[0:00] This message was recorded at Vision Baptist Church in Alfred, Georgia. It is our prayer that you will be blessed by the preaching of God's Word.
[0:14] Well, take your Bibles with me, please, to the book of 1 Kings, chapter 22. No more powerful name. That was beautifully sung, ladies. Thank you very much.
[0:25] 1 Kings, chapter 22. 2 Kings, chapter 22.
[0:57] 2 Kings, chapter 22. And most of us have just a tad of a wannabe like them. In the Bible story tonight, there's a king, a good man named Jehoshaphat.
[1:10] and he's a good guy comes from a good daddy he's done a good job being the king and prosperity begins to reign in his world he gets to prosperity and peace and uh that's going to get him in trouble so if you want to jot this down from verse one down through verse four there's the dangers of peace and prosperity because everything starts going good for jehoshaphat and for ahab and they've made friendships and these two kings are getting along now ahab for you to understand ahab's like the wickedest guy on the planet so when you say they're getting along you're saying something pretty strong i mean this is like adolf hitler i mean this is like uh all the bad guys in world war ii all lumped into one guy this guy is a wicked guy and the man of god has become his buddy they've even joined families together now go down if you were to verse five and write this down this is one of the wildest stories in the bible in verse five you're going to have the story ahab and jehoshaphat are sitting there and they're talking and uh they want to go and fight syria and take back some property that belongs to them and ahab wants jehoshaphat to get involved in that battle with him and jehoshaphat because he has this uh this god stuff in his past and he knows what it's like to get a hold of god in the past but when things settle out and smooth out in your life and you might not need to talk to god so much you know everything's going good you don't need to pray near as much as you do when your baby's sick when your baby's really really sick and might die or when uh you're you're financially in ruins or or when a whole bunch of stuff's going wrong you might get a hold of god a lot but when everything gets really good our bible reading kind of slides to the side our praying slides to the side our church attendance slides uh to the side because well we don't need it and so the first thing you got is all this prosperity and the next thing i wish you'd write down there is there are men of god or popular preachers because what ends up happening is ahab says uh jehoshaphat will you go down and fight with me will you go do this and uh jehoshaphat says well uh couldn't we ask god if he's going to bless this why don't we ask god what he'd do about this what he'd say ahab said not a problem i got a lot of preachers on my payroll i got a whole i got 400 of them here bring them in and all 400 come in and say man king whatever you want whatever you want god's going to do it you're going to win victory is assured you're a great guy god's on your side this is your best life now it's all going to go good and jehoshaphat says well man you know i'd like to know is there another guy in the kingdom that might have another opinion and uh ahab says yes there is but i don't like him he never says anything nice about me ever and so if we bring him in here he's going to say bad stuff i don't want to bring him josephath says oh come on man let's listen to this one guy well you got 400 of these let's get one more won't hurt and they bring him they go get him and the guys go down to they go to get micaiah and they say to him hey would you come up here but be nice come on the whole ministerial association's in agreement we all agree that everything's going to go good and we'd appreciate it if you could just say a good word and micaiah says to him i'll just tell you i'm going to say whatever god tells me to say that's who i am it's how i work it's how things are if he calls me i'm just telling the truth and they say oh come on you can be a nice one time could you smile one time could you say something nice take me up there they bring up there and and and ahab says all right go ahead mikhail what do you got to say he said oh king you're going to win everything's going to go your way and ahab says and i know that ain't what you think he said well i'll tell you what i do think
[5:11] you're going to be dead you're going to be dead for the day's over when this battle's over you'll be a dead man and israel's going to be beat up and whipped and that's the real truth and the other preacher said oh whoa whoa whoa how in the world could you have such a story to tell how could you know that i mean come on god spoke to us 400 of us been in touch with god and only one of you you're the guy all by yourself telling the story and mikhail said yeah well they was up in heaven sitting around and they were all talking about what was going on with this dumb little game you're about to play and one of the guys said to god hey let me go down and i'll tell a lie in that guy's ear and those prophets ears and he'll go along with it and hey they'll go into battle god's all right go ahead do that that'll find going down there tell him they went down told the prophets lies and then the uh uh the the bad leader he hurts uh mikhail right there in front of everybody knocks him around a little bit that's the next thing it goes on so it was peace and prosperity and when you're in the middle of peace and prosperity you can afford to hire preachers and you can get a preacher like you like itch and ear