Video Transcript: March Toward Destruction

As we continue our overview of the redemptive historical stories the Old  Testament, with the account of Israel's dissolution and restoration. Today, the  first part of that story the continuing problems that Israel faced as a divided  kingdom, their march towards destruction. The first sign that the miraculous  events on Mount Carmel did not mark the end of Israel's trouble was Jezabel's  response. Rather than submitting to the Lord's justice, she resisted it, venting an unholy hatred against Elijah and vowing to take his life. The Bible doesn't tell us  what Ahab's reaction was to this. But if he did not agree with his wife, he was at  least unwilling to stick his neck out for God and His Prophet. In fact, later events  in Ahab's reign showed his disregard for God and His covenant with Israel. One  event in particular was telling about how lightly Ahab regarded his duty to lead  his people in continuing service to God. This involves some property belonging  to an Israelite, Ahab coveted Nabob's vineyard and tried to buy it. But Nabob,  quite properly, was unwilling to give up the piece of the promised land that had  been given to his ancestors. Way back in the time of Joshua, and Israelites  inheritance after all, was more than property. It was a sign of his participation in  God's covenant. As Israel's leader, part of Ahab duty was to encourage and  support his citizens in their appreciation for God's provisions. Instead, he  became angry over Nabob's refusal and then aided by Jezebel, perverted justice by bringing false accusations of blasphemy against him. In the end, Nabob was  executed. With a result that Ahab seized the vineyard he coveted although the  king repented of his actions after a word of judgment from the Lord that did not  give Nabob his life back. Besides that, Ahab's repentance was very short lived.  But let's go back to Jezebel's earlier vendetta against Elijah. She didn't even feel a need to conceal her blatant attempts to oppose the Lord's prophet. However,  she apparently was not strong enough to carry out her threat immediately. If she  had been she wouldn't waste time sending a messenger to tell Elijah her plans.  Most likely she was just trying to strike fear into Elijah's heart. Well, it worked.  Elijah ran for his life. Sometimes flight is an act of faith and obedience. Elijah's  departure from Israel, right after the drought began, had been just that. But here  his flight was purely out of concern for his own survival. He ignored the fact that  the authority of the Lord had been tied up with his own activity. And then for him  to flee now was to make the kingdom of God giveaway in the mind of Israel to  the kingdom of Satan. But Elijah was tired of the battle. And he was profoundly  discouraged. I'm the only one left he complained, it's too much for me. However, in running away, he found no freedom, but just increasing discouragement, even prayed that he might die. But God answered Elijah's need rather than his  request. He sent an Angel to give him energy to travel on to Horeb, the  mountain of the Lord, where he spent the night in a cave. And thereafter  listening to his complaints, God gave Elijah an unmistakable revelation of His  presence and sent him back into the battle. He was to anoint three men to carry  out a series of judgments upon Israel. One of God's agents of judgment would 

be Jehu, who eventually would ascend to the throne of Israel and kill off Ahab's  descendants as well as Jezebel, Another agent was Elisha, who would succeed  Elijah as prophet and also put to death, the guilty who had escaped the sword of 

Jehu. Still, the judgments did not mean that God was giving up on the northern  kingdom of Israel, God informed Elijah yet I reserved 7000 in Israel, all whose  knees have not bowed down to Baal and all whose mouths have not kissed him. Although the people of Israel as a political and national entity, were being  destroyed, the covenant itself would continue, for God would preserve a  remnant of true Israel, the faithful who would be heir to the covenant and  promises of God So with this fresh look at the Lord's plan, Elijah understood and once again became committed to his mission as God's prophet. God found a  way to make his kingdom come, in spite of Israel's unfaithfulness and the  Elijah's retirement plans, he found a way that would ultimately result in his  victory over the evil opposition to his kingdom. This was no small matter, for the  conflict between Jezebel and Elijah was more than a dramatic episode and a  battle between two powerful people. It was an episode in that age old battle, first mentioned in Genesis 3:15. where God said, and I will put enmity between you  and the woman between your offspring and hers. In Jezebel, Satan struck out at God himself at the saving work of the Promised Messiah and at the Lord's  anointed Prophet, one of those who was preparing the way for Christ to come.  That's why Elijah's obedience was so important. Centuries later, when Christ  came, he would have some of the same frustrations that Elijah had with Israel.  One place he expressed this as a recorded in Matthew 23:37, oh, Jerusalem,  Jerusalem, killing the prophets and stoning those who were sent to you. How  often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood  under her wings? And you would not. But where Elijah had stopped, Christ  continued, he found a way to show them the highest love, placing himself before God's judgment in order to satisfy the demands of divine justice. By doing that  Christ won the victory. After Ahab, the northern kingdom, with its capital in  Samaria continued its march to destruction for another century, until God  allowed it to be conquered and its people deported by the Assyrians. II Kings  17:7-23 rehearses the reasons for their failure. Verse 15, is a good summary  says they rejected the Lord's decrees and the covenant He had made with their  ancestors, and the statutes he had warned them to keep. They followed  worthless idols, and themselves became worthless. They imitated the nations  around them, though the Lord had ordered them do not do as they do. In the  meantime, the spiritual decline of Judah, the southern kingdom, headquartered  in Jerusalem was not as uniform or fast. There were actually some kings of  Judah who did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, even though others more  closely imitated the kings of Israel. One of the better Kings was Jehoshaphat, a  contemporary of Ahab. Jehoshaphat sometimes acted unwisely and was  reproved by God for it, but for the most part, was judged by God to have done 

