Episode Transcript
Well now I have to say it's 10.01 after all that.
That just ruined my whole lesson, Brandon.
No, thank you all for getting it going.
Second Kings chapter 20 verse 11 is our text this morning.
Second Kings chapter 20 verse 11.
We finished verse 10 last week and learned about how God turned back time and suspended death's victory over Hezekiah for 15 years.
And the spiritual truth we learned from that event is that God didn't just suspend death for us.
He abolished it.
He abolished the second death.
And that's for those who have put their faith in his son for salvation.
Now God didn't change our appointment to die once.
The Bible says it is appointed unto man once to die and after this to judgment.
But he did abolish our appointment to the second death.
And you know every one of us came into this world having two death appointments.
One physical and then one spiritual.
And the lost person is not only appointed to die physically but he will also die spiritually.
He'll be separated from God and therefore if he's separated from God, he's separated from eternal life which is the second death.
That is being cast into the lake of fire with Satan and his angels and all who have rejected the gospel of Jesus Christ.
But today we'll continue by reading verse 11.
So look with me now.
Second Kings chapter 20 verse 11.
And Isaiah the prophet cried unto the Lord and he brought the shadow ten degrees backward by which it had gone down in the dial of Ahaz.
And Isaiah the prophet cried unto the Lord.
Now by doing this, this is after he had told Hezekiah what the sign would be that God would heal him and deliver Jerusalem and therefore Judah.
But when Isaiah cried unto the Lord, by doing this he was testifying that only God could turn back time and add years to the king's life.
He was humble and his humility kept him from receiving any credit for God's work.
And may I remind you that prophets are just sinners saved by the grace of God just like you and I are and they are subject to moments in the flesh.
Maybe you've heard somebody say, "Well I was having a moment."
Well that's usually not a good thing.
And Isaiah's humility kept him from having a moment, didn't it?
But not all prophets have been so humble in that type of situation.
In Numbers chapter 20 verses 8 through 12, Numbers 20 verses 8 through 12, God is giving instructions to Moses and here we'll pick up where he said, "Take the rod and gather thou the assembly together, thou and Aaron thy brother, and speak ye unto the rock before their eyes and it shall give forth his water.
And thou shalt bring forth to them water out of the rock, so thou shalt give the congregation and their beasts drink.
And Moses took the rod from before the Lord as he commanded him.
And Moses and Aaron gathered the congregation together before the rock and he said unto them, 'Hear now ye rebels, listen to this, must we fetch you water out of this rock?
Must we fetch you water out of this rock?'
And Moses lifted up his hand and with his rod he smote the rock twice and the water came out abundantly and the congregation drank and their beasts too.
And the Lord spake unto Moses and Aaron, 'Because you believe me not to sanctify me in the eyes of the children of Israel, therefore ye shall not bring this congregation into the land which I have given them.'
Now you have perhaps been over this passage in, if you were in the Genesis to Jesus or Creation to Christ class or maybe in your study with us many years ago when we went through the book of Numbers.
But the greater sin that Moses committed was in striking the rock.
God told him to speak to it.
He'd already smitten the rock once previously.
And the reason it was such an offense is that that rock, as we learn in the New Testament, was the Lord Jesus Christ.
It represented the Lord Jesus Christ who was smitten only once for the sins of man.
And that's why God told him to speak to the rock, told Moses to speak to the rock, not to smite it again.
But another sin that Moses committed in this passage, if you'll reread there, or I'll reread it for you since you probably didn't turn there, he said, 'Must we fetch you water out of this rock?'
Now Moses and Aaron could no more fetch water out of a rock on their own than I could.
That'd be silly to speak to a rock or to hit a rock and expect water to come out of it on my own.
Rocks don't produce water.
And that's why this was such a wondrous sign in his anger at the murmuring children of Israel.
Moses momentarily lost his composure and he attributed this upcoming miracle to Aaron and himself when he said, 'Must we fetch you water out of this rock?'
Now Isaiah in our text was more cautious.
He didn't say, 'Must I turn this sundial back ten degrees?'
He cried unto the Lord.
He didn't act as though he were the one turning the sundial back ten degrees by his own power.
Now look back in the text in verse 11, it said, 'And Isaiah the prophet cried unto the Lord and he brought the shadow ten degrees backward.'
The pronoun 'he' would obviously refer to the Lord.
The Lord did it.
You know in the 1980s there was a silly song called 'If I Could Turn Back Time.'
