Success and failure of a Leader

© 2012 Jasper Life Publications 1st Edition in English – August, 2012 1st Edition in Portuguese – May, 2010 - 5,000 copies Success and Failure of a Leader Translated from Portuguese with permission of Editora Árvore da Vida All rights reserved by Jasper Life Publications Inc. Jasper Life Publications Inc. 725 Viscount Road London, Ontario, Canada N6J 4G9 Phone: (519) 472-6620 www.jasperlife.com

ISBN 978-1-926970-38-7 Printed in Brasil

All scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Contents Preface................................................................... 5 1 God Working in His Chosen People...................... 7 2 Faithful to the Word and Open to Fellowship.... 23 3 Wisdom and Righteousness................................. 35 4 Doing God’s Work............................................... 45 5 Important Characteristics for Leading................ 57 6 The Greatness and Glory of

Solomon’s Kingdom......................................... 69 7 Solomon’s Folly and Fall...................................... 81

3

Preface In the Old Testament, God chose Jerusalem as the only place of worship. That is where He put His temple— His dwelling place among men. The temple promoted and supported the unity of God’s people. All the tribes gathered there to celebrate as one before God. That not only pleased the Lord, but was also a strong testimony against Israel’s enemies.

In order to build the temple, God needed a proper leader to represent Him before His people; someone who kept His commandments and walked in His ways. Saul was the first king anointed to lead God’s people, but he failed and the kingship was transferred to David. David, in his turn, fought many wars and shed much blood. So, the Lord told him that he was not to build a house for His name. The one chosen to be the leader of that great nation and accomplish this important work was Solomon, one of King David’s sons (1 Chron. 22:8-9).

In this book, through the experiences of failure and success of this wise and powerful leader among God’s people, the author Dong Yu Lan shows us important principles that will certainly help us in our service to the Lord and prepare us to reign with Christ in the coming age.

5

When we apply these words to the present day, we see that God has already prepared the material—those who are saved in Christ—and the place—the church—to build His unique work. For this, God still needs suitable leaders. He needs eligible, qualified, and willing people.

We pray that the Lord may give you a full revelation of these apparent facts and of the spiritual principles that are behind them. We also pray that your heart may be open to the words of the Lord, who has the power to enlighten us and make us prosper in His way.

April, 2010 The Editors

6

Chapter 1 If we want to serve the Lord, we must allow Him to work deep within us.

7

GOD WORKING IN HIS CHOSEN PEOPLE Introduction In order to fulfill His will and establish His kingdom on earth, God needs suitable leaders who cooperate with Him in His work. However, some questions arise: Who is eligible, qualified, and willing?

In this book, we will see the experiences of success and failure of a great leader in the Old Testament—King Solomon. May we be enlightened by the Lord to recognize our weaknesses and inability to serve Him, to be encouraged to seek His wisdom and direction at all times, and to have a humble heart to successfully fulfill the commission He gave us.

In order to understand the background and events of Solomon’s kingship, learn lessons, and obtain a victorious leadership, we first need to have a general view of the Bible.

God’s eternal plan is to have a people through which He is expressed on earth. The apostle Paul called this plan His economy, a Greek word translated as dispensation in some verses. In the Old Testament, the people of God were the nation of Israel, and in the New Testament it is the church.

9

Success and Failure of a Leader

God’s New Testament economy is centered in Christ and the church which is His kingdom. It is through the church that God fulfills His eternal plan.

Man’s Fall When God created man, He placed him in the Garden of Eden and gave him access to the tree of life, which is God Himself as life. God’s desire was that man would choose to eat from the tree of life to have eternal life. But Satan damaged the man God had made for Himself, inducing him to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Gen. 2:16-17). Because of that, man began to have a sinful nature and death began to work in him. Although God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife to cover their nakedness—representing the redemption of Christ— they were eventually expelled from the Garden of Eden (3:21-24). That was man’s first fall.

The sons of Adam, Cain and Abel, wanted to serve God. Abel bred sheep, solely to present them as sacrifices unto the Lord, since at that time man was still not allowed to eat meat. Cain, in turn, cultivated the land and brought its fruit as an offering to the Lord. God was pleased with Abel’s offering but not with Cain’s offering (4:3-5). As a result, Cain killed his brother and was expelled from God’s presence. That was man’s second fall.

In Genesis chapter 6, we read about the third fall, when the sons of God—the angels who followed Satan in his rebellion—married the daughters of men because of their beauty. The result was fornication and violence. That 10

God Working in His Chosen People

situation forced God to depart from the presence of man who had become flesh. God then judged the earth with the flood, saving only Noah and his family. Succeeding generations, however, turned away from God as well.

While building the tower of Babel, man rejected God to the point of exalting his own name. That caused man to fall again (11:4) and God abandoned the created race. God had apparently been defeated, but He never gave up His plan.

