Failing Against All Odds - 2 Kings 3

0:41They know how to tell their anecdotes around the table, around the campfire. Well, one important element of a good story is that it has to have a conflict. And a conflict has to be good, right? It has to be very difficult. It has to be big enough for you to wonder, how is this going to turn out? How will the main character resolve this? And then for it to be a nice story, the main character will be able to overcome all his problems and win against all odds.

1:17Well, as we pick up here in the second book of Kings, chapter 3, we're picking up the story where we left off last time, that we were together two weeks ago. And here we find a story that Is almost the opposite of what I just described. It is the story of King Jehoram who ended up failing against all odds, odd enough as it sounds. So we will see how and why that happened. As we come to the text, we need to remember first, remember, in chapter two, the prophet Elisha succeeded Elijah.

1:56From then, the author here of 2 Kings is very intentional, showing us how Elisha is the true successor of Elijah and recounts miracle after miracle. And we saw one last time. Elisha needs to continue those efforts to bring Israel back to the Lord as his master did, and the Lord is demonstrating that he is with him through all those miracles. The last one was with the two she-bears that attacked those boys that rejected Elijah. Now we will see the ministry of Elijah reach national proportions. I think that's the main thing here that the author wants to tell us.

2:40And the Lord will use Elisha to demonstrate once again the power of God, the mercy of God, His justice, His grace, His sovereignty, and in this case to a king and a whole nation that was rejecting the Lord, leaving no excuse that the Lord is the only true God and that we should all seek Him only. Obey him, depend on him completely. So let's go through this story together. And I'm going to divide this story, which is a little large, and I'm a little scared because I need to cover it all. But so I'm going to divide it in five scenes. Okay? And I'm going to be sharing some points of applications along the way. The scene number one, I like to call it a partially committed king. And verses one through three. We read that in the eighteenth year of Jehoshaphat, king of Judah, Jehoram, the son of Ahab, became king over Israel in Samaria. And he reigned twelve years. He did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, though not like his father and mother, for he put away the pillar of Baal that his father had made. Nevertheless, he clung to the sin of Jeroboam, the son of Nepat, which he made Israel to sin, and he did not depart from it. So Jehoram is the brother of Ahaziah, the little brother of Ahaziah, which we learned like last year. We talked about him when Elijah brought fire from heaven to those groups of fifty. And so what did he do? Jehoram did something well.

4:23And he, what was it? Well, he put away the pillar of Baal that his father had made. What is a pillar? Well, this pillar would have been a standing stone. It was a rather large stone, maybe that they will set it up, and it will serve as the idol or will mark the place to worship an idol. So, this was to put away this pillar of Baal was taking a step back from worshiping Baal. So, that was good, right? Now, why did he do this? We don't know.

4:57I think maybe because of his conscience, we're going to see him that he has a conscience. And he knows the Lord, he knows about him, and he does not repent, he still rejects him, but he's not overly wicked. He's not like his father and mother. Who were they? Well, Ahab and Jezebel, well known for being one of the most wicked kings in the whole history of Israel. It could be as well to gain some political favor. Maybe it was a concession to the worshipers of the Lord.

5:35Well, that's what he did well. He put away this pillar of Baal. He took a step back, maybe a little one. We don't know how big it was, but he did that. But he did something wrong. He says here in verse 3 that he clung to the sin of Jeroboam, and he did not depart from it. Jeroboam was the first king of the northern tribe. If you remember, after Solomon, the kingdom divided. You have Reoboam in the south, and then you have Jeroboam in the north. And something that Jeroboam did, so that the people remained loyal to him politically, was to set up two altars with golden calves. And, you know, ding, ding, ding, that's bad, golden calves, you remember Exodus and all that. So maybe it was... Well, it was a replacement of the worship to the Lord. It had its own priesthood, its whole system of sacrifice. And the idea was, so it had some religious purpose and some political purposes. Religiously, it allowed the person to worship as the worshipper wanted. He didn't have to go that far. He didn't have to go to Jerusalem. He didn't have to do all the things that needed to be done in Jerusalem. He could do it, it wasn't that strict. So it allowed the worshipper to worship in a way that he wanted. Not too far, not as God instructed. And politically, it kept people from going to the southern kingdom.

