Thank you for listening to this sermon from Seven Springs Presbyterian Church. If you want to learn more about us, please find us on Facebook or visit us at SevenSpringsPresbyterian.com. So tonight, as I said, we'll be doing something a little bit different and what I mean by that is we're not going to do a regular Bible study per se in that we'll start at a specific text and do a couple of verses or get a certain section done. But what this is is going to be more of I guess a lecture or a discussion about the dating of first and second Kings now before you all Seek to be able to catch up on your sleep. I really hope that this will be helpful and insightful Hope that it is not dry but up to this point We've been looking at the kingdom of Israel and there's been one king. And besides Ish-bosheth and David kind of having these reigns underneath this period of time, it's very easy for us to be able to understand what's happening. But what is going to start to happen is now the kingdoms are divided. And you have the northern kingdom and then you have Judah down the bottom, and you have Israel at the top. And you have these two kings and these two kingdoms, and we don't get to look at those stories all consecutively. There's a pattern between them, but we more look and focus on kings, and kings overlap with other kings. And so as the authors, the prophets of those times record about the king's reigns, they're focusing on particular kings at particular moments, at a particular period of time. And so as we go through the story of first and second kings, it would be helpful for us to understand what is happening around the other nations of Israel or Judah. Who are the prophets that are speaking in those times? And what are they saying? And as we go through, I'm hopeful to be able to remind us as we go through 1 and 2 Kings. But it's also very helpful for us to understand the details as we go through them about what is happening and how we come to that. Now before we get to the details of this dating of first and second kings, why would we do something like this? Why would we waste our time looking at something like this? A question, why is it important to date the reigns of kings and other aspects and questions like that? The simple answer is that we could just respond and say the Bible is inerrant. And that's true. I'm not discrediting the inerrancy of the Bible. And when we come to historical books, we might not understand all the intricate details of what is happening, but just to be able to say it is true is a good answer. And it requires us to be able to have faith in God and his word about who he is, his sovereignty over all things as he recorded. and through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. But what this can be is can somewhat be a childlike answer. And what do I mean by that? It's still a good answer. But there's a simplicity to that answer that we can go a little bit deeper and maybe not into the weeds of all these questions. But the Bible has answers to all of those questions. And it's good to be able to know the simple answer, but hopefully sometimes we can move past that simple answer to be able to broaden our understanding of God's word within history that we might be able to answer these questions if they're asked of us. To be able to say the Bible is true is good, but I think a lot of people got hung up and caught off guard when liberal theologians came up and asked questions and said, well, what about these passages? And we, on the sidelines, just stand and say, well, the Bible is true. We can't point to how or why. But yet, as we dig deeper, we actually get more of an understanding of how the Bible is true. You can do this in different fields. I think you see it clearly when you look at creation. We can say, well, the Bible is true. Creation is real. And then all the questions come. And so we can turn and we can understand what the Bible actually teaches and broaden our understanding. Or things like higher textual criticism that came up and said, well, how did the gospel accounts come to be in our Bible and how did the New Testament come to be? Why is there only 27 books in the New Testament? Why not 26? Why not 28? There's a historical true answer to that. And we can just say, well, God's sovereign. And that's simple, and it's true, and it's a good answer, but sometimes we can go a bit further. And I think answering some of these difficult questions is a good thing for us to be able to study. And a lot of times when people come to the Bible, they go to things like historical books and they say, here, see these hard dates and figures and they're incorrect. How can you say the Bible is true and they're incorrect? One example that is used is the Bible speaks a lot about King David. Not merely just about during his 40 year reign, but previous to that with his reign with Saul, with his son Solomon, with all the kings of Israel and Judah normally compared to King David. And historians look at all the facts and all the artifacts that they have out in the world, and they say, we don't have much, if at all any, that speak about King David. And they say, see, the Bible is not true, or the Bible exaggerated David's reign. And it's kind of like a