So today we're going to look at a story that is. I'll tell you my daughter's favorite story. And she wanted to be down here for this. I told her one time when I was a kid and I was in kids church, I got sent downstairs to sit with the adults, but it was because I had gotten in trouble really bad, she wanted to come down here.

So we have this thing that, we call it a sermon companion guide. It kind of looks like this and we print them on demand as needed. I'm out of them right now because three people asked for one today and that's great. And so if you want one, you can put that on your handy little connection card like Sermon Companion, please, and we'll get you one that way. Isn't that nice of us?

But we're on page 33 today. And if you want, if you don't have one of those or you forgot yours at home, there's a purple table right back there in the back that's got a couple handouts that are just today's guide, you know, that goes along with it. And so that'll kind of help you with it. But we're going to be looking at a story that I can't, can't even come close to covering the whole thing. Like, I can't.

I. I struggled. I had like, I do write notes for my sermons and I hardly ever look at them. They're there to like kind of guide me, to make sure I don't go too far off the rails because I usually do. Those of you that know me, I'm like, yeah, I do that. But there's so much going on in this entire history, this entire story that's in our scriptures.

I don't like using the word story because that kind of sounds like a made up kind of thing. It is historical and we believe that. We believe that these things happened and that they were recorded down under the inspiration of the Spirit of God and written down by human beings who were inspired by God's Holy Spirit to preserve this history for us so that we could look at it and learn from it. So that we could look at it and read it and study it and pray that God would give us understanding to say, why does this matter for us today? Because this happened thousands of years ago.

And a lot of times people don't like history. Who are my history fans? Like, who's a history buff who loves history? Like the History Channel, back before it was just like aliens and stuff, you know, when it was like actually about history like, that was awesome, you know, and if you don't remember that, it was like, yeah, they used to tell historical things, and now they're like, so we're looking for Loch Ness Monster. And I'm like, well, that's great.

Did you find her? No, I don't have to watch it now. You know, like, show me something that's actually happened. So history is great. And those people, as has been said, that don't, like, learn, don't study history, are doomed to repeat it.

All the bad things that happen, if we're not studying it, if we're not paying attention to it, if we don't understand it, what happened then, we're doomed to fall in those same things now. And the story we're going to look at today is about. I can't even tell you which character it's about. It's really about Christ in the long run. That's what our whole series is.

It's all about Jesus, right? Like, it's on the wall behind me. It's on the slides. If you're watching online, we're grateful that you're here as one of our kind of digital disciples. You've seen it on your screens, like, this is.

This whole series is all about Jesus. And we're doing this for a whole year, looking at the entire Bible and looking at different sections of it and how it all points us to Christ. But in the midst of this historical account, there's some characters that show up, some people that show up in the parts that we're going to look at today, and people with names like Jehu and Ahab and Jezebel and some other guys that are in there. And if we were to go over the whole thing, like, if you were to read everything about this, some of the prophets. The unit that we're looking at right now is the prophets and kings in the nation of Israel in historical times.

If you were to look at some of them, you'd find guys like a prophet named Elijah and some other unnamed prophets that have a job or a role that they do here. And as we look at this, we see these folks and what they're doing and what's going on. Takes 17 chapters, 17 chapters in first and second kings. That covers the story of what's happening with these people. Because there was a lot of stuff.

There's some kings that are mentioned in these books that have, like, a little short section. That's all it tells us about him. There was one guy, he wasn't well liked, and all it said about him was he died to no one's regret. And they didn't even have a bonfire in his honor. Can you imagine the nerve?

Like, how bad is a guy? They don't have a bonfire in his honor. When I go, I want the bonfire, you know, like, I want you guys to have. I actually wrote. I wrote a will recently, and I put that in there.

I put it in there that I want there to be a giant fire. I mean, a giant fire. Like, take, like, I want a tree company to, like, several of them to bring their brush in and let it dry for a while. Like, it needs a few months to pass, you know, like, you have the celebration of my life after I've been gone for a while, and. And you have a giant fire, and everybody enjoys it.

Like a fire that you can't get close to. You know what I'm saying? That's the kind of fire I want. I hope I'm worthy of that kind of a fire when I die. You know what I'm saying?

This one king, he didn't even get a fire in his honor. What a loser. So anyway, and he died to no one's regret. Nobody ever says these things in a funeral, you know, like, nah, nobody was sad he died. But there's all these guys and these kings that come and go.

Well, some of them think it right, you know, but anyway, they don't. Sorry. So there's all these kings and they come and go. Last week, we looked at this king named David. He's the second king over the nation of Israel.

And King David was, you know, he was, as said, a man after God's own heart. He didn't always do the right thing. There were several times that he overstepped the place that God had for him in his life, and he sinned in major ways. We looked at several of those things and mentioned them. I mean, everybody kind of that knows this story knows, like, oh, well, that thing with Bathsheba and her husband, it's like, yeah, he slept with a woman that wasn't his wife.

Then he kills her husband in battle on purpose to get him out of the way. And then he marries the woman. That's not a good thing. And this is the guy that's the man after God's own heart. He was one of the good guys.

Well, God didn't approve of that. That wasn't the point. The point is, when David is brought face to face with his own sin, when he is confronted by it, he repents of his sin. He doesn't double down and say, oh, yeah, well, I'm the king. I can do what I want.

Or, oh, yeah, well, guess what? You know, who are you to tell me what I did wrong? Don't judge me. He doesn't say any of those things. He confesses.

