Newspaper columnist Abigail Van Buren wrote, “If you want your children to keep their feet on the ground, put some responsibility on their shoulders.” Responsibility isn’t a curse; it’s a blessing. Adam and Eve had work to do in paradise before sin came into the world, and the perfect Son of God worked as a carpenter before He began His public ministry. Booker T. Washington said, “Few things help an individual more than to place responsibility upon him, and to let him know that you trust him.”
After killing his brother Abel and lying about it, Cain asked, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” He was dodging both responsibility and accountability, a practice that’s becoming very popular today. A bumper sticker announces, “The Devil made me do it,” and people smile when they read it. When our first parents sinned, they ran and hid from God, and when they were confronted with their sin, they blamed others. Finally, they had to take the responsibility for what they had done, and with responsibility came hope and promise. Irresponsible people may run away, make excuses, cover up, or blame others, but if they do, they will never know the meaning of healthy character, integrity, a clear conscience, and the joy of walking with God.
First Kings begins with the death of King David and ends with the death of King Ahab, and between those two events many other people either succeeded or failed, lived or died, because of decisions that were either responsible or irresponsible. The world of David and Ahab was nothing like our world today, but human nature hasn’t changed and the basic principles of life are quite stable. We ought to be able to reflect on what we’ve learned from 1 Kings and draw some practical conclusions for life today.
David: One person can make a difference The more you ponder the life of David, warts and all, the more you see his greatness. He was born with leadership ability, courage, and practical common sense, and the Holy Spirit gave him sensitivity to God’s will and a special power that set him apart as God’s man. His predecessor, King Saul, almost destroyed the nation, but David accepted the difficult responsibility of putting it back together again and building it into a mighty kingdom. David defeated Israel’s enemies; collected great treasures for building the temple; organized the army, the government, and the ministry at the sanctuary; wrote songs for the Levites to sing; and even invented musical instruments for them to play. What a man!
God’s covenant with David assured Israel of a king forever and was ultimately fulfilled in the coming of Jesus Christ into the world. It was because of His promise to David that the Lord kept one of his descendants on the throne during the years of Judah’s decline. Throughout the history of the monarchy, God measured every king against David, and though some of them were exceptional, none of them quite reached his level.
One person can make a difference, if that person is willing to accept responsibility and walk with God. Anybody can run with the herd, but when God finds individuals who are willing to stand alone if necessary, He goes to work and builds leaders. The words of Dr. Lee Roberson have echoed in my mind for many years: “Everything rises or falls with leadership.”
Solomon: Success often leads to failure It’s good to have the things that money can buy, provided you don’t lose the things that money can’t buy. Solomon was a brilliant man who could discuss everything from how to grow herbs to how to build fortresses, yet he made a mess out of his life and paved the way for the division of the kingdom. During the golden age of Solomon, the nations marveled at his wisdom and envied his wealth (and perhaps his many wives), but Solomon himself turned out to be a hollow man who forsook the Lord who had so richly blessed him. He was perhaps the wisest fool in Bible history.
When you read between the lines, you find that his living in luxury, surrounded by glamour and pleasure, introduced into Israel the viruses that eventually ate the spiritual heart out of the nation. Yes, we need education, but we also need to ask God for the wisdom to use it as we should. We also need money for food, clothing, and shelter—“For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things,” said Jesus (Matt. 6:32)—but to acquire money just for money’s sake is to surrender to covetousness and become so concerned about prices that we ignore values.
Solomon was irresponsible in many areas of life, and his son Rehoboam inherited some of that mindset and ended up dividing the nation. God made a leader out of David by sending him out to care for sheep; challenging him with a lion, a bear, and a giant; forcing him to run for his life for ten years; and making him wait for the promised throne. Solomon grew up pampered and protected; he could have used a few years’ service in the wilderness. By accumulating wives, horses, and wealth, he brought peace to the nation, but it was a peace purchased at the price of obedience to the law of God.
There’s no virtue in ignorance and poverty, but there’s no magic in knowledge and wealth. The government leaders tell us, “If people were just smarter and richer, we’d solve society’s problems.” People do become smarter and richer, and they create a whole new set of problems. Billy Sunday once said, “When I was a kid, we’d go down to the railroad yard and steal things from the freight cars. Now a fellow goes to university and learns how to steal the whole railroad!” People are so smart they can sit at a computer keyboard and rob a bank thousands of miles away. Human nature doesn’t change.
National strength and national character begin in the home If David had displayed in his home the kind of discipline and strength he showed on the battlefield, Jewish history might have been different. Part of the problem lay with his having too many wives, plus the fact that it isn’t always easy for the children of celebrities to grow up normally. But whatever the causes, some of David’s children turned out really bad, and what they were and what they did affected the nation.
