[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
Welcome into the Thing Deeper podcast presented by Focus Press. I'm your co host, Joe Wilkie, joined as always by Jack Wilkie. But not as always. Will is not here and he's been sick. He missed the deep end, unfortunately, this last week, and we missed him on that. We were hoping he'd make a recovery. He has yet to make a recovery, so poor guy is down for the count. So prayers for Will, just for a speedy recovery by the time this drops tomorrow. For those on Focus plus, we're hoping he's better, but specifically by Monday when everybody's hearing this. We're hoping he's on the mend. But anyway, Will we miss you. And. Yeah, Will. So with that, we kind of had to call an audible and we had something planned that we, us three, were going to do. We kind of previewed it on the deep end and we're not able to do that since it's us three. And we got one already planned for next week that we're pretty excited about. And so we'll table that one for a couple weeks.
So Jack and I were brainstorming about this and thought, man, what are we going to do with that? Will and I just threw out this idea we've been doing, and Jack has been doing a lot of these and I've been trying to help him out with it.
The 365s is what we call them on the deep end. But for those that have seen on Facebook, we're coming out with A Closer Walk with Thee is what we're calling them. Volume five is now on the way. And what it is, is a daily devo where we do prayer, meditation. Let me think about this. A reading prayer, a meditation, and then a discussion question. So it's great for families around the dinner table, whatever it may be. It's just great for individuals as well, because we try to, in the meditation section, give you a little bit of a, you know, something to meditate on, something to think about, you know, in your Christian life. But we're taking it all the way through. And so we've been in first and Second Kings for the last couple months.
[00:01:42] Speaker B: Most of volume five is. Yeah. Is those books.
Yeah.
[00:01:46] Speaker A: So most of volume five. And so I thought, hey, what if we just did one on Lessons from the Kings? He and I have both been in the text we've been reading through. There's so much rich stuff in here. Not that Will wouldn't be able to speak to these things, but it's just something that's been on our hearts and our minds recently. And so that's what we're doing today is thinking through the Kings, looking at it and pulling out things that I think are very relevant for today.
[00:02:09] Speaker B: Yeah, there's so much there that you always get that, well, America isn't Israel. No, but the church is parallel to Israel. But also you see how God deals with nations. You see the Gentile nations interacting with Israel through some of these times and how God raises them up and just what God expects of people and how people behave in response. I mean, it tells you so much about humanity. I mean, that's one of the blessings of the old Testament. Romans 15:4 says, the things were written before were written for our encouragement.
But the encouragement is kind of funny. Sometimes it's do this and sometimes it's don't do this. And sometimes it's God is strong in his justice and sometimes it's God is merciful and patient and all of those things should encourage us. And again, that is, the New Testament has narrative where people do things, but really you see day to day human life and God's interaction with it, God's approach to it and his thoughts on it and mankind's ups and downs and all that really played out well in the Old Testament and the Kings especially just gives us so many different characters to look at.
[00:03:18] Speaker A: Yeah, well, I think we have what we come up with. Six, seven, I think six different things, different lessons per se that we can kind of get into and discuss. And so let's start with one that the first one we have on our list actually is more toward the end of second kings and that is second kings 20.
Hezekiah, who is a good king for the most part, but man, he makes one of the most devastating statements, I would say throughout the book, in the entirety of the book, or both books really.
And Jack, I don't know if you want to read it, if we want to just read through this or go into second kings 20, but basically.
[00:03:54] Speaker B: Well, let's get a title for this point on it, which is.
And it's just not. It's not just Hezekiah, although that was part of it, the generational discontinuity.
I should have come up with a cleaner title for it, but they never got from one generation to the next. There was almost never two good kings in a row. You'd see reforms, you'd see improvements, you'd see, oh, this was a good king and he walked in the ways of David and all that. And then his son would come in and put an idol up and Go burn incense to him and all that. And so that was part of it. Well, again, Hezekiah, you see a good king, but the generational thing, his view toward it showed where the problem is.
[00:04:36] Speaker A: Yeah. And so that's a great clarification. Generational fall off is how you had it. And I like that phrase, I like that term, because that is a super sad part of this book. You have a great king, he does so many good things. Twenty years later it's all undone. It's just devastating, you know, to use that word again, like you've done all of these good things and yet you could not teach it to your son. And then with Hezekiah, to me being toward the end, it kind of sums up perfectly why this was the case.
So Isaiah says to Hezekiah, in 20, verse 16 of 2 Kings, hear the word of the Lord. Behold, the days are coming when all that is in your house and all that your fathers have laid up in store to this day will be carried to Babylon. And nothing shall be left, says the Lord. Some of your sons who shall issue from you, whom you will beget, will be taken away, and they will become officials in the palace of the king of Babylon. Then Hezekiah said to Isaiah, the word of the Lord which you have spoken is good. For he thought, is it not so? If there will be peace and truth in my days. Now the rest of the acts of Hezekiah and all his might and how he made the pool and the conduit and brought water in the city are, then I written the book of Chronicles. So right after this, Hezekiah slept with his father, so he dies. So the last words of Hezekiah are, didn't happen to me. That's not in my day. And to me that perfectly sums up the generational fall off of like, hey, at least we got it right. With no thought for his posterity, no thought for the generations. And that should be devastating to think, man, some kids that are coming from me, my kids, my grandsons, are going to be taken off to a foreign land, away from God's people, away from the temple, and away from where we've always lived or lived for, you know, several hundred years at that point in the promised land, we're going to be taken away from that. And all he can think about is, at least it's not me. At least it's not me. So to me, I do think we actually see a little bit of a parallel here, because we can look around and see that America is not in a good spot. Like, in the least. But there's also. There's almost this level of like, well, tough rocks, you know what I mean, for this, for the future generation.
And again, I'm not trying to, as Will might say, cast aspersions. Right. I'm not trying to throw people under the bus. On the other hand, you do see this from some of the older generation. Boy, well, it's tough in my day too, you know, and you're just going to have to get through it type of thing. And there just seems to be this generational gap. We've talked about this before. Hezekiah, to me, sums that up. But all of these kings failing to get their kids faithful, failing to think past the end of their nose or think past their own death, really speaks to me in this.
