Waiting in Defeat | Advent 2024: Waiting with Hope | Pastor Joe Coffey

Second Chronicles

2 Chronicles 36:17–23

36, verses 17 through 23.

Therefore he brought up against them

the king of the Chaldeans,

who killed their young men with a sword

in the house of their sanctuary,

and had no compassion,

a young man or virgin,

old man, or aged.

He gave them all into his hand,

and all the vessels of the house of God

great and small,

and the treasures

of the house of the Lord,

and the treasures of the king,

and of his princes.

All these he brought to Babylon.

And they burned the house of God,

and broke down the wall of Jerusalem,

and burned all its palaces with fire,

and destroyed all its precious vessels.

He took and exile in Babylon

those who had escaped from the sword,

and they became servants to him

and his sons,

until the establishment

of the kingdom of Persia.

To fulfill the word of the Lord

by the mouth of Jeremiah,

until the land had enjoyed its Sabbaths

all the days that it

laid desolate,

it kept Sabbath to fulfill 70 years.

Now in the first year of Cyrus,

king of Persia,

that the word of the Lord

by the mouth of Jeremiah

might be fulfilled.

The Lord stirred up

the spirit of Cyrus, king of Persia,

so that he made proclamation

throughout all his kingdom.

It also put it in writing.

Thus says Cyrus, king of Persia,

the Lord, the God of heaven,

has given me

all the kingdoms of the earth,

and he has charged me

to build him a house at Jerusalem

which is in Judah.

Whoever is among you of all his people,

may the Lord his God be with him.

Let him go up.

Hey, everybody.

Welcome.

Great to have you here at Christ

Community Chapel. Glad that you,

But you guys are the hardy ones.

Good job coming out.

Love that you're here.

This is the second week of advent.

And advent implies anticipation.

Waiting.

And that's why we have this little set

up, like a like a waiting room.

By the way, this was Zach's idea.

He is entering into the realm of props,

which I'm really excited about

because I want to see where this goes.

But we wanted to do it like this

because waiting is hard.

And there are,

different ways of waiting.

Of course.

I mean, it's one thing to wait.

When you know

there's going to be an end

to your waiting, like,

if you're pregnant,

you know that it's going to end

in about nine months.

You might go two weeks,

be two weeks past due date,

which would be a very hard two weeks.

But you're not going to go two years

past due date.

It's a different kind of

waiting when you're waiting for,

let's say, a job,

and you're wondering

when and if you will ever get that job.

It's a different kind of waiting.

We chose this, theme

because at Advent,

Christmas,

the entire world was waiting.

And what we now call the first century,

we call it the first century.

Because Jesus finally came.

Jesus was born Emmanuel, God with us.

And we changed the way we keep time

because of Jesus.

But back then,

it wasn't the first century.

It was just another century,

another hundred years

of what seemed like waiting.

This passage

that we're going to look at,

tonight is a very unusual passage

for Christmas series.

I don't know if you're

paying attention.

Well, it was being read.

The reason we chose this

passage is because God loves patterns.

God loves patterns.

And I say that for a couple of reasons.

One is the way that Jesus taught.

When you read

the Gospels,

Jesus is constantly pointing

to different things around him

that show

the pattern of what

he's trying to communicate.

In John chapter 12,

John 12 · chapter mention

right after

Jesus rides into Jerusalem on a donkey

and what we call the triumphal

entry Palm Sunday.

He knows that by Friday

he'll be hanging on the cross.

He gathers people

and he begins to teach them.

And he says this

unless a grain

of wheat falls in the ground and dies,

it remains alone.

But if it dies, it bears much fruit.

What he was saying is that wheat,

every grain, every seed,

is a pattern of death and resurrection

that points to him.

In Luke chapter 15,

Luke 15 · chapter mention

when Jesus is trying to describe

to people the heart of God,

he says to them,

listen,

if a shepherd had 100 sheep

and one wandered off,

will he

not leave the 99 and go after the one?

And what Jesus is saying is,

if you want to know the heart of God,

if you want to know

how God feels about you, just look

at a shepherd.

The way a good shepherd

treats his sheep.

You know,

I think about the seasons here

in Northeast Ohio.

We've just been catapulted

into winter, right?

And winter is a time

where everything seems like it dies.

The trees become sticks and the

the grass turns brown

and the flowers all die and go away.

And then in spring, right around

when we will celebrate Easter,

all of Northeast

Ohio will come back to life.

It will resurrect

because God loves patterns.

Second Chronicles 36 is a pattern.

Let me tell you the story,

and then I'll show you the pattern.

In the three points

that I'll have for you. But,

if you have your Bibles,

go ahead and

turn to Second Chronicles 36.

If you don't know where it is,

then, join the crowd.

This is a hard one to find.

If you're going to use,

you can do it the easy way.

You can just wait for it

to come up on the screen.

