Living Water Community Church

In particular the highlighted person was Bathsheba. But in this instance she is not mentioned by name. She is referred to as the wife of Uriah. She is the mother of Solomon by David. What this does for us as readers is it highlights David as a sinful man. David is and was almost always thought of as the greatest king of Israel. As we looked at last time in Jeremiah 30 the people are prophesied to one day serve the Lord their God and David their king. This points out how highly the people thought of David. Because this verse is clearly the referencing the future king who is descended from David. What Matthew is doing is drawing our attention to the fact that while David was a great king he was also a sinner and could not be the greater and better king we all needed. That king is the one Matthew is writing about. The other thing we saw as we looked into the situation with David and Bathsheba is the prophecy Nathan made of how the child Bathsheba carried would die because of David’s sin. It is easy to read past

The story of Ruth continues to show the idea that the women talked about in this passage were pagans and mainly gentiles. Yet God chooses these women to be the women in the line of Christ. Ruth was a Moabite woman who ends up coming to Israel because she had married an Israelite man. Boaz shows favor to Ruth because of what he's heard Ruth has done for her mother-in-law, Naomi. Ruth proposes that Boaz should redeem the inheritance of Elimelech. Boaz figures this out and ends up being the redeemer of Ruth and takes Ruth as his wife. Ruth, a Moabite, is brought into Israel and made part of the line of Christ.

The story of Rahab continues to show the idea that the women talked about in this passage were mainly pagans and gentiles. Yet God chooses these women to be the women in the line of Christ. Which is particularly striking since Matthew was written to Jews. This is very important because grace to gentiles is poured forth in even the line of Christ. Rahab was a prostitute who probably also had a house for prostitution. Why did the spies go to Jericho? Because God had a Canaanite women in Jericho that He was going to save from the destruction that He was bringing upon Jericho. It's almost like Rahab was participating in the passover that the Israelites were just starting to share in, for the first time, in the promised land.

The story of Tamar continues to show the idea that the women talked about in this passage were pagans and mainly gentiles. Yet God chooses these women to be the women in the line of Christ. Tamar loses her first two husbands because of their wickedness before the Lord. Tamar appears to be 'tainted goods' and Judah doesn't want to give his youngest son over to Tamar even though he's come of age. The picture of Jesus and Adam are also seen in this passage in the bearing of the twins by Tamar.

Today we looked at how Babylon came and conquered Jerusalem. How Zedekiah was made ruler and how he rebelled against the King of Babylon. Destruction followed this rebellion as Nebuchadnezzar came and destroyed Jerusalem and carried into exile a great many of the people. The remaining people left in Judah, flee to Egypt after Gedaliah the governor is murdered. The promises of God are seen to be fulfilled in bringing judgement upon Judah for there sin and rebellion against God.

We worked through the section of Kings which describes how Judah came to be under the authority and rulership of Pharaoh Neco the king of Egypt. The people of Judah had made Jehoahaz king when his father died even though he was not the oldest son of Josiah. We don’t know why this was and there is no good explanation given. He only reigned 3 months and the immediately returned to the evil which had marked the reign of the kings which came before his father Josiah. After 3 months Pharaoh Neco came and captured him and carried him off to Egypt where he lived out his days and died. He made his older brother Eliakim king and changed his name to Jehoiakim. He also placed a tribute on Judah of a hundred talents of silver and a talent of gold. Jehoiakim complied with this and extracted even more from the people. He used the extra to build himself a royal palace and he too did evil in the eyes of the Lord. For 3 years he became servant to Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. He rebelled against Babylon after 3 years at the same

We worked our way through the reforms brought about under the reign of Josiah. He was a righteous king which had been prophesied about at the beginning of the separation of the Judah and Israel. He brought reforms with real passion for turning the people back to God. No other king before him or after him had been as passionate for the exultation of God before the people. He sought to wipe out all idolatry including the worship of household gods. He wiped out the shrines which had even been built by Solomon on what is now known as the mount of olives. He even went into the territory which had formerly been occupied by Israel and tore down all their idols and altars to false gods. He did all of this knowing that after his death Judah was going to be taken captive for her consistent idolatry for hundreds of years. This reveals how Josiah was not being driven by a hope of God relenting or with the hope of establishing a legacy but simply by a passionate love for God. 

