Godless Worship

All right, let's pray, and we are going to get started. Help us to grow in the knowledge of you, dear son, our

Lord Jesus Christ, and remain firm in the confession of his blessed word. Give us the love to be of one mind and to serve one another in Christ.

Then we will not be afraid of that which is disagreeable, nor the rage of the arsonist Satan, whose torch is almost extinguished.

Dear Father, guard us so that his craftiness may not take the place of our pure faith.

Grant that our cross and sufferings may lead to a blessed and sure hope of the coming of our

Savior, Jesus Christ, for whom we wait, we wait, amen. Amen. All right, we're gonna change it up a little bit today.

If you have questions about the sermon, I ask that you hang on to them for a little bit. We're gonna dive into a lesson, and it's gonna be kind of a one -off lesson that's gonna build on what we talked about a couple of weeks ago.

A couple of weeks ago, we were doing a study on what God's word says about itself.

Where do we go to hear the voice of God? Now, I want you to consider then what happens to the church, what happens to the true worship of God when his word is ignored, when his word is not listened to, when the voice of God fades into the past, what happens to worship of God?

Anyone wanna take a crack at it? Just a preliminary guess. Remember back in chemistry class, you had to come up with the scientific method hypothesis.

What happens when I take this chemical compound and this chemical compound and I put them together?

The school will cease to exist, and it will be just a small, small little stub smoldering in the dust.

Yeah, that's my hypothesis. What's your hypothesis? What happens when people ignore the voice of God, what happens to the worship of the one true

God? What happens to it? Self -glorifying? Okay, yeah.

What else? Any other hypotheses? Tough crowd today.

Tough crowd. Okay. They let their emotions rule. They let their emotions rule. All right.

That's not a bad way of putting it. If we let our emotions and our ideas rule, what happens then to the worship of the one true

God? It's not happening. Yeah, you're worshiping our emotions. So, the truth is gone.

The truth is gone. Or it's covered up. It's covered up with a whole bunch of other things. Now, I want you to consider for a second.

In our society right now, because of political correctness, the worst sin that you can commit culturally is to do what?

Speak the truth. Offend somebody. Hurt their feelings. All right. You don't want to hurt nobody's feelings.

That's a bad thing. So, you know, I remember the Seinfeld episode.

Boy, am I dating myself. Years and years and years, decades ago now. And the topic of homosexuality was being brought up.

And every time it would be brought up, Seinfeld would say, not that there's anything wrong with that. Not that there's anything wrong.

So, as not to offend, right? That's the culture that we live in.

So, the worst thing you can do, the sin that is the unforgivable sin, is to say something that would hurt somebody's feelings.

All right. Well, we're gonna take a look at a biblical text first that gives a positive command.

And note here, we're gonna be dealing with law. And you're gonna note then something about the law.

Let me ask you this. Is it unloving for parents to give consequences to their children when they disobey?

You were quick on the draw there, yeah. Okay, that tells me something here. You are actively.

I used to think it was. Yeah, you used to think it was, right? All right. We say no.

What happens to children who experience no consequences for their bad behavior? They turn into monsters, right?

Yeah, they turn into monsters. As adults, they are quite the handful. They are entitled.

And these are the people who oftentimes will be the most offended if you hurt their feelings.

I recently read an article on a writer's blog. And I'm not a writer.

That's not why I was there. I was referred there by a friend who is a writer. And on this blog, it regaled us with a story of a young 25 -year -old woman who had not too long ago graduated from college and got a job as a journalist working for a publication.

And she submitted for publishing an article that she had written.

And the article itself contained a whole lot of grammatical errors and misspellings.

And so the editor sat down with her and firmly said, well, let's go through your article and said you've misspelled this word and this is not a grammatically correct sentence.

And this girl lost it. Absolutely came unglued and turned on the editor.

And when she was done, she called her mother up from the writer's pool and had her on speakerphone and was saying,

I cannot believe what an idiot my editor is. She was saying that this word is spelled wrong.

Well, that's the way I've always spelled it and I'm not wrong. And who is she to tell me how to, like there's no objective standard other than her own feelings.

And there's a lot of that going on in our culture nowadays, all right? But I'm gonna point something out here that what we are going to read in our current cultural setting sounds insane, unloving, unkind.

And I'm gonna use an important word here, intolerant. Intolerant, ooh, yeah, ooh, yeah, that's right.

Stone him, stone him, he used the I word, right? But I'm gonna ask the question here now, what is more loving?

Because we're gonna see a text in Deuteronomy 17 where God's voice is clearly commanding things.

And we're gonna fast forward into Israel's history where all of those commands are utterly ignored and the consequences then run their course.

And the impact it has on the worship of the one true God will be seen. And we're just gonna ask the question, which is more loving?

Tolerance for evil or intolerance for evil? And don't worry,

I assure you that this lesson will probably melt the internet once it's posted. So, you know, if we start getting death threats, you know that it's because I was stupid enough to think that you could talk about these things in public.

