These Three Kings

Well, I want to cover something this afternoon in this sermon, brethren, that I believe will be of help. I hope it will be of help to us. In Luke 8, we're familiar with the parable that Jesus gave, the parable of the sower. What I would like to begin this sermon with is a review of the types of soil that he mentions here in this parable. This is really important. I think most of us can remember enough about it, even if we haven't read it recently. Maybe we have. Yet you can remember different of the categories. And of course, the last category is the good soil, and that, of course, is the soil we'd like to be in. Or at least the soil that we hope we are. And maybe we need to think about. But here in Luke 8, verse 11, Jesus explained the parable. He mentions it up here in verse 4 in this chapter.

And the disciples didn't always fully understand, but they would ask Jesus. And in verse 11 it says, the parable is this. The seed that the sower was sowing is the Word of God. And of course, as we recognize today, we sow that through our broadcasting, through our publications, through our contact with people, through our study of the Word of God. That's what all of us have been drawn into, the work into the Church of God, through the seed having been sown in our life. Now, he goes on in describing and explaining the parable. Verse 12, the ones, or the seed that fell on the path, are those who have heard, but then the devil comes and takes away the Word from their heart, so that they may not believe and be saved.

And so obviously, that's a category we would think none of us are in, because we have received the seed. The seed has been growing in our life for some time. And yet you can see that, well, there are obviously people who may hear, and yet never really understand, never comprehend what it is that the Word of God is about.

But, in verse 13, it says, the seed that falls onto the rocky soil. The ones that fall on the rocks are those who, when they hear, or this stony soil, they hear the Word of God, they receive it with joy, but they have no root. They believe only for a while, and in a time of testing, they fall away.

So that's another category. Another category that, again, we can say, well, that doesn't sound like a good category. I want to stay away from that. Well, I'm going to encourage us to understand why, to stay away from that, because there are some pretty deep things here that we can understand. So that particular soil was rocky. It was stony.

In verse 14, as for what fell, the seed that fell among the thorns, these are the ones who hear, but as they go on their way, they are choked. They're choked by the cares and the riches and pleasures of life, and their fruit just never does mature. Now, again, another category, a category that appears to start off well will actually continue for quite a while, but ultimately something happens. Something happens, and that seed is choked. The last one, of course, in verse 15, but as for that soil, or excuse me, that seed in the good soil, the good ground, these are the ones who, when they hear the word, they hold it fast and honest and good heart, and they bear fruit with patient endurance.

Now, here we can see this seed in the path that really never takes off, but then we see three other categories, seed that is in the rocks, or seed that is among the thorns, or seed that is in the good soil, and that is bearing fruit. All of these we should consider. All of these we should think about. I'd like for us to consider these categories, keep these in mind, as we cover some important lessons today from the initial kings of Israel.

Now, who would the initial kings of Israel be? Well, I'm talking actually about the time. You can go back and study in the Old Testament, in 1 and 2 Samuel, and 1 and 2 Kings. Those four books are sequential, and they cover the history of the first king, that was physical king that was appointed in Israel, and then the next two, and then a dividing of the kingdom, where kingdom of Israel and kingdom of Judah have both a line of kings until they go into captivity.

But I want to take a look at the three initial kings of Israel. Of course, before a physical king was anointed or appointed, who was the king? Well, the king was God. The Israelites were supposed to be looking to God. They were supposed to have faith in God. And there are verses that show that God says, I was their king, but they didn't want me. They didn't want to follow me. They wanted a king like everybody else. They wanted to look like all the nations around them. They wanted to fit in. And yet, again, I'm pretty sure most all of you know, the first appointed king was Saul.

And after him, David became the king. And after David, Solomon. Saul, David, and Solomon were the kings, the first initial kings of Israel. And after Solomon, then there was a dividing of the kingdom. And there you see two different lines of kings of Israel and Judah. And at times, those people of Israel and Judah even had war with each other. They were at war with others, but they were also even at war with each other at times. So, I guess the title of my sermon would be, We Three Kings.