We worked our way through the beginning of the story of Josiah. He is a remarkably good God honoring king over Judah from a very young age. He begins to reign at 8 years old. He fulfills a prophecy given to Jeroboam at the very beginning of his reign over the newly separated 10 tribes of Israel. A prophet told Jeroboam that a king named Josiah would cast down false places of worship and call people to return to Yahweh. Josiah began with having work done on the temple to repair it. During the repair work they found the book of the law. This book was taken to the king and read. The response of the king was to tear his clothes because he knew based simply on the book how the people had done evil in the sight of God. Josiah sent a delegation of his advisors to Huldah the prophetess to inquire about the things which had been read. She pronounced the coming wrath of God against Judah because of the way she had turned her back on Him. God promised however this would not happen in Josiah’s lifetime because he had tor

We worked our way through the story of Manasseh. In typical fashion the writer of Kings is most concerned with the broader brush strokes of the story. We don’t hear in Kings about Manasseh becoming repentant when he is taken captive or the fact of his attempt to make things right after his return from captivity. While these were important personally they didn’t make a huge difference for the people of Judah because his son which became king after him continued to carry out the evil which Manasseh had initially begun. The writer of kings though does record how God continued to send prophets to Manasseh and Judah during this really long time of spiritual apostasy. One of the questions which naturally comes up when we look at a passage which essentially covers for the most part 57 years of hardened refusal to repent is, “Why did God allow this to continue?” Certainly, God was patient with bringing Manasseh to repentance. But the bigger point and the one which most likely comforted the people in exile is how God

We walked through the near death of Hezekiah. It is a really serious illness and he is really incapacitated by it. Isaiah comes to him and tells him to prepare to die. Hezekiah believes him and it grieves him because he is very sick. Hezekiah cries out to God from his deathbed asking for healing and restoration. Isaiah soon returns with the message Hezekiah will recover and will go up to the temple in 3 days. Because he is so sick Hezekiah finds this declaration unbelievable and he asks Isaiah for a sign. The sign he is given is the shadow moves back 10 steps on a time keeping device Ahaz had built. Hezekiah recovers and worships at the temple in 3 days just like Isaiah had prophesied. His sickness and recovery were talked about even in the halls of Babylon which was over 670 miles away. The king of Babylon sent an envoy with gifts to congratulate Hezekiah on his recovery. There may have been alliances made at this time. But Hezekiah is clearly caught up in the celebrity of the moment and proceeds to show the

We worked through the last part of Hezekiah’s conflict with the king of Assyria. In chapter 18 we ended with a very dark scene, Hezekiah and his leaders are in sackcloth before the Lord facing a grim and dismal threat from the king of Assyria. In chapter 19 we witnessed the Lord’s deliverance. It is a supernatural intervention as the Lord sends an angel who kills 185,000 men of the Assyrian army in one night. Sennacherib returns home in defeat and shortly after this is killed by his own sons. It is a good reminder that God loves His people and delights to rescue them. In this story we also see how Sennacherib declared his greatness above the god’s of all the other kings he had conquered and he boasted of how he would conquer Jerusalem as well. God will not be mocked by men, and God demonstrates His power by sending His angel to strike the army of the Assyrians. 

We followed the opening story of Hezekiah and his reign as the king of Judah. He is one of the most God honoring kings of the kings of Judah. He is one of the only kings to remove the high places where people worshipped. He destroyed the idols people worshipped including the bronze serpent Moses had made, since people had come to worship it as well. The record of Hezekiah’s reign includes the statement that there were none like him either before or after him in the way he trusted God. He not only trusted God but was recognized for seeking to be obedient to the commandments of God. The Lord was with Hezekiah and blessed him. We see Hezekiah breaking the reliance on Assyria his father had established. He also has success in going against the Philistines. This is all seen as a result of God being with him. In his fourth year as king of Judah the king of Assyria came against Samaria and besieged it for 3 years. After 3 years Samaria fell and the nation of Israel was conquered and carried off as captives. 7 years

Examples of times when peopled prayed to God. We look at the contexts of when peopled prayed and what they prayed about. Continuing this study of prayer is the focus of this Sunday. Ezra's confessionary prayer and Nehemiah's silent prayer of heart are two examples we looked at. Nehemiah also prays for protection and we see Job praying on behalf of other men. Daniel prays to God in the midst of danger and later for the Israelites in exile. Jonah and other examples are also looked at today.

We worked through the last half of chapter 17. We see the pagan people the Assyrians moved into the land of Israel dealing with attacks by lions. The response is, “We don’t know how to appease the God of this land!” and so they send word to the king of Assyria for help. He orders a priest to be sent back to the land to teach the people about God. The amazing thing about this is how God is using the establishment of the people of Israel in the land to be the basis for bringing the truth about the true and living God to the nations even if Israel is not really occupying the land. God is at work glorifying His name through them. While the vast majority of pagan people in the land of Israel certainly do not repent and turn to Yahweh there were no doubt some who did. God promises His word will not return void so there must have been some among those moved into the land who came to follow Yahweh. 