fisherman telling the tale of how big a fish he caught, and every time it gets bigger and bigger. And so the Bible just exaggerates David. And we can say, well, it's true, which is right, simple answer. But then when people go digging further, artifacts come up, like this one here. They found this, this is known as the Tel Dan Stele, artifact that they found. Now I don't need to be able to explain what this is, it's quite clear I thought, but maybe for the friend who's asking. This is a statement and the highlighted words speak of the house of David, the king of Israel. And so they find this, and here then is in the ninth century. Now we don't have the whole tablet to be able to see all of what it's speaking of, but we've recovered fragments that then speak and point to the house of David. Most scholars believe that the Stella recounts the campaign has a zeal of Damascus which defeated both Jehoram and Ahaziah of Judah. So the Bible is true and the Bible speaks of history and therefore the stories of the Bible have to fit within the stage of history. It's not merely that they're just stories, there are stories that actually happened and every story happened on a particular day. Now we might not be able to say it happened on a Tuesday or Thursday or whatever day, but we can actually generally pinpoint when events happened within the stage of world history. And history actually proves the Bible. The Bible is true, it's a true statement, but history, because it's God's world, not merely just God's word, but God's world and God sovereign over all things proves His word. Another example is Isaiah chapter 53, the servant song, and many scholars actually thought that Christians came in and they put that song in Isaiah. Because you read Isaiah chapter 53 and you think of Christ coming, the Paschal Lamb being slaughtered, and they said Christians must have put that in there. But yet history proves that Isaiah was written long before Christ came. Actually, the Dead Sea Scrolls were one of the greatest discoveries in the 20th century. And it proved that Isaiah chapter 53 was recorded on the Dead Sea Scroll 200 years before Christ even came. And so we see that history, time and time again, proves the Bible. Liberal theologians are corrected by these errors that come up. They will continue to pinpoint and seek to be able to find faults and flaws in the Bible, but every time they do, they're going to be embarrassed because the Bible speaks of true historical facts. So what then is the problem of 1 and 2 Kings? When we think about 1 and 2 Kings within history, within dating and trying to do this, there are many. One book I would recommend is this by Erwin R. Thiele, The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrews Kings. That's where a lot of this comes from. I'm not going to try and unpack the whole book, but a lot of the points come from this book. But there's many issues or problems that we face as we try and understand when this happened within history. There's discrepancies. In 2 Kings 9, verse 29, in the 11th year of Joram, the son of Ahab, Ahaziah began to reign over Judah. But just a couple of chapters before. the twelfth year of Joram the son of Ahab king of Israel, Ahaziah the son of Jehoram king of Judah began to reign. So is 11 or 12? There's a discrepancy. Not even that, you have merely just basic math, just simply adding numbers up. So Judah has 20 kings, and they reign for 393 years and three months. Israel has 19 kings and they reign 241 years and seven days, seven months. Now, if you start at the same time here, and here, you end, Israel would fall 690, Judah would fall 538 BC. But the problem, historically speaking, is Israel actually falls in 722, and Judah falls in 586. So you have 32 years difference here. In Israel, 48 years difference in Judah. And that's based on adding the king's reigns together. Not only do you have the dating, just basic math, you also have internal history. And what I mean by that is you have these two kingdoms that are running parallel with one another. They start at the exact same time, Solomon's death, Rehoboam, Jeroboam. And they meet together along the way with people like Jehu, who kills both the king Joram of Israel and Isaiah of Judah, the queen. But when you count the years to get to Jehu, Israel is 98 years, 7 days. Judah is 95 years. This event happens the exact same time, but when you count the days, there's a discrepancy. Or, another time when they meet together, 2 Kings chapter 18, in the end of the three years he took it, in the sixth year of Hezekiah, was the ninth year of Hosea, king of Israel, Samaria was taken. So you have this another overlap here later on between Hosea and Hezekiah, but when you add up the dates, Israel is 143 years, 7 months, Judah is 166 years. And they don't line up. We're external history. Not only have these two nations here of, you know, Israel and Judah, but you also have other nations that are running along in their timelines, like Assyria. And you have these other nations that are raging. And not only have these connections between these two kingdoms, you have these connections to this kingdom of Assyria. And places like Assyria, we have very meticulous record keeping of their kings and