Making Sense of Kings

Prayer: Father in heaven, You have told us:

“Joyful are people of integrity,

    who follow Your instructions.

Joyful are those who obey Your laws

    and search for You with all their hearts.

People who do not compromise with evil,

    and walk only in Your paths.”

May we hear Your Word today and believe. AMEN

Today is Palm Sunday, the day when Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey and people shouted “Hosanna! Blessings on the one who comes in the name of Yahweh the LORD! Hail to the King of Israel!”

They were waving palm branches. They put their coats on the ground to make a sort of red carpet. This was the moment. Jesus was riding into the City of David, Jerusalem, Zion—to establish His kingdom of power and glory. This was the moment they had been waiting for for a thousand years. Ever since King David died.

Today we’re looking at the Books of 1st and 2nd Kings. Originally, it was just one book of kings. The story picks up right where Samuel left off.

David had conquered all of Israel’s enemies and united the kingdom. God had promised David that his descendants would remain on the throne until the day the Great Messianic King, the Messiah, who would also be one of his descendants, would establish an eternal kingdom and fulfill the promises made to Abraham. The Messiah, the Christ, would be the future King of kings and Lord of lords who would bless all the peoples of the whole earth.

David’s reign had started really strong but he had a tragic moral failure that destroyed his family and rippled through the lives of everyone around him and weakened the nation he had worked so hard to unite.

As we start the book of Kings, David is an old man shivering in his bed, waiting to die.

His son, Adonijah, decides it’s time to take the throne for himself, even though it was a known fact that David had promised the throne to his other son Solomon. Typical story of family drama and brotherly love. Grasping for power. Everyone schemes and makes plans—eventually Solomon ends up on the throne and Adonijah ends up dead. 

As we read about David blessing Solomon, encouraging him to remain faithful to God, it almost seems hopeful and sweet—except for the parts where David makes him promise to murder all of his enemies.

David dies, Solomon becomes king, and at first, it seems like things are going to be really great. Solomon asks God for wisdom and God is so pleased with the request— instead of power and glory and long life—that He promises he will be the wisest person who will ever live. It seems like things are finally going to go great for Israel.

Solomon builds a Temple for Yahweh, it will be the place where the presence of God will dwell in a special way on the earth. It’s where the Ark of the Covenant will be—people from every nation on the earth are invited to come and pray and worship God. We have a long section that describes the building of the Temple and how beautiful it was—all the imagery has echoes of the Garden of Eden — a time when God dwelt with mankind in a peaceful paradise. We’re also told about deals Solomon makes with other kings, trading to get all the materials they needed to build it. 

When it’s all finished, they have a big worship service to dedicate the Temple. God’s presence fills it with His glory. Solomon prays this amazing prayer, promising to be faithful to God—he even has you and me in mind.

Listen to this little excerpt from chapter 8:

“In the future, foreigners who do not belong to your people Israel will hear of you. They will come from distant lands because of your name, for they will hear of your great name and your strong hand and your powerful arm. And when they pray toward this Temple, then hear from heaven where you live, and grant what they ask of you. In this way, all the people of the earth will come to know and fear you, just as your own people Israel do. They, too, will know that this Temple I have built honors your name.” 1 Kings 8:41–43

And they worshiped their hearts out. They sang, they prayed, they sacrificed. Then God appeared to Solomon in chapter 9:

“The LORD said to him, 

  “I have heard your prayer and your petition. I have set this Temple apart to be holy—this place you have built where my name will be honored forever. I will always watch over it, for it is dear to my heart. 

  “As for you, if you will follow me with integrity and godliness, as David your father did, obeying all my commands, decrees, and regulations, then I will establish the throne of your dynasty over Israel forever. For I made this promise to your father, David: ‘One of your descendants will always sit on the throne of Israel.’ 

  “But if you or your descendants abandon me and disobey the commands and decrees I have given you, and if you serve and worship other gods, then I will uproot Israel from this land that I have given them. I will reject this Temple that I have made holy to honor my name. I will make Israel an object of mockery and ridicule among the nations. And though this Temple is impressive now, all who pass by will be appalled and will gasp in horror. They will ask, ‘Why did the LORD do such terrible things to this land and to this Temple?’ 

  “And the answer will be, ‘Because his people abandoned the LORD their God, who brought their ancestors out of Egypt, and they worshiped other gods instead and bowed down to them. That is why the LORD has brought all these disasters on them.’ ” 1 Kings 9:3–9

Now, if you had to guess what happens in the rest of the book of Kings, what do you think? How do suppose the rest of the story goes?

