Father, as we study about your Word today, I pray that you would help us just to get excited. Lord, that all of your Scriptures, you breathe into it, and we can glean from every page. Lord, thus far, some pages were more intimidating and daunting and hard to understand than others, but I do pray that you would give us a desire to feed off your Word.

Help us to retain everything, and we pray that you would help us to just enjoy our time together this morning. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. So if you guys missed last week, I shared that the goal of the Old Testament survey is not to teach you the Old Testament.

It's not to lecture, it's not to give you information, but it's to cause you to want to learn, right? So my job is not to teach you, but rather to make the Old Testament friendly enough where you're going to want to learn. In a sense, I'm trying to defang this Old Testament for you.

And hopefully, like, did you guys hear my voice throughout the week? Yeah? Yeah, you saw my jolly face, like, in your head, right? That's good stuff, okay? Let's do, like, the OT memory key number one. What was it? Anybody remember? 3927, what are those? That's going to be important in the book of Isaiah also, so it's good to remember three times nine equals 27.

That one hopefully you don't struggle with. Big broad timeline of the Old Testament, 2,000, 1,500, 1,500, 500, 1,500. What do we remember? I am Dr. Jesus, A-M-D-R, Jesus. Abraham, Moses, David, Terence, Jesus. So what are the Old Testament books or how many? 39. What are the categories? Five books which are?

Pentateuch, 5, 12, 5, 5, 12, 5, 12, 5, 5, 12. What's the 12? History. Poetry, major prophets, minor prophets. What was Genesis about? Big endings. How about Exodus? Exit from Egypt, Leviticus, left foot kiss. Feasts and offerings, numbers. What are they doing? Wilderness wanderings. They were written to the first generation, okay, of, and it's kind of a description of what happened.

Deuteronomy, what is it about? Yeah, do it run on me, a law to the second generation. So from numbers perspective, people are in the wilderness because they sin. Deuteronomy perspective, why are they in the wilderness? Because God put them in there. Is that a contradiction? No. It's just a little hard to understand, but that's right there, okay?

Joshua, conquering general, okay? Cycles, there's a judge on a cycle, okay? Ruth, love story in the time of the judges. Joshua is 21 chapters, or 24 chapters, 10 years. Judges is this story again and again, 21 chapters, but 400 years. MTJK, Moses is at 1500, tribes, judges, and 1000 is kings, right?

You guys remember that. What are the five R's in the cycle? Rest, relapse, ruin, repentance, restoration, rest, relapse, ruin, repentance, restoration, rest. So you see this cycle, and technically the book of judges may not have ended in some sense. We're still in that cycle, right? What was the half Bible cheer that will help you remember 51% of the whole Bible?

King, king split, A, B, C, D, Medo, Persians, return, and Greeks. David, Solomon, split, Assyria, Babylon, captivity, destruction, Medo-Persians, let them go, return one, return two, return three, and then Greeks at 333. Very good. And what was that fake king that I made up that will help you remember kings one, six, 11, and 16?

Reho, Rehojo, right? And you don't need to necessarily remember who they were. I didn't give you that, but it helps. Jeheboam, Ahaziah, Jotham, Jojo, Josiah, all right? So we're gonna do a little quick review visually. There's Abraham, Moses, David returns, and then Jesus, Mount JK, which is Moses, tribes, judges, and kings.

And if you guys remember, the five Rs happen in this period. And so basically half of the Old Testament now you've covered. We've covered that in one week. Most of the Old Testament is the king, king split, okay? So we're gonna talk mostly about that today. But first things first, I wanna show you a map.

Our Xerox machine has to have a cleaning, so the copies came out a little bit funky. So I apologize for that. But this is a map of Israel in the time of around Joshua, okay? So you don't need to know who got what, but a couple things that you need to understand, okay?

There were 12 tribal territories, okay? Is that an easy number to remember? 12 tribal territories, it's like states, okay? 12 states, of the 12, 10 are of the sons of Judah, or Jacob, sorry, sons of Jacob. And you don't need to remember all of their names. But one of them is a half tribe, Manasseh from the son of Joseph, and Ephraim, son of Joseph.