All right, so Deuteronomy chapter 17, verse two will be where we start. And this is

Moses speaking, and the book of Deuteronomy is like Moses' last monologue. This thing clearly lasted quite a bit.

He's gonna die after he gives this monologue. And he's reminding the children of Israel about their covenant with God and the rules regarding that covenant.

So it says in Deuteronomy 17, two, if there is found among you within any of your towns that Yahweh your

God has given you, a man or a woman who does what is evil in the sight of Yahweh your

God. Now, note what the standard is. It's evil in whose sight?

God's sight. Is it evil in your sight? It may not be. If it isn't, well, then maybe you're wrong.

But you can note that anyone who does evil in God's sight, he's the standard. Not you, not me, not my feelings, not your feelings.

It's God's opinion. So anyone who does evil in my sight, God's the standard.

Here's what's gonna happen. And this is civil law here because there's gonna be consequences that pertain in the civil realm. Whether it's a man or a woman, and that person transgresses his covenant and has gone and served other gods, worshiped them, or the sun, or the moon, or any of the host of heaven, which

I have forbidden. So you're gonna note, idolatry, worshiping of other gods, the worship of the sun, the moon, the starry host of heaven, all of these are forbidden.

Then with the consequences for transgressing God's command and doing evil in his sight, you'll hear this, and it is told that you hear of it, then you shall inquire diligently.

And if it is true and certain that such an abomination has been done in Israel, then you shall bring out to your gates that man or that woman who has done this evil thing, and you shall stone that man or woman to death with stones.

On the evidence of two witnesses or three witnesses, the one who is to die shall be put to death.

A person shall not be put to death on the evidence of one witness. The hand of the witnesses shall be first against him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people, so you shall purge the evil from your midst.

Did I just hear oofta? Yeah, it sounds harsh, doesn't it?

Is God just unloving? You gotta note, he doesn't exemplify any of the things that our postmodern culture values regarding tolerance.

He is absolutely intolerant. And we're gonna note this as we see this text unfold, that when it comes to idolatry, not only is it a capital crime, idolatry is a capital crime, to help enforce this,

God is going to create the office of judge, and God is going to back up the office of judge with the death penalty for those who act presumptuously against the verdicts of those who are rightly installed in the office of judge.

Now remember, civil governments are established by God, we learn this from Romans 13, for the purpose of punishing the evildoer, punishing.

And so note then that in the Israeli civil government under King Jesus, King Yahweh, idolatry is a capital crime, and there has to be diligent investigations when somebody has committed this crime.

And if it is certain that they have done it, then they are to be put to death.

And you're gonna note that the witnesses who witnessed it, they're the ones who are to cast the first stones.

Yes. So then from hell sin cast the first stone, and giving the wicked a chance to repent, and be saved, how do we read

Old Testament and compare it to New Testament? So we're gonna note then, first of all, these are stipulations of the

Mosaic Covenant, okay? So when we look at the Mosaic Covenant, the Mosaic Covenant is fulfilled in Christ, it is not a living covenant anymore.

And when we look at the laws of the covenant, there are moral laws, there are civil laws, this is civil, and there are ceremonial laws.

The ceremonial laws all will point to Christ. The civil laws tell us something about jurisprudence and what it looks like to order your society around just laws and proper offices and institutions for the purpose of carrying out those laws and the penalties of it.

So the text though that you bring up, the story of the woman caught in the act of adultery, when you look at your notes in your

Bible, you're gonna note that it says that this does not appear in the earliest manuscripts of the Gospels. It doesn't, we're not sure where it came from.

And we do have, some of our earlier manuscripts have it in different Gospels. It's a story that got moved around.

And so as a story itself, we will note that the story of the woman caught in the act of adultery and the long ending of Mark, that they do not have proper attestation that would make us confident that they were part of the original autographs written by the apostles.

And so these mini stories, they are antedilogomena, they are written against. So we're careful with them, but we don't draw theology from either of them.

We gotta do so very carefully, okay? Now all of that being said, let me give you a counterpart to this that is a real counterpart.

If you wanna take a look, keep your finger here in Deuteronomy 17 and flip on over to Titus chapter one.

Titus chapter one. And I want you to consider the responsibilities, the duties of the pastoral office.

So we'll start with the qualifications and then we'll talk about the duties. And you're going to note that in theme, this is quite parallel because we're dealing with the sin of idolatry in Deuteronomy 17.

And when somebody is teaching false doctrine and giving and ascribing to God and Christ words and doctrines that he has not given, that is a form of idolatry.

So here's what it says, Titus chapter one verse five. This is why I left you in Crete, so that you might put what remained in order and appoint elders in every town as I directed you.

If anyone is above reproach, husband of one wife, his children are believers, not open to the charge of debauchery or insubordination.

For an overseer, you can say pastor here, as God's steward must be above reproach. He must not be arrogant or quick -tempered or drunkard or violent or greedy for gain, but hospitable, a lover of good, self -controlled, upright, holy and disciplined.

Now listen to verse nine. He must hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught so that he may be able to give instruction in sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it.

