THRU THE BIBLE EXPOSITION

The Books Of Kings: The Kings Of Israel And Judah From Solomon To The Babylonian Captivity

III. The Latter Era Of The Divided Kingdom, 2 Kings 2:1-27:41

O. Handling Destructively Evil Leaders God Permits To Arise

(2 Kings 8:25-10:17)

Introduction: (To show the need . . . )

Romans 13:1b KJV claims "(T)he powers that be are ordained of God." However, we may ask why God lets destructively evil leaders arise and how we are to respond to them! We mention some areas of concern (as follows):

(1) The Republican-American, January 18, 2019, p. 6A, recently ran two editorials complaining about elected officials either "bullying" other people with their power of office ("Will Mr. Tong act like and AG?") or "seldom" caring "about costs" to taxpayers (Chris Powell, "Mourn loss of literacy, not theater").

(2) Marc Thiessen's editorial, "Only socialists can be ignorant" (Ibid., January 28, 2019, p. 8A) complained that the mainstream media harmfully shields U. S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez from criticism since she's "a socialist." For example, she recently said, "'(T)he world is going to end in 12 years if we don't address climate change,'" but when Mr. Thiessen asked, "Where are the articles . . . ? Where are the journalists . . . ?" to critique such an unsettling error by such a high-ranking elected official, he himself answered, "Nowhere to be found," Ibid.

(3) Destructively evil leaders afflict us in religious realms, too: (a) "Many church growth conferences are sponsored by people and organizations like the Rockefellers and the Council on Foreign Relations" who apply the "Hegelian Dialectic Process" to churches to try to get unbelievers (the antithesis) into churches who can oppose believers (the thesis) so as to move them all to compromise (the consensus)! (Brannon Howse, Rel. Trojan Horse, 2012, p. 209-210) The goal of such leaders is to move believers away from their commitment to the moral absolutes of Scripture in order to set up a New World Order of global governance by way of moral relativism, Ibid., p. 211.

(b) Destructive leaders with Marxist ideology also afflict churches: "Manning Johnson, a former top member of the Communist Party" told "the Committee on Un-American Activities of the U. S. House of Representatives in July 1953" of the Communist Party's infiltration of "religious organizations" in the U. S. (Ibid., Howse, p. 100) He claimed, "'Communist agents'" were placed "'in the seminaries and divinity schools" to "divert the emphasis of clerical thinking from the spiritual to the material . . . toward the Communist program of 'immediate demands.''" (Ibid., p. 100-101) He added, "'This policy was successful beyond even Communist expectations,'" (Ibid., p. 101)

Need: So, we ask, "Why does God let destructively wicked leaders arise and how are we to respond to them?!"

I. When Elisha sent a student prophet to anoint Jehu as king over Israel, Elisha had him tell Jehu that his mission would be to destroy Ahab's house for its violent persecution of the godly, 2 Kings 9:1, 6-10a.

A. Elisha sent a student prophet to anoint Jehu to be king over Israel and heed God's call to Elisha's master Elijah that Jehu be anointed to execute some in Israel who had followed Baal, 2 Kings 9:1-2a; 1 Kings 19:15-17.

B. The student prophet's words to Jehu at his anointing reveal God would use Jehu to execute violent judgment against the house of Ahab for its acts of violent, idolatrous evil against the godly, 2 Kings 9:6-10a:

1. Jehu was to destroy Ahab's house for his wife Jezebel's slaughter of God's servants, 2 Kings 9:6-7 ESV.

2. Every male of Ahab's line would be slain and Jezebel's body would be eaten by dogs, 2 Kings 9:8-10a.

II. However, Elisha had the student prophet flee from Jehu right after anointing him, 2 Kings 9:2-5, 10b:

A. Elisha directed the student prophet to be ready to move swiftly, to "tie up" his outer robe garment for rapid movement in connection with his anointing of Jehu to be Israel's king, 2 Kings 9:1 ESV.

B. Also, the student prophet was to anoint Jehu in private separate from his military colleagues, and as soon as the student prophet had given Jehu God's instructions and anointed him, the prophet was to fling open the door of the house and flee from the scene. The student prophet obeyed this order from Elisha, 2 Kings 9:2-10a,b.

III. Elisha's reason for having the prophet flee from Jehu was to protect him from Jehu's sinful excesses:

A. The reaction of Jehu and his military colleagues to his anointing was sudden and sinfully excessive violence:

1. After the student prophet fled, Jehu told his military colleagues that he had just been anointed king to destroy Ahab's house, and his colleagues reacted by immediately coronating Jehu, 2 Kings 9:11-13.

2. Jehu thus quikly told his colleagues to seal off the city of Ramoth-Gilead around them to keep others from escaping to warn king Joram, Ahab's son, that Jehu was coming after him to kill him, 2 Kings 9:14-15.

3. As Jehu then rapidly drove his chariot toward Jezreel to get Joram, he kept the messengers Joram sent him, not letting them return to Joram, forcing each messenger to give him implied support, 2 Kings 9:16-21.

