1 - 2 Kings

[00:00:00] We're going to be in not just one book today. We're actually going to be in two books. We're going to be in First Kings and what's after First Kings, Second Kings. Y' all are scholars this morning, and we're going to be looking at both of those books. We've been going through a series in the Old Testament, particularly looking from Genesis to the end of the Old Testament, the book of Malachi. And we're doing this series through this entire year. Really, it's a survey. We're not going verse by verse through this, these books because that would take a lot longer than a year or you would just have to stay from January 1st until December 31st. That'd probably be the only way we could do verse by verse through the Old Testament. So we're doing a survey through the Old Testament and today we are looking at first and Second Kings, which I think up to this point we've just been looking at one book at a time. But this book really works together in a really significant way. So that's why we're looking at both of them in one week. In your bulletin, you can see kind of a synopsis for this. You can just read that there. In these two books, the nation of Israel loses its greatest king. What was his name? The greatest king of Israel. Not Jesus, by the way, but David. And then watches the throne be filled with mostly prideful, horrible, and even very evil kings. And the question then that we sit with today is what will God do about his nation running far from him? That's the question that we're going to wrestle with and we're going to answer today as we go through these two books. So I encourage you. Hope your Bibles are open. [00:01:34] Wrestling of pages is really good as we kind of flip through these books together this morning, following along. [00:01:40] Like I said, we're not going to be able to look at all of the texts here, but we want to understand where we are coming from and where we're going. [00:01:48] Now. Before we get into the book, I want to give a really brief kind of zoomed out. Can someone say zoomed out, zoomed out picture of the Old Testament? Because it's really important for us to know where we started and really what does the Old Testament look like? Especially because many of us, even though you may have been walking with the Lord for quite some time, you may spend lots of time in God's word, but the Old Testament can be kind of confusing at times. Does anyone feel like that sometimes you read through the Old Testament, you're like, where is this going? [00:02:16] What's going on right now? I'm 15 chapters deep in Jeremiah and I have no idea what's going on. And so I want to just give you just a brief, zoomed out picture of this timeline of the Old Testament. Here's a kind of a fun graphic for you to look at. At the beginning, some of the words are kind of small. At the beginning is creation. And that's that little picture there of things beginning. And then there's that kind of outline of somebody who looks like he has a big beard. That's the patriarchs there. That's Genesis. And then we go forward a little bit to Exodus, where they're freed from Egypt. After being there, then you have that little flag that's there. That's the conquest of something called the Promised Land. Can someone say the Promised Land? [00:02:56] The Promised Land. So that's Joshua. That's that time frame when they've been wandering in the wilderness for how many years? [00:03:03] 40 years, and they get into the conquest of this promised land, the land of Canaan, and they finally step into that after waiting for a really long time. But. But there's a lot of idolatrous nations there that they need to drive out. And so through the Book of Judges and even Ruth, in the first part of Samuel, we hear about these people named judges who are called to help really free the people of Israel from slavery or oppression from other nations. And then we move forward, and that's the little gavel there. And then we move forward to that crown which stands for the kings. [00:03:36] And that's particularly kind of right where we are now. You can see that red arrow pointing right in that king space to the suitcase. That's the exile. And then after that, they're in exile. The nation of Israel is in exile. For depending on if it's northern kingdom or southern kingdom, we'll talk about that in a little bit for quite some time. And that balloon. Why do you have balloons? Because you want to celebrate? Because then they finally are released from exile from either Assyria or Babylon, and they're sent back into, or allowed to go back into the promised land. And. And that actually is a very brief, if you will, snapshot of what happens in the Old Testament. Are you following me there? And then from the end of that balloon, there's about 450 years or so until who comes? [00:04:22] Jesus. [00:04:23] All right, so there's one more slide. This is a little bit harder for you to see, but the books, the way they stack up, we're right in that center section. Actually, what we're doing today is we're looking at first and Second Kings, and then next week we'll look at Ezra and Nehemiah, Allah also in one week. And really that's like the tail end of the timeline of the Old Testament. All of the other books like Esther and Jeremiah and Ezekiel, those actually stack up in the time frame of first Kings and second Kings and Ezra and Nehemiah. Okay, so what we're looking at today actually covers a big section of time. So kind of look at my hands as a timeline here, a big section of time. And then what we have is various prophets, the major prophets and minor prophets that are stacked in this timeline. Does that make sense? So here's the first Kings to two Kings and Ezra and Nehemiah over here. And then a lot of prophets that are stacked like this over that period of time. And many of the prophets are actually there warning the kings that we are looking at today to say, hey, you need to pay attention because y' all are straying away from God and there's punishment coming. So that, that's that timeframe that we're looking at right now. Go one slide forwards. [00:05:33] And so what we're looking at here then right now is answering