So you'll note then a pastor has a standard. The standard is sound doctrine and part of the office, the duties of the office of pastor is to teach what's in accord with sound doctrine and to rebuke those who contradict sound doctrine.

And then the text goes on to say this. For there are many, not some, many who are insubordinate and they are empty talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision party.

And listen to what it says in verse 11. They must be silenced.

Have you considered that in Christ's church, in the new covenant, that Christ wills for those who teach false doctrine to be silenced?

Silenced. If they are to be silenced, is God tolerant or intolerant of false doctrine?

Intolerant, right? So they must be silenced since they are upsetting whole families by teaching for shameful gain what they ought not to teach.

Now one of the Cretans, a prophet of their own, said Cretans are always liars, evil beasts and lazy gluttons so this testimony is true.

Therefore rebuke them sharply so that they may be sound in the faith, not devoting themselves to Jewish myths and the commands of people who turn away from the truth.

So you note that we are warned in the new covenant about many who are insubordinate, empty talkers, who have turned away from the truth and they are filling people's ears in church, not with the voice of God, not the word of God rightly taught, but with myths, doctrines designed to deceive, and doctrines designed to line their pockets with money.

And God says he wants them to be rebuked sharply and for them to be silenced.

Notice, that's new covenant. That's new covenant. So is it loving or unloving to rebuke false teachers and to silence those who are teaching contrary things, things that are contrary to sound doctrine?

It's loving, right? And who is it that wills for this to be done?

God, God does. So you can kind of see there's a parallel here. Let's come back to 17,

Deuteronomy 17 then, we'll continue. So we ended off in verse seven, which ended with these words, you shall purge the evil from your midst.

Now, if any case arises requiring decision between one kind of homicide or another, one kind of legal right and another, one kind of assault and another, any case within your towns that is too difficult for you, then you shall arise and go to the place that Yahweh your

God will choose. And you shall come to the Levitical priests and to the judge who is in the office in those days.

So note, God has established the office of judge in ancient Israel. And the office of judge is going to try harder cases.

And you'll note that this type of understanding of jurisprudence still exists to this day.

Not every killing is a murder. Sometimes a human being kills another human being with no malice at all.

It could be involuntary manslaughter, it could be an accident, or it can be full blown murder.

In order for it to be a murder, you have to demonstrate that malice was involved. But back in the day,

I mean, before guys wore hard hats on a construction site, somebody could be up on a roof and the guy go, oh,

I left my hammer on the roof, could you toss that down to me? Sure, no problem. They toss it down, the guy misses it, hits him in the head, and now he assumes room temperature, right?

That guy who tossed the hammer killed him. But did he murder him?

No. And so you'll note then that God has established judges for the purpose of making these types of distinctions and giving a verdict on that, and that this is an office set established by God.

So you shall consult them, and they shall declare to you the decision. Then you shall do according to what they declare to you from that place that Yahweh will choose.

And you shall be careful to do according to all that they direct you, according to the instructions they give you and according to the decision which they pronounce to you, you shall do.

You shall not turn aside from the verdict that they declare to you, neither either to the right hand or to the left, the man who acts presumptuously by not obeying the priest who stands to minister there before Yahweh your

God or the judge, that man shall die. So you'll note then that God backs up these judging offices with the death penalty for those who act contrary to it.

In other words, God is saying they are my agents, they're acting in my will and their verdict stands and you are to obey it and you are not to act presumptuously as if you know better because you're not in that office, the evidence wasn't presented to you, it was presented to them.

So often when you say something that someone doesn't like, they throw out the judge not lest ye be judged line.

Yeah. Totally misusing it. Yeah, there's a fun quote from Paul Washer, he says, don't misquote

God's word lest you be, you incur his wrath, you know, something like that.

So that effect, that's a total twisting of that text because Christ tells us to make a right judgment.

So you note then that in the civil realm of ancient

Israel, there were judges and God backed up those judges in their decisions with the death penalty.

You will obey this verdict under penalty of death if you act contrary to it or presumptuously.

So you can see that God has established this. So we'll continue. So you shall, and watch what the text then says again, you shall purge the evil from Israel and all the people shall hear and fear and they shall not act presumptuously.

So the office of judge then is for the purpose of purging the evil from Israel in the civil realm to punish evildoers and thus purge the evil from Israel.

So when you come to the land that Yahweh your God is giving you.

Now we're gonna note this next part. This is interesting thing because when you read the book of 1

Samuel, Samuel is the first prophet and the last judge of Israel.

He's kind of got like one foot in each office. And his sons were wicked.

They didn't follow his ways. And so the people of Israel come to Samuel and say, you're old and your sons don't walk in your ways.

We want a king. And this really upset Samuel. He was really upset by this.

But note here that long before Samuel was even born, long before he was conceived,

God knew ahead of time that Israel was gonna ask for a king. And he put some boundaries in place and some rules regarding the office of king in Israel long before Israel asked for a king.

And that's what follows next. When you come to the land that Yahweh your

God has given you and you possess it and dwell in it, and then say, I will set a king over me like all the nations that are around me, you may indeed set a king over you whom

Yahweh your God will choose. So note, they have permission from God to have a king, but God gets to pick the king.

