Episode Transcript
All right, it's 10 o'clock.
Time to begin our study.
We're in 2 Kings chapter 21.
2 Kings chapter 21, and verse 4 was the last text we visited last week, and we'll pick up there this morning.
Having unrighteously undone much of what his father Hezekiah had righteously done, King Manasseh began a 55-year reign over Judah.
And we've learned before that God sets up rulers, and he removes them just the same.
He's in charge of who's in charge.
Speaking of God in Daniel chapter 2 verse 21a, Daniel said about God, "And he changeth the times and the seasons, he removeth kings, and setteth up kings."
And many Christians struggle with how God could set up a wicked king to rule over his people.
That's a question that I certainly had at one time before I realized how God's sovereignty works in ways we just don't understand.
And people have a hard time understanding how God could let an unbelieving Gentile nation take his people captive and rule over them.
But when you study the Bible, you'll see that Israel and Judah, and even when they were just one nation, the nation of Israel, that more often than not, they were rebelling against the Lord.
And God often delivered them into the hands of their enemies, and then he would turn around when they turned to him, and he would show them his deliverance.
And he did that enough times that it became a pattern, and it showed us something that in our rebellion, God would also deliver us instead of destroying us, which he righteously could have done.
And so he has allowed them to suffer under these bad kings like Manasseh for the purpose of turning their hearts toward him in repentance.
So remember that when we study Manasseh and how God allowed him to reign for 55 years.
Now we're in 2 Kings 21 in verse 4, so I'm going to reread the verse from last week.
This is about Manasseh, the king of Judah.
And he built altars in the house of the Lord, of which the Lord said in Jerusalem, "Will I put my name?"
Manasseh built altars in the house of the Lord, of which the Lord said in Jerusalem, "I will put my name."
And when we learn that only God's name will be put in Jerusalem and in his house, then we learn that only God's glory may be put in Jerusalem and his house.
In Exodus chapter 40, the tabernacle had been finished.
And after that event, there was a magnificent display of God's glory.
And I'll read it in verses 34 through 35.
This is found in Exodus 40 verses 34 through 35 if you're taking notes.
"Then a cloud covered the tent of the congregation," now that's the tabernacle, "and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle.
And Moses was not able to enter into the tent of the congregation because the cloud abode thereon, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle."
It says it twice.
So notice that phrase, "the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle."
Now that word "filled" is also translated as the word "accomplished" and the word "overflow."
And when you understand that, then you understand that those two words, those two other words teach us that there was no room for the glory of any other entity.
Not another god, not man, only God's glory.
That passage in Exodus says that Moses could not enter into the temple or the tabernacle.
There was no room for the glory of anyone except the Lord God of Israel.
And so that's where his name was to be put, in that house.
And God doesn't share real estate in his house.
He is not into sharing the podium with anyone because he is high and lifted up.
He is the exalted one, the most high God.
And he owns everything, and he owns the people who have access to his house.
And he won't share his space or his glory with a false god or their images.
In fact, the truth is that false gods don't have any glory.
They're dumb idols.
They can't speak, they can't hear.
And in fact, the gods that they represent are nothing more than figments of the imagination of wicked people.
Because those false gods cannot create.
You know, if you wanted to boil it down to one difference between our God and the false gods, is that our God is the creator of all things, and a false god has created nothing.
In fact, it was a created image or statue.
False gods can't save.
False gods cannot make any claim to have always been in existence like the one true God.
And in the house of the Lord, we read that God put his name there, but Manasseh put the name of Baal there.
Now let's apply this to our church.
Just as the glory of God filled that tabernacle, leaving room for no other god, no other glory of any other entity, we have no room here to preach anything other than God's Word.
And the preaching of God's Word accomplishes-- remember, God filled-- his glory filled the tabernacle.
That meant it accomplished, it overflowed.
There was no room for anything else.
And the preaching of God's Word accomplishes his purpose here.
It fills our purpose here just as he filled the tabernacle.
Preaching God's Word accomplishes what God wants us to accomplish whenever we meet.
