Episode Transcript
All right, good morning is 10 o'clock time for us to start our Bible study 2nd Chronicles chapter 34 in verse 6 is where we last studied last week 2nd Chronicles chapter 34 in verse 6 We're glad you all are here, and we're glad for those who joined us online I'll try to look at you online people a little more than I do.
I'm still getting used to cameras You know when I was taught how to speak in public which went all the way back to 10th grade I Was taught to pan the room, you know look at groups of people and so I'm used to doing that But I'm not used to doing is looking up so brother Rick's been my tutor on that and it's uh, it's been helpful.
Thank you So we are Continuing to gain further insight on King Josiah's Rule the first part of his reign over Judah and we learned it It was 31 years that he was on that throne and so we began at the first part of his reign and I plan for us to be able to return to 2nd Kings chapter 22 later in the lesson today because that's where we left off To go to 2nd Chronicles and find out some of these details that were not included in 2nd Kings 22 But, before we do, and Kelly I hope you're watching, Kelly McCormick, I wanted to answer a question that she asked me on the Facebook Messenger page, and some of you may have seen that question.
It mentioned rewards.
I mentioned rewards last week, and she had a question about that, and it was a very good question because we were studying how King Josiah had the bones of the priests dug up and then burned and I mentioned rewards in that context.
I talked about the judgment seat of Christ and how that was the place where Christians receive rewards or suffer loss but that's only for the believer That is not for the unbeliever.
The unbeliever doesn't appear before the judgment seat of Christ.
They appear before the white throne judgment in Revelation chapter 20.
And so there are two different judgments and it's important to understand that.
And so the point of the lesson, the point of that part of the lesson last week was to show us that there will be a judgment after we die.
So the bones of those priests being dug up and burned was a type of that.
They thought, well they're in the ground, they're no longer accountable.
Yes they are, they're accountable to God even if man can't do anything to them.
So what Kelly wrote was that she did not want to miss out on any of the rewards in heaven and she wanted to know how to earn those rewards and avoid losing them.
And that's a pretty big topic right there and so I answered her privately for the time being because not everyone is at the same place when it comes to their understanding of doctrines like that and my answer to her may have been sufficient.
She's a Bible student and for somebody else it may have created confusion or led to further questions.
So I wanted to take a little more time to study it.
I answered her privately but I may be able to answer her question publicly as well and in short order answer questions that others have about that topic, about that doctrine.
I don't want anyone to have trouble understanding it.
So, I'm not going to do a full topical teaching on rewards here because that would take several lessons.
But I brought it up so I owe it to the listeners to follow up with an explanation.
I'm going to do that.
So thank you, Kelly, for asking the question that others may also have had on their minds.
That's very common.
And so I want to look first at the Hebrew and the Greek words that are translated as the English word reward in the Bible.
The Hebrew word Sakhar is also translated as the words hire, h-i-r-e, wages, price, fare, f-a-r-e, and worth.
And the idea behind that Hebrew word is the payment of a contract.
The payment of a contract.
So right away, looking at that Hebrew word, we get the idea that a reward is, in this context, is simply receiving what you earned after doing what you did.
That's the easiest way I know to put it.
Receiving what you earned after doing what you did.
And then in the Old Testament, or in the New Testament, there is a Greek word that's translated as reward and that's the Greek word misthos and it also means reward, hire or wages.
So even though it's a different language it means the same thing as the word sakar in the Hebrew language.
And there are other Hebrew words that are translated as the word reward in the Old Testament.
So it's not just the one I mentioned.
And except for where it means a bribe, all of the other Hebrew words carry the same meaning of paying recompense or giving someone what they earned.
Even peace being one of those meanings.
And other Greek words translated as reward also have the meaning of recompense or a payment that is due for a thing that was done.
And some of the rewards, and this is where, what you have to remember about rewards, some of the rewards people receive will be good and some of the rewards will not be good.
Now, if you think of the word reward, you don't usually think of something bad, do you?
You think, well, that's not a reward.
Well, it is if you're looking at the true sense of the two Hebrew or the Greek and Hebrew words that I've talked about this morning and that are in the Bible.
