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All right, go ahead and open up your Bibles to 2 Kings chapter number 16. 2 Kings chapter number 16. So again, if you have your chart and you've been looking it over, hopefully it's been making a little bit more sense as we have been studying through this book here, the book of 2 Kings. So remember what we're dealing with here. We're dealing with the nation of Israel and it's no longer the entire nation of Israel. We're in the time period now of the divided kingdom. Okay? The night sermon is going to basically expose a very major event that happened to the northern kingdom of Israel, which is they get completely removed from being a nation. And so if you have your chart here and you look on the right side under the northern kings of Israel, we are going to be finishing off with the last king on that list, which is Hoshea. But before we do, let's review a couple of things that we talked about last week because it's very important. Okay? Look down, if you would, 2 Kings chapter 16, look down at verse number 1. So the Bible says this, it says, in the 17th year of Pekah, the son of Remaliah, Ahaz, the son of Jotham, king of Judah, began to reign. So again, if you've got your chart here, in the beginning of this chapter, we are on the southern kingdom of Judah's side. Okay? Look down here, past Jotham, you'll see the name Ahaz. Okay? Ahaz is a very wicked king, did a lot of wicked things, and basically did not do the southern kingdom of Judah any favors whatsoever. Look down at verse number 2, it says, 20 years old was Ahaz when he began to reign and reigned 16 years in Jerusalem, and did not that which was right in the sight of the Lord his God like David his father. Okay? Now look at verse number 3. But he walked in the ways of the kings of Israel, yea, and made his son to pass through the fire according to the abominations of the heathen, whom the Lord cast out from before the children of Israel. So I mean, think about that, this king here, king of the southern kingdom, he decides that he's going to follow the same path that all of the kings primarily had followed on Israel's side. Now if you remember what their great sin was, it leads all the way back to the first king on this list here, Jeroboam I. He was the first king of the, what we call the northern kingdom of Israel, and what did he do? Well, he established his own religion basically. Remember, he feared losing control of the people, so he set up a idol, or a golden calf, he set one up in Dan, and then one up in Bethel. And then he told the people in Israel, these are your gods, these are the gods that brought you out of Egypt, and basically you can worship God through them, there's no need for you to go down to Jerusalem to worship God, okay? And obviously what that led to, and we've gone over this, that led to Baal worship, led to God getting very angry. God had sent them prophet after prophet after prophet. Basically it got to the point to where the kings in the southern kingdom started to yoke up and become friends, and even marry and intermingle with the kings in the northern kingdom of Israel, which produced a lot of issues, okay? And so we're talking about Ahaz, and he has decided that he's going to go the way of the kings of the northern kingdom of Israel, but look at verse 3, it says, but he walked in the way of the kings of Israel, yea, and made his son to pass through the fire according to the abominations of the heathen, whom the Lord cast out from before the children of Israel. So there's nothing new under the sun, the Bible says, okay? The reason why these people are even in this land to begin with was because God was tired of the heathens way back in the day of doing this very same thing, okay? And so as complacency sets in, as time progresses, these people figure, you know what? Is this God thing really working out? Is this worshiping, you know, at the temple thing really working out? Maybe we ought to try something new, okay? But really what they don't understand is they're trying something old that had gotten the heathen kicked out of the land that they currently reside in, verse 4, and he sacrificed and burned incense in the high places and on the hills and under every green tree, okay? So because he's like this, he's losing a lot of the protection that God would have given him, and so God stirs up trouble for King Ahaz. And then it says in verse 5, then Rezin king of Syria and Pekah son of Remaliah king of Israel came up to Jerusalem to war and they besieged Ahaz but could not overcome him. So here you have a situation, okay, and if you look at your king's chart, we're dealing with Ahaz right now, who was a king in the southern kingdom of Judah. Go over to the right side of your chart, the second to last king to reign in the northern kingdom of Israel, his name is Pekah. Now if you remember all the way from Zechariah, so you back up a little bit, okay, you're looking at your chart, you've got Zechariah, you've got Shalom, you've got Monaham, Pecaniah, and then you've got Pecah and Hoshea. All these people basically murdered each other, okay? That's how bad the northern kingdom is doing. All these kings, they get into power and then the next king that's going to take over, what does he do? Kills that king and they just keep operating in that same way. But here you have the situation where the king of Syria and the king of Israel are going to attack the Jews. They're going to attack the southern kingdom of Judah. Verse seven, so Ahaz sent messengers to Tilgath-Pileser, king of Assyria, saying, I am thy servant and thy son. Come up and save me out of the hand of the king of Syria and out of the hand of the king of Israel, which rise up against me. We talked last week about how this was obviously a mistake on Ahaz's part. Should not have done this. Obviously, should have consulted the Lord first, but the Lord does have compassion on Judah primarily because they're not as bad as the northern kingdom of Israel. If you look through the list of the kings, a lot of them were good. Some of them were bad, obviously, like Ahaz, and you're going to see that his son, who's going to take over very shortly here, is much better, and that's king Hezekiah. Now back up to verse number six, because what we're going to be looking at tonight is basically the beginning of what a Jew is and what the beginning of a Samaritan is. As you're reading through the New Testament, especially through the gospels, you see those words come up a lot, Jews, Samaritans. Well, understanding what we're talking about tonight is really going to help your studies out when you're reading through the New Testament. So again, I know we looked at this last week, but let's look at it again. Verse six, it says, at that time, the resident king of Syria recovered Elath to Syria and drove the Jews from Elath, and the Syrians came to Elath and dwelt