Well, after a break of a number of weeks, we're getting back this evening to the book of Jeremiah. And we're in that section of Jeremiah's prophecy, where Jeremiah is addressing the king and the kingdom. And in this presentation he gives to Israel, to Judah, of the judgment that God is going to bring upon the nation, his task, is to tear down, to pluck up, and to destroy. To speak about the dismantling of the institutions in Judah that they were going to lose because of their apostasy, because of their idolatry. They're going to ultimately lose the land, of course, but they're going to lose the temple, because the temple will be destroyed by the Babylonians when they entered into the city. In 586 BC, the city, of course, would also be destroyed. But he focuses upon the temple in the early chapters, chapter 7 to 9, I believe it was. He moves on to the covenant that Israel had with God, that they would be cut off from the covenant because they were covenant breakers. They were unfaithful to God's covenant. They were going to be cut off from their special statuses, the people of God, the elect people, the chosen people, the people esteemed in God's heart and in God's love. Again, not because God was unfaithful to his commitment to them, but they were unfaithful to his commitment, to their commitment to the Lord. And now we have entered into these chapters that address the subject of the unfaithful king, of the wicked king, of the failures of the kings of Israel, to lead the nation wisely and well. their failure to do justice, their failure to stop oppression, their failure to stop apostasy and to stop the drift towards idolatry and high places and altars never sanctioned by the God of Israel. So in chapter 22, there's an extended presentation of God's anger towards the kings of Israel. Back in chapter 21, you'll remember that it was Zedekiah that sends Pashur to Jeremiah, basically expecting that God would work some sort of a miracle, one of his wondrous deeds, and make Nebuchadnezzar just go away, make him just disappear from the scene, withdraw from us. And Jeremiah's response was, a bit too late, King Zedekiah, because all your efforts to forestall the destruction of the nation is of no use. Turn back the weapons of the war that are in your hands, with which you're fighting against Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon. It's futile. It'll bring you no good, because you will be destroyed, and the only safety you will have is basically to surrender. Zedekiah is going to be taken into captivity. He's going to see his own sons put to death before his eyes are plucked out, and he's taken away in chains. Of course, Zedekiah was the final king in Israel. When we come to chapter 22, other kings are in the view of the prophet in terms of words that are directed to them. about four of the sons of Josiah are being addressed, some who reigned a lengthy period of time, some a very short period of time. And yet they were all the relatives of good King Josiah, who perished in war. And he was the last king that sought to bring reforms, and he first stalled. the destruction of the nation. Again, he was the successor to Manasseh, a very evil king, all the chronicles tell us. There was repentance at the end of his life, yet massive misrule took place, massive compromise with the gods of the nations, and this massive wretched injustice that the people were guilty of. And now, in this chapter, there's no sense of chronology. Again, in chapter 21, the final kings of Achaia take center stage, now a bunch of different kings in a different order of their reigns, and it really is a question, I think, of placing together a number of different prophecies that were probably made at different times, but all directed to Judas' kings, all calling them to repentance. Some of these words of prophecy, some of them are in prose, some of it is in poetry. A lot of them do give some hope that repentance, changing your ways, amending your ways, seeking after justice, doing the right thing, will bring blessing once again to the nation. Of course, after Zedekiah, that's no longer a hope. But again, I think this is just a compilation of different prophecies given to different kings during different periods of Jeremiah's ministry. So I don't know if that makes sense. So don't try to make a chronological sense of it. Why does this king get addressed? And did that king get addressed? All of this is getting addressed long after the prophecy of chapter 21 concerning Zedekiah. The concern isn't chronology. The concern is the theme of the kingdom and the failure of Israel's kings. So in chapter 23, there's the passage speaking the words of woe to the shepherds, the failure of the leaders of the nation to do what they were supposed to do, and the fact that God was going to Himself come in the person of David. There'll be a revived Davidic throne, a revived Davidic kingdom. I will raise up David, a righteous branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely. This is chapter 23 and verse 5. And he'll execute justice and righteousness in the land. It's in his days that Judah will be saved. It won't be the days of Zedekiah. It won't be the days of Jeconiah. It won't be the days of Jehoahaz. It won't be the day of all of the different rulers of Israel between Josiah and the ultimate end of the kingdom and