The dilemma I have tonight is I have about 41 verses that I wanna teach on. That's chapter 17, 2 Kings. I believe it's 41, something like that. 2 Kings chapter 17, and I really wanna read all 41 of them, but I'm not going to, I'm not going to. I have done an analysis of the chapter. And I will share the analysis of that chapter with you tonight. And I recommend you go home and read the chapter, not while I'm preaching, please. But go home and read the chapter. Also, I want you to read Nehemiah chapter 9, if you're taking notes. Nehemiah 9, Nehemiah 9. 2 Kings 17, I don't see anybody taking any notes. 2 Kings chapter, you know, sometimes you're up here, you feel like you're just flapping your lips, ain't nothing happened. 2 Kings chapter 17 and Nehemiah chapter nine, chapter nine, are the two most complete summation statements of what happened to Israel. What in the world happened to Israel? They're God's people. They got the law given to them on the disposition of angels themselves. Angels gave them the law. There was an angel by night giving them light, angel by day giving them guidance. They got to eat Krispy Kreme for 40 years, manna, and their clothes didn't wear out. The women didn't get to buy one new pair of shoes in 40 years. To some, that's not heaven. I had a woman one time say, oh my, no shoes for 40 years, I thought, because it causes shoes not to wear out on her feet. Amen? Did you ever know how cheaply women's shoes are made? I better get off of that. Okay. So when they have 175 pair of them, really not, doesn't amount to a lot of money. As some people I know, but anyways, Why did God record this history in Nehemiah 9 and 2 Kings chapter 17? Where he goes in such a complete review of it, and it's not just a review, it's an application of what happened to them, what they did that eventually made them where God literally turned his back on them. and wrote over the top of them Ichabod, which means the glory has departed. You know, God writes Ichabod over churches. I've seen a few of them. They're so displeasing that He'll just put Ichabod over them and they're just not gonna, nothing's happening. May that not be us. May God come. Without Him, we're nothing. We're just holding church. We need Him tonight. We need the Holy Spirit moving among us. Here at the gospel, this is my 40th year, we've seen some real serious movings of the Holy Spirit. I've preached sermons where everybody except maybe a handful of people were down at the front filling up all the aisles and in the front, weeping and broken. That's God. When he come, that wasn't Bill Lytell, that was God came. You could almost, the very manifest presence of God But like anything, revivals, no matter where they've been, never stay. They move. And so what I've been praying that God would come back again in the way he came to us in the late 90s and early 2000s, where his manifest presence was so powerful, people would walk in the door and say, I know God's here. People I never even knew, never saw. I can feel God's here. And the people were tender, and broken, and hearted. Confession of sin was a fairly normal thing. We had five women confess to the church openly that they had been sexually abused as children, and they were willing to forgive their offender. Boy, that's big. And they were in their 30s, most of them. And it released them from it. It released them. I was just glad to be there when the Holy Spirit released those girls. Problem with that kind of thing is the girl that is abused, and I say one out of five now is the estimate, have some sexual abuse before they're 20, and they get bitter. They get bitter. They get angry and bitter and angry at God, angry at whoever did it. And by the way, they're held hostage by that. And you can go to God and say, Lord, you forgave me everything, I can forgive others. In fact, Jesus said, if you'll forgive me my trespasses as I forgive those who trespass against me. Is that not the Bible? And so when they finally realize they gotta forgive to be forgiven, they let it go. And boy, oftentimes there's weeping, weeping, weeping, and some big things come off of them. And that's what freedom's about. That's what Christianity's about. It's about freedom. The truth shall, do what brother? Set you free. That's what drug addiction a lot of times, people go to drinking and alcohol because of the pain of unforgiving and bitterness is in their life. Twice in the New Testament, we're told why we have the Old Testament. First Corinthians 10, six says, now these things were our examples, speaking back about the Old Testament. to the intent that we should not lust after evil things as they also lust it. That is a very clear statement of why we have the Old Testament. We have the Old Testament so that we won't make the mistakes they made. It's a close verse to that is Romans chapter 15, verse four. It says, for whatsoever things were written aforetime, that's the Old Testament, were written for our learning that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope. So God has written the Old Testament and recorded it for us, preserved it for us, and that is no easy feat. 39 books, no easy feat. The New Testament is only 20% of the Bible, only 20%. Four-fifths of the Bible's Old Testament. So you say, if four-fifths of this book's Old Testament, I should probably know some of it. Amen? And there's a reason why he wrote the Old Testament and has given it to us. And I