Pentecost 3
22 June 2025
Vineville Baptist Church
Macon, Georgia
Gregory Pope
CONCEIT: THE RISE AND FALL OF THE KINGDOM
(From Creation to New Creation: The Biblical Story #6)
1 Samuel 16:1 – 2 Chronicles 36.21. The Pre-Exilic Prophets
(Read in Worship: 2 Samuel 7.8-13. Amos 5.1-2, 12, 21-24)
As we return to our twelve week journey through the biblical story Israel has just entered the Promised Land and demanded to have a king so they could be like other nations. They got one in Saul who had mild success but whose failed reign is now coming to an end.
The prophet Samuel has already anointed David as the next king of Israel. While Saul was still king, the war between the Israelites and the Philistines had come to a standoff. So the anointed boy David of the Israelites famously fought and defeated the dreaded giant Goliath of the Philistines.
After David’s defeat of Goliath and his exploits as a warrior in Saul’s army, Saul becomes insanely jealous of David. The people begin to sing in the streets this taunting jeer: “Saul has killed his thousands, David his tens of thousands.” Saul tries to have David killed by sending him to the front lines, only to have David return a military hero.
David develops a deep friendship with Saul’s son Jonathan. When Saul and his sons, including Jonathan, are killed by the Philistines in battle, David composes as beautiful a lamentation as has ever been written. Such was the landscape of David’s heart that he grieved not only for his friend Jonathan but for his enemy Saul who had sought to kill him.
At the death of Saul, David becomes king. He moves the capital to Jerusalem, a brilliant and shrewd political move that united all of Israel behind him. The ark of the Lord containing Israel’s sacred objects is brought to Jerusalem, and dreams of a great temple to be built there are born in David’s heart. David leads Israel through their glory years with many victories in battle. He was a writer of psalms and wasn’t afraid to worship exuberantly, even dancing before the Lord in his boxer shorts in the presence of all the people, much to the dismay of his wife.
At times David was a mighty vessel of God’s blessing and strength. But things would not always be that way. As David rose to power he becomes bloodthirsty through holy war. His war efforts, sanctified by a theology of violence, overreach themselves and will later prohibit David from realizing his dream of building God’s temple.
But there was another sad and infamous episode, this one more intensely personal. David is at home in the palace while the troops are out fighting. (That in itself was uncharacteristic of David.) As David awakens from a mid-afternoon slumber and walks around the palace walls, he sees a young married woman bathing below. She is so beautiful it overwhelms him. Her name is Bathsheeba, who, like Rahab, will also find her name in the genealogy of Jesus. David’s better self would have simply rejoiced in the sight of her and offered her beauty to God in praise. But David has long since lost that place where his best self is in view, and he knows when he sees her that he has to have her. So he sends for her, takes her into his palace (most likely against her will), and a child is conceived.
Then comes the attempted cover-up. David panics. He tries to entice Bathsheeba’s husband, Uriah, who is in combat, to take a few evenings off and spend some time with his wife, in the hopes of covering David’s sin. Uriah refuses to indulge himself this pleasure because of his loyalty to his fellow soldiers. Once David would have been so loyal. So David sends Uriah to the front lines of battle where he is killed. And the text reads: The things that David did were evil in God’s sight.
Yahweh loved David. David loved Yahweh. The people loved David. But the blessing that covered David’s life was stained by acts of darkness. Like David, we are all capable of evil, and we need not forget it. We must be cautious with our own actions, careful not to judge others, and quick to repent when we fall.
When David is confronted with his sin by the prophet Nathan, David breaks down in shame and acknowledges his sin, crying out in humble confession: Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; . . . For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me. And God does.
But God’s forgiveness does not avert the consequences of human sin. David’s trail of tragedy brings unspeakable sorrow, including the death of the infant child he and Bathsheeba had conceived, a grief in which David nearly drowns.
There is also an incestuous rape within the family that David does nothing about. And then the rebellion of his son Absalom, who gathers forces to defeat his father only to be killed in the battle himself. God’s blessing on David’s life begins to fade, not because God loves David any less, but because of the consequences of David’s own fateful choices.
The blessing does not diminish completely. The redemption of David begins in the depths of his own darkness, with the capacity to face his own sin, and with the conception of another son, Solomon, who will complete David’s dream of Yahweh’s Temple. God promises David through a covenant of God’s steadfast love that God’s kingdom will not die with David. Israel holds on to the promise of a son of David, an Anointed One who will come and bring a day of justice and joy, a day where grace and peace will be all and in all.
As we come to the end of King David’s reign we see even more family trouble brewing. David’s spoiled sons are fighting over the throne until David appoints his son Solomon to be king. He instructs Solomon in great detail concerning the temple to be built in Jerusalem. And when David’s time to die draws near, he charges his son Solomon to walk faithfully in God’s ways so that his descendants will continue to reign on the throne of Israel. Having reigned over Israel and Judah forty years, David dies.
At the beginning of Solomon’s reign, God appears to Solomon and tells him to ask for anything and it will be granted unto him. What would you ask for? Riches? Good health? A life partner? Early retirement?
Solomon says, “Give me wisdom and knowledge to rule this great people of yours.”
And God responds, “Because you have not asked for for riches or health, or for the lives of those who hate you, but for wisdom in guiding my people, I will grant you also wealth and riches like no king before or after you.”
And Solomon is blessed with glory and wisdom and riches beyond measure. With great wisdom Solomon builds the grand and glorious temple of Jerusalem that will stand for almost 400 years. Solomon was indeed a man of great wisdom. Ascribed to him are many of the wisdom sayings in the book of Proverbs. All the kings of the earth sought after Solomon to hear the wisdom God had placed in his mind, and they would all brings gifts, year after year. He rules over all the kings from the Euphrates to the land of the Philistines to the border of Egypt. Life in Israel was flourishing beyond measure under Solomon.
