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July 13, 2021
They Are Still His People (Walk Thru the Bible Week 24)
The period of the divided kingdom includes a few good kings who try to do right but for the most part, it is full of idolatry and social decay. God’s grace gives the people centuries to get right with Him while He sends prophets to warn them of the coming judgment and invite them to repent. The prophet Joel explains that God will use foreigner invaders to carry out his judgment, but one day He will restore His people to their land and to Him, because they are still His people.
This episode complements the daily readings from our Walk Thru the Bible reading plan for July 12-18, covering 2 Kings 8-14; Joel; Jonah.
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Transcript
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Welcome to Walk Through the Bible, Susan Michael's 12-month journey through the most exciting
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book on the planet.
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It will transform your life one page at a time.
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Be sure to subscribe for future episodes that will ignite your faith and bring your Bible
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to life.
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Now, let's join our host, Susan Michael.
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Well, hey there and welcome back.
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This is Walk Through the Bible Week 24.
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We are deep into our history of the Northern and Southern kingdoms and this week we are
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reading from the Daily Bible pages 734 to 762 or what are the dates of June 11 through
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the 17th in the Daily Bible.
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Now last week we talked about sort of an overview of the history of this period, what we were
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looking at geographically in the context and this week we are deep into stories and jumping
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back and forth from the Northern Kingdom to the Southern Kingdom and I know it gets a
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little tedious and it gets a little confusing.
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But just stick with me.
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I am going to help you wade through it and sort of stick at that 30,000 foot view and
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not worry so much about all the details and getting straight which king was this and that.
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As I explained last week, in the Northern Kingdom of Israel their history lasted about
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200 years and in that 200 years they had nine different dynasties and around 20 different
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kings.
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So our first dynasty started out with Jeroboam and then last week we read about Basha and
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then the house of Omri who was Ahab, Ahab was his son, we talked about Ahab and Jezebel
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last week.
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So this year, this week we are reading about Yehu.
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Now God was so disgusted with Ahab, you know I told you he was the most evil king of the
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North and he brought this national cult of the Baal of Phoenicia that Jezebel had brought
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with her.
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And so God tells Elijah to go anoint Yehu as the successor of Ahab and that Yehu is
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to take over.
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Well, Yehu then goes and he wipes out not just Ahab but all of his family and his court,
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he kills everybody.
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He goes so far and beyond, it is so bloody and he even killed the king of Judah.
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Now this I want to explain to you why because the king of Judah had married a daughter of
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Jezebel and Ahab so they were related.
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So that means that this king was a threat to whoever was going to be king of the North.
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He could get a following.
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So he's killed, all his relatives are killed and I mean it was just very, very bloody.
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Yehu did one good thing, he destroyed the temple to the Baal of Tyre that had been built
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in the center of Samaria, the capital of the Northern Kingdom.
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So he got completely rid of the worship of the Baal that Jezebel had brought with her.
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He got rid of the prophets, he got rid of everything.
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But he didn't get rid of the two worship sites that Jeroboam had erected where he put the
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golden calves and where they were a mixture of worship of the God of Israel with the God
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of these calves or the God of Baal, local Baal.
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So like I told you before, there were many different Baals and there were these national
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or local Baals I should call them that were being worshiped there because there were lots
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of Canaanite pagans living in Israel and then there were a lot of Israelites that were highly
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influenced by this and they were worshiping there at Dan and Bethel.
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But Yehu did get rid of the worship of Jezebel's Baal that she brought with her.
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Now he immediately went and paid tribute to Shalmaneser who was the Assyrian king.
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And I bring this up because there is an archaeological find.
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It's called the Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser the Third.
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And on that obelisk he shows all these various kings that had to bow down and pay tribute
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to him.
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And it actually depicts Yehu, the king of Israel, bowing down to Shalmaneser, kissing
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his feet and paying tribute.
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So very clear archaeological evidence of Yehu.
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Now you've got to understand that Yehu also greatly weakens the northern kingdom of Israel.
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Why?
