The title of my message tonight
is Groves. The study of the history of the
kings of Judah and of Israel can be a little intimidating
at times and a little confusing because of the overlapping histories
of the two kingdoms. Here in the last part of this
text that I just read, you have two Jehoshas ruling, one in Judah
and one in Israel. The name Jehoash is the same
as Joash. We've seen Joash dead and buried,
and we'll see it again in this text and see him alive again
in verse 14 and again in chapter 14. And this is not a record
of miraculous regeneration, but rather it's selected portions
of his history that explains his interaction at different
times with different men. To make matters even more interesting,
we find two men of the same name ruling in verse 10, Joash and
Judah and Jehoash and Israel. That being said, these first
13 verses are an historical precursor to the sickness and death of
Elisha and his final prophecy in the latter part of this chapter. This going back and forth takes
some study, and in doing so, it can often cause us to lose
sight of the fact that all of this in some form or another
is designed to cause us to look to Jesus Christ. And though application
can be made to Christ, his works and his salvation he wrought
for his people, in these varied accounts one theme is often overlooked
by the fact that there are two kingdoms. That fact causes difficulty in
our studies, the fact that there are two kingdoms. I cannot say
that this confusion of overlapping histories is by design for this
purpose, but rather a particular effect it has had on me and is
one of thanksgiving. I'm thankful that in the matter
of salvation, there is but one king and one kingdom, one way,
one truth, and one life. There is no back and forth. in
the record of our salvation. There is no deciphering of one
kingdom playing into the life of another kingdom, not in our
salvation. There is no idolatrous king at
the same time a king who almost rids the kingdom of idolatry,
save for a few minor infractions. That's not our salvation. There
is one King and He is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords and
He alone alone is the salvation of His people, and that by grace,
and they are all idolaters by nature. But since their character and
conduct are in no way considered, even considered or employed in
their salvation, there can be no confusion in the matter lest
man designs to make it confusing. Christ is all. Christ is it. Christ is our salvation. Now
if men want to put another king in there, they're going to screw
things up. They're going to put another character involved in
this, they're going to mess things up. And we can see that plainly
as these two nations, or this one nation divided in two with
two different kings, are always at each other's throat. And even
the good kings do bad things. Even the good kings do somewhat
right in God's eyes, but not always. And it requires no leap
of the imagination or intellectual prowess to see that the introduction
of man's will or man's law, works, makes Christ to be only a part
of the whole. And in that scenario, a minor
player as the end result. Since free will and works are
attributed to men, it then stands to reason and scriptural declaration
that the man's insertion into salvation makes him to be Baal. and the golden calves, and Ashtoreth. He's not only an idolater, he's
an idol. He's an idol. By nature, we are
all idols and idolaters, and we worship, by nature, false
deities, and because of it, confusion rules the day. Men like to say
things about great doctrines like predestination and election
that they are confusing or hard to understand. No. They're the
easiest thing in the world to understand. Nothing hard to determine
beforehand is what predestination means, and who don't understand
that? You do it every day. In election, God chose whom he
would save. Completely understandable. Not
likable by nature. Hard to swallow by nature. But
nonetheless, these things are practiced by all of us every
day of our life. We all practice election. We
choose who we want. We choose what we want. We choose
what foods we want to eat. Every one of us practices election. It's natural to us. And yet,
we go angry when the same attribute is given to God. Every one of
us are predestinaries by nature. We predestinate everything we're
going to do. We plan everything we're going to do. That's what
predestination is, working a plan out. And yet men get angry when
you talk about predestination in reference to God. Substitution. You're here tonight because something
died that you might live. And I mean in a natural sense. If you ate a steak tonight or
a piece of pork chop, a pig had to die for you to do that. If
you ate a salad, some plants had to die for you to do that.