this question. [00:05:39] If you were to fast forward in that timeline that I kind of set for you, imagine you're a kid. Imagine you're a 16 year old kid in let's say, Babylon. [00:05:49] And you just got the news that the king said, you can go back to Jerusalem or you can go back to Israel. You've heard stories because you've been in exile, you've been sent away from at least your parents home for many, many years. And you've heard stories about this place that your parents used to live in, this place called Israel, in a place called Judah. And you asked your parents as a 16 year old, mom, dad, how did we get here? [00:06:18] And first and Second Kings answers that question. [00:06:22] It's them, if you will, the parents saying to their 16 year old kid, let me tell you from the time of David, because we've all talked about David. Let me tell you from the time of David to the time of us landing here in this place called Babylon, how did we get here? Why is this even a thing for us? And why are we so excited that we get to go back to where? [00:06:41] Back to Israel? Back to Jerusalem? So that's that picture that we're looking at. On the screen you can see a snapshot of both of these books, the books of first and second Kings and trace the history of Israel and Judah from the end of David's reign. That's what we were just talking about through this thing called the divided kingdom. That's when the kingdom split. We'll talk about that on your outline, chronicling the rise and the fall of many kings and prophets and showing how persistent idolatry. Can someone say idolatry? That's going to be incredibly important for us this morning. And covenant unfaithfulness, that is persistent unfaithfulness to God led to divine judgment, that is God ordaining judgment. And then their what, exile, that is them being removed from the place, the promised land, while also revealing God's faithfulness to his promises even in the midst of repeated failures. Are any of you this morning glad that God is faithful? [00:07:36] Even though we fail over and over again, he remains faithful. We're going to see that through our time this morning. If you would join me in prayer. And then we will dive right in. [00:07:48] Father, in heaven, we are grateful this morning to be reminded, even the songs that we sing, of your love for us and your faithfulness and your grace, the power that you possess much, much greater than we could even imagine. [00:08:01] We ask that as we spend time this morning, that through your love, because of your love and your faithfulness, Lord, that you would continue to reveal yourself to us. [00:08:11] For those of us perhaps here in this room that are straying from you, that are walking in their own way, Lord, that you would show us your desire to be near to us and us to be near to you. [00:08:22] And how wonderful it is when we truly do submit to your leadership in all areas of our life. Ask the things that I say would be from you, just guided by your spirit, in Jesus name, Amen. [00:08:34] All right, let us jump right in. In your outline, you can see something called the basics. And then the outline. And then after that you'll see the Savior. And then at the very bot it says the application, really briefly, the basics. Who's the author, when is this happening? And where is this happening? On the screen you can see the answers to those questions. Who's the author? I know. Kind of anticlimactic. We don't exactly know. [00:08:54] Most likely one of the prophets. Some people say it could have been somebody like Jeremiah for part of it, Ezra, Ezekiel, also some prophets that would have known very much what was going on here. Remember that timeline I told you about? I told you the prophets kind of stack. Those books kind of stack above that time frame. So they would have been familiar with what is Going on here, the time frame you can see there, 970 years or so before Jesus to about 560 years. So that's that time frame first, the beginning of first kings. That's the end of David's life to the very end when they come back to when they actually get into exile and they're about to come back from exile. And then where is this happening? Particularly see, where is this location? [00:09:38] Israel. You guys can read the screen. Where's the location in Israel? And then in parentheses I put Israel and Judah, because we're going to see that. Actually the nation of Israel splits. And so there's two different, if you will, locations, but it's really still located in the promised land. All right, chapters one through eleven dive us right into the outline. You can write this in Solomon's reign and rejection. Solomon's reign and rejection. You could write that in there. If you look in your Bibles, in 1 Kings, we just jump right in. [00:10:07] Solomon became king. What do we know about Solomon? What's something you know about Solomon? [00:10:13] He was wise. What else do you know about Solomon? Wise. He was also very wise. [00:10:17] We all could say wives. Yes, lots of wives. [00:10:24] Plural. Don't recommend that. All right, so David is where the beginning of 1 Kings starts. David is at the tail end of his life, and he is known as a man after what, God's own heart. So we know that David, he was not a perfect man. But one thing that we do see about David is when he was pointed out, when his sin was pointed out to him, he turned back and he said, I'm sorry. He repented and he turned his heart back towards God, which is something that God desires for all of us. Amen. [00:10:54] So David's about to die. [00:10:57] He wants Solomon to be the next king. God approves that. And so actually about two years before David dies, Solomon is. Is crowned king, which is also somewhat unusual for the king to be crowned before the previous king has died. And Solomon, then he's born of who was his mom, Bathsheba. We've heard the story, right, of David and Bathsheba. God, though, allows Solomon, even though he's born from this person who was not originally David's wife, to be the next king. Solomon inherits this throne. He's a young man, and he desires kind of with a pure, authentic heart. He desires to honor God with what's