Piqua Baptist Church

Find a seat and take out your copy of God’s Word. If you, by the way, don’t have a Bible here at church, there’s a stack of black Bibles in the back — please help yourself to one of those. If you don’t own a Bible, just take that one home. That is this congregation’s gift to you.

Here at Piqua Baptist, we work our way through books of the Bible a little bit at a time, and we’re working through a section of Scripture called Kings — 1 Kings, to be specific. 1 Kings chapter 15 and 16, to be even more specific.

And I should just say, before we jump too much into this: this is like turning on the TV when an entire series has been going on for a little while, and you’re in the middle of it. You just weren’t there for the first episode, and you’re trying to figure out where you’re at.

So what I’ll do, if the Lord enables me, is help orient a passage like this one into the big story of Scripture. All the books of the Bible tell the story of the Lord Jesus Christ and the goodness of God that He shows to us through Jesus. And the passage we’re considering in this series happens long before the Lord Jesus took on flesh and became man. So I’ll hope to set things up for you, just to get us oriented as to where we are in God’s story.

1 Kings chapter 15. Here’s the central claim I’ll be seeking to make from the text this morning:

Place your hope in the faithfulness of God, who keeps His promises to His Son, Jesus Christ, by whom you have peace and you inherit eternal life. Place your hope in the faithfulness of God, who keeps His promises to Christ.

We are fourteen chapters deep into this book, and so far we have covered about sixty years of Israel’s history — the history of God’s people. Here in these two chapters, we’re going to cover more than forty years. It’s like the author of Kings hits fast forward for a little bit, and we survey a list of eight kings, most of whom don’t amount to much in the eyes of the Lord. That’s where we’re headed.

Let me go ahead and pray for us, and then we’ll jump right in.

To the blameless, You show Yourself as blameless. To the merciful, You show Yourself as merciful. To the pure, You show Yourself as pure. To the crooked, You make Yourself seem intolerable. You have saved a humble people, but the haughty eye You have brought down.

And so, O Lord, we ask that You would make us a merciful people, that we would see You as merciful. A blameless people, that we would see You as blameless. Make us pure, that we would see You as pure. Make us humble, and speak to us through Your Word. For the grass withers and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord remains forever. Amen.

So, as I said, we’re going to work our way through a couple of chapters where there’s going to be a list of eight kings — seven of them bad, one of them almost good. And I can’t read a section of Scripture like this without thinking — and you’ll forgive, I hope, the sports reference — of the Cleveland Browns.

Since their return to the NFL in 1999, the Cleveland Browns have famously employed forty-two starting quarterbacks. If you’re not into football, I understand, but you should know that’s not good. In the same period of time, the Green Bay Packers have employed eight starting quarterbacks. And the lesson of this is that more quarterbacks doesn’t always fix the problem.

Eight kings are catalogued in these two chapters — one kind of good, five of them bad, two of them very bad. That’s seven bad kings and one good king, and the good king, sadly, we’ll see, is not good enough.

If you’re just dropping in on this series in Kings, let me help bring you up to speed. Kings is one book split into two parts. We’re not sure who wrote this book, but we do know to whom it was written. This book was written to Jews who were languishing in exile in Babylon, wondering how in the world they got to be exiles. And Kings tells the story of how they got there.

Kings tells us that Yahweh chose a people for Himself, the descendants of Abraham, and He entered into a covenant with them — an agreement — that if they were to keep this covenant, He would bless them. He would use them to restore His kingdom on the earth, restore mankind to Himself, and bring peace. But God’s people didn’t keep the covenant, and so Yahweh narrowed the scope of the covenant. He told them: if the whole people can’t do it, give Me one man. If one man — a king, the heir of King David — keeps the covenant, then his faithfulness will be counted to the people, and God will bless the people, restore His kingdom, restore mankind to Himself, and bring peace on the earth.

At first, it seems like David’s son Solomon is that king. But then we saw a few weeks ago that, in his old age, King Solomon compromised and broke the covenant. Solomon dies. Solomon’s son takes over — we saw that a couple of weeks ago — and Solomon’s son is a wicked, prideful man. Under his leadership, the kingdom of Israel splits into two kingdoms.

Now the author of Kings is going to bounce between these two kingdoms. First Kings 15 and 16 take place after the split: one kingdom in the north, called Israel, and another kingdom to the south, called Judah. In this couple of chapters, it sure seems like God’s plan for His people is on the verge of collapsing — yet the faithfulness of God preserves a lamp, preserves a remnant. God keeps His promise to David and to David’s sons.

This is the story of the faithful God who endured many unfaithful kings, who led an unfaithful people into false worship and to war — and the one man who tried to right the ship but couldn’t. That’s the summary of 1 Kings 15 and 16. Let’s get to work. Let’s have a look.

Now in the eighteenth year of King Jeroboam, son of Nebat, Abijam began to reign over Judah. He reigned three years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Maacah, the daughter of Abishalom. And he walked in all the sins that his father did before him, and his heart was not wholly true to the Lord his God, as the heart of David his father. Nevertheless, for David’s sake, the Lord his God gave him a lamp in Jerusalem, setting up his son after him and establishing Jerusalem, because David did what was right in the eyes of the Lord and did not turn aside from anything that He commanded him all the days of his life, except in the matter of Uriah the Hittite. Now there was war between Rehoboam and Jeroboam all the days of his life. The rest of the acts of Abijam and all that he did, are they not written in the Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Judah? And there was war between Abijam and Jeroboam. And Abijam slept with his fathers, and they buried him in the city of David. And Asa his son reigned in his place.

Two kingdoms, two kings. We start in the south, the kingdom of Judah, the city of Jerusalem. The first king for our examination is a king called Abijam. He’s the grandson of Solomon, the great-grandson of King David, heir to the throne of Judah.

Abijam’s father was Rehoboam. You may remember Rehoboam — old pinky-finger — the arrogant jerk who refused to serve God’s people, and under his leadership the kingdom split. The Egyptians plundered Jerusalem and the temple of God. Rehoboam dies. Good riddance. And now his son Abijam sits on the throne in Judah. Here we read in verse 3: he is no better than his father. He walked in all the sins that his father did before him. His heart was not true to the Lord, as was the heart of David his father.

We’re entering into a very dark time in the history of God’s people. We’re three generations removed from David, and it seems that God’s purposes for His people, God’s promises to His people, are all but lost. During Abijam’s reign, God’s people are at war with one another. According to the Book of Chronicles, the war between the north and the south caused half a million of the men of God’s chosen people to die on the battlefield. It’s dark.

But if we come to verse 4, we find one of the main reasons the Book of Kings was written: that no matter how dark the dark, God preserves a light. Let God be true, though everyone were a liar. The success of God’s purposes is not built on the righteousness of any man, but on the faithfulness of God Himself. The light of David survives by divine grace — not because David or David’s sons were righteous, but because God Himself is faithful.

The Lord entered into a covenant with David seventy years prior to the text we’re reading today, and so far the human partner in this covenant has been unfaithful. And yet here we see God will remain faithful in spite of — despite — the unfaithfulness of the human partner in the covenant. This is demonstrated for us in the example of the next king in our survey, a man called Asa.

In the twentieth year of Jeroboam king of Israel, Asa began to reign over Judah, and he reigned forty-one years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Maacah, the daughter of Abishalom. And Asa did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, as David his father had done. He put away the male cult prostitutes out of the land and removed all the idols that his fathers had made. He also removed Maacah his mother from being queen mother, because she had made an abominable image for Asherah. And Asa cut down her image and burned it at the brook Kidron. But the high places were not taken away. Nevertheless, the heart of Asa was wholly true to the Lord all his days. And he brought into the house of the Lord the sacred gifts of his father and his own sacred gifts — silver and gold and vessels.

With the northern kingdom and now the southern kingdom circling the drain, warring with one another, Asa provides us a glimmer of hope. The light of David survives by divine grace, and this is divine grace. Notice Asa’s family is a mess. Just consider: his great-great-grandfather was unfaithful as a king. His great-grandfather was unfaithful as a king. His grandfather was unfaithful as a king. His father was unfaithful as a king. And either his mother died young and he was raised by his grandmother, or his grandmother is his mother — which is gross, but it’s a possible reading of this text. Either way, she is an idolater.

Asa comes from a screwed-up family. And Asa shows us that, by God’s grace, destructive family patterns can be broken.

Brothers, your daddy may never have cracked open a Bible and led your family in family worship, but you sure can. Your daddy may have never told you that he loved you or was proud of you, but by God’s grace you can sure tell your kids you love them and are proud of them. Your daddy may have been a slave to the bottle and harsh with his wife, but that doesn’t mean you have to be.

Sisters, your mama may have taken many men into her bed, but by God’s grace you don’t need to. Your mama may have been a bitter, legalistic, harsh woman, but by God’s grace you can be joyful and kind, quick to forgive, and rich with grace. Your parents may have become mean and vindictive grumblers in their old age, but by the power of Christ in the gospel — with time and maturity, let it ripen in you — into Christian beauty, making you warm, happy, contented, quick with a word of encouragement.

By the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ, PBC, destructive family patterns can be broken and new patterns can begin. Years bathing under the waters of God’s grace in the gospel will enable you to build healthy, biblical patterns in your life and in your family — patterns of peace and joy, language infused with grace, a home filled with laughter.

Asa is evidence that God has not given up on His people. Asa is evidence that God is faithful and gracious. He is a lamp shining in a dark place. He institutes religious reforms: he puts away male cult prostitutes from the land, most of them anyway; he puts away filth from idols; he deposes his own mother — or grandmother — for her idolatry and burns her detestable graven images; he raises money for the right worship of God in Jerusalem. He brings about reformation and revival in the land of Judah, and under Asa, God’s people flourish. On the whole, comparatively speaking, Asa is a good king. He bails a lot of water out of a sinking ship. He plugs a lot of holes that were drilled in the hull by his fathers.

But all the good that Asa did, regrettably and sadly, it’s not enough. At the end of his life, even a good king like Asa came up short. For the sake of time we can’t read it all, but according to another part of the Bible, early in Asa’s reign he trusted the Lord. The Bible tells us the Ethiopians came against Judah with a million-man army, and Asa cried out to the Lord, and the Lord delivered him and gave him victory over the invaders.

But then, in his later years, facing war against his cousins to the north, Asa did not rely on the Lord. Instead, Asa trusted in princes of men. He took gold and silver and money from the temple of God — money that was dedicated to the worship of God — and used it to bribe the king of Syria in order to win the battle against his cousins to the north. In so doing, he did not act in faith but in sin. The Lord sent a seer against him to speak against him, and Asa had that man arrested. In his latter years, Asa became a hard and harsh ruler over God’s people.

But yet still, God remained faithful to the covenant He made with David and David’s sons. A lamp was preserved in Judah.

Now at this point in the book of Kings, the camera pivots north — and for pretty much the rest of 1 Kings, it is focused entirely on the kingdom of Israel in the north. The author speeds through six more kings, every one of them bad, the last of them the worst of all. When we get to him, the narrative slows way down.

Skip ahead to verse 25, 1 Kings 15:25. We’re back in the north, and we’re back in time. We’re back in the lineage of Jeroboam. Do you remember Jeroboam from a couple of weeks ago? He’s the blue-collar, ball-cap king — the king who took the northern kingdom and created his own religion. We’re going to read about what happens to him.

So first we saw the lamp of David surviving by divine grace. Now we see the legacy of Jeroboam collapsing under divine judgment.

Nadab the son of Jeroboam began to reign over Israel in the second year of Asa king of Judah, and he reigned over Israel two years. He did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and walked in the way of his father, and in his sin which he made Israel to sin. Baasha the son of Ahijah, of the house of Issachar, conspired against him. And Baasha struck him down at Gibbethon, which belonged to the Philistines, for Nadab and all Israel were laying siege to Gibbethon. So Baasha killed him in the third year of Asa king of Judah, and reigned in his place. And as soon as he was king, he killed all the house of Jeroboam. He left to the house of Jeroboam not one that breathed, until he had destroyed it, according to the word of the Lord that He spoke by His servant Ahijah the Shilonite, because of the sins of Jeroboam which he sinned, and which he made Israel to sin, and because of the anger with which he provoked the Lord, the God of Israel. Now the rest of the acts of Nadab and all that he did, are they not written in the Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel? And there was war between Asa and Baasha king of Israel all their days.

Two kingdoms, two kings — and now we’re in the north. When the people seceded, Jeroboam — blue-collar, ball-cap guy — took most of the people and started his own kingdom called Israel. Not only did Jeroboam start his own kingdom, but he also started his own religion, and he led God’s people away from the worship of God. You’ll remember from back in chapter 14 that Yahweh spoke against Jeroboam through a prophet, saying: You, Jeroboam, have done evil. You have made for yourself other gods. You’ve cast Me behind your back, and therefore I will bring harm upon the house of Jeroboam, and I will cut off from Jeroboam every male, and will burn up the house of Jeroboam as a man burns up dung, until it is all gone. Harsh and heavy words against a sinful king.

Jeroboam dies, and Nadab his son takes the throne. Verse 26 tells us plainly that even Nadab did evil in the sight of the Lord — Nadab was like his father in the sin that he committed. And now here is the account of how the Lord fulfilled His promise of judgment against the house of Jeroboam, through a man called Baasha.

Who is Baasha? He’s nobody. He’s not royalty, not of royal lineage. He’s a conspirator. He leads a conspiracy against King Nadab. While the king and the army are fighting to take back one of their cities from the Philistines, Nadab discovers that the greater threat to his kingdom is not the Philistines — it’s the people inside his kingdom. Baasha murders Nadab and makes himself king in Israel. He’s not going to be the last man to do this. As soon as Baasha becomes king, he kills the entire house of Jeroboam, just in case any one of Jeroboam’s other sons gets the bright idea that he would be king. Baasha makes sure the house of Jeroboam will not survive. No one is left breathing. God’s judgment on Jeroboam is swift and certain and absolute and sobering.

Jeroboam serves as a case study, as a warning, for all who reject the worship of the one true God and substitute it with a religion of their own making.

If you’re a guest with us, you may not consider yourself an overly religious person. But there’s something you ought to know, friend: religion is simply devotion to that which you believe will give you peace, safety, control, success — the good life. You worship what you believe will give you the life you want, which means, friend, you’re actually quite religious. We all are.

It’s just that your religion, can I be honest with you, is like Jeroboam’s — it’s self-made. Ask yourself this morning: what is it that I look to, to give me the good life? Friend, that’s your religion.

For a lot of us — Midwestern Americans, a lot of us — we look to our hard work, our talents. And hard work is a good thing. Hard work is what we look to, to give us the good life, the thing that we want. And so you might say, “I don’t worship hard work.” Really? Then why does it bother you so much when someone says you’re not doing a good job, that you’re kind of lazy, that you’re cutting corners? Why do you campaign in defense of this god of yours like any other religious devotee?

Hard work is good, but self-made religions all suffer the same systemic problem: they never address the root problem, which is sin. Sin out there, sin in here. Sin is any thought or word or deed that is contrary to God in His Word and God in His nature. And it is sin that keeps us from enjoying the life God made for us to enjoy.

Because of sin outside, sometimes hard work doesn’t pay off. Sometimes you get sick. Sometimes situations outside your control — the company goes under, the economy takes a downturn — and hard work doesn’t give you the life you want.

Because of sin inside, self-made religion can’t deliver on its promises, because peace, comfort, and safety come from being right with God. And sin — disobedience of God’s commandments — is what separates us from God. So sin must be removed. And there’s only one way for sin to be removed, and that is through the gospel of Jesus Christ.

The Bible teaches that God has dealt with sin on the inside of you. God became man. He took on flesh. Jesus Christ came into the world to put away sin. His death on the cross was the suffering of the penalty of your sin and mine. And when we turn to Jesus Christ, confessing our sin to Him, God promises to forgive us of our sin, remove sin from the inside, cleanse us of unrighteousness, unite us to His Son, grant to us the righteousness of God, restore us to God, and give us peace with God.

Jeroboam created his own religion, led Israel away from right worship of God, and the judgment of God therefore fell, and his entire household was erased from memory. The legacy of Jeroboam collapsed and was lost. So friends, if you want your life to count for anything, turn to the Lord Jesus Christ today. Repent of your sins. Trust in Him.

When a man abandons the Lord, a cascade of evil follows: covetousness, malice, envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. Men become foolish and faithless and heartless and ruthless. Not only do they practice evil themselves, but they give endorsement to others who practice evil as well. And this is what we see in the pages to follow — that more kings only make matters worse.

So first we saw the light of David surviving by divine grace, and then we saw the legacy of Jeroboam collapsing under divine judgment. And now, finally, we see the folly of trusting in princes — that more kings only make matters worse.

That brings us to the next king in our survey: Baasha. Let’s pick up reading in verse 33.

In the third year of Asa king of Judah, Baasha the son of Ahijah began to reign over all Israel at Tirzah, and he reigned twenty-four years. He did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and walked in the way of Jeroboam, and in his sin which he made Israel to sin. And the word of the Lord came to Jehu the son of Hanani against Baasha, saying: “Since I exalted you out of the dust and made you leader over My people Israel, and you have walked in the ways of Jeroboam and have made My people Israel to sin, provoking Me to anger with their sins, behold, I will utterly sweep away Baasha and his house, and I will make your house like the house of Jeroboam the son of Nebat. Anyone belonging to Baasha who dies in the city, the dogs shall eat, and anyone of his who dies in the field, the birds of the heavens shall eat.”

Remember, Baasha was a nobody — “since I exalted you out of the dust.” Baasha did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, and Yahweh sent a prophet against him with a word of judgment. He carried out God’s judgment against Jeroboam and his family, but because he himself did not submit to God’s word, God’s judgment was then carried out against him and his family.

If you keep reading in the verses that follow, Baasha dies, and his son Elah takes over — another king. Will that make the situation better? No, because Elah is wicked just like his father. He’s two years into his reign, and guess what happens to him? His father became king when he conspired and murdered the king before him, and now Elah’s own servants conspire against him and murder him. He’s at a party in the city of Tirzah, getting drunk, and his servant — a military commander of some kind, named Zimri — murders him and takes over.

Zimri is a military guy, so he gets straight down to business. He kills Elah, and then he kills all of Elah’s brothers — all of Baasha’s sons, the rest of his family. What Baasha did to the household of Jeroboam is now done to his own household. Zimri becomes king in Israel for a little bit, because it seems Zimri and his co-conspirators didn’t quite have the backing they expected they would have. When the rest of Israel learns that the king is dead, they decide to choose a different military commander to be their king — a fellow called Omri.

Skip down to verse 17, chapter 16.

So Omri went up from Gibbethon, and all Israel with him, and they besieged Tirzah. And when Zimri saw that the city was taken, he went into the citadel of the king’s house and burned the king’s house over him with fire and died, because of his sins that he committed, doing evil in the sight of the Lord, walking in the ways of Jeroboam, and for his sin which he committed, making Israel to sin. Zimri was king over Israel seven days.

Those who live by the sword will die by the sword. In his wickedness and in his violence, Zimri brought God’s judgment down on his own head — literally and figuratively. He burned the king’s house over his own head and died. Here we see another sobering picture of the effects of unrepentant sin: if you turn away from God, it’s like setting fire to your own home with yourself and your family locked inside.

And so now we’re on to the next king in Israel — a fellow called Omri, who establishes his throne in Israel. To be honest, he has a pretty good run. All things considered, Omri reigns for twelve years and does a lot of great and mighty things. Ironically, if you read through this text, you’ll see Omri does a lot of things that David does. He battles the Philistines, like David. He comes to the throne after the previous king kills himself, like David. He reigns in two capitals before establishing his own city, which becomes the capital, like David. He purchases a hill from a non-Israelite, like David. His son goes on to take foreign wives, like David. So he’s David — but he’s not David — because we read in verse 25: Omri did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, and did more evil than all who were before him. It’s not a competition, but these guys are trying to outdo one another in doing evil. More kings only makes matters worse.

And Omri is the worst king yet — but he’s not the worst king in the passage. That honor goes to the last king in our survey, one with whom we will become quite familiar in this series: a king called Ahab. The author stops the fast-forward and devotes the rest of 1 Kings to the reign of King Ahab. I figured it out this week: nearly 45% of 1 Kings is devoted to this king. We’ll see why in the weeks ahead.

Let’s pick up reading in verse 29.

