 Recording started. Good morning everyone. So how's your day start? Good morning. Good morning. So Sid, how was your day today? It was good. It went well. Thank you for asking. That's nice. That's nice. Okay. Okay. So today we're going to study, we're going to continue studying the book of Kings as we know. The first and second Kings are one single book called As Kings in the Hebrew Bible. Good morning, Divya. Okay. So even before we could start, can I request one of us to please lead us in prayer? Rubin. Rubin, can you lead us in prayer? Okay. Zellitholi, can you lead us in prayer please? For the God I come before your presence in the name of Jesus, I thank you so much for this session as we're going to study your word after the Holy Spirit will guide us. Lita, bless her as she teaches the Word of God and also help us to be receptive to your word, Lord. Amen. Amen. Thank you so much. Amen. I'll just present the presentation. Okay. Today we're going to study about the different Kings in Israel and along with that we will also study about Elijah and Elisha, the two powerful prophets who operated in the power of God. So just to recap on what we covered is the author of this book, the Jewish scholars believe that Jeremiah would be the author of this book and they suggest that most of the events of these books were recorded in the final year of the Southern Kingdom from 630 BC to 600 BC. And the book of the first and second Kings or the Kings, although there were two separate books in our Bible, they are originally written as one single book and it is a unified story that continues from the book of Samuel that came before this. So we see in the book of Samuel how David had unified the tribe of Israel into the kingdom of God and promised that from this line would come a messianic king who would establish God's kingdom over the nations and fulfill the promise that he made to Abraham. And also we see the book of Kings tells us the story of the long line of kings that came after David and none of them lived up to that promise. In fact, they run the nation of Israel into grounds. So yesterday we studied on the Solomon's reign, on the life of Solomon and his reign and the construction of the temple which became one of the wonders in the ancient times. And today along with the other Kings we will be studying on the two major prophets that is Elijah and Elisha. We will see how Jerusalem's destruction and Israel exiled to Babylon along with them. So in the book of Second Kings we see that the story went up to a tragedy to know how Israel split into two rival kingdoms, how God tried to prevent the corruption of Israel by sending the prophets but helplessly they cannot avoid the consequence of Israel's sin. And the book opens with two chapters about the kingdom passing from the aging of David to the son Solomon. And we see in chapter 2 how David's final words to Solomon were very similar to those of Moses when he handed over to Joshua and we also see Samuel when in his favor how he guided the people of Israel before he could pass. The same way we see David sharing some of his wisdom to Solomon that he may take it up. So Solomon's life started with the brightest moments. He had peace all around and he received the wisdom of God which helped him to lead people and the other nations in peace and he also built the temple for God. It was one of the big and good projects for him that he completed it well. So Solomon realized the sin later part because of his foreign wives and worshipping and building altar for the pagan gods and worshipping them. He went astray from God which made God to become furious on him but then the later part of the book with all his wisdom, yes we read in Ecclesiastes which he says everything is vanity but then the Bible has not recorded that Solomon repented before his death and we see the effect of this in his son who took over after Solomon was Rehoboam. Acting just like his father and it is a very story of what he did, the story of his greed and lust for his power. He tries to increase the taxes to his slave labor. In fact they came with the leadership of Rehoboam. These are the people from the northern tribe of Israel. They came to him asking that he may reduce the tax and be in favor but then Rehoboam did consult the elders who sat in front of him from his father Solomon's time. They advised him, the elders advised Rehoboam to reduce the tax and be in favor to them so that they will be loyal to you but then he refuses to take their advice and he chooses to take the advice of his age group youth and you know he makes a very bad decision by increasing the wages to the slave people, slave labor and you know this makes Rehoboam who was the leader of this tribe in the northern tribe rebel against Rehoboam and you know they fight and the tribes have been split into northern kingdom and southern kingdom and we see the split in the kingdom and the northern kingdom Samaria is the capital and in the southern kingdom Judah was the capital and eventually Rehoboam also goes on to build two new temples to compete with the Solomon's temple in the south so what he does is he builds a temple in the northern kingdom and he builds a golden calf in each to represent the God of Israel you know the connection goes to the book of Exodus in chapter 2 we see that how the people of Israel formed a golden calf so it's all quite clear from this point onwards the story goes back and forth from northern kingdom to the