He says, I have sinned, O Lord, against you and you alone. I have sinned. And probably the guy that you killed and the woman anyway, you know, he sinned against a few people. But like he says, lord, I've sinned against you in all of this. This isn't how you have designed me to live.

And so David was the good king, and then his son Solomon, his son Solomon, lives. And he's the one that builds this temple, this great, magnificent temple for God. And God chooses to dwell in this temple here on earth. The God of heavens, the God who has created the heavens and the earth is. He says, I will choose to put my name on this place and dwell in the temple in your midst.

Truly, the nation of Israel was a beautiful thing. They were called to live for God, to be his people, his treasured nation. They were called to absolutely be the ones that were the people between whom God and the rest of humanity was connected to, how they connected God to the rest of humanity. And so that was to be the job of the nation of Israel. They failed it that many times.

Solomon for sure, did. The son of King David, Solomon, builds this temple, and yet he married, it says, many foreign women. And they were women that the problem wasn't that they were foreign. It's that they had different gods that they worshiped and those gods they brought with them. And Solomon marries those women, brings their idols and their gods with them, and he begins to not only allow them to honor their gods, but he also begins to bow down to them.

And he encourages the people to do so, building shrines and temples for some of them. And so, as such, the people of Israel began to kind of wander off from the holiness that God had called them to live in. And then Solomon dies. His son takes over the throne, and he has this thing with the people where they're like, hey, you know, your dad, Solomon, he was kind of harsh on us. He wanted to build all these things, and he made us his slaves, and he took all of our money doing it.

It wasn't cool. Can. Can you maybe lighten the burden on us a little bit? Like lower taxes and not make us slaves of the government? Anybody Tyranny.

Okay, all right, sorry. Anyway, so he's like, I don't know, maybe. Let me think about it. So he talks to some of the older men, his father's advisors, and he's like, what do you guys think? And they're like, listen, if you give them their demands, in this case, they will serve you for life, and you'll be doing just fine.

He's like, I don't know. Let me talk to some of my buddies. He talks to his buddies and they're like, I don't know about that, man. Listen, I'll tell you what. You tell them that you're much bigger and stronger than your father ever was, and that if he stung you with whips, you'll sting him with scorpions.

And it's like, I guess that's a threat. I don't know. Anyway, so he tells them that. And the people are like, we don't need this. We're out of here.

There's 12 tribes of Israel, 10 of them take off. They're like, we're fine. So you had this northern and southern kingdom of Israel split, not like the north and south in the United States, our civil war, but it was the northern and the southern portions. They split off. And so they get their own king in the north, and they get their own kings in the south in Judah.

And the thing that Judah, the southern kingdom, has going for it is they have the temple there. This is the place where you go to worship God. So what does the other kingdom do? They don't want their citizens having to come down to the neighboring nation. Even though it's their brothers, they don't want them coming down there to worship God because that might destabilize their nation's security.

So what the king does, this first king of the northern kingdom, named Jeroboam, he decides that what he's going to do is he's going to break the first commandment and he's going to say, you know what? Here is your God, this golden calf. This is what God looks like. You just worship at this golden calf and you'll be fine. He puts one at the southern end, one at the northern end.

Makes it convenient, you know, Both ends of the kingdom, whichever you're closest to, just go worship there. You ever had that, like, convenience religion where you just say, you know what? I'm looking for a church. I want one that says these things and does these things and has these events for me? Because that's what I'm looking for.

You don't say, lord, where do you want me to go? Where I can serve you? Where I can be challenged not only to grow in you and grow in the way I serve you, but also where I can be discipled and make a disciple for you. Like, where somebody can teach me and I can teach somebody else. People don't really do that often enough.

They just say, like, this one's close by. It took me six minutes to get here. Pastor said some funny stuff, but also had some good things to say, and the people were friendly and the coffee wasn't terrible, I guess. I like that one. Like, we have this shopping mindset so often where we're looking for the best deal for our situation.

And really what God's trying to say is like, listen, I want you to grow, to serve, to go to train and disciple. Like, I want you. I don't just want you to sit here and like, be like, oh, that was good, pastor. Good message. Yeah.

And like, where did it challenge you? Where did. Where did. Where did the pastor. Where me?

Whoever it is, open the word of God and explained it and preached it and proclaimed it in such a way that you heard from the spirit of God speaking to you and saying, this. This part was for you. This is the part that you're not doing right. Or this is where I want to mold you and shape you into something that I can use to reach more people with the sake of the gospel. And so we've got these kings, Jeroboam, in the northern kingdom.

He's got the two worship centers. But then that's not enough. The kings, he, and the kings after him. They decide, you know, it's still a little bit far. Let's go ahead and make some mini worship centers.

Anytime there's a nice big tall hill with. With a spreading tree over it, let's just go ahead and put a little shrine there, and people can go do their thing there. They can burn incense or offer some sacrifice to God. But God becomes kind of this, like, ambiguous, unknown thing. I've been to churches before where they spoke of God as if it was just kind of a thought or an idea and not the king of the universe who created the whole thing.

Have you ever visited a place like that or heard somebody, maybe a preacher online? And it sounds like he talks a whole lot about a guy that he doesn't know even a little bit. You ever caught that? I went to a church and it was interesting. They never spoke the name of Jesus Christ because Jesus is controversial.

