2 Kings 8–11

0:00 Okay, survey time. Raise your hands if, as a teenager, you at any point did something insanely stupid, not yet, insanely stupid, that could have gotten you killed even, but you're still here. Yeah, that's, that's most of us. Most of us when we were teens, the Lord gives us a lot of years to be teenagers. It's 13 to 19. And as teenagers, we can do a whole lot of dumb things. I was one of those teenagers. I did a lot of dumb things as a, as a teenager. Not, I think, as many dumb things as some of you, because I've heard your stories. And my dumb things, my dumb things were not exactly exciting. They were just like pure dumb.

0:52 Some of you, I know because I've heard your stories, have done dumb things, but they're like exciting things. They had to do with, you know, being cool, doing cool stuff. Not me. My dumb things that could have killed me were just dumb. For example, I had in my bedroom this old-timey, old-fashioned looking lamp, Coca-Cola on it, you know, stained glass sort of thing. and it had a bulb in it and then a pull string, right, that you pulled to turn the light on and off. Well, you know, I was waking up one morning or something like that and pulled a little string on my lamp and the light didn't come on or, you know, it popped and the light bulb went out and I realized, okay, the light bulb is off. So I laid there in bed for a second and turned my head over to look at this lamp and then for whatever set of reasons or demons that got into me, I'm not sure which, I just without thinking reached over, unscrewed the light bulb, set it down on the thing And I thought, I want to stick my thumb in that socket.

1:52 But to make it more interesting, I guess, I grabbed the little light switch thingy and went like this. And then stuck my thumb up in the light socket. And I'm telling you, it almost knocked me off the bed. Why did I do that? I have no idea why I did that. And it is a dumb sermon introduction, but it is exactly what the nation of Judah did in our text today.

2:23 So off we go. We're continuing our study of the book of 2 Kings today. Take a Bible, turn over to 2 Kings chapter 8. That's where we're going to start. If you're using a pew Bible, one of these red maroon colored ones, you'll find it on page 314. That's where it starts. This book of kings, it's first and second kings together, was written about 200, not 200, 2,500 years ago. And it tells the story of the ancient kings of Israel, both the northern kingdom, which retained the name Israel after the Civil War, and the southern kingdom, which took the name Judah.

2:56 And as we've said over and over and over again through this study, the book of kings is not just doing historical work. It's not just telling you events. This is a book with a deeply theological message and purpose. It uses the lives of these kings not just to teach you the historical truths about the kings, though it does that, but more importantly, it uses the lives of those kings to teach you about God and about God's ways and therefore about ourselves. So that's why we're taking the time to study it, not just because it's interesting, not just because we can learn some history about this two-bit nation 3,000 years ago or so, but because we learn in this book about God and ourselves.

3:37 And there are a lot of things that this book teaches us about God. It teaches us to listen and obey his word. It teaches us that God is the only God in the universe, that other gods are false and fake and not worth following. We're listening to. This book teaches us the consequences of sin. It teaches us, as we're going to see today, the fact that God always keeps his promises. In our passage today, it also teaches us the importance God places on keeping his covenants.

4:09 In fact, in these chapters, just when it looks like the lights are about to go out on the southern kingdom of Judah, it's God's determination to keep his covenant to King David that saves them from destruction. They quite, not literally, but figuratively stick their thumb in the light socket. And it could have killed them, but God saves them because of his covenant with King David. Well, today we're going to look at four chapters of the book of 2 Kings, 8, 9, 10, and 11. If you came in this morning thinking it was just going to be 8 to 10, or maybe you looked in the bulletin, maybe you even read ahead and you read 8, 9, and 10, kudos to you.

4:46 You were right. It was just 8 to 10 when I started this thing. But the thing is, sometimes I get into studying a book like 2 Kings, especially one that I'm not as familiar with, and I just realized in the course of studying it that I divided it up wrong when I planned the sermon series. So the bulletins get printed and everything gets done, and then I realized I got this wrong, and that's exactly what happened here. It just turned out, as I studied it, that chapter 11 makes a better ending of 8 to 10 than it does a beginning of 12 to 15. Now, it functions as both, but it really fits with 8 to 10, so we're going to be studying it today.

5:18 If you didn't read that chapter, don't do it now. It's fine. If you don't know what happens in chapter 11, it'll just make for a great surprise ending to this whole thing. Again, we're not going to take all the time to read this whole thing. We're not going to read all four chapters. We are going to read two of them, and we're going to read some chunks of the others as we go. But I do want to give you, before we get started good, an overview of what is going on in these chapters. So take your Bible, turn there, page 314 in the Pew Bible.

5:49 Here's what's going on. So far in 2 Kings, what we've been doing is watching this continuing war that's been going on between the wicked house of Ahab, on the one hand, he was king in the north, right? That's the wicked house of Ahab, against the prophet of the Lord, which started out as Elijah and has now moved on to Elisha. And what's happened is that we've moved on now in this war to kind of the second generation. So you've got King Jehoram over here, who's king in the north. He's the king of the house of Ahab, against the prophet Elisha.

6:23 And last week, as we studied chapters 4 through 7, what we mostly saw was a series of miracles that showed Elisha doing the same things that his predecessor Elijah did. And the whole point of that is to say, well, this new guy is just as great a prophet of God as the old guy was. What happens in our text today is that finally, some really long-standing promises of God come to fruition. And the wicked house of Ahab finally gets what's coming to it.

6:57 And like a person escaping from a fire, the dynasty of David just barely escapes that in the south. But the Davidic king comes out with his clothes smelling like smoke. So here's a quick rundown. In chapter 8, you've kind of got in the first half or first third or so this brief conclusion to the story of the Shunammite woman that we talked about last week whose son Elisha raised from the dead. Then starting in verse 7, running all the way down through chapter 8, you've got the rise of new kings in Syria first.