[00:06:53] Speaker B: It does, because you make a modern parallel to it of if somebody said, hey, things are going to go pretty well for you, but your kids are going to be hauled off to China or something like that. Like, I would say, what do I need to do to make that not happen? Is there anything I can do? Not, oh, man, better them than me. Wow.
Sorry, kids, but at least my days are gonna be okay.
What kind of parent says that? What kind of parent has that view toward their own children and not, I need to set them up better off? And there's that John Adams quote that is the opposite end of the spectrum from this, where he says, like, I have to study war and politics, that my son might be able to study math and literature, whatever it was, but basically, like, I've got to go fight these battles and do these really hard things to set my sons and grandsons up for a better day. That should be your attitude.
So you've got that, that perspective is where it needs to be. And I just. You brought this up.
A lot of times older Christians are not invested in the success of the next generation. And a lot of times Christian parents are.
This is a think deeper, you know, foundational piece here, this view of generational faithfulness. And how many Christians like, well, I, you know, I hope they. They choose Christianity when they grow up. I sure hope that they're, you know, they, they make it their own faith. Like, well, yeah, they need to make their own faith. They don't need their parents faith to carry them, because that's not sustainable. But you need to have an expectation and like, hey, let's. I want this church to be strong 80 years after I'm dead. No, this customer view of Christianity basically says, it's there for me now. That's what matters.
As long as I've got what I need and what I want to get out of it, it's okay. And then, I mean, culturally, there's. You'll see the RVs with the bumper stickers. We're spending our kids inheritance like it's a Hezekiah mindset. And so it's no wonder you see young people not carrying on the faith of their parents.
[00:08:54] Speaker A: Well, let me ask you this. Thinking back to the kings, why do you think, like, I think there's only one king, a father son duo. And I'm trying to remember who it is.
Is it Jehoshaphat, one of those has a kid that stays partially faithful and I think falls off toward the end, if I remember right. So of all the kings, why do you think that is? Do you think it's because they are focused so much on their own legacy? Because we talk about this. Is it a parent that's too busy running the kingdom to not. You see this a lot with preachers where the preacher's kids go way off the deep end. Somebody like, obviously he's a Calvinist, but John Piper, and he's got an atheist son who's like a big deal on TikTok as this rabid atheist.
So you look and you go, what happened? A man of God doing all the right things, quote unquote. You know, obviously we don't agree with him theologically, but like he's up there in the pulpit preaching, helping people, serving the church. Well, you look at these kings, they're good kings. They're doing the right things. They're finding the law. They're, you know, getting people back to form. What does go wrong in there? Do you think it is a busyness and a lack of preparation for the kids?
Do you think the youth just didn't, you know, these kids are just taken away by.
By the youth. Do you think it's a.
I don't know. I mean, I was trying to think, like, does it really come down to the busyness of the kings that they just didn't invest in their kids? Or like, why do you think it was such a struggle to stay faithful?
[00:10:12] Speaker B: We're not given a day to day look into their lives. And so it's hard to say, I mean, like that that is something that can happen is, you know, dad is the workaholic and he's kind of taking care of everybody else and not his own family. And that's as you bring up like a minister trope, that can happen.
So we don't know on the other hand, we're given in Deuteronomy 6, like, hey, if you teach your kids this and teach them to observe these things, they'll keep it going. You will prosper in the land. And they just never did, ever. I mean, it started in judges where that cycle of the idolatrous families, the peoples, and then their kids come and they repent and they're. Because they're under oppression and they do better. And then their kids come along and just start doing, I mean, just one after the next. You never get any positive momentum going because they Never practice Deuteronomy 6. And so where you look at the church like there was a lot of positive momentum for Christianity for a really, really long time. Does that mean it was all perfect? No, it was only up all the time. No, you had revivals, great awakenings, things like that that were needed because people were not practicing their faith.
This is like one of those just sad things of humanity that ups and downs, peaks and valleys are part of it. And man, the valley is getting lower every time.
And you to turn that, that would be one of the saddest things to me is if generationally we can start turning things around and our families do well, our kids do well, and then when we die, it goes right back to where it was.
You have to think about your own legacy this way. And as we see with the Hezekiah, he didn't care about his own legacy. And I think a lot of Christians don't care about their own legacy of like your great grandchild. Being on a pew in adulthood after you are dead says more about you than anything that will be done when you're alive and nobody thinks that way.
[00:11:59] Speaker A: Well, the point I was going to get at is just example is not enough.
Well, hey, we went to church like, well, these guys did amazing things for the kingdom. The example wasn't enough to get your kids faithful. There had to be like a sitting down Deuteronomy 6, right? The Shema, like, hey, when you walk, by the way, when you rise up, when you lie down, you need to be pumping the word of God into your family. And if you're not, we talked about family worship. This goes back to our devos. Pick up our devo guides. We also have family worship guide from, from Will did a great one a couple years back and so pick that one up as well. But we're big believers in this of you've got to be in the word, you've got to be talking to people, you, you know, talking to your kids. And praying with them and explaining things to them and catechizing them. Really. I mean, the, the denominations get this more than we do. Of like, you got to go through catechism to some degree. And that sounds crazy, sounds denominational. The whole point is teach your kids the basics, the fundamentals. Who is, you know, who's God? What is the Trinity? What. What did Jesus Christ come to do? How's the Holy Spirit work?
[00:12:54] Speaker B: Like, why does the Bible matter?
[00:12:55] Speaker A: It's not just, yeah, why does the Bible matter? Why is it the word of God? How can we trust it? All those questions. That's not just from example. Well, we went to church, we did the right things. We were good people. I don't know what happened. Like, yeah, the kings were too. And their kids walked away almost every single time. So example is not enough. You got to be more intentional when it comes to the kids.
[00:13:13] Speaker B: Yeah. That actually puts us nicely into our second lesson from the Kings. Don't leave a key under the doormat for sin.
Don't kind of leave it an opportunity to come back in. Because with almost all of the good kings, it would say, he did well, he walked in the ways of his father David. You know, he served the Lord or whatever, but he left the high places. And that's where they would burn incense, where they would sacrifice to the idols. There were places around the land that, you know, you could go to Jerusalem, in the temple to worship God. God. But there are people would also go and worship these other places. And it's like, well, I'm personally pursuing the right path here, and I'm going to the temple and I'm not going to go worship on the high place. But he left it, and it's nice right towards the very end.
