Well, this chapter tonight is sort of the credits of Israel. If you've watched a movie before, and I don't want to assume anything, I don't want to make any of you stumble, but if you watched a movie, at the end of the movie the credits go by. And you know how it is with the stars of the movie. They get their name on the screen in like 38-point font and just stays there for a long time while there's some action maybe still happening in the background. But then they start to speed up and the font gets smaller until you get to like the third grip. or the guy who bought lunch, or the guy who did the duct tape on the microphones. And they get their names in about four point font at light speed. This is the section of the book of Second Kings we're at. If you remember, Jehu had several chapters for him. Elisha had several chapters as a prophet for him. And now we're in the section where king after king gets paragraph after paragraph. And they're going left to right. They're just flying across the scene. And so it's easy to read this section and just, you know, you don't know these people. And so your eyes go through the section as well. But I want us to kind of pull the car over and look at it sort of as a case of castle intrigue here. This is the behind the scenes, what's really going on in the halls of power in Israel back then. Well, if you remember Darryl Strawberry, baseball player. I didn't watch baseball growing up, but I married into a Yankees family, and so I know about Darryl Strawberry. I like to remind Deidre's family that he was a Yankee. And all of his shame reflects upon the whole Yankee organization. He was not just any baseball player, of course. He was Rookie of the Year, an eight-time All-Star, four World Series championships. He was arrested repeatedly, actually. As often as he became an All-Star, he was arrested. Some guess he was arrested 14 different times during his baseball career, for everything from domestic violence to the occasional moving violation to recreational drug use. Who among us doesn't have 14 arrests? I don't know. Not me, for the record. It was interesting that he was never sentenced to jail throughout this time. Although he kept being arrested, he wasn't sent to jail. Over and over and over again, no matter what the crime was, he was put on parole. And even when he got arrested while being on parole, he was put on parole again. And if you know the story, one of his last arrests, but the time that did land him in jail, the judge initially was going to parole him. And the prosecutor stood up and said in a speech that you can watch on YouTube, I mean, this thing is on video and every, again, I don't want to cause you to stumble with the YouTube reference, but the prosecutor says, Your Honor, if he goes free, Americans will lose confidence in the judicial system. I mean, obviously, because he plays for the Yankees, he's walking out scot-free, but that's not acceptable. You can't get arrested that many times and keep going free. And the judge said, you know what, you're right, and told the bailiffs to take Strawberry into custody and take him off to jail. And the look on Strawberry's face matched almost exactly the look on his attorney's face as the bailiffs came forward and cuffed him. And Strawberry looked at the judge and then declared this. Your Honor, I want you to know that my life is headed in the right direction, as he went out the door to jail. That's where we are in the book of Second Kings. You have king after king that wants to look you in the eye and say, readers, I want you to know that my life is headed in the right direction, as the handcuffs are on their hand and they're let out the door screaming and kicking. What we see in the book of Kings tonight is a list of kings. Actually, there's seven kings in chapter 15, seven kings. And I'm going to take from them six lessons tonight. So that's going to be our outline tonight, six lessons from seven kings. And I don't, honestly, in full confession or dove, will get through all seven of these kings. But we'll give it a good effort. And if time runs out. They'll hang around for us next week if we need to come back to them. Wrapped up in this chapter is these seven kings. This tension in the Bible, we talked a little bit about it last week. How can God be both a just and a justifier? How can God keep both of his promises to Israel? He's made two promises to Israel, and at this point in the life of kings, they seem to contradict. These promises go back to the very nature of the old covenant itself. When God makes the covenant with Moses and he renews it with Joshua, he tells the people, if you follow me, I will bless you. At the same time, if you reject me, I will punish you. If you start worshipping the idols, if you go back to worshipping the rain god, if you stop worshipping Yahweh, I will start taking your land away from you. That's the tension. And yet he's promised Abraham that the Israelites would live in the land and would never use it. He's promised David he would have a descendant on the throne forever. So you have these two promises that you can say, okay, there's not a contradiction as long as Israel keeps faith. As long as Israel walks in faithfulness, these two promises are not in conflict with each other. But here, by this point of 2 Kings, the hope of Israel walking in obedience is long gone. So now these two promises are contradictory. How can God keep both of them? How can God tell Israel, you will always stay in the land? And if you worship idols, you will get