the taking away of the people into Babylon during the reign of Zedekiah the king. But the theme is the kingdom. The theme is what the king should be doing and the failure of the king to do what the king should be doing. So because the subject matter has to do with the king in Israel, the king in Judah, I thought it would be good just to take some time and just rehearse in our minds and review from the Scriptures just what the Scriptures tell us about the king and the kingdom. Israel's kings have now become into judgment because of their misrule, because of their failure to do what kings should do. But this whole matter of kingdom is really as old as creation itself. When we read about the creation of the human race in Genesis chapter 1, human kingship is bound up with the creation account. And we're familiar with this. We know that God created Adam and Eve in His image and His likeness. They were His sons, His daughters, who bore His image and likeness for the purpose of filling the earth with image-bearers, and subduing the earth for God's will and purpose, and ultimately ruling over the earth for God's glory. They were to have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air. They were to rule as images of God. But sin entered in. And when sin enters in, dominion becomes domination. Sovereignty becomes tyranny. Authority becomes authoritarianism. And to put rule in the hands of sinners is a perilous and a dangerous thing, because they will misuse the authority and power that's given to them. And of course, the kings of the nations, they had kings after their own desires, after their own will and purposes. But again, in Israel, God is concerned that His nation would be different. And so when he comes and he redeems Israel from bondage in Egypt, the clear reality is God is king. It's God's kingship that becomes the first lesson that he seeks to teach the nation. He rules, and only when he rules is everything right with the world. But where he does not rule and human rulers with their perverted sense of right and wrong, with their sinful sense of justice and truth, and their wicked ways, then the kingdom turns into not what God designed it to be. And so absolutely necessary for human exercise of authority and kingship is likeness to God, being God's true image. And yet In the law, in the prophecy that God gives to the nation of Israel, God does make provision for a king. Although we see that God says when Israel asks for a king, they're rejecting me from being king over them. He is their rightful king. He is the one they should submit to. And he does tell Samuel to go ahead and give them a king. Because it was his will and purpose all along. that human kinship should come to its rights. Because again, that's part of creation's design. And even though sin enters and man's unworthy of exercising the rule that we were created to exercise, again, God still has his plan. His plan at the beginning was a perfect plan. When you have a perfect plan, there's no need to change it. There's just finding ways to implement it in a proper way. And so God has a purpose to provide a king for Israel. Again, kingship is provided in the law. You see that in Deuteronomy chapter 17. Again, I think this is something you're familiar with, but if not, let's just turn to Deuteronomy 17. Again, during this period where God's leading the nation, He's guiding them by His own presence, the pillar of cloud, by day, the pillar of fire, by night, he is in their midst in terms of the tabernacle as king in Israel. That was his throne room in the Holy of Holies. His royal presence was in their midst, again, leading the nation, guiding the nation, governing the nation by his law. The words of Deuteronomy 17, 14 need to be considered. It says, when you come to the land that the Lord your God is giving you, this is Deuteronomy 17, 14, and you possess it and dwell in it, and then say, I will set a king over me. No, God says you're going to do that. And you're going to do it like all the nations that are around you. You're going to want to be like the other nations and have a king like all the other nations. You may indeed set a king over you, whom the Lord your God will choose. Gotta look to the Lord for the guidance as to who should be king over you. One from among your brothers you shall set as king over you. You may not put a foreigner over you who is not your brother, only he must not, and here's what the prohibitions are, he must not acquire many horses for himself. In other words, he must not be militaristic. That's one of the things you would acquire if you're looking to raise up a large and a potent army instead of horses and horsemen and chariots and such. But that's the thing he's not to be doing. The Lord's to be the defender of his people, ultimately. He must not acquire horses for himself or cause the people to return to Egypt in order to acquire many horses, since the Lord has said to you, you shall never return that way again. And he shall not acquire many wives for himself. He shall not form a harem for himself and exploit the women of the land for his own lusts and his own desires. Lest his heart turn away, nor shall he acquire for himself excessive silver and gold. So he shouldn't abuse his power for his own personal enrichment. So he's not to be militaristic, he's not to be materialistic, and he's