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Episode 651: In this episode, Chris and Jeff delve into the biblical narrative found in 2 Kings chapter 17. They discuss the historical context of the Israelites' exile to Assyria, which corresponds to modern-day Iraq. The conversation highlights the long-standing warnings from God through various prophets, emphasizing His patience and love despite the people's persistent disobedience and idolatry.
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You're listening to the Bible Guys, a podcast where a couple of friends talk about the Bible in fun, in practical ways. He everybody, welcome to our podcast. Man, it's good to be here. Does it belong to us though? Is it? It's for the people. It's the people's podcast. It's the people's podcast. Welcome to the People's podcasts, ladies and jentlemen. You are happy to be a part of it. Yes, I'm Chris, this is Jeff, and we are the Bible Guys. There you go. Yeah, which, still it's funny to me. It's a touch presumptuous, right, we're the Bible Guys. Well, if you take it that way, or it could just be two guys that talk about the Bible and fun and practical ways. Hey, it's a good idea. It's a good slogan. We should do a podcast like that. Yeah. The theme song, here's the Bible Guys. That's funny. Okay, all right, well hey listen today we are going to start out with one of my very favorites. Yes, it's a family favorite. Which is a dad joke competition. I just pulled this up, so I haven't had a chance to read these yet. Yes, I I just pulled them up as well. Okay, so you should go first. Yeah, and so the competition part. We've decided recently in our little journeys, you know, our journey over the years, that we're going to determine who is the better jokes. Yes, that's what we're doing, the best one. Yeah, okay, here we go, number one. I'll go first. I just won an award for the most secretive person in the office. I can't tell you how much that means to me. Okay, very clever. Well, most puns make me feel numb. Math puns make me feel number. Oh, it's really good. That's very clever. See what they did their number? Yeah, I like it. Kind of dumb and dumber. Right right, Okay, here we go. Ready. I don't think that invisible planes will ever be popular. I just don't see them taking off. That's a good one. I like it today, that's right. What's the difference between a well dressed man on a unicycle and a poorly dressed man on a bicycle? Oh jeez? Attired? Oh wow a tire? Yes? Does she's four for four today? Yeah, no doubt so. If you don't know, Desiree is our assistant, and she's the one who always puts these together, so we don't read them until we sit down in front. Of the microphone. Yeah, and on occasion, we have booed more than we celebrated occasion, but this is not that occasions up this point. Well, you're gonna love this one. Okay, this is this is perhaps my favorite one. Okay, where do pirates get their hooks? I don't know, secondhand stores. That's a good that's a good one. Second. Second, it's really clever. If you had your first hand and you lost it. Yeah, well you don't have to explain it, you get it. You see how that worked. It was it was you need a second hand because. I see where they're going with this. Okay, fired on all cylinders today. Okay, imagine if you walked into a bar and there was a long line of people waiting to take a swing at you. That's the punch line. Oh, that's the punchline. Okay she is six or six? Okay, okay, this is good, good one. All ready. Someone complimented my parking today. They left a sweet note on my windshield that said parking fine. It is a compliment, right, just really fine parking. Really, I just want to let you know. Okay, job, you know, I never took it at that took it that way. But you know that time the police officer had his lights one told me I was driving fine apparently as well right speeding fine. Okay, not to brag, but I made six figures last year. I was also named the worst employee at the toy factory. Oh no, oh no, everybody else made a thousand he made. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. I'm buddy, the old last one. These are good, it says cop. This is the cop speaking. I'm arresting you for downloading the entire Wikipedia. Man. Wait, I can explain everything. It's not bad. That's a good one. I like it. Yeah, okay. My landlord told me we need to talk about the heating bill. Sure, I said, my door is always open. Oh there you go that. Yeah, but I would say we're nine out of ten. I would say nine out of ten. That's worth a good job. Yep, that's right, We're gonna good job standing ovation standing. Yeah, there you go. Hey, wow, Desiree, thank you, and and h. When it comes to the Bible, guys, uh, you know, her title may be somewhere in the job description of assistant. But she is the leader, she is blazing the trails. She's the writer, she's the producer, she's a Yeah, she's the everything. Yeah. But but but she has multiple jobs though, right. The bubble, guys, is just. Part of her. She just tells us what to do. Yes, yeah, and we allow it. Yes, we're happy to have it. Yes we are so thank you, guys. Are and speaking of being happy to have it, the Israels, Oh we're not happy. You have to move, you know, from from wasn't happy from