God’s Plan and Our Place in It: 2 Samuel—1 Chronicles
April 12, 2019
In our 2019 Bible Reading Plan, we have traced the history of God’s plan to save a sinful, broken world. Specifically, we’ve been following God’s promise to raise up a Redeemer who would destroy evil, save His people from sin, and perfectly restore them to God’s presence.
As generations passed, the revealed identity of this Deliverer came into clearer focus. He would be the descendent of Eve who would crush the Devil (Genesis 3:15), the offspring of Abraham who would bless all nations (Genesis 12:7), and the child of Judah who would reign as a Ruler (Genesis 49:10). Earlier this month, we watched the Lord promise King David that the coming Savior would be one of his own descendants, and this Son of David would rule forever over the Kingdom of God (2 Samuel 7:12-13, 16).
Only by Grace
Against the backdrop of this promise, the book of 2 Samuel paints the history of David’s reign in Jerusalem. His rise to the throne was hard fought and tumultuous, full of bloodshed and infighting. After Saul’s death, the old king’s friends did all they could to thwart David’s rise to the throne, even though the prophet Samuel had announced God selected David to be king (1 Samuel 16:13). As he depended on the Lord, David was finally delivered from his enemies, and the people of Israel united behind him (2 Samuel 5:1-5).
As a golden age of blessing and prosperity dawned for the nation, David sought to celebrate the Lord’s faithfulness and further unite the kingdom by building a temple for God in the capital city of Jerusalem. However, the Lord did not want His temple to be built by the hands of a warrior like David (1 Chronicles 22:8). Instead of David building a house for God, the Lord was going to build a “house” for him: an enduring dynasty that would lead to the great Deliverer’s everlasting reign. After David’s death, one of his sons would build the temple during a time of peace.
At first, David lived up to his old nickname as a “man after God’s own heart” (1 Samuel 13:14). With integrity and strength, he defended Israel from the surrounding kingdoms that hated God and raged against His people. However, like Saul before him, David began to grow comfortable and careless as he gained more victories. His trust drifted from God toward the might of his armies. “In the spring, at the times when kings go to war,” the Bible says tellingly, “David remained at Jerusalem.” (2 Samuel 11:1) Alone with no accountability, the king committed his greatest moral failures: adultery with Bathsheba and the coverup murder of her husband, Uriah (11:2-5, 14-15).
How could King David fall so far? Where could Israel place its trust if even the nation’s greatest ruler was capable of such unspeakable evil? Only in the God who keeps His promise to redeem broken sinners by His unfailing grace.
After God sent His prophet Nathan to confront David, the king’s heart did break over his sin (2 Samuel 12:13). He turned back to the Lord with tears of repentance. Even as God forgave David, the rest of David’s life bore the consequences as his own children repeated many of his sins. When his life drew to a close, David’s hope in the future of the kingdom rested not in his uprightness or that of his children, but in God’s gracious promise to preserve David’s line until the great Redeemer would come (23:5).
Is This the One?
By the time we fast forward to today’s chapters (April 12), big changes have taken place in the kingdom of Israel. Solomon has taken the throne after his father David. The Lord has blessed him with wisdom and wealth beyond measure (1 Kings 3:10-14), and the young king has dedicated himself to constructing God’s temple in Jerusalem (6:1). Today, as we see the people gather at the finished temple of the Lord, we experience something we haven’t seen since the days of Moses in the wilderness: God manifests His presence by filling the temple with His visible glory (8:10-11).
The Lord’s plan of redemption was unfolding before their eyes. God dwelt among His people again, a kingdom was established in the land He had given them, wealth and peace abounded, and David’s son was on the throne. Could Solomon be the great Deliverer promised from the beginning of history?
If only he were. Instead, Solomon would take a greater fall than his father before him.
Naturally, the wealth accumulated by King Solomon attracted the attention of the kingdoms around him. Before long, envoys came to visit him from all over the Mediterranean world (1 Kings 10:23-25). The Lord had given Solomon the perfect platform to share God’s grace and love with the nations. But instead, all this attention drew Solomon’s heart astray. He increased his wealth by making political alliances with foreign kings, which meant marrying many wives who brought many idols with them (11:4). To keep his wives happy, Solomon introduced idolatry into Israel’s national worship. This, of course, was “evil in the eyes of the LORD” (11:6).
The king’s downward spiral of sin is exactly what God had warned His people about centuries before in the wilderness (Exodus 34:16). As Solomon’s heart turned away from God, the Lord brought judgment on the nation by turning Solomon’s allies and officials against him. Israel’s golden age came to a crashing end. Centuries of division would follow.
