Not With a Whole Heart

Good morning. My name is Jason. If I haven't had a chance to say hello to you yet, I'm one of the pastors here, and I'd like to thank our other pastor, Matt, for teaching us the Word last week.

It was good to come home from just a terrible, tough, rough week from Florida. And I don't know how many of you I've tried to tell, you know, the weather was terrible, it was 40 degrees and rainy, and I shivered because apparently Florida is not equipped for 40 degrees.

I came home and tried to get some sympathy, and I got none. Nothing from you. But here we are. Here we are. It's not January. It's February.

Some of us are happy about that because we're marching forward. And I'm glad that you made it out on a snowy morning, and I'd like to invite you to open your Bible.

So take your Bible. If you could find the books of Kings, we're in 2 Kings, Old Testament book 2 Kings. And we are up to chapter 14 this morning. 2 Kings chapter 14.

2 Kings 14 · chapter mention

We're not going to take the whole chapter. I'm going to take the first 22 verses, and we'll stop there. And let me warn you, it's about to get bumpy, a bumpy ride.

You say it's already been bumpy, but we got people throwing off cliffs. We got all kinds of stuff today. So kids, I hope you're ready. 2 Kings chapter 14. Let me read it for us, and you can follow along as I read.

2 Kings 14 · chapter mention

Verse 1. In the second year of Joash, the son of Jehoaz, king of Israel, Amaziah, the son of Joash, the king of Judah, began to reign. He was 25 years old when he began to reign, and he reigned 29 years in Jerusalem.

His mother's name was Jehoiadin of Jerusalem. And he did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, yet not like his father David. He did in all things as Joash his father had done.

But the high places were not removed. The people still sacrificed and made offerings on the high places. As soon as the royal power was firmly in his hand, he struck down his servants who had struck down the king his father.

But he did not put to death the children of the murderers, according to what is written in the book of the law of Moses, where the Lord commanded, Fathers shall not be put to death because of their children, nor shall children be put to death because of their fathers, But each one shall die for his own sin.

He struck down 10,000 Edomites in the Valley of Salt and took Selah by storm and called it Jokthil, which is its name to this day. Then Amaziah sent messengers to Jehoash, the son of Jehoaz, the son of Jehu, king of Israel, saying,

Come, let us look one another in the face. And Joash, the king of Israel, sent word to Amaziah, king of Judah. A thistle on Lebanon sent to a cedar on Lebanon, saying, Give your daughter to my son for a wife.

And a wild beast of Lebanon passed by and trampled down the thistle. You have indeed struck down Edom, and your heart has lifted you up. Be content with your glory and stay at home, For why should you provoke trouble so that you fall, you and Judah with you?

But Amaziah would not listen. So Jehoash, king of Israel, went up, and he and Amaziah, king of Judah, faced one another in battle at Beth Shemesh, which belongs to Judah.

And Judah was defeated by Israel, and every man fled to his home. And Jehoash, king of Israel, captured Amaziah, king of Judah, the son of Jehoash, son of Ahaziah, at Beth Shemesh, and came to Jerusalem and broke down the wall of Jerusalem for 400 cubits

from the Ephraim gate to the corner gate. And he seized all the gold and silver, and all the vessels that were found in the house of the Lord and in the treasuries of the king's house also took hostages, and he returned to Samaria.

Now the rest of the acts of Jehoash that he did, and his might, and how he fought with Amaziah, king of Judah, are they not written in the book of the Chronicles of the kings of Israel?

And Jehoash slept with his fathers, and was buried in Samaria with the kings of Israel, and Jeroboam his son reigned in his place. Amaziah, the son of Jehoash, king of Judah, lived 15 years after the death of Jehoash, son of Jehoash, king of Israel.

Now the rest of the deeds of Amaziah, are they not written in the book of the kings of the Chronicles of Judah? And they made a conspiracy against him in Jerusalem, and he fled to Lachish.

But they sent after him to Lachish, and put him to death there. And they brought him on horses, and he was buried in Jerusalem with his fathers in the city of David.

And all the people took Azariah, who was 16 years old, and made him king instead of his father Amaziah. He built Elath and restored it to Judah after the king slept with his fathers.

