We Three Kings

Anyway, again, brethren, it's certainly good to see all of you, and I appreciate Tom mentioning how it is that fasting should be used more. We don't like to fast. I don't like to fast. But it is clearly a beneficial tool that we can be encouraged and understand even more the benefit of that. And that does tie into, to a degree, what I want to talk to all of us about in this sermon. I'd like to begin this sermon this morning by looking back at Luke 8 and considering the types of soil that we find in the parable of the sower. Now here in Luke chapter 8, you see clearly, actually, you find this in Matthew and I believe Mark and of course here in Luke. You find the parable of the sower, and you find Jesus' explanation of what it was about. And here in verse 11, we'll just read through this, and then I'll go back and mention what it is that I want us to keep in mind. The parable is this in verse 11. The seed is the word of God, and so that's what the sower was sowing. It was sowing the word that we find in the Bible, the word that is beneficial for all. It says in verse 12, the seed or the ones that were on the path were those who when they heard, the devil comes and takes away that word from their heart, and so they do not believe, and they are not saved. And so that was one of the categories. Seed that fell on a path, or on the sea mat, or the walkway where the seed just couldn't grow. It didn't grow. It was taken away.

In verse 13, it says, the seed that fell on the rocks, or the rocky soil, are those who when they hear the word receive it with joy, but they have no root, and they believe only for a while, and in a time of testing they fall away. So that's another category, a second category, in seed sown in a rocky soil, where it isn't firmly grounded. It isn't firmly rooted. And actually, as this seems to indicate, whenever testing or temptation comes, whenever tribulation occurs, then it dies. In verse 14, for that that falls among thorns, these are the ones you who hear, but as they go on their way they are choked by the cares and riches and pleasures of life and their fruit just simply doesn't mature.

It's another category here, one of the thorns, and of course it's talking about it choking the seed out to where it doesn't produce or grow to maturity. And finally, in verse 15, that which falls on good soil. Good soil, these are the ones who, when they hear the word, they hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and they bear fruit with patient endurance.

Now, of course, all of us want to be in the last category. We all want to be in the good soil. It talks in Matthew of the good soil producing 30 or 60 or 100 fold, and so there are many factors perhaps that would involve, you know, even gifts or abilities or effort in producing and growing in the type of fruit that God wants us to grow in. But what I want us to think about here, and just to consider, you know, it's important for us to think not simply about the good soil. I want to be a good soil, but to think about what's described regarding the other categories. Of course, the first category doesn't seem to be something that could involve us, since we're all in some way trying to grow. You know, God, you know, has allowed us to get beyond that, and so you would say, I would find it hard for any of us to be in the first category, the seed that fell on a path, because we're doing something. You know, we're responding, but more critically, what about the seed in the rocky soil, the seed in the thorns, and then the seed that we know is in the good soil? Those are areas of interest.

That we ought to think about. I'd like, of course, to keep these categories in mind. Keep the categories in mind, not just the good soil, but keep the categories in mind as we cover some important lessons from... I'm going to talk about the initial kings of Israel. Prior to the time when Israel and Judah were divided into two different nations, and you even see them later on fighting each other and at war against each other, but prior to that time they were all together in one nation.

They were the children of Abraham through Isaac and Jacob, and then all of the tribes of Jacob, the sons of Jacob, that made up the nation of Israel. And, of course, we're familiar with their story coming out of Egypt, eventually going into the Promised Land. But there came a time when the people... and we read about this, and I want to cover a little bit, and I know I'm going to have to hurriedly do this, but I hope that it can be helpful to you to cover some kind of wide-ranging information in 1 and 2 Kings...

or, excuse me, 1 and 2 Samuel, and then 1 and 2 Kings, because you have four books there that cover a great deal of the history of Israel having come into the Promised Land, and you find a lot about the kings that ruled in Israel. Now, again, I'm talking about the initial kings, and all of you should be familiar with who those are. I'm going to say you are. I know that if I look it up, I am, but I may not be able to figure it out. Ultimately, God was their king. You know, they decided they didn't want that.

You know, they didn't like that. They wanted to have a king like all the other nations around them, and so they asked for a king. And so God gave them. The first three kings of Israel would be the physical kings, would be Saul, and then David, and then Solomon. And then, after Solomon, the split occurred to where Judah and Israel and numerous lines of kings that I can't enumerate. And I have to go back and read it every time and try to figure out who's where. But the first three, Saul, David, and Solomon, are who I want us to think about.

