Episode Transcript
We're in 2 Kings chapter 23 verse 11.
That will be our new text this morning.
2 Kings chapter 23 verse 11.
We ended our lesson last week by learning what it meant when it said that King Josiah defiled Topheth.
So the children of Israel could no longer make their children pass through the fire to Molech.
What a departure from the original instructions God gave the children of Israel about what they were supposed to do with their children.
And the worship of Molech was just another form of Satan worship.
You know, it takes many forms.
And we learn that Satan is a soul thief.
He, as John chapter 10 said, he comes not to He doesn't come to give life.
It says he comes to steal and kill and destroy.
But Jesus said, I am come that they might have life and that they might have it more abundantly.
So a religion that doesn't give life is a false religion.
And now we're moving to the new part of our study today.
Speaking of King Josiah, look down in verse 11 with me.
And he took away the horses that the kings of Judah had given to the son.
Now these were living animals.
That's what I did, Nelda, when I saw that.
I have made that same face.
These were these living animals.
Were God's creation.
And because they were God's creation, man was supposed to have dominion over them.
And that dominion started all the way back in the Garden of Eden.
God gave instructions for man to have dominion over all the fish and the fowls of the air and all the creatures.
And those horses in this text belonged to the kings of Judah.
So nobody stole these horses from the kings of Judah.
They gave the horses to the son.
So that tells us that the kings of Judah made their own choices, didn't they?
Those horses could have been used to pull chariots.
Or to carry burdens for the children of Israel.
They could have been used in the service of the people Who belonged to the Lord.
But instead, the kings made the choice to give those horses to the son.
Now that already should make your brow furrow, because it's not logical at all.
How could the sun receive anything at all?
What do you actually give to the sun?
What do you contribute to the sun?
Even if you're not a religious person, that doesn't make any sense that you would give something to the sun.
The sun gives off life because it gives off heat and light.
And without the sun, too little of the sun causes death.
Too much of the sun causes death.
God made the sun.
In fact, he made the moon and the stars and all the other planets as well.
Genesis chapter 1, verse 16.
Genesis 1:16 tells us, And God made two great lights, the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night.
He made the stars also.
Very basic.
And then in verses 17 through 18, it said, And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth.
So, what does the sun do?
It gives light.
And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness, and God saw that it was good.
So, God did not only make the sun, but he set it.
In the firmament of the heaven.
So that tells you that God was in full control of his creation.
And we're studying particularly the sun here.
And when he put it there, or as the word set tells us, he appointed it there.
He didn't just fling it out there and say, Well, wherever it lands is where it lands.
He set it.
And he put it in a specific place, but he also gave it a purpose.
And that purpose, as the Scripture tells us, was to give light upon the earth.
Psalm chapter 148, verses 1 through 5.
Psalm 148, verses 1 through 5.
And we're establishing a foundation here of understanding the sun, its creation, its purpose So we can see how ridiculous it is for the kings to give horses to the sun.
It says, Praise ye the Lord, praise ye the Lord from the heavens, praise him in the heights.
Praise ye him, all his angels.
Praise ye him, all his hosts.
Praise ye him, sun and moon.
Praise ye him, all stars of light.
Praise Him, ye heavens of heavens, and ye waters that be above the heavens.
Let them praise the name of the Lord.
For he commanded, and they were created.
Boy, that nails it down.
God created the sun, he set it where it was supposed to go.
In fact, if you think about the relationship of the Earth in its orbit to the Sun, That had to be perfect.
Couldn't be too close, couldn't be too far.
Get too close, you burn up.
Get too far, you freeze, like those outer planets in our solar system.
Just ice, a ball of ice.
It has to be maintained in that orbit.
Or you and I aren't sitting here looking at each other.
And because the sun was created and put in a specific place and given a specific job The duty of the Son is to praise the Lord.
Now, the Son doesn't praise the Lord like you and I do with our voices or in our hearts.
The sun is not like we are.
But nevertheless, the psalmist wrote that these planets, the sun, the stars, the heavens, the host of the heavens, are all Supposed to praise the Lord.
They do praise the Lord.
And they're to praise the Lord because God commanded and because God created them.
