[0:00] Take out your Bibles with me, please. And though we will be looking at 1 and 2 Kings, I'd like us to look at Deuteronomy chapter 28.
[0:15] Yes, starting a little bit differently. I want to set the context of all that happens to Israel that is based on the relationship covenant that God made with Israel at Mount Sinai.
[0:38] And in Deuteronomy 28, we have the blessings of those who keep the covenant and the curses of those who do not. So we understand that everything that happens to Israel is based completely on their obedience to the covenant or their disobedience to that covenant.
[1:04] And in Deuteronomy 28, God is quite explicit about what these blessings are and what these curses are. And I am glad to say we are not under that covenant.
[1:22] We are under a new covenant, which brings us grace and forgiveness because we cannot keep the first covenant.
[1:34] So if you're able, please stand as I read from Deuteronomy 28. We will read 1 through 29 and then down to verses 36 to 46.
[1:47] Remember that this covenant, when he talks about the covenant, he's talking about the 10 words, right?
[2:00] The words written on the tablets, the tablets of the covenant, 10 words. So we know them as the 10 commandments. That's the covenant. Okay.
[2:13] Deuteronomy 28, verse 1. And if you faithfully obey the voice of the Lord, your God, being careful to do all his commandments that I command you today, the Lord, your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth.
[2:29] And all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you if you obey the voice of the Lord, your God. Blessed shall you be in the city and blessed shall you be in the field.
[2:43] Blessed shall be the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your ground and the fruit of your cattle, the increase of your herds and the young of your flock. Blessed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl.
[2:57] Blessed shall you be when you come in and blessed shall you be when you come out. The Lord will cause your enemies who rise against you to be defeated before you.
[3:09] They shall come out against you one way and flee before you seven ways. The Lord will command the blessing on you in your barns and in all that you undertake.
[3:21] And he will bless you in the land that the Lord, your God, is giving you. The Lord will establish you as a people holy to himself as he has sworn to you if you keep the commandments of the Lord, your God, and walk in his ways.
[3:39] And all the peoples of the earth shall see that you are called by the name of Yahweh and they shall be afraid of you. And the Lord will make you abound in prosperity in the fruit of your womb, in the fruit of your livestock, in the fruit of your ground, within the land that the Lord swore to your fathers to give you.
[4:02] The Lord will open to you his good treasury, the heavens, to give the rain to your land in its season and to bless all the work of your hands.
[4:13] And you shall lend to many nations, but you shall not borrow. And the Lord will make you the head and not the tail. And you shall go up and not down if you obey the commandments of the Lord, your God, which I command you today, being careful to do them.
[4:32] And if you do not turn aside from any of the words that I command you today to the right hand or to the left to go after other gods and to serve them.
[4:44] But if you will not obey the voice of the Lord, your God, or be careful to do all his commandments and his statutes that I command you today, then all these curses shall come upon you and overtake you.
[5:01] Cursed shall you be in the city. Cursed shall you be in the field. Cursed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl. Cursed shall be the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your ground.
[5:13] The increase of your herds and the young of your flock. Cursed shall you be when you come in and cursed shall you be when you go out. The Lord will send on you curses, confusion, and frustration in all that you undertake to do until you are destroyed and perish quickly on the account of the evil of your deeds because you have forsaken me.
[5:46] The Lord will make the pestilence stick to you until he has consumed you off the land that you are entering to take possession of it. The Lord will strike you with wasting disease and with fever, inflammation, and fiery heat, with drought, and with blight, and with mildew.
[6:05] They shall pursue you until you perish. And the heavens over your head shall be bronze, and the earth under you shall be iron.
[6:20] The Lord will make the rain of your land powder. From heaven, dust shall come down on you until you are destroyed.
[6:32] destroyed. Getting the picture? The Lord will cause you to be defeated before your enemies. You shall go out one way against them and flee seven ways before them.
[6:46] You shall be a horror to all the kingdoms of the earth. And your dead body shall be food for all the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth. And there shall be no one to frighten them away.
[6:58] The Lord will strike you with the boils of Egypt. With the tumors and scabs and itch which you cannot be healed. The Lord will strike you with madness and blindness and confusion of mind.
[7:13] And you shall grope at noonday as the blind grope in darkness. And you shall not prosper in your ways. You shall be only oppressed and robbed continually.
[7:28] And there shall be no one to help you. down to verse 36. The Lord will bring you and your king whom you set over you to a nation that neither you nor your fathers have known.
[7:45] And there you shall serve other gods of wood and stone. And you shall become a horror, a proverb, and a byword among all the peoples where the Lord will lead you away.
[7:58] away. You shall carry much seed into the field and you shall gather in little for the locusts shall consume it.
[8:12] You shall plant vineyards and dress them but you shall neither drink of the wine nor gather the grapes for the worms shall eat them. You shall have olive trees throughout all your territory but you shall not anoint yourself with the oil for your olives shall drop off.
[8:28] You shall father sons and daughters but they shall not be yours for they will go into captivity. The cricket shall possess all your trees and the fruit of your ground.
[8:39] The sojourner who is among you shall rise higher and higher above you and you shall come down lower and lower. He shall lend to you and you shall not lend to him.
[8:52] He shall be the head and you shall be the tail. All these curses shall come upon you and pursue you and overtake you till you are destroyed because you did not obey the voice of the Lord your God to keep his commandments and his statutes that he commanded you.
