By now, everyone realizes that we have a leadership crisis, not only in our country, but in the world at large. I wonder how we got to this place? Where does leadership come from and, maybe more importantly, where does it go? I believe that leadership is a gift from God, and if you’ll spare me a little time, I’ll explain to you why I think that. First, two statements about gifts from God, one from James and one from the Psalms:

Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.

You have ascended on high, you have led captivity captive: you have received gifts for men; yea, for the rebellious also, that the Lord God might dwell among them. Blessed be the Lord, who daily loads us with benefits, even the God of our salvation. Selah.

For some reason, we would tend to assume that God only gives his gifts to people who deserve them. I used to think so. I would have told you that God gave his gifts to Christian people, and to good Christian people at that. But the Psalmist says that he gives his gifts to the rebellious also. What are we to make of that? Well, we know that God causes it to rain on the just and the unjust. He doesn’t make the rain run down the property line, with one man’s field getting a good wetting down and the other man’s getting dry and dusty, right? That would probably be an effective technique for promoting righteousness, but God does not work that way. There is a curious incident in the gospel accounts that I think may give us a hint on this very complicated subject. We can find it in John, chapter 5.

Never take counsel of your fears. The saying is often attributed to Andrew Jackson who also, plainly, read his Bible. It is fascinating how often fear strips a man of victories already won. This was the case with one Jeroboam, the son of Nebat. After the death of Solomon, God handed him the largest portion of Israel—10 of the 12 tribes. He was a good man, and an energetic leader. But he was afraid that, having made the break with Solomon’s son Rehoboam, the people would eventually return to the unity of the Temple. It was not an unreasonable fear except for the fact that God had given him the kingdom and stood surety for it. This fear led him to a decision with disastrous long-term consequences.

Therefore the king took counsel, and made two calves of gold, and said unto them, It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem: behold your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt. And he set the one in Beth-el, and the other put he in Dan. And this thing became a sin: for the people went to worship before the one, even unto Dan.

The incident is uncannily similar to what Aaron did while Moses was up the mountain receiving the Ten Commandments. He made a calf of a God and said, These be your gods, O Israel, which brought you up out of the land of Egypt. Jeroboam had to know that, and yet he still did it. The seduction to idolatry in that world must have been extremely powerful. What Jeroboam does here is to substitute a political religion for the real thing. The lesson learned from David and Solomon is so easily lost. Both made moral errors, but because David never worshiped another God, the avenue of repentance was always open to him. When other gods begin to cloud the picture, however, the way back is lost in the fog. We’ll find the story of the prophet God sent to denounce Jeroboam’s spiritual wanderings—but who makes a costly detour of his own—in 1 Kings, chapter 13.

When you read those books of the Bible that contain the history of Israel, the lessons come at you one after the other. There is a man in the Book of Kings named Jeroboam, for example, who will embody several of them. Jeroboam is described as a mighty man of valor. Now, what that means in biblical-speak is that he was a fighter, and very good at it. He was a good man, an able man, and King Solomon promoted him and placed him over all the affairs of the house of Joseph. That made him the head man in the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh in the north. But he had a higher endorsement than that of Solomon, with whom God was, by this time, thoroughly disappointed.

And it came to pass at that time when Jeroboam went out of Jerusalem, that the prophet Ahijah the Shilonite found him in the way; and he had clad himself with a new garment; and the two were alone in the field: And Ahijah caught the new garment that was on him, and tore it in twelve pieces: And he said to Jeroboam, Take you ten pieces: for thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, Behold, I will tear the kingdom out of the hand of Solomon, and will give ten tribes to you: (But he shall have one tribe for my servant David’s sake, and for Jerusalem’s sake, the city which I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel:)

Why was this being done? The prophet answered:

Because they have forsaken me, and have worshiped Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians, Chemosh the god of the Moabites, and Milcom the god of the children of Ammon, and have not walked in my ways, to do that which is right in my eyes, and to keep my statutes and my judgments, as did David his father.

This verse often stops serious readers who realize what a bounder David had been at times in his life. But there is a serious difference between Solomon and David. When David sinned, he repented—and perhaps most importantly, he never, ever, served another God. And it was that faithfulness to God that made his repentance possible. That is a lesson worth remembering. You may go a long way down the wrong road, but if you never allow yourself to forget who your God is, the way back is still open. It may be a hard road, but it’s open.

When you are reading the history in the Bible, you have to resist the temptation to see things in terms familiar to the modern reader. Take the idea of cities, for example. Solomon has finished the Temple, and somewhere along the way, he has married the daughter of Pharaoh.

Well, Pharaoh wants to give his daughter a present, so he goes up along the coastal plain and takes a city named Gezer. He slew the Canaanites who live there, burnt the place with fire, and then gave it to his daughter as a present. What kind of a present is that! Gezer probably wasn’t much of a town to start with. Now his daughter gets, as a present from her dad, a lot of burnt-out houses, and a few hundred corpses of Canaanites. What is this?

What you need to take away from the account is that it wasn’t the houses that were important, it was the real estate. Gezer might have controlled a few hundred square miles of good agricultural land. And it may also have provided a prime location for an outpost—a fortress, if you will. In fact, a lot of these fortified cities were not so much towns as forts from which the approaches and surrounding areas could be dominated—there were still a lot of outlaws and marauders around. So, as the ruler of an enriched and emerging power, Solomon embarked an a great program of construction and development—walled cities, storage cities, stables, and more—as we’ll see beginning in 1 Kings, chapter 9.