And I've entitled this, We Three Kings of Israel. So Hank, you now know what the title is. We Three Kings of Israel. Actually, when you think about these three initial kings, and again, if we haven't read about them or if we haven't thought about them recently, then you might have to think back. And we can think about certain things about each one of these kings, Saul, David, and Solomon.

I think it's safe to say that each of these kings was offered help from God. They were all offered guidance. They were offered help. You know, it talks about the Spirit of the Lord, and exactly whether that's the same thing as the Holy Spirit being offered to us, it certainly would appear to be God helping these kings.

And even though that was the case, we find that all three of these kings were sinners and pretty well quite visibly sinners. It wasn't just that they thought they made mistakes and sinned. They were all sinners, and were all pretty well familiar with most of their flaws. I think it's safe to say that all of them had ups and downs through their 40 years of reign. I believe each one of them lived or reigned about 40 years.

I believe that's correct. Saul 40, David 40, and Solomon 40. So this took 120 years out of the initial physical leadership, physical leadership, that we can read about easily. So I want to begin with the first one, and again keep in mind the categories of soil that we talked about here in the parable of the sower. Regarding Saul, you can read pretty much most what you find about Saul in 1 Samuel chapter 8 through chapter 15. Now I'm giving you some kind of broad ranges there, and I'm obviously not going to read through seven chapters about Saul.

I'm not going to cover it that way, but I'm just telling you if you wanted to read about Saul, that's pretty much where you would go. There probably is a little bit of information, much briefer in Chronicles, that would go over a similar summary. But see, what do we know about Saul? What do we remember about Saul?

Well, certainly God selected Saul, and Samuel anointed Saul to be the first physical king in Israel. We can go back and read whenever you read through the whole account, and again, I'm not trying to go through all of the details of that, but we're finding that Saul was selected seemingly for some good reason. He was tall, people looked up to him, he must have been impressive, good-looking. Maybe he was the... I guess I won't name others that you could identify with, but he was apparently an attractive candidate. He looked like someone that people would want to follow. And initially, he seemed to be kind of mild about it and humble about it, and and yet there later came a time where it was pretty obvious. He took a big turn for the works. He plummeted after what you could say was kind of a little bit of a good beginning, but it didn't continue to go the way it should. What we find about Saul, even though he had those physical attributes and the people were asking for him, and even though God was mourning for Samuel, this is not going to turn out well. This will not be good. A physical leadership and trying to depend on them. In comparison to me, that is not a comparison. Or that's not a comparable... it's going to be far worse. And of course, he told him even what it'll be like to have your own physical king. But what we find about Saul was that Saul was disobedient to God's words. He was disobedient to the directions that Samuel, the prophet or judge... I'm not sure exactly how Samuel is clearly defined. Is he a prophet or judge? Oh, both! He's a both! Samuel had given him some instructions, and he couldn't follow those. Or he thought around it and figured out that, well, I ought to take things into my own hands.

This is my quick summary of Saul. And we can take a look at 1 Samuel 15, which is at the latter part of the descriptions that we have here about Saul. 1 Samuel 15, and this is after Saul has disobeyed Samuel, he is disregarded God, he's taken things into his own hand, he's sacrificed that he wasn't supposed to sacrifice. I mean, he didn't do the right thing.

And here, starting in verse 20, Saul said to Samuel... Actually, Samuel, I guess I should back up. To verse 19, why Samuel asked Saul, why did you not obey the voice of the Lord? What's the matter with you? You need to shape up here. Why did you swoop down in the spoil? And why did you do what was evil in the sight of the Lord? See, this was regarding a conflict with Amalek, and he was supposed to go in and completely destroy them, and he was supposed to follow Samuel's instructions, even about waiting for him, and he ignored all of this. In verse 20, Saul kind of non-thinkingly says, I've obeyed the voice of the Lord. I have gone on the mission on which the Lord sent me. I 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, to sacrifice, to the Lord your God and Gil-Gout. So here, Saul actually explained, this is kind of talking out of both sides of your mouth. I obeyed God, but here's Agag, and here's all the good sheep and the good cattle. God said, get rid of all of it. Clearly, he did not do. He did not do what God had directed through Samuel. So in verse 22, Samuel said, as the Lord has great delight in burnt offering and sacrifice as in obeying the voice of the Lord.

