False Prophets & Modern Abominations / Prophets & Kings - Part 3

So this will be part three of our study on the prophets and the kings. And we still have, it's going slower than I thought.

I really thought this would be a one or two Wednesday thing, but we still have several prophets to cover.

So in case somebody's new, if not here in the building, later online, if you're just dropping into this lesson, we've been going over the prophets who ministered during the divided kingdom stage in Israel, with Israel to the north,

Judah to the south. And yes, I realize I'm repeating some of this, but once you get to that point where you're like, man,

I've heard this again and again, then you know it, right? That's how we learn. So yeah, right.

That's the point. So Saul was the first king of Israel, then David and Solomon.

And those were the glory days, so to speak. But because of Solomon's idolatry, the

Lord decided to take the kingdom away from the house of David, with the exception of one tribe.

So David and his line would rule over one tribe, and that tribe was what? Judah. Right.

So the nation of Judah to the south. So Solomon's son, Rehoboam, only reigned over the nation of Judah.

So there were the kings to the north in Israel, all of them were ungodly. And then the kings in the south, in Judah, some were good, some were not so good.

Sort of a mixed bag. The northern kingdom fell to the Assyrians, the

Assyrian empire in 722 BC. The prophets warned the people to repent, to stop worshiping the

Baals. Did they listen? Obviously not. Now the prophets were warning the southern kingdom, and for the most part, it's the same type of thing.

The word of God came to them through the prophets, but mostly their message fell on deaf ears.

And not only that, we said the prophets were despised, they were persecuted, some of them were killed.

So some of the kings killed the prophets. I don't think there was ever a prophet who killed the kings, right?

The kings had the military power, the prophets had, you know, the sword of the spirit. So the kings, some of them, who is the one we talked about, definitely we think got killed by King Manasseh, the prophet

Isaiah. And we know Ahab and Jezebel tried to kill Elijah, but they were not able to.

So as we go along, we're trying to make application to the modern day. What does this mean for us?

Should preachers be addressing the issues the nation is facing? And when we talked about that,

I mean, everybody, most everybody seems to agree on those clear moral issues.

The answer is yes. And then there might be some things that people disagree on, and that's just the way it's going to be.

So last week we ended by talking about the prophet Habakkuk. So now let's look at the prophet

Joel. So I know this is a little out of order with the handout that I gave you, but I think

Joel probably wrote earlier rather than later. We're not exactly sure. Joel was a prophet to the southern kingdom of Judah.

And you just guess, why don't we know when he wrote? Think about some of the other prophets and how the book would start out.

You know, they would make reference to who was the king at that time. So there's no reference in the book of Joel.

So we don't really know when he was writing, maybe the seventh or eighth century. We're not sure. So we do know he was a prophet to the south.

And the theme of his book, Joel, is the day of the Lord. So Joel warns

Judah of a coming invasion. He may have been the first prophet to warn about the

Babylonians. That may be. Joel compares the invading army to a plague of what type of insect?

Locusts, right. But he also gives the hope that the locusts will be removed and that God will restore all that the locusts had eaten.

I did a three -part sermon on the book of Joel, I think back in 2019, 2020, somewhere around then, and I explained that many people believe that the day of the

Lord that Joel spoke about sort of came in phases. There was maybe a miniature day of the

Lord in the Old Testament when Israel was or Judah was conquered by Babylon. That could be seen as a day of the

Lord, day of darkness, destruction. In some way, the day of the Lord was fulfilled on the day of Pentecost.

You remember Peter made reference to Joel's prophecy. So in some way it was fulfilled there.

But we also think it's pointing ahead to that final and ultimate day of the

Lord in the end times, which culminates in the battle of Armageddon. So this is the, at least a dual nature of prophecy.

So when a prophet makes a statement about the future, there could be some fulfillment, maybe a miniature fulfillment back then, but then there's a final fulfillment.

Think about Jesus in the Olivet Discourse in Matthew 24. Jesus was talking about the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem, right?

And what was going to happen in 70 AD, but he was also talking about the end of the age. So sometimes the prophets are talking about more than one thing.

Is that, is that confusing? Yeah. I mean, especially if you lived back then, but Joel chapter two, starting in verse 30, if you want to follow along Joel chapter two verses 30 and 31, he says,

I will show wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood and fire and pillars of smoke.

