Immanuel Sermon Audio
2 Kings (12:66)
Here we go. Second Kings, so find Second Kings in your Bible. He's an interesting book. Second Kings and sort of like some of the previous books we've looked at, especially Second Samuel in really first Kings more than Second Samuel. It's hard to break this book up. There's just so many people in it and there's so many things happening that it's really hard to kind of chop it up. And so we're gonna try to hit some of the big ideas and we're gonna read long sections. We're gonna read scripture tonight more than we normally do on Wednesday nights because I just want you to read it and hear it. And the main points and the storylines I hope and I think we'll just jump off the page at you and be obvious, but we're gonna dig in and read some of these passages. Think about Hollywood with me and think about movies. There's sort of a trend, it seems to me, maybe it's always been there and I've just realized it, but it seems to me there's a trend and a fascination with sequels in Hollywood right now. Everything has to have a sequel. If you make a movie and it does well and there's any way you can continue the story, let's continue it and make it again and hope all those people who paid money to see it the first time will come back and see it the second time. And especially there's an interest in Hollywood, it seems with taking books that are part of a series and turning them into movies. So you find whatever book has been selling among young people, among young adults, teenagers, and you turn it into a movie. And the great part about that is if it's a series of books is you have a series of movies and you don't just make money off one movie, but off multiple movies. And so you think about whatever you think about these movies, you think about the Hunger Games, the newest Hunger Games movie just came out a series of books and there you go, we make a movie off each one. You think about Harry Potter, eight, nine, I don't know how many books in that series, but a whole bunch of them to make money off of and they just have a movie for each one. You think about the Twilight movies, I don't know if any of you were interested in Twilight, I doubt it, looking around the room, it's vampires and werewolves and teenage love stories, everything you could want if you're a teenage girl, but four books and all these movies right in a row to make money off of them. You think about maybe more classic movies, the new Star Wars is about to come out, we have a couple of staff members who are really excited that Star Wars is coming out and you think about the original Star Wars, the trilogy and then you think about when they came around the second time, they made another trilogy and my understanding what they're doing this time is they're gonna make another trilogy and so we're just making them in batches of three to see these stories. Think about Lord of the Rings if you're a JR Tolkien fan and they have one, two and three right down the line. Think about, they went back and did The Hobbit, which is before Lord of the Rings, only one book, but they were so desperate to make money off of it, they said let's turn it into three movies, one book, three movies and they just sort of drag the storyline out and so there's a lot of trilogies being made and you get sort of caught up in these storylines. This is basically how it works in a trilogy. In part one, you meet the characters and you figure out what the problem is. Here's the main people you're gonna see in this story and there's some sort of big problem. It does not get fully resolved in the first movie. Maybe there's some sort of resolution at the end so you can sort of catch your breath and relax a little bit but really they're just introducing you to the characters, introducing you to the problem. Then in the second edition or second and third or depending on how many volumes there are, you start to have doubt as to whether or not it's really gonna work out and you're hoping if it's a good story, there's gonna be a happy ending but you're starting to wonder, are they really gonna be able to pull it off? Is good really gonna be able to win over evil and the conflict sort of builds and the tension gets ratcheted up and a lot of what they do in this middle one is they set you up for the last one and so you go to this middle movie and sometimes you think nothing happened. What is going on here and all they're doing is they're setting you up for the last one, getting all the major pieces in place for how they're gonna wrap it up. And then you come to the final book or the final movie, you get the climax and hopefully you get some kind of resolution one way or the other. Despite all of the goofy movies that Hollywood makes, we still like to have resolution at the end and Hollywood is starting to throw us more negative resolution, bad endings at the end but what most people really like, the movies that make money is when there's a positive resolution, a positive ending. And so what does this have to do with Second Kings? Okay, we are looking at Second Kings. It is number 12 you see on the top of your outline, number 12 out of 66. So that's a lot of movies to make if you're going one movie per book, 12 out of 66. But it's also number four out of four if you break it down a little bit. It's not just 12 out of the whole Bible but it's number four, part four out of four. And Samuel and Kings really go together. When you look at these books of the Bible, this is