Episode Transcript
Well, good morning.
We are on its 10 o'clock.
Let's turn to 2 Kings chapter 21.
2 Kings chapter 21.
That's our text and we begin a new verse today with verse 8.
Glad to see you all here.
And I'm sure we've got a good online presence today as well.
2 Kings 21 verse 8, King Manasseh, the King of Judah has defiled the house of the Lord by placing altars there to worship Baal.
And of that house, God told David and Solomon, he would put his name there forever.
And we continue now with verse 8 where God promised, neither will I make the feet of Israel move anymore out of the land, which I gave their fathers, only if they will observe to do according to all that I have commanded them.
And according to all the law that my servant Moses commanded them.
Now to remind you, Israel speaks of the entire nation, all the 12 tribes.
And at this time in history and for some time, since Rehoboam and Jeroboam, the nations have been divided and we're studying the Southern kingdom of Judah.
So even though you see Israel there, that is a promise God made before the kingdoms were divided.
And so it certainly applies to Judah.
He said, neither will I make the feet of Israel move anymore out of the land, which I gave their fathers.
Now, this was God's perfect will for the children of Israel that their feet would never again be moved out of the land he gave them.
And what a wonderful arrangement that would have been, you know, in the 40 years of the wilderness wanderings, which the children of Israel did when God delivered them from Egyptian bondage in those 40 years, they were never left to die.
They were to die of thirst or to die of hunger or to be eaten by the wild animals.
They were never given over to their enemies in that time.
Yes, they did hunger, but God fed them.
And when he fed them, he taught them about the bread of heaven and yes, they thirsted, but God gave them drink.
And when he did, he taught them about the water of life.
And you read in the new Testament where Jesus and also the apostles drew upon those things that were done for the children of Israel in the wilderness.
And that rock they drank from was the spiritual rock that followed them.
That was Christ.
And back in Deuteronomy chapter eight in verse four, Deuteronomy eight and verse four, God spoke to the children of Israel through Moses saying this about that journey, that wandering of those 40 years in the wilderness, he said, vi Raymond, now that's their clothing waxed, not old upon thee.
Neither did thy foot swell these 40 years.
Now, can you imagine wearing the same clothes and the same shoes for 40 years?
I know you women can't imagine it.
Now we guys can, and I already messed up my illustration this morning because I wore the wrong belt.
My wife taught me when we met that your belt and your shoe, your footwear has to match.
I never knew that I'd get run around my whole life with the wrong color boots and belt on.
But anyway, because I wore brown boots, I didn't wear my Hanks belt.
Brother Fulton bought me a black Hanks belt about a year or two ago, and he said that belt has a 100 year warranty on it.
Well, I'm almost 100, so I'm not going to live another 100 years.
I'm closer to 100 than I am zero.
Just, oh, you need to know right now.
And so that Hanks belt has that 100 year warranty, and I'm afraid my son's in law will have to test the limits of that promise.
But boy, what a promise that is for a belt to last 100 years.
And so for God to wander these children of Israel through the wilderness and to make sure that their shoes never wore out, their feet didn't swell, their clothes didn't wear out, that was showing them something, wasn't it?
Because that robe of righteousness that we wear will never wear out.
There is no expiration date.
It's better than a Hanks belt by far.
And I believe the main reason God had the story of Exodus, this wilderness journey, and the promised land repeated by the prophets throughout the Bible was to remind his people of his faithfulness to them, even when they were unfaithful to him.
God was still faithful.
God not only told David and Solomon that he would put his name in his house, but he again reminds the reader here as we read about Manasseh's desecration of that place that it was reserved for God's name alone.
He tells us that in our text.
And I think back to the Garden of Eden, the garden God created, and the garden that God populated with the animals and the plants, including the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
And it was God's perfect will that they enjoy the fruits of that garden, that they enjoy everything in the garden, and that they refrain, that arrangement was based upon them refraining from one thing.
Now you enjoy everything here of the tree, of the fruit of all these trees you may freely eat, but not of this one, that tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
God delivered the children of Israel out of 400 plus years of Egyptian bondage, led them through a wilderness, and brought them into the land of promise where they could live in peace throughout all their generations, just like Adam and Eve could have lived in peace in that garden.
And that promise to Israel, just like that promise to Adam and Eve, was conditioned upon one thing.
Look back in your text, it says in verse 8, "Only if they will observe to do according to all that I have commanded them, and according to all the law that my servant Moses commanded them."
Now this wasn't a trick for the children of Israel.
