The outline tonight is slightly more complicated than it sometimes is, but just keep in mind that little three-point outline at the top. I like that because it really summarizes the way this text moved. Jehoahaz gets saved, Jehoash gets bored, and Israel gets three divine gifts. Jehoash gets saved, Jehoahaz gets saved, Jehoash gets bored, Israel gets three divine gifts. So pay attention to each of those movements as we read the chapter. In the 23rd year of Jehoash, son of Ahaziah, king of Judah, Jehoahaz, the son of Jehu, became king over Israel and Samaria and reigned 17 years. And he did evil in the sight of the LORD, and followed the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who had made Israel sin. He did not depart from them. Then the anger of the LORD was aroused against Israel, and he delivered them into the hand of Hazael king of Syria, and into the hand of Ben-Hadad the son of Hazael, all their days. So Jehoahaz pleaded with the LORD, and the LORD listened to him. For he saw the oppression of Israel, because the king of Syria oppressed them. Then the Lord gave Israel a Savior, so that they escaped from under the hand of the Syrians. And the children of Israel dwelt in their tents as before. Nevertheless, they did not depart from the sins of the house of Jeroboam, who had made Israel sin, but walked in them. And the wooden images also remained in Samaria. For he left of the army of Jehoahaz only fifty horsemen, ten chariots, and ten thousand foot soldiers. And the king of Syria destroyed them and made them like the dust at threshing. Now the rest of the acts of Jehoahaz, all that he did in his might, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Israel? So Jehoahaz rested with his fathers, and they buried him in Samaria. Then Joash his son reigned in his place. In the 37th year of Joash, king of Judah, Jehoash, the son of Jehoahaz, became king over Israel in Samaria and reigned 16 years. And he did evil in the sight of the Lord. He did not depart from all the sins of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, who had made Israel sin, but he walked in them. Now the rest of the acts of Joash, all that he did in his might with which he fought against Amaziah, king of Judah, are they not written in the book of the Chronicles of the kings of Israel? So Joash rested with his fathers, then Jeroboam sat on his throne, and Joash was buried in Samaria with the kings of Israel. Elisha had become sick with the illness of which he would die. Then Joash the king of Israel came down to him and wept over his face and said, Oh my father, my father, the chariots of Israel and their horsemen. And Elisha said to him, take a bow and some arrows. So he took himself a bow and some arrows. Then he said to the king of Israel, put your hand on the bow. So he put his hand on it, and Elisha put his hands on the king's hand. And he said, open the east window. And he opened it. Then Elisha said, shoot! And he shot. The arrow of the Lord's deliverance, and the arrow of deliverance from Syria. For you must strike the Syrians at Aphek until you have destroyed them. Then he said, take the arrows. So he took them. And he said to the king of Israel, strike the ground. So he struck three times and stopped. And the man of God was angry with him and said, you should have struck five or six times. Then you would have struck Syria till you had destroyed it. But now you will strike Syria only three times. Then Elisha died and they buried him. And the raiding bands from Moab invaded the land in the spring of the year. So it was as they were burying a man, and suddenly they spied a band of raiders. And they put the man in the tomb of Elisha, and when the man was let down and touched the bones of Elisha, he revived and stood on his feet. And Hazael, king of Syria, oppressed Israel all the days of Jehoahaz. But the Lord was gracious to them, had compassion on them, and regarded them because of his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and would not yet destroy them or cast them from his presence. Now Hazael, king of Syria, died. Then Ben-Hadad, his son, reigned in his place. And Jehoash, the son of Jehoahaz, recaptured from the hand of Ben-Hadad, the son of Hazael, the cities which he had taken out of the hand of Jehoahaz, his father, by war. Three times Jehoash defeated him and recaptured the cities of Israel." Thus far, the reading of God's Word. Let's pray. Almighty Father, show us Yourself in this text. Help us to see not just a bunch of kings blundering around the ancient Near East, but rather to see Your magnificence, Your grace, Your salvation. It's here, Father. Open our eyes so we can detect it. Be with me, help me to speak boldly, accurately, and