southern kingdom and you know they both are competing unnecessarily with each other and we see the kingdoms gradually fall and each one had the northern kingdom and the southern kingdom each of them had 20 successful kings and we see the author of this book says that each king evaluates the reign by a few criteria that they worship the God of Israel alone they didn't have that and they promoted the worship of the other gods because they were pagan culture already among them and they started promoting and worshipping the other gods and we see there is an idolatry among the people and they remained unfaithful to God or to the covenant, you know the covenant God was not kept among the people of Israel and we see a lot of corrupt and injustice happening among them and maybe this not maybe this was the reason the downfall of Israel and we see in the southern kingdom there were few good kings who followed God the one true God and in the northern kingdom we do not find any king among the 20 none followed the true God of Israel but in the southern kingdom we had about few king maybe 8 out of 20 were good who followed the God of Israel so in the Bible we see that the prophets were not fortune tellers rather they spoke on behalf of God of Israel and they played the role of covenant overseer which means they called out the idolatry and injustice among the kings and the people and they were constantly reminding Israel of their calling to be the light to the nation that they should obey the commands of God they should keep up the Torah and so the prophets challenged the king and the people of Israel to repent and follow their God constantly so that's how we see the role of Elijah and Elisha here so that God raises a prophets like Elijah and Elisha and they also add a center of prophets I mean the school of prophets later we see that in this book which is very prominent and Elijah being a wild man of a prophet living out in the desert and his opponent was the northern king Ahab and his wife Jezebel together these two had instituted the worship of the Canaanite gods called Baal over Israel so there's a famous story of Elijah challenging 450 prophets of Baal to a contest to see which God was a real God so what happens here is they build up a big altar and they pray to their God but you know but the God does not show up again we see that in 1 Kings chapter 18 again at Elijah at Mount Carmel victory so again Elijah mocks at them he says he says the prophets of Baal maybe your God is not able to hear so shout out shout Lord he provokes them and they do it they do it but then nothing happens nothing happens so Elijah said to all the people come near to me in verse 30 1 Kings chapter 18 verse 30 then Elijah said to all the people come near to me so all the people came near to him and he repaired the altar okay repaired the altar that was broken and Elijah took 12 stones according to the number of tribes of Israel and the word of the Lord had come saying Israel shall be your name and when the stones he built an altar in the name of the Lord and he made a trench around the altar large enough to hold the two sheets of the seat so he put the sacrifice of the bulls and what he did is after that he put water on the altar to make it more difficult whereas when the prophets of Baal sacrificed they didn't put any water but then they called up they got the answer finally it was late in the evening they gave up when they gave up Elijah started to repair the altar he put the sacrifice on the altar and then what he does is he he he puts water on the sacrifice he puts water on the sacrifice and on the wood so that you know the fire does not catch easily but then this is just to make the people understand around him that truly it is the God of the God of Israel is the true God so what happens we see in verse 37 hear me or Lord Elijah prays hear me Elijah prays from 36 onwards you see and it came to pass at the time of offering of the evening sacrifice that Elijah the prophet came near and said Lord God of Abraham Isaac and Israel let it be known this day that you are God in Israel and I'm your servant and that I have done all these things as your word hear me or Lord hear me that this people may know that you are the Lord God and that you have turned their hearts back to you again then the fire of the Lord fell and consumed the burnt sacrifice and the wood and the stones and the dust and it licked up the water that was in the trench now when all the people saw it they fell on the face and they said the Lord he is God the Lord he is God when those people screamed and shouted they God did not answer but here when Elijah just did a simple prayer he didn't scream he didn't shout he just did a simple prayer and the Lord answered his prayer the fire came and consumed complete sacrifice along with the water and the people who were around witness the true living God even today my friends we may be in such situation when we pray let's pray in faith and our God is a God who listens to every word of our prayer every word of our prayer he listens there were many miracles listed about Elijah doing every time we also see in chapter 19 what happens in chapter 19 we see how Ahab told because after consuming the sacrifice so Elijah says in verse 40 we see that he sees as the prophets of Baal do not let one of them escape and they seize them and Elijah brought them down to the brook of Kishon and executed them all when he executed them all Ahab the king