2 Kings chapter 11, as we consider a seasonal message. The title is, The Lady Who Saved Christmas. And I must confess, I took the title right out of Ralph Davis' commentary on 2 Kings, The Power and The Fury. the lady who saved Christmas. While there are many in the history of redemption that have intervened to make sure, by God's grace and power, that the messianic line would be preserved, tonight we'll notice specifically a woman by the name of Jehoshabat.
She is the lady in our text who saved Christmas. I do want to read 2 Kings 11 in its entirety, and then we'll make four observations by way of exposition.
Scripture Reading: 2 Kings 11
When Atalia, the mother of Ahaziah, saw that her son was dead, she arose and destroyed all the royal heirs. But Jehoshabah, the daughter of King Joram, sister of Ahaziah, took Joash, the son of Ahaziah, and stole him away from among the king's sons who were being murdered. And they hid him and his nurse in the bedroom from Atalia so that he was not killed. So he was hidden with her in the house of the Lord for six years while Atalia reigned over the land.
In the seventh year, Jehoiada sent and brought the captains of hundreds. of the bodyguards and the escorts, and brought them into the house of the Lord to him. And he made a covenant with them, and took an oath from them in the house of the Lord, and showed them the king's son. Then he commanded them, saying, This is what you shall do. One third of you who come on duty on the Sabbath shall be keeping watch over the king's house.
One-third shall be at the gate of Shur, and one-third at the gate behind the escorts. You shall keep the watch of the house, lest it be broken down. The two contingents of you who go off duty on the Sabbath shall keep the watch of the house of the Lord for the king. But you shall surround the king on all sides, every man with his weapons in his hand.
And whoever comes within range, let him be put to death. You are to be with the king as he goes out and as he comes in. So the captains of the hundreds did according to all that Jehoiada the priest commanded. Each of them took his men who were to be on duty on the Sabbath with those who were going off duty on the Sabbath and came to Jehoiada the priest.
And the priest gave the captains of hundreds the spears and shields which had belonged to King David that were in the temple of the Lord. Then the escorts stood, every man with his weapons in his hand, all around the king from the right side of the temple to the left side of the temple by the altar in the house. And he brought out the king's son, put the crown on him and gave him the testimony. They made him king and anointed him.
And they clapped their hands and said, Long live the king. Now when Atalia heard the noise of the escorts and the people, She came to the people in the temple of the Lord. When she looked, there was the king standing by a pillar according to custom. And the leaders and the trumpeters were by the king.
All the people of the land were rejoicing and blowing trumpets. So Talia tore her clothes and cried out, Treason! Treason! And Jehoiada the priest commanded the captains of the hundreds, the officers of the army, and said to them, take her outside under guard, and slay with the sword whoever follows her.
For the priest had said, do not let her be killed in the house of the Lord. So they seized her, and she went by way of the horse's entrance into the king's house, and there she was killed. Then Jehoiada made a covenant between the Lord, the king, and the people. that they should be the Lord's people, and also between the king and the people. And all the people of the land went to the temple of Baal and tore it down.
They thoroughly broke in pieces its altars and images, and killed Mattan, the priest of Baal, before the altars. And the priest appointed officers over the house of the Lord. Then he took the captains of hundreds, the bodyguards, the escorts, and all the people of the land. And they brought the king down from the house of the Lord, and went by way of the gate of the escorts to the king's house.
Then he sat on the throne of the kings. So all the people of the land rejoiced, and the city was quiet, for they had slain Italia with the sword in the king's house. Jehoash was seven years old when he became king." Amen. Let us pray.
Opening Prayer
Father, we thank You for Your Word and we thank You for Your protection of the Messianic line. We thank You that You used even unsung heroes in the preservation of Your holy seed. And we pray, Lord God, that these things would cause us to rejoice, that we would see the background to what we celebrate in terms of Christ's incarnation. Help us, Lord God, to truly praise You, our Lord. for all of Your kindness and all of Your mercy and Your fulfillment of promises made even way back in the Garden of Eden.