there unto this day. So obviously, yes, the king of Syria does help the king of Judah out, definitely not the way that God would have wanted it, but the important thing is in this passage here, in verse six, that's the first time that we ever see the word Jews. So what is a Jew? Well, a Jew is somebody who resides in the southern kingdom of Judah. Well, who do we know that we're in the southern kingdom of Judah? Well, you had the tribe of Judah, you had the tribe of Benjamin, and then you had the tribe of Levi. Now, Levites were obviously priests, okay, and that's going to be very important for us to remember as we go on. So anyways, Ahaz makes this quote, unquote, I don't want to say a friendship, but he makes this partnership, we could call it, with the king of Assyria, okay? And so he decides he's going to go up to Damascus to meet this guy, because remember, now he's kind of serving him because the king of Assyria helped him, and so skip down to verse number 11. Actually, look at verse 10. It says in verse 10, it says, and King Ahaz went to Damascus to meet Tiglath-Pilzer, king of Assyria, and saw an altar that was at Damascus. And King Ahaz sent to Uriah the priest the fashion of the altar and the pattern of it according to all the workmanship thereof, and then verse 11 says, and Uriah the priest built an altar according to all that King Ahaz had sent from Damascus. So Uriah the priest made it against King Ahaz came from Damascus. So this guy is definitely not following God, and we kind of got into this a little bit last week and explained why this is wrong, okay? The church, God's people, in other words, are not supposed to look at the world and be like, oh wow, that's such a great idea, let's bring that into the house of God, okay? Let's bring this paganism, let's bring this heathenism into the house of God, and that's exactly what King Ahaz has done and is doing at this point in time. So obviously time goes on, you know, we're not going to take the time to go through the rest of the chapter, we're just going to summarize it because we have to move on to chapter 17. But basically Ahaz, in order to keep his end of the bargain up, he goes and basically pillages the house of God, he starts taking the brass and a lot of the different metals and things out of the temple, which is obviously wrong and, you know, he's just a bad king. And so look down at verse number 18, it says, and the covert for the Sabbath that they had built in the house and the king's entry without turned he from the house of the Lord for the king of Assyria, right? So he's got to pay his debt, he's got to pay what he owes. And so what is he doing? He's robbing the house of God to do it. Verse 19, now the rest of the acts of Ahaz which he did, are they not written in the book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Judah? Verse 20, and Ahaz slept with his fathers and was buried with his fathers in the city of David and Hezekiah, his son, reigned in his stead. Okay, so on your chart now, mentally on the left side, under the southern kingdom of Judah, Ahaz is done. So now Hezekiah is currently ruling in Judah, okay? So that is who the king is in the southern kingdom of Judah. Now we're going to go on to chapter number 17 here, okay? And chapter 17 doesn't tell you this, but chapter 18 does. After Hoshea, the last king of the northern kingdom, after he'd been reigning for three years is when Hezekiah takes over. In Hoshea's reign, and you could maybe write this down on your chart if you have a pen, he reigns for nine years, okay? So when Hezekiah takes over the southern kingdom of Judah, Hoshea has nine years left in his kingship before that nation is going to be completely carried off and taken away. So again, this is why I printed out these charts, because the way that this book reads is just back and forth, back and forth, it's Judah, Israel, Judah, Israel. And you know, a lot of people today don't really understand this, and you can see why. It takes diligent study. It takes a lot of reading and understanding and really going over these things to cement them down into your minds, because if you're like me and you've gone to a lot of these other churches, you know, you just get used to calling everybody a Jew, or if you're from Israel you're a Jew, you know, or this king, all these kings are Jews. That's not the case, okay? They're Hebrews, but they're not all Jews. That is very, very important for you and I to understand. Verse number one of chapter 17, so let's move on here. So it says, in the 12th year of Ahaz, king of Judah began Hoshea, the son of Elah, to reign in Samaria over Israel nine years, okay? But understand that Hezekiah took over Judah after three years that Hoshea had been reigning in Israel. So again, the divided kingdom, the capital of the southern kingdom of Judah is Jerusalem. The capital of the northern kingdom is Samaria, where you're going to get the name Samaritans later on. So verse number two, and he did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord, but look at this here, but not as the kings of Israel that were before him. Now this is a very interesting point here because we've been studying these kings for a while now and it's just like all the kings of Israel, it's just like bad, except for Jew, right? It's just like bad, bad, evil, evil, evil, you know, and you get to Ahab and it's just like extremely evil, super wicked, okay? And then this guy here, the Bible tells you he's not as bad as the rest of them, okay? But this is the king that gets all the judgment of God just poured and dumped on him, okay? Interesting thought, isn't it? It's not always the worst king in power, it's not always, you know, just because somebody is super wicked and in charge of a nation doesn't necessarily mean that's when God's going to strike, that's when God's going to finally deliver judgment, you know, and that's exactly the case you see here. Because I'm sure at this time when Hoshea came on the scene, a lot of people were like, man, you know, he's not as bad, I think we're probably going to be doing pretty well. And then all of a sudden it's just destruction like they've never seen, like they never thought was even possible and they're going to get completely just annihilated. So verse three, against him came up Shalmaneser, king of Assyria, and Hoshea became his servant and gave him presents, okay, now why do you think that is? Well, because the nation of Israel is weak at this point, they've been serving other gods, been going back and forth, they have rejected prophets, so on and so forth. And so they have no choice but to be subservient to the northern, or I'm sorry, but to the king of Assyria. Verse four, and the king of Assyria found conspiracy in Hoshea, for he had sent messengers to sow king of Egypt. How would you like that to be your name? Like, are you the king of Egypt? Sow? Sow? Yeah, that's my name. 