And there's certain things that king has to do. So it would be one from among your brothers, you shall set a king over you.

You may not put a foreigner over you who is not your brother. Only he must not acquire many horses for himself or cause the people to return to Egypt in order to acquire many horses.

Since Yahweh has said to you, you shall never return that way again. And he shall not acquire many wives for himself lest his heart be turned away, nor shall he acquire for himself excessive silver and gold.

Can you think of a king who didn't follow that rule? Solomon, yeah.

He collected women the way some guys collect millionaires, bazillionaires collect rare cars and stuff like that.

That's a bad thing. So Solomon disobeyed this command. And in the cross -reference we're gonna look to, we're gonna see how his disobedience of this command has an impact then on Israel later down the line in their history.

Now, here's the other rule. I want you to consider this then. So every king whom the Lord chooses to be king must do this.

And when he sits on the throne of his kingdom, he shall write for himself in a book a copy of this law of the

Torah approved by the Levitical priests. Now this little aside here, approved by the

Levitical priest, then has, this is the command by which the Levitical priests were ordered by God to maintain the integrity of the biblical copies, the copies of the text.

And so you'll note then, the king when he gets on his throne, first order of business is you're gonna get hand cramps because you're gonna copy word for word from an approved manuscript,

Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy.

If you were made to write and copy in your own handwriting those five books, tell me about the impact it would have on your understanding of those books.

Right off the bat, you'd have a pretty good understanding, but watch then what that person is to do, what the king is supposed to do with their copy.

So that copy shall be with him. He shall read it, read in it all the days of his life so that he may learn to fear

Yahweh his God by keeping all the words of this law and these statutes and doing them so that his heart may not be lifted up above his brothers, that he may not turn aside from the commandment either to the right hand or to the left so that he may continue long in his kingdom, he and his children in Israel.

Handwrite a copy of the Torah and you are to be reading in it every day.

I don't think it ever made it, okay? I don't think it made it as a practice.

But had this been obeyed, what would the impact be? So now we're gonna fast forward to the book of 2

Kings. And 2 Kings references all of the elements that we just saw here, but this is now far ahead in Israel's history and clearly something has gone terribly wrong.

Terribly wrong. 2 Kings chapter 22. Josiah was eight years old when he began to reign.

So he comes to the throne as a boy. He reigned for 31 years in Jerusalem.

His mother's name was Jedidah, the daughter of Adaiah of Bozkath, and he did what was right in the eyes of Yahweh and he walked in all the way of David his father and he did not turn aside to the right or to the left.

Now, that's talking about the end of his reign after his 31 years reign.

But you're gonna note this. He goes 18 years, 18 years in complete oblivion, utterly ignorant that there was even a

Bible. And this story is crazy because we're gonna see just how bad worship got, the whole institution of the temple and everything about it got as a result of God's word being neglected.

So in the 18th year of King Josiah, he's 36 years old.

36, or is it 26? 26, he's 26, yeah, I don't do math. So he's 26, my apologies, 26 years old.

In the 18th year, King Josiah, the king sent to Shiphon, the son of Azaliah, son of Meshulam, the secretary of the house of Yahweh, saying, go up to Hilkiah, the high priest, so that he may count the money that has been brought into the house of Yahweh.

So you'll note that the temple is still referred to as the house of Yahweh. There's still a high priest.

There's all kinds of religious activity going on at the temple. Wait till you find out what's really going on there.

So it brought to the house of Yahweh, which the keepers of the threshold have collected from the people, so let it be given into the hand of the workmen who have oversight of the house of Yahweh.

Let them give it to the workmen who are at the house of Yahweh repairing the house, that is, to the carpenters and to the builders and to the masons.

Let them use it for buying timber, quarried stone to repair the house. But no accounting shall be asked from them for the money that is delivered into their hand, for they deal honestly.

In other words, Solomon's temple is now in need of repairs.

And so collect up the money that you guys have been saving, head over to the home temple depot, and get yourself some new timber, some new stone work, some fresh paint, and we're going to clean up the temple.

We're gonna repristinate it, make it look good again. And here's what happens.

Hilkiah the high priest said to Shaphon the secretary, I have found the book of the law in the house of the

Lord. And you're gonna note the way he says this. I found a book.

Did you guys know there was a book? No, there's a book? Well, it's right here.

So you'll note in cleaning this up in some back closet of the temple, they find a copy of the

Bible. There's a book and they're stunned. I found a book, right?

So Hilkiah gave the book to Shaphon and he read it. Now, you still don't know exactly how bad things have gotten, but all

I can say is that what he reads and what he looks up and sees and then reads, oh boy, we're in trouble.

Because things are way off from the book, really far off.

So at this point, this becomes a matter for the king. So Shaphon the secretary came to the king and reported to the king, your servants have emptied out the money that was found in the house, have delivered it into the hand of the workmen who have the oversight of the house of Yahweh.

And then Shaphon the secretary told the king, and Hilkiah the priest has given me a book.

