Biblestudy: Jehu: A Type for Today

A Savior People Wanted Not Needed
#1790bs
Richard T. Ritenbaugh
Given 09-Nov-24; 70 minutes 2024-11-09

Last Tuesday, our national election, I think, stunned a great part of this world. Most people thought one or the other candidate would win by the narrowest of margins. Everybody seemed to think it was going to be a very close election. And some imagined that there would be refusals to concede, either from one side or the other, or there might be bitter court battles, like over Arizona or someplace, which by the way, has not yet even been verified.

I did read today they since, whatever the year, I cannot remember, take about 13 days to count their votes there in the state of Arizona, and they have a two-page ballot this year and it is making it even more difficult. So who knows when we will find out if Kari Lake or the other guy won the Senate race there.

But a lot of people were very heavily invested in this election and almost everybody thought that it was going to be close. Many on the political right, thought Kamala Harris would doom the nation to perpetual wokeness. And on the left, many thought Trump's election, if he were to be elected, would give rise to a fascist dictatorship. They imagined the worst happening if the other opposing candidate won. And on Wednesday morning, it happened that the right was cheering and the left was wailing, and sometimes literally, on Instagram and TikTok.

Supporters of Donald Trump who came out of the woodwork to vote en masse for him, consider him a savior of sorts. Only Trump could save America from the far left, their elite, their blatant corruption, their runaway inflation, eventual communism, and the imposition of horrible woke, racial, and LGBTQ+ laws and regulations. They thought of course, as they always do, this was the most important election in all of the nation's history. And if Trump lost, then we were doomed.

But the people on the right said he is the only person who is courageous enough to stand up to the swamp in Washington, DC like he did the first time. He even survived an assassination attempt and shook his fist, vowing to carry on the fight and trying to urge his own people to fight, fight, fight. And I have actually heard many in the church express very similar ideas to what I just said.

Now on Wednesday morning, as I turned on my computer and began to see some of the things that were being said out there, I read a short article called, "A Sobering Mercy" (and some of you also read this because I posted it to Facebook). It is written by a Protestant pastor from Arizona. His name is Joel M. Ellis, and in it, he argued, and I will quote this,

Trump's election is a mercy from God. A stay of judgment but not a pardon. The nation has not repented of its evil. Indeed, for all the encouragement and joy of yesterday's election, the reality is that abortion access was not only expanded but constitutionally enshrined in many states. Today, every believer should thank God for the blessings of mercy from heaven. Lift your hands in joyful song and praise the Lord who raises up kings and casts them down. But the Lord has not given us a David, Jehoshaphat, or Josiah to rule. He is raised up Jehu, and there remains much work to be done.

To me, his analysis has the ring of truth. While Trump sidles up to Christianity and says pious things now and then and gets churchmen to pray over him in the Oval Office—you have probably all seen that picture—he is not a moral man. He is not even conservative politically. I would call him an opportunistic pragmatist, a businessman whose views lean toward the right in terms of politics, economics, and foreign affairs. But he is at best libertarian, personally and socially. I am 100% positive he will never win "saint of the year," if they had such a contest.

But what is he? He is brash, a fighter with heroic tendencies, even foolishly heroic ones. You hit him, he vows to hit you harder—and does. He is a driven competitor who has to win and will not leave the table until he has won. He can be careless and brutal, a kind of wrecking ball, a bull in the china shop. He rarely if ever apologizes for his words or actions. He is a "put up or shut up" gambler. He cannot stand opposition, he cannot abide failure. His signature phrase, remember, was once "You're fired!" It is his way or the highway.

As Joel Ellis wrote, he has similarities to Jehu. God called Jehu to save Israel, sort of. Knowing his story, that is, Jehu's story, it is hard to think of him as a savior, but God sent him to save the kingdom of Israel from the Baal worship of the dynamic duo, that is, the house of Ahab and Jezebel, which was so evil in their day that Elijah the prophet thought he was the only believer left. That is how scarce the number of believers in Yahweh, in the God of the Old Testament, were.

Jehu however, was a flawed, brutal, bloody man. And he turned out to be a terrible savior in the end. And that is what we are going to go through today. The messiahship, if you will, of Jehu because that is how the people considered him, a kind of a savior. And we will find out that he was the messiah they wanted, but he was not the messiah they needed, or something to that effect.

Let us go to I Kings 19. We are going to read several passages within this chapter. We will start in verse 1 and go down to verse 3. And then we will skip down to verse 9.

I Kings 19:1-3 And Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done [This was with the end of the drought and the killing of the priests of Baal on Mount Carmel.], also how he had executed all the prophets with the sword. Then Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah saying, "So let the gods do to me, and more also, if I do not make your life as the life of one of them by tomorrow about this time." And when he saw that, he arose and ran for his life, and went to Beersheba, which belongs to Judah, and left his servant there.

