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Now we have the aftermath. Second Kings chapter 17 verse 24. And the king of Assyria brought people from Babylon, Kuthah, Avah, Hamath, and Sefer Vayim and placed them in the cities of Samaria instead of the people of Israel. And they took possession of Samaria and lived in its cities. And at the beginning of their dwelling there, they did not fear the Lord. Therefore the Lord sent lions among them, which killed some of them. So the king of Assyria was told, the nations that you've carried away and placed in the cities of Samaria, they don't know the law of the God of the land. Therefore he has sent lions among them. And behold, they are killing them because they do not know the law of the God of the land. Then the king of Assyria commanded, send there one of the priests whom you carried away from there and let him go and dwell there and teach them the law of the God of the land. So one of the priests, whom they had carried away from Samaria, came and lived in Bethel, and taught them how they should fear the Lord. But every nation still made gods of its own, and put them in the shrines of the high places that the Samaritans had made, every nation in the cities in which they lived. The men of Babylon made Sukkoth Benoth. The men of Kuth made Nergal. The men of Hamoth made Ashemah. The Avites made Nibhaz and Tartak, and the Sefervites burned their children in the fire to a Dremelech and an Emelech, the gods of Sefer Vayim. They also feared the Lord, and appointed from among themselves all sorts of people as priests of the high places, who sacrificed for them in the shrines of the high places. So they feared the Lord, but also served their own gods after the manner of the nations from among whom they had been carried away. To this day, they do according to the former manner, They do not fear the Lord, and they do not follow the statutes or the rules or the law or the commandment that the Lord commanded the children of Jacob, whom he named Israel. The Lord made a covenant with them and commanded them, you shall not fear other gods, or bow yourselves to them, or serve them, or sacrifice to them, but you shall fear the Lord who brought you out of the land of Egypt with great power and with an outstretched arm. You shall bow yourselves to him, and to him you shall sacrifice, and the statutes, and the rules, and the law, and the commandment that he wrote for you, you shall always be careful to do. You shall not fear other gods, and you shall not forget the covenant that I have made with you. You shall not fear other gods, but you shall fear the Lord your God, and he will deliver you out of the hand of all your enemies. However, they would not listen, but they did according to their former manner. So these nations feared the Lord, and also serve their carved images. Their children did likewise, and their children's children as their fathers did. So they do to this day. Amen. Let's pray. So Father, as we read this, make us to fear you more. If that one thing could be accomplished by the sermon, Lord, it counted a great success. Although you do whatsoever you wish with this word, Holy Spirit, but we pray that you would make us fear you more, truly fear you. If there's any here that don't fear you, Lord, may they. Pray this in Jesus' name, amen. So just by way of reminder where we're at, last week we looked at the end of the Northern Kingdom. We asked the question why. And the Holy Spirit showed us that the end of the Northern Kingdom came because of their worldliness and their idolatry and their unwillingness to listen when they're being corrected. And we talked about how we should avoid these things too. We talked about how we should do this lest we share in their same fate. So tonight we have a little bit more to do in this chapter, in chapter 17, except we're not really hearing about the destruction per se, because it's all been said and done really. Now in this chapter, we're just left sifting through the rubble of all that's happened. But we're still asking the same question. We're still asking why. Why did this happen? This is a big polemic about why God let something this horrible happen to his people. As we saw last week, God had lots of reasons why this happened. But tonight's answer is going to be a little bit more succinct than last week. Because in a nutshell, the big reason that God gives for ending the Northern Kingdom in this chapter is that they did not fear the Lord. There are lots of ways a person might summarize what it means to be a Christian. I think this has to be one of the biggest and one of the most important ways to summarize what it means to be a Christian. A Christian is somebody who fears the Lord. This is precisely what Israel failed to do. This is what their new neighbors failed to do. And so we're gonna look at this fear of the Lord from two different angles like the text does. First we're gonna see the fear of the Lord as a calling that the people failed to live up to. We're gonna see God call them to that fear and then them fail to do it. Then we're going to see an ironic picture of Israel's failure to fear the Lord. It's probably not very clear right now. It'll get clear. Okay. So first, let's look