Original subtitles

levers everywhere.

Well, we are entering hour seven of Looney the Bible in 24 Hours.

And we're going to attempt to cover in one hour what I'll call the monarchy, first and

second Samuel, first and second kings and first and second chronicles.

This is the core in a sense of the historical books.

And I want to remind you that our whole review of the Bible is based on exploiting two discoveries.

The first is that the Bible is an integrated message.

These 66 books penned by over 40 guys over a period of virtually 2,000 years is an integrated

message meaning that every detail there is by design.

And if you want you to discover that of course, you come to another discovery and that is

you can demonstrate that the origin of this very carefully crafted message is from outside

our dimension of space and time.

Once you discover that for yourself, it'll just change your whole perspective of what

this book is really all about.

And so the central theme of course is the Old Testament is the account of a nation.

That's basically what it's about.

The New Testament is the account of a man.

The Creator became man.

And his appearance in our history is the central event of all history.

And he died to purchase us and yet is alive today.

And our most exalted privilege is to know him.

And that's what the Bible is all about and that's why you're here in this review.

Now we've been going through the whole panorama of history, starting with the creation of

the fall of man and so forth.

We went through the book of Genesis which took us all the way up to but not including

the Exodus.

The rest of the Old Testament in a historical sense goes from the Exodus to the exile when

the house of Judah finally goes into Babylonian captivity.

And they're about 400 years then that are sometimes called the silent years between the

close of the Old Testament, the beginning of the new.

The New Testament of course occurs all in one lifetime.

But what we're going to do now is we're going to focus on the monarchy, Saul, David, Solomon

and right up to the exile.

The rise and fall of the monarchy.

First and second Samuel is the bridge between the period of the judges and the kings.

And we call it first and second Samuel.

The Septuagint, the Greek translational testament, speaks of the first and second kingdoms.

Instead of first and second Samuel, first and second kings, they have first, second, third

and fourth kings in a sense.

And the Latin Vulgate follows that same pattern.

But we of course will stick to the more traditional thing of first and second Samuel which is

followed by the pair of first and second kings.

And they will include David's 40 year reign and then Solomon and the tragedy of the divided

kingdom, the division of the kingdom.

Finally leading to the exile, the wipe out of the northern kingdom and the exile of the

southern kingdom.

And first and second chronicles is a recap of much of that history from the point of view

of the southern kingdom, from Judah.

That's the southern kingdom of course, the one that produces David and David is in the

messianic line.

So it's obviously a primary significance here.

So the monarchy.

Samuel and Saul and David, Solomon, southern two kingdoms, Judah and Israel.

The southern kingdom outlast the northern kingdom.

Northern kingdom gets destroyed and the southern kingdom goes into captivity.

First Samuel covers Samuel and Saul.

Second Samuel covers David and then Solomon will be picked up by first kings.

And between first and second kings and second kings we have two prophets.

In first kings you have Elijah, very colorful character and a more soft spoken but equally

colorful character is Elisha in second kings.

But you can think if you remember the division in first and second kings is Elisha in Elisha

that may be helpful in trying to keep your bearings here.

And first and second chronicles is essentially a recap from second Samuel right on through

the king.

So we'll be going to summarize all of these.

First book is Samuel.

Samuel is the last of the judges and of course it covers his birth and his youth, his call

to office and various times and acts.

That will lead up to Saul, first of the kings.

His appointment is a king, his promising beginning and yet his later folly and sin.

He started off great but not good news.

And that when you get to the 15th chapter of first book is Samuel you encounter David

who is the greatest of the kings.

He's of course anointed by Samuel and he will have service before Saul.

He doesn't replace Saul until he's, it's all dies but he's at first in service to him

and then Saul gets jealous envious so forth he endures as a fugitive.

So Samuel is quite a guy, equaled only by Moses and he really ends in a very formal

sense the period of the judges.

The period of the judges is that strange time, it's actually time of decay tragically.

But one of the things that Samuel also does is he heads the order of the prophets.

He actually founded what they call the schools of the prophets.

We don't know a lot about that.

We hear it alluded to several times but we don't know a lot about the details.

But Samuel of course places Israel's first king on the throne and he later will anoint

David.

Many people have a misconception.

They have a feeling that a king for Israel was an afterthought.

The people wanted a king and so God reluctantly gives him a king.

That's not really a very proper perspective because we know in the book of Judges, first

of all in the book of Genesis chapter 38 we saw David's genealogy already anticipated

and encrypted there and also in the book of Ruth we have David's genealogy.

The problem with Israel is they wanted a king right now.

David wasn't ready.

So he got to say, you want a king?

I'll show you what a king's all about and give them Saul and they later regretted it.

In any case anyway we have David anointed and even as a kid now he's going to confront

Goliath.

Most of you know the story but he ultimately has to flee Saul as a fugitive.

There is of course a threat of the Philistines.

The Philistines originally came from Egypt, went to Crete then from Crete, came there

along the coast of Israel and they oppressed Israel for 40 years.

They were the enemies of Israel.

The word Philistine in Latin is Palestine.

The land was named by the Caesar in order to disallow a Jewish presence in the second

century.

But when you use the term Palestine what it really means is Philistine and they were

the enemies of Israel for over 40 years.

Now Samson who has a lot of colorful pranks that he plays really just had only tactical

successes when he dies the tribe of Dan which was responsible that region was not able

to hold it and they end up moving on their own initiative up into the northern part of

the country.

It's interesting that the Ark of the Covenant was lost through the Philistines but for a

short while and boy did they end up regretting it.

In fact one of the most colorful episodes in the scripture is when the Philistines capture

the Ark and every place they put it and they have five cities.

In each of the cities where they had it there as a hostage they had sickness and problems.

They had infestations of rats that were associated with that and they had an outbreak of hemorrhoids

strangely enough.

And they finally conclude after having in each of the five cities that they need to

send it back.

And one of the most humorous in verse Samuel 4 one of the funniest chapters in the Bible

because when they go to send it back the priests realize they can't just send it back

without an offering.

So they decide to put in the Ark sort of a restitution kind of thing.

They put five gold mice, one for each of the five cities that had been plagued by all these

problems.

But the funny part, and it's in verse Samuel 4, is that they also put in five golden hemorrhoids.

Now I have no idea who crafted those.

I have no idea who served as a model for them but it's there.

And they turn this loose and they find their way back by the way interestingly enough.

So the Ark was not a blessing to the Philistines.

They ultimately are defeated under Samuel's leadership and they do though they do continue

as a major nemesis for Saul.

The Philistines were ultimately subdued by David and so one of the things that the people

do though, they clamor for a king.

This is an example of self-determination.

So God had promised them kings from the beginning.

You'll find it in Genesis 17 and Genesis 35.

As I say, you'll find even the genealogy of David in Genesis 38 and cryptid behind the

letters and you'll also find it in the book of Ruth, explicitly laid out.

But the people want a king.

In fact, in verse Samuel 8, they clamor for a king to go out before us to fight our battles.

That's what they're claiming for.

They want a king to help them win battles.

Big mistake!

Who was fighting their battles up until then?

God was.

The Lord was.

Now this is a request that really is there's some lessons here in self-determination.

We're a culture that encourages being self-determined, freedom of action on the one hand.

And yet there's a danger of being self-determined instead of being God led.

And this request that comes to Samuel came from a committee meeting, not a prayer meeting.

And Samuel of course is really upset with his clamor.

But in 1 Samuel 8, verse 7, the Lord explains it to Samuel.

He says, hearken unto the voice of the people in all that they say unto thee.

This is God speaking to Samuel, for they have not rejected thee, but they have rejected

me that I should not reign over them.

God views this as a choice they've made, that they would rather have an earthly king

than a heavenly Lord.

And we can stand here as spectators and be very critical.

Boy, they should have known better.

And yet be careful when you look in the mirror.

