This Reading Mama

Ep 15: Israel's United Kingdom Bible Reading Plan

• Becky • Episode 15

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Welcome back This Reading Mama’s podcast!

Today, we're sharing our next printable Bible reading plan, which covers Israel's united kingdom from Saul to Solomon. We are walking you through more of the history of Israel as it is found in 1st & 2nd Samuel, 1st & 2nd Kings, and 1st & 2nd Chronicles.

We're picking up where we left off in Episode 10 in the storyline of the Bible. If you're new to our podcast, it may be helpful to listen to the previous episodes where we go through the storyline of the Bible. You can click on any of the links below to watch or listen.


In this episode, we cover these parts of the storyline of the Bible:

  • Hannah's prayer and dedication of Samuel
  • Samuel's call from God
  • The ark of the covenant being used as a "good luck" charm by Israel
  • Saul is anointed as king
  • Saul is rejected as king because of his disobedience and unrepentant heart
  • Saul hates David
  • David anointed as king
  • Saul's death
  • David as king of Israel
  • Absalom
  • David making preparations for the temple
  • Solomon as the next king of Israel

As a quick reminder, this  printable Bible reading plan is available to download if you are a Podcast+ Member. You can join our Podcast+ Membership or login to your membership to download the transcript, guided notes, and study tools from each episode!

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Snag a copy of Becky's newest Bible study, The Sacrifice of our Savior. It's a 4-week Easter study of Jesus in the Old Testament. Get the PDF here or get the hardcopy on Amazon.

Let's Connect!


SPEAKER_01

Welcome back to this Reading Mamas Podcast. I'm Becky.

SPEAKER_00

I'm Amy. Thanks for coming back. We'll start this episode just reminding you all that we have extra resources and tools to help you not only engage with the podcast, but also for teaching material if you're guiding a Bible study or children's class Sunday school. You can access them via the Podcast Plus membership. You have the Bible study plans, which one of them we'll be reviewing today, the new one for the month of April. And if you have any questions about any of the resources or what we cover on the podcast, reach out to Becky at thisreadingmama.com.

SPEAKER_01

And I want to say something. Sometimes people will say to me, they just don't remember the Bible. Like they read it and they just don't retain it. But I the one of the reasons why we've we're creating these resources is to give you something to interact with to help you retain it. So if you're looking at it, you're hearing it, you're writing it, you're more apt to remember and retain it. This is true. I have to write things down or I won't remember what I just read. Yep. So we are gonna review quickly the timeline of what we've talked about so far. We had a beginning, and these are all the things. We have a list here of all the things we covered, and that was episode two, from creation all the way through Joseph.

SPEAKER_00

And then we have another Bible study plan that references the time of slavery, freedom, and wanderings. You can go back and listen to episode five to go through that plan and also access that Bible reading plan.

SPEAKER_01

And then we had the Promised Land reading Bible uh plan. This starts with, I wanted to say program, this starts with Joshua, ends with the book of Ruth, and that was episode 10. And today we're going to cover the Israel's United Kingdom, where we see Samuel all the way through King Solomon, which of course today is episode 15.

SPEAKER_00

I know, pretty cool. So Israel's United Kingdom is the Bible study plan is labeled 30 Days of the United Kingdom. And you can again access this Bible reading plan being a podcast blessing.

SPEAKER_01

So when we get to this part of the Bible, it's a little more difficult, I think, because stories begin to overlap. And so I think it's helpful to think about it with a timeline, very similar to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, the Gospels. They overlap. So 2 Samuel, 2 Kings, sorry, that's wrong. 1st and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings, 1 and 2 Chronicles, and there's a comma after it, which there should not be on the slide. These overlap one another. So 1st and 2 Samuel overlap for the most part, 1 Chronicles. 1st and 2 Kings overlap with 2nd Chronicles. That's helpful. I have that written in my Bible, and it's helpful.