Don't raise your hand if you heard it.
Tell me how carnal you are.
And the reason it's silly is that turning back time would just give us another chance to mess up again.
That's all that would do.
And perhaps mess up in a different way.
And I'm pretty sure each of us wish we could go back in time and make better decisions about certain things.
I certainly regret some of the decisions, many of the decisions, that I've made in my life.
But turning back time doesn't mean that I would make a better decision.
It just doesn't.
I might do worse than I did.
I had a professor in college, a psychology professor, and he was old school and he was from England.
And there was no such thing as multiple choice in his class.
Everything was an essay.
And if you disagreed with the grade he gave you on an essay, you could set up an appointment with him and he would reevaluate.
And he told us at the beginning of the semester, he said, 'You might get a better grade and I also might see something I missed and you might get a worse grade.'
Well, how many people do you think went to his office in protest of their test scores?
None.
Me included.
So he was giving us the opportunity, if you will, to turn back time as though this were the first evaluation of our test and telling us it could be worse than it was.
And so that's the way I feel about turning back time.
And it's foolish to think that we who are unrighteous in our flesh could suddenly become righteous if we were given a second chance to do better by turning back time.
And the wondrous sign that God gave was not so Hezekiah could become righteous.
He was already righteous by his faith in the Lord.
It was, as God said, a sign that God would heal Hezekiah and deliver Jerusalem from Assyria.
That was the purpose of the sign.
Now back in verse 11 it said, "And he brought the shadow ten degrees backward by which it had gone down in the dial of Ahaz."
That means the time had already passed.
God didn't even make the time stand still.
He turned the dial backwards.
And I know last week I went through a mathematical scenario with you about approximately how much time that may have been.
And of course that assumes that 90 degrees represents six hours of the dial.
Well, some historians say that the dial, the markings on the dial represented 30-minute increments.
Well, I don't know.
The sign is that God turned back time for a few hours, however long that was.
And many commentators make an awfully big deal about how much time that was.
It doesn't really matter to me if the Bible is not any more clear on it than it is here.
God created time.
And He's always existed before there was time.
But He will continue to exist when time is no more as we see it.
On earth, as in right now, time is finite, isn't it?
It's got a beginning and it has an end.
If it takes me, now it doesn't take me five minutes to run a mile.
I don't run anymore.
But I'm not sure there was ever a time I could have run a mile in five minutes.
But let's use that as a good round figure.
If it takes five minutes to run a mile, then the run ceases to be timed after the runner crosses the finish line or completes the mile.
And eternity, though, has no beginning.
And it will have no end.
Now I admit that that thought is both scary and wonderful at the same time.
It's scary for the ones who refuse to accept God's gift of eternal life, and it ought to be.
But it's wonderful for those who've accepted that gift.
The dial of Ahaz, what is the dial?
We briefly visited that.
The word "dial" is from a Hebrew word that also means "steps" or "degrees."
And that makes sense based upon what a sundial does.
King Ahaz, this was the dial of Ahaz, that's what it was called.
King Ahaz was Hezekiah's father.
It's been a while since we studied him, so you might not have remembered that.
But Ahaz reigned over Judah 16 years before his son took the throne.
And Ahaz was a wicked king.
There is no doubt about that.
He committed many abominations in the temple and with the altar, and he had the great altar prepared.
And so he admired the way other countries did their religions and so forth.
And we studied those at great length.
And we read of the dial of Ahaz only one other place, and that's in the Isaiah chapter 38 passage that is what you would call a parallel passage to this one.
In other words, they're talking about the same type of events, just from two different writers.
But I did not find anything else in the Bible about the dial or the sundial than that.
So let's look now in verse 12.
And at that time, Berodot Baladon, the son of Baladon, king of--I wish they would have just named him Junior, but I'll say it--king of Babylon, sent letters and a present unto Hezekiah, for he had heard that Hezekiah had been sick.
Now why would the king of Babylon do this?
Why would he send letters and a present to Hezekiah on his deathbed?
Was he an old friend who was just showing concern?
No, he was not.
In fact, let's turn back and read about the last contact Babylon had with the children of Israel.
And you can turn back there with me.
It's in 2 Kings 17, just back a couple of pages.
2 Kings 17.
And I'm going to read verses 24 through 30 straight through.
"And the king of Assyria brought men from Babylon," there you go, "and from Kuthah, and from Avah, and from Hamath, and from Sefer Vayim, and placed them in the cities of Samaria instead of the children of Israel.
