SPEAKER_00: Well I invite you to turn with me in your Bibles to the book of 2 Kings, chapter 17.
SPEAKER_00: 2 Kings chapter 17.
SPEAKER_00: And I do want to open by reading the first 23 verses as we look at this text.
SPEAKER_00: A sad text in many ways, one that serves as a warning, a picture to us as a church, but also a warning to the nations.
SPEAKER_00: Second Kings chapter 17, verse 1 says, In the twelfth year of Ahaz, king of Judah, Hoshea, the son of Elah, became king of Israel in Samaria, and he reigned nine years, and he did evil in the sight of the Lord, not as the kings of Israel who were before him.
SPEAKER_00: Shalmanessar, king of Assyria, came up against him, and Hoshia became his vassal, and paid him tribute money, and the king of Assyria uncovered a conspiracy by Hoshia, for he had sent messengers to So, king of Egypt, and brought no tribute to the king of Assyria, as he had done year by year.
SPEAKER_00: Therefore the king of Assyria shut him up and bound him in prison.
SPEAKER_00: And now the king of Assyria went through all the land and went up to Samaria and besieged it for three years.
SPEAKER_00: In the ninth year of Hoshia the king of Assyria took Samaria, and carried Israel away to Assyria, and placed them in Halla, and by the Habar, and by the river Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes.
SPEAKER_00: And so it was that the children of Israel had sinned against the Lord their God, who had brought them up out of the land of Egypt, and from under the hand of Pharaoh, King of Egypt, and they had feared other gods, and had walked in the statutes of the nations, whom the Lord had cast out before the children of Israel, and of the kings of Israel which they had made.
SPEAKER_00: Also the children of Israel secretly did against the Lord their God things that were not right, and they built for themselves high places in all their cities, from watchtower to fortified city.
SPEAKER_00: They set up for themselves sacred pillars and wooden images, on every high hill and under every green tree.
SPEAKER_00: There they burned incense on the high places, like the nations whom the Lord had carried away before them, and they did wicked things to provoke the Lord to anger, for they served idols, of which the Lord had said to them, You shall not do this thing.
SPEAKER_00: Yet the Lord testified against Israel and against Judah by all his prophets, every seer, saying, Turn from your evil ways and keep my commandments, and my statutes according to all the law which I commanded your fathers, and which I sent to you by my servants, the prophets.
SPEAKER_00: Nevertheless they would not hear, but stiffened their necks, like the necks of their fathers, who did not believe in the Lord their God, and they rejected his statutes and his covenant that he had made with their fathers, and his testimonies which he had testified against them.
SPEAKER_00: They followed idols, they became idolaters, and went after the nations who were all around them concerning whom the Lord had charged them that they should not do like them.
SPEAKER_00: So they left all the commandments of the Lord their God, made for themselves a molden image and two calves, made a wooden image and worshipped all the host of heaven, and served Baal, and they caused their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire.
SPEAKER_00: They practiced witchcraft, and sooth saying, and sold themselves to do evil in the sight of the Lord to provoke him to anger.
SPEAKER_00: Therefore the Lord was very angry with Israel, and removed them from his sight, and there was none left but the tribe of Judah alone.
SPEAKER_00: Also Judah did not keep the commandments of the Lord their God, but walked in the statutes of Israel which they made, and the Lord rejected all the descendants of Israel, afflicted them, and delivered them into the hand of plunderers until he had cast them from his sight.
SPEAKER_00: For he tore Israel from the house of David, and they made Jeroboam the son of Nebat the king.
SPEAKER_00: Then Jeroboam drove Israel from following the Lord, and made them commit a great sin.
SPEAKER_00: For the children of Israel walked in all the sins of Jeroboam which he did, they did not depart from them, until the Lord removed Israel out of his sight, as he had said by all his servants the prophets.
SPEAKER_00: So Israel was carried away from their own land to Assyria, as it is to this day.
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
SPEAKER_00: Our Heavenly Father, we approach you this evening.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, the passage that we have just read ought to make us approach you with great humility and trembling.
SPEAKER_00: For we see that although you are a patient and a gracious and a merciful God, you are holy.
SPEAKER_00: Your commandments are holy, your statutes are holy, and the covenant that you make with your people is holy.
SPEAKER_00: So, Lord, I pray that as we look at this passage, we would do so with uh, Lord, a a mirror before us to examine our own heart, examine our own church.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, also that we would do so with uh a window to look out into the world and to see the consequences of when your people depart from the faith.