Satan’s doings only provide God with a way to manifest His glory and His sovereignty over all things.

A New Beginning After man rejected God by trying to build a city and a tower to exalt his own name, God gave up fulfilling His plan through the created race. Thus, He established a new beginning through Abraham who lived in Ur of the Chaldeans—a land of idols—by calling him to Canaan (Acts 7:2-3). Abraham’s nephew Lot was with him. When they got there, they parted company for both had many possessions. Although Abraham was older, he allowed Lot to choose his portion of land first (Gen. 13:8-9). Lot chose the plain of the Jordan, a land with no mountains, and dwelt among the cities of the plain, pitching his tents near Sodom (vv. 11-12).

There is an important lesson to be learned here. We usually choose the “cities of the plain” because they are peaceful and do not require much work or special attention. However, they easily lead us to “Sodom”—a sinful place apart from God. All difficulties allowed by 11

Success and Failure of a Leader

God in our life are actually a way through which He takes care of us, for they force us to turn to Him and depend on Him. Abraham went to Canaan, a mountainous region that contained the riches of the good land (cf. Deut. 8:7-9).

God told him to look at the entire land, for He would give it to him and his offspring. If Abraham was in a plain land, his vision of such a land would have been very limited and consequently God’s portion would have been limited as well. Similarly, if we expect to know more about the unsearchable riches of Christ, we cannot be content with the plain lands that are offered to us. We need to diligently seek fellowship with the Lord, fighting against the permissiveness of our flesh. Only then will we gain more of Christ.

Here we see two important items: the land and the offspring. The land is related to the dry land which emerged on the third day of creation and allowed life to appear. It represents the resurrection of Christ that gave us life and enjoyment. Abraham’s offspring was Isaac and our true offspring is Christ (Gal. 3:16). In Genesis 13:16, God promised that Abraham’s offspring would be like the dust of the earth and the stars of heaven (15:5). The “dust of the earth” represents Abraham’s earthly offspring—the people of Israel—while the “stars of heaven” represent his heavenly offspring—the church. That which God could not obtain from the people of Israel, He will obtain from the church. Thus, the history of the people of Israel serves as an example and warning for us, for God expects to find in us a good land for Christ to obtain His enjoyment.

12

God Working in His Chosen People

Death and Resurrection Some time after entering the good land of Canaan, God tested Abraham through the famine that was in that region.

Abraham’s behavior was not approved, for he preferred to go down to Egypt in search of food instead of relying on God’s supply. God had mercy on him and brought him back to Canaan. Jacob, Abraham’s grandson, also went down to Egypt with his seventy family members in a time of famine.

They remained in Egypt for four hundred and thirty years.

There they were strengthened and multiplied greatly until they filled the land. They were about two million people (Exo. 12:40-41; cf. Num. 1:1-3, 45-47).

At that time, a new king came to power in Egypt to whom Joseph meant nothing. The king was afraid that the Israelites would join their enemies (Exo. 1:8-10), so he ordered the death of the newborn males and subjected the people to slavery (vv. 13-16). The Israelites cried out to God because of their suffering. God raised Moses to save them (2:23-25; 3:7-10), but first He worked deeply in him.

This is an important spiritual principle: when God wants to use someone, He first works in them by eliminating everything that comes out of their natural life and flesh.

The same happened to Moses since his childhood. He was born in the same period in which the newborn males were to be killed. His mother hid him for three months and then put him in a well-coated basket, leaving him adrift along the bank of a river (Exo. 2:1-3). On the one hand, Moses was delivered to death, but on the other hand, he was resurrected because God saved him through Pharaoh’s 13

Success and Failure of a Leader

daughter (vv. 5-10). He was taken to the palace where he was educated in the Egyptian science. He was apparently able to become the leader of the people of Israel, but God could not yet use him because he was so full of his natural abilities.

God took Moses to the wilderness, where all the knowledge he had obtained in Egypt was put to death. God will never use our natural abilities. He will rather provide means to put them to death so that we may be useful to Him in resurrection. In the New Testament, we constantly see references as to walking and living in the spirit. Only in our spirit, where the Spirit of God dwells, can we serve God properly.

After forty years in the wilderness, when Moses considered himself unable to answer God’s call, the very God called him to lead the people out of Egypt (Acts 7:30-34). After that, they wandered in the wilderness for forty years, during which time Moses was still being worked on by God. The Israelites murmured constantly and rebelled repeatedly, which caused God to want to exterminate them. He told Moses that from him another nation should arise to serve God. However, Moses always prostrated himself before God, interceding for the people (Exo. 32:11-13, 30-32; Num. 12:13).

