The Thistle King (Part A)

It was a time I was ministering to a bunch of men who had bad fathers.

The fathers were notoriously drunkards and wife beaters, children beaters. And when I would preach Christ to them, I would speak out, you know, when you pray, our Father who is in heaven. And the Lord pointed out to me that they don't know what a good father is.

You have to clarify that to them. You have to tell them that the Father in heaven is not like any other father. Even a good father on earth is not like our Father in heaven. This is Cross-Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher Rick Gaston. Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville. Pastor Rick is currently teaching through the Book of Second Kings.

Please stay with us after today's message to hear more information about Cross-Reference Radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. But for now, let's join Pastor Rick in the Book of Second Kings Chapter 14 as he begins his message, The Thistle King. Second Kings Chapter 14. I hope between Acts and Kings who've been getting something out of these studies, we get a chance to criticize the dead or extol them, as the case may be. These characters, just the lessons all over the place to help us be better, better Christians. You know, all of the lessons to love our neighbor that come from the Christ is God telling his people that you don't have the right to treat people any way you want, any time you want. And this was one of the mistakes that the kings, especially in the north, were notorious for committing, for just treating people any way they wanted to treat them. And so let's dig into this.

Well, actually, I've got a little bit of an introduction. The title is The Thistle King. And last session, Chapter 13, at the end, it concluded with a military victory for the king in the north. It was a glimmer of hope that the people would serve Yahweh, beating back this mighty Syrian army. In the north, Jehu, we remember him, the mad chariot driver, he eradicated the Baal worship. That was the pagan god that had been retained in Israel, of course, to the shame of the people. But Jehu also, his children, the dynasty of Jehu, removed this Assyrian threat, along with the worship of this particular false god. But the fundamental problems remained. False religion had just taken such a deep root in the land that it was the cause of all their troubles.

That's why these lessons are here. In the south, the southern kingdom, where Jerusalem is, Jehu the priest ended the Baal worship there. His nephew, Joash, rebuilt the temple, or repaired it, pardon me, he did not rebuild it, he repaired it. And yet still, there were those disloyal to Yahweh, lurking around the kingdom, trying to sway the people away from their god.

It is no different to this very day. We have pastors in churches and whole denominations that are in opposition to the Bible. Many of them don't even believe in Christ. They just use his name as part of the ritual, because the people expect it.

Some of them, I get to use the name, that is. And of course, there are those other churches that are very solid, they believe in the word of God, they believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. So let's not think that what we're discovering here in the Old Testament is somehow far-fetched from where we live today. It is very relevant, nothing new under the sun, sin just keeps doing its work with every generation. The previous 19 chapters, from 1 Kings 17 to 2 Kings 13, have 90 years of history. And we're about 800 years before the coming of Christ. Within those 90 years, the last 65 years dealt with the ministries of Elijah and Elisha.

And what a benefit that has been to us. This 14th chapter forward, well mainly 14 and 15, give us selected events from the histories of two kings, the one in the north and one in the south. And of course, sprinkled in a few extra kings, usually their fathers. Of the nine kings whose reign is described in chapter 14 and 15, of the nine, five of them were assassinated. We expect something like this from the Roman Empire and the Caesars, but it's just always unsettling to find it amongst the people who should have done so much better. Amaziah, he will be assassinated, Zechariah, Shalom, Pekahiah, and Pekah, they're all going to be killed by their own people. Not one of the kings in the north, this is important, not one of the kings in the north encouraged his people to repent and seek Yahweh.

There are whole households like this. We're not, one of the parents will raise their children in the ways of Christ and will do whatever they can to keep their children from being around anybody who would influence them towards righteousness. Again, some churches and denominations have leaders who just don't believe in the Bible nor love Christ and it shows. Well that's the introduction, now we begin verse one, second year of Joash, the son of Joahaz, king of Israel, Amaziah, the son of Joash, king of Judah became king. Did you get that?

I don't think you're supposed to. Again, one of the most difficult chapters in the Bible to follow and that is because we have kings in two different kingdoms in the same land with the same names and the same alternate names and you have to follow the story very carefully to keep up with it. So as with last session, we'll concentrate not on the names but on the events and it's repetitive also, much of it, which adds to the confusion, constantly switching back and forth to kingdoms out of chronological order.