the story of the monarchy of Israel. This is the story of the kings, right? It begins in Samuel and you sort of get the lay of the land. You say, okay, here's Samuel. He's the last of the judges. Israel desperately wants a king. We're going to introduce you to the first king of Israel and that was Saul, okay? So we meet some of the characters. Then you come to Second Samuel in First Kings and the story sort of starts to snowball a little bit. And you meet David and you remember when we looked at Second Samuel, we broke David's life down the old Clint Eastwood Western, the good, the bad and the ugly. He said, here's the good parts, the good things David did. Here's the bad things David did. And then here's the ugly things in David's life where everything just sort of went to pot. And so you see some problems, real serious problems introduced here. And then you come to this one, right? We're still in this middle section. We're sort of setting up for the end of the story. And you come to First Kings and there's a whole bunch of characters. And it gets way worse than David. And so we broke First Kings down again with the good, the bad and the ugly. And we said the good was Solomon and he really wasn't very good. But we generously put him in the good category. And we said, there's the bad. And that was his sons, Raya Boem and Jeroboem who split the kingdom and divided it. So things are not looking up. And then we went to the ugly and we skipped over a bunch of rotten kings and we landed on Ahab. And we said Ahab was just a rotten person. He was a bad human being. He was not a nice guy. So you see this same pattern in these two books. You sort of get a glimmer of hope and you think, okay, maybe David's the guy. You think, okay, maybe Solomon's the guy. And then the story continues and you say, no, he is not the guy. He is not the one that Israel needs. And it just sort of snowballs from there. So if you go back, go back one, Tony, to the parts of the story that I put up there earlier, right? We got the characters, the problem. You meet the problem with Saul. These humans are not very good at being kings. And you come to doubt and conflict and you're starting to say, I don't know. I don't know if these guys can pull it off or not. It's not looking very good. And you come to the last volume, right? Which is second kings. And as Americans, you're saying, here we go. It's time for the hero to ride in. It's time to ride off into the sunset. We are completely, totally longing for a happy ending. And then go back one. What happens when you come to second kings in the story? Other way, I'm sorry. You go to second kings, you don't get a happy ending. You're just longing for someone to show up who will sort of set things right and be the king that David almost was and be the king that Solomon started off to be. And you're hoping for this happy ending. And instead, just to be honest, it's very anticlimactic. And it's just not a good ending. There's a few bright spots along the way. And we're gonna talk about a couple of those tonight, but for the most part, it's just a downhill slide of immorality and idolatry and rebellion and punishment. And it ends up with all of God's people being in trouble. So let's put it in the history of Israel. I've tried to do this every week as we've talked about Israel. We are in this spot right here. That's the blank on your outline. We're in the rebellion. So it starts off with Joshua in the conquest. We go to the period of the judges. We go to the monarchy. That begins with Saul, the division. Rehoboam and Jeroboam like we just talked about. Rebellion, that's where we're at tonight. Second Kings, we were there in first Kings two. We're still there in the rebellion. And really at the end of second Kings, we're also coming into the exile. I filled that one in for you, but we're gonna read about exile tonight. And eventually Ezra, Nehemiah, the people come back and they return to the land. So that's where we fall in the storyline. Second Kings is unique from these other part one, part two, part three, first, second Samuel, first Kings. And that it focuses on a lot of different characters. In fact, this is on your outline. Second Kings is the story of a parade of characters, including 29 Kings of Israel and Judah over 300 years. 300 years. I don't know about you, but I have a tendency when I read the Bible, especially in the Old Testament, to just read as if it's bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. It's just happening one thing right after the other, just stacked on top of each other. And you gotta look at this book and say, this book is spread out over 300 years. That's a long time, right? We have short time spans, time frames as Americans. We're a young nation compared to most nations on the earth. And we think 200 years is a long time. We've been around for a long time. We're the great United States of America. We're not going anywhere. We're the greatest, we're so strong, we're so powerful. This covers 300 years and lots of different kings in Israel and in Judah. Different, I told you it was unique. It was different in that first Samuel focuses mostly on Samuel and Saul, two major characters. Second Samuel focuses almost exclusively on David. Even the last book we looked at, first Kings, you can pick out Solomon is a major character. His sons are major characters as they split the kingdom and Ahab is a major character. This book has a lot of different people, a lot of moving