[9:14] They shall be a sign and a wonder against you and your offspring forever. Want to be under that covenant?
[9:29] Let's pray. Father, we pray that you guide us today as we look from this context of how you deal with your people Israel and we look then into this story of Solomon, his glory and his fall and where that leads the rest of your people in the promised land.
[9:59] Help us, Father, to see it as much more than simply history. Help us to see it as continual warnings to us as well.
[10:12] Help us to recognize that blessings realized can be lost. Help us recognize that if we abandoned you, if we go on in unrepentance, you will cut us off as you did Israel.
[10:38] Help us recognize and help us at the same time to see the hope that you bring, the promises that you still steadfastly give to those who will seek you.
[10:52] We thank you, Lord, that you are a God that forbears with sinners. Show us you today.
[11:05] Show us Jesus through these stories. We pray in Christ's name. Amen. Please be seated. I hope you can see why I wanted to start there.
[11:21] I wanted to start with the blessings and the curses of the covenant because that's where Israel lived. That was the condition and the terms of relationship relationship with God.
[11:37] So Moses was God's mediator to bring that covenant of law to Israel. Jesus is the new Moses who brought a new covenant to his people, a different term for relationship relationship with his people.
[12:01] And as the book of Hebrews said, the first covenant has faded and is obsolete. Not because the law was anything wrong with the law.
[12:14] The law is holy and righteous and good. Nothing wrong with the law. What's wrong is us. And the Old Testament proves over and over and over again we cannot keep it.
[12:29] We cannot keep it. Not as it stands. So, King Solomon, here we go.
[12:40] We're going to be in 1 and 2 Kings. It tells the story, 1 Kings 1-11 tell us the story of Solomon.
[12:54] Solomon had it all. I mean, what do you know about Solomon? What did he have? Wisdom. He was the wisest man on earth according to 1 Kings.
[13:08] Wiser than all. What else did he have? Huh? Wives. He had wives. He had so many wives. He had 700.
[13:20] 100 wives and princesses. He had peace. Peace? Peace. Peace. No war. No war.
[13:31] His daddy, King David, handed him the kingdom that was established all around, which was rested on every side.
[13:43] Solomon had peace. That is his name. Solomon, Shalom, Shaloman. His name is peace. He also had 300 concubines.
[13:59] Yes. Okay. 700, 300. Okay. He had treasures. He had treasures. He had treasures beyond all kings of the earth. He exceeded all kings of the earth.
[14:12] He had glory. He had security. He not only had it all, he did it all. He built lots of buildings and projects.
[14:23] He built the temple of the Lord. He built his own palace. He built another palace for his wife of Alliance who was the daughter of Pharaoh.
[14:40] He was into shipping, imports and exports. He had a fleet of ships. It was constantly both taking out exports and lots of imports.
[14:52] He imported horses. He imported gold, silver. What else? Peacocks. Baboons, apes.
[15:05] I think he bought a zoo. Or had a zoo. I don't think he had to buy anything. He wrote 1,000 songs and 3,000 proverbs.
[15:19] We have just a small sampling of what he did. He built a temple of gold. He built a palace with an ivory throne and 12 lions lining up his throne.
[15:37] And it said that no king of the land ever had anything quite as the like. His kingdom was world famous. At one point, I think in Hebrew, in 1 Kings 10, it says that the whole earth sought the presence of Solomon.
[16:03] So, remember the original blessings of Abraham. I will make of you a great nation. I will bless every family of the earth through your seed.
[16:22] And I will give to you the land as an everlasting possession. So, those are the three great promises. As we look at the kingdom of Solomon, we see those three promises coming to realization.
[16:42] They are now a great kingdom. They are a great nation. They are in the land firmly established in the promised land. And now, people from all the earth are starting to come to him to hear his wisdom.
[17:00] And it's capped off in chapter 10 as the queen of Sheba comes to Solomon. She has heard all these reports and she wanted to see for herself and so she comes and she tests him.
[17:14] She asks him all the hardest questions she can think of. And he answers all the questions. And he shows her all his wealth and all of his accomplishments.
[17:27] And it says, in chapter 10, it says that after she heard all of this, she had no breath left in her. Yes.
[17:38] Ding dong. And she said, the half hasn't been told. And then she blessed Solomon and she blessed Yahweh who has loved Israel this much.
[17:53] She testifies to the blessing of Yahweh and his love for his people. And we begin to wonder, so remember what David was promised.
[18:05] The promises of Abraham and then we have this new promise given to David. Remember in 2 Samuel 7, David wanted to build a house for the Lord and the Lord said, no, you shall not build me a house.
[18:18] I'm going to build you a house. It will be your descendant who will build my house. So his descendant is Solomon and Solomon builds the temple.
[18:30] And this descendant of David would be the eternal king. He would be, his throne would be forever. And as we see Solomon in his glory, we begin to wonder, is this the one?
[18:47] I mean, it's all lining up. It's all lining up. But as we read the whole story, Solomon is not only the perfecter of Israel's glory, he takes what David had established and he puts the icing and the cap on it to make it glorious.
[19:13] So he's the perfecter of Israel's glory, but he's also the architect of Israel's destruction. His rise and his fall are amazing.
[19:32] We go from the golden age to the grievous end. We go from riches to ruin, from triumph to tragedy.
