1st Kings Solomon then Divided Kingdom

To everyone, good to see you here. And to those who might be watching video, we also would pray the Lord's blessing on you. Let's just open with a word of prayer. Our Heavenly Father and our God, we come before your throne this morning as we lift our voices to worship you.

We pray, Heavenly Father, that you might be in all that we say and all that we do. Be with Pastor John as he brings your word, that you would just go before him and give him liberty in the things you've laid on his heart.

And we look forward to a blessing from your word, Lord. Pray that when we leave this morning that we can each say it's been good to be in the house of the Lord. And we will thank you for it. And we pray in Jesus' name, amen.

So stand with me as we sing joyful, joyful, we adore thee. Are we joyful this morning as we adore him? Let's hear that in our voices, okay? To put up the second verse, then we'll go back to the first one, okay?

I just want to give you a little history. I learned this song in the original song. The first word you see is, he that to the Lord has blessed me. The original song, you would read the words, here I raise my Ebenezer.

What's that mean, right? Do you remember when we just had first Samuel a couple of weeks ago? And when the Ark of the Covenant was taken by the Philistines, they captured it at Ebenezer. And they took it away.

And then the Philistines then came to Ebenezer and then took it to their temple in another place. And then we read in 1 Samuel 7 -10. And I wanted just to read you, the guy that wrote this song originally had this in mind.

1 Samuel 7 verses 10. Now as Samuel was offering up the burnt offering, the Philistines drew near to battle against Israel. But the Lord thundered with a loud thunder upon the Philistines that day and so confused them and they were overcome before Israel.

And the men of Israel went out of Mizpah and pursued the Philistines and drove them back as far as Bethkar. Now here's the key. Then Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Sheon and called the name Ebenezer.

And he says, saying, thus the Lord has helped me. So he raised up a stone of blessing. Where they had been defeated, now he says this is going to be remembered as a time of blessing. So even though we don't sing the songs, I want to sing the songs of Here I Raise My Ebenezer.

But mainly because I've learned that when I was younger, but just gives you a little history. But most people say, what in the world are they talking about, Here I Raise My Ebenezer? Well, it's a stone of blessing.

So let's just remember it. Verse two says, hitherto the Lord has blessed me. And that's what they're saying. And thou has brought me to this place, but they were taken to defeat because of their sin. But now with the Lord's blessing, they were taken and raised up a stone of blessing.

So let's sing, Come Thou Fountain. I'll let you go back to verse first now.

Okay.

Verse C, sing. Call for songs of loudest praise. Song my praise. His name is there to lead to this place. Be thou exalted.

God’s Covenant Warning in 1 Kings 9

Gospel reading this morning is from First Kings chapter nine, verses one through nine. First Kings chapter nine, verses one through nine. And it came to pass when Solomon had finished building the house of the Lord and the King's house and all Solomon's desire, which he wanted to do, that the Lord appeared to Solomon the second time as he had appeared to him at Gibeon.

And the Lord said to him, I have heard your prayer and your supplication that you have made before me. I have consecrated this house, which you have built to put my name there forever and my eyes and my heart will be there perpetually.

Now, if you walk before me as your father, David, walked in integrity of heart and in uprightness to do according to all that I have commanded you. And if you keep my statutes and my judgments, then I will establish the throne of your kingdom over Israel forever.

As I promised David, your father, saying you shall not fail to have a man on the throne of Israel. But if you or your sons at all turn from following me and do not keep my commandments and my statutes, which I've set before you, but go and serve other gods and worship them, then I will cut off Israel from the land, which I've given them.

And this house, which I've consecrated for my name, I will cast out of my sight. Israel will be a proverb and a byword among all peoples. And as for this house, which is exalted, everyone who passes by it will be astonished and will hiss and say, why has the Lord done this to this land and to this house?

Then they will answer, because they forsook the Lord, their God, who brought their fathers out of the land of Egypt and have embraced other gods and worshiped and serve them. Therefore, the Lord has brought all this calamity on them.

May the Lord bless the reading and hearing of his holy word.

Well, praise the Lord.

Great to be here, isn't it? All right, well, let's go to the Lord in prayer. Father God, how thankful we are that we can come to you. Lord, that we can bow our heart. We can call out to you. We can cry out to you and know God that you hear us.

