2 Kings chapter 14, let's look at verse 23. In the 15th year of Amaziah, the son of Joash, king of Judah, Jeroboam, the son of Joash, king of Israel, became king in Samaria and reigned 41 years. He did 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 sin. He restored the border of Israel from the entrance of Hamath as far as the Sea of Arabah, according to the word of the Lord, the God of Israel, which he spoke through his servant Jonah, the son of Amittai, the prophet who was of Gath-Hephir. For the Lord saw the affliction of Israel, which was very bitter. For there was neither bond nor free, nor was there any helper for Israel. The Lord did not say that he would blot out the name of Israel from under heaven, but he saved them by the hand of Jeroboam, the son of Joash. Now the rest of the acts of Jeroboam and all that he did and his might and how he fought and how he recovered for Israel, Damascus and Hamath, which had belonged to Judah, are they not written in the book of the Chronicles of the kings of Israel? And Jeroboam slept with his fathers, even with the kings of Israel. And Zechariah, his son, became king in his place. Amen. Now, last week, you remember that we were talking about the king Amaziah. He was our focus. And along, Amaziah was king of Judah, and there was Joash, or sometimes he's called Jehoash, in the north. Now today we're gonna look at Jehoash's son, Jeroboam II. Now one of the things that we pointed out last week was this, that Amaziah, you'll remember, down in the south, was a good king, though he made mistakes. Israel, in Jehoash, had an evil king, a bad king. But yet, in God's common grace, he gave wisdom. And you'll remember that Amaziah wanted to make war against Jehoash. The southern king of Judah, the good king, wanted to make war with the bad king up north. But God had never told Amaziah that he should do that. In fact, there were other occasions where it looked like there was going to be civil war. You remember even as far back as Rehoboam, when Jeroboam first rebelled against the House of David. And you'll remember that the Lord told Rehoboam, don't do it. Don't, do not attack. I'm not going to give you the victory. And Rehoboam and his army went home and they listened to the Lord. And so they were not, even though they were two kingdoms, they were not to be engaging in this really civil war with each other. And so when Amaziah said, hey, let's meet on the battlefield, Jehoash said, look, stay at home. You enjoyed your victory over the nation of Edom. And don't get all proud and don't get your peacock feathers all out. And now come and make trouble with me. And Amaziah didn't listen. And Amaziah went out and he lost. And he lost badly, so badly, that the last guy that you want taken captive is the king. And he was taken captive. Amaziah fell into captivity. And Jehoash then marched his army down into Jerusalem. king in tow tore down a huge section of the wall of Jerusalem and then helped himself to all the gold and fancy utensils in the temple and in the king's house and said we'll take this and this and this and this and this and this and this and this and clean the place out and took it all away. Now Today, what we're going to see is a different king. Now we're going to see Amaziah's, excuse me, we're going to see Jehoash's son, Jeroboam II. So, but what I want to do is I want to continue in that theme. And I want to develop the doctrine of common grace. If you look at your bulletin here, you'll notice that the title is Jeroboam II, and it's subtitled, When Evil Men Are Used For Good. When Evil Men Are Used For Good. Now, last week, we saw that it was the evil king who had the wisdom, who said, stay at home. Amaziah the good king did not. Now, this is puzzling, isn't it? How is it that the bad king had the right word, understood the situation rightly? How is it that the good king... lacked the wisdom, and ended up being defeated. Well, today we're going to talk about that further with our second half of 2 Kings 14, as we also look at the life of Jeroboam II. So let's just introduce ourselves to Jeroboam II here, work our way through these verses here, and then I want to explain why the doctrine of common grace is very important and what we as Christians should learn from this text and from having a high view of common grace. Now, what do I mean by common grace? What I mean is this. Common grace, as the name suggests, is the blessing, the benefits, the favor that God gives even to non-believers. so that God will, as the doctrine suggests, commonly give to believer and unbeliever alike certain gifts, certain graces, and we call these common graces because they do not reside in believers alone. Now there are certain graces that reside in Christians alone. The gift of faith resides in the believer. God in the Holy Spirit regenerates you, changes your heart, gives you a heart of flesh, and Ephesians chapter 2 tells us that the Holy Spirit gives you personally the faith which you place in Jesus Christ. That is a special grace. That is not a common grace. That is a special grace given to believers. Now, non-believers may have an intellectual assent to the truths of who Jesus is, but that is known as a faith of demons. They do not have