I Kings 19:9-10 And there he went into a cave [he is already down now to Horeb, the mountain of God, Sinai], and spent the night in the place; and behold, the word of the Lord came to him, and He said to him [that is, the Lord], "What are you doing here, Elijah?" So he said [the prophet], "I have been very zealous for the Lord God of hosts; for the children of Israel have forsaken Your covenant, torn down Your altars, and killed Your prophets with the sword. And I alone am left; and they seek to take my life."

Now down to verse 15. This was after the miracle there on Sinai when He did all these tremendous things. And then the still small voice, and the Lord was in the still small voice.

I Kings 19:15-18 Then the Lord said to him, "Go, return on your way to the wilderness of Damascus; and when you arrive, anoint Hazael as king over Syria. Also you shall anoint Jehu the son of Nimshi as king over Israel. And Elisha, the son of Shaphat of Abel Meholah you shall anoint as prophet in your place. It shall be that whoever escapes the sword of Hazael, Jehu will kill; and whoever escapes from the sword of Jehu, Elisha will kill. Yet I have reserved seven thousand in Israel, all whose knees have not bowed to Baal, and every mouth that has not kissed him."

We find out that Elijah was wrong. There were 7,000 people still in Israel who had not gone over to Baal worship. But as a nation, 7,000 is not that many. They were scarce in Israel. They were few and they fearfully kept a low profile from the priests of Baal and Ashtoreth, and of course, the king and queen. And that is probably why Elijah did not know there were any others, they were not telling anybody that they were actually worshippers of the true God.

Not only that, Ahab and Jezebel managed to at this time contract a royal marriage between their daughter Athaliah and the crown prince of Judah who was Jehoram. He was the son of Jehoshaphat. So the rot was spreading, it was already through most of Israel and it was going down into Judah through Athaliah, and it would continue to spread in Judah even after Jehu effectively cleaned up Israel.

There during that time, Athaliah tried to exterminate all the heirs of the house of David, nearly succeeding, and then reigned as queen over Judah for seven years. They had a half Sidonese, half Israelite queen for seven years and providentially, Joash was hidden away by the high priest who was married to Joash's sister. I think it was either sister or aunt. I am thinking about the relationship and now I cannot decide. But it was working into Judah as well. This was Baal worship, Ashtoreth worship gaining supremacy over God's people.

Those are the sorts of people doing their wickedness in Israel and Judah at the time. So we have Ahab and Jezebel and then we have Athaliah, a one-woman band doing her best to eradicate the true God, as she would see it, in Judah. It is almost kind of a no-holds-barred, dynastic power struggle that was occurring there. I would imagine that the king of Sidon was very much behind all that was going on. And so in his own way, he was trying to expand his rule into Israel and Judah. And it was kind of so no-holds-barred that it was devil take the hindmost. It was a very violent, very all or nothing, as they say these days, a zero sum game where you were either one or the other. And if you were the other, you had a price on your head, you had a target on your back. That is just how it was going in that time and place.

I mean, think about the way Jezebel handled Ahab's coveting of Naboth's vineyard. This happened just before this time. You can read about it in I Kings 21. God's law, Israelite law, forbade the king from buying Naboth's vineyard. He could not buy the land because it had to stay in Naboth's family. So even if Naboth had turned it over, he would have to give it back at the Jubilee. And they did not want that, they wanted to own it, they wanted to own it in perpetuity.

And so we know from the scriptures that Ahab pouted and sulked about it until it drove Jezebel completely mad. And she then conspired with the chief men of Jezreel where the vineyard was, and they hired scoundrels to bear false witness against Naboth saying that he had blasphemed God and he had said very disrespectful things against the king, Ahab. And so the jury was rigged, of course, and they considered him guilty and they stoned Naboth and then the government took the land. Ahab took the land from Naboth and Ahab was happy now.

But he and she had done this whole thing entirely illegally and immorally. And that was what they would do. It is a story put in there to help us to understand how they worked and how it did not matter what the law was or what the concerns may have been. If they wanted something, they took it and if someone stood in their way, they killed him. That was just how they functioned. And this was actually not only happening in Israel, but it was moving down into Judea as well. So religiously and politically Israel was a mess because of Ahab and Jezebel.

Let us go to a few chapters back in I Kings 16, we will read verses 29 through 33 to get a biblical overview of all this.

I Kings 16:29-33 In the thirty-eighth year of Asa king of Judah, Ahab the son of Omri became king over Israel; and Ahab the son of Omri reigned over Israel in Samaria twenty-two years. Now Ahab the son of Omri [three times in a couple of sentences that Ahab the son of Omri, God had something against the Omriites] did evil in the sight of the Lord, more than all who were before him. And it came to pass, as though it had been a trivial thing for him to walk in the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, that he took as wife Jezebel the daughter of Ethbaal, king of the Sidonians; and he went and served Baal and worshiped him. Then he set up an altar for Baal in the temple of Baal, which he had built in Samaria. And Ahab made a wooden image. Ahab did more to provoke the Lord God of Israel to anger than all the kings of Israel who were before him.

