Broken Vessels: Kings, Part I

Welcome! Today we continue our series called Broken Vessels, in which we have been learning by example how God uses people, fallible, broken people, to fulfill His good purposes. I want to start with a picture – the picture above. What is wrong with this picture? Take your time looking at it. We will come back to it.

Now, I want to talk about an incident late in Solomon’s life that sets the stage for the next 400 years or so. Fred has taught on Solomon the last few weeks, and we saw how Solomon, when he became old, allowed some of his many wives to turn his heart away from the Lord and towards the false gods that his wives followed, including Ashtoreth, Molech, and Chemosh. He actually built altars on high places and sacrificed offerings to these false gods. This brings us to I Kings 11:9

Broken Vessels: Solomon, Part II

David pretends to capture the city of Rabbah that has already been captured:

Now Joab fought against Rabbah of the sons of Ammon and captured the royal city. Joab sent messengers to David and said, “I have fought against Rabbah, I have even captured the city of waters. “Now therefore, gather the rest of the people together and camp against the city and capture it, or I will capture the city myself and it will be named after me.” So David gathered all the people and went to Rabbah, fought against it and captured it. Then he took the crown of their king from his head; and its weight was a talent of gold, and in it was a precious stone; and it was placed on David’s head. And he brought out the spoil of the city in great amounts. He also brought out the people who were in it, and set them under saws, sharp iron instruments, and iron axes, and made them pass through the brick kiln. And thus he did to all the cities of the sons of Ammon. Then David and all the people returned to Jerusalem.--II Samuel 12:26-31

Broken Vessels: Solomon, Part I

Solomon’s mother, Bathsheba

 
Bathsheba did not get her name from her habit of taking baths.  Her name Bathsheba means “the daughter of an oath”.  Her father’s name was Eliam meaning “people of God”.  Her grandfather’s name was Ahithophel the Gilonite. It is believed that this is the same Ahithophel the Gilonite from the city of Giloh mentioned in II Samuel 15:12. Giloh was one of the cities allotted to the tribe of Judah by Joshua in Joshua 15:51.  For this reason, I believe that she was from the tribe of Judah.

We have no record of how she met and married Uriah the Hittite.  We don’t know that she even knew of David’s scheme to have her husband murdered by the Ammonites.  Furthermore, we have no evidence that would suggest that the Lord would not have worked things out righteously to have David eventually marry this Bathsheba or have some other woman bear David a son that would have resulted in the line of David that would eventually lead to the birth of Jesus Christ so that he could be called son of David. We do know that Jacob (who was later named Israel) prophesied when he blessed Judah before he died saying, “the scepter shall not depart from Judah nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet until Shiloh comes.”