[00:00:00] Speaker A: You.
[00:00:01] Speaker B: Hey, thanks so much for listening to this message. My name is Jason and I'm one of the ministers here at the Madison Church of Christ. It's our hope and prayer that the teaching from God's. Words you hear today will bless your life and draw you closer to Him. If you're ever in the Madison, Alabama area, we'd love for you to worship with us on Sundays at 830 or 10:30 A.m.. If you have any other questions about the Bible or want to know more about the Madison Church, find
[email protected]. Be sure to also check out our Bible study podcast, madison Church of Christ Bible Studies. Thanks again for stopping by.
[00:00:38] Speaker A: Growing up, like probably some of you in here, I grew up going to a lot of different youth rallies and youth days. And one of the things that you could bank on if you were going to one of those youth rallies is somebody was going to stand in front of all of us kids and talk about the topic of dating. And so you would always get some different advice. And one of the most consistent pieces of advice I remember hearing was this never judge a person based on the first date.
The reason why they gave that advice is after you've probably been on first dates before and then second and third and on, you understand what they mean by that. Because usually on that first date, one of the things that you would probably do if you notice some type of deficiency, some type of flaw with you, you would keep that hidden. And maybe you were one of those kind of people that you were nervous about going on a first date with somebody because you were maybe more quiet and so you didn't know really what to say. And so because of that, you thought if we get in one of those points in the middle of this date where there's like an awkward silence and we're both staring at the floor or the ground, that I'm going to have filed away in my mind some different conversation starters just to bring up so there's not that awkward pause. And so you'd be sitting there and you're like, so how's the weather? And just to keep things going. But then maybe you're a person that is a big time talker and you wanted to not come across as being overly talkative, so you made a point to tell yourself, don't say too much, don't put your foot in your mouth. Say way less. And so maybe on that first date you got away with it, but usually by the second, the third, especially by the fourth date, eventually they came to know the real you. Because the reality is that you can keep the real you hidden for a while, but eventually the real you is going to come to the surface.
Tonight, excuse me, this morning while we talk about this guy named Amaziah, he was one of those kind of people that what you notice about him is he gets paid one of the greatest compliments we think that one could ever get. And it's this that they did what was right in the eyes of the Lord.
But the problem was right after that comma, it says this, but he didn't do all the right things with the right type of heart, that the true Amaziah was going to come to the surface. And while Amaziah may be able to fake his relationship with God to other people, god's not fooled and neither is the enemy.
Eventually, that part in our hearts that we keep hidden, it's going to come to the surface. I know this might be like a weird illustration to explain this, but one of the things that I love is the way our house was designed. Because to me, it's very conducive for having company over. All of our living space is downstairs and I'm talking like the kitchen, the dining room and the living room. All the bedrooms are upstairs. And the reason why to me that's very conducive for having people over is if, you know, companies coming and the main places people hang out is the living room, the dining room, the kitchen. You can collect all the stuff that's in your house and go where with it? Upstairs. And you go upstairs. And I'm sure no one does this, but we put ours sometimes in the tub.
We had company coming over and we were collecting all of our stuff, getting up the things around the house.
And we go upstairs and we're putting some of those things in the tub and in different places. And when they came over to the house, they said what a lot of people do when it's small talk, when you first walk into someone's house, oh, it's so clean. I love your home, it's so nice. And of course, then you have to say back, well, it's not always this clean, those kinds of things. And then in the middle of that, while they're complimenting us on our clean house, one of our children says, it's actually not that clean. We threw everything in the tub.
See the reality of who we are and those things that we've kept hidden, those things are eventually going to be told. Those things are going to come to the surface. And that's exactly what happened with this guy named Amaziah. When you hear a compliment like this that they did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, you would say, man, that is a very faithful person.
But can you and I really judge faithfulness based on an outsider's perspective?