[19:43] How many other things can we come up with here? He is the wisest man and he becomes a fool. I mean, if you have all that, what's all that wisdom for if you're not going to use it?
[19:56] He has blessings realized and lost. Lost. Because of Solomon, the nation will no longer be great.
[20:13] The land will be lost. And no one's coming. No one's coming. In fact, Israel's going to the nations.
[20:29] So, in 1 and 2 Kings, we have the record of what would be called the rise and fall of Solomon, but we also have the record more applicably to us as the misery of abandoning God.
[20:43] God. This is the tragic story of those who abandon God experience devastation, desolation, misery.
[21:00] They start as a united kingdom, the end as a divided kingdom. I mean, it's all falling apart. So, let's review real quickly. We have a chart that shows us the unfolding drama of redemptive history.
[21:13] Can we turn that on? Hopefully, if we can. Oh, Jeremy, you have to go? So, remember, so even if we don't get the chart, we can picture it.
[21:29] So, we have the unfolding drama, right? So, we have a theme of each of the eight periods, each of the acts, the era, the time frame, and those are approximate dates, the books that that's in, the key people, and most importantly, the promise that was given to throughout those ages.
[21:54] So, we're trying to take a bird's eye view of the whole Old Testament. Trying to make sense of the Old Testament. There's so much there. Can we put it down to the major eras, the major acts?
[22:06] So, we start with Genesis. What's the theme of Genesis? You can read it. Promises. To who? The patriarchs.
[22:17] Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Same promises repeated to them. Three promises. A great nation, an everlasting land, and a blessing to everyone. All right? Those are key because that's going to set the tone of all that happens after that.
[22:33] Right? So, then we come to Exodus. 400 years later, after Abraham, 400 years later to Moses, and we have Exodus. What is Exodus the theme?
[22:45] Redemption. Right? He redeems them out of Egypt. He redeems them from slavery. And he does it by Exodus, but actually, more literally, by the blood of a lamb. So, we have a picture.
[22:56] He also makes a covenant with Israel through Moses in that time to be a holy nation. If they keep his covenant, they will be a holy nation, a prized possession, et cetera, et cetera.
[23:07] They'll be all of these things. So, Moses, at the end of Exodus, takes them to the edge of the promised land. Well, in Numbers. Right? What happens in the book of Numbers? Hang on.
[23:19] The vote is 10 to 2. Nope, not gone. Right? So, rebellion in the wilderness. That leaves them for 40 years in the wilderness. They die out in the wilderness.
[23:30] 40 years later, Joshua's still there. Caleb's still there. So, we come to the next turning point. In the book of Joshua, what happens? They enter the land.
[23:42] Promise kept. The end of Joshua refers to this over and over. God has kept his promise. He did not let one word fall to the ground. He has fulfilled his promise of the land.
[23:58] Right? So, Joshua's great. They get the land. They're taking possession. They don't take all of it. Go into the time of the judges, which is another 300 and something years before David.
[24:11] And judges tells us everything falls apart. Right? Everyone does what is right in his own eyes. The judges go from good to bad to ugly. Right?
[24:21] And it just gets worse and worse. Next major turning point comes in the book of Samuel. From all this darkness of judges, you come to the time of incredible light.
[24:34] The time of the United Kingdom. The raising up of a king. And God raises up first king by the name of Saul, the desired one. Head and shoulders above everyone else. He looks impressive.
[24:45] He's not impressive at all. He doesn't keep the word. God takes the kingdom away from him and gives it to David, who's number eight son, the runt of the litter. Very pretty though.
[24:57] He has handsome and really pretty eyes. You know, he knows how to sling a stone. And it turns out that he's a man after God's own heart and he's a man that's very, very impressive.
[25:11] And we see David having faith to conquer giants. We see David having faithfulness to keep the word of the Lord, to keep God first in all things.
[25:22] He establishes and grows this worship of God that he loves the Lord so much. He writes these psalms and he organizes choirs and musicians and he just wants, he has this zeal for the Lord that's just so impressive.
[25:41] But then he falls. He just has a bad moment, huh? We come to a day in David's life where he, what was it, a day?
[26:01] He's supposed to be at war and he's home in the idle time and he looks out and sees Bathsheba. a very beautiful woman and from that point on he's a different person.
[26:19] He then takes her, lays with her, conceives with her, tries to cover it up, ends up killing her husband.
[26:32] I don't know how many commands he broke. We got coveting, we got stealing, we got adultery, we got lying in the cover up and we got murder, conspiracy to murder.
[26:47] God confronts him and David does repent but his life is never the same. So he hands the kingdom over to Solomon and that's where we come today.
[27:03] We come to Acts 6. So let's look now to 1 and 2 kings.
[27:21] What we'll see here is the apostasy. We have, under Act 5 we have the United Kingdom, right, the faithfulness, the glory and golden years of Israel.
[27:33] Everything's there. They have it all. They have the nation. They have the land. And with Solomon they start to have people coming. So all of these promises are being realized.
[27:46] And then Solomon, like his father, has a fall. But as bad as David's fall was, it was not anything compared to Solomon's fall.
[28:01] David fell over one woman. Solomon fell over 700 women who turned his heart away from the Lord.
[28:17] David did a thing that God said was an abomination. But David repented. David did not go after other gods.
[28:27] Solomon, we have no record of any repentance. We don't know. I don't know.
[28:39] Don't know his heart. Don't know how God judged him. But the record shows he is the architect of Israel's destruction.
