Destroying Baal Worship | What Are Your Modern Day “Golden Calves?” | 2 Kings 10:18-31

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never say his name. I love him though. I think

you're the one doing transitions today.

Oh you know what we slaughtered that segment?

No, no, you did not.

Hey, by the way, Jay, he was about the slaughter

what seems like hundreds of priests and as they're trapped

in a temple.

So if this is your second time to listen to

us this week, we kind of have a trend going right.

This is a pretty pretty rough week. Yeah right. But

here's what happens.

That a great transition that was a yes, a great

terrible transition, great horrible transition.

Saint King's Chapter ten says this in verse eighteen.

Then Jayhu called a meeting of all the people of

the city and said to them, Ahab's worship of Bail

was nothing compared to the way I will worship him. Therefore,

some and all the prophets and worshippers of Bail and

called together all his priests. See to it that every

one of them comes, for I am going to offer

a great sacrifice to Bail. Anyone who fails to come

will be put to death. But jay Who's cunning plan

was to destroy all the worshipers of Bail. Then jay

Who ordered prepare a solemn assembly worship to worship Bail.

So they did.

He sent messengers throughout all Israel, summoning those who worshiped Bail,

and they all came. Not a single one remained behind,

and they filled the temple of Bait from one end

to the other. Jayhu instructed the keeper of the wardrobe,

be sure that every worshipper of Bail wears one of

these robes.

So robes were given to them.

Then Jay who went into the Temple of Bail with Johannadabs,

son of Rekib Jahu, said to the worshippers of Bail,

make sure no one who worships the lord is here,

only those who worshiped Bail. So they were all inside

the temple to offer sacrifices and burn offerings. Now Jayhu

was stationed, had stationed eighty of his men outside the

building and warned them, if you let anyone.

Escape, you will pay for it with your own life.

As soon as Jahu had finished sacrificing the burnt offering,

you commanded his guards and officers go in and kill

all of them. Don't let a single one escape. So

they killed them all with their swords, and the guards

and officers dragged their bodies outside. Then Jay Whu's men

went into the innermost fortress of the Temple of Bail.

They dragged out the sacred pillar used in the worship

of Bail and burned it. They smashed the sacred pillar

and wrecked the Temple of Bail, converting into a public

toilet as it remains to this day. In this way,

it's amazing. I love the Bible.

People got get anything out of it. I'm like, are

you serious? Or people telling me the Bible's kind of boring,

I'm like, are you serious. You haven't read it, then

you haven't read Second Kings right for sure.

In this way, Jayhu destroyed every trace of bail worship

from Israel. He did not, however, destroy the gold calves

at Bethel and Dan with which jereboeam' son and Niba

had caused Israel to sin. Nonetheless, the Lord said to Jayhu,

you have done well in following my instructions to destroy

the family they have. Therefore, your descendants will be kings

of Israel down to the fourth generation. But Jayhu did

not obey the law of the Lord, the God of Israel.

With all his heart. He refused to turn from the

sins that Jereboam had led to Israel to commit.

Wow, man, Jayhu, you were right there, buddy. Yeah.

You know yesterday you had said there's something to be

said about going all the way.

Yeah, and make no mistake of it.

When he wanted to get rid of Bail, out of

the city or out of the region, he went all

the way, buddy. He did everything he could to the

nth degree. But he did not go all the way

when it comes to all false worship, which, by the way,

if we remember these things, what's the reason why, what's

his name, Jerbom, what's the reason why Jerreboem decided to

set up.

Golden calves in the north. Anyway? Why did he set

them up in the north.

Was because he was afraid that people go down to

Jerusalem to worships. Yes, give him something else.

Yes, because the temple is located in Jerusalem, which is

the region of Judah. And so remember there's the king

of the Northern Tribes of Israel, which is ten of

the twelve tribes of Israel, which is what we're talking

about here, Jehu. And then there's the two kings of

Judah and Benjamin. And by the way, both were large.