Surely, to obey is better than any sacrifice. He saw, had taken the sacrifices, and he had done something that he was not authorized to do. And so he was taking things into his own hand instead of looking to God. And Samuel says obedience is better than sacrifice, and a heed is better than the fat of rams. In verse 23, in describing how it was that he viewed Saul, he says rebellion is no less a sin than divination. And stubbornness is like iniquity and idolatry. And because you have rejected the word of the Lord, he has rejected you from being king.

Now clearly, Samuel was detailing things that Saul didn't see about himself. He did not see his nature. He didn't see, he says, I will bade God. But he had ignored God's instructions. He had not done. And if we go on down to verse 24, you even find Saul said to Samuel, I've sinned. I've transgressed the commandment of the Lord in your words because I feared the people and I obeyed their voice. Now here he starts making excuses for what he did. Now this is a bad quality, but something that's very human and very easy for us to do. You know, we can think through why I did that and make an excuse or make a...oh, it was somebody else. Very easy to do, but you see what Saul was doing. And now therefore I pray, pardon my sin, and return with me so that I can worship the Lord. And Samuel said, I will not return with you. You have rejected the word of the Lord, and the Lord has rejected you from being king over Israel. And of course, you know, I'm going to conclude that this certainly was a tipping point or turning point, but I would doubt that this is the first one. There were probably others that maybe are not even recorded that where Saul just simply didn't follow through. He started off somewhat well, but he just declined whenever he ignored what God had to say. And so even though he had been offered help from God, he had been offered the Spirit of the Lord to help him, he neglected that help, and it was eventually withdrawn. Now this was startling. This is, in a sense, pretty sad to see, because even though Saul...and of course you're going to read a lot about between Saul and David and conflicts there when you go through a section about David, but you see that Saul, for some reason, just didn't get it. He was not able to respond in the way God wanted, and so as I said, he was rejected and removed. He eventually was consorting with evil spirits. You know, major difficulty. See, what type of soil do you think Saul could represent?

You know, the path, the rocky, the thorns, or the good soil? I'm ruling out the path.

Maybe he'd be in that category. But see, which category do you think that we could place Saul in? The second of these three kings that I want to talk about is King Solomon. And you read about King Solomon in 1 Kings 2-11. There's about six or eight chapters about Saul, six or eight about Solomon. And yet, I think in many ways we're familiar with Solomon, we're familiar because Solomon made a few good moves. He started out well. He actually had a lot going for him. He was, you could say, a second generation king, I guess, because his father David had been king. And even the name Solomon meant beloved of the Lord. And so he was given a good amount of benefit. In many ways, he was set up by his father David through his mother, Bathsheba, because these were his parents. He was set up in order to build the temple. And David had collected a lot of the things that would be needed in order to build the temple. And of course, it was in David's heart. He wanted to do what God, he wanted to build God a temple. He wanted to do that, but God told him, no, you're not going to do it. I'm going to have your son do it. I'm going to have, you know, you've got a lot of blood on your hands, and so I'm going to have Solomon build the temple. And actually, again, when we read about Solomon, we see that Solomon made some good moves. First off, he asked God for wisdom. You know, that was probably one of his best moves. One of the most impressive things about King Solomon, and of course, we have many of his writings in the Proverbs and Ecclesiastes and Song of Solomon and many other songs and Proverbs that he wrote. And he did have wisdom in making decisions and what you read when you read about Solomon, that, you know, God was with him. God said, I'll be with you. I'll be with you. And as he honored God, as he thought about the right things, as he did the right things, and actually Solomon enjoyed a period of time, 40 years in Israel, that may have been the most opulent ever. You know, David's may have been good. I think it was probably increasing. There was a good amount of warfare still going on. Solomon had a relative time of peace and affluence, and what you see is not only the opulence that Israel rose to, but that he had a lot of prominence with the surrounding countries. They all came to see the glory of Solomon or the glory of the God of Solomon. And so he enjoyed a lot of benefits that way, and of course he had a direct purpose there in eventually building the temple. And yet, as we read about Solomon, particularly in Ecclesiastes, you find that Solomon, as he writes through the book of Ecclesiastes, doesn't have a clue what the purpose of life is. He's chasing the wind. He's achieving any and everything you can physically achieve, and he can delve into everything. He tested everything. And of course, I think most of you are familiar with Ecclesiastes 12 verse 13, which seems to be a conclusion, maybe at the end of his life. And he says, well, you know, what people really need to do is fear God and keep his commandments.

