Episode Transcript
2 Kings chapter 23 and verse 6.
2 Kings chapter 23 and verse 6 will be our new text today.
And we completed verse five last week, but we're not through reading about the measures King Josiah took.
To rid Judah of this idolatrous religion that they had come to accept and practice.
2 Kings chapter 23 and verse 6.
Yes, ma'am.
And back in verse 5.
King Josiah put down, that's what the words were, he put down or removed from office these idolatrous priests, every one of them.
Whether they burnt incense in the high places or if their job was to burn incense to Baal or to the moon or the stars.
Or in any other way, if they practiced a religion that was contrary to what the Lord had established, he put them down.
And now, having put down those wicked priests, Josiah takes another step in this spiritual revival.
So let's look at verse 6.
And he brought out the grove from the house of the LORD, without Jerusalem, unto the brook Kidron, and burned it at the brook Kidron.
Now this verse, if you'll go back and look at verse 4, you'll see that this verse is very similar to it.
And you might ask yourself, why is it repeated like this?
Well, actually, verse 6 is an enlargement upon verse 4.
And I'll explain that to you because this happens frequently enough in Scripture that you should begin looking at it when it happens.
And this will give you a way to study.
Another study tip from Brother Andy this morning, and I stole it from somebody else.
I didn't come up with any of this.
A perfect example of this verse, which appears to repeat a prior verse, but is actually enlarging upon that prior verse.
A perfect example is found in Genesis chapter 1, verse 27.
Where the Bible says, so God created man in his own image.
In the image of God, created he him, male and female created he them.
Now that was chapter one and verse twenty seven.
Now if you go into chapter 2, Genesis chapter 2 and verse 7, it says, And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.
And man became a living soul.
And so when you read that, you might say, well, wait a minute.
It already said that in chapter 1, verse 27.
God, that verse told us God made man in his image.
Why would Genesis 2, 7 repeat that?
Well, it's not uncommon in the Bible to have a general statement like the one made in chapter 1, verse 27.
And then later, for God to enlarge upon that.
So, for example, the general statement made in chapter 1, verse 27 is that God created man.
It doesn't give any details right there.
It just says God created man.
And then to enlarge upon that statement, God gives more information about that statement in chapter 2, verse 7.
Where it says God not only created man, it tells us how He created man and how He made him live.
He created Him.
From the dust of the ground.
He breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.
That's how he created man.
So, do you see how that works?
Did I ever tell you about the time that there was a man who showed up drunk at a church where I used to go?
And this man had been visiting the church, and we had a special patriotic service.
So some of our former military members put on their military garb or put on something that identified them with the service they were in.
And this man put on his Coast Guard uniform.
And when he showed up to church, he was drunker than Cooter Brown.
And his breath knocked me over, and I thought, not only did he come to church drunk, but he's wearing the Coast Guard uniform drunk, which to me was very disrespectful.
And now, in that story, I told you twice that that man came to church drunk, didn't I?
I said, Did I ever tell you about the time that a man came to my church drunk?
And I could have just stopped right there and you'd have thought, well, that sounds pretty interesting, except I'd like to know the details.
So I told you again that we had a patriotic service, that he was one of the military members who wore his uniform, and that when he came in he was drunk and his breath knocked me over.
I gave you more details about My topic sentence.
And so that's essentially what happens here in the Bible.
So in our text here in verse 6, we have more details about what happened when Josiah burned the grove at Kidron.
In verse 6, we learn that it was not only at Kidron, it was at the brook.
And look back in the text, and it says, And stamped it to small powder.
Now, just to remind you what the grove is, we think of a grove, we think of a pecan orchard or a An orange grove or something like that.
That's not what this was.
The grove was, and we'll get to it more in just a minute.
But it was a structure like poles, you might imagine poles, that were erected For the Baal worship and all of that.
So it was associated with, it was a physical structure associated with Baal worship and worship of other gods as well.
It says that he stamped it to small powder.
So the ashes that were, or the dust, as we learn, that's what ashes are.
From the burned grove were stamped into small patterns.
Now, why did he do this?