So Manasseh and Ephraim are Jacob's grandsons, but they get an extra portion of land because who's their daddy? Their dad's the one responsible for all the provision in Egypt, right? So you have 10 sons of Jacob, and then Manasseh and Ephraim, okay? So technically you have 11 sons of Jacob represented.

Who doesn't get a land? The Levites don't get a land. But in some sense, though they don't have a land, they are the richest tribe, okay? So they got 48 cities all throughout Israel. So on average, per tribal state, how many cities do the Levites dwell in? About four.

And there are six cities of refuge. So if you accidentally kill somebody and you need to come under the protection of the Levites, they were six, okay? So they were three on one side of the Jordan River, three on the other. And wherever you were, if you needed refuge for your accidental sin, you could get that.

So you have six cities of refuge, three on the east of the Jordan, three on the west. All right. This one, you have to actually do a little bit of mental gymnastics, all right? Here we go. How many tribal territories were there? Don't look at your paper. 12. How many of them were sons of Joseph?

Sons of Jacob? 10. And then there was a half tribe. What were they called? Manasseh, and a half tribe of? Ephraim. Who had no land? How many sons of Jacob got land? 10. Or 11. But one of them became half tribes. And what are the half tribes of Joseph called?

Manasseh, Ephraim. What tribe got no land? Levites. How many cities, though, did the Levites occupy? 48. That was not their land. They had dwelt in the land of one of the other tribes, but they were there as priests, right? And how many cities all throughout Israel were there cities of refuge?

Six. Three on one side of the river, three on the other. Okay? So I'm going to come up with a seventh key, and this one is just to help you remember the geography, okay? So the first key that you remember for the bodies of water is this phrase. Gals, Jordan is dead.

Okay? Gals, Jordan's dead. Now why do I say that? The topmost body of water that you see there, okay, or the big body of water is the Sea of Galilee, okay? And what's running straight down the middle? Jordan River. And what's at the bottom? Dead Sea. Okay? So if you think of Israel and there's bodies of water right in the middle, how many cities on the west for the refuge?

Three. How many cities on the east? Three. Sea of Galilee, Jordan, dead sea. Okay? So just remember this. The land is divided, half of this place is fertile, half of this place is fertile, because they're all surrounded by water. Galilee, Jordan, dead sea. So he's sad about this. All right?

But whodunit? Dun, dun, dun. Here I am, me, Phil. Is how you remember the territories around Israel. Okay? These guys are all throughout the Old Testament. So HI, if you look at your map, it's the Hittites. The AR is the, who are they? Aramaeans. Ammonites. Okay? So you have here I am, so Phil Jackson became a little bit like Scottish or Irish, whichever way my accent lands.

Okay? Here I am. The next one, me. Who's M? Moabites. E, Edomites. And who's the biggest pain in the butt for all the Israelites throughout a lot of their history? The Philistines. So gals, Jordan is dead. See a Galilee. Jordan River. Dead sea. Whodunit? Here I am, me, Phil.

Okay? Hittites. Aramaeans. Ammonites. Here. Me, Moabites. Edomites. Philistines. Do you guys think you can kind of remember who's where? Yeah? So geography, Israelite geography, what's down the middle? What three bodies of water? Galilee, Jordan, dead sea. Then going clockwise, you have the Hittites. Here are Aramaeans. Am, Ammonites. Hittites.

Moabites. Edomites. Philistines. Okay? If you guys actually had to study for this, you probably would ace this test. It's not hard for the geography. Got it? These guys are constantly harassments and nuisances to the country of Israel. Okay? Hopefully so far you guys are still with me. Any questions?

Easy enough to remember? Okay. So we have our first book that we're gonna cover today. You have one sand mule. Right? There's only one mule that is made out of sand. One sand mule. And what does this dude have in his hand? He has a saw. Right? So this whole book is mostly concentrated on King Saul.

Okay? But before you get Saul, you have Samuel. And you don't want to kind of neglect this story because one thing is you guys who's Hannah? Anybody know? Samuel's mom. And what is her biggest complaint to the Lord for most of her marriage? She's not having a baby. So she goes to the temple and she's praying.