their reigns. And they even record things in their historical documents, things like solar eclipses and other phenomenon like that, that we can actually pinpoint exact dates and times and years You know, like in 2 Kings chapter 18, in the 14th year of King Hezekiah, Sennacherib, the king of Assyria, came up against all the fortified cities of the Judah and took him. So we have Hezekiah down here, and we can pinpoint when that lines up with up here. But from the dates of the brains in the books of Kings, is about seven or so years off. Again, Jehu's a very pinnacle point. He offers to King Shalmaneser III of Assyria, or in 2 Kings chapter 16, He has sent messages to Tiglath Pilsler, the king of Assyria, saying, I'm your servant and your son. Come up and rescue me from the hand of the king of Syria and from the hand of the king of Israel who are attacking me. So we have all these references, internal, external references, and these references overlap. Again, history happens on a certain date at a particular time. And the simple answer is, well, we can just say, well, the Bible is true, and the other things are inaccurate. Actually, that's what they sought to be able to do sometimes, the Greek translation of the Septuagint, as they read through and translated it from Hebrew to Greek. They actually tried to correct some of the dates to make them more, to line up better, but they actually made more of a mess. And there's no reason for us to be able to say these dates that they are recording are wrong. So now we see the problem, right? The simple answer, the Bible is truth, but yet there's all these things that are coming up. The Bible is inerrant. The Bible is infallible. But it just doesn't seem that all this data lines up. Now there's some aspect where faith is a part of that answer. We know it's true, we don't know how it is true, but again I think that's the simple answer. There are actual answers and the Bible can actually help us with it. The Bible is true and it can be proven to be true. Well how? We need to understand that they're not minor differences. It's not one or two days off. There's major discrepancies, major problems. So how do we understand these general principles for us to be able to see, particularly when we're talking about dates in 1st and 2nd Kings, how the Bible is true? Now I hope not to be able to go down and get lost in the weeds tonight or other nights as we talk about them, but maybe as we go through there's going to be comments that come back to what we're talking about tonight that help us understand what we're talking about. And then we'll hit some of these more difficult periods, Jehu, Hezekiah, and we'll discuss them briefly as we come up to those. So the first thing that we need to understand, when do you start counting? You see it clearly throughout the whole, all of the king's reigns. There's a pattern that goes through. This king died and his son reigned in his place. He reigned X number of years. And there's that formula of how many years they reigned. The problem though is when do you start counting? Now if you were to ask people in this room, only the men though, never ask a woman how old they are, we'd be able to give an answer, honestly, how old are you? However, if you had asked someone from a different culture, particularly South Korea or other Asian countries, you could ask someone who's the same birthday as you how old you are. and they would have a different answer. Well, why? Because they count their birthdays differently. They don't count 0, 1, 2, 3. They start at 1. But the critical thing is their start date is different. Their birthday, they don't turn a year older on the day of their birth. they all actually changed their age in the new year. And even the new year changed in 1886 to be able to add to confusion. Now, that caused a lot of issues when things like the COVID vaccine came out. Because all these other cultures count birthdays and say you're this old on your birthday. Well there is a problem then when you went to a different country that counted a little bit different. So say if you're born on June 15th, you would not turn one until January 1st. And then so on every January 1st you would add another year. And then to be able to make it even more complicated I think helps us to be able to fathom such an idea of how we can be so off in our dates. Again, that changed in 2023. They revert back to how we would count birthdays. So there's a huge change. There's probably people that have counted their birthdays for a long time a certain way, and now this change. And so there's confusion about this. But if you didn't understand all the changes, then you'd be asking and not understanding what's happening. So this is where we start to do a little bit more digging in. How did the nations count their reigns? How did they start? And do you know what makes it more difficult? We see these two nations side by side and they count it differently. that they use different systems to be able to count. And to make it even more complicated, there's a time where there's overlap between families joining together, Jehu, and periods of time. So there's actually a time where a nation reverts to the other nations counting. So other