2 Kings 11:1–15:7

0:00 Well, good morning again, everybody. My name is Greg Gilbert. I'm the senior pastor here at Third Avenue, which means that usually I'm the guy that stands up here behind this big white pulpit and opens up God's Word, the Bible. That's what we understand this book to be and preaches it to you, which means to take a passage of Scripture, explain it, and then try to apply it to our lives in some various ways. If you're here with us this morning and you're visiting, maybe it's your second or third or fourth time, something like that, maybe it's your first time, we're especially glad to have you here.

0:32 I don't know how familiar things like this are to you. I don't know if you've been to church a hundred times in your life, or maybe you got pulled into this church service for the very first time in your life. Well, especially if that's you, if things are unfamiliar to you, just know that you're welcome here. We're super glad to have you. We know that there are some things that happen here that may seem a little bit strange, but we also hope that it's intriguing to you in whatever way. We want to be a congregation that is winsome, that is welcoming, and we want the things that we do here to be intriguing to you, even if sometimes they seem a little weird.

1:09 Speaking of weird stuff, I just want to give a special welcome to those of us seated in our penalty box over here. Yeah. Maybe you guys will send less this week, and then you can be back out there with your brothers and sisters. I'm kidding. They're not in a penalty box. That was a surprising thing for me to say, though, wasn't it? Life is full of surprises. That's what we're going to be talking about today, surprises. There's a particular idea in economic theory that says that our human minds, just because of the way they're constructed, tend to assume that things are going to go on the same forever.

1:50 You'll hear it in phrases if you listen to sort of economics TV when people say things like, if trends hold. You know, as we get into budget season here at 3rd Avenue and start building a budget for the next fiscal year, we say things like that. If giving trends hold, this is going to happen. And we make all kinds of assumptions based on the belief that trends are going to hold. The problem is they never do. Trends do not hold, and so therefore surprises just become a part of life. Sometimes those surprises are good, sometimes those surprises are bad, but they are inevitable.

2:27 And the question is how we as human beings, and especially today as Christians, are going to handle them. Well, in our text today in 2 Kings, we're going to be looking at a series of surprising things. And the question is going to be, how do we react to those surprising things? We're continuing our study of the book of 2 Kings today. Take a Bible and turn over to 2 Kings chapter 11. That's where we're going to start looking today. If you're using a red pew Bible, like the one I'm using right here, which you can find in the pew racks or I think on the sides and in the balcony, they're sort of tucked under the chairs.

3:01 But if you're using one of these, you'll be able to find 2 Kings chapter 11 on page 317. Just a little primer about how the Bible works, because we're going to be kind of moving around within four chapters of it today. You've got 66 different books in the Bible. 2 Kings is one of those 66. Each one of those books is divided up into what we call chapters. So if you look down on page 316, 317, you'll see a big number 10 on page 316, big number 11 on 317. Those are chapters, right?

3:31 And then within those chapters, you'll find smaller numbers that we call verses. I don't exactly know why we call them that, it has nothing to do with music, we've just been doing that for about a thousand years, and the point is that somebody about a thousand years ago divided the Bible up into these short little chunks so that we can talk to one another about the Bible, and I can say things like, look at chapter 11, verse 6, and you'll be able to know exactly where we are in the story. I'm going to be doing quite a bit of that today, so you're going to want to have a Bible open in front of you, and I promise all of this will make more sense if you've got the text in front of you.

4:07 It will also make more sense, just to say it again, if you have read these chapters in advance. So I've done this every week in 2 Kings. I'm going to continue to do it. Take some time at some point in every week to just read the text that's coming up for the next week. So if you look in the back of your bulletin, there's a list of upcoming sermons and the texts that are going to be coming up next. Read those in advance. I promise you the sermons will make more sense. Second Kings was written about 2,500, 2,600 years ago, something like that.

4:39 And together with First Kings, if you're not familiar with it, it tells the story of the monarchs, the kings of ancient Israel, this sort of small, two-bit, but ridiculously important nation in the history of the world. And it tells that story from the last days of the great King David. He was kind of the greatest king in the history of Israel. He was their second king, presided over a golden age that was carried on by his son. So that happened in about 1,000 B.C., roughly, if you want to put a number on it. And 2 Kings then ends in 586 B.C.

5:13 So altogether, 1 and 2 Kings is covering a span of history that runs a little over 400 years. So now, even with those couple of sentences that I just gave you, I know that some of you, your eyes are already glazing over. What is all of this about? Are we just getting a history lesson here with a bunch of unfamiliar names and dates and places? Well, no. And what I want to do is beg you right here up front not to be put off by all the dates and names. Because kings is not primarily a book of history. In fact, the things, I'm a historian.

5:45 I was trained as a historian in college. It's kind of what I do for a living, right? You ever thought of it like that? I look at ancient documents and try to understand them. That's what I do for my job. I am a historian. But the things that would normally interest historians like me, who won what battles, what each king accomplished, where the boundaries were of each country, who was rising and who was falling in terms of empires, those things in these books of kings are given extremely short shrift by the authors. In fact, those kinds of things are usually just sort of batted aside by some line like, as for all of those things, can't you read about those things in this other book?

6:23 That's what the author says over and over again. What he's interested in, far more than historical data though, is teaching his readers some truths about God, about how God operates in the world, and therefore, knowing how God operates in the world, how we, therefore, ought to live our lives before him. That's what he wants to teach us, and he uses the lives of the kings to do that. So this book that we're studying, for all of its age and for its intense weirdness sometimes, it turns out it is immensely relevant to us as Christians and to us as human beings.