Let's pray, shall we? Heavenly Father, this morning, I just thank you, Father, for the gathering of your people. What a good thing it is to be in the company of brothers and sisters, Lord.

What a wonderful thing it is to have visitors with us this morning. And Father, as we come to your word and open it up, let our lives be open.

Let our hearts be ready to hear what you have for us today. Father, we think of many who are sick at home, and who may be live streaming right now.

We pray for them. We pray, Father, that even in times of weakness, we would remember, Lord, that one day all will be made right. We will have perfect strength, because we will be reunited with you someday in heaven.

And it's in Jesus' name that we pray. Amen.

So if you haven't noticed by now, this book of Kings is a long tale of two kingdoms, right? You've got Israel in the north, Judah in the south.

Wasn't supposed to be this way, but because of sin, the kingdom split. And so now we have like these two successive lines of kings, and it doesn't help any, but that they all use the same names, right?

And so everybody's a son of Joash today, or a Joash themselves. Everybody's got a Jehoiaz or something in their background. Well, we've got two main kings today, and if you can kind of try to keep these two names straight at least.

Amaziah, king of Judah, and Jehoash, king of Israel. And I think we're going to find that although the narrator is trying to tell us the story of Amaziah, king of Judah, he keeps getting overshadowed by other kings, namely the king of Israel, Jehoash.

So it starts out with this initial assessment of our young 25-year-old king in verse 3. We are told that he did what was right, and isn't that refreshing to finally hear that?

Did what was right in the eyes of the Lord. And yet, and yet, not like David his father. No, as a matter of fact, we're told that this son is a lot more like his immediate father, which is another Joash,

whom we read about a couple of weeks ago. And if you remember the story of Joash, the boy king, saved from wicked queen Athaliah, raised by a good priest, he did a lot of good things.

A lot of good reforms made in the kingdom, but we also know that he finished rather poorly. In fact, quite bad. He listened to bad counsel. Got himself ensnared in idolatry to sins of the father

that sadly we're going to see follow this son Amaziah. So it's a slightly positive, but really more mediocre evaluation of our new king, Amaziah.

He, like every other king in Judah, neglects to remove the high places. This doesn't seem to be an immediate indictment of idolatry, but these high places went against the law.

Israel was supposed to worship, Judah was supposed to worship at the temple, not at these various worship sites that they had inherited from the Canaanites.

But never mind that, our king starts off, gets himself established, and we're told right away he wants to do something right, something just, namely, bring these assassins who killed his father to justice.

And this is what had happened to his father, if you remember from chapter 12, 2 Kings 12, verse 20. This is about Joash. His servants arose and made a conspiracy and struck down Joash in the house of Melo.

2 Kings 12:20

We even get the names of the assassins, and I just want to share them with you because, you know, we're always having babies in the church, and maybe one of these names, you know, a Jazachar might be a good option, or a Jehazabad.

I mean, there's a pretty good chance your kid's going to be a bad egg if you name them Jehazabad. So these assassins are dealt with by Amaziah, but our narrator is careful to point out something good, that although he takes out these assassins, he does not do what was typical

in the ancient world, which is to also just kill all their families too, to kill the heirs, to make sure there will be no possibility of a blood feud.

He actually obeys the Mosaic law. Did you know that Deuteronomy chapter 24 actually forbids that you would do this? In fact, what we get in these verses here, verse 6, is actually a direct quote that you don't take out the murderer's entire family, the kids, the spouse, the parents,

Deuteronomy 24 · chapter mention

as many other cultures would do. It's just the guilty party that is brought to account, and that's what he does. So good start. And then we come to verse 7, and I want you to check this out because although our narrator sums up a lot in just one verse, a single verse,

we need to understand that verse 7 is the single most important event of this entire career of this king Amaziah, his defeat of the Edomites to the south.

Now you might recall that these Edomites, they are the descendants of Esau, Jacob and Esau, Jacob's of course, it's from him that the people of Israel descend.

Esau has descendants too, the Edomites, you might remember that they had not originally been included in the promised land, but they made trouble with Israel, and basically the rule with the Lord was, you know, I've given you the promised land, the Canaanite territory, you're supposed to leave the Edomites alone

because, you know, that's your relative, Esau, but if they make trouble with you, you can make them your vassals, make them pay tribute. And that had happened under the great kings like Solomon.