kicked out of the land. How can he tell them that while they're worshiping idols? And then, of course, this promise is going to be reconciled in the person of Christ, who comes as the King of Israel. And he will be their true king. Israel will get cast out of the lands. But Christ is the true Israel, will come back and reign over his people as the second Adam. And he will establish a new people in the church. And then, ultimately, he will come back a second time to Earth and reign as the eternal king over his people from his throne in Jerusalem. But the prophets don't know this. The author of 2 Kings doesn't know how this is all going to play out. And so he's writing this chapter, 2 Kings 15, for you to experience this tension. Remember that there's two nations in 2 Kings. You need to understand that to get the most out of this chapter. There's the nation of Israel and the nation of Judah. These are two nations that have one blood but separated by war in their own idols. You can tell the difference between the two nations. Judah has the King of David on the throne, Israel has the ten tribes. Israel is bigger, they have ten tribes. Judah is smaller, they have 1.5 tribes. It's not that Judah is good and Israel is bad. You could say it this way, Judah is bad, Israel is worse. Judah is running from God, Israel is sprinting from God. The point of this chapter, though, is that no matter how bad you are, there's always grace if you turn from your sin. This is the tension that, as I mentioned earlier, how can God be both the just and justifier? The more you sin, the more God is glorified in your repentance. And you have to realize, in order to repent, that you are a sinner, that you have done wicked things. And that's what's so frustrating about the kings in 2 Kings 15, is they refuse to admit that they are evil kings. They refuse to come to terms with the nature of their sin. They may confess, yeah, I've done bad things, but they don't go from I've done bad things to I'm a bad person who needs a savior. And of course, it's a short drive from Israel to Springfield, Virginia. It's a short drive from that attitude in the ancient Near East to us present day. How often do we put sin in that category of, yeah, I did this and that was a mistake, but we don't let it get to, I have a sinful nature. But if you don't get to recognizing you have a sinful nature, you don't get to recognizing the grace of God and salvation. And so that's what's frustrating about this chapter as we look at these seven kings. Wonder, will they ever look in the mirror and see how broken they really are? Here's our first king. And the way we'll do our outline tonight, I'll give you the king's name, how long he reigned. We'll read about him. And I'll give you the lesson from him. The first king we have tonight is Azariah. And he reigned for 50 years. 50 years. Also known as Uzziah. He is the famous king from Isaiah 6. He's the one that the prophet Isaiah put his hope in. Isaiah thought that Uzziah would lead a revival, would rescue his people. And then Uzziah dies. And this is what breaks Isaiah's heart. Isaiah was confident that this would be the one who would rescue Jerusalem. This would be the one who would rescue Judah from her wicked ways. And then he dies. And you remember, he's crushed. And that's when the Lord appears to him and takes the coal and puts them in his lips. This is that king. Verse 1, in the 27th year of Jeroboam, king of Israel, Azariah, he's also known as Uzziah in the book of Isaiah, was the son of Amaziah, the king of Judah. He began to reign. He was 16 years old when he began to reign. And he reigned 52 years in Jerusalem. His mother's name was Jecholiah of Jerusalem. And you remember why he became king so young, because his father is the one that provoked the fight with Israel in the analogy from. from last week, remember the Chihuahua proposing the president, that analogy last week. That was his dad is the one who did this thing, gets hit by the bus. His dad gets crushed by the wild animal. He gets defeated by Israel in the war. He comes back to Jerusalem, and he gets kidnapped by the King of Israel, who takes him away into captivity. He finally escapes and goes back to Jerusalem. The people in Judah were so upset with him and so frustrated with him that they killed him. And then his son became king at 16 years old. He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, verse 3 says, in Yahweh's sight, according to all that his father Amaziah had done. Now, in light of what I just told you, remember that's a very low bar. So when it says he did right in the eyes of Yahweh according to Amaziah, it's a way of saying, I mean, what are we talking about here? Not David, right? Not like actually godly, right? But he was trying to be a good king. He tried to do right. It just didn't turn out all that well. Nevertheless, verse 4, the high places weren't taken away. The people still sacrificed and made offerings in the high places. And Yahweh touched the king. So he was a leper to the day of his death. And he lived in a separate house. And Jotham, the king's son, was over the household governing the people of the land." Now, that is outrageous right there. And you're supposed to know the rest of the story. It's not chronicled for you here, but it is in the book of 2 Chronicles. You don't need to flip there. The readers of 2 Kings would have known the story. I mean, this is an outrageous story. The king of Israel, their mighty noble king, the one that Isaiah was hoping in, becomes a leper. And