There's no temple. She goes to, I guess it's like a gathering and she's praying. And she's praying for a baby and she promises God, "If you give me a baby, I will devote him to your service." And then she has other kids after that. But you don't know actually how Hannah dies.

Right? She just disappears. But I wonder if Hannah was able to see her son anoint the very first king of Israel. Wouldn't that be so cool if we got an extra insight into scripture? So every little story and detail in scripture is not wasted. But Hannah prays to the Lord and then you get a prophet in Samuel.

He anoints the first king of Israel. What's his name? Saul. And remember how many years did he reign? Around 40. 40, 40, 40. Right? So just remember first Samuel, one Samuel. What's it about? Saul. Okay? One Samuel. Saul. Okay? What was the northern most major body of water in Israel?

Galilee. What's the river? Jordan. And what's at the bottom? Dead Sea. Who are the nations surrounding them? Hittites, Arameans, Ammonites, Moabites, Edomites, Philistines against the ocean. Okay? What's Saul about? What's first Samuel about? Saul. All right, here we go. There are two Samuels in this picture. Okay? And there are two Samuels and in front of these two Samuels, there's a guy who is wholehearted, who has a sling, who has a harp.

Okay? Who's second Samuel all about? David. What's one Samuel about? Saul. Two Samuels about? David. Okay? So, remember this picture, because it's going to come up again. This is a king with a whole heart before the Lord. He's got a sling. He's got a harp. Now, this is one king.

All right? First kings, one king. What's his heart like? It's half. Okay? He is not wholehearted like the first guy. Okay? This is about a half-hearted Solomon, and what caused his heart to be halved? The women behind him. How many... Do you know... Anybody know how many wives he had?

700. How many concubines? 300. And they were from all different cultures, all different nations. So he amassed an army of wives, and they turned his heart away, it says in first Kings 11. He also has wealth, but that wealth, it's a little bit split, because he has so much of it.

And he has a mic there. So you can also think of him doing songs. He did 1,005 songs, 3,000 poems and wise sayings. Okay? What is 1 Samuel about? Saul. 2 Samuel. David. One king, first kings, is about Solomon. Okay? So king, king, king. And then we kind of have those three books now covered.

All right? So how many cities did the Levites get? 48. Okay? And how many sons of Jacob got land? 11, but one of them was half. Manasseh, Ephraim. The Levites got no land, but they got 48 cities. How many cities of refuge were there? Six. Three on one side of the Jordan, and then three on the other side of the Jordan.

Where's the Jordan? It's running between the Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea. Moses, tribes, judges, kings. All right? So we did the judges already. Now we're starting kings. Who was the first king of Israel? The human king, the human choice? Saul. What book of the Bible is about Saul?

1 Samuel. Okay? Now how about the king after him is David. What book is all about David? 2 Samuel. Okay? What's his heart like? Whole or half? His son, Solomon. What book of the Bible basically just talks all about Solomon? First Kings. And in that picture, you have the women, the money, and the mic.

Okay? All of them were 40 years. Saul, 40. David, 40. Solomon, 40. Saul's technically 42, but just kind of... It's easy to remember, 40, 40, 40. And what year was David king? 1010. You guys following me? Okay, so it's easy to track. So we're gonna talk about these three kings for a little bit because they are important.

They have whole books devoted to them. Okay? The first key that you wanna remember is bad Saul. Okay? Saul is bad. If you guys are more Netflix savvy, Breaking Bad, and there's a guy named Saul, just think bad Saul. All right? What do you need to remember about Saul?

First of all, he's a Benjaminite. That's not a good thing because the book of Judges, the worst tribe ever to be because they... Of all the people that went into relapse, they went the worst. All right? Do you wanna know why? You look it up. Okay? They were the worst.

So all of this history, Benjamin was the worst, but they got the first king. So he's a Benjaminite. Okay? The second one, his hallmark was arrogance. He didn't start out arrogant, but he became so full of himself, he started making statues in his own image. Right? This guy who hid when Samuel came up to him and says, "You're gonna lead the nation." He's gonna be, "Who am I?

I am from the tribe of Benjamin. I am even from the least of the families of Benjamin. How can I lead my people?" But he's like huge. He's like a head taller than everybody, and he's hiding behind these crates. Okay? But he's arrogant. He didn't necessarily start out that way, and he was disqualified because of his disobedience.