And we pray through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.
Introduction
Well, as I said, the title and the points are basically from Ralph Davis' commentary. I thought it was very interesting to consider this passage at this particular time of the year. If we look at 2 Kings chapter 11, the time frame is the 9th century BC in the kingdom of Judah. It's 841 to 835 BC to be exact.
The reigning queen of Judah is Ataliah. We run into the same difficulty with that name as we do with Habakkuk. Some might pronounce it Athaliah. Some might be Adaliah.
The Hebrew pronunciation sounds similar to Ataliah, something to that effect. So any of those three, if I mention them, difference, it's the same woman that's in view here. She was the granddaughter of Omri. and the daughter of Ahab and possibly of Jezebel. Ahab had several wives.
She definitely exhibits something of Jezebelian genes, so it's probably not a stretch to consider that she was in fact the daughter of Ahab and the daughter of Jezebel. There's four observations we want to make this evening. The first is the wicked fury of God's enemies. Secondly, the wonderful significance of God's unsung servants.
Thirdly, the subversive presence of God's kingdom. And fourthly, the installation of the rightful king. I believe there are some good lessons and some good instruction here for us in the 21st century in North America.
The Wicked Fury of God's Enemies
But as we consider, first of all, the wicked fury of God's enemies, We read in verse 1, when Atalia, the mother of Ahaziah, saw that her son was dead, she arose and destroyed all the royal heirs. Now, just a bit of background. As we said, she was the daughter of Israel's Ahab. She became the wife of Jehoram, who was the son of Jehoshaphat.
Jehoshaphat was a good king, but he was somewhat simple when it came to covenantal dealings. Davis says he was covenantally stupid. Jehoshaphat wanted to make an alliance with the northern kingdom, so he gave his son to Atalia to be married. Jehoram was her husband.
He was, of course, in the kingdom. He was the king, rather. He killed all his brothers when he gained sole power, according to 2 Chronicles 21. And this was a time of a lot of bloodshed, people jockeying for position.
So, Jehoram, Athaliah's husband, killed all his brothers when he gained sole power. Shortly after that, Philistines and Arabs invaded Judah and carried off and killed all of Jehoram's son, except the youngest, Ahaziah. And it was Ahaziah that was caught with Joram of Israel in Jehu's purge. So he was destroyed.
When we get to this point, there's all these people that are dead. Now, Ahaziah is dead, and so Atalia begins to commit this slaughter of the remaining heirs. As Davis says, one wonders who could possibly be left for Atalia's ministry of murder aside from her own grandchildren. Those would be the ones that were, verse 1, the royal seed or the royal heir.
It was Italia's hour of power and she rose up and destroyed the royal seed. And we see that there in verse 1 and of course the net result is given to us in verse 3 at the very end, while Italia reigned over the land. So she, by this act of treachery, by this act of murdering her own grandchildren, succeeded the kingdom of Judah. She became the queen in the nation of Judah.
And I believe that the lesson here for us is simply this, that when that promise was made in Genesis 3.15, that there would be enmity between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent, we see it all throughout redemptive history. It's almost as if this promise was exposed and it was under attack. Various times in the history of redemption, it almost looked like the Davidic line was going to be wiped out, that it would be obliterated, that the promises of God would fail. And this is one of those instances where it came within a hairbreadth of being exterminated.
Had she been successful in wiping out all of the royal heir, that would have stopped the line of David and there would have been failure in terms of God's promise. Atalia's enmity against the kingdom of Jesus Christ is typical of godless rulers. Remember Herod in Matthew chapter 2 and the murder of the innocents. Remember Psalm 2 that tells us that the kings and the rulers of our world take their stand against the Lord and against His Christ.
This is not anything new under the sun.
God's Unsung Servants
And that brings us secondly to consider the wonderful significance of God's unsung servants. Be honest. I asked Tony the other day, or I mentioned it was going to be a message on the lady who saved Christmas. And he said, Rahab.