they have to build a new house for him outside the city. Lepers aren't allowed in Jerusalem. Unclean, not allowed. Remember, that's a shout, unclean. You can't come near them. So what happens if the king becomes a leper? Then what do you do? Well, you build a house for him outside the city is what you do, and you wait for him to die. And that's what they did. What a tragic way to die if you're supposedly the godly king. So this is behind Isaiah weeping about Uzziah's death. Uzziah didn't die out of the blue. He was a leper and had to live in a house. outside of the city. Now, why did God, in the ESV and the Book of Second Kings, it's kind of minimalizing, isn't it? That God touched him and he became a leper and lived in the house outside. I mean, there's got to be more to the story than that. Well, of course, every Israelite would know the story. But I'm just gonna guess that there are a few of you who who don't if you want to just jot this down It's in 2nd Chronicles 26 But the story is that Uzziah had won all these battles and was riding unlike his father who lost all his battles Uzziah had won battles and was riding high and mighty and acted like he could do whatever he wanted to anywhere in the world and including in Jerusalem. So he comes back to Jerusalem, and he appoints himself priest for the day. He puts on priestly robes and goes into the temple to make a sacrifice. That is a no-no. Kings and priests are different people, different functions. There's a separation of powers in there. If you remember in the State of the Union a while ago, I don't remember how long ago, the Supreme Court justices are sitting there in the Hall of Congress, and President Obama said something bad about the Supreme Court. I forget what he said, but those people don't know what they're doing. And one of the Supreme Court justices mouths, you lie, or you're wrong, or not true. I forget what he said. But now you've got a showdown. All three branches of government colliding in one room. In Congress, the president. Talking smack to the Supreme Court justices, calling the president a liar in front of all of Congress. This is a judicial mess right here. All three branches crammed in one room. There's a reason in Israel that wasn't supposed to happen. The king was not supposed to go into the temple. The kings were not priests. The kings were not prophets. The priests were not prophets. The prophets were not priests. These three branches are separate. But the king ropes himself in the priestly robes, walks into the temple, and does a sacrifice. And the high priest is telling him, stop. Don't do this. Are you out of your mind? And so the king's secret service throws the high priest out of the temple. Heave ho. The high priest doesn't go quietly. He goes and gets 80 of his closest friends, and they come back and take on the king. And it's about to be a brawl in the temple between the secret service of the king and the high priest and all of his underling priests. What a rodeo. Makes Congress look dignified, doesn't it? Well, God intervenes. And God intervenes by taking the priest's side and strikes the king with leprosy. The debate is, does the king have the power to make a sacrifice before God in the high place? And God strikes the king with leprosy. The debate is settled at this point. And so not only is he not allowed back in the temple, he's not allowed back in Jerusalem. And he's ushered outside the city. Well, in 2 Kings, all it tells you is that Yahweh touched the king, so he became a leper to the day of his death. Well, there you have it. Now the rest of the acts of Azariah and all he did are not written in the book of Chronicles, Kings of Judah. Remember, that's not the biblical Chronicles, it's an extra-biblical book. And Azariah slept with his fathers, they buried him with his fathers in the city of David, and Jotham his son reigned in his place. Here's the lesson from Uzziah. Pride makes repentance impossible. Pride blinds you to the need of repentance. Remember, in order to repent, you need biblical repentance. We talked about this morning in Matthew 4. In order to understand biblical repentance, you have to recognize that it is a change of mind. A change of mind that produces a change of heart that produces a change in the direction of your feet. But if you don't recognize your sin, you're not going to repent. The gospel is life for the sick. Jesus is a doctor for those who recognize they are not well. Pride keeps you from going to the doctor. Pride keeps you from turning your car around. Pride keeps you from recognizing that you are a sinner. And if you don't recognize that you are a sinner, then repentance is impossible because you don't get that you're going the wrong way. Isaiah was so strong in his own eyes that he was incapable of repentance. You know, ask yourself, have you ever been in an argument where you were wrong? You might know people who would answer that question, no. I'm always right about everything. Well, if you're not always right about everything, it's almost like salvation's out of reach for you. You know, if you can't understand that not just are you wrong about things, but you're wrong in who you are, that you, because you're in the likeness of Adam, that you cherish sin, you're, in a sense, you're broken. And only the gospel can fix you. But the gospel only fixes those who recognize that they're broken. Remember, this is why when the Pharisees came out to John the Baptist at the river, John the Baptist said, you brood of vipers, who told you to repent of