One of the most incredible museums that the world has ever known was also one that hardly anyone ever got to visit; it was the temple that King Solomon built. When the construction of the Temple was finally complete, Solomon brought in the things that King David had dedicated—silver, gold, furnishings—and placed them in the Temple’s treasuries. What a museum it must have made…but the general population never got to go in. Nevertheless, the grand opening still made for quite an enjoyable party. You’ll find the story of this celebration, and the dedication speech that accompanied it, in 1 Kings, chapter 8.

1 Then Solomon assembled the elders of Israel, and all the heads of the tribes, the chiefs of the fathers of the children of Israel, unto king Solomon in Jerusalem, that they might bring up the ark of the covenant of the Lord out of the city of David, which is Zion.
2 And all the men of Israel assembled themselves unto king Solomon at the feast in the month Ethanim, which is the seventh month [This is the month of the Feast of Tabernacles].
3 And all the elders of Israel came, and the priests took up the ark.
4 And they brought up the ark of the Lord, and the tabernacle of meeting, and all the holy vessels that were in the tabernacle, even those did the priests and the Levites bring up.
5 And king Solomon, and all the congregation of Israel, that were assembled unto him, were with him before the ark, sacrificing sheep and oxen, that could not be counted nor numbered for multitude.
6 And the priests brought in the ark of the covenant of the Lord unto its place, into the inner sanctuary of the house, to the most holy place, even under the wings of the cherubim.
7 For the cherubim spread forth their two wings over the place of the ark, and the cherubim covered the ark and its poles above.
8 And they drew out the poles, so that the ends of the poles were seen out in the holy place before the inner sanctuary, and they were not seen outside: and there they are unto this day.

Do you suppose God would ever call a man to be a lawyer or, perhaps, a governor? (And, no, I am not about to tell a lawyer joke.) There is a funny thing about Christian thinking when it comes to a divine calling. We tend to think of God's calling having solely to do with church work or ministry. But is that the right view of the matter?

There are two men in the Bible who cause me to think otherwise. They weren't called to be lawyers, but they were nonetheless called to a surprising vocation. Let me tell you their stories:

Once upon a time, there was a man named Jacob who had 12 sons—all born to him while out of country. The last was born of the wife that Jacob loved. He was named Joseph, which means added because he was added well beyond the expected family. And because he was the son of Jacob’s old age and of his most loved wife, he was a favorite son, and Jacob made him the famous coat of many colors.

When the lad was a mere 17 years old, he was bringing performance reports to his father that did nothing to endear him to his brothers. When his brothers saw the favoritism—and, beyond that, when they came to see him as a snitch—they hated him and couldn't bring themselves to speak to him with any civility. And then, something happened that could only make things worse. Joseph had a dream, and he had to poor judgment to tell it to his brothers. I say poor judgment, but it will turn out to be very important that he did tell the dream. We'll find this dream and what came from it in Genesis, chapter 37.

Sometimes, in the Bible, you come across descriptions, details, and lists that can be a little hard to follow. One example of this is the description in 1 Kings 6 of the construction of Solomon’s temple. It’s not too easy to work your way through it, and there are just too many details missing to get an accurate picture. You can find artists’ conceptions of it in publications and on the internet, but they are all different. Still, when you read through it you get a general impression of the size, the shape, the importance of the building.

And it came to pass in the four hundred and eightieth year after the children of Israel were come out of the land of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon’s reign over Israel, in the month Ziv, which is the second month, that he began to build the house of the Lord. As for the house which king Solomon built for the Lord, the length thereof was threescore cubits, and the breadth thereof twenty cubits, and the height thereof thirty cubits.

There is some question about the precise length of a cubit, but the ratio of the building is clear enough. It was not particularly large—about 90 feet long by 30 feet wide, and 45 feet in height. You can visualize the distance from the 30-yard line on a football field to the goal line, then 10 yards wide, and half again tall as it is wide. The importance of the building, however, is out of all proportion to its size. And these are just the measurements of the building proper. There was a lot more construction around the building itself. Let’s examine these blueprints a little more closely, as we continue in the Book of Kings.

In Gibeon the Lord appeared to Solomon in a dream by night: and God said, Ask what I shall give you. And Solomon said, You have shown unto your servant David my father great mercy, according as he walked before you in truth, and in righteousness, and in uprightness of heart with you; and you have kept for him this great kindness, that you have given him a son to sit on his throne, as it is this day. And now, O Lord my God, you have made your servant king instead of David my father: and I am but a little child: I know not how to go out or come in. And your servant is in the midst of your people whom you have chosen, a great people, that cannot be numbered nor counted for multitude. Give therefore your servant an understanding heart to judge your people, that I may discern between good and bad: for who is able to judge this your so great a people?

As far as I can tell, by this time Solomon was grown. But this is the way that he looked at himself—as a naïf, as a person who had no special knowledge of the world or the world’s ways. He felt totally inadequate to the task before him. There’s a humility in this, of a man who recognizes that the job is just a little bit too big for him.

And the speech pleased the Lord, that Solomon had asked this thing. And God said unto him, Because you have asked this thing, and have not asked for yourself long life; neither have asked riches for yourself, nor have asked the life of your enemies; but have asked for yourself understanding to discern justice; Behold, I have done according to your words: lo, I have given you a wise and an understanding heart; so that there was none like you before you, neither after you shall any arise like unto you. And I have also given you that which you have not asked, both riches, and honor: so that there shall not be any among the kings like unto you all your days. And if you will walk in my ways, to keep my statutes and my commandments, as your father David did walk, then I will lengthen your days.