How do you remember Saul? Bad. B. Benjaminite. A. Arrogance. D. Disobedience. What's at the top of the map? What ocean? What body of water? Sea of Galilee. What's running down? Jordan. What's in the middle? Jordan's in the middle. What's at the bottom? The Dead Sea. What's surrounding them? Hi.

Hittites. Ar. Arum. Am. Ammonite. M. Me. And then? And Philistines are bordering what? The Mediterranean Sea. Okay? What's the book of 1 Samuel about? Saul. What's the book of 2 Samuel about? What's the book of 1 Kings about? Solomon. Easy enough. What do you need to remember about Saul?

Bad. Benjaminite? Arrogance. Disobedience. And just do the math. If David's 1010, when was Saul king? 1052, okay? To 1010. And he was disqualified. Here it says, "But now your kingdom shall not endure. The Lord has sought out for himself a man after his own heart, and the Lord has appointed him as a ruler over his people, because you have not kept what the Lord has commanded you." And then he goes on to say, "To obey is better than sacrifice.

To heed better than the fat of lambs." So Saul's disqualified. So even though he's Israel's first king, God's first choice is not Saul. That's why the King-King split starts with who? David. And what year? 1010, okay? So what book is all about David? 2 Samuel. There's another one, but we'll get to that.

How do you remember David? Made in America David. So just think of Saul. What do you remember him by? Bad. How about David? Made in America David. First of all, he united the 12 tribes. For those 400 years, guess what the tribes were? Little countries. All of them had just religious cities.

They had culture, but they had affiliations mostly toward their ancestors. They were all different tribes. Judges came from all different kinds of tribes. David was the first one to just unite them all. This is like the United States of David. The UTD, United Tribes of David. So what did he do?

You united. And what's the next one? He established Jerusalem as the capital and the center of worship to Yahweh. He established Jerusalem. Where did the people worship before? Wherever the Levites gathered. But now there was a city where people can get together and that could be the capital of the United Tribes of David and where they could offer worship to God.

And David says, "I want to build a temple." But does God say yes or no? He says, "No, thank you very much because you are a man of blood." So what was David? David, all the tribes, for the first time, established where? Jerusalem. See, it's better than UEA, right?

USA. Here we go. And then the last one, he assembled masses of armies. It's interesting. He loved the Lord so fiercely. His family members called him arrogant, but God calls him humble. But his passion and love for the Lord inspired everybody. So everybody from every tribe flocked to fight for him.

And if you look at 2 Samuel 23, you have this list of mighty, mighty, mighty men and soldiers. There's one guy named Joseph Basheboth from Tachman. This guy killed 800 soldiers by himself in one battle with one spear. That's like a crazy, that's crazy skill. Right? 800. And there's a list of all of the soldiers that fought for David.

They even risked his life when David was like, "Man, I'm stinking thirsty." His mighty men go out into enemy territory, risk their lives to get him a cup of water. Does he drink it? No, he spills it out. He's like, "Ah." But you know one of those mighty men, he slept with his wife.

If you actually look at the list of mighty men, at the bottom it says Uriah the Hittite. See, if you actually know what to look for in the Bible, it's a lot of fun. There's so much drama. There is a lot of dirty people. Okay? So Saul, Benjamin, arrogance, disobedience.

It's interesting that the tribe of Benjamin actually is good in the New Testament because they're the only other tribe that can trace their lineage. That's why in Philippians 3 when Paul says, "I am from the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews," later Benjamin becomes good. Okay? But for Saul's purposes, Benjaminite, arrogance, disobedience.

How about David? USA, right? He united the 12 tribes. He established Jerusalem as the capital of worship. And then, armies. Saul had problems raising fighters, but he was such a big guy, he had no problem fighting by himself. But David had major armies from every tribe. They loved him.

And that's one of the reasons Saul hated him. Okay? So, you guys, so what book is about Saul? First Samuel. What book is about David? Well, and there's another book, but second Samuel. What's at the top of a body of water? Galilee, Jordan, Dead Sea, Hittites, Aramaeans, Ammonites, Moabites, Edomites, Philistines.