parts, a few bright spots, but not very many. This is on your outline as well. Just sort of a big idea before you jump into Second Kings. Genesis 12 and Exodus 19 describe God's desire for Israel to be a light to the nations. But Second Kings is the story of how they became just as dark as the people around them. It's just a tragic story. It just does not have a good ending. It's not the kind of movie you want to pay money to go see in the theaters. It ends and you're just left thinking, ugh, that is not good. Look with me at Genesis 12 and then we'll look also at Exodus 19. In Genesis 12, we're going way, way, way, way back to the true beginning of Israel. We're going back to Abram, not even Abraham, but Abram. Genesis 12, we're gonna look at verse three, but just start in verse one. It says, the Lord said to Abram, go from your country and your kindred in your father's house to the land I will show you. I will make you a great nation. That's the nation of Israel. And I will bless you and I will make your name great so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, him who dishonors you, I will curse. And in you, all the families of the earth shall be blessed. That was God's intention. I want you, Israel, in this family, in this nation that I'm forming, I want you to be a blessing to all the peoples of the earth. Flip over and look at Exodus. Skipping a lot of important ground that we've already covered, but Exodus 19, verse six. God has brought his people out. He's about to give them the Ten Commandments, but they've already been rescued from Egypt. Exodus 19, six, you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. These are the words that you shall speak to the people of Israel. I want you, Israel, to be a kingdom of priests. And you stop and you say, wait a minute, wait a minute. I thought only the Levites were supposed to be the priests. But God's saying in a sense, different than just the Levites, I want all of Israel to be a priestly nation that will take my truth, take my light, take my name to all the other nations. That's what I brought you out of Egypt to do. And so the story builds and it builds and it builds. And you get to Second Kings and you realize these people are not gonna be the light for anybody. These people are absolutely, every bit as dark as the people around them. And so let's jump in and let's just read a little bit. Look at Second Kings 17. Some of these scriptures are on your outline and we're gonna read some of them and we're gonna just summarize a few of them. Second Kings 17. Again, I think that as we read this, it's just pretty self-explanatory, what's happening. Second Kings 17 beginning in verse one. In the 12th year of A has, king of Judah, Hosea, the son of Allah, begin to reign in Samaria over Israel and he reigned nine years and he did what was evil, no surprise there in the side of the Lord. Yet not as the kings of Israel who were before him. So he was as bad, but he wasn't as bad as some of the other guys. Against him came up Shaomanasser, king of Assyria. And Hosea became his vassal and paid him tribute. But the king of Assyria found treachery in Hosea for he had sent messengers to sow the king of Egypt and offered no tribute to the king of Assyria as he had done year by year. Therefore the king of Assyria shut him up and bound him in prison. Then the king of Assyria invaded all the land and came to Samaria. And for three years, he besieged it. In other words, the king of Israel is paying off the king of Assyria. I'm gonna pay you money to leave me alone, right? You're paying off the bully. You're giving the bully your lunch money to avoid the conflict. And eventually you decide that guy looks tougher than the bully. If I give my lunch money to that guy, maybe he'll take care of the bully for me. And the king of Israel says, Egypt is looking pretty tough. Let's give them the money and maybe they'll go whip Assyria for us. And the king of Assyria finds out about it and he doesn't like it and he comes and he lays siege to the city for three years. So look at verse six. This is in 722 BC. In the ninth year of Hosea, the king of Assyria captured Samaria. That's the capital city of Israel. And he carried the Israelites away to Assyria and placed them in Hala. And on the hayboard, the river goes in and in the cities of the meats. If you like notes in your Bible, you make notes in your Bible, you ought to circle verse six and you could write out beside it Genesis three. This is almost exactly like Genesis three where Adam and Eve sinned against God and God says what? You got to go. You can't stay here. I made this place just for you. But now you got to leave and you're reading the exact same thing. God made this land for these special people and he brought them in here so that they could be his light and his witness and his priests. They sinned against him and now God says after many, many years of patiently putting up with them, you got to go. You got to leave. You are leaving the promised land. Verse seven is if you didn't understand this, this is very plain. This occurred because the people of Israel had sinned against the Lord their God who brought them up out of the land of Egypt from under the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt and had feared other gods and walked in the customs of the nations whom the Lord drove out before the people of Israel. And in the customs that the kings of Israel had practiced and the people of Israel did secretly