Episode Transcript
It's not 10 o'clock, but it is 10-0-1.
So we better get going.
2 Kings 17, verse 33.
My voice is still a little raspy from whatever I had earlier in the week, but it's not as bad as it could be.
2 Kings 17, 33 is our text.
And we need to finish this verse.
Thank you, Brother Doug.
As you're turning there, I'll remind you, we don't skip verses, but we also don't skip parts of verses if we can, not intentionally anyway.
2 Kings 17.
You always have to tell the troublemakers three times, right?
I'm glad you all are here.
All right, if you're there, I'll reread the entire verse.
2 Kings 17, verse 33.
They feared the Lord and served their own gods after the manner of the nations whom they carried away from thence.
They carried them from thence to hence, didn't they?
And we left off, not having yet discussed that phrase after the manner of the nations whom they carried away from thence.
Now, we had put several things together here, and we're speaking about the Samaritans, the Gentiles from the various countries, Babylon and Haevath and Sephravaim and all of that, that the Assyrians brought into Samaria to fill the void because they had taken the people of Samaria, the children of Israel, captive, and taken them back to their cities.
So it says, "After the manner of the nations whom they carried away from thence," this was the pattern that the Gentiles, the Samaritans used for their own religious practices while they were in Samaria.
Now, if you remember, they had to alter their religious practices significantly because when they arrived in Samaria, they didn't do what they were supposed to do according to the manner of the god of the land, Jehovah.
And so he sent lions to slay them.
So this caused a problem with the way they practiced their religion.
So the Assyrian kings sent a Jewish priest one there, and he went to Bethel.
And those Samaritans gathered around and listened to what he taught and said, "Eh, we're still going to do our own thing.
" So the phrase that we just read, that they did after the manner of the nations whom they carried away from thence, this is just a continuation of that apostate religion that these Gentiles had.
Now, these nations appear to be those of the children of Israel.
The nations whom they carried away from thence.
Because who was the only set of people carried away from Samaria?
It was the children of Israel.
And that's not very plain in our text, so we had to do a little digging to learn that.
And all of the Gentile nations such as Babylon and Cuthon, Ava and Hamath and Sephravaam were brought to Israel.
The nations carried from thence, or from Israel.
And we also know that Israel, when they were in Samaria, that their religious practices were also not in line with what God commanded them in the book of Leviticus.
So the nations carried away from thence would seemingly be those who were in Samaria, the children of Israel, before the invasion of Assyria.
Now, with that being said, we might rightly say that the Samaritans partially depended on the religious practices, the religious expression of the children of Israel as they formed their own religion.
Remember, they brought their religion.
They had to make some sort of adaptation to their religion because God was sending lions to eat them up.
And now they have the religion of those apostate Israelites who had walked away from God, who were doing their own thing.
They had that to look at.
In fact, if you look back at the text there in verses 31 and 32, that tells us the who.
"And the Avites made Nippah's and Tartak, and the Sephravites burnt their children to fire, in fire to Adremilech and Ahemilech, the gods of Sephravaium.
So they feared the Lord and made unto themselves the lowest of them priests of the high places which sacrificed for them in the houses of the high places.
" Now, those two verses tell us the who.
And then the next two verses tell us the what.
Really, verses 32 and 33 do.
"So they feared the Lord and made unto themselves the lowest of them priests of high places which sacrificed for them in the houses of the high places.
" That's the what.
That's the beginning of the what.
"And they feared the Lord and served their own gods after the manner of the nations whom they carried away from thence.
" Again, that's the what.
So when you put all those verses together, the end of verse 33 here means that these Gentile occupiers, whom the text is referring to as Samaritans, did all of these things that are mentioned after the manner of what we have determined to be the children of Israel.
Because Israel ignored the patterns and practices God gave them and came up with their own religion, the Samaritans just did what the Israelites did, and they made up their own religion.
Now, this was tragic indeed, especially on a spiritual level.
Let's play "What If" for just a moment.
What if the children of Israel in Samaria had obeyed the Lord, and kept His commandments and His statutes, and walked in truth?
