Hope From the Word

Guest (Male): On our money it says, "In God We Trust." But do we really? Here's Pastor Bill Luebkemann.

Bill Luebkemann: If you are worried about, "I'm trying to trust in God for this or that or the other thing," whatever thing it is in your life that goes wrong and you're worried about. Am I going to have enough money to pay the bills? I better work harder. Am I going to have this or that?

When you begin to doubt God and start to trust yourself, that's when you're going off track here because God is able to bring a dead man back to life through another dead man. He is well able to provide whatever it is that any one of us needs, even without us knowing it. He's in control. We just have to relax and let him drive. That's hard to do a lot of the time.

Guest (Male): God is always working in the world. Sometimes it's in direct response to your prayers. Even if it's not because of your prayers, it's because there's something good and glorious God is doing. It ought to inspire us to be looking and be attentive. But as we'll hear on today's Hope From the Word, that doesn't always happen.

We're presently studying the Old Testament book of Second Kings with Pastor Bill Luebkemann. We've come to the reign of King Jehoahaz, which was the beginning of the fulfillment of a promise made to Jehu. God promised him that his descendants would sit on the throne of Israel to the fourth generation. Let's get the details now from Chapter 13. Here's Pastor Bill.

Bill Luebkemann: Last week, we were looking at Joash, how Joash came to power as a seven-year-old boy. How he was hidden away when he was just a baby by his nursemaid, by the wife of the high priest actually, while his wicked grandmother ruled the kingdom. She had all of his siblings killed, but she didn't get to his.

After being hidden away for six or seven years, the high priest brought him out, presented him, and first he got the army to agree to back him. Of course, old Grandmom didn't like that. That didn't matter because she got whacked. Joash took over as the king when he was seven years old. He reigned for forty years.

We saw how he started out with a bang and ended with a whimper. He was mighty in serving the Lord in the beginning there, or maybe not mighty, but he did serve the Lord. He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord as long as the high priest who helped to raise him was still around. When that guy died, then Joash got off track and was worshipping idols and other things.

That brings us up to Chapter 13. We're going to switch back up to Israel now. We had been down in Judah. We're going back and forth between the two nations, catching up, trying to follow along. We follow along for a while with this nation, then Israel, then Judah, then Israel, then Judah, and we try to track what's going on there.

This is very similar to the way I watch TV some nights, just flipping the channels. I catch enough of three different shows to figure out what the plot is, but I don't have to see everything because I just want to know what happened in the end. That's what we're doing here, working our way through looking at the Southern Kingdom of Judah and the Northern Kingdom of Israel.

In the twenty-third year of Joash son of Ahaziah, king of Judah, you'll remember Joash served for forty years as king. He started when he was seven and ended when he was forty-seven. In the twenty-third year of his reign, he would have been thirty. He was still seventeen years away from being assassinated.

Jehoahaz son of Jehu became king of Israel in Samaria, and he reigned seventeen years. Both of these guys' reigns ended at about the same time. Joash was twenty-three years into a forty-year reign, so he had seventeen more years to go. This guy up in Israel, when he took over, he had seventeen years in the whole time he was king. They both would have ended being king at about the same time.

You'll remember that Jehu was the guy in Israel that assassinated or got rid of Jezebel and also the descendants of Ahab. He was reigning in Israel. He also killed the king of the Southern Kingdom of Judah. He killed them both. Now, Jehoahaz son of Jehu became king of Israel in Samaria, and he reigned for seventeen years.

He did evil in the eyes of the Lord by following the sins of Jeroboam son of Nebat, which he had caused Israel to commit, and he did not turn away from them. Jeroboam's name seems to be immortalized here. Every time it says about any king, which it says many times, he did evil in the eyes of the Lord, following the sins of Jeroboam son of Nebat.

Almost every time, it follows by saying which he had caused Israel to commit, and he did not turn away from them. It seems like God is really trying to rub it in here that this is this guy's memory, his posterity. Jeroboam could have had descendants on the throne for who knows how many generations, but he led Israel astray.

He was the first king of Israel after they revolted after Solomon died and Solomon's son took the throne. He could have done great things, but instead, he instituted all kinds of false worship. For the most part, they were worshipping the real God, but they were doing it the wrong way.

It's interesting how today so many people say every god is valid, every religion is valid, and whatever you think is fine as long as you're sincere. They even wrote a song about it. "You Gotta Be Sincere" was in *Bye Bye Birdie*. But here it says not only is it bad to worship other gods—that's very, very bad—but just worshipping the real God the wrong way was bad enough.

