Well, this evening, I would invite you all to turn in your Bibles to 2 Kings, and specifically tonight, we're gonna be taking a look at verses 25 through 29 of 2 Kings 8. 2 Kings 8. We are going to be looking at the very short reign, a year or possibly less, of a man by the name of Ahaziah, a king of Judah, but unfortunately a king of Judah, who emulated more the habits of the kings of the northern kingdom, that is Israel, in their apostasy, their bowel worship, and their bad decisions, their bad choices. But before we turn our attention to the Word of the Lord, let's seek His face and let's ask for His blessing. Please join me. Sovereign Lord, as I come to open up Your Word, I confess, O Lord, that I can't exposit this and apply it to Your people right, unless, O Lord, You illuminate me inwardly. Unless You help me to divide Your Word, I can do nothing. And certainly, O Lord, while my words may reach ears, I can't change hearts, Lord. Only You can do that. And so, Lord, I pray that you would. I pray that we would take these things, this counsel that's given to us in your word to heart. These things are meant to encourage and to warn. to show us where we should go and tell us to turn aside from the path that will lead to destruction before it's too late. I do pray, Lord, that we would understand that human nature has not changed. Time has gone on. But unfortunately, we are still at heart the same people. We need the same Redeemer. And therefore, the lessons are just as applicable to us today. I do pray all of these things in Jesus' holy name. Amen. 2 Kings chapter 8 verses 25 through 29. I do remind you this is the word of the Lord. 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 Amri, king of Israel. And he walked in the way of the house of Ahab, and did evil in the sight of the Lord, like the house of Ahab, 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 inflicted on him at Ramah when he fought against Hazael, king of Syria. And Isaiah, 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 and the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever. One of the motifs, and by motif I mean one of the dominant themes or central ideas that we see again and again in the Book of Kings is this idea, which is true, that children are profoundly influenced for good and evil by the ways of their parents. It's most often the case that a child will walk after the way that their parents walked, and I don't mean just in the way that they actually perambulate throughout the earth. It is interesting that the men in my house tend to walk the same way, but happily, we don't tend to walk in the ways of our fathers, going back after evil habits, not attending church, things like that. There is a possibility that a child will not walk in the way of his fathers. When those fathers were evil, that's a good thing. Unfortunately, it runs in the opposite direction as well. Sometimes you will have children who are raised by excellent parents who go off after the wrong direction, but usually there's an influence in their lives that sets them in that direction. One of the things that we're seeing Today, for instance, is the fact that often children are sent off after receiving excellent instruction, perhaps homeschooled in families by godly parents, then we send them off to what are essentially Marxist indoctrination camps, and all of the good work that we have done over the period of four years is utterly erased, both by what their instructors tell them, and also by the pressure and influence of the peers amongst whom they are with. So, whom they are with, I should say. And so we see that influence and example is profoundly important in the raising up of children. One of the things that you see in the Book of Kings is whenever there is a new king being introduced, there's a summary of whether he did good or evil in his reign, for instance. And you'll also notice that His great examples are listed as well. Who did he walk after? What was he like? In 10 chapters, we will be introduced to a good king of Judah, whose reign is introduced this way. This is 2 Kings 18.1. in the third year of Hosea, the king of Elah, king of Israel, that Hezekiah, the son of Ahaz, king of Judah, began to reign. He was 25 years old when he became king, and he reigned 29 years in Jerusalem. His mother's name was Abi, the daughter of Zechariah. And he did what was right in the sight of the Lord, according to all that his father David had done. So we see there Hezekiah is introduced. You don't have to read anything about what he actually did in the succeeding chapters because you're told what kind of reign he had from the very beginning, whether it was good or evil. If he was faithful to the Lord, if he loved the Lord, and if he did what was commanded by him, he is a good king. If he did not love the Lord, was not faithful to him, and didn't follow his example, he was a bad king. Now, Hezekiah, interestingly enough, obviously, it says in the introduction, you will notice