7:31 This guy, Hazael. And then you've got kings in Judah, two of them. So if you look at the sort of subtitles, right? Hazael murders Ben-Hadad. That happens in Syria. It's important. We'll talk about it later. Then you've got two kings in the southern kingdom of Judah. These are the Davidic kings. Jehoram reigns in Judah. And then Ahaziah reigns in Judah. So that's kind of what happens in chapter 8. In chapter 9 and 10, through that whole long thing, Ahab's chickens finally come home to roost.

8:02 And Jezebel, who is the wife of Ahab, finally gets what's coming to her. So you've got in chapter 9 all the way through 10, the story of this new king in the north, Jehu, who becomes basically God's instrument to kill them all and everybody who supports them. These are bloody, nasty chapters, but they are recounting a judgment against the house of Ahab that's been promised for a very, very long time now and hasn't happened until this moment. That's what happens in 9 and 10. We'll talk about it.

8:33 Then you've got chapter 11, the surprise ending about the house of David escaping that judgment in a kind of surprising way because they sort of brought it on themselves, but they escape. And we'll look at that in detail later too. Now, here's the sort of, I want to tell you what's fascinating about these chapters. They're kind of fascinating in their own right, if you like history, but there's a drama that's happening in these chapters. And once you catch that drama, it's just amazing. So I want to tell you about the drama. Basically, this is telling the story of the fall of the house of Ahab.

9:04 Ahab was the wickedest king that ever sat on either throne, north or south. Nobody like him in the history of Israel. He was that toad of a man squatting on the throne of his kingdom, if you remember that line. And here in these chapters, he and his wife Jezebel, who was even more wicked than him, killing people, leading the people to worship idols, all the rest of it, they both get what's coming to them. They were awful people. And because of that, God promised several times in 1 Kings that he was going to destroy them. And those promises of destruction had a couple of parts to them.

9:36 There was, to Ahab and Jezebel themselves, there was, I'm going to kill you in a particularly nasty way, and the dogs are going to lick up your blood from the ground. That's what he tells them in particular. But it's not just you that I'm going to destroy. I'm going to destroy your entire dynasty. Like anybody who could sit on the throne after you, anybody who has a claim to the throne, I'm going to wipe them out too, God says, because you are so wicked. And then, after those promises are made, for chapter after chapter after chapter, it doesn't happen.

10:15 I mean, yeah, Ahab himself dies, but other than that, everything kind of carries on as normal. His son succeeds him on the throne easily. There's no war. There's no fight. There's nothing. His son succeeds him on the throne. Then his son falls out the window of his palace. And then second son takes over. But there's nothing, you know, super serious about that. And Jezebel herself, Jezebel herself, just kind of hangs on just fine in the palace in Jezreel. And all these promises of God, all these things that God had said about destroying the house of Ahab, just kind of hang out there unfulfilled.

10:55 In fact, it's sort of worse than that because in the first few chapters of 2 Kings, Elisha actually, the prophet Elisha, actually seems almost friendly with Ahab's son. Even helps him in certain ways to hold on to his kingdom. So by the time chapter 8 opens, the tension in this whole thing is just almost unbearable. Because the weight of those prophecies is pressing down on the house of Ahab, but it's not collapsing. And yet you can kind of see the stilts on which it stands starting to shake under the pressure.

11:32 But here's some added, that's enough tension. But here's a little bit of added extra tension to this story. The southern kingdom through all of this, the kingdom of Judah through it all, has so far just been sailing along. I mean, you don't even get much said in the book of Kings for long stretches because the kings in Judah are just fine. Like they're reigning for decades at a time. They're doing what's right. Everything is just rolling for them. And why? Why are they prosperous?

12:02 Why are they peaceful? Why is everything rolling for them? Well, it's because of the covenant that God made with David. See, it's the kings in the south that are the descendants of David. The north took off on its own. They created their own dynasty, new family, new everything. They broke off from the house of David. They're not in covenant with God anymore. But Judah, the south, is in covenant. And so God has been taking care of them. But here's the problem. What you start to see in these chapters of kings is that the kings in the south have gotten tangled up with the kings in the north.

12:37 Because their king has married a daughter of wicked king Ahab. So what happens in these chapters is that when the fireballs start to fall on the house of Ahab, when it all starts to come down on Ahab, some of those fireballs get disturbingly close to destroying the line of David too. And why is that important? Because if you destroy the line of David, you get no Davidic king.

13:07 You get no Messiah. You get no Jesus. You get no Christians and no salvation. So the whole gospel, the whole of God's promises is hanging by a thread in these chapters. Now, obviously you know the ending in advance, right? The Davidic line is going to survive because here we are worshiping the Davidic king, Jesus, who sits on the throne of the universe, right? You know how it ends. The Davidic line does not get destroyed, but it's still a super good story, and there are so many things to learn in it.

13:38 Here's the main idea, I think, of these chapters. God always keeps his promises, and he will always protect the kingdom of his son. He always keeps his promises, and he will always protect the kingdom of his son. There are two points to the sermon this morning. We're not going to be so much dividing up the chapters as kind of tracing out the fates of the two kingdoms, north and south, through them. So we're going to look first at God's judgment on the northern kingdom of Israel. That's the house of Ahab, right?

14:09 And then we're going to be looking at God's grace to the southern kingdom of Judah. That's the house of David. So here are the two points of the sermon, first the north, then the south. Number one, God always keeps his promises even if it takes a while. God always keeps his promises even if it takes a while. And number two, God always keeps his covenant even if it is sometimes a close-run thing. God always keeps his covenant even if it's sometimes a close-run thing.

