If I'd like to do something a
little bit different tonight, I have had on my mind for some months
a passage of scripture which is disturbing and troubling and
I trust might be something we can look at over this next couple
of weeks and it might be a blessing to us. If you turn in your Bibles
to 2 Kings chapter 23 and we'll just look briefly there because
I want to go back to where this This actually began with this
prophecy. In 2 Kings 23 we are dealing
with some events in the life of Josiah. Josiah's reign came
350 years after the events of 1 Kings Chapter 13. So Josiah was only a young man,
he was six years of age when he ascended to the throne of
Israel, but it seems very clearly that he was converted at 16 and
at that time they found the scroll of God, it seems as if they found
the first five books of the Old Testament in the temple and Josiah
embarked. humbled himself and he embarked,
in verse 11 of chapter 2, when it came to pass, when the king
heard the words of the book of the law that he rent his clothes. And he says in verse 13, Go ye
and inquire of the Lord and for the people and for all Judah
concerning the words of this book that is found. For great
is the wrath of the Lord that is kindled against us, because
our fathers have not hearkened unto the words of this book,
to do according unto all which was written concerning us. And so Josiah In chapter 23 we
see Josiah breaking down the altars. He put down verse 5 of
23, he put down the idolatrous priest whom the kings of Judah
had ordained to burn incense in the high places and so on
and so forth. And he brought out the grave
from the house of the Lord and so the idolatry was there in
the very house of the Lord. It's extraordinary that God's
house was actually brought not just into public disrepute but
into physical disrepair. In verse 7, then he broke down
the houses of the Sodomites that were by the house of the Lord
where the women wove hangings for the grove. And he defiled
Topeth in verse 10, which is in the Valley of the Children,
Hinnom, that no man might make his son or his daughter to pass
through the fire to Molech. They thought that as they heated
the statues of these gods and placed their child into the hands
of the statue which was on fire and heated up, the screams of
the dying child would appease the God. And this is happening
in and around Jerusalem. It's just extraordinary. It's
extraordinary the depths of the depravity of the human mind.
But anyway, where I wanted to go, and he broke down in verse
14, he broke down breaking pieces the images and cut down the groves
and filled their places with the bones of men. Moreover, the
altar that was at Bethel and the high place which Jeroboam
the son of Nebat, who made Israel a sin, hath made, both that altar
and the high place he broke down and burned the high place and
stamped it small to powder and burned the grove. That's a grave
of trees which they thought were special and sacred. And as Josiah
turned himself, he spied the sepulchres which were there in
the mount and sent and took the bones out of the sepulchres and
burned them upon the altar and polluted it according to the
word of the Lord which the man of God proclaimed, who proclaimed
these words. Then he said, what title is that
that I see? And the men of the city told
him, it is the sepulchre, it is the tomb of the man of God
which came from Judah and proclaimed these things that thou hast done
against the altar of Bethel. And he said, let him alone, let
no man move his bones. So they let his bones alone with
the bones of the prophet that came out of Samaria. I want us to go back. Obviously
there was, for 350 or more years, right beside the evil temple
that Jeroboam set up in Israel, there was this marker to a prophet
of God. At the setting up of that temple,
when Jeroboam, and we'll look more at this in the following,
week or so, but at the setting up of the temple of Jeroboam,
a man of God, and let's go back to 1 Kings chapter 13. So that
happened. Josiah came, and it was 350 years
later, and the things that Josiah did were exactly what was promised
by the man of God that came out of Judea, out of Judah. So if you're back
there in 1 Kings chapter 13, because our time is limited,
what I wanted to do was just read briefly through this chapter
and make some comments as we go along, and then if the Lord
allows, I'd like us to look in more detail at it next week.