Jesus says, I came to bring a sword between people. What I thought Jesus was love and grace and acceptance. Oh, absolutely. But he also said he came to bring a sword. What's the Sword do, it divides.

It's almost like a surgeon's scalpel that cuts between things. And what he's saying is, I'm going to cut between what's real and what's not. I want to remove the things that aren't real. I want to remove the things that are harmful and that are bad. And praise God that he does that.

But this church wouldn't even speak the name of Jesus. They just kind of use this ambiguous reference to God, an impersonal God, really. They're like, well, God wants us to do this and God wants us to do that. And there's really nothing behind it. It was a powerless, empty religion that they were proclaiming.

So this is what's going on in Israel. And they'd have a bunch of bad kings in a row, and then every now and then they would have a good king, a king who said, you know what? We're going to get rid of all this stuff. And they would destroy the high places and they would cut out all these cult religious things that they would do. But they all left behind one thing, the golden calves.

It says the sins of Jeroboam that he led Israel to commit. And that's interesting to me. The king, the guy at the top, was living in a specific sin and he had led in that sin, but that led the people to follow him. Now we all like to think, well, I'm my own person. Nobody tells me how to live.

Nobody. I forge my own path, right? Like, I've got a don't tread on me plate on the back of my truck. What does that even mean? I don't know.

I love it. I'm fine with that. But I just, I just, I like the way the plate looked on my truck. It's a black truck and it was a black license plate with a little yellow snake thing. You know, it's like, don't tread on me.

And I love that sentiment. But still, at the same time, it's like, who, who am I really saying that to? Am I just saying that because some of you guys will like it and we'll feel pretty tight together, you know, like, hey, he's like us, you know, listen, people are always thinking that they're not influenced by someone or something else, yet we are. And the people were led astray by this king who had led Israel into sin and kings after him. They were so unwilling to do the unpopular thing that they wouldn't speak out against it.

Nobody would tear down these golden calves and say, no, we're worshiping the One true God, Yahweh, the God and king of Israel. I'm not really the king. I'm just his viceroy. I'm just his man that's leading the people. He's the one true king.

Nobody had the guts to do that. So along comes this guy named Ahab. Ahab is, to date, the worst of the worst. He is the absolute most vile, despicable, terrible king that Israel has had in their nation's history so far. And I want to give you just a little character profile, this between Ahab and Jezebel, and then tell you what happens in this history.

Ahab was this guy that I believe it was his father or grandfather had murdered a king and took the throne. And then Ahab later becomes the king. Like, that's how they do it sometimes, right? Ahab, though, what he ends up displaying is a weakness of character. He does go out to war and goes out to battle sometimes, but he's in a chariot, he's dressed in his royal robes, and he's by no means on the front lines fighting.

He's kind of hanging back, just kind of seeing how it goes. And he'll, like, tell some of his generals what to do, but he really hangs back where it's nice and safe. He's a weak man. And what he ends up doing was he picks this neighboring nation to the north of them called Sidon, the Sidonians. And he gets in a little bit tight with this king named Ethbaal, which means with baal.

B aal. BAAL is a foreign God known especially to the Sidonians, but to other nations that followed suit. And BAAL is the God that is related to the female goddess Ashtoreth or Astarte. She has different names in different areas, but these different people worship this God that they had made up. And she's like this female counterpart deity to baal.

Now, the interesting thing is this king of the Sidonians, his name is Ethbaal, means with BAAL or allied with baal. But he, before he was a king, he had actually been a priest in the worship of Ashtoreth, which was normally female priestesses in that cult religion. And so it's interesting that he's the man that's this, like, the one male priest with all these female priestesses around him. And then he becomes the king who thinks that this guy is going to be real strong, like, you know, kind of this real strong alpha male kind of guy. This Eth Bail guy?

Anybody? Probably not. It wasn't the environment. He was Around. But what he does is he has a daughter named Jezebel.

Now, Jezebel follows in her father's footsteps, of course, but he makes this deal with King Ahab of Israel that Ahab will marry Jezebel, and now they have a political alliance because it's like, you know, I'm not going to attack you and you're not going to attack me. We've got this one thing in common, you know, I married your daughter, so you're not going to attack my people because, you know, that hurts her. And I'm not going to attack your people because you're her father. And she. She won't be happy with me if I do that.

So, you know, it's just like, I'll keep the peace with you. So this is their peace treaty that they have. Now, Ahab, what he ends up doing, he has this alliance. He's a weak man. He has this alliance with a pagan king.

He invited more idolatry into the land of Israel than the kings before him had done. Idolatry is basically when you say, you know what? I could just worship the God that has saved us, the God that has called us to him, the one true God. But instead, I'm going to worship an idol. I'm going to worship an idea.

I'm going to worship something that I believe gives me security or provision, that because God isn't enough for me, people look at God and they say, you know what? God is capable of doing a few things for me, but when God doesn't follow through with what I want him to do, I'm going to go looking for something else. And they raise up an idol, and they say, I'll worship this. I'll give my life to this idol, and then it'll give me what I want. That's the mentality or the idea that people have.

And so King Ahab invites more idolatry into the land. And. And also he starts, like, you know, not just inviting it in, but he starts encouraging the people to follow suit. And he ends up, of course, marrying Jezebel. She's not just this pagan, like, from a priestess family of a pagan God.

She's kind of a seductress, a temptress. I'm not using some words that I really want to use. She's a hoe, though. Okay. Can I say that?