people get preachers that say what they want to hear and that's what happens in verse five now if you're going to go ahead and mark your bible go on down if you would to uh to uh we're going to go to first samuel 20 first kings 22 and 29 mark that in your bible and right there deception and death that's the funniest story in the world to me after after uh mikhail gets through telling the story they agree to go into battle and they have looks at jehoshaphat and says look let me tell you what i'm going to do you wear your kingly robes but i'm not going to wear mine i'm going to i'm going to dress up like a peon like a regular soldier but i want you to look like a king and you go out into battle like a king and i'll go out like a nobody and jehoshaphat i don't know what was wrong with the boy he said okay fine i'll go be the target for everybody i'll just wear a big banner it says shoot me kill me and when they got out in the battle the enemy king said just killed ahab just kill the king of israel so when i won't kill him get rid of him so they looked up and they saw that guy dressed like a king and so they came after him and when they got real close jehoshaphat said whoa my name's jehoshaphat i'm not ahab and they said okay so they all just turned walked off they left him there and they started looking for ahab couldn't find ahab the battle's about to be over this one guy's got an extra arrow left over or something and he just fires it up in the air it flies through the air and it hits him right between the cracks in his heart in his armor and kills him he says well he ain't dead yet he says get me off the field boys i'm bad shape they pull him off the field battle goes bad they lose he bleeds out and uh the dogs come and lick his blood you see he wanted to be like jehoshaphat wanted to be like that jehoshaphat's going to let his kid his son marry ahab's daughter so he had that friendship because peace and prosperity and having money is more important the truth and right so we sell our souls to enjoy their lifestyle and then we get a preacher that says what we want him to say but it brings deception and death and the last thing i want you to look at if you would go down if you would to first kings 22 51 and write this down there if you would the sins of the parents affect the children and i'll sum it all up in the last thing i want to say to you tonight i wish you'd get the story i wish you'd get it clearly in your head and realize what's going to happen so verse first kings 22 4 we'll walk back through it now first kings 22 4 the bible says and he said unto jehoshaphat will thou go with me to battle to ramoth gilead and jehoshaphat said to the king of israel that's ahab ahab the arab ahab the bad guy ahab hitler huh he said to him well i'm like
[9:21] you buddy we're buddies me and you we're the same guys we're on the same team we're working together i am as you are my people are like your people my horses like your horses i like being like you let's go that just sums up to me where most of us tend to live we watch tv shows and figure out how they live we want that and we quickly move into this first stage that happens and that's the prosperity and the peace oh jehoshaphat's a good man and a good king in first kings chapter 22 and verse 41 the bible gives his story kind of in the middle of this chapter and it sums up and it says jehoshaphat the son of asa began to reign over judah in the fourth year of ahab king of israel and and he followed his dad's example look at verse 43 and he walked in all the ways of asa his father and he turned not aside from it doing that which was right in the eyes of lord he's a good guy daddy showed him how to do it and he followed daddy's footprints but said we can stop right here and go home daddy you are making a difference jehoshaphat is doing right he has gone through the kingdom he's made right steps because he had the right dad but along the way as he started prospering god started blessing he started making little compromises with the world look at first kings 22 43 nevertheless the high places in other words he walked in the ways of his dad and he turned not aside from doing that which was right in the lord but but at the same time he left the worship places for the false demon up there in the high places he let it go and he made peace with the king of israel king ahab by letting his son marry first kings 22 44 and jehoshaphat made peace with the king of israel all you got to do is go check out a few more verses in the bible and you'll find out that that was they had an affinity they got together and his son has married the daughter of ahab that's another place we could stop this message how in the world does a man who knows god who comes from a family that knows god let his daughter his son marry a daughter of a man who is like demon possessed and like the most wicked and vile man on the planet i'll tell you how money i'll tell you how influence i'll tell you how fitting in with this world and so that's the move he made he took difficult stands he did some right stuff in first kings chapter 22 and verse 46 he got rid of the sodomites he said he said this this sexual deviancy this wickedness is going and he got rid of it but when peace and prosperity reign in your life you're in a time of great danger and so before i move on i would just like to ask you to consider this real quickly because we live in peace and prosperity i read about i read about world war ii and the british people when london was being bombed and london was being bombed and their churches were full and they're building where they work to get burnt blown up this today and the next day they'd know and they climb across the rubble to go to the next place and you know in those times people really turn out to be who they are but when it's all so good like it's alpharetta man we all came up in nice cars we live in nice houses i do too not say anything bad about you just saying this is a time of peace and prosperity i don't know if you've ever had this happen but uh 40 uh 41 years ago a friend of mine his little boy was born we were kids i mean we were like 21 20 or 21 years old and uh andrew was the name of his son and he was born we were standing at the window looking in in the hospital you couldn't touch your baby back then uh you were kept out of the room all you people now you're right there when your mama's in the room when your baby's born
