40 Minutes In The Old Testament - 2 Kings 11:18-13:5 (Episode 336)

Episode Date: November 8, 2022

Jehoash begins his reign at 7 years old and everything goes well as long as he has the voice of his priest to listen to. The temple needs work, but the funds are going elsewhere. The king is struck down and judgment is coming… along with a savior. Chad and Daniel discuss all of this. Have a listen! 1517 Podcast Network 1517 YouTube Donate

Welcome to another episode of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. 40 Minutes in the Old Testament is a 1517 Podcast Network podcast. You can go to 1517.org slash podcast to check out all the other podcasts that are living over there. And while you're over there, make sure you check out all the other things that 1517 is doing. Daily articles. There's a whole network of podcasts, which we are a part of. There's 20 podcasts. So if you like this one, there's definitely other ones that you will be interested in.

You can find preaching helps, conference videos, all different kinds of things, academies, doing a lot of stuff. So make sure if you haven't been over to 1517.org in a while, you don't have to go there and click around and see if you can find something that interests you. Chad, last week we ended off in 2 Kings 11. We had a lot of death. We had some treason, apparently, with the craziest, most hypocritical cry of treason maybe that has ever been uttered. And so that was good. And we sort of ended with this crier out of treason being put to death,

but not in the house of the Lord. They want to do that somewhere else. And we have a covenant cut where the people, apparently, they're going to belong to the Lord from this day forth and forevermore. Yeah, if only. If only. I was thinking this morning just how many times things like this happen. You know, when Joshua brought the people into the promised land,

and after the conquest, he gathers them all together and says, you quoted this at the conference, right? That famous, whom will you serve? you know but it's me in my house we will serve the lord and people are all like oh yeah yeah we'll we'll serve god we'll we'll definitely serve yahweh and joshua's like no you won't yeah you can't do that it's one of the great lines in the bible because it's coming right after the the line that people like to put on plaques in their houses like as for me in my house we will serve the lord and they forget that joshua says as for him in his house they'll serve the lord

But as for you and yours, to quote Joshua, you will not be able to, which is a great line from the mouth of Joshua, especially since he's a type of Jesus, not only in deed, but in name, and literally says, you won't be able to do that because he's a holy God. So you're not going to be able to serve him. Yeah, you could apply that in so many different circumstances. is, we will keep the law of God. No, you won't. You won't be able to. It's just not going to happen. So they renew the covenant there at the end of Joshua.

And this is a covenant renewal ceremony. We're going to actually see a couple more of these in the course of Old Testament history. You know, there's nothing wrong with it. Nothing wrong with kind of making a covenant or renewing a covenant or renewing vows. All that kind of stuff is fine. But don't get deluded into thinking that,

oh, now that we've done this, everything's just going to be smooth sailing from here on out, and everybody's going to be obedient and be faithful to God and keep His covenant. No, they won't be able to, because these are all sinners who are doing this. I feel like ever since our time in Joshua, we could start every podcast in the Old Testament with these words of what the people said to Joshua, which is, far be it from us to serve other gods,

and then we can continue with the next episode. Yeah. Far be it from us. Like, who do you think you're dealing with here? Yeah, as they begin to serve other gods. Yeah, every single time. Not that far from you is serving other gods. Yeah, yeah.

And I mean, in this immediate context, even though it's not recorded here in Kings, if you look at its parallel in Chronicles, you'll find that that is precisely what happened after the death of the priest. So anyway, they make a covenant. Um, and right away, everybody is, is kind of gung ho to their, all of a sudden they're all iconoclasts and, uh, they decide they're going to tear down the temple of Baal.

