The Fall Of Israel

Q: What does the Bible say about the fall of Israel?

The fall of Israel is documented in 2 Kings 17 as a consequence of Israel's idolatry and disobedience to God. In 2 Kings 17, the fall of Israel is described as a pivotal event where the northern kingdom, under King Hosea, fell to the Assyrians due to persistent idolatry and rebellion against God. After years of sinning against the Lord, including not repenting despite the warnings from prophets and the received law, Israel was ultimately judged. God allowed the Assyrians to besiege Samaria, leading to the deportation of the ten tribes and their subsequent loss of identity. This historical narrative serves as a profound lesson on the seriousness of idolatry and God's righteous judgment.

Q: How do we know God's judgment is true?

God's judgment is affirmed in Scripture as a consequence of sin and disobedience, evidenced by Israel's exile. The certainty of God's judgment is illustrated throughout the Bible, particularly in historical accounts such as that of Israel's exile captured in 2 Kings 17. The ten tribes faced divine punishment for their unrepentant idolatry, despite numerous warnings from God's prophets. This pattern reflects the biblical principle that God is patient, but His long-suffering has limits. Ultimately, God's judgment serves as a warning that rejection of His ways leads to dire consequences, and the fall of Israel stands as a testament to this reality.

Q: Why is understanding idolatry important for Christians?

Understanding idolatry is vital for Christians as it reveals the dangers of placing anything above God in our lives. Idolatry, as exemplified by the fall of Israel, is not limited to physical idols but extends to anything that takes precedence over God in our hearts. The biblical account depicts how the Israelites ignored God's laws and worshiped other entities, leading to their downfall. In contemporary terms, idolatry can manifest in various forms, including the worship of possessions, careers, or personal desires. Recognizing these forms of idolatry is crucial for Christians, as it helps safeguard their hearts and ensures that God remains the central focus of their lives. The Scriptures repeatedly warn against such distractions, indicating the necessity of repentance and genuine worship.

We're in 2 Kings chapter 17, and this is quite a momentous chapter in the Word of God. You'll see that as we read through it, certainly in the history of the Old Testament people of Israel. So we're not going to read too much of the chapter today. I just want to read a few verses from the start of the chapter, and then we will touch upon some other things later on in the chapter as we continue in our thoughts together. But we're in 2 Kings chapter 17, and we're reading from verse 1.

In the twelfth year of Ahaz, king of Judah, began Hosea, the son of Ella, to reign in Samaria over Israel nine years. And he did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord, but not as the kings of Israel that were before him. Against him came up Shalmaneser, king of Assyria, and Hosea became his servant and gave him presents. And the king of Assyria found conspiracy in Hosea, for he had sent messengers to Saul, king of Egypt, and brought no present to the king of Assyria, as he had done year by year. Therefore the king of Assyria shut him up and bound him in prison. Then the king of Assyria came up throughout all the land and went up to Samaria and besieged it three years. In the ninth year of Hosea, the king of Assyria took Samaria and carried Israel away into Assyria and placed them in Hala, and in Habor by the river of Gozan and in the cities of the Medes.

Amen. May the Lord bless this reading from his word. Sometimes when we are reading together in these chapters, these Old Testament passages in the history of Judah and Israel, The events seem to happen quickly. They come hard one upon another. And in a sense, that's because of the way that the scriptures are written. The writers, the chroniclers, have been writing the main events that happen and some of the most significant events that happen. And of course, when we are reading these passages together, these are the ones that we dwell upon. But it isn't always true that things are happening sort of hard on the heels of one another.

And here is an example because here we meet a man called Hosea and Hosea was the last king of Israel. Now last week we were thinking about a king of Israel who was called Pekah and his Shia was involved in the death of Pekah, his predecessor. Whether it was an assassination or not is not clear. But he was involved in Pekka's death. But it appears, it seems to have taken many years for him to become the recognized king of Israel. So he didn't just get rid of Pekka and take over the throne immediately. In fact, it seems like it was eight years that he was waiting to become the king of Israel. Now why that might have been is not entirely clear.

