Hope From the Word

Guest (Male): Next on Hope from the Word, we give attention to God's brand of justice. Jesus came to be the final sacrifice for sin, but it's still possible to sin. It's still possible to repent or not repent, and there is still going to be judgment, just maybe not as swiftly as happened in the Old Testament for those who do not believe or who have not called on the name of the Lord. There will be judgment.

You can read this kind of stuff like we're about to look at and say, "Boy, that was awful cruel of God. What a mean ogre He must be, killing all those people." But these were people who had simply, completely, totally, and without remorse, were not following after the Lord.

Guest (Male): (Singing)

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. To know and follow hard after You. To grow as your disciple in Your truth.

Guest (Male): Hebrews 10 says, "It's a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God." Queen Jezebel is about to experience the full weight of that. This is Hope from the Word, a ministry of Calvary Chapel of Marlton.

You might recall Jezebel was responsible for introducing Baal worship in Israel, but that doesn't tell the whole story. In short, she was one of the most wicked queens in all of Israel's history. Just as the prophets foretold, she would be brought down in a gruesome way. Pastor Bill Luebkemann will tell the story of God's poetic and perfect justice today from 2 Kings 9.

Bill Luebkemann: 2 Kings chapter 9. We are really focusing on the northern kingdom of Israel today. You remember the northern kingdom at this point was called Israel; the southern kingdom was called Judah. The northern kingdom was ten tribes, the southern kingdom was two tribes, but the northern kingdom was probably bigger in terms of land area and people.

The northern kingdom had a king whose name was Ahab, and he was a nasty old guy. His wife was Jezebel. We saw him depart from the land of the living here a few chapters ago, and his son, Jehoram or Joram (the name is used interchangeably), is ruling at this point.

But the Lord had promised Ahab way back in 1 Kings that his kingdom was not going to last. In fact, in the whole incident with Naboth's vineyard... this whole incident regarding Naboth having a vineyard... King Ahab wanted the vineyard, and Naboth wouldn't sell it to him.

The king offered to buy it for a good price or even trade it for a better vineyard somewhere else. He just wanted this vineyard. Poor old Naboth didn't want to give it up; it had been in his family for many years. So the king was doing the thing that kings do when they can't get what they want: pouting.

His wicked wife, Jezebel, saw him pouting and said, "Hey, what's the problem?" You can read about this in 1 Kings 21. He said, "I want to get that vineyard, and he won't sell it to me." Jezebel said, "Let me take care of that for you," and she had the guy killed. Then she told her husband, "Okay, he's gone. The vineyard is yours."

God spoke through Elijah to Ahab in verse 20 of 1 Kings 21. "I have found you because you have sold yourself to do evil in the eyes of the Lord. I am going to bring disaster on you. I will consume your descendants and cut off from Ahab every last male in Israel, slave or free. I will make your house like that of Jeroboam son of Nebat and that of Baasha son of Ahijah because you have provoked me to anger and have caused Israel to sin."

Also concerning Jezebel, the Lord says, "Dogs will devour Jezebel by the wall of Jezreel." So the Lord here, prophesying through Elijah, that Ahab's reign was going to come to a sorry end and every descendant of his would be cut off. What he did down in verse 27 was he tore his clothes, put on sackcloth, and fasted. He lay in sackcloth and went around meekly.

So the word of the Lord came back to Elijah the Tishbite and said, "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." Just a little repentance there, just a little meekness. I'm not sure if it was really repentance, actually.

Whatever it was, just a little meekness, just a little bit of humbling, was enough to allow God to say, "I'm going to put that off until his son is in power. He's not going to see it himself." Makes you wonder if the guy had really repented what God would have done. God would have surely called off the catastrophe altogether.

We're going to see now here in 2 Kings chapter 9 that judgment day has come for the house of Ahab. They didn't really get their act together, and Ahab's son, Joram, is not doing any better. We saw last time at the beginning of chapter 9 how Jehu became the king of Israel. Now Ahab's son, Joram, is still alive. Jehu has been anointed by a prophet, and we don't even have the name of the prophet here.

We see that Elisha picked a man from the company of the prophets and told him to go and hurry up and find Jehu and anoint him king and to do it privately and then to get out of town as fast as you can. That's what the prophet did. When Jehu went back to his buddies, they were actually fighting a battle or camped out in between battles at this point. He told his buddies that that guy just told me I'm the king over Israel.

His buddies responded by putting their cloaks under him and blowing a trumpet and shouting, "Jehu is king!" So they were supportive of the fact that he was king even though Joram was still alive. We're picking up here in verse 14 of chapter 9. So Jehu son of Jehoshaphat, the son of Nimshi, conspired against Joram. Now Joram and all Israel had been defending Ramoth Gilead against Hazael king of Aram, but King Joram had returned to Jezreel to recover from the wounds the Arameans had inflicted on him in the battle with Hazael king of Aram.

