Well, we are entering Hour 7 of “Learn the
Bible in 24 Hours” and we're going to attempt to cover in one hour what I'll call the “Monarchy”:
1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings, and 1 and 2 Chronicles. These ... this is the core, in a sense, of
the historical books. And ... I want to remind you that our whole
review of the Bible is based on exploiting 2 discoveries. The first is that the Bible is an integrated
message. These 66 books penned by over 40 guys over a
period of virtually 2,000 years, is an integrated message. Meaning that every detail there is
by design. And once you discover that, of course, you
come to another discovery. And that is you can demonstrate that the origin of this very
carefully crafted message is from outside our ... dimensions of space and time. Once you discover that for yourself, it'll
... change your whole perspective of what this book is really all about. And so, the central theme, of course, is the
Old Testament is the account of a nation. That's basically what it's about. The New Testament is the account of a man. The Creator became Man and His appearance
in our history is the central event of all history. And He died to purchase us, and yet
is alive today. And our most exalted privilege is to know
Him. And that's what the Bible is all about. And that's why you're here in this review. Now, we've been going through, ... the whole
Panorama of History starting with the Creation, the Fall of Man, and so forth. We went through the Book of Genesis, which
took us all the way up to, but not including the Exodus. The rest of the ... Old Testament in ... a historical sense, goes from the Exodus to the Exile. When the House of
Judah finally goes into Babylonian captivity. And there are about 400 years, then, that
are sometimes called the Silent Years between the close of the Old Testament and the beginning
of the New one. The New Testament, of course, occurs all in
one lifetime. But, ... what we're going to do now, is we're going to focus on the monarchy:
Saul, David, Solomon, and ... and right up to the Exile. The Rise and Fall of the Monarchy, 1 and 2
Samuel. Samuel is the bridge between the period of
the Judges and, ... the Kings. And, ... we call it 1 and 2 Samuel, the Septuagint,
the Greek translation of the Old Testament, speaks of the 1 and 2 Kingdoms. Instead of 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings,
they have first, second, third, and fourth Kings, in a sense, and the Latin Vulgate follows
that same pattern. But we, of course, will stick to the more traditional
thing of 1 and 2 Samuel, which is followed by the pair of 1 and 2 Kings. And, ... they will include David's 40 year
reign. And then Solomon and the tragedy of the division of the kingdom, finally leading
to the Exile. The ... wipeout of the
Northern Kingdom and the exile of the Southern Kingdom. And, ... 1 and 2 Chronicles is a recap of
much of that history from the point of view of the Southern Kingdom, from Judah. That's the ... Southern Kingdom,
of course, the one that produces David and David ... is, you know, in the Messianic
line. So it's obviously of, ... primary significance here. So the Monarchy. Samuel and Saul and David, Solomon - Southern,
2 kingdoms - Judah and Israel. The Southern Kingdom outlasts the Northern
Kingdom. The Northern Kingdom goes ... gets destroyed
and the Southern Kingdom goes to ... into ... into captivity. 1 Samuel covers Samuel and ... Saul. 2 Samuel covers David and, ...then Solomon
will be picked up by 1 Kings. And, ... between 1 and 2 ... 1 Kings and
2 Kings, we have ... the Prophets. In 1 Kings, you have Elijah - very colorful
character. And a more soft-spoken, but equally colorful
character is Elisha, in 2 Kings. But you can think, if you remember the division
in 1 and 2 Kings, there’s Elijah and Elisha, that may be helpful in trying to keep your
bearings here. And 1 and 2 Chronicles is ... essentially
a recap from 2 Samuel right on through the Kings. So, ... we'll be ... trying to summarize
all of these. 1 Book of Samuel, Samuel is the last of the
Judges. And, of course, it covers his birth and his
youth, his call to office and various times and acts. That’ll lead up to Saul, the first of the
kings. His appointment as a king, his promising beginning,
and yet, his later folly and sin. He started off great, but, ... not good news. And, ... when you get to ... 15th ... chapter
of the 1 Book of Samuel, ... we encounter David, who is the greatest of the kings. He’s, of course, anointed by Samuel. And he will have ... he will have service
before Saul. He doesn't replace Saul ... until ... Saul dies. But he’s at first in service to him, and
then, ... Saul gets jealous, envious so forth, he ... endures ... as a fugitive. So. Samuel is quite a guy. Only ... equaled only by Moses. And, ... he really ends, in a very formal sense,
the period of the Judges. The period of the Judges is ... is that ...
strange time. It’s actually a time of decay, tragically. But, ... one of the things that,
... Samuel also does, is he heads the order of the Prophets. He actually founded what they called the Schools
of the Prophets. We don’t know a lot about that. We hear it alluded to several times, but we
really don’t know a lot about the details. But Samuel, of course, places Israel’s first
king on the throne and, ... he later will anoint David. Many people have a misconception. They have a feeling that, ... a king ... for Israel was an afterthought, or the people wanted a king, and so God reluctantly
gives them a king. That's not really a very ... proper perspective. Because we know, in the Book of Judges, ... first of all, ... in the Book of Genesis, Chapter 38, we saw David’s genealogy
already anticipated ... encrypted there. And also in the Book of Ruth, we have David’s
genealogy. The problem with Israel is they wanted a king
right now. David wasn't ready. So God says, you want a king? I'll show you what a king is all about, and
... gives them Saul and they ... later regretted it. But in any case, ... we ... have David anointed. And even as a kid now, he’s going to confront
Goliath. Most of you know the story. But he ultimately has to flee Saul as a fugitive. There is, of course, a threat of
the Philistines. The Philistines originally came from Egypt,
went to Crete, and then from Crete came there along the coast of Israel. And they oppressed
Israel for 40 years. They were the enemies of Israel. The word “Philistine” in Latin is “Palestine.” The ... land was named by the Caesar
in order to ... disallow any ... Jewish presence ... in the ... second century. But when you use the term “Palestine,”
what it really means is “Philistine,” and they were the enemies of Israel for over
40 years. Now Samson, who has a lot of colorful pranks
that he plays, ... really just had only tactical successes. When he dies, the tribe of Dan, which was
responsible for that region, was not able to hold it, and they end up moving on their
own initiative, up into the northern part of the country. It’s interesting that the Ark of the Covenant
was lost through the Philistines, but for a short while. And boy, did they end up regretting it. In fact, one of the most colorful episodes
in the Scripture is when the Philistines capture the Ark. And every place they put it, and
... they have 5 cities, in each of the cities where they had it there as a hostage, they
had sickness and problems. They had ... infestations of rats
that were associated with that. And they had ... an outbreak
of hemorrhoids, strangely enough. And they finally conclude after having it in each
of the 5 cities, that they needed to send it back. (Laughter) And one of the most humorous, ... in 1
Samuel 4, one of the funniest chapters in the Bible, because ... when they go to
send it back, the priests realized they can’t just send it back without an offering. So they decide to put in the Ark, sort of a ... restitution kind of thing, ... they put 5 gold mice, ... one for each of the 5 cities that had been plagued
by all these problems. But the funny part, and it’s in 1 Samuel 4,
is that they ... also put in 5 golden hemorrhoids. (Laughter) Now, I have no idea who crafted those. I have
no idea served as a model for them. (Laughter) But it’s there. And they turned this loose
and they find their way back, by the way, interestingly enough. So the
Ark was not a blessing to the Philistines. They ultimately are defeated under Samuel’s
leadership. And they do though, they do continue as a major nemesis for Saul. The Philistines
were ultimately subdued ... by David. And, ... so one of the things, ... that
people do, though, they clamor for a king. This is an example of self-determination.
And, ... see God had promised them kings from the beginning. You'll find it in Genesis 17,
... and Genesis 35, and, as I say, you'll find even the ... the genealogy of David in Genesis
38, encrypted behind the letters and, ... you also find it in the Book of Ruth, explicitly
laid out. But the people want a king. In fact,
in 1 Samuel 8, they clamor for a king to go out before us to fight our battles, that's
what they're claiming for. They want a king to help them win battles. Big mistake. Who
was fighting their battles up ‘til then? God was. The Lord was. Now this is a request that we ... that really
is ... there’s some lessons here in self-determination. We're a culture that ... encourages being
self-determined. Freedom of action, on the one hand. And yet, there’s a danger
of being self-determined instead of being God-led, and, ... this request that comes
to Samuel, came from a committee meeting, not a prayer meeting. And, ... Samuel, of course, is really upset
with this clamor. But in 1 Samuel Chapter 8 verse 7, the Lord explains it to Samuel.