know some of it's difficult. Hey, those genealogies come up and it's like, whoa, I can't pronounce half of these names. But that's why you gotta get Alexander Scorby online. You get Alexander Scorby, he pronounces every one of those names and he pronounces them quickly and gets through them because unless you're studying the genealogies of the Bible, they don't mean a whole lot to you. My wife came up with some amazing statements by reading the Bible through. One time she came, she says, you know, our whole life comes into one line. So-and-so begets so-and-so, that's it. I said, yeah, life can be just a boom, it's over. And she said another statement she made years ago, she said, women get like no credit. I said, it's a man's world. It's a male-generated world, male-generated Bible. And it's true, in the genealogies, they almost never mention the women. They mention the men. You know, so-and-so begat so-and-so, begat so-and-so, read it for yourself. Now, we know without women, there'd be no man because there'd be no reproduction, amen? But it's just the Bible, it's the things you notice by reading it. And so if you're a feminist tonight, you're struggling right now. It's necessary for the people of God to look back at biblical history to avoid the same pitfalls that happened to those that went before us. And so we're gonna take a little look at this and some of the, very briefly if I may say, the lessons learned, we learn in 2 Kings 17 as I do this exposition. First of all, I see the indictment, the indictment. The Bible says they feared or respected or reverenced other gods. In verse 7, if you take your Bibles, you can follow me through this, I'll go through it. So it was that the children of Israel had sinned against the Lord their God, which brought them up out of the land of Egypt from under the hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and had feared other gods. I hope you don't read the horoscope. I've had Christians come to me and say, well, my horoscope, or what sign are you? Here's my sign. The cross. Amen. What month were you born? What, do you want to give me a present or what? You realize by looking at the horoscope, you're honoring the God of the horoscope. Did you ever have your fortune He's under deep conviction, he's starting to sweat, amen. That's good, brother. That's good, I like it, it's revival, revival. Do you ever have your fortune told? I mean, you go to some sort of a wizard, some sort of a witch and have your, they tell you your future by reading, oh, who knows what, they read all kinds of stuff. They read palm of your hands, they read all this kind of stuff. When you do that, you're honoring their God. Do you ever inquire at one of those tarot cards? Do you play a game with, do you play with a Ouija board? Are you missing or reading about witchcraft, black or white witchcraft? Do you believe somehow in the back of your mind there must be more than one way to heaven? and that the Buddhists, the Muslims, the Hindus, the Mormons, the Jehovah Witnesses somehow are gonna make it to heaven. If you're entertaining that, you're contradicting the God of the Bible. And he don't like that because he knows the truth. Secondly, they followed the custom or manner of the heathen, those around them, the unsaved. In 2 Kings 17, 8, and they walked in the statutes of the heathen, that's the rules and the practices of the heathen, whom the Lord had cast out before the children of Israel and of the kings of Israel, which they had made. God's people are not to be like, look like, or do like the heathen. Our music should not be like their music. Oh, this is good. Church of Jesus Christ today is committing this sin by panting ever and following after, not biblical methods, no, but not proven spiritual truth, no, but Hollywood. IBM fortune 500 Wall Street statutes for their church development you wouldn't believe how many emails and texts I get on how to fundraise and how to and use and how to do this and how to do that how to build the church listen Jesus said I Will build my church The gates of hell won't prevail against us We need to do what God tells us to do go into the world and preach the gospel to every creature Let God build the church By the way, we're not into church building. We're into telling the truth. And then it falls where, otherwise a guy like, I suppose a guy like Noah would have been an absolute and horrible failure. He didn't have very many people. His church never got past eight people and that was his relatives. Years ago, and this is old information for you, but Bill Hybels, how many remember the name Bill Hybels? Bill Hybels started a church called Willow Creek up in Chicago in 1974. Bill Hybels was exactly my age. We graduated together. We have a lot of similarities. In other words, we kind of share the same history. Bill Hybels went one way and Bill Lytell went another way. Bill Hybels went around the neighborhood and surveyed people and said, what kind of a church would you go to? What do you like about church? What don't you like about church? That's the way that they started Willow Creek. And it was a church the way you want it. It's kind of like, was it, who was it, Burger King? It says the hamburger the way you want it. You can go to McDonald's, they make it the way they want it, but you come to Burger King, you get it the way we want it. That's what happened. And that's the way of the heathen. That's definitely