This is how the book of Kings is given to us and we shouldn't be discouraged by this, we just take from it what we can get. Then added to that, which makes this section so difficult, is the circular dating. The dating of one kings reign by the other king. In the fifth year of this king, this one came to power.

It's just hard to keep up with. Again, you have to build charts if you're that concerned about it and many have and they are good charts, so we know that it is possible to trace this, get an idea of what's going on, but it doesn't make for good Bible study from a pulpit. Then one other thing, add to that, that these events took place three thousand years ago in a foreign culture, but yet the lessons are bound for right now. Well, it continues in verse one, Amaziah the son of Joash king of Judah became king. So this is the southern king where Jerusalem is, we're returning to the south now. His father was assassinated, we got that in the last chapter, chapter thirteen, and his son Amaziah, who it is referencing here, he's twenty-five years old now, and he will be king for twenty-nine years.

He will be the thistle king. He is another example, just another example of a good start and an awful finish with no excuse. You can understand if all this tragedy happened to him, we can understand it, we don't like it, don't condone it, but yet we understand it. We can't understand it with he or his father.

They had such potential. Verse two, he was twenty-five years old when he became king and he reigned twenty-nine years in Jerusalem. His mother name was Jehoadan of Jerusalem.

Well, she must have had been someone of notoriety for them to even mention her, we know nothing else about her. Verse three, and he did what was right in the sight of Yahweh, yet not like his father David, he did everything as his father Joash had done. So you have to know the whole history to understand what the writer is saying. If you just took this verse, you would be misled because he did not continue to do right in the Bible, not self-correcting but self-addressing you could say, and some self-correction too. So if there's an area where you think there's a mistake, it corrects itself through content, context in another place and we can all be happy with that. His heart is not loyal.

Second Chronicles twenty-five gives us a parallel story of what's happening and more information. Now this is boring to you unless you know that this is God's Word and there's going to be something here to speak to you, to get it inside, to deal with the things of life, yet not like his father David. David never abandoned Yahweh. Yes, he stumbled in sin.

Who doesn't? We shouldn't be so shocked, who he sinned? Well, he's born a sinner, what do you expect as he reacted to that sin?

That's what matters. But David, David is the man who coined the phrase, who God did it using David to coin this phrase, the Holy Spirit. It doesn't show up until David writes the fifty-first Psalm and he's repenting, take not thy Holy Spirit from me.

Prior to that it was the Spirit of Yahweh, the Spirit of God and that's how it was communicated. But David comes along and he's so full of God that when he writes and he's repenting with this contrite heart he says, take not thy Holy Spirit from me, cast me not away from your presence. What a dynamo and you do wrong to put David in a negative light and leave him there.

Yeah, there are those sins, who doesn't have them? So much more to the man than that and God says so. God is the one that says so because David, the throne of Messiah is connected to the throne of David even into the millennial reign. He's the most mentioned man in the New Testament from the Old Testament. Well, Psalm 51 again, you can reference that if you're not familiar, most Christians are very familiar with Psalm 51. There is also in this third verse a good example of the different uses of the Hebrew word father. Well David has been dead for 200 years or more and so of course it's not meaning this is the father of Azariah but according to the line, the family line, that dynasty and so that's just interesting. He did everything as his father Joash had done. Understatement.

He really did. In the days of the priest Jehoiada, he did very well, his father and then when Jehoiada died, he became an apostate. So in several respects, this son Amaziah, his reign resembles his father and there's a lesson for us because if you have been unfortunate in that you've had a poor father, that does not excuse you from being a good one. You can follow.

You can just continue it or not. It's our father who is in heaven. I had to learn that in ministry. I know I've said this story before but it was a time I was ministering to a bunch of men who had bad fathers. The fathers were notoriously drunkards and wife beaters and children beaters and when I would preach Christ to them, I would speak out, you know, when you pray our father who is in heaven and the Lord pointed out to me that they don't know what a good father is. You have to clarify that to them. You have to tell them that the father in heaven is not like any other father. Even a good father on earth is not like our father in heaven and there was a lot of progress in teaching about the Bible in defining a simple word to most of us as father. Well, this king Amaziah and his father both were zealous for Yahweh at first and then became apostates later on after God had blessed them. It wasn't like, boy, God keeps messing everything up for me.