Now that also applies to us, doesn't it?
The very the authority of God over us when it comes to praise is that He made us, so we should praise Him.
And His creation, all of His creation, apart from human beings, praise Him.
Human beings, for the most part, do not.
They do what the kings of Judah did.
And so the same principle.
Applies here as it does with idol worship.
An idol is a dead object that's made by the hands of man.
And the man is supposed to have dominion over that object, whether it's the tree from which he gets the wood to make the image Or whether it be a chunk of gold that he melts and forms into some sort of statue.
But in idol worship, as we've discussed many times before, but it bears remembering, in idol worship, man takes the thing that God created.
And then gives that thing dominion over the man.
Now, the sun is also a thing that God created.
The Sun even praises God.
How then can man worship the Sun when the Son worships God?
The S-U-N.
And if it's wrong for man to worship the sun, then how can man give his gifts to the sun?
This is nothing more than rebellion.
That's what it is.
You know, a son worshiper might argue with you.
He might say, well, The sun has lived longer than I have, therefore, I owe my praise to the sun.
Or the sun is far more powerful than I am.
Who can withstand the sun?
All of those things are true.
The sun is more powerful.
The sun has been around longer than we have.
But if you apply that logic to everything that is stronger than you and then lives longer than you, then you would worship the Galapagos tortoise as well, wouldn't you?
A Galapagos tortoise can live up to 175 years.
The largest specimens can weigh up to 900 pounds.
They live longer than me and stronger than me.
Listen, when man is compared to the animal kingdom, to the waters, to the planets, then he is minuscule.
He's a little speck.
He's comparatively weak, but that doesn't mean that man should worship any of those things.
Speaking of those who hold the truth and unrighteousness, the Apostle Paul wrote this in Romans chapter 1, verses 24 through 25.
Romans chapter 1, verses 24 through 25: Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts. to dishonor their own bodies between themselves, who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature that word is also creation.
The creature or the creation more than the creator who is blessed forever.
Amen.
I said it like a Methodist that time, Brother Doug.
I said, Amen.
It's all right.
It's all good.
So as I said, the word creature there is also translated as the word creation.
And so when you think of a creature, you might think of something that crawls on the ground.
That's just a very narrow Perspective we have of the word creature.
But a creature, according to the Greek here, is anything God created, is the creation.
And so the sun is a creation or a creature, and it is neither to be worshipped nor to be served.
Giving horses to the sun, as the prior kings of Judah had done, was sun worship.
That's exactly what it was.
Now, look where these horses were kept.
These horses that were given to the Son.
Back in your text, there in verse 11.
At the entering in of the house of the Lord.
Well, here we go.
So it wasn't just the Sodomites.
And it wasn't just the weavers of the houses for the shrines of Asherah who had lodging places near the house of the Lord.
It was also the horses.
That were given to the Son.
There was a stable of some kind near the house of the Lord that was reserved for the horses who had been given to the Son.
And what a great place to learn why the doctrine of the church must remain pure.
I want you to imagine that you were living in Jerusalem in the days before King Josiah.
Your king would have been his father, Amon, who was a wicked king, and before that, Manasseh, who was a wicked king for most of his tenure.
And at some point during the reign of King Amon, the Sodomites came out of the closet.
And they wanted to build houses next to the house of the Lord.
And somebody among the Sodomites had to be the first to ask.
Hey, guys, priests, are you okay if we build a house here so we don't have to go so far to do this perversion that we're doing, most likely with some of the priests?
And after that Sodomite got the OK, then another Sodomite Must have come along and said, Hey, if Otis can build a house next to the house of the Lord, why can't I?
After all, fair is fair.
So another house was built for the Sodomite because the scripture told us that the houses of the Sodomites were torn down by Josiah.
Multiple.
And before you know it, there were Sodomites everywhere, all around the house of the Lord.
Well, you know, there were some women in Jerusalem then who worshipped in the groves and who made hangings for those groves, the false god Asherah being their object of worship.
And so they must have come and said, hey, wait a minute.
The Sodomites are getting to build houses around the house of the Lord.
Why can't we?
Weave our hangings in this same place.
