Corliss Street Baptist Church
Morning Message – The Story 17
February 5, 2012
Rev Andrew Sullivan
The Fall of Judah
2 Kings 21:1-6, 10, 13
Sally Edwards, a 3rd grade teacher in Jacksboro Texas Elementary School, prepared an examination for her 3rd graders. She gave them 20 questions to answer. One question was to name the four seasons. The results were 67% of the 3rd graders listed the four seasons as “dove season, deer season, quail season, and turkey season”. What else would you expect from Texas?
When it comes to The Story of God’s Word, some people say some interesting things about the Bible. An epistle is the wife of an apostle. Some think one of the Ten Commandments is the freedom of speech.
This morning we are learning to bring the Bible together and seeing how it applies to our everyday lives.
In The Story we come now to 2 Kings 21. God made promises to Abraham and Moses and to David that the Messiah would come. He made unconditional promises. Even though God’s people failed to obey - God will fulfill his unconditional promises.
The Northern Kingdom Israel went into exile to Assyria in 722 BC.
What happened to the Southern Kingdom of Judah? We turn to 2 Kings 21.
1. JUDAH HAD BOTH GOOD AND BAD KINGS.
In 2 Kings 21 Manasseh did evil in the sight of the LORD. In fact, Manasseh did more evil than the nations God had destroyed before the Israelites. The Lord loved his people. He sent word to them through his messengers to turn away from their sins and follow the LORD but they refused again and again.
v. 16 But they mocked God’s messengers, despising his words, and scoffing at his prophets until the wrath of the Lord was aroused against his people and there was no remedy. He brought up against them the king of the Babylonians, Nebuchadnezzar. Nebuchadnezzar carried all the articles from the temple of God, the treasures of the Lord’s temple, and the treasures of the king and his officials. The Babylonians set fire to God’s temple and broke down the wall of Jerusalem. They burned all the palaces and destroyed everything of value there. Nebuchadnezzar carried into exile the remnant of Judah to Babylon where they stayed until the period when Persia came to power.
Just a footnote: “the Lord tells us the land enjoyed its Sabbath rest; all the time of its desolation it rested, until the seventy years were completed, in fulfillment of the word of the Lord spoken by Jeremiah (2 Chron. 36:15-21). The Captivity will last for 70 years.
Of the last six kings in Judah, only Josiah, who began his reign at the age of 8, was good. He did right in the eyes of the Lord and walked in all the ways of David, not turning aside to the right or to the left.
Huldah, the prophetess, spoke these words about Josiah, “Tell King Josiah because your heart was responsive and you humbled yourself before the Lord when you heard what I had spoken against this place and its people, that they would be wiped away from my presence. Therefore, your eyes will not see all the disaster I am going to bring on this place (2 Kings 22:14-20 NIV).
The point is God cannot continue to bless Judah. Judah had become like the Canaanites. They are doing the same sins as the Canaanites did. God does not tolerate such sins, and yet because of his grace and love for his people God will remain faithful to them.
Ezekiel says, God promises, in spite of sending Judah into exile, he is going to keep his promise that all nations will know God. In Ezekiel 36:24ff, we read, “The Lord said, I will make you clean. I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you. I will remove your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees, and be careful to keep my laws.”
He says this very clearly. Listen to this. “I want you to know that I am not doing this for your sake, declares the sovereign Lord. You ought to be ashamed of your conduct. You have disgraced yourself, O house of Israel.”
It is by God’s grace that he speaks these words. “On that day, which is to come, I will cleanse you from all your sins, I will resettle your towns, and the ruins will be rebuilt. I will do this, says the Lord, so that the nations around you that remain will know that I have rebuilt what was destroyed and have replanted what was desolate. I the Lord have spoken, and I will do it. Then they will know that I am the LORD.” (Ezek:36: 24-38).
The express purpose of God in his relationship with Judah is always to demonstrate He is the one true God who wants people everywhere to come back into relationship with Him. All of this points to the ministry of John the Baptist, our Lord Jesus Christ, and the day of Pentecost (The Holy Spirit Coming to dwell within his people), the birth of the church.
2. GOD RAISES UP THE BABYLONIANS TO JUDGE THE SOUTHERN KINGDOM, SINFUL JUDAH
The Babylonians become the greatest power in the world, and they destroy the Assyrians who were the strongest power in the world. The Babylonians go on to destroy Jerusalem and Judea in 586 BC, taking prisoners into exile.