So in their zeal, all the people of the land go to the house of Baal and they just demolish it, tear it down, his altars, his images, they smatter the, shatter those into pieces. And, uh, there's a priest there by the name of Matan, which is a Hebrew name, by the way. So this isn't like a, an outsider they brought in. and this is a native Judean. So Matan, the priest of Baal, well, they kill him before the altars. Notice that they took the queen out

so she wouldn't be killed in the house of the Lord. But this guy, they kill right there because, hey, this isn't like it's holy ground that they're about to desecrate. This is Baal, Baal's temple. So they kill him right there by the altar. So having taken care of the house of Baal, demolished it, killed the priest,

then uh that they they post watchmen around this place uh around around the temple and then they take the captains and these bodyguards that are here called the the care rights uh these are probably foreigners you know as was pretty typical if you were the ruler it's like they they gathered around them foreigners to act as their bodyguards and i suppose the thinking was that these guys don't have any allegiance they're going to be harder to bribe because they don't have any allegiance to a particular tribe or sect within Israel. So, these are maybe from some other country, but the Karaites is what they're called here. And the guards, people of the land, they bring the king down. This young king, he's only seven years old, Joash or Jehoash. He's the one

who's been hidden all these years. They bring him down to the temple. They march through the gates and he takes his seat on the throne of the king. So here we have a second grader, basically, seven-year-old who is seated on the throne. Everybody's happy. All the people of the land rejoice. And the city was quiet after Athaliah, that was that queen grandmother

that had killed all of the royal seed and taken the throne herself after she had been put to death with the sword at the king's house. And of course, everybody lived happily ever after. well so here we have we got a new king uh this is this by the way if if you happen to be those who follow along in your bible while you're listening to the podcast you'll notice that once more we have a chapter division that's in the wrong place so the very last verse of chapter 11

really should be the very first verse of chapter 12 but they got the division off a little bit so the end of chapter 11 beginning of verse beginning chapter 12 tells us that joash or jehoash you'll remember that often with these hebrew names you'll they'll alternate in the spellings same person just a slightly different spelling so joash or jehoash he's seven years old when he begins to reign now we all know that it really wasn't the kid who was writing that's the way this always works if you have a young young boy who becomes king young girl who becomes queen then they always have older advisors who are really the ones making the decisions. They're just kind of the youthful figurehead until eventually they get old enough to make their own decisions.

But we're told that he reigned for quite a while. It's kind of a Solomonic reign. Solomon reigned 40 years and Joash is going to reign 40 years as well. But as we'll see, I mean, there are kind of surface parallels between this guy and Solomon, but they're only surface parallels because Solomon builds the house of the Lord, builds the temple. This guy, he does eventually repair it, but it takes him half his reign before he gets around to fixing up the temple. And Solomon had peace all around him. This guy is not going to have peace all around him.

So you're seeing, throughout Kings, you're seeing this gradual diminishment of the house of David. They get weaker and weaker. Now you'll have occasional kings who pop up like Josiah and Hezekiah that we'll get to eventually, who are very Davidic and very Solomonic, at least the early Solomon, in the way that they reign. But overall, what you see is a gradual diminishment of the house of David. They get worse and worse and worse until finally you're going to have

the whole kingdom destroyed in the 6th century. So this guy, he reigns 40 years. We're told his mom's name, Zibiah of Beersheba. And we first of all hear, you know, the good part. this is kind of prototypical stuff too, like here's what he did right, and then there's always a qualifier. Here's what he didn't do so well. So Jehoash, well, he did what was right in the eyes of the Lord all his days. We have this little explanation inserted, because why did he do what was right? Because Jehoiada the priest instructed him. So he's kind of this kid's tutor. He's the

one who protected him, Jehoiada the priest, along with his wife. So, he only protected him, but he becomes his instructor. He's going to bring him up, presumably, in the ways of the Lord. But, verse 3, this is our qualification. Nevertheless, so he did what was right, but he didn't do this. The Bamot, the high places, were not taken away. And as a result, the people continued to sacrifice and to qatar which esv translates as make offerings i think it probably would be better to render this more literally as to to burn incense which is what qatar means to make smoke or to burn incense so the people continued on these high places to sacrifice and to burn incense to make smoke on on those same high places so the high places that we've

talked about before are these like illicit worship sites that are scattered throughout the land of israel yeah it seems to me like this kind of seems weird like it's you have this guy says he did all what he did was right in the eyes of the lord all his days and then you have this big qualifier of the people burning incense at these high places and stuff and i it seems that what you could take away from that is that uh idolatry was not promoted by him uh didn't increase under him uh and was certainly probably not engaged in by him but he didn't take away something that the people kind of like doing so he probably didn't say hey you should do this or i i think he's he probably uh by the guess he just left it alone yeah these are kind of c plus b

