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| > Sermon Archive > Sermons by Author > Dr. Wes Bredenhof > The anointed Avenger asks, Who is on my side? Who? | Previous Next Print |
| Order Of Worship (Liturgy) Psalm 124 Hymn 11:9 (after the Law of God) Psalm 83:5-7 Psalm 146:1,4,5 Psalm 105:1-3 Scripture reading: Revelation 18:1-19:5 Text: 2 Kings 9:30-37 |
Beloved congregation of Christ,
There’s no point in avoiding the obvious. Our text is one of the most violent and gruesome passages in the Bible. How Jezebel dies is ugly and gory.
Today many films and TV shows feature violence. It’s often what we call gratuitous – it’s unnecessary. It’s just there to entertain. I remember back in the early 2000s watching the opening scenes of a famous World War II movie where American soldiers were storming the beaches of Normandy. It was on TV. I had to turn it off because it was just too gory. Was it realistic? Probably. But do we really need to see a realistic portrayal of war and what it does to human bodies? That’s gratuitous, unnecessary, over the top.
But the Bible doesn’t feature violence and gore for its entertainment value. It always has an important point to make. That’s true here too when we’re dealing with how the newly anointed King Jehu killed Jezebel. God put this in his Word for a good reason and if we’re wise, we’ll want to learn why. We do that by focussing on the role of Jehu here and how he points to someone greater dealing with an even greater threat to God’s people. I preach to you God’s Word and I’ve summarized the sermon with this theme: the anointed Avenger asks: “Who is on my side? Who?” We’ll see this asked:
- At the judgment on the first Jezebel
- At the judgment on the end-times Jezebel
To begin, we need to quickly review the background to this story. God had commanded his people not to intermarry with the nations around them. He warned them how there would be serious consequences if they did. Ahab thought he knew better than God. So this Israelite king married Jezebel. She was the daughter of Ethbaal, king of the Sidonians. And it wasn’t like Ahab helped Jezebel become a worshipper of the true God. Instead, it was the other way around. Jezebel helped Ahab drift even further away from God with the worship of idols like Baal and Ashtoreth. She was an expert at what we call “flirt to convert.” Except her converting was to paganism.
Idolatry was a problem among God’s people before Jezebel showed up as the wife of Ahab. But she brought it to a whole new level. She had hundreds of pagan prophets who ate at her table – which is to say, she actively supported them. Jezebel then also persecuted the true prophets of God. She had many of them killed. She wasn’t a tolerant queen when it came to her religion. You were either for her or against her.
Then there was the whole scandal involving Naboth and his vineyard. You may remember how Ahab wanted the vineyard of Naboth next to his palace in Jezreel. He moped about it because Naboth wouldn’t sell it to him. Jezebel made some arrangements to have Naboth and his entire family murdered. Ahab got his vineyard.
None of this escaped the notice of God. Not the idolatry, not the persecution, not the murder, not the theft. God saw it all. And now he has sent his avenger to make it right. Jehu was anointed by God to destroy the family of Ahab. He’s already killed Joram and Ahaziah – that’s earlier in the chapter. Now he arrives in Jezreel to see God’s justice served on Jezebel, the queen mother. It’s her day of reckoning.
Undoubtedly Jezebel noticed Joram and Ahaziah head out of Jezreel to meet Jehu a little further down the valley. It’s hard to miss the sound of horses and chariots rushing out of the city. Perhaps she even watched what happened to them. But certainly she’d have noticed how Jehu arrived without Joram and Ahaziah. She certainly drew the conclusion of what had happened out there near Naboth’s vineyard.
Now if you look at verse 30 you see a curious reaction to this situation. Jezebel puts on make-up and does her hair. That tells us something about her and how we should think about her. She knows she’s going to die. There’s no other way this ends. But she’s so vain that she decides to try and beautify herself for death. She wants to go out in style with her hair and make-up done. But this is also telling us something about how we should think about her in the context of the whole Bible.