against the Lord, their God, things that were not right. And again, if you like notes, you could circle the word secretly and go out in the margin and write ha. They thought they were sneaky. There was nothing sneaky about it. They built for themselves high places in all their towns from watchtower to fortified city. They set up for themselves pillars and ashram on every high hill and under every green tree. And they made offerings on all the high places as the nations did whom the Lord carried away before them. And they did wicked things provoking the Lord to anger and they served idols of which the Lord had said to them, you shall not do this yet the Lord warned Israel and Judah by every prophet and every seer saying, turn from your evil ways and keep my commandments and my statutes in accordance with all the law that I commanded your fathers that I sent to you by my servants, the prophets, verse 14. But they would not listen, but they were stubborn as their fathers had been who did not believe in the Lord their God. They despised his statutes and his covenant that he made with their fathers and the warnings that he gave them. They went after false gods and became false. Little lesson there and that you will become like whatever you worship. You worship a false God, you become corrupted just like that God. You worship the true God over time you become more and more and more like the true God. Worship false idols, they became false. They followed the nations that were around them concerning whom the Lord had commanded them that they should not be like them. They abandoned all the commandments of the Lord their God made for themselves metal images of two calves and they made an ashara and they worshiped all the host of heaven and served Baal. Verse 17, shocking. They burned their sons and daughters as offerings. They used divination in omens and sold themselves to do evil in the sight of the Lord provoking him to anger. Therefore, no, surprisingly, the Lord was very angry with Israel and he removed them out of his sight, sent them into exile. None was left but the tribe of Judah only. You say, oh, he left Judah because they were really good. Judah also did not keep the commandments of the Lord their God but walked in the customs that Israel had introduced and the Lord rejected all the descendants of Israel and afflicted them and gave them into the hands of plunderers until he cast them out of his sight. When he had torn Israel from the house of David, they made Jeroboam, the son of Nabat king. And Jeroboam drove Israel from following the Lord and made them commit great sin. The people of Israel walked and all the sins that Jeroboam did, they did not depart from them until the Lord removed Israel out of his sight as he had spoken by all the servants of the prophets. So Israel was exiled from their own land to Assyria until this day and that gives you some indication as to when this book was written. We're gonna talk more about that next week but whoever wrote it said they are in exile now. So they wrote this book while the people were there in exile. And the following verses, if you look down at verse 24 into 41, it just talks about the people being taken out of the land and you may think, remember we're down here, we're hoping for a good ending. We're just, your fingers are crossed. You think, okay, they don't get to stay but maybe something good. Maybe they go into exile and then their eyes are opened. And the next little section says they get hauled off to Assyria and while they're there, they think it's really cute to worship all the gods of Assyria and the Lord. And it says in there somewhere. They feared the Lord but they also worship the gods of Assyria and they had one foot over here but they also tried to keep one foot over here and never, never, never did they learn their lesson. And there's a lesson in that. You can think about people that you know very rarely do negative consequences change a person's heart, very rarely. It's even rare that negative consequences change a person's life. And I can just think of guys that I grew up with, friends that I had and still have who have made horrible decisions in life. And they have faced some horrendous consequences. And maybe there's a temporary change. Maybe there's a short lived repentance but in the end it just, it doesn't seem to get their attention in a lasting way. And definitely true that negative consequences do not usually change people's hearts. It didn't for Israel, they go into exile and they worship all the idols. So what about Judah? Look over at chapter 18. We meet a guy named Hezekiah. Is he a good king or a bad king? Mostly good, right? He has his shortcomings. He has some characteristics that are not very encouraging at times but for the most part he's a good king and he tries to stamp out idolatry and he's trying to make changes for the better. And look at chapter 18, verse 13. Again, we're gonna read a long stretch here. So follow along, 1813. In the 14th year of King Hezekiah, a good king, Sennacherib, king of Assyria, came up against all the fortified cities of Judah and he took them. So you remember it was Assyria who came and beat up on Israel and took them into exile. And now Assyria is back trying to beat up on Judah, right? So they've conquered Samaria, the capital of Israel and now they're coming towards Judah and they take a bunch of cities. It says in Judah, verse 14. Hezekiah, king of Judah, sent to the king of Assyria at