SPEAKER_00: So, Lord, we commit this service to you, and Lord, we look forward to celebrating around the Lord's table at the close.
SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name we pray.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: I know newspapers aren't what they used to be, and they certainly probably aren't read as much as they used to be.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, for our younger generation, I might have to explain what a newspaper is.
SPEAKER_00: But for those of us who are familiar with the thing called a newspaper, there is a section that's often, it's usually in most newspapers, sometimes perhaps only on the weekend edition, called the obituaries.
SPEAKER_00: And the obituaries are opportunities for people who've lost someone that past week or uh whatever to put a little uh detail or explanation about that person's life, and it makes its way into the newspapers.
SPEAKER_00: They usually have some sort of glowing report or whatever, and a little bit of explanation about their death.
SPEAKER_00: But when a particular celebrity or prominent figure in history passes away, prominent newspapers will or magazines will publish a detailed obituary of their life.
SPEAKER_00: And it could be celebrating their death if they were a very evil and wicked person, or certainly celebrating their life, but it will give details about their life and how they lived and particularly how they died.
SPEAKER_00: And obituaries are very sobering things because it reminds us that death comes upon all of us, but uh they are they are detailed in history and and often reflect upon that person's impact on a nation or a family or an organization.
SPEAKER_00: You know, nations in some ways and different empires have had their obituaries.
SPEAKER_00: You can read in history about the empires of old.
SPEAKER_00: You can read about the Assyrian Empire and how it rose and how it fell.
SPEAKER_00: You can read about the Roman Empire and how it rose and how it fell.
SPEAKER_00: And all throughout history you can see the rise and fall of various nations.
SPEAKER_00: I find it interesting that there's a journalist and historian by the name of uh Peter Hitchens in the UK, who is a conservative, and he he claims and he kind of says that he has been writing about the decline of Britain for the last 50 years, and in his mind he says, I see myself as simply just writing the obituary of Great Britain.
SPEAKER_00: He details in a lot of his books the ways that uh the UK is not what it used to be, and the decline of Christianity in that nation and the impact that that has had and where it is today.
SPEAKER_00: And certainly we can see before us the decline of our own nation as Christianity becomes less prominent and less accepted.
SPEAKER_00: But our passage before us is one that I have entitled Israel's Obituary.
SPEAKER_00: The main section, which I have just read, details for us and goes back over the sad history of the Northern Kingdom from its beginnings when it removed itself from the covenant people of God and the covenant, the Davidic covenant, uh under uh King Jeroboam and established itself as a separate kingdom and tried to set up a separate form of religion and worship, which brings itself to its inevitable and certain end, which takes place here in 2 Kings chapter 17.
SPEAKER_00: This passage serves to us as a warning, a warning to the people of God, a warning to us as the church and the church at large about the danger of theological compromise, the inevitable end of all churches, denominations, and institutions that begin to tamper and to tweak and to alter and to begin to blend Christianity or Christ with culture, or begin to think that they can somehow import or mesh or mold or or uh uh blend the worship of the pagan world that we live in with the worship of God, which will always lead to what we know as apostasy falling away.
SPEAKER_00: And eventually, as we see here in this text, the complete removal of the nation of Israel from the land that God had promised.
SPEAKER_00: But our passage is also gonna give us another warning, and this is really, in many ways, a warning to our nation.
SPEAKER_00: As we're gonna see in the second half of this chapter, as this portion of land is resettled by the Assyrians, we're gonna see that when you remove the people of God, even as they are in their sad state as they were, that this creates a vacuum that will always end up being filled by all sorts of other things and will eventually place those people under the just judgment of God.
SPEAKER_00: It never goes well for a nation when God's people are removed or silenced or sidelined.
SPEAKER_00: But eventually, this passage is going to point us to a promise.
SPEAKER_00: God is going to work again in this land.
SPEAKER_00: His promised salvation, his promised redemption.
SPEAKER_00: He is going to demonstrate his saving grace again to a people that do not deserve it.
SPEAKER_00: And so let's begin by looking, first of all, at Israel's final ruler.
SPEAKER_00: Verses one to four tells us about the final king of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: We've been tracking with these kings as we've been going along in this particular book.
SPEAKER_00: And Hoshia's reign is the last one, the last nail in the coffin for the northern kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: This succession of kings, going back to King Jeroboam and then flipping in different families and different uh lineages and lines would now come to an end under the fateful rule of King Hoshia.
