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

Q. Trusting God When All Hope For Deliverance Seems Futile

(2 Kings 11:1-21)

Introduction: (To show the need . . . )

Sometimes we just need encouragement that God is still there and that He will deliver us. This is such a time:

(1) In a letter to the Republican-American, February 8, 2019, p. 6A, James Robinson of Waterbury lamented how "Govs. Andrew Cuomo, D-N.Y., and Ralph Northam, D-Va., have signed or supported legislation that would allow a baby's life to be terminated minutes before (and even minutes after) it is born . . . Where is the public outcry about this situation? . . . What kind of a people have we become when we consider legalizing such acts?"

(2) Jonah Goldberg's column, "The problem with social justice" (Ibid.) wrote of "the Green Party platform on social justice," noting it really means "taking money from the haves and giving it to the have-nots," Marxist ideology that promotes covetousness, stealing and the idolatry of materialism in violation of three of the Ten Commandments.

(3) The religious realm is polluted by evil, too: Nicole Winfield's article, "U. S. nuns urge changes to male-led church hierarchy" (Ibid., p. 6D) reported that "Pope Francis publicly acknowledged the problem of priests and bishops sexually abusing nuns." One would think we have heard enough in recent months of widespread sexual abuse of children by clerics in the Church -- we now have to hear of their abuse of nuns, too.

(4) Evil also affects evangelical realms: though "Darwinian evolution was the biological basis of" both "Adolph Hitler and his Nazism" and "Joseph Stalin and his Communism," the evangelical group "BioLogos, a theistic evolution organization," has "'repeatedly made the case that we must relinquish the inerrancy of the Bible and accept that the biblical writers worked from a defective understanding of the world and its origins.'" (Brannon Howse, Religious Trojan Horse, 2012, p. 57-58, citing Albert Mohler, "No Pass from Theological Responsibility -- The BioLogos Conundrum, Nov. 9, 2010, posted at: http://www.albertmohler.com/2010/11/09/no-pass-from-theological-responsibility-the-biologos-conundrum/.) This evangelical organization is thus pressing fellow evangelical Christians to give up holding to belief in the inerrancy of Scripture in order to accept belief in evolution!

Need: So, we ask, "Where is the encouragement to trust God when hope for deliverance from evil seems lost?!"

I. God promised David's royal line perpetual existence in His 2 Samuel 7:4-17 Davidic Covenant, but spiritual failures by multiple people seemed to have destroyed all hope for that promise to be fulfilled:

A. When Athaliah, the daughter of Ahab and Jezebel, learned that her son Judah's king Ahaziah had been slain by Jehu (2 Kings 9:27), she tried to destroy all of the Davidic princes so she could seize the throne, 2 Kings 11:1.

B. Her brutal act was the result of the spiritual failure of many people in various ways over many years:

1. It all began with the mother-goddess cult in ancient Babylon that was begun by Semiramis, a cult that is still mutating and will become the worldwide false religion "Babylon the Great" in the Great Tribulation, and Semiramis's cult spawned among other religions the Baal and Ashtoreth religion mentioned in the Bible. (Zon. Pict. Ency. Bib., v. One, p. 356; Harry A. Ironside, "Babylonian Religion," Idolphin.org)

2. That Baal cult spread to Phoenicia, becoming Jezebel's religion, and she married Ahab king of Israel who sinfully married her as a pagan princess only to adopt her Baal religion, a barbaric, sensuous cult, 1 Kings 16:29-33; Merrill F. Unger, Archaeology and the Old Testament, 1973, p. 171-177. Consequently, not only was Jezebel a brutal woman, mirroring her religious cult's brutality as she tried to kill off the prophets of the Lord (1 Kings 18:4), but her daughter Athaliah adopted her mother's calloused brutality of Baalism.

3. Later, good king Jehoshaphat of Judah then unbiblically formed an alliance with Israel's king Ahab by giving his son Jehoram in marriage to Ahab's daughter Athaliah, 2 Chronicles 18:1 ESV with 2 Kings 8:25-27. That marriage positioned the brutal Athaliah into the royal family of the Davidic line in Judah.

4. Then when God had Jehu anointed king in order to eradicate Ahab's family, Jehu in selfish ambition went beyond destroying just Ahab's house to killing Judah's king Ahaziah, 2 Kings 9:27. That act gave Athaliah opportunity to employ her own selfish ambition in her brutality to seize Judah's throne.

5. Accordingly, Athaliah's brutality led her to try killing all her deceased son Ahaziah's male offspring, even if they were her grandsons, to eradicate the royal line of Davidic so she could seize the Davidic throne.