And I'm going to pull this up because I always mix up Joash and Josiah, and I'm going to say the wrong one.
Josiah comes in and is like, yeah, we're not doing this. You know, we're just shatter all of it. We're going to grind it to dust. We're going to burn these places. We're going to defile the high places so they can't be used again.
That is the approach you have to take. And unfortunately, that was in the too little, too late portion of his of Judah's history. But leaving that little foothold for sin every single time. Oh, the high places are still there. Immediately after that king would die. Okay, we're back to the high places. We're worshiping there again. You can't allow that.
[00:14:35] Speaker A: Well, It's Paul's make no provision for evil, right? Like, be killing sin or it'll be killing you. We have all these strokes. Easier said than done, though. We can talk about it. We can understand these things. I think it's the same thing that helps keep your kid faithful is the same thing that's going to help you with this, which is the details. Little things tell big stories. We talked about this plenty. This is kind of a staple of mine. Little things tell big stories. I've preached on this before.
It is the small things that you don't think about.
Couple high places here, there, who cares? You know, at the end of the day, who cares? Like, it's not a big deal. We, hey, we brought the glory of the temple back. We got people mainly going back there. So 90% of the people are going back. You didn't remove that, right? It's. And it goes. You see this even all the way back with like David or Saul or whatever it may be with, you know, the census for David, like just a such a small error, but it costs him huge. Or Saul go ahead. Or he just goes ahead and sacrifice ahead of Samuel. And it's like, hey, for the most part, he was doing the right thing and he even sent up a sacrifice and it cost him something. It wasn't right. It was, you know, small details that tell much bigger stories. Even you can look at Nadab and Abihu. Well, what's the big deal? It's just incense. Like all of these things are speaking to a heart issue of what are you willing to do for me?
What are you going to do for God and for his glory? Are you willing to remove everything? And are you willing to be cynical in your own life? To some degree, cynicism gets a bad rap. But there's a level of cynicism that I think is important of looking at things going, man, sin absolutely could creep in in this area. And I don't know if you want to call it cynicism. Obviously, it's mindfulness. It's being aware. But looking at your life through a critical lens, saying, what do I need help with the most? What am I struggling with? You know, like, what are my weak points here? And being willing to engage with those to some degree. What high places have I left in my life that has potential to tear me down? Even if I'm doing 95% of the things right, is there anything that I'm giving any provision for evil to come in? Because most of the time it snowballs. It does not stop There. Well, there's this little secret. We see this with, like, addiction. Right. Well, man, he's a great guy, but he's just got this one little secret like, that always expands and blows up a guy's life for good reason. God tells us, like, a little leaven leavens the whole lump. So really sad to see. With the Kings as you go throughout, just how many are like, you're this close, man. If you just done that, like you said, Josiah comes and finally gets it done. So I think the wrap of the book is you get toward 22, 20, you know, or 20 to the end of the book was at 26, 20.
How many are in Second Kings? 20, 25, man. Packed full of all sorts of these lessons. A lot of our lessons can be found just in the last five. And I think that's intentional to kind of wrap on these notes.
[00:17:09] Speaker B: Yeah, this also, again, as I said, it ties into the legacy piece about the generations.
They left those things and their kids went and used them.
They did not help set their kids. Now, their kids could always go, ah, I don't care. I'm going to go build my own. And at least they'd have to go to that effort. At least the door was not open where it's like, well, let's see what this does. Let's, you know, and just. You kind of are. And so, again, this is one that is just common sense. The letting your kid have a computer in their room, having a phone, unchecked, whatever it may be, you're just asking for it. You're just opening that door. You're leaving the high places. And guess where that's going to lead. Well, so many times it does lead to problems and addictions and things like that, or just family practices you have and ways that of talking and the husband and not leading and the wife not submitting and things like that. Like these little things that you let linger, snowball into the next generation. You know, they say one generation tolerates, the next one celebrates or whatever.
And that's what happened. One generation, they would tolerate the high places, and the next one would use them. The next one would celebrate it. And so having that attitude towards sin of like, man, we're not. We're not giving the devil an opportunity. We're not leaving that door open. And interestingly, what Josiah did was go and tear a bunch of stuff down. What Paul says in 2nd Corinthians 10:4 is that we've been given this, and it's this gospel that we have is for the destruction of Fortresses or tearing down strongholds. You'll hear it said, these weapons of our warfare. And what is he talking about? He says in the next verse, we are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.
That's how you tear down strongholds, is you take everything captive. Well, they had to take every place of worship captive, and they didn't. And so it was not brought under the obedience of Christ, under God's rule, and it came back to bite them. And so making provision for sin, leaving the door open, leaving the key under the mat, whatever analogy you want to use there, they did that. And it came back to cost them over and over and over. And it's just, it's very interesting to me how the text would speak of those kings and say they were good kings. It would give them a lot of credit. It would say they did well, but or only he did not remove the high places.
That is a big asterisk on their legacy. And now I would say those kings are probably still going to be in heaven, right? That these are guys that are still saved, still did a lot of things right.
And so you can get into the well, do I have to be perfect? No, you don't have to be perfect. You're probably going to miss some things.
But if there is an obvious thing like that, tear it out of your house, tear it out of your own life, tear it out of your vocabulary, tear it out of your kid's hands, whatever it may be. Don't leave high places in your life because, I mean, the idols, call the idols appeal. They pull at us. And just leaving the door open is not a good thing to do.
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[00:20:45] Speaker A: yeah, it's Amaziah that has. I was trying to find it here. Amaziah in chapter 14. He did right in the sight of the Lord, yet not like David his father. He did according to all that Joash his father done. Only the high places were not taken away. The people still sacrifice and burn incest on the high places. So did great. Wasn't like David, you know, he doesn't go back to the man after God's own heart. But this gets us into the next point is actually this Josiah. I was just there as it's kind of wrapping in Josiah's life and so many things. And what it talks about is this covenant that he makes. In chapter 23, verse 3, the king stood by the pillar and made a covenant before the Lord to walk after the Lord and to keep his commandments and his testimonies and his statutes with all his heart and all his soul to carry out the words of the, of this covenant that were written in this book. And all the people entered into the covenant.
People will follow leaders.
