Fallen Kingdom

We are in Kings, if you want to find your Bible, your scripture journal, your tablet, your device, whatever it is, we are in 2 Kings, and guess what?

It is the end. Last sermon. Guess how many? Anybody want to guess? How many sermons? I'm going to give you all of like three seconds so you can't count them in your journal.

Number 31. You were close. 31. So, we are in 2 Kings chapter 24. We are going to pick up in verse 18, and then we will read this in pieces as we walk through, fill in a little bit more background of what's going on,

2 Kings 24 · chapter mention

and then we will finish all the way through chapter 25, verse 30. So, just a little bit of context. I don't know if you like timelines and years.

I do. So, the Exodus, where the Israelites are really birthed out of slavery, the year was 1446 B.C. They entered the promised land 40 years later in 1406.

First king of Israel, Saul, 1050. And now today we're going to discover that this kingdom is not going to last but 500 years, and it is done.

Let's pick up reading in verse 18. We're just going to close out chapter 24, and then again we'll give a little bit more background because there's more to the story.

Zedekiah was 21 years old when he became king, and he reigned 11 years in Jerusalem. His mother's name was Hamatal, the daughter of Jeremiah of Libna,

and he did what was evil in the sight of the Lord according to all that Jehoiakim had done. For because of the anger of the Lord, it came to the point in Jerusalem and Judah that he cast them out from his presence.

And Zedekiah rebelled against the king of Babylon. I'm going to stop right there. I'm going to ask if you bow your heads with me. Let's pray.

Father, we come to you as a people this morning. We recognize, Lord, that you are king. You are God above. You are king of kings, and we are your people.

Lord, will you just meet us where we are today? Will you speak to us? Will you teach us? We pray for the family today, Lord. It's so good to have Doug Diltz back with us, and we, Lord, pray for the Diltz family as they grieve the passing of his mother.

Thank you for the care he's given to her. Thank you for receiving her home with you. Father, we pray for conflicts going on, and for some of us in our places of work, maybe even in our homes, in our marriages, we pray that your spirit would work.

And Father, we pray that you would embolden the people to be a witness for you. And we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, it's been a series of brothers, and now a nephew who have been ruling in Judah.

I made a little chart, a family tree that might help you. They all start with J, except for the guy that doesn't. So you had Jehoiahaz first, and then you had Jehoiah Kim, and finally his nephew Jehoiah Chin.

And as we saw last time, they all ruled under the thumb of King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. So they were vassal kings, right? And yet, as we saw earlier in chapter 24, if you were with us, earlier in the chapter, Nebuchadnezzar kind of had it.

And so he and his army march on the city of Jerusalem, and they prepare. They set up a siege. And yet, before so much as an arrow is shot, a couple of strange things happen.

And one, Jehoiah Kim suddenly dies somehow. Secondly, Jehoiah Chin, the 18-year-old son, he just suddenly surrenders. And so it's over and done with before it's even started.

And the Babylonians, also known as the Chaldeans, they're referred to that here, they proceed to carry off not just a bunch of treasure from the temple and the palace, they also carry off the young king himself, along with some of the other fine citizens of the city.

And in his place, now Nebuchadnezzar installs another puppet king. This time it's Jehoiah Chin's uncle Zedekiah. As in Zedekiah, the passed over brother.

As in Zedekiah, the neglected brother. And as we're soon going to see, Zedekiah, the idiot brother. Because not long after this 21-year-old kid comes to the throne, he proceeds to read the political scene very, very poorly.

From sources outside the Bible, we know the Babylonians at this moment, they were having a few setbacks in the empire. Rivals in the region like Egypt and Moab and Ammon, they were feeling their oats and trying to push back on the Babylonian empire.

It wouldn't last long. But this led King Zedekiah to foolishly make the costly mistake of listening to some very, very dumb advisors, takes their bad counsel, and long story short, and if you want to know the long story, actually the book of Jeremiah tells you all about it.

Zedekiah makes the fateful and terrible decision to stop paying tribute and rebel against the king of Babylon. Again, the book of Jeremiah gets us behind the scenes and we can see all the political intrigue and there was a lot of it going on in the inner sanctums of Jerusalem.

