2022 Writings Commentary (With Psalms)

2022 Joshua, Judges, Ruth & Psalms
(See below for 2022 Samuel, Kings, Chronicles and Psalms)

The writer of Hebrews in 10:35-36 says, “Therefore do not cast away your confidence, which has great reward. For you have need of endurance, so that after you have done the will of God, you may receive the promise…” And so as Joshua prepares to lead Israel into the promised land historically, setting up a prophetic template for the time Yeshua will bring His flock into the Promised Land, the Lord tells Him this: “Only be strong and very courageous; be careful to do according to all the law which Moses My servant commanded you; do not turn from it to the right or to the left, so that you may have success wherever you go. This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it; for then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have success. Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous! Do not tremble or be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.” (Joshua 1:7-9) This is our guide for what to do for endurance.

It is with confidence—boldness—that we ought to endure in the faith and trust in the LORD Yeshua, for “surely the Lord has given all the land into our Hands; moreover, all the inhabitants of the land have melted away before us.” (Joshua 2:24) The enemy cannot stand against the Lord God. God will utterly destroy the enemy that stands in front of His anointed Saints, but not without their full and unadulterated trust. Joshua was one of two who exhibited this trust when it mattered most 40 years earlier, and then they endured through the hardship and persecution of the wilderness to get to this point. This is the time of their reward—at the end. Now, God was prepared to lead the children of Israel into the promised land, and God selected Joshua for this honor. Caleb of Judah will also celebrate this great honor with him.

Like the Exodus Sea of Reeds crossing represented the baptism upon leaving the bondage of sin behind in Egypt, so too now does the Jordan crossing represent the transition from life in this world to life in the next, whether through resurrection after death or rapture “in the blink of an eye”—both on the Last Day. Joshua, our archetypal Yeshua, will lead the saints into the Promised Land. The Lord provides cover for those who obey Him and keep His commandments, fighting for them and ensuring their victory; there is victory alone in Messiah Yeshua. The Lord commands Joshua to mark Israel’s entry into the promised land by taking stones from the midst of the Jordan, which Israel crossed on dry land. This memorial would serve as a testimony of the miraculous victory the Lord performed for Israel that day in 1406 BC. The waters did not heap up until the Levitical priests stepped out into the water in faith. Likewise, the Lord will not part the barriers in our lives until we trust Him fully and walk out in faith, fully expecting the victory in Yeshua. Without a wholehearted trust in the Lord, and obedience to His commands, we will not make it into the Promised Land.

Joshua 5, Joshua 6, Joshua 7, Joshua 8, Psalm 69

Joshua obeyed the Law of Moses after his first two battles in Joshua 8, living out the allegory that God had commanded him to do through Moses. The experience became quite representative of what Joshua and all of Israel had just experienced. Half stood in front of Mt. Gerizim and recited the blessings of God’s law, while the other half stood in front of Mt. Ebal and recited the curses of God’s law, with a gulf in between, because there is no gray area with God. You are either with Him or against Him. Joshua read the entire law before the entire nation, men, women and children, both those native born to Israel and the strangers who lived among them, and not a single person who was with Israel, whether Jew or Gentile, was absent from that reading. The law applies to all who are grafted in to Israel through faith in the Messiah Yeshua, and upon accepting Yeshua as our Lord and Savior, we accept the blessings and the curses of the law, and only through our faith and obedience out of love for our Savior do we inherit the blessings. Rebellion brings about the curse.

The story of Jericho is representative of the end of days. Read Revelation 11:15-19, which indicates that after the seventh trumpet is blown, “The kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Messiah, and He shall reign forever and ever!” It is at this time that “the temple of God was opened in heaven, and the ark of His covenant was seen in His temple. And there were lightnings, noises, thunderings, an earthquake, and great hail.” This is when Jesus comes on the clouds of Heaven to bring His saints to safety in Heaven while the wrath of God is poured out on everyone who had denied the Christ. From this point forward, the Kingdom of Heaven is established for the Saints who keep the commandments of God and the faith of Yeshua. There is still more fighting that remains for the Lord, as he destroys his enemies and refreshes the whole earth so the New Heaven and New Earth can be established. It’s all right here in Joshua.

And so when the Lord commands Israel to march with seven priests with seven trumpets around the city once for six days, and then seven times on the seventh day, blowing the trumpets, it should not be lost on us that this is a prophetic template for the End of Days. Read Revelation in full; it’s all there. From Joshua 6: “So the people shouted, and priests blew the trumpets; and when the people heard the sound of the trumpet, the people shouted with a great shout and the wall fell down flat, so that the people went up into the city, every man straight ahead, and they took the city. They utterly destroyed everything in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox and sheep and donkey, with the edge of the sword.” The kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord.” Do you see it: “For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord.” (1 Thessalonians 4:16-17)

Remember our Lord instructs us to “remember Lot’s wife,” who looked back at the world, “Whoever seeks to save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will preserve it.” (Luke 17:32-33) Remember the parable of the wedding in Matthew 22, the man who got in without a wedding garment. The master said to Him: “Friend, how did you come in here without a wedding garment?” So in our story in Joshua 7 we find Achan, which means “one who troubles,” who disobeyed the commandments of God given to Moses. He’s in the promised land, but then he is caught looking back in sin with covetousness like Lot’s wife, which means that he was indeed in the wedding feast without a garment. What is the garment? It is God’s righteousness in Yeshua that covers us from the nakedness (shame) of our sin. This man Achan turned away from the commandments of God, from obedience, from trust in the Most High, and thus he was found at the wedding feast naked. For this, he was removed from the feast. As Yeshua reports: “Then the king told the servants, ‘Tie him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’…”

And so Achan, the one who troubles, the man without a garment, the one who looked back with covetousness, was stoned with stones until he died and a memorial was made above his body as a testimony to those who had obeyed, lest they consider disobeying unto death. “Then Joshua and all Israel with him, took Achan the son of Zerah, the silver, the mantle, the bar of gold, his sons, his daughters, his oxen, his donkeys, his sheep, his tent and all that belonged to him; and they brought them up to the valley of Achor. … And all Israel stoned them with stones; and they burned them with fire after they had stoned them with stones. They raised over him a great heap of stones that stands to this day, and the Lord turned from the fierceness of His anger.“ Revelation 14:9-11 says “If anyone worships the beast and his image, and receives his mark on his forehead or on his hand, he himself shall also drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out full strength into the cup of His indignation. He shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment ascends forever and ever; and they have no rest day or night, who worship the beast and his image, and whoever receives the mark of his name.” The Lord wants there to be a memorial of disobedience to remind us the importance of obedience. Those who obeyed will witness the smoke of torment forever as a memorial.

Also of important note, Israel lost its first battle in Ai because of Achan’s disobedience. The discussion came up during our study of Deuteronomy 21-23, when the son who disobeys must be stoned at the city gate to discourage disobedience among the other children. We also discussed the story of the man who had relations with his father’s wife in 1 Corinthians 5. Paul literally says, “put away from yourselves the evil person.” This is a direct quote from both Leviticus and Deuteronomy, which means in the original context: stone the man to death. Interpreting these verses in spirit and truth, we must deduce that an evil person must be removed from among the congregation of believers, or else that person’s evil will percolate and spread like a cancer, infecting the whole body until it dies. If we tolerate rebellious and intentional sin within the church, it will kill the church and no one in the body will survive. While 2 Corinthians 2:1-11 makes it clear we must then also forgive the repentant sinner and welcome him or her back, it is imperative that we remove the sinner first to bring them to repentance. The story of Achan, the one who troubles, makes this abundantly clear.

We see in the story of Rahab, Yeshua’s matriarch, a woman who turned away from sin and believed in the God of Israel. She protected Joshua’s spies as the whole city felt the dread of Israel dwelling in the valleys surrounding Jericho. We too in America can feel this dread today, and why is that? It is because we know that our nation is sinful, and that we have not been strong enough to call it to repentance. We know that God’s judgment is coming upon us. And yet Rahab and her family turned away from the wickedness of their land, and turned toward the God of Israel. For this, they were saved out of the destruction of their world. In our case, when we turn away from the wickedness of our nation, which is caught up in every single sin of Torah that you can imagine, even and especially within the church, we too can be pulled out of the world by Yeshua and saved, even if it is just us and the family of believers we gather around ourselves. Let this be a lesson to us. Rahab, the woman of sin who turned away from sin, was saved from among her nation of sin and then became a matriarch of our Lord Yeshua. In Matthew 12:46-50, Yeshua makes it clear that His mothers and brothers and sisters are not of the flesh: “Here are My mother and My brothers! For whoever does the will of My Father in heaven is My brother and sister and mother.” And so this Rahab, a Gentile prostitute who turned away from sin and feared the Lord enough to obey Him and help His servants, became the mother of Yeshua quite literally because she did the will of His Father in Heaven. She was grafted into Israel and was saved at the destruction of the world and brought into the Promised Land—the very land she grew up in, which had been refreshed by the Lord into a new land.

Prior to taking Jericho, all of Israel circumcised themselves unto the Lord. We can read Acts 15 or Galatians or Romans and know that the Lord circumcises His people by the power of the Holy Spirit, and the circumcision of the heart is more than sufficient to meet this commandment. It’s a discussion for another time, but in short, we obey God’s commandments “in Spirit and Truth.” And yet we also see all of Israel keep the Passover in the land for the first time just days before they take the city of Jericho. The manna from Heaven stopped falling that very day, when they ate from the First Fruits of the land. After their obedience, Joshua met with Yeshua Himself, “the commander of the Lord’s army,” who was about to conquer Jericho for Israel. This captain of the Lord’s army commanded worship, and by this we know that this was Yeshua and not an angel. No angel of God commands worship, but this Christophany said, “Remove your sandals from your feet, for the place where you are standing is holy.” Yeshua is the one who conquers the world and replaces it with His Kingdom, both then as well as on the Last Day. Praise be to God! Yeshua is worthy of worship and praise, for He is one in being with the Father, and no one can get to the Father except through Him.

 Joshua 9, Joshua 10, Joshua 11, Psalms 70

This Word from Joshua 11:12, 19, 21, 23 sums up the whole of Joshua 9-11: “Joshua captured all the cities of these kings, and all their kings, and he struck them with the edge of the sword, and utterly destroyed them; just as Moses the servant of the Lord had commanded. There was not a city which made peace with the sons of Israel except the Hivites living in Gibeon; they took them all in battle. Then Joshua came at that time and cut off the Anakim from the hill country, from Hebron, from Debir, from Anab and from all the hill country of Judah and from all the hill country of Israel. Joshua utterly destroyed them with their cities. So Joshua took the whole land, according to all that the Lord had spoken to Moses, and Joshua gave it for an inheritance to Israel according to their divisions by their tribes. Thus the land had rest from war.”

The Lord God commanded the utter destruction of the people and tribes within the whole land of Canaan, and He instructed Israel to carry out His judgment upon them through Moses. These people were the most evil to live on the planet, with the exception of the Days of Noah and the Last Days. God would not have ordered them to be destroyed if they were not this evil. He gave Israel their land forever because of how evil they were and ordered them to be completely annihilated. Its interesting to me that the Hivites in Gibeon were able to escape this judgment through deception, and it should not be lost on us that this is how Satan works. He doesn’t use this deception to harm Israel immediately, for the Hivites pledged to be servants of Israel forever, and perhaps some of them eventually were grafted into Israel and worshipped Yahweh. However, we know that Israel was eventually led astray by the pagans who Israel allowed to remain in the land. Satan plays the long game and eventually uses Israel’s mercy against them. Don’t let this be lost in your interpretation. Don’t let this be lost in your interpretation. We must obey God always, even when His ways don’t make sense to us. Like David, we need to be men after God’s own heart, not men after our own heart or sensibilities. God’s way is the only way.

Also, it should be noted that Israel gave an oath in God’s name to make covenant with these Hivites, thus binding themselves to these people for good or for evil. This was a mistake, and again, it was based on a deception. Had the Hivites come and been honest and plead for mercy, willing to do whatever for their lives, and then had they consulted God on what to do, and God agreed to give them mercy, I would have been much more comfortable with an interpretation that sees this relationship as good. I don’t see it that way. I see it as the work of Satan, and I think it will bear that type of fruit in the long run. Admittedly, I want to research this more to be sure, and I want to study what actually came of this relationship with the Hivites in Gibeon. I will post another comment here once I do that research. So please accept my caveat for now. (See Judges 1 &2, particularly 2:1-5)

In the meantime, we know without a doubt that the story of Joshua conquering the land and utterly destroying the people in it is a prophetic template for the end of days when Jesus will return to do the very same thing. Note that this occurs after Joshua lead Israel into the promised land, and so Jesus will also bring the Wrath of God upon the Earth after He leads Israel and those grafted-in to it to the Promised Land of Heaven. Absolutely everyone who is against Jesus will be utterly destroyed forever. A cursory read of Revelation (and many of Paul’s writings and even Jesus’s own words) makes this abundantly clear. When Jesus returns the second time, there will be absolutely no mercy for those who are against Him. This is the time of grace that we’re living in right now, and this is the only opportunity that any people have to come to know Jesus and be given the gift of salvation. Without it, they are literally doomed, just like the Canaanites. There is no alternative way.

There is great significance also that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still for a day while he destroyed the enemies of God in Canaan. This absolutely happened, because God can do all things, and His Word says that it happened, and so it is true. But look to the prophetic significance for its deeper meaning. Psalm 90:4 says: “A thousand years in your sight are like a day that has just gone by, or like a watch in the night.” (There’s deep significance there—recall Yeshua’s words.) And 2 Peter 3:8 says, “But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.” Peter says “DO NOT FORGET.” This means something! The LAST DAY, the day Jesus said He would return on the clouds, the day He will rapture His saints and bring them to His marriage supper, is the same day He will bring His wrath on the whole Earth, and it will seem to drag out for 1,000 years on Earth, but in Heaven (where the Saints will be with God), it will be a day—one day, when the sun will stand still. And at the end of it, the Church (Israel and those grafted in to her) will descend from Heaven and the New Heaven and New Earth will be established. Like the Lord fought for Israel on that day, He will fight for Israel on the Last Day, and the Saints will then dwell forever with Him on the next day, which will be the Eighth Day eternal Kingdom of God. The Bible is so, so powerful in its meaning and beautiful in its consistency and clarity for those with eyes to see.

Joshua 12, Joshua 13, Joshua 14, Joshua 15, Joshua 16, Joshua 17, Joshua 18, Joshua 19, Joshua 20, Joshua 21, Psalm 71

These verses require far more intense study than our Bible study writer has allotted:

Joshua 12-21 ought to be our reference guide whenever a city of Israel or Judah is mentioned from this point forward. Is the city mentioned a city of refuge? Is it one of 48 Levitical cities? What tribe is it among? The answer to these questions will bring deep meaning to our understanding of what God is conveying. God had laid out the purpose for each of these tribes. Jacob before he died had prophesied about all of them in Genesis 49; he gave a double portion to Joseph through his two sons, and he did not give a portion to Levi, for Levi would be among the 12 other tribes as the priests who help administer God’s law. Also, the cities of refuge are established. From Joshua 20: “Kedesh in Galilee in the hill country of Naphtali and Shechem in the hill country of Ephraim, and Kiriath-arba (that is, Hebron) in the hill country of Judah. Beyond the Jordan east of Jericho, they designated Bezer in the wilderness on the plain from the tribe of Reuben, and Ramoth in Gilead from the tribe of Gad, and Golan in Bashan from the tribe of Manasseh.” We see all of this coming to pass in today’s reading.

We read prophetically about the Last Day in Ezekiel 47:21-23, “You are to distribute this land among yourselves according to the tribes of Israel. You are to allot it as an inheritance for yourselves and for the foreigners residing among you and who have children. You are to consider them as native-born Israelites; along with you they are to be allotted an inheritance among the tribes of Israel. In whatever tribe a foreigner resides, there you are to give them their inheritance,” declares the Sovereign Lord.” Do you see that this prophesy indicates that we, as gentiles who trust and obey the Jewish Messiah Yeshua, are grafted in to Israel and have a place in the inheritance of God’s people? And so this Word today that explains how each of the tribes received their inheritance is a prophetic template for the Last Day, when Yeshua will give us each our eternal inheritance. Did He not say in John 14:2-3, “In My Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also.” Yeshua will bring us to our promised inheritance at the appointed time.

And so, as Israel takes possession of the “promised” land, the land that God Most High, the Creator of the Heavens and the Earth, has promised to them through their fathers Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, we are at a crossroads of decision. Do we believe that God promised this land to Israel? The Scripture is quite clear that He did. Is Scripture true? I believe that it is. If it is, then the total annihilation of the evil Canaanites who previously possessed the land is also true, and God certainly would not do anything that was not fully justified, for He is just. We saw earlier how on the seventh day Israel circled Jericho and blew the trumpets and then shouted at the end, and how this was the beginning of Israel’s possession of the promised land as well as a prophetic template of the coming of Messiah. In Revelation 11:15, “Then the seventh angel sounded: And there were loud voices in heaven, saying, ‘The kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever!’” Both in ancient Israel and in the future coming of Christ, this signals the beginning of the Wrath of God. It’s not the Wrath of Man, but the Wrath of God. From that point forward, Israel totally annihilates all of the evil Canaanites, wiping them out, just as Jesus will totally annihilate all of the people of the Earth who reject Him and rebel against Him. It is fair and it is just. We’ve been given ample warning that this day is coming, and the Canaanites had 40 years to recognize that Israel was coming for them. Only Rahab and her family escaped God’s wrath through their faith and righteousness. Only those saints, whether Jew or Gentile, who endure and keep the commandments of God and the faith of Yeshua will enter the promised land.

On a more practical level, after five tribes had taken possession of their land, seven tribes remained to carve out the remainder of the land, and it’s interesting how Joshua asks them to do this. In fact, we still employ this type of surveying today as we create boundaries to our own private property, our own communities, and even our own states. They are all marked out like described in Joshua 18. “Provide for yourselves three men from each tribe that I may send them, and that they may arise and walk through the land and write a description of it according to their inheritance; then they shall return to me. … You shall describe the land in seven divisions, and bring the description here to me.” This is literally an ancient surveying expedition, and by so doing, these seven tribe leaders established the Kingdom of Israel. God declared it, but it was up to the people to go and take what was already theirs. Whatever their foot trod on became their property according to the Word of the Lord.

Joshua 14 is one of my favorite chapters of the Book, because it illuminates the heart of a true Christian and defines true faith. Caleb, one of two men who left Egypt who remained to take the land, had spied out Israel with Joshua and 10 other men. Only Joshua and Caleb had faith that God had promised the land and so they could possess it, the other 10 in fear wanted to return to Egypt; to the life of bondage (to sin), and therefore led their generation to destruction in the wilderness. Yet Caleb and Joshua maintained the promise because of their faith, if they could endure in it for 40 years. They did, and now 40 years later, Caleb’s faith is stronger than ever. “So Moses swore on that day, saying, ‘Surely the land on which your foot has trodden will be an inheritance to you and to your children forever, because you have followed the Lord my God fully.’” Look at this faith: “Now behold, the Lord has let me live, just as He spoke, these forty-five years, from the time that the Lord spoke this word to Moses, when Israel walked in the wilderness; and now behold, I am 85 years old today. I am still as strong today as I was in the day Moses sent me; as my strength was then, so my strength is now, for war and for going out and coming in. Now then, give me this hill country about which the Lord spoke on that day, for you heard on that day that Anakim were there, with great fortified cities; perhaps the Lord will be with me, and I will drive them out as the Lord has spoken.” Here’s the conclusion of the matter: “Therefore, Hebron became the inheritance of Caleb the son of Jephunneh the Kenizzite until this day, because he followed the Lord God of Israel fully.” Think about this man Caleb, who patiently endured in the Lord’s commandments for 40 years in the wilderness, suffering along with his people through a reality that he didn’t deserve as wheat growing up among the tares. Did he grow impatient? Did he grow upset about his lot? Did he complain? No! He patiently endured. And not only that, when the time came to possess what he believed would be his, he took his faith up a notch and knew that God would be with him to possess the most difficult land of all. God delivered exactly what he promised, and Caleb earned the highest honor among the Tribe of Judah. Hebron became the first capital of Israel, and even David reigned there first before conquering Jerusalem. Caleb’s faith is an example for us. When God promises something, we ought to fully believe it and expect that it will come to pass. This is the only way we will ever come to possess it. This applies to the Kingdom of God that has been promised to us. It’s ours, if we have the faith to possess it, and take the actions that show our faith to be legitimate, and not just lip service. “Then the land had rest from war.” In the End, we will have our rest in the Promised Land, if we can endure.

I love how in Joshua 15, Caleb’s daughter shows the same faith as her father. She had learned from the best. The Word says Caleb inherited a portion among the sons of Judah, Kiriath-arba (Hebron), and that “Caleb drove out from there the three sons of Anak: Sheshai and Ahiman and Talmai, the children of Anak.” Then he offered his daughter’s hand to the man who would go up and take Kiriath-sepher, which became Debir. Achsaw, his daughter, upon marrying Othniel, who captured the land, said, “‘Give me a blessing, since you have given me the land of Negev, give me also springs of water.’ And so [Caleb] gave her the upper springs and the lower springs.” What does the Lord Yeshua say to us in Matthew 7:7-8: “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.” Achsaw asked for springs of water (the living water of the Holy Spirit in prophetic form), and it was given to her because she asked according to God’s will. We should do likewise.

Israel as a whole did not possess all of the land promised to them, which indicates that some of the tribes still lacked the faith to do what God had asked. They left the Philistines and the Geshurites, the Maacathites, according to Joshua 13, and they left the Hitites as slaves in Gideon. They also left the Canaanites who lived in Gezer, and notes they became slaves. However, as we read throughout Samuel, Kings, Chronicles, and the prophets, these “slaves” became slave masters when Israel sinned. But it’s more than this, it was the practices of these slaves that led Israel into sin. God intended for them to be annihilated so they could not lead Israel to sin, but because Israel did not obey God fully, their disobedience came back to haunt them. Their sin of disobedience led to their sin of idolatry and their idolatry led to their future subjugation, and then their longtime dispossession of the land. Only when they cried out to God for mercy did He come and help them, once again, take possession of the promised land. Israel has still not accomplished full possession to this day, even though they now possess some of the promised land. Only Messiah Yeshua will lead Israel to possess the entire Promised Land. The children of Israel cannot do it on their own.

The tent of meeting and the tabernacle of God that were part of the first covenant settled in Timnath-serah in the hill country of Ephraim, and they divided up the area by lot in Shiloh for the first resting location for the Tabernacle in the land. We have seen Shiloh mentioned before (Genesis 49:10, Isaiah 9:6, Judges 21:19, and Jeremiah 7:12, 7:14, 26:4-9 are other Old Testament references), and it has deep prophetic and Messianic significance. Shiloh means “the peaceful one,”  “a place of rest,” and it refers specifically to the Messiah. It was the location of the Tabernacle from the land’s possession until the Philistines captured it, and then remained secluded until modern times when it was rediscovered. It is a place of rest, 10 miles from the modern Seilun (the Arabic for Shiloh). It should be noted that the place where the Mercy Seat copy of Heaven’s Mercy Seat came to rest is also the name of the One who would sit on the Mercy Seat after His resurrection. It is this Messiah, Yeshua, who will bring Shiloh once more at the End.

Joshua 22, Joshua 23, Joshua 24, Psalm 72

Joshua 22 should have been included in yesterday’s readings, for it concerns the Reubenites, the Gadites, and the half-tribe of Manasseh possessing the land promised to them on the other side of the Jordan. They fully fulfilled their promise to Moses and helped Israel take the promised land, and so they were awarded their portion of the spoils to take back with them. They set up an altar called “Witness,” as a memorial of their tie to the other tribes on the other side of the Jordan and their worship of God Most High. While at first a point of contention between the tribes of Israel, who were at this point very rightly concerned about idolatry, we see that their intent was to remember God and not allow their sons to forget the commandments of the Lord. Let this chapter serve as a distinction for us so that we know whether an image we might set up is a idol or not. Are we using it for worship? If so, it is an idol. If not, then it serves as a reminder so that we do not forget the Lord. An image of the Last Supper or even a statue of our risen Lord on the top of the mountain in Brazil, so long as they are not worshipped, serve as memorials so that we do not forget what the Lord has done for us. Let us make sure never to worship with such memorials, however.

As Joshua prepares to die, we can be certain that there is yet another day promised when the Lord Yeshua will bring us in to the eternal Promised Land. Joshua recalls the history of Israel from when God called Abraham out of his pagan roots to follow the One True God to the point when God has delivered on His promise to give Israel this promised land for all eternity. When Israel (and those Gentiles grafted-in to her) obey the commandments and keep faith in God, He will always deliver Israel and uphold his promises; however, in disobedience, the Lord will take away the promises that He gives only to a faithful people. As Joshua gives his famous last words, the question he poses applies to you and me today: “Now, therefore, fear the Lord and serve Him in sincerity and truth; and put away the gods which your fathers served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. If it is disagreeable in your sight to serve the Lord, choose for yourselves today whom you will serve: whether the gods which your fathers served which were beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. (אָנֹכִי וּבֵיתִ֔י נַעֲבֹ֖ד אֶת־ יַהְוֶה).

The people of Israel in Joshua’s day accepted Joshua’s call to pick a side. “Far be it from us that we should forsake the Lord to serve other gods; for the Lord our God is He who brought us and our fathers up out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage, and who did these great signs in our sight and preserved us through all the way in which we went and among all the peoples through whose midst we passed. …” And so we might say, We will serve the Lord because He has come in the flesh and died on the cross for our sins, and then He rose from the dead and sits on the right hand of the Father interceding for us, and He has forgiven our sin and called us out of it, out of the bondage of sin, and He will come again to bring us into the Promised Land if we would simply endure in our faith in this wilderness and keep our Faith in Him, no matter what. Note that Joshua’s conclusion also applies to us: “You will not be able to serve the Lord, for He is a holy God. He is a jealous God; He will not forgive your transgression or your sins. If you forsake the Lord and serve foreign gods, then He will turn and do you harm and consume you after He has done good to you.” Our response ought to be the same as Israel’s: “No, but we will serve the Lord.” And so let us be witnesses against ourselves that we have chosen for ourselves the Lord, to serve Him.” Let us walk in our faith at all times and not turn from it to the left or the right. “We will serve the Lord our God and obey His voice.” And He will come for those of us who endure and give us our inheritance.

Judges 1, Judges 2, Judges 3, Psalm 73

Judges 1 & 2 confirms what I wrote about the Hitites in Gideon, particularly this Word from the pre-incarnate Messiah, who is called “the angel of the Lord,” or the “captain of the Lord’s army,” among other names, in the Old Testament: “Now the angel of the Lord came up from Gilgal to Bochim. And He said, “I brought you up out of Egypt and led you into the land which I have sworn to your fathers; and I said, ‘I will never break My covenant with you, and as for you, you shall make no covenant with the inhabitants of this land; you shall tear down their altars.’ But you have not obeyed Me; what is this you have done? Therefore I also said, ‘I will not drive them out before you; but they will become as thorns in your sides and their gods will be a snare to you.’ ” When the angel of the Lord spoke these words to all the sons of Israel, the people lifted up their voices and wept. So they named that place Bochim; and there they sacrificed to the Lord.” (Judges 2:1-5 )

What’s most fascinating to me here is that Israel, in the “promised land,” commits the same sin as Adam in the Garden of Eden. God commanded Israel to annihilate the Canaanites for a particular purpose—so they would not be caught up in their sins; especially their idolatry—and then Israel disobeyed. Was it for a false sense of mercy? Who is Man to be merciful when God commands destruction? Because of Israel’s disobedience, God curses Israel in the exact same way he cursed Adam. It says in Judges 2:3 “they will become as thorns in your side and their gods will be a snare to you.” What does God say to Adam? “Cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you will eat of it all the days of your lives. Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you. (Genesis 3:17-18) In Matthew 7:15-16, Yeshua says, “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes from thornbushes or figs from thistles?”

The metaphor is the same. Thorns and thistles are the fruit that comes from false prophets; they are evil works. Because Israel has disobeyed the Lord and not destroyed the ones who have done heinously evil works, such as worship with orgies and abort the infants that come from them on scalding hot iron hands of idols, and other such works like passing their children through the fire, and syncretism, which is worshipping false gods along with the one true God, Israel will now be cursed with these evil acts in their midst. Because of this culture intermixing with their culture, many in Israel will turn away from following God and instead follow after the bad fruit of the World. Why is it so appealing to humanity to sin? Why does the flesh draw us away from God? It is the evil one in the World, vying for our destruction. It is the evil spirits that came out of the unholy marriages of fallen angels with women. They hate that God has made us and want us destroyed. Their temptations are too much for those who do not obey God and trust in Him. Now, because of Israel’s disobedience in the promised land, we must continue to deal with this evil among us, and endure in our righteousness with Yeshua’s Holy Spirit until the End.

All it took was one generation of righteous men to die out, and the generations after them turned away from the Lord. They didn’t experience God’s mighty miracles directly, and they began to disbelieve the stories their fathers told as if they were simply legends. Why? Because of the people who were around them who actually had legends in their cultures, who had invented their own gods with the direction of demons who had led them astray. If all these other legends had been made, then why is our history not legend also? Can’t we all just get along? This is why God wanted the Canaanites and every memory of them to be totally destroyed. One day, they will be. On the Last Day when the wrath of God will destroy all the enemies of Messiah Yeshua, once and for us. He will do this work himself, because we could not bring ourselves to do it. In the same way that our works cannot save us from death, the punishment of sin; so too our works cannot rescue us from our adversaries. We must rely fully on the Lord to do this work for us. And yet, we must be aligned with the Lord so we are not counted among the adversaries and inherit the curse of death.

“So they forsook the Lord and served Baal and the Ashtaroth.” And so, “Wherever they went, the hand of the Lord was against them for evil, as the Lord had spoken and as the Lord had sworn to them.” And yet, when Israel called out to the Lord to help them, the Lord raised up leaders who delivered them. What happens is the promised land of Israel becomes a new “wilderness” experience for the children of Israel, and the true “Promised Land” would be reserved for another day. (See Hebrews 4:8-9: “For if Joshua had given them rest, then He would not afterward have spoken of another day. There remains therefore a rest for the people of God.“ And so, we see in Judges 2 that “the anger of the Lord burned against Israel, and He said, “Because this nation has transgressed My covenant which I commanded their fathers and has not listened to My voice, I also will no longer drive out before them any of the nations which Joshua left when he died, in order to test Israel by them, whether they will keep the way of the Lord to walk in it as their fathers did, or not.” Life on Earth, even in the promised land of Israel, becomes a test to see whether we as individuals will choose to follow God or not. Choose this day whom you will serve!

Here, according to Judges 3:1-8, are the nations that the Lord left to test Israel: “the five Lords of the Philistines and all the Canaanites and the Sidonians and the Hivites who lived in Mount Lebanon, from Mount Baal-hermon as far as Lebo-hamath. They were for testing Israel, to find out if they would obey the commandments of the Lord, which He had commanded their fathers through Moses.” It really couldn’t be more clear that Israel erred by making a covenant with the Hivites after reading all of this, and it wasn’t just an error, it was sin with great consequences. “The sons of Israel lived among the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites; and they took their daughters for themselves as wives, and gave their own daughters to their sons, and served their gods.” If you remember the story of Rahab, it’s not a problem to take a Gentile wife if she converts to follow the God of Israel, who is God Most High. The problem here is that they married pagan wives and became “unequally yoked” with them (2 Corinth. 6:14). They therefore led Israel astray, which led to curses against them.

