Episode Transcript
We are in 2 Kings chapter 17 and verse 34 and that's our text.
I like saying it that way because it reminds me that I am also its student just like you and saying the text reminds me that we haven't gathered here to hear what I say or to tune in to hear what I've come up with.
But we've come to be fellow students of a text from God's Word.
And I like to remember an old saying I don't think a Christian came up with it, but I like it.
It's always a student sometimes a teacher.
That makes the best teachers anyway people who are students first.
And I think it'd be beneficial for Bible teachers and pastors to remember that lest we be lifted up with pride.
And as I was studying yesterday along those lines I asked God in my studies to help me to simplify the complicated and never to complicate the simple.
So if I can do that hopefully that'll be a blessing to you.
Let's reread the text 2 Kings 17 and verse 34.
And I'll count on you to have taken good notes last week or to have gone back and listened to that message in case you missed it.
That way we don't spend a lot of time in review.
And although the last few verses we've studied appear to be directed to the Gentiles in Samaria, don't forget the children of Israel who were in Samaria and many of whom are still in the northern kingdom of Israel are also addressed in this text.
It's not just for the Samaritans.
But in verse 34 speaking of the strangers who have occupied the cities of Samaria it says unto this day they do after the former manners.
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.
Now we see what rebels we really are.
Because in speaking to the Samaritans God's speaking to the human race.
There is no distinction between your nationality or your economic class or your gender or your skin color.
We're all Samaritans when it comes to what these people have done.
It's within our flesh to have those desires that they had to fear other gods.
In fact without the intervention of the grace of God man is always going to be rebellious in his heart not thankful and not holy.
And even when he's allowed to construct his own religion as we looked at last week including his own rules even then man does not keep them.
So by nature man is truly a lawbreaker.
A custom-made religion that we studied about last week wasn't even good enough for the Samaritans because they refused to obey it anyway.
They weren't satisfied with it even though they had made it.
Now let that sink in for just a moment.
Here's a good example.
This is a good Texas example because I'm gonna use the word pickup.
Imagine you were given $200,000 to have a pickup that was custom built.
Now I had written down a hundred thousand dollars, but by dynamics made me double that to $200,000 billy so there's still a chance for us to have that truck.
You see even sermon illustrations aren't safe from liberal economic policies are they?
So for this custom built pickup you got to choose the paint color, the interior, the motor, the trim, the wheels, tires, stereo system, everything.
And once this magnificent pickup was built according to your own desire, you drove her for one day and said I don't like it.
Now logically you should have no complaint about the pickup because you got everything you wanted on it and it didn't cost you a dime somebody gave you that money in this imaginary scenario.
Now everyone around you would say what's wrong with you?
Did you not get to build the pickup just like you wanted it?
You got your way and you still don't like it.
And even though the example there is about a custom built pickup, there's a spiritual truth we take away from that that fits right in with our teaching here about this custom made religion the Samaritans had and that is this.
It's real simple.
It's real short.
Man will never be satisfied with his own way.
Did you know that?
Man will never be satisfied with his own way.
Proverbs chapter 20 and verse 24.
Proverbs chapter 20 verse 24 says "Man's goings are of the Lord.
" How can a man then understand his own way?
Well, how about that?
How can we be satisfied with our own way if we don't even understand our own way?
How can we say that our way is the best way if we don't understand our own way?
You know one of the things that God was gracious to do for us is not just to give us his word, but to help us to understand it.
And to do that, one of the chief ways he did that was to make teachers, apostles in those days, prophets and teachers who are given that gift to be able to discern.
Now that doesn't mean some guy walks in off the street and just starts teaching you the Bible because the other part of that is to those individuals with that gift.
They have to study to show themselves approved.
And to God, not to impress man, but unto God.
And to be a workman.
Now to be a workman you have to work, don't you?
And that's what studying God's word is.
Rightly dividing the word of truth.
So what God did is he made it to where we can understand his word.
In fact, that Ethiopian eunuch who was in the chariot and who was reading, we find from the book of Isaiah, when Peter jumped up in there, or Philip jumped up in there with him and said, "Understandest thou what thou readest?
" What did the Ethiopian eunuch say?
He said, "How can I except some man should guide me?
" So he wanted to understand and God sent Philip the evangelist to help him understand.
And Philip took up there and preached Jesus to him.
