2nd Kings 8. Our text opens with a reference to Jehoram, the son of Jehoshaphat. You can cast your mind back to Jehoshaphat. We looked at his reign together on the evening of July 2nd of this year. So we've been out of Judah for a long time. We've been in Israel looking at Ahab, Jezebel, Ahab's children. Now we're back to Judah, looking quickly at the Judean branch of the kingdom of Israel. What's been happening there? Well, nothing good. 1 Kings 8, or 2 Kings 8, beginning at the 16th verse. Now in the fifth year of Joram, the son of Ahab, king of Israel, Jehoshaphat, having been king of Judah, Jehoram, the son of Jehoshaphat, began to reign as king of Judah. He was 32 years old when he became king, and he reigned eight years in Jerusalem. And he walked in the way of the kings of Israel, just as the house of Ahab had done. For the daughter of Ahab was his wife, and he did evil in the sight of the Lord. Yet the Lord would not destroy Judah for the sake of his servant David, as he promised him to give him a lamp to him and his sons forever. In his days, Edom revolted against Judah's authority and made a king over themselves. So Joram went to Zair and all his chariots with him. And he rose by night and attacked the Edomites who had surrounded him and the captains of the chariots. But his people fled to their tents. Thus, Edom has been in revolt against Judah's authority to this day. And Libna revolted at that time. Now the rest of the acts of Joram and all that he did Are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah? So Joram rested with his fathers and was buried with his fathers in the city of David. Then Ahaziah, his son, reigned in his place. In the twelfth year of Joram, the son of Ahab, king of Israel, Ahaziah, the son of Jehoram, king of Judah, began to reign. Ahaziah was twenty-two years old when he became king, and he reigned one year in Jerusalem. His mother's name was Athaliah, the granddaughter of Omri, king of Israel. And he walked in the way of the house of Ahab, and did evil in the sight of the Lord, as the house of Ahab had done. For he was the son-in-law of the house of Ahab. Now he went with Joram, the son of Ahab, to war against Hazael, king of Syria, at Ramoth Gilead. And the Syrians wounded Joram. Then King Joram went back to Jezreel to recover from the wounds which the Syrians had afflicted on him at Ramah, when he fought against Hazael, king of Syria. And Ahaziah, the son of Jehoram, king of Judah, went down to see Joram the son of Ahab in Jezreel, because he was sick. The grass withers, the flower fades, the word of our God stands forever. Let's pray. Almighty Father, we pray that you would help us to understand this text. Free us from distraction, open our minds, illuminate us, help us to feast on your word together. Thank you for calling us into your presence tonight. We pray that You would show Yourself to us. We ask it in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, Your only Son. And all God's people said, Amen. Well, it's no coincidence that so far in 2 Kings we've seen two kings of Israel Two sons of Ahab, brothers, who reigned. The first one was named Ahaziah. He reigned, and then the younger brother, Joram, reigned. So everything we've seen since 2 Kings 1 has been looking at the reigns of Ahaziah and Joram, the sons of Ahab. Now, the camera moves back to Judah, and we briefly see the vignettes of these two rulers of Judah. What are they named? Joram and Ahaziah, father and son, same names as the rulers in northern Israel. Why? Is this just kind of an oversight similar to the way in Shakespeare's, oh, what is it? There's one of his plays that has two characters, they're both named Jakes. Why, Shakespeare? Why would you do that to yourself and to the audience? Well, we don't know why Shakespeare did it, but it's easy to see why Judah and Israel did it. The two nations are becoming virtually undistinguishable. You can imagine the confusion in modern geopolitics if Kim Jong-un were to change his name to Donnie Trump, or if Xi Jinping were to change his name to Vladimir Putin, or Right? World leaders right now have very different names. We can keep track of who's who, but not so when we read 2 Kings 8. Wait, we're talking about King Joram. Is that Joram Ahab's son? Or Joram Jehoshaphat's son? Oh, we're talking about Ahaziah. Is that Ahaziah Joram's son? Or is that Ahaziah Ahab's son? But the point is Both kingdoms are going the same direction. They're both headed downhill into apostasy, into the evil of Ahab's reign. Infidelity is contagious. That's why the sermon is called One Big Evil Family. But not only do we see the contagion of infidelity in this chapter, we also see a noted emphasis on place. Virtually everything that happens in these texts happens in places where key moments took place in the lives of the fathers of the protagonists. Why? Well, God has a sense of place. God knows where we live. God is at work for judgment and salvation in the activities and places of our daily lives. So let's look at the reign of Jehoram, first of all. Jehoram, son of Jehoshaphat, Ahab's son-in-law. Jehoshaphat was a good king. Jehoshaphat walked with the Lord in integrity. He had a little bit of a slippage at the end, we talked about that. But in general, he gets a favorable rating from the author of Kings. So here's his son. Jehoshaphat, son Jehoram, begins to reign as king of Judah, 32 years old, verse 17. But how does he behave? Does he follow the godly example of his father? Not at all. He