not, God's not negotiating with you. He's not negotiating with you. He said, this is the way, walk, you're in it. This is it. Well, I don't like that. Well, you're in trouble. Instead of leading them, he basically followed them and introduced one of the first places ever introduced The world's music, rock and roll, added Christian words to it. And it drew a lot of folks. And they showed up, surprisingly, even to them. 15,000 folks on Sunday would show up and began using the world's method. This was with indictment. of the children of Israel also. The third indictment is that they had many secret sins that they were doing. Verse nine, the children of Israel did secretly those things which were not right against the Lord their God, and they built them high places in all their cities and from the tower of the watchman to the fenced city. They did not have loyalty to God's way of worshiping, so they invented their own way, which was more convenient and more fun. and more exciting. Does that sound familiar? Remember what I told you this morning, people are people are people? In any generation, they got pretty much the same desires, the same wishes, and by the way, they go the same way. And so they went the way of the heathen. They did the very things, the children of Israel did the very things that God had judged those nations for. He had judged those nations for doing those things, and his people got among them and began to do those things. Well, you can imagine how that was an insult to him. And you see, let's see, verse 10, they set them up images and groves in every high hill and under every green tree, and they burnt incense to all high places, as did the heathen. whom the Lord carried away before them, and wrought wicked things to provoke the Lord to anger. You say, does God get mad? He sure does get mad. He gets mad. He gets righteous indignation. And in verse 12, and they served idols, therefore the Lord has said unto them, you shall not do this thing. You say, I don't have any idols. You need to examine yourself. God, do I have any idols? Do I have anything in my life you're not pleased with? I think that's a legitimate prayer request to go to God. We are, and the children of Israel fail because they inculcated the things that God hated about the heathen into their worship. Now, it's going on today. The modern church is in full bloom in that sin, which has been repeated so many times, so many generations. That's where they're at. But that's why Israel got destroyed and people all around America are buying into this. And so we see the purpose of preachers in verse 13. in this indictment. In verse 13, he says, that the Lord testified against Israel and against Judah by all the prophets and by all the seers saying, turn ye from your evil ways and keep my commandments and my statutes according to all the law, which I commanded your fathers, which I sent you by my servant, the prophets. In other words, basically what I'm doing tonight is giving you a heads up. It's not my own heads up. It's from the Word of God. The prophets and the seers of that day were doing the same thing. They would go back to the Word of God, and they would go back to the Pentateuch, and they would warn these people, look, the people, the seven nations which are greater than you that God drove out ahead of us, they were doing these same things that you guys now are doing, and what do you think is going to happen to us if we keep doing these things? Just like he drove them out, he's going to drive us out. What happened to the children of Israel? Now, you know the history of Israel, right? God drove them out. He brought the Assyrians in to take the ten tribes out. He brought the Babylonians in to take the two tribes out. He literally, on this land that was full of milk and honey, which was just for them, had to drive his own people out of that land, just like he drove those seven great nations before them, which were doing the same kinds of things. Man, in Jeremiah, it says, how be it I send unto you all my servants, the prophets, rising early and sending. And in verse Jeremiah 25, four, it says, the Lord has sent unto you all his servants, the prophets, rising early and sending, and ye have not hearkened nor inclined your ear to hear. Preachers are to be very careful not to disrespect or undo what godly forefathers have passed down to them. We have a heritage. Man, we're in 2020 here. We're to almost 20 centuries from Jesus's crucifixion, resurrection. We don't need to reinvent anything. It's pretty well been settled. The doctrines of the Bible been hammered out. We don't need to come up with some new way, new deal, new thing. Proverbs 22, 28 says, remove not the ancient landmark which thy forefathers have set. If it's a good thing, if it's based on the Bible, if it's a good thing, stick with it. Stick with it. Preacher's job is not to build a church, but to preach the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth, so help him God. What's being done today is that if people feel the preacher is too strong or he's too narrow, they simply change preachers. and get the one that will say the things they want to hear, as I mentioned this morning. The reaction of people to hellfire damnation preaching is found in verse 14. of this chapter. Notwithstanding, they would not hear, but hardened their necks, as stiffened up, like the neck of their fathers, and they did not believe in the Lord