Of course, as Israel and Judah plunged themselves down into disobedience, they lost control of parts of the kingdom. And so they had lost control of Edom.

And so what we see is that Amaziah, the king of Judah, he wants to go down and get them back in the fold. And if we walk our way over to the book of 2 Chronicles, in chapter 25, we have a parallel account to this one.

In fact, in 2 Chronicles 25, we get a whole lot more material than what we get in just a single verse here in Kings. So let me kind of bring you up to speed on what Chronicles tells us.

2 Chronicles 25 explains that Amaziah mustered a fighting force, a pretty sizable one, 300,000 fighting men, not just farmers and shopkeepers, but men fit for war, it says.

Pretty big army. But apparently Amaziah suffered from a little bit of a crisis of confidence. He wasn't sure that this was going to be enough.

And so what he decided to do was to go off and hire 100,000 more mercenaries from Israel. Remember, he's Judah. So he goes up north and finds these Ephraimites from the tribe of Ephraim, and he hires 100,000 of them, kind of gives them a down payment for their services.

But then a man of God shows up, and this is what we read in 2 Chronicles 25, verse 7. But a man of God came to him, to Amaziah, and said, O king, and you know you need to listen up when a prophet comes and says, O king, O king,

2 Chronicles 25:7

do not let the army of Israel go with you, for the Lord is not with Israel, with all these Ephraimites. And then the prophet goes on to challenge the king, reminding Amaziah that, hey, the real power is with God anyway.

2 Chronicles 25, verse 8, But go, act and be strong for the battle. Why should you suppose that God will cast you down before the enemy? For God has power to help or to cast down.

2 Chronicles 25:8

And isn't that true? Isn't that still just as true today, in our lives right now, than it was back then thousands of years ago? That our God has the power to help.

And how many times do you and I need to hear that, and maybe hear it again? That for anything and everything that we would ever worry about, or try to make happen, that God has the power to help.

Landing a job. Maybe getting into some school, some program. Dealing with a diagnosis or a health issue. God has the power to help. You know, we used to, my wife and I used to tell this to our kids, and we still do, especially now that they're in college and making bigger decisions.

We used to tell them, and we still do tell them, work hard in your studies. Be disciplined in your life. Go present yourself as best you can at that interview or wherever it is.

Make your chariot ready. Make your horse ready, so to speak. But always remember that the victory is the Lord's. And that actually comes from the Proverbs.

And maybe you've heard of this one. Proverbs 21, verse 31. The horse is made ready for the day of battle, but the victory belongs to the Lord.

Proverbs 21:31

Well, it's a good word from the prophet. And our king, Amaziah, he actually listens to it. He sends these extra 100,000 Ephraimites home. He says, I don't need you after all.

And it turns out they don't like hearing that. They get pretty upset. And 2 Chronicles goes on to describe how Amaziah, he takes his 300,000 men of Judah, and he takes courage, we're told, and he goes down and leads the people out to this Valley of Salt, which sounds like a really nice place to visit,

the Valley of Salt, and he takes the Edomites by storm. We're told that in the battle, he kills 10,000 of them. And then Chronicles tells us that he captures, as prisoners of war, another 10,000 Edomites.

Wow.

But he doesn't keep prisoners for long because no sooner does he capture all these Edomites, 10,000 of them, and we're told that he marches them up to one of those steep cliffs in the area, and he has them all thrown down to their death until they're literally dashed to pieces.

Nice, right? Reminds us what a brutal world the ancient world was. But you know what? Honestly, that's not even the most disturbing part of the story, what Amaziah does.

Because according to our chronicler, he goes on to tell us this in verse 14. 2 Chronicles 25, verse 14, after Amaziah came from striking down the Edomites, he brought the gods of the men of Seir and set them up as his gods

2 Chronicles 25:14

and worshiped them, making offerings to them. Sometimes in Scripture, you just have to say, no! What? You have to be kidding. Are you serious, Amaziah?

