Episode Transcript
Good morning.
It's 10 o'clock.
We are in 2 Kings 25.
Verse 12.
And I'm going on about an hour of sleep.
So are some of you, I bet.
So with the Lord's help, we're going to continue expounding.
This wonderful truth to which we were introduced last week.
And we ended our lesson by reading verses 11 through 12.
And then we honed in on the poor whom the Babylonians left in the city of Jerusalem And then we went to Ecclesiastes chapter 9, and we read about a poor man who saved the city.
And then we went from there to Matthew chapter 8 and learned who this poor man was that was Jesus.
It was telling a story about Jesus because Jesus became poor.
The Bible said the foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man hath not where to lay his head.
And then we read from 2 Corinthians chapter 8, which told us Jesus became poor for us.
And so I ended the lesson by stating that the poor man, just like the one in Ecclesiastes, Came to save a city.
Now let's see what that city is.
You've waited till since last week to find out what that city is.
So this will begin the new part of our study, and again we are doing this by uh in order to explain verses 11 through 12 particularly what it meant to leave the poor of the city in Jerusalem.
And this is in Revelation 21, 2.
If you're taking notes, Revelation 21, verse 2.
And I, John, saw the holy city, New Jerusalem.
There it is.
That's the city.
Coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.
The city, the poor man saved, the saved city now is the New Jerusalem.
And it was specifically prepared by the groom, whom the Bible tells us is Jesus And it was prepared by this groom for his bride.
And that's the church.
If you're a believer, you are in the Lord's church.
And just for the sake of doctrine and understanding, especially if you're new to the faith, you have one church, and that is all the believers of all time from every nation.
That's one church.
That's the Lord's church.
But you have many churches which are representative bodies of believers in communities all over the world.
And yet not everywhere that has the name church on the building or the sign is an actual church.
It's a building And it's called a church, but in some cases, those churches are made up of unbelievers.
They don't receive Jesus as Savior.
They have other things going on with Their beliefs that prevent them from relying on what Jesus did at the cross.
But the bride Has been adopted into a city.
And I'm so glad.
Now that city's called the New Jerusalem And by the way, the bride is not just the independent Baptist.
I'm going to tell you that because the Bible doesn't ever say what only the Baptists are going to heaven It's for the Lord's church, all the redeemed of all the ages.
Now listen to verse 3 in Revelation 21.
Revelation 21, 3.
And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them.
And they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them and be their God.
And in that city, The poor man who saved that city, God the Son, the Son of God, will be with us Now the tabernacle that was in Moses' day was a place where God dwelled with his people.
Over the mercy seat.
He the high priest had access once a year into that most holy place.
And if you don't know anything about that, it's just a confusing mess for you, I'm sure.
But if you've learned about it, it's a wonderful picture of what is fulfilled here in Revelation 21.
3.
For God Himself shall be with him.
And because of Jesus, we don't have to wait once a year for a high priest to go into the most holy place because Jesus has already done that for us.
But unlike the corrupt earthly Jerusalem we're reading about in our text, the New Jerusalem has its own walls.
Do you remember what happened to the walls of the Jerusalem we're reading about?
They were torn down, weren't they?
The Babylonians burnt the houses and they tore down the walls.
In fact, I want to read to you about the wall, about That's round about the New Jerusalem in verse 12 of Revelation 21.
That's 2112, it said, and had a wall great and high, and had 12 gates.
And at the gates, twelve angels, and names written thereon, which are the names of the twelve tribes of the children of Israel Now we can trust these walls because we trust in the one who built them.
And I'll move down to verse 17 in that same Revelation chapter.
Speaking of this new Jerusalem, this city that was saved by the poor men, the poor wise man.
And there shall in no wise enter into it anything that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination, or maketh a lie.
But they which are written in the Lamb's Book of Life.
Now, unlike the earthly city of Jerusalem in our text, There won't be any unbelievers entering into the new Jerusalem.
It's only for those who are saved.
And the hopeless city of Jerusalem, in our text, was inhabited by the poor, because that's who the Babylonians left there.
And Jesus became poor, that we who are poor might through his poverty become rich.
And that's what the verses in 2 Corinthians chapter 8 told us last week.
And by becoming poor that we might become rich, Jesus saved a city.
