Morning, brothers and sisters. Let’s have another word of prayer.
Lord, we do rejoice that we gather in Your presence today. We rejoice that, as we have this time now, even though it is a little different than normal, Your presence is forever the same. You always have things that You want to speak to us, encourage us with, and use to touch our hearts.
We are thankful that we declare that Jesus Christ is Lord over this time. We look unto You to lead, guide, and truly touch all of our hearts.
Lord, as we consider this matter of a Bible study, this matter of the Word of God, would we, in a very fresh way, have a greater and greater hunger for You and for Your Word. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Can we read a couple of verses out of 2 Timothy? Second Timothy, chapter 3, near the end.
We know 2 Timothy is Paul’s last letter. This is toward the latter part of that letter, so these are some of the last words of his last letter, which makes what he has upon his heart even more important. It is interesting that, when he starts to close out this letter, he comes back to the significance of the Word of God.
If we look at the end of chapter 3, verse 16, as he is encouraging Timothy—and all of us—he says:
All Scripture is inspired by God,
and is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction,
for training in righteousness;
that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.
I love how it starts: all Scripture. There are a variety of ways in which we might not, at times, enjoy all of those descriptions when it comes down to being profitable for reproof and correction. We like to have Scripture for teaching and encouragement. But really, if we see God’s heart, we see the beauty of His reproofs and the beauty of His corrections.
Paul is really trying to reinforce to Timothy, and to everyone else, the significance of truly being in the Word of God. Earlier, he talked about rightly dividing the Word of God, because we may be equipped for every good work.
There is an all-encompassing thing here. Paul speaks of all Scripture and every good work. It is not some or a few; it is for every good work. We see how vitally dependent we are upon the Word of God.
Then, as you go over into chapter 4, he speaks again about why. He talks about the times that are coming. If you look in chapter 4, verse 3—and this is speaking to believers now, not the world—he says:
For the time will come when they will not endure the sound doctrine;
but, having itching ears, will heap to themselves teachers after their own lusts;
and will turn away their ears from the truth,
and turn aside unto fables.
It is very clear, and I think we see it manifested in the days we are living in, how many believers have this desire for the tickling of the ears, for self-satisfaction, and are not really holding fast to the truth.
If you look at these verses, it is all centered on what man desires—man’s self-satisfaction. What is going to satisfy me? What is going to make me feel good? What is going to tickle my ears?
It is a self-centered way of looking at the Word of God and trying to hear it, as opposed to setting the Word of God before us and allowing it to instruct us. Sometimes it does some instructing that we are uncomfortable with. But we see His great love, and we know He is working out this so great a salvation that we have been brought into.
So now, why am I sharing this? As I prayed, this morning is a little bit different than our normal morning messages. Starting on January 31, we are going to have a Bible study on the off Friday nights, studying the Books of Kings.
Now, what are the off Friday nights? I do not know how else you describe it, but right now we have what we call the regular Friday-night times of Bible fellowship. So, the other Friday night—we will call it the off Friday night—will be a time for Bible study.
This morning, Jim, Jeffrey, and I will be introducing this time. I am going to share some of the background of how we got here. Jim is going to share some of the critical lessons we see as we start looking at the Books of Kings. Jeffrey will be sharing about the study aids we will be using, the help available to us, and some of the questions we are going to consider.
It will be starting on January 31, and we will be studying the Books of Kings.
Now, how did we get here? If we look back through several family meetings, it has been brought up: Why do we not do something on the off Friday nights for those who are available? We have this time available. Let’s make the most of it.
After a series of family meetings and prayers, it was concluded to go ahead and start something. This came about through the fellowship of the saints, through sharing with one another in those times. We are thankful that we can step out in faith as an assembly and have this time.
It will be here at the meeting house, and depending on how many come, that will probably determine what room we meet in. It will be from 7:30 to 9:00 on the off Friday nights.
