Hi, my name is Father Mike Schmitz, and you're listening to the Bible in a Year podcast, where we encounter God's voice and live life through the lens of scripture. The Bible in a Year podcast is brought to you by Ascension. Using the Great Adventure Bible timeline, we'll read all the way from Genesis to Revelation, discovering how the story of salvation unfolds and how we fit into that story. Today, we are once again joined by Jeff Cavens as we take our steps away from this last checkpoint we had, the first checkpoint, really, the Messianic checkpoint of the gospel of John. And now today, we're taking that step into the royal kingdom. So that encompasses first and second Samuel, that encompasses the beginning of first Kings, as well as the books of Chronicles. And so I'm really excited to have Jeff here with us today as we take this next step in this next time period. I hope and pray that the Messianic checkpoint, those seven days we just experienced of the gospel of John, was a massive blessing to you. That sense of just being able to pop your head up and say, Okay, this is the fulfillment.

Jesus is the fulfillment of everything Everything that we've been hearing, everything we've been reading, everything has been claimed to us. And now we're going back, back in time to 1 Samuel, 2 Samuel, 1 Kings, and the Books of Chronicles, as we see what's happened now that David unites the tribes into one kingdom. So Jeff, to orient us as we take these next steps, what do we need to know?

Sure. Well, it's good to be with you once again.

Thanks. You just told us what we need to know.

Go. One, two, three. Well, Well, we're entering now, Father, a period, which on your Bible timeline chart is the Purple Period, and the Purple stands for royalty, because we're going to make a major, major shift here. And that's one of the reasons we're doing this, is we don't want people to get lost. We want them to know exactly where they are at. And as you mentioned, the narrative books are 1 Samuel 2 Samuel and part of 1 Kings. And in this period, as far as the big picture goes, we're going to see that Israel is going to ask for a king, and we can talk about that. But they're going to ask for a king, and during this period, we're going to see three kings. We're going to see the first king, Saul. He's going to reign for roughly 40 years. And then David will be the second king, and he's going to reign for 40 years. And Solomon, his son, will be the third king, and he's going to reign for 40 years. And so we're going to be looking, particularly at these three kings, but most importantly, David. And something happens between God and David, namely a covenant, and that's going to give us some structure for the rest of the story.

But I think it's really important, Father, for people to understand where we just came from in the green period, the conquest in judges. Yeah, definitely. We have to ask ourselves, why would they want a king? Why would they want a king at this point? And if you remember back in Judges, we have that spiral where they go from sin to servitude to supplication to salvation, and then silence, and then they continue it. And so in the Book of Judges, we see a ever spiraling out of control in iniquity by the leaders of Israel. So in chapter 3 through 5, you have Othniel, Echod, and Deborah. They're pretty good. And then in chapters 6 through 9, we have Gideon, not so good. Then chapters 10 through 12, we have Bad, Jephtha, the very terrible story. Then we have in chapters 13 through 16, Samson, it gets worse. Then chapters 17 and 18, Micah builds a private temple with his own priests and everything. And then chapters 19 through 21 of Judges, it just gets plain ugly. And it's at the end of this, after we have heard for four times in Judges that Israel did not have a king, and everyone did what was right in their eyes.

Yeah. It's so interesting because we did that, the intro to Conquest and Judges together, and talked about, Yeah, it's going to get bad. It's going to get dark. We talked about that cycle and the devastation that people experienced and how dark it would get. But I think a lot of people who have been journeying with us didn't realize until the last couple of days that, Oh, my gosh. Yeah, you weren't kidding. They might have actually even forgotten that we had prepped and said, just heads up, warning. It gets horrible No. I mean, it's absolutely devastating where God's people had fallen, how far they had fallen. Now that brings us to now. Yeah.

What we're doing now is we're going to pick up in 1 Samuel, and the very first thing that people are going to encounter is that Samuel comes on the scene. He's a young boy, he grows up. And there is in the background a division in the country that is taking place because back in Judges, a civil war really broke out, and the tribes were against Benjamin. Because of what he did. And then we have Samuel being really the leader, or some would say the 13th Judge. And the people come to Samuel in chapter 8, and they said, Now, appoint for us a king. He said this to Samuel, Appoint for us a king to govern us like all other nations. And at that point, Samuel was very upset. It says that the thing displeased Samuel when they said, Give us a king to govern us. And Samuel prayed to the Lord, and the Lord said to Samuel, 'No, listen. Listen to the voice of the people and all that they say to you, for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them. ' Now, I would have said, if I were God, I'd say, That's it.

