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2 Kings Steve Estes 2 Kings Steve Estes

Israel's December: Hoshea, Exile, Samaria Resettled

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Speaker: Steve Estes
Scripture: 2 Kings 17:1-41
November 24, 2024

Sermon Outline

1. The beginning of the end

  • Picture an imaginary future for the United States

  • Israel’s situation in today’s text

2. Israel’s final days and ultimate collapse

  • Too little, too late

  • Hoshea’s folly

  • Assyria’s vengeance

3. Why God let this happen

4. What counterfeit religion looks like

  • Counterfeit religion often begins with ingratitude toward the one true God

  • Counterfeit religion focuses on what is aesthetically pleasing

  • Counterfeit religion invents itself; biblical faith receives what is revealed

  • Counterfeit religion is after results; biblical worship is after God

  • Counterfeit religion rots a person’s soul

  • Counterfeit religion ruins not just ourselves, but also our descendants

  • Counterfeit religion leads to judgment

5. How counterfeit religion is guarded against

6. The weeping Judge

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2 Kings Steve Estes 2 Kings Steve Estes

Anarchy in the Northern Kingdom: Zechariah-Pekah

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Speaker: Steve Estes
Scripture: 2 Kings 15:8-31
November 10, 2024

Sermon Outline

1. The sad political story

  • Two weeks ago — 41 years of prosperity

  • Today — 21 years of anarchy

2. The bloody succession of kings

  • Zechariah (6 months)

  • Shallum (1 month)

  • Menahem (10 years)

  • Pekahiah (2 years)

3. Pekah’s reign and fall

  • The darkening night

  • The prophesied Light

4. What sin destroyed this nation?

  • The sin that stands out

  • Jesus on personal responsibility*

*As you study the Bible, remember that Scripture interprets Scripture

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2 Kings Steve Estes 2 Kings Steve Estes

October in Israel: Jeroboam II and the Writing Prophets

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Speaker: Steve Estes
Scripture: 2 Kings 14:23-29
October 27, 2024

2 Kings 14:23-29: In the fifteenth year of Amaziah son of Joash king of Judah, Jeroboam son of Jehoash king of Israel became king in Samaria, and he reigned forty-one years. He did evil in the eyes of the LORD and did not turn away from any of the sins of Jeroboam son of Nebat, which he had caused Israel to commit. He was the one who restored the boundaries of Israel from Lebo Hamath to the Sea of the Arabah, in accordance with the word of the LORD, the God of Israel, spoken through his servant Jonah son of Amittai, the prophet from Gath Hepher.

The LORD had seen how bitterly everyone in Israel, whether slave or free, was suffering; there was no one to help them. And since the LORD had not said he would blot out the name of Israel from under heaven, he saved them by the hand of Jeroboam son of Jehoash. As for the other events of Jeroboam’s reign, all he did, and his military achievements, including how he recovered for Israel both Damascus and Hamath, which had belonged to Yaudi, are they not written in the book of the annals of the kings of Israel? Jeroboam rested with his fathers, the kings of Israel. And Zechariah his son succeeded him as king.

Sermon Outline

1. Review and introduction

  • Israel splits in two

  • The southern kingdom

  • The northern kingdom

2. Opening description of Jeroboam II

3. Point 1: It’s God’s nature to bless undeserving people

  • How God blessed Jeroboam II

  • Why God blessed Jeroboam II

4. God’s blessing does not necessarily mean God’s approval

  • Examples from the minor prophets

  • Applications

5. God’s judgments in one time/place are always to show mercy in another time/place

  • Examples

  • Where is this in today’s passage?

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2 Kings Steve Estes 2 Kings Steve Estes

The Reigns of Jehoahaz and Jehoash

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Speaker: Steve Estes
Scripture: 2 Kings 13:1-25
September 29, 2024

Sermon Outline

1. Jehoahaz

  • “He did evil in the eyes of the LORD...”