[28:51] He was not just unfaithful. He was apostate. He abandoned God. At best, he had a divided heart. Very divided.
[29:04] One part for God, 700 for others. So, let's look at the story. So, once again, in Acts 6, we have this story of apostasy.
[29:18] We had, under the United Kingdom, we had 80 years of peace and the golden age, right? The very end of Solomon's life, we have Solomon's apostasy, which leads to a nation divided into ruin.
[29:36] The book of Kings shows us God's people abandoning him and that leads to division and devastation. There are two judgments that we'll see in these two books.
[29:46] First Kings shows us the first judgment that will be Solomon abandoning God and that will lead and breed disintegration and division and isolation.
[30:00] Okay, there will be a separation of the nation. In 2 Kings, we will see a second judgment that goes further. At first, just the nations are divided and they will divide into two groups.
[30:16] The northern ten tribes will be called the nation of Israel or the kingdom of Israel. Interesting. They now adopt the term Israel.
[30:27] And the southern kingdom is two tribes, Judah and Benjamin. David's tribe and Benjamin will be called Judah. So, in the second judgment, we'll see in 2 Kings that as these ten tribes not only separate, now these ten tribes are unrepentant.
[30:51] And they will be dissolved. And their unrepentance will create desolation. And not just exile, they don't return.
[31:03] These are the ten lost tribes. The southern tribes will return later when they're exiled to Babylon. These ten tribes, we don't know. They're lost.
[31:18] So, so watch the story here. Once again, we have a chiasm, a chiasm, right? We see the story starts in 1 Kings with the united kingdom. Solomon alone is king.
[31:29] If you have notes, you can see this chiasm. The end of the story, it starts with the united kingdom and ends at the end of 2 Kings as a divided kingdom and Judah all alone.
[31:41] In the middle of the story, we see in 1 Kings 12 that the northern kingdom separates from the southern kingdom, right?
[31:53] So, the ten tribes rebel against the two tribes. They, the northern tribes establish their own gods, their own temples, and their own priesthood.
[32:07] We don't have to have that up anymore, unless you want to see the picture of it. Interesting. So, the northern tribes, you know, they establish their own worship.
[32:19] They establish their own temples, they establish their own priests. Hey, you want to be a priest, you can be a priest. I mean, there's no rules or regulations really for the northern kingdom. They even have two golden calves.
[32:31] Remember when Aaron made the golden calf and they said, behold, Israel, here's your God that brought you out of the land of Egypt, right? This golden calf. Well, Jeroboam did the same thing.
[32:41] He made two calves because he needed two temples, one in the north, one in the south because he had the biggest territory. And he said the same words, behold, your God.
[32:54] Here's the calf. So, we're kind of reverting back to the ways. So, we see the northern kingdom separates in 1 Kings 2.
[33:05] Then in 2 Kings 17, we see the northern kingdom fall. They are captured and carried away. Whereas earlier at the division of the nation, God forbears with them.
[33:20] God doesn't judge them yet. God forbears. Here by this time in 2 Kings when Assyria, the king of Assyria, comes in and captures and carries away the ten tribes, it's God's judgment.
[33:36] and there's no promise of return except we will see something in Hosea 2. There is some hint of return, but it's not what we expect.
[33:48] In the middle of the story, we see a record of the kings of, in 1 Kings 13 to 16, a record of the kings of Israel and Judah. The kings of Judah are evil except for one or two guys.
[34:01] the kings of Israel, the northern tribes, are all evil and then eviler. That's a word. I mean, they get to the point of Ahab and Jezebel.
[34:11] Remember Jezebel, right, Ahab and something with Elijah, right? That's how bad the northern kingdom gets and that's why they are lost sooner than the southern tribe.
[34:26] The southern tribe at least had a few good guys that tried, right? But it was deteriorating as well. Then at the end of the story we see another record of the kings again of Israel and Judah before they're carried off.
[34:40] In the very middle of the story, do you see in the middle, do you see in the outline number D, E, and D? There's two lights in the middle of all this darkness.
[34:53] Two prophets in the middle of all this darkness. Their names are Elijah and Elisha. And it's those two. One, Elijah who is famous, right, for confronting evil and the false prophets.
[35:10] Remember he took on the 400 prophets of Baal and the 450 prophets of Asherah who sat at Jezebel's table. Remember he took them on, right, said, oh, you make it burn and they cut themselves and remember Elijah makes fun of them.
[35:26] Maybe you're God's sleeping. Maybe you need to yell louder. Maybe you need to cut yourselves some more. He's just having a ball playing with these guys. And then he wets his wood down, right, and pours, right, and this praise to God and God laps up the, you know, you can read the story.
[35:40] It's just an amazing thing. He defeats all of these guys and then Jezebel puts out a death threat and he runs for his life. I'll take on 850 prophets but one crazy woman I'm out of here, right?
[36:01] He runs 40 days and 40 nights to Mount Sinai. He gets to Sinai and God says, what are you doing here? Well, Jezebel, what are you doing here? Get back to work.
[36:13] Oh, poor Elijah. In that, so you got Elijah and then you got Elisha in the middle of the story before, Elisha's kind of the last prophet before they all get, before the northern tribes go away and Elisha's a little different.
[36:32] Both of them kind of prefigure Jesus, right? Both of them are deliverers, both of them are prophets, right? Both of them are rejected by their people. But Elisha not only confronts evil, but he's a different breed.