clearly the things that are written here. Help us all, Father, to be free from distraction and to focus on what Your Word has to say to us tonight. We ask these things in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and all God's people said, Amen. Well, as always, Our text tonight reveals something about our God. We see preeminently in this text his grace, how he saves his people. And we see that, of course, in how he saves Jehoahaz. We even have that loaded word, Messiah, in verse five. Then the Lord gave Israel a Messiah, a savior. We'll talk about that in just a minute. We see God's salvation for Jehoash as well. You can conquer Syria. Get excited about my promise. Of course, Jehoash doesn't, but God's promise remains steadfast. And then we finally see these three divine gifts that God has for his people. The gift of resurrection, the gift of covenant, and the gift of truth. All of these things, all six of these things, if you will, God's compassion, God's promises, God's three gifts, all five of these things, these tell us something about our God. He's still the God of the Exodus. He's still the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He's still the God who sees his people's pain and acts to save them. Our God is a God of salvation. That's the message of this text. And yet God's saving grace is so frequently resisted first by Jehoahaz, then by Jehoash. And then of course, as we continue to read, we'll see by Israel at large. God sends them deliverance, but they don't appreciate it. They continue down the same path that they walked on before God ever saved them. Why is that? Well, part of it is that this salvation is a temporal salvation, a political salvation, a military salvation, a geographical or a geopolitical salvation, not a spiritual salvation. And therefore, there's no promise of perseverance of the saints, But the other thing is that this is a warning to us. You can receive all kinds of benefits and blessings and graces from God, and then turn around and slap Him in the face. Say, thanks, but no thanks. I really don't care about everything you just gave me, God. So the message to us is God saves, God is gracious. But beware, don't harden your heart and resist that grace. Let's see, first of all, God's compassion on his suffering people. Chapter 13, verse 2, He did evil in the sight of the Lord. They walked in the sins of Jeroboam. Israel sinned. So what does God do? God chastens them. He gives them into the hand of Hazael and Ben-Hadad all their days. Syria comes, attacks Israel, beats them up, subdues them, probably levies heavy tribute, heavy fines, steals their stuff, kills their men. Basically, Syria is in charge and Israel is enslaved. This is what we call chastening. God takes his people, and he doesn't hit them with retributive justice. He doesn't say, you did X, therefore you deserve this punishment. Rather, he disciplines. Discipline is the training that makes punishment unnecessary. Discipline is God's way of saying, no, you shouldn't do that, and I'm going to help you not do it by making you feel the pain, the consequences, of those wrong actions. So God's people sin by worshiping Jeroboam's calf idols and God delivers them into oppression. We're right back in the book of Judges where this same cycle happens over and over and over. And what does Jehoahaz do? Uniquely, among all the kings of Israel, he pleads with the Lord, verse 4. Israel cries out. So Jehoahaz pleaded with the Lord. Wow. Jehoahaz worships two golden bulls. But in his heart, apparently he knows that this Jeroboam state religion is a load of bull. And he goes to someone who can really help. Now, as the one commentator said, we're all getting ready to fire our Proverbs 28.9 missile at Jehoahaz. If one turns away his ear from hearing the law, even his prayer is an abomination. So said Solomon. But what does our text tonight tell us? Jehoahaz pleaded with the Lord and God said, ha! Sorry, sinner. No. and the Lord listened to him." God listened to this king who did evil in the sight of the Lord, who worshipped two calf idols, who didn't care about God's promise to the house of David, who didn't care about God's regulations for worship, but he prayed to God and God heard him. Why did God hear him? For he saw the oppression of Israel, because the king of Syria oppressed them." Where else did God see oppression? Those two loaded words. Exodus 3, doesn't he tell Moses, I have seen the oppression of my people, with which the Egyptians oppressed them, and behold, it is very bitter. God says, I'm still the God of the Exodus. I still see when my people are suffering. And I still care and I still act to save my people. God delivered his people from