And they possessed Samaria, and dwelt in the cities thereof.
And so it was at the beginning of their dwelling there that they feared not the Lord.
Therefore the Lord sent lions among them, which slew some of them.
Wherefore they spake to the king of Assyria, saying, 'The nations which thou hast removed and placed in the cities of Samaria know not the manner of the God of the land.'
Therefore he hath sent lions among them, and behold, they slay them, because they know not the manner of the God of the land.
Then the king of Assyria commanded, saying, 'Carry thither one of the priests whom ye brought from thence, and let them go and dwell there, and let them teach them the manner of the God of the land.'
Then one of the priests whom they had carried away from Samaria came and dwelt in Bethel, and taught them how they should fear the Lord.
Howbeit every nation made gods of their own, and put them in the houses of the high places which the Samaritans had made, every nation in their cities wherein they dwelt.
And the men of Babylon made Succoth-Benoth, and the men of Kuth made Nergal, and the men of Hamath made Asshema."
Alright, Hezekiah should have known, either by historical writing or by the words being passed down from his father or his tutors, he should have known what happened to the northern kingdom of Israel, which is called Samaria in the text we read, and how the Babylonians rejected the teaching of the priest who tried to show them the manner of the God of the land.
That's just what Babylonians do.
That's what they did.
God sent a priest, that is through his providence the Assyrians sent a priest back to Samaria and said, "Hey, these people are being killed with lions because they don't know the manner of the God of the land."
And so this is what's important here.
Babylon's response to that teaching was to reject God and to remain idolaters.
And that is something that Hezekiah appears to have put away from his mind.
It appears not to have entered into his decision-making here as we'll read in just a few moments.
So we need to remember before we see what Hezekiah's response was, that the Babylonians, their last contact with the children of Israel was that they rejected their God and continued to be idolaters.
Now Assyria had been more powerful than Babylon, which is why the Babylonians were placed in Samaria by the Assyrian king.
So Assyria was the top dog at that time.
Now that the Assyrian army has been decimated and their king has been killed by his own sons, Babylon is just like a bunch of jackals or hyenas.
They've been kind of staying back a little bit.
But now they want to seize the chance to seize Judah, just like Assyria seized Samaria.
And Baradak Baladan reminds me of those old, long-lost friends who suddenly call you out of the blue.
And I know in my case, when that happens, I'm on guard because that old friend hasn't kept up with me for 40 years.
And I'm either about to get some horrible news about an old classmate who may have died, or more often, that person wants something from me.
They want to sell me something, amway.
Or the person wants a favor from me.
I hadn't been out of college very long, and I was a young highway patrolman, and I was still single, and I got a call from a young lady I went to college with.
And I thought, "Well, how nice."
She left a message on my voicemail, so I called her back.
She wanted to sell me something, and I thought, "Man, I was thinking she wanted to talk to me."
And I'm glad she didn't.
Otherwise, we wouldn't have had Miss Becky, who's out sick today.
But I learned a lesson.
Don't call them back.
Don't answer the phone if you don't have to.
Because that old friend may not be calling out of concern or just to have a cup of coffee with you or something like that.
Now what did Baradoc Baladon do?
It said, look back in your text, "He sent letters and a present unto Hezekiah."
Not by FedEx, not by UPS, but by ambassadors.
He had those delivered by men to Jerusalem, and we'll see more about that in a few moments.
Now where have we seen the sending of letters before in our study of Hezekiah?
Well if you'll turn back to 2 Kings 19 verses 8 through 14.
And walked in the statutes...
Oh, excuse me, I've turned back too far. 19 and verse 14.
And Hezekiah received the letter.
Now this was from the Assyrians.
"And Hezekiah received the letter of the hand of the messengers and read it.
And Hezekiah went up into the house of the Lord and spread it before the Lord.
And Hezekiah prayed before the Lord."
I've begun reading in verse 14, by the way.
"And Hezekiah prayed before the Lord and said, 'O Lord God of Israel, which dwelleth between the cherubims, thou art the God, even thou alone of all the kingdoms of the earth, thou hast made heaven and earth.'"
And he goes on to appeal to the Lord.
Now verses 8 through 14 tell us, and you can just put this in your notes, what kind of letter this was.
This was a threatening letter.
This wasn't a friendly letter.
There were no presents here.
This was a threatening letter that Hezekiah received from the king of Assyria.