Brother Fulton and I were sharing before church.
We're talking about how far away we live from here, and I told him the distance we live from here, and I said, "I'll tell you what, it's just worth the drive every time we make it."
We drive past a lot of churches, and some of those may be good churches.
I don't know, but I don't intend to stop in and find out.
Love the one where I am.
And so when we meet, yes, we sing, and we pray, we encourage one another, but none of those things or any other thing can accomplish or fill God's purpose for his church to meet.
His Word must be preached.
This is where his name is, is among his people.
And furthermore, we have no room to preach any other gospel than the one we received, how that Jesus died, was buried, and rose again on the third day according to the scriptures.
The cross where Jesus died is the altar where we meet God by faith, and there's not any room for any other altar in this place.
So to build another altar in the house of the Lord, which is what Manasseh did, was to give glory to another God in the house of the Lord.
And in my estimation, this is what made Manasseh's sin so grievous.
Now let's look in verse 5.
"And he built altars for all the host of heaven in the two courts of the house of the Lord."
Now by now, this was a temple, not a movable building because this temple had been built in Solomon's day and we studied all about that.
It said he built altars for the host of heaven.
Now the words "host of heaven," if you don't stay familiar with what that means, you may have forgotten that.
But the "host of heaven" comes from words that mean "the army of the heavens."
And that refers to the stars, the planets, the moon, the sun, etc.
And I'll give you a scripture for that as well.
Deuteronomy chapter 4 verse 19.
So if anybody ever asks you, "What's the host of heaven?"
this tells them.
Deuteronomy 4, 19, where God said to his people, "Unless thou lift up thine eyes unto heaven, and when thou seest the sun and the moon and the stars, even all the host of heaven shouldest be driven to worship them and serve them, which the Lord thy God hath divided unto all nations under the whole heaven."
So it tells you right there that the host of heaven is the sun and the moon and the stars.
Now the sun and the moon and the stars are indeed magnificent.
Absolutely breathtaking if you think about where they are and what they do.
And just take the sun, it's a certain distance from the planet Earth.
And as we rotate around it on this imaginary axis, there's not a straw sticking through the center of the Earth.
I used to, you know, when I was a kid, we'd build those models of the Earth and we'd have to spin them around.
But as it does that, it never gets too close for us to burn up or too far away to where we turn into a ball of ice.
And God has ordained that orbit.
Now isn't that magnificent?
And so the sun all by itself is worthy of considering because it shows us how big our God is.
It gives us light and warms us and we get vitamin D from it and by the way, that's free.
Do you know that?
Now don't go out there and get yourself burned up trying to get all the D you can.
It causes plants to grow.
But all of those things were created by God.
Listen to what the psalmist wrote in Psalm 148, verses 1 through 3.
Psalm 148, 1 through 3.
We're looking at the folly of Manasseh building altars for the host of heaven.
"Praise ye the Lord, praise ye the Lord from the heavens, praise him in the heights.
Praise ye him all his angels," listen to this, "praise ye him all his hosts.
Praise ye him sun and moon, praise him all ye stars of light."
Now, Manasseh was building altars to the host of heaven to praise them.
But the psalmist said, "He's got it all wrong."
The sun and the moon and the stars and all of his hosts are to praise God.
The Lord is to receive praise from everyone, everything, and everywhere, every time.
But the sun and the moon and the stars to which Manasseh built altars could not receive praise.
They weren't worthy to receive praise.
They were, in fact, to be busy praising the Lord.
The psalmist said, "Praise ye him all his hosts."
Now, the sun and the moon and the stars don't have a soul or a spirit.
So there's not...if you're imagining them calling out to the Lord, that's not how that happens.
But because they're God's creation, by their very nature, their very nature praises him.
The very things they consist of praise God because he created them.
So it was as though Manasseh read this psalm, which had already been written before he was ever born.
It was available to him to read.
He read this psalm and it was as though he said, "I'm going to do what I want to do.
I'm going to do the opposite of what God said."