not to be pedantistic, I guess we could say, in acquiring a harem for himself. And when he sits on the throne of his kingdom, he shall write for himself in a book a copy of this law approved by the Levitical priests. and it shall be with him, and he shall read it all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the Lord his God by keeping all the words of this law and these statutes, and doing them, that his heart may not be lifted up above his brothers, and that he may not turn aside from the commandment, either to the right hand or to the left, that he may continue long in his kingdom, and he and his children in Israel. So he's to be governed by the Torah. He's to be governed by God's law. He's to be governed by the commandments that are found in this book, in the Book of Deuteronomy. And he's to have a copy of it. Remember, the copy that was put into the holy place, and a copy that was to be placed in the king's residence, so that the king could read it, the king could be instructed. And again, this is part of God's covenant law. Two copies. The Lord himself, who's the covenant partner and the covenant king, he has a copy. And the king that rules the nation, he's to have a copy as well. But I don't think very far along the line of the kings of Israel, the kings of Judah, was this practice really performed. Because when Josiah, when they discovered the law in the temple when they were doing repairs in the reign of Josiah, it seemed like this book wasn't known. Josiah didn't know it, though he was king in Israel. Likely his father didn't know it, and Nasser didn't know it, Ahaz didn't know it. The kings of Israel, good and bad. probably were not well instructed in the law of the Lord, although that was prerequisite. That's what God said a king should be doing, staying away from militarism, staying away from materialism, staying away from hedonism, and staying away from ignorance of God's law, being well instructed in the law of the living God. And so God makes provision for the king in terms of the law, anticipating that a king would come to rule in Israel. And then, of course, the king was to come to his rights in terms of prophecy, not only in terms of the provisions of the law, but also in terms of the prophetic word. Again, in Genesis chapter 17, we have one of the parts, one of the three times in which God speaks to the issue of His covenant with Abraham. You have Genesis 15, you have Genesis 17, and you have Genesis 22, after the offering up of Isaac on Mount Moriah. But here in chapter 17, we have got this encounter of Abraham with Yahweh, and God says to him, in the words of verse 6, He says, I will make you exceedingly fruitful, I will make you into nations, and kings shall come from you." And a part of that does have to do with Ishmael, in terms of promises that were given to Ishmael. It has to do as well with the descendants of Isaac, as well. The king shall come from you. A similar word is said in the words of verse 16. when God said to Abraham, that's for Sarah, your wife, this is verse 15, you should not call her name Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name. I will bless her, and moreover, I will give you a son by her. I will bless her, and she shall become nations, kings of people shall come from her. And so royalty will come from Abraham's seed. Thus the expectation bound up in the Abrahamic covenant, the chapter 17 of Genesis. And of course, in the prophetic word that comes from the lips of Jacob at the end of his life, when he blesses his sons, he blesses the tribes of Israel. We have the words that he spoke to Judah, his son Judah. After 2049 of Genesis in verse 8, Judah, your brother shall praise you, your hand shall be on the neck of your enemies, your father's son shall bow down before you. Judah is a lion's cub from the prey, my son, you shall have gone up. He stooped down, he couched as a lion. Interestingly, the king is referred to as the lion of the tribe of Judah. I give the lion imagery in the word of this prophecy. But then you have the kingdom aspect in verse 10. The scepter shall not depart from Judah. Judah will be the ruling tribe. Israel's true king will come from the descendants of Judah, nor the ruler's staff from between his feet until tribute comes to him. And to him shall be the obedience of the people. And of course, the great descendant of Judah is our Lord Jesus Christ himself, who is the true fulfillment of this prophecy. But there would be kings of Judah's line that would anticipate the greater king that would come. And of course, it's David that becomes that king of the tribe of Judah as well. And so much of the Book of Judges is set out as an anticipation of David, as almost like The people of Israel are realizing that in their life it won't do to be led by judges. The judges were important links in the purposes of God for a period of time, but yet as you look at the judges in the book of Judges, each one becomes less godly, less wise, less blessed than the one before. It seems like there's an increasing incompetence, an increasing sinfulness, an increasing self-centeredness in the judges of Israel. Of course, Samuel, the final one, becomes something of an exception. But at least in terms of the book of Judges, when you come towards the end of the book, there is this constant remembrance that there is no king