Episode Transcript
We're in 2 Kings 17 and verse 16, where we've spent a lot of time the last couple of weeks.
Our last lesson taught us a lot about the significance of Israel making molten calves,
in this case two of them.
We began to look at the significance of the number 2 as well.
And in the Bible that is associated with the number of witness, because there were two molten calves.
Now I want us to look at something else that was significant about the making and worshiping of two molten calves.
Perhaps you remember King Jeroboam, the ruler of the northern kingdom of Israel, after it was separated.
The Lord said it would be separated and he made Jeroboam the king over the northern ten tribes called Israel,
and Rehoboam who was Solomon's son over the southern kingdom called Judah, which consisted of the tribes of Judah and Benjamin.
And Jeroboam's wickedness and idolatry set the stage for all of the evil kings who came after him.
And many of those kings had this testimony written about them.
This one is specifically about King Jehu found in 2 Kings chapter 10 verse 29.
It says, how be it from the sins of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin,
Jehu departed not from after them to wit the golden calves that were in Bethel and that were in Dan.
So there were two golden calves, or at least two.
Now listen to the foundation for that sorry testimony that those kings would inherit or would earn who came after Jeroboam.
And this goes back to 1 Kings chapter 12 verses 28 through 29, where it says,
Whereupon the king, that's Jeroboam, took counsel and made two calves of gold,
and said unto them, that is unto the children of Israel,
it is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem.
Behold thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.
That sounds awfully familiar, doesn't it? It's the same thing Aaron said to them.
And he set the one in Bethel, and the other put he in Dan.
So that tells us there were two.
And authored by Satan, the church of the golden calf was begun on earth by Jeroboam.
And he used two calves to do it.
He said to Israel in those days, it was too much trouble for them to go up to Jerusalem to worship.
Now that's appealing to the flesh, isn't it?
Save yourself the trouble.
Don't go to all that trouble. After all, who wants to go to trouble to do anything, right?
And in Jeroboam's opinion, the church the Lord established would be called the church of too much.
That's another church out there. The church of too much.
It's too much trouble for you guys. Let me save you the headache.
Isn't that ironic?
When all the church of too much does is to worship the Lord in the way he commanded.
That's not too much.
Adding altars, adding other rituals, and other responsibilities to the work of the church is what is too much.
In fact, that's what's wrong with most churches worldwide. There's too much going on there.
In fact, the Lord's church simply rests in the work that was already done by her founder, the Lord Jesus Christ.
Now in the Old Testament, for faithful saints, and there weren't many, but there were some,
going to the temple in Jerusalem was no trouble at all.
Why they lived to please the Lord.
Do you ever, when you put a sticky note, a gospel track up on a gas pump, or perhaps you give a booklet to someone,
do you walk away saying, boy, that was a lot of trouble. You don't, do you?
It's not at all.
It was, Jerusalem was the place in the temple, and before that the tabernacle.
The place where God ordains sacrifices and offerings to be made. Not Dan, not Bethel.
In fact, the original command for this is found in Deuteronomy chapter 12 verses 5 through 7.
Deuteronomy 12 verses 5 through 7.
So this takes us way back before the time of the king we're reading about now, which is King Hosea, by the way.
It said, and God spoke to Moses,
But unto the place which the Lord your God shall choose out of all your tribes to put his name there,
even unto his habitation shall ye seek, and thither, or there, shalt thou come.
And thither ye shall bring your burnt offerings, and your sacrifices, and your tithes,
and heave offerings of your hand, and your vows, and your freewill offerings,
and the firstlings of your herds, and of your flocks.
And there ye shall eat before the Lord your God,
and ye shall rejoice in all that ye put your hand unto,
ye and your households, wherein the Lord thy God hath blessed thee.
Only there, only at the habitation, the place where God told them to come,
to Jerusalem, to the tabernacle, the temple,
only there did God promise to meet with Israel,
through the high priest, through the blood,
and that high priest was the mediator, the earthly mediator, between God and man,
as we've studied before.
And so Jeroboam appealed to man's flesh when he said,
It's too much trouble for you Israelites to have to go all the way to Jerusalem.
And so he used the location of Dan and Bethel to save them the trip.
