But clearly, the narrator is speeding ahead to the conclusion, trying to get through the last 25 years after Josiah and on to the bitter end. So that is the method that we will adopt tonight. 2 Kings 23, beginning at verse 31. Jehoahaz was 23 years old when he became king, and he reigned three months in Jerusalem. His mother's name was Hamutal, the daughter of Jeremiah of Libna. And he did evil in the sight of the Lord, according to all that his fathers had done. Now Pharaoh Necho had him put in prison at Ribla in the land of Hamath, that he might not reign in Jerusalem. And he imposed on the land a tribute of 100 talents of silver and a talent of gold. Then Pharaoh Necho made Eliakim the son of Josiah, king in place of his father Josiah, and changed his name to Jehoiakim. And Pharaoh took Jehoahaz and went to Egypt, and he died there. So Jehoiakim gave the silver and gold to Pharaoh, but he taxed the land to give money according to the commandment of Pharaoh. He exacted the silver and gold from the people of the land, from every one according to his assessment, to give it to Pharaoh Necho. Jehoiakim was 25 years old when he became king, and he reigned 11 years in Jerusalem. His mother's name was Zebuda, the daughter of Pedaiah of Rumah. And he did evil in the sight of the Lord, according to all that his fathers had done. In his days, Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, came up, and Jehoiakim became his vassal for three years. Then he turned and rebelled against him. And the Lord sent against him raiding bands of Chaldeans, bands of Syrians, bands of Moabites, and bands of the people of Ammon. He sent them against Judah to destroy it, according to the word of the Lord, which he had spoken by his servants, the prophets. Surely at the commandment of the Lord this came upon Judah, to remove them from his sight because of the sins of Manasseh, according to all that he had done, and also because of the innocent blood that he had shed. For he had filled Jerusalem with innocent blood, which the Lord would not. pardon. Now the rest of the acts of Jehoiakim and all that he did, are they not written in the book of the Chronicles and the Kings of Judah? So Jehoiakim rested with his fathers, and Jehoiachin, his son, reigned in his place. And the king of Egypt did not come out of his land anymore, for the king of Babylon had taken all that belonged to the king of Egypt from the brook of Egypt to the river Euphrates. Jehoiachin was 18 years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem three months. His mother's name was Nahushta, the daughter of El Nathan of Jerusalem. And he did evil in the sight of the Lord, according to all that his father had done. At that time, the servants of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, came up against Jerusalem, and the city was besieged. And Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, came against the city as his servants were besieging it. Then Jehoiachin, king of Judah, his mother, his servants, his princes, and his officers went out to the king of Babylon, and the king of Babylon, in the eighth year of his reign, took him prisoner. And he carried out from there all the treasures of the house of the Lord and the treasures of the king's house, and he cut in pieces all the articles of gold which Solomon, king of Israel, had made in the temple of the Lord, as the Lord had said. Also he carried into captivity all Jerusalem, All the captives and all the mighty men of valor, 10,000 captives and all the craftsmen and smiths. None remained except the poorest people of the land. And he carried Jehoiachin captive to Babylon, the king's mother, the king's wives, his officers, and the mighty of the land he carried into captivity from Jerusalem to Babylon. All the valiant men, 7,000, and craftsmen and smiths, 1,000, all who were strong and fit for war. These, the king of Babylon, brought captive to Babylon. Then the king of Babylon, Maiden Madaniah, Jehoiachin's uncle, kinged his place and changed his name to Zedekiah. Zedekiah was 21 years old when he became king and he reigned 11 years in Jerusalem. His mother's name was Hamutah, the daughter of Jeremiah of Libna. and he also did evil in the sight of the Lord according to all that Jehoiakim had done. For because of the anger of the Lord this happened in Jerusalem and Judah that he finally cast them out from his presence. Then Zedekiah rebelled against the king of Babylon. Now it came to pass in the ninth year of his reign in the tenth month on the tenth day of the month the Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon And all his army came against Jerusalem and encamped against it. And they built a siege wall against it all around. So the city was besieged until the 11th year of King Zedekiah. By the ninth day of the fourth month, the famine had become so severe in the city that there was no food for the people of the land. Then the city wall was broken through and all the men of war fled at night by way of the gate between two walls. which was by the king's garden, even though the Chaldeans were still encamped all around against the city. And the king went by way of the plain. But the army of the Chaldeans pursued the king, and they overtook him in the plains of Jericho. All his army was scattered from him. So they took the king and brought him up to the king of Babylon at Riblah, and they pronounced judgment on him. Then they killed the sons