On one side you had the anti-Babylonian guys that wanted to team up with Egypt and push Babylonian control off. And then on the other side you had people like Jeremiah, the prophet, who was saying something very different, speaking for the Lord.

This is what the prophet Jeremiah was prophesying in Jeremiah 27 verse 5. It is I who by my great power and my outstretched arm have made the earth with the men and the animals that are on the earth and I give it to whomever it seems right to me.

Jeremiah 27:5

Now I have given all these lands into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, my servant. In other words, God was saying this is my doing.

You, my people, have been so wicked, broken all my commands, that I'm telling you that your time is over and I'm raising up the Babylonians and their king.

He is my servant. In fact, earlier in the same chapter, the Lord instructed Jeremiah, this is 27, Jeremiah 27, he instructed him to literally get in costume and act out a prophecy as he often did with his prophets in the Old Testament.

I, for one, am glad that I don't have to do that when I preach, put out a costume and act out my message, but these guys had to. And in this particular instance, what he was told to do was to basically dress himself up like an ox, to put yoke bars on his shoulders and straps and put them around his neck

and walk into the palace dressed like kind of a crazy guy. All to deliver this word. Jeremiah chapter 27, verse 8, But if any nation or kingdom will not serve this Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon and put its neck under the yoke of the king of Babylon,

Jeremiah 27:8

I, the Lord, will punish that nation with the sword, with famine and with pestilence, declares the Lord, until I have consumed it by his hand.

So, get this, do not listen to your prophets, your diviners, your dreamers, your fortune tellers, or your sorcerers, who are saying to you, you shall not serve the king of Babylon, for it is a lie that they are prophesying to you,

with the result that you will be removed far from your land, and I will drive you out, and you will perish. So, that's the picture. This is what's been happening all around Zedekiah.

He is surrounded by a bunch of these false prophets and dreamers and diviners and even members of the occult, apparently, and they're all telling him, hey, you know, Babylon's stumbling a bit right now, and, you know, just throw in your lot with Egypt.

You don't need to submit to these Babylonians anymore. And what does our king decide to do? What kind of man is he? What kind of character does Zedekiah have?

Well, again, the book of Jeremiah shows us a rather complicated relationship between this particular king, Zedekiah, and the prophet Jeremiah.

And pretty much, most of the time, he doesn't listen to the Lord. Or he'll listen, but he listens to the wrong people, to the false prophets.

Or he doesn't know what to do, and he kind of freaks out a lot. Zedekiah proved to be what they call a vacillating king. He was a weak king.

He was a king who could be controlled by the opinion of others. One scholar says that he was easily swayed by the weight of circumstances. Listen, guys, don't be like that.

Can I talk to you young people, teenagers, young adults? It is easy to be swayed by popular opinion. But if something is right, it's right. And if God's word tells you something is wrong, it's wrong.

No matter what others around you tell you, no matter how influential or popular or well-liked they might be, no matter what the peer pressure is that tries to shame you, don't be weak.

Don't be a follower. Don't be easily swayed away from your Christian values. So our King Zedekiah lacks a lot of qualities, but honestly, the Chronicles account, and we've been looking at those two accounts, Kings and Chronicles, because they parallel.

The parallel account in Chronicles actually pinpoints one particular big quality that was sorely lacking in King Zedekiah, and it proved to be his undoing.

Here it is, 2 Chronicles 36, verse 12. He did not humble himself before Jeremiah the prophet, who spoke from the mouth of the Lord. He also rebelled against the king, Nebuchadnezzar, who had made him swear by God.

2 Chronicles 36:12

He stiffened his neck and hardened his heart against turning to the Lord, the God of Israel. All the officers of the priests and the people, likewise, were exceedingly unfaithful, following all the abominations of the nations, and they polluted the house of the Lord that he had made holy in Jerusalem.

A bunch of things to notice in that passage. Number one, did you see how the king of Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar himself, actually was smart enough to make Zedekiah swear by his own God?

He did. Made him swear an oath before the Lord that he would stay faithful as a vassal. Secondly, notice that rather than soften his heart or humble his heart, like Hezekiah, his ancestor, had done, rather than lay prostrate in the temple and seek the Lord, this guy, Zedekiah, does the opposite.

