Episode Transcript
Good morning.
Ten o'clock it is.
2 Kings chapter 23 and verse 4.
Good to see everybody.
And we saw a new one go over there in the other building with Brother Fulton.
So that was good to see as well.
2 Kings chapter 23 and verse 4.
They've got another couple of weeks or so of building on Jesus, and then we ought to see a new crowd coming here with us.
So I'm pretty excited about that.
And we left off in verse 4, so we're going to finish that before we continue.
And having burned all these vessels of Baal into ashes, King Josiah carried those ashes to a place called Bethel.
And we learned about the significance of the ashes that they were the smallest form into which Any object could be reduced.
You burn whatever you want, and if you burn it long enough and good enough, you're going to burn it down to ashes.
And ashes came from burning, and we learned that burning is purifying.
And we read about the spiritual Babylon in Revelation chapter 18.
So let's reread our current verse from the beginning and then try to finish that out.
2 Kings 23 and verse 4, if you're just joining us.
And the king commanded Hilkiah the high priest, and the priests of the second order, and the keepers of the door, to bring forth out of the temple of the LORD all the vessels that were made for BAAL. and for the grove, and for all the hosts of heaven and he burned them without Jerusalem, that means outside Jerusalem, in the fields of Kidron. and carried the ashes of them unto Bethel.
Notice the place where the ashes were taken.
And that was Bethel.
And that word means the house of God.
Bethel was a physical place, but its name is important to us.
God made all things, including the dust of the ground from which he formed Adam, who was the perfect man.
And remember, God didn't make anything that had a curse.
Everything He made, He saw that it was good.
And sin entered into the world, and when that happened, Adam was no longer perfect.
And the world was cursed, specifically the ground from which Adam was taken.
The ground from which that dust came.
It was cursed.
And in Genesis chapter 3, verse 17.
The Bible says, and unto Adam he said, that is, God said, because thou Hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it.
Cursed is the ground for thy sake.
In sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life.
Now, I want you to go back and think about when God made the dust of the ground, because he created all things.
When he made the dust of the ground, no unholy thing could come from it.
That was pure Undefiled dust.
And not the vessels of Baal couldn't have come from it?
The thorns and thistles could not come from that dust.
But when sin entered into the world, listen to what happened.
In Genesis 3, verses 18 through 19, speaking of that very dust, that very earth, thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to thee.
And thou shalt eat of the herb of the field in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground.
For out of it wast thou taken, for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.
So the thorns and thistles came from cursed ground.
They came after sin had entered into the world.
The vessels of Baal came from trees that came from accursed ground and metals that came from accursed ground.
And just like Adam's sinful body would return to the dust, everything which is unholy Everything which is cursed must be reduced to dust.
It's got to be burned up.
Every work of man is going to be tried by fire, the Bible tells us.
But because we have a Savior.
Whose body was not reduced to dust, but was resurrected, then we have a sure and steadfast hope.
And that hope is that even though our sinful bodies will be reduced to dust.
We who believe on Jesus will receive glorified bodies that will never turn to dust.
We shall not perish because we have eternal life.
So remember this.
This is an easy way to summarize all of that.
The idol brings dust, the Savior brings life.
The idol brings dust, the Savior brings life.
I preached a funeral this week.
Sister Ann was there, and several people who you all know.
The lady in Alice was there.
The lady who passed away grew up here in Maybank, and she Happened to be a friend of mine and my wife's, and her husband was a Ranger captain in Garland when I worked there.
And her son-in-law and I are friends.
And her daughter her grand one of her granddaughters, I was one of her field training officers.
So I had a relationship with this family in many ways.
And I talked to them about sorrow.
And how there is a sorrow that people have who have no hope, and it's terrible.
And there's a sorrow for people who do have hope, and that hope is eternal life.
And so we touched on this a little bit, not in the same way, because I was talking to a mixed crowd there.
You just don't know who you have in that crowd in the way of Believers and unbelievers.
So their attention span for spiritual things is a lot shorter than yours is.
You know that when you come here, we're going to spend about 45 minutes teaching the Bible.
And so your mind is geared toward that.
You're ready to take notes and hear what's next.