14:41 All right, point number one. Let's look at the story. God always keeps his promises even if it takes a while. If you kind of look back, just let your eye wander back and your memory wander back into sort of the second half of chapter 6 on through chapter 7. We saw this story of the capital city of the north, Samaria it's called, being besieged by a Syrian army. And then miraculously being saved through the word of the prophet Elisha. Right? The city's under siege. There's a horrible famine. Elisha says, the Lord is going to save you. And then lo and behold, one day these lepers walk out from the gate and the army of the Syrians is just gone.

15:15 They're just gone, and God has saved them. Now, what are you supposed to do with that story? Are you supposed to cheer that story, or are you supposed to do something else with that story? Well, it's kind of a double thing, because on the one hand, you're supposed to cheer it, right? Here's the prophet Elisha telling the king in the north, the Lord is going to save you, and then the Lord saves him, and you're supposed to go, yep, go God, right? You saved the people in the north from certain destruction by the Syrians. That's a good thing. But as you read through the story, God's saving of Samaria, the city, the capital city of the north, God's saving of the northern people is also, by this point in the story, supposed to be kind of exasperating to you.

15:58 You're supposed to be tired of God intervening in all these different ways to save the people in the north. Why? Because for a very long time now, we've been waiting on God to just come on and execute judgment already against the house of Ahab. If you've been reading along or studying along, you know how wicked Ahab is. You know how wicked Jezebel is. You know how horrible these people are. God has promised a destruction, and yet it's not happening. In fact, he just seems to keep helping them.

16:29 And this broken siege in 6 and 7 is just one more example of that. But why are we expecting judgment in the first place? I mean, it'll be useful, I think, to just back up. You can take my word for it and just say, hey, you tell us we're expecting judgment. That's great. But I want to back up, and I want to give you a few specific verses, especially from 2 Kings, for why we are expecting judgment at this point in the story. And I want to pull the pieces together for you, because when you put them all together, they form this kind of prophetic net that's been slowly closing around the house of Ahab for a long time.

17:03 But it's missing some pieces yet. And when those pieces are put in place, you can think of a net or a mousetrap or something. When the last pieces are put into place, the house of Ahab is at it. But we're not quite there yet. It's just been closing slowly for a very, very long time. So here are the pieces of that trap that's being set up by the prophets. Back in 1 Kings chapter 14, it's verse 15 if you want to take notes and look at it later. 1 Kings 14, 15, this little known prophet, most of us have probably never even heard of him unless we've studied kings in some depth.

17:38 This little-known prophet, Ahijah, said that God was going to strike the northern kingdom and make it shake like a reed in water. So even back then, 1 Kings 14, the northern kingdom is evil, and God says, I'm going to strike you and make you shake like a reed in water. It's a really arresting image because what it says is the northern kingdom is weak, the northern kingdom is not able to support any weight, and it's going to shake like a slender little reed in the water. Then, after he says that, Ahijah says, not only am I going to do that, but I'm going to uproot these people, these northern people from this good land that she's sitting in right now.

18:17 So that was the prophecy. I'm going to make you shake, and then I'm going to uproot you. And so far, that hasn't happened. They're still there, and as far as we can tell in the story, everything is just going fine for the northern kingdom. They are not shaking like a reed in water. I mean, by 2 Kings 8, think about it. By 2 Kings 8, we are now 16 chapters of Bible and 80 years from that prophecy. And the northern kingdom is still going strong.

18:48 We've been waiting a long time for this trap to snap on the northern kingdom. Okay, fast forward. In 1 Kings 21, that prophecy of the shaking reed becomes more specific to Ahab and Jezebel in particular. When Elijah the prophet confronts Ahab after he kills this man named Naboth because he just wants his vineyard. He wants his land and so he kills him and takes the land. And Elijah confronts him and says this to him. I'm going to read you what Elijah says in 1 Kings 21.

19:19 He says this to Ahab, like to his face. He says, behold, the Lord says, I will bring disaster upon you. I will utterly burn you up, and I will cut off from Ahab every male, bonder free in Israel. I will make your house like the house of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, and like the house of Baasha, the son of Ijah. He wiped those houses out, and he's saying, I'm going to do that to the same. I'm going to do that very same thing to Ahab. Because, I'm going to do that, because the anger to which you have provoked me, and because you have made Israel to sin.

19:52 And of Jezebel, the Lord also said, The dogs shall eat Jezebel within the walls of Jezreel. Anyone belonging to Ahab who dies in the city, the dogs shall eat. And anyone of his who dies in the open country, the birds of the heavens shall eat. Now that's strong stuff. But again, we've been waiting for that to happen for a very long time. And we know that Ahab and Jezebel deserve it. I mean, by the time we get to 1 Kings chapter 8, we're nine chapters on and two decades on from that prophecy. And Ahab is dead. Yes, but Jezebel is still kicking, and Ahab's son is still on the throne doing just fine.

20:27 So what's going on? Well, last thing I want to pull together for you in this trap. Back in 1 Kings 19, Elijah had been told that for this trap to spring and destroy the house of Ahab, three things are going to need to be in place before that can happen. Elisha would need to succeed Elijah. We need a new prophet. That's one thing God said. Second, this guy named Hazael would need to be the king in Syria. And third, this other guy named Jehu would need to be king in Israel.

21:00 Now, so far, of those three things, Elisha, Hazael, and Jehu, how many have happened? By the time you get to chapter 8. One. Just one. The only one that has happened is that Elisha has succeeded Elijah now. So one piece of the trap is set. but there are still two, Hazael and Jehu, and you haven't even heard of them yet in the story. They just haven't shown up yet, but they are going to show up in really quick order now. So that's where the story stands as chapter 8 opens.