I suppose the fundamental thing is that we've just read the history
of Israel, and the history of Israel is the history of God's
people doing exactly as God had ordained. I suppose the great
thing about it is that When we read the Word of God, we find
that even if it takes a long time, 350 years, or as in the
case of the children of Israel, 400 years and more in Egypt,
when God makes a promise, His promises are firm and secure
and the people of God can rest in them. We can rest in them. This world is not out of control. This world is directly under
the control of our God according to the word of God, according
to the things that he must do for his people. as he has promised. So let's read some of this. The
context is that Jeroboam was promised, and we'll look at this
more next week, but Jeroboam was promised that he would have
the ten tribes of Israel and that two would be left because
of the covenant that God had made with David, that he would
have a son to sit on his throne. And so for the rest of the history
of nation Israel, you have the ten tribes, the ten northern
tribes, and you have the two tribes that are there around
Jerusalem, Judah and Benjamin. And so Jeroboam, to establish
himself and the worship of what he called God in his ten tribes,
set up these two temples in Israel And this is God's response to
him. And I think as we go through
it, it's really good to note how often the word of the Lord. By
the word of the Lord, verse 1, a man of God came from Judah
to Bethel. And Bethel means house of God. as Jeroboam was standing by the
altar to make an offering. So this is a public worship service
at these idolatrous temples where Jeroboam had set up calves, calves
in some ways like the calves that Aaron had made at the bottom
of Mount Sinai. There he was having this festival,
having this religious ceremony. And this man came from Judah
to Bethel. So he was going from Judah into
enemy territory. He was going into the very place
at the very centre of the worship of this man, Jeroboam, who caused
Israel to sin. And he cried out against the
altar. He cried out against the altar. By the word of the Lord, O altar,
altar. This is what the Lord said, a
son named Josiah will be born to the house of David. On you
will he sacrifice the priests of the high places who now make
offerings here, and human bones will be burned on you. That same
day the man of God gave a sign. This is the sign the Lord has
declared. The altar will be split and the
ashes on it will be poured out. When King Jeroboam heard what
the man of God cried out against the altar at Bethel, he stretched
out his hand from the altar and says, Seize him. But the hand
he stretched out toward the man shriveled up so that he could
not pull it back. Also, the altar was split apart
and its ashes poured out according to the sign given by the man
of God by the word of the Lord. So here we have this man. in
the very middle, at the very beginning of His idolatry. This
man came from Judah, this man of God. And it's interesting,
isn't it, as we see there in verse 2, He spoke against the
dead stones of the altar. He didn't speak to men, but He
spoke to the altar. It is often in the scriptures
you'll see that the prophets of God are actually speaking
out to the inanimate things of this creation. Hear, O heavens,
give ear, O earth, says Isaiah. Moses says similar things in
Deuteronomy Chapter 32. But of course what Jeroboam was
most offended by and what grieved him the most was the fact that
the man of God prophesies that a man named Josiah will be born
to the house of David. What God calls the enemies of
God is God's covenant relationships and covenant loves and covenant
promises to his people in the Lord Jesus Christ. And so he
speaks. And it's fascinating that Josiah's
name means, healed by Jehovah or Jehovah will support. And here we have an example Some
of the many in the scriptures, an example of a prophecy that's
fulfilled immediately. He stretched out his hand, the
altar, in verse 2, sorry, verse 3. He gave a sign, the altar
will be split apart and the ashes on it poured out. 5. The altar was split apart, and
its ashes poured out according to the sign given by the man
of God by the word of the Lord. When idolatry is begun, there
is a warning from the Lord. There is no idolatry without
there being warnings from God. And here, as we saw in 2 Kings
23, there was a warning left of this man. This man's body
was buried, his bones were buried there beside this as a warning
to Jeroboam, as a warning to Israel. There is a warning. when Jeroboam heard what the
man of God cried out in the name of David and naming the very
man who would come and bring this altar. undone as this man
had done immediately. Josiah was going to do it 350
or more years later. He stretched out his hand, verse
4, and said, seize him. It's exactly what the enemies
of God always want to do, don't they? We've seen it in Acts.