II. However, by means of the tiny thread of a singly baby boy's life, a life that was spared by a few godly people, God kept His Davidic Covenant promise alive, 2 Kings 11:1-21:

A. While Athaliah was slaying the royal seed, her step-daughter Jehosheba who was married to the Hebrew High Priest Jehoiada, secretly hid one of Ahaziah's infant sons and his nurse in a storage room for mattresses and couches in the temple where any sound by the baby would be unheard by the outside world, especially by Athaliah herself, 2 Kings 11:2; Ryrie Study Bible, KJV, 1978, ftn. to 2 Kings 11:2.

B. There, this baby named Joash was hidden for six years while Athaliah ruled the land, 2 Kings 11:3.

C. When Joash turned seven, Jehoiada took an oath in God's name from select temple guards he could trust to topple Athaliah, informing them of Joash's existence and showing them the young prince, 2 Kings 11:4.

D. Jehoiada then arranged for Joash to be crowned on the temple grounds where Judah's kings were customarily crowned, having the boy surrounded by armed guards with orders to kill anyone who approached their ranks lest they try to break through them to kill Joash, 2 Kings 11:5-9. Jehoiada also used the weapons king David of old had stored in the temple to arm his guards versus using weapons from the regular army lest any news of his plan to topple Athaliah be leaked back to her through men loyal to her in the regular army, 2 Kings 11:10.

E. When Joash was crowned on a Sabbath day when worshipers of Judah's true God would be present in abundance and supportive of a true Davidic king versus the Baal-worshiping Athaliah, the people present and the guard surrounding Joash clapped their hands and shouted loudly, "God save the king!" (2 Kings 11:11-12)

F. Athaliah heard the noise of the coronation in the nearby palace, so she entered the temple precinct only to see a true son of David had just been crowned king! She became upset, tearing her clothes and hypocritically crying, "Treason! Treason!" though she herself was the one who was guilty of that crime! (2 Kings 11:13-14)

G. Jehoiada had given orders that the guard not execute her on the temple grounds lest her blood pollute the area, so guards arrested her and led her out to the nearby palace area where they executed her, 2 Kings 11:15-16.

H. Jehoiada then made a covenant between the Lord, the new king Joash and the people to follow God (2 Kings 11:17) and all the people of the land destroyed Athaliah's temple of Baal and its chief priest, 2 Kings 11:18a.

I. The High Priest Jehoiada then posted guards at the temple of the Lord, and Joash was led under armed guard from God's temple to the palace where he was seated on David's throne, the line of David still existing in fulfillment of God's Davidic Covenant, 2 Kings 11:18b-19.

J. Consequently, all the people of the land rejoiced and the city of Jerusalem was quiet, for the oppressive rule of brutal, Baal-worshiping Athaliah had ended and a son of David was back on Judah's throne, 2 Kings 11:20-21.

Lesson: Though spiritual failure by multiple parties seemed to end all hope that God would sustain His Davidic Covenant, God protected that covenant through the thin thread of a baby boy's preservation by a few godly people.

Application: (1) May we trust in Christ for salvation from sin, John 3:16. (2) Amid the assault of evil that we face, may we recall that God always keeps His Word, even if it is by a slender thread, that we keep trusting Him to do so.

Conclusion: (To illustrate the message . . . )

In our introduction, we noted how the evangelical group BioLogos has repeatedly urged evangelical Christians to give up holding to the inerrancy of written Scripture that teaches pure creationism and adopt evolution as true.

However, much as God kept His Davidic Covenant alive by the thin thread of Joash, a son of David, by the words of the Ultimate Son of David and Messiah, Jesus Himself, God upholds Scripture's inerrancy and creationism:

(1) In Matthew 5:18 KJV, Jesus said, "For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled." Now, "(t)he jot is the smallest Hebrew letter, yodh, which looks like an apostrophe ('). A tittle is a very small extension or protrusion on several Hebrew letters which distinguish these letters from similar ones," Ryrie Study Bible, KJV, 1978, ftn. to Matt. 5:18. Even the smallest Hebrew letter or the very smallest protrusion on a Hebrew letter that distinguishes that letter from other ones, like the contrast between our capital letter "O" and capital letter "Q" that affect the spelling and hence the meaning of a word, will not pass from Scripture till God fulfills it! Jesus thus taught the inerrancy of Scripture down to the very letters or even parts of letters that affect a letter's identity and hence a word's spelling and consequent meaning!

(2) Applied to the issue of creation versus evolution, Christ's argument in Matthew 19:4-6 refers to Genesis 1:27 and 2:24, and it rests on the idea that a man and woman in marriage are "one flesh" as taken from the Genesis 2:21-22 record that God made Eve from Adam's rib, explaining how they were "one flesh." The creation of an adult woman from an adult man's rib in that passage cannot possibly involve any kind of evolution! Had mankind evolved, they would have evolved as male and female together, not as Genesis 2:21-22 presents them as the man being created by God first and the woman later from the man's rib! Jesus Christ held to pure creationism, and should we!

May we trust in Christ for salvation. May we trust God to keep His Word no matter what evil we face!