There's a book and listen to what it says next. And Shaphon read it before the king. Now I want you to consider, how long do you think it takes to read from Genesis 1 -1 to the last chapter of Deuteronomy?

This is gonna take a little bit of time, but this is so important that he reads the entire thing to the king.

So you can kind of fill in a little bit of the data here, that there's part that he starts reading it and the king goes, wait a second, hang on,

I gotta clear my schedule. I had some other appointments. And then the king says, I need a potty break. Bring it with you, let's go have something to eat.

Keep reading while I'm eating. And maybe this goes into the wee hours of the night. Who knows? But I mean, this is not done in five minutes.

This is done over the course of many hours. So that's what's happening. So he reads the whole thing out.

And keep in mind that King Josiah knows exactly what's going on in the temple because he's responsible for ordaining a certain group of priests who are serving in the temple of Yahweh.

We'll talk about that group later. And he's reading and he's seeing a huge disconnect between what's happening and what

God has said. Keep like Deuteronomy 17, which we just read in mind, you kind of get the idea.

So he read it before the king. So when the king heard the words of the book of the law, he tore his clothes.

And the king commanded Hilkiah the priest and Ahikam, the son of Shaphan, and Achbor, the son of Micaiah, and Shaphan, the secretary, and Asaiah, and the king's servant saying, go inquire of Yahweh for me and for the people and for all of Judah concerning the words of this book that has been found.

For great is the wrath of Yahweh that is kindled against us because our fathers have not obeyed the words of this book to do according to all that is written concerning us.

So now he knows he's in trouble and it's like, you need to find somebody who can talk to Yahweh for me.

We need a prophet. We need a prophet, a prophetess. Go quick, inquire, find out what's going on here.

Which is a smart move. So Hilkiah the priest and Ahikam and Achbor and Shaphan and Asaiah went to Huldah, the prophetess, the wife of Shalom, the son of Tikva, son of Harhas, keeper of the wardrobe.

Now she lived in Jerusalem in the second quarter and they talked with her. And she said to them, thus says

Yahweh, the God of Israel, tell the man who sent you to me, thus says Yahweh, behold,

I will bring disaster upon this place and upon its inhabitants. All the words of the book that the king of Judah has read because they have forsaken me and have made offerings to other gods that they might provoke me to anger with all the work of their hands.

Therefore, my wrath will be kindled against this place and it will not be quenched.

But to the king of Judah who sent you to inquire of Yahweh, thus you shall say to him, thus says

Yahweh, the God of Israel, regarding the words that you have heard, because your heart was penitent and you humbled yourself before Yahweh when you heard how

I spoke against this place and against its inhabitants that they should become a desolation and a curse and you have torn your clothes and wept before me,

I also have heard you, declares Yahweh. Therefore, behold, I will gather you to your fathers and you shall be gathered to your grave in peace.

And your eyes shall not see all the disaster that I will bring upon this place. And they brought back word to the king.

So note, God recognizes that this man after reading his word repented.

And God gives him an absolution and also a promise that he would die in peace.

Let's find out how bad things are though. Because remember, our initial question is, what happens to the worship of the one true

God when his word is ignored, when it no longer factors into worship?

So then the king, so he's gonna set about doing some reforming at this point. Josiah, I would argue, is a quite more aggressive reformer than Martin Luther ever was.

So Josiah, the king sent and all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem were gathered to him.

And the king went up to the house of Yahweh and with him all the men of Judah and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem and the priests and the prophets, all the people, both small and great.

And he read in their hearing all the words of the book of the covenant that had been found in the house of Yahweh.

And you're gonna note, for all of these people, that's the first time they'd ever heard those words. It's the first time.

So the king stood by the pillar, made a covenant before Yahweh to walk after Yahweh and to keep his commandments and his testimonies and his statutes with all of his heart, all of his soul, to perform the words of this covenant that were written in this book and all the people joined in the covenant.

And so the king commanded Hilkiah, the high priest and the priests of the second order and the keepers of the threshold, to bring out of the temple of Yahweh all the vessels made for Baal, for Asherah and for the starry host of heaven.

And he burned them outside Jerusalem in the fields of the Kidron and carried their ashes to Bethel. Inside Solomon's temple were vessels for the worship of Baal, Asherah, the sun, the moon and the stars.

Could you imagine, here at Kongsvinger, we have, we replace

Norwegian Jesus with a Buddha or maybe move him over and put a

Buddha next to him. Or maybe one of the images of one of the

Hindu deities, Shiva or Vishnu. And just to make things even better, we'll put a curtain so that when the

Muslims come to pray towards Mecca here and here, they don't have to see those idols.

Could you imagine? You do know that there are places called churches where they invite

Muslims to read from the Quran during the church service.

I am not making that up. Sounds so loving and tolerant, doesn't it?

But you'll know that in Israel's history, they had vessels for the worship of Baal, Asherah, the sun, the moon and the stars inside Solomon's temple, next to the menorah, next to the table of the showbread.

And if you think that's bad, it's gonna get just a little bit worse. Let's keep reading.

