Episode Transcript
All right, it's 10 o'clock.
It's time to begin our Sunday school lesson. We're in the 2nd Kings chapter 17 and verse 15.
2nd Kings 17 15
That was our stopping point last week. Just like it was the week before. We can't seem to get out of it
But that's all right with me.
That means the mine is deep and full.
Just a reminder, if you've got a noise making device, go ahead and silence that for now
and the next hour and everybody will be happy about it.
All right, we're glad for those that are here, glad to have our visitors from our visitors,
our members from Kentucky.
That just came out, I'm sorry.
Rusty and Megan, they are just as much members as I am and glad to have them and glad to
have the folks who've tuned in online. In our study last week and for
unfortunately several weeks before that we have seen the children of Israel
rejecting God, rejecting His covenant and His testimonies against them. The prophets
and the seers warned them but they followed vanity as the text told us and
and they became vain persons.
And now in the middle of verse 15,
let's see what becoming vain entailed.
So look with me in our text now,
and I'll read all of verse 15.
"And speaking of Israel,
and they rejected his statutes and his covenant
that he made with their fathers,
and his testimonies which he testified against them.
and they followed vanity and became vain.
That's where we left off last week.
The new part of the verse is,
"And went after the heathen that were round about them,
"concerning whom the Lord had charged them
"that they should not do like them.
"And went after the heathen that were round about them."
Now that is the logical progression of rejecting God,
following vanity and becoming vain.
After all, why would a vain person
follow a righteous person? Why would a vain person follow righteousness at all?
They're not interested in it. The vain person
is not righteous and therefore they don't follow
righteousness and they don't become righteous by following unrighteousness.
So in our flesh, whether you're a Christian or you're lost,
we have something in common.
We have a flesh.
And that flesh doesn't want righteousness.
That's why a Christian struggles sometimes in our daily walk.
I do, and so do you, some more than others.
It's because our flesh, that nature we have when
we were born in Adam, tells us to do what we want to do,
what feels good and what we think is right for the day, which may change tomorrow, what's
popular.
But for the vain person, for the lost person, the flesh guides the way.
And so anything you read about a lost person doing shouldn't surprise you.
It shouldn't shock you.
You shouldn't say, "Oh, I can't believe that this person did this thing or committed such
horrible act. Why they're just following after the flesh. But there's nothing in
our flesh that wants to follow righteousness and that's why this flesh
has to die and be resurrected in as a glorified body, not as a carnal earthly
body that's still full of corruption. When my children came home from school
or work and would tell me about a certain person, maybe it was a classmate
or coworker or someone like that who was doing things that were wrong, I would tell them
to avoid those people. Don't hang around them. Now why would I say that? To be unsociable?
Because we think we're better than they are? No. Was I teaching my children to be snobby
or trying to keep them from making friends? Not at all. Here's what I knew then and here's
what I know now. The flesh is weak and it wants to reject God and it wants to become
vain and to follow after vain persons. That's what the flesh wants to do. And kids, your
brain doesn't fully develop until you're about 25, so that's when you realize your mom and
dad were a lot wiser than you thought they were. Whether you admit it or not, you're
going to realize it. And so when they tell you or when they told you don't
hang around that boy, don't hang around those girls, they did it because they
love you. They don't want you to hang around vain persons. So don't be upset
with them if they tell you that. They're looking out for you because they love
you just like God looked out for Israel because he loved Israel.
And why his parents know that if our children hang around vain persons, they are likely
to reject God's Word and to follow after vanity.
And then they'll become vain, more vain than they already are as sinners.
And then they'll follow after vain persons just like Israel, followed after the heathen
nations around them as in our text.
Now in this text, the words "went after," you see that in the middle of verse 15 it
says, "and went after the heathen."
We have the words "went after," which means followed.
And if you look at it with the eye of your mind, get the theater of your imagination
going here.
If you follow someone, where are they in relation to you?
They're in front of you, aren't they?
And you're behind them.