And the reason why I bring this up is several years ago when I was in school, one of the things that I initially wanted to study and to write about was I presented this title to my teacher. I said I wanted to study parental leadership styles that lead to faithfulness in young adulthood. And to me, I thought, well, that's like a fun thing to study. I think that would be helpful, is to see if there's something about the way that we lead that can help young people when they get older to be faithful. And I'll never forget that. One of my professors said back to me, he said, I like the idea, but how do you, from the outside measure faithfulness?
I was like, Well, I mean, I guess they show up for services and maybe they know a lot about God. He's like, well, a lot of people can show up for services.
And I'll never forget what he said.
He said, that false kind of faithfulness, where maybe you project one thing, but in here there's something else going on. He said, Sometimes faithfulness, it can be faked.
And so as I was thinking about Amaziah today, I wanted to revolve it around this as we examine our own lives, to challenge us with what I think the Holy Spirit does by bringing this text before us is this that faithfulness is something that can be faked, but God nor the enemy, Satan, is fooled by it.
Satan does not have to have all of your heart.
He doesn't have to have half of your heart.
All he needs is a small portion of your heart that you can give every single area of your life over to Jesus Christ except one area. And what I'm saying is, it's enough for Satan.
He doesn't have half of it. He needs just a small portion of it. And that's exactly what happens with Amaziah. So what I want to do is dig into this guy and his life that showed so many half hearted moments. And so maybe for us, as we reflect on his life, we can make sure that his verdict of his life is not the verdict of our own. Here's what it says. In the second year of Joash, the son of Johaz, king of Israel, Amaziah was the son of Joash and king of Judah, and he began to reign, and he was 25 years old when he became king. Now, I want to give you a little bit of background that I think is so interesting. If you look back to Amaziah and Joash's history, joash and Amaziah were the kings that really should have never been. And what I mean by that is their ancestor. There was a lady named Athaliah, and some of you might be familiar with her. She was one of the most cruel, wicked kings ever queens excuse me, ever. What she did is that when she got ready to assume power, she wanted to make sure that nobody was going to take her throne.
And she even saw her own grandsons as a threat. And so what she tries to do is to kill all of her grandsons. And she was successful at killing them, except for one that got away, one named joash, that somebody hid this little baby and helped him escape. And because of that, he eventually becomes king, and then his son Amaziah eventually becomes king.
And the reason why I bring that up is that it also made me think of this. Some of you maybe have seen the movie Fly Boys or read the story about this. And if you like history, you might remember this, that during World War II, several United States airplanes were flying over a place called Chichijima, and those planes got shot down. And if I'm remembering it correctly, and I might be off on this, but there was nine guys that were in those planes that were shot down, and eight of the nine were captured. They were tortured, they were killed, and they were cannibalized.
But there was one that was able to elude capture, and that was this man in the raft. Some of you might know who the man is in this raft. It's George H. W. Bush.
Now, what's interesting about that is what did he eventually become President, but also what happened to his son, he became president. And the reason why I bring that up with these two individuals, joe Ash and Amaziah, is you have to think like for him as he's floating in this raft and all of a sudden someone sees him. He's like, God must want me alive. Like if I am getting rescued and everybody else was dead, but I'm here. God has a purpose for me. And so part of me thought, all right, so Amaziah, knowing his family history, you know, he's got to think, man, God evidently wants me alive. God's thumbprint is on my life. But you can see the thumbprint of God on your life, but still at times live with a half hearted faithfulness. And so here's what it says about him. He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, but not with a whole heart. Some translations say he did what was right in eyes, Lord, but not with the right heart or with a half heart.
If you're like me and you read that, it almost doesn't make sense that that statement in those two statements would be in the same sentence, right?
Because that comma separates two very, in our eyes, right, diametrically opposed statements that you could do all the right things, but do all the right things with the wrong heart.
And the reason why we have to bring this up is, number one, yes, scripture provides it, but also, it sets up a dilemma, doesn't it?
Because what you're going to see about Amaziah is this. Amaziah knows so many of these little details of the law.
He's one of those kind of people that we might talk about. They they cross the T's, they dot the I's, they know every verse for every single thing.