We Three Kings of Israel. Because they were the initial ones. They were the first ones. And I'd like to point out some things about each one of these kings. I think you have knowledge of all of them to some degree. And of course, I have a little knowledge of some of them. And if I read it recently, then I have a little more knowledge. If I haven't read it for a while, then I don't remember all of it. And of course, it's good to go back and then rehearse those lessons. But I'd like to point out about Saul and David and Solomon, that each one of these kings was offered help from God.

They were offered access to God. They were offered what it calls the Spirit of the Lord. They were given some help. Now, there are some significant things I want to point out about that. But each one of those kings, who were to be the ruler in the nation of Israel, they were offered help from God.

They had some access. They had some contact with God. Yet, we certainly know that all three of them were sinners. You know, there are sins, Saul's sins, David's sins, Solomon's sins are pretty graphically written. And of course, sometimes there were punishments that came because of those sins. And so they had access to God, but they were not perfect, and they certainly did sin. And you can have to say that all of them had ups and downs.

They didn't really just start here and take off and go upward like you would think they should have. But they didn't, and each one of them reigned for 40 years. Saul reigned for 40 years, and then David reigned for 40 years, and then Solomon reigned for 40 years. So this is a whole century, 120 years, more than a century, of the history of Israel under these three kings.

And yet again, I'd like for us to keep in mind the categories of soil that I read earlier that Jesus mentions in the parable of the Sower. So the first king that I want to talk about is Saul. I believe all of us would probably know that Saul was the first appointed king, the first anointed king. And you read about Saul in 1 Samuel 8 through 15. Now, I'm not going to read those seven or eight chapters. You might think I would, but I'm not. I'm not going to read those. I'm just telling you that that's where you find the bulk of the information about Saul.

You also find in one chapter in Chronicles kind of a summary of what he did. But what can we say about King Saul? Well, you could certainly say that God selected Saul. He selected Saul. He told Samuel, I want you to go and anoint Saul to be the first physical king in Israel. And the things that stand out about Saul were that he apparently was very attractive. He was a tall man. He was taller than most of the rest. He must have looked good. He must have had quite a prominent appearance. And so in many ways, people looked up to him and they were kind of willing to follow him, even though Samuel and God through Samuel told them what's going to happen.

This is not going to be near as good as it would have been if you'd have just had faith in me. But Samuel told them what they would expect. And Saul, of course, was anointed and then inaugurated as the first physical king in Israel. But what we find about Saul, whenever you read those chapters that I mention, what we find is that Saul didn't obey.

Saul, even though he was appointed king of Israel, he had some significant problems. And actually, you see more about Saul when you read about David, because David and Saul had quite the conflict before David was ever replacing Saul. You read about that in the section that's pretty much about David. But what you see about Saul, and you see this quite early in the encounter, that he doesn't take God seriously. He disobeys God. He can't follow instructions. Samuel told him what to do, and he didn't do it, particularly with the Amalekites.

He said, I want you to go conquer the Amalekites. I want you to obliterate everything, take care of all the animals, take care of all the people. Nothing is left. And even before that, Samuel was supposed to come and offer a sacrifice, and they would go into battle. Saul wasn't able to do that. He had to take things into his own hands. And in many ways, you'd have to say that you could characterize Saul as simply relying on himself. That's not a good position to be in. I'd like for us to go back to 1 Samuel chapter 15. 1 Samuel chapter 15. We see that Samuel is coming to Saul here in chapter 15, and he starts talking to him in verse 18.

The Lord sent you on a mission and said, Go and utterly destroy the sinners, the Amalekites, and fight against them until they're consumed. So this wasn't unclear information. It had come to him from God through Samuel. But he says in verse 19, Why didn't you obey the voice of the Lord?

Why didn't you swoop down on the spoil and do what was evil in the sight of the Lord? And Samuel said to Saul, Well, I've obeyed the voice of the Lord. Now this is after Agag is standing there, all the sacrifices, the animals that he didn't slaughter, and the other people that he didn't slaughter, they're all standing around. And Saul attests in verse 20, I've obeyed the voice of the Lord.

I've gone on the mission that the Lord sent me on. I've brought Agag, the king of Amalek, and I've utterly destroyed the Amalekites. But from the spoil, the people took sheep and cattle, and the best of the things devoted to destruction. They kept those to sacrifice to the Lord your God, Agilgal. So you can see what's going on here. Saul is rationalizing everything in his mind. He has decided what he is going to do. He has given in to whatever the people might have wanted or demanded. He thought that would be okay.

