Episode Transcript
Second Kings chapter 18 verse 32 is our text this morning.
It's 10 o'clock, time to start.
Last week, time failed us to finish talking about the land of oil olive.
I enjoyed that lesson.
And particularly we were talking about the candlestick that was between the two olive trees in Zachariah's vision.
Now if you weren't here last week and didn't tune in, you're probably wondering what in the world we're talking about.
Well I'll quickly review some of it in a moment, but I do encourage you to go back and listen to the recorded lesson from last week.
And you know if a person really wants to learn what's being taught and a person misses a lesson, then he or she is undoubtedly going to go back at some point and listen to the lesson before.
And let me say a few words about that before we continue.
Well my grandfather was a pastor.
People who missed Sunday school or missed the 11 o'clock hour just had to rely on someone else telling them what he preached in order to catch up.
There was not any other than a cassette recorder back then.
There really wasn't a way to do that.
And he even preached before cassette recorders, so he was an old timer.
But the reality is that most people were okay not catching up, and sometimes I think it's that way today.
It's just for some reason, it's not important to them to catch up on a lesson.
Now if a person has a mini-series they're watching and they miss an episode, before they watch that next episode, I can promise you they're going to go back and watch the one they missed, aren't they?
Now you don't raise your hand, but you've done that before.
And that's okay.
But that's just kind of a carnal thing we do.
We don't want to miss out on something, and so we go back and catch up.
I remember being in churches where the service was recorded on CDs or on cassette tape.
And in order to catch up on what you missed, you had to order a CD or a cassette tape from the church.
You had to go to the sound man or whoever was in charge of that and say, "Hey, I need for you to burn me a copy of Brother So-and-So's message two Sundays ago.
I missed church.
I was out of town and I want to listen to it."
And so that church staff member would have to go and put the time in and burn the CD or copy the cassette tape for you.
And sometimes there was a nominal fee for that just for the equipment or a love offering that you might give.
But it was a lot of trouble.
And so for somebody to go to that kind of trouble, it's impressive to me.
Now today we've got Facebook.
We can record everything we do and archive it.
And it doesn't cost you anything.
It's free.
It's convenient.
And if you can't be here, you can listen online.
If you can't listen online, then you can listen to the recorded version.
So it's always available for you.
And almost everyone has Facebook.
I know there are some people who don't.
And if you don't have Facebook and there's ever a lesson that you want to listen to, whether it's one I'm teaching or Brother Fulton, let us know.
And we will get you a copy somehow.
If you want to hear it that bad, we'll make sure that you have a copy.
So nobody's left out when it comes to that.
And one final thing, I appreciate the diligence of our tech team.
And they're the ones that make it possible for the shut-ins, the people who are sick or somebody who's out of town, out of state, or even out of country to listen to a quality broadcast of our services.
They take it seriously.
And I also appreciate those of you who have told me that you listened to a Sunday school lesson two or three times during the week.
To God be the glory, now to the candlestick.
Verse 32, hopefully everyone's there.
If you're just tuning in, we are in 2 Kings, Chapter 18.
And verse 32, I'll reread the whole verse.
This is Rab Sheikah speaking to the children of Israel in Judah, specifically in Jerusalem, trying to convince them to come to Assyria voluntarily for now.
He said, "Until I come and take you away to a land like your own land, a land of corn and wine, a land of bread and vineyards, a land of oil, olive, and of honey, that ye may live and not die."
Now, what's the implication there?
If you don't come with me, you're going to die.
He had already told them some bad news back a few verses ago.
But he spent the last few verses telling them how good Assyria is, how much you're going to enjoy yourself in Assyria, and all the wonderful things that we had there.
And we have taken a lot of time to compare each thing that he offers to what they already have that God has given them.
And so far, Assyria has failed the test, haven't they?
Now, what about this candlestick that was between the two olive trees?
If you listened to us last week, it was in Zechariah, because I was trying to show you what the Bible says about olive oil or oil in that context.
And there was so much represented by this candlestick which gives light.
And we're reminded that Jesus is the light of the world.
So any teaching about light, whether it was the light of the sun, the sun, the S-U-N, or the light from a candlestick, the light versus the darkness, those all point to the Lord Jesus Christ.