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Because by destroying the worship of Baal he has cut off ties.
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He's insulted Phoenicia.
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So he no longer has this strong alliance with Phoenicia.
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He has killed the king of Judah so he doesn't have a strong alliance with Judah either.
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So this really weakens him and makes him much more vulnerable.
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Now down in the southern kingdom of Judah, since Yehu had killed the king, his mother
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Athaliah, and I'm sorry I said that wrong before, it was his mother that was a daughter
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of Ahab and Jezebel.
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And she had married someone in the line of David and so their son was Ahaziah.
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And King Ahaziah was the one that was killed by Yehu because he was related to Ahab.
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But he was also related to the line of David.
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So his mother, the daughter of Jezebel, what does she do?
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Guess, take a big guess.
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She who serves the throne and takes it over herself, the throne of Judah.
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So this is the only time where someone from the house of David wasn't sitting on the throne.
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I think it only lasted for about six years.
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But what does she do?
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She brings in the worship of Baal, Jezebel's Baal, and makes it the national cult of Judah.
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And as a result, at the end of her six years, the priest of the God of Israel, because remember
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she's over Jerusalem where the temple is and all the Levites were there, they rebelled.
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And so they got rid of her and they found one relative, one member of the house of David
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that had not been killed.
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And he was a child.
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And so he was put on the throne as a child king, Joash.
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And the kingdom was actually run by one of the priests.
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But they wanted someone from the kingdom of David to be on the throne and they wanted
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to get rid of the Baal worship and that's exactly what they did.
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Of course, by the end of her reign, it was only six years, but it says the temple was
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in disrepair, so she may have even damaged the temple or destroyed parts of it and it
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had to be fixed up.
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Now back to the northern kingdom of Israel.
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Now we get to King Jeroboam II and he's a very important king because under his reign,
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the kingdom of Israel becomes the strongest ever.
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Under his reign, they are so wealthy.
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They are so powerful.
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They are so big.
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What does that mean?
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It means that if he's getting stronger, if Israel's getting stronger, it's because
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Assyria and Aram are weaker.
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But he's getting stronger and archeology confirms that his reign was very prosperous and really
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the most prosperous of Israel's history.
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He conquered the Arameans in Aram and Assyria is weakened at this point, not because of
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him, just their own internal problems, and that allowed him then to become strong.
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If during this time of Jeroboam, if you were to add up his kingdom with the southern kingdom,
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they actually are as big as what Solomon had.
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So it really is very strong and on the outside it looks very strong, very prosperous, it
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looks very good, right?
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But on the inside, that's where the problem was.
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It was still very sick.
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And this is why we have our national prophets are really saying judgment is coming.
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And we're going to get into a couple of prophets this week.
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And then next week, we're going to talk about Hosea and Amos.
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They both prophesied under Jeroboam II and they did not have good things to say.
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Because it was a corrupt kingdom on the inside.
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You know, it's a good war to warning for all of us.
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Prosperity is not the proof of spiritual righteousness.
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And we have to get that in our heads because sometimes we tend to think, oh, you're being
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prosperous, that means you're being blessed.
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And it can mean that, but it doesn't always mean that.
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So now this week, we read what I consider a comical story about a rebellious prophet
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and his name is Jonah.
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We all know the story because we learned it as children.
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But let's listen to it in the context now of what we know is happening all around us.
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So he was also a prophet to Jeroboam II.
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But he had a call from God to go to Nineveh.
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Now Nineveh was a city in the Assyrian province on the Tigris River.
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I don't believe it was the capital of Assyria at the time of Jonah, but it became the capital
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of Assyria.
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It was a very big city on the Tigris River.
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It said it took four days to walk through the city of Nineveh.
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So Jonah is called by God to go to Nineveh and to preach repentance to them, to warn
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them of what is coming, and to call them to repentance.
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And of course, Jonah does not want to do this because he hates the Assyrians.
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They are the enemy.
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So he runs instead of going northeast towards Assyria.
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Where does he go?
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West.
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And he boards a ship to go even farther west to Tarshish.
