God's Lamp
My first sermon
I had the privilege of preaching from 2 Kings 8:16-29 on Sunday 3rd August at All Souls Church, Eastbourne. You can read the sermon below or listen to it by clicking the image above. God bless!
God’s Lamp (2 Kings 8:16-29)
The Apollo 13 commander Jim Lovell recounted a story of his time in the Navy. The year was 1954. He was on a nighttime training mission off the coast of Japan.
He was flying back to the aircraft carrier, the USS Shangri-La. And suddenly, his cockpit electrical systems malfunctioned.
Picture the scene. A man. Alone in an aeroplane. Flying over the murky depths of the Pacific Ocean. In the dark. Trying to land on a tiny strip of runway aboard the aircraft carrier. Without navigation.
So what did he do? Well, he turned off the lights in the cockpit, and looked out of the window. And he saw something extraordinary. He saw, down below on the surface of the ocean, a glowing strip of green light.
These were millions of tiny glow-in-the-dark plankton, churned up in the wake of the aircraft carrier. And Jim Lovell was able to follow this trail of light to the runway, where he made a safe landing.
When his immediate situation seemed utterly hopeless. When the systems on his plane failed. He looked beyond them. And what did he see? A lamp. Leading him home.
And our passage tonight is all about a lamp, the lamp of God himself, shining in the midst of deep darkness.
And how dark it is. We are continuing our series about the torn kingdom. Why is it torn? Well, back in 1 Kings 12 you can read about how the kingdom of Israel split in two. When King Solomon died, his son Rehoboam took the throne. And there was a rebellion. Leading to ten of the twelve tribes forming the Northern Kingdom of Israel. And the remaining two tribes formed the Southern Kingdom of Judah.
Much of 2 Kings so far has been focused on the Northern Kingdom, where the prophets Elijah and then Elisha spent their time. Through the influence of corrupt kings, especially Ahab, the Northern Kingdom has descended into the worship of false gods and all manner of wickedness.
God’s judgement is about to fall on the Northern Kingdom of Israel. And in the first part of 2 Kings 8, we were reminded that this judgement will be enacted through the figure of Hazael, king of Aram.
But in our passage for this evening, the text shifts its attention to the Southern Kingdom, the Kingdom of Judah. How have things been going in the South? Well, we’re told about the reign of king Jehoram, and then the reign of his son, Ahaziah. Verse 16…
2 Kings 8:16-18 (NIV)
16 In the fifth year of Joram son of Ahab king of Israel, when Jehoshaphat was king of Judah, Jehoram son of Jehoshaphat began his reign as king of Judah. 17 He was thirty-two years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem eight years. 18 He followed the ways of the kings of Israel, as the house of Ahab had done, for he married a daughter of Ahab…
So right off the bat, Jehoram, the King of the South is marrying a princess from the North. Her name is Athaliah. And she is a daughter of Ahab.
Alarm bells are ringing. Ahab was that wicked Northern King. He was married to Jezebel. And together they plunged Israel into the worship of false gods, and even child sacrifice. They killed many of the prophets of the true God.
And God’s judgement is about to fall on the Northern Kingdom through Hazael, largely because of the evils that Ahab introduced. And now, Ahab’s daughter Athaliah has married into the royalty of the South.
And she is just as bad as her parents. We’re not given many details about her in this text. But she will go on to order the murder of her own grandchildren in 2 Kings 11. So Jehoram’s marriage to her brings terrible consequences. It invites the corrupting influence of Ahab’s family. And now the South is going the way of the North.
There’s a fascinating detail. In 2 Kings 1, we read that the Northern Kingdom had a king called Ahaziah. And then a king called Joram, which is actually short for Jehoram. In our passage this evening, the Southern Kingdom has a king called Jehoram. And what’s the name of his successor? Ahaziah.
So in the North, there’s a king Ahaziah followed by a king Jehoram. And in the South there’s a king Jehoram followed by a king Ahaziah. You see, the Southern Kingdom is now mirroring the Northern Kingdom. They’re both going off the rails together.
2 Kings 8:18 (NIV)
[Jehoram] followed the ways of the kings of Israel, as the house of Ahab had done, for he married a daughter of Ahab. He did evil in the eyes of the LORD.
