Hope From the Word

Guest (Male): Do you believe in miracles? Don't believe they happen anymore? Here is Pastor Bill Luebkemann.

Host Bill Luebkemann: Just in case you're wondering, there are no other gods. There is only one God, and he is the God of Israel. Which is why I'm glad the United States of America is on the side of Israel most of the time, since their God is the only God that there is.

If we were against Israel, we'd be fighting against God in many cases. I'm not saying Israel is perfect or does everything perfectly, but they are God's chosen people. It is his chosen land. And the fact that it's there today in the year 2008 is just a miracle predicted by the Bible.

Guest (Male): A quote from one of Jane Austen's books is, "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife." Today on Hope from the Word, Pastor Bill Luebkemann is teaching from 2 Kings about a king who made a very poor choice of a wife.

He did not seek God's wisdom on whom he should marry, but rather he chose the daughter of one of the worst kings in Israel's history, Jezebel. Here's Pastor Bill with some takeaway lessons from this.

Host Bill Luebkemann: Jehoshaphat, the good king, his son turned out to be a bad king. And how did he do that? Well, he married Ahab's daughter. So his brother-in-law is the king of the Northern Kingdom. He's the king of the Southern Kingdom. His brother-in-law is the king of the Northern Kingdom. His wife, Athaliah, is the daughter of Ahab.

So he married into this messed up daughter of Ahab and Jezebel. And if you look over in Chronicles, you'll find out that when Jehoram took over from Jehoshaphat, his dad, you'll find that Jehoram killed his brothers and also some other ones of his dad's advisors because he didn't want anybody threatening his hold on the throne, his grasp of the kingdom.

So he killed his brothers. Now, Jewish tradition, if you look in the writings of Josephus, says that it was his wife Athaliah, daughter of Ahab, that convinced him to kill his brothers, that she put him up to it. Being a daughter of Jezebel, that's probably what you'd expect from her. But she told her husband, you'd better not trust your brothers.

They could come along and say they should be the king. One of them could claim to be the king instead of you. So Jewish tradition now says she put him up to it. The Bible in Chronicles says he did it. Jewish tradition, the book of Josephus's history books, says why he did it was because his wife put him up to it.

And he followed along, not the ways that his father had taught him, or shall we say failed to teach him, but he followed along in the ways of Ahab, his father-in-law, because he married Ahab's daughter. Here's a guy that wasn't trained up in the way he should go. And the Bible says if you train up your child in the way he should go, when he is old, he will not depart from it.

And here's a case where a father should have done that. But instead, he was a bad king. He did evil in the eyes of the Lord. But the Lord kept him there because the Lord had promised David, "I'm going to keep someone on the throne from your family forever. I'm going to keep a lamp there forever." It's just going to be a small part of the kingdom because Israel had split away, but you're going to have something there. Someone from your family is going to be there forever.

In the time of Jehoram, Edom rebelled against Judah and set up its own king. Now you remember Edom was another country that was subservient to Judah. In other words, they paid tribute to Judah, and they were ruled over by Judah. But when Jehoshaphat died, Edom rebelled, said, "We're not going to accept you anymore. We're not going to be ruled by you anymore. We're going to have our own king. You guys can get lost." They pulled out of the relationship they had there.

And that got this guy really mad. He might have thought that if he married the daughter of Ahab and now his brother-in-law was the king of the Northern Kingdom, he might have thought that as an alliance, they'd be unbeatable. We'll work together. Me and the south, my brother-in-law in the north, we'll help each other. I'll help him, he'll help me. And we'll become unbeatable.

But he forgot something here, that is you don't need more men and more troops to be unbeatable. You need God to be on your side to be unbeatable. And that's what he forgot. And he actually got weaker. Isn't that funny? He married the guy's daughter, joined up and became friends with the Northern Kingdom. So on the surface, it would look like a great relationship. It's a family affair. They're all Jews. They've been estranged from one another.

