In a moment, we’ll have our reading from 1 Kings chapter 2.
I thought before we do, I’d give you a bit of the background to it. Various characters from King David’s past pop up in the reading. We’ll understand the story a lot better if we’re up to speed on who these people are, and how they featured in David’s life before this point.
Perhaps if you turn to 1 Kings 2, page 336, that would help.
We meet 3 main people here.
Joab
First, in verse 5, you’ll see we have Joab son of Zeruiah. Zeruiah had 3 sons – Joab, Asahel and Abishai. Joab was in charge of the army for most of David’s reign. He was commander in chief of his armed forces.
The king before David was Saul. David didn’t exactly have a professional handover from Saul. Saul was killed in battle – we had that story a few weeks ago. David had been living in exile in a neighbouring country. When Saul died, David came back, and was made king only over his own tribe of Judah.
One of Saul’s sons survived that fateful battle. His name was Ish-Bosheth. The commander of Saul’s army, a man called Abner, thought that Ish-Bosheth should be the next king of Israel, and he was made king over the other tribes.
One day there was a tragic skirmish between David’s men and Saul’s men. Saul’s military commander, Abner, killed one of Joab’s brothers, Asahel. Joab never forgot.
Over time, Abner grew tired of having the kingdom split in two. He did a deal with David. He’d persuade the other 11 tribes to have David as their king too. This period of war would end; there’d be a united kingdom, and David would be king.
But Joab couldn’t believe David had let Abner go so easily. So he went after Abner, and he killed him
Later, Joab did it again. Joab had proved too hot-headed to be in charge of the army, so David had a cabinet reshuffle. Joab lost his job over the army, and it went to another man called Amasa instead. Joab killed Amasa out of pure jealousy.
That’s what you need to know about Joab, son of Zeruiah.
Barzillai and Shimei
The other two characters we meet are Barzillai of Gilead in verse 7, and Shimei son of Gera in verse 8.
These both feature in another turbulent period of David’s reign. For a short while, his son Absalom tried to steal the throne. Het set himself up in Jerusalem as the king, lived in the palace, and David had to flee the city by night.
As he left the city, Shimei followed him, throwing stones at the sad procession of refugees, and shouting curses at David. David deserved this, he said.
Finally, the exhausted evacuees reached a place called Mahanaim. There Barzillai came out to meet them. He’d brought a mobile campsite. Tents. Beds. All kinds of food and drink to refresh these weary folk.
Eventually, Absalom is defeated, and David is able to return to his capital city.
First to welcome him back from the other tribes is Shimei. He’s full of apologies for his abuse. He asks David’s forgiveness. David swears an oath that he would not die.
And then David catches up with Barzillai. He’d love to reward him for his kindness. Perhaps he’d like to live in the royal palace and enjoy the royal food. But Barzillai won’t have it. He’s too old to enjoy such privilege. He’d rather spend his final days on his family land.
To be continued
Well there’s a bit of background to some of the characters we’ll meet in the reading.
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Introduction
Can we be sure that the happy ending will really work? This world is such a mess. Our lives are so full of problems. Will God really bring everything to a good conclusion? And will it last? Sometimes people wonder: If God made the world good in the first place, but then Adam and Eve wrecked it, what’s to stop us making a hash of it again?
1 Kings chapter 2 will help us with this.
This is the abdication story at the end of David’s reign.
We’ve had it in the news just this week. King Juan Carlos of Spain has decided he wants to abdicate. He’ll hand over the throne to his son, Prince Felipe.
Wouldn’t you love to be a fly on the wall as the two of them talk? What are the issues that Felipe will need to address when he becomes king? What advice would King Juan have for his son? Wait for the reigning king to die, you don’t get those conversations. And boy would it be interesting to earwig on them.
Well, with David, we do get the chance, because our reading records just this conversation between David and Solomon.
But there’s more going on here than David doing a handover. God is at work. He wants Solomon’s kingdom to be secure. Established. Prosperous. He doesn’t want things to fall apart and the people to suffer. And through this handover, God is establishing Solomon’s kingdom.
Let me show you that this is what the chapter is about. Verse 12: So Solomon sat on the throne of his father David, and his rule was firmly established. But who made it secure? Verse 24, Solomon says: And now, as surely as the Lord lives – he who has established me securely on the throne of my father David. Solomon recognises; it’s God who establishes his reign. And then Solomon carries out David’s advice. And so the chapter concludes, verse 45: King Solomon will be blessed, and David’s throne will remain secure [same word] before the Lord for ever. And then the last bit of verse 46: The kingdom was now established in Solomon’s hands.