Well, there would have been no Assyrian invasion, no captivity of the children of Israel in Samaria, no carrying them away to the Assyrian cities, and no replacing the Israelites with Samaritans, Gentiles from other nations.
And there would have been, therefore, no high places, no priests of the lowest of the Gentiles, and no idolatry in Samaria.
That's the "what if.
" That's the same thing you say when you ask, "What if Adam had not sinned?
" Wow, what a glorious thing that would have been.
But that's not where we are, is it?
But all of this fell out for two reasons.
One, Israel's disobedience and the testimony they left the Samaritans was that of a perverted religion, which the Samaritans further perverted into what we read about in our text.
And number two, the second reason this all fell out, you can't just blame Israel, the Samaritans were unbelievers.
So there's a problem right there.
Even though Israel left them a poor example, the Samaritans were responsible for their own disobedience.
Now right about here in my notes, my printer ran out of ink, and it prints the pages backwards.
It prints the last page first, and so when it got to the first page, it left some, I can't read what that is.
So I took the printer cartridges out, did what a good Christian would do, get the most out of it you can, stuck it back in there and to no avail.
I even tried to rob from the color cartridge.
It's empty too.
So, took a picture of that section with my phone, a screenshot.
So if you would indulge me for just a moment, as I refer to that part of my notes on my phone.
One of these days I'll just go all the way, won't I?
Be like Brother Fulton, I'll have all that arranged, but I'm a paper guy and we'll see if that changes.
Now remember, in spite of Israel's poor example, and in spite of the pagan religion the Samaritans brought with them, those Samaritans had been instructed by a Jewish priest about how they should fear the Lord.
We can't lose sight of that.
And although Israel would be accountable to God for the poor example that left the Samaritans, the Samaritans would also be accountable.
In fact, they were without excuse.
They had the chance to ignore the religion their forefathers taught them, the religion they had been practicing, kind of like Abraham when he came out of Ur of the Chaldees.
His fathers had a pagan religion.
The Samaritans didn't do as Abraham.
And they could have placed their faith in the truth that was taught to them by that Jewish priest who taught them how they should fear the Lord.
They could have made their spiritual situation better, but they made it worse, because they did after the manner of the nations whom they carried away from thence.
Now this gets even more telling.
Look back in your text here in verse 33, at the word feared, the word served, and the word after.
They feared the Lord and served their own gods after the manner of the nations whom they carried away from thence.
Feared, served, and after.
Now just set aside the object phrases where it said they feared the Lord.
Set aside the Lord just for a moment.
Let's just look at the word feared.
And excuse me, feared the Lord.
Set aside the words of the Lord, and we'll look at feared, and then set aside their own gods and look at the word served.
Feared, served, and after.
This verse shows us something.
It shows us that the Samaritans feared the way someone else feared.
They served according to the way someone else served.
And the reason we know that is the phrase after the manner, the word after.
After the manner, those three English words are actually translated from a single Hebrew word.
And whether a person acknowledges it or not, he is a created being.
Even an atheist who believes he evolved from a monkey would have to admit he was created even in his own false system.
He would have to admit he didn't just appear.
But he was created in a sense from a monkey.
So if it weren't for the monkey preceding him, he couldn't evolve from the monkey.
Now I'm using the absurd to illustrate the true.
And I'm so glad my print courtiers was faithful to me for the second page of my notes.
So we fear, and by the way, have you ever wondered if we evolved from monkeys?
Why are there still monkeys?
Are these going to be human someday?
No, they're not.
So we fear after the manner someone else fears.
And we serve after the manner someone else serves.
There's not any neutral ground here.
People think, well, I'll just make my own mind up.
Well, you will make a choice.
But if you say, I think I'm just going to be Switzerland, I'm going to be neutral on this.
You won't.
You can't.
In fact, we have to serve.
Romans 6, verses 16 through 18.
Paul wrote, "Know ye not that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey.
" Whether of sin unto death or of obedience unto righteousness.
But God be thanked that ye were the servants of sin, but ye have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered you.
Being then made free from sin, not the servant of it anymore, ye became the servants of righteousness.