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And of course there's a storm and the sailors are like, what's going on?
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He said, look, it's all because of me.
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Just throw me overboard.
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Just kill me.
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And they throw him overboard and God has him swallowed up by a big fish.
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And so he's inside the fish.
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So he says, okay, God, I'll go.
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He doesn't really repent, repent, but he does turn.
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He says, okay, I'll go.
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So the fish vomits him up on dry ground and he goes to the city of Nineveh.
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Now, like I said, Nineveh is very, very big, but it says that he just kind of entered it.
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And on that first day, he starts preaching a very, very weak and very brief message to
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call them to repentance.
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He does not want this to succeed.
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You understand?
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His heart wasn't in it.
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But lo and behold, they repent, they become sorry for their sins, and God forgives them.
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And so Jonah is very angry with God.
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But what does he say?
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I knew it.
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I knew you would forgive them because you are a gracious and forgiving God.
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And I knew this would happen.
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This is why I didn't want to come.
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So we know the story.
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He goes and he sits out to watch and see what happens.
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And this vine grows up to protect him from the sun and then a worm chews it away and
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he gets so angry and God's like, why are you so angry?
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And so I think the point for all of us in this story is, are we okay with the fact that
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God loves who may be our enemy?
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It's really easy in life for us to define our enemies and those people that disagree
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with us, those people that are doing things that I disagree with that may even be hurting
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my cause or my people or my country or my whatever.
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They're my enemy.
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And then to think that God loves them as much as he may love us.
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Are we okay with that?
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Because that's the message of the book of Jonah.
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God loved the Assyrian people and he wanted to reach them.
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Now a little point of history here I want to tell you.
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The Nineveh, what's known as the Nineveh Plains today is in what is today Northern Iraq.
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The Nineveh area, it later became the capital of the Assyrian Empire and it was a formidable
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enemy to the people of Israel and God used Assyria to bring judgment on his people, Israel.
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But Jonah, who brought this message of repentance to Nineveh, it's very interesting that then
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early after the disciples Christianity went to the whole area of Assyria.
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And so we have had Christians in Assyria since the very, very beginning of Christianity
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and they were there in that Nineveh area.
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And in Nineveh there was a tomb to the prophet Jonah which supposedly they say he died there.
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And they also had a tomb to the prophet Nahum.
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And in modern times now this is in the Iraqi city of Mosul.
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And I'm sure you heard of Mosul, you heard it on the news, it was the center of a lot
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of fighting in the Iraq war.
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But Mosul is at the edge, it contains part of the ancient city of Nineveh.
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So in Mosul is the tomb of Jonah and is a section of the ancient walls of Nineveh from
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what, 2700 years ago.
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And when Isis moved into Mosul, what did they do?
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They blew up the tomb of Jonah and the walls of Nineveh.
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And of course they were killing Christians right and left and so the Christians fled
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out into what's known as the Nineveh Plains.
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I want you to know this because God's heart is for those people too.
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And there's Christian, Chaldean Christians which are of the original Assyrians.
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They are Assyrian Christians today, alive today in the earth.
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And a lot of them were there in that ancient area of Nineveh which is today Mosul.
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And Baghdad and that whole area, those Christians fled to the Nineveh Plains.
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And you know, our prayer is that the Christians of that area would be able to form some kind
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of sovereignty where they can protect themselves, they can fight for themselves and not continue
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under this type of persecution, highly persecuted in that area.
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And my heart just broke when I heard of how Isis was destroying these key archaeological
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artifacts there in the tomb of Jonah and the walls of Nineveh.
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Now the other prophet that we read about this week or read from I should say was the book
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of Joel.
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The book of Joel we don't really know when it was written.
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And scholarship in the last, you know, couple hundred years had Joel being as written one
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of the first books to be written.
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And so the Daily Bible put Joel here as one of the first of what we call the writing prophets.
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But there really is a case to be made for Joel being actually the last one to be written.
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So I just want you to know, we don't know when it was written.
