Week 5
Old Testament Fluency in 12 Weeks
Who is the real King? (1 & 2 Samuel and 1 & 2 Kings)
Introduction:
The book of Judges ends with this verse:
Judges 21:25 In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes
Early in the book of 1 Samuel, the people demand to have a king:
1 Samuel 8:4-9 So all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah. They said to him,
"You are old, and your sons do not walk in your ways; now appoint a king to lead us, such as all the other
nations have." But when they said, "Give us a king to lead us," this displeased Samuel; so he prayed to the
Lord. And the Lord told him: "Listen to all that the people are saying to you; it is not you they have rejected,
but they have rejected me as their king. As they have done from the day I brought them up out of Egypt until
this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so they are doing to you. Now listen to them; but warn them
solemnly and let them know what the king who will reign over them will do."
Samuel warns them what a king will do to them (1 Samuel 8:10-18):
1 Samuel 8:19-20 But the people refused to listen to Samuel. "No!" they said. "We want a king over us. Then
we will be like all the other nations, with a king to lead us and to go out before us and fight our battles."
Samuel’s words at the installation ceremony of Saul as king:
1 Samuel 12:13-15 Now here is the king you have chosen, the one you asked for; see, the Lord has set a king
over you. If you fear the Lord and serve and obey him and do not rebel against his commands, and if both you
and the king who reigns over you follow the Lord your God—good! But if you do not obey the Lord, and if you
rebel against his commands, his hand will be against you, as it was against your fathers.
But “Saul won’t listen to anything” that God instructs him to do through Samuel.
So God speaks to him through Samuel:
1 Samuel 13:13-14 "You acted foolishly," Samuel said. "You have not kept the command the Lord your God
gave you; if you had, he would have established your kingdom over Israel for all time. But now your kingdom
will not endure; the Lord has sought out a man after his own heart and appointed him leader over his people,
because you have not kept what the Lord commanded you.”
God makes a covenant with David, the man after God’s own heart, and with his descendants
after him. A couple verses from this covenant:
2 Samuel 7:11b-12 “The Lord declares to you that the Lord himself will establish a house for you: When your
days are over and you rest with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, who will come from
your own body, and I will establish his kingdom.”
The first book of the New Testament, Matthew, opens with these words:
Matthew 1:1 A record of the genealogy of Jesus Christ the son of David.
David makes preparations for the temple and his son Solomon builds the temple. This is the
high point of acknowledging that God is the King.
But Solomon fails to obey the Lord’s command:
Deuteronomy 17:16-17 The king, moreover, must not acquire great numbers of horses for himself or make
the people return to Egypt to get more of them, for the Lord has told you, "You are not to go back that way
again." He must not take many wives, or his heart will be led astray. He must not accumulate large amounts
of silver and gold.
Apart from his wisdom, Solomon was most famous for three things:

Horses (1 Kings 4:26; 9:19; 10:28)
1 Kings 4:26 Solomon had four thousand stalls for chariot horses, and twelve thousand horses.
1 Kings 10:26 Solomon accumulated chariots and horses; he had fourteen hundred chariots and twelve
thousand horses, which he kept in the chariot cities and also with him in Jerusalem.

Wealth (1 Kings 10:14-27)
1 Kings 10:27 The king made silver as common in Jerusalem as stones, and cedar as plentiful as
sycamore-fig trees in the foothills.

Wives (1 Kings 11:1-4)
1 Kings 11:1-4 King Solomon, however, loved many foreign women besides Pharaoh's daughter—
Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sidonians and Hittites. They were from nations about which the Lord
had told the Israelites, "You must not intermarry with them, because they will surely turn your hearts
after their gods." Nevertheless, Solomon held fast to them in love. He had seven hundred wives of royal
birth and three hundred concubines, and his wives led him astray. As Solomon grew old, his wives turned
his heart after other gods, and his heart was not fully devoted to the Lord his God, as the heart of David
his father had been.
The song tells the rest of the story of what happened after Solomon:
Ten tribes from Rehoboam slip away
Israel’s Jeroboams, Ahab, and sons
Tend to lead the people astray
In Judah, are the evil like Manasseh
The good Hezekiah and Josiah
God sends Elijah and Elisha
The end result of all this sin is exile from the land
They forgot who the real king was.
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