We see throughout the balance of Judges that the Lord’s heart is to build a relationship with Israel. Israel means “striver with God,” or “one who strives with God.” This is a man or woman who gives his or her whole heart, mind, soul and strength to the Lord’s will. As Gentile believers in Messiah Yeshua,  we are grafted in to Israel, and we strive with God, with the help of His atoning blood sacrifice for sin, His resurrection that conquered death, and His Holy Spirit that gives us His power, to overcome sin and walk in righteousness. When historical Israel aligns with His will, which He articulates in His commandments, He sends “a deliverer for the sons of Israel to deliver them.” The root of “deliverer” is “yasha” or “Yeshua.” While throughout history, God sent deliverer after deliverer, it wasn’t until He sent His Son Yeshua that we could ultimately be delivered from sin for all eternity in the true Promised Land, the Kingdom of God. Think back to Hebrews 4. We will have rest on the Last Day when He comes again to deliver us from the World and conquer death forever for all who trust in Him. Israel has been looking forward to this moment since it became a nation, and this moment will be fulfilled in Yeshua for all of Israel who call out, “Blessed is [Yeshua] who comes in the name of [Yahweh] on the Last Day.” (Matthew 23:39)

We read about Othniel, and Ehud, and so many other and read their amazing stories, but we ought to think about the pattern that they are establishing prophetically, which points to Yeshua. Consider the parable of the wicked vinedressers in Matthew 21:33-44. The Nation of Israel are those descendants of Abraham, the Jew first by blood, and the Greek by adoption, who obey the commandments of God and keep the faith of Yeshua. Story after story gives us this truth. “Surely God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart!,” we read in Psalm 73:1. … “For behold, those who are far from you will perish; you have destroyed all those who are unfaithful to you. But as for me, the nearness of God is my good; I have made the Lord my refuge, that I may tell of all Your works.” (Psalm 73:25-28)

Judges 4, Judges 5, Psalms 74

Israel, falling away from worshipping God yet again, can not even raise one brave man to turn back to God and face the enemy. So, absent a single man with courage, God raises up Deborah, a prophetess, who has solid faith in God Most High. While she called Barak according to God’s commandment to deploy 10,000 troops of Naphtali and Zebulun against Sisera, the commander of Jabin’s army, Barak with weakness and cowardice says to Deborah, “If you will go with me, then I will go, but if you will not go with me, I will not go.” Because of this total weakness, Deborah says, “I will surely go with you,” showing her courage and faith in the Lord God; “nevertheless there will be no glory for you in the journey you are taking, for the Lord will sell Sisera into the hand of a woman.” In this exception not often repeated in the Bible, a woman leads Israel under God to victory, and a woman executes God’s judgment on the enemy. Barak, who should have been Israel’s hero, was instead emasculated.

Fulfilling Deborah’s prophesy from the Lord, Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite (descendant of Moses’s Father-in-law), prompted Sisera to hide in her tent. With great wisdom that only a woman could discern, she covered him with a blanket and gave him milk to get him to fall asleep. Once he was asleep, she took care of Israel’s battle for them and took out the general of their enemy with a tent peg. Barak, who because of Deborah and not his faith in God, which he lacked, was hot in pursuit. He witnesses prophesy fulfilled as Jael leads him to the man he pursued, dead in her tent. Following such a monumental occasion, Scripture records a song dedicated to Deborah and Jael, the two women who helped lead Israel to victory, under God. As far as Sisera, the enemy of God and God’s people, “at her feet he sank, he fell, he lay still … there he fell dead.” This was ultimately an embarrassment to the men of Israel and a reminder that, with courage, we ought to always serve God without fear.

Judges 6, Judges 7, Judges 8, Psalm 75

While Barak was weak in his actions and did not rise to the challenge God asked of him, Gideon was weak in reality—the youngest son of the weakest family in the community—and God called him to serve Him, and he did what the Lord asked, thus the Lord highly exalted him. It is the Lord’s strength that helped Gideon to accomplish the Lord’s will, because He trusted in the Lord and obeyed His commands. As we know, the proud will be brought low, and the humble will be exalted in the Lord. We also know that when we are weak, the Lord makes us strong in Him, and He fights the battle for us for victory. This is the story of Gideon.

Some people are confused by Gideon, thinking that he put the Lord to the test, but this is not correct. Satan asked Yeshua in the wilderness to put the Lord to the test by throwing himself off the Temple. Yeshua did not comply, stating, ‘Haven’t you read, you shall not put the Lord your God to the test,’ quoting from Deuteronomy. No, Gideon, with the fleece test, was not testing to see whether God would save him as Satan asked Jesus to do, but rather he was making sure the message to him was actually from God and not from a demon. This is a critically important thing to do, and we see Moses doing this and others, even the Apostle Paul upon his conversion. It wasn’t Jesus’s appearance that changed his faith—he was found by Ananias blind, in sackcloth and ashes praying. Only when Ananias healed his blindness in the name of Jesus did Paul give his life to the Lord. It takes two or three witnesses to establish a thing, and the Lord will indeed show up when He wills something to be done and confirm that the Word is from Him. This is what is going on with Gideon here.

And so knowing that Gideon is on the right track, we also see his total humility in combination with faith, which is the mighty duo for a man the Lord desires to use for His purposes: “So he said to Him, ‘O my Lord, how can I save Israel? Indeed my clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my father’s house.’ And the Lord said to him, ‘Surely I will be with you, and you shall defeat the Midianites as one man’.” Following the tests to make sure this was from the Lord, Gideon is ready to go.  “Gideon said, “Alas, O Lord God! For I have seen the Angel of the Lord face to face.” Then the Lord said to him, “Peace be with you; do not fear, you shall not die.” So Gideon built an altar there to the Lord, and called it The-Lord-Is-Peace.” Gideon, asked by the Lord to go to battle and defeat the enemies from Midian, is at peace because he knows the Lord is with him. It is this faith in the Lord that gives him this peace, which is a complete confidence and trust that the Lord’s will will be done, no matter what. It is this total trust that allows us to walk out in faith and do things that we never otherwise would be able to do.

And so now that Gideon has tested the Lord, the Lord will test Gideon to make sure that Gideon is actually fully trusting in the Lord. First, he asks him to destroy the idols to other gods within the camp of Israel. God cannot save Israel while they are practicing syncretism, or combining profane pagan practices with worship of the One True God. Gideon executes, though sheepishly (in the cover of night). You see Gideon’s father rise up as an advocate for his son, saying, let Ba’al contend for himself if he truly is a god. This faith helps to encourage Gideon at a time that he needed it, and God most definitely was there with this help through Gideon’s father. With the idols out of the picture, now God wants to make sure Israel knows that He is Truly God. He takes Gideon, the youngest son of the smallest family and reduces the size of his army to 300 men from thousands, and then he defeats the enemy. This was to ensure that the people knew that God secured the victory.

What’s more, these 300 men took torches and trumpets to battle. They didn’t lift a finger until God has routed the camp. It was God that turned the enemies swords against themselves, and it was infighting that gave Gideon the victory. But God is the one who did that, and no one could possibly mistake this considering the circumstances. From this point forward, Gideon’s men know they are invincible because God is with them, and they pursue the enemy until they are destroyed. We might balk at Gideon’s work to destroy the tribes of Israel who did not help him, but this is something the Lord does, also. The Lord commands that we love our neighbor and go above and beyond to help them when they are in need, and so when tribes of Israel won’t even help their heroes who are defeating the enemy, it is definitely these tribes that bring the curses upon themselves. The whole story works out according to God’s commandment, and in the end, God achieves victory for His name.

To be certain that Israel understands that God has accomplished the victory, Gideon makes this abundantly clear when the people try to elevate him to be ruler over them. “Then the men of Israel said to Gideon, ‘Rule over us, both you and your son, also your son’s son, for you have delivered us from the hand of Midian.’ But Gideon said to them, ‘I will not rule over you, nor shall my son rule over you; the Lord shall rule over you.’” Amazingly, faced with the prospect of taking credit for routing the enemy himself and elevating his own heart in pride for being a part of such a fantastic victory, Gideon gives credit righteously where credit is due. This is the opposite of what Moses did at the Rock when he took credit for bringing water out of it. Gideon gave all the glory to God, and the people knew that the Lord had brought the victory because of this and had peace for 40 years. Sadly, younger generations do not remember what the Lord did through Gideon and turn away again after the fathers’ stories have grown old and the battle armor that he created as a memorial is treated as an idol by those who don’t understand God’s will. Why do we fail to raise up our children in the way they should go? We have to ask ourselves, do we give the Lord 100 percent of ourselves? Do we properly correct them when they go astray? That is our role as fathers until death.

Judges 9, Judges 10, Judges 11, Judges 12, Psalm 76

Gideon was a just man who gave all the credit to God concerning the defeat of Midian, but sadly, only one of his 70 sons, Jotham, would remain after him (the Lord at least preserved his legacy in Israel). Remember, Gideon said, “I will not rule over you, nor shall my son rule over you; the Lord shall rule over you.’” Abimelech, which means “my father is a king,” would disgrace his family’s name and bring destruction to the people his father had delivered by the hand of God. His father was kingly in his humility and faith, and his total obeisance to God Most High, and though he refused to rule over Israel, he did lead Israel as a judge peacefully for 40 years under God. Upon his death, the people turned away from God, and Abimelech, Gideon’s son would epitomize this falling away.

In heinous self-serving, self deification, Abimelech elevated himself as king and murdered 70 of his brothers, missing only Jotham (praise be to God). Do these 70 represent the 70 nations outside of Israel and Judah? It should not be lost that Abimelech is an archetype of an antichrist figure, who directly opposes the humility and faith that his father had. His very name indicates that his father was held up as a king, even though Gideon didn’t see himself that way and humbled himself before God. Gideon is the type of ruler God wants to lead a people. Abimelech is quite the opposite of his father, looking to elevate himself above all, despite not deserving the elevation.

Jotham, who becomes the only heir to Gideon, prophesies from God most high about his brother’s evil, calling Abimelech a bramble that is lowly, even below the vine, which brings destruction to all through fire. The olive tree, Gideon (also Israel), did not take to the throne, saying, “Shall I leave my fatness with which God and men are honored, and go to wave over the trees?” Give God the glory! Let me be humble like this! And yet the bramble, the thorns and thistles of false prophesy and usurped power, says to those greater than it, “If in truth you are anointing me as king over you, come and take refuge in my shade; but if not, may fire come out from the bramble and consume the cedars of Lebanon.” The trees cannot take refuge in the shade of worthless bramble, and so fire is what comes forth from one who usurps authority that does not belong to him. Those who put their trust in false prophets and false leaders like this will burn up with them in the fires of Hell. And so, everyone who followed after Abimelech falls from grace or dies with him, and ultimately a woman drops a millstone on his head, ending his reign of terror.

Those who survive this evil time humble themselves before God, saying “We have sinned against You, for indeed, we have forsaken our God and served the Baals.” But listen to how God responds to them: “Did I not deliver you from the Egyptians, the Amorites, the sons of Ammon, and the Philistines? Also when the Sidonians, the Amalekites and the Maonites oppressed you, you cried out to Me, and I delivered you from their hands. Yet you have forsaken Me and served other gods; therefore I will no longer deliver you. Go and cry out to the gods which you have chosen; let them deliver you in the time of your distress.” God doesn’t believe them. They are paying Him lip service and calling out to His name to save them, but do they really believe? Will they keep their faith if God comes to deliver them again? I hear Yeshua saying, “Many will say to me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord…’ but I will say depart from me, you workers of lawlessness’.” You can almost see God saying here, go let your money save you, or your big house, or your job, or that adulteress you ran away with instead of your wife, or that stone statue or those beads you pray on. The Lord will not abide with those who give Him lip service (i.e., “oh, I believe in Jesus”) but who do not keep the commandments of God. The Lord will not hear those who pray to Him, but do not turn away from their sin. And so, it is only when Israel takes action and proves that they have faith that the Lord will listen to them. “The sons of Israel said to the Lord, “We have sinned, do to us whatever seems good to You; only please deliver us this day.” So they put away the foreign gods from among them and served the Lord.” This is the humility and repentance that the Lord wants from us. He wants us to “go and sin no more,” as Jesus said to the woman caught in adultery, and then he wants us to walk in righteousness by serving the Lord, which means to obey His commandments. The Lord responds to this: The Word in Judges 10 says, “He [God] could bear the misery of Israel no longer.” The Lord has Mercy on us and forgives us when we approach Him on the cross with a Humble and contrite heart, and beat on our hearts, “have mercy on me, a sinner.” This is the one the Lord justifies.

And so it is interesting that God once again chooses a humble and tossed away man, Jephthah the Gileadite, to save Israel from their enemies—Ammon in this case. His mother was the son of a harlot, and so he was driven off by his half brothers into isolation where he becomes a valiant warrior. Once Israel was in trouble, they turned to him and said, “Come and be our chief that we may fight against the sons of Ammon.” Jephthah’s heart is not unlike God’s heart in his next statement: “Did you not hate me and drive me from my father’s house? So why have you come to me now when you are in trouble?” It’s a valid question and one that God is asking you and me as we study His Word here. We ought to praise God and pursue Him even more strongly when we are not in trouble as when we are in trouble. And so the elders pledge to make Jephthah head over them if he helps them out. I wonder whether they should have made him head first, and not only if he helps them win. This strikes me as allegory for what we do when we half-heartedly pursue God, and this shouldn’t be.

Meanwhile, Jephthah gives credit to God, saying, “If you take me back to fight against the sons of Ammon and the Lord gives them up to me, will I become your head?” We know everything we need to know about the man here, and he is certainly a man of God. He very well may be calling them on their half-heartedness, but then he makes them pledge to keep their word by the Lord’s witness. There is a question here about Jephthah as a man, though. Does he put too much emphasis on his worldly redemption? I don’t believe so. He definitely wants God to be involved in redeeming Israel, which is evident from his vow to the Lord, “If You will indeed give the sons of Ammon into my hand, then it shall be that whatever comes out of the doors of my house to meet me when I return in peace from the sons of Ammon, it shall be the Lord’s, and [or] I will offer it up [to Him] as a burnt offering.”

I’ve put two possible alternate translations in brackets for understanding, and here they are:

“whatever comes out of the doors … it shall be the Lord’s, or I will offer it up as a burnt offering.” This translation accounts for the fact that Jepthath could not sacrifice a human and he could not sacrifice an unclean animal, and so he would either consecrate the animal or human to the Lord, or he would offer it as a burnt sacrifice.

“whatever comes out of the doors … it shall be the Lord’s and I will offer Him a burnt offering.” This makes absolute perfect sense and aligns with the whole of Scripture, and so I’m inclined to agree with this translation. Instead of “offer it up” it would read “offer to Him.” The word “it” in Hebrew is always “him,” or in this case “Him,” and so that’s not a stretch at all since there actually is no “it” in Hebrew, and the word “up” being “to” instead is also a valid translation.

That all being said, it is quite clear from the context of Judges 11 that Jephthah did not sacrifice his daughter as a burnt offering, and interpreters who have said this is the proper translation have done a great disservice to Scripture and have created an apparent contradiction where there is no contradiction. In short: they’re wrong. Jephthah, after all, has just been given the strength and calling of Almighty God to vanquish Israel’s enemies, and God would not have allowed a human sacrifice to result from this. It is against His law, and God does not lie; God does not contradict. So let’s follow the story to make sure it is clear for our understanding:

First, “When Jephthah came to his house at Mizpah, behold, his daughter was coming out to meet him with tambourines and with dancing. Now she was his one and only child; besides her he had no son or daughter.” Recall, Jephthah was going to be made judge over Israel, having just been redeemed from his banishment for being the son of a harlot. So when his daughter came out of the house celebrating his victory for Israel, he became sad because he would have to honor his vow and consecrate her to God. That means that He could not marry her off to keep his legacy going as the judge of Israel. Instead, she would remain childless and conceivably—because Scripture does not report otherwise—Jephthah does not have any other sons and daughters and thus does not leave a legacy. This is why Jephthah tears his clothes. He cannot take back His vow that He gave to the Lord, and thus his headship of Israel will last only during his lifetime.

Likewise, the statute created in Israel where the daughters of Israel would go out yearly to commemorate the daughter of Jephthah for four days is not something that outlived her. Israel does not celebrate this today. It seems like the daughters would literally go out to spend four days with her and give her some human contact and comfort. She was consecrated to the Lord, per Jephthah’s vow, which basically means in modern terms that she became a “nun” and lived in isolation praying to God for her entire life. She had visitors for four days of the year.

How do we know this for sure? Consider the verses where she willingly submits to Jephthah’s vow: “My father, you have given your word to the Lord; do to me as you have said, since the Lord has avenged you of your enemies, the sons of Ammon.” She said to her father, “Let this thing be done for me; let me alone two months, that I may go to the mountains and weep because of my virginity, I and my companions.” This is critical: She is weeping for her virginity, not for her life. She is doing this with her friends. She is literally spending two months in the mountains with her friends because after that she will need to remain in isolation without anyone. Israel was so grateful for what she did and what her father did for them, that they passed a law that she would spend four days a year with other women, so she was not completely alone at all times.

And then without question, when she returns from her two months with her friends, her father “did to her according to the vow which he had made; and she had no relations with a man.” Wait a minute, if he had offered her as a burnt offering to the Lord, why mention that she had no relations with a man? Is the Word of God somehow bemoaning that this one virgin died a virgin, when so many other young girls also die of other natural causes all the time? No, the Word would not bemoan her dying a virgin, but rather, the Word is pointing out that she lived her life and did not ever marry a man to have children. A woman’s value in these days was measured by how many sons she produced for her husband. Jephthah’s daughter spent her years in isolation and prayer, because she was consecrated fully to the Lord. It can be said also that her prayers, along with her father’s prayers, were the burnt offerings made, but it’s quite possible that Jepthah also offered a lamb or a goat as a burnt offering in the process of consecrating his daughter to a life of prayer. Jephthah himself only judged Israel for six years after this (Judges 12:7), so it is quite likely based on this context that he was very old coming back from battle and thus his main struggle was having only lived six years serving the Lord as a Judge of Israel with no one to pass his legacy on to. His daughter was celebrated by Israel for her life devoted to prayer and the daughters spent four days honoring her each year by spending time with her until she also died at a later date. Now, finally, I am at peace with this segment of Scripture and know that Jephthah was a man of God who served the Lord fully in everything he did, and so did his daughter.

Resources for further study:
https://www.thetorah.com/article/did-jephthah-actually-kill-his-daughter
https://www.studylight.org/commentary/judges/11-31.html
https://www.sefaria.org/Judges.11.38?ven=Tanakh:_The_Holy_Scriptures,_published_by_JPS&vhe=Miqra_according_to_the_Masorah&lang=he&p2=Radak_on_Judges.11.31.1&ven2=Sefaria_Community_Translation&vhe2=Radak_on_Nach&lang2=bi&w2=all&lang3=en

Judges 13, Judges 14, Judges 15, Psalms 77

God had just defeated the Midianites with Gideon’s army of 300, and next he used an outcast in Jephthah and his small band of warriors to bring Israel victory of the Ammonites. Now, God would use one man, Samson, to defeat the Philistines. Is there a theme here? I think so. God uses the unlikely, unwanted, and impossible to fight His battles, and it is God who is with them leading them to victory. I’m possible, God says. He is the Great I AM, and anything is possible with the Lord.

Once again, Samson has a reputation as a screw up among common interpretations, which I believe to be false, because the Scripture doesn’t allow for this interpretation. He was a mighty man of God, who did God’s will in all things. Don’t you see that Yeshua went to sinners to save them from their sin? He called out the adulteress, the tax collector, and the ruffians and told them to go and sin no more. Yeshua doesn’t change, but was always the same. He is the same God calling Samson to fulfill His will against the Philistines, and in Samson’s life there is victory for Israel.

Samson’s great strength and power is prophesied with a heavenly visit by the pre-incarnate Messiah to his mother and father, prompting Manoah to worry about whether he will live. Manoah’s wife showed great faith, saying “If the Lord had desired to kill us, He would not have accepted a burnt offering and a grain offering from our hands, nor would He have shown us all these things, nor would He have let us hear things like this at this time.” She gave birth to a son “and the child grew up and the Lord blessed him. And the Spirit of the Lord began to stir him…” This isn’t the story of someone who fails or is destined to fail, but someone who succeeds even during the day of his death. Do we know someone else like that? Does not our Messiah conquer sin and death through the cross?

When we see Samson go to Timnah and fall for the daughter of the Philistines, we’re tempted to see his attraction as lust or sin. His father and mother even complain: “Is there no woman among the daughters of your relatives, or among all our people, that you go to take a wife from the uncircumcised Philistines?” Sure, he even responds, “Go get her for me for she looks good to me.” This is surface level drama, but don’t let it get you. That’s not what this is about, and the next line proves it. Look at the next line: “However, his father and mother did not know that it was of the Lord, for He was seeking an occasion against the Philistines,” and at that time the Philistines were ruling over Israel. In this whole scenario, God uses this marriage to set up a victory of Israel over the Philistines, and we see from this story that Samson judged Israel for 20 years after his victories.

So returning to the stories that preceded Samson in Judges, we note near the end of Judges 15 that Samson created “heaps upon heaps” of Philistines “with the jawbone of a donkey;” He “killed a thousand men.” While 300 routed the Midianites, we now have one man killing a thousand. This is God showing up the battle to save Israel from their enemies—nothing more and nothing less. God does this every time, especially in modern times. When a man or woman fears God and keeps His commandments and loves and trusts God with all of their hearts, there is no stopping what God will do for them. Remember, Samson took a lifelong Nazarite vow. He did not sin during any of this time. Thus god used Samson to rout the enemies and judge Israel, and this time, He showed His power through just one man. Again, when else did God do such a thing? This is prophesy.

Judges 16, Judges 17, Judges 18, Psalm 78

Samson, the man called by God, sinned with a harlot, and then fell into the snares of the evil one with Delilah, his servant. Sin separates us from God, and with Samson, I don’t think his story was any different. While Delilah sought to turn Samson away from God Most High, God would use Samson’s fall for His purposes. We see that Delilah wore Samson down, time and time again tempting him to give in so that he could be destroyed. Isn’t this what the Devil does to us? Finally she says, “How can you say, ‘I love you,’ when your heart is not with me?” Satan isn’t looking for lip service, but like God AND contrary to God, he wants to be worshipped. Delilah, the servant of darkness, wants Samson’s heart. This is how she gets it: “It came about when she pressed him daily with her words and urged him, that his soul was annoyed to death. So he told her all that was in his heart…”

Do you see this? Satan wears down the saved Christian with temptation after temptation until they just can’t take it any more and give in. Samson’s soul was “annoyed to death,” and so he gave in and fell into the hands of the Philistines. We cannot do this. With the power of the Holy Spirit, we must overcome these temptations from the Devil. Samson did the next best thing. Once he was captured and caught again in bondage, and the enemy taunts him at his weakest point, he called out to the Lord in repentance: “Then Samson called to the Lord and said, “O Lord God, please remember me and please strengthen me just this time, O God, that I may at once be avenged of the Philistines for my two eyes.” The Lord answers Samson’s prayer as he offers himself up for his nation, “Let me die with the Philistines! … So the dead whom he killed at his death were more than those whom he killed in his life.” Is this not also prophesy? Yeshua, upon His death on the cross, saved far more than He did during His Earthly life and yet by it He also would condemn those who doubted Him. Through his sacrifice, He saved as many as would believe in Him, and yet he also vanquished His enemies, including sin and death.

The story of Micah and his Levitical priest and his idols sets up the depravity of Israel and the depths to which the nation is capable of falling. We hear over and over again that Israel turned their back on God, and here we have a Levite who, like Aaron, fashions idols for Micah and then for the larger tribe of Dan. This is an example of this very thing happening, and the consequences are clear from what we have read. When Israel turns away, the land falls under judgment. And they worshipped these idols until the captivity of Israel.

Psalm 78 becomes a great instruction that tells us how to read God’s Word: “Listen, O my people, to my instruction; Incline your ears to the words of my mouth. I will open my mouth in a parable; I will utter dark sayings of old, Which we have heard and known, And our fathers have told us. We will not conceal them from their children, But tell to the generation to come the praises of the Lord, And His strength and His wondrous works that He has done.” The Lord speaks to us in parables, in stories concerning the men of old, and He does not let His Word return to Him void. Both when He came in the flesh, and before He came in the flesh, the Lord conceals His truth in His Word, and only those who listen intently and seek the Lord with all their heart will come to know with understanding what the Lord intends. “He established a testimony in Jacob and appointed a law in Israel … that they should put their confidence in God and not forget the works of God, but keep His commandments.” After all, as John writes, the Saints “Keep the commandments of God and the faith of Yeshua.” We are to be NOT like the fathers who are stubborn and rebellious, like those who did not prepare their heart and whose spirit was not faithful to God. But upon God’s rebuke, we ought to seek Him, and return and search diligently for Him, for God is our rock and redeemer. God will forgive our iniquity when we seek Him with all of our heart.

Judges 19, Judges 20, Judges 21, Psalm 79

Israel’s almost total destruction of the Tribe of Benjamin was just, and it was indeed ordered by the Word of the Lord. Notwithstanding Deuteronomy 28, which is quite clear on the matter, I’ll show this through the unfortunate stream of events that took place from Judges 19-Judges 21. First of all, we see that in Judges 18, the Tribe of Dan had wandered greatly into sin, taking upon themselves idols and priests who sacrificed to idols. While God had described through the prophet writers of Scripture in previous chapters of Judges how the people of Israel had done evil in the sight of the Lord and turned their back on Him and followed after the gods of the Canaanites, we never saw any example of what this meant. Now in Judges 17-21, we see God’s prophets recording examples through the actions of the tribes of Dan and now Benjamin. We can see what it means that they turned toward evil in the sight of the Lord.

The first thing to know about the Levite from Ephraim’s concubine from Bethlehem in Judah is that she “played the harlot against him, and she went away…” from him. In Leviticus 21, the Lord says: “And the Lord said to Moses, “Speak to the priests, the sons of Aaron, and say to them: …They shall not take a wife who is a harlot or a defiled woman, nor shall they take a woman divorced from her husband; for the priest is holy to his God. … The daughter of any priest, if she profanes herself by playing the harlot, she profanes her father. She shall be burned with fire.” It would appear that this Levite is showing mercy by going to retrieve his concubine, though she is worthy of death. She runs to her father, who she profaned, and it appears that he is also showing mercy toward her. He in fact lavishes hospitality on the Levite from Ephraim because of the mercy he is apparently sharing toward his daughter.

When the Levite finally breaks away to leave toward his home in the hills of Ephraim, its critically important to note that he does not want to turn in toward Jebus (the pre-Israeli Jerusalem), saying, “We will not turn aside into the city of foreigners who are not of the sons of Israel; but we will go on as far as Gibeah.” And so it is critically important to recognize that this priest believed he, his servant and his concubine would be safe among his brethren, the tribes of Israel. In this case, Gibeah is a city within the lands of Benjamin.

As the Levite and his party enter Gibeah, notice the stark parallel to this story and the story of the Angels who entered Sodom and encountered Lot:
“When they entered, they sat down in the open square of the city, for no one took them into his house to spend the night. … Just then an old man came in from his work in the field at evening … And the old man said, “Peace be with you! However, let all your needs be my responsibility; only do not spend the night in the open square.” So he brought him into his house, and gave fodder to the donkeys. And they washed their feet, and ate and drank. (Judges 19:15, 16, 20-21)
“Now the two angels came to Sodom in the evening, and Lot was sitting in the gate of Sodom. When Lot saw them, he rose to meet them, and he bowed himself with his face toward the ground. And he said, “Here now, my lords, please turn in to your servant’s house and spend the night, and wash your feet; then you may rise early and go on your way.” And they said, “No, but we will spend the night in the open square.”But he insisted strongly; so they turned in to him and entered his house. Then he made them a feast, and baked unleavened bread, and they ate.(Genesis 19:1-3)

In both cases, the old man and Lot were showing Christian charity to the family. In both cases, the old man and Lot knew the evils of the city and invited the travelers in to the comfort of their home, and not only took care of their dinner, but also washed their feet. In both cases, the men of the city came to the door and demanded a homosexual relationship with the stranger:
“As they were enjoying themselves, suddenly certain men of the city, perverted men, surrounded the house and beat on the door. They spoke to the master of the house, the old man, saying, “Bring out the man who came to your house, that we may know him carnally!” (Judges 19:22)
“Now before they lay down, the men of the city, the men of Sodom, both old and young, all the people from every quarter, surrounded the house. And they called to Lot and said to him, ‘Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us that we may know them carnally.’” (Genesis 19:4-5)

In both cases, the host offered the women, saying it is better to have relations with a woman than it is to practice homosexuality and bring sin onto the land. In Lot’s case, the offer was made rhetorically and in righteousness, where he was legitimately offering his virgin daughters as wives to the Sodomites, as they had not known a man. In the case of the adulterous concubine, the offer is made due to the woman’s sin. I can’t say whether this is God’s judgment on the sinful woman or not, but it does seem like this could be an interpretation. Regardless, the men accept the offer and ravish her until she dies. This sin of brutality is just as great as the first sin of homosexual intent. This is where I will need to devote more study to discern the differences between the two stories and how God’s law is working itself out for good.

In any case, the comparison with the story of Lot is meant to showcase the evil of the city of Gibeah. The comparison in the two stories between Sodom and Gibeah could not be more clear. Thus, the point of this story is to show that the Tribe of Benjamin had become just as evil as the Sodomites and was equally worthy of total destruction. This is further clarified when the Tribe of Benjamin refuses to bring justice to the men who had committed this evil against the Ephraimite Priest in Gibeah. By gruesomely cutting his concubine in 12 pieces and sending her body to the tribes of Israel, the Levite is calling out for God’s judgment upon the whole nation of Israel. He is saying that this sin could bring destruction on all of Israel if it is not brought to justice. He’s right, and God agrees.

When Israel comes together to rightly confront Benjamin, and bring justice to the men who sinned so the land could be free of the woman’s bloodguilt, Benjamin revolted and joined their fellow tribesmen in their sin, choosing to protect the sinners instead of throw them out of the camp, which is God’s law in the matter. By doing this, the sin of these men was transferred to the whole tribe, and would have further spread to all of Israel without a response. And so Israel called out to God on how to address this, and God very clearly instructs Israel to go to war against Benjamin: “The sons of Israel inquired of the Lord (for the ark of the covenant of God was there in those days, and Phinehas the son of Eleazar, Aaron’s son, stood before it to minister in those days), saying, “Shall I yet again go out to battle against the sons of my brother Benjamin, or shall I cease?” And the Lord said, “Go up, for tomorrow I will deliver them into your hand.” God confirms this a second time during the midst of the battle.

And so the Tribe of Benjamin was reduced to 600 men who turned and fled toward the Rock of Rimmon, where they stayed for four months in surrender, repenting for the sins of their Tribe. Everyone else of the whole tribe was destroyed. The people of Israel sought God’s guidance on what to do, and they grieved over the loss of the Tribe of Benjamin and the potential ruin of this great tribe of Israel. They settled the problem two ways: First, the inhabitants of Jabesh-gilea did not come out to fight against Benjamin as the Lord instructed, and so they had to be destroyed for not taking part in the justice commanded by the Lord. Their virgins, 400 of them, were preserved for the men of Benjamin, but 200 more were needed. And so they commanded the men to take virgins from the daughters of Shiloh, stating to any fathers or brothers who complained that they did not take them in battle and left them to live. And so the balance of Benjamin had wives to continue the tribe’s inheritance. Both Mordecai in the story of Esther and Paul the Apostle were descendants of this tribe.

