These two books, spanning 450 years of history, illustrate how a kingdom divided against itself cannot stand. 1 Kings begins where 2 Samuel leaves off, during the final days of David’s life at around 971 B.C. Just after Solomon’s death (1 Kings 11:43), the kingdom was divided in two. Israel occupied the northern kingdom and Judah occupied the southern kingdom. The northern kingdom rejected God’s pattern of worship first and was destroyed in 722 B.C. Then the southern kingdom of Judah followed in her footsteps and was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar in 586 B.C.

Let's pray. Lord, as we look back into the annals of history to see one king after another over hundreds of years, seeing these trends, these personalities, these ways that you work with your people, your mercies, new every morning, every generation, for every King, for every era. Lord, I praise you for your handling of all of history. We know that you're wise. We know that we would not have handled these things the way you did, but we praise you that you're wiser than we are.

And now, Lord, as you show us matters of your kingdom that you would help us to learn from you and find our love for you grow. Amen. So 1st and 2nd Kings, it's a big chunk to bite off and it's a lot of chapters. There are so many remarkable things here. I wish we could just do this slowly and expositionally.

It's remarkable what's here, but we can't do that. It's too many chapters and we're going to do this in a short period of time. Let me give you the theme, number one in your outline. The theme is a divided kingdom and what you find here are matters that are running together of wisdom and folly and idolatry. You start with the wisdom of Solomon, it moves to the folly of Solomon and then the folly of the Kings.

1 Kings begins where 2 Samuel left off during the final days of David's life. When we begin 1 Kings, it's about 971 BC. When we end 2 Kings, we find ourselves in the days of Hezekiah, the days of Isaiah around 700 BC. Here at the very beginning, David dies and Solomon takes over the throne. And number two, the genre of this literature is, I'm gonna call it interpreted history.

God doesn't just simply give us facts of history, but he's always interpreting history in light of good and of evil. One of the most boring things you can do is study history without any context of good or evil and the meaning. If you study history and you don't arrive at meaning, you haven't studied history the way that God teaches history. God teaches history with meaning. You know, it's really a problem to memorize the personalities and the events and the dates of history, unless you can hang it on meaning.

And of course, the author here does give us interpreted history, or rather, history with meaning. So the timeframe for 1 and 2 Kings spans over 400 years. Most people think it was assembled and written either during or right after the Babylonian captivity, most likely completed when the Babylonians released King Jehoiachin after 37 years in prison, probably about 560 BC. It was perhaps completed around 540 BC. These are speculations based on different kinds of information.

Let's talk about the storyline. Just after Solomon's death, the kingdom is divided in two. The northern king of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah. So 1 Kings takes us to 853 BC and of course 2 Kings at the death of Hezekiah. 1 Kings divides into two halves.

The first half is chapters 1 through 11, and the focus is the 40-year reign of Solomon, his kingdom of wisdom, his kingdom of splendor, and the fruit of the wisdom, because wisdom always has children. Wisdom is always known by its children. Foolishness is always known by its children. Both wisdom and folly give birth to stuff. And we see that vividly in the life of Solomon.

In this section you find his taking over for his father David. You see something that God did to make him wise. You see him building the temple. Solomon creates a society of worship and beauty and truth, all of it flowing from wisdom from God. It was remarkable.

You know, oh to have been alive during the early days of Solomon's reign. We also see him in his later years and the wisest man in the world doesn't finish well. It's astonishing. What's the lesson? Be careful if you think you stand lest you fall.

You may have walked in wisdom. Don't think that you're not susceptible. Don't be proud of yourself. Don't think that you're part of some super godly set of people who can't fall. Solomon continued to let worldliness overtake him, and the result was disastrous.

And he was attracted to the gods of this world through the wives that he acquired. And his heart was divided. And his divided heart had a baby, a divided kingdom. The divided heart will always lead to a divided kingdom. And that's what you find from chapters 12 on.

So you've got two parts of the book, chapters 1 through 11 focus on Solomon's exemplary kingdom and his fall. And then from chapter 12 on is a turning point. Chapter 12 is a watershed event. This is the key chapter, as you can see in the fifth item in your outline. Solomon dies and the kingdom is run into and Rehoboam seeks advice from the immature in the kingdom and the result is you have brother against brother, you have capital against capital, you have nation against nation.