Were you listening to anything at all? I mean, the prophet just told you that the Lord would give you this victory. The Lord had the power. I mean, he forbids you from taking, like your own fellow brother Israelites, the extra 100,000 mercenaries with you, just so you'd know that he has the power

to give the victory. And then your way of thanking him is to hedge your bets, I guess, with some additional gods? Why not a little extra divine backing from some of these Edomite gods too, he thinks?

This is dumb. Well, the reaction from the Lord is about what you'd think it would be. 2 Chronicles 25, verse 15. Check it out. Therefore, the Lord was angry with Amaziah and sent to him a prophet.

2 Chronicles 25:15

I don't know, maybe the same one, maybe a different one. Sent a prophet to him who said to him, why? Why have you sought the gods of a people who did not deliver their own people from your hand?

You went and you picked up the gods of the losers? Why? But it turns out that Amaziah, the king of Judah, is not in a mood for listening now.

Apparently, his ears are shrinking. And that's because his head is swelling. He is literally getting a little too big for his britches. And this is why he immediately turns around and cuts off the prophet.

And this is what he says to him in 2 Chronicles 25, 16. But while he, the prophet, was speaking, the king said to him, have we made you a royal counselor?

Stop. Why should you be struck down? It's like, did somebody give you a job as a royal counselor and forget to tell me? You better shut up or you're going to be dead.

He's ready to kill this man. Ready to kill God's prophet now. And for what? For giving him a warning? For giving him a dire and necessary warning that he desperately needs to hear?

Well, our king has certainly got a courageous heart. I might even say a stout heart. But unfortunately, it has moved from strong and courageous to proud and lifted up.

And this is why, as we now come back to 2 Kings 14, and take a look at verse 8, this is why it's little surprise to see what he does next. Take a look at verse 8.

Our proud king, with an uplifted heart, now returns home in victory, and he seems to almost immediately dispatch a message up to the north to take it to King Jehoash of Israel.

This would be Amaziah's bigger and stronger northern counterpart. And it's not a friendly message. The tone of this message is pretty confrontational.

And to verse 8, he says, Come, let us look one another in the face. This is not like a contemplative time. This is not, let's go see how each other, you know, how are our skin care products doing?

Let's see what our faces look like. This is not even a staring contest. This is a challenge of war. This is, let's meet face to face, as in let's get it on on the battlefield.

These are hostile intentions. It's a provocation of war against Big Brother, and Big Brother knows it. Talk about a man too big for his britches.

I don't know what this would be like. You know, I was thinking about when I was growing up, I don't know why, maybe because it's the time of year, I was thinking about Indiana basketball back when I was in high school.

You might be shocked to learn I didn't play. I went to a school called Concord. We had a future MBA-er in a couple classes above me. But we had a pretty good basketball team.

And I remember back then, some of you know this, some of you don't, there were no classes in IHSAA. Is that what it is? IHSAA? Basketball. No class divisions.

Everybody, every school played each other. One big tournament. Thankfully, it's not like that anymore. And so now we've got these classes, right?

They start at 1A, and they go all the way up in basketball, do 4A. So I want you to try to just imagine for a minute. Imagine some little tiny 1A school, okay?

And imagine the little tiny 1A schools got a pretty good basketball team. I was thinking about like Oregon Davis, right? Anybody here from Oregon Davis?

Yeah, okay, great. Oregon Davis High School, they've had some pretty good basketball teams. But I checked the total number of students is 137 students.

Right? So they have a basketball team, and say they take out another 1A school. Or better yet, I know we've got some Jimtown folks here. You're 2A.

Say that little Oregon Davis beats Jimtown, 2A. And they are feeling pretty good about it. Oregon Davis. And their coach, in his post-game interview, he proceeds to like WWE style, call out Penn High School, 4A.

Or better yet, maybe Indianapolis Ben Davis, or the largest high school in the state, which is Carmel High School, with 5,000 plus students.

I think it's 5,200.

That's probably not a good idea. And that is exactly what King Jehoash thinks too. This is not a good idea. So the message he sends back has a little parable.

Kind of an insulting parable, but there's wisdom in it. He says, hey, little brother down there, verse 9, A thistle, that would be you, on Lebanon, sent to a cedar on Lebanon, saying, give your daughter to my son for a wife.