Now, before time, back in Manasseh's day.
Toward the end of his reign, he had taken away the strange gods and the idols out of the house of the Lord.
But that passage tells us that he left alone the people who worshiped in the high places.
In Amon's day, the weavers of the hangings of the groves came and wanted to have the same privilege the Sodomites had.
And if the Sodomites could live next to the house of the Lord, why couldn't the women also weave their hangings for Asherah there?
After all, again, fair is fair.
So then there were Sodomites in their houses and women in their woven hangings, but that wasn't enough.
The sun worshipers wanted in on the act.
So they brought the horses near the house of the Lord Reasoning to themselves, well, these horses were given to the son by the king.
After all, who could refuse the king's order?
Why should the Sodomites and the weavers of the hangings have exclusive use of this property near the house of the Lord?
And I think perhaps you're seeing a pattern here.
Maybe it's clear enough to you that there was a reason God was so detailed.
So specific, so demanding when he gave the law, the ordinances, the pattern in the mount that he showed to Moses.
And regarding the vessels for the tabernacle, here is an example of that detail.
God said this to Moses in Exodus 25, verse 40.
Exodus 25, verse 40, and look that thou make them after their pattern which was showed thee in the mount.
And there was just one pattern showed, and that was the pattern showed in the mount.
That's how all of these things were to be made.
Even the candlestick that went in the tabernacle.
Was to be made exactly like God said.
Numbers chapter eight, verse four.
Numbers chapter eight, verse four.
And this work of the candlestick was of beaten gold, unto the shaft thereof, unto the flowers thereof, was beaten work.
According unto the pattern which the Lord had showed Moses, so made he the candlestick.
In other words, Moses made it just like God showed him.
If Moses would have compromised in any area of the construction, from the brazen altar to the least part of the candlestick.
God would have been displeased.
Had they begun to mold that candlestick and said, we're only going to have enough room for six of these bowls.
And I know we're supposed to have seven, but we'll just make another we'll make one out of something else and put it over here.
Or we'll make the one in the middle, we'll make it silver, and the others can be gold.
Nope, that was not according to the pattern showed them in the mount.
And God would have been displeased.
And just as Moses could not afford to allow any defective vessels to be made, the church cannot allow any defective doctrine to be taught.
And in case you're wondering what doctrine is, doctrine is what you learn.
Old Testament words translated There it got repeated just in case somebody didn't hear it.
We'll see if it keeps going.
I'll talk and we'll give a delay about five seconds.
All right.
But the Old Testament words That are translated from this Hebrew word lechah.
You won't even know if I said that right, but I practiced it.
Are doctrine, learning, and fair speech.
So if doctrine is what you learn, then it's also what you are taught, isn't it?
And the New Testament word, the Greek word, translated doctrine, is from a word that means what is taught.
In fact, the root word for it is often used when Jesus taught.
It would say, and he taught them, and he taught them.
So if somebody ever tells you, well, I don't like all that doctrine.
In the church, I just want to go to church.
Well, then they are not interested in what Jesus taught because Jesus taught doctrine.
So the teaching of correct doctrine Was so important to the Apostle Paul that he wrote this to Timothy, who was a pastor.
1 Timothy chapter 1, verses 3 through 4.
We're learning a lot about the significance of giving horses to the sun here.
1 Timothy 1, verses 3 through 4.
Paul wrote, As I besought thee to abide still at Ephesus when I went into Macedonia. that thou mightest charge some that they teach no other doctrine, neither give heed to fables and endless genealogies which minister questions.
Rather than godly edifying, which is in faith, so do.
In other words, do what I said.
So did you notice what other doctrines do?
They go on and on with fables.
They go on and on with endless genealogies.
That is, well, you know, I came from this tribe and this tribe, and you know, I'm a pure Jew.
None of that matters.
They minister questions rather than answers.
And above all, these wrong doctrines do not edify in faith.
They don't build you up.
Only correct doctrine edifies or builds you up in faith.
Everything else tears you down.
And the reason the Sodomites felt the liberty to build houses near the Lord's house was that the priests taught other doctrine.
And that other doctrine gave heed to fables and genealogies.
It ministered questions.