He says “Hearken unto the voice of the people in all that they say unto thee.” This is
God speaking to Samuel. “For they have not rejected thee, but they have rejected Me,
that I should not reign over them.” God views this as a choice they've made, that
they would rather have an earthly king than a heavenly Lord. And we can stand here, as spectators, and
be very critical. Boy, they should have known better. And yet, be careful when you look
in the mirror. How many of us do the same thing? How many of us try to take charge of
our lives, rather than to submit it to prayer and to the Lordship of the Lord. Say the Lord’s
my Savior; indeed, but is He your Lord? Big difference. Big difference. Is He really the
Lord of your life? Well, David, of course, encounters Goliath.
You all know the story. This is later, of course. Now this guy, Goliath, was a formidable
guy. I assume he was on the local basketball team. He was 9 feet tall. He was not only
large, his profession was combat. He’s a ... he ... was trained. It’s interesting, you know the story, how
David is upset, because the troops are terrified as this champion comes forth to settle the
day. And no one will go up and, ... David’s there on other errands as just a child. But
he says, then I'll go, and Saul is going to give him his armor, but David quickly realizes
after he can’t ... he can’t handle that. It’s heavier than he is. He’s going to
handle it his way. He was ... he’s a shepherd and he was skilled with a sling. And, ... so he crosses the brook and picks
up 5 stones and puts it in his pocket. And you all know the story, how he took a stone
and nailed Goliath right between the eyes and when he fell he took Goliath’s sword
and cut off his head. The question that you're can to ask yourself
is "why did David pick up 5 stones?" Did he think he was going to miss? No, it turns out,
when we study the Scripture, you'll discover that Goliath had 4 brothers. And once you
realize that, you realize that David was ready for the whole gang. And I think that's
kind of fun. The other 4 are ultimately, several chapters later, taken care of by ... by then,
by David’s mighty men. But, ... he was from a family of 5, and you'll find that 2 Samuel
21, much later. But, ... it’s there in the Scripture to dig out. And, now, the, ... I might explain, by
the way, Goliath was a descendent of Anakim, he was a ... he was a descendent of Nephilim.
So this is a ... a vestige of, things that were going on in the land, when
God told Abraham that his ... his descendants would return to the land of Canaan after 400
years, that gave Satan 400 years to lay down a minefield. And there are 4 primary tribes that are
mentioned in the Scripture, that, ... were Nephilim and in which Josh- ... Joshua
was instructed to wipe out every man, woman and child of these certain tribes, because
he’s got a gene pool problem. Anyway, out of this of course, comes the hybrids
of the Anakim, they're called Nephilim also, even in Numbers 13, and, the Zamzummim
is one of them. That's the one from whom Goliath descended, but, anyway. Well, ... this of course, this caused
public awareness of David and that there was a deliverer in Israel and, ... so, ...
there’s a ... whole bit of rivalry that begins to emerge with Saul.
And so David becomes, on the one hand a deliverer and a chief of Saul’s men of
war. He also becomes ... a devoted friend of Saul’s son, Jonathan. And the 2 of them become very, very close.
And, in fact one place it says their souls were knit together. They were ... they were,
very, very, ... Saul ... Jonathan, despite the fact that David was a rival, in effect,
of his dad. Still ... regarded ... was very loyal, ... a good friend. So Saul’s an interesting study, by the way.
In fact, it’s interesting to contrast Saul and David. Saul was the kind of guy you and
I ... we'd want to pick. Very striking physical superiority. And initially, very modest, very
forthright, very direct, very generous. You see his early qualities, he showed a lot of
promise. But in his life, as in ours, the big issue is finishing well. Finishing well.
Boy, you could keep a logbook on that one. And he later, of course, Saul later declines.
He ... he gets ... fraught with irreverent presumption. He was a Benjamite
from Gibeah. He ... he in fact, he says its capital. Now remember ... remember the Benjamites
were the group that closed the Book of Judges with all the ... those, ... almost wiped
out by the other tribes. And so, but Saul was very impatient, anyway,
as a king. The Philistines were arrayed against Israel, and he was supposed to wait
for Samuel at Gilgal. But he ends up violating the priest’s prerogative and offering prearranged
sacrifice so the Lord. He wasn’t supposed to do that. He intrudes on the priest’s
office. Big mistake. And so, he, ... then he finally, you know, calls ... calls
the priest for guidance, rushes off and so forth. Very impatient character. And, ... he was supposed
to wipe out the Agites ... Agagites. He fails to do that. When Samuel finds that out, he’s
really upset. What if he had wiped out the Agites as God had told him to, which he didn't,
you would not have had Haman in the Book of Esther. Haman was a descendant of Agag. Very interesting, by the way, you're going
to see a little later, David has ... there’s a guy, Shimei, that is harassing David. And
his troops want to wipe him out because he’s running ... he’s throwing stones and ... yelling curses. And David won’t let him do it. David’s feeling if God called
him to curse, let him curse. Leave him alone. Because David’s spared Shimei, a descendent
of him was a guy by the name of Mordecai. So when you study the Book of Esther, as we
will, but the point I want ... you'll ... we'll pick it up then, but the 2 protagonists there,
the one that's the bad guy shouldn't have been alive if Saul had done what he was ...
supposed to. Mordecai wouldn't have been alive if David hadn’t spared Shimei. Kind of interesting.
There’s a whole thing going on. So, ... anyways, Saul’s decline, of course,
irreverent presumption, willful impatience and of course, his disobedience, deceit, and
failure to destroy the Amalekites. Big deal. He was supposed to do that. Samuel told him
to, God told him to. He didn't do it. When Samuel finds out, he’s really upset. Samuel
finally does kill ... the King of Agag. But apparently there’s a line, because,
... Haman descends from that. But then we have a very peculiar episode that,
... should come to mind every time you have ... every year at Halloween. You know, Christians are always sort of in a quandary what to do about Halloween. But
in any case, the Witch at Endor, very strange event, because, ... Saul, in desperation ... because he can’t get a hold of Sam- ... Samuel’s passed away, and he’s so used
to having someone to talk to, he needs to talk to Samuel. And so even though Saul has made witchcraft
illegal, wiped them all out, he knows there are some ... there’s still an underground
and he gets his men to ... they know there’s a witch, apparently a medium, down at, ... Endor. So he goes ... he goes in disguise down there. And, ... so, ... she brings a
... And when Samuel comes up, she’s shook. So what's going on isn't what she’s used
to. People argue, well, who was it really? I believe it really was Samuel. And it’s interesting that Saul doesn't see Samuel,
he only hears him. Because Samuel says before he dies, when he ... when he upset with ...
Saul about ... Agag, he says you will ... you will see me no more. And if you read
the text carefully, I believe he just ... he hears ... Samuel comes up, but the ... he
hears him, he doesn't really see him. In any case, ... the witch, of course, is
shook because she ... then she realizes something is going on. She suddenly realizes that he’s
the king and so forth. But, ... it’s ... it’s ... But, ... when
Samuel predicts to Saul that tomorrow you'll be with me, in other words, his death. And
Saul and his ... and ... and ... and his people were ... were killed the next day at Gilboa. So, it’s a very, very spooky scene.
Many people argue about the details, but, it makes a very, very interesting, thing to dramatize, particularly around, Halloween. Sort of the spirit of the ... time. But let’s get back to the ... monarchy.
Samuel and Saul of course is 1 Samuel. David in 2 Samuel. And so, in the second
book of Samuel, starts to talk about David and his triumphs. And, he is picked as
the King of Judah. When you see ... when Saul is dead, ... the ... the time
is open. He’s actually been anointed by Samuel long before, but it’s ... with, ... and David had several opportunities to kill Saul. He would not, because he’s
still God’s anointed, as far as David’s concerned. And there’s a very colorful event when Saul happens to be sleeping in the cave and didn't know that that was a thing ... cave
... that David was hiding in. And David, while he was sleeping, cut off the hem of his garment.
The next day, from the top of the hill, he shows that he could have. Saul’s pretty
shook. Why the hem of the garment? Because the hem is where all the authority is. So
we have on the ... on the ... a sleeve, typically, on a military or on the shoulder or something.