But it was a spiritual one.
It was a city that shall one day descend from heaven, as the revelation tells us.
And before we continue with this thought, with this truth, I see that I've shown you only from the Bible that Jesus is poor and that he became poor.
But this man of whom Solomon wrote in the Ecclesiastes was a poor wise man.
So we need to see if the poor man Jesus, according to the Bible, is also the wise man.
And we find in First Corinthians chapter 1, verse 30.
1 Corinthians 1, verse 30.
But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption.
All right then, the scripture says it.
Jesus Christ was made unto us wisdom.
So he is without a doubt the poor, wise man who will save a city.
Now there was one other characteristic of that poor wise man who would save Jerusalem, the earthly Jerusalem then perhaps, but the spiritual that city, that heavenly city that'll come down.
And that characteristic of that poor wise man Is found in the Ecclesiastes chapter I read you last week, and I'm just going to reread part of that passage to you It said, now there was found in it in the city a poor wise man, and he by his wisdom delivered the city.
Yet no man remembered that same poor man.
Then said I, Wisdom is better than strength.
Nevertheless, the poor man's wisdom is despised, and his words are not heard.
Now what did it say about that poor wise man?
No one remembered him.
And here it is, the poor man's wisdom was despised.
Prophesying about Jesus, the prophet Isaiah said in Isaiah 53, verse 3.
Isaiah 53, verse 3.
He is despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.
And we hid, as it were, our faces from him.
He was despised, and we esteemed him not.
Despised was this poor, wise man Solomon described, but he saved the city.
And despised was the Lord Jesus Christ.
But he saved a city, a city comprised of the redeemed of all ages, and I am so thankful to be a citizen of that city.
And if you are, that's why we sing these songs of praise in the hymnal.
Because we are saved by a poor wise man.
Now, perhaps some of you have been exposed to the teaching that the Bride of Christ is a select group within the Church of Christ or the Lord's Church.
How many of you have been exposed to the teaching of Baptist Briderism or the Baptist Bride?
If you've ever heard of that?
Yeah, some of you have.
I certainly have.
And when I say the Church of Christ, we're not talking about the Cambelites, the ones who call themselves the Church of Christ.
Christ, but they depend on water baptism and good works to keep them saved, and then they're not real certain that they've done enough.
That's not the true church of Christ.
We're talking here about the false doctrine of the Baptist bride.
And one of the great things I didn't see a lot of hands go up, and that's that's wonderful.
But one of the great things about unchurched people going through Genesis to Jesus and building on Jesus and then coming in here to learn the strong meat of the Bible is they haven't been in a church where false doctrine is taught.
And so we're not having to unravel all of that for them.
And that's great advantage to us.
However, You who are new Christians, you also may hear about this kind of doctrine one day.
You may not always go to church here, or you may hear a pastor somewhere else or on the internet teach, and you may think, oh no, that's troubling to me.
And so you need to be able to give an answer to the people who trouble you with this false doctrine.
And for you who have heard the false doctrine and are worried about it, if you are, our hope is that you'll listen to what God's Word said.
And let God's word disprove the false things people say about it.
That's usually the best way to do it, is say, well, I heard what you said, but can you show me right here where that is?
And they can't.
Or if they do, they take half a verse and get it all twisted up.
I was a member Of a fundamental independent Baptist Church for about ten years.
Well, a lot longer than that, but this particular one.
And our pastor was a Baptist brighter.
He was a good man.
He loved the Lord and But he believed, as Baptist brides do, that only a few select church members will be invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.
That's spoken of in Revelation 19, verses 7 through 9.
And I want to read that to you.
Let us be glad and rejoice and give honor to him.
For the marriage of the lamb, that's with a capital L, is come, and his wife hath made herself ready.
And to her was granted that she should be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white for the fine linen is the righteousness of the saints.
Did it say the righteousness of the Baptists, or the Methodist?
No, of the saints.
And he saith unto me, Write, blessed are they which are called unto the marriage supper of the Lamb, and he saith unto me, These are the true sayings of God.
Now, without getting into all the details of that doctrine of the Baptist briders, Our pastor at that church taught that the Baptist church will be the bride, and that all the others will go to heaven, but that they won't be called to the marriage supper of the Lamb.
