Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Get Out of the Spectator Seat | Historical Books | 1 Kings 15:1-8

Episode Date: August 29, 2025

Do you read the Bible from the spectator seat? Is there a hidden sin you need to confess? What is the lamp in Jerusalem? In today's episode, Jeff shares how 1 Kings 15:1-8 encourages us to move from the spectator to the arena floor, where we might meet the love and victory of Jesus. If you're listening on Spotify, tell us about yourself and where you're listening from! Read the Bible with us in 2025! This year, we’re exploring the Historical Books—Joshua, Judges, 1 & 2 Samuel, and 1 & 2 Kings. Download your reading plan now. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it so that others can find it, too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: 1 Kings 15:1-8

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks. Where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Jeff Parrott. Do you read the Bible from the spectator's seat? If you're like me and a lot of people I talk to, we can easily treat the Bible like it's just any other kind of content we consume. We want it to entertain us.

We might even wish it could mirror the menu options on our streaming services with a list of passages curated for our personal tastes. based on your previous reading, here are some passages you might like. Now, I don't know about you, but this consumeristic spectator approach to the Bible kind of reminds me of that famous line from Maximus in the original Gladiator movie. Are you not entertained? Russell Crow says it much better. If we're just sitting in the spectator seat and we expect that the Bible is there to entertain us,

then our level of engagement with it is going to be dictated by whether we're excited by what we read. We'll quickly become critics who observe. the Bible from a safe distance. And this posture is kind of interesting because it's very different from the way that the Bible clearly states how we should engage with it. Paul's second letter to Timothy states this, all scripture is God breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. Now, do you see how we're not meant to read the Bible from the spectator's seat? The Bible is God-breathed truth. It's trying to teach us and train us to equip us for life in the movement of

God's kingdom. The Bible is trying to get us out of the spectator's seat and into the arena. Reminds me a little bit of Theodore Roosevelt's line about the man in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood. That is, in contrast to those who stay in the spectator's seat, Roosevelt describes them this way, those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. Now, if it's true that the entire Bible is trying to get us to move from the spectator's seat

into the arena, then we have to do some hard work on the passages that we'd rather skip over. You know, the parts that would not be showing up on a menu of suggested passages that suit our tastes? I want us to keep this contrast in mind as we go into our passage today in 1st King's 15. we'll use these eight verses as a way to test the difference between the spectator seat and the arena.

What would it look like to read these verses as a spectator who wants to be entertained? What would it look like to read them as people who are in the arena, whose faces are marred by dust and sweat and blood? Let's see how God will use these verses to make us a people who aren't just being entertained, but are being trained to live in the advancement of his kingdom. as we approach God's word together let's slow down and pause and ask for his grace to move through our time Heavenly Father we thank you for the gift of life and breath we thank you for your word is all your grace thank you Lord we bring before you our joys and our sorrows our anxiety and our excitement our calendars and our

contingencies god meet us in this space jesus help us abide in you as we engage with your truth Holy Spirit, we ask you to move in and through this time in First Kings, chapter 15. As we read your living word, may it read us and restore us to life with you. In Jesus' name, amen. All right, these eight verses that we're going to read cover the short reign of a king named Abysium, who ruled over the southern kingdom of Judah after the death of Solomon's son, Rehoboam. Let's go ahead and read these eight verses in their entirety, and they're going to go back through and use our contrasting perspectives of the spectator's seat and the arena floor to see what God has for us.

All right, let's start with verse one. Now in the 18th year of King Jeroboam, the son of Nabat, Abidjam began to reign over Judah. He reigned for three years in Jerusalem. His mother's name was Makkah, the daughter of Abishalom. And he walked in all the sins that his father did before him, and his heart was not wholly true to the Lord His God as the heart of David his father. Nevertheless, for David's sake, the Lord His God gave him a lamp in Jerusalem, setting up his son after him and establishing Jerusalem, because David did what was right in the eyes of the Lord,

and did not turn aside from anything that he commanded him all the days of his life, except in the matter of Uriah, the Hittite. Now, there was war between Rehoboam and Jeroboam all the days of his life. The rest of the acts of Abidium and all that he did, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah? and there was war between Abidjim and Jeroboam, and Abidium slept with his fathers, and they buried him in the city of David,

and Asa, his son, reigned in his place. All right, now, if we read this passage, like we're in the spectator's seat, most of us would honestly be a little bit bored. We're going to want to move on. There's not a lot of explicit action. There aren't any obvious quotes to draw out and stamp on a coffee cup or stitch onto a pillow.

