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1-2 Kings April 25th, 2010 Lee Tankersley Click here for Print Friendly Version! Audio Version 2 Kings 8:7-13:25 
n February 10, 1546, Luther wrote a letter to his wife, Katie. He was away from her, acting as a mediator in a dispute in another city, but was constantly receiving letters from her in which she expressed her anxiety for him. Therefore, seeing that his wife was gripped with anxiety, he wrote her a letter, gently rebuking her for her worry and asking her to cast her cares upon the Lord. In the letter, he sarcastically thanked her for her anxiety, pointing out that all of their struggles were no doubt a consequence of her worry for them. He wrote to her, “Thank you most heartily for your great anxiety which keeps you from sleeping, for while you have been worrying about us, we were almost consumed by a fire which broke out near the door to my room in the place where we were staying. And yesterday, doubtless as a consequence of your anxiety, a stone almost fell on our heads and might have crushed us like mice in a mousetrap. For several days little pieces of plaster were drifting down from overhead in our private quarters, and when we summoned help and the ceiling was examined, a stone fell down which was as long as a large pillow and more than a hand’s breadth wide. Think of what might have happened as a result of your blessed worrying if the dear angels had not intervened! I fear that if you do not stop worrying, the earth will swallow us up and all the elements will fall upon us.”1
Reading that letter made me laugh. However, reading a letter he’d written three days earlier made me pause and examine my own life. In that prior letter, Luther had addressed Katie’s anxiety as well. But it wasn’t littered with sarcastic humor. Rather, he reminded her of who God was. He wrote to her, “You are worrying in God’s stead as if he were not almighty. He could create ten Dr. Martins if the old one were to drown in the Saale River, or burn in a fire, or be caught in Wolf’s bird traps. Do not plague me any longer with your worries. I have a better worrier than you and all the angels. He lies in a cradle and clings to a virgin’s breast and yet he is at the same time seated at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. Therefore, be satisfied. Amen.” 2 What struck me in this letter was this line, “You are worrying in God’s stead as if he were not almighty.” And the reason it struck me is because this is a description of so much of my life, and no doubt yours as well. We do something as if God were not (fill in the blank). We, like Katie, sometimes worry as if God is not almighty. We doubt his love for us as if he had not eliminated any reason for us to doubt it. We fret as if he is not good. We fail to pray as if he is not sovereign. We sin as if he will not discipline those whom he loves. We fail to trust his just forgiveness as if he is willing to ignore the sacrifice of his Son. We look to our works to see if he will accept us as if he demands something other than perfect righteousness. Simply put, the way we live our lives exposes to us and to those around us what we think about God. This is no doubt what Tozer recognized when he wrote, “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.”3 And though there is a mystery to the ways of God so that we cannot always know what he is doing and why, there are also bedrock qualities to his character that he has revealed. There are consistent ways in which he responds that he has shown to us. And those are the things I want us to see this morning as we look at these chapters in 2 Kings. If so many of our sinful responses are rooted in ignoring the character of God, then we can say that one the greatest needs we have is to be reminded of the character and ways of our God. Thankfully, for our sakes, the Bible tells us much about the character and ways of God, and one of those places is in 2 Kings 8:7-13:25. This six-chapter unit in 2 Kings returns us again to a focus on Israel’s political history. The book had started that way but then had taken a detour in focusing on the ministries of Elijah and Elisha. Now, the book returns to a focus on the lives and reigns of a number of kings. The unit is bracketed by Elisha telling Hazael that he will become king of Syria (8:7-15) and ends with a report of Hazael’s death (13:24-25). In the middle, we get reports of three kings of Judah: Jehoram (8:16-24), Ahaziah (8:25-29), and Joash (11-12) and three kings of Israel: Jehu (9-10), Jehoahaz (13:1-9), and Jehoash (13:10-25). But the text does not simply deal with the kings of Judah and then the kings of Israel (or vice-versa) but interweaves them a bit so that these chapters can become confusing. As I read over the text I found myself having to stop and keep a sidebar of who was where and when they were reigning. But as confusing as it can be to gather together the details of Israel’s history in these