Egypt some 600 years before the reign of Jehovah has. But he hasn't changed. He was still the God of the Exodus. He was still the God who sees the oppression of his people and still cares and still intervenes to save. So the Lord gave Israel a Messiah. It's the high point. Verse 5. Many translations kind of mask it. They translate it down into the word deliverer. It doesn't sound quite as loaded. Or they might use the word Savior. But the Hebrew word is Messiah. God sent Israel Now God chastens. He sends these Syrian troops rampaging through the streets to say, you're my people. I want you back. Come back to me. Do you see affliction in your life as God's chastening? As God's invitation? Say, yes, you lost that thing you love. Yes, you lost that thing you prize, that job, that car, that person. that bank account, that house, that name it. But that's okay, God says, because you have me and I'm chastening you and reminding you to come back to me. And it worked. God chastened Israel and Jehovah has cried out to him and said, God, save us. And what does God do? He saves them. He sends a savior. So they escaped from under the hand of the Syrians and the children of Israel dwelt in their tents as before. What happens when God comes in his saving might? You get to live in the promised land. We've talked about that blessing of a place in the promised land. Remember the woman whom Elisha helped? She got that blessing back in chapter six. The king, chapter 7, the king restored to her all her provisions, all the produce of her land from the day she had left from the famine until the time she returned. When God delivers you, you get life in heaven forever. Typologically. So God sends this Messiah, delivers his people. Obviously this was nothing so amazing as what happened at Golgotha. This is some small-time military and political victories that God handed to Israel. And who was this Savior? Well, it was probably the next two kings of Israel. If you're reading the text in Hebrew, you'll see, for example, in verse 17, where Elisha says, the arrow of the Lord's deliverance Again, that's the arrow of the Lord's salvation. That's the same root word as Messiah. So Jehoash is firing the arrow of God's salvation, and then in the next chapter, chapter 14, verse 27, God saved Israel by the hand of Jeroboam, son of Joash. So Jehoah has his son and grandson, were used by God to save Israel, to give it a new geopolitical lease on life. Pretty amazing. It's kind of tempting to just shut the sermon down right here. Hey, you in trouble, you hurting, you sad, life rough, call to God and he'll send a savior, amen. There's a lot more to the story, isn't there? One thing we should address, first of all, is, wait a second, preacher. You're telling me that we should be so impressed with God that he delivered his people when he is the one who sent the affliction in the first place? Right, isn't that what the text says? Verse three, he delivered them into the hand of Syria. Verse five, he gave a deliverer, so they escaped from under the hand of the Syrians. Oh, whoopie ding. First God hurts us. Then we're supposed to be so impressed with him when he takes the squeeze away, when he takes away the pain, when he takes away the suffering, when he delivers us from the same problem that he delivered us into in the first place. What's the big idea, God? Well, the problem with this objection, of course, is not that some unbeliever out there makes it. The reason this objection hurts is because our own hearts make it. Because we've all said this at one time or another, God, I'm supposed to be grateful to you for taking away this problem, this pain, this suffering that you sent to me in the first place? God's answer is, yes, you are. Why? Well, because God's goal is not to make us happy. He didn't start out saying, How can I make the people of Harvest Reform Presbyterian Church have a nice week? How can I give them the maximum amount of comfort and personal peace and affluence this week? That's not His goal. His goal is to conform us to the image of His Son. His goal is to make us like Jesus. His goal is to make us better people. His goal is to bring us closer to Himself. And so he sent suffering to Israel to say, Israel, come back to me. And that's exactly what they did under Jehoahaz. To some extent, they cried out to God. God sends suffering in our life to say, come back to me. Don't forget that I'm here. Right? If you have everything you need, it's pretty easy to forget that God is there. It's only when you're suffering, when Syrian armies are in your streets, that like Jehoiah has, you're more interested suddenly in pleading with the Lord. So we should be grateful when God delivers us, because