Full text of Zac Poonen’s teaching on the First Book of KINGS which is part of the popular series called Through The Bible.
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TRANSCRIPT:
Zac Poonen – Bible Teacher
Let’s turn to the first book of Kings.
First Kings chapter 1. Here is a book which begins with a united, powerful nation of Israel under a godly king, David, a man after God’s own heart, and ends with the kingdom divided and with a lot of evil kings ruling particularly over Israel. Ahab is the last one mentioned in this book.
Imagine something that begins with David and ends with Ahab and how the people go astray. You see, this teaches us one thing, what we’ve been seeing consistently in all the other books as well. The condition of God’s people depends greatly on the spirituality or lack of it in their leaders. You see that everywhere in Revelation 2 and 3 where the elders were spiritual, the church was spiritual, the elders were carnal, the church was carnal and whenever Israel had a godly leader, they moved in godly ways. When they had a carnal leader, they moved in carnal ways. A godly father will bring up his children in godly ways and a carnal father will bring up his children carnal ways.
So leadership is so important. It’s one of the things that we see throughout the Old Testament and a good thing for us to learn. So you see, God’s great need is for leaders. We read once that Jesus looked out and saw the multitude like sheep without a shepherd. It’s the same today as He looks out over India. He looks out over Christendom in India. India’s Christian population itself is perhaps 20-25 million and as God looks out over the Christian population of so many millions of people, you know what He sees? A lack of godly leaders. And that’s the challenge that comes to each of us.
Satisfy the heart of God in this generation. In every generation, God wants leaders. It’s not enough to depend on the leaders of another generation. In your generation, God wants leaders. David could not rule over Israel forever. He died, somebody else had to take over and what type of person that’s going to be. That’s the great thing.
Here is a godly man God raises up. He gets old and he dies. What about the next generation? Have they just got knowledge? Have they just got the doctrine? Have they just got the temple rituals? But no godliness, no personal knowledge of God? Then the people go astray. That’s the challenge that should come to each of your hearts: to be like David, to be like Deborah.
Okay, as we look at David’s end of his life, we see one or two sad things. When David was dying, we read that Adonijah (1 Kings 1:5), said to himself, he exalted himself, said, I’ll be the next king. He was one of the sons of David. So he prepared a chariot. He was not like his father. His father waited for God to make him king. This man said, I’ll make myself the king.
And why was he that type of person? Because, here’s the reason, (verse 6), his father had never given him any pain. That’s what the margin of my Bible says, had never punished him. He had never used the rod on him once. And never asked him when he did something wrong, why did you do that?
Can you imagine what’s going to happen to a child if he’s never punished by his father? And the father never asks him, why did you do that? And particularly if he’s a nice, good-looking child. It says he was a handsome man.