The Lord indicates at the beginning and the end of this episode that “In those days, there was no king in Israel,” meaning that there was no uniform way in which to judge disputes among the different tribes or lead the people toward righteousness. They turned to God, however, for the judgment of Benjamin, and God instructed the judgment that came upon the tribe. When it says “everyone did what was right in their own eyes;” however, this indicates that the peoples continued to sin, before and even after this episode. While they sought God’s guidance in this major affair, did they seek him in their lesser disputes or even their parallel disputes? Did they have a relationship with Him—an intimate relationship that taught them between doing what is right and wrong. Did they have the Holy Spirit dwelling within them? Were they like David, men after God’s own heart? The answer is no. The whole story of Judges, which happened between the days of Joshua, who brought Israel into the land, and Saul, who was God’s first anointed King, is a story of sin and redemption, over and over again. Without a moral and Godly leader, man continues to fall away after his own sinful ways. This whole lawless episode points forward to the need of a righteous king, the King Messiah Yeshua, so that the people can follow Him in His righteousness. Only in Yeshua, and His Holy Spirit reigning within us, can we walk in righteousness and be men and women after God’s own heart. Only then can we have an intimate relationship with God and live with the discernment between what is right, and almost right. In Yeshua, we can be men after God’s own heart, as David was, because he knew Him, just like we are invited to do.

Ruth 1, Ruth 2, Ruth 3, Ruth 4, Psalm 80

Ruth was introduced into the lineage of our Lord because of the famine that took place during the same time period that the story of Gideon takes place. ALL of the Israeli men who fled Israel due to this famine died— because of their disobedience—because rather than stay and reclaim the land for the Lord, rather than attempt to revive the land through the Word of the Lord, they fled for temporal reasons. Jesus said, “those who attempt to save their lives will lose it, but those who give up their lives on account of me, will gain eternal life.” Nevertheless, “God uses all things for good,” and Ruth was brought into the lineage of our Lord Yeshua as a result, while delivering death unto all the Jewish men who fled. She married Boaz, a son of Israel, but only because Elimelech, who died, brought his wife Naomi and her two sons Mahlon and Chilion, who also died, into Moab, where Ruth was living. Ruth was so moved by the Truth she learned of God through Naomi and her family, she went back with Naomi and married into Elimelech’s family. Boaz was the man who stayed, and in this he stayed true to the Lord. Thus, He would be an ancestor of our Lord Yeshua, and Ruth would bear fruit from her womb from a true man of God in Israel.

In her loyalty to her mother-in-law and the Mosaic law she has truly submitted to as Naomi’s daughter in-law, Ruth shows a true conversion in her Heart to the One True God: “Your people shall be my people, And your God, my God. Where you die, I will die, And there will I be buried. The LORD do so to me, and more also, If anything but death parts you and me.” Because of her loyalty to God and her mother-in-law, we see the law given to Moses come to life in the story of Ruth, with Boaz, a man of God, redeeming her on account of his relative Elimelech. We also see an allegory of Christ redeeming His Church, which is made up of Messianic Jews and Gentiles—like Ruth—who have been grafted-in to Israel. It is no coincidence that Ruth becomes a grandmother of King David, a man after God’s own heart, and our Lord Yeshua through Mary, and Mary herself shows some of the same humble obedience that Ruth exhibits. She sought Boaz to fulfill the law of God and give Naomi a son, when many younger men might have been more attractive to her for her own fleshly desire. She was a woman of God through and through.

Boaz redeems Ruth, a Moabite, as if she is a woman of Israel. She is literally grafted-in to Israel and becomes as if she was a daughter of Jacob. Even the elder Ephraimites at the city gate, where contracts and marriages are formed, say: “We are witnesses. The Lord make the woman who is coming to your house like Rachel and Leah, the two who built the house of Israel; and may you prosper in Ephrathah and be famous in Bethlehem. May your house be like the house of Perez, whom Tamar bore to Judah, because of the offspring which the Lord will give you from this young woman.” It’s interesting that the witnesses bring up the previous occurrence when a man of Israel, Judah himself, continued his tribe through the union with a Gentile woman. In this case Tamar, who pretended to be a harlot and bore Perez to Judah, who became the first ancestor of Yeshua from a Jew and Gentile union. The next in the line was Boaz’s own mother, Rahab, from Jericho, who married Salmon, Boaz’s father. Now Boaz has married Ruth. The Messianic line through King David comes from a long line of Gentiles being grafted-in to Israel, and this is a prophetic template for hwo Yeshua Himself would die for both Jew and Greek, and create one Israel, from the native born and those gentiles who are grafted-in by His blood.

It’s worth pointing out that Orpah was given the same opportunity as Ruth to be grafted-in to Israel, but she chose to return to the land of her fathers and worship the false gods they worship. She had come to knowledge of the truth, but then she turned back to her sin. According to Hebrews 10:26, she chose this path to her own destruction: “For if we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful expectation of judgment, and fiery indignation which will devour the adversaries.” Orpah is a representation of the Christian who accepts the Messiah Yeshua and walks in His ways, but then turns back away from this path of righteousness and returns to a worldly life of whatever fashion you can imagine. This person can no longer be saved and can expect damnation. Note how Orpah responds, and compare her response to Ruth’s response: “Then they lifted up their voices and wept again; and Orpah kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth clung to her.” They both wept together with Naomi, but only Ruth clung on.

Importantly, Naomi gives Ruth one more chance to turn back to her worldly life and to abandon the God of Israel: “And she said, “Look, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and to her gods; return after your sister-in-law.” But Ruth said, as we’ve seen: “Entreat me not to leave you, Or to turn back from following after you … Your people shall be my people, And your God, my God.” Ruth has voluntarily made a choice to follow God, to become one of His people, and to leave behind her former Gentile, pagan life. It is her instance of holding on to Naomi, who represents the life of a Godly woman of Israel, that binds Ruth to a path of salvation in the Messiah Yeshua, of whom she would literally be an ancestral mother.

God uses the Book of Ruth to show us the nature of a true child of Abraham, who is a part of Israel, the Bride of Messiah Yeshua. The faithful servant of the Lord God of Israel who is a Gentile grafted-in to the Church, has this attitude: “Why have I found favor in your eyes, that you should take notice of me, since I am a foreigner?” And Boaz answered and said to her, “It has been fully reported to me, all that you have done for your mother-in-law since the death of your husband, and how you have left your father and your mother and the land of your birth, and have come to a people whom you did not know before. The LORD repay your work, and a full reward be given you by the LORD God of Israel, under whose wings you have come for refuge.” Mark 10:29-30: “So Jesus answered and said, “Assuredly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or lands, for My sake and the gospel’s, who shall not receive a hundredfold now in this time—houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions—and in the age to come, eternal life.” We ought to obey Christ first before anything else, no matter what, and we will be rewarded. Ruth was so rewarded that her offspring mothered the Messiah Himself.

2022 Samuel, Kings, Chronicles and Psalms

1 Samuel 1, 1 Samuel 2, 1 Samuel 3, Psalm 81

Leviticus 18:18 says, “Nor shall you take a woman as a rival to her sister, to uncover her nakedness while the other is alive.” A sister here in the Hebrew means “sister,” but in spirit and truth of interpretation, the verse also indicates that a man ought not have multiple wives. A sister in the faith, or a sister from Israel, has the same meaning. We see however that Elkanah has not obeyed God in this manner, and thus Peninnah contends with Hannah and oppresses her while she is downtrodden because Elkanah favors Hannah and provisions her with more, even though Peninnah has children. The contention Hannah experiences is on account of Elkanah’s sin, but she will soon sing exultation and rejoicing in the Lord. She just needs to endure through a time of struggle first, which represents the time we too must endure hardship as we await the coming Kingdom.

Hannah does what is righteous for a woman of God, however, and prays to God, both appealing to Him for deliverance and making a similar offering that Jephthah promised relative to his daughter; that her son would be consecrated to the Lord. Upon receiving the Lord’s favor due to her humble and contrite heart, Hannah conceives and bears Samuel, a true man of God who will displace the sinful priests. Because Hannah honors her vow and gives to God her son Samuel, God blesses her with five more children. Obedience leads to blessing every single time. Peninnah means tower or stronghold, perhaps of the enemy here, while Hannah means favored one. In another example of two women, the second to bear is blessed and the first is forgotten, which foretells of the coming Messiah whose obedience to the Lord would establish the second covenant and bring blessings for all Mankind.

Samuel, as a young child ministering before the Lord, hears from God three times before Eli can confirm that the spirit of prophesy has come upon him. Eli shows some humility when he accepts the fate dispelled upon his household by Samuel’s first prophesy. He knows he deserved death for failing to call his sons’ several sins to account. God’s prophesy through the unnamed prophet is important: “But I will raise up for Myself a faithful priest who will do according to what is in My heart and in My soul; and I will build him an enduring house, and he will walk before My anointed always.” The faithful servant of God follows after God’s heart, not his own heart, God’s spirit and not his own soul, and for this, he will receive “an enduring house” and “walk before My anointed always.” In other words, this good and faithful servant will make it into the Kingdom, and we ought to follow this model. The sinful and untested servants will instead be locked out. Will we call, “Here I am, Lord,” when He calls us to do His will?

1 Samuel 4, 1 Samuel 5, 1 Samuel 6, 1 Samuel 7, 1 Samuel 8, Psalm 82

In these days, Israel had fallen away and was spiritually guided by Eli and his two corrupt sons, Hophni and Phinehas, and because the people treated the Ark of God as a talisman that would help them in battle, and they did not seek the Word of the Lord, Israel not only lost the battle to the Philistines but they lost the Ark of the Lord, also. God did not instruct Israel to bring the Ark into battle, and yet they brought it. In this they sinned, and this is why they lost the battle and the Ark to the enemy. Eli’s grandson was named Ichabod, because “the glory has departed from Israel.” This was the first time this happened, but it would happen again upon the grave disobedience of the people before the first temple was destroyed, and it would happen a third time when Israel crucified Yeshua, which after a 40-year period of judgment, lead to the destruction of the second temple. God had enough, and yet these shocks would eventually bring them to repentance.

The enemy had more respect for the Ark than Israel had at this time, and once they realized Yahweh was more powerful than their false god Dagon, they sought to send the Ark back. In fact, I love this line: “If you send away the ark of the God of Israel, do not send it empty, but by all means return him a guilt offering. Then you will be healed, and it will be known to you why his hand does not turn away from you. … Why should you harden your hearts as the Egyptians and Pharaoh hardened their hearts? After he had dealt severely with them, did they not send the people away, and they departed?” They had such respect for the power of Yahweh that they sacrificed to Him and returned the Ark to Israel after seven months. Beth-shemesh wasn’t worthy to receive the Ark, and only when it entered Kirjath Jearim and the people consecrated Abinadab’s son Eleazar to keep the ark did the people have peace.

Upon coming to age, Samuel calls Israel to repentance,  “If you are returning to the Lord with all your heart, then put away the foreign gods and the Ashtaroth from among you and direct your heart to the Lord and serve him only, and he will deliver you out of the hand of the Philistines.” We must seek the Lord with all of our hearts and obey His commandments. This is the structure of the faith. The people obeyed, and then and ONLY then, did Samuel pray and fast for the people. The people implored him: “Do not cease to cry out to the Lord our God for us, that he may save us from the hand of the Philistines.” This is the type of faith that we need to have, and this is the type of faith that brings the Lord’s blessings. “And Samuel cried out to the Lord for Israel, and the Lord answered him.” 1 Samuel 7 truly represents the whole of repentance and how turning back to the Lord brings His glory into our lives. “And the hand of the Lord was against the Philistines all the days of Samuel.”

Now, when Samuel grew older, the people asked him to appoint “a king to judge” them, and God concurs with this recommendation. And while the Lord sees this request as a rejection of His kingship over them, we cannot say that the Lord did not see it coming. In fact, a quick reading of Deuteronomy 17:14-20 will show that the Lord fully anticipated Israel doing exactly what they’re doing here: “When you come to the land which the Lord your God is giving you, and possess it and dwell in it, and say, ‘I will set a king over me like all the nations that are around me,’ you shall surely set a king over you whom the Lord your God chooses; one from among your brethren you shall set as king over you; you may not set a foreigner over you, who is not your brother. But he shall not multiply horses for himself, nor cause the people to return to Egypt to multiply horses, for the Lord has said to you, ‘You shall not return that way again.’ Neither shall he multiply wives for himself, lest his heart turn away; nor shall he greatly multiply silver and gold for himself. Also it shall be, when he sits on the throne of his kingdom, that he shall write for himself a copy of this law in a book, from the one before the priests, the Levites. And it shall be with him, and he shall read it all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the Lord his God and be careful to observe all the words of this law and these statutes, that his heart may not be lifted above his brethren, that he may not turn aside from the commandment to the right hand or to the left, and that he may prolong his days in his kingdom, he and his children in the midst of Israel.”

And so it’s really important as we read 1 Samuel 8 to recognize that God knew Israel would have a king, and that He also instructed Israel on how that king ought to behave. In fact, he was to have one wife, he was to not seek his own riches or pleasure, and he was to not only read the law, but record it and write it down and study it day and night. When the king knows God, then the people of Israel would be blessed, but when the king does not know God, then the words of 1 Samuel 8:6-22 come into play. “These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen and to run before his chariots. And he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and some to plow his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his servants. He will take the tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and to his servants. He will take your male servants and female servants and the best of your young men and your donkeys, and put them to his work. He will take the tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves. And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves, but the Lord will not answer you in that day.”

We see through the context of the whole Scripture that Israel would experience kings who followed after God and kings who rejected God, and Israel as a nation would prosper with kings that obeyed the words of Deuteronomy 17 and they would suffer with kings that followed the description of 2 Samuel 8.

When we read Psalm 82, it’s possible to interpret it as referring to kings who walked away from God’s ways, or priests who failed to serve God, and many scholars do, but a better interpretation that stems from Yeshua’s reference to the Psalm in John 10 indicates that here the Psalmist writes about God Himself among His divine council in the Heavens. In John 10, Yeshua says essentially that He is the God who stands in His own congregation of Divine Beings that He created and judges in the midst of these watchers of Mankind. This is why when Yeshua says, “doesn’t the psalmist write, ‘You are gods,” that they pick up stones to stone Him. They wouldn’t have picked up stones if Yeshua was simply interpreting Psalm 82 as a reference to some divine nature among men, and had claimed to be their equal when He said about Himself, “I am the Son of God.” Rather, Yeshua is saying that He Himself said those words as the Lord of the Divine Council to the Divine Beings who challenged God and sought to mislead Mankind. Because these Divine Beings challenged God and His order, they would be condemned to die like men and fall like human princes. We know that Satan indeed took 1/3 of the Heavenly Host with Him when He fell out of Heaven. Psalm 82 is about this, because Yeshua would execute this judgment against the Divine Beings upon His ascension into Heaven, and this is what He is telling the Scribes and Pharisees that prompts them to pick up stones. “Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be cast out,” Yeshua said in John 12:27-31 right before His crucifixion. And so, it is Yeshua who acknowledged these Divine Beings were “gods” from the perspective of misled mankind, who lead them astray to follow after themselves rather than after God Most High, and thus, He said to them, “You will die like men and fall like any one of the princes.” Then, Psalm 82 finished magnificently with a prophesy of the Messiah Himself and the very moment this would occur: “Arise, O God, judge the earth! For it is You who possesses all the nations.” This foretells Yeshua’s resurrection, which was the moment the Divine Beings were permanently cast out of Heaven and set up to be destroyed, like men who rebel, at the End of the Age. What glorious retribution for the Satanic Host that sought to mislead Man and rebel against God. Justice will be served.

1 Samuel 9, 1 Samuel 10, 1 Samuel 11, 1 Samuel 12, Psalm 83

Deuteronomy 17:14-20, as discussed for 1 Samuel 8, shows that God already knows and prophesies through Moses that Israel will ask for a king to lead them, and God is setting up the manner in which a righteous King ought to rule. Considering the weakness of man in the flesh, God makes accommodations for Man because Man has fallen and can be expected to not realize God’s ideal state of perfection on his own. You can see Yeshua talk about this directly in the matter of divorce in Matthew 19:3-12, saying that God had made accommodations through Moses to account for the fact that Man sins, but this was not His will from the beginning. His will was for Man not to sin. In the same manner, the king of flesh is not desirable, but only that God is king, and yet the worldly king is an accommodation on account of sin. In 1 Samuel 9-12, God further clarifies that His preference is for Israel to look to Him as the nation’s only King, and ultimately, He will restore this relationship by coming in the flesh and becoming both our King and High Priest, our mediator, our sacrifice and our redeemer. He will come again to completely restore this relationship between His bride, Israel, and Himself, and He will rule over His people forever more. In the meantime, God allows imperfect kings to rule His people, and cautions them that the king’s loyalty to Him will have a very large impact on whether the land as a whole is prosperous or not.

The king now plays a direct role in the affect of Deuteronomy 28. See these verses from 1 Samuel 12: “If you will fear the Lord and serve Him, and listen to His voice and not rebel against the command of the Lord, then both you and also the king who reigns over you will follow the Lord your God. If you will not listen to the voice of the Lord, but rebel against the command of the Lord, then the hand of the Lord will be against you, as it was against your fathers. … Only fear the Lord and serve Him in truth with all your heart; for consider what great things He has done for you. But if you still do wickedly, both you and your king will be swept away.” And so, even though Israel has chosen a king to rule over them, this king (government) will now be used as an additional method in which God will judge His people. If the people obey God, the king will be just and good and obey the Lord and lead the people in righteousness. If the people are evil and turn their backs on the Lord, then the King will oppress the people and used as a way to bring judgment on them. Ultimately, the king himself will be swept away through the judgment of God.

It’s important to note that Saul was chosen by God, Saul was anointed with the Holy Spirit by God, and Saul was changed by God into a Godly man, chosen to rule the nation of Israel, and God’s Holy Spirit fell upon him. He was still a man, just as we remain men and women when we accept Yeshua and the Holy Spirit falls on us, and it is still possible for us to fall away, just as Saul here eventually falls away and seeks after his own heart. It was his own choice to do this, just as it was also his choice to accept the calling of God upon him to become king. Saul’s story is one of the greatest examples in Scripture of a man losing his salvation per Matthew 7:21-23. He was anointed by the Holy Spirit and cried out Lord, Lord, he prophesied in the name of the Lord, and yet he fell into lawlessness and was thus ultimately rejected by the Lord and lost his salvation. “Therefore I make known to you that no one speaking by the Spirit of God calls Jesus accursed, and no one can say that Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit.” (1 Cor. 12:3).

Look at Saul here: “Then the Spirit of the Lord will come upon you mightily, and you shall prophesy with them and be changed into another man. It shall be when these signs come to you, do for yourself what the occasion requires, for God is with you. And you shall go down before me to Gilgal; and behold, I will come down to you to offer burnt offerings and sacrifice peace offerings. You shall wait seven days until I come to you and show you what you should do.” Then it happened when he turned his back to leave Samuel, God changed his heart; and all those signs came about on that day. When they came to the hill there, behold, a group of prophets met him; and the Spirit of God came upon him mightily, so that he prophesied among them.” This is a man who has prophesied in the name of God, but later falls away.

Now as we consider why God chose Saul to be the king and to anoint him with the Holy Spirit, we can see some common features that always come up when God selects those to do His will: He was the youngest in the family in the smallest tribe of Benjamin. He was humble and was found hiding when it was time to announce his anointing to the 12 Tribes. Yet at the same time, he was also “a choice and handsome” man, and “from his shoulders upward he was taller than any of the people.” There is a mixing here of God’s choice of Saul for his humble beginnings and humility of heart, and Israel asking God for a king. Are these later features on account of Israel’s choice? Are these the things Man looks for in a ruler, while the other more humble features are what God looks for? I think so.

Importantly, God continues to make it clear before all Israel that the nation has rejected God as King by asking for a man rule over them: “But you have today rejected your God, who Himself saved you from all your adversities and your tribulation.” Nevertheless, the people say, “Long live the king!” when Saul is presented to them. The Lord sends “thunder and rain” to show his disapproval of Israel’s choice of an earthly king, but Israel is repentant, and God indicates that He loves His chosen people, despite their folly. However, when they do disobey, they follow after “empty things that cannot profit or deliver,” he warns. In his obeisance, God sets two things in motion: 1) A nation will be judged positively or negatively by the obedience of its king (or government) to the Lord and His commandments, both for blessing and for destruction. 2) The Lord will restore His place as King over His people when he sends his Messiah, first to reestablish a proper interpretation of the law and to call sinners to salvation, and second to destroy all of the adversaries who oppose God and His commandments.

1 Samuel 13, 1 Samuel 14, Psalm 84

In 1 Samuel 13, we see it was only for two years that Saul reigned as king before he turned his heart away from the Lord and lost his salvation. We won’t see the proof text until later in Scripture, but here it is. “Because you [Saul] have rejected the word of the Lord, He also has rejected you from being king.” (1 Samuel 15:23). In this verse, Saul rejects Yeshua, who is the Word who became flesh. He denies the one who saves. It’s worse than this. In 1 Samuel 16, “the Spirit of the Lord came upon David ...but the Spirit of the Lord departed from Saul, and a distressing spirit from the Lord troubled him.” And, concerning Solomon, the Lord says in 2 Samuel 7, “But my mercy shall not depart from him, as I took it from Saul, whom I removed from before you.” What did Saul do? In 1 Samuel 13, we see that Saul violated “the commandment of the Lord your God, which he commanded you.” He did this by offering burnt offerings and supplications before the Lord, when it was the priest’s role alone to do such a thing. But more specifically, he relied on himself instead of waiting for God and God’s servants to prepare the men for battle, and when confronted with his sin, rather than repent, he gave excuses. For this, he lost his kingdom and his salvation and Samuel begins to search for “a man after God’s own heart” to rule as king.

In 1 Samuel 14, Saul became a Pharisee. He forced the people to fast before battle, which God had not asked him to do. For this reason, they were weak. Saul also announced what he was going to do first, and only then did he seek counsel from the Lord to bless what he already intended to do. For this reason, he was stymied and God did not answer him. In contrast, Saul’s son Jonathan had not heard his father and ate honey to brighten his countenance and prepare for battle. God has given us all clean foods to eat for our nourishment. Also, Jonathan asked for God’s guidance BEFORE he went up to battle, and God delivered the enemy into his hand as a result of this. What we see here is foreshadowing for why David loves Jonathan; David, a man after God’s own heart, loves the soul of Jonathan, because Jonathan follows God’s will. The people of the armies of Israel stood up for Jonathan, who obeyed God and not man, against their errant king.

As we read Psalm 84, it’s interesting to note the verse, “for a day in Your courts is better than a thousand outside.” This is a popular Christian song today, but it is also prophesy of the Last Day.

Psalm 90:4 says, “A thousand years in your sight are like a day that has just gone by, or like a watch in the night,” and 2 Peter 3:8 says, “But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.”

Consider Luke 12:35-38, to align Scripture with Scripture: “Let your waist be girded and your lamps burning; and you yourselves be like men who wait for their master, when He will return from the wedding, that when He comes and knocks they may open to him immediately. Blessed are those servants whom the master, when he comes, will find watching. Assuredly, I say to you that He will gird himself and have them sit down to eat, and will come and serve them. And if He should come in the second watch, or come in the third watch, and find them so, blessed are those servants.”

We can see through these verses that on the Last Day, Yeshua will raise the living and the dead who “watched” for their Messiah, and looked forward to the Marriage Supper of the Lamb, and they will be in Heaven on God’s time for a single day while the wrath of God takes place on Earth and the Millennial Reign takes place. These who watched obeyed His commands and kept their faith in Him, enduring until the End, whether their own last day or God’s Last Day. At the end of this Day of rest, Israel, the New Jerusalem, the Temple of God, which is the Church, will descend from the clouds of Heaven into the New Heaven and New Earth that Yeshua will set up, and it will last forever, the Eighth Day of Eternity.

Consider Revelation 21:1-4: “Then I, John, saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from heaven saying, ‘Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people. God Himself will be with them and be their God. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away.’” Yes, the Holy City, the New Jerusalem, is Israel, the Church, descending with the King at the end of the Last Day, to inherit the New Heaven and New Earth.

And so we can boldly say as Psalm 84 comes to a close: “I would rather stand at the threshold of the house of my God than dwell in the tents of wickedness. For the Lord God is a sun and a shield; The Lord gives grace and glory; no good thing does He withhold from those who walk uprightly. Oh Lord of hosts, How blessed is the man who trusts in You.”

In Revelation 21:22-26, we read: “But I saw no temple in it, for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. The city had no need of the sun or of the moon to shine in it, for the glory of God illuminated it. The Lamb is its light. And the nations of those who are saved shall walk in its light, and the kings of the earth bring their glory and honor into it. Its gates shall not be shut at all by day (there shall be no night there). And they shall bring the glory and the honor of the nations into it.”

The Lord God is indeed a sun and a shield, He gives grace and glory to those who love Him and keep His commandments. Let us be found watching and seeking for Him when He comes, not looking back.

1 Samuel 15, 1 Samuel 16, 1 Samuel 17, Psalm 85

Saul had lost God’s support of his crown when he sacrificed the sin offering and did not wait on Samuel; he took matters into his own hands. Now in 1 Samuel 15, Saul loses his salvation, but the reality of this takes 20 years or so to come to fruition at Saul’s suicide in battle. This is similar to when Jesus defeated Satan with His resurrection, but at that time threw the devil out of Heaven to rule on the Earth. It has been many years, and may be a few more, but Jesus will come again to banish Satan from the Earth and into total destruction. Satan began as “an angel of light” and one of the highest angels in God’s kingdom, but with his rebellion, he has been thrown out of Heaven and will soon be destroyed. Saul began as an anointed king of God, full of the Holy Spirit, elevated above every man in Israel, but through rebellion was dethroned and then ultimately destroyed.

Why did Saul lose his kingdom and also his salvation? Besides his past sins, which God tolerated, God commanded him to destroy the Amalekites and all their possessions, a continuation of a feud that began in the wilderness with Balaam and Balak. Saul took it upon himself to destroy the kingdom of the Amalekites, but he spared king Agag as well as “sheep and oxen, the BEST OF THE THINGS which should have been utterly destroyed, to sacrifice to the LORD your God in Gilgal.” Notice how Saul is still acting like a Pharisee? God told him to do one thing, but he has done another thing, and expanded on God’s law to make it mean something other than what God intended so he could save for himself the best meats of his spoil. This is what Jesus meant when he said, your righteousness must exceed the righteousness of the Pharisees to enter Heaven (Matthew 5:20). We must follow God’s commandments and not twist them to our own purposes.

But why was Saul’s later repentance not accepted? This is a scary thought. It’s because of Saul’s rebellion and his stubbornness in rebellion. Samuel’s anger here channels God’s anger quite well. “What then is this bleating of the sheep in my ears, and the lowing of the oxen which I hear?” This is where Saul makes his excuse, showing his rebellion, that he saved these sheep and oxen against the command of God to sacrifice them to God. Samuel simply tells him: “Be quiet!,” and follows up by repeating the charges against Saul. This is to say: “You’re wrong. You need to obey!” Rather than repent here—his last chance—Saul continues in his rebellion. This is the nail of the coffin for Saul’s salvation: Saul claims to have “obeyed the voice of the Lord,” despite him clearly defying it, and he continues to give excuses. He only repents after Samuel announces he has lost his anointing. It’s too late.

Samuel makes this point clearly: “So Samuel said: “Has the LORD as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, As in obeying the voice of the LORD? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, And to heed than the fat of rams. For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, And stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the LORD, He also has rejected you from being king.” Samuel is not saying that the Lord doesn’t want sacrifices here, because He clearly does. The Israelites sacrificed for many years as a prophetic template of the one-time sacrifice Yeshua would make for all time, eliminating the sins of those who repent and follow Him. Now, we become “a living sacrifice” for God, who wants our obedience first, which is our living sacrifice. He wants us to follow His commandments in humility and in trust, and not twist them for our own emolument. The lesson then for Saul and those who observed is the same lesson for us today.

We cannot continue in sin once we’ve been saved. We can’t be stubborn and put off repentance for a future day. We can’t make excuses for why we continue in sin. In Hebrews 6:4-6, we read: “For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted the heavenly gift, and have become partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come, if they fall away, to renew them again to repentance, since they crucify again for themselves the Son of God, and put Him to an open shame.” In Hebrews 10:26-27, we read: “If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God.” In Romans 11:22, we read: “Consider therefore the kindness and sternness of God: sternness to those who fell, but kindness to you, provided that you continue in his kindness. Otherwise, you also will be cut off.” At some point, it will be too late, as it was for Saul.

Samuel grieves greatly God’s rejection of Saul, because he too loved Saul. Yet, the man of God obeys our Heavenly Father and gives him the news that God has asked him to share. It’s clear: “Samuel did not see Saul again until the day of his death; for Samuel grieved over Saul. And the Lord regretted that He had made Saul king over Israel.” And yet, the Lord would not let him grieve long, for the work of the kingdom must be done. “Now the Lord said to Samuel, “How long will you grieve over Saul, since I have rejected him from being king over Israel? Fill your horn with oil and go.” If we encounter people who reject the Word of the Lord and will not heed His commands, we must dust off our feet and move on to the next house, bringing the Gospel to all who will receive it.

David, the man after God’s own heart was the youngest brother, not even considered as a candidate by his father Jesse. “For the LORD does not see as man sees; for man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.” And yet, he was “ruddy, with bright eyes, and good looking,” so he wasn’t the ugly step child, either. The point is that he was not picked by man, but by God. He was also a musician, a skill that God used to elevate him to where he needed to be. So as the Holy Spirit descended on David following his anointing as King of Israel, it left Saul and God sent a demon to oppress him. This condemnation of Saul gave David the opportunity to join the king’s court and learn the ways of the king. He would do this for many years before actually taking the throne. God prepares us ahead of time for the role He has for us.

While iconic, the story of David and Goliath has so many layers we could not possibly explore them all with one reading. It’s a Messianic story, it’s a story about the End of the Age, and it’s a historical story that had widespread implications in the lives of Saul and David. I found it fascinating that Goliath carried a spear with a spearhead that weighted 15 pounds. He must have been a large and strong man indeed to wield it—nine and a half feet tall, to be exact. Imagine such a solid, armored man shouting insults at you on a battlefield. Would you run? All of the Israelites hid their face from him. What “giants” are in our lives that we hide from? Is it Coronavirus? Is it threat of a vaccine passport or even the End of the Age? Is it tyrannical government? Is it getting fired? Is it gun confiscation or police knocking down our doors? Are we like the Israelites who cowered in fear from their giant, or are we like David, who faced Him without fear?

As God told Joshua (1:9), “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go;” David embodied this truth when he faced Goliath. We ought to meditate on David’s inspired words as we face giants in our lives, whenever they come: “You come to me with a sword, with a spear, and with a javelin. But I come to you in the name of the LORD of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. This day the LORD will deliver you into my hand, and I will strike you and take your head from you. And this day I will give the carcasses of the camp of the Philistines to the birds of the air and the wild beasts of the earth, that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel. Then all this assembly shall know that the LORD does not save with sword and spear; for the battle is the LORD’s, and He will give you into our hands.” (1 Samuel 17). This sounds a lot like the end of days.

Recall from Genesis 3:15 that Jesus will crush the head of the serpent and from Revelation 19:17 that the birds of the air and wild beasts of the earth will devour the flesh of the Lord’s enemies. When we repent from our sins and confess the name of Yeshua with our mouth and believe in Him in our heart, we are saved, and there is no enemy that can defeat us. No, not one. Our Lord commanded us, do not be afraid of those who can maim or kill the body, but be afraid of He who can throw the body and soul into Hell. We must love and serve the Lord with all of our heart, all of our mind, all of our strength, and all of our soul, and not turn to the left or to the right, and He will be with us, even to the end of the age. There is no enemy that can defeat us when we keep the commandments of God and have the testimony and faith of Messiah Yeshua (Revelation 12:17, 14:12).