minus kind of kings you know they're okay i mean it wasn't like you know they were uh the most of the northern kings were building golden calves and setting up asherah poles and you know going gung-ho into idolatry no they mean they they pretty much kind of sort of kept to the straight narrow but it wasn't like they were just shiny examples of orthodoxy or something you didn't want to ruffle everyone's feathers and like take away something that people are used to like yeah we've been doing this for a long time man you didn't want to do that so yeah they weren't they wouldn't be overly zealous for yahweh or anything uh so and you know probably the reason they didn't do this because they didn't want to upset the people the people evidently liked these high

places like these worship sites because that was you know they they did their own thing so there was the temple okay everybody was happy with the temple but also everybody wanted their little bitty temples their their lowercase t temples we might think of them these little high places where you have a wall altar and you offer your sacrifice here there you burn little incense uh you have your own little personal shrine is kind of the idea now the the problem with this there's lots of problems the main problem with this is that you can't have these by moat these high places these personal shrines without idolatry creeping in you know even if even if supposedly Yahweh was going to be worshipped at some of these places most of the time it was a mixture of Yahweh and

other gods so you have this syncretism taking place there and as a result of that you have this creeping idolatry that is slowly rippling into into the nation so that's kind of the beginning of the description of what he did, kind of just an overarching grade, we might say, that's given to this king. Now, we have some details, and these details are not exactly very encouraging. So, the first thing we hear is that the king said to the priest, all the money from the holy things that's brought into the house of the Lord, so the money for which each man is assessed, the money from the assessment of the persons, and the money that a man's heart prompts him to bring into the house of the Lord.

So all this money, which I'll explain in just a second what that's from, let the priest take each from his donor and let them repair the house, that is the temple, wherever any need of repairs is discovered. So evidently, during the course of Athaliah's short reign, the temple itself had, you know, fallen into disrepair. We don't know exactly what was happening, but judging by the amount of work that was required to fix it, which we'll get to in a few minutes, judging by that amount of work that was required to fix it, you know, it was some pretty significant stuff. Just like if you, you know, if you have an older house and you don't take care of it, of course, things start to happen, right? your foundation sinks, you got cracks in the walls, you got a leaking roof, you got all these

things that just happen to structures the older they get. So, of course, they're in constant need of repair. Same with the temple. You know, it's an immense structure here, and over time things happen, and things need to be repaired, and because so much of an emphasis had been placed upon the temple of Baal during Athaliah's reign, then the temple had begun to fall into disrepair. So the king, Joash, comes up with this great idea. Hey, the money that's assessed from this annual kind of census, where everybody has to pay the half shekel, basically that's what they're talking about, along with any kind of just free will offerings, we might call them. So the money that a man's heart prompts him to bring to the house of the Lord. So all the money coming in from these

particular parts of the sacrificial system, either just donations or from the half shekel that is to be used in order to pay workmen to make these repairs on the house of the Lord. No, it's nothing wrong with that. I mean, it's like a pretty good, pretty good taxation for you, right? Yeah. Yeah. It's just like today, you know, your church needs some fixing up. So the pastor, the board of elders, whoever they say, Hey, here's what we're going to do. You know, we're going to set aside donations and we're going to put it in a special fund so that we can put a new roof on the church or we can you know fix the drywall or whatever it is that needs to be fixed yeah good good idea so we're not told exactly when this happened but listen to this next line

but by the 23rd year of king jehoash the priest had made no repairs on the house now it's a long time this guy reigned 40 years now we don't know again when this decree was issued but now we're we're over halfway into his reign he reigns 40 years it's the 23rd year and it's like number one the priest had not done what they were supposed to do so most of the blame falls on them for this but also it took him that long to kind of figure out hey you know all this money we've been collecting evidently something is being done with it besides repairing the house of the Lord because it's still sitting there in disarray.