The Hittites actually later become the Phoenicians, all right? So just think Phil Jackson, Phoenix Suns, but the Hittites disappear and they become the Phoenicians. That's the only major change. Okay? How many tribes have land? Twelve, but one of them is a half-tribe of Joseph, or half-tribe of Manasseh, half-tribe of Edom.

How many cities do the Levites get? 48, all over Israel. But how many of the 48 cities are cities of refuge? Six. Three on this side of what river? Jordan. Jordan, what side of this river? Jordan. You got to pay attention to what I mean, all right? That's Pastor Peter Kim's favorite quote.

Saul, bad. Benjamin, arrogance, disobedience. David united the tribes, established Jerusalem, and assembled armies. Solomon is the next king that we're going to be looking at. Okay? I couldn't think of a clever thing. So just think of Temple City Proverbs teacher. I teach the Proverbs on Sunday morning to BAM people, okay?

And I went to Temple City High School, okay? So that's me, all right? So think Temple City Proverbs teacher, and the reason I put Proverbs in there, I was thinking of how to figure out like Peter, Temple City Peter Thung. So I couldn't figure it out, but then I was like, okay, Proverbs will help.

Because who wrote the Proverbs? Most of the Proverbs, what king? Solomon. So think Temple City Proverbs teacher, and you can remember Solomon. And I will be further etched into your memory for the rest of your life. Good luck with that, okay? The first thing Solomon should be noted for is he was the one who built the temple of God.

The original one, the main one, okay? King Solomon's temple. He brought in all kinds of culture. He had all kinds of literature, all kinds of foods, because guess what other cultures brought to him? Fruits, okay? And like literature, education. So it actually says in 1 Kings, he knew everything about like fish, birds, animals, flowers, plants.

This man was literally a know-it-all, okay? And he was brought, there were things brought to him. I'm assuming he even had a zoo. I mean, he has 12,000 horses, but I'm assuming he even has a zoo, okay? Because you get rare exotic animals, you start collecting them, all right?

So Solomon, he built a temple, he had culture, the TC. What's TC stand for? What city does it stand for? Temple City, that's where my high school was. He is the only king where there was zero war. Who took care of all the war? His daddy. His daddy basically wiped out all enemies, so Solomon's living large.

Okay, how many years? 40 years. So he had peace. But guess what? All of his sons were doofuses, because when they're in like a time of peace, they're not really like trained through hardship. So his sons, so Solomon was a wise man, but a bad father, okay? So there was peace.

There was 40 years of peace. And for the first time in human history, there's an organized taxation system. Boo. Okay? But Solomon's responsible for this. He has 12 tribes. Who united them? His daddy, okay? But now all of these 12 tribes who are loyal to daddy have all kinds of goods and resources and money.

As a unified country, we should start collecting little bits from everybody so that we can be used to protect and take care of them. Solomon in his wisdom started an organized government. You guys follow me? But who set that all up? David, his dad, because he united the 12 tribes, established where?

Jerusalem as a center of worship, and he assembled massive armies. They all fought. One guy had a spear. He killed 800 people by himself. So Solomon had 40 years of peace. So he had the ability to build a temple undistracted. He had the ability to just have time to study cultures.

And he had the know-it-all or the know-how to just collect taxes. So far so good? We're going to do a little review, okay? Oh, before we do that, this is Rehoboam versus Jeroboam, the first kings of both north and south. They have a conversation. And Jeroboam, who used to be Solomon's servant, says this.

Your father made our yoke hard. Now therefore, lighten the hard service of your father and his heavy yoke, which he put on us. And what is a heavy yoke? All the taxes. So Solomon taxes people heavily. And we will serve you. But Rehoboam, instead of trusting his father's advisors, he trusts his buddies, his posse.

And they go, you need to establish yourself as a stronger king. If Solomon made a heavy yoke, you make yours heavier. And he did that in that class of war. So there's all kinds of people drama. Here we go. Let's review. So find a partner and review these things together.

The blacks, what we covered before, the red ones are the ones we just covered in the last few minutes. So review with your partner for about three, four minutes. Find a partner and then go ahead and take some time.