And we know that God created light.
He didn't create Jesus Christ because Jesus has always been.
He's not a created being, as some religions believe that He is.
And we know that candlesticks don't burn by themselves, do they?
Any more than the sun burns by itself.
That light has to be given to it.
In fact, both the sun, the S-U-N, and the candlestick, in order to be lit, somebody has to do it.
And to maintain that light, someone has to continually provide whatever it is that causes that light to burn.
Now, in regard to the candlestick in the tabernacle and then in the temple later on, the children of Israel failed in God's commandment to always keep the light burning.
They just didn't do it right.
And in fact, those candles that they failed to keep lit represented one whose light never goes out.
So how would you like to have the responsibility as a Levite of keeping that candlestick and its candles burning continually?
Now, that would be, you'd have to be on the ball, wouldn't you?
You can't let those lights go out.
But it would be a lot easier to do that if you knew what those lights represented and if you believed what those lights represented.
That light represents the Lord Jesus Christ.
So any time someone were to enter into the holy place or to look into the holy place or to see the light inside, even from outside, they see the light of the candlestick lighting up the inside of that holy place.
They might ask, "Why is the light always on?"
And such a priest could tell them that light represents the light of the world, the Savior who will come and ultimately separate the light from the darkness.
And we'll never have to be in darkness.
God's people will never have to be in darkness because of that light.
Now, it'd be a lot easier to keep that light going if you truly believed that, wouldn't it?
You know why it's so in one way very easy?
I don't have to get motivated to preach God's Word.
I don't have to work it up and go, "Man, let me get a good night's sleep so hopefully I can preach God's Word."
I've preached God's Word on about 30 minutes of sleep after working all night.
And it's difficult, but I don't have to get motivated to do it.
That motivation's already there because I've accepted and embraced that God's Word is what I need more than anything else, God's given me the ability to teach it.
And so that's what you need to hear from me more than anything else.
You don't need my war stories.
You don't need me to brag about things.
You need me to teach you God's Word.
And whatever illustrations we use are not supposed to point to me.
They're supposed to point to the truth that's being taught in God's Word.
So this candlestick, you wonder, "Well, why would the lights go out?"
Well, you had people who just didn't really believe the message.
They thought, "Well, here we go.
We've got to light the candlestick again."
I'm getting tired of lighting this candlestick.
Can you hear it now?
And so the candlestick doesn't get lit for a day, and then for a few days, and then for a week.
And the work of the tabernacle and the temple finally ceases, and the doors are shut, and the abominations occur.
There's another thing we should learn about this candlestick.
In Revelation 1 and verse 20.
Now remember the purpose of talking about this candlestick is the oil olive that was used to supply the fuel to keep it lit.
Revelation 1.20 says, "The mystery of the seven stars, which thou sawest in my right hand, and the seven golden candlesticks."
The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches.
Now those are the messengers.
If you were here to learn the book of Revelation with us, that's been a while, but you may remember that.
"And the seven candlesticks which thou sawest are the seven churches."
Yes, even in the tabernacle, long before the Lord's church was preaching the gospel in the New Testament, long before the book of Revelation was written by the Apostle John, the gospel was being preached through those candlesticks.
That's why that light had to stay burning.
They testified of the light of the world.
Jesus and His light never goes out.
So to teach the lesson, you've got to keep the candlesticks burning.
In John 9, verses 4-5, Jesus said, "I must work the works of him that sent me while it is day, for the night cometh when no man can work.
And as long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world."
Now Jesus was the visible presence of God, the express image of God while he was in the world.
Well, he was in the world as a man for about 33 years.
And if the light only burns for 33 years, you and I have had it.
We're done.
And thankfully, the light burned before he came into the world as a man, and the light burned after he left the world as a man.
But he called the seven candlesticks in John's vision the churches.
That's the church right there.
Now that ought to tell you something about our responsibility to preach the gospel, to keep that light burning.
Not by our own human efforts, but by obedience to what the Lord said about preaching the gospel.
That's why Paul wrote to Timothy, "Preach the gospel in season and out of season.
Reprove, rebuke, exhort with all long suffering and doctrine all the time."
And that's why we do what we do here.
And when Jesus was resurrected and returned to his Father's right hand, who was the visible representation of God in the world?