He hardens it harder. And then finally, notice that it's not just the king. It's all of his other leaders as well. They're just as bad, if not worse.

They're described as what? Exceedingly unfaithful, doing abominations in the temple. Not good. I mean, we're beginning to realize that this kingdom is in the worst of ways.

That the ways of this kingdom are not much different than they were at the depth of things under Manasseh. And so now we go on to hear in verse 20 of how God has had enough.

We read that the anger of God has reached its boiling point and that God is ready to cast this nation out from His presence. So let's go on and see what happens in chapter 25, verse 1.

Pick up with me as I read. And in the ninth year of His reign, in the tenth month, on the tenth day of the month, Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, came with all his army against Jerusalem and laid siege to it.

And they built siege works all around it so that the city was besieged till the eleventh year of King Zedekiah. On the ninth day of the fourth month, the famine was so severe in the city that there was no food for the people of the land.

Then a breach was made in the city and all the men of war fled by night by the way of the gate between two walls by the king's garden and the Chaldeans were around the city and they went in the direction of the Ereba.

But the army of the Chaldeans pursued the king and overtook him in the plains of Jericho and all his army was scattered from him. Then they captured the king and brought him up to the king of Babylon at Riblah and they passed sentence on him.

They slaughtered the sons of Zedekiah before his eyes and put out the eyes of Zedekiah and bound him in chains and took him to Babylon. In the fifth month, on the seventh day of the month, that was the 19th year of the king, Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar, the captain of the bodyguard,

a servant of the king of Babylon, came to Jerusalem and he burned the house of the Lord and the king's house and all the houses of Jerusalem.

Every great house he burned down and all the army of the Chaldeans who were with the captain of the guard broke down the walls around Jerusalem.

And the rest of the people who were left in the city and the deserters who had deserted to the king of Babylon, together with the rest of the multitude, Nebuchadnezzar, the captain of the guard, carried into exile.

But the captain of the guard left some of the poorest of the land to be vinedressers and plowmen. And the pillars of bronze that were in the house of the Lord and the stands and the bronze sea that were in the house of the Lord, the Chaldeans broke in pieces and carried the bronze to Babylon.

And they took away the pots and the shovels and the snuffers and the dishes for the incense and all the vessels of bronze used in the temple service, the firepans also and the bowls.

What was of gold, the captain of the guard, took away his gold and what was of silver as silver. And as for the two pillars, the one sea, and the stands that Solomon had made for the house of the Lord, the bronze of all these vessels was beyond weight.

The height of the one pillar was 18 cubits and on it was a capital of bronze. The height of the capital was three cubits, a latticework and pomegranates.

All of bronze were all around the capital and the second pillar had the same with the latticework. And the captain of the guard took Saraiah, the chief priest, and Zephaniah, the second priest, and three keepers of the threshold.

And from the city he took an officer who had been in command of the war and five men of the king's council who were found in the city and the secretary, the commander of the army who mustered the people of the land and 60 men of the land who were found in the city.

And Nebuchadnezzar, the captain of the guard, took them and brought them to the king of Babylon at Riblah. And the king of Babylon struck them down and put them to death at Riblah in the land of Hamath.

So Judah was taken into exile out of its land.

Wow! Talk about anger being unleashed. Was it ever? And why is the Lord angry? Is it because he's a short-tempered God? Is it because he's got a short fuse?

Is it because he's an impulsive God who vindictively lashes out? No. Not at all. 2 Chronicles chapter 36 verses 15 and 16 tells us that the Lord, the God of their fathers, he did this.

2 Chronicles 36:15

He sent persistently to them by his messengers because he had compassion on his people and on his dwelling place. But they kept mocking the messengers of God, despising his words and scoffing at his prophets until the wrath of the Lord rose against his people

until there was no remedy. Some prophets, the king and his officials killed them. We know this from the book of Jeremiah. Others, like Jeremiah himself, narrowly escaped, was found thrown into a muddy cistern and left for dead, but survived.

And all this is why God had not only withdrawn his protective hand, it's worse. He'd even become Judah's enemy. Think about that. Their enemy.