SPEAKER_00

So at the end of our last reading plan, we showed this resource tool called the Time of the Judges. It's it's a cycle. So each stage of the cycle, it's one through seven. There's seven stages of the cycle on this tool, and they're blank. So as you're listening to the podcast or teaching a class, it allows you to fill in so you can see the warnings that God gives his people during this time.

SPEAKER_01

So then we have at the beginning of Samuel, we have a woman named Hannah, and she and her husband go up to Shiloh to offer sacrifices. And Hannah is barren. She prays to God and asks God for a child. God grants her her request, he answers her prayer by giving her a son, Samuel. She takes him to Shiloh, back to Shiloh, to Eli, who was a priest. He was also the last, if I understand correctly, the last judge during this time period. She takes him to him, and this is where we have that famous story that little kids like to tell in Sunday school, where Samuel is laying down and God continues to call his name. And Eli realizes he's calling, it's God calling you. Yeah. Because Samuel thinks it's Eli calling him. And then we have some interesting passages here, 1 Samuel 4 through 7, where it talks about the ark. So Israel is being attacked by the Philistines. And this part of scripture, they cut they take the ark out as their kind of their good luck charm, is what I say. Like they're coming to attack us. Let's take the ark out. And surely if we have the ark, God will protect us. And God does not. They are defeated by the Philistines. The Philistines take the Ark of the Covenant to their land and they put it in, I guess, the temple of Dogon or or where they had this uh this wooden or this idol stand sitting there, and they put it beside it, and this idol falls over, and they fix it back up. It's so funny that you have to fix up your quote-unquote God. Like they had to actually stand this God back up. And the next morning they go check on it, and again, he's fallen over again and is broken into pieces. His head is gone. It's pretty awesome. And then God sends plagues on the Philistines, and then they eventually eventually the ark does return back to.

SPEAKER_00

And then in 1 Samuel 8 through 11, Saul becomes king. So it starts with Israel telling Samuel that they want a king, they want to be like the other nation. Samuel's heartbroken by this, and God says, give them what they want. It's not you that they're rebelling against, it's me. They don't want me as their king. And so Saul is anointed, and then he is confirmed as king over Israel.

SPEAKER_01

And then Saul is rejected. So in 1 Samuel 13 and 1 Samuel 15, we first see Saul go and offer a burnt offering that he is not supposed to be doing. It's supposed to be Samuel doing it. And then a little later in 1 Samuel 15, we see where Saul is told to go completely destroy and wipe out the Amalekites. He chooses to keep the king, King Agag, I think was his name, if I'm saying that, probably not right. But he keeps the king and he keeps the best of the animals, the best of what there was. And Samuel is told by God, Saul did Saul disobeyed. You need to go speak to him. And so he finds Saul and he says, Why did you disobey? And Saul says, Well, I did obey God, and I love it. To me, it's a mic drop moment in scripture where Samuel says, Well, then what is the sound of bleeding of animals? I hear it in my ears, or he says something like that. So it's a mic drop.

SPEAKER_00

And then in 1 Samuel 16, Samuel goes into Bethlehem to visit the family of Jesse because God tells him that it is from Jesse that he is going to choose the next king. So Jesse calls all his sons out, and he warns, God warns Samuel not to worry about the appearance of the person that he sees their heart. And it's funny because Samuel does indeed look at the appearance. He thinks, oh, this one's going to be the one. And God is like, Nope, I see the heart. And so he goes through each of the sons that Jesse has presented before Samuel, and none of them are chosen by God. And so Samuel wonders, is that are these your only children? And he goes, Well, I have one more. He's out in the fields, he's shepherding the flock. And he calls him in, and God chooses David, and he's anointed by Samuel.

SPEAKER_01

Then when David kills Goliath, we have this chant that goes on where it says, Saul has killed his thousands, David has killed his tens of thousands. So Saul begins to hate David. He even tries to kill him. And he even tries to kill his own son over David as well. We see this 1 Samuel 17 through 31. Saul becomes tormented. So David has to flee for his life and he has to hide from Saul. And he does this. If I understand scripture, it's 10 years that he hides out from Saul.