In that ... in those ... in ancient Israel, it was on the hem. The hem had the genealogy,
had the authority, etc. That's why he cut the hem off. He cut off
... he cut it ... he cut off ... in fact, he later, even David repented of doing
that. That's why the ... the woman, with the issue of blood wanted to touch Jesus
... the hem of his garment. The hem was ... where the ... in the sense of the authority. Anyway, there's a whole study about hems you can undertake. But at Hebron, he’s picked as the
King of Judah. That's just the tribal picture so far. But, for ... and he ... he rules
at ... for 7 years, as the head of Judah. But, at Jerusalem, he will be
picked also the king of the whole nation, the king of all Israel, and his identity
with Judah, it never goes away, of course. In fact, later on, with the civil war, the
northern tribes lead ... take the ... a different tact with Ephraim as the spokesman for the
north. But anyway, he’s ... at this point, David is the King of all of Israel. And he reigns that way for 13 years. But
he has troubles in his family and in the nation. And in the last part of the second book of
Samuel details all this. And obviously, he’s accepted by the king over all Israel.
And, because of the human kinship, we are of thy bone and thy flesh. He also is
picked because of his proven merit. “Thou leddest out and broughtest in all Israel.”
These are all the accolades they're giving him when they pick him as ... to head up the
whole thing. And, also he’s a divine warrant. “The
Lord said unto thee, ‘Thou shalt be captain over Israel.’” The word “captain”
there is the top leader. We think of captain as a company grade rank. No, it’s a ... it’s
a ... here the term is top guy. But when we get to 2 Samuel 7, it’s one
of the most important chapters in your Bible. You want to be very sensitive to this, because
2 Samuel 7 affects everything that follows. Not only in the Scriptures, in the history
of mankind. And this has more to do with than just Israel alone, because this will ultimately
be the throne from which the entire planet Earth will be ruled. And, God there declares the perpetuity
of the Davidic dynasty. Now, do you know anyone that is a direct ... is a ... a descendent
of David? Only one. The Lord Jesus Christ. And something else is ... is that the Davidic
covenant is unconditional. We talk about the Abrahamic covenant being unconditional, the
Davidic covenant also is unconditional, very important point. Because this has Messianic
implications. This is crucial, not just because of the governance of this nation, it ... it’s
critical because it leads to the whole ... back stops the whole concept of the Messiah. That
started in Genesis Chapter 3 and climaxes with the marriage supper of the Lamb and so
forth in Revelation 19. 2 Samuel Chapter 7, starting with Verse 11,
“The Lord telleth thee that He will make thee a house,” speaking to David. “And
when thy days be fulfilled, and thou shalt sleep with thy fathers, I will set up thy
seed after thee. And I will establish his kingdom.” And he, that is David’s son,
“shall build a house for my name and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.”
So the Davidic throne is ... the dynasty is here endorsed by none other than God Himself. And, it goes on. It says, “I will be
his father and he shall be my son. If he commit inequity, I will chasten him with the rod
of men, and with the stripes of the children of men, but my mercy shall not depart away
from him, as I took it from Saul, whom I put away before thee. And thine house and thy
kingdom shall be established forever before thee. Thy throne shall be established forever.” So his ... his throne, his kingdom and his
house, those are 3 different things, but all related. Each one is established forever,
key point. And this perpetuity is confirmed throughout the Scripture. In Psalm 89, “His
seed also will I make to endure forever. And his throne as the days of heaven.” And a
few verses later, “Once have I sworn by my holiness that I will not lie unto David.
His seed shall endure forever and his throne as the sun before me. It shall be established
forever as the moon, and as a faithful witness in heaven.” And it goes on, the whole Psalm,
you know, goes on then. So in the Book of Acts, Chapter 2, Verse 30.
“Therefore being a prophet and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him, that of
the fruit of his loins, according to the flesh, he would raise up Christ to sit on his throne.”
So Jesus Christ is the fulfillment, the ultimate fulfillment of that commitment that God gave
David. So here are the key points you want to remember
from this ... from 2 Samuel 7. The divine confirmation of a throne in
Israel, the perpetuity of the Davidic dynasty, that the Davidic covenant is unconditional,
and all this has Messianic implications because in Matthew 1, Verse 1, the first verse of
the New Testament, it speaks of Him as the Son of David and the Son of Abraham. Both
are pivotal issues. When we get to Revelation Chapter 5, it’s
the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David. One is the tribe, one is the family,
but there you have it. And of course, it’s all the way through, I just picked a couple
of checkpoints here to ... to make the emphasis. So the Scarlet Thread continues. Remember
we started with the Seed of the Woman and that was the race, if you will, the human
race would be the means by which God was going to redeem the Creation. And not just the race,
but through the nation, it started with Abraham. And, not only the nation, but
the tribe of Jacob and the family of David. And so God is focusing, from Genesis 3, it’s
the race; and from Genesis 22, we know it’s ... through Abraham and from Genesis 49,
we know it’s the ... house of Jacob. And then a tribe of Jacob, and, then,
under David, of course, we have, 2 Samuel. So we got ... and as God focuses His revelation
of how the Messianic plan is going to work, that allows Satan to focus his attacks. And
we'll see that all the way ... going all the way through. Now David was quite a guy. We tend to focus
on some of the stumbles, but he was a very, very shrewd general. A very victorious warrior.
And he subdues the Philistines to the west. Saul never was able to do that. The Syrians,
Hadadezer in the north, the Ammonites and Moabites in the east and southeast, and the
Edomites and the Amalekites in the south. So in each of the major fronts, he succeeds
and subdues. Clever general, he’s a man of war. In fact, that gets to him, actually,
before it’s all over. But in addition to being a great general,
he also was a very constructive administrator. We miss that, because we focus on his person
and so many other things, but he was a very, very skillful manager. He brought
judgment and justice to all the people. That is quite a statement. That is quite a statement. And among the many things that he organizes,
one of the things you want to be very sensitive to is he organized the priesthood. The priesthood
was getting very large by now. The priesthood was not all the Levites. The Levites was the
whole tribe, but within that there were descendants of Aaron. But even there, quite a number.
So he organized the priesthood in ... into 24 subsets, or what they call “courses.”
And each course officiated from sha- ... from Shabbat to Shabbat. Each Shabbat it would
change and there was a sequence. And the 24, it’s one of the rare places
the number 24 occurs in the Bible. The num- ... number 24 is indicative of priesthood.
And, that becomes a very material point when you get to the book of Revelation because
there are 24 elders sitting on thrones, so they're both kings and priests, in some respects.
And so there’s a whole thing we want to get into then. The priesthood is, of course, of the House
of Levi ... the tribe of Levi. The royal tribe is the tribe of Judah and they are separate.
The kings were not to intrude on the rights of the priests. That's where Saul made a big
mistake and he paid for. Likewise, the ... the priests were not to rule. They were
priests. There was only one guy that you first encounter, at least, that's a king and a
priest. That was Melchizedek. In fact, he’s used idiomatically to make that very point
in the Book of Hebrews, Chapters 5 and 6. And ... even that would probably just,
disappear in obscurity except for Psalm 110 where it’s ... where God promises the
Messiah there, in effect, that he will be a priest after the Order of Melchizedek. Not
Leviticus, which was a temporary priesthood that dealt with, but to be ... a king and
a priest. There are only 3 people that are kings and priests: Melchizedek, Jesus Christ
and who else? You and me. We are kings and priests Peter tells ... says in his
letter. So you need to understand there’s a distinction there that's very, very critical.
And you do want to understand who the 24 elders are when you get to Revelation 24, it’s
a very important identity, it’s not free of controversy, but I think it’s pretty
clear as to who they are, because they ... tell who they are. But David just going down his résumé here
a little bit, he not only is a victorious warrior, great general, he’s also a very
creative and constructive administrator, but he also is a ... not just a poet, he is a
major poet and songwriter. And, he wrote, a large number of the Book of Psalms.
