2017 Maryland Men of Faith: Give Me This Mountain

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Maryland Men of Faith

Mxolisi Michael Sokupa

Anchored In Christ

This media has been presented to you by the Maryland Men of Faith, where men are challenged and encouraged to form the character of Christ.

For more information, please visit www.mmof.org.

Loving Father, we thank you this morning for a wonderful privilege you have given us to meet here and to discuss a very pertinent and important subject.

And as we go through the biblical story, I pray that this story may have a meaning that will apply to our lives as men.

And we thank you for the organizers who have thought and planned over the years for these men's meetings, and we pray that this 1 may be a blessing to each 1 of us in Jesus' name, amen.

I work for the White Estate and basically we are custodians of a very important legacy of the church, the writings of Ellen White.

And it is my joy and pleasure today to be able to share a few thoughts from the word of God and also about Ellen White and drawing from this important story that we're going to be looking at.

So I've entitled the topic for today, Turning the Tide.

And I want us to look at the stories of kings in a very brief way.

So as we look at the kings of Israel, we find a pattern that's going right across the kings of Judah and Israel.

As we look at the slide here, you have the king, the reference in scripture, and what kind of deeds are recorded about that King and we find an interesting pattern that the Bible records that most of these kings did evil in the sight of God.

So you have from King Rehoboam I, we could go back from Saul, the very first king, but I just thought of starting right at this point where there is a specific record on each king and what they did.

And so we see all the kings that did evil, And then we have Jeho, where there is good and evil.

We have all the kings of Israel, Jehosh, Jehoroboamtu, Zechariah, Shalom, Menahem, Pekiah, Pekah, Hosea, all who have done evil before God.

And then continuing through all the kings of Israel, it is not a very good record.

But there is 1 king that I would like us to focus on a little bit and draw some lessons, and that is King Josiah and we find his story in 2nd Chronicles chapter 34 verse 1 to 35 and I'd like us to to study very closely the the various programs of reform that Josiah put together and see how we can learn from Josiah's story on turning the tide.

And I know we have young people within our group and we also have various stages and this is a perfect story that gives us a wide range of the life of Josiah from the time he was 8 years old, the Bible records that he became king.

And, you know, whenever I present, particularly on this passage, it is always fascinating to think about how an eight-year-old could rule a nation.

And we know of course that they had core regents that ruled with them to give them counsel, to guide them, to work with them.

But the way the story is presented here, the core regents are in the background and we are looking specifically at the choices.

We are looking at the move of this particular king against this background that we've just painted of the kings that came before him.

Coming a little closer and looking at the very immediate family, who was his grandfather?

And the Bible records that Manasseh did the worst of evils against God than any other king and he had the longest rule.

And so we have a very negative legacy here for Josiah.

So in chapter 33 we have the life of Manasseh outlined here.

He was 12 years old, verse 1, when he became king and he reigned 55 years in Jerusalem.

So for 55 years, the Bible records all the evil deeds of Manasseh.

And just a few that are mentioned, Verse 2 says, He did evil in the sight of the Lord according to the abominations of the nations whom the Lord had cast out before the children of Israel.

For He built the high places which Hezekiah, his father, had broken down.

He raised up altars for bales and made wooden images and worshipped all the hosts of heaven and served them.

He also built altars in the house of the Lord of which the Lord had said in Jerusalem shall my name be forever.

So we have a glimpse of what Manasseh did during his reign And then we have Josiah's father who came after Manasseh and things were not getting better.

Ammon, Josiah's father, was 22 years old when he became king And his reign lasted only 2 years.

Some people conspired against him and killed him.

The people of the land executed those that had conspired against the king.

But the Bible records that he did evil in the sight of the Lord, as his father Manasseh had done.

So as we look at the story of Josiah, we have that kind of background.

We're looking at the kings of Israel and Judah.

We're looking at his very immediate family, his grandfather, his father, and what they did before the Lord.

And we have this young king who has just come into power.

And this is, I think, the very crucial question that we find very fascinating as we see his reform steps here.

So what does Josiah do as the first thing?

Verse 2 chapter 34 second Chronicles chapter 34 verse 2, and he did what was right in the sight of the Lord and walked in the ways of his father David.

He did not turn aside to the right or to the left.