That's one thing I loved about Philip and I love about all of the apostles is that it didn't matter where you were in the Bible, they were going to take you to the cross.
They were going to take you to Jesus.
And that's what Philip did.
So God made it to where we can understand whose way?
His way.
His word.
He said, "How can you understand your own way?
" And we can't.
So the Samaritans way, even though they didn't fully understand it, was not satisfying to them.
So they didn't keep it.
They didn't keep their own religion.
They added some more religion to it.
In fact, they had a religion.
But now they'd received instruction from this priest of the Lord, who taught them how they should fear the Lord.
They had their own religion.
And then they were surrounded by other Gentiles, other heathen nations who had their religions.
So they just put all that together and came up with what they thought sounded best.
And eventually, what they did is they abandoned their own way for their own way again.
See, man is never satisfied with his own religion.
They had their own way at first.
They had a religion.
And now they have another one.
And that's also their own way.
At no time did they ever say, "You know what?
We don't even understand our way.
Why don't we try to understand God's way?
" And what was God gracious to do?
We already studied.
Send them a priest to teach them how they should fear the Lord, how they should fear the Lord.
Not just to say, "You need to fear the Lord.
" And then turn around and go back to Assyria, where he was a captive, and hope they figured out what it meant to fear the Lord.
He taught them how they should fear the Lord.
If I just walk in here and tell a bunch of sinners, "You need to be saved.
You're going to hell.
" And turn around and walk out.
What are they going to say?
They're going to say, essentially, what the sinner said in the New Testament to the apostles, "Sir, what must I do to be saved?
" And what did Peter say?
"Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.
" So he told them how to be saved.
So the Samaritans, with their revised, custom-made religion, was nothing more than a different lane of the broad way that leads to destruction.
That's all that was.
In fact, there are many lanes.
That's why it's a broad way.
There are many lanes on that broad way that lead to destruction if you want to look at it like a highway.
You've got the atheist over here, perhaps in this lane.
And then the independent fundamental Baptists who don't believe the Gospel over here in this one, and then you've got the Catholics and the Jehovah's Witnesses and go on and on, the Buddhists who don't believe the Gospel.
And they may point at these over here in this other lane and say they're condemned when the truth is every one of them on that broad road are condemned.
For the Samaritans, it's like they went from one end of a sinking ship to the other end of a sinking ship and thought they would be okay there.
And because man's goings are of the Lord, as the Proverbs told us, then it's also true that we're supposed to go where the Lord tells us.
If our goings are of the Lord, then we need to pay attention to where it is He wants us to go.
And in the Gospel, He's pointed the place where He wants us to go.
And that's the cross where Jesus died for sinners.
And from which He was taken and buried in a tomb and stayed there for three days and rose again on that third day.
That's where we go.
We don't go to the the baptistry for that answer.
We don't go down here to these steps, which are erroneously been called and altered.
God said there won't be any steps on my altar.
And that was an Old Testament altar.
Our altar is where?
It's the cross.
And God has pointed us to the cross through the gospel, and He's pointed us to a way that unlike the Samaritan's way, is not our own way.
It's a narrow way, in fact.
We were in the beautiful mountains of New Mexico.
On our vacation in a place they say it's 9000 feet above stress level.
Well, I don't know about that, but it was pretty.
But did you know there are some roads there and in East Texas as well?
Where if you see someone else coming, you've got to get over, get your wheels off the road a little bit so they can come by because there's not enough room for two vehicles to safely pass, especially if they got great big old side mirrors like some of these men who haul gooseneck trailers.
That's a narrow road, isn't it?
And the narrow road that leads to life is the one that Jesus said, "Few there be that find it.
" The Samaritans weren't on that one.
It was shown to them.
But they said, "No, we like this this Broadway over here.
" After all, wouldn't that appeal to the flesh?
I'll tell you this, if you and we did this one year, we'll never do it again.
We took my four wheel drive pickup up the side of a mountain and I mean the side of a mountain.
It was called a state highway in New Mexico, but it wasn't any more a highway than a cattle trail.
And there was room for one vehicle and it was snowing.
And I told my wife, I said, "You see those monster truck tracks?
That means somebody made it up there.
Let's just get in them and go.
" So I put her in four wheel drive and about halfway up that, and I mean there wasn't nobody out there.
We never saw another vehicle or person.
And about halfway up that hill, I came around a bend and I needed to keep my wheels spinning.
