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All right, amen. Second Kings chapter number three. So the title of the sermon, I'll start with that, is this and it's We See Red. We See Red. And of course I'm getting that from verse 23 where we saw that the Moabites come up to the ditches of water and we'll talk about it again, but they come up to the ditches that are filled with water and they actually see blood and they make a false assumption of what has happened there and therefore they fall right into a trap. Okay. So the title is We See Red. And obviously, if you look that up, what that means to see red, you've heard somebody say that before, you know, when I get angry, all I see is red. What that means is to fall into a state of extreme anger or an extreme state of excitement or an extreme competitive arousal. Okay. That's what that means. And that basically describes the Moabites here in this chapter. So we've got 27 verses and it breaks down a very, very simple here. You've got three nations, essentially three Kings of three nations versus one, the Moabites. Okay. The three Kings by names, we have Jehoshaphat who is the King of the Southern Kingdom of Judah. We've got Jehoram who is the King over the Northern Kingdom of Israel. And then you just have the King of Edom. Okay. And we're going to get into this here in just a, just a sec. But you know, as I was reading this, I just kept thinking about like, it almost plays out exactly like how we were introduced to Jehoshaphat with Ahab, right? How Jehoshaphat got rebuked for yoking up with Ahab because obviously the nation of Israel at this time, the Northern Kingdom, they aren't following God. They're not following the statutes. And so you're going to see that same thing again today. Now let's start this off here right away. Look at verse number one. It says now Jehoram, the son of Ahab, began to reign over Israel in Samaria in the 18th year of Jehoshaphat, King of Judah and reigned 12 years. Now, if you remember earlier in our study of the Kings that a King rose up who inquired of Beelzebub. Okay. And he was Ahab's son. His name was Ahaziah. And so what happened to Ahaziah? Well, because of that, he died. God pronounced that he would die through the prophet and that's exactly what happened. And so now there is a new guy on the throne, obviously who are his parents. Well, Ahab, Jezebel, he's of that same family, but he's not as wicked as Ahab. And the Bible lets us know that. Look at verse number two. It says, and he wrought evil in the sight of the Lord, but not like his father and like his mother for he put away the image of Baal that his father had made. So the Bible here is very careful to let us know that this guy is still obviously an evil king. He's not to be looked up to. He's not to be followed. He's not an example, a good example, in other words, but yet, nonetheless, he's a little bit better on the spectrum than Ahab in that he got rid of the image of Baal that his father had made and say, why is this in the Bible? How can we apply this to our lives? What does this mean? Well, I mean, if you think about it today, you know, we live in such a wicked society, such a wicked world today. I mean, it really is beginning to look like the days of Noah, you know, or like the days of Lot. And it seems like any time gets up on social media. Okay. And they just say anything that makes sense. And, you know, it's like, oh wow, you know, this guy's not as bad as the woke people. You know, this guy's not as bad as so on, you know, such and such, you know, that's how a lot of people look at Elon Musk or they look at Andrew Tate. Okay. Well, you know who Elon Musk is. He obviously started Tesla, just bought Twitter, you know, and he obviously has taken some actions in with Twitter that support free speech. And you have Christians all over the world like, wow, you know, maybe he's coming to, you know, maybe he's a believer, you know, he's on our side. You know, we'll find out in the end. Okay. We're not, I'm not sure. The point being just because someone's not as wicked or not as evil as the guy before doesn't necessarily mean we need to give them our full wholehearted trust is what I'm trying to say. Okay. And so the Bible here, just giving us a description, Hey, this guy is evil. He follows the sins of Jeroboam. He is of that religion. He's not following the Lord, but he did get rid of the image of Baal. So just kind of, you know, basically telling it how it is. This is who this King was and this is how he operated. Okay. Look at verse three. It says, nevertheless, he clave unto the sins of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, which made Israel to sin. And then here it is. He departed not, it says he departed not there from. Okay. And again, you know, we've talked about this several times. What did Jeroboam do? He established a new religion. Why? Because he did not want to lose control. Okay. He figured, well, if everybody goes down to the Southern kingdom where the temple's at and they begin to worship there, then well, I'm going to lose control. They're going to fall under the King there. And so he starts his own religion. And of course that never works out well. You know, you always have people coming up. Well, you know, we still have church. We still have a Bible. We still have preaching. It's just watered down. It's just softer. It's more inclusive. We can reach more people that way. You see how that