[13:21] they didn't do none of that junk back then they took your wife in the back room shot her full of drugs and you heard her screaming and you waited and later they came out and told you what was going on you didn't know what you're going to have neither you just found out when it came out amen you guys know two days after you get pregnant but anyway but anyway so we're standing at the window looking in and we noticed that andrew's chest was really weird we'd never seen we were kids but we'd never seen a baby breathe that way his little chest would just sink all the way to his backbone it looked like and and so we were looking and and and steve looked at me and he said uh does that look normal to you i said yeah man it's got perfectly normal i'm supposed to say your kid looks weird i didn't know what to say and so steve walked over to the nurse and said uh is he having a breathing problem said yes he is they rushed in they grabbed the kid they put him in there and they said we don't know what's going to happen his lungs didn't fully develop 40 years ago you know what steve said he said let's go to the chapel man we ran downstairs and we go down there we prayed and we couldn't pray anymore and we'd cry because we were best friends we cry and pray about that baby we run upstairs and look in the window and the little incubator sees little body see it still doing that and he said can we go pray again that's what you do when things are bad you ever been there well when you got peace and prosperity here's what happens we let our guard down about spiritual things and what might please god because we're not that worried about it right now we forget to watch him pray knowing that satan is laying weight to destroy us when you're in the middle of the mess you're like at any time he's going to get me at any time it's going to happen but when everything's going good you kind of tend to forget that we're low to sleep spiritually because we do not feel such a need for god what we have never is enough we always want more no matter how prosperous we are we thought if we could just make a hundred dollars a week we could live happily the rest of our life we got to 100 and we knew it would take 150 we got to 150 we knew it'd take 200 or 300 because we're never going to have enough fact is in this story in first kings 22 48 jehoshaphat after all the stories going to make boats to go get him some gold got to get more separation from sin isn't as important when you don't see the danger of sin when it's looking like everything's okay in peace and prosperity we forget how our children are marrying the wrong person that might lead them to destruction how are you dealing with the peace and prosperity in your family do you find yourself able to make it without god working in your life you know we don't really need him you ever had how many of you've ever had one of those times when you had to have god you needed a miracle i mean you were like i don't know what god you got to come you ever been there have you been there say amen yeah you know when that's happening buddy you don't miss church services not then not then you're at church you don't miss sunday school you're like i i don't know if i get brownie points or not but i'm i'm counting on it if i need to get baptized again just let me do it whatever god please as soon as everything starts going good we back off we get lazy about our spiritual life we find the more of the world we have the more of the world we won't in the story tonight you'll find one compromise leads to another first friendship will they have from the desire to prosper and have peace then his son marries the wicked man's daughter and then they go to battle together are you allowing yourself small compromises that slowly pull you away from your love for the lord skipping church looking at porn i recently read where 80 something percent of young men in church have porn problems partying with those who don't love god or believe him can you not see the story i don't know if you can picture this but i've been there i feel so out of place here's jehoshaphat his daddy loved god
