Review & Preview : 2 Kings

I'm excited about beginning a new series with you. It's been, get this, two years, two years and one month since we finished in 1 Kings. So if you want to turn in your Bible to the space between the kings, can you find that?

Some of you have a journal, like right around page 150 or 151, and those scripture journals, which by the way, we have a new box of scripture journals for kings.

If you are new to the church or if you lost your journal, they're available for a suggested donation of $5. If you don't have it, you can take one anyway, but we would love to have you put that tool in your hands.

It gives you a space to take some notes. And today, don't be mad at me, but don't maybe go on to the first chapter's page. Save that for next week, because this morning, as we look into kings, I'd like to accomplish several things.

If you were with us back then, two years ago, it's going to be a review. I would like to overview 1 Kings with you. If you are newer to us or even a visitor today, I hope what I can do is offer you maybe a review of what happened back then.

And then for all of us, a summary, really a preview of what is coming in the second book of Kings. So I want to do two things. I want to review and I want to preview.

And look at what's coming ahead. But before we do that, again, maybe you're new with us or maybe you've not been in the church very long at all.

And you might be wondering why it is that we would give so much of our attention to an old historical book like Kings is. So maybe a comment on why we study the Old Testament.

Why we study historical books with ancient kings and prophets. Isn't this just background information you might be saying? And I would say we would say no, it is much more than that.

We believe that, yes, these are historical accounts, but they're also inspired scripture. This means that they are meant to be studied and understood and applied to our hearts.

Every but as much as a gospel like John or an epistle like Jude. After all, let's remember what the Apostle Paul himself said about the Old Testament.

I've got the scripture on the screen for you. This is Romans 15. He told us that whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction.

That through endurance and through the encouragement of the scriptures, we might have hope. And then he went on and said this over in another letter in 1 Corinthians chapter 10 verse 6.

1 Corinthians 10:6

He said, referring to things that happened in the Old Testament, these things took place as examples for us. That we might not desire evil as they did.

So what Paul's telling us is that these writings from the former days, the Old Testament books like Kings, are actually for our instruction.

And not just for the Jewish Christians living in the days where the Apostles were still alive, but for believers like you and I today. And this year of our Lord, 2024.

2024. Because these things took place and they have been written down as examples for us. And we're going to find that they are good examples sometimes.

Or in the case of books like Kings, mostly bad examples of things we should not do. And they've been preserved for us as warnings, as encouragements to teach us things that will strengthen our faith and that will deepen our hope.

And so that's our goal this morning. So with this encouragement about the Old Testament and its incredible value, let's bow our hearts and let's ask the Lord's blessing on our time, shall we?

Heavenly Father, we do trust in your word as Andrew prayed a moment ago. It is living and active. And Father, we pray that through it you would build your church.

Lord, the work of your church, your called out saints. It is the pillar and foundation of the truth. And you have equipped us, Lord, with a calling.

Many callings, but a calling to be on a mission. And so, Lord, as we learn from Kings, Lord, help us to understand how you want us to have it shape our lives.

Lord, make us, Lord, wise in our lives. And help us, Father, to be your hands and your feet and your mouthpieces as we share the reason for the hope that we have.

And we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen.

Now, we're going to look ahead, but before we do, we're going to have to look back. So, 1 and 2 Kings, you may notice in your Bible that they are two books, but actually, originally, they were written as one book.

And so, really, you could say that two years ago, we simply took a break. So, here we are. And to get our engine started this morning, I would like to accomplish three things.

First, review. I would like to look back with you and remember some of these highlights from the book of 1 Kings. The second thing I would like to do is preview.

I would like to look ahead with you at some big themes that we're going to see in this book called 2 Kings. And then, thirdly, even if ever so briefly, I'd like to consider with you this really profound, deep question.

A complex question. And that question is, so what? With a question mark. Meaning, what is the significance of these historical accounts? And why do these themes matter at all for our lives?

So, let's start with the review. And if you want to flip back into 1 Kings and try to follow along, that's fine, but I'm going to move fast.

What happened in 1 Kings? Well, the book opens with a chapter that details for us the transfer of power. A transfer of a crown that ends up looking pretty cloak and dagger.