And so Samuel said in verse 22, As the Lord has greater delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord. Surely to obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of ramps. So he was telling Saul, Look, you didn't do what God told you to do. And we go on.

Here in verse 24, and this is in a sense really prophetic, Saul says to David, or excuse me, I'm sorry, Saul says to Samuel, he says, after he heard what Samuel just said, that while you're being stubborn, you're being rebellious, you clearly are not obeying, isn't that more important than keeping these animals to sacrifice?

And Saul again says, well, I guess I've sinned. That's what it almost seems. He says, I have sinned. I've transgressed the commandment of the Lord, and I've transgressed your words because I feared the people, and I obeyed their voice. He says, well, what's happening here? What's happening with Saul? Well, he's starting, you know, whenever he says, I've sinned, it doesn't seem like he's very serious about that sin because he's really starting to make excuses and starting to blame everybody else except realizing, you know, well, I was the one responsible, I was the one accountable, I was the one who was given the instructions, and I didn't do it.

He's still saying, I did it. And he's trying to plead his case here in verse 24. Verse 25, therefore, I pray, pardon my sin, and return with me, so I may worship God. And Samuel said, I will not. I will not return with you, for you have rejected the word of the Lord, and the Lord has rejected you from being king over Israel. Now, this is a significant summary of, in a sense, the attitude that we see projected by Saul. He doesn't want to obey what God says. He wants to take things into his own hands.

He wants to blame everybody else for whatever went wrong. And yet he still wants to be accepted. He still wants to appeal to God, which, of course, wasn't going to happen. As Samuel told him, you are going to be rejected. You are going to be removed. And what we actually find in this case is that Saul, even though he had been given some help from God, even though he had been given an access to the Spirit of the Lord, you find that he neglected that Spirit that the Lord had offered him, and that eventually was going to be withdrawn.

You find later that Saul, whenever he found himself in just a complete frenzy, consorted with evil spirits. He didn't have the type of contact with God. He didn't have the grounding that he needed to have to be able to be a successful king. And actually, I think this is a description that I want to read here in 1 Chronicles. 1 Chronicles 10. I know the wording is a little bit different in the King James, but in 1 Chronicles 10, verse 13, in the New Revised Standard that I'm reading, this is talking about the death of Saul, and it says in verse 13, Saul died for his transgressions, for his unfaithfulness.

He was unfaithful to the Lord, in that he did not keep the command of the Lord. Moreover, he had consulted a medium seeking guidance, and did not seek guidance from the Lord. Therefore, the Lord put him to death, and turned the kingdom over to David, the son of Jesse. Now, what I'd like for us to think about is what type of soil do you think Saul might represent? What type of soil? The rocky soil, the thorny soil, or the good soil? The second king I want to talk about here, that's all I want to say about Saul at this point. The second king I want to talk about is King Solomon.

In King Solomon, you can read about pretty much a lot of what is written about Solomon in 1 Kings 2-11. Solomon was the son of David, the son of Bathsheba and David, not the son who was conceived in the act of adultery, but a later son, another son that was born to Bathsheba. Solomon, his name meant peace, and later another name that he had meant beloved of the Lord. He had been given a lot of blessings.

Technically, he was set up. He was a second generation Israelite in this case, in that David had been the king. I guess he was a second generation king, you could say. Israelite would not be as clear. He was a second generation king. He just inherited it from his father. He didn't always look at things exactly as he should, but primarily his purpose was to build the temple that his father David so desired. You find that David had set up, he had gathered material, he had come up with the plans, he thought about it, he wanted to build this house for God, but God told him, no, I'm not going to let you.

You have been a bloody man. I'm not going to let you build, but I will let your son Solomon build the temple. Solomon had quite a bit going for him, really. He had David as his father, he had a lot of accumulation of wealth that was going to be used for the temple. And of course, we read, whenever you read about Solomon during this section that I gave you here in Kings, you find that he started off in what you would say to be a pretty good way.

