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Dr. Manny Arango
Hey, Bible nerds. This is Dr. Manny Arango and I'm your host for the Bible department podcast powered by Arma. This podcast follows a Bible reading plan we created to help you read the entire Bible in a year. You can head to the show notes or thebibledepartment.com to download our reading plan and join the Journey family. Welcome to day 168. We're covering two chapters of kings. Today we're gonna ch cover chapter 15 and 16. Hey, if you've done the reading, everything's gonna make perfect sense. You got context for everything that we're gonna talk about. If you haven't done the reading, then you wanna make sure that you go ahead and do the reading. Before we jump into day one 68, we got a lot of action. All right, so what we have kind of before us, just wanna immediately move into context clues. I'm gonna have a lot of nerdy nuggets for you today. We have behind us King Jeroboam in the north in Israel, King Rehoboam in the south in Judah, okay? And once we cross the threshold from Jeroboam and Rehoboam, we are going to have three kings mentioned just in this next little chunk of scripture. Three kings of Judah are gonna be mentioned in. And six kings of Israel are about to get mentioned. And we're gonna probably cheat just a little bit and dip into chapter 17. Just a little. Okay, Just a little. So if you're looking at chapters 15 to 17, then we've got three kings of Judah and six kings of Israel. Immediately you're able to see, hey, while the second king of Judah that we're gonna talk about, his name is Asa. Because he's righteous, God's gonna bless him with a long. So just while King Asa is king in Judah, we're going to get multiple kings in Israel. So there's just going to be turmoil in Israel because the kings are absolutely evil. Let me tell you right now who the kings are, okay? The first king that we're going to talk about in Judah, okay? So the thing that you need to know about the Book of Kings is Kings is going to tell you who's reigning in Judah, who's reigning in Israel, who's reigning in Judah, who's reigning in Israel. So you have to keep track of. Is this part of the story happening in Israel or is this part of the story happening in Judah? Like, let's say Elijah? Elijah is not prophesying to any southern kings of Judah, okay? Elijah is only prophesying to northern kings of Israel. So can I give you the kings that we're going to talk about in Judah? We're going to have Abijah, who's evil, we're going to have Asa, who's good. And then the third king is just going to get mentioned. I mean, no information on him. He's just going to get mentioned. And his name is Jehoshaphat. Okay? So we're going to have three kings in the south, Abijah, Asa, and Jehoshaphat. And in terms of these chapters of text, King Asa is going to dominate the text. Okay. In the north, we're going to have. This is after Jeroboam, we're going to have Nadab, Baasha, Elah, Zimri, Omri. And then the most evil of the kings is going to be Ahab. So I want to tell you about a resource that we created, okay, that the Arma courses team created. And this is just. You can get this via PDF. I just printed it out because it makes it really, really easy. Designed pretty well. What it is, is it is a list of all the kings in Judah, okay? So this is a page of just the kings of Judah, okay, when they reigned and what scripture verses their stories are found in, and whether or not they were good or evil. And then the same thing for the kings of Israel, okay, a whole list of their names, the dates when they reigned, and then where you can find the story in the biblical picture. And then we made this cool little tree where you can see on this side are all the kings of Judah. And what you can see is that it's a straight line of succession because God has chosen to be faithful to the house of David. So all of the kings of Judah are descendants of David. But you're gonna see on this side is the kings of Israel are not all gonna be of the house of Jeroboam. And Jeroboam's children are not gonna throw continue to succeed him. But certain houses are gonna get killed off and then other people are gonna take over. It is a whole wild mess over here on this side of the chart. So you can get this entire resource by finding me on Instagram and Dming me the word idol. Okay, Just find me on Instagram, Annie Arango, and just send me a DM with the word idol. Idol. Don't put anything else. Don't say idol, exclamation point. Don't say, hey, it's the word idol. Just text the word idol and you can get access to that PDF. I think it's really, really helpful. It's a great summary, really, of the entire books of first and second kings. All right, let's get into some nerdy nuggets. Let's do it. First thing that we need to kind of talk about is Asa. Okay? Asa's a great king, but he's gonna make one mistake, and that one mistake is actually gonna cost him a consequence. And God is gonna send a disease to his feet. Now, here's the mistake that he's gonna make. He actually puts a bunch of silver and gold in the temple, but then he needs to use that silver and gold to essentially form a treaty with a foreign power. And he used that silver and gold to essentially outbid the kingdoms of Israel because set up a treaty with a foreign country. But Asa wants that treaty, and so he outbids him. He takes the silver and gold out of the temple, he sends it off to this foreign king. He's a phenomenal king. He's honestly a great king. We would actually go thumbs up. He's not evil. He's good. Okay? So much so that he removes his grandmother from power because she's an idol worshiper. But the one issue is this treaty that he makes with a foreign power, and because of it, God