Hope From the Word

Bill Luebkemann: If you're living contrary to God's word, you're not being blessed by him.

Guest (Male): Here's Pastor Bill Luebkemann.

Bill Luebkemann: Look, if you're out there sinning and you're not following the ways of God and you're doing evil in the eyes of the Lord, you might think you're just doing fine and dandy and peachy keen and everything's okay.

I've even had people say the Lord's blessing what we're doing when it was clearly wrong. Oh, the Lord's blessing it, the Lord's in it, we've prayed, we know God is in this. Well, his word says something different. Yeah, but we just feel, we just feel right. Well, you're confused and deluded if you feel right and you're sinning against what the word of God says.

Guest (Male): I think most of us have at the very least been tempted into a partnership with someone who is far from the Lord. But when we align ourselves with an evil person, we're asking for trouble.

Our example today is the king we've been studying here on Hope From the Word. King Jehoshaphat was a righteous and godly leader, but his son Jehoram did not follow in his father's footsteps. Rather, if it hadn't been for God's promise to King David to have a descendant of his on the throne forever, Jehoram would have been a goner. Let's join Pastor Bill Luebkemann now in 2 Chronicles 21.

Bill Luebkemann: If you'll open up to 2 Chronicles 21. We were looking at Jehoshaphat. We saw that his reign was essentially good. He started out really strong, even to the point of essentially having a roving team of evangelists going around the countryside. We saw that back in chapter 17. He has a lot of chapters devoted to him: 17, 18, 19, and 20 all devoted to Jehoshaphat. Pretty amazing. I didn't go through 2 Chronicles and look at who has more chapters. Certainly David and Solomon have more chapters, but I'm not sure that any other king does.

We saw in 17 that he appointed some guys to travel around the country and teach throughout the land, bringing with them the book of the law. He's off to a really good start there. But then he hooked up with this guy Ahab. Jehoshaphat was the king of Judah, that was the southern half of the nation of Israel because Israel had split into two halves. Actually, Judah was the smaller part of it and the northern kingdom was called Israel still.

He was the king down south in the smaller part. They were the ones that had a better track record of following after the Lord. Up in the northern kingdom, the kingdom of Israel to the north, Judah to the south, Israel was the larger kingdom and they were the ones that were farther away from God, not really walking with him at all. Up in the northern kingdom, this king was Ahab. He was not the guy that was looking for the whale. That was a different Ahab. This Ahab in the northern kingdom was evil, evil, evil. His wife was Jezebel. We've all heard of her.

Funny how Jehoshaphat, maybe just trying to be a nice guy or something, goes up there and tries to be friendly with Ahab. It cost him a lot. We saw in chapter 18 how he hooked up with Ahab for a battle, which was a big mistake. Jehoshaphat got out by the skin of his teeth; Ahab died, perished because of that.

When he came back down to his own kingdom, he got right with God again and there he was going out among the people turning them back to the things of the Lord. He kind of began his ministry strong, kind of got off on a bunny path in the middle there, and towards the end of his life he seemed like he was going strong again. But one of the other mistakes that he made was marrying off his son to the daughter of Ahab, or one of the daughters of Ahab. Big mistake.

Big mistake. The Bible says in the New Testament of course not to be unevenly yoked together with an unbeliever. If you're a Christian, you shouldn't be dating, going out with, getting married to a non-believing spouse. That makes no sense. Of course, the New Testament wasn't written yet, but God had told them not to intermarry. The northern kingdom were Jews, they weren't foreigners or anything, but they were the ones who weren't following after God. It was kind of like Jehoshaphat had this high tolerance for sin. He was a basically good guy himself, but he looked the other way, smiled upon, didn't complain about when people he knew were sinning.

We're going to see that his own son married into Ahab's family. Big mistake because now his son is influenced through his wife by King Ahab in the wrong direction. Even though Jehoshaphat is a godly king, we see that his son, not so much, not at all really, and his grandson neither. It takes a while, takes until his great-grandson before the kings get back on track with the Lord and we'll get to that next week. But this week, we're going to look at what happens with Jehoram, the son of Jehoshaphat.

We'll start in chapter 21, verse one. "Then Jehoshaphat rested with his fathers and was buried with them in the city of David." That's Jerusalem, by the way. "And Jehoram his son succeeded him as king." Jehoram's brothers, the sons of Jehoshaphat, were Azariah, Jehiel, Zechariah, Azariahu, Michael, and Shephatiah. All these were sons of Jehoshaphat king of Israel. Their father had given them many gifts of silver and gold and articles of value as well as fortified cities in Judah, but he had given the kingdom to Jehoram because he was his firstborn son.