at the fear of the Lord as the calling. It's what God called them to do, but it's what Israel failed to do. So before we look at this calling and this negative picture of the fear of the Lord, I want to draw you a positive picture of what it means to fear the Lord. show you positively what that means. So I want to think about Mount Everest for a second. The more I learned about Mount Everest, the more I realized that it is a climbing destination to be feared. Climbers, if they're smart, always fear Mount Everest. What I mean by that is they always have the highest opinion of Mount Everest, and they have a high opinion of what Mount Everest can do to them if they're not careful. A couple of statistics about Mount Everest, unless you know this already. Mount Everest is the tallest mountain above sea level at 29,029 feet. And apparently, it's excruciatingly difficult to climb. Experts estimate that over 300 climbers have died trying to make their way to the summit. Many of their bodies are actually still on the slopes. Apparently, it's very easy to die as a climber of Mount Everest. Climbers face dangers like low oxygen, altitude sickness, harsh weather, avalanches. At one point on the trail, there's this place called the Khumbu Icefall. Climbers can actually fall suddenly without warning into deep canyons that are covered over by a thin layer of snow because it's actually an ice flow that's actually moving a little bit day by day. Or they can be smashed by falling ice blocks that can be the size of houses. One climber was smashed by an ice block that was 12 stories tall. I think I got that right, 12-story tall ice block. So in one sense, you should really fear Mount Everest. And fearing Mount Everest means having the highest opinion of it and of what it can do to you if you're not careful. In another sense, fearing Mount Everest means, since it is so greatly to be feared, it means being very careful to follow its rules, or at least the tips that other people that have climbed it have come up with. You know, to make it to the top of the mountain alive, climbers have to be careful to do everything exactly right to maximize their chances of making it. They have to climb in the right season. They have to acclimate their bodies for weeks at a time, sometimes as much as 40 to 60 days at certain camps. They have to find the right guide. They have to have the right timing in the day. They have to bring the right supplies. And I'm sure there's lots of other things they have to do that we don't even know about to make it to the top. I'm sure they have to at least exercise before they try. So anyway, even though we're just talking about a mountain, I think it gives you a little bit of a start of a picture of what it means to fear the Lord. Fearing the Lord means having the absolute highest opinion of Him out of any being in the universe, and it means having a high opinion of what He can do to you. It means being very careful then to do exactly what He tells you to do. So that's what you see laid out for you in the second half of our passage tonight. You see, verses 34 through 40, the way I figure it is they're a kind of a flashback that shows God clearly calling his people to fear him, and it's all about fearing him. The word fear shows up six times in this little section. You might have realized when I was saying it, he just keeps repeating, fear the Lord. This is where God reminds his people how they should have been fearing him all along. This is after all that's been said and done, he's saying, this is how you should have feared me. And in some subtle ways, it looks a lot like my Mount Everest illustration. So first, God makes it clear to them that they should have had the highest opinion of him. Listen to the refrain in this section. Verse 35, you shall not fear other gods. Verse 37, you shall not fear other gods. Verse 38, you shall not fear other gods. Do you see? Then on the flip side, verse 36, but you shall fear Yahweh. Verse 39, but you shall fear Yahweh, your God. So you read all that and you think, do you think God wanted them to have the highest opinion of him over all other gods? So it's there explicitly, it's there right out in the open, it's just bam, it's just there, but it's also there implicitly too because all throughout this, God makes it clear that Verse 35, he is the covenant maker. That's the one to be feared. He makes it clear in verse 35, he's the one who commands, he makes commands with an expectation of being obeyed. And then there's that absolute power that he has over them, what he's able to do to them. The rest of the chapter, all of the first part of chapter 17 shows the terror of his judgment. Verse 36 references his deliverance from Egypt with great power and an outstretched arm. So yeah, God's telling Israel they should have had the highest regard for him. Look what he can do to you. He can judge you like he just did to Israel. He can save you like he did coming out of Egypt. He's the covenant making God. He's the commanding God. You ought to have no other gods before him. You ought to fear him and him alone. And then just like our Everest example. Another one of the leading words, another one of the repeated phrases that's here in this passage, God makes