If we're just spectators, we're going to respond to Maximus's question with an honest reply. No, we are not entertained. But let's take another approach and see how God might be using these eight verses to pull us out of the spectator's seat and onto the floor of the arena. We can do that by asking two simple yet very helpful questions. What do these eight verses reveal about the heart of humanity? And what do they reveal about God?

Let's start with the heart of humanity. This passage explicitly addresses the human heart with its examination of Abysium's heart. Let's go back to verse three, where we learned that Abidium walked in all the sins of his father and that his heart was not wholly true to the Lord. In the Hebrew, the phrase reads that his heart was not Shalem. It's connected to the biblical concept of shalom,

the idea of wholeness and completeness, the way life is meant to be. Abidium's heart is not whole. The center of his being, with his thoughts, his desires, and his decisions, they're all fractured by sin. And as we read this passage, we see how that fracture of his heart permeates his whole life.

Verse 7 details how Abidium was at war with the northern king, Jeroboam, just like his father was at war with Jeroboam. Abesium's heart is trapped in the spiral of sin that fuels disconnection and his relation to God and the world around him. Now, how does that revelation about Abidium's heart reveal something about your own? If you're not just reading this to be entertained, but to be trained in the mission of God, how does this passage expose something in your life? Maybe it's a hidden sin that you're hoping to make peace with,

but you need to confront before God and others. Maybe it's an unhealthy attraction, a disguised addiction, or an obsession that feels under control now, but is going to lead the disconnection and chaos if it's left unaddressed. As you consider your own heart right now, let the Holy Spirit pull you out of the spectator's seat and onto the floor of the arena. Next, let's address our second question. What does this passage reveal about the heart of God? Now, at first glance, it might not seem like there's much there, but verse four has a key phrase that we should consider.

Nevertheless, for David's sake, the Lord His God gave him a lamp in Jerusalem, setting up his son after him and establishing Jerusalem. Okay, this reference to a lamp in Jerusalem is a shout out to first. Kings chapter 11 verse 36. There, God promised that even after the division of the kingdom, he would preserve a lamp before himself in Jerusalem. Despite the darkness of the kingdom's division and downfall and exile, he would continue to keep the flame of his promise to David burning. And they would continue to be a king from the line of David on the throne some way, somehow. And so Abidium wouldn't be the final king to sit on the throne. Out of his steadfast love, God would give his son, Asa, the crown after him. Now this promise of the lamp being preserved stretches back

to God's promise to David in 2 Samuel 7, but it also stretches forward to the ultimate fulfillment of that promise in King Jesus. In the midst of our sick and divided hearts, God's kingdom will relentlessly and faithfully move. So if our first question about the human heart humbles us into conviction. The second question about God's heart empowers us into dependence. These verses are telling us that the only way we can stay in the story, the only way we can stay in the arena with the dust and the sweat and the blood is because God is in the arena with us. He is the ultimate victor who goes before us. So as we consider God's heart and his steadfast love, let's close our time together by considering how we can grow in an empowering dependence upon him.

How does this promise in First Kings stir your heart and mind to reconsider the gravity of Jesus' life, death, resurrection, and reign as the victorious king? How is God calling you to move from the spectator seat to the arena floor because of his relentless love for you in Jesus? Heavenly Father, we thank you that you call your people to be trained in the way of your kingdom. Jesus, we praise you and we depend on you and your victory and your love as we move from being entertained to being trained. Holy Spirit shape us into the kind of people who press into the dust, sweat and blood of a life together so that we can portray and participate in the work you're

doing. We ask this by your grace for your glory and your story. Draw us in, Lord. In Jesus' name, amen.