Episode Transcript
Good morning, it's 10 o'clock and time for us to get started with our Bible study.
A good crowd in here this morning and I'm sure we have a good presence online.
You know I've checked from time to time the number of views that we have on the Sunday school lesson and then the 11 o'clock lesson.
And it's amazing sometimes there will be a hundred and fifty views for this Sunday school class.
And I always wonder what makes people tune in and tune right back out.
Because I know most of them probably do that.
But I'm still thankful that they got a taste of it and if they don't like it well they can go somewhere else.
But if they like it then I hope that those people will join us.
So if I'm catching you and you're viewing it right now don't turn us off.
Because you're going to get fed okay.
You got to get that in and we appreciate you.
We're in 2 Kings chapter 19.
Second Kings chapter 19 and last week we concluded verse 22 and learned how King Sennacherib the king of Assyria himself was accused of blaspheming and reproaching the Holy One of Israel.
And we learned how he exalted his voice.
That means he lifted it up.
And how he lifted up his eyes against the Holy One of Israel.
And the theme we explored was this.
Even though a king may use messengers to carry out his evil.
The king is still responsible as though he were the one carrying out the evil himself.
He's just as responsible.
And we learned over the last few weeks that the evil Sennacherib did against Israel was against the Holy One of Israel.
So it was not necessary for the Assyrians to stand directly in front of God if you will and reproach him.
Shake their finger in his face if you can imagine that.
By doing evil to Israel they did evil to the Holy One of Israel.
And from that we learned that how a person, any person, treats the members of the Lord's church is how they treat the Lord.
In our new text we're going to look at another facet of this truth.
Sennacherib's messengers did evil against Israel, which was evil against the Holy One of Israel.
And even though messengers were used, it was still Sennacherib who did the evil.
And just as Assyria could not say we didn't reproach the Lord, just Israel.
Sennacherib also could not say we didn't reproach the Lord or I didn't reproach you Lord.
It was those messengers over there.
God held Sennacherib accountable for the message.
He held the messengers accountable as we're going to see.
So today we're going to look at the responsibility of the messengers.
When they carry out the evil thing their king sent them to do.
And we'll find that these messengers cannot escape responsibility for the message they delivered by blaming the king who sent the message.
You perhaps have heard that saying, "Don't shoot the messenger."
Well listen, that doesn't apply here.
The messenger is worthy to be shot just like the one who sent the message if it's an evil message.
And to the wicked blaspheming Pharisees in John chapter 8 verse 44, now the Pharisees were messengers too.
Jesus said, "Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do."
He was a murderer from the beginning and abode not in the truth because there is no truth in him.
When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own, for he is a liar and the father of it.
Jesus said, "The lusts of your father ye will do."
Ye will do.
He held them accountable for what they did.
He didn't say, "Guys, you're fine.
It's the lusts of your father that I'm worried about, not what you do."
He held the messenger accountable just as much as he did the author of the sin.
And in this passage, the message was the speaking of a lie.
That's what the message was.
It was the lie that the Pharisees, or the many lies the Pharisees were telling.
And Jesus taught that the Pharisees who were speaking the lies were of their father the devil, who lies when he speaks.
And whether it be the devil who authored the lie or the Pharisees who spoke it, both were responsible.
And both would face the wrath to come.
Jesus didn't absolve the Pharisees of guilt for their lies by saying, "It's okay.
The devil made you do it.
I know.
It's not your fault."
And friend, it's not okay when you sin.
We know who the author of sin is, but it's not okay when you sin.
The devil did not make you do it.
So don't ever go around telling people, as cute as the saying may have been at some point, "Don't tell people, 'Well, the devil made me do it.
I didn't have a choice.'"
Yes, you did.
Just like Adam and Eve chose to eat of that forbidden fruit, they were both held responsible.
Now let's look at that, because when we look at that, we're going to have a little better understanding of how Sennacherib and his messengers were responsible for their evil against the Holy One of Israel.
So let's read verse 23 in our text, and then I'll read you a couple of places from Genesis to help us with our understanding.
If you just joined us, we're in 2 Kings chapter 19 verse 23.
"And these words come from Isaiah, and they are against Assyria.
He said, 'By thy messengers,'" that is, the messengers of the king of Assyria, "'Thou hast reproached the Lord, and hast said, 'With the multitude of my chariots I am come up to the height of the mountains, to the sides of Lebanon, and will cut down the tall cedar trees thereof, and the choice fir trees thereof, and I will enter into the lodgings of his borders and into the forest of his caramel.'"
