A Cautionary Tale of Bad Leadership | 2 Chronicles 28:1-15

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It's new and improved. You know those commercials, oh right,

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I've always thought it was fascinating how people used to

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up or what's the other one I'm thinking of in

the movie where they all sat around the movie Oh Annie,

remember Annie, the musical Annie. Yeah, people would sit around

and listen to the radio, gather around the radio.

So you know, we didn't have a TV now as

a kid, but I probably owned three hundred old time

radio programs on cassette and records. Oh wow. Yeah, well,

I listened to The Shadow, and I listened to at

a Lone Ranger, and I listened to Gangbusters, and I

listened to Amos and Andy and oh yeah.

I'm not even sure i've heard an episode of The

Lone Ranger, although I've seen the movie, the Black and

White movie or the you know.

What I'm saying, the series.

I remember the radio programs came up before the movies.

I know that okay, but I but I did. Used

to watch The Lone Ranger. He'd leave behind his silver bullets.

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That'd be awesome.

And Karen G writes in for this, Karen G.

And she writes this, which Bible character do you think

had the best sense of humor? And then there's a

second question, and which one would you want to be

your best friend? And I guess that can be the

same answer, Oh best friend, who do you think of

the best sense of humor?

Best sense of humor.

Well, I'm tempted to answer first because I don't want

to think my answer. Go ahead, John, John, Yeah, he's

the one that you know, he's like, he's like they

both ran to the tomb, and the disciple that Jesus

loved arrived first with no reason whatsoever other than.

Say he was faster.

Yes, there was no theological issue about this.

Right, And and the fact that he always referred himself

as the decay that Jesus loved, and the fact that

he uh oftentimes was he was way more colorful than

the other gospel writers. I think that he had the

best sense of humor, and so I like that.

But we know he was the youngest of Jesus disciples,

and he beat Peter, who was the oldest of Jesus disciples. Right,

So do you remember I can remember the first time

I beat my dad in a race. Oh do you

remember ever beating your dad or your older brothers? Yeah, yeah,

there's a big memorable moment. So that's kind of funny.

But yeah, that's a great one. I think Elijah was

kind of funny. Yeah, I think you know, when he's

mocking the prophets of bail, Hey, keep jumping around and

cutting yourself. Maybe maybe Bale's just sleeping. Maybe maybe he's

in the John Right, that's kind of funny. So he's

kind of just I like his sense of mocking people. Uh,

he's pretty hardcore. I mean he also killed eight hundred

of them, so there's that.

But they make fun of you and now you die.

Right, Okay, Well who do you think could be? Like

the want to be the best friend?

The best friend j is I mean, obviously Jesus is

not included.

I'm a big fan Jesus. Jesus is my best friend.

Jesus is a friend of my.

Yeah, I would say best friend honestly, I would like

I'm gonna pick Barnabas.

Barnabas ooh, the Son of Encouragement. He is the best

friend is He's the best friend in the Bible?

Yes?

All right, man, that's pretty good. That was a good one.

I think David would be a great friend. David was

a great friend to Jonathan. Jonathan was a great friend

to David.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, And you can't go wrong

with David.

You know, having a king as a friend is not

a bad thing.

Yeah, a warrior king, right, where's my guy is? You know,

only known in certain circles.

So he's going to go out and fight, and then

he's going to write songs and sing and then they're

gonna have big parties. David's gonna dance. I think David

be tons of fun and I think it's crazy fun.

And you're safe with David, yeah.

Because of his mighty men. His entourage was pretty great.

Yeah, yeah, so I would.

I would definitely think David would be the most fun

to hang out with, okay or Solomon because he's crazy rich.

Oh song me pretty good.

Yeah, he's smart, he's kind of smarty pants.

Yeah. I would. Samson be fun, but he'd be unpredictable.

Well, and he was living kind of a wildlife.

Yeah yeah, yeah, Well, I mean that's the fun.

Let's have David's fun. Let's have David's fun and not

you know, David's dancing and having parties, but he's celebrating God.

Yeah. But Samson, Samson's like the Tales of Foxes come on.

Yeah yeah, yeah, it's pretty bad.

Yeah.

I think that's it is, between your sense of fun

and my sense of fun. Growing up, you never know

what's gonna happen. Yeah, that's truth.

It's like it's like, oh, it's a wild Friday.

Night, so you're you're picking bars. He's a son of encouragement,

I am.

Yeah.

And he made everything better. He did everything Barnabas did,

he made better.

Yeah. And he was the kind of friend that helped,

actually helped.