But I had to stop because there was a herd of Angus cattle in the middle of the road.
So I got out and she didn't get this on video.
I got out and I got rid of those cows.
Now I knew what to do with Angus cows.
I knew how to get them off the roadway.
Be patient, be firm, but don't be stupid.
Now, what would have been a better way, what would have been the way ever since then that I would go across that mountain?
Would it be on a narrow road or would it be on a big old highway?
Yes, the big highway.
That's the better way to get to where we were going, is a US highway that had been plowed and been treated.
And if I were to wreck out, I'd have help pretty close.
Because the flesh wants to do things that are easy.
And the flesh says, and rightly so in this case, take the wide road that leads across the mountain pass.
But the flesh is contrary to God's way.
God said it's a narrow road and no Samaritan said no.
Even though we weren't satisfied with our own way, and we've come up with a new way, we'll still not take that narrow road.
Now Romans chapter 1 verses 18 through 20.
Romans 1 verses 18 through 20 says, "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness, because that which may be known of God is manifest in them.
" In other words, it's shown in them.
"For God has shown it unto them, for the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen being understood from the creation of.
.
.
" ".
.
.
being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power in Godhead, so that they are without excuse.
" So in case somebody says, "Well, those Samaritans, I just feel sorry for them because they really didn't have a chance to know God like the Jews did.
" Yes, they did.
And we are without excuse.
And in fact, the wrath of God in this verse that I read you out of Romans is going to be revealed.
It's going to be shown.
It's going to be displayed upon all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, specifically men who held the truth in unrighteousness.
Now, that doesn't mean they held it like you would a baby.
That means they held it down like you would a prisoner.
They suppressed it.
The word "hold" means to seize in that verse, to hold it fast, to keep it from going somewhere.
Now, the Samaritans had the truth that the Jewish priests brought them as he taught them how they should fear the Lord.
But rather than holding the truth in righteousness, embracing it, having faith in it, which is what we do when we believe the gospel, when we believe any part of God's word, rather than doing that, rather than holding it in righteousness, they held it down in unrighteousness.
You remember how we marvel at the grace of God when he allowed that Jewish priest to be sent to Samaria to teach those Gentile invaders about the manner of the God of the land?
They had truth, didn't they?
And they held it down like a prisoner, rather than embracing it as their own.
After all, as the end of the verse tells us here in verse 34, whether the Samaritans kept their own rules or not, they still failed to do after the law and the commandments, which the Lord commanded the children of Jacob, whom he named Israel.
And that was the standard.
It always will be.
The Samaritans were not judged, and nobody will be judged on whether they've kept the rules of their own religion.
Did you know that?
There's a religion that believes to be saved.
You have to go back here and get dunked under that water.
And then you still have to watch it after you do that.
And so there are going to be people in that religion or those religions who believe that the standard by which they will be judged is were they baptized just in time?
And did they hold on and hold fast to the end?
They'll think that's how God's going to judge me.
And what Jesus, the righteous judge, will say at that great white throne judgment is, "Depart from me, I never knew you.
" It never was that you were baptized just in time.
It never was that once you were baptized that you did really well after that.
That never had anything to do with it.
It's the same question that Pilate asked.
"What shall I do then with Jesus, which is called the Christ?
" Now, let's look at verse 35 in our text.
2 Kings 17, verse 35, if you've just joined us.
Speaking of Israel here at the end of verse 34, "With whom the Lord had made a covenant and charged them, saying, 'You shall not fear other gods, nor bow yourselves to them, nor serve them, nor sacrifice to them.
'" Now, here we see a connection between the Samaritans' religious failings, the law, the commandments of the Lord and then of Israel.
And that connection is made on the basis of a covenant.
There in verse 35, look at it again.
"With whom the Lord had made a covenant.
" When God gave the ordinance of circumcision to the children of Israel, it was also binding upon the Gentiles or the strangers who were with them.
Did you know that?
Exodus 12, verse 49, which is the conclusion of that discussion about the circumcision of the Gentiles, it says, "One law shall be to him that is homeborn," that's the Israelite, "and unto the stranger that sojourneth among you.
" In other words, whether you were born an Israelite or you're a stranger, you're a Gentile, part of that mixed multitude, you got one law when it comes to circumcision.
And there it is.
When it came to the offering of a burnt offering, there was a law, one law, for Israelite and Gentile as well.