In the thirty-eighth year of Asa king of Judah, Ahab the son of Omri began to reign over Israel, and Ahab the son of Omri reigned over Israel in Samaria twenty-two years. And Ahab the son of Omri did evil in the sight of the Lord, more than all who were before him. And as if it had been a light thing for him to walk in the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, he took for his wife Jezebel the daughter of Ethbaal, king of the Sidonians, and went and served Baal and worshiped him. He erected an altar for Baal in the house of Baal which he built in Samaria, and Ahab made an Asherah. Ahab did more to provoke the Lord, the God of Israel, to anger than all the kings of Israel who were before him.

The northern kingdom continues to unravel. Ahab does more to provoke God’s judgment than any king had done before him, and pretty well guarantees that this ship is going down. What God did through Israel in the Promised Land is being undone.

Those of you who know a little bit about your Bible — when Israel crossed the River Jordan into the Promised Land, what was the first victory God gave them under Joshua? What city? Jericho. That’s right — Joshua fought the battle of Jericho, and the walls came tumbling down. They marched around the walls of Jericho seven days, blew the trumpets, and God caused the walls of Jericho to fall. After that victory in Joshua chapter 6 — you can read this afternoon if you’d like — Joshua lays an oath on the people. Here’s what he says: Cursed before the Lord be the man who rises up and rebuilds this city, Jericho. At the cost of his firstborn shall he lay its foundation, and at the cost of his youngest son shall he set up its gates.

Now let’s finish out chapter 16, shall we?

In his days, Hiel of Bethel built Jericho. He laid its foundation at the cost of Abiram his firstborn, and set up its gates at the cost of his youngest son, Segub, according to the word of the Lord, which He spoke by Joshua the son of Nun.

In the days of Ahab, Hiel of Bethel built Jericho. He laid its foundation — at what cost? The cost of Abiram, his firstborn. You know what that means? He killed his son. And he set up its gates at the cost of his youngest son, Segub. You know what that means? He killed his son — an offering of worship to a demon god, to gain favor to build.

You see what’s happening: as the kingdom of Israel walks further away from the Lord, the victories God had granted them in the Promised Land are being undone. Israel is turning back. The land is turning back. The blessing that follows obedience is lost. The curse that follows disobedience has come. And our passage ends. It’s dark.

Yet what we must see in a passage like this is that through the darkness, the lamp of Yahweh’s commitment to His covenant with David and David’s sons burns true. God keeps His word to David and David’s sons.

Remember: the exiles languishing in Babylon, reading their own history — this is meant to remind them that you have been unfaithful, but God has been faithful, and God will preserve a remnant for Himself. The lamp of David will burn in the dark. It’s meant to give them hope. It’s meant to draw them to the Lord, to look to Him to restore them to the land and to bring about His kingdom and His promises on earth.

And for us today, this book means even more. We read this text through the lens of the risen Lord Jesus Christ. God the Father’s commitment to David and to David’s sons was finally and fully kept in the Father’s promise to His Son, Jesus Christ, who is the true Son of David.

Christian, what is your hope in this life and in the next? Is it not this — that God keeps His promise to His Son? Just consider:

Do you remember what Jesus prayed in John 17? Father, Yours they were, and You gave them to Me. Christian, you are a gift the Father gave to the Son, and He will not recant, and He will not renege on His promises to His Son. You are being kept because of God’s faithfulness to His Son.

So where is your confidence? Where is your hope? Where is your assurance? It is this: God keeps His promise to His Son, and you are a part of that promise. The covenant with David was not built on David’s righteousness. It was built on God’s faithfulness, and nothing has changed. God will be faithful to His promise to His Son.

A passage like this one is given to us to loosen the grip we place on the hope of the princes of men. More kings only makes matters worse. Where is your hope in this life? Surely it is not in better leaders, in better laws, in a better economy. Surely it is not in better margins, a better balance sheet, and a better retirement account. What is your only comfort in life and in death? It is that we are not our own, but that we belong, both body and soul, to our faithful Savior Jesus Christ.

There is your hope. Put your hope in God, in the promise He has made to His Son, which He will not recant. God will keep His word. You can build your life on that. You can tether your peace to that. You can tether your joy to that, because that promise the Father made to the Son is the only thing strong enough to carry you through suffering. It’s the only thing strong enough to keep you walking when everything wants to knock you down. That promise of the Father to the Son is the only thing strong enough to drive you out of your comfort, to wean you off of your sense of safety, and send you to the nations to tell people who have never heard.

God will keep you because of His promise that He made to His Son. Place your hope in the faithfulness of God, who keeps His promise to Christ, His Son.

Let’s pray. Father, we give You praise and thanks because You have been faithful. You spoke a promise to Your Son, and that promise will not be broken. Give us all faith this week to lean upon and to lay upon our entire lives, trusting in the faithfulness of God. Amen.

It is a joy to be here with you all, with my wife — thank you for welcoming us. I know some of you, not all of you; dear brother Craig just came over and hugged my neck, and it’s so good to see you, Craig. Koinos Church is a fellow sister church in the Greater Dayton Association with you all. I know your pastor, Pastor Jamie, well — we’ve spent a good bit of time fishing together in a canoe in the Boundary Waters. We’ve shared a lot of stories together, and we love your church. We think highly of your church and what you’re doing here, the ministry in Piqua, and I’m glad Pastor Jamie gave me the call to come and preach for you all this morning.

Please open your Bibles to Ephesians 6:10–20. In just a moment we’ll read the word — I’m going to ask you to stand for the reading in just a moment. This morning, the title of my sermon is “Stand Against the Schemes of the Devil in an Abortion Rights State.” This morning, the text is calling us to stand against the schemes of the devil. The grass withers, the flowers fade, but the word of God stands forever.

Please stand for the reading of the Scriptures. Ephesians 6:10: “Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm. Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and, as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace. In all circumstances take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one, and take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. To that end, keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints, and also for me, that words may be given to me in opening my mouth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains, that I may declare it boldly, as I ought to speak.” This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated.

I asked Pastor Jamie’s direction and guidance on the text and the sermon for today, and he said that a sermon focused on ending abortion in this state, in this country, in this world would be appropriate. This text calls the church, calls all believers here and everywhere in the world, to stand firm against the devil’s scheme of murdering babies. This is not a political speech. This is the word of God to God’s people everywhere.

In 2023, Ohio voters did the worst thing our state has ever done. Ohio voters made abortion a right for anyone who wishes to have one. That is worse than the COVID shutdowns, legalizing gambling, legalizing marijuana, or anything else our state has done. I say this is the worst thing our state has ever done because we have given full permission to murder unborn babies. In 2025, as a result, at least 25,000 babies were killed in the state of Ohio; nationwide, about a million. And that will happen again this year and next year and on and on, until the evil of abortion is ended. You can read it in the Ohio Constitution, Article I, Section 22 — the right is given there: every individual has a right to end their unborn baby’s life up to 21 weeks and six days.

The text of Scripture in Ephesians 6 tells the church how to live biblically faithful lives in a world of darkness that hates God and his truth. Abortion is a reality not because people hate babies — although that may be a truth — but abortion exists because people hate God. That is the reality. That is why every evil in the world exists. That is why the evil of abortion exists.

We come to this text on spiritual armor and spiritual warfare after having read through the epistle to the Ephesians. In the first chapters, 1 through 3, we are told great theological truths of the conquering Savior who has conquered our sins, risen from the dead, and is exalted in the heavens, giving life and all things to the church, putting all his enemies under his feet. He is seated at the place of authority at the right hand of God the Father, and we are told we are seated with him in the heavenly places. He is seated with all power and dominion and has a name above all names, so that all his enemies will be placed under his feet, and he is head over all things to his church.

And in chapter 2:10 we are told that believers — those born again — have been chosen by him to do good works, which he has prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. Ephesians names several good works — marriage, parenting, many instructions — good works that believers have been chosen to do, prepared beforehand for them to do. And then we come to chapter 6:10, and we’re told about spiritual warfare. You cannot mistake it — it is very clear. Every believer, every church, has been chosen by God to do the good work of standing against the schemes of the devil. That means, Christian, you have been called to stand against Satan’s schemes. And in our day, we have been called to stand against this scheme, this evil. It is not the only one, but I think it is the greatest one — it is the worst one. We are called to stand against the evil of abortion.

Again, I will say this is not a political talk — this is a sermon to the people of God. The church of God has a power that no other entity, no other body in the world possesses. It is the power of the word of God. It is the power of Jesus Christ dying on the cross, rising from the dead, returning to earth to redeem his church, to put the devil in the abyss for eternity. We have the power of Christ. We must, in that power, go to battle with the forces of darkness.

I am not alone in thinking this — I’m sure many in this congregation believe this, and I hope all of you are engaging in this warfare. My experience, however, tells me that many Christians, many churches, are asleep — specifically asleep in addressing abortion. Many Christians, many churches, think we should not talk about the things that might upset some, that we should not talk about things that have a political flavor to them.

Dear friend, I would ask you: who is the Most High King? Who occupies the office of the highest government in the universe? In other words, who is the highest political officer in the universe? It is Jesus Christ, the reigning Lord, who has conquered Satan and sin, and we are to obey him and none other.

Charles Spurgeon was a pastor who thought so. He engaged with things that were very prevalent in the government, in the news, in politics. I want to read to you a bit of one of his sermons, given to his church in 1891, titled “War, War, War” — a time when the people of England feared their nation might go to war. He gave a text and an exposition on Ephesians 6. He said, “To be a Christian is to be a warrior. The good soldier of Jesus Christ must not expect to find ease in this world; it is a battlefield. Neither must he reckon upon the friendship of the world, for that would be enmity against God. His occupation is war. As he puts on piece by piece the armor provided for him, he may wisely say to himself: ‘This warns me of danger, this prepares me for warfare, this prophesies opposition.'” In his sermon, he charged his church not so much as to dream of winning the battle against Satan by accident, by remaining quiet, or by taking matters easily.

Faithful pastor Spurgeon, and many pastors through the centuries, have proclaimed to the people of God: we have been called, by the word of God and the power of the Spirit, to conquer Satan in this world, to lead the lost to salvation in Christ, because one day Christ will return and bring all of us home with him.

So look at the words of verse 10: “Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might.” Christian, you have been called to grow. You have been called not to weakness, not to laziness, not to comfort — you have been called to work, to grow, so that you will be strong. Strong how? Not strong physically — strong in spirit, strong in the truth.

This means we need churches like this one — churches like Piqua Baptist Church, where the pastors preach the word of God to God’s people for the strengthening of their people. I love the sermon series of this church — you’re going through 1 Kings. I looked at last Sunday’s sermon on 1 Kings 12 through 14. I love how this church preaches what happens to anyone when there is neglect of God’s word, and we see exactly what happened to the people of God in Israel. We see what happened following Solomon’s great sin. Solomon was the wisest, most blessed, wealthiest king of God’s people — God blessed him greatly — and yet, in spite of God’s blessing, King Solomon disobeyed God by embracing the many wives and the many nations and the many idols of the false gods.

And what happened to the nation of Israel? Because of Solomon’s sin, the nation became divided at the hands of Solomon’s son, Rehoboam, and Jeroboam. And what did Jeroboam do? In his great foolishness, the kingdom was divided — ten tribes versus the one tribe of Judah. Jeroboam continued to embrace idolatry and the worship of false gods, which led to civil war, a divided nation, and eventually the complete destruction of Jerusalem and the temple, and the deportation of God’s people into slavery.

What happens as a result of God’s people not standing against the schemes of the devil? Destruction. We should expect that of those who do not know God, who hate God. But we should expect of the church, of God’s people, to stand strong, to grow — because, as Peter warns in 1 Peter 5:8, there is a roaring lion, seeking to devour many. Christians should not live in this world thinking all is peace, all is ease, that there is no enemy. We believe, because the Bible tells us, evil is real. Lucifer is real. He is the one who hated God in the beginning and tried to take the throne of God and would have killed God if he were able — but he was not.

And now he is the roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. But we take great strength in the fact that Jesus is the Lion in Revelation. We are told he is the Lion of the tribe of Judah, who will return and seize the devil and bind him in a chain and cast him into the abyss. We are not weak. We do not have a weak Savior. We have a mighty God. In Genesis 49:8, Judah is the lion, and God says of him, “His hand will be on the neck of his enemy, and he will conquer his enemy.” Church, you are called to be strong, following after and obeying the Lion of the tribe of Judah. We are called to stand against Satan’s evil schemes, especially abortion.

But he has many schemes — abortion is not the only one. We’re called to stand against all his schemes, all of his deceptions. Every world religion, every other faith that is not obedient to the gospel, is of the devil — it is a deception. We’re to stand against all falsehood in the world, and certainly abortion must be the leading one of those.

Defeating abortion requires spiritual battle more than a political battle. We must engage it at every front, including the political battle, but it is more than that. Raising more money, getting more votes, will not be enough to defeat abortion. Abortion must be defeated by defeating Satan himself in the hearts and minds of men. What is needed is faithful, Bible-preaching churches who will teach and preach to God’s people, who will act, who will pray, who will lead, who will speak.

I want to say something to you, silver senior citizens, believers of this church. I do not mean to say that if you’re old or weak or tired, there’s nothing you can do, because you can’t stand very strong anymore. No — I think what the Bible means is that no matter how weak you may be physically, because of your age or your physical condition or your disability in some way, that does not mean you cannot stand firm. We stand firm because Christ is strong. You silver senior citizens have a power to wield against the enemy that is great — you have the power of prayer before Almighty God, calling upon him to crush the devil’s lies. I have a 90-year-old mother; she still teaches her old-lady Sunday school class at her church in West Tennessee. Those ladies pray, and I know God in heaven hears their prayers and answers them. My 91-year-old father-in-law, my wife’s father, in Atlanta, Georgia — he and his wife are praying people in their elderly years. They are praying against the evils of the devil. You pray. Church, pray.

Parents, teach your young children God’s word at home. Teach them to fear God, to follow and obey God, and to oppose evil in this world. And as your children are discipled, as the church does its work discipling its children, more and more disciples of the church are raised up in this culture who will defeat the evil of the devil. Part of the reason our nation is in the condition it’s in now, I believe, is a lack of family worship for over a hundred years. When God’s people do not obey him — not teaching their children at home for over a hundred years — what else do you expect than a culture that does not know God and does not fear him? Not only family worship, but also church discipline: over a hundred years of churches not taking sin seriously, not disciplining their own members when they disobey God. What do you expect of a culture that does that? This is what we have. Churches must return to obedience to God.

Verse 11: “Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities.” Verse 11 says stand against the schemes of the devil. What are schemes? The word means deceit, craftiness, trickery, tricks. The devil has many ways of deceiving, many ways of, in his craftiness, tricking and harming people.

You see those schemes throughout the Bible, beginning in Genesis 3, where the serpent appeared in the garden, at the tree, questioning God and his word — “Did God actually say…?” — that is a scheme of the devil. In Genesis 3:4, contradicting God, telling Adam and Eve, “You surely will not die” — God said they would die; Lucifer says they won’t. In 3:5, calling God a liar: “For God knows that when you eat of the tree you will become like him” — as if to say God is a liar. That is a scheme of the devil.

John 8:44: he is the liar and the father of lies. Revelation 12:9: he is the deceiver of the whole world. 2 Corinthians 4:4: he is the one who blinds people’s minds, preventing them from knowing the truth, taking them captive to the darkness. 2 Corinthians 11:14: he appears as an angel of light, disguising himself to lead many astray. 2 Timothy 2:26: he captures people in his deceitful schemes, darkening their minds, capturing them to do his will. And that is what the entire world does — and right now, in the state of Ohio, that is what is happening: he has captured people in his deceitful schemes to do his will.

John 8:44: Satan is a murderer — one of his schemes is murder, linked together with all his other schemes. His original aim was to kill God, and the Son of God, attempting to kill the Lord Jesus at birth, but he failed, because of course God is almighty. And Revelation 12 tells us that when he failed at killing the Son of God, he turned his attention to man, to the earth, to continue his long war against God — because he hates the glory of God and the truth of God — by attacking mankind. Read Revelation 12; it’s very eye-opening.

I believe that is exactly what is happening now through the murderous scheme of the devil of abortion. Abortion is a scheme of the devil — possibly the grossest, most widespread, deadliest of all time. First, Christians must grasp the reality that abortion is not primarily about killing babies. Although it certainly is the killing of babies, that is not Satan’s priority in itself — all murder is his scheme, his craft, aimed at bringing down God. Satan’s scheme is aimed at destroying God himself by destroying those who bear his image. This is why, in Genesis 9, the Bible prescribes the death penalty for anyone who intentionally takes the life of another person — that crime is not primarily against the person, it’s primarily against God in heaven, whose image the person bears. Christians must wage war on abortion because we must oppose Satan’s scheme to defeat God. It’s not a political matter — although politics is involved — this is a matter of worshiping and treasuring God. God does not need our defense, but he has commanded us to stand firm. It’s not because God is weak. Dear brothers and sisters, we must not be weak — we must be strong in his truth.

Where did this come from? Of course, it came from Satan, and he put it into the hands of men and women — women like Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood, who aligned herself with the teachings of Karl Marx, Adolf Hitler, and other socialists who hated God and his truth and embraced the idea of eugenics. One of her board members said these words: “Let us conceive for a moment at least a world not burdened by the weight of dependent and delinquent classes — a total population of mature, intelligent, critical, and expressive men and women, instead of the ignorant, mentally passive class which now forms the barren substratum of our civilization. That would indeed produce a terrestrial paradise.”

You notice the God-hating socialists and communists always promise a paradise without God, and what they always produce is a hell without God — that’s all they produce. Margaret Sanger envisioned a world where the government owned the children and provided everything for all people. She promised a paradise but only produced death. She joined the American socialist movement. If you want to understand what’s happening right now in the world with this resurgence of socialism, trace the roots. Margaret Sanger joined the American Socialist Movement and sought to depopulate the planet, to rid the world of “subpar races” and give everyone sexual freedom. The things you’re hearing today are not new — and they were not new in Margaret Sanger’s day, either. They were new on the day of Genesis 3.

I have a question for you: what has caused the greatest number of human deaths in the history of the world? You might think, well, certainly some terrible disease did it — not even close. Then it must be war — not even close. If you add up the known wars and the deaths from those, it comes to about 570 million deaths due to war. You know how many abortions there have been? We don’t know for sure, but since 1920 — that’s when Russia legalized abortion, the first nation to do so, and others followed — it’s estimated there have been about a billion abortions. That’s twice the number of all wars we know of. The American socialist Margaret Sanger was among those leading our nation and others to do that.

What is murder? Murder is the intentional killing of an innocent person — an attack on a person who bears the image of God, and therefore an attack on the person of God himself. Therefore abortion is maybe the greatest attack ever on the image of God, and that’s why I say it is possibly the worst, grossest, most widespread evil scheme of the devil, and we are called to stand against the schemes of the devil.

But what about things outside the church? They say the church is to deal with things inside the church — Sunday school, communion, baptism, helping the poor — but the things outside the church, the church has to be hands off. You can only keep your worship and your religion inside your walls, inside your home; when you exit your door, you cannot speak. Dear friends, this is not true.

I’ll refer again to Spurgeon’s sermon, “War, War, War.” He called God’s people to fight the Lord’s battles. In his day, slavery had already ended in England, but he began preaching about slavery in the United States, where it was still legal at the time, and he called God’s people to war against the evils present in England of his day — child labor, prostitution, all kinds of evils. He called his church to action, saying: “Go down the dark alley, climb the creaking staircase, penetrate the dens of iniquity where the lion of the pit lies in his death lair, and go ye and pluck out of the mouth of the lion two legs and a piece of an ear, if that be all you can save. Count it always joy to follow the Lamb, to seize him in his den and fight him where he reigns most secure. Protest daily, by act, by word, by pen, by tongue, against evil of every kind and shape. Be as burning and shining lights in the midst of darkness, and as two-edged swords in the mouth of the host of sin. Why, a true Christian, who lives near to God and is filled with grace and is kept holy, may stand in the midst of sinners and do wonders.”

He opposed slavery in the United States, and he was invited by some wealthy people in the United States to come on a preaching tour. Do you know what happened? Do you think Charles Spurgeon, the great preacher, ever visited the United States? It never happened — he never came. You know why? Because Christians in America threatened to murder him, because he opposed the evil of slavery. Imagine that. And thank God slavery was ended.