Now I wanted you to see what his response was to that threatening letter.
He took it to the house of the Lord and he spread it before the Lord.
Now back in our text, the letters we read about were not threatening letters.
They were, by all appearance and the way they're described, friendly letters.
The kind you would write to someone who is sick.
And by the way, if that's your ministry, you keep it up.
You'll never know what an encouragement you are to people who are sick and discouraged because of the letters, the cards, the text messages, the phone calls you send them.
But Barad-dak Baladon did not have a letter-writing ministry.
That was not what was going on here.
He, just like the other Gentile kings, went forth to conquer nations and then conquer more nations and that's what they did until they were defeated.
And Satan sure is slick, isn't he?
Whether by threatening letters or by friendly letters, he exploits an opening if he can find it and he steps in.
The Bible tells us he walks about like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour.
He's looking for the opening.
And I noticed that when the Assyrian king's letter made him afraid back in the chapter we just read, that he spread the matter before the Lord.
But as we'll see more clearly, the friendly letters from the Babylonian king did not cause Hezekiah to take them and spread them before the Lord.
The friendly letters didn't alarm him.
He didn't feel threatened.
Isn't that what the serpent did to Eve in the Garden of Eden?
He didn't come to her threatening her.
He came to Eve with friendly words, like the friendly letters, as though he were looking out for her best interest.
Genesis chapter 3 verses 3 through 5.
Genesis 3 verses 3 through 5.
Now this is Eve speaking to the serpent.
But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, "You shall not eat of it, neither shall you touch it lest you die."
And the serpent said unto the woman, "You shall not surely die, for God doth know that in the day you eat thereof that your eyes shall be opened and you shall be as gods, knowing good and evil."
What good news!
You're not going to die, your eyes are going to be opened, and you're going to be smarter than you were before.
What could go wrong there?
Those are friendly words from the serpent himself.
And through the serpent, Satan said, "I've got friendly words for you.
I've got letters and presents for you.
You're not going to die if you eat that fruit.
In fact, you're going to see more clearly and you're going to be as gods."
And Eve, rather than saying no to the serpent, rather than spreading the matter before the Lord, she fell for those seemingly friendly words.
She was fooled into thinking that God was holding back on her and that the serpent truly cared for her future.
What a lie.
But you see how smooth it was?
And let's learn a simple but very powerful truth right here.
Whether they are threatening words or friendly words, words from the devil are never welcome.
Whether they're threatening words or friendly words, words from the devil are never welcome.
They're never the right thing for you to believe or to embrace.
You don't say, "Well, you know, that doesn't sound so evil.
That doesn't sound so wicked."
When Jesus was tempted in the wilderness for 40 days, Satan pretended to care for Jesus, who was physically very hungry.
Matthew chapter 4, verses 3 through 4.
Matthew 4, verses 3 through 4, "And when the tempter," that's Satan, "came to him, he said, 'If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread.'
But he answered and said, 'It is written, "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God."'"
So Jesus didn't fall for Satan's fake compassion.
He didn't fall for Satan's suggestion that turning these stones to bread would prove that Jesus was the Son of God.
And from the way Jesus handled this, we are to learn how to respond to the words of Satan, whether they be threatening, like the Assyrian king's words, or friendly, as the Babylonian king's words were.
Now besides letters, what else did the Babylonian king send to Hezekiah?
Look back in your text in 2 Kings 20 and verse 12, it said, "a present."
He sent letters and a present.
And the word present is normally translated as the word offering.
And interestingly, the Hebrew word is used first in Genesis chapter 4, verse 3.
Genesis 4, verse 3.
And in the process of time, it came to pass that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering, that's the same word as present, unto the Lord.
So in that verse, Cain tried to get in good with God, all the while rejecting God.
You see how he did that?
He tried to get in good with God.
"Lord, I'm bringing you a present.
This is just from me to you."
And in doing so, he rejected what God had already commanded, what he had already shown their parents, that without the shedding of blood, there is no remission for sins.
God never commanded the fruit of the ground to be brought to him as an offering, as an atonement, but the blood of a lamb.
And in this case, Cain substituted a gift or a present for obedience, rather than making an offering out of obedience.
And what we learn from this is that the person who rejects you may come to you with a present.
Now why did Barad-dak Balad-dan send letters and a present?
Look back in your text, in verse 12, it says, "For he had heard that Hezekiah had been sick."