Judah by far was the largest region, the largest tribe anyway, right,

but the Northern Kingdom was larger in terms of totality, Yeah, totality.

But anyway, the point is is that everybody in Israel

had been trained, and you know, they knew that he

was supposed to go down the temple to worship. Well,

Jeribom set up the golden calves because he didn't want

them to go down there because he was afraid if

they went down there, they would stay down there. Right,

So I guess I can, you know, at least it

makes sense to me. It's awful, right. He should have

he should have getten rid of them. But I think

I understand why he didn't because he's thinking, hey, I can't.

Get rid of those. Number one, they were ingrained in culture.

But at this point, yeah, yeah, I wonder if Jeroboehm

had some kind of a hybrid. We're not really worshiping

these calves. We're worshiping they worship the true God or something.

Right, because what they were supposed to represent.

Right, there's some kind of a you know, the power

of the true God or whatever. But God says, don't

make any graven images.

That's what he says. Right.

Sometimes I'll hear people who even participate in Christian religious

things that also have little statues that they pray to, say, well,

not praying to that statue, I'm praying to what that

statue represents. It's kind of very similar, I think, to

these gods. Right, and so there's that. I feel bad

for j Hugh, And I think from the very get go,

we know Jay he was very ambitious. He was very

ambitious guy. God speaks to him, which blows my mind

that God gives him these instructions. And then he still

worships an idol right at the end, right, or leads

the people to doesn't say he worships idle. He lets

the people worship that.

I sort of realized. He allowed the people, yes to

have yeah, keep it.

They kept those there in Bethel and Dan and and

what you see is he does a lot of very

politically expedient things, taking advantage of God's orders right right,

and so he he wipes out ab ahab sons. I mean,

he wipes out all AaB sons and all the prophets

of Bail. And oh, by the way, let's just get

rid of Ahab's buddies too. He kills he kills a Haziah.

Doesn't he's not commanded to, but he does.

Right now.

He wipes out his competition to the south. But he

leaves these these calves because politically it's probably gonna cost

him a lot.

Right. He gets rid of Bail because Bail's the bad guy. Bail.

Bail worship was full on w kid evil beyond. I

think our modern comprehension of how evil.

The worship the worship of Bail was.

Yeah, whereas bombing down to a couple of gold calfs

and leaving a little cash offering every once in a while,

probably to Jay who didn't seem like it was that

big of a deal.

Well, and it served the same purpose. Like you said,

it was there to represent the true God or Israel.

Right, and so they had this, Well, it was to

represent the God of Israel. It didn't represent the true God.

But that's kind of what how Jerebohm was setting it

up for.

Oh yeah, yeah, well represent meaning meaning you're praying to

that same god. Yeah yeah, but yeah, you're not supposed

to have an image representing him as what.

Yeah, yeah, either way, I don't know if he was

trying to say this is the exact same God. I

think he's trying to say it's the same thing, just

as good is perhaps what he was doing there. But anyways,

the Lord told him to do these things, and he

does them. And as I mentioned, he literally cleans house

when it comes to Bail. I love that about it him,

like go jau right yep, And not that I love

the slaughter side of it, but these are the consequence

is that God had set up for these people, and

it was really clear, and it's not like they had

to go do this. These are these prophets are Israelites.

They're not strangers that got brought in that didn't know

God's laws. They knew God's laws. They rejected God's laws,

and they led the people for the sake of the

perversion or for the sake of the money or whatever,

they led the people astray away from God to these

these this false God. And so God had said, this

is going to be the consequence. You're gonna you're gonna

you're gonna be executed for this, and he uses Jahu

for that purpose.

So that's great.

But then, man, every one of these kings almost gets there,

don't they almost?

Yep? Almost, Which, by the way, have you ever heard

Brian Reagan talk about the word manslaughter?

Yeah? I love that.

Brian Regan is a famous community he was one of

our favorite and he says, you know, a lot of

times people get charged with manslaughter, but it's not murder.