walked in the way of the kings of Israel. Why? Because the daughter of Ahab was his wife. Infidelity is contagious. If you want your children to be idolaters, and your grandchildren to be murdered by their parents, either through abortion or neglect or bad parenting, go ahead and marry an unbeliever. That's what the text is telling us. Jehoshaphat probably or seems to have thought that this was perfectly okay to engineer a dynastic alliance between his royal family in Judah and Ahab's royal family in Israel. So he managed to get the daughter of Ahab, Athaliah, to come and marry his son, Jehoram, and everything looked great. See though, in a couple of chapters, what a terrible mistake that was. Athaliah murdered all of her own grandchildren in order to seize power. Don't marry an unbeliever. Don't date an unbeliever. Don't think about bringing an unbeliever into your family. The results are plain. He walked in the way of the kings of Israel, for the daughter of Ahab was his wife. In case you don't know what the ways of the house of Ahab are, the narrator spells it out for us. Verse 17, and he did evil in the sight of the Lord. He displeased God. And it's not too hard to see why. His wife was Ahab's daughter. Nothing surprising here. Well, yes there is. What's surprising? Verse 19. But the Lord would not destroy Judah. God promised, threatened to destroy Ahab's line long ago. I won't leave any descendant of Ahab breathing. First Kings 19, we'll see the fulfillment of that promise next Sunday night. Yet God refuses to destroy Judah. Why? For the sake of his servant David, he promised to give him a lamp, some translations say. Other translations say dominion. God told David, David, you will rule. Your seed will be on the throne before me as long as the sun. So why didn't God destroy Judah? He didn't destroy Judah because of the promise of the coming Messiah. And when we do evil, if we marry an unbeliever, for example, or commit some other sin, why doesn't God destroy us? For the sake of His promise of a coming Messiah, or really for the sake of the Messiah who came. The text is saying God judges and God saves. God judges wicked people. God judges the house of Ahab. But God also saves those in covenant with him for the sake of his servant David and the promise that he made. David, you will have a son who will have dominion. The government shall be upon his shoulder. He will sit on the throne of David and over his kingdom. He shall reign forever and ever. Do you trust in David's son? Do you look to his dominion? Do you know that as long as you're trusting him, you're safe? Regardless of what sins you've committed, mistakes you've made, things you've done, ways you've flouted God's advice, God preserved Judah, not because Judah was this wonderful little promised land kingdom that deserved his protection, but because God had made a promise and God keeps his promises. But nonetheless, there were consequences for the sin of Jehoram. What were those consequences? Well, pretty severe. First consequence, Edom revolts, verse 20 and 21. Edom was Judah's biggest client state. Edom is off to the southwest, rather to the southeast. They're below the Dead Sea. Edom controlled the trade routes to Arabia. You lose Edom, you lose all that toll money, you lose a big opportunity to trade. in that direction. And Judah lost Edom. Joram gets up, goes to Zair, which we don't know where that is, it might be Seir, might be some other city, and he tries to mount a night attack and he ends up killing some of the captains of his own chariots and he's routed. He manages to break out. The Edomites surround him. He breaks out. In the fight, though, he kills some of his own, and the best the people can do is flee home and escape with their lives. Not exactly what you would call a victory. The avoiding of a total defeat, perhaps, is the best that can be said for this. Kind of sounds like the poem Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold. I couldn't help but think of these lines. We are here as on a darkling plain, swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, where ignorant armies clash by night. The confusion of the text in verse 21 reflects the confusion that's felt when you're trying to fight in the dark, people who don't wear uniforms, and you can't see what you're doing, and you're just trying to escape with your life. That's what happened. They lost Edom. Oh, and they also lost Libna, verse 22. Libna was one of the major cities of Judah in the plains, not too far from Jerusalem, over towards the Mediterranean Sea. What does that say about the state of your nation when one of your more powerful cities says, you know what? I want to go it alone. I don't think it does me any good to be part of this nation. I want to secede. What does that mean politically? Well, that means that your kingdom is weak. It means that the benefits and protection of being part of a larger entity aren't there anymore. There's no point in sticking around. This is how badly off Judah is under Ahab's son-in-law. They're losing their biggest client state. They're losing a major city. What's happening? God is judging, chastening his people, saying, if you want to follow Baal, here are the consequences. You think Baal will provide for you? I don't think so. I don't see the prosperity. I don't see the political power. I don't see the cohesiveness of your nation. It's not there. If you worship a false god, beware. Benefits aren't what you think they are. So Joram sleeps with