[36:47] He is also doing miracles. You know, the widow's bread, you know, the oil that never runs out, and then another widow's, I think it might, maybe it's the same widow's son who dies and he raises him up and then the axe head that floats and all kinds of stuff going on in Elisha, these miracles.
[37:10] What's interesting is both Elijah and Elisha are mentioned by Jesus. And he mentions them in the context of prophets who are rejected like Jesus is rejected and prophets who are rejected by people and then go to Gentile people because both Elijah and Elisha are ministering to Gentile widows.
[37:40] And when he reminds the Pharisees of that, they want to stone him. Because he's saying you're doing the same thing. Interesting.
[37:54] So that's the darkness, the light in the middle of the darkness. But even Elijah and Elisha are ignored. even the power of Elijah's preaching and prayer is ignored and the power of Elisha's mercy and compassion and miracles are ignored.
[38:15] So we're going to see two judgments here. The first part, in 1 Kings, we see the abandonment of God.
[38:26] Judgment 1 is abandoning God breeds disintegration. My words. Abandoning God breeds disintegration. So when Solomon abandons God, God's going to tear the kingdom apart from him.
[38:40] It's going to disintegrate the kingdom. He's dividing it, but it's more than just dividing it. It's disintegrating it. They are being divided. They're being isolated.
[38:52] Okay? That's the first judgment in 1 Kings. To set the tone, we see what Solomon is like. So look at 1 Kings chapter 3.
[39:06] Solomon starts really, really well. He is too. We wonder, is he the son? Is he the one? So it says in 1 Solomon 3, 3, that he loved the Lord and was walking in the statutes of David, his father.
[39:23] Right? Go down to verse 5. At Gibeon, the Lord, Yahweh, appears 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.
[39:47] And you have kept for him this great and steadfast love and have 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.
[40:00] Although, listen to the humility here. Although I am but a little child, I do not know how to go in, go out, or come in. Ever felt like that? 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.
[40:20] Fulfillment of promise, right? 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.
[40:33] It pleased the Lord that Solomon had asked this. 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.
[40:47] 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 will arise after you.
[41:01] 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 will walk in my ways, keeping my statutes and my commandments, as your father father, David walked, then I will lengthen your days.
[41:20] I'll also give you a long life. So we see this great humility of Solomon. Chapter 4, the end of chapter 4, we see what God is, the results of God giving him all this wisdom.
[41:33] 1 Kings 4.29, God gave Solomon wisdom and understanding beyond measure and breadth of mind like the sand of the seashore, so that Solomon's wisdom surpassed the wisdom of all the people of the east and all the wisdom of Egypt.
[41:49] For he was wiser than all other men, wiser than Ethan the Ezraite. Can you imagine? Wiser than Ezra. Ethan. And Heman.
[42:00] Heman. Sorry. And Kalkol. There's a good name. And Derda. These are all great names. The sons of Mahol. And his fame was in all the surrounding nations.
[42:11] He also spoke 3,000 Proverbs. 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 fish.
[42:27] 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.
[42:38] There we go. Chapter 5 and 6, he prepares and builds the temple of the Lord. Chapter 7, he builds his own palace and more furnishings for the kingdom.
[42:52] Chapter 8, he brings the ark into the temple and he prays a wonderful prayer of dedication of the temple. Chapter 9 of 1 Kings, God appears to Solomon again and warns him.
[43:10] Listen to this. As soon as Solomon, chapter 9, verse 1, as soon as Solomon had finished building the house of the Lord and the king's house and all that Solomon desired to build, the Lord appeared to Solomon a second time as he had appeared to him at Gibeon.
[43:28] And the Lord said to him, I have heard your prayer and your plea. We're talking about the previous chapter where he's praying for the temple and that God would bless the ministry of the temple. I have heard your prayer and your plea which you have made before me.
[43:43] I have consecrated this house, speaking of the temple, 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.
[43:57] And as for you, if you will walk before me as 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.
[44:22] As I promised David your father saying, you shall not lack a man on the throne of Israel. It sounds like God is saying, you're the fulfillment of my promise to your father David.
[44:37] You're the man. You're the eternal king if you obey. But verse 6, 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 you, excuse me, worship them, what?
[45:01] Then I will cut off Israel from the land that I have given them. So much for a promised land. So much for an everlasting possession.
[45:13] And the house, the temple, and the temple, 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 the peoples.
[45:29] And this house, this temple will become a heap of ruins. Wow. Jesus said the same thing. Remember? Remember?
[45:39] Everyone passing by will be astonished and will hiss. And they will say, why has Yahweh done this to the land and to his house?
[45:54] Then they will say, because, excuse me, because they abandoned Yahweh, their God, who brought their fathers out of the land of Egypt.
[46:05] And they laid hold of other gods and worshiped them and served them. Therefore, the Lord has brought all this disaster upon them. Because they abandoned the Lord.
[46:21] So that's the warning. Come to chapter 11. So here we go. So chapter 10 highlights then the Queen of Sheba's visit, highlights and climaxes the whole glory of how great Solomon was, how extensive his kingdom, how wise he was, how wealthy he was, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
[46:44] And the Queen of Sheba just blessed, blessed, blessed Yahweh, who would love his people that much to give him such a wise and discerning king. There's a setup.
