Episode Transcript
It's 10 o'clock and time to get started.
2 Kings chapter 23 and verse 2 is still our text.
2 Kings 23 and verse 2.
In fact, we read through the text last week And we left off with King Josiah reading the Bible.
You can call it what you want.
The book of the law, the book of the covenant, the Bible, the word of God, the scriptures.
They're all the same.
And he left off reading all of the words of the Book of the Covenant to the people whom he led to the house of the Lord.
And at the close of our lesson, I talked about how important it was then and is now for people to listen to the reading and the teaching of God's Word.
And when people miss the teaching of the Bible, either by not coming to church or by not tuning in to the broadcast and listening to it that way.
They're not only missing the reading of the book of the law, but they're also missing out on something else that would help them tremendously.
And that is a free course on how to study your Bible.
And we didn't come up with that, by the way.
I learn what I learn about studying the Bible from reading the Bible, from listening to how.
The Apostle Paul taught the gospel, and how Jesus taught the gospel, and how Jesus would quote, he quoted Deuteronomy about as much as he quoted anything.
And so it's wonderful to see that.
But you know, a person who says he's a student of the Bible.
Has bound himself to something.
And from the word study comes the word student.
So if you're a student, then you must study.
You can't call yourself a student and not study.
It doesn't work out that way.
It's presumed that those who attend public or private schools or who are at home school or in any endeavor where they have to learn something, it's presumed that they're studying because they're called students.
But that's not always the case, is it?
The valedictorian of a graduating high school class has demonstrated what happens when you give yourself to studying.
And if you do it at a high level, then you can be a valedictorian.
In fact, a high achieving student like that will normally go on to college and graduate school and into a profession of some type, maybe become a doctor or Something like that.
And once that high achieving student completes all of that education and enters into his or her chosen profession.
Do you know what they become then?
They become students.
They're still students.
Even if they accomplish great things and teach others to do that, they are still students of their craft.
And I am still a student of my craft in my professional life.
And I certainly am when it comes to teaching God's Word.
I didn't read the Bible just one time and said, Well, I think I've got this.
I'll just start telling other people what's in there.
I have to keep reading it, rereading it, and studying it.
You know, my mind is just like a sponge.
And if you really know much about a sponge, you'll know that you when you fill it up with stuff, it just starts leaking everywhere.
So it goes in the brain and it goes right back out again, and I have to keep loading it up.
Brother Fulton has been teaching the Bible for most of his life.
If you take how old he is and how long he's been teaching, and I've been teaching the Bible for 30 years, which is Just barely most of my life.
It's about half my life in November.
And both Brother Fulton and I are just as much students now as we were the first time we read a Bible verse.
2 Timothy 2.
15, 2 Timothy 2.
15, Paul wrote this to Pastor Timothy.
Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.
So you can't rightly divide the word of truth, which is the Bible, which is the book of the law of the covenant, which is the word of God.
The same thing Josiah read, except we have a little bit more.
You can't do that without studying.
And the word study in that passage means to endeavor, to be diligent.
So a Bible student is one who endeavors to learn God's Word, who's diligent to learn it.
And to help you be better students, our pastor and I teach the Bible the same way.
Now, our personalities aren't exactly the same.
The way we express ourselves isn't exactly the same.
But in our teaching, you'll notice we have some things in common.
One, we read the content.
That's the verse itself.
That's what King Josiah did when he read the book of the law of the covenant.
He read the content.
You have to start there, don't you?
And then we give the context.
We tell you how the verse fits in.
With the other verses, the before and after, what's going on at that time, the setting.
And then we cite the companion verses that support our text.
You know, Jesus did that.
He said, Have you not read?
And what was he doing?
He was citing companion texts, telling you about his word back in Deuteronomy or his word back in one of the other Old Testament books.
We read what the other Bible verses say about the verse that we're reading.
And then, fourth, we use the concordance to tell you what the words meant in their original language.
And although we have been exposed to Greek and Hebrew and Aramaic or Chaldean, neither one of us speaks or write those languages.
I would imagine Brother Fulton's seminary training exposed him to much more of those languages than my on-the-job training.
I didn't go to To a seminary, I just opened the Bible and I learned the hard way most of the time, thinking I got something right and then realizing I didn't.
I had to go back and redo it again.