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It's a collection of poems and it talks about judgment, but it doesn't say why judgment is
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coming, which is interesting because next week we're going to read Amos and Hosea.
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They list all the sins, everything going on in northern Israel and in Judah.
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But Joel doesn't mention the sins specifically, but it talks about this army of locusts.
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And you know, locust swarms are very, very common in the area.
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We had a major one just in 2020, but they're very common.
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So there may have really been a locust swarm that Joel is talking about.
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But then Joel kind of transitions and begins warning about future judgment that's coming
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in the form of the day of the Lord.
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And he describes it almost as locust.
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So when you're reading it, it's a little confusing.
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Are we talking about locusts or people?
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And I also want to mention there's a famous verse in Joel about, blow the trumpet in Zion,
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you know, sound the alarm in my holy mountain.
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And there used to be a song that we all sang.
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It was very popular.
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So as they run on the city, they walk on the walls, great is the army that carries out
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his word.
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And we'd really get into it.
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And then one day somebody realized that this is talking about the Assyrian army that God
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is using to bring judgment on Israel.
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They're the ones climbing up the wall and bringing judgment.
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And so most people stop singing that song.
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But it comes from Joel.
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And so Joel talks about this judgment that's coming in the day of the Lord.
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And then he calls for them to repent and to rend their hearts and says that God is slow
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to anger.
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And God responds and he defeats the invaders and he restores the land and he pours out
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his spirit and there's this divine presence.
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And it's almost like there's a whole new garden of Eden.
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It's a whole new creation.
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And so this is the message of the book of Joel.
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I want to concentrate on one concept in it before we bring today to a close that we find
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in Joel that's very important.
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Joel here is saying that it's God's army that's going to bring the judgment, that's
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bringing the day of the Lord.
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His army.
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And this is a concept we got to get our minds around and we've got to grasp about God's
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relationship with his people and his relationship with these other countries.
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Israel is his people.
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He married them in the wilderness.
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They are his.
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He's made promises to them.
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And one of the promises was that if they turned from him and worshiped other gods that they
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would be kicked out of the land.
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They would be taken into exile.
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They would be judged.
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That's a promise that God made to his people.
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So he actually uses the Assyrian army to come in and bring judgment on his people and on
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the kingdom of Israel, I should say.
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We haven't gotten to that point yet in our story, but here in Joel he's pointing to
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that and that's why he refers to them as his army, the army of the Lord.
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And that's why we had the confusion in that song until one day somebody learned their
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history and realized this army was the foreign invaders that were going to come in and bring
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God's judgment.
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Then in Joel 3, verses 1 and 2, it's a very, very famous verse.
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And this is talking about when God restores his people to the land.
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So I want to read it for you.
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John 3, verses 1 and 2.
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In those days and at that time, when I restore the fortunes of Judah and Jerusalem, I will
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gather all nations and bring them down to the valley of Jehoshaphat.
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There I will put them on trial for what they did to my inheritance, my people Israel, because
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they scattered my people among the nations and divided up my land.
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Now let's wrap our minds around this.
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God uses the foreign army to bring judgment on his people and then when he brings his
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people back home and restores them and blesses them, he then draws those armies again to
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judge them for what they did because they mistreated his people and they scattered them
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amongst the nations and they divided up his land.
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So this is a very, very key concept to everything that we see happening now in our story and
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that we will be reading about.
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God promised judgment to his people but he also promised restoration.
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And here in Joel, he's got it all right there.
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God's going to judge and he's going to use these foreign invaders to do it but then he's
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going to restore you back to your land and he's going to then draw these nations and
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he's going to judge them for what they did to his people and he calls them my people
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Israel.
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So even in judgment, even in exile, even in sin and idolatry, there's still his people.
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He's going to deal with them as he promised Moses that he would in the wilderness.
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And this is the story that we are reading in this section of our history.
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So this is the principle of righteousness.
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His people were required to live a righteous life in the land and if they didn't, then
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there would be judgment.
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There's the principle of judgment but he promised return and he promised retribution that he
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would judge their enemy for what they had done.
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So enjoy your reading of Joel this week.
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It's a tremendous book and the story of Jonah and I'll see you back here next week when
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we will talk about Amos and Hosea.
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Alright so until then, God bless.
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Welcome to Walk Through the Bible, Susan Michael's 12-month journey through the most exciting
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00:00:06,180 --> 00:00:07,680
book on the planet.
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00:00:07,680 --> 00:00:10,700
It will transform your life one page at a time.
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Be sure to subscribe for future episodes that will ignite your faith and bring your Bible
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00:00:15,140 --> 00:00:16,140
to life.
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Now, let's join our host, Susan Michael.
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Well, hey there and welcome back.
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This is Walk Through the Bible Week 24.
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We are deep into our history of the Northern and Southern kingdoms and this week we are
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reading from the Daily Bible pages 734 to 762 or what are the dates of June 11 through
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the 17th in the Daily Bible.
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Now last week we talked about sort of an overview of the history of this period, what we were
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looking at geographically in the context and this week we are deep into stories and jumping
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back and forth from the Northern Kingdom to the Southern Kingdom and I know it gets a
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little tedious and it gets a little confusing.
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But just stick with me.
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I am going to help you wade through it and sort of stick at that 30,000 foot view and
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not worry so much about all the details and getting straight which king was this and that.
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As I explained last week, in the Northern Kingdom of Israel their history lasted about
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200 years and in that 200 years they had nine different dynasties and around 20 different
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kings.
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So our first dynasty started out with Jeroboam and then last week we read about Basha and
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then the house of Omri who was Ahab, Ahab was his son, we talked about Ahab and Jezebel
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last week.
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So this year, this week we are reading about Yehu.
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Now God was so disgusted with Ahab, you know I told you he was the most evil king of the
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North and he brought this national cult of the Baal of Phoenicia that Jezebel had brought
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with her.
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And so God tells Elijah to go anoint Yehu as the successor of Ahab and that Yehu is
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to take over.
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Well, Yehu then goes and he wipes out not just Ahab but all of his family and his court,
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he kills everybody.
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He goes so far and beyond, it is so bloody and he even killed the king of Judah.
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Now this I want to explain to you why because the king of Judah had married a daughter of
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Jezebel and Ahab so they were related.
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So that means that this king was a threat to whoever was going to be king of the North.
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He could get a following.
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So he's killed, all his relatives are killed and I mean it was just very, very bloody.
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Yehu did one good thing, he destroyed the temple to the Baal of Tyre that had been built
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in the center of Samaria, the capital of the Northern Kingdom.
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So he got completely rid of the worship of the Baal that Jezebel had brought with her.
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He got rid of the prophets, he got rid of everything.
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But he didn't get rid of the two worship sites that Jeroboam had erected where he put the
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golden calves and where they were a mixture of worship of the God of Israel with the God
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of these calves or the God of Baal, local Baal.
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So like I told you before, there were many different Baals and there were these national
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or local Baals I should call them that were being worshiped there because there were lots
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of Canaanite pagans living in Israel and then there were a lot of Israelites that were highly
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influenced by this and they were worshiping there at Dan and Bethel.
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But Yehu did get rid of the worship of Jezebel's Baal that she brought with her.
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Now he immediately went and paid tribute to Shalmaneser who was the Assyrian king.
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And I bring this up because there is an archaeological find.
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It's called the Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser the Third.
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And on that obelisk he shows all these various kings that had to bow down and pay tribute
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to him.
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And it actually depicts Yehu, the king of Israel, bowing down to Shalmaneser, kissing
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his feet and paying tribute.
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So very clear archaeological evidence of Yehu.
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Now you've got to understand that Yehu also greatly weakens the northern kingdom of Israel.
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Why?
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Because by destroying the worship of Baal he has cut off ties.
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He's insulted Phoenicia.
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So he no longer has this strong alliance with Phoenicia.
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He has killed the king of Judah so he doesn't have a strong alliance with Judah either.