Let me clarify a couple of things. There will not be formally provided childcare, but children are welcome. If parents want to bring the kids and have them sit around—if they are small and want to color or whatever—that is fine. There just will not be any formal childcare provision. If some want to coordinate things informally, that is fine, but it will not be provided. We are encouraging whole families to be here.
Also, another important question people ask: Will there be snacks? The answer is that we are not going to provide them. But anybody who wants to provide snacks afterward is welcome to do that.
Jim, Jeffrey, I, and others are just doing the Bible study. As for all the other things, if people have a burden for them, praise God. You know, I always love a good snack afterward anyway. So we will just leave that open if anybody feels impressed to do that.
So why are we studying the Books of Kings? As we fellowshipped and sought the Lord, we recognized that most believers generally have a pretty good understanding of the Old Testament from Genesis onward. You have Adam, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Joshua, Judges, Samuel, David, and up to Solomon. Most people have a pretty good handle on that flow, at varying levels.
But once you get after Solomon, and the two kingdoms divide, you have all these kings in the north and these kings in the south. Some of them have the same names. There is Jeroboam I and Jeroboam II, and on and on. It is like utter confusion sets in. When is this happening? When is that happening?
At the same time, you have these prophets coming in: this prophet during this king, and this prophet during that king. So we wanted to take this time and, in a simple way, seek the Lord together that He would provide light and that we could get a better handle on, we could say, the second half of the Old Testament.
Jeffrey will be going over some of the study aids we have to help us follow this in a visual way also. That is why we were picking Kings to start with.
On the first Friday night, we will be doing 1 Kings 1–11. That sounds broad, but really we are going to look at a snapshot of Solomon’s life, just to transition in—mainly the first chapter, and then chapters 9 and 10. That will be based on the information Jeffrey is going to provide.
The normal format will be that, as we gather, one of us will open the time by sharing for about ten or fifteen minutes, introducing the particular chapter and setting the tone.
Then everybody else, beforehand, will have received questions related to that chapter. It will be opened up for an interactive study of what you saw in that chapter, how we can encourage one another, and perhaps questions that people have from the chapter.
Jeffrey will explain this a little more, but there will be opportunities for people to ask questions online and submit questions about the chapters, so that they can be addressed either before or after the particular study we have had.
The key for our time together is that we really are not looking for the three of us to lecture for an hour and a half. We are looking for everybody to come prepared, so that it would be a joint study together—seeking the Lord and learning from Him and His Word. That is what we are looking for.
Some people have asked, “What is the difference between Bible study and Bible fellowship?” They are actually very complementary to each other.
Bible fellowship, which we are doing now, is where we read the Word and the Lord impresses something upon your heart. It becomes that rhema word to you. We see it happen so often with the openings on Sunday morning.
The brother reads the Scripture. Sometimes you get the introduction on Saturday about what the Scripture is going to be for Sunday, and you look at it and say, “How is this going to relate to Sunday morning?” But the Lord, in His faithfulness, spoke that word in fellowship with that brother. The brother shares, and we are all encouraged.
Bible study is a little more detailed: looking at the background and context. What is God really speaking here? What is God really after? What is the context? How does this whole letter to the Corinthians, or these books of Kings, relate to what God says, what God is doing, what God desires, and His purpose? There is an end in view.
Quite often, Bible study is taking that Word and putting it in your heart. Even though it might not be a rhema word at that time, it is still that logos, that Word of God. You put it in there, and then sometimes the Holy Spirit can come and bring it to light.
I know we have probably all experienced times of studying the Word of God and feeling like we did not get anything out of it. Then later, in some circumstance or situation, that verse you studied years ago comes to light. The Holy Spirit breathes upon it.
That is it: to get the Word of God into our hearts and into our lives, that we would have this to go on.
For example, if you think of Revelation 3:20, where the Lord is speaking to the church in Laodicea, He says:
Behold, I stand at the door and knock:
if any man hear My voice and open the door,
I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with Me.