How many of us do the same thing?

How many of us try to take charge of our lives rather than to submit it to prayer and to

the lordship of the Lord?

Say, the Lord's my Savior indeed, but is he your Lord?

Big difference.

Big difference.

Is he really the Lord of your life?

Well David of course encounters Goliath, you all know this story.

This is later of course.

Now this guy, Goliath, was a formidable guy.

I assume he was on the local basketball team.

He was nine feet tall.

He was not only large, his profession was combat.

He was trained.

It's interesting, you know the story how David is upset because the troops are terrified,

as this champion comes forth, to settle the day, and no one will go up.

And David's there on other errands as just a child.

He says, if they'll do it, I'll go.

And Saul's going to give him his armor, but David quickly realizes after training, he

can't handle that.

It's heavy and he is.

He's going to handle it his way.

He's a shepherd.

And he was skilled with a sling.

And so he crosses the brook and picks up five stones and puts it in his pocket.

And you all know the story, how he took a stone and nailed Goliath right between the

eyes.

And when he fell, he took Goliath's sword and cut off his head.

The question that you can ask yourself is why did David pick up five stones?

Do you think he's going to miss?

No it turns out, when we study the Scripture, he'll discover that Goliath had four brothers.

And once you realize that, you realize what David was ready for the whole gang.

And I think that's kind of fun.

The other four are ultimately several chapters later, taken care of by them by David's mighty

men.

But he was from a family of five.

And you'll find that in 2 Samuel 21, much later, but it's there in the Scripture to dig

out.

I might explain, by the way, Goliath was a descendant of Anakin.

He was a descendant of Nephilim.

So this is a vestige of things that were going on in the land.

When God told Abraham that his descendants would return to the land of Canaan after 400

years, that gave Satan 400 years to lay down a minefield.

And there were four primary tribes that are mentioned in the Scripture that were Nephilim

in which Joshua was instructed to wipe out a man-woman child of a certain tribe because

he's got a gene pool of pride.

Anyway out of this, of course, comes the hybrids of the Anakin.

They're called Nephilim also, even in Numbers 13.

And the Zamzuman is one of them.

That's the one from whom Goliath descended.

But anyway, well, this caused public awareness of David and that there was a deliver in Israel.

And so there's a whole bit of rivalry that begins to emerge with Saul.

And so David becomes, on the one hand, a deliverer and a chief of Saul's men of war.

He also becomes a devoted friend of Saul's son, Jonathan.

And the two of them become very, very close.

And in fact, one place that says their souls were knit together.

They were very, very, Saul, Jonathan.

Despite the fact that David was a rival in the fact of his dad, still regarded it was

very loyal, a good friend.

So Saul's an interesting study, by the way.

In fact, it's interesting to contrast Saul and David.

Saul was the kind of guy you and I would be wanting to pick.

Very striking physical superiority.

And initially very modest, very forthright, very direct, very generous.

You see, his early qualities, he showed a lot of promise.

But in his life, as in ours, the big issue is finishing well.

Finishing well.

Boy, you could keep a log book on that one.

And of course, Saul later declines.

He gets fraught with irreverent presumption.

He was a Benjamin from Gibbia.

In fact, he sets his capital.

Remember, remember the Benjaminites were the group that closed the book of Judges with

all those almost wiped out by the other tribes.

Saul was very impatient anyway, as a king.

The Philistines were away against Israel and he was supposed to wait for Samuel at

Gilgal, but he ends up violating the priest's prerogative and offering pre-arranged sacrifices

to the Lord.

He wasn't supposed to do that.

He intrudes on the priest's office.

Big mistake.

And so, then he finally calls the priest for guidance, rushes off and so forth.

Very impatient character.

And he was supposed to wipe out the agites.

He fails to do that.

When Samuel finds that out, he's really upset.

If he had wiped out the agites as God had told him to, which he didn't, you would not

have had Haman in the book of Esther.

Haman was a descendant of a gag.

Very interesting, by the way, you're going to see a little later David has, there's

a guy at Shamiai that is harassing David.

And his troops want to wipe out because he's throwing stones and yelling curses.

And David won't let him do it.

David's feeling if they got to call him to curse, they'll uncurs, leave him alone.

Because David's spared Shamiai, a descendant of him was a guy by the name of Mordecai.

So when you study the book of Esther, as we will, but the point I won't pick it up then,

but the two protagonists there, the one that's the bad guy, shouldn't have been alive if

solid then what he's supposed to.

Mordecai wouldn't have been alive if David hadn't spared Shamiai.

It's kind of interesting.

There's a whole thing going on.

So anyways, it's all declined, of course, irreverent presumption, willful impatience.

And of course, his disobedience deceit and failure to destroy the Amalekites.

Big deal.

He was supposed to do that.

Samuel told him to, God told him to.

He didn't do it when Samuel finds out he's really upset.

Samuel finally does kill the king of a gag.

But apparently there's a line because Haman descends from that.

But then we have a very peculiar episode that should come to mind every time you have

every year in Halloween.

You know, Christians are always sort of at a quandary what to do about Halloween because

obviously it's, I love what Pat Patricia, President Jeremiah Films said one time.

He says, asking a Christian to celebrate Halloween is like asking a Holocaust survivor to celebrate

Hitler's birthday.

We do always have a problem around that season because the kids want to do something.

And yet we're not trying to encourage the witch girl.

I'm very intrigued that in the state of Washington one of the school districts there canceled

Halloween because it was unfair to the witches to promote such a stereotype of Wicca and so

forth.

Boy, I can figure a lot of reasons to cancel Halloween, but that takes the cake.

But in any case, one of the things that gets our attention, of course, is the strange

issue of the witch of Endor.

And one of the suggestions I'm going to make is that it could make a very interesting play

for high schoolers or teenagers to put on because you've got the text in the Bible.

We had a contest many years ago of who could write the best play that was biblically accurate

and attractive as a piece of entertainment and so forth.

And we had Frank Paredi and a number of others judge the entrance and we took the top four

and they're available from our office for the asking for those that want to take on a

project like this.

But in any case, the witch at Endor, a very strange event because Saul and desperation

because you can't hold a sandwich passed away and he's so used to having someone to talk

to.

He needs to talk to Samuel and so even though Saul has made witchcraft illegal, wipe them

all out, he knows there's still an underground and he gets his men to, they know there's

a witch apparently medium down at Endor so he goes and disguise down there.

And so she brings it and when Samuel comes up she shook.

So what's going on isn't what she's used to.

People argue who was it really?

I believe it really was Samuel.

And it's interesting that Saul doesn't see Samuel, he only hears it.

Because Samuel says before he dies when he upset with Saul about Agai, he says you will

see me no more.

And if you read the text carefully, I believe he hears.

Samuel comes up and he hears him, he doesn't really see him.

In any case, the witch of course is shook because then she realizes something's going

on, she suddenly realizes that he's the king and so forth.

But what Samuel predicts to Saul that tomorrow you'll be with me.

In other words, his death and Saul and his people were killed the next day at Gilboa.

So it's a very, very spooky scene.

Many people argue about the details but it makes a very, very interesting thing to dramatize

particularly around Halloween, sort of the spirit of the time.

But let's go back to the monarchy.

Samuel and Saul of course is first Samuel, David and the second Samuel.

And so in the second book of Samuel starts to talk about David and his triumphs.

And he has picked us the king of Judah.

You see when Saul is dead, the time is open.

He's actually been anointed by Samuel long before.

And David had several opportunities to kill Saul.

He would not because he's still God's anointed as far as David's concerned.

It's a very colorful event when Saul happens to be sleeping in the cave and didn't know

that that was a cave that David was hiding in.

And while he was sleeping, cut off the hem of his garment.

The next day from the top of the hill, he shows that he could have.

Saul's pretty shook.

Why the hem of the garment?