Here's a verse for you.
Colossians chapter 3 verses 22 through 24.
Colossians 3 verse 22 through 24.
Now here's an example of a good reward for those who obey this command.
I'll read it.
Servants obey in all things your masters according to the flesh, not with eye service as they men pleasers, but in singleness of heart, fearing God.
And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily as to the Lord, and not unto men, knowing that of the Lord ye shall receive the reward of the inheritance, for ye serve the Lord Christ."
So Kelly, there you go.
And for everyone else, there is one way to earn a reward that you don't lose in heaven, to do what you do heartily as unto the Lord Christ, not as men-pleasers, but with a singleness of heart.
Now here is an example of a reward that is bad, and when I say bad, I mean in terms of the person receiving it, they're not going to look at it and say, "Well, that's a fine reward."
And it's found in 2 Timothy chapter 4, verses 14 through 15. 2nd Timothy chapter 4 verses 14 through 15.
And Paul wrote this, "Alexander the coppersmith did me much evil, the Lord reward him according to his works.
Of whom be thou where also for he hath greatly withstood our words."
Well Alexander the coppersmith was evil Wasn't he?
Because the words, the apostle Paul spoke and the apostles who were with him were the gospel truth.
They were salvation.
There were words of salvation and they were not bad words.
They were good words.
And so Alexander withstood those, he fought against them.
And he, in fact, Paul said he did me much evil.
So he's going to get a reward for that evil.
Now see, that's the side of rewards we don't think about, isn't it?
And he said, God reward him for the evil.
So what he's doing is he is going to get, uh, a reward for doing evil and that reward will be evil.
He'll receive evil for evil.
So for Kelly and any of you who want to study this further in your Bible, Remember that a reward is simply what you get in return for what you've done or not done and not all rewards are good.
And I gave Kelly some other verses to study if you want to write those down and read those and those were Matthew chapters 5 and 6 because you'll see rewards mentioned a couple of times in that section of passages.
And in 1 Corinthians chapter 13, 1 Corinthians chapter 13, and if you'd like to study about rewards, I encourage you to take what you learned this morning and that short time we spent on it and further your study about this doctrine.
And so I hope, Kelly, that gives you a jump start and maybe the rest of you too who were interested in that.
And this takes us back to our text in 2 Chronicles 34, 6, and I want to reread verses 3 through 6, give us a running start on that, and then finish out verse 6.
I'll start in verse 3.
"For in the eighth year of his reign, while he was yet young, he began to seek after the God of David his father.
And in the twelfth year he began to purge Judah and Jerusalem from the high places and the groves, and the carved images, and the molten images.
And they break down the altars of Balaam in his presence.
And the images that were on high above them he cut down.
And the groves and the carved images and the molten images he break in pieces and made dust of them and strode it upon the graves of them that had sacrificed unto them.
And he burnt the bones of the priests upon their altars and cleansed Judah and Jerusalem.
And so did he in the cities of Manasseh, Ephraim, and Simeon, even unto Naphtali, with their maddocks round about."
And that brings us to the part where we left off.
And he did so in the cities of Manasseh, Ephraim, and Simeon, even under Naphtali.
So we learned last week at the end of the lesson that this cleansing spread from Jerusalem to all the way to the cities that belong to some of the other tribes outside of Judah.
And as we concluded last week we were reminded that there was no Jewish king on the throne in Israel, in the nation of Israel, the northern kingdom at that time that Josiah was on his throne in Judah.
So he had a great opportunity without offending the king of Israel, didn't he?
The old Israel which was also called Samaria, was ruled by Assyria at that time.
And the children of Israel in the cities of Samaria had been carried away to Assyria, and then the Assyrian king had put Gentiles from other nations in those Samarian cities.
The great replacement, have you all heard of that in politics or, yeah, the great replacement.
Well, they had one back then too.
So now we have Josiah beginning to clean house, starting in Jerusalem, then Judah, and then Israel as well.
And then it said he did that with their Maddox roundabout.
Now Maddox are cutting instruments.