the bottom line is, He didn't have to. He doesn't exist to be our personal butler or valet to make our life better. God exists to glorify himself. And our life and death is a means to that end. If you don't like that, then the Christian life is not for you. You say, I rebel. My life needs to be an end in itself. I refuse to be a means to glorifying and enjoying God. I hope you like the Syrians. You're gonna be spending some time with them. You're gonna be receiving God's chastening. God will be saying, no, you are not the be all end all. You exist for me and not vice versa. God is working to teach all of us that. And the idea here is that we need to listen and learn. But did Israel listen and learn? Did Israel pay attention to God's Messiah, God's deliverer, and say, hey, we used to have Syrians oppressing us. Now we don't. Thank God. I'm going to destroy these calf idols, sell them for scrap, and use the money to buy an all-expenses-paid trip to Jerusalem where I can worship God the right way. Did that happen? No, verse six, nevertheless, they did not depart from the sins of the house of Jeroboam, who had made Israel sin, but walked in them. And the wooden images also remained in Samaria. What was Israel's response to God's salvation? They ignored it. They blew it off. They kept right on worshiping idols, right on seeking The gods of their time and age, the gods of their culture, what? The gods of prosperity, pleasure, plenty, personal fulfillment, convenience. Those are the gods of our culture. The gods of their culture were probably similar. God saved them, and they ignored him. They didn't care about his salvation. Why does the text suddenly dive off, verse 7, into this discussion of the size of Jehoahaz's army? We haven't heard any details about the size of the armed forces in the previous chapters. That's not generally something that interests the author of Kings. He doesn't tell us about military build-ups and military build-downs. But suddenly he says, oh, by the way, Jehoahaz's army was trashed. 50 horsemen, 10 chariots, and 10,000 foot soldiers. Nothing. There was absolutely nothing left of the fighting forces of Israel. What's the point? Well, the point is that God saved these people from Syria because there is no way that they could have saved themselves. They were totally impotent. They lacked all power to deliver themselves in a military fashion. God saved them without them. God delivered them without their help. But how did they respond? Well, they resisted that grace. That grace didn't prove irresistible to them. Quite the contrary. God gave them the grace of temporal salvation, and they turned their back on it. Kept right on sinning. Right on doing the same old things that had brought the discipline in the first place. But how did God respond? They sin. God chastens. They cry out. God saves. They sin again. What does God say? Fool me twice. Shame on me. No. God continues to be faithful. God promised Jehu a dynasty of four generations. Jehu's son Jehoahaz dies. Jehoash's son reigns in his place. God says, I promised a four generation dynasty. We've had the first generation, now we're on the second generation. I keep my promises regardless of what you do. So that's the first movement of the text. Jehoahaz gets saved. Not in a spiritual, eternal sense, but in a temporal, physical sense, God delivers him. Second movement of the text. We're on to Jehoahaz's son Jehoash or Joash. The text spells it both ways. In fact, it was not until really the 19th century that people got so obsessed with having one particular way to spell a name. If you read texts written before that time, the same person will spell his name five or ten different ways, depending on how he feels that day, how it sounds right to him. And that's what the text does here. Sometimes we call him Joash, sometimes we call him Jehoash. Same guy. So Jehoash takes over and his reign was completely formulaic. He did evil in the sight of the Lord, he walked in the sins of Jeroboam, the sons of Nebat, the rest of the acts of Joash, all that he did, he rested with his fathers. There's only one sentence in this entire four verses that's not a formula. How he fought, his might with which he fought against Amaziah, king of Judah. So we have a hint that he was so bad at foreign policy that he fought with his only natural ally. Other than that, This entire 16 years can be told in the standard formulas. There's only one leader of the United States who ruled for 16 years. Franklin Delano Roosevelt served four terms as president. You think you would be able to summarize the four terms of FDR in four short verses without departing from the usual formulas? And obviously those were a very eventful 16 