SPEAKER_00: The one thing you notice about him is that he was really typical.
SPEAKER_00: There was nothing really that different about him than all the previous kings of Israel before him.
SPEAKER_00: His opening line or the opening introduction to his reign is the same that we've been reading again and again and again about every other previous king.
SPEAKER_00: And verse 2 says, He did evil in the sight of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: And yet it says, in a brief moment, but not as the kings of Israel before him.
SPEAKER_00: Now we don't know exactly what that means.
SPEAKER_00: It indicates that he's not quite as bad.
SPEAKER_00: But he's still bad.
SPEAKER_00: He's still a wicked king.
SPEAKER_00: He still follows in the ways of King Jeroboam and all the other kings before him.
SPEAKER_00: He was typical.
SPEAKER_00: He did evil in the sight of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: It was uh recorded for us earlier that he actually assumed the throne by the way of assassination.
SPEAKER_00: He was a wicked king.
SPEAKER_00: He was also a treacherous king.
SPEAKER_00: Under his rule and reign, uh King Shalmanesar of Assyria comes and he uh he uh uh comes and besieges Israel, and Hoshia, in a desperate uh attempt to kind of get him off their back, becomes a vassal state to the emperor of Assyria.
SPEAKER_00: That basically means uh that they begin to pay tribute uh for their protection uh to the king of Assyria.
SPEAKER_00: They become a servant in servant in many ways to the king of Assyria.
SPEAKER_00: They be they become in leagues and in covenant with the Assyrian kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: But in a state of treachery, King Hoshia, rather than turning to the Lord, which is typical for the northern kings, he turns to another wicked king that would be the king of Egypt and tries to get out of this arrangement.
SPEAKER_00: And obviously, we assume that he is uh in league or trying to negotiate terms with the king of Egypt to somehow relief them from this terrible arrangement.
SPEAKER_00: King of Assyria, Khalmaneser, hears about this.
SPEAKER_00: He stops receiving tribute money, and so as a form of punishment, he surrounds the nation of Israel, surrounds Samaria, and he besieges it.
SPEAKER_00: He tightens his grip.
SPEAKER_00: Siege warfare goes back generations.
SPEAKER_00: We are seeing it a little bit now, right, with the Strait of Harmuz, the petrol prices going up.
SPEAKER_00: That's essentially siege warfare.
SPEAKER_00: And he begins to tighten his grip around King Hoshea and the northern kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: This leads to Israel's final removal.
SPEAKER_00: Israel is now in a state where they are being besieged.
SPEAKER_00: They are probably lacking trade, they're unable to get resources in and out of the land.
SPEAKER_00: This type of warfare would eventually wear the people down to the point of desperation, likely leading to famine and poverty and all of these types of uh things which just weaken a nation completely until finally they are without any more life.
SPEAKER_00: And so this the Assyrian king comes in.
SPEAKER_00: Hoshia the king has been removed and taken into prison, and in this final act of deportation, the northern kingdom is carried off to the nation and the kingdom of Assyria.
SPEAKER_00: History records for us that some people were left in the land, likely the poorest of the poor.
SPEAKER_00: But for the most part, the entire nation is removed out of the land of promise.
SPEAKER_00: This would make the complete end of the northern kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: This is it.
SPEAKER_00: From this chapter on, we will never read of the northern kingdom again.
SPEAKER_00: They became known as we have heard maybe perhaps that they have become known as the lost ten tribes of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: And no, they have never resurfaced anywhere in history.
SPEAKER_00: From this point forward, in all the next books of the Old Testament, the only history we will have is of the southern kingdom of Judah.
SPEAKER_00: This is it.
SPEAKER_00: No more prophets, no more miracles, no more sermons being preached, no more kings.
SPEAKER_00: They are removed.
SPEAKER_00: And this leads us to the next section, which is verses 7 to 23, which we've already read, which is entitled, of course, Is where Israel's Obichory.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 5, or sorry, verse 7 down to the end of verse 23 really is reads like that, doesn't it?
SPEAKER_00: It opens up, you can almost see it as the beginning of a of a movie or something, and so it was that the children of Israel had sinned.
SPEAKER_00: This is going back and retelling the tragic tale of the Northern Kingdom, demonstrating once again their sad history of rejecting God and the consequences that it brought about them.
