"A Chink in the Armor"
Why paying attention to our affiliations matters when it comes to our personal and public witness of Christ.
Download or email this sermon When Good Leaders Become Involved with Bad Ones
King Jehoshaphat was a good man, a righteous man. Every king of Israel was a backslider. Most of the kings of Judah were backslidden, but Jehoshaphat was a good king, in fact a very good king. What happens when good leaders become involved with bad ones? I do not believe in guilt by association. The Bible says nothing about guilt by association. But guilt by cooperation? Guilt by participation? Guilt by identification? When a good man will get on a platform or on a television program with somebody who is heretical, with someone who is apostate or immoral, you are implicitly endorsing that person's ministry and allowing yourself to be identified with him.
I was watching some TBN just yesterday. I couldn't believe how horrific some of it was. When an unsaved person watches that, they think that being born again is a con job. They've made "born again" a household joke all over the world, at least for people all over the developed world. It's getting more and more difficult to share Jesus, to preach the Gospel, to give the message of salvation to the lost because of what Satan has done with “Christian” TV, so-called. We'd be better off with no Christian TV than 99% of what we have today and I'm convinced of that fact. Anything that powerful Satan had to corrupt, and he's done it. Unsaved people see the idiot box and they think we're all idiots. They think we're all con artists. If good men go on there they become identified with the bad men. When Jehoshaphat rode in the chariot of Ahab, he became confused with Ahab.
But let's look at the passage from the beginning. Again the Holy Spirit has given us more than one account. In the I Kings version at the end of chapter 21 Ahab repented. (1 Ki. 21:27-29) Bad kings are great for repenting, but every time they repent they come back twice as notorious as they had been. If Benny Hinn repents again I'm going to duck for cover. Every time that man repents he comes back worse. What does this mean? Why? He is married to Jezebel. Jezebel is a biblical metaphor for the spirit of false religion. What does the Lord Jesus say of Jezebel? Revelation 2:20…
‘But I have this against you, that you tolerate the woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess, and she teaches and leads My bond-servants astray so that they commit acts of immorality and eat things sacrificed to idols.
It is a Satanic seduction by false religion of which the woman Jezebel is typologically the personification. In other words, she represents spiritual seduction; that's what Jesus said. You become like the people you're married to.
I'm married to a Jewish neurotic. I think it's the family history of escaping Pogroms. My wife checks the gas jets three times before we go to sleep, and she checks every window in the house at least twice. We live in England. Here it is, late at night, she put the lights out and she'll say to me in Hebrew "Yacov, did you check the window in the kitchen?" "Yes, Pavia I checked the window in the kitchen, good night." Did I check that window in the kitchen? No, she's making me nuts. I take a flashlight down three flights of stairs, the kids sleep on the second floor – we sleep on the top and the kitchen is on the ground floor – so there I go late at night.
You become like the people you're married to. Well, Ahab is married to Jezebel, the seductress who beguiled Israel into pagan demonic belief. What happens next? Jehoshaphat is a good king but there's a family connection: Nepotism.
I know two Jewish mission boards that were undermined, basically destroyed by nepotism -- two mission boards to the Jews became family enterprises. I've known churches where family loyalties destroyed the fellowship. If somebody disagreed it was like going against the family. Dangerous thing. Anything God intends for good the devil will use for evil and nepotism predisposes us to certain things.
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Scripture taken from the New American Standard Bible Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation.