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The Price of True Deliverance

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• Let's open our Bibles to the book of 2 Kings, chapter 17. 2 Kings 17, and we're going to read verses 33 through 41. The title of the message today is "The Price of True Deliverance," and I certainly never planned this since this was Memorial Day, to be honest. When I was preparing the message, it never entered my mind that tomorrow is Memorial Day, but in light of that, here is the price of true deliverance. Notice 2 Kings 17, verse 33.

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• "They feared the Lord and served their own gods after the manner of the nations whom they carried away from thence. Unto this day they do after the former manners. They fear not the Lord, neither do they after their statutes, or after their ordinances, or after the law and commandment which the Lord commanded the children of Jacob, whom he named Israel, with whom the Lord had made a covenant and charged them, saying, 'You shall not fear other gods, nor bow yourself to them, nor serve them, nor sacrifice to them. But the Lord who brought you up out of the land of Egypt with great power and a stretched out arm, Him shall you fear, and Him shall you worship, and to Him shall you do sacrifice. And the statutes and the ordinances and the law and the commandment which He wrote for you, you shall observe to do forevermore, and you shall not fear other gods. And the covenant that I made with you, you shall not forget, neither shall you fear other gods. But the Lord your God you shall fear, and He shall deliver you out of the hand of all your enemies.'"

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• "Howbeit they did not hearken, but they did after their former manner. So these nations feared the Lord, and served their own graven images, both their children and their children's children, as did their fathers. So do they unto this day." Have you ever considered the cost of freedom? What would true liberty and true freedom be worth to you? There are many people who are alive today in America who vainly think that in America we have true liberty and true freedom.

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• It was Johann Wolfgang von Goethe who said this: "None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe that they are free." William Blum, who is an investigative journalist in Washington, D.C., has written a book, *Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower*. And I want you to listen to one paragraph: "Overtly and covertly, legally and illegally, the military-industrial complex in the United States has joined forces with the prison-industrial complex, linked further to the omnipresent national security police complex, all clasping their hands tightly with the war on drugs in a declaration of war on the American people and the Bill of Rights. This authoritarian juggernaut, enamored with its own perpetuation, glorification, and enrichment, has convinced the American public that without its stormtroopers, all hell would break loose and the safety and security of the citizenry would be on a life support machine."

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• "In this undertaking, it has had the indispensable assistance of intimidated legislatures, an iconoclastic judiciary, compliant media, and a president who, in the words of civil liberties columnist Nat Hentoff, in this century has afflicted the most harm on our constitutional rights and liberties." So, the military-industrial complex particularly needs fear and it needs war in order to keep its appropriations to the utmost amount. It also needs that to keep the people under control.

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• So just how much do you think that it should cost to protect and defend and deliver us into what you and I would understand as true liberty and true freedom? You remember James Madison is called the father of the Constitutional Convention because he was secretary of the Constitutional Convention, and he said this: "If tyranny and oppression ever come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy." It will be in the guise, that is, a disguise, of fighting a foreign enemy. The American people would be absolutely petrified to discover that most of our foreign enemies are really not enemies at all. I'll explain that. They're simply the pawns of an elite group who use them to further their power and control over the American people.

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• We're in far more danger from the Congress of the United States than we are from the people of Afghanistan. We are in far more danger from our corrupt politicians, immoral bureaucrats, and socialistic and communistic executives than we are from the people of Iran and Iraq. Neither of those countries have attacked us. Neither of those countries have assailed our liberties and our freedoms. But our Congress has. Our judicial system has. The executive department has.

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• And they are now demanding that we give up more and more liberty and more and more freedom in order for security, or to be secure. And the truth is we are neither secure nor free. I had known this before, but it just came out in print this week. The Mujahideen were the database of the Al-Qaeda assets. If you go to the Drudge Report, you will see now where Secretary of State Hillary Clinton acknowledges that Al-Qaeda is a CIA operation. Here's what it says: "Al-Qaeda are a controlled opposition force

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• of the Central Intelligence Agency to promote their Middle East destabilization process, to give the empirical United States military-industrial complex a reason to invade whenever they want to." In fact, the word Al-Qaeda just simply means "database." That's all it means. And it was made up, basically, by the CIA to destabilize the Middle East. And you say, "Well, what about all these people attacking us?" Well, let me ask you a question.

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• If we had foreigners invading our country, would you fight back? Well, of course you would. We have not only lost our liberty and our freedom, we have been robbed, pillaged, and taxed to the point of desperation. In 1996, there was Senate Bill 1635, to establish a United States policy for a national missile defense system, and the budget for that alone back in 1996 was $60 billion Federal Reserve notes. There has just recently been a fight over a $57 billion increase in the Defense Department spending. Now listen, a $57 billion increase and they're having a row over $57 billion when the budget for 2012 was $676 billion. What is a paltry $57 billion when you're talking about $676 billion? And they are saying by the year 2015, which is just a couple of years away, that the budget is going to be $2.8 trillion just for defense.