This isn't an actual marriage proposal. This would be like saying, I'm on your level. I'm ready for you. Let's go. Big towering cedar of Lebanon versus little thistle of Judah.

I think of it as like, you know, the Charlie Brown Christmas tree. And then he says, A wild beast of Lebanon passed by and trampled down the thistle.

So that, you know, not even the towering cedar has to do it. Just any old wild beast, you know, Syria or Egypt or whatever people could do it.

Trample you down, squish you like a grape. King Jehoash of the north is not too impressed. He recognizes that this younger king, this king of a smaller kingdom down there in Judah, is saber rattling.

And he seems to be even suggesting that, you know, you guys probably couldn't even survive if you didn't have our protection. Any old wild beast could squish you.

So he says in verse 10, You have indeed struck down Edom. Good for you. Good job. And your heart has lifted you up. Be content with your glory.

Stay at home. For why should you provoke trouble so that you and all of Judah fall? The message is basically, You don't want any of this. Trust me.

Best regards, big brother King Jehoash. That's a pretty fair warning. And will our proud little king in the south listen? No. Check out verse 11.

But Amaziah would not listen. And so he and his army march out, and the battle is waged in verse 12, and Amaziah and Judah lose, and they lose big time.

In fact, we hear that Amaziah himself gets captured by King Jehoash. Winning king takes the losing king alive, makes him a prisoner of war, but worse.

King Jehoash takes his victorious Israelite army, marches all the way into Jerusalem, right into the city itself, which, by the way, is the first time Jerusalem has been breached.

It won't be the last. And we're even told that he takes out about 650 feet, 400 cubits of the wall between these two gates, leaving the city utterly vulnerable.

And then, just to be sure that there won't be any ideas, any thoughts of reprisal from this vulnerable, humbled city, he plunders everything that they've got in town.

He plunders the treasury and the temple, the treasury and the royal residence. He takes everything, because he knows that you're going to have a hard time hiring any mercenaries to help you if you ain't got no cash, no gold or silver.

And just for good measure, to ensure total compliance and good behavior, King Jehoash even takes a few hostages, which we would presume to be some of the noble families.

Takes them, along with our defeated, humiliated king, takes them as prisoner of war back to Samaria, his capital. And with that, we see here that our narrator kind of closes the chapter on Jehoash.

Strangely, he gives us a death notice for this king, and we already got one in the last chapter. It's like it gets repeated here for a second time for emphasis.

Maybe to emphasize his dominance. He gives it again, right here, in the middle of what's supposed to be Amaziah's account. Kind of crowds him off the stage.

And whatever happens to our once proud king, Amaziah, well, we learn a few things here at the end of the chapter. For starters, in verse 21, we learn that all the people of Judah take his 16-year-old son, once dad's captured and deported up to captivity, they take 16-year-old Azariah

and make him king. And once King Jehoash of Israel dies about 10 years later, Amaziah gets released, and next thing anybody knows in Jerusalem, Amaziah's back in town.

Which means that now there's like two kings.

Two kings in Judah, which is not totally unusual in the ancient world to rule his co-regents, a father and a son, only nobody seems real happy that dad is back.

At some point, somebody decides that two kings in Jerusalem is one too many. Verse 19, And they, and it makes us wonder, who is they? A few scholars reason that because later on, Azariah does nothing

about the conspirators, that maybe they include son Azariah. Verse 19, And they made a conspiracy against Amaziah in Jerusalem, and he fled to Lachish.

That's another major fortified city in Judah, basically like a second capital, should be a safe place to hide out. But they sent after him to Lachish, and they put him to death there.

Poor old Amaziah runs away only to be brought back on horseback, but he won't be coming as a rider. He'll be coming slung over the saddle style.

And then our king is swiftly buried and even more quickly forgotten. not remembered for much of anything, unlike his better appreciated son Azariah, who now takes full advantage of the decisive victory over the Edomites in the south,

and what he does is he kind of completes the job. He takes an army and goes all the way down to the port city of Elath, and he rebuilds it. He restores it to Judah.