It's a it's like it's like with the intent to harm,

and they call it manslaughter.

And he goes, he is without the intent manslaughter is

without the intent. You killed the person, but you didn't

mean to kill it. Yeah, yeah, that's right, that's right.

And he goes, he goes, but he goes, but he goes,

think about that.

It's a horrible word. It's a horrible word. He goes,

what are you inford, He goes, I slaughtered.

Them, man, But yeah, without the intent, that's right. But

but anyway, uh yeah, so let's not overlook this fact

that Jayhu has a pretty good plan. He's like, okay,

make sure there's not a single one left. So he

so he makes sure that that's that happens, and then

he says, make sure they all wear the same robes. Now,

can you imagine being in the middle of this cattle.

You know, I'm sure these people felt like cattle.

Right.

They're all the worshipers of Bail, they're all in the temple,

they're all packed together.

In this one room.

Hey, everybody, put on this robe. And you're thinking, you're thinking, oh, okay,

shop put on this robe and uh and uh, you know,

probably not even thinking like this was the way to

identify who to kill.

Look at this fancy, bright yellow robe right right right.

This is really nice and and everybody's wearing the exact

same clothes.

Well think about that. The what the cleverness of Jay

who This is my point. My point is is he says, Hey,

you think you think a have worshiped Bail. Wait, you

see my worship of Bail so so so he's convincing.

He's tricking all the prophets of Bail. Wow, there's never

been a worship experience like this. And we all got

fancy robes. We're all in here, dude, everybody's here. That

guy's here, that guy's here, all the famous words, they're.

All every one of us. We're all here, and he's

and he's building it up. Jay who's building it up?

Like and none of that.

But he's like, make sure there's not a single actual

worshiper of the Lord in this place.

Right. Well, they interpreted as wow, but we don't have

to deal with anybody else. This is just this is

a pure Bail worshiping moment. I mean everything that Jah

was doing is.

So clever, rightfu, Yes, yes, so uh this just I

was in Nairobi last week and we had all the

guys from around the world. About three hundred leaders came

in from forty something different countries around the world for

this gathering, and they're all, you know, none of them

are prosperous, wealthy people. So we decided on the last

day to take everybody on a safari. And it turns out,

believing or not, they live in the countries where safaris

are and almost none of them have been on a

safari ever. Wow, So we have three hundred people going

on safari at one time.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was crazy. WHOA, so that's going

to be.

So we bought, well, we rented these great, big safari

trucks and they were huge.

They fit fit like twenty people in each one of them.

We rent a whole bunch of them, so it was

it was, I don't know, it was crazy. So they

bought before we left everybody, they bought everybody a safari hat, right,

like like a tan safari hat. They were definitely they

bought them on you know, Timu or something. They were

super cheap. But still, and it was funny because you know,

you got a lot of sun. It's really bright. It's

hot right now there. It was in the eighties nineties,

and so I can remember a couple of times we

stopped one time for a restroom break out in the

middle of the National Park whatever, and you get out

and there's just all these people. But then you could

always find our people because everybody's wearing the same hat, right,

So you're looking through this massive crowd, they all are

very very similar to my eyes, you know what I mean.

I said, well, the hat, hat hat, those are our guys,

right right, And yeah, so that's exactly what they really

stood out they're wearing. You know, they were wearing hats.

These guys are all wearing.

The same roads.

That's exactly why we about that, so we can keep

back everybody.

Yeah, it was a great idea.

So so it's the same kind of thing, right that

I don't know that we took all three hundred on

the Safaris as I'm working it out right now, I

don't know, but it was it was well over one

hundred hundred and fifty something like that that we took.

And uh so he does the same thing. He gives

them all the same clothes so they would stand out,

and he says, make sure no worshippers are God or here.

This is just a private event.

