Putting in the Work
The Rest of The Story - 2 Kings 14 & 2 Chronicles 25 - Amaziah's arrogance.
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good morning welcome if you're new here among us my name is gene i serve here at c3 church as your lead pastor lonnie you threw me off a resident fact-checker took a second-row seat so i'm counting on you to keep up right for those of you who don't know we have people here who check their bibles as i preach and i like that i encourage that so bring your bibles check my work don't just believe everything i say so i heard a story about a farmer who was usually busy working in the fields but one day his neighbor noticed that he was just sitting on his porch doing nothing kind of weird so the neighbor says is everything okay are you all right well farmer says it's tolerable that's concerning what's going on fill me in he's like well a few days ago it was crazy a tornado blew through and knocked down a whole bunch of trees that i had to clear anyway to make a new field and you know get some firewood for the winter it was remarkable the neighbor said yeah but get this a couple days later lightning hit that field over there burned it up i had to clear it anyway saved me a lot of work well what are you doing now waiting waiting for what an earthquake an earthquake yeah i figure if an earthquake hits it'll shake up those taters over there in the field that i have to harvest anyway last week we saw that we need to have passion right but today we're gonna see that we also need to put in the work right so you got to be passionate about something but you also have to put in the work while it's true that the lord does take care of a lot of things for us it's also true that we have to put in the work as well both sides of the coin today we find ourselves continuing in that series the rest of the story the bible unredacted and if you're new here you may or may not know this about c3 church but we honor the word of god so this is the place where you're going to come and you're going to hear more scriptures than opinions we value god's word if you've been in church for a long time you may have done a series called the story or something like it and as we've discovered the story really doesn't cover the whole bible we did this as a church many many years ago and i wasn't in the word as much then if i'm being honest with you once i became a real student of the word i noticed that i hadn't actually read the whole bible doing the story kind of surprising they redact quite a bit of it and so the mindset that we have here at c3 church is who are we to say what part of the word of god we should hit the pause button on what part of the word of god is less important than another part of the word of god it sounds like i'm railing against those programs but we talk a lot about this we ask the whys here at c3 church is it really working why do we have to put this into a program when we've got the ultimate program guide right here and there's no part of this that's less important than another part so we're honoring all the texts and indeed i keep going back to that storybook and checking the counts today what we're going to read today has been redacted from that and the more i grow to love the word of god being honest with you guys the more that kind of annoys me we should honor the whole thing and that's what we're doing today so a recap and you can go online through our app they're going to tell you a bunch of different ways you can see the previous messages you can go on our youtube channel all kinds of different ways and you can watch the previous messages so just to recap joe ash we saw that there were two of them jehoiash joe ash one of them is very ungrateful he got saved from the wicked queen athaliah i wanted to take all the kids out but jehoiada the priest saved him remember he got left in the children's ministry for like six years he was saved but after jehoiad had died ripe old age 130 he was ungrateful to him all right so he wasn't wholehearted we saw that that was a theme and the other one in israel not to elisha either to his prophecy eh one two three strikes on the ground so we'll continue second kings 14 starting at verse 1. amaziah son of joash began to rule over judah in the second year of the reign of king jehoesh same name variant spelling of israel and messiah was 25 years old when he became king and he reigned in jerusalem 29 years his mother was jehoiadin from jerusalem now messiah did what was pleasing in the lord's sight but not like his ancestor david instead he followed the example of his father joash and messiah did not destroy the pagan shrines and the people still offered sacrifices and burned incense there there are two passages here on the screen why well if you don't know we've been talking about this the bible has different books that sometimes run in parallel this is one of those places but they're a little bit different no contradictions just the chronicler here noting a few things right so take a look at it second chronicles sorry that's a combination krings of chronicles and kings and messiah was 25 years old when he became king and he arraigned in jerusalem 29 years his mother was jehoiadin from jerusalem and messiah did what was pleasing in the lord's sight but look at this detail but not wholeheartedly and there's the problem from last week now we're going to connect them now