SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 11/27/2023 9:19 AM
PT-11 “Introduction to the book of Daniel.”
‘“And who can tell if God will turn
and repent, and turn away from his fierce anger, that we perish not? And God
saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God repented of the
evil, that he had said that he would do unto them; and he did it not.’ God said
I’m going to punish Nineveh. Before I do I’m going to send a prophet. Now He
had a hard time getting the prophet to go there. He took a short trip on a long
fish but eventually he got turned around in the right direction. And when he
finally got to Nineveh and he preached the warning, the whole city repented.
“God always gives time for
repentance. To His own people in Chronicles He says, “If My people which are
called by My name shall humble themselves and seek My face and turn from their
wicked ways, I’ll hear them and I’ll heal them.” God has always been eager to
respond. Ezekiel says two times that God has no pleasure in the death of the
wicked ones. But Israel in the north would never repent and Judah in the south
would never repent even though the warnings were abundant.
“Now, let me just give you an idea.
If you were living in Judah at that time in a decadent, descending, corrupting
society moving fast toward death, these are the warnings you would have seen.
Number one: the disaster of the Northern Kingdom. The people in the south were
able to see what happened in the north. They could see it. It should have stood
as a tremendous warning to them. They had engaged, for example, in – in the
north in gross idolatry under Jeroboam I. They had – get this -- actually
erected the worship of golden calves, a reversion back to the time of the
wilderness wandering.
“They had set up golden calves at
two ends of the north at Bethel and Dan. And Bethel means “the house of God.”
And so at the either ends of the Northern Kingdom they set up the worship of
golden calves and it became a national disgrace. And they wouldn’t listen to
their prophets. They had two wonderful prophets in the north, one by the name
of Amos and one by the name of Hosea, and they wouldn’t listen. And so, God
stopped speaking and God raised up the merciless Assyrians and in Isaiah 10:5 God
says the Assyrians are the “rod of My anger and the staff of My indignation.”
In other words, He used the Assyrians as His weapon to punish Israel.
“How did it happen? Well there they
were living in the Northern Kingdom. At that time in history around 750 B.C.,
the Assyrians ruled that part of the world and Babylonia was just a little
state in Assyria. And the Assyrians were a ruthless, merciless, wild bunch of
people, killers. And they ruled, and their capital city was Nineveh. They had a
ruler by the name of Tiglath-Pileser. You can spell his name P-U-L. That’s
another rendering, Pul.
“He moved in – according to 2 Kings
15, he moved in, and this was the first wave of Assyrian intervention. He moved
in to Israel and put them under heavy taxation. It was really intimidation. He
said, “You pay me taxes or I’ll declare war on you.” Discretion being the
better part of valor they decided to pay the taxes. But that put them under
Assyrian domination.
“Following Pul, or Tiglath-Pileser,
came another name you might remember, Shalmanneser IV. Sounds like a lizard but
it’s not. Shalmanneser IV. Now, he moved in more directly, not just taxation
but he attacked the capital of Israel which was the city of Samaria. And he
began the attack, and the attack was finalized by the man who followed him and
his name was Sargon II, S-A-R-G-O-N, a very famous name in Middle Eastern
history. Sargon II who lived from 722 to 705 literally crushed Samaria out of
existence and he carried the whole mass of people away. This is the ten tribes.
“People have wondered, they said,
“Well, does that mean” – and you always hear the phrase, the ten lost tribes –
“Does that mean that we’ll never be able to find the people of those tribes
again?” Well, we'll – we never know where they went. There is no historical
information as to where those ten tribes went. They were amalgamated, they were
intermarried, they were lost forever in mixture with the people of that part of
the world.
“But as God would have it, during
the time after the split and before the fall of Samaria, during that period of
time many of the ten-tribe people in the north moved to the south, so that the
two tribes in the south became sprinkled with people of the ten tribes in the
north. So that Judah really became, in a sense, representative of all twelve
tribes so that in the history of Israel all twelve tribes have still been
preserved. And that’s very important because in the tribulation, in Revelation
7 it says, “In the end time, God is going to take 12,000 from every tribe
of Israel to be His witness in the world.”
“The ten lost tribes were lost
insofar as the historical identification of those people, but enough of them
filtered to the south so that God could preserve every tribal line for the
future. But the rest of the captives never returned. They were lost. Israel had
sinned away its day of grace. Israel had brought itself to a place of terrible
judgment. In fact, Hosea said it well, he said, “Ephraim,” and that was his
term for the Northern Kingdom. “Ephraim is joined to his idols,” – and then
these terrible words – “let him alone.” Let him go, too far gone.