Look, this guy had seven sons here. Their names are irrelevant, can't pronounce them all. They should have had simpler names like Tom, Dick, and Harry. That would have been easier for us. But the father took care of all seven of them. It says he gave all seven of them gifts of silver and gold and articles that were valuable and every one of them got fortified cities in Judah. It doesn't say they just got one each either. He says gifts of fortified cities in Judah, so you're given to believe here that each one of these brothers at least had his own city that he could run and maybe even a few cities.

If you're a father and you want to leave your kids well, you want to see your kids do well, you want to see them get set up in life, able to pay their bills, and if you can leave them a little bit of something to go on, you like to do that. That's what this father was doing, but he wasn't really as concerned about the spiritual aspect of their lives as he should have been. Here he was giving them material things, many gifts it said, many gifts of gold and silver and articles of value as well as cities that they could call their own. They could have been mayors of different cities or governors of part of the land. He set them up well, but he didn't apparently teach them much about their religious faith. He gave the kingdom to Jehoram because he was his firstborn son. That was only proper; his firstborn son should have inherited the kingdom.

But look what happens next. "When Jehoram established himself firmly over his father's kingdom, he put all his brothers to the sword, along with some of the princes of Israel." This was true in a lot of eastern kingdoms, when a king inherited the throne from his old man, it was not uncommon to kill off all the brothers because they would be perceived as a threat to the throne. It happened more than once in the history of Israel, I think.

I'm thinking of one or two other times when it happened after Solomon died, right? His son tried to set himself up as king even though God had anointed David to be king. Little bit different situation there, but it's happened more than once. Here it was, his brothers were put to the sword by him along with some of the princes of Israel. He wanted to get rid of any threats. He wasn't really trusting in God here. He wasn't trusting in God that God had placed him on the throne, because if he was trusting in God that God had placed him on the throne, then he could have trusted in God that God could have kept him on the throne.

Instead, he was probably thinking he got there by his father's own hard work and therefore he needed to protect himself. He waited until he was established firmly and then he wiped out his siblings and also some of the princes, so whoever else would have been a threat to him as well. This was the first thing he did perhaps, or one of the first things that was clearly outside of the will of God and ungodly and he's going to pay the price for this pretty soon.

Jehoram was 32 years old when he became king and he reigned in Jerusalem eight years. He walked in the ways of the kings of Israel as the house of Ahab had done, for he married a daughter of Ahab. It's only logical here he was influenced through his wife. Look, we know Solomon started out doing tremendous with the Lord, but through his many wives he got led astray. He married foreigners who were not Jews and too many of them, anything more than one is too many of them, and he had 700 wives and 300 concubines and there wasn't anything he wouldn't do for them. Build them a temple, give them idols, build them a temple for their idols, he would do anything for his wives and he wound up worshipping idols in various places with his wives.

He was led astray by his wife. This is not to put down wives because wives can lead the husband astray, husbands can lead the wife astray; it can work either ways. In this case here, if a godly person, if a Christian marries a non-Christian, doesn't matter which one is the Christian, the guy or the gal, I would say there's a greater chance the non-Christian is going to pull the Christian away from the faith than the opposite way around.

When I was younger, if someone was dating a non-Christian, we always called that missionary dating and we always said that's very dangerous. I've heard of some cases where it just worked out all peachy and everything, but I think in other cases it hasn't. More importantly, the Bible says not to be yoked together unequally with an unbeliever. You can probably apply that in other areas too, like in business. When you have a business, why would you want to have an unbeliever as a partner in your business if you're a believer? What are you going to say to them when they want to cheat on their taxes or when they want to do something that's illegal or ship the customer the wrong product or not the weight that they paid for or short somebody in some way?

Being in business for 25 years, I've seen just about every kind of scam there is to know. People stealing from their employer, people stealing from their customers, I've seen all different ways that it's done. It's not pretty out there and I wouldn't recommend a Christian business person be in business with unbelievers. I'm not talking about having unbelievers work for you. If you're in charge and they work for you, that's maybe a different matter.

He walked in the ways of the kings of Israel, he followed the ways of his in-laws. He spent too much time at the in-laws' house. You know that old saying, if your in-laws are outlaws? His in-laws were outlaws, it was the house of Ahab. So his mother-in-law was Jezebel. He had married a daughter of Ahab, he did evil in the eyes of the Lord. Nevertheless, because of the covenant the Lord had made with David, the Lord was not willing to destroy the house of David. He had promised to maintain a lamp for him and his descendants forever. Only because of God's gracious promise, only because God said to David, "I will see to it that you have someone here on the throne," only because of that did God not come in and just obliterate this guy immediately.