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• Now, let me ask you to consider something. With the millions and billions and trillions that have been spent and are being spent to provide liberty and freedom for America, is it not interesting that in the year 2012, we now have less freedom and less liberty than our founding fathers did when they did not even have a standing army or navy or department of defense? Stop and think about that.

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• We have not been delivered from anything by the excesses of our government. Now, if you want to put a different spin on the word "delivered," in one sense, we have been delivered. We've been delivered into greater bondage, into greater slavery, into greater servitude. And it just simply appears that things are getting worse and worse. Now, listen carefully. We have problems in America. We have political problems in America, but our real problem is not political. We have economic problems in America, but our real problem is not economic. We have racial problems in America, but our real problem is not one of race. We have defensive problems in America, but our real problem is not one of defense. Our problem is a spiritual problem. And the problem is that we've sinned against and we've forsaken and we've apostatized from the one true and the living God who has revealed himself in Jesus Christ. Consequently, all of these other problems have enveloped us. We are always going to have problems when we're disobedient to the Word of God.

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• And all of the problems that we have stem from this one foundational and elementary problem: we have forsaken God. On the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C., are inscribed these words. Listen to what Jefferson said: "God who gave us life gave us liberty. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are a gift from God, that they are not to be violated but with His wrath? Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just and that His justice cannot sleep forever." What did he say?

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• We sin like the other nations. We're going to be judged exactly like the other nations. Again, it was Thomas Jefferson who said this: "The issue today is the same that it's been throughout all history: whether man shall be allowed to govern himself or be ruled by a small elite." Now, Robert Winthrop, who was also a former Speaker of the House, said it, I think, a little more fully, a little more clearly. He said it like this: "Men, in a word, must necessarily be controlled either by power within them or by power without them, either by the Word of God or the strong arm of man, either by the Bible or the bayonet." And that's true. When you and I refuse to be responsible and govern ourselves, inevitably someone's going to do it with a strong arm or with a bayonet. It's just like your child. As long as your child is obedient, wonderful, but as long as he is not going to govern himself and do right, there comes the rod.

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• And it's the same. The same principle is true even when we are adults. Jedediah Morse, who was also a patriot, and he's also known as the father of American geography, he said this: "To the kindly influence of Christianity, we owe that degree of civil freedom and political and social happiness which mankind now enjoys. Whenever the pillars of Christianity shall be overthrown, our present republican forms of government and all blessings which flow from them must fall with them." So he said, whenever Christianity is overthrown, all of our civil liberties, all of the principles of a republican form of government will fall with them. We have true liberty and true freedom through our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. But we must remember also that first and foremost, that true liberty and true freedom is freedom from sin and wickedness and rebellion.

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• You know, the Bible says in Galatians 5:1, "Stand fast, therefore, in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage." You remember, our Lord said in John 8:32, "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free." It is impossible to be free apart from Jesus Christ and His Word. When you study the book of Romans chapter 6, you will find that in Romans 6, sin is personified as a lord or as a king. And Romans 6 teaches us that sin actually has dominion over men who are unconverted. Sin reigns unto death, the Scripture says. Those of us who have been converted by the grace of God are under the Lordship of Jesus Christ.

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• We are under His kingship. But those who are unconverted are still under the kingship and the dominion of sin.

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• Now, I want you to understand a simple principle, and that is this: that spiritual freedom will lead to civil freedom. Spiritual freedom will lead to civil freedom. You remember in 2 Corinthians 3:17, the Bible says this: "Now the Lord is that Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there's liberty. The opposite is also true. Where the Spirit of the Lord is not, there is slavery.

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• Now, let me ask you, have you noticed that most people who are concerned about liberty and freedom in this country and who are speaking out are Christians? Has it ever entered your mind to ask the question, why are Christians more concerned about liberty and freedom than are the unsaved? Well, the answer is this: the unsaved are already slaves. They're slaves of their sins, their lusts, and their desires.

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• A slave is only interested in making his slavery more enjoyable, endurable, and comfortable. He is not necessarily interested in freedom for himself, nor is he interested in freedom for anyone else. He's a slave. He can't understand why everybody else cannot be content to be slaves as well. Just so you have your six-pack and your color TV and your boat, you want to be happy. That's the mentality.

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• Now, the principle should be very obvious. Where there is no true Christianity, where there is no truth that is Word of God, biblical truth, there is always tyranny and totalitarianism. I want you to stop and think about something. I want you to think about all of the countries around the world that are tyrannical and totalitarian and despotic.