[17:27] he loved god he had gotten rid of the sodomites he'd taken out the queen mother because she still was worshiping a false god he was a man of god and then he goes down to spend a little time with ahab and here's oh ahab this guy's wicked to the core now this guy's like i i don't just like demons i build them houses buddy i am the bad guy in the flesh and they're sitting in the room light and dark and lights trying to get along with dark probably felt a little weird but it's all going on now while they've made a friendship because now they're married together in spanish we even have a word for this called consuegros it means like it'd be like co-in-laws that's me if you translate it co-in-laws me and you we all we all got same family now my kid married your kid so we're family too and they're sitting in the room they're sitting in the room my family married your family in the room and ahab says hey why don't we go down and fight and get this land for us and jehoshaphat says and the second they start in verse five he said well let's find out what god says about it i mean don't forget i know you just you're you're money hungry i am too but i'd least like to put a veneer on it and make it look like i love jesus in the middle of all this and he says uh let's get him and so he calls in 400 of his prophets and they all say let's go to battle i told you the story and ahab knows exactly who to call on when he wants to hear a contrary word the real man of god comes in the room ahab's angry even the other preachers try to convince michiah to get his message right they just want it to happen they want to get it going michiah explains how false preachers operate telling self-serving self-loving god haters what they want to hear that's what they were doing they were the the wicked preachers the false preachers these demon possessed preachers these bell worshiping preachers these preachers that talked jesus and the world were telling self-serving self-loving god hating people what they wanted to hear first kings 22 20 it says and the lord said who shall persuade ahab that he may go up and fall so god's ready for ahab to fall and he says so go down there and do it and one of the guys came said i'll go tell it and i'll tell her i'll put a lying spirit in the mouth of all of his prophets in verse 22 and that's what happened zedekiah in verse first kings 22 24 he's a preacher since what i'd like you to understand there are preachers without number in america there are preachers without number in the world there are preachers on every corner there's every kind of preacher you want you can find them young and old and slim and fat you can find them that preach the bible and don't preach the bible you can find them that smile and never smile you can find what you want and that's exactly what old ahab had done so in first kings 22 24 zedekiah went near and smoked micaiah on the cheek and said which way the spirit of god how do you get from me to you huh like i know about god too how'd that happen and micaiah what a man he looks at him and said yeah you think god left me went to you think god let you went to me you'll know i'm right on the day you're trying to hide in your room when this country falls look at first kings chapter 22 verse 25 he said behold thou shalt see in that day when thou shalt go into an inner chamber you'll be hiding under a bed someday boy because god's gonna do what god's gonna do that's what's gonna happen so ahab said well i don't like what you've got to say i'm putting you in prison i'm letting you drink the water and eat the bread of affliction and you're gonna stay there till i come back and micaiah said as they drag him out of the room he said well i'll be
[21:28] there a long time because you ain't never coming back if you come back i ain't a man of god that's first kings chapter 22 verse 27 the popular preacher will preach what the people want to hear like there's no hell that's become the new thing hadn't it big fancy preachers telling us how there's no hell god wants you to have success and everything to turn out beautifully for you grace is a license to sin live any way you want what god gave us for liberty they've turned a license to sin anything goes sexually in marriage in fun in business and life in general anything goes and if you preach the truth you suffer the 400 guys don't like you and they even punch you in this story that their message while true causes hurt and suffering to them and those that hear so micaiah's message is horrible i mean can you imagine he looks and said if you go into battle you're dead and the people you take with you a lot of people gonna die today now that's not what the president wants to hear right before he pushes the button and so he's mad as he can be about that and by the way you know we love it when you have a funeral the preacher you have has a hard time not telling you your loved one went to heaven we'll preach the worst sinner into heaven so you'll like us if you were honest about your granddaddy if you're honest about your uncle you know he didn't go to church you know he didn't love jesus you know he didn't pray you know he didn't walk with god but you make sure you pick a preacher to say he went to heaven come on tell the truth that's what the story is so in the next thing it happens in first kings 22 and 29 there's going to be deception the kings decide to disobey god and go into battle ahab disguises himself in verse 30 and the king of syria in verse 31 says i got 32 captains running all my chariots he said guys only fight with one guy i only want you to fight with the king of israel don't even fight with anybody else just leave the peons alone just go for one guy go find ahab and take him out and jehoshaphat's got on his kingly robes in verse 32 and they come to attack him and uh he says hey it's me and they leave him and go off to get ahab can't find him first kings 22 34 when god makes a decision to judge your sin you can disguise yourself all you want you can hide and you can run but an arrow will find its mark this is the funniest verse in the bible really i mean i just love this guy the battle's over he hadn't shot all of his arrows and he's going to come back to home and when he walks in door all the other men are going to come in blood on their swords blood on their knives and no arrows left and this turkey had one he hadn't shot he was like i ain't going home with no arrow if i go home with an arrow everybody's gonna know i didn't do everything i could and so the bible said look at it verse 34 and a certain man drew a bow at a venture and smote the king of israel and the king said i'm i'm wounded and he died that evening in verse 35 and the blood ran down in the chariot and the dogs licked up his blood in 38 and this is what's interesting just like god said just like god said the wicked king was dead and david's godly seed would continue there's a great spiritual truth illustrated here you can be sure your sin will find you out