  • Result of this evil

  • “Then Jehoahaz sought the LORD’s favor”

  • How God did it

  • Israel’s response

2. Jehoash

  • Different king, same summary

  • A significant episode

  • A dead man lives again

3. Conclusion

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2 Kings Steve Estes 2 Kings Steve Estes

Jehu Destroys Ahab's Family and Baal Worship

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Speaker: Steve Estes
Scripture: 2 Kings 10:1-36
September 22, 2024

Sermon Outline

Destroying Ahab’s house

  • Jehu’s challenge

  • Heads roll in Samaria

  • Jehu seeks support of citizens and soldiers in Jezreel

  • Jehu slaughters Ahab’s house in Jezreel

2. Meeting relatives of Judah’s recently departed king

  • Remember Ahaziah?

  • The deadly meeting on the road to Samaria

3. Meeting a most unusual man

  • Jehonadab the Recabite

  • Jehonadab joins Jehu

  • The principle of this part of the passage

4. Killing Baal worship

  • A compulsory command

  • Death and destruction

5. What are we to think of this chapter?

  • Christian, don’t be naive about politics

  • God uses scary unbelievers to achieve his holy purposes

  • God often rewards unbelievers (in this life) for the good they do

  • It won’t do to abandon the sins we don’t like, but cling to the sins we do like

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2 Kings Steve Estes 2 Kings Steve Estes

Jehu Kills Ahaziah, Joram, and Jezebel

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Speaker: Steve Estes
Scripture: 2 Kings 9:1-37
September 8, 2024

Sermon Outline

1. Previously on The Northern Kingdom...

  • Elijah flees

  • Jehovah replies

  • God’s plan to topple Baal in Israel

2. Jehu anointed as king

  • Elisha sends a young prophet on a mission

  • Reaction of Jehu’s lieutenants

3. Jehu kills two Baal-worshiping kings

  • Killing Joram of Israel

  • Killing Ahaziah of Judah

4. Killing Jezebel

  • Jezebel prepares to die in style

  • Jehu has Jezebel thrown out the window

  • Jehu feasts while Jezebel is feasted on

5. Lessons

  • Rebellion against God is fanned into flame by those we associate with

  • Rebels vs. God are gradually storing up wrath for themselves

  • God avenges his suffering people

  • Is God’s wrath so gory and terrible?

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2 Kings Steve Estes 2 Kings Steve Estes

Joram's Last Chance for Grace Meeting the Shunammite's Son

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Speaker: Steve Estes
Scripture: 2 Kings 8:1-6
September 1, 2024

2 Kings 8:1-6: Now Elisha had said to the woman whose son he had restored to life, “Go away with your family and stay for a while wherever you can, because the LORD has decreed a famine in the land that will last seven years.” The woman proceeded to do as the man of God said. She and her family went away and stayed in the land of the Philistines seven years.

At the end of the seven years she came back from the land of the Philistines and went to the king to beg for her house and land. The king was talking to Gehazi, the servant of the man of God, and had said, “Tell me about all the great things Elisha has done.” Just as Gehazi was telling the king how Elisha had restored the dead to life, the woman whose son Elisha had brought back to life came to beg the king for her house and land.

Gehazi said, “This is the woman, my lord the king, and this is her son whom Elisha restored to life.” The king asked the woman about it, and she told him.

Then he assigned an official to her case and said to him, “Give back everything that belonged to her, including all the income from her land from the day she left the country until now.”