And then fifthly, we sometimes, though this is sparing, we use a commentator or tell you what a commentator said about a particular passage.
Or we may give you our own opinions, which is a commentary as well.
But when we do that, we'll tell you that we're not completely settled on that opinion in many cases. because it's just an opinion.
But in doing all of these things consistently, Sunday after Sunday, Wednesday after Wednesday, we're actually teaching you how to study your Bibles.
If I drop off and I go to Jesus, I can't teach you anymore about what I taught you.
You can take and use.
And same goes with our pastor or anybody else who teaches the Bible.
Now, I mentioned to you last week.
That I have a dear friend who occasionally sends me questions about verses he's studying.
And like my friend, everybody who says he's a student ought to be studying the Bible and then having those questions answered.
And many of your questions, like him, many of your questions will be answered if you listen to the lessons that are taught week by week.
And I know some of you take notes, some of you store it right up here.
But that's how you learn is to be exposed to that on a consistent basis.
So don't neglect the hearing and teaching of God's Word, or you'll end up like the people in Judah.
And they were in bad shape.
King Josiah read all the words of the book of the covenant to them.
You know, he didn't ask for a show of hands to see who was a seminary graduate.
He didn't say, now all of you who were seminary graduates, y'all already know all this.
Maybe they didn't.
He didn't say, now which of you studied with Hulda the Prophetess in the College of Jerusalem?
That's where she came from.
Josiah made no assumptions about what people knew or what they'd heard before.
He did not assume that they believed correct doctrine.
They all got the same treatment, and that was the whole word of God.
Now, I'm going to reread verse 2.
2 Kings 23:2, if you're just joining us online.
And the king went up into the house of the Lord, and all the men of Judah, and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem with him.
And the priests And the prophets and all the people, both small and great.
And he read in the ears, in their ears, all the words of the book of the covenant which was found in the house of the Lord.
Now just to really drive this point home, let's look at those words both great or both small and great.
Both small and great.
That's in the middle of that verse, because that really captures the entirety of the human race, doesn't it?
The small and the great.
That's the audience.
Those words describe every person in that audience.
Society sees each person as great or small in some way, and those distinctions really mean something to worldly-minded people.
But they don't mean anything to God.
He is no respecter of persons.
And those worldly distinctions should not mean anything to us.
Oh, yes, I respect my supervisor.
He's one who has a higher rank than I do.
And if he gives me a lawful order, then I obey that.
That's part of keeping my job and doing it well.
I say yes, sir, and no, sir, to him out of respect.
But, and he would agree, he is just a man.
And as a man, he's no greater than I am, and I'm no greater than he is.
And although Josiah was no respecter of persons, that doesn't mean he didn't have respect.
It meant that their.
Whether they were great or small, didn't mean anything to him at this time.
He was reading God's Word to them.
And although he was no respecter of persons, it's easy.
For Christians to get carried away with the admiration and sometimes even worship, or it appears to be that way.
Of people who are in positions of great authority.
I remember years ago, about 25 years ago.
I was in my boat on Lake Ray Hubbard, and I was driving my boat toward the Interstate 30 Bridge.
It runs over the lake a couple of times.
And I intended to fish in the shade of that bridge.
And as I got closer, I noticed there were Two police boats that were running in and out of those bridge pylons.
Two of them.
And I mean, they were fast and furious.
They had their lights on, and I thought.
Well, I'll go to the right over here and get away from them.
When I'd go to the right, they'd head that way.
And when I got close enough to that bridge, they got on their loudspeaker and said the bridge is closed.
And I thought, well, how do you close a bridge on a lake like that?
But I wasn't about to challenge them.
They were the authority figure, and I.
Went back another way.
So I turned around and went somewhere else, and I thought perhaps the bridge area had been sealed off because there was a drowning.
Or maybe a boat collision, and I couldn't see what was going on.
But I later found out that the reason that bridge was closed.
Was because there was an important dignitary from the Middle East who was being shuffled across that bridge in a convoy.
And the police, he was on his way to some kind of event.
And the police were assigned to forbid access to that area. in case someone wanted to launch an attack on him, maybe blow the bridge up or attack him from the water, I'm not real sure.
But I was quite unhappy that my fishing plans had been altered for someone.
And as a law enforcement officer, I understand the need for careful route surveillance and planning and security for a protected person.