The rest of first and second Kings is all about those kings in the divided Kingdom. So the structure, let's talk about the structure. All of this is structured around kings. So if you want to think about first and second kings, just think about a succession of kings. David passes it to Solomon, and then after Solomon, you have the divided kingdom, you have the northern kingdom and their kings, and the southern kingdom and their kings.

There are only three kings of Judah, or the southern kingdom, that are mentioned in the book. And there are many more kings of Israel in the Northern Kingdom. Israel is now referring to the Northern Kingdom. Judah is now referring to the Southern Kingdom. So the structure of this is hanging on kings and we do that too.

You know, we have, you know, in the reigns of various presidents and marking the historical events that took place. This is exactly what we see in 1st and 2nd Kings. Only two kings in this period did what was right in the sight of the Lord. Let's talk about the message. The whole message of this is the moral trouble that's always traced to idolatrous worship, which comes from either wisdom or folly.

It's wisdom or folly that causes all the problems. And as we'll see later, there's something at the heart of it. In every case, idolatrous worship. Worship is at the heart of every outward problem. You can look at people's lives and you can see this outward problem and that outward problem or you can look at your own life and see the things you struggle with outwardly.

You can always trace it back to worship. The outward always bears witness to the inward. The inward always creates the outward. And all the problems that Solomon got into happened beginning with the inward and beginning with worship when he began to modify the true worship of God to fit the worship of the nations. So when you look at your life, recognize you're just looking at a symptom of something greater.

And that's why we should always ask, where's my heart? Is my heart inclined toward the Lord? Is it my desire to worship Him in everything that I do? And then when it's not, what happens? Calamity, trial, trouble, war, famine, all kinds of breakdown happens.

But don't be confused about this. The outward is always the result of the inward. And whenever you diagnose anything in your life that's going on and the outward side of it, you can't stay there if you expect any progress. Consider your heart. Solomon said, above all else, guard your heart for it is the wellspring of life.

Everything begins in the heart. And that's what we see in this main message. The eighth item is the rise of the prophetic ministry. You're going to read about a number of prophets. Some of them we don't even know the names of.

They just show up and they speak and they disappear and they walk off the theater of history. Others like Elijah are iconic, astonishing, amazing, wonderful. You'll love reading about the prophet Elijah and his successor Elisha. In this session I'm going to talk, you know, quite a bit about Elijah and a little bit about Elisha. But notice the prophets that show up.

One of the prophets, Obadiah, not the prophet Obadiah, but the prophet by the name of Obadiah in this book. He just comes out of nowhere. He's serving in the court of Ahab. He's working for Ahab, but he's a secret Christian, and he's hiding the prophets that Jezebel wants to kill. He's hiding, you know, over a hundred prophets in caves, 50 at a time.

He's a prophet that works for Ahab of all people. Anyway, you're gonna run into fascinating prophets. Some don't have names, some do, And then you have these two gigantic figures, Elijah and Elisha. They're just wonderful. Let's talk about the pattern that you'll see here.

As you read it, look for this pattern. The kings who trusted in God were blessed. Those who did not trust in God were cursed. That's the pattern, okay? Solomon multiplied wives in disobedience to Deuteronomy 17, 17.

In Deuteronomy 17, 17, God says to kings, don't multiply wives. Don't multiply wives and also write the law of God in your own hand and don't depart from it. Well Solomon multiplied wives. And in chapter 11, verse four, we learn that his wives turned his heart away from the Lord. So you see this pattern of disobedience and destruction.

You're gonna read a phrase over and over again, they did evil in the sight of the Lord. What does that mean? It means that everything in your life turns for the good or the bad on obedience. God blesses those who obey, and he brings calamity into the lives that don't obey. And that promise of blessing and cursing runs throughout the Bible, but you'll see it in living color through these prophets.

If you're thinking about disobeying the Lord, just recognize what it means. The kings that were obedient, they did what was right in the sight of the Lord. That's another phrase. They did what was right. You won't read that very many times among these kings.

One of the most critical interpretive keys to the book of first and second Kings is the matter of idolatry. Everything hinges on idolatry. Everything. Blending true worship with idolatry was always the beginning of the trouble. You know we're all vulnerable to idolatry regardless of the blessings from the past and right at the beginning you get this, you get this example of Solomon who lived so marvelously and then he really lost his wisdom.