7:15And Jeroboam was fearing that the tribes might shift their allegiance to them. So he decided that other things were more important than obedience to the Lord. In this case, the king, the political. Power. Maybe he didn't go as far as taking that, as taking apart the golden calves because he wanted the political gain. Maybe just taking that would mean that people will go back to Jerusalem and they will pledge allegiance to the southern kingdom. Maybe he had other desires. So he did something well, he did something wrong. But what was God's summary of his life? Well, what did God say about him? Well, verse 2 says that he did what was evil in the sight of the Lord. So maybe he didn't look too evil. He did some good things. He could say, well, I'm doing better than my parents. You know, my parents were Ahab and Jezebel. I'm doing better than them.

8:21So the picture that we get here is that he is not kind of openly defying God. He's not going to that step to be an egregious king. He does something well. He takes some of the Baal worship out. But he doesn't go all the way. So the summary of his life is that he did what was evil. He was content with compromising. He did not fully commit to the Lord. He did not seek the Lord exclusively. He let all these other things go along and keep going.

9:00Well, he did not seek the Lord in the Lord's terms, you know, because that was the worship of the calves. Some will say, yes, he was wanting to worship the Lord, but in the way that he liked. He put other things before God. That's pretty much what's going on in here. And I think there's a clear application whether you are a born-again Christian or not, with different implications, obviously, but are you fully committed to the Lord?

9:35Maybe like Jerobam, you can say, well, I'm not as bad as other people. You know, I haven't got that far. I haven't killed anybody. I'm not openly defying God. I'm being moral in my own way. I'm following God. I like to believe in God in my own way, in a way that maybe is more convenient to you. Well, that's idolatry, just like with Jehoram, because that's making a God into your own liking. Maybe you say, well, I'm not just a religious type. I don't follow too closely to the point that it might affect my relationship with others, etc. I just follow the Lord as is good, you know, as it's good with me. Well, that again is idolatry. It's having other gods before God. It's making a God out of the relationships, making a God out of the Things that may feel good for you. So, unless your allegiance is only to the Lord Jesus Christ, unless you trust Him only in His terms, understanding and gladly accepting the cost to follow Him, well, the summary of your life will say as well, and He did what was evil in the sight of the Lord.

10:54Well, but if you who already follow Christ, maybe you're letting yourself be okay with things that are culturally acceptable, but you know, that are not acceptable in God's eyes. Are you going along with certain things? That is unfaithfulness to the Lord. And He loves and He delights in faithful followers, just like a husband will delight in a faithful wife, vice versa. And that's how the Lord presents Himself many times as a husband who delights in having a faithful relationship with His people. We've been going through even this morning talking about that loyalty. So here we see this partially committed king. And that's what the Lord says. He was evil in the sight of the Lord. So that's scene number one, the partially committed king. Let's go now to scene two, where things start getting a little more. Interesting. And it says, Now Mesha, king of Moab, was verse 4, by the way, Naomesha, king of Moab, was a sheepbreeder, and he had to deliver to the king of Israel a hundred thousand lambs and the wool of a hundred thousand rams. But when Ahab died, the king of Moab rebelled against the king of Israel. So King Jehoram marched out of Samaria at that time and mustered all Israel. And he went and sent word to Jehoshaphat, king of Judah, saying, The king of Moab has rebelled against me. Will you go with me to battle against Moab? And he said, I will go. I am as you are, my people as your people, my horses as your horses. And then he said, By which way shall we march? And Jehoram answered, by the way of the wilderness of Edom. So now we get a glimpse of, we got a glimpse of this rebellion in the first chapter, verse 1. This says, after the death of Ahab, Moab rebelled against Israel. And then we went through Ahaziah. Ahaziah was not able to counter that rebellion. We have chapter 2, and then we come to chapter 3, and that's finally when something is going to happen about this. So going back in history, Israel had defeated Moab during the time of Omri. Omri was a king. So for 40 years, they had to bring tribute. And that was a large tribute.

