Through the Bible - 2 Kings

Now all these things happened unto them for examples, and they were written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come. (1 Corinthians 10:11)

Through the divided kingdom of 2 Kings, God paints a picture of every human soul—and the King who must sit on its throne.

A Nation in Decay, Division, and Destruction

Open your Bibles to 2 Kings, really a continuation of 1 Kings, just as 2 Samuel continued 1 Samuel. It picks up right where 1 Kings left off, with a nation in decay, a nation that was divided and headed toward destruction. Decay, division, and destruction—those three Ds are good key words to keep in mind, because that's where the nation of Israel was headed.

The story of Israel during this time is a bleak one. It's not the prettiest picture. Many of you have read through 1 and 2 Kings and found them confusing, bouncing back and forth between the northern and southern tribes. The confusion is there because this is not the way God intended His people to be. When we walk contrary to what God wants, there is confusion—and that's what you see in these books.

Written for Our Instruction

These Old Testament books speak to us for a specific purpose. We've looked at 1 Corinthians 10:11—all these things happened to Israel for examples, and they were written for our admonition. And Hebrews 1:1 tells us, "God, who at sundry times and diverse manners spoke in times past unto our fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by his Son." Because we live in the last days, we should take careful note of what happened to Israel. The principles taught in the New Testament are pictured and illustrated by the stories of the Old.

Body, Soul, and Spirit

The Bible brings out a truth easily observed when you look at man. Each of us has a body, clearly seen. But there is another part not seen with the eyes—the intellect, the will, the emotions. That is the soul. What makes a person a person is the will, the intellect, and the emotion. The soul is what really makes you you and me me, and it lives on into eternity, whether in heaven or in hell.

Many of you have been to a funeral with an open casket. You look at the body and you know nobody's home. The body is still there, but the personality is gone. Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount that the light of the body is the eye—the eye through which the soul sees. The body is the equipment by which your soul interacts with this physical world. You can stand at the Grand Canyon and your soul recognizes the beauty of creation, even in its fallen state, but it does so through the body.

The Bible also reveals something we could not otherwise know: this world has an unseen, spiritual side. It is in that spiritual realm that God dwells, for the Scripture says God is spirit. So man is a trichotomy—body, soul, and spirit—just as God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. As the soul interacts with the physical world through the body, the soul interacts with the spiritual world through the spirit. The spirit is what died when Adam and Eve ate of the tree. That is why God's first words to Adam after sin were, "Adam, where are you?" The connection was gone.

The King as the Soul of the Nation

The nation of Israel was divided, and I believe God intended it so. The northern ten tribes picture the body. Judah and the city of Jerusalem—with the temple at its center, the place where man met with God—picture the spirit. And the king pictures the soul, the one who dictated where the nation would go. Where the king went, the nation went.

It was God's desire that there be one king who ruled the whole nation, a man after God's own heart. We saw that king in David. He was not perfect, but where he went, the nation went. When he became king he brought back the Ark of the Covenant and reestablished worship. Every time a good king came to the throne, the first thing he did was reestablish worship and refocus the nation on its spiritual center. But the evil kings focused on the fleshly things of this world—the idols, the abominations.

When you sit on the throne of your own life and allow your soul to chase the appetites of the body, you become a fleshly individual. Jeremiah 17:9 says the heart of man is desperately wicked—not just bad, desperately wicked. That stands in direct contrast to the humanist idea that man is essentially good. And Paul warns in Galatians that he who sows to the flesh shall reap destruction. Decay, division, and destruction.

The Northern Tribes and Their Ten Wicked Kings

The first division of the book, chapters 1 through 17, focuses on the kings of the north and south. There were ten kings over the northern ten tribes across several hundred years, and every single one was wicked. None followed after David. They all followed Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, who reestablished golden calf worship in two cities—Dan at the northernmost point, and Bethel, whose name ironically means "the house of God."

David became the standard bearer for the righteous king; Jeroboam, for the wicked. Every evil king "followed after his father Jeroboam"; every good king "followed after his father David." These chapters trace the northern tribes' slide toward destruction, ending in chapter 17 with their annihilation by Assyria as a judgment of God. The first thirty-five chapters of Isaiah speak of this coming judgment, where God calls the Assyrian king "the rod in my hand." God used three Assyrian kings as His tools—Tiglath-Pileser, Shalmaneser, and Sennacherib.

God's Patience Through the Prophets

Hebrews 12 tells us that whom the Lord loves He chastens. God loved this people and disciplined them, yet He waited over hundreds of years, constantly sending His prophets. The books of 1 and 2 Kings focus not only on the monarchy but on the prophets.