there, and he did what was right in the sight of the little Lord according to all that his father David had done. Now, Hezekiah was not directly the son of David. He was a descendant of David. David was his great, let's see, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather. The point, though, is that Hezekiah did not follow the evil example of his father Ahaz, who followed the evil example of the sons of Ahab. Instead, Hezekiah followed the example of David, and he loved and served the Lord, and he did what was right during his reign. Now, not all the time, that is. David only had one descendant who was sinless and perfect. Does anybody know who that was? Jesus, that's right. But the desire of Hezekiah's heart was to obey the Lord. Sometimes he failed in achieving that desire, but I often say that the difference between the Christian and the non-Christian can be illustrated with a compass, the needle pointing towards Jesus. For the Christian, occasionally the needle will get knocked around, spun out of sorts and so on. and not point to Jesus, but eventually it will come back to true. The person will continue to walk in the way of Christ. For the non-believers, sometimes the needle will seem to point towards Jesus, but usually it's spinning and pointing in the opposite direction. So Hezekiah was a follower of the Lord, but an imperfect follower, as we all are. Now, unfortunately, that cannot be said of Ahaziah. Ahaziah, from the beginning, followed the evil example of his parents. That is Jehoram, son of Jehoshaphat, and Athaliah, the daughter of King Ahab and Queen Jezebel. The great influence, though, in his life was not his evil father. It was primarily his evil mother. We read in the record of his reign in 2 Chronicles 22, And Athaliah, like her mother Jezebel, well she hated Yahweh. And she hated the Lord God of Israel. She followed the false god, Baal, just like her mother Jezebel. And she sought to have not just her son, but the entire nation of Israel follow her in her sin and apostasy. She didn't just turn her own child away from the Lord. She sought to turn all of the people of that nation in the wrong direction. It's interesting, to me at least, a little while ago I was reading a more modern story of the influence of an evil mother, and I couldn't help but be reminded of Athaliah as I did so. This woman was remarkably similar to Athaliah, although she was born in the modern age. The woman in question was born Madeleine Mays in Pittsburgh in 1919 to a Scots-Irish father who made sure she was baptized into his Presbyterian church. However, she did not continue on in the way of her father. In 1941, Mays married John Henry Roths, a steel worker, but she soon separated from him, and she served in the U.S. Army Women's Army Corps. She began a relationship with an officer by the name of William J. Murray, Jr., who was a married Roman Catholic. He refused to divorce his wife because that was a sin. to get divorced, but having an affair, oh well. But despite that, the fact that he would not divorce his wife, she divorced her first husband, Roths, and adopted the name Madeline Murray. She gave birth to her son with this man, Murray, after returning to Ohio, and she named the boy William J. Murray III. Madeline moved with the baby to Baltimore, where her mother and her brother lived. She eventually split up with Murray, and she began a relationship with a man by the name of Michael Fiorello, with whom she had another son, whom she named John Garth Murray. When Bill, Bill Murray, you're gonna get the wrong, let's stick with William. Instead of Bill Murray. When William Murray was still a child, Madeline started hosting socialist labor party meetings and encouraged him to attend so he could learn the truth about capitalism. She was a devoted Marxist. Madeline became an atheist activist when the boys were still young and attending public school and in 1916 after 1960, sorry. After returning with her two boys to the United States from a trip to Paris, during which she unsuccessfully applied for immigration to the Soviet Union, she brought William to the local junior high school to enroll him in classes and was incensed absolutely incensed to see the children doing what before class? Let's see if you can guess. Praying before class. After various attempts to prevent William's attendance during prayer and Bible reading time, Madeline gained national attention when she filed a lawsuit challenging the practice of prayer in school and Bible reading as well. And she named her son William as the plaintiff in that. If I tell you that in 1965 she married again, this time to a marine named O'Hare, you'll probably recognize her immediately as Madeleine Marie O'Hare. the founder of the American Atheists, and the woman behind the Supreme Court cases that took prayer and Bible reading out of American schools. Like Athaliah, Madeleine Murray O'Hare's intention was not just to corrupt her sons, it was to corrupt the entire nation. What became of those