Yeah, even at the end, there's not really anything much to be said for Amaziah. It seems like every last beam of spotlight is either stolen by his rival to the north or stolen by his own surviving son.

That's quite a story. Well, I guess you could say really a series of small stories about this king, Amaziah. I mean, did our narrator forget partway through writing this that these 22 verses are supposed to be about King Amaziah, and yet it keeps getting interrupted

with other foci, other points of our attention being distracted, whether by Jehoash up north who gets his own honorable death notice and his might is talked about, or again, as we just saw, even interrupted by his son, Azariah.

I mean, we've got more to learn about Azariah in the next chapter, but here, even in his dad's own chapter, he's getting the spotlight at the end.

I think it makes us wonder how we are supposed to assess a man like this, a man like Amaziah. Well, let's go back up to the beginning of the chapter in verse 3 because our narrator does this for us.

How do we assess this man? Verse 3, He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, yet not like David his father. That's a mixed picture. Here's how the chronicler puts it over in 2 Chronicles 25 verse 2.

2 Chronicles 25:2

He says that he did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, yet not with a whole heart. Not with a whole heart. Not like the man after God's own heart David, and not even with a whole heart.

What I think this means is that Amaziah had a divided heart. A heart divided in its loyalties. A divided heart is a heart that maybe starts out right, gets a few things right, and for a bit does well.

But sooner than later, that heart gives in to darker impulses and listens to, in this case, some darker voices, takes some bad counsel. And I think there are some lessons here for God's people.

You know, the books of Kings and Chronicles especially were written for the exiles, the Israelite exiles, that would be in the time period before Christ, and these books were put down to paper so that the Israelites, God's people, would learn from them.

And I'm convinced that whether it's 800 years B.C. when the events occurred, or 600 or 500 years B.C. when they were read about the first time, or 2,000 years after Christ, God's people are still God's people, and that is you and I today.

So I think the question is, what lessons might the Holy Spirit want you and I to learn from this account of this king's life? I'd like to offer you two.

Two lessons, and I want to start with this one. Lesson number one. When our hearts faithfully listen to God's word, we will align with its good counsel and take courage.

When our hearts faithfully listen to God's word, we will align with its good counsel and take courage.

And again, I don't want to underemphasize this. We do see some of this in King Amaziah. In moments, in fits and starts, he shows us that he can be a king who faithfully listens to God's word.

Like when he spared the children of the murderers of his father. Remember that? Those assassins, in accordance with Deuteronomy, he spared them and he abided by the principle that no, only the guilty party dies.

And then again, when he was preparing to go on that great campaign against Edom and he wanted to hire those hundred thousand mercenaries, wanted a little extra insurance, and then God's prophet showed up and said, no, don't do it.

The Lord won't be with you if you do. Go as you are. Act and be strong. He listened.

He listened to the prophetic word from God and he changed his plans to align with what counsel he was receiving. Good counsel. And you know, doing that takes courage.

Doesn't it? Courage. Let me just kind of ask you in your own life, where do you need to take courage? In whatever situation you can think of, is there a moment, a predicament, a situation you're facing today, tomorrow,

later this month, where you need to take courage? Because that's what it's going to take to faithfully listen to God's word. So maybe for someone here, it's a situation at work, and you need the courage to do the right thing.

Courage to maybe even just know your limits at the job that you're at. To not let your job be your entire life. Or maybe you just need the courage to work hard.

Or maybe for some of us, it's at school. Maybe you need to take courage and listen and obey good counsel from God's word and do your school work honestly.

Don't cut corners and cheat. Don't use AI to do your homework. Or Google. Or whatever it is at your fingertips.

Or maybe you need courage in a personal relationship, a family relationship. Courage enough to say, my convictions must remain aligned with God's word, the good counsel of God's word.

My heart has to submit to biblical teaching in this area, even if you say it hurts you.

Ladies and gentlemen, there will be times in your life where following God's word, following the good counsel it gives us, will be intimidating for us.

Will be challenging. We will say things like, I don't know, Lord. I don't know if I can do that. Someone might not like me. I can't stand for this publicly, Lord, or I might lose face or popularity or even lose my job.