Now why does the story tell us about David and not Ammon, his biological father?

I think there is a very significant point that is being put up here, that the focus of the narrative or the story is not on the biological lineage of Josiah, but the focus is on the spiritual lineage.

And I think that is a very, very significant point.

And as we look at various challenges that we all face today.

There are things that we inherit from our fathers.

And so, looking at Josiah, attempting to turn the tide here, we see a very significant and a very important conscious choice to be what God wants him to be, as we sang this morning during the devotion.

So he did what was right in the sight of the Lord and he followed and walked in the ways of his father David.

And then verse 3 says, in the eighth year of his reign, while he was still young, he began to seek the God of his father David.

And in the twelfth year of his reign, he began to purge Judah and Jerusalem of the high places the wooden images the carved images the molded images now let's talk a little bit about what Josiah is is doing here He is breaking down these idols that have been standing since the time of his grandfather.

Can somebody just give me a brief definition of an idol?

How would you describe or define an idol?

Something that's created that we worship for a good time to our own good.

Yes, something that we worship and we know that we're supposed to worship God, but if we worship something else, that is an idol for us.

Whatever comes before God, whatever you prioritize before God in your life, that to you is an idol.

Any other thoughts about the definition of an idol?

I think as we look at the Old Testament, I remember going to Israel for archaeological expedition.

I worked with Southern Adventist University and we were working in Lachish.

And it was the fourth season, or not season, but the fourth expedition.

In other words, other groups had gone there before to do archeology at Lachish, and we were the fourth group.

And we had a specific sort of task that we were, or question that we were looking at answering that had to do with chronology.

And now upon, you know, digging from the dirt, there were several interesting discoveries that we made right there in that city of David, fortified city of David, because it was 1 of David's cities, Lachish was 1 of David's cities, fortified right on the little hill there, and overlooking the plains.

And as we were digging, 1 of the significant finds was a little god, a fertility god, that we discovered that had been buried there.

And remember, those cities, or especially that city, had been ravaged by various, you know, attacks and razed to the ground.

And so people had been hiding these idols in their rooms, in their places of stay and they had them under their beds and 1 cannot help but think that idolatry in Israel was a real thing and here we had an evidence from the city of David of a fertility god that was found in 1 of the rooms there.

And so as we look at our modern time, as we look at our times today, idols may not necessarily be something tangible like something man-made that I worship, but as you rightly pointed out, gentlemen, anything that stands between me and God, that is an idol.

Anything that I worship, so you know, in the place of God, that is an idol for me.

So as we reflect on this story and looking at the history of Israel, and especially the question of idolatry, we need to think, What is it that in my life I place before God?

Whatever it is, anything that I place before God or in the place of God that I worship is an idol.

And so here is King Josiah going through the whole land and he begins to demolish all these high places, all these idols.

He destroys them and he's going from city to city.

Notice in verse 6, 2nd Chronicles chapter 34 verse 6, and so he did in the cities of Manasseh, Ephraim, Simeon, as far as Naphtali, and all around with axes.

When he had broken down the altars and the wooden images had bitten the carved images into powder and cut down all the incense altars throughout all the land of Israel, he'd returned to Jerusalem.

He had done what he thought was an important thing to do, to cut down all the idols, ground them to powder, and he even threw some of that powder into the graves of those who had sacrificed to them.

And so this king makes his itinerary and he comes back to Jerusalem with his mission accomplished.

But that was just scratching the surface.

Back to Menu

Anchored In Christ

Transcript

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Related

Reading and Practicing Scripture with Heart and Mind

55m

Behold the Man

49m

Islam, God’s Backup Plan

1h 11m

Emmanuel Institute - Ignite Your Church

Ignite Your Church - Part 9: The Implementation Guide

59m

AMEN 2009 Breakout Seminars

The Foolish Missionary

1h 12m

Give Me this Church

47m

OYC 2011 Seminars

Picking Up the Pieces

52m

Plenary

The Issues of Life

32m

Reasons to Believe

05 The Resurrection of Jesus Christ

50m

Seminars

How to Preach and Speak with Power

1h 42m

Christ our Righteousness

Christ our Righteousness - Part 1

47m

Stealing Lucifer’s Playground

Stealing Lucifer’s Playground - Part 2

1h 18m

Sound Doctrine