1 Samuel 18, 1 Samuel 19, 1 Samuel 20, Psalm 86

I can’t help but think the discouragement that David would face over the next 20 years. Here he is, the anointed King of Israel, chosen by God Himself, and now he is on the run for his life. Jonathan recognized God’s anointed and sought to subjugate himself to him, even though under the law of man he was next in line for the throne. For his loyalty, David pledged to protect Jonathan’s sons upon his ascendancy, and he did. God gave David this grace in his life, and David did not let the truth of it escape him. Yet, there were years and years to come before he would take the throne. How does a man endure through such hardship knowing that God has something great for him without taking matters into his own hands? He must be a man after God’s own heart to wait on the Lord, and be patient in His suffering. God says this very thing. Because David did this, he was given what was promised, and his kingdom lasts forever through his blood, the son of Mary, Yeshua.

1 Samuel 21, 1 Samuel 22, 1 Samuel 23, 1 Samuel 24, Psalm 87

We learn a few things about Torah through David’s experiences in 1 Samuel 21. When God says in Exodus 20:16, “You shall not bear against your neighbor false witness” (literal translation), God is referring to deception that leads to the harm of another, either slander or libel, or false testimony in court, for upon two or three witnesses to a violation of God’s law a matter is established (Deut. 19:15, others). And so, there is no contradiction here when David uses deception two times to preserve life, and it was not David’s actions here that led to harm against another. He deceived Ahimelech the priest noting that he was on a mission from Saul when he was actually running from Saul, and he pretended he was insane before Achish, the king of Gath, to preserve the life of him and his men when he was captured by the Philistine enemies. And yet, God says that David only intentionally sinned, or rebelled against God, in the matter of Uriah the Hittite, when He had Uriah murdered because he had committed adultery with Uriah’s wife Bathsheeba. “David did what was right in the eyes of the LORD, and had not turned aside from anything that He commanded him all the days of his life, except in the matter of Uriah the Hittite.” (1 Kings 15:5). And David also repented greatly (Psalm 51) and paid for that sin.

This is not a contradiction. David did not rebel against God, his heart was right with God, and he did these things to preserve his life and the life of his men. This is lawful. Importantly, it was not David who brought harm to another, as we read in chapter 22. Sadly, Doeg had overheard the interchange and alerted Saul to Ahimelech’s righteous action to help David when he was in need, an act following the Gospel, actually. Here was Ahimelech’s heart: “Who among all your servants is as faithful as David, even the king’s son-in-law, who is captain over your guard, and is honored in your house? Did I just begin to inquire of God for him today? Far be it from me!” And yet, Saul shows his evil heart and evil intent by ordering the death of Ahimelech. It’s critical to note that “the servants of the king were not willing to put forth their hands to attack the priests of the Lord.” They knew God, and they knew neither David nor Ahimelech had done anything wrong, and yet Saul gives Nob into the hands of the enemy Doeg, an Edomite, who not only murders 85 priests of Yahweh, but also the “men and women, children and infants; also oxen, donkeys, and sheep he struck with the edge of the sword.” This was a Satanic act, and Saul the fallen is behind it, not David.

Going back to chapter 21, David also eats of the shewbread, the holy consecrated bread devoted to priests. Yeshua uses this story in Matthew 12:1-8, Mark 2:23-28 and Luke 6:1-5 to show the problems with legalism, when the priests had improperly accused his disciples of violating the Sabbath by picking heads of grain to eat. It wasn’t a violation of the law, and David’s story proves it. Read Leviticus 24:5-9, the shewbread was meant to be put out on the Sabbath by the priests and then the bread was reserved for Aaron and his sons to eat—the priests. But Ahimelech was a son of Aaron, and it was within his authority to donate this bread to someone in need; namely, David and his men. He made sure to ask whether David and his men had been with women, which would have made them unclean—then it would have been unlawful for David and his men to eat the bread. But eating this bread under the authority of Ahimelech was lawful. Eating heads of grain under the authority of Yeshua on the Sabbath was also lawful, while threshing the wheat for the harvest would not have been lawful. Yeshua in the story of David and in the story of the wheat field is showing how we should not create laws of men that add on to the laws of God, but we definitely should be keeping the laws of God.

In 1 Samuel 23, the Lord gives two examples of how we ought to approach the big decisions of our lives. When David learned that the Philistines were raiding Keilah, he went to the Lord in prayer. The Lord answered him and instructed him to attack the Philistines and deliver Keilah. But David’s men doubted the Word that the Lord had given him. Why? Because of fear. Look what they said: “Behold, we are afraid here in Judah. How much more then if we go to Keilah against the ranks of the Philistines?” And so David again inquired of the Lord in prayer, to overcome the fear of his men and potentially doubts that it created in himself. The Lord confirms to David: “Arise, go down to Keilah, for I will give the Philistines into your hand.” This tells us that it is not only OK, but it is good to inquire of the Lord more than once to make sure a message is from the Lord, but it also tells us that we ought to go to the Lord in prayer before we make a major decision. David and his men, because David had done this, delivered Keilah and took part in the bounty of the spoils.

In the second example, David hears that Saul is plotting additional evil against him, and thus he wonders whether Keilah, the land he had just delivered, would be a place of refuge for him and his men. David asks the Lord first whether Saul would come to Keilah and destroy the city because of him. David should have known the answer from what Saul did to the priests of Nob, but he prayed anyway. The Lord confirmed. Then, David wanting to determine whether he ought to stand and fight against Saul, prayed again asking whether the people of Keilah would deliver him into the hands of Saul. The Lord confirmed they would, and so he left and stayed in the strongholds of the wilderness. Because David both prayed to the Lord for direction and then listened and obeyed when the Lord gave him direction, the Lord did an amazing thing for David: He delivered Saul into his hand, and he tested David at the same time to see whether he would obey God’s law.

And so in 1 Samuel 24, we see Saul going into the cave that David and all his men were in to relieve himself. He was alone and surrounded. David had a moment where he could have destroyed Saul and taken the crown. Most men would have done this, and David’s men encouraged him to do this. And yet, David felt guilty because he had cut off a corner of the king’s robe. He literally went and potentially turned himself into the king and confessed that he had done this thing to Saul. In so doing, David shows that he has no evil in him whatsoever when it came to usurping the throne outside of God’s timing, and Saul is humbled. David shows everyone that he has no evil intent and Saul cannot do a thing. He must walk away or face potential mutiny. Saul, seeing his difficult position, does not let David go out of mercy but out of necessity. He then begs David to take care of his offspring when David becomes king, and David later obliges. Saul knows at this point that the Lord had truly made David king.

Going back to 1 Samuel 22, we see that when David temporarily escaped to the cave of Adullam, his family heard he was there and went down to him. Not only this, but “everyone who was in distress, everyone who was in debt, and everyone who was discontented gathered to him,” and “he became captain over them.” The initial 400 grew to 600 in a later chapter. Who does this sound like?

In Matthew 11:2-6, we read: “And when John had heard in prison about the works of Christ, he sent two of his disciples and said to Him, “Are You the Coming One, or do we look for another?” Jesus answered and said to them, “Go and tell John the things which you hear and see: The blind see and the lame walk; the lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear; the dead are raised up and the poor have the gospel preached to them. And blessed is he who is not offended because of Me.”

And now we can see why Yeshua is known as the Son of David, and why David himself is a prophetic template for the Lord our God Yeshua.

Dad adds:
“When Saul realized he had sinned against David and against God, he became emotional:  

Saul asked, “Is that your voice, David my son?” And he wept aloud. 17“You are more righteous than I,” he said. “You have treated me well, but I have treated you badly. 18You have just now told me about the good you did to me; the Lord delivered me into your hands, but you did not kill me.  1 Samuel 24

He weeps about falling away from God, about leading others into sin and about following a path of deceit and destruction.  He knows he is wrong and actually shows  remorse yet he does not repent.  His sorrow does not lead to a change of heart.  He refuses to move away from his sin.  He  dooms himself.  The evil that overwhelmed him has also caused his madness.”

1 Samuel 25, 1 Samuel 26, 1 Samuel 27, Psalm 88

I now see that David’s story has a progression in it that is meant to represent our own progression and how the Lord will be with us and protect us, while the enemy, Satan, will try to thwart our righteousness at every turn. In the story of 1 Samuel 25, Nabal is the man of Belial who represents an antichrist or Satanic influence, and Abigail is a woman of God who represents Israel in her perfect form, living out the Gospel. David, our hero, had just overcome a Satanic temptation to take vengeance in his own hand and destroy Saul in the cave, but now Satan gets under his skin and angers him to the point where he is ready to take vengeance against Nabal. God sends Abigail in as a woman of God to remind David of the righteous path, and He listens to the messenger of God, saving his own righteousness. By doing this, God shows David the value of his obedience and strikes down Belial with His vengeance, leaving David in righteousness with the opportunity to unite Himself with the messenger of righteousness, Abigail.

We can see the Gospel played out in this story both in Nabal’s refusal to abide by it, and Abigail’s complete and total adherence to it. David and his men were protecting Nabal’s land even though they had not been asked to do it, and in return they ask for their host to provide a meal for them. The Godly thing to do, as we saw Abraham and Lot do when they prepared a feast for the angels who visited them, was to provide for the stranger who is within your gates. “1 John 3:17 says, “But whoever has the world’s goods, and sees his brother in need and closes his heart against him, how does the love of God abide in him?” And 2 Corinthians 8:14 says, “at this present time your abundance being a supply for their need, so that their abundance also may become a supply for your need, that there may be equality;” Nabal fails to do this, which violates God’s law. David was ready to take the law into his own hands, something we should never do. The Lord says, “vengeance is mine, I shall repay.” If David did not want to strike down the Lord’s anointed, he ought not strike down the child of Israel on his own land.

Abigail, in humility, takes responsibility for her worthless husband and provides for David, urging him to let God take vengeance on his enemies, saying, “On me alone, my Lord, be the blame.” What a respectful and humble heart, willing to take on herself repentance for a sin she had not committed. Ought we not do that for our countrymen? She then goes on to prophesy regarding David, saying that should he hold back his hand of vengeance, the Lord would avenge for him. And by waiting on the Lord, the Lord would greatly reward him. This is exactly what happens.

David recognizes above all else, Abigail’s discernment, and learns from it: “Then David said to Abigail, “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, who sent you this day to meet me, and blessed be your discernment, and blessed be you, who have kept me this day from bloodshed and from avenging myself by my own hand.”

While Abigail is able to hold back David from vengeance, the Lord saw fit to test David by presenting him with yet another trial concerning the same temptation. Saul came out hunting for David a second time, and the Lord once more gave David an opportunity to take vengeance on his enemy. What a time for discernment! David passes this test again, waiting on the Lord to take vengeance, which he communicates: “The Lord will repay each man for his righteousness and his faithfulness; for the Lord delivered you into my hand today, but I refused to stretch out my hand against the Lord’s anointed. Now behold, as your life was highly valued in my sight this day, so may my life be highly valued in the sight of the Lord, and may He deliver me from all distress.” The Lord will do just that, but it will take some time. Once again, David is obeying God’s commandments.

Saul, though he asks for David’s forgiveness, does not actually repent. David had to flee from the Land to prevent Saul from pursuing him a third time. It’s interesting that in Gath, the land of his enemy, David is able to make peace with his enemy by fighting for his enemy against the enemies of Israel. Perhaps 1 Samuel 27 is the source of the saying, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” David used the opportunity to raid the Geshurites, the Girzites and the Amalekites, three peoples that the Lord commanded Israel to destroy from the land. David was further obeying the commandments of the Lord to Moses and Joshua and also helping his enemy, Achish, which set David up to live in peace for a time. Achish believed that David was making himself “odious among his people Israel” because he was fighting with Achish, an enemy of Israel. And yet he was still doing the Lord’s work.          

1 Samuel 28, 1 Samuel 29, 1 Samuel 30, 1 Samuel 31, Psalms 89

Saul, before he lost the Spirit of the Lord, had banished the witches from Israel. The commandment says in Exodus 22:18: “You shall not permit a sorceress to live.” Saul had obeyed this commandment by banishing them. The Spirit of Torah allows for such mercy, and banishment was more merciful than death in Israel. In the wilderness, death was more merciful than banishment. In one line of 1 Samuel 28, we can see God’s law playing itself out in all of its glory. Note that this is a similar interpretation of the law that Paul exercised in 1 Corinthians 5, when he ordered a man having relations with his father’s wife to be banished from the assembly. The punishment for that sin is also death. (Leviticus 20:11).

Sadly, we are at a point where the Spirit of God (the Holy Spirit) had left Saul, and instead of repent, he turned to grievous sin, violating the law of Leviticus 20:6: “And the person who turns to mediums and familiar spirits, to prostitute himself with them, I will set My face against that person and cut him off from his people.” This was a last straw for Paul, so the spirit of Samuel, having been awakened from his rest in the grave (Sheol), said Saul and his sons would be in the grave with him the following day. This is what happens to all when they die, good or evil; they sleep in the grave. Only upon the Last Day when Christ returns will all of the dead be raised and judged by the Messiah, separated as wheat and chaff, sheep and goats. Samuel and Jonathan were both sheep. Saul and his other sons were goats. They all would be in the grave following Israel’s defeat by the Philistines.

And so yes, Saul turned to witchcraft, a most heinous evil, though a powerful one that can only be rebuked by the Holy Spirit of Yeshua. Doubt its power? Consider Balaam. Consider John Ramirez and his testimony (search on Youtube). Only authentic believers can stand against this power in the name of Yeshua. Despite having previously banished these witches from the land, Saul having fallen away persists in his lawlessness. Desperate to reconnect to God, he was willing to do anything to receive spiritual direction, except repent. He would not do that. How terrifyingly sad! He was too proud to recognize his sins. Did the woman call upon the spirit of Samuel? Some interpretations wrongly claim Samuel is an evil spirit, since he is described as an “elohim” in the Hebrew. This is where scholarship is needed. The word “elohim” means “spiritual being” as a distinction to a “physical being” and does not necessarily mean God Most High. And so elohim is not necessarily God, but God is Elohim.

The word in 28:13 is interpreted somewhat accurately in the NKJV as “a spirit” but completely accurately in the NASB as “a divine being.”  And so this is the spirit of Samuel that this witch has awakened, and Samuel’s own words make this clear: “Why have you disturbed me by bringing me up?” What’s really awesome about this episode is that we see that Samuel is “wrapped with a robe” when he appears. This robe is the very robe of righteousness; the blood of Yeshua. Isaiah, an equally righteous prophet saved by His faith in Yeshua, says this in Isaiah 61:10: “I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my soul shall be joyful in my God; for He has clothed me with the garments of salvation, He has covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself with ornaments, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.” This is an important Scriptural definition that ought to be used to interpret Scripture, particularly here. After bringing one more prophesy to condemn Saul and his bloodline and pronounce the throne to David, Samuel goes back to lie down and await the 2nd coming of Yeshua.

As Saul joins Samuel, we should note that his is one of three suicides in Scripture to my knowledge. The other two are his armor bearer and Judas Iscariot. This does not put Saul in good company. The Lord identifies the reason for Saul’s damnation: “The Lord has done accordingly as He spoke through me; for the Lord has torn the kingdom out of your hand and given it to your neighbor, to David. As you did not obey the Lord and did not execute His fierce wrath on Amalek, so the Lord has done this thing to you this day.” This is important as we get into the next few chapters. Recall from Samuel’s prophesy in 1 Samuel 8 that the king that turns away from the Lord will lead the nation into ruin: “And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves, but the Lord will not answer you in that day.” And so we see at the end of 1 Samuel 28: “Moreover the Lord will also give over Israel along with you into the hands of the Philistines, therefore tomorrow you and your sons will be with me. Indeed the Lord will give over the army of Israel into the hands of the Philistines!”

David, caught behind enemy lines, is showing us what it means to love his enemy. He has so properly treated Achish that the Philistine king is brazen enough to think David will go to war on his side against his own people. It’s unclear whether David would have actually fought against Israel. I do not believe that he would have; rather, I think he would have used it as an opportunity to bring the victory to Israel, but God takes David out of having to make this decision. Because of his righteousness, the Lord God does not allow him to fight against Israel and puts doubt into the minds of the “lords” of the Philistines, prompting King Achish to send him away. This was God’s doing, for sure, and was a grace extended to David who was faithful to the Lord in all things, even loving his enemies like the Lord Yeshua asked us to do.

As David went away, the Lord immediately gave him a mission: save his two wives and the people of Ziklag, which had been raided by the Amalekites. Do you remember why God condemned Saul? It was because he did not “execute [God’s] fierce wrath on Amalek.” Because of this, the kingdom was torn out of his hands and given to his “neighbor, to David.” The first thing God does, as He is bringing Saul to his death, is to send David on a mission to destroy the Amalekites. You can’t make this stuff up! Once again, David turns to prayer before pursuing them, referring to them as “a band,” and the Lord makes it clear: “pursue, for you will surely overtake them, and you will surely rescue all.” The Lord does not offer such victory to his enemies, only to those who have given Him their whole heart. In doing so, David is given the full authority of God to seek and destroy these Amalekies; something the Lord had intended to do 20 years prior with Saul. “David slaughtered them from twilight until the evening the next day,” being fully obedient to the Lord’s commandment, showing in his faith his total trust in the Lord.

Upon leaving the battle, then men who fought against Amalek wanted to deny the spoils to the ones who stayed back to guard the baggage, but David established a division of labor in war that was needed, and recognized the importance of the men who guarded the bags while the others went to war. Perhaps army medics would have this distinction today? We see David establish the principle: “share and share alike” in the verse, “For as his share is who goes down to the battle, so shall his share be who stays by the baggage; they shall share alike.”

The bodies of Saul and his sons are burned, but their bones were buried. Saul’s head was sent throughout the land of the Philistines. This is quite an ignominious death for the first human King of Israel. Cremation, perhaps, is not the most honorable death when we see that the honorable are buried in Scripture, and the dishonorable are burned. This deserves some thought.

We also see a principle being established here that the second is more glorious than the first. King David, the second King of Israel, would bring the land to peace and prosperity, setting up Israel’s golden age. The first king brought the land to ruin. Likewise, the Second Temple was more glorious than the first, because the Messiah walked in it. The second covenant is more glorious than the first, because it brought the salvation of Yeshua. The second age (the age to come) is more glorious than the first, because there will be no sin or death and the faithful will live eternally with God.

2 Samuel 1, 2 Samuel 2, 2 Samuel 3, Psalm 90

You’ve heard the saying, “don’t shoot the messenger,” but I submit to you this day that the idiom is unBiblical. Perhaps the Amalekite who brought word to David about Saul’s death believed David had abandoned Israel, since he dwelt among the Philistines. Clearly, he had not. David honored God’s anointed King Saul even beyond his death, and he honored God’s Word, which ordered the annihilation of the Amalekites. David shows here the pretense under which a messenger ought to be shot: “How is it you were not afraid to stretch out your hand to destroy the Lord’s anointed?” And David called one of the young men and said, “Go, cut him down.” So he struck him and he died. David said to him, “Your blood is on your head, for your mouth has testified against you, saying, ‘I have killed the Lord’s anointed.’” We ought to be very careful even speaking evil of dignitaries, for this is a sin against God. David testified against Saul’s actions against him, but never once did speak against his king.

We see in a series of events, though, how David gives deference to God’s law as the men of Israel and Judah fight over who ought to replace King Saul. We already know the answer: God through Samuel had anointed David as King to follow King Saul, and God took Saul out at the appointed time, due to his own rebellion against God. God brought vengeance. David did not. David obeyed the law of the God by bringing God’s justice on the one who murdered the King of Israel, God’s anointed, Saul. As God’s anointed, David had this authority. The men of Judah recognize God’s authority and acknowledge God’s anointed, making David king of Judah in Hebron. The men of Israel take the law into their own hand, and anoint Saul’s son Ish-bosheth as king over Israel. David leaves it to God to sort out this mess, and God does over a period of two years. The infighting that occurs is outside David’s command. The two generals who fight and rival after one another are fighting after their own hearts. God brings judgment on them and ultimately David unites the kingdom by executing blood-guilt justice on Joab, who took the law into his own hand.

David was right to reclaim his wife Michal, whom he had married after paying the dowry of 100 Philistines. Saul had improperly married her off again. Later we learned that David did not lie with her again, as she was now untouchable per God’s law given through Moses. However, he was still right to bring her back into his house. This very act was not only just, but it also would unite the kingdom in the eyes of men. Saul’s daughter was married to the new king, which aligned the hearts of worldly men to accept David as their new king. This marriage wasn’t about love, but duty. The man who had taken Michal afterward had committed adultery with her, and it is merciful that we do not read about his death. Perhaps because David spared Michal, he spared the man who committed adultery with her, also. Nevertheless, David’s interest was to unite Israel into one nation, and he accomplished this and did not sin. David did have several children with his other wives, and so we see that his marriage bed is reserved for the ones he loves.

In 2 Samuel 1:26, ahabah (אַהֲבָה) is the love David describes of Jonathan, which is better than the love (same word) of women. The first instance of the word ahabah in Scripture is Deuteronomy 7:8, “but because the LORD loves you, and because He would keep the oath which He swore to your fathers, the LORD has brought you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed you from the house of bondage, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.” And so we know very clearly from this that the love being described of Jonathan toward David and vice versa is the Greek “agape” love, describing sacrificial love, the same love that Yeshua gave to those who would believe in Him and commanded us to love each other with. And yet, it is the same word that describes the “love of women,” but like English, where you can love your God, love your brother, love your wife, love your children, and love your car, the word has different meanings. David is edifying the sacrificial Godly love he shared with Jonathan, wherein Jonathan put His relationship with God, and thus David, God’s anointed, before his own interest to the throne or even to serve his own father Saul. Don’t let anyone distort this.

2 Samuel 4, 2 Samuel 5, 2 Samuel 6, 2 Samuel 7, Psalm 91

The observers of King David didn’t learn from the Amalekite who killed Saul concerning David’s righteousness. Now the sons of Rimmon the Beerothite, have erred by killing Saul’s son Ish-bosheth in his bed. Rechab and Baanah, descendants of the Hivites who made a treaty with Joshua, sinned by taking vengeance in their own hand, something David learned during his time in the wilderness not to do. “As the Lord lives, who has redeemed my life from all distress, when one told me, saying, ‘Behold, Saul is dead,’ and thought he was bringing good news, I seized him and killed him in Ziklag, which was the reward I gave him for his news. How much more, when wicked men have killed a righteous man in his own house on his bed, shall I not now require his blood from your hand and destroy you from the earth?” David, the Lord’s anointed, was in his right as king to execute these murderers, per the law of God. Blood for blood.

Nevertheless, with David’s rival dead, the men of Israel anoint David King and unite behind him, and so the 12 tribes are united for the last time in History prior to the second coming of our Messiah Yeshua, when it will happen again. After seven and a half years, David captures “the stronghold of Zion and makes Jerusalem the capitol of Israel. Israel begins to take form in its golden age, and the kings of neighboring nations send craftsmen to honor the king, but David gives deference to God, acknowledging that God had established him as king over Israel and “exalted his kingdom for the sake of His people Israel.” David turns back to prayer as the Philistines come up to challenge his reign, and the Lord instructs him to conquer them.  

When the land had peace, David sent for the Ark of the Covenant, but grew angry when the Lord struck down Uzzah for touching the ark to steady it. The Lord had firmly established His law concerning the sanctity of the Ark, and importantly, David’s ignorance of the law is no excuse; the Lord clearly said in Numbers 4:15, 19-20: “And when Aaron and his sons have finished covering the holy objects and all the furnishings of the sanctuary, when the camp is to set out, after that the sons of Kohath shall come to carry them, so that they may not touch the holy objects and die. These are the things in the tent of meeting which the sons of Kohath are to carry . . . But do this to them that they may live and not die when they approach the most holy objects: Aaron and his sons shall go in and assign each of them to his work and to his load; but they shall not go in to see the holy objects even for a moment, lest they die.” From Numbers 4:4-20, 2 Samuel 6:3-8, and 1 Chronicles 13:6-12 we discover that two Kohathites, Uzzah and Ahio, drove the cart during the move. The cart was pulled by oxen. The ark of God had been put on a cart. This was a violation of God’s command in Numbers 7:9 which directed the Kohathites to carry the holy objects on their shoulders, and yet God had mercy. When Uzzah touched the ark, however, God honored His Word. Uzzah was struck down for His “irreverence.” We must not treat the Most Holy God so frivolously, even with the righteous covering of Yeshua’s blood, we must be fearful of God Most High and recognize His Holiness.

Following the incident, the Ark remained in the house of Obed-edom the Gittite until David had studied the proper way to move it. He brought it into Jerusalem with gladness, dancing before the Lord with all his might while wearing a linen ephod. Trumpets were playing and shouting among the people of Israel. When we worship God, we must be willing to let all the cares of the world fall away and our focus should be on the Lord. Our heart ought not give any care whatsoever to the reactions of those around us who might think of us as shameful or foolish to exuberantly worship the Lord. Those who are perishing will see Godly worship and Truth as foolishness, but those who are being sanctified for eternal life will be edified by it. It is humility to Worship in Spirit and Truth, as David has done, and those servants’ maids, or servants of servants, will highly esteem the Lord because of it. We know God dishonored Michal, who criticized David’s worship because she remained childless—a curse.

In 2 Samuel 7, we see an amazing prophesy about Jesus: “When your days are complete and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your descendant after you, who will come forth from you, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for My name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.” Solomon certainly did build a house for the Name of the Lord in Jerusalem, as God prophesied for the near term, but God was talking about the far-out prophesy when Jesus would build the Third Temple, which is the Nation of Israel made up of Messianic Jews and all those Gentile believers grafted-in to Israel through faith in the Messiah Yeshua. As Paul writes in Ephesians 2:11-22, but specifically verses 19-22: “Now, therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.” David confirms God’s prophesy is about Jesus: “Who am I, O Lord God, and what is my house, that You have brought me this far? And yet this was insignificant in Your eyes, O Lord God, for You have spoken also of the house of Your servant concerning the distant future. … For You have established for Yourself Your people Israel as Your own people forever, and You, O Lord, have become their God. … For You, O Lord God, have spoken; and with Your blessing may the house of Your servant be blessed forever.”

2 Samuel 8, 2 Samuel 9, 2 Samuel 10, 2 Samuel 11, 2 Samuel 12, Psalm 92

David was on fire—unstoppable–like Joshua conquering the people whom God commanded, one after another, after another, setting up the golden age of Israel, relying fully on the Lord, and the Lord standing with him all the way through it all. It was a picture of what the Messiah will do at the end of the age, conquering “all the kingdoms of the world,” which will become “the kingdoms of the Lord and of His Christ, and He will reign for every and ever.” We just read yesterday how David was blessed forever by the Lord God Most High on account of His faith. He honored his word and brought Mephibosheth, the son of Jonathan the son of Saul, into his house and served him at his table, giving him and his sons all the inheritance of his grandfather Saul, fully confident that Mephibosheth would not usurp the Kingdom. Is it because he was lame? Doubtful. Did Jesus not come to help the infirm, the poor and the lame? David is the earthly father whose blood ended up in Jesus through Mary, who also married into the line of David with Joseph, Jesus’s step father. Jesus, the Christ, was known as the Son of David.

Sadly, David’s victories led him into the great sin that nearly took him out. He personally would have had so much more without his sin, as the Lord says, “and if that had been too little, I would have added to you many more things like these!” He was so proud to stay back one Spring from battle and caught the visage of a young maiden bathing on the roof. Yeshua said that even the one who looks at a woman with lust in his eyes commits adultery, and truthfully, David had sinned before he even sent for Bathsheba. But he went forward and did the deed, full knowing that he was committing adultery. Her resultant pregnancy led David into even more sin. At first, his sin was deception as he tried to cover up his adultery and the resultant pregnancy, but when that didn’t work, he turned to murder to continue the deception; he sent Uriah into the fiercest part of the battle to die. One sin led to another; the untarnished and perfect king needed to keep up the appearance of righteousness, and in it, he almost lost his salvation and he did lose four of his children and brought chaos into his kingdom. And yet there was no hiding this sin from the Lord. Lest there be no mistake, we read, “But the thing that David had done was evil in the sight of the Lord.” This sin would haunt him for years and stick to him as a lasting legacy: “David did what was right in the eyes of the LORD, and had not turned aside from anything that He commanded him all the days of his life, except in the matter of Uriah the Hittite.” (1 Kings 15:5). The whole matter of Uriah the Hittite had started with David’s wandering eyes. “But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart,” Jesus said. (Matthew 5:28).

Amnon, Tamar, Absalom and the first son he shared with Bathsheba were the four children David lost on account of Uriah the Hittite, per the prophetic story told by Nathan the prophet. Note: “There were two men in one city, the one rich and the other poor. The rich man had a great many flocks and herds. But the poor man had nothing except one little ewe lamb Which he bought and nourished; And it grew up together with him and his children. It would eat of his bread and drink of his cup and lie in his bosom, And was like a daughter to him. Now a traveler came to the rich man, And he was unwilling to take from his own flock or his own herd, To prepare for the wayfarer who had come to him; Rather he took the poor man’s ewe lamb and prepared it for the man who had come to him.” Then David’s anger burned greatly against the man, and he said to Nathan, “As the Lord lives, surely the man who has done this deserves to die. He must make restitution for the lamb fourfold, because he did this thing and had no compassion.’ Nathan then said to David, ‘You are the man!’” David deserved to die for his sin, and he did make restitution four-fold for Uriah. This is the one thing David did that was “evil in the sight of the Lord.”

David, faced with conviction, immediately repented before the Lord: “Then David said to Nathan, “I have sinned against the Lord.” And Nathan said to David, “The Lord also has taken away your sin; you shall not die. However, because by this deed you have given occasion to the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme…” the Lord brought turmoil on David for the rest of his life, and condemned him to live the rest of his life in war, some of it civil war against his own sons. The first casualty was the son he conceived with Bathsheba from the fateful night. While the child was sick, he fasted, but upon the child’s death, he returned to normal. In so doing, He showed renewed faith in the resurrection from the dead and the life to come. He said, “While the child was still alive, I fasted and wept; for I said, ‘Who knows, the Lord may be gracious to me, that the child may live.’ But now he has died; why should I fast? Can I bring him back again? I will go to him, but he will not return to me.” David would go the way of all flesh and sleep in the ground, awaiting the coming of the Savior.

David wrote Psalm 51 following this episode, which saved his life. We should take his mindset to heart: “Be gracious to me, O God, according to Your lovingkindness; According to the greatness of Your compassion blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity And cleanse me from my sin. For I know my transgressions, And my sin is ever before me. Against You, You only, I have sinned And done what is evil in Your sight, So that You are justified when You speak And blameless when You judge. Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, And in sin my mother conceived me. Behold, You desire truth in the innermost being, And in the hidden part You will make me know wisdom. Purify me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Make me to hear joy and gladness, Let the bones which You have broken rejoice. Hide Your face from my sins And blot out all my iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God, And renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me away from Your presence And do not take Your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of Your salvation And sustain me with a willing spirit. Then I will teach transgressors Your ways, And sinners will be converted to You. Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God, the God of my salvation; Then my tongue will joyfully sing of Your righteousness. O Lord, open my lips, That my mouth may declare Your praise. For You do not delight in sacrifice, otherwise I would give it; You are not pleased with burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; A broken and a contrite heart, O God, You will not despise. By Your favor do good to Zion; Build the walls of Jerusalem. Then You will delight in righteous sacrifices, In burnt offering and whole burnt offering; Then young bulls will be offered on Your altar.”

Without this type of repentance, David had no hope. Because his heart was to serve the Lord and he immediately repented upon conviction, the Lord saved David from his sin.