Who were those candlesticks?
They were, and they are, the churches.
So as the candlestick on the lampstand represents the churches, which is the ground and pillar of truth, the Lord Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit bear witness that what we preach is true.
And the oil olive from those two olive trees in Zechariah's vision both sustained the light and witnessed the light that burns in this dark world when we preach the gospel of Jesus Christ, who's the light of the world.
The Holy Spirit bears witness to the gospel.
The Lord Jesus Christ bears witness to the gospel.
In Matthew chapter 5 verses 14 through 16, Matthew 5 verses 14 through 16, speaking to his disciples in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, "Ye are the light of the world.
A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid.
Neither do men light a candle and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick, and it giveth light to all that are in the house.
Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father, which is in heaven."
I love how Jesus explains the light and the candlestick.
The Old Testament candlestick was not under a bushel.
It wasn't hidden.
It was on, as you enter the tabernacle from the eastern side, that candlestick was, that lampstand, they're interchangeable.
That's what the words mean.
The Hebrew word for candlestick is lampstand, so it's interchangeable.
It was on your left side.
So you walk in that tabernacle, you look to the left, and there is that golden lampstand with those candles on it.
You look to the right, and there's your table of showbread.
You look straight ahead, there's the altar of incense.
You've just passed the brazen altar and the laver outside, and then there's the holy of holies on the inside, just to jar your memory a little bit.
But that candlestick was not under a bushel.
It was on a lampstand, and it gave light to all that were in the house.
And its light was supposed to continually burn, not flicker and die out, and then maybe have light again when one of the priests said, "Oh, the candle went out.
We better go light that back up," kind of like you might do a fireplace on a winter morning.
"Oh, it looks like it went out.
I better fire it back up."
And the olive oil that was in those bowls, in those candles, was pure.
It wasn't mixed with water or gas or anything else.
It was pure olive oil, and it was to be continually supplied to the lights so they would burn always.
That's what the Scripture tells us.
Now, what was the weakness of those burning lights on the candlestick?
What was the weakness of that whole setup?
Well, the weakness was that it depended on people to bring the oil and people, namely the priests, to keep the oil in the lamps.
So if the people did not bring the oil, as God commanded them to do, then the lamps would not be lit.
The priests could stand there all day wishing that the lamps would stay lit, but if no oil was brought, they had no oil to put in them.
And if the people brought the oil, but the priests didn't put it in the lamps, there would still be no light.
So you could have barrels of oil stacked up at the door, but if a priest was disobedient and said, "Well, I'm not going to put them in there.
I've got other things to do," then there would be nothing going on with that candlestick.
It would just be sitting there like a piece of unused furniture.
And in fact, that very thing happened for years and years, many years at a time.
There was nothing going on in the tabernacle at all.
You had seven pieces of furniture, a tent, a courtyard, and a holy place with nothing going on.
And even worse, abominations were done inside what should have been a very holy place.
And as with other things in the tabernacle and in the law itself, what we see is that man is wholly incapable of doing and sustaining that which pleases God.
If he says, "Hey, I did something that pleased God," can you sustain that?
Your flesh is sinful.
You can try all you want in the flesh, but you're not going to be able to do that.
And depending on man to bring olive oil and depending on priests to keep olive oil in the lamps always ended in failure and disappointment.
Now, stay with me here because we're going to get back to the olive oil of Assyria in a moment.
But we need to learn a lot about the olive oil that God commanded to be used.
And I want to refresh your memory a little bit about the construction, the original construction of the candlestick, the first time God gave a command to construct this candlestick, also called a lampstand.
And it's found in Exodus chapter 25, verses 31 through 32.
Exodus 25, verses 31 through 32, where God commanded Moses, "And thou shalt make a candlestick of pure gold, of beaten work shall the candlestick be made.
His shaft and his branches and his bowls, his knops and his flowers shall be of the same.
And six branches shall come out of the sides of it, three branches of the candlestick on one side, and three branches of the candlestick on the other side."
So you have three and three, and you've got the one in the middle, so that makes a total of seven.
Now, skipping down to verse 37 there in the same chapter of Exodus, Exodus 25, 37, we read, "And thou shalt make the seven lamps thereof, and they shall light the lamps thereof, that they may give light over against it."