And the word for minister is very interesting because it's also translated as the word trouble.
Trouble, the verb.
Bad doctrines trouble people.
Have you ever been troubled by bad doctrine?
Many of you have.
Maybe all of you have at some point.
I certainly have.
And our pastor built the knowimsaved. com website.
Because of that problem.
If you've gone onto that website, I encourage you to do that if you haven't.
It'll answer a lot of questions you may be walking around thinking about in your head.
But one of the questions he asks on there is, are you troubled or what's troubling you?
What's troubling you?
And that's what bad doctrine does.
It troubles people.
Good doctrine doesn't trouble people, it edifies people.
Now, at this church, we cannot afford to allow bad doctrine to be taught anywhere.
Let's say we allow the children up to the age of 10.
To be taught that Santa Claus is real, and then later on we tell them the truth when they turn 11.
Well, if that's allowed, then you have another person who says, Well, then, why can't we teach them about the tooth fairy?
After all, fair is fair, right?
I mean, the Sodomites said, hey, why can't we build a house here?
This other Sodomite did.
And then the weavers of the groves of Asherah said, Hey, the Sodomites get to live there.
Why can't we do our trade there?
And now we have the horses given by the king of the sun.
They have a lodging place near the house of the Lord.
And that's what happens.
And in doctrine, it goes on and on.
And if we do that, how will the children be able to discern a truth from a lie?
It's your job as parents, and it's our job as teachers of the Bible to make sure bad doctrine is never taught, and if it is, it's corrected. anywhere, whether it's at home or church.
Now we don't control what doctrine a parent teaches at home.
We hope to influence it here by giving good doctrine and then having that reinforced at home.
And it's very destructive when that doesn't happen.
And I'm afraid I've seen this very thing infect churches and families.
You want to know how the sodomites, the weavers of the hangings, And the horses given to the son found refuge near the house of the Lord, it was because bad doctrine was tolerated.
The horses were near the entering in of the house of the Lord.
Look back in verse 11 by the chamber of Nathan Melech, the chamberlain.
Now, a chamber is a room.
It's like a parlor.
And Nathan Melek is not mentioned anywhere else in the Bible.
So let's pay attention to what we find out about him right here.
First of all, he had a room near the entering in of the house of the Lord.
Now, I reckon that he had to be quite influential to have a room there.
He probably had to pony up some money for that.
But if he had a room there, then he must have been comfortable there.
And I want to say something right here.
We welcome all kinds of people into this church.
Anybody who has the desire to come here and listen to what we have to say, to worship with us, we welcome them.
We don't say, well, now, what's your background and all that?
Before we let you come sit in here, we don't do that.
We don't turn anyone away because of their race, color, creed, national origin, background, or anything else, or because of some sin they've committed.
Now, I will tell you this: if I knew that somebody was a sex offender and they had a condition of probation that says they cannot be around children, well, you're not going to get to come in and sit with our children.
We'll find another place for you.
To sit, we still want to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ to you.
But so we know that anyone is qualified to come and hear the gospel taught.
Who did Jesus die for?
He died for sinners, didn't he?
Are you a sinner?
Jesus died for you, whatever your sin is.
But we also know that and by the grace of God, we will never make somebody or strive to make somebody comfortable in their sin so they'll keep coming.
We won't try to make a sinner feel at ease about his sinful life.
And the preaching of truth makes unbelievers uncomfortable.
And that's exactly what we want.
We want an unbeliever to be uncomfortable at the preaching of the gospel.
I was not only uncomfortable about going to hell, I was terrified of it.
And I'm thankful that my grandfather.
Didn't sugarcoat the gospel just because I was his grandson and he loved me.
I was his favorite grandchild, by the way.
And when an unbeliever is uncomfortable at the preaching of the gospel, then he'll do one of two things: he'll believe on the Lord Jesus Christ for salvation.
And then he won't be uncomfortable at the preaching of the gospel anymore.
He'll be thrilled to death to hear it over and over and over.
You'll never get tired of it.
Or that unbeliever will reject the gospel of salvation and go on in his unbelief.
And therefore, every time he hears the gospel, he will remain uncomfortable.