6:58 We're actually going to be looking at four chapters of the book today, 11, 12, 13, and 14. But let's get ourselves up to speed with what's been going on in the story so far. For most of 2 Kings, through 10 chapters, 11 chapters, the main tension that's been running through the story and sort of driving the whole narrative of the book has been this question, when is the wicked house of the toad king Ahab going to fall? Right? You remember how we've described Ahab?

7:29 He's the wickedest king in all the history of either one of the kingdoms of Israel, north or south. He is the worst. And so one preacher described him as a toad that was squatting on the throne of his kingdom. So if you want to remember who Ahab is, that's how you remember him. He's a toad squatting on the throne of his kingdom. He'll stick in your mind, I promise you. That's how it's done for me for years. His wife was even worse, Jezebel. And so for a long time now, it's a span of about 80 years, and it runs all the way back into 1 Kings. we've had this series of prophecies hanging over the head of the house of Ahab like a sword, promising not only that Ahab and Jezebel were going to die, but that Ahab's entire dynasty was going to be wiped out.

8:12 And these jokers deserved it. They were wicked. They were murderers. They were idolaters. They led the people of Israel not just into sin, but into idolatry, into apostasy from the living God. They deserved for the dynasty to be wiped out. And yet for all this time, since sort of the middle of first kings, and now we're almost halfway through the book of second kings, the years have just been passing, one right after the other, and the house of wicked toad king Ahab is fine. There's no problem with it.

8:44 Ahab dies, yes. Jezebel's still kicking, though. First one son of Ahab takes the throne. He falls out of the window of his palace. Then another king takes over. The house of Ahab seems fine for most of the book. Well, in the text last week that we looked at, if you remember, it all started to come together, though. It finally happened in chapters 9 and 10. The trap sprang shut at the hands of this guy named Jehu. And the house of Ahab was completely, and if you remember anything of the stuff that we read, brutally destroyed, just like had been prophesied.

9:20 Now, the trouble was, that's the main tension of the book. When is the house of the wicked toad king going to fall? Right? But there's this underlying tension in the book, too, if you remember from last week. And it is the question, is the royal line of David also going to fall when Ahab's house falls? Remember? It would have been a disaster. Because if the royal line of David falls, if there's no descendant of David, then there's no Jesus. There's no Messiah.

9:50 There's no gospel. There's no salvation for me and you. And all the promises of God from Adam to Abraham to Moses to David, they all fail if the line of David falls. And by the first few verses of chapter 11, it looked like that was exactly what might happen. So that's where we're going to pick up the story today in chapter 11. Before we get there, though, I just want to give you sort of fair warning about these chapters.

10:22 Fair warning about these chapters. This story, at this point in the book of 2 Kings, is rushing pretty quickly toward the final destruction of the northern kingdom by the Assyrian Empire. That happened in 712 B.C., 700 years before Jesus. And that's where the book is headed. There's going to be a big invasion from the Assyrian Empire. It's going to destroy the northern kingdom. You ever heard of the lost ten tribes of Israel? Ten lost tribes of Israel. Well, that's when this happens. Ten tribes of the northern kingdom of Israel are wiped out by the Assyrian empire, never to be heard from again.

10:56 That's going to happen in 2 Kings chapter 17. That's where the story is headed. So in these chapters, we're kind of in between two big mountain peaks in the story. So you've got, you know, back there, we just passed it last week. You've got the fall of the house of the toad king Ahab, right? That's the mountain that we just passed. And we're like, wow, you know, we've been waiting on that for a long time. That's a really brutal but kind of cool mountain because God keeps his promises. Well, out there in the future in chapter 17, there's the total destruction of the northern kingdom. Like it's not coming back kind of thing.

11:29 That's the mountain that we're headed for. But for the next few chapters, we're just going to be kind of wandering around between those two mountains. And there aren't a whole lot of landmarks and there aren't a whole lot of things that are probably going to stick in your mind. There are a couple, but for the most part, we're just going to be kind of seeing kings rise and fall and live and die, and this and this, and then chapter 17 is going to come and we're going to go, oh, there's that big mountain. So I just want to give you fair warning that, you know, these are some strange chapters of the Bible.

12:00 Weird things happen, there are weird names, and I just don't want you to be put off by that because I think there genuinely are things that we can learn from these chapters, even if they're not the most memorable in the entire Bible. So let me just give you a rundown. We're just going to very quickly sort of headlines for each one of these four chapters that we're looking at today. 11, 12, 13, and 14. In chapter 11, we looked at this briefly last week. We're going to look at it in more detail today. You've got Athaliah, the queen's plot, basically to destroy the royal line of David and how she failed to do that, even though she got really close.

12:35 Then in chapter 12, you've got Joash's work to repair the temple. There are certain things that we're going to see and learn from that. In 13, you've got the reign of two different northern kings, which is really not all that remarkable. They're very normal, you know, normally wicked kings. But then the most important thing that happens in chapter 13 is the death of Elisha. That's what happens there. Again, it's extremely weird, but we're going to talk about it and see what lessons we can learn from it. And then in 14, you've got these two quick stories that we're not even really going to talk about. Of a foolish southern king who just got arrogant and decided to invade the northern kingdom and basically got his tail whipped.

13:11 and then this powerful but wicked northern king who whips him. That's the story of chapter 14. The lesson of that is pretty simple. Don't get arrogant, right, or you'll get your tail whipped. We're not going to talk about that one. So all of this, I'm not going to lie to you, is more than a little bewildering. We're marching toward the mountain of the destruction of the northern kingdom. But along the way, we just have to wander around a little bit. The main idea, though, is this. The main idea of these four chapters, I think, is this.