Why did Josiah do this?
Listen to Psalm chapter 8.
Verses 4 through 8.
Psalm chapter 8, verses 4 through 8.
And as I read this, I want you to picture King Josiah and his men. stamping this powder with their feet into well stamping the dust into small powder What is man that thou art mindful of him, speaking to God, and the son of man that thou visitest him?
For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour.
Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands.
Thou hast put all things under his feet.
All sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field, the fowl of the air and the fish of the sea, and whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas.
Now that man, that's Adam.
And of course, the spiritual man would be Jesus, the second Adam, the Bible calls him.
But this is Adam and all men who came after him.
So when God gave, when God created Adam.
He gave him a certain authority, which we find in Genesis chapter 1, verses 26 through 29.
Genesis 1, 26 through 29.
And I want you to listen for the word dominion as I read this.
And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.
And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
So God created man in his own image.
In the image of God created he him.
Male and female created he them.
And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air.
And over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.
And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb-bearing seed which is upon the face of all the earth.
In the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed, to you it shall be for meat.
Now, when you eat something, you've got dominion over it, don't you?
So, having dominion means to rule or to reign, just like a king does.
Man was created very clearly, man was created to rule.
Over God's creation, not to be ruled by God's creation.
Man was created to rule over God's creation, not to be ruled by God's creation.
God made trees to yield food for man.
Not to be turned into idols and groves and placed over men.
And that's what's happened here.
In not just the passage, but this whole context of idol worshiping in Judah.
That's what's happened And that's what a false religion does.
To make it very simple for us, a false religion places the creature above the Creator.
And it places the creation over the man whom God created.
It's all backwards.
If God makes a tree, that tree cannot rule over God.
It can't rule over its maker.
But in the false religions of Baal, The man who makes the idol doesn't rule over the idol that he makes.
He lets the idol rule over him.
And the idol can't rule over anything because it's dumb, it's deaf, it's mute, it's not alive.
And that's how messed up somebody's mind is who's into idolatry.
Man makes up the rules of idolatry, and then others are required to submit to it.
In the religion of the Bible, God makes the rules, and His creation is required to submit to it.
You know, all the laws, let's just take the law of Gravity, which is pretty simple to understand.
There's a certain gravitational force that attracts all objects to the Earth.
That's why And I didn't realize this when I was a kid, but I later understood what happens to people on the bottom of the earth.
Why don't they fall off into space?
Well, that's called gravity.
That's that force.
There is a specific quantity for gravity, and you can get into all that stuff if you study physics.
But the basic thing to understand is it keeps you glued to the earth.
When you jump up, what always happens?
You come back down, don't you?
Well, that's a law of God.
And He made that law.
So He rules over the law of gravity You wouldn't say, well, God made the law of gravity, but it applies to God, too.
I mean, it keeps him.
No, God is over the law of gravity.
And so we are under that law because God made that law.
We can't overrule that.
We can go to space and float around, but we can't reverse the law of gravity.
Here on this earth.
So, in all of this that we've read, the man has placed himself under the idol's feet.
So you think that figuratively.
But in Genesis and in the Psalm that I read you, that was never supposed to happen But because it's happened when sin entered into the world, then it's obvious that man is not going to be able to successfully extract himself From under the feet of false religions, whether it's idolatry or some other man-made religion.
So where is our hope to be completely released from this bondage that started with Adam?
1 Corinthians 15, verses 24 through 28.
1 Corinthians 15, verses 24 through 28.
We're still studying what Josiah showed us when he stamped the ashes of these burned images to powder.
It says, Then cometh the end when he, that's Jesus, shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father.
When he shall have put down all rule and all authority and power.
That includes the religions of Baal, it's everything.
For he, Jesus, must reign till he hath put all enemies under his feet.
But when he saith all things, I'm sorry, the last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.
For he hath put all things under his feet.
But when he saith, all things are put under him, it is manifest that he is accepted, which did put all things under him.
And when all things shall be subdued unto him, then shall the Son, capital S, also himself be subject unto him that put all things under him, that God may be all in all.