First John says, little children, keep yourselves from idols. That's a good companion verse to 1 and 2 Kings, because the kings always stumbled and received their problems from their idolatry. They did not destroy the idols. Sometimes they worship the idols, other times they just sort of put them away to save them up for a rainy day. So you see the ebb and the flow of idolatry.

Okay let's look at 1st and 2nd Kings. I wish we had an opportunity to at least say something about every chapter. We can't do that. So I'm gonna focus on a couple of big items and you'll just have to read through and pick up some of the nuances. Hey, there's some stories in here that you should just get lost in for an hour.

You know, you won't be able to because there's a lot of chapters, but as I was going through it again, I was just wishing I could go back and really spend time. I thought, man, I'd love to preach to first and second Kings, but I think that about every book. Okay, so in the first 11 chapters is the Golden Age of Israel. There's a united kingdom. David is king and he passes the kingdom over to Solomon.

The first part of this is the establishment of Solomon and then the rise of Solomon And then in chapters 9 through 11 is the decline of Solomon. There's a lot to learn from Solomon and. One of the things that you see. Is that His wisdom was the fruit of his humility. And you can see this right at the very beginning.

At the very beginning, we meet one of David's sons by the name of Adonijah. And Adonijah wants to become king. Solomon is going to be made king, but Adonijah wants to be king really bad. So he appoints this media campaign. He gets 50 horses out there and he's galloping through the land, you know, declaring that he's going to be king.

And he gathers people together to try to secure it. It says in chapter 1 verse 5, Then Adonijah the son of Hagath exalted himself saying, I will be king. And he prepared for himself chariots and horsemen and 50 men to run before him. And then verse six is a really interesting verse. And his father had not rebuked him at any time by saying, why have you done so?

He was also very good looking. His mother had borne him after Absalom. So a few things. One is he's exalting himself. Secondly, he's exalting himself probably for a reason.

His parents didn't discipline him. You know, at some point you'll have children, some of you do have children. Recognize what happens when you don't discipline your children you have you get people like Adonijah who they exalt themselves and One of the great things about the discipline of the Lord is that it helps a child not to exalt his own feelings, his own thoughts, his own passions. He moderates his passions, and he becomes a better man or a woman. Then King Solomon is completely different.

When there is this attempt to take over the throne by Adonijah, there's a lot that goes on. The prophet Nathan gets involved and he talks to Bathsheba, David's wife, and then Bathsheba talks to her husband. And so the word spreads that Adonijah is trying to become king. Here's what David says about Solomon. He says, let my son ride on my mule.

You have this difference between self-exaltation and humility. Adonijah has chariots and horsemen and men, you know, going aside to announce his kingship. What does Solomon do? He rides in on a donkey. It's the difference between the kingdom of heaven and the kingdom of this world.

David's view is that he's passing on the kingdom to Solomon. In chapter 1, there's just something here I wanted to read. It's not really critical in the whole flow, but it gives you an idea of David's worldview, particularly at his death. And I want to read it to you because understanding this early is really important. David says, as the Lord lives, who has redeemed my life from distress, assuredly Solomon shall be king after me and sit on the throne after my place.

As the Lord lives, who has redeemed my life from every distress." When you're young, you don't understand this. The older you get, the more you understand it. God will protect you. Have no fear. You can live freely and confidently.

You can hold your head up. You don't have to worry about the future. David is getting ready to die and he said what every person whose heart trusts in the Lord, he says, the Lord has redeemed my life from every distress. If you walk with the Lord you'll see that, You'll see how God has blessed you. And you can trust Him.

But there's a lesson here in the story of Adonijah and Solomon. The devil is always trying to destroy the kingdom of heaven, the line of David. He's always trying to break the covenant God has made with his people. And he works in your heart to unravel his rule in your heart and to supplant His rule with the rule of an imposter. Adonijah was an imposter.

He's figurative of the proud imposter in your heart that wants to take over for God. There's a lesson here that the devil is always working in every kingdom. In chapter 2 we get David's last words. This is really a critical matter. If you look at chapter 2 in the first four verses there are these beautiful words, Now the days of David drew near that he should die.

