Please open your Bibles to 2 Kings chapter 17. 2 Kings chapter 17. We will read the first 23 verses of the chapter In the twelfth year of Ahaz king of Judah Hosea the son of Elah became king of Israel in Samaria, and he reigned nine years and and he did evil in the sight of the Lord, but not as the kings of Israel who were before him. Shalmaneser, king of Assyria, came up against him, and Hosea became his vassal and paid him tribute money. And the king of Assyria uncovered a conspiracy by Hosea, for he had sent messengers to sow king of Egypt, and brought no tribute to the king of Assyria, as he had done year by year. Therefore the king of Assyria shut him up and bound him in prison. Now the king of Assyria went throughout all the land and went up to Samaria and besieged it for three years. In the ninth year of Hosea, the king of Assyria took Samaria and carried Israel away to Assyria and placed them in Hala and by the Habor, the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes. For 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 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 from before the children of Israel and of the kings of Israel, which they had made. 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. They set up for themselves sacred pillars and wooden images on every high hill and under every green tree. And there they burned incense on all the high places as the nations had done 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. Yet the LORD testified against Israel and against Judah by all His prophets, and 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. 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. They followed idols, 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. So they left all the commandments of the Lord their God, made for themselves a molded image and two calves, made a wooden image and worshipped all the hosts of heaven, and served Baal. And they caused their sons and daughters to pass through the fire, practiced witchcraft and soothsaying, and sold themselves to do evil in the sight of the Lord. to provoke him to anger. Therefore the Lord was very angry with Israel and removed them from his sight. There was none left but the tribe of Judah alone. 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. For he tore Israel from the house of David, and they made Jeroboam the son of Nebat king. Then Jeroboam drove Israel from following the LORD, and made them commit a great sin. 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. So Israel was carried away from their own land to Assyria as it is to this day. Thus far, the reading of God's Word. Let's pray. Almighty God, we pray that we would let these sayings sink down into our ears. Father, show us that you will not have your blessings despised. Help us to count our blessings and to worship you because of them. Help us not to imitate the sins of Israel. Please don't let us suffer their fate. Help me to speak boldly and powerfully. Put the fear of apostasy into all our hearts, we ask. In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and all God's people said, Amen. So God's promise has failed. You will live in this land permanently. Only they didn't live in the land permanently. Moses had brought them in sometime around 1446 B.C. Now, Our text tonight takes place in the year 722 BC. After 700 some years, 720 years in the land, Israel is banished. The ending of our text is deliberately haunting. Israel was carried away from their own land to Assyria, and they are still there, as the NIV has it. In other words, the point is that this is not a temporary exile. This is not, well, it's something you'll get over in 70 years. God will bring you back and restore his promises. This is much more the sense that Israel is finished. Ten tribes are gone and, of course, we still today talk about the lost ten tribes. Gone to every place in the world and we haven't found them. Why? Because they sinned. Now this chapter sets out to explain to us how it is that God's promise failed. God said you can live in the land permanently and yet kicked Israel out after 700 years. Why? And the answer that's given over and over in various ways is sin. Why was Israel exiled? Because they sinned. The fall of Israel warns us that the same God who showers us with copious blessings will judge us when we despise them. This story tonight is a story of blessings lost, and blessings despised. One commentator said that the text simply blames the victim. Trying to account for why Israel was carried into exile, the author, the narrator, tells us, well, Israel suffered so much at the hand of Assyria because they deserved it. And this commentator said, that's all wrong. That's blaming the victim. You can't do that. but it's not blaming the victim if the victim truly did bring it on himself. If a mentally unstable person is holding the gun and the cops say put the gun down and the mentally unstable person decides instead that he's going to point the gun at the cop, is it blaming the victim to say he has himself to thank for his own death? I don't think so. God said Don't serve idols. If you serve idols, we're done. So what did Israel do? Serve idols. And of course, whenever you're reading the Old Testament and you see the name Israel, go ahead and yank that out and put your own name in there. The text doesn't just describe the way God's people used to be. Far too often it describes the way God's people are. So the text does not blame the victim. The text explains why Israel did this to themselves. Why God did this to Israel. The bottom line is Israel despised God's blessings. One day God's patience ran out and he sent Shalmaneser to come and haul him off to Assyria. So blessings lost. What blessings were lost? Well, life in the land. Our text opens with Hosea the son of Elah. Does that