He started off by appealing to God, I need help. I need wisdom. And of course, God was happy to see that. That was a good move, a very good move on Solomon's part, because, as all of you know, we have many of his writings as a part of the Bible. It says he not only wrote the Proverbs that we see in a book, but he wrote many other Proverbs and other songs. He recorded in the Old Testament the Song of Solomon. You have the Book of Ecclesiastes, and you have different accounts of him showing the wise way of deciding things that God particularly gave him.

Did he have access to God? Did he have some help from God? Well, sure. He had that access. And of course, God said he would be with Solomon. And certainly Solomon enjoyed tremendous wealth. He enjoyed a tremendous affluence. He had great prominence from the surrounding countries. And actually, you find that all of the countries around Israel are now coming. Of course, this is during this 40-year period of time. They're coming to see Solomon, and they're coming to see what the God of Solomon, the God of Israel, who was with Solomon, how he had blessed this nation to just have the opulence, the wealth, the capacity for wonderful things.

So you see that Solomon lived at a time that was very, very successful and one that was very prominent in many ways. But you do also see somewhat of a downside to Solomon's wonderful beginning. What we find whenever we read Solomon's writing, and you read the book of Ecclesiastes, you read the entirety of that book, and he talks about trying this and trying that, talks about all kinds of things under heaven that he has tried, and he says, I've tried everything! He says everything physically, anything! Wine, women, song, labors, building, construction, all type, everything he could think of. He says, I've tried it all. And yet what you find when you look through the book of Ecclesiastes is that he did not understand a purpose for life. He didn't understand what you and I have access to today. He didn't understand what it is that God is actually doing with us. You do find that Solomon concludes in Ecclesiastes 12, verse 13, and I don't know if this is pretty much at the end of his life. It certainly is the central verse that you would pick out of the book of Ecclesiastes, where he says, what men need to do, the whole duty of man is to fear God, to keep his commandments, and certainly you can't debate that. That was clearly a correct statement that Solomon was able to make. And yet when you read the entire book, you find, boy, he was stumbling around all over the place, and never really satisfied. He did not have a contentment nor a peace from God, so that he would know the purpose of life. And actually, we want to look at 1 Kings, so if we can go over a little bit further, 1 Kings 11. You actually see what we might say is the downfall of Solomon. This is close to the time when he would be set aside and would die. I guess that's in chapter 11 as well. But let's begin reading in 1 Kings 11. King Solomon, verse 1, King Solomon loved many foreign women, along with the daughters of Pharaoh. He actually built a special building for the daughter of Pharaoh, who was one of his wives. But he says, King Solomon loved many foreign women, along with the daughter of Pharaoh, the Moabites and the Ammonites and the Edomites and the Zidonians and the Hittite women. From the nations concerning which the Lord had said to the Israelites, You shall not enter into marriage with them, and neither shall they with you, for they will surely incline your heart to follow their gods. Here's the summary of what we find at the end of Solomon's life when he is old. He is disobeyed in this case. He is clearly not followed, the Word of God. He has surrounded himself with a harem, and more than a harem, as we're going to see. It says in the last part of verse 2, Solomon clung to these women in love. He was so enamored by, I don't know, it says, a thousand women. Among his wives were seven hundred princesses and three hundred concubines. And his wives turned away his heart. And when Solomon was old, verse 4, his wives turned away his heart after other gods. And his heart was not true to the Lord his God, as was the heart of his father David. For Solomon followed Astarte, the goddess of the Zydonians, and Milcom, the abomination of the Ammonites.

So Solomon, verse 6, did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, and he did not completely follow the Lord as his father David had done. Here's an unfortunate description of Solomon at the end of his life when he was old, having turned from God.

And again, I'm not saying this that I don't know what Solomon's judgment is, that's up to God. But clearly we see the example in the end of his life that he was willing to mix the good that he had from God and the bad that was all around him.

He was willing to try to, you know, it says here in verse 6 that he was not willing to completely follow the Lord like David had done. See, he was willing to mix things up with the world around him. He was willing to kind of integrate God's way with Satan's deceptions, if we want to put it in our terminology.

In verse 7 Solomon built a high place for the abomination of Moab and for Molech the abomination of the Ammonites on the mountain east of Jerusalem. He did the same for all his foreign wives, where they would offer incense and sacrifice to their gods. And in verse 9 the Lord was angry with Solomon because his heart had turned away from the Lord and the God of Israel that had appeared to him twice, had commanded him concerning this matter that he should not follow other gods.

