Not everyone gets this, but let me have a run at it anyway: God does not care for centralized authority. That is not to say he hasn’t allowed it. And I realize that, in one sense, everything that happens is allowed by God or it wouldn’t have happened. But there is another sense in which God seems to say, Okay, what you are asking for is not the best thing for you, but I will let you do it and work with you in it. But, you are going to have considerably more pain if you go this way. A case in point is the occasion when Israel asked for a king. God didn’t like it, but he allowed it. He then proceeded to tell them what was wrong with the idea. Nevertheless, they insisted, and God didn’t reject them out of hand because of it.

But there is one thing that comes through to me in that story. (This was discussed back in the series before this, on the Book of Samuel.) It is that God endorses and supports maximum freedom for a people, and that he recognizes that power corrupts. Consequently, when Israel came into the land, there was no king, and no central, civil government. The centrality of faith supplied the only organizing principle. There was one priesthood, one Tabernacle, one place of worship, but civil governance was entirely in the hands of the tribal elders. They had a lot of trouble—mainly because they didn’t stay close to God—but it was the freest they would ever, could ever be.

Everything changed after they demanded a king, and we are going to learn a thing or two about the dangers and abuses of power and why God preferred a decentralized governance for Israel. In 1 Kings 21, a man comes to the throne who is (according to the writer) the worst of all the kings of Israel—the worst of a bad lot, the bottom of the barrel.

And it came to pass after these things, that Naboth the Jezreelite had a vineyard, which was in Jezreel, near by the palace of Ahab king of Samaria. And Ahab spoke unto Naboth, saying, Give me your vineyard, that I may have it for a garden of herbs, because it is near unto my house: and I will give you for it a better vineyard than it; or, if it seems good to you, I will give you the worth of it in money. And Naboth said to Ahab, The Lord forbid that I should give the inheritance of my fathers unto you. And Ahab came into his house sullen and displeased because of the word which Naboth the Jezreelite had spoken to him: for he had said, I will not give you the inheritance of my fathers. And he laid himself down upon his bed, and turned away his face, and would eat no bread.

In my time, I have followed a lot of election campaigns. I remember sitting in a car, in the rain, in England listening to the Democratic National Convention on the BBC when Lyndon Johnson was nominated. But in all my years of following elections, I have never seen anything quite like this election season. The political process has always been a little crazy, but this one is really strange—and I find myself wondering every time it rolls around, Is this the best we can do?

As a nation, we probably expect too much of our leaders and too little of ourselves. Like everyone else, I marvel at the weakness of people running for office, and I sometimes forget that they are merely a reflection of ourselves. I recall those famous lines from Abraham Lincoln about government of the people, by the people, and for the people and I don’t see how we can escape responsibility for what our leaders do and don’t do. We can’t sidestep that issue. If there are no strong leaders before us, it is our fault.

I would like to take you back to another time and place, to a nation surprisingly like us. They were like us in spite of changes in technology and an explosion of knowledge and information. They still were like us. The place is Jerusalem; the time is the days of Isaiah the prophet. Isaiah was quite young when he had his first vision and volunteered to be a prophet. He had no idea what he was letting himself in for. And in chapter three of his book, he touches on what bothers me most about the political climate we are looking at.

I simply cannot imagine a greater prophet than Elijah. He was not a smooth man, like I suspect Isaiah was. Isaiah was a poet, and a great one at that. I see no hint of poetic utterance in any word Elijah ever spoke. But then, every prophet that God ever called was chosen for the job at hand and for the people he was sent to talk to. One prophet was a sheep herder; another a fruit picker. They were pretty much ordinary men until God made them extraordinary. And as far as I can tell, none of them were really looking for the job when they got it. They were not self-assured men, either. Take Elijah as a case in point.

No prophet who ever lived, before or since, has had the massive validation that Elijah got. He stopped the rain for three-and-a-half years just to get everyone’s attention. Then he called down fire from heaven in the sight of all the people in the most dramatic way possible. Having ridiculed false prophets in the most graphic of terms, he had the people bring them down from the mountain and killed every last one. Then, in a matter days, perhaps hours, he was fleeing for his life before a woman. (Well, this was not just any woman, but Jezebel, who has passed down into our language as an epitome of wickedness.)

And Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done, and how he had slain all the prophets with the sword. Then Jezebel sent a messenger unto Elijah, saying, So let the gods do to me, and more also, if I make not your life as the life of one of them by tomorrow about this time. And when he saw that, he arose, and went for his life, and came to Beer-sheba, which belongs to Judah, and left his servant there. But he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a juniper tree: and he requested for himself that he might die; and said, It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life; for I am not better than my fathers.