Because the hem is where all the authority is.

So we have authority on the sleeve, typically on the military or on the shoulder or something.

In those ancient Israel it was on the hem.

The hem had the genealogy, had the authority, etc.

That's why he cut the hem off.

In fact he later, even David repented of doing that.

That's why the woman of the issue of blood wanted to touch Jesus, the hem of his garment.

The hem was the sense of the authority.

Anyway, whole study about hem's you can undertake.

At Hebron, he's picked as the king of Judah.

That's just the tribal picture so far.

But he rules for seven years as the head of Judah.

But at Jerusalem he will be picked also the king of the whole nation, king of all Israel.

And his identity with Judah never goes away, of course.

In fact, later on in the Civil War the northern tribes lead take a different tack with Ephraim

as the spokesman for the north.

But anyway, at this point David is the king of all of Israel.

He reigns that way for 13 years.

But he has troubles in his family and in the nation.

And the last part of the second book is Samuel details all this.

And obviously he's accepted by the king over all Israel because of the human kinship.

We are of thy bone and thy flesh.

He also is picked because of his proven merit.

They'll let us out and brought us in all Israel.

These are all the accolades of giving them when they pick them as to head up the whole

thing.

And also he's a divine warmth.

The Lord said unto thee, Thou shalt be captain over Israel.

The word captain there is the top leader.

We think of captain as a flag rank.

I mean as a company great rank.

No, it's a here the term is top guy.

But when you get to second Samuel seven, it's one of the most important chapters in your

Bible.

You want to be very sensitive to this?

Because second Samuel seven affects everything that follows.

Not only in the scriptures and the history of mankind.

And this is the divine confirmation of the throne in Israel.

And this has more to do with than just Israel alone.

Because this will ultimately be the throne from which the entire planet earth will be

ruled.

And God there declares the perpetuity of the Davidic dynasty.

Now do you know anyone that is a direct, is a descendant of David?

Only one.

The Lord Jesus Christ.

And so but anyway the divinity dynasty is declared through perpetuity.

And something else is that the Davidic covenant is unconditional.

We talked about the Abrahamic covenant being unconditional.

The Davidic covenant also is unconditional.

And that's an important point because this has messianic implications.

This is crucial not just because of the governance of the nation.

It's critical because it leads to the whole backstops, the whole concept of the Messiah

that started in Genesis chapter three and climaxes with the marriage of the Lamb and

so forth in Revelation 19.

Second Samuel chapter seven, 30 verse 11, the Lord tell of thee that he will make thee a

house speaking to David.

And when thy days be fulfilled and thou shalt sleep with thy fathers, I will set up

thy seed after thee, and I will establish his kingdom.

And he, that is David's son, shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the

throne of his kingdom forever.

So the Davidic throne is the dynasty is here endorsed by none other than God himself.

And goes on and says, I will be his father and he shall be my son.

If he committed an equity, I will chase him with the rod of men and with the stripes

of the children of men, but my mercy shall not depart away from him as I took it from

Saul, whom I put away before thee.

And thy house and thy kingdom shall be established forever before thee.

Thy throne shall be established forever.

So his throne, his kingdom, and his house.

Those are three different things, but all related.

Each one is established forever.

Key point.

And this perpetuity is confirmed throughout the Scripture in Psalm 89.

His seed also will I make to endure forever and is thrown as the days of heaven.

And the few verses later, once have I sworn by my holiness that I will not lie unto David.

His seed shall endure forever and is thrown as the sun before me.

It shall be established forever as the moon and as a faithful witness in heaven.

And it goes on, the whole Psalm goes on then.

So in the book of Acts chapter 2 verse 30, I've adopted the convention area.

I used a little scrolls when it's Old Testament.

I used the parchment when it's new, just as a way to alert you that we've switched from

Old and New Testament.

But in any case, Acts 2, 30, therefore being a prophet and knowing that God had sworn

with an oath to him that of the fruit of his loins, according to the flesh, he would raise

up Christ to sit on his throne.

So Jesus Christ is the fulfillment, the ultimate fulfillment of that commitment that God gave

David.

So here are the key points you want to remember from this, 2 Samuel 7.

The divine confirmation of a throne in Israel, the perpetuity of the Davidic dynasty, that

the Davidic covenant is unconditional.

And all this has messianic implications because in Matthew 1 verse 1, the first verse of the

New Testament speaks of him as the son of David and the son of Abraham.

Both are pivotal issues.

Well you get to Revelation chapter 5, it's the lion of the tribe of Judah, the root of

David.

One's the tribe, one's the family, but there you have it.

And of course it's all the way through, I just picked a couple of checkpoints here to

make the emphasis.

So the scarlet thread continues.

Remember we started with the seed of the woman and that was the race, if you will.

Human race would be the means by which God was going to redeem the creation.

And not just the race, but through the nation that we started with Abraham and not only

the nation, but the tribe of Jacob and the family of David.

So God is focusing from Genesis 3, it's the race and from Genesis 22, we know it's through

Abraham and from Genesis 49, we know it's the house of Jacob and then a tribe of Jacob

and then under David of course we have 2nd St. Louis.

So as God focuses His revelation of how the Messianic plan is going to work, that allows

Satan to focus his attacks.

And we'll see that all the way going all the way through.

Now David was quite a guy.

We tend to focus on some of the stumbles, but he was a very, very shrewd general, a very

victorious warrior and he subdues the Philistines to the west, Saul never was able to do that.

The Syrians ahead of Caesar in the north, the Ammonites and Moabites in the east and southeast

and the Edomites and the Malachites in the south.

So on each of the major fronts, he succeeds and subdues.

Clever general, he's a man of war, in fact that gets to him actually before it's all

over.

But in addition to being a great general, he also was a very constructive administrator.

We miss that because we focus on his person and so many other things, but he was a very,

very skillful manager.

He brought just judgment and justice to all the people.

That is quite a statement.

That is quite a statement.

And among the many things that he organizes, one of the things you want to be very sensitive

to is he organizes the priesthood.

The priesthood is getting very large by now.

The priesthood was not all the Levites, the Levites was the whole tribe, but within that

there were descendants of Aaron.

And even that quite a number.

So he organized the priesthood into 24 subsets with the call courses.

And each course officiated from Shabbat to Shabbat.

Each Shabbat would change and there was a sequence.

And 24, it's one of the rare places, the number 24 occurs in the Bible.

The number 24 is indicative of priesthood.

And that becomes a very material point when you get to the book of Revelation because

there are 24 elders sitting on thrones.

So they're both kings and priests in some respects.

And so there's a whole thing we want to get into then.

The priesthood is of course at the house of the tribe of Levi.

The royal tribe is the tribe of Judah and they are separate.

The kings were not too intrude on the rights of the priests.

That's what Saul made a big mistake that he paid for.

Likewise the priests were not to rule.

They were priests.

There's only one guy that you first encounter, at least, that's a king and a priest.

That was a Melchizedek.

In fact he's used idiomatically to make that very point in the book of Hebrews, chapters

5 and 6.

And even that would probably disappear in obscurity except for Psalm 110 where God promises the

Messiah there in effect that he will be a priest after the order of Melchizedek.

Not Leviticus which was a temporary priesthood that dealt with but to be a king and a priest.

There are only three people that are kings and priests.

Melchizedek, Jesus Christ and who else?

You and me.

We are kings and priests Peter says in his life.

So you need to understand there's a distinction there that's very, very critical.

You do want to understand who the 24 elders are when you get to Revelation 24.

It's a very important identity.

It's not free of controversy but I think it's pretty clear as to who the ark is.

They tell who they are.

But David just going down his resume here a little bit.

He not only is a victorious warrior, great general.

He's also a very creative and constructive administrator but he also is a, not just a

poet, he is a major poet and songwriter.

And he wrote a large number of the book of Psalms.