But as a man, that dignitary was certainly not important enough to ruin my fishing plans.
He wasn't any more important than anyone else driving on that bridge as a man.
Now, to the world, he was great.
He was what they would call a great man.
Status-wise.
But to me, he was neither small nor great.
And to God, the great and the small are alike.
He said the last shall be first, and the first shall be last.
You're not any more important to God than the next person is.
And often you'll hear actors and Politicians, rich and powerful people declare their independence from all things that are spiritual.
Most of them are unbelievers who mock at Christians.
And do you know what they need?
They need the same thing we need.
They need to sit in the audience of one who is reading all the words of the book of the covenant.
They need to sit in the presence of one who does not care about their worldly status, whether they're great or small, what their rank is, what their position in the church is.
They need to hear the same word we hear today.
If you notice that list of people who were in the audience.
For King Josiah's reading of the Bible, you saw prophets.
Isn't that sad?
That he was having to read God's word to the prophets.
You saw priests.
You saw the men of Judah and all the people of Jerusalem.
Now let's look at verse 3.
And the king stood by a pillar.
And made a covenant before the Lord to walk after the Lord and to keep his commandments and his testimonies and his statutes with all their heart.
And all their soul to perform the words of this covenant that were written in this book.
And all the people stood to the covenant.
Now, let's break that down.
It's kind of a long verse.
And the king stood by a pillar.
You'll see references to pillars in the Bible, and particularly in First Kings chapter 7. where the the construction of the Temple of Solomon is described.
And it was next to one of those pillars that Josiah stood.
Now, what is a pillar?
It's a sign of strength.
In fact, it is a strong part of a building.
It's got to be strong.
It supports.
A great amount of the structure, and the longer the building, the more pillars you have.
So, we have supports and arches and all that in this building because That's what makes it structurally sound.
So pillars are signs of strength.
In fact, The greatest example here is in Exodus 13, verse 21.
Exodus 13, verse 21.
And this describes how God led the children of Israel in their wilderness journey.
It says, And the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of a cloud.
To lead them the way, and by night in a pillar of fire, to give them light to go by day and night.
Now, perhaps you remember The story of Samson, and they're in Judges, and how he had great strength and He had hair that hadn't been cut, and that was the hair wasn't his strength.
The hair was a token.
God gave him this strength that he had.
And it's a pretty familiar story.
But toward the end of his life, he messed up, didn't he?
He told a woman about his source of strength.
His hair got cut, and he was taken captive, and he was blinded and put to work in the mill, and just a terrible situation.
But in his last moments, the Philistines took him to the temple of Dagon, and they were going to make sport with him.
They were going to use him for an entertainment, for the purpose of entertainment.
And there in Judges chapter 16, Samson asked to be placed between two pillars there in the temple of Dagon.
Now those pillars held that temple up.
Kept it from falling, much the same as the pillars in the temple of the house of the Lord did.
And that temple of Dagon was no doubt a magnificent structure.
And the pillars were what held it up.
Those earthly pillars were strong.
But those earthly pillars had not yet met the power of God.
And although Samson had lost his strength when Delilah cut his locks.
The Bible tells us his hair had begun to grow back.
And he prayed to the Lord, and the Lord returned his strength to him one more time.
And in verse 30, A, verse 30, little A, that's Judges 16:30 A.
Of that chapter, it says, And Samson said, Let me die with the Philistines.
And he bowed himself with all his might.
And the house fell upon the Lord's and upon all the people that were therein.
Now, what we learn from that, we learn a lot, but one thing we learn from it.
Is that earthly pillars cannot support an ungodly church?
They can't keep it from falling.
And to the Philistines, the pillars of the temple of Dagon were stronger than the pillars of any other place.
And they believed their God Dagon, although he was just a tall statue.
To be the God.
And they put their faith in those pillars when they assembled themselves into that temple.
That was supported by the pillars.
Now, in an earthly sense, we put our faith in the pillars of this building and the columns and the The arches and the structure of the roof and all of that to not fall on us while we're in here.
And I kind of like being able to finish the Sunday school lesson without having the roof fall in on me.
Simple pleasures.
And in the end, in the Temple of Dagon.
The pillars upon which those people depended to keep them safe ended up being their destruction because they couldn't withstand the power of God as it was expressed.
Through Samson.
Now, Josiah, in our text, did not stand next to the pillars in the temple of Dagon.
