I'm going to just be obedient, okay, tonight, and just we'll continue in our study about the people and their land. We talked some about the journey to Canaan, and you'll see a little bit of the joy of Canaan. And I've got two more points, I don't have alliterated yet, but they're going to be removed from the land and they're going to be allowed to come back. But anyway, turn with me to 2 Kings. Let me start, I don't know if we need to, let me just give you a place and then I'll catch you up on kind of where we are. If you remember, we started this talking about where the Garden of Eden was, and you can leave that one right there, Michael, that's fine, which is somewhere here in Iraq, according to most what people believe. We don't know necessarily, but so God calls Abraham out of Ur, The Ur of the Chaldees, we talked a lot about that. The Canaanites already in the land, right? Abraham comes up, makes his journey, comes down into the land of Canaan, and then we follow the history, and this is what God promised him. God promised him approximately this area that's outlined in red. Now what modern-day Israel is, is just this little piece here. But this is what God promised Abraham, right? And so what we wanted to do is follow this along and follow the history of this land, which is evidently very important. We'll end it in the modern day and then probably end with at least one excuse me, maybe one service about the prophetic importance of the land, but maybe if God lets us, all right? So this is the land God promised unto Abraham. We went to Joseph, we made it to Joseph and the exile. excuse me, made it to Joseph and those that were in Egypt. They come 400, however many years they're there until a king doesn't recognize Joseph and starts persecuting them and killing their firstborns, the boys, and all those things begin to happen. God raises up Moses. Moses leaves the children of Israel out of Egypt over across and wait a minute, yeah, over, leads Moses out of Egypt. and over to the land in which he promised them. He promised them a land, this land here. And so then we followed it out. We know that we went to Joshua. You remember Joshua, the children of Israel wandered in the wilderness. They wouldn't believe God. And then Joshua did believe God, those that were with him and Caleb and all the ones that were over or see under the age of 22. Don't quote me on that. But that made it up and that, you know, that we're born and all. And so they head in to the land of Canaan, everywhere God promises them, everywhere they touch their foot, God's going to give them victory, right? And so they begin here, I think, Possibly, I may even have a picture of this, Michael, I don't know, but north of the Dead Sea, maybe somewhere is where they entered in, I don't know. But anyway, they go in, they start conquering the land, God gives them victories, and we have the land is divvied up amongst the 12 tribes of Israel, as they were promised. And so that gives us about to the time in which the judges ruled. Remember Samuel being the last of those in that time period as a prophet and a leader there. And then you remember they wanted a king, remember? Who's the first king? Saul, King Saul, the selfish King Saul. Saul is, God gives the people what they want. Saul becomes king. And then in fact, Michael, if you have the picture there of David and Saul's kingdoms that they accomplished, I don't know if I've gotten anything better than that on there or not. But so David, from Saul to David, and then of course, we know what happened to Solomon. Now, does anybody know who's after Solomon? Who rules after Solomon? Solomon had a lot of wives, didn't he? And what'd they do? They turned to his heart from God, didn't they? And he allowed for the worship of a lot of false gods. Solomon did. And so that will lead us to Rehoboam, okay? So you're in 1 Kings chapter 12. The kingdom is split into two. Do we have that picture? I don't know. Yeah, two kingdoms. It's about the end there, Michael, if you see it, okay? All right, so during this time now, we've got Israel. And we've got Judah, right? Kingdom is split. Now, from this point on, there is They're in the land, they've won the victories. And here's something, if you're thinking along the lines of the spirit-filled life, which we've talked about some last time just on the surface, of where God wanted his people to dwell. And spiritually, that's where God wants all his people, right? In Canaan land, he wants us living in Canaan. But it's not a fairytale land where there's no enemies and everything goes good. It's not a Hallmark movie, right? He chose you to be a soldier. And no man that woreth entangleth himself with the affairs of this life. And he wants you spirit filled, but still battling. There's still enemies in the land, just like it is physically for the nation of Israel. But we also know that a man, and I believe this because I think you'll hear men like Brother Beard and other men say that there's many fillings. And I think what they mean by that is the same thing you and I know about the filling, not him getting more, you get more of him, it's him getting more of you, right? And so what happens in our Christian life? We let sin enter in and we let things come into our life and we're in the land and we've been spirit filled, but we fail and we worship other gods. The God of me? That's generally our God that we have a problem with. We don't generally worry about the Medes and the Philistines. We worry a lot about the God of me. And so there's battles, and just like there will be physically, and they're kicked out, this is a story of a Christian. A Christian