The Killer Kings (Part A)

If we read in Numbers, then you shall drive out all the inhabitants of the land before you destroy their engraved stones, destroy their molded images, and abolish their high places. When you come to Christ, Jesus, as your Lord and Savior, you begin to abolish all those other fake saviors and lords in your life.

You get rid of the lies, and that's a parallel to the principle, the commandment there in Numbers finds a parallel teaching in reality. 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 15 as he begins his message, The Killer Kings. Second Kings chapter 15, the Killer Kings, that's what we're going to consider this record of the kings in First and Second Kings continues with disregard for chronology.

And anyway, we're going to concentrate on the events. In verse 28, I'll comment about the chronology being secondary and the behavior being primary. And if you're a person that just needs to have everything outlined and just perfect, then you're going to be tripped up with the Bible. It's not disorganized entirely, but the points are all made, and that is the important part.

Of the six kings that are listed here from the northern kingdom, four were assassinated. That alone is a lesson. These are supposed to be the people of God.

These are the custodians of the Scriptures as a people, called to do this unlike anyone else on earth. And yet we discover these things. Sin is this very serious thing. It is not playing with us.

It is not toying with us. And neither is God. And that's what Jeremiah had to learn when God sent him to the house of the potter, to go there and look at the potter. And there he worked at the clay at the wheel.

He was making something. He had a plan. And so does God. Well, these kings were not loyal to Yahweh. And why would we then expect them to be loyal to each other, to their kings?

We shouldn't be surprised that we find that they are killing people so that they can become the king. And Zechariah is one of the kings that will reign in the northern kingdom. He is the last one of the Jehu dynasty.

The prophet said to Jehu, because you dealt with Ahab and Jezebel in the house of Ahab, you'll have a king on the throne for four generations, or four times. And Zechariah is the last of them. He is going to be killed by Shalom. And then Shalom, he will be killed by Menahem.

Menahem will not die a violent death, though he is a violent man. Then Pekiah, he will reign. And he is killed by Pekah. Now Pekah is the one that first gave us peekaboo.

No, he's not. But he kills Pekiah. And then Hoshea kills Pekah.

Now it's not happening the same day. I mean, there are many years involved, a lot of activity. For instance, Pekah does many wars. He's a very accomplished military commander, and yet he ends up being assassinated too. And thus we have chapter 15 of 2 Kings, the killer kings. Now we look at verse 1, and it starts off by dating the reign of a southern king, Azariah, with the reign of a northern king, which just adds to our confusion. In the 27th year of Jeroboam, king of Israel, Azariah, the son of Amaziah, king of Judah, became king. Well, Azariah, he was the thistle king, and he started picking fights. He couldn't win, and he paid dearly for it.

He retreated to get away from the kingdom, his own people, and they hunted him down in Lakish, and they assassinated him there. Well, this Jeroboam that is mentioned, the second Jeroboam, the first one goes back to the days after Solomon's death, he made no effort to please God. But he did a lot for the kingdom. And this is common grace, God giving grace to those who do not deserve it, which none of us do, that's the meaning of grace, undeserved kindness. But common grace, without common grace, mankind would self-destruct. So God does bless, he does protect, and he gives, even though it is met with ingratitude, he does this nonetheless. The prophets Hosea and Amos, as I've been saying, have been pointing out the prosperity during this time, the ivory that just was everywhere, the gold, the kingdom was prosperous, but there was moral decay, and it was severe.

And this explains why they're killing each other for the throne. There's no word of God, there's no conscience holding these men, they do as they please. And the idolatry, of course, being the foundation for this irreverent behavior, and also the prophets talk about the loss of justice. Now, if you live in a place where there is no justice, it is a very serious problem if you are a righteous person. If you are an unrighteous person with no conscience, then you probably thrive in that kind of environment. But if you're a decent person, you expect the powers and control to offer justice. And, you know, much of that has been eroding. Well, it is constantly, it's never been perfect amongst any accomplished society, it's been better than other times. Right now, it's the luck of the straw you draw of what's going to happen if you end up in the court system. Okay, because now we have political activists on the bench, whereas in the days of Hosea and Amos and the other prophets, they just had immoral idolatrous judges that were just corrupt looking out for themselves.

