I want to welcome our visitors.
I'm glad to have you. You'll stay for lunch. We'll
have plenty. Remember those who requested
prayer. Remember the Sampson family whose daughter has been
re-diagnosed with cancer. Her name is Aniya. She's what,
11? Eight. She's eight years old.
She had cancer and it went into remission. Now it's coming to
her brain. So remember them, and also the family's house caught
fire last week. So remember that family in your
prayers. Remember Dee Parks, who has incurable cancer of the
intestine. Remember him and his wife and
their children, and also their mom and dad. Moose Parks is missionary,
one of the missionaries we support. See, Fred's going back next,
not this Wednesday, but the following Wednesday for his second chemo.
So remember him, Loretta's going in Tuesday for a lumpectomy. Got a lot of things going on,
so remember these folks in your prayer. Seek the Lord's help
for them. And this week's birthday is this guy right here. So, this is my old wife. You ask her, I ain't sayin'. Tryin' to get me in trouble this
morning, that's what it's tryin' to do. Let's begin our worship
service with hymn number 17, Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing.
Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing. my heart to sing thy grace. Streams of mercy never ceasing
call for songs of loudest praise. Teach me some melodious sonnet
sung by flaming tongues above. Raise the Fixed upon it, mount
of thy redeeming love. Here I raise my Ebenezer, hither
by thy help I'm come. And I hope by thy good pleasure,
safely to arrive at home. ? Jesus sought me when a stranger
? Wandering from the fold of God ? He to rescue me from danger
? Interposed his precious blood ? Oh to grace how great a debtor
? Daily I'm called Like a fetter, bind my wandering
heart to Thee. Prone to wander, Lord, I feel
it. Prone to leave the God I love. Here's my heart, oh, take and
seal it. Seal it for Thy courts above. after scripture and prayer was
in hymn number 42. If you have your Bibles, turn
to 2 Kings. I'm going to read the last three verses
of 1 Kings chapter 22 and then read the first 18 verses of 1
Kings or 2 Kings chapter 1. In 1 Kings 22 verse 51 it says,
And Ahaziah, the son of Ahab, began to reign over Israel and
Samaria, the seventeenth year of Jehoshaphat, king of Judah,
who reigned two years over Israel. And he did evil in the sight
of the LORD, and walked in the way of his father, and in the
way of his mother, and in the way of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat,
who made Israel to sin. For he served Baal, and worshipped
him, and provoked to anger the Lord God of Israel according
to all that his father had done. Then Moab rebelled against Israel
after the death of Ahab. Nehaziah fell down through a
lattice in the upper chamber that was in Samaria and was sick. He sent messengers and said,
Go, inquire of Baal Zebub, the God of Ekron, whether I shall
recover of this disease. But the angel of the Lord said
to Elijah the Tishbite, Arise, go and meet the messengers of
the king of Samaria, and say unto them, Is it not because
there is not a God in Israel that ye go to inquire of Beelzebub,
the God of Ekron? Now therefore thus saith the
Lord, Thou shalt not come down from that bed on which thou art
gone up, but shalt surely die. Elijah departed. And when the
messengers turned back unto him, and said unto him, Why are you
now here? Why are you now turned back?
And they said unto him, There came a man up to meet us, and
said unto us, Go, turn again unto the king that sent you,
and say this unto him, Thus saith the Lord. Is it not because there
is not a God in Israel, that thou sendest to inquire of Beelzebub,
the god of Ekron? Therefore thou shalt not come
down from the bed on which thou art gone up, but surely shalt
surely die. And he said unto them, What manner
of man was he which came up to meet you and told you these words?
And they answered, He was a hairy man with a girdle of leather
about his loins. And he said, It is Elijah the
Tishbite. And the king sent unto him a
captain of fifty with his fifty. And he went up to him, and behold,
he sat on top of a hill, and he spoke unto him, Thou man of
God, the king hath said, Come down. And Elijah answered and
said unto the captive, Fifty, if I be a man of God, then let
fire come down from heaven, and consume thee, and thy fifty.