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. And right there, that's it. That's the last you're going to really hear of Hoshea in action, okay? He doesn't get out of this. He's done, he's gone, it's game over. But really, if you think about it, what is Hoshea doing? Well, he's violating the word of God. I mean, how many prophecies are there in the Bible where God is saying, don't run to Egypt for help? You know, don't run to, I mean, Isaiah chapter three talks about that. And I want to say maybe again in chapter 14, I have to double check, but definitely chapter, I think it's chapter, yeah, chapter three or chapter, chapter 31, that's chapter 31 for sure talks about that. In fact, that's a direct prophecy about this very thing. You know, where the prophets say, hey, don't ever run to Egypt for help. It's not going to work. Will you be able to help him here? Absolutely not. All I did was basically provide him with the end of his reign. Look at verse five. Then the king of Assyria came up throughout all the land and went up to Samaria and besieged it three years. Okay, so it took him three years to actually gain full and complete control of the northern kingdom of Israel. But why was he successful? Well, he was successful because God allowed this to happen. God had been warning them through prophet after prophet after prophet, okay? I mean, we spent 12 weeks on Wednesdays going through the minor prophets, didn't we? And how many were dedicated to the northern kingdom? Well, you had three. You had Jonah, you had Amos, and you had Hosea. I mean, Hosea is just chapter after chapter of just, hey, you guys need to stop what you're doing. You need to turn back to the Lord. I mean, when we studied the book of Hosea, I mean, God gives Hosea a prayer to give to the nation. He's like, here, you don't even have to think of the words to say, just say this prayer and I will stop right now and I will heal your backslidings, right? But they don't even wanna do that. Okay, God makes it too easy for them and they just cut them off. They're not interested whatsoever. And so here you have it. I mean, it's very important, verse five. The king of Assyria came up throughout all the land and went up to Samaria and besieged it three years. Verse six, in the ninth year of Hosea, 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 city of the Medes, which would be known today as the Kurds. Who's ever heard of the Kurds? And one of the things that was very popular during the Iraq war, a lot of Christian people would bring up on different broadcasts or, you know, I've heard this a million times, is that the Kurds have, a lot of the Kurds have a great found love for Israel. And they think that the reason for that is because they're the descendants of these people. And that could be true. I can't prove it. I figured I'd just throw that out there for you. But basically what you have here is the king of Assyria is taking the people out of the Northern Kingdom. He's taking them out, okay? And what you're gonna see, he's gonna bring other people in. Sound familiar? Sound like our nation today? The same thing is happening in our nation. I'm not trying to scare you, I'm just trying to let you know that there's nothing new under the sun. Verse number seven, for so it was that the children of Israel had sinned against the Lord their God, which had brought them up out of the land of Egypt from under the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt and had feared other gods. You see, what Jeroboam I should have done is just said, hey, things just didn't work out. God has divided the land. But you know what? We're just gonna go to Jerusalem and worship anyways. You know? They should have kept the stories. They should have kept in remembrance of what they were rescued from. Remember, they were rescued from what? 400 plus years of extreme bondage. Completely forgot about it. And now they're wiped out. They are completely gone. They are completely done. Verse eight, and walked in the statutes of the heathen whom the Lord cast out from before the children of Israel and made the kings of Israel, I'm sorry, and of the kings of Israel, which they had made. Verse nine, and the children of Israel did secretly those things that were not right against the Lord their God. And they built them high places in all their cities from the tower of the watchmen to the fenced city. Now I think that's very interesting there. The children of Israel did secretly those things that were not right against the Lord their God. Anytime that false religion is propagated and pushed, I don't care what the religion's called, especially when it's being pushed by your government leaders, you need to understand there are secret things going on behind the scenes that are happening. And that's exactly what God is telling you here. You know, not all this stuff was just out in the open. You know, I'm sure the word on the street by and large was, well, yeah, we still believe in God. We still believe in God. You know, we haven't gone anywhere. We're just doing things a little bit differently here. That's all. Okay, but their leaders, what are they doing? Well, they're doing some secret stuff. They're doing some crazy things. Human trafficking, abortions, I mean, all of that stuff. They were doing all of that. I mean, think, how do you think that King Ahaz learned the concept to even pass the sun through the fire, to sacrifice the sun to a false god? I mean, think about that. Look at verse 10. It says, and they set them up images and groves in every hill and under every green tree. And there they burnt incense in all the high places, as did the heathen whom the Lord carried away before them and wrought wicked things to provoke the Lord to anger. That word wrought there, that means worked. Okay, so these people are literally working wicked things. Like they have, I mean, they are all about this. And you're gonna see this later on here in this chapter that they sell themselves out, okay? What does this mean for us today, though? That is the question, you know, because, I mean, you cannot read the Old Testament without seeing that phrase high places and how God feels about it. God did not want them going up to these high places and building these high places like the heathen and burning incense up there because that's exactly what the world did. But you have so many people today that claim to be Christians and say, well, you know, we can just basically do what we want. We can bring the world into church. We can bring all this, you know, high energy, just motivational speaking type stuff. You know, whatever is in season in the world today, we are allowed to bring into church. And that's how you reach people. Now that's how you get God upset. Hey, that's how you get God angry. These high places, you know what that represents? That represents the old Burger King philosophy. You can have it your