And some of this is like, I mean, it's forced. I mean, the half shekel is not optional. Yeah, that's going to happen, right? It's not a voluntary contribution. Yeah, so this is like, oh, a few years

ago, right before COVID, the city had a vote. They wanted to build a new basketball arena for the high school. and so everyone had to go vote, and they were going to see if they were going to approve this property tax increase. It wasn't huge, just a small little percentage point of a property tax increase, and that money for four years until the next vote was going to go,

and all that money was going to go, and that was going to pay for the thing. So the town comes out and votes, and that passes. Some people weren't happy about it. Some people were very happy about it, but whatever, it passed. and then all during COVID you could see this construction going on at this place and this thing is being built and then when COVID was over it kind of gave them a nice long runway

to get this thing built and there it is and now it's there now if at the end of four years it's not 20 something years this is four years if there was like no ground broken no steel

framing I mean, I guarantee you that there'd be a lot of people that would be like, what is going on with the gym, man? Where's all this money going, and whose pocket is it landing? Because I've been paying these property taxes, and I don't see anything. Yeah, people would not like that. And it wouldn't take 20-something years before people started asking questions. Yeah. Yeah, but evidently it took quite a while for the king to notice that,

hey, yeah, this money, what's being done with it? Because we still have all these repairs and they have not been done. So he decides he's going to have a little get-together here, a little come-to-Jesus meeting with the powers that be. So the king summons Jehoiada, the priest, who, of course, had been his protector, his instructor all these years, and he's a high priest. So the king and the high priest, they get together, and the other priest.

and he says to them basically what's up why are you not repairing the house uh it doesn't even wait for a response so whatever that response might have been he says now therefore take no more money from your donors but hand it over for the repair of the house so it's not like money had not been coming in oh it was coming in all right but whatever was being done to it uh it was certainly but not being used for the purpose for which it had been determined. So the priest agreed that they should take no more money from the people and that they should not repair the house.

So in other words, they kind of agree, okay, the king's right, we're going to do what you say. But the king's going to make sure. He's not going to simply have this meeting with them, they make the promise, and everything's going to be good. He's going to come up with a very practical plan by which to make sure that any money that comes in goes to the proper place. And that plan is this, verse 9. Jehoiada, the king, I mean, excuse me,

Jehoiada, the priest, takes a chest. Now, interestingly, the Hebrew word for chest is aron. That's the same word that is behind the Ark of the Covenant. So you could also call it the chest of the covenant, the aron of the covenant. It's also used in the book of Genesis to describe a coffin so same hebrew word for chest or ark or coffin it's in other words it's a wooden container so he takes an auto and a chest and he they bore a hole in the lid of it and they put it beside the altar on the right side as people enter into the house of the lord and what would happen is the priest who guarded the threshold would put in it all the money that was brought in the house of the lord so you have this chest there with a hole in it and in goes the money every time that

somebody comes and they make their donations and then when it got full then the king's secretary and the high priest they'd get together and they'd empty it out they'd bag it they'd count it uh so they'd know how much was there and then they'd take this money and they'd and they'd they'd weigh out into the hands of the workmen, these carpenters and masons and everybody else who was involved in the repair, who was supposed to be involved in the repair, who had the oversight of the temple. And then they'd paid out to the carpenters and the builders who worked there, and to the masons and to the stone cutters, as well as to the guys that bought the timber and

they cored the stone. Everybody involved, in other words, they would begin to just kind of, you know, parcel out this money to, here's, you know, here's a thousand bucks for you, here's two thousand mugs for you whatever they needed in order to make these repairs verse 13 tells us but there were not made for the house of the lord basins of silver or snuffers or bowls or trumpets or any vessels of gold or silver from that money so i'm wondering if maybe that was partly where this money was going because verse 13 makes us sure that makes sure that we know it was not used for that so maybe the priests were getting you know they were getting a lot of new gold and silver

things from the temple but oh wow that you know walls are falling down but hey isn't this a nice golden stuffer i have here yeah that's kind of how i read this i mean i read it that you know this is the equivalent of like if uh you know half of your roof gets ripped off by a tornado and someone comes over be like you know fix that roof like oh eventually uh but have you checked out this new knife set i just got this new knife set it's gold plated knives it's so good and you're getting rain falling on your head and this seems like maybe what the king is wondering what's going on when he's like hey man uh cool that you got all of the you know the decor but the actual structure needs attending yeah this is a very practical sort of thing so uh so one used for that

uh and instead they of course they gave it to gave it to the workmen and in fact these guys This is sort of a casting shade against the priest here because they got to make sure the priests are doing their job because obviously they have failed in the past. But for the workmen, it says they did not ask for an accounting from the men into whose hand they delivered the money to pay out to the workmen because they dealt honestly. It's like, you know, we can't trust the priest.