13:32So Ahab died in a battle fighting Syria. If you remember your history, it's in 1 Kings. I mean in the last even the last chapter in 1 Kings 22, Ahab is killed in battle. So now the Moabites are feeling, you know, maybe we can stop this. You know, we can take them on and we can stop paying tribute, which is a lot of money just to, you know, we want that money. Why do we have to give that money away? So there's an interesting an interesting archaeological finding, if you are into those, which is called the Mesha Stone or the Moabite Stone. You can find it in, well, it's in Paris.

14:17And it says there that he started to take back the Moabite cities, that is the king of Moab, Mesha. He started to take back the Moabite cities that Israel had captured before. And it may have been taking Jehoram a couple years until he fought this battle. So we don't know how long it took, but at least throughout the time of Ahaziah, nothing happened with Mesha, and then maybe a couple of years more. So this Moabite people were starting to take possession of the cities that Israel had gained before. And now it's getting, you know, it's getting time for action for this king.

15:01It was a huge amount, of course, 100,000 lambs and 100,000, what was it, skins of rams. And this was meant to remind these people of their status. I mean, you are under us. And, you know, remember, every year, bring this huge amount of money. You belong to us. It's not like taxes, though. Sometimes it feels like that. But we see now that he makes an alliance. So Jehorah makes an alliance with Jehoshaphat. This is a very interesting character, King Jehoshaphat. Hopefully we can talk about him some other time. But he was one of the good kings in Judah. For example, in 2 Chronicles 17, 3, it says that the Lord was with Jehoshaphat because he walked in the earlier ways of his father David, and he did not seek the Baals, but sought the God of his father and walked in his commandments and not according to the practices of Israel. He was very successful, military speaking. The Philistines, the Arabians, many others brought tribute to him. So he was good in the sight of the Lord and he was very successful militarily. So, of course, Jehoram wants him with him. So I say, hey, would you come?

16:30But Jehoshaphat had a hard time, and this is another interesting thing that it will be nice to talk some other time. But he had a hard time learning about allegiances. He allied himself with Ahab, so that's pretty bad already. He went to battle with him, and that's when Ahab died in that battle. Jehoshaphat married his son to Adeliah, Athaliah, which was a wicked queen, the son of she was the daughter of Ahab. He allied himself with Asia, we see that in 1 Chronicles, and now he allies himself with Jehoram.

17:10Something interesting that we're going to see later is that Edom was under Judah. They had appointed their king there. So, and we're going to see that Edom comes with this, with the north, the south, and Edom all are going to go up against Moab. Now, what's the plan? What's the plan here for this battle? Well, they could not go from the north because it was very much fortified. We read that in other accounts. So, they had to march south. And man, I thought, yeah, I forgot. I would have brought a map today. But I didn't. But you can look in your map in the back of your Bibles. You're going to see Israel there. And obviously, the kings of the north. The king of the north was in Samaria, if you find him there, you know ways north of the Dead Sea, south south of the Sea of Galilee, kind of in the middle over there. So he will go south from there, he will pick up Judah probably, and they will go south of the Dead Sea or somewhere over there, they will cross south of the Dead Sea and then go up.

18:26And you see that there's Edom, and they will try to get to Moab that way. So from the south, they will make that circuit that they say over there. That's a pretty, pretty difficult route. Desert, no water, so pretty tricky terrain there. But it's something interesting to note here that, and we'll touch on this more in a few moments, but notice what King Jehoram fails to do. What should a king do? What did the king was what was the king supposed to do before he went to battle?

19:06He was to seek the Lord. He was to seek the Lord, and he just made his plans and he went his way, and it looked like a pretty good plan. So he does not seek the Lord and His counsel, he seeks help in other kingdoms, which, by the way, if you look and you check the law of the kings, that's something he shouldn't do. He shouldn't rely on other kingdoms, he should rely on the Lord alone. And so he relies on his own strength, his own schemes, his own allies.

19:37So instead of that, he relies on his own strength. He ends up in what we'll see next, scene 3, in a perilous circumstance. Verses 9 through 12, we see that the king of Israel went with the king of Judah and the king of Edom. And when they had made a cirquitious, I don't know if I can pronounce that, march of seven days, there was no water for the army or for the animals that followed them. That's pretty bad. Then the king of Israel said, Alas, the Lord has called these three kings to give them into the hand of Moab. Jehoshaphat said, though, is there no prophet of the Lord here through whom we may inquire of the Lord? Then one of the king of Israel's servants answered, Elisha the son of Shephat is here, who poured water on the hands of Elijah. And Jehoshaphat said, The word of the Lord is with him. So the king of Israel and Jehoshaphat and the king of Edom went down to him. So as you see, this grand military plan, you know, these three big kingdoms, they come from the south, they have all this great plan, and then they have no water. And so, pretty bad.