[25:34] oh ahab had taken nabos vineyards and he got away with it and one day when he was in the vineyard elijah came walking quietly through the vineyard and told him you and your wife gonna be dead you can imagine he said the dog's gonna lick your blood ahab gonna eat your wife and everything but her dirty hands and feet you can imagine so rg lee used to say in the great sermon you can listen to it online y'all listen it's called payday someday he said every time a dog barked elijah jumped oh ahab jumped you can imagine all we have can't you he hears him dog is that the dog's gonna lick my blood and eat my wife and yet lives that way but today he goes to battle and he's smart he told jehoshaphat you dress up like a king like me because everybody knows it's me wants that land you do that buddy you do that i'll dress like a peon just so you get all the honor today but you can run but you can't hide ahab thought he could hide from the consequences of sin but god's word always comes true there is only one way to escape the consequences of your sin and that's when someone else takes your punishment that's the only way for all have sinned and come sure the glory of god and the wages of sin is death but the gift of god is eternal life through jesus christ our lord that's the only way you can get away from sin that's the only way i deserve to die and he died when he didn't deserve to die and i live when i don't deserve to live sin has wages they are death it's appointed unto men once to die and after that the judgment i would spend a lot of time but this is the third night crowd i'm assuming you're saved but you know jesus took your place bore your griefs bore your sorrows and our sin was laid on him that's the only way we're getting out of this because as wicked as ahab was me and you in the same boat we were in the same boat but by the grace of god we're not in that boat anymore because we saw our need of a savior turned from our sin and trusted jesus and followed him we get to the saddest part of the story i think it's one thing if you're dumb enough to hurt yourself but to have a child bo carpenter just had a little baby born little thaddeus one of the other missionaries wrote a note and said enjoy the kid nothing like it in the world being a dad so true isn't it and they take that little baby home you're not even allowed to leave the hospital unless you got the right kind of car seat got to take care of this kid send you home with formula send you home with everything you need but it got to take care of this kid and you did real good buying diapers and you did real good buying baby food and taking their picture and a little footprint and saving a little locket of hair you did a real good job of that but now they're growing up and you're not that worried about them these aren't little pets they just need a little food just need a little food a little water a little attention these are eternal souls god has trusted us with second chronicles 21 4 jehoshaphat's son jehoram married ahab's daughter and learned to sin
[29:40] like ahab now i want you to get the picture asa great man of god not as great as he ought to be in but great man of god we'd all been impressed jehoshaphat still a great man of god jehoram granddaddy and daddy i mean he's got a godly heritage going here but somewhere along the way daddy didn't think i don't want my kid marrying a devil daughter bible says now when jehoram was risen up in the up to the kingdom and his father he strengthened himself and slew all of his brothers with a sword and several of the princes of israel verse 6 you got to look at verse 6 22 second chronicles 21 6 second chronicles 21 6 and he walked in the way of the kings of israel like as did the house of ahab and this is the telling part of the story for he had the daughter of ahab to wife good man raised by good parents married a bad woman and he wrought that which was evil in the eyes of the lord parentheses we are not to marry lost people so i'll just throw this out there to make you mad at me that means you don't date them neither you date them you're going to end up marrying them you ought not party with them just to be blunt honest the more you hang out with them the more you're going to fall in love with them the more you fall in love with them the more likely you are to marry them and missionary dating doesn't work most missionary dating works in reverse in this story maybe jehoram could have made a difference and he might have even said to somebody i'm going to marry the daughter of ahab and i'm going to bring her to jesus and she said yeah well i'll take you to the devil and before the story's over that's what he did ahab's kid was wicked too first kings 22 51 if you would and ahaziah the son of ahab he began to reign over israel and samaria in the 17th year of jehoshaphat verse 52 and he did evil in the sight