So a person has two and only two choices when it comes to this matter.
He will either serve sin or he will serve righteousness.
And how sin and righteousness are defined means everything.
Those who have faith in God's Word accept the definitions of sin and righteousness that God has given.
It's very clear.
But those who believe something other than God's Word have their own definitions of sin and righteousness.
Now can you imagine if you were to interview one of these Samaritan unbelievers about their own religion and you ask them, "What is your religion's definition of sin?
" There has to be something that you forbid people from doing.
What is it?
And you would get a definition.
And then you would ask, "Well, what is your definition of righteousness?
" And you would probably get some sort of definition.
And it would probably have something to do with doing well, doing things right.
But in God's Word, it's always the same.
So the definitions in God's Word are not subject to change.
They're always going to be the same.
In a person, let's take, for instance, the murder of an unborn baby.
In God's Word, there is no difference between the murder of an unborn baby and the murder of a 15-year-old or of an elderly person.
In the United States, which has created its own definition of murder, in fact, different states have different definitions of murder.
If in the United States the definition of murder doesn't apply to abortion in most places.
And that definition has been made based upon people's opinion about whether a baby is viable, that means whether it can live on its own, at certain parts of the pregnancy.
And that's why you hear, if you listen to or read after this type of thing, well, in the first trimester, it's okay, but in the second trimester, we think it's wrong.
God doesn't differentiate between first trimester, second trimester, third trimester, or somebody my age or your age.
It's all the same.
They're all people.
And that's very comforting to me to know that God's definitions never change.
Because I am surrounded, and so are you, by people whose definitions are constantly changing, whose ideas of right and wrong and sin, the word "sin" is not even used among those groups, but between right and wrong it changes, and sometimes it is made confusing on purpose, so you can't ever get it right.
And so the definition of abortion or murder has been subject to people's opinions about how viable the infant is, the baby is, in one trimester or the other, sometime during the pregnancy of the mother, and yes, I said mother, not birthing person.
So we who fear the Lord will always call it what God calls it.
We'll always say it's murder, because God's word declares it's wrong.
And so from conception to birth to one's last breath, it's all the same in the Lord's eyes.
Now, when that priest gave the law, he taught those Samaritans how they should fear the Lord, and I don't know how long that took.
I don't know whether that was over days or weeks or months, but it said he taught them.
And when he taught them, then he taught them what God's word said, regardless of what their religious practices were, regardless of the definitions of sin and righteousness that these Samaritans had.
He went back to the Plum Line and said, "This is what God's word says about how you should fear the Lord.
" Now, when lawmakers, whether they're in our country or others, but when they make or change laws that declare sin to be legal, when it was illegal before in that same state or country, then they're simply doing after the manner of the legislatures around them.
You know, when the lid comes off of this thing one day, and we see the amount of influence peddling there is at every level, and I'm talking about your city council, your county commissioners court, your state government, and your federal government.
When you see the amount of influence that's exerted from one voting member to the next, "Hey, vote like me.
Man, we've got to stick together here.
" You know, you wouldn't need a caucus or a group ever if all politicians said, "We're going to vote according to what the Bible says.
" If the Bible says it's right, then we want it.
And if the Bible says it's wrong, we don't want it.
Then I wouldn't have to say, "Hey, Nellie, you need to team up with me and make sure that we're voting the same.
" She can look at the Word of God, and I can look at the Word of God, and we both come up with the right answer when it comes to whether we ought to be able to kill an unborn baby or not.
And almost every time I think I have found a Christian politician, not one who says he's a Christian, or who uses an opportunity to get up in someone's pulpit and win votes, by God's grace, we're not doing that here.
We're going to preach God's Word, and if a politician comes in, they can sit anywhere they want to, just like you do, and listen and not interrupt the service.
And we'll talk to them about the Lord afterward and see if they're saved.
That's what we would offer them.
But every time I think I've found a Christian politician, I say, "You know what?
I'm voting for that guy.
" My hopes are dashed, because I see that politician fail to uphold biblical righteousness when he casts a vote or when he panders to some special interest group.