20:57All this great scheme hang on them finding. Water along the way, which was expected sometimes. But it's interesting to note that the kings always went to battle in the dry season. And a dry season in the desert is pretty bad. Maybe that's why the Moabites weren't expecting them from there. But so the area where they marched was desert, inhospitable land with few water resources. But a feature of the land are the wadis. Maybe you've heard of them. You know, they are dry riverbeds, and when there's rain far away, the water will seep through the mountains and then come, when they hit bedrock, they will go underground and then they will burst forth somewhere else and they will fill these water beds. Well, maybe they looked for some, but they were all dry right now.

21:54What's the response of Jehoram? Alas, alas, the Lord has called these three kings to give them into the hand of Moab. So he, well, he doesn't rely on the Lord, but now that he has problems, it's the Lord who's the problem here. He's a coward in the face of difficulty. He's a terrible leader. That's not what a king should do. You know, when he is in difficult circumstances, the leader has to stand firm and say, well, this is what we're going to do. Well, instead of seeking or doing something, it's like, oh, no, we're all going to die. Here. The Lord did this to us. And notice that his conscience troubles him. That's why I said before that maybe that's why he took that stone, the stone of Baal, because it seems like his conscience is troubling him. He says, this is the hand of the Lord. Why is this the hand of the Lord against him? Well, probably he had that conscience saying, hey, I'm not doing things right here. I haven't taken the golden calves or anything. And yet, he does not repent. We don't see any signs of repentance anywhere here, any signs of change, any signs of anything.

23:12He only feels desperate. He feels hopeless. But that's it. Jehoshaphat is the contrast here. He has a godly response. And I think in terms of literature, we could call him a foil. He shows the contrast. What Jehoram should be doing is what Jehoshaphat did. And he says, Is there not a prophet of the Lord here through whom we may inquire of the Lord? So he seeks the Lord. He shows his dependence on the Lord in the dangerous situation. He seeks the word of the Lord.

23:49And I think there's a clear analogy there for us. Right? When hardships come to our lives, do you fall on your knees? And pray. Do you seek the Lord? Does your time in the Word increase? Do you seek the Word of the Lord in those times? Or like Jehoram, you're overcome with feelings of hopelessness and woe is me, you know, what's gonna happen? The Lord is against me, you know, you can blame God for the situation.

24:24And I don't know what you may be going through right now, maybe some serious financial situation. I know that the economy is not being nice. Maybe there's a painful emotional situation. Those can always come. A dreadful physical problem. But what I know is that God wants you to depend on Him, to seek Him in your trouble, to find hope in the Word. Spend time in the Word. That will bring you peace in the sovereignty of God, joy in His love, courage to persevere. That only comes from trusting Him, to clinging to Him, to have your hope, your trust put in Him, casting all your anxieties on Him because He cares for you. 1 Peter 5:7.

25:18So these armies are going through a perilous circumstance, but having heard of Elisha, now the kings go and meet Him. And that takes us to scene four, which is what I would call the prophetic confrontation. prophetic confrontation. We find it in verses three uh thirteen through nineteen. So Elisha uh they find Elisha somewhere, we don't know where, maybe in the camp, and maybe they walked a little bit to find him. Anyways, he's there and he said to the king of Israel, What have I what have I to do with you? Go to the prophets of your father and to the prophets of your mother. But the king of Israel said to him, No, it is the Lord who has called these three kings to give them into the hand of Moab. And Elisha said, As the Lord of hosts lives, before whom I stand, were it not that I have regard for Jehoshaphat, the king of Judah, I would neither look at you nor see you. But now bring me a musician. And when the musician played, the hand of the Lord came upon him, came upon him. So we see a confrontation here.