We have some of that too. Azariah, the son of Amaziah, this is Uzziah. I'm not calling you a name, but he has these two names. And he seems to have been given the name Azariah at birth.

That was his birth name. When the prophet Isaiah writes a biography on him, it is called the Acts of Uriah. So the Azariah, his birth name, doesn't stick with the prophets. They call him Uzziah. All the prophets that reference him and ministered in his days.

We're not sure, it's unstated why he is Uzziah, but I think as we do in other places, we do a little detective work and we can get very close if not there. Name is identity and it speaks of nature in the scripture. And there are many name changes and variants throughout the scripture.

We're fine. Jacob being one of the most famous from Jacob to Israel. The Lord changing his name. Then there's Simon, son of Jonah, changed by the Lord to Peter, called Peter. That's the name we know him by. Then of course there's Saul, the apostle who changed his name. It appears all of a sudden he starts going by Paul.

And this is common. Well when you come to Christ, your identity, your nature changes. Anyone who's in Christ, he's a new creation. That's more from God's standpoint than our standpoint. Because we are new creations. We're not the same person. But we struggle with many of the same sins.

And so that change is limited as we look at it. But from God's perspective, the blood of Christ cleanses us from all sin. And when he looks at us, he sees the work of Christ. There's no sin there.

And this is of course how he has arranged it. Otherwise we couldn't be reconciled. Well, Azariah, his given name, the Lord is help.

Yahweh is my help. But when he goes by Uzziah, Yahweh is my strength. Well, he oversteps his boundary and he's smitten with leprosy by the Lord.

He became arrogant. And the Bible tells us that. And the name change is connected, I think the evidence is there, to that event.

His repentance, his admitting to God that he was wrong. The Assyrians have monuments from this time that we have archaeologists and we have today. And he has mentioned this king Azariah on the monument of the Assyrians four times as Azariah, not as Uzziah. Which again, you find the name Uzziah around those who love the Lord, the prophets. And the name change again after he became a leper, he is called Uzziah. Yahweh is my strength.

Why not my help? Well, he sinned. And the penalty for the sin he committed was death. And God did not strike him dead. He just smote him with leprosy. Eighty priests ran to the temple to withstand him. You're not offering incense here.

We don't care who you are. They're ready to fight to the death. And the Lord intervened. Struck him on the head with leprosy. And the priest saw it.

You're a leper. He could tell by looking, he didn't have a mirror right away. He couldn't look in the mirror. He knew something was not right. And they whisked him out of there and the Bible says indeed he was trying, he was willing to get out of there. And he lived the rest of his life in seclusion. And he had to have known that it was the strength of God's hand and grace and mercy that spared his life. Because he lives into his 70s, almost 70s. I mean, he's king at 16.

He reigns 52 years. He has such an impact on the nation that at his death, Isaiah breaks out in the year that King Uzziah died. I saw the Lord.

And that connection is not just, you know, by chance. Others had died and there was no great, this outburst of spiritual awakening in the heart of the prophet. But when Uzziah died, it impacted the prophet and it shows up in his writings.

So the new name, Uzziah, and that's the name that I'll try to refer to him as. It is the confession. It is repentance. It is a reflection of the grace of God.

Well, we move on. It says here about Uzziah. He was 16 years old when he became king and he reigned 52 years in Jerusalem. His mother's name was Jecaliah of Jerusalem. Well, he was a teen king after his father's assassination. The way it reads in Chronicles is though there was a delight to make him king. His 52 year reign, as I mentioned, makes him about 68, 69 years old. He's co-regent with his son Jatham, who was a good king also. And Uzziah is a good king. I'm going to cover in a minute some of his accomplishments.

