Through the Bible - 1 Kings

And it shall be, if thou wilt hearken unto all that I command thee, and wilt walk in my ways, and do that is right in my sight, to keep my statutes and my commandments, as David my servant did; that I will be with thee, and build thee a sure house, as I built for David... (cf. 1 Kings 11:38)

How a kingdom is lost—not by outward ruin, but by a heart that drifts from God.

Where 1 Kings Begins

The book of 1 Kings picks up right where 2 Samuel left off, at the end of King David's life, where David's son Solomon takes over the leadership of the nation. One of the most important aspects of Solomon's life is what he did that David could not do.

You remember that David desired to build a temple for the Lord. After he brought the Ark of the Covenant back into Jerusalem, he was seated in his own house and looked out at the tent that held the Ark, and he wanted to build God a house. He told Nathan the prophet his desire, and Nathan said, "Do all that's in your heart, king." But as Nathan was leaving, God spoke to him and said he had spoken too soon. So Nathan told David that, although he desired to build God a house, he could not, for he was a man of war. Yet God made a beautiful promise: "You want to build me a house? I'm going to establish your house." God also revealed that David's son could build the temple. As we come to 1 Kings, that is one of the prime things we see about Solomon's life.

The Theme: How to Lose a Kingdom

The prime focus of 1 Kings is the idea of losing the kingdom. David is the establishing of the kingdom of Israel. Under King Saul, the king the people wanted, the nation really wasn't established. God told Saul that if he followed His word, He would establish his kingdom, but Saul didn't do it. In 1 Samuel 14, God said to utterly destroy the Amalekites, but Saul didn't fulfill what God called him to. So in 1 Samuel 15, God said the kingdom had been rent from him and given to a neighbor, a man after God's own heart.

So David is the establishing of the nation, and Israel took the foothold of their land during his time. But was David a perfect man? Absolutely not. The Scripture calls him a man after God's own heart, and yet he was also a very sinful man—a man who committed adultery, conspired to murder, and covered it up in lies. This man is no different than any of us.

A Bible That Tells the Truth

I'm thankful the Scriptures call this sinful man a man after God's own heart. If all we ever saw of David was a perfect man, how would any of us ever think we could be after God's own heart? The Bible is like a newspaper that reports exactly what took place, and that's one reason I see the hand of God in these books. If mere men had written about their heroes, they would have painted them in the most flawless light.

Read the works of Josephus, the Jewish historian, right next to your Bible, and you'll see he exalts these men and covers over their sin—especially Abraham. When Abraham went down into Egypt and told Pharaoh his wife was his sister, and was ultimately kicked out, Josephus says God instructed him to do it. But Abraham was a sinner like we are, and so was David. I'm thankful Scripture reports it that way, because Jesus came to save sinners. Paul said, "I who am the chief of sinners." Jeremiah 17:9 says the heart of man is desperately wicked. You see that in David—a man after God's own heart who writes psalms expressing his desire to follow God, and yet in a moment of foolishness commits adultery and then murders Uriah the Hittite.

Solomon Takes the Throne

The child conceived in that sinful union died, but the second son born to David and Bathsheba was Solomon. When we come to 1 Kings, David is old and stricken in years—so old it's hard for him to stay warm. In the midst of this, one of his sons, Adonijah, the brother of Absalom, decides he is going to take the kingdom. This was David's lame-duck time; there was not much he could do.

But that was not what God desired, nor what David had said. David had appointed Solomon. So the advisors send Bathsheba to David to ask whether it is his desire that Adonijah rule, and David says no. Adonijah is exalting himself, so they anoint Solomon king, and he takes over where David left off. God uses him to solidify the nation. David founded the kingdom; Solomon solidifies it.

God's "If" to Solomon

God gives Solomon a clear "if." In chapter 2, David charges him that if his children take heed to their way and walk before God in truth with all their heart and soul, there shall not fail a man on the throne of Israel from David's line. As you read 1 Kings, you'll notice it repeatedly says a king "did not walk after the Lord as his father David did."

We know from 2 Samuel that David was not perfect, but something about David was clear: his heart was given to God. Sometimes his external actions didn't show it, but he was a man after God's own heart. Can anybody identify with that? When we receive Christ, God gives us a new heart, as Ezekiel 36 says, and as Jesus tells Nicodemus in John 3—you must be born again. That new heart desires to obey God. But who in this room fully obeys? We agree with Romans 7: "The good that I want to do, I don't do... O wretched man that I am." In David you see a man who desired to follow God but whose life didn't always measure up. And the Lord says, "This is a man after my own heart." He becomes the standard by which the rest of the kings are measured.