The sun shall be turned into darkness in the moon into blood before the coming of the great and awesome day of the

Lord. So you've probably seen at least at some point in your life when the moon looked red, right?

And that when I, whenever I've seen that, that's what I think of Joel's prophecy. He says in chapter three, the

Lord also will roar from Zion and utter his voice from Jerusalem.

The heavens and the earth will shake. This is verse 16, but the Lord will be a shelter for his people and the strength of the children of Israel.

So you shall know that I am the Lord, your God dwelling in Zion in my holy mountain.

Then Jerusalem shall be holy and no aliens shall ever pass through her again.

So you have some scary imagery, right? In the end times, there's a lot of bad things happening, but there's also some good things happening because what does

God do? He fights for his people, Israel. I think that passage that I just read chapter 3, 17 and 16, 17,

I think that probably speaks of the millennium in verse 18, he writes, and it will come to pass in that day that the mountains shall drip with new wine.

The hills shall flow with milk and all the brooks of Judah shall be flooded with water.

A fountain shall flow from the house of the Lord. So along with the judgment language, there is a message of hope.

And that's really true with most of the prophets. So there was the contemporary fulfillment with Babylon.

There was the partial fulfillment on the day of Pentecost and then a future and final fulfillment.

One takeaway from that, it shows that the prophets are still relevant. You know, we think of the book of Revelation as being very relevant because it's events that are going to happen in our future.

Well, it's the same thing for Joel. It's the same thing for Isaiah. Some of the things they're talking about already took place.

It's for Israel, for the Jews. That's true. But some of it is for us or for our future.

Any questions so far? All right. Yes. I have a comment. I mean, the promised land was known as a land flowing with milk and honey, and you just referenced it there in Joel flowing with milk.

But when Saul reigned, it was a time where he made some kind of weird proclamation that if anybody eats anything before we're done here, he's going to be killed.

Well, Jonathan wasn't there, didn't hear it, his son. And after this great battle and victory,

Jonathan scooped up some honey that was flowing through the woods.

Yep. And I just can't imagine that much.

I can't. I've never. Yeah. Walking through the woods. I've never seen any honey.

I'm sure maybe that's not a thing around here, but yeah, it was a land flowing with milk and honey.

They were promised all of these blessings, but all that was conditional on what their obedience to the law, which they didn't do a real great job.

And of course, crossing the line is when you start worshiping Baal and Astaroth and all the rest.

Okay. The next prophet we're going to look at is Jeremiah. We're going to spend a little more time on Jeremiah than probably any of the other prophets.

Jeremiah was a prophet to who? Judah. Yeah. I mean, we're pretty much talking about, well,

I guess not all of them are to Judah, but he ministered from at least lately we've been talking about mostly the prophets to Judah from 650 to 582

BC. Jeremiah also wrote the book of Lamentations, which a lament is expressing sorrow over for him, the destruction of Jerusalem in 586.

So he got to see it firsthand. And then he wrote the book of Lamentations in as a result.

So Jeremiah begins his book by saying that the word of the Lord came to him in the days of Josiah.

So we know when he reigned Josiah, the son of Ammon, king of Judah in the 13th year of his reign.

So very specific. We came also in the days of Jehoiakim, the son of Josiah, king of Judah until the end of the 11th year of Zedekiah, the son of Josiah, king of Judah until the carrying away of Jerusalem captive in the fifth month.

So he's very specific about his dates. He goes on and says that the word of the Lord came to him saying, before I formed you in the womb,

I knew you before you were born. I sanctified you. This is the very popular verse you hear quoted.

And the Lord told Jeremiah, I ordained you a prophet to the nation.

So this prophecy, it should be read beyond just the land of Judah.

So Jeremiah was not only a prophet, he was also a priest. Let's turn to Jeremiah 31.

This is one of the most important chapters in the old Testament. I haven't checked this in a while.

Okay. I was checking the Bible up here on the, well, the communion table or the altar, some people call it.

It used to be opened up to Jeremiah 31 because this passage is so important.

It talks about what? In the old

Testament, we see a reference to the new Testament.