And, Josiah deposed the priests whom the kings of Judah had ordained to make offerings in the high places at the cities of Judah around Jerusalem, those who also burned incense to Baal, to the sun, the moon and the constellations and all the hosts of heaven.

And you're gonna note here that Josiah himself being a king, he would have ordained priests to offer incense sacrifices to all of those deities.

And I'm using air quotes for that. So he says, I'm repenting. And he defrocks every one of those idolatrous priests.

And he brought out the Asherah from the house of Yahweh outside Jerusalem to the

Brook Kidron and burned it at the Brook Kidron and beat it to dust and cast the dust of it upon the graves of the common people.

And Asherah is a pole. That's a fertility symbol.

Think male parts here. That was inside Solomon's temple.

And if that's not bad enough, oh, it gets worse. Verse seven, he broke down the houses of the male cult prostitutes who were in the house of Yahweh where the women wove hangings for the

Asherah. They created living quarters just outside the temple, filled it with male cult prostitutes.

And that means that there were people who were coming to Solomon's temple for the purpose of worshiping

Asherah through homosexual prostitution inside the temple of God.

And everyone said, ew, nothing new under the sun.

And you'll note, had they obeyed God, would it have come to this? What happened to the word of God?

It disappeared. They stopped hearing it. They stopped listening to it. And keep in mind, somewhere along the way, the temple church council got together and they said, all right, on the agenda today, we're gonna have a motion.

And the motion is, I say we take this part of our budget and create a brothel and fill it with male prostitutes in the temple.

And somewhere along the line, the church council for the temple said, yeah, that's a great idea.

This is what happens when you ignore the voice of God, when you refuse to hear his word, to repent of your own sins, to repent of your own idolatry.

Your ideas take over and your ideas are awful and sinful. Mike, he made him worse.

He made it worse. Yeah, in fact, this text is gonna mention that in a minute. So what kind of God?

Several hundred years from David to this point. That's all, just a few hundred years. Yes, a few hundred years, yeah.

Now, as bad as things are in the visible Christian church, we have yet, and I should emphasize the word yet, here of a church that has decided that they were going to reinstitute cult prostitution.

Give it time. Give it time. That's where we're heading.

Where are we at right now? You have entire denominations of the old mainline denominations,

Presbyterian, Lutheran, Anglican, where they have impenitent homosexuals as their pastors, impenitent lesbians as their pastrixes.

They have completely abandoned what God's word says. And when you say,

God's word says no to this, they just poo -poo the word of God. Oh, Paul, he just hated women.

Oh, Paul, he was just a man of his time. But we know better. We're loving, we're tolerant. The God we believe in embraces everybody, right?

And what is this? It's a complete rejecting of the written word of God and refusal to believe that God himself is speaking through his written word and that his word is binding on our consciences.

And you speak out against it? You're unloving, you're intolerant, you're close -minded, you're bigoted, you are a hater.

And the list just goes on and on and on and on. And yeah, and you're a false

Christian too. Now, as we read the rest of the story, is

Josiah going to be censored by God or commended by God? He's already commended so far.

Let's see how the rest of the story unfolds. So time to get rid of those male cult prostitutes out of the temple.

So he brought all the priests out of the cities of Judah and listen to what he did next. He defiled the high places where the priests made offerings.

So this today would be considered a religious hate crime. He defiled all of the high places where people worshiped and offered sacrifices to all these false gods.

He defiled them. And from Geba to Beersheba, he broke down the high places of the gates that were at the entrance of the gate of Joshua, the governor of the city, which were on one's left at the gate of the city.

However, the priests of the high places did not come up to the altar of Yahweh in Jerusalem, but they ate unleavened bread among their brothers.

He defiled Topheth, which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom, so that no one might burn his son or his daughter as an offering to Molech.

Now, keep in mind, for 18 years of his reign as king of Judah, people were sacrificing their sons and their daughters to the false god,

Molech. And once he hears the real word of God, cuts that right off.

So do you think the worshipers of Baal, Asherah, Molech, the sun, the moon, and the stars are thrilled with these reforms?

Definitely not, right? But he's the king. So when he removed the horses that the kings of Judah had dedicated to the sun at the entrance to the house of Yahweh by the chamber of Nathan -Melech, the chamberlain, which was in the precincts, he burned the chariots of the sun with fire.

The altars on the roof of the upper chamber of Ahaz, which the kings of Judah had made, and the altars that Manasseh had made in the two courts of the house of Yahweh, he pulled down in broken pieces and cast the dust of them into the brook

Kidron. And the king defiled the high places that were east of Jerusalem to the south of the

Mount of Corruption, which Solomon, the king of Israel, had built for Ashtoreth, the abomination of the

Sidonians, and for Shemosh, the abominations of Moab, and for Milcom, the abomination of the

Ammonites. Why did Solomon build these for his wives?

He disobeyed what God said in Deuteronomy 17. He married a lot of women.