21:33 There's this kind of prophetic trap that's set to destroy the house of Ahab. So far it hasn't sprung, and there are a couple of pieces missing from it. We need Hazael, and we need Jehu in place. And then chapter 8 opens and we get this cute little story about the Shunammite woman again. I mean, it's so strange seeming because you've got all of this tension building up. Nations are moving and grinding. Dynasties are about to fall and you can just feel it. And then you get this story of the king of Israel reclining on his back, listening to stories from Gehazi, this servant of Elisha.

22:08 And this woman comes in with her son and the king nicely restores all her land. What's that all about? Why is it there? Well, Ed Moore, a couple of months ago, preached specifically on that passage. So I'm not going to spend much time on his details. But the way it seems to be functioning in the larger story. You can go back and listen to Ed's sermon if you want to. It will be hugely encouraging. The way that story seems to be functioning is that it is one last invitation to Jehoram, the northern king, to repent and come back to the Lord.

22:41 That's what it is. It's one last invitation to him to repent and come back to the Lord. Okay, let's look at just a little bit of it. We're going to kind of skip. Well, no, let's just read it. Chapter 8, verse 1. Now, Elisha had said to the woman whose son he had restored to life, Arise and depart with your household and sojourn wherever you can, for the Lord has called for a famine, and it will come upon the land for seven years. So the woman arose and did according to the word of the man of God. She went with her household and sojourned in the land of the Philistines, seven years. And at the end of the seven years, when the woman returned from the land of the Philistines, she went to appeal to the king for her house and her land. Why did she do that?

23:20 Because probably when she disappeared for that long, the king just requisitioned her land. He just took it. So now she's come back. She wants it back, right? So she went to appeal to the king for her house and her land. Now the king was talking with Gehazi, the servant of the man of God, saying, tell me all the great things that Elisha has done. And while he was telling the king how Elisha had restored the dead to life, behold, the woman whose son he had restored to life appealed to the king for her house and her land. And Gehazi said, my lord, O king, here is the woman. And here is her son whom Elisha restored to life.

23:52 And when the king asked the woman, she told him. So the king appointed an official for her saying, restore all that was hers together with the produce of the fields from the day that she left the land until now. Nice little story. The king's actions here are kind of fascinating, aren't they? He's a king in the north. He's an idolater. He's a pagan. And yet he wants to hang out with Gehazi and hear stories about Elisha, the prophet of the true God. Why? Well, I mean, there's nothing that particularly tells us.

24:26 But what you can see in the text is that he seems utterly fascinated with the God of the Bible. and yet he's not willing to give up his life of paganism and idol worship. He takes some steps, right? I mean, he sees the importance of this. He's even hearing stories and hearing an eyewitness testimony, seeing this kid that was raised from the dead by the God of the Bible, and he honors that. He's fascinated by it, but he never repents. He never puts his faith in the God of the Bible.

25:03 Friends, that's a deathly, deathly danger. To be fascinated by the God of the Bible. To love the stories. To want to sit around with servants of the Lord and hear the stories of what God has done. And yet not to put your faith in Him. Not to follow Him. Not to obey Him. There is an enormous difference. An enormous difference between being fascinated with God and putting your faith in Him. I wonder if that resonates with you at all today.

25:37 I wonder if you look at this and say, yeah, that's kind of me. Like I hang around the church, right? I come to church. I like the preaching. I like the way Greg talks about the Old Testament. There's things in there that I can learn. It's all fascinating. And yet you've never bowed your knee to the God of those stories. You've never bowed your knee in faith to the one who caused all these things to happen. Friends, that's an incredibly dangerous thing. It is an incredibly dangerous place to be now, and it's an incredibly dangerous place to be on the day of judgment.

26:12 Because if you stand before the bar of God, and he says to you, why should I let you into heaven? And you say, because I was fascinated with what you did. The answer is going to come back to part from me, I didn't know you. You knew some things about me, but you didn't know me. Friends, don't let that happen to you. Don't just be fascinated with the God of the Bible. Put your faith and your trust in him to save you from your sins. Fascination's not enough.

26:45 In the next verses, starting in 7 there, rolling on down through the end of chapter 8, one of the main pieces of that trap comes into place. You've got this no-account guy by the name of Hazael who takes the throne of Syria. You can read it later on. It's not that long, but it's a pretty fascinating story. You've got Ben-Hadad there, the king of Syria, is sick. And so he sends one of his servants, Hazael, to inquire of the man of God.

27:17 Elisha, am I going to recover from this sickness? And Elisha basically tells him, no, you're not going to recover from this sickness. Go back and tell him. And Hazael kind of takes that on himself and says, okay, well, you know, I'm going to take care of this myself. And so he smothers the king in his own bed with his own bedsheets and takes the throne for himself. That's how he comes to the throne. You can see what happens here. You've got this putting in place of another piece of the prophecy from 1 Kings 19, Hazael.

27:47 The rest of the chapter, look at verse 18 and on down through the end. It tells of two kings in the southern kingdom of Judah, One guy named Jehoram, and then his son Ahaziah, who only reigned for a year. And then, once Ahaziah is in place, this whole roller coaster that we've been waiting on finally gets to the top of the hill and tips over and drops at breakneck speed. Okay, so you remember the prophecy? You remember the prophecies, right, that Ahab's house is going to be destroyed, that dogs are going to lick the blood of his sons and relatives, Jezebel's going to be eaten by dogs, remember all that?