That's found in Numbers 15, verses 14 through 16.
Numbers 15, verses 14 through 16.
"And if a stranger sojourned with you, or whosoever be among you in your generations, and will offer an offering made by fire of a sweet savor unto the Lord, as ye do, so shall he do.
One ordinance shall be both for you of the congregation," which is what Israel was called sometimes, the congregation, "and also for the stranger that sojourneth with you, an ordinance forever in your generations, as ye are, so shall the stranger be before the Lord.
One law and one manner shall be for you and for the stranger that sojourneth with you.
" Now, sometimes people forget that.
They say, "Oh, the Old Testament was just for Jews.
" No, it wasn't, and I'm glad it wasn't.
I missed out on a lot.
And not only was there one law for the ordinances, but there was also one covenant.
As we're looking at the covenant the Lord made.
And if you listen to this, you, anybody who's listening, who think you're outcasts in the sight of the Lord, whether it's somebody who says, "Well, I feel kind of like those Samaritans do.
" Living in the cities of Samaria.
Or today, maybe you think because of some defect in your body, your heritage, in your mind, that you cannot be joined to the covenant of the Lord.
This passage is also for those who claim God was not merciful to the Gentiles in the Old Testament.
So here it is.
I'm going to read eight verses here out of Isaiah 56, verses 1-8.
Isaiah 56, verses 1-8.
"Thus saith the Lord, 'Keep ye judgment and do justice, for my salvation is near to come and my righteousness to be revealed.
Blessed is the man that doeth this and the Son of man that layeth hold on it, that keepeth the Sabbath from polluting it and keepeth his hand from doing any evil.
Neither let the Son of the stranger that hath joined himself to the Lord speak, saying, 'The Lord hath utterly separated me from his people.
' Neither let the eunuch say, 'Behold, I am a dry tree.
' For thus saith the Lord unto the eunuchs that keep my Sabbath, and choose the things that please me and take hold of my covenant, even unto them will I give in mine house and within my walls a place and a name better than of sons and of daughters.
I will give them an everlasting name.
" Now see, God's teaching the spiritual truth here, not just an earthly truth to the children of Israel.
"I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off.
Also the sons of the stranger that join themselves to the Lord to serve him and to love the name of the Lord, to be his servants, everyone that keepeth the Sabbath from polluting it and taketh hold of my covenant.
Even them will I bring to my holy mountain and make them joyful in my house of prayer.
Their burnt offerings and their sacrifices shall be accepted upon mine altar, for mine house shall be called in house of prayer for all people.
The Lord God which gathereth the outcast," did you hear that word?
"Outcasts of Israel saith, yet will I gather others to him besides those that are gathered unto him.
" Now if you've been with us long, you can't help but see at the end of that verse or think about Jesus and our gathering together unto him that was prophesied in the Thessalonians letters and other places as well.
God is telling Isaiah who's telling the people, it's not just these racial Jews who are going to be gathered together to him.
It's the stranger who believes the same way.
Now if you read that passage again, you'll say, "Boy, there's a lot of stuff they have to do.
" Listen, nobody's going to be able to do any of that fully and correctly.
It's not our works.
It wasn't their works that led them to salvation.
So not just the Israelite, but the stranger, the eunuch, the son of the stranger, the outcast.
God said, "Even them.
" And that means even you.
But the covenant to which you may be joined and to which they were invited to be joined is the gospel covenant because that's what all of those covenants, all of those ordinances pointed to.
And the fact that God said to Isaiah, "All these people, all these strangers, Israelites, doesn't matter who they are.
" There's one way.
There's one covenant.
And though they were invited to keep the sacrifices and the ordinances and all that of the Old Testament, all of those would one day be fulfilled in the person of Jesus Christ.
And the covenant to which you may be joined then and now is the gospel covenant which was established by the Lord himself.
But haven't we learned that man has broken God's covenant?
How can he still be part of the covenant?
He's broken.
We have learned that.
In fact, listen to what the prophet Jeremiah wrote.
In Jeremiah, Chapter 11, verses 9 through 10.
Jeremiah 11, verses 9 through 10.
"And the Lord said unto me, 'A conspiracy is found among the men of Judah, and among the inhabitants of Jerusalem.
They are turned back to the iniquities of their forefathers, which refused to hear my words.
And they went after other gods to serve them.
The house of Israel and the house of Judah have broken my covenant, which I made with their fathers.