chapters, it is relieving to realize that the goal of these chapters is not just to relay historical details. These chapters were not written primarily so that we might be able to produce a chart showing the order of the kings of the northern and southern kingdoms. Rather, these chapters reveal to us the consistent response and outworking of the character of God. These chapters show us that though the Lord’s judgments are inscrutable, there is a consistency to his character and certainty to his response in particular situations. That consistency of his character and ways are what I want us to see this morning. The first of these is that the Lord is not mocked – he will judge the sinner. The Lord is not mocked; he will judge the sinner After the showdown between Elijah and the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel, the Lord had spoken to Elijah, telling him that he would destroy a number in Israel who had turned away to worship Baal under the leadership of Ahab. Specifically, God told Elijah that he would anoint Hazael to be king over Syria and Jehu to be king over Israel. And together, they would strike down the house of Ahab in Israel. Those whom Hazael didn’t take out, Jehu would (1 Kings 19:15-18). Therefore, after a long break, what we find beginning in 2 Kings 8:7 and running through the end of chapter 10 is a fulfillment of that word. God is showing that though the delay has been long, the wicked have only grown more wicked, and the wicked have seemed to prosper, God is not mocked, and he will judge the sinner. We see the beginning of the fulfillment of God’s judgment in 8:7-15. Ben-hadad, the king of Syria is sick, so he sends Hazael to Elisha to see if he will recover or die. But the answer Hazael gets from Elisha is odd. Elisha tells him, “Go say to him, ‘You shall certainly recover,’ but the LORD has shown me that he shall certainly die” (8:10). The answer to Elisha’s odd word I think comes in a bit. But first, having spoken this word to Hazael, Elisha stares at him until he begins to weep, telling Hazael that the Lord has shown him that he will become king in Ben-hadad’s place and will do horrible things to the people of Israel. And, accordingly, Hazael goes back to the king, takes some kind of cloth dipped in water, and suffocates the king so that he dies. Therefore, I think that Elisha was saying that the king would have recovered from the illness, but he will certainly die because he knew Hazael would kill him. So, with that, we have Hazael coming onto the scene as the Lord predicted. Then, in 8:16-29, we have a second piece to setting the stage. We remember that the judgment was going to come to Ahab’s house. Well, note in these verses the themes of how these kings are connected to Ahab. We read in 8:16, “In the fifth year of Joram the son of Ahab, king of Israel, when Jehoshaphat was king of Judah, Jehoram the son of Jehoshaphat, king of Judah, began to reign.” Then, we read in verse 18, “And he walked in the way of the kings of Israel, as the house of Ahab had done, for the daughter of Ahab was his wife. And he did what was evil in the sight of the LORD.” So, we have Joram as king in Israel, and he is Ahab’s son, and we have Jehoram as king in Judah who was married to Ahab’s daughter. But then Jehoram dies, and his son Ahaziah reigned in his place. And he too was entrenched in line with Ahab. Thus, we read in 8:27, “He also walked in the way of the house of Ahab, and did what was evil in the sight of the LORD, as the house of Ahab had done, for he was son-in-law to the house of Ahab.” So, now, we have a king in the northern kingdom (Joram) who is the son of Ahab and a king in the southern kingdom (Ahaziah) who is the son-in-law to the house of Ahab. Simply put, these are kings in the line of Ahab. Then, one day, these two “Ahabian” kings fought together against Hazael when Joram got wounded and went back to nurse his wounds. Therefore, Ahaziah came to see him so that the two kings were in the same place at the same time. Two kings in the line of Ahab both at the same place. Meanwhile, Elisha gets word from the Lord that Jehu is going to be the next king over Israel, and he sends one of his servants to go and anoint him as such. We read of the servant’s words to Jehu in 9:6-10, “So he arose and went into the house. And the young man poured the oil on his head, saying to him, "Thus says the Lord the God of Israel, I anoint you king over the people of the Lord, over Israel. And you shall strike down the house of Ahab your master, so that I may avenge on Jezebel the blood of my servants the prophets, and the blood of all the servants of the Lord. For the whole house of Ahab shall perish, and I will cut off from Ahab every male, bond or free, in Israel. And I will make the house of Ahab like the house of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, and like the house of Baasha the son of Ahijah. And the dogs shall eat Jezebel in the territory of Jezreel, and