Now, whether he was writing that because that's correct information, it doesn't necessarily say that's what he was doing. Because when you look at King Solomon's life, he started off well. He had wisdom because God gave it to him. He had an abundance, and yet you find ultimately, you know, he had a lot of problems, a lot of problems that you would think he would have had. He would have been able, if he was listening to God's words, he would have been able to avoid at least some of the problems that he ended up in. I want us to look at 1 Kings 11. It's kind of a sad commentary. It's a sad commentary on what Solomon ultimately ran into. It says in verse 1, Solomon, King Solomon of Israel, loved many foreign women, along with the daughter of Pharaoh, he loved the women of the Moabites, the Ammonites, the Edomites, the Theidonians, and the Hittite women, from the nations concerning which the Lord had said to the Israelites, you are to not enter into marriage with them, and neither shall they they with you, for they will surely incline your heart to follow their gods. And yet it says Solomon, in the last part of verse 2, clung to these in love. He just ignored God's instruction. God's instruction was clear. Don't intermarry with these nations around us, because they will corrupt you. They will lead you away from God. And of course, in verse 3, among his wives, were 700 princesses and 300 concubines, and his wives turned away his heart.

So, you know, not a very good conclusion to Solomon's lengthy life. And it says in verse 4, when Solomon was old, his wives turned away. It almost would seem to be that, well, early on, he was not doing so badly. But since he didn't follow God's instruction and keep away from those who were around him, who could pollute him, and who could corrupt him, Solomon was old, and 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. He even had an example that he could see somewhat with David, and yet that didn't affect him properly either. He lived his 40 years in grand glory with everything available, and yet that corrupted him and turned him away from God. So, verse 6, Solomon did what was evil in the sight of the Lord. He did not completely follow the Lord as his father had done, father David. And Solomon, verse 7, built a high place for Chimosh, the abomination of Moab and Molech, the abomination of the Ammonites. On the mountain east of Jerusalem, he did the same for all the foreign wives who offered incense and sex. See, everything just went downhill. Whenever he intermingled good and bad, he may have been aware of what God was saying, or what God had told him, or what God had told David, or somewhat of the history. Going back to Abraham, he may have been aware of all that, but his mind was turned away. Verse 9, the Lord was angry with Solomon because his heart had turned away from the Lord, God of Israel, who had appeared to him twice, and had commanded him concerning this matter, that he did not follow other God, but he did not observe what the Lord commanded.

In verse 11, since therefore the Lord said, since you, this has been your mind, and you have not kept my covenant and statutes that I command you, I'm going to surely tear the kingdom from you and give it to your servant. And so clearly, when you summarize Solomon, when you see, and again, I'm not trying to make a judgment on Solomon because I don't know how God viewed ultimately his life. It doesn't look good to me. It looks pretty minimal, except he did conclude, you need to fear God and you need to keep his commandments. That's what we read in the end of the book of Ecclesiastes. But what we find was that Solomon was willing to mix good and evil. He was willing to mix God's way with the deceptions that Satan injected into his throne and his rule and his kingdom through his multiple lives. So what type of soil do you think Solomon would represent? He started off quite well. He started off with a, you know, maybe very prominent position. Wisdom from God didn't end up properly. The last of the kings, and of course I know these are not in order as far as they are, but I'm doing this order for a reason. The last of the kings is David. And as you know, the third king. And David's account, you want to read through it? 1 Samuel 16 through the end of the book. 2 Samuel is almost all about David. It's about his exploits, about things that he did, things that were good and things that were bad. And as we all know, David's sins are highlighted and evident to all. His coveting, his lust, his adultery, his murder, his even lack of trust. If that's what the census was, because it seems toward the end of his life, he sent out Joab to number the house of Israel. How much do we have? You know, how powerful are we? It wasn't looking to the real power. It wasn't looking to the one who could provide victory. It was looking to the physical strength. That's at least my understanding or limited understanding of what the problem was, because clearly it was a problem. And Joab even looked at him, you're crazy. You don't want to do this. This is just wrong. And he said, no, I want you to do it anyway. And so he paid a certain price for that, or at least the people did. And maybe the people were conspiring with David as well. You know, maybe they were egging him on to try to find out, well, do you think we can overtake this nation or that nation because we're this size now. And there appears to be more than a million-man army that he is able to muster. And yet, you know, what do we find about David? Well, he was selected by God, just like Saul, and Solomon would later be. He was anointed by Samuel. And yet we see in 1 Samuel chapter 13.