They want to seize them, they want to stop them speaking. But
the hand he stretched out towards the man shriveled up so that
he could not pull it back. The altar was split. So there
he was, Jeroboam, this mighty king, with his hands shriveled
up and he's unable to pull it out. It's shriveled up and left
there in that state. And Jeroboam cries out, doesn't
he? Verse 6. Then the king said to
the man of God, intercede with the Lord your God and pray for
me that my hand may be restored. So the man of God interceded
with the Lord and the king's hand was restored and became
as it was before. We here have, in the midst of
God's wrath, we have an example of His mercy, don't we? that
there Jeroboam, he cried out and immediately his hand was
restored by the word of the man of God." Intercede, it's interesting
isn't it. Jeroboam intercedes for the man
of God because his hand is shriveled up. He doesn't intercede because
his soul is shriveled up. He wants material blessings,
doesn't he? He wants to have His hand restored. He wants to have the punishment
taken off, but he doesn't want to have the word of God. Our
God is merciful. Our God is merciful. And then the king makes this
request, doesn't he? having been healed, the king
said to the man of God, come home with me and have something
to eat and I will give you a gift. But the man of God answered the
king, now don't forget this is in a public assembly, at a worship
service. And the man of God answered the
king, Even if you were to give me half your possessions, I would
not go with you, nor would I eat bread or drink water here. For
I was commanded by the word of the Lord, You must not eat bread
or drink water or return by the way you came. So there was the
man of God. He had actually publicly declared
what his purpose was. He was to come. He was to issue
this prophecy against this altar. The altar was to be in a sense
broken down. Jeroboam was going to entice
him and the Prophet stood firm, didn't he? He stood firm. For he says, I was commanded.
I was commanded by the word of the Lord. and he was commanded to go back
another way. He was to do it as if he was
just on his way. He was to go, issue his prophecy
and continue going. He wasn't to stay there and he
wasn't to take anything from them. He was, in a sense, to
publicly declare by not having food or drink or hospitality
from them, he was to publicly declare that the men of God were
going to have nothing to do or receive nothing from those who
were involved in idolatry and apostasy. It is just a warning,
isn't it? It is just another reminder in
the scriptures. We are not to have fellowship with the works
of darkness. We are not to join with them
in their apostasy. We are not to join with them
in their idolatry because we'll be infected by them or we'll
give encouragement to them. It is. It is the Word of God
this man brings. It is the Word of God that this
man adheres to. And now we come to this fascinating
part of this story, this remarkable history that's laid out before
us that we might be caused to see more and more clearly something
of the character of our God. So he took another road and he
did not return by the way he had come to Bethel. I want to
read a bunch of this and then we'll come back and look at bits
of it. Now there was a certain old prophet living at Bethel.
His sons came and told him all that the man of God had done
there that day. These sons of this old prophet,
so-called prophet, were there at that worship service, that
so-called worship service. And they told their father what
he had said to the king. And their father asked them,
which way did he go? And his son showed him which
road the man of God from Judah had taken. So he said to his
sons, saddle the donkey for me. And when they had saddled the
donkey for him, he mounted it, and rode after the man of God.
He found him sitting under an oak tree and asked, Are you the
man of God from Judah? I am, he replied. So the prophet
said to him, Come home with me and eat. The man of God said,
I cannot turn back. and go with you, nor can I eat
bread or drink water with you in this place. I have been told
by the word of the Lord, you must not eat bread or drink water
there or return by the way you came." The old prophet answered,
I too am a prophet, as you are. And an angel said to me by the
word of the Lord, Bring him back with you to your house so that
he may eat bread and drink water. But he was lying to him." He
wasn't a prophet of God, this man. He was a lying prophet.
We'll look at that a bit more later on. He was lying to him. So the man of God returned with
him and ate and drank in his house. While they were sitting
at the table, the word of the Lord came to the old prophet
who had brought him back. He cried out to the man of God
who had come from Judah. This is what the Lord says. You
have defied the word of the Lord and have not kept the command
of the Lord your God gave you. You came back and ate bread and
drank water in the place where He told you not to eat or drink.