And as soon as I heard that, I thought, come on now, you can't show me that in the Bible.
And it was a tradition that he learned just like a lot of other traditions we learn if we're not careful.
But it was very disturbing to me.
And he's the same man who publicly stated that the Sunday school lessons I taught were the salad and the sermons he preached were the main course.
And uh man, I'll never refer to God's word as salad.
Ever.
It's it's two things.
It's milk and it's strong meat, but all of it's truth And there's not anything in here that's less important than anything else.
And so there are some things that that were said that I disagreed with and you cannot prove in Scripture.
But uh he did used to say this about those who go to heaven and how the Baptist will be the bride, that special group.
In fact, what he said was, everyone who believes in Jesus will go to heaven.
We got that part right.
But it doesn't hurt to go first class.
And that's what he was talking about with the Baptist bride.
So in his opinion, the bride was first class, and I guess everybody else would have to be second class.
You can't have two first classes, right?
So let me quickly settle that matter for you with God's very word on this issue.
Ephesians 5, 22 through 32.
And yes, this ties directly into what we're studying about the poor of the city.
Ephesians 5, verses 22 through 32.
Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands as unto the Lord.
For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church, and he is the Savior of the body.
Therefore, as the church is subject unto Christ, so let wives be to their own husbands in everything.
Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church. and gave himself for it, that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the Word, that he might present it to himself a glorious church. not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that it should be holy and without blemish.
So men ought to love their wives as their own bodies He that loveth his wife loveth himself, for no man ever yet hated his own flesh, but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church.
For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones.
For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they too shall be one flesh.
This is a great mystery.
Listen up, but I speak concerning Christ in the church.
So that whole section on there.
What did that all teach?
Well, in an earthly sense, it taught husbands and wives who they were and how they were to love each other and it established a chain of command in the home.
But the spiritual lesson it taught is clearly stated at the end of that passage.
And it it is, I speak concerning Christ and the church.
That's why I told you, Paul said, about all of those things concerning.
The relationship between the husband and the wife and Christ and his church.
And if you're a member of the Lord's church through faith in Jesus, you're a member of the bride of Christ.
You're a member of the body of Christ.
You're one of the members.
And I'm not talking about being a member of this assembly or that one across the street or the parking lot, which I'm talking about the Lord's church, which, as I've stated and as the Bible very clearly tells us, is all the believers of all ages, past, present, and those who will believe.
Because of what Jesus prayed in John chapter 17 about those who will believe.
And if you're not a member of that church, then you're not a part of the bride of Christ at all.
You're not, it's not being a first or second class citizen.
You're either in or you're not.
And if you are a member of that church, Then you are the church.
You are the wife.
You are the bride.
You are the saved, the called, the justified, the sanctified, the glorified, all of it Now what does that have to do with this city, the poor wise man saved?
I know you're wondering.
What does it have to do with the poor of the land who were left in Jerusalem?
Well, this city, this earthly city now, as our eyes go back to Jerusalem in its pitiful state, in 2 Kings 25.
With its walls torn down and its houses burned down, it is absolutely helpless There are no rich men.
There are no mighty men.
There are no men of war.
No kings.
Remember, he fled out the gate.
There are no priests in it.
And of all the people upon whom those poor might rely to save their city.
They're going to rely upon a poor wise man.
One whose words will be despised, and yea, he himself Will be despised.
They're waiting on a man of sorrows to save them, one who's acquainted with grief and by whose stripes they may be healed.
They're waiting on Jesus.
And all who put their faith in the salvation that He would bring to them would be saved, every one of them.
There'd be no first class citizens when it came to salvation.
The kingdom would have citizens, and that kingdom would have a king.
And yes, there will be differences in rewards and positions for those in the kingdom.
That's very clear in the Bible.
We don't deny that at all.
But that's not what we're looking here, looking at.
We're looking for a poor wise man to save a city.
And he will save every one of them that believe on him.
And he wasn't coming to save the Jews from the Babylonians in that day.
His salvation was much greater than a geographical one or a national one.
Because had Jesus come and saved Jerusalem that day.
And put the walls back up and rebuilt the houses and established an army and brought the king back in and set up the tabernacle again.
Got all the furnishings back from the Babylonians and Chaldeans.