your sins? He wasn't saying that they don't need repentance. He was saying that who told them they need repentance? Did they recognize they needed repentance? I don't think so. They were there for the show. You have to first recognize that you are in need of a Savior before you recognize that Christ can be your Savior. It's so hard to find non-believers who recognize their sin. I mean, sure, there's those in the world who, you know, would say, oh yeah, I just like partying too much. I'm going to be in trouble when I die. But those people are the exception. Most people fancy themselves righteous enough to stand before God for judgment without a Savior. For those people, there's really no hope. They have to be broken before they can be rescued. I remember in high school a friend of mine named Sharif, who actually lives in Alexandria now. He's in the Marine Corps. I'm hoping he's not listening to this message. Sharif, in a biology class, took a test and he had a question that was incorrectly marked wrong. And he goes up to the teacher. This is a teacher that instilled fear in everybody in the class. And he was one of those dreaded teachers in high school. And Sharif goes up to him and says, I think that you marked this one incorrectly. And we're all listening, like, somebody is challenging the teacher. And the teacher looks at it and is like, yeah, I did get that one wrong, and keeps going through the test. And it's like, oh, but there's these other two you got right that I marked correct, but they were actually incorrect. So I made three mistakes. One, I gave you credit for an answer that you For two answers, you should have been marked wrong. And the other, I took credit away. You should have got it. So actually, your grade should be lower than it is. And so the teacher, at this point, you could tell, is aware that he has an audience of the whole class wrong. He says, you have a choice, Sharif. Do you want the grade you deserve or the grade you got mercifully? And Sharif, also aware of the audience here, stands up and is like, I want the grade I deserve. All right, my friend, mark down. There you go. That's how so many of us are with the Lord. We think that we can stand boldly before him because we deserve something better, that we deserve to be here. But that's not true. It isn't. All we have from the Lord is of grace. But pride keeps us from recognizing that. And pride keeps you from repenting. Well, on from Judah back to Israel here in verse 8, we're going to switch scenes here in the 38th year of Azariah, king of Judah. Remember, those are just time stamps. Azariah had been king 38 years when the camera switches from Judah over to Jerusalem, and there we find Zechariah. He's the son of Jeroboam, and he reigned over Israel and Samaria for six months. This is a very short reign. His reign is brief, but it gives us a picture of how God uses sin to fulfill his own promises. Let's read about it. Here, he did what was evil on the side of Yahweh, as his fathers had done. He did not depart from the sins of Jeroboam. Remember, that was the cow worshiping, the son of Nebat, which he made Israel to sin. Sherluam the son of Jabesh conspired against him and struck him down at Iblium and put him to death and reigned in his place. Now the rest of the deeds of Zechariah, behold, they're written in the book of Chronicles, Kings of Israel. I bet it's a short chapter. I mean, he was king for six months. This was the promise of Yahweh that he gave to Jehu. Your son shall sit on the throne of Israel to the fourth generation. And so it came to pass. A lesson from Zechariah's short six-month reign here. I love that the author of Kings draws out a lesson from this king that, you know, we don't really know anything about him except that he reigned for six months, but the author draws out this lesson. Sinful people are still inside of God's sovereign plan. Sinful people are still under God's sovereign control. God's not pleased with Zechariah's sin, of course. It says it didn't please the Lord. He did what was evil in Yahweh's sight, just like his father's has done. God does not approve of the idol worship. He doesn't approve of their sin. Nevertheless, this happened to fulfill Yahweh's promise. Well, what promise is that? It's a promise in 2 Kings 10, verse 30. Now, you may not remember this, but before Christmas, Back in early December, I told you, you should star that verse. You should box that verse. You should underline it or whatever. It was 2 Kings 10.30. Because I said, we'll get back to it. And this is us getting back to it right here. 2 Kings 10.30, Yahweh said to Jehu, because you've done well executing what is right in my eyes and have done to the house of Ahab according to all that was in my heart, your sons to the fourth generation shall sit on the throne of Israel. Now I won't. be too pedantic here and have you go through and write 1, 2, 3, 4 through them. But you could on your own time, in your own devotional this week, go through and find his four sons, write 1, 2, 3, 4. It's not that you're making a genealogical tree here. It's that you're tracing Yahweh's promises. And notice that they're fulfilled through wicked people. Jehu's sons did not do what was right in the eyes of Yahweh, yet God keeps his promise to them. What a powerful testimony to the sovereignty of our God. And notice that the last one reigns for six months. I mean, God is not stretching this out, is he? It's not like all of them got to reign for 50 years, like Uzziah did. No, by the end, he's like, you get