But the wealth and success become too much for him. In order to build alliances with foreign countries he takes for himself foreign wives, explicitly forbidden in the law of Moses because of the temptation to follow after their gods. Among his wives are 700 princesses and 300 concubines. Was it one of these women who inspired the sensual poetry of the Song of Solomon? We’re not exactly sure who wrote the Song, but what we do know is that Solomon was led by his many wives to follow after other gods. As a result the kingdom begins to crumble around him.
While Solomon has personally acquired wealth and riches, the people of Israel are not so fortunate. There was a price for all of Solomon’s glory. When Israel begged Samuel for a king, God told them what would happen. And it happened under Solomon’s rule: a huge army, heavy taxation, a widening chasm between rich and poor, and citizens reduced to a kind of slave labor to feed the appetite of the state’s economy. Adversaries rise up against Solomon and he is forced to flee. Even his own son, Jeroboam, rebels. Soon afterward Solomon dies.
When Solomon’s son, Rehoboam, becomes king, he inflicts the people with such hard labor that a civil war ensues and splits the nation into two kingdoms: a southern kingdom named Judah with Jerusalem as its capital and Rehoboam its king; and a northern kingdom named Israel with Jeroboam as king – both kings sons of Solomon. In three generations the House of David goes from being exalted among the nations with unrivaled prosperity to a disaster of a nation.
As the kingdom divides, the king loses his identity as a spiritual leader. Even the priests become political pawns. A word from the Lord will now have to come from outside the temple and beyond the throne of kings.
So prophets arise – men and women seized by the living word of God, its truth burning in their bones, whose preaching is never welcomed. Biblical prophets do not so much predict the future as they do speak forth the present truth about our current path and where it will lead if things do not change.
Elijah is one such prophet. If Moses is the most heroic figure in the Hebrew Bible, David is a close second, and Elijah is third. Elijah challenges King Ahab and his wife Jezebel for setting up altars to Baal, and calls God’s people away from the worship of Baal and the gods of success, self, sensuality, and security to faith in Yahweh, the one true God. Following the death of Ahab, numerous kings reign in Israel and in Judah, and prophets arise to speak God’s word.
We are given the story of a prophet named Hosea who is told by God to marry a prostitute named Gomer, making his personal life a powerful parable of Israel’s unfaithful relationship with Yahweh. Hosea’s story is about the never-ending, always-faithful love of God.
Another prophet coming up from the south to preach to Israel is a man named Amos, who emphatically does not want to be a prophet. (No one in their right mind does!) The prophets always challenge those who live in wealth and comfort and power. The prophets teach us that what really stokes the anger of God and leads to the downfall of nations is when the rich get preferential treatment and live in comfort and ease while the needs of our neighbors are ignored. The poor of the world starve and are used as cheap labor with low wages only to make the rich richer.
I fear what the prophet Amos might say today to: Wealthy countries who strip the poor of medical care only to give tax breaks to billionaires? Or unjust nations where CEOs make over 30 million a year and hourly workers in the same company make less than 30 thousand a year? Or greedy nations that strip aid from poor nations where children starve and people die from preventable diseases?
What do you think Amos would have to say about that? Perhaps something along the lines of his now infamous words: I hate your worship and sacred festivals, (your perfunctory prayers and empty words of allegiance). I will not accept your offerings . . . Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream!
Amos closes his prophesy with the darkest word of all: The end has come upon my people Israel, says the Lord. Israel, as they knew it, was about to die. Some 30 years after Amos preached Assyria defeats and takes possession of Israel and leads them into captivity.
The southern kingdom of Judah remains intact for a while. Like Israel, they are strong politically and economically but weak morally and spiritually.
The prophet Isaiah gives the same message to Judah as Amos did to Israel. The prophet Micah reminds them what the Lord requires of us all: to do justice, to love mercy, to walk humbly with God. The prophet Zephaniah condemns God’s people for their religious apostasy and indifference, their violence and oppression, their corruption, conceit, and national pride.
According to the biblical prophets, a nation falls when they say they love and trust God but practice economic oppression and social injustice, when violence, corruption, and national pride blind them to God’s demand for justice and mercy and humility.
Jesus spelled out what that looks like when he said that nations would be judged by their faithfulness in feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, welcoming the stranger, taking care of the sick and those in prison.
The prophet Jeremiah walks around Jerusalem with a yoke hung around his neck as a prophecy that Judah will soon be taken into captivity and exile. Jeremiah prophesies the fall of Jerusalem, then lives through the fall and the destruction of the temple. Judah and Jerusalem fall to the Babylonians in 587 BCE. The mighty Kingdom of David’s house has come crumbling down.
Does this story of Israel’s rise and downfall only provide for us a history lesson? Or is there a word here for us today? Do we need to hear from the prophets a word of warning: To stop bowing to the gods of wealth, security, and power? To cease our exploitation of the poor, end their oppression, and take care of those in need? To beat our swords into plowshares, turning our destructive instruments of war into life-saving feeding equipment, and living what God requires: doing justice, loving mercy, walking humbly with God?
We have the opportunity to change. The question is: Will we? Will we heed the gracious invitation of God spoken through the prophet Isaiah and embodied in our Savior Christ to turn from our idolatrous ways and be forgiven: Thus says the Lord, “Come, let us reason together. Though your sins be like scarlet they shall be white as snow.”
Israel and Judah did not listen. Will we?