we're going to move a little further into it so let's continue with the text second kings 14 starting at verse 5 when amaziah was well established as king he executed the officials who had assassinated his father however he did not kill the children of the assassins for he obeyed the command of the lord as written by moses in the book of the law parents must not be put to death for the sins of their children nor children for the sins of their parents those deserving to die must be put to death for their own crimes deuteronomy 24 16. so here we see the opposite side of that coin remember the generational curse christ has canceled that there's no more generational curse but we see the opposite side of that in the law of moses so he's honoring that at least for now if we continue 2nd kings 14 7. amaziah also killed ten thousand [ __ ] in the valley of salt he also conquered selah and changed its name to jacques deal great name as it is called to this day so here's the thing though second chronicles it's gonna give us a few more details on that it will go into this challenge that he makes to the king of israel and not really explain what just happened there but if we hop on over to second chronicles 25 5 we get more info on that then amaziah organized the army assigning generals and captains for all judah and benjamin he took a census and found that he had an army of 300 000 select troops 20 years and older all trained in the use of spear and shield he also paid about 7 500 pounds of silver to hire 100 000 experienced fighting men of israel so what have we learned judah is not supposed to be allied with israel they tend to be more wicked and evil so this is bad news so here's what happens a man of god came to him and said your majesty don't don't hire troops from israel he's not going to help those people they're from ephraim he says so and messiah says what about all that silver that i paid to them the man of god says the lord can give you much more than this no big deal let it go so amaziah discharges the hired troops it makes them really angry then we get in second kings that's where that line comes in so just to reiterate amaziah summoned his courage and he led his army out to the valley of salt where they killed ten thousand edomite troops if we go back to second chronicles it says he actually defeats another ten thousand and throws them off a cliff kind of a violent thing to do but also the hired troops from israel that he sent back home well they raided all the way back home and killed three thousand people of judah three thousand of his people and here's another problem when he conquers the [ __ ] he takes their idols we've talked about idols in this false gods with him and he bows down and worships them so the lord he sends a prophet and he says why do you bow down to these idols who couldn't even save your enemies what are you doing worshiping false gods but since when have i made you the king's counselor be quiet before i have you killed he says so the prophet stopped and he gave a warning i know that god has determined to destroy you because you have done this and you refuse to accept my counsel now here's where ii kings and second chronicles kind of come back in line second chronicles 25 starting at verse 17 after consulting with his advisers king amaziah of judah sent this challenge to israel's king jehoiash the son of jehoiah has and grandson of jehu come and meet me in battle but king johash of israel replied to king amaziah of judah with this story or like a parable out in lebanon the lebanon mountains a thistle sent a message to a mighty cedar tree give your daughter a marriage to my son but just then a wild animal of lebanon came by and stepped on the thistle crushing it you are saying i have defeated edom and you're very proud of it my advice is stay at home why stir up trouble that will only bring disaster on you and the people of judah but a messiah refuses to listen because god was determined to destroy him so he's going to use israel to teach him a lesson for this idol worship so they mobilized their armies but what happens is a messiah gets defeated by israel not only that he gets captured taken back to jerusalem which is kind of a little bit weird and he destroyed 600 feet of the wall there teach him a lesson if you keep reading though and messiah ends up living 15 more years than the king of israel if we keep reading second kings i just want to mention this it's going to be a little off topic but what happens here as i mentioned earlier or last week the chronicler 2nd chronicles is going to move on to talk about judah pretty much primarily right now not israel in the north so if you go back to second kings it's kind of like meanwhile in israel jeroboam ii is made king so if you remember jeroboam was the first king over israel and he doubled down on aaron's sin by making those golden calves is really really bad so we have jeroboam the second but it's not literally like jeroboam jr it's many many many generations later so we'll get into that in the future from amaziah we learn a lesson in arrogance arrogance is when our ambition is bigger than our ability arrogance you see we talked about having passion last week rekindling that passion with our relationships and especially with the lord but here we see we have to put that passion into practice very important if we don't practice if we don't refine our abilities