We call such a period an interregnum. That is a period between kings, a period between different rules. And this may have been because there were a number of candidates for the throne. There were a number of claimants to the throne, to be king in Israel. And perhaps there were fights, there were feuds, there were battles took place. Or perhaps it was more political, that things were maneuvering and people, different groups were trying to gain the ascendancy in order to put their man on the throne.

Whatever it is, It took quite a long time for Hosea actually to come to power. And there is a suggestion that he did finally come to power with the support of Assyria. Remember last week we spoke about the fact that to the northeast of Israel and to the southwest of Israel, these two large powers of Assyria and Egypt existed and Israel and Judah and Syria as well were kind of, I think we called them the jam in the middle of a sandwich. Well, that's the situation that we presently have today and or at this time. And we find that Hosea did come to the throne. But after becoming king, Hosea lost the trust of the king of Assyria.

Perhaps he realized that he could not continue to pay the large amount of money, the tribute, the presents or the gifts that it's called in the scripture. He couldn't give presents to the king of Assyria. The presents, the tribute that he demanded each year because the country couldn't afford it. And so we find that Hosea withheld payment. He didn't give these gifts for one or two years. And in the meantime, he tried to negotiate with Egypt. So he stopped paying his gifts to Assyria and he sent ambassadors to Egypt to see if Egypt would protect him against Assyria. He probably offered to pay them instead of Assyria. But this conspiracy, this betrayal, was discovered and Hosea was imprisoned.

And later, the Assyrian king captured Samaria, the royal city in Israel, after besieging it for three years. And what we learn in these verses today is that this was the end of Israel. This is the end of the ten tribes, the northern tribes that go by the name of Israel. When Samaria fell, the 10 tribes were taken into captivity. Now the king at this time, although we have one name given to us in the passage that we read, the king at this time seemed to be a man called Sargon and he came to the throne just a few months before the fall of Samaria.

So he had really recently come to the Assyrian throne. and he didn't want to be bothered with Israel anymore. So what he decided to do was rather than deal with these little kings who were scheming and not doing what they promised to do and just causing trouble and becoming annoying, He decided that he would be rid of them altogether. And he put an Assyrian in charge of the land of Israel.

And he rounded up and he deported a large portion of the people. Not only did he empty the land of all the 10 tribes, but he replaced them with colonies of other nationalities taken from different parts of the Assyrian Empire. So here we have in this passage a massive movement of people. king of Assyria emptied Israel, the land of Israel, of the ten tribes and sent them up north and he brought other nationalities and he planted them in the land of Israel.

Now, let me just say in context here that Judah continued to exist. Remember, we've got the southern kingdom and the northern kingdom, how these two parts divided after the time of David and Solomon. And for all of these years, they had continued independently. Judah still existed. It was the northern tribes that we're talking about here. And there was the tribe of Judah then, there was a few from Benjamin who are included in the tribe of Judah. There were some from the tribe of Levi as well who lived amongst, the Levites were not given land of their own, they were God's representatives and they lived amongst the different tribes. And they continued to remain in the southern kingdom.

And also, I think we have to say that it seems likely small groups from the Northern Kingdom fled to the Southern Kingdom. And perhaps some escaped deportation altogether. Because some individuals do appear to have retained their traditional tribal distinction. And I say that because later in the history of Judah, King Hezekiah, who will come to the throne in Judah sometime later, we'll get to that, he invited a number of these remnant groups to celebrate Passover and to worship at the temple in Jerusalem.

All that to say that nevertheless, the 10 tribes of the Northern Kingdom now were largely uprooted and deported from the land of Canaan to the lands beyond the river Euphrates. And there, in exile, they became assimilated into other populations, and their distinct identity appears to have been lost to history. Now having said that, Judah, too, later goes into exile. So the southern kingdom will also, in another age, go into exile.

And that's another story for another day. That event is known as the Babylonian captivity. This was the Assyrian captivity. That event is known as the Babylonian captivity. Some of those exiles from the Babylonian captivity, they did return to the land. They came back to Jerusalem in the days of Ezra and Nehemiah, and they rebuilt the temple which had been destroyed.