And so if you remember that image right there, then you'll tell your children or you'll remind
yourself through the scriptures, don't get behind somebody who's a vain person.
Don't get in line behind them.
You go over here somewhere else, but don't get in line behind that person because where
they go, you're going to go.
And that's what happened with Israel where the heathen went, Israel went.
And where vain people go, their followers will also go.
You know churches long ago began accepting vanity into their places of worship.
Where praying and singing praises and preaching were once sufficient, vanity began to creep
in slowly.
And then extracurricular activities, and those were followed by the loosening of behavioral
standards and acceptance of worldliness. It went from being cutting edge in some churches
to be in the mainstream in most churches. And so children grow up in those churches
and they don't know any different. They think that's the way it's supposed to be. They
didn't get to go to my grandfather's church or his father's church or his father's church
and see that it wasn't always the way it is now.
And now, in our day, vanity is so entrenched in most churches
that any attempt to root it out is met with hostility and resistance.
Now, you wouldn't think it'd be that way in the Lord's house
that if a pastor or an elder or church member
had gone astray in some area of their life
and a Christian in love came to them with the Bible and says you know you're
wrong don't you? The Bible says right here
that we're not to do that, that we're supposed to do this.
Now that ought to be all it takes for a Christian to be corrected.
And if you do that with somebody you do it in the spirit of love
because if you don't they're not going to listen to you and they shouldn't. They ought to
listen to God's word.
But don't hinder
that good work
by being
snobby to them or looking down your nose, do it in love. Show them where they're
wrong and tell them how to be right. Well when you do that to a vain person, then
you get met with the same resistance as you do with a scourner because they're
the same person. We've learned about scourners on Wednesday night, hadn't we?
It's the same person. A vain person is a scourner. And remember, the flesh
loves vanity and so vain people are going to follow vain people. And on the
other side of that coin vain leaders are going to seek vain people to follow them.
I'll tell you the last thing a vain church leader wants is somebody like me
or somebody like Brother Doug or anybody in this church who loves God's Word
to, they don't want to have to answer to someone like us when we say, "Can you show me what
you said in the Bible?" I'm not saying it's not in there, but can you show me? They do
not want to have to show that in the Bible, because when they can't, they look foolish,
and they are foolish. That ought to always be our test for what we do here, is what we're
doing in the Bible. I don't mean what color we paint things and what the carpet looks
like and whether we have this kind of microphone or that microphone, talking about what we
do here. What we occupy our time doing when we meet on Sunday mornings, on Wednesday nights,
or when we have a special meeting of some kind is what we're doing scriptural. And if
If it's not, guess what we need to do with it?
Stop.
And nobody ought to get mad about it.
But that's where most churches are today.
Vanity has become the norm, just like it was in Israel.
And so what do you think the reception of the seers and the prophets were when the children
of Israel were taught that they were wrong?
They rejected them, didn't they?
Because it was so entrenched.
had become the norm. Now let's consider a vain pastor who loves two things. He may
love a lot of things but we know that a vain pastor loves two things. Big paycheck and
a big audience. If he's got those two, he doesn't care what he or she, what he has to
do to keep the money coming and to keep the people coming. There was a church out in California
Well, it's written in a book.
It's the Saddleback Church.
You all heard of that, Rick Warren's church.
And they boasted one year that they went from 22,000 to 22,200 or something like that.
They increased their membership.
But what they didn't tell us how many of those people that came that year left that year.
It was a revolving door.
Now, that could be for one of several reasons.
But very often the reason is that people who come into a church are vain persons and they
don't want to learn God's Word.
The other reason is because spiritual people come into a vain church and realize pretty
quick this isn't where I belong.
I'm not getting fed here, I'm getting starved.
And so they leave.
But in any case, stepping away from that church to the church in general, the vain pastor
loves those two things, the big audience and the big paycheck.
And he may appeal to anyone and everyone to join his congregation, but only vain persons
will truly join the congregation of a vain preacher because spiritually minded people
will say, "That's not biblical.