Many times, that is used as a great gospel message, because the Lord truly has a desire to come into people’s hearts and lives and save them. Praise God for that. Millions have come into the kingdom of God through that verse, and we are thankful for it.
But when you are doing a Bible study, you realize that verse really does not relate directly to unbelievers in its context. It is being addressed to believers. The church in Laodicea, at that point in time, was in a fallen condition, and they had the Lord outside.
So we see how it is a truth. Praise God, the Lord is standing at everybody’s heart, knocking to get in for unbelievers. But in the context of that particular passage, in a study, you see how the Lord is really wanting to use that word.
Bible fellowship and Bible study are truly complementary. They go on together, and they encourage us all. It is vital that we have both. We need study, and we need fellowship, and we are hoping that the one will reinforce the other.
I am going to turn it over to Jim now.
Morning. I am here to give a kind of background on what we are going to be studying. Like Mac was saying, this is unfamiliar territory to a lot of us.
How many of us are really familiar with the Books of Kings—both books of Kings? Probably we could answer, “Well, I know that Elijah is in there. We talked about Solomon being there. I can think of a couple of kings—Hezekiah, Josiah.” But there are more than Hezekiah and Josiah.
So what we are doing is going into unfamiliar waters. But that is good, because we are going to become familiar with things.
It is always good to be in something unfamiliar, because then you are taking away the attitude of, “Oh, I know about this. Oh yeah, I know about this.” Then we close off anything new.
I remember my junior year in U.S. history in high school. We used the same textbook that we had used in eighth grade. I was like, “I know this stuff.” So it was a very boring class for me, because I knew it all. You know what I am saying, right?
Somebody will say something from a verse, and we think, “Oh, I have read that millions of times.” Some of us who underline in our Bible remember what we underlined it for. Then you cannot get out of, “Okay, that is what it means.”
That is why I say it is good to be in something unfamiliar, because we are in a place of being unfamiliar, in new places. We are open to discovery.
The Books of Kings are a good place to discover that God is sovereign—not the people, but God. God is sovereign in all these things. We can discover His way with His people.
In giving background, Mac made a little reference to this, but almost about half of the Old Testament is happening during the times of 1 and 2 Kings. Half of it.
You have 1 and 2 Kings, and 1 and 2 Chronicles; they all go along the same general period. Then you have almost all the prophets who wrote. I will leave out Daniel, Zechariah, Malachi, and Haggai, because they are what we would call exilic. But I am keeping in Ezekiel, because much of what he has is happening while not everybody has been carried into captivity.
You can throw in Proverbs and the Song of Solomon, because Solomon lived there. So about half of the Old Testament time period is in the Books of Kings.
I want to give you three things that we are going to look for. First, there are three views of what is going on in 1 and 2 Kings. There is some conflict that we want to look at. Then we want to look at the end.
Today, textbooks give you a little preview of what is in the chapter and what is behind the chapter, so that when you read, you have a purpose for reading. I do not want to give you the purpose for reading. I want to paint a background. Everything else will be in bold relief in front, but I want to give a little background and say, “Okay, this is what is behind everything.”
When I taught history and taught the Cold War, I told the kids there were three views of the Cold War: the traditional view, the revisionist view, and the post-revisionist view. Those views color the history that you are reading.
If you know this is a traditionalist view, then you say, “Okay, I know this is how the author thinks about this period of time.” The revisionist says, “Okay, I do not see it that way; I see it in a different way.” The post-revisionist says, “I do not see it that way either; I see it this way.”
Even though I am going to give you three views, they are all interwoven together.
The first thing we can say is that they do not know who wrote 1 and 2 Kings. There is speculation, and you can rule out a lot of things, but there is no name written telling us who did this.
But we do know one thing: it was written from the point of view of somebody in exile. It was written from the perspective of a member of the remnant. We are not sure who in the remnant, but we have the view of a person in exile—somebody in Babylon when they were all in captivity.
We know this even from 2 Kings 25, where it ends by talking about one of the kings who was set free at that time. So we know whoever wrote it was in exile at that time.