2 Samuel 13, 2 Samuel 14, 2 Samuel 15, Psalm 93

Sin has consequences. Even though David repented of his sin against the Lord, and the Lord forgave him, he would still need to live with the consequences of the sin. What is significant here is that David, upon repentance, literally prophesied his own punishment: He would lose fourfold what he took from Uriah the Hittite; namely, his wife and his life. David’s concubines will be raped and he will lose his son born to Bathsheba, Tamar to shame, Amnon to the murder by his brother, and Absalom to pride and taking the law into his own hand. As the law says, “Vengeance is mine, I shall repay says the Lord.” Absalom could not wait on the Lord like his father David, and it would eventually cost him his life. By lying with Bathsheba the wife of Uriah the Hittite and then plotting the murder of Uriah the Hittite and then taking Bathsheba as his own wife, David set in motion a long train of suffering for himself. The Lord had told him, “the sword shall not depart from your house.” He would live his remaining days with constant turmoil on account of his sin, and yet, he would not sin again.

We see that Jonadab becomes like Satan, giving Amnon the counsel to fulfill his earthly pleasures. He concocts a scheme so that he can lie with Tamar, his half sister. He falls to temptation, like his father David did. The law was such at this time that David would not have given Tamar to Amnon, despite Tamar’s word to the contrary. She was simply trying to get out of an awful situation. Sadly, she did not escape. Amnon, who had lusted after Tamar to the point of sickness, hated her upon committing the act of rape against her. The act of rape itself was an act of hate, and afterwards, his heart unveiled this truth in him. He could not face her, the “object” of his sin. He had treated her as an object, and he had sinned against her and the Lord. He would lose his life for this sin, but by the hand of his half-brother Absalom. Tamar, who had lost her virginity, would need to remain unmarried for the rest of her life. She was disgraced, and could not live the expected life of a princess, and this too was a kind of death on account of David’s sin. Would Amnon have even considered doing this act if his father had not done the same?

Absalom had a right to be angry, but he did not have the right to execute his brother Amnon. He clearly loved his sister Tamar, because he named his daughter after her. Because his father did not act in judgment against Amnon, he began to plot against his father to take the judgment seat away from him. This very thing is what David refused to do against King Saul, and David had waited on the Lord to bring justice. Absalom did not wait on the Lord, but rather rose to bring judgment against his father and brother Amnon by his own hand. This was sin. It would have been better to wait on the Lord to bring justice, and the Lord would have done so at the appointed time. And yet, perhaps his act of injustice was a response to his father’s murder of Uriah the Hittite, having observed this all go down.

This evil example was taught to Absalom by David, and thus another consequence of David’s sin. Again, while the Lord forgave David on account of his repentance, the sins were visiting on the second generation of he who hated the Lord by lying with Bathsheba and murdering Uriah, just like the commandment says. Consider Exodus 20:5-6, “I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.” The Lord asked David, why have you hated me upon his act? This act of hate against the Lord has affected his children and led them into sin. Now, the children had it within themselves to reject sin and turn toward the Lord and His commandments, but this was not something that Amnon or Absalom were able to do. Importantly: they failed on their own account and thus died according to their own sin, and not their father’s sin. David, the father who sinned, also did not die for his sin because he repented and lived. Amnon and Absalom did not repent, and so they both died in their sin.

2 Samuel 16, 2 Samuel 17, 2 Samuel 18, Psalm 94

David, suffering still from the consequences of his sin, endured the curses of a Saul loyalists and held his vengeance, just like in the days of old. His mindset is beautiful and ought to be repeated: “Let him alone and let him curse, for the Lord has told him. Perhaps the Lord will look on my affliction and return good to me instead of his cursing this day.” This is the epitome of Yeshua’s teaching: “love thy enemy.”

Absalom, having successfully executed a coup attempt against his father, slept with all of his father’s women, just as Nathan had prophesied. These women later would live out their lives in isolation away from the King. Yet David, having executed keen strategy to keep the kingdom together, sent spies to mislead his son who was likely overcome with worry from the conviction of his wrongdoing. This is exactly the time when men make mistakes, and Absalom did, which cost him his life. There’s so much other subterfuge and backstabbing that occurs, it’s hard to parse who’s side different people have taken, and I’m sure it was this same sense among the people suffering through this civil war. War is bad enough; how much worse when it is between family members and among neighbors? Thankfully, David’s calm and collected reliance on God leads the nation back together.

2 Samuel 19, 2 Samuel 20, 2 Samuel 21, Psalm 95
 
Psalm 95 is quoted by Paul, the likely writer of Hebrews, in Chapters 3 and 4. This verse here makes it clear that God does not forgive those who continuously rebel against Him:

“For He is our God, And we are the people of His pasture and the sheep of His hand. Today, if you would hear His voice, Do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah, As in the day of Massah in the wilderness, ‘When your fathers tested Me, They tried Me, though they had seen My work. For forty years I loathed that generation, And said they are a people who err in their heart, And they do not know My ways. Therefore I swore in My anger, Truly they shall not enter into My rest.’” (Psalms 95:7-11)

In Hebrews 3 & 4, the writer shows that God’s rest awaits those who obey the Lord and keep their faith in His promises by doing what He has asked and calling on His name: Yeshua.

2 Samuel 21 refers to a problem with Saul attacking the Amorites of Gibeon. Do more research on this.

2 Samuel 22, 2 Samuel 23, 2 Samuel 24, Psalm 96

In 2 Samuel 24, we see that “the anger of the Lord burned against Israel, and it incited David against them to say, “Go, number Israel and Judah.” The parallel verse is in 1 Chronicles 21, and it says, “Now Satan stood up against Israel, and moved David to number Israel.” The verses are not contradictory. God is not punishing David here, Israel had sinned, perhaps through idolatry, like has been her pattern. But we aren’t told what the sin is. What we do know is this, David brought on the punishment for Israel as a result of this law from Exodus 30:12 in Torah: “When you take the census of the children of Israel for their number, then every man shall give a ransom for himself to the Lord, when you number them, that there may be no plague among them when you number them.” Did David neglect to give tribute to the Lord when he numbered them? Of critical note, David is the one who said he has sinned, and he sought repentance. This is not a sin leading to death, and I wonder whether it is rebellious sin at all. When God says that David had only sinned in the matter of Uriah the Hittite, we need to give that verse significant weight. Was David really sinning here or was Israel sinning in a manner we aren’t told and the Lord is using the King, the government, a “beast of the earth,” to bring judgment on them? I lean toward the latter, because there is no contradiction with this interpretation. We see God use kings and governments to judge a sinful nation over and over again, and I think that is what is going on here. God allowed Satan to tempt David according to this Torah law to bring on the judgment, which is the plague, upon a sinful people.

Ezekiel 14:1-14 says, “And the word of the LORD came to me, saying, ‘Son of man, if a land sins against Me by acting unfaithfully, and I stretch out My hand against it to cut off its supply of food, to send famine upon it, and to cut off from it both man and beast, then even if these three men—Noah, Daniel, and Job—were in it, their righteousness could deliver only themselves, declares the Lord GOD.“ Thankfully, David was righteous at this juncture and his prayers for his nation led to God staying the hand of the destroying angel. He literally prayed for repentance of his nation. We should do likewise.

David, the righteous King who sinned only in the matter of Uriah the Hittite, turned to the Lord God for all of his needs, and he knew the Lord Yeshua through the Holy Spirit. He was saved by the Lord’s blood on the cross, just like we were, and you can see Him acknowledge His knowledge of this in the songs he wrote. Consider these beautiful verses from 2 Samuel 22, a copy of Psalm 18: “The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer; My God, my rock, in whom I take refuge, My shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold and my refuge; My savior, You save me from violence. I call upon the Lord, who is worthy to be praised, And I am saved from my enemies. For the waves of death encompassed me; The torrents of destruction overwhelmed me; The cords of Sheol surrounded me; The snares of death confronted me. In my distress I called upon the Lord, Yes, I cried to my God; And from His temple He heard my voice, And my cry for help came into His ears. The Lord has rewarded me according to my righteousness; According to the cleanness of my hands He has recompensed me. For I have kept the ways of the Lord, And have not acted wickedly against my God. Therefore the Lord has recompensed me according to my righteousness, According to my cleanness before His eyes. For You are my lamp, O Lord; And the Lord illumines my darkness. As for God, His way is blameless; The Word of the Lord is tested; He is a shield to all who take refuge in Him. For who is God, besides the Lord? And who is a rock, besides our God? God is my strong fortress; And He sets the blameless in His way. He trains my hands for battle, So that my arms can bend a bow of bronze. You have also given me the shield of Your salvation, And Your help makes me great. Foreigners pretend obedience to me; As soon as they hear, they obey me. Therefore I will give thanks to You, O Lord, among the nations, And I will sing praises to Your name. He is a tower of deliverance to His king, And shows lovingkindness to His anointed, To David and his descendants forever.”

1 Kings 1, 1 Kings 2, 1 Kings 3, Psalm 97

One final coup attempt vexes David in his final days, but through his wisdom, he sends Solomon to ride “lowly on a donkey” into Jerusalem, where he is anointed king. Understand that prophetic templates are often realized in the short-term, with a worldly example, and then they also take place in distant future, with their spiritual realization. Solomon, the imperfect man who asked for wisdom, a great request from the Lord that we should emulate, would prophetically represent the Messiah who would ride into Jerusalem lowly on a donkey on the day that Passover lambs were being inspected for their perfection so they could be sacrificed for the feast. Our Lord was then inspected at the Temple that day, and they found no fault in Him. (Matthew 21-23) Yeshua Himself make the connection in Matthew 12:42: “Now someone greater than Solomon is here—but you refuse to listen.” Solomon was the second King to reign over both Israel and Judah, a united Kingdom. His glory was greater than his father’s, another prophetic template. The second is always greater than the first, just as the Second Covenant is greater than the First Covenant.

Adonijah has an opportunity to live at peace with Solomon, despite his coup attempt, but he showed himself to be unfaithful when he asked for Abishag the Shunammite woman who kept David warm as he was dying. This act would cement his image as king in the eyes of the people, and it was this act of hubris that brought judgment on his head from the anointed king. Solomon, in his wisdom, brought justice on all of the men who had violated the commandments of God during David’s reign. This too is a prophetic template. David, representing the first coming of the king, gave mercy to all those who had wronged him, giving them an opportunity to repent. Solomon, representing the second coming of the king in another sense, brought justice on all of the lawbreakers and firmly established his kingdom. Yeshua, who came the first time, brought mercy and forgiveness to those who would seek Him and His righteousness. The second time, when Yeshua returns, He will bring justice and destroy all who practice lawlessness. There will be no mercy.

David’s last words to Solomon are words that we need to personally take to heart, for they are the words of a man or a woman who will prolong his days; meaning, the one who will dwell forever in the Kingdom of God. To be strong and show yourself to be a man (or woman) of God, you must “keep the charge of the Lord your God, to walk in His ways, to keep His statutes, His commandments, His ordinances, and His testimonies, according to what is written in the Law of Moses, that you may succeed in all that you do and wherever you turn, so that the Lord may carry out His promise.” This is what it means to have faith, to believe on the Lord Yeshua to the degree that you love Him, and thus obey His commandments. (John 14:15) Do not think that Yeshua came to do away with the law, because not one jot or tittle of it will pass away until Heaven and Earth pass away. (Matthew 5:17-20). To truly love Jesus and be His friend, we must do what He says. (John 15:14)

In a dream, the Lord appeared to Solomon and Solomon asked the Lord to “give Your servant an understanding heart to judge Your people to discern between good and evil.” And because of this humble request to serve the Lord, the Lord responded: “Behold, I have given you a wise and discerning heart, so that there has been no one like you before you, nor shall one like you arise after you. I have also given you what you have not asked, both riches and honor, so that there will not be any among the kings like you all your days. If you walk in My ways, keeping My statutes and commandments, as your father David walked, then I will prolong your days.” James 1:5-6 says, “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him. But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea driven and tossed by the wind.” Because Solomon’s heart was first to follow the Lord and to judge His people with wisdom, the Lord promised to “prolong” Solomon’s days, which means to grant him eternal life in the Kingdom of God. His faith saved him.

Would Solomon make it into Heaven? Through repentance, the answer is “yes.” “Now Solomon loved the Lord, walking in the statutes of his father David, except he sacrificed and burned incense on the high places.” (1 Kings 3:3) We know David served the Lord and was righteous in all manners except in the matter of Uriah the Hittite (1 Kings 15:5). Solomon served the Lord and was righteous in all manners except that he sacrificed to idols. His many wives led him toward this grave sin against the Lord. In 2 Samuel 7:15, the Lord says, “But My mercy shall not depart from him, as I took it from Saul, whom I removed from before you.” Was this grace? It would seem to me that Solomon’s faith and heart of repentance were genuine, even though his wives led him astray.

“Let all those be ashamed who serve graven images, Who boast themselves of idols; Worship Him, all you gods. … For You are the Lord Most High over all the earth; You are exalted far above all gods.” (Psalms 97:7, 9 )

The Lord would punish Solomon in this life, but not the next on account of His promise to David. We see in 1 Kings 11:11-13, “Then the Lord said to Solomon, “Because you have done this and have not kept My covenant and My statutes, which I have commanded you, I will tear the kingdom away from you and give it to your servant. Nevetheless, for the sake of your father David, I will not do it during your lifetime; I will tear it out of the hand of your son. Yet I will not tear the whole kingdom away from him. I will give one tribe to your son for the sake of My servant David and for the sake of Jerusalem, which I have chosen.” Only Yeshua in the Second coming will unite Israel, both Jew and Greek, into one Kingdom.

1 Kings 4, 1 Kings 5, 1 Kings 6, 1 Kings 7, Psalm 98

From 1 Kings 4, Solomon, again, a prophetic foreshadow of the Messiah in this text, “had dominion over everything … and he had peace on all sides around him.” And, “God gave Solomon wisdom and very great discernment and breadth of mind, like the sand that is on the seashore. … Men came from all peoples to hear the wisdom of Solomon, from all the kings of the earth who had heard of his wisdom.” Remember what Yeshua said again: “The queen of the South will rise up in the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and indeed a greater than Solomon is here.” (Matthew 12:42) The Queen of Sheba herself, a Saint according to Jesus, will rise up and judge the generation that condemned Yeshua, who was greater than Solomon in power and wisdom.

We see that this prophesy is realized with Solomon in prophetic foreshadow and then by Yeshua in His first and second coming: “O sing to the Lord a new song, For He has done wonderful things, His right hand and His holy arm have gained the victory for Him. The Lord has made known His salvation; He has revealed His righteousness in the sight of the nations. He has remembered His lovingkindness and His faithfulness to the house of Israel; All the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God. Before the Lord, for He is coming to judge the earth; He will judge the world with righteousness And the peoples with equity.” (Psalms 98:1-3, 9)

The Lord told Solomon concerning the First Temple that if he kept God’s statutes, ordinances and commandments and carried out His word, he would not forsake him or Israel and dwell in the Temple forever. Solomon did not live up to this. And yet the Temple Solomon built was glorious, so glorious in fact that the Lord Himself came to dwell within it as a thick cloud: “And it came to pass, when the priests came out of the holy place, that the cloud filled the house of the Lord, so that the priests could not continue ministering because of the cloud; for the glory of the Lord filled the house of the Lord.” (1 Kings 8:10-11) And yet, because Yeshua Himself would walk in the Second Temple, in Haggai 2:9, the Lord prophesies about the Second Temple’s greater glory: “‘The glory of this latter temple shall be greater than the former,’ says the LORD of hosts. ‘And in this place I will give peace,’ says the LORD of hosts.”

The Queen of Sheba text is here, and deserves further study: 1 Kings 10:1-10, 13

1 Kings 8, 1 Kings 9, 1 Kings 10, Psalm 99

What monumental prophetic lessons are contained in 1 Kings 8-1 Kings 10, with all of it summed up with Jesus’s words at the well to the Samaritan woman in John 4:21-23: “Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, believe Me, the hour is coming when you will neither on this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews. But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him.”

Solomon and David both understand this truth, as is evident by their words and the prophesy that the Lord speaks through them. The Lord says: “‘Since the day that I brought My people Israel from Egypt, I did not choose a city out of all the tribes of Israel in which to build a house that My name might be there, but I chose David to be over My people Israel.’” The Lord chose David, and more specifically the son that would come from him, to rule over Israel, the strivers with God, the chosen people, those who would come to believe in David’s son Yeshua, whether Jew or Greek. Solomon is the near-term fulfillment of prophesy, while Yeshua is the spiritual and full fulfillment, especially because He came in the flesh. The Temple, then, as Solomon Himself writes in Psalm 127:1, is defined by this Truth: “Unless the LORD builds the house, They labor in vain who build it; Unless the LORD guards the city, The watchman stays awake in vain.“

The Lord still acknowledges that David did well that it was in his heart to build a “house for My name.” And then the prophesy of prophesies shines through: “Nevertheless you shall not build the house, but your son who will be born to you, he will build the house for My name.” Yes, David’s son who was born to him indeed fulfilled this prophesy. Solomon is the near-term fulfillment, and Yeshua is the distant fulfillment of this prophesy. Mary is a descendant of David, and so was Joseph, his step-father, just so there is no confusion. Consider what is written in Hebrews 8:5-6: “The place where they serve is a copy and shadow of what is in Heaven. This is why Moses was warned when he was about to build the tabernacle: ‘See to it that you make everything according to the pattern shown you on the mountain.’ Now, however, Jesus has received a much more excellent ministry, just as the covenant He mediates is better and is founded on better promises.”

And I want to show this more excellent ministry in relationship with the Temple, and I will, but first we should examine the power of this copy of the Heavenly places, this footstool of God, for which it is written in Psalms 99:5: “Exalt the Lord our God And worship at His footstool; Holy is He.” We do worship now in Spirit and Truth, and the Earth is His footstool. Solomon acknowledges this again: “Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain You, how much less this house which I have built!” This is about making a place for the Lord’s name to be worshipped, according to God’s will, in the first covenant reality, while also serving as a foreshadow for the Temple that would be made by our Messiah Yeshua without hands.

Solomon’s prayer to the Lord is profound, and its one that applies to us today “in spirit and truth.” “Have regard to the prayer of Your servant and to his supplication, that Your eyes may be open toward this house night and day, toward the place of which you have said, ‘My name shall be there,’ to listen to the prayer which your servant shall pray toward this place … hear in Heaven your dwelling place; hear and forgive.” If we worship God today “in spirit and in truth,” then we ought to pray like Solomon for our prayers and supplications to be answered when we face Jerusalem, the place of God’s name.

Here’s the prayers Solomon makes to the Lord: “If a man sins against his neighbor,” that the Lord justify the righteous and condemn the wicked. That when Israel is defeated by an enemy, when there is drought, when there is famine, when there are plagues, when there is pestilence, when there are sieges against the land, when Israel faces any hardship on account of their sin, “if they turn to You again and confess Your name and pray and make supplication to You in this house, then hear in Heaven, and forgive the sin of Your people Israel, and bring them back to the land which You gave to their fathers.” This is the same prayer for us, when we pray in Spirit and Truth, in the name of Yeshua.

And here is a prayer of Solomon more specifically on account of the Gentiles who call on the name of Yeshua: “Also concerning the foreigner who is not of Your people Israel, when he comes from a far country for Your name’s sake (for they will hear of Your great name and Your mighty hand, and of Your outstretched arm); when he comes and prays toward this house, hear in heaven Your dwelling place, and do according to all for which the foreigner calls to You, in order that all the peoples of the earth may know Your name, to fear You, as do Your people Israel, and that they may know that this house which I have built is called by Your name.” This prayer has been answered by the coming of the Messiah Yeshua.

In the rest of the prayer of Solomon, he sets us many of the things that happen to Israel throughout the rest of the Old Testament, even their captivity in Babylon. “When they sin against You (for there is no man who does not sin) and You are angry with them and deliver them to an enemy, so that they take them away captive to the land of the enemy, far off or near; if they take thought in the land where they have been taken captive, and repent and make supplication to You in the land of those who have taken them captive, saying, ‘We have sinned and have committed iniquity, we have acted wickedly’; then hear their prayer and their supplication in heaven Your dwelling place, and maintain their cause, and forgive Your people who have sinned against You and all their transgressions which they have transgressed against You.” Solomon asks for the promised “inheritance” upon repentance.

Solomon is dedicating the Temple in the seventh month for fourteen days, and then on the eighth day he sent the people away and they blessed the king. I believe this is the seventh month on God’s calendar. It’s called the month of Ethanim here, which means “steady flowings,” and indeed if it is the seventh month of God’s calendar, it relates to the months of harvest in the fall. This is now known as the month of Tishri. Were they celebrating during the fall Holy Days? The feast of Trumpets is on the First Day of the month, the day of Atonement on the 10th Day, and then the Feast of Tabernacles on the 15th day for seven days.. Did they get sent home on the Eighth Day Holy Convocation? It’s hard to say, and the text doesn’t make this clear, but it would make sense that Solomon’s dedication of the Temple would take place during this feast, because this is when God would come to “Tabernacle” among the Temple-age children of Israel. The Eighth Day according to God’s Word in Leviticus 23 is when the people were sent back into their homes to recognize that they had peace in the promised land given to them.

The Lord hears the prayer of Solomon, and responds in the same way He has to several of David and Solomon’s prayers: “I have consecrated this house which you have built by putting My name there forever, and My eyes and My heart will be there perpetually.” We want to keep this in mind about physical Jerusalem, because the Lord does not use the word “forever” without meaning. The caveat is given to the people themselves: “As for you, if you will walk before Me as your father David walked, in integrity of heart and uprightness, doing according to all that I have commanded you and will keep My statutes and My ordinances, then I will establish the throne of your kingdom over Israel forever, just as I promised to your father David, saying, ‘You shall not lack a man on the throne of Israel.’” This sounds like the blessings of Deuteronomy 28.

Here’s the curses of Deuteronomy 28: “But if you or your sons indeed turn away from following Me, and do not keep My commandments and My statutes which I have set before you, and go and serve other gods and worship them, then I will cut off Israel from the land which I have given them, and the house which I have consecrated for My name, I will cast out of My sight.” So Israel will become a proverb and a byword among all peoples. And this house will become a heap of ruins; everyone who passes by will be astonished and hiss and say, ‘Why has the Lord done thus to this land and to this house?’ And they will say, ‘Because they forsook the Lord their God, who brought their fathers out of the land of Egypt, and adopted other gods and worshiped them and served them, therefore the Lord has brought all this adversity on them.’ ” The Lord would testify concerning His Holy Name in Jerusalem to the whole World whether or not the Jews obeyed Him, so that all would know that He is the Lord.

While King Solomon was greater than all the kings of the earth in riches and in wisdom,” Yeshua was greater than Solomon and was rejected by the generation He came to. Nevertheless, He will come on the Last Day to judge the kingdoms of this world, which will be thrown down like the walls of Jericho and the glory of Solomon and the temple he built for the Lord. The gold that Solomon collected, 666 talents of gold in one year, testified to the temporal basis of his prophesy fulfillment and his inability to fully fulfill the prophesy. There would be one more golden age of Israel in the future, but the next time it would be ruled by the King of kings, and Lord of lords. Solomon was God’s anointed, but he was merely a man giving Israel the best that man could offer, which was not enough for eternal salvation. Solomon, a man of God, but a man nonetheless, fell away from perfection and sinned, which eventually brought Israel and Judah to ruin.

We see Peter, Paul and John describe the Temple that the Messiah Yeshua would build, starting with His first coming, and finishing with His second. Peter says that we all come to Yeshua who is “a living stone, rejected indeed by men, but chosen by God and precious.” He says, “You also, as living stones, are bing built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. Consider the whole of 1 Peter 2:4-10. Also, in 1 Corinthians 3:10-17, we see Paul say: “According to the grace of God which was given to me, as a wise master builder I have laid the foundation, and another builds on it. But let each one take heed how he builds on it. For no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if anyone builds on this foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each one’s work will become clear; for the Day will declare it, because it will be revealed by fire; and the fire will test each one’s work, of what sort it is. If anyone’s work which he has built on it endures, he will receive a reward. If anyone’s work is burned, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire. Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? If anyone defiles the temple of God, God will destroy him. For the temple of God is holy, which temple you are.” And just in case these sections don’t make it clear that the Third Temple of God is actually made without hands, but is literally the Chosen People of God, whether Jew or Greek, who follow Yeshua and keep His commandments, consider this from Revelation 21:2-3: “Then I, John, saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from heaven saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people. God Himself will be with them and be their God.” This New Jerusalem are the people of God who had been raptured or raised from the dead on the Last Day, given new spiritual bodies like the spiritual body that Christ Himself assumed upon His resurrection. We are taken up on the Last Day for the Marriage Supper of the Lamb while the Wrath of God destroys and refreshes the Earth, and then we descend again to our eternal inheritance, the Kingdom of God, which will be created in the new Heaven and New Earth. Later in the chapter, we see in verses 22-24, that John “saw no temple in it, for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple.” The Lord, who built His temple with Christ as the cornerstone, His Apostles as the foundation, and the Saints as the structure itself, is filled with the Glory of God for all eternity. There is no physical temple, but only the Lord filling the hearts of all of His saints for all eternity, who are the Third Temple of God.

1 Kings 11, 1 Kings 12, 1 Kings 13, Psalm 100

In Deuteronomy 17:14-20, the Lord makes clear what His anointed king shall not do, including this: “Neither shall he multiply wives for himself, lest his heart turn away;…” Clearly, Solomon violated this commandment, and the Lord’s Word is True and comes to pass, and so this is what happened with Solomon, who “loved many foreign women, as well as the daughter of Pharoah: women of the Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sidonians, and Hittites—from the nations of whom the Lord had said to the children of Israel, “You shall not intermarry with them, nor they with you. Surely they will turn away your hearts after their gods.” This subsequent citation is from Deuteronomy 7:3. Importantly, God has not prohibited the marrying of a Gentile woman who has converted to the faith of Israel, as the stories of Ruth and Esther and so many other stories show. God, like He does still today in Spirit and Truth, prohibits a marriage that is “unequally yoked,” as you see in 2 Corinthians 6:14-18.

What’s important here is that Solomon “CLUNG to these in love. And he had 700 wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines, and his wives turned away his heart. For it was so, when Solomon was old, that his wives turned his heart after other gods, and his heart was not loyal to the Lord his God, as was the heart of his father David.” The Lord God is after our hearts. Consider that God had accepted Ruth, a Moabite woman, because in Ruth 1:14, we read: “Orpah kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth CLUNG to her.” In verses 16-17, Ruth says: “Entreat me not to leave you, or to turn back from following after you; for wherever you go, I will go; and wherever you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God, my God. Where you die, I will die, and there will I be buried. The Lord do so to me, and more also, If anything but death parts you and me.”

Let me continue this theme by showing the difference between Solomon, the anointed Jewish King who married Moabite pagan women, among others, and Ruth, the Moabite who clung to the God of the Jews. Consider Romans 2:25-29, “For circumcision is indeed profitable if you keep the law; but if you are a breaker of the law, your circumcision has become uncircumcision. Therefore, if an uncircumcised man keeps the righteous requirements of the law, will not his uncircumcision be counted as circumcision? And will not the physically uncircumcised, if he fulfills the law, judge you who, even with your written code and circumcision, are a transgressor of the law? For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh; but he is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the Spirit, not in the letter; whose praise is not from men but from God.” We see that Ruth is a Jew, even though being born a Gentile, and Solomon, though born a Jew, has fallen away from His Jewish God and will be judged by God.

What’s worse, Solomon has gone after Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians (also called Ishtar and now Mary in the Catholic Church), and after Milcom the abomination of the Ammonites. … Solomon built a high place for Chemosh the abomination of Moab, on the hill that is east of Jerusalem, and for Molech the abomination of the people of Ammon. And he did likewise for all his foreign wives, who burned incense and sacrificed to their gods.” There’s a story behind all of these gods that are still a part of the apostate Church in the form of “mystery Babylon,” and this syncretism continues in both the Catholic and Protestant churches to this day—both are culpable. The Lord hates this evil, because as He has said Himself, “I am a jealous God, you shall not worship any other gods before me.” This is the First Commandment—one that many Christians break within the church building to this day. Read Revelation 2 and Revelation 3 to see this.

Here’s the Lord’s response to such syncretism and disobedience, and this continues to this day: “the Lord became angry with Solomon, because his heart had turned from the Lord God of Israel, who had appeared to him twice, and had commanded him concerning this thing, that he should not go after other gods; but he did not keep what the Lord had commanded. Therefore the Lord said to Solomon, “Because you have done this, and have not kept My covenant and My statutes, which I have commanded you, I will surely tear the kingdom away from you and give it to your servant. Nevertheless I will not do it in your days, for the sake of your father David; I will tear it out of the hand of your son. However I will not tear away the whole kingdom; I will give one tribe to your son for the sake of My servant David, and for the sake of Jerusalem which I have chosen.” (I Kings 11:1-13) I think it may be possible for the Kingdom of God to be torn away from Christians who practice syncretism—I for one won’t be taking any chances; as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.

And so it’s unclear whether the mercy that God has toward Solomon is simply temporal or whether it is eternal. It seems eternal in the way God words it, that he had mercy on Solomon. Does Solomon repent toward the end of his proverbs? The Bible indicates that God has mercy on him, unlike the damnation that he brought against Saul. In 2 Samuel 7:15, the Lord says, “But My mercy shall not depart from him [Solomon], as I took it from Saul, whom I removed from before you.” More study is needed to determine the reason why, and only God knows whether Solomon will be with us in Heaven. One thing is for sure, his fall from righteousness is proof positive that the prophesies given to David were not about Solomon, but rather were about Yeshua, the coming King of kings and Lord of lords. Solomon fulfilled them in part, but then fell due to pride and disobedience. Only Yeshua will fulfill them completely.

Because of his disobedience, the Lord raises adversaries against Solomon, and this is just how the Bible words it. “Now the Lord raised up an adversary against Solomon, Hadad the Edomite; he was a descendant of the king in Edom. … And God raised up another adversary against him, Rezon the son of Eliadah, who had fled from his Lord, Hadadezer king of Zobah. … Then Solomon’s servant, Jeroboam the son of Nebat, an Ephraimite from Zereda, whose mother’s name was Zeruah, a widow, also rebelled against the king.” This is proof positive that the Lord brings enemies against a people who rebel against Him, even if they are His chosen people Israel. It is the Lord, not Satan, who brings this tribulation against the people who turn their back on God. The Lord will not tolerate His people to turn their backs on Him and live in sin. The Lord will turn His back on those who sin—we can count on it. Yeshua Himself says on the Last Day, he will say of those who say “Lord, Lord,” but sin, “depart from me you who practice lawlessness.”
 