That's not scriptural.
I'm not doing that.
I'm going to go somewhere else."
And you do that.
Did you know there are people, I know them, I know some of these people who are still
in churches where they disagree with things that the pastor and the leaders and the people
are doing and putting up with, but because they've always gone there, they just stay.
It's just too hard for them to get up and go somewhere else.
That's sad.
That's being trapped.
You're a prisoner of bad doctrine and the door's open for you.
Nobody's making you stay.
But that's how vanity works.
It's a great tool of the devil, isn't it?
It's a wicked tool.
But the spiritually minded person is going to quickly realize that that vain pastor has
nothing of value to offer.
He's shallow.
Even worse, he may make here and there references to the Bible, quote, part of a scripture to
further his agenda and that'll keep his followers, his shallow vain followers
thinking he's a man of God. See there he said something about the Bible, but
unlike the biblically sound pastor, that vain pastor is neither a Christian nor
is he interested in evangelizing lost people because to do so he has to tell
them the truth, doesn't he? He has to tell them, "You're not saved. You're a sinner.
And as you stand before God when you die in this condition, you are going to die, you're
going to go to hell and the lake of fire, where is the second death." That'd run most
of the people out of the vain church, wouldn't it? So he's not going to tell them that. He's
He's not going to learn and take those hours and hours that it takes of studying your Bible
just to teach a few minutes of a lesson.
And if you've ever studied the Bible to teach, or if you've ever studied anything to teach,
maybe most of you haven't ever taught a Bible lesson.
That's okay.
That's not everyone's gift.
But maybe you've taught other things.
And you know how much preparation it takes to be able to teach a very short time period.
If you're teaching a 45-minute class, you don't just spend 45 minutes preparing for
that class, right, Miss Megan?
Our teachers will testify to that.
And so for the vain pastor, he'd have to spend all that time studying the Bible and then
going with the excitement that we have when we teach the Bible and teach it to a bunch
of people who don't care.
Well, we teach it to people who are hungry for it.
That's why we don't have a full church.
And I mean, I'm not getting the Elijah Syndrome where I say, "I'm the only one serving God."
I know better than that.
But it's why we don't fill our pews.
It's why we don't have millions watching us on the Internet.
We're not as popular as TikTok, and we're not as popular as all these YouTube influencers,
and that's not what we're trying to be.
We just don't want to be vain persons.
So for the Christian who says, "You know, Andy, I still think if I could just be around
those people, I could rub off on them.
I could have some influence over them."
Well, don't think for a moment that you're going to be able to lead vain people.
Now I'm speaking to spiritually minded people.
I'm speaking to a Christian who loves lost people, who wants to see him say it.
think for a minute you'll be able to lead them if you'll just hang around them long enough.
Because they also follow vanity.
They have become vain persons and they have gone after the heathen round about them.
And remember, vain persons have foolish darkened hearts.
We read that from the Apostle Paul last week.
And those vain people cannot benefit your spiritual man in any way.
They have nothing to offer you.
And as Brother Fulton has been teaching about the scourner on Wednesday nights, we learn
the same thing about the vain person.
They really are one and the same.
We're proving a scourner is as wise as trying to lead a vain person.
Don't go after them.
Don't be their leader.
Tell them the truth and if they reject it, do as Jesus commanded his disciples.
Take the dust off your feet and go to the next house.
Don't spend all your time worrying about them.
You've given them the truth, they have it, and as a vain person they've rejected it.
Now look back in your text in verse 15.
I read this, but I want to focus on it a little bit.
It said, "Concerning whom the Lord had charged them that they should not do like them."
Now this is the heathen.
You'll see the word heathen and the word nations, or nation, used interchangeably in the Old
Testament and they're the same thing. Basically that's anybody but the Jews,
anybody but the children of Israel to be more specific. It says concerning whom
the Lord had charged them, the whom being the heathen. Now that leads us to
discovering a truth here about the sin of Israel, about following vain persons.