nations, Assyria, Persia, Babylon, you might say they counted like the South Korean. And this is called the Ascension year system. And the Ascension year is that the king comes to the throne, but his official reign does not start until the first day of the new year. So say you become king or queen in October, you wouldn't start counting on October, but you'd start counting in January. What a, maybe a somewhat modern day example. You have an election in November in 2024, but you don't take office until 2025. Or King Charles recently. He became king immediately when his mother passed away. But the coronation, you might say his official crowning, was not till later. And this is the system, the ascension year system is used by the northern kingdom of Israel. And then you have the second system and that's the non-ascension year system. And this is where the king comes to the throne and he starts counting in that first year. So if you came to the throne in October, that would be year one. But we would count October to October. Well, that's not how they would count. January, he would then begin his second year reign. So you can see then how you can quite easily have gaps as you add 2019 kings to be able to see. Now Judah uses the non-ascension year most of the time to add to the confusion. So you have two kings that come to the throne in October, but January 1st, one is on their first year while the other is on their second year. Now we can start to understand how something so simple seems so complicated. But we can also then start to begin to understand how it works. But it gets more complicated. Well, we hope we don't lose you. See, it's not only when do you start counting. As we pointed out, the critical point is not the day they start their reign. The critical point then is how they relate to the king's reign before and after a new year. So then you start to ask the question, not only when do you start counting, when is the new year? Now, we take this for advantage. internationally used the Georgian calendar system. But that only started to be used in 1582. And we don't have time to be able to get into the details, but our calendar is marked by solar rotations of the years, of the year, based on days, 365.25 days. and then we have a leap year. With one of the months being irregular, all the months being somewhat irregular, 30 days, 31, 28, 29, that follows somewhat of a lunar calendar. Now most older calendars are actually focused more on lunar cycles. Our months are more lunar but our calendar year is more solar. And then they would make adjustments to be able to catch up, to be able to line up with the solar seasons. So the Georgian calendar has a leap day every four years. The Assyrian calendar used a leap month. And they would do so every 13, every so often, about 19 years or so. And they would have 13 months in a year to be able to catch up instead of 12. Now, most of you, I think I'm boring you, but I think we need to understand when we come to this, we need to understand that we're not taking things for granted. We are understanding a different culture in a different time. And we shouldn't then impose our systems on a different culture. And mainly because we understand our system, but we don't understand theirs. I mean it's quite clear we'd be able to understand where an hour goes, the past week, why we gained an hour, why you drive to a place like Nashville and the clocks change on your phone, or in a different time zone. Why do we have to understand all of these things? It's not only important to understand the system of how they count the years, but an important part of every country and nation would be they have their own calendar. And particularly their calendar begins at a new point in different times. You see this here, Exodus 12. The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, this month shall be for you the beginning of months. It shall be the first month of the year for you. And this is Nisan. This is roughly around the middle of March for us. This is how they would count and begin their year. Now this is how Israel does it. However, Judah, their new year is more about harvest time, Tishri, which is roughly around the middle of September. So now we understand how the differences come in accounting, but also when you go back to the Ascension year, Everyone's starting in October, well when does the year start? Well if it's March or September again, the Ascension year system, they would start counting in March, year one. October rolls around, September comes around, Tishri, Judah would say that's year two. You see how complicated this is and we're not then imposing our system upon it. And again, then we can understand why we read the Bible and people merely just say, well, they're buffoons, they're idiots, they don't know how to count. No one read the Bible after writing the Bible and then they just said, well, it's true. Well, once we start to understand this, who's the one who's silly now? It's us who's saying that January 1st is the start of a new year. that we're imposing our own things, that you count a year as 365 days. So every culture has various new systems with intricate details. But it's also important when two nations interact with one another. Because