Israel. To modern day Iraq? Yeah, which was Assyria at the time. Because this prediction had been on the in the works for a long time. Now yeah, oh yeah, yeah, we've read a bunch of the prophets. You remember members coming saying hey, people better straighten up. Do you remember, do you? Yeah? Maybe some of our listeners remember too. Yeah. It's mind like a trap man. Yeah. So, so Assyria is modern day Iraq? And uh and so is this is this between the Euphrates and the Tigris rivers. You are correct, It's almost like you have a map right in front of him. Yah. Our listeners should get themselves a life application study Bible because they also could have a map in front of them. I was listening to the Bible guys this morning, which we recorded a couple of weeks ago, and we also promoted again the Life Applications. Did you learn anything this morning about oh, about the Bible? About the Bible? Yeah, I learned that. You it's okay to skip over the hard words of the Bible because you said, you said you have a friend that says, hey, the son of them. Yeah, yeah, that was that episode. And you you go and that guy, yeah, and that guy and that guy with that guy in that place. Yep. But go let those things get you all caught up. Yeah, well today, we got some good ones soon. So we're in Second Kings chapter seventeen. And if you remember, we have read a little bit of Isaiah, We've read a little bit of Hosea. We've heard what Elijah and Elisha had to say, right, and so all these prophets that have been going to the different Kings that have been saying, listen, if we don't turn around, judgment is coming. And they didn't turn around. So here it is finally in Second Critic, Yes exactly, Second Kings, chapter seventeen, verse six. It says. Finally, in the ninth year of King Josea's reign, Samaria fell, that's all of northern Israel, and the people of Israel were exiled to Assyria, which is northern modern day Iraq. They were settled in colonies in Hallaala, Halla, how. At you boy right? They were settled in colonies in Halla along the banks of the Habor River and goes on and the cities of the Meads, which would be the Median Empire would be modern day Iran, So you're talking about northern Iraq, Iran, that area there. This disaster came upon the people of Israel because they worshiped other gods. They sinned against the Lord their God, who had brought them safely out of Egypt and rescued them from the power of Pharaoh, the king of Egypt. They had followed the practices of the pagan nations the Lord had driven from the land ahead of them, as well as the practices the kings of Israel had introduced. The people of Israel had also secretly done many things that were not pleasing to the Lord their God. They built pagan shrines for themselves and all their towns from the smallest outposts of the largest walled city. They set up sacred pillars and a share of polls. At the top of every hill and under every green tree, they offered sacrifices and all the hilltops, just like the nations the Lord had driven from the land ahead of them. So the people of Israel had done many evil things, arousing the Lord's anger. Yes, they worshiped idols, despite the Lord's specific and repeated warnings. Again and again. The Lord had sent his prophets and seers to warn both Israel and Judah. Quote, turn from all your evil ways, obey my commands and decrees, the entire law that I commanded your ancestors to obey, and that I gave you through my servants the prophets. But the Israelites would not listen. They were as stubborn as their ancestors, who had refused to believe in the Lord, their god. They rejected his decrees and the covenant he had made with their ancestors, and they despised all his warnings. They worshiped worthless idols, so they became worthless themselves. What a powerful statement. They followed the example of the nations around them, disobeying the Lord's commands not to imitate them. They rejected all the commands of the Lord, their god had made two calves from metal. They set up in a share of poll and worshiped Bail and all the forces of heaven. They even sacrificed their own sons and daughters in the fire. They consulted fortune tellers and practiced sorcery, and sold themselves to evil or rousing the Lord's anger. Because the Lord was very angry with Israel, he swept them away from his presence. Only the tribe of Judah remained in the land. But even the people of Judah refused to obey the commands of the Lord their god, for they followed the evil practices that Israel had introduced. Rejected all the descendants of Israel. He punished them by handing them over to their attackers, until they he had banished Israel from his presence. For when the Lord tore israel away from the kingdom of David, they chose Jeroboam's son of Nebad, as a king. But Jeroboam drew Israel away from following the Lord and made them commit a great sin. And the people of Israel persisted in all the evil ways of Jerobohm. They did not return from these sins until the Lord finally swept them away from his presence, just as all his prophets had warned. So Israel was exiled from their land to Assyria, where they remained to this day. So not to this day, but to the day that passage was written. That was written. Now, so you know, again. You may