There's a wide variety of them.
They could be swords or axes or daggers, anything like a knife.
Those are all Maddox.
So they refer to the general group of cutting instruments.
And those were the instruments that these men used to break down the altars and the images, and possibly they used them to dig up the bones of the priests.
We don't -- we're not certain of that here, but that would have been a reasonable use of those mattocks.
And the words "roundabout" mean that this whole effort of tearing down these images and altars and digging up the bones all of that this whole effort was a circuit because that's what that means that word roundabout it's a circuit and we're gonna learn something really interesting about this this morning the ones tearing down the altars and the images and all of that were doing it on every side they did their work on every side all the way around And this is how God's people have to tear down those altars, which today are not normally physical as they were in those days, but they're at least spiritual.
And when we tear those altars down, we have to do it on every side, in every city.
And it's very much, it reminds me a lot of our lesson on the high places several months ago, which we studied and those high places had to be torn down as well on every side.
If a person is a drunkard and an adulterer and a thief, he can't just say, "Well, I'll tell you what, I'm going to put away my adultery and God should be okay with that.
He'll be pleased with that."
No.
God wants you to get that spiritual cutting instrument, those spiritual mattocks, that axe or knife or whatever you want to call it and tear down all of it on every side.
The adultery goes away.
The theft goes away.
Every sin goes away.
We don't say, "Well, I'm going to keep that one."
Don't have a goat tied off somewhere.
Have you all ever heard that expression?
If that goat's tied off, you've got a problem.
You haven't completed the circuit. haven't cut that sin out round about and that's exactly what Josiah was doing with the destruction of these altars.
And so this command about the Maddox round about about them taking care of this business in a circuit all the way around made me think about what circumcision is.
In the Old Testament the circumcision of the male infant was accomplished by cutting all the way around.
And that was the only way to completely remove that piece of flesh from the male child so it would be thrown away.
You remember when Moses failed to circumcise one of his sons and his wife did it and said, "Thou art a bloody husband unto me," because he had forgotten that was a sign of the covenant between God and the children of Israel is the circumcision of that male child on the eighth day and that it pointed toward something that we'll learn about here in just a moment.
And as you may have learned if you've been here very long, the circumcision of the male child speaks of the circumcision of the inner man of the believer, both male and female.
And in Romans chapter two, verses 28 through 29, Romans two 28 through 29, Paul teaches us that that old Testament circumcision was a type of the new Testament circumcision, which is spiritual.
He wrote for, he is not a Jew, which is one outwardly.
Neither is that circumcision, which is outward in the flesh.
Now that's the old Testament circumcision, but he is a Jew, which is one inwardly.
And circumcision is that of the heart in the spirit and not in the letter, whose praise is not of men, but of God.
So do you see how Paul linked those two together?
The covenant of circumcision, the Bible tells us was given to Abraham. and then it was passed down to Isaac and then to Jacob who was renamed Israel, God renamed him Israel.
And that practice of circumcision of the male child would separate the children of Israel from the uncircumcised Gentiles who were a type of the unbeliever.
And the children of Israel were a people whom God set apart from all other people.
And as we've learned and reviewed many times, the children of Israel were a type of the church of the Lord Jesus Christ, which is also called the Israel of God by the Apostle Paul.
Did you know that if you're a believer, even though you have no Jewish heritage whatsoever, if you're a believer, you are part of the Israel of God?
you are a Jew inwardly because your inner man, your heart, your inner man has been circumcised, not in the flesh but in the spirit by faith in the gospel of Jesus Christ.
So we're not members of the Lord's church by physical circumcision but by that circumcision of the inward man just like we read in Romans a couple of moments ago.
And just as the priest, to link this up with what we're learning about Josiah and this circuit, this cutting round, using the mattocks round about to cut down all these altars, just as the priest in the Old Testament had to completely cut that male infant's foreskin all the way around, so must the circumcision of the inward heart be all the way around, complete.
And through the Gospel, Jesus has completely separated us from this world unto himself, just like God separated the children of Israel unto himself through the covenant of circumcision in the Old Testament.