their God. Verse 15, and they rejected his statutes and his covenant that he had made with their fathers and testimonies, and testified against them, and they followed after vanity, became vain, and went after the heathen. There it is again, went after the heathen. They were round about them, concerning the Lord had charged them that they should not do like them. How much clearer do they have to be? What's fuzzy about that? And they left all the commandments of the Lord their God and made them molten images, two calves made to grow, worshiped the host of heaven, served Baal. They caused their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire. By the way, when your son and daughter passed through the fire, they didn't come back. They offered their children in fire. Babies. Babies. Sounds like abortion, doesn't it? They killed their babies. Remember I told you nothing changes? These people, back so many years ago, were killing their babies. Why God drove out the seven nations is because they were killing their babies. Why God drove out Israel after these people was because they were, in some degree, they were killing their babies. And if God drives us off of this land, it will be because, not us, but the people here have been killing their babies and polluting the land with the blood of those babies. Abel's blood cried out from the ground, this one guy, one guy. Imagine, last year I just got the statistic, in America 42.4 million babies. Is that possible? Because their sons and daughters would pass through the fire. God's reaction is found in verse 18, 20, and 23. Therefore the Lord was very angry with Israel and removed them out of his sight. and there was none left but the tribe of Judah only. The Lord rejected all, and verse 20, the Lord rejected all the seed of Israel and afflicted them and delivered them. Now this is the one that makes me crazy. He delivered them into the hand of spoilers until he had cast them out of his sight. I believe we're seeing this before our very eyes. On the democratic platform, these 16 or so people, they're talking crazy. They're going to spoil what we got here in America. They're going to spoil the economy. They're going to spoil the industry. They're going to spoil the incentive. What do they want to do? Insane things that go against human nature. Take from people who have worked hard and give it to people who won't work. Reward those who don't want to work or won't work You know what? A lot of them are afraid of if this thing keeps up they're gonna actually get a job Yeah, it's a truth not politics it's what happened first 23 under the Lord removed Israel out of his sight he said all his servants by said I It's said by all his servants, the prophets, so Israel carried away by their, so I'm gonna get this right. So was Israel carried away out of their own land to Assyria under this day. Man, I hope we don't have to learn the hard way. I hope we don't. I hope you don't have to lose something before you know you have it. Amen? You husbands tonight, you husbands tonight, go home, tell your wife how wonderful she is. You say, brother Bill, I only have one or two things I can think of. Make some stuff up. I've done enough marriage counseling. Once in a while, I get done with marriage counseling, and it's confidential, and I can't tell who, what, where. But I come home, it affects me. It affects me. To say I'm a robot is wrong. So I hear some of these situations, some of these people. I just come home and hug my wife and give her a kiss and say, thank you, thank you, thank you for not being like that woman. Foolish woman tears her house down with her own hands. Better live in the corner of your house outside in the weather than to be in a house with a contentious woman. Now that's all Bible. It's all Bible. And so if you got a wife that's a worker and a peacemaker, man, go home and just give her a big hug and say, oh, you're just so wonderful. What do you want? I will make it happen. Do we have to be, do we Christians have to be outlawed from witnessing? outlawed from passing tracks out? Do we have to find ourselves sitting on a urine-soaked jail mattress? And I know what I'm talking about. With a toilet that everybody can see, that there's absolutely no privacy, do we have to be in that before we realize what we lost? Why should you live a life sanctified under God? Because you love America, that's why. Because you love the beauty that God's given you, the wonderful freedom that we have. No nation ever has come up as far as we know in history like the United States of America. I believe if America is to be saved, it will be because born again believers which are called by his name will humble themselves and pray and seek his face and turn from their wicked ways. And he'll hear from heaven, forgive their sin, and he'll heal their land. I think there's some healing going on. I just read the other day that they believe that they're going to overturn Roe versus Wade soon. Oh, brother. Oh, brother. This is one of my big prayer requests of life. I say, God, let me see it. Now, I may die after that, but I says, God, I should have said, Can I live 20 years after that? But nevertheless, I told God, boy, if I could just live long enough to see Roe versus Wade overcome. God, would you let me see it? I believe I may see it. Not long, not long. In fact, there's two cases right now up before the Supreme Court. And if they rule on that, what