But I was thankful that God gave the opportunity.
And all the gospel tracts and sticky notes were gone, so I hope that doesn't mean the funeral home threw them away when we got through with the service.
Hopefully some people took those, and that's what I took them there for.
But we go down to verse five now verse five Speaking of Josiah, and he put down the idolatrous priests.
We'll stop right there.
Now that means he deposed them.
He did away with them.
And the question you might have is: well, did he kill them And the text doesn't seem to indicate that he did.
It doesn't specify.
So I can't say yes, he killed them, or no, he didn't kill them.
But in either case, these idolatrous priests were no longer in office in the Old Testament.
A priest was one who performed the sacrifices and the ordinances according to the pattern that God showed them in the mount.
They didn't go in there and just do what they wanted, or they weren't supposed to.
And when they did, great trouble came their way.
But the priest was to be an example of holiness all the days of his life.
And every day when somebody watched him or saw him do one thing or another, he should have done it in a holy way.
He should have been a righteous man.
And his first commandment was the same as the rest of the people: Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
And I would say, both then and now, that the chief problem with most churches is that they're willing to tolerate An idolatrous priest or pastor.
The pattern shown to every preacher Is the one that God declares in His Word.
You know, we have a pattern too.
The priests had a pattern that God showed Moses, and it had to do with all of those sacrifices and ordinances And the pattern that Pastor has in Timothy's day, and today also Is to study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth And then, and that's found in 2 Timothy 2. 15, if you were taking notes, 2 Timothy 2.
15.
Also in that same book of 2 Timothy.
Chapter 4, verses 2 through 5.
Chapter 4, verses 2 through 5.
And this is a continuation of the pattern that God showed us in His Word.
Preach the word, be instant in season and out of season.
Reprove, rebuke, exhort with all long suffering and doctrine.
For the time now, why do we do it?
For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine.
But after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers having itching ears, and they shall turn away from their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.
But watch thou in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, make full proof of thy ministry.
Now when a priest grew weary of those sacrifices and ordinance and he lacked the dedication That was required to perform them daily, then he would begin taking shortcuts and leaving things out and making substitutes And in Judah, those people would not endure, and they did not endure, sound doctrine They turn their ears away from the truth, just like their sister nation did in the north, there in Samaria or Israel.
But rather than rebuking those people with sound doctrine and long suffering, the priests tried to accommodate the people.
It gave them something other than the whole counsel of God.
And this phenomenon happens in many churches today.
The largest church in Rockwall County Started off as a Baptist church in the 1970s.
And if I remember right from what my cousin told me, it was down in a basement.
But its founding pastor allowed the name of the church to be changed over the years.
They dropped the name Baptist.
And I don't care whether you call yourself a Baptist or What if that's on the name of your church or not?
Because that doesn't tell me a whole lot about what you do with this right here until I actually hear you teach.
But what happened with this church was a drift toward worldliness and an attempt to draw more and more people into the doors.
And I'll tell you, if you walk down, and I was there for a particular ceremony here not too long ago for a loved one.
And if you walk down the halls of that thing, you'll think you're in a mall, a shopping mall.
And I mean, they've got stores and coffee bars and all kinds of things.
I'm not against somebody.
I mean, people come in here, they bring water or bring a little decanter of coffee or whatever.
Our pastor keeps something to drink up here.
I'm not down on that.
But all of these things that were put into this church were put in there to draw people in for, in my opinion, for the wrong reasons.
And For several years now, it may be even decades.
It's ever since we've moved to Rockwell County, that church has had Saturday night church.
And that way, and they advertise it this way, they'll say, that way people can have their Sundays to do what they want with.
And Sunday's the Lord's Day, it's the first day of the week.
But for some, it interferes with their water skiing and their fishing and their other leisurely activities.
And listen, if you came here on a Saturday night, this place would be empty.
And you're welcome to pick up the trash or, you know, let Billy know, and he'll open the shed, and you can cut the grass, you water the flowers, and do whatever you want.
And by the same token, if you go water skiing or fishing or to a soccer game on Sunday morning, you're going to miss church.
And we're not going to schedule an alternative day so you can have your Sundays to yourself. to accommodate your personal preferences.