This is a bad guy. This is someone who has no respect at all for God. He liked the pagan worship. Certainly he was a syncretistic. First under the religion of Jeroboam and then he took a step further once he got married and became a full-fledged Baal worshipper. Then he started building temples and putting up wooden images, poles for Ashtoreth, all that stuff that they did.

So we are given this introduction to Ahab to show us just how evil a person he was and how he was easily swayed, especially by Jezebel. And he had a fondness for pleasing her in everything that he did and he ended up totally forsaking God. So idolatry had taken hold in Israel in Ahab's time through his active support facilitated by his marriage to Jezebel and probably a military alliance as well with Sidon. So he put Baal and Ashtoreth worship front and center. It became a major piece of his domestic policy and he was all for it and then pushed it whenever he could.

He supported the heathen priesthood and he encouraged everybody to join him in pagan worship and he persecuted those who clung to the religion of the true God of Israel.

That sets the scene. Let us go to I Kings 18 and see the effect on the people before we go any further.

I Kings 18:17-21 Then it happened, when Ahab saw Elijah, that Ahab said to him, "Is that you, O troubler of Israel?" And he answered, "I have not troubled Israel, but you and your father's house have, in that you have forsaken the commandments of the Lord and you have followed the Baals. Now therefore, send and gather all Israel to me on Mount Carmel, the four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal, and the four hundred prophets of Asherah, who eat at Jezebel's table. So Ahab sent for all the children of Israel, and gathered the prophets together on Mount Carmel. And Elijah came to all the people, and said, "How long will you falter between two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow Him; but if Baal, then follow him." But the people answered him not a word.

This gives you an insight into the way the people of Israel were thinking or not thinking, just depending on how you look at it. They were confused, they were demoralized and uncertain. As we have seen, this phrase, "faltering between two opinions," is like a bird hopping one place or another. They did not know what to think. "Maybe Baal. Nah, maybe God. Eh, I don't know, the king likes Baal. The queen likes Asherah, and they are persecuting the people who like the true God. And well, what do we do? We're caught between a rock and a hard place." That is how they thought. They were not, they should have been faithful. But this is how it is when you have this kind of rivalry between religions. It catches people in the middle.

And there is silence when Elijah says, "Hey, make a decision." It is very illustrative of the fact that they were afraid, they were afraid of Ahab or they were uncommitted to the point where they did not know which way they should go. It is not said here, but it shows that they need a savior. They need somebody to rally around. In this case, it could have been Elijah because of what he was doing here and what he ended up doing in the rest of the story. But he was a prophet. He had a specific job. It was not necessarily to lead the nation politically. He had a hard enough time, really, leading it religiously because of the way things were going.

But what they really wanted, I think just knowing human nature, is they wanted somebody to be the point of the spear for them. They were probably ready and willing to do something different. They could probably see that Ahab was not a good ruler. Jezebel was leading him around by the nose. They needed somebody strong, heroic. They needed a Saul or they needed a David, but they needed a savior of some sort. Someone who could pull them out of the swamp that they were in at the time because the politics of the day were corrupt. They wanted a leader.

And in I Kings 19, we get God's three-pronged answer to the problem. We already read these, but I will read them again. This is after Elijah had twice said, "I'm all alone in this, God. What do You want me to do?" Or, "I've done everything I could. I've sacrificed myself but I've got Ahab and Jezebel hot on my trail." And so the God tells him in verse 15, "This is what I'm going to do."

I Kings 19:15-17 The Lord said to him, "Go, return on your way to the wilderness of Damascus; and when you arrive, anoint Hazael as king over Syria. Also you shall anoint Jehu the son of Nimshi as king over Israel. And Elisha the son of Shaphat of Abel Meholah you shall anoint as prophet in your place. [Like Trump, God was saying "You're fired!"] It shall be that whoever escapes the sword of Hazael, Jehu will kill; and whoever escapes from the sword of Jehu, Elisha will kill."

So these are the three things he did. He said,

1. We are going to anoint a strong foreign king. He is going up to Damascus where the kings of Syria ruled and he was going to anoint Hazael and He did this because He wanted a strong foreign king, that is, God wanted a strong foreign king, who would punish Israel for their apostasy.

2. He told him to go anoint a strong rebel king, an Israelite to overthrow Ahab and to purge Israel of Ahab's influence. And Jezebel's, of course.