And by taking our sins upon himself and then saving us through faith in his work, he did like those priests are doing in our text.
With his Maddox roundabout, that was the gospel, he tore down the idols, he tore down the false religion, the apostasy, the unbelief on every side and he did it roundabout in a circuit completely that we may be his completely.
Aren't you glad he didn't just partially save you or save part of you?
Somehow save a third of your soul and condemn two-thirds of it?
No, he saved you all the way around.
And I thought that was a wonderful lesson that God showed me about those two words, roundabout, which mean a circuit.
Let's look back in our text, 2 Chronicles 34 and now verse 7.
And when he had broken down the altars and the groves, and had beaten the graven images into powder, and cut down all the idols throughout all the land of Israel, he returned to Jerusalem.
Let's look at that first part.
And when he had broken down the altars and the groves, and had beaten the graven images into powder and cut down all the idols throughout all the land of Israel.
Now this tells us that Josiah had a view toward cleansing and purging the entire nation of Israel, both the northern kingdom that he wasn't ruling over at the time and the southern kingdom.
And in doing this, Josiah showed us his desire for all of Israel to be saved.
The apostle Paul had that same zeal, just as Josiah was not a selfish king who desired only for his household to be saved, or just his city to be saved, or even his nation, southern kingdom to be saved he desired all Israel would be saved well so the Apostle Paul was the same way in Romans chapter 10 verses 1 through 4 Romans 10 verses 1 through 4 Paul wrote brethren my heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they might be saved for I bear them record that they have a zeal of God but not according to knowledge for they being ignorant of God's righteousness and going about to establish their own righteousness have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God for Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone that believeth."
So just as Israel had a zeal of God rather than the righteousness of God so the inhabitants of Israel and Judah in our text had that same zeal.
As we've read, they went about their lives in a very religious fashion.
They were sincere in their offerings to their gods, weren't they?
They were very religious people.
You'll see them gathered in buildings all over the world this morning or whatever time, 10 o'clock or 11 o'clock is.
I wonder if Brother Candela tells his Sunday school class it's 10 o'clock but if he doesn't maybe he'll begin to do that and all over the world though in buildings whatever their denominations may be whatever their practices may be you have people who are sincerely religious that doesn't mean they're right about what they do and so they have a zeal of God but it's not according to knowledge it's not according to what God's truth teaches us that's how we get the knowledge of God isn't it is in the Bible and some even offer sacrifices to their God and as we learned in our study of Josiah and the people there in Judah those sacrifices had been offered in unclean places.
They'd been offered in high places.
They'd been offered in an unclean manner, not by faith, but by the commands of the priests of those false religions.
And they'd been offered by unclean persons.
So unclean sacrifice is offered in unclean places by unclean persons, yet sincere.
And both Israel then, And Israel in Paul's day and Israel now, the nation, have the same problem that they've always had.
By and large, they have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God.
So Josiah did this purging all throughout the land of Israel and then, back in your text, it said he returned to Jerusalem.
After all, he had a country to rule and he had a nation to lead.
He had a people to guide toward the one true God.
And so he returned to Jerusalem and now we get to return to 2 Kings chapter 22.
So if you'll go ahead and turn back there and that's where we'll be for the foreseeable future.
2 Kings chapter 22 and we're just continuing right along with our verse by verse study there.
We took a little bit of a timeout to amplify some details we didn't have before and that was wonderful.
2 Kings chapter 22 and verse 3.
So what we studied is chronologically before what is in verse 3 here just so you know it wasn't taken out of context as far as time goes it's chronologically in order.
Verse 3 "And it came to pass in the 18th year of King Josiah that the king sent Shaphan the son of Azaliah the son of Meshulam the scribe to the house of the Lord saying..."
Now it took a lot of time for the events that we've studied over the past few Sundays to take place.
The purging of Judah and Israel did not happen overnight.
It didn't even happen in a week.
And so the tearing down of these altars, can you imagine the lengths to which the worshippers of Baal went to build these fancy altars and images and to carve all that out?