A lot of palace intrigue. We've got an aging and dying King David. And we've got a rival sibling, one of David's sons, gunning for the throne that's supposed to be Solomon's, the youngest brothers.

And by chapter 2, all the rivals have been eliminated and Solomon's kingdom is secured. And the next several chapters go on to feature things like Solomon's famous prayer for wisdom.

Where he asks the Lord not for wealth and power, but for, quote, an understanding mind. Where he asks for discernment to govern his kingdom well.

But, of course, we end up learning that the Lord is so pleased with his request that he gives him everything. He gives him the wisdom that he asks for, but he also gives him wealth and power and extends the borders of this kingdom.

These are what we might call the Edenic years of the kingdom. The golden age of Israel. And it's during this time that the Lord finally allows the king of Israel, Solomon, to build his temple.

Which is dedicated in a very famous prayer of dedication in 1 Kings 8. By chapter 10, the kingdom is at its absolute height. It's impressing everyone who visits, including the queen of Sheba.

Confirming all the wild rumors of its glory. But then we come to chapter 11. And in chapter 11, as Solomon gets older, there is a devastating turn.

The kingdom begins to unravel and quickly. Solomon now has hundreds of wives and concubines. And we're told that they turn his heart away. He himself becomes an idolater.

A worshiper of false gods. And worse yet, he sets on a path to create idolatrous sites all over the land of Israel. And so therefore, leads the nation of Israel into idolatry.

And so as chapter 12 comes, Solomon dies. And as a punishment for this idolatry, the kingdom is split. And so, Solomon is a man named Rehoboam.

The Lord raises up another man, Solomon's former secretary of labor. His name is Jeroboam. And he makes Jeroboam king over the ten northern tribes.

So now it's a divided kingdom. You've got these ten northern tribes in the north. And then you've got these two, and one of which is very sizable tribes in the south.

A northern and a southern kingdom. Israel and now Judah. And yet this new king in the north, Jeroboam. A great opportunity. But instead of trusting the Lord to secure his new kingship, this new king makes a terrible mistake.

And he installs rival worship sites at Bethel and Dan. Where he sets up these golden calves. It's a terrible mistake. It becomes known as the infamous, and often repeated throughout kings, infamous sin of Jeroboam.

The way of Jeroboam. And the way of Jeroboam is a way of idolatry. And the Lord sends a prophet to indict him in 1 Kings 13. And prophesy the destruction of Jeroboam's whole household.

Not only will Jeroboam himself die, and he does, but both of his sons die too. One by sickness, the other by assassination. And by the time we come to chapter 16 in 1 Kings, we have a new king emerging in the north here.

And his name is Ahab. And what's notable about Ahab is not only the new form of idolatry that he introduces, which is Baal worship, but also his extremely wicked wife of a queen, a woman named Jezebel.

She and Ahab turn out to be big Baal worshipers. And so in 1 Kings 17, the Lord raises up another prophet, doesn't he? His name is Elijah. And Elijah right away begins to prove, both by his miracles, that life and death are not really in Baal's hands.

They're in Yahweh's hands. And then he goes on to challenge the 400 prophets of Baal in this infamous showdown at Mount Carmel. And he wins.

And as King Ahab continues down a path of disobedience, his downfall really fills out the last several chapters of 1 Kings. Sure, there's a brief repentance that grants him a bit of a reprieve, but his failure to believe God's prophets, his failure to live by God's word,

culminates in his divinely appointed death on a battlefield.

Though fighting in disguise in the last chapter of Kings, he nevertheless gets hit randomly by an arrow, and maybe we should put quotes around randomly, gets hit by an arrow, bleeds out in his chariot as predicted by the word of the Lord.

And so 1 Kings closes with a dead Ahab, but still very much alive and kicking, are his wicked queen Jezebel, and now the heir apparent, his son named Ahaziah, who now assumes the northern throne of Israel.

So that's where we left things off. That's our review. And what I'd like to do now, is take just a few minutes, and offer you a preview of what's coming.

You could think of this like, you know, we all wait for season 2 of a series, right? Rings of Power, or whatever it is. Think of this as Kings season 2.