That's what Jeroboam did. He had caused Israel to commit the sins because he didn't want them going down to Judah where Jerusalem was, where they could make their offerings and worship God the right way. They weren't friendly with Judah, so he said, "Look, you don't want to be bothered going down there. We're going to worship God up here, and we're going to go about it a little bit differently."

They were worshipping the right God, they were doing it the wrong way, and they didn't turn away from it. Jehoahaz son of Jehu continued that tradition. In verse three, "The Lord's anger burned against Israel, and for a long time he kept them under the power of Hazael king of Aram and Ben-Hadad his son."

You'll remember that Aram, of course, is Syria to the north, a country that Israel has problems with even today, all these thousands of years later. As a rule of thumb, this was maybe 800 BC. We're talking about very nearly three thousand years ago, and the Northern Kingdom was under the power of Syria.

They were under the power of Aram. I wouldn't be surprised if they paid some kind of tribute, taxes, or something. I don't know that for sure, but Syria was really challenging them. There was a time when Assyria came in and conquered Syria, and then Syria got so busy defending itself against Assyria that Israel had a little bit more flexibility.

After doing evil in the sight of the Lord and not doing what was right, leading the people in the wrong way, following traditions of Jeroboam, and being oppressed by the Northern Kingdom, finally one day, a lightbulb went on in this guy's head. "Maybe I should ask God for a little help." What an idea.

We're going to see how gracious God is here. If God was a mean-spirited, ugly old guy who wanted nothing but to hurt people and was looking down from heaven saying, "They're having too much fun again, let me put an end to that," he wouldn't be as gracious as he was here. Jehoahaz sought the Lord's favor, and the Lord listened to him.

He saw how severely the king of Aram was oppressing Israel. The Lord provided a deliverer for Israel, and they escaped from the power of Aram. The Israelites lived in their own homes as they had before, but they did not turn away from the sins of the house of Jeroboam, which he had caused Israel to commit.

They continued in them. Also, the Asherah pole remained standing in Samaria. You can kind of draw a parallel here to the time of Moses. Moses was the deliverer. Here's another deliverer, and it doesn't even say what the person's name was. It doesn't say if it was a guy or a gal, but they were being oppressed severely.

That's what happened in Egypt many years earlier, and the Lord took mercy on them. Jehoahaz the king asked the Lord to help. He sought the Lord's favor and prayed to the Lord. The Lord provided a deliverer, and somehow they were able to escape from the power of Aram. They were able to live free and clear again for a while.

In spite of that, what an opportune time it would have been for this guy to proclaim a national fast and to say, "Let's return to the God of our fathers and let's get it right. Here's the book of the law, and let's read what God has to say and let's get back to the Lord." Instead, they were blessed by God. He could have given a testimony: "Man, I sought after God, and God answered the prayer. Unbelievable."

Instead, they just went to their homes and enjoyed the prosperity. They didn't turn away from the sins of Jeroboam. I'm not even sure that they knew what the sins were because they weren't taking the time to read what God's word says. Perhaps they were even ignorant. People today say it doesn't matter what kind of god you worship or what kind of religion as long as you're sincere.

The Bible says you have to have it right. You have to worship the one true God, and you have to do it the right way. Don't tell the policeman, "I didn't know the speed limit was only sixty-five out here." Don't point to the sign that says 295 because they've had plenty of people point to that sign before. They don't even think it's funny anymore.

These people didn't bother to find out what God wanted. Somebody today that doesn't know what God wants, that doesn't know the Lord, that thinks every religion is the same and equally valid, that's just an opinion they came up with in their own head. They didn't get that by doing any amount of research. They didn't do any reading in the Bible.

That's like saying, "I want to be a doctor. I'm going to declare myself a doctor. I'm not going to bother reading the textbook or going to school or anything." But did you need your appendix out? I can help you. Have you seen that commercial where the guy's standing there with a bottle of alcohol, talking to a doctor on the phone?

The doctor says, "Begin cutting here," and the guy says, "Shouldn't you be doing this, doctor?" They didn't turn away from the sins of the house of Jeroboam, and they continued to do them. They left their Asherah pole standing there. They were worshipping idols even to some degree.

Nothing had been left of the army of Jehoahaz except fifty horsemen, ten chariots, and ten thousand foot soldiers, for the king of Aram had destroyed the rest and made them like the dust at threshing time. To say they were having some prosperity, this deliverer gave them the prosperity, and it must have really been a deliverer who did it because they didn't have much of an army.

The army had gotten wiped out by the Syrians. This is all he had left: fifty horsemen. Fifty, 5-0. Not many horsemen to defend a whole country. Ten chariots. They couldn't even all ride on a chariot. They had more horsemen than they had chariots. Ten thousand foot soldiers wasn't very many when in the past they had had numbers in the hundreds of thousands.

The king of Aram had destroyed it all out and left this guy with nothing. Whoever this deliverer was, somehow he delivered them. Somehow they had some peace and prosperity here for a time. The peaceniks were happy because they didn't have much of an army either, but they were vulnerable to whatever would happen to them.

As for the other events of the reign of Jehoahaz, all he did and his achievements, are they not written in the book of the annals of the kings of Israel? He did a lot of things, and he did have some achievements, and they are written down somewhere else in a book that we don't have anymore.

Jehoahaz rested with his fathers and was buried in Samaria, and Jehoash his son succeeded him as king. In the thirty-seventh year of Joash king of Judah, Jehoash son of Jehoahaz became king of Israel in Samaria. That's interesting because the previous guy began in the twenty-third year of the king of Joash, and it says he reigned for seventeen years.

Now we're saying this guy began in the thirty-seventh year, which is only fourteen years later. I don't know how to add those numbers up. That was going to take more work. I was not a math major, so I can bow out of that. But the numbers are close there. I don't have an answer for why they're off by a couple of years.

Jehoash son of Jehoahaz reigned sixteen years. He did evil in the eyes of the Lord and did not turn away from any of the sins of Jeroboam son of Nebat, which he had caused Israel to commit. He continued in them. Again, we see this tribute here to Jeroboam. As I was reading through this and I see that over and over, it just stuck in my head.

Every time they mention Jeroboam, they kind of rub it in. Jeroboam and his sins, which he caused Israel to commit. That's his memory. That's what he's remembered for, not just today, but for all these years. He did evil, the nation continued in evil, and nothing really good happened there.

As for the other events of the reign of Jehoash, all he did and his achievements, including his war against Amaziah king of Judah, are they not written in the book of the annals of the kings of Israel? Jehoash rested with his fathers, and Jeroboam succeeded him on the throne. Jehoash was buried in Samaria with the kings of Israel.

This guy did not do much. Jeroboam, this is a different Jeroboam because it keeps referring to the sins of Jeroboam who was king a long time before this. This is a different Jeroboam that takes over here. In verse twelve, it does mention this guy had some achievements. It mentioned that his father had some achievements, but it also mentions his war against Amaziah.

Keep that in the back of your mind because that's in the next chapter. This guy was the king in Israel, the Northern Kingdom. He took over as king almost at the end of Joash's reign. Right around the end of the time of Joash, this guy took over, reigned for sixteen years, so his kingdom extended well beyond the time of Joash down in Judah.

Now, Elisha, remember him? Elisha the prophet. We've been tracking along Elijah and now Elisha for the last quite a few weeks here. He's getting old in years now, Elisha, and he's suffering from some kind of a disease here. This is the guy that went around healing people, raising them from the dead, doing all kinds of things.

Elisha was suffering from the illness from which he died. He was on his deathbed. He was getting near the end of his life here. Contrary to what some people would say today, the Lord does take some people off the face of this earth with illness, and that's what this guy was suffering with.

Jehoash king of Israel went down to see him and wept over him. "My father, my father," he cried. "The chariots and horsemen of Israel." Here he is looking at Elisha. He obviously has some respect. He's the king now, he's grown up, and he's probably known Elisha for a long time. He's an important guy, even though he's not really following the Lord too much.

He has some kind of a bond with Elisha. Elisha said, "Get a bow and some arrows," and he did so. "Take the bow in your hands," he said to the king of Israel. When he had taken it, Elisha put his hands on the king's hands. He said, "Get a bow and some arrows, take them," and Elisha put his hands on the king's hands.

"Open the east window," he said, and he opened it. "Shoot!" Elisha said, and he shot. "The Lord's arrow of victory! The arrow of victory over Aram!" Elisha declared. "You will completely destroy the Arameans at Aphek." He's saying that this arrow that we're shooting out the window here is symbolic.

It's the Lord's arrow, and you're going to have a victory over Aram. It's going to be after Elisha dies, but you are going to have a victory there. Then he said, "Take the arrows," and the king took them. Elisha told him, "Strike the ground." He struck it three times and stopped.

The man of God was angry with him and said, "You should have struck the ground five or six times. Then you would have defeated Aram and completely destroyed it. But now you will defeat it only three times." Elisha died and was buried. The king is striking the ground with the arrows. I'm not really sure what that means.

There are different opinions on that, whether he was holding them in his hand and banging them on the ground or whether he was shooting them out the window and they were landing in the ground. What he did was symbolic that he's going to have victory over it. It seems like the Lord spoke through the actions of the king here, and the king only tapped them three times.

I'm not sure if he was tired or if he wasn't really into it or if he didn't think it mattered or if he thought that was good enough or what the reason was. Elisha said, "Well, that's a sign. You're not going to completely destroy the enemy, but you are going to destroy them three times. You're going to beat them three times. You're going to have some victory over them."

You get the feeling that there's something that the king was doing. Either this was God's will that he was only going to defeat them three times and that's why he did it that way, or maybe he wasn't really into it, wasn't really trusting God in some way. I'm not really certain exactly what that means. Elisha died and was buried, and that was the end of Elisha.

Moabite raiders used to enter the country every spring. Once, while some Israelites were burying a man, suddenly they saw a band of raiders. They threw the man's body into Elisha's tomb. When the body touched Elisha's bones, the man came to life and stood up on his feet. This is one of the more amazing miracles in the Bible.

Here they were out there trying to bury this poor guy. He was a lucky guy, I guess, or unlucky depending on how you look at it. Maybe he was enjoying being in Abraham's bosom and resting finally, but they were getting raided by these Moabites, and it happened from time to time. Some Israelites were out somewhere burying this guy when they saw the raiders coming.

They wanted to get out of there. But what are we going to do? We have to bury this guy. Well, here's Elisha's tomb. Just throw his body in there and quick let's run, let's get out of here. All it took was Elisha's bones to come in contact with this guy, and the Lord worked a miracle through that.

Here he was come to life again, stood up on his feet. It doesn't say what he did after that. It's just amazing to see the number of ways God works in the Bible. You see God answering prayers, and you see him doing things people didn't pray for. You see him healing people because they asked for it and healing other people that didn't ask for it.

You see him healing folks that had faith and healing folks that didn't have faith. How about this dead guy? How much faith do you think he had? And how much faith do you think Elisha had? They were both dead. One dead guy healing another dead guy. No faith, no praying, nobody asking for anything, just God deciding, "I'm just going to do it."

If you can't read this Bible and see that God almost doesn't do anything the same way twice, it would seem. This is just amazing. If you are worried about, "I'm trying to trust in God for this or that or the other thing," whatever thing it is in your life that goes wrong and you're worried about.

Am I going to have enough money to pay the bills? I better work harder. Am I going to have this or that? When you begin to doubt God and start to trust yourself, that's when you're going off track here because God is able to bring a dead man back to life through another dead man.

He is well able to provide whatever it is that any one of us needs, even without us knowing it. He's in control. We just have to relax and let him drive. That's hard to do a lot of the time. Hazael king of Aram oppressed Israel throughout the reign of Jehoahaz. So here we have the guy up in Syria again oppressing Israel.

The Lord was gracious to them and had compassion and showed concern for them because of his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. To this day, he has been unwilling to destroy them or banish them from his presence. Even though this oppression is going on, the Lord is still gracious to them through it.

He provides them a way out of different situations. He has compassion and shows concern for them. They're oppressed but they're not crushed. They're overtaken but they're not hauled away, cut up, killed, or what have you. Somehow while they were being oppressed, the Lord's presence was there with them. He was gracious and merciful to them.

Why did he do it? Because he had a promise that he made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. People who say today that the Lord is done with Israel, that Israel is all over, here you see God always kept his promise, no matter what happened. It's popular today even among Christians to say Israel doesn't matter anymore, the Lord is done with it, the church now represents Israel.

That is just so untrue. The church represents the church, and Israel represents Israel. They're two completely different things—organizations, groups of people, whatever—and his promise to Israel didn't end and it won't end. He doesn't change his mind, he doesn't go back on his word, he doesn't change his promises.

Guest (Male): You've been listening to Hope From the Word. We're currently in a study of Second 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 Second Kings next time on Hope From the Word with Pastor Bill Luebkemann, a presentation of Calvary Chapel of Marlton.