Guess what would have happened?
That kingdom would have fallen again.
In Jesus' day, in fact, the people did not understand his role in coming to them that first time before he ascended to be with his father in heaven in Acts chapter 1.
The apostles had come together and they had a question for him.
They had a good question for him.
And I'll read that from Acts chapter 1, verses 6 through 8.
Acts 1, verses 6 through 8.
Speaking of these apostles, when they therefore were come together, they asked of him, saying, Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel?
And he said unto them, It is not for you to know the times or the seasons which the Father hath put in his own power.
But ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost has come upon you, and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem and in all Judea. and Samaria and unto the uttermost parts of the earth.
Now those apostles were still under the rule of the Roman Empire when it came to earthly governments.
And they wanted to know if this poor wise man who had been despised by his own and slain on the cross Would restore the kingdom of Israel to the Jews at that time.
And Jesus' answer to them was, it's not your business to know that.
So what did he do?
He sent them to do the very business he would use to save a city.
He's telling them, I didn't come down here to save this rotten city that's been defiled and is inhabited mostly by unbelievers.
I didn't come to even save this geographical country.
From the Roman Empire.
Just like he didn't come to save them Judah from the Babylonian Empire.
He took these apostles and he sent them to preach the gospel.
And the gospel was preached throughout the world.
It was believed on, and churches sprung up everywhere.
The kingdom of God was growing even as the Jews were under the Roman Empire or the Greek Empire, or before then the Assyrians and the Babylonians and the Egyptians.
The kingdom of God was growing because people were believing on the Messiah, either the one who would come one day or the one who has already come.
The same Messiah.
Faith of the Old Testament saints is directed to the same place yours and mine is, to the cross, where Jesus accomplished our salvation.
God's kingdom, the citizens of the city of God, was multiplying through the gospel that Jesus sent them to preach.
And just as the Jews in the burned down, torn-down city of Jerusalem were waiting on a salvation that was greater than the defeat of Babylon.
We also are waiting on a salvation from the kingdom of darkness.
We're not asking, if you're a Christian, if you know your Bible, you're not asking, oh God, save us from the Chinese.
The Chinese are not our problem.
Lord, save us from this political party or that one.
That's not our problem.
Those are just symptoms and signs of the greater problem.
The worst problem we have is staring us in that mirror.
When we get up every morning.
But the kingdom of darkness is our problem.
And the kingdom of darkness is more than just an enemy country, that's that's on this earth right now.
And so rather than saying Lord, if you're going to save us, save us from our enemies now.
He's saving us from a greater enemy.
He has already accomplished that when he saved us from the penalty of sin at Calvary.
As we grow in him, he is saving us from the power of sin.
That's what the Holy Spirit does in you when you have a temptation and you say, Nope.
Thank you, Lord, for walking me away from that.
And one day, and this is the salvation that we await, he will save us from the very presence of sin.
Now had he saved Judah, Jerusalem, from the Babylonians, and said, okay, guys, they they ran back to their country.
Y'all are good to go.
Would he have saved them from the presence of sin by that act?
No.
Not by that act.
The way he saved them from the presence of sin is by dying on the cross.
And if they were looking for him to save the city so they could claim their their gates and put their walls back up and build their houses.
That's just like the the apostles asking him, wilt thou at this time restore the kingdom again to Israel?
And so when this poor wise man who is despised by the world saves his city, He's going to be saving us from the very presence of sin.
Can you imagine that?
And that, my friend, is an eternal salvation.
And that's the one that's worth waiting for.
And had the poor wise man simply saved Jerusalem from the Babylonians, that salvation doesn't last long.
And upon the death of the ones who were saved from Babylon, they would again be in bondage to the next kingdom who came against them.
And more than that, they would be in bondage to sin and death.
And many people today would rather be saved from the earthly clutches of an earthly enemy than waiting on Jesus.
To defeat both his earthly and his spiritual enemies.
Listen, when he comes again and sets up his government on the earth, he will defeat all of his enemies.
The ones you see with your eyes and the ones you don't.
He'll defeat every vestige of the kingdom of darkness.
And he'll do it in his way, in his time, and the United States Marine Corps will have nothing to do with it I lo I love the military just as much as anybody in here.
Maybe not if you served, you you have a special love for it.