in Israel. You have in chapter 17 the account of Micah and the Levite, that whole sordid scene. It tells us in the words of verse 6, in those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes. And that becomes the theme of the next few chapters when we read about, again, just horrific incidents of idolatry and cruelty and failure We have in those days, chapter 18 and verse 1, there was no king in Israel. And then in chapter 19 and verse 1, in those days there was no king in Israel. And the book concludes on that very note. So there's something of a message here we need to be hearing. There's a need for a king. Israel needs a king. Yes, Yahweh is their king. They're to bow to him, they're to be subject to him, but there is to be a likeness of Yahweh, one who has communion with Yahweh, one who represents Yahweh as someone after his own heart, his desires, his law, someone who's not a militaristic exploiter of others, someone who's not materialistic in oppressing others, someone who's not hedonistic in just gathering wives for his own pleasure and concubines, someone who's well-instructed in the law of God. Desperately, Israel needs a king. In those days, there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes. And of course, in the ordering of the book in our Protestant Bibles, we have the book of Ruth that comes next, and of course that ends in the ancestors of David, Ruth and Boaz and Obed and Jesse, and ultimately David the king comes from that line. And so everything is anticipating the arrival on the scene of the king, that the provision was made for in the law, the king whom prophecy pointed to, and David becomes the fulfillment of that, not the ultimate fulfillment, but yet a very real fulfillment. And so when we read that Israel asked Samuel for a king, God doesn't descend from that. He says they have rejected me as king over them. There was something wrong with the request. Basically, what was wrong with the request was not so much the desire for a king, Israel needed a king, but they couched it in the terms of We want a king like the nations possess. They were looking for the type of king the nations possess, but they wanted to be the kind of kingdom that all the other nations were. And that was the flaw. That was the point of their departure from the word and will of God. And God gave them a king like the nations when he gave them Saul. Again, what do they see as requisite in Saul? Yes, it was the Lord who anointed him and the Lord who appointed him. No question. But they looked at Saul and what did they see? Someone that was taller than everybody else. Someone that had all the intellectual requirements desirable in a king to lead the nation. But not a heart to fear God. He certainly was not a man after God's own heart, and that got proven in instances where God's commands were simply rejected, God's ways were simply flopped off, and Saul's ways became preeminent. And ultimately, he is dethroned. God takes the kingdom from him and gives it to one who he defines as being a king after his own heart. The unlikely. Shepherd of Bethlehem, David. And again, all the other brothers seemed to be better candidates, but God said, it's this one, the one who was the sweet son-sinner of Israel, the one who feared God, the one who was a man after God's own heart. And David's rule becomes the model for kingdom in Israel, not because it was a perfect rule. Clearly, it was not. David had his major flaws and his major faults, and yet it was David that brought the Ark of the Covenant to Mount Moriah. It's David that had it in his heart to build a house for God upon Mount Moriah, though he was not the one to whom that desire would be fulfilled, yet it was in his heart to honor God, to glorify the God of Israel. When he confronts Samson in that confrontation in 1 Samuel chapter 17, he looks at this uncircumcised Philistine And he's outraged that he would be opposing the God of Israel. He says, I come to you not with a sword and spear, but in the name of the God of Israel. He feared God. It was God that gave him the strength to keep the sheep safe from the bear and the lion that he slew. And it was God who was given the strength to conquer over the giant Goliath. And so, in so many ways, David was this man after God's own heart. And it was in David's rule that Israel came to a place of enlargement of its territory, of blessedness, of even the fear of the other nations. Hiram the king of Lebanon is a friend of David, and just thinking David's like the best thing in the world because of the blessing of God that so preeminently was upon him. And so Israel's finest hour was the hour of the Davidic rule, and everything went quickly downhill after that. Solomon and his harem, his many wives, his building projects, even though he was the one that built the temple. In so many ways, the temple was so far different. And we're going to see a little bit of it in Jeremiah in the passage we're going to look at tonight. And we are going to look a little bit at Jeremiah tonight. But I just want to set the stage for what we're going to read, is that Solomon set the wheels in motion. for the entrance of false gods in Israel, marrying foreign women, and his heart's going after other gods. And generations of Israel's kings now were weighed by whether they were comparable to David or they were not