when we're told that a king reigned in his place and he began his reign in the X year of the other nation's king, well how do they count that nation's king? They're not going to use their system, they're going to use your own system of how they count. You understand that the South Korean who calculated their birthday differently from you? and you give them your birthday and you say, how old am I? They're not going to give you your answer. They're going to give you their answer. Or when we start to be able to try and find a date, we can use 300 and 930 or 931 BC. But again, that becomes difficult. We're using our calendar system to be able to try and pinpoint a particular date. So that's the first one, that we need to understand when the date starts and how we, when the new year starts. The second major principle that helps us is co-regencies. Now we saw this in David and Solomon. In 1 Kings chapter 46, Solomon, reigned while David was still alive. Now the overlap might not have been big, but again, when we're thinking about how they count the years, there can be important distinctions. So in 1 Kings chapter 1, verse 46 and 48, Solomon sits on the royal throne. Moreover, the king's servants came to congratulate our Lord King David. saying, May our God make the name of Solomon more famous than yours, and make his throne greater than your throne. And the king bowed himself on the bed. The king also said, Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, who has granted someone to sit on my throne this day, my own I seen it." So here, David is king, but Solomon is also king. So the overlap of that reign is different. For that period of time, we know that here in 2 Kings chapter 2, 1 Kings chapter 2, David slept and his father was buried in the city of David. And the time that David reigned over Israel was 40 years. He reigned seven years in Hebron and 33 years in Jerusalem. So Solomon sat on the throne, his father, and his kingdom was firmly established. So here they say he reigned for 40 years, two different locations. One in Hebron, which you remember is more of a smaller area underneath Judah, and 33 years over the whole nation of Israel. But when they speak about his reign, he speaks in the whole entirety of the four years of reigns. So co-reigns were used by kings to be able to help protect the throne. They did so in imminent war. He said to Jehoshaphat, will you go with me to battle at Ramoth Gilead? Jehoshaphat said to the king of Israel, I am as you are, my people as your people, my horses as your horses. And then you go on to 33 and 34 in 1 Kings chapter 22. When the captains of the chariots saw that there was not the king of Israel, they turned back from pursuing him. It was not the king of Israel. But a certain man drew his bow at random and struck the king of Israel between the scale armor and the breastplate. Therefore he said to the driver of his chariot, turn around and carry me out of battle, for I am wounded." So here they're going into battle. Kings are going into battle and it's quite a dangerous thing. So you don't want to just go into battle and leave any person to be able to come and grab the throne. So, one way that you might be able to do that is a co-reign. When you're going into battle, you might assign your son and your son might reign in your place. If you get injured or hurt in war, then there's another king to be able to lead that. Imagine the military disorder and array that would come. If there's multiple sons, or if there's chaos, or if there's someone trying to rise up and strike down, the nation would be destroyed. So they might assign the king's son to be able to reign in that period of time. 2 Kings chapter 8, in the fifth year of Joram, the son of Ahab, king of Israel, when Jehoshaphat was king of Judah, Jehoram, the son of Josaphat, king of Judah, began to reign. So here you see this overlapping again. Another reason might be illness. 1 Kings chapter 15, in the fifth year, 2 Kings chapter 15 verse 5, when the Lord touched the king that he was a leper of the day of his death and he lived in a separate house and Jotham the king's son was over the household governing the people of the land. So here the king has leprosy, he's moved to a whole different house and his son begins to govern the land, watching over all these things in the household. 2 Kings chapter 20 verse 1, in those days Hezekiah became sick and he was at the point of death. Isaiah the prophet, the son of Amoz came to him and said, thus says the Lord, set your house in order for you shall die, you shall not recover. What does that then mean to be able to set your house in order? Again, you die because you're sick. The chaos that could ensue after your death, so you would assign who is going to reign in your place. Or even things like rival thrones. 