The Story - Chapter 16

We do get the prayer request from the green cards that you have, that the Hahn family wants to thank everyone for their prayers and continue to pray for Connor. He'll be finishing his last week of antibiotics this week, I assume. I'm sorry? You'll be the last. You're louder than I am. This week will be finishing last week of antibiotics for him. Okay. We want you to pray for Megan. Megan's having some difficulties for herself, seizures, and she also always is asking for people to pray for others, for her brother Derek and for her aunt, and to John about a job. Is that what that was, Megan? Also, I had a card that Sharon Dennis will be having surgery for ovarian cancer Thursday, the 2nd of January in Wichita. So we ask you to pray for wisdom for the surgeons and also for their skill. So we ask you to remember to pray for her. She's going through the difficult time in her life. I want to read a passage from 2 Kings, if you'd find that in your Bibles. Chapter 17, verse 7. I want to start there. I'm going to use several passages this morning. To understand the Bible, you have to know that from the very beginning, God's intention was that he might have people like yourself and myself who he could have very close relationships with. Stories told in Genesis about God where he walked in the evening talking to people, Adam and Eve in the garden, like you would talk with your friend, like you would be with your friend. God's intentions in the very beginning was to have that kind of relationship with us so that every day, wherever we were, we would see God with us as a very close and personal friend. What caused that to change was that Adam and Eve rebelled against God. They listened to what he had to say and said, we have better ideas. We know something that we want to do and we're going to do it. We don't care what God says. That broke this relationship of closeness with God as it would with any of your friends. If you have a very close friend and you're very close to them and you know what they want you to do and how you want to treat them and you choose to do something different, it alienates you from them. God began at that moment to try to create in this world a group of people who would have that same kind of close relationship with him, a relationship when he could trust them and they could trust him. The story of the Bible is a story about how God goes about gathering together a community of people who are willing to live in this kind of relationship with him. The story that I want to use this week is a story about Israel and Judah. God had set apart the people of Israel to be this community in which he would have close relationships with them. He gave them the law so that they would know exactly what he wanted them to do, to spell out in concrete ways how God wanted them to act and how he wanted them to trust him. From the very beginning, they had difficulty doing this. God gave them a land where they could live, separated from all the other people in the world. When you read the Bible, it calls it the nation of Israel, the nation of Judah. I want to help you to think about this in a different way. We think of the word nation in terms of the United States or Germany or France or Spain or Brazil, some different political organization. So when we read in the Bible about the nation of Israel, our first forethought is to compare it in our culture to political entities. That's not what the Bible means by this. But the Bible is talking about the people of God called Israel or Judah, the people that were under God's authority. Now when you compare these biblical passages about the nation of Israel or the nation of Judah, the best comparison is with the people of God or the church. So if we were to go back to the Old Testament and read this the way we would think about it today, we would say the church located in Israel or the church located in Judah. Because what he's talking about are his own people, people who have pledged to him their faithfulness and vowed to live in obedience to him. And what he's describing is how difficult it was for him to be able to build this kind of relationship and keep it with people he could trust and who would trust him. And what happens in this story is that God had given David to be the king of Israel, the whole nation of people, all of God's people both in the north and the south. And he had given his kingdom to Solomon, the son of David. Solomon started out being very faithful to God. Along the way his life got sidetracked and even though he knew what the right thing was, he didn't do it. God came to him in the last of his days and said, You've drained so far from me that I can no longer trust you with all of my people. And so he said, I'm going to take some of your people and I'm going to tear them apart and put them in the northern kingdom and they will be a different church. And you in the southern kingdom will be a different church. He took the church and he split it. So there was one group in the north and one group in the south. He did this because he loved the people of Israel. He loved the people of Judah. You see the story of the Bible is to teach us how God loves us. Oftentimes we think of love in terms of emotions. We think of love in terms of kindness and consideration. But love is a lot more than that. Love is self-denying, sacrificial service to others. So what God saw in Solomon was a man who had perverted the instruction God gave him. And was living entirely based on his own desires and his own wants and whatever pleased him with regard to money, sex, whatever it was. God saw that here was a man who had violated the basic principle on which he was building his church. So he said to him, I'm going to start over. I'm