Now there are two opposing reasons for sending letters and a present to a sick king, or to a sick anybody, but to a sick king, and we touched on them earlier.
One reason is out of genuine concern and prayer that the king would be healed.
But the other is the beginning of a wicked plan to overthrow the sick king.
But rather than an all-out war, it's much easier for the king of Babylon to draw close to Hezekiah through letters and a present.
Now strategically speaking, Babylon should have aligned themselves with Samaria and Judah against Assyria, turning back time, before Samaria was conquered by Assyria.
Babylon would have been wise to realize those are God's people, and yes, they're in disobedience, but we dare not set our hand against them.
We dare not reject their God.
So even strategically, they would have been better off aligning themselves against Assyria, but they were afraid of Assyria.
And even against a physically strong king, Hezekiah, Babylon dared not rise up, but now, in his weakness, Hezekiah is a much easier target.
You know, the outgoing president and I do not see eye to eye on many things.
However, what was very evident early in his presidency is that he was having some serious health issues.
He had diminished cognitive abilities.
His associates and his family, especially his family, should have shielded him from the public and from politics, but they used him to have their way.
And that, regardless of his party affiliation, was a cruel joke to me.
And the enemies of our nation, such as China and Iran, took advantage of our weakened president and those who were propping him up at all costs.
And they have just infiltrated us in so many ways.
And this is how Satan works.
He first sought to weaken Job, believing that Job would then curse God to his face.
And that didn't work.
So Satan further weakened Job.
He weakened him physically.
And yet, in all that, Job retained his integrity.
And when Satan tempted man in the garden, you know where he started?
He started with the weaker vessel.
Now some women don't like that phrase, but it's scriptural.
First Peter 3, verse 7, "Likewise ye husbands dwell with them," that is, with the wife, "according to knowledge, giving honor unto the wife, as unto the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life, that your prayers not be hindered."
You can always tell when a young married couple has their first child.
I was there.
You carry them around just like this.
Oh, be careful.
Move that piece of dust out of my way so I don't trip over it.
And by the time you have the third one, you're carrying them one arm on the hips, saying, "Watch your head!"
You know, it's just totally different.
But we carry that little baby as a weaker vessel.
We give great care.
We make sure that we don't do anything to hurt that baby.
And so that's the idea here of giving honor to the wife, by the way, and as being heirs together of the grace of life, that your prayers not be hindered.
So when Satan made the choice to go after Adam and Eve in the garden, he started with Eve.
He started with the weaker vessel.
Now why this sudden compassion for Hezekiah?
It's just what wicked people do when they find out that a wealthy person is sick.
And sadly enough, it's often a family member.
Let's take a man who's been an embarrassment to his family his whole life.
He separated himself from his family.
He won't talk to anybody.
He's chosen a life of wickedness and brought reproach to his parents, grandparents, his uncles, his aunts, and so on, as much as they've tried to love him through it.
And then one day he finds out Grandpa is at the point of death.
And suddenly, this reprobate goes to see him, pretends to have all this concern for him.
He tries to get close to the grandmother, pretending to be reformed and saying he has good intentions.
And then the grandfather dies.
But he doesn't leave anything in his will for the wicked grandson.
He knows that giving him a bunch of money is just going to send him further into the abyss that he's already made for himself.
And rather than accepting his grandfather's will as the consequences for a lifetime of bad behavior on his own part, the wicked grandson rejects it.
And he sues the family for monetary damages.
And that, my friend, happens every day somewhere in the world.
Satan sends letters and presents to those who are weakened that he may destroy them, not help them.
And you're about to see that in the next few verses.
Look with me in verse 13.
And Hezekiah hearkened unto them.
What did he hearken unto?
The letters and the present.
How disappointing.
This was a king who was greater than any before or after him in the throne of Judah.
And it was because of his trust in the Lord.
And for some reason, many of God's people have a tendency to make friends with the devil's crowd.
Now, Jesus told us that we're to be witnesses.
And who are we witnessing to?
Lost people, the devil's crowd.
But there's a big difference in witnessing being a shining light and tying yourself up together with somebody who is in the devil's crowd.
Genesis 3, 17.
And God is -- Adam and Eve have already sinned and God is doing the interrogating right here.
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,' for cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life."
For a few moments, it was Eve who was on the wrong side while Adam was still on the right side because she ate of the fruit and he hadn't yet.
And so there were however many moments, it may have been no more than 30 seconds to a minute.
I don't know.
But she had eaten of the fruit and Adam had not.