[46:55] He has it all. He is the wisest. He is the richest. He is the most famous. He excels of all the kings. He has security.
[47:09] He is blessed of the Lord, as the Queen of Sheba said. He has realized the blessings. The promise of Abraham looks like it's all unfolding in his lap.
[47:24] What more could he want? He has it all. Then we read 1 Kings chapter 11.
[47:36] Now, King Solomon loved many foreign women, along with the daughter of Pharaoh.
[47:49] He loved Moabite, Ammonite, Edomite, Sidonian, 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.
[48:04] Why? Why don't we marry foreign women if you're an Israelite? Because they surely shall turn your heart away after their gods.
[48:17] That's why. Not because God is prejudiced. God is zealous for his own exclusive worship. Solomon, look at the end of verse 2.
[48:33] Solomon clung to these in love. How can you love 700 wives?
[48:45] I have no one. This isn't agape love. Okay. Simply. In fact, the word in Hebrew for love, it has that picture of clinging.
[48:59] But it can mean the most pure, sacrificial, agape-type love. It could also mean the most base kind of love. It's kind of like our word in English, love. It just kind of could mean anything.
[49:10] Okay. He had 700 wives, princesses, and 300 concubines, and his wives turned away his heart. When did this happen?
[49:22] 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.
[49:38] Huh. For Solomon went after Ashtoreth, the goddess of Sidonians, after Milcom, the abomination of the Ammonites. So Solomon did what was evil in the sight of Yahweh and did not wholly folly, was not full in with the Lord, as David his father had done.
[50:01] So comment just briefly here. He is compared to David. And every king after him will be compared to David.
[50:13] David is the standard of faithfulness, integrity. But we're thinking, wait a minute, didn't, uh, was David totally faithful?
[50:25] Didn't he have, uh, yeah. Why is he still the standard? Why is David still considered, in spite of his ugly transgressions and iniquity, why is he still considered the standard?
[50:44] And why is God, even after that, calling him faithful, upright, with integrity? Integrity. Why? Because David repented.
[50:58] He repented big time. He even recorded it for everyone to see. Talk about walking in the light, right? Remember 1 John? Walking in the light. David did that. When he blew it, he walked in the light.
[51:09] Okay. Learn from me. And David never went after other gods. Okay.
[51:21] Bathsheba did not lead him away to another god. That's the difference. And Psalm 32, David says, Blessed is the man whose iniquity is not reckoned to him.
[51:36] He was justified by faith alone. I'm saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.
[51:48] And that was David's salvation. That's the difference. Solomon, on the other hand, loved these foreign women.
[52:01] Well, let's read on because God will explain this. Right? So, verse 7, Solomon built a high place for Chemosh, the abomination of Moab, and for Molech, the abomination of the Ammonites.
[52:13] Some of these were child sacrifice kind of gods. And so he did for all his foreign wives who made offerings and sacrifice to their gods. Verse 9, And the Lord was angry with Solomon.
[52:24] Because his heart had turned away from the Lord, the God of Israel, who had appeared to him twice and had commanded him concerning this thing, that he should not go after other gods.
[52:37] But he did not keep what the Lord commanded. And therefore, the Lord said to Solomon, since this has been your... What? Since this...
[52:48] Anybody seen it? Attitude? I have... Since this has been your practice. David fell badly.
[53:00] It wasn't his practice. It was a failure. Indeed. Indeed. A tragic failure. But it was not his practice.
[53:10] Remember 1 John? Practicing righteousness or practicing sin? It's not that we're perfect. It's not that we don't even make huge transgressions.
[53:22] But do we... Is that our pattern? See, Solomon, it became his pattern. Since this has become your practice and you have not kept my covenant.
[53:37] That's the biggie. And my statutes that I've commanded you. I will surely tear the kingdom from you and 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.
[53:54] Remember when David failed, right? Remember what God said to David? Okay. I'm not going to take your life. You'll not die. I'll forgive you.
[54:05] I'll cover your sin. But someone's going to die. You want to know who's going to die? Your son. So now to Solomon, he says, nope. I won't do it to you, but I'll do it to your son.
[54:18] Ow. Ow. Thanks, Dad. Wow. Kind of repeating a pattern here, aren't we? However, I will not tear away all the kingdom, but I will give one tribe to your son.
[54:33] For the sake of David, your servant. For the sake of Jerusalem that I have chosen. So we have a divided, the prophecy of a divided nation, which happens then next in chapter 12.
[54:45] A divided nation. Amen. So in chapter 12, we will see Solomon's son take the reins.
[54:56] He will not have the wisdom of his father. He will act foolishly. He will dismiss the wisdom, the wise counsel of the older men who had been Solomon's counselors.
[55:09] And he will bring in young men and listen to their counsel. Good idea, isn't it? It's always got new ideas in here. It's a fresh thinking in here. And of course, they say, be tougher.
[55:26] And so it causes the division of Jeroboam and the north, Judah on the south. So we see that division fulfilled.
[55:40] So here's the result. We said in this first judgment, it's the abandon. If we abandon God, we breed disintegration. We breed division.
[55:52] Is that true today? If we abandon God, will it breed disintegration in our lives? Isolation in our lives? Yes. Remember what Jesus said to the church in Revelation 2.
[56:07] Though you're faithful in your doctrine, though you're faithful in your teaching, you have abandoned your first love. And if you do not repent, I will remove your lamp.
