Before our New Testament reading, we will go once again to Luke’s gospel. Please turn to chapter one. And our reading will be verses 26 through 33. Luke one, 26 through 33. Listen to this. This is the very word of God. In the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph of the house of David and the Virgin’s name was Mary. And he came to her and said, greetings, oh favored one, the Lord is with you. But she was greatly troubled at the saying and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be. And the angel said to her, do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God and behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever. And of his kingdom, there will be no end. And then for our Old Testament reading and the text for this evening’s message, we come to the end of 1 Kings. So please turn to 1 Kings chapter 22. And our reading will be verses 41 to 53. 1 Kings 22, 41 to 53. Yehoshaphat, the son of Asa, began to reign over Judah in the fourth year of Ahab, king of Israel. Yehoshaphat was 35 years old when he began to reign, and he reigned 25 years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Azuba, the daughter of Shelhi. He walked in all the way of Asa, his father.
He did not turn aside from it, doing what was right in the sight of the Lord. Yet the high places were not taken away and the people still sacrificed and made offerings on the high places. Yehoshaphat also made peace with the king of Israel. Now the rest of the acts of Yehoshaphat and his might that he showed and how he warred, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah? And from the land, he exterminated the remnant of the male cult prostitutes who remained in the days of his father Asa. There was no king in Edom. The deputy was king.
Yehoshaphat made ships of Tarshish to go to Ophir for gold, but they did not go, for the ships were wrecked at Eze-on-Geber. Then Ahaziah, the son of Ahab, said to Yehoshaphat, let my servants go with your servants in the ships. But Yehoshaphat was not willing. And Jehoshaphat slept with his fathers and was buried with his fathers in the city of David, his father.
And Jehoram, his son, reigned in his place. Ahaziah, the son of Ahab, began to reign over Israel in Samaria in the 17th year of Jehoshaphat, king of Judah. And he reigned two years over Israel. He did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and walked in the way of his father and in the way of his mother. And in the way of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin, he served Baal and worshiped him and provoked the Lord, the God of Israel, to anger in every way that his father had done.
That’s the reading of God’s word. Let’s ask his blessing upon it now. Well, Father, thank you again for the Holy Scriptures. We thank you for these. Your spirit breathed annals of the kings of Israel and Judah. We know that they were written for our instruction, so we humbly pray that you would instruct us from them tonight. May Christ be honored and glorified. And may we be built up in our faith. We pray all this in Christ’s name, Amen.
What’s the difference between a real estate brochure and a home inspection report? One casts a house in the very best possible light. All the photos are taken from the best angles and try to make the place look as good as possible. The other exposes the deficiencies and flaws of a house. Beautiful color pictures from the most flattering angles are in those real estate brochures but in the home inspection you got up-close pictures of places where there might be water damage or a burned out fuse box or something. They’re different. They’re completely different because they’re created for completely different purposes. The real estate ad is published in order to try to sell a house. And the home inspection is published to show the deficiencies and flaws of a house.
The same difference can be observed between the annals of the kings of the nations of the world as opposed to the books of the kings that we find in the Holy Bible. The accounts of, and they’re written for similarly different purposes. The accounts of kings of the earth are written to glorify them. The accounts of the kings of Israel Judah were written to show their deficiencies by and large. The accounts of these kings are given to us here in the book of First Kings for more than just our historical curiosity. They are historical documents. They’re historically accurate, but they’re written for our instruction.
And they’re written to teach us that we need a better king. And so as we come to the end of the book of First Kings, we’ll be reminded that the inconsistent obedience of righteous kings and the persistent rebellion of wicked kings show us our need for Christ, the perfect king. I’ll say that again, because that’s the message of this text. In a way, it’s the message of the whole book of First Kings. The inconsistent obedience of righteous kings and the persistent rebellion of wicked kings show our need for Christ, the perfect king.
And we’re going to consider this under three headings, each of which pertains to a king who walked in the way of his father. So we’re going to see number one, Yehoshaphat walking in the way of his father. Number two, Ahaziah walking in the way of his father. And then we’re going to turn our sights and our attention to Christ walking in the way of his father. So first of all, we’ve got Yehoshaphat and the text says he walked in the way of his father.
If you are in that practice of using a Bible reading plan and thereby over some fixed period of time or consistently reading through the full counsel of God, you’re reading through your Bible on a reading calendar of some kind, you’re going to come to first and second Kings on a regular basis.
And if you’ve read those, books of the Bible, especially if you’ve read them more than just a couple of times, you begin to become familiar with standard formulas that appear in them as they give the accounts of the different kings that reigned in the northern kingdom and in the southern kingdom. And the formulas go something like this. In the nth year of so-and-so, king of either Israel or Judah, so-and-so began to reign in the other kingdom. And then you’ll be told how old in most cases you’ll be told how told how old the king was when he began to reign and you’ll be told the length of his reign.
