We invite you tonight to take your Bibles and turn to 2 Kings chapter number 13. 2 Kings chapter number 13. Now, you may remember or not, last week I mentioned that we would be looking at Jehoash's son Amaziah this week. Well, I got a little ahead of myself. Amaziah is the next king mentioned in 2 Chronicles where we spent most of our time last week. but not in 2 Kings, which is the book that we're studying. Tonight, the study of 2 Kings there, in 2 Kings 13, the story switches from the southern kings of Judah back to the northern kings of Israel or Samaria. It keeps switching back and forth on us. So we're not in Judah anymore. We're back up north with the northerners. And we will get to Amaziah when it switches back in 2 Kings 14. But we're going to spend a couple of weeks in 2 Kings 13. We're going to look tonight to the history of two northern kings here tonight as we look at two guys that didn't have a clue. You remember how many kings in the northern kingdom that we've seen who did right in the sight of the Lord? None. None. None in the north. Very few in the south. Out of eleven kings, none of them did right in the sight of the Lord. It all goes back to the sins of Jeroboam, who got the northern kingdom of Israel started out on the wrong foot with God. I mean, God allowed him to lead his people, and then he stepped out of the way. Remember, Jeroboam set up the calf worship. When he originally set that calf worship up in the cities of Bethel and Dan, it was for the purpose of he didn't want the people going back to Jerusalem, to the temple. He was afraid that he'd lose his kingdom, and the two kings would reunite again. And so he set up calves in Bethel and Dan, and that's where it all began, just after the split of the kingdom. And each king after Jeroboam continued in his idolatrous ways, which brought the judgment of God against every one of them. But they continued repeating the mistakes of the past. You know anybody like that? You ever known anybody like that? I've known plenty of people, especially in the time I've been in the ministry. You ever heard the definition of insanity? Insanity is repeating the same mistakes and expecting different results. or sometimes it's put this way, doing the same thing over and over and getting the same result but expecting a different one. Well, that quote has been attributed to Albert Einstein, Mark Twain, Ben Franklin, depending on who's telling the story. Sounds to me like Mark Twain, something he would say, but there's no evidence that any of those guys ever said that. Actually, I read where the that definition of insanity, quote, first appeared in 1981 in a document published by Narcotics Anonymous. And it was supposed to be a sort of a guide book for addicts trying to overcome their addictions, and it was warning its readers that insanity is repeating the same mistakes and expecting different results. In other words, they were trying to convince them, you know, if you're trying to get off drugs, you can't stay on drugs, okay? You've got to come off of them. You can't just continue to use them and think that you're going to quit them. And we know that that is a folly. I actually think the idea behind the quote came even earlier than that. I think it came from the HeHaw show myself. You remember the doctor? People would come to the doctor and say, doctor, doctor, it hurts when I do this. And he'd say, don't do that. Kind of the same principle. Maybe not really, but a little bit. We know that here in this chapter, we see these two more kings that just didn't get why things were going so bad for Israel. When in reality, their problem was the same problem of the 11 or so previous kings of Israel. And the Lord sent them prophets to tell them so. God was faithful to send them prophets, but they didn't listen. We'll see one of them weeping at the bedside of Elisha next week. Elisha is going to die in our next lesson. It's the latter part of the chapter. One of these wicked kings that's got idolatrous ways, was weeping there over Elijah. I mean, the Lord gave them prophets, but they didn't listen to them. They kept choosing idolatry and idol worship over the worship and obedience to the Lord, thinking that, hey, well, you know, the problem is that king that was before me, he didn't know what he was doing. But I know what I'm doing. You know, he didn't know what he was doing. That's why the country's in such bad shape. And they were going to be different, yet they kept repeating the past mistakes with the Lord. And that's when you make the mistakes with the Lord, you're going to fail miserably. And they did, just like the kings before them. So let's begin the night here. We're going to take a look first at the first three verses. 