Talk 16

0:01 Well, we are at a transition point in looking at the Old Testament book of Kings, because we are moving from one Kings to two Kings. For those of you who don't know, originally it was just one book, but when they came to translate the Hebrew Bible into Greek, known as the Septuagint, it was divided into two, really just for convenience, because it's a very long book. So we're at that pivotal point, and it'll be interesting just to see and work through, as you think about it, exactly why they put the division where they did. It's not a bad place to put the division, because it happens after the death of King Ahab, as we looked at last week, and also the death of Jehoshaphat, the two kings of the divided kingdom. Last week, we focused on the end of Ahab, killed in battle, trying to outwit both his enemies and God by going into battle in disguise. and of course, disguises may work with humans, but they certainly don't work with God. By contrast with Ahab, Jehoshaphat, as I mentioned last week, he had a largely good and successful reign. And what I want to do is begin our reading this week from 1 Kings, the final chapter, chapter 22.

1:43 And just a little statement that is made about Jehoshaphat. It's in verse 43 of 1 Kings chapter 22. And it says that in everything, he followed the ways of his father Asa and did not stray from them. And here's the key phrase. He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord. It's worth thinking about that phrase. It's used quite often in the Bible, in the eyes of the Lord. It's a simple thing, but it's very significant.

2:19 The understanding that life is lived before the Lord, in his sight, in the eyes of the Lord. And it's taken up in a different, slightly different sense in the New Testament. In Colossians 3, for example, Paul comments on the temptation when it comes to our daily work. Well, perhaps you know what it's like when you know the boss is coming in. Then things will tend, well, it depends what your boss is like, of course, but things tend to smarten up. And yeah, you're conscious of the eyes of your boss on you. And peers, then perhaps it changes. I remember carrying out experiments in school when I was a school teacher, and I would occasionally set a piece of work and then leave the classroom, but not go anywhere.

3:19 Just stand outside and see what happened. And of course, predictably, within about 30 seconds, bedlam ensued, because the teacher's eyes aren't there anymore. Now, that's the challenge, and Paul raises that and encourages us to be different, especially not only, but especially in our daily work, so that we're not simply doing it when we know the boss is watching, but we're doing it as for the Lord who is always watching. Now, the danger is we consider that as a threat, And that will depend precisely on how we view the Lord Jesus. Do we see him as a threat, some unfeeling, unsympathetic, unsupportive tyrant who's just looking for an excuse? You make a mistake and wham! Just looking for a reason to get rid of you. Or do we see him as the Lord who loved us, who cares for us, who's interested in the details of everyday life.

4:31 For me, it's an enormous encouragement to know that the Lord is watching. I don't see it as a threat. I see it as an important discipline, a reminder that I'm not out in isolation doing things in the dark. But to know that he's there cheering me on in this small task of life, full of compassion, forgiveness, able to pick me up when I flounder with me, as we were hearing from Robert this morning, we don't have a high priest who isn't sympathetic with us. To know that he's the one who represents us. He's the one who's watching us. What an incentive for us. to this life lives out in the eyes of the Lord who died for us.

5:29 Jehoshaphat also had his weaknesses, and we saw one of them last week, a tendency to get sucked into deals, into partnerships with the wrong people. We saw it last week, it nearly cost him his life, and we're briefly told of another at the end of chapter 22, where he got into a scheme of building trading ships. The idea was build these ships and they could import gold. And it just sounded like a scheme that was too good to be true. And it was too good to be true. Unfortunately, Ahaziah, Ahab's son, was in the mix. And you can read more about it in the book of Chronicles, which I encourage you to read actually, because it adds details that were not given in Kings. And it explains that Ahaziah was involved and it all ended in disaster with the entire fleet getting wrecked in a storm.

6:29 A pity then he hadn't taken that decision before the Lord. He'd just seen a deal, opportunity, wow, this sounds good, and goes for it. It's a very human trait. What could possibly go wrong? And we fail to pray. We fail to pay attention to the character of those we would be associated with or their real values, perhaps so excited by the potential that we decide, well, we don't need to tell the Lord about this. This is obviously right. And we certainly don't need to tell our wives.