Now that you see that in your mind, now that your memory's refreshed, let me go back to Zechariah's vision for a moment, the one we read last week.
And I want to reread what I read last week from that passage, part of it anyway.
This is found in Zechariah 4, verses 1 through 2.
"And the angel that talked with me came again, and waked me as a man that has wakened out of his sleep, and said unto me, What seest thou?
And I said, I have looked, and behold, a candlestick all of gold with a bowl up on top of it, and his seven lamps thereon, and seven pipes to the seven lamps, which are upon the top thereof."
Now skip down to verses 12 through 14, that would be Zechariah 4, 12 through 14.
"And I answered again, and said unto him," this is Zechariah answering this angel, "What be these two olive branches, which through the two golden pipes empty the golden oil out of themselves?
And he answered me and said, Noest thou not what these be?
And I said, No, my Lord.
Then said he, These are the two anointed ones that stand by the Lord of the whole earth."
Now I told you last week, I believe those two anointed ones represented God the Son and God the Holy Spirit.
Now remember, this is a vision that we're looking at here.
That's why there are a couple of different things about this lampstand than there were in the book of Exodus.
This is a vision.
This is a teaching vision.
What did you notice was different between the golden lampstand in Exodus and the one in Zechariah's vision?
The thing that stood out to me the most were the pipes.
The pipes.
The lampstand in Exodus did not have pipes.
It was one beaten work.
It was made out of one piece of gold and fashioned into all of these things.
It had the shaft, the branches, the bowls, the knobs, the flowers, and that was it.
It didn't have any pipes.
How did the oil get into the candles?
It was put there by a man every day, every night, all day, all night, and it was supposed to burn continually.
Now the Hebrew word for pipes that I just read you out of Zechariah is found one time in the Old Testament, and that's in the verse that we just read.
So the lampstand in Zechariah's vision had pipes, and those pipes were the means by which the two witnesses emptied out their golden oil, which went into the lamps.
Now as long as those witnesses kept piping oil to the lamps in this vision, the lamps would keep burning, wouldn't they?
And only God in his three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and specifically in this vision, I believe it was the Son and the Holy Spirit, only God could continually give light to those lamps, because God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, never run out of oil.
And the vision said those two witnesses stood beside the Lord of the whole earth, which I believe is represented by the candlestick in the vision.
So there's your trinity right there, isn't it?
The two witnesses, God the Father and God the Son, or excuse me, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit, stand beside the Lord of the whole earth.
There's your trinity, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit.
Now I doubt many of you have ever studied that Zechariah passage, and if you have, you may have arrived at a different viewpoint than I did, and that's okay, as long as it's scriptural, as long as you can support it scripturally.
And I certainly welcome any well thought out interpretation if you have one, but I believe we've learned an awful lot about the olive oil, which the children of Israel and Judah already have at their disposal.
Now, how does the olive oil, about which we've read, compare with the olive oil from Assyria?
Well those Assyrian olive trees may have been beautiful, and the oil from the olives may have been fresh and shining, but just like the land of bread that could not give life, the olive oil of Assyria could not give light.
Oh, it could be put in a candlestick, all right, and burn, but it would have an end.
There would be a time when it wouldn't burn anymore.
Men would stop bringing oil.
They'd say, "Hey, this is getting more expensive than Joe Biden's gas."
Yes, I did that.
I told my daughter the other day, I said, "I try not to be political up there, just teach God's word."
Sometimes something like that will slip out, though.
So men stop bringing oil, that's a problem, isn't it?
And you know that would happen in Assyria.
And the ones who attend to those lamps, if such oil was used to be burned in Assyria, would one day fail to keep the oil in the lamps.
They'd say, "Why do we have to do this?
Other people aren't doing this.
He's not working as hard as I am."
The olive oil, in fact, would one day run out, wouldn't it?
You can only grow so many olive trees in Assyria or anywhere else.
And you know those are the same earthly limitations we saw in the tabernacle itself when it was left to the faithfulness of men.
It depended on the faithfulness of men, which I believe was an overarching lesson God was showing us.
Yes, they were supposed to keep it, but we're supposed to keep every single commandment, every law perfectly, aren't we, in order to be accepted by God.