28:24 Remember the three triggers? It's Elisha, Hazael, and this guy Jehu. Well, now, after chapter 8, we've got two of those in place. Elisha is there, and Hazael is in place. Check and check. And then look at the beginning of chapter 9. Then Elisha the prophet called one of the sons of the prophets and said to him, Tie up your garments and take this flask of oil in your hand and go to Ramoth-Gilead. And when you arrive, look there for Jehu, the son of Jehoshaphat, and go in, have him rise, lead him into an inner chamber, take the flask of oil, pour it on his head, and say, thus says the Lord, I anoint you king over Israel.

29:06 So there it is, the last piece of the trap. Elisha, check, Hazael, check, and now this third guy named Jehu. Here's what we're going to do. These two chapters are just fascinating. So what we're going to do is read them, and I'm going to stop at various points and just kind of comment and explain certain things that are going on. But I think the story itself is just so powerful that we're just going to read it and see what happens. So look with me at chapter 9, verse 1. Then Elisha the prophet called one of the sons of the prophets and said to him, Tie up your garments, take this flask of oil in your hand, and go to Ramoth-Gilead.

29:40 And when you arrive, look there for Jehu, the son of Jehoshaphat, son of Nimshi, and go in and have him rise from among his fellows and lead him to an inner chamber and take the flask of oil and pour it on his head and say, Thus says the Lord, I anoint you king over Israel and open the door and flee, do not linger. So the young man, the servant of the prophet, went to Ramoth Gilead and when he came, behold, the commanders of the army were in council. And he said, I have a word for you, O commander. And Jehu said, To which of us all? And he said, To you, O commander. 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.

30:27 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 Aijah. And the dogs shall eat Jezebel in the territory of Jezreel, and none shall bury her. And then he opened the door and fled. When Jehu came out to the servants of his master, they said to him, Is all well? Why did this mad fellow come to you? And he said to them, You know the fellow and his talk. And they said, That's not true. Tell us now. Maybe they saw the oil on his head, right?

30:59 Something has happened here. You're lying to us. So tell us now what has happened. And he said, Thus and so he spoke to me, saying, Thus says the Lord, I anoint you king over Israel. And then in haste, every man of them took his garment and put it under him on the bare steps. And they blew the trumpet and proclaimed, Jehu is king. Thus Jehu, the son of Jehoshaphat, the son of Nimshi, conspired against Jehoram. That's the reigning king up in Israel. Now, Jehoram, with all Israel, had been on guard at Ramoth Gilead against Hazael, king of Syria. But King Jehoram had returned to be healed in Jezreel of the wounds that the Syrians had given him when he fought with Hazael, king of Syria.

31:34 So Jehu said to his men, if this is your decision, then let nobody slip out of the city to go and tell that news in Jezreel. We don't want them to get away. Then Jehu mounted his chariot and went to Jezreel, for Jehoram lay there. And Isaiah, king of Judah, had come down to visit Jehoram. Now the watchman was standing on the tower in Jezreel, and he saw the company of Jehu as he came and said, I see a company. And Jehoram said, take a horseman and send him to meet them and let him say, is it peace? So a man on horseback went to meet him and said, Thus says the king, Is it peace?

32:05 And Jehu said, What do you have to do with peace? Turn around and ride behind me. The watchman reported, saying, The messenger reached them, but he is not coming back. So he sent out a second horseman who came to them and said, Thus the king has said, Is it peace? And Jehu answered, What do you have to do with peace? Turn around and ride behind me. Again, the watchman reported, He reached them, but he's not coming back. And the driving is like the driving of Jehu, the son of Nimshi, for he drives furiously. Can you imagine being known just by the way you drive? Joram said, make ready. So they made ready his chariot.

32:36 Then Joram, king of Israel, and Isaiah, king of Judah, set out each in his chariot and went to meet Jehu and met him at the property of Naboth, the Jezreelite. Now that's ominous. And when Joram saw Jehu, he said, is it peace, Jehu? And he answered, what peace can there be? So long as the whorings and the sorceries of your mother Jezebel are so many. And then Jehoram reigned about and fled, saying to Ahaziah, Treachery, O Ahaziah! And Jehu drew his bow with his full strength and shot Jehoram between his shoulders, so that the arrow pierced his heart, and he sank in his chariot.

33:14 Jehu said to Abedkar, his aide, Take him up and throw him on the plot of ground belonging to Naboth the Jezreelite. For remember, when you and I rode side by side behind Ahab his father, how the Lord made this pronouncement against him. As surely as I saw yesterday the blood of Naboth and the blood of his sons, declares the Lord, I will repay you on this plot of ground. So now therefore take him up and throw him on the plot of ground in accordance with the word of the Lord. When Ahaziah, the king of Judah, saw this, he fled in the direction of Beth-Hagan. And Jehu pursued him and said, Shoot him also.

33:45 And they shot him in the chariot at the ascent of Ger, which is by Iblion. And he fled to Megiddo and died there. His servants carried him in a chariot to Jerusalem and buried him in his tomb with his fathers in the city of David. In the eleventh year of Joram, the son of Ahaziah, began to reign over Judah. When Jehu came to Jezreel, Jezebel heard of it. So she painted her eyes and adorned her head and looked out of the window. And as Jehu entered the gate, she said, Is it peace, you Zimri, murderer of your master? What does she mean by Zimri there?

34:15 Well, there was this guy named Zimri who ruled over Israel for one week after killing the king that preceded him. So what she's saying to him is, your rebellion is not going to be any more successful than Zimri's. At best, you may kill the king, but you're going to reign for a week until somebody else kills you. That's what she's saying to him. She's insulting him. And he lifted up his face to the window and said, who is on my side? Who? And two or three eunuchs looked out at him. He said, throw her down. So they threw her down. And some of her blood spattered on them. These people have a problem with falling out of windows.