our passion can get us into trouble and that's exactly what we see here have you ever heard the term jack of all trades master of none i'm sure you have i knew someone once who liked to brag about how many things he knew how to do how many jobs he had it just seemed no matter what you did it was like oh yeah i did that professionally before i know everything about it but here's the thing he should have been like 80 years old don't say his name heather but he was only in his 30s and he had like a bazillion jobs he's a professional everything you too carolee don't say the name it was amazing boasting and boasting you ever watch a show shark tank you never see that show i like it being a former business person from the business world i like to predict if they're going to give them the deal or not or like you know i do like that monday morning what is it okay monday morning quarterback kind of thing thank you tony or whatever what happens when you get old anyway you know i kind of go through it's kind of like american idol or something like that and i can always predict like who's going to win because of being in the music industry so i like the show we keep it on the background evenings if it's on and we watch it and so here's the thing you got to know google or siri is always listening right so we watch shark tank and then all of a sudden i'm on my phone and everything about shark tank is coming up in my news feed constantly especially kevin o'leary he's kind of the mean guy right he's like the simon cowell of that panel well i see an article and it says this is the one thing you really don't want to put on your resume or do as it pertains to your resume as i click on it i'm like all right let me see congregation is kind of getting annoying maybe i'll joke i just wanted to see what it was it's a joke please it's a joke you talked about getting fired last week too let me see what it is and it was a lot of things here's the thing kevin o'leary if he looks at your resume if you're applying for a job with kevin o'leary lucky you if you're applying for that job if he sees that you've had too many jobs especially in a short period of time he is going to throw your resume in the garbage too many jobs is not good you see it shows that you lack commitment you're not willing to commit and you might be a jack of all trades master of none if you own a business or you've hired people you want someone who's had a job for like 10 or 20 years like a really long time shows that they have commitment they can commit to something if they've been doing it that long they're probably pretty good at it that's what i want to see quality not quantity and commitment want to be good at something we have to commit to that thing commitment is required but in our american culture if i can throw the whole country under the bus for a second we often think that more is better right more more is always better but commitment isn't about quantity commitment's about quality that's what we want to go for some even do this in their relationships i knew another person once who used to brag about having a lot of friends he would say something like i have more best friends than anyone it's kind of a weird thing but he touted this as a really good thing like i have a ton of friends i'm friends with everybody and that's a great thing that's not what the word of god says proverbs 18 4 there are friends in quotes for a reason who destroy each other a little bit better of a translation here a man of many friends will come to ruin but a real friend sticks closer than a brother you see you can't be friends with everyone can't do it eventually you're gonna have to pick sides eventually you're gonna have to commit a messiah had divided loyalties and messiah lacked commitment his loyalties were divided between god and false gods between israel and god god's not on their side at this time you see we can't have divided loyalties in the things we do in our relationships especially with the lord james 1 5 if you need wisdom ask our generous god and he'll give it to you he will not rebuke you for asking but when you ask him be sure that your faith is in god alone do not waver for a person with divided loyalties is as unsettled as a wave of the sea that is blown and tossed by the wind such people should not expect to receive anything from the lord their loyalty is divided between god and the world and they are unstable in everything they do you see people have divided loyalty often times because they lack commitment people often hop around from job to job you see this with people dating not wanting to commit and getting married it's really usually because they don't want to put in the work it's about practice it's about putting in the work relationships take work people don't want to settle down so they hop around because they know it's going to take work you see not only did amaziah have divided loyalties worshiping false gods but also teaming up with israel and in that process here's another thing that people do he tries to buy his strength that's 7 500 pounds of silver maybe i'll buy some strength he hires all those soldiers but the man of god prophet rebukes him for it likewise in the world today there are many who try to buy their credentials right or abilities now i can speak of a couple of different industries that i've been a part of or i can give you examples maybe you'll be able to