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• Now stop and think. I don't care if you're talking about South America, I don't care if you're talking about Mexico, I don't care if you're talking about China, Russia, North Korea, I don't care. In all of those countries where you have totalitarianism, you do not have Christianity, or Christianity is so minute. And what few Christians are there are persecuted and prosecuted. Any time there is a denial of Jesus Christ and a denial of the Word of God, inevitably there's going to be tyranny and totalitarianism. Now, in some countries, people will say this: "But we do as we please." Doing as you please is not freedom. Doing as you please may be lawless. It may be licentious. It may be immoral. The false idea of freedom is this: the false idea is one where people vainly believe that freedom, in its essence, is just the ability to do as you please or whatever you like. Well, I might think I have liberty to go up and punch Robert in the nose. I feel like doing it.

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• And I punch him in the nose, but he might feel like shooting me for punching him in the nose. Is that liberty? No, it's not liberty. Liberty and freedom is not doing what you think you would like to do. True liberty and true freedom are doing what you should do and what you ought to do based upon the Word of God.

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• Now, I did not read all of 2 Kings 17. I wanted to. It's a long, long chapter. But I want to show you the price of true deliverance from 2 Kings chapter 17. Everyone knows that Israel has been in a covenantal relationship with God, and their covenant was very simple. God gave them His law. And God says, "Now your part is to obey Me and worship Me." We read some of this.

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• "Do not fear other gods. You only fear Me." So Israel accepted the terms of the covenant. They said, "Whatever the Lord has said that we will do." You can read it for yourself in the book of Exodus. They agreed to that. But you've got to understand that God's covenant had both good and bad, or positive and negative, sanctions. The good sanction was this: if you obey, God says, "I'll bless you." That was the good and the positive sanction. The bad or the negative sanction was this: if you disobey, "I will curse you and will judge you."

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• Now, 2 Kings chapter 17 gives us a very full and impressive vindication of the divine procedure in punishing a very highly privileged, but a rebellious and apostate people. Now, I probably won't have time to read all of this, but in Leviticus 26, if you would turn there, hold 2 Kings chapter 17, look in Leviticus chapter 26. And make sure that you write these down. Most of you should know these passages, but look in Leviticus 26 and notice, if you would, what God says.

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• Here is the covenant in detail. Leviticus chapter 26. And notice, if you would, what God says. Leviticus 26, verse 1: "God says, 'You shall make you no idols nor graven image. Neither rear you up a standing image, neither shall you set up any image of stone in the land to bow down unto it, for I am the Lord your God. You shall keep my sabbaths and reverence my sanctuary, I am the Lord.'"

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• Now watch: "'If you walk in my statutes and keep my commandments and do them, then I will give you rain in due season, the land shall yield her increase, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit. And your threshing shall reach into the vintage, and the vintage shall reach into the sowing time, and you shall eat your bread to the full and dwell in your land safely. And I will give peace in the land, and you shall lie down, and none shall make you afraid. And I will rid evil beasts out of your land, neither shall the sword go through your land.'" Now watch: "'And you shall chase your enemies, and they shall fall before you by the sword. And five of you shall chase a hundred, and a hundred of you shall put ten thousand to flight, and your enemy shall fall before you by the sword. For I will have respect unto you, and make you fruitful and multiply you and establish my covenant with you. And you shall eat old store and bring forth the old because of the new. And I will set my tabernacle among you, and my soul shall not abhor you. And I will walk among you

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• and will be your God and you shall be my people. I am the Lord your God who brought you forth out of the land of Egypt, that you should not be their bondmen, but I've broken the bands of your yoke and made you to go upright. But if you will not hearken unto me, and will not do all these commandments, and if you despise my statutes, or if your soul abhor my judgments, so that you will not do all my commandments, that you break my covenant, I also will do this to you. I will even appoint over you terror, consumption, and the burning ague that shall consume the eyes and cause sorrow of heart, and you shall sow your seed in vain, for your enemies shall eat it. And I will set my face against you, and you shall be slain before your enemies.

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• They that hate you shall reign over you, and you shall flee when none pursues you. And if you will not yet for all this hearken unto me, then I will punish you seven times more for your sins, and I will break the pride of your power, and I will make your heaven as iron and your earth as brass, and your strength shall be spent in vain, and your land shall not yield her increase, neither shall the trees of the land yield their fruits. And if you walk contrary to me and will not hearken to me, I will bring seven times more plagues upon you according to your sins.

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• I will also send wild beasts among you, which shall rob you and your children and destroy your cattle and make you few in number, and your highways shall be desolate. And if you will not be reformed by me by these things, but will walk contrary to me, then will I also walk contrary to you and punish you seven times for your sin. Watch: 'And I will bring a sword upon you that shall avenge the quarrel of my covenant. And when you are gathered together within your cities, I will send the pestilence among you, and you shall be delivered into the hand of the enemy.'

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• "And when I have broken the staff of your bread, ten women shall bake your bread in one oven, and they shall deliver you your bread again by weight, and you shall eat and not be satisfied." And you can keep reading all the curses. I'm not going to go to Deuteronomy 28, but if you read there, you will find exactly the same thing.

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• So God has given this covenant, and there are both positive and negative sanctions, or good and bad sanctions. God says, "If you obey me, I'll bless you. If you disobey me, I'm going to curse you."