six-month promises done. Cross that off the list. What a great testimony to the faithfulness of God that even wicked, cow-worshiping sinners are still used by him to fulfill his own promises. Who knows if Zechariah was even aware of God's promise to Jehu? Who knows? I doubt he's having his quiet times in the book of 2 Kings, for example. Who knows what he knew? But God knew what would happen and orchestrated his reign to fulfill his own promise. Jehu had enemies. I know we've got the chart in the back of the different kings. They don't really let you know how they're related to each other. To appreciate Jehu, just remind yourself there are no dynasties in Israel. You know, Ahab had a descendant reign. There's no real dynasties back then. In Judah, this is the dynasty of David. It goes forever. But in Israel, not so, except for Jehu. Jehu is really the shining dynasty in Israel because of God's promise, because God is faithful to keep his words. Let's go to our next king. Shalom, he reigns for, Shalom, he reigns for one month. Shalom, the son of Jabesh, began to reign in the 39th year of Uzziah, king of Judah. He reigned one month in Samaria. So no lessons from him. One month, we don't get anything about him. We forget that he existed. Moving on. That's why it's six lessons from seven kings, okay? It was a month. Some people live, all right, your lesson, some people live short lives. There you go. And we'll move on. Verse 14, then Menahem, the son of Gadi, came up from Tizra and came to Samaria. And he struck down Shalom, the son of Jabesh in Samaria, and put him to death and reigned in his place. So that's why only one month. Now the rest of the deeds of Shalom and the conspiracy he made, behold, they're written in the book of Chronicles, Kings Israel. At that time Menahem sacked Tisha and all who were in it and its territory from Tisra on because they didn't open it to him. Therefore he sacked it and he ripped open all the women in it who were pregnant. This is a civil war inside of Israel. He begins to attack Naphtali. Remember his his father was was killed and there becomes a civil war and so he attacks the the people here to put down his I mean, that's what kind of king Menahem is. He's a king who reigns in chaos, incompetence, evil, and tyranny all rolled up into one person. And it doesn't get better once he does his coup here and gets on the throne. He starts, you know, reigning outside of Samaria and sacks Tisa, but then he gets control of the country and he becomes the king. In verse 17, the 39th year of Azariah, king of Judah, Menahem, the son of Gad, he began to reign over Israel and he reigned 10 years in Samaria. He did what was evil in Yahweh's sight. God doesn't approve of ripping open the pregnant women there in verse 16. Of course he's evil in God's sight. He did not depart all his days from the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat which he made Israel to sin. This is this wicked king. He became king by killing his predecessor and to quell resistance he attacks the tribes that his predecessor was born in. He's brutal. He's not the wicked neighbor down the street. This kind of awfulness isn't happening in some other nation. It's happening in Israel. Their king is the one who's violating pregnant women, killing babies. Their new king is the one who murdered their old king and attacked that tribe that he's from. What's the lesson from this? I'm going to give you the lesson before I read the rest of his description here. Evil people laid the groundwork for their own destruction. The lesson from Menahem is that evil people laid the groundwork for their own destruction. When they do fall, they don't fall far. They fall into the traps that they have made for themselves. Let's read about Menahem's traps. Pul, the king of Assyria. Now, Pul is, in the secular world, he's a well-known king. Telgath, Pisler, ancient Near East history, he's kind of a big deal, so to speak. If you don't care about the Bible, you don't care about Israel, he's one of the more powerful kings in the world. He's known as Pul in the Bible. It's an abbreviation of his name, which is Tiglath-Pileser. Pileser, abbreviated to Pul. the king of Assyria, came against the lands. And Menahem gave Paul a thousand talents of silver so he could help him confirm his hold on royal power." Follow the logic of that real quick. He's being attacked by another country, so he bribed the other countries coming to steal his money. So he gives that other country his money so that he can stay king. I mean, still kind of complicated. Let me say it like this. You're going on a vacation, You're afraid your house might be robbed. And so you find the local burglar, and you give him all of your stuff so that when you come back, your house won't have been robbed. Is this a good plan? Well, I mean, it takes away the suspense of it, I guess. I mean, you know that you've been robbed because you gave the burglar your stuff. That's the way Menahem reigns. He gives the burglar his stuff. Instead of praying to the Lord for military delivery, he gives what the Syrians were coming to take. He just gives it to them. He gives it to them. Verse 20, Menahem exacted the money from Israel, that is, from all the wealthy men, fifty shekels of silver from every man to give to the king of Assyria. So the king of Assyria turned back and didn't stay there in the lands. And the rest of the deeds of Menahem and all that he did, aren't they written in the book of Chronicles, Kings of Israel? Menahem slept with his fathers, and