They're going to get back together. We're going to have a winning team here. Nobody will be able to take us on. But instead, he actually got weaker because it seems like the Lord wasn't going to bless what he was doing. And so Edom rebelled. Now, he didn't like that very much. So Jehoram went to Zair with all his chariots. So he went down to Edom with his chariots. He's going to teach them a thing or two about rebelling.

The Edomites surrounded him and his chariot commanders, but he rose up and broke through by night. His army, however, fled back home. To this day, Edom has been in rebellion against Judah. Libnah revolted at the same time. So he went off to attack Edom, and the Edomites surrounded him. But he wanted to continue forward. And with his chariot commanders, they broke through the line.

So they were prepared to continue forward, to go into Edom, to attack Edom. But the rest of his troops were afraid. They took off and ran the opposite way. So he lost that battle, and Edom was no longer subservient to Judah. Neither was Libnah. They revolted at the same time. As for the other events of Jehoram's reign and all he did, are they not written in the book of the annals of the kings of Judah?

Jehoram rested with his fathers and was buried with them in the city of David. And Ahaziah, his son, succeeded him as king. Now here we have the son. This guy is the grandson now of Ahab and Jezebel, because his father had married Ahab's daughter. In the twelfth year of Joram, son of Ahab, king of Israel—so Joram is still king in the Northern Kingdom.

Remember the previous section was in the fifth year. Now we're in the twelfth year, eight years later. In the twelfth year of Joram, son of Ahab, king of Israel, Ahaziah, son of Jehoram, king of Judah, began to reign. Ahaziah was twenty-two years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem one year. Well, this guy didn't make it long.

His grandfather on the one side was Ahab, who was a terrible bum. On the other side, his grandfather was Jehoshaphat, who was a good king. But he didn't take after the Jehoshaphat grandfather. He took after the Ahab grandfather. And he should have been able to observe Jehoshaphat was king for a very long time. I forget exactly how long.

But his own father, who we just read about, Jehoram, was only king for eight years. And he should have said, "I wonder what my dad did different from my granddad because my granddad was more successful than my dad. So maybe I should be more like my granddad instead of being more like my dad." But he wasn't that smart either.

His mother's name was Athaliah, that's a granddaughter of Omri, king of Israel. He walked in the ways, she was granddaughter of Omri, daughter of Jezebel and Ahab. He walked in the ways of the house of Ahab and did evil in the eyes of the Lord as the house of Ahab had done, for he was related by marriage to Ahab's family. So there you have it. This guy did the same exact kind of nonsense. And guess what happened? Nothing. His career lasted a whole whopping one year.

Ahaziah went with Joram, son of Ahab, to war against Hazael, king of Aram. So Hazael, remember we saw him at the beginning of this evening's study. Hazael now had taken over from Ben-Hadad, the king of Aram or Syria. And these guys went off to war against him. Ahaziah went with Joram, son of Ahab. So here we have the king of the Southern Kingdom and the king of the Northern Kingdom going together to war against Hazael, king of Aram at Ramoth Gilead.

The Arameans wounded Joram. So King Joram returned to Jezreel to recover from the wounds the Arameans had inflicted on him at Ramoth in his battle with Hazael, king of Aram. Then Ahaziah, son of Jehoram, king of Judah, went down to Jezreel to see Joram, son of Ahab, because he had been wounded. So they went into battle together. The king of the Northern Kingdom, Joram, he got injured. He went home to recover, and the king of the Southern Kingdom, who is the son of his brother-in-law, goes to visit him.

So these people have relationships where they're friendly with one another when it shouldn't be so. And that's because neither one of them is serving the Lord. Now we're going to come back to those guys further down in chapter nine, but now the scene switches back to Elisha here at the beginning of chapter nine.

The prophet Elisha summoned a man from the company of the prophets and said to him, "Tuck your cloak into your belt, take this flask of oil with you, and go to Ramoth Gilead." Now that's where the battle had been going on that we just been reading about. "When you get there, look for Jehu, son of Jehoshaphat, the son of Nimshi. Go to him, get him away from his companions, and take him into an inner room. Then take the flask and pour the oil on his head and declare, 'This is what the Lord says. I anoint you king over Israel.' Then open the door and run. Don't delay."