Therefore your body will not be buried in the tomb of your
fathers. When the man of God had finished
eating and drinking, the prophet who had brought him back saddled
his donkey for him. and as he went on his way a lion
met him on the road and killed him and his body was thrown down
on the road with both the donkey and the lion standing beside
it. Some people who passed by saw
the body thrown down there, with the lion standing beside the
body. They went and reported it in the city where the old
prophet lived. When the prophet who had brought him back from
his journey heard of it, he said, It is the man of God who defied
the word of the Lord. The Lord has given him over to
the lion, which has mauled him and killed him, as the word of
the Lord warned him. The Prophet said to his son,
saddle the donkey for me, and they did so. Then he went out
and found the body thrown down on the road with the donkey and
the lion standing beside it. The lion had neither eaten the
body nor mauled the donkey. So the Prophet picked up the
body of the man of God, laid it on the donkey, and brought
it back to his own city to mourn for him and to bury him. Then
he laid the body in his own tomb and they mourned over him and
said, O my brother, after burying him he said to his sons, when
I die, bury me in the grave where the man of God is buried. Lay
my bones beside his bones. For the message he declared by
the word of the Lord against the altar in Bethel and against
all the shrines on the high places in the towns of Samaria will
certainly come true." It's a remarkable piece of history
in Israel, isn't it? It is. Obviously one of the things
that immediately grabs my attention there is that It is here and
everywhere throughout the Word of God, Word of the Lord. It
is a weighty and serious thing to stand before people and speak
on God's behalf to them. And therefore this is a story
which is particularly pertinent to me, but also it is particularly
pertinent to anyone who listens to anyone speaking. It's not
for nothing that God says you are to test the spirits to see
if they are of the Lord. God's servants quite simply are
to speak and to act according to the Word of God and not beyond
it. and then to live in such a way
and then not to live in such a way that they lead others to
doubt it even if it seems enticing and spoken by an angel. What
was Paul's warning to the Galatians? He said, even if I come back,
even if I come back or an angel from heaven comes back. If Paul
comes back with another message other than the one he preached
to them, he says, but though we or an angel from heaven preach
any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto
you, let him be accursed, let him be anathema, cut off from
God. As we said before, now I say
again, if any man preach any other gospel unto you than that
which you have received, let him be accursed. For do I now persuade men or
God, or do I seek to please men? This is a remarkably strong statement,
isn't it? For if I yet pleased men, I should
not be the servant of Christ. It doesn't mean that I should
be a a servant who performs well sometimes and otherwise you just
cease to be a servant. If you change the gospel you
cease to be the servant of God. So here we have A picture, a
salutary warning, isn't it? A salutary warning that was left
in the nation of Israel for 350 years and beyond. Through all of its history, from
the time of the separation of those tribes, there was this
tomb, wasn't it? There was this monument, and
we're not told what was written on it, but it was known by the
people those idolatrous tribes in the Northern Kingdom, it was
known by them throughout all that time that this is that particular
term. God has set up Ebenezers in time,
as the Indian says, I have been faithful. That's what Ebenezer
means, thus far I have been faithful. God has always been faithful
and he has left markers of his faithfulness. And may the Lord
cause us to come to them and to view them with the thought
and the remembrance that He is faithful. The great marker, the
great Ebenezer that He set up of course is the Lord Jesus Christ
and Him crucified. There is just that one, He's
finally spoken to all humanity in His Son and He has that marker
and there it is set up in all of history for all time for all
humanity. So all things come to pass by
the Word of God and the Word of God always reflects the character
of He who is the Word made flesh. We cannot separate the Lord Jesus
Christ from the words in these books. and time. Time, our God, stands
outside of time. The things of time are ruled
by our God. So here we have a picture of
a false prophet and a fallen prophet. And the fall of this
prophet from Judah is a reminder of the weakness of our flesh,
that there was this man who could stand before that king who wanted
to destroy him and to stand there courageously and to stand there
declaring the word of God both to him and to that assembled
multitude before that very altar that had been destroyed at his
word. And he could stand there and
he could be faithful and God would care for him and did care
for him and protect him and yet Yet this old man wearing the
clothes and having the name of a prophet could lead him astray.
