All right, our scripture lesson is taken from 2 Kings 11, beginning at verse 1. When Athaliah, the mother of Ahaziah, saw that her son was dead, she proceeded to destroy the whole royal family. But Jehoshua, the daughter of King Jehoram and sister of Ahaziah, took Joash the son of Ahaziah and stole him away from among the royal princes who were about to be murdered. She put him and his nurse in a bedroom to hide him from Athaliah so he was not killed. He remained hidden with his nurse at the temple of the Lord for six years while Athaliah ruled the land. the Word of the Lord. May we pray. Lord, we pray on this Lord's Day, Mother's Day, that we will extract great truth by antithesis of what a mother should be by seeing what a mother should not be. We pray that you would bless the exposition of scripture, that we may learn from it intellectually, that we may be moved by it emotionally, and that you would move on our wills by the Holy Spirit to grant us choice to choose the way of the Lord, to be at peace and to rejoice even in the middle of the storms of life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. Now I mentioned this and decided to continue my study on Bible characters. This is number 122 and we have spent two Lord's Days looking at Ahab. And we come now to the daughter of Ahab and Jezebel. And I thought, well, do I change my pattern or do I take this character? who is the very antithesis of a good mother, and preach on her. And so I'm preaching on Athaliah, and I hope that as we understand who Athaliah is and was, and who her mother was, that we can understand this is not the kind of mother I want to be. And I thank Almighty God for my mother, who was the antithesis of Athaliah. My mother who loved me, my mother who served Christ by praying for me even when I was lost, and I thank God for my mother. And so now as we look at this passage, I want us to turn over to 2 Chronicles for a moment for a fuller look at this character. 2 Chronicles, and this would be on page, this would be chapter 21, page 703. And you also have there a handout This is my poor work. I was not satisfied with anybody else's chart. And it's a very confusing genealogy because there are two kings, Ahaziah, and two kings, Joram. And Joram has two names, Jehoram or Joram. So you've got a King Joram of Israel and a King Joram of Judah. You've got a King Ahaziah of Israel and a King Ahaziah of Judah. And then sometimes people misunderstand that the Hebrew word ben, which is son, can refer to a son, a grandson, a great-grandson, or skip four or five generations as we see in the Gospel of Matthew. And so the same is true for the Hebrew word for daughter, bet. And so a bet can be a daughter, a granddaughter, great-granddaughter, and so on. So these are things that are confusing. You can see that I clipped out things and put them in. I don't know what happened to my T-square, but they're all wacko. And then I decided, foolishly, to write with my little pen in there. So you can write notes on the back if you like. But that document. So as we turn here to 2nd Chronicles chapter 21, I'm going to give a bit of a running commentary with you, and they're on page 703. Notice that King Jehoshaphat was a godly king. He wasn't perfect. In fact, the worst thing that King Jehoshaphat ever did was to unite with the northern kingdom of Israel, because the northern kingdom of Israel not only had it departed from God's authorized worship, which was at the temple in Jerusalem, that was the sin of Jeroboam I, but under Omri, it went into full-fledged apostasy because Amri had some, perhaps, genetic connection to the Phoenicians. And by the way, Tyre and Sidon, which is where Amri's relationships are formed, it's interesting if you look at the little chart at the very top middle, Tyre and Sidon, Ethbaal, or Ithabaal, was a priest of Astarte before he became the king. That's the father of Jezebel. And so it's interesting that he killed the king, and I believe it was the sister of the king that he killed, left and went and founded the city of Carthage in North Africa. So the Phoenicians And we get a lot of words from the Phoenicians, Tyre and Sidon. We get the word phonics from the Phoenicians because the Phoenicians are the people that established an alphabet that is pronounced over against hieroglyphics and cuneiform and so on. So the Phoenicians and Ephbaal was a priest of the Asherah and his daughter Jezebel ends up marrying a marrying the son of Amri. So we have that there. Now, we go down, we're there in 2 Chronicles 21. Now notice Jehoram's brothers. The sons of Jehoshaphat were, once again we have that famous name, Azariah, Jehiel, Zechariah, Azariahu, Michael and Shephetiah. Now notice, all these were sons of Jehoshaphat, king of Israel. Their father had given them many gifts of silver and gold and articles of value as well as fortified cities in Judah, but he had given the kingdom to Jehoram because he was his firstborn son. You realize that's why we have had throughout history a lot of lunatics? because the firstborn is often not the most qualified. Just look at the British royal family as one example and how that happens. So you get inbreeding and