way. That's all that means. And God is not pleased by that. He has the Bible for a reason. We need to study these things and we need to follow them. Verse 11, I'm sorry, verse 12. It says, for they served idols, where of the Lord had said unto them, you shall not do this thing. God says, don't do it. Jeroboam says, I got a great idea. Okay, I heard a story back in the Old Testament where when Moses was receiving the law, you know, the people wanted golden calves. So they, you know, they took the metal and all the gold from the people and they made this golden calf. You know, but the problem is, you know, Aaron didn't quite do it right. Okay, that's why God was mad because Aaron just didn't do it right. We need to redo it in a way that God would be pleased. And of course, God is not pleased with that. He's extremely upset. Verse 13, yet the Lord testified against Israel and against Judah. So here's another thing that you're gonna see in this chapter is that Judah's not getting off the hook. I mean, they just survived the reign of Ahaz and Ahaz did a lot of spiritual damage to the kingdom of God. So God says here in verse 13, yet the Lord testified against Israel and against Judah by all the prophets and by all the seers. That's just an old word for prophet saying, turn ye from your evil ways and keep my commandments and my statutes according to the law which I command your fathers or commanded your fathers in which I sent to you by my servant, the prophets. So he's not saying you need to follow every jot and tittle to be and stay saved. He's basically saying, hey, I chose you to be a people for me so that you could be a beacon of light to the world. Okay, I didn't choose you to be a group of people unto me so that you could mimic the world because then God's message doesn't get out. See, that's the difference. Verse 14, notwithstanding, they would not hear but hardened their necks like to the neck of their fathers that did not believe in the Lord their God. Okay, and you see that when you study the children of Israel coming out of Egypt. Okay, and they're murmuring and some of them are complaining and some of them are just unbelieving and God deals with them. God is telling you right now that that's the attitude of a lot of people in the northern kingdom of Israel. They just don't want to hear. Verse 15, and they rejected his statutes and his covenant that he made with their fathers and his testimonies, which he testified against them. And they followed vanity and became vain and went after the heathen that were round about them concerning whom the Lord had charged them that they should not do like them. You know, I've mentioned this before and I'm sure many of you've heard this. There are programs in place right now and a lot of them will send us advertisements. And it's basically, who's ever heard of the Purpose Driven Life, you know, by Rick Warren. Rick Warren came up with this program where he would basically send out, I guess it was like these surveys into the community. And he'd say, what are you looking for in a church? Okay, and whatever information he would receive back, like we want rock and roll, we want rap, we want this, we want the dark scene, you know, we just kind of want it dark because men love darkness rather than light. You know, things like that. He would do that. He would give the people whatever they wanted. The problem with that is what does God say about that? What does God want? Okay, and that's why Christianity is in deep trouble today. That's why this nation is in deep trouble and why they got removed out of the land because they wanted to do things in their way instead of God's way. I mean, think about it. God sent them these amazing prophets. Elijah, Elisha, Jonah, okay, I mean, Hosea, Amos. These guys were, and many others too that aren't even named, okay. Now, did people get saved because of them? Absolutely, okay. There were definitely people that were saved, people that got born again, people that wanted to follow God. There's definitely a remnant here, I understand that. But by and large, society just rejected God and they did not want him. And so God is letting us know how he feels about this. He's saying, look, okay, I didn't choose you to just follow the world, but they did. And we live in similar times today because that's what most of professing Christianity is doing, they are following the ways of the world. Verse 16, and they left all the commandments of the Lord their God and made them molten images, even two calves and made a grove and worshiped all the hosts of heaven and served Baal. You ever wonder how God feels about people that worship the stars and the sun and all the angels that are up there? Well, here it is, okay. There's only one who is worthy of our worship and that is the Lord God, the Lord Jesus Christ. Look at verse 17, and they caused their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire and used divination and enchantments and sold themselves to do evil in the sight of the Lord to provoke him to anger. Who's ever heard of a musician say, I sold my soul to the devil. Okay, there's plenty of them. In fact, there's all kinds of, nowadays it's easy to get that information. I think somebody recently sent me a scroll. It was just like a, I don't know, like a two minute scroll of just different artists over the years. Just, you know, I sold my soul, sold my soul. There's a guy named Bob Dylan talking about it and he's just like, yeah, you know, I made a bargain with the chief commander, you know, back in the day and I'm holding up my end of the bargain still today, you know. It's just these people, it's a real thing that goes on and it's nothing new and it's been going on for a long time, okay. I mean, you have all the ingredients that we have in our society today. You have things being done in secret. You have a fake religion. You have falsehood being pressed. And if you were with us during the Amos study, I mean, Amos was like, I'll go up there by myself, right. Amos was from Tekoa and he's like, look, I'm following God, whatever he says. And God said, hey, go up to the northern kingdom of Israel and preach against him. He goes up there to the king's court and starts preaching the word of God, right. And what do the priests of the land say to him? They're like, hey, Amos, take that stuff out of here. Go preach that stuff to the southern kingdom of Judah, okay. You know, because your words, basically the land cannot even bear your words. That is how they felt about it. And literally, what do people tell our church? We can't even bear your words. Like this land out here, like the groundscape, like this building can't even bear your words. It's so offensive. All we're doing is reading the Bible. It's just the way it is today. Verse 18, therefore, okay, what does that mean? For that reason. Because they rejected God's statutes, they rejected his commandments. It says in