the trust, the fiducia, as we would put it in the Latin theologically. They do not have the fiducia, they do not have the trust that one needs to have saving faith. There is special grace given to believers, but there is common grace that is given to believers and non-believers alike. There are natural gifts that the Spirit gives. There's creativity. Again, the Spirit of God, remember the book of Acts says, in God we live, move, and have our being. So non-believers live within the presence of God as we do, and the Spirit of God who hovers over the earth, he will also guide and direct and bless, in common ways, even the lives and courses of non-believers. So, in 2 Kings 14, starting at verse 23 to 29, we have a king, boys and girls, he's not a good guy, and his name is Jeroboam, we're calling him Jeroboam II, okay, because we've already had one Jeroboam, who was also the king of Israel. And that Jeroboam wasn't good either, so this is not a name put on your baby list here. Just scratch that one off. Jeroboam, Jeroboam II. Now, first of all, he reigns 41 years. Now, that's a common grace blessing. He had a very long tenure as king. In fact, Jeroboam II has the longest reign of any king of Israel. Now, not the longest of Israel and Judah, but the longest of Israel, the longest of the northern kings, was Jeroboam II, 41 years. And yet, the scripture tells us here in the opening verses of our text that he did evil in the sight of the Lord. He did what? He continued in the sins of Jeroboam I. And I'm not gonna rehearse greatly what those sins were. You can hear other messages on that. But essentially, you remember Jeroboam I was the one who installed the golden calves at Samaria and Bethel. Okay? And said, here's your God. Here's the God who delivered you out of Egypt. Here's the God who put you in the land in which you're enjoying. Bow down to these golden calves. Offer sacrifices to these golden calves. And you can worship Jehovah that way. It was a violation of the second commandment. That was chief sin of Jeroboam the first. And Jeroboam the second is fine with that. And that sin has been going on for so many now generations. that it's actually probably easier to just go along with it than actually to get rid of it. But yet, what do we see in our text? The Lord uses Jeroboam II for Israel's welfare and prosperity here. Look with me at verse 25. Notice what, after the historian tells us that he had a long reign, and then in verse 24 he tells us he did evil in the sight of the Lord by following Jeroboam I, nevertheless, look at verse 25, he, Jeroboam II, restored the border of Israel. from the entrance of Hamath as far as the sea of the Ereba, according to the word of the Lord. That is, God blessed the reign of Jeroboam II, even though God could say, this is a reprobate king. He did evil in the sight of the Lord. And yet, God used this bad king for the good of northern Israel. Now this, again is where we get to the doctrine of common grace. God will and does, then and now, accomplish his providential purposes through even non-believers and evil men. God will, many times, use evil men, men who are non-Christians, men who reject the Lord Jesus Christ, men who maybe blaspheme Christ, men who deny the Word, men who want to excise out of the Word verses they don't like. He will use them, nevertheless, for the blessing, commonly, of nations. And yes, sometimes even for the blessing of the Church. Remember, Jeroboam II, is a blessing to the nation of Israel, which still is the visible church of the Old Testament. So here we're seeing God use a bad man for the good of his church. Now, we've seen this elsewhere. Let me show you some other places. For example, We know that the king of Persia was a man named Cyrus, and yet what does Cyrus, the king of the Persians, do? He is the one that makes a decree that God's people, when they were in captivity for those 70 years for their apostasy and were brought into Babylon, and Babylon was eventually taken over by the Medes and the Persians, The king Cyrus, king of the Medes and Persians, said, I want the children of Israel to go back to their land. I want them to rebuild the temple. I want them to make sacrifices and I want them to pray for me, King Cyrus. So there's another example where God in his providence used someone who was a non-believer an idolater, and yet he used him to do what? Do good for the church. What does Proverbs say? The book of Proverbs says that the heart of the king is in the hand of the Lord. What does that mean, boys and girls, that the heart of a king is in the hand of God? It means this, God is sovereign over the dispositions the thoughts, the intentions, the motives of even the most powerful people in this world. And God will direct even the mightiest among us in the direction he wants them to go for his purpose, even if the motivation of that individual is not to glorify God. God will nevertheless use the providential directives of that individual for the glory of himself. God is sovereign over that. We see it also, for example, in General Joab. Remember, one of David's generals. Very complicated figure, shall we say. And he could be used for great good, and he did win battles for David. But he did terrible