And here's a quote from that church that I just told you about, the biggest church in Rockwall County.
They've got campus churches all over the metroplex that spring from this one church.
This is right off their website.
And I quote, thank you for your commitment to Saturdays.
As our campus continues to grow, we're excited to add a second Saturday service. to make space for more families on Sunday mornings.
Both service times will kick off during at the movies at 4 o'clock and 5:30 p. m.
Did you hear that?
Their service is called at the movies.
Now, the Apostle Paul told Timothy that the Ephesian church would call their service at the Bible.
And he didn't say that, but that was his command to Pastor Timothy: to preach the word, not to try to integrate some worldly notion like at the movies or at the games or any of that, so people would come in and listen.
He told them to preach the word.
And Brother Fulton and I were sharing last week after or maybe it was Wednesday after one of the services, and I said, you know, our most Sundays our pews are more empty than they are full, but I'll take the people we have over The people who might come in if we just added all kinds of entertainment to this place.
I wouldn't give a plug-nickel for a crowd like that because they're not interested in spiritual things.
And that's what we're here to do: to teach them.
And we invite everybody to come in regardless of their background or their religious beliefs, but we don't intend to keep them or you here.
Through anything other than teaching God's word, or we're worthless as teachers.
So there are many problems in the average church today.
And you could say one problem is bad preachers.
In Judah, you could say one problem is bad priests.
Another is bad doctrine, which comes from bad preachers.
But I believe that probably the greatest problem is that there are bad church members who tolerate bad preachers who preach bad doctrine.
Now, my higher math skills tell me that there are more church members in a church than there are pastors.
And I bet you that's true across the board.
So the majority of the church is the members.
And if that majority anywhere, not just here, anywhere.
If that majority expected their pastors and their teachers to preach the word, to rightly divide the word of truth, and to abstain from worldly lusts that destroy the church.
Then they would never tolerate bad preachers.
Can you imagine if the people of Judah, the first time they heard of a priest Wanting to substitute a mangy old animal for a clean one at a sacrifice, if they said, No, you're not.
You take that thing right back out of here, and we're telling the high priest on you.
That would have been a sight, wouldn't it?
Do you know what that preacher of that large church would tell me if he heard my criticism, which I would be glad to offer in love to him in a private setting?
He'd tell me, now our movie night is Bible-based.
Okay, that's what a lot of people say about their activities.
It's Bible-based.
He'd tell me that the use of movie nights gets people in the door so he can minister to them.
I was a member of a church. that had a monthly food fellowship, after which we would have a Bible lesson, very similar to what we did here at one time before COVID.
And one Sunday afternoon, Our pastor decided to show a movie about an old preacher named Sheffield.
And boy, it was a Class B movie.
The acting was terrible But the message was okay.
And I thought, well, I'd rather hear the Bible talk, but all right, maybe that's it.
Well, the next movie he showed was Sergeant York.
Which had absolutely nothing to do with the Bible.
And the next movie he showed was The Ten Commandments with Charlton Heston.
Do not go look up trailers on that to see what I'm talking about.
Take my word for it.
I don't think the pastor had seen that movie in some time.
Because he obviously got that forgot that the very first scene is a bunch of scantily clad women bathing in the river.
And I watched him fidget in his chair as soon as that scene came on, and I thought, you're not getting up to go turn it off.
And after about five minutes, I was fixing to get up and go turn it off.
I'd have probably been run out of the church.
But he did, and he turned around and he apologized.
He said, I did not realize that was in there.
And a short time after that, I wrote my pastor privately, and I offered to preach on those Sunday afternoons rather than having him show a movie.
And I told him, I said, this give you a little bit of a break, and that I really missed the Bible lessons we'd been having.
And without naming me, he responded publicly to me during his next message.
And he said there were some people in the church who needed to stay in their circle of concern.
And by God's providence, Brother Fulton called me on the phone shortly after that.
He didn't know that happened And he asked if I would come to Central Baptist Church as an associate pastor.
And I was so relieved.
But I was also sad that my former pastor had responded the way he did.
And I still love him, and I believe he loves God's word, and he loves the people.
