This message is a concluding word of the life-study of the history of the kings among Israel.
There were altogether forty-one kings in the history of Israel. The first three, Saul, David, and Solomon, reigned over the entire people of Israel. Nineteen kings, from Rehoboam to Zedekiah, reigned over Judah in the south, and nineteen, from Jeroboam to Hoshea, reigned over Israel in the north.
Among these forty-one kings, nine, including David, were comparatively good in the eyes of God. Thirty, including Saul, were evil in the sight of God. Two, Solomon and Jehu, were partly good and partly evil.
In Saul's behavior, his performed humility in pretense, his self-interest seeking, and his ambition for the kingship not only for himself but also for his descendants were all exposed and showed that he was not building the kingdom of God but a monarchy for himself and his descendants. This seduced him to forget about God and to contact a medium, a witch, concerning his fate.
David behaved himself as a man according to God's heart for God's delight, yet he committed an awful sin in indulging himself in sexual lust, offending God to the uttermost, so that in His Holy Word this evil is mentioned a few times (1 Kings 15:5; Matt. 1:6). He made himself a very negative example in indulging in lust and in marrying a Gentile wife. This first influenced Solomon in his indulging of lust and in the taking of heathen women as his wives, which seduced him into idolatry, causing the loss of a great part of David's God-given kingdom, and continually influenced most of the kings in the indulgence of lust and in idolatry.
Solomon, on the one hand, was very good in expressing the wisdom of God and in building the temple for God, but, on the other hand, he was evil in the indulgence of lust, taking seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines, most of whom were heathen, and in idolatry in building high places with temples of idol worship for many heathen idols.
Of the remaining thirty-eight kings, only eight were comparatively good. Actually, however, they still were self-seeking and self-glorying, somewhat considering the kingdom of God among them something of their monarchies, not knowing God according to the way ordained by God, not denying themselves, their natural man, to live a life and carry out a career absolutely by the Spirit of God. Twenty-nine kings, among whom Jeroboam, Ahab, and Manasseh were the worst, were totally evil in such matters as rebelling, murdering, usurping the throne, and shedding the blood of the innocent for the building of their monarchies without any care for the kingdom of God on the earth. One king, Jehu, was evil as well as good.
The way in which these forty-one kings had their being, how they behaved, lived, moved, and acted in their daily living, activities, and careers, paints a full picture of how the elect of God could partake of the God-promised and God-given good land and enjoy all its rights that they could become God's kingdom on the earth usurped by His enemy Satan. This typifies and signifies how we can partake of the all- inclusive Christ as the portion ordained by God for us and enjoy all the rights in Christ assigned to us by God that we, the people chosen and redeemed by God, can become God's kingdom in Christ and with Christ on the earth usurped by the evil one, God's enemy Satan.
The root of the evil of the evil kings, like that of the evil of the people of Israel, was their forsaking the very God as the fountain of living waters and their turning away to the pagan idols as broken cisterns that hold no water (Jer. 2:13). These two evils drowned them in the death waters of idolatry, of the indulgence of lusts, and of injustice in shedding the blood of the innocent. Their evils offended their God to such an extent that He would not turn His anger from them but cast them off, first into the hands of the Assyrians and then into the hands of the Babylonians, who destroyed and burned the holy temple and the holy city, carried away into captivity the holy people to a pagan land of idol worship, and desolated the holy land for seventy years. Thus, they, as God's elect, lost the enjoyment of the God-given good land and, instead of remaining the citizens of God's kingdom in the holy land, they became captives in a heathen land.
The tragic result of such a pitiful history of the kings among God's chosen and blessed elect should be a serious warning to us, God's elect in the New Testament age, and should indicate to us how sober we should be to take heed to the particular points of each case. Just to be one who is according to God's heart, like David, and just to be partly right and good in the eyes of God, like some honest Christians, do not qualify us to partake of Christ in full and to enjoy all the rights in Him that we may become adequately the church as the Body of Christ and as the kingdom of God and of Christ. Conformity to Christ's death by the power of His resurrection is required of us, the New Testament overcomers, that we may die to ourselves, our natural man, and live to God in resurrection. A life of living Christ, magnifying Christ, and moving and acting with Christ by the bountiful supply of the all-inclusive, life-giving Spirit, doing everything in and according to the Spirit, is indispensable for us, God's New Testament seekers, to be winners in the racecourse of the divine life that we may fully enjoy Christ as the God-given good land in the church age and be gloriously rewarded to partake of Christ, in the fullest sense, in the kingdom age.
Every king should have had a thorough realization that they should be kings who did not rule a nation for their own interest and prosperity but ruled for God's eternal economy that God could have a nation on the earth to keep the land of Immanuel (Isa. 8:8) for Christ's reign and a people for a lineage of the genealogy to bring Christ to the earth. For this purpose they had to be a Nazarite to take God as their Head, their authority, and submit themselves to Him as His servants, and abandon all the pleasures (wines) of the world. But all the kings failed God in this, including David, the best one among them. Thus, they did not fulfill God's purpose for His economy. Rather, they lost their reign in God's kingdom, which is the top portion of the enjoyment of the good land (the all-inclusive Christ).
To be a king among God's people is to be the deputy authority of God on the earth. The deputy authority of God on the earth is composed of God's oracle, the speaking of God, and God's authority, the ruling of God. Both items were entrusted to the priesthood, as in Moses, who was represented by Aaron the high priest. When the Aaronic priesthood started to wane, God raised up Samuel to speak for Him as a prophet (1 Sam. 3:19-21), and Samuel brought in the kingship for God's authority (16:1-3). The kingship among all the kings of Israel was always regulated by the prophets, such as David by Nathan (2 Sam. 12), Ahab by Elijah (1 Kings 18), and Jehoram by Elisha (2 Kings 3), and was strengthened by the prophets, such as Hezekiah by Isaiah (2 Kings 18—20) and other kings by Jeremiah (Jer. 1:1-3). After the captivity of Israel due to the kings' failures, it was through the prophet Daniel's prayer that the captivity was returned (Dan. 6:10; 9:15-25).
We need to realize that these three classes of people — the priests, the kings, and the prophets — are the structure of the entire Old Testament. In a very real sense, the Old Testament is a history of the priests, the kings, and the prophets. God's deputy authority is composed of the priesthood and the kingship. However, both the priesthood and the kingship became a failure, and the prophets came in to strengthen, regulate, instruct, help, and support the weakened kingship.
The kings should always go along with God's oracle, that is, go along with the priests. Then God's deputy authority will be maintained on earth by the priests speaking as His oracle and by the kings ruling as His authority in His kingdom. These are basic principles for our knowing the Old Testament.