comparable to David, and in most cases they were not. And so we come to these final kings in the days of Jeremiah, in the days of the We've had the northern kingdom already fall to the Assyrians. Now the southern kingdom is under siege from the Babylonians, and Israel's kings are now going to be taken away in chains, and no Davidic ruler will rule from this time forward. There is the dismantling of the kingdom of Israel because of the crimes of the kings themselves. And it doesn't get revived until God sends the true King, who's the true fulfillment of the promises in the Lord Jesus Himself. We'll see that more in Chapter 24. But here in Chapter 22—I'm sorry, Chapter 23—in Chapter 22, I just want to go back just briefly, and we're not going to go far tonight into this section, but again, The kings of Judah had failed. They hadn't done their jobs. They hadn't embraced their calling. They were not concerned at all with being well-instructed rulers of God's people, carrying out their rule by His words. And so the prophet is now called in chapter 22 and verse 1. to go down to this nondescript King of Judah. We're not told which one it was. We don't really know which one it was. Shalom is the first one mentioned in verse 11, but here it's just, hear the word of the Lord, O King of Judah, in verse 2, who sits on the throne of David. You have a prestigious throne that you sit on, but you don't do the works of David. You don't have a heart after God like David had. You and your servants and your people who enter these gates, thus says the Lord. And when you boil it down, he's telling them, do your job. What was the job of the king? Well, to ensure justice and righteousness in the land. Mishpat and Tzedek are the Hebrew words The idea of mishpat was the idea of people obtaining what was rightfully theirs, of not being defrauded, of not being robbed, of not having anything that was rightfully theirs wrongfully taken from them. That has to do with material possessions, that has to do with perhaps taking away their good name, that has to do with not giving them what they deserve Rightly so. And so you see, he speaks about the oppressor, him who has been robbed. You haven't delivered from the hand of the oppressor, him who has been robbed. Injustice has reigned. People have been robbed. Things that were taken from them, their ancestral heritage was taken from them. The land that God gave to each member of the tribes of Israel. as people who had power just took it from them as they put land to land and looked to accumulate for themselves land and wealth and property and again at the expense of others. Now kings do your job. Ensure that justice is being done in the land. Righteousness, that word tzedek, it's a word that means conformity to the law. The laws are being flaunted. Nobody's paying mind to the things that God has said. King, do your job and ensure that tzedek and mishpat are being done in the land. Justice and righteousness are being furthered. And then you're to be the one who's the helper of the needy, the people that are being oppressed, the people who have been wronged, the people who are the victims of violence, the people who are least able to fend for themselves, the alien, the orphan, the widow. King, you're to be their deliverer. King, you're to be the one who comes to their aid. You're to be the one that makes certain that they are not disadvantaged, that no wrong is done to them, no violence is done to them. That's your job as king. And anything less than doing that job is not to be a king after God's own heart. It's not to be doing the things that God designed the king to be in Israel and for the king to do in Israel. And by definition, you know, the true and rightful King, our Lord Jesus, is concerned about these very things. He is the one who's concerned about those who are victimized, those who are ill-treated, those who have been cast out from the mainstream of society and the nobodies. You see, you're calling, brethren. It's not many mighty after the flesh, not many wise, not many nobles. It's not the rich. generally speaking. God has rich people whom he saves and humbles, and they use their wealth for mishpat and tzedek, for righteousness and justice. But it's the poor in this world that he makes rich in faith, according to James. And so Jesus hung around with the nobodies. He's the friend of the publicans and the sinners, the outcasts. He did what a true king does. He filled the role of kingship right to the T, as the perfect shepherd of his people, ministering to the needy, giving help to the helpless, raising the fallen, bringing the orphan to the knowledge of the fatherhood of God and the embrace of the community of the faithful, the widows, to be ministered to, and to be loved, and to know they have a special place in the heart of God. Jeremiah, tell the king to do his job. Then he tells the king, whoever this king of Judah was, for if you will indeed obey this word, and this is why I think it's an early prophecy, because there's still hope, There's still hope. For if you will indeed obey this word, then there shall enter the gates of this house, and maybe the house of the Lord it's talking about, maybe the palace, maybe the gates of the city, hard to know. But there will be entrance into the place of God's people, the place where God's King reigns and rules in