name sound familiar? It's the same name etymologically as Jesus. Hosea comes from the same root as Yeshua. which is the Hebrew form of the Greek name Jesus. Isn't that ironic that the last king of Israel was named Salvation? Yahweh saves. And yet He didn't save. Of course, Israel was destroyed under him. But, nonetheless, he was the best king Northern Israel ever had. Notice verse 2. He did evil in the sight of the Lord, but not like the kings of Israel who were before him. You say, what? He's named salvation. He's the best king that ever ruled, and he suffered the most. He's the one who happened to get to preside over the destruction of northern Israel. In a sense, the parallels to the real Jesus should be obvious. The best king Israel ever had, who did the best and suffered the worst. This king, of course, was far from being like Jesus. He tried to throw off Assyria, decided he would strike a deal with Egypt. Bad idea, geopolitically. The king of Assyria comes, captures Hoshea, hauls him off to prison, and then proceeds to besiege Samaria for three years, while Hosea languishes in an Assyrian dungeon somewhere. And after a three-year siege, Shalmaneser, king of Assyria, succeeds in capturing Samaria. So Israel, without a king, loses their place in the Promised Land. Promised land is a type of heaven. The promised land is the place of God's presence or was in that day. To be kicked out of it is effectively to be exiled, to be sent away from the presence of God into the outer darkness where there's weeping and gnashing of teeth. Not everyone who is exiled necessarily went to hell. This is a picture saying, life in the promised land is God's gift, and if you despise it long enough, you'll lose it. Life in heaven is God's gift, if you despise it long enough, you'll lose it. The Syrian records indicate that about 27,000 people were carried into exile. For your typical Israelite, this was an unmitigated disaster. But how did things come to this point? Well, the narrator tells us, Israel despised the blessings she had received. First set of blessings, the blessings of God's redemption. Israel had been brought out of Egypt. The narrator reminds us of that. But Israel didn't care and deliberately set out to worship other gods. Of course, these other gods are listed here. Building high places, making sacred pillars and Asherah poles, burning incense on the high places, serving idols. What's an idol? Well, the Greek word just means something you can see. Eidolon, something subject to vision. They worshipped what they could see. So we have one sentence on what God did for them, verse 7, one verse, and then we have five verses on what they did in response. God brought them out of Egypt, and what did they do? Well, they worshipped idols in every way you can think of. God brought you out from under the dominion of sin. How did you respond? By sinning in every way you could think of? By serving the God of pleasure, the God of convenience, the God of money, the God of power, the God of relationships, name it. Don't be like this, in other words. They despise the blessings of redemption. And they also despise the blessings of God's Word. God sent them prophets and seers, verse 13. And these prophets and seers warned them, turn from your evil ways, 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. Again, we have this same blessing of God's Word in our life. We have it more than they did. They had the occasional prophet that would come through, We have all 66 books. This is a huge blessing from God. How did they despise it? Well, they despised it by not listening to it. They despised it by stiffening their necks and not believing it. Right? Scripture is very, well the Old Testament especially, very vivid. Rather than bowing their heads before God, they were stiff-necked. They would not bow. would not submit. That's what being stiff-necked means. So they rejected his statutes and his covenant. They said, we want no part of this. I don't want to serve God like my parents did. I want to do my own thing. So they went after the nations. They rejected the blessings of God's worship. God gave them a temple, God gave them a way of worship, a tabernacle, an Ark of the Covenant, a high priest, a whole Levitical way of access into His presence. And they said, no thanks, we'll take two golden calves, please. And they worshiped those golden calves for 200 years. And again, this is not just them. Don't think this is something they did long ago. This is not something I will ever do. That's just the problem. It is something we can do. We too can despise God's worship. Oh, I don't need to be there every time the doors are open. Or if I am there, surely that counts for something and God owes me because I come to evening service. Or however we think. Don't despise the blessings of worship. Don't think, oh, it's just something to do, just kind of a habit that we've gotten into. Think this is the most awesome thing we get to do all week long. We get to meet with God. Israel didn't care. They preferred to worship in their own way. They found transcendence by child sacrifice, by orgies in front of Baal, by witchcraft and soothsaying. Don't despise the blessings of worship. And don't choose alternate methods of worship that are displeasing to God. If you reject true worship, you will end up worshiping something else, and that something else will inevitably be nasty and degrading. You end by denying God, or you start by denying God, you end by denying your own humanity. Right? Don't you have to do that to pass your children through the fire? Say, I hate my own child enough to kill him in order to worship my false God? And then what other blessing did they despise? Well, they despised the blessings of God's presence. Verse 18, the Lord was very angry with Israel and removed them from His sight. That is, from