Is that all right? Some of you are like, no, it's not. I get some thumbs up, though, Emma. Is that cool? All right.

She's good with it. She had a couple Barbie dolls I'm like, that one's a real ho because her skirt was, like, real short, you know? So you guys don't like that? Okay, fine. We'll go on.

What Ahab does, though, is as the king, he abdicates his authority and gives it to Jezebel. By the way, the scripture calls her worse than what I just did. They say she's a whoring idolater. So that's why I figure I can call her a ho. It's a shorter version of it.

Ha, ha. Got you, guys. You thought that I was just being kind of gross up here. Nope. Bible says it so.

Ha, ha. But he abdicates his authority and gives it to Jezebel. Now, that's not what the king's supposed to do. The king isn't supposed to take his authority and give it to someone else. They are to work under his authority.

They can work within his authority. A king or a president, for that matter. They can send an ambassador to another nation with certain amounts of the authority of the king, but they can't really, like, do the king's job. And I kind of put in the notes something that ends up happening here. Jezebel at one point takes Ahab's signet ring.

That's like his signature. You put that on a document, they put a little wax seal on there and put the signet ring on it, and it's got his little stamp, and therefore it becomes a law or a decree of some kind. And I was half joking, but I said, it's kind of like if a president let somebody write stuff and sign it with an auto pen. That wouldn't happen. I know that would never happen in our country.

But anyway. So what Ahab ends up doing, though, is he gets kind of depressed about some things that he feels are beyond his control, and he starts pouting about it. There's a couple places where it says, he went home vexed and sullen. That sounds like the name for a good emo band. For those of you who know what emo is.

It's the people that are kind of like a lot of dark colors and are sad about things, and they write it in their songs. Vexed and Sullen. Doesn't it sound good, Tom? It's a good name for a band. I like it.

So he goes home vexed and sullen because things aren't going his way. He just kind of starts getting depressed over it. And his wife is like, aren't you the king? He's like, well, yeah. She's like, okay, just give me A ring.

I'll take care of it. And she goes and has a guy murdered. And she's like, here, I took care of it for you. Now everything's good. That's the kind of woman she was.

See, Jezebel, she comes in, she brings in idols. Here's her little character profile. She brings in idols, and she also goes about killing the prophets of God. Hundreds of them, thousands of them. She kills God's prophets.

Now, I know. I know that there's no nation on this earth that would try to shut down the churches. There's no time in our history where they would ever tell people that you can't go to church. There's not a time in the last five years where they would say, hey, churches aren't a good place for you to be. You can gather outdoors as long as you've got a sign protesting something, but you can't be in a church, right?

You hear what's happening here? She shuts down the worship of God. She kills his prophets. And. And then.

And I know this would never happen either in our land. She starts emasculating the men around her, like literally. She makes eunuchs out of the men that are serving around her. She cuts them off and she keeps them from being able to be the men that they have the potential of being. I know that nobody would ever take a whole generation of people, men and women, and cut off their ability to fulfill the biological roles in which God had created them.

Right? Never would we let that happen. Remember, those who don't understand history are doomed to allow it to repeat. We've been seeing some of these things in our land, but what she did was she stole the king's authority, her husband. And she begins thinking that she's the one that's in charge.

And she began acting as if she were in charge and not the king that God had allowed to be on the throne. She. She murdered not only the prophets. She murdered a guy named Naboth. That was the time she stole the king's ring because he wanted the guy's vineyard.

And he said, well, that's the inheritance for my children. How could I look at God and sell this? I don't have the right to sell it. And so the king was vexed and sullen about that. She goes home and she writes this letter, has a banquet throne.

They said, invite Naboth. Have him sit at a place of honor, but then have two scoundrels come up and speak against him. They were probably the fact checker websites of the day. I hate those things. Have you ever read one of those?

They're like, well, actually, that's not true, because blah, blah, blah. And it's like you just made up lies to try to prove your point. And that's what these guys did. They said, we heard that Naboth cursed God and the king. Well, he didn't.

That was a lie. There were scoundrels. They're worthless men. But the people listened to the worthless men instead of the one. That was the one man that stood for the truth and that stood for God.

And so they took him out, they executed him. They stoned him, throwing rocks at him. They didn't give him a joint. They stoned him. They threw rocks at him until he was dead.

And then she said, take your property. The man that owned it is dead. She killed his sons off, too. It doesn't tell that in the story. It tells it later.

She not only killed Naboth, but then went after his sons, his whole family. So there was no inheritance. No inheritance to take the land, nobody to inherit it. And so the king took it. And as he goes there, the prophet comes up and meets him and he says, have you murdered.

It's just a funny way of saying it. Have you done the murdering? And the king says, oh, so you found me, O enemy of mine. He says, I'm not your enemy. And so this is what is going on with Jezebel and with Ahab.

Jezebel used the godly religion when it suited her, though. She. She said, this man cursed God and the king. Oh, all of a sudden you care if somebody's cursing God? You were killing his prophets over here, but now you want to use God when it benefits you.

Now, again, I know that nobody, there was no, like, no politicians, no presidents would ever start to invoke the name of God when it suits them, right? And kind of ignore him the rest of the time. You guys aren't cynical enough with me here. Seriously, like, okay, like, these people, they lie to us constantly, and they're like, oh, well, God would. Blah, blah, blah.