And he charged Solomon his sons, saying, I go the way of all the earth, be strong, therefore improve yourself a man, and keep the charge of the Lord your God, to walk in His ways, to keep His statutes, His commandments, His judgments 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 fulfill his word, which he spoke concerning me, saying, If your sons take heed to their way to walk before me in truth with all their heart and with all their soul he said you shall not lack a man on the throne of Israel in David's final words he's charging his son to obey Obeying the Lord is the most powerful, helpful thing you'll ever do, and David makes that clear as he's passing the kingdom onto his son. But I love these words, I go the way of all the earth, be strong, prove yourself a man. Now after this, David gives instructions to his men and you find this in verses 5 through 46 in chapter 2. Now what David does is he orders the execution of some people, and the question is why.

Why did he go and kill Shimei and Joab? Why did he do that? He had let Shimei slander him and didn't do anything about it. He let Joab, you know, run on for years, but now he ends their lives. The answer is in chapter 2, 45 and 46.

But King Solomon shall be blessed, and the throne of David shall be established before the Lord forever. And here's the answer. So the king commanded Benaiah, the son of Jehoiada, and he went out and struck him down and he died and here's the reason thus the kingdom was established in the hand of Solomon Benaiah was appointed to get rid of the opposition so that Solomon would start on solid ground. So he eliminated the slanderers and the enemies. Joab a military leader and perhaps particularly dangerous to Solomon's kingdom.

God knew that these men were dangerous and God through David let them live even in the midst of their slanders. But God in His wisdom understood that these men needed to be removed in order for the kingdom to be established. Then early on, and this is really striking to me, Early on in chapter 3 in the first three verses, Solomon turns in the wrong direction. Verse 1 in chapter 3, Now Solomon made a treaty with Pharaoh king of Egypt and married Pharaoh's daughter. Then he brought her to the city of David until he had finished building his own house and the house of the Lord and the wall all around Jerusalem.

Meanwhile the people sacrificed at the high places because there was no house built for the name of the Lord until those days. And Solomon loved the Lord, walked in the statutes of his father David, except that he sacrificed and burned incense at the high places. Solomon's downfall came as a result of small steps, making a treaty with Pharaoh the king of Egypt, and then marrying Pharaoh's daughter. This was really the beginning of the end. What you do with marriage, what you do with relationships, will chart the whole course of your life and that's what happened with Solomon.

Ungodly marriages end up turning his heart against the Lord and those become the seeds of compromise in his life. It was his wives that turned his heart away. But at the same time you see Solomon with astonishing wisdom. If you go to chapter 3 verse 5, something happened in Solomon's life. It happened at Gibeon.

And now there are two places that God appeared to Solomon. This is the first place. Let's just go ahead and read it. This is chapter three, verse five. At Gibeon, the Lord appeared to Solomon in a dream by night.

And God said, ask what I shall give you. Amazing. God says, you ask me, I'll give it to you. And what does Solomon say? Verse six, and Solomon said, "'You have shown great mercy to your servant David, "'my father, because he walked before you in truth, "'in righteousness and in uprightness of heart with you.

"'You have continued this great kindness for him and you have given him a son to sit on his throne as it is this day. Now, oh Lord my God, You have made your servant king instead of my father David, but I am a little child. I do not know how to go out or to come in. And your servant is in the midst of your people whom you've chosen, a great people too numerous to be numbered or counted. Therefore, give your servant an understanding heart to judge your people that I may discern between good and evil for who is able to judge this great people of yours.

So verse 9 is what he asked for. The speech pleased the Lord, verse 10, that Solomon asked this thing. Then God said to him, Because you have asked this thing and not asked long life for yourself, nor have asked riches for yourself, nor have asked life of your enemies, but have asked for yourself understanding to discern justice. Behold, I have done according to your words. I've given you a wise and understanding heart so that there has not been anyone like you before you, nor shall any like you arise after." Now, this was a miracle of God.

God gave him an understanding heart. Wouldn't that be wonderful if God so chose to do that with you? But that's what He did. In verse 13 He says, He says, And I have also given you what you have not asked for both riches and honor so that there shall not be anyone like you among the kings of your days Solomon didn't ask for riches he didn't ask for honor But God turned around and gave it to him. And then Solomon awoke and indeed it had been a dream.

And he came to Jerusalem and stood before the ark of the covenant of the Lord and offered burnt offerings and offered peace offerings and made a feast for all his servants. So God pours wisdom into his heart. He goes before the ark and makes offerings and then the very next thing happens is he needs wisdom big time. Two women come to him and they're making accusations. One of them is accusing the other of killing their baby and Solomon exercises his great wisdom in dealing with this problem.

