2nd Kings chapter 10. Now Ahab had seventy sons in Samaria. And Jehu wrote letters and sent them to Samaria, to the rulers of Jezreel, to the elders, and to those who were reared Ahab's sons, saying, Now, as soon as this letter comes to you, since your master's sons are with you and you have chariots and horses, a fortified city also, and weapons, choose the best qualified of your master's sons, set him on his father's throne, and fight for your master's house. But they were exceedingly afraid and said, look, two kings could not stand up to him. How then can we stand? And he who was in charge of the house, and he who was in charge of the city, the elders also, and those who reared the sons, sent to Jehu, saying, We are your servants. We will do all that you tell us, but we will not make any one king do what is good in your sight. Then he wrote a second letter to them, saying, If you are for me, and if you will obey my voice, take the heads of the men, your master's sons, and come to me at Jezreel by this time tomorrow. Now the king's sons, seventy persons, were with the great men of the city who were rearing them. So it was, when the letter came to them, that they took the king's sons and slaughtered seventy persons, put their heads in baskets, and sent them to him at Jezreel. Then a messenger came and told him, saying, They have brought the heads of the king's sons. And he said, Lay them in two heaps at the entrance of the gate until morning. So it was in the morning that he went out and stood and said to all the people, You are righteous. Indeed, I conspired against my master and killed him. But who killed all these? Know now that nothing shall fall to the earth of the word of the Lord, which the Lord spake concerning the house of Ahab. For the Lord has done what he spoke by his servant Elijah. So Jehu killed all who remained at the house of Ahab in Jezreel, and all his great men and his close acquaintances and his priests, until he left him none remaining. And he arose and departed and went to Samaria. On the way, at Beth-eked of the shepherds, Jehu met with the brothers of Ahaziah, king of Judah, and said, who are you? And they answered, we are the brothers of Ahaziah. We have come down to greet the sons of the king and the sons of the queen mother. And he said, take them alive. So they took them alive and killed them at the well of Beth Iked, 42 men. And he left none of them. Now when he departed from there, he met Jehonadab, the son of Rechab, coming to meet him. And he greeted him and said to him, is your heart right as my heart is toward your heart? And Jehonadab answered, it is. Jehu said, if it is, give me your hand. So he gave him his hand and he took him up with him into the chariot. Then he said, Come with me, and see my zeal for the Lord. So they had him ride in his chariot. And when he came to Samaria, he killed all who remained Ahab in Samaria, till he had destroyed them, according to the word of the Lord which he spoke to Elijah. Then Jehu gathered all the people together and said to them, Ahab served Baal a little, but Jehu will serve him much. Now therefore call to me all the prophets of Baal, all his servants and all his priests. Let no one be missing, for I have a great sacrifice to make to Baal. Whoever is missing shall not live. But Jehu acted deceptively with the intent of destroying the worshipers of Baal. And Jehu said, proclaim a solemn assembly for Baal. So they proclaimed it. Then Jehu sent throughout all Israel, and all the worshipers of Baal came, so that there was not a man left who did not come. So they came into the temple of Baal, and the temple of Baal was full from one end to the other. And he said to the one in charge of the wardrobe, bring out the vestments for all the worshipers of Baal. So he brought out vestments for them. Then Jehu and Jehonadab the son of Rechab went into the temple of Baal and said to the worshippers of Baal, Search and see that no servants of the Lord are here with you, but only the worshippers of Baal. So they went in to offer sacrifices and burnt offerings. Now Jehu had appointed for himself eighty men on the outside and had said, If any of the men whom I have brought into your hands escapes, whoever lets him escape, it shall be his life for the life of the other. Now it was so, as soon as he had made an end of offering the burnt offering, that Jehu said to the guard and to the captains, Go in and kill them. Let no one come out. And they killed them with the edge of the sword. Then the guards and the officers threw them out and went into the inner room of the temple of Baal. And they brought the sacred pillars out of the temple of Baal and burned them. Then they broke down the sacred pillar of Baal and tore down the temple of Baal and made it a refuse dump to this