3. He told Elijah, you are not strong enough for the time that is coming. You have proven that you are fearful. We need somebody who is not. So He had Elijah go anoint a strong prophet to oversee all of this that was coming up and to clean up what the other two missed. It is kind of a strong view against Elijah here. But I think God was fairly disgusted at Elijah's reaction to Jezebel's threat and all the whining he did in the days afterward once he got down to Beersheba and then at Sinai. Elijah, for some reason, just would not see that God was behind all this. And even though he had done great things, he could not quite reconcile what God was doing here. And so he said, I think you have reached the end of your rope here. I am going to give a younger man your job so that he can bear up under these trials. So he anointed Elisha.

But we are going to focus on Jehu, the middle one, the second one. He is the kind of savior that the Jews in the first century were looking for when they knew that the Seventy Weeks Prophecy was pretty much up and they were out looking for Messiah. They, like the Israelites at this time, in King Ahab's time, wanted a militaristic, political savior. They wanted Messiah to come and rout the Romans and reestablish the kingdom of David on Jewish soil.

And so the people of Ahab's time were looking for the same thing, somebody to get rid of Ahab and Jezebel so that they could become a great nation. And frankly, it is what modern Americans, I believe, secretly want to see happen in this country. They want the total annihilation of the enemy. You can see it on Twitter and other places in some of the language they use against the people on the other side of them politically. They use very violent language. And I think that is a typical human reaction when you have situations like this, where you have one political party, or one religious party, facing off against another of fairly equal strength. And just bad attitudes arise and pretty much you are at each other's throat and you want the other side to just not exist.

Now, most of the time we constrain that urge, but I am talking about humans in general. But at other times they do not and you have nasty bloody purges and civil wars and other things that crop up. And that is what we have been hearing in America over the last, I do not know, 10, 15 years of: is America going to plunge into civil war over their very divided nation? So, I think we could probably see some parallels here going forward.

Let us go to II Kings 9. We are starting to get into Jehu, because the intervening chapters were all about Elijah and Elisha and some of the things that they had to deal with. Finally, we are getting to the anointing of Jehu.

II Kings 9:1-10 And Elisha the prophet called one of the sons of the prophets, and said to him, "Get yourself ready, take this flask of oil in your hand, and go to Ramoth Gilead. Now when you arrive at that place, look there for Jehu the son of Jehoshaphat, the son of Nimshi, and go in and make him rise up from among his associates, and take him to an inner room. Then take a flask of oil and pour it on his head, and say, 'Thus says the Lord, "I have anointed you king over Israel."' Then open the door and flee, and do not delay." [Get out of there!] So the young man, the servant of the prophet, went to Ramoth Gilead. And when he arrived, there were the captains of the army sitting; and he said, "I have a message for you, Commander." And Jehu said, "For which one of us?" And he said, "For you, Commander." Then he arose and went into the house. And he poured the oil on his head [I hope he said something to let him know he was going to do this.], and said to him, "Thus says the Lord God of Israel: 'I have anointed you king over the people of the Lord, over Israel. You shall strike down the house of Ahab your master, that I may avenge the blood of My servants the prophets, and the blood of all the servants of the Lord, at the hand of Jezebel. For the whole house of Ahab shall perish; and I will cut off from Ahab all the males in Israel, both bond and free. So I will make the house of Ahab like the house of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, like the house of Baasha the son of Ahija. The dogs shall eat Jezebel in the vicinity of Jezreel, and there shall be none to bury her.'" And he opened the door and fled.

He said a lot more than Elisha told him to. I have often wondered about that. Was it a special revelation to him that he should tell him all these things or was he just making it up as he went along?

II Kings 9:11-13 Then Jehu came out to the servants of his master, and one said to him, "Is all well? Why did this madman come to you?" And he said to them, "You know the man and his babble." And they said, "A lie! Tell us now." So he said, "Thus and thus he spoke to me, saying, 'Thus says the Lord: "I have anointed you king over Israel."'" Then each man hastened to take his garment and put it under him on the top of the steps; and they blew trumpets, saying, "Jehu is king!"

It is pretty straightforward story of how this Jehu was anointed. But did you catch a very significant point? Remember back in I Kings 19 God told Elijah to go anoint Jehu. Well, here we have in II Kings 9 Elisha is the one who tells a servant, one of the sons of the prophets, to go anoint Jehu. Now that is a couple or three people removed from God's command. It is like Elijah said, "I don't know if I want to do this. When you get a chance, Elisha, go ahead." And Elisha said, "Well, I've got this young kid here. He's got potential. I'll send him." I do not know if it was that they were afraid of Jehu. The way he says, "After you say this, get out of there! You don't know what Jehu is going to do."

I do not know it was fear on their part or whether God was behind it, getting Jehu further and further away from Him, making him several removes away from His prophets and from Himself because it is a sign to the reader that God was not entirely behind Jehu. Jehu got his instructions about what he would do from the mouth of this son of the prophets. But it was kind of in general, this is what you shall do. And then Jehu figured out how he would do it himself. He was the one that came up with the plans for how he was going to to work out this directive from God about killing Ahab and Jezebel and this whole house, and ridding the land of Baal and Asherah.