We practice substitution in our everyday life, and yet when we
talk about substitution in reference to salvation, men despise it. By nature, we are worshippers
of a false god and his confusion. And confusion engenders other
confusion so that error is added to error and lies to cover lies. Things like grace becomes an
offer rather than a sovereign act. Lordship becomes a transference
of power rather than the exercise of power. Sovereignty falls to
the exercise of man's will rather than the will of God. God becomes
like man and man becomes like God. And that's confusing. Salvation becomes the act of
man and God's singular, the act of man and God's singular and
absolute role becomes a bit part. The result of that conditional
covenant, the old covenant. The two kingdoms, the power plays
in the intrigue of the kings. God's suffering a little error
even among the good kings. He did, didn't he? Jehu tore
up Baal, but worshipped him gold and cash at Jeroboam. Every one
of the good kings said they did right when it was God's eyes,
but they left something behind that shouldn't have been left
behind. God called that Worshipping idols. But the scripture also says that
he winked at those times. He winked at those times. In
Acts chapter 17 and verse 29 it says, For as much then as
we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the
Godhead is like a gold or silver or stone or graven by art, a
man's device. And Paul is talking on Mars Hill
to those about the statute that they've raised to the unknown
God. And he says, at the times of this ignorance, God winked
at. God winked at. What does that mean? He put up
with it. He suffered it to be so. But
now, not now, ain't no winking at idolatry now. Ain't no winking
when kings worship false gods now. Now he commandeth all men
everywhere to repent, to turn from their idols to serve the
living God. Because he hath appointed a day in which he will judge
this world in righteousness by that man whom he hath raised
from the dead, whom he ordained whereof he hath given us assurance
unto all men that he hath raised him from the dead. All men are
going to be judged, not by their idols, Not by their idolatry,
but the plummet has been hung in Israel and that plumb line
is the Lord Jesus Christ. And if you aren't as righteous
as He is, you are going to perish in your sin. It makes the believer be thankful
that all confusion has been removed in the matter of salvation. There
is none other name under heaven. None another name. The Lord said,
I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man cometh unto
me, except the Father which hath sent me. Draw him. In 1 Corinthians
8, verse 6, Scripture says, But to us there
is but one God, the Father. Of whom are all things, and we
are in Him. And one Lord Jesus Christ, by
whom are all things, and we are by Him. Just one. Over in Ephesians chapter 4,
we read these words, beginning with
verse 4. There is one body, one spirit,
even as you are called into one hope of your calling. One Lord,
one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above
all and through all and in you all. One, one, one, one. Because two is confusion. Which is shown forth in these,
in representative form by these two kingdoms. And there was a thing about that
Old Covenant, absolute obedience on the part of man was never
a consideration of the Old Covenant because man was a sinner. He
was a sinner. So degrees of obedience were
accepted and this was proved in that the law of the ceremonies
were not designed to take away sin. They were never designed
to take away sin, but rather to remind men that they were
yet sinners and in need of a sacrifice that would answer their inability
and impotence to do anything about their sin. That's what
the Old Covenant did over and over and over with every sacrifice
offered, with every holy day, with every Sabbath, with every
Day of Atonement. Everything was to tell people
one thing. All this we're doing is to show
you that you're a sinner and remind you over and over again. That's what Paul said about the
law in Hebrews chapter 10. In Hebrews chapter 10, he says
this, for the law, verse 1, having a shadow of good things to come,
and not the very image of the things, can never, with those
sacrifices which they offered year by year, continually make
the comers thereunto perfect. Then, had they been made perfect,
then would they not have ceased to be offered. If one had been
made perfect by their sacrifices, there would be no offering or
sacrifice. Because that the worshipers once purged should have no more
conscience of sin. But in these sacrifices, there
is a remembrance again made of sins every year. Every year. The duplicity and the vacillating
attitude of the kings of both kingdoms serves to remind us
that if salvation is to be successful, if salvation is even possible,
it must be accomplished without any participation of humanity
and mankind. It must be done entirely by one
who cannot break a covenant, who cannot do anything but perfect
obedience. There is only one that fits that
bill. And that's why scripture declares
salvation is of the Lord. That's who it's of. Now that