Earlier in the chapter, when Jehu meets Joram, he tells him that there can be no peace when the whorings of his mother Jezebel are so many. Her idolatry is portrayed as prostitution. We’re getting the same picture here in verse 30. The painting of the eyes described here is associated elsewhere in the Old Testament with prostitution. There’s an example of that in Jeremiah 4:30. Please don’t misunderstand. The Bible isn’t saying that any woman who puts on eye make-up is a prostitute or might be thought of as one. Instead, this is a specific kind of cosmetic that was associated in those days with prostitutes. That’s how Jezebel is being portrayed here. She’s an old lady by this point, but she’s pathetically putting on the same kind of make-up a prostitute wears.
As Jehu draws near, she calls down to him from her window in the tower. Jezebel mocks Jehu. She calls him “Zimri.” We read about Zimri in 1 Kings 16. He murdered King Elah and then reigned in his place. However, he only reigned for seven days before he killed himself. By calling him “Zimri, murderer of your master,” Jezebel is saying this is what’s going to happen to Jehu too. He’s going to be a short-lived king just like Zimri was.
But notice in verse 31 how Jehu doesn’t even dignify Jezebel’s question with a response. He ignores her. Instead, he calls out to anyone listening above, “Who is on my side? Who?” Those are important words here, which is why I’ve built the sermon around them. There’s a choice to be made up there in the tower. Jezebel made her choice a long time ago, but there are others surrounding her who now have to choose what they’re going to do. Will they support the wicked queen mother and what she’s done? Or will they support God’s anointed avenger in bringing justice to the land?
There were two or three eunuchs up there. Eunuchs were castrated men who served in the presence of female royalty. Now according to God’s law, castration was forbidden. There weren’t supposed to be any eunuchs in Israel. But here’s another example of how the ways of the world had seeped into the Old Testament church and corrupted it. It again portrays to us the ugliness of Jezebel and her ways. She’s portrayed as a prostitute and a woman who literally emasculates men.
As Jehu looks up at these men and they look down at him, he calls out to them to throw Jezebel down. Without any hesitation, they heave her through the window. Apparently they have no love or concern for Jezebel at all. They instantly take the side of Jehu. As for Jezebel, she ends up a gory mess on the ground and all around. She gets trampled by the horses.
Verse 34 gives us this picture of Jehu entering the palace and enjoying a meal. All this work of justice has apparently given him an appetite. He needs a break and some nourishment.
Then after he’s enjoyed his meal, suddenly he thinks about Jezebel. On the one hand, she is a cursed woman. God had cursed her and called for her death. From a broader biblical perspective, you could say she was in the line of the seed of the serpent from Genesis 3. Her head was destined to be crushed. But on the other hand, Jehu still had some sense of obligation to a daughter of royalty. She was the daughter of Ethbaal who was king of the Sidonians. So she should at least be buried, he says.
But when they go out to find her, there’s not much left. Her painted face and hair-do are gone. There’s only her skull, along with her feet and the palms of her hands. Everything else has been eaten by the scavenging dogs. It’s quite fitting, really. She was unclean in life and now the unclean animals have made a meal of her. She’s now being digested by a pack of canines, literally being turned into dog feces.
When Jehu is told about this, he recognizes this right away as the fulfillment of God’s word through his prophet Elijah. Years before Elijah had said that Jezebel would become dog chow. Her body would be dung on the ground, disgusting and worthless. No one would want to look at it. Nobody would recognize it as her body. This is what God said would happen and it was just and right that it did.
God’s plan and the fulfillment of prophecy is really the key thing to see here in this passage. Jezebel doesn’t die by accident or misadventure. She dies by her own idolatry, murder, and robbery. Jezebel received the death sentence from the heavenly Judge and Jehu was the Judge’s executioner.
When we look at it that way, Jehu’s question in verse 32 takes on its proper meaning as well. He asked, “Who is on my side? Who?” When he asked that, it wasn’t just about him. He was on a divine mission. God had sent him to carry out justice. So really, it was a question of who is on God’s side. If you’re with Jehu, then you’re with God. The eunuchs who threw Jezebel out the window were on God’s side along with Jehu. They were doing God’s work. They couldn’t be neutral. They couldn’t stand to the side. They had to choose and they chose rightly. They chose to be on the side of God’s anointed Avenger.