what was right in the eyes of the Lord. Jehoshaphat's lack of wisdom in one  matter, however, almost put an end to the Davidic dynasty. The seeds for this  were laid when Josh Jehoshaphat allowed an alliance between his house and  the house of Ahab Jehoshaphat's son Jehoram married Ahab's daughter,  Athaliah, Athaliah seems to have been much like her mother, Jezebel. A few  years after both her husband and son had been killed. She seized control of  Judah's throne and did her best to kill off her own grandsons, the legitimate  heirs to Judah's throne. She missed only one infant Joash. But by the grace of  God and the actions of certain faithful covenant keepers in Judah Joash  escaped with his life. Athaliah was killed a few years later and replaced by then  seven year old Joash, who like his great grandfather Jehoshaphat, again, did  what was right in the eyes of the Lord. There were always many political  challenges for relatively small nations like Israel and Judah and spiritual  challenges tpo, especially since God had forbidden them to be as flexible as the  surrounding nations in their worship practices. These challenges only grew as  Assyria became a world power and expanded its influence in their direction. The prophets became particularly active at this time. Amos and Hosea brought their  message to the northern kingdom, while most of the other other prophets  ministered mainly to Judah. The prophets messages were graphic in various  ways meant to help God's people recognize and repent of their infidelity to  Yahweh. I'll give just some representative illustrations of this, Hosea used his  marriage and family life to convey what God had in mind. Hosea married a  woman who prostituted herself to other lovers as Israel had done spiritually, but  took her back, to illustrate the willingness of the Lord to take back his unfaithful  people. Micah drew a word picture of a courtroom in which God was a  prosecutor. The people of God were the defendants and the mountains and the  hills were the witnesses. In Micah's story, the people protested their innocence  of the charges laid against them by pointing to the sacrifices they have made.  And that's when Micah made clear what God really wanted in chapter 6:8, he  has showed you Oh man, what is good? And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God? Habakkuk's  prophecies took the form of a dialogue between himself and the Lord. He  questioned the Lord's failure to punish the wickedness rampant in Judah. And  when told that this would be punished by violence at the hands of the  Babylonians, he, he wondered, how could it be that God would use such a  wicked nation to punish a people more righteous than themselves. And that's  when God gave his assurance that Babylon's wickedness would be punished as well, and faithfulness would be rewarded. Habakkuk concluded by expressing  his confidence and trust in the Lord. Jeremiah and Ezekiekl both used a lot of  symbolism to drive their messages home. Besides using common objects, such  as a useless belt and a smashed jar, Jeremiah conveyed the coming loneliness  and lack of comfort in store for God's people by his own failure to marry and 

have children and to grieve at funerals. But as a sign of confidence that the Lord would restore his people after a long time of desolation. Jeremiah also bought a  field in his hometown at a time when Jerusalem's destruction at the hands of  Babylon was imminent. As for Ezekiel, he was called to lie on his left side for  390 days to represent the sin of the house of Israel, and on his right side for 40  days to represent the sin of the house of Judah. And in one of his other  demonstrations, he was told to cook his food in a way that would represent the  coming years that God's people would have to eat the defiled food of the nations to which they would be exiled. The prophets thus tried to help the people  recognize the enormity of their sin against Yahweh in order to encourage their  repentance and return to wholehearted service. They let them know that God  had to judge their sin but also offered the assurance that he would not reject  them forever. But they also frequently offered specific advice about what to do  and the particular difficulties they faced. Isaiah, for example, went to two kings of Judah to help them decide how to deal with the Assyrian threat in the face of  God's call for them to trust Him and keep their covenant with him. The first of  these kings was Ahaz in the year was 735 BC, Judah's closest neighbors, Syria  and Israel had banded together to resist Assyria. And they want to Judah to join  their coalition. Ahaz refused, with a result that Syria and Israel had invaded his  country and attacked Jerusalem. So far, the attack had been unsuccessful, but  Ahaz was so worried that Jerusalem would be overrun, that he was thinking  about asking Assyria for protection from his neighbors. Of course, as Ahaz  knew, Assyria would not offer this help for nothing, it would require a lot of  money as an incentive. And that's when God sent Isaiah to talk to Ahaz. He told  him that what he feared the fall of Jerusalem would not happen. And Isaiah  finished. If you do not stand firm in your faith, you will not stand at all. Despite  this word of God to him, and you can look at II Kings 16:7. Despite this, Ahaz  failed to trust God. He went ahead with his plan to ask Assyria for help. And  along with that request, he sent a lot of silver and gold from both his palace and  from the Lord's temple. Afterwards, Assyria didn't respond and come to the  rescue by attacking both Syria and Israel and sending many of their people into  captivity. And that was the end to Israel as a nation. But Assyria didn't stop  there. Eventually would turn on Judah and treat it as it had Judah's enemy  neighbors. So as it turned out, Ahaz robbed God's own temple In the wealth of  his country, to get temporary help from a nation that would soon become an  even bigger enemy. Fortunately for Ahaz, this trouble did not come in his lifetime but when his son Hezekiah, was reigning over Judah. And that brings us to the  story of Isaiah is meeting with Hezekiah. Isaiah was 34 years older than he had  been when God sent him to Ahaz. Judah was again surrounded by enemies.  This time it was the so called ally whom Ahaz had fired, hired to fight against  Syria and Israel. For some reason, Assyria had now turned against Judah and  conquered many of her cities and was threatening Jerusalem. This is explained 