day. Thus Jehu destroyed Baal from Israel. However, Jehu did not turn away from the sins of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, who had made Israel sin, that is, from the golden calves that were of Bethel and Dan. And the Lord said to Jehu, Because you have done well in doing what is right in my sight, and have done to the house of Ahab all that was in my heart, your son shall sit on the throne of Israel to the fourth generation. But Jehu took no heed to walk in the law of the Lord God of Israel with all his heart, for he did not depart from the sins of Jeroboam, who had made Israel sin. In those days the Lord began to cut off parts of Israel, and Hazael conquered them and all the territory of Israel from the Jordan eastward, all the land of Gilead, Gad, Reuben, and Manasseh, from Moroer, which is by the river Arnon, including Gilead and Bashan. Now the rest of the acts of Jehu, all that he did and all his might, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Israel? So Jehu rested with his fathers, and they buried him in Samaria. Then Jehoahaz his son reigned in his place. And the period that Jehu reigned over Israel and Samaria was twenty-eight years." That's far the reading of God's Word. Let's pray. Almighty God, show us Yourself in this text. Show us Jesus Christ and Him crucified. We pray this, that You would free us from distraction, that You would bring us into Your presence, that You would come and find us. We ask it in Christ's name, and all God's people said, Amen. Well, the question that might be on everybody's minds is, Is this text really edifying? Here's Jehu running around slaughtering people. Oh, here he is somewhere else, slaughtering more people. Oh, here he is in the third place, doing another big slaughter fest. Is this the Quentin Tarantino movie of the Old Testament? The answer is no. No, it's not a Quentin Tarantino film. Yes, it is edifying. because it tells us something about our God. Again, the narrator is not interested in providing us vignettes that give glimpses of life in Bronze Age Israel. That's not the purpose of the Book of Kings. This isn't an archeological daily life in ancient times kind of thing. The point of these books is to tell us something about the God we worship. and the God who has revealed himself to us in Jesus Christ. And what this text tells us about the God we worship is obvious. He is a God of vengeance. We might be a little queasy about Jehu's role as public theologian, standing in front of a pile of 70 heads and saying, yep, yep, yep, this is the Word of God, folks. Just like he said. And then Jehu, the public intellectual, once again declaring, this is my calling. This is who I am. It's my job to root out Baal. And I'm going to go after him with a vengeance. It might make us queasy, but the text is pretty clear that Jehu is right. That he is doing what God wanted. Verse 17. When he came to Samaria, he destroyed all who remained to Ahab according to the word of the Lord, which he spoke to Elijah. And then in verse 30, the Lord himself finds Jehu and says, you did what I wanted. You did in the house of Ahab all that was in my heart. So you want a glimpse into the heart of God? Take a look at Jehu standing by a pile of 70 heads. Take a look at Jehu, all bloody from offering a Baal sacrifice, standing outside the temple of Baal while his hired thugs slaughter everyone inside. This is a glimpse into the heart of God. And the narrator doesn't flinch, doesn't say, you know, this is going to be qualified later, folks. God isn't really like this. Point is, Our God is a God of vengeance. He doesn't take sin lightly. He doesn't blow sin off. He doesn't say, oh, a little idolatry on the side. In the words of Charles II of England, God won't damn a man for a few irregularities. So said the most notorious philandering king of England. But is that what our text tonight says? No. Not at all. The Lord is a jealous and avenging God. The Lord is avenging and wrathful, brings payment on His adversaries, recompense to His enemies, Nahum 1 verses 2 and 3. That's what this text is about. In this text, we see God's vengeance, God's chastening, God's mercy, and God's hatred of idolatry. And we see that he doesn't always display those attributes in ways that we might think are particularly appropriate or tasteful. Well, first of all, in our first section of the chapter, verses 1-11, God takes vengeance on the line of Ahab. Jehu is in Jezreel. He sends letters to Samaria to the rulers of Jezreel, who had probably fled to Samaria, saying, oh, there's a coup going on. We might be a little safer in the capital. Something like that. He contacts them and says, look, if you want to make this a civil war, be my guest. How do they respond? No thanks, right? What if we had a war and nobody