God gave Israel all of his commandments through Moses, through his servant Moses.
And after he did that, in Exodus chapter 19 verse 8, at the foot of Mount Sinai, we read, "And all the people answered together and said, 'All that the Lord has spoken we will do.'
And Moses returned the words of the people unto the Lord."
So they received the law, they understood the law, they agreed to obey the law, and God bound them to their words.
It's amazing to me how God's law went from one prohibition in the garden to many prohibitions in the law.
If you go back and look at the law book that Adam and Eve had, well you could scratch that on a little sticky note, couldn't you?
"Thou shalt not eat of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die."
You might have to write small, but you could get that all on a sticky note.
That's all they needed.
They could have put that thing up, of course they had it right here, they heard it, but they could have just put that up on the refrigerator and reminded themselves every day when they got up, "Don't eat of that tree over there.
Eat of everything else but not that tree."
Well now, they've got a law book.
They've got the tables of the stones and all the writings that would contain the law, and all that Adam and Eve had to do was refrain from eating from one tree.
And what they didn't realize was, in that one law, God was protecting them from much more than just committing one sin.
He was protecting them from committing a multitude of sins.
You see, the knowledge of good and evil was a knowledge that they would not be able to handle if they received it.
And that knowledge of good and evil was what they would gain by breaking God's commandments.
Now, it's not always good to gain something, isn't it?
About every Thanksgiving and from about there all the way through New Year's, everybody gains something that they don't want, and that's extra weight from all that food we eat.
But to gain this knowledge of good and evil would include learning how to lie, and how to steal, and how to kill, and how to commit all kinds of abominations.
That knowledge of good and evil, the evil part, would teach them how to worship other gods.
It would teach man how to provoke his children to wrath and to walk after the flesh and not in the spirit.
The knowledge of good and evil would have indeed opened their eyes, and it did.
But it would open them unto a world of sin, whereas before they had known only good.
And because of that, after they sinned and fell in the garden and were tossed out, and all mankind was born outside of that garden, because of that, God could not command the rest of mankind, or even Adam and Eve when they were evicted from the garden.
He couldn't just say, "Remember, y'all still don't eat of that tree."
It wasn't as simple as that anymore, because their eyes had been opened to all manner of sin, the knowledge of good and evil.
And that's why there are so many commandments.
God would have to give them a law that would address every possibility that their sinful minds could conceive.
And yet, after the children of Israel bound themselves to that law, which God again gave to protect them, from then on, Israel went from obedience to disobedience, from willing to unwilling, from faithful to unfaithful.
So because God's promise to not move their feet anymore out of the land He gave them was conditioned upon their obedience to sin, then when they did sin, He punished them by moving their feet out of the land which He gave them.
That's what He did.
And from this were shown their sinful nature, and our sinful nature as well.
Now how impossible it was for Israel to keep this law is how impossible it is for us to perfectly keep God's law.
There wasn't any difference between them and us.
And their forefathers, all the way back to Adam, were operating under the knowledge of good and evil.
That's what we need to remember.
It wasn't just Adam and Eve who were affected by the knowledge of good and evil, it was all mankind after that.
And so they committed those same kinds of sins throughout all their generations, and they're still being committed today.
Mankind was hopeless to please God and to remain in the land forever, speaking here of Israel.
And so Israel was in a pickle, weren't they?
They needed somebody to do this job for them.
They needed somebody to obey this law for them.
Somebody who could please God for them, because they certainly weren't doing it.
And they needed a Redeemer, because the blood of the bulls and goats they sacrificed could never take away sin.
Psalm chapter 62, verse 5 through 6.
Psalm 62, verse 5 through 6.
My soul, wait thou only upon God, for my expectation is from him.
He only is my rock and my salvation.
He is my defense.
I shall not be moved.
What is the key to not having your feet moved out of the land which the Lord your God gave you?
I'm not talking about the state of Texas, the county of Henderson or Kaufman or wherever you live.
I'm talking about that spiritual place.
The key to not being moved is in the rock of your salvation.
That's what the psalmist said.
And Israel's feet were moved when they did not trust in their Creator.
But when a person sees, when a sinner sees God as his only rock and salvation, then he shall not be moved.
Oh, these bodies are going to go to the grave.
And even if a person is alive during the rapture and they're changed, the body still doesn't get to go any further than the bodies of the dead.
We shall be changed, whether you're in the grave or whether you're alive when Jesus comes.