being in front of Him where He could see them and they could see Him. Israel had this life in the Promised Land where God dwelt in the temple. Then they totally despised that blessing. Why should it matter to me that God is here? And Judah did the same thing, verse 19. Judah followed Israel's example and said, I don't care whether God is present. Is the presence of God the most important thing in your life? Or is it secondary, tertiary, something you can live without, something you don't even think about? Israel despised the presence of God. And then notice, too, they rejected God, verse 15, so God rejected them, verse 20. This is what we call apostasy. That was what was described in Hebrews 10. Where you say, formally or informally, by words or by actions, God, I don't want you anymore. Go away. When you reject God, He rejects you. So why did Israel suffer at Assyria's hands? Well, they rejected God. They didn't care about His presence, nor did they care about His King. Verse 21, He tore Israel from the house of David. God's anointed King in the Davidic line was a blessing on all of Israel. And Israel managed to stick it out for two kings, and then after Solomon, they said, no way. We don't want to serve Christ. We don't want to serve God's anointed king. We prefer our own king. Will you serve Jesus as your God, or do you prefer to serve some other God? Personal peace and affluence. The God of being right. God of popular acclaim, some other ruler that makes life seem better. That's what Israel wanted, and of course that's what they got. They despised these five blessings. God's redemption, God's word, God's worship, God's presence, God's anointed king. Brothers and sisters, we have all five of these blessings. How much do you value them? That's the message of this text. Stop taking God's blessings for granted. Don't think, well yeah, I deserve redemption. I deserve God's word. I deserve access to God's worship. I deserve the blessings of God's presence. I deserve being under the rule of Jesus Christ and not under the rule of some tyrant. Every false god is a tyrant. If you want a good ruler, you have to come under the rulership of Jesus. Isn't it easy to take all five of these for granted? To think, well, this is just the way things are. Yeah, these blessings are all mine. I can't lose them. I can't forfeit them. But you can, and Israel not only could, but did. So stop taking God's blessings for granted, and then realize that true worship is the proper response to blessing. That's the theme that's played over and over and over in these 23 verses. God blessed them in a particular way, They responded by worshipping an idol. God blessed them with his redemption. They worshipped an idol. God blessed them with his word. They worshipped an idol. God blessed them with his worship. They worshipped an idol. God blessed them with his presence. They worshipped an idol. God blessed them with his anointed king. They worshipped an idol. How should we respond to blessings? We should respond by worshiping the true God. What is worship? Coming into His presence, declaring how great He is, and serving Him, obeying Him, doing what He wants. You shall worship the Lord your God and Him only shall you serve. Moses puts those two things in parallel. So when you get a blessing, Don't worship an idol. Don't choose something you can see to give you ultimate meaning, ultimate joy, ultimate happiness, ultimate peace. Don't put your hope and trust and all your personal confidence in an idol. And again, an idol means something you can see. Whether that's your bank account or your dwelling place or your relationship with somebody, some other human being or whatever. Why is it important to be here in church? Because this is one way, this is the most important way that we respond to blessings. We're here because we're grateful for these five blessings of God's redemption, word, presence, worship, and anointed King. We're here because we value those things. So don't apostatize. Don't fall away. Don't shrink back. Don't despise the blood of the covenant by which you were sanctified. Don't be like Israel. How can you not be like Israel? The way to not be like them is simply to recognize God's blessings for what they are. To say, wait, God has given me Himself. He's given me His Word. He's given me His presence. He's given me His anointed King. I have Christ, and so I don't need something that false god X over here is offering, because I have something better. You know, think about it. Let's say your dishwasher is working great. You walk into Menards, and there you see A wonderful dishwasher and it's on sale and it's only $250. Are you going to be tempted? No, it's not something you would even need or think about. And if Christ is meeting your needs, if you are focused on Him and His blessings, then the blessings offered by the God of pleasure, the God of convenience, the God of approval, won't seem enticing at all. That's not something I want or need. I have Jesus Christ. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, don't let us shrink back. We see in Kings over and over how hard it is to be faithful, how easy it is to be unfaithful, and how much you hate it when we're unfaithful. Father, we see Your hatred of unfaithfulness in the faith that Israel suffered. Father, don't let us apostatize. Don't let us fall away from Jesus Christ. We pray, Lord God, that You would help us to never despise Your blessings, but rather to count them, to glory in them, to thank You for them, to worship You for them. Teach us to worship You truly, to respond to Your blessings rightly, with worshipful, thankful hearts. We pray this, we beg this, in the name of our blessed Lord Jesus, who lives and reigns with You and Your Holy Spirit, one God in three persons, forever and ever. And all God's people said, Amen.