2nd Kings chapter 15 In the 27th year of Jeroboam king of Israel, Azariah the son of Amaziah king of Judah became king. He was 16 years old when he became king and he reigned 52 years in Jerusalem. His mother's name was Jechaliah of Jerusalem. And he did what was right in the sight of the Lord, according to all that his father Amaziah had done, except that the high places were not removed. The people still sacrificed and burned incense on the high places. Then the Lord struck the king so that he was a leper until the day of his death. So he dwelt in an isolated house. And Jotham, the king's son, was over the royal house, judging the people of the land. Now the rest of the acts of Azariah and all that he did, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah? So Azariah rested with his fathers, and they buried him with his fathers in the city of David. Then Jotham his son reigned in his place. In the 38th year of Azariah king of Judah, Zechariah the son of Jeroboam reigned over Israel and Samaria six months. And he did evil in the sight of the Lord as his fathers had done. He did not depart from the sins of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, who made Israel sin. Then Shalem, the son of Jabesh, conspired against him and struck and killed him in front of the people, and he reigned in his place. Now the rest of the Acts of Zechariah, indeed, they are written in the book of the Chronicles of the kings of Israel. This was the Lord of the Lord, which he spoke to Jehu, saying, Your son shall sit on the throne of Israel to the fourth generation. And so it was. Shalem, the son of Jabesh, became king in the 39th year of Uzziah, king of Judah, and he reigned a full month in Samaria. For Menahem, the son of Gadi, went up from Tirzah, came to Samaria, and struck Shalem, the son of Jabesh, in Samaria, and killed him, and he reigned in his place. Now the rest of the acts of Shalem and the conspiracy which he led, indeed, they are written in the book of the Chronicles of the kings of Israel. Then from Tirzah, Menahem attacked Tipsa, all who were there in its territory, because they did not open it to him, therefore he attacked it. and all the women there who were with child, he ripped open. In the 39th year of Azariah, king of Judah, Menahem, son of Gadi, became king over Israel and reigned 10 years in Samaria. And he did evil in the sight of the Lord. He did not depart all his days from the sins of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, who had made Israel sin. Pul, king of Assyria, came against the land, and Menahem gave Pul a thousand talents of silver that his hand might be with him to strengthen the kingdom in his hand. And Manahem exacted the money from Israel, from all the very wealthy, from every man fifty shekels of silver, to give to the king of Assyria. So the king of Assyria turned back and did not stay there in the land. Now the rest of the acts of Menahem and all that he did, are they not written in the book of the Chronicles of the kings of Israel? So Menahem rested with his fathers, then Pechahiah his son reigned in his place. In the fiftieth year of Azariah king of Judah, Pechahiah the son of Menahem became king over Israel and Samaria, and reigned two years. And he did evil in the sight of the Lord. He did not depart from the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who had made Israel sin. Then Pekah, the son of Remaliah, an officer of his, conspired against him and killed him in Samaria, in the citadel of the king's house, along with Argab and Arye. With him were fifty men of Gilead. He killed him and reigned in his place. Now the rest of the acts of Pekahiah and all that he did, indeed, they are written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Israel. In the 52nd year of Azariah, king of Judah, Pekah, the son of Remaliah, became king over Israel and Samaria and reigned 20 years. And he did evil in the sight of the Lord. He did not depart from the sins of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, who had made Israel sin. In the days of Pekah, king of Israel, Tiglath, policer, king of Assyria, came and took Ijon, Abelbeth, Maacah, Jenoa, Kadesh, Hazor, Gilead, and Galilee, all the land of Naphtali. and he carried them captive to Assyria. Then Hosea, son of Elah, led a conspiracy against Pekah, the son of Remaliah, and struck him and killed him. So he reigned in his place in the 20th year of Jotham, the son of Uzziah. Now the rest of the acts of Pekah and all that he did, indeed, they are written in the book of the Chronicles of the kings of Israel. In the second year of Pekah, the son of Remaliah, king of Israel, Jotham, the son of Uzziah, king of Judah, began to reign. He was 25 years old when he became king, and he reigned 16 years in Jerusalem. His mother's name was Jerusha, the daughter of Zadok. And he did what was right in the sight of the Lord. He did according to all that his father Uzziah had done. However, the high places were not removed. The people still sacrificed and burned incense on the high places. He built the upper gate of the house of the Lord. Now the rest of the acts of Jotham and all that he did, are they not written in the book of the Chronicles of the kings of Judah? In those days, the Lord began to send Rezan king of Syria and Pecha the son of Remaliah against Judah. So Jotham rested with his fathers and was buried with his fathers in the city of David, his father. Then Ahaz his son reigned in his place. That's far the reading of God's