I can't get anywhere. They were getting these huge successes and they, this is how they, you know, there's nothing like an ingrate, right? You do something for somebody and they don't appreciate it. In ministry, you can, a person comes up with an idea, a good idea and you do it and there's another good idea and they come up, well, I don't want to do that one. That's all they remember.

They don't remember that you green lighted one or two other. Well, there are some people that are just that way. Both father and son, these two kings, eventually opposed the prophets and became intolerant of their criticism. His father, of course, killed Zechariah the prophet, not the one who wrote the book of Zechariah, a different one. This one is going to threaten to kill a prophet for the criticisms that the prophet gives him. Both created a conspiracy against themselves because of their poor leadership.

People said, we got to get rid of this guy and were assassinated. Both were murdered by people, their own servants because of their poor leadership. Both were unsuccessful in war because of how they treated God and both had to withstand a siege on their capital, which is brutal.

Both of them paid off their enemy by surrendering great amount of wealth from the kingdom and from the house of God. Looking at 2 Chronicles 25, the parallel version or account, and he did what was right in the sight of Yahweh, but not with a loyal heart. That makes me ask myself, am I serving Jesus Christ in my heart?

Is my heart loyal to him? Yeah, I may, you know, lose it here and there, but I love the Lord Jesus Christ and I want to get it all correct with him. 2 Chronicles 25 again, verse 27 this time. After the time that Amaziah turned away from following Yahweh, they made a conspiracy against him in Jerusalem and he fled to Lachish, but they sent after him to Lachish and killed him there. That's how it ends for this king. It must have been painful for the historians to write these things. It wasn't as though they were just his patriots and it was that kind of pain.

Well, this is my kingdom, my country, and I'm sorry to see my countrymen behave this way. Well, that was part of it, but it went beyond that. These were the people of God. The historians believed the promises, but they also believed the consequences that God had foretold would happen and it had to have been painful for all of them throughout the Old Testament because it is one continuous story of defeat, glimmer of hope, defeat, glimmer of hope. Verse 4, however, the high places were not taken away and the people still sacrificed and burned incense on the high places. This is constantly repeated within the old times of the kings and it points to the limitation of the loyalty of the people.

It was very shallow. Loyalty was very shallow with many of them. These forbidden centers of worship where they offered incense and blood sacrifice, it was forbidden by God.

You just kind of get your head around this. Well, why were they doing it? They had that much of the Bible to know better and the synagogues come along. Well, the synagogues were never meant to be places of ritual. There were no blood sacrifices there, no incense burning unto Yahweh. That was reserved for the temple. The synagogues concerned themselves with teaching. They assembled to teach the word of God and the church is built on that foundation. The apostle Paul really is the one that blazed that trail for us and to this day we do much as the ancient synagogues, although we don't have the women sitting on one side and children separated by the men on the other side. I'm sure there are some churches that would like to do that or do do that. But anyway, coming back, the high places, they were still there and it was convenient for the people.

You know, I like to go to Jerusalem to worship but I just go down to this little center on a hill over here and I can do it there. No, you cannot. Your offering is then voided. It's useless.

It's like voiding out a warranty with much, much more horrific. Separation is the word of the saint and it meant nothing to many of these people, to all of them that were engaging in this kind of worship, false worship. To the Christian, we are to have contact with unbelievers without merging.

We don't join them in their view of things, in their position of who Christ is, nor do we view them as our enemies simply because they're unbelievers. Leviticus 26, 30, I will destroy your high places, cut down your incense altars and cast your carcasses on the lifeless forms of your idols. My soul shall abhor you. That's God speaking to the people. They didn't like that. So they just ignored it.

But it didn't go away. And God has never been, you know, well, I've got to get them into the church. Don't tell them that. Christianity as well as with the Jews is supposed to be in the face, get up in the face of lies about God. I mean, there are exceptions where God just says, all right, cool it. I've got this one.

You just leave it. But there are other times God says, you're supposed to be preaching what I'm telling you to preach. John the Baptist was up in the face of Herod. You're not to have your brother's wife, punk. Okay, he didn't say that part, but it should have been there. That's, forget about the punk statement, the punk, the insignificant one. As an apprentice iron worker, the apprentices are called punks because they are insignificant.