We don't have to be ashamed because of Jesus Christ. We can come boldly before your throne of grace, Father. And that is a humbling thought, that no matter what's going on, no matter our history, once we have put faith in Jesus Christ, his finished work on the cross of Calvary, that we can gather together.

And Father, we can come to you with a clear conscience, God, and with the blood of Jesus Christ that it covers forever all of our sin, God. Lord, we think of the sins of the United States of America, God.

We think of the principle of reaping and sowing so clearly laid out in the word. And we, as a country, Father, are indeed reaping what we've sown. We see it all around us, God. We see it, Father God, in virtually any news source, what's going on.

And knowing, God, because of our blasphemy, because of our abominable sins as a country, Father, we indeed deserve what we are getting right now. We ask you, Father God, that Christians might rise up, that Christians might band together to pray, to pray, God, for your mercy upon our land, to pray for the salvation of our elected officials, God.

God, the only king that is gonna solve the problems of this world and of our country is King Jesus. It is the gospel that is gonna solve what's going on in our country, Father, nothing else. We've tried everything, more laws.

You know, God, you know the things that have gone on in this country that have tried to turn back what's happening. And, Father, the only thing that will ever do that is King Jesus. So, Lord, we pray for families that are represented here.

We think of people in our state and around the country that are being so severely impacted as the government again tries to control something, Father, that is so controversial and destroying literally tens of millions of people's lives, God.

Fried chicken restaurants that have been open for 105 years closing. It's just sobering, God. And we, Father, as Christians, we need to be praying for this country. We need to be on our knees, God, pleading that you might be graceful and merciful, God, unto us.

We pray for churches around the country, Father, that are struggling with yet another lockdown, that you would give them wisdom in how they should respond to this, God. I'm thankful, so thankful, for the folks that are here this morning.

What a blessing to come in and see the light in believers' faces, God, and to smile, even in some cases to hug. How wonderful that is. So we're thankful for this day of worship. We're thankful that we can exalt you, that we can praise you, that we can rest in you.

We can trust you through all these things. We commit to now. And, Lord, we think of the Sherman's and other families, Father, that in various ways, with health issues and different struggles, God, that your grace that is sufficient would be poured out upon them, Father, as they bear up under these trials.

And we give you praise, we give you honor, we give you glory, in Jesus' name, amen.

As I drive around, a lot of times I listen to preachers on the radio, and I was listening to one this week that talked about the phrase, before salvation, you were without hope. And he went into a very long definition of what it is like to be without hope.

There's no hope of a rescue. There's no hope of being, we think about people in floods and in storms, and the men in battle who've been isolated, and with no hope of anybody coming to rescue them. But he was talking about the fact that we, before Christ and before his salvation, were without hope.

But we have hope. If in this life only we have hope, we're most miserable, but we have hope. So stand together if we sing about the Lord's salvation that gives us that hope. Thank you, and you may be seated.

Solomon’s Rise, Compromise, and Drift Toward Idolatry

Well, open your Bibles, please, to 1 Kings. 1 Kings chapter 16 is where we're gonna start,.

And then we'll go back.

So for many, many years, we went to Los Angeles a lot, because that's where a lot of Janet's family, my wife, is from. And one particular year, we had this big get-together, and they had, I don't know whether they reserved a bunch of seats, but it was at a buffet, a Chinese buffet.

Now, I've been to a few of those. I'm sure you have, too. But I walked into this place, and about the only thing I could think of is, this has to be the Disneyland of buffets. I have never in my life, literally, seen anything quite like it.

It stretched the entire length of the restaurant. And you could get seafood, you could get, I mean, at a Chinese buffet, you could get Mexican, you could get fried chicken, you could get, basically, I have never in my life, literally, seen anything like it.

I've been to some big buffets. I've never, it was just absolutely amazing. And that's kind of how I feel, because you're only gonna get one trip to the buffet today. First Kings is so rich, and has so much going on, and it was all I could do to fit it into one Sunday, okay?

So I just wanna give you fair warning, that all we're doing, if you read the book, if you're familiar with it all, all we're doing is we're standing at the scenic overlook, and all we're gonna be able to see are the tips of the mountains, okay?

The valleys of the rich, fertile trues, we're gonna have to skip many of them, okay? So will you forgive me in advance? You pay all this money to go to a buffet, and you only get one trip, okay? But that is, hopefully you have a couple of weeks.

Next week, God willing, I'm gonna preach on Thanksgiving.

I haven't picked a text yet.