So even though God appointed and anointed him to do this, it seems to me that God is putting some distance between Him and what He wanted Jehu to do, and what Jehu eventually did. That tells me that God did not necessarily approve of Jehu and his methods. And so we are kind of cautioned here as we get into the story that we are not going to get a Jesus Christ of Nazareth type of Messiah. We are going to get a Jehu, the son of Jehoshaphat, type of messiah and it is going to be bad, it is not going to be good. It is going to be rather bloody, just to put it in one word. So he tells Jehu what he wants done and lets the man figure out how to do it and it reveals Jehu's character.

Now we are not going to get into the details of Jehu's bloody career, but we are going to hit some highlights starting in this chapter, II Kings 9, starting in verse 14. We will go down through 18 and then 20 through 26.

II Kings 9:14 So Jehu the son of Jehoshaphat, the son of Nimshi, conspired against Joram.

I do not know how long this conspiracy took, but from what we have already read, he already had the army behind him or at least the ones that were there at Ramoth Gilead because they all hastened to put their cloak down so that he could be proclaimed king. So he already had quite a number of the strong men in Israel as part of his new administration, if you will.

II Kings 9:14-15 (Now, Joram had been defending Ramoth Gilead, he and all Israel, against Hazael king of Syria. [He is one of our other guys. Hazael is trying to take away a chunk of Israel from him and it is over on the east side of Jordan in Ramoth Gilead.] But King Joram had returned to Jezreel to recover from the wounds which the Syrians had afflicted on him when he fought with Hazael king of Syria.)

So he had left Ramoth Gilead and the army in the charge of Jehu and the other commanders there and he had himself gone back to recover from his wounds. And so this gave Jehu a tremendous advantage that he did not have to work around Joram being very close by, you know, just over in the next tent or something. Joram was back where he was ruling from in Jezreel so he could quickly put together his coalition, if you will, and conspire then against the king.

II Kings 9:15-26 Jehu said, "If you are so minded, let no one leave or escape from the city to go and tell it in Jezreel." [He was putting martial law up so that people could not go tell the king what was going on in Ramoth Gilead.] So Jehu rode in a chariot and went to Jezreel, for Joram was laid up there; and Ahaziah king of Judah had come down to see Joram. [These guys were near relatives. Actually, they were brothers-in-law and they were both there in Jezreel.] Now a watchman stood on the tower in Jezreel, and saw the company of Jehu as he came, and said, "I see a company of men." And Joram said, "Get a horseman and send him to meet them, and let him say, 'Is it peace?'" [I am thinking that the king thinks that Jehu has won a great battle in Ramoth Gilead and he is coming home victorious and there is now peace in Gilead.] So the horseman went to meet him, and said, "Thus says the king, 'Is it peace?'" And Jehu said, "What have you to do with peace? Turn around and follow me." And the watchman reported, saying, "The messenger went to them, but is not coming back." [So as the horseman come out to meet Jehu, he said, "Get in the back of the line. I don't want anything reported to Joram about what's going on."] Then he sent out a second horseman who came to them, and said, "Thus says the king, 'Is it peace?'"

And Jehu answered, "What have you to do with peace? Turn around and follow me." So the watchman reported, saying, "He went up to them and is not coming back; and the driving is like the driving of Jehu the son of Nimshi, for he drives furiously!" Then Joram said, "Make ready." And his chariot was made ready. Then Joram king of Israel and Ahaziah king of Judah went out, each in his chariot; and they went out to meet Jehu, and met him on the property of Naboth the Jezreelite. [Things are all coming together here very symbolically.] Now it happened, when Joram saw Jehu, that he said, "Is it peace, Jehu?" So he answered, "What peace, as long as the harlotry of your mother Jezebel and her witchcraft are so many?" Then Joram turned around and fled, and said to Ahaziah, "Treachery, Ahaziah!" Now Jehu drew his bow with full strength and shot Jehoram between his arms; and the arrow came out of his heart, and he sank down in his chariot. [I guess so.] Then Jehu said to Bidkar his captain, "Pick him up, and throw him into the tract of the field of Naboth the Jezreelite; for remember, when you and I were riding together behind Ahab his father, that the Lord laid this burden upon him: 'Surely I saw yesterday the blood of Naboth and the blood of his sons,' says the Lord, 'and I will repay you in this plot,' says the Lord. Now therefore, take and throw him on the plot of ground, according to the word of the Lord."

We get a taste of the way Jehu functioned, the way he decided he was going to overthrow the house of Ahab. He had a face of granite. He was not going to be dissuaded in any way. He would control everything that was going on and he was going to go straight for his target. And he did not care how bloody it was. He did not care that there was the king of Israel, he did not care that the king of Judah was there. He had a mission, he was going to fulfill it, and he was very efficient.