In 1 Kings 12-13, God spoke through Ahijah the Shilonite prophet and told Jeroboam that he would take Israel away from Rehoboam, Solomon’s son, leaving him with the tribes of Judah and Benjamin only, on account of Solomon’s sin. Rehoboam foolishly considers the advice of his young friends over the wisdom of his father’s councilors, and this lapse of judgment leads to the division. We are told “the king did not listen to the people; for it was a turn of events from the Lord, that He might establish His word.” God put this foolishness and rash judgment in the heart of Rehoboam to fulfill His word through the prophet. And so when Israel departs from Judah and leads the men back to their lands with Jeroboam at their head, Rehoboam seeks to claim back Israel and the full kingdom, but God sent a word through a prophet, saying, “You must not go up and fight against your relatives the sons of Israel; return every man to his house, for this thing has come from Me.” Let this be a lesson to us. Every evil thing that happens to us is not necessarily an attack of the evil one. An unfortunate situation may be from the Lord, to test us, to judge us, and to lead us toward repentance. It may the result of a sin of someone else, as was the case here, that has nothing to do with us. Man’s sin, whether our own or someone else’s is the cause of all the misery in the world. But as God uses everything for good for those who love Him, so too must we look toward God to use every negative situation for our good, to bring us closer to Him and His way. He refines us like gold and silver, always bringing the dross that must be cast off up to the surface. We need to let Him and thank Him for the care He gives to us, His children, to make us more like Him. “For whom the LORD loves He chastens, And scourges every son whom He receives.” (Hebrews 12:6)

Sadly, Jeroboam quickly allows God’s gift to him; namely, the care over all of the tribes of Israel, to go to his head. Rather than humbly accept the role of Israel’s steward under God, Jeroboam gets jealous and worries he may lose authority to Judah by men who go to Jerusalem to worship God, and so instead of leave the situation to God to handle, Jeroboam takes the matter into his own hands and sets up false gods in Israel, bringing the judgment of God on him. He even took God’s feasts, His appointed times that He ordained for all of Israel, including Judah and Benjamin, and changed them to different months intentionally to differentiate himself from the House of David. Sadly, he differentiated himself from God. Modern Christians do this too by following invented holidays with pagan origins that have nothing to do whatsoever with the commandments of God. Not even the apostles celebrated these errant feasts, for they followed their Jewish Messiah and the feasts that God had commanded.

We see in 1 Kings 13 the legitimate prophet, “a man of God from Judah” who went to “Bethel by the word of the Lord.” He prophesied against Jeroboam for his idolatry, saying that Josiah would come and destroy the priests who were sacrificing to these false idols. He prophesied a sign that this would come true, and it almost immediately came to pass. The prophet was even able to freeze Jeroboam’s hand, and then unfreeze it upon his request. Sadly, all of this did not turn the heart of Jeroboam toward the Lord, but he remained obstinate in his disobedience. “After this event Jeroboam did not return from his evil way, but again he made priests of the high places from among all the people; any who would, he ordained, to be priests of the high places. This event became sin to the house of Jeroboam, even to blot it out and destroy it from off the face of the earth.”

Sadly, this legitimate prophet was led astray to his own death by a false prophet, “an old prophet living in Bethel.” The Lord had told the man of God from Judah to return home without eating and drinking, but the old prophet from Bethel lied to him, according to the Scripture: “He said to him, ‘I also am a prophet like you, and an angel spoke to me by the word of the Lord, saying, ‘Bring him back with you to your house, that he may eat bread and drink water.’ “ Because the Man of God from Judah believed the false prophet and not God, he was devoured by a lion. What does Peter say? “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.” (1 Peter 5:8) Peter, Paul, Jesus so many other said: “Beware of false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves.” (Matthew 7:15) Paul writes in 2 Corinth. 11:14-15: “For Satan himself transforms himself into an angel of light. Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also transform themselves into ministers of righteousness, whose end will be according to their works.” If we are not careful, our lives—not just our temporal lives, but our eternal lives—may be devoured by this lion seeking to destroy us. We must obey God and not man.

1 Kings 14, 1 Kings 15, 1 Kings 16, Psalm 101

The kings of Israel and Judah fall away on account of Solomon, and all but Asa in these chapters turn toward evil. Asa himself put doctors and medicine above God, and thus died in that sin, according to 2 Chronicles 16:12-13. Jeroboam was the most evil king until Ahab, and the Lord speaks to him directly through the prophets saying, “You also have done more evil than all who were before you, and have gone and made for yourself other gods and molten images to provoke Me to anger, and have cast Me behind your back— therefore behold, I am bringing calamity on the house of Jeroboam, and will cut off from Jeroboam every male person, both bond and free in Israel, and I will make a clean sweep of the house of Jeroboam, as one sweeps away dung until it is all gone.” The prophesy comes to fruition, when Nadab the son of Jeroboam “struck down all the household of Jeroboam.”

Rehoboam, Solomon’s son, continues in his path of evil and likewise sacrificed to Asherim and supported male cult prostitutes. For this, Shishak of Egypt raided Israel and took the gold, and the two sisters, Israel and Judah, fought constantly.

The Lord says for David’s sake He kept a “lamp in Jerusalem,” which foreshadows the seven lampstands of Revelation 2 and 3, meaning the seven churches. All but two of those churches were failing miserably to do the Lord’s will. Yet, the other five lamps continued to burn, albeit dimly, and so did the lamp of Judah here. This is because “David did what right in the sight of the Lord, and had not turned aside from anything that He commanded him all the days of his life, except in the case of Uriah the Hittite.” He had repented of that one sin in Psalm 51.

We see in 1 Kings 16, that Omri King of Israel bought the hill Samaria from Shemer for two talents of silver. He made it the capital of Israel, and Ahab his son made it infamous. The name Samaria comes from the former owner, Shemer. The name was given to three Israelites, but it means the settlings, or dregs, of wine in the bottom of the barrel. If we consider the metaphors of new wine and new wineskins that Yeshua uses in His parables, meaning the new understanding of Truth in Scripture that He taught to His disciples, who were untaught, this speaks quite lowly of the city and the people it represented as its capital. They represented the dregs of the wine: a total misunderstanding of Scripture and a pairing of it with pagan tradition. But this didn’t necessarily make them lost forever. In Jesus’s day, the Apostles thought quite lowly of the city and its people, but Yeshua reminded them that He had come to save the lost children of Israel, and he went to the outcast of the outcasts, the woman at the well who had to draw water at noon because the other women had shunned her. Yet, Yeshua called on her in all forgiveness to spread the word of the coming Messiah. Jesus said the righteous had no need of a savior, and so he had come to save sinners. The age of grace is soon ending, and Jesus will return to judge the living and the dead. Many are called, but few are chosen.

1 Kings 17, 1 Kings 18, 1 Kings 19, Psalm 102

Elijah was a stranger (one possible meaning for Tishbite), potentially not an Israelite at all (though this is unknown), he was potentially from the same region of Galilee that our Lord Yeshua lived in growing up, and he then settled in Gilead, but this too is unknown and just hypotheses. In truth, he has an unknown origin and is one of Scripture’s mysteries. Yet, he was a powerful man of God, one of the most powerful prophets of all time, and in his day God showed “signs and wonders,” much like during Moses’s time in Egypt, during Jesus’s day, and like that which is prophesied to come at the End of Days. He is also only one of four men who had a different ending to his life than everyone else; the other three being Enoch, Moses and Yeshua. Melchizedek was another mystery of Scripture, but we are not told about his comings and goings, only that Yeshua was a High Priest of His order, which is an order that answered directly to God without mediation. It seems Elijah is in this camp, also.

God used Elijah the prophet to curse Israel and bring drought, famine and hunger on the land on account of Ahab and Jezebel and their Ba’al worship, which is akin to Satan worship. God fed the prophet in the wilderness until the streams dried up, and then he sent him to a widow’s house for miraculous sustenance. There are lessons for us here. The widow’s home Zarephath is in Sidon, which is a Phoenician city in modern Lebanon by the Mediterranean. Of this event, Jesus said in Luke 4:24-26, “Assuredly, I say to you, no prophet is accepted in his own country. But I tell you truly, many widows were in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, and there was a great famine throughout all the land; but to none of them was Elijah sent except to Zarephath, in the region of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow.” God also used Elijah to care for this widow, which prepared the prophet for his appointed time of purpose in Israel.

When Elijah comes to the widow, he asks her for bread, but she says first, “As the Lord your God lives, I have no bread, only a handful of flour in the bowl and a little oil in the jar; and behold, I am gathering a few sticks that I may go in and prepare for me and my son, that we may eat it and die.” Note that she does not acknowledge Yahweh as her God, and also she does not trust in Him; in fact, her first instinct is to indirectly tell Elijah to go away so she can die. Elijah and the Lord do not give up on this unbeliever, and her faith changes quickly. Note: “Elijah said to her, “Do not fear; go, do as you have said, but make me a little bread cake from it first and bring it out to me, and afterward you may make one for yourself and for your son. For thus says the Lord God of Israel, ‘The bowl of flour shall not be exhausted, nor shall the jar of oil be empty, until the day that the Lord sends rain on the face of the earth.’ ” So she went and did according to the word of Elijah, and she and he and her household ate for many days.”

So this woman doubted the Lord’s power over her, but then she developed faith upon Elijah’s Word from the Lord. She showed her faith by going to do “according to the word of Elijah,” and because she put her faith in action, the Lord cared for her and her household. This isn’t the end of the story. The Lord then desires to test the faith of this widow, and can’t let her off with just simply believing without testing her belief. It turns out her faith was weak. When her son became sick, she said, “What do I have to do with you, O man of God? You have come to me to bring my iniquity to remembrance and to put my son to death!” Whoa! This is huge! This woman must have sinned, and Elijah—living with her—must have preached the Word of God to her, because she became convicted by it. Her first instinct from this conviction was to give up and die, but now she blames Elijah because he is the one who brought this conviction to her. This is why people say today, “Why are you forcing your religion on me,” when all we do is repeat to them the Word of God. They are convicted, they feel that conviction, and they don’t know what to do with it. They blame God’s messenger and try to run away—every time.

The story of Elijah shows us how we ought to respond to such as situation as this: “He said to her, “Give me your son.” Then he took him from her bosom and carried him up to the upper room where he was living, and laid him on his own bed. He called to the Lord and said, “O Lord my God, have You also brought calamity to the widow with whom I am staying, by causing her son to die?” Then he stretched himself upon the child three times, and called to the Lord and said, “O Lord my God, I pray You, let this child’s life return to him.” The Lord heard the voice of Elijah, and the life of the child returned to him and he revived. Elijah took the child and brought him down from the upper room into the house and gave him to his mother; and Elijah said, “See, your son is alive.” It is our role to double down, to ask the doubter to take a step of faith, to ask the doubter to allow us to appeal to God to them in the midst of their conviction, and then to pray to God to bring the remedy. God answers prayers that are according to His will—always. Because He did so here, he brought total faith and repentance to this woman, who is ready to listen and learn the ways of the Lord. She says, “Now I know that you are a man of God and that the word of the Lord in your mouth is truth.” We must pray that God gives us the same pathway to help those in our own lives in this state of conviction, so we can lead them to repentance and then righteousness through obedience to the Word of God and through faith in the Messiah Yeshua.

In the situation with Obadiah and Ahab, God does an amazing thing. This was Elijah’s appointed time of purpose. First, He leads Obadiah to step out in faith and trust God through his words, then He brings the Word of God directly to Ahab, condemning Him directly: “Ahab said to him, “Is this you, you troubler of Israel?” He said, “I have not troubled Israel, but you and your father’s house have, because you have forsaken the commandments of the Lord and you have followed the Baals.” In this brief Word, we can see that Ahab has both forsaken the commandments, which is how we show our love to God, and He has forsaken trust in God alone, and gone after Satan instead, which is the way of the World or of the Flesh. In this simple verse, we see Revelation 14:12 in reverse: “Here is the patience of Saints: Here are they who keep the commandments of God and the faith of Yeshua.” Ahab had done the opposite. He is an antichrist figure at this time.

Elijah proposes a test, ordained by the Lord, by calling 450 prophets of Ba’al and 400 prophets of Asherah, Satan and His consort, the Queen of Heaven, and asks them to prove their gods have power. Now we know that Yahweh is behind this test, because Satan absolutely does have power, but only the power that the Lord God Most High allows him to have. Here, he has restricted Satan from showing his power through these prophets’ witchcraft. Yeshua, our Lord and King, has power over Satan. “Greater is He who is in me than he who is in the world.” In the name of Jesus, we can conquer demons, and this is what Elijah does here.

Elijah confronts the men of Israel with a question that we’ve seen repeated since the first sin of Man in the Garden, and it is a question posed to all of us today: “How long will you hesitate between two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow Him; but if Ba’al, follow him.” This is the same statement that Jesus says in Matthew 6:24, “No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.” Mammon, while commonly interpreted as money, actually means more generally “the things of this World.” Ba’al is the god of this world, Satan, and so this is directly analogous (John 12:31). Elijah is calling Israel to follow after God alone, as Jesus said in Matthew 6:33, “But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.” Satan will be cast out, just as He was defeated in this battle between God Most High (Yahweh/Yeshua/Ruach HaKodesh) and Ba’al and his Asheroth.

I find it most humorous, showing God’s sense of humor as well as Elijah’s, how Elijah mocks the prophets of Ba’al and Asheroth. The Wisdom of Yahweh (pre-incarnate Jesus) says in Proverbs 1:26: “I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your fear cometh;” And so, “It came about at noon, that Elijah mocked them and said, “Call out with a loud voice, for he is a god; either he is occupied or gone aside, or is on a journey, or perhaps he is asleep and needs to be awakened.” When it says “occupied,” Elijah is actually saying that perhaps this “god” is relieving himself and can’t attend to the sacrifice. “Gone aside” in Hebrew actually translates to “meditating.” This is high-level mockery. Yahweh is literally laughing at the coming calamity of these prophets of Ba’al and Asheroth.

What I find ludicrous, and creepy, is this description of what the prophets of Ba’al do to “worship” their demon god: “So they cried with a loud voice and cut themselves according to their custom with swords and lances until the blood gushed out on them. When midday was past, they raved until the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice.” We hear of many sick practices of pagan religions and devil worshippers today. Satan wants us dead—all of us. He wants nothing less than to destroy all of us. In fact, he is after believers, going around like a “roaring lion seeking someone to devour.” These people cutting themselves and bleeding all over the place are simply his “useful idiots.” And yet, how many people rushed to inject poison into their bodies in 2021 just so they could fit in? Everyone else was doing it, so they went ahead and did it, too. It’s disgusting, but we see Satan’s mark in every destructive and tyrannical act of modern times. We need to be like Elijah and stand up as one man against all of them and just say “No, our God is stronger. He laughs at your feeble attempt to do what YOU think is right. We will do what our God thinks is right.”

With one prayer to Yahweh, the Lord God Most High, “the fire of the Lord fell and consumed the burnt offering and the wood and the stones and the dust and licked up the water that was in the trench. And “When all the people saw it, they fell on their faces; and they said, “Yahweh, He is God; Yahweh, He is God.” The Power of God Most High is unmistakable, and His works are glorious to observe in our lives. I love when I see Him working; it brings tears of joy to me.

Elijah then rightly slew all of the prophets of Ba’al by the brook Kidron, and he gives Ahab an opportunity to repent. With Israel turned back to God and the prophets of Ba’al destroyed, God is ready to bring rain back on the land.

What comes next is dumbfounding. Why does Elijah after witnessing such a great triumph of the Lord God Yahweh fear for his life from Jezebel, who threatened him? He says, “O Lord, take my life, for I am not better than my fathers.” Even the greatest of God’s servants, a prophet who showed such great signs and wonders still had a moment of doubt and fear of the witch Jezebel. Couldn’t God destroy her as he did the prophets of Ba’al. He can, and later, he does, but the story goes to show that the human condition is frail, and we all need to be reminded from time to time that God is with us. Elijah’s attitude is one of humility and this is the contrite heart that the Lord is looking for. The Lord provides cakes for Elijah to eat and a jug of water. But the Lord wanted him back on the field. He wasn’t supposed to go hide in the cave. The Lord repeats, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” His humility has descended into self pity, and now the Lord urges Elijah to get on the move:…

… “you shall anoint Hazael king over Aram; and Jehu the son of Nimshi you shall anoint king over Israel; and Elisha the son of Shaphat of Abel-meholah you shall anoint as prophet in your place.” It’s time to get back to work, Elijah, and then retire, the Lord says. All of this work would have taken quite a bit of time to complete—years perhaps. Just training Elisha to replace him, though the story is short, would not have taken as little time as the text seems to indicate.

I find it interesting that when Elijah called Elisha to follow him, Elisha asked to kiss his father and mother before going with him. I see this as a flaw in Elisha. When Yeshua called the Apostles, the dropped their fishing nets and followed him. Matthew left his tax booth and followed Yeshua on the spot. Unless we forsake all that we have, we can’t be Yeshua’s disciples. Elisha was an amazing prophet of God, but did he err in his hesitance in following after the Lord?

1 Kings 20, 1 Kings 21, 1 Kings 22, Psalm 103

To continue to show His favor to the people of Israel following the defeat of the prophets of Ba’al, the Lord defeated the Aramanians in the mountains and then in the valley. Ahab was torn, unequally yoked with a pagan witch, and this tore him away from doing what was right in the eyes of the Lord, which he may have otherwise done: The Lord says through His prophet: “‘Surely there was no one like Ahab who sold himself to do evil in the sight of the Lord, because Jezebel his wife incited him. He acted very abominably in following idols, according to all that the Amorites had done, whom the Lord cast out before the sons of Israel.’ It came about when Ahab heard these words, that he tore his clothes and put on sackcloth and fasted, and he lay in sackcloth and went about despondently. Then the word of the Lord came to Elijah the Tishbite, saying, “Do you see how Ahab has humbled himself before Me? Because he has humbled himself before Me, I will not bring the evil in his days, but I will bring the evil upon his house in his son’s days.””

Let this be a lesson to us on two levels: We must not be unequally yoked (2 Corinthians 6:11-18), considering of course the whole weight of the interpretation of this in 1 Corinthians 7. If we are married to an unbeliever, or worse, a pagan, it will be much harder for us to make it to Heaven. Secondly, even if we do evil in the sight of the Lord, as David did with Uriah the Hittite and as Ahab did on account of his wife Jezebel, repentance with a humble and contrite heart will restore our relationship with the Lord through our trust in Yeshua and His blood on the cross. The result of Ahab and Jezebel’s marriage—their son Ahaziah who would take the throne after him—was a depraved soul, fully overtaken by his mother’s evil. And thus the Lord brought judgment on Jezebel and her children, while sparing Ahab for a time.

Ahab fell again, however, when he accepted the fruit of his wife’s evil in his name, who murdered Naboth for his vinyard through political treachery. Ahab went to take possession of this property and accepted his wife’s evil plotting, which brought about his death in battle. His blood at the bottom of the chariot in which he was slain was licked up by dogs by the pool used by prostitutes to bathe. What an ignominious death for this weak king, who was led away from the Lord by His evil wife. This is why Yeshua says that wives or husbands, fathers or mothers, sisters or brothers, or even our children cannot take us away from putting the Lord first in our lives, or else we will not make it. We must put God first no matter what, in the name of Yeshua.

2 Kings 1, 2 Kings 2, 2 Kings 3, Psalm 104

Elijah in one of his last acts condemned the wicked Ahaziah, son of Jezebel and Ahab, and his brother Jehoram took his place. God is still fulfilling his prophesy to destroy the house of Ahab after him on account of Jezebel. What an evil heart to inquire of demons instead of the Lord God. This was a similar thing to what Saul attempted to do with syncretism when he went to the witch of Endor. Did Ahaziah think that Elijah would bring a different answer when he was there face-to-face with the king? “Thus says the Lord, ‘Because you have sent messengers to inquire of Baal-zebub, the god of Ekron—is it because there is no God in Israel to inquire of His word?—therefore you shall not come down from the bed where you have gone up, but shall surely die.’ ” The Lord had mercy on the third set of Ahaziah’s servants because they humbled themselves before the Lord, but the first two sets of messengers were being sent to condemn Elijah for his prophesy—the Lord would not allow it. Even if the news is bad or the answer is “no,” we ought to humble ourselves before the Lord.

When Elijah’s mantle passed to Elisha, they both crossed the Jordan by parting the waters. First Elijah did this before he was taken up by a chariot of fire and fiery horses to Heaven. Then, Elijah did this on the way back. This is a sign of their great faith. The water parts when be believe and then take action to show we believe. This was done on account of all the prophets who were watching. The Lord was calling them to follow Him.

Upon Elisha’s anointing, evil children, the brood of their evil parents, came to curse Elisha, the anointed of the Lord. It’s important to see here that the Lord will not have mercy even on children who are cruel in their heart. The sins of their fathers had passed on down to them, and they were walking in them. We cannot expect children who sin like their fathers to be saved, for Exodus 20 makes it clear that if they continue in sin, they will not. Only when the children turn from their fathers’ sin are they saved. Repentance by the blood of the Lamb is key.

In the alliance between Jehoshaphat, the king of Judah, Jehoram, the king of Israel, and the king of Edom, sons of Esau, we see that the Lord delivers the Moabites into their hand only on account of Jehoshaphat. Elisha said to Jehoram: “As the Lord of hosts lives, before whom I stand, were it not that I regard the presence of Jehoshaphat the king of Judah, I would not look at you nor see you.” And so we see that when we are yoked with unbelievers, even though the Lord does not want this for us, He will bless the unbelievers on account of us, if we pursue Him and ask with fervent prayer. On account of Judah, the men were provisioned with water as they expelled Moab from the lands of Edom, Judah and Israel. Yet we see toward the end of the battle that while the Lord had provisioned Judah and Edom, the Lord does not protect Israel on account of their evil king Jehoram but lets wrath come upon them, because their hearts were not with the Lord.

2 Kings 4, 2 Kings 5, 2 Kings 6, 2 Kings 7, Psalm 105

In Psalm 105, we read, “Seek the Lord and His strength; Seek His face continually. Remember His wonders which He has done, His marvels and the judgments uttered by His mouth, O seed of Abraham, His servant, O sons of Jacob, His chosen ones! He is the Lord our God; His judgments are in all the earth. He has remembered His covenant forever, The word which He commanded to a thousand generations,” Elisha, who was a prophet who facilitated double the number of Yahweh’s signs and wonders as Elijah, is a prophetic foreshadowing of our Messiah Yeshua. He multiplied oil and bread, he defeated the enemies’ armies with a Word, and he raised the dead. These are fantastic stories, and they truly deserve significant study. I highly desire to go back and study these stories in great detail.

The widow whose oil was multiplied to pay her debts and provide abundance for her young sons is the sinner who gives her life to Yeshua and is filled with the Holy Spirit unto abundance. This woman obeyed God by seeking jars to fill with the oil the Lord has promised her through Yeshua. This was by far a monumental act of faith on her part, and she was rewarded for walking out in faith with abundance. There is no shortage of life when we give our whole heart to the Lord and put His kingdom first, as this widow obeyed Elisha and trusted in the Lord.

The childless woman had such faith in God that she showed the hospitality that Yeshua taught us, making a place for the Man of God to dwell with her as he passed by, taking care of his every need. As a reward, God provided her miraculously with a son in her old age, and then took that son from her. Notice her faith: Despite her son being dead, she told her husband “It is well.” She told Gehazi, “It is well.” Only when Elisha confronted her did she share what happened. Despite the test to her faith, she put her full trust in the Lord and knew that the Lord could bring her son back from the dead. Because of her faith, it was possible, and it is possible for us to heal all illnesses in the name of Yeshua today, even death itself, just like this. Do you have faith to walk on water and move mountains? In Yeshua, all things are possible.

During the famine in the land of Gilgal, Elisha ordered the "sons of the prophets" to collect herbs, a wild vine, and wild gourds, and added them to the pot of stew. The sons of the prophets didn't know what these wild vines and gourds were. Were they Gentiles grafted in to the Tree of Israel, were they wild vines tossed into the stew for Israel. They shout out, "there is death in the pot!" Gentiles coming into Israel could be perceived that way by Israel. Elisha adds flour to the pot, "and there was nothing harmful in the pot." They then proceeded to eat it amidst the famine and it was good.

Flour is קֶמַח qemach (Strong's Heb 7058), which means flour or meal. Remember that flour is used to make bread, it is used as an offering to the Lord, it is used in many many instances to give to the Angel of the Lord for food. Flour is used to create unleavened bread. Flour in these verses very well may represent Yeshua being added to the pot of wild vines and gourds added to the herbs, the bitter herbs that reflect the suffering of Israel in Egypt, which seems to be repeating during this famine in Israel.

Is this a prophetic metaphor reflecting Gentiles being grafted into Israel and made into one unit by Yeshua? I think it could be. Remember, Peter was told, "come and eat" regarding the unclean animals. Remember, Yeshua said to eat His body and drink His blood, which is eating the Word of God and making it a part of ourselves, keeping the commandments of God because we love Him, and accepting His sacrifice for our sins, making it a part of ourselves and a covering that we need so we can appear righteous to God.

The story of Naaman shows the power of influence, for one young girl from Israel convinced this great general to seek healing from the prophet Elisha. Naaman didn’t like the prescription to wash seven times in the Jordan, turning again toward doubt, but another servant of his turned his heart back toward the faith he first developed by listening to his servant girl. Naaman was expecting some great religious display “Behold, I thought, ‘He will surely come out to me and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God, and wave his hand over the place and cure the leper.’” But Elisha wanted him to turn to the Lord in faith. The servant says: “My father, had the prophet told you to do some great thing, would you not have done it? How much more then, when he says to you, ‘Wash, and be clean’?”” When Naaman relents, repents, and obeys in faith, he becomes clean. The result of this influence is monumental: “Behold now, I know that there is no God in all the earth, but in Israel.”

Elisha was also able to see the Lord’s armies and trust in the angelic protection that the Lord had sent. In two battles, the Lord’s angel army defeated the enemy. The first instance, the Lord’s angels lead the enemy into the heart of Samaria so they are surrounded by Israel. Rather than kill them, Elisha orders the King to be hospitable toward them. Does Yeshua not tell us: “Love your enemy”? Here we see the fruit of this in action. The people went away and didn’t return to fight again against Israel. In the second instance, the Lord’s angels made the sound of an approaching army and scared the enemy away, leaving all the spoil for famished Israel. When you trust in the Lord, He will help you win the battles in your life, even if it doesn’t go like you’d expect.

Our reading in 2 Kings 7:3-20 ties into a greater lesson about leprosy, which represents sin in our lives, and there is much more I could say about this reading. Here we see how we ought to interact with other members of the Body of Yeshua, even if we are separated from some of them for a time on account of sin. There were four leprous men at the entrance of the gate; and they said to one another, “Why are we sitting here until we die? If we say, ‘We will enter the city,’ the famine is in the city, and we shall die there. And if we sit here, we die also. Now therefore, come, let us surrender to the army of the Syrians. If they keep us alive, we shall live; and if they kill us, we shall only die.” They couldn’t go back into Israel because they were leprous, so they wandered off into the enemy camp, fully expecting to die, but God used them to deliver their people Israel, instead. …

… As we look through the story, we see that these sinful men discovered that the Assyrians had fled, and rather than keep this great bounty to themselves, they shared it with their people Israel, with the “Church,” and brought the city also to repentance. Israel is cautious, considering the source of their deliverance (the four lepers), and they send a few scouts out to verify that deliverance had come, but once they verify that the deliverance had come, and that God had sent leprous messengers to deliver the whole land from famine, they all go out and are filled with the bounty that was brought by the Lord alone. We know from Scripture that famine itself is a judgment for sin, and so we know that Israel has also been involved in sin prior to the attack of the enemy against them. Without getting too deep into this story, I think it is critical to note that all of these people were delivered from God alone, and not by any act of their own. …

… The lepers went to the camp fully expecting to die. The Israelites were dying in their sin, in the judgment of famine. They were delivered from God when they didn’t deserve it. They all deserved to die in their sins. The Israelites dying of famine accepted their brothers who had been condemned in their sins, the four lepers, and the four lepers had turned to rescue their brothers and sisters, fully sharing the mercy that God had given to them with the rest of their people. Remember Paul writes, “love covers a multitude of sins.” Together, they shared in God’s mercy and forgiveness. We must remember as brothers and sisters in Christ that we all fall short of the glory of God, and that our hearts are all desperately wicked. When we are united in Yeshua and “love one another,” and obey the commandments of God because we love Him, and walk away from our sins, God leads us out of our suffering into redemption. Praise be to God for the gift of our salvation through the blood of Yeshua and the promise of our inheritance through His resurrection.

2 Kings 8, 2 Kings 9, 2 Kings 10, Psalm 106

It’s just a really bad idea to get yourself unequally yoked. Why would Jehoram marry Jezebel’s daughter? Power? How is that worth it? He led Judah into such evil, just like Israel, that the prophesy that Isaac gave to Esau became true and Edom revolted from the hand of Judah. They broke the yoke from off their neck. This Jezebel had far-reaching effects on the sister nations

Thankfully, God had other plans and sent Elisha to anoint Jehu King of Israel, so he could purge the evil from both lands. He eliminated the prophets of Ba’al in an epic ruse, and executed all of Ahab’s posterity, fulfilling a prophesy of God. Sadly, he turned from God after these victories and thus met an untimely end himself.

Things got so bad that Athaliah, the granddaughter of Ahab’s father Omri, murdered all of the king’s sons and stole the crown of Judah herself. The Lord, honoring His Word to David, preserved the infant Joash until he was seven and then took out the evil witch. Joash, with the help of the priests, particularly Jehoiada, cleaned up Judah and restored the city to the Lord. Evil lasts for a time, but the Lord always brings restoration to His people, whom He preserves. The seal of the Holy Spirit will protect the people of the End Days, though they will endure hardship—persecution, torture, even death—before Jesus returns. A remnant will endure until the end.

2 Kings 12, 2 Kings 13, 2 Kings 14, Psalm 107 - April 17

This section of Scripture strikes me as ordinary life. There are rulers of Judah and Israel who sometimes do evil and sometimes do good, but they neglect to give their whole hearts to the Lord. They pay Him lip service, maybe even they do great works and donate all kinds of money to church to make repairs and help the poor, but is their heart fully with Him? Still, they sacrifice on the high places and practice the religion of Man instead of the Holy Convocations that God has ordained, they add to what God has commanded, rather than “keep the feasts” and “do this in memory of Me.” These men of Judah and Israel during this time period are not an inspiration to me, and I believe God intends it to be that way. He is showing us through their lukewarm faith how we ought not follow Him. He wants our whole heart. He wants us to have the burning faith of Elisha, so that even when we have died our bones can raise people from the dead.

Yeshua, our Lord and King and Risen Savior, has the power over death and only in Him can we be saved. May we trust in Him for all things and not go half-hearted into our faith as Jeroboam did, by striking the ground only three times with our arrows, but may we strike the ground with as many arrows as we have in our quiver, so that the Lord can give us the abundance of life, provision and protection. Why hold anything back from the Lord, when He has given us everything! Let us reply in kind and give Him everything we own, every part of ourselves, and every moment of every day. Let there not be civil war among us brothers and sisters in Christ, as there was between Judah and Israel, but let us instead focus on this thing: that in Christ Jesus, we are all one, regardless of whether we are Jew or Gentile, Catholic or Protestant or Messianic, so long as we are united in our Messiah Yeshua, and we give HIM our whole lives, nothing else matters. There is no religion of Man that compares with the Glory of God and the Truth of His Church, which is one Body in Christ.

2 Kings 15, 2 Kings 16, 2 Kings 17, Psalm 108

First off, Azariah, also known as Uzziah, did right in the eyes of the Lord, except he still allowed Israel to sacrifice on the high places, when the Lord commanded sacrifice in the Temple. Why does Man insist on His own way? “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it? I, the Lord, search the heart, test the mind, even to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his doings.” (Jeremiah 17:9-10) We must give our heart fully to the Lord and fully surrender to Him, or else we may go astray like this king. In his pride of doing what HE BELIEVED was right to serve the Lord, He burned incense at the altar, according to 2 Chronicles 26:16-23, which was a rite given only to the priests. Like Saul, he pursued his own heart and worshipped the way he believed was right instead of worshipping in the way the Lord said was right in His Word. Because of this, he became a leper and he bore this mark of sin to his grave. We ought to be warned against this type of behavior and work very hard to do only as the Lord wills, and not add or subtract from it according to the dictates of our own hearts.