7:06 And then we go for it and it ends in disaster. And we don't do it because we're afraid of two things. First, God might be against it. And secondly, our wife might be against it. And they both might be right. Seek the Lord's wisdom and your wife's and do what you know to be right in the eyes of the Lord. And then finally, in chapter 22, the historian swings back to Ahab's son, Ahaziah. And sadly, he was a chip off the old block, both his father's block and his mother's block.

7:44 He had learned nothing from Ahab's experiences. In stark contrast to Jehoshaphat, verse 52 of chapter 22 tells us, he did evil in the eyes of the Lord because he followed the ways of his father and mother and of Jeroboam son of Nebat who caused Israel to sin. Perhaps you remember him. We talked about him quite a long time ago. He was the one who prevented Israel from continuing to go to the house of the Lord in Jerusalem and worshiping God there the way God had required. And he set up arrival places of worship and then gradually allowed the worship of Baal to come in to the 10 tribes. And we're told that Ahaziah served and worshiped Baal and aroused the anger of the Lord, the God of Israel, just as his father had done. So that's the setup, if you like.

8:52 That's the background for now moving into 2 Kings 1. We have now moved to beyond Ahab to a son Ahaziah. Sadly, he's a chip off the old block. And we're given that general assessment in the end of 1 Kings, but now a specific incident at the start of 2 Kings. Let's look at the first few verses. After Ahab's death, Moab rebelled against Israel. 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.

9:52 But the angel of the Lord said to Elijah the Tishbite, 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're going off to consult Baal Zebub, the god of Ekron. Therefore, this is what the Lord says. You will not leave the bed you're lying on. You will certainly die. And so Elijah went. So let's notice the way this is set up. These early verses of chapter one here are crucial in the way the early verses of 1 Kings chapter 1 were crucial. Moab, we're told, rebelled.

10:42 That is the tribe of Moab, the nation of Moab, I should say, rebelled against Israel. We're told that at the beginning and then nothing. Moab is ignored after that until chapter 3 verse 5 repeats the same line. So what we have here, what the movies would do, is they show you a scene, and then they take you away, and you're wondering what on earth is the relevance of that, and then you go somewhere else, and then suddenly it comes back to the same scene again. So what we're being asked to do is to read what follows in the light of the broader context. There is a rebellion of the nation of Moab against Israel. That gives the context for what follows and what follows isn't pretty. Ahaziah had fallen.

11:52 We're not told exactly the circumstance. He fell through some lattice work in his upper chamber of his palace and badly injured himself. Clearly fell down at least one floor and was seriously injured. Unfortunate at any time, of course, when that happens. But when you're the king, the leader of the people, and a nation is in rebellion against you, it's even more challenging. And in that crucial moment, strategic moment of grave danger and need, he sends out messengers to Baal. So we just let that sink in. Here's the leader of the ten tribes sending out messengers to bow.

12:55 It was so serious that God himself intervened. And at the Lord's word, Elijah went to meet with those that Ahaziah had sent out with a question. Is it because there is no God in Israel that you're going off to consult bowels above the God of Ekron. What on earth are you doing? Abandoning the living God, consulting with a dead idol that can't speak, has no life, cannot help. How tragically foolish can you get? And because you have done this, Ahaziah, you will not recover from your fall. It's a mortal fall, and you're going to die.

13:52 Now, you might have thought that a message like that, which was brought back by the messengers to Ahaziah, would have stirred him a little. Well, it stirred him, but in the wrong way. When the messengers brought the message back, he went into a rage. And he sent 50 soldiers to where Elijah was at the top of a hill with a totally defiant message, man of God, come down. Whereupon Elijah called down far from heaven and destroyed the troop of soldiers. Now this is big, serious stuff. Undaunted, Isaiah tried again with exactly the same result. And then he tried a third time.