Now I can tell you, we're not going to get halfway done with that verse today, because there are so many references in there that need to be explained.
And I like to take my time doing that.
Remember, it's like baloney.
We just cut off where we leave and pick up next time, right?
I don't have a certain number of words or verses I have to get in before the clock runs out.
That's the beauty of verse-by-verse teaching.
Isaiah said this to Sennacherib, he said, "'By thy messengers thou hast reproached the Lord.'"
That is, Sennacherib reproached the Lord by way of what he sent his messengers to say and to do.
We looked at his role in it, now we look at the messengers' role.
Look at the English word "by."
They're beginning of verse 23, "by."
That English word is translated from a Hebrew word that is normally translated as the word "hand."
This right here.
There were 44 times in the Old Testament it's translated as the word "by."
There are over 1,300 times it's translated as the word "hand."
That's the image that you have.
"By" is not just a two-letter word that gets us into the verse.
It's a very important part of the verse.
"By thy messengers thou hast reproached the Lord."
As we often do, let's look at the first use of the Hebrew word that is translated "by," but normally is translated "hand."
We're going to look at the first use of it in the Bible.
It's found in Genesis 3, verses 22 through 24.
Genesis 3, verses 22 through 24 if you want to write that verse down and I will read it to you.
"And the Lord God said," now this was after Adam and Eve's sin, "and the Lord God said, 'Behold, the man has become as one of us, to know good and evil.'
And now lest he put forth his hand," there's your Hebrew word, "and take also of the tree of life, and eat and live forever, therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden to till the ground from whence he was taken.
So he drove out the man, and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden cherubim, and a flaming sword which turned every way to keep the way of the tree of life."
Now the hand is an instrument of the body, and it is told what to do by the brain with the exception of what's called the reflex arc.
When your finger touches a stove, the message doesn't have to go all the way to your brain to tell you to take your finger off.
The timing of the reflex arc is between 10 and 30 milliseconds.
The average human reaction time when you realize a threat up here and you do something about it is about a second and a half before you actually react.
So that's just for y'all who are really interested in that.
Reflex arc goes from the sensory nerves in your finger, those use that as an example, to your spinal cord and right back out to a motor neuron which says, "Get that finger off the stove."
And it happens like that, doesn't it?
But the brain is going to record that moment and say, "Hey, that was hot.
That stove caused me an injury and I'm not going to touch it again if it's within my power."
But the brain signals for the hand to do something, and the normally functioning hand is going to do it.
If I want to pick up this Kleenex, my brain says, "Yeah, pick the Kleenex up."
A lot of complex things happen in the body for that to occur.
You may remember that when God confronted Adam and Eve, they pointed their fingers somewhere else, didn't they?
They went like this.
Adam pointed at Eve.
He said, "It's this woman you gave me."
And Eve pointed at the serpent.
She said, "The serpent did beguile me or he tricked me, he deceived me."
And Sarah was a little girl, a little bitty thing.
If she ran into a wall, she would say, "That wall, that wall was to blame.
It was in her path."
She's overcome that.
But it was cute.
It's how we do.
And it wasn't cute to God in the garden, let me tell you that.
It is one of them, a four-year-old does it, but not in the garden.
And Eve pointed at the serpent, said, "He did beguile me."
Yes, the serpent was held accountable for his sin, but Eve was accountable for hers as well.
And although Eve was accountable for her sin of giving the fruit to her husband, Adam was accountable for eating the fruit.
Looking back at the phrase in Genesis 3.22, "Lest he put forth his hand," because we're studying that same Hebrew word in our text.
It's the word "by."
"Lest he put forth his hand."
We see how God holds the messenger accountable, not just the author of the sin.
Our text in 2 Kings says, "By thy messengers thou hast reproached the Lord."
Sennacherib's messengers were Rabshika and all those men who were with him.
Satan's messenger in the garden was the serpent.
Eve's messengers were her hand and her mouth.
That hand took the fruit and put it in her mouth and she ate of it.
And God said, "If you eat, you're going to die."
So the hand and the mouth were involved.
Those were her messengers.
And she couldn't say, "Lord, I had nothing to do with this.
It was my hand and it was my mouth."
Blame them.
Well, that doesn't make any sense, does it?
That would excuse all behaviors that are done with the hand, all of the things that are said by the mouth.
But they cannot be excused.
In fact, think about Adam's messengers.
They were also his hand and mouth.
And by their hand and mouth, they partook of the fruit.
And notice this, God did not separate the man and the woman whom he joined together.