his fathers and his son Ahaziah reigns in his place. Verse 25 then is ominous. Ahaziah the son of Jehoram began to reign. In the twelfth year of Joram the son of Ahab. Now go back to chapter 3 verse 1. You'll see that Joram son of Ahab reigned 12 years. So Joram is in his last year. Ahaziah is only 22 when he starts to reign, and he only reigns a single year. As far as I can tell, this is the first time in our narrative that Israel and Judah have both lost a monarch in the same year. Not a good year. A sign of massive political instability, which of course we'll see detailed in the next chapter. What's the basic scoop on Joram? He's all about Ahab. Look at verse 27. He walked in the way of the house of Ahab and did evil in the sight of the Lord, as the house of Ahab had done, for he was the son-in-law of the house of Ahab. Ahab manages to show up three times in one verse. And in describing our family to this perspective of birth mother, Alexa wrote about me. This is Caleb, my husband. He likes reading, writing, arithmetic, reading, eating snacks, playing with babies, reading. So what's my wife's impression of what I enjoy doing? What's the narrator's impression of what Ahaziah is all about. Ahaziah apparently has a strong connection to Grandpa Ahab and Mommy Athaliah. But we also see Ahaziah's downfall. No, we don't see that here. We see the setup for it. Verse 28, Ahaziah goes with Joram son of Ahab to war against Hazael king of Syria at where? Ramoth Gilead. Well that's the very place where Ahab got his mortal wound back in 1 Kings 22. What happens to Joram son of Ahab at Ramoth Gilead? Verse 29, King Joram goes back to Jezreel to recover from the wounds which Assyrians had inflicted on him at Ramoth Gilead. Spelled a different way, Rama, same city. What? Are we just reading the same events all over again? Ahab met his death wound at the hands of the Syrians at Ramoth Gilead. Now his son Joram is there with his buddy Ahaziah, right? Ahab was with Jehoshaphat when he was wounded at Ramoth Gilead. Now the king of Judah and the king of Israel are together at the same city fighting the same enemy and the king of Israel gets wounded. And he goes, where to recover? Well, to Jezreel. And what's Jezreel? Well, that's the place where Naboth had his vineyard, back in 1 Kings 19, or 1 Kings 20. So these places all suddenly show up again. Wait, Ramoth-Gilead, not a good place for kings of Israel. Wait, Jezreel, not a good place for citizens of Israel. Wait, Ahaziah is going with Joram. It didn't work out so well when Jehoshaphat went with Ahab. But what do we make of this? The text just stops abruptly. And the reason we don't continue is because you have to back up again. We're going to leave Ahaziah and Joram. They're visiting each other in the hospital room. And we're going to zoom out next Sunday night. Go back to the battlefield at Ramoth Gilead. We're going to see the beginnings of a major coup. It just so happens that chapter 8 ends with a perfect setup. Here we go. Two royal birds in one little cage. Kill two birds with one stone? Well, it may happen in chapter nine. Stay tuned. But what's the point? Why do we have to hear about Jehoram and Ahaziah of Judah? What do we learn from them? Well, we learn, as I've already pointed out, infidelity is contagious. If you want your grandchildren or your children to walk away from Christ, Mary an unbeliever. We also see, though, that God is at work for salvation where we are. God protected Judah for the sake of his promise to David. Even though the king of Judah married an unbeliever, even though the blood of David was mixed with the blood of Ahab, blood of David wins. God's promise is stronger than the evil and contagion of infidelity. So if you have infidelity in your line or in your family, that's not a death sentence. It's a sign to trust God. Trust that God is at work in salvation, in the places of your daily life. God is not absent from the mudroom of your home. and the place where you work from your office and the cab of your vehicle or your machine. He's there, he's at work right here in Campbell County, in Crook County, in our state. He's at work for salvation and he's also at work for judgment. Why did he gather Ahaziah and Joram together just at the right time for Jehu to come along and meet them? Why did he let Joram get wounded at Ramoth Gilead? Why did he let Judah lose Edom and Libnah? He's at work for judgment. He's at work certainly for chastening in the lives of believers. So trust His work in salvation. Fear His work in judgment. Don't sin against Him. Don't say, oh, God doesn't care if I do the wrong thing. He does care. But know that there's forgiveness and salvation for the sake of His promise to David. Let's pray. Father God, we pray that you would teach us to trust your promise to David. We thank you that you promised to give him a lamp, that you promised to give him dominion. Help us to trust your Son, who is the ruler over the kings of the earth. Father, you are the God of places and times. You are the God of the whole earth, and the God of right here, right now. Father, we pray that we would avoid the contagion of infidelity. We pray much more that we would trust your promise to David and to his seed forever. We thank you for that seed for Jesus Christ. The One who perfectly lived, who perfectly died, who perfectly rose, and who perfectly sits at your right hand. We rejoice and give you thanks in Him. And it's in His name that we pray. And all God's people said, Amen.