going to take away from you ten or eighty percent of your people and I'm going to give them and start a new church in the north. And I've got a young man that I'm going to place in charge of them and I'm going to tell him what I want him to do and I hope to build my relationship with him. But it didn't work. As soon as this young man got this nation or this part of the church he began to say, boy you know we've got to be different than the church in the south so we're going to do everything different in our own way. And he built altars there. And he began to encourage people to worship not in the temple in Jerusalem where the headquarters was but on their own wherever they were however they wanted to, whatever pleased them. And in chapter 17 of 2 Kings now the judgment of God falls again on the church in the north. Before it had been on the whole nation. Now it's just on those in the north. The writer in 2 Kings says They forsook all the commands of the Lord their God and made for themselves two idols cast in the shape of calves and an asherah pole. They bowed down to all the starry host and they worshipped Baal. They sacrificed their sons and their daughters in the fire. They provoked him to anger. They practiced divination and sorcery and sold themselves to do evil in the eyes of the Lord provoking him to anger. So the Lord was very angry with Israel and removed them from his presence. Only the tribe of Judah was left and even Judah did not keep the commands of the Lord their God. They followed the practices that Israel had introduced. Therefore the Lord rejected all the people of Israel He afflicted them gave them to the hands of their plunderers until He thrust them from His presence. Now this sounds like a terrible thing. How could a God who loves us so destroy so many of His own people? Well it sounds like God doesn't love them. But love really has two dimensions. First the one we're most common with is if somebody loves you they do good things for you. But love also has a dimension that if you love people you don't do some things to them. What happened in this instance is maybe most comparable to what would happen to one of us if you went to the doctor and he said you have a cancer in your arm and if I don't treat this cancer you're going to die. And I can take it and cut it off and get all of the cancer and you'll be free to be able to live but without one arm. Would you say that the person who decides to do this surgery or to have this surgery hates his arm? No, he doesn't hate his arm he just loves to have life. What God was faced with with the people of Israel was they turned so against Him that they became a cancer in His church. The scripture says that the people of Judah the South church started looking at the North church and says why do we have to do all these things that the Bible tells us to do when the guys up there can do whatever they want to do. And so they were influenced to begin to practice what was happening in the North for themselves. God looked at what was taking place in His people and already He lost those in the North and now these two tribes in the South He was in danger of losing them and it was either get rid of those in the North or lose everything He was trying to do for His love for Judah. He said I must destroy Israel. God didn't want to do it. I think that's partly why the scripture says He was angry. Not just angry because they did this but He was angry because they had done something that was going to destroy what God had planned for them. His plan was that they would have this relationship where He was their ruler He was their Lord and they would follow Him. It was not going to work. Their hearts were too far from Him. It was beyond repair. And so He said I'll take my hand away from them. You notice He doesn't say that I'm going to cause them to have these problems. The world is filled with all kinds of problems out there. You don't have to work at that. Just give it an opportunity. It will come to you. What He said He was going to do is when you're invaded and you call and ask for my help I'm not going to help you. I'm going to just take my hand away from you. Not because I don't like you but because I cannot allow you to destroy your sister Judah. And so He eliminated Israel off the face of the earth. Ten of the tribes they're called the lost tribes they just disappeared from the face of the earth. God loved Judah and He loved Israel but He could not stand by and say Israel destroy Judah. The love of God works in powerful ways it's always at work. Either withholding what's necessary to help us see what we should do or giving us exactly what we need at the time that we need it. Sometimes we think of love in different ways. I remember a story a young fellow one time that came to talk to me and he was complaining about his parents. He said you know I'd like to be able to talk to my parents. I'd like to be able to sit down and talk to them and I'd like to have a good relationship with them but they just won't allow that. I said why is that? He said well they're always complaining to me. They're always telling me what I'm doing wrong and they're always judging me. I said well what do you want to have happen with your parents? He said well I want them to be like my friends. When I go over to my friend's house and I want to smoke some weed my friends don't say anything bad to me about it. They just say that's okay if you want to do it. And when I take a little dope or get drunk they don't criticize me or tell me they don't like me anymore or I'm doing something wrong. They just accept me the way I am. I said to him you know why that's true? It's because your friends don't love you. They don't really care what happens to you five years from