4. Jehu then slew Joram and also Judah's king Ahaziah who had been visiting him, 2 Kings 9:22-29; 8:25-29.

5. Jezebel heard that Jehu planned to kill her also, so as he approached Samaria to get her, Jezebel dressed up as a queen prepared to die in defiant dignity, and she even ridiculed Jehu, calling him a murderer like Zimri before him whose dynasty like Zimri's would soon perish, 2 Kings 9:30-31 with 1 Kings 16:8-20.

6. Jehu asked for help from Jezebel's servants, and they turned on her, throwing her out of an upstairs palace window so that she fell to the ground where Jehu trampled her under his horses' hooves, 2 Kings 9:32-33. Scripture was thus fulfilled: Jezebel's body was eaten by dogs next to the palace in the plot Naboth had owned, the man she had put to death to get his land for her husband, 2 Kings 9:34-37; 1 Kings 21:1-23.

7. However, Jehu by intrigue pressured men of Jezreel who had custody of Ahab's 70 young sons there to kill them, and he then tried to shift the blame for the alaughter of these young boys to others, 2 Kings 10:1-10.

8. Jehu was still not finished: at Jezreel, he killed all of Ahab's officials, friends and priests, what God had not told him to do, and when he traveled toward Samaria and met relatives of Judah's king Ahaziah, he slew all 42 of them through God had not told him to kill Ahaziah or his kinfolk, 2 Kings 10:11, 12-14.

9. Jehu continued to Samaria, meeting Jehonadab the son of Rechab along the way, and offering him a ride in his chariot to witness all Jehu said he would do for the Lord in slaughtering the rest of Ahab's kin, 2 Kings 10:15-17. Had Jehonadab refused, Jehu likely would have killed him as a foe: the verb "made him ride" in 2 Kings 10:16b is in the Hiphil stem, the causative nuance of the verb rakab, "mount and ride, ride" (Kittel, Bib. Heb., p. 575; B. D. B., A Heb. and Eng. Lex. of the O. T., p. 938-939), so Jehu caused or pressured Jehonadab to ride with him in his chariot to see all his violent slaughter of Ahab's kinfolk!

B. Accordingly, knowing the reaction of Jehu and his military colleagues to his anointing would be so suddenly and excessively violent, Elisha had the student prophet flee from Jehu immediately after anointing him lest the prophet himself be forced either to approve of Jehu's sinfully violent excesses or be slain as Jehu's enemy.

Lesson: Elisha told a student prophet to anoint Jehu as king to administer judgment on Ahab's house, but Elisha directed the prophet then immediately to flee from Jehu to avoid unwanted entanglement in his wicked excesses.

Application: (1) May we trust in Christ for eternal life, John 3:16. (2) May we realize that God lets destructively evil leaders rise to punish evils in the realms that they rule, but God calls us to avoid getting caught up all such sin.

Conclusion: (To illustrate the message . . . )

This sermon's lesson is applicable to what we face in the issues mentioned in our introduction (as follows):

(1) On destructive government officials who bully and financially fleece constituents, we must (a) realize God lets such officials rise to power to punish the public for accepting evolution as true with its amoral value system where the strong selfishly bully the weak in a "survival of the fittest" mentality! Evil officials adopt such an amorality and so take selfishly abusive advantage of vulnerable constituents. We must then (b) seek to live free of the influence and reach of such officials and hold to Biblical morals instead of adopting evolutionary amorality.

(2) On the mainstream media that destructively fails to give the public the truth, we must (a) realize God has let such a media rise to punish society for replacing the authority of true, written Scripture with false narratives rising from false human ideologies like Marxism. We must then (b) heed Scripture as our sole and final authority on all matters of faith and practice as opposed adopting competing, extrabiblical ideologies, Deuteronomy 13:1-3.

(3) On the "seeker-sensitive church growth movement" leaders under the Rockefellers and the Council on Foreign Relations who destructively try to get church people away from the moral absolutes of Biblical Christianity to promote a New World Order, we must (a) realize God has let such evil leaders arise to punish people in churches who adopt extrabiblical ideologies and practices in addition to or in place of Scripture. We must then (b) heed written Scripture alone as our final authority (1 Timothy 1:3-4; 2 Timothy 3:13-4:5), and (c) one Biblical practice is to keep the local church a place for ministering to BELIEVERS in HOLINESS, NOT to the UNSAVED so as to make them feel "comfortable" in the local church when the Holy Spirit to the contrary wants them to feel uncomfortable in coming under conviction of sin, righteousness and judgment to get saved, John 16:7-11!

(4) On Marxist leaders who try to get believers to move away from true spirituality to dwell on immediate material need issues, we must (a) realize God has let such leaders arise to punish church people who fail to rely on the Holy Spirit for true spiritual vitality and (b) to punish church people who heed the god of materialism! We must then (c) rely on the Holy Spirit to address matters of the heart and (d) not follow the false god of materialism, Galatians 5:16-23; 2 Timothy 1:1-14; 1 John 2:15-17!

May we trust in Christ for salvation. May we heed Scripture alone and rely on the Holy Spirit in living!