But uh I've heard somebody say that the Halls of heaven will be lined with U.
S.
Marines, and that's the biggest heresy.
That is doing a disservice to what the Bible tells us about the presence of the Lord.
God doesn't need us to do that.
We need him.
But when he judges this earth, all the elements are going to melt with a fervent heat, Revelation tells us.
And the devil and his angels and all the unbelievers are going to be cast into the lake of fire.
And so our enemies will be completely defeated.
Which is when our salvation will be absolutely complete, free from the penalty, the presence, the power, and the presence of sin.
All of that.
And until the children of Israel turn to the Lord, believing in their Messiah, they will not and cannot be saved.
And if you hear if you ever hear a preacher say, well, God's got a different plan for Israel, no, he doesn't For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to everyone that believeth, to the Jew first, and also to the Greek, which represents the Gentile.
In other words, it doesn't matter who you are, the gospel is how you're saved.
So let's look back in our text now.
We're in 2 Kings 25, if you just joined us on the internet.
And let's look at verse 13.
And the pillars of brass that were in the house of the Lord, and the bases, and the brazen sea that was in the house of the Lord.
Did the Chaldees break in pieces and carried the brass of them to Babylon?
Now you may remember that in the Bible, brass represented judgment.
And we learn that the house of the Lord, we learned this in prior lessons, the house of the Lord was so defiled that the wood And it was good for nothing but the fireplace.
And we learned that the brazen altar was a place of judgment.
That's where sin offerings were burned in the Old Testament tabernacle and the temple later on.
But because the use of the house of the Lord had been so corrupted.
The brazen pillars, the brazen bases, the brazen sea, which is just a large pot, were good for nothing but scrap metal.
Verse 14, and the pots and shovels, and the snuffers and the spoons, and all the vessels of brass wherewith they ministered, took they away.
So the Babylonians got down to even the pots, shovels, and the spoons.
None of those items were left in the house of the Lord.
Verse 15.
And the firepans and the bowls and such things as were of gold.
In gold and of silver, in silver the captain of the guard took away.
And perhaps you've learned that gold represents the deity of God.
That is his attribute of being the most high.
And the golden lampstand in the tabernacle, in the in the in the Old Testament was made of a pure beaten gold.
The gold, you had the gold in incense altar, you had the table of showbread.
And many other items in the temple made of gold.
Now silver, which was also pilfered by these Babylonians from the Lord's house.
The silver represents redemption in the Bible.
Jesus was sold out for 30 pieces of silver.
And in forsaking the Lord, in the day we're reading about here, in forsaking the Lord, the Jews had forsaken the attributes of God that made him the most high.
You remember they were worshiping idols.
They were bringing carved images into the temple.
And they had, in doing that, in forsaking God as the Most High and as the Savior of mankind, and looking to these idols and to these images.
Then they had forsaken the redemption that only God could provide.
Instead, they made idols and images that could not save.
And called them their gods.
Now the God is supposed to make the worshipper, right?
But in this case, the worshipers made the God.
It's all backwards.
Verse 16.
The two pillars, one sea, and the basis which Solomon had made for the house of the Lord.
The brass of all the vessels, all these vessels, was without weight.
Now this brings us to another point.
The phrase which Solomon made.
Now I can picture in those days a worldly Jew or Gentile perhaps saying, surely the thing Solomon made Wouldn't be defiled by the Babylonians.
Surely God wouldn't let them touch the things Solomon made.
After all.
Solomon was the king of great wisdom and understanding, the king who reigned in peace for 40 years.
But what it shows us is that no matter how famous, how influential a man is, he's still a sinner.
And we know a lot about Solomon.
And though the works of his hands were great, and they were, they were magnificent works.
We read about those when we read about his reign As great as they were, in God's eyes, they're corrupt.
They're made by the hands of man.
In fact, you can narrow it down to this.
Only the work Jesus does through his people is worth saving.
That's it.
Job chapter 4, verses 17 through 21.
Job chapter 4, verses 17 through 21.
Says, this is Job speaking, shall mortal man be more just than God?
Shall a man be more pure than his maker?
Behold, he put no trust in his servants, and his angels he charged with folly.
How much less in them that dwell in houses of clay?
whose foundation is in the dust, which are crushed before the moth.