things as well. He even murdered innocent people. And so we see that God can use very complicated figures in history to do good things. I gave you a couple here, Cyrus and Joab from scripture. Let me give you some from recent history. I would suggest that one figure, if you've ever read, would be extensively on Winston Churchill. His biographer makes no bones about it. We could not say that Winston Churchill was an evangelical believer in the Lord Jesus Christ. Winston Churchill himself somewhat famously said that there are some who are pillars in the church. He said, I am a buttress. I support the church from without. And if you know anything about architecture, the buttresses are on the outside, holding up the walls. And what was he saying? He's saying, well, I'm not a churchgoer. I support the church as a civil magistrate, but I am not in the church. And yet, we know, if it was not for Winston Churchill, history might have been very different. There was a time where Churchill stood alone against a great evil. in a world, America, we were still kind of asleep. We were happy clams here, nobody's bothered us, we have two oceans separating us from all the troubles. And we were minding our own business, and Churchill was left alone. And God used him, I think, providentially. You could say, today, we have businessmen who, would not be considered evangelical. Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, and yet, look how we have technologically moved forward as a nation, as the West has moved forward technologically through such men. God gives common blessings to non-believers and Christians alike through men who may not know him savingly. So we see that common grace is a part of God's benevolence, a part of God's benevolent love. And it's important that we understand this is not a salvific love like we find in Ephesians 1 or Romans chapter 9. A salvific love is a love unto salvation. That is Ephesians 1 and Romans 9 tell us that God from eternity past set his love upon his own people. And that that love is set upon them savingly. That is you were chosen in Jesus Christ in eternity past. If you're a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ today, it's because God had already chosen you in Christ Jesus, savingly, to be a part of his people. He chose you and united you in his own eternal decree in Christ. That's a salvific love for God's people. But there's also a beneficent love. That is, it's a love that emphasizes the goodness of God. It is not a love that leads unto salvation, necessarily, but it is a love that shows the goodness of God, even to those who rebel against him, even those who persecute his people, those who are against God. For example, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said that God causes it to rain upon the righteous and the unrighteous alike. So, you know, when the afternoon summer thunderstorm comes, it's not as though God providentially directs rain onto your garden and bypasses your neighbors garden because they don't go to church. But God waters your garden, and He waters your neighbor's garden. Even though, salvifically, He loves you, but beneficently, He loves your neighbor, too. This is why the Bible could say, for example, that Jesus loved the rich young ruler. The Bible says that Jesus had a love for the rich young ruler, and we know the outcome of that. The rich young ruler, yet what? He rejected Jesus Christ, didn't he? He turned away, one of the saddest verses in the Bible, he turned away from Jesus Christ, and yet Jesus honestly and sincerely had a love for him. Now that, what kind of love was that? It was a love for him as an image bearer of God. God gives gifts and graces commonly because whether you're a believer or an unbeliever, you are made in the image of God and God has a love for the non-believer made in his image. Even if that non-believer will never come to faith, God has a sincere love for them as his image bearer. He is grieved over their rebellion, He longs sincerely that they would come to faith in his son. He offers the gospel to the non-believer, the reprobate, as sincerely as he does the elect. The doctrine of common grace should create within us, therefore, a sense of humility. A sense of humility. Why is that? Well, for one reason, common grace, having a doctrine, a healthy doctrine of common grace recognizes for the believer that we don't have all wisdom. Now, we may know the most important thing, that is to know Jesus Christ. Jesus said it himself, this is eternal life, that you know the Son. That's the most important thing. So if you are here this morning and you do not know the Son, you do not know Jesus Christ, in a personal saving way, If you do not have an experiential faith in Jesus Christ, then that needs to be your first business. Because that's the most important thing to know. Not just to know Christ, but that you be known by Him. It's actually more important that He knows you than you know Him. Because there will be many who say, Lord, Lord, and yet on the last day, Jesus said, I don't know you. It's actually more important that He knows you and that you make yourself known to him. But nevertheless, though we may know that which is most important, even the most needful for