And where did Manasseh build these wicked altars?
Look back in verse 5.
In the two courts of the house of the Lord.
Now, there was an inner court in the temple Solomon built.
The inner court is written...is described to us in 1 Kings chapter 6 verse 36.
1 Kings 6 verse 36 said, "And he built the inner court with three rows of hewed stone and a row of cedar beams."
Now, if there was an inner court, there was an outer court.
If you have a first, you have a second, right?
Or you will, that's the next number.
And the outer court we read about...it's also called the utter court, U-T-T-E-R.
Outer court or utter court is found in the vision of Ezekiel.
And that's chapter 42 verse 8, Ezekiel 42.8.
Now, these aren't the only places that these courts are talked about in the Bible, but at least I'll give you a scripture for each one.
"For the length of the chambers that were in the utter court was 50 cubits, and low before the temple were 100 cubits."
But whether it be the inner court or the outer court, there was no place anywhere in the tabernacle, anywhere in the temple, for any other altar than the one the Lord commanded Moses in the Old Testament.
And he commanded a brazen altar, and he commanded an altar of incense.
And that's it.
No other altars.
Now, let's look in verse 6 here about Manasseh.
It said, "And he made his son pass through the fire."
Now, we'll stop there.
That is an act that is utterly detestable to us.
We can't even imagine that.
And whether they were sacrificed by fire or made to physically pass through the fire, both of those were harmful to his children.
Not only physically harmful, but they were associated with honoring the false god Molech, also called Moloch, in the Bible.
And God had prohibited the children of Israel from doing that very thing.
This wasn't some loophole they pretended to find, saying, "Well, God never actually said not to do that.
He did."
Leviticus 18.21.
"And now shalt not let any of thy seed pass through the fire to Molech, neither shalt thou profane the name of thy God, I am the Lord."
So when a parent introduced his child to the religion of Molech, then he literally sentenced his son to the fire because that was a religion for unbelievers.
And nowhere in the Bible does God ever command a parent to do such a horrible thing.
And in Leviticus, he in fact specifically prohibited it.
Ephesians chapter 6 verse 4.
Now this is how people do this even today.
Ephesians 6.4, "And ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath."
Now let me just stop right there.
That does not mean, "Now don't make your kids upset with you."
One of mine tried that one time.
I said, "Daddy, it says right here you're not supposed to provoke us to wrath."
So I did an exposition of the scripture to her.
And we got away from that poor exegesis that she was relying upon.
"Provoke not your children to wrath."
And how do you do that?
"But bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord."
So if I don't bring my children up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, then I provoke them to wrath.
When these fathers and mothers brought their children up in the religion of Moloch, they provoke them to wrath because they did not bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.
That's the application right there.
Back in the text, it's after he says, "And he made his sons pass through the fire," next thing, "and observed times."
Observed times.
And we have covered these things before, but I'll just hit them real quickly.
It's from one Hebrew word.
Observed times, one Hebrew word, and it means a soothsayer, or a sorceress, or an enchanter.
Now nobody can tell the future but God.
And Nancy Pelosi, she is apparently the best stock trader that ever existed.
Warren Buffett could learn a thing or two from her, couldn't he?
But nobody can tell the future by using the stars, or the days of the month, or the number of the years.
And all of these efforts to do that are based upon a lack of reliance on God's word.
If you want to know what the future holds, I'll tell you where to go.
Here's a good place to go.
Read Matthew 24 and 25.
That's not the only place, but don't go to an observer of times.
And it says in verse 6, "and used enchantments."
Used enchantments.
That means to divine, or to act as God.
Leviticus chapter 19, verse 26.
Leviticus 19, 26.
God told the children of Israel, "Ye shall not eat anything with the blood, neither shall ye use enchantment, nor observe times."
And then our text also says in verse 6, "and dealt with familiar spirits and wizards."
Now we studied that before as well as the observing of times.
I'm going to read a passage to you that we studied.
It is in 1 Samuel 28, verses 7 through 9.