they're gonna do is rule that life begins at conception. And if they rule that life begins at conception, that means the conception baby has the rights you have. And if you kill him, you're a murderer. Just like if you kill a woman with a baby, you are on two counts of murder, not one. Oh, that's good. May God save us, amen. You didn't realize how powerful you were. But as a born again believer, let me say this. If just 10 righteous folks would have saved all of Sodom and Gomorrah, How many would it take to save America that love Jesus and want to follow him and do right, separate from evil, separate from the things that displease God? Find out what displeases God, separate from those things. Live honest and transparently before him. Seek his word, seek his face, and that'll do more to save America than any single thing we could possibly do. Because the Bible says there's no power but of God. The power that be are ordained of God. Romans chapter 13, verse seven verses. And I can guarantee you, there is nobody gonna be president unless God says so. And that included Obama. When he became president, I went home and said, God, we deserve it. I know we deserve it. But please save us. I don't think we have to go, I don't think we have to go the way of Israel. I don't think we have to do that. We have the indwelling Holy Spirit. We have the completed Word of God. They didn't have those things. We can exceed what they did. We can repent, and the blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, cleanses us from how much sin? All sin. They had a sacrificial system, a complicated sacrificial system, in which they went to, and in foreshadowing of Christ to come, by faith they obeyed, and God counted them to righteousness by faith. They were saved by faith. They weren't saved by them animals. Not one animal saved anybody. But the faith they had in God to obey Him, That was counter to them for righteousness. Looking forward to Jesus. And when you look back to Jesus, that's counter to you for righteousness. And brother, if there ever is a generation that has no excuse, that's us. We have no excuse. I think tonight we need to drive some stakes down. Let's not compromise the word of God. copy the heathen. However you may consider or we may consider the success of the modern church as they inculcate the world and seem to be growing, seem to be doing well, do not be deceived by that. Do not be deceived by it. Let's keep a sweet in the midst of all that. Let's keep a sweet but firmly grounded, ancient landmark faith, and keep on keeping on by the grace of God. Amen? I have decided to follow Jesus. No turning back. No turning back. Though none go with me, Still, I will follow. You know, we're way too concerned about who's with us, how many are with us, how big, what's your attendance, what's your this, what's your that. We need to be concerned in the quality. Now, I love, hey, Jesus said, I think it honors God to have a full house. But it dishonors God to have a full house full of disobedience, willful disobedience. And God wants you, as you come to Him, to be concerned about Him, not those around us. I'd be a fool to tell you that I wouldn't love to see 500 a Sunday and have two services filled with 500 each. I love that. I love to preach. Hey, preachers like to preach. And we'd rather preach to, I worked just the same amount of effort to preach to two as I preach to 10, or to 20, or out on the beach on Easter to 1,000, or 2,000, or however many. We never have figured out how many are there yet. We took a drone out there. I was preaching. Nobody told me this was gonna happen, right? So I see this drone. I see this red light going like this, and then, oh, here comes a missile. I thought it was a Reaper. I thought it was a Grim Reaper. That's what they call them, drones. Grim Reapers, no wonder they call them that. Oh, here we go, brother. This would be a good place to go, though, amen, right on the beach. That was Brother Chris is back over there. He ain't listening. He's back over there flying this thing. Oh, look at that. So he was supposed to get a picture of all that. He was supposed to get a movie, a little video, so we could put it on a website and show a video of it. Thing corrupted. Couldn't get a thing off of it. Couldn't get a thing off. Got one picture. The whole thing corrupted. And then it was a few weeks later, he flew that baby off into the sunset. Chris says, well, I hate to tell you this, but once you get out of range with your little controller, that baby just keeps right on going. He says, it headed back towards the back of here, and I never could find it. I said, some kid found that thing. So I said, as long as you buy the next one with your money, I'm good with it. And he did. And he bought the next one. He bought a one that you can't lose. If it gets out of range, it comes back home and lands right where it started. Now, you're a smart boy. That's good. Amen. Let's live for Jesus, man. Let's not repeat 2 Kings 17, Nehemiah 9. Let's not do that. Let's not go there. Read those chapters and ask God, Lord, help me. Father, thank you tonight for your Holy Spirit. If you would like to know more about the Lord Jesus Christ, you may contact us at the church website, gospelbaptistchurch.com, or you can go to Facebook and type in Gospel Baptist Church Bonita Springs, Florida. Also, you could call the church office at 239-947-1285. Thank you, and God bless.