Should the church preach and address evils outside the church walls? Spurgeon was a good example. Another is William Wilberforce in Parliament in England, who engaged in a decades-long battle against slavery as a Christian in Parliament, taking biblical truth to Parliament to end the evil of slavery. He told England that he believed God would punish England for the sin of slavery if they did not repent, even bringing down the nation. Here’s what he said: “It would be criminal to withhold the declaration that, of all the motives which press upon me to bring this subject before Parliament, that which operates on me with the greatest force is the consideration of the present state and prospects of our country — that the Almighty Creator of the universe governs the world which he has made, that the sufferings of nations are to be regarded as the punishment of national crimes, and their decline and fall as the execution of his sentence.”

Charles Spurgeon said it, William Wilberforce said it: God will punish the nations for their evils against him. And dear friend, I think this nation, this state, must take this to heart. God will punish the wicked. God will send Satan to hell along with all his servants. And church, we must stand against those evils — we must not join them.

We wrestle against not flesh and blood. Look at verse 12: “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore take the armor of God.” We do not wrestle against people — although people are involved, we seek to rescue people, but our work is against Satan himself.

“The rulers, the authorities” — those are angels and demons, Satan himself and all his followers. The authorities, those spiritual powers in high places, have been given power over this present darkness. This would include demons possessed of Satan’s power, and world leaders who serve as agents of those demons and Satan. We are to wrestle against them. The word “wrestle” means to throw your opponent down. Now, Jesus will do that literally, physically, with Lucifer and all his servants. We are not called to physical engagement — we’re called to spiritual and ideological engagement. We’re to throw down the lies of the devil with the truths of God.

How are we to do that? With the power of Christ. Hebrews 2:14 says, “Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery.” Christ died on the cross and rose from the dead to conquer sin and death. It is through his power that we do this, because he is now the enthroned Lord — he is the enthroned King on the throne of heaven. He died, he rose again, and he is enthroned now, ascended back to the Father’s side. That is where he rules and reigns. He is the conquering, reigning King, and so we resist Satan with the weapons of Christ the ruler. The weapons of our warfare are not flesh and blood, but have divine power to destroy strongholds — we destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ (2 Corinthians 10:4).

Verse 13: we are to take up the whole armor of God. I want to point to just one piece: the belt of truth. Put on all the armor of God — but think about the truth. Be prepared with the truth in your own mind, in your own home, in your own church, and in the world. Be prepared to speak the truth and to live and act with the truth against the lies of the devil.

Such as: the unborn baby is not a human person, it’s only a blob of cells. That is a lie from the devil, because he hates God and wants to destroy God’s glory. The unborn baby bears the full image of God and must be protected, as the Constitution of the United States declares, because our founding fathers recognized that all rights come from God in heaven. This only agrees with what the Bible says. And this was said out loud, even by those who support abortion access. Bill Maher — one you can rely on to say something true every once in a while — talked about his shock at how many people who say they believe in protecting the unborn will not stand up to call abortion murder and call for the punishment of those who do it. He called this hypocrisy, and he was right. He finished that part of his monologue by saying, in effect, “Of course babies are humans, of course they are, everybody knows it” — and then said “good riddance” anyway. He’s for allowing it regardless. Christian, let me ask you: do you care? Do you care about the glory of God? Do you care about the enemy who wants to bring God himself down? Of course you do. You must.

There’s the lie that the church has no business in this fight. That’s not true. Look at the prophet Isaiah, the prophet Jeremiah — through God’s prophets, God’s word is spoken condemning the sins of God’s people and the pagan nations around them. God’s judgment will fall on all who disobey him — this nation, any nation, Great Britain, any nation. We must warn all: God’s judgment will come.

Another lie: abortion is necessary, it is healthcare, we must rescue dying mothers. The intentional killing of an innocent person is not healthcare — it is murder. Abortion is the intentional killing of an innocent person; therefore abortion is murder. I think, at the end of the day, everybody knows this. Lucifer himself knows this. Bill Maher, an atheist, knows this. You know this. And we must speak this and not budge.

Others say abortion is necessary in the case of rape. We live in a state where the death penalty has not been exercised in some years — or, well, actually that’s not quite right. The death penalty is exercised about 25,000 times a year in this state. Who’s being executed? The unborn baby, for a crime they did not commit. Think about that. We know it’s murder, and we know the death penalty must be exercised — we’re executing the wrong person. That is a horrific evil, and there are other lies.

This section ends with the gospel of peace, and I want to end with the gospel of peace. There is no way we can stand against the schemes of the devil unless we ourselves have acknowledged to the Lord God that we also joined forces along with Adam and Eve in the garden. They joined forces with Lucifer to stand against the glory of God. Every one of us joined forces with Lucifer as well, seeking our own will, living in our own sins to please ourselves, to disobey God — and we would all be cast into hell along with Lucifer, except that Christ died for our sins.

If you have confessed your sins to Jesus, he has forgiven you for your rebellion and your hatred of his glory, and he has saved you, forgiving your sins and making you righteous in Christ. Now eternal life is yours — you will not be cast into the abyss with Lucifer. You’ll receive eternal life. Dear friend, anyone in the room — if you have not yet confessed your sins and repented, submitting yourself to the Lord Jesus, believing the gospel and following Christ, your sins have not yet been forgiven, and you will be punished along with Lucifer. So today, dear friend, if you’re not saved, you must confess your sins. You must trust Christ. You must be saved. And if you will confess, he will save you today. Will you do that?

Let’s pray. Dear Jesus, I pray that every person in this room will submit themselves to you. If anyone in this room now is not saved, Lord, tug their heart, pull them, make them see, convict them, make them want to repent. Dear Lord God, save them. And God, I pray you would empower us, empower your church, to go and preach the gospel to all people and stand against the devil’s lies, for your glory, Jesus. We pray in your name. Amen.

Here at PBC, we work our way through books of the Bible a little bit at a time, and today we find ourselves continuing on in our series through Kings. We are in 1 Kings chapter 12 this morning. So if you brought a Bible to church this morning, point your Bible to 1 Kings 12. If you’re not super familiar with the Bible, that’s going to be toward the beginning of the Bible — look for the book called 1 Kings, and big chapter number 12.

Let me go ahead and pray. As the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there, but water the earth and make it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower, bread for the eater, so your word will go forth from your mouth: it will not return back to you void or empty, but it will accomplish the purpose for which you have given it, and it will succeed in what you have sent it to do. Here we are, O Lord, eaters of your bread, and here I am, sower of your seed. For the grass withers and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord remains forever. Amen.

Here’s the central claim that I’ll be making this morning: abandoning God’s word brings ruin, but trusting and obeying God’s word through Christ leads to true life and joy and flourishing. I’ll trust that you’ll see that as we work our way through this passage this morning.

The Bible reveals that God is full of love and joy and mercy and grace, and that he created a kingdom in which mankind is meant to glorify him and enjoy him forever. He gave his word, the Scriptures, sort of like the laws of the land, to tell his people how to glorify him, how to enjoy him, how to live life in his kingdom, and to spread infectious joy to the nations of the world. His word protects his people from all of the things that would prevent them from enjoying him and the life that he has made for them to live.

God gave them leaders, kings, who were to keep God’s word and to help God’s people keep God’s word, to glorify him and delight themselves in him, and to spread infectious joy to the nations of the world. These kings were meant to protect God’s people from all that would ruin and all that would spoil their enjoyment of the God who made them. But the kings failed to do this. The kings acted in their own interests and boasted in their own glory. And instead of protecting God’s people from ruining their joy in God, the kings led God’s people into the very thing that ruined their joy in God. And the people were sent into exile in Babylon. Kings is their story.

The first eleven chapters of 1 Kings chronicle the rise and fall of the king who was most likely to succeed — Solomon the wise, the son of David. And as we have seen already in this series, Solomon had it all. He had wisdom like no man before or since. He had riches like no king before or since. Power, political might. But as we saw last Lord’s Day, Solomon, in his old age, abandoned the word of the Lord. We saw last week how he loved many foreign women, and they turned his heart away from the Lord. And before King Solomon died, the Lord came to him and said, “I’m taking the kingdom and giving it to another.” He told him that his kingdom would be divided.

Chapter 12 of 1 Kings is the fulfillment of God’s promise. And we’re introduced to two men with similar enough names that it can get a bit confusing — so by God’s grace I’ll try to help you keep these two men separate. We have a man called Rehoboam, who’s Solomon’s son, grew up in the palace, rightful heir to the throne of Israel. And you have Jeroboam, who is Solomon’s servant — the man that God said would take the kingdom away from Solomon (well, the majority of the kingdom anyway).

This text that we’re considering this morning is going to show us how abandoning God’s word will never lead to human flourishing, human joy, and the glory of God. It will teach us that all who abandon God’s word and tamper with God’s word bring destruction on themselves and on others. And therefore a text like this one sends us forward in time to find the King who did succeed — the King who did keep God’s word, the King who suffered the ruin of his people’s disobedience of God’s word, the King in whom sinners will find their enjoyment and delight and pleasure forevermore.

Three parts as we work our way through these three chapters.

Let’s pick up reading, chapter 12, verse 1 — remember, we’re going to try to keep these two men apart, Rehoboam and Jeroboam:

“Rehoboam went to Shechem, for all Israel had come to Shechem to make him king. And as soon as Jeroboam the son of Nebat heard of it (for he was still in Egypt, where he had fled from King Solomon), then Jeroboam returned from Egypt, and they sent and called him. And Jeroboam and all the assembly of Israel came and said to Rehoboam, ‘Your father made our yoke heavy. Now therefore lighten the hard service of your father and his heavy yoke on us, and we will serve you.’ Rehoboam said to them, ‘Go away for three days, then come again to me.’ So the people went away.”

Verse 6: “Then King Rehoboam took counsel with the old men who had stood before Solomon his father while he was yet alive, saying, ‘How do you advise me to answer this people?’ And they said to him, ‘If you will be a servant to this people today and serve them, and speak good words to them, then they will be your servants forever.’ But he abandoned the counsel that the old men gave him and took counsel with the young men who had grown up with him and stood before him. And he said to them, ‘What do you advise that we answer this people who have said to me, “Lighten the yoke that your father put on us”?'”

Verse 10: “And the young men who had grown up with him said to him, ‘Thus shall you speak to this people who said to you, “Your father made our yoke heavy, but you lighten it for us” — thus shall you say to them, “My little finger is thicker than my father’s thighs. And now, whereas my father laid on you a heavy yoke, I will add to your yoke. My father disciplined you with whips, but I will discipline you with scorpions.”‘”

“So Jeroboam and all the people came to Rehoboam the third day, as the king said, ‘Come to me again the third day.’ And the king answered the people harshly, and forsaking the counsel that the old men had given him, he spoke to them according to the counsel of the young men, saying, ‘My father made your yoke heavy, but I will add to your yoke; my father disciplined you with whips, but I will discipline you with scorpions.’ So the king did not listen to the people, for it was a turn of affairs brought about by the Lord, that he might fulfill his word, which the Lord spoke by Ahijah the Shilonite to Jeroboam the son of Nebat.”

Now remember — we’ve discussed this a number of times in this series. It’s important, when you’re trying to understand what’s happening in this book, to remember to whom it was written. This book was written to a people long after the events happening in this book, after the people of Israel have been kicked out of the land because of their disobedience to God. They’re sitting, languishing in exile in Babylon, wondering, as you might, “How in the world did we get here?” The book of Kings was written to answer that question. This is that story. Solomon set the wedge, and these are the boys who drove the sledgehammer.

Let’s start with Rehoboam. Rehoboam was Solomon’s son. Upon his father’s death he becomes king. Rehoboam is a king’s kid — he grew up in the palace, he wears fancy clothes and drinks from golden scepters. He has soft hands and probably beautiful feathered hair. The other guy, Jeroboam, is not royalty at all — he’s just a guy, a blue-collar project manager with a ball cap. He was in charge of the labor force that Solomon had raised to build the things that Solomon built. Jeroboam, blue-collar, man of the people, hears that Rehoboam is now king, and — we just read — he comes home from Egypt.

What in the world is he doing in Egypt? Well, if you were with us last week, you know God came to Solomon and said, “The kingdom is going to be taken from you and given to another.” Jeroboam is the other. And when Solomon hears that, Solomon goes after him — he’s a threat to the kingdom. So Jeroboam flees from the mad king and finds safety hiding in Egypt. And as soon as Solomon dies, Jeroboam, blue-collar ball-cap guy, comes home. Out of Egypt he comes — a man of the people, a man for the people, a man to deliver the people from the oppressor. And he tells the king in verse 4, “Your father made our yoke heavy — will you lighten the load, and then we’ll serve you?” It’s almost as if you can hear Jeroboam saying, “Let my people go.” Echoes of days gone by.

The king says, “You fellas, go away — give me a few days to think about it and come back.” Rehoboam, palace boy, soft hands, pretty clothes, feathered hair, goes to his father’s advisers, the old men, and says, “What should I tell these people?” And the old men, in their wisdom, say, “Well, you should lighten the load. It is a heavy load. The kingdom is flourishing — let’s lighten the load a little. You serve them, and they’ll serve you.” Well, a king’s kid doesn’t like that word, “serve.” And so he goes to the young men — which, by the way, when the Bible says “young men,” these men are probably in their forties. Rehoboam is in his forties; he’s a “young man” because he’s immature. He goes to the young men and says, “Well, what do you say? The old men said I should serve the people — what do you say?” And the young men say, “Lighten the load? You’re the king — serve them? No — they serve you. Tell them your pinky finger is thicker than your father’s thigh.”

And by the way, your English translation has softened the language here — the phrase for “little finger” is likely referring to a different part of the male anatomy. These men are being childish. They’re being crass. Well, they grew up in the palace. Rehoboam takes their advice, tells the people, “I’m not going to lighten your load — I’m going to increase your load.” Do you remember when Moses went to Pharaoh and told him, “My people have a burden — lighten the burden, let my people go”? Do you remember what Pharaoh did? Increased the load. Rehoboam is the new Pharaoh. Echoes of days gone by, looking for the new Moses. The king hardens his heart, refuses to let the people go.

Verse 15 is a fascinating little verse. It tells us that this turn of affairs was brought about by the Lord, in fulfillment of God’s word. Did Rehoboam act freely in this matter? Yes. Could he have acted otherwise? No — because that’s just how it works when you have a God who is sovereign over all things. He has control of the hearts and desires of men. That is all that blue-collar ball-cap Jeroboam needed. He didn’t even need to start a civil war — he just needed old Rehoboam, Pinky Finger, to do what Pinky Finger does. The people seceded all on their own; he didn’t have to do anything. God’s word was fulfilled exactly as God had foretold.

Ten tribes secede — Israel was made up of twelve tribes, and ten tribes to the north secede, leaving Rehoboam. Two tribes to the south, Judah and Benjamin, remain with Rehoboam, the son of Solomon, the son of David. Well, if you’re a king who grew up in the king’s palace, you’re not going to take that — “You don’t secede from my kingship.” And so Rehoboam sends in muscle, sends a man to force the people back in line, and they kill the messenger. And they make Jeroboam, ball-cap, blue-collar guy, king over ten tribes.

Well, again, Pinky Finger doesn’t handle that well. He gathers his father’s army together, and he’s going to invade and bring the people back to himself — he’s the rightful king. So we are on the verge of a civil war. And the Lord spares the country from a civil war — he comes to Rehoboam and says, “This is from me. I did this. Calm down.” Now there’s not much to commend about the man Rehoboam, but here is one thing: he submitted to God’s word and spared God’s people a civil war. At least at this point he did — at least he recognized that if he were to fight Jeroboam, he would be fighting against God’s plan. Nevertheless, the kingdom is divided, all due to the pride of man. As I said, Solomon set the wedge, and these boys drove the sledgehammer that split the log.

Now the focus of our text shifts to blue-collar ball-cap Jeroboam. God had instructed him back in chapter 11 that if he were to obey God’s word when God gave him the kingdom, God would settle him and establish him and prosper him, and the people would prosper — “Do obey my commandments and you will be blessed.” Now we get to see how old Jeroboam does. This brings us to our second point: a man invents a new religion.

Let’s pick up reading in verse 25. 1 Kings 12:25: “Then Jeroboam built Shechem in the hill country of Ephraim and lived there. And he went out from there and built Penuel. And Jeroboam said in his heart, ‘Now the kingdom will turn back to the house of David. If this people go up to offer sacrifices in the temple of the Lord at Jerusalem, then the heart of this people will turn again to their lord, to Rehoboam king of Judah, and they will kill me and return to Rehoboam king of Judah.'”

“So the king took counsel and made two calves of gold. And he said to the people, ‘You have gone up to Jerusalem long enough. Behold your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.’ And he set one in Bethel, and the other he put in Dan. Then this thing became a sin, for the people went as far as Dan to be before one. He also made temples on high places and appointed priests from among all the people, who were not of the Levites. And Jeroboam appointed a feast on the fifteenth day of the eighth month, like the feast that was in Judah, and he offered sacrifices on the altar. So he did in Bethel, sacrificing to the calves that he had made, and he placed in Bethel the priests of the high places that he had made. He went up to the altar that he had made in Bethel on the fifteenth day of the eighth month, in the month that he had devised from his own heart, and he instituted a feast for the people of Israel and went up to the altar to make offerings.”

A man invents a new religion. The northern kingdom was probably three to four times the size of the southern kingdom, so old blue-collar ball-cap Jeroboam has a pretty big job on his hands. Up to this point, Jeroboam has been presented as a man a bit like Moses — he comes out of Egypt, he comes asking to relieve the burden on the people, he comes with a declaration that the people need to be delivered from a heavy hand. But here we see that he is not a new Moses. Here he goes in another direction. Here we see that this king is riddled with insecurity.

The temple of Yahweh was in the south, in Jerusalem, which is Rehoboam’s territory. And Jeroboam feared that if his people had to keep traveling back to Jerusalem, which they were supposed to do three times a year, their hearts would turn back to their true king, the king of Judah, the son of David — and then Jeroboam would lose everything; they’d kill him. But don’t you remember, from chapter 11, it was God himself who came to Jeroboam and said, “If you listen to my word, I will establish you”? But Jeroboam doesn’t believe God’s word. And so he devises a plan. And by the way, this plan is politically shrewd, practically good, but theologically a disaster.

Two golden calves. He puts one near the northern border, in the city of Dan. He puts one near the southern border, in the city of Bethel. Worship made convenient — if you live toward the north, you go to the north; if you live toward the south, you go to the south. And this way, nobody has to go to Jerusalem and spend their money there. Because when God’s word doesn’t align with your ideas and plans, your own objectives — well, just change God’s word. It’s that simple. He tells the people, “You’ve gone up to Jerusalem long enough. I’ll make it more convenient for you. I’ll put a place of worship closer by, so you don’t have to travel so far.” And then listen to what he says: “Behold your gods, O Israel, who delivered you out of Egypt.”

Where have we heard those words before? About 500 years before Jeroboam is born, Yahweh delivered his people out of slavery in Egypt and brought them to himself at a mountain called Sinai. And the deliverer, Moses, goes up the mountain to receive instructions from the Lord, and he’s up there a while, and the people get impatient — “Where’s this man Moses?” And so they convince their insecure leader, a man called Aaron, to make them a golden calf. Aaron listens to the people, builds the golden calf, puts it in front of the people, and listen to what the people say: “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.” Echoes — that’s the very same thing Jeroboam said, isn’t it?

And that makes what Jeroboam is doing wrong in so many ways. In the Bible, God told his people how they were to worship him. There is one God, and the first commandment forbade worshiping any other god, all the false gods of the pagan nations. The second commandment forbade the use of images and icons and symbols in worship. And Jeroboam goes next-level — he makes not only new objects of worship, he makes a new place of worship, he makes his own priesthood (the priesthood was supposed to come from the tribe of Levi; he’s like, “I’ll get my own guys”), he makes new holy days, new festivals. He’s making an entirely new religion — a religion of the people, for the people. And Jeroboam replaced the worship of Yahweh with one that verse 33 says he devised “from his own heart.”

Now, politically, this is brilliant, because this is how you retain political and economic control. Give them objects in their worship — people love objects, but we don’t like this God we can’t see; we need something we can see and touch and feel and smell. We like icons and symbols; the pagan nations all have that. Keep the people out of Jerusalem so they won’t spend their money there — they’ll spend it in my kingdom. We’ll make the holy places nearby, make the worship of God easier and more convenient, more appealing to the modern Israelite. It’s brilliant. But as I said, theologically it is a disaster.