Yeah, he did. Okay, well, there you go. You choose Barnabas,

I choose David as our best friends.

Yes.

And then as far as the funniest people in the Bible,

you think, I.

Think John John, and you chose Elijah Elijah. These are

good answers.

Okay, we've done well, man, we nailed it. We should

just shut the episode down now seven minutes and we peak.

I agree, I agree. And by the way, even though

that we did so well on the you know that segment.

We nailed it.

You know who didn't do well? Who as a king

you did it?

This week?

Is a Has? Wow, he did not do well.

He did not know.

In fact, he did so not well.

That actually the only three big mentions and main accounts

of a Has really point out how evil he was.

Well speaking of that in Second Chronicles, chapter twenty eight. Yeah, man,

that was a great, great terrible transition to thank you.

That's all three this week.

Thank you, thank you.

You're on the street.

Hey. By the way, think about how much we've jumped around.

We went from Amos, we skipped right over Second Kings,

we went to Isaiah, and then we went to Micah,

and now we're going to be in Second Chronicles.

This is all kind of a hot spot of God

engaging with people. Yeah, so these kings a Has and

Hezekiah and who is the one up there in Jotham

and all that, and then Micah has to go talk

to all these guys. It's all happening about the same time.

So there's a bunch of prophets and then the whole

series of kings back to back to back to back

to back that God's dealing with. And so this is

kind of a hot spot of God communicating. He's about

to go silent right after he's done with Isaiah, right

right Malachi, he goes, he goes quiet, and so there's

a a window here of God intensely communicating with his people.

So in Second Chronicles, chapter twenty eight, it says a

Has was twenty years old when he became king and

he rained Drusalm sixteen years. He did not do what

was pleasing in the sight of the Lord, as his

ancestor David had done. Instead, he followed the example of

the kings of Israel. He cast metal images for the

worship of Bail. He offered sacrifices in the valley of

Ben Hinham, even sacrificing his own sons in the fire.

In this way, he followed the detestable practices of the

pagan nations the Lord had driven from the land ahead

of the Israelites. He offered sacrifices and burned incense at

the pagan shrines and on the hills and under every

green tree. Because of all this, the Lord his God

allowed the King of Arab to defeat Ahaz and to

exile large numbers of his people to Damascus. The armies

of the King of Israel also defeated AHAs and inflicted

many casualties on his army. In a single day, Pekka,

son of Ramalaiah, King Israel's king, killed the und twenty

thousand of Judah's troops, all of them experienced warriors, because

they had abandoned the Lord, the god of their ancestors.

Then Zikri, a warrior from Ephraim killed Masiah, the king's son, Azrakam,

the king's palace commander, and al Cana, the king's second

in command. The armies of Israel captured two hundred thousand

women and children from Judah and seized tremendous amounts of plunder,

which they took back to Samaria. But a prophet of

the Lord named Ovid was there in Samaria. When the

army of Israel returned home, he went out to meet

them and said, the Lord, the God of your ancestors,

was angry with Judah, and let you defeat them. But

you've gone too far, killing them without mercy, and all

Heaven is disturbed. And now you are planning to make

slaves of these people from Judah and Jerusalem. What about

your own sins against the Lord your God. Listen to

me and return these prisoners you've taken, for they are

your own relatives. Watch out, because now the Lord's fierce

anger has been turned against you. And some of the

leaders of Israel as Aria son of Johonnah, and Vera

Kaiah son of michellema Wo Jekiah, jay His Kaiah, the

son of Shalem, and a mass of the son of

had I agreed with this and confronted the men returning

from battle. You must not bring the prisoners here, they declared.

We cannot afford to add to our sins and guilt.

Our guilt is already great, and the lord's fierce anger

has already turned against Israel. So the warriors released the

prisoners and handed over the plunder in the sight of

the leaders and all the people. Then the four men

just mentioned by name came forward and distributed clothes from

the plunder to the prisoners who were naked. They provided

clothing and sandals to wear, and gave them enough food

and drink, and dressed their wounds with olive oil. And

they put those who were weak on donkeys and took

all the prisoners back to their own people in Jericho,

the city of Palms, and then they returned to Samaria.

Wow, there it is.

There you go.

So, so there's a write up about a has and

it's a part of our Life Application Study Bible. Yes,

so we love the Life Application Study Bible. And we

don't get any sponsorship from them, even though we've been

promoting them.

For how long years?

Years?

Years, And we definitely and by the way, I've had

people come up to me in the lobby and the

church lobby, and because they're new to the Bible, it's

completely understandable that people may not understand that there's a translation, right,

So then the translation is like, what translation of the

Bible are you going to read from? You know, it's

been translated from the Greek, so it's you know, the

King James version was back in the sixteen hundreds. There's

the NIV, which is the New International Version. There's the NLT.