It’s a classic case of ‘be careful who you marry’. But notice, the text blames Jehoram as much as it blames his wife. Because his decision to marry Athaliah reflects a deeper problem within his heart. He desires her more than he desires the LORD.
2 Chronicles 21:11 tells us that…
2 Chronicles 21:11 (NIV)
[Jehoram] had caused the people of Jerusalem to prostitute themselves and had led Judah astray.
This king, supposedly an anointed leader over Judah, has plunged the kingdom into deeper darkness and corruption. Imagine a shepherd leading the sheep into a swamp. That’s what Jehoram is like.
And now, the streets of Judah are filled with the worship of false gods, and all manner of wickedness. And God-fearing Jews at the time might well have been thinking: Where is the LORD in all this? Does he care? Can’t he see what’s happening?
Do you ever feel that? Our context is very different to Ancient Judah. But maybe you look out at the world. And you see the failure of political leaders. You see the failure, even of prominent leaders within the church. And maybe you yourself wonder, where is God in all this? Does he care? Can’t he see what’s happening?
And as we read through 2 Kings and see the influence of one terrible king after another, it’s easy to look at Judah and think, it’s a lost cause. It’s on its way down the drain. There’s no coming back from this.
And make no mistake, God does not turn a blind eye to evil. He burns with anger against the wickedness of people like Jehoram.
John Stott once said that “the wrath of God… is his steady, unrelenting, unremitting, uncompromising antagonism to evil in all its forms and manifestations.”
From before creation God has eternally been a Father loving his Son in the joy of the Holy Spirit. And now, as he watches over this fallen world, his wrath isn’t in spite of his love. His wrath is because of his love. He sees evil for what it truly is. He sees the harm that it does.
And he opposes it. He wouldn’t be a loving God if he didn’t. And this makes verse 19 all the more extraordinary.
2 Kings 8:19 (NIV)
Nevertheless, for the sake of his servant David, the LORD was not willing to destroy Judah…
The LORD is withholding judgement, righteous though it is, from Judah. Why?
2 Kings 8:19 (NIV)
…He had promised to maintain a lamp for David and his descendants forever.
The LORD had made a promise to King David. Way back in history, before the kingdom split. A covenant. A binding agreement. And a key place you can see it is Psalm 89. God says…
Psalm 89:35-36 (NIV)
35 Once for all, I have sworn by my holiness—and I will not lie to David—36 that his line will continue forever and his throne endure before me like the sun;
This is the LORD’s promise. The line of David, the throne of David, will continue into eternity.
And so the reason that God does not wipe Judah from the face of the Earth, the reason that he preserves it, even when it is wallowing in its own wickedness, is that through it, an eternal kingdom is being established.
This verse, verse 19, is the only explicit mention of God in this passage. And as we read on, things are going to get even worse. But undergirding it all is this promise of God. A promise that will not be broken.
2 Kings 8:19 (NIV)
…for the sake of his servant David, the LORD was not willing to destroy Judah. He had promised to maintain a lamp for David and his descendants forever.
The throne of David will extend into eternity. It might not look like it now. It might seem that the throne of David is in dire straits. And that’s why the faithful remnant of Judah needed to hear the promise again and again. They needed to cling to it.
Let’s see how the rest of Jehoram’s reign panned out. Verse 20.
2 Kings 8:20-22 (NIV)
20 In the time of Jehoram, Edom rebelled against Judah and set up its own king. 21 So Jehoram went to Zair with all his chariots. The Edomites surrounded him and his chariot commanders, but he rose up and broke through by night; his army, however, fled back home. 22 To this day Edom has been in rebellion against Judah. Libnah revolted at the same time.
Notice how the surrounding lands are recoiling at Jehoram’s rule. Edom in verse 21 had been under Judah’s control since the time of King David himself. And the fact that they choose to rebel during Jehoram’s reign is a sign of Jehoram’s failed leadership.
Libnah in verse 22 is a city that was originally conquered by Joshua. And now they too are rebelling against Jehoram. Well this all leads to a scrap and Jehoram survives this time. But his days are numbered. Verse 23.