Solomon got busy using that giant brain of his to make the most powerful nation on earth. The first thing he did was marry the Pharaoh’s daughter to make Egypt an ally. Even though God had specifically forbidden Israel to ever make deals with Egypt. He wasn’t supposed to take foreign wives either, but he married hundreds of women and made hundreds of political partnerships. If you read Deuteronomy 17, which is a list of things that kings were forbidden to do, Solomon did them all. He acted like it was his personal bucket list. Even instituted slavery to get his building projects done. He also ripped off those kings he had made deals with to get building supplies for the Temple.

He made a bunch more temples for all the false gods of his pagan wives, too. His kingdom looked more like Egypt than the Israel Moses had described, Solomon was more like Pharaoh than King David. Everything that happened next, it’s not like God didn’t warn him.

And we’re so tempted to be like, “Dude, Solomon! What were you thinking? I thought you were supposed to be wise? That was so stupid! How could you turn your back on the LORD like that?”

Because we’d never do anything like that, right? Ever since Jesus saved us and made us right with God, we’ve been careful to walk in humble faithfulness, thankful for the cross and His mercy that covers all our sin. Right? We open our eyes in the morning with God’s name on our lips, can’t wait to get out of bed so we can thank Him for this new life He’s given us. We grab our Bible and devour the daily reading—our daily bread, food for our soul. We pray for our family and our friends and our church. Can’t wait for Sunday, when we come together in Jesus’ name to worship. We don’t let anything stand in the way of that! Nothing is more important to us than worshiping God.

Solomon built that amazing Temple but it says he barely bothered to go to worship more than a few times a year. Sounds like most lame Christians in America if you ask me.

Is it any surprise when all the false gods that we actually do worship every day take over our hearts? The false gods of power and greed and sex and fear. Politics and news and sports and entertainment. Pride and laziness and selfish comforts. Anger and lust and envy. We have plenty of time for all those things—too often, we make worshiping God an afterthought.

Listen. The thing that brings the judgment of God over and over throughout the Scriptures is neglecting worship—worshiping false idols instead. The breaking of the first commandment. And if that isn’t making everything in the world a reason to skip church, making other things more of a priority than gathering as the church to worship—then what do you think it is?

David sinned horribly, and it had massive consequences in his life, but he was still called a man after God’s own heart. He is still considered the greatest king. Do you understand why? It’s because even in his sin he didn’t turn his heart to false gods. He didn’t neglect worship. He wrote half the Psalms, he made praising God his biggest priority. He wrote songs and prayers and hired musicians and choirs. The Temple hadn’t even been built yet, but the true glory days of worship were during the reign of King David.

We need to consider what the unfaithfulness of the church in our day has brought on us. Remember what God said to Solomon—let me apply it to the church: “If you or your descendants abandon me and disobey the commands I have given you, and if you serve and worship other gods—I will make the church an object of mockery and ridicule… everyone will be appalled and will gasp in horror.” We shouldn’t be surprised that the church is so looked down on in our culture. Why should anyone else take our faith seriously if we’re not going to?

This has been my frustration with American Christianity since I was a teen. It’s the reason I’m a pastor but I usually just feel like I’m beating my head against a stone wall. The gospel of Jesus Christ is about a lot more than getting saved and going to heaven—it’s supposed to saturate every aspect of our lives. And that starts with taking worship seriously.

So this is the main message of the Book of Kings. It’s the reason everything goes bad for Israel. It’s not really because the people commit sins—it’s because they neglect God and worship false things.

Solomon is the beginning of the end. When he dies, His son, Rehoboam takes the throne, and in his first speech as King says, “My father beat you with whips but I will beat you with scorpions!” A real charmer that one. 

He starts a civil war. The Northern Kingdom, who is called Israel or Ephraim or Samaria in different parts of the Bible—they split from the Southern Kingdom, which is called Judah or Jerusalem. Since the Temple is in the Southern Kingdom, the Northern Kingdom of Israel builds their own places of worship, two of them. Unbelievably, in both, they not only create graven images to worship but—and you’ll never be able to make sense of this no matter how hard you try—they make two giant golden calves. It’s like they definitely read the Book of Exodus but seemed to miss the point.

The rest of the Book of Kings is the pathetic record of about 20 Northern Kings and 20 Southern Kings. Almost all of them do their worst to drive the Kingdom straight into the ground. God had pretty simple criteria for whether they were a good king or a bad king. Did they lead the people to worship God alone or did they encourage demonic idolatry? There were no good kings in the Northern Kingdom of Israel—none. And in the Southern Kingdom, where a descendant of David always sat on the throne, it wasn’t much better—only eight out of twenty.