verse 18, therefore, which means, for that reason, therefore, the Lord was, and look at this, very angry with Israel, and removed them out of his sight. There was none left but the tribe of Judah only. Okay, now obviously in the southern kingdom, yes, you had the tribe of Benjamin and you had the tribe of Levi because Levites were the priests, but this is it, okay? The title of the sermon is The Fall of Israel. Israel is gone, they are done. 10 tribes completely removed. And who did that? God did that. God took them out because they are not following him. So if you have a nation today that calls itself Israel and they hate the Lord Jesus Christ, they spit on the ground when you mention his name, they have politicians trying to make it illegal to convert anyone to Christianity, how do you think that God feels about that today? Read the chapter again and you'll get your answer. It's not pleasing to him. Verse 19, so now God's gonna switch gears just a little bit and get on Judah now. So now he's back to the southern kingdom here, verse 19. Also Judah kept not the commandments of the Lord their God, but walked in the statutes of Israel, which they made. Okay, and that goes back to the days of Jehoshaphat. King Jehoshaphat and how he just loved Ahab and loved Ahab's sons and just kept trying to pile up with him and God sent him prophet after prophet. Stop doing this. Okay, it had ramifications though, didn't it? Look at verse 20. And the Lord rejected all the seed of Israel and afflicted them and delivered them into the hand of the spoilers until he had cast them out of his sight. Verse 21, for he rent Israel. That word rent there means tore. He rent, he tore Israel from the house of David and they made Jeroboam the son of Nebat king and Jeroboam drove Israel from following the Lord and made them sin a great sin. So basically what we're getting now is just a very quick recap of the Northern kingdom of Israel, their history from Jeroboam to Hoshea. You're just kind of getting a recap of how God feels about it and why God removed them out of his sight. Verse 22, it says, for the children of Israel walked in all the sins of Jeroboam, which he did, they departed not from them until the Lord removed Israel out of his sight as he had said by all his servants, the prophets. So was Israel carried away out of their own land to Assyria unto this day. Now look at verse 24. And the king of Assyria brought men from Babylon and from Cutha and from Avah and from Hamath and from Sepharvaim and placed them in the cities of Samaria instead of the children of Israel. And they possessed Samaria and dwelt in the cities thereof. Okay, so verse 24, maybe underline this, just, you know, make sure you know where this is at. This is the beginning of what we now call the Samaritans. Okay, so the king of Assyria, he takes the 10 tribes, primarily takes them all out, right? He besieges Samaria three years. And in that process, he's taking them out of the land. Now, according to secular history, and this is probably true, there's a lot of evidence for this. One of the things that the king of Assyria would do when he would take people out of the land is they would take fish hooks and like put them in people's mouths and just like march them in that kind of a manner. I mean, this guy was a sick, twisted individual. And God even explains a lot of that when talking about the fact that he was gonna deliver them into the hand of the oppressor, i.e. the king of Assyria. So here you have it, verse 24, you have the beginning of what we now call or called the Samaritans, verse 25. And so it was at the beginning of their dwelling there that they feared not the Lord. Therefore, the Lord sent lions among them, which slew some of them. Now, I wonder how this was for people in the southern kingdom of Judah under Hezekiah's reign, because you know they had family and they all kind of knew each other from time. And all of a sudden, the entire nation, their own brethren gone, and they have these strangers now in the land. They have this mixture of all these other nations. And basically what happened, we don't have time to get into a full genealogy, but there were still people of the northern kingdom of Israel left that probably didn't get carried away captive. And so you had this mixing going on, okay? And people will say, well, Samaritans are half Jew and half heathen. Really, they're a blend of all these different nations and the Hebrews that probably just never got carried away. But he definitely took most of them out of the land. That is clear from reading this, okay? And so what happens? Well, these foreigners come into the land, okay? And they don't know how to worship the Lord, and so God's gonna test them. Verse 25, and so it was at the beginning of their dwelling there that they feared not the Lord, therefore the Lord sent lions among them, which slew some of them. So this really happened. God sent lions to devour some of the people to try to get their attention, okay? God's letting them know, hey, this land here is actually sacred. It belongs to people that love me. I'm dealing with them, so don't think you're gonna come in here and just get a free pass right off the bat. Now, symbolically, what you could possibly see here is really just a metaphorical picture of the Lord Jesus Christ, because the Bible says that Jesus is the lion of the tribe of Judah, okay? And how does he slay people today? Well, with his words, okay? When a person hears the word of God preached to them and they believe and they put their faith and trust on him, they're saved forever, you know, you die to self. God gives you that new man, and so I kind of see that here in verse 25. I see that symbology there. Look at verse 26. Wherefore, so this problem is so bad, okay? Look at what they do. Wherefore, they spake to the king of Assyria, saying, the nations which thou hast removed and placed in the cities of Samaria, know not the manner of the god of the land. Therefore, he hath sent lions among them, and behold, they slay them, because they know not the manner of the god of the land. So they're like, you know, the god of this nation here is just the god of the land. He's not the god of the whole world, okay? So it's interesting that they can pick up the fact that God's mad. So they know this issue of lions coming in had to be from God, but they don't know who God is. They just say, well, he's gotta be the god of the land. So why don't you send us somebody so that we can add him to the list. Look at verse 27. Then the king of Assyria commanded, saying, carry thither one of the priests whom ye brought from thence, and let them go and dwell there, and let him teach them the manner of the god of the land. Verse 28, then one of the priests whom they had carried away from Samaria came and dwelt in Bethel, and taught them how they should fear the Lord. Now, my question is here, who was this priest? That