before him. And so he and God have this interaction and God asks this question. He says, solomon, what would you like? [00:11:43] What would you like? And what does Solomon ask for? [00:11:45] Wisdom he says, God, I want to serve these people. Well, I recognize that they are not mine, they are yours. And I want to serve and I want to lead them well. So we will you please give me wisdom? And God grants him this desire for wisdom. And also because he didn't ask for wealth or power, he says, I'm gonna give you much more than what you asked. And so Solomon then becomes one of the most powerful kings at that time. [00:12:14] And God then, because he's pleased with his request, gives him wealth, gives him power, gives him incredible peace in his. [00:12:22] Solomon also then is tasked with the opportunity to build something. Remember, David wanted to build something and God said, you have too much blood on your hand, but your son Solomon's gonna build it. What did Solomon end up building? The temple. And so Solomon, this is a beautiful thing, right? He built this incredible temple, his incredible wealth. And people come from all over the known world to see Solomon's wealth, to see the architecture of the buildings that he's doing, all of that, just incredible. They want to see the amount of wisdom that Solomon has. [00:12:52] And one of the things that Solomon pulls off is peace with many of the surrounding nations. And one of the ways he does that is by marrying the daughters of the other leaders. [00:13:04] And this is where the wives plural kind of comes in. And so he ends up marrying many other women from other nations. And at first that seems like, oh, cool, they're not going to come invade their son in law's land. And maybe that's what he was thinking. [00:13:18] But also there's a problem with that is they were from other nations. [00:13:23] Which means, by the way, he's breaking God's law as far as marrying people only from Israel. But there's another problem. These wives brought in their idols from the other nations. And Solomon didn't say, no, no, honey, you can come by yourself, but leave your idols at home. He let them come, and then he also let them worship those idols even in Israel. And not just that. [00:13:46] He then began to lead and guide even Israel to say, it's okay for you to worship these idols as well. Not going so well, right? Not a very good reflection of what his dad wanted and the instructions that his dad had left for him. [00:14:02] Even though Solomon sat on the throne for 40 years, Solomon was the wisest of fools. [00:14:11] He rejected God's very clear command. He didn't lose the kingdom, but he started its path towards its demise. And maybe something for us to consider as we think about Solomon particularly is this success is not a sign of God's approval Satisfaction of your soul when you're deep in Scripture is, just because I'm making a lot of money, just because things are going really well for me doesn't mean God saying thumbs up. What you're doing is right. And David might have been deceived by that. Look at all the things that I'm doing. I guess God's okay with this. Was God okay with it? Not at all. Not at all. [00:14:48] By the time of Solomon's death, even particularly one of the things even with Solomon is he even forced many of the Israelites into forced labor to build things for him. [00:15:00] At the time of Solomon's death, he mirrored more of Pharaoh than he did of David, which is a sad ending right then. The question that we're left with is this. What is God going to do with such a powerful kingdom that is no longer aligned with him when God is the one who gave them strength in the first place? [00:15:22] God knows. [00:15:25] Matthew 12:25 says this. God knows that a kingdom divided against itself cannot what stand. [00:15:33] So what's God going to do? [00:15:35] He's going to split the kingdom. And that's the next point on your outline. Particularly in 1 Kings, chapters 12 through 16, we see this. The kingdom splits. The kingdom splits in chapter 11. Flip over in your Bible to chapter 11 of First Kings. God shows up to a man named Jeroboam. Can we say Jeroboam together? [00:15:57] God shows up to this guy named Jeroboam in chapter 11. [00:16:01] And Jeroboam, he's an official in the court of Solomon. And this prophet shows up to this guy named Jeroboam, no royal blood, shows up to him and says this Solomon is not obeying God anymore. So the consequence is this. The kingdom is going to be split and you, Jeroboam, are going to be someone who's going to lead as king, part of the nation of Israel. How do you think Jeroboam felt about that? [00:16:27] Probably pretty excited, right? [00:16:29] David found out about it. How do you think David felt about that? [00:16:33] Not so good. [00:16:34] So sitting. I'm sorry, not David. Solomon. Sitting as the rightful king. Solomon then tries to kill Jeroboam. Jeroboam flees, he runs south to Egypt and he stays there for a time. If we go on to chapter 12, we see now that Solomon dies. [00:16:49] And then the question is this, who's going to be the what, the next king? Well, Solomon has another son named. And they're not twins, the names sound really similar. Solomon has a son named Rehoboam. Can we say Rehoboam So now we have Jeroboam, who's not related to Solomon, and we have Rehoboam, who is. So Jeroboam and Rehoboam. All right, so there's. The two names sound really similar, but two different people. Jeroboam has run south to where Egypt. Rehoboam goes, well, I think I'm going to be the next what? [00:17:22] King? So they gather a bunch of the people, all the elders and stuff, and Rehoboam is there. And the people have this question for Rehoboam. Are you ready for the question? Rehoboam, are you going to be nicer than Solomon? [00:17:36] Because Solomon forced us into labor. Solomon brought all sorts of stuff going on. He made us pay a lot of taxes. Are you going to be nicer than Solomon? [00:17:45] And Rehoboam's answer is this. And by the way, Jeroboam has heard that Solomon died, so he joined in on this little conversation. So now we have Rehoboam, who's going to be king. Jeroboam, who's sitting