two sons, though? And it's interesting when we consider it. In 1980, Amazingly enough, by God's grace, William J. Murray was converted. He became an evangelical Christian and went on to become a Baptist minister, praise God. Learning of his conversion, though, his mother publicly declared, one could call this a postnatal abortion on the part of a mother, I guess. I repudiate him entirely and completely for now and all times, he is beyond human forgiveness. On reading his mother's statement in the press, Williams said, oddly, it didn't hurt me that much because of how dysfunctional the home was that I was raised in. The number of times in which I had done something that was perhaps wrong in her eyes as a child, and afterwards she looked at me and said, I wish abortion had been legal when I was carrying you. She told me that to my face when I was a teenager. So this statement was nothing more than a continuation of that. This was a woman who was obsessed with death and shaking her fist against God throughout her entire life. Now, unfortunately, William was the only member of the family to follow his grandfather's example into Christianity. Madeleine Marie O'Hara and the rest of the family, including William's daughter, Robin, whom she adopted, became deeply involved with the American Atheist Organization. And in 1986, her other son, John Garth Murray, became the head of the organization. John Garth Murray, however, was only in power, having the title, but no control. His mother maintained that authoritative control behind the scenes, which was probably also, interestingly enough, the story, probably, of Athaliah and Ahaziah. Williams says that Madeline Murray O'Hare had a fascination with death and murders, and she hired David Roland Waters, knowing that he was a felon and a murderer. He started working for American Atheists in 1993, and in May of 1994, he stole $54,000 from Madeleine Murray O'Hare. She was incensed that the felon had filched $54,000 of her own money, and she fired him. Then subsequently, with the help of friends, he kidnapped Madeleine Murray O'Hare, her son, John Garth Murray, and her adopted daughter, Robin. He spent several months torturing them. and squeezing them for every penny that they could get. When finally he had squeezed them dry, he murdered them and buried their remains in an oil drum in the desert. Had William followed the example of his evil mother, he too would have ended up in an oil drum instead of being in the service of the Lord to this day. Something to consider, the continuing influence of an evil mother and where it leads children. As we shall see, though, Athaliah, like Madeline Murray O'Hare, turned out to be a big fan of post-natal abortion. In a little while, we'll read about how she slays all of the young heirs to the throne in order to seize and then hold on to power herself. But one thing we should learn from this, brothers and sisters, is Ahaziah's own death can also be laid on the doorstep of Athaliah and his evil relatives. Ahaziah's grandfather, Jehoshaphat, had been drawn into war, a war at Ramoth Gilead, you'll remember. Ahab had been mortally wounded attempting to retake that portion of Israel. from the Syrians, and now Ahaziah was being led by Joram to a war in the same place. Ramoth-Gilead incidentally means Heights of Gilead, and it's about 25 miles east of the Jordan. Today it's in modern-day Jordan. But Ahaziah agreed to accompany his evil uncle, the other Jehoram, called Joram here, King of Israel, in this joint military campaign against the Syrians, with the Israelites. And this being the same place that his grandfather had been mortally wounded, he should probably have considered that it's not the Lord's will for us to retake this, but he wasn't considering the Lord's will at any point. Wounded in battle, Jehoram had gone back to his royal palace in the city of Jezreel. And later, King Ahaziah, probably motivated by his mother and encouraged by his uncle, had traveled to visit his recuperating ally. And we will see, I hate to give this story away, that while they were there, both of them are going to be killed by the man that God will anoint to be the next king of Israel, a man by the name of Jehu. It's interesting though, isn't it, that the story ends at Jezreel. in the very place where Ahab, you remember, had stolen the vineyard of Naboth. The Lord had promised Ahab that because of his evil, there would be a wicked end to all of his children. His line would be cut off, and all of these things come to be the destruction of Ahab's apostate dynasty. Ahaziah, we'll see, reigned for less than two years, and then, this young man, well Ahaziah king of Israel reigned for two years, Ahaziah king of Judah reigned for one. And that is what happens when you are evil. Now a couple of, well three applications. First, when it comes to marriage, we've talked often about the importance of choosing the right man. to lead your family. That's of greater importance perhaps than certainly his