you know he goes and tells the queen Jezebel all that what happened on Mount or on Mount Kamal and he goes and tells him and now Jezebel says Jezebel says that this time tomorrow Elijah will be dead she sends a messenger to tell to tell Elijah that this time tomorrow you will be dead and when he himself went then the minute Elijah heard the minute he heard verse 3 chapter 19 verse 3 we see and when he saw that he arose and ran for his life I see some comments coming Ma'am would you mind checking the waiting room please yes please someone waiting I don't see anyone waiting said I don't see anyone waiting okay okay if anyone is waiting said please let me know okay okay we'll continue with the class so we see we are in chapter 19 verse 3 so we see that Elijah was so powerful he just defeated 450 prophets of Baal he killed them and suddenly the minute he heard a decree from Queen Jezebel that you will be killed he's so fearful you know he starts running for his life and he went to Bir Shiba which belongs to Judah and left his servant there but he himself went a day's journey I think somebody joined now okay good okay so we'll continue so he himself went a day's journey into the wilderness and came and sat down under a broom tree we are on verse 4 so he sat under a broom tree and see what he did and he prayed saying what that he might die and said it is enough now Lord take my life for I am no better than my father's what happened to this man just so powerful he saw so many miracles before this he you know he saw the Lord fed him through ravens you know through ravens God fed him and when he was full of faith you know Elijah was full of faith and you know supernaturally God fed him through the raven every day and then Lord sent when the brook God dried Lord sent Elijah to a widow in Zarefa and she sustained him there was a miracle of the flower and oil never went dry in her house and she could feed prophet Elijah till the famine sustains you know he had he had seen the power of God when he was so much of faith now he's in depression he's running for his life and now he's giving up he could not run anymore in his life so he prays sitting under a broom tree he's praying Lord that I might die take me away but what did Lord do what did Lord do see when he was when he had faith God miraculously fed him we may think when we are depressed God may not hear our prayer we should have faith more for God to answer our prayer but then what happened to Elijah in this situation you see what happens verse 5 then then he lay and slept under a broom tree with all his weakness no more strength in his body he just fell asleep suddenly an angel touched him and set him arise and eat then he looked and and there by his head was a cake baked on coal and a jar of water so he ate and drank and lay down again now what happened when he had faith God fed him through the ravens and sustained him through the widow but now when he's depressed and lonely running after running for his life and finally he gave up we see God sent his angel and God fed him with his foot he himself fed him he himself fed him during our difficult times we see the presence of God much greater than the good times God himself will be with us the God who was with Elijah God who never gave up his soul to the Queen of Jezebel to kill him he was a man of God God honored him God fed him God sustained him again we see in verse 7 again the angel of the Lord came back second time touched him and said him arise eat because the journey is too great for you so he arose ate and drank and he went into strength for next 40 days and 40 nights he could sustain himself with that food and he went to hooray the mountain of God and again he started to grow in strength grow and faith grow and God so if we are in the Lord do not have to imagine that you know we will be in the same flight all times will be good times no they will be ups and downs in our life so what is important is how are we seeking God when we seek him with all our heart he will answer us one thing we need to remember is during our difficult season in our life God himself will be with us much more than what he was in the other good times with us he himself will sustain us he himself will provide us he himself will strengthen us the God who strengthened Elijah that he could go ahead for next 40 days the God himself will be with us and sustain us and after that we see God gives him an assignment and he tells him down the verse we go to verse 15 and the Lord said to him go return on your way to the wilderness and Damascus and when you arrive anoint Hazel as king over Syria and anoint Jehu the son of Nimish as king over Israel and Elisha the son of Safath of Abel Mehulot you shall anoint him as a prophet in your place so God is raising leader after Elijah Elisha God is mindful of who will replace Elijah after he goes and also God raises Elisha and he gets enough time to be trained with Elijah and also God puts this desire in Elisha not to leave Elijah no matter where he goes we see that Elisha grows in strength from strength and later we also see you know King Ahab uses his royal power and he murders the Israelite farmer and then steals his family's vineyard and Elijah again confronts Ahab's injustice and he announces the downfall of his house and Elijah called down you know and again when there's ups and downs there was another situation where 50 men come from King Ahaziah against Elijah and Elijah called down the fire