That's what you learn. That's the third lesson. Your people will follow leaders. So if we're following along, first is just the generational fall off. We got to be thinking generationally. Second is not removing the high places, getting sin out of your life. Third is that people are going to follow leaders. Josiah comes in. These are the same wicked people that are, you know, doing terrible things and following evil kings, and they follow evil kings. And then he comes in and he puts the people right back into the covenant with God because there's a strong leader that comes and says, hey, we're following this. And the people get in line. And it's a crazy thing where you go, oh, no, people, they don't follow. They don't follow like people are sheep. People will follow. Why do we think, why do we talk about the importance of Christians in politics? Why do we talk about the importance of establishing really strong elders, really strong husbands and fathers? People will follow leaders at the end of the day. And you see this with Josiah as he's once again doing all these right things.
But he doesn't just stop there and go, hey, I made a covenant with God. That's good enough. It's like, no, no, we're getting everybody right. Because I'm taking the lead to say everybody needs to be doing this. And that's a scary thing for leaders. I always used to look at Paul imitate me as I'm like, Christ, man, what an arrogant Guy, like, who would actually say that? It's the same concept as Josh here. It's the same concept of I'm leading. You know, I see myself as a leader. I see myself as following God. We're all going to do this because this is the best way. And if I'm the one that has to lead the charge, so be it. And we have a lot of guys that I think are allergic to that of.
You go off on this, you know, let you talk, speak more to this. But this elder idea of like, you know, the best leaders, the best elders are those that don't want it. Like, that's literally the first thing in First Timothy three is you have to desire the role. But we kind of use this step back, like, no, we need guys that desire to lead and desire to turn
[00:23:12] Speaker B: the people back toward God that the role. We say this a lot for fathers in the home. He's the tone setter. Same is true for the elder of the church. Same is true for the politician. Same is true for the, the business manager, whatever it may be. People take their cue from, from who you are. And if you don't have, like a strong vision or you're not communicating, you're not excited about something, you're not, you know, pulling people along with you in a certain direction, they'll find their own direction. They're, they're, they're gonna just. There's gonna be problems, there's gonna be infighting, there's gonna be like, hey, if we're all on the same team, working towards something together and we're excited about it and it's the right thing to do, and you've communicated this vision that can go a long way. Well, this went both ways for Israel, where a king comes in, he's like, all right, we're idolatrous now. And the people are like, okay, I guess we're idolatrous now. Or a king comes in, like, hey, we're not doing that anymore. Now, not everyone follows him. There is resistance that comes up at first.
This is something you've got to get used to, you know, for.
We've run into this, had messages about this. You talk to people about like this all the time. When the father starts leading his home, there is resistance. Like, hey, no, we. I don't like this. That's not the way it's been. You gotta follow through with it. When, you know, in the church, when real leadership comes along, somebody's gonna throw a temper tantrum. But the vision says this is the right thing to do. People threw temper tantrums when kings and prophets, Elijah was doing the right thing. Ahab threw a temper tantrum. Every time he saw Elijah. He just, he hated the guy. He couldn't, you know, oh, you troubler of Israel. There's always gonna be that. But when you have the vision, you follow through, you just keep going, you make it happen and everyone's better off for it. And yeah, whoever you are, whatever situation you are, whatever leadership influence you have, set that culture, set the tone. And if you're not the person in leadership, get on board when things are going the right way, encourage your leaders, pray for your elders, lift up your preacher, things like that, to say, yeah, I do want to do this, I am on board, keep going. Because sometimes in leadership the self doubt comes in very easily. Right. And like, man, is anybody even following me? Is anybody even listening to me? And when you've got your Barnabas next to you, when you've got your Joshua and Caleb next to you, when you've got those kind of guys going, yeah, we're right there with you, man, keep going. That makes all the difference in the world. So be that guy to say, yeah, we do need to get rid of these idols. I'm going to go help you tear them down.
Whether you're the leader or the follower, this is the kind of attitude that needs to permeate our churches and our homes.
Right, Right.
[00:25:40] Speaker A: Do you think Americanism, you know, America's a great country, obviously the greatest country, but we do have a, we might call it the patriot spirit, more of a free thinking, individualist streak. Do you think that comes in?
[00:25:57] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:25:57] Speaker A: Individualist streak. Yeah, you know, kind of the libertarian like don't tread on me approach. I'm not saying all Americans do, clearly, because there's a lot of people that go down. But do you think that that challenges this and that it's harder to lead in America because of that, or do you think people are just people for the most part?
[00:26:14] Speaker B: No, I, there is a degree to which people are people, but I used to think that was more of an American thing. No, it's a more, I think a more recent thing where everyone has been broken down into individualism. You're not a member of your own family unless you want like you choose what serves you, what makes you happy, that kind of thing. And so all roots, all identity, all of that has been ripped up for the purpose of making us easier to divide and conquer. Right. And so if you have a church family that has a culture and identity and this kind of thing, realize what you have, be thankful for it again, hold up your leaders and encourage them and all that. Because it's so rare to get people to buy into anything these days unless it's exactly what they want to do in that exact moment.
[00:27:02] Speaker A: Well, and I think that things like Covid really destroyed the people's trust in leaders. We are already having a trust that waned.
It's tough to be a leader these days because everything's out on the Internet. Everybody can scrutinize you. It's the age of information. And so I think people are looking at leaders in America. You look at how much we know about the average person in D.C.
so back then, I mean, you think 40, 50 years ago, you don't know what your representative's doing. You don't know how much funding he's getting from so and so from, you know, all these different packs. And you don't know that he's got insider trading. Nancy Pelosi, you know, with all this insider trading, making $682 million, where you don't know those things. Right. You're just.
I don't know, you just trust them, like, hey, they're good people. I guess now we know these things. I think it's eroded confidence and trust in leaders. This is all the more important. It's easy for. Because of that, because there's a lot of bad leaders for kind of the sheep to rise up and to have that mentality of we don't trust leaders. Unfortunately, I do think this bleeds over into the church. So if you have an elder that goes against something that you want to do, it's like, well, this guy stinks as an elder. And, you know, he's. We don't have to follow him. Like, we still have to respect our authorities. We still go back to Romans 13, that God has placed these people in charge of us from a governmental standpoint, but also from a obviously the elder standpoint and obviously the husband and father standpoint. And so these different areas, now is the time more than ever for leader or for sheep, rather. Yes. Have your eyes open. But also you've got to be willing to submit. Because I know trust has been eroded in a lot of leaders, but that doesn't mean that we can, you know, just run over it. And right now, where we have wives running over their husbands, kids running with gentle parenting, kids running over their parents, we got church members, you know, just running amok, and they don't want to listen to the elders or any of the men in the congregation. And Then obviously we have people that really struggle on the government standpoint, and that goes both ways.