Turn to Amos 3:7: "Surely the Lord God does nothing unless he reveals his secret unto his servants the prophets." And verse 8: "A lion has roared, who will not fear? The Lord has spoken, who can but prophesy?" God does nothing without first showing His plan through the prophets. Repeatedly He came to His people saying, "Turn to me and I'll heal you, but if you don't, I'll judge you." That reveals His long-suffering patience.

And He still does this. Hebrews 1 says He has in these last days spoken to us by His Son—the Word who became flesh and dwelt among us. The first message of both John the Baptist and Jesus was, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." When we follow Him, God strengthens us; when we turn away, He sends His word to call us back.

Elisha and the Ministry of the Spirit

The main prophet of 1 Kings was Elijah; the main prophet of 2 Kings is Elisha, whose ministry fills chapters 1 through 17. His ministry mirrors the work of the Holy Spirit. He cast salt into the water to make it sweet; the Holy Spirit is the living water. He raised the dead and brought restoration. He told a widow about to die to gather all the pots she could, and her single cruse of oil never ran dry as she poured.

Just as the Spirit, according to John 16, convicts the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment, Elisha's ministry was directed primarily at the northern ten tribes, calling them to repent. When we walk contrary to God, the Holy Spirit shows us our sin, shows us God's righteousness, and warns us of the judgment to come—and the call is always the same: repent.

Judgment Falls on the North

The first division ends in chapter 17, when God's grace, though available, is finally withdrawn and judgment comes through Shalmaneser, king of Assyria.

Yet the Lord testified against Israel and against Judah by all the prophets and by all the seers, saying, Turn ye from your evil ways... Notwithstanding they would not hear, but hardened their necks... Therefore the Lord was very angry with Israel, and removed them out of his sight: there was none left but the tribe of Judah only. (2 Kings 17:13–18)

How could a God of love do such a thing? The New Testament speaks the same way. In 1 Corinthians 5, Paul deals with a man in carnal sin and says, "Deliver such a one unto Satan for the destruction of his flesh, that his spirit might be saved in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ." That is exactly the pattern here: God allowed the Assyrian army to destroy the flesh—the northern ten tribes, the body of Israel—so that the spirit, Judah and Jerusalem, might be saved. To this day they are the lost tribes of Israel, completely gone, exiled because of their own sin.

The Spirit Begins to Falter Too

The shift takes place in chapter 18, and from there to chapter 25 the book focuses only on Judah and Jerusalem. But notice 2 Kings 17:19: "And Judah kept not the commandments of the Lord their God, but walked in the statutes of Israel which they made." Even the spiritual center had begun to turn toward the flesh, because most of Judah's kings—the soul of the nation—were focused on the things of this world.

This is the principle for our lives. If the soul focuses on the body, it drags the body and the spirit toward eternal destruction; the spirit does not cease to exist in death—it simply follows where the body was already headed. But if the soul focuses on the spirit, it carries the body in that direction, and though this body does not enter the next life, it will be raised in the twinkling of an eye, corruption putting on incorruption. Everything depends on where the king—the soul—is focused.

Of all the kings from David to the end, only four besides David were good: Hezekiah, Josiah, Joash, and Jehoshaphat—four good kings over some 350 to 400 years.

King Hezekiah: He Did What Was Right

And he did that which was right in the sight of the Lord, according to all that David his father did. He removed the high places, and brake the images, and cut down the groves, and brake in pieces the brasen serpent that Moses had made... and he called it Nehushtan. (2 Kings 18:3–4)

Hezekiah was the son of wicked King Ahaz, who refused the counsel of the prophet Isaiah. Yet Hezekiah did what was right. He even destroyed the bronze serpent. Back in Numbers 21, when the people were bitten by serpents in the wilderness, God told Moses to lift up a bronze serpent so that whoever looked would live. But over the next six hundred years, the people turned that good thing into idolatry, burning incense to it. Hezekiah called it "Nehushtan"—just a thing of brass—and tore it down.

He trusted in the Lord God of Israel; so that after him was none like him among the kings of Judah, nor any that were before him... and the Lord was with him; and he prospered whithersoever he went forth. (2 Kings 18:5–7)

Under his father Ahaz, Judah was nearly destroyed when the northern tribes and the Syrians came against it. Isaiah told Ahaz that God would protect him if he trusted, but Ahaz refused. Instead he took gold from the temple and his own house and sent it to the king of Assyria for help. Assyria destroyed the Syrians and the northern tribes—and then decided to come after Judah too. You can never pay off the enemy.