there going, I heard that prophecy from before. [00:17:59] I think I'm supposed to be king too. But this guy might be king. You get the gist with me, right? You know what's going on. And so Rehoboam says, check back with me in a few days. People come back a few days later and say, hey, what's your answer? And here's what Rehoboam says. Rehoboam says this. You thought my dad was harsh. I'm gonna be worse. Isn't that a good way to start your kingship? [00:18:22] You thought he taxed you a lot. I'm gonna tax you more. You thought you worked hard under him. You're gonna work even harder under me. He said it in a much more kind of crass, rude way, but basically he said Solomon was weak. [00:18:35] I'm gonna be a much better, stronger, more authoritative king. Well, how do you think the people felt about that? [00:18:42] Not so good, right? So what ends up happening? This is when the split happens. Some people stay this hand right here. Moving forward is gonna be Israel. Okay, here's all of Israel. Are you with me here? The northern part is gonna be known now as Israel. And this is when the split happens. I think I put a picture on the screen. Yeah. The southern part is Judah. All right? So now imagine my hand and that image on the screen. The. The lower part is Judah. The upper part is Israel. [00:19:10] So the split happens. And Jeroboam, he says he's the official guy who was Told I'm going to be king one day. Jeroboam takes people and they go. And he reigns as king over the northern part, which is known as what? Israel. And Jeroboam, he's the son of Saul. I'm sorry, he's the son of Rehoboam is the son of Solomon. He says, all right, well, I'm going to stay as king in the southern part, and that's where Jerusalem is. So Jerusalem is the capital down here in the lower part, and then up in the northern part is Israel. [00:19:41] Now, Israel, there's the southern part, the northern part, and the southern part, Israel and Judah. They've split, has happened. Now. Follow me here. [00:19:50] There's now gonna be 20 different kings in both of those places. Can someone say 20 kings? [00:19:57] 20 kings. [00:19:58] The northern part's going to have 20 kings. That is until the exile. And the southern part is going to have 20 kings. We're going to look at those kings in just a little bit. Each of these kings, this is really important for us to follow. Each of these kings are given a criteria as to if they are a good king or a bad king. Okay, because there is. We're going to see actually lots of bad kings. But what's the criteria? Because you're going to see some good kings, bad kings in a minute. Here's the criteria. Three things. If you want to write this down, do that. [00:20:26] Here's the first thing. Here's the criteria. Did they worship the God of Israel alone, or did they promote idol worship? That's the first criteria. Second is, did they deal with idolatry among the people? Okay, so idolatry themselves, and did they deal with the people worshiping other idols? And thirdly, did they remain faithful to the covenant like David, or the instructions of God like David did, or did they become corrupt in all of their morality? So idol worship. Idol worship, and then just even obedience. Remember, we went through, like, Exodus and Leviticus and Deuteronomy and numbers. God gave Israel tons of instructions. The third is, are they actually gonna follow those instructions? The law of God. All right, are we clear on that criteria? Now I'm gonna give you a little bit of teaser here. What's 20 plus 28 out of the total? 40 kings in both of them. [00:21:19] Eight of them were good kings according to that criteria. [00:21:23] The rest of them all what? [00:21:26] All disobedient, all wicked. So here's that picture you see still on the screen. Judah is in the southern part. [00:21:32] The top part is called what? [00:21:35] Israel. We're going to points two and three, on your outline, we're going to talk about Israel first. And then point four on your outline, we're going to talk about Judah. First and second Kings spend more time talking about Israel than they do with Judah. And so we're going to spend more time talking about Israel than we will Judah today. [00:21:50] First and Second Chronicles, which we'll look at later, talks more about what happens in that southern southern kingdom. So you ready to look at point three? All right. Israel's rebellion, rejections and removal. That's the third point on your outline. Israel's rebellion, rejection and removal. So so far we've had a disobedient King Solomon that caused the split to happen. And now we're going to look at how did things go when things were split, split up between both of those places? First Kings, chapter 17, all the way to Second Kings, chapter 17, with a little bit of kind of changes here and there. Mostly focus on the northern kingdom. So there is some. They'll reference back to the southern kingdom, but most of the time it's talking about this northern kingdom. Now I put a slide on the screen. You're not going to be able to read through all the names, but there's a number that's important for us to look at, and it's this. The top of it says kings of Israel. What's the numbers there? 0 out of that means how many of the kings? The twenty kings in the northern tribe was good. How many of them? [00:22:53] Zero. Isn't that sad? [00:22:56] That's a lot of kings that existed there. And then you can see numbers in parentheses after some of those names. That's the amount of time in years that they reigned as kings. So for example, you can see Jeroboam, it says rebellious. And then in parentheses, 22. That means he was king for 22 years. Nadab, he was a bad king, two years. And you go on and on and so on. [00:23:19] You can see there the amount of time that they reigned as king. And you might think, why on earth are they ignoring God for so long? [00:23:30] Why on earth? [00:23:34] They also. We'll talk about this soon. They also had plenty, plenty of warnings from prophets. [00:23:40] Come back to God. Come back to God. You see number seven on there, Ahab. Remember him? We hear a lot about Ahab and his wife Jezebel. Very bad, bad king. Did he have a