And what happens when you make the Lord your enemy? Well, you're left to your worldly enemies. And that's what happens here in verse 1 as Nebuchadnezzar's war machine rolls up in the land and proceeds to roll over every town in Judah until they finally come to Jerusalem

with the whole army and he lays siege to it.

Cross-referencing the Bible with some Babylonian records, we know that this siege precisely begins in January of 588. And it goes on for a year and a half, 18 months.

Think about what that means to be an ancient people living in a city under siege back at this time. Back then, remember, there is no refrigeration.

There's no deep freeze you can go and grab stuff out of. Neither were there any delivery trucks or trains that were going to stop and bring you goods over land.

I mean, they didn't even have so much as airtight cans and jars for preservation. And so what that meant is year by year, you lived by your harvest.

That's what you ate. And when that year's harvest was exhausted and you're all holed up inside a city being besieged, trapped by a massive foreign army outside your gates, what that means is that there is no next year's harvest.

What your enemy doesn't take for himself and eat, he's going to burn. And when the food inside is gone, it's gone. We have this other book of the Old Testament called Lamentations.

And in this book, we actually find some pretty horrific snapshots of what life was like at precisely this time inside the city for these 18 months.

We read about how people started out trading what treasures they had left for what little bread they could find until that was gone. And then Lamentations just talks about the tears and the cries and the churning of stomachs, the cries and fainting of infants and babies

from lack of any nourishment at all from their mothers. And finally, it even gets to the point that there are acts of cannibalism happening in the city, terrible things.

by July of 587, verse 3 tells us that at this point the famine was so severe in the city that there was literally no food left, not so much as a crumb of bread.

And what does the king do? What does the king and all of his men of war decide is the best course of action? We ask ourselves, is it some self-sacrificial act of heroism from the city's leaders?

Did Zedekiah go out to fight? Did Zedekiah go to the temple maybe like his ancestor the great Hezekiah once did and lay face down and repent and plead for deliverance?

No. This guy waits until nighttime, until it's dark, and then him and his mighty men make a breach in the wall and they try to sneak out and run away to save their own skins.

They leave everybody behind. Of course, they don't get very far, do they? Chaldeans are on to them, give quick pursuit, and Zedekiah and his guys don't even get as far as Jericho.

They're captured, brought up to the king, King Nebuchadnezzar at Riblah. It's the Babylonian headquarters now, Riblah. I've got a map somewhere.

It's about eight miles north of Jerusalem, and there in Riblah with his family in tow, the family's been brought. The most horrific thing imaginable for any parent happens.

Nebuchadnezzar passes sentence for his oath breaking, and then Zedekiah's own sons are brought out and viciously slaughtered right in front of his eyes.

They make him watch, and worse yet, they decide that that is going to be the very last sight he will ever see, because they immediately gouge out his eyes, and they send him off into exile where we never hear from Zedekiah.

Again, he dies.

That's the horror for this king, personally. By the way, a fulfillment of prophecy from Ezekiel. What about the city? It's now been breached.

What about all the people? Well, Nebuchadnezzar has plans for that, and what he does is he sends in his hatchet man, this man named Nebuchadnezzar, which literally means hatchet.

Hatchet man comes in, the captain, Nebuchadnezzar, and what he does is he commences with what you could call Operation Decimation, and completely ravages the city for all it's worth.

Plunders everything left in the temple before burning it down, burns down every great house in the city, including the palace, of course, and verse 10 tells us that the Chaldean army, they want to make sure that this city is completely vulnerable, never to be rebuilt, and so they tear down the city wall.

A lot of you are familiar with the story of Nehemiah and the rebuilding of the wall. This is when it got torn down. But it's more than just plunder and destroy.

This Babylonian Chaldean captain also carries off a whole bunch of people into exile, but only the best, only those with means or skills or who had any potential to contribute to Babylonian society.

Not to mention, you're also draining, you're removing any potential leadership or talent for a future uprising. You leave only the poorest of the land.

Verses 13 through 17, if you take a look, it's an interesting little paragraph. It, to our modern eyes, probably feels a bit excessive, kind of rambles on.

Like, we get it, we get it. He plundered the temple. But our narrator very intentionally takes the time to describe all the details. The city's gold is pretty much already gone, but now the Babylonians are basically feasting their eyes on all the vessels of bronze.