But this general contractor over here, he's trustworthy. you know he's going to use the money the way that we're the way it's supposed to be used so we don't need to keep tabs on him but uh yeah make sure you put that that chest in the temple because that's where the money needs to go and don't just trust the priest to count it because you make sure you get the king's secretary there so there's like there's double supervision here so that everything is done uh done kosher but the priest i mean it wasn't like all of a sudden now the priest or, or, uh, what was me? I have no money because they would still, we're told this is verse 16, the money from the guilt offering and the money from the sin offering, the money it

was brought and then kind of translated into, um, into animal sacrifices. That money was still given to the priest. All right. So don't feel sorry for these guys. Like, Oh, now all of a sudden they're, you know, they don't have a paycheck coming in. They have money. They're going to be taken care of. Uh, they're just not going to be buying a bunch of gold and silver stuff with the offerings like they had been up to that point. All right. So, uh, we get the temple prepared, you know, we ever got some financial responsibility going on here again. And, uh, that's kind of the end of that section. Now, if, uh, we, we, we refrain from this, uh, most of the time, uh, because we're eventually going to cover first and second Chronicles. But if you were

interested in reading about the parallel to this story of this king in second chronicles 24 then you could go do that there's a whole lot more details uh and many of them are kind of ugly details honestly about this king that's that's described in second chronicles 24 that we're not going to get into but suffice to say at this point that after after jehoiada the high priest dies then the king kind of goes off the rails uh he's going to abandon the service of the lord he's going to kill the replacement high priest a guy named zechariah it's going to be uh it's going to be stoned to death because it can be i don't remember he's stoned to death he's gonna be killed because he preaches against the idolatry that was being permitted there so there's a lot more

that's included in second chronicles that's not included here in second kings all we're told is beginning with verse 17, that Hazael, our Syrian guy that we've heard so much about in the last few chapters, Hazael, the Syrian king, the one that made Elisha weep, he goes up, first of all, fights against the Philistine city of Gath, takes control of it. And then he turns toward Jerusalem, sets his face to go to Jerusalem, and is basically threatening to conquer Jerusalem. but king jehoash he uh he gets out of this situation not by opposing him in battle not by praying to god for help no he he gets out of the situation by ironically taking stuff from the temple to give to the syrian king we're told that joash joash took all the sacred gifts

that the kings before him had dedicated as well as his own sacred gifts so he raids the temple basically of all this gold found in the treasuries of the temple and his own house and he used these basically to pay this high ransom to haziel king of syria and so haziel satisfied with all these riches that he had received he leaves jerusalem alone he doesn't attack it he doesn't he doesn't destroy it so this king who seemingly was all worried about the repair of the temple and made sure that money went to the proper place well this guy then turns around when he's threatened by the syrian king and he goes into the temple and he just basically just empties it out you know taking all these riches and then handing him over to the syrian king in order to in order to save

save israel then wrapping up verse 19 uh this is the kind of the things we're we're accustomed to hearing the rest of the acts of joash and all that he did aren't they written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah. In fact, they are. 2 Chronicles 24. How did he die? This is kind of a sad ending to a rather mediocre reign. His servants arose and they made a conspiracy and they actually killed him. They struck down Joash in the house of Milo on the way that goes to Sila. And we have their names listed there. A guy named Josachar, the son of Shema, and Jehozadab, the son of Shomer, his servants, they conspire, they strike him down so that he died. And then he was buried in the city of David with his fathers and his son, a guy named Amaziah,

that we'll get to eventually. Amaziah, his son, reigned in his place. So, you know, overall, the story starts out, it's kind of, you know, fascinating. He's spared when he's a little kid, maybe even a baby he's hidden away in the temple you know in the very temple this temple that's going to become part of his story the whole way through his reign he's hidden away and then you had this great unveiling when he's seven years old and his wicked uh grandmother who had taken the place of of the king she's she's killed he becomes king and kind of i don't know when i read I get this sense like there's such great hopes, you know, for this young king who's being raised by a faithful priest. And then the farther along you go, the more your hopes are just dashed.