The Samaritans chose a false religion over the Lord.
So, there goes the argument for spiritual evolution, doesn't it?
Do you know what spiritual evolution is?
Well, it's very similar in theory to biological evolution, which is what we hear about more than anything.
And biological evolution suggests that there are characteristics in life forms that cause the next generation to become different, better, another species.
And it begins with the premise that all life started off as this single, small, simple microscopic life form, like an amoeba.
And that all of the animals and plants and people and all of that you see today came from that simple life form.
It just gradually added limbs and a tailbone and all of these other things.
It's silly, and there's no proof for it.
It's just a bunch of assertions.
It says, "Its believers say that humans were first apes.
" And again, if that's the case, why do we still have apes?
Now, believers in spiritual evolution say that man's spirit began as a simple form and it was totally dominated by nature.
And then it evolved and continues to evolve to a higher form that will one day be perfectly and completely dominated by the spiritual or by the divine.
In other words, people will just naturally go because of this doctrine of spiritual evolution.
Their believers say they will naturally go from being carnal to being spiritual.
Now, this theory, of course, flies in the face of what the Bible says about the inner man.
That's your spirit.
Jeremiah 17.
9, Jeremiah 17.
9, "The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked who can know it.
" He didn't say the heart of the very first man was desperately wicked.
He said the heart of man, that's all of us, all of mankind, is deceitful and desperately wicked who can know it.
And that's the inner man that people count on for spiritual evolution.
Well, maybe it'll just get better.
So this is a rhetorical question, but I'm sure you have your answer.
Was there spiritual evolution in Israel?
To learn about the future, we look at the past, don't we?
And of course, the answer is no.
Because most of the kings that we've read about up to this point are after the manner of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat.
They sinned after his manner, and he was wicked.
And if there were spiritual evolution in Israel, you would think people would just get better and better, and there would be less said about them in a negative way and more of a positive obituary for their kings.
And the remnant of these good kings we've read about is scattered.
And the effects of their righteous reigns were short-lived.
And even Solomon, who had 40 years of peace toward the end of his reign, well, he sold out, didn't he?
He had a terrible ending.
But those righteous reigns of those remnant good kings, even they weren't perfect because these men were sinners.
And in the timeline of Israel's spiritual development, these good kings were just a bump in the downgrade, as Charles Spurgeon calls it.
It's just a downgrade.
He spoke about it happening in the church, even back when he was a pastor, and certainly is kept on to this day.
What about in Noah's day?
Let's go back when there weren't that many people on the earth, as there are today.
What about Noah's day?
Was there spiritual evolution then?
I mean, after all, God had made man in the garden and man sinned, and God gave him a substitute and pointed him to the cross and to a savior and then gave him a law and all very basic laws in those days.
And man lived a long time.
Men lived in 800, 900 years, Methuselah, 969 years, the elder statesman of them.
Well, what about then?
Well, Genesis 6, verse 3.
Genesis 6, verse 3, here's your answer to that.
"And the Lord said, 'My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh, yet his day shall be 120 years.
'" So from that day, God gave man fair warning.
He got 120 years to get better.
"My spirit has striven with you, and you've got 120 years to get better.
" Now, he knew they wouldn't.
But man can't say, "Well, God didn't give us a chance.
" He gave them Noah.
And in 2 Peter 2, verse 5, Peter calls him a preacher of righteousness.
So you have God telling them you've got 120 years.
And then you have God giving them Noah, a preacher of righteousness.
He didn't have to do that.
He didn't have to give them 120 minutes, much less 120 years.
But during that time, Noah and his house were building the ark.
And Noah, as Peter called him, was a preacher of righteousness.
So that means he wasn't just a carpenter.
He was preaching God's Word.
Because if he was a preacher of righteousness, and the Bible tells us what righteousness is throughout, we know Noah was preaching what God said righteousness is.
And that's why nobody wanted on the ark.
Huh, they laughed at him, I'm sure.
So when somebody says, "Well, I think if we're just giving a chance, we'll get better.
" Well, the Bible tells us that not only has spiritual evolution not happened, it will not happen.