26:22I don't know what what the king was expecting when he went to see the prophet Elisha, but he found himself being scolded here. What are you doing here? It's pretty much what Elisha tells him. We have nothing to talk about. We have nothing in common. Then he's a little sarcastic and he says, Well, why don't you go to the prophets of your father, Ahab? You know what will they tell you? Pretty much saying, Don't expect God's direction, help, fellowship, I don't know, when you're still rejecting him.

26:56By the way, it's so interesting to see The common popular ideas on prayer. You know, I believe in the power of prayer, people say, and they don't even believe in God. You know, oh, just and or say, oh, just give prayer a chance, you know. Well, God is not in that. He will say, Why are you coming here? You know, repent first. Then we will have fellowship. Then you'll have direction. But, anyways, we see Jehoram's response, and instead of repenting and doing everything that he should do, he says, No, I'm coming to you because God is responsible for this. Somehow, we don't know his mind, what he's thinking, but pretty much he's saying, God is responsible for this, so you are the one to talk to. You're his prophet, right? So, Elisha responds, and this is a very, very interesting response. And he says, Were it not that I have regard for Jehoshaphat, I would neither look at you or see you.

28:01So, this is interesting. It is only because of the relationship that Jehoram has with a righteous person, Jehoshaphat, that he can receive the word of the Lord, that he can receive God's mercy. Jehoshaphat was kind of a mediator here. He allowed evil Jehoram to have a relationship with the prophet of God. And I can just but see here a picture of the. Gospel. We, who were far from God, undeserving of His mercy, His grace, His presence, anything, we were given mercy, access to the presence of God. How? Thanks to our mediator, who's Jesus Christ, King of kings.

28:49This is not a perfect analogy, but however, we can see the consistent and changing character of God here who gives grace to the undeserving sinners on the basis of their relationship with a righteous one. So God could say to us, Were it not for Jesus Christ, I would not look at you nor see you. For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as ransom for all, 2 Timothy 2:1.

29:24The question, though, is, do you have a relationship with that mediator? Well, if you do, thank him and praise him because he is the one that gives you that relationship to the Lord. Well, now Elisha asked for a musician, and this is interesting. And the word there for musician is someone who would play a string instrument, maybe some sort of guitar, I don't know. We don't know why. We're not told why. I think and maybe agree that probably to calm down after this confrontation. Maybe heated confrontation, but he he wants to s to be in a state co conducive to talk to the Lord. Maybe he w he was singing as well, singing to the Lord, praising him and and waiting for a word from him. And now he gives his prophecy, verse sixteen. And he said, Thus says the Lord, I will make this dry stream bed full of pools.

30:25Maybe your translation says, Make this dry bed full of pools. For thus says the Lord, you shall not see wind or rain, but that stream bed shall be filled with water, so that you shall drink, and you and your livestock and your animals. And this is a light thing in the sight of the Lord. He will also give the Moabites into your hand. And you shall attack every fortified city and every choice city, and shall fell every good tree and stop up all springs of water and ruin every good piece of land with stones. So pretty much what we see here is that God is promising to provide for both their needs, the one that they came for and the one that, well, they didn't ask for, but the Lord provided as well. So first the water.

31:13He says that that dry stream bed will be, well, there's a grammatical thing there. Maybe your translation says, go and make pools. And maybe your translation, the ESV, says, I will make. That's a hard grammatical decision. I tend to For the second, go and make the pools. But the point is, this dry bed is what's going to come flowing. Remember the Wadis? You know, maybe the rain is coming from another place, seeping through the ground, and then hitting bedrock and then going underground, and then bursting forth. And so it's a lot of water in a short amount of time and it's gushing through. So these pools, what they're going to do is strap all this water so that then they can, especially the animals, they can drink peacefully and they can have a reserve of water. You cannot drink out of a wadi that's just gushing through at the moment. So that's either the Lord, either the Lord is going to make a pool out of that dry bed or they have to make those pools. I lean toward a second. But anyways, they're not going to see wind or rain. And that's key. That's very interesting. It's not like this dry bed is going to start flowing because there's rain and everyone will see that. No, no, they're not going to see wind. They're not going to see rain. The Moabites won't see either of those either.