And then once you get to that point. You might start to brace yourself for disappointment. Because the next thing that’s going to be said is he did evil in the sight of the Lord. Or he walked in the ways of Jeroboam, son of Nebat. And you sigh and you think again. Another one, another bad king, another evil king. Because the majority of the time, the performance evaluation given by the Holy Spirit in the books of Kings and in the books of Chronicles to for that matter, is he did evil in the sight of the Lord. Once in a while, you get a pleasant surprise, though.
Once in a while, you come across a king where it says he did what was right in the eyes of the Lord. And it’s especially nice if you get two good kings in a row, which is what we have here with Yehoshaphat. The text says Yehoshaphat did what was right in the sight of Yahweh, in the sight of the Lord. And Yehoshaphat did so, he did what was right, and he did it in all the same ways that his father Asa had done.
And as a matter of fact, he even surpassed his father in some respects. You see that particularly in verse 46, because there were these, at certain points in the history of the southern kingdom even, Judah, there were these cult prostitutes. And Asa, we read about how Asa got rid of them. He put them out of the land. He put them to death. But he didn’t apparently get all of them, but Yehoshaphat finished the job.
We can compare scripture with scripture to get more information about kings of Israel and of Judah. And we can learn more about Yehoshaphat and his reign and some of the good that he did by going to 2 Chronicles. And in 2 Chronicles chapter 20, we learn that the Lord God gave Judah some mighty victories.
And so when the text speaks of, our text this night speaks of how he warred, you can learn a little bit about that by turning to the book of Chronicles. Just as a reminder though, if you look with me at verse 45. when it says the rest of the Acts, how he warred, are they not written in the book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Judah? That is not a reference to what is in our Bibles as 1 Chronicles and 2 Chronicles. That’s reference to documents that we no longer have, that no longer exist as far as we’re aware. Those would have been the more thorough annals of the Kings of Judah. But we can turn to our inspired books of the Chronicles and learn a little bit more about Yehoshaphat.
And we find that the Edomites and the Ammonites and the Moabites formed a confederation and they waged war against Judah and God gave Jehoshaphat the victory over them, gave them a decisive victory such that from that point, that is why the text says there was no king in Edom because that king was deposed after he lost in battle to Judah and to Jehoshaphat. And so Jehoshaphat placed a governor there to rule Edom. You can also find in the books of Chronicles that Yehoshaphat did much to fortify the nation.
He built fortified cities. He strengthened them. He further organized the armies of Judah, did lots of stuff to help promote and ensure the security of his nation. These are great things. These are things that kings ought to do. But I think maybe the best of all that Yehoshaphat did was recorded for us in 2 Chronicles 17, seven through nine. Listen to this.
In the third year of his reign, he sent his officials, Ben Ha’il, Obadiah, Zechariah, Nathanael, and Micaiah to teach in the cities of Judah. And with them, the Levites, Shemaiah, Nethaniah, Zebediah, Asahel, Shemiramoth, Jehonathan, Adonijah, Tobijah, and Tobadonijah. And with these Levites, the priests, Elishamah and Jehoram. And they taught in Judah, having the book of the law of the Lord with them. They went about through all the cities of Judah and taught among the people.
Isn’t that wonderful? This King, Yehoshaphat, wanted the people of God to know the word of God. And he helped ensure that they did and would by sending teachers to the people. And so you see, that’s maybe of all the good that Yehoshaphat did, maybe that was one of the best things. And it shows that he was a good king. And he walked in the ways of Asa, his father, walked in the ways of his father, David, in that sense. But there is at least one caveat, and it’s a very common one, that tarnishes Yehoshaphat’s reign a little bit. And that’s found in verse 43. It says, the high places were not taken away. The end of verse 43 says, Yet the high places were not taken away, and the people still sacrificed and made offerings on the high places. Now, just as a reminder, these high places, as they’re called, those were places for worship of the Lord. Those were not, generally speaking, places where the people of Judah were worshiping idols. They were places where people would go and offer sacrifices to Yahweh. The problem is, that’s not where they were supposed to offer sacrifices.
So it’s kind of like one of those situations where we might be tempted to say, well, their heart was in the right place. They were worshiping the true and living God. They just weren’t doing it where God had told them they were supposed to do. You could think of that as an Old Testament 8th century BC violation of the regulative principle. They’re worshiping God, but they’re sort of worshiping him in ways other than he had prescribed. So it’s not idolatry in the strict sense.
Now I say this is a common caveat, even for the good kings of Judah, because there’s only one king in the history of the kings of Judah who actually successfully, after the divided kingdom, actually successfully removed the high places. That was Hezekiah. Hezekiah lived and reigned 150 years and seven kings after Jehoshaphat. And he finally got rid of the high places. They were taken away. And tragically, his son, who reigned immediately after him, rebuilt them all.