SPEAKER_00: And as we read this obituary and as we go through it, we need to be reading it with absolute humility and praying to God that this would not be the story of our church or any other church, that it would not read like this.
SPEAKER_00: But the reality is this does tell the story of many churches and many institutions and many Christians.
SPEAKER_00: This does reflect it.
SPEAKER_00: What do we notice about this obituary?
SPEAKER_00: The first thing you noticed is that Israel begins their downward spiral by rejecting their covenant redeemer.
SPEAKER_00: This is how it all started.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 7 says, For so it was that the children of Israel had sinned against the Lord their God, who brought them up out of the land of Egypt from under the hand of Pharaoh, the king of Egypt.
SPEAKER_00: Down in verse 15 it says, And they rejected his statutes and his covenant that he had made with their fathers, and his testimonies which he had testified against them, and they followed idols.
SPEAKER_00: Where did it all begin?
SPEAKER_00: Well, it begins obviously with this kingdom as part of the covenant people of God.
SPEAKER_00: They were one nation, covenant and in league with the southern kingdom of Judah.
SPEAKER_00: And it's interesting to know that in verse 7, when it says that they sinned against the Lord their God, who brought them up out of the land of Egypt and out of the hand of Pharaoh, it is the same language that is used in Exodus chapter 20 when God is instituting the Mosaic covenant.
SPEAKER_00: This is how Exodus chapter 20 starts.
SPEAKER_00: It starts with their these people's identity as the redeemed people of God and identifies Yahweh as their redeemer.
SPEAKER_00: And he is the one who identifies them, and they are identified with him as God establishes this Mosaic covenant with them on Mount Sinai.
SPEAKER_00: And so this statement was not merely a historical fact of deliverance, but it was a declaration of the relationship that these people had with Yahweh, with the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: They were in covenant relationship with him.
SPEAKER_00: But when they had removed themselves from this covenant, they withdrew themselves not only from the house of David, under that Davidic covenant, but they also withdrew themselves from the Mosaic covenant.
SPEAKER_00: How do we know this?
SPEAKER_00: Well, they formed their own priesthood, they formed their own worship, they made up their own laws, they came up with their own statutes, they came up with their own commandments, they completely rejected the law of God and that covenant which identified themselves as the people of God.
SPEAKER_00: You see, the Mosaic covenant is really in many ways what distinguished the people of Israel as a people.
SPEAKER_00: They were to be known by the nations, by this covenant relationship, and by the precepts and statutes and commandments that God gave to them under the Mosaic covenant.
SPEAKER_00: Their lives were to be governed by God's righteous and holy law.
SPEAKER_00: Their worship was to be governed by God's righteous and holy ceremonial law.
SPEAKER_00: Their society was to be governed by God's righteous and holy civil laws.
SPEAKER_00: And as a result of this, this is how they would be known to be the distinct people of God, the people of Yahweh.
SPEAKER_00: This is how the other nations would look upon them.
SPEAKER_00: And as Deuteronomy tells us, that they were to that other nations were supposed to look upon them and wonder who is a wise God, such as your God, who would give you such wise statutes and commandments.
SPEAKER_00: That was what distinguished them in their identity.
SPEAKER_00: The Abrahamic covenant gave them a name and a land, the Davidic covenant gave them a kingdom, but the Mosaic covenant gives them this identity, and it begins with those statements I am Yahweh your God.
SPEAKER_00: And hence you are my people.
SPEAKER_00: I am the one who brought you out of the land of Egypt and out of the house of bondage.
SPEAKER_00: This is how they were supposed to be known.
SPEAKER_00: This is what made them distinct.
SPEAKER_00: And yet, they rejected their covenant redeemer.
SPEAKER_00: They rejected the one who brought them out of Egypt.
SPEAKER_00: They rejected the one who revealed himself to them on Mount Sinai.
SPEAKER_00: They rejected God's covenant.
SPEAKER_00: And as a result, they ran to other gods.
SPEAKER_00: You see, you can't reject God and just become neutral.
SPEAKER_00: Neutrality is never an option.
SPEAKER_00: There is no such thing as an atheist.
SPEAKER_00: You cannot become a nothing.
SPEAKER_00: It is in human nature to worship.
SPEAKER_00: It is in human nature to serve a God.
SPEAKER_00: It is in every single one of us.
SPEAKER_00: And so they couldn't just simply reject God and become a nothing.
SPEAKER_00: They had to replace God, and as a result, they replaced.