I'm done. I've tried. ' But God is saying, 'No, no. ' Give them what they want, and they want a king like all the other nations. But there's been some warnings about this. If way back when you were reading in Deuteronomy 17, it actually said, and you read this, it said that when you come into the land which the Lord your God gives you and you possess it, you're going to say, I want a king to rule over us. And he says that a king should not have many horses, a king should not have many wives, and a king should not multiply silver and gold. And then when you read in 1 Samuel, after they ask for a king, God gives them a warning. Again, he says, Well, if you want a king, I want you to know something. This is the way of a king. They're going to take your sons and appoint them to his chariots. They're going to take your daughters and your sons, put them to work. They're going to take your fields. They're going to tax you. And the people said, in Hebrew, bring it on. They said, whatever, whatever.

We want a king.

Yeah, it doesn't matter.

Yeah, right. We want a king. And so they ended up with their first king, who is Saul. And of all places, he is from the midst of the Civil War. He is from the tribe of Benjamin. And so he becomes the first king, and he reigns for 40 years.

Well, that's a remarkable too, because of the fact that at the end of Judges, what we heard was, here's the horror of the tribe of Benjamin, and that it was happening in the midst of the tribe of Benjamin. And here, the first king is coming from that tribe. Now, when it comes to, you mentioned the three kings, Saul, David, and Solomon. I just need to say it. It's burning inside of me. Which one brought gold, which one brought frankencense? And which one brought myr? Is that... Those are the same... That's not the same three kings? Okay, sorry. I just had to do it. I don't know. It was there. Yeah, that landed flat. Anyways. It's remarkable that even with that warning of, Here's what's going to happen. Then if we just see it. We see it play out in real-time, not only with Saul, but also with David and with Solomon. Even the highlight, David being the prototype king for the Messiah, he even also has this tendency towards doing exactly what God said he didn't want to happen, but was going to happen. Right.

Well, what happens is it looks like Saul is going to be the king, and you have to remember, clear back in Genesis 12, that seems like a long time ago now, doesn't it? Where God promised three things. He said, you're going to receive land, there's going be a royal dynasty, and there's going to be worldwide blessing. Well, we're at the point now where they're in the land, first promise, check, but now there's going to be a royal dynasty that it's going to be created, and it looks like it could be Saul, but it's not, because Saul was disobedient a couple of times to the Lord, and it was literally ripped from him and given to this young David from Bethlehem. The next key point in our reading here is going to be 2 Samuel 7, because 2 Samuel 7 is where God is going to make a covenant with David. And David comes to the Lord and says, Hey, you've been traveling around in this tent all this time. I want to make you a permanent It's beautiful structure. And it's almost humorous how God says, Did I say I wasn't doing okay in the tent?

Did I ask you to build this structure? And God says something interesting to David. He says, I'm going to make your name great, which is a way in Hebrew of saying, I'm starting a royal dynasty. You know, Father, who ends up on that seat of David later on.

Right. Jesus. Jesus. Yeah, sorry. I You should fill it in. That looked in your eyes. I was like, Yeah, I do. Oh, we should say it out loud. Yeah, Solomon. No, wait. More to come after Solomon. You know what there is with this royal kingdom? There's so much promise, and there is truly promise. As you've mentioned, here's the three promises in that covenant with Abraham. Here's the fulfillment. Well, a partial fulfillment. Here's the land. Here's the beginning of this royal dynasty. Ultimately, again, through Jesus Christ, who is the ultimate Messiah, I know that we're mostly following 1 Samuel and first Kings here. But also, would you mind just giving us a little taste or peek into Chronicles? Here's what I mean, is in Chronicles, I've been doing some reading on this to get brushed up on getting my lens right, and that Chronicles is written even after the Babylonian exile. And so Chronicles is pointing out, written by, say, Esre the Scribe, that you would say it's pointing out here is David as the prototype Messiah or the prototype anointed one we're waiting for to reestablish that kingdom, as well as the role of temple worship, because here is after the Babylonian exile, we need to recapture and remember our history.

And so, yes, we have 1 Samuel, we have the Kings, but also here's Esreus saying, Okay, let's go back and be reminded of the unfaithfulness, and that could be us again because that's why we were brought into exile in the first place. And so here's a recapitulation in some ways. I guess maybe my question would be two questions. One is, what's one way that people can read Chronicles concurrently with Samuel and Kings and not be like, Oh, my gosh, this is the same story retold over again? Secondly, I guess the same question, what's a good way to approach what it seems redundant, but we know that it's not being redundant. It's telling us another layer of truth.