you get, like for example, the children of Queen Victoria, All the female daughters of Victoria carried a gene that was passed on in the case of the Tsarina of Russia, the last Tsarina of Russia, Alexandra, the wife of Nicholas II. She passed that gene on, which was hemophilia, which now we have treatment for that, but back then they didn't. So you look at all the inbred houses of Europe and you look at history. History is a testimony that the firstborn is not necessarily the best born. And so what happens is this guy becomes the king. And look at what he does here. It says in verse 4, when Jehoram established himself firmly over his father's kingdom, look at what he did. His father thought that he would remove all the jealousy, all the tension, all of the conflict. I've made wonderful plans so that there will be no problems. But notice what happens. What does he do? He put all his brothers to the sword along with some of the princes of Israel. Jehoram was 32 years old when he became king. and he reigned in Jerusalem eight years. He walked in the ways of the kings of Israel as the house of Ahab had done, for he married a daughter of Ahab." See there, he married a daughter of Ahab. He did evil in the eyes of the Lord. Nevertheless, because of the covenant the Lord had made with David, the Lord was not willing to destroy the house of David. Keeping your hand there in the Bible, you look down here and you see on the chart, Israel on the left, Tyre and Sidon in the middle, Judah in the right. You can see that when Ahab marries Jezebel, they have three children. Their three children are Ahaziah, Jehoram and Athaliah. And so you can see the order of rain there on the left-hand side. And so the daughter of Ahab and Jezebel is the one who marries Jehoram. And Jehoram is this very wicked man who determines to murder all his own brothers. That's striking, isn't it? And so we read further down. And he says, he talks about the afflictions that God sent on the nation of Judah because of that sin. And he says there in verse 10, to this day Edom has been in rebellion against Judah, Libna revolted at the same time because Jehoram, look at this carefully, Jehoram had forsaken the Lord, the God of his fathers. He had also built high places on the hills of Judah and had caused the people of Jerusalem to prostitute themselves and had led Judah astray. Now we see this, the effect of a leader. I think of this, the applicability of this is not so much to our country as it is to the Christian church. Think about a Christian church. Think about the influence of a leader of a Christian church. And if a leader of a Christian church is not faithful to scripture, if that leader is not faithful to the Lord, what will that leader cause? That leader will cause the church eventually to become apostate. That's why it's dangerous. to be in a church where the leadership doesn't really love the Lord, know the Lord, and seek the Lord. And so this is what this man does. This man does what? He causes, he caused the people of Jerusalem to prostitute themselves and had led Judah astray. What does it mean that they prostituted themselves? It meant that they forsook the Lord. Never forget, that Israel was the wife of the Lord. We speak of it figuratively, but that's how she's regarded. She entered into a covenant with God at Mount Sinai, and so she's the wife, in a sense, of the Lord. And so when she left the Lord to follow other gods, it's always regarded as not simply adultery, but prostitution. And that also reflects something else. As we've seen in these studies on biblical characters, Pagan worship was characterized by sacred prostitution. That is, the favor of the God was sought for fertility, for blessing of crops, for children to be born, all of that. That God's favor was sought by ritual prostitution where someone like the king would engage with a prostitute who represented the God, and that's fertility. So it's really strange, isn't it? Wow, that's so different from what we think of as religion. Even false religions, that's so different. And so again, that's the meaning of that. Now, here's an interesting thing. Look at verse 12. Jehoram received a letter from Elijah the prophet. And so it's near the end of the life of Elijah, and he sent this letter to him. And he says, this is what the Lord, the God of your father, David, says. And he goes down and he says, if you skip down a few verses to verse 13, you have walked in the ways of the kings of Israel. You have led Judah and the people of Jerusalem to prostitute themselves, turn to page 704, just as the house of Ahab did. You have also murdered your own brothers, members of your father's house." Notice what he says next. This is Elijah the prophet before he died. Men who were better than you. Men who were better than you. That's a striking thing. And so this man murders those who were better than himself and he does that out of fear. And then he goes on and he says, verse 14, so now the Lord is about to strike your people Your sons, notice he had more than one wife. This is an important thing we'll see in a moment. Your people, your sons, your wives, plural, and everything that is yours with a