Hey, it's Shelby and Paul here. Today we're in First Kings 13 through 15. In Paul, it is troubling times. There is unrest. There is division. We're now following two different kingdoms. We're kind of entering a new phase in the book, our new section, the book of First Kings. So, and it's really gonna take us all the way through Second Kings. So can you give us just some general guidelines for how we can reach out to the world and can you give us just some general guidelines for how we can read these sections that feel like we're rapidly going back and forth between kingdoms and talking through multiple kings in one chapter? Yeah, so we kind of get this format for the kings and we alternate between descriptions in Northern Kings and Southern Kings. And with each one, they have usually a date, a length and the location of the rain and a theological appraisal, basically whether or not they were a good king or a bad king, bad king according to Deuteronomy and the law. And then for the Southern Kings, occasionally we'll get this comment about whether they followed in the footsteps of David or not, essentially to say whether they were good like David was or not. And spoiler alert, most of them are bad. Most of them, yeah. And actually in the Northern Kingdom, all of them are bad. None of them are said to have obeyed the Lord. We get a few good ones in the Southern Kingdom, some pretty notable good ones actually that we'll talk about much later. But today we're getting a number of kings from both kingdoms and we focus mainly on Jeroboam, Rehoboam and their next two descendants. And just for a reading comprehension standpoint, I'd encourage readers to just pay attention to what nation is mentioned. Part of what makes it confusing sometimes is that they'll often give date markers according to who is actually ruling in the opposite kingdom. So it'll say something like in the 10th year of this king's reign in the Southern Kingdom, the Northern King took office, right? So sometimes that can be a little bit confusing. Some Bibles have headings that really help. So we'll just say Israel's king and then their name or Judah's king and then their name. But either way, in those moments, it's good to just slow down and say, okay, who are we talking about? Where are we? Again, it mentions the location of their reign frequently, which can be helpful. So yeah, so there's some kind of tips for reading these portions. Those are great tips. Thank you for those. They're gonna give us just handles to hold as we read through several chapters here. I know when we're reading today, also in chapter 13 and 14, we're introduced to a few different prophets and kind of the narratives around them can be a little bit difficult to understand. So can you help us make sense of that section? Yeah, so yeah, like you said, we're getting some more prophetic activity here and prophets in the Bible serve a really specific purpose. And they are God's mouthpiece. They declare the word of the Lord to the people, often as a warning against certain types of sin. And that's where something I think a lot about in terms of prophets is that they don't just have foresight, like the ability to tell the future, but also insight. They can look at the situation that's going on in front of them. And then through divine revelation, they can give a very specific word of advice from God to the people to be able to discern what's going on and what the right next steps are. And so there's absolutely divine revelation happening here, but there are also very wise people that can discern and see what's going on. And so this is actually kind of the irony of Abesia, the prophet that we meet in chapter 14, because he's blind. And so we get this kind of humorous, almost humorous exchange between him and Jeroboam's wife, because Jeroboam comes to him in disguise, trying to pretend to be someone else, but God reveals to him, hey, this is Jeroboam's wife. And so she comes to him. And before she even says anything, he says, come in wife of Jeroboam, why are you disguised? I have bad news for you. Again, it's like this kind of humorous tone that's like, he's blind and yet he can see her. Like he knows, he sees right through her soul, right through her intentions. And so God's prophets do not beat around the bush. No, they certainly do not. And we're gonna see that a few more times throughout first and second Kings. Okay, all of that's helpful for just understanding these chapters, but what do we walk away with? How do these apply to our lives? Yeah, like I mentioned yesterday with these Kings, you know, we wanna say more, there's more for the Bible to say to us than just don't be like them, right? And I think for Jeroboam, it's to notice that he only asks for favor from God after his hand withers. And essentially, even though God relents from his judgment and his hand is healed, 1333 tells us that even after this, Jeroboam did not repent of his evil way. And so I think the lesson to take here is that the discipline of the Lord is meant to be a tool for our hearts and not just to, you know, get what we want, but to actually reorient ourselves back to God. And also, I think it's an invitation to not wait until our sin gets bad enough for God to need to discipline us, right? His discipline is not meant to be harsh or cruel, but to bring us back into loving relationship with him. And so we can take conviction from the Holy Spirit as an invitation to be back into intimate relationship with God. Jeroboam had to wait for someone to come to him and say, if you keep living this way, it's not gonna be good. And then, before he even acted like he was gonna repent, he had to experience a consequence. But we know that God is so good that if we pursue him, he will give us joy. He will meet us with everything we need. Second Peter one tells us that God has given us everything we need for life and godliness. And so again, we don't need to wait until things get bad because of our own sin to repent. We can pursue God faithfully and intentionally before we experience his discipline. Yeah, that's a great encouragement. I think my takeaway from these chapters is, even though we're seeing kings who are not following the Lord and even though we've seen this divide of the nation, God is sending people to speak to them. He's not abandoned them. He has people going on his behalf and correcting them and calling them to repentance. And so here we see the kindness and mercy of God in the midst of a kind of a bummer situation, kind of a dark period of history. And so I'm holding onto that as hope as we continue through because we're gonna see some kings respond to that. And so maybe you didn't see that today, but I think we're gonna see that as we keep reading. So we will talk through more of First Kings tomorrow.