from heaven to slay these two groups of 50 men and the other place 51 men and consumed them and the third group of men was led by a commander who pleads for mercy with Elijah and he escapes and later part we see how Elijah Elisha follows Elijah closely and it's time for Elijah to move and we see how Elijah and Elisha cross the river Jordan Elisha we see Elijah just give me a minute I'll just play that picture so Elijah just puts his mantle onto the river Jordan and the river Jordan parts what does this remind of any event before the Red Sea part okay even does it remind us when Joshua was leading the Israelites they had to cross the river Jordan and come to a place called Gilgal do you all remember we saw Joshua asking the priest to carry the Ark of the Covenant and step into the river the minute the priest like steps into the river the river parts so what was it the presence of God and the Ark was flowing on the one who carried the Ark the minute they stepped the water parted the same way the minute Elijah puts his mantle onto the river the river parted so there was a presence of God and that mantle so when when he parted the river when he parted the river he crosses and then we see Elijah been Elijah when he was about to take away in the world when then Elisha knowing because even as a prophet knowing that it's time for Elijah to go so Elijah Elisha asks Elijah to bless him with a double portion of the anointing and Elijah says if you see me taken off it will be and you know as Elijah was taken off he throws the mantle on Elisha and the mantle falls on and he takes that mantle and he comes back and Elisha saw Elijah been taken up in fire and like a whirlwind with two horses and he sees this scene this is an imaginary scene which has been depicted by some artist so I thought I can put this and we see the river Jordan there the mantle falls and now Elisha takes that mantle and he gets back when he is getting back again he puts that mantle onto the river and again the river parts for Elisha to cross so this shows that Elisha carried the power what Elijah had as it started working with them so Elisha used this mantle to bring in many miracles bring in many miracles and one such was we will turn to 2nd Kings chapter 4 verse 38 now Elisha is taking over the prophetic school and he's been training all the prophets and one such date happened like during the time of famine we are in verse 38 and Elisha returned to Gilgal now what is Gilgal? Gilgal was the first place when Joshua led all the 12 tribes the children of Israel they crossed the river Jordan they rested in that place this was the place called Gilgal Gilgal was a place of blessing it was a place where the children of Israel rested it is a place where the children during the 40 years they didn't the first male child did not undergo the circumcision but at the place of Gilgal when they rested Joshua God instructed Joshua for the circumcision to be done and all the male child were circumcised and we see this was the place where God instructed Joshua to carry the 12 tribes to carry each stone from the river of Jordan and they placed this 12 stones as a memorial in the place of Gilgal and they recollected that and Gilgal was a place where the rolling of the shame the shame was rolled off from them that they were no more slaves but they were children and God has promised them with a promised land they will have a land and then now back to this verse 38 we see Elisha returned to Gilgal and there was a famine in the land now there is a famine now the sons of the prophet were sitting before Elisha and he said to his servant put on a large pot and boils stew for the sons of the prophet so he is instructing them to put on a large pot and make stew now the stew has been prepared now what happens the next verse we see in verse 39 one person goes out into the field now why did he go he was not instructed he himself thinks okay the herbs or the spices are not enough let me go do something extra we need to believe on the prophet we need to believe what he's been preparing in the same way we need to believe on the finished work of the cross of Jesus we should not do something extra add something to what Jesus has already done and completed on the cross so this person he goes to the field and he gathers some herb he does not even know what it is he just felt okay this is something very looks very good so let me take it this what happened even in the garden of Eden when God instructed to have the fruit from the good tree but then something that was attractive which God did not instruct and instructed them not to touch it but something that was attracting lust of the eyes led them to sin the same way here this person felt this this veg or this herb may be good so he takes a lap full of wild guards and came and sliced them and he puts it into the pot and they did not and he did not even know what they were and what happened in verse 40 and they served this to served it to all men to eat and now what happened they were eating this to you and suddenly the prophets cried out saying man of God there is death in the pot now the food is prepared to nourish the body to give life to the body and not bring death now what happened this is bringing death and they could not eat it so what we usually do if something bad is fallen in a food we tend to take it and throw away and keep the other food but then it's a stew it has been boiled it's been spread over so what Elisha does