This person is looking back and giving us a kind of political history of what happened in both of these kingdoms. Actually, this is the kingdom of God, right? He is giving us a political history of the kingdom of God, and it is very objective.
There is a cause-and-effect perspective. He looks back and says, “I see this king, this is what happened, this is why it happened, and this is what happened because of it.” It is this exilic look at political history.
It is a person looking back and saying, “Why are we here? Why did we wind up here? This is why we wound up here.”
Secondly, you have a priestly view. You might say, “Wait a minute, Jim. You just said the one who wrote Kings was in exile.” One of the companion books of Kings is Chronicles.
When you read Kings, you really need to read Chronicles. First Chronicles is more about David, and 2 Chronicles is about Solomon and the kings. They believe Chronicles was written by Ezra, and Ezra was a priest and a scribe.
So you have this priestly view. Especially as we get into 2 Kings, we will see that many of these kings are spoken about more extensively in relation to the southern kingdom. We get an expansion of these kings.
You have the objective account, and then you go to the subjective and see some of the things that were really pushing these men one way or another. We get this priestly look that goes underneath and allows us to see, sometimes, into the heart.
The third view does not have to do directly with whoever wrote Kings or Chronicles. The third view is the prophet’s view. These are all the prophets who left written records of what happened in this time—apart from those four I talked about earlier.
In this prophetic view, we get to see God’s viewpoint of everything—not just what is happening, but what is going on in His heart and mind for His people.
We are going to see that God is jealous. He is jealous for His people. He is jealous for His testimony. We can see that He is angry. We can see that He is heartbroken. We can see that He desires to right the ship, so to speak.
Not only do we see man’s look at the whole thing—what is in man’s heart, how man sees things objectively and subjectively—but we also get to see how God feels and how God sees.
A prophet is not somebody who just foretells something. He is one to whom God has spoken. God is saying, “This is what I see, and I want you to tell them. I want you to tell them how I feel. I want you to tell them where they are going wrong. I want you to tell them how to get back to Me.”
A prophet is foreseeing consequences for actions. He is foreseeing a finished work that God really wants to do in calling His people back. So we see some foretelling, and we also see some forth-telling: “This is what is going on.”
These views are all interwoven. You cannot read Kings without reading all these other things, because they all enter into the different aspects of the account.
I do not know how many of you have a chronological Bible. I just got one for Christmas. My wife is so nice to me. “What do you want?” “I want this.” She got it for me.
How many times in our regular reading do we read the prophets and say, “Why is he saying this stuff?” The prophets are speaking into a situation.
It is just like when we read 1 Corinthians on Friday nights. Do you think Paul is just pulling stuff out of the air and saying, “Oh, I think now I will talk about this. Now I have to talk about this”? No. He is speaking to a circumstance. He is speaking to something specific in the Corinthians’ lives.
The prophets are all speaking to something specific in the lives of Israel and Judah. Something is happening there.
You cannot read 1 Kings and Chronicles without asking, “What prophets are in here? What are they saying?” It adds to our understanding not merely of the time, but of who God is, how God looks at things, how God sees things, and what His heart is like in all of this.
Brothers and sisters, that is really the purpose of the Word of God: to reveal God to us. Yes, we are going to get knowledge out of this. We are going to get wonderful teaching and revelation. But the revelation is going to be about who God is.
Sometimes it is going to be about who we are. God is saying, “That is you, and this is how I feel about you.” That is the wonderful thing about studying the Bible: we get to find out who God is.
That is our quest: “Lord, I want to see You.” I do not just want to have a bunch of knowledge so that I can hit somebody over the head with it, convert them, or show them that I am right—because that is what a lot of us want to do, do we not?
Secondly, we have conflict. There is a center of conflict, and there are two things that cause or form the center of this conflict.
Number one is the temple. At the very beginning of Kings, we have the building of the temple. The rest of Kings talks about what is happening to the temple, especially in Judah.
