So while these nations feared the Lord, they also served their idols; their children likewise and their grandchildren, as their fathers did, so they do to this day (2 Kings 17:41).

When Israel was taken into exile by Assyria, other peoples were brought into the land to take their place. Then lions began to devour them because they did not fear the LORD. Then they learned a little about the LORD from a Levite and added Him to their pantheon of gods to worship. They served the LORD along with all the other idols they had known from their respective lands, and they taught this to their children and their grandchildren also. This may have brought them temporary relief from the lions, but they remained as lost as ever, for they failed to obey God's covenant, where He commanded them,

You shall not fear other gods, nor bow down yourselves to them nor serve them nor sacrifice to them... (2 Kings 17:35f).

Friends, as I read this description of the people that lived in the land of Israel after the demise of the Northern Kingdom, I wondered if I might not be seeing a reflection of America today. We read,

They feared the Lord and served their own gods according to the custom of the nations from among whom they had been carried away into exile (2Kings 17:33).

It was not that the new inhabitants did not fear the LORD. They feared God AND they feared their own gods as well. They worshipped God AND their idols as well. The LORD did not have their exclusive devotion. 

Every day I wake up with an uneasy feeling, even when there is nothing going particularly wrong in my life. It is not like I question my salvation, but I feel like one who just woke up in a foreign country. The more I seek God in His Word and the more I try to apply His truth to my life, the stranger and more awkward everything going on around me seems to be. 

I remember sitting in Sunday School class the other day, and the leader was teaching on Philippians 4:8-9. He encouraged everyone to meditate on these verses and shared how precious these verses were in guiding his thinking. Another spoke up and encouraged everyone to make their teenage boys memorize these verses.

In that moment I felt a welling up within me of emotion. I wanted to shout out, "No!" The Scriptures must not be treated like a mantra, as if somehow the mere repetition of certain words and phrases could suddenly produce holiness. I know this was not the intention, but it sounded like this to me in the moment.

What is more, as the class was coming to a close, I began to realize that there would be no further application than just that everyone should meditate on these verses. Yet, I felt like to end it this way would be just like giving someone instructions to put a desk together without also providing the raw materials. What good would it be to meditate on a set of instructions if there was nothing with which to build the desk? No, the point of the passage was for people to immerse themselves in the Word of God, even the full counsel of Scripture, through which they could learn to think properly about things and take the kind of actions that will please God. 

Friends, is God just one among many gods we serve in our lives? If the LORD is God, does this not demand our exclusive and total devotion? Do we not debase the LORD when we plead with one another, "Let's try to give God at least ten minutes each day." When we read Martin Luther, the great Reformer, saying something like, "I have so much to do that I shall spend the first three hours of my day in prayer...", we marvel because it is so counterintuitive to what professing Christians normally say, namely, "I have so much to do that I barely have any time to pray."

Friends, is God just one among many gods we serve in our lives? I spoke with a friend recently about leading his kids in a daily devotional time. He told me that he works all day and barely has an hour to play with his kids at the end of the day before they go to sleep. The dilemma for this dad was whether to spend that precious hour in play, which is what his kids would prefer, or to use that hour to teach them the Bible and worship God.

Friends, is God just one among many gods we serve in our lives?! When I talk like this in casual conversation, I feel as if some people look at me like I'm an alien. It's as if they are silently thinking, "What's wrong with him? Who thinks like that? Who does that?" Yet, I am reminded of what Joshua declared to the people of Israel in his day:

But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord (Joshua 24:15).

If the LORD is God, does He demand anything less than complete devotion? Should we not we be daily seeking how to give Him this complete devotion? (cf. Matthew 6:33)

Friends, we are "aliens" in this world (cf. 1 Peter 2:11), and our citizenship is in heaven (cf. Philippians 3:20); therefore, let us continually learn to set our minds on things above and not on earthly things (cf. Colossians 3:2). The more we do this, we may feel more uncomfortable in this world, but we will find greater peace with God (cf. James 4:4; 1 John 2:15-17).

Let us, therefore, daily immerse ourselves in God's Word, and as we do this, His Word will work within us to shape our every thought and decision, our every affection and conviction, and our every act and behavior to draw us nearer to Him and to achieve His highest glory.

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. They followed the example of the nations around them, disobeying the LORD’s command not to imitate them. (2 Kings 17:15 NLT)

In our reading today the Northern Kingdom of Israel comes to an end, as their sins finally lead to their exile to Assyria. The stand-out statement about the is that "they worshipped worthless idols, so they became worthless themselves." They did not realize that their worth came only from the LORD, and apart from Him, they had none. 