Well, it seems like once sort of his guide dies, like it just all goes down. Like he's fine as long as he's got this sort of spiritual advisor who it does seem that he trusts implicitly, implicitly that he i mean it says right i mean he does everything that he tells him to do but when he no longer has that uh you know it's like if uh imagine the story pinocchio if pinocchio just does what jimmy jiminy cricket says all the time this movie is like way less interesting like this guy is just going around like not getting into trouble he's doing all the right things you're like this is this is not a very interesting so that this is a story about a wooden puppet that wants to be a real boy and he just does whatever his good conscience jimmy

cricket says this movie not very exciting what a wise little puppet that is and it seems like you have something like that where as long as he's listening to the voice of this person who's it seems like a faithful worshiper of yahweh seems like a good priest seems like he's wise and he does seem that he's willing to listen to him it's all good but he no longer has that voice in his ear or that person to go ask advice from it seems that everything falls apart yeah and we could probably do a quick survey of history and see a lot of a lot of kings that are that are like that i mean inside and outside the scriptures uh where yeah when they had their their old wise faithful counselor or counselors around them then everything was good but you take those guys out of

the picture and it turns out the leader the king well he wasn't that great of a leader he just happened to be the one who knew how to listen to the right yeah and that's not nothing you could just not listen to wise counsel which lots of people do uh pinocchio doesn't do it uh and that's why that movie's interesting but so you get credit for that knowing what you don't know and knowing who's wiser than you and heeding their word so there's definitely something uh commendable about that but when that goes away and you're just left on your own uh those i think those voices are also hard to replace yeah they are yeah definitely so and you know when they're when they're not replaced and you begin either to listen to yourself or sometimes just to listen to less wise

uh advisors people telling you so maybe some voices telling you that you haven't been quite ambitious enough you haven't you know like yeah it's nice that you've been faithful and all this stuff but man you can never what about your legacy or who knows what they're going to tell you uh yeah the a completely leal voice is hard to come by yeah so that uh that's what happened to our friend uh joash joash uh began with great potential ended with uh not that great of a not that great of a legacy so uh we're this finds us at the end of into chapter 12 so let's jump into chapter 13 see how far we can get into that we're going to shift uh so this is typical of kings right we'll we've talked about the south for a while now we're talking about the north for a

while and then we'll switch back to the south so we do this dance back and forth between north and south. So we've been in the south, been in the kingdom of Judah. Now we're going to shift our attention back to the northern kingdom of Israel. In the 23rd year of Joash, the son of Ahaziah, king of Judah, so the guy we were just talking about, in his 23rd year, then Jehoahaz, the son of our very bloody friend Yehu, so this is the first of his sons, Jehoahaz, the son of Yehu, Well, he starts to reign over Israel in Samaria, and he reigns 17 years. You know, fairly lengthy reign for a northern king. You remember that Yehu, because he did everything that was in the heart of the Lord,

he was promised a short dynasty. He was going to have four sons to reign after him. So Jehoahaz is the first of those. Reigns 17 years. But as you also might expect, this being a northern king, guess what? But he did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and followed the sins of, well, we all knew who he followed the sins of, Jeroboam, right? The arch sinner from the first king of the northern kingdom.

Followed the sins of Jeroboam, the son of Abot, which he made Israel to sin. He did not depart from them. So this continuance of idolatry, the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel. And so he did what? Well, this kind of feels like we're back in the period of the judges. Remember the cycle that we saw in the judges, the Israelites? They rebel, God's anger would get kindled. So what would he do?

Every time, he would deliver them into the hands of blank, whoever the foreign power might be at the time. Same thing here. He gave them into the hand of Haziel, king of Syria, and into the hand of his son, a guy named Ben-Hadad. So what did Jehoahaz do? Well, again, this is kind of the cycle of the judges. they would cry out to the Lord.