heavy blow. Now look at verse 15. Man, you don't want to have the Lord mad at you. Look at verse 15. You yourself will be very ill with a lingering disease of the bowels until the disease cause your bowels to come out. Whoa, ouch, oh my, I can't imagine a worse death than that. Can you? I mean, that's horrible. What do we learn about God from the Old Testament? The God of the Old Testament is the same as the God of the New Testament, except there's no Jesus atoning for the sins of people. And so you see particularly, you see particularly the severity of God's judgment on people in the Old Testament. In fact, Paul says, behold the kindness and the severity of God. And so, I mean, this is severe. This is severe. You think of that. And then it says in verse 16, the Lord aroused against Jerusalem, against Jehoram, all these hostility, this hostility and look in verse 17. They attacked Judah, invaded it, and carried off all the goods found in the king's palace, together with his sons, plural, and wives, this is Jehoram, wives, plural, not a son was left to him except Ahaziah, the youngest. And so we have Ahaziah, the son of Joram, who is the son both of Joram and of Athaliah. And he says, He says, except the youngest, then verse 18, after all this, the Lord afflicted Jehoram with an incurable disease of the bowels. In the course of time, at the end of the second year, his bowels came out because of the disease and he died in great pain. His people made no fire in his honor as they had for his father's. Jehoram was 32 years old when he became king and he reigned in Jerusalem eight years. I don't know about you, but the next sentence in verse 20 is not something I want said at my funeral. Would you like that said at your funeral? Wow. He passed away to no one's regret and was buried in the city of David, but not in the tombs of the kings. So here's a man under the influence of his mother, became so wicked that when he died, No one regretted it. We're glad he's dead. Wow. mentioned that I attended the funeral of of Sandy's father's favorite cousin and it was all about Jesus and I and I reflected on how I stood actually and spoke there in that Baptist Church in Jacksonville Florida and I said as a preacher I've heard so much malarkey at funerals over the years and two examples stand out. One was a case where a man A man's mother had died and he had asked that I speak by reading scripture only, and the pastor of her church said these words. And I couldn't believe this was said in a Baptist church, of all things. Baptist churches are just like Presbyterians, except we do recognize one another in certain stores. Sorry. So anyhow, he said, he said about how wonderful this lady was. And he said, and I believe that when Mrs. So-and-so entered heaven, the Lord God stood up out of respect for her. That's blasphemy. That's blasphemy. Stood up. The Lord stands up off his throne out of respect. Oh my, let me stand up, get off the throne and stand up out of respect. Oh, I'm so glad you're here, Ms. So-and-so. You deserve to be here, and we respect you so much that I'm standing out of respect. Where do preachers get stuff like that? Maybe they're afraid of losing a paycheck. I don't know. I never worried about losing a paycheck, and I always figured God would take care of me, and He always has. I've been young, I'm now old, but I've never seen the righteous forsaken or his children begging for bread. He's ever generous and he gives money away to others. So we see on here, and so in chapter 22, Second Chronicles 22.1, the people of Jerusalem made Ahaziah, Jehoram's youngest son, king in his place, since the raiders who came with the Arabs into the camp had killed all the older sons. So Ahaziah, son of Jehoram, king of Judah, began to reign. Ahaziah was 22 years old when he became king. He reigned in Jerusalem one year. His mother's name was Athaliah. granddaughter of Amri. So Athaliah is the daughter of Ahab and Jezebel, and she is the granddaughter of Amri. He walked in the ways of the house of Ahab. Now look at that next clause in verse 3, 2nd Chronicles 22, 3. For his mother encouraged him in doing wrong. Think about that for a moment. As we celebrate mothers this day, and as we celebrate the fact that even a man can become a mother, as Paul referred to himself in 1 Thessalonians 2.8, as he cared for the people of God as a mother. In other words, it isn't simply being biologically a mother, it's caring for other people, it's nurturing other people. St. Paul was a mother to the believers in Thessalonica. And so that ought to encourage all of us, whether we're men or women, whether we've ever had a child or never had a child, we can be tender and care for others as St. Paul referred to himself in 1 Thessalonians 2.8. So notice here, that his mother encouraged him doing wrong. What is the greatest obligation of a mother as we think of it on Mother's Day? The greatest obligation of a mother is to nurture her children to know the Lord. That's the greatest obligation. It isn't enough biologically to give birth to a child. A dog can give birth to a dog, a puppy. What is the great burden of being a mother? It is to nurture the children that