it clear that all these things being true, they should have been very careful to do exactly what he told them to do. He says it negatively and positively to make his point. Verse 34, they don't follow the statutes or the rules or the law or the commandment that the Lord commanded. Verse 35, and the statutes and the rules and the law and the commandment that he wrote for you, you shall always be careful to do. You see that? There's that whole highest opinion of him and what he can do to you. And so being very careful to do everything that he commands. These are the things repeated over and over again in this chapter, especially in 34 through 40, where it's laid out, the fear of the Lord. And these words, mishpat, Torah, mitzvah, like in bar mitzvah, choke, these are the words that are said here in Hebrew, repeated all over the place in this chapter. Because that's what it means to fear the Lord. Have the highest opinion of Him and what He can do to you, and to be very careful to obey Him. So at the end of this little flashback, it becomes pretty clear why there's all this rubble and destruction in the Northern Kingdom. It's because the Northern Kingdom didn't do any of this. They didn't have a high opinion of him. They didn't have a high opinion, they didn't take seriously what he was going to do to them, and they didn't obey any of his commandments. They did not fear the Lord. And it probably goes without saying, but I'll say it, nothing's changed in the history of the world from that time until here. We have to fear the Lord in the same way. It's absolutely necessary for you to get. At this point, I actually feel my total inadequacy for getting this across to you. But listen, he is the master and creator of every speck of existence. And what he says goes. And look what he did to Israel there in Samaria. And he saved them in one era from the king of Egypt. And he squashed them in another era here under the hand of the Assyrians. This is the one who holds your eternal destiny in his hands. I can't make you fear him. It's actually very frustrating to me. I know I can't make anybody fear him. If only I sometimes just want to preach sermons that just show the terribleness of his judgment, something, or just the loveliness of his kindness to make you fear him. If only I could show you just for a second, like Moses saw when he was hidden in the cleft of the rock, show you just for a second the brightness of his train, then you'd fear him. Or if I could show you just the smallest peephole into hell, then you'd fear him. It's something you have to experience for yourself though. This is a conviction that he's gotta work into your heart by faith. That this, this God is a God to be feared. And how can I please him? Feared for his terribleness, but feared for his loving kindness. And how can I please him? How can I more closely follow what he says? I can tell you on the last day, you will not regret having followed him too closely. You will not. So I guess this one thing's certain from this passage. All of us need more of this. We have to fear the Lord. Have to fear the Lord. It's what it means to be a Christian. So that's first. That's first, just we see God's standard. This is how he wanted them to fear him, and they didn't. And now we go on to a picture of what fear of the Lord does not look like. Drink this first. So we looked at the fear of the Lord from one angle, how Samaria really should have feared the Lord. Tried to illustrate that for you. Now we have to look at it from another angle. We have to look at a picture of what it looks like to not fear the Lord. And there's actually a lot of irony in the first half of this chapter. It's very interesting. It's actually fascinating to picture in your head, too, the first half of this chapter. The first half of this passage shows the North hitting an all-time low. Not only have they been conquered and pillaged, and their kings been taken away, and their populations been scattered, most of them anyway, now Gentile dogs are living in their houses. The whole thing's been given to somebody else, different towns for different nations, for different people groups, and these people bring with them a whole menagerie, a whole college open house, a whole job fair of different gods. And so now, here's the terribleness of this. The Promised Land is now full of demon worship. It's actually, in a way, if you think about it, it's actually like the Promised Land was before Israel ever came in. It's back to square one, actually a little bit worse than square one. And these foreigners that come in, they're a stunning picture. or pretty convicting picture of what it looks like to not fear the Lord. Because first of all, if we just keep with my definition, these people have a very low opinion of the God of Israel, at least when they move in. In verse 26, it's subtle, but you see it, they call him the God of the land. Not the God of all the earth. They think he's just some petty little regional deity. He's just the God of this area the size of New Jersey. And then verse 33 tells us that they just put Yahweh on the shelf next to all their other statues. Thank you, Nergal, and thank you, Sukkoth Benoth, and thank you, Yahweh. And he's just one God among