It's exactly right. It's such a good question because it's something that we receive a lot, and that is, Wait a minute. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, didn't we read this before? Yeah, you did, but it was a different version of it. Here's the easy way to remember it. You have 1 Samuel 2:1, and the first part of 1 Samuel as the narrative of the United Kingdom. At At the end of the United Kingdom, you're going to be taking readers through the divided kingdom. That's going to take place. That's the Black period, where you're going to have a country called Israel to the north and Judah down in Jerusalem to the south. David will always be linked to the south in Jerusalem, to Judah. So if you're going to read Chronicles, along with 1 Samuel 2 Samuel, and Kings, you have to understand that it is a revisiting of history history, but it focuses on the Southern Kingdom of Judah, the Kingdom that Jesus is going to be coming from. And the chronicler has a way of telling all of the really good stuff about David and the King. Because when you read 1 Samuel 2, you find the good and the bad about Saul, the good and the bad about David, and the good and bad about Solomon.

The Chronicles sticks to the south and gives you another Another perspective, another camera shot at all that you're going through in the south.

Yeah. And so some of those elements in Samuel as well as beginning of verse Kings that I do highlight the fact that even though these men are chosen by God, even though they are anointed, they're not perfect. And we've seen that consistently. The whole story right now has demonstrated so consistently that a person can be anointed by God, they can be called by God. Even the Book of Judges, again, here is the spirit of God upon Samson, who was not a good judge. Sorry, who was a good judge, wasn't necessarily a good man. And yeah, is there any thing we can draw out from that when it comes to not just our own moral lives, but also be paying attention to that as an element of scripture, an element of God's story that we should be not forgetting, that we should remember.

Yeah. Well, I think that one thing that our followers here in Bible in a Year are realizing is that the Bible is not a candy-coated story. It is telling it every angle, the good, bad, and the ugly, and that is life. If you took the United States right now in history, and it's the greatest nation, some would argue, in the history of the world, the richest, the most sophisticated, and so forth, well, we can tell you a lot of stories that are not so good. If you really want to know the whole history, and that's what you're getting when you look at the United Kingdom, you're seeing Saul for 40 years. Saul's role was really to unite the tribes, and he actually did a good job. But he was disobedient twice, and God takes the kingdom, gives it to David, and David now is expanding the kingdom. He's a warrior, and he expands the kingdom, and God makes a covenant with him where they are one holy kingdom. They were a nation before that. Now they are a Kingdom made up of a larger bit of property and people. And then after that Solomon is going to be the builder.

So they all have different functions. We have a uniter in Saul. We have an expander in David with the covenant being made with David. A royal dynasty is established, meaning that someone from him, from his life, will be on the throne forever. And that means that Solomon is the next king. One of Solomon's boys will be the next, the next, the next, the next, all the way to Jesus. And you can follow that in the genealogy. But every single one of these three kings had their downfalls, and Solomon perhaps was the worst, because as he began his reign, what do we know Solomon for? We know him for his wisdom. We have the... Yeah, We have the Proverbs and the Wisdom of Solomon and Ecclesiastes and so many wonderful books that we're going to be going through. But he disobeyed what was told earlier that a king should not do. A king should not have many chariots, much gold and silver, and many wives. And all three of those things are related to foreign alliances. And what God is saying in this kingdom that is established is that the king of Israel should reflect how God rules and reins.

So you can read some of the Psalms here, and they are the kingly Psalms where God is saying this is the way a king should rule. Well, after David, Solomon takes the reins, and he is not ruling the way God would rule. And you can find all of this in first Kings 10:11. We're going to see that the people have had it with Solomon, and they want some reform. And they go to Solomon and they say, Look, we've had it. This is not good. The 10 tribes of the north are going to say, This is not good for us at all. And we want to know, how are you going to rule? They're going to say to Solomon's son, Reha Boam, Are you going to rule like Solomon did? Because Solomon was a mean ruler at the end. You can read about this in first Kings 10 and 11, says he had 700 wives and 300 concubines. He had 1400 chariots, and he had 666 talents of gold. All three things that a king should not do. He had all of them in spades. And his wives, they turned his heart away from God into worshiping the gods of the Canaanites, the people in the land, Baal and so forth.

And the people had had it with him. And so that brings on the next period, the divided kingdom. And so as Solomon started out so well, he ended so bad. And that is going to lead to the next period, where the kingdom is going to divide. So in all three Kings, you see the good, you see the bad, and the consequences of it. David, he was a great king, and probably we would consider him the prototype of a king until Jesus, who is called, interestingly enough, the son of David. But even David got into trouble with Bathsheba. But here's the difference. Saul got into trouble, and his heart was unrepentant. He basically said, Okay, yeah. All right. The prophet called me on this. I did it. Let's not make a big deal out of it. No reason to put it on Facebook. Okay? And David, he got into trouble, and Nathan the prophet, nailed him with a message. And what was David's response? Repentance. Exactly. Psalm 51, which is, by the way, a great Psalm before you go to confession.