Pechahiah his son reigned in his place. I mean, there's certainly an irony here. The irony in this, why does Israel even have a king? Do you remember that people wanted a king like the other nations had to do one thing? To lead them into battle. And Samuel said, no, you don't understand. You're not going to get a good king. You're going to get a Saul. You're not going to get a king that's going to be like the other nations and lead you valiantly in battle. You have the Lord to do that. But Israel never wanted the Lord to lead them into battle. They wanted a king like the other nations. Well, now they get one. And he's not leading him into battle. He's giving away their stuff. to the other kings. After Solomon's death, 10 of the tribes no longer wanted to be ruled by David, by Judas. They chose their own king and their own gods. Now they're losing to the nations around them. Hosea is a prophet during this time. He has somewhat of a sarcastic comment about Menahem's Move here. This is what Hosea writes about Menahem's bribery. Hosea 13, verse 10. Where now is your king to save you in all of your cities? Where are all your rulers, those of whom you said, give me a king and princes? Now, Hosea, we're talking hundreds of years after Samuel and Saul here. But Hosea is mocking Israel because of how their ancestors wanted a king. Hosea is asking them, where's the king you guys want? They have a king. It's not like the throne is vacant. They have one. And Hosea is mocking them. Where is the king you wanted? I see all the silver going away. Where's your king? You're the ones who said, give me king and princes. I'll give you a king in my anger, and I'll take away a king in my wrath, God says. Your kings will come and go to teach you a lesson. And of course, Manahem robs from Israel, and then will die. He's followed. Evil people lay the ground for their own destruction. He's going to be followed, of course, by Pekahiah. Pekiahiah, he's going to reign for two years. That's verse 23. In the 15th, or in the 50th year of Azariah, king of Judah, the Zuziagon is the end of his reign. Pekiahiah, son of Manahem, began to reign over Israel and Samaria. And he reigned for two years. He also did what was evil on the side of Yahweh. He did not turn away from the sins of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, which made Israel to sin. And Pecha, the son of Remelah, his captain, conspired against him with fifty men of the people of Gilead, and struck him down in Samaria, in the citadel of the king's house, with Argab and Arieh, to put him to death, and he reigned in his place. So he reigns for only a couple of years. He gets killed by one of his captains, one of his bodyguards. His secret service turns against him and kills him. This is a time of chaos and anarchy. Kings killing kings. Kings killing kings who killed other kings. The tribes are beginning to be cut off in this as they turn against each other. Here's a basic lesson for Pekiah. Evil kings are in contrast with the Prince of Peace. Evil kings are in contrast with the Prince of Peace. And we don't get that so much out of this section right here. But this is brought out by the prophet Isaiah. This is the king that was on the throne when Isaiah prophesied the virgin birth of Christ. He said, you want deliverance. God will deliver you. He really will. In fact, so that you know he will, a child will be born. Before he knows the difference between his right and his left, God will deliver you. And part of that prophecy, Isaiah chapter 9, unto you a child will be born. The government will be on his shoulders. His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Prince of Peace, Mighty God. I mean, we know this is the Christmas promise. It's an Advent passage. And I think it's helpful for you to see the force of that Advent passage is because the background of it is this utter chaos in Israel. Isaiah presents the future coming Messiah as a contrast with Israel's wicked rulers. God will give them a king. It's the same promise back in Saul's day. God will give them a king in his own time, and he will be better than the kind of kings they have. He's not going to be there to lead their people into war. The song we sang tonight, lead on kings eternal, king eternal. It's not with swords loud clashing. That's not the kind of king God will give. God is going to give them the Prince of Peace. Of the increase of His government and of His peace, there will be no end. On the throne of David and over His kingdom, He will establish it and uphold it with justice and righteousness forevermore. The zeal of Yahweh will do this. The nation's rage, Psalm 2 describes, the one enthroned in heaven laughs because He controls the wind, He controls the world, and He will harness all of this chaos to bring His Savior to the earth. And the cross, of course, is the focal point of human history. And God reigns over all of human history, directing it to Christ, even evil kings like Pekehaye. He's just there as a form of contrast. You often wonder, what is God doing with evil in the world? Sometimes he brings good out of it. Sometimes he brings good through it. Sometimes he strengthens your faith as you go through trials and temptations. But sometimes, it's not a cop-out to sometimes just say that evil is in the world for contrast. The night is dark so that you see the light of day. Evil is in the world so that you know that God does not like evil. that God doesn't delight in, and that's the case with Pecahiah's reign. Evil kings are a contrast with the