many to them. I actually like the little phrase that they have here about the priests, that they appointed for among themselves all sorts of people as priests. That almost sounds like a modern expression, doesn't it? It looks like that in the Hebrew. They had all kinds of people be their priests. Very low opinion. It's actually pretty interesting, too. One of the most repeated words in this chapter is the word for to make, which is a pretty common word in the Bible. You make something, you do something. But it's repeated in this section. We think on purpose. You look at verse 29. Every nation still made gods of its own and put them in the shrines of the high places that the Samaritans had made. Every nation in the cities in which they lived. The men of Babylon made Succoth-Benoth. The men of Kuth made Nergal. Think of these gods, supposedly. The men of Hamath made Asherah. The Avites made Nibhaz and Tartak. This is the author's way of making fun of these gods. Then they made this god. Then they made this god. Then they made this god, saying kind of implicitly, they're serving gods that they made with their own hands, while they snubbed the god who made them, saying they're nuts. Look what they're doing. Just to add to their mockery a little bit, I did a little digging on these gods. We're not a hundred percent sure who all these gods are Our God stands the test of time even their own reputations didn't stand the test of time, but Here's the best I can do Jewish doctors from earlier in history. They tell us that Sukkoth Benoth was worshipped as either a chicken or Venus planet Venus Nurgle is either a rooster or fire See, that's how precise I can get Ashima is a smooth goat, make a statue of a smooth goat. Nibhaz as a dog. Tartak is a donkey. And a Dremelech and an Emelech are either different kinds of pheasants and grouse, or they're related to the demon Melech. That's why they demanded child sacrifice to the fire. So anyway, it's pretty clear these nations have a pretty low opinion of Yahweh. And in addition, they're not very careful to follow his commands when they enter the land. They actually don't even know what God's commands are. And so here's what God does, and you just read it. He sends lions to kill them. We have a side note. Can you imagine what it would be like for the Lord to send lions to terrorize an entire countryside? It's just crazy to think about, isn't it? Lions attacking these nations so much so that they start to see a correlation and realize, we've got to start doing something a little differently. There's lions everywhere. So for a while, the foreigners start to change their tune. They even send to the Assyrians and ask, can you send us a priest to show us how to make these lions go away, how to worship this God the right way? But the thing is, they don't really seem to get the picture, though. It seems like they just kind of figure out a way that they can throw God a bone every now and then to kind of keep the lions off their backs. Because they send for this priest, the priest comes in and gives them some new worship techniques, some new rituals, probably a priest from the north, which wouldn't have been very good anyway. And they go, the text says they go right back into worshiping all their other gods. So these foreigners, they're a good picture of what it's like to not fear the Lord. They don't have a very high opinion of Yahweh or what he can do to them, except for I guess when the lion was in their town, and they're not very careful to do what he says. They're very not careful to do what he says. However, I will say this about the foreigners. Here's where the irony starts to come in in this passage. The thing is, they actually did a better job of fearing God than the Israelites did who came before them. You know, in 1 Kings, when a lion kills the man of God during Jeroboam's reign, it doesn't make any difference to Jeroboam. But when lions attack these foreigners who came to live in Israel, Well, they're asking of the Lord. They're asking, how can we get him to make the lions go away? They did it half-heartedly, but they still did it. That's more than you can say for the people of Israel that were just expelled from the land. They at least called a priest so they could observe some of God's ways. Verse 33 even says, so they feared Yahweh. So there are two things we need to make of all this. The first is that here you're seeing pagans fear God more than God's people were. That's a terrible indictment of the Northern Kingdom. You're seeing how low the Northern Kingdom has come and how just God was in punishing them. So that's first. Second, what do we do with this apparent, maybe some of you picked up on this if you're really astute, what do you do with this apparent contradiction between verse 33 and verse 34? Verse 33 says, so they feared the Lord, but also served their own gods. And verse 34 says, they do not fear the Lord. So you read that and you wonder, so which is it? Do they fear the Lord or do they not fear the Lord? It says both. And here's what I make of that. Here's what most make of this. We know the writers of scriptures were anything but idiots. We know they were superintended by the Holy Spirit. Even if we allowed for a second, just for argument's sake, which I never allow, but even if we allowed for a second that there are all kinds of writers and editors that are just shoving in their little things into the Bible, it's still unbelievable that this kind of contradiction would make it in unnoticed, that the writers wouldn't notice in all their extensive editing and that there are these kinds of contradictions. It would seem to be that either 33 and 34 are talking about two different groups of people, which I think seems hard to conceptualize. I don't think that's what's going on. Or the great author of scripture is trying to send us a message. Could it not be that verses 33 and 34 are saying the same thing? That to fear the Lord and to fear other gods at the same time is really the same as not fearing the Lord at all. I'll say it a different way. Could it be that verse 34 is a broader interpretive statement about verse 33? That if anyone fears both the one true God and other gods at the same time, that they really don't know what it means to fear God at all. I think that holds up. Because brothers and sisters, I think this intentional snafu here points to the important lesson that if you fear God on par with how much you fear something else, you're really not fearing God. Could you really be said to be a God-fearer if you care more what other people think than you care what God thinks? If I care what all of you think and then I care what God thinks, I'm not fearing God. Are you really a God-fearer if you're more afraid of earthly consequences than you are of his name and his power? So I think that's an important lesson to learn. It's an important lesson the Samaritans didn't seem to learn, and it's an important lesson that the Israelites learned even less. So let's apply this before we close. We come again to the hard work of self-examination. I think this passage begs the question, do you fear God? Using our definition from before, Do you have the highest, the absolute highest opinion of him and the highest regard for what he can do to you, for good or for bad? To ask it a different way, is he the biggest sun on your horizon in this life? Is he the biggest thing, the biggest person? When you have a decision to make, does his opinion cast the weightiest vote? Does his presence cast the longest shadow I think one of the best ways to tell if you fear the Lord is whether or not you tremble at his word. Do you ever read in his Bible, you read his warnings, and it just makes you, oh, okay. Do you ever read about a way to please him? You see something that makes him happy, and in your inner man, you think, well, I wanna do that. I wanna do that more. That's a good way to tell if you fear the Lord. What's your reaction to the word of God? A good way to tell if you're not fearing God is if you have an attitude like these foreigners. If he's just the God of the land to you, metaphorically speaking. If he just has a place in certain spheres, if he's just the Sunday God, or the God that you kinda take off your shelf when you need him, or just the God of certain areas, regional. Or if he's just one among many to you. If he's just one possible piece of advice, I see what the Bible says, I see what pastors, elders, parents say, and thank you, that's one possibility. Or if it's one opinion that weighs less than all other opinions. We're still sticking to our definition, that's just the emotional, cognitive fear of the Lord. Here's how you also know if you're fearing the Lord. Are you careful to do what he commands? That's the kicker, isn't it? It's one thing to say that you fear the Lord, to say that you fear the Lord, it's another thing to be careful to do what he says. You know, it can be pretty tempting sometimes to look at Christians who are very careful, they're very considerate in their obedience to God, they're trying to do what the Lord says. It's very easy to look at those people and think that they are legalistic, little sticks in the mud, Every once in a while, maybe we cross that line, but you know what I see when I look at very, very careful Christians? When I see Christians that are just very careful to try to follow the ways of the Lord and to try to follow His laws and His commandments, and they're careful. You know what I think about those? I think, that person has a healthy fear of the Lord. A healthy fear of the Lord. I guess back in the day, you'd call them a God-fearing man, a God-fearing woman. One of the best ways to tell If you fear the Lord, it's to see if the Word of God has a shaping influence on your life. You come away from the Bible with a fresh resolve to change something. If you long to be the kind of person that the Bible approves of, if like Elder Shepherd led us in this morning, if you hunger and thirst for righteousness, you just want to be more that kind of person. Or are you like the rest of the world? Do you just pick and choose what you'll obey like you're at an ice cream bar? I will obey those things. Those things, not so much. Or, the other way people do this, do you just, like the Israelites, like the foreigners, do you just throw God a bone every now and then so you can go and serve your passions? You know, what can I do to keep the lions off my back, to keep good with this