[56:24] If you abandon the Lord, though you teach all his things, but you abandon the love for the Lord. I will remove your lamp. That's still a principle today.
[56:37] Second judgment is unrepentance. So the northern kingdom continues to be unrepentant. And they've already been divided, but now they're going to be desolated.
[56:50] Right? So unrepentance creates desolation, misery, emptiness, anguish. That's true in our own lives. If we continue to be, if we've abandoned the Lord, we've walked away from the Lord, and we continue to be unrepentant.
[57:06] We continue to stray and wander. What will happen to us? We will experience tremendous desolation of spirit and soul. We will experience misery, emptiness.
[57:18] David described that in Psalm 32, when he did not repent, when he would not confess. He experienced that hand of the Lord and his bones drying up.
[57:29] Incredible misery and emptiness. Because his real life was in the Lord, and he was ignoring that. Same is true today.
[57:42] Jesus said to the dying church in Revelation 3, Repent, or I will come against you. Now to the other church, he said, I'll take away your lampstand.
[57:56] But to this church that was dying and on the verge of being dead, unless you repent, I will come against you.
[58:06] Okay, I'd rather just have my lamp removed. I don't know what that means. I will come against you. That sounds pretty bad. So, by the time we get through Elijah, Elisha, we see this northern kingdom will fall, finally in chapter 17 of 2 Kings.
[58:31] Right? The fall of Samaria. So, Jerusalem is the capital of the southern kingdom. Right? Judah. The southern kingdom has Judah and Benjamin.
[58:43] Jerusalem is their capital. When Jeroboam split the northern ten tribes, they had to establish a new capital. That became Samaria. Same Samaria we know in the New Testament. And he established not only capital, but as I said, palaces and temples.
[59:01] So, come to 2 Kings chapter 17. We've got a threat in the land. His name is Shalmaneser, king of Assyria. And so, we read in 2 Kings 17, 6, in the ninth year of Hosea, the king.
[59:21] He's the king of Israel. He's the final king of Israel. In the ninth year of Hosea, the year actually is 722 B.C. We know this for a fact.
[59:35] 722 B.C., the world changed. Israel was captured. The king of Assyria captured Samaria, and he carried the Israelites away to Assyria and placed them in Halah, and on the harbor, the river of Gozon, in the cities of the Medes.
[59:55] And this occurred because the people of Israel had sinned against the Lord their God who had brought them up out of the land of Egypt. Remember, here we're reminding them, they were redeemed people.
[60:06] They were treated with grace and mercy. These are the people who had been brought up out of the land of Egypt from under the hand of Pharaoh, the king of Egypt. But then they feared other gods, and they walked in the customs of the nations, became like everybody around them, whom the Lord drove out before the people of Israel.
[60:27] And they walked in the customs that the kings of Israel had practiced. And the people of Israel did secretly against the Lord their God things that were not right.
[60:40] They built for themselves high places in all their towns, from watchtower to fortified city. They set up for themselves pillars of Asherim on every high hill and under every green tree.
[60:52] And there they made offerings on all the high places, just as the nations did, whom the Lord carried away before them. So they replaced all these other nations, and then they just kind of end up doing the same as the other nations that they just replaced.
[61:08] They did wicked things, provoking the Lord to anger. And they served idols, of which the Lord said to them, you shall not do this. Yet the Lord warned Israel and Judah by every prophet and every seer, saying, turn from your evil ways and keep my commandments and my statutes in accordance with all the law that I have commanded your fathers and that I have sent my servants, sent to you by my servants the prophets.
[61:35] But they would not listen, but were stubborn. They're unrepentant, as their fathers had been, who did not believe in the Lord their God.
[61:49] They despised His statutes and His covenant that He made with their fathers and the warnings that He gave them. They went after false idols and became false themselves. And they followed the nations that were around them, concerning whom the Lord had commanded that they should not do like them.
[62:06] And they abandoned all the commandments of the Lord their God and made for themselves metal images of two calves. And they made an Asherah and worshiped all the hosts of heaven and served Baal.
[62:16] And they burned their sons and their daughters as offerings and used divination and omens and sold themselves to do evil in the sight of the Lord, provoking Him to anger.
[62:30] Therefore, the Lord was very angry with Israel and removed them out of His sight. None was left but the tribe of Judah only.
[62:42] Judah also did not keep the commandments of the Lord their God but walked in the customs that Israel had introduced. That more later on that one. Verse 20, And the Lord rejected all the descendants of Israel and inflicted, afflicted them and gave them into the hand of plunderers until He had cast them out of His sight.
[63:01] When He had torn Israel from the house of David, they made Jeroboam, the son of, a little history repeat here, son of Nebuchad King. And Jeroboam drove Israel from following the Lord and made them commit great sins.
[63:14] We're going back to the original split, Jeroboam being that first king. The people of Israel walked in all the sins that Jeroboam did. They did not depart from them until the Lord removed Israel out of His sight as He had spoken by all His servants, the prophets.
[63:30] So Israel was exiled from their own land to Assyria until this day. Now, when was this written? I don't know.
[63:40] But long time after. And so what happens to the northern land of Israel, the land we call Samaria, the land we call, right, Galilee of the Gentiles?
[64:00] What happens is, verse 24, the king of Assyria brought people from Babylon, Kapha, Abba, Hamath, and, I'm going to skip that one, and placed them in the cities of Samaria instead of the people of Israel, instead of the people of Israel.