Identity Crisis
Just as 1 and 2 Samuel were originally one book, divided into two scrolls that record the rise of Israel’s monarchy, 1 and 2 Kings form one book that records the history of that monarchy as it unfolded. Or more accurately, it’s the history of two monarchies. Shortly after Solomon’s death, civil war broke out and the kingdom was divided (1 Kings 12:16-17). David’s descendants continued to reign from Jerusalem in the southern kingdom of Judah, while several families fought over the throne in Shechem (then later in Samaria) in the northern kingdom of Israel.
When a man named Jeroboam became the first king in the northern kingdom, he broke God’s commandments by building shrines across Israel, all in an effort to keep the Israelites from making pilgrimages back down to Jerusalem (1 Kings 12:27-25). From the very beginning, these shrines were places of idolatry that led the people even further from God. In 1 and 2 Kings, every last ruler of the northern kingdom is described as evil in God’s sight, their sins of idolatry and wickedness often being related to “the sins of Jeroboam” (15:30).
Even with the temple and God’s appointed priesthood in Jerusalem, the southern kingdom of Judah was hardly more faithful, and most of the kings in Judah also receive a bad report in 1 and 2 Kings. The few rulers who get a positive evaluation are still criticized for being lax on the rampant idolatry in the land, and only two kings—Hezekiah (2 Kings 18:1-3) and Josiah (22:1-2)—are commended by God because of their desperate efforts to restore the south to the true worship of God.
God’s people faced an identity crisis. The kings entrusted by God to lead His people in His ways and His worship were more concerned with worshiping themselves. For them, embracing the idols of the nations was just one more way to acquire the comfort, control, and prestige they lusted after. Because the Israelites forgot their place in God’s story as the people He saved from slavery to share His promise of salvation with the world, God was going to remove them from the land He had given them. He would send the Israelites into exile for abandoning their true identity, just as He had warned them before they ever set foot in the Promised Land (Deuteronomy 28:36-44).
In 722 BC, the northern tribes of Israel were conquered by the Assyrian Empire (2 Kings 17:6). More than a century later, in 586 BC the southern tribes of Judah were taken into exile by the Babylonians (25:1-7). The northern kingdom would never be restored. But because of His promise to David, God announced He would restore the people of Judah from captivity after 70 years in Babylon (Jeremiah 25:11-12). Time and time again, His people had proved unfaithful. Even still, the Lord remained steadfast in His commitment to preserve David’s family so the promised Deliverer would come. Because God’s identity never changes, His promises never fail.
Where Do We Go from Here?
When we begin 1 Chronicles at the end of this month, we’ll find ourselves all the way back at the beginning of the Bible’s story in the Garden of Eden. While 1 and 2 Kings traced the history of Israel as it unfolded, 1 and 2 Chronicles were written after the exile in Babylon and look back on God’s unfolding promise in the history of His people.
First Chronicles begins with chapter after chapter of names and genealogies. You might be tempted to skip over these hard-to-pronounce lists—but don’t! These are in God’s Book for a reason. Not only is this a record of God’s children through the ages, but these genealogies are also carefully tracing the lineage of Adam’s children, Abraham’s children, Judah’s children, and David’s children as the ancient Israelites desperately awaited God’s Savior, their Messiah, the King who would bring an end to sin and evil once and for all.
It’s as though, in these lengthy lists of individual names, God is saying, “No, this isn’t the Promised One, this isn’t My Messiah, but I will preserve My people and point them to Him as I drive all of history toward His arrival. He’s coming! Only trust Me and wait.” When we finally read the genealogies of Jesus in the books of Matthew and Luke, we realize the wait is finally over. The King is here, and He will redeem, restore, and reign over Heaven and earth.
Jesus Is the One
Like the historical books of the Bible, we need to look back if we want to look ahead rightly. Only when we understand our own story within the history of God’s greater story can we understand who we are, why we’re here, and what we’re living for.
David, Solomon, and the kings of Israel and Judah share one thing in common: many of their problems were rooted in the temptation to take God’s place at the center of their lives. We face the same identity crisis today. In our sin, we like to think we’re “the one”—the main character and the meaning of our story. We want to be in control; we want to achieve by our own merit; we want all the recognition for ourselves. The world tells us this is self-empowerment, but the Bible reveals this is self-destruction. Jesus is “the One,” and without Him our story means nothing.
We were made for God’s glory, created to play a part in His redeeming story, chosen to be changed by the grace of Jesus into Jesus’ own likeness. The good news of God’s Son defines who we are, shapes how we treat others, and helps us see our circumstances through the lens of our Christ-centered mission. Even when we fail, we can trust God, knowing He will accomplish every promise He made for us in Christ. Knowing God’s plan will never fail, we can rest in the freedom that brings and pursue Him boldly in faith.
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