We worked through the first half of 2 Kings 17. Here we see the judgement of God being poured out on the 10 northern tribes for their unfaithfulness. Again and again the point is made how this is happening because of the unfaithfulness of God’s people. They had adopted the customs of the people who were driven out before them. They rejected the one true God who had delivered them from Egypt and slavery and had given them the land. They embraced idolatry with zeal. We spent a good deal of time looking at the idea of customs and how God had given them many things which would have made them a peculiar people. They had the sabbath observance, the feasts of the Lord, the freeing of slaves and resting of land every 7 years and the forgiveness of debts and return of property every 49 years. They clearly had God ordained customs which should have set them apart and been a constant reminder of God and His grace. But they turned their back on these things and did not practice them but instead adopted the customs of the

We worked our way through chapter 16 dealing with the rulership of king Ahaz of Judah. There is a lot of detail about his life especially when we consider how he is described as a king who did not do what was right in the eyes of the Lord. This is the first time this kind of description is applied to a king of Judah. It is a sad commentary an a life spent turning away from God at every point. He was even said to have sacrificed his son to an idol. Yet we see in the book of Isaiah how God reached out to Ahaz in his time of need as Jerusalem was being attacked by both Israel and Syria. But Ahaz refused to trust God and accept His help. Instead he sent money to Tiglath-pileser the king of Assyria and asked him for help. The Assyrian king came down and conquered the Syrians killing their king. This of course aided the kingdom of Judah but the Assyrian king demanded Ahaz submit to him and even came down and executed his own attack against Jerusalem. Ahaz also lost soldiers and cities to the Philistines and the Edo

We are looking at many different ways in which people in the Bible prayed. The examples of prayer are very rich and it will take a few weeks to go through these examples of prayer we find in the Bible. Different words are used for "prayer" depending on the way the person was seeking to approach God. Join us as we look through the ways we see prayer done in the Bible.

We worked through a section which showed us one of the longest reigns of any king in Judah. King Uzziah also known as Ahaziah reigned 52 years. Here was a king which in many ways honored God and yet as he entered the end of his reign he became proud and entered the temple to offer incense to God. This angered God and he struck Uzziah with leprosy in front of the 80 priest which assembled to stand against what Uzziah was doing. He lived the rest of his life in a different house as a leper. His son Jotham reigned after him. While his reign was said to be like his fathers he too fell short of doing all God wanted. While this was happening in Judah there were 5 reigns of different kings of Israel laid out for us. They did not seek to honor God and one after another they died often at the hands of people close to them. The writer of kings takes us through all of these kings in this short space showing us how time after time after time no matter how the king intended to go they all fell short. None of them was the

We explored the time when the kings of both Israel and Judah demonstrated halfway commitments to God. They either started out strong for the Lord and ended worshipping idols or they simply seemed to want God and idols too. It is a sad time in Israel of halfway commitments. People seem to be seeking for the Lord because of their oppression and God hears them and gives them relief but they continue to worship idols. God watching over them and watching out for them seems to have little or no impact on how they live or worship. And yet there is a warning here. A warning to honor God as God. Judah thought they could simply worship at the high places it would be fine. It was more convenient then going up to Jerusalem. Who cares that other idols are worshipped there. But God had established the temple and He had come to dwell there and establish His presence between the cherubim. He called on the people to come to Him and worship Him there. This was God’s plan. The worship of God is established by God and matters to

We worked our way through the lives of some of Jehu’s descendants as they ruled over Israel. We also witnessed the last acts of Elisha as he wrapped up his ministry and died. The descendants of Jehu were very much like their father. They seemed to have a certain type of zeal and regard for Yahweh but they continued to worship the golden calves and other false gods. It is a tragic act of disobedience as they show only a half way commitment to God. But the reality is a halfway commitment is not an act of faith. We saw in the story of Joash a real sorrow at the sickness of Elisha. He weeps when he goes to visit him. But his compassion does not translate into a greater commitment to God. Elisha gives him a prophecy about his future conflicts with Syria. He uses a bow and arrows to speak of the victories which will come. We also see a brief story about how a man’s body is quickly tossed into the tomb where Elisha’s body lay. The dead man came into contact with Elisha’s dead body and God brought him back to life. T