will be the same way. A Christian will be in the land, and he'll be serving God, honoring God, conquering, making victories, and then he'll get at ease and he'll quit fighting. and get his enemy time to re-strengthen and gather strength and come against you, then you fail again in the battle. And so what God does is God, like for instance, under Manasseh, because of all the sins of Manasseh, God lets his people be thrown into another land, exiles them. He removes them off the land. God's in charge of the land. You know who was in the land first? The Canaanites. God pushed out the Canaanite, not the Jew, God did. And now God's gonna push his people out because they wouldn't honor God in the land. So as of this time, we've got the Northern Kingdom, which is the Kingdom of Israel. Does anybody know the capital? Okay, thank you. Right here, Samaria, the Northern Kingdom. The Northern Kingdom. Then you've got down here, what's the capital of Judah? Jerusalem, right? Okay, so during this time, go with me now. You can keep that up, but let's get in the Bible. That just gets you up to date, just where we are. So from this point on, we're gonna probably stick in 2 Kings. You're gonna find a lot of this in Isaiah. You'll find other places. We could go to Chronicles. We might go to Chronicles once, maybe the last chapter, but we'll primarily stay right here. in 2 Kings, so let me get the picture that we need before we move along. I think there's two pictures by the Michael Assyrians, one and two, and we'll kind of start there. All right, go with me to chapter 16 instead. Chapter 12 is not all that, you can mark that if you want to, but chapter 16 is where I want to pick up and try to move as quick as we can. and try to get through as much of this as possible. Are you in 2 Kings chapter 16? All right, 2 Kings chapter number 16. Here's what we have in chapter 16. We have Ahaz who is going to fight with Syria and Israel. What's going on at this time is the Assyrian Empire. You see it on this map here. Go back to that other one, it's a little bit bigger, yeah. Okay, here's a map of the Assyrian Empire, okay? Now, if I can give you, here's Israel. Can you see it just a little bit at least? I know if you're in the back, it's gonna be extremely difficult for you to really be able to see, but all this area up here that Abraham was from, they're always getting enemies from up here, aren't they? Not anymore, most of their enemies are down here now, but anyway. So here's the Assyrian Empire, okay? So the Assyrian Empire is beginning to grow, and it's growing, and it's expanding, and eventually, the Assyrian Empire is gonna push, well, they're gonna push, well, I'm glad they got the capital here. The capital of Syria is Damascus. Okay, you can see where I'm pointing there is Damascus. So the Assyrian Empire, as it expands, here's Israel, down in here, and the Assyrian Empire is gonna expand out this way, and the Syrians, which is up in here, the Syrians, not us Syrians, the Syrians are going to team up, let's say, with the northern tribe, with the northern kingdom, okay? They fear, they know that the Assyrian kingdom is growing and beginning to conquer land, and eventually they're gonna come for Judea. They're gonna eventually come for Israel, and Syrians don't wanna be captured either. So they kind of make a league a little bit there with the Syria does with the Northern Kingdom of Israel, okay? That's where we are when we get to 2 Kings chapter number 16, all right? So what we have is Syria and Israel comes against Judah now. Judah, the Southern Kingdom, we've got an appeal in the Southern Kingdom of Judah. They need Judah. Okay, so the Northern Kingdom and the Southern Kingdom didn't get along anyway. Syria and the Northern Kingdom and Israel come against Judah because they wanna install their own king. This is typical of the day. You're gonna see it three or four times as we go through this. A big nation will come in, they'll conquer Israel, they'll take the current king out and they'll find some, generally pretty young fella, to throw in there who they can control and they'll change his name. You'll see that as we move, Jehoiakim, you'll see several others. They'll change their name, put in somebody, I forget the word that's used there, but they'll install a leader over the place. The Romans do it too. The Romans do it too. Herod, Herod was appointed. So, all right. Anyway, so here comes the Assyrians and they're gonna make a move down against the nation of Israel. They know they're going to the Northern tribe. They kind of hook up with Syria and they come together and can form kind of a confederacy, so to speak. And they know they need Judah. Judah wants nothing to do with them. They don't want nothing to do with Syria. They don't want nothing to do with the Northern kingdom. And so what Syria and Israel do is decide to try to come against Jerusalem and come against Judah, take it over before the Assyrians do, put their own leadership in and kind of they control the whole area now. And now of course a bigger army to fight the Assyrians, right? So that's where we're at in 2 Kings 16. And I wanna give you, look at verse number seven. The whole chapter gives a great, It gives a lot of good stuff. And if we read it, we'll get caught up in a lot of stuff that is important, but I don't wanna do that. So Ahaz sent messengers to this wonderful man who had his parents did a lot of drugs. And they just came up one night with a name and wanted me in 2025 to repeat it. So here we go. Tiglath Pellicer. Pileser, king of Assyria, saying, I am thy servant and thy son. Now, who's he as? Who's he appealing