When you get to chapter 4, we see Solomon's astonishing wealth. You see his officials. You'll see the happiness of his kingdom in verses 20 through 21. You'll see the daily provisions in verses 22 to 24. You'll see the peace and safety in chapter 25.

You'll see his horses in chapters 26 through 34 and his military prowess. Now I want to read 429 because it will give you an insight into Solomon. And God gave Solomon wisdom and exceedingly great understanding, and largeness of heart like the sand of the seashore. Thus Solomon's wisdom excelled the wisdom of all the men of the east and all the wisdom of Egypt. For he was wiser than all men than Ethan the Ezerhite and Heman and Shaulclal and Darda and the sons of Mahal and his fame was in all the surrounding nations.

He spoke 3, 000 proverbs and his songs were 1, 005. He spoke of trees from the cedar of Lebanon, even to the hyssop that springs out of the wall. He also spoke about animals, of birds, of creeping things and of fish. And men of all nations, from all the kings of the earth, who had heard his wisdom, came to hear the wisdom of Solomon." Remarkable. And fruitfulness was the result of his wisdom.

Remember, wisdom always gives birth to something good. Folly always gives birth to something bad. And here you see the beautiful things that happen. Then in chapter five, he makes preparations for the temple. He raises this huge labor force.

It's amazing what he did. He was bringing in materials from the surrounding nations. Look at chapter 5 verse 15. He had 70, 000 who carried burdens and 80, 000 who quarried the stone in the mountains beside 3, 300 from the chiefs of Solomon's deputies who supervised the people who labored in the work. The king commanded them to quarry large stones, costly stones and hewn stones to lay the foundation of the temple.

And he goes on and on about just the remarkable labor force and the materials that were brought in. It's incredible. Then in chapter 6 through 8, Solomon builds the temple. There's a promise that we should stop on here in chapter 6 verses 11 through 14. Then the word of the Lord came to Solomon saying, concerning this temple which you are building, if you walk in My statutes, execute My judgments, keep all My commandments, and walk in them, then I will perform My word with you, which I spoke to your father David.

And I will dwell among the children of Israel, and will not forsake my people Israel." The Lord says, if you walk with me, if you keep my commandments, I won't forsake you. You know the kings of Israel just didn't hear it. For some reason they couldn't hear it. So he starts building this temple. It takes seven years for him to build it.

He also builds a house in the forest of Lebanon. You read about that in chapter 7. Took him a lot longer to build his own house. He hires bronze workers, all kinds of metal workers and woodworkers to do all this. In chapter 8 he brings the ark into the temple And there's this amazing statement in chapter 10, verse 11.

He brings the ark into the holy place. A cloud fills the temple, and it says, "'The priests could not continue ministering "'because of the cloud, for the glory of the Lord had filled the house of the Lord. And there's a beautiful prayer. You should read that carefully. And then God tells Solomon.

That if they don't obey, then things will happen and talks about sins against your neighbor. You know, why you get defeated in battle, why you have no reign, why there's famine and siege and pestilence and blight and mildew. It's all because of sin. And you'll learn that in chapter 8. Chapter 9 is Solomon's sort of last rise and then final fall.

In chapter 10 you have the Queen of Sheba coming. This is an amazing moment really in all of history. She was so stunned by what she heard. She had to go see it. She had to go ask him questions and that's what she did.

And she said it wasn't even close what I heard. It was way more. He was wiser than I thought. And she goes on and on about the beauty, the organization, and the effectiveness of wisdom in the kingdom. The orderliness that was there, It's all documented in the visit of the Queen of Sheba.

Now, here's a verse you should remember. Chapter 10, verse 27. You have to somehow grasp the wealth of Solomon and the wealthiness of the nation because of his wisdom. Because the wealth came because of the wisdom. Here's 1027.

The king made silver as common in Jerusalem as stones. And he made cedar trees as abundant as the sycamores, which are in the lowland. Here's what this means. There was wealth everywhere. Was silver literally as common as stones?

I don't think so. I think he's using an analogy here. But there was so much of it that it would just take your breath away. So when we get to chapter 11, we learn about Solomon's love for his foreign wives. He married these wives and he began to respect their gods.

He respected them so he respected their gods. This is the trap. When you respect someone who is an idolater, often you find yourself an idolater too. So you can read about it in chapter 11. This was how he lost it all and he did lose it all.