And it's like. Like you don't care about God at all the rest of the time, but when it suits you, when you want to get a bill passed, when you want to get reelected, you'll all bring up the name of God as if you're just right there with us common folk that worship God. We're not the same. And by the way, you think, oh, yeah, yeah, those people in that party. Look, folks, I didn't say any party.

I'm talking about both of them. And they're kind of like one big party when you think of it. You know, they all are kind of really the same when it comes down to it on some of these things. And we can't really. We can't fall for it anymore and say, oh, these people have our best interest at heart.

See that one they talked about God, or that one talked about God. Oh, yes, big talk. We can all talk about God quite a bit. So what does God do about this? God selects a prophet to come and anoint a man.

He had already told the great prophet Elijah that this was going to happen. And Elijah anoints a man named Elisha to be his successor. And Elisha is the one that sends this man. But it's in fulfillment of the word of God from a few years before. And this prophet goes, and he finds the commanders of the army of Israel, and they're just hanging out together.

Now, it's not because they didn't have enemies. It's not because there weren't wars going on around them. It's because they didn't have a leader that was leading them. They. They didn't have a king who was following the ways of God and leading faithfully.

So these generals are there, the army's camped out. The generals are just sitting there with no orders, nothing to do, and they're just hanging out. And they're probably under some little shade things, canopy or something, and there's a house or a building attached to it, but they're hanging out outside and they're just sitting there. And this prophet comes up and he says, I have a message for you, commander. And they said, which one of us?

Apparently there was several commanders there. Like, the commanders of the army are sitting there with no marching orders. And he says, for you, Jehu. So he goes inside, he's like, what is it? He says, pour some oil on his head.

It wasn't like a mean thing. It was olive oil. It was his anointing oil. And he says, you're the next king of Israel. God wants you to fulfill what he told Elijah that would be done, and that's to eliminate the house of Ahab.

Now, at this point in our story, Ahab has passed away and his son is leading the nation, but Jezebel is still alive. That's the part that we're going to pick up on as we read the scripture. Jehu's just been anointed, and he gets all the generals behind him and the armies behind him, and he takes off. Now we're going to be in Second Kings. It's a book in your Old Testament, your Bible.

And it will also be on the screenshot. And we're going to be in chapter nine, starting in verse 17. Now, mind you, he's been anointed to be the king, but there's still a king that's alive. So that guy's got to be eliminated and also all of his offspring. Now he.

He's been anointed. He gets with the other generals in the army, and they start taking off, and he's driving his chariot. And we see in verse 17, they pull up to this town called Jezreel. Jezreel is a town that Ahab, excuse me, that Ahab had built up in order for it to be a center of idolatry, of idol worship, of worship of BAAL and Ashtoreth. Now, the watchman was standing on the tower in Jezreel, and he saw Jehu's troops approaching.

He said, I see troops. Jehoram. There was, by the way, the king of Israel and of Judah were hanging out together at the time. They had allied themselves for a while to fight neighboring enemies. But they were just hanging out in Jezreel because they had gotten some wounds inflicted, and they're just, you know, healing up for a while.

So where was I? At Jehu's troops approaching. He said, I see troops. Jehoram ordered, that was the king. He said, send a rider out to meet them and have him ask, is everything all right?

So the horsemen went out to meet him and said, this is what the king says. Is everything all right? I love this response. Jehu replied, none of your business. Follow me.

Some of your translations might say, what do you and I have to do with peace? Fall in behind me. In other words, I'm a man of war. What do I know about peace? Get behind me.

So the guy falls in behind him, and the watchman reports he's reached them, but he hasn't come back. The one who drives the lead chariot drives like Jehu, son of Nimshi. He drives recklessly. I think I skipped a part. He sent a second horseman out, and the same thing happens.

So he says, yeah, the second horseman's gone out there, but he drives recklessly like Jehu, son of Nimshi. Some of you might have that reputation. Anybody have a reputation of driving recklessly? Anyone? You're not going to admit it already too much.

That's a good time. I saw this video, and it showed tracks on the pavement, and the guy's like, look at this.

And there was this car tipped on his side in a ditch. And it was just this hilarious video. It's like, that's reckless driving. You get a reputation. After that, Jehu had a reputation of driving his chariot recklessly.

I don't know how you do that, but it's amazing to me. His driving was well known in days of horses and chariots. And so they said, well, we think it's Jehu, son of Nimshi. In other words, he's on our side. So King Jehoram orders, hitch up my chariot.

When his chariot had been hitched up, King Jehoram of Israel, which would be King Ahab's son, by the way, and King Ahaziah of Judah went out in their respective chariots to meet Jehu. They met up with him in the plot of land that had once belonged to Naboth of Jezreel, the man with the vineyard that Jezebel had killed. When Jehoram saw Jehu, he asked, is everything all right, Jehu? He replied, how can everything be all right as long as. Now, I hate this version that I'm reading from for this one reason.

I told you what it says earlier, and I'm gonna translate it for you right now. Live on. You know, kind of live translations. How can there be peace when the whoring idolatries of your mother, Jezebel, abound in the land? This one softened it up.

And it's like, how can there be peace when Jezebel is still alive? That's not what it says. He uses some very coarse words against this guy's mama. He wasn't even telling a mama joke. He was just saying, this is who your mom is.

She has a reputation, and it's well deserved. Any of you grew up on the playground telling mama jokes? Don't raise your hand on that one.

That's your mother's. Come on. You know. Anyway, when Jehoram saw Jehu, he asked, is everything all right? How can it all be all right?

