2023—Week17: 1Kings21-2Kings19; John03-06

Is it fair to say that there’s a parallel between the distinct ways God appealed to the apostate Northern Kingdom of Israel vs. the merely unstable Southern Kingdom of Judah and the ways Jesus appealed to the people who sought Him vs. the people who opposed Him?


1 Kings 21-2 Kings 19: This is a period of rapid decline in the northern kingdom of Israel. As if Jeroboam’s launch of the nation in pragmatic, syncretistic calf-worship wasn’t bad enough, Ahab has brought new lows to the kingdom with his persistent Ba’al worship. His wife Jezebel is worse still, for the exploitation of religion in to murder an innocent man in order to confiscate property he desired didn’t even occur to him until she suggested it in Chapter 21. God is greatly offended by this hypocrisy, and thus the valley of Jezreel becomes a continual motif throughout the rest of Scripture for judgment of religious hypocrisy. It was where the prophets of Ba’al were slain in 1 Kings 17. It’s where Jehu kills Joram and Ahaziah, the kings of Israel and Judah in 2 Kings 9. It’s where Josiah was defeated and slain for his pride by Pharaoh Neco in 2 Chronicles 35:20-26. And ultimately, it’s where the fruit of the world will be “reaped” in Joel 3:9-16, Revelation 14:14-20,19:15-21 and Zechariah 12:7-11. Nevertheless, even as all the problems in Israel and Judah are evident, so is the mercy of God in the ministry of Elijah, which is taken over by Elisha. Their ministries are accompanied by miracles and supernatural enlightenment, and there is a school of the prophets, which may have been established by Samuel (1 Samuel 19) but was probably formalized and/or greatly increased under Elijah’s and Elisha’s ministries, after Jezebel’s attempts to exterminate them all. (1 Kings 18:13-14) Elijah and Elisha intervene at times in the decisions of kings. Elisha raises the son of the Shunnamite woman and heals the Syrian general Naaman’s leprosy, while rebuking the greed of one servant (2 Kings 5) and the faithlessness of another (2 Kings 6:13-17). Jesus angers the members of the Nazareth Synagogue by implying Elijah's miracles for the Sidonian widow of Zarepath in 1 Kings 17:9-16 and Elisha’s healing of the Syrian general were indicative of grace overflowing to the gentiles because the people of God were so rebellious. (Luke 3:16-28), Nevertheless, the good kings of Judah like Jehoshaphat, Joash, Amaziah, Uzziah, Jotham and Hezekiah and the prophets sent to appeal to the Northern Kingdom, represented the patience and mercy of God. I noticed Hezekiah’s prayer in the invasion of Assyria was on behalf of “the remnant.” (2 Kings 19:4, 30-31; cf., Proverbs 29:1,2; 2 Chronicles 7:14, 1 Kings 19:18, Romans 9:27, 11:5) There’s a remnant in both places, and it’s for the sake of this remnant that God continues to work. It also shows in the heart of Jesus for the lost sheep of the house of Israel, including the Samaritans.

John 3-6: Reading the book of John after the synoptic Gospels brings an entirely different perspective on the ministry of Jesus. It’s personal. It’s evangelistic. It’s explicitly divine, even to gentiles without the benefit of the theocracy. Who is it that Isaiah's voice in the wilderness prepares the way for? YHVH. But when he arrives, who is it that he prepares the way for? Jesus. (John 1:15-27, 3:28) He tells Nicodemus that He is not only One Who can do miracles because God is with Him, but that He is the Son of Man Who is (present tense) in heaven, (John 3:13), and the basis on which everyone will be saved or judged. (3:16-19) His encounters like this one are scheduled, as the text implies in John 4:4, and He is willing to use not only their explicit spiritual seeking, but their unconscious hunger for satisfaction they can’t identify, (John 4:14, cf., v.34; 6:34, cf., vv. 27, 48-58), to invite them to salvation. His outreach to the religious leaders who are angered by his miracle on the Sabbath is different, but no less merciful:He tries to get them to think about the true nature of the Sabbath, and everything working together to reveal His true nature to them. (John 5) 

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