But we can't do it, so we depended on the one who did.
But most importantly of all, that Assyrian olive oil that Rab Sheikah said is so good, that Assyrian olive oil did not point to the light of the world.
Their use of olive oil in Assyria would not teach you about the Lord Jesus Christ.
It would give those in darkness a little bit of light for a little while, but only earthly darkness.
That light would go out when those people died.
It would go out when the corrupt earth is burned with fire.
That Assyrian prophet, I'm sure they had many, would not get to enjoy a vision like Zechariah had, because the Assyrian God with a little gee and its two witnesses could not have pipes that supplied the lamps with oil.
Their unholy trinity was the world, the flesh, and the devil.
Their unholy desires were the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.
They had nothing to teach spiritually.
They walked in darkness.
In fact, spiritual light would expose their evil deeds, wouldn't it?
And further, that Assyrian oil did not bear witness to the truth.
It did not represent the Holy Spirit or Jesus Christ.
And if you remember our lesson last week or the week before, Christos, which is the Greek word for Christ, means anointed.
It did not represent the Holy Spirit or anointed one, Jesus Christ.
And that Assyrian oil could only burn for a while.
It could be used to cook, flavor food, maybe give light, but only for a while.
And then either the user would perish from the presence of the olive oil or the olive oil would perish from the presence of the user.
What kind of lesson is that?
And in death, the olive oil would bring no comfort to the one who relied upon it for light and food.
And this is the story of life in Assyria under the Assyrian covenant, about which we learn further in the next few words of 2 Kings 1832.
So if you've left that text, come back to it, please.
And let's look at the next promise here.
He said, "Rabshika said to these Jews, it's a land of oil, olive, and of honey."
Deuteronomy chapter 8 verses 6 through 8.
This is Moses to the Jews.
Therefore thou shalt keep the commandments of the Lord thy God to walk in his ways and to fear him.
For the Lord thy God bringeth thee into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths that spring out of the valleys and hills, a land of wheat and barley and vines and fig trees and palm granites, a land of oil, olive, and honey.
Now we have seen the promise of Rabshika speaking on behalf of his king Sennacherib that the children of Israel before they left for Assyria could enjoy their own vines, their own fig trees, and drink from their own cisterns.
Now how about that?
The enemy gives you permission to enjoy the things that God's already given you to enjoy.
We don't need his permission, do we?
Now in the first place here we learned that honey was a benefit that God had already promised Israel in the land to which he would bring them.
It was a land flowing with milk and honey.
So the implication by Rabshika was that the olive oil of Assyria was like the olive oil of Judah.
It was just as good.
And that the honey of Assyria was like the honey of Judah.
You're going to love it.
In the Old Testament we see the phrase "land of milk and honey" quite often.
Now milk, that's a little easier.
That's what newborn babies drink until they're weaned from it on the stronger foods.
And if they're healthy then they never do return to their mother's milk.
And the spiritual truth with that is that a newborn Christian is on milk.
He's drinking milk spiritually.
That beginner's food.
Learning what the Bible calls the first principles of the oracles of God.
Learning what Brother Fulton is teaching next door in the Genesis to Jesus class which probably most of you, or at least many of you have gone through.
Maybe you've been through creation to Christ and Genesis to Jesus.
That's even better.
And he's doing that so that when people come in here and I make a reference, or the Bible makes a reference to something you don't say, "Where did that come from?"
You say, "I remember that."
I remember learning about that over here next door a few months ago or maybe a few years ago and that's what we want.
We'll try to build upon that.
You're drinking a lot more milk over there than you are here.
Here you may still be getting some milk.
But you're on the strong meat when you've moved to that next level of understanding the Bible.
But that newborn Christian, you maybe, is expected to grow on the basis of what he or she has learned and not to have to return to learning all over again what the gospel is.
Now you're going to learn more about the gospel.
You're going to learn some of the things about the gospel that you may not have understood.
But to have to learn again that you're a sinner and Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners, that he died a substitutionary death for sinners, which is what you've trusted in.
He was buried and rose again from the dead and went to the right hand of the Father and he's coming back one day for his people.
To have to go learn all that over again means it didn't take.
And that would be unusual if a person has made a true profession of faith.