In 2 Kings 15, Ahaz, Uzziah’s grandson, brought the evil of Israel back into Judah, and he trusted in Damascus to save him from his enemies, instead of the Lord God. Upon defeating Israel, which had come up against her sister Judah, the Judaean King made an alliance with Tiglath-pileser, the king of Assyria, and visited him. In this alliance, he turned his heart fully toward the gods of Assyria and literally moved aside the altar to Yahweh within the Jerusalem Temple to build an altar to the gods of Damascus. Do our churches have altars to demons within them today alongside the altar to God Most High? We don’t read the conclusion of this story today, but what we do see here is that Ahaz’s effort to go after demons and make alliances with the enemy worked. The evil one has power, and he craves worship—this is the reason Yeshua threw him out of Heaven. Satan is the great imitator and he will do whatever he can to get your attention away from the Lord, even if it means putting his altar next to the Lord’s altar and giving you what you desire, whether healing, wealth, or power. We must not be like Ahaz and worship demons alongside the Lord.

1 Corinthians 10:1-22 speaks about this at length, and I encourage you to read it, particularly as it relates to Passover vs. the syncretism being practiced by Ahaz in today’s story, which is allegorically the same thing the modern Church is doing by praying to saints or Mary or practicing the pagan festivals that have been relabeled, as well as the Jews, who may go after Reiki for healing on Wednesday and then come before the altar of Yahweh on a Saturday or Sunday, and even pray in the name of Yeshua. Paul says in verses 21-22: “You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons; you cannot partake of the Lord’s table and of the table of demons. Or do we provoke the Lord to jealousy? Are we stronger than He?” The Lord has made it quite clear in His commandments in Exodus 20:3-6: “You shall have no other gods before Me. … you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, …visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.” Syncretism is a sin worthy of death. It is idolatry, and the Lord, who is long-suffering, won’t tolerate it forever. He will bring judgment.

At this point in our reading through 2 Kings 17, Judah had a few errant kings like the children of Jezebel from a few generations back to Ahaz in 2 Kings 15—and Manasseh, among others, are yet to come in subsequent chapters—but Israel had followed after idols from the very beginning from the time when Jeroboam took the 10 tribes away from Judah and Benjamin and set up golden calves to worship on the two ends of the land. God sent powerful prophets to try and redirect Israel,f from Elijah to Elisha and the others with more cameo appearances in the Scriptures. This was God trying to pull them back to Him. Remember: the Lord God is “long-suffering,” but His lovingkindness will not extend to those who stubbornly rebel against Him; He will bring judgement—always in the hopes to bring His people to repentance. This is what is about to happen to Israel, and the Lord is very clear in 2 Kings 17 why He gives Israel into the hands of the Assyrians.

After bringing these people out of Egypt and asking them only to obey His commandments and worship Him alone, these people: “feared other gods and walked in the customs of the nations whom the Lord had driven out before the sons of Israel, and in the customs of the kings of Israel which they had introduced.” Let this stop us in our reading right here! You can’t follow after strange customs of other people of other faiths—even if they work—because the Lord is a “jealous God.” Ultimately, Yahweh is God Most High. He has ultimate power and he created these demons to have power also, and yet they rebelled against Him and sought worship for themselves. The Lord will destroy them and all who follow them in the End, but in the meantime, they have power and their deception is strong. We also see that the kings, who were deceived, also created their own customs that they made the people follow instead of the Lord. Do we not see governments today trying to turn God’s people away from what the Lord has commanded? This too will be judged, for all who do not stand firm and follow after the Lord, trusting in Jesus and keeping His commandments, no matter what the cost.

Additionally, the “sons of Israel did things secretly that were not right against the Lord their God.” What did I cite from Jeremiah 17:10 above? “I, the Lord, search the heart, test the mind, even to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his doings.” The Lord knows what we do in secret—we can’t hide anything from Him. Judgment will come for the secret things we do that no one knows about except God, if we don’t repent from these things. Is it pornography, drugs, selfish ambitions or desires, pride, murderous thoughts, and so on? The Lord will judge!

The Lord’s rationale doesn’t stop there, for “they built for themselves high places in all their towns … they set for themselves sacred pillars and Asherim on every high hill and under every green tree … they burned incense on all the high places as the nations did which the Lord had carried away to exile before them.” These are “evil things provoking the Lord.” “They served idols.” What high things do you have in your life that come before keeping the commandments of God. Is your Saturday work around the house and shopping trip, your Friday night drinking night more important than keeping the Sabbath to the Lord God? Who has deceived you? The Lord does not lie and His Word is clear. What income bracket is more important than God? What house? What car? What healing practice or pharmaceutical do you love more than the Lord’s commandments?

The Lord has “warned Israel and Judah [and YOU and ME] through all His prophets and every seer, saying, “Turn from your evil ways and keep MY commandments, MY statutes according to all the law which I commanded your fathers, and which I sent to you through MY servants the prophets.” He also sent His Son, Jesus, our Lord and God, one in being with the Father, who told us this same thing: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15).  He said, “repent and believe in the Gospel” (Mark 1:14-15). Matthew 21:33-46 tells of the parable of the wicked vinedressers, who turn away every prophet and then kill the son. This isn’t just about Israel and Judah, but we can be guilty of this, too. Do we hear the Word of God and do it or do we reject it to follow our own way like Israel and Judah in today’s story? Choose this day whom you will serve! “And if it seems evil to you to serve the LORD, choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.” (Joshua 24:15)

Israel “did not listen, but stiffened their neck like their fathers, who did not believe in the Lord their God.” This is HUGE! The word “listen” here is “(שָׁמַע) sh’ma,” which means “hear and obey.” The word “believe” here is “(אָמַן) aman,” which means to confirm or support, or in other words to have faith. This is the structure of the faith, right here in 2 Kings 17:14. This is the whole of the Gospel, repeated in Revelation 14:12: “Here is the patience of the Saints; here are they who keep the commandments of God and the faith of Yeshua.” It shouldn’t surprise us that the very next verse, 2 Kings 17:15, is “They rejected His statutes and His covenant which He made with their fathers and His warnings with which He warned them.” In other words, they took the Mark of the Beast, which was in between the frontlets of their eyes (forehead) and on their right hand. They believed, thought, spoke and acted like the World and went after the flesh and they rejected God and His commandments. To take the Mark of God and receive the Seal of the Holy Spirit, we must believe, think, speak and act according to the Commandments of God and trust Yeshua with all our heart, soul, mind and strength. This is our choice, one or the other, and there is no half way there.

God makes this so very clear, even 2 Kings 17:16: “And they followed vanity and became vain, and went after the nations which surrounded them, concerning which the Lord had commanded them not to do like them.” He repeats Himself in the following verses, making it abundantly clear that they rejected God’s commandments and thereby rejected God. If we reject God’s commandments today, we reject Jesus. There isn’t any other way around it. You worship another Jesus (2 Corinthians 11:4) if you do not strive to keep the commandments of God and rely on God to help you with His Holy Spirit (John 14). To rebel against the commandments of God is to take the Mark of the Beast, which leads to eternal death, nothing more and nothing less.

Continuing, these Israelites even made molten images again, after their fathers in the wilderness who were destroyed—they didn’t learn—and they made their children pass through the fire. They literally sacrificed their children to Ba’al, at the temple of Planned Parenthood, to worship the gods of prosperity and selfish desires. They practiced divination and enchantments, putting their faith in a vaccine instead of God, in pharmaceuticals instead of God, in doctors instead of God. Revelation 9:21 says, “And they did not repent of their murders or their sorceries or their sexual immorality or their thefts” about the people of the Last Days. The word “sorcery” translates to “Pharmakeia” in Greek, and today we can know that the meaning is regarding today’s pharmaceuticals as well as the pagan practices of healing like Reiki, and perhaps even other forms that are not directly from God. We ought to repent if we have taken part in any of this, and “go and sin no more.” But what about the murders? How many pass their children through the fire of Planned Parenthood today? How many shout “you idiot” at the President or the governor or think evil thoughts about rebellion? Is this not murder of the heart, according to Jesus in Matthew 5:21-26. What about sexual immorality of all kinds, which is rampant today! In Matthew 5:27-30, even looking at a woman with desire is adultery, how much more looking at her pictures, or taking those pictures? Do we want what we don’t have? Is this not covetousness, a violation of the 10th commandment? Is this not theft if we desire with our hearts something more than we desire the Lord? How different are we than the Israel of 2 Kings 17 today? Is there any difference at all? The People who follow Jesus ought to look completely different, in every single way, and instead they ought to look like Daniel, like Job and like Noah, standing apart from the people all around who were destroyed.

“The Lord was very angry with Israel and removed them from His sight; none was left except the tribe of Judah. Also Judah did not keep the commandments of the Lord their God, but walked in the customs which Israel had introduced. The Lord rejected all the descendants of Israel and afflicted them and gave them into the hand of plunderers, until He had cast them out of His sight.” What remnant does the Lord preserve? He preserves the Saints, marked by the seal of the Holy Spirit, who keep the commandments of God and faith in Yeshua; these who take the “mark of God.” God uses the evil nation of Assyria to drag all of the Israelites into captivity and He allows Assyria to bring men from Babylon, Cuthah, Avva, Hamath and Sepharvaim to inhabit the land of Israel instead. These people we no better than Israel, but Israel had to be judged according to Deuteronomy 28. The Lord did this for His name and His glory alone! And yes, the Lord God will use evil governments even today to judge the people who are not repentant, who rebel against His commandments, just like you see in America, Israel and around the whole world today. This is how we know that the End is close. The whole world is in need of judgment. Who will be among the remnant? Who will call the people to repentance?

These people who God sent into the land of Israel were devoured by lions—“Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour” (1 Peter 5:8—until they looked to the priests of Israel to inquire concerning the Lord and His will. God Most High is “a jealous God.” He created the Heavens and the Earth and all that is in them and He requires that His creation turn toward Him, lest they be destroyed. And yet He too is long-suffering and loving and even came in the flesh to die for our sin, so that those who turn toward Him and trust Him with all their heart and keep His commandments will be preserved alive. Can we endure through the testing, through the trials, through the persecution, and through the deception? These peoples of the land lived with syncretism, which the Lord would not tolerate forever. Eventually, the Israelites would move back and intermarry with these inhabitants, becoming the Samaritans. Jesus went to save these lost sheep of Israel, and the opportunity is still there for them and all of us to follow Him, but we must choose to do so. He is calling to us. But few will be chosen. The gate is narrow indeed.

2 Kings 18, 2 Kings 19, Psalm 109

We know unequivocally from the story of Hezekiah that persecution and spiritual attacks are coming when we give our whole heart to the Lord to follow Him and then act on our faith by doing what the Lord commands. There is absolutely no doubt about it. In fact, Jesus Himself warned us about this in John 15:18-21: “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours. But all these things they will do to you on account of my name, because they do not know him who sent me.” And so Sennacherib and his taunting blasphemy of the Lord God at the wall of Jerusalem is just what we can expect. If we aren’t the recipient of this type of persecution, then perhaps we ought to check our faith in action to make sure we are right with the Lord.

Sennacherib’s attack is told in greater detail within the book of Isaiah 36-38, and we can see very clearly that the general of Assyria uses deception, subterfuge and propaganda to attempt to drive Jerusalem off course. Satan will attack you when you obey God’s commandments and keep your faith in Yeshua with the same mind games, and he will use people you love and those you have helped to bring these attacks. Remember Job whose wife told him to “curse God and die.” Had Job done this, he would have died, both physically and eternally. Yet, Job righteously calls out his wife by admonishing her not to be “as one of the foolish women” and acknowledges that we must accept the good with the bad and praise God throughout all of it. Hezekiah does the same as Job here, and what a blessed and wonderful result that God delivers to him for his faith.

You’ll note that Hezekiah humbled himself and turned to prayer and fasting, and he also asked for God to honor His own great name by refusing to allow the blasphemy. Is this our heart? Do we care about God’s reputation more than our own like Hezekiah? We ought to. Moses did the same when God offered to make a great nation of him because Israel sinned against the Lord. Moses said that on account of the name of Yahweh and His fame, God ought to save Israel despite their sin, and God agreed. Hezekiah, after praying a prayer in the same model as the Lord’s prayer, says, “Now, O Lord our God, I pray, deliver us from his hand that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that You alone, O Lord, are God.” The Lord responds affirmatively, stating “For I will defend this city to save it for My own sake and for My servant David’s sake.” We must appeal to the “zeal of the Lord” and be zealous for his Great Name, Yeshua, and defend Him with testimony every chance we get, and thus the Lord will deliver us with His salvation.

2 Kings 20, 2 Kings 21, 2 Kings 22, Psalm 110

Psalm 110 is a prophetic Messianic psalm quoted by Yeshua and yes, the Book of Hebrews references it in great detail, particularly in the early chapters. In the Psalm, David is referencing the two powers doctrine of Hebrew theology, and here, the Invisible Father spoke to the Visible Son, “Yahweh said to My Lord,” who prior to His incarnation showed Himself as “the Angel of God,” and many of these “Christophanies” appear in the Tonakh. Melchizedek is thought to be a Christophany by some, but others believe he was some other divine being, perhaps an angel. It is unknown, but we do know that the Lord is among his order of priests; namely, eternal. Yeshua is our eternal High Priest and He is not part of the Aaeronic line. He was a son of David, a King; only a priest through this order of Melchizedek. There are many texts in the Dead Sea Scrolls that reference Melchizedek and they also note that the Messiah would be of his order. It’s interesting to contemplate and study, but it requires more study for me at the moment before I have any confidence in the meaning.

Hezekiah’s illness of 2 Kings 20 is healed by the Lord’s mercy upon Hezekiah’s prayer, which once again shows the power of prayer. Sadly, Hezekiah has turned toward his own welfare here and has put the welfare of Judah after himself. This is not the heart of a Godly King, who ought to put the Lord first, the people second and himself last. This is not to say the king wasn’t Godly, for he was of great faith and his prayer indeed brought deliverance against Assyria and healing for himself. However, he seems to have a problem with pride and this pride would affect his lineage. He showed all of his wealth to the king of Babylon. Why would he do this? To glory in his own wealth, a fault that would cost his nation and his sons—and he doesn’t seem to care. This is sin! Manasseh, his son, grew up in his father’s good kingdom, but he must have experienced some influence from his evil grandfathers. The sins of the father’s do carry forward for four generations, without repentance.

Thankfully for Manasseh, we learn from his story in 2 Chronicles 33 that he came to repentance, but he started off desperately wicked—literally a Satan worshipper who sacrificed his own children to demons and practiced witchcraft. He was pulled off by hooks in his mouth to Babylon as a result of his evil and God’s wrath would build against Judah because of him. But he did repent. You can read his prayer for repentance here: https://apocrypha.org/kjv/prayer_of_manasseh/1.htm. God relented on immediately destroying Judah because of this repentance. Josiah, Manasseh’s grandson, was able to reign 31 years in Jerusalem walking in the commandments of God because of his repentance. Things got os bad that Shaphan the priest had to “discover” the Torah in the Temple it had not been used in so long. Thankfully, Josiah leads Judah to repentance and there is peace for a time, but things are still in the process of crumbling. Moral and spiritual deteriation is very hard to culturally undo, and usually only calamity can bring a people back to God. This is what’s coming.

2 Kings 23, 2 Kings 24, 2 Kings 25, Psalm 111

Today’s reading is critical to understand from a holistic perspective. Israel had already been captured by the Assyrians, and God prevented Assyria from capturing Judah also on account of Hezekiah’s faith and prayer, which God responded to positively through Isaiah the prophet. However, Hezekiah’s son Manasseh did such evil in Judah that God judged Judah and determined it would have the same fate as Israel, and Babylon, which also conquered Assyria, would be the conquering nation. There’s a few things to consider here: 1) Manasseh repented, and thus God had mercy on him individually. 2) Manasseh’s actions while he was a Satanic king has a far-reaching impact on the nation of Judah, and the culture was unrecoverable at this point. 3) Even though Josiah completely cleansed the land, the culture was dead and was not coming back without total judgment. God makes it clear that His judgment was on account of the innocent children who were murdered; sacrificed to the demons of Ba’al and the others. This is how I know that it is extremely unlikely that America will recover. We are under judgment and will likely be destroyed, despite any “knight in shining armor,” like Josiah. Christ Himself is our only hope of salvation, so let us serve Him even if we are the last ones to do so.

Josiah is a beautiful man, and I personally believe he was individually saved by the blood of Yeshua and we will meet him in the Promised Land. A part of me prays for such a strong leader like him to cleanse America, or even the World, but I know from Scripture and prophesy that any such man will be the Antichrist at this point. He will come in deception, first appearing to restore God’s law and decency, even making a peace compact with Israel, but then he will turn against Israel and his Beast system will reign until the return of Yeshua. At this point, I am wary of any “man” coming to save us, and I am all but certain I will personally oppose him. Only Yeshua’s return can save us at this point.

All that being said, I think it is critical for us personally to do what Josiah did within the universe that is under our own control, whether that be our homes and families, our properties, or if we run a company, our companies. His example is epitomized in Psalms 111:10: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; A good understanding have all those who do His commandments; His praise endures forever.” And it was when Josiah read in the hearing of all the priests and the prophets and the people the “words of the book of the covenant” in 2 Kings 23 that God established the remnant of the people who would be saved. It is my understanding that Daniel and his friends and their deep and lasting faith came out of this authentic and beautiful repentance that Josiah led. This was the faith that would hold Judah’s place not just in the history books, but through the time of Yeshua and into the present day. There would be no modern Israel or any Bible at all if it wasn’t for what Josiah did. Don’t underestimate the work that God’s Word did for the remnant that persevered through the tribulation that was coming, as we must also do.

The King made a covenant to keep God’s “commandments and His testimonies and His statutes with all his heart and all his soul, to carry out the words of this covenant that were written into this book. And all the people entered into the covenant.” The ones who did this faithfully were saved by the blood of Christ. We need to do this now, as Revelation 14:12 makes clear. Josiah then commanded the priests to cleanse the Temple, to cleanse the city and to cleanse the nation, and what Glory he brought to Jerusalem during those days, even celebrating the Passover and looking forward to the Lord’s sacrifice on the cross. We need to do this same type of cleansing that you read about in 2 Kings 23 within our homes and within our hearts. There ought to be NO idol, and no profane thing whatsoever within our lives, but we ought to keep the commandments of God! We also see that Josiah cremated the bodies of the evil prophets, which should be a lesson to us. We ought to avoid cremation for it is an act of disgrace for the dead. Those who are honored are buried.

Here are two key verses from 2 Kings 24 regarding why Jerusalem was captured and Judah was destroyed by Babylon: “So He sent them against Judah to destroy it, according to the word of the Lord which He had spoken through His servants the prophets. Surely at the command of the Lord it came upon Judah, to remove them from His sight because of the sins of Manasseh, according to all that he had done, and also for the innocent blood which he shed, for he filled Jerusalem with innocent blood; and the Lord would not forgive.” What were the sins of Manasseh? He did witchcraft, he worshipped Satan and he sacrificed children on the altar to Ba’al. What is going on in America today? Americans are practicing witchcraft, both the spiritual form as well as the pharmaceutical kind. Americans—“Christians even”—are worshipping Satan by purposefully throwing off each and every one of the commandments of God and worshipping “another Jesus” who is not the Jesus of Scripture. Americans are sacrificing their children via Planned Parenthood at the altar of Ba’al, for their own “careers,” “prosperity,” and “selfish desires.”

God is going to destroy America; there is zero doubt in my mind. Our only chance is to be like Noah, Job or Daniel, willing to forsake everything and follow after Jesus; willing to suffer great persecution, illness, and suffering and love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us, never ever going against the commandments of God found in Exodus 20—all of them; willing to die, whether we’re thrown into a lion’s den or worse instead of go against the commandments of God. Jesus, our savior, showed us this same example, and He told us to follow Him. He said the Kingdom of God could be accessed through a “narrow gate,” which is faith in Jesus, and that a “narrow path” leads up to that gate, which is following the commandments of God. We need to do both, or we will not make it. Judgment is coming. Who knows how long it will take, but we know that when innocent blood is shed on the land, judgment is coming. Will we make it? We must keep our eyes on Jesus and never take them off of Him; not even for a moment.

Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon is an evil man when he conquers Judah; he is not a man of God. In fact, he is quite representative of Satan himself. Read Revelation 13. The same thing happens at the end of days, which I believe we are fast approaching. Verse 7 says “It was granted to [the Beast] to make war with the saints and to overcome them.” This means we will not be spared of the tribulation, but we will face it, and like Yeshua told us, we will need to endure through it. He even says this same thing in verses 7b-10: ‘And authority was given him over every tribe, tongue, and nation. All who dwell on the earth will worship him, whose names have not been written in the Book of Life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. If anyone has an ear, let him hear. He who leads into captivity shall go into captivity; he who kills with the sword must be killed with the sword. Here is the patience and the faith of the saints.”

And so as we read more about Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonian captivity, know that this is prophesy about the end of days and look to Daniel, Noah and Job to see how we need to be living during these times. Those are our three examples from Ezekiel 14:14. Judah is completely annihilated, which was the land of prosperity God gave to the people who trusted Him and kept His commandments. When they turned away from God, God turned His back on them, and He will do the same to the lawless today, as He makes clear in Matthew 7. The land is plundered. There is disease. There is famine. There is scarcity. There is death. This is what the four horsemen look like in Revelation 6. This is what judgment looks like. Trust in Jesus and obey God’s commandments. There is no other hope.

The Saints will need to endure, trust in the Lord and the seal of His Holy Spirit that He has placed on us, and wait for His coming, for He will throw down the kingdoms of the World, and they shall become the Kingdoms of the Lord and of His Christ.

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The words of the wise heard in quietness are better than the shouting of a ruler among fools. Wisdom is better than weapons of war, but one sinner destroys much good.”
Ecclesiastes 9:1-5, 9-12, 17-18

“Dead flies make a perfumer’s oil stink, so a little foolishness is weightier than wisdom and honor. A wise man’s heart directs him toward the right, but the foolish man’s heart directs him toward the left. Even when the fool walks along the road, his sense is lacking and he demonstrates to everyone that he is a fool. If the ruler’s temper rises against you, do not abandon your position, because composure allays great offenses. There is an evil I have seen under the sun, like an error which goes forth from the ruler— folly is set in many exalted places while rich men sit in humble places. I have seen slaves riding on horses and princes walking like slaves on the land. He who digs a pit may fall into it, and a serpent may bite him who breaks through a wall. Furthermore, in your bedchamber do not curse a king, and in your sleeping rooms do not curse a rich man, for a bird of the heavens will carry the sound and the winged creature will make the matter known.”
Ecclesiastes 10:1-8, 20

1 Chronicles 1, 1 Chronicles 2, 1 Chronicles 3, 1 Chronicles 4, 1 Chronicles 5, 1 Chronicles 6, 1 Chronicles 7, 1 Chronicles 8, 1 Chronicles 9, Psalm 69

The early books of Chronicles are true to their name, recalling with historical precision the genealogy of the fathers who first inhabited the world from the time of the fall to the flood, and then from the flood to the kings of Israel. Matthew and Luke then bring this genealogy forward to the Lord Himself, who was son of Mary and step-son of Joseph, begotten but not created, conceived of the Holy Spirit, but eternal in being. I want to study this genealogy with more precision and I believe there are so many stories to discover here. I don’t have time today. We see in this reading, Judah prevailed over his brothers as the first in the line of kings, while the birthright, the inheritance belonged to Joseph. We learn that Judah was carried away into exile to Babylon for their unfaithfulness. The history of the whole world is here, and it ought to be studied and understood.

Psalm 69 could be written by a devout Messianic believer today for it is a confession much like we ought to be making to the Lord God as we live in the world but not of the world: “O God, it is You who knows my folly, And my wrongs are not hidden from You.” Yes, we are sinners, but saved by Christ. “May those who wait for You not be ashamed through me, O Lord God of hosts; May those who seek You not be dishonored through me, O God of Israel.” I do not want my brothers and sisters to stumble on account of me, but to be built up in their faith in Messiah Yeshua, encouraged to follow Him all the days of their lives. “Because for Your sake I have borne reproach; Dishonor has covered my face. I have become estranged from my brothers And an alien to my mother’s sons. For zeal for Your house has consumed me, And the reproaches of those who reproach You have fallen on me.” Anyone who trusts in the Word of God and has faith in Yeshua will suffer persecution, but this is meant to build us into stronger men and women in Christ. Our resolve cannot be moved: “as for me, my prayer is to You, O Lord, at an acceptable time; O God, in the greatness of Your lovingkindness, Answer me with Your saving truth. … Answer me, O Lord, for Your lovingkindness is good; According to the greatness of Your compassion, turn to me, And do not hide Your face from Your servant.” We strive after the Lord in everything we do, giving Him love with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, following His commandments with zeal. We love our neighbor as ourselves, the way God instructed in His Word. “But I am afflicted and in pain; May Your salvation, O God, set me securely on high. I will praise the name of God with song And magnify Him with thanksgiving.” This World is not our heaven, it is our wilderness, but we have the promise of everlasting life in Christ, and this is why we praise Him and give Him everything we have, including our very lives. Come quickly, Lord Yeshua.

1 Chronicles 10, 1 Chronicles 11, 1 Chronicles 12, 1 Chronicles 13, 1 Chronicles 14, Psalm 70

Chronicles, like Luke is to Matthew, and John to Mark, is another telling of the historical events surrounding Israel from King Saul to the Babylonian captivity. There are new details here that aren’t found in 1 Kings and 2 Kings, and we ought to look for them as we read both accounts. One is not true and the other false, or vice versa in any area, but Scripture is ALWAYS congruent. We must watch for any apparent contradiction and recognize that God is trying to tell us something. When we pray to the Lord for understanding and seek Him through His Word, He will reveal His Truth to us.

We see a quick retelling of the story of Saul, who was killed by the sword because of his disobedience to the Lord. David, on the other hand, who assumed the throne, obeyed the throne in all ways, even waiting on the Lord for His battle plans. We ought to allow the Lord to order our steps as we plan our ways. In this case, David wanted to defeat the Philistines, that was him planning his way, but look how the Lord orders his steps: When David asked the Lord whether he ought to go out against the Philistines, the Lord said, “You shall not go up after them; circle around behind them and come at them in front of the balsam trees. It shall be when you hear the sound of marching in the tops of the balsam trees, then you shall go out to battle, for God will have gone out before you to strike the army of the Philistines.” Because David waited on the Lord and did “just as the Lord had commanded him,” he defeated the enemy in battle. Proverbs 16:9 says, “A man’s heart plans his way, But the LORD directs his steps.”

In the case of Uzza, we do learn that the Lord requires us to worship Him in the manner He has prescribed. We cannot follow after our own way, but we must follow the commandments of God. Proverbs 14:12 reads, “There is a way that seems right to a man, But its end is the way of death.” We can not worship the Lord in our way, but we must worship Him in the way He has told us to do so, keeping His feasts, keeping His sabbath, obeying the laws about what we put into the Holy Temple of God, which is our body. We cannot defile the temple of God and expect to live. Uzza learned this lesson the hard way. It’s right next to the lesson of how David did things God’s way and succeeded. We are meant to learn from this dichotomy. We must obey God and not man; we must pursue God’s commandments and not the tradition of the elders; we must put Yeshua first in our lives always, loving and trusting Him and following Him in all His ways.

1 Chronicles 15, 1 1 Chronicles 16, 1 Chronicles 17, Psalm 71

David honored the Lord and brought great worship to the Lord as the Ark He commanded Moses to build was brought into the Holy City. What joy will we participate in when the Lord Yeshua comes into Jerusalem and brings the light of God into the City forever more? Those like Micah will perish in all the Earth, and only those who celebrate in the Lord will remain. David wore an ephod like a priest, ornate in nature, to prophetically set up the coming Messiah, who would be both King of kings, a mediator between God’s people (His bride) and God, as well as the High Priest who would take over for Aaron’s line. David was both a King and Prophet, which is not something that persisted throughout the Davidic line until Yeshua. I love the words of worship recorded in Chronicles, for we all ought to “give thanks to the Lord and call upon His name and make known His deeds among the people. He is the Lord our God, and His judgments are in all the Earth. Remember His covenant forever.” This is the very structure of the faith. To trust/serve/have faith in Jesus, and keep His commandments according to the new covenant in Christ. David, though a prophetic template for the coming High Priest and High King, would not build a Temple for the Lord, for Yeshua would be the one to do this, God’s Son who was in the Davidic line. Solomon provided a prophetic template for this act, but Yeshua would build the final Temple of God, which is the Body of believers who come to follow Him following His death and resurrection. We are the Temple of God that He is building, and let His name be praised within every fiber of our being.


1 Chronicles 18, 1 Chronicles 19, 1 Chronicles 20, 1 Chronicles 21, Psalm 72

There are are a few lessons I want to highlight from the 1 Chronicles 18: “And the Lord helped David wherever he went.” When we trust in the Lord and do what He asks of us, He will be with us. When we see David took a large amount of bronze that Solomon later used to fulfill a commandment of the Lord to build a bronze sea and pillars in the Temple, we should understand that God uses us for His purposes always, and sometimes His purposes will not be fully realized during our lifetimes. This is why we ought to serve the Lord joyfully at all times, for our work for Him will never be in vain. As we live, we should aspire to be like David, a “man after God’s own heart,” who “administered justice and righteousness for all his people.” In any instance where we are a leader, we ought to direct our charges with the righteousness of God and His love in our heart.

In 1 Chronicles 19, David loved his enemy and showed kindness to the sons of Nahash, because Nahash had shown kindness to him when he was running from Saul. They rejected this kindness and attacked David, but the Lord stood up for David and Israel and rescued them from the attack that followed. When we love our enemies, even to the point where we are loving them as we suffer persecution from them, know that the Lord will stand by us and deliver us out of our trouble. In David’s case, the Lord defeated the enemies who came to unjustly attack David, thinking he had an evil intent when he did not. Not only that, but David’s enemies then served him following the battle. We ought to trust in the Lord always, and He will deliver us.

In Matthew 4:1, we read, “Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.” In 1 Chronicles 21:1 we read, “Now Satan stood up against Israel, and moved David to number Israel.” But in 2 Samuel 24:1, we read “Again the anger of the LORD was aroused against Israel, and He moved David against them to say, ‘Go, number Israel and Judah.’” The fact of the matter is that Satan was created by God and one of his roles is to tempt Mankind. Remember Job. God allows Satan to test us, to see whether we will be strong and remain loyal to God’s law in the midst of our temptation. I think he does this to prepare us for the New Jerusalem, which is a return to the Garden of Eden. He cannot let any of us in if we follow after temptation and set aside the law of God. In Christ, He covers our past sins, but our heart must be righteous, seeking to follow God’s law if we are going to make it. This is why Jesus taught us to pray, “lead us not into temptation” (Matthew 6:13). Pray to Jesus our savior that He helps us with His Holy Spirit to pass these tests.

Consider: 1 Chronicles 27:23-24

1 Chronicles 22, 1 Chronicles 23, 1 Chronicles 24, 1 Chronicles 25, Psalm 73

David was instrumental in orchestrating everything for the Temple to set it up to be built for His son Solomon, who would represent prophetically the Prince of Peace, Messiah Yeshua. Yeshua is David’s son who would reign forever, but Solomon would set up the Kingdom of Israel for the prophetic example to all nations so that we would know to look to Yeshua when He came as the savior of all. God counsels Solomon through David as well as all of us when He says, “the Lord give you discretion and understanding … so that you may keep the law of the Lord your God. Then you will prosper, if you are careful to observe the statutes and the ordinances which the Lord commanded Moses concerning Israel. Be strong and courageous, do not fear nor be dismayed. “Is not the Lord your God with you? … Now set your heart and your soul to seek the Lord your God” Is there any other instruction we need? Only that Yeshua is the Lord our God, who came in the flesh and died for our sin so we might live through His resurrection from the dead.

We also pray, as in Psalm 73: “Surely God is good to Israel, To those who are pure in heart! … For, behold, those who are far from You will perish; You have destroyed all those who are unfaithful to You. But as for me, the nearness of God is my good; I have made the Lord God my refuge, That I may tell of all Your works.”