we see the next verse so Elisha says then bring some flour and he puts it into the pot and said serve it to the people that they may eat and there was nothing harmful in the pot now what happened something that was harmful something that if they eat they would die but Elisha added flour to it and he gave the same stew for everyone to eat and now it was edible now this stew was you know was able to nourish the body when they eat it brought life when we believe on the finished work of cross with all our heart with all our mind and soul with complete faith you see it brings blessing it nourishes us it brings life into our dental situation so we need to believe on the finished work of cross and we should not do anything extra Elisha the prophet went on to do many miracles like this we will see the list of miracles of Elisha and Elijah did eight miracles we see how the oven shut causing the drought and you know multiplied the flour and oil for a widow raised the widow son from dead defeated the prophets of Baal with fire from heaven and brought rain to end and the drought destroyed all 51 soldiers with fire and lightning and again he destroyed another set of 51 soldiers with fire and lightning and he parted the water of Jordan before he was taken off and with his blessing with the double portion anointing Elisha does 16 miracles that has been recorded okay one thing we need to know all that has been recorded is may not have that is not the limit that they would have done they would have done many but this is what has been recorded Elijah would have done many miracles in his lifetime but then eight was recorded and the author was mindful of the double the portion so though Elisha Elisha did eight miracles and which has been recorded and for Elisha they have recorded 16 miracles just double than that but maybe both of them did much more and we see the first miracle which Elisha did after passing of Elijah was parted the water of Jordan river and he crossed over and then he purified the water then sent bear to ravage his attackers cause the flood to save Israel to foil the mobiles you know so many such miracles that he did we see in second kings multiplied the lobes and he healed Naaman we see in chapter 5 very soon after this we see healing of Naaman a commander who was healed a simple instruction Elisha gave him he didn't even visit Naaman face to face he just sends a messenger to Naaman saying that Naaman go dip yourself in the river of Jordan seven times and you will be healed from this leprosy though Naaman initially was furious on him but then servants encouraged Naaman to just follow what the prophet says and when he obeyed when he humbled himself and he obeyed we see the healing come to pass same way sometimes God speaks to us in very small things small like simple things he asks us to do but then when we do that we see greater things happen we see healing we see blessing so what is important important is the obedience to God obedience to his word we see the blessing of God flow into us and we see the other miracles happened after that so we see later part Elisha falls sick and he passes away many miracles he does and he passes away and after that both the prophets were clearly remarkable men and they played the same role confronting Israel's king for idolatry and injustice and ultimately they were unsuccessful in turning Israel back from the idol worship and the apostasy but in the next session we see the Northern Kingdom as rocked by a blood revolution and started by a new king named Jehu who destroys Ahab's family and although Jehu was at first commissioned by God this violence just gets out of control and he creates the spiral of the political assassination and rebels from which Israel can never be recovered and then we see many other kings reign the final moment of this book tells the story of the lone Southern Kingdom is here and we meet a very heraldic king like Ezekiah who trusts God when the armies of the Assyria come knocking on Jerusalem door or Eusea who discovers his lost scroll of Torah in the temple so he starts to read it and he convicts and he institutes religious reforms to remove idolatry in the canonites influence and from the land of Judah and it just too far gone but then the king you know is there and in this season there's another king who raises Manasseh and he turns to be the one of the wicked king and he not only introduced worship again to the idols now he turns the Jerusalem temple he puts the idols in the Jerusalem temple and he institutes child sacrifice in the temple of God and God sent prophets to say the time is up Israel has reached the peak and you know we've seen the final chapter that the story unfolds like you know the Babylonian comes to capture the Southern Kingdom and the Babylon coming to invade the Jerusalem and destroy the temple and carry the people and the royal line of David often to the exile and in the last chapter we see you know we may wonder like what is happening to the line of David now but then God gives favor to this king in the Babylon and E he releases the line of David that is Jehochim who was the descendant from David so the Babylonian king finds favor God gives favor to Jehochim in the Babylonian king's eye and he releases him in the prison and the king says Jeho came to sit and dine from his table so we see the we see God's mercy and favor to David's line so it's not much but in the story we see the hope that God has not abandoned the line