OT: 2 Kings
This week we look at 2 Kings. This is the concluding book in the history of the nation of Israel. Last week, looking at 1 Kings, we saw the decline of the nation from its heights of glory under King Solomon, to the depths of idolatry under the kings who followed him.
We saw the division of the kingdom into two halves. The Northern Kingdom, Israel, is compromised of 10 tribes, with headquarters in Samaria. The Southern Kingdom, Judah, consists of Judah and Benjamin, with headquarters in Jerusalem.
The decedents of King David still sit on the throne of Judah. The throne of Israel has been passed from one man to another, mostly through treachery, murder, and military coup.
1 Kings revolved around Solomon and Elijah. Solomon made small compromises with the surrounding culture. Overlooked “small” sin, disobedience to God, and ended in idolatry.
Elijah, however, stood resolutely against the idolatrous practices of the prevailing culture. He refused to compromise or dilute his worship of Yahweh. He stands as a shining example to us of what it looks like to stand alone against a hostile culture.
As we look at 2 Kings we will, sadly, see the fall of both Northern and Southern Kingdoms, as they give way to the culture and end in captivity to it.
Along the way, we will learn two important ideas.
- You become what you worship
- God is God everywhere
- God controls history
As we study 2 Kings, we’ll see all of these truths demonstrated and learn what they mean to us, and how we are to live our lives in light of them.
The transition from 1 Samuel to 2 Samuel was bridged by the death of King Saul. The transition from 2 Samuel to 1 Kings was bridged by the death of King David. The transition from 1 Kings to 2 Kings is bridged by the departure of Elijah.
Notice my wording, departure not death.
Elijah’s main opponents was King Ahab and his wife Jezebel. Ahab ruled over Israel, in the North, and Elijah confronted his idolatry and worship of Baal, resulting in the execution of 450 false prophets.
At the end of 1 Kings, Ahab has died and his son Ahaziah has become king in his place. Shortly after beginning his reign, Ahaziah takes a nasty fall and is confined to bed. He sends his trusted men to inquire of the pagan god Baal-zebub, asking whether he will recover. Elijah intercepts the men and sends them back to the king with the bad news that he won’t.
5 The messengers returned to the king, and he said to them, “Why have you returned?” 6 And they said to him, “There came a man to meet us, and said to us, ‘Go back to the king who sent you, and say to him, Thus says the Lord, Is it because there is no God in Israel that you are sending to inquire of Baal-zebub, the god of Ekron? Therefore you shall not come down from the bed to which you have gone up, but you shall surely die.’” 7 He said to them, “What kind of man was he who came to meet you and told you these things?” 8 They answered him, “He wore a garment of hair, with a belt of leather about his waist.” And he said, “It is Elijah the Tishbite.” (ESV)
Notice that Elijah said “Thus says the LORD…” This is common prophet speak. The prophets almost always preface their announcements with this phrase. In you English Bible when you see the world LORD in small capital letters, it means the name of God is used there. The Hebrew word is Yahweh. It means, “self existent, or eternal.”
I just want you to see that this is not some vague notion of a god, but the name of the one true God, that is being used here. Yahweh is speaking up and making himself known. Yet the people are still worshiping the false gods of the culture.
And so the king sends a captain of the army to Elijah, three times. The first two times, fire comes down from heaven to consume them. The third time the captain is humble and seeks mercy. Elijah goes with him, delivers the judgment in person, and the king dies.
In chapter 2 is the story of Elijah’s departure from earth. Elisha has vowed not to leave Elijah’s side, but to stay with him till the end. Elijah has promised that if Elisha witnesses his being taken, he will gain the reward he asked for, a double portion of the spirit that rests on Elijah.
Elijah smacks the Jordan river with his rolled up cloak and it parts so the two cross on dry ground. As they are walking along, chariots and horses of fire descend from heaven and carry Elijah away. He is one of only two men taken before natural death. Enoch was the other.
Elisha witnessed the whole event and gained the reward. He is now the prophet in Israel. The next several chapters are replete with miracles performed by Elisha the prophet.