The Rise of Solomon and the Gift of Wisdom

Solomon's rise begins in chapter 3. He writes to Hiram, king of Tyre, a friend of his father, saying David wanted to build a temple, and "I would like to do what my father could not." Solomon begins on the right path, and that path begins with the worship of the Lord at the center of everything. Offering a thousand sacrifices in one day, he seeks the Lord.

That night God comes to him in a dream and asks, "What do you want? Anything." Solomon doesn't ask for long life, riches, or the blood of his enemies. He says, "God, I would have understanding how to go out and how to come in." He recognized he was a young man who did not know how to lead the nation. So he asks for wisdom, and God answers: because he didn't ask for wealth, long life, or the heads of his enemies, God gives him all those things as well as wisdom.

But in one sense Solomon's request was a little out of sorts. He asked for wisdom to rule the people; perhaps he should have asked for wisdom to rule his own heart. His wisdom is exemplified in the famous account of two women who both had children, and one rolled over on her child in the night and swapped it with the other. Solomon called for a sword to divide the living child, and the true mother cried out to spare it. All the people recognized he had the wisdom of the Lord.

A Nation at Its Grandest—and a Hidden Flaw

Because of his wisdom, the nation became wealthy and powerful. Under Solomon, Israel saw its grandest time—the largest, the most beautiful. His house was huge; the temple was immaculate, overlaid with gold. People came from all over the world to hear his wisdom, bringing silver, gold, and spices. His fame spread throughout the world. The nation became strong, with armies, because servants from other nations did the menial work, freeing Israel's men to focus on battle.

And yet there were problems, beginning in chapter 3. "And Solomon made affinity with Pharaoh king of Egypt, and took Pharaoh's daughter." Verse 3 says Solomon loved the Lord, walking in the statutes of David his father—but notice the parenthetical: "only he sacrificed and burnt incense in high places." His exterior actions were great. This is the king everybody would love to have. But there was something wrong with the heart. He had an affinity for strange things and for many women.

The Heart of the Problem

He asked the Lord for wisdom to rule the people, but how to govern his own heart, maybe he did not have. He was clearly wise—he wrote about a thousand proverbs and many psalms, and we have the book of Proverbs. But most of those proverbs were likely written early in his life, right after God gave him wisdom. As his life declines, beginning in chapter 9, you see the decline came because he didn't know how to rule his own heart with wisdom.

The heart is the issue. The heart of the problem of man is the heart of man. Jeremiah 17 says the heart is desperately wicked—who can know it? Scripture says God is the one who tests the hearts of men. Solomon spoke of this in Proverbs, yet he himself did not know how to govern his own heart. And that begins the decline of the nation.

God Appears a Second Time

In chapter 8, when Solomon consecrates the temple, he prays a beautiful prayer asking that whenever God hears the cry of His people toward the temple, He would hear and forgive. Then in chapter 9, about eleven years after the first time God appeared to him, God appears a second time. He says, "I have heard your prayer... I have hallowed this house... my eyes and my heart shall be there perpetually."

But God gives a condition: "If you will walk before me as David your father walked, in the integrity of his heart... then I will establish the throne of thy kingdom upon Israel forever." God is not looking at our outward life. As He told Samuel, God does not look on the outward man but on the heart. He was not interested in the horrible things David did on the outside; He was interested in his heart, revealed in Psalm 51 in confession and repentance.

But verse 6 carries a warning: "If you shall at all turn from following me... and serve other gods and worship them, then I will cut off Israel out of the land... and this house will I cast out of my sight. And Israel shall be a proverb and a byword among all people." Everyone passing by would be astonished and hiss, asking why the Lord had done this—and the answer would be: because they forsook the Lord their God and took hold of other gods.

Solomon's Heart Turns Away

Those were the marching orders. Did Solomon follow them? "But King Solomon loved many strange women, together with the daughter of Pharaoh—women of the Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Zidonians, and Hittites." Of these nations the Lord had said in Exodus, "You shall not go in to them... for surely they will turn away your heart." The exterior worship of God might remain, but these women would turn the heart.

"And it came to pass, when Solomon was old"—underline that, because it was as his life progressed—"that his wives turned away his heart after other gods, and his heart was not perfect with the Lord his God, as was the heart of David his father." He went after Ashtoreth and Milcom, built high places for Chemosh and Molech, and did so for all his strange wives. Many of these were political marriages, treaties as the nation expanded, but every one of these wives brought their false gods into the house of Solomon.

