Best of human psychology in I and II Kings

New Year’s Day is upon us and now begins the annual flood of idolatrous advice about how to improve your life--by losing weight, exercising more, learning to slow down and experience mindfulness, better appreciating your self-worth, practicing small acts of kindness and gratitude, meditating daily on peace, love, happiness, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. None of it mentions the need for belief in Jesus Christ and God’s Word.  

“You’ll learn more about human psychology in I and II Kings than you will reading Rogers, Jung, Freud, or whoever else you want to study,” says Jordan in an old study. “You can read all the Christian psychology; you can follow Chuck Swindoll and listen to Chuck Stanley and all these guys who belch out this Christian psychology with their scriptural pabulum on the subject. You can listen to Dr. James Dobson . . .

“You’ll learn more about Christian psychology in I and II Kings than anywhere else, I guarantee you. I’ve read those books for years with my mouth just agape about how they reveal human nature to you.

“See, the difference is the Bible doesn’t just tell you about it; it tells you why it’s that way, looks under the surface and gives you some information, and fortunately, it also tells you what to do about it.

“The keenest observer of human nature really doesn’t understand what’s going on in the inner man of a person. It takes the Scripture to pierce that. I and II Kings will do it for you. But I and II Chronicles look at the same events from a divine perspective.

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“In the Old Testament you have some books that repeat things. For example, what’s in I Kings and II Kings is repeated in I and II Chronicles. God didn’t need to write two accounts of the same story just because He thought you didn’t read it enough the first time. There’s a completely different viewpoint.

“You know when you study Matthew, Mark, Luke and John you have four pictures of the life of Christ. You know it’s not designed to be a harmony, or one life of Christ. God could have written that if He had wanted to. But rather He gives you four pictures, four perspectives of Christ and there’s prophetic reasons for that. In fact, the Old Testament tells you there’s going to be a four-fold picture of Christ looking at the same person and same events from different perspectives.

“In Kings and Chronicles, it’s the same way. Kings looks at it from the human viewpoint. But when you look at same events in Chronicles, you’re looking more from the divine viewpoint.”