There were people in the lobby that came up to

me and they were confused. They thought the Life Application

Study was a translation.

Oh right, yeah, you know what I mean. It's like, no, no, no, no.

So what we're reading from is the New Living Translation

and LT that's the translation, that's the conversion into English.

And then on top of that that, that Bible is

coupled with a study and it's the Life Application Study Bible,

and it's an actual Bible that puts together what like helpful.

Little notes, notes on key passages and explains the hard

things to understand, yes, and gives you some historical background.

There's on this page that we're looking at right now.

There's one, two, three, four, five, six different notes on

key verses. It also has a whole chunk explaining who

a Has was. Yes, and then there's a photo of

some QNEA formed tablet that proves that a Has was

a real guy that we found in archaeology, and it

tells the little story of how they found that and

that he was paying a tribute to the Assyrian king. Right. Yeah,

So that's what you get is you get some notes

that explain it, you get some uh maybe some bigger

elements that kind of highlight major characters and explain the

big picture of their story. And then there's also some

historical maps and archaeological proofs and stuff of what you're

what we're reading about.

Which is extremely cool.

Yeah, and it's super super approachable, right right, So sometimes

I was we were laughing. I had to read all

those goofy names.

Dude, I've said this before, but I said, normally you

get through them like a chance.

Yeah, but I stumbled to it. Yeah, But Michelle Moth

that one got me, Like, like.

When we were determining like who was going to do

the intro of the outro, who's going to read, who's

going to do this, Who's going.

To do that?

I said, dude, I said, you could read, And I

said for two reasons, I said, number one, because you

have a really good reading voice. I said, but besides that,

you tackle these names like a champ, and I don't

think I want to do it.

I would just barf it all up.

And uh and today, Yeah, when you came across Kayas

Hill him off yeah and Jay his kayah, those two

back to back, I just couldn't get.

So, you know, you read those names and you go, oh,

I can't understand the Bible. Skip the names. Just you

say that guy and that guy is sometimes that guy

and this other guy that's okay, right, or or I

have a friend they'll just use you know, the first letters. Jay,

you know A was the son of J, M. B

was the son of M. Right whatever. Because you don't

know those names or the names of the towns, don't

get bogged down on those. The big story is this

Judah rebelled against God. God allowed even and even though

because a has was so wicked. So God allowed the

the armies of Samaria in northern Israel to defeat them.

Then this guy obed he was a prophet. He goes

and says, hey, so you defeated the army. Don't take

the women in children captive and abuse these people, turn

them into slaves. God's going to judge you now because

of your own sins. Right. And then those four guys,

I couldn't read their names, those four guys, four guys

speaking of Hey, you know what, we should show compassion.

And so what do they do? They bound their wounds,

they clothed them, they put them on donkeys, got them

back home. That's that's a big picture. You can understand

the story if you don't get bogged down in the

big words. Yeah, that's it. And really understanding is more

important than being able to read a word out loud.

That's that's the thing. And so what a good study

Bible does for you is that it gives you these

extra notes, Like you know, a has was so deprived

that he sacrificed his own son to the pagan gods.

And this was a practice of the Canaanites, whom his

rights were supposed to have driven out of the land

in the time of Joshua. Yeah, because they didn't finish

the job in Joshua's time. Four hundred years later, they're

still tempted by the sins of that group of people.

Yeah, and I'm not sure if that was Dagon, but

dagone was.

Probably the god that they did that with.

Yeah, this one was. It says, oh, it does.

Say that, Okay, because uh, you know the.

Uh, it's just it's detestable to even think there were

so many kings that decided to do that. And back then,

by the way, they had so many sons because they

they you know, slept with so many wives and concubines,

so they had sons everywhere, right.

And so and then you know, the sad thing to me,

if we're going to really drive home an application today,

the sad thing to me is, you had Jotham was

a good guy. You had Hezekiah was a good guy.

But a Has just kind of throws off his family

heritage at this point, right Usiah. So Usiah was a

good guy following God. Usiah's son, Jotham is a good

guy following God. So a Has his father and grandfather

were godly men, and he was so tempted by the

way that the Samaritan or the Samerian nation was living,

you know, northern Israel, that he saw their temples, he

saw their worship practices, all this magic that they were

doing all this stuff, and he decided he threw off

the temple of God, he threw off the worship of

the One True God, and decided to embrace this other wickedness.

