The Book of the Kings in the Bible was covered by 4 Books: (1) 1
Samuel, from Samuel to King Saul, (2)2 Samuel, the reign of King David, (3) 1
Kings, from King Solomon to King Ahab, and (4) 2 Kings, from King Ahab to King
Zedekiah.
Here, we see that the Kingdom of Israel went through 3 stages: (1)
The United Kingdom of Israel (40 years of Saul’s reign, 40 years of David’s
reign, and 40 years of Solomon’s reign); (2) The Divided Kingdom (10 Tribes in
the Northern Kingdom Israel, whose Capital is Samaria and 2 Tribes in the
Southern Kingdom Judah, whose capital is Jerusalem, and lasted on Israel’s
exiled by Assyria back in 721 BC); and (3) The Single Kingdom Judah which
covered 140 years until Judah was exiled to Babylon back in 587 BC.
The 1 & 2 Kings covered a total of 400 years.
The Books of the Kings was said to be written by Prophet Jeremiah
which main purpose was to provide answers on why God allowed Jerusalem to fell,
the Temple to be destroyed, and the nation to be exiled, and effectively be
slaves again in the foreign land.
The message of the Kings is this: we generally get the government
that we deserve. A wicked people will be oppressed by a wicked government. If
we reject God, He will reject us. If we obey God, He will bless us. If we
repent, He will restore us.
Here, we see also, that the spirituality and faith of a nation
depends on the spirituality and faith of its leaders. The lack of the godly
kings in Israel and Judah results to its spiritual decline as a nation. Same
way, the lack of a genuinely righteous and faithful Church leaders today,
results to the spiritual decline of the whole Church.
Throughout the spiritual decline of Israel and Judah, the priests
should have been reminding the people of the Law of God and calling them to
repentance. However, their silence and ineffectiveness led to God raising up
prophets to call the people to repentance. The main prophets to the South
during the times of the kings were Obadiah, Joel, Isaiah, Micah, Nahum,
Jeremiah, Zephaniah, and Habakkuk and during the time of the exile to Babylon:
Daniel and Ezekiel. While, the main prophets to the Northern kingdom of Israel
were Elijah, Elisha, Jonah, Amos and Hosea. What we learned here is if a person
or Church leader ordained by God will not be responsible enough to shepherd
God’s people, God will cut him out and raised up another man in his place.
Kings makes it clear that God always gives His people warnings
before bringing punishment upon them for what they know is wrong. Yet,
generally Israel and Judah ignored the warnings of God’s messengers and
preferred the soothing reassurances of the false prophets. The prophets God
sent were frequently ridiculed, beaten, punished and often martyred.
Here, we see also that God’s warnings came in stages. First they
were verbal, through the prophets. Then they were visual and, finally, violent.
The Book of the Kings concludes with God’s nation losing its territory, and
then lost their independence. The ten Northern tribes were deported to Assyria
and finally the kingdom of Judah in the South was deported to Babylon. What the
Church can learned here is that no one is judged by God without receiving first
multiple warnings.
The Book of 1st
Kings
The Book of 1st
Kings started with a united and powerful Kingdom of Israel under the ruler ship
of the godly King David, the man after God’s own heart. It ends with a divided
Kingdom under the ruler ship of evil kings. Ahab was the last king in this book.
In the first two chapters of 1st Kings, we witnessed
the last days of King David until his death. Here, we saw a man who is a
faithful servant of God but failed as a father. Throughout David’s life, we
witnessed that never, even once, that he chastised and disciplined his sons. We
witnessed that on the rebellion of Absalom (wherein David fled instead of
rebuking and correcting his son), then later on Adonijah. Also, on his last
words to Solomon, he failed to teach his son the ways to avoid the things to
which he himself failed. He failed to warn Solomon about women and about
acquiring many riches in life. Although we can give David the credits of being
a good father when it comes to providing his children resources and money (because
he, himself is the one who provided Solomon with everything that he needed to
build the temple of the Lord), David, on his last moments, did not teach
Solomon how to be a godly man, but what he taught him is how to seek revenge.
In this story we see two things: (1) How to be a responsible man
and (2) How to genuinely forgive a person.
How to be a responsible man? Remember, Adam sinned against God not
because of rebellion but because of being irresponsible. If we cannot be a good
steward on our responsibilities here on earth, we cannot also be a good steward
in God’s Kingdom.
Here we see that David is a good man when it comes of being a king
and faithful to the Lord in terms of humility and accepting and repenting from
his sins. All the days of his life, he is vocal and bold enough on serving God.