Good guess. Others have said, you know, a name here or there. Sarah, I heard tonight as well. Would you have ever said Jehoshabah?
Would you have ever said, yeah, I know who spared the royal line. It was Jehoshabah. Jehoshabah, notice here in verse 2, the daughter of King Joram, sister of Ahaziah, took Joash, the son of Ahaziah, and stole him away from among the king's sons who were being murdered. And they hid him and his nurse in the bedroom from Athaliah so that he was not killed.
What we have is Ahaziah's sister is the savior of Ahaziah's baby son against Ahaziah's mother. Ahaziah's mother wants blood and Ahaziah's sister spares this baby boy, Joash. And of course, the background. We realize in Genesis 3, I've already alluded to that, God promised a deliverer.
And when we look at that promise, there are three things we notice. The deliverer would be a man. He would not be an angelic being. He would not be some other power structure.
He would be a man. He would be the seed of the woman. This is why abortion was absolutely unheard of or unthought of in Old Covenant Israel. They were looking for the seed of a woman.
They simply would not have murdered babies in their mother's wombs because they were expecting a Messiah to come. A second implication is that the Deliverer would achieve victory through suffering. He would have His heel bruised. He would have some sort of suffering involved in the mission that the Lord had given Him to bring victory.
But the Deliverer would achieve a glorious conquest. He shall bruise your head. The faithful in Israel, the faithful in Judah, were looking for this promise. And praise God for Jehoshaphat that she took this boy and hid him from the murderous rage of Ataliah.
And of course,
The Davidic Covenant at Stake
the covenantal context, the 2 Samuel 7, the Davidic covenant. When the Lord God had promised David, when your days are fulfilled and you rest with your fathers, I will set up your seed after you, who will come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be his father, and he shall be my son.
If He commits iniquity, I will chasten Him with the rod of men and with the blows of the sons of men. But My mercy shall not depart from Him, as I took it from Saul, whom I removed from before you. And your house and your kingdom shall be established forever before you. Your throne shall be established forever." So, if young Joash had not been hidden away, if he had not been spared from this murderous rage, we would see the decline or the ultimate breaking of this promise of 2 Samuel 7.
And of course, the Lord God doesn't make promises, He doesn't keep. He is good on His Word and He uses Jehoshabah here in order to spare this young boy, Joash. She is, incidentally, according to a parallel in 2 Chronicles 22, the wife of Jehoiada, the priest. The Jehoiada that we read of here in verse 4, who begins privately to make sure that Joash is recognized for the kingdom.
This Jehoiada was married to Jehoshabah. So, they had a godly family there. So that's the wicked fury of God's enemies, the wonderful significance of God's unsung servants.
The Subversive Presence of God's Kingdom
Notice, thirdly, the subversive presence of God's kingdom. Verse 3, So he was hidden with her in the house of the Lord for six years, while Italia reigned over the land. So you have the visible illegitimate kingdom of Italia. And then you have the invisible or the secret reign of the rightful king.
What does this sound like? Hopefully it sounds like the day and age in which we live. Listen to Davis. You must see this as your anchor, not the secret reign of Joash, for there is a far greater than Joash who reigns now.
David's descendant and Joash's descendant, Jesus the Lord. And the rulers of this age and the pagans around you don't know this secret. But you do, if you've swallowed Ephesians 1, 20-22. This is what puts iron in your guts and makes you able to resist any other power that tries to control you. knowing there is a legitimate King who secretly reigns, keeps you from despair while the pretenders carry on.
Amen. One of the things that concerns me in the trial-filled age in which we live is when Christians get so anxious and get so caught up in the political machine. And I'm not against all that. I believe we ought to.
Watch and see and pray and be involved and all that stuff. But there's a fine line between watching and praying and being involved and being unnecessarily paralyzed by the prevalence of wickedness. By forgetting that Jesus Christ is on His throne, that He is King of kings, that He is Lord of lords. At this particular time in Judah's history, we'll notice later, in just a moment, there was a temple of Baal in the land of Judah.