" Oh no.
Through Isaiah, God said that those who take hold of the covenant would be gathered to him.
But not only had Judah and Israel broken that covenant, but there was not any person who had kept it perfectly.
So that offering of, "If you join the covenant, I'll gather you unto myself.
" In their flesh, every one of them made themselves ineligible because they broke the covenant.
And God's a God who keeps covenants.
He doesn't appreciate covenant breaking because he never breaks a covenant.
Somebody, because nobody could keep it perfectly, somebody had to keep it perfectly, didn't they?
They had to keep the covenant, and that's what Jesus did.
So not only did Jesus establish the covenant, and keep God's end of it, but he also kept man's end of it.
That's the only way you have an opportunity to be saved.
I'd like to use a New Testament passage to illustrate just one example of how Jesus did that.
In Matthew chapter 4 verses 8 through 10.
Matthew chapter 4 verses 8 through 10, and this was the third temptation.
Satan tried to perpetrate against the Lord.
"And it said again, the devil taketh him," that's Jesus, "up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them.
And saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me.
" Now let me just stop right there.
You may say, "Wait a minute, I thought God was the God of all creation.
He is.
But because of what happened in the garden, when man said, 'We are no longer under the government of God because we want our own way,' and Adam and Eve chose to sin, they removed themselves.
They said, "We don't want God's government.
" And so they're now under the government of the prince of the power of the air, who is also called the God of this world, and that's Satan.
So if you're wondering, "How would Satan have the authority to say, 'I'll give you Jesus all of these kingdoms if you'll bow down and worship me?
' Then Jesus saith unto him, Get thee hence, Satan, for it is written, thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.
" Jesus doesn't want this old corrupt kingdom.
He's not going to be king over this old corrupt kingdom.
He's going to redeem it.
That, yes, he is the king of kings and lord of lords.
Yes, at no time does Satan ever have authority over the Lord Jesus Christ.
But what Satan was offering him was the kingdoms of this world.
Now, if you said, "I want to live forever and I want to be over the kingdoms of this world," just like they are, that'd be a terrible thing to say, because sin would abound and abound and abound and iniquity, and the love of many would wax cold.
That's what you'd be over.
That's what you'd be a part of.
Would you want to live forever in that?
No.
Jesus wasn't interested in what Satan was offering him.
Jesus is going to take what Satan offered him and he's going to do away with it.
He's going to redeem it and that will be his kingdom.
That's where we'll live, those who believe on him.
Now, in the Jeremiah passage, we were told that Israel and Judah had gone after other gods and served them.
And in the Matthew passage, I just read you, Satan tried to get Jesus to do the same thing.
He tried to get Jesus to exchange the whole world, the kingdoms of this world, for his own soul.
But Jesus obeyed God's word and did not do it.
In Matthew chapter 16, which is down the road from what I just read you, Matthew 16, verse 26, Jesus said, "For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?
Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?
" So Satan, in that scene there in Matthew 4, tried to get Jesus to make a trade.
You bow down to me, you worship me, that's your own soul.
It was impossible that Jesus would do it, but that was the offer.
And I'll give you the world.
This will be a great prophet to you.
You know, mankind, beginning with Adam, exchanged his soul for the prophet of the whole world.
The same deal that Satan offered Jesus except in different words.
In Genesis chapter 3 and verse 5, when Satan was trying to convince Eve to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, he said, "For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and you shall be as God's knowing good and evil.
" And both Adam and Eve accepted that offer.
They exchanged their souls, which brought spiritual death upon the human race, or physical death upon the human race, and spiritual death in the way of being separated from God.
Now they had originally seen that as a great prophet, hadn't they?
They said, "Wow, Eve even listed the things that made that fruit look wonderful to her.
She saw that it was pleasant to the eyes, could make one wise, looked like it tasted good, all of the good things about it.
" In other words, she thought about the prophet that would come, as Satan told it to her, if she would just eat of that fruit.
What was it that God cursed after all that?
He cursed the ground for Adam's sake.
You think that that's prophet eating from this tree that I told you not to eat from?
Tell you what we'll do.
You want the whole world?
You can have it, but it's going to be a cursed world because you brought sin into it.
Man had broken the covenant with God by breaking the one law that he gave them.
He gave them one law.
And after they broke that law, God shed the blood of those innocent animals, and he clothed Adam and Eve, who had tried to clothe themselves in what they thought would be acceptable to God.