now or ten years from now. But your parents are desperately concerned for you. And so when they see you doing something and making decisions and choices that they understand from their experience are going to lead you into great trouble they do everything they can to alert you to your problem and to keep you from doing it. The difference between your friends that you like and your parents that you don't like is that your parents love you and your friends are indifferent to you. They don't care. God always loves us. He is never indifferent to what we do. And you can be sure that when God looks at the life of His people I'm talking about the church now the people that belong to God when God sees us straying away from Him He does not act indifferently about this. He's interested in the whole body of Christ. And if He allows one or two or five or ten of us to begin to stray off and behave in ways contradictory to what He wants for us He knows that this spiritual infection of rebellion will grow. You know how that works? If you have several children and one of them say I'm not going to do it it spreads like wildfire. Rebellion is infectious and contagious. So God always acts in love to protect the whole of His people by addressing the issue of each one of us and how we live how we think and our actions. And so when you read the story of Israel and Judah you tend to think God doesn't love Israel. It wasn't true. He just could not save them because they did not want to follow Him. So the story of Israel now is a closed book. That part of God's people or the church is over and gone. Never to appear again. The focus is on the people of the south. Judah. This church. They didn't always have good kings and great kings. As a matter of fact they had oftentimes kings that were about as bad as those on the north but they had some. In fact all of the kings that were really good ones came from the south. And the picture of one of those kings shows why God saw in them hope and possibility of some change. Just as the northern kingdom had been surrounded by enemies and people that wanted to destroy them so it was true of the southern kingdom except they were smaller. They had less resources and less soldiers. Finally a time came when the Assyrian king came and surrounded the city of Jerusalem and said we've captured all the cities and all the countries around you and you're the only one left and we've come to take you. And Hezekiah the king was a godly man and Isaiah who was his prophet at that time a spiritual mentor to him said God wants to rescue us. Hezekiah went to the prophet and the prophet told him God is going to take care of you. Trust him. You're his person. You belong to him. And the king sent a letter to Hezekiah. He said to him you know all the nations around you have trusted their gods. It's not going to work for you just like it didn't work for them. He was insulting God. He said to Hezekiah you may think that your prophet is going to tell you the truth but he lies to you for the God that we serve is greater than all these. Let me point out a fact to you he said. If I were to give you a thousand horses you don't have enough soldiers to even put on the horses. How do you think you can protect yourself? This is what Hezekiah did. Hezekiah received the letter from the messengers and read it. He went up to the temple of the Lord and spread it out before the Lord and Hezekiah prayed to the Lord. Oh Lord God of Israel enthroned between the cherubim you alone are God over all the kingdoms of the earth. You have made heaven and earth. Give ear oh Lord and hear. Open your eyes oh Lord and see. Listen to the words of Sennacherib has sent to insult the living God. It is true oh Lord that the Assyrian kings have laid waste to these nations and their lands. They have thrown their gods into the fire and destroyed them for they were not gods but only wood and stone fashioned by men's hands. Now oh Lord our God deliver us from his hands so that all kingdoms on the earth may know that you alone oh Lord are God. He didn't hide his head in the sand. He said to God I have real trouble and it's trouble above and beyond anything that I can deal with but I put my case in your hands because I believe you're the Lord of all the universe and there is nothing beyond your power or your ability to do. Now Hezekiah had no idea how God was going to handle this. He didn't even make a request of what God should do. How many times have you prayed when you have a problem and you know what the answer is and you tell God exactly in detail how you want him to answer your prayer. Hezekiah didn't do that. He said God here is my problem. You are greater than all the gods of the world. Your power and authority is unlimited. We place ourselves in your hands. This was the kind of man God had been looking for. Someone who trusted him. Someone who believed in his power. Someone who believed that in obedience to him life would come. Someone who had no reservations about the danger that faced him but absolute confidence in the power of what God could do. Later on in the same chapter scripture says that night the angel of the Lord went out and put to death 185,000 men in the Assyrian camp. And when the people got up the next morning there were all the dead bodies. So Sennacherib king of Assyria broke camp and withdrew. He returned to Nineveh and stayed there. What God wanted to show to the people of the northern kingdom was his great power. What he was able to show to the people of the southern was his great power. He loved both of them. But one of them trusted him and one of them didn't. And so God in his own way came and did what only God can do. The miraculous redemption of his people. Now in the passage in chapter 16 that you