came? Well, that's what Jehu did. He offered a war. Nobody came. The people who were Ahab's trusted servants raising his children said, you know what? I would much rather assassinate all of these children than fight Jehu. So Jehu makes this an object lesson to the people of Jezreel. Shows them the pile of heads and says, I didn't have to kill him. This wasn't me, folks. Ahab's own servants did this. because God has cursed Ahab and his house. God takes vengeance and these piles of heads are Exhibit A in our case showing that God takes vengeance. Now, in a few chapters, we'll see the narrator of Kings cite the text from Deuteronomy that says, Children are not to be put to death for the sins of their parents, nor parents for the sins of their children, but each man will die for his own sin. Clearly the narrator of Kings knows about that text. So how is it that we have here Ahab's sons dying for Ahab's sin? When God said, you're not allowed to do that. Don't kill children for the sins of the parents. Well, number one, God's statement is a rule for human civil courts. God is not bound by the same rules of evidence, by the same Miranda rights, and so on, that human courts have to abide by. In the US, it's never been legal to taint a particular line. In England and Wales, it hasn't been legal since 1814 with the Corruption of Blood Act. Before that time, if you committed high treason or a couple of other really terrible crimes in England and Wales, your descendants could be tainted with that same treason and suffer certain legal punishments and disabilities, especially the loss of inheritance. Well, in the 19th century, reformers got rid of that provision. to bring it more in line with God's law. Fathers should not be punished for the sins of children or children for the sins of fathers. But, that's a law for human civil courts, number one. And then, secondly, God is perfectly aware of the corporate dimensions of sin. And He punishes them appropriately. We'll keep talking about this because God cursed Ahab's line to the fourth generation. Just like God cursed Adam's line through every generation. Adam sinned and God said, all of your descendants are now tainted by sin. Ahab sinned and God said, your descendants to the fourth generation are tainted by sin and will die. Of course, all of Adam's descendants die. Basically, this is a small scale reenactment or illustration of that same principle at work. and corporate solidarity between parents and children. In Adam, all die. And we could say the same in Ahab. All die. Because God hates sin and punishes sin and takes vengeance on those who give themselves over to sin. Now, God's vengeance is clearly seen in this chapter, but keep in mind that it's seen more clearly at the cross. God hates idolatry and He punished Ahab and his line for it. God hates sin so much that He even punished His own son for our sins. So the news of God's vengeance is bad news if you're a sinner. But if you've taken refuge in Christ, it's good news because your sins have already been avenged in Him. Jehu first takes vengeance here. Ahab's sons died because of their affiliation with Ahab, but those who are affiliated with Jesus Christ live. Secondly, God's agent of vengeance acts unscrupulously. God doesn't always use sterilized instruments. He sometimes uses some very, very dirty people to accomplish his work. So Jehu is on his way from Jezreel to Samaria. He comes to this obscure sheep shearing shed somewhere along the roadside. Beth Eked is the Hebrew words. The translation is house of shearing. Jehu comes to this shearing shed and he meets there these 42 men. Now, right off the bat, that's a little fishy, right? These men, 42 men, have not heard of the events of the last few days. They don't know that there's been a coup in Israel? Maybe, maybe not. So Jehu says, who are you? And they, of course, don't know who he is. There being no photography in these days, his picture wasn't all over the front page of the Jerusalem Post. He's just a guy who randomly stops by. So they say, oh yeah, well, we're brothers of King Ahaziah. And we've come to greet our relatives in Samaria. Now, maybe unfortunately for these fellows, the Hebrew word greet sounds almost exactly like the Hebrew word for avenge. So Jehu might have heard, we've come to avenge our brothers. Jehu didn't like that. And so he has them all caught and slaughtered. Now, are these men descendants of Ahab? Probably not. Maybe a few of them are if they're brothers of Ahaziah and Ahaziah's mother was a daughter of Ahab. But it's highly unlikely that Ahaziah's mother had 42 sons all by herself. In other words, Jehu is already getting carried away. And this smacks a little more of God or Jehu being more zealous for Jehu than he is for God. He's wiping out these Judeans, these