We have a conflict over worship—true worship. I am not going to get into that because those are things we are going to discover. I am not going to give any spoilers here.
But there is a conflict over true worship, and the temple really is God’s testimony—God’s testimony to the world.
What did Kenny talk about? “One thing have I desired … that I may dwell in the house of the Lord.” This is it. This is the house of the Lord. This is where God dwells—God dwelling among His people.
The big thing about that is, if we really are worshipers—if our hearts are really captured by Someone we are truly worshiping—then that is going to alter our lives. It is going to change our lives.
When we fall in love with someone and begin, quote-unquote, to worship that person, we are drawn to them. That is a good way of looking at worship. We are drawn to them.
All of a sudden, we find ourselves looking at all the good things about that person, and we find ourselves wanting to please them. “What can I do to please you?” Like I told you, my wife bought me a chronological Bible.
If He is dwelling among His people, how should His people respond to Him dwelling there? I will sum it up with the verse from Micah—I think it is chapter 6—and we used to sing it back in the seventies:
He hath showed thee, O man, what is good;
and what doth the Lord require of thee,
but to do justly, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with thy God?
That is the testimony. What is the testimony of the kingdoms? It should be our testimony as well.
We are not just looking at past history. This is the kingdom period. Well, we are in the kingdom of God, are we not? It is the same thing, and it applies to us.
That is another thing about study: when you study something, you have to apply it. I love arithmetic. I was not the greatest in math, but math in theory is great. Yet you have to apply math.
You cannot just have it without applying it. It is no good without application. It is just numbers, just theories. But when it is applied, it has an effect.
That is why it says we learn from history that we do not learn from history. Why? Because we have not applied what we learned.
The other conflict is the king’s heart. With each king, there is conflict in his heart over who is going to rule.
Let me read a verse or two from 1 Kings 9, starting with verse 4. This is God talking to Solomon. Solomon has his dream, goes to give God sacrifices, and God says, “What do you want from Me?” Solomon says, “I want wisdom.” Then God says to Solomon:
And as for thee, if thou wilt walk before Me, as David thy father walked,
in integrity of heart, and in uprightness,
to do according to all that I have commanded thee,
and wilt keep My statutes and Mine ordinances;
then I will establish the throne of thy kingdom upon Israel for ever,
according as I promised to David thy father.
All throughout Kings, when it is talking about kings—especially in the southern kingdom—it compares every king to David. God is saying, “This is what I am after in a king.”
Why is that? What do we know about David? He had a heart after God’s heart.
That is the battle: Who rules the heart? Every king, we are going to see, has that struggle. Who rules the heart? Or how far will I go in allowing that rule in my heart?
These things are applicable to our own lives, but this is the conflict in each king: What is in my heart? Did he do according to David?
This is the very issue that brings about a divided kingdom. Every good history has conflict. That is why people like to study history: they like conflict. They want to see what caused the conflict, and they want to see the resolution of the conflict.
The third thing is that there is an end. There is a resolution. I do not know how many of you are familiar with the Books of Kings and Chronicles, but they do not end well.
If we are looking at the exile, the person in exile who gives us the objective view of what is happening says, “We are in captivity.” It does not end well.
It is like Psalm 137:
By the rivers of Babylon,
there we sat down, yea, we wept,
when we remembered Zion.
They hung their harps. They were not singing anymore, and their captors were saying, “Come on, sing us a song of Zion.” How can we sing? That is the objective look at it. It ends badly.
Or we can look at it like a priest, from a subjective view. All of a sudden, we can see that the kings failed us. What do we do now? This is where you have people looking for Messiah. Who will save us? Who will save us out of these things?
When we see ourselves as we are, what do we look for? We look for a Savior. We see this in Kings.
We also have the prophetic view. At the end of every prophet you read, there is something of hope. There is hope about being restored.
In Isaiah 43:4-6, the Lord says:
Since thou hast been precious in My sight, and honorable, and I have loved thee;
therefore I will give men for thee, and peoples instead of thy life.