And I only mention that to tell you this, that they take the name Israel as the title of their nation. So although I'm telling you today that the 10 tribes called Israel go and are lost and forgotten, the name Israel is adopted by Judah. And so we continue to read about Israel in the Old Testament and in the New Testament, although it is no longer the 10 tribes.

They've gone and they've disappeared. Now we didn't read all the verses of this chapter as I said to you at the beginning, but in the remainder of the chapter the Holy Spirit tells us that Israel was judged because the people had sinned against the Lord their God which had brought them up out of the land of Egypt from under the hand of Pharaoh the king of Egypt and had feared or worshipped, feared is the word that is sometimes used to mean worshipped, and had feared other gods. So that the reason why the ten tribes were sent into exile and have become lost to history is because of idolatry. And idolatry is always punished by God. These people should have known better. They had received God's law from Moses. They had known the wisdom of David and Solomon. They'd had warnings from the prophets and they'd had many evidences of God's dealings with them over hundreds of years. But still, Having turned to idols under Jeroboam, they never repented throughout the reign of the 19 wicked kings that ascended the throne of Israel, the 10 tribes.

That was the reason why they were deported and why they had been judged. There's another thing that's mentioned in this chapter that I find quite interesting. And I want to draw your attention to that as well. Later in the chapter, I mentioned to you that having taken the 10 tribes out of the land of Canaan and taken them to lands beyond the river Euphrates, which is quite far up in the Northwest, in and beyond Turkey probably. and into Iran and Iraq. These were the sorts of areas that these people were probably taken to, if you've got any sense of geography.

But the people that were brought into the land and repopulated the land, we're told this about them, that they were tormented by lions. which were told God sent amongst them. Verse 25 of the chapter says, so it was at the beginning of their dwelling there, these colonies of foreign nationalities, at the beginning of their dwelling there in the land, that they feared not the Lord, therefore the Lord sent lions amongst them, which slew some of them. And these Assyrians, let's call them Assyrians, they realised there must be a supernatural reason for the aggression of these lions and the toll that it was taking upon them. Now, these Assyrians worshipped the gods that they had brought with them from their own lands. But they had this notion that they had come into a strange land, they'd come into a new land, and perhaps they had offended the local God, the God of this land, the God of the new land of Israel.

And so they asked the king of Assyria to send them a priest. from amongst the diaspora of Israel, a priest from the exiles, that he should come back and teach them the ways of the God of the land. And sure enough, a priest was sent to teach them the ways of the Lord. However, It was not real spiritual worship that these people were engaged with. It was mere superstition.

And although they learned something about the nature of the true God and about his laws and his practices and who he is, they simply added God's name to the list of the idol gods that they were trying to please and placate. And the final verse of the chapter says, verse 41, so these nations feared the Lord, or they worshipped the Lord, and served their graven images, both their children and their children's children, as did their fathers. So do they unto this day. That is up to the time when the history of the kings was written down. Now, here are some lessons that I want us to think about. The first one is this.

The Lord, and I'm thinking now about the 10 tribes, the people of Israel, the Lord had been patient and he had been long suffering with the people of the 10 tribes. He had spoken to them by the scriptures. He had given them his law. He had sent them prophets like Elijah and Elisha and the others like the prophets in the land. Those that were called the sons of the prophets, for example. And yet the people would not listen. They would not remain faithful to him. And therefore God judged them and punished them.

When I preach the gospel, when I preach, whenever I preach on a day like this, I want to tell people about the love of God and about the grace and the mercy of God. I want to tell them how God has made a way of salvation and a means of forgiveness for sin and peace with him by the sacrifice of his own dear son. I want to tell them about the new life that is to be found in the Lord Jesus Christ. And I hope I do. I certainly try to.

But we must never forget that God's patience with sinners lasts only so long. His long suffering of rebellion and sin will come to an end. and he will bring judgment on unbelievers. He will hold men and women and boys and girls to account for their sin and for rejecting his way of salvation.