SPEAKER_00: Him, of course, with the gods of their own making, the gods of the nations around them, and they embraced all the various aspects of idolatrous practices by their neighbors.
SPEAKER_00: If you were to go back to the place of Jeroboam, you see that Jeroboam tries to kind of institute this sort of blended and sort of um uh syncretistic type of religion where he tried to kind tries to kind of keep aspects of worship under the Mosaic covenant, but tries to bring pagan elements into it.
SPEAKER_00: But it's not long beforehand where that is completely lost.
SPEAKER_00: And the people have run completely to the other gods of the nations, so much so that they're so much so that their land and their lives become consumed by idol worship, of which it says here that on every high hill and under every green tree there were idols everywhere, idols to Asherah and the Baals and all of the various pagan uh gods of this nation.
SPEAKER_00: Idolatry had consumed them to the point where they were no longer distinguishable.
SPEAKER_00: They looked and acted and lived exactly like the nations around them.
SPEAKER_00: You couldn't tell the difference between them and the other pagan nations.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, and this brought great destruction upon them as people.
SPEAKER_00: We must never ever think of idolatry as anything innocent.
SPEAKER_00: Please do never ever look upon the idols that are worshipped in our land and assume that they have no power over those who worship them.
SPEAKER_00: It does pollute a person, it does pollute a land, it does pollute a society, it does pollute a nation.
SPEAKER_00: Idolatry is never innocent, you always become what you worship.
SPEAKER_00: And what do we see?
SPEAKER_00: We see them practicing all manners of wickedness.
SPEAKER_00: This is not just some sort of cultural thing.
SPEAKER_00: It affects every single single thing they do to the point where in verse 17, they go to the very depths of doing exactly what the pagan nations were doing and offering their sons and daughters on the fire to Molech.
SPEAKER_00: They are now engaged in human sacrifice.
SPEAKER_00: Their conscience has been so seared by the idols that they worship that they have no problem offering their own children on the fire to these false idols.
SPEAKER_00: They practice witchcraft and sooth sayings, and they sold themselves to do evil in the sight of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: This would include all kinds of various kinds of evil.
SPEAKER_00: All of those are dealt with in the book of Leviticus, as God tells his people not to be like the nations that are uh are before them, the nations, the people of Canaan.
SPEAKER_00: They are exactly the same.
SPEAKER_00: And Israel from the northern kingdom for generations resembles the gods of this world and not Yahweh.
SPEAKER_00: What a sad, sad state for the people of God.
SPEAKER_00: It gets even worse.
SPEAKER_00: Not only have they run to other gods, but they reject God's prophets.
SPEAKER_00: God was so patient and forbearing and gracious that he sends prophets to the people to warn them and to call them to repentance.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 13 He says, Yet the Lord testified against Israel and Judah, and by all of his prophets, every seer, saying, Turn from your evil ways and keep my commandments and my statutes according to all the law which I have commanded your fathers, which I have sent to you by my servants.
SPEAKER_00: But nevertheless they would not hear, but they stiffened their necks, like the necks of their fathers who did not believe in the Lord their God.
SPEAKER_00: God in his grace sends prophets, mighty men like Elijah and Elisha, the two most notable, but he sends them where?
SPEAKER_00: Sends them to the northern kingdom, warning them, pleading with them.
SPEAKER_00: Return, doing miracles in front of them.
SPEAKER_00: We've seen them on and on again.
SPEAKER_00: The miracle on Mount Carmel, the miracles of Elisha.
SPEAKER_00: God has been so gracious and patient with them, and he sends them prophet after prophet after prophet, but the Bible says that they stiffened their necks.
SPEAKER_00: I still have this vivid memory.
SPEAKER_00: My mom used to cut my hair when I was a kid.
SPEAKER_00: And as she would try to cut my hair, my head would wobble like this.
SPEAKER_00: And she would grab my head and she would say, Ryan, think Jewish.
SPEAKER_00: Stiffen your neck.
SPEAKER_00: You know?
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: They were a stiff-necked people.
SPEAKER_00: Stubborn.
SPEAKER_00: Would not heed the warning.
SPEAKER_00: And as a result, they receive God's judgment.
SPEAKER_00: Verses 20 to 23, God says, He says, I tore them from the house of David.
SPEAKER_00: This covenant that God made with David, that out of his line would come Emmanuel, the king of kings, the one who would bring blessing to the nations.