14:54 But this time the captain leading the third group of troops took a very different approach. And he fell on his knees and begged for the lives of his men. And Elijah responded and went down the mountain and confronted the king and repeated exactly the same message. And Ahaziah died just as the Lord had said. It is a powerful start to this second half of the book. It's a disturbing start. And perhaps as we look at it, we think, this is harsh, this is unfair. And it is so easy for us to forget how high the stakes were here and how serious the sin of idolatry is.

16:01 For Ahaziah, the king and leader of his people, not just to ignore the living God, but to chase after a dead idol and send soldiers to bring God's prophet to heal. You don't send 50 armed men to seek a conversation or to issue an invitation to dinner. This was his attempt to wipe out the voice of God to the nation. Ultimate arrogance, ultimate foolishness in defying God and his word, and the ultimate insult to God. Ahaziah knew what he was doing. He hadn't been living off grid. He was Ahab's son. He knew all about the living God.

16:54 He knew what had happened at Carmel, where Elijah had demonstrated in spectacular fashion that Baal was no God, had no voice, had no existence, and where the living God had revealed himself with fire from heaven coming down to consume the sacrifice Elijah offered. And yet despite that, when he was in need and in peril, he sought after that same dead idol. What would you have God do? Of course, it's important we don't get the wrong end of things here, like the disciples did on one occasion when they went with Jesus to a Samaritan village and the villagers wouldn't provide hospitality, weren't welcoming at all, and James and John in a high anger and frustration and wanted to call down fire from heaven to consume them. Perhaps they've been reading 2 Kings 1 that morning. Who knows? And Jesus said no. And quietly moved on to another village.

18:10 Because here is Jesus, the Savior, coming to seek and save those who are lost. And a short time later, he would deliberately seek out a Samaritan woman and bring the gospel to her. and threw her to her entire village. And later in the book of Acts, the risen Lord sent Philip to bring the gospel to these villages and many people were converted. Just as well, he hadn't acceded to the request to bring fire down from heaven to burn them up. So the way that God dealt with Ahaziah through Elijah is not a pattern for us. And the kind of personal frustration, anger, animosity, perhaps tinged with a little bigotry and racism that the disciples demonstrated, it's very human, but it's very disappointing. They were raw recruits.

19:11 They had a lot to learn about the ways of the Lord Jesus. And if we are not careful. We can be just like them, give in to our frustration at the way the world is going and the way that people are, and forget that our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and the spiritual powers of darkness. We need to listen carefully to what Peter, who learned his lesson that day, says in his letter, do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult. Repay evil with blessing, because to this you were called. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope you have, but do it with gentleness and respect. Or Paul, writing to the Philippines, Let your gentleness be evident to all.

20:21 But let's make no mistake. According to the Lord Jesus himself, there is a day of judgment coming. It is simply nonsense to say that the God of the Old Testament is a different God from the one we see in Jesus. Jesus spoke more than anyone else about the reality of coming judgment because judgment is part of the Christian gospel. It's not all of it, but it is part of it. It is precisely because there is going to be judgment that the judge himself died for us on the cross so that we might be forgiven, but judgment there will be. What Elijah did was not contrary to the spirit of Jesus. God has committed all judgment to his son.

21:23 The one who died for the sin of the world is going to be the world's judgment. But God has not committed this judgment to us, thankfully. That it's not for us to call down fire from heaven And as Elijah did, it is for us to bring the good news of salvation through the death and resurrection of Jesus until God himself calls time on this world. This opening to Kings raises a deeper issue. A fallen, damaged king. It's so interesting to me. Maybe it's just me. But 1 Kings began in an equally interesting way, not with a fallen king, but an old and cold king, David.

22:14 The problem there was trying to keep him warm, keep him going. And that opened up the deeper question, how to keep things going when David was gone, especially the relationship, the special relationship the nation had with the living God. Now, 2 Kings starts with a fallen king, not old and cold, but broken and dying. And the issue is not how to keep him going, but the question is, to whom or where will he turn for help? And I can't help thinking that this graphic opening raises a much deeper question, because it's not just Ahaziah who's fallen and badly damaged with a death sentence over him, but it is the entire human race, fallen, broken, under sentence of death. To whom do we turn? Where do we seek help? Where do we go for wisdom?