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So this really weakens him and makes him much more vulnerable.
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Now down in the southern kingdom of Judah, since Yehu had killed the king, his mother
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Athaliah, and I'm sorry I said that wrong before, it was his mother that was a daughter
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of Ahab and Jezebel.
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And she had married someone in the line of David and so their son was Ahaziah.
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And King Ahaziah was the one that was killed by Yehu because he was related to Ahab.
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But he was also related to the line of David.
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So his mother, the daughter of Jezebel, what does she do?
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Guess, take a big guess.
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She who serves the throne and takes it over herself, the throne of Judah.
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So this is the only time where someone from the house of David wasn't sitting on the throne.
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I think it only lasted for about six years.
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But what does she do?
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She brings in the worship of Baal, Jezebel's Baal, and makes it the national cult of Judah.
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And as a result, at the end of her six years, the priest of the God of Israel, because remember
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she's over Jerusalem where the temple is and all the Levites were there, they rebelled.
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And so they got rid of her and they found one relative, one member of the house of David
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that had not been killed.
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And he was a child.
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And so he was put on the throne as a child king, Joash.
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And the kingdom was actually run by one of the priests.
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But they wanted someone from the kingdom of David to be on the throne and they wanted
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to get rid of the Baal worship and that's exactly what they did.
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Of course, by the end of her reign, it was only six years, but it says the temple was
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in disrepair, so she may have even damaged the temple or destroyed parts of it and it
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had to be fixed up.
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Now back to the northern kingdom of Israel.
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Now we get to King Jeroboam II and he's a very important king because under his reign,
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the kingdom of Israel becomes the strongest ever.
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Under his reign, they are so wealthy.
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They are so powerful.
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They are so big.
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What does that mean?
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It means that if he's getting stronger, if Israel's getting stronger, it's because
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Assyria and Aram are weaker.
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But he's getting stronger and archeology confirms that his reign was very prosperous and really
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the most prosperous of Israel's history.
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He conquered the Arameans in Aram and Assyria is weakened at this point, not because of
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him, just their own internal problems, and that allowed him then to become strong.
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If during this time of Jeroboam, if you were to add up his kingdom with the southern kingdom,
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they actually are as big as what Solomon had.
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So it really is very strong and on the outside it looks very strong, very prosperous, it
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looks very good, right?
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But on the inside, that's where the problem was.
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It was still very sick.
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And this is why we have our national prophets are really saying judgment is coming.
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And we're going to get into a couple of prophets this week.
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And then next week, we're going to talk about Hosea and Amos.
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They both prophesied under Jeroboam II and they did not have good things to say.
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Because it was a corrupt kingdom on the inside.
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You know, it's a good war to warning for all of us.
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Prosperity is not the proof of spiritual righteousness.
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And we have to get that in our heads because sometimes we tend to think, oh, you're being
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prosperous, that means you're being blessed.
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And it can mean that, but it doesn't always mean that.
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So now this week, we read what I consider a comical story about a rebellious prophet
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and his name is Jonah.
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We all know the story because we learned it as children.
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But let's listen to it in the context now of what we know is happening all around us.
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So he was also a prophet to Jeroboam II.
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But he had a call from God to go to Nineveh.
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Now Nineveh was a city in the Assyrian province on the Tigris River.
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I don't believe it was the capital of Assyria at the time of Jonah, but it became the capital
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of Assyria.
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It was a very big city on the Tigris River.
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It said it took four days to walk through the city of Nineveh.
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So Jonah is called by God to go to Nineveh and to preach repentance to them, to warn
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them of what is coming, and to call them to repentance.
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And of course, Jonah does not want to do this because he hates the Assyrians.
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They are the enemy.
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So he runs instead of going northeast towards Assyria.
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Where does he go?
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West.
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And he boards a ship to go even farther west to Tarshish.
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And of course there's a storm and the sailors are like, what's going on?
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He said, look, it's all because of me.
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Just throw me overboard.
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Just kill me.
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And they throw him overboard and God has him swallowed up by a big fish.