Jeroboam abandons God’s word and does things his own way. But do you understand that when God speaks, he’s not making suggestions? We don’t have to wonder how God would be worshiped — the worship of God is regulated by the word of God; Scripture regulates the worship of God. So no man has the right to add something into the corporate worship of God without positive biblical warrant. Doing so is at the very least subtraction by addition, and at worst it’s the manufacturing of a new religion. Jeroboam, having abandoned the word of the Lord, is judged by the word of the Lord.

And now we come to chapter 13, where we see that God sends a man to Jeroboam with a word from the Lord. And as we will see in this chapter, the man himself becomes the message. This brings us to our third and final point: God will not be mocked.

Chapter 13, verse 1: “And behold, a man of God came out of Judah by the word of the Lord to Bethel. Jeroboam was standing by the altar to make offerings. And the man cried against the altar by the word of the Lord and said, ‘O altar, altar, thus says the Lord: “Behold, a son shall be born to the house of David, Josiah by name, and he shall sacrifice on you the priests of the high places who make offerings on you, and human bones shall be burned on you.”‘ And he gave a sign that same day, saying, ‘This is the sign that the Lord has spoken: behold, the altar shall be torn down, and the ashes on it shall be poured out.’ And when the king heard this saying of the man of God, which he cried against the altar at Bethel, Jeroboam stretched out his hand from the altar, saying, ‘Seize him!’ And his hand, which he stretched out against him, dried up, so that he could not draw it back to himself.”

Remember the original audience — we are hundreds of years later, in the sixth century BC, sitting beside a river in Babylon, reading for the first time, “How in the world did we get here, in this exile?” And the author of Kings, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, gives us this story about this man of God to explain how we got here, in this place, in exile.

An unnamed man of God comes out of Judah, comes to Bethel, where King Jeroboam is participating in false worship. And he confronts this false worshiper with the word of the Lord, pronouncing God’s judgment against this unsanctioned altar, in this unsanctioned place, under this unsanctioned king, in this unsanctioned manner. Jeroboam stretches out his hand against the man, and his hand is dried up, and he can’t even move it — the hand that made so many things is lifeless.

Verse 6: Jeroboam, seeing his hand tied up like that, asks the man of God, “Pray for me, that I may get my hand back.” And he does, and God is merciful, and gives him his hand back. So the king is happy about this — probably happy that he has his hand back, but also happy that this guy could be useful in his kingdom. So he invites him to his home. Look at verse 9: the man of God refuses, saying that it came to him by the command of the Lord: “You shall neither eat bread nor drink water nor return by the way that you came.” So the man of God tells the king, “I can’t come back to your house — God told me I can’t eat food here, I can’t drink water here, and I’m not to go home the same way I came; I’m going to go a different way.” And so the man of God refuses the king and returns home by a different way.

Now, if you read this passage before you came to church today, which I hope you did, you probably noticed there’s some strange stuff about to happen in this story. An old prophet from Bethel, which is where Jeroboam is worshiping, hears about this unnamed man of God, and he saddles his donkey and invites this man of God to come to his house. So the king invited him — he said no, because God said he couldn’t. But this prophet comes and says, “Will you come to my house?” And the man of God says, “I can’t — God told me I don’t eat, I don’t drink here, I go home by a different way.” Look at verse 18: the old prophet lies to him. He says, “I also am a prophet, just like you, and an angel of the Lord spoke to me, saying, ‘Bring that guy back to your house so that he can eat bread and drink water.'”

Well, the unnamed man of God concedes. They sit down at the table, eating their food, drinking their water, and the Lord speaks through that prophet and tells him that because the unnamed man of God did not listen to God’s word, he will die, and he will be buried away from his father’s tombs. So the man of God saddles his donkey and heads home for Judah, and on the way he is attacked by a lion and killed. And the old prophet from Bethel finds the man — his body dead but uneaten, the donkey unharmed, the lion just sitting there. And he takes the man’s body and brings it back to Bethel and buries it.

If that story wasn’t strange enough, the old prophet then calls his sons to him and says, “When I finally die and you’re preparing for my funeral arrangements, I want to be buried with that man of God — I want to be buried in the same tomb.” In fact he says, “Lay my bones by his bones.” So you’re reading this thinking, “What in the world?”

Skip down to verse 33. Chapter 13:33: “After this thing, Jeroboam did not turn from his evil way, but made priests for the high places again from among the people; any who would, he ordained to be priests of the high places.” Verse 34: “And this thing became sin to the house of Jeroboam, so as to cut it off and to destroy it from the face of the earth.”

Let me help you be a better Bible reader, especially of the Old Testament. Did you catch the repetition of the phrases about Jeroboam making high places, making priests, and then the strangely worded phrase, “this thing became sin”? If you look closely, you’ll notice we just read those same three things back in chapter 12, verses 30 and 31, in reverse order — they appeared in chapter 12:30–31, and then again in chapter 13:33–34. What the author of Kings is doing is bracketing this story for you as a reader, telling you: look here, in between. And remember, this book is written to explain how we got to the place we are, in Babylon, in exile — and the author is bracketing this story because there’s something about it he wants us, the readers, specifically those in exile, to see.

The first thing should be the most obvious: when you look through chapter 13, you see the phrase “the word of the Lord” appears eleven times in that one chapter. The phrase “the way” appears eight times. The word that gets translated in your Bible as “return” or “turn back” appears sixteen times. And then the section ends with what we just read: Jeroboam disobeying the word of the Lord by not turning back from the way.

This is brilliant writing from the divine author of Kings. This story is telling the original audience: you are the man of God from Judah. This is why he is unnamed. You, Judah, were sent with the word of the Lord to confront the false worship of the pagan nations. You were told not to eat and drink like the pagan nations. You were told not to go back to Egypt the way you came, but to go by another way, God’s way. But like this man, you abandoned the word of God and were led astray by false prophets — angels preaching another gospel, if you will. You therefore have been judged, and you therefore will be buried away from your fathers’ tombs.

This is brilliant writing. The word of the Lord stands forever. God will not be mocked. This passage teaches us that no matter who you are — a man of God, a prophet of God, a king of God — God’s word stands above you, and God’s word must be obeyed. If you are to have life and flourish in life, and have peace and joy in life, the word of God must be obeyed.

Jeroboam does not end well. I wish we had time to go through all of this, but his son gets sick, which is very sad, and he attempts to trick an old prophet — the same prophet who told him he would get ten of the tribes of Israel. He tries to bribe him to give a favorable word about his son. But the prophet is a good prophet and speaks a true word to the king, telling him the bad news that’s coming: his son is going to die, and because he cast the Lord behind his back, all the men of the house of Jeroboam will be cut off, and Jeroboam will become a poster child for the type of king who abandons the word of the Lord and goes his own way. In the weeks ahead, as we work our way through the book of Kings, you’re going to see there’s going to be plenty of those guys.

Then we come back to old prideful Pinky Finger, Rehoboam. He does not fare well either, because under Rehoboam’s leadership Judah does what is evil in the sight of the Lord, provokes the Lord to jealousy with idolatry, with male cult prostitution — which, just for a point of clarity, because of the day in which we live, is a bad thing.

We’ll end our reading today in chapter 14, verses 25–28: “In the fifth year of King Rehoboam, Shishak king of Egypt came up against Jerusalem, and he took away the treasures of the house of the Lord and the treasures of the king’s house — he took away everything. He also took away the shields of gold that Solomon had made. And King Rehoboam made in their place shields of bronze, and committed them to the hands of the officers of the guard, who kept the door of the king’s house. And as often as the king went into the house of the Lord, the guard carried them and brought them back to the guard room.”

Remember last week, all the gold that kept pouring into Israel under Solomon’s reign — one year he got 666 talents of gold, some 50,000 pounds of gold, something like three and a half billion dollars’ worth of gold in a single year. He had all his stuff plated with gold. And now it’s gone. The glory of Solomon is fading, and quick — the body of Solomon is barely cold, and these people who once plundered the Egyptians are now being plundered by the Egyptians, and all the gold is gone. That invasion must have rattled Rehoboam — you see how he spent the rest of his days shielded by soldiers wherever he went. This is the fate of all who disobey the word of the Lord.

Three men in our passage today — two kings and a man of God — and all three suffer the same condition. All three placed themselves above God’s word. All three, hearts swollen with pride. Three hearts that did not tremble at God’s word.

Rehoboam, king, son of David, swollen with pride, surrounding himself with people who could never tell him no, abandoned the word of the Lord. He was a fool — he couldn’t see it, and nobody around him would tell him he’s a fool, but everyone else knew it. They always do. And as soon as Pharaoh in Egypt saw weakness, he pounced, and Rehoboam spent the rest of his life in fear.

Jeroboam, blue-collar man of the people with a ball cap, insecure, rather than believing God’s word, makes power grabs, invents a new religion more suitable to himself and others to consolidate power and control, and turns away from God — becomes a byword for all who rebel against God and are judged.

The third man, the man of God, is obedient at first, but he’s undiscerning and careless, and his own life becomes a parable of hypocrisy. He came to Bethel and said, “Thou shalt” — but then thou didn’t. He became a parable for the kind of person who speaks God’s word but then doesn’t keep God’s word.

So for those of us who are here who are like Rehoboam, swollen with our own sense of self-importance, thinking more highly of ourselves than we ought — for those who are here who are like Jeroboam, who’ve tampered with God’s word, trying to make it more palatable, more appealing to yourself and to modern sensibilities — for those here who are like the man of God, who pronounce judgment on others and then practice the very same things — and for those here who are more like me, an unholy combination of all three — let me introduce you to another King, another man of God.

Jesus Christ left the glory of heaven to serve, not to be served. Jesus Christ did not invent new worship; he restored right worship. Jesus Christ spoke the word of God, kept the word of God, is the word of God. Jesus Christ laid down his life on a cross to suffer the judgment of sin for all the Rehoboams and Jeroboams and hypocrites of every kind who turn to him in faith. Jesus’s death and resurrection and ascension to the Father mean you don’t need to suffer the fate of the men in this passage. Instead, PBC, you can be restored to right relationship with God. You can receive your true purpose in life. You can glorify God and enjoy him forever.

In Christ, friends, insecurities melt away. There’s no more fear when you see how fully you have been accepted and loved by your Father in Christ. You can do what Rehoboam wouldn’t do — you can serve those the Lord has entrusted to you without fear of being misused or seen as weak. In Christ, you can do what Jeroboam wouldn’t do — you can worship God rightly and lead others to do the same. All that you have is from the Lord, and you need not fear anyone taking it away — the Lord gives, the Lord takes away, blessed be the name of the Lord. In Christ, you can do what the man of God from Judah wouldn’t do — you can lean your life fully upon God’s inherent word. You can put the full weight of your problems and your fears and your anxieties and your concerns on God’s word, without ever being blown about by every wind of doctrine, unsettled when you come across a podcast or a YouTube channel or a TikToker who says, “I’m a prophet of God too.”

PBC, seek out the good life that God has made you to live — the life of joy and delight in bringing glory to God the Father, and allowing your joy in God to become infectious to those around you. And you’ll find this life prescribed for you and protected for you in the words of this book. Because the grass withers and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord remains forever.

Let’s pray. Father, receive our thanks for speaking to us. Give us ears to hear, eyes to see. Amen.

I just want to say to everyone how thankful I am for the privilege that you give to me, as one of the pastors here, to be able to open God’s word with you every week, and to look at what God has said to his people, and to rejoice in who God is to his people. It is truly one of the great privileges of my life to be one of the pastors of this church.

We continue on in our series in 1 Kings, a book that we have been working on for a few weeks, and we find ourselves in 1 Kings chapter 9. Here at PBC, we work our way through books of the Bible a little bit at a time, and we are working through the book of Kings together. We find ourselves in chapter 9. So if you have a Bible, please point your Bible to 1 Kings 9. Today we will be considering verses 9 through 11.

The main point that I’ll be making today, the central claim that I will seek to make from the text this morning, is this: King Solomon fails in his role, so God’s people must look beyond him to the King who was faithful, Jesus Christ, in whom they receive every covenant blessing.

Let’s pray. May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing to you, O Lord. I do not have the words of eternal life. I do not have the words that your people need to hear this morning. And so I ask, O Lord, that you would do by the power of your Holy Spirit what I cannot, which is speak through your word. For those who are afflicted, comfort them; for those who are comfortable, afflict them. Draw them ever more to the true reality of the glory of Jesus Christ, who is our faithful King. Give us ears to hear. For the grass withers and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord remains forever. Amen.

There is something in musical theory called a Shepard Tone. Three notes are played at the same time across multiple octaves — a low note, a middle note, and a high note, all played at once — and they slide up in pitch. And when the highest note gets too high to hear, a lower note sneaks in beneath and replaces it. But your brain can’t register the switch. And so what you hear is this pitch rising and rising and rising, even though it never does. It’s an illusion — sort of like a barber’s pole, where the stripes seem to be going up and up and up, but in fact they’re just spinning in a loop.

You have probably heard a Shepard Tone. Movie makers use it to build suspense and to engender feelings of panic. It makes you feel like something big is about to happen. Christopher Nolan movies do this a lot — if you’ve seen movies like Dunkirk, The Dark Knight, Inception, and Interstellar, all of these movies use a Shepard Tone.

Solomon’s kingdom is a bit of a Shepard Tone. If you’ve been with us in this series, then you know we’ve already read how Solomon has risen to power. He’s risen in wealth. He’s risen in wisdom. And in today’s passage, we will see Solomon’s glory continuing to rise — or at least that’s how it appears. That’s how it sounds. Because we’re so used to grading glory by the world’s standards, we see Solomon rising and we think he is rising. But in actual fact, Solomon’s glory is a barber’s pole, a Shepard Tone. It looks like it’s ascending, but it’s a trick. The wisest man becomes the greatest fool. And this passage keeps us in suspense, looking for and longing for the one whose glory is true, the one whose rise is true, whose rise is infinite. This passage keeps us looking and longing for the one who is greater than Solomon.

We have a lot to cover in 45 minutes — four movements in this text. I’ll give them to you as we go.

1 Kings 9:1: “As soon as Solomon had finished building the house of the Lord, the king’s house, and all that Solomon desired to build, the Lord appeared to Solomon a second time, as he appeared to him at Gibeon. And the Lord said to him, ‘I have heard your prayer and your plea, which you have made before me. I have consecrated this house that you have built, by putting my name there forever. My eyes and my heart will be there for all time. And as for you, if you will walk before me, as David your father walked, with integrity of heart and uprightness, doing according to all that I have commanded you, and keeping my statutes and my rules, then I will establish your royal throne over Israel forever, as I promised David your father, saying, “You shall not lack a man on the throne of Israel.” But if you turn aside from following me, you or your children, and do not keep my commandments and my statutes that I have set before you, but go and serve other gods and worship them, then I will cut off Israel from the land that I have given them, and the house that I have consecrated for my name I will cast out of my sight, and Israel will become a proverb and a byword among all peoples. And this house will become a heap of ruins; everyone passing by it will be astonished and will hiss, and they will say, “Why has the Lord done thus to this land and to this house?” Then they will say, “Because they abandoned the Lord their God, who brought their fathers out of the land of Egypt, and laid hold of other gods and worshiped them and served them; therefore the Lord has brought all this disaster on them.”‘”

Solomon becomes king — we saw this last week — and he just begins building things. Now, that’s not for amusement. It’s not a side project. Solomon building things is a fulfillment of his divine purpose. It is God’s purpose for him. It is God’s purpose through him. He is the son of David. By taking the throne of his father David, by building a house to the Lord, Solomon shows that he is not just David’s son, but he’s also God’s son. Yahweh had come to David and said that his son would be God’s son. And Solomon, fulfilling the role that God gave to David, is Solomon fulfilling the role that God gave to Israel, fulfilling the role that God gave to Abraham, fulfilling the role that God gave to Adam, the first man. There are 3,000 years of redemptive history packed into these first eleven chapters of 1 Kings.

When Yahweh delivered his people Israel out of slavery in Egypt, he spoke to Moses. He told Moses, “You tell Pharaoh this: Israel is my firstborn son; let my son go, that he may serve me.” And so God delivered Israel out by his mighty hand, and he called them to himself in the wilderness, and he initiated a covenant with them. Now, if you’re new to Christianity, we keep using this word covenant — I’m really sorry about that. What we mean by that is an agreement. Covenant is a fancy Bible word that just means an agreement between two parties, with terms and conditions — blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience. God enters into an agreement, a covenant, with his people. They’re to keep his statutes. They’re to be his people. They’re to walk uprightly before him and do all that he has commanded, and he will reveal himself to the rest of the world through them.

But Israel failed to keep that covenant. And so God narrowed the scope and said, in effect, “Let Israel have a king, and let the king represent all the people. If the king keeps my law, if the king walks before me with integrity of heart and does all that I command him, then I will bless the entire nation, and I will establish my justice and my righteousness, and I will call the nations to come and see and hear and believe.”

Solomon was supposed to be that king. There’s all sorts of expectation that he will be that king. So far, almost all the evidence that we have read up to this point points to the fact that Solomon is that king. He’s built the house of the Lord, and the Lord endorsed the building of the house with the glory of his presence.

Halfway into his reign — Solomon reigns for 40 years, and 20 years into his reign — the Lord appears to him for a second time. In verse 3, God says, “I’m putting my name here forever. My eyes and my heart will be in this place for all time” — unless, verses 6 to 13, unless the king fails. Verses 6–13 are a warning, and there is a lot riding on this man Solomon. So long as the king follows the Lord and keeps the commandments of the Lord, the statutes of the Lord, everything’s good — the people will be blessed, the nations will come. But if the king fails, breaks the covenant, breaks the agreement, if the king goes and serves other gods, then Yahweh will remove his hand of blessing from the people. Israel will be removed from the land. Rather than being a light to the nations, God says they will become a scorn, a mockery among the nations. They’ll become an omen of God’s judgment.

The rest of chapter 9 and chapter 10 are the rising tones of Solomon’s glory. He continues to build. He is blessed by God with fabulous, unimaginable wealth. Politically speaking, this man is formidable — scary powerful business partners enter into agreements with Solomon, and if they don’t like the terms and conditions, there’s nothing they can do about it. He’s that powerful. He walks into an agreement, he makes the terms and conditions, and you can’t do anything about it. He’s got all the money. He’s got all the power. This is the fame of this king. His wealth, his glory — it is on the rise, and we feel pulled into it. Let’s take a look.

1 Kings 10:1: “Now when the queen of Sheba heard of the fame of Solomon concerning the name of the Lord, she came to test him with hard questions. She came to Jerusalem with a very great retinue, with camels bearing spices and very much gold and precious stones. And when she came to Solomon, she told him all that was on her mind, and Solomon answered all her questions; there was nothing hidden from the king that he could not explain to her. And when the queen of Sheba had seen all the wisdom of Solomon, the house that he had built, the food of his table, the seating of his officials, the attendance of his servants, their clothing, his cupbearers, and his burnt offerings that he offered at the house of the Lord, there was no more breath in her. And she said to the king, ‘The report was true that I heard in my own land of your words and of your wisdom, but I did not believe them until I came and my own eyes had seen it, and behold, the half was not told me. Your wisdom and prosperity surpass the report that I heard. Happy are your men! Happy are your servants, who continually stand before you and hear your wisdom! Blessed be the Lord your God, who has delighted in you and set you on the throne of Israel! Because the Lord loved Israel forever, he has made you king, that you may execute justice and righteousness.’ Then she gave the king 120 talents of gold, and a very great quantity of spices and precious stones. Never again came such an abundance of spices as those that the queen of Sheba gave to King Solomon.”

Sheba is maybe modern-day Yemen, possibly Ethiopia. The queen hears of Solomon’s great wisdom and great wealth, and she is intrigued, and she comes to see. She brings with her an entourage of camels and spices and gold and precious stones. She comes bringing questions, and Solomon answers all of the queen’s questions, and she sees Solomon’s blessings and the blessings of God on the kingdom. She sees the wisdom of Solomon and the house that he has built. The Bible says she sees his food and his officials and his servants, their clothing, and the offerings that Solomon is making to the Lord, and she has never seen anything like this. It takes her breath away. And she says, in effect, “I heard that you were like this and I didn’t believe it, and now that I’m here and seeing it, I realize not even half of what I’ve heard is true — it’s way more.”