none shall bury her." Then he opened the door and fled.” Therefore, now we have Hazael in place, Jehu ready to make himself the next king of Israel, and these two Ahabian kings in the same house together. The scene of judgment is set. Sure enough Jehu takes off after Joram, and when Joram and Ahaziah come out to meet him, asking if there is peace, he answers, “What peace can there be, so long as the whorings and the sorceries of your mother Jezebel are so many?” (9:22). And they know they’re doomed. Sure enough, as Joram goes to flee, Jehu draws his bow and shoots him and kills him. And we read that this happened “in accordance with the word of the LORD” (9:26). Then, as Ahaziah flees, one of Jehu’s servants shoots and kills him. Then, he heads off to see Jezebel, and when he finds her, he has his servants throw her out the window so that she dies and the dogs eat her flesh, in accordance with the word of the Lord. But Jehu wasn’t done yet. He finds out about seventy sons of Ahab and has men kill them and bring their heads to him in baskets, so that we read in 10:10-11, “Know then that there shall fall to the earth nothing of the word of the LORD, which the LORD spoke concerning the house of Ahab, for the LORD has done what he said by his servant Elijah. So Jehu struck down all who remained of the house of Ahab in Jezreel, all his great men and his close friends and his priests, until he left him none remaining.” But even then he wasn’t finished. We read in 10:12-17 how he killed forty-two relatives of Ahaziah who remained in Samaria, and then in 10:18-27 how he got all the prophets of Baal together and had his men kill all of them and demolish the house of Baal so that we read in 10:28, “Thus Jehu wiped out Baal from Israel.” So, just as God told Elijah that he would judge the house of Ahab, so we see it coming to fruition. Yes, it perhaps seemed like it took and while and many may have wondered if God would really act, but in the end, God showed that he is not mocked and that he will judge sinners. Now, this is not a particularly enjoyable point to make, but it’s one that we must keep in our minds – God will not be mocked and will ultimately judge sinners. And the judgment of sinners is a horrifying reality. Revelation tells us that he will throw into hell all of those who are not believers in Jesus Christ. That’s an uncomfortable but necessary message to tell to those who have not placed their faith in Jesus Christ. We do no favors to those who do not know Christ when we conceal the truth from them. The gospel is good news not because it is a message that tells us how to have greater financial peace or happiness now. The gospel is good news because though we all stand as sinners under the coming judgment of God, we can know that God sent his Son into the world who lived a perfect live, died on the cross, bearing the punishment from his own Father that those who believe deserved for their sins, and rising from the dead to live forever. But that good news is only good news for those who actually believe, for those who trust in Christ. If you do not believe in Christ, then the wrath of God still hangs over you. Either you believe in Christ and know that the eternal punishment for your sins has been borne by him or you refuse to believe and bow the knee to him and you will bear eternal punishment for your sins. What is certain is that God will punish sin. The question is, will you believe in Christ and know that he has taken the punishment for your sin for you or will you refuse to believe and bear the punishment of God yourself? Christ has borne the punishment of all who will believe. So, ask yourself this morning, “Is your faith in Christ?” If it is, then the judgment of God reminds us again of what Christ has done for us. If your faith is not in Christ, then ask yourself, “Do I really want to die in my sins and face God’s certain judgment for my sins?” Let me ask you who do not believe this morning, “Why would you die in your sins when God makes clear that he will not be mocked and will certainly judge sinners?” Please, believe in Christ so that you might be saved from the coming wrath of God. But why turn away from sin and toward God? After all, he judges sinners. The answer is that the text also reminds us that the Lord is merciful, and he will respond to repentance. The Lord is merciful; he will respond to repentance Throughout these chapters, there are brief periods where the people repent of their sins, turn to the Lord in obedience, and the Lord responds. The first instance was with Jehu. He obeys the Lord in wiping out the house of Ahab and the worship of the false god, Baal, and so the Lord responds to him in 10:30, saying, “Because you have done well in carrying out what is right in my eyes, and have done to the house of Ahab according to all that was in my heart, your sons of the fourth generation shall sit on the throne of Israel.” Here, we have a turning to the Lord by Jehu and