fact being established, there's also a pattern of behavior that
occurs again and again in these various kings, as these various
kings did right or did wrong in the sight of the Lord, or
partial right and some wrong. Without exception, either the
high places or the groves, or sometimes both, were retained
after Baal was destroyed. These were places designed and
employed in the worship of false gods, notwithstanding the idols
of Baal and Ashtard had been destroyed. The idols had been
destroyed, but the bent of the idolatrous mind and adolescent
heart had not been altered at all. They said that they didn't
worship Baal anymore, they said they didn't worship Ashtar anymore,
but they went to the high places and they went to the groves to
worship. I'm sure, there's no doubt in my mind, that they actually
were saying they were worshipping God. But they were worshipping
God through idolatry. Or they said they were worshipping
God through idolatry. The idols had been destroyed,
but their heart and mind had not changed. You see, the idolater's
heart cannot abide with the idea that what they do is of no value,
and that's an idolater's heart. The man-made, hand-hewn deities
were but rubble in the latrines and the garbage heaps, and it
was obvious that the people could live without them, because they
went on and lived without them. And I say to you, without hesitation,
that you could remove the name of Christ in the name of God
from 90% of the churches in the world today, and they would go
on just fine. Because they're not organisms,
they're organizations. That's what they are. They're
well-oiled machines. I remember a lady called one
time and asked me about what kind of things we did for our
youth and all this stuff, what kind of programs we had. I told
her we only had one, and that was to preach the gospel. And then
she told me she'd been without a pastor for two years. I said,
well, how's it going? She said, we're doing fine. I said, well,
don't bother to call one then. If you're doing OK, don't bother.
Don't get somebody that's going to cause trouble. Just go on
like you're going on. And they could go on like they're
going on, because there's no need of truth. The mind is an
image factory. That's where we get our word
imagination. And the base thought that engenders
idolatry in whatever form it takes is that the individual
has something to do, some meritorious action that recommends that individual
to their God. No matter what it is, no matter
what form idolatry takes, that's the basis for it. In all probability,
the former Baal worshipers had merely transferred their practices
to the worship of the true God. And that little gram of error
poisoned the whole batch. And though I'm sure they would
have claimed otherwise, their so-called worship of the true
God was pure idolatry. Can you do that? Many will stand
before Christ and say, did we not preach in thy name? Did we
not prophesy in thy name? Did we not cast out devils in
thy name? And he will say, and you depart
from me, you workers of iniquity, I never knew you. Anything, no
matter what it is, Anything that takes the mind and heart away
from Jesus Christ as all of salvation is Idolatry Flat-out The same
sort of idolatry is prevalent in this day. Pagan symbols decorate
churches, steeples and spires and obelisks are but phallic
symbols of old, employed to worship the gods of fertility. Every
next time you see one, know what it is. That's why they put steeples
on there. They're phallic symbols. That
big obelisk out in the middle of St. Peter's Square, which
is getting a lot of things. Did one get elected today? Where
was he from? Italy? Oh, he's South American,
OK. That big obelisk out there, that's
not Roman. That's not Italian architecture.
You know where they got it from? It was a phallic symbol for Osiris
and Isis, the mother and son of God in Egypt. And they towed
that thing on a ship and brought it and put it right in the middle
of the place. Can't even think of the place. Crosses date back to priesthoods
that predate Christ by millenniums. They're found in houses and homes. Also in houses and homes and
houses of worship, so-called, images of Christ are found there.
They adorn the walls of worship. And the unattractive Jew from
Nazareth, as he's described in scripture, is painted with a
broad brush of ethnicity to appear as a rugged, handsome fellow
with soulful countenance and tender eyes. Crucifixes made
of gold and silver, their works of artificers are attached to
varnished sticks, and these sacred lollipops are brandished as scepters
or hung on walls to create little sanctums in the homes of the
faithful. It could even be an Egg McMuffin that could take
that holy place. For there was one not many years
ago when a woman found a picture of Jesus' face in an Egg McMuffin
and she built an actual altar in her home. And the Egg McMuffin,
I'm sure, is not edible now, but it's still worshipped. And
these are all idols. I've told you the story many
times of the little six-year-old girl who went to Brother Mahan's
church and learned the gospel since she first heard the word.