Now things were bleak, brethren. Ataliah had about a six or seven year reign that began with a murderous rage against little children. But you see that God is not marked. God is not gone.
God is active. God is in control and His true King is in hiding in a small room being tended to for several years because Jehoshabah, by God's grace, was faithful. We need to make sure that we guard against the temptation to look out among us and to get paralyzed with fear and to forget that Jesus Christ truly does reign over all things. Whether the economy collapses or not, Jesus is on His throne.
Whether good men or bad men are in high places, Jesus is on His throne. This is one of the big messages in the book of Revelation. The book of Revelation is about the enthronement of Jesus Christ. Over and over and over again, we see what's going on in the world, but our gaze is always directed back to the throne, that place of control, that place of calm dignity, that place of sovereign power.
And this is my burden for us as Christians. is that we would not take our eyes off of the fact that King Jesus rules and He reigns over all things for the good of His church. The subversive presence of God's kingdom. The visible reign of the illegitimate kingdom was contrasted here with the secret existence of the true King.
Installation of the Rightful King
And then that brings us fourthly to consider the installation of the rightful King. Jehoiada. goes, calls all these several persons together. The long and the short of it is, he is crowned and he is given the testimony according to verse 12. The testimony probably refers to the law of God.
This was the possession of the king. When the king took office, he was to copy for himself the law of the Lord. So, he is crowned, he is given this testimony, and then everybody cries out, Long live the king. And then Atalia comes and sees this.
This is an amazing scene here. Verse 13. Now when Atalia heard the noise of the escorts and the people, she came to the people in the temple of the Lord. When she looked, there was the king standing by a pillar according to custom, and the leaders and the trumpeters were by the king.
You'd pay to see that. Here's this wicked, horrible person. This woman who has usurped the crown. This woman who has shed blood to get to where she's at.
She hears some commotion. She hears some celebratory praise. She runs over the temple to see what's going on. And there's the king.
Now notice what Italia does. All the people of the land were rejoicing and blowing trumpets. So Italia tore her clothes and cried out, treason, treason. How'd she get to the throne?
By murder. She's the last one in the world that should ever take the word treason to her lips in condemnation of another. Davis said, one marvels that a usurper could use that word with a straight face. How dare her?
But she's going to get hers. She is removed from the temple and summarily executed. They didn't play games back then. They dealt the law.
They dealt the justice out. Verse 15, Joahetta the priest commanded the captains of the hundreds, the officers of the army, and said to them, take her outside under guard and slay with the sword whoever follows her. For the priest had said, do not let her be killed in the house of the Lord. So they seized her, and she went by way of the horse's entrance into the king's house, and there she was killed.
So the rightful king has been recognized, the rightful king has been crowned, the rightful king has been given the testimony, and the usurper, the one who really was guilty of treason, has been summarily executed.
Covenant Renewal and Destruction of Idols
Now notice, notice verses 17 to 20, what Davis calls the high price of covenant restoration. The covenant is renewed in verse 17. But it says Jehoiada made a covenant between the Lord, the King, and the people. This wasn't something entirely new.
Probably a reconfirmation of the covenant as found in the books of Moses. So he makes a covenant between the Lord, the King, and the people, that they should be the Lord's people, and also between the King and the people. The sequence, notice, between verses 17 and 18 is important. We have this renewal of covenant in verse 17, and then we have destruction in verse 18.
That's conspicuous. We need to understand this. Covenant leads to destruction. If there is fidelity to God, verse 17, all that attempts to sap and seduce that fidelity must be thrown down.
That's verse 18. Notice in verse 18, and all the people of the land went to the temple of Baal and tore it down. Again, these are dark days in Judah when there's a temple of Baal sitting in their town. I mean, we would probably raise an eyebrow if they started to build a mosque in downtown Chilliwack.
Hopefully, we'd raise an eyebrow. You know, one of the things about England is that there are so many mosques, so many moslems. throughout that land, a land that produced the Puritans. Now has Charles Darwin on their 10-pound note and mosques dotted all over their landscape. Well, that's kind of how it was in Judah.