On a certain occasion, Moses could not bear the people’s murmuring and expressed his flesh to the fullest, for he had not yet been completely transformed. The Lord had ordered him to speak to the rock so water could come out and quench their thirst, but instead Moses “lifted his hand and struck the rock twice with his rod” (Num. 20:3-11). God was greatly offended.

The rock had already been struck once (Exo. 17:1-7). The rock is Christ (1 Cor. 10:4) who was wounded only once on 14

God Working in His Chosen People

the cross and from whose side came out blood and water to cleanse us from our sins and regenerate us with His life. Christ cannot be wounded twice. Moses’ sin was so severe that God prevented him from entering Canaan (Num. 20:12).

This story teaches us a great lesson: if we want to serve the Lord, we must allow Him to work deep within us, exposing everything that comes from our human being and cleansing us. Thus, we will be ready to be used by Him and enter into the full enjoyment of Christ—the reality of the good land.

The Enjoyment of the Good Land Requires Struggle God, in His sovereign arrangement, provided a successor for Moses. Joshua followed Moses during forty years in the wilderness and was trained in many aspects. In a sense, as God worked in Moses, Joshua was also being perfected.

Joshua felt incapable when God instructed him to lead the people into Canaan. Then, Moses told him to be strong and courageous (Deut. 31:7). Later on, in Joshua 1:6-7, 9, 18, even God Himself and the people encouraged Joshua.

Joshua had already been trained by God in many aspects.

He learned to depend on the Lord in everything he did and to serve Him corporately, that is, together with the saints.

The Amalekites attacked the people of Israel while they were beginning their journey in the wilderness. Joshua was instructed by Moses to choose men and command them in the battle against the enemy. While Joshua fought, Moses prayed for him with his hands held up. When Moses lowered his hands due to fatigue, Joshua was defeated, but when Moses raised his hands, the young warrior started to overcome 15

Success and Failure of a Leader

again. Then, Aaron and Hur helped Moses to keep his hands raised, ensuring Joshua’s victory in the battle (Exo. 17:8-13).

Thus, Joshua learned not to depend on himself and his own strength, but to depend on the Lord. In a certain sense, that was also an experience of death and resurrection.

We can never emphasize this enough: if we desire to be used by the Lord, we must allow Him to do His work of death and resurrection in us. God wants to train us until we no longer depend on our own strength. Do not think that you are capable, that your ideas are good, and that you know something, for none of that has any value to God. What matters to God is that we trust in Him and depend on Him. Joshua was enabled to lead the people of Israel in the conquering of Canaan because he lived that way.

The conquering of the land demanded much fighting.

The same thing applies to us today. If we desire to conquer a greater share in the enjoyment of Christ, we must struggle and strive. The Lord Jesus said, “ And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force” (Matt. 11:12). It is not possible to simply follow others for a more profound and rich enjoyment of Christ; it is necessary to personally seek Him. On the one hand, the people of Israel had to fight, but on the other hand, God is the one who gave them the victory. Through the spoils, God supplied them with weapons, clothes, and food. By conquering the cities, they enjoyed things which they did not plant or store and dwelt in houses which they did not build (Deut. 6:10-11). That is the spontaneous result achieved by those who strive to conquer the good land!

16

God Working in His Chosen People

Preparations for Choosing the King The book of Joshua is glorious. It shows us the conquering of the good land of Canaan victory by victory, the division of the land, the mutual cooperation between the tribes, and in the end, the people’s covenant to serve the Lord. But after the death of Joshua and his generation, “another generation arose after them who did not know the Lord nor the work which He had done for Israel” (Judg. 2:10). What would have caused that? How can we explain such a remarkable difference between two subsequent generations? The Bible does not state this clearly, but we believe that because they conquered much of the land and each tribe had a portion, they relaxed and rested from their effort to conquer the land, to the point of forgetting the Lord.

God allowed the enemies to come and oppress Israel.

When that happened, they called on God, who raised men to free them—the judges. But right after being freed, the people again turned away from God. “In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (17:6). Thus, God’s authority was not recognized and the people were not submissive to Him. The priesthood also deteriorated so that the Levites were hired to serve people and idols. In short, God did not have an expression on earth and for His government to be established, He had to choose a king.

God prepared everything in detail as recorded in the book of Ruth and in the beginning of 1 Samuel. There was famine once more in the land and Elimelek took his family to Moab, where his sons married Moabite women.

17

Success and Failure of a Leader

Naomi, Elimelek’s widow, returned to Judah accompanied

by Ruth, her daughter in law, after the death of her sons.

Through that, she recovered the enjoyment of the land, but the descendant had yet to come so God’s plan could be fulfilled. In Judah, Boaz married Ruth and bore Obed, David’s grandfather (Ruth 4:13-22).

God continued the preparation for choosing the king.

