1 Kings 15-16 part 10
Last week we read about what happened to Jeroboam and
Rehoboam during their reigns tonight we will be examining several kings that
come after Jeroboam who ruled of over the northern kingdom and the next king
who came after Rehoboam who ruled over southern kingdom
1 Kings 15:1 In the
eighteenth year of King Jeroboam the son of Nebat, Abijam became king over
Please remember the Abijam was Rhoboam’s son and all that 1
Kings reveals to us is that his rein only lasted 3 years and that he followed
in dad’s footsteps. We also learn that Abijam continued to fight with Jeroboam
as his father did. Now the only reason that God continued to allow
2 Chronicles 13:1 In the
eighteenth year of King Jeroboam, Abijah became king over
Here we learn about one of the confrontations between
2 Chronicles 13:6
"Yet Jeroboam the son of Nebat, the servant of Solomon the son of David,
rose up and rebelled against his lord. 7
"Then worthless rogues gathered to him, and strengthened themselves
against Rehoboam the son of Solomon, when Rehoboam was young and inexperienced
and could not withstand them.
Jeroboam had no intentions of surrendering against this young inexperienced man but now let read what else Abijah says in,
2 Chronicles 13:8
"And now you think to withstand the kingdom of the LORD, which is in the
hand of the sons of David; and you are a great multitude, and with you
are the gold calves which Jeroboam made for you as gods. 9 "Have you not cast out the
priests of the LORD, the sons of Aaron, and the Levites, and made for
yourselves priests, like the peoples of other lands, so that whoever
comes to consecrate himself with a young bull and seven rams may be a priest of
things that are not gods? 10
"But as for us, the LORD is our God, and we have not forsaken Him;
and the priests who minister to the LORD are the sons of Aaron, and the
Levites attend to their duties.
11 "And they burn to the LORD every morning and every
evening burnt sacrifices and sweet incense; they also set the
showbread in order on the pure gold table, and the lampstand of
gold with its lamps to burn every evening; for we keep the command of the LORD
our God, but you have forsaken Him. 12
"Now look, God Himself is with us as our head, and His priests with
sounding trumpets to sound the alarm against you. O children of Israel, do not
fight against the LORD God of your fathers, for you shall not prosper!"
He was doing his best to try and convince them that the
2 Chronicles 13:13 But
Jeroboam caused an ambush to go around behind them; so they were in front of
Judah, and the ambush was behind them.
14 And when
One of the themes that you are going to see throughout these different reigns is when a king would rely upon God instead of themselves or someone else God will help them defeat their enemy. This event must have been one of the few times that Abijah relied upon God or did things the way that God had commanded because our account in 1 Kings tells us that he walked in the ways of his father Rhoboam. So while he has some good qualities these were over shadowed by sin in his life. This also shows us today that we should always rely upon God first to help us with our problems if we do we can feel confident that God will put a plan in place through his providence that will help up be victorious over our problem.
2 Chronicles 13: 19
And Abijah pursued Jeroboam and took cities from him:
So as you can see 2 Chronicles gives us much more detail about this king. We learn that in his lifetime he had married 14 wives and had a total of 38 kids. One of his sons names Asa became the next king in his place and we will talk more about him next week, but we do learn that the first 10 years of his reign are peaceful. For the rest of our study tonight we will now be looking at the northern kingdom and several of its kings. The first king we will examine is Nadab who was Jeroboam’s son.