But that we live in tough times, and they lived in tough times back then. I still think this holds true. I think our point of people will follow leaders still holds true, but now more than ever, I think, yes, keep your eyes open. But you got to be willing to submit, you know, to. To your leaders, whether you agree with them or not.
[00:29:08] Speaker B: Yeah, the.
I could do it just as good. Well, you're not. Okay. And you're not like, well, I'd be a better elder than it. Well, you're not qualified, so, no, you wouldn't be. You literally can't be. You know, and that is something that no matter what you think of those guys, they're there and you're not. Like, there's a degree to which, as you see with David and Saul, hey, that's the Lord's anointed. I'll let God handle that. God has put them there, and it's just my job to.
David didn't submit to Saul in everything, but in the things where he could, he did. And I think that's an attitude a lot of people need to have.
The interesting thing, this is another one that flows very nicely into the next point. These all go so well together because they're from the same text, is the need for the prophetic voice. There is a time to tell the king, get your act together. I mean, most famously, you see this with Elijah and Ahab, but you see this with other prophets.
You see the standing up to the king and saying, hey, this is not okay. You know, standing up to the people and telling them, we're not going to do this. And especially it's kind of cool when you start getting towards the later ends of 2 Kings. That's where some of the minor prophets and even Isaiah, Right. Is writing. And there's parallels to Isaiah and he's in Uzziah's time and some of the other ones, and you're seeing what they're talking about and saying, hey, we've got all these problems as a people and we've got to get this fixed, and prophesying Babylon and those kinds of things that were going to happen.
I think a lot of people think the prophetic void, like, it wasn't well tolerated then, it's still not well tolerated now. And a lot of Christians think it's cringy.
A lot of Christians think that a man getting up and saying, I'm speaking against the spirit of the age is doing something wrong as Evidenced by. I know I made a lot of friends with my why I Hate the Chosen video. That clip of Jesus kind of scolding John the Baptist for standing up to Herod. You know, like, oh, basically you're just a shock jock kind of thing. You're just doing it for. Essentially, that's what they made it out to be. Was John the Baptist is doing it for clicks. He says, oh, oh, my followers are going to love it. Like anybody who stands up to. And so this wasn't just Elijah. This wasn't just an Old Testament thing.
This is what God calls prophets to do is say, actually the world is wrong and needs to repent and get right with God.
[00:31:27] Speaker A: And there's a level of the sons of Issachar in First Chronicles of Understanding the Times.
[00:31:32] Speaker B: You got to understand they should know what they should do. It says they understood the times to know what Israel should do.
[00:31:38] Speaker A: Like, it goes together reading the root news. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's. It's having the ability to go, okay, here's what's going on. Here's where we go from here. Here's what we have to do. It's time for us to have those guys. And so not to contradict my last point, my last point is, yes, I do think it's really important to submit to your leaders, especially when it's just these conflicts of opinion and such.
But when it comes to these things, we also are, as I said, the. The leadership is crumbling in a lot of ways. Trust in leadership is crumbling. So I think it's really important to try to get.
To be able to call that out. You know, to be able to call a spade a spade and to say, man, this is the. These are the issues that we're seeing. And you see a lot of this with people because we'll get these private messages like, what do I do? My elders are doing xyz. You know, I don't agree with it at all. Maybe they're bringing in children's worship or things like that, and people are going, what do we do? And I think there is a time to be able to stand up respectfully, but to be able to stand up and call that out and say, hey, this is not a good trajectory. Our parents did this back in the day with.
Back when I was a baby, you know, they. They did this of standing up to an eldership, and next thing you know, wouldn't you know, at that church, turned from church Christ toward a community church in the next, like, five years after we left.
[00:32:43] Speaker B: Because you can't get into existence anymore.
[00:32:46] Speaker A: I don't think it exists. Yeah. At all. Anymore. You could just see the writing on the wall of, like, this is what's going to lead to this. And it started small. It started with something. And mom and dad were like, hey, that's not okay. And a couple other people stood up to that and were willing to kind of push back and say, I think that's a bad trajectory. Sure enough, there's a bad trajectory. So there has to be a level of being able to call out the leaders. And once again, it can be done respectfully. But you got to understand what's going on. One of the biggest struggles is to see. And I'm not trying to pick on guys specifically, but, yes, there's a lot of fathers that are just. They're not plugged in to what's going on at church. The moms are getting the kids to church. The moms are just as engaged as anything. And the dads are like, yeah, I go, you know, sure, I'll lead a, you know, prayer or whatever, or maybe a scripture reading here, there. And so they think they're just as plugged in. But are they really paying attention to trends? Are they really paying attention to what's going on in the world and how that affects the family? Are they really paying attention to what's going on in the church? So this would just be a call for those to have that prophetic voice, to be able to stand up and speak against the problems of the age. If you don't know the problems coming into your home, if you don't know what TikTok is, if you don't know what, you know, at the time, it was fortnight. I don't even know what it is now. But, you know, some of these things that are coming into the home, this is one of those. You got to be plugged in. The prophets were clearly. And yes, they're from God, but they're clearly plugged in. They knew how to speak to these issues. They knew they had the backbone to do it.
So, yeah, this is a call for our leaders to be able to step up, but for everybody in the church, specifically men, to start looking around and saying, man, where is the trajectory of my family? Where's the trajectory of the church, the culture around me, and what can I do about it?
[00:34:17] Speaker B: Yeah, as I said, it really bothers me that how many Christians view this as cringy, view this as, ooh, don't do that. We don't need to talk about those things. And kind of the make nice with the world. And.
[00:34:31] Speaker A: Yeah, why do you think that is? I know we talked about it before, but why do you think that is that they view it as cringy? Because you're right, you do see that.