He stood next to the ones in the temple.
Of the Lord, the house of the Lord.
And we can be sure that he wasn't depending on those earthly pillars to keep him safe.
But instead, we learn from them that they are a type of the strength of the Lord, those pillars in the house of the Lord.
And speaking of this pillar, that is the true strength, the strength that comes from the Lord, the one who supports all things.
We find in 1 Timothy 3.
15, 1 Timothy 3. 15, where Paul wrote, But if I tarry long, That thou mayest know how thou oughtest to behave thyself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth.
In the address to the church of Philadelphia in the book of Revelation, the Apostle John wrote this in Revelation chapter 3.
Verse 12.
Revelation 3 and verse 12.
And these are the words of the Lord Jesus: Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God.
And he shall go no more out.
And I will write upon him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, which is New Jerusalem.
Which cometh down out of heaven from my God, and I will write upon him my new name.
How about that?
The pillars in the temple of Dagon fell at the command of the Lord.
They turned out to be as weak as the false God they represented.
But the pillars in the temple of our God.
Will be those who have overcome, those who are saved.
And the tabernacle.
And the temple later represented, in fact, everything in there represented the Lord Jesus Christ.
Every piece of material, every instrument.
All the furnishings and the ordinances and the sacrifices all pointed to one place, and that was to Jesus Christ.
So the pillar by which Josiah stood when he read the book of the covenant to the people was a representation of God's strength.
Which is what we have in Jesus Christ.
And as Josiah stood by that pillar, look what it says in verse 3: and made a covenant before the Lord.
Now the book's been read.
Now he makes a covenant.
And I want us to take a hard look at this covenant.
If you've been with us before when we studied the word covenant, you may remember that it has the idea of a cutting.
And this came, this notion came from Genesis chapter 15, where God commanded Abraham.
He was called Abram then concerning this covenant.
Genesis 15, verses 9 through 10.
It says this, and he said unto him, Take me an heifer of three years old and a she-goat of three years old.
And a ram of three years old, and a turtle dove, and a young pigeon.
And he took unto him all these, and divided them in the midst.
So there's your cutting.
And laid each piece one against the other, but the birds he divided not.
Now we skip down to verse seventeen and eighteen in that same chapter.
And it came to pass that when the sun went down, it was dark.
Behold, a smoking furnace and a burning lamp that passed between those pieces.
In the same day, the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates.
This burning lamp was the Lord Jesus Christ.
That was a representation of the Lord Jesus Christ passing between those two pieces, those pieces of the covenant.
After which the Lord said he made a covenant with Abram.
Now, some commentators have the smoking furnace as being the afflictions that Abram's seed would endure, and there are verses that support that.
We won't go into that for time's sake right now.
I wanted to focus your mind on that word covenant and then what it means, what the idea behind it.
And the word covenant itself is an alliance.
It's an agreement.
Today people would call it a contract, wouldn they?
And I want to say here that you should be very careful about making covenants with God.
You ought to be careful about making covenants with anybody.
But making covenants with God.
Because what happens, if God makes a covenant with you, He is absolutely going to keep it.
There's just not any doubt about it, and he's going to keep it just like he said he would.
But when we make a covenant with God, we're laying out these terms there.
And we're not able to keep it.
We're not going to keep it.
We don't have the power that God has to keep a covenant.
And so.
Instead of making a covenant with God, what we need to do is trust the one He's made on our behalf.
And the covenant he made and kept in the person of his Son Jesus Christ, that's the one we need to believe in.
That's the one we need to accept by faith.
When the children of Israel decided to make a covenant with God to keep all the law that was read there at Mount Sinai, They quickly violated that covenant.
It didn't take them long at all.
And because of our sin nature and the sinful choices that we make, Man just cannot keep that law.
He can promise God over and over: God, I'm sorry, I'm going to start over.
You ever done that?
Lord, I want to start over with you.
I want to try again.
Hit the reset button.
If our keeping of a covenant was what it took to be accepted by God, then every member of the human race would be rejected and condemned.
But when we've placed our faith in Jesus, then we've trusted Him as our covenant keeper.
He kept the covenant of the law on our behalf.
He did what we cannot do.
And in him, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature.
In him, we have kept the covenant of the law.
Not in our flesh, but in him.
