The Killer Kings (Part B)

The sins got such a grip. You're preaching to Christ, to somebody, to lead them to the Lord. You better be praying for them, because this Satan has got moves that can only be neutralized through prayer. I believe that.

I believe God already sees what's happening and is making his move and inviting us to be part of it. And so, yeah, it's very difficult for a person to have this realization, Jesus is Lord. I am a sinner. I am not worthy.

And I repent and change. 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 2 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. And now here's Pastor Rick with part 2 of his study called The Killer Kings in 2 Kings chapter 15. 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 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 gonna 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 more, 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? Why does man think it is cute to tinker with God's word? To just tell him, now 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 priest 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, and to all the hosts of heaven. These people were worshipping created things.

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. It could come back in.

He'd eradicate it. They go low profile for a while, then they 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 junk.

What are you doing? That kind of leaven ascends you to hell. You can't improve on what Christ has done. Second Chronicles tells us in chapter 34, as Josiah comes along years later, thus Josiah removed all the abominations from all the country that belong 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 riches. And so you look at this good king and you hear this, the Lord struck him, huh? For, again, his presumptuous disobedience. Well, I'll get a pass, I'm the king.

People do this all the time and God judges them all the time for it. Well, his father, Amaziah, wanted to be known as his great general. You know, he was really the thistle. He tried to take down Jeroboam and he, of course, became a prisoner of war himself and then assassinated. Uzziah wanted to serve both God as king and as priests, spiritual leader, offering the incense at the golden altar. And in the priesthood, in the Old Testament, the priesthood and monarchy were not to mix. They're two separate, they were to remain distinct. One was spiritual, the other one was physical, primarily, but both were spiritual.

Both had physical elements too. And in the blink of an eye, the great and powerful Uzziah was a leper, unclean, a social outcast until his death. And God could have done worse to him, but he leaves him as a messenger to us. Yahweh is your strength.

That should suffice. And so, as I mentioned, the kings put him out. Only Christ can be the prophet, the king, and the priest. Only the anointed, God the Son.

He is the Son of God because he is God the Son. The Bible says that he did not consider it robbery to be counted equal to the Father because he is equal to the Father because the Father arranged it that way from eternity past. And he is after the order of Melchizedek, who was the king of Salem and also its priest. And no man could appoint themselves priests, especially high priests, in the land. And one of the Jeroboams, what Jeroboam does when he says, you know what, I don't want the people going to Jerusalem to worship, no matter what Moses said, no matter what the Bible says, he makes up his own priest.

Anybody can be one. See, the sin he committed was just, that's why every time we come across Jeroboam I, his name, the Bible says he's the one that made it. He did it.

He did it. And it's a message to anybody reading it. Don't this be you. I'm going to say it just like that.

Who cares about grammar when it makes the point. Don't this be you. Actually it sounds kind of King James. Numbers 18, therefore you and your sons with you shall attend to your priesthood for everything at the altar and behind the veil and you shall serve. I give your priesthood to you as a gift for service, but the outsider who comes near shall be put to death. And that was Uzziah. And God did not kill him because God is not petty.

People are petty. God's not petty. Well, God spared him. So he dwelt, in verse five, so he dwelt in ice, in an isolated house, removed from the people, no regent with his son, and Jotham, the king's son, was over the royal house. And he's a good king. But he won't live that long.

He dies at 41. And that's a judgment not on him but on the people. They were going to get the king they deserved because they're fooling around with God, playing games with him.

You know, we're God's people, but really they despise the law of God. Verse six, now the rest of the acts of Azariah, who is Uzziah, and all that he did, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah? Verse seven, so Azariah rested with his fathers and he buried him with his fathers in the city of David. Then Jotham, his son, reigned in his place. They have found essentially the gravestone of Uzziah, and that's the name it goes by. He's buried as Uzziah, not Azariah, which lends back to what I was saying earlier. So here, verse seven, Isaiah the prophet who supported Uzziah will support his son Jotham also. Now, when the king Uzziah died, as I mentioned, Isaiah 6, 1, saw the Lord high and lifted up the train of his robe, filled the temple. It's just such an assurance that God was still on the throne, even though after fifty-two years, Uzziah was no longer there, in this void. And you know, if you live long enough, you know, people that aren't the best characters, but you grew up with on television, when they die, you kind of, a little piece of you goes with them, like, man, I remember my mom used to watch that guy, or whatever.

And so there's a connection. Well, this is a righteous connection, not a casual or common one. When this king died, it affected Isaiah, and when Josiah dies, it will affect Jeremiah. In 2 Chronicles, we read, Jeremiah also lamented for Josiah, it broke his heart, that a righteous king had died. And in Josiah's case, it was such a waste, it just, he was trying, he made a mistake and he paid for it with his life. But you will meet Josiah in heaven, you're a righteous king. Well, anyway, this, and incidentally Josiah was in, the only king that Jeremiah knew for eighteen years. And when he died, he lamented, and he knew those rotten kids, you know, unlike Jotham that was not a rotten kid, but a good kid, what Jeremiah knew, that Josiah's sons, they're bad news, and they were. Anyway, verse 8, in the thirty-eighth year of Azariah, king of Judah, Zechariah, the son of Jeroboam, reigned over Israel in Samaria six months.

Six months is all he's going to get, because he's going to get killed. And he did evil in the sight of Yahweh, as his fathers had done. He did not depart from the sins of Jeroboam, the son of Nabat, that's the one that changed the location of worship and just made a priest, who made Israel sin. And the historians are brutal and rightfully, it's a righteous indignation.

