Sermon Transcript Tone Analysis

I have so many things around.

My ears open.

Good morning.

It is good to be with you.

We are on episode 21 of the plan.

We're heading into the end of 2nd Kings, and I'm, I'm getting really excited because next week is when everything changes, and the story is just everything, really starts coming together, which isn't to say that this week isn't any good.

But just to say, I'm getting really excited cuz I know this is a long series, we are well past my record for the longest series, I've done, but the story of the Bible is so fascinating, and the way that it moves through the entire is one story moves.

The entire Bible to me is really helpful and encouraging and inspiring to me to know that I play a place.

I have a place in that same story and a story that we've been looking at the way we've been summarized, in the story of the Bible.

Is this, that the Bible is the story of God's plan, to establish a Place full of people who live out their purpose in his presence.

So that made the world.

He put people in it, and he gave us the task of ruling, the world on his behalf.

That's what we're here for.

That's what you were designed for and God wants to live here with us.

We do that.

And unfortunately, we're really good at messing that up Adam and Eve, messed it up.

And and we keep messing up God's plan.

But the Bible is the story of God not giving up on that plan.

It's a god continually working to restore it and starting with Abraham in Genesis 12, God decides to work through one particular group of people to show the plan through them so that the whole world can look at Israel and see who God is and what he wants for his people, and we've been seeing is real struggle to live into that plan.

God gave them each part of it.

He made them his people, he gave them the Kingdom of Israel.

He gave them his law to tell them how to fulfill their purpose.

And he came to live with them and Israel.

And yet they're still struggling to fulfill that to be obedient to God and to reflect him into the world.

To the point that the Kingdom of Israel has now been broken into two different kingdoms.

The ten Northern tribes are the king of Israel and end of kingdom of Judah is to the South.

And last week.

We looked at the house.

Kingdom of Israel.

Really went off the rails.

I actually went so far as to reject God as their God and they chose bail instead and we looked at how the god called that the Prophet Elijah and Elisha later to confront them about that and call them back to the Covenant in at the end of the sermon, we pointed towards, what was going to happen to how God was going to resolve that.

He sent Jay, who was a general and Israeli General and he led a rebellion.

And he, he deposed a have Sun, but he actually want a little bit overboard where he killed every single member of the family of a habit.

It's like 70 people and then he killed every single worshipper of bail and it was a bloodbath.

In fact, it was so bad that there's one of the Minor Prophets talked about how God then asked the judge for the way he wiped out ahab's family because what ultimately happens is Jay who does lead them back to God, but really mainly because he wants them to follow him.

And so he's not really sincere and following God.

He's just using it as an excuse to kill off his Rivals.

So as we enter the story today, if he Generations later, what we find is Israel, even though they aren't, they aren't they all isn't their main Garden, where they're back, the following God.

They're not actually better off in their trajectory and God's going to take some pretty drastic action and it's going to shift the focus of our story as we go into our first reading today.

I want you to remember our coordinates, how we keep our bearings in the story.

Who is God, who are God's people, where is their home?

What is, how can they meet with God and what has God called them to do.

That's what we wanted to have in place before we move into the story.

Proper.

Let's start in 2nd, Kings 17, in the twelfth year of a has king of Judah, Jose, son of Eli became king of Israel and Samaria.

Any rain 9 years.

He did evil in the eyes of the Lord, but not like the king of Israel who preceded him.

So he was, he was bad as bad as they had, but he was bad, Nassar.

King of Assyria came up to attack.

OSHA, who have been showing us are as vassal and it paid him.

Tribute for the king of Assyria discovered that Jose was a traitor for he had sent envoys to sow king of Egypt and he no longer pay tribute to the king of Assyria as he had done year by year.

There for shamin, S are seized them and put them in prison.

The king of Assyria invaded the entire land marched against America and laid Siege to it for three years in the ninth year of Jose of the king of Assyria captured Samaria and deported the Israelites to Assyria.

He settled them, a holla, and gozen, and the Haverhill River, and in the towns of the medes.

Okay, so that's a pretty big deal.

10 tribes of Israel, just got destroyed the kingdoms.

Destroyed.

Their King has taken away their deported.

Most of the Israelites deported.

The Kingdom of Israel is gone.

That's a really big deal.

So, what's left?

If the key loser has gone, well, chapter 18 starts this way.

In the third year of Hosea, son of Eli king of Israel.

Hezekiah, son of ahaz King of Judah, began to reign of Judah is still around and their King is Hezekiah.

So now the only we haven't really looked at the southern Kingdom so far, and now they're the only ones left.

So who was the story about now?

About Hezekiah and the Judah ights.

Technically the name for someone from the kingdom of Judah.

Judah.

Alright.

Where is their home?

The kingdom of Judah?

And if you've noticed in the mass, we've been looking at so far, Israel tends to be surrounded by nations of about the same size, like their neighborhood is, is country is about the same size and they often are the biggest kid in the, on the Block.

The neighborhood's changed a bit.

Is that Judah is this little brown patch here?

Next in this huge green Empire of the Assyrians and what you normally call A Little Kingdom on the edge of a huge Empire.

The word is a vassal you saw it in the reading a vassal.

So the king of Judah is currently a vassal of a, Siri know, what is a vassal.

A vassal is a country that is technically on paper Independence, but that's only if they don't aggravate the big Kingdom next to them.

It means that they do what the Empire tells them that the Empire.

Next then tells them to do.

They probably pay protection money to that Empire.

If that Empire goes, the war, they go with them.

The closest example I can think of in my lifetime would be the countries in the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War.

So like East, Germany and Czechoslovakia all those different countries.

They weren't technically part of the Soviet Union, but they just happen to agree with the Soviet Union on everything.

Right, those are baffles.

Technically, they're independent, but there are consequences.

If they disagree with the big Empire with the bully on the Block.

To the next coordinate is presents.

How can they meet with God?

The word god at this point?

This is what you do has going from their little country.

But God's presence is on Earth is at the temple, which is in Jerusalem in their Capital City.

They actually have access to the presence of God Israel.

The northern kingdom had the issue that they couldn't meet God in their Kingdom.

They would technically have had to go to Jerusalem, but for the B God lives with them so that they got that going for them.

Now.

What is their job is specifically?