And then the following week, we're out of town, and we have a wonderful man that's been an elder in many churches. I can't wait to hear his message. He'll be here in my steed. Barb is gonna be playing that Sunday, God willing.

We'll be driving back to start school the next day. So I'm very thankful, and you're gonna wanna try to read 1 Kings. It's 23 chapters. It's not long chapters, but it's so rich. So before we go any further, do you have your sermon notes out?

There's two sides to it, and I'll pray. Father God, we come to you now in Jesus' name, and we thank you so much for this opportunity to open the incredible, rich book that is your word, your holy, inspired, infallible word.

And God, we know that it is the Holy Spirit that is ultimately our teacher. That is his ministry, his role in our life is to comfort and to teach and to show us the truths of the gospel and of your word.

So we commit this now to you, the Holy Spirit's care over this message, and that you'd give us the faith and the grace, Father, to hear what you might have us to hear today, that we might truly live it out as we leave this place.

We pray in Jesus' name, amen?

Amen.

Now, I think we would all agree that 2020 has been a difficult and a challenging year for many people. And when I see the kinds of things that are going on, it's just sometimes overwhelming. The growth in evil and immorality that we're experiencing as a country, innocent people being knocked over, hit from behind and kicked on the ground.

And if we were an Israelite living in the years towards the end of Solomon's reign and the kings that follow him, we might say the same kind of thing about the kind of spiritual darkness that existed in a country that was set apart for God.

See, we live in a mixed race country, right? We have believers, we have Christians, we have Mormons, we have everything, don't we, right? We have unbelievers, we have atheists, but we're talking about an area in the world.

And sometimes we lose this perspective when we're in the Old Testament. We're talking about an area of the world that would be like a church, set apart, a whole country. We had the period of judges, right?

And then we move into the period of Samuel the prophet, the last judge, the first of many prophets. And then you have King Saul, then you have King David, then you have his son Solomon, then you have his son Rehoboam, and you have the church, you have the nation of Israel, the people of God that love Him with their whole heart, with all their mind, with all their strength, literally fractured in half and split apart, 10 tribes to the north, two tribes to the south, under Rehoboam's leadership.

A united kingdom, and if you look at your notes, this is the two parts of first king, the united kingdom and a divided kingdom. So in the history of God's chosen people, remember, we're talking about not an eclectic group of people, we're talking about people that were Abraham's descendants.

Are you tracking with me? We're talking about people that would say, I am a Christian, I'm a believer, okay? And you have King Saul as the first king over this group, when God was saying, I wanna be your king, right?

But give us this king. Then you have David, a man after God's own heart. And then just as he dies, he anoints and calls Solomon to be king. Then Solomon dies, and his son Rehoboam becomes king. And under the rule of Rehoboam, so three monarchies, the kingdom, these special God's people that love one another and love the Lord and live in such a way that is so different from everybody else that everybody looks at them and says, I wanna be like that, I want that God, I don't want this pagan God anymore.

They split apart. 10 tribes to the north, two tribes to the south, Benjamin and Judah. And once the kingdom divides, it's all downhill from there even faster and more. You can look on the back of your notes and see the list of kings.

And progressively, those kings get worse and worse. Israel, the northern 10 tribes never have a good king.

Never.

They are as idolatrous as they come and they get worse and worse and worse. And then you come to 1 Kings chapter 16, verse 30. You come to King Ahab, he's about in the middle of the list of the northern kings.

And verse 30 says, now Ahab, the son of Omri, did evil in the sight of the Lord more than all who were before him. Are you like me? Are you asking yourself, can it get any worse? Anybody saying that? When they passed the legalization of men marrying men and women marrying women, did you say to yourself, could it get any worse?

And then the governor recently signed in a law that's of this state where men who engage in horrific acts with children can no longer be called pedophile and be put on a sex registry. What's next? You get to Ahab and you say, what?

You get to Rehoboam, right? And you say, what could happen? Solomon starts great, ends bad. And you go, how could it get any worse? And it just keeps getting worse and worse and worse.

Look at verse 33.

Ahab made a wooden image. Ahab did more to provoke the Lord God of Israel to anger than all the kings of Israel who were before him. And wait till we get to the later kings. Because as you read through the book, it gets worse.

So if you look at your notes, you'll see that 1 Kings is divided into two parts. The first half mainly deals with the reign of Solomon. The kingdom is still united. He's David's son. And then the second half records the history of the subsequent breakup and shattering of this special people.