would be interesting to find out, because you remember Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, what did he do? Well, what he did was he ordained the lowest people of the land priests. So if anybody wanted to come be a priest, they were allowed to. So hopefully they found somebody that actually understood the truth about God, maybe one of the Levites that didn't get a chance to go down, and hopefully they sent somebody like that to actually teach these guys the truth. But look at the result. Verse 28, then one of the priests whom they had carried away from Samaria came and dwelt in Bethel and taught them how they should fear the Lord. Verse 29, howbeit every nation made gods of their own and put them in the houses of the high places which the Samaritans had made, every nation in their cities wherein they dwelt. And the men of Babylon made Sakoth-benoth, and the men of Cuth made Nergal, and the men of Hamath made Ashima. Verse 31, and the Avites made Nibhaz and Tartek, and the Savarvites burnt their children in fire to Adrammelech and Anamelech, the gods of Safarvium. And so there you have it. The priest comes down and says, you know, this is how you ought to fear the Lord. They're like, okay, great, hey, thanks a lot. That's gonna solve our lion problem. So they just basically add him to the list and they've set up their own false gods and worship their own idols and things of that nature. Now, one of the things that I also see in this chapter here is this is a smart tactic, and this is what you're seeing going on in the world today. Okay, if you're familiar with Bible prophecy, you know that the end goal is for the Antichrist to come and take power of the world. People that are born in the land have a sense to want to defend that land, don't they? You know, I mean, it doesn't take much to go around here especially. This is very, very prevalent in our area to find people that say they're extremely patriotic and they just can't wait till things go down so they get out and fight, you know, and things of that nature. But the king of Assyria is pretty smart here in a wicked way. When he takes those people out and he puts them in another land, right, they're gonna lose that ability and that desire to want to fight for that land where they're at. You see what I'm saying? Of all those people that they replace the Israelites with, they're not interested in fighting or anything. They're just trying to get their own lives straight so they can not be devoured by lions and just go on their merry way. Extremely weak because you never read, you know, past this point that Samaria has a king and they rise up and become a good nation or anything to be reckoned with, right? They're just the annoying Samaritans according to the Jews and that's just kind of how it is and that's the result. So what you see going on today in this world is what? You see a push to get people to denounce their nationality, where they're from. You know, now it's a bad thing to be an American and they got these white up borders and they're just letting anyone they want to come through here, child molesters, drug dealers, just the worst of the worst. They're allowing them to come into this country, okay? And what are they doing? Encouraging people, oh, you know, you should leave. There's an attack on nationalities throughout the entire world. Soon I believe it'll probably spread to the Chinese and to the, you know, the Japanese and to everyone, okay? To the Russians, you know, that's why there's a big push. Oh, you know, the Russians and white supremacy and all that junk, you know? It's to degrade and to mix the world into this point to where no one feels like they wanna fight for their own nation. That's what's going on. But they're doing this swap today on a mental level, okay? Whereas here it's physical. The King of Assyria is like, I'm gonna take all these people out of Israel and I'm gonna replace them with these people and it's gonna be perfect. They're gonna settle down and they're not gonna have ties to the land really and they're just gonna kinda wanna just live. And that same principle is being applied to the citizens of the world today so that when this guy who is called the Antichrist finally rises up and comes on the scene, the world is prepared for him, okay? Because see, what he wants and what he will demand is worship to him, okay? And so you have all these different nations. You got America, which is definitely not, I would say we're a post-Christian nation, but still somewhat of a Christian nation. You've got all these Islamic countries that are just gung ho Islam. You've got your other religions in these other countries. You're gonna start to see that change over time, okay? And there's gonna be a necessity for that change because the Antichrist, as you know, as the devil preparing the world to receive him as their God and their savior, but that's kind of a wild rant that I just went on. Look at verse, look at verse 31, or I'm sorry, verse 32. It says, so they feared the Lord and made unto themselves of the lowest of them priests of the high places, which sacrificed for them in the houses of the high places. So this priest that the king of Assyria sends down, okay, he teaches them how to fear the Lord, but what do they do? They do the same thing that Jeroboam, the son of Nebat did. Jeroboam made of the lowest people of the land priests, didn't he? So guess what? The king of Assyria sends a priest from Israel, back to Israel, and what do they do? Oh, well, we'll fear the Lord, but we're gonna make the lowest of the people of the land priests. So he goes apparently and teaches them about God, but he teaches them incorrectly. Verse 33 again, they feared the Lord and served their own gods after the manner of the nations whom they carried away from thence. Verse 34, unto this day they do after the former manners. They fear not the Lord, neither do they after their statutes or after their ordinances or after the law and commandment, which the Lord commanded the children of Jacob, whom he named Israel. Now we're almost done here, but just really quickly, if you would go to, I'm gonna have you make a stop over in Ezra, so go forward in the Old Testament, a few books and go to the book of Ezra and go to Ezra chapter number two. Ezra chapter number two. Ezra chapter number two. So book of Ezra takes place and we've gone over this a little bit in the past, but if you weren't here, let me just explain it to you. Okay, so many years after the Northern Kingdom of Israel, after they go away into captivity, okay, if you look at your King's chart after Zedekiah, so you're on the left side under the Southern Kings of Judah after Zedekiah, what happens? Well, Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian King and the Babylonians, they come in in three different ways and they take away the Southern Kingdom of Judah and they remove a lot of them