They're almost fed up with this stuff. When they keep hammering that, every time they come to his name, don't forget to put in there, the supervisor telling the scribe, don't forget, the one that made Israel sin. And so we want our people to understand it. Anyway, where am I, verse 9, he did evil in the sight of Yahweh, as his fathers had done. He did not depart from the sins of Jeroboam, the son of Nabat. So this section now again chronologically goes back in time, so again we're all over the place, and it is calling this period of violent men, killing each other to be king, with the exception of the one Menahem that I mentioned. This is the fruit of 300 years of apostasy, in Yahweh's name, much of it. Wait till we get to Ahaz, who just throws out the altar of Solomon and just finds one in the pagan world and has one made up after that one.

I saw this pagan altar, we need that here. He's such an innovator, from hell's standpoint, he's wonderful. Anyway, this I mentioned already commented on Zechariah the king, not the prophet that spoke to Uriah in the south. He reigns for six months and he is killed, verse 10. Then Shulam, the son of Jabesh, conspired against him and struck and killed him in front of the people and he reigned in his place.

Well, that's a bold move. You know, blatant execution. Like, look, we all don't like you, and nobody's going to object to this, excuse me while I kill you, kind of a thing.

He's likely fed up with his politics and dealing with just everything, and his weakness in character, so he kills him outright. The Assyrians have a record on Shalom as the king in Israel, and it says that he was the son of nobody. Wasn't these people talking about your parents? First we have Jehu telling, you know, Azariah about his mother Jezebel, now we've got the Assyrians talking about it.

He doesn't have any. Well, what they're saying is, he's not from royalty, he was a commoner, and they didn't respect him, and they wanted to point that out. Well, Amos the prophet actually prophesied that this would be the case with these kings, and they couldn't stand Amos for doing it. It didn't matter that it all came true. They didn't go back to Amos and say, you know what, your prophecies are right, we need to clean up our act.

No, that wasn't the way they did it. Verse 11, now the rest of the acts of Zechariah, indeed, they are written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Israel. Let me pause here a minute to say that sin's got such a grip, you're preaching to Christ to somebody to lead them to the Lord, you better be praying for them, because this Satan has got moves that can only be neutralized through prayer.

I believe that. I believe God already sees what's happening and is making his move and inviting us to be part of it. And so, yeah, it's very difficult for a person to have this realization, Jesus is Lord, I am a sinner, I am not worthy, and I repent and change. It's very spiritual, it's invisible, but it is not the works, the fruits of it are very visible. But what's going on in the inside? You can't x-ray it, you can't get an MRI and say, look at that, a spiritual deficiency, there it is right there, it should be next to the frontal lobe, but it's not.

No, you can't do that, because it's spiritual. Well, verse 12, this was the word of Yahweh which he spoke to Jehu saying, your son shall sit on the throne of Israel to the fourth generation, and so it was. Well, that prophecy is fulfilled. Verse 13, Shalom the son of Jebesh became king in the 39th year of Uzziah king of Judah, because he reigned 52 years, and he reigned a full month in Samaria.

So, this one is the short, he doesn't, he gets 30 days. Verse 14, for Menahem the son of Gadai, he was a Gadai warrior, probably, anyway, went to Terzah, came to Samaria, and struck Shalom, from Terzah came to Samaria, struck Shalom the son of Jebesh in Samaria and killed him and he reigned in his place, the killer kings. Terzah is said, it comes up in Solomon's song, it's beautiful up there, quoting at the time, and it was the capital city in the north, but Amri realized, you know, it's just not fortified enough, and he moved it to Samaria which is a natural fortification, and that's why he moved the capital to Samaria. Anyway, verse 15, now the rest of the acts of Shalom and the conspiracy which led indeed, which he led indeed are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Israel. We don't have that book, that's extinct, we take his word for it. Verse 16, then from Terzah, Menahem attacked Tipsha, all who were there in his territory, because they did not surrender, therefore he attacked it, all the women there who were with child he ripped open. Yeah, you didn't see that coming. We're reading along, we're just looking, the kings all of a sudden some gory terror pops out and the writer is saying, this is the reality of the sin.

These folks at Tipsha, they didn't like Menahem becoming king and killing Shalom, so they resisted, and he was brutal and cruel, and so he attacked them and he murdered, and that's how he dealt with it. There's nothing new about terrorism, that's what this was. Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's minister of propaganda, if you read his quotes today, you would think that he is the chair in the democrat party today.

I'm not kidding you, I'm not taking cheap shots. You read what he says about how to manipulate people, and you say, this is them. Never admit that you're wrong, no matter what evidence they put in front of things like that.

Well, this is what he says, one of the things he says. Terror could also be used to compel people to change their behavior. You don't like Hitler? Well, how about we terrorize you? I think your behavior, I think everything about you will change after that, and that's what he did. They terrorized their opponents.

If you were stood up in a forum debate in the government office and you said, I disagree with that and here's why, they would terrorize you, and that included killing you. Anyway, Satan at work through human beings because Satan can't ball up his fists and punch you in the face. He has to get a human to do it for him, and he does. Whether, you know, in some way, whatever violence or sin against somebody, he's getting, he has to get a person to do it. Verse 17, Menahem reigned in Israel in the 39th year of Azariah, king of Judah. Menahem, the son of Gadai, became king over Israel and reigned 10 years in Samaria.

So, his act of terrorism evidently served his purposes because he served for 10 years as king, and it worked for one lifetime. And after that, you could say, hell doesn't break loose, but you won't break loose from hell. So we go to the book of Revelation, chapter 20. Then I saw a great white throne and him who sat on it from whose face the earth and heaven fled away and there was no place for them. Now the earth and the heaven fleeing in this part of John's vision in the Revelation is because judgment is about to be exercised.

This is the fierce wrath of God and nothing stands and nothing can deal with that. 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.