SPEAKER_00

It's an awkward time because Saul is still king, even though God said, I'm going to remove the kingdom from you. And he goes and he anoints David, who can't yet be king. Yeah. So it's that moment of conflict where Saul knows he's not the rightful king anymore, but he doesn't know how he'll be taken out.

SPEAKER_01

And I love how David doesn't take Saul out. He even spares his life twice.

SPEAKER_00

And then we have in 2 Samuel 1 through 12, Saul dies. And then David now becomes the rightful king of Israel. And it's in this time period where God promises David that his line is going to be eternal. His throne will remain eternally, and the kings that follow will come from his own bloodline. And so that's what is known as the Davidic covenant. We cover that in our last episode. That was episode 14. And then we see David's kindness. This is where David, after Saul's death, because David had a very special relationship with Jonathan, who was the son of Saul. And Jonathan had a son named Mephibosheth. And so he he finds him, he brings him in to where he is, and he tells him that he all the days of his life can have a seat at his table. And what were you saying, Becky? That reminds you of the gospel.

SPEAKER_01

It's a picture of God taking us and adopting us. We were we were kind of worthless. Mephibosheth wasn't really of any quote-unquote use to David. He was crippled, but he took him in and showed kindness to him and treated him as his own son.

SPEAKER_00

And then David does sin against the Lord. Um he meets Bathsheba, she gets pregnant, and in that time Nathan is sent by God to David to reveal to him his sin. And as soon as he knows that Nathan is talking about him, he quickly repents. This is very different from Saul. Saul did not want to confess. It was something that was brought to his attention by Samuel. Well, what about this? And he makes an excuse. He blames the people. He just keeps going until he can't go anymore. And then he's like, Okay, yes, I did it. Please forgive me. Please don't take the kingdom away from me, but it's too late. Like he wasn't repentant. He was just saying, yes, like a confession, but not a repentance.

SPEAKER_01

And I think it's fascinating when he does that. He says, go he tells Samuel to go sacrifice to the Lord your God. He doesn't say my God. He says your God, which I think is interesting.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, and so I really like how we can see David's heart here, his ability to repent very quickly and know that he has sinned against the mighty God.

SPEAKER_01

And then we have this story of Absalom in 2 Samuel 13 through 18. So there was an issue in the family. David did not take care of it, so like he should have. So Absalom says, I'll take it into my own hands. Well, because of this, he flees. David invites him back, he comes back, but he he develops a conspiracy. He gets men to follow him to the point where he kind of declares himself that he is now the king. The people want him and not David. So David here flees for his life. And then when Absalom dies, David comes back and is the rightful.

SPEAKER_00

And this is fulfillment of prophecy because when David did sin with Bathsheba, God had told David that the sword would never depart from his house. And this is a consequence of that. So he forgave him, but there were still consequences for the sin. And so in 1 Chronicles 22, and in other parts of Scripture, as Becky said, these overlap in the different books. David is beginning to prepare for his son Solomon, who's going to build the temple, because David can't build it. David is told by God that he can't because he is a man of war and he has shed too much blood in his time as king. David also has a part in scripture where he sings a song of deliverance, where he reminds us that God delivered him from his enemies and he delivered him from the hand of Saul. And then he gives the charge to Solomon before he dies, and he reveals to Solomon that God told him that he would have a son, and his name would be Solomon, and that he was going to be the one to build the house in the Lord's name.

SPEAKER_01

And then we see the last part of this reading plan covers Solomon becoming the king. We see this in 1 Kings 1 through 10. Solomon is told by God he can ask for anything, and Solomon asks for wisdom. And because of that, God gives him wisdom, but he also gives him riches. And through Solomon, we see the temple is built.

SPEAKER_00

And so if you are a podcast bless member, you have access to these Bible reading plans. As of now, there are four January through April. And if you have any questions about the membership or the resources that we have through that membership, you can email Becky at Becky at this readingmama.com. So let's be determined as Ezra to read, do, and tell the word of the Lord. Amen.

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Becky Spence

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