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• Now, when you get to 2 Kings 17, Israel and Judah have found themselves in a very, very difficult situation. I want you to begin by looking at the first six verses, and we're going to go through these very quickly. I want you to see, first of all, there was treason against God and conspiracy against man. Look in 2 Kings 17, verse 1: "And in the twelfth year of Ahaz, the king of Judah, began Hoshea the son of Elah to reign in Samaria over Israel nine years." Now, I want you to notice what the Bible says about Hoshea: "And he did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord, but not as the kings of Israel that were before him."

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• Now, he was wicked, but not quite as wicked as some of them. "Against him came up Shalmaneser, king of Assyria, and Hoshea became his servant and gave him presents. And the king of Assyria found conspiracy in Hoshea, for he had sent messengers to So, king of Egypt, and brought no presents to the king of Assyria, as he had done year by year. Therefore, the king of Assyria shut him up and bound him in prison. Then the king of Assyria came up throughout all the land and went up to Samaria and besieged it three years." So, there's treason against God, there's conspiracy against man. The treason against God is revealed in the fact that the king was evil in the sight of God. He did not honor God. He did not obey God. He did not seek to please God. He may not have been as bad as the former kings, yet he was a wicked king. He was a wicked king.

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• Now, you've got to remember the Ten Commandments give us our duty toward God and our duty toward man. Hoshea broke all of the commandments. He not only dishonored God, but he dishonored himself and his word. He had been defeated by Shalmaneser, the king of Assyria. He agreed to be his servant. And so after a while, he got tired of being servant of the king of Assyria, so he went to So, king of Egypt, and entered into a covenant with him to try to throw off the yoke of the king of Assyria. Well, his subterfuge and conspiracy against Shalmaneser is now made manifest because he's a traitor to God.

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• Now you're going to ask me, "Well, wait a minute, Brother Weaver, just hang on. Would you try to get out of the slavery and servitude like that?" Well, there's a problem. It was not just slavery and servitude. If you will hold 2 Kings chapter 17, look in your Bibles to Isaiah chapter 10. Here was the problem. Isaiah chapter 10. The problem was that God had sovereignly sent the Assyrians against Israel to punish them and to chastise them for their sins. So it was not the fact that just Shalmaneser came; God said it. Watch, if you would, Isaiah chapter 10, beginning there with verse 5: "God says, 'O Assyrian, the rod of mine anger, and the staff in their hand is mine indignation.

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• I will send him against the hypocritical nation and against the people of my wrath will I give him a charge to take the spoil and to take the prey and to tread them down like the mire of the streets.'" Note, if you would, God said, "I sent him," and I sent him for one particular reason: to punish and to chastise and to judge my sinful, wicked, disobedient people. And notice what is happening now. Hoshea says, "I don't like that chastisement. I don't like that

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• punishment, so I'm going to do whatever I can to get out of it." You see what I'm saying? Let me tell you something. When we are justly and rightly and righteously being punished for our sins, the Word of God says it's right that a man should bear the punishment for his sins, and certainly that is true. But here he did not like that, and so he's going to cry

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• to So, king of Egypt, "Come up and deliver me." So Hoshea did not want God, nor did he want His curse or His judgment. Thus, he sought to revolt against God and man. Now, I want you to mark this down. Here is a biblical principle, and that is this: whenever there is treason against God, there will always be conspiracy against man. All you've got to do is look at the Bilderbergers.

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• You see what I'm saying? Look at the Illuminati. Look at the desire for one world government. They're traitors against God and His law. And look at all the different varying conspiracies they have against countries to control them. Let me go a little further. Whenever there is treason against God, there's always conspiracy against man. All you have to do is look at how America, the United States government, violated not only their covenant with God

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• but conspired against the Indian nations. I understand certain principles. But I have a number of books on the Indians and the treaties that our government made, but do you realize our government broke every treaty they ever made with the Indians? Every single one of them. And when you begin to read some shenanigans that our government did to steal their land, they would take one Indian and make him drunk and proclaim him a chief and get him to sign over the land while he was drunk. And then they would claim that would be a legitimate title to the Indians' land. And when none of the Indians had chosen him to be chief, he had no standing at all. You read some of these things, you think, "Lord, have mercy." No wonder they hated the white man. Now, I realize they were heathen, I understand that. But just because somebody is a heathen doesn't mean that you do them wrong.