Judah. and there will be kings who will sit on the throne of David, riding in chariots and on horses, they and their servants and their people. As the king goes out among his people, seeking to ensure that justice and righteousness is done, and the needy of the land are not oppressed, but are delivered. But if you will not obey these words, God says, I swear by myself. And again, that's language of covenant. When God enters into covenant in chapter 22, after Matt and Mariah, the offering up of Isaac, he says, I swear by myself that I will be a God to you. God swears by himself. He can swear by no one greater. And now I swear by myself that this house shall become desolate. The king fails to keep covenant with God. And again, one of the things I did look at with you as I went through the story of Israel and kingship is the covenant that God made with David in 1 Samuel chapter 7. I won't look at it with you now, but just allude to it. You can read it on your own, 1 Samuel—I'm sorry, 2 Samuel chapter 7—is that the kings that succeeded David If they failed to obey the Word of God, if they failed to walk in the ways of God, God would discipline them, and then if they wouldn't obey after that, they simply would be cut off. The kingship was designed to be an eternal kingdom, but it didn't necessarily say that any particular generation of kings would continue to rule. And ultimately, God's purpose with reference to the resurrection of the kingdom, the fallen kingdom of David, the raising up of that fallen kingdom, has reference not to the human kings of David's line, you might say, but the one who is the God of man. David's son, yes, but also David's Lord, our Lord Jesus Christ. And so God says, in essence, that He's going to make the kingdom of David to become a desolation. It's going to become dismantled. It'll no longer be operating. There'll no longer be a king on David's throne. That there will be foreign nations that will be ruling the nation of Judah. But thus says Yahweh concerning the house of the king of Judah, you are like Gilead to me. What does that mean? Well, when the people of Israel were coming through the plains of Moab and coming to the borders of the Jordan to cross over, it was the tribe of Reuben and the tribe of Gad, they were later joined by the half tribe of Manasseh, who went to Moses and said, you know, this land that we're in, which was Gilead, is a land of pastures. It's a land perfectly suitable to us, perfectly suitable to our needs as a tribe. We want to settle here. Don't make us go and live across the Jordan. We'll live in that place of Transjordan that was called Gilead. And so there was something of a beauty to Gilead. It was a mountainous region as well as a pastureland, and there was something of great beauty that belonged to it. There was also something of riches that belonged to it. We're all familiar with the balm that came from Gilead. You have the Midianites that were going down to Egypt when Joseph was sold by his brothers to them. They were coming from Gilead. They were coming with balm from Gilead that the Egyptians valued because they used it in their—particularly their funerary practices when they made mummies of their emperors and such, and the bond from Gilead was a valuable commodity. So you have a place that's filled with riches and valuable commodities. It's a beautiful region of mountainous ranges, and it has pasture land that captivated the imagination of at least two and a half tribes who wanted to settle there. And God says, you are like Gilead to me. I think of value, I think of beauty, I think of usefulness. It's like the summit of Lebanon. Lebanon was the place where you had the highest of elevation, at least in that region, and Mount Lebanon and its summit. And it also was a place on the mountains of Lebanon where the cedar trees grew that were, again, proverbial, the cedars of Lebanon in terms of their size. They were the very things that Solomon used for the construction of the temple and for the construction of his own palace. And so God says, you Judahites, you kings of Judah, this is what you're like to me. a thing of beauty, a thing of value, a thing of purpose, a thing of elevation, a thing of stately trees, all good things. Yet, yet, if you're not going to heed my voice, if you're not going to do what kings are supposed to do, yet surely I will make you a desert, an uninhabited city, a place that no one wants to live, where there's nothing useful, there's nothing beautiful. I will prepare destroyers against you, each with his weapons, and they will cut down your choicest cedars and cast them into the fire. And I rather think this matter of cutting down the choicest cedars and casting them into the fire well might be a prophecy. of the fact that the temple made from the cedars of Lebanon were put to the torch and put to the flame as the temple was destroyed. Solomon's palace also made with those sturdy cedars of Lebanon would also be torched and cast into the fire. And many nations will pass by the city, and every man will say to his neighbor, why? Why? Why has the Lord dealt thus with this great city? I mean, it was a great city because of the blessing of God. The city of the great King. Why has the Lord dealt thus with this great city? And they will answer, because they have forsaken the covenant of the Lord their God and