relate so if you know me you know that i came from the martial arts industry before this we were business people my wife and i that's why we like shark tank and here's the thing when we started out well it was bh before heather it was just me it was in a warehouse it was tough sleeping on the mats didn't have any money it was a new thing not everybody knew about mma back then now everybody knows about it and what's brazilian jiu jitsu that sounds weird so no one knew about it it was a new thing took a lot of work got a billing company the program right so i got to get on a program so i can stop starving to death this is getting difficult so i call up the billing company you're going to do the billing and they give you like all this advice they give you back then some vhs tapes whoa showing my age right so you got to watch the vhs tapes and the series and read the books i did all this stuff about the program and they call me for the follow-up and they say okay how's it going i'm like not good nobody's joining the gym right now nobody knows about this well here's the solution guy's name was ed anderson too so it's like a pre-figure of ed anderson here's the solution so i got my bizarro world ed now because ed would never say this to me ed would say pray right but this guy's like the program no pray so total opposite kind of funny so he tells me if you want to succeed you need to start a black belt club that's what you need a black belt don't you have one and i'm like what's a black belt club there's a guy where all the people have actually like earned their black belts get together and they like eat pizza like what is it well no no no no no no so you have your regular dues right so 100 bucks a month that's what person's going to pay but if they have kids you pull them aside and you say you can join our black belt club and see as a member of the black belt club that puts you on like a two-year track you know and if you put in the work you break some boards you know you're you're gonna you're gonna be a black belt in two years i'm like that's not possible i'm not a black belt you see when i started brazilian jiu jitsu i was a black belt and something else and then i got tapped out by a white belt because it's better and they don't have black belt clubs and so i took off my black belt and started over again and so i'm basically like an associate kind of teacher here with a purple belt on is still trying to get a black belt well that's a problem why would anyone join your school if you're not even a black belt because we actually like teach people how to fight here like that's kind of the thing oh really yeah can't do that you can't even get a black belt in this art until you're 18 years old they don't give it to kids because it's kind of funny black belt club hung up the phone so told this story before but it's kind of funny worth repeating we stuck to quality we stuck to commitment we didn't change anything it was hard living in a gym is not easy smells too it's not cool not cool lots of ramen noodles but stuck to it commitment commitment commitment years later years it took me 10 years of training professionally to get a black belt years later blood sweat and tears finally 400 students ed anderson not that one calls me up what did you do top 10. in the country in that billing company what did you do the exact opposite of what you told me still have the phone like to bang it around a lot when i was like anyway that's it commitment it's hard practice it's hard but it's worth it it pays off but a lot of people think look if i just pay the dues right i can be a black belt right happens in church another industry i can talk about if i just pay my dues i can get in the leadership right every pastor's like what happens if i just pay my dues i can get what i want here right if i just pay my dues i can affect things you know don't talk about that pastor change the hymns pastor if i just pay my dues i can get in leadership right wrong wrong we as leaders in this church can not be bought a lot of controversies i'm going to wait after easter because i don't want to spoil everyone's easter but i'm going to talk about it there's a lot of controversies in the mega church all right so i'm going to address that how we're very very different here but just as a part of that hear me now i cannot be bought i made all that money in the business industry the lord called me out of it i'm okay i'm good i'm not impressed we cannot be bought so it's important to pay your dues it's important hear me it's not free building incentive not free doing a lot with it but important that you participate you pay your dues but there is no black belt club at c3 church period the world teaches us to be transactional ed talked about this the world teaches us everything's a transaction the word teaches us to be relational and that's what we are here a bible believing church it's not simply about paying your dues it's about putting in the work and real relationships take work that's it now our passion should push us to put in the work right with single-minded whole-hearted devotion if we're truly passionate you see amaziah wasn't single-minded he wasn't wholehearted he worshiped other gods so first we must check our passion is it really there are we really passionate let me tell you how you're going to know if you're really passionate about something you'll want to put in the work