In the next session, we'll be exploring some of those to get that perspective. He didn't
write all the Psalms, but he wrote ... an awful lot of them. But David’s turning point, of course, is
his great sin. And one of the things we obviously need to be very sensitive to, is the obvious
honesty of the Scriptures. They don’t paint David as having no faults. They record his
successes, but they also record his stumbles and failures. And he, of course, ... we're
all familiar with the story with Bathsheba. He not only committed adultery, he arranges
for the murder of her husband. This is heavy stuff. And this is the king that we're talking
about. And this was not a little one-night stand,
a little stumble. This was the result of a process. It usually is. First of all, he was
in a mode of very prosperous ease. When things are going well, watch out. When you are at
the peak of your success is when you're vulnerable. You're vulnerable two places especially, at
the bottom and the top. Both extremes are danger points. And he was prosperous. He was
supposed to be at war with his troops. He’s home. And it was not a case of him looking out the
window and seeing this gal for the first time. If you really do your homework, you'll discover
that there was a family relationship. I mean, the ... these are people that, ... this was
not an initial encounter. It’s the first encounter of that kind, probably, but I mean,
it was not a stranger we're dealing with here. And, ... the other thing with David, though,
he was already showing signs here because he was becoming very self-indulgent. We all
tend to do that. Something else to be guard ... on guard for. Accumulating wives was forbidden
in Deuteronomy 17. Forbidden for kings to accumulate wives. And, of course, he ends up
having this affair with, Bathsheba. And he gets, of course, confronted by Nathan, the
Prophet. In which he has deep remorse and repentance. To his credit, Psalm 51 is famous
because that's David’s Psalm as he grieves over the sin that he is guilty of, especially
the sin against God. And that's one of the reasons God can say,
in 1 Samuel 13 and it’s also recorded in Acts 13, that, David is regarded by God
as a man after his own heart. You know, when he says that, it’s sort of startling, because
here’s David, he’s a sinner. He’s an adulterer. He’s a murderer. How can he be
a man after God’s heart? Because he’s honest, he owns his sin, acknowledges it,
repents of it. God has a lot of room for a repentant sinner. We're all sinners. And,
that's what ... that's what the whole issue is as far as our relationship with God
is concerned. So that starts, though, years of suffering.
Remorse and contrition did not obliterate the consequences. God may forgive you for
the fornication or adultery, but it doesn't get rid of AIDS. It doesn't get rid of
unwanted pregnancies. It doesn't get rid of the consequences of sin in ... the
... in the natural. But, so David’s family then becomes
just a whole saga of incest, fratricide, intrigues, and ultimately rebellion and civil war, have
their seeds in David’s sin. And, you know, it’s astonishing. People speak of
victimless crimes. They speak of crimes that, you know, really have no victim. There is
no such thing, because this is a crime against anyone that loves you. It’s a crime against
anyone in whose love you abide. And so, sin ... sin multiplies. Because of his ... of all these things, he’s
not allowed to build the Temple. God says your son, Solomon, will build the Temple.
And David says, in effect, no problem. I'll just pay the bills. So David, most people
don’t realize this, David prepaid much of the cost of the Temple. Not all of it, Solomon
was very prosperous, too. But, he actually prepaid. He really made a lot of the ... you
know, he couldn't build the Temple, but he could arrange for a lot of the ...
needs and ... and Solomon’s glory, that follows of course, is in large measure
due to, David’s preparation for that. But there were troubles in the family. Now,
something else, you know, you talk about, the sword shall never depart from thy
house, 2 Samuel 12. The sword shall never depart from your house, David. One of
the things as you read through the ... the intrigues, you'll discover that there’s this
old character by the name of Ahithophel, that's a counselor to Absalom in his rebellion against
David. And what doesn't come through, unless you do a little bit of homework, you sort
of wonder, what has ... why is Ahithophel so available to David’s enemies? And you have to connect some dots here, but
you'll discover if you connect the dots, that Ahithophel was Bathsheba’s grandfather.
And you begin to realize that he never forgave David’s violation of Bathsheba.
So, the first son of Bathsheba, of course, dies and then, ... also a loss of moral
authority. Amnon raped David’s daughter, Tamar, another
seedy episode. Absalom kills Amnon, so there’s all this going on in the family. Finally,
Absalom leads a rebellion against David and he’s counseled by this Ahithophel character,
which the Bible doesn't make clear unless you connect the dots, you discover who was
his father and who was that father and it turns out it’s the father of Bathsheba.
You realize that he’s the grandfather of Bathsheba. So anyway, finally Adoni– ... Adonijah
attempts to seize the kingship from Solomon and so it goes on and on. So we've got a whole
seedy thing here. And that leads ... now we're into 1 Kings. We've gone ... bear in mind,
1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings are 1, 2, 3, 4 Kings in the ... in the Greek and in the
... in the Latin. But anyway, we'll stick with the traditional one here. And the 1 Kings
will close with the antics of this incredible character called Elijah. Very colorful character.
And, so the first book of Kings is ... can be called really discontinuance through disobedience.
The ... they're starting to have real problems. Solomon reigned for 40 years. And, the first
book of Kings deals with the accession, the Temple being built. And it’s the peak of
Israel’s fame and glory of the days of Solomon. But he also turns apostate and we'll talk
about that in a minute. And that leads to declension and ... and finally decease. And,
the kingdom finally divides, because when he ... Solomon finally does die, his son, Rehoboam takes over. But Rehoboam does some ill-advised, increase
of taxes and other things, that gives the excuse for Jeroboam to peel off in a rebellion.
And he ... Jeroboam organizes the Northern Kingdom. And, the Southern
Kingdom is called Judah. The Northern Kingdom is called Israel. And
when you're reading the Bible in this area, you need to be careful when it says Israel,
whether it’s talking about the Northern Kingdom or the nation as a whole. We tend
to use the term “Israel” for the nation as a whole, and that's appropriate. But there’s
a period there where Israel, the house of Israel was the Northern Kingdom, sometimes
called “Ephraim.” Not ... it was more than just Ephraim was the ... the primary
spokesman tribe, if you will, of that group. And Jeroboam, of course, leads them to idolatry
for a number of reasons and ... the ... it ... it is ... in the northern, as
an attempt to get the Northern Kingdom straightened out, Elijah is there primarily ministering
in the north and has some very colorful episodes. For a period of about 80 years, the divided
kingdom continues there before it finally goes under. But Solomon, we talked about David, let’s
talk a little bit about Solomon. He acceded the throne when he was 15 years old. And they
did have a lot more responsibility at very early years for lots of reasons. But, that's according to Josephus, by the way, and, Adonijah attempted
to preempt, but he was thwarted by Nathan, the Prophet, so he doesn't ... he’s not
able to pull it off. In fact, David on his deathbed, instructs
Solomon to clean house of a whole bunch of overdue punishments. And that would include
Joab. Joab had previously murdered Abner and, so David says it’s time to deal with
Joab. And there’s also the Shimei issues and some other issues that he ... he goes
through a little checklist, punchlist, if you will, for Solomon when he takes the throne. And then, of course, the big event in Solomon’s
career is the building of the Temple and, the Cedars of Lebanon were famous and
... and, they're much more attractive than the coarser sycamores that were typically
available in the south. So arrangements are made, Hiram is the King of Tyre up there.
And he had a very close friendship with David. It was his friendship with David that really
sets this all up. But, so the Cedars of Lebanon were purchased by David for the Temple. But something that most people don’t notice
is that the design of the Temple was given to David by God Himself. Most of us assume
the Temple was just Solomon’s rendering in more elegant terms of the basic architecture
of the Tabernacle. No, it’s more than that. In fact, there are some architectural features
to the Temple that go beyond what the Tabernacle had, besides just being larger and so forth.
And it’s important to understand that that was God-given, and, I'll show you why
in a minute. But this project of building the Temple, the
first temple as we might call it, had over 183,000 workmen, 30,000 men, 10,000 per
shift in a month; 70,000 carriers, 80,000 hewers in the mountains and over 3,000 supervisors.
That's a bunch of ... that was a mammoth, mammoth project, of the Temple. Now the architecture of the Temple is worth
studying. You ... you ... when you look at this, you'll recognize right away, it’s
very similar to the Tabernacle in its concept. The Tabernacle was 75 feet, 150 feet long,
if we accept a foot and a half or a cubit, which is reasonable. This is much larger,
much, much larger. And of course a permanent structure, not designed to be portable, like
the Tabernacle was, which was designed for the wilderness wanderings. But the architecture is very similar. As you
enter first, the first thing you encounter is the Holocaust altar, the ... or the brazen
altar. Except this was larger. And around it are 10 lavers of bronze for the washing.