read in the story this week there is a story about this man Isaiah who was the guy who was the mentor for Hezekiah. And why that is important in this story is that this tells us what kind of person it is that God responds to in his work, in his life. What is it that God wants from us that we might have this relationship with him of trust? This relationship that allows us to be able to face the most difficult trials in life. I want to read from Isaiah chapter 6 of an experience that Isaiah had that sort of set the tone for his entire life. This is what we might call in our own language a conversion experience. It might be what we would call a call to ministry or a call to preach or a call to be a missionary. It was an encounter that a man had with God that changed the entire course of his life. Now what the Bible does when it shows us this story it is saying here is the kind of man that God can work with. The kind of person that God can love and respond to in a positive way. Here is what happened to Isaiah chapter 6 of the book of Isaiah beginning with verse 1. In the year of Uzziah in the year that Uzziah the king died I saw the Lord seated on a throne high and exalted and the train of His robe filled the temple. He was in the temple. It was a building not like a church where they had singing and sermons but it was just a place in which people could go and pray to think about God reflect on their life offer a sacrifice to Him as a way of showing their commitment and devotion to Him. For some reason he was in that temple. He gives us the dates it is a historical event. He was there in the year that Uzziah the king died a great traumatic thing like the assassination of President Kennedy was sort of similar in our time to what was taking place when Uzziah died. And there he was in the temple and he was thinking about God and all of a sudden he saw God. Now I don't know if he saw Him with his eyes or in his mind but what it means is he came face to face with who God was. You can go in a place sometimes and out of the corner of your eye you see people around and you see them but when you turn around there is someone you know and then you see them. You recognize them. Here in this time he was in the temple and he looked and he could see what God was like. Not like an ordinary king sitting on a chair. In those days the king would always sit on a stage in a big chair and everybody that came in he would look down on you to show his position of power and authority. But here he saw God and God was way higher than anyone else he had ever seen. Above all the world he saw God. His robe was so big that it filled the whole temple. Just the hem of his robe filled the whole temple. And there he was and around him were seraphs. The seraphs were the seraph is just a word that means the one on fire. He saw flying around God sort of fireflies except they were big like people. Now you can see this is a very powerful vision that he has. Above him were seraphs. Each had six wings. Two to cover their faces with two to cover their feet and with two they were flying. Now they weren't covering their face because they were ashamed or covering their feet because they were ashamed. Of their sin but they were in the presence of holiness. Now you might at your house for example get up and put on shorts and a grungy shirt and then you hear a knock on the door and if you went to the door and there was a television crew who were out taking pictures you would immediately run in and try to put on something a little more presentable because you would want to in the presence of a lot of people that you wanted to think well of you look nice. The seraphs didn't even want to be seen by God. They didn't even want their feet uncovered in God's presence. They were so astonished by the holiness of God and they were saying Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord Almighty. Now the word Lord in the Bible when it's capitalized like this stands for God's personal name like you could call me a man or you could call me by my name Doyle. They didn't want to even say God's name. They were in such reverence for Him so they only called Him Lord or Ruler in the scriptures but in the name when they were talking they said Holy, Holy, Holy is Yahweh Almighty. They were declaring to the world great power that He had. The whole earth is filled with His glory. Everywhere you look in this world you see how great God is by the things that He's made. They were overwhelmed with the power of God the majesty of God and who He was. At the sound of their voices the door post and the threshold shook and the temple was filled with smoke. Isaiah is saying Woe is me I cried. I am ruined for I am a man of unclean lips and I live among a people of unclean lips. Mine eyes have seen the King the Lord Almighty. Then one of the seraphs flew to me with a live coal in his hand which he had taken with tongs from the altar. With it he touched my mouth and said See this has touched your lips. Your guilt is taken away. Your sin is atoned for. Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying Whom shall I send and who will go for us? And I said Here am I. Send me. What God describes here is the kind of person He walks with in the garden that He talks to day by day. A person that recognizes His greatness His majesty and His authority. Who recognizes the holiness and the purity of God. Someone who recognizes the greatness of God's power and stands in awe of Him. Someone who recognizes that God's holiness is so much greater than their own sinfulness. Isaiah looked at himself and he said My lips say things that are evil. I live among people who constantly say those things. Do you identify with that? We live in a world of filthy mouths. I am too unclean to stand in God's presence. And I live in a world that is unclean. My life is hopeless. To be able to stand in the presence of almighty God. Then without being asked the seraph goes over and takes a coal off the altar where the fire is. Brings it and touches his lips. Now I think it is symbolic in what he is saying that he saw. He saw God say My holy fire will cleanse your lips. Whenever Isaiah realized he was forgiven for his own sin he then heard God talking. God like he was talking to some of his friends in heaven said we have a job to do. Who will we send? Now this man Isaiah came to God and said You send me. I will do whatever you want. What happens when a person comes face to face with God and receives his forgiveness is overwhelming gratitude. To be willing to say whatever you ask of me I will do. Look back at Adam. He said I know what you want but I am not going to do it. Look at the northern kingdom. I know what you want but we are not going to do it. Look at Hezekiah. I Lord am willing to do whatever you ask. I trust you. That is the person God wants you to be. The person who recognizes the greatness of God's forgiveness recognizes your own sinfulness. We celebrate this Christmas season because Isaiah told us that even though he had had that great experience we would have something even more. Chapter 53 he said he was talking about what was going to happen in the future the time would come. Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows. You recognize that? He is talking about Jesus. You are going to have he said in the future someone who will do for you even more than was done for me in the temple. Yet we considered him stricken by God smitten by him and afflicted. He was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brought us peace was upon him. By his wounds we are healed. We all like sheep have gone astray. Each of us has turned to his own way and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. The birth of Jesus was the greatest gift of love ever given to us. Because what he did was he gave Jesus to come and in our place die for our iniquities for our sins. He gave Jesus to come and show us the kind of person God wanted us to be. He gave us Jesus so that we would know what it's like to live in this world in obedience to God. He gave us Jesus so that we could see in human flesh lived out before us what it was God wanted from us. Not only was he an example but he was the sacrifice for our failures. This Christmas season is the story of God's greatest gift of love. God has loved people throughout the scripture because he wants to build in us a community of people who have the kind of relationship with him that Isaiah felt that day. And he presents to us the means whereby it comes. The very model of Jesus and the presence of his spirit. Would you bow your heads for just a moment? I need your imagination for just a minute. Your eyes closed. Imagine that you look in the face of Jesus. You can use any kind of picture you've seen of him. Would you feel prepared to look in his eyes? You feel like your life is what God wants it to be? Your words are what God wants them to be? Your behavior is what God wants that to be? Most people I know when they think of that say I'm really unclean. God has given us a medium whereby we receive his presence. Which is what Isaiah did. Confess his unclean state and God then will forgive us. We don't have to beg and plead. It's like the angel of the seraphim goes and gets the coal when the need is expressed. So all you have to do is to say God, I am unclean. My mouth, my life, my behavior is unclean. And if your heart is surrendered to him he will forgive you. When you confess your sins he is faithful and just to forgive your sins and cleanse you of all unrighteousness. The Bible says. Now the second part. God says I have a lot of things in this world I need done. Can you say to God whatever you have me to do I will do. God's love for us knows no end and he expects our love for him to be the same. I'm going to ask the pianist to play for just a moment and I want you to reflect on the presence of God in your life and what he wants from you. And whatever you know right now that he wants is the test. Are you willing to say I will do what you ask. I will do what you ask. Lord Jesus you know what people have said to you in their minds. I ask you to answer each prayer. For those who confess sin I ask for forgiveness and cleansing. For those who have resisted you from doing what you want them to do I ask a willing spirit. I ask for all who are prepared to render themselves to your hands the joy of living and a relationship of friendship with you. In the name of Christ we can claim that promise. Amen. I would like to ask one additional request. Megan asked us to pray for her brother and fiance who are expecting a baby. Megan asked us to pray that she will be a good aunt. We will be praying that you will be a good aunt, Megan. Would you stand please for a moment of prayer. We now go to do the things that you have told us you want us to do. But we don't go in our abilities or our own power. We are completely dependent like Hezekiah on you. We ask you to remove the barriers that keep us from obedience. We ask you to empower us that we will have the willpower and strength to obey. And we ask that whatever happens we will not quit because of what we think or feel. But only when you say enough. We go to be your people in the world in which you placed us. And live in the name and authority of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. Joy to the world the Lord is come let earth receive her King let every heart prepare Him room and heaven and nature sing and heaven and nature sing and heaven and heaven and nature sing Amen.