So now we have a thing where mostly the kings were not anointed by God. They weren't chosen by God. And by the way, don't think because this next king is being chosen by God, he's going to be a good one either, because he should have been a good one. He could have been a good one, but he chose poorly. But we'll get to that also.

But here we have most of the time the kings were chosen because they were the son. So the king died, his son took over. There was no prophet anointing somebody saying, "You're going to be the king." This only happened a few times. Or if it wasn't the son, it was somebody like Hazael here, who just assassinated the king and just took over illegitimately in his place.

But here is actually a prophet of God going and picking a guy and anointing him king, saying, "You're going to be king." And Elisha here calls a man from the company of the prophets, one of the prophets there. Remember we saw the prophets hung out together. They had kind of their own little group there. And this might have been a younger guy. Maybe this was a homework assignment, maybe it was a practice mission for him.

Somebody I read suggested that, and that's a possibility. I don't know why Elisha didn't do it himself. It seemed to me to be important enough for Elisha to do himself. But obviously, God had this other plan. Elisha said to one of the guys, "Look, here's what you're going to do. Tuck your cloak into your belt." In other words, you're going to be prepared to run. You can't be tripping over your cloak.

"Take this flask of oil with you and go to Ramoth Gilead. That's where the battle's going on. We saw that already. And look for this guy Jehu, son of Jehoshaphat, the son of Nimshi. And get him away from his companions. Take him into an inner room somewhere. In other words, this is going to be done privately. Only he's going to know, and only you're going to know. You've got to find the guy, you've got to get him away from his companions because when you do this, we don't want anyone else to know.

And when you get him alone, when you get him in the inner room, this is what you're going to do. You're going to pour the oil on his head and you're going to say this: 'This is what the Lord says. I anoint you king over Israel.' Then you're going to get out of there. You're going to have a getaway car waiting, and you're going to hop out the door, get in the getaway car, and take off just as fast as you can before anything happens to you."

So the young man, okay, it was a young man, the prophet, I thought I had read somewhere it was a young man. It says right here in verse four. So the young man, the prophet, went to Ramoth Gilead. When he arrived, he found the army officers sitting together. "I have a message for you, commander," he said. "For which of us?" asked Jehu. "For you, commander," he replied.

So he gets there and he finds these army officers all sitting together and he tells Jehu, "I've got a message here for you." And Jehu says, "Well, who's it for? Well, it's for you, sir." So Jehu got up and went into the house. Then the prophet poured the oil on Jehu's head and declared, "This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says. 'I anoint you king over the Lord's people, Israel. You are to destroy the house of Ahab, your master, and I will avenge the blood of my servants, the prophets, and the blood of all the Lord's servants shed by Jezebel.

The whole house of Ahab will perish. I will cut off from Ahab every last male in Israel, slave or free. I will make the house of Ahab like the house of Jeroboam, son of Nebat, and like the house of Baasha, son of Ahijah. As for Jezebel, dogs will devour her on the plot of ground at Jezreel, and no one will bury her.'" Then he opened the door and ran.

Now it seems like this guy said more to Jehu than he was supposed to because Elisha only said to tell him one thing: "I anoint you king over Israel." And instead, he told him a lot more. Well, I think if you're wondering about that, the answer is really simple. Either Elisha told him more to say and it's just not recorded here, or this guy was a prophet himself.

So Elisha told him, "Here's the mission. You're going to go and anoint this guy king over Israel." And he sent him on his way. And then the Lord may have spoken to the guy and said, "Hey, you're going to say some more stuff also." I don't think we should assume there's anything wrong with this extended message here. Either Elisha gave it to him, or he heard right from the guy. The man was, after all, a prophet himself.