There’s also a molten sea and we're going to talk about that in a minute, but ... a
huge, huge basin, 7 and a half feet deep and about 10 feet in diameter, that the ... the
... the priests would be able to do ritual cleansing in. And when you go through all that, you then
enter the holy place itself, that first rectangular edifice. As you walk in, instead of a Menorah,
a ... a 7 branch lampstand, there are 10 of them in there. And you go a little further,
there are not ... not just a table of show bread, but 10 of them. So everything is, you
know, the decimal point is moved over, so to speak. And then just as it did in the Tabernacle,
you encounter the golden altar of incense. It’s always associated with the Holy of
Holies. Many people assume it’s in there. No, it can’t be in there, it has to be tended
day and night. So it’s out ... and they couldn't go in the Holy ... only the High
Priest, only the Holy Priest could go in the Holy of Holies and only once a year and only
after great ceremonial preparation. But as part of that edifice was the golden
altar, which was just outside the veil, but regarded as part of the Holy of Holies,
we have the golden altar, the altar of incense. And as you go through, ... when you could,
if you could at least in your mind’s eye go through that veil, you there would find
2 things, not one. Many of us stumble on that. The Ark of the Covenant, of course, was in
there. But on top of the Ark is a separate appliance,
a separate piece of furniture, so to speak. And that's the Mercy Seat. And, we often
regard those together. It’s instructive to be sensitive to the fact that the Scripture
always deals with them separately. In fact, strangely enough, the Mercy Seat is a superior
element to the Ark. Several places, the Holy of Holies is described as the place of the
Mercy Seat. Yes, it’s the place of the Ark of the Covenant, too, but ... but it’s the
Mercy Seat that's preemptive here. So that's the ... that's the quick picture
of the thing. But there is something added that's not in the Tabernacle and that's a
porch in front. And in front of the porch, there are 2 other objects, 2 bronze pillars.
These are huge bronze pillars that have nothing on top of them. They're not bearing ... they're
not weight bearing. What are they there for? And furthermore, they have names. To the one
side, to the south, it’s Jachin, and to the north, it’s Boaz. And, Jachin means, “in his counsel,” is what the word means. And Boaz means “in his strength,”
is what the terms means. And these ... these are ... these are very provocative. Something else to be sensitive to, everything
outside the Temple itself, the ... the Holocaust altar, the molten sea and these lavers are
all bronze, as are the pillars. Everything else ... everything inside is gold. So there’s
a distinction right there, that everything that's inside the ... the thing, the holy
... the holy place and the Holy of Holies is gold. Around the outside of the Temple structure
proper are wooden chambers. And these are very, very interesting elements. They're called
“headers.” These were the private storerooms for the priests. This is where the priests could
keep their personal things. And this is also where the prie- ... priests would keep their
secret idols. This was ... this was where ... these were closets
that were supposed to be ... that needed to be cleaned out. And, so, this
is ... this is subject to a great deal of discussion here shortly. And,
there’s personal storage for the priests. Now, so we have the Holy of Holies, the most
inner sanctum. We have the Holy Place and we have the porch, which is a new element,
and we have the inner court and of course the outer court outside. So those are the
main things that are obviously very similar to, but slightly different than the Tabernacle
we were familiar with. Now, it’s interesting that 7 times in the
Bible, it says “Ye are the Temple of God,” 7 times that's mentioned. Now that might be
just use ... being used metaphorically, because you're the Temple of God in the sense the
Holy Spirit indwells you. That may be all there is. And yet, it’s interesting that
it’s 7 times in the text and if you ... if you take the view that I do, that that's deliberate
and it’s part of the design, then it also turns out to hold the key to our software
architecture. You know, if we talk about architecture of
a building, I think most of us have a feeling for what that involves. If you're talking
about architecture of a computer, that's also hardware. You've got memory, you've got processors,
you've got el- ... identifiable chunks of it that have functional relations to one another.
And they're easy to ... I could sketch it out and it’d be easy to understand, because
it’s tangible. What most people, unless you're in the trade,
have no idea is that there’s architecture to software, too. See, the thing that controls
a computer’s behavior is not the hardware, it’s simply the environment that the software
runs in. It’s the software that determines what it really does. And, now it’s interesting,
you and I are the same way. We have an architecture. And we speak of terms all
the time that really relate to that architecture. Heart, soul, spirit, mind. What do these things mean? When I say “have
heart,” I've actually ... we're not ... I'm ... we're not talking here about the organ
that pumps the blood. We're using it metaphorically or idiomatically in another sense, aren’t
we? But what do we really mean? In some sense it’s like having guts,
in some sense it’s a volition. Some ... the ... the word can mean different things to
different people. The word “soul,” what is a soul? We ... we
can make some guesses. We have some sort of feeling for it, but what does it really mean?
And “spirit“? The Scripture itself, in Acts 4 says ... or Hebrews 4, the ... only the word of God can discern between the soul and the spirit. A psychologist
can’t. There’s a very interesting problem. If you
have a computer, can you map the architecture of the software in the computer, and the answer
is, no, you can’t. Because you can’t go uphill. Because you ...
design that into a language. The language is then implemented and by the time you get
down to what they call “machine language,” you can’t go uphill. Not generally, there
are some exceptions, but not generally. That's why you have a software industry. That's
why you can go to a computer store and buy some software and use it all you like, but
you can’t change its design because you can’t get at it. You don’t know how it’s
organized. That's what protects the intellectual property, down in the guts of
that, there’s some proprietary know-how that's embedded in the code. The code’s
there, you've got it, but you can’t unravel it, because you're ... someone is trying to under- ... if you were trying to understand my computer
from the way it behaves, you'd be frustrated. You can’t get at its architecture. That's the same dilemma a psychologist has.
He can only infer how you're organized, how you're organized, by the external behavior.
He doesn't get a chance to ... only God knows the thoughts and intents of the heart, the
Scripture says. You can’t get behind it. So the only way you can understand the architecture
is to get the designer’s manual, not the owner’s manual, the designer’s manual.
And, that's exactly what we have in front of us, in our laps, we have the designer’s
manual. And He has given us the architecture of our software. And the heart, soul, spirit, mind, these are
important terms, because you can’t keep the greatest commandment unless you know what
they are. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with what? All your heart, all your soul,
all your spirit, all your strength, all your mind, whatever. These things are important
to know. So I'm indebted to my wife, who spent 20 years
researching this, checking out each word in the Hebrew and the Greek for each of those
terms. And ... and tracking that down. We even went to Israel, went to the Rothschild Museum ... library and museum and so forth, to do some research
here and got a lot of help. And, she was the first, in my mind, to really perceive
the parallelism between the struc- ... the architecture of the Temple and the architecture
of man ... ourselves. The outer court is similar to the body. But
inside that is the soul. And then, the heart is in the real core and the spirit is the
Holy of Holies. They're analogous, if you will, in a number of ways. And what's the
porch? That's the ... that's where the volition is expressed. That's where there’s willpower.
That's where you make choices. Because you notice that the spirit dwells in us if we're
believers, right? How many knew that? Sure. Okay. That's what Scripture says. Okay. Why don’t we see it more evident? Why doesn't
our behavior demonstrate that the spirit is in us? You follow ... you see ... you see
the dilemma. It’s not that the spirit isn't there, it’s that we throttle it, because
we make our decisions ... we make our decisions from sight or from faith. Do we make our ... do
... see, we make our dec- ... the decisions are made on the porch. Are we letting the
spirit lead? Or are we responding to soul-ish or bodily appetites? And then there’s this interesting area called
the “Headers,” the storehouses. And the more you study this, both in terms of the
history with the priests, but also in its other aspects, it seems to be co-relative
to the subconscious. And, it’s interesting that much of our memory is obviously organized
below the conscious level. We've all experienced that. Gee, what was the name of that guy in
school back then? I don’t remember. And then 10 minutes later, it just popped in your
mind, right? Because you're ... subconsciously, you've got a process going on to find it. If you've been in college and you have a difficult
problem, you ... most of you have discovered that if you go through ... if you review the
problem before going to bed and you wake up in the morning, you often have the answer.
It’s clear there’s all kinds of evidence, this goes ... this is not Freud. Freud was
obsessed with all of that. No, no, it goes way, way back. It goes back to Augustine and
others. The ... awareness that there is a subconscious process in our
mind is ... very evident. That's also where we hide things that affect
our behavior. And they're a part of ... spiritual hygiene, if you will, is to
clean out those closets and the Holy Spirit will help you do that. But we need ... we
need to ... if you're interested in this area, there’s a trilogy of books, the core book
is “The Way of Agape.” And the second one of that series is “Be
Transformed,” which really goes into all of this, how to actually take these concepts
and insights and translate them into a personal, practical impact on your Christian walk. And
so I don’t want to spend the rest of the time, ... we've got to keep moving here, but
... but that's an area. Another thing I want to bring out, is the
Bible inerrant? You know, most of us in this group, of course, take ... accept the fact
the Bible in the original, trans- ... texts are free of error. Well, I used
to say that a lot when I was a teenager and I ran into a guy who said, “What about 1
Kings 7:23?” 1 Kings 7:23 speaks of this big, huge bronze laver or bowl or molten sea
as it’s ... molten meaning it’s cast and sea being a ... full of water.