Jehu said, "If this is the way you feel, don't let anyone slip out of the city to go and tell the news in Jezreel." Then he got into his chariot and rode to Jezreel because Joram was resting there and Ahaziah king of Judah had gone down to see him. Look, he was in this battle here working for the king that he was about to bump off. He was working for King Joram, one of his leading army guys.

If you look back at verse 1 or verse 2 of chapter 9 here, Elisha sent the prophet and said, "Go to Ramoth Gilead and look for Jehu son of Jehoshaphat and get him away from his companions and anoint him king." So here was Jehu, the military guy at the scene of the battle where Israel was fighting against the Syrians, the Arameans there in the northern reaches somewhere. They were having the battle, in between battles. Jehu was there, he gets anointed king.

Prior to that, the king had been injured and he had gone back down to Jezreel to recover. So the king wasn't really there when all these events happened; he was recovering from an injury. Jehu says to his buddies, "Look, if this is the way you feel..." In other words, you just blew the trumpet and you shouted out, "Jehu is king!" "If that's the way you're feeling, if you really believe it, okay, then don't let anyone slip out of here to go warn the king. Don't let anyone slip out of here to go down to Jezreel and spread the news that I'm the king. We don't want that news to get out because we have to have a plan here for what we're going to do."

His plan was to go down to Jezreel just like he had been told and assassinate the king. So he got in his chariot and rode there and he made his companions promise, "No one's going to leave here, don't let anyone slip out, keep everyone up here. We can't have anybody getting down here and getting the word out." So he got into his chariot and rode to Jezreel because Joram was resting there and the king of Judah, Ahaziah, was there also. Everybody with me so far?

So here he is, he's been anointed king. If you go back in the first part of chapter 9, you'll see how it says in verse 7, "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." Ahab and Jezebel were a bloody pair, and they got what they had coming to them.

I was reading an article on the internet recently, just a few days ago, on "Is the Bible true? Is it accurate?" Of course, I believe it's without error, infallible in the original writings. There was an article I was reading about this somewhere, I forget where, but some guy had posted his comments and said, "Well, the Bible's inspired but not inerrant." In other words, this was his opinion. It was inspired by God, but it was not without error. In other words, God had inspired it, but somehow God likes mistakes.

So He inspired it, but He didn't do so perfectly. This guy's reasoning was he said that Jesus came to repudiate the Old Testament, that the people of God had so messed up everything, all these bloody killings and everything, just ruined the whole thing. Jesus had to come and set the record straight. So this guy was saying a lot of what's in the Old Testament is inaccurate. You can see it's inaccurate because of all the blood and gore and guts, and Jesus came to set all that straight.

There's a guy who just doesn't get it, doesn't understand what the whole book talks about and how in so many ways the Old Testament God was dealing with sin in a different way. Jesus came to be the final sacrifice, but it's still possible to sin. It's still possible to repent or not repent, and there is still going to be judgment, just maybe not as swiftly as happened in the Old Testament for those who do not believe, who have not called on the name of the Lord. There will be judgment.

So you can read this kind of stuff like we're about to look at and say, "Boy, that was awful cruel of God. What a mean ogre He must be, killing all those people and what have you." But these were people who had simply, completely, totally, and without remorse, were not following after the Lord. They didn't care about the Lord, they didn't care anything... and in Ahab and Jezebel's particular case, they had also murdered so many people themselves in cold blood. So their time was due. This was prophesied; it was going to happen.

Here is Jehu, freshly anointed king, swearing his partners to secrecy. "Keep everybody here," and he took some guys with him and he goes down to Jezreel to begin to do his duty. Now the king, meanwhile, of course, has a lookout because back then they didn't have satellites or sensors in the roadways to see how many cars are going down the highway this time or any of that kind of stuff, no webcams or what have you. But they had a lookout, and he didn't even have binoculars, the poor guy.

I don't know what he did. I guess he went like this and pretended to have binoculars. When the lookout standing on the tower in Jezreel saw Jehu's troops approaching, he called out, "I see some troops coming!" Now this got the king nervous because who is this who's coming? "Get a horseman," Joram ordered, "send him to meet them and ask, 'Do you come in peace?'" It's interesting, this guy didn't want peace with God, and he didn't want peace with all the people that he had killed, and he didn't want peace with the southern kingdom of Israel known as Judah, at least not in any particular way.