But yet you can know every verse. You can know all the places to turn, but also not have the right heart about the pages in which you're turning to.
And so I want us to think about this as we think about him, but think about us and to think about this dilemma. And maybe you've seen this in your own life, that you could do all the right things in all the correct ways in a way too, where it's very much in alignment with God's perfect will.
However, you do those things with the wrong heart and your heart is not where it needs to be.
God's not faked and the enemy is definitely not fooled by it.
So why was this in the Bible?
Because as I was reading this, I kept thinking, man, I must agree with the Holy Spirit, have to put that in the Bible to have to say the statement, somebody did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, but not with a whole heart. And I believe the reason it's in here is because what we read here, he doesn't want that to be the verdict of our lives too. You go through the Bible and you see this is a consistent pattern. Think about when God looked down and said, listen, I know you think Saul's the part because he's tall, he's handsome, he looks like a king, he looks like a leader. The problem with that guy, he might look the part, but his heart's not in the right place. And so that's why in one Samuel 16 it says that other people look at the outward appearance, but God always looks at what the heart. And so he raises up this guy named David. And what's interesting about David, david had his flaws, right? But more often than not, what made David a man after God's own heart and why there's a whole book called Psalms that he wrote a lot of is that he poured out his heart in the good and the bad moments, usually.
And we still today read the Soul Song book, the Book of Psalms, to reflect on our own heart condition. He's like, I can do something with somebody that is willing to share their heart to be honest about who they really are.
And so here's what the text goes on to say. And this is kind of where you can see that his half heartedness shows up.
It says that he did what was right in the eyes of Lord, but not like his father, David. He did all the things like his father had done, but the high places were not removed. The people were still sacrificing and making offerings on the high places.
Here's the reason why this is a big deal. In Deuteronomy, chapter twelve, one of the things that the Bible refers to is that whenever a king gets into a place of leadership, that king is supposed to remove any type of idol that's in that area.
Because if you keep it close by, you might have a tendency to gravitate towards it. Do you see part of the issue? He's keeping some stuff in the tub, right? He's keeping some stuff nearby, he's keeping some things off to the side, but eventually those things are going to come back, as we see at the end of this story, to haunt him.
And the reason why he was keeping up these places is there was a fraction of the community in which he lived that liked to worse way.
And I do think it's a reminder that God doesn't want us to transform his worship. You think about one of the most commonly used words for worship in the Bible is actually to kiss towards it's, to give him that sacrifice of praise. But the neat byproduct as we worship together god is the impact it has on us also collectively.
But here's the part where we know he knows the law.
He's crossed the t's, he's dotted the I's, he knows the verses and he knows where to turn is because of the decision he made. Next it says as soon as the power was firmly in his hand, he struck down his servants who has struck down the king? His father. But he did not put to death the children of the murderers because it was written in the book of the law of Moses that you're not to do that.
So he's getting ready to avenge his father's death and so he kills the people that killed his father. But he knew the law so well that he said I know that God also told us that we can kill the people that killed my father, but we can't kill the children. The children shouldn't have to suffer for the poor decision that dad made, right?
How did he know that? Well, let me tell you, he was in the law, he was reading the word, he knew the right stuff. But still what's off it's his heart because then we see this show. Up next, Amazon is getting ready to go to battle and he's going to battle against a group of people called the Edomites. And the reason he's going to battle against the Edomites, most people believe is because he wants a trade route in order to bring in more commerce, more business and all of those kind of things. So it's necessarily not a wrong thing. So in order to go to this battle he said all right, here's what we're going to do, I'm going to get together. It says he mustered 20 years old and forward people that were 300,000 that he came to. A number of these were men that were fit for war, able to handle a spear and a shield.
So he had his own 300. But then he decided to do this. Well I'm going to go out and hire 100,000 mighty men of valor and I'm going to get them from Israel and I'm going to pay those guys 100 talents of silver. He thinks this is a good idea. But this man of God comes up to him and no, no, King, you can't do that. Do not let the army of Israel go with you because the Lord is not going to be with you.