prince of peace. King number six, Pecah. He reigns for 20 years. It's more like 10. That's because he took one tribe and reigned over it for 10 years before he ended up in Samaria. I won't bore you with the details of that. Read Chronicles if you want to know more about why 20 slash 10. But, verse 27, in the 52nd year of Azariah, king of Judah, Pecah, the son of Remeliah, began to reign over Israel and Samaria, and he reigned 20 years. Remember, 10 we were in Samaria, 10 elsewhere. He did what was evil on the side of Yahweh. He did not depart from the sins of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, which he made Israel to sin. In those days of Pekah, king of Israel, Tiglath-Pilser, king of Assyria, came and captured Eshon, Abel, Beth, Mekah, Janoah, Kadesh, Hazor, Gilead, Galilee, all the land of Naptali. And he carried the people captive to Assyria. Again, because there's a list of city names that you don't know, it's kind of easy to gloss over the significance of this. Napoli is one of the 12 tribes. It's gone. A tribe just got lost. Wake up in the morning and check out your newspaper and you see Canada absconded with a couple border cities and the state of Washington. Gone. Canadians kidnapped them all. Ushered them up to the Arctic Circle or wherever. That's what happens here. The 12 tribe gone. Naphtali kidnapped. God is now taking away Israel. The promise that he would let them dwell on the land, he is unwinding here as Naphtali is banished into exile. And by the way, the Syrians didn't just take you into exile and give you a passport and let you roam around the country. They put you into some other place that they had taken captive. And then they populate your place with people they took captive from somewhere else. And so if you're from the tribe of Gad or Manasseh or whatever, Ephraim, and you roll in the Naphtali one day, you don't find emptiness. You find all the houses. They're just not speaking Hebrew anymore. They're not Israelites. They're speaking Syrian or Arabic or whatever. That's what language is being spoken there. It's a different place. Everything's full. There's people there. They're just not Jewish anymore. That's what's happened here. He reigned for 20 years, but made a shipwreck of the country, Hosea. prophesized during this time. On that day of our king, the princes became sick with the heat of wine. He stretched out his hand with mockers, for with hearts like an oven they approach their intrigue. All night their anger smolders. In the morning it blazes like a flaming fire. All of them are hot as an oven. They devour their rulers. Their kings have fallen, and none of them calls upon me. That's Hosea's summary of this time period. The princes are killing each other. The captains are killing the kings. The tribes are getting taken captive. God is burning with anger. Meanwhile, none of them, none of them, none of them ask God for help. None of them. Basic warning from this. If warnings are ignored, the lesson from Pekah's reign, if warnings are ignored, judgment is imminent. If warnings are ignored, judgment is eminent. Israel is fast forwarding to oblivion. They, like Daryl Strawberry, are going in the wrong direction, but they proclaim they're going the right way. There's warning signs everywhere, but they're not heeding them. The tribes are disappearing. They're not paying attention. This is one of those situations where ignoring something doesn't make it go away. What are the warning signs? Well, they're losing a tribe. That's a warning sign. Their kings are getting murdered left and right. That's a warning sign. I remember lending one of my cars to a friend. It was an older car. It was amazing. The thing was held together, stereotypically with like bailing wire and duct tape kind of car. And I get a phone call. From her, she was driving in Los Angeles, and she says, I just heard a loud sound in the car, and all the lights went on. But it's still running. Where are you? I'm on the freeway. OK. Still running. I talk to my friends. Hey. To the guys I'm with, my roommates, hey. My car made a loud sound. All the lights are on. But it seems like it's still moving. And we all agree, that's not a big deal. Things are fine. So we tell her, all is well. Keep trucking. And I hang up the phone. And then I thought, you know what? I don't know anything about cars. I'm the wrong person to ask. So I call my dad, who knows about cars, as every good American should do. And my dad says, ooh, you should probably pull over immediately or the car might explode. You'll ruin the engine. OK. Pull over. Saved my car, barely. Had we ignored the warning signs, would have ruined the car. With your life, do you understand it works the same way? That when you start to entertain sin, God gives you warnings. He gives you confrontation from friends. He gives you little judgments in your life. Little pinches to get your attention. Little pangs in your conscience. Little warnings. that what you're doing will end poorly. And if you choose to ignore those warnings, what do you think will happen? If the lights come on on the dash, you've heard the loud sounds, you lost one of the 12 tribes, and you ignore this, how do you think the story will end? You cannot ignore the warning signs. If you feel your heart growing cold to the Lord, if you see devotional life as something of a bygone era, if you're not reading the Bible, if you're not evangelizing, if you're not praying in any way, if you don't see yourself growing in godliness, if you see yourself starting to entertain