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And so he's inside the fish.
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So he says, okay, God, I'll go.
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He doesn't really repent, repent, but he does turn.
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He says, okay, I'll go.
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So the fish vomits him up on dry ground and he goes to the city of Nineveh.
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Now, like I said, Nineveh is very, very big, but it says that he just kind of entered it.
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And on that first day, he starts preaching a very, very weak and very brief message to
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call them to repentance.
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He does not want this to succeed.
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You understand?
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His heart wasn't in it.
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But lo and behold, they repent, they become sorry for their sins, and God forgives them.
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And so Jonah is very angry with God.
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But what does he say?
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I knew it.
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I knew you would forgive them because you are a gracious and forgiving God.
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And I knew this would happen.
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This is why I didn't want to come.
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So we know the story.
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He goes and he sits out to watch and see what happens.
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And this vine grows up to protect him from the sun and then a worm chews it away and
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he gets so angry and God's like, why are you so angry?
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And so I think the point for all of us in this story is, are we okay with the fact that
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God loves who may be our enemy?
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It's really easy in life for us to define our enemies and those people that disagree
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with us, those people that are doing things that I disagree with that may even be hurting
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my cause or my people or my country or my whatever.
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They're my enemy.
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And then to think that God loves them as much as he may love us.
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Are we okay with that?
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Because that's the message of the book of Jonah.
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God loved the Assyrian people and he wanted to reach them.
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Now a little point of history here I want to tell you.
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The Nineveh, what's known as the Nineveh Plains today is in what is today Northern Iraq.
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The Nineveh area, it later became the capital of the Assyrian Empire and it was a formidable
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enemy to the people of Israel and God used Assyria to bring judgment on his people, Israel.
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But Jonah, who brought this message of repentance to Nineveh, it's very interesting that then
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early after the disciples Christianity went to the whole area of Assyria.
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And so we have had Christians in Assyria since the very, very beginning of Christianity
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and they were there in that Nineveh area.
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And in Nineveh there was a tomb to the prophet Jonah which supposedly they say he died there.
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And they also had a tomb to the prophet Nahum.
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And in modern times now this is in the Iraqi city of Mosul.
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And I'm sure you heard of Mosul, you heard it on the news, it was the center of a lot
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of fighting in the Iraq war.
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But Mosul is at the edge, it contains part of the ancient city of Nineveh.
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So in Mosul is the tomb of Jonah and is a section of the ancient walls of Nineveh from
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what, 2700 years ago.
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And when Isis moved into Mosul, what did they do?
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They blew up the tomb of Jonah and the walls of Nineveh.
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And of course they were killing Christians right and left and so the Christians fled
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out into what's known as the Nineveh Plains.
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I want you to know this because God's heart is for those people too.
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And there's Christian, Chaldean Christians which are of the original Assyrians.
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They are Assyrian Christians today, alive today in the earth.
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And a lot of them were there in that ancient area of Nineveh which is today Mosul.
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And Baghdad and that whole area, those Christians fled to the Nineveh Plains.
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And you know, our prayer is that the Christians of that area would be able to form some kind
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of sovereignty where they can protect themselves, they can fight for themselves and not continue
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under this type of persecution, highly persecuted in that area.
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And my heart just broke when I heard of how Isis was destroying these key archaeological
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artifacts there in the tomb of Jonah and the walls of Nineveh.
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Now the other prophet that we read about this week or read from I should say was the book
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of Joel.
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The book of Joel we don't really know when it was written.
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And scholarship in the last, you know, couple hundred years had Joel being as written one
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of the first books to be written.
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And so the Daily Bible put Joel here as one of the first of what we call the writing prophets.
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But there really is a case to be made for Joel being actually the last one to be written.
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So I just want you to know, we don't know when it was written.
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It's a collection of poems and it talks about judgment, but it doesn't say why judgment is
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coming, which is interesting because next week we're going to read Amos and Hosea.
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They list all the sins, everything going on in northern Israel and in Judah.