He is active in the ministry, but he forgot to bring his house in God’s
presence. Remember his first wife Michal, the daughter of Saul, who blasphemed
David’s worship to the Lord? Also, we cannot forget Amnon, his eldest son, who
raped his daughter Tamar. Here, David never brings to justice the violation
incident of Tamar because of the sole reason that Amnon is his eldest son and
heir to the throne. This is the root cause of Absalom’s first rebellion. Absalom
is the second son of David and next in line after Amnon. He was also the
brother of Tamar. He seek for his sister’s justice and killed his brother and
defiled his father’s bed by having sexual relation with David’s concubines in
the open. During that time, instead of punishing his son, David runs away. Now,
after Absalom’s death by Joab, Adonijah, being the third son was so sure that
he will be the next king.
What we can learn in David’s life is this, a good servant of God
is not only good in the ministry, but also, first and foremost, he is a good
shepherd of his own family. As a father, David should always be eager to
discipline his children. God also made
it clear that a good and responsible father do not only shows love to his
children based on material things or the amount of money that he gave them but
he shows love to them through discipline because God disciplines us for our
good, in order that we may share in his holiness (Hebrews 12:10). Also, a good
and respectable Father is certainly not afraid of his children!
Failure to be a good father and a responsible man, resulted to
years of falling away from the Lord of the children of Israel.
The second thing is how to genuinely forgive a person? Here we see
that David swear that he will never take revenge on those people who hurt him
by killing them and true enough, he never killed them. However, he never say
that he will not ordered his son to do so. Here we see how David took his
revenge in the legal way, without breaking his word. What we see here is a
tragic story of a man who failed to forgive a person and died with a bitterness
in his heart.
Our most challenging part as a human being is how to forgive as
humanly thing as possible. That is the nature of sin. Sometimes we thought that
because we avoid a person we already forgave them. However, we see here that on
David’s weakest moment when he was dying, this is the time when he admittedly
speak what is really inside his heart – that he is harboring hatred and his
entire last wish was to seek revenge. However, we know that vengeance is on the
Lord. What God really wants us to learn is to love people. If we learn how to
love them the same way as we love ourselves, instead of hating them, what we
will do is to understand them and teach them the right way instead. But we can
never do that if we do not learn what true love is, and true love can only be
learn in God. Remember, God shows His great love for us that while we are still
sinners Christ died for us (Romans 5:8). How to love a person then? Love God
first and God will give us the power to overcome one of our greatest weaknesses
in the flesh – to forgive.
Forgiveness is not about feelings. It is a demonstration of God’s
love. God cannot shows us His love because of our sin. God cannot even reveals
Himself to a sinner because our sin clouds away our eyes of understanding and
hides us away from the presence of God. So, God made a big step to reach us
out. He came down from heaven to earth, in a form of a sinner man to die for
our sins and overcome death, that His resurrection will open a door for us,
that if we acknowledge Him, He will forgive us and cleanse us from our
unrighteousness, so that we can finally be with Him.
Forgiveness for us must also be the same way. Instead of seeking
revenge, we must give them kindness and show them the way to the Father
instead. That is the greatest kind of love – to give life (John 15:13) and
without holiness in us, no one can ever see God (Hebrews 12:14).
Failure to forgive conceive to sin, which is murder.
In 1st Kings, half of the book highlighted the reign of
King Solomon (Chapter 1-12). King Solomon is the next king to succeed David and
he was notable for his wisdom and riches.
Most people referred Solomon as faithful during the first years of
his reign. However, if we look closer in his life, we will notice that he is a
compromiser. In fact, the only thing that Solomon did faithfully for the Lord
is building the temple of God (which half effort belongs to his father David),
and fulfilling the last will of his father (to seek revenge). Other than that,
he compromised. In fact, the first thing that Solomon did as a king is to argue
with his mother and issued an order to kill his brother Adonijah.
In twenty years of his reign that is being spent on building, only
seven years was spent for God’s temple, and the rest of 13 years was spent on
building his house which is far greater and more spectacular than the temple of
God. Also, during those times, he married the princess of Egypt.
Most of the later years of his life, he spent on marrying foreign
women which turned him away from the faith. What is Solomon’s sin? His sin is
his clear violation of the specific instructions of God that kings were not to
accumulate for themselves, excessive wealth or multiple wives (especially,
foreign and pagan wives). Meaning, his failure to crucify the desires of his
flesh. After he departed from the Lord, God punished Israel in the time of
Solomon’s son Rehoboam and the Kingdom of Israel was divided into two.
Also, all throughout the book of 1st Kings, it is
noticeable the instability of rulership of both kingdoms, especially in Israel,
because of the iniquity of Kings that are seated on the throne, which caused
people to sin.
1st Kings is concluded on the death of King Ahab of
Israel, whose wife is Jezebel.
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