And so what they do is they grab and they take everything, every piece of sacred dishware in the temple. Not only that, they are pulling everything down that's been overlaid with the precious metal to strip off the metal.

Even those two giant pillars, they're pulling them down, breaking them into pieces and stripping off the bronze to carry it away to their kingdom.

It's kind of a tragic twist of irony to hear how our narrator spends the last couple of verses of the paragraph reminding us of even the specific dimensions, the details of this once glorious stuff that Solomon had made for the Lord's temple as it's all now stripped and taken

and anything that they don't want to take, they burn.

In verse 18, we read of more killing and executions and we know what the purpose is. It's very clear. It's to send a message because the Babylonians proceed to round up the top two priests of the city, the top officers and commanders.

They grab a few politicians for good measure from the king's council, the secretary, and they decide, you know what, how about just like 60 more of the leading men of the city?

They round up the whole group, march them eight miles north to the city of Riblah, Babylonian headquarters, and there, Nebuchadnezzar has them struck down and put to death.

They're executed. End of verse 21, very soberly summarizes it very well. So Judah, the narrator says, was taken into exile, out of its land.

But the book's not done, is it? Our story's not quite over. Let's finish up in verse 22 and read the rest. And over the people who remained in the land of Judah whom Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, had left, he appointed Gedaliah, the son of Ahiakam, the son of Shaphan, the governor.

Now when all the captains and the men heard that the king of Babylon had appointed Gedaliah, governor, they came with their men to Gedaliah, at Mizpah, namely, Ishmael, the son of Nathani, Aiah, and Johanan, the son of Kariah, and Saraiah, the son of Tanhumeth, the Nedophethite,

and Jazaniah, the son of the Makathite. And Gedaliah swore to them and their men, saying, Do not be afraid of the Chaldean officials. Live in the land and serve the king of Babylon, and it shall be well with you.

But in the seventh month, Ishmael, the son of Nethaniah, son of Elishamah, of the royal family, came with ten men and struck down Gedaliah and put him to death along with the Jews and the Chaldeans who were there with him at Mizpah.

Then all the people, both great and small, and the captains of the forces arose and went to Egypt, for they were afraid of the Chaldeans. And in the 27th year of the exile of Jehoiachin, king of Judah, in the 12th month, on the 27th day of the month, evil Merodach,

the king of Babylon, in the year that he began to reign, graciously freed Jehoiachin, king of Judah, from prison. And he spoke kindly to him and gave him a seat above the seats of the kings who were with him in Babylon.

So Jehoiachin put off his prison garments and every day of his life he dined regularly at the king's table and for his allowance, a regular allowance was given him by the king according to his daily needs as long as he lived.

So a couple of pretty important things happened here at the end. Number one, Nebuchadnezzar has a governor appointed over the remaining few citizens of the land of Judah.

This governor, his name is Gedaliah, he comes from pretty good stock. Now there's a lot of names here, it's hard to keep track of them, but his father, this Ahicham, once served the prophet Jeremiah and actually saved Jeremiah's life in Jeremiah chapter 26.

Jeremiah 26 · chapter mention

And his grandfather, Shaphan, served as secretary under Josiah, the king that made all those reforms. So Gedaliah is a pretty good choice. He would have been well known in the city, he came from good stock, he was an ally and a friend of Jeremiah the prophet.

And he was very much pro-submitting to Babylon. But once all the captains of the land and their men here, and these we think are probably roaming guerrilla bands of fighters that are left that had run away, once they all hear of the new appointment of Gedaliah, they all come in to meet him.

And we're told in verse 24 that Gedaliah makes an oath, he swears to them, he says, if you guys will just lay down your weapons, demilitarize and settle down, I'm telling you, it will go well with you.

Guys, accept God's judgment in this situation we're in, that is our best option. But it turns out that these men are not interested in that and led by their ringleader, this guy named Ishmael, they proceed to hatch a plan to take out the new governor.

Just two months into his role, Gedaliah gets assassinated. And again, we have more detail over in the book of Jeremiah if you're interested.

We learn over there of how Jeremiah tried to warn Gedaliah, other people close to him tried to warn this naive governor and it wasn't to any avail.