13:42 Despite our inevitable tendency to forgetfulness, God is unfailingly gracious to us, his people. Despite our inevitable tendency to forgetfulness, God is unfailingly gracious to us, his people. That's the main idea. Two points to the sermon today, really looking at first chapters 11 and 12. The reign of Joash, king of the south, king of Judah. 11 and 12, and then 13, 14, this kind of rapid succession of a handful of kings from both the kingdoms.

14:15 Two points to the sermon. Number one, a surprising forgetfulness. And then number two, a surprising grace. That's where we're headed today. A surprising forgetfulness from chapters 11 and 12, and then a surprising grace from 13 and 14. So point number one, chapters 11 and 12, a surprising forgetfulness from this little guy, Joash, king of the south. Do you remember from last week as the house of Ahab kind of begins to collapse as Jehu understands what his calling is from God and he's wiping out the house of Ahab?

14:46 There's this great question running underneath the text as to whether the messianic house of David was going to be caught in the middle of all that rubble and collapse itself. I don't know if you remember the scene from Lord of the Rings. It's been a while since I've done a Lord of the Rings thing, hasn't it? Two weeks maybe, something like that. Anyway, you remember the scene when Gandalf the wizard is standing on this bridge of something or other. And this demonic, fiery being called a Balrog is chasing Gandalf's friends.

15:18 And Gandalf stands in front of this demonic, fiery thing. And he takes his staff and he slams it down in the middle of the bridge. And says to this demonic thing called a Balrog, you shall not pass. Right, it's very dramatic. And then for some reason, the bridge collapses, right? You remember this in the movie or the book? And the demonic creature falls down into the darkness and into the abyss, and you think Gandalf is one. And then, at least in the movie, I don't remember in the book, I think it happens in the book too, this whip or tail or something snaps back up to the top of the bridge, wraps around Gandalf, and pulls him off into the abyss too.

15:58 Remember that? It's just a devastating moment in the story when Gandalf dies like that. Dies. Anyway, that's what you're supposed to be feeling as chapter 11 opens. You're supposed to see the house of Ahab falling down into the abyss. And then at the beginning of chapter 11, you're supposed to be wondering if this whip is going to come up and grab onto the house of David and pull it down into the abyss too. That's the fear you're supposed to have.

16:30 And it just gets worse, the whole thing, in the very first verse of chapter 11. Look at it. Chapter 11, verse 1. Now, when Athaliah, the mother of Ahaziah, this is all down in Jerusalem, down in the south, house of David, Athaliah is a daughter of the wicked toad king, right? So she's awful. She's like the Jezebel of the south. When Athaliah, the mother of the dead king, saw that her son was dead, she arose and destroyed all the royal family. Now, this is bad.

17:02 This is bad, bad, bad. Because if you don't have a royal family of the house of David, again, you've got nobody to sit on the throne. You don't have a Davidic king. You don't have a Messiah. No Jesus, no salvation, no gospel. The whole thing is hanging by a thread here. And at the end of verse 1, you're like, you're thinking, what in the world destroyed all the royal family? But keep reading. Verse 2. But Jehoshabah, 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.

17:40 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 or the temple of the Lord, while Athaliah reigned over the land. I mean, it's just a wild story, right? Because you see that while the whip is trying to grab onto the house of David and pull it down, one son from the royal line survives. The entire rest of the royal family is wiped out except for this one son. You see that? At this point in history, about 800 years before the birth of Jesus, all the promises and covenants of God that have been being constructed since Genesis chapter 3, right?

18:20 Through all of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, the entire story, God's been constructing this edifice of promise and salvation. It's all hanging by this slender little frayed thread of a terrified nurse huddling in a dark room with a little one-year-old baby while a bunch of bloody soldiers run around the palace killing anybody who's related to the king. It's an incredible story, and yet he survives. It's dramatic, right?

18:52 But what do we learn from that? For one thing, we learn that that kind of dire straits situation is a very familiar feeling for the people of God throughout history. It is a very familiar feeling for the people of God to think they are hanging by a frayed, slender thread. It happens throughout the Old Testament. It happens in the early church. It happened on that Saturday after Jesus died on the cross when the disciples of Jesus huddled in a dark room and wondered what was to happen next now that Jesus was dead.

19:27 See, the point of this, the lesson to learn from this and a hundred other passages of scriptures is that circumstances around us and the movement of history and even the devil himself are constantly looking for a way to destroy the people of God and therefore God's promises. But they will never succeed at that. You remember the story in Revelation, the vision that John has of the dragon waiting on the birth of the child to devour the child, and then as the story progresses, the child kind of, you know, it sort of morphs from Jesus into the church.

20:02 And what happens again and again in that story? The dragon snaps at the child, snaps at the child, snaps at the child, and misses every single time. The devil is constantly snapping with his dragon jaws at the people of God. And he is always, in the ultimate sense, going to miss. Look through history. That's just the story of God's people. The story of God's people is to be pressed to the breaking point, to be hanging by a thread that is so slender you can barely even see it. And yet, sometimes so surprisingly, it seems like a miracle, God preserves them.

20:40 Friends, it's a good thing for us to remember as one local church. It's a good thing for us to remember as part of the universal church throughout time and history and space. It's a good thing for us as individual Christians to learn to trust in and even to celebrate. I mean, think back over the years that you've been a Christian. How many times over the years that you've been a Christian, especially if you've been one for a long time, how many times have you yourself been, you thought, at the breaking point of your faith, at the point of just giving up and somehow, some way, that just didn't happen?