The Assyrians at the Gates of Jerusalem

When Hezekiah became king, he rebelled and refused to keep paying Assyria. That is what brought Sennacherib down against the defense cities of Judah, taking them all—in one day, as we'll see in 2 Chronicles, capturing 200,000 men. The only thing that could stop him was the Lord.

At first, Hezekiah's faith faltered. He sent to the king of Assyria, "I have offended you; whatever you put on me, I will bear it," and stripped the gold from the temple doors and pillars—the very gold he himself had placed there to refocus the nation on worship. When times got tough, he backtracked. But paying the enemy did not stop him. Sennacherib sent his commander, the Rabshakeh—a title meaning the king's cupbearer, his most trusted advisor—with a great army to Jerusalem. They stood at the upper pool, the city's main water source, a deliberate sign that Jerusalem could not stand.

The Rabshakeh delivered five blows to Hezekiah's delegation. First: your plans for war are vain words. Second: your alliance with Egypt is a broken reed that pierces the hand. Third: you say you trust in the Lord—but Hezekiah just tore down the high places, so surely your God is angry with you. (The enemy did not know God had commanded that.) Fourth: even if I gave you two thousand horses, you couldn't find riders to face the least of my soldiers. Fifth, and heaviest: "Am I now come up without the Lord against this place to destroy it? The Lord said to me, Go up against this land, and destroy it."

Hold Your Peace

Hezekiah's men begged him to speak in the Syrian language, not Hebrew, so the soldiers on the wall would not be discouraged. But the Rabshakeh refused, and cried out in Hebrew to all the people: don't let Hezekiah deceive you, don't let him make you trust in the Lord. He promised them, "Make an agreement with me, and come out, and you shall eat every man of his own vine and drink the waters of his own cistern." Then he sprang the trap—the Assyrian relocation program—admitting he would later carry them away to another land, just as he had done to the northern tribes. He mocked: "Have any of the gods of the nations delivered their land out of the hand of the king of Assyria... that the Lord should deliver Jerusalem out of my hand?"

But the people held their peace, and answered him not a word: for the king's commandment was, saying, Answer him not. (2 Kings 18:36)

That is exactly what we are to do. The delegation came to Hezekiah with their clothes torn and reported the words.

Hezekiah Spreads It Before the Lord

And it came to pass, when king Hezekiah heard it, that he rent his clothes, and covered himself with sackcloth, and went into the house of the Lord. (2 Kings 19:1)

Hezekiah sent to Isaiah, saying it was a day of trouble, like a child come to birth with no strength to deliver it. He pleaded that God would hear the blasphemy of the Assyrian and answer the prayer of the remnant. Isaiah replied, "Be not afraid of the words which thou hast heard... behold, I will send a blast upon him, and he shall hear a rumour, and shall return to his own land."

The king of Assyria heard a report that the Ethiopians were marching against him and sent his armies to deal with them, but first sent Hezekiah a letter: "I haven't forgotten you. I'll be back." Hezekiah took that letter up to the house of the Lord, spread it before God, and cried out for help. That night, one angel struck down 185,000 of the Assyrians, and Sennacherib turned back to Nineveh.

It is striking that in the annals of Sennacherib, on display in the British Museum, he records destroying every city and taking captives—but of Jerusalem he only boasts, "I shut up Hezekiah like a bird in a cage." He never claims to have taken the city. And of course he never mentions the 185,000 who died.

Set Your Mind on Things Above

Through Hezekiah we see one of the lights against the black canvas of 2 Kings—a king who put his trust in the Lord. He was tempted to trust his money, his food, his water from Hezekiah's Tunnel, his ability to pay off Assyria. But instead he spread the letter before the Lord and said, "Only you can save us." And God saved him.

So 2 Kings shows us the picture of those who follow the king on the throne. You can take that throne yourself if you want—but unless you are a man after God's own heart, you will chase the things of this world, and there is a way that seems right to a man, but the end thereof is death. You don't have to be perfect; David wasn't, and Hezekiah wasn't. But if your heart is given to God, He will prosper and deliver. Set your mind on things above, not on the things of this earth.

Closing Prayer

God, we do thank You for the illustration we have in this book. We thank You for the truth of Your word, and I ask, Lord, that You would help us take it to heart, to hide these things in our hearts, that we would be those who sow to the spirit—for if we sow to the flesh we shall reap destruction, but if we sow to the spirit we will reap everlasting life. We thank You for the truth, we thank You for this awesome passage of Your word, and we pray You would apply it to our hearts. We ask in Jesus' name, amen.