Ishmael pulls off the assassination. We're told he kills some other Jews there at Riblah and he even makes the mistake of killing some of the Chaldean soldiers.

And once all the people realized what's happened, the Babylonian appointed governor has been executed, assassinated, and some of the Chaldean troops have been killed too.

They are terrified. They freak out. They're afraid of what reprisals they might face from the Babylonians and we're told that against Jeremiah's advice, they all now flee to Egypt.

Jeremiah says, no, the Lord doesn't want you to go. You're going to be okay, but they won't listen. In fact, they even kidnapped Jeremiah and they make him go too.

Yet another tragedy upon tragedy for Judah. But strangely, that's not how the book closes. Our narrator jumps ahead in verse 27. He jumps us ahead basically about 26 years to our former king.

If we can see the tree again, that might help you. Zedekiah's nephew, Jehoiachin. He's the only one still alive. Turns out he's been sitting in a dungeon for like 37 years.

37 years! Of course, he went in when he was 18. So he's still a pretty spry young guy at 55, right? And it's at this time that Nebuchadnezzar passes off the scene.

We think he dies and he leaves the throne to his son, a man with a rather intimidating name, I would say, Evil Merodach. Hello, my name is Evil.

What are you?

But it turns out he's not such a bad guy after all. He's actually quite decent. Because what he does in the year 561, we read of how he now graciously frees Jehoiachin from prison.

Verse 28 says, he speaks kindly to him like they're old pals and he gives him a seat above all the other seats of the other vassal kings that the Babylonians control.

Means he's like the favorite. He's the one getting the most honored seat at all the ceremonial functions and parties. And along with his new amnesty, he not only gets to put off the old prison jumpsuit, right?

He gets a generous allowance. And please understand, it's not like today's allowance. Like here's your few dollars, couple bucks allowance. No, this allowance means he's going to get lands, he's going to get an estate, he's going to have provisions for his family, and it's something that Jehoiachin

turns out he's going to need because he has like seven sons now in captivity. All provided to him. Everything that he will need to survive and not just survive, but honestly to thrive.

But more important than all the material provisions for our exiled king, there is something else significant about his elevation. As we said, he'll have sons.

And one of these sons, the oldest, his name's Shealtiel, he'll have a son. And that son will have a son. And that son will have a son. So that this line, which remember is the line of David, will continue.

And in fact, Jehoiachin, or maybe you might be familiar with his New Testament name, Jeconiah, do you realize his name pops up in a list in the Gospel of Matthew?

Matthew chapter 1, verse 11. And Josiah was the father of Jeconiah and his brothers at the time of the deportation to Babylon. And after the deportation to Babylon, Jeconiah was the father of Shealtiel.

Matthew 1:11

And 12 more generations will go down the line, down the surviving line of David. And guess who will be born in that line? A man named Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ.

Christ.

Today is a, there's no getting around it. It's a tragic story. It's a very violent story. But it's also a story that closes on a note of hope.

And in the few minutes that we have left, I'd like to try to draw out for us what I see as three truths. Can we do that? Three things that I believe God wants us to see in the closing events of this book.

Here's the first one. Number one is this. I think he wants us to see that he, God, is true to his word. First thing to see is that God is true to his word.

What we mean is what he says will happen will happen.

The curse for disobedience. What did he say back in Deuteronomy? Deuteronomy chapter 28, verse 36. The Lord will bring you and your king whom you set over you.

Deuteronomy 28:36

Isn't that interesting? Whom you set over you. Because God never really wanted them to have a king, did he? He was their king. The Lord will bring you and your king whom you set over you to a nation that neither you nor your fathers have known.

That was part of the curse. The covenant curse. If God's people ever rebelled against God and his word and his commands, which they did, God said this would happen.

And God was making good on his word. Because that's what God does. That's what God always does. He's always true to his word. What he says he will do, he will do.

What he says will happen, will happen. When he tells our very first parents in the Garden of Eden that if you guys eat from the forbidden fruit, you will surely die, guess what happens?

We all surely die. All of us die in Adam's sin.

But you know what? On the flip side of this, God being true to his word can also be for our good. After all, the people are living in exile.