community, to keep my parents off my back? What can I do to just kind of throw a bone to God so I can go and worship all these other gods, my own flesh included, all these other things? I actually think this is one of those things that is a strength of ours here at Matthews. This is why I love how regulative principle we are. It's not a bad thing at all that we try to do things by the book. So my message to you in all of this is that you should be able to see in yourself if you fear him or not. You should be able to detect and see if you fear the Lord. And if you're not fearing the Lord, you should be afraid. I hear the words of 1 Peter 1, verse 17. If you call on him as father, who judges impartially, According to each one's deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile, knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ. So I'll start to conclude here. We're about to completely leave the Northern Kingdom behind. We're done with it. It's going to pop up just in reference for the rest of it. We're going to go all the way to Judah. But this is a pretty hopeless ending for the northern kingdom, isn't it? This is it. And then it's amen, period. Moving on to the south. Israel was supposed to clean house. It was supposed to exalt Yahweh, supposed to get rid of all the other gods of the land. Now we're back to square one. There may be even more gods there than there were before. And the pagans are doing better than Israel was doing. And so you think, this is pretty hopeless. This is pretty despairing. Things are just worse. In the big scheme of things, you wonder, where do you go from here, Northern Kingdom? Where do you go from here, Israel? And you think, in the big scheme of the Bible, it seems to always go this way. It's a vicious cycle that plays itself over and over again in the Bible. God blesses a people, and they're blessed for a time. Their blessing makes them apathetic, and they don't hear them anymore. And then there's judgment. You have this cycle, and it always happens. It's what just happened to Israel in the north. It's about to happen to Judah in the south. And it's so hopeless. Book of Kings feels so hopeless sometimes. Well, there is one little glimmer here in verse 39, if you look hard enough. One little glimmer of hope in God's promise, verse 39 says, That's the little glimmer of hope that was there for Israel. That one day there would be a Messiah who'd stand on the earth and show them in His fullness all the reasons why they should fear Him and call them back to the fear of the Lord. And that one day He'd make a way to destroy all of their enemies and to bring them back into the land. To make the land and the whole earth full of the knowledge of the Lord and the fear of the Lord. And that's the glimmer of hope that's there for anybody. It's there for you too. If you heard the sermon tonight, And maybe you've come to fear him in a new way, or you fear him more than you've ever feared him before. Or maybe you've never feared him at all. And for the first time you think, I need to fear him. This passage is saying, this promise is saying, you shall fear the Lord your God, and he will deliver you out of the hand of all your enemies. He says, if you fear Him, if you have the highest opinion of Him and what He can do to you and you are conscious to obey Him, and all this is in faith, in the Lord Jesus Christ, knowing that that's the one whom you fear, He says He'll save you. He'll deliver you. That's the way. Or said another way, the last way I'll say tonight, if you fear Him in a fatherly way, if in that he has your highest regard as your father, and if you want to please him as father, then because of Jesus, if you fear him this way, you don't have to fear his judgment. That's what John talks about when he says, perfect love casts out fear. Not the right kind of fear, it casts out the wrong kind of fear, the fear of judgment. What Jesus would have me tell you tonight is that if you fear him the right way, you don't have to fear him the wrong way. You have nothing left to fear except just Him in a fatherly regard. So take this tonight as a summons to fear the Lord. It's of the highest importance that you fear the Lord. And let's pray that we can do this better, shall we? Let's pray. So Heavenly Father, I guess all that's left is for us to plead with you that you would instill in our hearts a healthy fear of you. For those of us that fear you, Lord, make us fear you more, the right way, as our father whom we want to obey. And Lord, for those that don't fear you, I know there are some here that don't fear you very much or at all. Pray, Lord, that you would be larger to them. Lord, that they'd have a higher opinion of you and what you will do as the one who holds their destinies in your hand, and that they would fear you and be very careful to follow you all the days of their life into eternity. May we be a God-fearing church, Lord. May we know what this means experientially. We pray all this in Jesus' name, whom we fear. Amen.
Failure to Fear
Serie 2 Kings
ID del sermone | 681917132575 |
Durata | 34:53 |
Data | |
Categoria | Domenica - PM |
Testo della Bibbia | 2 Re 17:24-41 |
Lingua | inglese |
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