into Babylon. They carry them away captive. Now they're carrying away captive is a little bit different. They don't replace them with other people from other lands because God's not gonna let them do that. So 70 years they are in captivity, okay, and pretty much only the poorest of the land are back in Jerusalem at this timeframe. Well, the Babylonian empire, they fall, they get taken over by the Medo-Persian empire and then this King by the name of Cyrus gives the decree finally and says, hey, I know it's been written about me that I'm supposed to let you guys go back. He gives the order and allows the Jews to go back into the land to start to rebuild the temple and to basically build the land up again, okay, and look at how serious they take that during this timeframe. Look at verse number five. It says, then rose up, so Ezra chapter, I'm sorry, look at Ezra chapter one, Ezra chapter one, verse five. It says, then rose up the chief of the fathers of Judah and Benjamin and the priests and the Levites. Okay, so you have these three groups here. You've got Judah, you have Benjamin and then you have the priests, which are the Levites, with all them whose spirit God had raised to go up to build the house of the Lord, which is in Jerusalem. Verse six, and all they that were about them strengthened their hands with vessels of silver and with gold and goods and with beasts and with precious things beside all that was willingly offered. Okay, then it's gonna go on to tell you about some of the aid that Cyrus is going to issue. Then if you just kind of glance over at chapter number two, you're gonna see it look very spacious, a lot of names. Okay, we're not gonna go through those names, but what I want you to do is to go to verse 59. Ezra chapter two, look at verse 59. Look at what this says here. Verse 59, Ezra chapter two, it says, and these were they which went on. So all these names that are preceding this, it says, all these were they which went up from Tel-Melah, Tel-Harsha, Cherub, Adon, Imur, but they could not show their father's house and their seed whether they were of Israel. And the reason why I'm bringing us up here is because what do you have going on today? Well, all 12 tribes are back in the land of Israel. It was a miracle. It's like, can they prove that? Is that why they left brown, came back white? Look at verse 60. The children of Delilah, the children of Tobiah, the children of Nicodah, 652, look at verse 61. And the children of the priests, the children of Habiah, the children of Cose, the children of Barzillai, which took a wife of the daughters of Barzillai, the Gileadite, and was called after their name, verse 62, these sought their register among those that were reckoned by genealogy, but they were not found, therefore, remember what that means for this reason, therefore, were they as polluted, put from the priesthood. Okay, so interesting thing, when Judah becomes a nation again, when they are released from captivity, when they were given the green light to go back, they take their genealogy seriously, okay? And when they couldn't prove that someone was a priest, that they were not the son of Aaron, they were not of the sons of Levi, guess what? They were as polluted. They're like, well, you can't prove your lineage, guess what? You are polluted, you're just not gonna be a priest. And then if you keep reading, they decide they're gonna wait on the Lord for them to send somebody who's clearly a true Levite, a son of Levi, who could be a priest and a son of Aaron, who could be the high priest and things of that nature. And so I bring that up because you don't have any of that going on today in today's modern day Israel, do you? No, really what you have over there is just this jumbled religion, which is called Judaism, which is basically a rejection of Jesus Christ. Go to John chapter four, we're getting very close to being done, John chapter four. So I just wanna kinda show you what happens in Samaria over time and how Jesus deals with some of the questions that they have, because I think it's fascinating, we're looking at the beginning of the Samaritan race, if you will, and then we're gonna kinda look at the end of it here, okay, in John chapter four. Now this is the famous story of a woman at the well. So let's pick it up here in verse number seven, John chapter four, verse seven. It says this, there cometh a woman of Samaria to give, I'm sorry, to draw water, Jesus saith unto her, give me to drink. Just like, hey, give me something to drink, verse eight. For his disciples were gone away unto the city to buy meat. Verse nine, then saith the woman of Samaria, unto him, how is it that thou, being a Jew, askest drink of me, which him a woman of Samaria, for the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans? Okay, so that does a good idea, I'm sorry, that does a good job of summarizing this beef that the Jews and the Samaritans have. Okay, the Jews lost their neighbors, and even though they were always at odds with each other, I mean, the king of Assyria completely removed them, put new people in, and they just became known as the Samaritans, and did not get along, and I mean, all the way up to the time of Christ, they don't get along. Look at verse 10. Jesus answered and said unto her, if thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, give me to drink, thou wouldest have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water. Okay, now this opens up a doctrine that we just don't have time to get into, but basically, you know, if you explain to somebody the free gift of salvation, okay, they have a need to ask for that. You have to receive that. It's not automatically given to every citizen of the world. Okay, verse 11. The woman saith unto him, sir, thou hast nothing to draw with, and the well is deep. From whence then hast thou that living water? Art thou greater than our father Jacob, verse 12, which gave us the well, and drank there of himself, and his children, and his cattle? So very interesting, because in 2 Kings chapter 17, we see that that priest comes down with the authorization of the king of Assyria, and teaches them to fear God. Okay, well, at some point, he must have brought up their history, because here we're reading a story of a woman of Samaria, a Samaritan, and she mentions Jacob. So she knows their history. She understands that history and where that came from, but look at the response here. Verse 13, Jesus answered and said unto her, whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again, but whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst, but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life. In a nutshell, once you're saved, you are always saved. You're not saved again and again and again and again. It is a one-shot deal. You put your faith and trust in Christ one time. He's got you forever. Verse 15, the woman saith unto him, sir, give