And spoiler alert, you can tell in your Bible, it's going to be the final season, right? Here's how I want to proceed. I don't think we can go chapter by chapter.

In fact, we're going to do that week by week, and it's going to take us some months to do that. I think today a more helpful way would be to preview for you some of these big themes that we can be on the lookout for.

I've got six big themes that you can be looking for as we learn from these highlights and lowlights. And again, spoiler alert, they're mostly lowlights.

And these themes include these six words, or I guess they're summed up in six words, and I'll just give them to you right now. Blessing. Secondly, failure.

Sovereignty. Patience. Punishment. And hope. There could be more, but these are really the larger themes of 2 Kings. So let me just take a minute, and let me start with blessings.

I want to talk about each one very briefly. Theme number one, blessing. Let's not forget that the very fact that the Israelites are in this place, this land, is itself a blessing.

The land itself. The promised land conquered under Joshua. This land filled with milk and honey. Israel is blessed to be in it. But the blessings don't stop there, because the Lord also intended to bless His people with good rulers, good leaders, the right kinds of leaders,

in kings that He would choose. In fact, long before Israel even had a king, way back in the book of Deuteronomy, He gave people, the people laws about future kings.

It's almost as if He knew what they would want, right? And so He told the people, when the time comes that you start asking me for a king, and you're in the promised land, and you say, we've got to have a king, here's the deal.

He's got to be one whom the Lord your God will choose. He's got to be one of your own. He can't be a foreigner. He must be a decent and upright man.

He should not acquire for himself many wives. And then there's also this in Deuteronomy 17, verses 18, 19, and 20. Listen to this. And when he, your king, sits on the throne of his kingdom, he shall write for himself in a book a copy of this law,

Deuteronomy 17:18

approved by the Levitical priests. Think about that. The king has an assignment. Copy a book. Transcribe the book of the law. And the Levitical priests are going to check your work, right?

Make sure you get it right. And this book, it shall be with him, and he shall read in it all the days of his life. So it doesn't get copied and then put on a shelf.

It's daily devotions for the king. He will read in it all the days of his life that he may learn to fear the Lord his God by keeping all the words of this law and these statutes and doing them, that his heart may not be lifted up above his brothers, and that he may not turn aside from the commandment,

either to the right hand or to the left hand, so that he may continue long in his kingdom, he and his children in Israel. Wow. Your king does this, the Lord says, and it will be your blessing.

And when some other kings lived by this criteria, it was. They were blessed. So the Lord blessed them with land. He blessed them with prosperity and protection.

He also blessed them with their temple and his word. And we're going to see on into the book of 2 Kings how they still, the people still have these blessings.

Because they are still in the land, at least for part of the book, and they still receive his word through faithful prophets. And once in a great while, they'll have a rare good king.

Blessings. Remember, it may be very true, and I think scholars are right to describe 2 Kings the way that they do. They call it an avalanche.

It's not just a fall. It's an avalanche with these two kingdoms spiraling and falling ever downward. And I think that's true. But the fact remains that to understand 2 Kings properly, as the story of a fall, you have to fall from somewhere.

And that is a state of blessing. First theme is blessing. Second theme, of course, is this. Number two, failure. Failure.

29 different kings. No less than 29 different kings will be named throughout the course of 2 Kings. And almost all of them will be characterized as doing, quote, evil in the sight of the Lord.

Though prophets like Elijah and soon to appear Elisha will rise up and speak against it, the idolatry of the northern kingdom will perpetuate and fully penetrate this northern kingdom.

Even becoming a snare for southern Judah as well. And eventually Judah will succumb too. And so we have these first 10 chapters in 2 Kings that are coming.

And in these chapters, we're going to watch as our narrator consistently criticizes the northern dynasty of Ahab. Ahab and his heirs who perpetuate this idolatrous worship.

And even though God is going to raise up a pretty ruthless fellow like Jehu to destroy Ahab's dynasty, his whole house, and every vestige of Baal worship, what's going to happen after that is that the idolatry only shifts in a different direction.

And by chapter 17 of 2 Kings, this northern kingdom of Israel will see its fall to the Assyrian invaders. And these 10 tribes will be deported.

