SERIES: Enlightening Epitaphs of the Kings and Prophets
The Ten Lost Tribes: “They refused to listen…. So the Lord removed them from His presence.”
Introduction: For the past several months we have been studying the biographies and the resulting epitaphs of a number of the kings and prophets of Israel and Judah. For the most part these kings have been a discouraging lot. Jehoshaphat and Jotham had a heart for God, and a few like Amaziah and Uzziah, had a half-heart for God, but most had no heart for Him at all. And frankly, we would have found the situation even worse had we concentrated on the kings of the northern kingdom of Israel as described in 2 Kings. But for the most part, with the exception of Ahab and Jezebel, we have limited our study to the kings of the southern kingdom of Judah.
This morning we are going to cap off this string of tragic biographies with the sad epitaph of an entire nation: the northern kingdom of Israel. “They would not listen,,,. So the Lord removed them from his presence.” The destruction and demise of Israel was so thorough that today, 28 centuries later, they are still known as the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. But frankly, the dominant theme of this story is not the sin of a faithless people, but rather “the tough love of a faithful God.” We begin this morning with …
Review of the history of the northern kingdom of Israel
I want to read a few verses from our primary text this morning–2 Kings 17–verses that summarize the collapse of the northern kingdom but at the same time communicate the unrelenting love of God.
The king of Assyria invaded the entire land of Israel, marched against Samaria its capital and laid siege to it for three years. In the ninth year of Hosea, the king of Assyria captured Samaria and deported the Israelites to Assyria….
All this took place because the Israelites had sinned against the LORD their God, who had brought them up out of Egypt from under the power of Pharaoh king of Egypt….
The Lord warned Israel and Judah through all his prophets and seers: “Turn from your evil ways. Observe my commands and decrees, in accordance with the entire Law that I commanded your fathers to obey and that I delivered to you through my servants the prophets.”
But they would not listen and were as stiff-necked as their fathers, who did not trust in the LORD their God….
So the LORD was very angry with Israel and removed them from his presence. Only the tribe of Judah was left, and even Judah did not keep the commands of the LORD their God (2 Kings 17:5-19).
Do you see among the rubble the clear evidence of the love of God, despite the obvious tough actions He took against His people? First, we are told that this is the same God who delivered them from slavery in Egypt. Then the author reminds us that God warned them through His prophets, again and again–that’s sure a sign of love. And thirdly, when He disciplined the northern kingdom, He allowed the southern kingdom to survive for another 130+ years, even though they too, for the most part, refused to keep His commandments.
God is patient; He is long-suffering. Listen to the description of Him in Psalm 103:
The LORD is compassionate and gracious,
slow to anger, abounding in love.
He will not always accuse,
nor will he harbor his anger forever;
he does not treat us as our sins deserve
or repay us according to our iniquities.
For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
so great is his love for those who fear him….
As a father has compassion on his children,
so the LORD has compassion on those who fear him;
for he knows how we are formed,
he remembers that we are dust. (Psalm 103:8-14)
Yes, God is full of love and grace and mercy, but He is also holy. And His holiness means that He cannot ignore sin indefinitely; He cannot wink at it and pretend it doesn’t matter. Furthermore, He knows that if He doesn’t discipline His children, they will go off the deep end and destroy themselves with their sin. And so, His love must be tough; it was with Israel.
A sad summary of Israel’s two centuries of existence. I want you to note well the chronology here. The northern kingdom was founded upon Solomon’s death in 931 B.C. and was destroyed as described in the year 722 B.C. That means Israel was a nation for 209 years. That’s only slightly less than the 226 years the United States of America has existed as an independent nation. I think that’s important, because we Americans have a tendency to think very myopically about history. We look at our country as the rich, powerful, and influential nation it is, and we consider it indestructible. A lot of Americans seem to think that modern history started with the Declaration of Independence and everything before that was the Dark Ages. As a matter of fact, we are a newcomer, a young upstart on the world stage. Two hundred years is just a blip on the screen of history. We make a serious error when we exalt ourselves and fail to realize that we are what we are only because of the grace and love of God. But just as in the case of Israel, that love can be tough.