God gives, whether they're her own or by adoption through marrying a widower. It is to nurture those children to know the Lord and to guide them in the ways of righteousness and truth to know the Lord and to be able to serve the Lord in this world in a practical way. Fathers are wonderful, but no one so shapes the life of a child as a mother. And so we see here the antithesis of this woman. The job of the mother is to encourage children. to do what's right, to make sure that they can take care of themselves when they grow up, to make sure that they love the church of the living God. There's nothing greater for a mother to do than to impart to her children a love for God's people, God's church, which is not the building. The building houses the people of God. The building houses the church. And so the greatest gift a mother can give to her children is to inculcate in them, to instill in them a love for God's people, a love for public worship, a love for the written Word of God, studying it privately and listening to it publicly, and so on. Now, we're going to read further, skipping down on page 705, we'll look at verse 7. Through Ahaziah's visit to Joram, God brought about Ahaziah's downfall. When Ahaziah arrived, he went out with Joram to meet Jehu son of Nimshi. whom the Lord had appointed to destroy the house of Ahab. While Jehu was executing judgment on the house of Ahab, he found the princes of Judah and the sons of Ahaziah's relatives, who had been attending Azariah, and he killed them. You remember the great coup. We're not going to get on that today. That's for down the road. But what happens is, God had had a belly full of the Amrad dynasty. That's King Amri and his son Ahab and then Ahaziah and Joram. And he'd had enough of them and so he raises up a general who happened to be Jehu and he's anointed by God's prophet to become king and he wipes out the house of Ahab, including the great mother of all mothers, negatively, Jezebel. And I'm always struck at what she did, that when she's about to be killed and she knows she's gonna die, she had to put her makeup on. We'll look at that another day. But she knows she's going to be killed. She's got these two eunuchs, one on one side and one on the other, and she is accosting Jehu. She knows that she's going to die, but she has to fix herself first. I don't know. I mean, I remember when just before COVID broke out and the last Sunday that I preached here when we had visible services, the water system in Texarkana had gone off and we were in the hotel, the Hampton Inn, and There was no running water, and I was so grateful that Sandy always likes to have a bucket of ice because that was the only water I had, and at least I could wet my hair down, even if I didn't shave when I came to preach that morning. But, let's see. Jezebel had to make sure she was nicely clothed and decked out before she was thrown down by the eunuchs. Anyhow, that's another story for another day. And so here's what happens in verse 10. It says, When Athaliah, the mother of Ahaziah, saw that her son was dead, she proceeded to destroy the whole royal family of the house of Judah. Now notice verse 11, now this is a godly mother. But Jehoshabah, the daughter of King Jehoram, took Joash, the son of Ahaziah, and stole him away from among the royal princes who were about to be murdered, and put him and his nurse in a bedroom, because Jehoshabah, the daughter of King Jehoram, and wife of the priest Jehoiada was Ahaziah's sister. She hid the child from Athaliah so she could not kill him." Let that sink in for a moment. Now if you look at the chart that I passed out, the chart is this. She is the daughter of King Ahaziah. And so she's his daughter. And what does that mean? Is she the daughter of Athaliah and of King Joram? I don't believe so. Remember, he had other wives. He had other children. And so she is a daughter of the king. And she is the aunt of this little baby, Joash. And as a good woman, as a godly woman, she protects the life of little baby Joash and hides him in the temple. She was married to a much older man. And that was the high priest, because political things, people marry. And by the way, I need to say this about marriage. I once attended, in fact more than once, I attended an engagement party. The most meaningful engagement party I ever attended was a pastor, a Christian pastor, who lived in an adjoining parish to us in Louisiana, and it was an arranged marriage. This son, who was in medical school, called his father and said, Dad, I think I'm ready to get married. Will you find a wife for me? And so we got to, Hey, God bless you. We're sure glad you're here today. Want you to come back. We love you. And so what happens is these two fathers sat down in this large room and they went through the things and said this was an arranged marriage. And it's pretty amazing. And he said, we waved the bride price, we waved this, and then they had a big meal celebrating. Now, I'm just gonna ask you this. Looking at arranged marriages throughout history as over against what happened with Sandy when the first time I ever saw her, my hand went up from her hand, I saw her face and became a believer