[00:34:37] Speaker B: I think there is a desire for man's approval. I mean, you see the stuff that comes out of Christianity today where I mean, just their whole thing is like, please like us. Just please, please like us. Please like. And so that's where you see. And we had that whole episode on how to know when a church is captured. And it was about critical theory. We will not, you know, it's that the hierarchy of race and male, female relations and all of those things. And so we're always going to talk about how the church has been mean to homosexuals. We're going to talk about racism, we're going to talk about men dominating women and the problems of all of that. And we're not ever going to talk about how the same situation, the sins, can go the other direction or how any of those things. Because the world has basically handed us our script and we went, okay. And they told us, well, don't talk about these things. Or they did the, you know what, as Christians, you're really not supposed to talk about politics. And oh, by the way, politics extends all the way down to what bathroom your little girl is allowed to go into.
And so therefore we said, okay, I guess we just won't talk about that. Like, no, this is. Why do we, we don't have to ask them for approval. And that was the beauty of the prophets is Elijah wasn't asking Ahab, hey, would you mind if I, you know, said something about the prophets of baal? It was, we're not doing this anymore and we're going to kill the prophets of BAAL and we're going to do all these things that they were, that they did in Old Testament Israel because it needed to be done.
And I'm not saying we're not behaving in the same way, but the against the grain kind of thing that Elijah did, well, Elijah, again, look how isolated it got him. And God promised him, hey, there's thousands of others that are still haven't bowed the knee to baal. But it sure felt for Elijah like, man, you're on your own here. Because the people were weak. The people weren't standing up. The people weren't doing what they were supposed to.
You really get hung out to dry when you stand up on these things. It bothers me how many preachers won't talk about some of these things that you can, you know, you can predict how they're going to preach through. Ephesians 5. You can predict how they're going to preach through, you know, certain things. And it's not ever going to rock any boats. It's going to be 100% approved by.
That's.
[00:36:51] Speaker A: That's a problem we see as Ahab, man, I hate that guy. He has nothing good to say about me. You know, with Micah, like, just. He never has anything good to say. Sometimes we don't have good things to say. We get this all the time.
[00:37:03] Speaker B: He got the. You're too negative.
[00:37:06] Speaker A: Exactly. And we're not trying to say we're the prophets, okay? So please don't misunderstand us when we're talking about this, but there's a level of.
[00:37:12] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:37:13] Speaker A: When we're talking about. Against public schools and we're talking against things like, you know, modern dating and prom and some of the issues of what I would consider the world that's creeping into the church and some of just the other big things that we talk about, the. Obviously the roles of men and women, man, we get a ton of pushback on it. It's like, well, you guys have never had anything nice to say about the church. Like, sometimes there are time for that. That sounds a whole lot like Ahab going, he just doesn't have any. It's not time for nice things. Sometimes it's against understanding the times. Sometimes it's time to pump somebody's tires and go, wow, you're doing a great job. I'm all for that. That's great. We've had those episodes, too. They always flop, by the way, for everybody that. Why aren't you ever nice about the church? It's like, man, we've done several of those, and we get about 200 listens on those. So everybody that wants these, it's like, I'm sorry, did they just go nowhere? Yes, we love the church. Yes, we are excited about potentially where the church can go.
We're also keeping our eyes open and recognizing same as the prophets. This is not good. This does not bode well. If we don't get our kids out of public schools, there ain't going to be a Church of Christ if we're not going to be well, so somebody's
[00:38:13] Speaker B: going to go, oh, they're talking about public schools again.
I would say, if, you know, take one of these prophets, take Elijah or Elisha and drop them in today. What are they going to be talking about? They're going to be talking about.
[00:38:25] Speaker A: What would they say?
[00:38:25] Speaker B: What are you guys watching on tv? You're letting your kids be indoctrinated by this stuff. You're letting your daughter wear that. You're. You're looking at that online, like that kind of stuff. Those are the issues that they're going to talk about and those are the issues that when we talk about them today, as Paul told Timothy, they're not going to endure sound doctrine. People aren't going to want to hear it. And so to like, that's just. That should be the job. And that was the unfortunate part for these guys. Elijah, Elisha, Micaiah, there's whatever the. And again, as I said towards the later part, the ones that were the writing prophets start coming in.
Being liked was not part of the job. Now, that doesn't mean you get to be a jerk, but like this sense of it. I had somebody tell me that once that if the world doesn't like us, we're doing something wrong. Like what?
That's literally the opposite of what Jesus said. And so Jesus told us that you have the example in the prophets. You see John the Baptist get his head cut off for it. And we think our job is to let everybody know how nice we are.
No. And so that there's a big lesson when you read through these is you need people like that to say, actually, no, we're not doing that.
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[00:40:11] Speaker A: And you need a little sandpaper and you need people to stop tone policing. If it's right, it's right. You could have tone police to lijah all day long.
Come on. Do you really have to make fun of the prophets of BAAL to eat? Isn't that going a little far? Think about your witness. It's like, man, sometimes the time demands for it, for harsh words, for sandpaper, for a little grit to get in there and to have some. Bust some skulls a little bit that's all part of the job. That's John the Baptist, that's Elijah, that's Elisha. That so many of these prophets going in. Yes. There's grit. Yes. There's sandpaper. Yes. It's off putting. Yes. It's going to offend some people. We're not in the, you know, just trying to offend people arena. On the other hand, people are going to get hurt from time to time. People are going to be upset when you're telling the truth. We do it anyway. And not we, but I'm saying we as Christians need to do that anyway. We need to be pushing that as much as possible. So let's move on to number five. This is a bit of a transition point. Not as smooth as the other, other ones, but still very interesting because you and I were talking off air about this. Like there are things we don't understand. And that is that God works in ways we don't always understand.
For instance, you see things like.
Now you just. Is it Uzziah that we were talking
[00:41:22] Speaker B: about, that that goes.
[00:41:24] Speaker A: And, you know, burns, I think he goes up in. And he's not supposed to go up in the temple, I believe. And he basically does the priestly work and is struck with leprosy. And then you have somebody like Ahab who literally for like 40 years is just a train wreck, an absolute disaster, but God lets him work. There's some things that we just don't always understand. And what we have to assume is. And what we know is God's not us. God's ways are higher than our ways. He understands things that we don't understand.
But there are absolutely some challenging texts in first and Second Kings.