And there came down fire from heaven, and consumed him, and
his fifty. Yet also he sent unto him another captain of fifty
with his fifty. And he answered and said unto him, O man of God,
thus hath the king said, Come down quickly. And Elijah answered
and said, If I be a man of God, let fire come down from heaven
and consume thee and thy fifty. And the fire of God came down
from heaven and consumed him and his fifty. And he sent again
a captain of the third with fifty. And the third captain of fifty
went up, and came, and fell on his knees before Elijah, and
besought him, and said unto him, O man of God, I pray thee, let
my face and the life of these fifty thy servants be precious
in thy sight. Behold, there came fire down
from heaven, and burned up the two captains of the former fifties
with their fifties. Therefore, let my life now be
precious in thy sight. And the angel of the Lord said
to Elijah, Go down with him, and be not afraid of him. and
he rose and went down with him unto the king and he said unto
him thus saith the Lord for as much as thou hast sent messengers
to inquire of Beelzebub, the king of Hebron, the God of Hebron,
is it not because there is no God in Israel to inquire of his
word? Therefore thou shalt not come down off that bed on which
thou art gone up but shalt surely die. So he died. according to
the word of the Lord, which Elijah had spoken. And Jeroham reigned
in his stead in the second year of Jeroham, the son of Jehoshaphat,
king of Judah, because he had no son. Now the rest of the acts
of Ahaziah, which he did, are they not written in the book
of Chronicles of the kings of Israel? Let us pray. Our Father,
we bless you and thank you for your word. which is a lamp unto
our feet and a light unto our path. We thank you, Father, for
the honesty and integrity of your word that tells the truth
about you and tells the truth about humanity. We thank you,
Father, that our great prophet, the Lord Jesus Christ, has told
us the truth about who you are and what we are and has showed
us the way of salvation. has showed us that our hope is
built on Jesus Christ alone and what he did on Calvary's tree.
Regardless of anything else that might be in our minds, nothing
settles your justice and wrath but the cross of Calvary. We
thank you that Jesus Christ willingly, voluntarily came into his world,
lived among sinners, came in the likeness of sinful flesh
without sin, condemned sin in the flesh, and made in his people
to be the righteousness of God. We thank you, Father, that we
as ruined, wretched sinners, saved by grace, can think on
such things in a world that's gone mad. Father, we pray today
for those who are sick and going through troubles. Pray for this
Samson family. The news of their daughter's
cancer, we pray for them. Pray for Fred as he awaits his
next chemotherapy. Loretta, she's getting ready
for this operation. The others who requested prayer, I ask Lord
to help for them. I know it's every case. And only
you can do things that can't be done. Things that are impossible
for humanity. You can comfort hearts, you can
convict, you can console, You can confront, you can control.
All these things belong to you. Where all power belongs to you.
Help us to worship you. Cause us to do so. Bring us down
into the dust where we belong. Cause us to lift our eyes to
see him who's altogether lovely. Enthroned, the Lamb of God at
thy right hand. Ever living to make intercession
for his people. Help us now. We pray in Christ's name, amen. Hymn number 42, All Hail the
Power of Jesus' Name. Bring forth the royal diadem
and crown him Lord of all. Bring forth a royal diadem and
crown him Lord of all. He chosen seed of Israel's race,
he ran ? Hail Him who saved you by His
grace ? And crown Him Lord of all ? Hail Him who saved you
by His grace ? And crown Him Lord of all ? Let every kindred,
every tribe ? On this terrestrial ball ? To him all majesty ascribe
? And crown him Lord of all ? To him all majesty ascribe him, Lord of all. Oh, that with yonder We'll join the everlasting song
and crown Him Lord of all. We'll join the everlasting song
and crown Him Lord of all. Steve Deridge, seat of the office
this morning, please. Let us pray. Our Father, again
we approach in the name of Jesus Christ, that name that is above
every name, the only name under heaven, given among men, whereby
we must be saved. The unspeakable gift that you've
given your children, and with him you've freely given us all
things. as we return unto thee what is rightfully yours, let
us do so with joy and thanksgiving in our hearts for Christ's sake. Amen. I invite your attention back
to 2 Kings. Except for the prophets Ezekiel
and Daniel, all other prophets from Isaiah through Zephaniah
ministered during the time period covered in 2 Kings. So it is
a very important portion of Scripture A sizable number of prophets
and their prophecies had to do with this time period here. Now
this book mirrors the attitude of the time of judges when men
did what was right in their own eyes as they rebelled against
God in vile and overt idolatry. The first king recorded is a
kind of harbinger for all that follow. save for a very few instances
where a few kings did what was right in the eyes of the Lord.