- Parts the Jordan River – ch 2
- Heals poison water – ch 2
- Bears maul young boys who taunted him – ch 2
- Provides water for army – ch 3
- Delivers military victory – ch 3, 6
- Multiplies a widows oil – ch 4
- Raises the dead – ch 4
- Purifies poison stew – ch 4
- Feeds a multitude with small number of loaves – ch 4
- Cures leprosy – ch 5
- Makes iron ax head float – ch 6
- Prophesies a famine – ch 7
Even after his death, his bones cause extreme miracles.
20 So Elisha died, and they buried him. Now bands of Moabites used to invade the land in the spring of the year. 21 And as a man was being buried, behold, a marauding band was seen and the man was thrown into the grave of Elisha, and as soon as the man touched the bones of Elisha, he revived and stood on his feet. (ESV)
That is the life of Elisha. We’re going to come back in a minute and look at one of those stories in detail. In the mean time, let’s look at what’s happening with the kings of the land.
The Northern Kingdom of Israel is to go through 11 kings in the first 17 chapters of 2 Kings. Only one of them has any redeeming qualities. Jehu is anointed as king by one of the “sons of the prophets” at Elisha’s bidding. He then proceeds to consolidate power by putting to death both Northern and Southern Kings, Queen Jezebel, all of king Joram’s 70 sons, all of Ahab’s sons, and all the prophets of Baal.
Because he had done all this, God promised to let his sons rule over Israel for four generations. But Jehu’s heart was not devoted entirely to Yahweh. He continued the sin of Jeroboam, that is the worship of the golden calves. He failed to be exclusive to Yahweh in his worship and God began to take away part of the Land of Promise.
Enemies rose up and conquered parts of the land.
The nine kings who followed him continued to engage in idolatry. Concerning each of them it says virtually the same thing,
24 And he did what was evil in the sight of the Lord. He did not depart from all the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, which he made Israel to sin. (ESV)
The last king to reign in Israel was Hoshea. His story is told in chapter 17.
17:1 In the twelfth year of Ahaz king of Judah, Hoshea the son of Elah began to reign in Samaria over Israel, and he reigned nine years. 2 And he did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, yet not as the kings of Israel who were before him. 3 Against him came up Shalmaneser king of Assyria. And Hoshea became his vassal and paid him tribute. 4 But the king of Assyria found treachery in Hoshea, for he had sent messengers to So, 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. 5 Then the king of Assyria invaded all the land and came to Samaria, and for three years he besieged it.
6 In the ninth year of Hoshea, the king of Assyria captured Samaria, and he carried the Israelites away to Assyria and placed them in Halah, and on the Habor, the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes. (ESV)
And so Israel fell. The people were carried away into captivity. This happened in the year 722 BC. This defeat and captivity happened because of the people’s idolatry.
7 And this occurred because the people of Israel had sinned against the Lord their God, who had brought them up out of the land of Egypt from under the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt, and had feared other gods 8 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. 9 And the people of Israel did secretly against the Lord their God things that were not right. They built for themselves high places in all their towns, from watchtower to fortified city. (ESV)
The did not stand firm against the idolatry of the surrounding culture, but instead gave way to it. They didn’t stop worshiping Yahweh, they just worshiped other gods in addition.
We are not unlike them. We do the same thing. We worship Jesus on Sunday and Wednesday, but we secretly worship other gods. We harbor “high places” in our lives. Parts of ourselves that we don’t clean out and hand over to King Jesus, but instead retain ownership for ourselves, or give ownership away to the gods of the culture.
We talked about this last week when we looked at the downfall of Solomon. This week, Kevin DeYoung, one of the authors of “Young, Restless, and Reformed” is posting a series on his blog entitled, “Our High Places.” He is identifying areas of our lives, both individual and corporate, that he feels have not been given over to Jesus, but instead we have harbored disobedience in these areas.
But something far worse happened than merely idolatry. The author of 2 Kings points it out in verse 15.
15 They despised his statutes and his covenant that he made with their fathers and the warnings that he gave them. They went after false idols and became false, and they followed the nations that were around them, concerning whom the Lord had commanded them that they should not do like them. (ESV)
They became what they worshiped. They worshiped false idols and became false. The same is true of us. We become what we worship! If we worship Christ, we become Christ-like. If we worship the gods of the culture, we become like the culture.