And notice verse 9: “Blessed be the Lord your God.” She’s giving praise to Yahweh, who has delighted in Solomon and set him on the throne of Israel. God loved Israel and put him on the throne to establish justice and righteousness on earth. Do you see how the author of Kings wants us to realize that Solomon is the fulfillment of the promises of that agreement God made with Israel? Be my people, follow my commandments — justice and righteousness will be established, the nations will come. What’s happening here? The king is on the throne, justice and righteousness are established, he has wisdom like no one else, riches like no one else, and the nations come.

In his earthly ministry, the Lord Jesus used the queen of Sheba as a positive example of someone who seeks to hear God’s word. The queen had a little bit of knowledge about who God was and what God was like, and what God’s king was like, and she traveled a very far distance, at great expense to herself, to learn. So if you’re here and you’re not a Christian, you’re going to see that Solomon is going to fail. But Jesus will come and do what Solomon failed to do. You need to see that there is someone greater than Solomon here. In Jesus Christ you will find out who God truly is. You will see that God is merciful and gracious and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. Jesus goes to the cross to suffer the penalty of sin, and on the third day God raises him from the dead, to forgive sins and to reconcile sinners to God. This is the thing that God wants you to see. Be like the queen of Sheba — take the little information that you have heard and keep pursuing. Take this Bible home. If you don’t have a Bible, there are some stacked up on a table in the back. Take one with you. Open up the Gospel of Mark and begin reading it. Begin pursuing this King, and learn.

The queen leaves Solomon with roughly 9,000 pounds of gold, which is a lot — huge amounts of spices and precious stones as well. And as much as 9,000 pounds of gold is, it’s just a fraction of the amount of gold that is brought to Solomon. In one year, the Bible says the king received almost 50,000 pounds of gold. He had so much gold that he made shields out of gold — shields, things that you bang around. He has fleets of ships bringing him gold and silver and ivory and rare animals like apes and peacocks. He has a zoo in Jerusalem. He has so much silver that he floods the market and it becomes worthless.

And then Solomon makes himself a throne unlike any throne you’ve ever seen — the whole thing covered in ivory and the finest gold, six steps up to the seat, a golden lion sitting on each end of every step, and two more lions under the armrests. The lion of the tribe of Judah, looking down from his ivory throne. Behold, friends, the glory of wise Solomon, the one to whom the nations come.

Skip ahead in your Bible to verse 23. 1 Kings 10:23: “Thus King Solomon excelled all the kings of the earth in riches and in wisdom. And the whole earth sought the presence of Solomon to hear his wisdom, which God had put into his mind. Every one of them brought his present, articles of silver and gold, garments, myrrh, spices, horses, and mules, so much year by year.” The whole earth — this man is an international celebrity. Thousands upon thousands of horses, an army that makes the earth shake when it moves. Can you see his glory? Can you hear the rising tones of Solomon’s wealth and fame? It just keeps going.

But let’s not forget — it’s not going up. It sounds like it’s going up because we’re so used to grading glory by the standards of the world. So what sounds to us like rising tones is just an illusion. Not all is as it should be. Riches are deceitful as a measurement of glory. In the way that Solomon was warned, friends, we too have been warned about riches. Jesus said it plainly: “Watch out, be on your guard against all forms of greed.” There are so many species of greed, and they come in so many forms. Jesus says life does not consist in the abundance of possessions. Church, beware of the deceitfulness of riches. The Bible says, “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and everything you need will be added to you.” Trust in the Lord as your provider, and recognize that whatever you have is a gift, and you are a steward. Steward well what you have — whether you have a lot or whether you have little — and purge yourself of the love of money by living below your means and giving generously to the cause of Christ in the advance of his gospel.

The king has been warned. The king has prospered. And now we come to the third movement in our text. The king has wandered.

1 Kings 11:1: “Now King Solomon loved many foreign women, along with the daughter of Pharaoh — Moabite, Ammonite, Edomite, Sidonian, and Hittite women — from the nations concerning which the Lord had said to the people of Israel, ‘You shall not enter into marriage with them, neither shall they with you, for surely they will turn away your heart after their gods.’ Solomon clung to these in love. He had 700 wives and 300 concubines, and his wives turned away his heart. For when Solomon was old, his wives turned away his heart after other gods, and his heart was not wholly true to the Lord his God, as was the heart of David his father. For Solomon went after Ashtoreth, the goddess of the Sidonians, and after Milcom, the abomination of the Ammonites. So Solomon did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and did not wholly follow the Lord, as David his father had done. Then Solomon built a high place for Chemosh, the abomination of Moab, and for Molech, the abomination of the Ammonites, on the mountain east of Jerusalem, and so he did for all his foreign wives, who made offerings and sacrificed to their gods.”

The wisest man who ever lived became a fool. The one who wrote 3,000 proverbs became a proverb himself. It’s tragic. The very man who warned his son about sexual sin commits sexual sin. It wasn’t that long ago, back in chapter 3, that we read Solomon loved the Lord. And now here we read Solomon loved many foreign women — 700 wives, 300 concubines. The king is collecting women like baseball cards, and that’s what they are to him. And it’s gross. But I suppose it makes sense when you’re grading glory according to the world’s standards. When you’ve enslaved all of your enemies, when silver is as common as stone, when you sit atop a six-step, lion-clad, ivory throne — what else is there? How else are you going to notch your belt? How else are you going to demonstrate your greatness? A harem of women — that’s what kings do, isn’t it?

Not God’s king. Again, the author of Kings assumes his readers know the Bible. Deuteronomy 17, the word of the Lord says, “A king shall not acquire many wives for himself, lest his heart turn away, nor shall he acquire for himself excessive silver and gold.” Well — that’s three strikes. Excessive silver, yes. Excessive gold, yes. Many women — well, it depends on what you mean by many. Tell you what the Bible means by many: two is one too many. Seven hundred with three hundred in the bullpen is a blatant disregard for God’s word and a slight against the dignity of the finest thing in God’s creation.

Verse 2 says that Solomon clung to these women in love. That word “clung” is not an accidental word — it’s the same word in Genesis 2: “A man shall leave his father and his mother and cling to his wife” — singular, wife. Brothers, your Creator has given you two arms with which you can cling to one woman, not many, be they actual or virtual — one woman.

So what is Solomon thinking? Listen — this is not about sensual pleasure. This is about power. This is about glory. These women are trophies, tokens of political power, because the kings of the nations surrounding Israel are just throwing their daughters at him. Who wants to be on the wrong side of the guy with golden shields? Not me. And so Solomon is just taking them and adding them as trophies on the shelf, saying to the nations of the world, “Look at me. Fear me.” And the nations probably do fear him. But God does not fear him. God will not be mocked.

Verse 4: “When Solomon was old, his wives turned away his heart.” Isn’t that what God said would happen? God will not be mocked. The son of God, who was meant to be a beacon of God’s blessing on account of his pride and his disobedience, becomes an omen of God’s judgment.

That phrase in verse 4, “when Solomon was old,” grieves me. As a man ages, he’s meant to increase in holiness and purity and righteousness and gentleness and joy and encouragement. It grieves me because just a few weeks ago, after service, I received an email from a brother pastor, a friend of mine, old enough to be my father, a few years from finishing his ministry, who that day resigned from ministry due to impropriety with a woman in his church. Brothers, guard your heart and never let down your guard. Don’t fool with sin. God will not be mocked. I’ve been a pastor long enough to know that temptation is no respecter of age. If you are middle-aged like me, or if you are an older saint, the message is the same: guard your heart and do not let your guard down. You do not retire from Christlikeness, ever. Understand — temptation does not come and knock on the front door like it did in your twenties. It seeps in through the cracks in the foundation, in the form of bitterness and discontentment and judgmentalism and murmuring and gossiping and idleness.

When Solomon was young, he built a house for the Lord. When Solomon is old, he’s building high places to demons. Molech is a monster that demands child sacrifice, and Solomon is building a temple to that monster. So, PBC, whatever your age, do not take sin lightly. No matter what sin you have committed, no matter how long you’ve been committing it, turn to the Lord for mercy and you will receive grace. There is more grace in Jesus than there is sin in you.

Have you noticed the strange way that this text talks about King David? Did it catch your ear? When God speaks of David, he keeps saying that David was faithful and walked with integrity. You’ve read your Bible — you know that’s not entirely true. So what is this, revisionist history? It’s not revision, it’s repentance. First of all, David never worshiped false gods. But most of all, when David was confronted by his sin, he dealt with God. David was not a perfect man. He was a sinner just like all of us. It’s just that when David was confronted with his sin, he took it to the Lord. He repented before the Lord.

So, friend, no matter what you have done, turn to the Lord. Do business with God today before you leave this place, and then talk to someone. The Bible says, “Confess your sins to one another.” Find a man or a woman in the church and confess to them what you have done. Find a pastor and confess to them. We will lock arms with you and help you walk in repentance and bear fruit in keeping with repentance.

So the Lord warned Solomon. Solomon ignored the warning. And now we come to our last movement: the kingdom is torn.

Verse 9: “And the Lord was angry with Solomon, because his heart had turned away from the Lord, the God of Israel, who had appeared to him twice and commanded him concerning this thing, that he should not go after other gods. But he did not keep what the Lord commanded.” Verse 11: “Therefore the Lord said to Solomon, ‘Since this has been your practice, and you have not kept my covenant and my statutes that I have commanded you, I will surely tear the kingdom from you and will give it to your servant. Yet for the sake of David your father I will not do it in your days, but I will tear it out of the hand of your son. However, I will not tear away all the kingdom, but I will give one tribe to your son, for the sake of David my servant and for the sake of Jerusalem that I have chosen.'”

The Lord appears to Solomon and tells him what’s about to happen: the kingdom, young man, is going to be torn from you. No — let me say that again. The kingdom, old man, is going to be torn from you. Torn. Torn. Torn. Once again, the author of Kings assumes you know your Bible, and you know that word. If you’re familiar with your Bible, you’ve heard that word before — kingdom being torn.

A good while before Solomon is born, Israel demands a king of their own, like the nations. And God comes to them and gives them Saul — it’s not God’s choice, it’s their choice. And Saul doesn’t listen to the word of the Lord. And so the Lord sends a prophet called Samuel to Saul and says, “You’ve not obeyed the Lord — the kingdom is going to be given to another.” And then Samuel turns to leave, and Saul takes hold of his robe, and it rips. And Samuel says, “Just as you have torn my garment, the kingdom will be torn from you.” Here the Lord tells Solomon the very same thing: the kingdom is going to be torn from you.

When Saul hears that the kingdom is going to be torn from him, you know what he does? He goes and finds the guy to whom the kingdom is going to be given — a young kid named David — and spends the rest of his life trying to kill David. Rather than receiving the rebuke, the discipline of the Lord, and repenting before the Lord, Saul doubles down and tries to kill David.

Skip ahead to verse 26: “Jeroboam the servant of Solomon, the son of Nebat, an Ephraimite of Zeredah, whose mother’s name was Zeruah, a widow, also lifted up his hand against the king. And this is the reason why he lifted up his hand against the king: Solomon built the Millo, which was like a huge fortress that lifted the temple up high, and closed up the breach of the city of David his father. The man Jeroboam was very able, and when Solomon saw that the young man was industrious he gave him charge over all the forced labor of the house of Joseph. And at that time, when Jeroboam went out of Jerusalem, the prophet Ahijah the Shilonite found him on the road. Now Ahijah was dressed in a new garment, and the two of them were alone in the open country. Then Ahijah laid hold of the new garment that was on him and tore it into twelve pieces, and said to Jeroboam, ‘Take for yourself ten pieces, for thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: Behold, I am about to tear the kingdom out of the hand of Solomon and will give you ten tribes. But he shall have one tribe, for the sake of my servant David and for the sake of Jerusalem, the city that I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel, because they have forsaken me and worshiped Ashtoreth, the goddess of the Sidonians, Chemosh, the god of Moab, and Milcom, the god of the Ammonites, and they have not walked in my ways, doing what is right in my sight and keeping my statutes and my rules, as David his father did. Nevertheless, I will not take the whole kingdom out of his hand, but I will make him ruler all the days of his life, for the sake of David my servant, whom I chose, who kept my commandments and my statutes. But I will take the kingdom out of his son’s hand and will give it to you — ten tribes.'”

The original readers would have heard this and recognized what the author is doing. The Lord comes to the king and tells him that since he has not listened to God’s word, just like Saul, the kingdom will be torn from him — just like Saul. It will be given to another man — just like Saul. And there’s a prophet whose garment is torn — just like what happened to Saul. Echoes of Saul, and echoes, and echoes.

And there’s more. Skip down to verse 40: “Solomon sought therefore to kill Jeroboam. But Jeroboam arose and fled to Egypt, to Shishak king of Egypt, and was in Egypt until the death of Solomon. Now the rest of the acts of Solomon, and all that he did, and his wisdom, are they not written in the book of the acts of Solomon? And the time that Solomon reigned in Jerusalem over all Israel was forty years. And Solomon slept with his fathers and was buried in the city of David his father, and Rehoboam his son reigned in his place.”

Verse 40 lands with a cinematic boom: “Solomon sought therefore to kill Jeroboam.” Do you see what the author is doing? Solomon is the new Saul. As David was to Saul, Jeroboam is a faithful servant. And as Saul did with David, Solomon seeks to kill him. The wisest man who ever lived, his soul so riddled by compromise, refuses to bow his head in submission to the Lord and goes after Jeroboam, who — not ironically — has to flee to Egypt. We’ll deal with him next Lord’s Day, where the Lord will fulfill his word, and the kingdom will be taken from Solomon, where it will be divided, and will never again be united.

And so here we are, at the funeral of the wisest man who has ever lived. What should we make of this man’s life? What is Solomon’s legacy? Shall we grade him by the standards of the world? If so, this man was a huge success — a thousand anniversaries a year, more money than Elon Musk. Huge success. Will we remember him for what he built in the first twenty years of his reign, or in the last twenty years?

A text like this causes us to ask: how will we be remembered? What, my friends, will be the legacy of your life? Sisters, will you be remembered as a woman beautiful before her God, resolute in her faith, who trusted the Lord in all sorts of sickness and affliction and setback and hardship and difficulty — a woman who was committed to the glory of Christ in the advance of the gospel? Or will you be remembered as a bitter, implacable old woman? Brothers, will you be remembered as a man of joy, a generous man with his compliments, with his finances, with his time, who served the Lord and served his church? Or will you be remembered as miserly and crotchety, a do-nothing old man who could not be pleased?

PBC, let us endeavor, the Lord enabling, to be the sort of people who are remembered for building the house for the name of the Lord, for serving the church of Jesus Christ. Let us be remembered for our selflessness and our joyful generosity. Let us be remembered as storehouses of encouragement, with rich insights into God’s grace.

I’ve done a lot of funerals. I’ve sat with a lot of families reminiscing about their loved one. I’ve heard a lot of people talking about how dad loved the Buckeyes and fishing. I love the Buckeyes. I love fishing. But if the day comes when I go on to be with the Lord, and the thing that my kids are thinking about is that I loved the Buckeyes and fishing, I have failed. It’s a tragedy.

Let us be remembered for treasuring Christ, for spending ourselves to see Christ exalted, for praying with people, for talking with people, for teaching people about the glories of God’s grace. We come to church and we sing, “All I have is Christ, Jesus is my life.” Would that it would be true, and would that other people would know it.

So I close with this: whatever way you have wasted some part of your life, all I’m asking is that you follow a text like this one through, up to Jesus Christ, who is the greater Solomon. See how he left the riches of heaven to become man, how he became poor to make many rich, and that the King of heaven came to serve, not to be served, and to reveal the true heart of the Father — the heart of mercy and grace and love. And that part of your life of which you might not be so proud — just hand it over to him. Make it an offering of worship to this one who did what you did not, and he will take you in, and he will redeem what you have lost, and rewrite your story — the story of repentance.

May the Lord make it so among all of us. Let’s pray. I pray, O Lord, that you would make these things true of us — that we would be a people who spend our lives on the advance of your gospel, not seeking glory for ourselves, but for his name and his name alone. In Jesus’ name we ask.

We find ourselves picking up where we left off last Lord’s Day in 1 Kings chapter 6. As you’re finding your way to the text that you’ll be reading a section of today, let me just give you the big idea. Here is the central claim that we’ll be seeking to make today: because Jesus Christ is the greater Solomon, who faithfully builds God’s dwelling place, God’s people must devote themselves to God’s kingdom rather than building a name for themselves.

Days before the Lord Jesus was murdered on a cross, he rode on the back of a donkey on his way into the city of Jerusalem. And the people met him there with palm branches, declaring him to be their Savior and their King. And as soon as Jesus entered the city of Jerusalem, he went straight to the temple, the central place of the worship of Yahweh on earth. And there the Lord Jesus saw men buying and selling, changing money, extorting others, turning the worship of God by foreigners into a money-making business. And Jesus drove out all who bought and sold in the temple. He overturned their tables and completely disrupted their economy.

And here’s what he said about that: “My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations, but you have made it a den of robbers.” It’s a somewhat curious indictment when you think about it. No mention of greed, no mention of extortion. Jesus understood the greatest sin to be the co-opting of the purpose of God in the temple.

The other sins were being committed there, but the greater sin was hindering the nations from coming to the Lord. God had commissioned the Jews to build a house for his name. They were to be a light to the nations. They were to be a city on a hill. They were to facilitate the teaching and the worship of Yahweh. They were to build God’s kingdom. And when they did, the nations of the earth would see and would come, and they would learn about the Lord, and they would find peace in the Lord, and they would find peace with one another.

But in Jerusalem, these Jews had repurposed the house of God. They had turned its purpose in on themselves. They had perverted the purpose of God. Rather than building a house for God’s name, they used their privileged position to build a house for their own name. And Jesus, zealous for the glory of God, overturns their tables and ruins their economy.

The Scripture gives us a window into the many failures of Israel. And the more that we look through this window, this glass becomes a mirror, and eventually we see their sin in our hearts. We see how we too have been turned in on ourselves, that we too have co-opted God’s plan for our lives, and we see how we have sought to build a house for our own name. And Jesus Christ, still zealous for the glory of God, comes to us today as he did way back then. And he will upset the economy of human pride.

Today’s passage, 1 Kings chapter 6 to 8, is the construction of and the dedication of the temple of God. And if you read this section of Scripture before you came to worship today — which I hope you did, which, by the way, we put in the worship guide each week at the bottom of the back side so you can see what text is coming up next week (the purpose of that is so that you can read it beforehand and prepare your heart for worship) — so if you read 1 Kings chapter 6, 7, and 8, then you know part of it is, well, let’s just be honest, it’s a bit boring. It reads like assembly instructions for IKEA furniture. And there are words and phrases used in this section that might as well be in Swedish — like, what the heck is a cubit? And a knave? You wonder why sections like this are even in the Bible.

And it is difficult to see how it is relevant to our lives. And so as we study this section of Scripture, let us remember that the Bible was not written to us. It was written for us, but it wasn’t written to us. The author of Kings has written this book long after the events that are described in it — long after the destruction of the temple that is built in this text. This book is written to the people who endured the destruction of that temple, the destruction of that city — to the people who are, at the time of their reading, sitting in exile in Babylon, wondering, “How did we get here?” And so as we peer through the glass on this section, I think you will find, actually, that this passage is quite relevant to our lives today, if not even somewhat convicting.

I wish we could read it all, but for the sake of time we will only read a section. 1 Kings chapter 6, verse 1: “In the four hundred and eightieth year after the people of Israel came out of the land of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon’s reign over Israel, in the month of Ziv, which is the second month, he began to build the house of the Lord. The house that King Solomon built for the Lord was sixty cubits long, twenty cubits wide, and thirty cubits high.”

Let’s pray. Father, teach us from your word to be that house of prayer for all the nations. And spare us, O Lord, by the power of your Spirit, from ever becoming a den of robbers. Place your name here in this place and exalt your Son in us and through us. For the grass withers, the flower falls, but the word of our Lord remains forever. Amen.

1 Kings 6:1 is the culmination of 500 years of Israel’s history. The phrasing of verse 1 indicates that there’s more going on than it first appears. If you didn’t read the text before you came here today, let me just fill in some of the details that are happening in chapters 6 and 7.