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• Let me go a little bit further. I'm just giving you an illustration. The same is also apparent in how the United States government violated the Constitution and invaded the South and denied self-government to five million Southern people. When you think of Ruby Ridge, where Randy Weaver's wife was killed with a baby in her arms and his son was shot in the back by federal officers. When you think of the Branch Davidians and how those children along with adults were burned to death by the United States government, we gasp when we think of that. But that was nothing compared to the thousands that the federal government raped, robbed, pillaged, burned out, and murdered civilians under William Tecumseh Sherman and

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• Sheridan and Grant with the blessings of Abraham Lincoln. Whenever there is treason against God, there's conspiracy against man. Why? Well, the Bible teaches us very clearly in Romans chapter 3 that all these sins are simply because there is no fear of God before their eyes. And if you are not afraid to sin against Almighty God, you're certainly not going to be afraid to sin against man. If you're not afraid to rebel against God, you're not going to be afraid to conspire against man.

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• Now, I want you to think about something. God had given Israel her liberty. God, what did the Bible say? He brought them out of the land of Egypt. He made them to walk upright. He broke their chains. He delivered them from their bondage. In fact, in 2 Kings chapter 17, look in verse 7: "For so it was that the children of Israel had sinned against the Lord their God, who had brought them up out of the land of Egypt, from under the hand of the Pharaoh king of Egypt, and had feared other gods." Note, it was God who gave them their liberty. It was God who gave them their law. Read Exodus 20, Deuteronomy chapter 5. It was God who gave them their land.

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• He enabled them to conquer Canaan. In fact, they had to confess, "We got not the land by our sword and by our arm, but we got it by the blessing and the grace of God" (Psalm 44). Whenever there's treason against God, there will always be conspiracy against man. Because whenever there's treason against God, nothing else matters but sin and self.

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• Secondly, I want you to note in verses 7 and 8 of 2 Kings 17, there was also a rejection of the law of God and a replacement of God's law with man's law. Look in verse 7 and 8: "For so it was that the children of Israel had sinned against the Lord their God, who had brought them up out of the land of Egypt, from under the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt, and had feared other gods," watch, "and walked in the statutes," that's laws, "and walked in the statutes of the heathen whom the Lord cast out before the children of Israel, and of the kings of Israel which they had made." Wow!

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• I want you to turn and hold 2 Kings 17, but go back to Deuteronomy chapter 6. I want to show you why God gave the law to Israel. Look at Deuteronomy chapter 6. And I'm going to explain exactly what they have just done. Look at Deuteronomy chapter 6 and notice, if you would, verses 1 through 3. Then we're going to skip down. Deuteronomy 6 verses 1 through 3. Deuteronomy 6 verse 1:

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• "Now, these are the commandments, the statutes and the judgments which the Lord your God commanded to teach you, that you might do them in the land whither you go to possess it, that thou mightest fear the Lord thy God to keep all his statutes and his commandments, which I command thee, thou and thy son and thy son's son, all the days of thy life." He'll watch, "that thy days may be prolonged." Hear therefore, O Israel, and observe to do it, that it may be well with thee, that you may increase mightily, as the Lord God of thy fathers hath promised thee, in the land that floweth with milk and honey. Now, God said, "I've given you my law, and I want you to obey it, that you may have a long life, and that you may prosper."

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• Now, skip down, if you would please, to verses 24 and 25. Verses 24 and 25: "And the Lord commanded us to do all these statutes to fear the Lord, our God, for our good always, that he might preserve us alive as it is at this day. And it shall be our righteousness if we observe to do all these commandments before the Lord, our God, as he has commanded us." They understood that the law of God was for their good. It was for their righteousness.

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• But what in the world has happened now? What has happened now is they have traded God's law for man's law. And the interesting thing is, if you look down in verse 8, the Bible says, 2 Kings 17, verse 8, "and they walked in the statutes of the heathen whom the Lord cast out before them." The Hittites, the Jebusites, the Hivites, all of these wicked, perverted people, they're now obeying their laws. And then he adds, in verse 8, "and of the kings of Israel which they had made." You remember the kings of Israel were apostate kings.

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• And so here's what they've done now. They've ceased obeying God and His law, and they've substituted man and man's law. We confess and acknowledge the righteousness and the perfection and the holiness of God's law. However, we as a people have done exactly that which Israel had done. We've swapped and we've traded God's law for man's law. We've rejected God for man. We refuse to bow to God's law, and yet we bow to man's law. And the interesting thing in verse 7, God charges Israel with fearing other gods. What gods? Well, the answer is the civil government gods of the heathen and of Israel. And what we've forgotten is this, that government can be an idol just as much as anything else. And Israel's idolatry is evidenced by the fact that they walked in the statutes of the heathen whom the Lord had cast out before the children of Israel and the kings of Israel which they made. Simply stated, they forsook the law of God in order that they might obey the law of man.

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• We've done the same thing in America. We've traded God's law, the Ten Commandments, for the laws of man. Do you realize, unhappily, the United States government today does not recognize God or His law? Neither do most Americans. And what we've done, we've traded God's Ten Commandments and we live in total ignorance of God's law, but we are inundated with a voluminous amount of man's law. Do you realize, and I have a large print Bible, not the largest, but I've got a large print Bible, but as large as this Bible is, I can carry God's law in my hand. How many of you would like to carry the Federal Register around in your hand? How many would you like just carry the IRS code around in your hand? You could not.