eternity, it does not mean that all wisdom resides with us. Job's friends were believers, but Job's friends didn't have all the wisdom, did they? In fact, their counsel at times was terrible. as it applied to Joe. Now, what their counselor said was true, but it was not true as it related to that particular situation with Joe. Does that make sense? It was proverbial wisdom they were giving, but it did not accurately apply to the situation Joe was facing. They did not have all wisdom So that means that we can learn from non-believers. This is where humility comes into play. This is where discernment and prayer needs to come into play because this is a very difficult thing. And I sympathize with those of you who have teenagers. I sympathize with you who are teenagers because you're beginning to wrestle with these things. Okay? Because, look, this is a very conservative Presbyterian church. None of us wants to compromise with the world, right? We know that this is true religion, to look after the widow and the fathers, and to keep ourselves from the world. And we don't want to compromise, do we? We don't want to compromise with the world. But we also have to recognize that the world has some common grace wisdom that we need. And so we all have to struggle and wrestle with this, your pastor included, with okay, when am I compromising with worldly thoughts, and when am I being humble and recognizing they may have real wisdom that I need to listen to? And this takes humility. Now a lot of times, unfortunately, is Christians don't have that humility, and therefore they tend to cut off anybody who is not a Christian and think they have nothing to teach me or my family. They might naturally be a better father than you. You're not going to heaven because you're a better person. You're going to heaven because of grace. That non-believer might actually be better at certain things in your home than you are. They might have wisdom in finances, in business, in very practical things, mechanics. I suspect we depend a lot on non-believers to keep our satellites going up in space. I don't think it's, you know, the National Association of Evangelicals that is keeping those satellites going. So what do we make of this? I wanna give you six thoughts on this doctrine of common grace from the life of Jeroboam II. Jeroboam, the point is Jeroboam, bad man, but he did good for Israel by God's grace here. So I wanna give you six things by way of application. Number one, first of all, common grace allows you as a Christian to see the goodness of God. to have a large view of the goodness of God, that God loves his creatures. God has a concern for his creatures. It's interesting that in the book of Jonah, the last verse is how God is concerned not only about all the Ninevites, but even all the animals, even those not made in his image. God has a great concern for them. Look that up sometime. I once heard a sermon that made a very unfortunate point, and the sermon in it, the minister suggested that God had no love for the reprobate. And I think that was a misread of scripture. I think what he was doing was he was taking, you know, for example, the verse, Jacob I love, Esau I hated. And that is true salvificly. You know, that God is angry with the wicked every day. Psalm 7 tells us that. But we shouldn't derive from that, and that alone, that therefore God has absolutely no love for the reprobate. And I said to this minister afterward, I said, it seems strange you say that God has no love for the reprobate. Why then are we commanded to love our neighbor? Why would God command me to do something that isn't within God's own nature? The reason we love our neighbor, even the reprobate, is because God has a beneficent love for them. We're not to do things that are contrary to the nature of God. He had a wrong understanding of the nature of God. So, I think when you have a doctrine of common grace, you can have a large, wide, deep view of how good the Lord is. Secondly, and this is kind of very similar to the first point, but it bleeds over. Secondly, I think the doctrine of common grace reminds us that we are to do good and to be patient with sinners. That is, if God gives rain and sunshine and vegetable gardens and all kinds of food and vocation and family and, you know, enjoying travel and vacations and technology and all these myriad of blessings, and he's giving them to people who curse his name every day. I mean, think about this. God puts the oxygen in their lungs out of which they blaspheme God's name. Now, if God can be patient and take that, if you will, every day, after day, after day, after day, after day, giving them food, giving them housing, giving them clothes, giving them a wife, giving them children, giving them grandchildren, giving them all these blessings, and yet they take all that blessing and they use it for rebellion against God. And if God can be patient with that, It tells us something about how we, who are slighted far less frequently and far less injuriously, how we ought to bear with our neighbors who are sinners. We are to do good. We are to be patient. We are to be kind. When we are persecuted, we bless. When we find ourselves being the enemy of another, We pray for them, right? We