Hope From the Word

Guest (Male): Today on Hope From the Word we begin a new adventure in the book of Second Kings. Grab your Bible and join Pastor Bill Luebkemann for what promises to be an interesting and inspiring series.

Bill Luebkemann: Some people might pick on Elijah here and say, "What's he doing picking on these guys for innocent guys?" Hey, he didn't send the fire down. God sent the fire down. He might have prayed for it. He said if I'm a man of God let this happen, but God sent it down. God didn't send it down to wipe out innocent guys. These must have been people who were idol-worshipping folks also who had their end coming to them here at this time.

And they were participating in an enterprise that wasn't a godly enterprise. They were telling a man of God that he should obey the king and not God. It's a great idea to obey the king. You should obey the authority over you except when God tells you something different, and then it becomes a matter of righteousness.

Song: Give me one pure and holy passion. Give me one magnificent obsession. Give me one glorious ambition for my life, to know and follow hard after you. Give me one pure and holy passion. Give me one magnificent obsession. Give me one glorious ambition for my life, to know and follow hard after you. To know and follow hard after you.

Guest (Male): Calvary Chapel of Marlton brings you Hope From the Word with Pastor Bill Luebkemann. Thank you for tuning in today. We're going to begin a study of the book of Second Kings today. After wrapping up First Kings yesterday, we're moving directly on to more of the history of Israel and the life and times of the prophet Elijah. We begin at chapter one verse one. Here's Bill Luebkemann to begin our study.

Bill Luebkemann: Well, if you'll open up tonight to Second Kings, we're going to begin chapter one verse one, which really just picks up where we left off at the end of First Kings. What we saw at the end of First Kings was that King Ahab had died, and then there was a little bit of an interlude there where it told us what happened down in Judah, some of the kings there. Then it came back and we saw that Ahab's son Ahaziah was king of the northern kingdom, king of Israel. That happened in the seventeenth year of Jehoshaphat who was king in Judah.

This guy Ahaziah only lasted two years. We saw at the end of First Kings he did evil in the eyes of the Lord and he walked in the ways of his father and mother and in the ways of Jeroboam son of Nebat who caused Israel to sin. He continued on in the tradition of the kings of the northern kingdom which was for the most part to lead the people away from the Lord. He served and worshipped Baal and provoked the Lord God of Israel to anger just as his father had done.

The Lord didn't put up with this guy for too long. That's where we begin now in Second Kings, chapter one, verse one. After Ahab's death Moab rebelled against Israel. Moab, of course, had been in submission to Israel for a long time, probably since the time of David. They were off to the east on the other side of the Jordan River and they had been paying tribute of one sort or another for many years.

Even though Israel was divided, there was still some submission there even though Ahab was a despot and even though he was wicked, desperately wicked, and even though he led the people away from the Lord in so many ways and continued with those traditions, his kingdom was essentially prosperous. They had a lot of good times and they had relative peace. They won some battles we saw, they weren't starving or hungry, and they were able to keep their enemies at bay.

Moab here I guess saw the opportunity to rebel after Ahab died. We're going to come back to that. I think in chapter three we get back to that. It's almost a footnote here. After Ahab's death Moab rebelled against Israel and then it doesn't talk about it again for a couple more chapters. We'll come back and see what happens in a little while. So now we're going to talk about Ahaziah though, who was the king now and who only lasted for two years.

We're going to find out how the end of his sorry reign came to be here. In verse two: Now Ahaziah had fallen through the lattice of his upper room in Samaria and injured himself. So he sent messengers saying to them, "Go and consult Baal-Zebub, the god of Ekron, to see if I will recover from this injury." Here's a guy that's the king now and he's on the second floor of his house and he leans against some kind of a lattice there.

He's leaning on the railing, leaning looking down at his garden, leaning against something that couldn't support his weight. Whatever exactly happened it doesn't really say, but he fell through and he landed on the ground below and he got injured pretty bad here. His injury was life-threatening. In fact, it was eventually fatal. He was concerned. Is he going to recover from this injury or is he going to die? He wants to know and he wants to consult with a god to find out what's happening. He decides to consult with this god Baal-Zebub who is the god over in Ekron.

He's not consulting with the Lord God, yet I think we know that he knows there is a Lord God. He doesn't try to consult with the God of his own country, but instead he wants to consult with the god of another country. I think maybe he knew what the God of Israel would say to him if he asked. Maybe he thought if I ask the real God I won't get an answer, or if I ask the real God I'll get the wrong answer, or if I ask the real God I'll get an answer I won't like.

This other guy is pretty cool because I can pay him and get whatever answer I want to get. He gives the answer. He's like the bubble gum machine. You put your money in, you get your bubble gum out. He gives you what you want here. So maybe that's why he did it. Not really sure here, but in any event it was a great sin against the Lord. How much different it might have been for him if he had merely inquired of the true Lord and the true God.

How much better it would have been and different if he had just simply repented at some point in the process. We're going to see here that he still has ample opportunity to do that. Instead he doesn't repent here. He doesn't say maybe God allowed this to teach me a lesson, but instead he sends messengers to this other land to consult with this false idol Baal-Zebub to ask this fake god, this idol-worshipping land, will he recover or not.

But the angel of the Lord said to Elijah the Tishbite—now remember we still have Elijah the prophet on the scene. The angel of the Lord said to Elijah, "Go up and meet the messengers of the King of Samaria and ask them, 'Is it because there is no God in Israel that you are going off to consult Baal-Zebub, the god of Ekron?' Therefore, this is what the Lord says: 'You will not leave the bed you are lying on; you will certainly die.'"

So Elijah went. When the messengers returned to the king he asked them, "Why have you come back?" Well, they didn't—they went on a journey for the king. They did not complete their mission. He told them to go to Ekron and consult Baal-Zebub and they didn't do it. It's hard to say why they turned around and went back. If some peasant had met them on the road with a message from God, would they have turned around and gone back?

What was it about Elijah? His appearance? His presentation? The words that he had to say? What was it that was so compelling that made these messengers receive this with such a force that they took him at his word and said, "Okay, we're going to turn around and go back." They didn't follow the king's orders. They could have been executed for just simply not following his orders. They didn't go where they were told to go and do what they were told to do.

Yet they had an answer for him. They got the answer to the king's question. I might add it was an accurate answer. It was more accurate than they would have got if they had traveled the distance and seen the fake god over in the other country. When the messengers returned to the king he asked them, "Why have you come back?" He knew how long it took them to get to Ekron and back and he knew they didn't make it to the Walt Whitman Bridge.

What happened? "A man came to meet us," they replied. "And he said to us, 'Go back to the king who sent you and tell him this is what the Lord says: Is it because there is no God in Israel that you are sending men to consult Baal-Zebub the god of Ekron? Therefore you will not leave the bed you are lying on; you will certainly die.'" Maybe that's why the messengers turned around and went back, because out of the blue some guy came up to them they didn't know and he knew who they were and he knew where they were going and he knew what their mission was and he knew what their question was.

He didn't need to ask them the question in order to give them the answer. It reminds me of Joseph interpreting the dream for Pharaoh. Pharaoh didn't want to tell the wise men that he called in what the dream was. He said, "Interpret my dream for me." "Okay Pharaoh, tell me what your dream was and we'll interpret it for you." "Oh no, I'm not going to tell you what it was. If you're so wise, if you can interpret the dream you should know what it was too. So you tell me what it was and interpret it."

"Whoa," they said. The wise men said, "There's no one that can do that." The most the wise men could do is listen to what the king said his dream was and then they could dream up some kind of interpretation and give it to him. But these people were walking along the road minding their own business and Elijah comes up and he knows who they are, where they're going, what their mission is, what the question is, and he even has the answer for them and it's an accurate answer.

It's correct. It's the right answer. He come up to them and says, "Go back to the king who sent you," and they were probably just awestruck. How could this be? How could anybody know this and give them this message? This is from the Lord. This is what the Lord says: Is it because there is no God in Israel that you are sending men to consult Baal-Zebub the god of Ekron? Therefore you will not leave the bed you are lying on; you will certainly die. You see it again? Therefore you're going to die because you're consulting this god in another country.

The reason he fell through the lattice work to begin with perhaps was because of how wicked and evil he was. The king asked them, "What kind of man was it who came to meet you and who told you this?" They replied, "He was a man with a garment of hair and with a leather belt around his waist." The king said, "That was Elijah the Tishbite." I think maybe the king had a suspicion who this was. I bet it was Elijah, that guy that was always fighting with my dad.

He was always an enemy of my dad. My dad used to tell me stories about this guy Elijah, always causing trouble. When they described this garment of hair that he wore around him, which was probably animal skin of some sort with hair on it, and a leather belt, the king recognized it. He said, "You had an encounter with Elijah the Tishbite. That's who it was." Then he sent to Elijah a captain with his company of fifty men.

The captain went up to Elijah who was sitting on the top of a hill and said to him, "Man of God, the king says come down." Interesting. How many men do you need to go get one guy? Fifty-one men? You can't send six or ten or even a dozen or fifteen or even twenty? He sent fifty-one men to get one guy. Well, he knew Elijah could do some pretty powerful things. He heard from his dad about that time up on the mountain where Elijah called down fire from heaven.

He knew that it hadn't rained for three years because this guy Elijah had prayed for that. He thought I better send a few extra guys. Not figuring that if the Lord could overpower one man he could overpower fifty or fifty thousand or fifty million. It doesn't matter. He sent the captain with his fifty men and they give this man of God an order: "Come down." Elijah answered the captain, "If I am a man of God, may fire come down from heaven and consume you and your fifty men."

Then fire fell from heaven and consumed the captain and his men. Oh how I wish I could do that today sometimes. Anybody here wish they could do it today? Come on, you can admit it. It would be really handy sometimes. Some people might pick on Elijah here and say, "What's he doing picking on these guys for innocent guys?" Hey, he didn't send the fire down. God sent the fire down. He might have prayed for it. He said if I'm a man of God let this happen, but God sent it down.

God didn't send it down to wipe out innocent guys. These must have been people who were idol-worshipping folks also who had their end coming to them here at this time. And they were participating in an enterprise that wasn't a godly enterprise. They were telling a man of God that he should obey the king and not God. It's a great idea to obey the king. You should obey the authority over you except when God tells you something different, and then it becomes a matter of righteousness.

So I think we can believe here and assume that this was an unrighteous command that these people here knew that this guy was a man of God. They called him a man of God. They're giving him an order to come down to go see this pagan king and they met their just reward here so to speak. What does the king do? He says, "Oh I think I'll send fifty-one more guys and get them wiped out too." At this the king sent to Elijah another captain with his fifty men.

The captain said to him, "Man of God, this is what the king says: Come down at once!" This guy's even worse. He's even more insistent. "Get down here right now. You're taking orders from this king." "If I am a man of God," Elijah replied, "may fire come down from heaven and consume you and your fifty men." Then the fire of God fell from heaven and consumed him and his fifty men. Didn't this guy hear what happened to the first fifty?

We're going to find out the guy in charge of the third fifty heard about what happened the first two times. Now you say well how did anyone hear about it if they all got consumed? Well, someone must have been watching. Someone must have been within eyesight nearby. Someone saw the fifty men go up there and was wondering where are those fifty men going. They watched and then they saw the fire come down. When fire comes down from heaven I wouldn't be surprised if it makes a pretty loud noise also in addition to being pretty bright.

So perhaps they heard something as well as saw something. This second group of fifty went anyway. So the king sent a third captain with his fifty men. This guy is smarter though. This third captain went up and fell on his knees before Elijah. "Man of God," he begged, "please have respect for my life and the lives of these fifty men, your servants. See, fire has fallen from heaven and consumed the first two captains and all their men. But now have respect for my life."

Here's a guy that's at least polite. He's speaking to Elijah in a polite way. And the angel of the Lord said to Elijah, "Go down with him. Do not be afraid of him." So Elijah got up and went down with him to the king. Here's a guy that treated the prophet with proper respect and Elijah went along. He told the king, "This is what the Lord says: Is it because there is no God in Israel for you to consult that you have sent messengers to consult Baal-Zebub the god of Ekron?

Because you have done this you will never leave the bed you are lying on; you will certainly die." And so he died according to the word of the Lord that Elijah had spoken. Because Ahaziah had no son, Joram succeeded him as king in the second year of Jehoram son of Jehoshaphat king of Judah. As for all the other events of Ahaziah's reign and what he did, are they not written in the book of the annals of the kings of Israel? So Elijah did go down.

The angel of the Lord told him not to be worried or concerned about what would happen to him. He went down and delivered this message from the Lord directly to him. And at no point do you see this king repent. When his messengers came back to him and said we met this guy and he was the guy with the hairy garment on and everything and he told us this thing, he could have torn his clothes, sat in ashes, put on sackcloth, and he could have repented.

You see with Ahab his father remember just a few chapters ago? His father did something similar. Ahab repented, First Kings twenty-one verse twenty-seven. When Ahab heard these words, he tore his clothes, put on sackcloth and fasted. He lay in sackcloth and went around meekly. Then the word of the Lord came to Elijah the Tishbite: "Have you noticed how Ahab has humbled himself before me? Because he has humbled himself I will not bring this disaster in his day but I will bring it on his house in the days of his son."

Well God knew that Ahab at least humbled himself when he was confronted with his situation but his son wouldn't even do that. And then when Elijah went down and saw the king in person yet another opportunity wasted. Yet another chance to humble himself. It's not recorded that he even answered Elijah. Elijah told him you will certainly die and it says he died. Opportunity wasted. Whenever the Lord brings this kind of judgment, "you will certainly die because of what you've done," gosh, at least try humbling yourself buddy.

Who knows? Maybe God might relent and put off the judgment. Now we skip forward a little bit in chapter two to the time when Elijah's time on earth is up. It's nearing the end of his ministry. When the Lord was about to take Elijah up to heaven in a whirlwind, Elijah and Elisha were on their way from Gilgal. Elijah said to Elisha, "Stay here; the Lord has sent me to Bethel."

But Elisha said, "As surely as the Lord lives and as you live, I will not leave you." So they went down to Bethel. Now we've come to this day in the ministry of Elijah when it's going to be his last day on earth and he knows it. And Elisha knows it and apparently so do a lot of other people. I think it was in the newspaper, on the internet or something. A lot of the prophets seem to know it as you're going to find out here.

Elijah is aware that it's his last day and Elisha's aware of it also. And it seems like he's trying to get rid of Elisha. Maybe he's testing his faithfulness to see how faithful Elisha will be to be with him till the very end here. Elisha said—and so several times here Elijah says, "You wait here, I'm going to go on." Elisha says, "No, I'm not waiting here. I'm not missing out. I'm sticking by you. I want to see what's going to happen. I want to be there.

As surely as the Lord lives and as you live, I will not leave your side." So they went down to Bethel. The company of the prophets at Bethel came out to Elisha and asked, "Do you know that the Lord is going to take your master from you today?" "Yes, I know," Elisha replied, "but do not speak of it." I guess it bothered him. Even though Elijah didn't die in the traditional sense but was taken up to heaven, he was still not going to be on earth anymore and he was going to be missed.

Elisha was going to mourn in some way. I don't know if he knew exactly what was going to happen or not or how it was going to happen. But Elisha says, "I know that. I don't want to talk about it. Keep it to yourself." Then Elijah repeats the whole thing with a different place. Then Elijah said to him, "Stay here Elisha, the Lord has sent me to Jericho." And he replied, "As surely as the Lord lives and as you live, I will not leave you."

So they went to Jericho. The company of the prophets at Jericho went up to Elisha and asked him, "Do you know that the Lord is going to take your master from you today?" "Yes, I know," he replied, "but do not speak of it." So again they go from Bethel, they go to Jericho. Then Elijah said to him, "Stay here, the Lord has sent me to the Jordan." And he replied, "As surely as the Lord lives and as you live, I will not leave you."

So the two of them walked on. Fifty men of the company of the prophets went and stood at a distance. You have a bunch of guys watching. This is what they call a gaper delay. Taking the place where Elijah and Elisha had stopped at the Jordan, Elijah took his cloak, rolled it up and struck the water with it. The water divided to the right and to the left and the two of them crossed over on dry ground.

When they had crossed, Elijah said to Elisha, "Tell me, what can I do for you before I am taken from you?" So it's kind of like you get the idea Elisha's passed the test a few times here. He stuck by his master's side. There's going to be some reward perhaps. "Let me inherit a double portion of your spirit," Elisha replied. "You have asked a difficult thing," Elijah said, "yet if you see me when I am taken from you, it will be yours; otherwise not."

A double portion. Let me have twice as much of the spirit as you have. Well, it doesn't necessarily mean that. You may remember that the firstborn always got what? A double portion of the inheritance, right? The firstborn inherited a double portion of what the others got. If there were three sons, the estate was divided four ways. The first son got half and the other two got a quarter.

Guest (Male): You're listening to Hope From the Word with Pastor Bill Luebkemann. Bill has given us a good start in the book of Second Kings. Return tomorrow when we find out if Elijah dies. But of course if you can't wait, you can read ahead. 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 a.m. 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 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 Second Kings next time on Hope From the Word with Pastor Bill Luebkemann, a presentation of Calvary Chapel of Marlton.