Lakeish saying, "I have done wrong, withdraw from me. "Whatever you impose on me, I will bear." In other words, hey, remember what Israel used to do? They used to pay you that money and you would leave them alone. We'd like to sign up for the same plan. Just automatic draft out of our checking account, take whatever you need, whatever you want and please leave us alone. The king of Assyria said, "Okay, he required of Hezekiah, "king of Judah 300 talents of silver "and 30 talents of gold." Hezekiah gave him all the silver that was found in the house of the Lord and in the treasuries of the king's house. At that time, Hezekiah stripped the gold from the doors of the temple of the Lord and from the doorposts that Hezekiah, king of Judah, had overlaid and he gave it to the king of Assyria. Only place to get that kind of money was to rob it from the temple. So he steals it from the temple, sends it off. The king of Assyria sent the tartan, the rabcerees and the rabceca with the great army from Lakeish to king Hezekiah at Jerusalem. They went up and they came to Jerusalem. When they arrived, they came and stood by the conduit of the upper pool, which is on the highway of the washers' field. When they called for the king, there came out to them, Aliah Kim, the son of Hylkiah, who was over the household in Shebna, the secretary, and Joah the son of Asaf, the recorder. So a bunch of government officials go out to talk to this delegation. Verse 19, "The rabceca said to them, "'Say to Hezekiah, 'Thus says the great king, "'the king of Assyria, "'on what do you rest this trust of yours? "Do you think that mere words are strategy and power for war? "And whom do you now trust that you have rebelled against me? "Behold, you are trusting now in Egypt "that broken reed of a staff, "which will pierce the hand of any man who leans on it, "such as Pharaoh, king of Egypt, to all who trust in him. "But if you say to me, "we trust in the Lord, Yahweh our God? "Is it not He whose high places and altars Hezekiah "has removed, saying to Judah and Jerusalem, "'You shall worship before this altar in Jerusalem.'" Time out. You look at that verse and you say, "Hezekiah did a good thing "in tearing down these high places." Right? And he told the people, you're not supposed to worship there in the high places. You're not supposed to worship up there where they worship Baal and Asherah and Molek and all these other God. You're supposed to come to the altar in Jerusalem and so he tries to get rid of them. And the nations around him hear about that. And they don't understand. Listen, sometimes unbelievers will not understand obedience. Doesn't make sense to them. And this Assyrian king comes and he says, "What are you doing? "You're tearing down altars of your own God "and this doesn't make any sense. "You say you trust the Lord, "but you're not going to let the people go to these high places. "He doesn't understand the issue." Verse 23, "Come now, make a wager with my master, "the king of Assyria." This is funny. I'll give you 2,000 horses. If you're able to part, able on your part to set riders on them. How then can you repulse a single captain among the least of my master servants when you trust in Egypt for chariots and horsemen? Moreover, is it without the Lord that I have come up against this place to destroy it? The Lord said to me, "Go up against this land and destroy it." That's an interesting verse. And you can read smart Bible commentators and some of them say, God didn't really say that to him. He's just mouthing off. And he's talking big, and he's taking God's name in vain, saying that God said something he didn't say. And you read other Bible commentators that say, God did tell him somehow through a prophet, through a dream, through a vision, through something God wanted him to go up because all of this that's about to happen is part of God's plan. So you make your own decision. Verse 26, "Alaykim the son of Hylkiah, "Shebna, Joah, said to the raptureka, "this is again funny. "Please speak to your servants in Aramaic, "for we understand it. "Don't speak to us in the language of Judah "within the hearing of the people who are on the wall." In other words, you're freaking all our people out. So talk in a different language so they can't understand you, and we can pretend like this is not a big deal. The raptureka said to them, "Has my master sent me to speak these words "to your master and to you, "not to the men sitting on the wall who are doomed "with you to eat their own dung "and drink their own urine." There's a lot of trash talk in the Old Testament if you read through it. And some of it is quite good. So that's pretty good right there. You guys are in so much trouble, you're not gonna have anything to eat but your own dung and nothing to drink but your own urine, okay? The raptureka stood and he called out in a loud voice in the language of Judah. Hear the word of the great king, the king of Assyria, thus says the king. Do not let Hezekiah deceive you, for he will not be able to deliver you out of my hand. That's a true statement, by the way. Do not let Hezekiah make you trust in the Lord by saying the Lord will surely deliver us and the city will not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria. Do not listen to Hezekiah for thus says the king of Assyria, "Make your peace with me and come out to me. "Each one of you will eat his own vine, "each one his own fig tree, "each one will drink the water of his own sister "until I come to you and take you away to a land "like your own land, a land of grain and wine, "bread, vineyards, olive trees, honey, "that you may live and not die." Do not listen to Hezekiah when he misleads you saying, "The Lord will deliver us." Has any of the gods of the nations ever delivered his land out of the hand of the king of Assyria? Where are the gods of Hamath in Arpat? Where are the gods of Sephar Vaim and Hina and Yvah? Have they delivered Samaria out of my hand? Who among the gods of the lands have delivered their lands out of my hand that the Lord should deliver Jerusalem out of my hand? In other words, your God is just like all the others. They couldn't stop me and He can't stop me. The people were silent and they answered Him not a word for the king's command was do not answer Him. A lie came in the son of Hylkiah who was over the household, Shebna, Secretary Joah, the son of Ace after the recorder, came to Hasakiah with their clothes torn and they told him the words of the raptureka. Keep going just a few more verses here. As soon as Hasakiah heard it, he tore his clothes, covered himself with sackcloth. He went into the house of the Lord. He sent a lie came who was over the household and Shebna, the secretary and the senior priest covered with sackcloth to the prophet Isaiah the son of Amaz. That's the Isaiah who wrote Isaiah. Hasakiah says, we need a prophet here. We need somebody who can talk to God and hear from God. Go get Isaiah, maybe he can help. They said to him, thus says Hasakiah, this day is a day of distress, of rebuke and disgrace. Children have come to the point of birth and there's no strength to bring them forth. It may be that the Lord your God heard all the words of the raptureka whose whom is master the king of Assyria sent to mock the living God and he'll rebuke the words that the Lord your God has heard. Therefore lift up your prayer for the remnant that is left. In other words, they want Isaiah to pray for him. This is a pretty good strategy. We're in big trouble. Let's find somebody who's godly and ask him to pray. When the servants of king Hasakiah came to Isaiah, Isaiah said to them, say to your master, thus says the Lord, do not be afraid because of the words that you have heard with which the servants of the king of Assyria have reviled me. Behold, I will put a spirit in him so that he shall hear a rumor and return to his own land and I will make him fall by the sword in his own land. Then the raptureka returned. He found the king of Assyria fighting in Libna for he heard that the king had left Lakeish. The king heard concerning Tirhaka, the king of Kush, behold, he set out to fight against you. So it's just like God said, there's going to be something going on, he's going to have to leave, he's not going to be able to take you out. He sent messengers again to Hasakiah saying, thus you say to Hasakiah, do not let your God in whom you trust deceive you by promising that Jerusalem will not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria. Behold, you have heard what the kings of Assyria have done to all lands, devoting them to destruction. And shall you be delivered? Have the gods of the nations delivered them, the nations that my father's destroyed, Gosun, Haran, Rezef, the people of Eden who were in Telesar, where's the king of Hamath, the king of Arpad, the king of the city of Sephar Vaim, the king of Hinnah, or the king of Evah? So he leaves, they're in trouble, they're about to get destroyed, they tear their clothes, they repent, they cry out to God, they get Isaiah to pray for him, Isaiah prays, and Isaiah says, look, don't worry, God is going to send him away, right? Depending on how you read that previous verse, God brought him here, and God is going to send him away. He's trying to teach you a lesson, and he's trying to teach this king a lesson. And he sends him away, just like he said he is, to go and to fight this battle in another part of his kingdom. The people are terrified, and they keep silent, just like he told them to, and if you look starting in verse 14, it says, he receives the letter, the king Hezekiah does, and he prays, and you can read his prayer. I would encourage you tonight, read starting in verse 15 down to 19, Hezekiah's prayer. Basically, he leaves, this guy goes away to fight, but the people are still afraid, they're still terrified. And down in verse 20, Isaiah says, God has heard your prayer, God knows that you're concerned, talks about God's power and his plan, and what Isaiah writes him there starting in verse 21, and then look at verse 32 in chapter 19. Thus says the Lord concerning the king of Assyria. He shall not come into this city or shoot an arrow, there or come before it with shield or cast up siege mound against it. By the way that he came, by the same way he shall return. He shall not come into this city declares the Lord. For I will defend this city to save it, for my own sake, and for the sake of my servant David, and that verse is important, and the order of that verse is important. I'm going to defend the city for my own sake first, and second for the sake of my servant David. Verse 35, that night the angel of the Lord went out and struck down 185,000 in the camp of the Assyrians. And when the people arose early in the morning, behold these were all dead bodies. Then, Synacharib king of Assyria departed, and he went home and lived at Nineveh. And as he was worshiping in the house of Nisrock his God, Dremelek