word. Let's pray. Almighty God, show us, we beg, your judgment and salvation in this text. We see the violated bodies and the violated boundaries. We ask, Father, that you would help us to see how this is edifying, to see that it is edifying. It tells us that judgment is coming, and also that in judgment lies the promise of salvation. We pray that you would free us from distraction, that you would open our hearts and our minds by your Spirit as the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, that we might see Jesus Christ in this text. We pray in His name, and all God's people said, Amen. Well, at risk of invoking an ancient technology that some of you are unfamiliar with, It seems that our chapter tonight is stuck on fast-forward. We blitz through king after king after king. In fact, there are seven kings in this chapter. More than in any other chapter in the Book of Kings. Seven, of course, is the number of perfection, but in 2 Kings 15, it comes across as the number of imperfection. We certainly see a whole lot of imperfection in the seven kings whose reign is recounted in less than 40 verses. We've got an average of just over five verses per king, covering almost 60 years, 55 years. What's the point? Well, we're speeding towards destruction. And there are several different things in this chapter and in the chapters around it that talk about destruction in terms of violated boundaries. The first one we saw last Sunday night when Amaziah provoked this stupid war with Jehoash and Jehoash came down to Jerusalem and broke down its wall, verse 13 of chapter 14. He broke down the wall of Jerusalem from the gate of Ephraim to the corner gate 400 cubits. It's kind of the first violation, the first boundary that's crossed in a very marked way. But it doesn't end there. Notice the other boundaries that are crossed. Well, Uzziah, for one, crosses a boundary, goes into the Lord's house, offers incense, violates that boundary, and in return, God violates his bodily integrity with this disease of leprosy that makes your parts rot off. And then, of course, we have Minahim in verse 16, this wonderful character who attacked Tipsa and ripped open all the pregnant women. Why? Because the city wouldn't open up to him. The city refused to be violated, and so he violates it, And as a sign of his eagerness to violate, violates, of course, the sanctity of human life, violates the bodily boundaries of these mothers and their children. And then at the end of the chapter, one more, well, two more major violations. The first major violation, verse 29, Tiglath Pileser comes and cuts off an entire province of Israel. All the land of Naphtali. So an entire tribal territory is gone just like that. We have 50 states, they only had 10 tribal territories in northern Israel. One-tenth of their administrative regions had just been wiped out. Yet another boundary violated. This time very clear on a map. And then the final boundary violation, verse 37, the incursions of the Syrians and Israelites into Judah. The Lord began to send Reza and Pekah against Judah. So clearly our chapter is kind of held together by this theme of violated boundaries and violated bodies. We're speeding on to destruction God's unstoppable judgment on his own people is symbolized and enacted in the violation of political, social, and bodily boundaries. The fact that judgment is coming is visible, say, in Uzziah's body, in the broken wall of Jerusalem, in the missing tribal region of Israel. God is saying, look, people, judgment is coming. It starts with Uzziah, and the leprous rot comes to Judah. 52 years did all the amazing things that we read about in Chronicles. What does our narrator tell us? Two things. People were still sacrificing, and Uzziah was a leopard to the day of his death. That's it. We talked last week or two weeks ago about trying to put the 16-year presidency of FDR into four verses, but here the narrator takes 52 years, crams them into these seven verses. Judah is starting to rot. How do we know? Well, her king is starting to rot. The most important person in the land, the one who symbolizes its fate, he's in trouble. Why did he rot? Well, we know from Chronicles because he insisted on worshiping God on his own terms. And the New Testament tells us that the people in Corinth who did that actually died. Again, the warning is clear. Worship matters. How you approach God, how you come into his presence is a big deal in his mind. He's not afraid to smite the people who don't pay attention to that. The people who think they're holy enough to just waltz in. It's a warning to us. Of course, on an individual level, don't worship God wrongly. And on a corporate level, look out. When you look at your political leaders and think, there's some rot here, sign that judgment is coming. What kind of worship is wrong? Any worship where our heart is not engaged? Any worship where we're doing it to impress other people rather than to impress God? Any worship where we say, well God, I know you didn't specifically say you wanted this, but I think you do? Beware of those kinds of worship. Verse 8, Zechariah, son of Jeroboam, we saw last week how successful Jeroboam II was. He restored an almost Solomonic empire. He was the third in the line of Jehu, now his son Zechariah, fourth in the line of Jehu, last six months. It's like judgment was straining at the leash, just ready to pounce on the line of Jehu as soon as the prophetic word let it. And the narrator goes back and reminds us, hey, God