So Jeremiah, his purpose in writing was to warn of the destruction that the Jews were about to face and to urge them to return to faith in the

Lord. Jeremiah is probably, this is just my opinion, I guess, but I would say

Jeremiah is probably one of the most negative books in the Bible. I've heard people say the book of Ecclesiastes is the most depressing.

Jeremiah is maybe one of the most negative. So, you know, does that mean we should ignore it?

No, we should learn from it if anything, but there's still a message of hope and restoration.

And this is the great hope right here. So Jeremiah 31, look at verse 31.

We'll start here. Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah.

Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant, which they broke, though I was a husband to them, says the

Lord. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the

Lord. I will put my law into their minds and write it on their hearts, and I will be their

God and they shall be my people. No more shall every man teach his neighbor and every man his brother, saying,

Know the Lord, for they shall all know me from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the

Lord, for I will forgive their iniquity and their sin. I will remember no more.

So he's talking to the nation of Israel or to the Jews, and he promises them in the

Old Testament that there's going to be a new testament. How many

Jews do you know who even believe that the New Testament is a thing? I mean, they must have some response to this, but clearly they do not believe that there is a

New Testament right now in the Lord Jesus Christ. So we're living in the

New Testament right now. But has Israel been restored?

Can you say this, that all the Israelites know the Lord? Yeah. So obviously we're in the first stages of this.

Maybe you could say, when would this be fulfilled? It's going to be fulfilled at some point.

When will the promises of God be fulfilled for the nation of Israel? Yeah, it's going to start.

Things are going to start happening during the tribulation, but they're going to be fulfilled in the millennium. Jesus in the gospel of John speaking to the

Jews. He said that he had other sheep that were not of this fold. So he was telling the

Jews that he has another other sheep referring to the Gentiles. So right now we're living in what is called the times of the

Gentiles or the church age. Paul says in Romans 11 that this period will continue.

That blindness in part has happened to Israel until the fullness of the

Gentiles has come in. And so all Israel will be saved.

We don't know when that's happening. It's going to draw near. But once God is done working with the

Gentiles, then he's going to shift and start working with Israel.

And according to Paul, all Israel will be saved once the time of the Gentiles is over. Some people call this dispensationalism.

I just call it the Bible because that's what's being said. Not that everything that's called dispensational is correct necessarily, but this part, this part is.

So again, that happens in the end time. So Jeremiah, does he have some things to say about the future?

Yes. Look at Jeremiah 31 verse 35 and for those people, and I know

I make a point of this on a fairly regular basis, but you know, it's in the

Bible and it's important. So Jeremiah 31, 35 to those people who don't think there's a future for Israel, you need to pay attention to this.

Thus says the Lord who gives the sun for a light by day, the ordinances of the moon and the stars for a light by night, who disturbs the sea and its waves roar.

The Lord of hosts is his name. If those ordinances, what's he talking about? The sun, the moon.

If they, what, if they depart from me, says the

Lord, then the seed of Israel shall also cease from being a nation before me forever.

You realize what's that? What is that saying? It's saying that, you know, there's a better chance of the sun just like ceasing to exist tomorrow than for God to be finished with the nation of Israel.

I mean, how else would you interpret that? So the fact that they once again became a nation, of course, they've always been a, we think of a nation as having borders, right?

But this is just the way as Americans in the 21st century, we think of the southern border and the northern border and then the nation, the

United States is a political entity with board. That's not the way the Bible described nations.

It was a people with a culture and a belief system. So Israel has always been a nation really, but of course they officially became a nation with borders in 1948, 1949.

You cannot tell me that's a coincidence. That didn't happen to Babylon, you know,

Saddam Hussein tried to rebuild Babylon. Did God let him do it? No, no. That hasn't happened with Assyria or any, any of these ancient nations,

Nineveh, but it happened with them. And I realized some people have gotten a little carried away with the 1948, 1949, and they've set dates and the fig tree prophecy and all the rest.

But the fact is God is doing something. He's planning something. There is a future for them.

And I personally believe that the stage is being set for end time events that could happen a lot sooner than a lot of people think.

So a few other things. There is some speculation because going back to talk about Jeremiah, and this is really just for fun because we don't actually know this, but there is some speculation that Jeremiah had possession of what artifact is a common theory out there.