“You know what happened? After the
Assyrians took over the Northern Kingdom they got to feeling their oats and
they got to looking at the Southern Kingdom. Now, the Southern Kingdom had a
lot to offer. That was a wonderful land. Remember, that was the Promised Land,
rich and fertile and beautiful, productive. And so Sargon kind of got the idea
they ought to just go down and take the south while they were at it.
“Well Sargon died in the battle
moving toward Judah. But he was replaced by his son and his son is a very
famous name in Middle Eastern history. His name is Sennacherib, Sennacherib.
Sennacherib took the invasion into Judah. Now get this. This is around 700 or
so. This is a hundred years before they actually go into captivity and already
God is warning them by giving them a firsthand look at what it’s like to be
taken over by some great power. They stood there and watched the Northern
Kingdom go into oblivion. And now Sennacherib literally invaded Judah and put a
vice grip on Judah.
“There was really only one thing
that saved Judah from Sennacherib, you know what it was? In the line of bad
kings a good one popped up. His name was Hezekiah, Hezekiah. And you know at
the time of Hezekiah there was also a good prophet. His name was Isaiah. The
good life of Hezekiah, the tears and the prayers of Hezekiah and the life of
Isaiah crying out to God in behalf of Judah touched the heart of God and in
grace He spared that nation. And you – you have to – you have to remember the
story. The Assyrians were moving to destroy Judah. And they prayed and God
answered, and God sent – get this – one angel. You remember that? One angel,
and he slaughtered 185 thousand Assyrians in one shot. Wow! Those angels are
something, 185 thousand Assyrians and Judah was spared. God was gracious.
“But do you know something?
Archaeologists tell us that even during that time, though Judah was spared,
under Sennacherib at least 200 thousand people from Judah were taken into
Assyrian captivity. So they got a good taste of what judgment was coming, not
only from what they saw in the north but what they actually experienced
themselves. They had seen tens of thousands of people driven from their homes,
deported into foreign lands. And Werner Keller says in his book, ‘The Bible As
History,’ “The fertile crescent was plowed up, its people tossed about hither
and thither. Instead of a varied range of races and religious – religions
existing side by side, the result was a jumble. All investigation into what
became of the ten tribes who had their home there has so far come to nothing,”
end quote.
“You say, “Boy, I’ll bet Judah
learned their lesson.” No. Hezekiah had a son and Hezekiah’s son had a name
Manasseh and Manasseh was a vile, wretched, idolatrous, grasping, self-centered,
evil king who plunged Judah right back into the pit of idolatrous sin. So you
know what happened? God says, “Let me warn you again.” Sennacherib was followed
by another ruler of the Assyrians named Esarhaddon. And Esarhaddon moved in and
he forced Manasseh to pay him taxes under threat of war.
“Esarhaddon was followed by another
man and we mentioned his name last week, Ashurbanipal. He took Manasseh
captive, wrapped him in chains and took him away. And all the while God was
saying, “This is what it’s going to be, people, if you don’t repent of your
sin.” Well you know something? When Manasseh was dragged away in chains in the
midst of his sorrow and captivity and the land without a king, Manasseh got his
heart right with God. He got down on his knees and he turned to God and he
repented. And he reached out to God and God picked him up and restored him and
he had the Assyrians bring him back and stick him on his throne. And God again
was gracious. Just maybe Manasseh learned finally, and maybe the nation will
come around.
“You know something? They never did,
following Manasseh, again the decline into final oblivion. There was a second
category of warning. Not only the fall of the north and the powerful presence
of the Assyrians, but the preaching of the prophets. All through this time of
decadence, God had His preachers. You know, in a very real sense, I feel that
way in America about many men of God who are standing up in this evil day and
saying, “We cannot continue to live like this and avoid the judgment of God. We
can’t any longer with a clear conscience sing about America as a nation of
godly people.” Just can’t do that. We must speak against this generation, not
on its behalf but against it like the prophets.
“They had some great prophets in
those years. There was Isaiah, then there was Micah, then there was Nahum, and
later on there was Zephaniah. And after him, there was Jeremiah and then there
was Habakkuk and all of these great prophets of God poured out their hearts and
cried out with a message of infinite judgment coming in a way that the people
never dreamed. And they had had some pretty good illustrations, but they were
so captive to their sin that they never really heard the message.”
This
Sermon was preached by John MacArthur on 09-30-1979. This is not the end of it as Lord willing I
will put more of it on tomorrow.
11/27/2023
9:40 AM
No comments:
Post a Comment