But he used also those molten calves to steer them away from God's commandments,
just as Aaron allowed Israel to do in his day.
And by setting those golden calves, those molten calves in Dan and Bethel,
he contradicted God's command that his people come to his habitation,
the one he spoke of in Deuteronomy, and the one these people should have known about.
They should have said, No, King, we're not going to Dan and Bethel.
We're going to Jerusalem just like the Lord said, it's no trouble at all.
And we're sure not going to offer anything to a golden calf, no thanks.
But that's the world, and the world won't do that.
In teaching the Galatians about what Abraham's two sons, Ishmael and Isaac, meant spiritually,
he wrote this about Jerusalem.
This is the Apostle Paul writing to the Galatians in chapter 4, verses 25 through 26.
Galatians 4, 25 through 26.
Because there's something more here than just the children of Israel going to a city called Jerusalem,
a geographical place. There's something more to be learned.
And so Paul wrote, for this Hagar, he's talking about Hagar, the mother of Ishmael,
is Mount Sinai in Arabia, and answereth to Jerusalem, which now is,
and is in bondage with her children.
But Jerusalem, which is above, is free, which is the mother of us all.
The acceptable place of Old Testament worship was the city of Jerusalem in the house of the Lord.
Now that place pointed us to another Jerusalem, to a new Jerusalem.
And when you read the book of Revelation, that new Jerusalem comes down from heaven.
And that's where all true worshipers will one day come.
When Jeroboam made the two calves, he reasoned that it would be more convenient
for the children of Israel to go to Dan or to Bethel than to Jerusalem.
Now remember that the animal sacrifices that were made in the temple
could never take away the sins of the people.
But if the people had said in those days, you know those animal sacrifices have to be repeated
year after year and they cannot make the come or their unto perfect.
That's what Hebrews says about it. They can't make us clean.
So we're just going to stop doing them.
They'd have been in big trouble. They'd have been cut off.
Because what God was teaching them in those sacrifices that were made daily and yearly and
there's just blood everywhere, was that it was necessary for man to come to God
and for a sacrifice to be made because man is sinful.
And they did that over and over and over, repetition after repetition,
pointing to the once and for all sacrifice that would be made when Jesus died for their sins.
Now I'm going to stop right there and help you out with something if you have trouble witnessing to someone.
If you walk up to someone's door or you see somebody in the supermarket or wherever it is,
you have the opportunity to witness to them and you start off with Jesus died for your sins.
If they don't understand what a sacrifice is, that sounds like the most ludicrous thing in the world to them.
If somebody doesn't have a Bible background or some sort of understanding of the Old Testament,
what are they going to make of that? What would you make of it?
If I knew nothing about the Bible and you said Jesus died for your sins,
I'd say, what do you mean? He died for my sins.
There's a lot of ground that needs to be covered.
And so what you do is you take them back to the same place that the children of Israel were
when those sacrifices were being made over and over and over and why that was done.
And then you can arrive at the cross and tell them that this is the Lamb of God.
Like all of those lambs that were slain day by day in the temple,
this is the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world.
Where those lambs slain in the Old Testament couldn't take away sin.
But this one can and he does and he did and he will to help them understand, to point.
God pointed these Israelites to Calvary.
So that was important that they made these animal sacrifices even though the sacrifices
themselves could not take away sin.
And in the same way, the physical location of Jerusalem,
which was where the tabernacle was set up after the children of Israel
were led into the Promised Land and where the temple would be built
in Solomon's day and rebuilt after it was torn down and rebuilt again.
It's not to the city of Jerusalem where people must go to be saved.
So having the Israelites come to Jerusalem,
that journey, that trip they made was not a salvific trip.
It didn't save them from their sins.
But what did it do? It would point to the truth of the New Jerusalem
in the book of the Revelation.
And that's what the Old Testament does.
It's a big spiritual foam finger pointing ahead.
And you know what the New Testament is for us?
It's a big spiritual foam finger pointing right back at the cross.
In fact, all of the fingers are pointing at the cross.
Listen to what Jesus taught in John chapter 4.
I'll read verses 19 through 24.
John 4 verses 19 through 24, speaking of this Jerusalem.
Remember, the big problem here with Dan and Bethel is they weren't Jerusalem.
Jesus was speaking with a woman of Samaria at Jacob's well.
In verse 19 where I pick up,
the woman saith unto him, Sir, I perceive that thou art a prophet.
He just told her she had five husbands and the one she lived with wasn't hers.
That's why she said that.
Our fathers worshiped in this mountain,
and ye say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.
Jesus saith unto her, Woman, believe me,
the hour cometh when ye shall neither in this mountain,
nor yet in Jerusalem, worship the Father.
Ye worship, ye know not what.
We know what we worship for salvation is of the Jews.
But the hour cometh, and now is when, listen to this, when true worshipers,
not just the people who make the foot journey to Jerusalem,
not just the people who say, here's a lamb to be sacrificed on this altar.
He said true worshipers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth.
For the Father seeketh such to worship him.
God is a spirit, and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.
Notice he did not say they that worship him must worship him in Jerusalem.
It's not the city.
It's worshiping God in spirit and in truth.
And all of that being said, the children of Israel ignored God's command
to observe one place, one altar, and one way of worship.
And they fell for Satan's old scheme that draws people away from God's commands.
That's all this is.
You know, the church of the golden calf could also be called the 7-11 church.
Because it was more like a spiritual convenience store.
After all, and we have them around my house, Walmart is about seven miles from my house.
But Tiger Mart is just down the street and everything there is more expensive than it is at Walmart.
So that's where you go.
If you want something and you don't mind paying more of a price,
I'll spend 10 extra dollars in gas money to save 50 cents on milk.
I know that doesn't make sense, but that's sometimes me.
It's too much trouble to go to Jerusalem or to just go to Dan or Bethel.
And for the children of Israel to fashion two molten calves
was for them to return to the sins of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat.
Now look back in your text here in verse 16.
In the middle, in fact, let's go ahead and just read the verse again.
And they left all the commandments of the Lord their God and made them molten calves,
molten images, even to calves and made a grove.
That's where we are now.
And made a grove.
Now we covered this in some prior lessons about other wicked kings
because it was common for them to also make groves.
But let's be reminded here of what a grove is in case we forgot.
Of course, when I say we, I mean you.
I didn't do it in the Grinch voice.
The Assyrian name for a grove is Asherah.
Asherah.
And the history behind that name, this is some secular history,
suggests that Asherah may have been a female goddess.
So the grove here is attached to the worship of a false god.
But the grove itself is a bunch of trees.
And here's where we learn that.
Deuteronomy 16 verse 21.
Deuteronomy 16 verse 21.
And God had described what he wanted the altar to look like and all of that.
And here's what he said.
Thou shalt not plant thee a grove of any trees near unto the altar of the Lord thy God,
which thou shalt make thee.
So in that verse, you have the word plant and you have the word trees describing a grove.
So it's pretty clear that a grove was simply a group of trees.
Does God hate trees?
No, he made them.
In fact, he made all of them.
And he said, and this is good.
He told Adam and Eve, or he told Adam and Adam told Eve,
as far as we can tell, that's how she knew.
But he told Adam thou shalt not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
What did he say before that?
Of all the trees in the garden thou mayest freely eat.
Help yourself, except for this one.
And so God didn't have a problem with the children of Israel having trees.
That's how they made things.
That's how they built buildings and so forth.
That's what they burnt for firewood.
But he said, I don't want you planting them near the altar.
So you could think of it this way.
Of all the trees, thou mayest freely plant them anywhere,
but near the altar thou shalt not plant them.
That would be a good corollary of what he said to Adam in Genesis.
So God prohibited Israel from planting trees near his altar.
Because had they done that, and knowing that those groves of trees
were associated with the worship of a false God,
it would be like allowing a second altar to be placed next to the brazen altar.
And you remember when that was done, we read about that a few chapters ago
in 2 Kings, the so-called great altar.
That came from Syria, that came from Damascus.
Now look back in your text after it made a grove in verse 16 here.
And it said this about Israel and worshiped all the host of heaven.
Now the host of heaven, that can be a mysterious phrase.
For some, it has been for me before.
So let's look at it.
What is the host of heaven?
The Hebrew word for host is translated, is an army, is what it means.
It's referring to an army.
A host is an army.
And an army has a leader, doesn't it?