If he rejects salvation, he will not be comfortable in this church, although he may still continue to come, and that's what we want.
Hey, the first time you hear the gospel, it's probably pretty rare that you believe.
I probably could do a survey of each of you and ask you, how many times did you hear the gospel before you said Wait a minute.
I better believe that.
That's for me.
Some of you may have the first time.
Others may have heard it for years.
And finally became believers, and others may still be unbelievers.
But a person who rejects salvation is not going to come here and be comfortable.
And if he accepts God's free gift of salvation, then he'll find great comfort in this church as long as we teach good doctrine.
He'll find great comfort not because of the padded pews, although those are very nice, or the warm temperature or the awesome food next door.
He'll find comfort in the preaching of the gospel that brought him forgiveness, that removed his condemnation, that gave him assurance of eternal life.
So, Nathan Melek should have never been comfortable anywhere near the house of the Lord.
That should have been a place where.
He saw those sacrifices made at the brazen altar and said, Wow, that's a sin offering right there.
That's another sin offering.
There's another one.
And I don't believe in any of that.
He should have never been comfortable near the house of the Lord, much less having a chamber, a room there.
He should have been ashamed and repented toward God.
But alas, the horses given by the son, or to the son by the kings of Judah.
Were stationed near his chamber.
And we also see, looking back in your text, that his chamber was, it says, in the suburbs, the suburbs.
Now that word suburbs does not mean the same thing it means today.
We think of a suburb as a place like Rockwall, from whence I come weekly.
A town near a very large city.
Addison is a suburb of Dallas.
But the word suburb in the Old Testament means an apartment, an open apartment.
The Hebrew word is parbar, and it's the word that means suburb.
And in fact, that the actual Hebrew word is used in 1 Chronicles 26.
Where we read about the appointment of the porters who served in the temple that Solomon built, and it's which is also called the house of the Lord.
And I'll read from 1 Chronicles 26, verses 16 through 18.
You'll hear this word, Parbar, which is suburbs.
It says, Eastward were six Levites, northward four a day, southward four a day, and toward Asupim two and two at Parbar westward, four at the Causeway and two at Parbar.
These are the divisions of the porters among the sons of Korah and among the sons of Merari.
Now out of context, that sounds totally confusing, but I just want you to hear the words parbar so you would understand what suburbs were.
They're open apartments.
They're not cities outside of the main city.
And furthermore, it says in our text that King Josiah burnt the chariots of the sun with fire.
You see that at the end of the verse?
And as we've studied before, the burning of something with fire is associated with judgment.
And the only thing, only fitting thing to do To those chariots that were dedicated to the sun was to judge them, to burn them with fire, to reduce them to ashes, so they could never be used again.
Now look with me in verse 12, please.
And the altars that were on the top of the upper chamber of Ahaz.
Now, the alarm goes off right here for a lot of reasons.
One, because it says alters, plural.
And two, it puts these altars on top of the upper chamber.
Now the upper chamber is not where altars were supposed to go.
There were only two altars that were allowed in the house of the Lord.
That was the brazen altar, which is the first piece of furniture you see if you walk into the tabernacle or into the temple area.
And the second altar was the altar of incense, which is directly in front of the veil, the curtain, that covers the Holy of Holies.
Those altars, no altar, neither those two altars or any other altar belonged in the upper above the upper chamber of Ahaz.
And even though King Ahaz had been dead for some time, he still had an abomination named after him.
What a shame.
And even Josiah's grandfather, Manasseh, who repented in the end.
Had an abomination named after him, because our verse says, look back in the text, and the altars which Manasseh had made in the two courts of the house of the Lord.
Yes, he repented and trusted in the Lord his God, but the scars were still there.
You know, I was talking to somebody yesterday, and the Some of you are, well, most of you are old enough to remember the son of Sam, the serial killer named David Berkowitz, and he's in prison for the rest of his life.
That he has apparently preached the gospel for many years now in prison.
And yet, if that man is a Christian now There are still scars that he left.
There are families who have been grieving for decades because their children were murdered by him.
And so that's the way Manasseh is.
Yes, he repented.
He trusted the Lord, and we're thankful for that, because God can save anybody, and he will.