He held both of them accountable.
He didn't say, "Adam, I'm going to leave you in the garden.
It's not your fault.
This is between the serpent and the woman and they're gone.
He's going to crawl on his belly and she's going to travail in childbirth.
But you, sir, get to stay in the garden because it wasn't your idea."
God didn't say, "You know what, Adam?
I'm going to cut off your hand and I'm going to remove your tongue and your teeth from your mouth because they're the offenders.
You, sir, are fine."
He took both of them regardless of their roles in this sin and he said, "You're out, and serpent, you're cursed.
You're crawling on your belly the rest of your life."
God could have said, "I will separate the woman from the man because she's a bad influence on him."
But instead, he removed them from the garden, "lest they put forth their hands and also take of the tree of life."
So the hands, which are the same as the Hebrew word for "by" in our text, were the messengers of sin for Adam and Eve.
So God addressed them when he said, "lest they take by their hand."
The hands couldn't escape blame.
The ones who owned the hands could not escape the blame either.
In fact, if the messengers could escape the blame, if the hands could escape the blame, or in our case the messengers of Sennachred could, then if you apply that to all sin, it would not be necessary for the physical body to die.
Now you think about that.
You have the serpent, which is Satan.
You have Adam and Eve.
And if when the serpent lied to Eve and said, "You shall not surely die," and she took an eight of that fruit based upon his lie, his sin, if she could escape blame, if her hand could escape blame, and her mouth could escape blame, why would she need to die?
She wouldn't be corrupt.
Sin would not have corrupted her, but it did.
God didn't say, "lest the serpent once again tempt them, I will remove them from the garden."
He said, "lest they put forth their hand."
He held the messenger just as accountable as he did the one whose idea it was for them to sin.
If a person could truthfully say, "The devil made me do it," then that person could escape blame in some way.
You know, we have in our Texas law, we have what are called defenses to prosecution, meaning if you commit a certain crime, there are some defenses to prosecution that may keep you from being found guilty of that crime.
So if you went into a store and you stole a loaf of bread, and when you came out, the police arrested you for shoplifting, for theft, you're probably going to go to jail for that, get a ticket, you're going to be held accountable.
But what if there was somebody behind you with a gun in your ribs saying, "steal the bread or I'm going to shoot you."
Well, that's what we call duress.
That person was made to commit that crime under duress, and they're not held accountable, the person who held the gun on them and caused them to commit the crime is.
So it's a defense to the prosecution of the bread stealer.
He can be absolved.
So if a person could truthfully say, "the devil made me do it," that would be a defense to prosecution.
But you know what?
That's not available.
Because the devil doesn't make you do it.
Man can't escape blame.
Otherwise, why would his body, soul, or spirit be in corruption right now?
He holds us responsible for our sin.
The author of the message and the messenger as well have both reproach the Lord.
Now backing up in Genesis chapter 3 from which I read a few moments ago, I want to read verses 14 and 15.
"And the Lord God said unto the serpent, Thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field, and upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life.
And I will put in matee between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed.
It shall bruise thy head, and now shall bruise his heel."
Now Satan took the form of the serpent.
He authored the lie that Adam and Eve could eat of the forbidden tree without dying.
He could not say, "God, I'm not the one who ate of the tree."
Certainly he would have tried to excuse himself from responsibility.
"I'm not the one who believed the lie.
They did.
I just told it to them.
You have to choose to do wrong."
And that is correct.
But look at what happened to that serpent.
God would not have accepted that excuse at all.
He cursed him.
He said, "You're going to crawl on your belly.
You're going to eat dust all the days of your life, and there will be in matee, and one day you will be defeated by the seed of the woman."
How's that for responsibility?
How's that for accountability?
Revelation 20, verse 2.
You know it's no secret Satan used the serpent as a messenger.
That's why he was held accountable.
That's why that serpent was held accountable.
Revelation 20, verse 2, just to show you the connection between the devil and the serpent.
"And I saw an angel come down from heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand.
And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the devil and Satan, and bound him a thousand years."
Just as Satan would be punished, so was the serpent in the garden.
They're one and the same.
Satan entered the serpent just as the evil spirits of his entered into the swine herd that ran violently down that steep place into the ocean and drowned.
If you haven't read that story, you will.
You'll come across it in our studies.
And even though Satan will be punished for his evil, so was the serpent all the way back in Genesis, as we just read in verses 14 through 15 there in chapter 3.
What did God say to the serpent?
The messenger?
Did he say, "Because the devil made you do it, you did this"?