of Zedekiah before his eyes, put out the eyes of Zedekiah, bound him with bronze feathers, and took him to Babylon. Now in the fifth month, on the seventh day of the month, which was the 19th year of King Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar Aden, the captain of the guard, a servant of the king of Babylon, came to Jerusalem. He burned the house of the Lord and the king's house, all the houses of Jerusalem, that is, all the houses of the great men, he burned with fire. And all the army of the Chaldeans, who were with the captain of the guard, broke down the walls of Jerusalem all around. The nephews Aradon, the captain of the guard, carried away captive the rest of the people who remained in the city and the defectors who had deserted to the king of Babylon with the rest of the multitude. But the captain of the guard left some of the poor of the land as vinedressers and farmers. The bronze pillars that were in the house of the Lord and the carts in the bronze sea that were in the house of the Lord, the Chaldeans broke in pieces and carried their bronze to Babylon. They also took away the pots, the shovels, the trimmers, the spoons, and all the bronze utensils with which the priests ministered. The firepans and the basins, things made of solid gold and solid silver, the captain of the guard took away. The two pillars, one C, and the carts which Solomon had made for the house of the Lord, the bronze of all these articles was beyond measure. The height of one pillar was 18 cubits, and the capital on it was of bronze. The height of the capital was three cubits, And the network and pomegranates all around the capital were all of bronze. The second pillar was the same with a network. And the captain of the guard took Saria, the chief priest, Zephaniah, the second priest, and the three doorkeepers. He also took out of the city an officer who had charge of the men of war, five men of the king's close associates who were found in the city, the principal scribe of the army who mustered the people of the land, and 60 men of the people of the land who were found in the city. So Nebuchadnezzar Aden, captain of the guard, took these and brought them to the king of Babylon at Riblah. And the king of Babylon struck them and put them to death at Riblah in the land of Hamath. Thus Judah was carried away captive from its own land. Then he made Gedaliah, the son of Ahicham, the son of Shaphan, governor over the people who remained in the land of Judah, whom Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, had left. Now when all the captains of the armies, they and their men, heard that the king of Babylon had made Gedaliah governor, Then it came to Gedaliah at Mizpah, Ishmael the son of Nethaniah, Johanan the son of Koreah, Saraiah the son of Tamhut the Nataphathite, and Jazaniah the son of a Maokathite, they and their men. And Gedaliah took an oath before them and their men, and said to them, Do not be afraid of the servants of the Chaldeans. Dwell in the land, and serve the king of Babylon, and it shall be well with you. Now it happened in the seventh month that Ishmael, the son of Nethaniah, the son of Elishamah of the royal family, came with ten men and struck and killed Geliah, the Jews, and the Chaldeans who were with him at Mizpah. And all the people, small and great, and the captains of the armies, arose and went to Egypt. For they were afraid of the Chaldeans. Thus ends the reading of God's Word. Let's pray. Almighty God, Teach us to fear Your judgments. We know You delight in mercy, but You are a God of justice. You are the judge. You will surely judge Your people. It's time for judgment to begin at the household of God. We pray that You would teach us to fear You now, and that You would spare us in that great day of judgment. Through Christ our Lord, Amen. Well, our text tonight is intentionally devastating. Despite the cotton wool of historical distance that insulates us from some of the realities here, we're intended to still feel the blows of the Babylonian battering rams, to understand the complete and total devastation. This was every aspect of Israel's life that was touched. I had an acquaintance a few years ago who on the same day lost his job, his home, and his church family. He worked for the church He was fired on the very day that he was supposed to close on a new house. He closed on selling his old one and driving from there to close on the new one. He was fired. And of course, you can't close on a home loan when you're unemployed. And so within the space of a couple of hours, he lost home, church family, and job. Well, that kind of devastation is just a little picture of what Israel, what Judah lost in our text tonight. The elites were slaughtered and or deported. The religious, the political, the civic, the cultural life of Judah as a people all destroyed. The last shred of independence was taken away with this bonehead assassination of Goliath at the end of our reading. Even if God didn't fail, His people failed Him. That's the message of tonight's text. The way this is constructed shows us God's flair for the dramatic, We're going to see some of that. We're going to see God's wrath against His people's sin. We're going to see that God will judge His people if they persist in wickedness. We see that under four points. God judges Judah completely. God judges Judah speedily. God judges Judah poetically. And God judges Judah