Some people believe that Jeremiah possessed or had possession of the

Ark of the Covenant and that he knew, right, because he did know, God told him that the Babylonians were going to come in, destroy the city, destroy the temple, and that Jeremiah actually had the

Ark hid somewhere. No real evidence that that's true, but like I said, that's just for fun.

I mean, it makes sense because when does the Ark disappear? Remember David, he wanted the temple to be built.

It was built under Solomon. The Ark was in the temple in those days, but after the

Babylonians came in, the Ark just disappears. So the point of the book,

Jeremiah, is he a real happy guy? What is he called? What's his nickname?

Weeping Prophet. Jeremiah is the Weeping Prophet, hence the Book of Lamentations, Lament.

But Jeremiah wasn't just sad, he was also pretty angry. If you read the book, like I said, it's kind of negative.

Jeremiah was angry, which means, whose message is he preaching? God's message.

So Jeremiah wasn't just angry, God was angry. God was angry at Judah over their backsliding.

As a matter of fact, he uses that term, backsliding. They did not listen to the true prophets, instead they listened to who?

The false prophets. Let's turn to Jeremiah 28, and this is as good a time as any to address this issue of the false prophets.

So it's easy to say who the true prophets are. That's what this whole study is about, partially at least.

Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, Habakkuk, these are the true prophets. Who are the false prophets, though?

In the Bible, Jeremiah names a few false prophets. There's some people who have the opinion, well, you should never name names.

If there's a false prophet out there, let him be, don't, just leave him alone. You should never name names.

Well, I'll let that person rebuke the prophet Jeremiah, because guess what, Jeremiah named names.

He names a man named Hananiah, also a false prophet named

Ahab. In the book of Acts, there's a false prophet named Bar -Jesus. So there were true prophets, and there were false prophets.

Actually, what chapter did I tell you to turn to? Is that the first few verses?

I have to look this up. Isaiah, Jeremiah, chapter 28,

I just wanted you to see that. Yeah, the first verse, and it happened in the same year at the beginning, the reign of Zedekiah, king of Judah, in the fourth year, in the fifth month, that Hananiah, the son of Azer, the prophet, who is in Gibeah, basically he says to the people, skip ahead to verse, let's see, skip ahead to verse seven.

Nevertheless, hear now this word that I speak in your hearing and in all the hearing of all the people, the prophets who have been before me and before you of old prophesied against many countries and great kingdoms of war and disaster and pestilence.

For the prophet who prophesied of peace, when the word of the prophet comes to pass, that prophet will be known as one whom the

Lord has truly sent. So when Jeremiah said that Babylon is going to come in and destroy the city, did that happen?

Yeah. So we know that Jeremiah is a true prophet. Then Hananiah, the prophet, took the yoke off the prophet of Jeremiah's neck and broke it.

Remember, they put them in the stocks and Hananiah spoke to in the presence of all the people saying, thus says the

Lord, even so I will break the yoke of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon from the neck of all the nations within the space of two full years.

And the prophet Jeremiah went his way. How did that work out?

Yeah. Nebuchadnezzar only got more and more powerful. So Hananiah was a false prophet.

Jeremiah then prophesied his death and guess what happened? Verse 17.

So Hananiah, the prophet died the same year in the seventh month. So you don't want the prophet

Jeremiah prophesying your death because it's going to happen. Okay. So just to kind of,

I did that to make the point that Jeremiah did not only name the names. He said, yeah. And by the end of the year you're dead.

And he, and he died. Okay. Can you imagine if that happened today? Again, there's, we don't believe there's prophets today, but I mean,

I can just imagine what people would say. Well, that's not very Christ -like to say that this person's going to drop it.

Well, if God said he was, and he did, so like, anyways, okay.

So here's the point of addressing the false prophets. We need to make application.

A lot of people would rather the Bible stay in the past. That way we don't really have to do anything about it.

It's comfortable when all this is in the past. When we pull it into the modern day and say, okay, is this happening right now?

That's when people start getting a little, little uncomfortable. So are there true prophets today?

We don't believe so. Do we have the true prophets? Yes. We have their writings, which are in scripture.

Are there false prophets today? Oh yeah. There's a lot of them.