told Jehu, you'll have four generations of sons on the throne of Israel. And so it was. Again, God's word comes to pass. And we could say this about every last thing God has said. God said it, and so it was. God said, you sin against me, you'll die, and so it was. God said, if you take refuge in me, you'll live, and so it was. Are we amazed by the Word of God coming true every time? We look at this, and maybe you'd say, wow, sure enough, God said four generations, he got four generations. Just like God told Ahab, judgment on your line, to four generations. And there was judgment for four generations. We should be amazed by God's Word coming true, and remember that every time God says, here's how it's gonna be, That's the way it will be. Borders can be violated, boundaries can be violated, bodies can be violated, but the Word of God cannot be violated. It is infallible. It is inviolable. No matter how much people try. Zechariah dies. Well, Zechariah is assassinated. And Shalom, his assassin, reigns a full month. Anyone here able to name the single U.S. president who served 31 days in office? We did have a president who reigned a full month, William Henry Harrison, in 1848 or 1849. He died of pneumonia, not assassination. So here's Shalom. We're hastening on to destruction. Fast-forwarding to judgment. Does the knowledge that God's judgment is coming and even coming quickly comfort you or distress you? See, for them, judgment was just judgment. When northern Israel fell, that was it. That was the end. But for us, judgment in its finality, in its totality, is salvation because judgment is when Christ comes back. Judgment is not just suffering and pain and destruction, it is that. It will also be the glory of Jesus' return. So that's really the comfort, that's the gospel message in here. Hastening to destruction is not the final word. Judgment is not the only story. Because at the final judgment there will be salvation too. We blow through Shalom. Menahem, son of Gadi, comes up, attacks him, reigns in his place, and it almost seems like Israel has more assassins than kings in this era. Most of its kings were assassins. We've talked before about the KGB during the days of Stalin and how each ruler of the KGB, each head of the KGB, personally eliminated his predecessor. Well, so it was in northern Israel. Menahem, violator of bodies, hates life, hates everything but power apparently, very clearly pursues this theme of violated bodies by ripping open pregnant women, which is what, a way of saying I hate you, I hate the new life you're carrying, I don't want anything to do with it? That was Minahim. And his sickening violence worked a little bit. That and his violation of what Israel was supposed to be. Israel is supposed to survive by God's protection. But Menahem survives by sending a nice fat bribe to the king of Assyria. Violator of bodies and the body politic. But his sickening violence was such that for once his son reigns in his place. He hates pregnant women, but he has a son. The inconsistency of those who hate Christ. If you don't have faith and love, or faith and hope, you won't have love. And that's Minahim. Didn't have faith, didn't have hope, and so was full of hatred and violence. His son reigns in his place for two years, and then a minor officer conspires against him and kills him between the lion and the eagle in his palace in Samaria. What more is there to say about Pekahia? A dynasty soars and crashes. And as a counterpoint, verse 27, in the 52nd year of Azariah, king of Judah, all of this activity, all of this assassination takes place while Uzziah rules with God's favor just 20 miles south. Well, it's 50 miles or so from Jerusalem to Samaria. Samaria is totally unstable. Jerusalem is totally stable. What makes the difference? The favor of God. One last king in Israel. Pecha, the son of Remeliah, becomes king, does evil in the sight of the Lord, did not depart from the sins of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, who had made Israel sin. We hear that about every single king of northern Israel, except the last one. We'll look at him in two weeks. One commentator told the story of a particular plant that the Germans ran in France during World War II. And this plant made bearings, ball bearings for trucks. And the French employees had figured out a pretty clever way of sabotaging every set of ball bearings that rolled off the assembly line in this plant. They carefully sprinkled a handful of sand into every set of bearings that they made. And every truck made with ball bearings from this plant would go just fine for the first 70 miles or so and then break down and quit. Well, the sand in the ball bearings in northern Israel was Jeroboam's false religion. Jeroboam started them with sand in the ball bearings that eventually brought the entire thing grinding to a halt. It took 200 years, roughly. but it worked. That's what false worship does. It's the sand in the bearing that eats away your life individually, socially, nationally. Worshipping these golden calves, turning away from the true God. Of course, we could say the same about any God. Worshipping pleasure, power, money, prestige, convenience, or any of the other gods of our age and time, our nation. It is sand in the bearings that eats away the viability of the project. Our nation can't survive if we worship false gods, and certainly the church can't survive worshiping false gods. So once again, Israel is violated. Tiglat, the policer comes and he takes