we see the Lord’s merciful response in blessing him. And we see the same thing in 13:1-5. There, we read, “In the twenty-third year of Joash the son of Ahaziah, king of Judah, Jehoahaz the son of Jehu began to reign over Israel in Samaria, and he reigned seventeen years. He did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and followed the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, which he made Israel to sin; he did not depart from them. And the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he gave them continually into the hand of Hazael king of Syria and into the hand of Ben-hadad the son of Hazael. Then Jehoahaz sought the favor of the Lord . . .” Now, let’s stop there for a minute and ask a question. How would we expect this to go? Jehoahaz, Jehu’s son, is now reigning over Israel and has done great evil in the sight of the Lord, provoking his anger again and again. So the Lord is continually handing him into the hand of Hazael. So, then, Jehoahaz decides he will turn to the Lord and seek his favor. How do you think God will respond? Perhaps he will say, “Jehoahaz, the only reason you’re turning to me is because you find yourself in a bad place. So, forget it. Too little, too late.” Perhaps God will say, “I’m sorry. It’s just been too much. Had you turned to me a while back, fine. But not now. You’ve pushed me again and again. You knowingly did what you knew I deplored again and again.” Or maybe God would say, “Sure, if you didn’t know the evil you were doing, I would have looked beyond it. But you knew. There were things you did that you actually stopped and considered how evil they were and pushed the thought out of your mind and did them anyway. So, now you’re going to get what you deserve.” After all, all those things about the nature of Jehoahaz’s sin were true. He did turn to God only after finding himself in a bad place. He did sin again and again before seeking God. He did what he knew was wrong. So, we would expect to read something like, “Then Jehoahaz sought the favor of the Lord, but there was none to be found.” But what do we read? “Then Jehoahaz sought the favor of the Lord, and the Lord listened to him, for he saw the oppression of Israel, how the king of Syria oppressed them. (Therefore the Lord gave Israel a savior, so that they escaped from the hand of the Syrians, and the people of Israel lived in their homes as formerly.” How do we explain this? We explain it by recognizing that the Lord is merciful and responds to repentance. He sent his Son to die and pay for our sins not so that he might turn away from us when we seek his grace and forgiveness. He sent his Son to die for us so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Christ. He sent his Son to die so that you might turn to him in repentance and know that he hears and receives and forgives you. This is our God. So, let me encourage you this morning, as you are convicted of your sin to turn to him in repentance. Why would you not turn to him when you see again in the Scripture that he is merciful and responds to those favorably who turn to him? There are a number of lies the enemy will tell you about how God will respond to you along the lines of how we assumed God would have responded to Jehoahaz. But remember his response: “And the Lord listened to him” and delivered the people. But, let’s ask another question. How do we know God will be merciful to us? How do we know he won’t judge us, since we’re sinners? How do we know he won’t call us what we are – wicked people who deserve nothing less than hell? The answer to that question is also seen in our text, for the text reminds us that the Lord is righteous, and he fulfills his promises. The Lord is righteous; he fulfills his promises Throughout these chapters we are reminded of God’s faithfulness to his promises. First, though we read in 8:16-18 of these evil kings in Judah, doing evil in the sight of God, we read in 8:19, “Yet the LORD was not willing to destroy Judah, for the sake of David his servant, since he promised to give a lamp to him and to his sons forever.” So, because God promised that David would always have a son who would reign on the throne. And notice in chapter 11 how this promise is severely threatened. Joram and Ahaziah were dead and we read in 11:1, “Now when Athaliah the mother of Ahaziah saw that her son was dead, she arose and destroyed all the royal family.” Therefore, it looks like David’s line is done for. The family tree has been severed. But then we read verses 2-3, “But Jehosheba, the daughter of King Joram, sister of Ahaziah, took Joash the son of Ahaziah and stole him away from among the king’s sons who were being put to death, and she put him and his nurse in a bedroom. Thus they hid him from Athaliah, so that he was not put to death. And he remained with her six years, hidden in the house of the LORD, while Athaliah reigned over the land.” This story of a little baby being hidden away from a ruler