1 Samuel 28, verses 7 through 9.
This is during the reign of King Saul over Israel, when they were still a nation.
"Then said Saul unto his servants, 'Seek me a woman that hath a familiar spirit, that I may go to her and inquire of her.'
And his servants said to him, 'Behold, there is a woman that hath a familiar spirit at Endor.'
And Saul disguised himself and put on other raiment.
And he went, and two men with him.
And they came to the woman by night, and he said, 'I pray thee, divine unto me by the familiar spirit, and bring me him up whom I shall name unto thee.'
And the woman said unto him, 'Behold, thou knowest what Saul hath done, how he hath cut off those that have familiar spirits and the wizards out of the land.
Wherefore then layest thou a snare for my life to cause me to die?'"
And then if you skip down to verse 11, same passage.
"Then said the woman, 'Whom shall I bring up unto thee?'
And he said, 'Bring me up Samuel.'"
Now Samuel was dead already.
So a woman with a familiar spirit was going to be used to try to talk to Samuel from the dead.
This is called a necromancer.
A necromancer.
Someone who tries to consult with the dead.
And in that passage I read you, you heard the word "wizards" as well.
And a wizard is someone who has a familiar spirit.
So it's very close to the same thing even though the Hebrew words are different.
But let's ask ourselves a question here.
If we're looking for spiritual truth, why would we want to talk to someone who was dead and who couldn't even bring himself back to life?
Why would you do that?
That man's life was taken from him, however he died, and in himself he does not have victory over the grave.
He's still dead.
So the one with whom we need to consult is the one whose life was not taken from him, but who lay it down of his own free will.
And he said, "If I have the power to lay it down, I have the power to take it up again."
The one whose words we need to hear is one and the only one who's not a captive of the grave because he overcame death and he lives again.
Manasseh was going down the wrong road.
He was knocking on the wrong door in every way.
Look back in your text in verse 6, and toward the end it says, "He wrought much wickedness in the sight of the Lord."
And if you look at the Hebrew word and all of the English words for the word wrought, you'll see how pervasive and how deep-rooted this wickedness is.
I'll use those other English words that are also translated from the Hebrew word to describe to you what it meant for Manasseh to have wrought much wickedness in the sight of the Lord.
Manasseh did wickedness.
He committed it.
He kept it.
Showed it.
Prepared it.
Made it.
And maintained it.
So he didn't just stumble into wickedness.
And these words help us understand just how deep sin goes in the sinner.
It's how he was born.
It's what he knows.
It's what he prefers.
It's what he becomes.
It's not an accident.
It's a preference.
You know, when you put a little baby in a high chair, and you put their sippy cup up there, their bottle, and they accidentally knock it over, what do we all say?
We say, "Uh-oh," and we pick it up and give it to them.
That was an accident.
They're clumsy.
They can't grab things right.
But there comes a little point in time where it's not an accident anymore.
Where they do that, and they go, "Uh-oh," because they like watching mom or dad pick that thing up.
And then when they get to be a toddler, you wish that's all they did, is just knock that thing over.
But man doesn't accidentally sin.
A sinner has that preference for that.
And the sinner has a—it's not only a preference, it's a conscious decision, and it's a continuation of a pattern.
As it says, the word "maintained" was also translated from the Hebrew word for "wrought" or "worked."
So it's a continuation of a pattern.
The sinner—we're thinking of Manasseh here, but this is for all sinners, every sinner— the sinner inherently rejects the truth of God's Word.
And the reason that he does that, the reason that we did that, is because our deeds were evil.
It's like we learned on Wednesday night.
And when you tell the sinner that the lie upon which he stands is "but for a moment"— if you were here Wednesday or watched on Wednesday, you know where that's coming from, from the Proverbs.
If you tell him that lie is "but for a moment," then he will mock the truth that's been established forever.
And only when, by God's grace, that sinner receives the truth of God's Word, repents of who he was and what he believed, can he be saved.
So Manasseh did wickedness in the sight of the Lord, and that's where he is with God right now.
