1. Friday Night Genesis, Friday, January 4, 2013
2 Kings
Intro to the book
In 1 Kings we saw how Israel split into two after the reign of Solomon. Ten tribes to the
north which continued to be called Israel, although they are also referred to as Samaria
and the Northern Kingdom, and Judah to the south. 2 Kings continues to follow the
history and successive kings of both of these kingdoms until they are both conquered
and the population dispersed. In 1 Kings we also got to follow many of the adventures of
prophet Elijah. In 2 Kings Elijah is taken into heaven and during the first half of the book
we follow the ministry of his successor – Elisha. As the kings are moving on, and the
situation in both kingdoms is generally deteriorating, God seems to be sending an
increasing number of prophets. Almost all the prophets in the Old Testament, starting
from Isaiah and clear through the end of the Old Testament are from the time period
covered in the book of 2 Kings. There are only a handful of exceptions – prophets who
lived during the return from the exile, a time period which we’ll cover in the books of Ezra
and Nehemiah.
We begin 2 Kings with the unfortunate king Ahaziah of Israel who played humpty-dumpty
and died from his injuries. His death is dated around 849 BC. So 2 Kings continues from
somewhere around that point and follows the history to the exile of both kingdoms. Israel
was conquered by the Assyrians, and the end of the kingdom is marked by the fall of its
capital Samaria which happened in 722 BC. Judah seemed to have better kings, and so
it carried on a bit longer until it too was conquered by Babylon, first in 597 BC when the
king became a vassal to Babylon and then again in 586 BC when king Nebuchadnezzar
of Babylon pretty much trashed the country and took complete control of the territory.
Jews will eventually return to their land but Israel will never again be seen on the map
until 1948 AD, when the UN once again created a country by that name in the Middle
East. So the book of 2 Kings covers a period of around 260 years.
2 Kings also includes the first description of a Chicago driver. A lookout reports in 2
Kings 9:20 “The driving is like that of Jehu son of Nimshi—he drives like a maniac.” I
actually looked up the etymology of this and this is indeed where we get our expression
“to drive like a Jehu”.
2 Kings – God gets our attention.
Scripture reading: Matthew 23:33-37
Last month we looked at an important question – how do we know whom to trust? We
looked at a couple of examples in 1 Kings where choosing the wrong advice among a
number of competing voices proved very tragic for those making the decisions. We saw
that God wanted us to take the time and examine the available evidence and ask
questions. He was willing to provide the evidence and be patient with us as we put it all
together.
This month we look at a question that in many ways precedes last month’s question.
How do we even know we should be looking for evidence? We may be perfectly happy
in the place where we are at, with the beliefs that we have, and never even think that

2. there may be a problem with them. So how would we know that we should venture out
and gather evidence for or against our current beliefs?
Have any of you seen the movie “The King’s Speech”? If you have seen the movie you
may remember that before seeing Lionel Logue, Prince Albert went to a number of top
specialists in order to find a cure for his stutter. One of the remedies prescribed by these
doctors, you may remember, was to smoke cigarettes “to open up his larynx”. Smoking
will cure you was the prescription of the top specialists of the day! Since this is what the
scientific community is telling you, how would you even know that you should continue
researching the effects of smoking? In the end, it was smoking that in 1952 caused the
premature death of King George VI, one of the most beloved kings of the United
Kingdom.
The short answer to this question is – God will get your attention. 2 Kings is LOADED
with attention getters. As Israel and Judah were drifting away from God, God was
sending prophet after prophet to warn them of the error of their ways, and since it
seemed that the prophets were largely ignored, God resorted to some commando tactics
to get people’s attention and take His messengers seriously. When some youths called
Elisha “baldy” it seems very harsh to send out bears to kill them as punishment. After all
– “Sticks and stones may break my bones – but names will never hurt me”. Didn’t God
and Elisha ever hear that saying? But imagine the situation – these kids have just seen
Elijah taken up into heaven, and then watched as Elisha took Elijah’s coat, rolled it up
and struck the waters of the river Jordan, which caused them to part, so he could cross
over it on dry land. They had witnessed all of that, and their only response was to
irreverently taunt Elisha: “Why don’t you go up too, baldy?” As the word of this incident
spread, you can bet your boots people paid more attention to what Elisha had to say!