Quite a reversal for Elijah. But God was not finished with him yet, as we’ll see continuing in 2 Kings, chapter 19.

He is the archetype of all prophets; his name was Elijah. Probably one of the reasons he is so well known is because he is so persistent in the Bible—he keeps cropping up. He was to come just before Jesus (John the Baptist, everyone sees, fulfilled that) but most students of prophecy expect him to come again at the end time. This naturally leads to a lot of pretenders. I have met three or four Elijahs myself.

If you recall the caricature of a man with a long beard, wearing a robe, and carrying a sign that says, The End is Near, you have an idea what these self-appointed Elijahs looked like. And self-appointed is the word. Most modern, would-be prophets are self-appointed. Prophets, you know, are a dime a dozen. The real Elijah—the prototypical prophet—was emphatically not self-appointed, and God took him out of his toolbox to say what needed to be said. He stepped up to the plate and delivered one short sentence.

And Elijah said, As the Lord of hosts lives, before whom I stand, I will surely show myself unto him today.

And then he disappeared for three-and-a-half years. Not another word. I encountered one of these self-appointed prophets a few years ago, and I couldn’t get him out of my hair—not even with a flea comb. He only had one problem. He was wrong on every page. He was trying to tell me things about myself that were matters of verifiable fact, and he missed. He couldn’t have hit the side of a barn with a shotgun from inside. As dramatic as Elijah may seem as you read the book, he was really pretty simple—a man of few words—and he didn’t guess. He had a sure word from God.

I was standing, looking out an open window in my hotel room at Victoria Station in London one night. My wife and I had been to the theater, had just got back in, and opened the window for a little fresh air. I heard a rumble, uncharacteristic of London weather, and I remarked, I hope that’s thunder. It wasn’t. The IRA had set off a bomb two blocks from our hotel in a trash bin along the street. No one was hurt, but it was a little disconcerting. I can’t help wondering what the IRA realistically hoped to gain in all this. Were they really doing their thing with a goal in mind, or are they like bunch of Ozark boys turning over outhouses on Halloween?

I am persuaded that, in all too many cases, people who are fighting in wars have long since forgotten what the war is all about. They don’t remember the grievance or, if they do, they have only heard about it from their great-great-grandfathers and never, in all their lifetime, experience the grievance in question. Why on earth did the Irish Republican Army keep on bombing the English? Why can’t they kiss and make up? There are lives to be lived, jobs to be done, grandchildren to be loved. And after all, they are brothers.

When I reflect on this, and look back through eons of time to the House of Israel and the House of Judah, I can’t help marveling at the ongoing war between these two nations of brothers. Here we are 24 years since the death of Solomon—24 years since God told everyone to stop fighting and go home—yet still the wars between Judah and Israel go on.

When you settle in to read the Bible, you run into any number of difficulties—none of them fatal, of course. The sense of the Bible is not that hard, it is just that the writers of the Bible wrote, not only in a different language, but out of a different culture. Things that would be important to the modern reader don’t even cross their minds. There are mysteries in the Bible, to be sure, but there is enough plain talk for us to know where we stand with God. The more difficult problem is that the modern reader is used to history being presented in a certain way. The ancient writers of history operated on somewhat different principles.

One of the confusing things, for example, about reading the Book of Kings is the structure of the book. 1 Kings tells the story of the division of Israel into two kingdoms. After that, the story interleaves the parallel history of the two kingdoms and it is easy to get lost. There are any number of Bible handbooks and encyclopedias that provide charts and chronologies, but they are enough to make your eyes glaze over. If you really want to get the picture and keep it straight, the best way is to make your own. The careful reading, and then writing down names and relative dates, will give you a feeling for the passage of time.

One of the most important things to remember as you read is that there are real people back there who suffered greatly because of the sins and foibles of the leadership of the people. I can’t help reflecting on the poor guy on the farm—with his wife and six kids—plowing the ground, planting crops, breeding his livestock, trying to make a living for his family. It was a hard life even when times were good. But there weren’t a lot of good times, for reasons we will come to understand as we make our way through these chapters. The one who tells the story of this era, no doubt moved by the Holy Spirit, lets his frustration seep through from time to time. Remember, the one who wrote down these words was a real person, too.

At the Last Supper, after washing his disciples' feet, Jesus said something of singular importance. He said, You call me master and lord, and you say well for so I am. The American reader is likely to take these two words, master and lord, as synonyms; but when the King James translators sat down and wrote this out, the head of a school was a master. Even to this day in most English schools the person who runs the school is the headmaster. Consequently, they chose the word master because to their English readers it would convey the idea of a teacher; and not merely a garden-variety, run-of-the-mill teacher, but a significant master of his subject.