God sent some pretty awesome prophets to the Northern Kingdom, though. Two of the coolest characters in the whole Bible did their best to fight against the wickedness of the notorious King Ahab and his infamous, bloodthirsty, Canaanite wife, Jezebel. Elijah the Prophet was a wild-man who called down fire from heaven against the prophets of Baal, and when God took him to heaven—in a chariot of fire, Elijah didn’t die, he just rode up to heaven. His replacement was a young prophet named Elisha. I’m particularly fond of Elisha, not only because he did twice as many miracles as his mentor, but also because he was bald. Wasn’t a great idea to tease him about it though, see 2nd Kings 2:23 —Elisha is my man.

Prophets or no prophets, the Northern Kingdom refused to worship God, and in 722 B.C. the Assyrians destroyed them once and for all. They became the 10 Lost Tribes of Israel.

The Southern Kingdom chugged on for about another hundred years. During those years they actually had a couple of the best kings, men who loved God and led a lot of reform during their reigns. Hezekiah stood up against the Assyrians by faith and God saved the day. Josiah found a lost scroll of the Books of Moses and started a bonafide religious revival. But it was also during this time that the worst king of them all, a monster named King Manasseh, brought demonic worship into the Temple and even started making child sacrifices. 

The Book of Kings had started with Solomon building the Temple and making a bunch of promises to be faithful. But it ends about 400 years later with the complete destruction of Jerusalem, the Temple, and the people of God being taken as slaves into exile in Babylon. It’s a horrific story, the last king has to watch the Babylonians murder his family before they gouge his eyes out—so that would be the last thing he saw.

It seems hopeless. The end of the dream. The people who were saved from Egypt, given the Promised Land, promised that a descendant of David would always sit on the throne of Israel—if the people were faithful, if Israel kept the covenant. But they didn’t. And now it seems like it’s all over.

In the last chapter, there’s one little glimmer of hope. The King of Babylon invites Jehoiachin, a descendant of David who would have been king, to eat at his royal table for the rest of his life. We’re left thinking maybe this isn’t the end after all.

The next two books in the Bible are 1st and 2nd Chronicles. They tell pretty much the same story as Samuel and Kings but from a very different perspective. It only tells the story of the Southern Kingdom of Judah—the line of David. The last paragraph talks about the return of Israel from exile after 70 years of captivity. Where the Book of Kings is a warning about what happens if we fail to worship God alone—the Book of Chronicles paints a picture of hope for a future Messianic King who will come to reign and live with His people. Prophets like Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel help flesh out the details.

The promise of the Messiah, and the promise of a new Temple.

Which brings us back to today. Palm Sunday. A descendant of King David riding into Jerusalem on a donkey—the symbol of a king to them. People shouted “Hosanna! Blessings on the one who comes in the name of Yahweh the LORD! Hail to the King of Israel!”

This is Jesus, the miracle-working rabbi who claimed to not only be the Messiah but the Son of God, Yahweh Himself. The first thing He’s going to do when he gets inside the gates of Jerusalem is go into the Temple and drive out the moneychangers and people turning it into a den of thieves. This is the same guy who said if the Temple was torn down He would rebuild it in three days. He wasn’t talking about the building. 

This man, riding on a donkey, isn’t just the Messiah—the prophet, priest and king who was promised to Adam and Eve, to Abraham, to Moses, to David and to Solomon. He’s also the promised Temple. He is the location of the special presence of God on the earth.

He’s also the entire nation of Israel reduced to one man. They had never been able to keep the covenant, they had never been able to be faithful. He was doing it for them.

Pretend like you don’t know where this story is going for a minute. He’s not only the promised Messiah, the King, and the Temple. He’s also going to be priest and sacrifice to once and for all time save His people. He’s going to willingly sacrifice His life to rescue Israel from all those thousands of years of unfaithfulness. And not only Israel, but everyone who believes and calls on His name. Which brings this whole thing to us.

Maybe you felt the heat earlier when I was talking about going to church and making the worship of God a priority. Maybe you feel like you’ve turned your back on the Lord just like Solomon and all those rotten, unfaithful kings. Maybe you have. Actually, I know you have. And so have I.

That’s why Jesus rode into Jerusalem and did what He did. Because we couldn’t. That’s why we’re still saying the same thing today that crowd said 2,000 years ago: ‘Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest heaven!'” Lord Save us. A prophet named Zechariah said this to the people of God after they had been saved from the exile in Babylon, he was talking about something that was going to happen 400 years later on the day we call Palm Sunday:

“See your king comes to you, righteous and victorious, lowly and riding on a donkey.” Zechariah 9:9 AMEN