So we see there’s inconsistent and imperfect obedience among these righteous kings even. Now, the text tells us also about Yehoshaphat that he made peace with Israel. We saw that in verse 44. And especially since that comes right on the heels of the mention of the high places, that’s probably supposed to be interpreted as a deficiency, probably supposed to be understood as being a failing of his, this making a peace with Israel. It sounds good. Peace always sounds good. But at what cost? The wisdom of it, the wisdom of forming an alliance with Israel, with the Northern Kingdom, with Ahab, has already proven doubtful. We saw it in the passage we looked at last time. And we also know that this piece that Jehoshaphat made with the Kingdom of Israel included a marriage alliance. So Jehoshaphat’s son married Ahab’s daughter.
That ended up having very negative consequences down the line. Now, if you look with me again at verse 49, with reference to the ships trying to go for gold of Ophir, but were wrecked at Ezion-Geber. In verse 49, it says, then Ahaziah, son of Ahab, said to Jehoshaphat, let my servants go with your servants in the ships. But Jehoshaphat was not willing. That overture from Ahaziah apparently came after a first effort which was also a joint. Again, this is information we can get out of Chronicles. Jehoshaphat and Ahaziah had already made an attempt together, and that’s the one where the ships were destroyed.
And Ahaziah comes along and proposes, they try again, But the thing is, we’re told in the books of Chronicles that the Lord sent a prophet to Jehoshaphat and rebuked him for allying himself with the king of Israel. And the most important thing to note about that is, in terms of Jehoshaphat and his character, is that he listened to the prophet, he heeded the rebuke, and he repented of his alliance with Ahaziah.
So, as for Jehoshaphat, he was a good king. In many respects, he’s a very good king. He was obedient, but he was obedient inconsistently and imperfectly. Well, that brings us then to point number two, where we see Ahaziah walking in the way of his father. And as you think about the history of Israel, the history of God’s covenant people, and specifically that history as it went on after the kingdoms were divided. Some of Judah’s kings were good. Jehoshaphat is a case in point. His father was another one.
None of the kings of Israel were good. And if you ever, next time you read through the books of the kings, kind of keep a list, keep a log. Write down the names of the kings and write down whether they were good or bad. If you keep them in a column, one for Judah, one for Israel, in that Israel column, not a single king of Israel was good. They were all evil. They all walked in the ways of Jeroboam, son of Nebat, who caused Israel to sin. None of Israel’s kings were good. The northern kingdom had a sordid, sinful, tragic history.
And Ahab, that we’ve been looking at for some chapters now, in most respects was the worst of the lot. And Ahaziah’s reign, the son of Ahab, his reign has been described by some as a brief echo of Ahab’s. Ahab reigned 22 years. Ahaziah’s reign was one 11th of that. So Ahab was a wicked king and yet the Lord allowed him to reign 22 years in worldly terms too. In worldly terms, if we were to examine Ahab’s reign, his legacy, he did well. the world might look at Ahab and consider him a success. And because he lived in such wickedness and yet enjoyed a relatively long reign and had a modicum of earthly success, Ahaziah had no external incentive to be a better man.
Which reminds me of those words in Ecclesiastes. Because the sentence against an evil deed is not executed speedily, the heart of the children of man is fully set to do evil. Maybe if Ahaziah had seen his father suffer for his sins, suffer for his unrighteousness, and be afflicted in some way or other because he was an unrighteous man, he might have thought better. But from Ahaziah’s perspective, his dad did just fine serving the Baals. and turning away from Yahweh. And you notice that there’s this threefold description of his wickedness.
Not all the kings get this. But as I said, Ahaziah walked in the ways of his father, but he did more than that. We’re told that he walked in the way of his father. That would have been Ahab. He also walked in the way of his mother. That would have been Jezebel.
And if you just turn the page back with me to 1 Kings 21, and look with me at verse 25, in this little synopsis of Ahab and of his reign, it says, there was none who sold himself to do what was evil in the sight of the Lord like Ahab, whom Jezebel, his wife, incited. Ahab was a wicked man, he was a bad king, but he had this wicked wife egging him on, encouraging him in wickedness, inventing evil for him to walk in. So Ahaziah walked in the way of his father, and he walked in the way of his mother, and to cap it all off, as so many of the other kings are described, he walked in the way of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat. Jeroboam was the first king of that northern kingdom.
He’s the one that got him off on the wrong foot. Jeroboam was Israel’s prototypical evil king. He’s the one that the scriptures say over and over and over again made Israel sin. He instituted false worship in the northern kingdom. Remember, he wanted to retain power. He wanted to hold on to his people. He didn’t want their hearts to return to Jerusalem and to the God of Judah. And so he set up those golden calves, one in the north, one in the south, and said, it’s too much for you to go to Jerusalem. Go worship at these places. These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you out of Egypt.