But the story I’d like to look at this evening is the story found in the very first chapter of 2
Kings. King Ahaziah fell through the balcony railing and took a tumble from the upper
room of his palace and seriously injured himself. Unsure of his prospects for recovery,
he sent a delegation to inquire of Baal-Zebub, the god of Ekron. God informed Elijah of
this and sent him on an intercept course with this message: “'Is it because there is no
God in Israel that you are going off to consult Baal-Zebub, the god of Ekron?' Therefore
this is what the LORD says: 'You will not leave the bed you are lying on. You will
certainly die!'” (2 Kings 1:3,4). When the delegation returned prematurely with the bad
news, Ahaziah dispatched a company of 50 armed men led by a captain with a short
message for Elijah: "Man of God, the king says, 'Come down!' " (2 Kings 1:9). This is
where things take an interesting turn. Rather than go with the armed troop or say ‘no’,
Elijah said: "If I am a man of God, may fire come down from heaven and consume you
and your fifty men!" (2 Kings 1:10). And sure enough, fire came down from heaven and
consumed the captain and his fifty men. Not to be denied, Ahaziah then sent another
captain and his 50 men. Except this time the message was “Come down at once!”. And
the same thing happened. Ahaziah then sent a third captain with his 50 troops. At least
this guy took Elijah seriously. He didn’t command Elijah to come down, he just pleaded
with him. I know what happened to the previous 2 captains and their men. Sir, I’m just
following orders and would like to survive today. Please spare me and my men. Elijah
then went with him to king Ahaziah and repeated the “you will die” message and king
Ahaziah did.
What does one make of a story like this? We are going through the Bible asking the
question: what does this tell us about God? So what does this tell us about what God is

3. like? That He would not heal a king because he dared consult someone else? That He
would burn up a hundred men and their 2 captains, just because He didn’t like the tone
of their voice? On first blush, it is certainly not very flattering, and would make one
wonder whether spending eternity with a God like that is even a good idea.
So let’s try to break down this story and see if we can make more sense out of it, since
this story is only a sampling of similar incidents recorded in 2 Kings and elsewhere.
Starting at the very beginning – who was Ahaziah? He was the son of king Ahab and
queen Jezabel. You may remember those two from 1 Kings. It was during king Ahab’s
reign that Elijah had to gather the people of Israel on Mount Carmel and ask them to
make a choice between God and Baal. On that day, God was the only one who
answered and the answer came in the form of fire from heaven. Ahaziah would not have
been unaware of these events. In fact, when the delegation that set off to Ekron returned
early and described the man who intercepted them, it is king Ahaziah who identified him
as Elijah. So even though he was obviously familiar with Elijah and the God whom Elijah
served, when he needed to consult a deity, Ahaziah instead elected to send a delegation
to inquire of Baal-Zebub, the god of Ekron. Ekron, just for the record, is a major Philistine
town, and Baal-Zebub is the god of flies. This doesn’t make sense on so many levels!
Why would you send a delegation to a foreign country to inquire of a foreign god? Just
from a purely tactical point it is stupid – you are tipping off your enemies that you are
incapacitated and could not fight should they attack! Secondly, why inquire from a god of
flies about your own health? Finally, as Elijah had helped demonstrate so forcefully on
Mount Carmel – God was the only real God, since He was the only one who actually
responded. Was Ahaziah honestly expecting an answer from a god who had previously
failed to respond? It may have been a long wait….
And so God interjects and provides an answer. He may not have been asked, but God is
sending a clear reminder. “Is there not a God in Israel?” He provides the answer to king
Ahaziah’s question, reminding him that He was the only God who does answer.
What about the 2 captains and their men that perished? The original message did get
Ahaziah’s attention, but obviously made no difference to his attitude. So God continues
to pound the message. Ahaziah is not a man who is to be denied, and he has the
muscle to back it up. God dramatically shows him that all his armies are no match for the
true God. The manner in which this happened, with the fire falling down from heaven
should have rung a bell with Ahaziah. It was fire coming down from heaven that
consumed the sacrifice at Mount Carmel and showed Lord to be the true God during the
reign of his father Ahab.