is going to send a disease in his feet. Now, we may think to ourselves, what's the big deal, man? We got bunions or athlete's foot or corns or whatever. Like, that's not that big of a deal. But in the ancient world, kings, a part of their authority was their ability to walk. A part of their authority was their ability to walk and govern their land. And this is a world where people wear sandals, okay? This is not a world where you can just get some shoes and nobody knows that you have a disease in your feet. There's not a world where there's wheelchairs. Even Franklin Delano Roosevelt, fdr, one of the most famous presidents in American history, I'm pretty sure, had, like, polio and couldn't. Was kind of paralyzed, like, later on in his presidency. And the American public never knew when a leader has some kind of ailment, disease, disability, it's actually a. It's a big deal. It may even. Even fdr, we're talking modern society, and nobody knew, obviously. You know, television's not huge. I mean, FDR was big on radio. And so just to put this in comparison, the disease in his feet, it's a throwaway line. You'll pass by it if you're not paying attention. It is an indictment on Asa. And the mistake that he makes. All right, Now Baasha. Baasha is appointed, so now we're switching from Judah, going to Israel. Baasha is going to fulfill a prophecy, okay? The text tells that he's going to fulfill a prophecy and he is going to completely kill a. The king who's Nadab and their whole family. Which is normal in secular society for a king to completely kill any competitors to the throne. So anyone who could lay claim to the throne would die. And he's fulfilling prophecy. However, God still punishes him for doing it. Because just because you're fulfilling a prophecy does not mean that you get a pass on doing things that are immoral or sinful or wrong. So let's think about it. It was prophesied that someone would betray Jesus, but it doesn't have to be Judas, okay? It's prophesied that Jeroboam's whole line is gonna die off. But it doesn't have to be Baasha. You don't take it upon yourself to fulfill a prophecy. A foreign king could have killed everybody in Jeroboam's family line. It does not have to be Baasha. So again, a prophetic word from God does not give you license to do things that are not godly. And I mean, man, that could be a nerdy nugget and a timeless truth. But let's keep moving if maybe you're confused about that, like, why is Baasha judged by God when he's doing something that fulfills a prophecy by God. Well, just because God prophesied that it would happen doesn't mean that you have to do it. Just because God prophesied that somebody's gonna betray Jesus doesn't mean that. If I'm Judas, I'm like, yeah, man, somebody's gotta do it. May as well be me. Like, that's. That's not how this works. Okay? So I wanna make everyone aware that when the Bible talks about prophecy, that's not just like, fatalism. We don't fall into, oh, well, God said it's gonna happen. So I may as well take advantage of the fact that God said it's gonna happen. That's not the way that we think about human free will is still at play. And Baasha is killing Jeroboam's family for political gain. He's doing that for himself, not a good king. He's evil, and he's doing it for selfish reasons. Okay? Next thing I need you to see is that there's absolute turmoil in Israel. Okay? And there's now gonna be infighting between the nets to. Well, Elah's gonna rain, and then Zimri is only gonna rain for seven days. And. And Zimri and Omri are both military leaders. And Zimri is scared, actually, of Omri. And so he sets the palace that he's in on fire, which is. I mean, that's a way to go down, you know what I'm saying? I'm about to lose. So we. We going out with a bang. Now let's talk about Omri. A lot is not said about Omri in the Bible. Actually, what is said is that he's absolutely wicked. He actually marries his son Ahab. He allows his son Ahab to get married to a Phoenician princess whose name is Jezebel. Okay? Famous character in the Bible. We'll talk more about her name tomorrow. So Omri is a wicked king. But outside of the Bible, Omri is celebrated as an amazing king. He's celebrated as an amazing king of Israel because of all the economic and military advantage that he's able to constitute during his reign. So in extra biblical records, Omri is a legend. But in the biblical account, Omri's trash. Because God doesn't judge people based on secular standards. God judges people based on Deuteronomy, Deuteronomistic history standards. What does the book of Deuteronomy say a good king is supposed to be like? So according to secular standards, Omri is actually, like, well known outside of the Bible. The all types of extra biblical or secular sources actually considered Israel to be the kingdom of Omri. And so the dude's a legend outside of the Bible. But in the Bible, what do we know him as? Wicked. Wicked. So being creating a good economy for your country does not substitute the fact that you allow BAAL worship. And so for Yahweh, he just goes, nah, no thanks, Homie. You're wicked. I don't care how much wealth and military power you brought into the country, you're absolutely wicked. So let's keep going through some nerdy nuggets. One of the things that's gonna happen is Samaria is gonna become the capital of Israel, and that's gonna be a permanent thing all the way into the New Testament. Samaria is gonna be the capital until. Well, in the New Testament, Samaria is more of a region, but that's getting too far into the weeds. Just know that the capital is moved, and it will remain Samaria until the Assyrians come in. At least until the Assyrians come in and ship everybody off. Okay. During this time, we