And so by walking in the way of his father and in the way of his mother and in the way of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, Ahaziah took all the worst that Israel had to offer and embraced it, embraced it all. The defining mark of Ahab’s reign was his refusal to listen to the word of Yahweh. And Ahaziah followed in his father’s footsteps, walked in his ways. So the recap and the summary for Ahaziah was that he was a wicked king.
He was entrenched in rebellion against the Lord. So you take these two kings, Jehoshaphat, Ahaziah. In Jehoshaphat, we have an inadequate king. God’s people need a better Messiah. In Ahaziah, on the other hand, We’ve got him, we see him inciting the wrath of God. He’s bringing the wrath of God upon the covenant people by all of his rebellion. And both of them, the inadequate king and the wicked king show us our need for Christ.
And so we’re gonna turn our eyes to Jesus now in point number three, Christ walking in the way of his father. The Old Testament contains many types. many figures, many shadows that point forward to Christ. They point forward to him because they represent him in one or more ways. So you think of the tabernacle, all the different furnishings, all the aspects of it, everything in it, somehow point to Christ and his work or his person.
Think of the Passover. Now, the Passover lamb represented Christ, who was our Passover, who was sacrificed for us. You think of how Moses, in special ways, was a type of Christ. He was the great prophet, but there was a prophet who was going to come, like unto Moses, to whom the people had to listen. Or you think of how Elijah, the prototypical prophet, represented all the prophets, and points ahead to Christ, our great prophet. So all the types and figures of the Old Testament point forward to Christ. The kings of Israel and Judah also cause us to look forward to Christ.
How do they do that? Well, for the most part, it’s because of their deficiency. We need a king. And we need a king who’s wise, We need a holy king. In short, we need a perfect king. And in Christ, we have that. Jesus is a perfect king walking in the way of his perfect father.
The father even said so. He said so from heaven during Jesus’ earthly ministry. He did it twice. At Jesus’ baptism, the heavens were opened up. And the father said, this is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased. And then when Peter and James and John went up on that mountain and Jesus was transfigured before him, God spoke again from that glorious cloud and said, this is my beloved son.
Listen to him. Christ walked in the way of his father. Let’s see some testimony of that and some examples, some beautiful examples of it. You can hold your place in First Kings if you want, but turn with me to John’s Gospel. Let’s consider Christ walking in the way of his father. Turn with me to John Chapter 8. Look at verses 28 and 29.
So Jesus said to them, when you have lifted up the son of man, then you will know that I am he and that I do nothing on my own authority, but speak just as the father taught me. And he who sent me is with me. He has not left me alone for I always do the things that are pleasing to him. Jesus speaks as his father taught him. He always does what pleases his father.
Turn ahead two chapters, Chapter 10. Verse 18. When Jesus talks about laying down his life. He says in verse 18, no one takes it from me. But I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down. And I have authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from my father. Turn ahead two more chapters. Chapter 12. Verses 49 and 50.
Jesus said, For I have not spoken on my own authority, but the father who sent me has himself given me a commandment what to say and what to speak. And I know that his commandment is eternal life. What I say, therefore, I say, as the father has told me. And in John 1431, he says, I do as the father has commanded me. Christ walked in the way of his father. There was no wickedness in Christ. He had no sin. His obedience was consistent. His obedience was perfect.
Now, as I said at the opening, the nations of the world maintain books of kings. recording the histories of their monarchs. First and second kings are like those in some respects, but there’s one important difference. The chronicles of other nations are essentially like that real estate brochure. The chronicles of the nations of the world have an essentially patriotic aim. to record the accomplishments of their kings, to chronicle their victories, to record their splendor and the glory of all their rulers.
But in the Bible, the books of the kings serve to show that the kings of Israel and Judah fell short. 1 Kings shows that even the best of the kings of Israel and Judah fell short. Even the best of kings is flawed. The basic failure of the kings of Israel and Judah is at the very heart of the narrative. Because its aim is not patriotic. Instead, it’s evangelistic. The inconsistent obedience of righteous kings and the persistent rebellion of wicked kings show us the need for the perfect king. There is ultimately only one king. who in the days of Yehoshaphat and Ahaziah was still many, many years yet to come.
He’s the only one who can bring hope to our fallen race. And he has come. He has come. The saying is trustworthy. and deserving of full acceptance, Christ the King came into the world to save sinners. How thankful we ought to be that he did. Let’s pray. Lord, we cringe, we grieve when we read of evil kings like Ahaziah. We thank you for good kings like Jehoshaphat, and yet the best of the kings was flawed. We thank you that you sent the perfect king, our king, King Jesus. Lord, may we follow him. Thank you that he walked in your ways, the ways of his father. May we do the same. Give us grace to that end, we pray through Jesus Christ and in his name, amen.