The Message of 1–2 Kings

First, Sin Is Predictable, Sad, and Stupid

In a way, it is crazy. From page 2 of the Bible the message is clear: sin looks great, but it only delivers pain and death and separation. It delivers hell. We really should have gotten that by now. And yet, every time it pops up in front of us, we say, “Oh, that looks nice!” Even sheep get the message that, though the fence looks like the gateway to freedom, there is an electric current running through it. But we keep charging into the fence and, every time, acting surprised! So let us get it into our heads: sin—and hell—are utterly predictable and ultimately dissatisfying. There is always something heartbreakingly sad about sin. Persistent, lifelong sin carries with it the reward of exclusion from God’s unimaginably generous reign and the prospect instead of the terrifying experience of his wrath. Sin is dumb. That is the history of Israel and Judah in three words. And that is a truth we must take hold of over and over again, as the gospel continually reshapes our mind and even our affections, as the gospel exposes the empty stupidity of sin and drives that message home to us, as we see Jesus Christ dying on a cross, bearing the weight of our predictable, heart-breaking, immeasurably stupid sin so that we can be free of it and enjoy life with him forever. Thus we must not rush into sin today, or tomorrow, because that would be unbelievably, cosmically stupid.

Second, God’s Word Has Relentless Power

This is the endless refrain of Kings. I hope and pray that, wherever we became Christians, whoever discipled us, whichever churches we are a part of, this has been burned into our souls. I tell my students that my prayer for them is that for the rest of their lives they will be constitutionally incapable of having any other kind of ministry than a Word-shaped, Word-centered, Word-driven ministry: a ministry in which they teach people Christ through his Word. I would go so far as to say that if we get this one simple fact, this core idea in 1–2 Kings, then our time will not be wasted. This is how God works. He works through the Word by his Spirit. As Paul famously wrote to Timothy,

All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. (2 Tim. 3:16–4:2)

Why? Because this is how God changes people; this is how God builds his church, as he works relentlessly through his Word.

Finally, God’s King Is the Only Hope

Again and again the book of Kings says, “The Messiah cannot be him, not him, definitely not him—or her!” Again and again we have been launched in our minds toward the one king who is utterly consistent, and godly, and courageous, and selfless: King Jesus, who has come and who is our hope, the one to whom we have been joined forever by faith, the one in whom we have been declared beautifully and perfectly innocent, the one whose likeness is even now being drawn on every part of our lives. The whole of the Bible directs our eyes to Jesus Christ—but why? Because in Jesus Christ we see God’s beauty in the flesh; in Jesus Christ we see God’s love and power and tenderness living and breathing and speaking; in Jesus Christ we see the God of salvation and judgment; and in Jesus Christ we see ourselves as we will one day be.

B. B. Warfield writes about this movingly:

Oh, toil-worn pilgrim, weary with your burden, would you know the glory in store for you? Look at Jesus: you shall be like Him. Are you tempted to despair? Do you shrink from an endless future in which you shall remain for ever yourself? Look at Jesus: not as you are, but like what He is, you are to be. If we can but attain to such a hope, heaven bursts at once upon our souls. To be like Jesus! Is this not a glory, in the presence of which all other glories fade away by reason of the glory that is surpassing? When we look at Jesus, we may not—we cannot afford to—forget that we are looking at that which, by the grace of God, we may and shall become.

. . . The one perfect man, the one perfect model of life, stands before us in Christ Jesus. And the voice comes to us—not the voice of an angel only, but God’s own voice of power—proclaiming, Ye shall be like Him!

Could there be another proclamation of equal encouragement, of equal strengthening? Up, brethren, let us take Him, the perfect One, for our model; let us nurse our longing to be like Him; and let us go forth to the work of life buoyant with the joy of this greatest of hopes, this most precious of assurances—We shall be like Him; what He is, that shall we also become! In the strength of this great hope let us live our life out here below, and in its joyful assurance let us, when our time comes to go, enter eagerly into our glory.¹

Even in exile, when it appears that the throne is occupied by someone else, God’s King is our life and strength and hope. So, as we read the book of Kings, let us fix our eyes on Jesus Christ, for there is neither relief, nor security, nor strength, nor joy, nor peace anywhere else.