It's a tragic story. Then when you get to chapter 12 to the end of 2 Kings, it's the story of the divided kingdom and the kingdom is divided and Jeroboam sinks deeper into his idolatry. Now, in chapter 12 you run into two personalities, Rehoboam and Jeroboam. Rehoboam is the successor to Solomon to the throne. He ignores the advice of the mature experienced men and he embraces the advice of, I'll just say it, the stupid immature young men.

You know the Bible says that older women should teach the younger women. Younger women shouldn't just do what they think they should do. They should be taught by the older women. Same thing with men. The older men should be teaching the younger men in order to keep them from foolishness and trouble and problems.

But Rehoboam, he went and he listened to the proud young people. As a result of it, there was a rebellion and a division that really defiled everybody's life from that time forward. So then you have Jeroboam. Jeroboam is a refugee from Egypt and he comes back to Israel after Solomon's death. And he comes back and the kingdom has been divided and he becomes king.

He lifts himself up. He's a terrible influence on the nation. He creates a new place of worship. He builds houses of worship. He takes golden calves and says, this is your God.

He kind of modified the religion. He didn't completely change it. He just watered it down a little bit and changed it. He built a house of worship in the north because He didn't want his people from the north going down to Jerusalem because it would destroy his power base. So instead of sort of forcing people to go to Jerusalem to worship, he made a place of worship in the north because he didn't want true worship to grip their hearts.

So he created a worship on his own. He just created out of whole cloth a whole new way of worshiping, using a lot of the same imagery and words of the worship of the people of God. The truth is he wanted power and he didn't want to dilute his power by sending people down south to Jerusalem. So he sets up these houses of worship, creates these two golden calves, And here's another thing that he does. You know in the south in Judah you had to be a qualified legitimate priest.

Jeroboam said anybody can be a priest. Everybody's a priest. You know how the New Testament says, let not many of you become teachers? Jeroboam threw that in the trash can. And He ordained anyone who wanted to be a priest, and he had a feast in order to bring these people in.

So he does that, and he's judged severely. And here, let me just read to you Jeroboam's rationale in chapter 13 verse 26 It says Jeroboam said in his heart now the kingdom may return to the house of David. That's what he was worried about He wanted to secure the worship of the people on his turf. He says, if these people go up to offer sacrifices in the house of the Lord at Jerusalem, then the heart of this people will turn back to their Lord. Rehoboam, king of Judah, and they will kill me and go back to Rehoboam, king of Judah.

Therefore the king asked advice, made two calves of gold, and said to the people, it's just too much for you to go up to Jerusalem, hear your gods, which brought you up from the land of Egypt. So he goes to people and says, you know what, let's be convenient. Let's do something good for the people. You won't have to go down to Jerusalem anymore. I've made this great place for you to worship.

Hey, it's got golden calves. It's really fantastic. And you won't have to go down there. Congratulations, you can now have a better life. Okay, this is a really, really big deal for the entire book of 1 and 2 Kings.

It's bigger than your thinking. In verse 30 in chapter 13 is the interpretive grid for 1 and 2 Kings, I believe. Because what Jeroboam did is referred to over and over and over again in the book of 1st and 2nd Kings. Verse 30, now this thing became a sin for the people went to worship before as far as Dan. In other words, they went up and they worshiped in these false places of worship as far as Dan.

Now, this was the big problem in Israel. Worship. Worship is at the heart of everything, And you're gonna read this phrase about Jeroboam over and over and over and over again in the book. It goes back to this scene and it tells you that your worship is the beginning of every problem you've ever had. And it was really the hinge point for all the trouble that Israel experienced.

In chapter 14, the destruction of Jeroboam's line is foretold. Now there's this really dramatic scene. Jeroboam is there worshiping, a prophet shows up, and Jeroboam points his finger at him and says, arrest him! And he loses his strength and then Jeroboam cries out to God for God to heal him. But at this point the altar splits apart in order to bear witness to the divided kingdom.

Okay so chapter 14, the destruction of Jeroboam's line is foretold. Chapter 15, Jeroboam's line is destroyed. In chapter 15 we come to Asa. Asa is a godly king. Interestingly enough, in chapter 15 verse 12 we read that Asa banished the perverted people.

This is interesting particularly in terms of what the Supreme Court just did last week. The term that he uses here, and it occurs twice in first and second case, is The term that has to do with broad categories of immorality, however, it's often used for homosexuality. Some commentators make the case that he absolutely banished the homosexuals from the land. 1512. And then, chapter 16, Ahab reigns in Israel.