Solomon, the son of David, was foretold long ago that he would sit on David’s throne. And God entered into an agreement with his people — a covenant — that the son of David would build a house for the name of the Lord. Chapter 6 tells us that God has kept his promise to his people, and the work on the house of the Lord has begun. The Lord reminds the king in chapter 6 that if he is faithful to the covenant, the blessing of God will fall on him. And because the blessing falls on the king, it will flow out from the king to the people. This one verse is 500 years in the making — well, long before even that, actually.

Long before God spoke to David, the Lord appeared to a man called Abraham and promised him that, though he was old and childless, God would make his descendants into a great people, a great nation, as many as the sand of the sea. And out of Abraham, one of his descendants would be the one who would reverse the curse of sin, who would bring peace on the earth. God kept that promise. Abraham’s descendants did become a great nation, the twelve tribes of Israel.

At one point in their history, they went down into Egypt during a famine, and in a couple of generations were turned into slaves in Egypt. There they languished. They cried out to the Lord, who delivered them through a man called Moses, who saved them out of Egypt. God promised that he would bring them into his land, that he would give to them, that they would be his people and they would prosper in that place. And through them, God would reveal himself and his glory to the nations of the world. God would dwell among his people. God would live with them.

And the presence of God among his people is both a wonderful and a terrifying thing, because Yahweh is unbelievably holy, and humans can’t just live with holiness in their midst. Their sin and God’s holiness is incompatible, and so they would be destroyed. And so, on the way to the promised land, the Lord commissioned Moses to build a tabernacle — a tent where the sin of God’s people would be atoned, where the glory of God could be contained and veiled, and where God would dwell among his people and meet with them.

The presence of God on earth was located in its most concentrated form above something called the Ark of the Covenant. The Ark of the Covenant was the holiest object on earth. It was an ornate golden box, and the lid over this box — into this lid were molded two angels called cherubim, who would face one another, their wings outstretched toward one another.

The tabernacle in the wilderness was temporary. It was portable, because when God’s people finally arrived in the land and settled there, and the kingdom was established, and God’s king was on the throne, the permanent place of worship — the permanent dwelling place of God on earth — would be built: the temple. And if the king was faithful to the Lord, then God would bless the people of the Lord, and the nation would see those blessings, and they would come to Israel to learn about God, to learn his word. And by being made right with God, they would have peace with God, and they would have peace with one another, and therefore the kingdom of God would expand all across the world.

King David desired to build this temple, but the Lord said that it would be David’s son who would build the temple. Solomon is David’s son, and he — as we saw last week — was blessed by God with incredible wisdom, and therefore incredible riches. He begins the work on the temple of God in the 480th year since they left Egypt. That’s why verse 1 is worded as it is. God is fulfilling his promise that he made all the way back in the garden — to Adam, and to Abraham, and to David, and to Moses. It’s a big deal.

The author goes on to tell us about the materials and the designs that are made by Solomon in this temple, and none of these designs and none of these materials are random. Solomon is not being creative. He is following a pattern. The temple would be modeled after the tabernacle in the wilderness, and the temple would carry echoes of Eden.

I wonder if you’ve noticed this when you read it. I would encourage you to read this section of Scripture again this afternoon and take note of all the mentions of the trees, and of flowers, and of fruits, and of gold, and of precious stones. Take note of the direction that the temple faced — the temple faced east. Take note of the mention of cherubim.

Actually, if you have your Bible open, skip down to verse 23 — chapter 6, verse 23: “In the inner sanctuary, that’s the most holy place, Solomon made two cherubim of olive wood.” Two cherubim, with the temple facing east — where have we heard this before? In Genesis chapter 3, when the first man and first woman sinned against God, and the Lord drove them out of Eden, the place where God dwelt, the place of eternal life. The Bible says this: “At the east of the garden of Eden, Yahweh placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.” The temple is built to be the way back to God, the way back to eternal life. And so, yes, it is a big deal. The people work hard, and they get the work done.

Let’s skip down to verse 37. 1 Kings 6:37: “In the fourth year the foundation of the house of the Lord was laid, in the month of Ziv. And in the eleventh year, in the month of Bul, which is the eighth month, the house was finished in all its parts, and according to all its specifications. He was seven years in building it.” Chapter 7: “Solomon was building his own house thirteen years, and he finished his entire house.”

Now, chapter divisions were not inserted by the author of Kings. Chapter divisions were added many years later to help us read it. So putting chapter 6, verse 38, next to chapter 7, verse 1, seems to suggest the phrase that we’ve been using in this series: not all is as it should be. Solomon was seven years in building the house of God, and almost twice that in building the house of Solomon.

Here is one of those places where the window into Israel’s history becomes a mirror to our own lives. If you are a Christian, then you recognize that the goodness of God is primary, the worship of God is primary, the kingdom of God is primary in your life. You believe that God is essential in your life and he is first in your life. This is just what it means to be a Christian. But I wonder, practically speaking, if that is how you live.

Do you live like God is most important? Do you live like the kingdom of God is of greatest importance to your life? PBC, would you say that the kingdom of God is the organizing center of your life? Or would you say that you tend to give God what is his and then just sort of move on to other things — you do the church thing and then you get on to real life? Is the kingdom of God central in your life, or is it more of a side project?

Those of you who are brave enough to do such a thing, hold the text in front of you as a mirror and let it exegete your own heart. For you are building a house with your life. And the question is: that house that you are building with your life — to whose name is it being built? To your name, or to God’s? For whose glory is this house being built — for your glory, or for the glory of Yahweh? If you opened up your calendar and your bank statements and your conversations and your prayers and your thoughts and your anxieties for examination, would anyone conclude that the kingdom of God is central in your life? Be honest in your self-evaluation.

Whose kingdom are you building? Where do you find your mind going in the quiet? What is it that you’re planning for when you think about the future? Is God and his kingdom and his church the principal thing in your life? Or is it more like a room in your house that you visit on occasion? Well, the Lord knows which it is. And in his zeal for his Father’s glory, he will come to you as he came to the Jews in Jerusalem, and he will overturn the economy of self-glory.

The Lord came to one church and listen to what he said to them: “I know your works. You are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot! Because you are lukewarm, neither cold nor hot, I will spit you out of my mouth.” PBC, there are some of us that I am profoundly worried about. Coldness I can handle — I know how to deal with coldness. But you’re not even cold. “You think that you are rich, but you are poor. You think you have no need, but spiritually speaking you are wretched, and pitiable, and blind, and naked” — and you are wasting your life.

If you cannot say honestly that God and his kingdom and his church are the controlling center of your life, friend, repent of this sin and turn to the Lord, who is happy to forgive you and restore you to himself and give you the true purpose of your life. It has pleased the Lord to connect your alignment to his purpose in your life to your fulfillment and joy. If you feel aimless, it is the kindness of God, most likely, telling you something’s off. Align yourself with the priorities of God’s kingdom and God’s church, and God will give you the desires of your heart and fulfill you.

You’re building a house with your life. What matters is for whose name. There’s only one house that God will endorse with the presence of his glory, and that is the house that is built to his name.

Skip ahead to chapter 8, verse 1: “Then Solomon assembled the elders of Israel and all the heads of the tribes, the leaders of the fathers’ houses of the people of Israel, before King Solomon in Jerusalem, to bring up the ark of the covenant of the Lord out of the city of David, which is Zion. And all the men of Israel assembled to King Solomon at the feast in the month of Ethanim, which is the seventh month. And all the elders of Israel came, and the priests took up the ark, and they brought up the ark of the Lord, the tent of meeting, and all the holy vessels that were in the tent — the priests and the Levites brought them up. And King Solomon and all the congregation of Israel who had assembled before him were with him before the ark, sacrificing so many sheep and oxen that they could not be counted or numbered.

“Then the priests brought the ark of the covenant of the Lord to its place, in the inner sanctuary of the house, in the most holy place, underneath the wings of the cherubim. For the cherubim spread out their wings over the place of the ark, so that the cherubim overshadowed the ark and its poles. And the poles were so long that the ends of the poles were seen from the holy place, in front of the inner sanctuary, but they could not be seen from outside, and they are there to this day.”

Verse 9: “There was nothing in the ark except the two tablets of stone that Moses put there at Horeb, where the Lord made a covenant with the people of Israel when they came out of the land of Egypt. And when the priests came out of the holy place, a cloud filled the house of the Lord, so that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud, for the glory of the Lord filled the house of the Lord.”

Five hundred years waiting, and now the day had come. The city of God was established. The king was on the throne. The temple of God was built. The Ark of the Covenant was settled in its permanent home. The way back to Eden was laid out. And most important of all — God showed up.

This is one of the highest points in the history of Israel. They had been climbing this mountain for centuries, and now you read: “The glory of the Lord filled the house of the Lord.” Here God will place his name. Here God will give his endorsement. Here God’s promise was fulfilled. God’s temple was built. God’s presence drew near. God took up residence in Jerusalem and dwells in the midst of his people. It’s just impossible for me to overstate just how massive this is in Israel’s history. God’s kingdom has come. God’s will has been done.

And the king speaks, giving praise to God for his faithfulness, reminding his people that their God keeps his covenant. Look at verse 13. Solomon says to the Lord, “I have built you an exalted house, a place for you to dwell —” what does your Bible say? “— forever.”

Now let’s not forget to whom this book was written. Hearing the word “forever” would have been gutting. It’s not that different from a heartbroken husband whose wife left him for another man, watching the video of his wedding, where his wife is making her vows to him, saying, “forever.” It’s gutting, because it’s not forever. That temple is destroyed. That city is demolished. The ark is gone. The king is deposed. “I’m languishing in Babylon — what do you mean, forever?”

They know, and we know, that God’s king did not keep God’s covenant. They know, we know, that God’s people would break God’s covenant. They know, we know, that the blessings of obedience were lost and the curses of disobedience had fallen. They know, we know, that the glory of this temple would be undone by the king’s compromise, by human selfishness, by greed, by men and women building a house to their own name. This God kept his covenant. The human partner in this covenant did not.

In the dedication of Solomon’s temple, the purpose of Solomon’s temple is revealed. The purpose of this temple is to tell the world of God’s mercy and grace — that God is a king who rules well over his people through his king, who stands in their place and prays for them. In the prayer of their king, they are reminded that even when they sin, they only need turn to the Lord, who will hear their confession and forgive.

Let’s pick up reading in verse 27, and hear God’s king praying for God’s people. Verses 27 to 30: “But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you, much less this house that I have built. Yet have regard to the prayer of your servant and to his plea, O Lord my God, listening to the cry and to the prayer that your servant prays before you this day, that your eyes may be open night and day toward this house, the place where you have said, ‘My name shall be there,’ that you may listen to the prayer that your servant offers toward this place, and listen to the plea of your servant and of your people Israel when they pray toward this place. Hear in heaven, your dwelling place, and when you hear, forgive.”

This is the purpose of the temple. God’s house is a house of prayer. God is a God of mercy who hears prayer and forgives sin. The king goes on to outline seven scenarios in which God is revealed as merciful. We don’t have time to read them all — let me just explain them.

The next scenario is particularly interesting. Let’s read it — verse 41: “Likewise, Solomon prays, when a foreigner, who is not of your people Israel, comes from a far country for your name’s sake (for they shall hear of your great name and your mighty hand and your outstretched arm), when he comes and prays toward this house, hear in heaven your dwelling place and do according to all that the foreigner calls to you, in order that all the peoples of the earth may know your name and fear you, as do your people Israel, and that they may know that this house that I have built is called by your name.”

Even the foreigner who hears of God’s great name and mighty hand comes in praise. And the Bible promises that God will show mercy, God will hear, and God will act — and the purpose is that all the peoples of the earth may know God’s name and fear God. So God’s house is not just a house of prayer; it is a house of prayer for all the nations.

Solomon goes on: verses 44–45, God’s people are assured that when they go into battle and pray, God will hear and God will maintain their cause. Solomon’s prayer then culminates in a prophetic petition, and in reading verses 46 to 53, no doubt the original hearers’ ears would have perked up. Because there we read that if Israel sins — and there’s none who doesn’t sin — if Israel breaks the covenant and the curses fall on Israel and they are carried off as captives to a foreign land, if they repent, God will show mercy, God will hear, and God will forgive.

Those original readers, living in Babylon, who had witnessed the destruction of the temple, the desolation of the city, having watched their king deposed, who were wasting away in exile under the judgment of God for their sins — this would have filled them with great hope. God has not abandoned his people in Babylon. God is a God of mercy. God is eager to forgive.

Our sins are many; God’s mercy is more. This was true in the tenth century BC. It was true in the sixth century BC. It is true in the twenty-first century AD. Sinner, this same God is eager to hear your prayer and to take you into his arms, to cleanse you of all unrighteousness and to restore you to himself. Whatever you have done, your sin is great — God’s grace is greater still. So when you turn to the Lord in faith, acknowledging your need for mercy, God will hear, God will forgive.

The people in this story, and the people to whom this story was written, knew God was a God of mercy, but they did not know how. They saw God’s mercy in shadows and types, temples and sacrifices. But brother and sister, we see God’s mercy in substance, in full. God the Father sent God the Son. Jesus Christ became man for this reason: the covenant lacked a faithful human partner. Jesus kept that covenant — truly God, truly man. Jesus earned every blessing for covenant faithfulness. Jesus gave his life on the cross so that covenant curses would fall on him. He stood in our place, condemned. The judgment of God for our sins was placed on him, and he died. But Jesus Christ was without sin — death could not hold him. And so he rose from the dead on the third day.

And now all who turn to him in faith are united to him and granted his righteousness. They are treated as if they had kept the covenant, and all the blessing of Christ’s obedience is counted to them. Jesus was the covenant-keeping King who brings about the covenant blessings for the people of God.

When God’s people are in exile, praying to God for mercy, they have no idea how this God will hear them and forgive them and restore them. But we do. We know that God would take on flesh and suffer the curse of sin and show mercy to sinners, and restore them to Eden, and grant them eternal life.

You see, this whole section of 1 Kings points forward to Jesus Christ, who is the greater Solomon — who builds a greater temple. Jesus is the place where God has placed his name. There’s a reason why Solomon told these people that when you sin, look toward this temple and pray. Because this temple was a window through which they were to see the embodiment, the personification, of the mercy of God: Jesus Christ. For Jesus is where God’s people turn to receive mercy.

And having been united to Christ, having received the blessing of his obedience, God’s people are filled with God’s Spirit, and they become the temple of the living God. Did you know there is a temple that doesn’t need to be built? It’s already been built. Of course you knew that — if you were with us just a few months ago, 1 Corinthians 3:16: “Do you not know that you are God’s temple?”

Where is the dwelling place of God on earth? Here — the church of the living God. You are the temple of the living God. And this is your purpose, Christian: to be a light to the nations, to be the city on a hill, to facilitate the teaching and the worship of Yahweh to the nations of the earth. You are called to image God, to show the world who he is and what he is like. It’s your delight in him as a witness that he is most delightful. You are that golden temple on a hill, built to his great name. You are the means by which God’s name is known, God’s glory is revealed, God’s kingdom is spread.

You. How did Jesus put it? “Go into all the world and make disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

You see, the way you carry yourself in your home and in your workplace — you are revealing who God is and what he is like to those who don’t know him. The way of a husband with his wife, the way of a wife with her husband — this dance they have is revealing the happy glory of this God. The way you speak about your co-workers, about your customers, the way you think about politics and immigration, the way you handle yourself in setbacks and suffering — all of it is meant to teach this world: this is who God is, this is what God is like. What you do on the Lord’s Day, what you do with your money, what you do with a boyfriend or girlfriend — all of it meant to show what is most joyful, what is most delightful, what is most important.

You are the city on a hill, broadcasting the bright glory of God in Christ, who is joy, who is peace for all people. And so you don’t need to bother building a house for your own name — you carry the name of the Most High God. This is your purpose. Here you will find fulfillment. Here you will find peace. Here you will find joy.

And because of this, we can take the benediction of King Solomon over Israel three-thousand years ago and apply these words to our own life, to our own church. We’ll finish our time together reading the blessing of the king over the people, verses 54 to 61.

“Now as Solomon finished offering all this prayer and plea to the Lord, he arose from before the altar of the Lord, where he had knelt with his hands outstretched toward heaven, and he stood and blessed all the assembly of Israel with a loud voice, saying: ‘Blessed be the Lord who has given rest to his people Israel, according to all that he promised. Not one word has failed of all his good promise, which he spoke by Moses his servant. The Lord our God be with us, as he was with our fathers. May he not leave us or forsake us, that he may incline our hearts to him, to walk in all his ways and to keep his commandments, his statutes, and his rules, which he commanded our fathers. Let these words of mine, with which I have pleaded before the Lord, be near to the Lord our God day and night, and may he maintain the cause of his servant and the cause of his people Israel, as each day requires, that all the peoples of the earth may know that the Lord is God; there is no other. Let your heart therefore be wholly true to the Lord our God, walking in his statutes and keeping his commandments, as at this day.'”

Let’s pray. Lord, make it so. Lord, exalt the name that is above all names — Jesus, the Christ, Yeshua HaMashiach, the Savior, the Lord. Exalt him here. Amen.

Settle back into a seat and take out our copy of God’s Word. If you weren’t able to be here last week, we have begun a series in the book of Kings. First Kings chapter 3 is where we will begin our time together. First Kings chapter 3. Let’s pray.

Oh, the depths of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God. How unsearchable are his judgments. How inscrutable his ways. Father, will you give us your Holy Spirit and enable us to taste these riches, to understand this knowledge, and oh Lord, may we peer into the depths of your judgments, of your statutes, of your ways. Give us faith to believe. The grass withers, the flower falls, but the word of our Lord remains forever. Amen.

During the 11th and 12th centuries, the Republic of Pisa was rich and dominant. They wanted to display the great wealth that they had, their great piety, and their geopolitical dominance, and so decided to construct a magnificent religious complex. They commissioned four monuments to their greatness: a grand cathedral, a massive baptistry, a huge cemetery, and a freestanding bell tower. Work began in the year 1173. The cathedral and the baptismal were magnificent, but it was the bell tower that would become most famous. It was to be a hollow cylinder stretching 200 feet into the air, covered completely in white marble.

Five years into the construction of this tower, the architects noticed a problem. The south side of the tower was sinking. Little did they know they had built the tower on a shallow foundation of weak and compressible clay beneath the subsoil, and the massive weight of the tower caused it to lean. Unable to fix it because of war and regional conflict, construction came to a halt. But the people of Pisa were committed, and after peace was brought to the region, they worked on the tower again. And in 1372, almost 200 years after they started, the tower was finished.

Over the centuries, though, the lean worsened. By the 20th century, it was in danger of falling. In the 1990s, engineers removed the bells from the top of the tower and removed soil from the north side, reducing the lean of the tower by 16 inches, but left it still leaning. It remains stable to this day as the leaning tower of Pisa.

Last summer, my family and I had the privilege of visiting the leaning tower of Pisa, and it really is a beautiful square that the Pisans had built. The tower is truly magnificent. The only bothersome thing about going to Pisa is all of the tourists taking very strange pictures, using perspective from their cameras to try and prop up this leaning tower. I have a video on my phone of all these people looking like mimes, doing this. It might have been funny the first ten times it was done. Now it’s just a little annoying. That’s not to say that we didn’t do it — of course we did — but it’s annoying.

We’re continuing on in our series through Kings, and last Lord’s Day we saw God’s word being fulfilled as the kingdom of Israel passes from David to the son of David, King Solomon. We saw God establish his king on the throne, and all that set themselves against the Lord and his anointed fall. We saw that Solomon is like a new Adam — that Solomon did what the first man, Adam, was supposed to do but failed to do — that when the offspring of the serpent, the enemy of God, came seeking to usurp God’s plan through a woman, Solomon had the offspring of the serpent, the seed of the serpent, killed.

This morning, the author of Kings is going to show us again that Solomon is like Adam. He’s continuing to carry out the mandate that God gave to Adam. He seeks God’s wisdom to rule, to take dominion, to extend the kingdom of God beyond the borders. And Yahweh gives his king great wisdom and establishes his kingdom. So under King Solomon, the kingdom of Israel is big and beautiful and magnificent, and it stretches far and wide. But as we will see, like the tower of Pisa, she has a lean.

Here’s the central claim of these three chapters that we’ll be considering this morning: Look to God’s wise king and seek his wisdom, because through him the kingdom of God is established.

Let’s pick up our series in chapter 3, verse 1.