prophet saying, turn back to God? Yes, his name was Elijah. [00:23:59] The people rebelled against God. Idol worship to the same level, which is really key for us to get here. The level of idol worship that was going on here is literally. Follow me here. The same level of idol worship and what comes after that as the original nations that they were told to drive out when they came into the promised land. Remember how they were wandering in the wilderness for how many years Israel was, and then they were told go into Canaan. Because there's all of these idolatrous nations who are doing terrible things. I mean, horrible sexual perversion around their idol worship, around child sacrifice, around slave labor, about incredible abuse of others, literally the things that they were supposed to annihilate these people for that kind of sin the nation of Israel was now practicing. [00:24:45] So they had rebelled against God and they had thus rejected also God's prophets and continued sin. I put a couple slides on the screen that gave a little bit of body to what I just said there in second Kings. So flip over in your Bible quite a bit. Two kings, chapter 17. The tail end of what we see with Israel is this. They despise. They being the nation of Israel, despised his statutes and his covenants that he made with their fathers and the warnings that he gave them. They went after false idols and became false. And they followed the nations that were around them concerning him whom the Lord had commanded them that they should not do like them. Go to the next slide. [00:25:23] And they abandoned all the commandments. Remember the third criteria? Obey the commandments of God. They disobey, ignore, abandoned the commandments of the Lord their God had made for them. And they made metal images of two calves. Does that sound familiar, by the way? [00:25:40] Golden calves, some calves for them to worship. And they made Asherah and worshiped all the hosts of heaven. By the way, that's not actually heaven. That's like worshipping the stars and things in the sky. And served baal. They burned their sons and their daughters as offerings and used divination and omens and sold themselves to do evil things in the sight of the Lord. [00:26:00] What's the last phrase? Provoking him to what? [00:26:04] Anger, understandably. So. Right? [00:26:07] Horrible, horrible things. And so what's God going to do? We find in these chapters that God understandably, is incredibly angry about this. So it says, Therefore in chapter 17, verse 18 of 2 Kings, therefore the Lord was very angry with Israel and removed them out of his sight. None was left but the tribe of Judah. Remember? That's the southern part that we talked about. [00:26:30] None was left other than Judah, though a remnant remained in the north of Israel. That is Israel under Assyrian rule. And tens of thousands were deported and made servants in Israel. Assyria. Leave that on the screen. For a second. So here's what happened. Israel, the northern kingdom, they're hanging out, they're doing all their terrible idol worship. [00:26:50] And God then prompts the heart of the Assyrian king to go in and to take the nation of Israel. And so that's what the Assyrian king does. He goes in and he captures much of the land and he takes them captive. Actually, over a couple of waves. The capital of the northern tribe of the north was Samaria. Does that sound familiar, by the way? Samaria, like the Samaritans, sends them in and then he captures Samaria after some time, and he takes them and he really leaves kind of the insignificant people, a few insignificant people politically in Israel. That's what we read on the screen. But the rest of them, in hordes, takes them to Assyria. [00:27:31] Now what happens after quite some time is this. [00:27:34] The king of Assyria says, I'm going to start allowing some people to go back to the northern tribe of Israel, back to Samaria. And if you're a New Testament person, pay attention to this here, which is all of us. [00:27:48] He sends some of them back to Samaria, but also the king of Assyria says, you know what, there's some other tribes that we have in Assyria that we're going to send back to Samaria, and they're going to all be there. And so really what we have is we have some Israelites in Samaria. We. We have some Assyrians in Samaria, and then we have a bunch of other mixed tribes in Samaria as well. Does that make sense so far? All kind of got sent back to Samaria. [00:28:10] And the terminology here, I don't have better terminology than this because it's probably the most appropriate terminology for the people in the New Testament at Jesus time. And it's this. The people in Samaria were then known as people of mixed blood because there's people from all these other nations. And we've been told by God in the law that we're only supposed to marry people who are of the same nation, Right? But all these people in Samaria, what nation are they from? [00:28:40] All over the place. So then that gives you now a better picture when you read in John 4, when Jesus meets the woman at the well, that Samaritan woman, why do the people hate her so much, the Samaritans? Because they think we are the holy people. We have good, clean blood, if you will. We're actually fathers of Abraham because we, we can trace our ancestry back to Abraham, but not you Samaritans. [00:29:07] Your blood is all Mixed with Assyrians and all these other tribes. You're not like us. You follow me there? And so even the story of the Samaritan on the road, Jericho. Why do they hate the Samaritans so much? Because there was this constant clashing between, we are better than you. You are these mixed tribe people, unlike us. [00:29:29] So that's kind of that story, if you will, of the northern tribe. And Assyria then said, hey, we took out Israel. So, well, let's go down to Judah and try that down there. How'd that work for them? It actually didn't because at the time there was a good king in Judah. So let's talk about Judah. Now we have a picture of what happened with the northern tribe. They completely were idolatrous worship. Assyria took them for many years and then they trickled