So in making application, right? Be doers of the word and not hearers only. Okay. Let's, let's apply this.

You say there's false prophets. Who are they? Who are they? Okay. Now, before you shout out any names, uh, traditionally evangelicals would say something like Joseph Smith of the

Mormons. He is a clear false prophet and no Bible believer would have batted an eye at that, you know, today they might, but you know, up until 20 years ago, people probably wouldn't have thought too much about that.

Ellen G white of the seventh day Adventist false prophet. Uh, we've talked about this before.

Uh, again, nobody really wants to, uh, fight these issues or talk about it because people get upset.

But if we say that there's false prophets today and it's a problem, what good does it do if we never named the name?

What good is that? Why? You shouldn't even talk about it though. Here's the thing about Joseph Smith and Ellen G white.

I mean, these are totally different. Mormonism is a totally different religion. It's polytheistic.

The false prophets you have to worry about are not in other religions. The false prophets we have to worry about are the ones operating within so -called evangelical

Christianity. So I'm just going to give two names, I'm going to do all the naming of names is all going to happen tonight.

I'm going to get all that out of my system tonight. So the two false prophets that I'll name by name tonight that have deceived many people over the past 40 years,

Benny Hinn, number one and Kenneth Copeland, two clear false prophets.

If they are not false prophets, the term has no meaning. Benny Hinn.

Let me give a few examples. Benny Hinn prophesied that Fidel Castro would die in the 1990s and it's kind of a dumb thing to make a prophecy about,

I think, but of course, Jeremiah did that to him and I, maybe he was reading this and he decides that Fidel's pretty unpopular.

I'm going to make Fidel Castro is pretty old, like it, there's a pretty good chance he would have died in the 1990s, but it's like God allowed him to live longer than any other world ruler just to prove

Benny Hinn wrong. It almost seems like that. Benny Hinn was also not just a false prophet, but a false teacher.

He taught that there are nine members of the Trinity. I mean, like that makes what?

Trinity means three. Okay. Kenneth Copeland taught that Jesus died and went to hell to be tortured.

And Copeland back in the spring of 2020, he made a video claiming to stand in the office of the prophet of God and he declared an end to COVID -19 and I don't know if it was

March or April, but it was very early on. How did that work out? Not, now

I know there's some people that say, yeah, it was never, well, yeah, but again, making application, it really does no good to read about the false prophets or to warn about false prophets when they're operating amongst us, but we're not willing to name the name.

So the word of God, Jesus, Jeremiah, all throughout the epistles, it constantly warns of false prophets and false teachers.

So that's just to make application. Any questions on that? All right.

Mark. Just a comment. It just boggles the mind how many people get sucked into these

Peter Popov and... Yep. I mean, to me, it's so obvious this is a scam.

How do they not see this? I mean, it's really just kind of blatant stupidity.

Well, you know, I think a lot of people are desperate. I think a lot of people, because those programs often run at two in the morning or something, you know, people, maybe they're sick, they're dying.

They want healing. It's never happened. They've tried everything else. Hey, I'll send Benny Hinn a few thousand dollars because that's what he says.

If I do this. So I think a lot of people, they might know better, but it's sort of a last ditch effort.

You know, some people were just brought up in the charismatic Pentecostal movement. That type, type of thing is just normal.

They don't really think much. I don't, I don't know why people do it, but I could tell you stories of people.

I know personally that they were robbed blind. People that were sick died broke because they sent all their money to these

TV preachers. And I mean, that really gets my blood boiling more than, more than just about anything.

But yeah, we need to say something about them. I think. Yeah, dad.

The other thing that makes people do that is the Bible says it well. Many of these people have itching ears.

Yeah. They hear something new, something like that. They love it.

Right. They don't check or care if it's scriptural or not. They have itching ears. Yep.

Yeah. They want to be told what, what they want to hear because there's a lot of stuff in the

Bible that is negative and, and maybe they have an idea of what's in the Bible. They've heard it before and it's just not exciting.

They want some new, fresh prophecy and you're going to tell me all these wonderful things are going to happen.

I get the attraction. It's just not true. Okay. So those men made false prophecies.

They are verifiable false prophets. Okay. So anything else on that before we move on?

Okay. So I named the two false prophets. I'll name the

Kings or rulers later on. Okay. So we spent a lot of time on Jeremiah for good reason.

He's a major prophet, right? So his prophecy about the new covenant, one of the most significant old

Testament prophecies that has great relevance today. All right. Let's look at a minor prophet, a man named

Obadiah. Obadiah is, he's one of those guys. It's like, yeah, that name sounds like it would be in the

Bible, but I don't know if I've ever read that book. Right. Obadiah. What's that about?

Oh, we don't know much about Obadiah. We're not sure when his prophecy was written sometime around the sixth century.

Maybe here's what we do know. He's similar to Jonah and Nahum. Remember, they did not speak to Judah.

They spoke to the city of Nineveh. Now Obadiah did not speak to Nineveh, but he did speak to a different nation.

So he was preaching the doom of what nation? Yeah. The nation of Edom.

So if you remember Isaac, Abraham, Isaac, Isaac had two sons, Jacob and Esau.

Jacob is the father of the Israelites, had his name changed to Israel. Esau is the father of the

Edomites. So these are two nations. God chose Jacob over Esau.

So the nation of Israel has this hope. There's a future for Israel. Is there a future for Edom? No. The purpose of this book is to show that God will judge all those who are against his chosen people.

Because the Edomites really despised their brother, Jacob. Obadiah is the shortest book in the

Old Testament. Only one chapter. Verses one through nine, Obadiah declares the wickedness of the

Edomites and gives examples of their pride. And verses 10 through 14, it tells of the transgressions and offenses of the

Edom, implying that they should have acted as a brother since they descended from the same father.

But verse 10 says, because of violence to your brother Jacob, you will be covered with shame and you will be cut off forever.

And this is something you often hear. Nations or empires that decide to persecute the

Jews, like Hitler and the Nazis or the Babylonians.

You're always going to lose. Now there will be one empire that seems like they're going to do it.

The Antichrist, but it's not going to work. So the New World Order or whatever you want to call it in the future, they're going to persecute the nation of Israel.

But anyone who ends up going against the nation of Israel in the end will be destroyed.

Because actually every nation is, if you think about it, every nation is going to collapse.

The only nation that goes into the millennium as like God's special people is the nation of Israel.

Verses 17 and 18, we read that the house of Jacob shall possess their possessions.

So all the land of Edom, who's going to get it? The Jews. The house of Jacob shall be a fire and the house of Joseph a flame, but the house of Esau shall be stubble.

They shall kindle them and devour them and no survivor shall remain of the house of Esau, for the

Lord has spoken. And by the end of the first century, the nation of Edom was, guess what?

Non -existent. So did Obadiah's prophecy come true? Yes. All right.

Any questions on that? And this is why evangelicals tend to be so pro -Israel.

It really, well, maybe it has to do with some other things, but there is a biblical reason why.

You don't want to go too far with that and get carried away.

Like Israel can do no wrong and they're always right. No, that's not the case. I mean, they're living in unbelief. So they need to be saved.

They need Jesus. There's a famous televangelist, Paula White.

She was Trump's spiritual advisor for four years. Paula White was in the news last week where she went to Israel and she said, we're not trying to convert the

Jews. As an evangelical, I do not want to convert Jews. I want to learn from the rabbis.

So she went over there and said, don't worry. We are not interested in converting you. And I'm like thinking, what is this?

That's bizarre. But we should want to convert everybody.

I mean, I realize that doesn't always happen. But anyways, so Edom was destroyed.

Okay, we could spend the last few minutes looking at the prophet Ezekiel, but I think I'll save that for next time.

Since we're kind of entering into a new phase of history, this is the

Babylonian captivity. So Babylon's come in, Israel's destroyed, or Jerusalem's destroyed.

Instead of Jewish kings, the prophet Daniel's going to interact with pagan kings, right?

He's going to cross paths with Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. So we'll cover that next time. So there's obviously going to be a part four.

That's good news for some of you, bad news maybe for others. I really am going to try to finish next time.

But I realize this study started with a focus on the prophets and kings, but it sort of turned into just focusing on the prophets.

So let's spend the last few minutes talking about some kings. Let's turn to 2 Chronicles.

If you want to study the kings on your own, I just recommend read the books.