Now the account of Ahaziah could be called par for the course
as it relates to the continuing attitude of the descendants of
Jeroboam of which Ahab and his dastardly doings contributed
a sizable amount of material in first Kings. The prevalent
description that followed Jeroboam throughout his corrupt lineage
was found in what I just read in verses 52 and 53. He followed
the Baal. He worshipped the Baal. He did
what was wrong or evil in the sight of God. These words form
an epitaph for the headstones of the majority of the kings
of Israel after the kingdom was divided, remembering this is
God's naturally chosen race. He chose them of all the other
races out of his people and gave them what is called a religion
of works from Mount Sinai. And of course, any religion that
involves works is automatically doomed to fail. And it was, by
design, doomed to fail because it pictured how men, when given
an opportunity to obey God, don't do it. And that's just a fact
of life. That's a fact of natural humanity.
A.S.I. had a short term, two years. From majesty to mausoleum was
only two trips around the sun. And little of what he did save
for his idolatry is recorded for us even in the Chronicles.
What we do know is that a providential plank he was standing on gave
way under his feet And overcome by the law of gravity, he plunged
to terra firma and was made sick, it says. He evidently was hurt
pretty bad in the fall. His fall was from great heights,
and it's symbolic of the fact that the closer you are to the
ground, the less painful your fall's going to be. We should
take our headquarters, as old Tot Scott Richardson said, in
the dust. And if we fall, it won't be hurt
so bad, because we're already really close to the ground. The
proof of Ahab's idolatry in his open rebellion is twofold. First,
being Ahab's son, he was more than likely present when those
400 false prophets bid his deceased daddy to go
to possess Ramoth Gilead. You remember the story of Micaiah,
the only prophet among all of them. Now those 400 prophets
were false prophets. They were prophets in Israel.
They said they were prophets in Israel. And the king decided
he wanted to go up and possess Ramoth Gilead. And he says, call
the prophets and ask them if I should go. Well, they were
bought and paid for, and they all said, go on. It's yours. Go possess it. But he knew maybe
I should ask somebody else. And so he called for a prophet,
another prophet. And they said, well, there's this one guy named
Micaiah. And the king said, well, I hate
him. He don't ever say anything nice about me. But he called
Micaiah. He said, should I go up and possess
Raimund Gilead? Micaiah says, go on up. No problem. Go possess Raimund
Gilead. And he says, how many times have
I told you? Tell me the truth now, because he knew, he knew
that he was in trouble. MacGuy says, well I heard a council
in heaven. They counseled together and said,
how is it that we can get Ahab killed? Let's send him up to Ramoth Gilead. He'll be killed there. Well,
the king slapped him upside the head and put him in jail. And
he went up to Raymond Gilead, took off his king's clothes and
put on servant's clothes and went onto the battlefield in
servant's clothes, not king's clothes, and said, a bowman drew
an arrow at a venture. I shot an arrow in the air. Before it landed, I knew not
where. It landed right in the breastplate joints of Ahab, and
he died there. And the dogs licked his blood.
Maybe, probably Ahaziah was there present when all this took place.
He was privy to the words of that prophet Micaiah, the lone
prophet of God, as he preemptively and sarcastically rehearsed the
demise of Ahaz. There is no doubt that he knows
the outcome that the Word of God has when God says something
is going to happen. That is what takes place precisely
as it is spoken, supported by the fact that he, Ahaz, was now
the king and he had done evil in the sight of the Lord. Secondly,
because he was able to identify Elijah when they came with the
news that there was this guy who stopped us on our way to
Beelzebub, the god of Ekron. When he stopped us, he said,
well, what did he look like? He said, well, he's kind of a
hairy fella and wearing a leather girdle. He says, man, it's Elijah
the despised. Another one of those prophets
he hated. Hated Elijah. He was able to
identify Elijah. It's reasonable to assume that
he was present when Elijah declared the promise of the destruction
of Ahab's family before Micaiah did it. And with this knowledge,
with this understanding that the word of God is absolute,
proved by the death of his father, and witnessed by the canine's
feast on the blood of the slain king, rather than call on the
name of the Lord." Knowing all these things, now he was there
when this happened. Knowing all these things, he calls on Beelzebub,
the god of Ekron. His injuries, he knows, will
probably be fatal, but he wants to get some help from Beelzebub.