They didn't get tricked into doing it. They did it because they wanted to. It
It was not a sin done in ignorance.
They didn't accidentally follow the heathen people in their vanity.
They followed them by preference.
They preferred it.
They had a choice.
You see, God had very clearly told his people way back in Leviticus who these vain persons
would be and how Israel couldn't know who they were.
In fact, I'm going to turn to Leviticus 18 if you just want to write it down in your
notes because it contains a list, a long list of sins that Egypt, that's where they came
from remember, and Canaan, that's where they were going.
It contained a long list of the sins of people from those two places.
In fact, I'll read a few of those, "And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Speak unto
the children of Israel, and say unto them, I am the Lord your God.
After the doings of the land of Egypt wherein you dwelt, shall you not do?
And after the doings of the land of Canaan, whither I bring you, shall you not do?
Neither shall you walk in their ordinances."
So in those couple of verses there, God told them who these people were.
He said it's the people in Egypt which is where you dwelt, in other words where you
used to live.
And it's the people in Canaan, that is the place where you're going.
It's the promised land.
And of course they're supposed to drive the Canaanites out.
But those are the two groups of people I'm talking about, Israel.
So you don't have to wander around and say, "I wonder if God was referring to these people
or these people."
He tells them the whom. He says here's who they are.
And then as you read through some of those sins,
in fact, starting in verse 6,
He said, "None of you shall approach to any that is near of kin to Him to uncover
their nakedness. I am the Lord."
So He forbade incest and went down and wrote quite a bit about that.
In fact, a lot of chapter 18 is about their sexual sin.
It just spells it out for you.
It wasn't good enough for Israel apparently
to just honor their wife, honor their husbands
and be faithful to them.
And that anything outside of that was sin.
No, God named it.
He told the priests, here are the sins,
here are the specific sins that Egypt was doing
that Canaan is doing right now. So you know who they are and you know what the
sins are and I'm gonna skip down now to verse 24. After all of those sins are
listed in Leviticus 18 24, God says this, "Defile not ye yourselves in any of
these things for in all these the nations" that's the same as the word
"The nations are defiled, which I cast out before you."
And to defile is to make unclean or to pollute.
So God not only told the children of Israel who the nations were,
He told them what those nations did in their vanity.
So in our text, the children of Israel didn't follow vanity out of ignorance,
but out of preference. They knew who and they knew what and they still did it anyway.
They knew from God's own testimony
to their forefathers, years before
that these vain people did vain things that were contrary to God's commandments
and God called those people the heathen or the nations
and in following them we see
that the children of Israel weren't deceived as much as they were defiant.
They said no to God. That's what you have to remember about vain people.
It's easy to think, well maybe they're just ignorant. Well if they are and they're
seeking the truth
then when you give it to them they'll say, "I believe that."
That's right. Amen. That sounds good. Or let me think on that. I like what you
said but I'm gonna have to meditate on it.
They're not going to reject it out of hand.
Now look in verse 16 with me.
And they, that's Israel, left all the commandments of the Lord their God and made them molten
images, even two calves, and made a grove and worshiped all the host of heaven and served
Baal.
It says, "And they left all the commandments of the Lord their God.
They left them.
They forsook them."
That word in the Hebrew means to loosen the bands of.
Well, you may think, "Oh, well, that means freedom."
My job, one of the things I do is enforce commercial vehicle laws.
And one of the reasons that I have contact with and exchange autographs with some truck
drivers is that they have allowed the bands that secured their load to be loosened.
They have some sort of machinery or some type of load that has to be secured front to back
and side to side.
So you and I, the little peons who drive our cars and pickups around don't get our windshields
broken, don't run over the stuff that falls off their truck, and the motorcyclists don't
get decapitated by things that fly off the trucks.
So you're welcome.
So it's not a good thing when those loads loosen their bands, is it?
A lot of times the bands that secure a load or the bands that secure something in our
lives are for our own safety and protection and for those around us.
And the bands of God's commandments were not to keep Israel down.