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• It would be absolutely impossible. Now, I want you to know something. God's law does not change. But man's law is changing continually and constantly. Moreover, man's law is always incomplete and incoherent. Man's law contradicts all the time. God's law does not. I want you to listen to what James Madison said concerning law. Remember, he was the father of the Constitution, Secretary of the Constitutional Convention. He said this: "It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws are so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they could not be understood, if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man who knows what the law is today can guess what it will be tomorrow. Law is defined as a rule of action, but how can that be a rule which is little known and less fixed?" What would James Madison say today if he had a look at the Federal Register?

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• God's law traded for man's law equals tyranny, despotism, and totalitarianism. Look at verses 9 through 12 very quickly. There was a secret and then open rejection of God as demonstrated by blatant idolatry. Look in verse 9: "And the children of Israel did secretly those things that were not right against the Lord their God. And they built them high places in all their cities, from the tower of the watchman to the fenced city. And they set them up images and groves in every high hill and under every green tree. And there they burn incense in all the high places, as did the heathen whom the Lord carried away before them, and wrought wicked things to provoke the Lord to anger. For they served idols, whereof the Lord had said of them, 'You shall not do these things.'"

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• Now those whose hearts are set on rebellion and refuse to repent or even listen to the Word of God are going to always demonstrate their rebellion. The sins that began secretly are now openly committed. You remember the scripture teaches us, "As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he." Here is a simple and yet evident reason why you and I should never harbor unbiblical thoughts, ideas, imaginations in our hearts. Our Lord said, "But those things which proceed out of the mouth come forth from the heart, and they defile the man. For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts,

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• murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, and blasphemies." Out of the heart. So we should never keep unbiblical, ungodly thoughts in our hearts.

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• Now, I want you to listen carefully. I'm trying to show you that there was a secret rejection of God, and then it was an open rejection, as demonstrated by blatant idolatry. The principle that is true when it is applied to individuals personally is equally true when it is applied nationally. I want you to think that when our country first began, there was an open confession and acknowledgement of Jesus Christ and the Word of God. I have a message

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• "The Biblical Attitude Toward Ungodly Rulers" in that I quote numerous state charters and constitutions which said very pointedly that no man could serve as an officer or senator or representative who did not acknowledge Jesus Christ and confess that the Bible was the inspired Word of God. The Founding Fathers demanded Christian rulers. But I want you to think about how our country began with an open confession of Christ, then proceeded to a secret denial, and now there is nothing but open, blatant blasphemy by denying every principle of Christianity.

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• Prayer was removed from the schools. Bibles were removed from the schools. Bible clubs were denied the ability to meet even after school hours. And consequently, what we are producing is a whole nation of illiterate and immoral boys and girls who have no perception of right and wrong because they are taught there are no absolutes. And the amazing thing is this: one cannot even carry a Bible in many schools today, or even in our courtrooms. But it's OK to have a Bible in prison.

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• I mean, that's like shutting the gate after the horse is out. I mean, you know what? Why don't you give them the Bible first to keep them out of prison? Secret sins will always blossom openly after a while. Secret idolatries will always become open, brazen, and public. So he said very clearly that they had sinned secretly, but then they began to do everything openly.

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• Fourthly, I want you to note very quickly in verses 13 through 17, there was an open rejection of the demand for repentance and obedience. Look in verse 13: "Yet the Lord testified against Israel and against Judah by all the prophets, by all the seers, saying, 'Turn you from your evil ways and keep my commandments and my statutes according to all the law that I commanded your fathers, which I sent to you by my servants the prophets.' Notwithstanding," watch, "they would not hear, but hardened their necks like the neck of their fathers that did not believe in the Lord their God. And they rejected his statutes and his covenant that he made with their fathers and his testimonies which he testified against them.

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• And they followed vanity," that's idolatry, "and became vain and went after the heathen that were round about them, concerning whom the Lord had charged them that they should not do like them. And they left all the commandments of the Lord their God and made them molten images, even two calves, and made a grove and worshipped all the host of heaven and served Baal." Watch: "And they caused their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire and used divination and enchantments and sold themselves to do evil in the sight of the Lord to provoke him to anger."

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• So once you've set your course on idolatry and you refuse to even listen to someone who is warning you or someone who is rebuking you or reproving you, telling you you're on the wrong road, when you refuse to hear the word of repentance and restoration, you're always going to go further and deeper into rebellion and wickedness.

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• Now, I want you to watch this progression. Look in verse 14. God sent the preachers, verse 13, but watch verse 14: "Notwithstanding they would not hear, but hardened their necks like the neck of their fathers that did not believe in the Lord their God." They got a stiff neck, a hardened neck. What happened? Well, skip down to verse 15: "And they rejected his statutes and his covenants that he made." They became so stiff-necked, so hardened. They wanted nothing to do with the covenant of God. They wanted nothing to do with the Word of God.