There was a temple of Baal in Judah. So they renew the covenant, then what do they do? They go and tear down the temple of Baal. And not only do they tear down the temple, but they destroy all of the idols.
They destroy anything and everything that would sap that fidelity to Jehovah. And there's Matan, the high priest, well, they kill him too. You cannot miss this, brethren. Restoration or covenant leads to destruction.
Davis says, when truth reigns, the false must be eliminated. The king is established on the throne of the kings, according to verse 20, and all the people of the land rejoice. The city was quiet, for they had slain Italia with the sword in the king's house.
Application
Now what do we learn from this passage? The first, and we've seen it, we must rehearse it, is the enmity that exists against the kingdom of Christ. Jesus promised His followers that if the world hates you, know that it hated me first. The Bible tells us that people, apart from God, hate Him.
They don't seek Him. They don't fear Him. They don't love Him. They don't honor Him.
And they don't worship Him. We ought not to be surprised by that. Now, we should never get comfortable with sin. We should never be desensitized to just how heinous sin is.
But we ought not to just be so perplexed. If we are rooted in the soil of biblical theology, we'll realize that this is simply application of Genesis 3. There is enmity that exists between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. Now, it culminated at Calvary when the seed of the woman crushed the head of the seed of the serpent.
But there is that enmity that continues on today. We need to see that. We need to understand that. We need to realize that.
We need to know that so that we'll pray effectively. so that we'll be on our guard, so that we'll be watchful. People don't want you to be happy in Jesus. People don't want you to have a good relationship with Christ. Young people, people don't want you to resist their drugs, or to resist their foul language, or to resist those things that hopefully, by God's grace, you are resisting.
There are a whole host of people that want you to join in their wickedness with them. You need to resist. You need to guard. You need to realize that that enmity exists and you will certainly not fight against it by going along with it.
Lessons from Jehoshabah
A second lesson. Jehoshaphat, mentioned briefly, is an unsung hero of the Christian faith. I mean, again, would we have said tonight, coming in here, yeah, Jehoshabah. Do we ever talk about her?
Do we ever think about her? Have you ever thought about Jehoshabah? Have you ever in your life said, kids, I want to teach you about someone that's very important in redemptive history? Someone that, by their courage and by their strength, preserve the messianic line.
Now, we know God is sovereign. God, however, uses means. And we want to learn about Jehoshabat tonight. More than likely, brethren, that is not what we're about.
Listen to what Davis says. This is a lengthy quote, but I think it's so beautiful. He says, Yahweh's promise to David was one infant away from proving false and falling to the ground. What a crucial moment.
Jehoshabah is the human agent responsible for preserving the kingdom of God in this world. It's amazing, isn't it? That's really what's happening in this passage. If it weren't for Jehoshabah, there wouldn't be any Christmas.
The Davidic pipeline would have been broken. Here is the lady who saved Christmas. She is God's role-aid in what sometimes seems the soap opera of history. Because of her initiative in verse 2, all of verses 4 to 18 can take place.
You see how strategic Jehoshapah's act is? Yahweh's promise hung by a frazzled thread in 840 BC, and she kept it from snapping. You see Yahweh's method, don't you? No spectacular intervention.
Get this. Oh, he could have caused Italia's hiatal hernia to make her choke on her granola one morning before she ever started her bloodbath. But he didn't. He had his servant Jehoshabah in place.
He didn't just, you know, cast her down dead. into some miraculous, stupendous act of judgment. Now, she gets hers to be sure, but all things being equal, it is the normal execution of covenant justice. He goes on to say, you may draw an erroneous inference at this point. You may think that your service for Yahweh is not crucial like Jehoshabah's.
I am, you might say, seldom or never thrust into dramatic scenarios like the one she faced. Are you sure? If you are a Christian parent, you have responsibility over the church in your house, where you are meant to serve as prophet, priest, and king. As prophet, you teach the Word of God to your children.