Through Hannah’s prayer, Samuel was born and consecrated to God for all his life (1 Sam. 1-2). Through Samuel, the priesthood was restored and God again had a prophet, a channel to speak to His people. Samuel was positively influenced by his family: his mother was a woman of prayer, who poured out her soul before God, and his father Elkanah was a Levite who went up to Shiloh to worship the Lord every year according to the law. All of this was used by God to eventually establish His government among men.

Choosing the King Hannah’s prayers, recorded in the first two chapters of 1 Samuel, can help us very practically in our fellowship with the Lord. Hannah was constantly pouring out her soul before God, for she had no children. That was her personal need; but after praying over and over again, her petition touched God’s need. She conceived and bore a son called Samuel. Hannah had consecrated her son’s life to the Lord even before he was born, so when he was weaned, she left him in the temple under the care of the high priest, Eli. On that occasion, Hannah prayed again to the Lord.

She was so thankful to God, not because He gave her a 18

God Working in His Chosen People

son, but because of His salvation (1 Sam. 2:1). In addition, she prophetically spoke of the Lord’s anointed king who was yet to come (v. 10). We must learn from Hannah. We must pray unceasingly even if in the beginning our prayers are only aimed at our own personal needs. If we persevere in prayer, we will touch God’s needs, for we will pray according to His will.

God gave Samuel to Hannah as an answer to her prayers.

When he was about five years old, he was taken to the temple to serve the Lord. Some years later, God spoke to him, confirming him as a prophet. Moreover, Samuel became a priest and a judge. He was truly a man of God! God also used him to anoint the young David as king of Israel.

David had had experiences with the Lord since his childhood. While shepherding his father’s flock, he trusted the Lord to defend the sheep from the attack of wild animals (17:34-37). Also, because he trusted the Lord, he presented himself to fight against the Philistine, Goliath. Another commendable feature of David was his profound respect for God’s anointed one, Saul. Though he had been anointed king and unfairly persecuted by Saul, David never raised a hand against him, but preferred to escape.

When we read the second book of Samuel, we have the impression that there is another David, for we see so many records of sins and failures. David, however, would not hide nor justify his mistakes. He was always ready to repent, as in the case of his adultery with Bathsheba (2 Sam. 12). When enlightened by the Lord through the prophet Nathan, David repented immediately, genuinely and thoroughly as we see in Psalms 51.

19

Success and Failure of a Leader

In 2 Samuel chapter 24, David numbered all the fighting men in his kingdom, perhaps motivated by the greatness of his achievements. Upon realizing that he had sinned, he promptly repented (v. 10). Thus, in order to stop the plague sent by God as punishment upon the people, David offered sacrifices to Him on the threshing floor of Araunah (v. 25), where the temple was later built. Thus, God gained David and the land for His purpose.

God needs man’s cooperation to fulfill His purpose, so He works in man and enlightens him that he may repent from his sins. Our repentance must be genuine and thorough so that God may continue His work.

Kings and Overcomers Everything we discussed so far shows us the background to the books of Kings. In these books, we see that God continues working with the purpose of fulfilling His economy through His chosen people. Everything that is recorded in these books serves as an example for us (cf. 1 Cor. 10:11).

God needs capable people and land for the building up of the church. The land refers to Christ and our enjoyment of Him. In order to be people capable of cooperating with God, we must allow Him to work in us, conforming us to the image of His Son (Rom. 8:29).

The most important fact in the book of 1 Kings is the building of the Lord’s temple which was the centre of the kingdom of Israel. When David manifested his intention to build the temple for the Lord in 2 Samuel 7, the Lord told him that his descendant would do so. On the one hand, the 20

God Working in His Chosen People

descendant refers to Solomon, but the true descendant is Christ, as we see in Galatians 3:16. The temple represents the church and Christ said that He Himself would build His church (Matt. 16:18). We must praise the Lord, for today He is building up His church through us!

The books of Kings record many negative facts, terrible sins, and unpleasant things in the eyes of God. The worst sin recorded there is division. The twelve tribes were divided into two kingdoms: the kingdom of Israel in the north and the kingdom of Judah in the south. The kingdom of Israel sinned greatly by establishing other places of worship to prevent the people from worshipping in Jerusalem, the place chosen by God. As a result, the kingdom of Israel was completely destroyed. But God preserved the line of David’s descendants—the kingdom of Judah—from which Christ came.

In Matthew 1, we see the genealogy of Christ. It does not mention anyone or any king from the kingdom of Israel, the northern kingdom. But even when the kingdom of Judah was taken captive to Babylon, God preserved His people there. Christ is the descendant of those who returned from captivity.

Through the accounts of the books of Kings, God is training us with the purpose of making us kings. His desire is to prepare us for the millennial kingdom, when the overcomers will reign with Christ. God waits patiently for us to allow His Spirit to work in us by exposing us, purifying our being, and eliminating our flesh to make us overcomers.

21