is? It's all about control. Just give me the people. Okay. What does that always lead to? It leads to further and further degeneracy. Okay. And then what happened? Ahab comes on. He's like, well, this nation's already been doing all this other crazy stuff and let's get Baal going. You know, let's just go full on devil worship. I mean, that's always where this leads. That is the direction that our world is going into because the Bible tells us that there will be, there will come a man where he basically at one day will stand up and demand worship. There'll be a false prophet who will point to him and say, you know, he was dead and now he's alive and we need to worship him in the whole world. The Bible says, we'll go after him unless you're saved or your name's found in the, uh, the book of the lamb. But that's a sermon for another day. Let's look at verse number four. It says this, it says, and Misha king of Moab was a sheet master and rendered unto the king of Israel, 100,000 lambs and 100,000 rams with the wool. Okay. That's important there. That's telling you something here. Look at verse five. It says, but it came to pass when Ahab was dead, that the king of Moab rebelled against the king of Israel. Now back to verse four, it says a Misha king of Moab was a sheet master and rendered unto the king of Israel and 100,000 lambs. Think about that. 100,000 lambs, 100,000 rams with the wool. Okay. Like this is a heavy burden that the nation of Moab owes and has to pay tribute to the nation of Israel here. Okay. And so obviously that's probably crippling their nation. It's probably, you know, they're looking at this like we could use all these resources. We could use all this food and all this clothing that's made from the wool and so on and so forth. And so of course they're going to look for any avenue they can to break free. Ahab is a wicked guy. He dies. It doesn't say this, but maybe they figure out, well, Jehoram's not worshiping the devil. You know, maybe this is our chance to slide in and actually rebel. Okay. And so I don't know, but that's kind of what I see there. But look at verse number six. It says, and King Jehoram went out of Samaria the same time and numbered all Israel. So he realizes Jehoram, king of Israel, he realizes there's trouble. Okay. There's trouble. We're losing control. We're losing control of these people who are supposed to pay us tribute. We're not going to starve. We're not going to allow this to happen. And if you remember, if you've been with us for any length of time where we were studying through, you know, first second Samuel, first Kings, you'll notice that, especially during David's reign, okay, during David's reign and even Solomon's reign, you know, they made these other nations outside. Actually, they put them to tribute. You know, if you go through the law, you know, and you read what God says about Moab and Ammon and Edom, they're all related to the nation of Israel. Okay. Uh, where did the Moabites come from? Remember that? Lot. Okay. Do you remember that whole situation with Sodom and Gomorrah? God rescues Lot with the angels. They drag him out of Sodom and they, they, they, they leave Sodom, but Sodom doesn't leave them. Remember the daughters of Lot are like, well, we're never going to get married. We're never going to have husbands. So they do the unthinkable, the unimaginable, and they take advantage of their father. And thus you wind up with two children named Moab and Ammon. They grow into nations, so on and so forth, become wicked over time. And here we are still reading about them, but basically God told the nation of Israel, Hey, you're not to go directly attack them. Now, if they attack you, if they do something to you, you can defend yourselves. You can put them to tribute and things of that nature. And so as you read the chapter here, and as you study that subject out, God does want the Moabites to be under their, their, their tribute because of the sins and the atrocities that they have done. And anytime, practically most of the time, I'll say, when you're studying the Moabites and the Ammonites, they are always up to no good. And obviously there's a period of grace there. If you remember David, okay, when he was on the run from Saul, what did he do with his parents? And we left him with the king of Moab. And so you can see there's, there's this relationship at times with, with those nations. But nonetheless, at this specific time, they were under tribute. They were contributing, you know, economically to the Northern kingdom of Israel and they rebel. And the king of Israel is like, you know, I need to obviously number what I have here, which is a sermon of itself that we've talked about in the past. But he's like, we need to do something about this. We have to respond. We have to fight and get what is ours. And so he comes up with another idea after numbering his army. Verse seven says this. And when he went and sent to Jehoshaphat, the king of Judah, saying, the king of Moab hath rebelled against me, wilt thou go with me against Moab to battle? And he said, what do you think he said? What do you think Jehoshaphat said? Yes. He says, I will go up. I am as thou art, my people as thy people and my horses as thy horses. Now keep your place there, if you would, and go to second Chronicles chapter number 20. So go forward in your Bible. Second Chronicles chapter number 20. The second Chronicles chapter number 20. Now we're