Look, if you're out there sinning and you're not following the ways of God and you're doing evil in the eyes of the Lord, you might think you're just doing fine and dandy and peachy keen and everything's okay. I've even had people say, "The Lord's blessing what we're doing," when it was clearly wrong. Oh, the Lord's blessing it, the Lord's in it, we've prayed, we know God is in this. Well, his word says something different. Yeah, but we just feel, we just feel right. Well, you're confused and deluded if you feel right and you're sinning against what the word of God says.

The Lord was not willing to destroy the house of David. He might have thought, hey, I'm doing great, the Lord didn't—I'm cheating and the Lord didn't bother me. The Lord doesn't bother me, he doesn't care, he's not really alive, he's not paying any attention. He's doing his own thing. Not so. Verse eight. "In the time of Jehoram, Edom rebelled against Judah and set up its own king. So Jehoram went there with his officers and all his chariots. The Edomites surrounded him and his chariot commanders, but he rose up and broke through by night."

To this day, Edom has been in rebellion against Judah. If you rewind the clock a few generations, Edom had been conquered by King David and they were paying tribute to the king of Israel all these years. They were paying tribute, taxes, or whatever, 10% of their crops. They were paying tribute. They were under the dominion of Judah. But now what happened was Edom broke free. They rebelled. We know from the Jewish historian Josephus that this happened because the king over in Edom died. He was slain in an insurrection and the new king wanted to really get a good reputation for himself, so he said, "Hey, let's rebel and we won't have to pay tribute to Israel anymore."

He led that revolution, that rebellion and ultimately they won. The Lord tore away part of the kingdom, so to speak, part of the area that Jehoram ruled over was torn away by the Lord here. He went to try to argue with his troops to have a battle. He went there with his troops, it says he went there with his officers and all his chariots. The Edomites surrounded him and his chariot commanders, but he rose up and broke through by night and got back home. Basically he surrendered and he was lucky to get out of there because God was protecting him. Why? Because God had promised to maintain a lamp for David and his descendants forever.

God was carrying through on a promise. One of the things we should know about the Lord is he never breaks his promise. He always carries through on the promise, always. When the Bible says God loves us—that's the whole theme this weekend, God's redeeming love—it's never going to change, it's never going to be any different. He loves us forever. Doesn't matter what's happening around us, what things look like. Sometimes we say, "If God loves us, why did he allow this to happen or that to happen?" The circumstances do not change the fact that God loves us. If we don't understand the circumstances, all that means is that we don't understand the circumstances. It doesn't mean that God has left us, that he's no longer walking with us, that he doesn't love us anymore.

To this day, from when this was written, from when this happened up to the time that the Chronicles were written, to this day, Edom has been in rebellion against Judah. I think the chronicler here is wanting to tell the Jews who are returning to Jerusalem after the captivity, "Look, when the good guys were king and they honored God, things always went right. It wasn't because you were good guys and you were doing everything right; it was because God was blessing."

It's like we saw Sunday night on that David Barton show on TV, which I recommended everybody watch. It was called Is America a Christian Nation? Amazing at the founding of our country and the amount of Christians that were here and the things that they said, the quotes that he had from George Washington and James Madison and Abraham Lincoln. This guy has such a command of quotes from these people to show how much they trusted in God to make this land into a great land.

In America today, you see happening what was happening in Israel at the time of this king here. People were leaving God. We are not God's chosen people, America, we are not Israel, but we are a nation that was blessed by God because this country was founded on God's principles and he chose to bless it. It seems like more and more he's not blessing it as much. It's not because we need to approve some government bill to provide for this or that or the other thing; we need to return to the Lord as a nation.

People will say this was never a Christian nation. He showed articles in his talk from the newspaper: America is not a Christian nation, America never was a Christian nation, America's founders were not Christians, America's founders hated God. Then he went on to show how 29 of the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence had seminary degrees. "Not bad," he said, "for a bunch of people who hated God." One of them wrote a hymn book, he set all the Psalms to music, all of them. David Barton had a copy of the book. One of the Psalms, Psalm 119, was 66 pages long of music. He was speculating, "Wonder how many church services you would need to sing that one Psalm, 66 pages long?"

Can you imagine setting one Psalm to music, let alone setting all the music? For a bunch of guys that hated God, they were doing pretty good. All this history has been banned now. It's not politically correct to talk about it. We see in our country a lot of parallels. It's not an exact duplication, but a lot of parallels to what happens when a nation can lose its moral foundations and then try to solve all of its problems using its own wits and its own intelligence.

Libnah revolted at the same time because Jehoram had forsaken the Lord, the God of his fathers. It makes it even more clear now. Let there be no mistake about it; it wasn't random chance, wasn't evolution, wasn't just something that happened. Libnah revolted also and the reason why, because Jehoram had forsaken the Lord, the God of his father. He was not interested in knowing anything about the Lord. He had also built high places on the hills of Judah and had caused the people of Jerusalem to prostitute themselves and had led Judah astray.