No, he said, "Because thou has done this."
Did you catch that?
Because thou has done this.
Thou art cursed.
God held the serpent, though a messenger, accountable for what he did, not for what the devil did through him.
The devil is accountable.
We saw that in the Revelation passage there.
He's bound a thousand years.
The serpent was punished as well.
Now look at the sentences, the punishments God gave Adam and Eve after they sinned.
Genesis 3.16, he said unto the woman, he said, "I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception.
In sorrow thou shalt bring forth children, and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee."
Who was Eve in all of this?
She was a messenger.
Just like Sennacherib's messenger, she believed a lie, and then she gave the message to her husband, who also believed the lie.
She tried to escape responsibility in verse 13 when she said, "The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat."
God did not excuse her.
As for Adam, there in Genesis 3.17 and 19, "And unto Adam," he said, "because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree of which I commanded thee, saying thou shalt not eat of it.
Cursed is the ground for thy sake, and sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life.
Thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to thee, and thou shalt eat the herb of the field and the sweat of thy face, shalt thou eat bread, till thou return to the ground, for out of it thou wast taken, for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return."
When God asked Adam why he did wrong, back up in verse 12 of Genesis 3, he said, "The woman whom thou gave us to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat."
Who did he pass the blame to there?
Pass the blame to God.
He said, "God, it's your fault.
I was doing fine down here by myself before you did surgery on me and took a rib out and made this woman who caused me all this trouble."
He put the blame on God, and he put the blame on the woman.
He didn't take responsibility for his own sin.
Now the question you've probably asked, if you're a somewhat deep thinker and you wanted to know what happened to Adam and Eve, you might ask, did they ever become Christians?
The Bible doesn't tell us, but the Bible does tell us that God slayed those animals and made skins for them and put them on them, which is a type of the righteousness of Christ.
So I believe they probably became Christians.
But again, it doesn't specifically tell us.
What we know though is they were held accountable for their sin.
Adam didn't take responsibility for his own choice.
So did the author of the lie or the messenger of the lie get off the hook?
No.
And to the serpent, God could have said the same thing as Isaiah did to Sennacherib.
"By thy messenger, thou hast reproached the Lord."
And even though Adam didn't author the lie, and even though he wasn't the messenger used to carry the lie, he believed the lie.
He believed the lie and his messengers, the hand in the mouth, committed the sin.
Believing the lie was committing a sin too, by the way.
Somebody ever says, "What was the first sin ever committed by a man?"
Believing a lie.
Believing a lie that the devil told, and then acting on it, was the part that we normally imagine, the taking and eating of that forbidden fruit.
Sennacherib approached God by sending messengers to reproach God, and if anyone else in Israel believed this lying message this messenger sent, he, just like Adam, would be held accountable for his choice.
And we're seeing that in our study of the book of Hosea as well.
Write down 2 Thessalonians chapter 2 verses 8 through 11.
2 Thessalonians chapter 2 verses 8 through 11.
Where Paul is teaching the church about what people call the end times.
And then shall that wicked with a capital W, that's a person, then shall that wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming, even him whose coming is after the working of Satan, with all power and signs and lying wonders, and with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish, because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved.
And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion that they should believe a lie.
Had Adam received the love of the truth that God showed him in the garden, he would not have believed the lie the serpent told him.
I look back in our text in 2 Kings 19.23, we studied the word by at some length, "By thy messengers thou hast reproached the Lord."
Now let's look at that phrase, although we have seen the word "reproached" and blasphemed in earlier studies.
The word "thou" makes it very clear that Sennacherib himself had offended God by what he sent his messengers to say and do.
The word "reproached" is also scorned.
It means to scorn.
And it's very close to the word "blaspheme."
In fact, there is one time when this Hebrew word is also translated "blaspheme."
And whether the king of Assyria or his messengers, the one whom they have reproached is the Lord.
Now that's what we're going to focus on for a few moments, the Lord.
Is there a more foolish thing to do than to scorn to reproach the Lord?
Let's look at how this same event was described in 2 Chronicles chapter 32 and verse 17.
2 Chronicles 32 verse 17 and put the little letter "a" next to 17 because that means we're taking the first part of the verse.
It's written about the same event, but a word that you're going to see in here is different.
It's the same Hebrew word.
It says this about Sennacherib.
He wrote also letters to rail on the Lord God of Israel and to speak against him.
The word "rail" and the word "reproach" are the same thing.
He railed on the Lord.