Many of the actions and attitudes that brought Israel down after two centuries are clearly being exhibited in our own country today. It has been said that “if history teaches us anything, it is that history teaches us nothing.” Sadly, that is often the case, but it would be very unwise for us not to examine carefully what happened to Israel so that we do not make the same mistakes.
In its 209 years Israel had 19 or 20 kings (depending upon how one counts co-regencies) and nine different dynasties. Not one of those kings, starting with Jeroboam I and ending with Hoshea, made any real pretense of godliness. I list their names here and suspect that relatively few are known to you–perhaps Jeroboam, Ahab and Jehu. The reason the others are relatively obscure is obvious if you read through 2 Kings, because they contributed little, sinned greatly, and ended up being consigned to the scrap heap of history.
Jeroboam I Jehu
Nadab Jehoahaz
Baasha Jehoash
Elah Jeroboam II
Zimri Zechariah
Tibni Shallum
Omri Menahem
Ahab Pekahiah
Ahaziah Pekah
Joram Hoshea
There is just one name I want to draw your attention to this morning, and that is Jeroboam II, who reigned longer than any other king of Israel, from 793 to 753 B.C. His forty years were a time of economic, military, and cultural prosperity, though, unfortunately, not spiritual prosperity. In fact, a lot of parallels can be drawn between Jeroboam’s day and ours. The past 40 years have been a time of unparalleled prosperity in the United States. Our economy has been strong, our military might unprecedented, and our culture has led the world.
But just 31 years after the death of Jeroboam, the incredibly strong and powerful nation of Israel went down the tubes and out of existence. In that 31 years six different kings followed in quick succession. Four were assassinated by their successors, one died of unknown causes, and the last was taken prisoner by the Assyrians, never to be heard from again. If you read their biographies in 2 Kings 15 and 17, you find epitaphs like these:
Zechariah: “He did evil in the eyes of the LORD.”
Shallum: “He sacked Tiphsah and ripped open all the pregnant women.”
Menahem: “During his entire reign he did not turn away from the sins of
Jeroboam.”
Pekahiah: “He did evil in the eyes of the LORD.”
Pekah: “He did evil in the eyes of the LORD.”
Hoshea: “He did evil in the eyes of the LORD, but not like the kings of
Israel who preceded him.”
In fact, that last statement is the best thing said about any of these rulers–“He wasn’t quite as bad as those before him.” It’s little wonder that God stepped in to bring an end to this nonsense.
The tragic destruction of its capital and deportation of its people. In the early paragraphs of 2 Kings 17 we discover that Shalmaneezer V, the famous Assyrian emperor, attacked Israel because Hoshea, their last king, failed to live up to the treaties between the two countries. Shalmaneezer seized Hoshea, put him in prison, invaded the whole country, and laid siege to the capital of Samaria. The Jews fought valiantly and held out for three years. But finally, the city was captured, and the Assyrians deported most of the population to Assyria, leaving mainly the old, the sick, and the disabled.
This was the end of the proud nation of Israel. It wasn’t the end of God’s chosen people, but it was the end of the northern kingdom. The reason they are referred to as the Ten Lost Tribes is that no Jew today can trace his lineage with any certainty back to these tribes–only to the tribes of Judah and Benjamin. And the primary reason for that is …
The importation of foreigners and the birth of the Samaritans. Verse 24 tells us that “the king of Assyria brought people from Babylon, Cuthah, Avva, Hamath and Sepharvaim and settled them in the towns of Samaria to replace the Israelites.” This was a normal practice in that day. To keep exiles from ever returning and reclaiming their property, it was given to foreign settlers. Over time they intermarried with the Jews that remained and became a nation of mixed races called Samaritans. The Jews of Jesus’ day (who were mostly descendants of Judah) hated the Samaritans and vice versa.
Now I want us to be sure we understand why all this happened to Israel. It was not just bad luck, not just the cycle of political fortunes, not just man’s inhumanity to man. It was the product of tough love, divine discipline on an entire country!
Reasons for the fall of Israel
They sinned against the Lord. Listen to verse 7: “All this took place because the Israelites had sinned against the LORD their God, who had brought them up out of Egypt from under the power of Pharaoh king of Egypt.” The author then goes on to give us some details as to how they sinned. He tells us …
They worshiped other gods and followed the practices of the nations the LORD had driven out before them, as well as the practices that the kings of Israel had introduced. The Israelites secretly did things against the LORD their God that were not right. From watchtower to fortified city they built themselves high places in all their towns. They set up sacred stones and Asherah poles on every high hill and under every spreading tree. At every high place they burned incense, as the nations whom the LORD had driven out before them had done. They did wicked things that provoked the LORD to anger. They worshiped idols, though the LORD had said, “You shall not do this.” (2 Kings 17:7-12).