She had the sentence of death upon her and Adam did not, not yet, until he ate.
And so you might correctly say during those brief few moments that Eve was a member of the devil's crowd.
She'd sinned.
God said, "You're going to die."
And though I believe she and Adam were redeemed by believing in the salvation that God showed them when he placed those animal skins upon them, but after she ate of the forbidden fruit, she was of the devil's crowd.
And Adam, before he ate of the fruit, was still without sin.
So when he hearkened to his wife Eve, he hearkened to the devil's crowd by taking that forbidden fruit that she had already eaten simply because she gave it to him.
What did she do?
She came to him with a present, didn't she?
She said, "Here you go."
Instead of saying, "Well, hold on a minute.
Time out, lady.
I seem to remember that my creator said, 'We shall not eat of that tree lest we die.'
And I don't want to die."
He just ate it.
Now just to be clear for those of you who may be a little shaky, you don't lose your salvation because you hearken to the devil's crowd, because you can't lose your salvation, period.
That's the wonderful thing about God's Word.
These things have I told you that you may, or written unto you that you may believe on the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life and believe on the Son of God.
So we know.
But when you listen to the devil's crowd, when you hearken to them as Hezekiah did here, it will cost you greatly in many ways.
And because our flesh, because of our flesh which represents our fallen nature, this body you're looking at represents my fallen nature, we not only tend to hearken to the devil's crowd, but we also fail to hearken to God at the same time.
Verse chapter 14, verses 22 through 23.
Numbers 14, 22 through 23.
God said to Moses, "Because all those men which have seen my glory and my miracles, which I did in Egypt and in the wilderness, and have tempted me now these ten times and have not hearkened to my voice, surely they shall not see the land which I swear unto their fathers, neither shall any of them that provoked me see it."
One more thing we should learn here is that Jesus did not and will not hearken to the voices of those whom Satan sent, even though they seem to be quite religious.
Matthew 7, verses 21 through 23.
Matthew 7, 21 through 23, Jesus said, "Not everyone that saith unto me, 'Lord, Lord,' shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.
Many will say to me in that day, 'Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name?
And in thy name have cast out devils, and in thy name done many wonderful works.'
And I will profess unto them, 'I never knew you; depart from me, ye that work iniquity.'"
When we inquire about a person's salvation, they often tell us what they've said or done in order to be saved.
However, what they've said or done is not the same thing God says about how they must be saved.
So we don't hearken to their words.
If I ask somebody, "Where are you going to go when you die?"
They say, "Well, I'm going to go to heaven."
And I say, "Well, how are you going to get there?"
"Well, I've done A, B, and C.
I've done this work.
I go to church.
I tithe.
I do these things."
If I say, "Oh, well, good, good, okay," then I've hearkened to their words.
They don't need that from me.
I need to say, "Can you show me in the Bible where it says that that's the way to heaven?"
And that way we get to the Bible as soon as we can.
That's where I want to go.
And we don't just go along to get along with people.
And I think that's probably one of the greatest problems in the church today, to add people, to keep the pews full and all that.
Pastors and teachers have just gone along to get along.
As long as the pews are being filled, they're happy.
As long as people look happy on the outside and sing real loud and smile while they're singing, they think, "Oh, good, this is good."
We show them God's words and we tell them they have to hearken to those words.
When a person tells me that they believe this certain thing will happen in the end times, I ask them where in the Bible they find that event.
And if that event's not in the Bible, then we don't hearken to those words, do we?
Jesus showed us the pattern for dealing with words sent from Satan, for dealing with those letters and presents sent from Satan.
No matter who delivers them to us, do not hearken unto them, just dismiss them.
Now let's look back in our text.
In verse 13, it said, "And Hezekiah hearkened unto them, and showed them all the house of his precious things, the silver and the gold and the spices and the precious ointment and all the house of his armor and all that was found in his treasures.
There was nothing in his house nor in all his dominion that Hezekiah showed them not."
And we're going to pick up with that verse next week and see what it means.
Let's pray.
Father, thank you for all of those who were able to make it today and to tune in.
Lord, we know there are some out who are sick and who are hurting, and we pray for them and ask that you would minister unto them your grace and your mercy, that they may again join us.
We pray for our pastor during the next hour, that as he preaches your word, our ears would be attentive and our hearts open unto truth.
We pray our singing, our praying, our encouraging of one another in the faith would all be acceptable in your presence.
In Jesus' name, amen.