2 Kings 8:23-24 (NIV)
23 As for the other events of Jehoram’s reign, and all he did, are they not written in the book of the annals of the kings of Judah? 24 Jehoram rested with his ancestors and was buried with them in the City of David. And Ahaziah his son succeeded him as king.
In God’s sovereignty, the book of the annals of the kings of Judah is a lost book. But the account of Jehoram in 2 Chronicles 21 describes his downfall in more detail. I’ll read it to you.
2 Chronicles 21:16-20 (NIV)
16 The LORD aroused against Jehoram the hostility of the Philistines and of the Arabs who lived near the Cushites. 17 They attacked Judah, invaded it and carried off all the goods found in the king’s palace, together with his sons and wives. Not a son was left to him except Ahaziah, the youngest. 18 After all this, the LORD afflicted Jehoram with an incurable disease of the bowels. 19 In the course of time, at the end of the second year, his bowels came out because of the disease, and he died in great pain. His people made no funeral fire in his honor, as they had for his predecessors. …20… He passed away, to no one’s regret, and was buried in the City of David, but not in the tombs of the kings.
You see, Jehoram was so bad that he wasn’t even given a proper kingly burial. His own people seemed to recognise that under his leadership, they had hit rock bottom. These are dark times.
And God does act in judgement. He forcibly removes Jehoram from the throne as a punishment for his wickedness. But he could have gone a lot further. He could have purged the land of Judah entirely. And he didn’t. Why?
2 Kings 8:19 (NIV)
…for the sake of his servant David, the LORD was not willing to destroy Judah. He had promised to maintain a lamp for David and his descendants forever.
So that’s Jehoram. How about his son, Ahaziah?
2 Kings 8:25-27 (NIV)
25 In the twelfth year of Joram son of Ahab king of Israel, Ahaziah son of Jehoram king of Judah began to reign. 26 Ahaziah was twenty-two years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem one year. His mother’s name was Athaliah, a granddaughter of Omri king of Israel. 27 He followed the ways of the house of Ahab and did evil in the eyes of the LORD, as the house of Ahab had done, for he was related by marriage to Ahab’s family.
So Ahaziah is following in his Father’s footsteps. He continues to spread the evils of the house of Ahab. 2 Chronicles tells us that…
2 Chronicles 22:3 (NIV)
…his mother encouraged him to act wickedly.
That unwise marriage choice that Jehoram made is now affecting his son. There’s this ripple effect, this spreading corruption, being passed down the generations.
2 Kings 8:28-29 (NIV)
28 Ahaziah went with Joram son of Ahab to war against Hazael king of Aram at Ramoth Gilead. The Arameans wounded Joram; 29 so King Joram returned to Jezreel to recover from the wounds the Arameans had inflicted on him at Ramoth in his battle with Hazael king of Aram.
Then Ahaziah son of Jehoram king of Judah went down to Jezreel to see Joram son of Ahab, because he had been wounded.
Now remember, God’s judgement on Israel will come through Hazael. So this human attempt to defeat Hazael proves unsuccessful. Whatever their motives for fighting this battle, Ahaziah and Joram are definitely not seeking the Lord. Joram is wounded, and our passage ends with Ahaziah setting off to visit him.
So we’ve encountered two terrible southern kings this evening. And do you know what the name Jehoram means? It means "Yahweh is exalted". The LORD is exalted. And interestingly Athaliah, the name of his wife, is the female version of that name.
As for the name of their son, Ahaziah, that means "Yahweh sustains". The LORD sustains. So on the face of it, the names of our characters in this passage seem incredibly ironic. None of them are living up to their names.
But here’s the thing. Whatever the failings of the human rulers who bear these names, the names proclaim a deeper truth. The LORD is exalted. And the LORD sustains.
Because the line of David does not end with Jehoram or Ahaziah. They are not the answer. The answer comes in the person of Jesus. His name means ‘The LORD saves.’ And he is the Messiah. The anointed one. The true king in the line of David.
Let’s keep a finger in 2 Kings, and turn to Matthew chapter 1. The genealogy of Jesus. Look down at verse 8. Slap bang in the middle is Jehoram. And as you read down through those descendants of Jehoram, one generation after another, eventually you get to Jesus himself.