His mother is mentioned here as the mother of another king. She must have been a woman of some decent reputation to find her way into the records, just an honorable mention. And you know, it's good to have people that we honor, that we respect, that we admire for a reason, not just because. And she was likely one of those types of people that you just admired. We all should have heroes. We all should have someone that we admire, whether they're dead, long dead, or still alive. If they're still alive, you have to bring an extra dose of grace because they're going to disappoint you at some point. And you can't, you can't just say, oh man, they just let me down.

I'm crushed now. They can be my hero no more. That might not be fair. It might be.

It depends on the situation. But anyway, coming back to this, verse 3, and he did what was right in the sight of Yahweh according to all that his father Amaziah had done. Now there's no, there's no asterisk next to that except the leprosy outbreak. But of the 19 kings of Judah, only six of them, and I'm not counting David and Solomon, were really good in the eyes of the Lord. Solomon of course brings up debate. But there was Asa, he did well, and when he was old he became stubborn and diseased in his feet and he stumbled, no pun intended, he stumbled a little with the Lord there. Jehoshaphat of course, he adored Yahweh. He just couldn't pick good friends. And he paid for it.

Lessons all over the place for us there. Uzziah, whom we're talking about, his son Jotham, then Hezekiah, and Josiah is the final Judean king in the Old Testament. Well, the accomplishments of this Uzziah, the blessings of God on him, and I'll quote that in a minute. He conquered the Philistines, the Edomites, and the Ammonites. He subdued these people that were a problem. And he of course received gold and silver from them, tribute. That strengthened his military and built to the infrastructure of his kingdom, which benefited God's people.

He established access routes to the sea, the Mediterranean and the Red Sea. He repaired and reinforced the wall around Jerusalem. That's a big deal, because that's a deterrent. That's a defense system. Before a king decides, let's go conquer Jerusalem, oh wait, they got a pretty big wall there.

I don't know if it's worth it. He built Jewish cities and conquered territories, and then he established garrisons, troops, forts, camps there in those areas. And these were Philistine, many of them were Philistine areas. He significantly advanced the military of Judah. In fact, they were inventing all sorts of war machines under his reign. And the king is directly responsible for this. He could have not been doing this. He developed significantly Judah's agricultural system, and he greatly improved just the life in Israel of Judah and their territory. This is a good king. The Bible says in 2 Chronicles, he sought God in the days of Zechariah, who had understanding in the visions of God, and as long as he sought Yahweh, God made him prosper.

That, again, he's going to stumble, but this is him overall. Zechariah, this prophet here, otherwise unknown, we don't know, it's not the Zechariah who wrote the book of Zechariah, that comes much later. Verse 4, except that the high places were not removed, the people still sacrificed and burnt incense on the high places.

Now we've been covering this. These were worship centers that were expressly forbidden in their Bible. But God's a chatterbox, who needs to listen to him?

Do what I think is good, because he understands I'm a decent person. If you believe that, you are spiritually ignorant, and you're lining yourself up for judgment, and you're not getting a pass on that. The apostles, Peter, John, and James, went up on a high mountain when Christ was transfigured.

They were so taken emotionally, especially Peter, Peter was an emotional guy. We pick it up in Matthew 17. Then Peter answered and said to Jesus, Lord, this is good for us to be here. If you wish, let us make here three tabernacles, one for you, one for Moses, one for Mary. Okay, it doesn't say Mary.

But that's what happens today. He says, Elijah. And of course, the father interrupts them. While he was still speaking, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them, singled them out. And suddenly a voice came out of the cloud saying, this is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased. Listen to him. He's the one. He is the anointed, the Christ, the Messiah.

Nobody else is in his class. And that is a profound lesson. But, okay, it's there in the Bible. How come people who claim to believe the Bible disregard that and build these centers of false worship in Jesus' name? Well, that's what they were doing here in Israel.

Nothing new under the sun. And the judgments will be the same. This is serious stuff. I'll get to Revelation and the great white throne judgment if I ever get out of this chapter. 2 Kings 17, they feared Yahweh.