Solomon made a marriage alliance with Pharaoh, king of Egypt. He took Pharaoh’s daughter and brought her into the city of David until he had finished building his own house and the house of the Lord and the wall around Jerusalem. The people were sacrificing in high places, however, because there was no house had not yet been built for the name of the Lord. Solomon loved the Lord, walking in the statutes of David his father, only he sacrificed and made offerings at the high places. And the king went to Gibeon to sacrifice there, for that was the great high place. Solomon used to offer a thousand burnt offerings on that altar.

At Gibeon, the Lord appeared to Solomon in a dream by night, and God said, “Ask what I shall give you.” And Solomon said, “You have shown great and steadfast love to your servant David, my father, because he walked before you in faithfulness, in righteousness, and in uprightness of heart toward you, and you have kept for him this great and steadfast love, that you’ve given him a son to sit on his throne this day. And now, O Lord my God, you have made your servant king in place of David, my father, although I am but a little child. I do not know how to go out or come in. And your servant is in the midst of your people whom you have chosen, a great people, too many to be numbered or counted for multitude. Give your servant, therefore, an understanding mind to govern your people, that I may discern between good and evil. For who is able to govern this, your great people?”

It pleased the Lord that Solomon had asked this. And God said to him, “Because you have asked this, and have not asked for yourself long life or riches or the life of your enemies, but have asked for yourself understanding to discern what is right, behold, now I do according to your word. Behold, I give you a wise and discerning mind, so that none like you has been before you, and none like you shall rise after you. I give you also what you have not asked, both riches and honor, so that no other king shall compare with you all your days. And if you walk in my ways, keeping my statutes and my commandments as your father David walked, then I will lengthen your days.”

At Gibeon, Yahweh appears to young King Solomon in a dream, and God says to the king, “Ask what I shall give you and it shall be done for you.” Whatever you want, just ask. And Solomon’s response to the Lord’s statement is wonderful. Now, Solomon was probably twenty years old or so when he was anointed king, but we see from Solomon’s response — this young man knows his Bible.

Now, last week I suggested that you read 2 Samuel chapter 7, and I hope you did that, because the covenant that God makes with David in 2 Samuel 7 is really foundational for much of what happens in the book of Kings. And Solomon’s response to the Lord’s promise shows that this boy knows God’s word — especially knows the covenant that God made with David. In his prayer, Solomon quotes God’s word back to him, which is a rather instructive thing. If you want to enrich your own prayer life, if you want answers to prayers, just pray the Bible.

Mind you, though, this is a dream. I don’t dream much, but when I do dream, my words are usually mushy, my speech is slow, sometimes my fingers are hot dogs — it’s a mess. But Solomon is quoting Scripture in a dream. This boy’s different.

He says to God, “You have shown great and steadfast love.” Now, if you were here on Wednesday night and were blessed, as I was, to sit under Jay Herod’s teaching, then you learned that the phrase steadfast love in the Old Testament means God’s loving kindness — his Old Testament version of the word grace. Which, by the way, I don’t know if you know this or not, but sometimes we come to this room on Wednesday nights and we talk to God and we delight in the glories of Christ. I’m not sure if you knew that or not, but now you know that I know that you know.

Solomon gives praise to God for keeping his word, showing loving kindness to David by placing his son on the throne, the son of David. And he praises God for keeping his word — not just to David, not just keeping the covenant with David, but keeping the covenant with Abraham. Did you catch him quoting the covenant that God made with Abraham? That God had promised to make his descendants a great people, too many to be numbered. Twenty years old — this boy ain’t even old enough to buy cigarettes, and he’s quoting covenants in a dream. Like I said — different.

Solomon admits with great humility that the task before him is too great. “I am,” he says, “just a little child. I don’t know how to go out and come in.” Going out and coming in is a Hebrew idiom for leading by example — it’s all saying, “How am I to be an example to these, your great people? I’m twenty years old.” This young king acknowledges his own incompetency, reminding us of the apostle Paul, who said, “Who is sufficient for these things?” Solomon is saying, “I don’t have the ability to do what you’ve asked me to do. I need you.”

Verse 9: “Give your servant, therefore, an understanding mind to govern your people, that I may discern between good and evil. For who is able to govern this, your great people?” Solomon knows what he needs, and he knows his need. “I need an understanding mind.” Now, ancient Hebrew did not have a word for mind. Literally, this Hebrew phrase means a listening heart. Solomon is saying, “Give me a heart to hear your word and to obey your word, so that by knowing your word and obeying your word, I might keep your word and discern right from wrong and lead your people.” And in this, Solomon is exemplary.

What if God came to you in a dream and said to you, “Ask whatever you wish and it will be granted to you”? What would you ask for? Financial freedom? Would you ask for a godly wife or a godly husband? Would you ask for good health? Would you ask for a mind to remember where you put the tool that you just had in your hand?

Well, it may surprise you to learn that God has come to you — not in a dream, but in the pages of Holy Scripture — and said to you… well, I’ll just read it. The second half of John 15:7, the Lord Jesus says this, and I quote: “Ask whatever you wish and it will be given to you.” Close quote. So God has come to you in the same way he came to King Solomon and said to you, “Ask whatever you want and it will be done.”

So does that mean that I can ask the Lord for a ’71 GTO, or to draw a tag to hunt elk in Arizona? Some preachers preach that way. Well, it may help you to know what Jesus said in the first half of John 15:7, and I quote: “If you abide in me and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish and it will be done for you.” If you abide in me, if my word abides in you, then ask. It’s like when the psalmist said, “Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart.” When your heart — when you are delighting in the Lord — what is the desire of your heart? The Lord. That’s what you’re delighting in. And so if you are abiding in Christ and God’s word is abiding in you, what are you going to ask the Lord for? Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

And that’s what we see in King Solomon. He says, “God, you’ve made this promise to my dad, and I know I’m somehow a part of that promise, but I can’t do what you’ve asked me to do. The work is too great. Your people are too great. I need you to equip me to serve your purpose. Give me a listening heart. Give me an understanding mind. I need wisdom to lead your great people.”

Exemplary, brother pastors — and those men here who will one day be pastors — heed King Solomon’s example. God has called us to lead this, his great people, to discern good and evil, right and wrong. And like Solomon, we need a discerning mind. We need wisdom. We need a listening ear. We need to abide in God’s word to lead God’s people.

The first four of the Ten Commandments all have to do with how God has chosen to be worshiped by his people. How God has chosen to be worshiped by his people is regulated by Scripture. So what we do in this place is regulated by Scripture, and we need wisdom to lead God’s people to worship him rightly. Church, will you pray that the Lord gives your pastors listening ears? Will you pray that the Lord would give us humble hearts to submit to God’s word and to lead by faithful example — to be men who abide in Christ, whose word abides in us, that we might discern right and wrong?

It pleased the Lord that Solomon asked for this, and the Lord granted the king’s request. And God gave Solomon a wise and discerning mind like no one before or since. And in addition to wisdom, Yahweh gave Solomon great riches and great honor. And as we keep reading through the text, verse 16 of chapter 3 all the way down to verse 19 of chapter 4 is basically a showcase of the king’s wisdom.

Verses 16–28 should be rather familiar to a lot of you. The author gives us a story to showcase Solomon’s divine wisdom. It’s a memorable story. Two women appear before the king — prostitutes — and they live together in the same home, a brothel or something, and the author makes no comment on that whatsoever. He just tells it like it is, expecting that the readers will recognize there are many layers of problems here.

They’re in front of the king because both women gave birth to little boys around the same time. And tragically, one woman, nursing her baby at night, lay on top of him and suffocated him, and he died. And when she realized this, she gets up and sneaks into the other woman’s room and swaps out the living baby with her dead baby. And when that woman wakes up and realizes, “This is not my baby,” she accuses the other woman of stealing her baby. And that woman denies the accusation. It’s about as horrible a situation as can be imagined. You have two women — one a troubled and distressed mother, and the other a lying baby thief — and they go before the king.

And this is years before DNA testing, years before any kind of security monitor. There was no one else in the house. There is one woman’s word against another woman’s word, and no one to witness one or the other. So what is the king to do? It’s impossible to know which of them is the distressed mother and which is the lying baby thief. No one can know the heart but God. And so the king needs divine wisdom.

The first demonstration of the king showing divine wisdom is the fact that the king listens to these women — that’s evident from the way the story is told. The king just lets them argue in front of him. Proverbs 18:17 says, “The one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him.” The king listens. He gets all the data that he can. But how is he going to know who’s lying and who’s telling the truth?

So Solomon devises a test to expose the motivation of each woman’s heart — a stress test, if you will. He calls for a sword, and he says, “Divide the living child in two and give half to the one and half to the other.” Solomon knows that a mother’s instinct to protect her child from harm is as strong as any force in the universe, and she would rather suffer the greatest pain to herself than allow her child to come to any harm.

And Solomon’s test reveals the heart of the true mother. For the one says, “Oh my Lord, give her the living child, and by no means put him to death.” But the other, driven by jealousy and bitterness — and probably grief over her own dead son — said this: “He shall be neither mine nor yours. Divide him.” The true mother reveals herself through her self-sacrificial love for her child and is restored to her child. And God’s people see that the wisdom of God was in Solomon to do justice. That’s showcase one.

Showcase two: the author goes on to show how King Solomon structured his kingdom. He appoints officials and officers to management positions in his kingdom. He’s the wisest man who has ever lived, and yet he recognizes that he has his own limitations and delegates leadership responsibilities to others. He’s like Moses, who went before him and appointed others to do the work. He delegates authority because Proverbs 11:14 says that in the abundance of counselors there is safety. The author wants us to see: Solomon has the wisdom of God to do justice.

Now, none of us are ancient Near Eastern kings, but all of us need God’s wisdom. Wisdom is the God-given skill to act according to God’s will. The Puritan Richard Baxter put it like this: it is that holy skill by which the soul is enabled to choose the best end and the best means to that end. And so wisdom is simply applying God’s truth to real-life situations. And so all of us need that.

If you’re here and not a Christian, you need wisdom — not just to get through life, but to make the wisest choice of all. The Bible says that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom. And so, sinner, fear God. This afternoon, take one of those Bibles on that table back there home, and read the Gospel of Mark, and see the glory of this God — magnificent and glorious and just. He is your king, whether you recognize him or not. And if your life ends before you surrender your life to this king, you will spend eternity under his judgment. And friend, because we love you, we would spare you of that. Repent of your sin. Turn to Jesus Christ today and receive forgiveness of sins and eternal life. If you have more questions about that, I’ll be by those double doors — I’d love to talk to you.

We all need wisdom. Young men here need wisdom to know how to live as a Christian in the world, how to prioritize their lives according to kingdom priorities, how to prepare themselves to lead a family, should the Lord will. Young women need the same. Husbands need wisdom to know how to lead in their family. Wives need wisdom to know how to love their children and their husbands and to manage their household. And so all of us must pray for wisdom.

Pastors find themselves in situations not too dissimilar to the one Solomon found himself in — less dramatic, mercifully, but difficult nonetheless. One person says this, another person says this — how do you know which it is? One person says we should do this, another person says we should do that — which is it? One person says this is the right application of Scripture, another person says this is the right application of Scripture — which way is it? One person says we should spend our money here, another says we should spend our money there — which is it? We need wisdom.

Counselors meet with couples, and he says it was like this and she says it was like this, and the facts aren’t clear. How do you know which is right? How do you know if either of them are right? I’ve done enough counseling to know it is a pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey game. There’s no donkey. So we must pray for wisdom.

You need wisdom in your jobs. You need wisdom to care for aging parents. You need wisdom to counsel adult children. You need wisdom to be a member of the church. You need wisdom to know how to rid this country of the sin of abortion. You need wisdom to know how to remain steadfast under trials. You need wisdom to know how to live as a citizen of the kingdom. We all need wisdom.

The great news is that Jesus said, “Ask and you shall receive.” James 1:5: “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him.” Ask whatever you wish and it will be given you. So, PBC, let us pray for wisdom, because when we, the people of God, receive the wisdom of God and apply the wisdom of God, the kingdom of God and the justice of God is established and advanced in the world.

And that brings us down to chapter 4, verse 20, where we see the wisdom of Solomon and its effects.

Judah and Israel were as many as the sand by the sea. They ate and they drank and were happy. Solomon ruled over all the kingdoms from the Euphrates to the land of the Philistines, to the border of Egypt. They brought tribute and served Solomon all the days of his life. Solomon’s provision for one day was thirty cors of fine flour and sixty cors of meal, ten fat oxen and twenty pasture-fed cattle, a hundred sheep, besides deer, gazelles, roebucks, and fattened fowl. For he had dominion over all the region west of the Euphrates, from Tiphsah to Gaza, over all the kings west of the Euphrates, and he had peace on all sides around him. And Judah and Israel lived in safety, from Dan even to Beersheba, every man under his vine and under his fig tree, all the days of Solomon.

Solomon also had 40,000 stalls of horses for his chariots and 12,000 horsemen. And those officers supplied provisions for King Solomon and for all who came to King Solomon’s table, each one in his month; they let nothing be lacking. Barley also, and straw for the horses and swift steeds, they brought to the place where it was required, each according to his duty.

And God gave Solomon wisdom and understanding beyond measure, and breadth of mind like the sand on the seashore, so that Solomon’s wisdom surpassed the wisdom of all the people of the east and all the wisdom of Egypt. For he was wiser than all other men — wiser than Ethan the Ezrahite, and Heman, and Calcol, and Darda, the sons of Mahol. And his fame was in all the surrounding nations. He also spoke 3,000 proverbs, and his songs were 1,005. He spoke of trees, from the cedar that is in Lebanon to the hyssop that grows out of the wall. He spoke also of beasts, and of birds, and of reptiles, and of fish. And people of all nations came to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and from all the kings of the earth who had heard of his wisdom.

Now, remember something I said last week: the author of Kings assumes that his readers know their Bibles. And in the section I’ve just read, the author is grabbing texts from all across Scripture and applying them to Solomon and his kingdom.

Look again at verse 20 — “as many as the sand by the sea.” Sound familiar? It’s a reference to the promise God made to Abraham in Genesis 13, and again in Genesis 22, that his descendants would be like the sand of the sea. So there’s God’s promise fulfilled in Solomon. Solomon ruling over all the kingdoms of the Euphrates to the border of Egypt — same thing. It’s the promise God made to Abraham in Genesis 15, the same promise God reiterated in the covenant with Israel in Exodus 23 and again in Deuteronomy 11. That’s God’s promise fulfilled in Solomon.

Now, surely the phrase in verse 24 sounds familiar to you — “Solomon had dominion.” Where do we get that from? Genesis 1 and 2. It’s the same word God used when he told Adam his role: take dominion, rule, bring my peace, my beauty, my order, my extension of my kingdom to the earth. That’s God’s promise fulfilled through Solomon.

Judah and Israel are living in safety from Dan to Beersheba, which is from the top to the bottom. Verse 25, every man under his vine and every man under his fig tree — that’s a fulfillment of God’s promise through Micah, in Micah chapter 4. The author assumes that we read this and hear those texts: this is God fulfilling his promise through Solomon.

There’s more. Look at verse 33 — Solomon spoke of trees, of beasts, of birds, of reptiles, of fish. So he’s good at botany and zoology — who cares? What the author is telling us is that Solomon is a new Adam. Again, the phrase is taken from Genesis 1 and Genesis 2, when Adam is naming the animals, taking dominion over the animals, showing his authority over creation.

And don’t miss verse 34 — the people of all the nations are coming to hear of the wisdom of the son of David. That is a fulfillment of the prophet Isaiah’s prophecy in Isaiah 2, that the nations would come and see and hear and learn of God and have peace with one another.

The author of Kings wants us to know that God is establishing his kingdom on earth — that this, the son of David, is a new Adam, a new Abraham, a new Moses, a new Israel. He’s the one in whom and through whom all the promises of God find their yes and amen.

And remember, last week, if you read 2 Samuel 7 — and I hope you did — remember what God said he would do through the son of David. 2 Samuel 7:13: “He will build a house for my name.” We don’t have time to read the whole chapter, but turn to chapter 5 and look at verse 5. King Solomon, the son of David, says, “I intend to build a house for the name of the Lord my God.” This young king understands himself to be the fulfillment of the promises of God. He is the son of David who will build the house for the Lord. And next week, Lord willing, we will see that house built.

But there’s more the author wants us to see. God has established his king. God has established his kingdom in Israel. And the borders of the kingdom are expanding far and wide. But if you have been listening, if you’ve been paying close attention, then you’ll have noticed — how did we put it last week? Not all is as it should be. This beautiful tower has started to lean. There have been signs, breadcrumbs.

So let’s go back. Chapter 3, verse 1: Solomon made a marriage alliance with whom? Pharaoh, king of Egypt. In God’s law, does it not forbid God’s people marrying foreign women? Look at verse 2 — the people were sacrificing where? At the high places. Look at verse 3 — the king is sacrificing at the high places. But doesn’t God’s word forbid God’s people sacrificing on high places?

In Deuteronomy chapter 17, God said of Israel’s kings, and I quote, “The king must not acquire many horses for himself” — no big army. Skip down to chapter 4, verse 26, which we just read a minute ago: Solomon had 40,000 stalls and 12,000 men to ride his horses. Now, I don’t know how many horses “many horses” is, but it seems to me 40,000 stalls represents many horses.

Furthermore, Leviticus 25 says that no Israelite is allowed to force another Israelite to serve as a slave. Now go to chapter 5 and look at verse 13 — King Solomon drafted, what’s your Bible say? Forced labor. You know another word for that? Slave labor, out of all of Israel — 30,000 men. And just so you know, one day when we get to chapter 12, you’re going to see that decision split the nation.

So all that to say — this beautiful tower, covered in God-given wisdom and white marble, with its bell towers calling the nations to come and see, has begun sinking on one side, and no amount of mimming or perspective is going to put it right. Eventually the leaning tower of Israel will fall.

All the blessings given to Solomon, all the blessings of Solomon’s kingdom, are but a foretaste. They’re the hors d’oeuvres for the feast to come. Solomon is a sapling of the oak tree that is the true son of David, Jesus Christ. It is Jesus who will establish God’s kingdom that cannot be shaken. It is Jesus who will build God’s temple on the earth that cannot be destroyed. Solomon may have been the wisest man who has ever lived, but Jesus Christ is wisdom personified. We learned that, didn’t we, in 1 Corinthians chapter 1, some months ago — the apostle Paul said that Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God. Paul wrote to the Colossians, telling them that in him are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

So it is Jesus Christ who will do what Solomon failed to do — that in Christ, God will finally and fully establish his kingdom. Jesus will build God’s temple, the church of the living God. Jesus is himself the temple of the living God. And through the church, united to him by faith, shaped into his likeness, the bells of God’s divine wisdom ring out to the nations. Ephesians 3:10 says, “Through the church, the manifold wisdom of God may now be known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.” That’s a massive reality.

That means, brothers and sisters, that when we gather on the Lord’s Day in this place — receiving and releasing members, when we strengthen and encourage one another, when we exhort and discipline one another — we are making God’s wisdom known. We are establishing God’s justice on earth. This is the house built for the name of the Lord our God, and no other. This is the place where his banner flies, and no other.

So Christian, when you apply God’s wisdom, when you establish God’s justice in your life, at your work, you are making God’s wisdom known. When you raise your family in the fear of the Lord, you are establishing God’s kingdom. That is what God-given wisdom is for.

God’s people go from the church out to the nations, to the places where Christ has not been named, to do what? To establish churches — God’s kingdom within the kingdom of man, separate from the world — to show and tell the world what the justice of God is like, what peace with God is like. That is our role. Solomon couldn’t get it done. Jesus came and did it, and united you to himself, and filled you with his Spirit, the Spirit of wisdom. And through you, the church, the manifold wisdom of God is made known among the nations.

And so let us pray that God would give us wisdom to do that here in Piqua, in Miami County, and out to the nations. And let us pray that by God’s grace, as we apply God’s truth to real-life situations, he would establish his kingdom, and to Christ is the delight of all.

Let’s pray. Father, please receive our thanks for allowing us to become a part of this, the magnificent story that you’re telling about the glory of your magnificent Son. In whose name we pray, amen.

Well, if you have a Bible or someone nearby has a Bible, point it to First Kings—the Old Testament book of First Kings. I’ll give you a couple of minutes to find it. Just a hint if you’re having a hard time finding it: First Kings comes before Second Kings. So, if you went to Second Kings, just go back—you found it.