Jehoram turns in his chariot around and took off. He said to Ahaziah, it's a trap, Ahaziah. And for those of you nerds, you'll like what I put on the screen. It's from Star Wars. Anyway, don't worry about it.

Skip down to verse 30. They go and they take care of some people, kill some people, all this stuff. Verse 30. Jehu approached Jezreel. When Jezebel heard the news, she put on some eyeliner, fixed up her hair, and leaned out the window.

Now, she's got some miles on her at this point, but she's thinking maybe, just maybe, if I pretty myself up enough, this guy who's going on a rampage to kill all the king and the king's family, maybe, just maybe, he'll accept me to be part of his harem and part of his life, and I can still have my position of power. She's trying to cling on to the last little bit that she has. She beautifies herself up as much as she can. Verse 31. When Jehu came through the gate, she said, is everything all right?

Zimri, murderer of his master. That would have been Ahab's. I forget if it's his father or grandfather was Zimri who had killed his master. He looked up at the window and said, who is on my side? Who?

Two or three eunuchs. Remember the guys that she had emasculated. This is their chance to shine.

Two or three eunuchs looked down at him. He said, throw her down. So they threw her down. You ready, Emma? Alright.

This is her favorite part of the story. I tell her these stories at bedtime. So they threw her down. And when she hit the ground, her blood splattered against the wall and the horses. And Jehu drove his chariot over her.

He wanted to make sure she was dead. Like, that's double dead, guys. He went inside and had a meal. Now, I did say this is my, like, mildly chauvinistic joke. Since her husband had been dead, she made all these sandwiches, but there was nobody to eat them.

So there was just a pile of sandwiches there. And I promised her I would tell that joke. She loves it anyway. No, they went in, they ate a meal, and then he said, dispose of this accursed woman's corpse. Bury her.

For after all, she was a king's daughter. But then they went to bury her, and they found nothing left but the skull, the feet and the palms of her hands. When they went back and told him, he said, the Lord's word through his servant Elijah the Tishbite, and has come to pass. In other words, it came true. He warned, in the plot of land at Jezreel, dogs will devour Jezebel's flesh.

Jezebel's corpse will be like the manure on the surface of the ground in the plot of land at Jezreel. People will not even be able to recognize her. Don't you love your Bible? Some people say, I don't know, there's nothing interesting in there. I've Read it before.

I don't know. Have you? Like, I read it for years before I realized that they rode over her with the horse and chariot. I just knew they threw her out. But then I'm reading it one day and it said, and blood splattered on the wall and on the hooves of the horses as they went over her.

I'm like, they rode over her. Oh, my goodness. Like, they really wanted to make sure that this lady wasn't coming back to life. You know, like, you've all seen the movie, you know, where it was like this shootout and one guy's down for the count. You think, okay, we'll just move along.

And then, like, he's like, last breath, he raises up, you know, and shoots somebody. You're like, ah, you didn't finish him off. Rookie move. You know, it's Hollywood for you. They weren't going to take any chances with this woman.

As soon as they run over her, they go inside, they eat. And he's like, oh, we should probably bury her. I mean, her dad was a king. Is only respectful, you know, Like, I respect the office, not the person, that kind of thing. And so they went to do that.

But God had already acted, you see, he had said, I'm going to make sure that nobody can go and even visit the burial place of Jezebel. I'm going to make sure that the dogs eat her. And as the dogs go out and drop their excrement off in the fields, as wild dogs do, then Jezebel's remains are essentially scattered all over. That's what God said. And that's what happens.

Believe me, whatever things you've heard me say, and you're like, I think he shouldn't have said that joke. Guess what? The Bible says it a lot darker and bloodier than I ever have, so don't be too mad at me. God wrote these words.

Here's the point of all of this. Like, I struggle with this story. Not with understanding and now with comprehending it, not with having a bunch of things that I would love to say to you people, but time ticks down, and I don't want to keep you here all day. Some churches do that in different cultures. They're there for hours.

You guys aren't ready for that. I am. You're not. I could keep going. I tell people I talk for a living.

I'm a pastor, you know, Like, I can keep talking.

I want to talk to our men and to our women for a little bit. Guys, there's some things that were happening Then that I see happening a lot now.

King Ahab was to be the one that was in power. He was the king. He was God's king over those people. And even when he was wicked and evil, God still allowed him to retain that throne for a while. But there was a time limit on it.

In fact, the prophet had come to him and told him that his end was near to not just him, but his dynasty, his family line. And the king actually began to repent then. And as he did that, God said, okay, this is still something that is firmly decreed, but I won't have it happen in your lifetime. I will allow you to pass in relative peace. I mean, he died in war, but he didn't see his whole family destroyed.

And it was years later. And for all I know, they had plenty of time to repent, but nobody would do it. Ahab's son wouldn't stand up to his mother. He still allowed her to have her influence in this case. And folks, this goes beyond the realm of honor thy father and mother.

You see, she was totally dishonoring God and she had killed his prophets and made it essentially impossible for people to even find God had they wanted to. And she does all of this and nobody puts a stop to it. Where were the men? Where was the king? The king that was supposed to be the one following God, who God had told them the first thing the king was to do was to write down his own personal copy of the law of God.

When he becomes king, he'll have the scribes that kept the word of God and literally kept it, like protected the scrolls of the Word of God. They were to read it to the king and he would in his own hand write out the Scriptures. And he was supposed to do that. And then he was supposed to read it every day and dwell within it and have it richly in his heart. So many times, men, we abdicate our responsibility to the Word of God, we get busy with other things.