not going to take the time to read the whole chapter, obviously, but if you did, what you would find is the Jehoshaphat does have a history of going to battle with Moab and Ammon and had to actually inquire of the Lord for help. God has helped him. God blessed him in that. So Jehoshaphat, you know, he's got this problem where he's got a little bit of an ecumenical bone to him, right? He feels for the Northern Kingdom, you know, and obviously you could tell by his actions, he desires them to be saved. And I preached a sermon before where I showed you clearly that Jehoshaphat was a soul winner. Okay. Jehoshaphat actually won people to the Lord in the Northern Kingdom of Israel. We don't have time to look at it today, but it's a fascinating story. We'll get into it again at another time. I wouldn't want to preach the same thing I preached recently, but nonetheless, he does have a history with those nations. Okay. And so it could be that the King of Israel realized that and said, hey, we've got this common thing here. Would you help us? And knowing his history with his father and with Ahaziah decides, you know, it never hurts to ask. And of course, Jehoshaphat, you know, jumps right on him. But I want to highlight something about his actions and how God feels about him yoking up with these nations. Okay. Look at verse 35 here. Second Chronicles 20, look at verse 35. So it says this, and after this, did Jehoshaphat, King of Judah, join himself with Ahaziah, King of Israel, who did very wickedly. Okay. So where you're at right now, what you're reading is you're actually reading chronologically Second Kings chapters one and two. So in that realm there. Okay. And so what we see here is that Jehoshaphat, after not learning his lesson, after being rebuked for yoking up with Ahab, he yokes up with his son, Ahaziah. And the Bible tells you who did very wickedly. Okay. God does not want his children, his people to be yoked with the world, with wicked people. Okay. It should never be that way. Look at verse 36. And he joined himself with him to make ships to go to Tarshish, and they made ship or made the ships in Eson Geburt. Look at verse 37. And Eleazar, the son of Dodova of Marsha, prophesied against Jehoshaphat saying, because thou has joined thyself with Ahaziah, the Lord hath broken thy works. And the ships were broken that they were not able to go to Tarshish. Okay. So let's back up for a second here. Now, if you would, let's just take a look at it together. Go back one chapter. Okay. Go back to Second Chronicles 19. Second Chronicles chapter 19. Okay. So, I mean, we spent a lot of time talking about Ahab at the end of First Kings, and we saw Jehoshaphat, how he was willing to yoke up with him. And remember Ahab was like, hey, we're going to go to battle. I've got these 400 prophets, and they all agree. Remember, Jehoshaphat's like, something's not right here. Isn't there like a real man of God? Isn't there like a real prophet that could prophesy for us? And Ahab was like, yeah, there's this one guy, but I hate him, you know, because he always tells me bad things. And we don't like to hear bad news. We don't like to hear bad things. And Jehoshaphat's like, ah, you know, don't say that. And, you know, the rest of the story, the prophet comes, prophesies, and of course they don't like the message, and they lock them back up. But the prophet was proven correctly here. Now, what does God, the question is, what does God think about Jehoshaphat yoking up with the northern kingdom of Israel's king, Ahab? Okay, well, what does he think about that? Well, here's the answer to that question. Look at verse one, it says Jehoshaphat, the king of Judah, returned to his house in peace and to Jerusalem. This is after Ahab gets smoked. Verse two, and Jehu, the son of Hanani, the seer, went out to meet him and said to king Jehoshaphat, shouldest thou help the ungodly and love them that hate the Lord? Therefore, remember, so for that reason, therefore is wrath upon thee from before the Lord. Okay. And this throws a lot of people off here because we're taught in our society today that the worst thing you could do is to ever speak against Israel. Okay. Well, modern day Israel today, by and large, okay, by and large hate our God. They hate the Bible. Okay. You can't go to Israel today and just start knocking on doors freely and preach the gospel. Okay. You could get in trouble for that. Okay. Now, does that mean there's no Christians in Israel? Well, of course there are saved people in Israel today. I wholeheartedly believe that, but here we have a clear example of God saying, hey, I don't even want you Jehoshaphat yoking up with the northern kingdom of Israel because they are not with me. They have their own religion. They have their own beliefs. They are not following me. And even though, yes, I established that physical nation, I don't want you to support them. It looks bad. It's not okay. So he gets rebuked for it. Okay. He gets a warning for it. Don't do that. Okay. Well, again, go to second Chronicles chapter number 20. What do we see? Well, after Ahab dies, Ahaziah asks for help to build these ships. What does he do? Oh yeah. Well, why not? You know, my people are as I people let's just go ahead and do this. And then what happens? Well, chronologically what happens, he doesn't get another warning right away. What happens is his works are broken. Okay. What happens is circumstantially the efforts that