As priest, you intercede and wrestle in prayer for them. And as king, you rule over them with proper discipline and protection. It's because my parents understood that that I am in the kingdom of God. Don't tell me your kingdom service doesn't matter.
He goes on. And it's interesting, isn't it, that Jehoshabah's name is not exactly a household word. Daughter of a king, wife of a priest, she had some status. But we don't hear of her again.
You yourself probably didn't think of her all this week until you happened to read this chapter. She may well have been relatively obscure in her own time. Folks, after all, we're still talking about the Battle of Karkar in 853, and Shalmaneser III was Time Magazine's Man of the Year. John Bright, in his History of Israel, doesn't refer to Jehoshapah by name in his narrative, nor even list her in the index.
But isn't this the glory of God? That He does not need powerful or prominent people? So we will be wrong if we become fixated on Jehoshabah. We could too easily do that.
Then we'd start marketing Jehoshabah mugs, Jehoshabah sweatshirts, Jehoiada Jehoshabah coffee table books, a la the Charles and Diana genre, and we'd try to get her on a Christian TV network. Sometimes the Bible doesn't say something directly because it expects you to be smart enough to pick it up. Don't you catch what verse 2 wants you to say? God wasn't napping, was He?
He had just the servant He wanted in just the right place at that very time. Your only response should be to stand and sing the doxology. Praise God, from whom gutsy women come. Amen.
Isn't that awesome? That's our God. I mean, if you get five books in your life, get His commentaries. He makes the former prophets alive, or six books.
Judges, Joshua, 1st and 2nd Samuel, actually what, 2, 4, 6, yeah, 1st, 2nd Kings. That's the kind of stuff I need. That's the kind of stuff you need. We may forget Jehoshabat tonight when we go out of here, but we all live in Christ because she was God's instrument to preserve Joash.
It's an amazing God we have. God of attention to detail. And He's right. We would, you know, the prayer of Jabez.
Do you think that's actually in the Bible? So there could be that huge marketing campaign promoting the prayer of Jabez? If what He's saying is right and people caught on, there would be. That's the day we live in.
Jehoshabamugs. Jehoshaba.com. That's not what we're supposed to do. We're supposed to praise the God who used Jehoshabba in a very wonderful way.
Necessity of Covenant Restoration
And then the third and final observation in terms of application is the necessity for covenant restoration. In the 9th century BC in Judah, it was manifested as we have seen through the destruction of the temple of Baal, through the casting down and destroying of idols, and through the killing of Matan, the priest of Baal. Now, it won't look that way for you and I. We're not going to go downtown and rip down Baal's temple, start destroying idols, and start killing priests who serve a false god.
But there must be covenant restoration. There must be fidelity to the Lord God. There must be what we have been learning. Hopefully we're learning in the book of Colossians.
That's Paul's letter. calling the church to covenant faithfulness, to living in terms of who Jesus is and what He has done on our behalf. This whole idea of being encouraged or strengthened in heart, of being united in love, of growing in our understanding of theology and learning more and more about the mystery of the Gospel. Those are the means or those are the ways by which we will walk faithfully to our God. That we will walk faithfully in terms of the new covenant.
So, whether it's the 9th century B.C. and where to go out and rip down the temple of Baal, or it's in the 21st century here in North America, ripping out the temples of Baal in our own hearts, or destroying the idols that we hold near and dear, destroying those things that get between us and our God, covenant restoration or covenant renewal is absolutely crucial in the New Covenant Christian.
Closing Prayer
Walking in the New Covenant means resisting the pull of the competitors and drawing blood if necessary. Not the blood of Matan the priest, but our own blood. In fact, that's the implication in Hebrews 12. You have not resisted to the point of shedding blood.
The implication certainly is, but you should. You should be willing to resist to that degree. You should be willing to lay down your life. You should be willing to crucify those desires.
You should be willing to sacrifice all those things for the Lord Jesus Christ. We learned something. The lady who saved Christmas.