And her grandmother was a Methodist, and her grandmother took her
to church on Sunday, and they had this huge cross right in
the middle of the church, right up in front of the pulpit. And
everybody came up and knelt at that cross, and her grandmother
took the little girl's hand and started to kneel down, and she
knelt down, and she was pulling on her granddaughter and kneeled
down, and her granddaughter, six years old, said, I'm not kneeling
down to that. She says, why not? She said, it's an idol. It's
an idol! They're all idols, but religion
calls them aids to worship. Visual aids for those who claim
to walk by faith and not by sight, but they're visual aids. For
Israel and Judah, Judah was the high places and the groves that
put themselves in the equation of salvation. Each of these places
in their own way tell the story of the error of salvation by
free will and works of righteousness. The high places address man's
need of self-exaltation and denote a need in man to be above others. They reveal an erroneous thought
that altitude translates to proximity. Religion speaks that language.
They talk about the higher life. or the higher plane of existence,
the upward way. They're just modern and current
ways to speak of high places. the utopian ideals of Plato and
Marx and such counted on this false notion that natural man
could become a spiritual person. He could rise above himself and
reach a place called utopia, which means no place, which I
think is an actual good interpretation of it. But their idea was that
he would reach such a state of spirituality that his natural
self-interest would be sacrificed on the altar of the collected
good. And every time that's been tried by any government, it's
failed. Because man's never going to get rid of his self-interest
until he dies. Never. The high places were where
men could supposedly by their will rise above themselves to
an estate that would make them accepted before their God, or
make them able to accept their God. They sing, nearer my God to thee. But they hold that they get there
by their own vertical gravity overcoming trick. One poet said it right, nearer
to God, nearer I cannot be. For in his son, I'm as near as
he. The Groves address another mode
of self-deification. The Groves are dedicated to the
worship of Ashtaut. Her name becomes transliterated
into our English word Easter. Yeah. Her holiday is the spring
equinox, and it's about fertility, replete with symbols of prolific
reproduction, such as the rabbit and the egg, lilies and scrotal
baskets full of delights. Her holiday was absorbed into
so-called Christianity and attributed to the resurrection of Christ.
It has nothing to do with the resurrection of Christ. Nothing. Even her co-deity Baal was incorporated
into a celebration with the practice of sunrise services like took
place on Carmel when Elijah ended up killing 400 prophets of Baal. Baal's the sun god. But the true
worship of Ashtar and the uses of the groves is found in the
meaning of the word grove. Groves actually get their name
from Ashtar, who was held to be a consort or a prostitute
or a concubine, a bale. The derivative of that name is
asherah. It means grow. But it comes from
a word ashar. And that means to go straight,
to walk straight, to advance, to make progress. This progress
is toward the place of earned acceptance with God. This religious
practice is today called progressive sanctification. And it is supposedly
accomplished by walking straight and living a life of progressive
rectitude, living in a manner that would ultimately bring them
to a place of holiness that would obligate God to accept them. They may speak of grace, but
they utterly refuse to let anyone discount their works. The high
places and the groves were maintained after the gods and their temples
were destroyed because the truth is it is not God that matters
in salvation, but rather it is the works and will of men and
their ability to reach that higher plane, walk that straight path,
and be accepted by God. The high places and the groves
are still here. and so-called Christianity is
making great use of them. And people are being ignorant,
either willful or otherwise led down a path of destruction. They are not like Icarus, the
son of Daedalus, who in escaping from Crete on artificial wings
made for him by his father, flew so close to the sun that the
wax with which the wings were fastened melted and he fell into
the Aegean Sea. The high places and the groves, the higher life and the progressive
sanctification are places for men with wax wings to try to
reach the sun and they will fall into the rolling depths of perdition. And Scripture says how great
will be their fall. Father, bless us to understand
and pray in Christ's name. Amen. All right.