So when you hear that television preacher says, "Oh, everybody's going to come to the Lord in this great in-time harvest.
" That's a liar.
In fact, it's going to get worse.
Man's spiritual condition is not going to get better by time or chance or an increase in intelligence.
And yes, the Bible says so.
2 Timothy chapter 3 verses 12 through 13.
2 Timothy 3 verses 12 through 13.
"Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution.
" So right there, that tells you that people who live godly in Christ Jesus aren't going to suddenly be appreciated by those around them.
In fact, it's going to be the opposite.
If you think, "Well, maybe they'll just leave us alone.
" They'll think, "We're a bunch of weirdos and they won't bother us.
" No, the Bible says you're going to suffer persecution.
"But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse deceiving and being deceived.
" So these persecutors, not only are they going to persecute you, but they're going to get worse and worse, these evil men.
And they're going to continue to deceive and be deceived.
Does that sound like spiritual evolution is going to work out?
No, it doesn't.
Matthew chapter 24 verses 12 through 14.
Matthew 24, 12 through 14.
If you remember, this chapter was triggered by Jesus' disciples asking them, "When are you coming?
What's the sign of your coming?
" and all that.
And Jesus said about that day, "And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold.
" So he said there's going to be more sin and less love.
That's not good, is it?
That's a downgrade.
More sin and less love.
"But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.
And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations and then shall the end come.
" So there's another point.
People say, "Well, maybe if we could just get the gospel out to everybody," and that's what we're supposed to do.
Now, this church right here and our members across the country and around the world, the pastors we support, we're working toward that aim, but we cannot get the gospel to every breathing creature on this earth.
But we can get it to some of them, and that's what we're supposed to do.
But even when the gospel of the kingdom is preached in all the world for a witness to all nations, guess what doesn't happen?
Spiritual evolution.
They don't all say, "Well, God took the time to make sure the gospel got back out to all these nations, and all nations are going to respond and put their trust in Jesus.
" No, they're not.
They're going to sin more and loveless.
Jesus said, "Iniquity, which is unrighteousness, it's transgression of the law, breaking the law, shall abound," meaning it's going to multiply.
That's what that word means.
In fact, going further down in Matthew 24, I'll read verses 37 through 39.
Verses 37 through 39.
Where Jesus said, "But as the days of Noah were, so shall also the coming of the Son of Man be.
For as in the days that were before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark, and knew not until the flood came and took them all away.
So shall also the coming of the Son of Man be.
" So Jesus said, "You all know how wicked the people were in Noah's day.
God killed every one of them except for eight.
" And that was by their own choice.
Every one of them had a choice to believe that message that the preacher of righteousness, Noah, gave to them.
A hundred and twenty years.
And he said, "No, we don't need that.
" They did too.
And Jesus said, "It's going to be just like that at the coming of the Son of Man.
" So all of this great end-time harvest people think is going to happen, and all of this spiritual evolution these folks think are going to happen, and of course the spiritual evolutionists don't believe Jesus is needed in the whole project anyway.
So they've got a rude awakening coming, don't they?
Well, what were the people doing in Noah's day?
And Jesus made reference to it.
Well, they were doing whatever one around them was doing.
They were doing after the manner of all the nations around them.
In Genesis 6, verse 5, this is before the flood, "God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
" I don't see a word in that whole verse that says anything got better.
So yes, the heart was continually evil.
The thoughts were continually evil.
They made no time for righteousness.
They made no time for a preacher of righteousness.
They were concerned about carnal things.
That's why the message of the Jewish priests did not appeal these Samaritans at all.
He said, "You need to fear the Lord.
" And they chose the carnal things.
Those carnal things in Noah's day were marrying, eating, and drinking.
And listen, none of those are inherently bad.
I mean, I had a Diet Coke on the way.
I'm going to have me a good warm jug of tea, green tea on my way to where we're going this afternoon.
We just have to drink something every day, don't we?
And we eat, and several of us marry it in here.
None of that's all bad.
But they all represent temporary pleasures.
Yes, marriage is a pleasure.
None of which we will be doing when we go to be with the Lord.