21:16 How many times? The thread just held when everything about the circumstances looks like it ought to break. Some way, somehow. it holds but see that that's the thing in those moments that you might be thinking about or that you might think about later in the week the somehow some way there in that phrase is not you it's not your strength it's not your effort the some way somehow is God it's God's hand holding you up underneath the thread and saying this far shall you fall but no further the glorious comforting thought isn't it this far shall you fall but no further than that our statement of faith has a an article in it that i think states it beautifully it says though christians may fall through neglect and temptation into sin though they may fall through neglect and temptation into sin whereby they grieve the spirit impair their graces and

22:19 comforts bring reproach on the church and temporal judgments on themselves it's horrible stuff Through neglect and temptation, you can fall into sin, and all this bad stuff can happen to you, even as a Christian. But listen to the next phrase, yet, yet, yet. The gospel is a gigantic yet in our lives. Yet they shall be renewed again unto repentance and be kept by the power of God through faith and to salvation. Friends, take this to the bank. If you are a Christian, God will at some point in your Christian life let you come to the point where it all looks like it's about to fall apart.

22:57 And then he will hold it together. I don't necessarily mean the circumstances. God often lets our circumstances fall apart. But he will hold your faith together in those moments. So that it might be his grace and not your strength that is praised. But this is a good thing to remember, that we are all kept not by ourselves, but by the power of God unto salvation.

23:29 Well, the rest of the chapter there, chapter 11, the story is told of how after seven years, this priest Jehoiada, Jehoiada, I guess it's said, the priest Jehoiada, decided that it was time to reveal the little king's existence. He had him hidden away for seven years, but he decides it's time. So in the rest of the story, he brings him to the temple in Jerusalem. You look at verse 4 there, he reveals him to the royal guards. He calls in the three battalions of the royal city guard, and he, you know, marches the little guy out. He's like seven years old, and he's like, you know, behold the king.

24:01 There he is, right? He survived. It's not Athaliah who has a claim to the throne. It's this little guy right here. The rest of the story is just wonderfully dramatic. Jehoiada makes a plan to send three different battalions of the royal guard to two different places. So he says, two of you, two of you battalions, you're going to stay here in the temple of the Lord and you're going to surround the little king. And you, the third one, I want you to go, it's a little unclear, but I think they're to go to the house. This is verse 6. Go to the house by which I think is meant the temple of Baal, the foreign pagan god.

24:32 So they're to go there. And I think given what happens later on in the chapter, they're supposed to just wait on the order to destroy the house of Baal. So two battalions here in the temple guarding the little king. One battalion going to get ready to destroy the temple of Baal. They do what he says. The two detachments surround the little king in the temple. They put the crown on the little boy's head and a copy of the Pentateuch in his hand. And Jehoiada gives them the shields of David. So they've got these golden ancient shields all around the king.

25:02 And then they start to shout, long live the king, long live the king. Well, of course, Athaliah, the southern Jezebel, hears all of this. comes running out of the palace demanding to know what's going on and she's promptly seized and put to death and then look what happens in verse 17 because it's a it's a beautiful moment look what happens and Jehoiada made a covenant between the Lord and the king and people that they should be the Lord's people together and also a covenant between the king and the people so you see what's going on there there's two covenants being made here or really renewed you got the covenant between God and the people, including the king. Yet they're now going to be his people. That's looking back to Mount Sinai when they originally made the covenant with God. And then you've got this covenant between king and people. Looking back to the city of Hebron where the people first made David king over them. And then it seems you get this wonderful, happy ending. Look at verse 18.

26:00 Then all the people of the land went to the house of Baal and tore it down. His altars and his images, they broke in pieces. They killed Matan, the priest of Now, that's where the book really should have ended.

26:37 like right there because that's a beautiful picture and at the end of chapter 11 you're really supposed to have this end of the movie thing going on here right I mean this is like top of the mountain this is golden hues this is Gandalf saying now come the days of the king right that's what this is it's the end of the movie happily ever after sort of thing going on here and it's incredibly beautiful and it is incredibly also short-lived because in the very first few verses of chapter 12 we are jerked back to reality or the way I kind of read it is that it's not so much a jerking back to reality as if it happens really quickly it's more like we're eased back into reality like a lukewarm bath that's already been used by somebody else see apparently over the last few generations the temple of the lord that solomon had built what are we talking about 150 years earlier or something like that the temple that solomon had

27:42 built had fallen into disrepair and so the new little king joash decides that he's going to fix it well the first thing he does in chapter 12 to try to fix it is that he gives the order that the priests of the temple i mean this is not a bad thought right it's a little bit distant You would expect a little more, you know, from him. But his idea is, you priests who are in charge of the temple, you take some of the money that the people of the land are giving to you for the work of the temple, and you put it toward the repair of the temple in order to fix it up. But then look at verse 6 of chapter 12. So I'm on page 318 now.

28:13 You can find the 12, then look down in there. Jehoash, that's the same guy as Joash. It's just a different name, right? Jehoash reigns in Judah, then Jehoash repairs the temple. You'll see four or five, then look down to six, right in the middle of that paragraph. But, he says, this is the author, but by the 23rd year of King Joash, the priests had made no repairs on the house. Now, we don't know exactly when he gave the order. You know, it may have been very much as soon as he took the throne, right?

28:46 I mean, he'd been standing there with the crown probably drooping over his eyes and the Pentateuch, right? As all these people said, long live the king. And he may have felt some piety and said, let's repair the temple. And you guys go do it because I'm seven years old and you guys will have the expertise. Now, he may have done that, right, at that moment. It may have been a little bit later. But clearly, by verse 6 of chapter 12, the author of Kings is stunned that we have made it to the 23rd year of his reign and nothing has been done. He's stunned by it. Why?