So to tear those things down and then to grind them up into powder, I don't know if you've ever done this, but my father, who was a university professor for over four decades, and he had a computer that he needed to replace, and it had a bunch of sensitive student information on there, so he asked the computer guru of our university, "What's the best method, the best software I can get to completely wipe this hard drive?"
And he said, "Kenny, take it out in the driveway and beat it up with a hammer."
And so I never forgot that.
He's basically saying, "You can't wipe a computer.
You think you can.
Hillary Clinton's the only one I know of who could wipe a computer and get by with it, but you can't wipe a computer.
And so my thought was if I'm going to replace a computer, because I was in a private business for a long time and I had some very sensitive client information on there that was restricted to me, the client, and their attorney, and I could not, even after I left that business and went back into law enforcement, I could not take a chance that that would get in the wrong hands.
So I'd take that laptop apart and pull out all these little pieces and take a hammer and put a washcloth over them and I'd just break them up.
And I didn't have time to grind them into powder.
You know why?
It just takes too long.
So I beat them up as small as I could and threw them in different trash cans and somebody is going to have to be highly motivated at the landfill to figure all that out.
So you can imagine trying to turn all of these images and altars into powder with the primitive implements and tools they had back then.
I mean I'm just getting very practical here.
This was not an overnight thing.
And so we have a long process and at this point now in our text we're more than halfway through Josiah's reign.
Remember he reigned 31 years and we're reading about his 18th year.
So just to summarize or review, he began ruling at the age of 8, he sought the Lord at the age of 16, he began purging Judah and Israel at the age of 20, and now he's 26 years old and he's about to take the next step in leading the people to the one true God.
And I'd like to point out here that even though the people and the priests were obviously way behind the curve spiritually, that did not slow down Josiah.
Now if, let's say we had a president or a governor or whatever office he may hold, but we'll say the president, who was so well versed in his Bible, like some of our presidents way back yonder.
They held the Bible in high esteem, George Washington and others.
And let's say that that president was so far ahead of the local pastor in the Bible that he said, "You know what?
I know way more than he does about the Bible.
I need to quit studying and let him catch up with me and pass me because it's not right that the pastor doesn't know his Bible better than the president.
Well, that would sound like a foolish statement wouldn't, and it would be.
Yeah.
If I was the president, I'd say, well, pastor, you got a lot of reading to do.
I'm not stopping.
I love this book and I'm going to keep going.
And so Josiah wasn't slowed down by the, uh, spiritual retardation of the priests and the people in Judah.
And it would have been easy for him to let off the accelerator of of his spiritual growth, he could have reasoned, well, the priests and the people haven't quite caught up with me yet, so why should I burn brightly anyway?
But that's not how leaders are made, not good leaders.
A good leader stands out in the midst of the smoke, whether it's a spiritual leader or a leader in the workplace.
A good leader will stand tall when others around him are falling.
And boy, I tell you, I've seen that in my personal life, and you may have too.
A good leader will stay faithful even if he's in the minority.
And a Christian ought to do the same thing today.
And perhaps you're the only one in your family who walks with the Lord.
Maybe you're not, but if you are, maybe your spouse or your children or your brothers or sisters or parents or whoever it is are lost and or maybe they're straggling in their spiritual development you'd wish they'd get off high center and start studying their Bible.
Don't you let off the gas one bit.
Don't let that discourage you.
You keep studying your Bible and going to church with the saints and praying and keep living by faith and let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father which is in heaven.
Because others are watching you.
These people in Judah were watching Josiah.
They heard he sought the Lord and I can promise you this, from that point on there were people looking for him to fail.
That's why when a pastor fails it's such a huge, huge event in the church.
It's a terrible event is what it is.
But it's huge because others are watching pastors, but others are watching you too as a Christian.
And they're going to be looking for you to see if you become more like them or more like Jesus.
And Josiah, as young as he was, was spiritually mature enough to persevere in his spiritual growth and as he purged Jerusalem and Judah and Israel.
And let me tell you, there were plenty of naysayers in his day for doing the right thing just like there are today when people try to do the right thing.
And as we've seen just in politics and in the media, evil people will show themselves when good people show themselves.