2 Kings 13, verses 1-3, and we see Jehoahaz, the son of Jehu, remained in idolatry. Look at verse 1. In the three and twentieth year of Jehoash, the son of Ahaziah, king of Judah, Jehoahaz, the son of Jehu, began to reign over Israel in Samaria, and reigned seventeen years. and he did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord, and followed the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, which made Israel to sin, he departed not therefrom. And the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he delivered them into the hand of Hazael, king of Syria, and into the hand of Ben-Hadad, the son of Hazael, all their days." So, under his government, which pursued the same insane policy of his predecessors regarding the support of calf worship, Israel's apostasy from the true God became even greater and more confirmed than in the time of his father Jehu. Remember Jehu destroyed Baal worship, and it looked like he was going to do real good, destroyed Baal, but then he kept the idols in Bethlehem, not real bright. He embraced the calf worship instituted by Jeroboam. And so God's judgment, when it came, was even more severe. And the instruments we see here in verse three talks about the instruments that the Lord employed by here in order to scourge the nation of Israel were two kings of Syria, Hazael, we've seen Hazael, and his son, General Ben-Hadad. Now that, I know that name is familiar to you, Ben-Hadad, because this is Ben-Hadad the third. It doesn't say that, but this is the third Ben-Hadad. that we've seen actually in Syria. And the first Ben-Hadad made a league with King Asa of Judah to invade Israel. That's back in 1 Kings 15 and verse 18 and 20. The second Ben-Hadad was the one who besieged Samaria in the days of King Ahab of Israel. And even though he appeared to have the upper hand on Ahab, a prophet of the Lord delivered a message to Ahab that he would defeat Ben-Hadad, and he did. And when you find that story in 1 Kings chapter number 20, we've already gone over that. I'm just giving you a summary of these Ben-Hadads so you'll remember. Then this Ben-Hadad the second also later warred against Israel again after Ahab was dead. You'll find that in 2 Kings chapter 6 verse 8 and following. But the Lord used Elisha to tell Joram or Jehoram everything that Ben-Hadad was doing. He thought he had a mole in his army. Remember that? And the mole was the Lord. The Lord was giving it to Elisha and Elisha was telling the king of Israel's army what was going on. Later, Ben-Hadad II is also the one whose army besieged Samaria into a famine. Remember when they circled it and they were really hurting for certain. That's in 2 Kings 6 verse 24 and following. And then the Lord ended the siege and the famine by spooking his army, and they left everything behind and fled. And just like that, the famine was over. I mean, they had all this food out there that was left behind by the ones that were sieging them. Well, that was Ben-Hadad II and his army that did that. Ben-Hadad II then got bad off sick in Damascus, and he sent this fellow named Hazael that we see here. He sent him to inquire of Elisha when he came to Damascus as to whether he was going to recover. Elisha just happened to come to Damascus and he heard Elisha was in the area and said, Hazael was a general up underneath. So he wanted him to go inquire for him. He wasn't in shape enough to go inquire for himself. So he since has ill, and in 2 Kings 8 verse 10 it says, And Elisha said unto him, Go say unto him, Thou mayest certainly recover. That's what he's wanting to know, was he going to recover. He says, Thou mayest certainly recover, howbeit the Lord hath shown me that he shall surely die. Elisha got into a stare-down contest with the guy, Hazael. Because he knew Hazael was the one that was going to kill Menhadad II. And so he assassinated, he got back and he was assassinated by Hazael the day after receiving only part of Elisha's message. The part of Elisha's message that he told himself, you're going to recover. He didn't tell him that he was going to die. And the very next day he smothered him on his bed. Then we see Hazel took the throne and when he had a son he called his name Ben-Hadad. So we have the third Ben-Hadad. That's the one in our text tonight. The Lord used both Haziel and Ben-Hadad III, is what I'm going to call him, to punish Israel. The name Ben-Hadad, why it was popular with Syria, is because it means the son of the god Hada. Son of the god Hada. And that was a Syrian deity. And so it makes sense that you were wanting to sound real good. You'd name yourself after your god. And then we see the Israelite army, what