23:30 Peter, in the book of Acts, when he is told not to teach in Jesus' name, his response was simple. Salvation is found in no one else. There is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved. The world is fallen. It needs saving. I am fallen. I need saving. To whom will we go?

24:08 As the disciples put it to the Lord Jesus, to whom will we go? When he said to them, will you also go away? You have the words of eternal life. There is salvation in none other, but a succession of kings, of leaders of the nation, had led the people little by little away from the true source of salvation and life. If you remember back to 1 Kings and the question, how do you keep things going after David? Well, at the human level, the answer was Solomon became king. But God provided something far greater than Solomon.

24:54 He provided a house, a magnificent building that Solomon built, the house of the Lord, or Solomon's temple, as we call it. It was to be the center of the nation's life. They only were to have one temple, one house of the Lord, because there only is one. And it is there that God said he would presence himself. My name will be there. It represented him. It represented his real presence amongst his people. So that, for example, when they needed God's mercy, they would pray either in that temple or towards it.

25:31 And they would hear, God would hear from his heavenly dwelling place and he would forgive. And when they wronged their neighbor or being defeated by their enemies or times of drought brought on because of disobedience, times of famine or plague, times of war, when they had sinned, when they had taken captive to other lands, they were to either go to this house or pray to the God of this house. And Solomon, his magnificent prayer in one king's prayer, may you, God, listen to them whenever they cry out to you. This was to be the heart of a nation's life. It represented the presence of God, the character of God. And they were to learn to come to it, or at least pray to the God of it, and to cry out to him. But successive leaders had led them away from that. And it raises the obvious question and challenge as I look at the tragic results.

26:45 of the way they lived. How central is the Lord and his administration, his house, in my own thinking, in my own living. His word, his worship, his service. It's something that we have to actively seek. I mean, the house could just sit there and people just ignore it as many did or even be prevented from going as Jeroboam did with the people. It needs an active engagement. Paul tells us that all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden in Christ. Hidden.

27:34 In other words, they're not just lying on the surface. They're hidden. they reward those who diligently seek them. It involves a little bit of exploration. It involves a little bit of work. It involves a little bit of engagement. It involves a consistency. James talks about this.

27:57 He talks about the instability of so many because one day they're all fired up and we're definitely seeking God's wisdom. We want to live our lives in the sight of the Lord and we're going for it. And the next day they forget all about it. And then the next day, and then they come back and they're all over the place. And James says, let not a person like that think he will receive anything from the Lord because he's not serious. She's not serious. It's not the settled direction of their life to call to God. And then we see the end result.

28:34 You end up looking for help and salvation purely on the horizontal and not the vertical. And you chase after the gods of this world and not the one true God. It is an enormous challenge to me, to all of us. But finally, there's a little detail. that intrigues me. And again, perhaps it's only me. But Elijah was up a mountain when this took place. They went to him, come down Elijah.

29:17 He didn't come down, he came down eventually. But he was on a mountain, almost as if graphically, physically demonstrating the man whose connection with the eternal world and the king, the leader, and so on who's no connection with that world. He wants him down so he can wipe him out and cut off all voice from the eternal world. That pressure is a pressure that all of us encounter. It's not the only time that Elijah has been on a mountain. and I want to finish just by bringing your attention to the story in Luke chapter 9 in the New Testament where we see Elijah again up a mountain. This is Luke chapter 9 and verse 27 when Jesus said to his disciples, truly I tell you that some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God. And about eight days after Jesus said this, he took Peter, John and James with him and went up into a mountain to pray.

30:26 And as he was praying, the appearance of his face changed. His clothes became as bright as a flash of lightning. Two men, Moses and Elijah, appeared in glorious splendor talking with Jesus. And they were talking about his departure, his exodus, which he was about to bring to fulfillment at Jerusalem. Peter and his companions were very sleepy, but when they became fully awake, they saw his glory and the two men standing with them. And as the men were leaving, Peter said, Master, it is good for us to be here. Let us put up three shelters, one for you, one for Moses, one for Elijah. And Luke adds he didn't know what he was saying.