be tempted to think sort of what I'm feeling, which is like, you know, here it is more doom and gloom predicted by the Lord, that is, you know, delivered as a message, and then and then there it is the destruction in the fall of these things. But really you could look at it another way, which is how patient is our God to have warned them over and over and over and over again. Right, So, I mean really, so there's a lot of a lot of this whole. You know, here comes the destruction. I think of that song here comes the Boom. It's like, here comes But really it's a great sign if you look at it that way. It's a great sign of God's patience and love and warnings. And so that statement that you said was a really powerful statement. In verse number fifteen, they worshiped worthless idols. So they became worthless themselves. What a phrase it really is. And it just goes to show you that that happens over a very long period of time. Right, that isn't a statement that happens overnight. So if you decide to follow God with your life, and let's just say recently you've you know, struggled in your faith, or you've straight away and you've had a season where you've doubted, I wouldn't say that that statement applies to you all. You're worthless because of that. This is a this is a statement made by the people that characterizes years and years and years of warnings and God's patience and God refraining his actually you know, he's he's holding back his judgments. And so again that's why we read so many warnings. And so yeah, they've become worth us themselves because they have died. They dove so deep into idolatry. Think about the all the practices they just named Astra poles or share of poles under every single tree. Come on on every hilltop, he said, on every hilltop. Share of poles were phallic symbols of the yes. Yes. If you've ever been in India, or if you've been in a Hindu temple, they have those phallic symbols that sit inside the bulls like that. It's very similar, only they would make these big, tall poles and they would dance around them and make sacrifices to them and all that kind of stuff. But it was very pervert, perverted and twisted. And then that it even said some of them sacrificed their own sons and daughters to the in the fire, and the fire to the gods of Bail, I think, And so yeah, that's pretty pretty crazy. And they consulted fortune tellers and stuff. Yeah, yeah, which is a popular thing in our culture today. All these things are similar other than burning our children alive, everything else that they're that they did, we tend to do in our culture in different ways. So it's easy to look down on them for things. But yeah, it's it's pretty pretty incredible. So I looked up. I had this thought while you were talking because I wasn't paying attention. No, no, actually, you had good things to say. It was really powerful, So I just wanted to let you run with that because I think you're really solid. But dawned on me while you were talking that you know, at the very beginning, when you started saying it's just more the same, we have read dozens and dozens and dozens of days of God saying watch out right, watch out here it comes. Hey, watch out right. That the like a dozens of days, and it can start to feel like and we've said that, you know, as we sat down before the camera started rolling. And go, well, here we go again, right right. And so I looked this up just now and I asked, what percentage of the Old Testament is God warning. The people of Israel to turn back to him? Yeah, right, And it's about thirty percent, thirty five percent of the prophetic books, about thirty percent of the Book of Joshua, about twenty percent of the Law warns the people just to walk with him. The wisdom and poetry books, job Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes fifteen to twenty percent of that. So when you work it all out, somewhere between forty and fifty percent of the entire Old Testament as God warning the people come back to me. Wow. So you take a giant chunk of the Bible, right, two thirds of the Bible is God just saying don't do it, please, please don't do it. Don't do it, don't go that way. Listen, if you do it, you're gonna be in trouble with me. Wow. Right, And so when you and I read through the Book of Psalms and David writes his mercy and durs forever, we would take, like, you know, six five minutes in an episode just talk about wow, aren't you just glad God's mercy and durs forever. But instead, what God decided to do is take almost fifty percent of the entire Old Testament and just prove his mercy and durs forever. I'm just holding back and holding back. Now there's a limit to his patients, certainly, and they finally pushed it, and God goes, listen, you're never going to turn. You're not going to change without a little bit of pain, which is I think this is true for most of humanity. You know how many of us we don't change our lifestyle until we go to the doctor and getting uh oh right, and suddenly you know, suddenly you're like, oh man, I need to lose some weight, and you start exercising whatever, right, you get the bad news. And that's most of the time most changes we make in our life are for are because of pain, yeah, right, and so God's telling them I want you to come