1 Samuel chapter 13 is recorded so that we can come to understand something about David in spite of his sins. And of course, there is no person who is not sinned. All of us fit that category. Here in 1 Samuel chapter 13 verse 14. Now let's back up. Verse 13, I guess I should say. This is Samuel talking to Saul. It says, you have done foolishly. You have not kept the commandment of the Lord.

And the Lord would have established your kingdom. But now that kingdom has discontinued. And so, this was being told to Saul. But here in verse 14, it says, the Lord has sought out a man after his own heart. And the Lord has appointed him to be the ruler over his people. Because you have not kept what God commanded. This is what Samuel told Saul. You know, God is rejecting you, and he is going to select, and he is going to use someone who has a different heart. A man after God's own heart. And if we look back to Acts 13, a reference that we have in the New Testament to David, and how it was that he was the king. Acts 13 verse 22. This is Paul's giving some history of Israel.

And it says in verse 22, when he had removed Saul, he made David their king. And his testimony about him, he said, I found David, the son of Jesse, to be a man after my own heart, who will carry out my wishes.

This was in contrast to what Saul didn't do. And yet, David was called a man after God's heart, and someone who would carry out the wishes of God. And clearly, he didn't do that all the time. He forgot that, or he ignored that at times. And like I said, ups and downs occurred. You could say David seems to have quite a bit of fluctuation there. And yet, what we see about David was that his heart was repentant. We're familiar with Psalm 51, the entirety of the Psalm. And I want to look at a couple of verses here. Psalm 51, David is writing this after his debacle with Bathsheba initially. And he says in verse 3, I know my sins, I know my transgressions, my sin is ever before me, and against you and you alone have I sinned.

He realized something far worse. See, Saul said, I sinned.

And Samuel says, you don't really mean that. You don't really believe that. You're really just making an excuse. And so you don't see any excuses here in Psalm 51. You see, no excuses, no blame placed elsewhere. You see, personal accountability.

And in verse 10, David said, I need a new heart.

Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me.

And verse 11, I think, is a reflection on what he saw as he had dealt with Saul over actually a fairly long period of time before Saul was eventually deposed and David was actually initiated as king. He had been anointed, but he was not yet king until God caused him to become the king with Saul's death. But he says in verse 11, don't take away from your... Do not cast me, excuse me, do not cast me away from your presence, and please, please do not take your Holy Spirit from me. See, what had he seen with Saul? He had seen that God pulled back. He had seen that God didn't continue to work with Saul. He saw that this is wrong, this is bad. And so David begged God, in a sense, to restore him to a right frame of mind. And actually, you know, I think it's interesting to see, you know, just how it was that David describes that. And of course, over in verse 17, he says, sacrifice, that's acceptable. God is a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart. You will never despise that. The physical sacrifices that they were customarily did, in a sense, to kind of cost them something for their sins. God, David realized that that's not what you want. That is not what the purpose of life is.

You're not just wanting, you know, to slaughter a bunch of bulls and goats and doves. That's not what you want. What you want is transition of heart. You want a different heart, a different spirit. And David represented that, and we find, you know, that even though, you know, David had many of these sins, you know, he did truly understand repentance. And see, this is a good sign for all of us that we want to learn, you know, to see our nature. See, Saul never saw his nature. Saul didn't see it. He made excuses. He, you know, got disrupted rather quickly. Solomon, even though with a long lengthy life, or at least a lengthy reign, I'm not going to, I don't believe he lived all that long, Solomon with a lengthy reign eventually was in demand. He eventually was completely turned from God. And yet David was a man after God's heart. David was a man, of course, that we know will be prominently used in the world to come. And yet David suffered a great deal. He suffered a great deal in his physical life. He had family confusion and distress most of his life, most of his adult life. You know, he had numerous sons who were trying to kill him. He had different, you know, different of his family members who were in, you know, just horrible anger toward him. But he was, he was proven to be faithful. And you also find that he also had, and you see this in 1 Samuel 24, this is an account, 1 Samuel 24, that I think also reflects a relationship with God, one that reflected repentance and a desire to do better, one that reflected an understanding of his own inadequacies and his need for God.

But here in 1 Samuel 24, you see this is an account between David and Saul.