SPEAKER_00: God tears them from this covenant.
SPEAKER_00: And he sends people to plunder them by their enemies.
SPEAKER_00: God afflicts them again and again and again until finally they are removed from the land altogether.
SPEAKER_00: And can you see this finality?
SPEAKER_00: They said, We will not live under the Mosaic covenant with our covenant Redeemer.
SPEAKER_00: Thus you will be torn from the Davidic covenant, and you will not receive the blessing of the king coming to reign.
SPEAKER_00: And eventually I'm going to remove you now from this Abrahamic promise.
SPEAKER_00: You will not even be in the land altogether.
SPEAKER_00: They were completely removed and cast away.
SPEAKER_00: Israel's obituary sadly could be written about every Christian church, every denomination, or every institution that departs from the faith and descends into apostasy.
SPEAKER_00: This is a story that has been well documented in church history.
SPEAKER_00: Churches that embrace syncretism and pluralism and all the various religions of the world, and they try to blend these things, begin to descend.
SPEAKER_00: They welcome them.
SPEAKER_00: They will eventually become like them and be defined by them, so that it's almost impossible to tell the difference between a Christian church and the culture and the world that they're called to be a light into.
SPEAKER_00: They eventually become consumed by them and will ultimately be destroyed by them.
SPEAKER_00: And one day God will remove them.
SPEAKER_00: Apostasy often creeps in under the guise of good intentions, a commitment to social justice and equality, a desire to be an influence in the world, a desire to have acceptance and academia, church growth, whatever it is.
SPEAKER_00: But when churches fail to heed the warnings of Scripture and the true preachers of the gospel, they will eventually become shells of themselves and no longer be the distinct people of God that we have been called to, and eventually they will close down.
SPEAKER_00: We have a I think I mentioned it before, but we have a literally a real-life example of this just up the road.
SPEAKER_00: There's a a building up the road.
SPEAKER_00: Used to be old Tungabi Uniting Church.
SPEAKER_00: It originally began as a Methodist chapel.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm assuming that under them in the 1970s, when the Uniting Church formed, it joined the Uniting Church and is now a Hindu temple.
SPEAKER_00: Removed.
SPEAKER_00: Replaced with pagan worship.
SPEAKER_00: We've seen Christian institutions and seminaries that have begun with good institu good intentions.
SPEAKER_00: Do you know that Harvard, Yale, and Princeton all began as Christian universities?
SPEAKER_00: I don't think if you went to Harvard Divinity School that many people would even think you believe the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: We have seen churches all go down this road.
SPEAKER_00: What's the application for us?
SPEAKER_00: Brothers and sisters, we must guard our hearts.
SPEAKER_00: Guard our doctrine.
SPEAKER_00: May the sad story of the Northern Kingdom never be said about Emmanuel Baptist Church.
SPEAKER_00: We need to pray.
SPEAKER_00: We need to pray for the Christian church here in Australia and all of its institutions.
SPEAKER_00: Pray that Bible colleges would remain sound and faithful to the Word.
SPEAKER_00: Pray that Christian denominations would not give in to the pressures of the culture but maintain faithfulness amidst the ever-growing pressures.
SPEAKER_00: May this never be the obituary of our life and our church.
SPEAKER_00: The second part of this chapter details what happens to the land after Israel is removed.
SPEAKER_00: And this is all about the resettlement of Samaria.
SPEAKER_00: And Assyria had a custom, or maybe a custom, maybe a practice, it'd be more uh more like it, that when they took over a people, um they were aware, and I think probably learned from history in many ways, that if those people groups were allowed to stay within their people groups and within their culture, and even though they were under uh maybe the authority or the reign or the rule of the Assyrian Empire, if they were allowed to kind of stay with that, they would maintain their national and cultural identity.
SPEAKER_00: And if they were growing, uh, that would bring cohesion and a growing cohesion amongst those people and lead to the possibility of revolt and overthrowing.
SPEAKER_00: And so they would, they would take their captors or and their people that they would conquer, and they would intentionally place them amongst others to diminish that cultural identity and thus reduce the likelihood of those people binding together under some common uh uh identity to try to overthrow them as an empire.
SPEAKER_00: It's a very clever strategy.
SPEAKER_00: Because they knew that if they could intermingle these different cultures together and and reduce their understanding of who they were as a people, that would uh certainly diminish the idea that they would uh rise up against them.
SPEAKER_00: And so they begin to amalgamate them with other people.