And it's quite humbling and you become a journeyman, then you get to call the other ones. Anyway, coming back to this, we are supposed to be forthright and not hide truth from people and not become nitpickers and Pharisees. That is not the spirit of it all, at all. But we know when we're supposed to share, unless you've been so reluctant over the years, you've lost your business.

You're not sensitive to it anymore. You've lost the skill. And I'd like to remind us the Levites and the priests in Israel were to be skilled. They had to be trained. They had to maintain their training. And they just could not just, well, you know, just throw the thing up on the fire and cook it.

There was a protocol to follow. And Christians or royal priesthood, we're supposed to be trained too. That's why we do Bible study. Why else do we do Bible study? Well, to be Christ-like.

Why? Why do you want to be Christ-like? To go to heaven. Okay, but that's not, that's because of what Christ has done. Christ-likeness is to primarily allow us to be used to bring others into the kingdom. Because God doesn't use angels at this time in history to save lost souls. 2 Kings tells us, because it says here in verse 4, and the people still sacrificed and burned incense on high places.

All the kings struggle with this. Hezekiah put it down. Hezekiah is going to be the son of this king. 2 Kings 18, he removed the high places and broke down the sacred pillars, cut down the wooden images, broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made. For until those days the children of Israel burned incense to it and called it Nahushtan.

That's in their face. That king said it's nothing. It is not Yahweh. You hear burning incense to this thing that Moses used in the desert. Moses is not God. We love Moses, we take his word, that's how we know how to worship God, but he is not God. And bowing down to some relic like this is a cursed thing.

Josiah will come along, he'll pulverize, he goes up into the north and he starts digging up graves. I mean, he just goes in their face. So, why do I have to hear about what the world is doing that is decadent, but the world can't hear about what Christ has done that is righteous? Why is there a double standard there? Well, it takes a little bit more than just knowing that because you just can't, you know, a bull in a china shop just walk around the world causing arguments and fights wherever you go. That's not the spirit of Christ. But it is, it is an understanding that when you, when it is time to share the gospel, you share the truth. Because holding back the truth about salvation because you don't want to hurt somebody's feelings sends them to hell and what does it do for you?

Well, that's the way it is. I think that is just a joy in knowing God has brought someone in front of you. What happens just because he brings them in front of you doesn't mean they're going to get saved, but many times it does.

You could be the last exit before hell for that person. Verse 5, and now it happened as soon as the kingdom was established in his hand that he executed his servants who had murdered his father the king. Well, what son would not given these conditions? And so he exacts justice and following the law at this point. This is what the writer means when he says he did all according to his father. And then he adds a part about David to just warn you it's coming. But verse 6, then the children of the murderers he did not execute according to what is written in the book of the law of Moses in which Yahweh commanded saying fathers shall not be put to death for their children nor children put to death for their fathers, but a person shall be put to death for his own sin.

So much for generational curses that somebody thought up as cute, just a sophisticated excuse to get away with sin. The father is, you know, you're not going to be judged for what somebody else did. And he's upholding that. He executes justice on the assassins, the murderers, in accordance with the scripture, the law of Moses, the books of Moses. We believe that Moses is the one that has given to us Genesis through Deuteronomy. There have been amendments to it.

He didn't go, Moses didn't write, and Moses died. Someone had to come back and put that in. And so there, we understand that. That's totally acceptable. We fuss when those details are left out.

Now why didn't you tell us more about that? Verse, that's how it is covers a lot of things, doesn't it? You can just say that's how it is. And that's the end thought.

Well, that doesn't work if you're pulled over for speeding. Thanks for joining us for today's edition on Cross Reference Radio. This is the daily radio ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville in Virginia.

We trust that what you've heard today in the book of 2 Kings has been something to remember. If you'd like to listen to more teachings from this series, go to crossreferenceradio.com. Once more, that's crossreferenceradio.com. We encourage you to subscribe to our podcast too, so you'll never miss another edition. Just go to your favorite podcast app to subscribe. Our time is about up, but we hope you'll tune in again next time as we continue on in the book of 2 Kings. We look forward to that time with you, so make a note in your calendar to join Pastor Rick as he teaches from the Bible right here on Cross Reference Radio.