The fall of the Northern Kingdom and the Southern Kingdom are hard stories, but they teach us valuable lessons of faith. One of the biggest things that God did in the Old Testament was to use an old couple to start a brand new nation, Abraham and Sarah. The Lord’s purpose, his plan, is to provide a way for all lost people to come back into relationship with him. This is The Story. Jesus came, remember, to seek and to save those who are lost, not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.
In the midst of judgment God always offers a promise of hope. The Lord is full of compassion, mercy and grace. He takes no pleasure in the death of the ungodly. He calls all people to repentance.
3. GOD CALLS JEREMIAH TO BE THE “WEEPING PROPHET” OVER JUDAH AND ITS FALL.
Jeremiah is called the weeping prophet because he writes Lamentations. He writes “After affliction and harsh labor, Judah has gone into exile. She dwells among the nations; she finds no resting place. ..This is why I weep and my eyes overflow with tears. No one is near to comfort me, no one to restore my spirit.” (Lamentations 1:3, 16)
God calls Jeremiah to be his prophet before he is born. “When the people of Jerusalem went into exile, the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah saying, “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. Before you were born, I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.”(Jeremiah 1:3-5).
Just as God called Jeremiah, in the New Testament God calls us. Eph. 2:10, “For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” We all have a role to play in God’s unfolding Upper Story of love and salvation. Through our good works, and telling our story of conversion to people, we are to be encouraging people, leading people, to come to the Savior.
In Jeremiah 1: 6 Jeremiah does not want to be God’s spokesman. He makes excuses for not doing what God says. He says, “Sovereign Lord, I do not know how to speak; I am only a child.” God promises to help Jeremiah speak and God will be with him. Listen to the quote from Jeremiah 1:7-9. The Lord rebukes him. “Don’t tell me you are only a child. You must go to everyone I send you, and say whatever I command you. Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you and will rescue you, declares the Lord.”
“Then the Lord reached out his hand and touched my mouth, and said to me, Now I have put my words in your mouth. See, today I have appointed you over nations and kingdoms, to uproot and tear down, to destroy and overthrow, to build and to plant.”
In the New Testament God gives us his Holy Spirit to help us fulfill our role. The Lord tells us that when we find ourselves in difficulty and have to confess our faith before others, don’t be afraid, because the Spirit of God will give you the words to say. Remember that just as the Father sent Jesus into the world to seek and to save those who are lost, so he sends us into the world. Jesus said “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always to the very end of the age.” So we have a job to do like Jeremiah.
Jeremiah’s task is to call people back to the Lord, but he will fail. Jeremiah will weep over Judah’s destruction and offer hope for the future. You will come back to the land. God will send his Holy Spirit upon you.
In Lamentations 3:19-26, hope is written. He said in v. 19 “I remembered my affliction, my wandering, the bitterness and the gall. I well remember, my soul is downcast within me. Yet this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. ..v.25 The Lord is good to those whose hope is in Him, to the one who seeks Him; it is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.”
We say together “Lord, your compassions never fail. They are new every morning, and great is your faithfulness.” What we see here is God’s grace in action. Grace is not all that fantastic if you don’t need it. However, if you think you don’t need it, you’re lost.
God told Jeremiah, I have a role for you to play in the unfolding of my Upper Story. The same is true for us today. We are called to be God’s workman, to do good works for him. God has a role for all of his people to play in the unfolding of his Upper Story, not just for Jeremiah, but for all of us who know the name of Christ.
Jeremiah’s response was an excuse. I don’t know how to be a public speaker. I am too young. We ourselves may feel overwhelmed that God has a place for us, but if we yield ourselves to what he wants us to do, he will enable us to do it.
Remember it is not about us. It is about God and him working through us. We may feel inadequate—and we should—but God promises to give us everything we need to be faithful to him. We have the armor of God – truth, righteousness, peace, faith, salvation and God’s Word. We have prayer, the Holy Spirit, His Word, and one another to encourage us.
God gave Jeremiah an assignment, and then told him he would fail at it. God’s employment contract with us does not require us to be successful; he only invites us to be faithful to Him. In our lifetime, we may never know the outcome of our work. It may look like a failure, but if we have been faithful to God, he says, “You are successful.
In closing let us sing “Great is Thy Faithfulness.”