If you're going to use

one of our pew Bibles,

I can tell you it's on page 361.

Page 361.

All right.

I'm going to read it for us again.

So it's fresh in your mind,

and then I'll explain the story.

This is what it says

beginning in verse 17.

Therefore, he brought up against them

the king of the Chaldeans,

who killed their young men

with the sword

in the house of their sanctuary.

Had no compassion

on young man or virgin,

old man, or aged.

He gave them all into his hand,

and all the

vessels of the house of God

great and small,

and the treasures

of the house of the Lord,

and the treasures of the king,

and of his princes.

All these he brought to Babylon.

And they burned the house of God,

and broke down the wall of Jerusalem,

and burned all its palaces

with fire, and destroyed

all its precious vessels.

He took him to exile in Babylon.

Those who had escaped from the sword,

and they became servants to him

and to his sons,

until the establishment

of the kingdom of Persia.

To fulfill

the word of the Lord

by the mouth of Jeremiah,

until the land had enjoyed its Sabbath

all the days that it laid desolate,

it kept Sabbath to fulfill 70 years.

Now, in the first year

of Cyrus, king of Persia,

that the word of the Lord

by the mouth of Jeremiah

might be fulfilled.

The Lord

stirred up the spirit

of Cyrus, king of Persia,

so that he made a proclamation

throughout all his kingdom,

and also put it in writing.

Thus says Cyrus, king of Persia,

the Lord,

the God of heaven, has given me

all the kingdoms of the earth,

and he has charged me

to build him a house in Jerusalem

which is due in Judah.

Whoever is among you of all his people,

may the Lord his God be with him.

Let him go up.

All right.

So

there's a pattern here.

And,

this passage is a very brief summary

of one of the darkest times

in Israel's history.

And I'm calling, this particular sermon

awaiting in defeat

because Israel was decimated

by Babylon.

And the reason that,

that Israel was decimated

is given in verse 21.

And this is what it says

to fulfill the word of the Lord

by the mouth of Jeremiah,

until the land had enjoyed its Sabbaths

all the days that it laid desolate, it

kept Sabbath to fulfill 70 years.

I'll explain that.

So when God brought Israel

into the Promised Land,

he set them up for success.

He wanted, Israel to be,

the the very best place

the world had ever seen.

So he gave them instructions

on how to create such a place.

And the people of Israel, for whatever

reason, decided to treat God's

instructions as God's suggestions.

And I say that, like,

for whatever reason, I know the reason.

It's the same reason that you do it.

It's the same reason that I do it.

I mean, there are certain instructions

that God gives that make sense

and there are certain instructions

that God gives

that don't seem like they make sense.

And for Israel,

one of the instructions

was that every seven years,

God wanted them to let the land rest.

He called it giving the land a Sabbath.

They were to let it lay fallow right.

And that,

you know,

now we know from agricultural sciences,

that's a very good thing to do,

that when land is allowed

to lay fallow,

that the nutrients are replenished

and actually the crops

become more nutritious.

Later years after it has laid fallow.

But they didn't know that at the time.

So it didn't make sense to them.

So they didn't want to do it.

And we still do that.

I just recently read an article.

It's one of many articles I've written.

I've read, from non-religious

sociologists about cohabitation,

because now they're finding

that couples that cohabitate

have a much lower success

rate in marriage

than those who do cohabitate,

because it made popular sense to people

that you you test drive before you buy.

That's was the kind of the terminology.

But now we find out that

God's instructions

really did make sense.

But so we still do it.

But the Israelites had

trouble with the idea of a Sabbath

year, of letting the land lay fallow.

And if they had done that, it

not only would have replenished

the nutrients in the soil,

it also would have reminded them

that the land wasn't theirs.

That land was God's land.

And that's also a hard concept

to really buy into that

my car's not my car.

My house is not really my house.

It's God's house.

Can you imagine

having to move out of your house

every seven years just to be reminded

that it's not your house,

it's God's house,

or giving 10% of your paycheck

every paycheck

to remind yourself it's not your money.

It's God's money.

You see, it's still hard

not to take God's instructions

as God's suggestions.

So it didn't make sense to the people

because the land still

could have could produce crops

so that

when the seventh year rolled around,

they went ahead and spread seed

and they wanted to see

maybe if God really

wants the land to rest,

God won't allow it to sprout up.

You know, that's the way we think.

Sometimes we think,

you know,

I know God doesn't want me to do this,

but if he really doesn't

want me to do this,

somehow I won't be able to do it.

And they don't make obedience easy.

But that's not the way it works.

If you want to disobey God,

you can always disobey God.

That's a pattern.

So they go ahead

and throw the seed out, and sure

enough, it begins to sprout

and when it was harvest time,

they went ahead and harvested

that seventh year.

And when they did it,

they probably felt a little bit guilty.

But there were 12% richer.