he tries to conduct with Ahaziah fails. Okay. And then God sends him a second warning with Eliezer, the son of Dotovah and says, Hey, the reason why what you're doing failed is because God doesn't want you to yoke up with people that hate the Lord. Okay. It would be like, if you know, we're going to yoke up with St. Stephen's Episcopal and work on a project together because we have a common enemy. I believe that God would rebuke me for that because we have a different God. Okay. Just because they say Christ, Christian, Bible, brother, sister, doesn't mean anything. Okay. When the Sodomites were attacking and protesting us and as they still are, this church has been a beacon of support for them. Okay. So here you have a situation that we can all see with our own eyes, where you have Satanists, Sodomites yoking up with supposed Christians and some, and we're supposed to believe that God loves that, that God's okay with that, but nothing could be further from the truth. Okay. God does not like that. He does not honor that. He never has. And he never will. So let's go back to second Kings chapter number three. Okay. So what you're reading now, what you got to understand is that Jehoshaphat has already been rebuked twice. Okay. He was rebuked by Jehu with the word of God. And then he was rebuked circumstantially and that backed up by the prophet Eliezer. Okay. And so you say, well, why are you bringing this up here? Well, I'm bringing this up because somebody might say, well, but he doesn't get rebuked for going to battle with Jehoram. Okay. No, but things don't go very well. Okay. I mean, two out of three, right? He gets rebuked twice for, once for yoking up with Ahab, once for yoking up with Ahaziah, you know, you can't expect us to believe that it's okay for him to do what he's about to do. He's just too quick to jump on this dude's side here. Okay. And so I just wanted to throw that out there as food for thought. Look at verse number eight. And he said, which way shall we go up? And he answered the way through the wilderness of Edom. Verse nine. So the king of Israel went and the king of Judah and the king of Edom, and they fetched a compass of seven days journey. And there was no water for the host and for the cattle that followed them. Okay. So right off the bat, okay, this is the third time that Jehoshaphat, the king of the Southern kingdom of Judah, where the temple's at, where the center of true religion for the world is at. Okay. Here he finds himself in a situation where they've gone seven days, they've got army, they've got people, they got resources, they've got cattle. I mean, they've got needs. And one of those needs is water. And when you go a certain amount of time without water, you die. Okay. So you can see right away, it doesn't sound to me like God is endorsing this in any way, though he is going to provide, though he is going to intervene here. That's great. It just goes to show you how much God loves us and how merciful he is to us, how we can make mistakes. We could go down the wrong road. We can just completely even ignore warnings. And God still shows his love and his care for his people. We serve a great, magnificent, powerful, awesome, loving God. Okay. Never forget that. Verse number 10, and the king of Israel said, a loss that the Lord has called these three kings together to deliver them into the hand of Moab. Okay. So who really starts to panic here? Well, it's the king of Israel. He's got this conspiracy, if you will. He's like, God has orchestrated this so that we're all going to die. Okay. Now, what does the saved king actually say? The king who does love the Lord, but didn't make the best decision. Okay. Verse 11, but Jehoshaphat said, is there not here a prophet of the Lord that we may inquire of the Lord by him? And one of the king of Israel's servants answered and said, here is Elisha, the son of Shaphat, which poured water on the hands of Elijah. Okay. So again, you have these two extremes. You have the king of the Northern Kingdom of Israel, Jehoram, who is clearly not saved. Just because he put away the image of Baal doesn't mean he serves the Lord. He's still after the sins of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, which was calf worship, golden calf worship. Okay. Not worshiping the Lord. And then you have Jehoshaphat who says, you know what? I've got enough life experience now to understand, you know, that God will help us in this. Okay. And so what does he do? Well, he does the same thing that he did with Ahab, his father. He says, hey, where's the man of God? Where is the prophet? Okay. Let's see what the Lord says. It is interesting here how one of the king's servants answered and said, well, there's Elisha here who poured water on the hands of Elijah. Now you could take that in different ways. And I've heard many different interpretations and I think there are, a lot of them are definitely valid, definitely true. One way that people will read this is, is kind of a dig on Elisha, you know, which could very well be because it's like, oh yeah, he's just bringing up something insignificant. Right? Like if I was going to describe Elisha, you know, I probably wouldn't describe him that way. I would maybe attribute, yeah, there's Elisha here who was ordained and who was established and set up by Elijah, who went up to heaven by whirlwind. And the guy, you know, Elijah, the prophet who just, who basically destroyed the 450 