Do you see any of these same tendencies in our own country–worshiping other gods, doing secret things against the Lord, doing wicked things that provoke Him, proliferating false religious systems? I think you’d have to be blind not to see the parallels. And please note that none of this was done innocently, without premeditation. In fact, the author goes on to stress the fact that …
They refused to listen to God’s prophets. You know, the very fact that God sent them prophets is another sign of His love. We read in verse 13:
The LORD warned Israel and Judah through all his prophets and seers: “Turn from your evil ways. Observe my commands and decrees, in accordance with the entire Law that I commanded your fathers to obey and that I delivered to you through my servants the prophets.”
There is no way one could say they didn’t know better. If we were studying the OT chronologically, we would see that many of the prophets–not just Elijah and Elisha, but Obadiah, Joel, Amos, Hosea, Micah, and Isaiah–delivered God’s warnings to the northern kingdom. But they refused to listen. Oh, I suspect there were a few people here and there, perhaps even an entire congregation of people on occasion, who listened and repented and were obedient. (You will remember that even in Ahab’s time God told Elijah, who was feeling very much alone, that there were 7,000 others in the nation who had remained true to Him and refused to bow the knee to Baal. But 7,000 among several million is not very encouraging!)
I don’t know what the comparable statistics are in our nation today. I do know, however, that it is not much more encouraging. Oh, there are still lots of religious people; church attendance, though steadily declining, is still around 40%, about 20 times better than in most of Western Europe. But that includes every religion, every cult, and every New Age group in the country. How many of those are gathering to worship the one true God and study His Word? You know, God has sent us prophets, too. There are voices crying in the wilderness today, calling God’s people back to him, but how many are listening?
As a whole, the nation of Israel turned a deaf ear to God’s prophets. Consider verse 14:
But they would not listen and were as stiff-necked as their fathers, who did not trust in the LORD their God. They rejected his decrees and the covenant he had made with their fathers and the warnings he had given them. They followed worthless idols and themselves became worthless.
Let me stop there for a moment. I believe it is always true that people become like the God or gods they worship. The pagan gods fought, committed adultery, manipulated one another, and therefore the people who worshiped them felt free to do the same. The god of Islam, Allah, is remote and stern and vengeful, not the loving God of Scripture; is it any surprise that radical Muslims practice vengeance as a core value of their faith? If one’s god is tolerant of sin and ready to excuse, that person will be tolerant of sin and excuse his own behavior. As the passage says, those who follow worthless idols will themselves become worthless. On the other hand, those whose God is a God of holiness and justice and creativity and love and patience, have at least the possibility of learning those characteristics and becoming like Him. But Israel chose worthless idols over a loving God.
They violated God’s commandments. God had given them the Law of Moses, consisting of 613 laws that governed every area of their lives. These laws were not meant to deprive them of freedom but to enhance their freedom, not meant to lessen their pleasure but to enhance their pleasure. These laws were designed to help them become more healthy, secure, fulfilled, and happy. In other words, the commandments of God were themselves another sign of His love. But here’s what it says in verse 16: “They forsook all the commands of the LORD their God.”
What have we done with the laws of God? Well, what have we done with just the ten commandments? Lying has become a way of life in our culture. I heard the other day about research that shows the average American tells 200 lies a day! Stealing is at an all-time high, particularly in the corporate world. What about adultery? I read a national magazine just this week that cited a study that says 70% of all men and 50% of all women are unfaithful to their spouses. And covetousness? It seems the more we have, the more we want. Are we any better than the ancient Israelites?