If they say, "Yes, I do believe Jesus died for my sins.
He rose again for my justification."
I believe that.
That's mine.
Then you've drunk the milk.
Not the Kool-Aid, but the milk.
And so you're to go on to strong meat.
It's natural.
You're to eat that strong spiritual meat and we've covered that several times before.
So milk wasn't as hard to learn about for me as honey.
Learning what honey represents was not as easy, but as always, I just looked at what the Scriptures say about it and went from there.
That's always the answer or the beginning of the answer.
Look at what the Scriptures say and go from there.
Honey was sent with Jacob's sons when they went to Egypt to buy food during the famine in Genesis chapter 43.
The manna God gave to the children of Israel in Exodus chapter 16 was said to taste like wafers with honey.
Honey is sweet, but honey was not permitted in a meat offering.
Leviticus chapter 2 verse 11.
Leviticus 2 verse 11.
Here's the command about the meat offering.
"No meat offering which ye shall bring unto the Lord shall be made with leaven, for ye shall burn no leaven nor any honey in any offering of the Lord made by fire."
So while leaven made the bread rise and a meat offering was also a meal offering, it wasn't just flesh.
So while honey, or excuse me, leaven made the bread rise, honey would make the bread sweet, wouldn't it?
And neither of those was allowed in a burnt offering.
Now in the Bible, and perhaps you've heard this taught, I believe you have here, leaven in the Bible often speaks of sin.
It's a type of sin.
Here's a good New Testament reference for you on that.
It's 1 Corinthians 5 verses 7 through 8.
1 Corinthians 5 verses 7 through 8 where Paul wrote to this church, "Purge out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened, for even Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us.
Therefore let us keep the feast not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth."
So unleavened bread in the meat offering would speak of sincerity and truth on the part of the one making the offering.
And I'm sure there are other things it speaks of as well.
But it certainly would be that based on what Paul taught.
Now although we see honey mentioned several times in the Old Testament, it's only used in two accounts in the New Testament.
And one of those is recorded twice, the same account recorded in John, or excuse me, Mark 1.6 and Matthew 3.4.
And I'll read that from Mark chapter 1 verse 6.
This is the same description given of the diet of John the Baptist where it says, "And John was clothed with camel's hair and with a girdle of skin about his loins, and he did eat locusts and wild honey."
And the other account mentioning honey in the New Testament is found in Revelation chapter 10 verses 9 through 11.
Revelation 10 verses 9 through 11.
"Where the apostle John," not John the Baptist, but the apostle John, "had seen an angel in his vision, and John wrote, 'And I went unto the angel and said unto him, 'Give me the little book.'"
The angel had a book in his hand.
"And he said unto me, 'Take it and eat it up, and it shall make thy belly bitter, but it shall be in thy mouth sweet as honey.'
And I took the little book out of the angel's hand and ate it up, and it was in my mouth sweet as honey, and as soon as I had eaten it, my belly was bitter.
And he said unto me, 'Thou must prophesy.'"
That means to preach.
"Again before many peoples and nations and tongues and kings."
And John would go on and do that.
So that book was sweet to the taste in this vision, but it was bitter to the belly.
And as I was studying this, trying to make sure I gave you the right sense of it, I referred back to a lesson on Revelation 10, verses 9-10 taught by our pastor on April 10, 2016.
Now if you haven't been with us during that time, you didn't get to learn the book of Revelation.
So it's about an eight-year-old message, but it's ever so timely.
And I so appreciate the many verses he gave when he taught that passage.
I take notes, but I write down all the verses that the pastor uses, and you may do this too.
When I say, "This verse says that," you're going to write that down, because you may want to go later on and look that up again.
Read it for yourself.
Study it.
And what I've found in my case, and it may be so with Brother Fulton, is that when I have a passage that's difficult to me, I'm going to have a lot more scriptures that I refer to than otherwise.
If a passage is not as difficult for me to expound, I may not use a lot of other scriptures in the Bible, but when I see a lot of scriptures written down about a short verse or a small passage, then it tells me that the one who studied also may have had a challenging time with that, and I want it to be very sure that the sense he gave you of that passage was what the Bible has taught consistently.
And that's me making a bit of a supposition there, but he referenced 10 companion scriptures with many verses in there, and not including the text we studied.