That's what's coming in chapter 17. And there's going to be failure in Judah too. It'll take a little longer. Their digression is a little slower.

Not much. A little. Because apart from a few temporary bright spots and a good king or two, Judah is going to march its way toward destruction as well.

And they too will fall to invaders, this time the Babylonians, and see themselves sent off into exile.

Failure. A big theme in this book. But, even in the midst of this theme of failure, there's a third theme, and that is sovereignty. Sovereignty.

Namely, God's sovereignty. What's a very famous and repeated phrase in the book of not just 2 Kings, but 1 Kings 2? It's this phrase, as the Lord lives.

As the Lord lives, the prophet says. As the Lord lives before whom I stand. Meaning, the Lord is in control ultimately. There will come a pivotal moment in 2 Kings chapter 19 where we'll see a very desperate, boxed-in king named Hezekiah.

2 Kings 19 · chapter mention

And he will appeal to the Lord. And this is what he will say. 2 Kings 19 verse 15. O Lord, the God of Israel, enthroned above the cherubim, You are the God.

2 Kings 19:15

The God. You alone. Of all the kingdoms of the earth, You have made heaven and earth. And throughout 2 Kings, we're going to hear God referred to as the sovereign Lord, as the Lord Almighty.

And we need to remember that because we're going to see an abundance of kings and leaders and foreign leaders who think they're in control. But the word of the Lord that gets denounced through His prophets, that will always have the day.

God makes predictions, and we'll hear a number of them, and they're going to happen. The Lord announces His purposes, and nothing and no one can thwart them.

And when God fights, He always wins. And when He makes promises, they will be fulfilled. It's God who's in control of events throughout this book.

It's God who drives out the nations. It's God who enlarges and God who reduces Israel's territory. It's God who rebukes and punishes and exiles an unfaithful people.

The sovereignty of God is a huge and pervasive theme throughout this book. And so is this next one, number four. Theme number four is going to be punishment.

Punishment.

We could go back as far as the book of Exodus. This is a time just after the Golden Calf incident at Mount Sinai. And the Lord calls Moses back up to the mountain to replace the two stone tablets that he shattered.

And then in Exodus 34, we read that the Lord Himself passed before Moses. And as He did, this is what He said. Exodus 34, verses 6 and 7. The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands,

Exodus 34:6

forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty.

Sin must be punished. As the New Testament book of Romans says, sin brings wrath. And 2 Kings is going to trace the ongoing devolution of the northern kingdom as it falls face forward over and over

into these sins of Jeroboam. That phrase is going to haunt us. King after king will continue to walk in the way of Jeroboam. Rival worship sites to what have become rival gods, false gods, idolatry.

And Kings will be very clear as a book that there are consequences for this. In fact, really, right off the bat, we could get into verse 1. Chapter 1, verse 1.

What does it say? Right away, it says, Moab rebelled against Israel. Israel is losing control. And that's a punishment. And a little later on, Israel is going to begin to reduce its territory.

And that too should be seen as a punishment. Here's 2 Kings chapter 10, verse 32. We're going to read that in those days the Lord began to cut off parts of Israel.

2 Kings 10:32

Reduction of territory as a punishment. And it will culminate in the fall of the northern kingdom again in chapter 17. And I want you to just, this is kind of a peek ahead.

Listen to what the narrator explains is the reason why the kingdom falls. 2 Kings chapter 17 verses 7-9. And this occurred because the people of Israel had sinned against the Lord their God who had brought them up out of the land of Egypt from under the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt

2 Kings 17:7–9

and had feared other gods and walked in the customs of the nations whom the Lord drove out before the people of Israel. And they had walked in the customs that the kings of Israel had practiced.

And the people of Israel did secretly against the Lord their God things that were not right. exile the ultimate form of punishment from the Lord.

And as the practice of evil comes to a head in the southern kingdom of Judah under the wicked rule of a king named Manasseh who did more evil we're going to read than any king before him.

2 Kings chapter 21 verse 12 we'll hear the Lord promise to bring a punishment punishment on Judah of quote such disaster that the ears of everyone who hears of it will tingle.