But he did not observe what the Lord commanded. And therefore the Lord said to Solomon, Since this has been your mind and you have not kept my covenant and my statutes that I commanded you, I will surely tear the kingdom from you and give it to your servant.

And of course that was what would happen. Solomon would die. There would be a dividing of the kingdom. One of his sons would be a part of one of those kingdoms. And then the other kingdom would be Israel and Judah, the two kingdoms that existed then after Solomon. But what do we see about Solomon? Well, he allowed himself to get choked. He allowed himself to turn from the true God.

He allowed himself to fall from a closeness to God that he could have enjoyed, he could have appreciated. So again, what type of soil do you think Solomon would represent? Which category? The shallow soil, the rocky soil, the thorny soil, or the good soil? The third king, of course, is David. And you see David's account. David, of course, is quite commonly talked about throughout the Bible and certainly in the Church of God.

We're very familiar with David. And yet you can read about David starting in 1 Samuel 16 and going to the end of that book and then through the entirety of 2 Samuel. 2 Samuel is entirely about David. And then you see a couple of chapters in 1 Kings where David is near death and then does die. So from 1 Samuel 16 to 1 Kings 2, that's the record that you can read if you want to just simply read most of the information about David. Again, there's a summary account in Chronicles that correlate with that as well.

But see, I think all of us realize that David's sins were highlighted. They are pretty commonly known by most everyone. His sins of coveting, his sins of lust, of greed, of adultery, of murder, of not having trust in God. Ultimately, he counted Israel. You read that in the last part of 2 Samuel. He sent out and had his senses done. And again, this appears, and I'm not sure that I fully understand everything about that, but it appears an odd thing to do.

And maybe it was a matter of him wanting to know, well, how many men do I have? How much of a force? If we're going to go fight somebody, how many people do we have? We're not going to pick on somebody bigger than us. We'll be sure that we're bigger, and then we'll know we can overtake an army of 200,000 if we have 800,000. See, that's my understanding of what he was doing in this counting or this census of Israel. And it wasn't that it was wrong for them to know how many people they had.

But see, he did this for a wrong purpose. He did this with a wrong motivation. And even Joab, his captain, who he was telling to go do this, go count all these, he said, What? Are you crazy? You don't need to do that. God doesn't want you to do that. David said, Do it anyway. You know, he had a little problem at that point. But see, we're aware of these sins of David, and we also know that David was selected by God.

He was anointed by Samuel in a similar way that Saul had been. And yet what you found about David, like I said, all of these men had sins. All of them had huge ups and downs in their lives. Well, what you find about David, you read back here in 1 Samuel 13.

1 Samuel 13. This is even before we see David introduced. But Saul and Samuel are talking. 1 Samuel 13. Samuel says to Saul, You have done foolishly. You have not kept the commandment of the Lord your God, which He commanded you, and the Lord would have established your kingdom over Israel forever.

See, he was telling Saul after he had disobeyed and after he had resisted and not followed instructions and was just stubborn and rebellious, as we read earlier. He says in verse 14, Now your kingdom will not continue. The Lord has sought out a man after his own heart, and the Lord has appointed him to be ruler over his people, because you have not kept what the Lord commanded you.

See, here we see a description of what made David different. Was he less of a sinner? Well, no. He also sinned. But what we see about David was that he was able, he recognized what it was, how valuable, how significant it was that the Spirit of God had been made available to him. See, as I told you, Saul neglected that. I think we could say regarding Solomon, he certainly was turned away, and he neglected the help from God that had been available.

But David appreciated the help. He realized, and actually he came to see, and if we look at Acts 13, the book of Acts records a recounting that Paul gives of a history of Israel. And in Acts 13, in talking about Saul and then David, in verse 22, Acts 13, 22, when he had removed Saul, he made David their king.

In his testimony about him, he said, I have found David, the son of Jesse, to be a man after my heart, a man who will carry out all of my wishes. See, there was something different about David's heart, something different about his desire to please God, something different about his appreciation for his access to the great God.