They'll take the side of evil, even when it's blatantly obvious. take the side of the, as we've seen recently, the illegal immigrant who was a gang member, who was a wife abuser, and who'd been involved in killings.
Take his side and defend him rather than saying, "Let's get him to prison.
Let's get him out of here."
Back in our text here, we have Josiah sending Shaphan, who was the grandson of a scribe, if you follow that out in the last verse that we read there in verse 3, he sent Shaphan.
So even though Shaphan was the grandson of a scribe, he was very likely a scribe himself and that probably ran in the family.
The root word for the Hebrew word that's translated scribe means to score with a mark or a tally where you actually make a mark.
Now you've seen people do that maybe on a desk.
They'll scratch, scratch, scratch, scratch until they finally make a line in the wood.
And that's what scoring is.
Not scoring a touchdown, but actually scoring or marking a tally.
And that's what this Hebrew word means, is to score or to mark with a tally as a record.
It's for the purpose of recording, not doodling on the desk.
And it's also translated as the words tell, number, accounted, declare, and reckon.
And those are pretty much math words.
Some of them are very strong math words like the word tell, accounted, and number.
So a scribe isn't just someone who wrote down what other people said.
He was truly an accountant of all things that were done in his place of employment and his writings were declarations of things that took place whether it was spoken words or counting inventory or money that was to be reckoned and in those days and in a true scribe now doesn't cancel history they record it you've heard of all these cancel culture that we put up with for the last probably the decade, maybe longer than that, where remnants of our history are being destroyed because people want to remember it a different way.
And a scribe doesn't do that.
And Josiah sent Shaphan, the scribe's grandson, to the house of the Lord and he gave him the following instructions.
Look down in verse 4 with me please.
"Go up to Hilkiah the high priest that he may sum the silver which is brought into the house of the Lord, which the keepers of the door have gathered of the people."
Now there was more than one Hilkiah in the Bible so we can't be certain that this Hilkiah was the father of Jeremiah.
Now Jeremiah's father was Hilkiah and he was a priest and the Bible says he was a priest of Anathoth which is about three miles from Jerusalem.
So it's not impossible that this Hilkiah was also Jeremiah's father but I can't say with any certainty and I don't know that any of the scholars that I've read after can, but nevertheless he's a priest and that's what's important here is that he is the priest.
In fact, we're going to see that he was the one who was supposed to sum the silver that was brought into the house of the Lord.
So look at that.
"Go to Hilkiah the priest that he may sum the silver which is brought into the house of the Lord."
And Josiah knew this.
Silver has been brought into the house of the Lord.
That's a reasonable conclusion from that statement.
He wasn't asking Shaphan to go find out if silver was gathered in the house of the Lord.
He already knew it was.
He'd done his homework.
But what was unknown to him was the amount.
Just how much silver do we have in the house of the Lord?
How much has been collected by the keepers of the door there?
And you know that's a scenario that is ripe for corruption, isn't it?
Can which people drop silver coins and yet nobody knew how much was in there.
They said, "Well, that's just where people put their money."
Now, if that were the case, how would anyone know if any of the silver went missing?
You wouldn't.
Or if it were stolen.
Listen, it's always right to have an accurate count of money or or supply inventory because if you don't there's no accountability and without accountability you have corruption.
You've got theft.
It's going to happen.
In fact I used to work quite a few thefts from banks.
Now just about every bank, I don't know one that doesn't have this practice, Every bank for whom I did work had a policy they called double accountability.
If you've ever been a teller, if you've ever worked around cash somewhere, the policy of double accountability means that if Allison and I are working together at a bank and she says, "Oh, I need to count my drawer down," then I go over there and I watch her and I count that drawer down with her.
Both of us are counting it, making sure that what she says is in there is the same.
And what it also does is it discourages me from stealing because I know Allison counted that drawer with me and she can say there were $571.12 in that drawer and that better be what goes in the safe and what comes out the next day when the next person gets that drawer.
And so that accountability is designed to protect us and also to discourage theft.
And in every case that I worked where there was a theft in the bank, guess what didn't happen?