Look at chapter 16 verse 33. This is a key verse. Ahab gets a lot of attention in 1 and 2 Kings. Well, in 1 Kings, because when we open up 2nd Kings, Ahab has just died. Thank the Lord.

And Ahab made a woman image. This is 1st Kings 1633. Ahab did more to provoke the Lord God of Israel to anger than all the kings of Israel who were before him. Okay? He did more evil than if you counted it all up, He was the worst of the worst.

You'll get an insight of what a baby Ahab was and how he was always jerked around by his wife. It's a study in a really messed up marriage and a really tragic family. Elijah shows up in chapter 17. This is where a lot of the fun begins. Well, there's a lot before this, but I'm telling you Elijah is absolutely, you know, gripping.

He just, he shows up, he proclaims that there's gonna be a drought, and then he helps a widow. Now, 1 Kings 17 is the first time we meet Elijah. He just shows up out of thin air. Matthew Henry says he seems to drop from the sky like an angel, and you'll find this. He just shows up in these moments and then he disappears.

He's really a remarkable figure he doesn't hang around he comes in he does his business and he leaves. James you know says that he was a man like us. He was subject to our own, you know, passions. He was sometimes fearful, sometimes he was depressed, sometimes he was angry. He had strong passions.

But if he walked in this room you'd be looking at him. You know, if the descriptions are the way that I take them, if he walked in the room what you would basically see is a lot of hair and a lot of leather. He would be kind of a disturbing and posing figure. And he's like John the Baptist. He has no genealogy.

We don't know where he came from. You know, he probably just came from families like ours, just ordinary old families that are in the world. And he's called Elijah the Tishbite. There's not a place known by that name. No one else in Scripture is called a Tishbite.

What's a Tishbite? We don't know what a Tishbite is. That might be part of the humor of God. You know, people You don't know where they come from. You don't know anything about them.

They have no qualifications or can be really useful to God. When you get to the New Testament, there are only two Old Testament figures that appear bodily in the New Testament. You know who they are? You know where it happened? Mount of Transfiguration.

Moses and Elijah. Wow! Peter, James, and John were there and they saw Moses and Elijah, two of the most astonishing figures in all of history. You know, Elijah lived in a dark time, 1200 years from Abraham. He lived in a time where, quote, almost all the kings did what was evil in the eyes of the Lord, and they walked in the sins of Jeroboam." You're gonna read that over and over again.

They did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and walked in the sins of Jeroboam. His false worship, his deliberate apostasy. It was a very dark time. I think that, you know, we live in a dark time too. We live in a time where we need Elijah to speak out.

Elijah is to show up and make statements that are true. You know, God took him to heaven in a flaming chariot. You'll read about the transfer of authority or transfer of the office of prophet from Elijah to Elisha. And Elisha actually gets a double portion of Elijah's blessing. And as it turns out, Elisha performs exactly twice as many miracles as Elijah does in the story.

And you'll read, you know, you'll think you're reading about Jesus. You know, people are being raised from the dead. The lepers are cleansed. The compassion, the beauty of the power of God working upon people's lives is spoken of. You know, there was a time in Elijah's life where he really lost his heart, though.

He forgot Psalm 23. He wanted to take his life. This is in chapter 19, verses 1 through 8. It was just too bleak for him. And, you know, whenever you think things are too bleak, go read about Elijah and see if maybe there's any hope.

And of course there is. You know, Elijah came off this gigantic victory with the prophets of Baal. You know, Elijah just had victory over the prophets of Baal. It's again one of the most exciting stories in all of literature. You would think that after that victory it would just all be more and more victory.

There'd be this snowball effect, more and more victory. That's not what happened. Elijah was operating on a false assumption and that is that everything outwardly is gonna just always get better and better. Well it actually got worse. After they did what he did with the prophets of Baal, life got harder, not easier, And he had a wrong assumption.

You know, let's not say that it's evil for a Christian to get sad every once in a while. Elijah did. He was under extreme pressure. But what did God do? He comforted him.

He lifted him out of the miry clay. He gave him food, he gave him encouragement, and he brought him back to life. You know, we reach times when, you know, we get discouraged. We don't know where we're going. We don't know what's going to happen to us.