34:48 So they threw her down. Some of her blood spattered on the wall and on the horses, and they trampled on her. Then he went in and had lunch, and he said, See now to this cursed woman and bury her, for she is a king's daughter. But when they went to bury her, they found no more of her than the skull and the feet and the palms of her hands. When they came back and told him, he said, This is the word of the Lord, which he spoke by his servant Elijah the Tishbite. In the territory of Jezreel, the dog shall eat the flesh of Jezebel, and the corpse of Jezebel shall be as dung on the face of the field in the territory of Jezreel, so that no one will ever be able to say, Here lies Jezebel.

35:21 he keeps going. Now Ahab had 70 sons in Samaria. So Jehu wrote letters and sent them to Samaria, to the rulers of the city, to the elders, to the guardians of the sons of Ahab, saying, now then, as soon as this letter comes to you, seeing your master's sons are with you, and there are with you chariots and horses and fortified cities also, and weapons, in other words, you got enough stuff to take me on, select the best and fittest of your master's sons and set him on his father's throne and fight for your master's house. In other words, bring it on. If you're going to fight with me, let's have it out. Make one of these guys king, bring your armies, and let's have it out. Verse 4, but they were exceedingly afraid and said, behold, the two kings could not stand before him. How then can we stand? So he who was over the palace and he who was over the city, together with the elders and the guardians, sent to Jehu saying, we are your servants and we will do all that you tell us. We will not make anyone king. Do whatever is good in your eyes. So he wrote to them a second letter saying, if you're on my side and if you're ready to obey me, take the heads of your master's sons and come to me at Jezreel tomorrow at this time. Now the king's sons, 70

36:27 persons, were with the great men of the city who were bringing them up. And as soon as the letter came to them, they took the king's sons and slaughtered them, 70 persons, and put their heads in baskets and sent them to him at Jezreel. You notice he told them to come, that they are keeping their distance, just post the heads, right? Just mail them. UPS. We're not going anywhere near this guy. When the messenger came and told him they have brought the heads of the king's sons, he said, lay them in two heaps at the entrance of the gate until the morning. Then in the morning, when he went out, he stood and said to all the people, you people are innocent. It was I who conspired against my master and killed him, yeah, but who struck down all these? In other words, I'm not in this alone. Like, I can't kill all these people by myself. I can't do this rebellion all alone. There are people all over this kingdom who are with me, and they have killed Ahab's sons. That's what he's saying. Know then, this is verse 10, 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

37:28 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. Then he set out and went to Samaria and on the way he was at Beth Echid of the shepherds, Jehu met the relatives of Ahaziah king of Judah in the south and he said who are you? And they answered we are the relatives of Ahaziah. We came down to visit the royal princes and the sons of the queen mother and he said take them alive and they took them alive and slaughtered them at the pit of Beth Echid. 42 persons and he spared none of them. If you look down through the rest of the chapter you'll see that he also strikes down all the prophets of Baal in Samaria. He calls them all together at the temple and promises them he's going to make a sacrifice to Baal and then he has them all slaughtered by the army. He is just absolutely wrecking the house of Ahab and everyone who supports it. Now that's just a brutal story isn't it? It is just a brutal story and it's hard to get away from because it sits uncomfortably

38:33 with us at some points. But I want you to notice that the text itself seems to throw zero side-eye at what Jehu does here. You can look at 1017 or you can look at 1030. Jehu is actually commended over and over again for doing what he's doing here to the house of Ahab because he is God's appointed instrument to carry out all that he had promised to do to the house of Ahab. And Jehu does it right down to the letter.

39:05 So here's the disturbing thing. Here's what kind of gets us. All the discomfort that we may feel about this story really comes down not to discomfort with this ancient primitive king. It comes down to discomfort with God and the judgment of God. And that's an important thing for us to see in ourselves. See, generally speaking, we love the stories in the Bible that are about grace and deliverance and redemption.

39:37 We love the story of the Israelites being rescued from Egypt and Exodus. We love the story of the Shunammites' son being raised from the dead. But when we come to passages like this in the Bible, we're not as familiar with them. Sometimes they shock us and it seems that we've never even read them or heard about them before because what we do with stories like this is that we turn away from them in disgust. We don't want to look at them. Even when the Bible is screaming at us, this is the righteous judgment of God. We, in general, are uncomfortable with judgment.

40:09 We think it's primitive. We think it's wrong. We think it's violent. We think it's overdone. But brothers and sisters, if we're Christians, if we're believers of the Bible, we have to face up to the fact that judgment is real. And it is coming, and when it does come, it will not be pretty. And that's an important warning for you if you're here and you're not a Christian.

40:41 And I'd be defaulting on the duty that I've got to stand up here and tell you about the meaning of the Word of God if I didn't warn you about that coming judgment. I mean, as much as you don't, as much as we don't want to admit it, as much as we don't want to look at it and stare it in the face, God has promised in His Word that He is going to judge the world and every person in it. And the images that the Bible uses for that judgment are the worst things you can imagine. Death, destruction, blood, fear, horror, hell.

41:12 And that is not just the Old Testament. You can look at what Jesus says in some of the later chapters of Matthew. You can read some of the chapters of Revelation about the final judgment. The Bible wants you to be aware that there is a coming day of judgment. And it wants you to fear that day. But you know what else the Bible wants you to understand? The Bible wants you to understand, even against that backdrop of judgment, that there's a hand outstretched that is full of mercy and grace and escape from judgment.

41:49 It wants you to know that, yes, there's a day coming, but there's going to be a whole people, there's going to be a whole kingdom who stand on the mountain apart from it. And the only reason they're going to be there, the only reason we are going to be there is because we put our faith in the King, because we put our faith in Jesus Christ. Friends, judgment day is coming. There's no way to avoid it. There's no way that I could avoid warning you about it. but what I can do as a preacher and explainer of God's word is tell you that that's not the final word.