physical attributes, how much money he earns. If he is not a man who loves the Lord and who is following him from the heart, he's not the right man to lead your family. He's not going to be able to do so. If he is too weak in his own faith, to be a spiritual leader in the household, or if he is worse, indifferent to or even opposed to the Lord, he is no fit man for marriage. But what about the woman you marry? Matthew Henry puts it very well when he says, the child may be expected to resemble the mother. When men choose wives for themselves, they must remember they are choosing mothers for their children and are concerned to choose accordingly. Young men choose well. Choose a woman who will raise up your children. And should you die, because none of us can discount that possibility. We don't know when our lives are going to end, none of us. But should you die before your children are grown, will this woman be able to raise up your child, your children, in the knowledge and the admonition of the Lord? Does she love the Lord? Will she walk in a direction that you would want your daughters to walk in? That's of critical importance. And so choose accordingly. Choose a woman who loves the Lord so much that you have to run after the Lord yourself in order to catch up with her. Secondly, Beware of entering into any alliances with those who stand opposed to the Lord. It is often the case that, unfortunately, and I've seen this happen before, young Christian children who are in a situation where they are very lonely will take up with non-Christian kids who are not following the Lord and who will be a bad example to them. They'll get into bad company. Sometimes it's not loneliness, sometimes it's curiosity. Sometimes there will be a young woman or a young girl in that particular group who they are attracted to, young woman or young girl, young woman or young man, that's what I meant, whom they are attracted to. And they become part of that particular grouping, a group that does not love the Lord. Often it's the case, unfortunately, that children will be drawn into evil company when they are at school and away from other people. I have to admit, I was evil company in school. I was not the kind of person who your children should hang out with. My philosophy was not much better than, I wasn't, by God's grace, a Marxist, but my personal morals and philosophy of life were no better than hers in many different respects. So beware of entering into alliances with that kind of person and watch out over your children. Give them advice in that particular area. They may not want to hear that these are not the people that they should be hanging out with, but it's your duty as parents to tell them that. Matthew Henry comments, Providence so ordered it in the case of Ahaziah that he who had been debauched by the house of Ahab might be cut off with them. Those who partake with sinners in their sins must expect to partake with them in their plagues. Now, if you were a child and you have a parent who is evil, That's very sad, obviously. You should not follow after an ungodly parent. They will lead you, as Athaliah led her son to destruction, they will lead you in the paths of destruction. It's very difficult for a child in that particular situation to say, no, my father, or no, my mother, and not follow their example. One of the things that often I unfortunately see is when a divorce is happening in a formerly Christian family, one of the parents, the father, or the mother has apostatized. Many of the older children will choose to go with the one who is more libertine, the one who will give them greater freedom, especially if they have entered into the teen years. This is the wrong decision. Unfortunately, and I hate to have to say this, but in the modern world, if you ever are in that situation, children, and you are forced to choose between two parents who are splitting up, if you have a godly parent and if you have an ungodly parent, choose the godly parent, the parent who may keep you more in the guide rails with the Lord, but nonetheless, who will set you on the right path. Follow the example of godly forebears, not ungodly ones. for good examples around you. Now, sometimes it may be that there's such a dearth of good examples around you that you have to seek for good examples in the past. One of the things that blessed me, and my parents were all of their non... Church attendance, and they're not raising me up in the knowledge of the Lord. They did give me some good, they did instill some good things in me. I do want to say that and offer them that respect. They, for instance, my mother endeavored against my will, my best efforts to kibosh the entire process. My mother did teach me to read. She taught me to read well so that by the time I was school age, I was already reading well beyond my years. And one of the things that I learned early on was to love history. And I was attracted to the heroes. I was sometimes attracted to the villains as well. My wife