Jesus said, You call me teacher and lord, and rightly so because that is what I am. The words in the Greek mean a master of a school and a sovereign lord, so they are not synonyms at all; and they define two very different relationships that a person will have with Jesus Christ. So let's take a closer look at these two words, these two relationships, and their significance for a Christian.

By now, everyone realizes that we have a leadership crisis, not only in our country, but in the world at large. I wonder how we got to this place? Where does leadership come from and, maybe more importantly, where does it go? I believe that leadership is a gift from God, and if you’ll spare me a little time, I’ll explain to you why I think that. First, two statements about gifts from God, one from James and one from the Psalms:

Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.

You have ascended on high, you have led captivity captive: you have received gifts for men; yea, for the rebellious also, that the Lord God might dwell among them. Blessed be the Lord, who daily loads us with benefits, even the God of our salvation. Selah.

For some reason, we would tend to assume that God only gives his gifts to people who deserve them. I used to think so. I would have told you that God gave his gifts to Christian people, and to good Christian people at that. But the Psalmist says that he gives his gifts to the rebellious also. What are we to make of that? Well, we know that God causes it to rain on the just and the unjust. He doesn’t make the rain run down the property line, with one man’s field getting a good wetting down and the other man’s getting dry and dusty, right? That would probably be an effective technique for promoting righteousness, but God does not work that way. There is a curious incident in the gospel accounts that I think may give us a hint on this very complicated subject. We can find it in John, chapter 5.

Never take counsel of your fears. The saying is often attributed to Andrew Jackson who also, plainly, read his Bible. It is fascinating how often fear strips a man of victories already won. This was the case with one Jeroboam, the son of Nebat. After the death of Solomon, God handed him the largest portion of Israel—10 of the 12 tribes. He was a good man, and an energetic leader. But he was afraid that, having made the break with Solomon’s son Rehoboam, the people would eventually return to the unity of the Temple. It was not an unreasonable fear except for the fact that God had given him the kingdom and stood surety for it. This fear led him to a decision with disastrous long-term consequences.

Therefore the king took counsel, and made two calves of gold, and said unto them, It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem: behold your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt. And he set the one in Beth-el, and the other put he in Dan. And this thing became a sin: for the people went to worship before the one, even unto Dan.

The incident is uncannily similar to what Aaron did while Moses was up the mountain receiving the Ten Commandments. He made a calf of a God and said, These be your gods, O Israel, which brought you up out of the land of Egypt. Jeroboam had to know that, and yet he still did it. The seduction to idolatry in that world must have been extremely powerful. What Jeroboam does here is to substitute a political religion for the real thing. The lesson learned from David and Solomon is so easily lost. Both made moral errors, but because David never worshiped another God, the avenue of repentance was always open to him. When other gods begin to cloud the picture, however, the way back is lost in the fog. We’ll find the story of the prophet God sent to denounce Jeroboam’s spiritual wanderings—but who makes a costly detour of his own—in 1 Kings, chapter 13.

When you read those books of the Bible that contain the history of Israel, the lessons come at you one after the other. There is a man in the Book of Kings named Jeroboam, for example, who will embody several of them. Jeroboam is described as a mighty man of valor. Now, what that means in biblical-speak is that he was a fighter, and very good at it. He was a good man, an able man, and King Solomon promoted him and placed him over all the affairs of the house of Joseph. That made him the head man in the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh in the north. But he had a higher endorsement than that of Solomon, with whom God was, by this time, thoroughly disappointed.

And it came to pass at that time when Jeroboam went out of Jerusalem, that the prophet Ahijah the Shilonite found him in the way; and he had clad himself with a new garment; and the two were alone in the field: And Ahijah caught the new garment that was on him, and tore it in twelve pieces: And he said to Jeroboam, Take you ten pieces: for thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, Behold, I will tear the kingdom out of the hand of Solomon, and will give ten tribes to you: (But he shall have one tribe for my servant David’s sake, and for Jerusalem’s sake, the city which I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel:)

Why was this being done? The prophet answered:

Because they have forsaken me, and have worshiped Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians, Chemosh the god of the Moabites, and Milcom the god of the children of Ammon, and have not walked in my ways, to do that which is right in my eyes, and to keep my statutes and my judgments, as did David his father.

This verse often stops serious readers who realize what a bounder David had been at times in his life. But there is a serious difference between Solomon and David. When David sinned, he repented—and perhaps most importantly, he never, ever, served another God. And it was that faithfulness to God that made his repentance possible. That is a lesson worth remembering. You may go a long way down the wrong road, but if you never allow yourself to forget who your God is, the way back is still open. It may be a hard road, but it’s open.