42:21 Take the hand of mercy that's outstretched to you. Put your faith in Jesus who took the punishment that you deserve. You know that's what he was doing on the cross, right? Taking the punishment from the day of judgment and pulling it forward and exhausting it in himself so that when that day comes for you, the judgment won't fall. That's what he did. Put your faith in him. It's important to remember this as well if you're a Christian. I mean, why? Why? I mean, the day of judgment is exhausted for you, right? The judgment's not going to fall because it already fell for Jesus, and yet it's important for you to remember that.

42:54 Why? Well, because for one thing, thinking about the day of judgment and what could have been reminds you of what you have been saved from and makes you more grateful and more loving of Jesus Christ for what he did for you. There's a song that Stephen Curtis Chapman did years ago, like when I was in high school. But the gist of the song, the sort of lyrics of it was, remember your chains. Remember your chains. Remember the prison that once held you, but that you are now free from.

43:30 It's good. It's good to remember the day of judgment. It's good to remember what could have been, if not for Jesus Christ, because that will make you love him more. For that matter, remembering the Day of Judgment also presses on us as Christians the importance of talking and making opportunities to talk to people about the gospel of Jesus Christ. To point them, just like I did a few minutes ago, to that outstretched hand of Jesus in mercy. So knowing, having the Day of Judgment kind of put in front of you by 2 Kings 9 and 10, knowing that the Day of Judgment is coming, who do you need to tell about it?

44:08 Who have you been putting off telling about it because you know people don't want to hear about judgment? Well, maybe staring at you in the face just a little bit today will cause you to take whatever steps you need to. To tell them about the day of judgment and the salvation of Jesus from it. By the end of chapter 10, this prophetic trap that's been surrounding the house of Ahab, it finally snaps shut. And just like was foretold, Jehu destroys Ahab's entire dynasty. The judgment of God falls just like he promised, even if it took longer than anyone expected. That's one story that's going on in 8 through 10. But these chapters teach us something else too. It's not just that God always keeps his promises of judgment, it's also that God always keeps his covenants. And that's point number two. God always keeps his covenants, even if that is sometimes a close-run thing. He always keeps his covenants, even if that's sometimes a close run thing. So the main thrust of chapters 8 to 10 is definitely the last strand of this trap surrounding the house of Ahab

45:13 coming into place, and the trap finally snapping shut. That's the main story. But if you've been able to kind of keep things straight in your head between north and south, the house of Ahab, the house of David, if you've been able to kind of keep things straight, and admittedly that's difficult with all this unfamiliar stuff. There's also this disturbing sub-narrative that's been running underneath that main storyline. There's this kind of side question that's been growing in intensity through these chapters, and that question is, have the kings in the south, the Davidic kings, let themselves get so tangled up in the nastiness of the north that they're going to get torched just as well when the fireballs start falling?

45:58 That's the question that animates this thing underneath the main text. Well, so let's stop before I explain that and show you some of the strands of it and think about for just a second why that is such an important and dramatic question. We've already kind of alluded to it, but I'm just gonna say it again in case you missed it. The kings in the South are the Davidic kings, which means that the Messiah's got to come from them. And if there are no Davidic kings in the South, There is no Messiah. There is no salvation. So this question that's hanging in these chapters, are the kings in the south even going to survive when the fire starts falling on the northern kings, is huge.

46:38 And throughout chapters 8, 9, and 10, those fireballs start falling, and they get uncomfortably close to the house of David. Let me show you. So look back up at chapter 8. Look at the second half of it, starting in verse 16. Two sections there. Jehoram reigns in Judah. Then Ahaziah reigns in Judah. Those two sections are talking about two successive kings in the south. So two Davidic kings. Jehoram, that's the same name as the guy in the north, but it's not the same guy. It's a different guy. And then his son Ahaziah.

47:10 And there's a huge, deep sense of foreboding in the telling of these stories. So look at chapter 8, verse 16. In the fifth year of Jehoram, the son of Ahab, king of Israel, when Jehoshaphat was king of Judah, Jehoram, the son of Jehoshaphat, king of Judah, began to reign in the south. He was 32 years old when he became king, and he reigned eight years in Jerusalem. And he walked, here's where it gets foreboding, 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.

47:49 So Jehoram in the south is an absolute disaster. He married a daughter of Ahab in the north who led him. Chronicles tells us about this later. Led him to slaughter all of his brothers, right? Get any kind of, you know, challenge to the throne, out of the way. And then she led him to institute Baal worship in the south. Even in Jerusalem where the temple was. And to build a temple of Baal right next to it. Actually, he leads the southern kingdom to look not one whit different from the northern one. They worship the same gods.

48:20 They do the same things. They murder each other. And it's all because he married this unbelieving woman. Quick lesson, don't marry or date someone who does not worship the same God that you worship. Now there's a little bit of a reaction there. I'll be honest with you, that question and that application has been more of an issue in the years that I have been a pastor than I ever would have expected it to be.

49:00 Because our hearts get drawn to people and Satan is all too happy to let your heart get drawn to someone and then off you go, just like Jehoram, on a road that can very easily lead to destruction. Now, I know you got some stories. I know some of you are those stories of evangelistic dating, or even evangelistic marriage, and you say, well, I've seen it happen before. I've seen a believer date a non-Christian, and the non-Christian sometimes becomes a Christian through the dating. Okay, fine. That's fine. That's still not an argument for dating or marrying someone who doesn't love the same God that you do. Why not? If it works, sometimes why not? Well, who has to do the work of changing that person's heart? If evangelistic dating or marriage is going to work, who actually has to do the work of changing that person's heart?