They sacrificed their children on the altar of expedience. Here’s what it says in verse 17: “They sacrificed their sons and daughters in the fire.” They did this to appease their false gods and gain their favor. Isn’t it a relief to know we don’t practice such uncivilized behavior in our country in the 21st century! Imagine sacrificing one’s own children in order to achieve a better or more convenient life for oneself! Unthinkable, isn’t it? Friends, I want to tell you that I firmly believe the #1 issue God is going to charge our nation with at the judgment of the nations is the way we have sacrificed our children, not just on the altar of the abortionist, but also on the altar of divorce, and on the altar of materialism. This is not said as a blanket condemnation of everyone who has made one of these mistakes. Rather it’s a strong encouragement to elevate children to the status they deserve. A tragic number of children have been essentially abandoned to rear themselves by parents bent on achieving personal happiness and financial security.
I recently heard that the definition of insanity is doing the exact same thing but expecting a different result. Do we really believe we can escape God’s discipline on our own country if we behave just like Israel? We have seen that they sinned against the Lord, refused to listen to God’s prophets, violated God’s commandments, and sacrificed their children on the altar of expedience. But you know something?
The ultimate failure that brought the tough love of God down upon Israel was the refusal to worship God as He desires to be worshiped.
Have you noticed the essential absence of any specific mention of fornication, adultery, divorce, lying, cheating, murder, and drunkenness in the descriptions given in 2 Kings 17 of Israel’s sins? Oh, if you read the prophets, you discover quickly that these sins were rampant, along with neglect of the poor, injustice in the courts, etc. But the sin the Scriptures focus on most when justifying God’s tough love with Israel is their violation of the first two commandments:
“You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God.”(Exodus 20:3-5)
The violation of these first two commandments is the ultimate sin. And what I discover in the remainder of chapter 17 is an incredible display of the very sin of false worship. Three times–in verse 32, 33, and 41–we have very similar statements about how worship became distorted and therefore worthless in Israel. These statements are describing the behavior of the remnant of Jews and foreigners left in Israel after the Assyrian conquest, but the words actually describe the whole history of Israel:
“They worshiped the Lord, but …” (32)
“They worshiped the Lord, but …” (33)
“Even while these people were worshiping the Lord,… they were serving their idols.” (41)
I want us to examine each of these statements and try to grasp what it is saying to us this morning:
1. “They worshiped the Lord, but they also appointed all sorts of their own people to officiate for them as priests.” (2 Kings 17:32) I would summarize the issue here this way: they chose the wrong kind of leaders. There is a leadership crisis in the church today. I’m not talking about leaders who haven’t read the latest leadership literature and therefore don’t know how to organize their schedule or run a meeting. I’m talking about the moral scandals we read about almost daily among the clergy. And I’m talking about a major faith crisis among the clergy. Two weeks ago I was talking to a pastor friend of mine from Wichita. He told me about the latest chapter in the saga of a well-known clergyman I was acquainted with when I lived there 20 years ago. This pastor of a leading mainline church had gone through two highly public adulterous affairs and had divorced his wife and remarried–all while pastoring this church. The justification his leaders gave for keeping him was, “We have to be forgiving–who is able to cast the first stone?”
When his third affair became public, the church finally decided enough was enough and asked him to leave. He was incensed at their lack of love and their intolerance, but fortunately the Unitarian Church in Wichita came to the rescue. They had a vacancy, so they hired him, and even more amazingly, a number of people from his former church followed him to his new pastorate because they had such high regard for him!
Friends, when professing Christians are choosing people like this to be their leaders (and frankly, it’s happening all the time; I could share many other unbelievable stories about the blind leading the blind), the church is in trouble and is inviting the judgment of God, just as Israel was disregarding God’s requirements for leaders, and therefore invited the discipline of the Lord.
2. “They worshiped the Lord, but they also served their own gods in accordance with the customs of the nations.” I would summarize the problem here as practicing cultural syncretism–adopting, adapting, and incorporating the views and customs of a pagan culture into the faith. Now certainly a measure of adaptation is necessary and appropriate. Missionaries have long realized they can’t just import western music and western dress codes and western styles into African or South American churches. But friends, if and when God’s people become so adapting to the culture that they bring idolatry and paganism into the church, that is destructive of the core values of Christianity.
There are times when God calls upon us to resist the culture, and I think there are times when He asks us to reform the culture. But frankly, I see more evidence that the church is compromising with the culture. The divorce rate is as high today in the church as it is in the culture at large. The business ethics of Christians are often indistinguishable from those of the secular world. Even much of the music and preaching in some churches is hardly distinguishable from what you might find at a pop concert or a motivational seminar.