See, what he thinks is, I need to unite myself with Israel. And he's like, no, don't unite yourself with Israel. Israel's not on God's good list right now. They're on the naughty list.
They are falling victim to idols. And what will happen is if you start to unite yourself with people that God opposes you, you can't move forward.
We can't be what we need to be if God is opposing us, right?
When you think about this, that he is keeping this enemy close by, do you notice a pattern here? He keeps the idols close by, and he seems to keep even the enemy a little bit closer. I want to ask you this question. What or who in your life are you uniting yourself with, that maybe God opposes?
Who or what in your life are you uniting with that you know, that God opposes?
As you think about that, I think about a text in the Book of Proverbs and in verse 13, it says this, that righteousness guards a person's life.
So if righteousness guards a person's life, then what does unrighteousness do?
Well, it lets the enemy in.
See, he's keeping a lot of stuff close by. So when we lived in South Alabama, the second house we lived in, we had this really big issue with flies. Our first house, we had no issue with flies. But this one we did. And so because we had these issues with flies, one of the things that we did is we bought a bunch of fly swatters and we put them on top of the refrigerator. And for home school PE, what we would do is we would give our kids the fly swatters and give them a good arm workout going around the house, smacking stuff. And so they would kill a lot of those flies. The other thing that we would do, we got one of those sticky pads, which is also really terrible. Some people think that the flying thing is bad, that's a slow death, the sticky pad. But anyway, so we had those set up.
Nothing was fixing it, trying to get rid of these flies. So my mom brought up something. She said, well, one of the things that you could use or you could do is there's a guy where she works. It's kind of like this open space. It's kind of like a shop that he has something called a salt gun.
S-A-L-T salt gun. And I cleared with Greg Dean this morning that I am using this. And security knows as well this holds salt. And you pull this back and you shoot it at flies and it kills the flies. Our boys were so excited to get this. Like we're not big hunters. So if you come to our house, you'll see mounted on the wall different flies we've killed over the years.
So we had this thing and they had a blast going around the house, shooting and killing all of these flies. We had fly swatters, we had sticky pads and we had this gun to get rid of the fly issue. But guess what happened?
We still kept having flies.
Like what in the world? So we asked an exterminator to come to the house to see what the issue is. Like why do we have this now at this house? What's unique?
And so he came back in the house. He said, here's your issue. In your backyard you have three fruit trees and there's a lot of fruit on the ground because you all aren't eating all the fruit. And I'm like, well if we did, we'd have another issue.
And so he said, what happens is the fruit falls to the ground and the flies are eating that fruit and it's just like a heyday for them.
So what I'm saying is you are going to continue to have an issue with the flies as long as you have what in your backyard, those fruit, those trees, right?
Have you noticed at times what our approach is to dealing with those parts of our life that we maybe don't like? Or maybe there's a part of our life that we want to do better at. And our first inclination is, well here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to start a new program.
Or what I might do is I might get a new app for my phone to help.
Or what I might do is I might get a journaling, Bible or this new Bible program and that'll fix it. What we need to fix the issue is another device, another program, something, right?
But what happens is we're making those kind of decisions, not that they're bad, but at the same time we're keeping the enemy still close by. For Amaziah, he's got the high places still up. And for Amaziah, he also is uniting himself with things that God definitely opposes. What I'm saying is Satan is attracted to a lot of the things that you and I are choosing not to get rid of.
And so if righteousness guards our life, then we understand unrighteousness is going to let the enemy in. So think about what we're in essence saying. We're inviting him into our life. And we may not realize it's like this, but a lot of the times, his invasion, it starts as an invitation. And you might think, well, no, I didn't invite him into this. Like I didn't ask for it. And yeah, you might be right. But your lifestyle says it does.
What do you keep close by?