So we know that from the time Jesus was born, when he lived, when he went to the cross, was crucified, he subjected himself to the will of his Father.
He said, not my will, but thy will be done.
In our text, Josiah is a type of Jesus Christ When he stamps the ashes of those burned images, the burned groves, the idols, all of that into powder.
Because what he has done is judged those earthly objects which represented the kingdoms of this world.
And those worldly religions, those objects associated with those worldly religions are literally under Josiah's feet.
And when he judged those groves, he judged them not only for himself, but also for the people.
Over whom he reigned.
And although this was a type of Jesus and what he will do.
Josiah's actions could not finally wipe out all of these religions.
He was just a man.
He was like the high priest who went into the Holy of Holies once a year and shed blood.
And if you remember what the Bible says about that, he had to first shed blood for his own sins.
So that's what makes him different than Jesus.
Although he represented Jesus for the people, what made him different than Jesus is that he was a sinner, just like Josiah.
Josiah is a sinner Who had to be saved by grace.
But he was still a type of Jesus Christ when we look at what he did with the powder Of these idols representing the world religions.
And God had already told Josiah through Huldah the prophetess.
That he would go to his grave in peace, but the rest of Judah would not.
However, our Savior, when he comes, he will wipe out all of the false religions.
Even though right now we see the kingdom of darkness reigning in this world, and here is our hope.
The writer of the Hebrew writes this to the Lord, says this to the Lord.
Hebrews chapter 2, verse 8.
Hebrews chapter 2, verse 8, Thou hast put all things in subjection under his feet.
For in that he put all in subjection under him, he left nothing that is not put under him.
But now we see not yet all things put under him.
So, in truth, all of those things are already under Jesus' feet.
But in time we have not yet seen that come to completion.
We have not seen all those things put under his feet.
And that's where people get discouraged.
Christians sometimes get discouraged.
They say, you know, I believe the Bible.
I believe Jesus is coming again.
I believe he's Lord of all.
And then there's the word but.
But I look around me and I see this world getting worse and worse and worse.
Well, if you're a Bible student, you know that has to happen, don't you?
You know that it's not going to get better and better and better.
There's not going to be this end time harvest that these prosperity gospel preachers talk about.
No, there's not.
Jesus said that there will be few.
Who find the way of life?
It's a narrow path.
Few there be that find it, and many there be which go in at the gate of destruction and down that broad road.
But people are discouraged because of what's going on in the world.
Brother Fulton and I have had this conversation before, and you might think you guys are weird, and maybe we are a little bit.
Will say, man, this world is falling apart and it is so exciting.
He and I both said that to each other.
And we don't mean that we like violence or we don't.
We don't like any of that stuff.
It's wicked But we view it in terms of what the Bible says about what must happen.
Jesus said.
These things must come to pass.
Go back and read Matthew chapter 24 and chapter 25.
These things must come to pass They have to happen.
And so when they are and when they do, although we don't know when he'll come, we know these things must come to pass.
And so don't be discouraged if you think, man, I know Jesus is going to put all things under his feet, but right now, it just looks like I don't know how he's going to do it.
You don't have to.
He said he would.
By faith we know all things will be put under his feet.
So one day we can see it for ourselves.
Revelation chapter 11, verse 15.
B.
Revelation 11, 15, B.
That's the second half of the verse.
The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever.
There's our hope.
What did Josiah do with the powder from the ashes of those burn groves that he had stamped under his feet?
Look back.
In the text, it says, and cast the powder thereof upon the graves of the children of the people.
Now, you remember what we learned last week.
The idol brings dust, the Savior brings life.
The idol brings dust, the Savior brings life.
The powder The dust that was cast upon the graves of the children of the people here in our text reminds us who their God was.
Their God was the God of this world, the Prince of Darkness, which is Satan.
The God in whom they trusted had been turned to powder and scattered on their graves.
That's it.
That's all they get out of their God is powder, dust.
There's no eternal life for them.
That idol, even though in the form of dust, is now on top of their graves.
It's about as close as it can be to them without being inside the grave.
It's right there.
If that idol had the power to give life, first of all, it wouldn't have been turned to dust.