He led them astray, making them prostitute themselves. An unauthorized union. Prostitution is an ungodly union and leaving the Lord and worshipping idols is the same kind of ungodly union here; "prostitution" is a good word for it. His father was tearing down the high places where the idols were worshipped. This guy came along and started building them back up again. He caused the people to worship the idols and he encouraged them. His father was going around having revival meetings, teaching the word of God, bringing the book of the law with him, traveling around the land telling people about the Lord. This guy was just doing the opposite, probably saying, "Hey, never mind what my father told you. Here's the real thing, what you should be doing: worshipping these idols."

It got so bad that he went out to his mailbox one morning after the mailman came and there's a letter from Elijah in his mailbox. Now, it wasn't delivered by the postal service. Now, look, you go home and read some commentary. Some people are going to say this couldn't have been from Elijah because Elijah died prior to this guy being king. That Bible's just full of all inconsistencies, it's all mixed up. Well, guess what? There have been some copyist errors over the years where one letter was transcribed wrong. It's possible that due to some dating that we don't understand that maybe Elijah still was alive here at this point.

If not, maybe it was Elijah's successor, Elisha, who wrote this letter. Jehoram received a letter from Elijah the prophet which said—what it said was what's important, not who it came from, because it was really from God. Jehoram received a letter from Elijah the prophet which said, "This is what the Lord, the God of your father David, says: 'Look, God is talking to you, you better pay attention. You have not walked in the ways of your father Jehoshaphat or of Asa, king of Judah. But you have walked in the ways of the kings of Israel and you have led Judah and the people of Jerusalem to prostitute themselves just as the house of Ahab did.'"

Look, you're not following your father, you're not following his father, you're not following the ways of the kings of Judah. You're following the ways of the kings of Israel. Hello, he's married to the daughter of the king of Israel. As we said, probably spending too much time over at his in-laws' house. You've made the people prostitute themselves just as the house of Ahab did. You have also murdered your own brothers, members of your father's house, men who were better than you.

He got them all murdered. He probably slept better that night thinking, I'm safe now. But God knew. God was watching. He may have felt safe for a long time. Who knows how many years went by before this happened? He was only the king for eight years, so somewhere maybe in the middle, a few years after he became king, is when this happened perhaps. It's going to catch up with him. God knows he's not mocked. What we sow, that is what we're going to reap.

"So now the Lord is about to strike your people, your sons, your wives, and everything that is yours with a heavy blow. You yourself will be very ill with a lingering disease of the bowels until the disease causes your bowels to come out." Wow. I never heard of anything like that. You ever heard of anything like that? Don't know what disease that was. It does not sound like fun and I don't recommend it. Thinking about—what's that chronic disease of the bowel some people get? It's really nasty. Crohn's, yeah, Crohn's. Thinking like maybe this was a super-duper, extra bad case of Crohn's disease or there's other diseases of the bowels, I'm sure there's probably a hundred of them and maybe this was a special disease that God cooked up just for this guy, who knows. Terrible to think about.

That was the nature of this guy's offense to God. You're going to become ill with this lingering disease, so it turns out the disease lingered for two years before he died. He had two years to think about what he did. He had two years to lie there in pain and agony.

The Lord aroused against Jehoram the hostility of the Philistines and of the Arabs who lived near the Cushites. They attacked Judah, invaded it, and carried off all the goods found in the king's palace together with his sons and wives. Not a son was left to him except Ahaziah the youngest. We know from other writings that those sons were all killed by the invaders. The first thing that happened, it looked like before the disease began, these Philistines and Arabs came in and they attacked and they carried off everything and they invaded his land and they carried off his goods. They went into his palace.

Man, they took his flat-screen TV and his DVR and his Pentium multi-threaded—well, whatever was popular in those days, the goods that he had, and he had more goods than anybody and they just carried them all away. They took his sons and his wives and not a son was left except the one, Ahaziah his youngest. After all this, the Lord afflicted Jehoram with an incurable disease of the bowels. In the course of time, at the end of the second year, his bowels came out because of the disease and he died in great pain. His people made no fire in his honor as they had for his fathers.

The enemies carried off this stuff prior to that. It doesn't say exactly how long it was, but they may have—he may have lost his wives and his sons and then he may have been sitting around for a while moping before he got this disease. He had to know that it was coming because the prophet Elijah had written to him. You know the interesting thing to me too is that it never says he regretted anything.

Guest (Male): You've been listening to Hope From the Word. We're currently in a study of 2 Chronicles. You can hear this message or 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. 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 seven. 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: ccmarlton.org.

If you'd like to 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 through 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 Chronicles next time on Hope From the Word with Pastor Bill Luebkemann, a presentation of Calvary Chapel of Marlton.