And at the very last part of verse 6, it said, "to provoke him to anger."
So all of those things we read in verse 6 were done to provoke God to anger.
And that's all one Hebrew word, "to provoke him to anger."
And here's the key.
Wickedness provokes God to anger.
Psalm chapter 7, verse 11.
Psalm 7, 11.
"God judgeth the righteous, and God is angry with the wicked every day."
And we're going to look at that for a second.
He's angry with the wicked every day.
In other words, wickedness provokes God to anger every time and every day.
Have you ever worked around someone who was moody?
Maybe you were.
But I mean, you never knew whether that person would come to work whistling or spitting mad.
And you knew when that person was in a sour mood not to provoke him or her by saying or doing anything that might trip his trigger.
In fact, you just kind of left him alone.
And then that same person comes to work the next day, and he's in a better mood, he's joking around, having fun at work, and the things that provoked him yesterday don't even faze him today.
Well, that's not how God works.
God doesn't show up some days in a bad mood and some days in a good mood.
He's the same yesterday, today, and forever.
And the Bible says He is angry with the wicked every day.
So every day Manasseh did wickedness, God was provoked to anger.
Verse 7, "And he set a graven image of the grove that he had made."
The word "set" means to put or to appoint.
In fact, the Hebrew word translated "set" here is first seen as the word "put" in Genesis chapter 2 verse 8.
Genesis 2 verse 8.
"And the Lord planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there he put or set the man whom he had formed."
Now this image that Manasseh made was of a grove.
It was an image of the grove that he had made.
Which word "grove" is translated from the word "Azera," also the Phoenician goddess Asherah.
And the word "Azera" means happy and blessed, and that's kind of ironic that a person who would believe the false god of a grove of trees was responsible for their happiness.
It was actually the creator of those trees who gave the people the blessing of the trees so they could build houses and chariots and so forth.
And yet Manasseh worshipped the creature, the thing that was created more than he did the creator.
It said, "And he set a graven image of the grove that he had made."
And I can't help but to keep coming back to this truth.
The very fact that Manasseh made or had made an idol means he was the idol's creator.
And by all rights, if he created the idol, he should be sovereign or all-powerful over the idol.
It ought to be Manasseh who has the power to set up the idol and the power to remove it again.
So how then could something that relies on a man to build it and on a man to set it up... how could that thing have power over the man that built it and set it up?
It's illogical.
Whether you're a Christian, an atheist, whatever you are, that is illogical.
But that's what idol worshippers do all over the world.
And where did Manasseh set this handmade idol?
Look back in your text, it says, "In the house."
Now we'll see that this is the house of the Lord in just a moment.
For 29 years before this, Judah was the beneficiary of a sanctified priesthood and an undefiled temple under King Hezekiah.
But in one generation--get that, in one generation-- that temple was once again defiled, desecrated, by the placing of an idol inside.
You see that idol--follow this now-- that idol, once it was made, it started off in the grove.
It wasn't in the temple.
It was in the grove.
And the people tolerated it.
I'm going somewhere with this.
It was in the grove and the people tolerated it.
I remember in 1998, police officers entered a home in the Houston area because of a call about a man there supposedly having a weapon in his house and making some sort of threat.
And that wasn't happening, but upon making entry, the police observed two men engaging in a sexual act with each other.
And they arrested those men for the offense of homosexual conduct, which was a Class C misdemeanor under the Texas Penal Code.
It really was, for a long time.
One of those men, Mr.
Lawrence, fought the case all the way to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.
And every court along the way said, "No, you violated the law.
Too bad."
So did the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.
But in 2003, the U.S.
Supreme Court ruled that that law was not only unconstitutional in Texas, but in the other 13 states that had that very same type of law.
And so at that time, homosexuals began to do what was called "coming out of the closet," revealing their acts and so forth.
And you know what happened?
Society began to tolerate it.
And some of those homosexuals began demanding the types of equal rights given to people who were racial minorities.
And those are two totally different things.