We didn't have double accountability.
We had one person counting the money, and I cautioned my daughter Sarah about that.
She works with money at her workplace, and I said, "Always be sure if you're counting money you've got somebody watching you."
I know you'd never steal from them, but always have somebody watching you, because you might have a thief in your workplace.
So that's just a little advice there, but it springs from what Josiah did.
He wanted that silver summed up.
And I'll tell you, Brother Doug is very conscientious about our checking account, keeping, boy, he keeps those numbers right and if he has a question or if he thinks, "Man, something's not right here," it's going to bother him until he gets it fixed and I like that.
He knows he's dealing with God's money too, which adds another level of responsibility.
I'm conscientious about my checking account.
You know it represents the fruit of my labor, my financial security and that of my family.
Ultimately though, everything in my checking and savings and investments and social security and all that was given to me by God.
So I need to be a good steward of it no matter what I do with it.
And I reconcile my checkbook often.
I make sure my deposits and my withdrawals and transfers are accurately recorded.
And when they're not, I find out why they're not and I get it fixed.
So why would we be surprised that Josiah wanted the money in the house of the Lord to be summed?
This was money, look back in your text, which the keepers of the door have gathered of the people.
How interesting.
What does the Bible say about the tithe?
Well, Leviticus 27 verse 30.
Leviticus 27 verse 30.
"And all the tithe of the land, whether of the seed of the land or of the fruit of the tree, is the Lord's."
It's holy unto the Lord.
You hear that?
It's the Lord's.
So whatever you do with it, it's the Lord's.
And the priests of Judah had been so wicked that they were collecting money from the people and they were doing it by the authority given to the Levites in the book of Leviticus.
And the people on the other hand were under the commandment to give their tithes to the Lord.
Yet the religion of Judah had been so perverted and Israel too.
And it was not of the Lord at all.
The priests were heretics.
They were the keepers of the door and they were supposed to keep not only the door, but they were supposed to keep the entire service of the house of the Lord, everything.
And instead the Lord's house was defiled, the priests were defiled, the people were defiled and the money that should have gone to build up the Lord's work was being kept back from that assignment.
All you have to do is turn on your television to see people giving their silver, their dollars, to these so-called ministries on TV.
And those ministries are comprised of keepers of the door, just like this temple was.
They're comprised of keepers of the door that do nothing but fleece their vulnerable people of the money in return for these empty promises that they'll be physically healed or blessed financially.
They'll get that million dollar check in the mailbox.
I read about a woman one time who tried to pass a million dollar bill at Walmart.
I saw the article and the picture and I thought, wow, what a fool.
But these charlatans that we're talking about here, they're a bunch of liars and they have money, they have silver from the people who thought they were giving it to the Lord's house for the Lord's work.
I believe some of those people are sincere, they're just misled.
And instead people like the televangelist Kenneth Copeland who has a net worth of approximately seven hundred and sixty million dollars, almost as much as Brother Fulton.
No, that's not why a pastor got into this.
I can promise you.
Kenneth Copeland lives in an 18,000 square foot house.
He calls it his clergy residence.
He's been quoted as saying that when people drive by that house, "they will know there is a God."
Now that's his proof.
He wants people to see that house and say there is a God.
That was in a speech he gave in 2015 to the Southwest Believers Convention in Fort Worth.
He said that.
And this man, who's been married three times by the way, has gathered silver from the people and he's convinced them that if they'll sow what he calls that financial seed, those blessings will come their way.
Well, it seems like he's the only one getting blessed out of all that.
The people are getting poor and if he thinks God doesn't know exactly what he's been up to, he will after he draws breath because God has and will sum the silver which was brought into the house of the Lord and he'll be held account for what he did with that and with that we'll close and pray.
Father thank you for your word thank you for the people who love your word it makes it so much more rewarding and easier to teach when we know there are people who hunger for truth and I pray that you just help us to meditate upon what we've learned today and to not let it leave us but to live by it.
And we ask that you give our pastor the grace and liberty he needs this next hour to break the bread of life and to preach your word to your people.
In Jesus name, amen.