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• They totally, absolutely refused all of His testimonies. Let me tell you something. When you refuse to listen to the Word of God, you are in dire straits. And notice, if you would, in verse 15 again, the Bible says, the latter part, "they followed vanity and became vain and went after the heathen that round about them." In other words, their hardened neck caused them to refuse utterly and totally the Word of God. Their refusal to hear the Word of God drove them farther into their idolatry and their wickedness. Now skip down to verse 16.

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• Here's the full and final effect of it: "And they left all the commandments of the Lord their God, and made them molten images, even two calves, and made a grove, and worshipped all the host of heaven, and served Baal, and caused their sons and daughters to pass through the fire." That is, they either dedicated them to false gods, or they burned them alive in honor of those false gods, of all their false gods. So when men refuse to hear the Word of God, there's only one direction for them to travel. That is straight into the judgment of Almighty God.

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• The Bible says in Proverbs 29:1, "He that being often reproved and hardeneth his neck shall suddenly be destroyed and that without remedy." That's what's happening to these people. Fifthly, very quickly, watch. They faced the curse and judgment of God because of their stubbornness and their sins. That's verses 18 through 23. "Therefore, the Lord was very angry with Israel and removed them out of his sight.

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• There was none left but the tribe of Judah only. And Judah kept not the commandments of the Lord their God, but walked in the statutes of Israel, which they had made. And the Lord rejected all the seed of Israel and afflicted them and delivered them into the hand of the spoilers until he had cast them out of his sight. For he rent Israel from the house of David. And they made Jeroboam the son of Nebat sin, and Jeroboam drove Israel from following the Lord and made them sin a great sin. For the children of Israel walked in all the sins of Jeroboam which he did, and they departed not from them until the Lord removed Israel out of his sight, as he had said by all of his servants the prophets. So was Israel carried away out of their own land unto Assyria unto this day."

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• Now, I want you to note something. I told you earlier that God had given Israel their liberty. He delivered them. He gave them His law. He gave them their land. Everything Israel had, God gave them. And the interesting thing is, when you read this passage we just read, because of their stubbornness, because of their sin, because of their rebellion, they lost their liberty. They were carried slaves into Assyria, those who were not killed. They lost the law in the sense that they could no more do any sacrifice or anything else because the temple was destroyed as well. They lost their land because it's now occupied and controlled by heathen. They even lost their nation and their national unity because they now are dispersed everywhere. In other words, they lost everything. Sin devastates and destroys.

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• It will not only destroy you personally, it will destroy familially, ecclesiastically, and nationally. Sin is no respecter of nations. Sin and justice will destroy America as it did Israel. It doesn't matter to sin. Israel and Judah lost everything because of their sin, and so will America. Because God is immutable. He is unchangeable. And what angered Him in 2 Kings 17 angers Him today. What He did in 2 Kings 17, He can do equally well today.

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• One last point, and then we'll tie it together for you. Sixthly, I want you to notice that after judgment, instead of seeking pure religion, they adopted a synergistic or mongrel religion. Verses 24 through 33. I wish I had time to just read this and explain this, but the king of Assyria now has moved a lot of heathen into Samaria; he took a lot of Samaritans and he moved them into Syria and other places. And if you will read this passage, you will find that God sent lions among them and the lions were killing the people because of their sin and rebellion. And so the people said to the king of Assyria, they said, "We're being hurt and we're being killed because we know not the manner of the gods of the land." I mean, not only were they polytheistic, they had no earthly idea of the omnipresence and omniscience and omnipotence of the one true, the living God. And so they sent, and the king of Assyria sent an apostate priest back to teach them the way of the God of the land.

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• Remember, that's why God sent them into captivity to begin with, because they were worshiping the golden calves. So what did the people do? The Bible says they made their own gods and they worshipped the Lord God. In other words, He was just a little added deity besides their gods. He wasn't the true supreme sovereign God. So they professed—now, listen—they professed that they worship the one true and the living God, but they did not. In fact, that is exactly what God says.

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• Skip down, if you would, please. Verse 40: "Howbeit, they did not hearken, but they did after their former manner. So these nations feared the Lord and served their graven images, both their children and their children's children, as did their fathers. So do they unto this day." And if you would skip back over to verse 34, here it is: "Unto this day they do after the former manners. They fear not the Lord.

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• Neither do they after their statutes, or after their ordinances, or after the law and commandment which the Lord God commanded the children of Jacob, whom he named Israel." So they said they followed the Lord, but they didn't. Our churches are full of people who say they worship Jesus Christ, but they do not. You can only worship Christ as you worship Him according as He is laid out in the Word of God. You cannot worship Him any old way you please. That's what these people were trying to do. "Well, we'll do it this way." No, no, no, no. What did our Lord tell the woman of Samaria? He said, "The time is coming when you shall neither in this mountain nor Jerusalem worship the Father. For all that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth." And if you're not worshiping God in spirit and in truth, you're not worshiping God.