The Kingdom Torn Away

"And the Lord was angry with Solomon, because his heart was turned from the Lord God of Israel, which had appeared unto him twice." Therefore the Lord said, "I will surely rend the kingdom from thee, and give it to thy servant. Notwithstanding, in thy days I will not do it, for David thy father's sake; but I will rend it out of the hand of thy son." God in mercy would not remove the whole kingdom, but leave one tribe for David's sake and for Jerusalem—ultimately looking forward to the Son of David, Jesus.

The kingdom established and expanded under Solomon now declines because of his own actions. His heart was not given completely to the Lord. The outward looked good—a temple overlaid with gold, a grand palace, a king wiser than anyone in the world. If ever a nation looked religious on the outside, it was Israel under Solomon. He knew how to govern the people, but he did not know how to govern his own heart, and because of this he loses the kingdom.

It's the same in every one of our lives. We have been brought into the kingdom of our Lord. If our hearts are given over to Him, He establishes us; if we insist on ruling our own hearts, we lose the kingdom in many ways. Immediately afterward, in verse 14, "the Lord stirred up an adversary"—Hadad the Edomite. Then another, Rezon. Then a third from within, Jeroboam, a mighty man of valor whom Solomon made ruler over the charge of his house. God speaks through a prophet to Jeroboam: the kingdom will be divided, and Jeroboam will rule ten tribes, while only David's household will rule Judah and Benjamin.

Rehoboam and the Division

After Solomon's death, his son Rehoboam takes the leadership. The people come and ask whether he will be hard on them as his father was, for Solomon had laid heavy taxes on them to build the temple, the palace, and the stables at Megiddo. Rehoboam asks for a few days. The old men who counseled Solomon advise him: lessen the taxes and the people's hearts will be with you. But he forsakes their counsel and consults the young men he grew up with, who say he must establish his dominance.

So Rehoboam declares, "My father chastised you with whips; I will chastise you with scorpions"—his little finger heavier than his father's loins. The people respond, "What portion have we in David?" and depart to the north, setting up Jeroboam as their king. Rehoboam wants to gather an army, but the word of the Lord comes: this is from My hand, because your father did not follow Me.

Why the Kings Confuse Us

Thus begins what many find a difficult passage—the kings of the north and the kings of the south, easy to mix up as you read back and forth between Jehoshaphat, Ahab, and others. But this confusion exists because the nation was not as God intended. Under Joshua, God desired to be the King of the nation. The people wanted a king like the other nations, and God gave them Saul, who led them astray. Then He gave David, a man after God's own heart, whose whole focus was the worship of the Lord at the center of the nation.

When Solomon came, he focused only on the external works of religion. That's why he built a temple counted among the wonders of the world—silver was like rocks in his day because there was so much gold. It was a nation focused only on external righteousness. And when you and I become focused only on external righteousness, our hearts are led away. Throughout the rest of the Old Testament we see a people tossed to and fro between the service of God and their own pleasures—serving the Lord with their lips while their hearts were far from Him, as Isaiah says.

The Prophets Begin to Speak

In 1 Kings the prophetic ministry of the Bible begins. Again and again "a man of God came and spoke unto the king," and Elijah rises to prominence at the end of the book. The primary message of the prophets was: repent. Turn your heart back to the Lord. And if they would, what would God do?

In Solomon's dedication prayer in chapter 8, he cries out: "Lord God of Israel, there is no God like thee... When thy people Israel be smitten down before the enemy, because they have sinned against thee, and shall turn again to thee, and confess thy name, and pray, and make supplication unto thee in this house: then hear thou in heaven, and forgive their sin." Over and over he prays, "If your people sin and cry out to you for forgiveness, hear them and forgive." And in chapter 9 God says, "I will do even as you said." Sadly, the people largely rejected the prophets, just as Jesus would say in the Gospels.

Jeroboam's Golden Calves

From chapter 12 on, we see the division of the kingdom and how these kings led the people astray. To Jeroboam, the first king of the northern ten tribes, God says the same thing He said to David and Solomon: if you follow Me, I will establish your kingdom. But Jeroboam reasons that if his people go down to Jerusalem to worship, they'll want to return to Rehoboam. So he builds two new altars and re-establishes the worship of the golden calf at Dan and Bethel. The northern tribes worship these false gods, and God's judgments come upon their kings—just as judgment comes on the southern kings who depart from the Lord even though they have the temple.

Elijah and the Drought

Eventually King Ahab marries the wicked Jezebel, who brings the worship of Baal—the idolatry Israel stumbled in until the Babylonian captivity. At this point God raises up Elijah. "Elijah the Tishbite... said unto Ahab, As the Lord God of Israel liveth, before whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years, but according to my word."