That’s what 1 Kings chapter 2 is about. How does God make sure that the kingdom is established and secure for Solomon?
Solomon was David’s son. God had promised David that he’d always have a descendant on the throne. Our reading mentioned that promise. But as we’ve said several times, the promise was a big pair of shoes, and Solomon did not have big enough feet to wear them. There would need to come another king, greater even than Solomon.
The New Testament opens with Jesus’ family tree. Matthew wants to make sure we don’t miss the fact that Jesus was descended from David. Jesus was often called “Son of David” by the crowds. Even the term Messiah or Christ means “anointed one”, and picks up on the fact that the Old Testament kings were anointed with oil at their coronation. And at least once, Jesus told the people that one greater than Solomon was here, referring to himself.
There’s a hymn we sing to Jesus sometimes, although not often at this service: Hail to the Lord’s anointed, great David’s greater son. Jesus deliberately patterned himself on Solomon.
If 1 Kings 2 is the story of how God established and secured Solomon’s kingdom, it’s even more the story of how God establishes and secures the kingdom of the second Solomon, king Jesus.
And that’s what we care about. Jesus is good. Jesus is loving. When Jesus comes back, the world will be a perfect, unspoilt place for everyone who follows him.
Will his kingdom be secure? How will God establish it? Will peace on earth last? Or will things all fall apart?
1 Kings 2 tells us how God establishes the kingdom of Solomon, and how he establishes the kingdom of Jesus.
And according to this chapter, there are 4 ingredients in having an established kingdom. We need a king with 4 qualities, and happily, in Jesus, that’s just what we’ve got.
Faithful to God
First, we need a king who will be faithful to God.
Verse 2: I am about to go the way of all the earth. So be strong, act like a man, and observe what the Lord your God requires: walk in obedience to him, and keep his decrees and commands, his laws and regulations, as written in the Law of Moses. Do this so that you may prosper in all you do and wherever you go and that the Lord may keep his promise to me: ‘If your descendants watch how they live, and if they walk faithfully before me with all their heart and soul, you will never fail to have a successor on the throne of Israel.’
We’d never write the script this way, would we? We’d want a king who was strategic, politically sharp, who wouldn’t let other get one over on him. God really only wants one thing – he must be faithful to God.
That’s because the king doesn’t make the rules up. He’s a king under God’s authority. His job is to govern according to what God says. He’ll only when he respects that God has put him where he is. The minute he starts trying to make things up himself, it will all go very wrong.
As it did for Solomon. As you read the rest of Solomon’s reign this week, those of you on our Bible tour, you’ll see the cracks start to appear. By the end of his reign, things were beginning to fall apart altogether.
Not so the Lord Jesus. He perfectly feared God. He always walked in God’s ways. He lived exactly as his Father wanted. “Not my will, but yours be done” was not just his prayer at Gethsemane, it was the refrain of his life.
We need a king who will be faithful to God.
Just with wrongdoers
Second, we need a king who will be just with wrongdoers. Just with wrongdoers.
Verse 5: Now you yourself know what Joab son of Zeruiah did to me – what he did to the two commanders of Israel’s armies, Abner son of Ner and Amasa son of Jether. He killed them, shedding their blood in peacetime as if in battle, and with that blood he stained the belt around his waist and the sandals on his feet. Deal with him according to your wisdom, but do not let his grey head go down to the grave in peace.
The Old Testament law distinguished between war and peace. You could kill a combatant in a military conflict, but that doesn’t make it OK to kill a civilian in peacetime. That’s murder, it’s wrong, and it carried the death penalty.
Joab crossed that line. He didn’t kill Abner and Amasa in battle; he killed them when there was no war on. It was murder.
And David had done nothing about it. He should have been tried and sentenced for it. Perhaps David was lazy. Perhaps Joab was too convenient an ally. Either way, as he comes to hand the kingdom over to Solomon, it’s time to right those wrongs. David inherited some injustices from Saul’s time that haunted him until he put them right. He wasn’t going to let the same thing happen to Solomon.
We need a king who will be just with wrongdoers, punishing them when necessary.
It might make us uncomfortable, but Jesus repeatedly taught that he’s just this sort of king. One day he will return, and when he does there will be a judgement. Every human being will stand before him, and we’ll each give an account of our lives. Every wrong deed will be punished.