And I want to say, because I know our pastor watches these Sunday school lessons, I want to tell him on camera, I've told him personally enough times.
But thank you, Brother Fulton, for remaining true to God's commands on how to pastor a church.
And thank you for rightly dividing the word of truth and for insisting that the teachers here do the same and for not showing Sergeant York.
Judah not only tolerated bad priests, but they encouraged them as well.
They were willing to substitute idols for animals.
Now, if you think about just that.
An idol can't shed blood, can it?
How do you teach about the shedding of blood for the remission of sins when you have an idol?
And they were willing, these people were willing to adopt man's religious traditions because that's what they were.
Over the truth of God's word and the commands he gave concerning how to worship him.
And not only did the citizens tolerate those idolatrous priests, but most of the kings did also.
Look down in your text.
Verse 5 it said, And he put down the idolatrous priest whom the kings of Judah had ordained to burn incense in the high places in the cities of Judah and in the places round about Jerusalem.
So notice the kings not only tolerated the priests, they not only encouraged the priests to do this, but they ordained them to do so.
And the word ordained in the Old Testament is widely translated, and it's normally translated as the word give.
So you could read it this way: that the kings of Judah gave the priests to burn incense in those high places.
They appointed them to do so.
The word point is also translated from the Hebrew word that is ordained here in this passage.
Now what that passage just described to you is nothing more and nothing less than a state religion.
Now, at the outset, a state religion sounds about as good as socialism If you just stay real superficial with it, you say, well, that'd be great if everybody worshiped God the same way and worshiped the same God and went by the same Scripture or set of religious rules, and socialism sounds the same way too, doesn't it?
Well, everybody gets according to their need, and everybody, nobody does without.
But when you start peeling the onion back and you look at how that happens, you see that both are failures.
Socialism ends up in absolute Despotism for most people.
They lose everything they have, lose their power, lose their choices, lose their financial freedom.
They depend on the state.
And with idolatry, it also comes to a bitter end.
What is that?
Dust.
Turns to dust.
Not eternal life, dust.
A state religion is just an offshoot of the religions of Cain.
It replaces God with an idol.
And some state religions replace God with a ruler, which is an idol.
And they'll give that ruler divine attributes.
That ruler, in turn, commands their obedience, he commands their worship.
Listen, if you can stomach it, listen to how the people of North Korea describe their leader.
Whether it's their great leader, their dear leader, and they give the un family, or the Kim family, Kim Jong-un, Kim Jong-il, Kim Il-soon.
If you go back in time, those were the founders, so-called founders of North Korea.
And they give them divine attributes.
And the way they talk about them.
If you go and I watched a documentary of a man who was taking a sanctioned tour of North Korea, you get the sanitized version of North Korea.
And everywhere he went, Whether it was a doughnut shop or a museum, the people who were giving him the tour would tell him how many times the dear leader has visited this place and what the dates were, and they had them written down.
They treat him like God.
And when kings are in the business of appointing priests to burn incense, then they're also in the business of regulating the burning of that incense.
Now, what should a priest, a godly priest, have said to any king who tried to get in his business about how to run things at the house of the Lord?
He should have said, King, you go be king, and you let us be priests according to the pattern that God showed Moses in the mount.
Please don't interfere.
There's one way to do this, and that's God's way.
And as a whole, state religions regulate who the priest is, what the priest does, and what he preaches.
Now imagine if that state appointed priest, the one out of our text, had said we ought to obey God rather than men.
Well, the ruler of that nation would have had the priest imprisoned or maybe even killed Because to obey God means to disobey man when it comes to worship.
In fact, if you're commanded to do anything that is explicitly against God's word, then don't do it.
The first wicked king of Judah who told the priests to burn incense in the high places.
Should have been disobeyed.
There should have been no obedience to that.
The priest should have told that king, Thou shalt not bow thyself down to them.
Nor to serve them, for I am the Lord thy God.
I am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, unto the third and the fourth generation of them that hate me.
But it's so easy just to go with the flow.
To please the king, to please the people, to make everybody happy.
And it's so difficult to risk freedom Lie for limb to obey God, and you cannot do it in the flesh.
You can't do it in the flesh because it's too easy to do the other.