mercifully. Completely, speedily, poetically, mercifully, four different aspects of God's judgment that are highlighted in our text tonight. The first point, and clearly the biggest point in this text, is that God judges completely. God's chastening means something. We all know someone who has fits of rage and declares that things are going to change, never going to be the same way again, and 20 minutes later things are back to normal. Some of you may be familiar with the shortest war in history, the Anglo-Zanzibar War of the 1890s. The war between the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the Sultan of Zanzibar. The war lasted 38 minutes. Shortest war in history. But is that the kind of judgment that God had? Is this the shortest judgment in history? No. Things did not go back to normal after 45 minutes. Things are still not normal for the descendants of the people who inhabited Judah at this time. So God judged Judah completely, first of all by judging her kings. We have four kings in this text, reigning in a neat 3-11-3-11 pattern. Three months, eleven years, three months, eleven years. Three of the kings are sons of Josiah. So the first two and the fourth were all sons of Josiah. The third king is the son of Josiah's son, so is the grandson of Josiah. We'll look more at him next week. There's a little epilogue, just four verses long, that talks about what happened to him in Babylon. We have four kings, and every one of them perishes. He's either taken away to captivity in Egypt, captivity in Babylon, or dies. for some reason after relatively short reigns, 11 years or even just three months. These kings are under the foreign power. Two of them had their name changed by foreign monarchs. Eliakim, his name is changed to Jehoiakim by Pharaoh. And Zedekiah's name is, well, Zedekiah was not named Zedekiah, he was named Mattaniah, and the king of Babylon changed his name. Why? As a sign that Egypt and then Babylon had dominion. So God judged the monarchy. He judged the people who suffered famine, siege, rape, all the problems of warfare. By the ninth day of the fourth month and this final siege, there was no food for the people of the land. So it wasn't just the elites who suffered, it was the people at large. God judged the temple. And our writer can't seem to let go of this temple. Did you notice chapter 25, verse 16 and 17? He suddenly lets himself get lured back into describing the dimensions of a pillar. Here's how big this pillar was. The height of the capital was three cubits. Here's what the pillar looked like. This writer loved God's temple. He loved it. He's busy telling the story of how the Babylonians took the city, and he stops for a few minutes of architectural details. One of my pastor friends in North Carolina told me the other day that his congregation is very proud of their church building. That any visitor who comes gets shown the church building right down to the janitor closet. Well, that's where this writer was. He loved God's temple. But God left his temple. The presence of God killed Uzzah. Back in 2 Samuel 6, Uzzah reached out his hand, touched the ark, boom, struck dead. If God had defended his temple, would the entire Babylonian army have been able to take it? No. But God walked away. God left the temple. God abandoned His temple. Again, another anecdote. I remember one of my parents' friends going through divorce proceedings. He had been married 20 some years, and we asked him, why didn't you try harder to change before this? so that your wife is now divorcing you." And he said, and the look on his face, the tone of his voice, he was so broken, you could tell, he just said, I never thought she would do this to me. I didn't think I needed to change because I never thought she would take this nuclear option. Well, that's exactly where Judah was at. Judah, God left His temple. What's Judah's response? I never thought He would do this to me. Because what was God's promise? I will dwell here forever. And if God says forever, what does He mean? God can't lie. We saw that back in 1 Kings 7 and 8, Solomon's dedication of the temple. Surely I have built you an exalted house, he says to God, a place for you to dwell in forever. What happens? God moves out and He lets the Babylonians take away all the valuable material from the temple back to Babylon. I never thought He would do this to me. I never thought that He would finally drop the hammer because of my sin. Right? Because if you thought that, you would have stopped sinning. And that's what Judah failed to pay attention to. That's so often what we fail to pay attention to. God judged His people completely. the kings, the common people, the temple, and the empire, the land itself. Did you notice chapter 24, verse 7? The king of Egypt did not come out of his land anymore, for the king of Babylon had taken all that belonged to the king of Egypt from the brook of Egypt to the river Euphrates. Turn back to Genesis 15 for a second. Believe it or not, 2 Kings 24-7 is a direct quote from Genesis 15-18. In Genesis 15-18, what are God's exact words to Abraham? On the same day, the LORD made a covenant with Abraham, saying, To your descendants I have given this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates." So to whom does the land from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates, belong? To Abraham's descendants, the Hebrews. But by 2 Kings 24, who has it? The king of Babylon had taken all