[00:41:55] Speaker B: There are. Another one I wanted to bring up was Jehu, which very interesting. There's a parallel to Jesus that when he's going to become king, the men lay their garments down in front of him for him to walk on the steps and like, hey, you know, this is our new king. And this coronation that he goes through and his first acts as king is just, all right, we're gonna kill all these people. We're gonna kill all these people. We're gonna deceive these guys into, you know, these prophets, these. These idolatrous guys into a room. And then we're gonna kill all of them. And I mean, just all of this bloodshed. And not only was he king, and not only was this one of those like, oh, God, let this happen. No, God told Elijah long before, hey, this Jehu guy is gonna be the king of Northern Israel. In fact, you're gonna anoint him and you know, he's gonna bring about the, the justice that needs to happen. And in that same. Because this is when Elijah is on the mountain and kind of has the pity party. I'm the only one. And God says, no, there's 7,000 others. But also he says, you're gonna have Elisha, you know, you're gonna have an apprentice, a young prophet to follow you. You're going to anoint Jehu. And then there was another, a foreign king. And when it came time for that foreign king, it's like, oh, this is gonna be bad. He's gonna like come in and really like there was weeping over, man, that guy, oh boy, that's not good. And he did, I mean, like, brought pain and judgment to Israel. And then you got Jehu again, who was hand picked by God and comes through and I mean, just brings the sword. Now he goes bad in his later days, you know, makes bad choices later on.
But this is one of those.
If you're just a New Testament reader and you read this, you're like, what is going on? Why did God allow it? God didn't just allow it to happen.
He handpicked the guy to make it happen. And when it does, that was what God wanted to have happen. And I don't know.
And again, it's not a template for what we should do, but it shows you God looks at things differently than we have conditioned ourselves to look at them.
[00:43:48] Speaker A: Same thing is like you look at some people that have prosperity, they get blessed and things seem to go well. Some of the battles that are won, I've been reading through some Second Samuel, there's some in there as well. Battles that are won. And you're going, how's that possible? There's the one where the Benjamin.
And this is, I think at the end of. Is at the end of Judges, one of those where the Benjaminites do horrible, despicable acts and then he cuts up the concubine and then they go against him. And I think Benjamin wins like two or three straight times against Judah and against the other people. And you're going, how shouldn't this be God's judgment? Where it's like, okay, the good guys need to go get these bad guys. The bad guys win like three straight times. And it just doesn't seem to make sense to us. Once again, it's just a lesson in God's ways are not our ways. We don't always understand why things happen. I don't understand why Some of these kings, as I'm reading through this, like, this guy should have been struck dead, not just with leprosy. This guy should have been struck dead on the spot. But he prospers. He actually things seem to go fairly well. Israel lasts before the assyrian captivity, was it 622? They last for few hundred years, you know, couple hundred years as a failed state. Basically like bad king after bad king after bad king after bad king. God allows for it. And what you find is that it's all in the working of time, the proper working of time. God knew these things were prophesied. God knew Assyria was going to come take him into captivity the same way he knew at Babylon, the southern kingdom.
It was all in the fullness of time to allow these things to take place. Babylon wasn't, wasn't raining in the 580s when they came in and took, you know, or they weren't raining before that. And so it had to be this proper timing of things.
And that means sometimes God allows things that we go, what's going on? How could he allow this? Why is this guy prospering? Or why did this happen? Or why do these people lose their kid or whatever it may be? And we're just really questioning God in those moments. There's a lot of questioning moments in Second Kings, first and Second Kings, only to come to find out like God's timing was perfect. He needed certain things to happen to so as to bring about the captivity, so as to bring people back from captivity. We see the end and that ushers in, of course, intertestamental toward Christ. So, yeah, I think because we have the overarching view, there's still things that don't fully make sense to me, but I can contextualize a little bit more. How much more difficult is that in our lives, though, to contextualize when we don't have the entire story? I don't get to see however long I get to live. Hopefully, Lord willing, let's say I make it 80 years. I don't get to see what happens at 76. And maybe something that happens to me at 32 years old makes a lot more sense in 40 years. I'm not privy to that, that we have to be able to trust that same thing with God in 2 Kings. God's coming through for us. And God is good and he's seeing things that we don't see because he's timeless. So I don't know. That's what stands out to me. I mean, what are your thoughts on, like how do you work around some of these things in your mind?
[00:46:29] Speaker B: Again, you just sit back and say, he's God and I'm not. And I was thinking about, like, as, what is the application of this for us in today's world? And I think it's some of what you said there. If God is always working and bringing things about and rising people up, and it's not even, you think, okay, he brought up David. He brought up Moses. He brought up Joshua. Yeah, he did that. He also brought up Nebuchadnezzar. He brought up Jehu. He brought up Gideon. Guys, that did some good, did some real bad things, right? And use them for his purpose. And so you can look at that in the world today. And this is one of those with the presidents that we get.
I think there is kind of that view sometimes that, oh, man, God let one slip through the cracks when the wrong person gets in or whatever. Like, no, there's a reason.
There's a reason it went that way. And, you know that his change is not always going to come in the form of, like, the good is not going to look like what we want it to look like sometimes, but it will get there in the end because God is watching over it. And so you see, Jehu, there's a reason we don't hold him up like we do with David, right? Even though David was a man of great bloodshed, but, you know, he was right with God. That's a bad guy. And you see, again, some of these punishments that God has on people and some of the times where he's more patient than others. And you can look at the world today, and I mean, I'm still angry about some Covid things. I'm like, why has Dr. Fauci not received the Jezebel treatment? You know, like, why he's God and I'm not? And I think, again, seeing that the whole Hindsight is 2020 thing over these hundreds of years, where you just see God unfolding these stories. And I brought that up, that prophecy that he gives to Elijah, it's in 1 Kings 19, 16, 17, where he's telling him, all right, you're not alone. You're not the only one here. Yes, these people are wicked. Yes, you've got some other people with you, but I've got this guy, this guy, this guy. I'm going to send you. That takes a long time.
It is a long arc for all of that to play out, but it does because God's moving all the chess pieces. Well, we can look at that and go, wow, he really had that planned. And then come back to our modern day and go, hey, what's going on? Where are you? And so it's very informative to us to just look and go.
God uses people we wouldn't expect him to use. God does things we wouldn't expect to be done.
God navigates these things and imposes his plan in ways that we wouldn't.
But, you know, praise him for it because he's so much smarter than us.