29:17 Why did it happen? Why did it go so long? however long it was well i mean obviously as you read the story you've got the laziness and probably the greed of the priests themselves i mean they just didn't want to use that money to repair the temple when they could use it on themselves right so that's one problem but you've also got the king joash himself how did he let this go on for so long i mean you know we we have staff here at third avenue and i'm you know the guy that kind of kind of oversees that staff and if i ask staff members to do something and we literally make it to like another staff meeting and it's not done yet i start to get slightly irritated right so just y'all know that you staff members i like a week later and i'm starting to wonder okay what's going on what is what is gumming up the works here joe ash let it go until the 23rd year of his reign why i mean had the guy not checked on the project had he not asked any questions had he in jehoiada not had another staff

30:19 meeting for 23 years and here's the biggest question to me had he not been to the temple of the lord to see that it had not been done had joash's heart become so cold to the lord that he had not been to the temple of the lord in 23 years. See, there's just a surprising forgetfulness here among both kings and priests, especially in the light of that golden-hued mountaintop experience at the end of chapter 11.

30:59 How do you forget that? But they did. They did forget it, and you and I forget too, right? I mean, our minds also are always, always prone to wander away from the truths that we know about God, about Jesus our Savior, to wander away from the things that we have seen him do for us. I mean, we want to look at this story in 2 Kings chapter 11 and 12 and say, Joash, Jehoiada, how could you forget that day when you sat on the throne of the kings?

31:34 How could you forget that? But friends, if you think about it, the question for us is even bigger, right? How could you forget the day that the king was raised up on a cross for you? How could you forget the day that the Holy Spirit brought your dead soul to life? And live like a person who's drunk on the world. And the gospel is a glorious thing.

32:11 It's the most glorious story that could ever be told. It's the most glorious reality that could ever be talked about. That the king of the universe, the creator of literally everything, loved us so much that he became one of us. And then let us kill him so that the penalty for our rebellion against him could be wiped out and exhausted in him instead of us. It's the most glorious story that could ever be told. Why isn't that the thing that fills up our mind every hour of every day? Why doesn't the truth and the glory of the gospel just swamp the troubles of this life?

32:49 Because we are forgetful. Just like Joes, just like Jehoiada and the priests, we are forgetful. Look, I'm also not just telling you here. The application of this point of the sermon is not just don't be forgetful, right? Just do better. That's not the application. What I'm telling you is that your mind is fallen. Even if you're a Christian, your mind is still fallen. And in this life, you will always have a struggle with forgetting what God has done for you.

33:24 And the solution to that isn't just to grab your own bootstraps and jerk them up and do better. That's not what I'm telling you. What I'm telling you is that the call of the Christian life, in the face of that battle, in the face of our own tendency to let our minds sink and forget, the call is to claw our way back week after week to remembrance of what the Lord has done. You realize, right, that God knows that you are forgetful. He knows you deeply, and he knows that you are forgetful.

33:59 And that is why God has given us this routine of coming here together week after week, week after week. Because singing and praying and hearing the word of God is how we claw our way out of forgetfulness. Friends, don't neglect that. I know you're here today, but the question isn't whether you're going to be here today. It's whether you're going to be here next week and the next and the next and the next and the next and the next and the next for all the years of your life.

34:30 Don't neglect that. Because if you do, you'll sink farther and faster than you ever thought possible. Well, once Joash kind of wakes up and sees that the priests aren't doing what he commanded them to do, he finally takes charge, right? 23 years late, but he finally takes charge. The rest of the chapter sets up a system where people can give money directly to the repair of the temple. It's sort of a temple repair designated account, right? I don't know how they did it accounting. I don't know if they did it like we do at 3rd Avenue, but we got designated accounts here.

35:02 One is for the repair of this building, and they set up the same kind of thing there. Temple repair designated account. And you can see down in there that, you know, if you read it, the plan works. I mean, they use the money. The people give a lot of money. They dole it out to the various craftsmen, and the temple gets repaired. And it's another happy ending, right? Well, no, again, not for very long because look at verse 17. So he's got the temple repaired, right? It's beautiful, again, like it was in the days of Solomon. But in 17, at that time, Hazael, king of Syria, went up and fought against Gath and took it, whatever.

35:36 But Hazael set his face to go up against Jerusalem. And Jehoash king of Judah took all the sacred gifts that Jehoshaphat and Jehoram and Isaiah's fathers, the kings of Judah, had dedicated, that means to the Lord. And his own sacred gifts that he had dedicated to the Lord. And all the gold that was found in the treasuries of the temple of the Lord and of the king's house. And sent them to Hazael king of Syria. And then Hazael went away from Jerusalem. This dude spent 23 years neglecting the temple of the Lord.

36:08 and then he put a whole lot of effort into getting it repaired, and then he just gave it all away instead of trusting in the Lord. It's like he woke up for a second, and then just slips back into sleep. I mean, that's what the story reads like. He just slips back into sleep. I mean, it's just deflating. As a narrative thing, it's just deflating. But it's also a good warning to us. Friends, sleep comes on us so easily.

36:42 Not physical sleep. Spiritual sleep. It's like Hebrews 2 says, we must pay careful attention so that we do not drift away. That's what happened to Joash. Be careful that it doesn't happen to you too. For all God had done, Joash had a surprising forgetfulness. Here's point number two, moving on into 13.