why wouldn't you want to so these things we talked about from last week now connecting once we have our passion once we're whole hearted we must develop devotion to that thing now messiah hadn't either now putting in the work is about practice and i've heard people say they don't like to practice i was also a musician oxymoron professional musician for a while jenny's like the only guy i know who can make money doing that and it's because he wears a kilt i think but anyway it's an inside joke you'll see if denny's here but anyway you don't like to practice you know and it's a really funny question that every industry i've ever been in i've been asked this question it's hilarious how did you get that good not that i was the best it was not the best in any of these industries but it was good how did you get that good i'm like i practiced 12 hours a day that's how i got that good people better than me they complain when they go on tour because they can't practice enough they have devotion passion to these things you just practice practice practice same thing martial arts how did you get that good practice you got to do it how do you know so much about the word practice i read it a lot i listen to it all the time practice now people may not like practice but everybody has practices everybody has habits you may not like practice but there's things you practice a lot and so getting good at stuff is about adjusting those practices that's it that's the practical matter here putting the work into what really really matters now there are some christians who will say see we don't like if you're new here we don't like like typical mantras that people mindlessly say and here's one of them christianity it isn't about religion it's about relationship partially true but the bible never says that religion isn't a good thing in fact it says it's a very good thing read james right taking care of widows and orphans this is perfect religion it's about work too a lot of the people who say that say it i'm guessing because they're lazy all right so you get these types of people now while it's true we are not saved by works it's not what i'm trying to say grace alone faith in jesus christ but it's also true that our work is evidence of our salvation furthermore i'm going to show you what the word says about that the word says we are created for good works so here's one that i'm going to show you and most of you know this ephesians 2 8 god saved you by his grace when you believed and you can't take credit for this it is a gift from god salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done so none of us can boast about it that's where everybody stops they don't like the next part for we are god's masterpiece he has created us a new in christ why so we can do the good things that's good works in greek right there he planned for us long ago why so that we can do good works let that sink in we have to put in the work there are too many that subscribe to this greasy gray slippery salvation thing i'm dunked and i'm done you hear that like i'm good i'm going to get baptized and just go do whatever i want amazing amazing i've seen it it's crazy i'm dunked that's it i'm set regardless of how much i sin what i do that is not what god's word says let's take a look at some more texts just in case i told you you don't have to believe me believe that so paul writing to the church in philippi one of his nicest letters yet he still says this philippians 2 12 dear friends you always followed my instructions when i was with you and now that i'm away it is even more important work hard work hard to show the results of your salvation obeying god with deep reverence and fear i need to stop there for a second and explain this to you so i do read this in the greek when i prepare i think about it and i have questions i call my greek teacher who's watching right now so i'm not going to try to pronounce this but i can read it so i checked because i'm like no deep reverence isn't in there in the greek it doesn't say reverence there there's a different word in greek for that why did they do that i'll tell you why it's an americanized translation right because what do we have another mantra i bet you heard this when it says fear in the bible it's not really fear it's it's just talking about like a kind of reverence that we had for god it doesn't really it can't mean fear yeah because god's santa claus no it means fear and i want to show you here this is going to be hard for you to read with fear and terror that's what that word means and that's why most the closest you're going to get in an american bible translation the closest fear and trembling that's the closest you're going to get so i contacted my greek teacher because i'm like that this doesn't seem right to me and so i sent her a text and i said hey did i get this right that promos word does that mean terror but also implies the action of shaking because it's like tremor like tremor yes exactly right thank you fear and terror that causes you to shake could paul be any more specific no fear and terror just let that sink in that is the word of god and i inserted the better translation the original because the original says something drastically different fear and terror work out your you better make sure you're saved or you're going to hell that's a scary place you should be terrified of hell the word of god says that too it's