So they got over their guilt.

And then when the next seven years

rolled around, the next Sabbath year,

they did it again.

Because it's always easier

to sin the second time

than it was the first time.

And it's easier

still the third time

than it was the second time.

And that's the way it went.

And there was another rule

that was even harder for them

that every seventh Sabbath year.

So after 49 years, the 50th year

God said was

was what he would call

the year of Jubilee.

In the year of Jubilee,

every debt was canceled,

every slave was set free,

and all the land went back

to the original families

that owned the land.

So in Israel,

if they had followed that,

there would have been

no generational poverty

and no trust fund babies.

Everyone would have had to work

the same amount

like their grandparents

and their parents.

But that really didn't

make sense to them.

So they never did that either.

So what happened with them?

Oh, by the way, the

the year of Jubilee

would have been easier

had they been doing

the Sabbath year

every seven years,

because big obedience

is always easier after small obedience.

If you ever want to be a person

who is able to obey big,

you have to be a person

that does a lot of small obeying

anyway.

So they decide

they're going to disobey.

They're not going to

trust God and do the Sabbath years.

And they never

they don't do it,

and they don't do it for a long time

in the course.

They never do the year of Jubilee

either.

They don't do it for 490 years,

for that's

almost twice

as long as the United States of America

has existed.

So for 40 or 90 years, 70 Sabbath

years, they skipped.

And that's what verse 21 is about.

Let me read it again and you'll see.

This is what verse 21 says

to fulfill

the word of the Lord

by the mouth of Jeremiah.

Until the land had enjoyed its Sabbath

sake,

God saved up all the Sabbath

they had not done.

And he did it all at once.

All the days that it laid

desolate, it kept Sabbath to fulfill

70 years, 70 years.

So it happened all at once.

And the way it happened

all at once, as they lost

the promised Land,

the way they lost

the Promised Land were the Babylonians.

And that is summarized

very briefly, just four verses,

where it says,

therefore he brought up against them

the king of the Chaldeans,

who killed their young men

with the sword

in the house of their sanctuary,

had no compassion,

and young man

or virgin, old man or aged,

he gave them all into his hand

in all the vessels of the house of God

great and small, and the treasures

of the house of the Lord,

and the treasures of the King

and his princes.

And all these he brought to Babylon.

And they burned the house of God,

broke down the wall of Jerusalem,

burned all his palaces

with fire, and destroyed

all his precious vessels.

He took and exile Babylon.

Those who had escaped from the sword,

and they became servants to him

and to his sons,

until the establishment

of the kingdom of Persia. Okay,

here are my three points.

This is the pattern of God

waiting in defeat.

When?

What? Why?

When it's your fault, you're waiting.

What God does while you're waiting

and why God does it

first when it's your fault,

you are waiting.

You know it's one thing to be waiting,

or to be suffering,

or to have your life rocked

by something

that you didn't really have a hand in.

I talked to a woman three weeks ago

who was just diagnosed with stage

three lung cancer.

She's never smoked.

That's one type of suffering,

and it brings its own questions.

But I always think

with that kind of suffering,

if you're sitting in a waiting room,

it's easy

to imagine

that Jesus can be right next to you.

And you may have questions for Jesus.

Like,

I don't understand

why this is happening,

but will you sit with me?

Will you stay with me?

Will you walk with me?

Will you help me?

Those seem like all reasonable things.

But if your life is a wreck

and it's your fault,

and there's a direct line

with your decisions

and your sin and your disobedience

and the chaos in your life,

it feels different.

It feels like it.

It's harder to go to God.

It's like the difference between

going to a friend for help

when you need it,

and going to a former friend

who you've had a falling out with,

and it was your fault

you had the falling out with them.

You knock on their door,

they open the door

and they say you have some nerve

showing up here.

I have talked to countless people

over the 40 years I've been in ministry

who fall into this category

where there's a direct line

into the destruction and chaos and pain

in their lives and their decisions

and their sin.

And when that

happens that

it's it's easy to think,

it doesn't matter if you try to obey.

Now

and it

there's nothing

you can do to undo the mess

that your life has become.

And God's

not even someone you can turn to

because it seems like

God is not for you,

but he's against you.

And that's

when it's important to know patterns,

to know your Bible,

to be able to see a story

like in Second Chronicles chapter 36

2 Chronicles 36 · chapter mention

and see the pattern.

Because when it seems like God

is done with you, he's not.

And that brings me to my second point

what God does while you're waiting.

One of the worst things

about being in a waiting room,

I think, is

when you're just waiting for someone

to tell you something, right?

I've been in waiting rooms,

and every time the door opens where

whatever's happening is back there

and the doctors are all back

there, I'm looking to see

maybe they're going to come over to me

and give me an update.

Maybe this will be the time

I'll get some information.

But it's

different

when you're waiting in defeat.