And Jesus is our unmovable rock, and we who trust in him are in him.
And if he shall not be moved, then we shall not be moved.
Isn't that a wonderful truth?
Look at verse 9 with me now.
Back in our text, if you just joined us online, we're in 2 Kings 21 verse 9.
"But they hearkened not."
Now we'll stop there.
That's the story of man from the fall in the garden of Eden until today.
Even though he hears God's word, he doesn't listen to it with the attitude of doing it.
That's what hearkening is, is when you hear with the attitude of doing it.
And rather than blaming himself, sinful man would say that his current dilemma is the fault of those who came before him.
I can hear one saying, "Well, if only Adam and Eve had obeyed God, we wouldn't be in the situation we're in today."
Oh yeah, we would.
Because what you would be saying is that our happiness, our salvation would be conditioned upon Adam and Eve obeying the one law God gave them.
If they obeyed the law, somebody else wouldn't.
Do you think there's anybody who came after Adam and Eve who was more fit to obey the one law that God gave them in the garden?
Only Jesus.
It wouldn't have been you or me.
And in your flesh, and I would say this to anybody, is your flesh more prone to obey, to do good, than Adam's and Eve's was?
No, it's not.
Yet another will say, "If the Romans had not crucified Jesus, the world would be a better place."
Well, how arrogant are we to think that we would fare any better in the treatment of the Son of God than those Romans.
If it weren't the Romans who crucified him, it would have been the Greeks.
If it weren't the Greeks, it would have been the Persians.
It would have been somebody, the Muslims.
There's none that doeth good, no, not one.
There's none that seeketh after God.
And lest these Jews in Manasseh's day lifted up their heads in pride by blaming their forefathers, saying, "Well, if they hadn't of sinned against the Lord, we wouldn't be having all this trouble."
The verse continues here by saying, "And Manasseh seduced them to do more evil."
Well, let's look at the role of the leader here.
Manasseh is the king of Judah.
Proverbs chapter 20 and verse 8.
Proverbs 20 verse 8.
Now we're going to contrast this with what the verse just said about Manasseh.
It said, "He seduced them," that is Judah, "to do more evil," even more than their forefathers.
The role of a leader is given to us in Proverbs 20 verse 8.
It says, "A king that sitteth in the throne of judgment scattereth away all evil with his eyes."
The word judgment and its companion words such as the word cause or plea are always used in the sense of righteous judgment.
It's a term for justice.
That's the way to look at it.
And only one time is it used in the negative sense, but it's preceded by the word pervert, not the noun but the verb.
Pervert judgment.
So every other time you see that Hebrew word in the Old Testament, it's talking about righteous judgment or justice.
Now Manasseh sat on a throne, but his throne was not a throne of righteous judgment, was it?
It was a throne of perverted judgment.
He was a crook, literally, as that's what the word perverted means, it's crooked.
We studied that in the Proverbs a time or two.
And if righteous judgment scatters away evil, like the Proverbs said, then perverted judgment seduces people to commit evil.
And that's what Judah did.
Let's look at the word seduce in our text.
It said in Manasseh seduce them to do more evil.
The word seduce means to err, E R R.
It's translated that way 17 times.
It means to go astray.
It means to wander.
All of those words are used to translate the Hebrew word.
The word can be used in a good sense, such as when Abraham testified that God caused him to wander from his house there in Genesis 20 verse 13.
And it could also be used in a bad sense as it is in our text because it's associated with a king who's causing his subjects to do evil.
The word seduce also teaches us that there is a right way.
And when people are led astray from that right way, then they have been seduced to do so.
They've been seduced to do what is wrong.
How will you know what's wrong?
If you don't know what's right, you have to have a right way to have a wrong way.
Don't you?
A few weeks ago, I taught on the way that seemed right to us versus the way that seemed right to God and the way that seemed right to God is clearly outlined for us in his word.
And it's the same today is when he gave it to the prophets and to the apostles to write down.
It hasn't changed any.
Can you imagine if we had as many updates in the Bible as we have on this silly thing, man, I'll tell you what, I can't turn my phone on.
They'll say, you need to plug it in tonight.
You got another update.
And of course what that does, uh, uh, they're slowing it down and that way I had to buy a new phone one of these days.
I know what's going on.
Uh, but I'm, I'm glad the Bible doesn't have any updates.
Now, when there is a translation that helps people to understand it better than they would have better than if they tried to understand English, it was spoken 400, 500 years ago.
That's fine.
That's not an update of the Bible.