And that's one more reason why these works-based religions.
Are leading their followers to outright rejection by the one whom they want to be accepted by.
They say we want to be accepted by God and we're going to do all these things, and all they're doing is leading themselves to be rejected by the one whom they are trying to please.
God's provided a covenant keeper already in his son.
But these religions have made themselves the covenant keepers.
Do you see the difference?
And their covenant keeping is nothing more than a rejection of the one who was the burning lamp who walked between the two pieces.
And with that in mind, let's look at this covenant that Josiah makes while he's standing by this pillar.
Now, the first part of the covenant we read a moment ago was to walk after the Lord.
So look back in verse 3.
And the king stood by a pillar.
And made a covenant before the Lord to walk after the Lord.
Josiah agreed that Judah would walk after the Lord.
If you put the two words walk and after together, both in the Hebrew and in the English, it means to follow.
Now the king agreed that all the people of Judah would follow the Lord.
Now think about that for a moment.
You have a different level of willingness in that great sea of people, don't you?
You have one like Josiah who that means everything to him to follow the Lord, to keep the book of the covenant.
And you have others who are just along because the king said, Hey, meet us up here at the house of the Lord.
So they're up there and they're standing around.
They look around, and if other people may raise their hand and say, Well, yeah, I'll do it too.
That's the kind of people you have.
You have varying degrees of commitment.
And so Josiah is doing something he believes is right.
He's thinking, what greater thing can we do than to make a covenant with the Lord?
To promise the Lord that the whole nation is going to keep the law.
Well, you know what?
And they should, but they can't.
In the wilderness journey, the children of Israel literally followed the Lord.
He led them in a pillar of a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night.
And they saw the cloud and they saw the fire with their eyes.
And so they just went wherever that cloud or fire led them.
And once the children of Israel were brought into the promised land, God's perfect will for them was that they would never move away from that promised land.
His perfect will for them was that they would follow the law by keeping his commandments.
But he knew they wouldn't.
And just as they looked at the pillar of fire and the cloud to see when they were supposed to move and when they were supposed to stay and in what direction they were to go.
So they would also look at God's word to determine their course and manner of living, including their worship.
There are hymns written about this subject.
We have them in our hymn books.
I will follow on.
The word follow.
Anywhere with Jesus and several others.
Do you realize that those are covenants that we are singing?
Where he leads me, I will follow.
Those are covenants we're singing to him.
And they're beautiful songs.
But what happens when we sing those and we don't follow the Lord?
We're covenant breakers, aren't we?
We made a covenant and we broke it.
And we pay the price for that.
For Christians, we lose out on blessings, rewards, opportunities to serve the Lord.
In the wilderness, anyone who did not follow the pillar of fire by night and the cloud by day would have been lost, literally, wandering in a wilderness.
And that wilderness would have consumed them at some point.
And those who reject salvation Have rejected the cloud and the fire.
They said, I'm not following.
They look at God's word and say, I'll do what I want.
It's my life.
So Josiah is binding a heavy burden on Judah to follow the Lord, to walk after the Lord.
And look back in the verse.
The second thing it says, and to keep his commandments and his testimonies and his statutes with all their heart and all their soul.
Now, this is what following the Lord would have looked like to them.
All of these commandments, all of these testimonies, these statutes are contained in God's Word, and they were in the book of the law.
Of that covenant that was found in the house of the Lord and read by Josiah.
And the covenant he made here was being made by him on behalf of all the nation.
He was representing all the nation.
Now, this is a beautiful picture of Jesus Christ, one man who made a covenant and kept a covenant with his father on behalf of all of his people.
Yeah.
Now Josiah, that's where he's limited.
He's not the Lord Jesus Christ.
He's a sinner who needed to be saved by grace, the same as the rest of us.
But in this, he was a type.
To himself make a covenant on behalf of all of his people.
So this would require a drastic change for the nation of Judah.
They didn't come to the house of the Lord and to this temple.
They didn't come as a holy, obedient people.
Who were fully committed to serving the Lord and walking after him?
No, they came as a disobedient nation, one who was in trouble and was about to be consumed by their enemies.
And who had a king who loved them enough to take their cause before the Lord.
Now look back in the text, it says this is how they would follow, or at least this is what motivation they would use to follow.
It says with all their heart and with all their soul.