do not return curse for curse, but we bless, we pray, we endure, because God shows us by his common grace how patient and good he is putting up with sinners. Number three. This is one I think that probably would be beneficial for us. I know this application has been beneficial, I think, for me, and that is, that the doctrine of common grace allows you as a Christian, and I don't want you to misunderstand what I'm saying here, but to relax as you engage the culture. And what do I mean by that? To relax. If you're like me, the last thing you want to do is betray the Lord, right? You don't want to compromise. You don't want to be like Peter denying the Lord in front of non-believers, okay? I think we all are there, right? So what happens? I think if you're like me, then you tend to steal yourself up when you know you're gonna be in an environment where there are gonna be a lot of non-believers. And I wanna suggest to you to try and go into those situations reflecting on how much God has a beneficent love for these people. and just to relax in their presence, and just to be yourself in Christ, and in a sense, enjoy them, okay? Because God does. Now, he does not enjoy their sin and their rebellion, but they are made in his image. And God, though that image is terribly broken and fractured, Nevertheless, in this season of grace, in this season of the gospel going out, I think our disposition should be one to engage the culture in common grace activities. And what would those common grace activities look like? Well, they could be civic organizations, something for the common good of our community. a political engagement. It could be sports or arts. And I say to this, maybe you were raised in a church where your church emphasized there had to be a Christian alternative to everything. So you couldn't play just basketball in the basketball league. You had to go to the Christian basketball league, you know, because you're a Christian. You know, I want to emphasize this to help you relax. If that was your understanding, to maybe think basketball is a common grace endeavor. Why did God decree basketball? Because He delights in basketball. Now, He delights in football more, but no. And I say that as one who went to a basketball school. God delights in cultural activity. And if you want to know how do I navigate this, I would urge you, maybe with your kids, to read, maybe as a family together, through the book of Daniel over the coming weeks. Because I think Daniel sets a good example. First of all, Daniel's almost the only person I can think of in the Old Testament, there's never a negative word said about him. And we also see that Daniel is really set in one of the hardest environments, isn't he? This is a guy who, as a teenager, was taken away from Judah and brought into Babylon as a teenager. And you see him as a teenager, a young adult, all the way till he's in his mid-80s, by the time you get to the end of the Book of Daniel. And Daniel spends his entire 70 years in captivity, all those 70 years, from a teenager on to his death, having to navigate this issue of cultural engagement, faithfully. without compromise to Yahweh, but yet still having to navigate through the highest echelons of Babylonian and later Medo-Persian government. I mean, that was a tall order, and many times having to do it almost alone. It must have been a lonely experience for him. But to look at God's common grace to help you to relax and engage like Daniel, in these common cultural endeavors. What was Daniel doing there? Daniel was trying to be a faithful prime minister, a faithful administrator of the Babylonian empire. And remember what Jeremiah told the people of God, look, you're gonna be here for 70 years because I'm punishing you. So do this, make the welfare of this exodus in Babylon your welfare. He said, I want you to marry, have kids, plant gardens, do all those cultural and vocational things that you should be doing for the good of this empire, because the good of this empire is gonna be your welfare. Their welfare is gonna be your welfare. You're not going home anytime soon. Don't listen to the false prophets who say, oh, in a year you're gonna be back in Jerusalem. You're not. 70 years you're gonna spend in the Babylonian empire. So, get used to it. Well, there's a sense, We live in Babylon too, right? We live as aliens and strangers in this world and there's a sense that we are to engage in cultural activity and that the welfare of Troop County is our welfare. And we ought to work for the welfare of this region in which we live. And we ought to engage in those things that make it better for everyone. All right, number four. Having a high view of common grace gives you as a Christian a foundation to witness to God's special grace. I'll say that again. Having a high view of common grace allows you as a Christian, gives you as a Christian, I should say, a foundation to witness to God's special grace. I want you to think of common grace almost like you think of a stage on which a play is orchestrated. Common grace is the stage, it's the platform. I'm on this platform here, boys and girls, okay? Common grace is kinda like that platform from which we see special revelation unveiled for