This is similar to the New Testament to passages describing unsalty salt. In the passage dealing with counting the cost of following Jesus, we read,

So you cannot become my disciple without giving up everything you own. “Salt is good for seasoning. But if it loses its flavor, how do you make it salty again? Flavorless salt is good neither for the soil nor for the manure pile. It is thrown away. Anyone with ears to hear should listen and understand!” (Luke 14:33-35 NLT)

When we understand that becoming a disciple of Christ is equivalent to becoming a Christian, these words ought to pose a most convicting challenge to every professing Christian. It is only in surrendering everything to the LORD, even everything we call "our own," that we are able to follow Jesus, which is the post-requisite to faith in Him for our salvation. If we do not give everything up to Christ, then we are holding on to something as our own. This is equivalent to holding on to an idol. And when we do this, we are like unsalty salt, which is not even fit to throw on manure. This is equivalent to being "worthless" as in the account we read in 2 Kings above. So, Jesus concludes, if God has given you an ear to hear, then "listen and understand," that is, fulfill what God has called you to do and surrender everything to Christ and begin to follow Him. For as long as you come short of this, you cannot call yourself a disciple of Christ. You cannot rightly call yourself a Christian.

Under the Law of Moses it was forbidden to worship anyone or anything except the LORD. Yet, the people of Israel, as well as the people that came to live among them, persisted in worshipping their idols alongside the LORD. And for this, they were rejected by God:

For the LORD had made a covenant with the descendants of Jacob and commanded them: “Do not worship any other gods or bow before them or serve them or offer sacrifices to them. But worship only the LORD, who brought you out of Egypt with great strength and a powerful arm. Bow down to him alone, and offer sacrifices only to him... You must worship only the LORD your God. He is the one who will rescue you from all your enemies.” But the people would not listen and continued to follow their former practices. (2 Kings 17:35-40 NLT)

In the New Testament, you cannot do this either. We must worship only the Lord. As Jesus taught, "You cannot serve both God and mammon" (i.e. money, wealth, and the like) (Luke 16:13).

Friends, let us stop attaching ourselves to worthless things, even home, cars, and clothes, also the pursuit of wealth, attractiveness, and popularity, as well as the desire for knowledge, skills, and worldly excellence. Instead, let us give up every dollar to Christ, every priority to Christ, every interest and relationship to Christ. And when He gives these things back to us to invest for Him, let us be faithful to wisely and diligently invest them all to win new disciples for Christ. 

Let us not become worthless by serving ourselves or by pursuing worthless things, but let us serve the Lord with all our hearts and pursue His will in everything. As I warned you before, the church today has innoculated most Christians from the post-requisite surrender that accompanies true faith. Let us return to the true Gospel, which is free to receive, because none of it was achieved by us but only and completely by God (Ephesians 2:8-9). But let us count the cost and understand that this free gift of eternal life will cost us everything in this life:

For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it. What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? (Mark 8:35-37 NIV)

Friends, We read in 2 Kings 15:5, "Then the LORD struck the king, so that he was a leper until the day of his death; so he dwelt in an isolated house," but we are given no details. In order to get the whole story, we must read the parallel account in 2 Chronicles 26:16-23. There we find that although he was generally a good king, the king's pride got the better of him, and he was struck with leprosy for trying to burn incense on the altar, an activity permitted only for priests.

Note also that in 2 Kings the Judean king's name is Azariah but in 2 Chronicles it is Uzziah. Complicating matters even more, the name of the priest that confronted the king was also Azariah. Therefore, a careful reading is required to keep things in order. Earlier in Kings we saw something similar going on with two contemporaneous kings of Israel and Judah, who shared the name Joash/Jehoash. Again, without careful reading, these king's could easily be confused with one another.

I bring these things to your attention to encourage you to follow the rabbit trails of your curiosity and don't read too swiftly through the biblical accounts. If you do, you may find yourself on the wrong side of biblical history. Now, there are certainly places where the Bible is silent; however, there are also many places where the Bible explains things, but these explanations can only be discovered by searching them out.

The failure to read carefully has led many to fall into great error. For example, many evangelical preachers still teach Old Testament passages as if Christians are still under the Mosaic Law. This confusion happens because they have not carefully studied the Scriptures, comparing Scripture with Scripture, to discern the truth. Therefore, all of us must be careful for ourselves, for we will not be held guiltless because we were taught wrong, for we are all commanded to study for ourselves and rightly interpret the Scriptures (see 2 Timothy 2:15).