to here? If you go back, can you hold your place there and go to Isaiah? Isaiah gives a warning. This is pretty good stuff here. Let's see if we can get moving here quicker. So if you'll, I'm gonna read this to you. You stay there and Isaiah. Ahaz sends messengers. He says, I am my servant, my son, come up and save me out of the hand of the king of Syria and out of the hand of the king of Israel, which rise up against me. And Ahaz took the silver and gold that was found in the house of the Lord and in the treasures of the king's house and sent it for a present to the king of Assyria. So instead of fighting or getting into it with the Northern kingdom and Syria, there's a messenger that sent out to the king of Assyria, of the Assyrian empire and appeals to him and says, look, I'll serve you and sends a ton of gold and silver and all that's found in the house of the Lord, the things that belong to God, and send it out to buy over a protection from the king of Assyria to protect Judah against their kinfolk, the northern tribe. All right, so the king of Assyria agrees to do that. So what's strange to me is the northern kingdom that should have never partnered up with Syria to begin with. They had no business. What communion has Christ with Baal? but they partnered up with the world because they were just like the world. The northern kingdom for sure, and so was Judah too, they weren't much better, that's why God kicks them all out. But they had gotten too friendly with the world, and they got too worldly, too full of sin. Well, when Judah sends that message out, that just attracts the Assyrian army down south, and then they come down, they hit Damascus first. And so the king of Assyria agrees to what Ahaz sent out and he comes down against Damascus and they take over Damascus. So now the northern kingdom is really vulnerable now. They don't have anybody but themselves, and it's them versus the king of Assyria. And of course, that's going to be the first group that's going to get conquered. They're going to take Samaria. They're going to take the northern kingdom, and they're going to put them into exile, the whole northern tribe. So when Ahaz appealed to the king of Assyria and to come and to rescue him from these, his own brethren, if you will look with me, that was sin against God. He shouldn't have done that. So tying all this in, go to you and Isaiah. There's more to it than just chapter seven. But look at chapter seven. And it came to pass in the days of Ahaz, the son of Jotham, the son of Uzziah, king of Judah, that Rezan, the king of Syria, and Pekah, the son of Remilia, king of Israel, went up toward Jerusalem to war against it, but could not prevail against it. And it was told the house of David saying, Syria is confederate with Ephraim. You know who Ephraim is, don't you? Right, that's the Northern Kingdom. He just referenced that. You go to Ezekiel. I think I've preached on that here. And they played the harlot. But he said, Syria is confederate with Ephraim and his heart was moved and the heart of his people and the trees of the wood are moved with the wind. Then the Lord said, excuse me, then said the Lord unto Isaiah, go forth now to meet Ahaz. Thou and Shir Jashub, thy son, at the end of the conduit of the upper pool in the highway of the fuller's field. And say unto him, take heed and be quiet. This is what God used a man of God to preach to Ahaz and tell him this is what he told him to do. He said, fear not, don't be afraid. You're seeing all these Assyrians coming against you and the Assyrian kings coming and the northern tribes against you. And that's what God's always telling his people, to be courageous and not fear. We look out on the condition of our world today, it shouldn't be fear that strikes our heart. Why? Because God's able. That's the same message that I heard in 2025 that God uses Isaiah to preach to Ahaz and tell him God is well able. I drove all these enemies out to begin with. I'll keep them from coming against you again. Be at peace. Don't fear. God's got you. Amen. And what do we do? Panic. Start making deals and trying to work it out. And well, maybe if we just don't do this, here we go. We're going to be in trouble, people. There's no way out. When you're in trouble in Canaan, there is no way out. There is no help for you. There's no hope for you outside of the same God that got you there to begin with. So when you find yourself confronted with enemies that are too great, God, the Bible said that God will provide a way of escape that you may be able to bear it, right? And so God will give his people a way of escape. God put them in that land. They weren't there on their own account. God drove them there oftentimes, didn't He? God wanted them to be the, God wants me and you to be like Jesus, begun a good work in us, and He's gonna perform it to the day of Christ. You know who's pulling you and pushing you to be like Christ? The Holy Ghost is. And then you can stop cooperating, you can sin, but He won't ever stop pushing, and He won't ever stop pulling on the Christian that's supposed to be in Canaan. A lot of people fear because Canaan is scary. It is. You'll have a lot less battles to take it easy on the other side of the river. But you'll never fulfill what God has for your life. You'll never know true peace, no true joy. You've got to get into that land. Anybody ever know it? You know that closeness with God, that fullness of the Spirit? And your heart just yearns for that place that you had with God, that relationship that you once had? That's what these Jews are about to experience. Their heart's gonna yearn for the land again, right? That