of the lord and he walked in the way of his father and in the way of his mother we could stop right there would you underline that this wicked guy did just like mama and daddy taught him he walked in the way this is the bible i'm not saying this this is not dr spock or dr phil speaking it's the word of god daddy and mama taught the boy how to be wicked verse 53 he served baal and worshipped him and provoked to anger the lord god of israel just like his daddy had done your sin not only affects you but it affects future generations that come from you when i was a young preacher i would often talk to drug addicts and alcoholics and adulterers they were all the same group you know basically sin kind of runs together and they'd say i ain't hurting nobody but me i ain't hurting nobody but me that's that was their excuse i might i might be getting drunk and i might be doing drugs i hurt nobody but me that might be what ahab was thinking might be what jezebel was thinking but the grandkids are even turning out bad your sin not only affects you but future generations one thing to do wrong but now look what you're doing your children are going to turn out like you now that's not always true they're they have their own will and a godly parent could do his best to raise a kid
[33:42] and they might turn out bad but let's just be honest that ought not be your excuse to let them just live like the devil they ought to be seeing jesus modeled you ought not take home and talk about you ought never talk at your house about junk you don't like about god junk you don't like about the church junk you don't like about stuff because your kids hear it and they pick up on it you got a bad attitude so your kids got a bad attitude i tell every missionary i ever worked with if your kid doesn't like the country you're working in it's because mom and daddy don't and whether you say it out loud or not you telegraph it you telegraph it by skipping church you telegraph it by making fun of things you ought not make fun of you telegraph it by what you watch on tv the places you go and the things you do someone said that children do in excess what parents allow in moderation everything about you is having a direct correlation as to how they're going to live and turn out what are you doing to put jesus and salvation in front of your children your thursday night crowd so you're probably doing more than most but it is what the text is about why don't you reread these verses and meditate on them so let me sum it up you must see your need it is easy for us to get caught up in the comfort of the world and man we got a bunch of it here we sleep on soft beds i've just been in tunisia lord help me i got in my bed and it hugged me that one was a board with a sheet on it you know i woke up in the morning it was like somebody hit me in the hip and the shoulder like every time you turn over it's like turning over on a sheet of plywood we're never satisfied with what god's given us and we're making soft compromises i want my kid to fit in i don't want to be weird i want my kid to fit in if they need to take a little smoke let me just take a little i mean i just want them to fit in whatever you don't do that you must hear truth and not just what you want to hear we want a church that fits our lifestyle not a lifestyle that fits what the word of god says you must realize and teach your children there's no escape from sin and its consequences but jesus good morality won't get anybody out of trouble you can't do enough good to outweigh the bad you must know jesus it may take a long time for your sin to catch up with you but it'll get there our best bet's to heed the word of god and repent while there's still time the future of my children depends greatly on me godly people have godly influence wicked people have wicked influence failing to love god may severely affect your children give them the example not just what you say i have watched people that came out of the same godly parents and they marry somebody who's not really that in love with jesus they go along in church for a while then they find a reason to get their feelings hurt and they get out of church then their kids are sleeping together with their partners in their house
[37:44] and having beer parties put on facebook they're atheists i know they made that decision but when i look at the family i know that the parents made little compromises that might have contributed to that decision jehoshaphat was a great man but he ends up losing badly by associating with a wicked man like ahab who you planning on associating with it's dangerous to want to be like them we're not like them we're not like lost people they got a different destiny they got a different daily walk we are pilgrims and strangers in a world where we don't belong we don't fit in their entertainment's not our entertainment their lifestyle's not our lifestyle their goals are not our goals but we can't hardly work with them without it becoming contagious we want what they want i said we i didn't say you there's nothing wrong with the job austin said it tonight nothing wrong with the job nothing wrong with but you know what happens is slowly slowly jehoshaphat pulled down his relationship with god and picked his own self and the story ends badly who you're going to associate with wanting to be like them is a dangerous thing this message was recorded at vision baptist church in alfred georgia for more information log on to www.visionbaptist.com where you can find our service times location contact information and more audio and video recordings thanks thanks to my