And even though that was eight years ago, it told me that there was a challenge teaching that Revelation text.
And one of the kingdom truths I wrote down was this, "Man, it applies to what we're learning right now about Judah and their choice about whether to go enjoy the Assyrian honey and bread and all of that."
And that kingdom truth was, "The words of God should fill us so that the world's food has no place in us."
That was good.
"The word of God should fill us," now that should be the case of the people in Judah, "so that the world's food has no place in us."
That would be the food of Assyria.
It shouldn't sound good to Judah.
And as we try to apply what these other Bible passages teach about honey to the text we have here in 2 Kings, let's consider what was written in Leviticus chapter 2 verse 9, because here's a good spiritual lesson we're going to take from that.
Leviticus 2 verse 9, "And the priest shall take from the meat offering a memorial thereof and shall burn it upon the altar."
It is an offering made by fire of a sweet savor unto the Lord.
Now this is the same meat offering where no honey or leaven was allowed.
Honey, a natural sweetener, was not allowed in a meat offering that was ultimately a sweet savor to the Lord.
That meat offering was made sweet, not by man's contribution, but by man's obedience to the Lord.
God said, "Leave the honey out.
It's going to smell sweet to me, not because you burn it with honey, but because you obeyed my commandment.
You did it like I told you to do it."
And I also believe it is clear that the prophesying or preaching of God's Word is sweet as honey to the mouth of that faithful one who preaches it.
But the bitterness in the belly spoken of there in Revelation shows us that the preaching of those sweet words to the Gospel is done in bitterness.
In fact, here's a scripture that says that in Ezekiel chapter 2, the word of the Lord came to Ezekiel and told him to eat a book, and the contents of that book are described in verse 10.
So this is Ezekiel 2 verse 10 I'm quoting from.
"And he spread it before me," in the book, "and it was written within and without.
And there were written therein lamentations and mourning," M-O-U-R-N-I-N-G, "and woe."
Now that doesn't sound very tasty, does it?
Not to the flesh, but it's the truth of God's Word.
And in chapter 3, Ezekiel 3 verse 14, "He said, 'So the Spirit lifted me up and took me away, and I went in bitterness in the heat of my Spirit, but the hand of the Lord was strong upon me.'"
Judah and Assyria both had honey, earthly honey.
For Judah, this honey was not to be offered but eaten.
Their offerings to the Lord were not to be made sweet by their honey, but by their obedience.
And what was supposed to be sweet to Judah were the words of the Lord, just as they are to all of God's people, or are supposed to be.
But the words of the Lord were spiritually sweet to the taste.
That's why they're honey to us.
They're sweet to the taste spiritually, just like honey.
But in the belly they are bitterness, because those words pronounce judgment and lamentation and woe upon the disobedient children of Israel and upon lost sinners today, and in fact upon every rebellious sinner of all time.
And those sweet words are spiritual bitterness in the belly, because they're mostly rejected by those who hear them.
Have you ever read, maybe you spent time in the Bible and you learned a truth, you memorized a scripture, you heard a message or something from a message, and boy, it was sweet to you.
And you tried to share that with somebody and they went, "That's superstition.
That's bitterness in the belly."
Our friends, our family, maybe even some who are watching today, reject those sweet words.
The average person, as we close, the average person wants words that are sweet to the mouth and the belly.
Words that have no lamentation or sorrow or judgment, wrath, lake of fire.
And those were the sweet words the honey of Assyria represented.
An Assyrian meat offering would have had honey in it, but it still wouldn't be sweet to the Lord.
It'd be an abomination to him.
It'd be made in disobedience.
And Judah would make a grave mistake in going to that land of oil, olive, and honey, for though it were a good and pleasant land with oil, olive, and honey, it would lead Judah to disobedience and then destruction.
And with that, we'll close.
Let's pray.
Father, thank you for the truth of your word.
And Lord, I know it comes at us so fast sometimes.
It's hard to absorb it all.
But my prayer is that each one here has been taught of God, and that any of the weaknesses of the presentation or the presenter are moved to the side, that we may understand and embrace your truth and never long for the oil, olive, or the honey on the devil's plate.
And we pray it in Jesus' name.
Amen.