place where God is in their minds. So Isaiah is told by God, don't be faint hearted for the two tails of these smoking fire brands for the fierce anger of resin with Syria and the son of Ramalia because Syria Ephraim and the son of Ramalia have taken evil counsel against thee saying let's go up against Judah and vex it and let's make a breach therein for us and set a king in the midst of it, even the son of Tabeal. Thus say of the Lord God, it shall not stand, neither shall it come to pass. Now, you continue to read on in there, and there's a lot of really good stuff that I'd love to stay in Isaiah chapter seven, but we can't do it. So go back to chapter number 16. So it's not like they don't know. Aren't you glad God will always send a messenger? Ahaz didn't have to do this. He doesn't have to do what he's gotta do. I know you feel like you're forced into a position and a place that you have to do what you're doing. That's not so. How many times I got to thanking God when I was praying earlier. Thank God for Brother Norris coming to preach to us. And what I mean by that is, thank God that he'll send a messenger our way. God's character has been proven every time before God ever judged Israel, he sent them a message. God communicates, God has told us time and time again, we need to repent. God's told us time and time again, we need to get right with God. We ought to be giving, we ought to be praying, we ought to be witnessing. Time and time again, he's preached to us, don't act shocked when judgment comes. Because God in his faithfulness, It keeps on giving the message over and over. But there'll come a time he won't now. He's gonna do what he said. All right, so he don't have to do what he's doing. He chose to do it in light of the preacher telling him, stand still, God said don't fear. What does he do? Gets full of fear, makes a deal with the devil. Basically, right? So that's where we are. The Assyrians are gonna come now. They come to Judah's aid, so to speak, not really, but I think they saw the opportunity of the weakness of the area, and it was a good time to come as wolves in sheep's clothing and conquer who needed to be conquered. So they do, and they conquer Syria. And then they come on down, they kill Rezin, and in seconds, let's go to chapter 17, because here in chapter number 17, the Bible is gonna tell us, let me just read this, because we've got so much to cover. So the Northern Kingdom has fallen, the Assyrians have come through and conquered Damascus, they've conquered Samaria, and they are going to be taken in captivity. So chapter number 17 gives us somewhat of a picture into this, the record, a history lesson here about what happens when they get taken out of the land. I'm trying to decide whether we ought to read all this or not. So it's in chapter number 17. And if you look at verse number 24, I'll just give you chapter number 24, the king of Assyria brought men from Babylon. So, We'll not read the whole chapter, but I'll read chapter, verse number 24. The King of Assyria brought men from Babylon, and from Kotha, and from Ava, and from Hamath, and from Sepharvim, and placed them in the cities of Samaria, instead of the children of Israel, and they possessed Samaria, and dwelt in the cities thereof. And so it was at the beginning of their dwelling there that they feared not the Lord. Therefore the Lord sent lions among them, which slew some of them." All right, just give you what happens. The Northern tribe is conquered, they're taken captive. And the King of Assyria decides to send men from Babylon over to Samaria. and inhabit the land and hold it down. This is gonna happen a lot. Because they're God's people, they're gonna be hard to run out of the land. They're stubborn people, they are. And they're not easy to deal with. The Romans had three or four different uprisings before they finally squashed them. I mean, it was just constant. And why do you think they wanted to appease them by letting Barabbas go? because there's gonna be an uprising, they start killing people. I mean, they weren't the most cooperative people in the world, especially when they had been under the judgment of God and aren't walking by faith. So men from Babylon are sent to Israel, let me use that term, to inhabit the land. They get there, God's mad because the people that are in that land are supposed to be honoring God. This is what happens when we think we can bring lost people around and be buddies with them. You just can't do it. You can be a light to them, but you can't be friendship with the world. Or you're what? The enemy of them, right? So come you out from among them, be a separate, saith the Lord. That's what the Bible said. And so when they get in the land, the problem is now God said, that's my land. And the people that are supposed to be worshiping me are supposed to be in this land. And God sends lions in there and lions start eating them people up. So these people are scared to death. These Babylonians that have been sent over to Samaria, they're scared to death. And they send back a letter and say, hey, Something's bad wrong. Lions are eating us up. And so they, look at verse 26. They speak to the king and he said, the nations that you remove from here, that were placed in the cities of Samaria, know not the manner of the God of the land. So these lost people admit God owns this land and the God that owns it, we don't know who he is. We don't know how to worship him and he's judging us and we need help. So because they don't know the manner of the God of the land, the King of Assyrians says, carry one of the priests over. Now, Josiah comes upon this guy's