After what we’ve seen of Jehoram, we might be surprised to see his name included in the family tree of Jesus. Isn’t Jehoram a bit of an embarrassment? After all, when he died, he wasn’t even given a proper burial. “He passed away, to no one’s regret”. The people of Judah didn’t want to remember him, understandably so. But here he is.
Jesus isn’t embarrassed to include Jehoram, and countless other deeply flawed men and women on his family tree. Why? Because it proves that the line of David, this eternal kingdom, depends not on human efforts but on God. Through this broken family, often even in spite of it, the line has been preserved and has finally reached its fulfillment in the person of Jesus.
Let’s turn back to 2 Kings 8. Verse 19. Because the promise was always there.
2 Kings 8:19 (NIV)
Nevertheless, for the sake of his servant David, the LORD was not willing to destroy Judah. He had promised to maintain a lamp for David and his descendants forever.
Jesus is that lamp. He is the eternal son of the Father, anointed with the Holy Spirit. And he calls himself the light of the world. The lamp of the world.
The fullness of God’s shining goodness dwells in him and emanates from him. He came to fulfill his promise to David.
His promise that the throne of David would continue. But this Kingdom extends far beyond David’s physical descendants. Jesus is the lamp, not just of David, not just of Judah, but of the entire world. Of the entire cosmos.
In John 1, we read this.
John 1:9-11 (NIV)
9 The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. 10 He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. 11 He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.
The most glorious person to ever set foot on this earth, the true king in the line of David, the lamp of the world, he was rejected. He was rejected even within Judah. And in his early thirties, he was nailed to a Roman cross outside the city of Jerusalem.
In his final years, the songwriter Leonard Cohen wrote and recorded an album called ‘You Want it Darker’. He says this…
Magnified, sanctified, Be thy holy name
Vilified, crucified, In the human frame
A million candles burning For the help that never came
You want it darker, We kill the flame
We kill the flame. Humanity as a whole. We might not be as bad as Jehoram and Ahaziah. But like them, we have inherited a curse. All of us living downstream of the failure of those first human rulers, Adam and Eve.
We are broken. We are corrupt. We are compromised. We are perishing. And day by day, we contribute to the wickedness of the world. That’s what humans are like. Even the best of us.
We kill the flame. Because on that cross, Jesus, the true lamp absorbed the full force of the darkness in this world. The darkness in every single human heart, including our own.
He did what only the best king could do. He took responsibility. God the Son himself shouldered the righteous judgement of God in our place.
It was unimaginably costly for him. But the lamp was not extinguished. He only burned brighter. Pioneering a path into glorious resurrection life. And in Revelation 21 we see the vision for his eternal kingdom.
Revelation 21:22-24 (NIV)
22 I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. 23 The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp. 24 The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their splendor into it.
The lamb is the lamp. The lamb who was slain on the cross, is the lamp of David and of the entire world. And people from all nations are being brought into his kingdom. This is the Father’s eternal plan. For his people to dwell with him forever. Illuminated by the face of Jesus himself. The king who made the ultimate sacrifice in our place.
This is the glorious good news of the gospel. It’s a message that came, first to the Jews awaiting their true king, and now it has spread to the ends of the earth. And all who come. All who will simply receive Jesus, the lamp of the world, will be included in his kingdom.
We are awaiting the return of Jesus. And things are going to get worse before they get better. There will be more leaders like Jehoram and Ahaziah. But God hasn’t given up on this thing. He hasn’t given up on his church. And he hasn’t given up on his world. Because through the church, as the word and Spirit go out, the light of Jesus is reflected to the world, so that many will be saved.
The throne of David is alive and well and it belongs to Jesus who is seated at the right hand of the Father. Hallelujah! And one day, he will return to judge the world, and lead his church into a new heavens and a new Earth.
If you would like to know this lamp, this king, this Jesus, we would love to chat to you after the service.
Whatever you’ve done. Whatever your struggles this evening, he holds out his hand to you. It’s a nail-scarred hand. Because he made the ultimate sacrifice on that cross, to open the door to his kingdom. Will you receive Jesus? Will you take that nail-scarred hand? Will you receive the lamp who will lead you home?