It was different for the Israelites.

It's different

when you feel like

you've already

gotten the news that you dreaded.

It's already happened.

You're not in a waiting room anymore.

You're in rubble of your life.

But this is important.

Don't miss this.

When it comes to God,

you are always in the waiting room.

You're not in trouble.

God never leaves you

in complete defeat.

Right?

And I say that

because of what happens here

in Second Chronicles

36, in this

dark time in Israel's history,

when they think God

has completely given up on them

and it's their own fault

that God is at that moment moving

kings and kingdoms

like there's so many chess pieces.

Nebuchadnezzar,

the king of Babylon

who destroys Israel, he dies and he

he leaves the kingdom,

the kingdom of Babylon,

to a series of his sons,

the last of which is a son

named Belshazzar.

Belshazzar weakens

the kingdom of Babylon to the point

where Darius the Mede conquers Babylon.

Darius

the Mede is famous

for throwing Daniel in the lion's den.

Daniel gives way, or Darius

the Mede gives way to Cyrus

the Persian, and Cyrus

the Persian wakes up one morning

and says, I know what I'll do.

The God of the universe wants me

to rebuild his house in Jerusalem,

and to tell every Jew,

if you want to go back,

you can go back.

But when I say that God was moving

kingdoms and kings like chess pieces,

what I mean is that

there was no one in all of Israel

who even thought this

was a possibility.

E no one could have ever dreamed

that Cyrus would make this proclamation

in his first year.

There weren't

there weren't

a group of wealthy,

successful Jewish businessmen

who went to Cyrus with the proposal.

They had nothing to offer Cyrus.

They had no cards to play.

And this is the other thing.

When you have run out of cards to play,

God still has a card to play for you.

God always has a card to play for you,

and that's what he does with Cyrus.

But that brings me to the last point,

which is why.

Why does God do what he does?

Hey,

I think it's it's really interesting

how specific look at verse.

This is verse 23.

This is the proclamation that he makes.

Thus says Cyrus, king of Persia,

the Lord,

the God of heaven,

has given me

all the kingdoms of the earth, and he's

charged me to build him a house

at Jerusalem, which is in Judah.

Okay.

The reason that hits me is, you know,

sometimes it helps me

to try to see

what the Bible doesn't say,

so I can appreciate what it does say.

What Cyrus doesn't say is that,

he he has not developed

a compassion for Israel.

It's not like he met

some Jewish people and he felt bad

they no longer had a country,

so he wanted them

to have their country back.

That's not it.

He wasn't into nation

building like we did

at the end of World

War Two with Japan and Germany.

He didn't send the Jews back with seed

and plows

in order to make it fertile again.

He was very, very specific.

He said,

The God of the universe wants me to do

one thing is to rebuild his house

in Jerusalem.

The house of

God in Jerusalem was called the temple.

Solomon built the temple.

Nebuchadnezzar destroyed the temple.

Cyrus rebuilt the temple.

The temple was the place of sacrifice.

The temple was a place

where you made atonement for your sin.

The temple was a place you went

to come home to God

to be reconciled to him.

That's what the temple was for.

Do you see what God was doing

and why God was doing it?

That Israel,

even though they were waiting

and it was their fault,

even though it was their sin

that had brought judgment.

God was working.

And the reason he was working

was he was inviting them home.

You know, I mentioned Luke chapter 15.

Luke 15 · chapter mention

Luke chapter 15 is one of my all time

Luke 15 · chapter mention

favorite chapters in the Gospels.

Because Jesus tells three

back to back to back stories.

About the same thing.

There's the story of the lost

sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son.

And the point of each story is

God's relentless

love.

For no matter how far

someone is away from,

no matter what decisions

they have made,

God never gives up.

God is always working to provide

a way back home to himself.

I think I

I started by saying

advent is a time when all the world

was waiting,

and whether they realize that or not,

all the world was waiting

for an opportunity to come home to God

because we were all estranged

and God sent Jesus as a way home.

Listen, whoever you are,

wherever you are, whatever your life is

like and whatever reason

your life is like that,

the invitation from God is

the same because Jesus is the same,

and Jesus is God's way of saying,

you come home

and be connected to me again.

Be reconciled, be forgiven

through my Son Jesus.

That's advent, that's Christmas.

Would you pray with me?

Father in heaven,

thank you for, your grace,

which is so, so great.

And,

when I was preparing

for this message,

I know there are so many times that,

my life has been messed up

and it's been my fault,

but you have never given up.

And I'm so grateful for that.

I pray for, all of us here

that you would,

give us a heart to obey,

that we wouldn't,

take your instructions,

like, suggestions and ignore them.

But I also pray that when we do that,

we be reminded that you're a

God who loves patterns.

And your

pattern is to

provide a way back to yourself

because of your love.

Thanks for Jesus.

We pray this in his name. Amen.