sepulcher one day. This man that was in exile, a priest, is sent over there to teach them people about God. As we go on to read in other places, you're gonna find what happens though, is instead of them people getting saved, instead of, because you can't go about it, if I used every type that this was, you know what this reminds me of? This reminds me of, there's a lot of blue lights and head banging band music and rapping for Jesus going on over here, because they are foolish to who the God of the land is, and they don't know how to worship him. and somebody tries to go in and Christianize it. Well, I'm gonna get in trouble. Somebody will get mad, but that's what happens. A lot of modern day stuff is going on, evangelical churches, so to speak. So they are clueless about how to worship God, but somebody that's maybe had a daddy that read a Bible at some point is usually in the center of that mess. And they know kind of what it ought to be, but they never got right with God, they never got saved, and it turns into a circus. And that's what the Samaritans are. And that's why in Jesus's time, they were so despised by the Jewish people. Because they take their pagan gods and mix them in with the God of the land. And the Bible's gonna say this, they feared the Lord and worshiped their gods. That's impossible. You can't fear God and worship your idols. Right? You got to serve one or the other. Not this crowd. They mixed it all up together and made a big jumble of mess. This is the first example of the one world religion. There's room for Mohammed in Samaria. There's room for the hippie Jesus. That's okay with everybody being in sin. There's room for all kinds of stuff in that religion, except for one person. His name is Jesus. They don't want nothing to do with that, but there's room for about everything else. As long as you won't preach an exclusive gospel, there's room for you with your religion in some areas. It's much like the Greeks. So they all got their gods. They're defiling the land with some half attempt worship at the God of the land by this priest who I think probably genuinely was trying to teach them what was right, but that wasn't God's way. God didn't want them people there. And so they are under the judgment of God. So one of the priests comes and away and dwells in Bethel and taught them how they should fear the Lord. Howbeit every nation made gods of their own, put them in the houses of the high places, which the Samaritans had made, every nation in their cities wherein they dwelt. And the men of Babylon may succor. This is gonna go down and talk about the different gods. Look at verse 32. So they feared the Lord, and made unto themselves of the lowest of them priests of the high places. Verse 33, they feared the Lord and served their own gods. Do you see that? Verse 34, unto this day, they do after the former manners, they fear not the Lord. So what it's saying is they were attempting at it, but they weren't really doing it God's way. And then so it sums in verse 34, so they really weren't walking in the fear of God, that's who was there. So the Lord who brought you up out of the land with great power says, him shall you fear, him shall you worship. And of course they don't do that. So the Assyrians have now taken over the Northern kingdom, they've exiled who all was there. And now we've got to move, let's move towards, go to chapter 18 as quick as we can. So anybody know the capital city of Assyria, of the empire at the time? Nineveh. You know about Nineveh, don't you? So now you've got Judah left all by itself. It's really hedged in on every side. They've got the Egyptians down here. By the way, the Egyptians are a little bit nervous about the Assyrians too. The Assyrians are making their way down. They're headed for Egypt. They wanna take over Egypt. Judah is the only thing standing in between them. So here's where we get into chapter number 18. I need to move quicker and I'm moving. Just turn to verse number 14 then. And let me read this to you. 2 Kings 18, verse number 14. Hezekiah destroys the pagan worship and Hezekiah's trying to stand for God. He is trying to honor God with his life and he rises up. He's not going to let the Assyrians come in and take over Jerusalem. So Hezekiah is going to fight. And in chapters 18, verse number 14, let me read this. Hezekiah, king of Judah, said to the king of Syria, to Lachish, saying, I have offended. Return from me that which thou puttest on me, will I bear? And the king of Assyria pointed unto Hezekiah, king of Judah, 300 talents of silver and 30 talents of gold. Hezekiah gives him all the silver found in the house of the Lord and in the treasures of the king's house. At that time did Hezekiah cut off the gold from the doors of the temple of the Lord. He's undoing the very work that he did. All to appease. And I know this has been preached before. I just want to say it to you. You're not going to make a deal with the enemy you're fighting. There is no victory until victory. I forget who preached that. I remember where I heard it. but he went through all the times in the Bible. You can't, appeasement will never, let's see, there's no peace except through victory. You won't get peace in your life by just compromising with your sin. Well, I'll tell you what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna not do it on Sunday, right? Anybody ever, I'll tell you what I'm not gonna do, I'm not gonna do it this much, I'm just gonna, I'll just do this. You cannot compromise with sin, never get any peace, never. There's gonna have to be victory, conquest, conquer. Only God can conquer, right? So don't kid yourself and