And when he did that, God showed them that another must die for you to be clothed in righteousness, the righteousness that sin took away.
They had perfect fellowship with God in that garden before sin.
And where they failed, Jesus would succeed.
And the covenant they broke would be kept in their stead by Jesus.
And it wasn't limited to Adam and Eve, nor to the Israelites, but it was kept on behalf of the human race, so that as Isaiah wrote, not even the stranger or the Samaritan in our text could say, "The Lord has utterly separated me from his people.
" Jesus was both the lawgiver and the lawkeeper on our behalf.
And when we exchange or he exchanged his soul, his life for the unrighteousness of the whole world, he exchanged his righteousness to redeem us back to God because we had no chance of keeping the covenant any more than these Samaritans did in our text, or the Israelites, to whom, or about whom this verse 35 is referring specifically.
And he exchanged his righteousness to redeem us back to God, that we may be complete, no longer strangers, no longer eunuchs, no longer Samaritans or Israelites in the flesh, no longer outcasts, but gathered unto him as one, just like Isaiah said, so said Paul.
And yet the Samaritans rejected that offer.
And many Israelites today rejected the covenant keeper's offer as well.
In fact, most people do today.
That's why there's a broadway that leads to destruction.
Now look back in your text there in verse 35, "with whom the Lord had made a covenant and charged them.
" Now let's look at this phrase and charge them.
What does it mean to charge, at least based upon what we're reading in our text?
It's the same word translated as commanded.
So if one has been charged, one has been commanded.
And that's how we first see it used in the Old Testament, in fact, is the word commanded.
Back in Genesis chapter two verses 16 through 17, Genesis two 16 through 17, "and the Lord God commanded the man," that means he charged the man, "commanded the man, saying, 'of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not eat of it, for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.
'" So you notice this charge consisted of a positive command and a prohibitive command.
"Thou mayest freely eat," that was the positive command or charge.
So we learn here that some charges are commands to enjoy liberty and some charges are commands to avoid sin.
So when people say, "Oh, the Bible's just a bunch of you shall not and thou shall not," and yeah, it is, it's protection, but that's not all it is.
It's also full of, "thou mayest freely eat, however one that is thirsty come and let him drink.
" The Bible also has that, that's a charge too.
"Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved in thy house.
" That's a charge.
So we learn that some charges are commands to enjoy liberty, in this case eating of every tree of the garden with one exception, as we looked at earlier.
Now the prohibitive part of this charge that God gave Adam and Eve in the garden is very specific and it comes with a result.
Not only do I not want you to do this, but here's what's going to happen if you do.
God did not leave it up to Adam and Eve's imagination or judgment to figure out which of the trees in the garden were bad for them.
You know what they'd have done?
They'd have found the one that they didn't think was as pretty as the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
They said, "Well, maybe it's this one over here, this bad.
" No, that's one of the good trees.
I don't really know, but God didn't leave it up to them to decide which one it was.
He named it and that was merciful.
What if they would have unintentionally eaten of the wrong tree?
And so, "Well, we didn't know it was that one.
You never told us.
" He named it and they certainly knew which one it was.
And not only did God tell them which tree it was, he told them what was going to happen if they ate from it.
That's also merciful.
Do you know that?
If he says, "I would need of that tree.
" And he said, "Why not, Lord?
" And he said, "Oh, I just wouldn't.
I'd just advise against it.
" That'd be cruel because it would again leave it up to their imagination as to what would happen if they ate of that tree.
God said, "If you eat from that tree," he specifically said, "thou shalt surely die, and the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.
" That's the worst sentence you can receive when it comes to breaking a law, the death penalty.
At least on earth it is, the death penalty.
The spiritual death penalty is actually the worst that you can receive and will receive when you reject the gospel.
Now, we'll have to stop right there.
I know, Brother Doug.
And we'll pick it up next week in verse 35.
Let's pray.
Father, thank you for those who were able to come.
And Lord, I pray the others who were not were able to tune in and to listen to this message and to learn from the truth that's in your word.
And, Father, I pray during the next hour that you would give our pastor the same liberty you gave me today to take what you've taught him, to teach it, to give the people the sense of it, and help them understand it.
So we will not have wasted our time here, but it will have been a great profit to the teacher and to the student as well.
We ask this in Jesus' name.
Amen.