Just now that he's injured, he's thinking about peace. He's hobbling around and he can't quite think about a battle here, and he sends out this message, "Do you come in peace?" Just amazing that a guy who's just like his mother, Jezebel, and his father, Ahab, would be asking, "Do you come in peace?" Like, what does that matter? You're not doing anything in peace. What does it matter if they're coming in peace? The horseman rode off to meet Jehu and said, "This is what the king says: 'Do you come in peace?'"

"What do you have to do with peace?" Jehu replied. "Fall in behind me." So Jehu here correctly calling the shots here saying, "The king has nothing to do with peace. What are you joking? This king wants peace? Get in line, get in line behind me." I think we can see here that perhaps this horseman knew who Jehu was and respected him perhaps more than they respected the king. We're going to see some more of those thoughts here in a few minutes.

Meanwhile, that lookout's up there in the lookout tower watching what's happening, and he sees the horseman does not come back. The lookout reported, "The messenger has reached them, but he isn't coming back." So the king sent out a second horseman. When he came to them, he said, "This is what the king says: 'Do you come in peace?'" Jehu replied, "What do you have to do with peace? Fall in behind me."

The lookout reported, "He has reached them, but he isn't coming back either. The driving is like that of Jehu son of Nimshi; he drives like a madman." So the second guy goes out, he asks the same question, "Do you come in peace?" Jehu gives him the same answer. "You're asking the wrong question. You're a representative of a king that causes battles and wars and kills people and sheds blood and innocent and whatever, and you're asking about peace? Get in line behind me."

The lookout says, "Boy, neither one of them came back." It doesn't seem to indicate that he saw that they had gotten in line behind Jehu; I guess he couldn't quite make that out at that distance. But he recognizes how Jehu drives his chariot. He's a madman. In other words, he's crazy. So he's driving on the left-hand side of the road, doesn't wear his seatbelt... he's a madman. Well, he's probably just very intent on what he's doing. I think one of the translations said something along the lines of driving furiously.

I think he's in a hurry, wants to get the job done, he's committed to what he's going to do. Maybe he's a little nervous, maybe wants to get it over with. He's got a purpose here he set out, and his style there is recognized by the lookout. "Man, it looks like Jehu son of Nimshi just by the way he's driving that thing." "Hitch up my chariot," Joram ordered. And when it was hitched up, Joram king of Israel and Ahaziah king of Judah rode out, each in his own chariot, to meet Jehu. They met him at the plot of ground that had belonged to Naboth the Jezreelite.

When Joram saw Jehu, he asked, "Have you come in peace?" "How can there be peace," Jehu replied, "as long as all the idolatry and witchcraft of your mother Jezebel abound?" Joram turned around and fled, calling out to Ahaziah, "Treachery, Ahaziah!" So here you see, the first horseman doesn't return, the second horseman doesn't return, so the king rides out himself. And it just so happens that he just so happens to meet them on this plot of ground that used to belong to Naboth, the plot of ground that his father had stolen from Naboth with the collusion of his mother.

It just so happens that right here in this very place where this happened, that's where they meet up. Isn't that interesting? You know, if you believe it just so happened just because it just so happened, you're missing the point here, that the Lord God is in these things. They met on that plot of ground, and Joram asked Jehu the same question, "Have you come in peace?" Now he gets a better answer, a more thorough answer. "There can't be any peace as long as there's idolatry and witchcraft of your mother around." I'm rephrasing this.

But this land is full of idolatry, and it's full of witchcraft. You remember when the northern kingdom broke away from the southern kingdom, the first thing they started to do was worship God by other means. They had the golden calves, they worshipped in different places, they didn't go down to Jerusalem to worship because that's part of the other country, so we can't go there even though that's the only place we're supposed to go to worship God. So we have to do it on our own terms.

So the way that Israel had gone astray was they were worshipping God, the same God, but they were doing it their own way. They weren't doing it in the prescribed way or in the prescribed place. But by the time Ahab became king, it had become full-out idolatry, state-sponsored, supportive idolatry. Ahab had built for his wife, Jezebel, a temple to Baal so that the priests of Baal could come and make offerings to Baal. So now we have strayed. It was bad enough we were worshipping the right God in the wrong way, but now we're worshipping the wrong God also, or maybe even more so, or in place of.

And so we have idolatry which is worship of other gods, we have witchcraft. The mother Jezebel is still around even though the father is dead, and there cannot be peace with God when we're going about things in the wrong way. When God has prescribed how to do it, and we don't do it, there can't be peace with God. The way you get saved today, the way you can be assured of going to heaven and spending eternity with God in heaven, is through the peace that comes from His Son and the only sacrifice that's been made that can redeem us all from our sins. There's only one way.

And yet the world today is filled with people who are trying to worship God in different ways and also trying to worship different gods. You can see the same parallels today. So there are plenty of religions where worship of different gods is done, but there are also plenty of people who say they believe in the God of the Bible, but they're going to get to heaven by their own way. They're going to go about it their own deal. They're going to earn their way into heaven, they're going to work their way there, they're going to get His approval somehow. So you can see the same two things happening around us today.