They are destroyed from morning to evening, they perish forever without any regarding it Doth not their excellency which is in them go away?
They die even without wisdom Now it could be argued that Solomon was unrivaled in his excellency.
But Job rightly asks this rhetorical question.
That means one that doesn't need an answer because it's obvious.
He asks: Shall mortal man be more just than God?
And the answer to that is no, mortal man shall not be more just than God And had the Babylonians spared the things that Solomon made, they said, oh, hey, don't touch that.
That was, Solomon had that made.
Even though those things had been part of this now defiled temple, it would have implied that Even the judgment of God through the Babylonians couldn't touch the things made by the hands of such an excellent king.
Now Solomon didn't feel that way about himself.
But God knows that in the heart of man is the desire to make earthly things sacred.
And you can look at any civilization and see that that is true.
And in 2 Kings chapter 18, verse 4, in fact, this is going back to a study we had some time back.
The text says he removed the high places and break the images and cut down the groves.
And break in pieces the brazen serpent that Moses had made, for unto those days the children of Israel did burn incense to it, and he called it Nehushton.
And that was actually speaking of King Hezekiah who did that.
Now let's go back to the making of that serpent as we tie it into our lesson and begin to close.
Numbers chapter 21 verses 6 through 9.
Numbers 21 verses 6 through 9.
And the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people.
And they bit the people, and much people of Israel died.
Therefore the people came to Moses and said, We have sinned, for we have spoken against the Lord and against thee.
Pray unto the Lord that He take away the serpents from us.
And Moses prayed for the people, and the Lord said unto Moses, Make thee a fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole.
And it shall come to pass that every one that is bitten, when he looketh looketh upon it, shall live.
And Moses made a serpent of brass, and put it upon a pole.
And it came to pass that if any if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived.
In other words, when he looked up at the serpent, then he would live, even though he had been bitten by that deadly serpent.
Now, some of you may have learned about this in the Genesis to Jesus or creation to Christ class.
You may have been exposed to this.
I don't remember for sure.
But here is the carnal nature of man.
In the days of Moses, And this was according to God's command, he held that pole with that brass serpent on it and told the people, look there and you'll live.
So the people who were bitten looked on the brass looked upon the brass serpent.
That's what the word behold means, is to look upon.
And they were saved from death, from the physical death that those serpents would have caused and had been causing.
Now that pole and that serpent were made from earthly materials by an earthly man The pole and the serpent themselves had no saving power whatsoever.
But God used them to teach a greater spiritual lesson.
That Jesus taught us in John chapter 3, verses 14 through 15.
John 3, 14 through 15.
He said, and as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, talking about going to the cross.
That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life And after that day, in the Old Testament, in the book of Numbers, the children of Israel should not have been trusting in a serpent on a pole to save them.
But in a Savior who hung on a cross.
They should not have been looking upon a pole, but upon a person And that is Jesus.
And they look upon him by faith.
In those days they looked at the pole with their eyeballs.
But when you look at the cross where Jesus died, when you behold your Savior, you do it by faith, because we can't see the cross.
We didn't live then.
In fact, most people who've ever believed weren't living in that day.
But it's the carnal nature of man To do what the children of Israel did after the day in which God saved those who were bitten.
And as I read to you a while ago in Numbers 21, Or I'm sorry, uh back up in uh 2 Kings 18, verse 4.
What did it tell us the children of Israel did with that pole and that serpent?
They burned incense to it.
They worshiped what they could see, a pole and a serpent.
And they rejected what they could not see, and that was God.
They worshiped the type and they rejected what's called the anti-type or the fulfillment of it.
That would be like somebody worshiping the brazen altar, worshiping the altar instead of what the altar represented, the judgment upon our sin which fell on Jesus.
And so King Hezekiah took that out of the way And all this brass and all this gold and all this silver that had been in the house of the Lord was taken away.
Because the children of Israel had misused it.
And with that, we'll close.
Father, thank you for the truth of your word.
Thank you for every person who came and everyone who tuned in, for all those who may watch the recorded message later on.
And Father, we pray you just burn the dross off of the message and that only truth would lodge in the heart of those who heard it.
That they would be strengthened in their faith, and we ask it in Jesus' name, amen