This is why Paul warns us in Romans to exclusively worship Jesus.
12:1 I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. 2 Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. (ESV)
Earlier in Romans (8), Paul had said that we were predestined to be conformed into the likeness of Christ.
So this is our first point. You become what you worship. Worship Jesus!
Now, let’s go back and pick up point #2. God is God everywhere.
During the time of Elisha’s prophesying, the king of Syria had a general named Naaman. His story is instructive.
Naaman was a great man. He was commander of the armies of Syria. He was a leper. This was a difficult thing for him, I’m sure. He has tried every cure, every appeal to every deity he knows of. Yet he was not cured. Then, from a Hebrew slave, he hears of Yahweh, and of Elisha. So his king sends him to Israel seeking to be cured. The king of Israel fears this because if Naaman is not cured, he fears it will mean war. Elisha hears of this and sends for Naaman.
8 But when Elisha the man of God heard that the king of Israel had torn his clothes, he sent to the king, saying, “Why have you torn your clothes? Let him come now to me, that he may know that there is a prophet in Israel.” 9 So Naaman came with his horses and chariots and stood at the door of Elisha’s house. 10 And Elisha sent a messenger to him, saying, “Go and wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored, and you shall be clean.” 11 But Naaman was angry and went away, saying, “Behold, I thought that he would surely come out to me and stand and call upon the name of the Lord his God, and wave his hand over the place and cure the leper. 12 Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Could I not wash in them and be clean?” So he turned and went away in a rage. 13 But his servants came near and said to him, “My father, it is a great word the prophet has spoken to you; will you not do it? Has he actually said to you, ‘Wash, and be clean’?” 14 So he went down and dipped himself seven times in the Jordan, according to the word of the man of God, and his flesh was restored like the flesh of a little child, and he was clean. (ESV)
And so Naaman is cured. This story is packed with great stuff, but let’s keep reading to see the point I’m after.
15 Then he returned to the man of God, he and all his company, and he came and stood before him. And he said, “Behold, I know that there is no God in all the earth but in Israel; so accept now a present from your servant.” 16 But he said, “As the Lord lives, before whom I stand, I will receive none.” And he urged him to take it, but he refused. 17 Then Naaman said, “If not, please let there be given to your servant two mules’ load of earth, for from now on your servant will not offer burnt offering or sacrifice to any god but the Lord. 18 In this matter may the Lord pardon your servant: when my master goes into the house of Rimmon to worship there, leaning on my arm, and I bow myself in the house of Rimmon, when I bow myself in the house of Rimmon, the Lord pardon your servant in this matter.” 19 He said to him, “Go in peace.”
But when Naaman had gone from him a short distance, (ESV)
This is a strange part of the story. Naaman is cured, recognizes Yahweh, then asks for some dirt. You see, in that culture, the pagan gods were geographically limited. Each god had a certain area he was god of. So Naaman makes the assumption, wrongly, that Yahweh is similarly limited. He thinks Yahweh is tied to the dirt in this particular region of the earth, so as he prepares to return to Syria, he wants to take some dirt with him so he can build for himself a place of worship to Yahweh.
He also asks for pardon, saying that when he returns to his job, his king will continue to worship the false god Rimmon, and he will be obligated to enter that place of worship.
Elisha answers with a simple “Go in peace.” Not a very satisfying answer. But a good one. No dirt is given, it is not needed. God is not bound by space or time as we are. He is God of the whole earth.
A similar question is asked of Jesus by the woman at the well. Seeking to change the subject and get the heat of spotlight off her sin, the woman asks Jesus,
19 The woman said to him, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. 20 Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.” (ESV)
Jesus answered,
21 Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. 22 You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. 24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” (ESV)
God is God everywhere. If we are to worship him, we must worship him in spirit and in truth. We must worship him everywhere, not just in the church building. We must worship at home, at school, at work, while playing sports, while fishing, while watching a movie, etc.