So the division, so division. Division of the most privileged people on the planet for some 2 ,000 years of human history. Division between a race of people, specifically and especially chosen by God to show forth the light of his goodness and love and mercy to the rest of world.

And instead of light themselves, instead of being light, they were descending into ever-increasing darkness and not the kind of darkness that engulfs us when we go down into a cave, right? When you go down into caves and there's no light and it gets darker and darker and you're looking up.

We're not talking about that. We're talking about spiritual darkness that was literally suffocating the spiritual life out of Israel that eventually split them apart at the seams. So we have Saul, then David, then Solomon.

Solomon ends up with a divided heart. He's half-hearted in his devotion to the Lord, eventually winding up. I don't get this at all. Some, you know, I mean, I don't get this at all. I don't think any of us can get it.

700 wives? How are you gonna do that?

300 concubines?

I mean, that's 1 ,000 ladies to take care of.

Come on.

And riches, riches that people can only dream about. Now, you remember the message of judges? Imperfect judges pointing to what? The perfect judge. First Samuel, God should be king, and men, you love me, right?

God should be king and men should lead, right? Second Samuel, know the value of a broken and contrite heart. First Kings, declining kings pointing to the perfect king. Remember that when you read through this book.

Declining kings pointing to the perfect king. First Kings, God's people in decline with ever-increasing darkness and ever-increasing disobedience with the record of imperfect kings beginning with Solomon and those imperfect kings getting worse and worse and more and more disobedient to God.

And this account, this record of decline and imperfect kings is given us in order to point us to the perfect king who will never let anyone down, who will never serve God with half of a heart. And that king is who?

King Jesus.

So we're in a river, we're in a kayak,.

The rapids are fast and they're all pointing and we're all headed towards King Jesus. That's where this is all going, okay? In the same way that Israel's kings were imperfect and failed to lead God's people as they were instructed.

All of these things in the same way that the sacrifices never could make full payment for people's sin, right? All of this is pointing to the perfect lamb, the perfect king that would take away the sins of the world.

So back in chapter two. As I said, there's so much. We're just at the scenic overlook. I'm gonna take you and point out the mountaintops that we see. 1 Kings is a two-part book. It's set during Israel's last years as a United Kingdom and part one, chapters one through 11, Israel united, Israel united.

So chapters one and two is a record of David's final days. King David, a man after God's own heart. It records his selection of Solomon to succeed him as king. It chronicles his death and then it gives this record beginning in chapter one, verse 10.

It gives this record of Solomon's rise to power. Verse 10 says, I'm sorry, chapter two, verse 10. So David rested with his fathers and was buried in the city of David. The period that David reigned over Israel was 40 years.

Seven years he reigned in Hebron, remember that? We talked about that, the tabernacle was there. And in Jerusalem, he reigned 33 years. Then Solomon sat on the throne of his father David and his kingdom was firmly established.

And by the way, what's interesting is you find out that his kingdom becomes firmly established by his killing any of his detractors. His dad, David said, well, this one was trouble, this one was trouble, so you know what Solomon does?

Solomon goes out and has him killed. All right, so his power is solidified. So second, in the first chapters of the book, you read about very positive aspects of Solomon's character and there is a verse you might wanna mark in your Bibles because it is really sort of the on-ramp to a huge lesson in this book.

And that's in chapter three, verse three. Look carefully at this verse. Solomon loved the Lord, that's what we should do, right? Come on, church, right?

Right, loved the Lord.

Walking in the statutes of his father David, which would be what? The law, God's ways, right? Shouldn't we all be doing that?

Oops.

Except, your translation might have the word but, that he sacrificed and burned incense at the high places. Any problems?

Come on, he loved the Lord, right?

Amen, let's do it. He walked in the statutes of his father David,.

That's what we wanna do, right?

Oops, oops.

But we dissipate in this one area by sacrificing and offering pagan worship. In a word, what is that word? If you wanna make a mental note, the word is called compromise. The word is called being half-hearted.

The word is not loving the Lord your God with all of your heart, all of your soul, all of your strength, just what suits you. But on the positive side of the ledger, you come to verse five. At Gibeon, the Lord appeared to Solomon in a dream by night and God said, ask, what shall I give you?

Now, I don't know about you, I cannot read that verse ever in however many years it's been. Can you imagine God visiting you right here? Because Gibeon was where he worshiped. Can you imagine God visiting you right here this morning and saying, ask anything you want of me and I'll give it to you?