There are so many instances in the scriptures of men being extraordinarily
faithful and standing in the midst of extraordinary things.
Peter in the Garden of Gethsemane with a little knife in his hand
took on A company, a great company of soldiers and a matter of hours
later he had fallen, fallen into wickedness before a little servant
girl. King David could go out and conquer
nations and cities and yet be tempted just by a look, a look
from his palace ramparts. It is a reminder and I trust
it is always the case my friends that when we see the falls of
others we are reminded that this is just typifying the weakness
of our flesh. There is a fallen prophet and
there is a false prophet. There is a call from God for
his people to stand faithful No matter what the cost. The
flesh is always weak. That's why we are God's people
according to Philippians 3. We worship God in spirit and
truth and we have no confidence in the flesh. We have no confidence
in the flesh. there are these false prophets
around and they come as wolves in sheep's clothing. He may,
he may have at one time been trained up as one of the prophets,
but if he had been a true prophet of God he wouldn't have been
there with his sons going to this idolatrous worship service
and him not saying a word and not speaking against the wickedness
of Jeroboam. And no true prophet will tell
deliberate lies to bring another person undone. This prophet of
God had spoken the word to Jeroboam and yet by the by the hand of
the Lord was able to heal Jeroboam's withered arm. When the people
of God meet with humility they always respond with kindness
and they wait on the Lord to reveal what is true and what
is not. So he told a deliberate lie. False prophets. False prophets
have always been the worst enemies of the true prophets. It is the
false who are the worst enemies. The ones that are dressed in
sheep's clothing are the ones that are the worst, aren't they?
Not the ones that are openly wicked, but the ones that come
as if they are the genuine article. He's called a prophet that came
out of Samaria, but at this time there was no such place as Samaria.
There he was in a place called the House of Bread, Bethel, and
yet there he was in a place where God's people, the children of
God, the children of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, were being led
into wicked, wicked idolatry. They caused, Jeremiah says, they
caused my people Israel to err. Beware of false prophets. And
here we see divine justice being meted out on this man that's
sent by the Word of God from Judah. And the judgments of God
The judgments of God are in very many ways unfathomable, aren't
they? They are deeper than we can imagine. He says the deceived and the
deceiver are His, and He doesn't have to give account of Himself
in any of His matters. And it's extraordinary, isn't
it, that in so often we are caused, as the Samas and others to see,
that those who have sinned most seem to suffer the least in this
world. Those who sin aggrievously against
the children of God seem to escape any retribution or punishment
now. They will, they will receive
ultimately according to their works. But he had a crime, didn't
he, this man, this man of God, his one crime quite simply was
just disobedience. And he had a judgement given
to him, his carcass shall not come into the sepulcher into
the terms of his father. He won't reach his own house,
but he shall be made to be a carcass almost immediately. It's interesting
isn't it, this old prophet should be the messenger, this old false
prophet should be the messenger and deliver words from God but
you can remember instances in the scriptures like Balaam for
those who delivered the word of God and there's not a word
that Balaam said that wasn't faithful in those sermons you
read in Numbers I think it's 21. They are the most remarkable
sermons that Balaam preached and he preached the truth and
yet he's a notorious false prophet. And it may have been, it may
have been that God had organised all of this to issue a warning
to the old lying prophet and to leave in the nation Israel,
that northern ten tribes, a marker of this man's, the judgement
of God upon this man for his sin. It is. It is a solemn account. It makes me think thoughts that
cause me to want to walk before the Lord with fear. I trust it's
something that is a salutary warning to all of us that this
offence, this offence of going against the Word of God is a
deeply, deeply serious thing and He has no excuse for it.