SPEAKER_00: And this uh was happening here as Assyria resettles the land of Samaria with people from all different era all different people groups.
SPEAKER_00: Look at verse 24.
SPEAKER_00: Then the king of Assyria brought people from Babylon and Shutha and Ava and Hamath and from the Sephirotham and placed them into the cities of Samaria instead of the children of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: Now we know that some of the Israelites stayed.
SPEAKER_00: There were some who actually uh were still there, and they began to intermingle and intermarry or intermarry and interbreed with these people that were now resettling the land of Samaria.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 25, and so it was at the beginning of their dwelling there that they did not fear the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Therefore the Lord sent lions among them, which killed some of them.
SPEAKER_00: So they spoke to the king of Assyria, saying, The nations whom you have removed and placed in the cities of Samaria do not know the rituals of the God of the land.
SPEAKER_00: Therefore he has sent lions among them, indeed they are killing them because they do not know the rituals of the God of the land.
SPEAKER_00: Then the king of Assyria commanded, saying, Send there one of the priests whom you brought from there, and let him go and dwell there, and teach them the rituals of God of the land.
SPEAKER_00: Then one of the priests whom they carried away from Samaria came and dwelt in Bethel and taught them how they should fear the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: It's kind of ironic, but anyway.
SPEAKER_00: However, every nation continued to make gods of its own and put them in the shrines and in the high places which the Samaritans had made, every nation in the cities where they dwelt.
SPEAKER_00: The men of Babylon made Succoth and Benoth, the men of Kuth made Negro, uh Nergol, and the men of Hamath made Ashima, and the Avites made Nibhaz, and the and Tartak, and the Severvites burned their children in the fire to Adramelech and Anamalek, the gods of the Sephrevaeim.
SPEAKER_00: So they feared the Lord, or feared Yahweh, and from every class they appointed themselves priests in the high places, who sacrificed for them in the shrines of the high places.
SPEAKER_00: They feared the Lord, yet they served their own gods, according to the rituals of the nations among whom they were carried away.
SPEAKER_00: Well, this is interesting.
SPEAKER_00: This land is resettled with people of all different backgrounds and tribes and tongues and nations and gods who worship different gods.
SPEAKER_00: And they all blend in together.
SPEAKER_00: And Assyria resettles these people with this land, and it says, it's interesting, instead of the children of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: And now you have false worship being done by pagans in the land that God has promised to his children, blending with the remnants of the Israelites who were there.
SPEAKER_00: And interestingly enough, God still sends judgment upon these people for their idolatrous worship in the form of lions who are attacking them.
SPEAKER_00: And then a priest is sent to teach the people how to how do we worship Yahweh?
SPEAKER_00: What are the rituals we have to do?
SPEAKER_00: And so it gets to this point where you have what is said that they are fearing Yahweh, but they're serving their own gods.
SPEAKER_00: What is this?
SPEAKER_00: This is this is just pluralism gone mad.
SPEAKER_00: Where there's this tiny semblance of Yahweh worship, but it is so polluted with idolatry that it doesn't even look or even resemble true worship at all.
SPEAKER_00: And so the land is now being polluted, not just simply by wicked practices, but by a wicked people, a foreign nation, foreign nations that have come in and settled in the place where God's people were.
SPEAKER_00: And they are an abomination in the sight of God.
SPEAKER_00: Again, they practice human sacrifice, idol worship, sexual immorality, all of these wicked things.
SPEAKER_00: Yet it says that they feared God but served their own gods, and they were left with just the crumbs of a once holy people and a righteous God.
SPEAKER_00: What does this tell the world, the nations, if you would?
SPEAKER_00: Well, when God's people are removed or replaced, when they are not present or when they are not prevalent, the only option for a society is to fill that void with any and every kind of idolatrous practice.
SPEAKER_00: And we have seen in history, and we are witnessing in many ways now, the crippling and completely incoherence of nations that have rejected and continue to reject God's righteous laws.
SPEAKER_00: And they don't know what to do with each other.
SPEAKER_00: They don't know how to handle society, they don't know how to be a people, lost any sense of identity, lost any sense of understanding who we are or where we came from or any of these types of things.
SPEAKER_00: And it's interesting that in the Old Testament, under the Old Covenant, the people of Israel were called to be a distinct people of God, but they were also called to welcome in the stranger, the one who would come and submit themselves and join in covenant relationship with Yahweh.