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• You know, it's amazing how even most professing Christians will not listen to the Word of God. And what the average Christian wants is a mongrel religion. He wants everything to blend together for him, so he can partake of a lot of different things. And I've heard people say, "It doesn't matter which religion you are, just so that you're sincere." Well, you can eat arsenic or strychnine, and you can be sincere thinking it's an aspirin, but you're going to be sincerely dead. Some people say, "Well, you know, there's a lot of good in all religions."

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• Oh, yeah, I understand that. Do you realize that rat poison is 99% cornmeal? Cornmeal is good food. It's just that 1% of arsenic that kills you. The only true religion is biblical Christianity. All else are false. All others are false. You cannot worship God any way you please. That's what these people tried to do.

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• Now, I want to give you the reasons as to why the Israelites suffered and were deprived of their lives, liberty, law, and their land. Here they are: number one, because of their idolatries. Number two, because of their rejection of God's law. Number three, because they replaced God's law with man's law. Number four, because they disregarded the warnings of God's prophets. And number five, because they accepted a mongrel or synergistic religion. Now, I told you

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• the title of this message was "The Price of True Deliverance." I've given you a lot of facts, I've given you a lot of history, but I do want you to look in your Bibles, first of all, to 2 Kings chapter 17. And notice, if you would, beginning there with verse 35: "With whom the Lord had made a covenant and charged them, saying, 'You shall not fear other gods,

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• nor bow yourself to them, nor serve them, nor sacrifice to them. But the Lord who brought you up out of the land of Egypt with great power and a stretched out arm, Him shall you fear, and Him shall you worship, and to Him shall you do sacrifice. And the statutes and ordinances and the law and the commandment which He wrote you, you shall observe to do forevermore, and you shall not fear other gods.'"

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• Watch: "'And the covenant that I made with you shall you not forget? Neither shall you fear other gods.'" Why? "'But the Lord, your God, you shall fear.'" Here it is: "'And he shall deliver you out of the hand of all your enemies.'" Are you listening? Freedom and liberty do have a price. Being delivered from enemies, both foreign and domestic, does have a price. However, the price is not the millions and billions and trillions that are being spent by the Defense Department on the defense of America. The price of true deliverance is repentance and obedience to the one true and living God who has revealed himself in Jesus Christ. And he shall deliver you from all your enemies. There is no deliverance except by God's deliverance. I want you to turn to one last passage. I want you to turn to Psalm 81. Psalm 81. And as you turn to Psalm 81, I want to quote to you Psalm 127, verse 1.

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• You know it by heart: "Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it. Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain." If God doesn't protect us, we're not protected. If God doesn't deliver us, we're not delivered. I told you the price of true deliverance is repentance and obedience. If you look in Psalm 81, beginning there in verse 10, look what God said to his people: "I am the Lord, thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt. Open thy mouth wide and I will fill it." Lord, have mercy, what a promise. "Open thy mouth wide and I will fill it." You know, I cannot help but think of little baby birds.

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• You've seen them when mama comes with that nice juicy worm. What do they do? They open those little beaks wide and they're just crying. They want—"Open your mouth wide," said God, "and I will fill it."

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• Now, look what he said: "But my people would not hearken to my voice and Israel would have none of me." They wouldn't listen. They would not obey. What was the result? "So I gave them up into their own hearts' lusts, and they walked after their own counsels." And here's what God said: "Oh, that my people had hearken unto me and Israel had walked in my ways!" Are you looking?

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• "I should soon have subdued their enemies and turn my hand against their adversaries. The haters of the Lord should have submitted themselves unto him, but their time should have endured forever. He should have fed them also with the finest of wheat and with honey out of the rock should I have satisfied them." God said, if they had just listened and obeyed, "I should have soon subdued their enemies and turned my hand against their adversaries." And even their adversaries would have submitted to me.

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• If we want deliverance individually, familially, ecclesiastically, nationally, it must start with repentance toward God and faith in Jesus Christ and obedience to His word. For only He can deliver us from our enemies, both foreign and domestic. The price of true deliverance: repentance and obedience. Father, in the name of Jesus Christ, we bow to Thee this day. We thank You for Your word. We thank You for Your truth. And we ask, Father, that You'd be pleased to work in our hearts, grant us real, genuine repentance and grant us, Heavenly Father, real, genuine obedience. That our lives might be brought into greater conformity to Your word and that You'd be honored and glorified in our lives. In Christ's name we pray, Amen.

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• You may contact Freedom Ministries by mail at 7400 Abercorn, that's A-B-E-R-C-O-R-N Street, Suite 705, PMB 175, Savannah, Georgia 31406, or give us a call at 912-925-0995.

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• You can also visit our website at www.dominionministry.com.

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deepseek | deepseek-v4-pro | clean_readable_transcript | 2026-06-06T01:59:26Z