And then their perverted doctrine began to infiltrate the schools and the workplaces to the point where merchants who refused to cater to their whims, example, by making a cake with two homosexuals, something on there that indicated two homosexuals were getting married.
And that man was, that business owner was prosecuted and he was sued.
On June 26, 2015, the White House was illuminated by the rainbow flag colors, not to celebrate the token God gave to never flood the earth again, but to commemorate the legalization of same-sex marriages in all 50 states.
And during that time and since then, it has not only begun to be tolerated, but celebrated in many churches.
Do you know what happened?
First, the idol was built in Manasseh's day, and the people tolerated it.
The idol was set in the grove, and the people just left it alone.
The idol was set in the house of the Lord, and then the people embraced it.
And we learned this same thing about the high places when we studied Solomon's life.
And now, the law against homosexual conduct in the state of Texas has since been repealed.
It's been taken completely out of the law book.
And in fact, there are now places in this world where people are arrested and prosecuted for hate crimes, for speaking out against homosexuality as a sin.
If you don't believe me, go to London, the home of Charles Haddon Spurgeon, one of the most powerful preachers who ever lived.
Go to London and speak out against the LGBTQT alphabet group.
I'm going to read you the words from the prosecution manual of the Crown Prosecution Service there in England.
Here is the definition of such a hate crime.
"Any incident or criminal offense which is perceived by the victim or any other person to be motivated by hostility or prejudice based on a person's sexual orientation or perceived sexual orientation."
It says "any incident."
It doesn't even have to be a crime.
Well, let me tell you something.
There's an incident going on right here, and it's called "preaching God's Word."
And to anyone listening or watching, we don't hate anyone.
There's this straw man that's been set up, this false argument that says if we preach against a certain type of sin, that means we hate the person doing it.
No, it's actually the opposite.
We love you.
God loves you.
He sent his son to die for you, to forgive you that sin, so that you don't die in it.
In fact, we love all sinners, and we plead for them to repent of their sin and put their faith in Jesus.
But if the incident here of preaching the truth of God's Word is perceived by a person as being hostile to their sexual orientation, then I plead guilty.
And if we have to go to jail one day for that sort of thing, we'll do that.
The idol went from the mind of the maker to the hands of the maker, to the grove, and then into the house of the Lord.
And there was something about this house we are reminded of in the next few words, back in our text, of which the Lord said to David and to Solomon his son, "In this house and in Jerusalem, which I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel, will I put my name forever."
Now back in verse 4, we read a similar statement, but it's amplified for us here.
First of all, this is a multi-generational truth.
God said this to David, and he said it to Solomon his son.
That truth was good enough for David, and it was to be good enough for Solomon.
And secondly, God said of Jerusalem, "Which I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel."
Do you know what Jerusalem means?
It means the teaching of peace.
The teaching of peace.
And it was in Jerusalem that God's people would enjoy peace from their enemies, but they would not remain faithful.
So, thank God in the new Jerusalem we will enjoy peace from our enemies forever, when God puts down all wickedness.
And he chose Jerusalem, and he chose the house of the Lord there as a place to put his name forever.
God is not the flavor of the month.
He's not a God who alternates power with other gods or shares his glory.
He's the one who lives forever and ever, and who put his name in his house and in his holy city forever and ever.
You know, the earthly city of Jerusalem will one day be gone, but the new and eternal one shall never pass away, and that's where God's name will be.
It is now, and it always will be.
And next week, we'll pick up in verse 8, Lord willing.
Let's pray.
Father, it's been good to be in your house this morning to study your word.
Thank you for the faithful who come and those who tune in and are fed your word, and I pray as we continue into our next hour that you would bless our singing and preaching as we praise you in song, and Father, as we encourage one another in the faith and give our pastor the same grace and liberty that I've asked for today as well, that he may preach your word without fear or favor and teach us, Lord, that when we walk away from here, we'll be edified in the faith, and that the lost sinner will be drawn unto you through the sweet gospel news, that they can be saved just as we were, and it's in Jesus' name we pray.
Amen.