years. But a lot of important stuff happened in the 16 years that FDR was president. Things whose consequences we're still living with every single day. Is that the attitude that this narrator of Kings has? Oh, Jehoash. Wow. Now there's an important King. Wow, things really changed during his reign. We got a lot to say about him. No. The only important moment of this guy's life was when he stood before the Word of God mediated through Elisha. Well, that's the story we get here in verse 14. Elisha's dying. And Jehoash comes down to see him, weeps over his face, utters the same words that Elisha said when Elijah was taken up to heaven, and then has this weird little interchange with the bow and arrows. Elisha gives him God's promise, you will strike the Syrians at Aphek till you have destroyed them. Right? Your people have been oppressed for the last 20-some years by the Syrians, maybe 30 years. You can end this once and for all, Jehoash. What does Jehoash say? I don't care. Jehoash is bored by the promise of God's deliverance. Okay, I'll shoot. Okay, I'll strike the ground. Oh, come on, Elisha. Elisha gets mad at him because he can't rouse himself to care about the promise of God. God says, I will use you to deliver my people from Syria. Joash says, cool. See if I care. Do you believe it? Shoot, shoot, shoot, Elisha says. Presumably he was firing the arrows out the window into the ground, kind of along the lines of the first arrow. This was a very active thing, not just handing him a quiver and saying, here, bang this on the ground, but really giving Jehoash the opportunity to show some military spirit. And he doesn't. The Word of God comes to him and it leaves him cold. He's not really moved by the promise of God. Well, the message is clear. When the Word of God comes to you, that's the supreme moment of your life. How you respond to what God has to say is the most important thing about you. We can take Jehoahash's entire 16 years and we can boil it down into this one encounter with Elisha. Say, he got God's promise. God came to him and said, you can save Israel. And he did the minimum. You know, he responded and he didn't say, no, I'm not. Nope, nope, nope, gonna retire. moved to some island in the Mediterranean. He did do something to appropriate God's promise, but he didn't do very much. He wasn't excited by the promise of God. He was bored by the promise of God. And you and I do this too. We hear God's promise of victory over sin, We hear God's promise of a more powerful, spirit-filled, love-filled, faith-filled, hope-filled Christian life. We say, yeah, that sounds nice. Yeah, sounds pretty good. Maybe I'll do the minimum to try to get there. Yeah, I'll try three times, but I won't try 10 times. It's easy to judge Jehoash's limp response or to say, well, how was he supposed to know what firing the arrow was all about? He just thought that the prophet was senile. But I think if we had been there, we could have seen the power of Elisha's spirit and the excitement that Elisha had. Shoot, shoot, shoot. And Jehoash saying, Yeah, I'll shoot a little bit. I'll make some effort. And it's good to make some effort, but it's better to make more effort. To respond to God's grace with excitement, with joy, with zeal, not with a half-hearted, ah, this is a little bit boring. More exciting things going on back at the palace, Elisha. Don't be bored with the grace of God. Don't be bored with the word of God and the promises of God. It's easy to get there. It's easy to find everything else more exciting. But this Word of God truly is the supreme, definitive thing that comes to us and it defines our lives and tells us who we really are. Finally, we see God's three ways of providing for his beaten people. Elisha dies, they bury him, border security is bad again, raiding bands from Moab are coming in. We've talked about this before. In an age before instantaneous communication, it was very hard to defend a border because raiders would just go find a place where the border was not defended, come in, raid, and get out by the time anybody could hear that they were there. It was too late. The stuff had already been taken, houses already burned down, people already killed, and there was no way to stop it unless you were powerful enough seal the border, and of course, people weren't rich enough to be able to afford to do that. So, Syrian bands, or Moabite bands, rather, are raiding. These people are in the middle of a burial and they have to hide quickly, so they throw the man's body in on top of Elisha's body. The man comes back to life. Now, some people have said, oh, I don't like this, this sounds like relics. The toenail clippings of St. Jerome have this spiritual power