in Isaiah 36. The Assyrian field commander met Hezekiah's representatives at  the same spot. Isaiah had meant met Ahaz so many years before. The field  commander spoke in Hebrew and loudly enough for the defenders on his  Jerusalem's walls to hear he went on at some length saying that no one should  listen to Hezekiah's promise of the Lord would deliver Jerusalem because  Assyria was certainly strong enough to take the city. field commander must have had some familiarity with the Hebrew Scriptures too, because he promised that  anyone who surrendered would eat from his own vine and fig tree and drink  water from his own cistern until I come and take you to land, like you're own. A  land of grain and new wine and a land of bread and vineyards. His promise was  intentionally very similar to God's promise, that if his people would keep  covenant with him, he would make their land a place where every man could live at peace beneath his own vine and fig tree at peace and unafraid, rather like the happy condition of God's people in the time of Solomon, which I Kings 4:25 tells  us all the people lived in safety, each man under his own vine, and fig tree.  Hezekiah was just as afraid as his father Ahaz had been so many years before,  but his fear did not drive him to distrust God, rather, it drove him to prayer.  Unlike his father Hezekiah believed Isaiah's message that the Lord would deliver Jerusalem from Assyria, and God did. Scripture tells us that the angel of the  Lord and this is on Isaiah 37 that the angel of the Lord went out and put to death 185,000 men in the Assyrian camp, and further that Senacherib, king of Assyria,  returned to Nineveh, where it so happens he was assassinated by his own sons. Scripture gives many more details good and not so good about Hezekiah's  reign, but we we move on to Hezekiah's son and Manasseh, who is perhaps the  most wicked king Judah ever had Manasseh worshiped idols and even built  altars to them in the Lord's own temple to practice sorcery and divination and  sacrificed one of his own sons in a pagan ritual. In Manasseh's time, there was  very little to differentiate Judah from any of the surrounding nations who had not  been set apart for service to the Lord. According to II Chronicles 33, Manasseh,  repented late in life and tried to undo some of his evil, but was only moderately  successful and in doing so. Manassseh's grandson Josiah, on the other hand,  was devoted to the Lord and did his best under the work of his grandfather. He  tore down the pagan altars, had a covenant renewal ceremony in the temple. He outlawed or killed the pagan priests, mediums and spiritists. Scripture record  this verdict on him, II Kings 23:25 and following, never before nor after Josiah,  was there a king like him who turned to the Lord as He did with all his heart and  with all this soul and with all his strength, in accordance with all the law of  Moses. Nevertheless, the Lord did not turn away from the heat of his fierce  anger which burned against you to because of all that Manasseh had done to  provoke, provoke him to anger. So the Lord said, I will remove Judah also from  my presence, as I removed Israel, and I will reject Jerusalem the city I chose  and this temple, about which I said there, shall my name be. That's just what 

happened in 597 BC, shortly after the death of Josiah's son Jehoiachim whose  reign was marked by oppression, dishonesty, violence and the shedding of  innocent blood. Jehoiachim even dared to put a prophet of the Lord to death. s  Jehoiachim's son Jehoiachin, followed his father as King but he only lasted three months, after which he and his mother were taken captive to Babylon, along  with the other influential people, and leaders. Nebuchadnezzar placed  Jehoiachin's uncle Zedekiah on the throne as his puppet king, but that only lasts until Zedekiah rebelled. And then Nebuchadnezzar destroyed Jerusalem and the temple and Judah as a nation was finished. Thus, it was that God's project  begun with Abraham, of a people dedicated to serving Him in their own land,  and being a light for the nations Gods project seems to have failed. Yet the book of Kings ends on just a bit of a positive note, because there is still a descendant  of David left alive, alive Jehoiachin, who's 37 years after the exile, was finally  released from prison and allowed to eat at the table of Babylon's new king.  Jehoiachin's release, at least implies that God will continue to fill, fulfill the  promise he made to David, II Samuel 7:16. Your house and your kingdom will  endure forever before me. Your throne will be established forever.