What's the first thing that comes to your mind? Some of you say, a new body.

Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.

This one's starting to hurt. Some of you might say, man, I could really use 10, 15 grand. Well, since it's anything, how about a million? Right, why not? What does Solomon say? He doesn't ask for riches.

He doesn't ask for a beautiful wife. He doesn't ask for a house. He asks for wisdom to rule over God's people. By the way, to give you a perspective, Solomon is probably in his late teens when he takes the throne.

So this is early in his life. So in chapter four, we learn a little bit about Solomon's reputation he had gained with the people of Israel and those outside of Israel. You can look at chapter five. When you read that, you come to this incredible record of Solomon as a builder.

Remember, Solomon, not David, was chosen by God to build Israel's first temple. He also built palaces. He built homes for his wives.

Ha, ha, ha, ha.

I guess so, 700. And he built storehouses for his riches. So the first half of 1 Kings records this story of Solomon's rise to power and then his drifting away from the Lord. By the way, which started back where?

In chapter three, where he loved the Lord, he obeyed the commands, but he also, what? On the side was offering sacrifices over here, right? Compromise. So in chapter nine is where this descent, this drift away from God, where Solomon's love for God begins to grow colder and colder and colder.

He drifts further and further away from the Lord, and there's a very hard but helpful lesson to consider. When we're trying to think, okay, how do I apply what happened to Solomon, how he started so good, how he actually had such a heart for God that when God says, ask me for anything, the one thing he asked for is wisdom to rule his people, God's people, right?

How does he get from there to 700 wives, 300 concubines, and the wealthiest man probably that ever lived makes Bill Gates look like a pauper? Here it is. I don't know if I put it in your notes. I don't think I had room.

Declining devotion to God doesn't happen overnight. It's a process. Declining devotion to God doesn't happen overnight. It is a process. Like when we explore a cave and we slowly work our way down into the depths of the cave, descending into spiritual darkness is a process.

Solomon did not wake up one day with 700 wives and 300 concubines. Okay, do you understand that? You don't just go to bed one night and wake up the next day with 700 wives and 300 concubines. He didn't go out to his horse stables one day and find thousands of horses.

Oh, wow, look at this.

Santa was good.

By the way, all of this in Deuteronomy, kings were not to do. Kings were to be monogamous. One wife from Israel, not from Egypt. These things take time. Solomon did not wake up one day in grievous disobedience to the Lord.

It was a process. And what we need to understand is that God's people today, unfortunately, we are prone to the very same process. Solomon drifted further and further away from this wholehearted devotion of the Lord incrementally, a little at a time, step by step.

His disobedience and the consequence of that disobedience was this ongoing process in spite of the profound ways in which God warned him. And if you look at chapter 9, where Dave, so actually very well read, you have this incredible warning.

I've heard your prayer, verse 3, that you have made before me. I have consecrated this house. Then verse 4, if you walk before me as your father David walked, in the integrity of heart and in uprightness to do according to all that I have commanded you, and if you keep my statutes and my judgments, then this is what I'm going to do.

Verse 6, but if you or your sons at all turning from following me and do not keep my commandments and my statutes, which I have said before you, but go and serve other gods and worship them. By the way, he was already doing that.

Did you hear what I just said? He was already doing that with the high places. He was already doing that with all the wives. See, we always think of idols as little wooden statutes, and we come to church and we go, I'm not idolatrous.

Well, let me tell you something. Idols today are not little statues. They could be a job. They could be a car. They could be a bank account. They could be a 401k. They could be a lot of things. I know somebody once, their idol was lots of children.

I mean, I'm all for it, right? My kids are like, I wish we had brothers, like four or five of them. Yeah, four or five.

No more.

I will, verse 7, cut off Israel from the land, which I have given them, and this house, which I have consecrated for my name, I will cast out of my sight. Israel will be a proverb and a byword among the peoples.

Can you imagine getting a warning like that from God,.

Personally?

You just did, right? This is the Word of God, living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, able to judge the thoughts and the intentions of our heart, even down to the dividing of the marrow.

This is for us. God isn't talking to us audibly today. He talks to us here. Got it?

Are we, amen and amen?

Verse 24.

Look at this. Look at this.

Just, what, 10 verses later? But Pharaoh's daughter came up from the city of David to her house, which Solomon had built for her. Whoops.