2 Kings 21:12

That's what we'll read. Punishment. But it's not all punishment. And praise God that it's not. Theme number five is patience. Patience. Because the punishment that is promised

and predicted we're going to find that it doesn't always come right away. In many cases we're going to find that it's delayed and it's delayed because of this incredible quality and attribute in God in his patience.

author and theologian Peter Lightheart says that if anything quote God is indulgent toward his people. It's like a bad kid right? It's just on a chair that needs to be something and the parent just

stands by and waits and waits and waits. Sometimes it looks like that in 2 Kings like God what are you waiting for? Sometimes God does not execute justice immediately.

He will instead allow a good king like Josiah hang on to that name a king like Josiah who happens to be the grandson of wicked Manasseh to survive an assassination attempt to ascend to the throne and then to restore Israel's worship

for a brief time and it is brief and it won't avert the crisis of judgment that is ultimately coming but the Lord's response in allowing a Josiah to be raised up and to do the good things that he does shows us his patience.

He is patient with his people when he sends them prophet after prophet even when they're not well received and they're never well received. Again, one scholar says that by the time we see the people all marched off in exile in the last chapter of 2 Kings chapter 25 the reader

2 Kings 25 · chapter mention

has a sense of like well it's about time. What took so long? Well what took so long is the patience of God. He does not want them to perish.

And that really brings us to a sixth and final theme today. The last one for our preview. Theme number six is hope. Hope. Hope. 2 Kings features a lot of tragedy and failure and punishment but it also features hope.

In fact, 2 Kings actually points to hope. Because the same covenant that required judgment on Israel is the same covenant that promises hope and restoration.

It's the same covenant that promised a future David a Davidic heir. A promise that is very much still alive and kicking as this book ends with a Davidic heir still alive.

Still alive. Eating at a foreign king's table. Last couple of verses of 2 Kings will tell us. And there are glimmers of hope throughout the book too.

As I mentioned there are some good kings and there are some very good moments. Jehu chapter 10 will wipe out the Baal cult. Totally. He will cut off wicked king and Jezebel's line.

The kingdom of Judah, the southern kingdom, will get no less than three good kings. Josiah, Hezekiah, Joash. And each of them will lead the nation in some measure of repentance.

In some cases full scale repentance. And in 2 Kings chapter 22 in one of these men's reforms we will see the biggest revival ever in Israel's history.

2 Kings 22 · chapter mention

Josiah will come of age and he will rediscover the book of the law and he will read it and he will do what Deuteronomy said that he should do.

And he will restore temple worship. And he's going to lead the nation in this wide scale reform. He's going to literally cut down the Asherah poles.

He's going to eliminate cult prostitution all over the land and even clean up the occult because things are really bad. Hope. And while sometimes these moments of hope are created because people repent because there's real confession of sin

most times there's hope simply because there's God. Because he's a patient God. He's a gracious God who puts up with evil kings like Jehoram in 2nd Kings chapter 8.

Here's what we read in 2nd Kings chapter 8 verse 19. Yet the Lord, even with this wicked king, yet the Lord was not willing to destroy Judah for the sake of David his servant, covenant since he promised to give him a lamp to him and his sons forever.

Or because he's a gracious and compassionate God who remembers covenants, even when the covenants are broken. 2nd Kings chapter 13 verse 23.

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.

I mean, I think the sheer fact that this book of Kings gets composed in exile after both kingdoms have fallen, I think that is proof that there's hope that this book would be composed to explain to the exiles

this is why you are where you are. This is what's gotten you where you are. And yet there's still hope because why would you chart and document all of this if there's no hope?

All hope is not lost at the close of Kings. And again, by the end, although the Davidic kingdom will be broken and fallen, God's promise to David won't be.

It will stand. And there will be a promise of an heir one day who doesn't just resurrect the kingdom, but who has a resurrection himself. Jesus, the Davidic heir, who will save not just Israel, but all people, a savior for the

whole world.

So that's a preview of what are some major themes. So if you've jotted them down somewhere in the margins of your journal or your book or whatever you have, keep a hold of those.