32:45So not only are they going to get the water, and we're going to see how that plays out later on, they're going to get a military victory. Because God's grace goes above and beyond. Perhaps to bring the name. Back to him, maybe. Well, and we're told in verse 18 that the Lord will give Moab into their hand. I take this to be, you know, they're going to be in a position to claim victory. And it's going to be obvious that they're going to be in a position of victory. They have to fell the trees, stop the springs of water. That will ruin the land, that will cripple their economy for years to come. So that was a way of saying, don't come after us again.

33:36And I wonder if they will be thinking about God's power while they were cleaning all their lands from all their rocks. I think that was part of it, too. So after this prophecy, now we reach the fifth and the last scene of this story, which I'm calling a puzzling conclusion. And it's a very puzzling conclusion, and we'll see why. Verse 20 says, The next morning, about the time of offering the sacrifice, behold, water came from the direction of Edom. So that's from the south. Remember, the Moabites were from the north. So they're not seeing anything. They don't see rain, they don't see water, they don't see anything. So it's coming from the south. And the water came from the direction of Edom till the country was filled with water. This is dry season. Remember, so we're all. When all the Moabites heard that the kings had come up to fight against them, all who were able to put on an armor, from the youngest to the oldest, were called out and were drawn up at the border. And when they rose early in the morning and the sun shone on the water, the Moabites saw the water opposite them as red as blood. And they said, This is blood. The kings have surely fought together and struck one another down. Now then, Moab, to the spoil. So they're getting all their hopes up. They think that everything went according, well, not according to their plan, but all the kingdoms, we have three kingdoms, which normally and naturally they don't like each other. They're coming together against them. They think, oh, well, maybe they fought against each other. Which is funny because, well, that happened to Moab not long ago. If you read 2 Chronicles 20, you see that Moab went with Edom and who else was? With Amon, with Ammon. I don't know how you pronounce it. Ammon. So they went together and they wanted to fight against Judah. And before they reached Judah, they started fighting against each other and then they left. So it's not unheard of. It happened to them a couple of years ago. So they know this might be a possibility. And now, why are they so confused? Well.

36:00Well, first of all, let's see at the timing of the water. It was at the first flash of dawn. That's when the morning sacrifice was performed, maybe before sunrise, so it was very early. That was the time of prayers and worship. So that's an interesting connection there. The worship directed toward the Lord. So the Lord is answering prayers of protection. And the water that now is trapped in those pools, and probably the river was drying or it wasn't too strong by now, it looks red. Well, we don't know if this is a, I don't know, it could be a miracle. I'm not discounting this, but Edom means red, if you remember that. And the land looks pretty red. It's a reddish color that has the soil. And if water comes gushing through, well, we even see rivers that look kind of muddy and reddish. So it could be that and combined to the whole area that looks pretty red. It could be reflecting that color in the water. So it could be that. It could be plainly supernatural. The Lord can do anything he wants. So that's what brings the confusion to Moab. Now let's see what happens next. Verse 24.

37:23But when they came to the camp of Israel, the Israelites rose and struck the Moabites till they fled before them. And they went forward. Striking the Moabites as they went. And they overthrew the cities, and on every good piece of land, every man threw a stone until it was covered. They stopped every spring of water and felled all the good trees, till only its stones were left in Kir Haraseth, and the slingers surrounded and attacked it. Let's stop there. So now the prophecy is fulfilled. They attacked every city. They did what the Lord said. They had Moab in their hands.

37:56Kir Haraseth is the capital city of Moab, and they have it surrounded. They attacked it. Prophecy is ready. Moab is on their knees. Moab was absolutely defeated by now. Their economy was in ruins. They were militarily defeated. They had the capital surrounded and pretty much surrendered. And it was now, this is what it should have happened. Now it's time for offering terms of surrender. They should have maybe write up how much they were going to pay in tribute for next year. And Israel will go back victorious, having regained their territory, the territory that they had lost.

38:43Interesting, again, is to see the law. It's always important to see what the kings do compared to the law of the king. And Deuteronomy 20, 10 tells us what should happen in times like this. The king of Israel should have allowed Should have followed the law in this. It says, when you draw near to a city to fight against it, offer terms of peace to it. And if it responds to you peaceably and it opens to you, then all the people who are found in it shall do forced labor for you and shall serve you. So it would have happened exactly, you know, it would have redone the treaty of, okay, I'm going to pay you this tribute yearly, etc. So go back to the old ways.

39:31But what happens? Instead, Israel keeps pressing in. This king looks kind of bloodthirsty. He keeps kicking Moab while it's down. Maybe it's pride. I don't know. Wounded proud. Pride. He's abusing the mercy of God here. And he's trying to make an example of King Mesha. He's driving him into utter desperation. Because when the king of Moab, verse 26, saw that the battle was going against him, he took with him 700 swordsmen to break through opposite to the king of Edom. But they could not. So he knows Mesha, the king, knows that he cannot defend his capital city any longer. He wants to flee. He wants to break through somehow, get out of there. He decides to go through Edom. Maybe because he considered them weaker, I don't know. Maybe he thought that he could find an alliance with them again. Well, the point is that he couldn't. He was trapped. He was born. Brought to the very end of himself, having been shown no mercy, no decent human treatment, as expecting from God's people.

40:37So he turns back to the city, apparently, and in verse 27, we read this very puzzling end of the story. Then he took, this is the king of Moab, he took his oldest son, who was to reign in his place, and offered him for a burnt offering on the wall. It's very heavy. And in this complete desperation, Mesha does the only thing that he has left to do. He resorts to human sacrifice, maybe perhaps begging his own God to help him or to hopefully appease the wrath of whatever cruel God was coming against him.

41:17And having done this, we see now the very puzzling end of this story. And it says in the last part of verse 27, and there came great wrath against Israel. And they withdrew from him and returned to their own land. Now, there is a lot of debate about what actually happened here. As I've been explaining, I believe that Israel, in his cruelty, her cruelty, pushed Mesha to its limits and was therefore now responsible for the acts of the king. Now he was desperate. That shouldn't have happened. So they did not follow God's law. Instead, they abused God's mercy because that victory was God's.

42:01They sought to take revenge, maybe, for the enemy, on the enemy. And as a result of that disobedience, cruelty, perhaps defaming God's name, God is angry at them. And great wrath comes against Israel. Now, some believe that this wrath is from Judah and Edom, so they break their allegiance and leave. Others say that maybe it's the wrath of the Moabites, and seeing that very touching image, they take courage and go back and fight. I believe that is the wrath of God. This phrase is generally used for divine wrath. In Numbers, we see the wrath of the Lord that was kindled and made the earth swallow Korah.

42:47Fire came out of the sanctuary and consumed the rebels. The anger of the Lord burned against Israel because of Achen. If you remember that story, and the people fled before the men of Ai. We don't know how this great wrath looked like. I had a hard time. I was looking for it for so long. Couldn't find it. Maybe you can study it more and tell me. Very intrigued. But the result is that the armies withdrew from Mesha and they went to their own land. That's the end of the story. And thus, Israel failed to do what they had come to do. They had come to renew the subjugation of Moab, but they left, having destroyed the country, having come so far. Close. But they failed against all odds.

43:36Well, we've come to the end of this interesting, puzzling story. The story of Jehoram, a partially committed king that ended up failing against all odds. A king that experienced God's mercy, God's power, but he squandered it all by refusing to follow the Lord. So now this story leaves us many lessons and warnings. We saw some like the importance of depending on the Lord, the seriousness of being unfaithful to the Lord. We witnessed the power, the sovereignty, the mercy of God. We even saw a picture of our need of our relationship with the righteous one, with Jesus Christ, our mediator. To be honest, I had a very hard time finding or recognizing which one is the main point or the takeaway of this puzzling story. However, if I have to pick one, I will say, don't be like Jehoram.

44:33Don't be like Jehoram. I think that he is put here as an example of a bad example. Instead, what should we do? We seek the Lord with all our hearts. We obey Him completely. We depend on Him in every circumstance. And if you belong, if you belong to Him, you can rejoice. You know why? Because the end of your story will not say it will not be marked by failure. It will not be marked by the great wrath like Jehoram. Your story ends obtaining a great salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ and living in His presence forever. So let's pray. Father, thank you so much for the stories that you have left for us. Kings are so instructive and so similar to our condition as well. So help us depend on you. Help us seek you always in every situation. Not to wait for difficult times to come to seek you, but to always be depending on you and seeking your word. Thank you for the time together here with your word. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.