the God of Ekron. Now, God is in Israel. He never
left Israel. God is in Judah. He never left
Judah. What does Beelzebub mean? Beel
means Lord and Zebub means flies. Lord of the flies. There may
be a reason why he called him. Ekron means plucked up by the
roots. Because Ekron had a humid climate. It was probably plagued
with flies. And Beelzebub was supposed to
help the populace rid Ekron of its pests. He was a pest control,
this Ekron god, this Beelzebub god. He was an orchid man. One
can only wonder why that all these false gods that might be
approached to find out if you're going to die, A has called on
the Orchid Man. Probably because his injuries
were such that the flies had begun to buzz around him. He called the Lord of Pest Control. Maybe his injuries had begun
to corrupt and fester and his stench was drawing flies. We
don't know, but that's the one he called. There's plenty of
gods to call on, but he called on that one. The meaning of Ekron
coincides with the description of the false prophets given in
Jude 1, 12, when he said, These are spots on your feast of liberty
or charity, when they feast with you, feeding themselves without
fear, clouds there are without water, carried about by winds,
trees whose fruit withereth without fruit, twice dead and plucked
up by the roots. That's what Ekron means, dead
and plucked up by the roots. Ahaziah was an idolater. to the
core. And the mark of the idolatry
is that he hides in falsehood and makes lies his refuge. He
prefers that. He was aware of the power and
the might of Almighty God. God's prophet had said that Ahaz
would die in Remeth Gilead and he had died. The prophet said
the dog is going to lick his blood, and the dog licked his
blood. He knows the Word of God, and yet he goes on and does what
he does in idolatry. Why? Because he is a reprobate.
It is that simple. He is a reprobate. Read the last
verse of Romans chapter 1, you will find that a reprobate KNOWING,
KNOWING the judgment of God. They keep on doing what they
are doing anyway. the judgment of God that they continue he
was he was a he was an idolater all together and the marker the
question arises why do men invent and manufacture a God who cannot
save them and then call on him to help them when they're in
times of trouble this is what's going on in the world today in
the pulpits of America throughout they've invented a God that can't
help them they say it themselves His hands are tied. He can't
do anything unless you let Him. You've got to make Him God. You've
got to allow Him to save you. That's the language of the pulpits
of America. Why in the world would you call
on somebody like that? You've invented Him. You've made
Him up. And now you're going to call
on Him to help you when you've already said He can't help you
unless you let Him. What kind of God is that? I've often said,
Why do people pray to God to save people if they believe God
can't save them unless they let Him? Why don't they pray to the
people to save themselves because they're the ones that ultimately
do it anyway. The angel of the Lord came to Elijah and told
him to meet the messenger of Ahaziah and ask them a very pointed
question in verse 3. He says this. He says, But the
angel of the Lord said to Elijah the Tishbite, Arise, go up and
meet the messengers of the king of Samaria, and say unto them,
Is it not because there is not a God in Israel? That certainly
means, isn't God in Israel? That's all that means. Sometimes
the old English is hard to decipher. Is there not a God in Israel?
And you go to Beelzebub, the God of Ekron. Is there not a
God? Is there not a God? We are reminded
of the words of the Prophet Jeremiah when he said, Is there no balm
in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then are the health
of the daughter of my people not recovered? Elijah asked the
same kind of question, which is actually an accusation and
an indictment on idolatry. God is present! The God who slew
your daddy and your mama, the God who promised their death
and performed it, and you heard it, and you go to this false
stone thing that people have made, and his representative,
the Lord of Flies, the true God is in Israel. Throughout Scripture
that is set forth. The same Sovereign that delivered
them from Egypt, that freely gave them the promised land on
which they now resided, the same that performed miracle after
miracle to protect them and keep them, the gracious God that gave
them the prophets, the oracles, the law and the testimony, the
worship and the priesthood. He is among them as the one who
is omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent, and the dying despot
is called on the Lord of Flies for help. One man said, and I think it
was Ralph Barnard, folks that don't believe in God are insane. They're insane. The Lord said
they're demon-possessed. Read Luke 5. Such blatant rebellion
cannot be unpunished, cannot go unpunished. God must punish
sin. Elijah tells the messengers to
relate to the king that he will not get better. He's going to
die. on the bed that now he lies upon.
Tell him that. And after Ahaziah determines
in his own mind that the prophet of his doom is Elijah, he rather
than repenting sends out men to bring Elijah to him, probably
to kill him. His father hated the true prophet and maybe that
attitude is passed on to his son. The first captain in his
50 come to Elijah and they kind of mock him in verses 9 and 10.
They said, Thou man of God, the king said, come down. The words
that he uses to reply to them is also kind of a mockery, where
he says, I'll tell you what's going to come down. It ain't
me. What's going to come down is fire from heaven and destroy
the whole bunch of you. He that is attributed with praying
and there was no rain for three and a half years, calls on fire
from heaven to consume the captain and his 50. The Lord has said,
touch not mine anointing and do my prophets no harm. The same
God who declares that he is a consuming fire, destroys these mockers
of his prophet and the puny plans of their rutting royal. Unperturbed
by the fricasseeing of the first captain, In his 50, the king
sends another 50 who speak the same mockery and meet the same
flambeau. Still proving his disdain for the prophet of God, the dying
desperate soon to be a cadaver, sends another captain at 50.