But you can't undo the earthly scars that you leave.
And that's, I'm going to tell you just personally, that's one of the reasons I'm going to be so glad When God wraps his thing up and we go to be with him, I don't have to think about those scars anymore that I've left.
You don't have to think about the scars you've left.
And the evil witness of these altars remained in the house of the Lord.
And those altars of Manasseh were referenced back in 2 Kings 21, verse 5, where it says this about Manasseh before he repented.
2 Kings 21, verse 5, And he built altars for all the hosts of heaven in the two courts of the house of the Lord.
And even though those altars had been built by Jewish kings, the rest of verse 12 in our text says, look back at it.
About those altars did the king beat down, and break them down from thence, and cast the dust of them into the brook Kidron.
Josiah did what should have been done.
He knocked them down, he ground them up, and he threw them away.
And nobody would ever be able to use those altars again.
They could build new ones, but they couldn't use those again.
And this is significant because these weren't altars made by the common people.
These were altars made by kings.
And more preachers need to be like Josiah was, and that is to call out evil not just in the low places, but in the high places as well.
The drunkard on the street who steals for his next bottle of whiskey is no worse than the high-ranking politician who engages in insider trading extortion.
And all kinds of other corruption.
Y'all have heard of the SP 500 and the Dow and all of these indexes?
Well, there's the Pelosi Index, which beats all of them.
Y'all knew that.
But they're the altars of these high-ranking, not just politicians, but anybody of high rank in the world.
Are going to be beaten down, broken, and ground to dust before they're thrown away.
Now let's let's look here in verse 13.
I forgot to type verse 13 in my new Bible.
This, so I'll read it to you.
And I know this is a long verse, but we'll read it and then start picking it apart as we have time.
Verse 13, and the high places that were before Jerusalem, which were on the right hand of the Mount of Corruption. which Solomon the king of Israel had builded for Ashtarith, the abomination of the Zidonians, and for Kemash the abomination of the Moabites, and for Milcom, the abomination of the children of Israel or of Ammon, did the king defile.
And I emphasize these words in my notes: the high places.
Which Solomon the king of Israel had builded.
All the other is identification of what those gods were, but those were the two phrases.
The high places which Solomon the king of Israel had builded.
So the name of the false gods or their names are not as significant.
In my estimation, as the fact that Solomon, a king of unparalleled wisdom, built them.
That's what's significant.
He went after those strange gods, and then he built altars for those strange gods to please his many, many wives.
And the sum and substance of all that he did in that respect is captured in 1 Kings 11, verse 4.
1 Kings 11, verse 4.
For it came to pass when Solomon was old, that his wives turned away his heart after other gods.
And his heart was not perfect with the Lord his God, as was the heart of David his father.
And although Solomon was a Christian, He, just like the wicked kings, left a bad witness in Judah.
His ending was terrible, and his legacy was tainted.
He had a great beginning.
Man, when you read about Solomon's beginning and how he prayed that God would give him understanding to lead such a great people as Israel, and how God Answered that prayer and then gave him more than he could ever ask for.
What a wonderful beginning, and he had a terrible ending.
Manasseh had a terrible beginning, and he had a wonderful ending.
But both of them left scars.
And if you see in the text the phrase the mount of corruption, This was called that because of the idolatry that was performed there.
And some commentators say that that was the Mount of Olives.
Zechariah 14, verses 4.
A 14, verse 4a says, and this is about when Jesus comes back, and his feet shall stand in that day upon the Mount of Olives, which is before Jerusalem on The East.
Now, if you were looking at Jerusalem from the south, the East would be the right hand.
Acts chapter 1, verse 12.
Speaking of the disciples, Acts chapter 1, verse 12 says, Then returned they unto Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is from Jerusalem, a Sabbath day's journey.
So I'm not certain that this mount of corruption is or is not the mount of olives in our text.
It very well may be.
But let's see what Josiah did with those high places that Solomon built next week.
Father, thank you for the attention that each one has paid to your word today.
Thank you for teaching us by your Spirit.
And I pray that We'd be built up in the most holy faith because of what you've done for us today.
In Jesus' name, amen.