The next session we'll be exploring some of those.

Get that perspective.

He didn't write all the Psalms but he wrote an awful lot of them.

But David's turning point of course is his great sin.

And one of the things we obviously need to be very sensitive to is the obvious honesty

of the scriptures.

They don't paint David as having no faults.

They record his successes but they also record his stumbles and failures.

And he of course, we all familiar with the story with Bathsheba, he not only could it

adultery, he arranges for the murder of her husband.

This is heavy stuff and this is the king that we're talking about.

And this was not a little one night stand, a little stumble.

This was the result of a process.

It usually is.

First of all he was in a mode of very prosperous ease.

And things are going well.

Watch out.

When you are at the peak of your success is when you're vulnerable.

Your vulnerable to places especially at the bottom of the top.

Both extremes are danger points.

And he was prosperous.

He was supposed to be at war with his troops.

He's home.

And it was not a case of him looking out the window and seeing the scale for the first

time.

If you really do your homework you'll discover that there was a family relationship.

I mean these are people that this was not an initial encounter, first encounter of that

kind problem.

But I mean it was not a stranger we're dealing with here.

And the other thing with David though, he was already showing signs here because he was

becoming very self-indulgent.

We all tend to do that.

Something else to be unguarded for.

Accumulating wives was forbidden in Deuteronomy 17.

It was forbidden for kings to accumulate wives.

And of course he ends up having this affair with Bathsheba.

And he gets of course confronted by Nathan, the prophet in which he has deep remorse and

repentance.

To his credit he has remorse and repentance.

In fact Psalm 51 is famous because that's David's psalm as he grieves over the sin that

he is guilty of.

Especially the sin against God.

And that's one of the reasons God can say in 1 Samuel 13 and it's also recorded in Acts

13 that David is regarded by God as a man after his own heart.

You know when he says that he's sort of startling because here's David, he's a sinner, he's

a daughter, he's a murderer.

How can he be a man after God's heart?

Because he's honest, he owns a sin, acknowledges it, repents of it.

God has a lot of room for a repentant sinner.

We're all sinners.

And that's what the whole issue is as far as our relationship with God is concerned.

So that starts though years of suffering.

In contrition did not obliterate the consequences.

God may forgive you for the fornication or adultery but it doesn't get rid of AIDS, doesn't

get rid of unwanted pregnancies, it doesn't get rid of the consequences of sin in the

natural.

But so David's family then becomes just a whole saga of incest, fratricide, intrigues,

and ultimately rebellion and civil war have their seeds in David's sin.

And you know it's astonishing.

People speak of victimless crimes.

They speak of crimes that really have no victim.

There is no such thing because this is a crime against anyone that loves you.

It's a crime against anyone in whose love you abide.

And so sin multiplies.

Because of all these things, he's not allowed to build the temple.

That's as your son Solomon will build the temple.

David says in effect, no problem, I'll just pay the bills.

So David, most people don't realize this, David prepaid much of the cost of the temple.

Not all of it, Solomon was very prosperous too.

But he actually prepaid.

He really made a lot of the money, he couldn't build the temple, but he could arrange for

a lot of the needs.

And Solomon's glory, he follows of course, is a large measure due to David's preparation

for that.

But there were troubles in the family.

Now something else, you talk about the sword, she'll never depart from my house, 2 Samuel

12.

The sword, she'll never depart from your house, David.

One of the things as you read through the intrigues, you'll discover that there's this

old character by the name of Ahidafel that's a counselor to Absalom in his rebellion against

David.

And what doesn't come through, unless you do a little bit of homework, you sort of wonder

why is Ahidafel so available to David's enemies.

And you have to connect some dots here, but you'll discover if you connect the dots that

Ahidafel was Bathsheba's grandfather.

And you begin to realize that he never forgave David's violation of Bathsheba.

So the first son of Bathsheba of course dies, and then there's also a loss of moral authority,

Hamden, raped David's daughter Tamar, another CD episode.

Absalom kills Ammon, so there's all that's going on in the family.

Finally Absalom leads a rebellion against David, and he's counseled by this Ahidafel

character, which the Bible doesn't make clear unless you connect the dots.

You discover who was his father and who was that father and turns out it's the father

of Bathsheba.

You realize that he's the grandfather of Bathsheba.

So anyway, finally at an IJ attempts to seize the kingship from Solomon, and so it goes

on and on.

So we've got a whole CD thing here, and that leads now into first kings.

We've got, bear in mind, first second Sammy, first second kings are first, second, third,

fourth kings in the Greek and in the Latin, but anyway we'll stick with the traditional

one here.

And the first kings will close with the antics of this incredible character called Elijah,

very colorful character.

So the first book of kings can be called re-discontinuous through disobedience.

They're starting to have real problems.

Solomon reigned for 40 years, and first book kings deals with the accession, the temple

being built, and it's the peak of Israel's fame and glory in the days of Solomon.

But he also turns apostate.

We'll talk about that in a minute, and that leads to declension and finally disease.

And the kingdom finally divides, because when Solomon finally does die, his son, Raya

Bohm takes over.

But Raya Bohm does some ill-advised increase of taxes and other things that gives the

excuse for Jeroboam to peel off in a rebellion.

And he, Jeroboam organizes the northern kingdom.

And the southern kingdom is called Judah, the northern kingdom is called Israel.

And when you're reading the Bible in this area, you need to be careful what it says

Israel, whether it's talking about the northern kingdom or the nation as a whole.

We tend to use the term Israel for the nation as a whole, and that's appropriate.

But there's a period there where Israel, the house of Israel was the northern kingdom,

sometimes called Ephraim.

It was more than just Ephraim, but Ephraim was the primary spokesman tribe, if you will,

of that group.

And Jeroboam, of course, leads him to idolatry for a number of reasons.

And it is, in the northern, as a attempt to get the northern kingdom straightened out,

Elijah is there primarily ministering in the north and has some very colorful episodes.

For a period of about 80 years, the divided kingdom continues there before it finally

goes under.

But Solomon, we talk about David, let's talk a little bit about Solomon.

He acceded the throne when he was 15 years old.

And they did have a lot more responsibility at very early years for lots of reasons.

And that's according to Josephus, by the way.

And then, and Elijah attempted to preempt, but he was thwarted by Nathan the prophet.

So he's not able to pull it off.

In fact, David, on his deathbed, instruct Solomon to clean house of a whole bunch of

overdue punishments.

And that would include Joab had previously murdered Abner.

And so David says it's time to deal with Joab.

And there's also the Shimei issues and some other issues that he goes through a little

checklist, punch list, if you will, for Solomon when he takes the throne.

And then, of course, the big event in Solomon's career is the building of the temple.

And the cedars of Lebanon were famous and they're much more attractive than the course

of Sycamores that were typically available in the south.

So arrangements are made.

The Hiram is the king of Tyre up there.

And he had a very close friendship with David.

It was his friendship with David that really sets this all up.

But the cedars of Lebanon were purchased by David for the temple.

But something that most people don't notice is that the design of the temple was given

to David by God himself.

Most of us assume the temple was just Solomon's rendering in more elegant terms of the basic

architecture of the tabernacle.

No, it's more than that.

In fact, there are some architectural features to the temple that go beyond what the tabernacle

had, besides just being larger and so forth.

And it's important to understand that that was God-given.

And I'll show you why in a minute.

But this project of building the temple, the first temple, as we might call it, had over

83,000 workmen, 30,000 men, 10,000 per shift in a month.

70,000 carriers, 80,000 hues in the mountains, and over 3,000 supervisors.

That's a bunch of...

That was a mammoth project of the temple.

Now the architecture of the temple is worth studying.

When you look at this, you'll recognize right away, it's very similar to the tabernacle

in its concept.

The tabernacle was 75 feet wide, 150 feet long, if we accept a foot and a half for a

cubit, which is pretty reasonable.

