Self-Destruction through Self-Deception. 2 Kings 13:1-25

 

Lesson 97 Illustrations

What we see from this point on as far as the northern kingdom goes is a continuous deterioration into rebellion against God into apostasy and degeneracy, and it is fueled by an increasing level of self-deception which leads to self-destruction. This applies not just to the nation Israel but it applies to each individual believer. We can all come under arrogance or the blindness of our own arrogance of self-absorption and this, if it is not dealt with with the objective truth of God’s Word can lead to tremendous catastrophe in our own lives and in our own souls, because as we succumb to self-deception it eventually will lead to self-destruction and all that comes with that.

 

Romans chapter one really describes the dynamics that occur, and this is true even for someone who is a believer although the context of Romans chapter one is talking about unbelievers. A believer in rebellion against God, a believer that is not focused on God’s Word, still falls into this same trap. Romans 1:20 NASB “For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.” In other words, we can look at what exists in creation and we can see something about the one who created it. We can begin to understand that all that exists at a microscopic level cannot just have come to exist by accident and therefore we learn something about the one who made us. There is enough evidence out there in creation about the existence of God that no one can stand before the Supreme Court of Heaven and say they didn’t see any evidence. [21] “For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened.” No matter how rank the atheist might be all have known, the Scripture says, that God exists. And they know it, but they are suppressing that. They made a choice to be deceived, to deceive themselves and to suppress that truth. [22] “Professing to be wise, they became fools, [23] and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures.” So instead of worshipping the creator man is going to worship something else because man is created by God in his soul in such a way that he must worship something. So if you remove God and take Him out of the picture you must worship something within the creation—nature, ideas generated by man, yourself, money, material things, something. So there is this exchange that takes place and the more man touts his intellectual achievements and denies God the more foolish he becomes.

 

What this is saying is that the position of the unbeliever is they are living in delusion, living on the basis of a lie. When you reject the objective reality of the God of the Bible then something takes its place, and what takes its place is a fantasy. What takes its place is a creaturely generated explanation of reality that is going to somehow give meaning or value and justification for behavior to our lives. What the Scriptures says is that it all comes under the general delusion of this lie that pulls in every aspect of life and everything that we see and redefines it. Imperceptibly, unconsciously an unbeliever or a rebellious believer goes about his life and everything he sees is instantly redefined, taken over and restructured within the framework of the lie he has chosen to control his life. We all do this, it is the sophistication of our sin nature, and unless there is the Holy Spirit and the Word of God to take out a hammer and chisel and start breaking that lie apart we would just end up in complete self-destruction. So Romans chapter one gives us an analysis of what is going on in the nation of Israel because this is what is going on in the souls of the majority of those who live in the northern kingdom.

 

As we get into the thirteenth chapter we focus on two kings in the northern kingdom, Jehoahaz and his son Jehoash (also known as Joash). Not a lot of said of either one but enough is said to give us a pretty good understanding of the dynamics of what God is doing in the northern kingdom of Israel. In the conclusion of the chapter is an incident that involves Elisha. This is his closing scene as Elisha is in his final illness before he dies.

 

What we have to recognize when we go to the Old Testament is that this was written initially to the initial audience of Israelites in order to teach them certain principles, certain spiritual realities, and to illustrate what had been stated and predicted by Moses back in Deuteronomy as Moses addressed the nation before they went into the land. He told them what would take place: how they would depart from the Lord and how they would go through various cycles of divine discipline, and how God would bring hardship, military conquest and economic collapse into their lives in order to pressure them to bring them back to Him. And when they would turn back to Him then God would bless them. Then they would once again fall into the trap of false deception and living on the basis of the lie that they told themselves. We see this happen as a nation and we see that is what is being illustrated in these episodes. But the nation is composed of individuals and individuals are doing the same thing. The individuals of that time are no different from the individuals of our time or the nations of our time, so there are a lot of principles of application here for what happens when a nation succumbs to a lie, to self-deception, and what happens to individuals within those nations. It always comes out of the sin nature which is the source of arrogance in our life. The very orientation of the sin nature is toward self—self absorption, and in its arrogance it is focused on a lie which deceives us into thinking that somehow we can live our lives apart from God.

 

When we take a majority of people in a nation who are living according to a lie, and the more sophisticated the lie and the more consistently they live on the basis of that lie, then that whole nation begins to drift in the direction of those lies and operates on the basis of lies, distortions and various fraudulent views of reality. And yet they believe these things are true in the very core of their being. This impacts every dimension of life—money and how money is handled, business and how it is conducted and how contracts are made, language and the meaning of language and how language is twisted and distorted to mean certain things in order to fit the parameters of the big lie. It also affects scholarship, academia, because there are scholars and academics who are set on being the great apologists for the great lie, and so they are constantly promoting and defending the lie, publishing these in the magazines and journals and newspapers that pander to those who promote the lie, and this all begins to build a civilization that as time goes by is just built upon this lie.

 

When there are a number of nations who cooperate at an international level on the basis of this lie, then we begin to see the kind of circumstances set up that will lead to the end times scenario and eventually the campaign of Armageddon at the end of the Tribulation period, because that is the only direction it can go. It started with the arrogance of Lucifer before Genesis chapter one when Lucifer wanted to be like God. Once he committed that sin of arrogance and he uttered his five “I wills” all focusing on his desire to be elevated above God and to be worshipped above God then everything else falls out from that lie. Satan is really the chief architect of this whole approach to living on the basis of a lie and self-deception.

 

In the Old Testament God warned Israel about living on the basis of this lie. What is the core lie as we saw in Romans chapter one? It isn’t what modern psychologists tell us what may be their favorite lie in this decade, the lie according to Scripture is the lie that somehow God doesn’t really exist and that what really determines reality is something within creation, something that is ultimately defined, generated and set forth by individual creatures. The lie starts with God: is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob the God of the universe or not? That is the foundation stone, and if we reject the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as the creator God of the universe, the heavens and the earth and the seas and all that is in them then once we reject that we are ultimately elevating to that level something inside of creation—an idea, a thing, an animal, or just humanity itself. That is why the first two commandments in the Ten Commandments focus on worshipping the Lord God alone. Once we shift from that foundation then everything else tumbles out in terms of the great deception.

 

What was the big problem in the northern kingdom of Israel? After Solomon died and his son Rehoboam ascended the throne he listened to the young arrogant counselors he had who insisted that in order to maintain the façade of their materialistic lifestyle, the façade of wealth and grandeur that they had had at one time under Solomon because of God’s blessing, but has gradually deteriorated over time in the latter years of Solomon’s reign because of his idolatry and the disobedience of the people, they were forcing themselves to live as if they still had the affluence, the prosperity and material blessing they once had. So they wanted to increase taxation so that they could get more money from the people in order to maintain this external façade. There is something vaguely familiar with that whole methodology! It goes down through the ages. We see civilization after civilization, empire after empire, nation after nation, following this same arrogant path.

 

After the split Jeroboam recognized that he could not bring a unity to the northern kingdom if every three or four months all of his people were going down to Jerusalem to celebrate one of the pilgrim feasts mandated by the Law. He recognized that he had to have an alternative religion, his own worship centers in the northern kingdom so that he could keep everybody at home in the north at these various times, and he erected two golden valves, one in Bethel and one in Dan, so that the people in the north could come and worship there. At this point he leads the people into idolatry. There is the rejection of the creator God, the construction of the metal god made of gold, and then he assigns a name to this god and says, “This is the god who brought you out of Egypt, who redeemed you from slavery in Egypt.” It wasn’t the God they worshipped down in Judah on the temple mount, it was this golden calf they had constructed in the north. Once they made this mental shift to this deception then everything else began to collapse. It collapsed because God has constructed reality you can’t continue to live in prosperity and happiness on the basis of a lie. Then God intensified these consequences in terms of these various stages of discipline that are outlined in Leviticus chapter 26 and Deuteronomy 28 and 29.

 

The northern kingdom has gone through this and even of we start with the prosperity that they had at the time of Solomon’s death, and even though they have periods when they come back to a time of temporary prosperity (they never go back to the glory days of Solomon), we can follow their trajectory sliding downhill. The more apostate they become, the more they more they are sold out to living according to this lie, there is intensified discipline—famines, wars, loss of territory, etc. 

 

In the first nine verses of this chapter we have the summary of the reign of Jehoahaz (Joash) in the north. Remember that Jehu was the one anointed by Elisha and called by God to a specific task to completely annihilate the house of Omri/Ahab that had brought the fertility religion, the Baal worship into the northern kingdom. As obedient as Jehu was to that commission he never fully destroyed the high places and he kept the idols in Bethel and Dan operational. Jehu died in 814 BC and was succeeded by Jehoahaz who died in 798 and succeeded by Jehoash who died in 782, but in the latter part of his reign he is going to have a co-regency with his son Jeroboam II. Jeroboam II was the last king in the north to restore territory and bring the people back to a façade of prosperity; it is God’s final act of grace toward the northern kingdom before He will bring them into judgment. Jeroboam died in 753 and thirty years later in 722 the northern kingdom will be destroyed by the Assyrians. In the south at this time we have looked at Joash (835-796) who covers the last part of Jehu’s reign, all of Jehoahaz’s reign, and then he has a small two-year overlap with one who has a similar name in the north, Jehoash. The two kings we focus on in this chapter are in the north: Jehoahaz and Joash.   

 

What we learn here in these verses is that Jehoahaz is the son of Jehu. Jehu was the great reformer but he only went so far, and Jehoahaz is like his father. He reigns in the north for seventeen years but his evaluation is that he continues in the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat. So the delusion continues; the self-deception continues. The nation is living on the basis of a lie. Their understanding of their purpose is a lie; their understanding of reality is a lie, and this infiltrates everything they do. It infiltrates their family life because the men are going off and some of the women to the temples, to the temples prostitutes in order to have prosperity, in order to encourage the gods somehow to imitate them and give them prosperity. It is a worship of success, of the possession of material things, as providing the meaning in life; it is worshipping things as the source of value in everything in life. And as God promised He is going to bring in punishment from the north by bringing the Arameans (Syrians) against them militarily under Hazael and bring tremendous suffering and hardship.

2 Kings 13:3 NASB “So the anger of the LORD was kindled against Israel, and He gave them continually into the hand of Hazael king of Aram, and into the hand of Ben-hadad the son of Hazael.” Finally under all this pressure Jehoahaz crumbles a little bit and he turns to the Lord for help. So he is not as evil as some of the kings in the northern kingdom, is probably a believer and has some understanding of who the true God is, he is not completely blinded by self-deception. [4] “Then Jehoahaz entreated the favor of the LORD, and the LORD listened to him; for He saw the oppression of Israel, how the king of Aram oppressed them.” So God is going to deal with them in grace. It is not because they deserve it, they are not really changing, it is only a superficial things. They are just crying out in pain, they are not recognizing the real sin and the deceptiveness of their own soul. Who is the deliverer? The deliverer is not a Jewish hero, not an Israelite hero. This is like when God raised up Shamgar back in the early part of the book of Judges to defeat the Philistines at a time when there was so much apostasy in Israel that there was no one in Israel that God could raise up to deliver them. It is the same here, there is nobody in the northern kingdom that God can raise up to deliver them and so He raises up the power of the Assyrians. They invade Syria from the north-east. Ben-hadad can’t continue to fight against Israel, he has to turn around and watch his rear as he is being attacked by the Assyrians. This takes all the pressure off of the northern kingdom of Israel.

Notice how they respond. Did they respond like believers should respond? Did they recognize that they had been under divine discipline, so that they humbled themselves under the hand of God and turned to Him? No! 2 Kings 13:6 NASB “Nevertheless they did not turn away from the sins of the house of Jeroboam, with which he made Israel sin, but walked in them; and the Asherah also remained standing in Samaria.” There were some harsh negative consequences. Militarily they were wiped out. [7] “For he left to Jehoahaz of the army not more than fifty horsemen and ten chariots and 10,000 footmen, for the king of Aram had destroyed them and made them like the dust at threshing.” That which they looked at for security rather than God is taken away from them. They are still operating on self-deception, still willfully blind to reality because their basic problem isn’t intellectual, the basic problem isn’t financial, not environment, no social; it is volitional and they don’t want to worship God.

Verses 10-13 summarize the reign of Joash. Not much has happened during his reign that is of real value, he just continues the same policies of self-deception and running the nation on the basis of a lie. 2 Kings 13:10 NASB “In the thirty-seventh year of Joash king of Judah, Jehoash the son of Jehoahaz became king over Israel in Samaria, {and reigned} sixteen years. [11] He did evil in the sight of the LORD; he did not turn away from all the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, with which he made Israel sin, but he walked in them.” But there is still a little bit of interest in God and hope and understanding the truth in Joash. That comes out in the next episode beginning in verse 14: “When Elisha became sick with the illness of which he was to die, Joash the king of Israel came down to him and wept over him and said, ‘My father, my father, the chariots of Israel and its horsemen!’” This must have taken place very early in Joash’s reign, not long after he came to the throne. Notice he weeps over Elisha. There is some sense in his youth that there is value to Elisha and that he does represent truth and God. Remember the same phrase, “the chariots of Israel and its horsemen,” was used back when Elisha was addressing Elijah and Elijah was then going to depart to heaven. What many think was the Elisha coming for Elijah, but here there is no chariot coming for Elisha. This is a title that is being given to the prophet because he represents the power of God in the spiritual conflict that Israel is at the center of. So he is addressed as the one who is the real power of Israel. It is not their physical military might; the only military might they have comes from the hand of God.

2 Kings 13:15 NASB “Elisha said to him, ‘Take a bow and arrows.’ So he took a bow and arrows. [16] Then he said to the king of Israel, ‘Put your hand on the bow.’ And he put his hand {on it,} then Elisha laid his hands on the king’s hands.” This is like an ordination ceremony when pastors who are ordained will put their hands on the head of the person they are ordaining. It shows an identification and a transfer of authority, and that is what he is doing. He is talking to the young king and this is an opportunity for the king to really trust God and rely upon Him to provide for him in a very rich and abundant way. [17] “He said, ‘Open the window toward the east,’ and he opened {it.} Then Elisha said, ‘Shoot!’ And he shot. And he said, ‘The LORD’S arrow of victory, even the arrow of victory over Aram; for you will defeat the Arameans at Aphek until you have destroyed {them.}’”

2 Kings 13:18 NASB “Then he said, ‘Take the arrows,’ and he took them. And he said to the king of Israel, ‘Strike the ground,’ and he struck {it} three times and stopped.” Elisha doesn’t tell him how many times to strike the ground, it is up to the king to decide how many times he is going to strike the ground. He just strikes the ground three times, he could have struck it five times, ten times, or twenty times but he only does it three times. For this limitation Elisha gets angry with him. [19] “So the man of God was angry with him and said, ‘You should have struck five or six times, then you would have struck Aram until you would have destroyed {it.} But now you shall strike Aram {only} three times.’” In other words, you will defeat him but you will not completely remove the problem.

What is going on with this whole bow and arrow thing? There are a number of passages that could illustrate this but one that perhaps gives us the most clarity is in Psalm 127:3-5 as the psalmist is praising God for the gift of children NASB “Behold, children are a gift of the LORD, The fruit of the womb is a reward.  Like arrows in the hand of a warrior, So are the children of one’s youth.” A warrior uses an arrow in order to defeat the enemy—recognition that we are in a spiritual conflict. Parents have a prime role in that conflict in raising up their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord so that they can go out within this spiritual warfare and have a positive influence for the Lord in the midst of the devil’s world. The picture here is one of influence and defeat of the enemies of the people of God. [5] “How blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them; They will not be ashamed When they speak with their enemies in the gate.” The more ammunition you have the more of the enemy you can destroy. So when we look at the use of the bow and arrow imagery in 2 Kings it is a picture of using the Lord as a military warrior to defeat His enemies. The enemies of Israel are the enemies of God. The idea for the spiritual warrior is to fully trust God in the sufficiency of His grace and His power, and not to limit it but to exploit it. 

We limit ourselves, our willingness to exploit the grace of God, and that is exactly what Joash did here. Rather than beating the ground six or seven times in order to secure a complete victory he limits from his own limited view of God (because he has bought into the lie) and only strikes the ground three times. He understood the significance of this imagery in terms of the defeat of the enemy. He knew that this was a depiction of exploiting God’s power in the military conflict. He was limited because the more we live according to the lie and according to self-deception the more we are limited in our relationship to God.

Then we are told about Elisha’s death. The bury him and then there are some raiding bands from Moab. As they were burying a man they saw this band of raiders coming and instead of completing the tomb and the burial for the man they just opened the tomb of Elisha and put the man in Elisha’s tomb. “…and they cast the man into the grave of Elisha. And when the man touched the bones of Elisha he revived and stood up on his feet.” This is a resurrection, he is brought back to life. This fits the pattern that we have seen in Elisha’s ministry. From what we saw in 2 Kings 2 Elisha’s ministry focused on the message of life and hope and meaning that comes only from God. The people were instead devoted to the worship of Baal and the Asherah and the result was that they were under divine discipline. The people were miserable, and yet Elisha’s message was a message of real hope, that hope and life comes only in relationship with God. So here is one last example of bringing life where there is death, and that only comes through God and through the message of His prophets.        

The closing statement: 2 Kings 13:22 NASB “Now Hazael king of Aram had oppressed Israel all the days of Jehoahaz. [23] But the LORD was gracious to them and had compassion on them and turned to them because of His covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and would not destroy them or cast them from His presence until now.” They don’t deserve this. They don’t deserve anything more than increased discipline. But the way God works with the disobedient believers is to take them through some discipline then treat them in grace, give them that opportunity to turn back to God in obedience. If they don’t he increases the pressure. God was gracious to them not because of who they are but because God regarded the covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

2 Kings 13:24 NASB “When Hazael king of Aram died, Ben-hadad his son became king in his place.” Then things became only worse as Ben-hadad begins to attack them, but God gave a measure of grace to Joash and he did recover some of the cities that Hazael had taken from the northern kingdom earlier. This begins a process of recovery for the northern kingdom for a while as their last little bit of hope as God treats them in grace before the final judgment.

As we look at this example we point out that there are various ways in which we see the same thing going on in the world around us today. As Christians in the United States we live in the midst of spiritual warfare. We are to be successful warriors persevering within the angelic conflict, growing and maturing in the Lord and studying the Word. We are not to succumb to the lie. The lie that permeates every civilization is that which the Bible refers to as worldliness. Every civilization, every nation, every generation has its own zeitgeist or spirit of the times. We pick this up from parents, from teachers, from movies, and our minds are constantly being assaulted by very sophisticated and intellectual arguments against Christianity and the truth of God’s Word, and very sophisticated and intellectual arguments to support and to defend the way of the world.

The preaching and teaching from the pulpits of America must meet those attacks with the same level of sophistication and intellectual rigor, otherwise there will not be anyone in the pews in the next generation. This is what has happened in England and Europe. As the content of the pulpit ministries became diluted with the human viewpoint rationalization and rationalism of 19th century liberal Protestantism it absolutely eviscerated Christianity of any biblical truth and biblical content. So that by now we go to these wonderful, beautiful churches in England and on the continent, and some are gymnasiums, some are museums, some are just empty with two people in them on Sundays, some of whom are not even converted. The strength of Christianity no longer is there. That is because the Word of God is rejected. The nations are living in a fantasy world and the people are living in a fantasy world. As a nation we are living on the basis of a number of fantasies. We live on a financial fantasy having spent money we didn’t have. We are living on the basis of debt rather than what we actually have. We are at war against stupidity and ignorance. A nation goes to war because there is a well defined enemy that seeks to destroy that nation, yet we don’t have the courage to define the enemy and so we live on the basis of a military lie. We are at war with Jihadi Islamo-fascim and we need to define it as such. We live on the basis of a political fantasy that we still have leaders in Washington that genuinely want to follow and defend the US Constitution. We live on a moral fantasy that we can live in moral relativism—legalize homosexual marriage, legalize illegal drugs, that we can have open borders, that we can call right wrong and wrong right and it won’t really destroy the nation. Then we live in the worst of all, a spiritual fantasy that there is a separation of church and state and we can restrict God to a little closet or cubby hole on Sundays and for the rest of the week we can live as if He doesn’t exist. This goes under the false statement of separation of church and state. This nation was not founded on separation of church and state. That is not found in the Constitution, it is found in a letter that Thomas Jefferson wrote to a Baptist church in Connecticut, and in the context it means just the opposite of what it is used to mean today. In fact, the First Amendment states, “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” The spiritual problem is the source of all other problems. This nation was always thought by its founders to be a Christian nation.       

The spiritual life is the real issue in a nation. The reason we have problems isn’t because we have elected the wrong officials. The reason we have elected the wrong officials is because the nation has turned its back on God. If we don’t get the spiritual solution right then political tea parties, getting a lot of people out to the polls, and all of the other solutions will have no effect. They are just like the band aids that the northern kingdom put on, just like Joash going to God and praying for deliverance but there was no real change because of self-deception.

The solution starts first with the gospel. People have to understand that Jesus Christ died on the cross for their sins and they must trust Christ as savior. Second, they must grow. 1 Peter 2:2 NASB “like newborn babies, long for the pure milk of the word, so that by it you may grow in respect to salvation.” This is not an option, it is a command. If we don’t have time to study the Word then we are living in the same deceptive lie that dominated the northern kingdom, and it will have the same result which is self-destruction individually and then nationally.