Take a guess, what books should you read? Kings. Yeah, that makes sense. The book of 1 Kings and 2

Kings. But also 1 and 2 Chronicles, because you'll read statements like this.

2 Chronicles 36 verse 1. Then the people of the land took

Jehoahaz, the son of Josiah, and made him king in his father's place in Jerusalem.

Jehoahaz was 23 years old when he became king, and he reigned three months in Jerusalem.

So this is 2 Chronicles 36 verse 3. Now the king of Egypt deposed him at Jerusalem, and he imposed on the land a tribute of 100 talents of silver and a talent of gold.

Then the king of Egypt made Jehoahaz's brother Eliakim king over Judah and Jerusalem and changed his name to Jehoiakim.

And Necho and took Jehoahaz, his brother, and carried him off into Egypt.

Think about what we're reading right now. If you were to bring this into modern times, it'd be like, okay, this guy got elected.

He was impeached, and he was replaced by this guy. We're getting into politics.

You shouldn't talk about this. Isn't that what we're reading, though? Verse 5.

Jehoiakim was 25 years old when he became king, and he reigned 11 years in Jerusalem, and he did evil in the sight of the

Lord his God. Notice that phrase. He did what? Evil.

Okay, that's kind of judgmental, isn't it? Whoever wrote Chronicles is really judgmental. No, this is obviously something that was a high -handed act of rebellion against God, and the

Bible calls it for what it is. So not only does the Bible record political matters, it makes a judgment about their behavior, does it not?

If they did evil, something that was clearly evil in the sight of God. So verse 6.

Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, came up against him and bound him in bronze fetters to carry him off to Babylon.

Nebuchadnezzar also carried off some of the articles of the house of the Lord to Babylon and put them in his temple at Babylon.

Now the rest of the acts of Jehoiakim and the abominations which he did and what was found against him, indeed they are written in the book of the kings of Israel and Judah.

Then Jehoiachin, his son, reigned in his place. So he is singled out as someone who has done what?

What's the word? Evil. Not just evil, abominations in the sight of God.

So the kings did evil, obviously. And not only did the prophets preach against these men, it was all recorded for us to read about.

And because there's nothing new under the sun, and again, making application, rulers did evil back then.

Do rulers still do evil today? Yeah. Oh, I heard.

So there's no prophets today.

So there is no Jeremiah to get a word from God. I have an idea of what God might say. I mean, maybe

I'd be surprised, but I could guess, right? So there's no prophets today, but there are pastors who speak prophetically.

Maybe you've heard this term. When someone speaks prophetically, they're speaking truth to power, right?

So the governor, the president, the prime minister, the king, he's in a position of power, and the prophet speaks

God's truth to power. What you're doing is evil in the sight of God. That is something a prophet would do.

So when Joe Biden took the American flags and moved them off to the side and placed the transgender flag into the center, the place of prominence, and then after the ceremony, a bunch of activists took their clothes off and paraded around the

White House lawn, that is an abomination. Oh, you're just talking against the

Democrats because you're on the other side. Okay, Mike Pence. Who's heard of Mike Pence? Mike Pence did an interview where he said, according to him, he thinks transgender surgery should be legal.

He said, well, you know, I don't really, for children it should be illegal, but for adults, you know, live as you wanna live.

I might not agree with you, but you know, the Bible says love your neighbor as yourself. So that's an abomination to God right there.

And here's the thing. You might think I'm being unfair with Joe Biden. Mike Pence, I think, is more guilty because he knows better.

So just in case anyone's upset and you're gonna text me or email me or call me later, save your breath, because I'm not apologizing, okay?

I would rather be voted out and run out of town on a rail than to make excuses for that stuff.

And I'm serious, but you know, the same types of things are happening right now.

And I think a lot of pastors, they don't dare say anything because they're too afraid.

Now I understand the issue of politics is a touchy subject and there are real reasons why you would wanna be careful about how you approach that.

I get all of that, but I mean, when it's open, high -handed acts of evil in the sight of God.

And notice I'm not upset with the sinners. We want the sinners to be saved because we were sinners saved who are now saved by grace.

I'm not against them. I am against the rulers who know better. God has placed them in a position of authority.

You know what the scripture says, God raises them up and sometimes he raises them up to tear them down.