This is much larger, much, much larger, and of course a permanent structure, not designed

to be portable, like the tabernacle was, which is designed for the wilderness wanderings.

But the architecture is very similar.

As you enter first, the first thing you encounter is the Holocaust altar, the brazen altar,

except this was larger.

And around it are 10 labors of bronze for the washing.

There's also a molten sea, and we're going to talk about that in a minute, but a huge,

huge basin, seven and a half feet deep and about 10 feet in diameter that the priests

would be able to do ritual cleansing in.

And when you go through all that, you then enter the holy place itself, that first rectangular

edifice.

As you walk in, instead of a menorah, a seven-branched lampstand, there are 10 of them in there.

When you go a little further, there are not just a table of showbread, but 10 of them.

So everything is, you know, the decimal points moved over, so to speak.

And then just as you did in the tabernacle, you encounter the golden altar, or the altar

of incense.

It's always associated with the holy of holies.

Many people assume it's in there.

No, it can't be in there.

It has to be tended day and night.

So it's outside, and they couldn't go in the holy of holies.

Only the high priest could go in the holy of holies, and only once a year, and only

after great ceremonial preparation.

But as part of that edifice was the golden altar, which was just outside the veil, but

regarded as part of the holy of holies, we have the golden altar, the altar of incense.

And as you go through, when you could, if you could, at least in your mind's eye, go through

that veil, you there would find two things, not one.

Many of us stumble on that.

The ark of the covenant, of course, was in there.

But on top of the ark is a separate appliance, a separate piece of furniture, so to speak.

And that's the mercy seat.

And we often regard those together.

It's instructive to be sensitive to the fact that the scripture always teals with them

separately.

In fact, strangely enough, the mercy seat is a superior element to the ark.

Several places, the holy of holies is described as the place of the mercy seat.

Yes, it's the place of the ark covenant too, but it's the mercy seat that's preemptive

here.

So that's the quick picture of the thing.

But there's something added that's not in the tabernacle.

And that's a porch in front.

And in front of the porch, there are two other objects, two bronze pillars.

These are huge bronze pillars that have nothing on top of them.

They're not bearing, they're not weight bearing.

What are they there for?

And furthermore, they have names.

To the one side to the south, it's Yachin and to the north, it's Boaz.

And Yachin means in his counsel, what the word means, and Boaz means in his strength,

is what the term means.

And these are very provocative.

Something else to be sensitive to, everything outside the temple itself, the Holocaust altar,

the molten sea, and these labors are all bronze, as are the pillars.

Everything inside is gold.

So there's a distinction right there.

Everything that's inside the holy place and the holy of holies is gold.

And the outside of the temple structure proper are wooden chambers.

And these are very, very interesting elements.

They're called headers.

These were the private storerooms for the priests.

This is where the priests could keep their personal things.

And this is also where the priests would keep their secret idols.

These were closets that needed to be cleaned out.

And so this is a subject, a great deal of discussion shortly.

And there's personal stories for the priests.

So we have the holy of holies, the most intersanquem.

We have the holy place.

And we have the porch, which is a new element.

And we have the inner court and of course the outer court outside.

So those are the main things that are obviously very similar to but slightly different than

the tabernacle we were familiar with.

Now it's interesting that seven times in the Bible it says, you are the temple of God.

Seven times that's mentioned.

Now that might be just being used metaphorically because you're the temple of God in the sense

the Holy Spirit dwells you.

That may be all there is.

And yet it's interesting that it's seven times in the text.

If you take the view that I do that that's deliberate and it's part of the design, then

it also turns out to hold the key to our software architecture.

You know if we talk about architecture of a building, I think most of us have a feeling

for it that involves.

If you talk about architecture of a computer that's also hardware.

You've got memory, you've got process, you've got identifiable chunks of it that have functional

relations to one another.

And they're easy to, I could sketch it out and it'd be easy to understand because it's

tangible.

But most people unless you're in the trade have no ideas that there's architecture to

software too.

See the thing that controls a computer's behavior is not the kind of hardware.

It's simply the environment that the software runs in.

It's the software that determines what it really does.

And now it's interesting you and I are the same way.

We have an architecture.

And we speak of terms all the time that really relate to that architecture.

Heart, soul, spirit, mind.

What do these things mean?

When I say have heart, we're not talking here about the organ that pumps the blood.

We're using it metaphorically or idiomatically in another sense, aren't we?

But what do we really mean?

You know?

In some sense it's like having guts, in some sense it's a volition.

The word can mean different things to different people.

The word soul, what is the soul?

We can make some guesses, we have some sort of feeling for it, but what does it really

mean?

And spirit, the scripture itself, Acts 4 says, or Hebrews 4, only the word of God can discern

between the soul and the spirit.

A psychologist can't.

There's a very interesting problem.

If you have a computer, can you map the architecture of the software and the computer and the

architecture is no you can't?

Because you can't go uphill.

Because you design that into a language, the language is then implemented and by the time

you get down to what they call machine language, you can't go uphill, not generally, some exceptions,

but not generally.

That's why you have a software industry.

That's why you can go to a computer store and buy some software and use it all you like,

but you can't change its design because you can't get at it.

You don't know how it's organized.

That's what protects the intellectual property.

In the guts of that, there's some proprietary know-how that's embedded in the code.

The code's there.

You've got it, but you can unravel it because you're, someone is trying to, if you're trying

to understand my computer from the way it behaves, you'd be frustrated.

You can't get at it's architecture.

That's the same dilemma a psychologist has.

He can only infer how you're organized, how you're organized, by the external behavior.

He doesn't get a chance to.

Everybody God knows the thoughts and intents of the heart the scriptures have.

You can't get behind it.

So the only way you can understand the architecture is to get the designer's manual, not the owner's

manual, the designer's manual.

And that's exactly what we have in front of us in our labs.

We have the designer's manual.

And he has given us the architecture of our software.

And the heart, soul, spirit, mind, these are important terms because you can't keep the

greatest commandment unless you know what they are.

I should love the Lord thy God with what?

All your heart, all your soul, all your spirit, all your strength, all your mind, whatever.

These things are important to know.

So I'm indebted to my wife.

We spent 20 years researching this, checking out each word in the Hebrew and the Greek

for each of those terms and tracking that down.

We even went to Israel, went to the Rosschield Museum, a library in the museum and so forth,

the news research here and got a lot of help.

And she was the first in my mind to really perceive the parallelism between the structure

of the temple and the architecture of man, ourselves.

The outer court is similar to the body, but inside that is the soul.

And then the heart is in the real core.

And the spirit is in the holy of holies.

They're analogous, if you will, in a number of ways.

And what's the porch?

That's where the volition is expressed.

That's where there's willpower.

That's where you make choices.

Because you notice that the spirit dwells in us if we're believers, right?

How many do that?

Sure.

Okay, that's what Scripture says.

Okay, why don't we see it more evident?

Why doesn't our behavior demonstrate that the spirit is in us?

You see the dilemma.

It's not that the spirit isn't there, it's that we throttle it.

Do we make our decision?

Do we make our decisions from sight or from faith?

Do we make our decisions?

The decisions are made in the porch.

Are we letting the spirit lead?

Or are we responding to soulish or bodily appetites?

And then there's this interesting area called the headers, the surhouses.

And the more you study this, both in terms of the history with the priests but also in

its other aspects, it seems to be correlative to the subconscious.

And it's interesting that much of our memory is obviously organized below the conscious

level.

We've all experienced that.

What was the name of that guy in school back then?

I don't remember.

And then ten minutes later, it just popped in your mind, right?

Because subconsciously, you've got a process going on to find it.

If you've been in college and you have a difficult problem, most of you have discovered

that if you go through, if you review the problem before going to bed and you wake up in the

morning, you often have the answer.

It's clear there's all kinds of evidence.