What do you unite yourself with? And so you can tell his heart's not in the right place. Because when that man of God comes up to him and says, hey, listen, you don't need to unite yourself with Israel. They're on the bad list right now. Do you know what he says next? Well, what about the money?
I mean, I gave these guys 100 talents. Like, what about the money?
And I think we could all relate to that, because maybe you've been in a situation before where you've invested a lot of time, a lot of money, a lot of energy into something, and you've invested so deeply into that that you think, well, how could I get out of it now?
Like, I feel like this is just what it is.
And so then we start making decisions as half hearted people do, at times based on not obedience, but expedience, as to, does this help me? Does this get me through it quicker?
And so what happened is he did listen to that advice, and so he got rid of that army. They were not happy with him, the Texas. They became very, very angry. Judah returned home in fierce anger. And so it says, Amaziah took courage, led out his people, and went to the Valley of Salt and struck down 10,000 men. And then it says, the men of Judah captured another 10,000 alive and took them to the top of a rock, threw them down from the top of the rock, and they were all dashed to pieces. Now, you read that and you're like, Whoa, that's an incredible, awesome victory. But let's think about it for just a second.
Is that really that impressive of a victory for 300,000 people?
I never considered this and never even thought of it, but two different commentaries brought up this point that usually that number of people going to battle in the past has always yielded greater results.
That could it possibly be that God gives a half hearted victory because Amaziah has a half hearted approach? Like, we don't know, but it could be, because when you read that 300,000 only overtook 10,000, are we supposed to clap? Are we supposed to be impressed?
There are some real dangers to half heartedness.
And so after he got done striking down the Edomites, listen to what he does.
The people he was trying to get rid of, the calls he was fighting against, the people he campaigned against, he brought their gods, set them up in his land and worshiped them and started making offerings.
Like what?
At first, when I was reading this, I was thinking, Why would you do that? But yet we do that at times. Have you noticed how sometimes there can be something we can campaign against, we can be vocal about, but at the same time, sometimes we find ourselves also being susceptible to the very same things.
See, that's one of the dangers of half hardenedness is that sometimes it means that you are susceptible to the very evils that you campaign against. We've seen it on the news before.
We've even seen people in a leadership position in churches, public officials that campaign against certain evils of this world. Then we find out later what that's the very thing that they are struggling against. How do you get there? It's not giving him your what? Your whole heart.
But if people were to point at his knowledge, he could point them to a place.
He crossed the T's, he dotted the I's. But the problem was, he didn't do it with a whole heart.
That man that came up to him tried to help him by saying, listen, you don't need to do this.
Look at his response to the truth he received.
Well, who made you a royal counselor?
Stop.
Why should you be struck down?
So the prophet stopped, but said, I know that God has determined to destroy you. Kind of some biblical history if you date back to the pentateuch. One of the things it also mentions is that anytime somebody brings idols of the enemy into the land, they should be killed and destroyed.
So he said, Listen, God's going to destroy you for this because you've done this and not listen to my counsel.
See, that's the next mark of a half hearted person is that when they are confronted with truth, they don't want to listen to it.
This is not the way to organize a Bible class or a sermon all the time. So I'm not trying to say to do this a lot, but when I was getting this message ready, one of the things I did decide to Google, I Googled Bible verses and times in the Bible when people didn't hear the truth or wouldn't receive the truth. And it was really interesting. An article popped up that this man had written about that very thing, and he listed all the places in the Bible and why people did not receive or hear truth. So I was like, well, thank you for doing that work for us. And here's the first one he said that was on there is when there's unconfessed sin in our hearts, we're not going to be able to clearly see the truth. Psalm 66 talks about how we have this clouded vision because there is that part of our heart that we've kept away. Isaiah 59 one and two. God poses through Isaiah a rhetorical question. Is God too weak to save you? Well, is he?
No. So what's the issue? He says, well, your sins have separated you from God. It was that unconfessed sin that's causing you not to see the truth. The second thing he listed was apathy.
And this is one of the most dangerous places to be. It's kind of like those, like you know the truth, but you also maybe even know that you need to change, but you just don't care.