prophets of Baal. Right. That's how we would describe him. But this guy's like, oh, he's the one who washed the hands of Elijah. So he's like, he's just kind of minuscule. He's just kind of over there, you know, or you could just read it. That's just how they described him. Okay. I see it as kind of, you know, no inhuman behavior, probably a dig, probably a little jab at him, but nonetheless, he's there. Look at what it says in verse 12. And Jehoshaphat said, the word of the Lord is with him. So the king of Israel and Jehoshaphat and the king of Edom went down to him. Now, interesting here, just like the story with Jehoshaphat and Ahab. Now remember Ahab was resistant. He was like, yeah, there's one guy, but I hate him. Okay. You don't see that with Jehoram. You got to give him credit here. Okay. It's recommended. They go see Elisha and he's like, okay, let's go. You don't even hear a peep from the king of Edom. He's like, well, I guess if I got to squeeze through a church service, I might as well, cause I need water, you know, whatever it is. I'll just, just, just hopefully get by here. Look at verse 13. It says, and Elisha said unto the king of Israel, what have I to do with thee? Get thee to the prophets of thy father and to the prophets of thy mother. And the king of Israel said unto him, nay, for the Lord hath called these three kings together to deliver them into the hand of Moab. So Jehoram's not going to let this conspiracy go. He's like, no, I know that God set us up. Okay. God has failed us basically. God wants to kill all three of us. Okay. And Elisha here, he's like, hey, why don't you go inquire Beelzebub like your brother did, like your mom does. Why don't you be just like your mom? Like, like, why are you even here? You know, now you're in trouble. And now you want to play church. You're in trouble. And now you want to reconcile. You're in trouble. And all of a sudden, now you need God. Okay. That's not how it's supposed to work. Look at verse 14. And Elisha said, as the Lord of hosts liveth before whom I stand, surely, were it not that I regard the presence of Jehoshaphat, the king of Judah, I would not look toward thee, nor see thee. Now that's a sobering statement. So this prophet's basically saying, you're lucky. You're lucky that a person who loves the Lord is even standing here. Otherwise I wouldn't help you one bit. I would let you die of thirst. I would let you die from dehydration. I would just walk away. And that would have been righteous. That would have been just. That would have been settled and done with. Okay. So what he's basically saying also is, hey, you need to reconsider some things here at Jehoram. You need to think about your actions. You need to think about your entire belief system and realize the only reason that you're about to get any kind of blessing and live through this is because of that saved, born again, Bible believing, Christian Jehoshaphat. So verse 15, Elisha says this, but now bring me a minstrel. And it came to pass when the minstrel played that the hand of the Lord came upon him. Kind of reminiscent of David. Okay. You guys remember when the evil spirit would come on Saul and they would go and his guys would go and grab David and he would play the harp. He would play the music and then the evil spirit would depart kind of reminiscent of that here. Elisha says, go bring me a minstrel. He plays this instrument and what happens? Okay. Well, the word of God flows almost like what we talked about this morning with the parables. Okay. Look at verse 16. And he said, thus saith the Lord, make this valley full of ditches. Okay. So this is God's solution here. And this is what he wants to happen. Okay. It says, I'm not going to cause it to rain. I want you guys to dig ditches. Verse 17 for thus saith the Lord, you shall not see wind. Neither shall you see rain yet that valley shall be filled with water that she may drink both ye and your cattle and your beasts. Verse 18. And this is but a light thing in the sight of the Lord. He will deliver the Moabites also in to your hand. Now, of course, there's coming a twist. You would think by reading this here that they're just going to have a 100% annihilation slaughter, but the story ends a little unexpectedly. Okay. But notice what's going on here. The word of God is the solution to the thirst. The solution to the problem is you have to dig these ditches. Now think about it. These guys have gone seven days. Okay. And they probably just assumed, they just figured, you know, well, there'll be water along the way. There's going to be, you know, provision for us and it'll be okay. It never came. You know, we call that Murphy's law. Murphy's law. We would have talked about that in the past. You know, if you're headed up to a mountain pass and you're like, yeah, but I know that just 20 minutes up there, there is a gas station and I can make it. I can, I can stop there. It's a little more expensive, but I could stop there and get gas. Murphy's law will tell you when you get there, even though it's three o'clock in the afternoon, something's going to happen. It's going to be closed. And the next gas station is just, you know, beyond the amount that you have in your tank. Okay. And so that's basically the point that these guys are at, but God says, Hey, you know, you have to actually dig these ditches. You're actually going to have to go forth, even though you're thirsty, even though you're