49:51 God does. You're not going to do it. God has to change that person's heart. And God, the very one who has to do that work, says, don't do it. I'm not going to do that very often. Friends, do not date or marry someone who does not worship and love the same God that you do. Just don't do it. New Testament says exactly the same thing. So Jehoram's in trouble, but look at 19, chapter 8, verse 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.

50:30 So, okay, the south is in bad trouble. It's in bad straits. It's tangled up by marriage with this pagan house of Ahab, but God is still with them so far. Now look at 25 to 27, this next king. In the 12th year of Jehoram, the son of Ahab, king of Israel, Ahaziah, the son of Jehoram, king of Judah, began to reign. So this is Jehoram's son. Ahaziah was 22 years old when he began to reign, and he reigned one year in Jerusalem. His mother's name was Athaliah. She was a granddaughter of Omri, king of Israel.

51:01 Omri is Ahab's ancestor. So she is the daughter of Ahab that Jehoram married, and she's now the mother of the new king. This new king, 27, 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. How many times can it say house of Ahab about the south? House of Ahab, house of Ahab, house of Ahab. It's like the southern kingdom is in lockstep. A couple of other things to be concerned about here.

51:32 You've got Athaliah, right? It's not a good sign that she is still around. She's kind of the south's own Jezebel. And she leads Ahaziah to act again in the same ways as his father, in the ways of the house of Ahab. Second thing, what's missing from that paragraph that is present in the paragraph from 16 to 19? What's missing? Oh, that reassurance about the covenant with David is just not there. You see that? That reassurance about the covenant is just not there.

52:04 It makes you wonder if God's just finally lost patience. Okay, one more thing that's concerning here. We know from chapter 3, verse 1, that the dude in the north is going to reign for 12 years. And then he's going to get destroyed. We know that. We've also been seeing the way he's going to get destroyed, that trap, the pieces falling into place. They're all there. He's going to make it for 12 years, and then it's going to happen. So when does this new king in the south take the throne? We'll look at 2026, or 25, sorry.

52:36 He takes the throne in the 12th and last year of the dude up there. So we're at the end, right? I mean, the storm clouds are gathering now. Jehoram in the north is about to get nailed. Now look at 28. This new king in the south went with Jehoram, the son of Ahab, to make war against Hazael. And the Syrians wounded him. King Jehoram returned to be healed in Jezreel. The wounds of the Syrians had given him at Ramah when he fought.

53:07 And Ahaziah, the son of Jehoram, king of Judah, as the storm clouds of judgment are gathering on his last days, went down to see him because he was sick. This is the very last day. The storm clouds are gathering. And what does this poor, dumb king as Haziah do? He goes right to the place where the lightning is about to strike. And that's exactly what happens. We read it a few minutes ago. He's shot just like Jehoram is. He's dead.

53:38 What happens now? What happens now? Well, that's where chapter 11 picks up. But it gets worse first. Look at 11.1. 11.1. When Athaliah, the mother of Ahaziah, saw their son was dead, she arose and destroyed all the royal family. Like she's chopping at the stump of the dynasty of David. She's trying to destroy it. But look what happens in verse 2.

54:12 But Jehoshaphat, the daughter of King Jehoram, 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. And 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. You see what happens to that?

54:43 He's the last one, this little baby Joash. He's the last one of the sons of David. I mean, the whole thing has come down to this, the whole dynasty of David's come down to this tiny little trickle in this one little baby. And yet God works to save the dynasty of David. It's often like that, isn't it, for the people of God? It often works out that the people of God find themselves in hopeless-looking situations. Why? Why is that? Why does God do that to his people?

55:14 Why does God put his people in hopeless-looking situations like this? Because he loves to show off. That's why. He loves to show off. He loves to put his people in hopeless positions and then save them. He loves to show off what he can do and what he only can do in a helpless situation. And it's like that over and over again throughout the Bible. He presses his people up against the Red Sea with the armies of Egypt coming down on him. And then at the last second, he splits the Red Sea.

55:46 And his people go across on dry land. The Shunammite woman's dead son, hopeless situation. And yet God brings life out of it. And it's like that now, here in chapter 11, as this single solitary nurse huddles in this dark bedroom with little Joash as the entire dynasty of David otherwise is destroyed. It was going to be the same on that Saturday, about 2,000 years ago, when the disciples wept because Jesus was dead and in the tomb.

56:22 Hopeless situation. And yet on Sunday, the angel said, why are you looking for him here? He's not here. He's risen from the dead. Friend, do things ever seem hopeless to you? Things ever seem completely hopeless to you? You need to remember. You need to remember from this story right here that you serve and worship a God who revels in helpless situations. He loves them because he loves saving his people.

56:57 That's exactly what's happened to you in the gospel of Jesus Christ. You were saved by God from a totally helpless situation. Paul says that you were dead in your trespasses and sins. It doesn't get any more helpless and hopeless than that. And yet with a word, God brought your soul to life and caused your eyes to see the beauty of Jesus and plucked you out of hell and out of death and out of the grave. Praise God. We serve an amazing God. We serve an amazing God who always keeps his promise, who always keeps his covenants, and who keeps us secure because we are united to the king.

57:36 Let's pray. Our Lord Jesus, we honor you and we praise you as the Davidic king, the one who reigns over the universe as now king of kings and lord of lords. And we thank you, Lord Jesus, that we are secure and safe forever in you. Thank you for dying for us. Thank you for living for us. Thank you for rising again so that we might live forever with you in the light of eternity. You are a good king, and we praise and honor you for that this morning.

58:07 We ask all of these things and praise you for all of these things in your great name. Amen.