1
Kings 15:25 Now Nadab the son of Jeroboam became king over
We don’t learn a great deal about Nadab other than his reign
was very short just 2 years and that he followed in his farther footsteps. The
only significant event that happens is that he lead a siege against the
Philistines at Gibbethon located here on the map. This is also where loses his
life to a fellow Jew named Baasha (bay-uh-shah) along with all his household
which fulfilled one of the prophecies that Ahijah said would happen in 1 Kings
14:14 which once again shows that God keeps his promises. Now Baasha (bay-uh-shah) is the new king of
1 Kings 15:32 And
there was war between Asa (ay-sah) and Baasha (bay-uh-shah) king of
Again I want to say that we will be looking at Asa (ay-sah) next week. But one thing I want you to know is that during Asa (ay-sah) long reign of 41 years there were 8 kings that rose and fell in the northern kingdom this is why you keep seeing for instance that Baasha (bay-uh-shah) became king during the third year of Asa(ay-sah) reign. Baasha reigned for 24 years and did so from Tirzah as seen here on the map and once again we have another bad king that did not follow God and this will be the pattern for every king of the northern kingdom because not one of them was good.
We also learn from 2 Chron. 16:1 that Baasha (bay-uh-shah) went down to Ramah and build this city up
to prevent the children of
1 Kings 16:1 Then the
word of the LORD came to Jehu the son of Hanani, (hah-nah-nigh)
against Baasha, (bay-uh-shah) saying:
2 "Inasmuch as I lifted you out of the dust and made you
ruler over My people Israel, and you have walked in the way of Jeroboam, and
have made My people Israel sin, to provoke Me to anger with their sins, 3 "surely I will take away
the posterity of Baasha (bay-uh-shah) and
the posterity of his house, and I will make your house like the house of
Jeroboam the son of Nebat. 4
"The dogs shall eat whoever belongs to Baasha and dies in the city, and
the birds of the air shall eat whoever dies in the fields." 5 Now the rest of the acts of
Baasha, (bay-uh-shah) what he did,
and his might, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the
kings of
Once again we are not
given any great details here but we can see that Baasha is going to suffer the
same fate at Jeroboams household did because of his evil ways and because he
killed Jeroboam’s household. As we read Baasha’s son Elah reins for 2 years but
had bit of drinking problem and while he was all liquored up his servant Zimri
kills him and Baasha’s entire household as foretold by Jehu and Zimri becomes
the new king. Well, at least for 7 days.
1 Kings 16:15 In the
twenty-seventh year of Asa king of Judah, Zimri had reigned in Tirzah seven
days. And the people were encamped against Gibbethon, which belonged to
the Philistines. 16 Now the
people who were encamped heard it said, "Zimri has conspired and
also has killed the king." So all
Zimri reign was very short
and full of turmoil because of the evil thing that he did.When he saw the
people were getting close to him he committed suicide by burning himself up in
his house. Next we find out there is division over who would be the next king
over
1 Kings 16:21 Then
the people of
During this time when the
division occurred these two men were reigning at the same time as king for
about 4 to 5 years before Tibni (tib-nie)dies
and leaves Omri as the only King over all of Israel. The way I know that this
took 4 to 5 years is by doing simply math. We can see that Zimri the previous
king died during the 27th year of Asa in verse 15 and Omri (um-rih) didn’t become the
one king of
1 Kings 16:24 And he
bought the hill of Samaria from Shemer for two talents of silver; then he built
on the hill, and called the name of the city which he built, Samaria, after the
name of Shemer, owner of the hill. 25
Omri (um-rih) did evil in the eyes of the LORD, and did worse than all who were before
him. 26 For he walked in all
the ways of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, and in his sin by which he had made
Israel sin, provoking the LORD God of
Just when you think that
no one could be more evil than some of the previous kings Omri pulls it off as
he is labeled as worse than all who were before him. One his main works
recorded for us was buying this hill of Samaria and building a city on it and
then following the pattern of Jeroboam and setting up idols to worship instead
of worshiping God. Then finally we learn that his son Ahab takes his place as
king. We will be looking at Ahab later as the Bible has much to say about this
evil man. Please don’t forget to keep the hand out I gave you which shows the
order of the kings and most of the prophets that we will be dealing with. Just
as suggestion you might want mark the Kings that we cover as we go so that you
can easily see which ones we will be talking about next.