37:17 A surprising grace. A surprising grace. So Joash dies at the end of chapter 12. It's pretty shocking the way he dies because he's murdered. Now, that is not something that we're used to seeing in the southern kingdom. They've been kind of protected, right, by the covenant with David. They're the Davidic kings. They're the ones who have the right to the throne. So things are pretty solid down in the south. You don't see kings getting murdered very often. Up in the north, on the other hand, it happens all the time. But that's fine, and it makes sense because they're like the godless, non-Davidic, rebellious line. They're savages, basically.

37:48 But that kind of thing isn't supposed to happen to the Davidic kings in Jerusalem, especially to this guy that we just knew like a chapter earlier as, you know, cute little King Joash in the temple, right? And now he's getting murdered. So things have headed down really fast. He's struck down by some of his own people, and his son takes his place. Well, in chapter 13 and 14, we leave the southern kingdom. The camera shifts back up to the north, which you know by now that when the camera shifts to the north, it's going to be a wild ride. You do not ever much get any good thing happening in the north.

38:21 The north is a wasteland of idolatry and wickedness, and I'm not talking about the north of the United States. This is the north of Israel. For those of you who are confused, all you Southerners who got confused and excited there for a second. The north of Israel is a wasteland of idolatry, murder, wickedness, mayhem. You've got kings dying all over the place up there. You read about the northern kings over and over again here, and it's pretty much always what you see in 13, 1, and 2. In the 23rd, it's just a formula.

38:52 It happens all the time. In the 23rd year of Joash, son of Ahaziah, down here, king of Judah, Jehoaz, the son of Jehu, began to reign over Israel and Samaria. And he reigned 17 years. He did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and followed the sins of Jeroboam, which he made Israel to sin. He did not depart from those ways. You get it again with the second king in 1310. Another king of Israel. In the 37th year of Joash, king of Judah, Jehoash, the son of Jehoaz, began to reign over Israel. See, it's the same formula. It's the same formula. He reigned for 16 years.

39:22 And then you get it again. He also did what was evil in the sight of the Lord. He did not depart from all the sins of Jeroboam, the son of Nabat, which he made Israel to sin. but he walked into them. Then you get it again down in 14, 23 and 24 with this third king, 14, 23. In the 15th year of Amaziah, the son of Joash, king of Judah, Jeroboam, the son of Joash, king of Israel, began to reign in Samaria, and he reigned 41 years. And he did what was evil in the sight of the Lord. He did not depart from all the sins of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, which he made Israel to sin.

39:52 It's three in a row. Just bam, evil, bam, evil, bam, evil. He did the sins. He did the sins. He did the sins. It's just, it's horrible. And in the first part of 14, you've got another southern king getting tangled up with the north and getting his tail whipped. So that whole, you know, snapping Balrog tail, maybe rearing its ugly head again. What's most interesting about these chapters is not the succession of evil kings, though.

40:23 I mean, you get that. It's kind of drumbeat. He did what was evil, did what was evil, did what was evil. That's not really what's most interesting. You get a whole lot of that throughout the book of Kings. And it's all leading up. It's adding weight to the Lord's case that's going to come crashing down in 17 when they all get carried away into exile. So it's just adding rocks to those scales of justice. And all of that's going to fall in 17. So that's not what's most interesting here. What's most interesting about these chapters is that in the second half of 13, the great prophet Elisha dies.

40:57 So look with me at chapter 13, verse 10. We already read it, but chapter 13, verse 10 through 13, basically tells the whole life of this guy, Joash. It's not the same Joash in the south. It's a northern Joash. And he reigns for 16 years, but he gets four verses. So his whole life is summed up in four verses there, all 16 years. But then starting in 14, the timeline sort of backs up a little bit into the reign of this guy. And it tells us the one thing that was interesting about his entire reign.

41:31 And that is that he was basically present when Elisha dies. It's a fascinating, wildly weird story. So we're going to read it. Verse 14. Now when Elisha had fallen sick with the illness of which he was to die, Joash, king of Israel, northern guy, not southern guy, he's not the guy who repaired the temple. He's an utterly different dude up in the north with the same name. Joash, king of Israel, went down to him and wept before him, crying, My father, my father, the chariots of Israel and its horsemen.

42:02 And Elisha said to him, Take a bow and arrows. So he took a bow and arrows. And then he said to the king of Israel, Draw the bow. And he drew it. And Elisha laid his hands on the king's hands. And he said, Open the window eastward. And he opened it. And Elisha said, Shoot. And he shot. And he said, The Lord's arrow of victory, the arrow of victory over Syria. For you shall fight the Syrians in Afek until you have made an end of them. And he said, Take the arrows. And he took them, and he said to the king of Israel, strike the ground with him. It doesn't mean to, like, do that with him. They're in an upper room of a palace, and he's supposed to take the bow and arrow and go, shoot, shoot, shoot.

42:36 He's supposed to strike the ground, shoot the ground with the arrows. That's what that's supposed to do. Okay, so verse 18. He said, take the arrows, and he took them, and he said to the king of Israel, strike the ground with him. And he struck three times and stopped. And the man of God was angry with him and said, you should have struck five or six times. And then you would have struck down Syria until you had made an end of it. But now you will strike down Syria only three times. So Elisha died, and they buried him. Deeply weird. Now, bands of Moabites used to invade the land in the spring of the year.

43:10 And as a man was being buried, behold, a marauding band was seen. And the man was thrown into the grave of Elisha. And as soon as the man touched the bones of Elisha, he revived and stood on his feet. And then it literally just moves on, like it gives us nothing else about that. Now Hazael, king of Syria, oppressed Israel. I want to know more about that. 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, until this very day when this was written.