It would have had power over the man who tried to burn it.
If that idol could give life even in the form of dust, even though it died, it should be able to resurrect itself, right?
But it can't.
And it sure can't call that unbeliever out of the grave unto eternal life.
Can't do it.
Because those people are dead.
They're dead physically and they're dead spiritually.
They were unbelieving Jews, and they go to the same lake of fire as the unbelieving Gentiles.
There is no difference.
Doesn't matter what John Hagee says.
You know, I'd be hated and mocked for saying that around most religious crowds, especially the liberal Jews of this world.
The Jews who were saved would say, Amen.
That's it, brother.
But the unbelieving Jew would scoff at any notion that they can't be accepted by God.
Their claim would be, well, we're Jews.
We're the children of Israel, of the seed of Abraham.
Of course, God accepts us.
All the promises of God belong to us because we are national Jews.
We are racially Jews.
Well, you know what?
Those people didn't like Jesus either.
They didn't like him when he told them the same thing in Matthew chapter 23, verses 29 through 33.
Matthew 23 verses 29 through 33, where he said Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees.
Now, Jesus is talking to the Jews, the unbelieving Jews, hypocrites, because ye build the tombs of the prophets and garnish the sepulchres of the righteous.
And say, if we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets.
Wherefore ye be witnesses unto yourselves that ye are the children of them which killed the prophets?
Fill ye up the measure of your fathers.
Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?
So these Pharisees and scribes were Jews.
They said their father was Abraham.
Jesus told them, You'll not escape hell.
That's not, that is not going to get you anywhere with God.
In fact, I'm more of a child of Abraham than an unbelieving Jew.
And I'm a Gentile racially.
And we tell them, when we tell them today, you can't escape hell in your unbelief.
They despise us just like they despise Jesus.
And to the unbeliever, whether he be a Jew or a Gentile, he will not be raised to eternal life by his false God.
Instead, the powder of his false God will be figuratively scattered upon his grave, and he'll be thrown into the lake of fire I'm glad my God is not a grove or an idol or a wooden image.
In fact, the Bible tells us.
What kind of image Jesus is?
Did you know he is an image?
He sure is.
2 Corinthians 4, verse 3.
2 Corinthians 4, verse 3.
But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost, in whom the God of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not.
Lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.
He is an image, but he is the image of God.
He's not the image of Baal.
He's not the grove of Baal.
And notice a couple of things in that passage.
One, the image of God is Christ.
And two, the God of this world, Satan, blinds the unbeliever to the gospel of Christ.
So in doing that, He blinds them to the image of God, which is Christ, and convinces them that the real image of God is an idol.
Or a sinful man, or a grove like what we have in our Second Kings text.
Remember, the powder from the ashes of those burned groves was scattered upon the grave of unbelievers.
Figuratively, when that happened, those images were one with the unbeliever in the grave upon which they were scattered.
That's the image.
What about our image?
Well, our image is Christ.
He's the image of God.
He died for sin once, and he was resurrected never to die again.
He's God the Son.
And whereas the unbeliever is left in the grave by his image, the believer is raised from the grave by his image.
Our image can never die.
He can never be burned to ashes, or stamped into powder, or scattered upon our graves.
So what Josiah did reminds us of what Jesus will completely do in the process of time, his time, when he cometh.
Now look in verse 7.
Josiah continues, it says, and he break down the houses of the Sodomites.
And the word sodomite is also translated as the word unclean.
And this term is applied to the male homosexual.
The first time the word sodomite is mentioned is in Deuteronomy chapter 23, verse 17.
Deuteronomy 23.
Verse 17, where it says, There shall be no whore of the daughters of Israel, nor a sodomite of the sons of Israel.
So God said, there won't be one, meaning it's forbidden, not one will never happen because they did.
He said, there won't be one, it's forbidden, period.
It was just as forbidden for a man to be a sodomite as it was for a woman to be a whore, which is a harlot.
And the Hebrew word for whore is actually the feminine noun, and the word Hebrew word for sodomite is the masculine noun.
They're from the same root.