This is not Freud.

Freud was obsessed with all that.

No, no, it goes way, way back.

It goes back to Augustin and others.

The awareness that there is a subconscious process in our mind is very evident.

That's also where we hide things that affect our behavior.

And part of spiritual hygiene, if you will, is to clean out those closets.

And the Holy Spirit will help you do that.

But we need to...

If you're interested in this area, there's a trilogy of books.

The core book is the way of agape.

And the second one of that series is Be Transformed, which really goes into all of this, how to

actually take these concepts and insights and translate them into a personal, practical

impact on your Christian walk.

And so I don't want to spend the rest of the time.

I don't know if we've got to keep moving here, but that's an area.

Another thing I want to bring out is the Bible in Aaron.

You know, most of us in this group, of course, accept the fact the Bible is the original

text, our free of error.

Well, I used to say that a lot when I was a teenager and I ran into a guy who says,

what about 1 Kings 723?

1 Kings 723 speaks of this big, huge bronze, labor or bowl or molten sea as a strand,

molten, meaning it's cast and sea being full of water.

It was 10 cubits in diameter and 5 cubits deep.

5 cubits about a foot and a half.

But the problem with verse 23, it says the circumference is 3 times a diameter.

Now any schoolboy knows that can't be right.

That's technically in there, not a big deal, but it's wrong.

Every schoolboy knows that the diameter, that the circumference is not 3 times the diameter,

it's pi times the diameter.

Pi is a very peculiar number.

Most people may not remember it was 3.14159265358979.

But most of us in school either used 3.16 or 3.159 or often 22 7th, 3 in the seventh

as a approximation.

And that's what most of us did in school.

But it certainly isn't 3 times.

And so part of the problem, this is not a big deal, but the accusations made by the

skeptics look there's an error in the Bible.

Well I didn't know how to answer this.

I just had to accept it until I got into graduate school, whatever.

And a rabbi happened to point out something interesting to me because I had trouble with

this.

Here's the molten sea, 10 cubers from one brim to the other and it was round all about and

his height was 5 cubits and a line, 30 cubits did compass it round.

That's our conference.

In the Hebrew it's misspelled.

The macerits when they found a word in the text they were copying that was apparently

wrong, they didn't correct it, they marked it.

And they put in the margin what apparently was the correct version.

The mistake, apparent mistake or the error, the variant I'll call it, was called a kathith.

And the correct version was called a kiri.

And what's interesting when you study this, you also need to understand that both Hebrew

and Greek are distinctive in that every letter in the alphabet has a numerical value.

And that one of the applications of that fact is that they would add up the numbers on a

page and if it didn't add up to the one they were copying, they would burn it and start

over.

They didn't try to correct it.

And it was really very rigorous.

The rigor of the scribes is something to be really applauded.

That's why the Dead Sea Scrolls when they were discovered in the, had a complete copy

of the book of Isaiah and I think there are four letters different.

Over hundreds of years in me copying because of the rigor and the commitment of these

scribes.

It's the commitment of perception, perfection.

Well, if you go through these letters, it turns out that the kathith, that is the written

variation, is a cup of avanar and a hay.

And the way it should be spelled is just with a cup and avav.

Now a cup and avav would be the value for kiri should be 106.

But here they've added a hay at the end of the word.

They can't even tell because it's just a breath.

It's like putting the H at the end of a word often does you can't tell it's there in pronunciation.

But the hay has a value of five.

And by the way, the hay is also the breath or spirit too by the way.

But that's another thing we'll get into some other thing.

So kiri should be 106 but the way it spells 111.

And when you apply that correction to the text, it says that the circumference is 31.45

and some other things.

In other words, we have a circumference of 46 feet that is expressed with an error of

less than 15 thousands of an inch.

And that's a lot better than we would have gotten if we'd used 22 sevenths on approximation.

The precision is frankly astonishing.

And so a little spelling lesson.

I might mention just in passing that there's another place that pie appears in the Bible

text.

It's one of the pie's one of the dimensionless ratios.

In the beginning God created the heaven of the earth is Genesis 1-1.

And if you take that in the Hebrew and you take the number of letters times the product

of the letters and divide it by the number of words and times the product of the words,

you get pie to four decimal places.

That's rather bizarre.

There's another place in John 1-1.

If you do the same thing with John 1-1, you get the value of e, the base of Naparian

logarithm, another dimensionless constant in the universe, two four decimal places.

But let's move on.

So that's pie.

Interesting.

I don't have to do with that.

I just throw it in there to, you know, no extra charge.

Solomon was personally very brilliant, but he lacked moral vigor.

Very bright guy, but he lacked commitment.

He was, of course, excessively self-indulgent.

There it goes again.

So historically, he ruled at the peak of Israel's prosperity, the queen of Sheba visited him

because she'd heard rumors and couldn't believe it when she gets there.

She found out that the half wasn't told her.

Very famous event.

The affluence, the commercial success of Israel, the peace, the enjoyed peace.

There's no war.

They really were, it was at their peak.

But it's interesting how Solomon is always later on historically, always referred to adversely.

Solomon in all his glory was not a raid as one of these lilies and so forth.

It's always used as a measure, but in an adverse sense, it's very strange.

There are many parallels people try to draw between the millennial reign and Solomon's

reign, but there's also some strange hidden negatives.

It's interesting that there were six steps to his throne, the positioning that his salary

was 666 talents a year.

In fact, the 666 only appears twice in Scripture.

Twice it appears to Solomon's salary, and of course it takes a fabled implication from

the 18th verse of Revelation 13.

So Solomon really represents the zenith of the kingdom.

They owned Mediterranean all the way to the Euphrates, from the Red Sea and Arabia to

Lebanon.

The tributary states were held in subjection.

The Canaanites became peaceful subjects or useful servants, so they were subjected.

The immense treasures that were implemented were supplemented with excessive, in fact,

oppressive taxation.

In fact, that's where Rehobo makes a big mistake when Solomon dies, he even increases

the taxes worse than that leads to the rebellion.

So we have the literature of success.

The foundation was in the Torah.

We have the history from Moses to Samuel at this point.

We have the patriarchal teaching of Job, and we'll get to that in the next session.

We have the theology of the Psalms in the next session, and the practical wisdom of the

Proverbs, primarily Solomon's.

And then we have the mystical suggestions in the Song of Songs.

So this really sets the stage for the next session we'll be getting into.

Solomon wrote 3,000 Proverbs and 1,000 Songs.

And he also wrote a great deal about natural history, and we'll see glimpses of some of

that in the writings that we do look at.

But he failed.

Because Deuteronomy 17 says that Israel's king should not multiply wealth, horses, or wives.

And he did all three.

He did all three.

He traded in chariots and horses.

That's what Maggita was at one time, was his primary trading base.

He indulged many foreign wives, 700 wives, and 300 concubines.

Whew!

From the very nations that he was warned against trafficking at all in.

Can you imagine a guy with a thousand women on his hands?

I don't know how many had PMS at one time.

I can't just...

I just...

Yeah, of course.

You must have been exhausted.

Of course, obviously, many of these were just political alliances and things.

And concubines were like a second-year wife kind of thing, if she wasn't...

They had rights and things.

Anyway.

But as a result of all of this, it's in his regime that false gods are introduced and

false worship.

This is where the nation starts downhill because of its carnality, because of its false worship

and the rest.

The Solomon's self-life had had its full swing.

In the end, he was turning away sad and sick of it all.

And he writes the book of Ecclesiastes which most people do not understand, misunderstand,

all his vanity.

Ecclesiastes is actually not a pessimistic book.

That may surprise you.

That's his reputation.

Well, we'll wait until next session.

We'll take a look at it.

But anyway, there's apostasy starts.

He himself falls into apostasy.

His excessive taxation, of course, alienates the affections of the people.