that belonged to the king of Egypt from the brook of Egypt to the river Euphrates. From the river of Egypt to the river Euphrates. Israel had forfeited its empire. God's promise to Abraham, in so many words, is defunct. God said, your seed will have this land And then here in 605 BC, God takes it back. No they won't. I said forever, and by forever I meant 600 years. How does your faith respond to something like that? God, I didn't think you would do this. God's promises don't fail, but God always reserves the right to tell you what they mean. And they may not mean what you thought they meant. That's the downfall of the prosperity gospel. Right? Aren't there texts that tell us, serve God and He will provide? He'll give you a land flowing with milk and honey? My God shall supply all your needs according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus, Philippians. What does that promise mean? Well, it may not mean what you think it means. And if it doesn't mean what you think it means, how do you respond? Is it God who failed you? You reserved the right? to say, God, you lied. I'm checking out of this relationship. I'm done. That's the last time you bait and switch me. Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on you. Is that how Judah was supposed to respond? We're done with this Yahwism. We are so over Jehovah. God's a Babylon. Here we come. The answer, of course, is no. That's why they were judged. They had been worshiping false gods. But nonetheless, they were judged by God saying, those promises I made, they didn't mean what you thought they meant. You were wrong. My promises relate to an ultimate future, an ultimate heavenly future, an ultimate Messiah, But did he take the time to carefully spell that out through the prophets? There's some hints in Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel. The prophets who were active at this time and before. But God did not make it clear for a long time. He let his people wrestle with the fact that he had apparently broken his promises. And in your life, too, you are almost certainly going to wrestle with a hard providence or many, many hard providences that will make you say, God, I think you just broke your promise. How will you respond? Well, not only did God judge Judah completely, He judged Judah speedily. We have four kings, over a period of a mere 22 years. Four kings, 22 years between the death of Josiah and the end of Judah. Three deportations of chapter 24, verse 1. In his days, that is in the days of Jehoiakim, Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, came up. This was the deportation of 605 BC in which Daniel was taken to Babylon. Then the second deportation, verse 14. Also, he carried into captivity all Jerusalem, the captains and the mighty men of valor, 10,000 captives, all the craftsmen and the smiths. Well, 597 BC, Nebuchadnezzar carries away, again, the elite. This was the deportation in which the prophet Ezekiel was brought into exile. And then, of course, the third deportation in 586 BC, when everyone who was anyone who was left was either taken into exile or hauled away and slaughtered. Four kings, 22 years, three deportations, and one assassination. The king of Babylon leaves Judah with some autonomy, a puppet governor, who answers to Babylon, but who is a member of the Judean elite, has local connections, is left as head of state, and some hothead Israelite youth named Ishmael, the son of Nethaniah, comes with ten men and kills this governor, Gedaliah, and his entire administration, thus ensuring what? only that Judah would be subject to direct Babylonian administration. No longer is a local elite in charge. Now you're being managed by someone appointed directly by Nebuchadnezzar, someone who is not a Jew and has no allegiance or loyalty to Judah. God took Judah from flourishing under Josiah to bleeding under Nebuchadnezzar in less than 25 years. And it's right to read this story with fear and say, am I a Josiah who's delaying judgment? Or am I a Manasseh who's hastening it? Clearly this story is not here so we can pat ourselves on the back and say, wow, it's a good thing I'm so much better than the people of Judah were in those days. That's not what God is telling us. God is telling us, don't congratulate yourselves. Read this. Remember, the question in every text of Scripture is, what does this tell me about God? And what does this text tell us about God? That God judges. God will judge His people. He judges Judah poetically. Chapter 25, verse 6, verse 5, the Chaldeans pursued the king and they overtook him at the Jericho flat. This is the last king of Judah, Zedekiah, being captured by the king of Babylon at Jericho. What's significant about Jericho? Jericho is the place where God's people entered the promised land. Jericho is the beginning of the story. And now Jericho is the end of the story. We've come full circle. God's people entered the land there sometime around 1400 B.C., 1200 B.C., right in there. Now that's where the last gasp of their independence takes place. And then Egypt. The Book of Kings ends with flight to Egypt. Chapter 25, verse 26. After Gedaliah is assassinated, the remaining people in Judah who don't want to submit to Babylon get up and go to Egypt, dragging Jeremiah with them. Why? Because God said that's the ultimate response he would have to the people He brought out of Egypt. I brought you out of Egypt, and if you sin against Me, I'll