the entire tribal territory of Naphtali, just hauls them off to Assyria and that's the end of them. They never appear again in the narrative. Israel is being violated because they're violating God's word. They're violating God's law. They don't want to worship the true God. They don't want to seek their satisfaction and their meaningfulness in Him. So Tiglath-Pileser comes and hauls them away. Finally, the last king, the seventh king, we're back to Judah, Jotham. Son of Uzziah begins to reign. He does what's right according to what his father did. He still lets the people worship on the high places. There is one bright spot. He built, verse 35, he built the upper gate of the house of the Lord. In the midst of all the incursions, all the violations, all the breaking of walls and breach of boundaries, we have here one notice that in Judah there was something a little bit different happening. There was somebody saying, hey, let's build a gate. Hey, let's enforce a boundary. Let's repair the temple of God. It wasn't much, but compared to everything that's happening around him, it's a lot. I think there's something here for us. When boundaries are being violated all around us, we may not be able to do everything or do much even to change that. Surely there's a boundary we can enforce somewhere and hopefully it's something that relates to the house of the Lord. Jotham wanted to prioritize worship. Jotham said the way we meet with God is important. That's a boundary that I'm going to try to rebuild. Is that something we can try to rebuild? Something we can work on in our lives, in our family's life. Let's build the gate of the house of the Lord, so to speak. Say, no matter what violations of boundaries are going on around us, it's important to guard our time meeting with God. Guard the house of the Lord, the place where God dwells, which is his church. Some of you may know, I put questions in the weekly email that Wayne sends out about what's going on each Sunday here at Harvest. And one of the questions in this past week's email for the evening sermon was, where do you see political, social, and bodily boundaries being violated in our contemporary world? And Paul Gale, who is the only one who answers the questions, or at least sends answers to me, wrote to me and said, har, har, har, are you kidding? I don't have time to list all the ways in which I see political, social, and bodily boundaries being violated all around us. And of course, I think all of us could say the same. Things like refugee crises. Talk about a violation of political boundaries. And abortion, talk about a violation of bodily boundaries. And transgenderism, talk about a violation of social boundaries and bodily boundaries that is simply rife in our culture and in the world around us. You can hardly open a magazine or turn on the television without seeing something about the violation of political, social, and bodily boundaries. That's the world that Jotham lived in too. And it happened to him. Verse 37, God began to send Reza and Pekah against Judah. God didn't say, well, Jotham cares about boundaries, so I'm going to give him a break. He'll have an easy life. No, it didn't work that way. God obviously knew that Jotham cared. He knew that Jotham was doing what was right in his sight, to a large degree. But he still sent him testing. He still sent him people who came against him. Of course, Isaiah and Ahaz had a dialogue about Rezan and Pekah. You can read that in Isaiah 36, or in Isaiah 6 through 9, rather. It was during these times when Rezan and Pekah came that God gave the promise of Emmanuel that we read every Christmas. You're under attack, people of God. Political, social, and bodily boundaries are being violated in the world all around you, the narrator seems to be saying. But it is possible, even in that environment, to try to rebuild the house of the Lord, it's possible to seek God with us. God himself will give you a sign. A virgin will conceive and bear a son and call his name Immanuel. His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Those prophecies were given at this time. Boundaries are being violated but God is coming. That's the message of this chapter. And so because God is coming in the here and now, certainly we should attempt to shore up the boundaries as we can, especially those relating to the worship of God. And in the further horizon, we should look and say Christ is coming back. Judgment brings salvation. When Jesus comes, it won't just be for judgment. will be for blessing. If you believe that, it will comfort you, no matter how egregious the imperfections around you. You can be like Ahaz and Jotham and look and say, Rezan and Pekka are coming, and they're going to destroy us. God had one word in response to that. Emmanuel. God is with you so you don't have to fear the violation of boundaries. Let's pray. Our Father, we thank you because your Son has come and is coming. We don't need to fear the violation of boundaries. Help us therefore not to live in fear but to live in confidence. To seek to rebuild the gate of the house of the Lord as we can, as you give us opportunity and material. Help us, Father, to trust in the sign of Emmanuel. We know that we are, in our own time, seemingly, once again, fast-forwarding to destruction. We pray, Father, that in this time, you would teach us to trust you. We ask these things in the name of your son, the one whose coming means not just judgment, but also salvation. And all God's people said, Amen.