According to Genesis 3, Satan came as a liar and his first target was human marriage. He’s been attacking it ever since. According to Genesis 4, he came as a murderer and his second target was the human family. He encouraged Cain to be envious and angry so that Cain would kill Abel. It’s been said that in the modern home, the stereo and the TV set are better adjusted than the members of the family. People complain because children can’t pray in school, but few parents encourage them to pray at home.
Home is a school for character, where we learn to love, listen, obey, and assist. In short, it’s where we learn to be responsible.
Rehoboam: Generations must work together Whether it’s in the home, in the chambers of government, or in the sanctuary of the local church, generations must work together and learn from each other. Solomon’s son Rehoboam foolishly turned a deaf ear to the experience of the mature and chose to win only the applause of his peers, and as a result he lost most of his kingdom. By putting labels on different generations and letting them do their own thing—“Well, that’s just the way they are!”—we’ve weakened social solidarity, divided the family, cut whole generations off from the heritage of the past, and convinced young people that they really can make it alone.
God has decreed that parents shall be older than their children. He has also commanded parents to love their children, teach them how to listen and obey, protect them from evil, and be good examples before them. But parents can also learn from their children. It’s a two-way street. I cultivate the friendship of young people, because I need them and they need me. I help them catch up on the past and they help me catch up on the present. I’m not always right and they’re not always wrong. The older generation hands the next generation a valuable heritage from the past, but if we don’t understand the world they’re living in and the way they feel about it, we can’t help them use that heritage for their good and the good of society.
Paul saw the local church as a family in God (Titus 2:1–8), with one generation ministering to another. Younger people treat the older folks as they would their parents or grandparents, and older saints treat the younger ones as they would their own children. When a family gets together, they don’t always agree on everything, but they try to help each other during the various stages of life. That’s the way it should be in the home, the church, and the nation.
Jeroboam: wasted opportunity God offered Jeroboam a priceless opportunity to build the kingdom of Israel for the glory of God, but he wasted it. Instead of looking back to David and imitating his leadership, and looking up to the Lord for help, Jeroboam let his ego take over and did things his own way. He invented his own religion to make it easy for the people to disobey the Lord. He abandoned the divine authority of God’s Word and appointed priests who were unspiritual and unqualified. God sent him signs and messages, but he refused to submit. “The sins of Jeroboam” are mentioned over twenty times in Scripture.
The division of the Jewish nation was a tragedy, but if both Rehoboam and Jeroboam had listened to the Lord, they could have rescued both kingdoms from ruin. Once opportunity is lost, it won’t be repeated. Each opportunity is a test of the vision and values of the people in charge. The Lord gave Jeroboam a sure promise (11:29–40), but the king wouldn’t take it seriously and trust God to fulfill it. Opportunity doesn’t shout, it whispers, and our ears must be attentive. Opportunity knocks, it doesn’t kick down the door, and we had better be alert to open the door. The American poet John Greenleaf Whittier wrote For of all sad words of tongue or pen, The saddest are these: “It might have been!”
To ignore God-given opportunity is to waste the past, jeopardize the future, and frustrate the present.
Baal: The insidious cancer of idolatry Jeroboam put up his golden calves and Jezebel brought in Baal worship, and before long, the people of the northern kingdom had turned from Jehovah to the worship of dumb idols. An idol is not only an insult to God but it’s an insult to man, for men and women were created in the image of God to reflect the glory of the true and living God. To create a god in your own image and worship it is a dangerous thing, for we become like the gods we worship (Ps. 115:8).
If you want to be religious and still enjoy the pleasures of sin, then the worship of idols is the road to take. But its freedom leads to bondage and its pleasures eventually lead to pain and death. Whether the idol we worship is money, prestige, authority, sex, entertainment, or our own self-righteous satisfaction, it can never equal what we receive when we worship the true and living God through His Son, Jesus Christ.
Elijah: Reformation and renewal A nation, a church, a family, or an individual is never so far gone that the Lord can’t gave a new beginning. Elijah was Ahab’s enemy because Ahab was following his own agenda and not the Lord’s. Elijah was God’s servant and risked his life to bring the nation back to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. True reformation should lead to spiritual renewal. It isn’t enough to tear down the pagan altars and remove the priests of Baal. We must rebuild the Lord’s altar and ask God for new fire from heaven to consume the sacrifices.
Reformation means getting rid of the accretions of the new things to get back to the foundations of the old things. When Israel abandoned her covenant with Jehovah, she ceased to be the people of God and became like the other nations. The beautiful temple that once housed the glory of God became a pile of ruins that bore witness to the sins of an ungrateful and unbelieving people. God’s chosen people forgot their glorious past and deliberately manufactured a future that brought shame and ruin.