think that you can appease, because that's what he does. And you know the cost of his appeasement? And it didn't win. It didn't win. They eventually get it. But you know what it cost him? All the hard work that he had put in all those years serving God. He lost everything. It was taking the gold off the doors of the temple. Things that he had overlaid with gold, he gave it to them. And I think he put himself and people before God. And I can see why you'd want to do that. I want to save everybody I can save. If they're coming against, going to kill, let's just make a deal. That don't always work. Listen, they've been learning that in the Middle East for years now. This world's been in turmoil because they're trying to make a deal with the devil and appease a nation, a group of people who are set out to destroy the entire world. Their whole religion is built around the destruction of every Christian and every Jew, and you won't make a deal with them devils. You know the only way we're gonna have peace? When the King of Peace shows up. And you know what he's gonna do? He's not gonna make a deal with no Philistine. He's not gonna make a deal with a Palestinian. He's gonna cut heads off, and the blood's gonna run to the horse's bridle. That's what's gonna happen. God's gonna kill every one of them. Right. And I want them to get saved, but I'm gonna tell you something. We ain't gonna make a deal and see no peace over here. This has been going on since day one. And so here he is, now he's gonna make a deal. Please don't hurt us, we'll give you all the gold. So of course they take all the gold and there's another verse, goodness. Go on, let's see. I wanna give you this, I don't want you to miss this at least. We gotta get this before we go home. So Hezekiah, is he doesn't know quite what to do. Go to chapter 19 quickly. Basically undoing his whole work that he's done. The Assyrians kind of afraid, I don't find biblical proof of this, but the Assyrians, the Assyrian general comes to Hezekiah and He, to Jerusalem, just outside the gate, and he starts trying to intimidate everybody in the southern kingdom. He starts telling them, don't listen to them. Where is this God that he's trying to get you to talk about Hezekiah? He's discouraging them. You all are trusting God, look what's happening to you. He's out there and trying to discourage them with everything and telling them not to listen to Hezekiah. Don't trust him. We're going to come in. We're going to kill everybody. We're going to do all these things. And so here's Hezekiah. He's made an appeal. He doesn't know what to do, but he's tried to do right. and to the best of his ability, and the Assyrians are afraid that Judah's made a deal with Egypt, and that Egypt is gonna come up and try to help him. Now there's no proof that that ever happened. No proof, I thought the Bible does not say that. It gives us the account of that Assyrian general that claims that Egypt is gonna help them, but there's no Bible record that says Hezekiah ever made a deal with Egypt that I could find. So it's speculation on their part, but it does make them kind of stop before they just ride in and kill everybody. So they're standing outside the gate because they don't really know what's back here. So they want him to surrender. So he sends out all that gold and everything else. And if you're in chapter 19, look at, oh, I really wanted to read this whole chapter. Look at this. Y'all remember this. Hezekiah received the letter of the hand of the messengers and read it, and Hezekiah went up to the house of the Lord and spread it before the Lord. Now, he's also been advised that he needs to pray, God's gonna take care of him. Now, what's gonna happen is, well, we gotta stop, we gotta end it on this. So, we may turn and look at this. Look at chapter 19, verse number 14. And 15, excuse me. And Hezekiah prayed before the Lord and said, oh Lord God of Israel, which dwelleth between the cherubims. Can I tell you something, when you're faced with enemies like this, and I think there's a time period that people know, can I kind of try to make a connection here spiritually for us? There's a time period that I think all of us know that we're about to slip. We know we've been at ease. We know we've not really been putting a lot of effort into walking with God. We're just kind of... indifferent, I could say, I guess. And we let little things slip here and little things slip there. And then God begins to get our attention, doesn't he? Because he's not just gonna let you stay like that. So God starts getting your attention and he'll start using things to get your attention. And take that for here. You may have an enemy all of a sudden. You know what, for the first thing that generally goes when you're in that condition, you won't have a lot of faith. Your faith is weakened somehow by that lazy Christian type of walk. I can't handle that. I need to be somewhere where I'm gonna be challenged every day to live as close to God and draw night of God. I can't afford to get in a lazy place where I just come in and somebody gives a little message and I go home and just survive. That's not me, I won't make it like that. I don't think any of us do, really. I think God's got something for all of us to do and you're kidding yourself to think you're just at ease and nothing's really getting done. You're on your way down. And I think you come to a place you realize you're on your way down. If something doesn't happen, I am gonna sin. If something doesn't happen, I am gonna get out of church. You can tell you're not doing well. You may not be there yet, but you know you're close to being