That is a translation.
And if it's honestly done from the original languages, then people understand.
And some people can't get past that, by the way, they are, they don't go for that.
And I think maybe we've had some depart our assembly over the years who, because we didn't use the 1611 KJV.
And by the way, nobody does cause you can hardly read it.
Remember brother, uh, Fulton having brother, Dr.
Peel, brother Peel.
Some of y'all didn't know him.
Most of you did.
And in fact, maybe everybody in here did except for the Jeremeney kids.
We all here when Dr.
Peel was here.
Okay.
All right.
Uh, smart, smart man, brother Fulton years ago, handed him the King James, the 1611 and said, brother Peel, would you read that?
And man, let me tell you, he had a hard time because of the way it was written in the characters and all that.
And nobody in here has a 1611.
We've all got the 1769 revision of the English language so that we can understand it.
So don't, that's just a little side note.
Don't get too hung up on whether somebody says, well, I use KJV only.
Well, which one are you using?
I use KJV too.
Which one you using?
You know, we don't worship translations.
We worship God and his word.
And I'm glad that we have translations to help us understand.
Okay, well, I'll, I'll get off that, but God would never, never seduce you to go astray from his word, from the way he established.
In fact, James 1, 13 and 14, James 1, 13 through 14 says, let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God.
So that right there is telling us God would never tempt you to break his word.
You cannot blame your proclivity to sin, your choices, your tendency to sin on God because he's holy.
It says, no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man, but every man is tempted when he is drawn away of his own lust and enticed.
So if you use the truth we've learned so far about Manasseh, then we could also read this verse like this.
Let no man say when he is seduced, I am seduced of God for God cannot be seduced with evil, neither seduces he any man.
It's the same truth.
So you can put it out of your mind that God ever seduced anyone to do evil.
And that would be counterproductive, wouldn't it?
That'd be against his holy nature.
And drawing on what we've learned in a previous lesson, we now know that man is seduced by someone other than God.
In fact, the origin of that seduction is the great seducer himself.
That's Satan.
Speaking of the end times, in Mark chapter 13 verse 22, Mark 13 verse 22, Jesus said, "For false Christs and false prophets shall rise and shall show signs and wonders to seduce, if it were possible, even the elect."
That is the saved.
And although in that passage the word seduce is from a Greek word rather than a Hebrew word, it means the same thing as it does in our text.
It means to err, to go astray.
So who seduces?
False Christs and false prophets.
Jesus is never going to trick you.
He's never going to try to fool you with his word.
He wants you to understand it.
You know, I heard a very well-known theologian, someone who I respect.
I don't agree with everything he says, but I do respect his scholarship and most things.
And he's a very, very intelligent teacher of the Bible.
And I heard him say the other day that the gospel is not something you need to understand.
It's something you need to believe.
And I thought, well, how do you believe something you don't understand?
You don't have to understand every facet of the gospel, but you need to understand that you're a sinner and Jesus died for sinners.
He shed his blood on the cross for you.
You need to know that he did that and understand at least some of what that means before you can have faith in it.
And I hope he was just mistaken in his words.
I hope he doesn't really believe that because I want to explain the gospel.
You know, it reminded me of the Ethiopian eunuch who was in the chariot and Philip joined himself to him and he said, what'd he say?
Understandest thou what thou readest?
That was important to Philip the evangelist.
And the eunuch said, how can I accept some man should guide me?
And Philip joined himself to the chariot and he saw that eunuch was reading from Isaiah and he preached unto him Jesus.
But when he got up there, he said, do you understand what you're reading?
That was important.
What he didn't say, look, you don't need to worry.
I don't need to explain this to you.
Do you believe what you just read?
Well, that poor eunuch would have probably said, I don't know.
I don't know what it says.
So we, it is important that we understand what we're reading here.
And Manasseh, this, this wicked King.
Now he didn't want anybody to understand God's word or believe it either way at this time in his life.
But he was a wicked King and he believed in a false God and we're reading all about it.
But you know, even though Manasseh was a powerful King, he was on that throne for 55 years.
Don't forget he started raining when he was 12.
So he just a young sprout.
And I don't think much of his counselors because they led him astray.
If he was raised, uh, not to believe God's word and his, his daddy has a kind of believe God's word, but we have a King who's very powerful and very influential.
It said he seduced Judah to do more evil, but you know, just because somebody tries to seduce you doesn't mean you have to obey them.
What do we teach our little children?
You know, if a stranger tries to talk to you or get you to come over there, you run to mom and daddy.