and Charizar, his sons, struck him down with the sword, and then they escaped into the land of Ararat, and Arshadon, his son, rained in his place. You get through all that and you think, down again on that previous slide, you're thinking okay, maybe this is the happy ending. Assyria came, they took Israel, hauled them off. Assyria came after Judah, and they're just beating on the door. They're taking city after city after city, and they come to Jerusalem, and it looks like they're going to take him, and the people pray, and Isaiah prays, and God does an amazing miracle, and he sends this guy back where he came from, and everybody's off the hook, and you think okay, let's ride off into the sunset, Judah is safe. And then you just keep reading, and you come to chapter 24, starting in verse one, Assyria is no longer important, and there's a new king in town named Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, and Nebuchadnezzar is a bad dude, and look at 2 Kings 25, we're skipping over a lot of stuff, you can go back and read this, 25, verse 21, says the King of Babylon, struck them down, and put them to death at Ribla in the land of Hamath, so Judah was taken into exile out of its land. Both of them go, Israel is gone, and Judah is gone, they're all in exile. We started with a king, we split the kingdom, both of those offshoots from the original nation rebelled, and God sends both of them into exile one at a time. Two lessons to take away from second kings, and you can go back and you can read about Nebuchadnezzar and his siege and all that stuff, if you'd like to, but two lessons, first one is this, God will defend his glory at all costs, that's on your outline, a central lesson in second kings, the certainty that God will defend his glory at all costs. So one example of God doing this is looking at Israel, rebellious Israel, and saying, basically you are embarrassing me, you're giving me a bad reputation. I brought you people out to be specially for me, and you're not doing it, and you're making me look bad, and you're rebelling against me, and you're turning against me, so I'm gonna do something to stick up for my own name, my own glory, you're outta here, you're gone. And then he does something different for Judah, at least initially. Judah looks like they're about to get pounded by Assyria, but the guy who comes to do the pounding is a little bit too mouthy, and God says, I don't like that. I don't like these people making fun of me. I don't like the king of Assyria comparing me to all the other gods of these nations. So you know what I'm gonna do to them? While they're sleeping at night, I'm gonna send my angel to kill about 200,000 of 'em. That's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna stick up for my own glory. I don't need you to do it, Hezekiah. I can do it myself. And then you go on past Hezekiah. You see these other wicked kings, and God says the exact same thing he said to Israel. If you're just gonna totally turn against me, after everything that I've done for you, then I'll do to you what I did to Israel. And I will act for my own name, for my own glory, and I will not tolerate and put up with your sin and your rebellion, so he sends the people out to defend his own glory. Second idea is this. When you read through Second Kings, you're reminded that Jesus is the prophet king, capital P prophet, capital K king, that we need to lead us and to save us. And we're not gonna read all of these stories, but I just wanna show you where they're at so you can read 'em on your own. Look at Second Kings beginning in about chapter four. It talks about Elisha in the widow's oil. Then it talks about Elisha in the Shunamite woman. Then it talks about Elisha raising the Shunamite's son. It talks about Elisha purifying the deadly stew. It talks about Naaman being healed of leprosy, and obviously God did that, but he did it through Elisha in his commands. You keep reading in chapter six, it talks about the ax-head recovered. You remember that story? Elisha comes in the ax-head floats up in the water so that the guys can get it back. You keep going beginning in verse eight. Horses and chariots of fire. Remember Elisha's servant is terrified that they're about to get wiped out, and he sort of gives him this unveiling, this revelation of all these angelic hosts who are there to fight with them and to fight for them. So he sees this revelation. Chapter seven, there's a miracle about Elisha and food, and just on and on, all these stories here about Elisha starting in chapter four up through about chapter seven. If you were here a couple of weeks ago, we talked about Jesus in the Gospel of Luke, and we talked about Jesus doing all these miracles. He's healing people, he's bringing people back to life. He's doing amazing things. And the people who hear this report, do you remember what they said about Jesus? This man is a prophet. That's a strange thing when you're reading the story. You expect them to say, "This guy is amazing. "This guy is a miracle worker. "This guy is powerful." But instead they say, "This guy is a prophet." And there was a reason they said that is 'cause they knew the Old Testament. They'd read all these stories about Elisha, and they knew all these miracles that God did through Elisha, and they said, "Okay, Elisha was a prophet." And we look at this guy, Jesus, and he's doing all these miracles, he must be a prophet. And so let me just give you some examples here of parallels