And we should think about Elijah. Lloyd Jones, the great preacher of the 20th century said that there are times when you get so low you have to change your strategy and he says you got to stop listening to yourself and start preaching to yourself and you know I think that when you reach those low moments like Elijah did, that's often what you need to do, is you need to stop listening to yourself and bemoaning yourself and start preaching the good news to yourself. Chapter 18, Elijah challenges the prophets of Baal. Chapter 19, Jezebel goes after him. Chapter 20, Ahab defeats Ben-Hadad the Assyrian.

It's a fascinating story. You have this childish, immature Ahab murders Naboth, steals his vineyard. Ahab ends up dying in battle. It's such a dramatic story. Now we get to 2 Kings.

2 Kings is not a different context. Nothing changes. You go straight into the next king. The divided kingdom continues on, and you'll find various prophets. In chapter two, Elijah is taken up to heaven, and he's replaced by Elisha.

And one of the first things that happens to Elisha is that a group of kids are calling him Baldhead, you Baldhead. That's in chapter two. It's a great story. In chapter three, the king of Moab is defeated by the kings of Israel. In chapter four and chapter five, Elisha does more miracles.

And you have this picture of the prophets and how they're operating in the society. There's a really funny story in chapter seven. It's the story of the lepers. You know, these two lepers are outside the city and they say, you know, if we stay out here we're gonna die. If we go in there we're gonna die.

So what should we do? Well, they decide to go turn themselves into the Syrians. So they go and they're gonna raise a white flag hoping the Syrians are gonna feed them. They go into the Syrian camp and it's abandoned and there's all this treasure there. There's bread and wine, there's riches and they're gobbling it right off.

Then they stop and they say, hey, I don't think we should be doing this. So they go and they tell the authorities what happened. You know, what does that story mean? It's a really interesting story because there's a lot of human nature in it. There's a lot of sin and realization of sin and things like that.

It's a classic story. You know, in chapter 8 you have this woman whose son was restored and just a continuing on of the Kings. You know, second Kings, you know, like I said, it begins with good news. Ahab is dead. And okay, Let's talk about some lessons.

I'm going to just give you a few of them. The first lesson is the lesson of idolatry. God's people are prone to wander. Drift happens. Whatever you are using to diminish your love for God, identify it, renounce it.

What dulls the knowledge of the love of God in your life is so important. What is it that's causing you to compromise? You know, John Calvin said that the human heart is a factory of idols and that we are experts in inventing idols. We're experts at inventing idols. But there's the lesson of idolatry.

What is it that's diminishing your love for Christ? Identify that and turn to Christ. In front of you are the lessons learned of a couple dozen kings. Learn the lesson from them. Don't learn it the hard way.

Here's the second one. There's a lesson about leaders and dependency. What Israel needs is a better king. You know, each king in here makes you long for a better king, and it shows the fickleness of man. Isaiah says to Ahaz, do not trust in man whose breath is in his nostrils.

We often put our trust in kings. We should never do it. First and Second Kings proves why. There's the lesson of preservation. God is preserving his church.

Nothing can stamp it out. He uses weakness to demonstrate his power. Even the most wicked King cannot cause the stamping out of the Word of God. The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. His mercy's never come to an end.

God is going to preserve his church. And I think the last lesson is this. It's the lesson of humility. Humble yourself. Keep your soul in close watch.

We see in particularly in Solomon a man who had some of those remarkable victories. Watch out, you're not finished. Are you inclined to holiness or are you inclining the other way? Solomon started inclining the other way with his wives. What is it that's causing you to incline the wrong way because that trajectory is a disaster?

And let's finally talk about Christ in the book of 1 and 2 Kings. In Matthew chapter 12 verse 42 we read, indeed greater than Solomon is here. Greater than Solomon. The greatest, you know, most powerful king of Israel, Solomon, is pointing to Christ. Every one of the kings is really designed to point us to Christ, to remind us of what a good king he is, to remind us of how wise Christ is, to remind us of the prosperity of the soul and the body and the life that Jesus Christ brings.

Jesus Christ is King of Kings and Lord of Lords. And every king in 1 and 2 Kings should cause you to pause and say, thank God for Jesus Christ who came to the earth. He died, he suffered on a cross, and he rose again on the third day to give me life. In him was life and the life was the light of men. He is the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords.

He's the only King that you need. So there it is. That's 1 and 2 Kings.