3. In fact, “Even while these people were worshiping the Lord, they were serving their idols.” (41) We here at First Free may try our best to choose godly leaders, and I think we do a pretty good job at that. We may do our best to avoid cultural syncretism, and I think we generally do, with perhaps somewhat less success. But when it comes to serving idols even while we are worshiping the Lord, I think we struggle big time. Several months ago Pastor Jeff talked very directly to us about the effects of idolatry in the church.[i] He said,
To worship is to value something above other things so that you serve it through the amount of energy and time you expend on it…. That for which I would give anything and accept nothing in exchange is the most important thing in my life. Whatever that is, is my god.
Jeff then went on to talk about the twin gods of pride and self-determination, the god of success, the god of family, the god of popularity, the god of health, the god of sports. Even religion itself can become a god we worship. Viewed that way, I fear many of us may be serving idols even while we are worshiping the Lord. Jesus said, “No servant can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and mammon.” Do we realize that if we continue in our double-mindedness, we are inviting the tough love of God, the discipline of the Lord?
Now let me summarize all that happened to Israel in the words of 2 Kings 17: 18-23:
So the LORD was very angry with Israel and removed them from his presence. Only the tribe of Judah was left, and even Judah did not keep the commands of the LORD their God…. The Israelites persisted in all the sins of Jeroboam and did not turn away from them until the LORD removed them from his presence, as he had warned through all his servants the prophets. So the people of Israel were taken from their homeland into exile in Assyria, and they are still there.
Please realize that these words do not mean that God abandoned His chosen people. He abandoned the nation, but He continued to pursue individuals within that nation. In fact, we will discover next week that when the next king of Judah, Hezekiah, led a great revival among the people of Judah, he was not satisfied to see only his own people blessed by that revival; he sent word to all those left in Israel and invited them to come down and participate. In 2 Chronicles 30:6-9 we find a letter that Hezekiah sent to those people:
People of Israel, return to the LORD, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel (Jacob), that he may return to you who are left, who have escaped from the hand of the kings of Assyria. Do not be like your fathers and brothers, who were unfaithful to the LORD, the God of their fathers, so that he made them an object of horror, as you see.
When couriers took that letter to the towns of Israel, most of the people scorned and ridiculed them, but a few humbled themselves and went to Jerusalem. The very fact that God continued to pursue them as individuals is evidence of His relentless love.
The message I want to conclude with is this:
God still loves people and will do anything to reach them except force their repentance, but His love is still tough.
The entire picture of God in the Scriptures is that He is a pursuing God. People are not the seekers; He is the seeker. We are not trying to find Him; He is trying to find us. He loves mankind and is not willing that any should perish but rather than all should come to repentance. And so His judgment tarries.
There’s a fascinating story in the NT about a woman who was a direct descendant of the mixed-race Samaritans we’ve learned about today. According to the 4th chapter of the Gospel of John, Jesus met this woman at a well and asked her for a drink. She was stunned that a full-blooded Jew would ask a woman (and a Samaritan at that!) for a drink, but she got into a conversation with Him. The woman had a disastrous personal life, having had five husbands and now shacking up with still another man. She was hung up on some questions about the appropriate place to worship–was it at the Temple in Jerusalem or at the Samaritan temple on Mount Gerizim?
As Jesus counseled her, He did not begin by telling her that God was angry about her sins, which were many. Instead He told her that God was seeking “worshipers who will worship the Father in spirit and truth” (John 4:23). He began guiding her toward a right relationship with God. She sensed Jesus’ love and compassion for her, and she repented and believed. And she became a contagious Christian. The text goes on to say, “Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony.”
Friends, the relentless love of God was still operating with an individual descended from the settlers in Samaria 700 years before! And it’s still operating today. God loves you, and He is seeking you. He will do anything to find you and bring you into His family. The proof of that is found in the fact that He already did the most amazing thing conceivable when He gave His one and only Son to die for you. Friends, it’s time to respond to His love–before you have to experience His tough love.
DATE: August 18, 2002
Tags:
History of Israel
Samaritans
Child sacrifice
Abortion
Leadership
Idolatry
[i] Jeff Schultz, Idolatry American Style, sermon preached at First Evangelical Free Church, May 26, 2002.