He has no excuse for it. He had every reason to doubt
the honesty of this old prophet. He didn't bear any testimony
of himself of faithfulness to God and he bore no testimony
of faithfulness against the wickedness of the city that he lived in.
He seemed to say nothing against the idolatry of it. He didn't
seem to consult God in it at all. this man from Judah. He didn't seem to think that
it was necessary for him to seek the Lord's counsel. There is
a great verse in Proverbs 8 that says, seek the Lord early, which
means in every situation you seek Him early, you seek Him
at the beginning of your activities, you seek Him early in the morning,
you seek Him as you begin the things that you are doing. It is no small matter, this disobedience
to the command of God is no small matter, that God takes the role
of His prophets very, very seriously indeed, in both in judgment,
the judgment that they are caused to bring upon the world around
them, but also in their own lives. It is a weighty, weighty thing. And for young people that I meet
who are anxious about joining the ministry or becoming preachers
and things, the very first thing you want to do to them is actually
remind them of the heaviness of it all. And if you can do
anything else, then go and do it. God's servants will be made
by God to stand on his behalf for poor people. God's servants
will be made to stand and God will ensure the faithfulness
of his servants. But there are some wonderful
things in all this, isn't it? There is, in the death of this
man, there is just this remarkable remarkable event that he was
killed by the lion. His body was thrown down the
road, verse 24, and there as these people walked by, that
lion who killed this man enabled other people to walk by and not
be touched at all. He just had one purpose, that
lion. He was to kill him and then protect him. He was to put
his body to death and then protect his soul. It is a picture of
the fact that our Lord Jesus Christ, in Him, our bodies are
put to death, but in the putting to death of our bodies, He will
actually save our eternal souls. There they were standing guard
over it, the lion not touching the donkey, verse 24, not touching
the people. And when this other man came
by, when this prophet came by, The lion did nothing to him.
There he was. The lion was standing there in
protection of the body. That man's body was not going
to be thrown into the waste. His bones and his body were going
to go back at the foot of that temple in Jeroboam's idolatrous
house and it was going to go back there as a testimony to
the Word of God, a testimony to the faithfulness of God. God
had used this man in death as he had in life and used his death
for hundreds and hundreds of years as a marker of who our
God is and how faithful he is to his covenant. The Lord has given him over to
the lion. The lion killed him as the word of the Lord had said. God restrains and God protects
and God brings judgement, all according to his word. And the
punishment for this prophet, the true prophet, went no further
than death. 29 The prophet took up the carcass
of the man of God, and laid it upon his house, and brought it
back. 30 And the old prophet came to the city to mourn and
to bury him. For the third he laid his carcass
in his own grave, and they mourned over him, saying, Alas, my brother! And it came to pass after he
buried him that he spoke to his son, saying, When I am dead,
then bury me in the sepulcher wherein the man of God is buried,
and lay my bones beside his bones. Because the saying which he cried
by the word of the Lord against the altar in Bethel, and against
all the houses of the high places which are in the cities of Samaria,
shall surely come to pass. This man who had treated this
prophet of God, maybe intended to mock him, but now he weeps
over him, like Joab at Abner's funeral. He's compelled to be
a mourner. He's compelled to be a mourner. It is a remarkable testimony
to the fact that there is only a need for there to be one sin
to bring death. There is a soul that sins, it
must die. And it's fascinating, isn't it,
to ponder the fact that the old man who lied to him and brought
him to his room and weeps over him, and it seems as if he lived
on. And this man, this man of God,
dies as a criminal and the old prophet lives on. And an idolatrous
prince, Rehoboam, a king, he lives and goes on in pomp and
power. So our God's ways are always
such that there will be things in them which will cause us to
be left humbled before our God. To be humbled before him and
to be humbled under his providence and under his care. And that inscription, as we saw
earlier in 2 Kings 23, it just remained there, didn't it? There
was a title. There was a title and there was
a character given to this man. And the Word of God, the man's
words about Josiah coming. Josiah, a king out of the loins
of David, coming. come true after all those hundreds
of years and everything that that prophet had said sat there
as a testimony. There is, by the raising up of
God's witness wherever it might be, there is a testimony against
the idolatry all around all the time and it remains there. We
are privileged, brothers and sisters, to know that throughout
history, and even throughout this land, God has raised up
faithful witnesses. We've got those booklets that
speak of the people that came here in the 19th century, Henry
Dowling and Daniel Allen and others, who faithfully proclaimed
the Gospel in places like Braidwood of all places. in Tasmania and
throughout, and the history remains as a testimony that God has sent
the Gospel to this land. And when God has written history
and God has raised up His Ebenezers, they remain there They remain
there as a challenge and a rebuke to the idolatry around them.
