Can We See the Gospel in 1 Kings?

To some, the book of 1 Kings might sound boring. But what we have in these pages is the stuff that best-selling Netflix series are made of. There is betrayal, murder, wickedness, and all the action-packed narrative you could want. But there are also seeds of rebellion. It’s filled with compelling stories — like a prophet influencing the weather, calling down fire from heaven, and raising a child from the dead. Or the rise and fall of one of the most successful kings Israel ever had — at least, successful in the world’s eyes. 

But ultimately, just as with every page of your Old Testament, this story points to the coming King Jesus. 

How Do You Find the Gospel in the Old Testament? 

I suppose before understanding how to find the gospel in the OT, it’d be helpful for us to define the gospel. The simplest definition is one given by JI Packer: God saves sinners. If you’d like to put a bit more meat on your gospel presentation, I use two different frameworks with four points each. The first is God—Man—Christ—Response. The second is more of a story: Creation—Fall—Redemption—Glory. 

The first presentation centers upon God’s character and how humanity fails to meet God’s holy standard, as such the judgment of God is upon us. But the good news is that Jesus Christ fixes this by fulfilling what is required through his life, death and resurrection. Our only fitting response, then, is to respond to Him in repentance and faith. When this happens, we are united to Christ and his record becomes our record. 

The second presentation centers upon the overarching story of the Bible. God lovingly created us to love Him and enjoy Him forever. We were made for rest, rule, and relationship. But we made shipwreck of this, and so rather than having the blessings of obedience we are under the curse of disobedience. Rather than having peace (rest), purpose (ruling), and healthy relationship we often experience the opposite. Ultimately, we are alienated from God. But thankfully God sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to bear our curse and to fulfill what God intended for humanity. As such we now experience the blessings of Jesus’ obedience in our place. He restores the rest, rule, and relationship we were created to enjoy. Someday everything will be ultimately restored and we will live in a new heaven and a new earth. 

We could write entire books focusing on these various themes of the gospel. But every gospel story follows this basic skeleton. No matter where you find yourself in the Old Testament (or the New Testament) you can find one of these various threads. Every place in Scripture is either telling you something about God, something about our rebellion, something about His rescue, or something about our future restoration. If you can spot this, then you can fill out the rest of the story. 

How Do We Find the Gospel in 1 Kings? 

1 Kings is really one book that is part of a larger story. Originally 1 Kings and 2 Kings was one unified book. And these were set within a larger story known as The Former Prophets (Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings). It is a story of God making big promises to his people and then fulfilling those promises. A key verse is 1 Kings 8:56 when Solomon declared: 

“Blessed be the Lord who has given rest to his people Israel, according to all that he promised. Not one word has failed of all his good promise, which he spoke by Moses his servant.”

One of the major themes of the book, then, is that God keeps His promises. But there is another thread which runs through this story — that of human failure. 2 Kings (the final part of the story) ends with the people taken off into Babylonian exile. 1 Kings will show how Israel/Judah got to its deplorable state. 

In some ways the story in 1 Kings (especially if we finish it up with 2 Kings) is the story of the Garden of Eden 2.0. It starts with God blessing humanity and putting them into a beautiful place. For Adam and Eve, it’s the Garden of Eden. For those in 1 Kings it is the Promised Land — and its climax is Solomon’s building of the temple. 

Sadly, just as with our first couple, we see rebellion happen in 1 Kings. Solomon does not follow in the footsteps of David. By 1 Kings 11 he is just as bad as Pharaoh. He is the opposite of what King David called him to be. The kingdom divides and further spirals into rebellion. As a result of this rebellion, and just as we see in Genesis 3, the word of God comes to the sinful people. This time it comes through the form of the prophets, Elijah (and later Elisha). Will they turn back to God in repentance? 

In Genesis 3 humanity hid, lied, and tried to pass blame rather than own up to their rebellion. As a result of this treachery, and in order to keep them from taking of the tree of life and forever remaining in this state, God booted them out of the Garden. The same thing happens in the story of Israel/Judah — they get booted out of the land. 

Both the story of Adam and Eve and the story of 1 Kings leaves us longing for a deliverer. The failure of kings causes us to long for King Jesus. And the prophets running alongside of the failure of the kings gives us a little foretaste into what the kingdom of God is actually like. 

Just as with so many other books of the Old Testament, we have in 1 Kings a picture of God’s blessing — man’s rebellion — God’s remedy — and a longing to set things right. 

Where Is the Gospel in Jeroboam’s Golden Calves?

There are a few places in 1 Kings where drawing a line to Jesus might be relatively simple. It’s not hard to make connections between Solomon, his temple, and the Lord Jesus. It’s also pretty clear to see Elijah as a type of Christ. But what do we do with some of the more obscure passages? How would you proclaim Christ from the story of Jeroboam and his golden calves in 1 Kings 12:25-33? 

First, we want to place this story in its immediate context. The Northern tribes of Israel have just broken off from the Southern tribes. But that posed a problem; the temple was in the South. How could the people worship? The people would turn back to the house of David if he didn’t have a rival temple. So he built one. 

Here we see that what Jeroboam is doing is attempting to mirror the kingdom of God. He likes certain aspects of God’s kingdom, or at least he believes the people he is ruling will want to have some of the blessings. Jeroboam wanted to keep power for himself and so he used religion as a means to do it. Even though God had promised Jeroboam that he was giving him a kingdom, he was still deathly afraid of losing it. He couldn’t trust God at his word, so took matters into his own hands. 

He gave the people something that looked like the real thing. And just as in Exodus 32 it involved golden calves. “Behold your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt,” he foolishly declared – as if the living God is One we can craft with our own hands. This is what humanity always does though. When we abandon God, when we reject His provision, we will always craft gods for ourselves. 

We might look at this story and shake our heads. If we remember the story of Exodus 32, we’ll certainly be baffled by the stupidity of Jeroboam. How can this end well? But the story of Jeroboam is really our story. We see in Romans 3 that this is the way of all humanity — we worship and serve the creation (the stuff we make with our own hands) instead of the Creator. And as such we all fall short of the glory of God. 

Our only hope then is a Rescuer. Apart from Jesus Christ we will keep crafting our own idols. It is only when we turn to Jesus Christ that our foolish idolatry is broken — for then we see the Lord as He really is. Then, we have a true object for our worship. And so, this story is just a reminder of the propensity of our hearts toward idolatry. 

Only Christ broke the cycle. One of the temptations of Christ was to take the path of Jeroboam. “You’re hungry, turn this stone into bread,” said the tempter. It’s the same thing that was set over Jeroboam. “You don’t have a temple, build your own.” But where Jeroboam failed, Jesus succeeded. He would only receive the kingdom that His Father delivered. And because of this Jesus has a perfect record. And because of this, our only hope is in Christ to deliver to us the kingdom!

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