I can't say no, Lord, or I could lose that relationship. How about this one? I can't give of my first fruits to you, Lord, or I might have to make sacrifices in other areas of my life.

That one hit me and my wife, Terry, pretty personally a few, well, a couple decades ago. We were newly married and we had to learn a practice of the principle of tithing.

To give of our first fruits and listen, let me tell you, you probably don't know, but it's scary when you have debt. Nobody knows about that, right?

Nobody has any debt. It's scary when, as was the case with us, we didn't make much. It's scary when, for us, the first few years of school or of marriage, I was still in school.

We had one income.

Or maybe it is just in the area of a relationship for you. Maybe the fear is I don't want to be single for the rest of my life. I'm fearful that if I don't lower the bar or if I don't lower my standards, someone won't want to be with me.

You need to take courage and align yourself and your behavior with the good counsel of God's word. And the good counsel of God's word, if it tells you don't be unequally yoked with someone, and it does, then don't be unequally yoked with someone.

And if the good counsel of God's word tells you to save all sexual behavior for marriage, and it does, then you save it all for marriage. We need to take courage.

You know, for Amaziah, he wanted that win against the Edomites pretty bad, didn't he? He must have willing to go off and compromise by hiring a bunch of mercenaries, Israelite mercenaries to get it.

But then God's word confronted him, didn't it, in the form of a prophet? It showed up, and the word of God to him was, no, don't do it. You cannot partner up with these mercenaries.

If you do, I cannot bless that, God said.

Is there a challenge for you to be courageous in some situation where you're considering some partnering up?

And I think about even those of us at home. You say, well, I haven't been in school in a long time and I don't work outside the home. I'm entrusted with the care of my family.

Listen, I don't have to tell you homemakers, any of you who have had children, the comparison game starts day one. You bring the baby home and everybody wants to know how much it weighs, right?

And then next thing you know, get ready, are they rolling over yet? Is she sitting up? potty training? All of you can feel better because we have a child who was not potty trained until like, what, five?

Yeah. So feel better. But you know, the comparison game never, ever stops. It doesn't. And some moms and dads are willing to make compromises to see their kids stand out or get ahead.

What are you going to do when practice times for whatever it is, if it's some form of the arts, some form of sports, practice times conflict with family commitments.

You have some of those, right? Families? Like maybe a family dinner? Or what about when practice commitments conflict with faith commitments?

We decided to do some volleyball with our youngest son who's not here today. We decided to do some volleyball and we learned right after we signed up half the games are Sunday morning.

That's not where he is. He's sick.

Commitments to, in this case, our church. Because we are showing, all of you, but more important than all of you, we're showing him, we're showing our children what our priorities really are.

What our God's, in this case, just one, three in one, what our God is. Remember, mom and dad, it's okay that your children are not cool. It's okay.

And remember, it's okay to not always be liked by everyone. It's okay to disappoint the coach. It's okay to not always have the approval of the world, but it's going to have to start with the courage of you, mom and dad.

All right. Remember, hearts that faithfully listen to God's word will align with its good counsel and take courage. That's our first lesson.

It's not the only one. There's a flip side to this lesson, and this will be our second one. It's this. When our hearts arrogantly reject God's word, we will align with bad counsel and take to idolatry.

Idolatry. When our hearts arrogantly reject God's word, we will align with bad counsel and take to idolatry. You know what seems to be the problem for Amaziah?

He's probably got a lot of problems, but the one I notice in the text is it seems like the moment he gets a little taste of victory down in Edom and he wins big, next thing you know, he's climbing up that mountain, climbing up to throw all the prisoners off the cliff,

and then he came down, but you know in a strange way his heart didn't come down. It stayed up high. His high and arrogant heart told him to save all those foreign idols of the Edomites and

bring them home and worship them, maybe a little extra security and blessing. And even when a prophet tried to warn him, right, his high heart arrogantly rejected that warning,

you know the truth of it is it's not like this man Amaziah wouldn't take any counsel at all. He did. Because once he returned, Kings doesn't tell us this, but Chronicles does.

He did seek out some counsel, just not the right kind. 2 Chronicles chapter 25 verse 17, check this out. Then Amaziah king of Judah, this is right after he's come back from Edom, then Amaziah king of Judah, took counsel and sent that message to the king up north.