Let us notice a few things. Jehu was the kind of man that did not let any grass grow under his feet. It seems as soon as he was anointed, he started putting his allies together and started rebelling. He acted swiftly and decisively. He had no hesitation whatsoever.

Secondly, his repeated phrasing of "What have you to do with peace?" describes actually both Joram and Jehu. Neither were men of peace. They were violent men, as most had to be at the time, and they were bloody and brutal. I kind of get the feeling like they were Vikings and just going at each other. And it was all a matter of who is the strongest.

Three, his chariot driving style is mentioned here. He is described as a furious person. I looked up the definition for furious just to make sure I had it right in my mind. And the dictionary I looked it up in said it is marked by extreme and violent energy. And that describes Jehu to a T.

Fourth, I mentioned this already. He had no qualms about assassinating the king or even putting an arrow through his back. He did not care whether he faced him on a field of battle or shot him in the back as he was fleeing. He is no respecter of persons. He had no deference whatsoever. He was uncaring in that way. He had a job to do and he did it.

Let us pick it up in verse 27 here.

II Kings 9:27-28 But when Ahaziah king of Judah saw this, he fled by the road to Beth Haggan. So Jehu pursued him, and said, "Shoot him also in the chariot." And they did so at the Ascent to Gur, which is by Ibleam. Then he fled to Megiddo, and died there. And his servants carried him in the chariot to Jerusalem, and buried him in his tomb with his fathers in the City of David.

He also had no misgivings about hunting down Judah's king like a dog and killing him, sent a pack of his wolves after this dog, and they shot him as he fled.

We can see that Jehu was a man who felt no guilt at all about murder. "Kill him; kill him; kill him; kill them; kill them." We will see this as we go on. He had very little respect for life and even the life of kings.

II Kings 9:30-37 Now when Jehu had come to Jezreel, Jezebel heard of it; and she put paint on her eyes and adorned her head, and looked through a window. Then as Jehu entered at the gate, she said, "Is it peace, Zimri, murderer of your master?" And he looked up at the window, and said, "Who is on my side? Who?" And two or three eunuchs looked out at him. Then he said, "Throw her down." So they threw her down, and some of her blood splattered on the wall and on the horses; and he [Jehu] trampled her underfoot. And when he had gone in, he ate and drank. Then he said, "Go now, see to this accursed woman, and bury her, for she was the king's daughter." [Kind of like, Oh yeah," like an afterthought.] So they went to bury her, but they found no more of her than the skull and the feet and the palms of her hands. Therefore they came back and told him. And he said, "This is the word of the Lord, which He spoke by His servant Elijah the Tishbite, saying, 'On the plot of ground at Jezreel dogs shall eat the flesh of Jezebel; and the corpse of Jezebel shall be as refuse on the surface of the field, in the plot at Jezreel, so that they shall not say, "Here lies Jezebel."'"

So from the text here, we see that Jehu is almost blasé about Jezebel's death. He is in control. He says, "If you're on my side, throw down," and they did, and he tramples her under his chariot, then goes inside the palace for a meal. He is a stone cold killer. Like I said, he has no respect for life, even the life of a king or a queen. And it gets no better. In chapter 10, he sends a letter to Samaria for Ahab's 70 sons to be beheaded and have their heads delivered to him at Jezreel. And he does the same and more in Jezreel.

II Kings 10:11 So Jehu killed all who remained of the house of Ahab in Jezreel, and all his great men and his close acquaintances and his priests, until he left him none remaining.

We call this cleaning house. He killed everyone who had any kind of tie to Ahab and to Jehoram, or Joram. It is said both ways. He just decimated the nation of Israel's leadership, all those who had held offices, anybody who had done any kind of support. If we had to read more of chapter 10, there were great men of Israel who were fostering many of his sons. They all died even though they did what Jehu told them to do in delivering up the all the princes. Jehu was not a nice person. I think you are getting the drift here.

Let us look at verses 12 through 14 here in chapter 10.

II Kings 10:12-14 And he arose [that is, Jehu] and departed and went to Samaria. On the way, at Beth Eked of the Shepherds, Jehu met with the brothers of Ahaziah the king of Judah, and said, "Who are you?" And they answered, "We are the brothers of Ahaziah; we have come down to greet the sons of the king and the sons of the queen mother." And he said, "Take them alive!" So they took them alive [that is, his men took the brothers of Ahaziah], and killed them at the well of Beth Eked, forty-two men; and he left none of them.

So now he is reaching into Judah and taking all the the brothers of Ahaziah, who he also killed or had killed as he fled. And then let us look at verse 15.