us. That is, as we go about God's ordinary providential dealings, it is the platform on which we stand to share Jesus Christ with others. Put it another way. You hear in this church and in every evangelical church the importance of reading your Bible, right? Read your Bible, read your Bible, read your Bible. Every day, read your Bible. Well, you can't read your Bible if you don't know how to read. Reading is common grace. You needed to learn English first, right? You needed to learn your ABCs before you could read Special Revelation. Right? That's the way common grace works. Common grace is the platform from which special grace operates. So that is, as you go about your life, and you engage in the common grace activities, that is an opportunity also to demonstrate the life of Christ in a saving way to others. So common grace is important. See, if we deny common grace, or let's not say deny, but we minimize common grace, what happens? The tendency, I think, then, is to retreat from cultural engagement. If you have a low view of common grace, then you wanna insulate yourself, fortify yourself. Maybe an extreme example is the Amish community, okay? Now, they actually have cultural engagement because they're such an oddity now, right? All these tourists want to see them, so maybe they're, but there would be an extreme. So little cultural engagement. Because in part, I think because of a low view of common grace. Let me move on, number five, I gotta finish here. A high view of common grace keeps, and this is similar to what I just said, keeps Christians from becoming culturally stunted. A high view of common grace will keep you from becoming culturally stunted. What do I mean by that? What I mean is I think you'll be a more effective witness for Christ if you have a high view of common grace. of common grace. For example, let's take the Amish that I just mentioned. There's probably not many Amish people working for Elon Musk at SpaceX, right? Okay, not many, probably not many Amish people developing new technologies in Palo Alto, correct? Okay, now what if every Christian took that view? Okay, there'd be no Christian witness at SpaceX. There'd be no Christian witness in Palo Alto. I mean, there's already very little proportionally to begin with in Palo Alto, but there is a Christian witness. There's an OP church just south of Palo Alto. So we need to have a high view of common grace, because otherwise, we're gonna become culturally irrelevant, and we don't wanna be that. Now, we don't wanna become worldly, and we don't wanna turn ourselves over to the world, and we don't wanna view the kingdom as the world, The culture is not the kingdom, but the kingdom is to be coming up against everyday life. And so we need to recognize that. These Christ and cultural issues are some of the most difficult, I think, to address and to understand, because they are complicated, and there's so many ways that they can be applied. Let me give you one more, and we need to close here. The final one is this, that a high view of common grace allows you to be a thankful people more liberally. You can be more effusively a thankful person with a higher view of common grace. That is, you can thank God for Jeroboam II and what he did for Israel. Even though he wasn't a good man, we can thank God for his common grace blessings. Whether it's for business leaders, doctors, scientists, engineers, teachers, you can thank God for them. You know, I mean, think about all the things that you learned. Especially those of you, maybe adults, you know, you don't know whether your teacher was a Christian or not. And yet, you learned, right? How to read and how to write. learned how to take a derivative. Those of you who are engineers in calculus, right? Was that calculus teacher a Christian? I don't know. But God, you could thank God for them. They taught you x squared is two x, right? They taught you truths, common grace truths, and we can be thankful that God gives us those who have laid the foundation for us to operate as Christians in a world. We see this again with Daniel. Daniel had to learn the language of the Chaldeans, didn't he? He had to learn the culture in order to operate at the highest levels for Christ there. Did you know that commentators speculate, where did the wise men come from? We know they came from the east. How'd they know about a star? and that they should go follow a star to see Jesus Christ. You know what most biblical commentators think and speculate? It was the oral tradition handed down because Daniel and his captivity. Remember, Daniel was one among the wise men. Daniel told them of a savior that was coming. See, it may have been if it wasn't for common and special grace, the wise men wouldn't have shown up. to see the Lord Jesus Christ in the manger. Amen, let's pray. Father, we thank you, Lord, for the mysterious use of even wicked men for good under your divine economy. Lord, may we therefore receive this biblical truth with all humility and looking to Jesus Christ and the power and ministry of the Spirit for wisdom, how to navigate cultural engagement recognizing the blessing of common grace without being co-opted by this world. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen.