Well, I'm gonna read a different passage than I put into your bulletin. Sorry about that, but it's gonna be 1 Kings 9. I really think this one is a passage that encapsulates some of the main messages of 1 and 2 Kings together. 1 Kings 9, beginning at verse 1. And it came to pass when Solomon had finished building the house of the Lord, and the king's house, and all Solomon's desire which he wanted to do. But the Lord appeared to Solomon the second time as he had appeared to him at Gibeon. And the Lord said to him, I have heard your prayer and your supplication that you have made before me. I have consecrated this house which you have built to put my name there forever, and my eyes and my heart will be there perpetually. Now if you walk before me as your father David walked in integrity of heart and in uprightness To do according to all that I have commanded you and if you keep my statutes and my judgments Then I will establish the throne of your kingdom over Israel forever as I promised David your father saying you shall not fail to have a man on the throne of Israel, but If you or your sons at all turn from following me and do not keep my statutes and my commandments and my statutes, which I have set before you, but go and serve other gods and worship them. Then I will cut off Israel from the land, which I have given them. And this house, which I have consecrated for my name, I will cast out of my sight. Israel will be a proverb and a byword among all peoples. And as for this house, which is exalted, everyone who passes by it will be astonished and will hiss and say, why has the Lord done thus to this land and to this house? Then they will answer, because they forsook the Lord, their God, who brought their fathers out of the land of Egypt and have embraced other gods and worship them and serve them. Therefore, the Lord has brought all this calamity on them. Amen. Father, we thank you for this, your word, and for the whole First and Second Kings, which has so many instructions that we need in our day and age. And I pray that you would enable me to faithfully bring your word to this, your people, for your people to be edified, built up in this, your gracious word. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen. Well, I'm just curious how many people have been able to keep up with the readings and have read through 1st and 2nd Kings. Just a few. I don't blame you. It's been a slogging big job to get through that. I have found the stories in 1st and 2nd Kings to be absolutely captivating. I try to read through the Bible once a year, sometimes more, but this book is one of my favorites. It is so huge. taking on these two books that I won't be able to give an adequate survey. So my survey part is going to be pretty brief. But what I want to do this morning is I want to dissect this book in a way that will help you to read through First and Second Kings much more intelligently in the future. The first thing that I want to point out is that these books constitute far more than simply history. Most commentaries that you read on First and Second Kings will tell you that the author was very selective in his choice of facts for the history because the purpose of the author was not just to ground us in history, that is one of the purposes, but the purpose of the author was to give us theological lessons and practical and moral lessons to guide his people. And that means that this book was designed to transform us. and even to transform entire nations. It was not designed to just give us geopolitical facts. Now, there are a lot of fascinating geopolitical facts in this book, but this is far more than simply a history. Now, just one example of the selectivity, based on archeology and secular history, most scholars acknowledge that Omri was probably one of the most important kings after Solomon in the entire history of Israel, and yet this book dismisses him in eight verses. Harley spends any time whatsoever on Omri. Why? Well, because it does not entirely fit the purpose for this book. And we'll get to the purpose a little bit later on, but he's selective is the point. He skips over decades of fascinating history. in other kings' lives, again, because it does not fit the purpose of this book. So you're gonna be a little bit disappointed if you're looking to 1 and 2 Kings to be a complete history. You really need to look at all of the Bible together to get that complete history. But this book has a very specific purpose for every fact that was included. Let me give you another example. In the 1 Kings 22 story, where Jehoshaphat and Ahab link up together to fight against the Syrians who had amassed an enormous army, you would expect the author to spend a lot more time, give a lot more details about a battle that proves to be one of the pivotal battles in Ahab's life. In fact, he dies and it's the end of his kingdom. But the details that the author gives to us actually go behind the scenes and reveal the conflict between demons and angels. bad prophets and a good prophet, and why God is sovereign over absolutely every detail of history, including, you know, some soldier who has no idea what he's shooting at. He just shoots an arrow at random, and God takes that random arrow and pierces at the precise point where Ahab's armor was weak, and it kills him. And Ahab was disguised so that nobody would know to shoot at him. But that's one of my favorite stories in showing that God's providence covers even the so-called chance events of life. In God's economy, there is nothing chance. Even the throwing of a dice, Proverbs says, is controlled by the Lord. Now from our perspective, it looks random. It looks very, very chance-like, but God controls even that. And from this book, this history was written clearly In a way that shows in that chapter, the pragmatic decision of Jehoshaphat, and he was a very good king, the pragmatic decision of Jehoshaphat to align with evil King Ahab against an even worse enemy was a disastrous decision because of angered God and proved to be covenantally unfaithful. The history of that one battle is full of practical lessons on things like God's sovereignty, the importance of nations adhering to his covenant, the importance of following the details of God's law even when it proves to be inconvenient, how spiritual principalities and powers factor into warfare, God's laws of harvest. It's just a rich repository of lessons. So we can't just read these books as histories. We need to see them as God's prophetic writings to a nation that had been disregarding his covenant. And there are several features of this book we need to understand as background in order to properly understand the book as a whole. So I'm going to go through a little bit of background detail for you. First fact that everybody acknowledges, and that's so important to understand if we're to understand these books, is that 1 and 2 Kings is a unity. In our books, they're divided up into two books, but the original Hebrew, it was one book. That's why I'm only preaching one sermon on 1 and 2 Kings. And The author clearly connected the book of Kings to the book of Samuel, and he did so not only thematically. There is a connection thematically that all commentators talk about, and that is it's a part of the Deuteronomistic literature. That means, just like Samuel, Kings is applying the book of Deuteronomy to the blessings and the cursings that God was bringing upon nations. But it's also connected very tightly to Samuel, just via its structure. And if we had time to dig into it, we would see that it's connected tightly to later books by a later subsequent prophet. For right now, I'm just gonna stick to the fact that we will misinterpret the book if we do not see all of 1 and 2 Kings as one book, united in purpose and theology. We'll miss the central message if we divide them up. And we'll look at that a little bit more in a bit. The second thing that needs to be understood is when the book was written. Unlike Chronicles, which was written by Ezra, a prophet who wrote after the exile and after Israel gets back into the land of Israel, Kings began to be written in the years just prior to the exile, and the last two chapters were written after Judah was carried away, captured to Babylon. And there are many proofs of that. I'll just give you one hint of the kind of internal evidences you need to look at. 1 Kings 8, verse 8, is the first example. After discussing the temple, and the Ark of the Covenant, and the cherubim, angels that were on top of that Ark of the Covenant, and the rings, and the poles that go through those rings, the last phrase of 1 Kings 8, verse 8 says, and they are there to this day." Now that statement would make no sense whatsoever if the temple had been destroyed. and the furniture taken away. That's the way many people think of this, that it's written centuries before. No, that statement makes it very clear that the bulk of this book was actually written before the exile. Now the last two chapters are written immediately after the exile. But if Jeremiah wrote this book, and I'm jumping ahead in my outline, but if he wrote the book, as I believe he did, and as ancient authorities have clearly stated, that all of these facts make sense. Jeremiah would have been writing the vast bulk of the book prior to the exile, but he would record the last two chapters because he was an eyewitness. Chapter 25 is obviously being written by an eyewitness of the burning of the temple and of the city, and he was an eyewitness. But just like the other histories, The very last part of the book, the last four verses, was written by the next historical prophet, who was Ezra. This is one of the ways that the historical books have been linked together. Let me just give you a review of this kind of an issue that we have seen already. The last verses of Deuteronomy were written by Joshua, and Joshua wrote not only his book, but the last part of that, to connect those books together. So Joshua 24, verse 26 says, then Joshua wrote these words in the book of the law of God. It's written right into the canon, okay? They didn't have to wait for centuries to figure out, is Joshua canonical or not? That's a heretical view of canonicity. No, the prophet who wrote the book immediately wrote that book right into the canon, and that is true of all of the subsequent prophets as well. The last verses of Joshua were written by Samuel, connecting 1st and 2nd Samuel tightly to Joshua. The last verses of Samuel were written by Jeremiah, and actually we saw that Samuel, the chiasm in it, is not finished until the first two chapters of Kings. And again, it's to tightly connect these books together. The last verses of Kings were written by Ezra. And my book on Canon shows how all of these tightly integrated features show that the books of the Bible are self-authenticating. God alone can declare them to be canonical. Now, keep in mind that you better not believe what I have just told you if you want to be academically respectable. liberals and even some modern conservatives think, oh, that's not academically respectable anymore to believe that Jeremiah wrote the book First and Second Kings. Everybody thinks it's way, way later than that. Well, I don't care to be academically respectable in this compromised age at all. Ancient, all of the ancient authorities and certainly the internal evidence shows, for example, their stylistic features that are identical in Kings as they are in Jeremiah. I won't get into all of the internal evidences, but there are a number of conservative scholars who have shown that the modern debate on authorship is absolutely ridiculous. It's silly. Jeremiah did indeed write this book. Now that fact alone is going to clue us into why Kings is constantly preaching the theological and the moral themes of this book to his audience. He was warning his nation that if it did not repent, it would end up in exile. And once they were in exile, he was trying to warn them that if they did not repent, they were not going to get back into the land Canaan. Our covenantal God does not turn a blind eye to the compromises of any nation including our own. Now the fourth thing that helps us to understand why this book was written is the Hebrew structure of the book. You know I'm big on getting into the structure of the books because it's a part of hermeneutics. It's a part of the design. Many different ways in which the Hebrews would structure books. This one happens to be a Chiasm. And I usually try to find the structure of a book before I read what the scholars say the structure is, because there is a danger of eisegesis. You say, oh, that's a cool structure, and then you read it back into the text. So what I typically do is try to find the structure, and then I will look to the scholars to see if others have come up with the same structure. It's just kind of a validation technique. And I will grant you, because we've hosted Presbytery, I have not had the time to do a lot of the computer analysis of Hebrew words and phrases, but this one just fell together very easily. All I did was look at the beginning and the ending and working back to the middle, and it was instantly obvious that this was a chiasm. A chiasm is an A, B, C, D, C, B, A kind of a structure, you know, where the heart of the book is the central theme. So I started writing down what the themes of each section were, and voila, I came up with the chiasm that's in your outlines. And then I went to test to see if any others saw the same thing, and they did. George Sabron, Jerome Walsh, Robert Cohn, Peter Lightheart, and others. Slightly different details that you will see, but again, the same basic structure and all pointing to 2 Kings 2 as being the very center of that chiasm. So take a look at the first chart of the chiasm of the book. I'm just going to quickly walk you through it. You'll see that the book begins with the last days of aged David. the first king of the Davidic covenant, and it ends with the last days of Jehoiakim, the last king of the Davidic dynasty. And throughout this book, every king is being compared to David. The Davidic covenant is a central theme to this book. It's part of the thesis of this book. And the fact that the last verses of 2 Kings or about God preserving Jehoiakim in Babylon, or a hint, hey, God's not finished with the Davidic covenant yet. There is something yet to occur in the Davidic covenant. He is preserving the line of David just as he promised to be an eternal line. because it's Jesus who's going to carry, he's going to be eternally, you know, the seed of David who will rule over the kingdom. And so it's not by accident that the New Testament points back to Jehoiakin, this exact passage to make that point. Now back to the outline, the second part of the book of Kings, that's the first B section, deals with executions of contenders in order to consolidate David's dynasty, and that section is paralleled by the second to last section of the book, the second B section, with executions of contenders that ends the ruling of the Davidic dynasty. Third part of the book deals with the temple and city being built up by a wise but very young Solomon corresponding to the second sea near the end of Kings where the temple and city are destroyed by an equally young but very unwise king. In fact, this temple imagery is a central message to the book. But the parallel sides, when you start examining those two sides, you realize the temple was built upon the Davidic covenant and the temple was ruined because people were violating the Davidic covenant. The first D section of the last days of United Kingdom involves Solomon calling foreigners to see the glory and the wisdom of the kingdom. You got this Queen of Sheba, right? She's traveling 1,200 miles on camel. That's a long way just to see the glory of this kingdom. But this is immediately followed by an astonishing and unexpected apostasy, and then conflict, and then successors. And this parallels the last days of the kingdom of Judah where Hezekiah, who some people liken to a second David or a second Solomon, he's an inspired prophet, Hezekiah is, but he pridefully unwisely calls foreigners to see the glory of the kingdom followed by apostasy, conflict, and successors as well. Now he's going to be making in this book a big theological point of the foreigners being called to see the glory of the kingdom. The first calling was good. The second calling was not good. Why? The first E section outlines lessons from the wars of Judah and Israel. And for convenience sake, I've really shortened this outline. I didn't give you all of those details. And they're paralleled in amazing ways by lessons from the wars of Judah and Israel in the second E, but that discussion, same discussion, but it is interrupted by telling us about the prophets Elijah and Elisha, which are the F-section of this chiasm. The first F-section deals with the ministry of Elijah the prophet, paralleled with the second F-section that deals with the ministry of Elisha the prophet, the prophet who has a double portion of the spirit of Elijah, which leads to the heart of the book, which is the passing of the prophetic mantle from Elijah to Elisha in 2 Kings 2. So the way chiasms go, we've preached on chiasms enough, you understand this, the elbow or the heart of that chiasm is the central theme of the chiasm. So you can see why you have to take both books together, otherwise you're gonna miss this. if the central feature there is not about some king, which you might expect some glorious king is going to be the center or some horribly bad king. No, it's not about the king at all. Since it's about the prophetic lawsuits, covenant lawsuits that Elijah and Elisha bring against the nation, you can see that it makes sense of Jeremiah using this as the basis for his covenant lawsuit. So basically what happens is 1 and 2 Kings is his compilation of the evidence that's going to be entered into the courtroom documents for his covenant lawsuit of the book of Jeremiah. So that's what's going on in this book. By the way, this is what makes 1 and 2 Kings so, so different from 1 and 2 Chronicles. Chronicles equals the history of Samuel and Kings. And there's a whole bunch of material cut out of Chronicles. Most of the bad stuff is cut out of Chronicles. It's emphasizing the positive stuff. You almost have no negative stuff about Solomon or other kings like that. Why? Because Chronicles is designed to encourage the post-exilic community about God's promises to those who are faithful, whereas Kings is documenting how God is going to bring his covenant lawsuits against those who are unfaithful. And so the prophetic message is central to this book. And it's no wonder then that the Hebrews, they recognized this, they spoke of both Samuel and Kings as being the former prophets. It's a prophetic document. And interestingly, 2 Kings 2 is also a very precise chiasm. I won't get into all of the details of the parallels, but if you look in your bulletins, I mean your insert there, I put Peter Lightheart's description of even the geographical nature of the chiasm. He points out, yes, thematically it's a perfect chiasm, but even the way in which they travel geographically was a chiasm. He points out that Elijah, for example, had to go way out of his way in a very odd route out of Israel, and that trip was a prophetic trip. Not just so that it would later be able to fit into a chiasm that God providentially arranged, but also to show a reversal of the original conquest in order to show God's preparation for a new spiritual reconquest of the land. It's not accidental, it's very deliberate. Let me just explain what is meant by that. If you just look at the geographical locations in his outline of chapter 2, of Gilgal, to Bethel, to Jericho, to the crossing of the Jordan, those just happen to, well there's no happen to's in the Bible right, but they just happen to mirror the geographical locations of entrance into the land of Canaan in the book of Numbers and in the book of Joshua, which makes sense of why in this book Elijah is portrayed as a second Moses And Elisha is portrayed as a second Joshua. So just as the spirit of Moses rested upon Joshua, and he took up the mantle of Moses to conquer the land of Canaan, the spirit of Elijah rests upon Elisha, and Elisha takes up Elijah's mantle to engage in a new conquest. But Lightheart believes that these are also prophetic statements of exile and return to the land that would have been very, very encouraging to Jeremiah's audience. As Lightheart says, quote, the departure and return of the two prophets points ahead toward the departure and return of Israel in the exile. In both cases, two go out and one returns. Now I'll just warn you, if you're reading Lightheart, he many times reads way too much into a text. But the parallels are so many and so obvious, I think he is absolutely correct on this. The parallels between Moses, Joshua, Elijah, and Elisha. They are not by accident. So what's going on here is God is using the themes of exodus and conquest to show that the northern tribes of Israel are being treated as an Egypt that is destined to judgment. And the southern tribes are being treated as a Canaan that is destined for judgment. It really is beautiful imagery. But as I've already mentioned, there are themes of hope in 2 Kings 2, a hope of a return to the land and a reversal of the curse if Israel will but repent. Now, how does Jeremiah include those hints of hope? If you just take a look at 2 Kings 2, verse 18, 2 Kings 2, verse 18, this occurs after Elijah dies and is taken away with no body to be found. despite the fact that 50 prophets searched diligently for that body for three days. I think even the three is not by accident. They could not find the body, just as no one could find Moses' body because God had buried that body. Now what happens after Moses dies and Joshua goes into the land, after he's crossed the Jordan? Jericho gets conquered, right? First city. that what happens after Elisha crosses the Jordan, verse 18 tells us, and when they came back to him, for he had stayed in Jericho, he said to them, did I not say to you, do not go up? Now keep in mind that God through Joshua, Joshua had cursed Jericho in Joshua 6, verse 34, and he had said as a part of his curse that the First King who tried to rebuild Jericho would sacrifice his son upon its walls. Well, 1 Kings 16 verse 34 showed the fulfillment of that prophecy. The king there rebuilt the walls and he sacrificed his firstborn when he laid its foundation. And there's actually gonna be another firstborn sacrificed in 2 Kings 3. So there's a theme going on there. But in our chapter, apparently even the water and the ground are cursed. So take a look at verse 19. Then the men of the city said to Elisha, please notice, the situation of this city is pleasant as my Lord sees, but the water is bad and the ground barren. The water had poisoned the ground and made everything barren. Everything was under Joshua's curse. And there's a reversal that's going to happen. Elisha is going to heal the water, heal the land. He's going to do it with a bowl of salt. And the salt represents a new covenant. It's a covenant of salt. It was a prophetic foreshadowing. Now some think it's just a prophetic foreshadowing of Israel being able to come back into the land of Israel and there's going to be now restoration. But many also think that this is a prophetic foreshadowing of Jesus, the greater Elisha, who takes Jericho's and turns them into new covenant gardens. And I'll explain in a bit how Elisha is very clearly a type of Christ, is said to be. If you've ever been to Jericho, It's beautiful. It's not barren at all. Even to this day, it is a beautiful land. But the chapter as a whole is strewn with hints that the prophetic evaluation of nations is at the heart of what the book is all about. And at the heart of the heart of this book is verses 9 through 12, which details Elijah being caught up, his mantle falls down. There's a transfer of the mantle to Elisha, which symbolizes what? It symbolizes the constant prophetic presence of God's voice evaluating history. Now if that's true, then it makes sense that the book as a whole is going to be used as the foundational evidence for Jeremiah's prophetic covenant lawsuit in the book of Jeremiah. He uses real history to warn nations not to rebel against God and numerous examples of a disaster that follows when they do not. So we're into why 1 and 2 Kings was written. And I've already told you, but let me summarize it again. God made an eternal covenant with David and Now that Israel's in exile, they're gonna be wondering, what was with this eternal covenant? And God, there's always gonna be some king to reign, and now there's no kings reigning. Is God unfaithful? Has he failed his promises? And this book is an apologetic to show that God has been totally consistent with his promises. The history of kings was designed to clearly demonstrate God's covenantal curses on kings, when they violated God's law, God's covenantal blessings on kings, when they kept His covenant. They submitted to it. When you see the consistency of God's blessings and curses over the course of hundreds of years, you cannot explain these things away as accidents of history. God was totally sovereign. And throughout the histories, God is continually reminding Israel, hey, this is why Samaria fell and the Jews were scattered over all of the empire of Syria. And he's continually reminding them, if you don't repent, you in a similar way, southern kingdom, Jerusalem, are going to be destroyed and you're going to be scattered amongst the Babylonians. Constantly and repetitiously, the writer tells us, here is yet another example of why this nation deserves to be destroyed. They were not destroyed by an accident of politics. They were not destroyed because of economics or any other geopolitical fact. Well, yes, God blesses and curses with geopolitical facts, doesn't he? But ultimately, it's God who blesses or curses nations, and he has been 100% faithful to his Davidic covenant. I think that is the message. of Kings. Key word is David, which occurs 92 times. Every king is compared to David, and the book is showing that God enforces the covenant with David. And I was torn on what constitutes the key passage for interpreting the whole book, so I put two up there. But I really do think that the one I read earlier, 1 Kings 9, captures the essence of the book. And I'm just going to only reread verses 4 through 7 of God's speech. God says, now, if you walk before me as your father David walked, in integrity of heart and uprightness, to do according to all that I commanded you, and if you keep my statutes and my judgments, then I will establish the throne of your kingdom over Israel forever, as I promised David your father, saying, you shall not fail to have a man on the throne of Israel. But if you or your sons at all turn from following me, and do not keep my commandments and my statutes, which I have set before you, but go and serve other gods and worship them, then I will cut off Israel from the land which I have given them and this house which I have consecrated for my name, I will cast out of my sight. Israel will be a proverb and by word among all people. So no surprise, God had already right from the beginning promised this is the way it's going to be. In a nutshell, nations are in covenant with God, and they must obey His laws, they must trust His gospel, and they must submit to His rule. If they do not, they are sowing trouble to themselves. And it's just a matter of time before apostate nations are destroyed if they don't repent, if no revivalist is brought to slow down that day of reckoning. And by the way, it doesn't matter whether the king is as good as David. If he violates God's covenant, he suffers the consequences. And this book shows that all the kings failed in some way from David to Jehoiakim. This not only reminds us that we must look forward to a coming Messiah who would be the final and the only faithful king, truly faithful king, but it reminds us of the need to apply the gospel even to politics. Without God's grace, no nation could be pleasing in God's sight. Now let me give you a whirlwind tour of some of the key features of the book. First two chapters of Kings, First Kings are a really odd way to begin a book. That is, they are odd if you're trying to prove that David is an absolutely fantastic leader, the ideal king. He is anything but that. He is portrayed as weak and utterly out of touch with reality on some levels. He is not the eternal Messiah that was promised. Instead, the opening verses show him shivering in bed, unable to keep warm, and his advisors give the odd suggestion Oh, why don't you marry a young, beautiful virgin who can keep you warm in bed? And he goes along with that ridiculous, ungodly suggestion, living just like what the pagan nations