It was 10 cubits in diameter and 5 cubits deep, 5 ... a cubit’s about a foot and a half. But the problem with that verse 23, it says
the circumference is 3 times the diameter. Now any schoolboy knows that can’t be right.
That's ... that's technically an error, not a big deal, but it’s wrong. Every schoolboy
knows that the diameter, that ... the circumference is not 3 times the diameter,
it’s pi times the diameter. Pi is a very peculiar number. Most people may not remember
it’s 3.14159265358979. But most of us in school either use 3.16 or ... 3.159 or
often 22 7ths, 3 and a 7th, as approximation, and that's what most of us did in school. But it certainly isn't 3 times. And so part
of the problem, this is not a big deal, but the accusations made by the skeptics, look,
there’s an error in the Bible. Well, I didn't know how to answer this. I just had to accept
it until I got into graduate school and whatever. And a rabbi happened to point out something
interesting to me, because I had trouble with this. Here’s the molten sea, 10 cubits from
one rim to the other and it was round all about and its height was 5 cubits. And a line
30 cubits did compass it round, a circumference. In the Hebrew, it’s misspelled. The ... Masoretes, when they found a word in the text they were copying that was apparently wrong,
they didn't correct it, they marked it. The ... and the part ... and they put in the margin
what apparently was the correct version. The mistake, apparent mistake, or the error, the
variant, I'll call it, was called a kethiv, and the correct version was called a qere. And what's interesting when you study this,
you also need to understand that Hebrew, like ... both Hebrew and Greek are distinctive
in that every letter in the alphabet has a numerical value. And that one of the applications
of that fact is that they would add up the numbers on a page and if it didn't add up
to the one they were copying, they would burn it and start over. They didn't try to correct
it. In other words, they were really very rigorous.
Their rigor of the Scribes is something to be really applauded at. And that's
why the Dead Sea Scrolls, when they were discovered, in the ... had a complete copy of the Book
of Isaiah and I think there were 4 letters different. Over hundreds of years and many
copying, because of the rigor and the ... the commitment of these ... of these scribes, it’s the commitment to perfection. Well, if you go through these letters, it
turns out that the kethiv, that is the written variation is a kapf, a vav and a heh. And the way it should
be spelled is just with a kapf and a vav. Now a kapf and a vav would be the ...
value for qere should be 106, but here they've added a “heh” at the end of a word. Now
you can’t even tell, because it’s just a breath. It’s like putting the “H”
at the end of a word, oftentimes you can’t tell it’s there from pronunciation. But the “heh” has a value of 5. And, by
the way, the heh is also the breath or spirit, too, by the way. It’s ... but that's a whole
another thing we'll get into some other time. So qere should be 106, but the way it’s
spelled, it’s 111. And when you apply that correction to the text, it says that the circumference
was 31.415 and some other things. In other words, we have a circumference of 46 feet
that is expressed with an error of less than 15,000ths of an inch. And that's a lot better
than we would had gotten if we'd use 22 7ths, as a ... an approximation. The precision is
frankly astonishing. And so, a little spelling lesson. I might mention just in passing, that there’s
another place that pi appears in the Bible text. It’s one of the ... pi is one of the
dimensionless ratios. “In the beginning, God created the Heaven and the Earth” is
Genesis 1:1. And, if you take that in the Hebrew, and you take the number of letters
times the product of the letters and divide it by the number of words and ... times
the product of the words, you get pi to 4 decimal places. And that's rather bizarre. There’s another place in John 1:1, if you
do the same thing with John 1:1, you get the value of e, the base of a Napierian logarithm,
another dimensionless constant in the universe, to 4 decimal places. But let’s move
on. So that's pi, interesting ... interesting. I don't know what to do with that. I just
throw it in there to, you know, no extra charge. Okay. Okay. So, Solomon was personally very brilliant,
but he lacked moral vigor. Very bright guy, but he lacked commitment. He was, of course,
excessively self-indulgent. There it goes again. So historically, he ... ruled at
the peak of Israel’s prosperity. The Queen of Sheba visited him, because she'd heard
rumors and couldn't believe it. When she gets there, she found out that the half wasn’t
told her. Very famous event. The affluence, the commercial success of Israel, the peace,
they enjoyed peace. There was no war. They ... they really were ... it was at their
peak. But it’s interesting how Solomon is always
later on, historically, always referred to adversely. Solomon ... in all his glory
was not arrayed as one of these lilies, and so forth. It’s always used as a ... measure,
but in an adverse sense. It’s very strange. Now, there are many parallels people try to
draw between the millennial reign and Solomon’s reign. But there’s also some strange hidden
negatives. It’s interesting that there were 6 steps to his throne. It’s interesting
that his salary was 666 talents a year. In fact, the 666 only appears twice in Scripture.
Twice it appears as Solomon’s salary and of course, it takes, fabled implication
from, the 18th verse of Revelation 13. But, so Solomon really represents the
zenith of the kingdom. They owned the Mediterranean all the way to the Euphrates. They, ... from the Red Sea, and Arabia to Lebanon, and, the tributary states were held in
subjection. The Canaanites became peaceable subjects or useful servants. They ...
were subjected. The immense treasures that were under
David were supplemented with excessive, in fact oppressive, taxation. In fact, that's
where Rehoboam makes a big mistake. When Solomon dies, he even increases the taxes worse and
that leads to ... to the rebellion. So we have the literature of success, the
foundation was in the Torah. We have the history from Moses to Samuel at this point. We have
the patriarchal teaching of Job, and we'll get to that in the next session. We have the
theology of the Psalms in the next session and the practical wisdom of ...
the Proverbs, primarily, Solomon’s. And then we have the mystical suggestions
in the Song of Songs. And so this really sets the stage for the next session we'll be getting
into. Solomon wrote 3,000 proverbs and 1,000 songs.
And, he also wrote a great deal about natural history. And we'll see a glimpse of
some of that in the writings that we do look at. But he failed, because Deuteronomy 17
says that Israel’s king should not multiply wealth, horses, or wives, and he did all 3.
He did all 3. He traded in chariots and horses, that's what Megiddo was at one time, was his
primary trading base. He indulged many foreign wives, 700 wives,
and 300 concubines. Whoo! From the very nations that ... he was warned against trafficking
at all in. Of course, obviously, many of these were just, political alliances and things,
and, concubines were like a ... was ... was like a second tier wife, kind of thing,
and she wasn’t, ... there was ... had rights and things. But anyway, but as a result of all of
this, ... it’s in his regime that false gods are introduced and false worship. This
is where the nation starts downhill because of its carnality, because of its false worship
and the rest. So Solomon’s self-life had had its full
swing. In the end, he was turning away sad and sick of it all. And he writes the Book
of Ecclesiastes, which most people do not understand. Misunderstand it. All is vanity.
Ecclesiastes is actually not a pessimistic book. They may surprise you. That's its reputation.
Well, we'll wait until next session. We'll take a look at it. But anyway, there’s apostasy starts. He
... himself falls into apostasy, his excessive taxation, of course, alienates
the affections of the people and that's why Jeroboam had a good ... opportunity to
rebel when the time came. He was led astray by his wives. He had temples built to several,
to Chemosh, Moloch and Ashtoreth, the different, these are the ... idols of Moab and
Ammon and the Sidonians; Sidonians to the north and Moab and Ammon to the ... to the
east. On the temple grounds. This is an offense,
and of course, his adversaries stirred up rebellion. And among the tribes, Ephraim, in the north,
becomes one of the ... those that are you know, disenchanted, and disaffected. So 1 Kings 11 says “Wherefore the Lord said
unto Solomon, ‘For as much as ... as done of thee and thou has not kept my covenant,
and my statutes, which I have commanded thee, I will surely rend the kingdom from thee and
will give it to thy servant.’” And that's exactly what was ... what was ... that was
predicted, that's what happened. “Notwithstanding in thy days I will not
do it for David thy father's sake: but I will rend it out of the hand of thy son.” See,
so in deference, because of David, he’s going to ... it won’t be him, it’ll be
his son that's going to bear all the grief here. “Howbeit I will not rend away all the kingdom;
but will give one tribe to thy son “for David my servant's sake, and for Jerusalem's
sake which I have chosen.” The tribe of Judah. So we have the divided kingdom. Rehoboam’s
folly, of course, is that he ... his ... ... advisors told him to raise the taxes
even more and he did, and that was a dumb move. And that was Jeroboam’s opportunity. And so he established alternative worship
centers up north for idol ... worship and that ... that was a political move, religious,
of course, but political because he wanted to break Jerusalem’s hold on the people.