1 Kings chapter 16 verse 21, When the people of Israel were divided in two parts, half the people followed Tibni the son of Gennath to make him king, the half followed Omri. But the people who followed Omri overcame the people who followed Tibni the son of Gennath. So Tibni died and Omri became king. So remember that time when David, Solomon, Saul dies. Ish-bosheth comes to the throne. The nation is somewhat divided. David reigns over Hebron and Judah and Ish-bosheth over Israel. Well, we see this happen again with Omri and Tibni. So you see these overlap of rains and you can see how these co-rains are another principle that help us to be able to understand where these rains might come and find that, shorten that gap to be able to understand how that big gap might happen. So the next thing that we need to understand is that external history. How does it relate to other nations? So we can see how these other general principles help us. Now, we briefly need to know where we can line up with other dates. Now, mentioned before, we have other historical reference records which are very well organized. We have no reason to be able to discredit them or just say, they're wrong, the Bible's right. Now, they're not inerrant. They can have faults and flaws. But it tells us not only who reigned, but also important events that line up, such as meeting with neighboring countries, such as Israel and Judah. Again, their evidence helps prove the Bible is true. They're used as a weapon to be able to discredit the Bible, but actually they're used to be able to show the Bible as correct. So we can calculate things such as the lunar eclipse or solar eclipse, such as March 19 in 721 BC. We can see these Assyrian kings. We see how the power of these kings, such as Omri, plays a very important part and is mentioned in these documents. They help us with checks and balances. When Hezekiah meets in 2 Kings chapter 18, Sennacherib the king of Assyria, what we can find out is important dates. Ahab fought in 853. Jehu tributes Shalmaneser in 841. So you have Ahab and Shalmaneser. Jehu and so 853 and then 841. So there's this period of time where these two relate to Assyrian kings, the other outsiders. And we can work out from that to be able to extend that or understand it. to be able to place where all of this happens within history when we talk about kings and dates. So why does this matter? It's interesting. Well, to some people it's interesting. But it's important because when we read the Bible, when we go through these things, these are not made up stories. They're true. They happened within time. They happened within certain dates. And that history is actually His story, God's story. God's sovereignty over all of creation. Not merely just a small slither of a nation of Israel or Judah, but all the nations are used for God's purposes. C.S. Lewis said that history is a story written by the finger of God. And we see God's providence not just over his people, but all people. Nations rise and nations fall to be able to fulfill God's purposes and his plan. That all of this happens and the Apostle Paul says in Galatians chapter four, but when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his son born of a woman under the law to redeem those who were under the law so that we might receive adoption as sons. That here Christ entered into history at the fullness of time. What happened before was all God orchestrating all of these events and times and circumstances to be able to fulfill His plan that His Son would enter the world stage of history by putting on flesh. That all of these happen as they pray in Acts chapter 4. point out that He is sovereign in verse 24. I see in heaven and earth and everything in them who through the mouth of our father David your servant said by the Holy Spirit why did the Gentiles rage and the people's plot in vain the kings of the earth set themselves and the rulers are gathered together against the Lord and against his anointed for truly this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus whom you anointed both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place. Not only Christ's birth happened to the fullness of time in God's orchestrating all of history, Christ's death. The kings and the people and leadership and the rulers and the reigners in that time, all of it was foreordained and predestined to be able to take place. God says this in Isaiah chapter 46, declaring from the end, from the beginning, and from ancient times, things not yet done, saying, my counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose. We understand that history points to the one true living God, the sovereign God over all things. And as we read through these stories, we will see arrows that are shot seemingly at random to strike a king to be able to carry out his plan and purposes. We will see his sovereign hand at work to be able to fulfill his promise that he said to David that there would be a king who sits on your throne who will rule forever. Nothing comes by chance. Everything comes from the fatherly hand. And to be able to see that as we walk through, to be able to see God's sovereign hand working through history to reveal His story. Thank you for listening to this sermon from Seven Springs Presbyterian Church. If you want to learn more about us, please find us on Facebook or visit us at sevenspringspresbyterian.com. Seven Springs Presbyterian Church began in 1874 and is a congregation of the Presbyterian Church in America located in Glade Spring, Virginia. Please join us for worship on Sunday at 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. for His glory and His gospel.