2 Kings

“The Christian life is not a way out of life but a way through life,” said evangelist Billy Graham. God doesn’t save us and hide us away until He takes us to heaven. He saves us and then drops us into the midst of difficult situations and challenges, and He expects us to make a difference. According to Romans 12:1–2, if we surrender to the world around us, we become conformers; but if we yield to the Holy Spirit and dare to be different, we become transformers and God uses us to accomplish His will.  

The book of 2 Kings describes what happens to a people when the conformers take over. It records the end of the northern kingdom of Samaria when the Assyrians took over and the captivity of the southern kingdom of Judah by the Babylonians.’ Both kingdoms rebelled against the covenant of the Lord and became like the idolatrous nations around them. Many of the kings of Judah followed the example of Jeroboam and Ahab, not the example of David. God sent His people messengers to call them back to the Word of God, men like Elijah and Elisha, as well as kings like Jehoash, Hezekiah, and Josiah. “But they mocked the messengers of God, and despised his words, and misused his prophets, until the wrath of the Lord arose against his people, till there was no remedy” (2 Chron. 36:16).  

When society around us is in moral and spiritual darkness, God’s people need to be lights, and when society is decaying because of sin, we need to be salt. We must be distinctive! Paul calls us to be “children of God without fault in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation” (Phil. 2:15, NKJV). “If a man does not keep pace with his companions,” wrote Henry David Thoreau in the conclusion to Walden, “perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music he hears, however measured or far away.”  

The hour has come for God’s people to be alert to the voice of God and obedient to the will of God—to be distinctive. God is seeking transformers, not conformers.
Warren W. Wiersbe

A Suggested Outline of 2 Kings

Theme: God’s judgment of Israel and Judah      
I.  The ministry of Elisha (2 Kings 1–13)    
II.  The fall of Samaria (2 Kings 14–17)    
III.  The captivity of Judah (2 Kings 18–25)