And he gets Jehu into this house here, and he pours the oil on his head. And he says, "This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says." Look, this is the Lord here, just in case you're wondering who the Lord is. It's the God of Israel. Just in case you're wondering, there are no other gods, by the way. There is only one God, and he is the God of Israel. Which is why I'm glad the United States of America is on the side of Israel most of the time, since their God is the only God that there is.

If we were against Israel, we'd be fighting against God in many cases. I'm not saying Israel is perfect or does everything perfectly, but they are God's chosen people. It is his chosen land. And the fact that it's there today in the year 2008 is just a miracle predicted by the Bible. Many people for years had given up on there ever being an Israel again.

If you ask people two, three, four, five hundred years ago, "Hey, the Bible says all this stuff about Israel and the end times," they would say, "Well, there is no Israel." So the Bible must be wrong. They even had to come up with a whole separate kind of theology to reconcile that. They call it replacement theology. They said Israel's gone and the church has taken the place of Israel.

So any scripture that talks about Israel in the final days is really talking about the church, because the church is now spiritually Israel. But the people who were the more astute students of the Bible said, "No, that's not what that means. If it talks about Israel, it's talking about Israel. And if it says something's going to happen to Israel, then it's going to happen there. And so there's going to be a nation of Israel. It's going to have to rise again someday."

And after World War II, it did. Surprise! And here they are again. And you can take that whole replacement theology and throw it out the window. The church is not spiritual Israel. The church is the church, and Israel is Israel. And they have two separate completely different roles in end-times prophecy.

And he says to the guy, "I anoint you king over the Lord's people, Israel. You are to destroy the house of Ahab, your master." Now you'll recall this was prophesied also, that Ahab was not going to have any descendants left. And now this guy, Jehu, is getting his marching orders. You're to destroy the house of Ahab, your master. Ahab's already dead, by the way. His son is the king, right? But his wife, Jezebel, is still alive.

And he's getting the orders here: "You are to destroy the house of Ahab, your master, and I will avenge the blood of my servants, the prophets, and the blood of all the Lord's servants shed by Jezebel." In other words, it's payback time for all the blood that they shed, killing the prophets, many of them that they did kill.

"The whole house of Ahab will perish. I will cut off from Ahab every last male in Israel, slave or free." In other words, there's going to be no more descendants of Ahab, no more Ahabites, if you will. They're done. They're going to be just like the house of Jeroboam, the house of Baasha, totally eradicated, exterminated because of what they've done. "And as for Jezebel, dogs are going to eat her on that plot of ground in Jezreel, and no one will even bury her."

And by the way, I might add, I don't think she was missed at all. And this guy delivered this message and took off. When Jehu went out to his fellow officers, one of them asked him, "Is everything all right? Why did this madman come to you?" "You know the man and the sort of things he says," Jehu replied.

So one of his officers is concerned. They treat the prophet as a madman. Interesting. "What do you have to say? Is there a problem? Something wrong? You got some bad news or something? What's this all about?" And Jehu said, "You know the guy. Yeah, it's like Jehu is saying, 'Yeah, the guy's a madman. You know what he's like. What he says doesn't matter.'"

Well, they press him on it here. "That's not true," they said. "Tell us." Jehu said, "Here's what he told me. This is what the Lord says: 'I anoint you king over Israel.'" They hurried and took their cloaks and spread them under him on the bare steps. Then they blew the trumpet and shouted, "Jehu is king!"

Isn't that interesting? First they say, "Why did this madman come to you?" They say the prophet is a madman. He's a crackpot. He's crazy. But then, when they find out what the message is, they believe it. I mean, it's good that they believe it because it's a true message, it really is from God.

But first they treat him as a madman, and Jehu doesn't seem to want to tell them right away what's going on. But they press him: "No, that's not true. What was it all about?" And when he tells them he was anointed king over Israel, then now they want to honor him. They spread their cloaks under him on the bare steps. That's a method of honor.