First Kings chapter 1. We’re beginning a new series in the book of Kings. So, as you’re finding your way there, let me pray and then we’ll go ahead and get started.

May grace and peace be multiplied to us in the knowledge of God and of our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. For the grass withers and the flower falls, but the word of our Lord remains forever. Amen.

Kings is explanation. It’s one book in two parts—a historical narrative. We don’t know who wrote the book of Kings. It’s possible that it was the prophet Jeremiah. We do know that this book was written sometime after the city of Jerusalem fell to the Babylonians and the people of God were carried off into exile.

This book, which will take up the subject of our study for the next few months, was written to them. It was written for us, but it was written to them. It explains to them how this exile happened to them and why. It helps the exiled people of God to grapple with the hard question: “How did we get here?”

There’s a lot going on in the background of the book of Kings, and the author just assumes that you, the reader, understand the story. So as we spend the next few months working our way through these books together, I will by God’s grace—and whoever else teaches this series—fill in the blanks and hopefully explain what’s happening in the background.

Kings covers a period of four centuries, from the death of King David somewhere around the year 970 BC all the way to the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BC. To understand why we have this book, why it’s in the Bible, and what good and usefulness it is to us, let us attempt to put ourselves in the sandals of the original audience: exiles in Babylon with the temple in ruins, severed from the land that God had promised to them, generations of God’s own people wiped out, wondering, “If Yahweh is good and all-powerful, then why are we here? How could this happen?”

Kings answers the questions: God is good. God is all-powerful. And before the Babylonians broke down the city walls, Israel’s sin hollowed the stones. Knowing this as the background of Kings will help us when we read people and kings in this book doing dubious, questionable things. It’s part of the narrative tension in the book that we’re meant to feel. Understand that historical narrative like this is not all endorsement, but it is all explanation. How did we get here? Here’s how.

More than anything, the book of Kings builds expectation for a Savior—for the King who is greater than all the kings featured in this book. God’s people have been disoriented in exile, longing for someone to come and save them. All of the streams of 1 and 2 Kings flow to the ocean of Jesus Christ and His gospel. As much as the Lord would enable us, let us follow those streams to the ocean.

That’s the setup. Here is the central claim of the first two chapters of 1 Kings: The throne belongs to God’s chosen king, and all who exalt themselves against him will fall.

Let’s pick up reading 1 Kings chapter 1. Everyone there? Okay.

“Now King David was old and advanced in years. And although they covered him with clothes, he could not get warm. Therefore his servants said to him, ‘Let a young woman be sought for my lord the king, and let her wait on the king and be in his service. Let her lie in your arms, that my lord the king may be warm.’ So they sought for a beautiful young woman throughout all the territory of Israel, and found Abishag the Shunammite, and brought her to the king. The young woman was very beautiful, and she was of service to the king and attended to him, but the king knew her not.”

First Kings picks up where 2 Samuel left off. David—Yahweh’s chosen king, the giant slayer, the lion killer, the kingdom conqueror, the military genius, the psalmist, the bard, the shepherd of Israel, the man after God’s own heart—is old, cold, quiet, and dying. During David’s great life, there wasn’t an enemy he couldn’t defeat. But here we see the enemy of sin and death is proving too great. Now he’s old and he can’t get warm.

His servants love him, they’re loyal to him, and they’re doing everything they can to help him. They come up with an idea: “Let’s get a young woman and put her in the king’s bed, and she will keep him warm.” Well, why not ask one of his wives? This may be the first sign that not all is as it should be.

You see, God told Israel that He would give them kings, and God gave them laws for how these kings were to rule. One of the laws for the kings was that they should not acquire many wives for themselves. Yet King David, at this point in his life, has at least eight wives and something like ten concubines. Any one of David’s wives or concubines could have done the job, but things are not as they ought to have been. So the servants hold a beauty pageant, find the most beautiful virgin in the kingdom—a woman called Abishag the Shunammite—and bring her to the king.

. Why did she have to be young? Why did she have to be beautiful? David is a 70-year-old man at this point. But the servants suppose—you’ll forgive the expression—that they can jumpstart his old body. If the king can sire more children, then perhaps he can reclaim some of his former glory. Oh, but look at verse four: The king knew her not. The king is old, cold, quiet, and impotent. There’s no more riding into battle. There’s no more winning glory and fame. There’s no more building the royal household. This king is impotent.

But that’s not all this king is. This king is also negligent. David was Israel’s first official king. During his reign, the Lord entered into a covenant with David. Let me encourage you this afternoon to read 2 Samuel chapter 7. God promised that He would provide a dynasty to the house of David—that the son of David would sit on the throne of Israel, and he would rule the people of God.

More than that, David’s son wouldn’t be just David’s son; David’s son would be God’s son. God would be like a father to him in the same way that Adam was the son of God and Israel was the son of God. David’s son will be the son of God. Not only that, he will be the mediator of the covenant of Abraham and the mediator of the covenant of Moses. As goes the king, so goes the kingdom. The whole nation of Israel is embodied in one man: the son of David.

Second Samuel 7 is a massive chapter. God identifies the son of David as the fulfillment of the long-awaited prophecy from the very beginning. In the beginning, when Adam and Eve sinned against God, a curse fell upon them, and the Lord spoke of one to come who would be the offspring—the seed of the woman—who would crush the serpent’s head, destroying the enemy of God and the offspring of the enemy. So the son of David is the seed of the woman that would crush the seed of the serpent.

All of that is behind what’s going on in the opening verses of 1 Kings. As King David lay dying, these great expectations were for this son of David to come, and that time is almost here. But notice: David’s successor has not been anointed, and David is almost dead. This king has been negligent. This is brilliant writing, by the way. You see what the author is doing? As goes the king, so goes the kingdom. David is impotent; David is negligent. Israel has been impotent; Israel has been negligent.

Now, David, with eight wives and ten concubines, has many sons. Which of the sons of David is the son of David? Well, one man has an answer. Enter Adonijah, son of Haggith. Pick up reading at verse 5:

“Now Adonijah the son of Haggith exalted himself, saying, ‘I will be king.’ And he prepared for himself chariots and horsemen, and fifty men to run before him. His father [that’s David] had never at any time displeased him by asking, ‘Why have you done thus?’ He was also a very handsome man, and he was born next after Absalom. He conferred with Joab the son of Zeruiah and with Abiathar the priest, and they followed Adonijah and helped him. But Zadok the priest and Benaiah the son of Jehoiada and Nathan the prophet and Shimei and Rei and David’s mighty men were not with Adonijah. Adonijah sacrificed sheep, oxen, and fattened calves by the Serpent’s Stone, which is beside En-rogel, and he invited all his brothers, the king’s sons, and all the royal officials of Judah, but he did not invite Nathan the prophet or Benaiah or the mighty men or Solomon his brother.”

Once again, the author of Kings assumes his readers know the Bible. Those who have read 2 Samuel know we’ve been here before. David’s family is a mess—like Netflix-docuseries-level mess. David was a great king and a terrible father. He had many sons by many women. Adonijah was the fourth oldest of David’s sons and the oldest living of David’s sons. As the oldest living, that made him, to many people, heir apparent.

Well, where were his other sons? David’s first son, Amnon, raped his half-sister, Tamar, and was consequently murdered by David’s third son, Absalom. King David got angry with his son Absalom, but refused to reconcile with him. The Bible says that Absalom was a beautiful man with glorious hair—like Jason Momoa-glorious hair. The people loved Absalom almost as much as Absalom loved Absalom. And Absalom tried to make himself king.

Second Samuel 15 tells us the story, and it might sound a little familiar: Absalom got himself a chariot and horses and 50 men to run before him. So yes, we’ve been here before. Absalom fails and dies in battle. First son, second son—third son, we don’t know anything about; he must have died at some point along the way. But we do know David’s fourth son, Adonijah, exalted himself and said, “King me.”

We read that David handled Adonijah about the same as he handled his other sons, which is to say he didn’t handle them at all. Verse 6 says that he never questioned Adonijah, never displeased him at all. The dad never disciplined his son his whole life. Which makes Adonijah a handsome man—royalty, rich, and undisciplined. I’ll bet he was just a joy to be around.

Adonijah is scheming. He confers with Joab, the king’s cousin, who is the commander of the armies of Israel. He confers with Abiathar, the high priest of Israel. This boy knows what he’s doing. He’s accumulating powerful allies and friends.

But notice who’s missing: most notably, perhaps, Nathan the prophet—the one who speaks God’s word. There is no prophet conferring with Adonijah. Adonijah seemingly wants nothing whatsoever to do with anyone who speaks God’s word.

When the author tells us that Adonijah makes himself king by the Serpent’s Stone, he’s laying on the clues thick. Things are bad. Adonijah is just Absalom 2.0, exalting himself as king while neglecting God’s words—holding a coronation for himself at a place that literally means “the slithering.” The author wants us to see that Adonijah is the seed of the serpent, not the true son of David.

Nathan the prophet isn’t the only one missing from this party, is he? Adonijah invited all of his brothers except for one. Well, why is that? Did they just forget to send the invitation? No, Adonijah knew what the original readers would have known: that the one who was to sit on the throne of David—the son of David—had already been announced by God. Adonijah knows that. So he’s being preemptive: getting himself an army, getting himself the priesthood, and gathering the royal family together to declare, “I’m the king, not him! I got here first!”

You read in verse 11 and following that Nathan the prophet steps in and goes to David’s wife, Bathsheba. Many of you will recognize that name. One day long ago, when King David was at the height of his glory and power—at a time of the year when he ought to have been out with his army fighting bad guys—he was back home taking a walk on the balcony of his palace. He looked down and saw a woman bathing, and he lusted after her. Her husband wasn’t at home because he was out fighting David’s battles. So David took her into his own bed, and she got pregnant. But God exposed him through the prophet Nathan.

Bathsheba bore David five sons. The first died in infancy, and the youngest was called Solomon. It is Solomon whom God chosen to sit in King David’s place.

The prophet Nathan engineers counter-moves against Adonijah. This is not political intrigue; this is acting upon God’s promises. He tells Bathsheba to go to her husband, the king, and say (quoting verses 17 and 18):

“My lord, you swore to your servant by the Lord your God, saying, ‘Solomon your son shall reign after me, and he shall sit on my throne.’ And now, behold, Adonijah is king, although you, my lord the king, do not know it.”

All throughout this narrative, David is being presented to us as clueless and powerless. He can’t keep himself warm. He doesn’t speak when he needs to speak. He doesn’t do what he needs to do. He doesn’t know Abishag. He doesn’t know Adonijah is king. What does he know at all? He has to be prompted by others to do what the king is supposed to do.

Now, finally—finally—this impotent king speaks. Finally, he’s been aroused from his slumber, and David confirms that Solomon is God’s choice. So he calls Zadok the priest, Nathan the prophet, and Benaiah the warrior, and he has Solomon sit on his own mule and ride not to the Serpent’s Stone, but to Gihon, a place of springs. There the prophet and the priest anoint the true son of David as king over Israel. They blow the trumpet: “Long live King Solomon!” All the people go up after him singing, and the Bible says that the earth was split with the noise.

Before we move on to chapter 2, I would like to point out something that I’ve noticed here regarding God’s grace. The most powerful man in her world took her into his bed, used her, killed her husband, and forced her into a marriage. This woman endured the loss of her husband and of her child; her home was shattered.

Here is proof, sisters, that regardless of your past, what horrible sins have been committed against you, or what sins you have committed yourself, this God is a God of grace. What sins have been done to you do not have the final word. God sees you, God is not done with you, and when you are surrendered to Him, God will use you to put His Son on the throne.

So, the rightful king of Israel takes the throne, and Adonijah knows he’s in trouble. All of the guests at Adonijah’s coronation also know they’re in trouble. They freak out and bug out, because no good comes from being on the losing end of a coup. Verse 50 says that Adonijah fears Solomon, and he flees to the altar of God for safety.

King Solomon goes to his older brother and tells him that if he shows himself a worthy man, loyal to the throne, he won’t touch him. But if there is wickedness found in him, Adonijah will die. He gives him a second chance and tells him, “Go home. You’re safe.”

So, who is the rightful son of David? It is Solomon, the man of God’s own choosing.

As we’re going to see in the weeks and months ahead, not all is as it should be. Solomon will ultimately fall short of the title of Son of Man, Son of God, Son of David. He will not keep God’s word; he will not fulfill God’s prophecy. Heavy is the crown.

There is a reason, by the way, the Lord Jesus rode a donkey on the way into the city of Jerusalem. There is a reason why those who followed Him cried out, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” There is a reason why, as soon as the Lord Jesus entered the city, He put down the money changers and purified the worship of God. It is because Jesus Christ is the Son of David—the true King who alone can wear the crown, keep the word of God, stay faithful to the covenant, embody the people of God, and mediate the covenant of Abraham and Moses.

By His death and resurrection, Jesus brings justice between God and man, and between man and man. Jesus brings peace and the blessing of God to the nations. After His resurrection, Jesus ascended into heaven, where He sits at the right hand of the Father, with all authority in heaven and earth given to Him. There is one rightful King over all the earth: Jesus the Christ, King over all.

Yet, everyone in this room has been like Adonijah, haven’t we? Every one of us has exalted ourselves and said, “I will be king.” Every one of us has justified our own coronation by getting people to go before us, gaining the support of others to follow us. And like Adonijah, we do it without the prophet of God, without the word of God. Because we know, like Adonijah knew, the word of God isn’t going to say what we want it to say.

God’s word says, “Humble yourself,” but we say, “I will be king.”

God’s word says, “Deny yourself. Follow Christ,” but we say, “I’ll make my own way.”

God’s word says, “You are not your own,” and we say, “My body, my choice.”

God’s word says, but we say, “I’m an adult. I do what I want.”

God’s word says, “Don’t get drunk,” and we say, “Well, I’m just having fun. Just need to chill.”

God’s word says, “I am your provider. Trust in me,” but we say, “I’ll try and make a little bit of money on sports betting or the lottery.”

Children, the Bible says, “Obey your parents, for in the Lord, this is right.” And you know that every time you disobey your mom or your dad, you’re being like Adonijah and saying, “I will be king, not them.” You’re breaking God’s commandments.

The point is, everyone in this room needs to be delivered from the seed of the serpent—the parts of Adonijah that live within us. If you’re not a Christian, I hope that you see that. I hope it’s clear: God will get His way. God does not bend His will to yours. God does not lower His standard for anyone, including you. There is one King, and you are not Him.

That King shows His greatness by giving Himself up, dying in the place of sinners, and offering them forgiveness for their sins and reconciliation with their Creator. The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is enough to forgive you of any wicked thing and every wicked thing you’ve done, and to grant you peace with God and eternal life. Friend, turn to Him today. As Solomon did to Adonijah, He’s giving you that chance. Will there be wickedness in you?

Because as we’re about to see in chapter 2, the son of David brings justice and peace. Solomon does it in part; the Lord Jesus did it in full.

Let’s pick up reading in chapter 2, verse 1:

“When David’s time to die drew near, he commanded Solomon his son, saying, ‘I am about to go the way of all the earth. Be strong, and show yourself a man, and keep the charge of the Lord your God, walking in his ways and keeping his statutes, his commandments, his rules, and his testimonies, as it is written in the Law of Moses, that you may prosper in all that you do and wherever you turn, that the Lord may establish his word that he spoke concerning me, saying, “If your sons pay close attention to their way, to walk before me in faithfulness with all their heart and with all their soul, you shall not lack a man on the throne of Israel.”‘”

A few weeks ago, when we finished up our series in 1 Corinthians, we read the Apostle Paul writing to the church, saying something somewhat similar to what David is saying to Solomon here: “Be a man.” This is what it means to be a man, brothers. I said it then, and I’ll say it again now: masculine strength is not measured in pounds on a barbell, but by obedience to the commands of God.

As goes the king, so goes the kingdom. David knows this, and so he tells his son, “Keep the charge of the Lord your God. Walk in His ways, keep His statutes, keep His commandments, keep His rules, keep His testimonies, and you will prosper, and God will establish His word.” David’s just taking all of that from 2 Samuel 7 and applying it to his son who’s now king. As long as the son of David does right, there will always be a son of David on the throne.

Now remember, let’s put ourselves in the original readers’ sandals, and feel how painful that would have been to hear and be reminded of—because they’re in Babylon. Their kings didn’t keep the commandments, and there is no son of David on the throne. This text is yearning for the King who will do what these kings did not.

David tells his son, “Bring justice to the kingdom.” In verses 5 down to 9, he’s telling him, “Clean up the messes that I didn’t clean up when I was king.” And then in verse 10, David dies. This text once more yearns for a King who does what these kings don’t do—which is not die.

With the dirt still fresh over his father’s tomb, the seed of the serpent is back. Adonijah, sent home by his younger brother Solomon, who’s king, goes to the queen mother. The serpent always goes to the woman! He says, “Give me Abishag the Shunammite as my wife.” What does he mean? That young girl who won the beauty pageant to keep the king warm? In the ancient Near East, possession of a deceased king’s wives and concubines was a symbol of succession to the throne.

Those of you who’ve read 2 Samuel remember when Absalom rose up against David and David fled the city. You know what Absalom did? He took all of David’s concubines to shame his father. That’s what Absalom 1.0 did; Absalom 2.0 is trying to do the same thing. The seed of the serpent is seeking to usurp the throne through a woman. We’ve been here before.

But Solomon is no dummy, and he recognizes what Adonijah is trying to do. Adonijah has answered the question: “Will you be a worthy man? Is there wickedness in you?” He had been warned, and so Adonijah is executed.

The rest of chapter 2 is taken up with Solomon exacting justice in the kingdom. You remember Joab, the commander of the armies, King David’s cousin? As soon as he hears the news that Adonijah has been killed, he knows what’s coming, because he took up with Adonijah against Solomon—he took up with the wrong king. So he flees for his life. Besides siding with Adonijah, Joab had also been guilty of shedding innocent blood during a time of peace, and his sins find him out.

Then we’re introduced to a fellow named Shimei, back from 2 Samuel, who had cursed King David during the days of Absalom’s rebellion. Shimei is given a second chance, just like Adonijah. When he also proves that he cannot keep the king’s commands, his sin finds him out, and he is killed.

Do you get what the author is doing here? There is one King. The earth is split when He is exalted. Those on this side, those on that side—you’re either with the son of David, or you are against him.

Chapter 2 ends in this way: So the kingdom was established in the hand of Solomon. The son of David sits on the throne.

The question hanging over this book is: Will the son of David do what is right? Will he keep the terms of the covenant?Will he bring peace and justice and order and beauty to the world? Will the nations see the blessing of God and come and worship Him?

In the weeks ahead, we’re going to see that Solomon’s kingdom, great as it is, will not last. It doesn’t survive one generation. Within one generation, it’ll be divided, and within a few centuries, Jerusalem will burn. Even the best son of David cannot carry the weight of the crown.

But there is another Son of David. Jesus Christ did not seize the crown like Adonijah; His Father gave it to Him. He did not rise through the ranks through intrigue, but through obedience. He conquered through being conquered. He died, rose again, and ascended to the Father. Now He sits on the throne over every square inch of creation, and His kingdom will have no end.

The church of Jesus Christ is not searching for a king. We’re not waiting for a king; we have one. Our calling is not to build our own kingdoms, but to serve the advance of His kingdom. This place—as I mentioned last week—is an embassy of God’s kingdom: an embassy of the kingdom of Jesus Christ, the Lord who is King, amidst a world that is against her King.

Every Lord’s Day that we gather, we hear our King speak. We conform our lives to His word. We are equipped to carry out His mandates. And every day we wake, we face the temptation of Adonijah to say, “I will be king.” Every day by God’s grace, we step down from that throne, and we gladly acknowledge that there is already a King in heaven: Christ is King, and I am His servant.

So I make one more appeal: if you are not a Christian, the issue is not whether or not Jesus is your King. He is your King. The question is: will you meet Him as your King or as your Judge? Friend, make your decision today. Blessed are all who take refuge in Him. I pray that the Lord would use this book and our time in this book to help us find rest and refuge in the King who is above all kings.

Let’s pray.

Father, we thank You for Your word, and we ask that You would please have mercy on us every time we seek, like Adonijah, to make ourselves king—to remind us that there is already a King, and that the peace and the justice that we seek, the order and beauty that we want, will not be found anywhere else but in Him. Do this for His glory. We pray. Amen.