But that leader is not the host.
Are you catching this?
Right off the bat, they're worshiping something that is not a leader.
Or someone that is not a leader.
An army has a leader.
It's called by different names, whether it be a commander, a captain, a general,
depends on what country you're in.
So we see an immediate problem, and that is that the children of Israel
were worshiping an army, not the leader of an army.
And secondly, this host, this army was a particular host.
It was called the host of heaven.
And the Hebrew word for heaven is often referring to, at least in the Old Testament,
often referring to the firmament or the sky.
Or it can refer to the abode of God, that is where God resides.
You can't confine God to a certain place, but that's our understanding of it as
frail, three-dimensional humans.
And one Hebrew translation of this verse that I just read, you says,
this is a Hebrew translation,
they forsook all of the midst of the Lord their God and made them molten images,
even two calves, and made an asherah, that's a grove,
and worshiped all the host of the sky and served Baal.
So that Hebrew translation called it the host of the sky.
Let's look at some other uses of this phrase, the host of heaven, in our Bible.
Help us understand what it is.
The first use of the phrase, the host of heaven, is found in Deuteronomy chapter 4 verse 19.
Deuteronomy 4 verse 19. That's a good note to make next to host of heaven.
It says, speaking to the children of Israel,
unless thou, that's the children of Israel,
unless thou lift up thine eyes unto heaven,
and when thou seest the sun and the moon and the stars,
even all the host of heaven should be driven to worship them and serve them
which the Lord thy God hath divided unto all nations under the whole heaven.
The phrase in that verse, even the host of heaven,
is the translators telling us that the sun, moon, and the stars are the host of heaven,
about which God is speaking.
Now the word even in that verse is in italics.
That means it was supplied by the translators to help us understand the Hebrew.
I read a statement of faith or what we believe or whatever this church called it,
of a particular independent fundamental Baptist church.
And it said, of course, that they believed that they didn't say which King James version,
but the one they're using is the only one for the English-speaking world
because it's a word-for-word translation of the Hebrew Masoretic text
and of the textus receptus for the Old Testament.
New Testament. Well, first of all, that person who wrote that
doesn't understand anything about language
because you don't do a word-for-word translation.
Spanish is my second language.
If I did a word-for-word translation of something in Spanish,
and I mean I translated it just like it was written into English,
you'd say, what?
It's exactly what you'd say.
Hey, you got your adjective here at the end of the sentence
and you left out a pronoun here.
Well, I actually didn't because it's implied in the Spanish language
by using a certain conjugation of a verb.
We won't get into all that.
And I thought, wow, this person made a bold claim
and probably doesn't know Hebrew or Greek either one.
But that being the case, the translators supplied this word even.
And what I like about it is they were honest.
They put it in italics.
They said this wasn't in the original text.
That's what the King James translators did.
And I appreciate that.
So here God is speaking to the children of Israel in another place in Deuteronomy.
This is chapter 17 verse 3.
And he's warning them about any person who commits this sin.
He said, and he picks up in the middle of a sentence,
and hath gone and served other gods and worshiped them,
either the sun or moon or any of the host of heaven,
which I have not commanded.
So the phrase or any of the host of heaven follows the word sun and moon.
And it tells us then that the sun and the moon are members of the host of heaven.
Now let's go back to...
So that ought to help you a little bit with what is the host of heaven in this verse.
It's the sun, moon, the stars, the planets.
Let's go back in time to Genesis chapter 1.
I love going back to Genesis, and I love going back to Genesis 1.
In fact, everyone turned there.
It's easy to find.
Genesis chapter 1.
I love doing this,
having everybody look at this verse,
and I hope you'll learn something that you didn't know before.
We're peeling the onion down a little bit further to the middle here.
Yes, we all know God said, don't worship the host of heaven.
And that ought to be enough right there.
But we're going to look at why it is so egregious.
All right, are you in Genesis 1?
Now look with me there in verse 16.
And God made two great lights.
The greater light to rule the day, and what do you think that is?
That'd be the sun, wouldn't it?
And the lesser light to rule the night, what do you think that is?
That's the moon.
He made the stars also.
So God made the sun, the moon, and the stars.
Verse 17, and God set them in the firmament of the heaven.