back into Israel. Then we shift down to Judah. Look in your outline. Point four, Judah's disobedience, downfall and deportation, which are really just different words than we used for point three. But the same thing. [00:30:11] Now we look at Judah, which actually is two tribes. Judah and Benjamin in the south, there was 10 tribes in the north, two tribes in the south here. [00:30:22] And here we see something a little bit different. [00:30:26] Look on the screen. I put a picture of those kings as well. We have Rehoboam. We talked about Jeroboam and Rehoboam. Rehoboam was the guy who was Solomon's son. He's the guy who stayed in the south. He was mostly bad. But here we see. What's the numbers there? [00:30:40] 8 out of 8. So there was some good ones. The one in bold, the names in bold there you can see those were the good Kings. So about 40% or so of the kings here in the southern kingdom were actually good, or at least mostly good kings that we can read about. There's good kings like Asa, you can read about, or Jehoshaphat. Can you say Jehoshaphat? [00:31:02] Name your kid, your next kid, that then like number 10, the 10th king. There you see King Uzziah. You might remember Isaiah, chapter six starts off in the year that King Uzziah died. That's that king there. He was a good king up until actually the very end. And then Josiah, the last of them, number 16. And again, you can see in the numbers in the parentheses there how long they reign as kings. So like the Northern kingdom, they too had plenty of warnings from prophets saying, get back with God. Stop your idol worship. And for some of them, they actually listened. Can someone say listened? They actually listened and this is probably why the Southern Kingdom lasted 150 years longer than the northern kingdom did. So the northern kingdom, they were taken out by what nation? [00:31:54] Assyria. Then Assyria tried to come down here and take out the southern kingdom, Judah. And that didn't work out for them because God was protecting them for another 150 years. And then this is actually like prophet of Jeremiah talks to the nation of Judah and says, hey, you got to get back with God because the nation of Babylon is going to come and remove you if you don't start to obey God. [00:32:18] Well, we can see some of them did, but many of them didn't. Now, I've talked a little bit about prophets, if you like to write things down. The prophets had three jobs. Someone say three jobs. These prophets had three jobs. Here's the jobs of the prophets that literally existed pretty much all throughout in the northern kingdom and southern kingdom over these a few hundred years. Look what it says. You can write this down. The first thing, their job is to speak for God. [00:32:43] Their second job is to be watchdogs for evil. [00:32:47] And their third is this to remind the people of God's law, speak for God, watch out for evil, and remind leaders and the people of God of God's law. [00:32:58] Now, some of them, like Elijah, for example, he did just that. And the response from the king and the people was rejection and was abuse. Elijah, for example, Elisha, the same thing. Jeremiah, Ezekiel. We read about these prophets who were telling Israel, please pay attention, get back with God, obey God. Well, eight of these, 20 did. But in the end, God said, it's time. [00:33:26] And what happened? Well, the prophet Jeremiah talked about this. The nation of. [00:33:32] Not Assyria, but what nation came and took them? [00:33:35] Babylon. [00:33:36] And unlike the northern kingdom, that had kind of a. We don't have a really clear date for them, their entire, the entire nation being removed. We have really clear time frames for the southern nation when Babylon came in and removed them. Daniel one actually starts off this way. Daniel, what story do you guys remember when you hear Daniel? Daniel and the Right. So Daniel chapter one on the screen shows us this. In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim, which is actually the last king that you saw there, King of Judah, which is that southern nation, Nebuchadnezzar, king of what? [00:34:13] Babylon came to Jerusalem and besieged it. And the Lord delivered Jeakim, not in a good way, moved the king of Judah into his hand. That is, Babylon came, moved by God as an instrument of judgment to Judah. And they said, we're going to Besiege that is to surround, to conquer Judah and we're going to take them back to Babylon. Who was one of those people that went back to Babylon? Daniel. Right. [00:34:39] Then we hear In Ezra chapter one and two, the end of this 40 year period of time where the people of Judah are in captivity to. In that case, 40 years later, it's going to be the king of Persia. But in Babylon, you can read this in Ezra chapter one and Ezra two speaks about when God says, all right, the 40 years is up and he actually prompts this pagan king, say, it's time for you to send the people back to Jerusalem. You know something? [00:35:09] Even if people don't obey God and don't honor God, God can still prompt them to do stuff. [00:35:15] It's not like, well, they're not Christians, so they're just not going to listen to God. God can still change the minds of people and change the hearts of people. And I find great comfort in that. I hope you do as well. Especially in a season like this when the people of God were very concerned about what was happening in the political realm. Are any of you concerned about, maybe I shouldn't ask that question. [00:35:34] What's happening in the political realm can stir our hearts so much. We can get so anxious about it and we forget. [00:35:41] God can control the outcome of all of these things. [00:35:45] It is not outside of his control. It's, oh, I just pray that this person becomes a Christian so that they'll finally listen to God. God can do whatever he wants and move the hearts of anyone. [00:35:56] The reason for this exile was discipline. God wanted his people to pay attention. Can someone say pay attention? [00:36:03] Let's look now at the Savior. He was working through all of this. And we even see glimpses of Jesus in the midst of all this. Particularly, and