They chose to be on the side of the one who pointed ahead to Christ. When Christ returns to judge the living and the dead, there will be those who are on his side and those who aren’t. When Christ comes to bring justice to the earth, there’ll be no one neutral, no one on the sidelines. Loved ones, when God’s anointed Avenger enters the gate, so to speak, we have to make sure we’re on his side. We’re on his side first of all by aligning ourselves with him through faith. Through trusting in him as our Saviour and Lord, we form our allegiance to this King. That’s what we all need to make sure we’re doing right now. If you haven’t already, side with King Jesus through trusting in what he did on the cross to pay for your sins. If you haven’t already, side with King Jesus through being committed to live with him as your King and you as his servant. Now is the time to make sure we’re on his side by God’s grace and through the power of his Holy Spirit.
Outside of First and Second Kings, the name Jezebel is only mentioned in one other place in the Bible. It’s in Revelation 2. It’s in Christ’s letter to the church at Thyatira. He says he has something against that church. It’s that they tolerate a woman named Jezebel. It’s unlikely that Jezebel was the actual name of this woman. Instead, Christ calls her that because she evokes the spirit of Jezebel. She leads God’s people to practice sexual immorality and idolatry. So Christ says that he is going to bring justice not only on her, but also on those who follow her. If you are not on Christ’s side, but on Jezebel’s side instead, you’re in serious trouble. Not only that, but if you’re on Christ’s side, you’re also not supposed to tolerate Jezebels in the church.
The name Jezebel isn’t mentioned in what we read from Revelation in chapters 18 and 19. But reading about this woman named Babylon there, it’s hard not to make the connection. The city is described in Jezebel terms. She is sexually immoral. In chapter 17, she’s portrayed as the great prostitute, the “mother of prostitutes.” That language is repeated in Revelation 19:2. She is also “drunk with the blood of the saints, the blood of the martyrs of Jesus.” Remember how Jezebel persecuted and murdered the prophets of God? Same here with Babylon. In Revelation 18:7, she proudly says, “I sit as a queen, I am no widow, and mourning I shall never see.” Just as Jehu is pointing ahead to Christ, so Jezebel was pointing ahead to this great wickedness in the end-times in which we live right now.
And just as God’s judgment fell swiftly on Jezebel, so it will fall swiftly on Babylon. Revelation 18:8 says, “…her plagues will come in a single day.” And in verse 10, “For in a single hour your judgment has come.” Then twice it says that she has been laid waste in a single hour. Jezebel woke up that morning expecting just another day, but it turned out she was going to fly. She was going to take a one-way flight out the window. The same thing is going to happen to this ultimate Jezebel according to the book of Revelation. God’s judgment will come surely and swiftly. His anointed Avenger will suddenly appear to bring justice.
Now I’m sure the big question in your mind is: who is this end-times Jezebel, this Babylon? We have to remember the genre of the book of Revelation. It’s apocalyptic literature. That means spiritual truths are brought across to us with various symbols, often drawn from the Old Testament. So we shouldn’t be thinking there is literally a Jezebel-like woman named Babylon. Nor should we think that Babylon even represents one city or nation, whether in the past, present, or future. As Simon Kistemaker points out in his commentary on Revelation, Babylon “is a figurative description of all the godless inhabitants in the world…The name Babylon applies to the lasting conflict between Satan’s henchmen and the people of God.” Babylon is symbolic of the world that’s hostile to God right now. Again, we have to think of it in terms of the antithesis established at the beginning. In Genesis 3, God spoke about the enmity between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. Just like Jezebel, Babylon is a manifestation of the seed of the serpent. Just like Jezebel had her head crushed, the same thing is going to happen to Babylon. Babylon will be judged and given her just desserts.
God doesn’t want his people to be included in that judgment. That’s why Revelation 18:4 says, “Come out of her, my people, lest you take part in her sins, lest you share in her plagues.” That’s a way of rephrasing Jehu’s question from our passage, “Who is on my side? Who?” If you are on God’s side, if you are on the King’s side, then “come out of her.” Have nothing to do with Jezebel and her immorality and idolatry. Have nothing to do with Babylon. Come out of her and stay out of her.
