Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Is God's Grace Conditional? | Historical Books | 1 Kings 9:1-9

Episode Date: August 13, 2025

Is God's grace conditional? Is the Old Testament God different than the New Testament Jesus? Why does God punish his people? In today's episode, Jensen shares how 1 Kings 9:1-9 reminds us that our God has been gracious from the beginning of the story. If you're listening on Spotify, tell us about yourself and where you're listening from! Read the Bible with us in 2025! This year, we’re exploring the Historical Books—Joshua, Judges, 1 & 2 Samuel, and 1 & 2 Kings. Download your reading plan now. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it so that others can find it, too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: 1 Kings 9:1-9

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. And the time it takes to get to work. I'm Jensen Holt McNair. The hymn Amazing Grace has always been a favorite of mine. Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now I'm found, was blind, but now I see. It's a hymn that repeatedly reminds me that it's only by God's grace, His power that I'm saved, that a wretch, a sinner like me, could have redemption. It's by his grace alone. I have no power to reverse blind eyes.

I could not find my way on my own. It is only the grace of God that enables my healing, my flourishing. The hymn has always felt like a reassuring hug. It reminds me of my safety. It has never been up to me to secure my salvation. I couldn't if I tried. I'm safe in the cleft of God's amazing grace. And then I read passages like the one in First King Nine, and I get a little confused.

Passages that feel like maybe I've misunderstood God's grace? In this passage, Solomon has just dedicated the temple, prayed to God and offered sacrifices to the Lord. And now in Chapter 9, we're given a front row seat as God appears to Solomon and speaks to him in response. Now stick with me, but I want to read the passage in its entirety of what what God actually says to Solomon. I have heard the prayer and plea you have made before me. I have consecrated this temple which you have built by putting my name there forever. My eyes and my heart will always be there. As for you, if you walk before me faithfully with integrity of heart and uprightness,

as David your father did, and do all I command and observe my decrees and laws, I will establish your royal throne over Israel forever. As I promised David, your father, when I said you shall never fail to have a successor on the throne of Israel. But if you are your descendants turn away from me and do not observe the commands and decrees I have given you and go off and serve other gods and worship them, then I will cut off Israel from the land I have given them and will reject this temple I have consecrated for my name. Israel will then become a byword and an object of ridicule among all peoples. This temple will become a heap of rubble. All who pass by will be appalled and will scoff and say, why has the Lord done such a thing to this land and to this temple?

People will answer, because they have forsaken the Lord their God, who brought their ancestors out of Egypt, and have embraced other gods, worshipping and serving them. That is why the Lord brought all this disaster on them. Okay, so on a first pass-through of this passage, sometimes it feels to me like God's affection, his protection and provision, his grace and love for his people is conditional. Like if you obey me, I'll be with you. If you disobey me, I'll leave you to ruin. Is that what God is saying here? And if it is, does he get some sort of heart change in the New Testament? A heart change that allows you and I to still sing songs like amazing grace and believe that God's grace isn't conditionally based on our performance? Now these are common conclusions that people can make.

from passages like this. It's what lead people to talk about God in terms of the Old and New Testament. But as I've studied the Old Testament and who God is, I've learned that if we look closely and ask the right questions, we can see that our first take on the passage might not be entirely fair. I think there are three important things that we have to examine in this passage if we want to get a clear picture of what's going on. First, and most importantly, God is reiterating the terms of a specific covenant he made with David. Covenants made in the ancient near East came with obligations, and if those obligations weren't fulfilled by either party, then there were curses or punishments that fell on the party who broke the covenant. It wasn't uncommon for this penalty to even be

death in this culture. So the covenant that God made with David to establish his kingdom forever was not the first covenant that God made with his people. We often talk about five key covenants that God made with his people, one with Noah, Abraham, Moses. this one with David, and then in the New Testament, through Jesus, the new covenant. This is the covenant that you and I that we live under now. Now some of these covenants had conditions like this one with David, some like the Noahic covenant, were unconditional, and that God just makes a promise to his people and vows to remain faithful to it. When making his covenant with Abraham, telling him that he would make him into a great nation, give him a promised land, and bless the world through this nation,

only God passes through the two halves of sacrificed animals present for the ritual of making a covenant. In doing so, he is symbolically saying that if this covenant is not fulfilled, then his punishment would be like that of these animals. Now, normally both parties would walk through, agreeing to uphold their end of the covenant, but God's grace is on display here. Only he walks through, taking all the responsibility of the covenant on himself. In the Mosaic covenant, the people of Israel are given the law. God rescues them from slavery and bondage in Egypt, and he delivers them into the life that they were created to live. He makes a covenant to bless them if they live faithfully and curse them if they don't. This is where our new covenant lends begins to question God and his goodness. And then, despite the failure of the Israelites to remain faithful to the Mosaic covenant, God comes in and makes the Davidic covenant. reestablishing his commitment to his people, despite their failure. So we have to take God's words here in the context of his covenant making with his people. With each covenant God makes, his plan for redemption that he laid out all the way back in Genesis 3, moments after the fall, becomes a little bit clearer.