me this water that I thirst not, neither come hither to draw. Verse 16, Jesus saith unto her, go call thy husband and come hither. Now, this is interesting here, okay, because Jesus, being a Jew, by himself is talking to a Samaritan woman, which by cultural standards back then would cause most people to have an aneurysm, to flip out, okay, and so what does Jesus do? Oh, go call thy husband. He's about to show her who he really is. Verse 17, the woman answered and said, I have no husband, and Jesus said unto her, thou hast well said, I have no husband, for thou hast had five husbands, and he whom thou hast is not thy husband in that saidst thou truly. So he's like, you're telling the truth. You don't have a husband, but you've had five. You've got five husbands. Verse 19, the woman saith unto him, sir, I perceive that thou art a prophet. All right, what else you gonna say? You just read my whole life story to me. But here's an interesting thing. Verse 20, this ties back into what we're talking about. Our fathers worshiped in this mountain, and ye say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship. So you see that struggle there. Okay, in Samaria, they were upset that the Jews would say you'd have to come down here to worship, but in the Old Testament, which this is still Old Testament time because it's pre-cross, that's how it was. The Jews at this time, they had the Bible, or what was of the Bible at that time. They had the responsibility still to go out and preach the word of God. Now that has been given unto us, the Israel of God. So hopefully that makes sense. Verse 21, Jesus saith unto her, woman, believe me, the hour cometh when ye shall neither in this mountain nor yet at Jerusalem worship the Father. You see that? So when someone says, oh, the Jews are building the third temple, they're building the third temple, and they're the apple of God's eye, and it's a great and marvelous thing. I point to this. I point to this. Jesus told the Samaritan, woman, hey, there's coming a day where you, Samaritan, won't worship God in this mountain, and in Jerusalem, they're not gonna worship him there either in the temple is what he's referring to. Verse 22, look at this. Ye worship ye know not what. We know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews. Okay, and I'll explain that to you really quickly. That's not saying that you have to be a Jew to be saved. He's saying that the Jews were given the responsibility to basically the kingdom of God, the Bible, the message of truth, the true religion at this time fell on the physical Jew, okay? It was their job to go through the world and to preach truth, to preach the true God. And obviously they dropped the ball. I mean, Jesus is preaching to him over and over again, dies on the cross. God immediately tears the veil in the temple in half. What does that signify? That signifies that God is done with that Old Testament system, and then we get into a whole nother sermon. Verse 23, but the hour cometh, and now is, when the, look at this, the true worshipers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for the Father seeketh such to worship him. Verse 24, God is a spirit, and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. Truth is what matters to God. His word is truth. Jesus said, the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life, okay? That is why we are very dogmatic about which Bible version that we use here, because Jesus says, hey, I seek people. The Father seeks people to worship me in spirit and in truth, and how can you do that? Go back to 2 Kings, and we'll finish up here real quick. But how can you do that when you have a guy standing in front of his congregation casting doubt upon the word of God? By saying, well, you know, this wasn't translated correctly, and in another language it says something different. Are you limiting God? Because that's what it sure sounds like to me. So hopefully John chapter four kind of sheds some light on the damage that had taken place here in kind of the spiritual state that the Samaritans were in. They're really, again, not much far off from the Jew, okay? Let's see here, real quickly, look at verse 35, it says, with whom the Lord had made a covenant and charged them, saying, you shall not fear other gods, nor bow yourselves to them, nor serve them, nor sacrifice to them. So basically from here to the end of the chapter, God is quoting for us different passages from the book of Exodus and Deuteronomy. Verse 36, but the Lord who brought you up out of the land of Egypt with great power and a stretched out arm, him shall ye fear, and him shall ye worship, and to him shall ye do sacrifice. Verse 37 says, in the statutes and the ordinances, in the law and the commandments, which he wrote for you, you shall observe to do forevermore, and you shall not fear other gods. Okay, so again, what the Samaritans were doing was wrong. Verse 38, in the covenant that I have made with you, you shall not forget, neither shall ye fear other gods, but the Lord your God, you shall fear, and he shall deliver you out of the hand of all your enemies. What is the secret to success in the Christian life? Well, it's to go all in like we talked about this morning. It's to understand that you being a Christian and deciding in your heart, you're gonna serve the Lord, 1 Peter chapter four, okay? You're gonna go through some strange trials, some fiery trials, but hey, what does that mean? That means the Spirit of God is resting upon you. That is proof that you're doing right. Understand that, verse 40, howbeit they did not hearken, but they did after their former manner. So these nations feared the Lord and served their graven images, both their children and their children's children as they did unto this day. And what do we just do? We just read John chapter four, which I mean is very close to the end of the nation of Judea, which is by then just a province under the Roman Empire, okay? They never got it right, completely done. So what I see in the Bible, the fall of physical Israel, all 10 tribes that were just carried away, gone, it's gone forever. They are absolutely done for. You're gonna have to go to heaven to talk to any of them that were saved. So we are going to stop it right there. We'll pick it up in chapter 18 next week. Let's go ahead and bow our heads and have a word of prayer. Thank you so much, Lord, for your truth and for preserving these stories, Lord. We understand that these were written for our admonition and we just pray that you would help us to be able to explain these things to other people. Lord, there's a lot of people, as we all know, confused about history and things of that nature and the Bible. We pray that you use us to go out there and straighten people up. We thank you for all that you do for us, Lord. Please bring us back safely on Wednesday. In Jesus' name I pray, amen. ["In Jesus' Name I Pray"]