Don't you get it?
You don't get away from my side.
You tell them, no, you run away.
You holler stranger, stranger, you go to a policeman.
We teach them don't let one of those predators seduce you.
And the same thing spiritually you have a choice to make.
And if you want to listen to your heart, you can do that, but that's not going to work out too well for you.
Or you can listen to God's word.
As Jeremiah, the prophet said this about the heart or the inner man that we learned about this week in the Proverbs, he said is deceitful.
It's desperately wicked.
And it's not helpful to listen to a deceitful heart.
Is it that deceitful heart tells you that your way is right and that your way makes sense and that your way won't hurt anything.
That deceitful heart doesn't see anything wrong with what you're doing.
And Jeremiah said the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.
Who can know it?
Now that's Jeremiah 17, nine.
If you're writing that down, Jeremiah 17, nine and that deceitful heart is what Satan uses to seduce you to do evil.
He said, just go with your heart.
And if you missed our Wednesday night lesson this week, you missed a wonderful explanation of Proverbs 12 verse 20.
And I'll read the first part of it, which means I put a little letter a after the number 20 Proverbs 12, 20 little a, because it ties into our lessons seamlessly.
It says deceit is in the heart of them that imagine evil.
Now, what did, what did Manassas seduce Judah to do more of evil?
So he's got a deceitful heart, doesn't he?
And the people whom he seduced successfully also had deceitful hearts.
And so together their King and they imagined to do evil.
They scratched it out.
Like a man would scratch out or write his plans for his future on a piece of paper.
And they, the evil they imagined to do was look back in our text there in verse nine, more evil than did the nations whom the Lord destroyed before the children of Israel.
It was like a contest to see who could be the worst.
Now there are two phrases to study here.
The first one is the phrase more evil is so much for the theory of spiritual evolution.
Huh?
You know, spiritual evolution.
Well, I'll give you a quote that defines what this group believes they're called spiritual alify.
It's some website dedicated to promoting the theory and the practice of spiritual evolution.
And here's what it says.
I'm reading a quote from that, that website.
It says during our spiritual evolution, everyone goes through different phases, each of which has some specific characteristics by recognizing these characteristics, we can open the path to the higher levels that lead us to perfection in quote.
Now that is a human centered life from the devil himself.
And his second lie to Eve was very similar to this one, by the way, Genesis three, four was the first lie.
And the serpent said under the woman, you shall not surely die.
That was the first lie he told her.
Now God had told Adam that in the day they ate of that tree, they would die.
And Genesis three, five, here's the second life for God.
No, doth know that in the day you eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened and you shall be as God's knowing good and evil.
Satan successfully seduced Eve into believing that she could spiritually evolve.
So the spirit, the spiritual evolution started right there in the garden.
Satan was the author of it, just like he is of every religion, except the religion of Abel, which is the religion of David and the religion of the Lord Jesus Christ, apostles and prophets and his people, those who believe in him.
There's just one true religion and all those others are authored by Satan.
And you see there that spiritual evolution was authored by the same deceiver there in the garden.
He taught her that her sin wouldn't kill her, but that it would open her eyes.
He taught her that her sin wouldn't separate her from God, but it'd make her more like God.
And that was the first teaching of the theory of spiritual evolution.
But Jesus clearly refutes this teaching in Matthew chapter 24 verses 11 through 12, Matthew 24, 11 through 12, where he said, "And many false prophets shall rise and shall deceive many.
And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold."
Now he's talking about these end times that his disciples asked him about.
And that word abound is normally translated as the word multiply.
Now, when you multiply something, you have more, a lot more of it, don't you?
You're not just adding, it's increasing exponentially.
And so it tells us, Jesus didn't say there will be less and less iniquity or wickedness, unrighteousness.
He said, there'll be more of it.
It'll multiply.
Now, does that sound like perfection?
No, it's the opposite of it, isn't it?
It sounds like perdition is what it sounds like.
And in our text, sin abounded under Manasseh.
It said he led them to do more evil.
It abounded under Manasseh to the point that Judah did more evil, not the same amount of evil, not less evil, but more.
And they did more evil than whom?
Look back in your text, the nations whom the Lord destroyed before the children of Israel.
It's worse than we thought, isn't it?
Judah under Manasseh wasn't being compared to Judah under Ahaz or Judah under Rehoboam, both of whom were wicked Kings.
They were being compared to Gentile nations, such as the Canaanites and the Assyrians and other heathen idol worshiping people under Manasseh.