were doing. It again shows this is not quite the ideal king that we might think that he was. He's not the Messiah. David was even out of touch with reality when it came to politics, not even realizing that his son Adonijah had already conspired to overthrow the kingdom. He'd already been declared as king. He wanted to take the kingdom away from his dad. He was out of touch as a parent. The text says that he never disciplined his son. Now, these are embarrassing details that this author is including here, and other authors don't include that, but he very deliberately includes these in the book to show that David is weak. He's not like the final Messiah will be. It really takes a prophet, Nathan, to remedy the solution. And by the way, the prophets are a pretty strong link in this book. And Bathsheba also reminds David, and David quickly does so. Now on his deathbed in chapter two, David gives instructions to Solomon to deal with issues he had been too weak to be able to deal with himself. Again, showing that David lacks what it will take to be the final Messiah. We're looking for another. He tells Solomon to follow God's laws, stay in covenant with God, since that is the only way that a king can prosper. And Solomon deals, I believe, very fairly with the three men who had all engaged in capital crimes under David's reign. In chapter three, we are left wondering, if we're just first-time readers and not Christians who already know better, But we might be left wondering, well, maybe this is the promised Messiah because look at how magnificent His reign is. He seems like He is a man after God's own heart. He's humble. He's dependent upon God. Verse 3 says, Solomon loved Yehoah, walking in the statutes of his father David, except that he sacrificed and burned incense in the high places. Uh-oh, okay, there's one defect there. But it does appear that he even corrected that by consolidating all worship into the temple, which is a glorious temple of gold, where Almighty God has His throne. He is devoted to God. He loves God. And 2 Samuel 12 verse 24 says that God loved Solomon in those early years. He loved him. 1 Chronicles says that God named him Solomon, which means peace, because he's going to be the representative of Christ's empire of peace. It was a symbol of Christ. In those early years, Solomon recognized his desperate need of the Lord if he was to reign properly. And in response to his humility, God says in verse five, ask, what shall I give you? And Solomon's prayer of response, I think, is a magnificent prayer. Rather than asking for riches and power, he simply asks for wisdom to discern between good and evil and to be able to reign in a way that will please God. And God was very pleased with that prayer. And he not only gives him more wisdom than any of the ancients had, but more wealth and more power, and again reflecting the Lord Jesus Christ and the future. So this is 2 Kings 3, beginning to read at verse 10. The speech pleased the Lord that Solomon had asked this thing. Then God said to him, because you have asked this thing and have not asked long life for yourself, nor have asked riches for yourself, nor have asked the life of your enemies, and have asked for yourself understanding to discern justice, behold, I have done according to your words. See, I have given you a wise and understanding heart so that there has been not been anyone like you before you, nor shall any like you arise after you. And I have also given you what you have not asked, both riches and honor, so that there shall not be anyone like you among the kings all your days. So if you walk in my ways to keep my statutes and my commandments as your father David walked, then I will lengthen your days." Now, this is a theme that keeps coming up throughout the book. So Solomon is off to a good start. When you look at the things that Solomon did in the first eight chapters, with two exceptions, he is portrayed as a king that is almost as ideal as David was. And as I mentioned before, the scripture especially portrays him as the symbol, the type of Jesus Christ and his messianic kingdom. The temple itself, we won't get into that, but it's got imagery of the Garden of Eden showing that only by God's grace and by his rule can paradise be restored. It's all of grace, beautiful imagery. Solomon's prayer at the dedication of the temple in first Kings eight, one of the most heart moving prayers you can find in the Bible. I would encourage you to pray at least parts of that prayer to the Lord. I love that prayer. I've prayed it many, many times. I know some of you guys have prayed it, uh, right here in church, at least parts of it. Dr. Joe Moorcraft is correct when he says that this prayer shows the early Solomon to be a man who knows his God, knows the scripture, has a heart for God, loves his law, walks in his laws, keeps his covenant. With two exceptions, he seemed like such an appropriate symbol for the Messiah. So the question comes, how on earth could he backslide so far? How on earth could he violate every prohibition to kings that God gave in Deuteronomy chapter 17? How on earth could a man who loved God so much backslide as far as chapter 11 says that he backslid in his old age? It seems inconceivable. But Jeremiah's point is that even the best kings will fail if their hearts are not constantly kept by God's grace. Solomon stands as a warning to all of you. that you need to guard your hearts or you could become a slave to Satan. Out of the heart arise the issues of life, and Solomon gave in to the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. And if you read chapter 11, wow, you see all three lusts written all over that chapter. I'm gonna read the first few verses of chapter 11. But King Solomon loved many foreign women, as well as the daughter of Pharaoh. Women of the Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sidonians, and Hittites, from the nations of whom the Lord had said to the children of Israel, you shall not intermarry with them, nor they with you. Surely they will turn your hearts after their gods. Solomon clung to these in love. And he had 700 wives, princesses, and 300 concubines, and his wives turned away his heart. For it was so, when Solomon was old, that his wives turned his heart after other gods, and his heart was not loyal to the Lord his God, as was the heart of his father David. For Solomon went after Ashtoreth, the goddess of the Sidonians, and after Milcom, the abomination of the Ammonites. Solomon did evil in the sight of the Lord and did not fully follow the Lord as did his father David. Then Solomon built a high place for Chemosh the abomination of Moab on the hill that is east of Jerusalem and for Molech the abomination of the people of Ammon. And he did likewise for all his foreign wives who burned incense and sacrificed to their gods. Now it's very easy for us to shake our heads at Solomon and wonder how a man of prayer How a man who could write the inspired and beautiful book of Proverbs, a man of such intense devotion to God, and a man who had already warned other people, hey, don't stray from God's laws, how he could stray so far. At the age of 17 or 18, Solomon told his first wife, by inspiration, that she was his one and only. At least that's how I understand verse in the Song of Solomon, and there's a number of other commentators say yes, that's a declaration of monogamy. He was not a polygamist at that point. Because it was said by inspiration, I just assume that he had no problem with lust at that point. He had a beautiful relationship with his first wife, who by the way was not the daughter of Pharaoh. And I can prove that definitively. Um, scripture is abundantly clear on that point. That was a compromise marrying Pharaoh. And I think first King says he should never have married Pharaoh. Now, just to give you one crystal clear proof, she was not his first wife. We learned from first Kings 14, verse 21, that Rehoboam was one year old when Solomon came to the throne. Pharaoh's daughter was married to him significantly after he came to the throne. So again, that's just a proof that Pharaoh's daughter was not the first wife. But the point is, Solomon was such a humble, sincere, godly man in his early years, it seems hard for people to understand his transformation into the prideful, lecherous man that he became in chapter 11 with 700 wives and 300 concubines. But you know what? I have read numerous testimonies of godly, passionate pastors who have played the same game with pornography, which in some ways is no different than what Solomon did. And because those pastors started rationalizing their sin, they made an absolutely disastrous mess of their lives. They got hooked. It started with one compromise, and then the allure made them have another compromise. Another, until they became addicted and manifested problems similar to Solomon's idolatry. Now when you read Steve Gallagher's book, Tearing Down the High Places of Sexual Idolatry, or his book, At the Altar of Sexual Idolatry, you can see one-to-one parallels between people addicted to pornography today and what Solomon was going through. One-to-one parallels, and as a result, these pastors have lost their ministries, their reputation, their wives, their children, their houses, so many things. They gave it all up because they were pursuing after their idolatrous lusts. Do not think that you were immune from falling as Solomon fell. Of course God used that pain and he uses pain in our lives to bring the elect back to himself, doesn't he? The book of Ecclesiastes was written by a broken Solomon shortly before he died at the age of 60, and he was aged at 60. He was worn out in his life, but he wrote that to warn us, don't imitate me. God did not allow Solomon to experience any joy in sex, work, research, food, entertainment, and any of the other wonderful things of life as long as he was in a backslidden condition. It was all emptiness and vanity. God turns the beautiful things of this life into ashes. so that we will not serve idols. And yes, our idols are every bit as real as Solomon's idols were. 1 Kings 11 verse 2 says that Solomon clung to these women in love. He refused to give them up. And given their idolatry, it would have been perfectly just for him to give them up, execute them, divorce them. Read Ezra. It would have been perfectly lawful for him to have done that, but he clung to them. When you cling to pornography, you are clinging to the same demons that Solomon worshipped. In fact, you are opening your life wide open as an invitation for demons to inhabit your life, just as Solomon did. So Solomon learned that lesson as an old man, probably feeling much older than his actual age warranted, and he was restored to God, and he wrote the book of Ecclesiastes to teach us to avoid his errors early. He basically says, don't wait as long as I did. By the way, I think Song of Solomon and Proverbs were written way early in his life during the good period. Now interestingly, the author of this book doesn't mention Solomon's restoration. Unlike Chronicles, he is outlining how disasters will follow anyone who compromises his covenant. It doesn't matter how good and how glorious you are, those disasters will follow you. We already saw that principle at work in the book of Judges, in the book of Samuel. And this author leaves us with an image of Solomon in his old age, where Solomon resembles Pharaoh more than he resembles Christ, and the consequences are ugly. Chapter 12 begins the next section of the book showing that Rehoboam has picked up his father's evil actions. Parents, when you do not deal with the issues in your life quickly, your children may well imitate them and perhaps go beyond you. Rehoboam was much worse than Solomon was. Not content with his insane wealth, he tries to increase already burdensome taxes on the people, and the people rebel under Jeroboam and form their own nation. And interestingly, when Rehoboam tries to force the nation back into the union, God sends a prophet in verse 24 saying, thus says Yehovah, you shall not go up nor fight against your brethren, the children of Israel. Let every man return to his house for this thing is from me. So in this verse, God endorses the doctrine of states seceding from a tyrannical country in order to protect their citizens, interposition. issue was taxes. It wasn't even a hugely big issue. God authorized that secession. But the book goes on to show that the secession is not a Savior either. Politics is never a Savior. Though Jeroboam had the right to secede he too violated God's covenant and created problems for the northern tribes right from the beginning. And the proof of that is he built two temples. Now he did it to Yehovah but he built two unauthorized temples. He and he refused to submit to the Levitical priesthood, and he put two golden calves. I mean, this is exactly what happened in Exodus, right? Where Moses, God said he almost destroyed that nation if Moses hadn't interceded. So anybody who's reading this and seeing those two golden calves, you say, oh, this is not heading in a good direction. Jeroboam's definitely in trouble. The rest of the book, and we're not going to have time to adequately cover it all, but it's going to get evaluations of each king and whether he followed in the steps of faithful David or whether he rebelled against God like Jeroboam or Ahab or one of the other evil kings. They were judged on especially three things, whether they compromised in worship, whether they failed to get rid of idolatry in the nation, and whether they were willing to follow the covenantal laws and provisions in their own life. Some kings made a pretense at loyalty to God, but wow, this writer sees right through that pretense and he says, no, they're a bad king. Doesn't matter if they claim to be worshiping God. If they're violating in this way, they are bad kings. Others were explicitly hostile to the true faith and actually persecuted the true faith and drove it underground. Kings is an outstanding book to study during times of apostasy and persecution to see how God's people handled such pressures. Now of the 19 Northern Kings, not one was good, not a single one. Now you might wonder, what about Jehu? Didn't he obey God in killing all of the prophets of Baal? Yeah, he did, but he did it for ulterior motives because those prophets would have been fiercely loyal to the Omri and so he wanted to get rid of any competition, but God makes it pretty clear that he was definitely a bad king. And every one of those kings had a tragic death. Seven were assassinated, one committed suicide, one was stricken by God, and one was taken to Assyria. It does not give a pretty picture of of secular kingship. Northern kingdom lasted 209 years and then was scattered around the world in exile. Now by itself that shows God's an incredibly patient God and there's a reason why he allows these kingdoms to last. They become tests then of his people. We won't get into that right now. Southern kingdom lasted 136 years longer than the northern kingdom for a total of 345 years. The only interruption to the line of David, the lawful line, was Queen Athaliah." Okay, so you can see God's view on her. She's not a legitimate ruler. Of the southern kings, beginning with Rehoboam, 12 did evil, two had a mixture of evil and good, and six kings were quite good. But because of all of the evil kings, many of Judah's kings also died a tragic death, with five being assassinated, two being stricken by God, three being exiled to foreign lands. And it illustrates that God is not mocked. Now, the evil of the kings, pervasive evil that was there, explains why the prophets play such an important role in this book. Prophets were God's inspired mouthpieces. to tell these kings and to tell Israel what God thought about them. And it usually wasn't happy news. Sometimes they gave supportive message, but usually it wasn't happy. Now, I did hand out a legal-sized sheet of all of the kings and prophets so that you could place where each story occurs. It can get very confusing because it jumps back and forth from North Kingdom to South Kingdom, and you can get lost if you don't have a chart like that. And if you want a much, much more detailed chart, this one's from Floyd Nolan Jones, but if you go to floydnolanjonesministries.com, I think he's one of the most accurate chronologists out there. You'll see a massive chart that's almost impossible to print off, but you can read it online. It's really cool. Anyway, the prophets that you see on that chart were constantly challenging the people to get back to the laws of God. That's the constant refrain. They called out idolatry and injustice, brought God's covenant, lawsuits against nations that refused to heed His voice. But don't think they were the only prophets. You see some names there, but I'll just give you a hint that God had sent hundreds of prophets. 1 Kings 18 verse 4 says that one of Ahab's officers, he was a good man by the name of Obadiah, hid 100 prophets. We don't know the name of a single one of those prophets, but he hid 100 prophets of God, 50 in each cave, and fed them with bread and water. He was protecting them from the queen, the wife of Ahab. So it's another kind of interposition. In fact, this book is full of examples. You want to find out how you can protect one another against tyranny? Oh, this is a book that's got all kinds of information on that. We aren't told the names of those prophets, but it illustrates that God was faithfully bringing his word to where? The northern kingdom that never pretended to be, except under Rehoboam, a Christian nation. Okay, despite its total commitment to paganism and its declaration, hey, we're not a Yahweh's nation. God didn't say, okay, if you want to worship other gods, that's okay. No, they too were subject to God's law, just like the USA and Canada and every other nation is. Don't ever think that God's laws are only for those who stay in covenant with him. The most prominent prophets in the Northern Kingdom were Elijah and Elisha. Ahab was the most prominent king who needed God's rebuke. He had allowed his demonic wife Jezebel to control him, to control the politics, and the tyranny that resulted was horrible. Elijah declared a drought on the northern kingdom, and true to his word, God did not allow one drop to fall on that northern kingdom. Ahab was ticked off. He hunts and hunts for Elijah. He wants to kill him, and he can't. God preserves him. God protects him, God feeds him. And finally Elijah shows up to tell Ahab there's going to be a competition among Carmel to see whose God is the true God, Baal or Yahweh. And Ahab, who could have killed him right then and there, he thinks, well yeah, maybe this will settle things once and for all. It must have been kind of naive, but he calls all Israel to witness this. And he's very polite, he says, okay, Baal worshipers, you can go first. So they make their altar, they put the bull on top of it, and they're praying and crying out to Baal to bring fire. He tells these people, look, the God who brings fire down from heaven miraculously and consumes the sacrifice, that's the true God. And the people think, you know, that's pretty cool. We've never seen anything like that. Let's go for it. So he has them go first. They're crying from morning till noon with no results. So Elijah just starts mocking them. You know, maybe it's your gods are on a long trip. You know, maybe you need to cry out louder. Maybe they're asleep. Maybe they're relieving themselves. You know, he's just mocking them. And they do cry out louder and louder. And they're cutting themselves with knives and saying, please send fire. Finally, he says, OK, it's over. It's my turn. And he puts his bull on his altar and he asks them for water because he's the only guy there. So he asked them for water. He digs a big trench around this this altar. And he pours barrel after barrel of water on top of this altar, drenching the wood, filling up the trench that's around it, and a simple prayer to God, and fire streaks from heaven, devouring not just the sacrifice, but the wood and the stones and the water. There's nothing left, and astounded, the people cry out, Yehoah, he is God, he's the true God. And so Elijah seizes the moment, and he says, okay, grab these false prophets, and he goes and slays them all. Wow, does that tick off? Queen Jezebel, and she vows to kill him. As I mentioned, 2 Kings 2 is the heart of the book, and it shows the mantle being transferred from Elijah to Elisha. Elisha had asked for a double portion of the spirit that was upon Elijah. Did he get it? Yes, he did. Seven miracles for Elijah, 14 miracles for Elisha. Exactly double the portion. Now, let's take a quick look at the Christ of Kings. Christ of Kings can be seen in a number of symbols where David symbolized the period of Christ's kingdom that we are in, the Messy Period. Solomon symbolizes the future period of Christ's kingdom when the whole world's gonna be converted and when it's going to be peace and prosperity and wholeness. Another beautiful symbol of Jesus is Elisha. Scholars believe that Elijah was a symbol of John the Baptist. And Elisha, just like Joshua, was a symbol of Jesus. And the New Testament seems to back that up. In Matthew 11, verse 14, Jesus said very explicitly that John the Baptist was the Elijah who was to come. And he repeats that thought in Matthew 17, 10 through 12, which makes Jesus the prophet who comes after John the Baptist. So he corresponds to Elisha. So I think it's pretty strong evidence he is a type of Jesus. Christ is also symbolized by the temple, sacrifices, prophets, priests, kings. We've looked at all of those symbols, so