God wouldn't destroy the earth for its evil. He would build a nation and use them to bless the world. That nation would live in a way that was set apart. different than the world around them, and they would remain faithful to God as he established a kingdom that would never end. In all these covenants, God has promised to remain faithful to the terms despite the failures of his people. And that brings us back to our second observation. What is the specific transgression that God focuses on? If we look at verse 6, we read, but if you or your descendants turn away from me and do not observe the commands and decrees I have given you, and go off and serve other gods and worship them.

Okay, so quick aside, the focus here is on idolatry. It is on a rejection of God as God. God is not threatening to punish his people if they lie too often. This is less about actionable disobedience and more about an issue of the heart. And God's stance on idolatry doesn't change from the Old Testament to the New Testament. In Matthew 624, Jesus is speaking to a crowd in the sermon on the Mount, and he says, no one can serve two masters. For either he will hate one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money. So Jesus is speaking about money here,

a common idol that we give our lives and devotion to. But the point stands, Jesus knows that if you're serving one master, if you give yourself over to an idol, whatever it is, you cannot also serve God. You've not just messed up or made a mistake and the father's being ungracious. You have replaced God as king with an idol. You've rejected God. You've removed yourself from the covenant. Now, the third and final thing that I want us to recognize in this passage is the punishment that comes.

Directly following verse 6, where God lays out his focus on idolatry, he lays out the terms of the punishment. If you give yourself over to other gods, then I will come. cut off Israel from the land, I have given them, and will reject this temple I have consecrated for my name. Israel will then become a byword and an object of ridicule among all the peoples. This temple will become a heap of rebel. So God promises disaster and ruined the temple and city of Jerusalem, but he doesn't threaten total abandonment. He does not threaten to neglect his promises. What comes for Solomon and the people of Israel is rebellion, disobedience,

apostasy, and idolatry that does lead to the downfall of the temple, Jerusalem, and God's people. And yet, even in exile, the prophet still pointed God's people back to his covenants and prophesied about the new covenant to come. Jeremiah 31. 31. Behold, days are coming. And they're coming. declares the Lord when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. Not like the covenant which I made with our fathers and the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt. My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them, declares the Lord. But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord. I will put my law within them and on their heart I will write it.

And I will be their God and they shall be my people. They will not teach again, each man his neighbor and each man his brother saying, know the Lord, for they will all know me. From the least of them to the greatest of them, declares the Lord, for I will forgive their iniquity and their sin I will remember no more. This new covenant would be different, but it was always the plan. God knew that in the end it could never be up to his people to fulfill the terms of the covenant and remain faithful. It would all have to depend on his grace.

His power. He will put his law in our hearts, and he will reveal himself to us. He will rescue us. Ephesians 2 says, for it is by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not from yourselves. It is the gift of God, not by work so that no one can boast. We could never uphold the terms of the covenant with good works and obedience. Our hearts would always wander. But through faith, through total surrender and allegiance to Jesus' king as Savior as Lord. We have access to an unlimited supply of amazing grace. We don't have to prove ourselves to live in the blessing of this covenant. We do not have to perform to live in the blessing of the safety of God's grace. We only have to surrender to sit at the feet of Jesus to receive. This doesn't differ from the God we see in the Old

testament. We see a God who is providing a way for his people, teaching them, revealing his plan for redemption, remaining faithful even when they could not. There are consequences for rejecting his kingship, but even when their hearts strayed and they stepped outside of his blessing, God still pursued them. He still made a way. He still promised a new covenant where he wouldn't let their failure, their rebellion, keep them from blessing. Through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, you and I have hope for a new life, life eternal, a life free from death and bondage to sin, not by our power, but by the power of the resurrection of Jesus and the gift of the Holy Spirit, who lives within those who have put

their faith in Jesus' king. God has put himself in us. He has written himself into our lives, onto our hearts, his spirit lives actively working in you as a follower of Jesus today. You can fight sin. You can remain faithful. You can grow in the fruits of the spirit, not because you're awesome,

not because you work really hard at it, but because God said that he would make a way and he did by giving you his living spirit to strengthen, guide, and convict you. What a gift of grace. Grace that both saves you from your sin and delivers you into a beautiful spirit-led life within the covenant and blessing of God. God, we thank you for your amazing grace. We thank you for your relentless pursuit of your people

and the story of redemption that you've been weaving throughout all of history. May we live and step with a spirit, relying fully on you for our strength, our deliverance, and our blessing. We love you, Lord. Amen.