“The REAL Reason” – FBC Morning Light (7/10/2024)

The Assyrian Judgment on Samaria

Well, a good Wednesday morning to you. Today, in our Bible reading, we're reading 2 Kings 17, which is going to be the focal point of our comments here in a few moments, as well as a couple of verses in 1 Chronicles 5, and then two Psalms, Psalms 99 and Psalm 106.

So as I said, in 2 Kings 17, we've been mentioned, we hand of God in using the Assyrians to bring punishment and judgment upon his people Israel. Well, here in 2 Kings 17, we read about the carrying out of that that judgment, okay?

So verse 5 says, the king of Assyria went throughout all the land of Israel and went up to Samaria and besieged it for three years. Samaria was like the capital of those northern ten tribes of Israel, okay?

Samaria was the place of the palace for the king of Israel. And it says in the ninth year of Hoshea, the king of Israel, the king of Assyria took Samaria, the capital city, and carried Israel away to Assyria and placed them in Hallah and by the Habor, the River of Gozan, in the cities and in the cities of the Medes.

And so you have that simple report, and it's given in a matter of two verses, but those two verses are pregnant with pain and heartache and grief and sorrow and death and loss. I mean, can you imagine?

There was a three-year siege of the city of Samaria, which means all supplies are cut off, no food can get in, nobody can get in to bring aid, nobody can leave safely. So, I mean, the people are just stuck for three years.

There would have been starvation and deprivation, and that was the whole point of a siege, you know, you starve a people to surrender. And eventually the city fell, and then there's the captivity, where, you know, thousands of the Jewish people were taken into captivity.

They were taken away from their homeland, they were taken to other places and relocated, and those who survived had to eke out a means of living for however long, the rest of their lives. And so this is all a very grievous thing.

Israel’s Sin and Personal Responsibility

Now, why? What's the reason for all this? What's the reason for the bondage, the misery, the pain, the sorrow, the grief, the loss that has been inflicted upon Israel by the Assyrians? I'm going to say something here that is not popular in our culture, and it is because of the choices of the people of Israel.

I'm not saying this is an anti-semitic thing, I'm just saying that in this situation you had Assyrians who took people of Israel captive, and the people of Israel were responsible for it, for their own misery and their own woe.

Now, like I said, this is not a popular thing to acknowledge today. Like, people do not want to, they do not want to say, I am suffering because I have done something wrong. They don't want to say that I ended up being assaulted or hurt or whatever, and it was my fault.

I did something that has resulted in this as a form of punishment. And it's not saying the other person who did the assault is not responsible for that or anything like that. But we don't want to take, we're very reluctant, very reluctant to take personal responsibility and say, I have done wrong and therefore I'm suffering for it.

But that's exactly what the problem was here for Israel, and it's exactly why God used Assyria to bring all this pain and woe and misery and loss and heartache and bondage. The explanation follows here in the text.

It says, so, in verse 6, the king of Assyria took Samaria and carried Israel away to Assyria. Verse 7 says why. For so it was that the children of Israel had sinned against the Lord their God, who had brought them up out of the land of Egypt.

After all God had done for them, they had sinned against him. And verse 8 says, they had walked in the statutes of the nations whom the Lord had cast out from before the children of Israel and of the kings of Israel, which they had made.

And the children of Israel secretly did against the Lord their God things that were not right, and they built for themselves high places in all the cities, that is, altars to false gods. They set up for themselves sacred pillars and wooden images on every high hill and on every green tree, false worship.

They burned incense on all the high places like the nations whom the Lord had carried away before them, and they did wicked things to provoke the Lord to anger, for they served idols of which the Lord had said to them, you shall not do this thing.

And it's not like they did this for just a very brief time and then the Lord said, all right, that's it, I've gotcha. No, the Lord was very patient. Verse 13 goes on to say, yet the Lord testified against Israel and against Judah by all of his prophets, and every seer saying, turn from your evil ways and keep my commandments and my statutes according to all the law which I commanded your fathers and which I sent to you by my servants the prophets.

Nevertheless, verse 14, they would not hear. They stiffened their necks. And the final result is God sent the judgment. So when you read in verse 6 that the king of Assyria captured Samaria and took Israel captive and brought all this misery and woe and heartache and pain upon Israel, you have to understand why.

It's because of Israel's personal sin. Israel was personally responsible. I think we can make contemporary application of that truth, and I think it is appropriate for us to examine our own hearts and our own lives and keep short account, keep a short account.

When the Holy Spirit convicts us of sin, that we turn from it and we forsake it, and don't get to a point where God has to punish and chasten. If it does come to that, then let's allow that chastening to actually bring us to a place of repentance and bring us to our knees and not be a stiff-necked people.

So again, God graciously gives us insight, and we're wise and helped if we accept it. So God, I pray today that we would do just that, be helped by what you've given us today. In Jesus' name, Amen. All right, well listen, have a good rest of your Wednesday.

Hope your hump day goes well and you get over that hump very smoothly today. God bless.