II Kings 10:15-17 When he departed from there, he met Jehonadab the son of Rechab, coming to meet him; and he greeted him and said to him, "Is your heart right, as my heart is toward your heart?" And Jehonadab answered, "It is." [I do not know if that was said in a frightened voice is or whether it was said firmly, "You're anointed by the Lord."] Jehu said, "If it is, give me your hand." So he gave him his hand, and he took him up to him into the chariot. [As Jehu drove furiously, you might just be taking your life in your own hands, getting up in the chariot with him.] Then he said, "Come with me, and see my zeal for the Lord." [That is what he is saying that is his excuse for all of this. He is doing it because of his zeal for the Lord.] So they had him ride in his chariot. And when he came to Samaria, he killed all who remained to Ahab in Samaria, until he had destroyed them according to the word of the Lord, which he had spoken to Elijah.

This is two cities now that he has gone into and killed everybody loyal to Ahab. First it was Jezreel. Now it is Samaria and we see this expanding and Jehu just going bloodthirsty throughout the land of Israel to kill all the supporters of Ahab. I wonder about this encounter with Jehonadab and it strikes me as Jehu showing off. That he was kind of being a braggart about all that he was doing and he takes up Jehonadab into his chariot and says, "Look what I can do!" and he goes and slaughters all those people in Samaria.

His final bloody purge involved a public massacre of all those who worshipped Baal. I do not know how much of this I want to read. We are getting toward the end of the hour but what he did was he deceived everybody and said, "Jehu is going to worship Baal more than Ahab. So everybody come down to the temple of Baal and join me. I'll give a sacrifice and we are going to show how strong we are." And so they all came down and he says, "Hey, all you worshippers of Baal, let's all dress up in the same dress." What is the word they use for it here? Vestments, that is the word that is used in the New King James. He gave them all vestments. So they all looked alike and they all could be identified because they were wearing the uniform of the priests of Baal. And so he sent in 80 of his most loyal men and they killed everybody who was wearing one of these vestments and then they burned the place down, burned all the idols that they could find. And last but not least, crews came in, cleared the place off, and they made it a public latrine. Nice guy, is he not?

But he did, with this very bloody act, nearly exterminate Baalism in Israel. He forced it underground. He was the guy you wanted to do a job as long it was killing or destroying because he was very thorough. And he left no one. You know, anybody he could find that had any connection to Ahab and Jezebel and Baalism or Asherahism, he killed them. He had no mercy.

We are going to read now the most telling paragraph of all about Jehu. This is at the end of chapter 10, verses 28 through 31.

II Kings 10:28-31 Thus Jehu destroyed Baal from Israel. However Jehu did not turn away from the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who had made Israel sin, that is, from the golden calves that were at Bethel and Dan. And the Lord said to Jehu, "Because you have done well in doing what is right in My sight, and have done to the house of Ahab all that was in My heart, your sons shall sit on the throne of Israel to the fourth generation." But Jehu took no heed to walk in the law of the Lord God of Israel with all his heart, for he did not depart from the sins of Jeroboam, who had made Israel sin.

God did say here that Jehu had done his job well. There were probably other ways he could have done it, but knowing the time he did it that way. And God said, "Ok, you did actually fulfill what I said to do in your own way. So I'm going to give you this throne of Israel for four generations." But that was the only reward he really got for what he did because Jehu was not going to continue in God's way. He was obedient to the specific commandment to do what he did, but he was not going to worship God, not in the way of the Bible. He did not walk in the law of the Lord. And so he did get a reward, but it was not a lasting reward. Not one like we heard today from Ted [Bowling] about what God gave David versus what He gave Saul. Jehu was more of the Saul type than he was of the David type.

So even though he destroyed Baalism he did not restore true worship. If he had done that, like Josiah tried to do, then he would have had a much longer dynasty and things would have been better in Israel. He did not even encourage any kind of return to the truth. He just went right back to the religion of Jeroboam. So in the end, he turns out to be a completely secular savior, not a righteous one.

Let us read verses 32 and 33.

II Kings 9:32-33 In those days the Lord began to cut off parts of Israel; and Hazael conquered them in all the territory of Israel from the Jordan eastward: all the land of Gilead—Gad, Reuben, and Manasseh—from Aroer, which is by the River Arnon, including Gilead and Bashan.

So the result of what he did was not peace, strength, and prosperity, but weakness and defeat. In his purges (I mentioned this before), Jehu killed most of Israel's leadership, all those people who had any kind of experience in government. His assassinations made him enemies in Sidon and in Judah. So he had now new enemies around him. Hazael of Syria soon bit off a huge chunk of territory, all those tribes east of the Jordan. And from an extra-biblical source, the obelisk of Nimrod, the Black Obelisk of Nimrod now in the British Museum, we find there that Jehu was forced to pay tribute to the Assyrian king. So not only was he trying to hold off the Syrian king now, he had to pay tribute to the Assyrian king, Shalmaneser III. As a matter of fact, I think in that black obelisk, you actually see a caricature or a picture of Jehu with his forehead on the ground in front of Shalmaneser. And you know what? That was in Jehu's first year—the first year of Jehu.