and fell in love with her at first sight. Arranged marriages have a better track record than a marriage like Sandy's and mine. I'm just saying, I'm not advocating it, I'm just saying, but this was an arranged marriage and so she marries the high priest who was much older. What do you do? See, the world says, if you don't love a person, you should not engage in physical relations. But scripture says, if you're not married to a person, you shouldn't engage in physical relations, because physical relations have been designed by God to produce love. And we tend to put the horse, the cart before the horse. So it's an arranged marriage. God arranged for relations to produce the love that sustains a marriage. Anyhow, so just that tidbit there. And so what happens here is that she decides to kill everybody. And she is wiping out her own children. Wow. And grandchildren. This is the antithesis of a good mother. I mean, she's a murderess, and she murders all these children, and she never knew, she never knew that one escaped. Her own son, who's dead, his son survived. Where was he taken? He was taken into the temple itself, where she never went because she did not follow the Lord, she followed Baal, the sex god and fertility god of the Canaanites and particularly the Phoenicians. So she doesn't go to the temple, and he was safe. And I think that leads us to one final thing to say, and that's this, as we reflect again on Mother's Day. Where is the place of safety for a baby? Where is the place of safety for a little child? If there's one place in particular, and that place is right here, that's where children are safe. Children are safe in this place, Wow. Raise your children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. Raise your children. in a place of safety. The world is a dangerous place. Saint Paul talks about in 1 Corinthians chapter 5, when people are put out of the church, they're under the particular attack of Satan, the evil one. But inside the church, that is, being part of the body of Christ, is a place of safety. And so little Joash is preserved in the temple of the Lord until he's six years old. And if you want to read a really great Bible story, it's how she's finally executed. And it's kind of like at the very end, as she faces execution and she knows it's coming and she realizes what's been going on, she tears her clothes and she cries out, treason, treason! Wow. but isn't treason. It's the restoration of the kingdom to the house of David, because David is in the line of the Messiah. And there's one other thing that's striking. If you compare the genealogy in Matthew, which is the legal genealogy of Jesus, and that means that it follows the line down through his stepfather, Jesus was not the son of Joseph, but he was legally the son of Joseph. I don't know about you, but if God made a promise to me that of my descendants, he would place one of them on my throne forever to rule and reign over everyone forever, and it was just an adopted kid, I'd feel like God had lied to me. So if you compare the Gospel of Matthew with the Gospel of Luke, you discover something very interesting. The Gospel of Luke uses a bit of Greek grammar, and that is a genitive of a relationship. It never says what the relationship is. But you will hunt in vain in the Gospel of Luke chapter 3 for any reference to Jehoram, Ahaziah. None of those people are there. They're left out of the biological genealogy of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord Jesus Christ is biologically descended. from Adam through King David on down and he is genetically, biologically descended from King David. So God keeps his promises, doesn't he? He promised that to David, he swore on an oath that of David's literal seed of his descendants he would place one of them to be on his throne and there was much opposition to that. That line was almost wiped out. But God, in an amazing way, preserved the seed of Abraham, the seed of David, who was the Lord Jesus Christ, who was the literal biological descendant of David. not through King Solomon, but through another son of David called Nathan. That's an interesting thing, isn't it, Nathan? Be sure and welcome Nathan after church today, and we're grateful that you are part of our fellowship now. May we pray. Lord, as we come to a close of a sermon on Mother's Day that has many sub points, we pray that we would glean from it what is important to glean, that we would honor our mothers, not only our biological mothers, but those who have shaped us for good and for God. And Lord, the greatest way we can honor a mother on this day is to give our hearts to the Lord Jesus Christ. And if there's anyone here today or watching today on the internet, we pray that today would be the day of ceasing to resist the pull and say yes to Jesus, I surrender all. Lord, we thank you for our own mothers and for those who have shaped our lives, and we thank you for the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth, and we pray that we may always be loyal to the church who is our mother. Lord, we pray that you would bless us and keep us this day through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.