happened with them. They were reduced to a very weakened condition by the continuous invasions of Hazael and Menhadad III. Now, we see in verse 4, next, we see things got so bad that Jehoahaz besought the Lord. That sounds a little funny, doesn't it? Things got so bad I finally had to call out to the Lord. You ever know anybody like that? Yeah. Look at verse 4. And Jehoiaz besought the Lord, and the Lord hearkened unto him. For he saw the oppression of Israel, because the king of Syria oppressed them. Now, in extreme distress, he finally besought the Lord and sadly what we see in Jehoiah has is repeated in the lives of many even today. Folks wait until they're in extreme distress before they finally acknowledge the Lord and seek His help. Matthew 6.33, though, tells us, But seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you. Get things out of whack. Get things out of order. And that's the problem with these kings, is they had things totally out of order. The Lord needed to be first, not last. Well, we see here also that Jehoiahaz was heard. not on his own account, but because the Lord, quote, saw the oppression of Israel because the king of Syria oppressed them. He listened on behalf of his people. what he did. The Lord judged Syria for their harshness against his people even though he allowed them to come against Israel. Now this is hard for us to understand. We saw the same thing when we get to the point of later on whenever the Babylonian invasion takes place. The Lord is the one who had his hand on Nebuchadnezzar. He was doing the work of God, but the Lord still held him responsible for how cruel he was to his people. It may not make sense to us, but that's God's ways. God still has his hands on his people. If you understand, he's got a hedge of protection about him. these kings from coming in and doing what they want to do. And all the Lord has to do to chastise His people is lift that hedge of protection. So the Lord's not doing it. He's just taking the protection away. And these kings are doing this evil against the people of Israel, but the Lord's going to hold them accountable. Also in play here is the Lord remembering the ancient covenants that he had with the patriarchs. Assyria could only go so far. Skip down, we're not going to get this far tonight, but skip down and look at verse 22 and 23 with me and you'll see this. Verse 22 says, But Hazael, king of Syria, oppressed Israel all the days of Jehoahaz. And the Lord was gracious unto them, and had compassion on them, and had respect unto them because of his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and would not destroy them, neither cast he them from his presence as yet. So we see there that the Lord was still, had his hand on the thermostat about how much they could do to him. How much the enemy could do to Israel. Now, next thing we see in verse 5, we see the Lord gave Israel a brief respite. Verse 5, it says, And the Lord gave Israel a Savior. so that they went out from under the hand of the Syrians, and the children of Israel dwelt in their tents as before time." So they were kind of carried away, and then the Lord sent them a Savior to help them out there. Now, it doesn't exactly tell us who the Savior is here. Let me give you a couple of possibilities. It's possible that this came partially in the days of the son of Jehoahaz who is another Joash. Can you believe it? This is on the Israel side. We saw one on the Judah side. Well, there's one on the Israel side that we're going to see. But it's possible that it was in the days of his son Jehoash, or Joash, and partially in the days of Jehoash's son, Jeroboam II. Can you believe he called his son Jeroboam? Jeroboam started all this mess. And yet, that Joash called his son Jeroboam, and he'll be Jeroboam II. But look at verse number 25. Again, we're not going to get this far, but I want you to see this. Down to verse 25, it says, And Jehoash, the son of Jehoahaz, took again out of the hand of Benhadad, the son of Hazael, the cities, which he had taken out of the hand of Jehoahaz, his father, by war. Three times did Joash beat him and recovered the cities of Israel. Now that three times is going to be significant next week when we start talking about Elisha and Joash's Talking with Elijah, the exchange that they had and what was going on there, just remember that. I'll call your attention to it when we get to it next week. We see also, look at chapter 14 and verse number 25. Chapter 14 and verse number 25. This is even further down the road. It says that he restored the coast of Israel. This is talking about Jeroboam, the second Jeroboam. He restored the coast of Israel from the entering of Hamath unto the sea of the plain, according to the word of the Lord God of Israel, which he spake by the hand of his servant Jonah, the son of Amittai, the prophet, which was of Gathipher. Now that's the same Jonah of the book of Jonah. He didn't just prophesy to Nineveh, but he had a little part here. But look at verse 26 there. It says, For the Lord saw the affliction of Israel, that it was very bitter, for there was not any shut up, nor any left, nor any helper for Israel. And the Lord said not that he would And the Lord said not that he would blot out the name of Israel from under heaven, but he saved them by the hand of Jeroboam and the son of Joash." So, save them, there's a Savior right there. So, a combination of those two possibilities there. But the Lord will give them a brief respite there, and we see that there was no fundamental change in Israel's spiritual condition though. Look at verse number 6, chapter 13, verse number 6. So it says, nevertheless, they departed not from the sins of the house of Jeroboam, who made Israel sin, but walked therein, and there remained the grove also in Samaria. So they get in great distress, call out to the Lord, the Lord delivers them, and what do they do? They go right back to their idol worship. We might think that Israel would change, but she remained firmly in idolatry, and that's a sad commentary on both the northern kingdom and her kings. Next thing we see in verse number 7, we see the sad condition of Israel in the days of Jehoahaz. Verse 7 says, Neither did he leave of the people to Jehoahaz, but fifty horsemen. and 10 chariots and 10,000 footmen. And that's not a very big army. For the king of Syria had destroyed them and made them like the dust by threshing. This first part of that verse describes the sad state of their armed forces. That's 50 horsemen, 10 chariots and 10,000 foot soldiers, not very much at all. And that last phrase, made them like the dust by threshing, is a local phrase that's used in that area, in that culture, to describe a state of national suffering that's just short of extermination. And they were, when you look at them, they were just short of being exterminated. Then we see the sixth thing here, the death of Jehoahaz and the ascension of his son Jehoash. I'm going to call him, he's another Jehoash, that is Jehoash, to the throne. Look at verse 8 and 9. So now the rest of the acts of Jehoahaz, and all that he did, and his might, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Israel? And Jehoahaz slept with his fathers, and they buried him in Samaria. And Joash, his son, reigned in his stead. And then we see that Joash repeated the past mistakes of all his predecessors. Again, they're still repeating the past mistakes. They're not getting it. Daddy was an idol worshipper. It didn't go well for him. Well, listen, it's not going to go well either for him because he continues. Look at verse number 10 and 11. It says in the 37th year of Joash king of Judah began Jehoash the son of Jehoahaz to reign over Israel in Samaria and reigned 16 years. And he did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord. Look at here. He departed not from all the sins of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, who made Israel sin, but he walked therein. So, over and over again, it's the same story with the northern kingdom. And then, last of all, we see here, we see the death of Jehoash, or Joash, and the ascension of his son, Jeroboam II, to the throne. Look at verse 12 and 13. It says, "...and the rest of the acts of Joash, and all that he did, and his might wherewith he fought against Amaziah king of Judah, are they not written in the book of the Chronicles of the kings of Israel? And Joash slept with his fathers, and Jeroboam sat upon his throne, And Joash was buried in Samaria with the kings of Israel. Now, that's our study for this evening. And by what we just read, we might think that we're done with Joash, but we'd be wrong. So that didn't tell us very much about him right there, did it? Well, next week we're going to see the prophet Elisha is fallen sick. And he was on his deathbed, and Joe Ash went to visit him. And during that visit, a very interesting discourse takes place between the two of them prior to Elijah's death that has to do with Joe Ash's partial success against Syria. Now, he could have been more successful had he done a few certain things. He just didn't go far enough. Elijah said, you only went this far, you should have done more. We'll see what that's all about, Lord willing, next week. Amen. That's our Bible study for this evening. Let's pull our prayer list out. We'll pray for the needs tonight and we'll be dismissed with this prayer.