between Elisha and Jesus. Elisha multiplies the widow's oil. Remember that? Just this miraculous provision of oil, seemingly out of thin air. Jesus goes to a wedding and multiplies wine, seemingly out of thin air, right? Very, very similar miracles. The Shunomite woman has her son raised from the dead. Elisha does that. Jesus raises multiple people from the dead, a widow's son, the centurion's servant. He's raising these people from the dead, just like Elisha. Elisha purifies stew so the people can eat. There's bad stew, and it's kind of a weird story, to be honest with you. Everybody's getting sick and keeling over pukin, and he does sort of a weird thing, and everybody eats the stew, and it's a happy ending. You say, "That's a strange story." And you look at Jesus, and you say, "He has food miracles." Much more impressive than fixing the stew. He feeds thousands with one small, tiny lunch. You see Naaman coming to be healed of leprosy, and you see Jesus healing lepers, and touching lepers, healing the sick. You see Elisha, and again, I'll be honest with you, it's just a weird story, the ax head floating. You read that, and you say, "What does that have to do with anything else that's going on? The ax head is floating." He's just giving his people a sign, a picture, a pointer. And you look at Jesus, and you say, "Jesus is out on the lake doing what?" Walking on water, out to his disciples. You look at Elisha, and he's there with his servants, and they're not sure things are going exactly right, his servant, and he says, "Look, I'm gonna show you something that you can't see normally." And he shows him all these angelic hosts there to fight with him. You think about Jesus taking his three closest disciples up the mountain, right? And what does he do? He reveals something to them that they've never seen before. They didn't realize they didn't understand. He shows them, "This is who you're really dealing with here. This is who I am." Far greater than Moses or Elijah, who were standing here beside me, he reveals his glory to them. You even see Elisha anointing kings, and it points you all of it to Jesus, the prophet king. And look, you read Second Kings, it's just a sad book. That's all it is. It's just sad. It's sad in the people's rebellion. It's sad in their stubbornness. It's sad in the consequences they have to face. We just read over this very quickly. We read chapter 25 verse 21, said Judah went into exile, and we just read over it that easily. But you think about what that was like for those people. To have a king and his army march into your city with swords and clubs and weapons and chopping heads off and blood flowing in the streets and people getting hauled out of there. And you come to the end of the book and you say, this whole monarchy thing has been a failure. Saul couldn't do it. David, he was really close at times, but he couldn't do it. Solomon started off maybe even higher than David ever was. And then it all went in the toilet. And you saw some bright spots along the way. You see Jehoshaphat, you see Hezekiah, but in the end it's just a sad, sad book. And you come to the end of it, and hopefully what you're feeling if you read through Second Kings is, none of these guys could cut the mustard. They're not good enough. We need a new prophet, capital P. We need a new king, capital K. And in that way, the whole book points you to Jesus. And I hope you see that thread as we continue through the Old Testament, that these are not just neat stories about Elisha and Hezekiah. Sometimes in Sunday school, we make the mistake of just chopping the Bible up and saying, okay, here's a story about Hezekiah and let's learn about his character and let's learn about his faith and let's learn about this. And we forget Hezekiah is a minor, minor character in one big, long story. And the whole story builds up in points to Jesus. The Bible's not about Hezekiah. It's not about Solomon. It's not about David. All of these people are sign posts pointing you to Jesus. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. So let's pray and then we'll share some prayer requests and pray together. Lord, we love you. We're thankful for the Bible and it's honest. And it describes people as they truly are in their sin and their stubbornness. Father, if we're honest with ourselves, we see the same characteristics in our lives that we see in the people of Israel. We are grateful for your grace and your mercy. We're grateful for your patience. We think about the disastrous things that happen to these people, but we also think that you waited hundreds of years to bring these consequences about. And we read in 2 Kings that time and time and time again, you sent prophets, you sent seers, you sent warnings. You sent messengers to call the people to repentance. Father, we're grateful that you are patient with us, that you're long-suffering. You're slow to anger. You are bounding instead, fast love. But Father, we see in this book that at the end of the day, you will do what you need to do to defend your name and your glory and your reputation. Father, we thank you that this book does not hold up mere men as our heroes or as our answer, but that it points us to Jesus. And we pray that we would always look to Him, that when we read the Bible, we would see it as the story about Jesus coming and Jesus living and Jesus dying and Jesus promising to come back for us. Father, we love you. We're grateful for your word and we pray in Jesus' name.