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't that they were supposed to be exclusive with, you know, walls highs.
SPEAKER_00: They were to be a light to the world, a light to the Gentiles, but they failed miserably at that.
SPEAKER_00: But here you see a culture that is trying to have everybody worship their own gods, their own way, and the result is always just devastating.
SPEAKER_00: This is the inevitable result of a people that reject God's wisdom found in his word, that pushes God's people either out entirely or completely to the sideline and does not think that they have any sort of a voice.
SPEAKER_00: It just becomes, that nation just becomes a rudderless ship in the sea of ideas, and eventually will sink under the folly of its own idolatry.
SPEAKER_00: We've seen this in places where communism has tried to drive out God's people or basically completely suppress God's people.
SPEAKER_00: It becomes a devastating, horrible place to live.
SPEAKER_00: But all of this was not outside of God's plan.
SPEAKER_00: You know, Israel's obituary is not God's obituary.
SPEAKER_00: Why is this event in Samaria's resettling recorded for us?
SPEAKER_00: It's not just simply to give us historical information.
SPEAKER_00: And it certainly does serve for us an example and a warning to all nations that seeks to remove God's people from out of their presence, but it sets the scene for God's continued plan of redemption.
SPEAKER_00: You see, centuries later, Jesus, that one who was promised, Emmanuel, would come to this earth.
SPEAKER_00: And he comes to a time when the Bible says the Jews had no dealings with the Samaritans.
SPEAKER_00: Because the Samaritans to them were a mongrel people.
SPEAKER_00: A blended mix of Judaism and everything else.
SPEAKER_00: Sort of said they worshiped Yahweh, but they didn't know how to worship him or where to worship him or anything.
SPEAKER_00: And they had no, they despised the Samaritans, and the Samaritans despised the Jews.
SPEAKER_00: They were hated.
SPEAKER_00: And yet in John chapter 4, we read, don't we, that as Jesus travels, he said, I must needs go through Samaria.
SPEAKER_00: And there he finds a woman who is rejected by her own people because of her immoral lifestyle, and offers her the water of life.
SPEAKER_00: He offers her himself.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus Christ, the Israel of God, returns to that land and brings salvation to a people who did not deserve it.
SPEAKER_00: Not by eradicating them, not by reclaiming some piece of real estate, but by overturning their rebellious hearts of a people far from God.
SPEAKER_00: And that is what Christ does to every human heart in which he touches, in which he reveals himself, and to which he gives his water of life freely.
SPEAKER_00: And so, brothers and sisters, as we move into the time of the Lord's table, this is so significant.
SPEAKER_00: Because the northern kingdom removed themselves from their covenant-keeping God.
SPEAKER_00: They removed themselves, they tore themselves, they rebelled.
SPEAKER_00: And as this table is a sign to us in a time of covenant renewal, we take these elements, being reminded of the saving grace that came to our rebellious hearts.
SPEAKER_00: We once again declare that Yahweh is our God, that He is the one who has delivered us out of the bondage of Egypt, out of the bondage of our own sin, and has brought us into a covenant relationship with Him.
SPEAKER_00: And we partake of these things, being reminded, but we're also warned that the inevitable end to those who reject God and become apostates, that your end will be like that northern kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: We need to pray for ourselves, pray for our church, pray for our land, pray for the churches around us, pray that God's people would flourish, pray that the church of Jesus Christ in this place, here in Emmanuel and churches all around us, that ministers and church leaders would not compromise, but continue to walk in faithful relationship with our God.
SPEAKER_00: And may this never be said of us.
SPEAKER_00: But may we hear the words of our blessed Savior at our final day.
SPEAKER_00: Well done, my good and faithful servant.
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
SPEAKER_00: Father, we come before you today.
SPEAKER_00: We thank you so much for the passage that we have looked at.
SPEAKER_00: It's a sobering one, but Lord, a necessary one.
SPEAKER_00: And as we come to your table, Lord, I pray that our hearts would be stirred once again to walk in faithfulness with our God.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, keep us.
SPEAKER_00: Keep each one of us.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, from stumbling and falling into the grips of idolatry.
SPEAKER_00: We thank you that we have that blessed assurance that you've given to us in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And so, Lord, I pray that you would guard this church and churches all around us of this land.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, guard the institutions that are training and sending men into the harvest.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, may we see this land revived and God's people flourish.
SPEAKER_00: And may the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ conquer every rebellious heart, we pray in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.