Three times he tried this. The definition of insanity is
said by some to do the same thing over and over again and expect
a different result. Idolatry is insanity. But the
result is different. No thanks to the insanity of
the corrupting carcass, the royal regent, the third captain is
50 or bound by the command of the king. They have to go. The
king is their boss. And they go. They must go after
Elijah. They must go to Elijah, as their
incinerated predecessors have. But they do not have to come
in arrogance. and pride and with mockery in
their heart, and they do not. They come in obedience to the
king and obeisance to the God of heaven who is a consuming
fire. They say in verse 13, He sent
again the captain of the third fifty and his fifty, and the
third captain of the fifty went up and came and fell on his knees,
came and fell on the knees before Elijah and besought him, and
said unto him, O man of God, I pray thee, I let my life and
the life of these fifty thy servants be precious in thy sight. Look
on us with kindness. Don't do to us what you've done
to the other two. Behold, there came fire down
from heaven, they said, and burn up the two captives of the former
fifties and their fifties. Therefore, let my life now be
precious in thy sight. Precious of great value and worth
to him is what they're talking about. They sought mercy. They
sought mercy because they knew that they were but fat wood kindling
before the prophet. This is where mercy is found,
you see, at the place where death for sin is indicated and required
and just and reasonable. Mercy never comes because of
a sense of entitlement or merit. If you would have mercy, you
must put the noose around your neck. You must. you must lay your head on the
chopping block and attribute sovereignty to God who can justly
kill you or spare you. If you're going to seek mercy,
that's where you're going to seek it. These receive mercy from God.
Elijah went to the bedside of the doomed despot and says, you're
not going to get up. You're not going to you are going
to die because though there is God in Israel, you went to a
false God. There are many lessons to be
learned from this account, but the chiefest is the simplest.
There is but one God revealed fully and only in the person
of the Lord Jesus Christ. You hear him or perish in the
flames of hell with all who dare to mock his word. Men have invented many deities.
Most of them look like the men that invented them. And all of
them are false. And all of their efforts are
futile. Their domain is the dunghill,
and their dunghill deities, monarchs of manure, are disposed of with
the ease of God's swatting of fly. He said, I will ease myself
of my nefarious. I'll ease myself. you know, hard
work. Our Lord said to those who thought
to build idols to monuments to the law and the prophets who
had a job to do in the Old Testament and they did it. They did their
job. They sent forth Jesus Christ
and Him crucified from Genesis 1 all the way through to Malachi.
They sent forth Christ all the prophets gave witness of him
all of them they did their job and on the Mount of Transfiguration
Simon Peter, bless his heart, I'm so glad he's in the Bible
because I'm so much like him Simon Peter after seeing Elijah
and Moses come across the time one of those things it's hard
to understand There's things in this world
we'll never get a hold of. But he saw Moses and Elijah speaking
to the Lord Jesus Christ about the death that he should accomplish
in Jerusalem. And it was something. He said
in 1 Peter, I've seen it with my own eyes. I was there. This ain't no fable. This ain't
no fairy tale. I was there on that mount. And
there was Moses and Elijah talking with the Lord about the decease
he should accomplish in Jerusalem. I saw the Lord lit up, whiter
than any fuller could make, brighter than the noonday sun. He said,
Buddy, I was impressed. And I thought, this would be
a good place to have a monument, something to remind
us of this. We ought to build a monument
to Moses, a monument to Elijah, and one to Jesus. And while he
was yet speaking, a fog rolled over the place. We in the mountains
know something about that. We was up one year, many years
ago, picking blueberries up on Big Sam. Sam's not. We were sitting around the fire
at night and a fog rolled in. Well, actually, it was a cloud.
We were so high that a cloud rolled in. And I mean, it rolled
in and suddenly I could see the fire vaguely, but I couldn't
see anybody crossing the fire. that's what happened Peter was
speaking and then this fog rolled in and a voice came from heaven
Moses and Elijah these gave witness of Jesus Christ this is my beloved
son in whom I am well pleased you hear him you hear him the
God of Israel is on the throne dare not to seek help for many
other souls. Dare not. In Him alone, by His
substitutionary sacrifice, is justice satisfied and mercy sown. Only there, in Jesus Christ. In Jesus Christ. Father, bless
us to understand and pray in Christ's name. Amen.