But Dave, you may say, those poor innocent troops that were just carrying out orders –
they got fried! I admit, it was not pretty, but it is even more horrifying to me that this did
not make a blind bit of difference to Ahaziah! Rather than stop in his tracks, Ahaziah
sent out a second and even a third company of soldiers, knowing full well what had
happened to the first company, and with no variables to suggest a different outcome.
How is God supposed to reach a person like that, who in their stubborn rebellion will
knowingly send their men into certain death? But God did not stop trying.
As we consider the fate of these poor soldiers who wound up as pawns in the tug of war
between God and Ahaziah, it would also be helpful to pull back and consider the bigger

4. picture. Are there any people from that period of time that are still kicking around?
Except for Elijah, who was taken to heaven, there is no one from that period of time who
is still alive – they all died sooner or later. We all do. But the Bible tells us that this is not
our final death. All will be resurrected by God from this death. And so God is in a unique
position that He can undo what has been done. If there have been God-fearing men in
those companies of soldiers, they will be resurrected to eternal life. They will not lose out
on anything. What God is concerned with is the eternal. Reaching a person as stubborn
and hardened as Ahaziah was, required some desperate measures, especially since he
was in a position to lead the entire nation into destruction. God can and will restore our
life after we pass away, but our eternal life is in our own hands. God can pursue us and
hound us to change our mind, and accept eternal life from Him, but that is all He can do.
If we ultimately reject it – there is nothing that He can do. There is only one catch to His
offer of eternal life. Life, eternal or otherwise, is only possible within the framework of
God’s law of love. This is the law of nature. As that well known verse in Romans 6:23
says: “For the wages which sin pays is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life
through Jesus Christ our Lord.” (Romans 6:23). And so God will do everything He can to
get us to realize this reality and put us on the path of eternal life.
For some it will not work. But for some it will. 2 Kings 21 talks of a Jewish king by the
name Manasseh. There he is described as the worst of the bad kings they had. Isaiah
the prophet spent most of his ministry speaking out against the things Manasseh was
doing. His final memory of life on this earth will be, according to legend, of Manasseh
placing him inside a hollow log and sawing him in half. However, if you flip over to 2
Chronicles 33 which was written a good deal later than the book of Kings, you will find
that Manasseh did in the end change his ways. Assyria conquered Judah and carried
Manasseh off in chains as a common prisoner. This is magnitude of what it took to finally
get his full attention and change his ways, but God did it and was glad to accept
Manasseh’s heart-felt repentance. I get goose bumps when I imagine what a
stupendous surprise it will be for Isaiah to see Manasseh in heaven. He may even think
God made a mistake somewhere!
So as we deal with some of these difficult and supernatural stories, many of which we
find in 2 Kings, there are 2 things that I believe are helpful to remember.
1. What is the end goal here – temporary, earthly or eternal?
2. God will do everything he can to get our attention and get the message through: “You
are on the wrong path!” We do not need to fear that God will let us perish in our
ignorance. He will send messages, He will make the heavy metal axe head float in
water, send bears, rain fire from heaven, send adversity, even make the sun go
backwards – anything He can think of that would make us sit up and pay attention.
No one will be lost at last because they were oblivious to their condition. Apostle Paul
says in Romans 1:19 that “what may be known about God is plain to them, because God
has made it plain to them.” Every step of the way you will find our persistent God
hounding you with messages, such as this one sent through prophet Ezekiel, who also
lived during the final period covered by 2 Kings: “Say to them, ‘As surely as I live,
declares the Sovereign LORD, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather
that they turn from their ways and live. Turn! Turn from your evil ways! Why will you die,
people of Israel?’” (Ezekiel 33:11) And if sending message after message doesn’t work,
God will not shy away from whacking you upside the head with a proverbial 2x4. One

5. way or another God will get your attention. Whether it will make any difference is up to
you.