31:08 Very kind of him. And while he was speaking, a cloud appeared and covered them. And they were afraid as they entered the cloud. And a voice came from the cloud saying, this is my son whom I have chosen. Listen to him. And when the voice had spoken, they found that Jesus was alone. This experience, dramatic experience, was given to the disciples to illustrate the two worlds. the world down here that is about, as Jesus announced, to kill him, get rid of him.

31:48 And Peter was horrified. It's never going to happen to you. And Jesus said, you're thinking the way man thinks, not the way God thinks. You've been inspired by Satan, actually, that kind of thinking. Two worlds. How real is the eternal world? Do you want to ask yourself that question every so often? I mean, am I kidding myself here?

32:12 You go into work on a Monday morning, am I kidding myself? As you're facing the same challenges day and daily, the same suffering, the same challenges in your life, am I kidding myself here? Is this real? Jesus gave them this remarkable experience of the reality of the eternal world. Normally, the way we see it is through death. Ahab wouldn't have had any question about the reality of the eternal world after his death. Neither would Ahaziah or Jehoshaphat or us, any of us. None of us will have any question.

32:57 The key thing is perceiving its reality before we die so that that reality impacts our lives. So Jesus gave them a special experience of seeing the kingdom of God. And there they were in a mountain, Jesus was praying. And as he prayed, he was transformed before them. This is not science fiction. This is not Star Wars. This is real space-time history. And as part of that experience, Moses and Elijah are brought across space and time and stand with him on the mountain.

33:35 And they are in discussion. They're talking about, not the fact that these terrible people are going to kill Jesus isn't that awful, but they're talking to Jesus about the exodus that he is going to accomplish in total control. What's happening here is that we are being brought into a kind of strategic discussion in the heavenly places involving Jesus, Moses the great lawgiver, Elijah the great prophet, both of whom had very interesting ways of going out of this world. And here they are on this mountain with Jesus, startling, pulling back the curtain of the eternal world to show them the reality that we're dealing with here. and you can imagine Peter and the others while they were overwhelmed after this kind of recovered he suggested crazy stuff building tents to keep them there had he not listened to what Jesus had said about going to Jerusalem and accomplishing Exodus no of course not just completely overwhelmed very human like all of us and then A cloud appeared and they were pulled into the cloud.

35:05 And suddenly this little world that seems so real to us and solid seemed very shaky. And in that cloud a voice from heaven saying, This is my son. Listen to him. Peter writes about the experience in his letter. And he says, yeah, it's true. We were there. We were on the mountain. We witnessed that.

35:37 It happened. We heard the voice. But then he said, look, we have got something better than that. And you go, what is that? We have got the more sure word of prophecy. given to us by God, which is meant to have, therefore, the same impact on us of making the eternal world real to us. That world that Elijah represented, that world that Ahaziah knew was there, but rebelled against and opposed with all his might and lost his life. tragically,

36:30 the reality of the eternal world. So these ancient stories, they may seem grim, and they are grim. There's serious issues going on. But at the same time, there is that, certainly to me, that enormous encouragement. I go back to Jehoshaphat, the simplicity of it. he did what was right in the eyes of now you need to fill a blank in the eyes of me, in the eyes of my peer group, in the eyes of my culture, in the eyes of the world in the eyes of the media, in the eyes of or in the eyes of the Lord. And your answer to that will depend on what you think of Jesus.

37:33 Let's pray. Father, thank you again for vivid images that stick in our mind. A fallen king injured beyond human help and yet his failure seek you. And if there are any of us like that, Lord, open our eyes to see the reality of the eternal world, the eternal kingdom, your grace, your mercy, and your judgment so that we might respond. May the power of your word be living and active in our lives and make your kingdom even more real to us as a result of engaging with these stories so that we can live our lives and do what is right in the sight of the Lord Jesus. Amen.