tired, even though you're scared, you're wary, all of these things, you actually are going to have to dig these ditches and then I will fill them up, you know, and that kind of goes with today. You know, a lot of people just assume because their great grandfather was a preacher that they're just automatically going to be, you know, going to heaven. You know, you actually have to place your faith on Christ. You actually have to make that volitional choice. You have to make that decision. The word of God is there for you, but you have to actually decide in your own heart to trust and place that faith on him. And similarly here, you know, the word of God is, Hey, dig these ditches. The water will come and you got to have faith. Okay. You got to have that faith that that's going to happen because that's the word of the Lord. The promise is I'll fill the ditches, but you got to dig them. And they say, okay. And they do it. And let's take a look here. Okay. Verse 19, he shall smite every fence city and every choice city and shall fell every good tree and stop all wells of water and mar every good piece of land with stones. Verse 20 and it came to pass in the morning when the meat offering was offered that behold, there came water by the way of Edom and the country was filled with water. So again, God clearly proving that he means what he says, says what he means and does what he says every single time. You would think if you were Jehoram, you'd be like, you know what? I need to put these stupid golden calves away. You would think if you were the king of Edom and seeing this, you'd be like, you know, whatever religion I am at this point, I'm done. I'm following the Lord because I've clearly seen this miracle here. He saved us. He did this work for us, you know, and all we had to do was have the faith and he provided. But as human, as mankind is, you know, they just don't get it. They don't see the blessing here. They don't see the miracle here. Okay. Look at verse 21. And when all the Moabites heard that the kings were come up to fight against them, they gathered all that were able to put on armor and upward and stood in the border. So here it is, the Moabites, they're like, we're not going to let this go. We're not going back to tribute. We're not going back to providing this stuff. We're going to fight. We're going to stand our ground and fight these three kings. Okay. So they've got it in their mind that they're going to win. And guess what? Delusion is coming. Strong delusion is coming and it will destroy them. Verse 22. And they rose up early in the morning and the sun shone upon the water and the Moabites saw the water on the other side as red as blood. Okay. We see red. So here it is in the morning when the sun comes up, when it should be bouncing off of the water and you should be able to look at it and clearly see that it's H2O water to drink. What do they see? They see red. They see blood. They see an opportunity to attack these three kings. And what's so significant about this and Elijah already alluded to it. Elijah already alluded to it is that the children of the Lord are there. Okay. And so, you know, we just need to understand that sometimes we make mistakes. We yoke up and say things we shouldn't, whatever, you know what? But God is always on the side of those that love him. And you're going to see that here. Look at verse 23. And they said this, and they said, this is blood. The kings are surely slain and they have smitten one another. Now therefore Moab to the spoil. You see that? We see red. These guys have now fallen into a state of extreme excitement. They're like, yes, this is our opportunity here. We're going to be able to go in and we're free. It's a done deal. We can clean up the rest of these guys. No problem. Cause the Kings have already destroyed themselves. Okay. But what they don't know is that God has sent them a very strong delusion to see this as blood verse 24. And when they came to the camp of Israel, the Israelites rose up and smote the Moabites so that they fled before them, but they went forward smiting the Moabites, even in their country. So they beat them back out of Edom and they beat them into the country of Moab. Okay. And again, you would think here, you know, you would think if you were the King, if you had any kind of logical capacity left in your brain that you would be like, wait a second, why, why did we see blood? Like, like what caused us to see that? Surely it was where did it come from? To ask the questions, but there was no questions asked. They're getting beat down. The truth is prevailing. They're losing verse 25 and they beat down the cities and on every good piece of land cast every man his stone and filled it. And they stopped all the wells of water and felled all the good trees only in Kir Harasath left a, the stones thereof, how be it the slingers went about it and smote it. So again, fulfilling the word of the Lord, everything that Elisha the prophet prophesied, guess what fulfilled to a T 100%, just like the word of God always is always fulfilled, always needs to be followed. Okay. It's the word of the Lord that always prevails verse 26 says, and when the King of Moab saw that the battle was too sore for him, he took with him 700 men that drew swords to break through even unto the King of Edom, but they could not. So he sees this isn't going my way. Okay. All of a sudden this three on one is a real viable thing. What he doesn't