Because think about the pursuit that's mentioned in Jeremiah 29. It says in Jeremiah 29, if you seek me not with a half, but if you seek me with. Your whole heart, you will find me.
He's like the easiest person to play hide and seek with, right? It's like if you've played with a kid before, you're going to hide basically in a place where they can find you because you know that they're not the best at going and finding things all the time. He's like, Listen, I'm one you can play hide and seek with because you will find me. If you give in an effort, you will find me. It's that heart of apathy at times that causes us not to see. But also the other thing he mentions is when you hate other people, if you go back to the Sermon on the Mount, one of the things that Jesus does, he takes all of these laws that they grew up hearing, and you know what he did with those laws? He reverts them back to the heart of it.
He's like, you've heard that you're not supposed to commit adultery, but what I'm telling you is if you commit adultery in your heart, you've committed adultery and you've heard for years that you're not supposed to commit murder. Well, I'm telling you that if you hate somebody, you've committed murder.
One John four in seven through ten expounds on this, doesn't it? When he said, this is how you know the love of God, that when the love you have been given is reciprocated to the love that you give out, that's how you know you've seen God.
Then the next one, he mentions that you give other people's opinions more weight than God's.
And then this one was to me, the one of Amaziah, that you give your own opinions more weight than God's.
And so remember that man that came up to him and said, hey, listen, because you've chosen this way, it's going to destroy you.
And that's exactly what happened to him.
Do you see the common theme here? You might know a lot of stuff, but the condition of your heart is way more important than that intelligence, that knowledge, that facts that you have in your head.
So it says, the rest of the deeds of Amaziah from first to last are not written in the book of the kings of Judah and Israel. Here's what's fascinating about that statement. It's saying like, there are other things we could mention, but this is what we chose to highlight.
Like, he's got a resume, but this is what we chose to highlight.
So from the time when he turned away from the Lord, they made a conspiracy against him in Jerusalem. He fled, they sent people after him and they put him to death. Isn't it interesting that the enemies, the idols that he kept close by, guess what they ended up doing?
They destroyed him.
The things that we choose in life oftentimes to not get rid of are the very things that Satan loves to capitalize on.
We mentioned it in the very beginning. Maybe you got some stuff you just kind of thrown in the tub, maybe some stuff you've kept hidden away in the corner. You can approach your walk with God, where I'm going to give everything to Jesus except this one area.
That's enough for Satan. He doesn't even have to have half of your heart. He just needs a small portion, a certain chamber that you've kept hidden away.
When I was growing up, I remember the lyrics to this song, and I found it this week, and I thought it really fit with this. When it says this, all he wants is you.
No one else will do. Not just a part. He wants all of your heart. All he wants is you.
All he wants is all of you. Now, maybe times you've approached your walk with God that he's coming to clean up stuff in your life to make you a better version of you. God didn't come to send His Son to this earth just to clean up your life. He came to take over.
So maybe for you, you've kept, like, a portion hidden that you're like, well, I've given everything to Jesus except this one area. What I'm telling you is enough for Satan.
Maybe you're here today and you want to confess sin, that there's some things that you've kept hidden.
Maybe you might have faked your friends, your family, but I want you to understand God nor the enemy is fooled by it. Maybe you're here today and you've never made the decision to put on Christ in a story that we've covered this morning that does have, yes, a lot of negative impacts. And you see this guy that was set up to be a hero, but failed so much. You know what's interesting? That you read about those prophets that came to him, giving him words of advice that he didn't listen to.
Their full devotion ended up leading them to some incredible rewards later.
So that's why there's a positive side to all of this that, yes, while half hearted commitment does lead to an inevitable ruin, giving God your full heart can lead to an eternal reward. So if you're here today and you want to give your life to Christ through baptism, maybe you want to let Him reclaim your life. Not half of it, but all of it. I encourage you to come forward or go find one of our shepherds while we stand and we sing this song.