Very busy man. And so he married a lot of pagan women. And those pagan women said, oh,

Solomon, honey, I don't believe in your

God. I worship Ashtoreth, can you please, please build me a temple for my

God so I can worship there? I need to go to church on Saturday too. Okay, honey,

I love you. Maybe it didn't go down quite like that.

It was probably a prenup. It was a prenup, yeah. Yeah, I'll marry you if you build a temple to my deity.

And so you'll note Solomon is faulted here. And Solomon's building projects to his pagan wives come down.

And he broke in pieces the pillars, cut down the Asherim, filled their places with the bones of men.

Moreover, the altar at Bethel, the high place erected by Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, who made

Israel to sin, that altar with the high place, he pulled down and burned, reducing it to dust. He also burned the

Asherah. And as Josiah turned, he saw the tombs there on the mount. And he sent and took the bones out of the tombs and burned them on the altar and defiled it according to the word of Yahweh that the man of God proclaimed, who had predicted these things.

And this was predicted in another section of 1 Kings. So then what is the monument that I see?

The men of the city told him, it's the tomb of the man of God who came from Judah and predicted these things that you have done against the altar at Bethel.

And he said, let him be. Let no man move his bones.

So they let his bones alone with the bones of the prophet who came out of Samaria. And Josiah removed all the shrines, also the high places that were in the cities of Samaria, which the kings of Israel had made, provoking

Yahweh to anger. He did to them according to all that he had done at Bethel. He sacrificed all the priests.

So they were all put to the sword. They were put to death, the priests of these false gods of the high places who were there on the altars and burned human bones on them.

And then he returned to Jerusalem. And then the king commanded all the people, keep the Passover to Yahweh your

God as it is written in the book of the covenant. For no such Passover had been kept since the days of the judges who judged

Israel or during the days of the kings of Israel or the kings of Judah. But in the 18th year of King Josiah, this

Passover was kept to Yahweh in Jerusalem. Moreover, Josiah put away the medians, the necromancers, the household gods and the idols and all the abominations that were seen in the land of Judah and in Jerusalem that he might establish the words of the law that were written in the book that Hilkiah the priest found in the house of Yahweh.

Before him, there was no king like him who turned to Yahweh with all of his heart and with all of his soul and with all of his might according to all the law of Moses, nor did any like him arise after him.

Yes. Well, as we continue to read then, still, verse 26, still the

Lord did not turn from burning of his great wrath by which his anger was kindled against Judah because of the provocations with which

Manasseh had provoked him. So you'll note then that this blip in the map of faith, this godly king who hears the word of God which somehow mysteriously disappeared,

I guess I have to beg the question, how do you worship God and know his will apart from the written word of God?

And by the way, you're gonna note, history has this weird thing where it seems to repeat itself because we human beings are prone to the same kinds of sins.

What happened during the medieval period? Where did the Bible go during the medieval era?

Where did it go? It got locked up in Latin.

Rome canonized, literally kind of like made it the official translation of the

Bible, the Latin Vulgate. And so if you were living in Norway at the time and you were a peasant in Norway or my ancestors living in Germany or in the

United Kingdom or what is the United Kingdom now or in Ireland and you went to church, would you hear the word of God preached and proclaimed to you in your own language?

No. How would you know at all what

God said? You wouldn't. So what happens in the vacuum when you're not hearing the voice of God?

What happens in that vacuum? Idolatry just grows like the weeds in my yard.

I put no effort into maintaining my yard and guess what? There's weeds everywhere and getting rid of them takes effort.

In the same way, if you do not hear the word of God, you will worship according to your own heart, according to your own feelings.

And it's during that time when people were not hearing the word of God that you have the rise of the cult of saints, the doctrine of purgatory, the enforced celibacy of priests, prayers to the saints and to the

Virgin Mary, indulgences and all of this stuff. Where did that stuff come from?

It's not in the Bible. And consider

Martin Luther then. Martin Luther, he's just doing his monkery thing, right?

He's a monk and he's a tormented monk at that because he's trying to save himself by his good works, his prayers.

If anybody could have been saved by being a good monk, it would have been Martin Luther, right?

And he's wearing out his confessors. And so Staupitz comes up with this great idea.

Brother Martin, I'm going to send you to Wittenberg and your job is going to be to teach theology and the

Bible in the university, the newly established university there at Wittenberg. And so he applies himself to his job.

He's now an instructor of the scriptures, right? And what does he do? He digs in and he reads for the first time,

Romans chapter three. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

None is righteous, no, not one. And they're saved by his grace alone.

He reads those words and it's like, whoa, I don't have to save myself by doing all of these things.

Christ has done it for me. He's merited my forgiveness. I don't have to merit forgiveness. Christ has merited it for me and gives it as a gift.

And what does he do? He starts preaching the word.

He starts translating the word. And for the first time in centuries, people in Europe are hearing the word of God in their own language.

And it changes history. But now we've got an interesting problem. Now you have the

Bible for free. 500 English translations for free all over the internet.

You know what people are doing with the Bible? Nothing. They're not reading it.

It's an okay one. It's not bad. There are some things I would quibble with Jerome in his translation.