And of course, it would appear at different times God had delivered Saul into David's hands. And yet what we read here in chapter 24, 1 Samuel 24 verse 6, it says, you know, after David had, in a sense, kind of embarrassed Saul by going in and cutting off part of his coat and, you know, running out of the cave where they had been, and Saul didn't realize he was in a position to be able to easily overtake him and kill him if he wanted to. But it says, I said we should back up to verse 5. After this, David was stricken in the heart because he had cut off a corner of Saul's cloak. And he said to his man, 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. Again, David had a deep respect for the leadership that God was providing through Saul at that moment. Now clearly Saul was bad, getting worse, clearly chasing David at times, clearly pretty much insane at times. You know, the things that Saul did did not show a sound mind, and that of course is what the Spirit of God does enable us to have. And yet David simply refused to disrespect Saul's authority, even though he's throwing spears at him. And even though in this case he's kind of been delivered into his hand, and David did something that was disrespectful, but that hurt him. That hurt him because he didn't want to disrespect God. He'd already had significant problems, or perhaps at this point, I'm not sure the time frame here, but he had had ups and downs, and yet he truly didn't want to disrespect the king that God had appointed.

So, you know, in these brief descriptions and in this regard regarding David, what type of soil do you think David would represent? The rocky, the thorns, or the good soil? I think all of those are pretty obvious. And yet, you know, we see that David clearly had a heart toward God that was right. He had a shepherd's heart of service and love and help, and that of course is what we want to emulate. That's what we want to strive to have. So, in conclusion here, I want to go back. What we learned about Saul was that he was faithless, he was disobedient, he was rebellious and stubborn. You know, those are all the descriptions that you have of Saul. Actually, I had another verse that I wanted to read to you, and maybe you can put it in here. 1 Chronicles 10, 13, and verse 14. You know, that describes Saul's failings. It says he was not faithful. He would not yield to God.

He was given a role, but even he was given help, but he neglected it. He put it aside. And so, you could say that Saul fit into the category of being faithless, or you could say, and I would think he should be likened under the shallow soil, the rocky soil that had no root or depth of foundation. He just didn't have it. He didn't have the commitment and the devotion to the work that he had been called to do as king of Israel. And I think whenever we think about that, then we should consider, are we deeply committed and grounded? We don't want to fall into the rocky path, the path where the roots were shallow and the plant just wouldn't grow. And so, we have to analyze our own commitment and grounding in the Word of God. The second one we mentioned was Solomon, and of course Solomon was granted wisdom and affluence from God, and yet he turned to idolatry and he never understood the purpose of life. He didn't understand that he needed to yield to God. And so, I think he could very easily be likened under the seed that fell among the thorns. We read about that in that parable. Well, there were seed among the thorns that actually appeared to thrive. They appeared to do well, but then later on, the cares of this life, the pleasures of this life, those were the undoing. See, in that part of the parable that Jesus gave, the fruit didn't mature because it was choked by the riches and pleasures of this life. And brethren, we have to guard against that. We live in an affluent society in comparison, certainly to most of the world, and even though we have difficulties and trouble and seem to be declining, we still have maybe more than many others on, or maybe almost all others, on the face of this earth. So, we don't want to be distracted and then choked like the thorns would do. So, we can ask ourselves, do we guard against these things that we know are wrong? See, it wasn't that Solomon didn't know this was wrong. He knew it was wrong. He did it anyway. He was just choked. He couldn't get over all these foreign women. He couldn't get over that. He couldn't put that aside, and of course, they did, as we read in Kings, they corrupted him. They pulled him away. And see, things can pull us away if we let them, and we don't want to let them. And of course, the final one was David, who I would describe as having a humble and a contrite spirit. He saw his deceitful nature.

He saw that I can be messed up. Not that I can be. I have been. I am messed up. I need God's help. I need to be revived. I need to be restored. I see my nature. And of course, I would think he sought repentance. Often, he sought to do the will of God, and he did that with a faithful heart. I think he could easily be likened under the good seed, or the good soil, where the seed was sown, and if it 30, 60, or 100-fold was produced, that would be bearing the spiritual fruit that we're told that we should be producing. What it says there in Luke 8 that we read earlier, the good soil bears spiritual fruit with patient endurance. However long God continues to work with us. Some of us are relatively young. Some of us are older. How long does God want us to patiently endure? Well, to the end, whenever that is, wherever that is.

And so, that in part is why I mentioned this new booklet about spiritual growth. We want to be growing spiritually, and if we do the things that are in that booklet, we will be growing spiritually. We will be developing the type of fruit that God wants us all to have, and he wants us to be involved in the work that he has called us to do. So, these three kings of Israel have much to teach us, and I think they also provide warning to us as we progress on the path to eternal life.