And I think about you know, we had read a

couple of weeks ago how the kings of Judah had

started making alliances with the kings of Israel. They shouldn't

have anything to do with the kings of Israel, because

the kings of Judah were serving God and leading the

people to serve God, and Israel was clearly always walking

away from God. Always, they almost never had a good

king that led them to follow the Lord. And instead

what happens is they start whereas that Jeroboam allows his

daughter to be married to the king of you know,

to the prince in Israel, all those things you.

Got to give him, give it up for him at

least trying trying to unite the kingdom.

Right, yeah, but God said, don't hang out with these people. Right.

God has driven a wedge between the people who are

following God's ways and sending judgment on the people who

are walking away.

From suggesting that was forbidden. Oh yeah, I didn't know that.

Yeah, I think so, huh yeah, And so they shouldn't

have have been hanging out with them. God is always

calling his people to get away from culturally, leave the

culture of the of those who are rejecting God right,

don't be you should be different, and they are hanging

out with them. So if you hang out with them

long enough, you're going to be like them. And so

what happened was Usaiah didn't really bend over to their ways,

and Jotham didn't, but Usiah's grandson did, right, which would

be Jeroboam's great grandson.

So me, it's a good time to go back to

I was going to read this this little block on

a has It says our heritage influences but doesn't necessarily

determine our life decisions.

Kings of Judah illustrates this truth.

He turned away from the good examples of his father

Jotham and his grandfather Usiah, but his poor example seems

to have little effect on his own son, Hezekiah, who

proved to be a great and godly king.

Isn't that crazy?

The circumstances circumstances of the life of king has will

fall into the general categories A bad and worse When

Judah suffered a dehabilitating attack from the rivals of Israel

and Aram, the king ignored the opportunity to see God's

help and turned instead to Assyria for assistance. A Has,

his cowardly leadership, forced Judah into the virtual slavery to

the Assyrians. Soon every evidence of Judah had once been

a godfing nation was smashed, defaced, or tucked out of sight.

A has imported idolatry. He even presented some of his

children his offerings to the gods, as he had hoped

would rescue him from his nation from their disastrous situation.

We sure A has a sin when from beneath a

load of failures in trials we turn away from the

good examples from God. Instead of repenting of any known

sin and God calling upon or in calling upon God

for relief, We, like a has have, may appeal to

every source other than God for aid. Our own abilities,

our own money are harmful habits. The results only serve

to increase this tragic circumstances. Difficulties and mistakes will either

devastate our faith or they will stimulate growth and maturity.

The positive differences come from when we humbly see God's

help whenever the situation trials that tempt us and turn

away from God should instead spur us toward God. Yeah,

so so there it is. And by the way, that's

also a sermon in there. I bet you're somewhere, you know.

Sometimes the suns they just they haven't paid the price,

they haven't.

Learned the lesson the hard way. You know, you grew

up with a silver.

Spoon in your mouth, and you don't necessarily understand the

dangers of what it means to reject God, even though

that he should have, you know, but you know, when

you're when you're third generation of a good godly dynasty,

you know, you just everything's everything's been good for a

couple of generations, right, you don't necessarily understand probably the

dangers of what it means to go off and pursue

all these ungodly things. And and he has sure did

model it so much so to where I'm sure you know,

Hezekiah grows up and says, who, like, you.

Know, my kaya saw one hundred and twenty thousand of

Judas troops get wiped out and the prophets coming out,

and saying, you know that happened because your dad, because

your dad. Yeah, right, that so he saw all the

bad results, the fact that they literally mortgaged their future

by by trying to make an alliance with Assyria. As

matter of fact, the little historical element that's in this

thing that has the quinea form is a has is

paying taxes to Assyria. So this is what happens is

when we start going against God's way. Next thing, you know,

our wealth and our power and all those things begin

to flow away from us. Right, And this is what

happens to them is Judah was so strong and so

healthy and so prosperous. But then when aas begins to

walk away from God, they become very weak. And now

he's paying out taxes to Assyria, trying to get some

help from them. Eventually it wipes them out, right, they

get wiped out by by Assyria. But I think that

you see Hezekiah seeing man, my dad went the wrong way. Yeah,

and Hezekiah wants to be a good king. He was

moderately successful. I think he personally was a good guy.

He made a couple of mistakes, but he's a good guy.

He's trying to lead the people back. Later on, we'll

read about his life soon, but he'd learned hopefully from

the wickedness of his dad and change the direction. But

his dad was just a bad guy.

Yeah for sure.

Well that is our time, so we will hopefully pick

up with you tomorrow on the Babba Gush