We're not told that he cried out, but he sought the favor. He entreated the Lord, and the Lord both listened to him, and he saw the oppression of Israel. So he hears and he sees how the king of Syria was oppressing them. And now, if we're not thoroughly into the rhythm of the book of Judges yet, now we are, because listen to verse 5. therefore the lord gave israel a savior now the hebrew there is moshiach and in the book of judges the judges when their activities are described so they might be called a show fate which is the

word for judge in hebrew but when their activity is described it's almost consistently that they would yasha to save or to rescue israel so here we have the lord giving israel a moshiach a a savior a deliverer a rescuer so that they escape from the hands of the syrians and then the people of israel lived in their tents or their homes literally it's tent as formerly now the real question is who is the savior it's kind of a kind of just dropped there right in fact um the esv has this has five through six in parentheses for some reason but there's very speculations who this might be some people say is you know this might be a reference to elisha elisha which kind of makes sense yeah other people say it was a an unnamed like general in the army that god

raised up to be this kind of powerful judge like savior and some people say it's in reference to maybe even like a foreign power who came along and oppressed the Syrians, which then took some pressure off of the Israelites. I don't have a strong opinion either way. Maybe this is a reference to Elisha, that he was the savior. I kind of like that idea. He was the savior of the north, but we're not given a name, so we can't say for sure. I think it's weird how you have this okay you're going to walk in the sins of Jeroboam of course and then you have the anger of the Lord

is kindled up so God is upset and he delivers them in the hands of the Syrians and then Joaz is going to seek the favor of the Lord how am I going to make God like me I need to figure out how to make God like me because this is not going well

and he's not successful in this in the sense that God doesn't give him something to do like i'll like you if you do this it just says that god listened to him despite him being an idolater trying to figure out how to make god like because he saw the oppression of israel and how the king of syria oppressed him and then you're like well wait a minute didn't aren't you the one that put them into that hand of syria like so so you have this weird thing that goes on which some people like find this kind of stuff difficult i just think it's interesting so

you have idolatry god turns you over to the syrians you cry out to god god's like i'm gonna i'm gonna help you out not because you changed your ways which they didn't but because i just see how bad this oppression is and i think that that just reminds me of like if you're getting a spanking as a kid when i got a kid and my dad said this is gonna hurt me more than it hurts you i always thought that that's not possible because i'm the one i'm the one getting i'm the one getting spanked i'm the one experiencing the pain here without you i feel like that's how god is like he turns his people over to the hands of the syrians and and he then he looks at it and he and he it hurts him he doesn't like it you know it's still it's still what you had coming you you did

you don't have you forsake god and now this is what you get this is what happens but god also looks down on that and says this is the spanking that hurts god more than it hurts you like god is and then he's moved to save you from the thing that he delivered you into because you abandoned him. Yeah. Well, I mean, that's the way it is with a loving, compassionate father, right? It's not like he enjoys punishing his people any more than any loving, compassionate father enjoys disciplining his kids.

You know, it pains a loving parent to have to do that. But God also knows that these things have to be done. But then when he sees the suffering of his people, he's moved to compassion. And I love the result of his being moved to compassion is he raises up the Savior. It's perfect. I mean, it's so, like these verses could be just lifted

from 2 Kings and then transplanted into the Gospels. Yeah. That's what happens. God sees the suffering of his people, which they deserve because of their sins. And so what does he do? He says, you know what? I'm going to take care of the situation. I'm going to send a savior, a Moshe.

I'm going to send, of course, ultimately my son, who will save his people from their sins. So sin, result of sin, divine compassion, divine action of salvation for his people back then, for all of humanity in the Mosheite and the Savior Christ himself. That's exactly right. All right, we are out of time, so we're going to leave it right there. I'm sure after this

Savior episode that people will now become faithful to the Lord and we can end this vicious cycle of not being able to serve the Lord. I'm sure that's what we're in store for. If you believe that, you can stop listening.

if you don't believe that you might want to keep listening because we might need that real deal savior we might need to keep working towards that end we will keep working towards that end next week I'll see you then Chad alright see you then I'll see you next time.