Then they blew the trumpet and shouted, "Jehu is king!" You know, one of the reasons this was done in private, I think, most likely, was so that Jehu could announce it at his own convenience. He could bring it out whenever he wanted to. He didn't need to bring it out right away. But for whatever reason, he chose to do so right here in this spot. And the people who treated the prophet as a madman now all of a sudden are believing what he says.

I just think it's interesting. Number one, none of them stood up for the king, Ahab's son, Joram. They didn't like him. They didn't say, "Wait a minute, we're loyal to the king. What do you mean you're the king? We have a king, we don't need another king. You only need one king, you don't need two kings. This is a mutiny! We're not going to follow you, we have the king we're going to follow." No, there's not the slightest hint here that these people were unhappy that Jehu was king.

It seems like they were very unhappy with the current leadership of the country and they were very happy that there was going to be a change and maybe they even liked this guy, Jehu. So they were throwing their cloaks down, blowing their trumpets, and honoring him and saying, "Hey, Jehu is king! Let's have this big celebration."

And I think that that's very interesting, that they don't in any way object or anything here. And it's interesting that they go from calling the guy a madman to believing what he says. But I think it's also interesting, again, when your friends come to you because you're a Christian and they're not, they make fun of what you believe, except when they're sick, or when someone they know is dying, has cancer or something.

Everybody in the world knows at least someone who has cancer or had cancer or will have cancer or some other dreaded disease. And they can make fun of God and joke about God and use the Lord's name in vain and all that kind of stuff, but when there's a real problem, they come to you and ask you to pray for them.

And you know, likewise, if you tell such a person who could be the most antagonistic person towards the faith that you've ever met, when they're having a bad time, that you're praying for them, an awful lot of them who are normally antagonistic will receive that with thanksgiving. You tell them, "I'm really praying for your mom. I heard she's not doing too well. Our church has put her on the prayer chain."

The most antagonistic unbeliever will say, "Wow, that's really great. I'm going to tell her that." You're going to tell her? "Yeah, I'm going to tell her that." Why are you going to tell her? You don't believe in God. Why are you going to tell her that a bunch of people are praying to a God that doesn't exist? But it seems like when the push comes to shove, everybody knows God exists.

And they know who to come to to ask for prayer. And when you say you're praying, when you give them some news, especially if it's encouraging, if it's what they want to hear, they're right on top of it. And I just want to suggest here, maybe these people are really just like us, or just like unbelievers in the world today. We'll take the news if it's good news.

Great opportunity for this guy here. Fabulous opportunity. He could have done what the Lord told him to do, and then he could have led the people back to the Lord. The guy was picked up out of nowhere and given a job to do. And his job here was to bring judgment on this family of Ahab. And what an opportunity! The guy could have done that and said, "Hey, you know, I'm going to get right with the Lord and really do it with the right motive." It doesn't seem like he had that right motive. He doesn't seem like he turned any of that around to his own advantage, because he turns out to be a crummy king also. But we'll find that out next time.

Guest (Male): You've been listening to Hope from the Word. We're currently in a study of 2 Kings. You can hear this message and more Hope from the Word with Pastor Bill Luebkemann by going to ccmarlton.org. Pastor Bill's messages can also be found by downloading the Hope FM app on your smartphone or tablet. Or if you prefer to listen via podcast, you can find Hope from the Word wherever you find your podcasts.

We'd love to have you join us at Calvary Chapel of Marlton, either in person or online. Our Sunday service begins at 10:00 AM, and there's a Wednesday evening service at 7:00. To catch us online, you can subscribe to our YouTube channel at Calvary Chapel of Marlton, or just go to our website for the link at ccmarlton.org.

And if you'd take a moment to write to Pastor Bill, it would be such a blessing to us. We're thankful each and every time we hear what God is doing in our listeners' lives, and we want to pray for you, too. Either email us through the website at ccmarlton.org, or call 856-983-1662. We'll continue our study in 2 Kings next time on Hope from the Word with Pastor Bill Luebkemann, a presentation of Calvary Chapel of Marlton.