Fear not; for I am with thee:
I will bring thy seed from the east,
and gather thee from the west;
I will say to the north, Give up;
and to the south, Keep not back:
bring My sons from far,
and My daughters from the end of the earth.
There is hope of being restored back to that relationship—not just the relationship, but the purpose God always meant for His people to have.
The end of all this, if they are coming back and everything, is like the Psalms of Ascents. If you read the Psalms of Ascents, they start in a bad place, but they end up in a good place. All the steps along the way are good.
The aim I think the Spirit has for us in studying Kings is summed up in Psalm 84:5-7:
Blessed is the man whose strength is in Thee;
in whose heart are the highways to Zion.
Passing through the valley of Weeping they make it a place of springs;
yea, the early rain covereth it with blessings.
They go from strength to strength;
every one of them appeareth before God in Zion.
That is the hope that comes out of studying the Word. All of a sudden, in our hearts become the highway to Zion—a highway back to God, a highway to where God fulfills everything He has wanted to fulfill in His people.
That is what we want to see in Kings. We want to have that heart, our heart renewed like that. We do not want to get discouraged by saying, “Oh, this ends badly.”
Yes, at the very beginning we can say it ends badly, but the Scriptures do not end with 2 Kings 25. They go on to Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther. Then they go on to John the Baptist and Christ being born. Then they go on to the crucifixion, the resurrection, the Lord returning, and us being with Him forever.
I want to show a few of the helps that we will have and provide, and a site where we will post some questions.
Maybe first, I just wanted to mention that it is the glory of God to conceal a thing, and it is the glory of kings to search out a thing. This is Proverbs 25:2.
It is the glory of God to conceal a thing;
but the glory of kings is to search out a matter.
It is a real principle that the Lord hides things from us on purpose, and it is glorious. There are so many unsearchable, unexhaustible riches of Christ that we have to discover for eternity.
It applies also to the Bible and to the Scriptures. It is a glorious thing that you read a passage for the hundredth time, and it is as if you had never read it before. Suddenly, it clicks.
Whether it is a light bulb of revelation or a piercing of conviction, it is glorious. The Lord has hidden many things, and, like they said before, this section of Scripture seems to be the most well hidden from us.
Our brothers already mentioned it, but I remember trying to read through the Bible faithfully. This is the time of year when many of us have renewed our Bible-reading plans, which is good. I think it is healthy to read through the Bible to get an overview of all of it—to have that panoramic view of the Scriptures.
But you have to press through some passages. We all know it can be a little difficult in Leviticus, or some other places, or even in Exodus when there are a lot of details. But definitely, I could say that I have been the most lost when I get to the kings after Solomon.
When I get to the prophets, I am not sure who Ezekiel is talking to. In the latter half of Isaiah, I feel like I am suddenly in the New Testament. But in the beginning of Isaiah, I am lost. With other prophets, I ask, “Why is God angry? What is going on? Why does it matter that this is the time of Uzziah? Who is Uzziah?”
I have been so lost reading the Scriptures, and I found that this is on purpose.
It is like food. We can chew some food pretty early on as humans—some baby food. But eventually there is food that gets stuck in your teeth, and you need teeth. There is some price to pay for certain types of food, for steaks and so on.
With the Bible, sometimes we need to search out something. It is a glorious thing, though, when you search and find something of the Lord.
It means a little more time spent, a little extra effort. But as more and more of that searching piles up, eventually new things begin to click that could not have clicked without a little extra sweat and time, without extra pauses to say, “Wait a second.”
If I am doing my Bible reading and have only so much time in a day, trying to make it through my three or four chapters, I am okay with not understanding half of what I read—or a lot of what I read.
Maybe I understand one paragraph, and the Lord edifies me. Gradually I understand more and more through messages spoken, through reading, and then the tenth time I am like, “Oh, I see what is going on.”
But some of those things never really click until you do a little extra study. That is what we are hoping to do.