Sometimes it's what we call providing for our family and protecting them. Sometimes it's just we're simply exhausted from doing those things. Sometimes it's the pressures of life, whatever it may be, and we neglect the place, the position, the power of the Word of God in our lives. Men, see, the Scriptures tell us over and over God has told us that we are to be what's considered the head. Now, headship does not mean ultimate power and authority.

And my wife and my family must do what I say. That's not at all what that means. And I apologize if you've had somebody in your life as a man who. Who thought that that's what that meant and tried to rule over you and dominate you women in that way. It's not what the word of God says because they missed the next part that says, men, you're to be the head of your wife as Christ is the head of the church.

He gave himself up for her. He died for her. In other words, Jesus gave everything to provide for the sanctity of the church. Christ has done everything for you. Because of that, I follow Jesus Christ.

See, I can serve Jesus Christ because he has served me to the utmost of anyone's ability in a way that nobody else ever would. Jesus Christ gave his life for you and for me. God loves you. Jesus loves you so much that he gave everything for you. Nobody else can do that.

Nobody else will do that. Men, you are to love your wives in that way. And then women, you have been endowed with so much beauty and grace. You really have.

And in that there's no parallel to it. There's nothing that men can ever do, no matter even what they're told today that, well, a man can become a woman. It's like they might dress up like one, they might act like one, they might change their name, they might change their physical makeup of their body. But women, we can never be you. We can't be.

The loving heart. The grace and the beauty that you have is something that men could never accomplish. You're unparalleled, but you are to hold your husbands up. If he is the head, you've got to support him. Sometimes the best way to support him is when you say, you know what?

I'm going to lead in prayer. I'm going to set the example. I'm going to spend time. If he thinks he's too busy, I'm going to spend that time. And I'm not going to try to weaponize the word of God and I'm studying it and then say, well, you know, husband, what the word says is this.

You're not living up to it. Don't do that. You lead in such a way, you serve him in such a way that you spend time in the Word. You spend time on your knees in prayer before God, seeking the face and heart of God. And through that, your husband will receive the blessings that you have been affording him in that way.

Some women I've known that have prayed for years that their husbands would come to Christ, that they would come to know God. I know there's some men that are in this room today because of that, women don't ever stop the man that you want him to be. You have to spend time on your knees in prayer for him to become that man.

What will never happen, though, is we'll never be the people God created us to be for tolerating the spirit that was in Jezebel. If we're allowing this thing, like, there's this thing that goes on in our world where they try to say that masculinity is toxic. Oh, for sure. There's been some men that have definitely been abusive physically or with their words. They're verbally abusive, whatever it might be.

There's some character traits of men that aren't desirable or godly. And men, it's time for us to stop those things. You stop giving your life to things that are stealing life from you. You might be addicted to something. You might be giving your strength to pornography, to illicit drugs, to.

To drunkenness. You might be giving your strength, your masculinity away to some of these things. And you're robbing your family of the gifts that God has called you to have. Man. It's time for that to stop.

Women, men who might be single, whether it's widowed, divorced, not married yet, never married. I wasn't trying to make this a little closing sermonette thing on marriage in general. I did talk about what men and women are supposed to do within those roles. But if you're not in one of those roles where you're married to somebody else doesn't mean that you don't have some type of a purpose here in this. Like, it's not.

Doesn't mean it's not talking to you. You see, what your job, what you have, is the opportunity to be a voice within society that actually stands up for biblical masculinity and biblical femininity. These are things that God created us to have within us. He created us to have these spiritual roles. You see, what's going on is there's a spiritual battle in our world.

It's disguised as a cultural battle. And there are people that get caught up in cultural wars. I get tempted too, as well. Oh, I see these cultural things that are happening, and so I want to speak out against them. Well, what do I do?

I have a podium, a pulpit thing. I can talk from up here. Well, that doesn't change that stuff very much. So. So I want to get on Facebook.

I want to make videos or comment on other people's stuff. That doesn't change it very much, does it? People get entrenched in their belief system more and more. But every chance you have to stand up, to speak up, to be, and to encourage others to be the people God designed and created us to be, we see a difference that happens in our world when we do that.

This war that seems like a cultural war is actually a spiritual battle that's been going on for a long time. A few thousand years ago, you got Ahab and Jezebel and their story here in the scripture and what might have seemed to people like a little bit of a cultural battle, like, well, you have your religion and we have ours. That wasn't true at all. There was the one true religion, the worship of the one true God. And those people were killed and they were sent to their graves as martyrs for their faith because Jezebel couldn't tolerate the worship of God in her land.

We see similar things today. Although Christians aren't being put to death in this country, it's happening around the world. But in this country, for a long time, people have said that if you're a Christian, especially a Christian male, that's like the worst thing that they can ever imagine. A Christian man who worships Jesus Christ is the worst thing that the spirit behind Jezebel, the Jezebel spirit, whatever you want to call it, that's the worst thing that it can imagine is a man who will stand up and worship God and lead his family in that way. Because so many times, if you've been in church a long time, you've seen a woman maybe bring her kids to church, but we never see the husband, we never see the father around, and we say, well, what's going on?

But as soon as that man gets serious and gives his heart to Christ and starts leading his family like God designed him, oh, you better watch out, things start changing in that household, things start changing in the world. Amen. So this is why Satan doesn't want you to hear this today. This is why Satan doesn't want us to be able to process what's going on in the scripture. He wants you to think, well, that's just an old story.

