The Bible Study Podcast, episode 262. Today, the Bible Study podcast continues the study of Second Samuel with Chapter 21.

Welcome to the Bible Study podcast. Before we get into Chapter 21, I want to take a little strategic break here. I want to talk about where we are and where we're going.

As I've mentioned in the past, when we finish up the study of Second Samuel, we will not go into First Kings, which would be the next thing that we would come naturally if we were continuing on in the Old Testament.

One is I'm really tired of trying to record all the names here from the Old Testament.

You have no idea how much I struggle with this and edit out me saying them wrong.

I may still be saying them wrong, but I am at least saying them with confidence.

And I want to move on to something else. And as I mentioned, where we're going to go on to next immediately is a study on the kingdom of God. And the kingdom of God is like, is the phrase that we're going to be looking at in the New Testament. What does that have to do with 2 Samuel, 1st and 2nd Samuel? And if you asked me last week, I would say, well, probably nothing other than I'm tired of

being in the Old Testament.

I want to get back to the New Testament.

But as I was thinking about this today, it occurs to me that this is actually a wonderful,

different contrast here because we're going from the first two kings of Israel to the kingdom of God.

And remember that God did not want there to be a kingdom in Israel, that God was king, but the people

demanded a king. And that's what we've been talking about as we talked about Samuel and as we

talk about David. We talk about their failings. We talk

about their strengths, and we talk about their struggles, as we'll continue to do today. But when we

transition into the kingdom of God, we're going into more of a godly model of the way God wants

things to work and the way that God is moving to make things work. So as we look at the

kingdom of God, we'll be leaving some of what we're dealing with today, some of the mess that we

get when we put our own rulers into place, when we put people other than God first and when we

put their authority first. And so as we look at First and Second Samuel here, we have four more chapters.

Think about that lens is how would all of this be different if God were in charge,

if God were the number one person in charge here in Israel in charge in Judah.

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