understand is it's four on one because God is on their side. And why is God on the side of the three Kings? Because of Jehoshaphat, plain and simple because of the Christian, because of the believer, that is why he is on their side. And so the King of Moab Misha is just like, dang, you know, what does he do? Does he, does he give up and say, you know what, maybe I need to reconsider here. You know, maybe I need to kind of think about some things, you know, maybe I should talk to Elisha. No, he goes and grabs 700 more people to try to fight. And what happens? Resistance. He loses. It doesn't work. He can't even defeat Edom. Now look at verse 27. Then he took his eldest son that should have reigned in his stead and offered him for a burnt offering upon the wall. He does the unthinkable. Okay. Instead of just surrendering, instead of just saying, you know what, I guess we lost, we got smoked, got destroyed, you know, to stop the death, to stop the plunder, to stop the bloodshed, let's just give up. Let's just admit that we were wrong. Let's just admit that we were jacked up, that we were deceived. Is that what happens? He does the unthinkable and sacrifices his eldest son. He says, you know what, eldest son, you are going to do the dirty work. You are going to be the fall guy. You are going to do the unthinkable. But the way you're going to do it is going to be me controlling it and I'm going to kill you. Okay. Now let's stop right there and kind of talk about this. If you study, again, the Moabites out, you'll see this verse in a place in the Bible that says that Chemosh is the abomination of Moab. Okay. And I'm bringing that up just to kind of get into a little bit of history. Now, several weeks ago, I mentioned the Moabite stone. Does anybody remember me mentioning that, the Moabite stone? Well, if you don't, just type it into Google later and read about it. It's pretty interesting. So archeologists uncovered this stone and it actually claims to be written by Misha, the king of Moab. Okay. Now, a lot of it's, when you read it, it's like, that never happened, Misha. You got your butt whipped. You know, you got smoked here. You got stomped, right? But what you learn from his writing is you learn several things. And one of those is that they believe that they actually had to appease their gods, like Chemosh. It calls them Chemos, K-E-M-O-S. They call them Chemos. Okay. But it's Chemosh of the Bible. He's a false god, a devil, basically, essentially, just Satan. Okay. Now they believe that they had to convince Chemosh and the other gods that they have, the other idols, that there was a just reasonable cause to go to war. Okay. And so that's one of the things that you'll learn here. And so, I mean, they're all into this. They're like, they're fully on wholeheartedly into Chemosh, worship, devil, worship, idolatry. And so what do they fall back on? They fall right back on that. And in the moment of desperation, instead of sparing the other people, instead of sparing his own family, right? He says, you know what? I'm just going to have to sacrifice my own son, human sacrifice. I'm going to sacrifice him as a burnt offering on this wall. Now, what sense does that make? You know, when you're reading through Ephesians, like chapter two, and how Paul talks about how, you know, in times past, you're without hope in the world, you know, without Christ, you know, the world without Christ is a very, very dark place that could go many different directions. And they all lead to darkness, all lead to things that just don't make sense. Okay. And I'm saying that because this shouldn't have happened here. I mean, there are other heathen nations. It would have just been like, well, I guess we're going back to tribute, you know, but this guy here into this devil worship essentially is like, I've got the solution. I'm going to sacrifice my own child, my eldest son. Okay. Now look at what the result of that is. It's just very bizarre. And there's a lot of battle on the internet over how this verse should be interpreted, but let's take a look at the end of the verse there. Okay. So after it says he offered him for a burnt offering upon the wall and there was great indignation against Israel and they departed from him and returned to their own land. That's kind of how the chapter ends. And then, and then it goes into, we'll go into something else next week, but notice what it says. And there was great indignation against Israel. Well, where did that indignation or wrath, cause that's what that word means wrath come from came from the Moabites. Okay. So now the people are like, look at what you all made us do. You made our King have to sacrifice his own son and you owe us an apology. You owe us an explanation. You owe us something. Okay. And the children of Israel are like, this is whack and we're out of here. Okay. Think about it. The battle stops. It ceases here. There's no more fight left. There's no more reason to fight. So it says in Israel, they just departed from him and returned to their own land because they know in the law that that's an abomination. And they realize once they see it, they're like, Oh, it's over. Okay. So the way I imagine it happened is the Moabites, obviously they're, they're destroyed. They're now fewer in number. The army is weakened. It's just decimated. It's desecrated. And they're just probably dropped the swords and they just start chiding and just start maybe screaming. It doesn't say, but what it does tell us is a great indignation came against Israel. And it's not from God. God said that you're going to win. You're going to prosper. You're going to, you're going to win this battle here. Okay. But the Moabite King does the unthinkable and gives up his own son to a false God. Okay. And I mean, he probably invested a lot of time and a lot of training into his son. Okay. Just to throw it all away in a moment of time, a moment of desperation didn't get his way. And he's just like, I'm done. I got the solution. Kayden, come up here. You know, it's just, it's terrible. It's a terrible way to, to, to, to be, you know, and obvious. There's all, there's all kinds of lessons for us in this, you know, the world may offer you the world. It may offer you itself, but the end thereof is always, always, always destruction every single time. And that's what you're seeing here, 100%. And there was great indignation against Israel. So the Moabites, they look at that sacrifice and they're just angry at Israel. They're just in, they're just wrathful towards them. And Israel's like, okay, we're out. We're gone. We're done. I guess the battle's over, you know? So that's why I said earlier, you know, this is going to kind of take a little bit of a twist here. Like I never would have thought that, you know, the first time I read this, I was like, okay, it's going to be like all the other battles, you know, they're just going to beat them back, put them back to tribute and it'll be, it'll be it. And then you get to the end here and it's like, whoa, they did the unthinkable here, you know? And sometimes the world can be like that. It can be a very unpredictable place. You don't know what's going to happen, which again is another warning to us not to even put ourselves in that situation. Because when we yoke up with the world and we say, you know, I don't really need the church. I don't really need the brethren. You know, I'm just going to hang out with my friends. I know they do all this crazy stuff. I think it'll be okay. It may or may not, you know, you may get a soft warning from God. You may get a circumstantial warning backed up by the word of God. Word of God may just say, you know what, I'm going to teach you a hard lesson here. And I'm actually going to expose you to something that you're probably not going to recover from. You know, I would imagine that these guys that saw that, it probably, the sight of that just probably never left them. It probably impacted them for the rest of their lives. That's just my opinion. That's what I believe probably would have happened. But nonetheless, and kind of a weird end to this battle here with this King offering his son. And they're just, all they've got left is just the wrath. Okay. Again, they can't see anything but red. That, I mean, even, they saw blood. This is our chance. Okay. They learn as they're getting beat back that it wasn't what they thought. They were exposed to the truth. And instead of just saying and humbling themselves, that's not what we thought. We were lied to. Whatever. What do they do? They do the unthinkable and they keep fighting. 700 more people will do it. And then finally, the King's like, I'm just going to give up my son. Okay. And then what do they do? The Moabites are like, yeah, and it's all your guys' fault. Never stop and think, you know, maybe you're just not looking at this right. Maybe it just might be that the God who keeps delivering his people might just be the true God of the earth. You know? And that's what God wanted those nations to see, which is why he was so gracious, which is why he was so merciful, to even put the law in place in the first place that says, hey, you know, don't go up and attack Moab. Don't go up and attack Ammon. You know, ask them if you can pass through. And then of course, when that didn't work, back in the days of the Exodus, God said, you know, they're going to pay the price for that because he didn't help you. And so you're, you're, you're, you're seeing a continuation of that here. But I mean, there's all kinds of lessons here, lessons for us. You know, the Bible says that we shouldn't yoke up with unbelievers, people who are just like adamantly against the word of God. Now, does that mean you can't visit your mom and your family and things like that? No, that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about being yoked. Like, hey, my best friend hates God, you know, but I'm working on them. Okay. It ought not to be so. Get a new best friend, get somebody who loves the Lord. Hang around people that love God and love the Bible, because you're going to have less chance of even being put in a situation where you're seven days without water. And now you're just like, Oh, okay. Oh no. What do we do now? You know, but again, for the believer, for you guys, for us, for the saved, you always have the Lord. Okay. When we make the mistakes, we make the bad decisions. We need to understand God is still there and he still helps his children out every single time he doesn't fail. And there's no record of God failing any believer anywhere in this world. And you need to take that to the bank. Let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer. Thank you so much Lord for this chapter and these great truths of your word. I just pray you bless the fellowship after the service and bring us back again safely next week in Jesus name. I pray. Amen.