Where did He put them?
In the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth.
So right there we learn that the host of heaven consist of,
when we combine it with the other scriptures we've looked at,
it consists of the sun, the moon, and the stars.
Verse 18, and here was their assignment,
and to rule over the day and over the night,
and to divide the light from the darkness, and God saw that it was good.
So go back to verse 16, He says, the greater light to rule the day.
So what was the authority that the sun had over anything?
The sun's assignment was to rule the day.
The sun has authority over the day, if you want to look at it from that perspective.
God said the sun rules over the day, that's pretty plain.
And the moon over the night.
What does the sun not rule over?
It doesn't rule over the night.
That's the lesser light, it rules over the night.
Now get ready for something to put in your theological toolbox here.
We've already discussed that the sun rules over the day,
it doesn't rule over the night.
But God, and this is absent here for a reason,
God did not give the sun, the S-U-N, the authority to rule over mankind.
He did not.
The sun rules over the day.
Now what about the moon, which is the lesser light in this passage?
It rules over the night, doesn't it?
The moon also does not rule over people.
God set that lesser light to rule over the night.
In fact, the sun doesn't rule over the moon, the moon doesn't rule over the sun.
So we have two factors in play here.
The sun and the moon are members of the host of heaven.
And they have to answer to the one who created them.
And that's God.
And secondly, the authority of the sun and moon are clearly spelled out here
and mankind is not under their authority.
Before God created man, he created the sun and the moon and the stars.
But before he created the sun and the moon and the stars, he said, let there be light.
So therefore, the sun and the moon and the stars did not create light.
Light was before them.
They did not create light, they were given light.
So they are under authority.
In fact, the sun and the moon don't have authority over the light God created.
If the sun disappears, which according to even unbelieving scientists, there's an expiration date,
don't know when that is for the sun, it's gases.
It's going to run out of steam someday, run out of gas.
Does that mean there won't be any more light in the world?
No.
It means there won't be any more sun light, no more light from that sun.
God never put man under the authority of the sun and the moon, but in our study of 2 Kings 17,
the children of Israel have once again submitted themselves to the authority of something God created.
Now here's something that made that sin even more aggravating.
It says they worship the host of heaven, which in military terms means they obey the soldiers
rather than their leader.
Now, if some of you who were in the military or if you've been in law enforcement, like I have,
one of the quickest ways to get yourself in trouble is to listen to what the guy next to you says,
instead of what the guy above you says.
That'll get you in trouble and it doesn't matter what it's for either.
If my sergeant tells me that I need to go out here and work this certain highway
and follow bus six around in the morning, check for school bus violations,
and one of my fellow deputies says, hey, you don't need to do that.
Go eat breakfast with us over here.
Man, Chilosos has got a good breakfast burrito and you go sit with us.
That bus will be fine.
What's the quickest way for me to get in trouble?
Go to Chilosos.
That's what the children of Israel were doing.
They were listening to the soldiers and not the leader.
They were listening or they were worshiping, that is, the host, the army.
Now, who's the one in charge of the host of heaven?
Let's look at it.
It's the Lord.
First Samuel chapter one, verse three, and then put little a,
because we're going to just use the part of the verse we need
to understand who's in charge of the Lord of hosts.
First Samuel one, three, little a.
And this man went up out of his city yearly to worship and to sacrifice
unto the Lord of hosts in Chilos, the Lord of hosts.
Now, did that man sacrifice to the host of heaven?
No, he went to sacrifice to the Lord of the hosts of heaven.
And in that passage, the word Lord, the name Lord is all caps,
which means Jehovah, the self-existing one,
the name by which he was also called in Genesis chapter two,
verse four, which says these are the generations of the heavens
and of the earth when they were created in the day that the Lord God,
that's Jehovah Elohim, that's the self-existing one and Elohim,
that's the Godhead.
That's the plural that tells us God is three persons in one.
In the day, the Lord God made the earth and the heavens.
So if God made the heavens, then everything in the heavens
is under God's command.
And we are clearly told that God made the host of heaven.
The sun, the moon, and the stars.
The host of heaven are not wicked, but they're not to be worshiped.
And the children of our, the children of Israel in our text worship the host of heaven
rather than the Lord of hosts.
That's what their error was.
They worship the moon, the stars, and the sun,
just like God told them they would all the way back in Deuteronomy.
Did you know he said, this is what's going to happen.
You're going to worship the stars and all of that.
That was back in Deuteronomy 17.
Now, do you remember when we were studying images, molten images?
We learned how foolish it was for a person who makes an image
to turn around and to submit to that image.
Well, it's just as foolish to submit to the thing God created
rather than to the one who created it.
The Apostle Paul speaks about this matter in Romans chapter one.
In fact, he gives a very detailed description of people who do this.
And I'll pick up in verses 21 through 25.
If you want to write it down, Romans one, 21 through 25.
Because that when they knew God, they glorified him not as God,
neither were thankful, but became vain in their imaginations
and their foolish heart was darkened, professing themselves to be wise,
they became fools and changed the glory of an uncorruptible God
into an image made like a corruptible man.
So if you wanted to know what was going on in the minds of these people,
what was their spiritual condition when they made these images?
There it is right there.
And to birds and four-footed beasts and creeping things,
wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts
to dishonor their own bodies between themselves,
who changed the truth of God into a lie
and worshiped and served the creature more than the creator.
Who is blessed forever. Amen.
Worshiping the host of heaven is serving the creature.
That is the thing that was created more than the creator.
Now back in our text in 2 Kings 17, 16.
In addition to making two molten calves,
making a grove and worshiping the host of heaven,
this verse finishes out by saying and served Baal.
The name Baal means Lord with a little L.
And so the people who worshiped Baal were giving Baal authority over them.
They were making him their Lord.
And although we've studied a little bit about Baal before,
maybe you've studied a lot about Baal before.
Let me give you something else to think about.
If Baal is Lord, this is a hypothetical here,
but this is what they were doing.
If Baal is Lord, then whatever Baal says has to be obeyed
by all of those who desire to please him.
And we know Baal had an altar,
because it's referenced several times in the Old Testament.
But if you're wanting scripture references on each one,
I'm going to give them to you.
Judges 6 verses 28 and 30.
Now there are more than that, but that'll get you started.
If you're hungry to go after that and study it some more on your own.
So Baal had an altar, just like God had an altar.
Baal had an altar.
Baal also had a house.
1 Kings 1632.
1 Kings 1632.
The Lord had a house too, didn't he?
Baal had prophets.
1 Kings 1819.
1 Kings 1819.
The Lord had prophets.
Baal had followers.
1 Kings 1818.
1 Kings 1818.
The Lord has followers too.
Baal had an image.
In fact, that image was made by Ahab in one place.
2 Kings 3 verse 2.
2 Kings 3 verse 2.
Hey, did you know the Lord has, that God has an image too?
The Lord Jesus Christ.
He is the express image of God.
But he's not an image made by hands.
Baal had priests.
1 Chronicles 2317.
1 Chronicles 2317.
The Lord has priests too.
In fact, the believers are his priesthood now.
So unto Baal were made prayers, burning of incense,
offering of corn and wine and silver and gold and oil.
But there was one critical thing missing.
Have a good mind to tell you, I'll get to it next week,
but we still have a couple of minutes.
One critical thing missing.
There is one thing.
Now there are many things, but this is one of the things
that separates the followers of the Lord from the followers of Baal.
And here it is.
Nowhere in the Bible do we read about the word of Baal.
Nowhere.
There was no divinely inspired word given by Baal to his followers.
There were no sure prophecies given by Baal to his followers.
No testimony of his creation of all things.
In fact, by the very act of making Baal the image,
wicked man testifies that he could not have created all things
because he was a created being, a created image.
And because there was no word of Baal, there was no gospel.
There's no salvation and there was no hope.
And next week we'll explore that a little bit more.
The missing word of Baal.
There is none.
Let's pray.
Father, we thank you that we have your word
and that we have the sure prophecies and the promises of your word.
And Father, we thank you that you plainly declare to us
how we may be pleasing to you, how we may come to you in salvation,
how we may walk by faith and not by sight.
And Lord, I pray you to strengthen us and help us to do that throughout this week.
Bless our pastor and our congregation in the next hour.
And may our worship, our singing, our preaching, our learning be acceptable in your sight.