The key issue in any nation’s faith has always been the struggle between the true prophets and the false prophets, both of whom claim to speak in the name of the Lord. The false prophets tell us what we want to hear while the true prophets tell us what we need to hear. The false prophets don’t make a deep and thorough diagnosis of the nation’s sicknesses; they barely scratch the surface. True prophets cut deep and expose the hidden cancers; like John the Baptist, they apply the ax to the root of the trees (Matt. 3:10) and don’t waste their time plucking off dead leaves from the dying branches.
“Where is the Lord God of Elijah?” asked Elisha as he began his prophetic ministry (2 Kings 2: nkjv). We know the answer: “The Lord is in his holy temple” (Hab. 2:20). But the real question isn’t “Where is the Lord God of Elijah?” but “Where are the Elijahs?” God is still seeking for men and women whose hearts are right with Him, people He can use to recover the past, renew the present, and rescue the future.
Ahab and Jezebel: the abuse of power Some years ago I began to read a biography of Adolph Hitler, but the longer I read it, the more depressed I became, until finally I stopped reading the book. I never did finish it. I respond the same way to Ahab and Jezebel. He was spineless and she was heartless and together they were the embodiment of wickedness. If they were living today, Hollywood would make a feature movie about them and they’d be featured in a miniseries on television. Cameras in hand, the press would follow their every move and report every activity in detail. It would make no difference that Ahab and Jezebel were godless unbelievers who lacked character and high ideals. The public feeds its sick imagination on that kind of garbage and keeps asking for more. Thanks to fallen human nature, there’s always more.
Page through a review of the twentieth century and marvel at how the nations of the world ever survived such a concerted abuse of power. Much of it was brutal, leading to the annihilation of millions of innocent people. Some of it was done with finesse, the abusers wearing their white gloves, but it still led to destruction. Abusers who didn’t use knives, guns, and ovens, used words, and this includes professed Christians in the church. The world looked on and said, “Behold, how they hate one another!” I’ve been in ministry for over fifty years, and in the past ten years, I’ve heard more church horror stories than I did in the previous forty years.
Whether it’s administrative power, financial power, physical and mental power, or the ultimate power of life and death, the power we have comes from God and must be used according to His will. King and queens, emperors and prime ministers, dictators and generals, parents and teachers, the FBI and the KGB—all of them are accountable to the Lord and will one day answer to Him.
King Jesus is the greatest example of the right use of authority. He is a Servant who leads and a Leader who serves, and He does it because He loves us.
God is sovereign! Since the days of Job, people have been trying to make sense out of what goes on in this world, and nobody has yet discovered the key. We have a hard enough time predicting the weather let alone fully understanding the dynamics of history or even the personal situations in our own lives. A famous movie star said, “Life is like a B-picture script. It is that corny. If I had my life story offered to me to film, I’d turn it down.” American playwright Eugene O’Neill had a character in Strange Interlude say, “Our lives are merely strange, dark interludes in the electric display of God the Father.” That’s not very encouraging.
Knowing that our God is sovereign in all things gives us the courage and faith we need to live and serve in this fallen world. “The Lord brings the counsel of the nations to nothing; He makes the plans of the peoples of no effect. The counsel of the Lord stands forever, the plans of His heart to all generations” (Ps. 33:10–11 nkjv). He has given us the right to make choices and decisions, and He will not force His will upon us, but if He isn’t allowed to rule, He will overrule. In spite of our resistance and rebellion, His will shall be done “on earth as it is in heaven.” He runs the universe by His wise decrees and doesn’t call a committee meeting to find the consensus of His creatures. “Man’s will is free,” writes A. W. Tozer, “because God is sovereign. A God less than sovereign could not bestow moral freedom upon His creatures. He would be afraid to do so.”
Yet, how longsuffering God is with both the saved and the lost! He allowed Jezebel to kill some of the prophets of the Lord, and He allowed Elijah to run away from the place of duty. The greatest judgment God can send is to allow people to have their own way and then suffer the consequences. “How long, O Lord, how long?” has been the painful prayer of believers on earth (Ps. 13:1–2) and in heaven (Rev. 6:10), but our times are in His hands and He knows the end from the beginning. When the news of the day upsets me, I pause and worship the eternal sovereign God who is never surprised or caught unprepared. This keeps me from fretting and getting discouraged and it helps to keep my life in balance.
C H R O N I C L E S2K I N G S2The book of 1 Kings has revealed to us the sinfulness of the human heart, the faithfulness of a loving God, and the seriousness of being a part of God’s believing remnant. Before Jesus returns to set up His kingdom, many things are going to get worse and we may become discouraged and be tempted to quit. Then we’ll remember that responsibility means our response to His ability. God is still on the throne, so we’ll join the heavenly multitude and sing the song of the overcomers: “Alleluia, for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth” (Rev. 19:6).