Israel, the northern tribes, went on for years and years in wickedness. And people presumably thought that the judgment that Elijah and Elisha spoke about, well, it would never happen. Well, one day it did. And Israel was defeated and sent into exile, never to return.

God's final judgment will also be a casting away and a final separation. Sometimes God judges people in death when they die, but there is going to be a day of judgment. There is going to be a time when the Lord Jesus Christ returns as judge and that final judgment will be a casting away and a final separation. The Lord Jesus Christ spoke of this time during his own ministry when he would gather all peoples of the world before him and set the wicked on his left hand and on his right those made righteous by his blood. And he tells us that he will say, he's speaking here in Matthew 25, he tells us, these shall go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into life eternal.

There is a judgment coming, and there is a separation coming, and there is a punishment coming. an eternal, everlasting punishment for all those who do not come to the Lord Jesus Christ. And these are very fearful, and these are very solemn things, and these are written for our warning, to warn you and me of a judgment that is coming, and that way of salvation that is opened up in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Thinking about the idolatry of the children of Israel, maybe we would think, maybe we think, I would never practice idolatry. I would never make or buy an idol or bow down to worship it. Maybe not, maybe not. But you know, I think that idolatry is much wider than bowing down to an image of a little Buddha or having a shrine in our house.

Idolatry is anything that has preeminence in our lives over God and over the Lord Jesus Christ. You know, some people worship their football teams. Some people worship a singer or their favourite band or their hobby or their pastime. Some make idols of their own body. or of their family. Some worship their job. Whatever it might be that captures our affections more than the Lord Jesus is an idol in our hearts and in our minds.

And the Bible warns against vain imaginations. These are false notions that we imagine in our thoughts about God. They are born of ignorance. God has told us the truth concerning himself and ignorance about God and false notions and false imaginations about God is no excuse. If we do not know God, we will go to hell. Ignorance will take us to hell. If we worship another God, not the true God of the Bible, whatever we imagine Him to be, we are idolaters in our hearts.

And that's what Israel did. It is what these Assyrian colonies did that inhabited the land after Israel was removed. They feared the Lord and served their graven images. They gave lip service to God, but in their hearts, they were still idolaters. And I believe that there are many churchgoers today who are just like this. They say they fear the Lord, but in their heart they serve the gods of their own passions.

And here's the last point I want to leave with you, and it's very simple. I just want to leave you with this thought. All these stories, all this history, all these kings, Judah and Israel, a few good ones amongst them, many wicked ones, are given to us Not merely for our interest or our curiosity. Not to give me a subject to speak about in order to take up a few minutes of time each week.

They are given to us to point us to the Lord Jesus Christ. And how do they do that? They warn us that God has judged sin and will judge it again. but they also teach us that there is a way of escape from God's anger and there is a spiritual life to be had and there is forgiveness of sin and peace with God.

Jesus Christ is that way. And by his death, he has opened up a door into God's presence. Because while it was Israel, the 10 tribes, that were punished by God, for those who have faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, we understand that he has suffered in our place and he has taken God's punishment when he died for our sins. The Lord Jesus Christ has opened a door into God's presence for those who come to him and trust in him.

He hasn't given us salvation upon the grounds of our own good works, but by reason of his own blood and righteousness. I hope you find to some extent the history of these Old Testament accounts of some interest and some usefulness. But I don't want you just to know facts about the Bible. I want you to feel the power of God's love in your heart and his grace in your soul. And it is my prayer today that the Lord will teach us all to trust him and love him and worship him in spirit and in truth. Amen.

The Fall Of Israel

What does the Bible say about the fall of Israel?

How do we know God's judgment is true?

Why is understanding idolatry important for Christians?

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About Peter L. Meney

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The Fall Of Israel

What does the Bible say about the fall of Israel?

How do we know God's judgment is true?

Why is understanding idolatry important for Christians?

Sermon Transcript

About Peter L. Meney

Comments

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