Keep an eye out for these themes as we move on into the chapters of this book. But before we finish, even if just briefly, I want to at least touch on the so what.

I want to at least whet our appetite for some of the significance of a couple of these themes and why they should matter to us. I want to give you a sense of how timely they can be.

How are each of these themes going to touch our lives? Well, I can't tell you that today because I would need to go chapter by chapter and verse by verse through this whole book to show you that.

And I intend to do that just not right now. But maybe I can give you a sample. Can I do that? A teaser. Let's just think about a couple of themes.

How about the themes of sovereignty and hope? Sovereignty and hope.

I don't think I have to tell you that we as a country, as a nation today, we are in an election season. Did you know that? We are staring down an election in just about two months.

And if I have learned anything and you have learned anything about elections these days, there are a lot of voices out there that want to play up on our hopes and our fears.

Right? And maybe especially the fears, which are the opposite of hope. you don't want this policy or this could happen. You don't want that candidate or that's going to happen.

You can't have that party in power or this will happen. Now, I'm here as an American citizen like many of you, I think probably most of you, and I vote.

I think that's important. I add my voice in the decision making about such things. And I would encourage you to do the same. But here's what I know.

My hopes are not tied to what happens in November.

My hopes are not tied to any election, to any candidates, to any particular party or outcome. Not to say I don't have some strong preferences, and I'm sure you do too.

And the reason my hopes are not tied to any of that is because 2 Kings reminds me that God is above all rulers and kingdoms. And that even the worst of what nations can do, and this was his nation, by the way, a theocracy, or at least it was supposed

to be, even the worst of the messes they can create does not stop his sovereignty. my hopes are not tied to what happens in two months. So if you want to say, oh, it feels like our country is headed toward political and moral disaster, and in many ways, maybe we're already

there, and I'm not actually going to argue with you about that. I just want to simply remind you that 2 Kings is going to show us that Israel was here too.

And yet, and yet, God is still the God of heaven. And the Lord still lives. And His word is still true. And He's still able to work toward accomplishing His purposes no matter what happens at a

ballot box. No matter how evil and wicked a ruler might be. No matter how far gone into idolatry a land may become.

Are there sometimes punishments and judgments even upon a nation? Sure. But remember that nothing will happen that will derail the promises of God for His people.

And that should give you hope. That should give you a hope that's an anchor for your soul, firm and secure, as it takes them, what, two more months to figure out who wins elections.

That should anchor your soul. So don't go fearing and losing your hope that Congress looks one way or another, or that some person you don't want to be in the Oval Office is there.

Don't fear that God has somehow lost control because we happen to have yet another very flawed and possibly very evil ruler coming to power in this land.

God has done it. Because up ahead in this book we're going to see some very wicked, fundamentally flawed rulers, worse than we've ever seen.

And they will lead people into some really abhorrent, I mean abhorrent policies. They will lead people into sin, these rulers will. And they will hurt a whole lot of people, shed a whole lot of innocent blood.

you could say it's not an exaggeration to say that hellish things will happen in this book of 2nd Kings. But who's still on the throne?

Not Israel's temporary and ever-changing line of kings, but someone else who sits on the throne, the throne of heaven, which is an eternal throne.

So keep your eye and keep your heart on God's sovereignty and keep your heart rooted in hope. This is just one of many, many lessons Kings is going to have for us.

And believe me when I say that I'm really excited, I'm really looking forward to what's up ahead in this book, and I hope that you will pray for me, pray for your pastors as we prepare to teach you God's word every week, and pray for yourselves, pray for your own hearts too, that you will come to listen and learn,

and committed to live according to the ways that God shows you, because He is sovereign, and because of His sovereignty, you can have hope. God bless you.

God bless you. God bless you. God bless you. God bless you. God bless you. God bless you. God bless you. God bless you. God bless you. God bless you.

God bless you. God bless you. God bless you. God bless you. God bless you. God bless you. God bless you. God bless you. God bless you. God bless you.

God bless you. God bless you. God bless you. God bless you. God bless you. God bless you. God bless you. God bless you. God bless you. God bless you.

God bless you. God bless you. God bless you. God bless you. God bless you. God bless you.