There's some kind of wonky things he did. Yeah, for instance, in the prophecy regarding Christ in Genesis, Genesis chapter three.

And you know, the seed will crush the head of the serpent. He mistranslated the

Hebrew there. And as a result of it, he mispronouned it. And so the way the

Latin Vulgate reads, it turns out to be the seed of a woman. The woman herself would crush the head of the serpent rather than her seed.

And as a result of that, many people in Roman Catholicism use that text saying that it's a prophecy about Mary rather than Christ.

So you know, but Roman Catholic scholars today recognize that Jerome mistranslated that.

But still the tradition and the false doctrine regarding Mary from it still persists. So there are things that have to be cleaned up.

It was, and I would note this, as somebody who works in the original languages,

I would never put my translations out for publication for this very reason, is that I don't consider myself to be scholarly enough in these things, in and of myself to offer a translation to the world.

And the best translations out there are done through scholarly committees, you know.

ESV has a sound scholarly committee. They're skewed to Calvinism, and there's some errors that they bring in as a result of that, but still it's a great translation.

There's no such thing as a perfect translation, period. And so, you know, if you want to look at an example, like the worst scripture out there up until very recently was the message, which was this is the product of Eugene Peterson.

This is not a translation, you know. And it's funny that it's, the word, the abbreviation for the message is the

MSG. So I always tell people they need to have MSG -free sermons.

So, yeah, but that's a different story altogether. So since we're talking about translations, something's been bugging me since we were back in Titus.

And when they call the Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, and lazy guttons.

But my footnote says, of course that refers to those who are teaching improperly.

Is there some translation or something that really would have told us that of course it's not all

Cretans? See, so this is a standard way in which humans communicate.

Okay, and let me explain it to you this way. It's fallen out of vogue. In fact, if Paul were to speak these words today, he would be lambasted.

And the idea here is that he's using hyperbole. He's using hyperbole.

And on top of it, he's even using hyperbole against, you know, using a common phrase of the time that is describing a particular people group.

All right, it would be like me saying, well, everybody knows that Germans are complete hotheads and they're totally stubborn idiots and mules.

And people go, oh, I can't believe you said that about all the Germans. And it's like, do you not understand how language works?

Okay, I'm making a point. I'm pulling on a common way in which Germans are portrayed.

And that's kind of a stereotype. Everybody knows it. But regardless of whether or not the stereotype is accurate down to the individual citizen, the point is is that I'm pulling on that to make a better, a bigger point.

And that's what Paul's doing. Of course, in this day and age, you're offending someone. Oh, yes, of course. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Thank you. Yeah. And there you go again. You'll note the Apostle Paul.

Yes, he did use offensive, racially charged language. Those Cretans, I mean,

I'm sure that they are gonna file charges against him and get him defrocked as an apostle for being so racially insensitive.

So is there kind of a cyclical pattern through the ages of like a couple of smalling out a mile together?

Hundreds. Uh -huh. Millions. Yeah. I wouldn't put a timeframe on it.

I would just say that they're human beings, each and every generation that is born, is born dead in trespasses and sins, and our default mode is idolatry.

And so what will always end up happening is that one generation is going to come up and they're going to react against their parents and talk about how absolutely stifling and limiting and putting

God in a box, this Bible stuff is, and so they'll come up with clever ways of undermining the words of Scripture to replace them with their own ideas.

And then once their own ideas take root, it's funny how this all works. You just find out that it's the same weeds that were growing in Israel back at the time of Josiah.

Syncretism, idolatry, homosexuality, it's all there. Is there anything different today?

And you'll note that this story is a great story that says, sola scriptura. This is the place, the

Bible is the place where I know I can go with confidence and I'm hearing God's voice.

And I neglect his voice to my own harm. Now coming back to the question then, was it loving to purge the evil from Israel?

Yeah, because now you have to take a bigger step back. What happened to those generations of Israelites who grew up worshiping syncretistically

Yahweh and Baal and Asherah and the sun, the moon and the stars and partook of homosexual relations and cult prostitution.

What happened to them? Where are they today? They're lost eternally.

They are eternally lost and they have themselves to blame.

And at some point, God's word just disappeared. God went all

Burger King on them. You can have it your way. Yeah.

What I find interesting is some of these mainline churches, it's like God who set this all up, the health effects of homosexuality, the

AIDS crisis and all the other things that go with it, the abortion, with the death of innocent human beings.

Yep. And it just seems very strange that they can accept anything and everything but never preach the dangers of falling away from the word of God.

See, that's intolerant. That's unloving. That's unkind. And you notice in the days of Israel, they didn't have abortion, they had sacrifices to Molech.

You don't want your baby? No problemo. We'll offer it to Molech. All right?

It's all there. It's all there. And you can see that this was a slide.

This is a slide into rank of rebellion and apostasy. And where does it begin?

It always begins with an attack against the written word of God.

You silence the voice of God, and you supplant him with competing voices, this is where you end up.

But they were religious. They were offering prayers and sacrifices inside of Solomon's temple.

And God didn't accept a single one of them. And not only that, he commends Josiah for putting all of that to an end.