Harlotry and sodomy were forbidden because they were then and are now still unclean.
And what's revealing here is that Judah had not only tolerated the Sodomites, but they built houses for them.
They gave them a place to live and a place in which to continue this unclean behavior.
When Solomon's son Rehoboam ruled over Judah, there were Sodomites.
1 Kings chapter 14, verse 24.
1 Kings 14, verse 24.
And this is about Rehoboam's rule.
It says, and there were also Sodomites in the land.
And they did according to all the abominations of the nations which the LORD cast out before the children of Israel.
Because their behavior was unclean, their behavior was also like the nations that God cast out before the children of Israel, because those nations were unclean.
And in God's commandments to Israel, he often told them not to do according to the works of the nations, of the Gentile nations.
His people were to be a peculiar people.
That means they are different than all the other nations.
They were supposed to be different, just like Christians are supposed to be different.
We're not supposed to be like everybody else.
And if you believe your Bible and you're a Christian, you try to live by your Bible.
You're going to be different than everybody else.
In fact, you're going to be different than most people who are in churches today.
In King Asa's day, you remember King Asa, he was a good king.
In 1 Kings chapter 15, King Asa took care of that problem.
Because verse 12, 1 Kings 15:12 says, and he took away the Sodomites out of the land and removed all the idols that his father had made.
Okay, so not that long ago, compared to where we are now in biblical history in 2 Kings, not that long ago.
The king removed the Sodomites.
He removed all the idols his fathers had made.
He cleaned house.
But now, just as Satan always does, that uncleanness has crept its way back into Judah, it's been established in Jerusalem, and it's been given a house.
Not just tolerated, the people have not only tolerated the Sodomites, they've embraced them and made a safe place for them.
Have you heard that term safe place?
Yeah.
But Josiah said there is not a safe place for the Sodomites.
And that's a good takeaway for us today.
There's no safe place for sin.
Now, look where that safe place for sin was.
It says that we're by the house of the Lord.
The Sodomites' houses were by the house of the Lord.
And even this wicked world we live in has some rules, some laws that provide a safe haven for the church building.
Under the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Code, the Commissioner's Court of a county may make regulations prohibiting the sale of alcohol Or alcoholic beverages by a dealer whose place of business is within 300 feet of a church in the unincorporated part of a county.
Some cities have laws prohibiting the establishment of sexually oriented businesses within a thousand feet of a church.
But Jerusalem didn't have any of those rules.
The safe haven for the Sodomite was right next to the house of the Lord, which clues us into an even more egregious likelihood.
Those who worked in the house of the Lord very likely availed themselves of those sodomites.
If the high priest and the other Levites were godly men, they would have never allowed a single brick.
Of a male whorehouse to be placed anywhere near the house of the Lord.
They wouldn't have tolerated it.
And we seem to return to this theme too often in our studies.
What the church winks at today, it will tolerate tomorrow.
And what the church tolerates tomorrow, it will embrace the next day.
And what the church embraces, it will soon begin to teach and to defend.
And we're going to keep pointing right over here at this building Where they had, of course, they had women pastors for a while, and then they took a step up.
They upgraded.
They had a homosexual as a pastor And he was unashamed about it.
And this is not my opinion.
This is me doing a background on him, looking at his Facebook page, the things that he posts, and all of that.
He had a male partner.
I mean, he just didn't make any bones about it.
So not at one time, I can tell you that the Presbyterians way back in the day would have never gone for something like that Now, they have some different beliefs about things than we do, but that was a very conservative group of people.
If you know any old Presbyterians, you probably would say, yeah, they sure were.
And over the time, it said, well, it's okay.
We'll have a woman preacher in here.
Well, it's okay.
We'll allow some people to join who are also Practicing homosexuals.
Well, let them join.
Maybe they'll get better.
And now they got a pastor over there, and there's no doubt he taught and defended it.
And that's sickening, but how did it start?
It started by the people winking at it and going, that's really none of our business.
It is when it comes to the church.
We got to keep the gate of the church.
We're not exclusive.
We're inclusive, but we're inclusive only of those who believe in the gospel.