descendants of David, who may not really be connected with Ahab at all, other than that their father, one of his wives, his many wives, had been a descendant of Ahab. And then the next scene, again, Jehu brings Jehonadab up into his chariot and says, come with me and see my zeal for the Lord. But it appears, based on his overall life history, that Jehu was really more zealous for Jehu than he was for the Lord. This Jehonadab, the son of Rechab, what's in this chapter is basically all we know about him. He is mentioned again in Jeremiah 35. He was the founder of something of a purist religious group. He wanted his children to live in such a way Well, to live like they were still wandering in the wilderness. They weren't allowed to own property. They weren't allowed to live in houses. They weren't allowed to drink wine. And they survived for 250 years after this time. They were still around in Jeremiah's time. But there weren't many of them. There were so few, Jeremiah could put them all in one room in the temple. So some think that Jehonadab was an arms dealer, because his father's name, Rechab, sounds just like the Hebrew word rechev, Chariot. So maybe Jehu is trying to impress this arms dealer fellow. Jahana Dab, Chariot dealer. But that's basically speculation. All we know is that he happens to be some kind of associate of Jehu who comes along with him to this big bale slaughter fest. So Jehu, as we read, proclaims a feast for Baal, summons all the big-time Baal devotees from around Israel, holds a sacrifice, personally offers it, as if to say, my religious policy is even more pro-Baal than Ahab's was. Baal's day is here. And then while everyone's excited, he sends in the commandos and cuts them all down. What do we make of this? Well, first of all, we can say it certainly is biblically justified. Deuteronomy 13, in fact, God tells his people, if a city in your territory gives itself over to idolatry, go to that city with ropes and pull it down and destroy it. Don't let those people live. Idolatry is the worst thing that can happen to you. If there's an idolatrous city in your land, that's gangrene, that's corruption. That will spread and kill you all. So, eliminate it. That was God's Word in Deuteronomy, and Jehu is just taking Him at His Word. Okay, we have idolaters in Israel. Let's wipe them out. And so He does. Jehu had this temples to toilets program, we could say. He took the temple of Baal, made it a latrine to this day. Verse 27. But, what do you say about his legacy? Notice verses 28, 29, 30, and 31. 28, Jehu destroyed Baal. 29, but he didn't turn away from the sins of Jeroboam. 30, but he did what was right, and God commended him for it. But, verse 31, he took no heed to walk in the law of God. So we have a positive statement, then a negative statement, then a positive statement, then a negative statement. It's like you can only say good things and bad things about him. He's a mixed bag. He got rid of Baal. God came to him, commended him, and promised him a four generation dynasty. And we'll see how God kept that promise to the letter over the next several chapters. So God commends him, and yet at the same time God condemns him. Jehu said, I don't believe in Baal. Let's get rid of Baal. Let's eliminate Baal, and then as soon as Baal is eliminated, what does he do? Go back to worshipping Jeroboam's bull idols. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Jehu wasn't willing to trust God and say, I can still rule northern Israel even if people go to Jerusalem to worship. No, he wanted this means of political control. We talked about this about a year ago, how subtle idolatry is. There were so many good reasons back in First Kings 13 for Jeroboam to institute calf worship. It made sense on so many levels. And here it is, still making sense a hundred and some years down the line. Oh, civic religion, what a great way to buttress my political power. God says, no, Jehu. But yet God's mercy is visible too in that Jehu gets verse 29 and verse 31 condemning him. He took no heed to walk in the law of the Lord God of Israel. He led Israel into idolatry just like Jeroboam had. But God was merciful to him anyway. God promised him a four generation dynasty anyway. Because though God is a jealous and avenging God, The Lord is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble. God's mercy and God's justice are both in this text. God's vengeance exercised through Jehu. God's mercy shown on Jehu. Because why? Because God is simultaneously one who perfectly hates sin and perfectly has mercy on sinners. Well, God starts chastening Jehu, verse 32 and 33. Israel starts losing territory. It's God's way of saying, or warning His people, hey, if you persist in what you're doing, you're going to suffer. That's what discipline