And so we had 2 golden calves put up, one in Dan in the north and one in Bethlehem
in the south. And, so, it’s really bad news. And we know from 2 Chronicles, that the
... when that happened, the faithful in the north migrated to the south, to stay faithful
to ... for temple worship. Those in the south that were apostate anyway moved north where
it was politically correct. And that's recorded in Chapter 11, 2 Chronicles. So ... so the nation split in 2. The Northern
Kingdom under Jeroboam called itself the House of Israel; and the Southern Kingdom under
Rehoboam called the House of Judah. He says he just had one tribe. That's a little misleading,
because Benjamin had already been folded in and so had Simeon. So you've got Judah, Benjamin
and Simeon, and then the Levites join also. So you've got 4 of the 12 south already. So
you begin to notice right away that the 10 lost tribes thing is ... naïve
and ... not biblical. But in all of this, Elijah shows up, and, in the last chapters of 1 Kings. He had a ministry to the Northern Kingdom. The
New Testament speaks of him more than any other prophet, interesting character. He appears
twice in the New Testament. He actually appears at the Transfiguration, at Matthew 17.
He’s there. Moses and Elijah are there with Christ and ... with Peter, James and John.
But he also appears, I believe, in Revelation 11. There are 2 witnesses there and for reasons
I'll cover when we get there, I think he’s one of the 2 witnesses. And it’s interesting that Elijah did 8 major
miracles. He suspended rain for 3 and a half years. And also there’s this big confrontation
at Mount Carmel, where fire comes down and so forth. And the suspension of rain and the
fire are 2 of the 4 powers that are alluded, that, associated with the 2 witnesses.
That's one of the reasons I make that identity. And he also is raptured. He’s translated
into heaven in 2 Kings 2. Interesting guy. But you have to ... you can’t talk about
him without talking about Queen Jezebel, daughter of Ethbaal, King of the Sidonians. She was
the wife of the King Ahab of Israel. And she is ... there are allusions made to her in
the New Testament. You need to understand her history to understand what those allusions
mean. Her ... she becomes synonymous with crafty, cruel, malicious. And I won’t make
any allusions to people on the political front of that kind, but we'll go on. Naboth, there’s a strange little incident
occurs with Naboth's vineyard, but I believe it’s very, very significant, because I believe
that the the letter to Thyatira makes allusions to this. Naboth was a little guy
who had a little vineyard and it was not much, but it was his. The king wanted it and Ahab
just refused to sell, I mean Naboth just refused. Ahab wanted it and Naboth didn't
want to sell. So Queen Jezebel says, hey, let me handle
this. Okay. So she has an inquisition, finds some accusers that accuse him falsely and
has him executed. She holds an inquisition to get him killed and then ... so the king
can have that vineyard. Does that sound familiar? Does that sound like a period of history that
we all know about, called the Inquisition? 1 Kings 21, you can check it out. Well, anyway, there’s a famous confrontation
at Carmel, Mount Carmel, where Elijah confronts the ... Queen’s 450 prophets. They're
also 400 prophets of the groves. So there are actually 150 guys there. And let’s ... let’s
have a contest. You have your place, I have mine, and you set up your ... you set up your
thing and let ... you call your god to start your fire. Okay. They just ... they
go for that. They decide to do that. And I'll do the same. We'll see ... let’s
see who wins this one. And they go through their whole routine, all
morning, right up until noon and as they keep cutting themselves and doing all their ceremonial
things, nothing happens, of course. And it’s really a funny thing to read there, because, Elijah is making fun of them. Maybe your god is hard of hearing. Gee, maybe
he’s relieving himself, you know. So and ... and that's actually what he’s saying.
It’s a fiddled a bit in the King James translation. When they're all through, Elijah takes some
stones and sets up an altar, so it’s no ... no ... no man ... no tool, you know,
it’s ... they're raw stones. Puts a trench about it. Has ... puts all the wood there.
But then, you golfers will understand this, he wants a handicap. So he douses his with
water, 3 times, and calls God and the fire comes down, starts it, and obviously proving
that God is God. But Elijah seizes the opportunity and slaughters,
goes after and slaughters the priests ... the priests of Baal, Jez- ... Jezebel’s own.
That doesn't please Queen Jezebel at all. There’s some ... so we have ... he challenged
Baal to match the altars in sacrifice. He mocked them openly and doused his 3 times
and then slaughtered the 450 prophets of Baal. And, Elijah came to all the people and
said, how long will you hop between two opinions? If the Lord be God, follow Him.
And if Baal, then follow him. And the people answered him not a word. And he went through,
of course, and made his point. Well, that brings us to really 2 Kings and
this interesting guy called Elisha. Elisha has a quality in Hebrew called “chutzpah.”
He not only wanted to be the successor to Elijah, he wanted twice as much of the spirit.
So, that's chutzpah. But the second book of Kings is actually the most tragic national
record ever written. The first 10 chapters are the annals of the Northern Kingdom, which
goes from bad to worse, the mystery of Elijah ... Elisha is there. It goes all the way to
death of Jehu, Israel’s 10th king. And the ... the book actually alternates the
annals between the northern and Southern Kingdoms. You have to watch and be careful to the ...
Chapters 11 to 17. Jonah, Amos and Hosea, prophesy in these days. We'll talk about them
when we get there. And, there’s a ... this ... it ... it goes all the way to the ... to
the wipeout. I call it the Syrian captivity, but the nation is gone from that point on
there. The annals of Judah, the Southern Kingdom go from Chapters 18 to 25. And that's when Obadiah, Joel, Isaiah, Micah,
Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah and Jeremiah prophesy. So we've got a lot of ... quite a few prophets
there. There’s 8 of them that prophesy, essentially to the Southern Kingdom. And it
ends, of course, with the Babylonian captivity, which is ... the Southern Kingdom has only
70 years of captivity. They come back. The Assyrians, the ... the Northern Kingdom
does not, as ... as that entity, at least. And, now Elisha does receive Elijah’s
mantle. He wanted to, he ... he tried ... followed him around. Elijah tried to shake
him, he’s always there. He says if my mantle falls on you, you have it, and he ... and
when he gets translated, the mantle falls on Elisha. And he desires a double portion
and it’s interesting when you study the career of Elisha. Elijah did 8 miracles, Elisha
has 16, of course, so he got his double portion. But some ... interesting. Elijah is very
similar to John the Baptist. There’s a ... a similar parallel between them. Elisha is a
little softer. He ... he does a lot of healing acts, he has gentler words. He brings ... he
brings life out of death. So there’s a ... some people make a com- ... you know, contrast
there. But I want to give you one glimpse, because
it’s meaningful to all of us, of unseen warfare, in 2 Kings 6. The King of Syria is
warring against the King of Israel and took counsel with his servants, saying in such
and such a place shall be my camp. And the man of God, meaning Elisha, sent unto
the King of Israel saying “Beware that thou pass not such a place; for thither the Syrians
are come down.” In other words, Elisha uses a prophetic gift to the advantage of
the King of Israel. Every time the King of Syria does this, the King of Israel sent to
the place which the man of God told him and warned him of, and saved himself there not
once or twice. In other words, this happens a number of occasions. So much so, that we get to Verse 11. “Therefore
the heart of the king of Syria was sore troubled for this thing; and he called his servants,
and said unto them, Will ye not shew me which of us is for the king of Israel?” In other
words, the King of Syria thinks he’s got a mole on his staff. Somehow, the King of
Israel is always tipped off whenever he sets a trap, they ... they elude it. And he ... he
thinks it’s ... there’s a leak, there’s a security problem here. “And one of his servants said, None, my
lord, O king: but Elisha, the prophet that is in Israel, telleth the king of Israel the
words that thou speakest in thy bedchamber.” This is the first recorded occasion of a phone
tap. (Laughter) Okay. So the King, obviously the King says,
“Go and spy where he is, that I may send and fetch him. And it was told him, saying,
Behold, he is in Dothan.” Dothan’s quite an interesting place. That's where ...