Sermon Outline

1. Background to today’s text (2 Kings 4 for reference)

2. King Joram had already seen God’s divine kindness through Elisha

  • Aramean ambushes foiled

  • Aramean army delivered into Joram’s hands

  • Northern kingdom’s capital relieved of starvation

3. King Joram asks to hear more about Elisha’s great works

  • The widow in debt

  • Death in the stew

  • Feeding one hundred

  • A borrowed ax

  • The Shunammite woman’s son

4. Lessons

  • See how God cares for His own people

  • See how important our response to accounts of God’s mercies are

Background for next week’s sermon

  • 2 Kings 8:7-14, NIV: Hazael Murders Ben-Hadad

  • 2 Kings 8:25-29, NIV: Ahaziah King of Judah

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2 Kings Steve Estes 2 Kings Steve Estes

Elisha's Fiery Horses and Chariots

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Speaker: Steve Estes
Scripture: 2 Kings 6:8-23
August 11, 2024

Sermon Outline

1. Intro: Secrets are sometimes hard to keep.

  • Aramean king’s secrets are being leaked.

  • The new prophet on the block

2. The Aramean king sends an army to capture Elisha.

3. God is with His people, even when they cannot see it.

  • First of three prayers

  • Picture the fiery beings.

  • Think of their number.

  • Think what the actual miracle was.

4. How God protected Elisha and his servant

  • Who made the first move?

  • Second of three prayers

  • Last of three prayers

5. God protects His people so that unbelievers may find that same protection in him.

  • How Israel treated the captured Arameans

  • What do we learn about God from this?

6. Lessons

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2 Kings Steve Estes 2 Kings Steve Estes

Elijah, Elisha, and Chariots of Fire

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Speaker: Steve Estes
Scripture: 2 Kings 2:1-12
August 4, 2024

2 Kings 2:1-12: Now when the Lord was about to take Elijah up to heaven by a whirlwind, Elijah and Elisha were on their way from Gilgal. And Elijah said to Elisha, “Please stay here, for the Lord has sent me as far as Bethel.” But Elisha said, “As the Lord lives, and as you yourself live, I will not leave you.” So they went down to Bethel. And the sons of the prophets who were in Bethel came out to Elisha and said to him, “Do you know that today the Lord will take away your master from over you?” And he said, “Yes, I know it; keep quiet.”

Elijah said to him, “Elisha, please stay here, for the Lord has sent me to Jericho.” But he said, “As the Lord lives, and as you yourself live, I will not leave you.” So they came to Jericho. The sons of the prophets who were at Jericho drew near to Elisha and said to him, “Do you know that today the Lord will take away your master from over you?” And he answered, “Yes, I know it; keep quiet.”

Then Elijah said to him, “Please stay here, for the Lord has sent me to the Jordan.” But he said, “As the Lord lives, and as you yourself live, I will not leave you.” So the two of them went on. Fifty men of the sons of the prophets also went and stood at some distance from them, as they both were standing by the Jordan. Then Elijah took his cloak and rolled it up and struck the water, and the water was parted to the one side and to the other, till the two of them could go over on dry ground.

When they had crossed, Elijah said to Elisha, “Ask what I shall do for you, before I am taken from you.” And Elisha said, “Please let there be a double portion of your spirit on me.” And he said, “You have asked a hard thing; yet, if you see me as I am being taken from you, it shall be so for you, but if you do not see me, it shall not be so.” And as they still went on and talked, behold, chariots of fire and horses of fire separated the two of them. And Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven. And Elisha saw it and he cried, “My father, my father! The chariots of Israel and its horsemen!” And he saw him no more.

Then he took hold of his own clothes and tore them in two pieces.

Sermon Outline

1. Vexation at Elijah’s departure

  • Anxiety at coming change

  • The prophets go to Bethel

  • The prophets go to Jericho

2. The prophets go to the Jordan

  • Elijah’s last miracle

  • Elijah asks his protege what he can do for him

  • God takes Elijah away in style

  • Elisha’s reaction

3. God reveals Elijah’s successor

  • Elisha mourns, then gets to work

  • Elisha is recognized as Elijah’s successor

4. Three short episodes to start Elisha’s ministry

  • Episode 1: Ordinary ministry with Jericho’s prophets

  • Episode 2: Ministry of God’s grace at Jericho

  • Episode 3: Ministry of God’s judgment at Bethel

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