Well then, what are we supposed to do?
Romans chapter 6, verses 16 through 18.
Romans chapter 6.
Verses 16 through 18: Know ye not that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey.
Whether of sin unto death or of obedience unto righteousness.
But God be thanked that ye were the servants of sin.
But that ye have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered to you.
Being then made free from sin, ye became the servants of righteousness.
You're going to serve the one to whom you have yielded.
So the question is: are you a servant of sin or are you a servant of righteousness?
I'm not asking if you ever sin or if you always do righteously.
I'm asking whose servant you are.
And if you're unsaved, you are the servant of sin.
You may say, well, my neighbor thinks I'm a pretty good person.
And you may be thought of as a very good person in society.
But you're the servant of sin because you're in bondage to sin if you're an unbeliever.
If the king says burn incense to the idols, then you do it.
If the preacher tells you that you don't need to study the Bible, then you say, well, okay, he said we don't need to study the Bible.
That'll simplify things.
But if you've been made free from sin, By trusting in what Jesus did for you on the cross, then you're the servant of righteousness.
That doesn't mean you'll never sin, it's that you serve a different master.
You're not bound by sin.
You're freed from sin and you're free from its bondage.
It doesn't have you tied down anymore And by God's Spirit, you may and you should obey Him.
You can't do it in your flesh.
You can't tell the King no in your flesh.
And when the king tells you to burn incense to idols, whatever form that may take, then you tell him it's better to obey God than man.
And you'll be willing to face those earthly consequences from the evil king rather than to sin against God.
So we can conclude that the priests who burn incense in the high places were not saved.
They were the servants of sin, just like the kings who ordained them to burn incense in these high places.
And this evil knew no boundaries, as we will see in the next part of the verse.
There, in verse 5, in the middle, it says, them also that burned incense unto BAA, to the sun, and to the moon, and to the planets, and to all the host of heaven.
What started off small grew into all this.
You remember when King Ahaz sent Urijah the priest to Damascus, Syria.
Because he wanted to have an altar like the Syrians did.
They had a fine-looking altar.
And Ahaz had that altar built and brought to the house of the Lord, and he had it put Next to the brazen altar.
Rattle the cobwebs, you might remember that lesson if you were here.
He had it put next to the brazen altar.
And so he reasoned within himself, well, that's not so bad.
I mean, I didn't get rid of the brazen altar.
We just gave the people another choice.
Saturday church versus the Lord's Day, showing a movie versus Bible study.
They just have a choice.
Now, let me say this, by the way, we have a film that we show.
It's not a movie per se, it's a film.
It's a documentary of a tribe to whom the gospel was preached It's called Itao, and many of you have watched that.
And it shows how people were systematically taught the gospel of Jesus Christ.
And believed it.
And it brought me to tears the first time I saw it.
And every time I've seen it since then, I feel like I'm going to shed those same tears.
And now, in our text here, what started off as an alternate altar in Ahaz's day has turned into an absolute free-for-all.
For the devil and his worshipers.
We just read it.
And the majority of the children of Israel in Judah, and in the north, too.
Had turned from the living God to idols.
And whatever the king wanted is what the priest did.
And whatever the priest did is what the people accepted.
And it turned into pantheism, where everything is God and God is everything.
The planets, the moon, the host of heaven.
And it all started with something that was added to the pure, undefiled religion God ordained in His Word.
It started with an alternate altar, another way.
That started back in the garden or outside the garden of Eden with Cain and Abel, didn't it?
Cain said, Well, I know what God said, but I'm going to bring the fruit of the ground.
See what he thinks of that.
Billy, I don't care how beautiful those cherry tomatoes are.
They are not worthy to be brought to God, are they?
Only the blood.
Do you know why we are so strict?
And I'm sure people over the years have criticized us, whether publicly or privately, but why we're so strict when it comes to avoiding the addition of activities to the church.
By experience and observation, our pastor and I have watched churches add things to their calendar.
And those things in turn have caused other things to be added, and they've become, in many cases, more important and more time consuming, for sure.
Than the preaching of the Bible.
And when a church decides it's going to build a basketball court and have a church basketball team, it's on the road to problems.