Even though he did this and God wanted him to get rid of Ahab's house and get rid of Baalism and he did his job, God did not reward him except for what we saw there in verse 30, that he would have four generations on the throne.

He immediately began to be beleaguered from outside and have a great deal of problems. The bottom line is that his murderous rampage isolated Israel and actually hastened its fall. His salvation for the nation was all vengeance and no righteousness. He delivered Israel from Ahab and Jezebel and their idolatry, but he left the leadership vacuum nearly empty and the nation declined and imploded in short order.

There was one high point I need to point out to be fair and honest. And that is the last scion of Jehu that actually sat on the throne of Israel was Jeroboam II and that was a period of prosperity when Amos lived, and Amos was the one that was going about at the time criticizing the king of Israel and Israelites for the way that they had degenerated.

So Jehu's coup and bloody purge ended up leaving Israel with lots of tumult and civil infighting and problems, right and left. So in many ways, Israel was worse off. They went from one kind of oppression to another with barely a respite. As one commentator said, "Here we have violence that judges but does not heal. Only at Calvary did fierce judgment of sin bring restoration and health for sinners."

Now you may be saying to yourself at this point, knowing how I started this, Trump would never do such things—and you are probably right. I am not trying to say that with Trump we will see bloody purges like Jehu did. That is not at all what I am saying. We live in a time, in a nation, where such things rarely happen and the rest of the world would not look kindly on something like this. They would not stand idly by if someone tried to do anything like Jehu had done.

However, what I want you to see is a correspondence that we must recognize, and that is, at best Trump can only be a physical savior, a political savior. He, like Jehu, may deliver us from the worst that the Left has to offer and return us to an era of, you know, prosperity, what we are more used to. But as General Douglas MacArthur said in his farewell speech to Congress (and he also actually lifted this from his speech on the Battleship Missouri on the occasion of the Japanese surrender). If you remember, some of the old people know that Mr. Armstrong loved to quote this. He says here, this was during the Korean War,

We have had our last chance. If we will not devise some greater and more equitable system, Armageddon will be at our door. The problem basically is theological and involves a spiritual recrudescence and improvement of human character that will synchronize with our almost matchless advances in science, art, literature, and all material and cultural developments of the past 2,000 years. It must be of the Spirit if we are to save the flesh.

Let us go to Matthew 11 because this has to do with the coming of the true Savior. It says here,

Matthew 11:1-6 It came to pass, when Jesus finished commanding His twelve disciples, that He departed from there to teach and to preach in their cities. And when John [he was the greatest of the prophets remember] had heard in prison about the works of Christ, he sent two of his disciples and said to Him, "Are You the Coming One, or do we look for another?" And Jesus answered and said to them, "Go tell John the things which you hear and see: The blind receive their sight and the lame walk; the lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear; the dead are raised up and the poor have the gospel preached to them. And blessed is he who is not offended because of Me."

Now, John was confused at this time. He had lost a little bit of faith and he had to ask the question rather than know that this was the One. He knew. He was the one that baptized Jesus. He saw all that was happening. He was having a kind of Elijah moment here and Jesus' answer to him is essentially a paraphrase of Isaiah 61, the first verse and half of the second verse. It is the same thing He announced in Luke 4:16-21 as He began His ministry.

So His answer to John's disciples is essentially, before the day of vengeance, before defeating the oppressors, we must first free God's people from sin. That is where true oppression lies. That is its source. What Jesus Christ did is real deliverance, is real salvation. Jehu and others like him put the cart before the horse, choosing vengeance first, while God puts conquering sin and putting on righteousness first. A people must be prepared to rule in righteousness after the wrath of God's judgment occurs.

Let us finish in Hebrews 10. This is the path of the true Savior, starting in verse 12.

Hebrews 10:12-17 But this Man, after He had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God, from that time waiting till His enemies are made His footstool. For by one offering He has perfected forever those who are being sanctified. But the Holy Spirit also witnesses to us; for after He had said before, "This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, says the Lord: I will put My laws into their hearts, and in their minds I will write them," then He adds, "Their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more."

What He does first is He pays for the sins of those who believe and accept Him. Then He perfects them for service under Him. And then, in the fullness of time, He takes vengeance on His enemies and establishes His government. He flipped the script. The world always looks for a political savior, a deliverer who will rid them of their enemies and put them on top of the pile. And this is a good reason why we should stay far from politics, the politics of this world, because we may get swept up in a salvation that is wrong headed. We may get swept in up in the worldly messianic fervor. That is, for a physical savior.

We have to always remember that we have a different kind of Savior. One who loves His people, who sacrifices Himself for their sins. He makes them worthy of His deliverance. And thank God that we have been called to follow that true Savior.

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