also start to get a lot of migration from Israel into Judah. Just normal people just going, man, Israel's wicked. I'm a brother, I'm a sister, I'm kin of the same people group that live in Judah. I'm going to to escape to Judah. What? This would be the same as North Koreans escaping into South Korea. Ethnically, you're the same people. And so there's a lot of so, which obviously means Israel is going to get more and more and more wicked and Judah. So we begin to see this at the time of the exile. Almost 90% of Israel is going to get wiped out, like killed. And the majority of the people in Judah are not killed. They're exiled into Babylon. And so God deals more graciously with Judah than Israel, not just because of the covenant that he's made with David, but also because the population is actually more righteous. It's more righteous because it's gonna have better leaders, but it's also more righteous because people from the north are actually moving, migrating into the south, which is a big deal. That's not a small deal. Moving your home in the ancient world and migrating away from your ancestral lands in being a refugee or a foreigner is a big, big, big, big, big deal. We don't see that as a big deal in our modern Western culture, but that's a big deal in the time biblical times. Family, the wait is over. My brand new book, Crushing Chaos is out now and available everywhere. Books are sold. Literally. Today I walked into a Barnes and Noble and I signed a bunch of copies and at a physical location. So you can grab this book at a physical Barnes and Noble or you can go to a Books a Million or Amazon or anywhere books are sold and grab a copy. If you enjoy reading the Bible from an ancient perspective, if you understand that the beauty of scripture is actually knowing it in context, then you'll love this book. And if there's any chaos in your personal life, I think that reading the Bible from an ancient perspective can actually help to crush the chaos in your life. I think this book is going to be a New York Times bestseller. I really do. I think we wrote a good one. I think you should get a copy today. All right, back to the episode. What we are going to see is Omri was actually in like a 24 year siege of some territory that the Philistines had taken over. Land that was supposed to be God's, God's chosen people's land. But what ends up Happening is Omri has to leave that siege to go deal with Zimri. And as he does it, the Philistines take power, take control, and the Israelites are never able to get this land back. Which leads us conveniently into our timeless truth that when the people of God fight each other, it gives the enemy an opportunity to claim territory and to gain power. When Zimri and Omri are fighting each other, all it does is it opens the door for foreign enemies of God to claim territory and gain power. And that is a timeless truth, that when Christians fight each other, that when Jesus followers fight each other, all it does is it actually gives the end. It's a distraction. And I would contend that the Church of Jesus Christ, especially in America, I don't know what's going on around the world, is oftentimes distracted. We're so distracted by critiquing other churches and critiquing other Christians and fighting with each other that we just allow the enemy to have to have territory, whether that's in the secular industries or whether that's in entertainment or whether that's in politics or wherever those fears of influence are. We always abdicate space for the enemy to gain territory and to claim territory and gain power when Christians are distracted by infighting. And so that's exactly what happens. Zimri and Omri are fighting each other, and the Philistines are over here taking over power. And Zimri is only focused on his own personal victory. And because that's his focus, Omri has to come squash this rebellion. And this infighting gives the Philistines an open door over here to claim territory and to gain power. And that same dynamic happens every single day. So maybe, just maybe, get out of the comment section on Facebook, stop arguing with other Christians, and actually fulfill the Great Commission. Be salt, be light, be by this. People will know that you're my disciples. It's your love for one another. So whenever the siblings fight, it gives people who are not part of the family of God an opportunity to see us as weak and divided. And a house divided against itself will always fall. That's my timeless truth for the day. All right, guys, that's 1 Kings, chapter 15 and 16. I gave you as much context as I could, honestly. Like, I would say go ahead and DM me the word idol, because this list right here, this is going to give you all the context you need for the whole book of first and second Kings and a little bit of Chronicles as well. So go ahead DM me the word idol. We'll get this over to you in PDF form and you can print it out at home if you want and kind of follow along with the rest of the days. Uh, you got context clues, you got some nerdy nuggets. And like always, I left you with the timeless truth. I'll see you tomorrow. I'm proud of you. I love you, man. If you're on a streak, don't break it. If you're not on a streak, today's a good day to start one. I love you guys so much. I'll see you right here tomorrow for day 169 as we continue our trek through the book of first kings. Peace. Thanks so much for joining us on the Bible Department podcast. You can find us online and learn more about the show at the the bibledepartment.com and on Instagram hebible department. If you enjoyed this episode and want to dive deeper into the Bible, you can get free access to our library of courses@thebibledepartment.com we'll see you back here tomorrow.