not just coming from me i'm just reading you the original translation of the word of god fear and terror that causes you to shake that's the better translation let that sink in see exact that that's how we you know we're going to be good you'll live we have food upstairs so i don't know why i do it's not on you most of the people here you're actually really cool like you're like no i'll preach more so that's good healthy church it's just an old habit i apologize i do it all time and then i overexplain myself anyway food upstairs afterwards don't worry you'll live if you're hungry go get something to eat now whatever i don't care but it's it's up there too you can hear it you can hear it even in the bathroom which is really creepy so if you go to the bathroom anyway tangents where am i anyway it's why we're there it's why we're there tony will tell you it came from a mega church big church it's not working people tell me oh you know wow there's so many people in the seats yeah let's see if they stay it's a revolving door 67 of christians from the previous generation if you're like a little older than me and now you have grown-up kids 67 dropout rate that's not a good thing i'm not smirking because it's funny it's not it's sad yet i still have insanity people from that generation who have kids like a little younger than me whatever they don't go to church whatever but hey pastor how come we're not doing this my old church we used to do this i want to put this on the website we aren't your church back home how come we don't do this where's your kid that's why right now mega church scandals why did that happen because you gave everybody a watered-down version of this you gave everyone quantity no quality you told them they didn't have to put in any work and when they started going through hard times or when this didn't work for them they fell away you're a liar you got churches out there you're always going to be healed you just don't have enough faith it's fine then when they get sick i watch people who come from that and they die of cancer they die from cancer that why why did this happen because you were lied to that's why you were lied to so i'm not going to do that to you guys we got to fix that 67 draw but that's crazy but it's not working because people are told that they don't have to put in the work if you're new to this it's work but it's worth it it's worth it so what does working hard to show the results of our salvation look like ii peter 1 5. in view of all of this make every effort to respond to god's promises supplement your faith wow we're supposed to supplement our faith yeah you are with a generous provision of moral excellence and moral excellence with knowledge and knowledge with self-control and self-control with patient endurance and patient endurance with godliness and godliness with brotherly affection and brotherly affection with love for someone everyone supplement your faith with moral excellence what would it look like to be morally excellent to someone's face and behind their back morally excellent when nobody is watching you except google and siri and facebook through your computer camera don't worry if you're not doing anything wrong you're good that's why i don't worry about it moral excellence knowledge here's another one you get this like thing that like christians can be stupid no knowledge supplement your faith with knowledge what would it look like to be in the word all the time james remember it james 1 5. if you want wisdom ask for it the holy spirit if we are temples of the holy spirit what does that mean we have god in us well is god stupid no we have knowledge from god knowledge it's right here too we have total abundant access to it don't get me started knowledge he also gives self-control that's interesting these are starting to sound like the fruits of the spirit in galatians 5 right remind you of that we've been talking about that oh it's kind of redundant in here self-control so you're going to use that knowledge to think about what comes out of your mouth and what goes in it patient endurance patiently waiting for the lord while putting in the work do we have that balance are we patient with others around us do we endure suffering romans 5 do we endure suffering without complaining i don't know godliness are we trying to be like jesus brotherly affection proverbs we doing that are we loving everyone these are the questions we need to be asking ourselves i want you to meditate on this you see jesus requires commitment and these are the steps to putting that in place this is putting in the work we are saved by grace through our faith in jesus christ some of that we can do the work here's a key second peter 1 8 the more you grow like this the more productive and useful you will be in your knowledge of our lord jesus christ amen we pray for you lord i thank you for everybody who took the time to come in here today and thank you for everybody watching online a lot of people thank you for them from far away but if you're from close i want to encourage those people to come on in here and be a part of the body of christ filled in the unity with the holy spirit lord i pray i pray that you just work in these people to make them vehicles of your love as they go out this week productive in their knowledge of our lord jesus christ lord we love you we thank you i ask these things in jesus name amen you