of David but he is merciful and he is mindful of the promise that he made to Abraham so while we saw that the Southern Kingdom were captured by the Babylon the Northern Kingdom was also captured by the Assyrians and they take the whole people into the idolatry and you know many other things happen there but in the Southern Kingdom they captured by the Babylonians and now the king of Babylon has favor on the descendant of David Jehochim and he releases him from the prison and he allows him to dine with him in the table and the rest of rest from there we will we will study on it when we study the next book on the first chronicles so this is where the story ends in the book of kings and hoping that God will work through this people we will see how God will work through this people and keep up the lineage of David so we have seen the fall of the great kingdom established by God because of their disobedience and unfaithfulness few things that we can learn from these books are obedience to God will bring blessing to us obedience to God will bring blessing to us and the second we see we are responsible for our own action we are responsible because as the king they knew what they have to do but then they had to face the consequence of their actions and we didn't go much in detail because of time but then I would recommend each of us to please go through each and every chapter of first and second king so that we will understand what is the responsible what was their own action why the kings of Israel had to face all this and the third point we see is we should not regard anything more highly than God God should be our first priority and if we give you know the first place to anything else that becomes the idolatry that becomes the idol front of God that becomes the objection to receive God's blessing so at any point in our life we need to give that first place that first priority to God so now I leave it open to the class what was each of us learning please share your points what you learn from these two books from your understanding class you can unmute and share your understanding share what was your learning from these two books classes of perfect silence said share what was your learning am I audible yes ma'am you are ma'am from the book of kings my learning was like even though is ma'am what we see in the kings like in as in the genesis Israel Adam did sin God made them repented they suffered and then they went to Egypt Egypt also when Moses was them they they repented they who told that this is not good this is not good in Egypt we were happy we were getting this much of things here in Egypt we are not getting these things in then Moses came then Joshua came when Israel wanted a king God gave them a king Saul they were not happy with the soul then David came David was a man with the God's own heart so the entire entire reign David was blessed and when Solomon came though Solomon was a God fearing man still he was not a good example for the people of Israel but on the time of time period of the 40 years he was having as God has promised with that David God kept peace on his lifetime so in this area what I love the most like even though we are not not as the people God wants still God is going God is a God who keeps his promise God promised to David that he will keep his that God will keep his kingdom for a lifetime from the Jesus came from his kingdom so there are many examples like after Solomon his successes was also like not doing what was the God's will but still God was keeping his kingdom till the time Jesus came and his kingdom was not taken apart yes even though it was divided but the God's promise lasted till Jesus this is what the best thing I like yes yes God is a promise keeper yeah and when the obvious alums and I also like how God loved Solomon even though he says that David and David and BC bus first son how he was like that because of the curse that Abraham or David made who he had died but the thing is how God is keeping Solomon for the kingdom even David had a desire to build a temple for the God but David not was not able to still God kept that my son David has a heart to build a temple for me David cannot make it but my sons Solomon can make it can make it yes yes thank you said that was a good recap thank you okay so said can you please lead us in prayer has been in this class is there anyone else or is it is there anyone else would like to add share okay said can you close the class and pray okay now father we come to the throne of grace we thank you for the time we have given us we thank you for all the learning Lord as we see in the kings book Lord we have learned in world in book Lord whatever we have learned whatever the failures the is the kings of Israel has done Lord that should not be repeated in our life for Lord yes whatever the success they went through whatever the blessing they went to Lord as we are the sons of Abraham Lord we are the sons of Abraham Lord we are your kingdom we are Lord we are your chosen generation Lord we want all the blessings should be added to our lives also whatever the things whatever the blessings you have given to all to them Lord Lord it should be added to our our accounts also Lord we thank you for the time you have given us we thank you for the man we thank you for the session Lord opportunity you have given us in Jesus name we pray amen amen thank you so much for joining in today's class thank you and God bless amen thank you good bless