Now, we may not say "reproach" very much in our current day, but sometimes we may say, "He was railing on so-and-so," or, "They were railing on me."
Maybe you've heard that before.
But how dare he rail on the Lord God of Israel?
How dare he speak against him even one word?
After all, what is man but a corrupted being whose sin has separated him from God, his Creator?
To put this in perspective, I want to read from the book of Jude verses 8 through 9.
It has only one chapter, so if you're a little bit OCD, you can put Jude chapter 1 verses 8 through 9.
Or you can just say Jude verses 8 through 9.
It'll get you to the same place.
I'm a little OCD, so I'll put 1, 8 through 9.
Listen for the word "railing."
"Likewise also these filthy dreamers defile the flesh, despise dominion, and speak evil of dignities.
Yet Michael the archangel, when contending with the devil, he disputed about the body of Moses, dares not or dare not bring against him a railing accusation, but said the Lord rebuke thee."
Now even though the New Testament is translated from the Greek language, the English word "railing" there and the English word "rail" in the Old Testament are the same.
Michael the archangel, a powerful messenger of God, had contended with the devil about Moses' body.
And I don't know what the contention was.
And there are differing views on who Michael was or represented, but that's not our primary focus right now.
It's the word "railing."
If Michael the archangel dared not bring a railing accusation against Satan, who at the time before he was thrown out of heaven was the anointed cherub of all heaven, and would have probably been Michael's superior if it's the case that Michael was the archangel as in an angel, not the Lord Jesus Christ.
But that Michael the archangel had not made a railing accusation.
In fact, it said he dares not.
That means he dared not.
It was unthinkable.
And Jude is saying if he wouldn't even do that, then how do these filthy dreamers, these wicked people about whom Jude is writing, how do they have the gall to bring railing accusations against dignities, against those who are superior to them?
They had no right.
And if those filthy dreamers had no right to bring a railing accusation against the devil or other dignities, other powers higher than they, how does a filthy dreamer like Sennacherib have the nerve to bring a railing accusation against the Lord, who is above the dignities against whom Michael would not make a railing accusation, who is above the dignities against whom these filthy dreamers were not to make railing accusations, and yet Sennacherib railed against the Lord.
And by the way, the Greek word for railing in Jude is also translated as the word blasphemy in the New Testament.
Now let's apply this truth to our world today.
This is a quote from John Lennon in 1966.
He said, "Christianity will end.
It will disappear.
I do not have to argue about that, I am certain.
Jesus was okay, but his subjects were too simple.
Today we," meaning the Beatles, "are more famous than him."
This unbeliever brought a railing accusation against the Lord, and that railing accusation is he's not that famous.
He died of acute lead poisoning not too long after that.
If you weren't around then, that means he was shot six times.
Thomas Andrews, who was the chief architect of the Titanic, was asked, "How safe is this ship?"
Quote, "He said even God himself couldn't sink the ship."
End quote.
Thomas Andrews railing accusation against the Lord was that he was too weak to sink a man-made ship.
You don't have to read the daily news feed for very long to find many famous people in this world who mock God, who deny Him, who reject the gospel of Jesus Christ and so forth.
They're all bringing railing accusations against the Lord.
They imply Him to be a liar or a construct, a figment of man's imagination.
And Sennacherib would fit in well with the world today.
He wouldn't be the least bit out of step except for his clothing fashion.
I don't know.
Maybe what he wore then is back in the style.
In fact, if we were alive today, he'd probably be celebrated as a hero.
Now let's look at some of the things Sennacherib said by way of these messengers.
Back in the text, 2 Kings 19.23 and about the first third of it, it says, "With the multitude of my chariots I am come up to the height of the mountains to the sides of Lebanon."
We'll cut it right there.
"With the multitude of my chariots I am come."
The word "multitude" and the word "chariots" are the exact same Hebrew word.
One means the other.
A multitude of chariots is the opposite of a single chariot.
What does it mean that Sennacherib would come with a multitude of chariots?
Well, the multitude of chariots is a show of strength because there are many.
Imagine the dust it kicks up and the sound it makes and the effect it has on the opposition.
A multitude of chariots is overwhelming to the opponent, especially if the opponent has only a few chariots or maybe none at all.
You know a multitude is what these cowardly gangs use to overwhelm their victims.
Now I don't endorse fighting at all.
I think when you fight you've lost the ability to communicate with somebody.
Nevertheless, I had to learn how to do it growing up as part of my job because of the nature of people.
But I will tell you this, things are a lot different now than they were when I was a kid.
And certainly a lot different than when my dad was a young man.