worshiped other gods and served them. It was their apostasy and their idolatry that, again, is at the core of the judgment that God will bring against the nation and against the nation's king. And then the section concludes with these words, this little bit of poetry. Weep not for him who is dead, nor grieve for him but weep bitterly for him who goes away, for he shall return no more to see his native land." You might ask, who is he referring to? Who is the one who goes away? Who is the one who returns no more to see his native land? Who's the one who was dead? of whom were told not to grieve." Well, likely it's the people that are mentioned in the very next verse. This belongs to next week's study, but I just want to just call your attention to explain these words. But it says in verse 11, for thus says the Lord concerning Shalom, the son of Josiah, the king of Judah who reigned instead of Josiah his father, and who went away from this place. He shall return no more. You see, this one who you weep bitterly for, who goes away and shall return no more, seems to be Shalom, the son of Josiah. He has gone away, and he shall return here no more. What does that mean? Well, Shalom was—let me get it right—Jehoahaz. There's all kinds of names of Josiah's children who had similar sort of names, but there was Jehovah Ahaz. And Jehovah Ahaz only reigned for three months before he was taken away captive to Egypt. And he will not return. His bones are down in Egypt. They will die in Egypt. Weep for him. Weep bitterly for him. He doesn't get to be buried in God's land. He doesn't get to be buried in his native land. He does not get to be buried in Judah, but he gets to be buried far away in Egypt. Weep not for him who is dead, nor grieve for him. That's likely, in the light of verse 11, his father Josiah. Because whatever you think of Josiah going up to war with Egypt, he died in a gallant effort. to do what he thought was patriotic for his country, right or wrong. That's an interesting judgment call, this side going up to battle and perishing. But the point is, he gets to be buried in his homeland as a hero, as an heroic king who brought great reforms to Israel, who ruled wisely, who ruled well with his son Jehovah as can't give him any of those honors. They don't really belong to him. It's the contrast between a faithful king and an unfaithful king. A faithful king who lives an honorable life and receives an honorable death, and one who's a dishonorable man is taken away into captivity, never to return to his native land. And so God has some strong words for these kings. To whom much is given, much will be required. Much was given to the king in Israel and in Judah, and much is required of them. And their failure to reign according with God's designs for the king brings a heavy judgment upon them, but also it brings a longing for the true king. for the true king after God's own heart, for the king of whom is said, I will set my king upon my holy hill of Zion, the king of whom God says, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies the footstool of your feet, the king who is the one who purged our sins and sat down at the right hand of the majesty of God, to all of his enemies are put under his feet. Let's bless God we have a king who does not fall before the demands of his office, but who executes the office of the king to utter perfection for the good of his people and for the glory and honor of the living God. Well, God willing, having put our toes into the 22nd chapter, we'll move along to further words that are given to Judas Kings as we gather to study the rest of this chapter in the coming weeks. But let's thank the Lord for this time that we can consider these matters, and let's go to Him in prayer. Father, we're thankful for this full display that you give in the Scriptures of your purpose to have this earth ruled wisely and properly and well. We look all around us and we see the kings of the earth and the peoples that take counsel together against you, against your anointed one, people who are simply filled with themselves and their own ideas and think they could be rulers of the world who will be bringing rule that will benefit others when in fact they're simply destroying themselves and others. We're thankful for the one who reigns in righteousness, our Lord Jesus, filled with wisdom, filled with justice, filled with righteousness, filled with the power of your Spirit to do rightly. And we're thankful, Lord, that all authority in heaven and earth is given to him. And we pray that the time will soon hasten when the kingdoms of this world become more fully the kingdoms of our God and of his Christ, that he shall reign forever and ever. We're thankful for the blessings we've known as we have studied your Word through these meetings on Zoom on this Lord's Day. We pray that the inclement weather that we've been experiencing in the Northeast would would be something we would patiently wait for better weather to come. We pray that in coming weeks we might be enabled to gather together in our building. Lord, we're thankful for these means by which we've been able to see one another's faces, hear one another's voice, and together sing the hymns of our faith and to study your Word and to pray together. So be pleased to bless us as we ask these mercies coming in Jesus' name. Amen.