Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - What Do You Depend On? | Historical Books | 2 Kings 3

Episode Date: September 29, 2025

How do you respond when things go wrong? Do you depend on God? Or do you depend on something else? In today's episode, Keith shares how 2 Kings 3 encourages us to fight our battles with utter dependence on God. If you're listening on Spotify, tell us about yourself and where you're listening from! Read the Bible with us in 2025! This year, we’re exploring the Historical Books—Joshua, Judges, 1 & 2 Samuel, and 1 & 2 Kings. Download your reading plan now. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it so that others can find it, too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: 2 Kings 3

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Keith Simon. What's your first reaction when things go wrong? Maybe you're passed over for a promotion you really wanted. Or maybe you're in a conflict with a friend and they're gossiping about you behind your back. Or maybe you're experiencing more anxiety than you ever have. What you do when things go wrong tells you a lot about yourself and a lot about your faith.

Some people naturally turn to God in difficult times, and others are quick to blame him. Some are so convinced that God is good that they can surrender to His will even when it's painful, while others doubt God. They doubt His motives and they lash out at him. We see both reactions, trusting God and doubting God, playing out in 2nd Kings chapter 3. Let's pray and then dive in. Father, I pray that you would give us ears to hear, what you want to say to us. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. And second Kings three, we have a conflict is explained starting in verse four. King Mesha of Moab was a sheep breeder. He used to pay the king of

Israel an annual tribute of 100,000 lambs and the wool of 100,000 rams. But after Ahab's death, the king of Moab rebelled against the king of Israel. So I think that makes sense, but let me explain it real quickly. Moab had been paying Israel a tax for the past 30 to 40 years, but when King Ahab of Israel died, they decided to rebel against Israel and stop paying that tax. So King Joram promptly mustered the army of Israel and marched from Samaria. On the way, he sent this message to King Jehoshaphat of Judah. The king of Moab has rebelled against me. Will you join me in battle against him? And Jehosephat replied, why, of course, you and I are as one. My troops are your troops, and my horses are your horses.

So King Joim, who had replaced Ahab on the throne, goes out to do battle with the Moabites. But before he goes, he asks King Jehoshaphat to join him. And King Jehoshaphat agrees and lays out a plan of attack. They will go through Edom, try to get the Edomite king an army to join them, and then they will attack Moab at their weakest spot. The problem is they run out of water. Verse 9. The king of Edom and his troops joined them.

and all three armies traveled along through the wilderness for seven days, but there was no water for the men or their animals. So now is the moment of crisis. To run out of water in the wilderness is a life or death situation. So how do the people respond? First are King Joram. Remember, he was the son of the wicked king Ahab and Queen Jezebel. At the beginning of the chapter, we read that he had done what was evil in the Lord's sight,

but not to the same extent as his father and mother. He at least tore down the sacred pillar of Bail that his father had set up. Nevertheless, he continued in the sins that Jeroboam had committed and led the people of Israel to commit. So do you hear the half-hearted obedience? Joram removed the sacred pillar of Bail, but he continued in the sins of his forefathers. Half of him wanted to follow God. Half of them wanted to do what he wanted to do. And Joram reminds me of what Elijah said on Mount Carmel.

He stood in front of Israel and said, How much longer will you waver between two opinions? If the Lord is God follow him, but if Bail is God, then follow him. See, God isn't interested in half-hearted obedience. Twice a day, the Jews prayed the prayer called the Shemah. It's found in Deuteronomy 6. It says, listen, O Israel. The Lord is our God, the Lord alone.

And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength. You get that little word all? That word all means that God is looking for something that is not half-hearted. He's not looking for what the double-minded Joram wants to offer him. One guy said of Joram, he was not as wicked as he could have been, but he was not as righteous as he should have been. When the crisis comes, the double-minded person, the half-hearted person, doubts God's goodness.

So here's Joram in verse 10. what should we do the king of israel cries out the lord has brought the three of us here to let the king of moab defeat us do you hear the doubt joram says the lord is against us the lord doesn't want what's best for us joram leapt to the conclusion that he was about to die This response is all too familiar for people who only half believe in God. When trouble comes, they assume the worst. Joram was the kind of man who blames God for his troubles. Like Joram didn't think much about God or follow God in any meaningful way, but as soon as things don't go well for him, he blames God. King Jehoshaphat, well, he shows us a different option.

Instead of turning away from God in a moment of crisis, he turns toward God. Here's verse 11. But King Jehoshaphat of Judah asked, is there no prophet of the Lord with us? If there is, we can ask the Lord what to do through him. One of King Joram's officers replied, Elisha is here. He used to be Elijah's personal assistant. Jehosephat said, yes, the Lord speaks through him.

So the king of Israel, King Jehoshaphat of Judah, and the king of Edom went to consult with Elisha. Now, when things don't go well, and Jehosephat doesn't pout, he doesn't blame God. Instead he turns toward God. He calls on God for wisdom and help. I want to be like Jehoshaphat. And that when I'm in trouble, maybe it's a health crisis or something at work or some fear I have for my well-being or my kids' well-being, whatever it is, when I'm in trouble, I want to go in faith to God knowing he loves me, he cares for me.

There's another very troubling response to a crisis in this chapter, and it involves the Moabite king, King Mesha. 2 Kings 3 says that eventually the Israelites reached the Moabites and defeat them. And when the crisis came, Mesha responded in two sinful ways that come at the end of this chapter. The first is he tried to handle it on his own. Here's verse 26. When the king of Moab saw that he was losing the battle, he led 700 of his swordmen in a desperate attempt to break through the enemy lines near the king of Edom, but they failed. This is the classic self-reliance that, unfortunately, we're all too familiar with.

When we run into problems, when we face the crisis, we're prone to depend on ourselves. We say, oh, we'll figure out a solution. We'll try to buy our way out of this. Or maybe we turn to our network of friends to help us in some way. Well, all those might be appropriate responses they can't replace depending on God. What I mean by that is there's nothing wrong with thinking about your problems and how you should respond. there's nothing wrong with asking friends for help. But if you're doing that instead of depending on God,

well, that's when it's a problem. But then the chapter concludes with an even darker response by King Mesha. It says the king of Moab took his oldest son, who would have been the next king, and sacrificed him as a burnt offering on the wall. So there was great anger against Israel, and the Israelites withdrew to their own land. According to all the ancient sources,

The Moabites attributed their disasters to the anger of their god Chemosh. They believe that bad things happen to them because Chemosh was angry. And apparently, King Mesha believed that this human sacrifice would appease the false god Chemash. What King Meshe was really doing was handing his son over to darkness. King sometimes did this in ancient times, but it's still a shock to read about a king's son bleeding to death on a city wall as a sacrifice trying to appease a false God. In the rage and the frenzy, Mesh's soldiers finally succeeded in driving away the Israelites,

but in the process they lost their crown prince. Maybe you think this dark evil story doesn't have anything to do with us. Maybe you think we're way beyond sacrificing our children and altars. But hold on a second. Can you think of any ways that we sacrifice the well-being of children for our own comforts, that we sacrifice what's best for kids for our own personal goals? I'm sure we can all think of a few. Let's pray. Father, I pray that we would look to you in our times of crisis, that we wouldn't learn to depend on ourselves, but instead depend on our Savior.

Not by might, not by power, but by your spirit. That's how we want to fight our battles, and utter dependence upon you. And I pray, Father, for ourselves and for our communities, for our culture, that we would not sacrifice the well-being of our children for our personal comfort and our personal ambition. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.