We won't need physical food and physical drink because our bodies won't be like they are right now.
And we won't be marrying each other.
And if you don't believe that, go read Matthew 22 some other time so you can have victory over that.
Those earthly things, the one we're going to be married to is Jesus.
And that's a whole different union than the one between the husband and wife.
But what does the union between the husband and the wife teach us anyway?
It's about the relationship between Jesus and His church.
We're the bride, He's the groom.
Now in the Timothy passage I read you earlier, Paul said evil men and seducers will wax worse and worse.
So the evil religious practices of mankind will birth more evil religious practices.
And so on until Jesus sets everything right.
And that will not be according to the religions of the nations who were carried away from Samaria, but according to the pure and undefiled religion that's found only in God's Word by way of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
And it's called the narrow way.
And it is not after the manner of the nations who are on the broad way who will be carried away.
Now let's not leave this verse without learning that the abounding iniquity of man, because this can sure look hopeless to you, the abounding iniquity, the multiplication of transgressions of man and his false religions don't have the final say.
Did you know that?
Yes, iniquity shall abound.
The Bible is honest about it.
It will multiply, and it is.
But there's something else that out-multiply is iniquity.
Iniquity does after the manner of the nations, but grace does after the manner of God.
That's what out-multiply is iniquity.
In fact, we are specifically told that by the Apostle Paul in Romans chapter 5 verses 19 through 21.
Romans chapter 5 verses 19 through 21.
And I want you to listen for the word abounded.
"For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners.
" That's speaking the first Adam.
"So by the obedience of one shall be be made righteous.
" That's the second Adam, Jesus.
"Moreover the law entered that the offense might abound.
But where sin abounded," that means where it was multiplied, "grace did much more abound, that as sin hath reigned to death, sin is only king until you die.
" Sin says, "I'm in charge of you.
" Sin has a limited reign.
"That as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life, by Jesus Christ our Lord.
" The reign of righteousness never ends.
The reign of sin is coming to an end.
Now the words abound and much more abound are from two completely different Greek words.
The Greek word for much more abound means exceedingly.
In fact, I think it has the prefix hyper, H-Y-P-E-R, which you say, "hooper," in the Greek.
It doesn't matter, it means exceedingly.
So whatever iniquity has, grace trumps it.
Iniquity will always come in second place to grace.
There's your kingdom truth.
Iniquity will always come in second place to grace.
Short and easy to remember.
So you who like the Samaritans in our text have gotten caught up in the manner of the nations around you.
Why don't you look to the grace of God as it is revealed through His Son Jesus Christ, who by grace laid down His life for us, that we would not have to live and die after the manner of the nations around us whom God's judgment will carry away.
Now let's look at verse 34 back in our text.
"Unto this day they do after the former manors.
They fear not the Lord, neither do they after their statutes or after their ordinances, or after the law and commandment, which the Lord commanded the children of Jacob, whom He named Israel.
" So just when you think that in verse 33, the Samaritans were as bad as they could possibly be, think again.
Notice, they do after their former manners.
There's been no good change.
They fear not the Lord, even though that's what they were taught to do.
They don't fear Him the way that the priests taught them to fear the Lord.
Neither do they after their own statutes or after their ordinances, or after the law and commandment, which the Lord commanded Jacob.
So these words in this verse knock another hole in the ridiculous notion of spiritual evolution.
The Samaritans had finally cobbled together this religion, mixing some of what Israel practiced, some of what the priests taught them, some of their own religious preferences altogether.
Now this is what we would call a custom-made religion.
And you might think a person would finally be satisfied if he could put his own religion together, if he could just be allowed to write his own rules and then just follow those rules.
And when we meet next week, we're going to see why that cannot happen.
Let's pray.
Father, You've been so good to us to reveal truth and by Your Spirit to teach it to us and to help us to meditate on it.
And Lord, I pray we'd keep it on the frontlets of our eyes that it would be foremost in our thoughts and that we would judge all things and all people and all religions by the truth of Your Word, make it so much easier on us.
And if you'll help us to do that, Lord, we'll give you