is. Punishment, retributive justice, is where God says, you did wrong and I'm going to take it out of your hide. I'm going to punish you for that sin. But chastening is different. Chastening or discipline is the training that makes punishment unnecessary. We could say in terms of the metaphor of the vine and the branches, those that don't bear fruit are cut off and burned, right, as Jesus said. That's punishment. But those that do bear fruit are pruned to bear even more fruit. And that's chastening. God starts pruning Israel to say, Israel, I want more fruit out of you. So I'm going to cut off some of your territory. God still disciplines us. We could say allegorically, He cuts off part of our territory. Lose a little out of your bank account. Take away your car. Take away your health. take away your child. What is that? God taking away a certain amount of your territory to prune you, to chasten you, to help you bear more fruit in your Christian life. So the same God who took all this vengeance on Baal in Israel, on Ahab's line, looks to his people It says, I want you to be fruitful for my kingdom, so I'm going to prune you and it's going to hurt. Notice the most unkindest cut of all, as Shakespeare would say. They lost Gilead, which is mentioned twice in verse 33. Right? All the land of Gilead, including Gilead. We didn't want to lose that. That was so important that we have to mention it again because we loved it so much. And it's gone. That's our God. He's a God of vengeance. He's a God of mercy. He's a God who chastens because he's a God who hates idolatry. So we have this final formula. The rest of the acts of Jehu, all he did, are they not written and so on. And he slept with his fathers and was buried in Samaria and Jehoahaz, his son, reigned in his place. So what do we take away from the life of Jehu? Where do we go with this? Well, we need to learn that our God is a God of vengeance, that our God is merciful. Learn from Jehu to be more zealous for God than you are for politics, power, and comfort. Learn from his life, as the photo negative of what Asaph learned. Asaph said, I want what the wicked have. And then he went into the sanctuary and said, No, I don't. I want Christ. Whom have I in heaven but you, and there is nothing I desire on earth besides you. What did Jehu do? He said, I want to be zealous for the Lord. Come with me and see my zeal for Jehovah. And then when push came to shove for 28 long years of his reign, what did he do? Well, you know, let's go back to Jeroboam's civic religion. That's worked pretty well so far. No need to rock the boat. No need to really get rid of idolatry in Israel. Let's just have a religion that's a little easier to control in political terms. We'll learn from Jehu not to put politics ahead of religion. In other words, not to put this world ahead of God. Not to say, I love the drops more than the ocean. I love the benefits God gives more than the God who gave them. Don't say that. Learn that God is avenging and wrathful. God's wrath poured out on Ahab's sons was just a tiny foretaste of God's wrath poured out on his own son. So learn from Jehu that your God is merciful. God saves, that's the message of this text. Sometimes it's in a very depressing, bleak way. God saves by cutting off idolatry from Israel. God saves by cutting off Ahab's line. God saves by destroying the wicked. That's what the crucifixion means. Christ took the place of the wicked and was destroyed, quote unquote, by the wrath of God. so that you and I would not have to be. Brothers and sisters, we serve the God of Jehu. Let's serve him better than Jehu did. Amen. Let's pray. Father, we thank you that you are good, a stronghold in the day of trouble. We thank You though You give wrath to Your adversaries and repayment to Your enemies. You were merciful to Jehu. You were merciful to us in and through Jesus Christ who suffered Your wrath in our place. Father, help us to see Your wrath poured out. Help us to recognize the truth that You are jealous and avenging. Help us to see Your vengeance, to hear and fear and turn away from wickedness. help us to be motivated, not by fear, but by love for the Christ who suffered and died in our place. Father, we ask that you would make us truly grateful this week. Grateful not just for your blessings, but for your chastening, for the discipline that we have to endure, knowing that you treat us as sons, for our prophet, that we might share your holiness. We pray that your chastening would be more effective in our lives than it was in Israel's life. During the days of Jehu, the son of Nimshi, we ask these things, father, in the name of your son, the son of the true and living God, who lives and reigns with you and your spirit in three persons forever and ever. And all God's people said, amen.