Doesn't have anything to do with today. Believe me, I held back on some of the parallels that I see between this story and our world today. Because I don't try to be political and I'm not trying. Like, I get that way sometimes, or I try not to be. I try not to just say, well, here's what's wrong with the world today.

You guys know what's wrong with the world today, right? You see it and you feel It I want to show you that God knows that. And he's been talking about. And he's been trying to tell us about it for a long time.

But I know that Jezebel spirit is still alive and well today because it was alive and well in the time of Jesus Christ. You know, after Jesus had died, rose again, and ascended into heaven. A few years later, he met with. He brought one of his old apostles, a guy named John, and he brings him in a vision up to heaven and he shows him some things and he says, you know what? I want you to write a letter to some of these churches.

He gives them seven churches in particular, but the letters were shared more broadly to other neighboring congregations. And he has this one church in a town called Thyatira, and he speaks to them and he says, you know, there's some things that you're doing well, but there's one thing that I really hold against you. You tolerate that wicked woman, Jezebel. Now, it wasn't the Jezebel from our story. That was hundreds of years ago.

She is double dead. Remember? Gone, gone. All right? It's not her.

She's not alive. But the spirit behind her was alive and well in the church of Jesus Christ. And this spirit, this thing that was there was a woman that seemed to be somehow influenced, inspired. I don't know if she was somehow actually possessed by a demonic spirit. I don't know what the story was, but somehow she was following in the ways of Jezebel and she was in the midst of the church and leading the church to sin against God.

She was telling them, you know what, this whole, like, Satan thing isn't that big of a deal. Sin isn't quite as big as that preacher tells you. In fact, I'll tell you what you should do is you should just dabble in sin a little bit. Like, if you guys just push your way into sin just a little bit, you'll understand it better. If you just sin just a little bit, you'll understand what people are going through, and then you'll know how to relate to them better.

Maybe you'll be able to share Christ with them if you know what they're actually doing. That's the Jezebel spirit, and she's on undermining the teaching of the word of God that's going on. And folks, I see this in the church all the time. I see some of my brothers as pastors that are falling to these things and they're proclaiming things that like people that are in our own denomination in the Nazarene Church that are preaching things that I say that is inspired truly by the spirit of Jezebel that has no place in the word of God. And so I see what's going on here is that Jesus had told his church to get rid of Jezebel.

He had Jehu make sure she was double dead. As if we should have gotten the message the first time. But we allow the Jezebel spirit to keep coming back. I've seen it alive and well in this nation over the last several years, and I see that it's still going on. She just won't let go.

So what do we do? Like, like what? How do we stand up to this? How do we deal with this? The first thing I believe is to open your eyes to what's around you.

And then men and women remember the role that God created you to have. This is the last thing I'll say. I think in the Garden of Eden, the first couple chapters of your Bible, there's a guy named Adam and his wife named Eve. And they're in the garden. Everything's great.

Should it continue being great? But then Satan comes up and he tempts Eve and he gives her an idea and he gives her a plan. And he says, if you just do this, you'll become like God yourself and you'll be able to decide for yourself what is good and what is evil. And she likes that idea. She takes a hold of the fruit, she eats it in direct opposition to the word of God, the command of God.

And then it says, she takes some and gives it to her husband who was with her. So we say, who sinned first?

Maybe. Where was Adam this whole time? Right there with her. He just stood by passively like, like, just beta male Adam standing there, where. While Eve is taking a role as the leader, the head of their relationship, and saying, okay, I'm deciding spiritually what we're going to do now.

I'm deciding in our world that we're going to do this thing now. God told us that. Adam, you told me that God told us that because Eve wasn't alive yet. Like, he hadn't made her yet. It was just Adam that God had said, don't eat from the tree in the middle of the garden.

But now he's told Eve. And Eve goes up and she says, no, I guess we're eating this now. I'm eating some. And here you have some. He says, I guess I have to now, you know, you said so.

Hmm. Man, guys, like, we've. We pile a lot of stuff on Eve, but they don't call it the sin of Eve. It's the Adamic sin, that sinful nature that dwells in us, man. We've received that from Adam when we've abdicated our responsibilities within our marriages, within our families and within society.

Women. I'm not saying that you can't be like leading in ways. I'm not saying though that there should be the ceiling for what? None of that. Not saying any of that.

Haters online, say what you want, I don't care. You're not here. I don't have to look at you, you know, like, fine, but here's the deal, men. God has given you a responsibility. He's giving you a calling and he's giving you a purpose.

When you abdicate that responsibility, Satan starts knowing who he can go after next. And he's going to use a person, he's going to use a situation, he's going to use a scenario. He's going to start talking to our family, he's going to start talking to our wives and our children. He's going to start slithering through society and saying, you know, God doesn't really care if you do this.

Jesus does care. The good news is that through Christ we have been empowered to stand against Satan. We've been empowered to live out the roles that God. God has created us to live. The days of Jezebel's spirit are over.

If you're joining us online but you have never attended in person, let us know that you're watching by leaving a comment. And please give us a thumbs up on the video. If there's any way we can pray for you or if you would like to know a little bit more about this church or, or a relationship with Jesus, text us at 839-792-6 and be sure to check out our website at cfnfamily. Org. Thanks for watching and we pray that God blesses you this week.