And you see that described in Psalm 51, a psalm that I know all of us are familiar with, and we often even sing because it's one of our hymns. But in Psalm 51, we see David's appeal to God, and this apparently was written after his encounter with Bathsheba and with Uriah, and with coming to see not just what had led to that, the lust and the greed, ultimately the adultery, ultimately then the deception to try to kill Uriah, to murder him, all of those things. He saw, I did that, I did that on purpose. My heart is wrong. You know, I am in need of help. I need God. And that's what we find in many of the descriptions of those that God worked with in the Old and of course all of us in the New Covenant with God. Well, we see in verse 3, Psalm 51, David said, I know my transgressions and my sin is ever before me. Against you and you alone have I sinned. See, this wasn't the type of contrition that Saul had. Saul was willing to blame everybody else. He was going to blame the people. He said, well, Samuel, you were late. You didn't show up when you said you would. And you see Solomon again bringing others in to corrupt his own kingdom and to run himself down and to take himself away from God. And he says, because you have that mind, I can't use you. But what we find about David was that he truly came to see that he needed a different heart, a new heart. He needed God to forgive, but more than that. He needed God to transform his nature. And see, brethren, that's, of course, an example for us. He says in verse 10, Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me. Don't cast me away from your presence, and please, don't take your Holy Spirit away from me. See, he had seen what happened to Saul. He knew that Saul neglected the spirit that God had offered. He knew what happened. He could see that later Saul is doing completely crazy things, throwing spears at David, setting up options to try to kill him, all kinds of things that we see in contrast to the way that God certainly would have loved Saul to be.

But he didn't use. He neglected the spirit available. And David, he says, I need your spirit more than anything else. I see how important that is. I see how valuable that is. I cannot live without the Spirit of God leading me. Now, again, he wasn't perfect. He sinned, and he sinned after he wrote this. But he says in verse 12, Restore, restore to me the joy of your salvation and sustain me in a willing spirit. And I'll teach sinners, transgressors, your ways, and sinners will return to you. I'll appeal to people to follow God, serve God, honor God. They need a closeness to God. And of course, in verse 17, he says, The sacrifice that's really acceptable to God is not the animals, the blood of the bulls and goats and the pigeons and doves that they were used to using as sacrifice. He said, The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit and a contrite heart.

And, O God, I know you will never despise that type of approach toward you. See, David came to understand true repentance. He came to understand how much he needed God, and he was begging God to be merciful to him and not take the spirit away from him so that he would be able to continue to honor God. And actually, you find when you read through the story here about David, that he did suffer a great deal. His family was just chaotic.

It's the only way you could describe it. His children were of complete distress to him and to his kingdom. He had sons who were trying to kill him. He had others who were trying to overthrow him right at the end. He suffered a lot. And yet he did have the type of heart that God says he wanted, and that he would carry through on what I tell him to do. And here in 1 Samuel 24, you also find another account. 1 Samuel 24. This is a time when Saul is chasing David, and David has, in a sense, caught Saul in a cave.

And you find that, in a sense, Saul had been delivered into David's hands. He could have easily killed him. He could have easily taken him out of the way, because, again, he was chasing David in his band of men, and Saul had the army with him, and this was quite a vulnerable situation for Saul. And yet, in verse 5, David had cut off a corner of Saul's cloak, in verse 4, I guess, and in verse 5 afterward, David's heart was stricken.

He was stricken to the heart, because he had cut off a corner of Saul's robe. He was looking to God. He knew that, at this point, he had been anointed to be the next king of Israel, but he wasn't about to take it into his own hands to get rid of the one that God had set in authority.

And so he went ahead to say, in verse 6, He said to his men, The LORD forbid that I should do this thing to my LORD. The LORD's anointed to raise my hand against him, for he is the LORD's anointed. Ultimately, he was going to be ascending to the throne.

He had been appointed. He had been anointed for that. He had not been installed. But he had a deep respect. A deep respect, not just for Saul, because Saul, at this point, was pretty much a crazy person. He was doing crazy things, and he couldn't figure out how David was always confound everything he tried. He just couldn't figure it out. But of course, he didn't have a contact with God any longer. He had neglected that and refused that.