[64:19] They're replaced with foreigners. They're replaced with Gentiles. And they took possession of Samaria and lived in its cities, and so it is to this day.
[64:30] I'm adding that part. So, the northern ten tribes disappear.
[64:45] No record of their return. They are lost. They do not show up again even in the New Testament with the exception of Anna.
[64:58] In Luke 2, describes Anna who, remember, had been praying night and day in the temple, right, and was waiting for the Jesus to come. She is mentioned as being with the tribe of Asher.
[65:09] That's the only mention except for the book of Revelation of any of the tribes of the north. So, that means it's possible that there are a few remnants that had come back.
[65:23] You get to the book of Revelation, it mentions the tribes, right? Well, remember what we said about those tribes? And they're all mixed up and they're in different order and Dan's completely gone and there's another one that's completely gone and all the lower ones, the concubines ones, are elevated to the top tribes.
[65:42] Anyway, it's different. Clearly different. Does that mean, I don't know. I'm not going to talk about future tribes. but I do want to mention this.
[65:57] During this time, there was a prophet by the name of Hosea who prophesied to Israel. He was one of the few prophets to those northern tribes. Most of the prophets after Elijah, Elisha prophesied to the southern kingdom only.
[66:15] Hosea was different. Hosea prophesied to Israel. Israel. So if you've been unrepentant, here's what I, point I want to press.
[66:26] If you've been unrepentant, if you've been wandering from the Lord, does that mean you're lost like those lost tribes? It could mean that.
[66:36] But if you have a still breath in you, you are not ultimately lost.
[66:49] Hosea tells us in Hosea 2, 19 to 23, he talks to the lost tribes, those ones that eventually become the Samaritans, those who are no longer God's people.
[67:07] Do they have any hope? So that's why I ask you, have you abandoned God? Do you feel like you're too far lost? Hear what Hosea says to those lost tribes.
[67:22] He says, I will betroth you to me forever. I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice, in love and in mercy.
[67:33] I will betroth you to me in faithfulness and you shall know the Lord. And in that day, I will answer, declares the Lord. I will answer to the heavens and they shall answer the earth and the earth shall answer the grain, the wine, the oil, and they shall answer Jezreel and I shall sow in her.
[67:53] There's that word seed from all the way back from Genesis. I will seed her for myself in the land and I will have mercy on no mercy and I will say to not my people, you are my people and he shall say, you are my God.
[68:16] Now you have to read up Hosea to get a little bit of that background but remember, he was called to marry a prostitute. He was called to marry an unfaithful woman as a picture of Israel who was unfaithful to God and he called the children of that prostitute no mercy and not my people.
[68:36] Nice names, huh? Hey, no mercy, get over here. Hey, not my people, come over here. They were an illustrated sermon but the story was redeemed because God then says, I take that prostitute who left me, who abandoned me and I will betroth her to me in righteousness and faithfulness and love and I will betroth her to me forever and I'll take her children and no mercy will become mercy and not my people become my people.
[69:09] That's the hope because of all those scattered tribes into the nations that intermingled with the nations, that's us, folks.
[69:23] We're those lost ones and the hope is that if you've been straying from the Lord, if you've been wandering from the Lord, it's not too late.
[69:36] The evil one will try to convince you to forget it, it's too late, you're too hardened, you're too bad. The Lord can do anything and if you hear his voice today, do not harden your heart.
[69:50] Do not harden your heart. Do something today. During the same time, Isaiah gave the remedy for all these ruined sinners, all those who had gone astray, all those who had turned their own way, Isaiah, the prophet, gave hope.
[70:09] He said in Isaiah 53, who has believed what he has heard from us? I mean, the message is unbelievable. Who's believed what he's heard from us?
[70:19] And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? I mean, our message is foolishness. The gospel is foolishness, is it not? Isaiah said the same thing.
[70:34] Who? Because here's what the gospel is about. It's about this person. He grew up before him like a young plant, like a root out of dry ground.
[70:51] He had no former majesty that we should look upon him and no beauty that we should desire him. Talking about Jesus. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.
[71:06] And as one from whom men hide their faces, he was despised and we esteemed him not. But surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.
[71:21] Yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten of God and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities.
[71:33] Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace. And by his wounds we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray.
[71:45] We have turned every one of us to his own way. And the Lord has made a remedy for our ruined lives.
[71:56] He has laid on him the iniquity. Not just the failings. Not just the transgressions. But the iniquities of us all on him.
[72:09] He became sin for us. That we might be forgiven and rescued and remedied.
[72:20] Jesus laid down for his sheep. He was pierced for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities, wounded for our healings.
[72:34] Turn to him. Call on him. Come to him and do it today. Let's pray.
[72:46] Father, we thank you for your word. Lord, we thank you for even the dark times that we read about in 1 and 2 Kings. How your people abandon you.
[72:57] How your people do not repent. How you then must tear them away and cut them off. And it seems without hope.
[73:08] And sometimes we feel like that, Lord, when we have abandoned you and we have been turning to our own ways and we continue to do that and we wonder and worry, have we gone too far?
[73:22] Are we truly lost? But you preach to that person. You say to that person, come to me.
[73:35] If you will repent, I will cleanse you. I will wash you. I will forgive you. I will make you my beloved child.
[73:50] Help us hear those words today. We pray in Christ's name. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.