who wanted to kill any potential rival has a familiar flavor to it, doesn’t it? But hiding him away isn’t the end of the plan. Rather, the rest of chapter 11 tells us that Jehoida the priest made a covenant with some men to protect this young boy and then anoint him as king. Sure enough, they do it. And when Athaliah hears the noise of the coronation, she comes running, crying “Treason! Treason!” But the men take her out and put her to death so that we read, “Jehoash was seven years old when he began to reign.” So David’s line continues. And Joash/Jehoash does well for a while. We read in 11:18 how the people got rid of the priests of Baal and tore down the altars to him. And we read in 12:4-16 how he set up a plan to make sure that the temple always had money to be renovated. He did much that was pleasing to the Lord. However, we find that he also did other things not so well. In fact, all the goods and gold that he had set aside to repair the temple he ended up giving away to Hazael when Hazael threatened him. And bribing an enemy king with the money of the temple is never looked upon well in 1-2 Kings. So, his own servants rose up against him and killed him. But then we read in 12:21, “And they buried him with his fathers in the city of David, and Amaziah his son reigned in his place.” Again, God is showing that his word is certain. He fulfills his promise. Even in chapter 13, when a man falls into the grave of a dead Elisha, I think that is to remind us of the certainty and power of God’s word, for that is what Elisha represented to the people. But, we are most clearly reminded of God’s commitment to fulfilling his promise at the end of chapter 13. We read in 13:22-23, “Now Hazael king of Syria oppressed Israel all the days of Jehoahaz. But the LORD was gracious to them and had compassion on them, and he turned toward them, because of his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and would not destroy them, nor has he cast them from his presence until now.” So, not only does God keep his covenant with David, but he keeps his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as well. But, we might ask, “What does this have to do with me?” I mean, good for David’s sons and good for Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and any connected with them, but what does this have to do with us. Well, God’s faithfulness to his covenant promises are crucial for us because one of those promises to Abraham is that in him he would bless all the nations. In Galatians 3:8-9, Paul writes, “And the Scripture, forseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel to Abraham, saying, ‘In you shall all the nations be blessed.’ So then, those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.” That is, all the way back in Genesis 12 when God promised to bless all the nations in Abraham, he was making a promise to justify any who would have faith in Christ. This wasn’t a promise that he would justify those who deserved to hear a verdict, “You’re righteous” from God, for none of us deserve to hear that verdict at the final judgment. No, it was a promise to justify anyone who simply had faith in Christ. If anyone has faith in Christ, God has promised to declare that one righteous – to justify the one who has faith in his Son. How, then? Because we really aren’t righteous; how could God then declare us righteous simply by believing in his Son? The answer is that Jesus lived a perfectly righteous life. He deserves to hear, “You are righteous.” But instead of that, he died, taking the punishment for the sins of any who would believe in him, though his righteous judgment was heard three days later as God raised him from the dead. Therefore, though we are not righteous, if we have faith in Christ, we can know that Jesus’ perfect life of righteousness is credited to us even as he took the penalty for sins on the cross that we deserved. It is a glorious exchange – he takes my punishment and I get his righteousness credited to me. And that exchange happens for any who have faith in Christ. God promised to do that. He promised it to Abraham. That’s why it is very good news for us to read that God keeps his promises. He never fails to do what he promised to do. Therefore, if we repent and turn to him, with faith in his Son, we can know for certain that we are forgiven, cleansed, and declared righteous. We can know for certain that God will do the very thing he promised – justify anyone who has faith in his Son. That is the good news. And that’s what we will celebrate as we come to the table. Amen. 1Martin Luther, Luther: Letters of Spiritual Counsel, ed. and trans. Theodore G. Trappert (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1955), 107. 2Ibid., 105-06. 3A. W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy (New York: Harper Collins, 1961), 1. 3720 North Highland Avenue Jackson, TN 38305 731-664-3295 Contact the Webmaster
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