sins that a few years ago you wouldn't have entertained, I mean, don't just roll your eyes at that and ignore it. Receive that as a warning sign from the Lord. Listen, I'm not telling you if you're not evangelizing that you're probably not a Christian. I'm not saying that. I'm saying that God is giving you warning signs. If you're seeing areas of deficiency in your life, receive them as little warning lights on the dashboard of your life to wake up and pay attention. Because if you ignore them, judgment is around the corner. That's what happens next. That may be the case of some of you in your lives tonight, that you see your life falling apart, you love your sin, and God is giving you warnings to stop. If you ignore these warnings, they don't go away. They get worse. They get worse. And lo and behold, we've made it to our seventh king, Jotham. He reigns for 16 years. Really, more like 25. And for the same reason, again, he started overlapping with the king he was a rival with in the second year of Pekah. The son of Ramaliah, the king of Israel. Jotham, the son of Uzziah, king of Judah, begin to reign. He was 25 years old when he began to reign. He reigned 16 years in Jerusalem. His mother's name was Jerusha, the daughter of Zadok. He did what was right in the eyes of Yahweh. According to all this, Father Uzziah had done. Nevertheless, the high places weren't removed. The people still sacrificed and made offerings in the high places. He built the upper gate of the house of Yahweh. The rest of the acts of Jotham, all that he did, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of kings of Judah? In those days, Yahweh began to send Rezend, the king of Syria, and Pekah, the son of Ramaliah, against Judah. Judah is now getting it from the Syrians as well as from the Israelites. Jotham slept with his fathers, was buried with his fathers in the city of David, and Ahaz his son reigned in his place. Chapter 27, verse 2 of 2 Chronicles tells us that despite Jotham's upbringing, He did not do all that was right in the eyes of the Lord. He dealt very corruptly, his language of 2 Chronicles 27.2, with his life. Jotham made Judah rich. He expanded his father's military success. But he did not take public stands against sin. He loved money. He loved the income he was getting. He was a wealthy king. And he loved that more than he loved taking an opposition against sin. Proverbs 14.12. It says that there's a way that seems right to man, but in the end, it leads to death. The lesson from Jotham's life is that compromises never produces fidelity. He did what was right in the eyes of his father, just like in the eyes of Yahweh, just like his father has done, verse 34 said. But remember what happened to his father. Died a leper outside the city. That's Jotham's father. So again, when it says he did right in the eyes of the Lord, just like his dad, that's the standard we're dealing with here. What was his problem? He loved silver. He loved gold. He built a better gate to the temple. That was his big accomplishment described in 2 Chronicles. He built a nice gate for the temple. And described in verse 35 of chapter 15 here. He redid the temple gate. Great. With all the filthy lucre he got. Awesome. But it was not enough to rescue his life. There is a way that seems right to man, but in the end it leads to death. That's the sense of all of these kings. As I mentioned earlier, these kings stand in contrast with the true King of Israel. The true King of Israel, of course, being Jesus, who is the sinless Savior, whose kingdom has no beginning and no end, who reigns over the world with power and glory, and who offers forgiveness of sins to those who come to Him. In contrast with these kings who are strong, Men, as far as military went, they were weak men spiritually. What an awesome contrast with our Lord, who always received the weak. He always received the broken. And His kingdom will have no end. Father, we're grateful that You reign over all. That Your kingdom has been established of old, that You reign over the world. We're grateful that you've given us these lessons in our life, these warning signs. I pray that the people here tonight would take stock of their lives. They would examine it for spiritual warning signs, they would see areas of deficiencies, and they would make correction. Lord, we want to be humble people. We want to respond to your word. We don't want to be proud and stubborn people in opposition to your word. Lord, humble us. Cause us to see areas in our life that we need to grow, that we need to change. Cause us to grow up into the image of Christ. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. You have been listening to Emanuel with Pastor Jesse Johnson. You can find more resources like this at ibcva.com. Here is a parting word from Pastor Jesse. If you have any questions about what you heard today, or if you want to learn more about what it means to follow Christ, please visit our church website, ibcva.com. If you're not a member of a local church and you live in the Washington, D.C. area, we'd love to have you worship with us here at Emanuel. We're located in Northern Virginia, and for more information about when and where we worship, check out our church website. I hope to personally meet you this Sunday after our service. But no matter where you live, it's our hope that everyone who uses this resource is involved in their own local church. Now may God bless you this week as you seek Jesus constantly, serve the Lord faithfully, and share the gospel boldly.