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But Joel doesn't mention the sins specifically, but it talks about this army of locusts.
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And you know, locust swarms are very, very common in the area.
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We had a major one just in 2020, but they're very common.
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So there may have really been a locust swarm that Joel is talking about.
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But then Joel kind of transitions and begins warning about future judgment that's coming
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in the form of the day of the Lord.
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And he describes it almost as locust.
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So when you're reading it, it's a little confusing.
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Are we talking about locusts or people?
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And I also want to mention there's a famous verse in Joel about, blow the trumpet in Zion,
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you know, sound the alarm in my holy mountain.
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And there used to be a song that we all sang.
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It was very popular.
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So as they run on the city, they walk on the walls, great is the army that carries out
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his word.
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And we'd really get into it.
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And then one day somebody realized that this is talking about the Assyrian army that God
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is using to bring judgment on Israel.
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They're the ones climbing up the wall and bringing judgment.
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And so most people stop singing that song.
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But it comes from Joel.
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And so Joel talks about this judgment that's coming in the day of the Lord.
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And then he calls for them to repent and to rend their hearts and says that God is slow
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to anger.
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And God responds and he defeats the invaders and he restores the land and he pours out
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his spirit and there's this divine presence.
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And it's almost like there's a whole new garden of Eden.
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It's a whole new creation.
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And so this is the message of the book of Joel.
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I want to concentrate on one concept in it before we bring today to a close that we find
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in Joel that's very important.
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Joel here is saying that it's God's army that's going to bring the judgment, that's
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bringing the day of the Lord.
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His army.
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And this is a concept we got to get our minds around and we've got to grasp about God's
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relationship with his people and his relationship with these other countries.
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Israel is his people.
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He married them in the wilderness.
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They are his.
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He's made promises to them.
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And one of the promises was that if they turned from him and worshiped other gods that they
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would be kicked out of the land.
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They would be taken into exile.
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They would be judged.
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That's a promise that God made to his people.
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So he actually uses the Assyrian army to come in and bring judgment on his people and on
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the kingdom of Israel, I should say.
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We haven't gotten to that point yet in our story, but here in Joel he's pointing to
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that and that's why he refers to them as his army, the army of the Lord.
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And that's why we had the confusion in that song until one day somebody learned their
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history and realized this army was the foreign invaders that were going to come in and bring
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God's judgment.
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Then in Joel 3, verses 1 and 2, it's a very, very famous verse.
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And this is talking about when God restores his people to the land.
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So I want to read it for you.
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John 3, verses 1 and 2.
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In those days and at that time, when I restore the fortunes of Judah and Jerusalem, I will
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gather all nations and bring them down to the valley of Jehoshaphat.
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There I will put them on trial for what they did to my inheritance, my people Israel, because
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they scattered my people among the nations and divided up my land.
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Now let's wrap our minds around this.
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God uses the foreign army to bring judgment on his people and then when he brings his
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people back home and restores them and blesses them, he then draws those armies again to
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judge them for what they did because they mistreated his people and they scattered them
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amongst the nations and they divided up his land.
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So this is a very, very key concept to everything that we see happening now in our story and
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that we will be reading about.
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God promised judgment to his people but he also promised restoration.
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And here in Joel, he's got it all right there.
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God's going to judge and he's going to use these foreign invaders to do it but then he's
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going to restore you back to your land and he's going to then draw these nations and
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he's going to judge them for what they did to his people and he calls them my people
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Israel.
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So even in judgment, even in exile, even in sin and idolatry, there's still his people.
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He's going to deal with them as he promised Moses that he would in the wilderness.
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And this is the story that we are reading in this section of our history.
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So this is the principle of righteousness.
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His people were required to live a righteous life in the land and if they didn't, then
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there would be judgment.
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There's the principle of judgment but he promised return and he promised retribution that he
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would judge their enemy for what they had done.
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So enjoy your reading of Joel this week.
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It's a tremendous book and the story of Jonah and I'll see you back here next week when
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we will talk about Amos and Hosea.
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Alright so until then, God bless.
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