Israel's December: Hoshea, Exile, Samaria Resettled

2 Kings
Written By Steve Estes

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Speaker: Steve Estes
Scripture: 2 Kings 17:1-41
November 24, 2024

Sermon Notes

Outline:

1. The beginning of the end

  • Picture an imaginary future for the United States

  • Israel’s situation in today’s text

2. Israel’s final days and ultimate collapse

  • Too little, too late

  • Hoshea’s folly

  • Assyria’s vengeance

3. Why God let this happen

4. What counterfeit religion looks like

  • Counterfeit religion often begins with ingratitude toward the one true God

  • Counterfeit religion focuses on what is aesthetically pleasing

  • Counterfeit religion invents itself; biblical faith receives what is revealed

  • Counterfeit religion is after results; biblical worship is after God

  • Counterfeit religion rots a person’s soul

  • Counterfeit religion ruins not just ourselves, but also our descendants

  • Counterfeit religion leads to judgment

5. How counterfeit religion is guarded against

6. The weeping Judge

Steve Estes

Steve Estes has been senior pastor at Brick Lane Community Church in Elverson, Pennsylvania, for over thirty-five years. 

Steve’s books and other writings began with his longtime friendship with Joni Eareckson Tada. As teenagers, they grappled with why God allowed Joni’s paralysis in a swimming accident in the Chesapeake Bay. Steve left for college . . . they kept in touch . . . she liked the style of his letters. When her 1976 autobiography Joni spawned thousands of reader responses, she asked Steve to join her in crafting a follow-up. The result was A Step Further in 1978.

Later, Wycliffe Bible Translators commissioned Steve to write the biography of former college friend Chet Bitterman, a Wycliffe linguist who was kidnapped and murdered by political terrorists in Colombia in 1981. Other books and articles followed, including When God Weeps (with Joni) and A Better December (a giveaway book for non-Christian friends at Christmas.)

Steve was educated at Westminster Theological Seminary, Columbia Bible College and Jerusalem University College in Israel. He has taught homiletics at Westminster and is a board member of the Christian Counseling & Educational Foundation.

But Steve would say his most significant life achievement was persuading college classmate Verna Stoltzfus to marry him in 1974.  They now have eight children and more grandchildren than can fit in a van.

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