Jehu said, "Look, how can there be peace? When we can't have peace with God and we're not going to have peace with our neighbors because God's not going to give us the peace with the neighbors unless we are at peace with Him." And Joram, that's all he needed, that's all he needed to hear, just that one sentence. He turns around and fled, shouting out to his friend Ahaziah king of Judah, "Treachery, Ahaziah! Get out of here!" In other words, this guy's after us. It's interesting, I don't think he suspected anything at first, but he sure found out and got what was coming to him.

Then Jehu drew his bow and shot Joram between the shoulders. The arrow pierced his heart, and he slumped down in his chariot. Jehu said to Bidkar, his chariot officer, "Pick him up and throw him on the field that belonged to Naboth the Jezreelite." Right in the very place where his father had stolen this field after his mother had murdered Naboth, right in this very place where it was going to happen, here it was, he's perishing on that very place. And it's interesting here that this was foretold by Elijah to Ahab so many years before.

"Remember how you and I were riding together in chariots behind Ahab, his father, when the Lord made this prophecy about him: 'Yesterday I saw the blood of Naboth and the blood of his sons,' declares the Lord, 'and I will surely make you pay for it on this plot of ground,' declares the Lord? Now then, pick him up and throw him on that plot in accordance with the word of the Lord."

So Jehu remembers and he says to his buddy Bidkar, "Remember before this guy was king and Ahab was still king? Remember we were in his army, too? This was a prophecy, what the Lord said right here on this spot, on this ground here." Isn't that funny? Jehu remembered the prophecy, he knew about what was going to happen to the guy, but he didn't organize it so that Joram would come out and meet him on that piece of ground. He didn't say, "You know, let's have a duel, and we'll do it on that plot of ground, Naboth's ground."

He was riding his chariot furiously towards the city. The king came out to meet him after sending two horsemen before him, and just coincidentally, isn't that funny? They just happened to meet at this spot where the ground is that his father, Ahab, had stolen. That's the spot where this guy got killed, and they threw his body out on that spot. And he didn't even realize it until the end here. He says, "Hey, guess what? Remember that prophecy? Here it is, it happened." It's not like you could plan this if you wanted to, but he's giving a testimony to God's greatness here, to the glory of God and how God knows all things even before they happen.

When Ahaziah king of Judah saw what had happened, he fled up the road to Beth Haggan. Now look, I think I've told you before, I make no claim whatsoever that I know how to pronounce these names. If you think I'm pronouncing it wrong, that's fine; I'm sure you can do a better job. I just pretend to know the name. This guy, Ahaziah, was the king of Judah, and he... generally Judah was a kingdom, generally, that was more interested in God than was the northern kingdom. And this guy should not have been making friends with his buddy up to the north. They shouldn't have been hanging out together.

But you might remember that the king of the southern kingdom, Ahaziah, you might remember that his mother was Ahab's daughter because his grandfather took his son and married him off to Ahab's daughter as sort of a treaty. So this guy actually was descended from Ahab also. In fact, I think if you wrote all that on a piece of paper, I think that would make them cousins, because the one guy is the son of Ahab and this guy is the grandson of Ahab. So second cousins.

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.

Guest (Male): (Singing)

To know and follow hard after You. To know and follow hard after You. To grow as your disciple in Your truth. To grow as your disciple in Your truth. This world is empty, pale and poor compared to knowing You, my Lord. Lead me on, and I will run after You. Lead me on, and I will run after You.

Guest (Male): Hebrews 10 says, "It's a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God." Queen Jezebel is about to experience the full weight of that. This is Hope from the Word, a ministry of Calvary Chapel of Marlton. Pastor Bill Luebkemann will tell the story of God's poetic and perfect justice today from 2 Kings 9. 2 Kings chapter 9. We're focusing on the northern kingdom of Israel today. The northern kingdom had a king whose name was Ahab, and he was a nasty old guy. His wife was Jezebel. We're going to see now here in 2 Kings chapter 9 that judgment day has come for the house of Ahab.

Guest (Male): (Singing)

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. To know and follow hard after You. To grow as your disciple in Your truth.

Guest (Male): Pastor Bill's messages can also be found by downloading the Hope FM app on your smartphone or tablet. 856-983-1662. 2 Kings 9:14-10:36. 2 Kings 9:14-10:36.

Guest (Male): (Singing)

Lead me on, and I will run after You. To know and follow hard after You.

Guest (Male): 2 Kings chapter 9. 2 Kings 9:14-10:36. Hope from the Word. Bill Luebkemann. 2026-06-08.