Joseph was sold and so forth. And but anyway, so it’s a little village there. And
so the King of Syria goes and he ... he ... therefore he ... sent he thither horses and chariots
and a great host, and they came by night and compassed the city round about. So get the picture. In this little village,
Elisha and a servant are living. And suddenly the entire Syrian army is surrounding this
place, one morning they wake up. “And when the servant of the man of God was risen early,
and gone forth, behold, an host compassed the city both with horses and chariots. And
his servant said unto him” ... unto to Elisha, “Alas, my master! how shall we do?” He’s in panic. Looks out there and, you know,
he can hear them revving their engines. I mean, it’s close. He answered, Elisha
says, he answered, “Fear not: for they that be with us are more than they that be with
them.” And I sort of presume that the servant sort of yeah, yeah, yeah, but they're ... they're
... they're there. I mean, he’s, you know, that sounds like a textbook answer, doesn't
it? Well, Elisha prayed and said, “Lord, I pray
thee, open his eyes, that he may see.” I almost imagine him being frustrated, just, okay, Father, show them ... show them the ... let them know, let ... let them in
on it, so to speak. Elisha prayed, and said, “Lord, I pray thee, open his eyes, that
he may see. And the Lord opened the eyes of the young man; and he saw: and, behold, the
mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha.” This is one of those little glimpses into
another dimension. This is a little glimpse that there is power around us we don’t see.
There is warfare around us we don’t see. We need to understand that. Those of you that use a word processor.
How many of you use a word processor on a computer? You know that when you're writing
a letter or something, there’s all kinds of things happening you don’t want to be
bothered with, you know, where the margins are, how ... where the tab is set, what
font it is, whether it’s underlined, bold. Normally, you don’t care, you just want
to get the letter written. But there are times when you want to deal
with the formatting a little bit. And so there’s usually a key, it’s a reveal codes key.
If you hit that key, all these things going on behind show up in different colors, the
margins and the tabs and the instructions as to what font, you know, all those little
codes are in there. And sometimes you want to be able to diddle those. See, that's our problem in life, what we need
in life sometimes is a reveal codes key. That's what Elisha did. He put the button ... pushed
the button, so to speak, and the servant saw what he normally doesn't see,
that ... that they're protected by spiritual forces. And Daniel 10, of course, deals
a great deal with that. We'll get there later in this review. But, so what are we up against? Paul tells
us in Ephesians 6, he says, “Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to
... be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.” He says that twice, by the way,
in this passage. But he says, “For we wrestle not against
flesh and blood.” Oh, that's interesting. “We wrestle not against flesh and blood,
but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this
world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” And he’s not talking about politics
or ... or governmental things here, he’s talking about ... these ... in the Greek,
these are ranks of angels. What we wrestle against are spiritual be-
... beings that are adverse to us that are incredibly powerful. The host will say, “We
wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the
rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” And
you need to go into Ephesians 6 and understand what the armor is and so forth. But they're ... anyway, getting back to our
history here, the ... the Northern Kingdom had 19 kings, reigned 250 years, 7 different
dynasties. They finally go into the Assyrian captivity in 721, never to return. The Southern
Kingdom, Judah, had 20 kings, reigned about 370 years. In other words, they got an extra
century. They didn't learn enough in that extra century. You'd think they would have
learned from the ... the plight of the Northern Kingdom, but they didn't. And, they had
... but they only had one dynasty. The Northern Kingdom had 7 different dynasties. The Southern Kingdom had one dynasty, the
dynasty of David. Bad or worse, they were all Davidic. But they ultimately get put in
the Babylonian captivity, but only for 70 years because of God’s commitment to David.
They do ... that was there, for some reasons we'll come to. But, and if you ... if you go through
all these kings and so forth, you'll discover that, they're ... the Northern Kingdom goes from bad to worse and finally gets wiped out.
And for 250 years, up to 721, and the ... the Southern Kingdom lasts an extra century,
roughly, and goes into captivity. Comes back from the captivity, and we'll ... we see that
when we get to Ezra and Nehemiah, and so forth. And we could talk about some ... there were
some good kings. No good kings in the Northern Kingdom. There were a handful of pretty, not
so bad ones in the ... in the Southern Kingdom. And Hezekiah, Josiah, being the most
notable. But, Dav- ... David is the standard of
measure. And God’s faithfulness in preservation, all the way through. Death of Azaziah,
Joash is preserved from the usurper's sword by Jehosheba. Again and again, there are plots
to wipe out the line, and again and again and again, there’s one that's saved. Joash
was saved. And the childless Hezekiah under the Assyrians is saved, and the blood curse
upon Jeconiah was bypassed. And all these things are things we'll talk about later. But the object lessons were ignored.
You know, it’s interesting, Hegel is famous for saying “The history of man teaches us
that man learns nothing from history.” And that's tragically true. With the exception
of Hezekiah and Josiah, the downgrade in Judah just continued. Hezekiah was the greatest
since David and Solomon. Manasseh, just the ... was among the wickedest and longest reigning.
It was during his reign that the Ark of Covenant is slipped out of the country to protect it,
down to ... under Pharaoh Necho in Egypt and that starts a whole other line ... story. But, so the captivity of Judah and the destruction
of Jerusalem are emphatically ascribed to the sovereign hand of Jehovah or Yahweh or
however you want to say the name of God. And, the price of compromise. You know, Ruben
and Gad, half tribe of Manasseh had settled east of the Jordan, you remember that in the Torah?
And, they were the first to go into captivity in 1 Chronicles 5. 13 years later, the other tribes of the Northern
Kingdom are also deported to Assyria. The Assyrians appear to have been the most inventive
of torture cruelties. And I won’t go through all that, but they really invented torture.
And, so the ... they also had a policy of replanting their captives in other areas,
so they would lose their national identity. The captives may not have been killed, but
their identity was, because they would crisscross their captives where they ... throughout their
entire ... not just the region, throughout their entire empire. So there’s no return
for ... from exile for the entity called North- ... Northern Kingdom. So the 10 lost tribes is a non-biblical myth
that many people are involved with. The Levites emigrate to the south, according to 2 Chronicles
11. The faithful from all 12 migrate to the south, the Scripture tells us. Idol worships,
we can infer, migrated to the north, and of ... and ... and where it was politically correct. In any case, they were all freed by the Persians
in 536 B.C., in any case. All 12 tribes are evident in post-Exile records. That's something
that most people don’t realize. And, Ezra, Nehemiah deal with all of this. In the
New Testament, too, we find James and Peter deal with all 12 tribes. So the Chronicles really parallels what we've
just said with an emphasis on Judah. And, the first book of Chronicles talks about
the house ... house of Jehovah. And it has Israel’s main genealogies, Adam to Jacob,
Jacob to David, David to Zedekiah, and the tribal allotments. And it’s interesting,
the Tribe of Dan is missing, strangely ... it’s there, but not really. It’s a very strange
passage. There’s a whole story about that, but we'll take that at another time. Of course, then, the ... the last part of
it is that David’s reign of Jerusalem, where he’s anointed the Ark of the Lord, where
he brings it, but incorrectly, and he'll get ... learns that lesson. The Covenant of the
Lord, the Temple of the Lord, these are all issues in Chronicles. The 2 Chronicles is
Solomon’s 40 years’ reign, a recap of all of that. It’s early established Temple,
all his glory. And then the last part, the last, two-thirds of it, is the division of the kingdom, the 20 kings of Judah and the deportation
to Babylon, setting the stage for Ezra and Nehemiah. Now, next time, next session, we'll take the
poetical books, Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, a whole different kind of survey for our next session. Let’s bow our hearts. Father, we ... we're
awed at how much You love us. We thank You, Father, for giving us this heritage, giving
us the benefit of the comfort and the encouragement and the admonitions of these great men that
went before us. We thank You for the candor of seeing their failures as well as their
successes. And Father, we would pray that through Your
Holy Spirit, You would help us be exceptions and learn the ... from these lessons. We pray,
Father, that these lessons not be wasted on us, that we would understand what contributed
to those failures, understand why some of these great men stumbled and fell from what
they might have been. We recognize, Father, what so ever things
were written aforetime were written for our learning, so that we, through the patience
and comfort of the Scriptures, might have hope. So Father, we just thank You for Your word.
We do pray, Father, that You would just continue to kindle a new fire in each of us for Your
word. That we each might just partake of these treasures that You've vouchsafed into our
care. Above all these things, Father, we pray that
You would help us grow in our understanding of our Messiah, our Lord and Savior. We also
pray, Father, that You'd help each of us, through through Your spirit and through Your word, be ever
more fruitful stewards of the opportunities that You put in our path. As we without any
reservation commit ourselves into Your hands. In the name of Yeshua, our Lord and Savior,
Jesus Christ, Son of David. Amen.