But wait a minute. Someone might remember what Jesus said in John 17. He said that his disciples are in the world, but not of the world. Doesn’t that mean we do have something to do with the world after all? Aren’t we sent into the world to be witnesses for Christ? Yes, that’s absolutely true. Revelation 18 isn’t saying we have to form a religious community completely cut off from the world. It isn’t saying we can never talk to people from Babylon or work with them and so on. It isn’t saying we can’t appreciate music or books produced by people from Babylon. What Revelation 18 is saying is that we can’t be identified with Babylon, with its Jezebel spirit. Being in the world, but not of it, means we’re distinct while we’re in the world. They can see we’re not like them – we don’t talk like they do, we don’t have the same priorities they do, we don’t live like they do. That’s what it means to “come out of her.” It means we’re among them, we have contact with them, but we’re still distinct. What makes us distinct is that we’re on the side of King Jesus. We’re following him as our Saviour and Lord.
One concrete way we might apply this is to again think of how the pagan Jezebel ended up in a Jewish palace in the first place. That happened because a member of God’s covenant and church decided he would ignore what God had said about marrying from the nations around. The king himself chose not to side with God and his Word. He knew better than God. Today, one definite way we can “come out of” Babylon, one definite way we can side with the King, is to follow what his Word says about marriage. And here God’s Word especially addresses our young people. God says we’re not to marry unbelievers. We’re to marry only in the Lord. You can’t think you know better than God, that you’re wiser than him. When you get married to an unbeliever, you’re getting united to Babylon, to Jezebel, so to speak. That is going to have consequences – it rarely works out well. So don’t go down that track. Listen to God and stay on his side.
Some of us haven’t done that, whether in regard to relationships or other ways. There are many different ways we can fail to keep ourselves distinct from the world. If you hear this and your conscience is pricked, then look to Jesus Christ and what he did for you on the cross. Perhaps you haven’t sided with him in the past, but that’s forgiven as you look in faith to Jesus and his sacrifice for you. You’re righteous in God’s sight not because of yourself but because of your Saviour. And as you’ve experienced his grace towards you, you can hear his question again: Who is on my side? Who? And with his Holy Spirit leading you, you can say, “I am, Lord. By God’s grace, I am on your side. Please help me to live as one who is on your side.”
Many years ago I was listening to the radio somewhere in Canada and people were phoning in their requests for songs. I just about choked when I heard a woman named “Jezebel” dedicating a song to her boyfriend. I thought, “Who would hate their child so much that they’d call her ‘Jezebel’?” The name carries so much stigma, as it should. Her name was actually Jezebul, which means “Where is the prince?” But the Hebrew pronunciation tradition bastardized it to Jezebel, which means “Where is the dung?” It’s on the ground, in case you missed it. So history has long heaped scorn on this woman and her name. But if we scorn her name, all the more should we scorn and reject what she stood for. She’s over there on one side with Babylon and the whole world arrayed against Christ. If we’re Christians, we should be over there on the other side with God and his anointed King. It’s the best place to be, the safest place to be. AMEN.
PRAYER
Our Father in heaven,
We praise you for bringing justice by the hand of your servant Jehu. You brought down Jezebel and gave her the judgment she deserved for her wickedness. At the end, you’ll bring justice on this evil world too. You’ll bring it through your anointed Avenger King Jesus. Father, we place our trust in him and we want to follow him, and so we can be confident that his judgment won’t fall on us. We pray for the help of your Holy Spirit to come out of Babylon and stay out. Give us strength to resist the charms and attractions of the world. O God, we pray especially for our young people. Please help them to value the wisdom of your Word, also when it comes to romantic relationships. We pray that all of our young people will find godly partners who want to serve Christ and who will help them to do the same.
* As a matter of courtesy please advise Dr. Wes Bredenhof, if you plan to use this sermon in a worship service. Thank-you.
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