overthrown. And that's where this man is. And you know what he gets? He gets news from the man of God. And the man of God encourages him and tells him that God is gonna send a, he's gonna send a blast upon him. He says, and then the second part of that, he said, I'm gonna, he's gonna hear news back home and I'm gonna pull him back home and I'm gonna kill him there. That's what God said he was gonna do. Boy, I like that, don't you? Amen, God. Take care of those enemies. Like I can't do it. All right, so Hezekiah goes down before God, and he said, oh God, which dwelleth between the chair. This is what most of us need to pray tonight. Oh God, that God that you first saw high and lifted up, that God that's still able, the God that's like no other gods. He appeals to him and said, oh, thou art God, thee God, even thou alone of all the kingdoms of the earth, thou has made heaven and earth. Lord, bow down thine ear and hear. Open Lord, thine eyes and see, and hear the words of Sennacherib, which has sent him to reproach the living God. "'Of a truth, Lord, the kings of Assyria "'have destroyed the nations and their lands, "'and have cast their gods into the fire, "'for they were no gods, "'but the work of men's hands, wood and stone. "'Therefore they have destroyed them. "'Now therefore, O Lord, our God.'" They're not gonna throw him in a fire and destroy him. Hey, most of them gods, when they'd ride into them places and they'd go into their temples, here's how they defeated their God. Put your little Buddha sitting up there in his little, you know, shrine, and you just walk over and just flick him over. I'd hate for that to be my God. Hezekiah said, but you're our God, our God. You can't put him in a fire. You can't do nothing with him. You're not gonna flick him over, right? He said, you're our God. I beseech thee, save thou us out of his hand, that all the kings of the earth may know that thou art the Lord God, even thou only. And he turns to prayer, and God answers the man's prayer. And, boy, we gotta go, but skip down to verse 34. I will defend this city to save it for my own sake and for my servant David's sake. Boy, that's something, isn't it? And it came to pass that night, the angel of the Lord went out, smote in the camp of the Assyrians a hundred, four score and 5,000. And when they arose early in the morning, behold, they were all dead corpses. So Sennacherib, king of Assyria, departed and went and returned and dwelt at Nineveh. Then it came to pass, as he was worshiping in the house of Nisaroth, his God, that Abramelech and Sherezer, his sons, smote him with the sword, and they escaped into the land of Armenia. And Esarhaddon, his son, reigned in his stead." God did exactly what he said he'd do. He sent a blast, he sent an angel to kill most of them. The king goes back home, this tail tucked between his legs, walks in to go tell his God, pout and tell his God he needs help, and God lets his sons come in there and kill him. Now, I know that sounds brutal, but you know, we have thought far too soft towards our sin. That man had no business there. He's there because of their sin. If they weren't in sin, he wouldn't have been there. And God sent them into that land to judge them. Here's something we gotta think about. When we think about our sin, that is a similar prayer, and I'm done, but that is a similar prayer, we need to pray to God. This is not some little old thing, well, I know it's not that big a deal, but it's just, I've been spending too much time on Facebook. You're robbing God of his time, it's a big deal. Hey, if you're spending three or four hours floating through there and reading every time somebody goes to the bathroom, you're wasting God's time. He said, redeem the time for the days are evil. But we'll look at it and say, well, at least I'm not drinking alcohol. And what I'm saying we need to do, anything that has robbed us of our walk with God needs to be viewed as that king of Assyria trying to march into the city of God. This is where he's at now. It ain't no little thing, well, it ain't that big a deal, I'm gonna go with them. I usually don't go places where they sell beer, but I'm gonna go in there, it's not that big a deal. No, it is a big deal. I'm telling you, you start compromising and compromising and compromising. Well, I don't wanna look like, I don't care what you wanna look like. That is the devil trying to tell you all that. You need to stand by the convictions that God put in your heart that are biblical now, and you don't need to compromise with them, because you're kind of weighing them out against everybody else's. They're coming in to spoil. You know what they're gonna do? If he gets in control of this land, of this body, he's gonna dishonor God in the land. God purposed for you to offer your body, a living sacrifice to God. He wants you to glorify God in your body and your spirit, which are God's. And if you let the enemy back in to take control, he's gonna dishonor God in the land that he owns. God purchased your body. And I'm tired of letting the world and our own minds talk us out of living holy for God. Because we're gonna appear weird to somebody or they're gonna think something about it. I'd just rather be weird to a bunch of perverts that live today. We need to be holy again. We need a revival of holy living in the church, he said. It's ruining all of us, friend. It's killing all of us. None of us are better off by trying to compromise and be at ease with our enemies. They are not for us. They are not for God. They are the enemies of God. And we ought to build the walls up, put the armor on and get to fighting and run this crowd