in them. That's not what the text is talking about. If it is, of course, it's saying that Elisha was a better miracle worker dead than he was alive, because it took him a while to raise the little boy in the last story about a resurrection from the dead. But no, the point here is that God is the God of resurrection. The power of God can bring people back from the dead. And that's good news for Israel because it's headed for destruction. God says, even though you're headed for destruction, I can fix it. Even when all hope is gone, while there's life, there's hope, we say. God says, even after death, there's still hope. I am more powerful than death. Remember, When Elijah died, Elisha came back to the Jordan, smote it with Elijah's mantle and said, Where is Yahweh, the God of Elijah? It's as if someone is asking that question here. Where is Yahweh, God of Elisha? Elisha died. Is God still with us? Yes, He is. He is still raising the dead. He is still the God who has power over life and death. This was an irresistible grace. When God's power touched this man, he lived. The point is clear. Israel, church, when God's power touches you, you will live. Second promise, verse 22. Syria is still oppressing Israel, but God was gracious to them, had compassion on them, and regarded them, Why? Because of his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Now, it's been a while since we've seen those three names. They appear, well, Abraham and Isaac appear in 2 Kings 18. Abraham and Jacob, rather. But the patriarchs are virtually not mentioned after Deuteronomy. They only come up in Joshua 24, in 1 Kings 18, and in 2 Kings 13, right here. Well, the patriarchs who dominate the entire narrative structure of the book of Genesis only come up three times from Joshua to 2 Kings. In other words, when they get mentioned, it's probably a pretty big deal. What is God doing? He's reminding us of His covenant with them, His covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. What was that covenant? It was a promise to give Abraham a seed and a land and many nations. I have made you the father of many nations. Ultimately, the promise was the promise that from Abraham would come the Messiah, the true savior whose salvation would be greater than the salvation brought by Jehoahash and Jeroboam II. God remembered his covenant and he showed mercy on Israel. God still remembers his covenant. He still remembers his promise to save. He hasn't changed. He still has mercy for the likes of us. Because the law cannot annul the promise made to Abraham 400 years before Moses' time. God said, I will bless all the families of the earth in your seed, Abraham. God was busy doing that, even in the days of Jehoash. Well, and finally, God's third provision was truth, the truth of his promises. God said, Jehoash strikes the arrows. Jehoash shoots into the ground three times and stops. And what happens? Jehoash defeats Ben-Hadad three times. Just like God said he would. God's promises are true. Now this is a pretty powerful arsenal to face the forces that stood against Israel. They had God's covenant. They had God's truth. They had God's resurrection power. The warning to us is we have the same things. Look what happened to Israel. We'll get there in a few weeks. They went to judgment, waited down with God's mercies. Let's not do that here. Receive God's mercies and respond rightly. Respond in obedience, in faith, in hope, in love. Because God is the God of salvation. God is the one who gives us a Deliverer, a greater Deliverer than he gave to Israel. And as the salvation we have, as the Savior we have, is greater than the Savior they had in the form of Jehoash and Jeroboam II, so we ought to live then in terms of that greater salvation. You have God's covenant. You have God's truth. You have God's resurrecting power. Not just physically, but spiritually. So let's make use of those things. Let's pray. Father God, we thank you for your promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. That you would not destroy your people or cast them from your presence until now. That you are with us always, even to the end of the age. Father, help us to respond rightly to your grace. Help us to have softened hearts. To have cleansed minds. To have pure motives. free us from sin, and help us to love, serve, honor, and enjoy you day by day, week by week, year by year. Father, we pray that 2018 would be a year in which we do not resist your grace, in which we gladly receive your chastening, in which we humble ourselves under your mighty hand and are lifted up. We pray these things In the blessed name of the Lord Jesus Christ, the great Messiah whom you sent to save us, and all God's people said, Amen.