Some people will get more excited about being on the church basketball team than they will being faithful to church.
And as with any competitive sport, the play becomes physical, tempers flare, words are exchanged, and what's meant to be a fun game turns into a church split.
And then people will miss church.
Now they won't miss a game or practice, but they'll miss church.
And even though it may be thought of and called Christian basketball or hoops for him.
It's nothing more than a distraction from the purpose of the church.
I love basketball.
But I love God's word a whole lot more than I love basketball.
And when we meet in the auditorium here, or when we meet across the way in one of the Sunday school classes, The clear number one activity is the teaching of the Bible, and we don't have much time to do it while we're here.
And we want the majority of our time to be spent doing just that: teaching the Bible.
Now, I've been to a few church meetings in my life.
I've been to missions conferences and revivals, and then just some regular, what you'd call regular worship services where this happened.
And here's a typical order for one of those services.
Man, I'm thinking of a church in Plano, Texas I went to one time for I guess it was called a missions conference or a revival.
I'm not sure what it was at that time.
But Brother Jim Bob gets up to lead the singing.
But he's got to say a few words first.
And then when that's done, Brother Ed Earle gets up and he makes announcements, a lot of them.
And then Brother Skip comes up to lead a prayer.
But he has to say a few words too.
And there's no telling what he's going to say when he prays.
You can't just get anybody to pray, by the way.
You'll have to undo some bad doctrine after they finish.
And then there's another song, and then yes, Brother Jim Bob has a few more words to say before he leads that song.
And after that song, the offering plate is passed, followed by another prayer.
Now, mind you, some of the things that are said in these prayers are absolutely unbiblical.
And then there's a special.
And then the speaker finally gets to pulpit at about 11:50, and the people are already looking at their watches.
They're worn out.
And they're saying, man, he better be done by 12.
Because I got a roast going.
Cowboys are starting.
I'm supposed to be somewhere.
And that sermon better not be over 10 minutes long.
Then comes the dreaded invitation.
When my dad was a music leader, as a college student at Hardin Simmons University, he and my mother, he would sing and she played the piano.
They were at a church, they called it the Jesus Saves Baptist Church.
It was a church up north of Abilene.
That wasn't the name of it But it was a little bitty church, and it had a sign almost as big as the church.
It was Neon, and it said Jesus Saves.
So everybody around there knew that as the Jesus Saves Baptist Church.
And an evangelist came through there, and I say that very loosely, an evangelist, that's what he called himself.
He, my dad sang, and my mother played just as I am for 45 minutes because that evangelist would not let them stop.
And what a sweet song and a beautiful song.
My dad can hardly stand to hear it even to this day because of that bad experience But that preacher wouldn't let them stop until every person in that church came down to the front and did all of those things that people sometimes do at the front.
Now let me ask you this.
How is it that we're able to sing two songs, all the verses, and still get our pastor into the pulpit by about 11. 10, sometimes 11. 15, if we have a special?
Well, we cut out all the things that aren't necessary to do during the worship service.
And yes, the offering is important.
But we leave the plates here and we freely encourage people to have access to them before church, after church, and to put their offering.
And we have had no problem with the finances of this church.
And yes, prayer is important, and we recommend you do it daily and in some cases hourly.
And yes, announcements can be useful.
And sometimes we'll give a short announcement here about one thing or another, but many of those things can be put on a bulletin or on the Facebook p or even given to someone over the phone.
And we realize that a person's attention span is about 45 minutes.
And so we want to maximize that time by keeping your attention on the teaching of the Bible as much as possible.
And if the people and the priests and even the kings had kept things simple and scriptural.
We wouldn't be reading about idolatrous priests burning incense in the high places to the planets, to the moon, and to the host of heaven.
And with that, we'll close in prayer.
Father, thank you for your word.
And Lord, thank you for how simple your word makes things.
And I pray, Lord, that you'd help us not to cater to the lusts of this world or to the desires of The people outside the doors who want what they want in a church, and that we'd just be faithful to study the word and to rightly divide it and to preach it in season and out of season.
And to keep it high and lift it up in this church, lest Satan slip in and cause us problems.
And we pray this in Jesus' name.
Amen.