my way. Certainly drastic changes. Yeah yeah, the biggest changes, the most significant changes are almost always because of pain, except for marriage, that one we're excited about, right, that's a big change. But after that and kids, right, right, and then after that everything else, all the other things we do when it comes to our own personal changes because for the most part, we don't want to change. We like what we're doing. We prefer the decisions we've made. We think we're smart, we think we're smarter than God. Sometimes or most of the time, it's not like I think I'm smarter than God. I've just decided I'm going to do what i want to do, right, That's it's usually that we're it's not that we're actively, you know, just telling got off. It's usually not even considering him. And then we just do whatever we want to do. And so God goes, okay, listen, don't go that way, don't go that way. And then finally, when he knows there's no more coming back from this, that's when he finally sends Assyria in. And the Assyrians were not easy people. To deal with. I mean, all the people around them were like these guys. Remember Jonah, Jonah couldn't stand the Assyrians. Now Here we are, but I don't know how many years later, but here we are, and Jonah, everything that Jonah believed about the Syrians is true. They're brutal. They're brutal in warfare, they're brutal to their captives, They're brutal. And how they manage the conquered nations, all that stuff just brutality. And God goes fine, right, godug goes on to holla, and that's where you're gonna be. Well. Of the Old Testament, which you said is probably about a third of the. Bible, two thirds the Old Testament is about two thirds of the Bible. Right, So oh no, No, I was meaning what is that for? Two thirds would be about a third of the Bible. Yeah, yeah, I'm about a third of the Bible. Yeah, so that is that is pretty crazy, isn't that? Yeah? A third of the Bible. I'm not sure I've ever had anybody. I'm not sure I've read that anywhere or even thought about that. Honestly, we're a third of the Bible. I'm a pretty incredible thinker. It's yeah, yeah, you had that one question that you typed in the chat GPT. That's exactly what I did. Yeah, well you brought it up. You brought it up, and it made me think. So, see, this is the benefit of studying the Bible together. By the way, chat GPT is amazing. It is. It's fun, it is really amazing. It's not always right, so don't take that as the gospel, right, but it's fairly accurate. We were doing we were doing movie clips, and I was wondering about scenes of a movie where people were angry. And I was like, man, there's got to be some movie scenes where people are angry, and I can think about maybe five or six of them off the top of my head, you know, like really really good ones. But I typed in jet GPT and I said, hey, could you name me scenes of a movie? I said, give me like twenty, and they gave me the name of the movie. The year was put out, and they described every scene and gave it a title. And it was remarkable. And I've seen probably eighty ninety percent of everything that listened, and I just thought to myself, I forgot about that. I forgot about that. I was just thought to myself, Wow, what a what a tool. Wow, that's amazing. It's really cool. And by the way, it's an amazing time to live. It was. It was for church, so it was part of. Our you're working through creative elopment. Yeah, creativelopment. Yeah. Yeah. So it's not just very fun. I don't use it as a source of wisdom and knowledge. I use it as an assistant, like a research assistant. Yeah. That's really because it's just so quick and it'll go. It's pretty comprehensive, right, So I don't use it to generate ideas. I get ideas and then use it to research for me, and then I usually follow the links and all. So here you go look at this for those of you that are watching online. I went ahead and I carved out the piece of the Bible that is the Old Testament, which is all of that, and here's the New Testament, which is this. It almost looks like it's three quarters Old Testament. Yeah, one quarter New Testament. Yeah. Well, I mean I've always been told that's about right, right, Yeah. Yeah, So half of the Old Testament roughly is God saying listen, I love you and I want you to come back. Yeah, that's a really powerful, powerful thing. And then finally they crossed the line. So this idea that God is you know, if you remember when we were talking about Hooseiah, that's why God gets more and more extreme in his up in his attempt to get their attention, until finally that story of Joseiah his wife cheating nine name and he goes and buys her back. What a precious story. But the people were so hard hearted at that point they didn't want to hear it. And then all these things Isaiah is speaking out, all these prophets are speaking out. Nobody comes back, and he says, but the Israelites would not listen. They were as stubborn as their ancestors would refuse to believe in the Lord, their God. And I think that stubbornness is maybe the one of the more dangerous things in our lives. As were stubborn. You know, I used to have a guy that I respected, but I didn't always do well from a performance standpoint in front of But he told me, you know, the greatest