43:42 When Hazael, king of Syria, died, Ben-Hadad, his son, became king in his place. And then Jehoash, the son of Jehoahaz, took again Ben-Hadad, the son of Hazael, the cities that he had taken from Jehoahaz, his father, in war, three times. See that? Joash defeated him and recovered the cities. Okay, again, just deeply weird. What's going on with this whole story? I find Elisha more weird than Elijah. So what's going on? Well, a few things that I think we can say.

44:13 It's not exactly clear, first of all, you look back up to verse 14, Not exactly clear why Joash goes to Elisha's house in the first place. It might be that he's heard that the prophet is sick. On the other hand, it might be that if you were to look earlier up in the story, this is a period where Israel, the northern kingdom, is just getting its tail kicked by Syria. And most of its army has been destroyed by this point. And it may be that he's going to Elisha for what these kings always go to Elisha for, which is to help out with that problem. Well, at any rate, he sees that Elisha is sick.

44:43 He weeps, he cries out, my father, my father, the chariots and horsemen of Israel. What does that mean? Well, probably what it means, even when it's said of Elijah earlier, is that you, O prophet, are the army of Israel. You are the defender of Israel. That's probably what it means. My father, my father, you are the chariots and horses of Israel. But it's not clear why the king is saying that. I mean, is it meant to honor the prophet? I mean, if so, and if we're supposed to understand it, to be an honor to him, it's very strange that it's coming on the lips of this wicked apostate king, right?

45:22 It's a major step down from Elijah, where Elisha, the next great prophet, is the one who says it about Elijah. And then, you know, chariots of fire come down from heaven and whisk him away off to heaven. Like, here, it's this pagan apostate king who says it, and, you know, then Elisha just dies of an illness, right? There's just nothing all that spectacular about it. So it's not clear exactly what's happening. The best explanation, though, is probably that Elisha so far has, in fact, been serving as the chariots and horsemen of Israel.

45:54 He has been the army and defender of Israel, the northern kingdom, keeping it from destruction in all of these different ways. So the message and the thing you're supposed to kind of see is that when Elisha dies, the last chariots and horsemen of the nation are gone. And the northern kingdom is in deep, deep trouble. And that's how the whole story is going to go from now until this cataclysm in chapter 17 when it's totally destroyed. But not yet. That's not going to happen yet. Elisha still has one more trick up his sleeve. We read it.

46:25 He tells the king this series of steps. Take it in bow and arrow. Open the window. Shoot to the east. You're going to shoot Syria like that because they're in the eastern part. Now take the arrows and shoot the ground. He doesn't really tell him how many times to shoot the ground. But the king takes the arrow, shoots the ground three times. right? And then he turns and looks, and the prophet's furious at him, just absolutely furious. He's angry, and he says, you should have struck the ground five or six times, and then you would have destroyed Syria completely, but now you're only going to get three victories over them. I mean, what is that? It just seems dirty, doesn't it? I mean, Elisha doesn't tell him how many times to shoot the ground with the arrows, and he got three, and all Elisha wanted was five or six?

47:08 I mean, it would make more sense if he said, you need to embrace the promises of God so fully that you're shooting the ground with arrows until tomorrow morning, right? Shoot it a thousand times and show that you really care about the promises of God and you're embracing them. But why is shooting it five or six times more embracing it than shooting it three times, especially when you don't know how many are supposed to shoot it in the first place? Well, don't know. However, I have a guess.

47:39 Here's my guess. If you look down at verse 25, the strikes of the arrows very much seem to correspond to cities. See that? 1325. Jehoash, the son of Jehoahaz, took again from Ben-Hadad, the son of Hazael, the cities that he had taken. Took the cities that he had taken in war. Three times he defeated him and recovered the cities of Israel. So I think what's going on there is that everyone would have kind of had an understanding of what the cities of Syria were, the major cities.

48:16 Three of them taken from Israel, and three of them ending with the capital in Damascus being the other three. Don't know what exactly the five to six thing is. But there would have been a finite number of great cities of Syria, and everyone would have known it. And somehow, there's probably a little more said between the prophet and the king here. But probably the king was content just to take back the three cities that had been taken from him. But he had no interest in going any further and taking that one, that one, and Damascus.

48:54 So not so crazy, I think. He stopped short. He should have had a kind of holy ambition to destroy God's enemies. All the way to Damascus. All the way to the last city. But he stopped short just by getting back what was originally his. You ever do that? You ever stop short of fully embracing promises of God that you know are true? Just kind of put half your weight on the promises of God.

49:29 Sometimes our minds will do that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, I know. I know he's working all things for good, and I trust that. But I also worry a little, too, just to be safe. It'll be God's providence and my worry that works all things together for good. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. I know that he says, he promises that all those who come to him by faith alone will be saved. But I'm going to hold on to this one good work. I'm going to let myself feel good about this one thing just to be safe.

50:00 Brothers and sisters, God has promised you as his child that total, complete victory is already yours in the end because of what Jesus has done for you. So grab on to that promise with everything you've got. Strike the ground with those arrows, baby. Put your faith in Christ. Let them rip. I mean, metaphors aside, what does that mean? I mean, strike the arrows, baby. Strike the ground with the arrows, baby. I mean, that's great. That'll preach. But what does that mean? What does it really mean, practically?

50:32 It means to trust with everything you are that God will do what he has promised to do. Among other things, like we were talking about earlier, it means trusting that when you come here week after week after week, God will use this gathering to do in your heart what he says it will do. Strengthen you, encourage you, give you grace to persevere through the next week until we gather again. Trust the process.

