The LORD has people all around the world who know Him and seek His face. In our reading today, one of these people was Elisha, former assistant of the famous prophet Elijah who had been taken to God in the book of 2 Kings 2. Elisha is now operating as a prophet of God, a chosen man who is God’s w...

Naaman was a mighty military leader of the Syrian army. He was politically powerful and physically strong, no one could touch him. And then, he contracted a deadly disease. 2 Kings 5 tells us how God healed him through the prophet Elisha.

The next few chapters of the Bible are packed full of int...

Hezekiah was the 16th king of ancient Judah. His reign was marked by a determined effort to get back to the ways of God. He and his people were living in a treacherous time, and they knew it. During his reign, the larger, northern nation of Israel fell to the Assyrians. Hezekiah was about to be t...

The 19th king of Judah is my favourite! His name was Josiah, and he was eight years old when he became king. He knew that there was something unique and different about this kingdom. He demanded that they rebuild the Temple of God, and work to encourage the people to seek the LORD. In fact, we le...

The fall of Jerusalem was the final act in the capture of Judah. Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, pronounced other kings to take over for Jehoiakim. After Jehoiakim’s rebellion against Nebuchadnezzar, Jehoiachin became king of Judah. Jehoiachin was 18 years old when he became king, and he rei...

Trouble seemed to follow the family of Jacob. On the night Jacob wrestled with God, before he reconciled with his brother Esau, the LORD renamed him Israel because he had fought with man and God and prevailed. There is only one nation in the world today that bears that name; Israel is a nation Go...

The Bible is a book committed to keeping the truth front and center. When the names of those who make up the nation of Israel are recorded in their generations, they are recorded without any favour. The children that they had in the land of Moab (Lot’s descendants) and what they did are recorded ...

David had tremendous success as the king of God’s nation, Israel. Politically, he made a lot of good choices. Personally, he was a human like the rest of us and so he made mistakes. Sometimes his bad personal choices impacted Israel, as was the case with prince Absalom’s rebellion. A special char...

David’s call as king was to rule the nation of Israel, and to set the record straight for the future; priests and their successors had to be set up so that the Kingdom of God could continue. The record of their calling is recorded in 1 Chronicles 24.

These job descriptions are recorded in the Sc...

David articulated what God had spoken to him while he was the king of Israel. David knew that the LORD had anointed him and had chosen the tribe of Judah for the future leadership of Israel. The Kingdom of God was set in place by God and to be fulfilled by man. Of course, God’s stipulations would...

David told his leaders and priests that Solomon would take the responsibility of constructing the Temple of the LORD. This was something that David wanted to do, but was not allowed. David had collected and set aside as much of the building materials as he could. He was a godly king of Israel des...

While each of the twelve tribes of Israel had its own distinct culture, the Tabernacle was the centralized religious institution of national unity. Israelites would walk from all over to worship God. When they established a kingship, however, Israel’s priorities switched from religious to politic...

In 884 BC, two kings from Judah and Israel were in power: Ahaziah was the ninth king of Judah, and Jehoram (also known as Joram) was the twelfth king of Israel. These two kings did vast evil in the eyes of the LORD. This was the time that Jehu was anointed to kill the house of Ahab and his evil s...

During the time of Jeroboam II in 784 BC, the seventeenth king of northern Israel, the people of Judah took Uzziah, whose name means “God is my strength” and made him king over his father Amaziah. Uzziah was a talented and creative man who loved the soil. He invented many things and had them buil...

In 722 BC, northern Israel fell to the Assyrians. The Assyrians were the most powerful nation in the Near East, on earth even, and were wielding their power like crazy. After Israel was conquered, Judah was next. Everything would come against Jerusalem, the capital of Judah, and the only way they...

It was approximately 726 BC when Hezekiah began his kingdom. During his reign, Hezekiah’s life was miraculously extended by God by fifteen years, and three years later his son Manasseh was born to the king by his wife Hephzibah. Manasseh took over rulership at about 698 BC. He was the leading exa...

Second only to Moses in the mind of many Jewish rabbis was the priest Ezra. He was a very skilled scribe, an expert in the religious order of the Jewish nation and had great understanding of the Mosaic Law. In many ways, he was the leader of the Jewish exiles who desired to return to Jerusalem af...

The city of Jerusalem has a rich and holy history. It flourished during the time of David and the economy boomed under Solomon's wisdom. Long before that, in the time of Abraham, it was known as Salem, meaning “peace”. In fact, Jewish tradition suggests that Shem, the son of Noah, was an early ki...

A city that’s rebuilt will never quite be the same as its original. Not only in its final form, but the process to get there is different as well. For Nehemiah and the Israelites, it was more than just structural, it was cultural and religious; it was for God. It meant rebuilding the walls of Jer...

Jerusalem is called God’s city. The LORD will return there, in His perfect timing. Throughout history, God’s city has had many difficult times and some great times. Today, Jerusalem is a city populated by about one million people and growing. There is a whole wave of modern Jews “making Aliyah” t...

The Jewish people have been living with a target on their back for centuries and centuries. As early as the time of the Exile all the way to Nazi Germany, antisemitism seems all too spiritual. It even manifested among early (false) Christians in the first few centuries. But remember that sin, sat...

The Jewish people were in exile and had been for years. Mordecai was a Jewish man who lived as an exile in ancient Persia. He raised his cousin, a young girl named Hadassah, as his own daughter because she was an orphan. Hadassah would eventually come to be known as Esther, Queen of Persia. It is...