will tell you that. But it was looking for examples in books to show me the right way to go or to lead my life after that. That served me well after I entered into the Christian faith. When I discovered the Puritans, largely through the influence of a godly librarian in a Presbyterian church, I began to discover men whose example was just shining. It was amazing. I could look upon these men and say, that's the kind of man I need to be. You saw their piety. You saw their genius. You saw their studiousness. You saw their godliness, their humility, as well, amongst all of it. And all of these character traits and patterns became things that I wanted to emulate myself, that I wanted to see in me. as imperfectly as they've always been portrayed in me. So the value of books, particularly good Christian books, Christian heroes of the past, not just Christian men. It's interesting, Joy and I used to read on our way, we used to be part of the giant, barely moving parking lot that is Route 66 headed into Washington, D.C. And on our way in, Joy would drive and I would read because Joy used to get car sick when she read. So we went through a number of Christian books together as new Christians. One of the first books that we ever read was The Hiding Place by Corrie Tenboom. In that, we saw an example, an amazing example of the perseverance of a godly woman in awful circumstances. A woman who was sent with her sister and her father to concentration camps. They went to Ravensbruck. I've forgotten which one her father was sent to. But this was a woman nonetheless who came through and at the end she forgave even the German captors who had so tormented her during her time in Ravensbruck. and a woman who was used in a deeply fragmented, torn apart Europe to bring the good news of the gospel to people who were in many cases lost and hurting. And so that was a great example for me, and then I discovered more and more as time went on from books, not from the examples that have been set for me in my childhood. I was raised in a a largely godless environment, but nonetheless, godly people from the past. I am very grateful for all of those friends I have who have been dead for centuries, who have taught me so many things, who have been my mentors and examples, who, being dead, yet speaketh through their word. But most of all, brothers and sisters, where should we gain our greatest examples? Obviously, from the Bible. We can go to the book of books, and we can learn there about what it means to be a godly Christian man, a godly Christian woman. But the thing is, we can look at the heroes, in quotes, of the Bibles, the Bible rather, and at some point or another, we always see them failing. there's something that shows that they are not perfect, that they were incapable, or they could be examples to us, they were incapable of being our Redeemer. And that's why our greatest example, the one whom we must follow primarily, is of course the Lord Jesus Christ. He's the one who sets the standard for all of us. And while we will never be able to be like Christ perfectly, we should be able to listen to what Paul says, imitate me as I imitate Christ, and follow that good example. And so I would urge you to make Christ the example that you follow. First, in submitting your will to that of the Father. You remember that Jesus said, not my will, but thine be done when he was speaking to the Father. We should say the same thing to Christ when we come to him in prayer. Not thy will, but thine be done. It should always be the case that we are seeking to follow on after Christ, to take up our cross, to follow Him as the only Redeemer, and to know that when we falter and when we fail, there is one who has never stumbled and will help us and lift us up and who will lead us the rest of the way on to heaven, and that is Jesus. He should be the great, to use a crass expression, the good big brother whom we emulate, and of course the good shepherd who we know will lead us safely home to heaven. May it be that you seek your examples from the living and also the passed on stock of those who lived godly lives always. Let's go before him now. God, our gracious Father, we do thank you, Lord, for those men, for those women who you raised up in our lives to set an example for us. We thank you, O Lord, that for all of those teachers, Sunday school teachers, the influence of relatives and parents who modeled Christ and who were able to say to one degree or another, imitate me as I imitate Christ. And we pray, O Lord, for the next generation, that you would help them to avoid those ungodly examples. We pray, O Lord, that you would safeguard them from those who would lead them in the wrong direction. May it be, O Lord, that they always choose to follow the godly and to shun the ungodly, Lord. But may we not hate the ungodly. May we pity them and seek to share the gospel with them so that they too might be brought from the tribe of Cain into the tribe of Seth. And we pray this in Jesus' holy name.