A foreign wife?

In addition to multiple wives, a foreign wife was specifically prohibited by God, and it wasn't because God didn't want the king to be happy, because God told in Deuteronomy this all Knowing God, he knew what a foreign wife, a wife not an Israelite, could and would do to a man.

Over time, Solomon actually breaks every single command given in Deuteronomy 17 for kings. How about that? Why does God want Christians to be equally yoked? Marry a Christian. Marry a solid Christian.

Amen?

Now, you're not going to find a perfect wife or husband, because as soon as you find them, right? Come on. You're not going to find a perfect church, because as soon as you find it, guess what?

You're there.

You like that? Compromise, material prosperity, horses, gold, silver, 700 wives, 300 concubines, all of this toxic mixture turned Solomon's heart away from his devotion to God to a devotion to idols and other gods, and you come to chapter 11, verse 41, and you come to the end of Solomon's life.

Now, the rest of the Acts of Solomon, all that he did, and his wisdom, are they not written in the book of the Acts of Solomon? And the period that Solomon reigned in Jerusalem over all of Israel was 40 years.

Then Solomon rested with his fathers and was buried in the city of his David, and Rehoboam, his son, reigned in his place. So that's the first half of 1 Kings, 1 Kings, Solomon. Remember, under his leadership, Israel's spiritual temperature declines further on its way down to its fall, and when we get to 2 Kings, which I'm not sure when, because we got Christmas coming, and I have the elders' blessing to do a couple of messages on the virgin birth of Christ, which I'm looking forward to doing some Christmas messages.

I mean, we need to be celebrating the birth of Christ. We need to be celebrating the gospel. Every time I study for one of these messages, I mean, what a downer this book is. Man, beat myself up some more.

2 Kings is worse. Decline, ever-increasing darkness, until the United Kingdom rips apart and divides 10 tribes to the north and two tribes to the south, and that's where chapter 12 picks up. The second half is devoted to the divided kingdom.

The nation of Israel, and I can't emphasize this enough, because you get a disconnect. You think, oh, this country, these people, they are God's covenant chosen people like the church is today. So you have to relate the Old Testament in the context of the church,.

How we are as believers.

In order to get traction in the Old Testament, you've got to make that connection, okay?

You have to.

They're not Christians in the sense that we are because they are looking forward to Christ, right? Abraham is looking forward to Christ. By faith, looking forward to Christ, okay? They were always looking forward to, the true believers in Israel were always looking forward to Christ, to the Messiah by faith, and God saved them that way the same way He saves us,.

All right?

But to get the traction of what in the world is going on here, you've got to understand He's dealing with this set-apart covenant people that we are to be. We are to be light and salt like they were to be light and salt.

Do you understand that? That's what Jesus is talking about in the Sermon on the Mount. So we have this special chosen people. They're intended to be light in a dark world. They're split apart at the seams, and it's right here as we wade into the streams in terms of trying to understand the Bible that things all of a sudden, people just get confused.

I can deal with Solomon. I get it. But now when we get to chapter 12 and you start looking at all the kings, look at your notes. Look at all the kings underneath Rehoboam for Judah, and look at all the kings for the northern 10 tribes, Israel.

Look at all those kings.

And you start reading into this section, you get into 2 Kings, and you're like,.

Who's what?

Jeroboam this, blah, blah, blah, Zechariah, blah, blah.

I thought he was a prophet.

And pretty soon you just get so confused, and all of a sudden the country of Israel is now just the northern 10 tribes.

Called Israel.

You can get confused. One moment when you read 12 through the end of this book, and you get to 2 Kings, one minute God is referring to Judah the tribe, the tribe, one of the 12 tribes, and literally three verses later he might be referring to Judah the southern kingdom.

And you're just sitting there shaking your head going, what in the world is going on? So there is a good way to think about this, okay? There's four key parts,.

Four key figures.

In this latter part of Israel's history. The first one is King Rehoboam. King Rehoboam. He is the first ruler of the southern kingdom, and he's dealt with in chapter 12 through chapter 15. And one of the key events in Rehoboam's reign is a political decision that he makes almost soon as he become king.

He basically ignores the advice and counsel of the elders of Israel that lived during Solomon's reign, regarding the effects of Solomon's heavy tax burden on the people. And instead, he listens to the advice of his young friends, and he taxes them even more than his father taxed them.