I won't delve into them today. I'm not going to cover the themes of the book either. I've listed them there for you. But let me list a few of my favorite lessons from the book of Kings. I've put quite a few scripture references for each lesson so you can study those on your own. But there are two ways in which Yehovah is said to be the only true God who controls all things. So there's miracles that show God controls nature. There are these twists and turns, remarkable twists and turns of human history to show He controls all history. I've already related the story of Mount Carmel, but Elijah's statement that no rain would fall except at his command, God's command through Elijah, shows he controls rain. Feeding of Elijah by crows, when nobody else had food and the crows didn't eat it, they just brought it to Elijah, shows God's control over crows, right? The widow of Zarephath having a never-ending supply of oil and flour, the raising of the child from the dead in 1 Kings 17, 23, the randomly shot arrow that God pokes right into Ahab. Those verses indicate God controls every facet of nature and history. You cannot escape that lesson when you read Kings. A second major lesson is God's unconditional election. That's the second point of the five points of Calvinism, right? Tulip, total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace, perseverance of the saints. So many stories that show God's selective grace, His unconditional grace. But Jesus singles out two, and those two stories infuriated the Jews of His day. It was the widow of Zarephath and Naaman the leper. I'm not going to give you the wonderful story of Naaman the leper. You probably all know it by heart. But here's the point that Jesus makes from that story Jesus said but I tell you truly Many widows were in Israel in the days of Elijah when the heaven was shut up three years and six months and there was a great famine throughout all the land but to none of them was Elijah sent except to Zarephath in the region of Sidon to a woman who was a widow and many lepers were in Israel and in the time of Elisha the prophet, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian." What marvelous examples of unconditional election. He bypasses the people who think they're pretty good, and he sends his grace to two Gentiles. Another major lesson is that God demands exclusive worship. I give verses that show whether you're Jew or Gentile, all nations are called to worship God. Next point, I've given several verses that show God dictates the nature, content, and place of worship. We call this what? The regulative principle of worship. That God needs to be worshipped the way he wants, the way he dictates, not the way that we think he ought to be worshipped. Jeroboam is an example of this. He didn't worship pagan gods. He claimed to be worshipping Yehoah, But he did it according to the dictates of his own heart, not the dictates of the scripture. So this book speaks against the false worship that plagues evangelical churches who worship the true God, but they do it according to the dictates of their own hearts, not according to the dictates of scripture. Deuteronomy 12 had commanded, you shall not worship Yehovah your God in that way. Whatever I command you, be careful to observe it. You shall not add to it nor take away from it. And then you can study some of the examples I give in Kings. I think they're fantastic examples illustrating regulative principle of worship. Another major lesson of this book is that God's laws are binding on all men, not just on true believers. God enforced it on David, if he violates God's laws, he suffers. When Manasseh, the most wicked of the kings, violates God's laws, he suffers more. But they were both subject to the law. And one interesting story that illustrates this is in 1 Kings 20 when God allows Ahab to win against the Syrians. Now the reason, and the only reason He allowed Ahab to win against the Syrians is because the Syrians had blasphemed him by saying, Yehoah, he's the God of the hills. We have the God of the plains. We can win them if we fight on the plains. And so here's what God says to Ahab to teach them not to blaspheme. Thus says Yehoah, because the Syrians have said Yehoah is God of the hills, but he is not the God of the valleys. Therefore, I will deliver all this great multitude in your hand and you shall know that I am Yehoah. God didn't give it to him because of his goodness, far from it. And Ahab actually should have learned from this. He should have said, oh, wow, he is the God of all the world and submitted, but he couldn't because he was under the thumb of Jezebel. He continued to worship Baal. So it also explains one of the reasons why God allows bad nations to exist so long. They are very convenient tools to persecute and also to purify the church. God has his reasons. But another lesson seen throughout the book is that God is faithful to always keep His promises. His promise to David keeps coming up over and over again. He also mentions keeping His promises to other kings. Very encouraging theme. I love the theme of God's promises. He is a promise-keeping God. Most of the kings in this book end up having syncretism, and it's clear God hates you mixing the presuppositions of the world with the presuppositions of the scripture. And again, this book speaks against evangelicals who think like the world, act like the world. They're trying to mix the two together. Yet another lesson is that the repeated failures of kings in this book illustrates the saying, it is better to trust in Yehovah than to put your confidence in princes, Psalm 118, 9. Or, do not put your trust in princes, nor in a son of man, in whom there is no help, Psalm 146, 3. This book is a fantastic illustration of that principle. Paul summarizes yet another lesson of this book by saying that the unfaithfulness of the Jews does not mean that God was being unfaithful to His promises. He always had the elect to whom he was utterly faithful. And in teaching election, Paul comes to the inescapable conclusion that all Israel is not Israel. In other words, there's an invisible church within the church as a whole. So Paul says, but it is not as though the word of God has taken no effect, for they are not all Israel who are of Israel, nor are they the children, all the children, because they are the seed of Abraham. but in Isaac your seed shall be called." That is, those who are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as seed. And then finally, this book illustrates that only grace can keep us from the downward slide that depravity is tugging at, okay? Don't ever presume upon God's grace or you may well become like Solomon. Every day recognize that there but for the grace of God goes every single one of us. And every day ask God to keep you from stumbling. I love the verse near the end of Jude where he says that he is able to keep us from stumbling. May it be so, Lord Jesus. Amen. Father, we thank you for your word. And we thank you for how you have constructed the Bible to present to us so many different lessons. Help us to learn those lessons, to be transformed by those lessons, and to grow in our love and devotion to you as a result. Bless this, your people, in Jesus' name.