God then feeds Elijah by ravens at a brook until it dries up, then sends him to a widow in Zarephath. She is down to one cruse of oil and a little meal, ready to make a final meal and die, but Elijah promises that her supply will not fail as long as he is there—and it doesn't. After three and a half years of drought, God sends Elijah back to confront Ahab and gathers all the people, the 450 prophets of Baal, and the 400 prophets of the groves at Mount Carmel.

Mount Carmel: Choose This Day

Elijah asks the great question in verse 21: "How long halt ye between two opinions? If the Lord be God, follow him: but if Baal, then follow him." And the people answered him not a word. This is the question every one of us must come to. How long will you be tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine?

Elijah sets the terms: two bullocks, no fire underneath, and "the God that answereth by fire, let him be God." Even the secular historians say man took off when he had fire—fire brought life. There's something important about fire and life in our lives too, for Jesus says, "I have come to give you life, and that more abundantly," and John the Baptist says of Him, "He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire." When Jesus brings fire, He brings life.

The Fire Falls

The prophets of Baal cry out from morning until noon, leaping on their altar. Elijah mocks them: maybe your god is on vacation, asleep, or has gone to the bathroom—cry louder. They cut themselves with lances until the blood gushes out. Consider the devotion given to false gods that could not answer, and the lack of devotion given to the one true God who brings fire.

In the evening Elijah said, "Come near unto me." He repaired the altar of the Lord that was broken down—an important work many of us need to do as well. He took twelve stones for the twelve tribes, dug a trench, laid the wood and the bullock, and had four barrels of water poured over it three times until the water filled the trench. Here is a picture of water overflowing the sacrifice and fire coming to consume it—interesting when we consider the New Testament.

At the time of the evening sacrifice Elijah prayed, "Lord God of Abraham, Isaac, and of Israel, let it be known this day that thou art God in Israel... hear me, that this people may know that thou art the Lord God, and that thou hast turned their heart back again." Then the fire of the Lord fell and consumed the sacrifice, the wood, the stones, the dust, and licked up the water in the trench. The people fell on their faces, crying, "The Lord, he is God! The Lord, he is God!" They rounded up the prophets of Baal and put them to death in the Valley of Jezreel.

Elijah's Despair and the Still, Small Voice

A miniature revival begins, but when Jezebel hears of it, she vows to kill Elijah by morning. You would think that after seeing the fire fall, Elijah would feel untouchable. Instead he runs—down through Judah to a juniper tree, where he hides and prays, "Lord, take away my life." Obviously he didn't truly want to die, or he would have stayed where Jezebel was. He's at the point of despair and depression.

God lets him sleep, then sends an angel with a cake baked on the coals and water. He sleeps again, and the angel feeds him a second time. That food sustains him on a forty-day journey to Horeb, the mountain of God—talk about a power bar. There he hides in a cave, despairing, saying three times, "I, only I, am left." God passes by in fire, but God was not in the fire; in a mighty wind, but not in the wind; in an earthquake, but not in the earthquake. Then a still, small voice.

So often we look for the fire, the earthquake, the great wind, yet God speaks through a still, small voice. If we'll quiet our hearts and be still and know that He is God, He'll speak. God tells Elijah to anoint kings over Syria and Israel, and to anoint Elisha as prophet in his place—Elisha who will be at the forefront of 2 Kings.

God Always Sends a Word

God always sends His prophet to speak to the king. In Amos 3 He says, "Surely the Lord God will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets." Through the Old Testament, God would not move until He spoke through a prophet. We might wish for a prophet today—and many cults have been built on that desire—but Hebrews 1 says, "God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son."

We have the Word of God here. Jesus is the Word. In the beginning was the Word. This communicates the heart, mind, and nature of our God, that we could walk in His ways and not have a confusing, divided kingdom like the one we see here. 1 Corinthians 10:11 says all these things were written for our instruction, for us upon whom the ends of the age are come.

Where Your Treasure Is

It has everything to do with the heart. Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." If our treasure is in the things of this world, our heart is focused here. But if our treasure is the Lord God seated on His throne, our heart is with Him. That's what we saw in David—a sinful man whose heart was with the Lord. And that was the problem with Solomon that brought the decline of the nation: his heart was given to his wives and horses, which led him away from God. The exterior looked beautiful, covered with gold, but it was the heart that was the problem. May we learn the lesson of 1 Kings.

Closing Prayer

God, I thank you for the truth of your word. I pray that you would help us to apply it and take it to heart tonight. God, help us to be those who are willing to lay aside these earthly things that we so often treasure, that our hearts might be with you. I pray that my life would not be just a good-looking temple covered with gold, but that the heart would be given to you. Lord, the holy of holies, the inward part that nobody ever sees—may it be a place indwelt by you. We ask it in Jesus' name. Amen.