It is not just for these off Friday nights that we hope you will be edified. It is for the years ahead, as we read through the Scriptures, that we would be able to sit down and read through a prophet and say, “All right, I know where I am. I know who he is talking to, and I can step into the heart behind the voice. I can understand what I am reading.”
Later, when we are reading through the Scriptures, even in a faster way, we can follow along and not be so thoroughly lost. Sometimes, as was mentioned, the edification comes later. You are in another situation, meditating on the Word, and you remember something.
We are looking to store some things up in the heart.
I want to bring up some of the confusing things—and keep us more confused so we will all show up on Friday nights. No, I hope this does not sound like an advertisement. We just need to explain what we are doing.
We know Saul, David, and Solomon. This is called the United Kingdom, which simply means there was one united people of God, the Israelites.
Maybe the majority in this room understand this, but for those who were like me for the first five years of my Christian life, I never understood what in the world was going on. After Solomon, everything split.
On one side you have Rehoboam, and on the other you have Jeroboam. I can remember reading those names and just not caring who was who. I was just trying to read through, and I was lost.
Basically, Rehoboam is in the line of David, and Jeroboam is not. At the death of Solomon, as his son was to take over, the kingdom became divided.
Then you have these two kingdoms going on. You may remember when it clicked and you understood, “Okay, in the kings, there are two separate kingdoms.”
But then you get to a place that was really confusing for me. You have Rehoboam, King Asa, Jehoshaphat, and then Jehoram, or Joram, on one side. Right after him is Ahaziah. At almost the same time, you have Joram, or Jehoram, on the other side, and before him was Ahaziah.
Can you tell who is who when you read these portions? On one side is Joram, sometimes called Jehoram; on the other side is Jehoram, sometimes called Joram. After Joram comes Ahaziah, just briefly, but there is another Ahaziah who came right before Joram on the other side.
I have been so lost with this. One time I was frustrated, had extra time, and started to read through. I wrote down every king, tried to separate them into two columns, wrote down their times, and tried to compare it with Chronicles.
This was the beginning of unraveling some of the confusion and actually caring about what happened with these names. I think that is the kind of thing we can help one another with, to get a little clearer on.
We always know about Elijah and Elisha. Did you know they were working with the Northern Kingdom instead of the Southern Kingdom? In the south is where the temple is, where the line of David is, and where there are some good kings. In the north, there were not so many good kings—perhaps none.
Another confusing point comes at the end of the southern kings: Jehoiakim and Jehoiachin. When we read these names, they can all be confusing because these are not American names. But I think, as we study together, the names themselves will have meaning behind them, like Josiah and Hezekiah do.
We will have a chart available. This little handout can fit in a Bible, a study Bible, or next to your notebook. It has the timeline.
You can see Solomon, and then the kingdom divides between the north and the south. It goes through the kings, gives their years and dates, and shows who was ruling at the same time. It is a long timeline that goes through to the end.
There are also maps. The Southern Kingdom includes Jerusalem and Benjamin, while the Northern Kingdom includes the other tribes. Those ten tribes, excluding the tribe of Levi, were in the north, and they were removed earlier than the Southern Kingdom.
I know this has been mentioned in messages, and probably many of us know it. But remember that you did not always know it, and remember that some of us in this room are just lost. Even all of us are still a little lost in some areas.
Those ten tribes were removed earlier by the Assyrians. Their wickedness was worse, and they were taken away first. Later, the Babylonians took the southern part of the kingdom—Judah and Benjamin, with some Levites who were there.
That is why we commonly call the people of Israel today Jews, after Judah. Those other ten tribes became so assimilated that it is difficult to discover where they all went. There are various findings and DNA testing, but basically much was lost. Yet the people of God, the remnant, returned.
I love maps and charts. I like to see the geography of where something is, not merely because it will spiritually help me, but because it helps my memory.