Yeah, and after.

And after.

So many times.

Yeah. You have a tremendous display here of the struggle to rule and reign like God. And then eventually, Jesus is the one who completely does this. He is the King, and the King of Kings and the Lord, the Lord of Lords. So it's an action-packed segment that you're going to be going through. You just have to follow the narrative from Saul to David to Solomon. And then towards the end of it, right as you get to first Kings 10, 11, and 12, that's where you're going to see the next big change that you got to get a hold of if you're going to follow the narrative in the Bible.

It's so important, especially just recognizing that every one of these Kings, the downfall in so many ways was disobedience. That here is Saul, who is obedient, here is David, who is obedient, here was Solomon, who is disobedient, and then we have Christ, who is fully made himself obedient, and by that was exaltet, right? And that sense of that faithfulness and that faithful obedience to his Father. Last thing, just the last minute or two. Jeff, what are some lenses or what's some things we should be focusing on or paying attention to as we go through this next section on the Royal Kingdom?

Sure. Well, I think one of the things, Father, that people can do is to be reminded once again that all of the texts that they're going through right now, all of the books they're reading with you right now are Christocentric. I would encourage people to continually read it and think about it through the lens of Jesus. It's like that bracelet, what would Jesus do? To compare that constantly with Saul and David and Solomon. Then I think you will grow an appreciation for Jesus, the obedient son and the king of Kings. You can get an idea of how a king should not rule and how a king should rule. I think you can translate that into everyday life. For example, how should you How should you be a father today? How should you be a mother today who's a leader in your home? Or if you have a business, how do you conduct yourself as someone who is a leader and responsible for other people? We can learn so much from these three Kings as far as what not to do and what to do. But I think also to keep track of those three things that were given in Genesis 12, the land, a royal dynasty, and a worldwide blessing.

God is showing you through these stories in 1 Samuel and first Kings, he's showing you his heart. That's the second thing that I would encourage people to read with that lens, that God is showing you his fatherly heart, and he is revealing his plan. That plan will find its fulfillment in Jesus. But it's like taking a vacation trip as a family. Everyone gets packed in the car, they're getting excited. They've got their books, they've got things to drink in the car, and they're just, Oh, it's going to be so great. And they're going to go to that destination, whether it's Jellystone Park or Black Hills or the Grand Canyon. And everyone's in the car ready to go. And three days later, they get there. But those three days were a little bit rocky. I mean, they had some fights in the car. Don't touch me. Don't touch me. He took my book. They stopped. I need to stop at a gas station. And they ended up getting there. But the journey there that they were so excited about did have its ups and downs. Yeah.

I love, as you even mentioned, not just that journey, but also there's stuff in here about fatherhood. There's stuff in here about being a good parent. Again, here's the land, the dynasty, the worldwide blessing. But even the day-to-day decisions that these people had made, they affect ultimately the way the kingdom goes. They affect that blessing. They affect all these things. I think sometimes we fail to see the ways in which someone was like, Oh, this is just my life. These are my decisions, how those can affect God's ultimate efficacy in the world, the way that God wants to actually bless the people around us. Because as part of the church, we're part of that worldwide blessing that God wants to extend to the entire world through us and in us. Yeah, it's so good. Like you said, there are so many details that are not neat and are not clean, but are part of the story. We're so grateful. I think some people have experience when they're growing up as like, Okay, don't ask questions. When it comes to the Bible, when it comes to church, when it comes to God, we don't ask questions.

And yet we want to encourage that because theology is faith-seeking understanding, and we have to ask questions if we're going to seek understanding. So grateful for you also for this introduction to the Royal Kingdom. Every single time we have this new time period, I know that every one of us who is joining the Bible in a year, we just are so blessed every time you walk alongside with us, Jeff, and so grateful.

It's a privilege to be with your Father. You're doing a great job, and it's so fun to follow along with you and to hear the word of God. And faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. So many people are being blessed.

Yeah, so good. And speaking of, we're praying for you all who are walking with us. And this is more than just a bunch of people listening to a podcast. This is a community of people who aren't just listening to God's word, but we're also praying with God's word, and we're praying for each other. So please keep that up. Keep praying for each other. I know you are praying for me and for Jeff. We are praying My name is Father Mike. I cannot wait to see you tomorrow. God bless.