ability one is availability, and the other greatest ability is teachability. And they just refuse to be teachable. They refuse to be corrected. And now I think in my life I want to be teachable. I want to be from God, and so a lot of times I find myself praying, God, help me, help me be teachable today. Help me help me to be able to make things better by being able to get good advice and understand the heart and the wisdom of people speaking to me. I don't always do that. I don't sometimes I still get grumpy when people correct me. But I want to be teachable. And these people they were stubborn and it was their own stubbornness that led to their downfall. Yeah. And by the way, side, note, when this chapter starts off and says finally the ninth year of king's reign is its right, Samaria fell and all the people were exiled. I was reading in the Life Application Study Bible, and it actually says that when it mentions Samaria, it's representative of the entire Northern Kingdom because Samaria was the capital, the. Capital of the Northern Kingdom they call it Israel. So really, when it says Samaria fell, you know, when the capital falls, then the entire place is under siege. Right, So it's good to know. So I think it's interesting. Just one little side note, you know. So there's the share a pole, that's the phallic symbol bail. Right, there's those things they worshiped, the two calves that they made from metal, at the fake temple that they set up in Samaria, all those things. But then it says, look at it says, they set up in a share a poll and worship bail and all the forces of heaven. Right, the forces of heaven would be the stars. That's what it's talking about there. It's not talking about I don't believe angelic her demonic beings. It's talking about I believe the stars because any pivots into fortune tellers and sorcery. Right, So he's talking about the zodiac, and so there is this warning here. You know, sometimes we dabble with some of the Oh it's fun to do a fortune teller thing. It's fun to see what my astrology sign is. It's fun to see those things. But just understand he was saying, they started acting like the people around them, and so then they began to worship the gods that the people around them were worshiping, and then they became as useless as those gods. And so what happens is we dabble and we play with the thing because we think it's cute, and then next thing we know, our life has been consumed by all this evil stuff. Right, And so I just always warn Christians, man, stay away from the cutesy stuff. Yeah, and the stuff that you think is innocent. Because it leads to I mean, dude, hagged right between the forces of heaven talking about astrology and fortune tellers is and oh, by the way, they sacrifice their own sons and daughters in the fire. Right right right? Are you serious? How does that happen? Well, it has to start somewhere. Our sins starts somewhere, and it usually starts in something that feels relatively innocent or just a touch dangerous, but not super bad. It's not like you're, you know, out, you know, joining the forces with isis right, You're just dabbling in it. But eventually it starts somewhere and gets to the point where they're leading their children through. You know what it's like, It's like looking at the ocean and not respecting the ocean. Is it is to say. I'm on the beach and I'm like, oh, here, here, the beautiful waves. Look how pretty it is. We're you gonna go out there and just horse around or mess around, and so you you begin to think that the ocean is there to provide you with beautiful scenery, and you know listening, you know some calm, smooth listening things, right, and it's like, no, no, no, if you are going to mess with the ocean, you better respect the ocean. Right. We were just telling the story here. Recently, we were in Costa Rica and my kids were with me, and my wife decides she wants to go. Out in the ocean. And we were a beautiful beach. So she goes out. The waves looked a little big to me, and I'm not really an ocean guy, so I don't always go, oh, I want to go swimming in the water, but she did. She wanted to go. So she gets out there. Well, then the waves start rolling in and they're substantially bigger than they looked. Yeah, so she gets knocked down and she starts to stand up, and the next one knocks her down, and then it's funny, so we're laughing, and she gets up, she starts to walk, and you know, you know how the person just looks blast at at that point and she stands up, she's knocked down again, and then I start realizing she's she's getting further and further out because the water would hit and then hold back, so she was kind of in it. So I had to run out and get her. I'm substantially larger than she is, right, I had to get her and I had to pull her back. It got really dangerous really quick. So it was funny. It's funny. At first it looked attractive. Oh, I want to go in the water. Yea. Then it was funny, she's getting knocked down, and then she was one or two more ways away from just getting swept out into the sea. Yeah, it was really really dangerous, and that's what happens there. That's the warning there. It is all right, Well, that's a good place to end, and hopefully we'll see you tomorrow. All the Bible guysh