firstly, you can write this down on your outline. Is Jesus is the ultimate prophet? Jesus is the ultimate prophet. [00:36:17] Acts chapter 3 speaks about Jesus being a prophet. God sent prophets to warn, just as Jesus came to warn and spoke for God. Really, that criteria, the three criteria that I gave for a prophet, Jesus did all of those things. He spoke for God. He warned people about idolatry as well. And he said, hey, please obey the commands of God. Now, in the case of the prophets, did they listen to them sometimes? Right? In the case of Jesus, when he came, did everyone listen to Jesus sometimes? Some people did. Not all of them. You can see the similarities there. More than that, prophets like Elijah and Elisha, they did things like raise people from the dead. I don't know if you knew that they spoke boldly to people in the face of danger. They parted the water. [00:37:06] Elijah went up to heaven without actually dying. Elisha multiplied food, healed the leper, raised the dead, purified food, and he cared for non Israelites as well. These prophets, even just those two, you can see a reflection of Jesus in them. But Elijah and Elisha and the other prophets, they were not perfect. [00:37:27] They were imperfect and mortal. But Jesus is the perfect prophet who not only speaks God's word, but is the word of. [00:37:35] Is the word of God. Secondly, on your outline, you could write this in. Jesus is not only the ultimate prophet, but he's also a better king. He's also a better king. [00:37:46] Some time ago, when we were going through judges, or actually after Judges, I was talking about this hamster wheel of this cycle that people kind of were kind of going through in judges of being in a place of freedom and then being in a place of idolatry and then of punishment, and then God bringing a deliverer. And that cycle was continuing. I would imagine for the people of Israel that we just read about in first and Second Kings, I would imagine there were some of them that are going, please, kings, Won't you just obey God? [00:38:14] Won't you just listen to him? I thought that having a king would solve all of our problems. Did it solve all of their problems? [00:38:22] Not at all. Not at all. They thought before they had a king, if we just have a king, all of our problems will be solved and we'll actually obey God. And then they got a bunch of kings and did they obey God? No, because the answer is not people to our problems. [00:38:38] The answer is Jesus Christ. [00:38:40] And so here we see that Jesus is the better king. Some of those kings, they did mostly good things. Some of them did a lot of good things. Some of them did no good things. But Jesus, the true son of David, showed up and said, all of those kings that you thought could solve your problems, you could see that they couldn't. And here I am as the true king that actually can meet the needs that you have and point you back towards the God in heaven. [00:39:07] Let's look at the application and then we'll close. [00:39:11] This is something that's really helpful for you, I hope, as well as you go through the Old Testament, if you have studied through Scripture for some time and you've seen some structure around the Old Testament, something that you could write down, three things that you can kind of think about at the end of any study that you're doing, and it's this. It's he what? We and me. Okay, write that down somewhere. He, we, me. And when you're looking at application, what does this mean for me? What is the he, we and me, he being God, we being humanity, and me being me. All right. And that's actually what we've been doing this entire series in the application, where it says, God, humanity and me is literally just the he, we, me. But sometimes he, we, me can be easier to remember. So what does this teach me about God? What does this teach me about humanity, and what does this teach me about me? Let's look at this together in that order. What does it teach me about God? I put one idea on the screen. Hopefully there's many things for you today. [00:40:03] Even though the kings failed in such significant ways, God's patience did not quit. [00:40:14] His faithfulness to his rebellious children shows the lengths of his love, of his mercy, and of his grace. [00:40:23] And I don't know about you, but there has been times in my life where I look back and I'm like, I have messed up so much. [00:40:30] And God is right there listening. [00:40:33] He's not in another room somewhere else. He's not being like, well, yeah, that's true. You messed up way too much. I gave you. I'm done with you. [00:40:41] He said, I have been waiting for you to turn around. And friends, if you're here today, maybe you're thinking that same thing. I've been running from God for so long, or at least maybe there's been a part of my life that I have been rebelling from God in for so long, and God probably just doesn't want me anymore. And here's what we learn in 1st and 2nd kings, he does. [00:41:01] He still has not given up. And he won't. Even though there may be seasons, long seasons like we saw with Israel and Judah, long seasons of discipline and of hardship. The purpose of that discipline and hardship is to draw you back to him, for you to realize and for me to realize that he's the better king, not me. Because don't we do that? We say, I want to be the king of my life. I want to be the queen of my life. [00:41:26] And God here is saying, no, it's actually much better when I'm the king of your life. When you do it that way, it's going to be much better for you. And in the midst of, as we all experience, in the midst of that struggle of I want to be king. No, you should be king, and I want to be king, and you should be king. God says, I'm not going to abandon you in that. I'm going to keep showing up and waiting for you to surrender to me. [00:41:49] So that's what we learn about God. [00:41:52] We. The humanity part. You could write this in. It's on the screen as well. You could think about this. When humans want to be lifted up, we. They. We often push God aside and do things our own way. You know what I'm talking about here. [00:42:07] In these