Not those who say, Well, I don't see anything wrong with that sin.
Well, if God does, it really doesn't matter what we think about it.
We just better get on board with Him.
You know, this building is a house.
It's a literal building, which we refer to as the church building.
And this building houses our furniture, our instruments, our books, if you include the other side, our cookware and food and a lot of other earthly goods.
And during the Lord's Day, and then on Wednesday, and occasionally some other days of the week, like when we have vacation Bible school or ladies' Conference, this building houses those who come to worship.
This building does not house an automotive business or a clothing store or a gas station.
This building does not house people who are just looking for somewhere to spend the night, like a motel.
Spiritually speaking, this building houses truth.
It's a house of prayer.
It's a house of singing to the Lord.
You're not going to hear us play a rock song in here.
This is for the Lord's music.
It's a safe place for believers.
It's a hospital for lost sinners.
And what we do not house and we will not house by God's grace is bad doctrine.
It's not welcome.
Bad doctrine has no residence here.
The Book of Mormon has no safe place here.
The Koran is not a welcome text in this house.
This church is a house for God's Word and all that pertains to it.
Can you imagine us allowing you know we have some extra land over here.
It's we used it for an overflow parking lot. during a certain time.
And then I guess people just never did recover from COVID spiritually.
For whatever reason, we don't have as many coming, but we have that land.
Can you imagine us saying, you know, we're not using that?
And somebody wants to build a house of prostitution over there, we're good.
As long as they don't come in the church door, we would never do that.
Yet the very people who were supposed to guard the sanctity of the Lord's house allowed such a thing to be built.
Inhabited and to flourish next to the house of the Lord.
Josiah took care of that problem.
And not only were the houses of the Sodomites next to the house of the Lord, but look back in your text, it says, where the women wove hangings for the grove Now the Hebrew word for hangings is almost always translated as the word houses.
And because of that, I sought another translation that actually reflected this very frequent translation of the Hebrew word into house.
Young's literal translation puts the verse this way: And he breaketh down the houses of the whoremongers that are in the house of Jehovah.
Where the women are weaving houses for the shrine.
That's the same verse translated in Young's literal translation.
So those hangings were actually houses.
For the shrine of Asherah, which is the word that is translated groves.
And that was one of the false god So these women were weaving a shrine or a house for the shrine of a false god.
And this was also next to the house of the Lord.
This reminds me of how King Ahaz was a wicked king, by the way, how he had the great altar from Damascus built.
And placed next to the brazen altar.
It was beside it.
He didn't immediately swap them out.
He said, well, we're just going to give the people another option here.
I mean, all religions lead to God.
That was kind of the thinking there.
And That brazen altar gave people the appearance that either altar was acceptable.
And in such a case, it seems that it's always the Lord's way that gets removed.
Have you ever noticed that?
The churches don't get more conservative and more conservative, get more liberal, or they just hold to the truth.
We don't need to get any more conservative than we are.
I mean, we can always do a better job here, right?
There's no I'll never get up here and say, Well, I'm just preaching the best I'll ever preach.
I don't know that that's the case.
I hope it's not.
Hope you get something better over time.
We don't always do things exactly right, but in general, We're about as conservative as we're ever going to get.
But most churches don't go from conservative to more conservative.
They go more liberal, more liberal, more liberal.
And that's what Ahaz did.
And that's what Judah did.
That's why Josiah is having to do what he's done.
And it's always the Lord's way that gets sacrificed.
And Josiah got rid of the houses of the Sodomites.
And of the houses of the shrine of Asherah.
And next week we're going to look at what he did with the priests.
Let's pray.
Father, thank you so much for your word.
Thank you for the people who came.
Father, we miss the ones who aren't here.
We know some are sick.
Some are grieving, and we pray for them that you'd restore them physically, emotionally, and bring them back to our service.
And Lord, we pray now for the next hour, for the singing, the praying, the preaching, all that will be done.
And may it be done according to your will.
And may it be pleasing to you that your church may be built up in the faith and lost sinners may be evangelized and drawn to the gospel.
In Jesus' name, amen.