Daniel Allen was a great champion of the Gospel and proclaimed
God's free grace and God's sovereign electing love and God's particular
redemption for his people and was a great expositor of the
scriptures and a courageous man. And it's remarkable, isn't it,
that all of his papers, all of his writings are kept locked
away in Moor College in Sydney, which denies all of what he ever
said. And yet his testimony remains. It is something to ponder, isn't
it, that the Lord has always had his witnesses throughout
this world and he raises up his witnesses and he cares for them
and protects them and he causes that witness to be there for
that time and he also causes that witness to be there to be
remembered. The witness, of course, is always
a witness to the Lord Jesus Christ. Josiah was one of those men that
typified the Lord Jesus Christ. He came to that idolatrous land
and he purified that land and he brought back to that land
the worship of the true and living God. The Lord Jesus Christ came
to an idolatrous nation called Israel. and he purified a people
out of that land and he restored the worship of God in that place.
The temple in Jerusalem had become like the temple that Jeroboam
had set up. The Lord Jesus Christ came back and said, this is my
temple and he cleansed it. But the real temple, the real
temple was his body and the real temple were the people of God
who were one with him. And as we've been seeing in Acts,
Again and again and again people are drawn and drawn and drawn.
They are not drawn to a physical building. They are drawn to Him. They are drawn by Him to Himself. They are drawn there to bear
witness to the truthfulness of this word written hundreds and
hundreds and hundreds and thousands of years ago. They are drawn
by Him to bear witness to Him in this world. That is the life
of God's people, isn't it? That is the work of our great
God. It's the Lord Jesus Christ bearing
witness to Himself. But how does He bear witness
to Himself? He bears witness to Himself by the work that He
does in the lives of His people, fulfilling His Word and making
His Word the history of this world. It is a remarkable privilege,
brothers and sisters, but also this passage shows us that this
is a weighty privilege, isn't it? No one can read that passage
without pondering the awesomeness of the judgment of God, both
upon the likes of Jeroboam and this idle false prophet, but
the judgment of God upon that man. But it is a remarkable judgment
of God that our bodies will die, but our lives, our souls will
be preserved and our witness will be preserved. The lion of
the tribe of Judah will stand over his people and he will protect
them and he will protect their dead bodies from being desecrated
and he will protect their dead bodies from being desecrated
with this world. I love taking people out to the
and showing them Isabel's grave. And I say you tread very carefully
around here because the Lord comes back, that grave will open
and our sister Isabel will rise out of there gloriously to be
reunited with her soul that is now worshipping our God in heaven. It is an Ebenezer, it is a marker
until the Lord Jesus Christ returns that here was a woman drawn by
God from Morocco to Germany to the South Coast, drawn inexorably
by God to come and worship the Lord Jesus Christ in spirit and
truth. It is a testimony. They are throughout
this land. They are marked throughout this
Word that we have before us. They are just reminders of the
faithfulness of our God, the faithfulness of our God to His
Word, and the faithfulness of our God to His people, and the
power of our God to do everything. He is able. He is able. Let's pray.