And in those days if two boys had a beef they went out to the playground or went somewhere else in the county and they had a fistfight and when they were done, they were done.
And everybody went home and that was the end of it.
There wasn't any retaliation.
Well when gangs came along, all of that chivalry if you will, all of those rules went away.
And so what these gangs do, they're made up of cowards and if somebody is watching who says, "Well I'm not a coward."
Well if you're in a gang you're a coward because you're relying on the masses of people who are with you to execute your will.
And what the gangs do is to overwhelm their victims.
How many videos do I have to see of two or three juvenile delinquents jumping an elderly person, knocking them out, taking their things, sometimes even killing them?
It seems like it's every day.
Now their multitude does what they dare not do individually.
Criminal gangs, Brother Fulton and I have dealt with over our careers have relied on their multitude to have their way with their victims.
If somebody says, "Hey, the crips or the bloods that put out on a hit on this guy scares people."
They think, "Oh no."
But if somebody said, "Hey, this one individual over here, he's about 5'6" and about 130 pounds and he can't keep his pants pulled up and he doesn't have a gun but he's got a problem with you.
That wouldn't scare anybody.
It's the multitude.
And although a multitude of chariots or a multitude of people may be intimidating to men, and they certainly are, let's see whether that's the case with God.
That's right Brother Doug.
God's not intimidated is he?
I'm going to read to you from Judges 4, verses 4 through 7.
And Deborah, a prophetess, the wife of Lapidoth, she judged Israel at that time.
Now let me just stop right there.
There are some heretical churches who believe that the fact that Deborah was a prophetess gives them right to have women preachers and women deacons and all that.
That is not the case.
Israel was in such bad shape.
Their men weren't fit to lead anybody.
The fact that a woman was put in a position that God did not design her for originally was a slap to God that he couldn't find a man to lead Israel.
So Deborah was a prophetess and she judged Israel.
And she dwelt under the palm tree of Deborah between Rama and Bethel in Mount Ephraim.
And the children of Israel came up to her for judgment.
And she sent and called Barak the son of Abinuim out of Kaddish Naftali.
And said unto him, Hath not the Lord God of Israel commanded saying, Go and draw toward Mount Tabor and take with the ten thousand men of the children of Naftali and the children of Zebulun.
And I will draw unto thee to the River Kishan, Sisera.
In other words, God was going to bring Sisera to that Kishan River.
Sisera, the captain of Jabin's army.
Now Jabin had been giving Israel the fits.
Had ruled them cruelly for 20 years.
The captain of Jabin's army, listen to this, with his chariots and his multitude.
And I will deliver him into thine hand.
So let's set that up.
Deborah told Barak, not Barak Hussein Obama, this was a Barak who believed the Lord.
She told Barak that God's commanded Israel saying, Go to this place, go to the Kishan River.
And I'm going to deliver Sisera, the captain of Jabin's army.
And his multitude and his chariots, I'm going to bring all of them to that place.
Now in the flesh, that would have scared Israel to death.
To send ten thousand men out there, no chariots, send ten thousand men out there and they look up and they see all these chariots.
In their flesh they would be scared to death because of the multitude of the chariots.
But God said, through Deborah to Barak, he's going to bring all of that.
And I'm going to deliver him into your hand.
In other words, you're going to win this battle.
And going further down in that fourth chapter of Judges, we read in verse 15.
Verse 15, "And the Lord discomfitted Sisera and all his chariots and all his host with the edge of the sword before Barak, so that Sisera lighted down off his chariot and fled away on his feet."
The word "discomfitted" means destroyed or crushed.
Even if you didn't know what it meant, it doesn't sound good, does it?
It doesn't sound like that was a party.
He was discomfitted.
What will the Lord do with the multitude of chariots the enemy brings his way?
He will crush them.
He will destroy them.
Man may flee from them, but the Lord will consume them.
In fact, there is an even earlier instance of this in the Bible.
In Exodus chapter 14, but we're going to have to wait until next week to get to it, because we are out of time.
Let's pray.
Father, thank you for the time that you give us each Lord's Day to have this class and to teach your word.
And thank you for the people who are faithful, who are hungry, who want to learn a little bit more about your word each time they come.
Father, I pray you'd find us faithful teaching to that end.
And now we ask you to bless the next hour, the singing, the praising, the fellowship, and the preaching of your word, that you would build your church up and edify us so that when we see the multitude of chariots in whatever form they may take in our day, we can know of a surety that the Lord will deliver them into our hands.
In Jesus' name, amen.