It was to protect them because God loved them.
He could have just let them go out and run that race with no guidance whatsoever and
they would have certainly been eaten alive before they got out the door, so to speak.
But it makes sense when you consider that Israel followed or went after the heathen,
because to follow one thing you have to leave another, don't you, if that other thing is
going the other direction.
In fact, listen to the first use of the Hebrew word that is translated as "left" in our
And it's found in Genesis 22, excuse me, Genesis 2 verses 22 through 24.
Once again, we're going back to the creation to learn a vital truth.
Genesis 2 verses 22 through 24, if you're writing that down,
"And the rib which the Lord God had taken from man made he a woman and brought her unto the man.
"And Adam said, 'This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.
She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man.
Therefore shall a man," here it is, "leave his father and mother,
and shall cleave unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh.'"
Isn't that amazing?
Adam didn't have an earthly father like you and I do.
You ask me, "Who's your daddy?"
Kenny Shepherd, "Who's your mom?"
Ray Net, "All right, I can name my parents."
If you asked Adam, "Who's your father?"
He'd say, "Well, I don't have an earthly father.
"God made me.
"God is my father.
"He spoke me into existence
"and breathed the breath of life into my nostrils.
"That's how I became a living soul."
And then Eve didn't have an earthly father like we do.
She was made from her husband, from his rib.
However, just as Eve came from Adam's side,
a one-time event, by the way, these men,
trans men, run around saying they can get pregnant.
No, they can't.
And Adam wasn't either.
This was a surgery.
God took a rib, and he made a woman out of it,
just like he took nothing and made everything out of it.
But just as Adam, or just as Eve, came from Adam's side,
so children would come from Eve's womb,
and that is how procreation has gone even to this day.
And those children, in doing that,
they would one day leave their parents if they got married,
and cleave to a wife, or cleave to a husband,
and become one flesh again.
It's a beautiful teaching.
And I really want to teach on it for a long time,
but I've got to leave it now
because I wanted you to understand a little more
about the word leave,
that to leave something you cleave to something else.
If you're going to leave this thing,
you're going to follow this thing.
If you follow this thing, you have left that thing.
Very simple principle, very much ignored.
Israel left God's commandments.
And when obedience to those commandments provided them security from their enemies and safety
from all the diseases and the wild beasts, you know they roamed in the desert for 40
years and their foot didn't swell, their shoes didn't wear out.
Can you imagine that?
I can wear these pair of boots out pretty quick if I walk around on them 40 years in
the desert.
And there was no better place for Israel to be than in the center of God's will under
His protection living by His provision, which came with following His commandments.
So when they left God's commandments, as the Scripture tells us, then they forfeited the
benefits that came with obeying those commandments.
And they accepted the harm that came by cleaving to these idolatrous people called the heathen
and their practices there in the land of Assyria.
You know in the last couple of days Israel has been pounded with rocket attacks, kidnappings,
invasion by Hamas, which is one of the arms of Iran, by the way.
When Israel has fought back and there have been hundreds, and I imagine before it's done
we'll say thousands, who have been and will be killed and wounded and displaced, terrorized,
it's a war zone.
And while I would like to see Israel wipe Iran and Hamas off the face of the earth,
doing so is not going to stop their enemies from attacking them.
I prayed for Israel yesterday.
I didn't pray that they would win the war.
They either will or they won't.
I prayed they'd repent and turn to the Lord
and trust the Messiah whom God sent from their very own flesh
to deliver them from sin.
But Israel and King Hosea's day
that we're reading about now,
and in our day to day have something in common.
They've left God's commandments.
I think it's noteworthy here, I don't make much out of it, but it's noteworthy that the
Assyrians who have besieged Israel in our text and then taken them away to be prisoners
and obviously killed some of them in this effort, that had they wiped off the Assyrians
off the face of the earth, those Assyrians wouldn't be alive today because the Assyrians
came from what was called Mesopotamia.
The map looked a little different a few thousand years ago.
But many of the people who came from the Assyrians are in that area of Iran and Iraq and it's
not all of Iran and there's a lot of things that have happened since the time we're reading
about in the Bible and the time now, mixing of peoples and moving and all of that.
But the bottom line is, had Israel always done what God said when He said, "Wipe them
out," then the problems they have today would not have occurred.
They'd have all the land that God gave them.
They'd have all the blessings God gave them.
They wouldn't have rocket attacks, but they do and they will until they repent.
And we're no better, by the way.
The principle of leaving and cleaving is not only manifested in our text here, but it's
manifested in more ways than you might imagine.
I thought of an example when I worked for the state of Texas.
I received a salary in health insurance, retirement, contributions, I got equipment, training,
and all kinds of benefits.
And when I left that job to open my own private business in 2001, I left in good standing.
I didn't have any trouble with the agency I left.
But unlike the children of Israel when they left God's commandments, by the way, they
leave in good standing.
But because I left state employment and cleaved to private employment, then I no longer enjoyed
the state salary I was getting.
I had to return all the equipment that I was issued by the state.
Contributions were no longer made to my state retirement.
In leaving that state job, I cleaved to the benefits of self-employment, which were a
little better pay, making my own schedule, getting to attend family gatherings, and calling
my own shots when it came to who I would allow my clients to be and how much I'd charge them
for what I did.
But I also knew there'd be no more paid vacations.
There'd be no more sick leave, retirement contributions made by the taxpayers, and that
was fine with me.
I knew what I was leaving and I knew what I was cleaving to, and I was okay with both.
I had counted the cost, and it was worth the move.
And then when I returned back to law enforcement, I had counted the cost, and it was worth the
move again.
I'm not much of a job hopper.
I worked my first one for 13 years, my next one for 14, and I'm on year number nine with
this one.
Everything else happened before I got out of college.
Now think about Israel when they left God.
Did they count the cost?
No way.
There's no way.
They had not correctly predicted the consequences of leaving God's commandments and cleaving
to the heathen nations around them.
And we're learning about that both in our study here and in the Book of Hosea in the
next hour.
In fact, I was talking to Brother Fulton the other night and where he is in the Book of
Hosea and where we are in the Book of 2 Kings 17 about right together chronologically.
We're talking about pretty much the same time period.
Isn't that something?
Now he and I didn't get together and say, "What are you teaching? Are you teaching Hosea?"
"Alright, well I'm going to teach 1 and 2 Kings, 1 and 2 Samuel first, and then 1 and 2 Kings,
and try to make sure that when you get to that part about Assyria besieging Israel,
that I'm there too." It didn't happen that way.
And we see that so often and we love the way God directs the affairs of man and
how he leads us where we are in the Scriptures. It's wonderful.
You know, Jesus taught several lessons about counting the cost when it came to being his disciple.
And he spoke to them about counting the cost in one place.
He taught them about putting their hand to the plow and looking back in another, which is the same principle.
Some wanted to hang on to their old lives.
Remember the one who said, "Let me first bury my dead and then I'll come and follow thee."
Jesus said, "Let the dead bury their dead."
All of these and others
were things that kept people from wanting to be
Jesus' disciples
because they had not really counted the cost.
Do you know what Jesus told people when
they said they wanted to follow Him? He didn't say, "Oh man, it's going to be great."
He said, "You're going to suffer.
You're going to be ridiculed.
you're going to be mocked, cast aside, some of you are going to be in prison,
put to death.
In fact, he said the world's gonna hate you for my sake.
You still won't be my disciple?
He counted the cost for them. He said here's the cost.
You don't have to figure it out. I'm gonna tell you because Jesus was God in
the flesh and he knew what would happen ahead of time and he said here's the cost
for following me. You still want to do it?
and what happened the most they turn went the other way they weren't interested
in that
they wanted one foot in the world one foot on whatever jesus was doing that day
he even told the most of y'all followed me
for the bread
for the miracles the loaves and the fishes
well for the vain israelites
it's obvious they also had not counted the cost of following the heathen
into a syria they left god they cleaved to the heathen
but if you were to ask one if you could
go backward in time and ask
one of those Israelites when they were still in Samaria
when their king had said hey
we want to go over here and make a league with Assyria and all that
if you'd ask one of them
do you look forward sir to the day
wherein the Assyrians will surround your city
and where you'll be enslaved
have your property taken from you
and have the temple of the Lord defiled.
Do you look forward to that day? Those people would have said, "Well, that's not
going to happen."
They wouldn't do that.
After all, we have a covenant with Israel.
Boy, how many covenants does man have to break with man for us to realize that
covenants between men
are no good? He said, "Well, what about a contract?"
Well, there's a reason that Brother Fulton has a job at the bankruptcy court, right?
because people also don't honor contracts.
The unbeliever
either does not believe in the white throne judgment
or he believes he's going to be found acceptable at that time.
You see, he hasn't counted the cost of being an unbeliever
because he thinks, "Well,
I know there's a God somewhere
and when I die,
I'll have a talk with him, he understands me, we have a deal, you hear all those foolish
things said by people who have not counted the cost of their unbelief.
And that unbeliever reasons, just as many do, that his good works are more than his
bad works.
Or he'll compare himself against the worst of society to make himself look clean.
You know if you hold a dirty white sheet up next to a black sheet, the dirty white sheet
looks pretty clean.
But if you hold it up next to a sheet that's never been out of the package, you realize
how dirty that white sheet is.
That unbeliever has a mistaken view of the mercy of God.
He thinks, "Well, I've heard God's merciful.
He'll be merciful to me too.
He'll be merciful to my unrighteousness in the way I envision.
just have a talk. But then they ignore Jesus, the one through whom God has
chosen to express His mercy to us, to make it available and sure to us.
An unbeliever says, "Well, all religions lead to heaven. I'll just go my own way."
The unbeliever has not counted the cost. Even if they believe in hell, they don't
think they're going to go there. I talked to a man who worked with me years ago and
he was one of the jobs he had was fence building and so he went out to build an iron fence
for a man and that man stayed out there with him and tried to witness to my friend and
said do you know where you're going to go when you die? I loved it. He said yeah I'm
I'm going to go to heaven."
And the man said, "You think so?
Have you ever sinned?"
He said, "Yeah, but I've never done anything bad enough to go to hell."
Well see, he had a mistaken view of righteousness and of the holiness of God.
And he believed in a hell, but he didn't think he'd go there.
Now looking back in our text, and we'll have to finish up here pretty quickly, it says
in verse 16, "and made them molten images."
You know they had to leave God's commandments
to make molten images.
And the reason I know that is because Exodus chapter 20 verse 4,
put the little letter A, the lower case letter A next to 4, that tells you we're
not reading the whole verse,
keeps us honest in our note taking.
Exodus 20 verse 4, little a,
he said thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image.
What did they do? They made a molten image. They made a graven image.
And that's how we know they left God's commandments
to make molten images. It's because God had already given them that commandment.
Don't do that. And next week
We've got a lot of depth here that we're going to explore about this molten image.
You may think, "Well, where can you go from this?
It's a molten image."
God said, "Don't make them.
Let's move on."
No, there's a lot here.
It's the first time I've ever seen this in my study, and I hope to share it with you
next week when we meet again.
Let's pray.
Father, thank You for Your Word, for the comfort we get from the Scriptures, Lord, and we need
that comfort in this world today as things around us continue to fall apart, blow up,
disintegrate, and Lord, it just seems that more and more people are trending toward wickedness
and unbelief.
And the churches, by and large, have fallen away from Your Word and have preferred the
the pop psychology and the feel-good preaching that the itching ears want to hear today.
So Lord with that, help us to be humble, help us to look to You, to not be prideful, and
to avail ourselves of the grace You've given us to continue in the Lord's Church in the
way that would please You.
And we pray that in Jesus' name.
Amen.