1 Chronicles 26, 1 Chronicles 27, 1 Chronicles 28, 1 Chronicles 29, Psalm 74

There are so many lessons here, but I’ll have to revisit another time. The whole order of the Kingdom is laid out here, and I know there is both immediate as well as prophetic meaning for all of this. When David assembled everyone to Jerusalem, he outlined a few timeless truths of the faith that ought to be emphasized and remembered:

Whether you are Solomon or not, this is a good lesson: “As for you, my son Solomon, know the God of your father, and serve Him with a whole heart and a willing mind; for the Lord searches all hearts, and understands every intent of the thoughts. If you seek Him, He will let you find Him; but if you forsake Him, He will reject you forever. … consider now, for the Lord has chosen you to build a house for the sanctuary; be courageous and act. … Be strong and courageous, and act; do not fear nor be dismayed, for the Lord God, my God, is with you. He will not fail you nor forsake you until all the work for the service of the house of the Lord is finished.”

Notice here how we ought to pray. We do not ask the Lord to bless us, for He has already blessed us; rather we say, “blessed be the name of the Lord.” See how David does it. This is a good example of how we ought to pray:

“Blessed are You, O Lord God of Israel our father, forever and ever. Yours, O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty, indeed everything that is in the heavens and the earth; Yours is the dominion, O Lord, and You exalt Yourself as head over all. Both riches and honor come from You, and You rule over all, and in Your hand is power and might; and it lies in Your hand to make great and to strengthen everyone. Now therefore, our God, we thank You, and praise Your glorious name. “But who am I and who are my people that we should be able to offer as generously as this? For all things come from You, and from Your hand we have given You. For we are sojourners before You, and tenants, as all our fathers were; our days on the earth are like a shadow, and there is no hope. O Lord our God, all this abundance that we have provided to build You a house for Your holy name, it is from Your hand, and all is Yours. Since I know, O my God, that You try the heart and delight in uprightness, I, in the integrity of my heart, have willingly offered all these things; so now with joy I have seen Your people, who are present here, make their offerings willingly to You. O Lord, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel, our fathers, preserve this forever in the intentions of the heart of Your people, and direct their heart to You; and give to my son Solomon a perfect heart to keep Your commandments, Your testimonies and Your statutes, and to do them all, and to build the temple, for which I have made provision.” Then David said to all the assembly, “Now bless the Lord your God.”

2 Chronicles 1, 2 Chronicles 2, 2 Chronicles 3, 2 Chronicles 4, Psalm 75

The Lord says in Psalms 75:2, “When I select an appointed time, It is I who judge with equity.” This was the appointed time for Solomon, the immediate realization of God’s prophesy to David, to create a Kingdom on the Earth that would surpass all others. There was nothing like Solomon’s Israel before it, and there has never been a country so wonderful since then, with its ruler exhibiting wisdom like no other man has ever known, except Christ Himself. And we know that David’s prophesy that this son of His would rule forever was not realized in Solomon, but it will be realized in Christ, and His Kingdom will be greater than Solomon’s kingdom. This is the appointed time that we all have hope in; it is the promise that was given to us by Christ in the flesh, and the point of its glory is that God Himself will rule this Kingdom from its center; Yeshua will sit on the throne forever.

Solomon asked for wisdom rather than long life, revenge, riches, or honor, and thus God gave Solomon wisdom plus all of the other things. There is humility in asking God for gifts that benefit His people rather than ourselves, and this ought to be our heart when we pray, also. Our prayers ought to be focused on God’s will, not our own desires. Solomon, though the wisest man to ever live other than Christ Himself, lacked discernment, which is the ability to determine between what is right and almost right, and this is what led to his downfall. His many wives corrupted him in his disobedience; God had commanded kings in Deuteronomy to not multiply wives for themselves. Yet, before He fell to this temptation, He exhibited just how great the Kingdom of Heaven will be, for it will be greater than Solomon.

Yeshua said Himself in Matthew 12:42, “The queen of the south shall rise up in the judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: for she came from the uttermost parts of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and, behold, a greater than Solomon is here." On the Last Day, those Saints who are saved by the promises of God through Messiah Yeshua will judge those who rejected Christ. All flesh shall stand together in one place for this great judgment, and Solomon will sit beside us all and receive the Lord’s judgement. Did he repent at last before his dying breath. According to the Word of God, he did. But Solomon will serve in Jerusalem under the Lord Yeshua, and His time may only be remembered as a prophetic template for the age to come. Solomon knew that no temple in Jerusalem could contain the Lord God who created the Heavens and the Earth and everything in them, which is why Messiah Yeshua now builds the Temple in us as He prepares us all for His return.

As Solomon prepares the implements for the Temple he is building for the Lord, we find a verse that Bible skeptics often point to as “proof” that the Word is fallible, but I bring this up here to give you the tools to rebuke them, for they have not read closely enough. The NASB 2 Chronicles 4:2 reads: “Also he made the cast metal sea, ten cubits from brim to brim, circular in form, and its height was five cubits and its circumference thirty cubits.” Critics point out that pi is 3.14, and this measurement only represents the 3 and not the .14, but they miss verse 5: “It was a handbreadth thick, and its brim was made like the brim of a cup, like a lily blossom; it could hold 3,000 baths.” A handbreadth represents the .14 in the measurement of pi, and so the brim of the bath that was used for washing makes it clear that God, who created the circle, knows His math that He made.

Likewise, in these descriptions, we also see that Solomon put oxen under this bath to represent the 12 tribes of Israel. These statutes of oxen held up the bath; they were its pedestal. The molten calf that Israel constructed in the wilderness should not be forgotten, but the apparent contradiction ought to be addressed. It’s not a contradiction. In the wilderness, the people worshipped the calf and called it their God who saved them from Egypt. This is syncretism and pure idolatry. God hates this form of idol worship. When the calfs were set up to represent the 12 tribes of Israel under the bath, they serve as a memorial to remind Israel that they bear the weight of their own sins. These calves were not worshipped. They were art, but also a memorial. It is not idolatry to create graven images, but it is idolatry to worship graven images. Whenever images are given power or identity, they must be destroyed. Without that element, they can serve as powerful reminders. This is an important distinction and one that should be approached with much care. It matters what is in the heart.

2 Chronicles 5, 2 Chronicles 6, 2 Chronicles 7, 2 Chronicles 8, Psalm 76

The priests sanctified themselves before they went into the Temple, and in a similar way, we ought to enter our time of worship and prayer with “clean hands and a pure heart.” (Psalm 24:4) Through Messiah we have access to the throne room, and we ought to offer prayers of repentance before we go to the altar, which is in Heaven, and even still we must approach with great humility, for God is a consuming fire. When we all approach the altar in this way, our hearts unite in praise and worship as one. “all the Levitical singers, … clothed in fine linen, with cymbals, harps and lyres, … and with them one hundred and twenty priests blowing trumpets in unison when the trumpeters and the singers were to make themselves heard with one voice to praise and to glorify the Lord, and when they lifted up their voice accompanied by trumpets and cymbals and instruments of music, and when they praised the Lord saying, ‘He indeed is good for His lovingkindness is everlasting,’ the house of the Lord was filled with a cloud … for the glory of the lord filled the house of God.” “Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!” (Psalm 133:1).

Solomon’s prayer to the Lord once again recognizes that “heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain [God]; how much less this house” that Solomon built. And yet, the Lord promised to put His name there so long as the people would obey His commandments. Even when they stumble, the Lord would hear their prayers of repentance from that place. However, if they became persistently unfaithful to the point of being scattered throughout the world, the Lord would use the desolation of the Temple as a testimony to His being. The Jewish people would become the testimony of God, if they were righteous, to their own glory, and if they were disobedient, to their destruction, to the glory of God at all times. Through this people would come the Messiah who would save all, Jew and Gentile alike, from sin and point them to the Heavenly Temple that is being built through the growth of the Body of Believers throughout the world.

Even when the people do sin, and even if the temple is destroyed and has an abomination in its place—as there is today a mosque with the words “God has no son” written on its walls—, God will hear our prayers of repentance when we pray toward the place where He has set His name, for to this place He will return to establish His Kingdom forever. Pay attention to the Lord’s response to Solomon, for it applies to all the people who call upon His name, Yeshua: “I have heard your prayer and have chosen this place for Myself as a house of sacrifice. If I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or if I command the locust to devour the land, or if I send pestilence among My people, and My people who are called by My name humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, will forgive their sin and will heal their land. Now My eyes will be open and My ears attentive to the prayer offered in this place.”

2 Chronicles 9, 2 Chronicles 10, 2 Chronicles 11, 2 Chronicles 12, Psalm 77

Solomon achieved the greatest glory that man is capable of achieving, and God gave this to Him because He asked for wisdom. The Queen of Sheba, whom Yeshua Himself said would rise up on the last day and judge the wicked in Matthew 12, had been saved by Solomon and His wisdom of God. On account of what God did for Solomon, the Queen of the South became a believer in God Most High and will be in the Kingdom of God, according to Yeshua Himself. Nevertheless, all was not well in Jerusalem. The gold he received represents the absolute maximum wealth any man has ever received on the Earth, which is why the number 6 is repeated three times. Six is the number of man, and by repeating the number three times we know that man has reached his limit, and by a testimony or two or three a thing is established. Without God, there is no further hope, and wealth even like this, without God, brings complete emptiness.

Solomon, in his wisdom, makes this same conclusion. First, in Ecclesiastes 5:13-16, he writes: “There is a grievous evil that I have seen under the sun: riches were kept by their owner to his hurt, and those riches were lost in a bad venture. And he is father of a son, but he has nothing in his hand. As he came from his mother's womb he shall go again, naked as he came, and shall take nothing for his toil that he may carry away in his hand. This also is a grievous evil: just as he came, so shall he go, and what gain is there to him who toils for the wind?” And yes, as he multiplied horses for himself, he also multiplied wives and riches for himself, which is a violation of the law in Deuteronomy 17.  But like all of us, Solomon was a man, as we’ve established, and all men sin and fall short of the glory of God, which is why Solomon, the wisest man to ever live before Christ, needed to look forward to the salvation of the Messiah in the same way that we look back on our salvation through Yeshua.

We know Solomon reached this point after a life where he wandered much from the Lord on account of his many pagan wives. He caused great evil in the world, even penning books on witchcraft that are still used to this day on account of his pagan wives. His legacy is not without its black marks, but can any of us say that we are without sin? 1 John 1:10 says that anyone who does this is a liar and the truth is not in him. In Ecclesiastes 12:13-14, effectively Solomon’s last words, he concludes: “The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil.” In other words, “keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus,” as we read in Revelation 14:12, for this is the whole duty of man. We know Solomon’s heart ended in the right place on account of this deathbed conclusion, but also because the Lord says this in 2 Samuel 7:15: “But My mercy shall not depart from him [Solomon], as I took it from Saul, whom I removed from before you.” The Lord saved Solomon but condemned Saul. That’s a study in itself.

The Lord also said on account of Solomon’s syncretism, which was caused by his divided loyalty to his many wives, the Lord would divide Israel. It is still divided to this day and will only be united by Yeshua himself when He comes again. God used Rehoboam’s youthful passion and apparent lack of wisdom and discernment to bring this judgment about. Rather than wisely listen to His father’s counselors, the elders of Jerusalem, and win the loyalty of the people, he listened to his ignorant friends and treated them harshly, causing a life-long civil war. But the Lord sent a prophet to tell Rehoboam to hold his peace against Israel, for the Lord said, “this thing is from me.” To his credit, the young king listened to the prophet of God. There are some times in our lives where things happen to us that are not our fault; we fall under God’s judgment for being a part of a sinful nation, for instance, even though we live righteously like Daniel. But our role is not to fight back against God’s judgment, but to embrace it and call the people to repentance, as Daniel did.

Rehoboam was never at peace on account of the land’s sin through his father’s many wives and the families that came from them. Yet, Judah was still the apple of God’s eye, as even the Levites who had lived in Israel and the faithful members of other tribes came to dwell in Judah so they could worship the Lord according to His commandment. Jeroboam of Israel had turned away from the Lord and established his own religion. And yet, Rehoboam did turn his back on the Lord in his fifth year, so the Lord sent Egypt to defeat him in battle. The “sword” is among the four judgments of God. Judah repented upon this attack, with Rehoboam their king, resulting in the Lord’s Word: “They have humbled themselves so I will not destroy them, but I will grant them some measure of deliverance, and My wrath shall not be poured out on Jerusalem by means of Shishak. But they will become his slaves so that they may learn the difference between My service and the service of the kingdoms of the countries.” You see, the Lord chastens those He loves to bring them closer to Him. We must always approach Him with humble and contrite hearts, repenting of all our sin through Christ, for He is our salvation.

2 Chronicles 13, 2 Chronicles, 14, 2 Chronicles 15, 2 Chronicles 16, 2 Chronicles 17, Psalm 78

Abijah shows us the importance of relying on the Lord for our victories. He gave such strong testimony before Israel regarding obedience to the Lord that God routed Israel for Him, even though Israel had a better battle strategy. Asa had the right heart for the Lord until the very end of his reign, and so his story is meant to teach us the importance of enduring in our faith until our last day. Asa trusted God for the defeat of the Ethiopians and God utterly routed them before him on account of his faith. We read: “because you relied on the Lord, He delivered them into your hand. For the eyes of the Lord move to and fro throughout the earth that He may strongly support those whose heart is completely His.” The Lord wants our WHOLE heart, not just a part of it. He wants to be first in our lives, and if we put Him first, He will put us first and bless us greatly.

Also true: “And if you seek Him, He will let you find Him; but if you forsake Him, He will forsake you.” This is the case today also. If you seek Yeshua and put the Kingdom of God first, He will let you find Him; if you forsake Him, He will forsake You. Yeshua is God, and so this is Yeshua interacting with Asa here.

Sadly, Asa turned his back on God and trusted in his own strategy instead of God’s strategy. Rather than wait on God for defending against Israel, Asa turned to an arrangement with pagan Assyria in his 35th year, and so in his 36th year he faced the sword, the judgment of God, until the end of his reign. Worse than this, Asa himself seems to have been lost; he grew diseased in his foot, a judgment of the Lord of pestilence, and rather than seek the Lord in this, he sought the physicians first, an act of idolatry. This is not to say we cannot seek physicians, but only that God ought to come first in our lives. Because Asa sought the physicians before God, God took his life in his apostasy. He died in his 41st year, after six years of apostasy. The lesson: Don’t be like Asa, but listen to the words of Yeshua in Matthew 24: “He who endures until the end will be saved.” Paul says the same thing in 1 Corinth. 9:24: “Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may obtain it.” We must trust in Yeshua until our dying breath, or until He comes to take us home. If we turn away like Asa, we will not make it.

Jehoshaphat followed the example of David, who was a man after God’s own heart, and purified Judah of all the idols. He did more than this and brought back the teachers of the law, so that all the people would know the commandments of God and do them. Because of this, “The Lord was with Jehoshaphat because he … sought the God of his father, followed His commandments, and did not act as Israel did.” While Jehoshaphat’s faith certainly blessed the people of Judah that he was charge over, it also assured his own position in God’s kingdom. Jehoshaphat’s actions are represented by Revelation 14:12: “Here is the patience of the Saints; here are they who keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus.” The Lord will establish us in His kingdom when we do this. Let us endure in this faith and not turn away, so that the Lord may be found by us.

2 Chronicles 18, 2 Chronicles 19, 2 Chronicles 20, Psalm 79

In Jehoshaphat’s alliance with Ahab, it is important to note the prophet’s words here: “Jehu the son of Hanani the seer went out to meet him and said to King Jehoshaphat, ‘Should you help the wicked and love those who hate the Lord and so bring wrath on yourself from the Lord? But there is some good in you, for you have removed the Asheroth from the land and you have set your heart to seek God.’” The point of this saying is that Jehoshaphat’s intent is not to help the wicked in his wickedness, which would anger the Lord, but to lead the wicked to the Lord through a good example, to love the enemy and bless those who curse the Lord. Jehoshaphat was literally doing the work that Yeshua has asked of us when He said in Matthew 5:44-45: “But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.”

Sadly, we have a second example where Jehoshaphat does help the wicked in his wickedness, and this time, the Lord rebukes the king for allying himself with Ahaziah of Israel to make ships for trading in Tarshish. It was a business venture, rather than a call to repentance, and so Jehoshaphat was making himself unequally yoked with an unbeliever here in an effort that displeased the Lord. The Lord destroyed the works of this arrangement and broke up the ships in Ezion-geber so they could not sail to Tarshish, and then 1 Kings 22 says Jehoshaphat did not reengage in this effort. This does not seem to be a moment of apostasy, but error, for the Lord says about Jehoshaphat: “the kingdom of Jehoshaphat was at peace, for his God gave him rest on all sides. He walked in the way of his father Asa and did not depart from it, doing right in the sight of the Lord.” In 1 Kings 22, the Word of the Lord reiterates: “He did not turn aside from them [the good ways of his father Asa], doing what was right in the eyes of the LORD.”

And so the most amazing stories of Jehoshaphat’s reign are how he sent out judges, even into Israel, to do the work of the Lord. Consider: “So Jehoshaphat lived in Jerusalem and went out again among the people from Beersheba to the hill country of Ephraim and brought them back to the Lord, the God of their fathers.” Ephraim is Israel. This was the reason Jehoshaphat had allied with Ahab. This is a work of the Lord. Look at what he said to the judges: “Consider what you are doing … let the fear of the Lord be upon you; be very careful what you do, for the Lord our God will have no part in unrighteousness.” And then when Moab, Ammon and the Meunites came out from Engedi against Judah, Jehoshaphat was afraid and sought the Lord, proclaiming a fast throughout all of Judah. All of the people came together to seek the Lord during this time. He lead as a godly king, saying “Listen to me, O Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem, put your trust in the Lord your God and you will be established. Put your trust in His prophets and succeed.” Because of the people’s faith led by Jehoshaphat, the Lord defeated the enemies in battle.

One more thing is worth noting here. The Lord had decided that it was Ahab’s appointed time to die, and so he had sent deceiving spirits, according to the Word, to the prophets so they would lead Jehoshaphat and Ahab together in battle against Ramoth-gilead. Jehoshaphat rejected Ahab’s prophets, and asked for a prophet of the Lord. This prophet Micaiah, confirmed that the battle would be won, but also prophesied that Ahab would die. For this, Ahab commanded he be imprisoned until Ahab returned victorious. Micaiah’s response is key: “Micaiah said, “If you indeed return safely, the Lord has not spoken by me.” A prophet’s word is only as good as its realization. If a prophet’s word comes to pass, this is how we know that his or her word was from the Lord. Until then, we ought to look alone to the Lord for our deliverance. In the heat of battle, this is what Jehoshaphat did: “Jehoshaphat cried out, and the Lord helped him, and God diverted them from him.” Ahab, on the other hand, died just as Micaiah prophesied, showing him to be a true prophet.

2 Chronicles 21, 2 Chronicles 22, 2 Chronicles 23, 2 Chronicles 24, Psalm 80

Jehoram, his son Ahaziah, Athaliah his mother, and even the rescued boy king Joash suffered from the influence of intermarriage with the children of Israel’s Ahab and Jezebel and all of the apostasy and syncretism that this led to. We are warned in 2 Corinthians 6:14 to not be unequally yoked with unbelievers, and sadly, Judah’s kings had not abided by this Torah teaching from Genesis 24:3. Jehoiada the priest had been able to right the ship for the people and was honored with burial among the kings of Israel because of this, but sadly he was one of the few great men of God along the way to Judah’s ultimate decline into captivity. While he himself might have been saved by his faith and righteousness, two sides of the same coin, most of the people around him were succumbing to the pull of the flesh and the world and falling away from God and His commandments. These were sad times in Judah and they are sad times whenever a culture begins to die because it has turned away from the Lord. As for me and my house, we shall serve the Lord.

2 Chronicles 25, 2 Chronicles 26, 2 Chronicles 27, Psalm 81

The story of Amaziah in 2 Chronicles 25 is sad, but his story is God’s parable for an enemy that takes down many a Christian man and woman in today’s world; namely, halfheartedness. The Word says very clearly, Amaziah “did right in the sight of the Lord, yet not with a whole heart.” Yeshua tells us we must love the Lord our God with “all of our heart,” soul, mind and strength, and those who are “lukewarm,” he will spit out of His mouth, as we read concerning the Church of Laodicea in Revelation 3. In the first instance, Amaziah did what was right. He had assembled 300,000 from Judah and 100,000 from Israel to battle with Edom, but the Lord said to send the Israelites home, even though they had already been paid on account of their evil hearts. “God has power to help and to bring down,” and He desires obedience. But what of the money they were already paid? God’s prophet said rightly, “The Lord has much more to give you than this.” Do we Trust God enough to obey Him even when it doesn’t make sense? God has much more for us than we can imagine if we do. His blessings are abundant and joyful!

While Amaziah obeyed God here, and therefore won the battle with God’s help, he sadly took the pagan gods of Edom and began to worship them after defeating them in battle. Rather than worship God who delivered him, he worshipped the spoils from war: “he brought the gods of the sons of Seir, set them up as his gods, bowed down before them and burned incense to them.” Here’s where the half heartedness of the king comes into full view. The Lord hates idolatry perhaps more than any other sin, and thus “the anger of the Lord burned against Amaziah.” Because he did this, the Lord brought the very same Israeli troops that he told the king to send away to destroy Jerusalem, but Amaziah did not repent. God will use an evil enemy to judge His people who turn their back on Him. Don’t forget this. God made sure Amaziah was killed on account of his persistent, unrepentant sin, and it wasn’t just a physical death. The half-hearted will not make it to the Kingdom of God.

Uzziah’s story is also well known, and also quite sad. This historically true example, a parable of God, shows us how important it is not to covet a calling that God has not given to us. Uzziah was king, but he wanted to be a priest. God said “No,” but Uzziah took it upon himself to assume the role for himself anyway. Because of this, God smote him with leprosy and took his crown away, too, leaving the kingly duties to Uzziah’s son Jotham. It is so important that we do not assume God’s will for us, but rather that we wait on the Lord and listen to the plans that He has for us, for they are good plans to prosper us and give us a future and a hope. It is our duty to wait on the Lord and trust in Him while we wait, however long we wait. When waiting becomes worrisome, that is the time to trust in the Lord even more. He can indeed give us much more than we imagine, but He also has the power to help and bring down. He wants our hearts humble and contrite, depending on Him and worshipping Him for His glory, for He provides us with everything we need. We truly play no part other than making that choice to trust and obey or not.

Besides acting as the crown prince while his leprous father was alive, Jotham served another 16 good years as king, fully following the Lord and benefiting from that good relationship with Him. But Jotham’s reign could have been so much more.”He did not enter the temple of the Lord.” Is this why “the people continued acting corruptly.” Is this why he only lived to 41 years old? He trusted in the Lord and accomplished mighty outward works for the Lord, but his inward life was lacking. He became mighty because he ordered his ways before the Lord His God—in other words, he did the works of the law. However, did he have a true faith, a relationship with God that would help him flourish forever. It doesn’t seem like it. We ought not boast in our works, for we are saved by grace through faith in the Lord Yeshua. Where was this element in Jotham’s life? Because it was absent, the people he led in Judah “continued acting corruptly.” His spiritual leadership was lacking.

2 Chronicles 28, 2 Chronicles 29, 2 Chronicles 30, 2 Chronicles 31, Psalm 82

Following the reckless reign of Ahaz, which was filled with judgment on account of the king’s idolatry, Hezekiah made things right with the Lord and called the whole people to repentance. There is much to be said about his actions, for they reflect a true faith in God, but the writer of Chronicles sums it up nicely here: “Thus Hezekiah did throughout all Judah; and he did what was good, right and true before the Lord his God. Every work which he began in the service of the house of God in law and in commandment, seeking his God, he did with all his heart and prospered.” He followed the law to the extent that he celebrated the Passover the second month to ensure enough priests could be consecrated, just as the law instructed. This is true faithfulness. It matters what is in our heart, and we ought to serve God by giving our all to doing His will. Hezekiah did that.

As Dad said in the paragraph that follows, Hezekiah’s reign is a great allegory for our walk with the Lord, for indeed, we are the Temple of God, and we ought to often repent, humbling ourselves in Christ to achieve a true purity of heart in Him:

“Reading about King Hezekiah, I could not help but to make a connection between cleaning the physical Temple of God and clearing out all the debris and unclean clutter within the mind and heart.  This is only accomplished with personal repentance.   We are designed by God to be the actual Temple.  The unrepentant have closed the doors of the heart to keep God out.  Without accomplishing good works for the Lord, the "lamps of their souls" are dimmed because the self sacrifice which is required to advance God's Will is neglected.  Hezekiah tells the people to "  not be negligent now, for the LORD has chosen you to stand before Him, to serve Him, and that you should minister to Him. Through the act of "clearing out the rubbish,"  of mentally and spiritually separating those things that guide the actions from a mundane to a sacred use, we acknowledge the calling of God which is to love and to serve Him with all our minds, strength and heart. The repentant soul finds unison with The Lord which opens the heart to gladness and fills it with the music of praise.”

2 Chronicles 32, 2 Chronicles 33, 2 Chronicles 34, Psalm 83

The story of Sennacherib King of Assyria and his effort against Judah is told in much more spiritual detail in Isaiah 36 and 37. But even here in 2 Chronicles 32, we can see a great parallel summary. The purpose of this story is to show how God tests His faithful servants, which includes any of us who call on the name of Yeshua, and how we ought to respond, first with prayer, and also with faithful strategic action to any attack of the enemy against our faith. We also see Sennacherib’s use of propaganda to come against the faithful king. Like Satan, he mixes in lies with the truth and promotes a syncretism that mixes the Holy with the profane. It is because Sennacherib likened Yahweh to the false gods of the other nations, and because Hezekiah did not waver in his faith and Isaiah the prophet and all the people stood with him in their resolve, that God came to rescue Judah from this attack. Like we saw in Judges, particularly in the story of Gideon, the Lord will bless His faithful, but then He will test us to make sure we remain faithful, blessing us all the more when we do. This is the story of Hezekiah here. Like all of us, he went through periods of pride and doubt upon receiving these blessings and was thus humbled for this. Because he humbled himself upon correction, Hezekiah continued to walk righteously with the Lord all his life, as we should also do.

Manasseh did such evil in the sight of the Lord so severe that even though he himself repented and was saved, his actions led to the consequence of Judah’s ultimate captivity in Babylon. He turned to witchcraft and child sacrifice, spilling innocent blood in Judah, and he built altars all over the kingdom to demons, even putting some of these altars in the Temple to Yahweh. “Thus Manasseh misled Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem to do more evil than the nations whom the Lord destroyed before the sons of Israel.” There is much prophesy written about this. Despite his repentance, it was too late for his son Amon who had learned from his father’s evil, and Amon himself was lost. This was the case for most of the people of Judah, also. For we read in 2 Kings 24 that Nebuchadnezzar King of Babylon conquered Judah “because of the sins of Manasseh, according to all that he had done, and also because of the innocent blood that he had shed; for he had filled Jerusalem with innocent blood, which the Lord would not pardon.” In America, we ought to focus on repentance for this same sin, lest we fall in the same manner.

That being said, it’s important to note again that Manasseh himself was saved. He repented when he was dragged by hooks by the armies of Assyria into Babylon. There is a prayer called the “prayer of Manasseh” in the Apocrypha, and it contains Messianic prophesy and allusions. His was a true repentance, as you can see here: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Prayer of Manasseh&version=CEB. Note that this means even those who are witches today, those who are caught up in devil worship or those who worship false gods, even those who are among the ruling elite who have brought great evil on the world, those at Pfizer who forced the world to worship demons through their vaccine, all of these men and women can be brought to repentance and saved through the blood of our Messiah Yeshua. This is why we must recognize that no man is actually our enemy, and thus we ought to show the love of Christ toward them, but rather they are victims of our enemy the devil and they need the same deliverance that was offered to us. Pray for repentance.

The story of Josiah’s great repentance is a lesson for us that we should heed. The sin was so great in the land on account of what Manasseh did before he repented that even the full repentance of Josiah and his leadership to purify the land was not enough to stop the Lord’s wrath on the people. It was enough to delay the judgment of God until after his reign, but the damage was done. The people themselves had been corrupted to a point where the culture was evil. Yes, Josiah could lead during his reign in righteousness, and the Lord recognized his righteousness, his faith and held off His judgment. Yes, his righteousness was beautiful and admirable, and we particularly now should follow in his footsteps. America’s culture is in the same place as Judah’s culture during the reign of Josiah. I would love to have a leader like Josiah, but I know it won’t be enough. We must be like Daniel, like Noah, and like Job to be saved out of a wicked time like this. We must do our part to elect a Josiah as president, governor and congressmen and legislators, but unless the culture changes and completely repents, judgment is still coming. Pray for repentance.  

2 Chronicles 35, 2 Chronicles 36, Psalm 84

As we read in Psalm 84, I pray in thanksgiving and hopeful expectation through faith and obedience in the Lord Yeshua concerning the Kingdom that is to come: “For a day in Your courts is better than a thousand outside. I would rather stand at the threshold of the house of my God Than dwell in the tents of wickedness. For the Lord God is a sun and shield; The Lord gives grace and glory; No good thing does He withhold from those who walk uprightly. O Lord of hosts, How blessed is the man who trusts in You!” This Word is also a prophesy about the Last Day, when we shall feast at the Marriage Supper of the Lamb, the culmination of all the Sabbaths from the beginning until that day, and the fourth cup of the Passover Seder, while the wicked are destroyed here in this place in a time that appears to be like 1,000 years. We return with Christ at the end of the Day to dwell with Him forever on the Earth. We must trust in the Lord Yeshua, and obey the commandments of God.

Josiah is yet another very sad story in the final annals of the Kings of Judah. Though he devoted everything to obeying Torah, he lacked faith in the Lord. He obeyed the letter but not the spirit of the law, and the opposite is necessary.

Here’s his obedience: “There had not been celebrated a Passover like it in Israel since the days of Samuel the prophet; nor had any of the kings of Israel celebrated such a Passover as Josiah did with the priests, the Levites, all Judah and Israel who were present, and the inhabitants of Jerusalem.” This is all ceremony without the faith that builds a relationship with God. God wants our heart, not blind obedience.

Here’s His lack of faith: When Neco of Egypt came up to do battle, he simply intended to pass through the land, and rightfully said that his mission was from Yahweh, the One True God who created the Heavens and the Earth and everything in them. Because of the Jews, Neco was a follower of the One True God and was in the process of doing His will. But Josiah behaved like the peoples before Israel had even entered the land and prohibited Neco’s passage, violating the will of God; “nor did he listen to the words of Neco from the mouth of God,” we read. For this, he was killed in a battle God did not instruct him to fight.

We can’t just obey God’s law and expect salvation, we need to Trust in His Word, first. Our obedience is the result of our salvation, not the cause of it. As we know from John 1, the Word of God became flesh and dwelt among us. Josiah failed to trust in the Word of God, and this was his undoing.

Joahaz, Eliakim, and Zedekiah grew worse and worse, as Jeremiah the prophet warned Judah over and over again about their coming demise and need to repent. “all the officials of the priests and the people were very unfaithful following all the abominations of the nations; and they defiled the house of the Lord which He had sanctified in Jerusalem.” The whole culture was corrupt; they had all turned their backs on God, with the exceptions of the few obedient and faithful prophets. God is merciful, and His lovingkindness endures forever. He would send His Son to save His people, the ones who repented and put their faith in Him, walking in all His ways. But first, God would fulfill His promise to restore His people to Jerusalem 70 years following the destruction of Nebuchadnezzar. God would do many things for the Gentiles during this time, prophesising for the Messianic age to come.