That's why Jeroboam had a good opportunity to rebel with the time gain.

He was led astray by his wives.

He had temples built to several, to Shamash, Molok, and Esterish.

The different...

These are the idols of Moab and Ammon and the Sidonians, Sidonians to the north and Moab

and Ammon to the east.

On the temple grounds, this is an offense.

Of course, his adversary stirred up rebellion.

And among the tribes, Ephraim in the north, becomes one of the primary layers of those

that are disenchantant and disaffected.

So First Kings 11 says, wherefore the Lord said unto Solomon for as much as is done of

thee, and thou hast not kept my covenant and my statutes, which I have commanded thee,

I will surely rend the kingdom from thee, and will give it to thy servant.

That's exactly what was predicted.

That's what happened.

I was standing 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.

See, so in deference, because of David, he's going to...

It won't be him, it'll be a son that's going to bear all the grief here.

How be it?

I will not rend the way all the kingdom, but I will give one tribe to thy son for David

my servant's sake, and for Jerusalem's sake, which I have chosen.

Tribe of Judah.

So we have the divided kingdom.

Rehoboam's folly, of course, is that his advisor's told him to raise the taxes even

more, and he did, and that was dumb move, and that was Jeroboam's opportunity.

And so he established alternative worship centers up north for idol worship, and that

was a political move, religious, of course, but political because he wanted to break Jerusalem's

hold on the people.

And so we had two golden calves, one in Dan, and the north, and one Bethel in the south.

So really bad news.

And we know from the second chronicles that when that happened, the faithful in the north

migrated to the south to stay faithful to temple worship.

Those in the south that were apostate anyway moved north where it was politically correct.

And that's recorded in chapter 11, second chronicles.

So the nation split in two.

The northern kingdom under Jeroboam called itself the house of Israel, and the southern

kingdom under Rehoboam called it the house of Judah.

He says he just had one tribe.

That's a little misleading because Benjamin had already been folded in, and so is Simeon.

So you've got Judah, Benjamin, and Simeon, and then the Levites join also.

So you've got four of the twelve south already.

So you begin to notice right away that the ten lost tribe thing is naive and not biblical.

But in all of this, Elijah shows up.

And in the last chapters of the first king, he had a ministry to the northern kingdom.

The New Testament speaks of him more than any other prophet.

He appears twice in the New Testament.

He actually appears at the transfiguration at Matthew 17.

He's there.

Moses and Elijah are there with Christ and Peter, James, and John.

But he also appears, I believe, in Revelation 11.

There are two witnesses there, and for reasons I'll cover when we get there, I think he's

one of the two witnesses.

And it's interesting that Elijah did eight major miracles.

He suspended rain for three and a half years.

And also there's this big confrontation amount of caramel where fire comes down and so forth.

And the suspension of rain and the fire are two of the four powers that are associated

with the two witnesses.

That's one of the reasons I make that at any.

And he also has raptured.

He's translated into heaven in 2 Kings 2.

Interesting guy.

But you have to, you can't talk about him without talking about Queen Jezebel, daughter

of F.Bail, king of the Sidonians.

She was the wife of the king, Ahab of Israel.

And she is, their illusions made to her in the New Testament.

You need to understand her history, understand what those illusions mean.

She becomes synonymous with crafty, cruel, malicious.

And I won't make any illusions to people on the political front of that kind.

But we're going.

There's a strange little incident that occurs with Naboth vineyard.

But I believe it's very, very significant because I believe that the letter to Thyatara

makes illusions to this.

Naboth was a little guy who had a little vineyard.

And it was not much, but it was his.

The king wanted it and they have just refused to sell.

I mean, Naboth, just refused to sell.

They have wanted, and Naboth didn't want to sell.

So Queen Jezebel says, hey, let me handle this.

Okay.

So she has an inquisition, finds some accusers that accuse him falsely, and has him executed.

She holds an inquisition to get him killed, and then so the king can have that vineyard.

Does that sound familiar?

Does that sound like a period of history that we all know about, called the inquisition?

Trischenes 21, you can check it out.

Well, anyway, there's a famous confrontation at Carmel, Mount Carmel, where Elijah confronts

the queens 450 prophets.

They're also a 400 prophets of the groves.

So they're actually 150 guys there.

And let's have a contest.

You have your place, I have mine, and you set up your thing and let me call your God to

start your fire.

Okay?

They just, they go for that.

They decide to do that.

And I'll do the same.

We'll see.

You can't, let's see who wins this one.

And they go through their whole routine all morning, right to noon, and as they keep cutting

themselves and doing all their ceremonial things, nothing happens, of course.

And it's really a funny thing to read there because Elijah's making fun of him.

Maybe your God is hard of hearing.

Gee, maybe he's relieving himself.

You know, and so that's actually what he's saying.

It's hit a little bit in the King James translation.

When they're all through, Elijah takes some stones and sets up an altar so it's no man,

no tool, the raw stones, puts a trench about it, has puts all the wood there.

But then you golfers will understand this.

He wants a handicap.

So he dows his his with water three times and calls God and the fire comes down, starts

it and obviously proving that God is God.

But Elijah sees the opportunity in slaughters.

It was after in slaughters, the priests of Baal, just the bells on.

That doesn't please the green just bell of all of this.

So we have a, he challenged Baal to match the altars and the sacrifices.

He mocked them openly, dowsed his three times, and then slaughtered the 450 prophets of Baal.

And Elijah came to all the people and said, how long will you hop between two opinions

of the Lord be God, follow him?

And if Baal, then follow him.

And the people answered him not a word.

And he went through, of course, and made his point.

Well, that brings us to really second Kings and this interesting guy called Elisha.

Elisha has a quality in Hebrew called Hutzpah.

He not only wanted to be the successor to Elijah, he wanted twice as much of the spirit.

So that's Hutzpah.

But the second book of Kings is actually the most tragic national record ever written.

The first ten chapters are the annals of the northern kingdom, which goes from bad to worse.

And the mystery of Elisha is there.

It goes all the way to the death of J. Israel's tenth king.

And the book actually alternates the annals between the northern and southern kingdoms.

You have to watch it, be careful.

To the chapters 11 to 17, Jonah, Amos, and Hosea prophesy on these days.

We'll talk about them when you get there.

And it goes all the way to the wipeout.

I call it the Assyrian captivity, but the nation has gone from that point on there.

The annals of Judah, the southern kingdom, go from chapters 18 to 25.

And that's when Obadiah, Joel, Isaiah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkah, Zephaniah, Jeremiah prophesy.

So we've got quite a few prophets there.

There's eight of them that prophesy essentially to the southern kingdom.

And it ends, of course, with the Babylon captivity, which is dead.

The southern kingdom has only 70 years of captivity.

They come back.

The Assyrians, the northern kingdom does not.

As that entity at least.

And now Elisha does receive Elijah's mantle.

He wanted to.

He followed him around.

Elijah tried to shake him.

He's always there.

He says, if my mantle falls on you, you have it.

And when he gets translated, the mantle falls on Elisha.

And he decides a double portion.

That's interesting.

When you study the career of Elisha, Elijah ate miracles.

Elisha has 16.

So he got his double portion.

But some different, Elijah is very similar to John the Baptist.

There's a similar parallel between him.

Elisha is a little softer.

He does a lot of healing acts.

He has gentler words.

He brings life out of death.

So some people make a contrast there.

But I want to give you one glimpse because it's meaningful to all of us of unseen warfare

in 2 Kings 6.

The king of Syria is war against the king of Israel and took counsel with the servants

saying, in such and such a place shall be my camp.

The man of God, meaning Elisha, sent unto the king of Israel, saying, be aware that thou

pass not in such place for the Syrians are come down.

In other words, Elisha uses a prophetic gift to the advantage of the king of Israel.

Every time the king of Syria does this.