We'll get to this next section when we get to Ahaz. They feared Yahweh, yet served their own gods. Are these people insane? This is irrational. Why would you serve Yahweh when he forbids doing this? You do it nonetheless.

Do you think you're just going to kind of get away with this? Well, you know, God's a big idiot. He doesn't see these kind of things. I could do this with somebody else's wife and nobody will ever care.

You're crazy. And the Bible singles us out and points at you if you do this kind of thing. What are you doing? You.

What are you doing? They feared Yahweh and served their own gods according to the rituals of the nations from among whom they were carried away. This goes back to Deuteronomy. You may not sacrifice to pass over within any of your gates which Yahweh gives to you.

And in Chronicles when Solomon comes along, then the Lord appeared to Solomon by night and said, I have heard your prayer and chosen this place for myself as a house of sacrifice. There is to be no war, no other. And then we read in Numbers, then you shall drive out all the inhabitants of the land before you, destroy their engraved stones, destroy their molded images, and abolish their high places. When you come to Christ, Jesus, as your Lord and Savior, you begin to abolish all those other fake saviors and lords in your life.

You get rid of the lies. And that's a parallel to the principle, the commandment there in Numbers finds a parallel teaching in reality. You cannot have buddy gods. You cannot have auxiliary places of salvation. There's one cross of Christ and no other.

And why is this so difficult? What do, why does man think it is cute to tinker with God's word? To just tell him, you don't mean it. You said it, but I don't believe it. Well, Satan pulls it off. He blinds people. He distracts them. He whispers in their ear, don't believe that.

It can't be true. Josiah, the last, as I mentioned, of the good kings in Judah, he finished what Hezekiah started. King Hezekiah comes along and it says he removed the idolatrous priests whom the kings of Judah had ordained to burn incense on the high places in the cities of Judah and in the places all around Jerusalem and those who burned incense to bow to the sun, to the moon, to the constellations, into all the hosts of heaven. These people were worshipping created things. It's like you, you know, it's like you're drawing a picture and then you start worshipping what you drew. You're not God. You're not divine.

You're not self-existent. You're not omniscient. You can't be everywhere at the same time. You're not all-powerful. And you're not able to beat death. And then you're disqualified. You can't be God. You're not big enough. You can't do those things. You are disqualified. And yet, of course, Hezekiah smashes these things up, calls them nuhushten, they're worthless things. They're not Yahweh. But he couldn't get it out of the land.

He couldn't come back in. He'd eradicate it, they'd go low profile for a while, then they'd pop back up. Same thing that people do today. They act like I've given my life to Christ. The next thing you know, they're mingling in some other jungle.

What are you doing? That kind of leaven will send you to hell. You can't improve on what Christ has done. 2 Chronicles tells us in chapter 34, as Josiah comes along years later, Thus Josiah removed all the abominations from all the country that belonged to the children of Israel, and made all who were present in Israel diligently serve Yahweh their God. All his days, they did not depart from following Yahweh, the God of their fathers.

But sadly, that reform was superficial. Some were sincere, but when he died, the next four kings were monsters, and they persecuted the prophets, particularly Jeremiah, and they were all dealt with by God. Ultimately, evil gets away with it for a while, but at the end, it's got to land.

It runs out of fuel, and that landing is not really a landing, it's a crash. And again, we're seeing people do this to this day. They have their high places, and they won't let them go. When the kings couldn't get this stuff out, they weren't giving the good kings, they weren't giving permission or tolerating it. It was just that difficult to eradicate this stuff out of Israel. Well, coming now to verse 5, then Yahweh 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. So this is that good king Uzziah, and God is saying, if I'm going to deal with Uzziah this way, who was a good king, what do you think I'm going to do with you who are bringing in idols? He thought that he could be a priest when it was forbidden. No one could be in the office of a priest in Israel except the sons of Aaron, the descendants of Aaron.

That's in their law when he got too big for his britches. 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.