Sometimes it's described as living east of Eden. You could really say that the whole human race is living in exile ever since the Garden. And now, of course, for the ethnic Israelites, the people God had chosen in Abraham, they're literally living in exile.

But, doesn't the New Testament refer to Christians like that too? Doesn't 1 Peter 2 refer to believers as sojourners and exiles in this world?

We are. But we have a God who promises to bring home all those who are in his Son. And he promises to give us to impute to our account the merits of his Son's righteousness

when we come to faith in Jesus. when we believe in his name. God, in his word, says that he makes us his own. And Jesus himself says that he's going to come again and take us to be where he is.

John 14, 3, that where I am you may also be. The good news of Jesus Christ is that God is still a God who is true to his word. And maybe that's something that you just need to remember this morning.

to sink your hopes into that. To know that everything God has said about you as his child, if you are his child, he's going to do it. He's going to bring it about.

Everything he promises you is an heir. He will be true to his word. If he says it's going to happen, it will happen. That's our first point.

But here's the second one. Number two. The second point I think we see here this morning is this. God's judgment cannot be resisted or escaped.

It must be accepted.

God's judgment cannot be resisted or escaped. It must be accepted. What have we seen here in Kings today? We've seen exactly this. Judgment come.

Jerusalem besieged. City fallen. Temple destroyed. People executed or exiled with only the poorest remaining. This is inescapable judgment in those covenant curses.

Egypt was not going to help.

Breaches through the wall under cover of night is not going to save anybody. There is no escape. Guys, the judgment that God brings is sure and certain.

And the message of prophets like Jeremiah during this dreadful time was for the people to do what? To accept it. To accept it. Remember the yoke bars and the straps and him looking like an ox in the palace complex.

His enacted prophecy was a way for him to communicate this is what God is telling you now. God says, I'm behind this judgment. Don't believe the lies that your false prophets and occultists are telling you.

God's judgment must be accepted. And that's true for us today too in our day. Just as true as it was for ancient Israelites. Because God has told us in his word in the New Testament that he has set a day where he is going to judge.

No matter what the drifting world that we live in thinks, God is going to judge. The apostle Paul told this to a group of Athenians, some philosophers in the city of Athens in Acts chapter 17 verse 31.

Acts 17:31

He has fixed a day, God has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man he has appointed and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.

I want you to understand that the judgment of God is a reality regardless of what finite creatures like you and I think about it. We don't dictate to God what he's going to do.

We don't tell God what's right for him to do because we are finite. He is infinite. More than just finite and limited, we're also warped and sinful.

Even the best of us, we don't see the world like God sees it. We live in sin, tainted in our lives by it. Frankly, it warps the way that you and I think about justice and righteousness.

But God doesn't suffer from any of this. And his word tells us that his ways are good and right and perfect and his judgments are just and good.

And so for the person who's struggling in unbelief or for the one who's struggling with the moral character of God, you say, I don't know, understand why God sends people to hell.

Why is there eternal punishment? Why is there suffering in the world? Why doesn't he alleviate it? Learn from Jeremiah's words. We do no good for ourselves questioning, resisting, or complaining about God's judgment.

It's something that we must accept.

And for those of us who are in Christ, if you're in Christ, praise him for the one who fully accepted it in our place. Because that's what Jesus did as our substitute.

He accepted it so that you and I don't have to. Yes, even in judgment as we've seen today, there's mercy. There's mercy at the end of the chapter, isn't there?

First with Gedaliah. He was supposed to be mercy. And for, I guess, about two months he was until these people rejected it and killed him. But even for those in exile, we saw how well it went for, what's his name, Jeconiah, Jehoiachin,

both of those. We saw how well it went for him. But you know what else? Jeremiah says that God intended it to go well with the people in exile.

Did you know that? All the scared, frightened citizens of Jerusalem that were freaking out that ended up running away to Egypt. Here's what he said to them in chapter 29 of his book, Speaking for God.

This is what he says, Speaking for God about the plans that God had. Jeremiah 29, verse 11, For I, the Lord, know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord.

Jeremiah 29:11

Plans for welfare and not for evil to give you a future and a hope.

Listen, that was spoken to the people of Jerusalem on the verge of their judgment. And that shows us that there is mercy in judgment. But tragically, there are people like this Ishmael that come along and who reject it and fight against it and attack it.