When I know Babylon is over there by the Euphrates River, that helps me associate things in a certain way. Then, spiritually, occasionally you find something in the Bible where the Euphrates River really matters. There is a spiritual Babylon, and there is something about going to the other side of the river—not like in Richmond, but in the Bible.
There is something about that. Abraham came across, and so on. Some of these nerdy Bible-study notes eventually click into something wonderful.
For example, a brother preached here a long time ago about Enoch and Methuselah. I read this in the God Has Spoken series and thought it was great. I have seen it in other books too: Methuselah died in the year that the flood happened.
You cannot find that out from your regular four-chapters-a-day Bible-reading plan. You have to sit down when you go through “so-and-so begat so-and-so,” chart them out, see when the dates line up, and connect it all together.
It is actually wonderful. When you get into the details, sometimes we will find treasures of the Lord that are glorious.
That is our heart in this: we want to search out and find more of Christ. We want to step into that glory where the Lord has hidden things for us to find in these kings and prophets.
These are things of Christ. The thing the Lord hides is the treasure of His Son. All these things were written for a purpose. They are not mere history, mere details, or things for us simply to skip over.
It is helpful to encourage one another. Sometimes you really do not want to study, but because you are doing it with other people, it helps. It is also helpful to be able to bring up questions.
We have a site where we will post questions, and we will send out an email about it. The site is called thetimeofthekings.com.
For the first study, we are doing the first eleven chapters. Normally we will not be doing so many chapters; we will cover a smaller section. If you cannot read all eleven chapters, that is okay. As Brother Mac said, perhaps read the first two chapters or the last few chapters.
The site shows the reading and some of the questions. For example: Why was there conflict over Solomon becoming king? What caused the decline of Solomon? What are the beginnings of Jeroboam?
Jeroboam matters all throughout Kings. One of the recurring phrases is about walking in the sins or ways of Jeroboam.
We want to bring some of our own notes from our reading and study, things to share, and any questions we have.
There is also an anonymous place on the site to submit questions. It says “Submit Questions,” and you can type something there. If there is something you want to ask—“Can we please talk about this?” or “Can we talk about the stone with King Omri’s name on it?”—you can put it there anonymously, unless you add your name.
If you are really allergic to websites and computers, you can probably write something on a piece of paper, stick it in the box in the back, and it will eventually, through pigeons, make it to us.
Mainly, I just wanted to encourage us. We all want to encourage one another that we are the people of God. We are called as kings and priests, and it is a glorious thing for a king to search out a thing of God—the things that God has hidden in the Word of God.
There is a kind of hunger in our hearts. Even when we are reading through the Bible, you have that feeling: “Ooh, someday I want to check into that. There is something hidden there that I have got to look into.”
There is that kind of desire by the Holy Spirit inside of us to search out the hidden things of God.
I know many of us are doing various studies, reading through the Bible, and having our time in the Word. Just as we get together on Friday nights to fellowship through 1 Corinthians, we also want to encourage you, if you are able—not as a heavy thing, a weight, or a conviction, but as a joyful, happy invitation—let’s search, seek, and find the Lord together.
We will have these off Friday times.
I just want to add that not every one of us is really nerdy, like we are going to be chart people. But some are, and some of us are going to benefit from others doing that kind of work.
Do not feel like, “Oh, I have got to do this and that and the other thing.” There are people who would love to do that kind of stuff. There are other people who like to think about little details like that.
We come with what we have. We are not saying everybody has to do this, that, or the other thing. You read the Word, come with what you have read, look at those questions, and come share together.
Actually, we are not making our own charts, really. We are stealing from this one. So you do not have to be a nerd so much. We will just try to benefit from each other and help each other.
All right, let’s pray together.
Lord, we worship You together. We see that it is glorious that You have hidden the riches of Christ, even in the Word of God.
Lord, our heart is that we can find You, meet with You, and discover more of You. We pray, as we fellowship with each other and as these times start on Friday evenings, that we would find You.
May we be able to encourage one another, seek Your face together, and search Your Word for Yourself. In Jesus’ name, amen.