off. The crowd you're talking about, and the crowd of sin is trying to get in your heart. That's what Hezekiah was gonna do. He was scared, but he wasn't gonna give up. And God honored him. God let him stay there. They stay safe for a while. There's some kings and we'll have to pick back up later. But man, that Hezekiah, God honors that prayer. Oh, I wish we could go back. Well, let's end on Isaiah. Well, goodness. You remember when, well, all right. Let me turn there, Isaiah. Let me read this to you. You remember how God honored him though? Remember when he turned to the wall and cried to God? He said, God, remember how I tried to serve you? Don't let me die now. God told the man of God, he said, go back in there. Well, I said, you go back in there and tell him I heard his prayer. I'm gonna, in three days, he's gonna be healed. He's gonna get up and I'm gonna give him, is it 15 more years he got? The effectual, fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much. Now you take, that didn't mean he didn't make mistakes. He did. He shouldn't have given all that gold and silver out. No way. That's God's stuff. That'd be like us turning all this stuff over to the masons. This is God's stuff. God, and God threw his people, but God bought that organ, he bought that piano, he bought this pulpit, he's paid these bills and got these lights on. And we are not giving it up to nobody. Right? Well, we need to stop. All right. It's about the 10th time I've said that, isn't it? But, well, I'm not going to do it. Let's just stop. Let me just wrap this up. So, God removes the Assyrians. If you read in chapter 37, it's what God had said to Isaiah to tell Hezekiah. And then I was going to go and show you that other prayer. Judah is gonna stay fairly safe for a while through several kings we could go through. Manasseh is up next and some other things that we could go through. But then there's gonna come a king by around, if you wanna set a bookmark, just go back to 2 Kings chapter 23, and that's where we'll pick up next, okay? 2 Kings 23, and we come back whenever we do chapter 23, and we'll talk about Josiah. Oh, what a man after God. He loved God, and he tried to do right, and I just can't do it. We have spent so much time now. So, anyway, at this point, the Assyrians now have control over everything. They have now deported and implanted in the north, and so far, Judah's been spared. But that's going to change. And so what we're trying to do is track the history of this land that God promised to his people. And the best we can do as we study through this in our Bible is try to see how it relates to us. And I don't know about you, but I think the best thing for all of us is to be where God told us to be. Feel walking in the Spirit, battling for God. See, some people think the Spirit-filled life is just traveling around to camp meetings and shouting. I don't know who told you that, they just lied to you. That's not, I want you to shout and go to camp meetings, sure. But we ought to be fighting battles, we ought to be spreading the Word of God. You know, there's a whole lot of other things to do. And when we're not there or we're on the verge of wondering out ourselves whether God throws us out or whether we're getting ourselves out. We already went through an example of some leaving voluntarily to Egypt. Abraham did it. But now there's some people that get so numb. This is what scares me more than anything. Sitting in church. listening to Bible preaching, listening to the singing, and then getting completely numb. A man like Brother Norris could come and stand in this pulpit and have the power of God on him, open his Bible, and preach against my sin, and me sit there unmoved, unchanged, unfazed by it, and think, God's going to let me stay like that. Now listen, that's rocked many a Christians to sleep today. You don't believe it? Go to church. Go to other churches and tell them, don't you do it. Take my word from anybody that travels and preaches and goes around. They'll tell you the average church has been rocked to sleep in the comfort thinking that God is just gonna let them stay in their sin and just live and think that they can just have a shouting meeting once a week or so and go on about life. That's not what God wants for us. That is shallow. God wants us victorious. Right? And we ought to take this matter of sin serious. It's serious to God. Does that help at all? If you can think about your body as being that land, in that sense, when those enemies come against it to defile it, and I don't want God to send lions after me, do you? So I want to ask God, Brother Reed, you come on, Miss Jessica, and I'm going to end this thing. You stand with me. and we'll try to crash land this plane here. But I don't wanna, God help all of us, not to deceive ourselves. Remember what the Bible said, going forth and forgetting what manner of men you were, and I don't wanna be hardened through the deceitfulness. I wanna get back in that land victorious for God. Lord, I love you, help your people. Lord, we desperately need revival in our day, real revival. And you said judgment begins first in the house of God, so help us to judge ourselves first. Are we giving enough to you? Our time, our resources, our efforts, our concerns, our thoughts, our prayers, our study of the word, are we being wise with the time you give us? Are we in sin? Are we taking fire into our bosom? Lord, please help us, help us to judge ourselves, and Lord, let us empty ourselves that we might be full with all the fullness of God. We love you, in Jesus' name, amen. If you need to come, just remind the Lord whether he's gonna sing.