51:05 My son Jack just had ACL surgery just this week, Wednesday. He's got a whole regimen that he's got to go through, exercises and all the rest, and it's basically killing him. I mean, it hurts like crazy, but the thing that Mariah and I keep telling him over and over again is, Jack, I know it hurts. I know you don't want to do the exercises. Trust the process. Trust the process. The doctors know what they're doing. A friend, far more than the doctors know what they're doing with my kid's ACL, God knows what he's doing with your soul. Trust the process and let God do his work.

51:40 There's another lesson I want you to see here, too, before we finish. It has to do with that weird story in 2021 of the corpse being thrown on Elisha's bones coming back to life. It's just deeply weird. But is it just a magic trick? I mean, is it just a thing without meaning? I don't think so. I mean, I think on one level, part of what this is doing is just reminding us yet again that when it comes to God and his word, death does not have the final word. It seems like it might, but it doesn't.

52:11 And so periodically throughout the Bible, you'll have these times, Enoch being taken by God, Elijah being taken by God, the Shunammite's son being raised from the dead, this person thrown on the bones. There are these times when God just arrests death and says, you're not taking that one, right? And it reminds us of that. I mean, you've got to look at this, too, and think that this is the most ridiculous resurrection in the entire Bible. Right? This is a nameless guy. They're having his funeral. They get scared by some marauders, and in their haste to run away, they just quickly dig up a grave and throw him in it, and they start to run away, and he's like, hey!

52:49 And then you don't hear anything else about him in the whole Bible. Why so ridiculous? Why is this so ridiculous? It's because a lot of times when we see resurrections in the Bible, our mental image of those resurrections is that the guy walks out of the room or the tomb like this, right? And we'll talk about things like the raising of Lazarus, the resurrection of Lazarus, the resurrection of the Shunammite woman's son, and we'll take the person who got resurrected and stick them right in the center of the story. And this story is reminding us that you can't do that. The people who get resurrected are not what matters.

53:19 What matters is the God who resurrected them. You're not going to glorify this guy. There's no way. You're just not. He's too ridiculous. You will, however, glorify the God who raised him from the dead. That's one thing it's doing. What else is it doing? Well, let me show you in a couple of steps. Look down at 13, 22 and 23. Very next little story. Now Hazael, king of Syria, oppressed Israel all the days of Jehoahaz. But the Lord was gracious to them and had compassion on him.

53:50 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. Okay, now that's crazy surprising because we're talking about these wicked, wicked people up in the north. This is the house of Ahab. And these new guys after the house of Ahab aren't doing any better. If anybody deserves destruction, it's these people. And yet God here has compassion on them. Why? Well, he tells you right there, because of his covenant with Abraham, Now you notice it's not David for these people in the north.

54:27 David only applies to the people in the south. But the underlying reality of the covenant with Abraham applies to the people in the north. He can't apply the covenant with David. That's the south. But do you see what he does? He digs deeper into history to find a reason to have compassion on his people. I don't know about you. I think that is a wonderfully comforting thought. that God digs to find a reason to be gracious.

55:00 I think sometimes we think of him as being exactly the opposite. He's looking for a reason not to be gracious to us. But here the Lord had a thousand reasons to throw these people off, to cast them away. And he digs 1,700 years into the past to find a reason to be gracious to his people. It's amazing. It's amazing that God would be that kind of God. But the thing is, for us as Christians, He doesn't have to dig at all because the reason to be gracious and compassionate to us is seated right there at his right hand with a crown on his head.

55:32 Before the throne of God above, I have a strong and perfect plea, a great high priest whose name is love, whoever lives and pleads for me. So even the northern kingdom is held secure by God's grace, by covenant. But look at the end of 23 more closely, 1323. He has compassion on them because of his covenant. He would not destroy them, nor has he cast them from his presence. He's not cast them from his presence.

56:04 That's the same word. Stick with me here. There's like two more steps to this. That word cast away is the same word that's going to be used later in chapter 17 when he actually does cast them away. He's going to cast them into Assyria. So he hasn't cast them away yet. Then he will cast them away. Okay, being cast away is a bad thing. It's like being cast into death, cast into exile. That's what's going to happen to them. Okay, now look again up at 21. As a man was being buried, behold, a marauding band was seen, and the man was, same word, cast away into the grave of Elijah.

56:45 But as soon as the man touched the bones, he revived and stood on his feet. See the point? You see the point that it's making? It's beautiful, really. It's fuzzy, right? And it strikes our ears as ridiculous, but it's a beautiful point. When Israel is cast away from God's presence, it will not be permanent. That whole point comes to a head in Ezekiel 37. When God shows Ezekiel a valley of dry bones, and he speaks to the bones, and the bones come to life into a great army.

57:15 That's the message. Because of the covenant, because of God's love for his people, he will rescue even this wicked people from death. Because that's what he does. And friends, if you don't hear anything else today, hear that. That is what God does. He rescues wicked, sinful people from death. And maybe you're here today and you know yourself to be a wicked, sinful person. Don't run away from God because of that.

57:46 run to him. Nobody's going to take your dead soul and cast it on the bones of Elisha. That's not going to happen. But what you need to do is take your wicked, sinful, dead soul and cast it on the heart of Jesus. And you will, I promise, find life. Let's pray. Our Lord Jesus, we thank you that ultimately you are the great giver of life. you're the one that if we'll throw ourselves on you and on your mercy and grace you will give us spiritual life and we thank you and praise you for that lord we ask that you would not let us be forgetful of these things but help us to remember them so that we might know the fullness of your grace we ask all that in jesus name amen