If we are to worship Yahweh, we must worship him with our whole lives and do so with our whole hearts. We cannot limit our worship of him to Sundays and Wednesdays, or the church building. We must understand that we have been born of the Spirit and and must worship in spirit and truth. That means we worship him exclusively and exhaustively. We worship him with our whole life and our whole heart.
Now on to point three.
Judah did not fair much better than Israel. During the span of time covered in 2 Kings, the Southern Kingdom saw the reigns of 15 kings and 1 queen. Of these kings 9 did evil in leading the people into gross idolatry, 4 did what was right except they did not remove the high places, only 2 actually followed Yahweh wholeheartedly. Hezekiah and Josiah.
Hezekiah’s story is told in chapters 18-20, and Josiah’s story is told in chapters 22-23. Even with the reforms and revivals these kings brought, the kingdom of Judah because idolatrous just as the Northern Kingdom had.
Just like Israel, God judged Judah and brought about the nations downfall and captivity, this time to Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon.
25:1 And in the ninth year of his reign, in the tenth month, on the tenth day of the month, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came with all his army against Jerusalem and laid siege to it. And they built siegeworks all around it. 2 So the city was besieged till the eleventh year of King Zedekiah. 3 On the ninth day of the fourth month the famine was so severe in the city that there was no food for the people of the land. 4 Then a breach was made in the city, and all the men of war fled by night by the way of the gate between the two walls, by the king’s garden, though the Chaldeans were around the city. And they went in the direction of the Arabah. 5 But the army of the Chaldeans pursued the king and overtook him in the plains of Jericho, and all his army was scattered from him. 6 Then they captured the king and brought him up to the king of Babylon at Riblah, and they passed sentence on him. 7 They slaughtered the sons of Zedekiah before his eyes, and put out the eyes of Zedekiah and bound him in chains and took him to Babylon. (ESV)
21 And the king of Babylon struck them down and put them to death at Riblah in the land of Hamath. So Judah was taken into exile out of its land. (ESV)
This looks like dark times. This people, this kingdom, was supposed to be a shining example to the world of the worship of Yahweh. God had promised Abraham that through his offspring all the peoples of the earth would blessed. God had promised David that his descendent would reign forever on the throne. And now the nation is destroyed. The Temple is destroyed. The people are taken captive, exiled in a foreign land.
Yet there is hope even in this darkness. For the enemy has not won. This was not Satan’s doing. This happened because the Lord willed it. The Lord caused it!
18 Therefore the Lord was very angry with Israel and removed them out of his sight. None was left but the tribe of Judah only.
19 Judah also did not keep the commandments of the Lord their God, but walked in the customs that Israel had introduced. 20 And the Lord rejected all the descendants of Israel and afflicted them and gave them into the hand of plunderers, until he had cast them out of his sight. (ESV)
God caused this horrible affliction, and there is hope in that. Our third point was that God is in control of history, and that brings us hope. Our God is a God who keeps his promises. Though things may look dark to us, God knows the end from the beginning. He is in control of world events. Nothing happens outside His sovereign will. There is hope in the darkness.
The latter part of 2 Kings mentions several prophets, among them is Isaiah. Next week we’ll look at the book that bears his name, and we’ll see events from his perspective. We’ll see the hope of light in the midst of darkness. For now, let’s fast forward all the way to 1 Peter.
3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, 5 who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. 6 In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, 7 so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. 8 Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, 9 obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.
10 Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully, 11 inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories. 12 It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you, in the things that have now been announced to you through those who preached the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look.
13 Therefore, preparing your minds for action, and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. 14 As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, 15 but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, 16 since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.” 17 And if you call on him as Father who judges impartially according to each one’s deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile, 18 knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, 19 but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. 20 He was foreknown before the foundation of the world but was made manifest in the last times for the sake of you 21 who through him are believers in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God. (ESV)
We are much like the Israelites in this book, idolaters, exiles in a hostile land, hoping in God for deliverance from the powers of this world, looking to the future, worshiping in the present. Our God is God everywhere, and He controls history. Our hope is secure with him. Worship him with your whole heart and life, and become like his blessed son, our savior, Jesus Christ.