take you back there. The exodus is over. You marched out of Egypt 600 years ago. Now you're marching back. Of your own free will! God's people prefer Egypt to the promised land. Talk about poetic justice. I redeemed you from Egypt. I brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. What do God's people say? Let's go back to Egypt. Let's go back to the house of bondage. Things were better there than they are in the promised land. And then, of course, Babylon is all over this story. Babylon takes us even further back. Jericho is where Israel entered the Promised Land. Egypt is where Israel came out of to go to the Promised Land, but where were they from before Egypt? They were from Babylon. Abraham was from Ur of the Chaldeans. God's people who were taken into captivity were taken back to Babylon. So the story has come full circle, not just to Joshua chapter 1, full circle all the way back to Genesis chapter 11 where Abraham is called out of Babylon for the purpose of blessing the nations. We looked at this last spring. Abraham called out of Babylon for the purpose of blessing the nations. Now Abraham's descendants go back to Babylon because they failed to bless the nations. The story has officially stalled out. Everything God did for his people in between the call of Abraham and the death of Zedekiah. Sort of futile. Just simply one rotation of the wheel of history and we're back to where we started seemingly. Give yourself to sin and beware God's poetic justice. If you are truly his child, you will be chastened. Yet even in that chastening, God judged Judah mercifully. Notice where the judgment falls. Ahab was judged in the first generation. Ahab, of course, was killed, and so were his children. But God judged the third and fourth generation of Judah. It wasn't Manasseh who was judged. He's the original. Then we have Amon, the first generation. Josiah, the second generation. And then Jehoahaz, Jehoiakim, and Zedekiah, they're the third generation. Jehoiachin, the fourth generation. God spared the line until the third and fourth generation. Because that's the kind of God He is. Merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in mercy. Even in exile, David's line receives more mercy than Ahab's. Remember how Solomon came to the throne back in chapter 1, determined that no blood guilt would attach to the house of David? That was our 1st Kings sermon. Our second sermon on 1st Kings. 1st Kings 2. Where Solomon assassinates Joab, banishes the priest, Azariah, and tells Shimei to stay in Jerusalem. And he says, no blood guilt can stick to David's house. But by the end of the book, does blood guilt stick to David's house? Absolutely. Manasseh shed innocent blood and the Lord would not pardon. But God is still merciful. Delaying His wrath to the bitter end. The high priest line was spared. Chapter 25 points out to us, verse 18, that Saria, the chief priest, was exiled. But if you turn the page to 1 Chronicles 6.14, you see that though he was exiled, he wasn't killed. Azariah begot Saria, and Saria begot Jehozadak. Jehozadak went into captivity when the Lord carried Judah and Jerusalem into captivity by the hand of Nebuchadnezzar. The high priestly line is still alive. The royal line is still alive. Jehoiachin is in exile in Babylon, but he's not dead. Isaiah pictured this by a forest of stumps. The holy seed is a stump. The tree is still there. It's been cut down. But what can grow out of a stump? Fresh shoot, God's servant, the branch. So God's project failed. God ended up judging His people. Why? Because, as we've said before, the Levitical system was overloaded. The Levitical system could not handle the amounts of sin that were dumped into it. The system was overloaded. and shut down because it could not provide true forgiveness for sin. And God knew from day one that it could not provide true forgiveness. And God's people knew that. David, Psalm 51, you do not desire sacrifice or I would give it. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit. Does God still judge? Yes, He does. But in Christ, we have a way of access to God that can't be overloaded with sin. You can't dump so much sin on Christ that He shuts down. Because He paid the penalty for sin. There's true forgiveness in Him. So we should read this text and beware of God's judgment. Absolutely. We should also celebrate God's salvation. When it looks in our lives like God's promises have failed, remember 2 Kings 25. Remember that God has the right to reinterpret His promise. To show you what it really means. To put its fulfillment in His time rather than ours. Is it easy to trust Him then? No. But is He trustworthy? Absolutely. In the midst of judgment, the royal line was spared. In the final judgment to come, Christ and those in Him will also be spared. Prepare to be chastised. Prepare for God's judgment by taking refuge in the One who endured it for you. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, show us Yourself in this text. Show us Your judgment, Your wrath. Show us Your pardoning mercy, Your saving love. Thank You that in Christ, We will be spared from the great day of judgment and the wrath of God Almighty. We ask that we would receive Your mercy in that day because we have received it now. Because we are trusting in Christ and in Him there is no condemnation. We praise You for this. Seal these truths to our hearts, we beg in the name of Christ. And all God's people said, Amen.