2 Chronicles 25:17

Who did he take counsel with? And what was that counsel? To think it's a good idea to pick a fight with big brother up north? Are they calling him, oh Amaziah the amazing Amaziah, you've been so successful.

fool. Now why not go prove yourself and make a big statement, a bigger statement with your big brother up north in Israel? But that was bad counsel.

Bad counsel to go to war with Israel. Even King Jehoash of Israel told him this is a bad idea. Little thistle, don't do it. but his high heart told him to do it anyway and it was reinforced by bad counsel.

You know when we lift our hearts up high, scripture actually talks about that. Maybe you've heard a couple of these verses I'll share with you like Proverbs 16 verse 18, pride goes before destruction and a haughty, a lifted up, haughty spirit before a fall.

Proverbs 16:18

Or maybe this one from the lips of Jesus in Matthew 23 verse 12, Jesus says whoever exalts himself will be humbled and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.

Matthew 23:12

And isn't that essentially what happens here in 2 Kings 14?

So again, I want to fast forward to our day, to your life, my life. Think about the idols and temptations in our culture. The various false gods that people like us are tempted to chase after, whether it's a false god of success,

or happiness, or pleasure, or winning, or gaining things, even gaining approval from others. Those are terrible gods to chase after. terrible gods to serve.

And the thing about it is, we have so much bad counsel around us in this world telling us, yeah, yeah, it's a good idea, you should do it, you should go for it.

And they egg us on, these voices do. And they tell us, you know, this is really what life's all about.

But it's not always about your kid making the team. it's not always about getting that grade that you want to get, or getting into that program.

It's not always about rising on the company pay scale. And when our bad advisors tell us that we should be ready to sacrifice everything, do whatever it takes to make it happen, because that's what worshiping a false god looks like, it means you sacrifice to it.

we have to recognize this for what it is. It is bad counsel.

So this morning, let's be wise to remember, as we look at a man like Amaziah, that hearts that arrogantly reject God's word, they will likely tend to align with bad counsel, and probably take to idolatry.

Let me leave you with some good news. The good news today is that Amaziah is not the only king to look at. And I'm not referring to either King Jehoash in the north or son Azariah.

I'm thinking about another son of David. Another who would be in the line of David. You know, someone even better than David himself, because even David himself was not perfect.

He fell short on several occasions. But there was a coming son of David, wasn't there? A true and better and perfect son of David who never fell short, not even once.

God's love. And I want to remind you that this son of David, as the gospel of John reminds us, he did all that his father wanted. He sought and followed all of his father's will and perfectly to the point that he laid down that perfect

life to provide full atonement for all whose lives were sinful and alienated. alienated. He did it so that people like you and me could get new hearts.

Hearts that would be soft. Hearts that would listen humbly to his word. And hearts that would have the courage to align with his good counsel.

Jesus did that. Would you pray with me? Stand with me and let's pray as a team comes. Let's thank Jesus for this.

Dear Heavenly Father, we first and foremost thank you that you would send your son. Lord, if nothing else, Kings, is a reminder to us that cycles and patterns and sometimes long-standing patterns of dysfunction are never enough to derail your good work.

Because you're such a patient God. you're patient with your people. You're patient with us. And we just want to thank you for that. How many times in our lives, Lord, have we done just like a king like Amaziah?

Have we listened to some bad counsel? Have we failed to take courage, Lord, even maybe we've taken to a form of idolatry and we repent of that?

We confess that. But Jesus, we can come to you because you are the king upon whom we can lock our eyes, fix our eyes. You're the author and perfecter of our faith and we thank you that you came and you went faithfully to the cross and you laid down that

perfect life and you provided the perfect atonement for any person who will come and seek you. And so, Lord, we give you praise for that, Jesus.

Jesus. And we pray for us as a people, God, that you would embolden this community of Redeemer, that you would embolden and strengthen all of our children.

Lord, that you would build and embolden the teenagers among us, the young adults and all of us, Lord, so that we can faithfully align our lives with you.

And we will not do it in our own strength. We need your help. We need your spirit. And we pray this now in the name of Jesus. Amen.