books, we are reminded that putting God in. In his rightful place is the only way to experience true peace, true success, and true joy. [00:42:20] We use the term who's in the driver's seat, right? [00:42:24] And it's that picture of is God in the driver's seat or is he in the passenger seat? And sometimes we do this. We're driving along down the road of life, whatever that is, and we are saying, God, I'm gonna turn right. God, there's a lot of traffic over here. God, can you bless this traffic? He's like, you should have turned left and listened to me. [00:42:43] If you actually just listened to me, you should have done it that way. Okay, well, God, now I'm in this traffic. Can you help this traffic? He's like, well, you've got to wait it out now. Like, you're the one who put yourself in this mess. And then we finally get through the traffic, and then maybe the next time we're saying, God, should I turn right or left? He's like, thanks for asking, by the way. You should turn left this time. And then we turn left, and things are going well. You're like, God, I should always listen to you. He's like, you should, you know, you should. It's better that way. And then we're like, yeah, this is going really well. I think I'm going to turn right. He's like, you didn't ask. And there's more traffic, and you hit a pothole, and now your suspension's out, and you're like, God, can you bless me some more? He's like, you should have what? [00:43:20] Listen to me. [00:43:22] Too often, that's what our life is. Following Jesus. Following Jesus looks like, as opposed to this saying, God, you've gifted me the steering wheel, but really, I want you to be sitting in this seat. And so what I'm gonna do is not turn the wheel without checking with you. I'm not gonna step on the gas or step on the brake without checking with you, even though the things out there might look really foggy and I don't know where I'm going. I don't Know what's going on? [00:43:49] I'm gonna ask you, because you actually can see further into the fog than I can. And you know what? Right and left is going to bring me. And so I'm going to trust you with that. But what did these kings do? They said, God, get out of the car. [00:44:02] This is my car, and I'm going to take it where I want. And what was the result? [00:44:06] A lot of hardship, wasn't it? And not just for them. Did you see that? But also for everyone else in their leadership, everyone else under them. Do you know this, that your decisions don't just affect you? [00:44:20] Write this down somewhere. Fools repeat the errors of those who came before them. The wise learn from them. Fools repeat the errors of those who came before them. The wise learn from them. So look back at the people in your life, look at the people around you, and learn from the mistakes of other people. [00:44:36] Lastly, me. [00:44:38] The Book of Kings has many lessons for believers. One of the most clear and sobering realities is this. [00:44:45] How quickly they turned to idol worship. It blows my mind, and yet it shouldn't, because I know my heart. [00:44:54] God desires wholehearted worship. And so what do we learn? We learn this. The difference between a good king and a bad king was the ways they put God first. Did they put him first? And if they did, that brought blessing, not just for them and for the other people. And that demands us to ask this question. You should see that on the screen. Who is in charge of my life? [00:45:15] Who is in charge of my life? One of the things that I think is so fascinating about this, then we're gonna close, is this. [00:45:21] They didn't. The kings and the people didn't say, I no longer believe in God. Here's what they did. I'm gonna bring in other gods as well. [00:45:32] That's the danger. Friends of God. Plus something else. [00:45:36] Because the idol worship that happened, it wasn't that they said, now, we are now atheists. And it's. They went from monotheists to polytheists. [00:45:44] It's God and other things. That's where the idol worship really manifested itself. And then they said, you know what? This God of heaven actually doesn't have more authority than all the other gods. He has actually a little less. It wasn't that they made God invisible to them. It was. They said, there's other things more important. And that is the danger in idolatry is it can say, oh, you haven't actually abandoned God. He's just less important. That's still idolatry. Friends, God's still important to me on Sunday. Yes, but what about Monday through Saturday? There's all of these other gods. God still calls that idolatry. [00:46:21] God wants our whole heart, not just our Sunday from 9 to 11 heart. [00:46:28] Let's pray. [00:46:31] Father in heaven, we are so grateful this morning for your incredible love for us. And you see us here this morning and the tension that exists even in our own hearts of making you king of our lives, every single moment asking you where you want us to go before we take that turn ourselves. [00:46:51] And we know that when hardship comes, you have not abandoned us. You're calling us back to you. [00:46:57] For those here today, maybe in the midst of struggling through that traffic, through that fog, knowing that where they are right now is a result of where they put themselves, I am grateful, so thankful that you have not abandoned them. You have not abandoned us in that space. [00:47:12] And you promise, no matter what, your grace is greater than all of our mistakes, all of our intentional sins. Your love does not fail. [00:47:25] So this morning, Lord, I hope that we can all be encouraged by that reality. [00:47:31] Your reality. Your presence in our life. [00:47:34] In Jesus name, Amen. [00:47:37] Maybe you're here today and you have never actually said, I want God to be in the driver's seat. Maybe you've chosen to do things your way and God has always been in the passenger seat. You've never actually said, I need salvation in my life. Choose that today to make him the king of your life. And maybe there's a part of your life you're saying, I'm struggling to give God complete authority of that part of my life. [00:47:59] Choose to do that today.