Judah had exceeded the evil of the enemy nations.
God destroyed before him.
Now that's not a crown you want to wear.
That's not a trophy you want to have.
In fact, one of those enemy nations is specifically named later in this chapter.
Now let's look back in our text, chapter 21 and verse 10.
"And the Lord spake by his servants the prophets saying," so even in the midst of this egregious sin, God still ordained that he would continue to speak to Judah by his prophets.
If some of them may have been looking for the, or listening for the audible voice of God, or perhaps looking for the visible presence of God, maybe another burning bush or a talking donkey, there was no need for that.
The prophets rebuked Judah and Israel whenever God sent them, and they always tried to correct them.
They always gave the same message, even though it was a different prophet each time.
And they may have used different words than they did.
And if God's prophets speak to these people like they do in this passage, then the people ought to listen.
They ought not look any further for some revelation from God.
You know, there are people who still do that today.
Say, well, now the Bible says, and they'll say, "Yes, but God spoke to me the other night in a dream, and he told me, 'Man, that's hogwash.'"
Don't believe that stuff.
God has revealed everything we need right here.
When somebody tells you God spoke to them in a dream, you don't need to argue with them, but what you're probably going to hear is something that's not biblical, something that's not scriptural.
They're looking for something outside of what God has already declared in his word.
Be very careful of those people because we know Satan is the greatest counterfeiter there is, and he can sure mimic things that the Lord has done, and that's what he's tried to do, he and his unholy trinity, the world of flesh and the devil.
And so we have the Lord speaking through his prophets, and I'll tell you, I'm going to use a passage from Luke chapter 16 to teach us something about this statement right here, about God speaking through his prophets.
In Luke 16, that was the story about the rich man who died and went to hell, and the beggar Lazarus who died and was in Abram's bosom.
And the Lord spake by his servants, the prophets.
I want to read chapter 16 of Luke verses 24 through 29, now that you know the setting.
This is the rich man lifting up his eyes, it said, "And he cried and said, 'Father Abraham, have mercy on me and send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am tormented in this flame.'
But Abraham said, 'Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivest thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things.
But now he is comforted and thou art tormented.
And beside all this, between us and you, there is a great gulf fixed, so that they which would pass from hence to you cannot.
Neither can they pass to us that would come from thence.'"
Well, that kills the notion of purgatory right there, doesn't it?
"Then he said, 'I pray thee therefore, Father, that thou wouldst send him to my father's house, for I have five brethren that he may testify unto them, lest they also come into this place of torment.'
Now listen to what Abraham said to him, 'They have Moses and the prophets, let them hear them.'"
In that passage, there were two miracles the condemned rich man wanted Abraham to perform.
Here he was in hell trying to bargain with Abraham.
First, he wanted Abraham to send Lazarus from the presence of the Lord back to earth to testify to his brethren.
And he also wanted to send Lazarus from the presence of Abraham's bosom to cross that gulf that's fixed between them into hell and put water on that condemned man's tongue.
And so Abraham heard this request for these two miracles and he said, "They have Moses and the prophets, let them hear them."
That was more important than whether a miracle would have been done between heaven and hell.
Now, and Abraham said, "That's not necessary."
Rather than attempting to agree to either miracle that the rich man requested, Abraham said, "Let your brothers hear the prophets and Moses."
These men didn't need--those men who still lived on earth, the brothers of this condemned rich man did not need a miraculous appearance from Lazarus.
They needed to hear the word of God spoken by the prophets.
The same word of God that the beggar Lazarus believed when he was still living on earth.
He didn't have to have somebody come down from heaven, back from the dead and talk to him about the gospel.
He heard Moses and the prophets and he believed.
And the word of God spoken by the prophets is what Judah needs to hear as well in our text.
And next week we'll pick up with verse 11.
Let's pray.
Father, it's good to be in your house this morning studying your word.
Thank you, Father, for the word of God and all that it teaches us.
And Lord, thank you that you've simplified matters for the church and for the pastors and teachers.
You've told us to study to show ourselves approved, to be workmen, rightly voting the word of truth and we don't have to be ashamed.
We don't have to be confounded or confused.
And for the people to hear it, to give us the ability to teach them so they understand that they may believe what they've heard.
And we so thank you for that and we don't overlook it.
We don't take it for granted.
And we ask that you continue giving us that same grace and giving that to our pastor as he yields himself to you here in a little while when he preaches.
In Jesus name, Amen.