Now, if you have a King James Translation, the word there, T-H-E-I-R, is in italics both times.
And what that means is the translators supplied the word in English in order to help us understand the full meaning of the Hebrew words there.
And that's necessary throughout the Bible.
If you know anything about translation, you can't translate everything word for word in the same order it's given in another language.
I speak Spanish fluently and English fluently, and I know it's the case in those languages.
It's also the case in every other language.
And so it takes, for example, in Spanish, if you have a verb and you conjugate that verb, then you don't have to use a noun.
To express the fact that I am going, I can just use the conjugation of verb that says I'm in first person right now as I speak.
But if I say I am going in English, I have to use the word I.
I have to use a pronoun.
I can't just say, am going.
You might say, well, who?
Who am going?
So that is a very basic understanding of what we're dealing with here when we have these italic words.
So don't get thrown off by the italic words, but do remember that they were supplied by the translators.
Now, I've always wondered what the KJV-only crowd Does with this.
If you know those people, they'll tell you that the King James Translation is the only acceptable translation for the entire world, and that is not true, and there is no biblical support for that.
And we use a King James because it is a good translation, but we don't worship the translation.
We worship the actual words of God.
But I've, after all, the In this King James Translation, we have italics words in there that help us understand the sentence, but they were not supplied in the original language.
Neither were the chapter and the verse numbers, by the way.
Now I like to have fun with the KJV only crowd, but some of them get angry pretty quickly.
And when you ask them to use logic and reason For the argument, it goes off the rails.
And I don want to argue with anybody.
If somebody wants to learn, I'll teach them.
If they don't, I'll just shake their hand and we'll walk away disagreeing.
But back to the text, there is this notion.
That people have that they should be believed if they claim to do something with all their heart and soul.
And on behalf of the nation of Judah, Josiah said, Well, Judah will keep these commandments with all their heart and all their soul.
It's as though sincerity is the driving force behind the results.
And really, it's not.
You either do something or you don't.
You can either do it or you can't.
And if the children of Israel can't keep the law, they're lawbreakers.
And they might argue, well, I really tried hard not to steal.
I tried hard to not lie to my neighbor.
I tried sincerely not to bring a mangy lamb for my burnt offering.
But none of that matters because they have still failed to keep the law.
And yet, even though we cannot keep the words of the book of the law perfectly, we're still bound to do it anyway.
James chapter 2, verse 10.
James 2, verse 10.
For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all.
And a person may say, Does God expect me to perfectly keep his law, to obey it completely?
Yes, he does.
Leviticus 18, verses 4 through 5.
Leviticus 18, verses 4 through 5.
God told the children of Israel, Ye shall do my judgments.
And keep mine ordinances to walk therein, I am the Lord your God.
Ye shall therefore keep my statutes and my judgments, which if a man do, he shall live in them.
I am the Lord.
That's pretty clear, isn't it?
If you're an unbeliever and that makes you feel hopeless and helpless, listen to this verse.
This passage in Galatians 3, 22 through 26.
Galatians 3, 22 through 26.
But the Scripture hath concluded all under sin, that the promise of faith by Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe.
But before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up under the faith which should afterward be revealed.
Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ.
That we might be justified by faith.
But after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster, for ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus.
Before I believed on Jesus Christ, I was kept under the law.
It was my schoolmaster, and it taught me that I was a covenant breaker who needed a Savior, one who would not break the covenant.
And when I was saved, I was no longer under that schoolmaster.
I was a child of God because of my faith in Jesus Christ, not because of my sincerity.
Not because I said, well, I'll keep the whole law, but because of my faith in Jesus Christ.
Most of the people of Judah are lost, they're unbelievers.
And this covenant to keep the whole law is going to be impossible for them to follow.
They've already broken it, yet they're still under its demands.
It was still right for Josiah to say, We'll obey the whole law, even though they could not, even though they would not.
And Judah, in our text, Has not accepted the law as a schoolmaster to bring them to the Messiah who would one day come.
And perfectly keep that law and die for their sins.
And next week we'll try to finish out verse three.
Let's pray.
Father, we're so thankful for your word this morning.
Thank you for all who came to listen and those who tuned in.
And Lord, help us to meditate on what we've learned today.
And may it increase our faith.
And may it make us appreciate so much more.
The covenant our Savior kept on our behalf when we could not.
In Jesus' name, amen.