And David had that. He had a contact with God. And of course, he was willing to show respect for God's authority, and for how it was that God would work that out. And so we see examples of David, of course, where his faith and trust in God had been proven.

That was even early on in his life. He said with a lion or a bear, and he said against Goliath, God is the one who can protect us. He's the one who can take care of these problems for us. And so you find a lot of very favorable things about David, as well as, of course, his sins. But David's example is one where he is displaying a shepherd's heart of service and love and help. And that, of course, should be emulated. And so, the third type of soil, what kind of soil do you think David would represent? He wasn't flawless, but he was certainly accepted by God.

He was honored by God. He will be honored by God. And undoubtedly, he has got to be considered to be in the good soil. So as we conclude here, let's go back over these three kings that we have discussed here. First of all, we discussed Saul. What is it that we could say about Saul? Well, he was faithless. He was disobedient. He was rebellious, and he was stubborn and refused to change.

I would think you would have to liken Saul's description here to the rocky soil, the shallow soil where there was no depth, no root. He was not committed. He was not devoted to the foundation that should have been, you know, his uplifting. He just simply was, you know, he was very shallow in everything he did. He would not yield to God. And I think as we think about that, and as we even think about this parable, we can think, oh, I'm in the good category.

Well, I also want to think, well, I don't want to fall into this category. I don't want to not be deeply committed, deeply grounded in the Word of God, and deeply devoted to the calling and to the commitment that God has extended to me right now. The second one we talked about was Solomon, and Solomon certainly was granted wisdom from God and given a great deal of affluence. You know, affluence that was almost, you know, it's just gushing the way it's described back there in how opulent everything was that Solomon was able to do. So he was granted wisdom and influence from God, affluence and influence, perhaps, but he had an affluence as well, and yet he turned to idolatry, and he never really understood the purpose of life.

See, I think you would have to say that Solomon could easily be likened to the soil where the seed was sown among the thorns, because, you know, after a while, the thorns just simply choked him out. And again, you know, the fruit of his life didn't mature. It was simply choked out by the riches and by the pleasures of physical life.

And I think you would have to say he clearly became distracted from God's purpose for his life. And again, brethren, we have to apply this to us. Do we guard against those things that we know are wrong? Do we guard against them? Do we guard against the distractions that are around us?

See, Solomon didn't. He brought them in, and, you know, he just very easily mixed in with what he was doing in the kingdom. He allowed himself to be choked. And again, we don't want to allow ourselves to be choked of the blessings that God has available to us. And of course, finally, David's example, the third king we mentioned.

David had a humble and a contrite spirit. He saw his deceitful nature. He sought repentance, I would say often. We have a repentance psalm, but I'm sure you see many other times throughout his life where he was seeking God's forgiveness. He was confessing his sins and acknowledging his need for God. It says, God says he did the will of God, and he had a faithful heart. See, those were all things that we want to emulate, and I would think that would be likened under the good soil, where the seed could grow either 30 or 60 or 100-fold. There may be a lot of factors to how much each of us can grow. Some of it may have to do with our own ability.

Some of it may have to do with gifts that God would give us. Some of it may have to do with circumstances that we go through and trying and testing. How it is that we're looking to God for his help in order to bear spiritual fruit with patient endurance. That's what we read in the parable, that the good soil was able to bear fruit with patient endurance. That's why, as I mentioned regarding the booklet that we were passing out earlier, it's called Tools for Spiritual Growth. It's important that we be growing individually, that we be bearing a fruit that would be described as the fruit of the divine nature, the fruit that is so important for us to share with one another and for us to share with others as God brings them to contact with us.

That particular booklet is clearly a very important one that we ought to be very excited about and really very grateful for. I think that you can see some connections between the parable of the sower and the seed, the soils that were there, and of course who it is that we want to try to emulate. How it is that we want to stay away from the warnings that are about the rocky soil and the thorns that can choke us out.

It talks about the cares and the riches and the pleasures of life. Either we guard against that. Those are not wrong to enjoy at times. But certainly we don't want them to choke out our responsiveness to God and our need for God and our understanding of God because even as we live in this world, we don't want to be aversely affected by the world.

So these three kings of Israel, I think, have much to teach us. And certainly they provide warnings to us as all of us progress on the path to eternal life.