The king of Israel sent to the place which the man of God told him and warned him of.

And save himself there not once or twice.

In other words, this happens at a number of occasions.

So much so that we get to verse 11.

Therefore, the heart of the king of Syria was so troubled for this thing.

And he called his servants and said, you not show me which of us is for the king of Israel?

In other words, the king of Syria thinks he's got a mole on his staff.

Somehow, king of Israel is always tipped off when he sets a trap, they eluded.

And he thinks there's a leak, there's a security problem here.

One of the servants said, none my lord, oh my king.

But Elisha, the prophet that is in Israel, telleth the king of Israel the words that thou

speakest in thy bed chamber.

This is the first recorded occasion of a phone tap.

So obviously the king says, go and spy where he is that I may send and fetch him.

I was told him, behold, he is in Dothan.

Dothan's quite an interesting place.

That's where Joseph was sold and so forth.

But anyway, there's a little village there.

And so the king of Syria goes and therefore he sent he thither horses and chariots and

a great host.

And they came by night and compass the city round about.

So get the picture.

In this little village Elisha and the servant are living and suddenly the entire Syrian

army is surrounding this place one morning they wake up.

And when the servant of the man of God, that's Elisha's servant, was risen early and gone

forth behold, a host compass the city both with horses and chariots.

And the servant sent him to him into Elisha.

Alas my master, how shall we do?

He's in panic.

Looks out there and you know he can hear them revving their engines.

I mean it's close to him.

He answered Elisha says, he answered fear not for they that be with us are more than they

that be with them.

And I sort of presume that the servant sort of, yeah, yeah, yeah, but they're there.

I mean, you know, that sounds like a textbook answer doesn't it?

Well Elisha prayed and said, Lord, I pray thee open his eyes that he may see.

I almost imagine him being frustrated.

Okay, Father, show them, let them know, let them in on it, so to speak.

Elijah prayed and said, Lord, I pray thee open his eyes that he may see and the Lord

opened the eyes of the young man and he saw.

And behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha.

This is one of those little glimpses into another dimension.

This is a little glimpse that there is power around us we don't see.

There is warfare around us we don't see.

We need to understand that.

Those of you that use a word processor, how many of you use word processor on a computer?

You know that when you're writing a letter or something, there's all kinds of things

happening you don't want to be bothered with.

You know where the margins are, how where the tab is set, what font it is, where it's

underlined bold.

Normally you don't care you want to get the letter written.

But there are times when you want to deal with the formatting a little bit.

And so there's usually a key, it's a reveal codes key.

If you hit that key, all these things going on behind show up in different colors, the

margins and the tabs and the instructions as to what font, you know all those little

codes are in there.

And sometimes you want to be able to do those.

See that's our problem in life, but we need in life sometimes is a reveal codes key.

That's what Elijah did.

He put the button, push the button so to speak and the servant saw.

You know what I mean?

You don't see that they're protected by spiritual forces.

And Daniel 10 of course deals a great deal with that we'll get there later in this review.

So what are we up against?

Paul tells us in Ephesians 6, he says, put on the whole armor of God that you may be able

to stand against the wilds of the devil.

He says that twice by the way in this passage, but he says, for we wrestle not against flesh

and blood.

Oh, that's interesting.

We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers,

against the rulers of darkness in this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.

And he's not talking about politics or governmental things here.

He's talking about these in the Greek, these are ranks of angels.

What we wrestle against are spiritual beings that are adverse to us that are incredibly

powerful.

The hosts of Satan.

We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against

rulers of darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness, high places.

And you need to go into Ephesians 6 and understand what the armor is and so forth.

But anyway, getting back to history here, the northern kingdom had 19 kings around 250

years, seven different dynasties.

They finally go into the Assyrian captivity in 70-21, never to return.

The southern kingdom, Judah, had 20 kings raised about 370 years.

In other words, they got an extra century.

They didn't learn enough in that extra century.

You think they would have learned from the plight of the northern kingdom, but they didn't.

But they only had one dynasty.

The northern kingdom had seven different dynasties.

The southern kingdom had one dynasty, the dynasty of David.

Bad or worse, they were all Davidic.

But they ultimately get put in the Babylonian captivity.

But only for 70 years because of God's commitment to David.

That was there for some reasons we'll come to.

If you go through all these kings and so forth, you'll discover that the northern kingdom

goes from bad to worse and finally gets wiped out.

And 250 years, up to 721, and the southern kingdom lasts an extra century roughly and

goes into captivity.

It comes back from the captivity.

We'll see that when we get to Ezra, Nehemiah, and so forth.

And we could talk about something.

There were some good kings.

No good kings in the northern kingdom.

They were a handful of pretty, not so bad ones in the southern kingdom.

And Hezekiah, Josiah, being most notable.

David is a standard of measure and God's faithfulness and preservation all the way through.

Death of Azizah, Joash is preserved from the usurper sword by Jehovah.

Again, there are plots to wipe out the line.

And again, and again, and again, there's one that's saved.

Joash was saved.

And Charles Hezekiah, under the Assyrians' age.

And the blood curse upon Jekimah was bypassed.

And all these things are things we'll talk about later.

The object lessons were ignored.

It's interesting Hegel is famous for saying, the history of man teaches us that man learns

nothing from history.

And that's tragically true.

With the exception of Hezekiah and Josiah, the down and grade in Judah just continued.

Hezekiah was the greatest since David and Solomon.

Manasseh was among the wickedness and longest reigning.

It was during his reign that the Ark of the Covenant has slipped out of the country to protect it

down to Pharaoh and Hezekiah and Egypt.

And that starts a whole other line.

Sorry.

So the captivity of Judah and the destruction of Jerusalem are emphatically ascribed to

the sovereign hand of Jehovah or Yahweh, or however you want to say the name of God.

And the price of compromise.

You know, Ruben and Gabb have Prab, Manasseh had settled east of the Jordan.

You remember that in the Torah?

And they were the first to go into captivity in 1 Chronicles 5.

And 15 years later, the other tribes of the northern kingdom are also deported to Assyria.

The Assyrians appear to have been the most inventive of torture cruelties.

And I won't go through all that, but they really invented torture.

And so they also had a policy of replanting their captives in other areas so they would

lose their national identity.

The captives may not have been killed, but their identity was because they would crisscross

their captives throughout their entire empire.

So there's no return from exile for the end of the northern kingdom.

So the Ten Lost Tribes is a non-biblical myth that many people are involved with.

The Levites emigrate to the south, according to 2 Chronicles 11.

The faithful from all twelve migrate to the south.

The scripture tells us, idol worship, so we can infer, migrate to the north.

And where it was politically correct.

In any case, they were all freed by the Persians in 536 BC, in any case.

All twelve tribes are evident in post-exile records.

That's something that most people don't realize.

And Ezra and EMI deal with all of this.

In New Testament too, we find James and Peter deal with all twelve tribes.

So the Chronicles really parallels what we've just said with an emphasis on Judah.

And the first book Chronicles talks about the house of Yehovah and it has Israel's main

genealogies, Adam to Jacob, Jacob to David, David to Zetikai, and the tribal allotments.

And it's interesting, the tribe of Dan is missing.

Strangely, it's there, but not really.

It's a very strange passage.

There's a whole story about that, but we'll take that another time.

Of course then, the last part of it is that David's reign at Jerusalem where he's anointed

the Ark of the Lord, where he brings it correctly and he learns that lesson.

The covenant of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, these are all issues in Chronicles.

The second Chronicles of Solomon's forty years reign, a recap of all of that.

This early establishment, the building temple, all is glory.

And then the last part, the last two thirds of it is the division of the kingdom, the

twenty kings of Judah and the departation of Babylon, setting the stage for Ezz and

E.M.

I.

Now next time, next session we'll take the poetical books, Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes,

Song of Songs, a whole different kind of survey for our next session.