Amazingly, Jesus is not only the king who punishes justly, he’s also the one who was punished. He died on the cross to be punished in the place of anyone who will trust him. We’d have no hope at all if it wasn’t for that.
But if God’s kingdom is to be secure and established, we must have a king who will be just with wrongdoers. A king like Jesus.
Remove enemies
Then third, we need a king who will remove his enemies. A king who will remove enemies.
This is Shimei. Verse 8. And remember, you have with you Shimei son of Gera, the Benjaminite from Bahurim, who called down bitter curses on me the day I went to Mahanaim. When he came down to meet me at the Jordan, I swore to him by the Lord, ‘I will not put you to death by the sword.’ But now, do not consider him innocent. You are a man of wisdom; you will know what to do to him. Bring his grey head down to the grave in blood.
Cursing a main leader of the people was also a capital crime in Old Testament law. Shimei was not innocent. David had spared him, but he should have died for his insolence.
But why now? Why does David ask Solomon to set things straight after so many years. Because again God needed to establish Solomon’s kingdom. Shimei’s problem was that he wasn’t really on David and Solomon’s side. He’d chosen to set himself against David, and he could do the same to Solomon. And as long as there were people in the kingdom who weren’t really onside, it could all fall apart from within.
The way Solomon handled him was a stroke of genius. Just what you’d expect from a wise king like him. He didn’t kill him. He told him that his pardon would stand provided he never left the city where he could keep an eye on him. That way, of course, he couldn’t go back to his home town to try and rally an opposition.
Shimei was too stupid or careless to take the olive branch. He did fine until two of his slaves ran off to nearby Gath. He went to find them. And when he got back, he got his death sentence. His crime was not running to Gath. His crime was his disloyalty, his disrespect, his cussing attitude towards David, for which death was the correct penalty.
Solomon offered him the chance to be a loyal subject. Then he could have lived. But instead he carried on as before, looking dangerously like someone who could start a rebellion in a moment. And Solomon couldn’t leave enemies like this to weaken his kingdom.
We need a king who will remove his enemies.
Again, we need a king like Jesus. Here’s what Jesus says will happen at the end of the age, when he returns. Matthew 13, verses 40 to 43: As the weeds are pulled up and burned in the fire, so will it be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil,. They will throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their father.
This was not something Jesus said only once. He said it many times. His return will be a day of weeding out. Everyone who is not on his side will be banished. It’s the only way his kingdom can be secured and established for those who are in it.
Jesus hasn’t returned yet. He’s putting off the day when he banishes his enemies for a long, long time. There’s still time to change sides, to make sure one of his loyal subjects when that day does come.
But ultimately, we need a king who will remove his enemies.
Reward loyalty
That thought of being one of his loyal subjects brings us to the fourth and final thing we need. We need a king who will reward loyalty. Reward loyalty.
It’s time to look at Barzillai. Verse 7: But show kindness to the sons of Barzillai of Gilead and let them be among those who eat at your table. They stood by me when I fled from your brother Absalom.
Barzillai himself, you’ll remember, was too old. He turned down David’s hospitality. But David wants to make sure that his son, Solomon, rewards Barzillai’s sons for their father’s loyalty.
This is the ancient equivalent of being given a pension. They’d get somewhere to live in the royal city of Jerusalem. They’d get a daily portion of food assigned for them. They’d even get to eat with the king, perhaps on a rota. And they’d keep these benefits for life.
Because here’s the final thing we need. We don’t just need a king who deals with the problems – punishing wrong, and removing enemies. We need a king who rewards loyalty. Who looks after those who choose to go through life on his side. Who choose to stand up for their king, even if it’s at great personal cost.
Solomon was such a king. It paid to be one of his loyal subjects.
And Jesus is such a king as well. Here’s Jesus, in Matthew chapter 10, verse 32: Whoever acknowledge me before others, I will acknowledge before my Father in heaven.
Put yourself on Jesus’ side in life, he’s a king who will make sure you won’t regret it.
Conclusion
If you want a stable kingdom. If you want things to end well. If the world is to end happily ever after. We need the right kind of king.
What a good thing we have the right kind of king.
We have a king who is faithful to God in every respect.
We have a king who is just, and who will punish wrongdoers.
We have a king who will remove and banish his enemies.
Which means the only safe place in life is to be in his kingdom. To set our lives to follow Jesus.
Which means it’s a good thing that we also have a king who will reward loyalty.