You say, you mean people can reject God's mercy? They can. You mean people can hold themselves back from God's mercy? Yeah, they can. I think even sometimes we as Christians can do that.

Have you ever felt guilty when you've fallen into some sin again and you felt like God's mad at you and you need to stay away? You need to hide from God?

But that's not what God's word tells you to do. It tells you to come before the throne of grace, to receive mercy and find help in your time of need.

sometimes we hold ourselves back from gathering with other believers. We stop attending our small group or we quit coming to church because, well, you know, I've missed a lot.

I've been away. I haven't been reading my Bible. I haven't been praying. I got this thing in my life that's kind of coming apart. I don't feel worthy.

Remember, none of us is worthy. So just accept His mercy and come.

Sometimes we even hold ourselves back from certain aspects of the Christian life like the Lord's Supper or a commemoration of His death and resurrection.

We hold ourselves back because we don't feel worthy. Listen, if worthiness is the standard to take communion in this church or in any of God's churches, none of us get to take it.

We're not worthy. We celebrate the one who was worthy in that act. That's why the Bible says, draw near to God and He will draw near to you.

Come to His table. Gather with His people. Come to His throne of grace in your time of need because if you are in Christ, somebody's already accepted your judgment.

Finally, one last point. We'll close with this one. The third thing we see is this. Number three, God's covenant promises remain on track. Remain on track even for covenant breakers.

Even for covenant breakers.

What happens in the very last paragraph of 2 Kings? A king is given a change of scenery and a change of clothes. Right? A change of clothes and a change of residence and I think we could say he got a pretty major upgrade.

Right? From prison orange. I don't know what they wore. To royal purple robes. A king with nothing for most of his life. Okay? You're 18 when you go to jail.

You're 55 when you come out.

Living on meager prison rations.

Well, come on out now. I've got a seat for you. No, no, no. Not over there. I really, I really like you. Jehoiachin. I want you right here by me.

Says evil Meridach. You get the honored seat at the royal table. And you know what? Regular portions for you. I'm going to treat you like one of my sons.

Abundance for you and your soon to be seven sons.

You know what Jehoiachin is? He's a reminder that God's covenant promises are still on track. Even for covenant breakers. We are told nothing about Jehoiachin and whether he repented, got saved, or whatever we would call it.

We don't know if he was any better than he was before. But we do know that God has plans with this guy because of the line that he's in. We do know that God is going to send his Messiah through this man's line.

because he's in David's line.

You know what else? There's a very real sense in which all of us who are in Christ are Jehoiachin. Because every person, right, who comes to Christ gets freed from prison.

Gets their chains taken off. Has their garments changed? And get a seat at the king's table and an inheritance. A total change of status. We exchange the soiled garments

of our prison for garments of white revelation. A seat that we had in a cell, a prison cell of sin for a seat wear? At the king's table. And we receive an inheritance, we're told, by Peter

in his epistle that will never perish or spoil or fade and that no enemy can strip off and take away. Yes, God's covenant promises remain on track even for

covenant breakers. Will you pray with me? Will you stand as we pray? The team's going to come. We get a chance to sing together once more.

Heavenly Father, we are amazed at your mercy. What else can we say? The horrors of sin and their consequences, Lord. Judgment, it's ugly, it's terrible, it's painful to read about, Lord, but we see what you're doing.

We see what you were doing. We see now, from our perspective, what you've done in your son, Jesus, for your people.

And so, Lord, I just want to appeal to anyone here who is still wearing prison clothes, Lord, anyone still in an orange jumpsuit of sin, you don't have to be there.

Lord, you're calling them, right? They can lay down their soiled garments for clean, white garments. They don't have to stay in the prison of whatever it is that's holding them in this world.

Lord, you invite each person to a seat at the banquet at your royal table. And you give us an inheritance, Lord, a royal allowance. Some of us have gone on and have received that.

Others of us are still here waiting to see that someday. But knowing that you are a God who is true to his word, we have faith, we have trust that you will bring to fruition what you promise.

And so we thank you. We praise you. And we pray all of this in the name of Jesus, your Son, our King and Savior. Amen.