[00:48:58] Speaker A: Yeah, he's God and we're not.
Hindsight is 20 20. Talking about COVID That should be a great Covid book when they go back. Hindsight is 2020 or 2020 in hindsight. Anyway, sorry, when you were talking about Fauci. And again, I don't understand it all. We don't have to understand it all. That is kind of the point of this. And sometimes it gets a lot worse. To your point, Jehu wasn't good. You know, the guy that, the foreign king that God raised up, Sennacherib and guys like that. It ain't good. It didn't bode well for him. It's still something that the prophet said. It's still something that God used ultimately for good.
Sometimes I think we are in a time of judgment. You've talked about this before with some of the Christian persecution such. I think it's more Christian judgment for man. We haven't stood up. We haven't done these things. It may get a lot worse for us. We're very aware of that. That's why we want to create a better place for our kids. We want to create a healthier future for our kids.
On the other hand, yeah, I mean, we got to be. We've got to be aware that just because it's, you know, God is in control and God is very good, doesn't mean that good is going to happen to us. The same way that they went through some really, really difficult times.
So that speaks to another transition point here, though. Our last point on first and second Kings. The lessons that we're learning from the kings is God's incredible patience.
Because, yes, God put them through some very difficult things. He allowed for difficult things that I think they.
And there's that whole thing of, well, God doesn't actually send people to hell. They put themselves. No, he does. Well, God doesn't actually punish it. It's just the. The consequences saying, like, no, he actually punishes. On the other hand, we see God with incredible patience throughout the Kings sticking by these wicked people.
It is, you Think about the roller coaster that God would be on. And he's not on the roller coaster because he's God, but that we would be on of like, hey, they're great. Nope, they're not. Yay, they're great. Nope, they're not like, way up and down. And throughout this entire thing, God is the constant. He's steady. He's calling back to him. When things are good, hey, that's great. Keep going. When things are bad, hey, come back to me. God is always steady in our lives. But my goodness, I mean, that's what I get from the kings. It's just a complete roller coaster that God's patience and his faithfulness to his people, it really shines through.
[00:51:04] Speaker B: It does. And I mean, yeah, just hundreds of years of ups and downs and bringing them good kings and letting the faithfulness to David's line right where they didn't always deserve it, but God preserved it because of his promises to David and the beauty of that. And of course, that leads to Jesus all the way down the line. And so again, you're seeing God's plan, patience being part of that plan and his long sufferingness. And you think about what he told Moses on Sinai about that character of his own character, as you said, it's a character that punishes the wicked to multiple generations, but that is faithful and patient and long suffering. Like, this is a God who will go so far out of his way to have a relationship with us humans. And you just go, why? You ask the same question that David asks in Psalm 8, like, why us?
What are we?
How are we worth this? I think is a way to phrase that.
And I would just look at him and say, well, we're not, but he thinks we are, so we must be. And it's because of his love and who he is, not because of ourselves.
And so even through this terrible phase of history where just so many bad things happen, you see a Josiah doing good things, you see a Hezekiah making good decisions, you see an Elijah and obviously Elisha right after him. And these guys that you can look back and be proud of and look to as examples and all that in the midst of bad and. Or that they would bring about at least temporary revival and all that. And yes, they didn't pass it on to their kids. Yes, there were these issues that followed up, but there was still good to be taken out of there. And so many wonderful blessings because God didn't just strike them dead in the first generation.
[00:52:45] Speaker A: And throughout this, you also have the prophets, you have Isaiah, you have even Jonah, with the sign of Jonah, things pointing toward Christ, things pointing toward, hey, I got somebody coming. You know, and same thing now, got somebody coming. He's going to come back. Judgment's going to be there. And so we point toward that and we find hope in that. We find solace in that. And when life is crazy, we don't understand it, and it's difficult. And it goes back to the last point of just some things. It's like, what is going on? God is patient, God is loving. God is kind. He does not view time the way that we do. And we know that he's good because in the midst of the craziness of that, like you said, he rose up really good men, even men that were shouted down, even men that weren't appreciated, really good men. And he always pointed toward hope in Christ going forward.
And I think that's a really important point in this is man. His faithfulness is seen all the way through. And even if that wasn't realized for another 700 years or 600 years or wherever it may be, God came through for his people. He came through then in ways that they couldn't begin to realize, but he specifically came through with Christ. We don't know when Christ is coming back, but we stay the course. We stay faithful, knowing that man, God's got something good planned for us for sure.
[00:53:49] Speaker B: So just to recap.
First, think generationally. Second, remove the high places. Third, be a good leader or be a good follower. Fourth, hold the prophetic voice. Fifth, trust God's working even if you don't understand it. And sixth, give thanks for God's great patience. So just so much there. Wonderful books. As Joe mentioned at the top, this is the main meat of our volume five of our Closer Walk series. We. We started in just in Genesis 1. In volume one, we just kept on marching through the text all the way up to where this brings us in. Two Kings. We're actually going to transition out of the consecutive through the text because of the repetition between first and second Chronicles. So volume six, we're going to jump a little deeper into the Old Testament. But you don't have to do all six. There are all five of these at the same time. Pick one up. As we said, it's my wife and I do them at night. 10, 15 minutes in the Word together, talking about it, praying about it together.
It's a family devo kind of thing just to get you in the Word and thinking about it and talking about it in our busy schedule so you can get the combo pack of the first four. As we said, the volume five will be out Lord willing sometime this week and I don't think there's anything else to promote. As always, join us on the deep end FocusPress.org/ for the weekly exclusive episode and you get all these devotionals. If you don't want to buy all five volumes of the book. These are all posted to Focus for our members. There they go up six days a week.
Sunday is the only one we take off. So jump on there.
You'll have.
What is it? 460 devotionals at this point to catch up on or you know, you can just start working on. So a great perk of Focus plus. So that's all we've got for you this time. Again, keep willing your prayers. We hope he bounces back for the next one because we're talking non institutionalism next week. We've got a special guest for that, so keep an eye out for it and we'll talk to you on the next one.
Hey guys, Jack Wilke here. If you enjoy our work with podcasts like Think Deeper and Godly Young Men and our books, articles, seminars and want to support the work that we do, the best way to do so is to go to focuspress.org donate that's focuspress.org donate thanks again for listening.
