Well, I would encourage you to take up your copy of the Word of God and turn in it to 2 Kings chapter 11, as tonight we'll be taking a look at verses one through 12. And we'll be reading about the brief reign of the most wicked grandmother in the Bible, Athaliah. But before we turn our attention to the Word of God, let's go to the God of the Word. Let's beg him to help us. God, our gracious Father, we confess that without your help, Lord, we can do nothing. You are the vine, we are the branches, we depend upon you. We need your help, Lord, to understand these words and to apply them to our hearts. Lord, I know I can reach ears perhaps, but I can't change hearts. Only you can do that. And I pray that you would. I pray, Lord, that your word would mold us and change us, that we would not simply hold it out at arm's length objectively, but that rather, oh, Lord, we would allow that spirit to change us, your Holy Spirit. Make us over again. Give us ears now to hear and eyes to see all that you have to tell us. And we pray these things in Jesus' holy name. Amen. Second Kings 11 and verses 1 through 12. I remind you, this is the word of the Lord. When Athaliah, the mother of Ahaziah, saw that her son was dead, she arose and destroyed all the royal heirs. But Jehoshabah, the daughter of King Joram, sister of Ahaziah, took Joash, the son of Ahaziah, and stole him away from among the king's sons who were being murdered. And they hid him and his nurse in the bedroom from Athaliah so that he was not killed. So he was hidden with her in the house of the Lord for six years while Athaliah reigned over the land. In the seventh year, Jehoiada sent and brought the captains of hundreds of the bodyguards and escorts and brought them into the house of the Lord to him. And he made a covenant with them and took an oath from them in the house of the Lord and showed them the king's son. Then he commanded them saying, this is what you shall do. One-third of you shall come on duty on the Sabbath, shall be keeping watch over the king's house. One-third shall be at the gate of Sur, and one-third at the gate behind the escorts. You shall keep the watch of the house, lest it be broken down. The two contingents of you who go off duty on the Sabbath shall keep the watch of the house of the lord of the king, for the king rather. But you shall surround the king on all sides, every man with his weapons in his hand, and whoever comes within range, let him be put to death. you are to be with the king as he goes out and as he comes in. So the captains of the hundreds did according to all that Jehoiada the priest commanded. Each of them took his men who were to be on duty on the Sabbath with those who were going off duty on the Sabbath and came to Jehoiada the priest. And the priest gave the captains of hundreds the spears and shields which belonged to King David that were in the temple of the Lord. Then the escort stood, every man with his weapons in his hand, all around the king, from the right side of the temple to the left side of the temple, by the altar and the house, and he brought out the king's son, put the crown on him, and gave him the testimony. They made him king and anointed him, and they clapped their hands and said, Long live the king. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever. As I was preparing to preach these verses tonight, I was reminded that I had discovered a few years back that a friend in the ministry had actually preached on them as a Mother's Day sermon. It was more of a what not to do approach, but it struck me as an interesting choice nonetheless. I am not gonna preach a Mother's Day sermon from this to you. Here, the focus of the writer of Kings, it changes, once again, from the northern kingdom of Israel to the southern kingdom But in this case, as often happened, there is a direct relationship, obviously, between the events in the north and the events in the south. You'll remember that Jehu, the new king of Israel, who had taken over the government, he had completed his coup. He had completed also his purge of the Amrei dynasty, that is the descendants of Omri. He had wiped out the line of Ahab entirely, and he had also dispatched his wicked queen Jezebel, but the purge had also included Ahaziah of Judah and most of his relatives who had been visiting Jezebel's son, King Joram, who was Ahaziah's uncle. And he'd also created, or completed rather, a bloody purge of the nation's Baalists. You remember he'd herded all of the worshippers of Baal into the temple and then he'd set men on the outside. He pretended to give sacrifices in the name of Baal and he'd made sure that everybody in Israel who was anybody in terms of Baal worship was there. and then he had had them all put to death, and it would have been wonderful if he had followed that up with a restoration of rite worship, but unfortunately, he had turned them back into the calf worship that had been established by the first king of the northern kingdom, Jeroboam. But one thing he had not done is he had not crossed into Judah to get rid of Athaliah, the mother of Ahaziah and the daughter of Jezebel. Ironically, the name Athaliah means Yahweh is exalted, But nothing could have been further from the case. This was not a queen who exalted Yahweh in any sense. Athaliah, we need to remember, was not just the daughter of Jezebel. She was the granddaughter of Ethbal, the king of Sidon. The Phoenician historian, Meander of Ephesus, tells us that her grandfather had been the priest of Astarte, that is, Asherah in the Bible, the goddess consort of Baal. and that her grandfather, Ethbal, had slain the king of Phoenicia, a man by the name of Pheles, and had reigned in his place for 32 years. So murder and coups and ball worship ran in her family. They were deeply ingrained in her, and that was her orientation as well. We read that she had a distinctly evil influence on her son. In 2 Kings 8-6, you'll remember we read Ahaziah was 22 years old when he became king, And he reigned one year in Jerusalem. His mother's name was Athaliah, the granddaughter of Amri, king of Israel. And he walked in the way of the house of Ahab, and did evil in the sight of the Lord, like the house of Ahab. For he was the son-in-law of the house of Ahab." And we read also that she had had a dramatically evil influence on her husband before him. And in 2 Kings 11.6 we read, Now in the fifth year of Joram, the son of Ahab, king of Israel, Jehoshaphat, having been king of Judah. Jehoram the son of Jehoshaphat began to reign as king of Judah. He was 32 years old when he became king, and he reigned eight years in Jerusalem. And he walked in the ways of the kings of Israel, just as the house of Ahab had done. For the daughter of Ahab was his wife, and he did evil in the sight of the Lord." So this was a woman who had corrupted her husband, had corrupted her son, and who was aiming at corrupting the entire nation. And we are told that the only reason that God did not wipe out the house of Judah and Athaliah with it, at this point, was for the sake of the promises given to David. In 2 Kings 11, we read up to verse 18, but verse 19 says this, and this is the only hope of Israel. Yet the Lord would not destroy Judah for the sake of his servant David, as he had promised to give him a lamp to him and his sons forever. That, of course, is a reference to the Davidic covenant that God had made with David in 2 Samuel 7, 16, when the Lord had pledged to David, and your house and your kingdom shall be established forever before you. Your throne shall be established forever. I don't want to go back over material that we've already covered, but we remember that in that pledge that God gave to David, He is being promised that there would be an eternal king to sit on his throne. No line of kings in human history had lasted forever. Every family, even the families of the pharaohs, had ended, but David is told, no, your line will go on. How is that possible? And the answer, of course, is that his son would be David's greater son, the Lord Jesus Christ, the seed of the woman who would crush the head of the serpent, the one who was promised all the way back in Genesis 3.15. That was the covenant promise that was being made, and that promise becomes incredibly important in this story. Because the house of Judah and the bloodline that would lead to Jesus the Redeemer hangs in the balance in this particular chapter. Had the Lord decided, He could have allowed the line to end in this chapter. And had it not, consider this, had it not been for the bravery of one couple, that is Jehoshaphat and her husband, the high priest Jehoiada, there would have been no Mary and no Joseph, no going to Bethlehem for Jesus to be born, because both Mary and Joseph were descendants of that line. And so literally everything about redemption depended upon that moment in time when Athaliah was slaying people and Jehoshabath had the, or Beath as she's called in Second Chronicles, had to make a snap decision. What is she going to do? So what happened here? Well, normally, following the death of a king of Judah, like Ahaziah, one of his sons would have become the ruler in his place. But the wicked queen mother, Athaliah, had other plans. Apparently, she had been the real power behind the scenes in her husband and then her son's reigns. And the idea of becoming merely grandmother to the king did not suit her taste anymore. She wanted to be the ruler of the kingdom, so she decided to take a page out of her grandfather's book, and she stages a coup. As soon as the news of Ahaziah's assassination in Israel reaches her, instead of setting up the oldest remaining heir of Ahaziah as king, she sets out to wipe out all her son's descendants and claim the throne for herself. She literally is murdering her grandchildren at this point. had never had a queen reign but now they would for a brief time. The heirs mentioned in verse 1 incidentally that are being spoken of had to be the sons of Ahaziah since all of his brothers had been taken away by the Arabs and put to death in 2 Chronicles 22.1 and all of his other relatives had been slain by Jehu. You remember going up to visit Joram, and they'd been intercepted by Jehu and put to death. So, Athaliah actually murders her own grandsons in order to be queen. What a, I mean, just a horrific grandmother. Only one child was spared by the Lord's will, and that is Joash. And that was because of the kindness and also the bravery of Jehoshaba. Who I believe, I was thinking about this as I was preparing the sermon. This is a woman who should be far more esteemed in Bible lore than she actually is. I mean, how many Christians even would you, you know, how about Jehoshabba? Jehovah what? You know, nobody remembers this woman. And yet, while we remember Jail and Deborah and Abigail, Here was the woman who literally saved the royal line of Judah from destruction. And we read about her that Jehoshaba was the daughter of Jehoram and the sister of Ahaziah, but the text does not say that she was the daughter of Athaliah, which means that it is likely that she was a daughter of one of King Jehoram's concubines. He had several wives and many concubines. That's further reinforced in 2 Chronicles 22, where we are told that she was actually, she was the wife of Jehoiada, the high priest. And given that Athaliah was a Baal worshiper, she would probably not have allowed her own daughter to marry a priest of Yahweh, so Jehoshabah must not have been her blood daughter at all, but rather a half-daughter. Her name Jehoshabin, incidentally, is actually a variant of the name that's given to her in Chronicles. That's Jehoshabiath in Chronicles, which is quite a mouthful. But what do you think the actual, the anglicization of that word is, that name? Anybody can guess? Jehoshabiath? It comes up in the New Testament. It's Elizabeth, very good. Give that man, well, you don't smoke cigars, but give that man some pipe tobacco later. Seeing what Athaliah was plotting, Jehoshabba had acted quickly to save one of the royal heirs, and that was her infant nephew, Jehoash. And she and her husband, the high priest Jehoiada, what did they do? They hid him. and his nurse in their living quarters in the temple compound. And this was one place in Jerusalem where Queen Athaliah would not be likely to go. She despised the temple. She despised everything that was associated with the worship of Yahweh. So, By God's grace, and this was no mean feat, keep this in mind, they successfully hid Joash, the prince, for six years. Had the child been detected by Athaliah, not only would he have been killed, but Jehoshabah and Jehoiada would have been murdered as well. And Jehoiada can't put an infant on the throne. He has to wait until the boy's grown up a little. So he waits until Joash is seven. And those would have been miserable years while Queen Athaliah, the Baal worshipper, ran the government. I mean, imagine the tyranny and oppression that was going on there and just the wrongness, the Sidonian princess reigning over them, taking the place of a king over the government and undoubtedly putting to death anybody associated with the former government as well. Well, finally, he comes to the point where he brings forth Joash, and he presents him to the temple officials and the military commanders. And one commentator on this section asks, how did they know he was indeed a prince of the house of Judah? And he asserts, I think, a little ridiculously, maybe he bore an unmistakable family resemblance to his father, the king, whose futures they knew very well. No, the actual answer is easy. You couldn't have hidden a baby in the temple without the officials and guards being in on the conspiracy. Why is that? They cry, OK? They make noise. Anybody with any experience with babies knows this. You can't just tell the baby, put a sock in it. The baby is going to cry. They would have become aware of the baby. So the officials, at least some of them in the inner circle, had to be aware of what was happening from the beginning. So there was a resistance during Athaliah's rule going on. But how can they reveal him and then put him on the throne without Athalias simply sending soldiers to kill him and then all the other supporters of the true king and the line finally being wiped out for good or for evil actually. And the answer was the changing of the guards. That was the key to the conspiracy. The temple guard, as well as the priests and the Levites, they served in shifts. It wasn't the same guys always on duty. It was your turn to serve this week and so on. And that was on a rotating basis. And the military contingent who guarded the temple also had the responsibility for protecting the royal palace in Jerusalem. And since the shifts changed on the Sabbath, that is on Saturday, Jehoiada chose the next Sabbath day as the time for his carefully planned coup. That was when the company of soldiers guarding the palace marched to the temple to relieve the guards there. Normally one would go off and they would exchange their weapons and they would continue on. But in that moment when the two contingents met, all the contingents of soldiers would be at the temple at the same time. and that would give Jehoiada a full military contingent, enough strength to carry out his plan, plus there would be no guards at the palace for Athaliah to call out at that point. And it also meant that you had this concentrated gathering of soldiers that would have been noisy enough to smother any of the noises of getting ready for the coronation. And the people of Jerusalem wouldn't be too suspicious. The changing of the guard would be something that they had experienced again and again and again. So Jehoiada also realizes at this point that he immediately, in order for the coup to be pulled off, he didn't just need the temple officials and the guards, he also needed the population of Jerusalem on his side. Now he does tell the guards, if any man comes near, you must slay him immediately. He's a threat to the king's life. But he also hands out the beautiful ceremonial weapons that would be used in a coronation or for a royal visit to the temple. And that would clue everybody on the fact that this is the heir. It would signify that this young man was not merely some kid. the son of Ahaziah who has been hidden. And so he's stood in the place where the coronation would occur by the appropriate pillar, and the boy prince then receives the crown on his head. I'm pretty sure that at seven years old it probably didn't fit very well, you know, you kind of have to hold it over him or something like that. But interestingly enough, the word for crown in Hebrew is naser, and it means consecration. It means a crown, but it's also a sign of consecration and setting apart. In the crowning of a king of Judah, what was being said before the people was, by putting this consecration upon him, that this man was being set aside by God as the head of the government. that he was God's anointed agent and somebody who was a type of Messiah, a type of Christ. He pointed backward towards David, the ideal king, but forward towards David's even greater son, the Messiah, who would come, who would be not just the king of his people, but the prophet, priest, and king of his people. So we have that consecration happening there. And not much is said in Scripture about the various jewels and so on and the regalia of the coronation or the particular queen or king, rather, crown that was being used here. But it's almost... absolutely certain that the crown was kept in the temple with the other royal vestments and so on and the vestments of the high priest. But one of the most important things that happened there, apart from the placing of the crown upon him, consecrating him and setting him apart, was also he is handed a copy of the law. Now this was probably the book of Deuteronomy or the Deuteronomy scroll. at this point in time, because of course, they didn't have books at that point, is placed into his hands. In Deuteronomy 17, 18, go ahead and take a look there, if you would. Deuteronomy 17, 18, it says this. Also, it shall be, when he sits on the throne of his kingdom that he shall write for himself a copy of this law in a book. This is speaking about the kings who would come from the one before the priests, the Levites. And it shall be with him, and he shall read it all the days of his life that he may learn to fear the Lord his God, And be careful to observe all the words of this law and these statutes, that his heart may not be lifted above his brethren, that he may not turn aside from the commandment to the right hand or to the left, and that he may prolong his days in the kingdom, he and the children in the midst of Israel. Now, what this was meant to do, obviously, in this case, the son is handed, Joash is handed the scroll, and he doesn't sit down and begin to copy it at that point in time, although the king was supposed to do that because the idea was this would be an aid to the memorization of the contents. If you're actually having to copy your own scroll, your own version of the Book of Deuteronomy, it should be a means by which it gets into you. That was the whole point. gave them his instructions to guide them. My laws shall be in your heart and you will govern my people according to my instructions. So the idea is that the king, the ultimate king, the king of kings is God himself. and that the consecrated king rules in his place. This was meant to point forward again to the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the King of kings and the Lord of lords and the Prince of princes, the highest of them all. He is the one in whom the law is not only something that he knows, but something that he himself wrote and not copied. He was the original author and the Holy Spirit set down his words And so, this is pointing forward to the time when you will have a king who is a living embodiment of the word. And don't we read in John chapter one and verse one, in the beginning was the word, the logos, Jesus himself, the conveyance of God's word. God speaks to us through prophets, but in these days he has spoken to us in the person of his son who is the living embodiment of God and the perfection of his word. All of these things, and this is just something that we need to remember, all of these things are pointing us in the Old Testament to the coming of Jesus Christ. All of the rules and the requirements of the law all had this symbolic meaning that was supposed to send our attention to the Messiah when he came. All of these kings were imperfect. I'm not going to tell you, for instance, I mean, it's one thing to put the book in the king's hand. It's another thing entirely for the book to get into the king's heart and for him then to live by it. One of the things, it's interesting, I was watching the bits and pieces of the coronation of King Charles III who because the US government just won't hurry up, is still my regent, can you believe that? But anyway, I'm waiting with bated breath for the oath ceremony so I can switch my allegiances for good. But one of the things that they do, they mimic this, believe it or not, this ceremony in the way that the king is prepared to rule. He is anointed with oil, which is supposed to point towards the Holy Spirit, the idea being that he is the head of the church. We don't believe that, obviously. But then into his hand is placed by the Archbishop of Canterbury a copy of the Bible. And, you know, it is to laugh to think that King Charles III is reigning according to the word of God, unfortunately. You can put the Bible, you can put a beautiful calfskin, you know, custom leather, hand-stitched Bible into his hands, and wouldn't we all love that? It is simply a book closed and without meaning unless the king opens the book, reads it, and is blessed by the Holy Spirit within him to understand it and then apply it to his servants. You can have all of this pomp and circumstance as they did in a highly, I mean, this was probably the most irregular coronation of a king of Judah in the history of all of Judah. and the most accelerated as well, intense. But at the same time, probably one of the most joyful that ever took place as well. But the question is, Joash has been given God's word. Will he rule according to it? And I'm not gonna spoil the surprise for you, so you have to find out later on. You'll have to come back. But let me get to applications now, apart from the one that I've already just given you. How many great events Turn in the Bible. Have you ever considered this? On people being hidden and delivered from murderous authorities. And I'll give you just three examples. First, we have Moses hidden from Pharaoh's soldiers by his mother. We have Rahab hiding the spies in Jericho on her roof. Then we have the disciples in Damascus hiding Saul, who would become Paul, of course, and then getting him over the wall in a basket so that he escapes and is not killed. I mean, imagine had those people not been hidden and they'd been discovered and put to death, how dramatically that would have changed redemptive history. But of course, the greatest example is that of Christ being taken into Egypt so that he might avoid death at the hands of Herod. And it was the wise men, of course, not going back. They were warned not to go back to Herod and declare where the child was. So they hid him, and then he was carried away. that we might be redeemed, another attempted end run by the devil to destroy the Messiah before he could come to his adulthood and begin his ministry here on earth. But again and again we see that. And here, of course, we have Jehoshabath hiding Jehoash, and it's incredibly important. Now, all of those acts of defiance, those acts of hiding, were determined by God and his sovereignty, but they still, in time, required great bravery on the person doing it, because in every single case, to have been discovered hiding these people would have been a death sentence to the person who was doing it. I'm reminded of the example of Corrie Ten Boom and her family in the Netherlands who hid Jews in their house because they were being searched for by the Nazis to be sent off to death camps and concentration camps. And yet Caspar Ten Boom didn't hesitate when the Dutch resistance came to him and said, will you hide Jews in your house? Knowing that if they were discovered, it would be a death sentence for him. And as it was, he was given up by a traitor. and he himself died in a concentration camp, but that, brothers and sisters, is the right spirit. It was interesting, I asked, I was curious to see, and I'll be very frank with you, I was curious to see if the spirit of rising antisemitism, how far it had gotten in my friend group, and I said, okay, so it's 1942, it's in the Netherlands, and a member of the Dutch resistance comes to you and says, will you hide Jews in your house? What's your answer? Now, whether or not when push came to shove, they would do it, at least almost everyone in my friend group on Facebook said, yes, I would do that. It did my heart good. But one answer was particularly... compelling to me. It was given by a friend of mine. Now, I will be honest with you. My high school years were kind of wretched. Aside from my pursuit of, at that time, unsuccessful pursuit of my to-be-wife joy, most of my time was pretty pretty bleak. I did have a small group of friends though. And one of my friends was a young man by the name of Mark Cooperman who was Jewish. He wrote in reply, he said, my mother, age six, and her family were hidden in a hole under a haystack by a nice Polish farmer and his Ukrainian assistant for over a year in what is now Ukraine, formerly Poland. Ground zero for testing new ways to kill people during the Holocaust. So my answer would be yes. The farmer was forced to flee after the war officially ended and lived. The assistant stuck around to help and was murdered by a Bandera mob. Bandera was a Ukrainian right-wing leader, a puppet of the Nazis during the Second World War. But it was telling. The friendship and the willingness, the compassion of a Ukrainian farmer who had nothing to gain and everything to lose by hiding that family under a haystack was the reason I had a friend in high school. So God's providence is amazing, the way that he orders things. Now, we don't know whether they'll be, you know, just our friends in school or great men like Paul who write, you know, two-thirds of the New Testament. But brothers and sisters, I would urge you, if ever we come to that point where hiding somebody as that farmer hid that family is presented to you, I would say don't hesitate. Do that thing. Do that thing that was so used by God in the past. Be willing to sacrifice in order to save others. Be willing to express the same spirit that our covenanting forefathers did when hiding preachers in their houses, despite the fact that if they were discovered to have been hiding them, the dragoons could summarily execute them. This is something that goes back in Presbyterian history as well. It's something that we need to be willing to do in times of difficulty. This is what the Lord's people do, and I pray. I pray it doesn't come to that, but if it ever does, that'll be what you do. And as I said, you never know how the person you save might be used. Now, my second application is to contemplate, what a day of joy. It was when Jehoash became king. They clapped their hands and said, long live the king. The night, the long night of Athaliah's reign is finally over. Dawn is breaking. Their tyranny is being thrown down. And now you have the good man Jehoiada, the high priest, bringing forth to their amazement the son of Ahaziah, the true heir to the kingdom. Finally, he is revealed. And so they say, this is his crown right. Consecrate him as our leader. And the people of Jerusalem are filled with joy. Now there is a similitude here as well. I want to read to you what Matthew Henry said. He said, with such acclamations of joy and satisfaction must be the kingdom of Christ be welcomed into our hearts when his throne is set up there and Satan, the usurper, is deposed. Hosanna, blessed is he that comes. Clap hands and say, let King Jesus live forever. Live and reign in my soul and in all the world. It is promised he shall live and prayer shall be made for him and his kingdom. continually. I pray that that coronation has happened in your life as well, that the Lord Jesus Christ is now reigning in your hearts and that you know what joy it was to have the long night of the usurpation of Satan and his misrule over you ended. Remember, there is a day coming when Jesus returns and all misrule ends forever. and how I long for that day, I hope you do too, but I pray that he has begun his reign in your hearts already. If not, it's time to bow the knee and cry out, long live the king, and allow that rule to begin. If you do, it is because he has sovereignly taken his proper place in your heart and in your life. Let's go and now address him. God, our Father, I pray that everybody who is listening to me this day, that they would call upon the Lord Jesus, that they would bow the knee, that they would kiss the sun while there is yet time. Psalm 2 says that when the heathens rage against God, ultimately it does them no good. All of the kingdoms of this world will be broken unless they confess Christ. And oh Lord, how we long for the time when he alone is the sole king and regent and ruler over all of humanity and all the sub-kingdoms are done away. Oh, Lord, we look forward to that great government. that will begin when He returns. And, O Lord, may we make sure, first of all, that He is reigning in our hearts. Otherwise, when He returns, it will not be a day of delight, a day of clapping hands, and long live the King. It'll be a day of terror. And I pray that that would not be the case for anyone here. O Lord, rule and reign over us, not just for a while, but eternally. And we pray this in Jesus' holy name, amen.