Yeah, right, so now he's wanting to make sure let's

not mess this up either. Let's not accidentally kill the

wrong guys. We're just going to wipe out the priests

of Bail and the worshippers of Bail.

Oh so you thought of the safari a. It's because

of the yellow rogue. Yeah, yeah, that's that's that's how

I was thinking about.

Yeah. So I was just recently rereading John Eldridge's book

Wild at Heart.

Yeah, and we talked about it a couple of weeks

ago on the about Yeah.

Yeah, and he well, it's because of that. I was

flying home and I remembered that we had talked about it.

On one thing, I think, I thought, I haven't read

that book in like one hundred years, you know, it seems.

Like it was on I know it's a long time.

So I look good. I look good for one hundred years.

I don't look great for fifty three, but I look

good for a hundred.

So so the.

I was reading it on the plane and it just

reminded me how our God is a warrior. Right, So

every every boy grows up with this warrior in them, right,

and it's the same thing that our God is a warrior.

So the Bible says that there's a point where God says,

Israel is my bride. Multiple times he says Israel is

his bride, and he asks them, why are you cheating

on me with other gods? So where we only think

of this great cosmic circumstance of a creator of this planet,

this universe, God's loss. We only think of it from

our perspective. But it turns out it's not our story,

it's his. And what he made was a bride. He

made somebody to love and to be loved by. And

then he says, I'm going to provide for you. I'm

going to offer security to you. I'm going to give

you homes and land, and I'm going to give you

a land full of milk and honey. I'm going to

give you peace if you'll follow me. I'm going to

give you prosperity. Just show me your love. That's all

I want. I just want your love. And then, on

multiple occasions through the prophets, he says, why are you cheating?

I mean literally committing adultery. He says at one point,

why are you horing around with the other gods?

Right?

And so finally God decides, you know what, I'm going

to war for my bride. That's what he does, He's

going to war. And this is that God uses men

to do his bidding right in this and so he's

using a future king to wipe out the bad king.

He's using a future leader to wipe out the bad prophets, right,

that's the mechanism he's choosing, using the moment. But this

is a warring God. You ever wonder how God feels

about at you, this is how God feels about you.

I'm all in, I'm gonna do whatever it takes to

get you back right. And so I think some of

the difficulties we have in our life is is our

own bad decisions, but it's also God doing battle to

get us back right, to win us back and if

we can just understand that his passion for us. You know,

the Bible says in Exodus that don't have any other gods.

God's a jealous God, right, And that jealous is like

a lover's jealousy. It's not jealous like I wish I

had what you had, right, That's not it. It's I

have this passion for you that I don't want. I

don't want your heart to be stolen by anybody else.

Right.

And if you've ever been in love. You know what

that means, right, you feel the same way about you

about the one that you love. And this is how

God feels about the people of Israel. So while we

look at him, we go, wow, he's wiping out a

bunch of people. These are horrible, evil people that have

chosen to run away from God, not to follow God.

And he's saying, I'm doing battle. I want all the

rest of it is let's come back to me, right,

That's what I want. So let's get rid of the

one who lead the worship away from me, and then

let's elevate the ones who will lead worship coming to me.

And jay who has this opportunity, I honestly believe I think,

I think, I really do believe that if Jayhu had

led the people to wholeheartedly worship God, I think jay

Who would have reunited Israel. I think I think he

had that opportunity. He was so forceful, he was so demanding.

A has Aa is out of the way at this point.

If he had led these people and it led them

back to Jerusalem for worship and led them, I think

God will done it because he was doing everything else

right except politically.

I don't want him go down to Jerusalem. So I'm

going to keep these two calves, so dumb man.

But yeah, God's a warrior and he's fighting for your

love and compassion and love and passion.

That's great. Well, there definitely is that perspective. Well, there's

baskets full of heads just in the last two chapters,

so that's right, right, that's great. He's going to war

for you, Yeah for sure.

Hey, well that's a great place to end, and that's

our time, so hopefully we will see you next time.

On the Bible Gush one