We came to the end of the book proper last week. Those of you with subject headings in your Bibles will likely see one above verse 22 and another one above verse 27. That's really because those two paragraphs are the twin epilogues of this Book of Kings. The book, as proper as you can see, ends in verse 21 with the sentence, Thus Judah was carried away captive from its own land. land and its loss is the final word of the Book of Kings. Then the author gives us these two very brief vignettes, just a couple of verses each, that deal with the further fate of Judah. Let's read these two epilogues. Then he, Nebuchadnezzar, 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, they came to Gedaliah at Mizpah. Ishmael, the son of Nethaniah, Johanan, the son of Korea, Saraiah, the son of Tanhumeth, the Nataphathite, and Jazaniah, the son of 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 Gedaliah, 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. Now it came to pass in the 37th year of the captivity of Jehoiachin, king of Judah, in the 12th month, on the 27th day of the month, that evil Merodach, king of Babylon, in the year that he began to reign, released Jehoiachin, king of Judah, from prison. He spoke kindly to him and gave him a more prominent seat than those of the kings who were with him in Babylon. So Jehoiachin changed from his prison garments, and he ate bread regularly before the king all the days of his life. And as for his provisions, there was a regular ration given him by the king, a portion for each day, all the days of his life. Thus ends the reading of God's word. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, give us eyes to see and hearts to understand this word in front of us. Help us to see your faithfulness to your promise. We thank you for this new understanding of how to live as believers that Gedoliah was the first to forge. We pray, Father, that you would help us to dwell in the land where you have placed us, to serve the political rulers you placed us under, and yet to remain your people. Father, we pray these things in the name of Christ, asking that you would free us from distraction, that we might worship you in all purity of heart. Amen. So we have the double epilogue here, brief vignette from just after the time when Judah was conquered, Then a further vignette from 25 years down the road. What is the narrator trying to tell us? What are his two final comments on the story he's told to this point? Well, his first comment, epilogue one, is that the Judean rump state is a failure. Nebuchadnezzar has what he sees as a good idea. He's going to take a local elite and put him in power in Judah. And that lasts maybe a couple of months before some disaffected, distant member of the royal family comes and assassinates that local elite. At which point Babylon takes direct control. Judah is over. Not even a client state of a greater Babylonian empire is going to remain. Judah has been absorbed. That's the message of the first epilogue. The second ep, but the book does not end there. The book ends with this little note about David's seed, Jehoiachin, having his head lifted up. And as we've seen thus far, the fate of the king and the fate of the nation are mirror images of each other. Just as King Josiah perished in an act of stupid warfare, so Judah perishes in an act of stupid warfare. And just as Jehoiachin has his head lifted up, so Judah will have its head lifted up. The book ends with a hint of hope. The fate of God's people depends on the fate of David's line, and David's line will have its head lifted up. That's the message of this final epilogue of the book of Kings. The question is raised in verse 22, Nebuchadnezzar makes Gedaliah son of Ahicham governor over the land of Judah. Now this Gedaliah was a good guy. His father had delivered Jeremiah. In Jeremiah 26, Jeremiah wrote, nevertheless, the hand of Ahicham, the son of Shaphan, was with Jeremiah, so that they should not give him into the hand of the people to put him to death. So this is the son of one of Jeremiah's allies, somebody, in other words, who cared about the word of God, who wanted to listen to the words of the prophet, who was in favor of Yahweh inside the Judean establishment. Nebuchadnezzar taps him and says, you're the new client ruler in this area. You're a client state of Babylon, there's no doubt about that, but you're a Judean and you will be allowed to govern Judah. And this looks like it's getting somewhere. Quickly, Gedaliah's rule gains some traction. Notice that he instantly attracts the army and the text actually lists for us kind of the names of the joint chiefs of staff who come there to Mizpah and swear loyalty to Getaliah. So Getaliah has the remnants of the armed forces. He has Babylonian support. It looks like his rule might actually take. Then Getaliah proposes this absolutely radical idea to them. Verse 24, he takes an oath, and he says 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. And what's so radical about that idea? Well, Israel, as originally conceived, as Balaam put it, is a people dwelling alone, not counting itself among the nations. Israel is the unique nation. The only nation with whom God is in covenant. The only nation whom God protects. Some of you have probably seen those blasphemous bumper stickers that say things like, God is my car insurance. What's the idea? Well, God has promised to protect me and so I don't buy car insurance. I just drive and if somebody hits me, God will take care of it. But in a sense, according to the very word of God to David and to Israel in general, God was their defense budget. And we've seen that more than once in this book of Kings, where the situation was dire, there was no way that Israel could make it, that Judah could make it, and then God intervened and protected them at the last second. So that's the original conception that Israel is a unique nation and that uniqueness is necessary, so the people of Israel believe, to serve God. How do you serve God? Well, you move to Israel and join his people. God's people live in God's land under a man that God chooses with a whole Levitical system that's closely allied with the Judean Israelite state And it's a total package. Religion, politics, the worship of God, and the place where you lived were uniquely tied together in Israel. God says the land is mine. I'm giving it to you to live on as a place in which you can worship me. So, Israel had understood itself for many generations, ever since the Exodus, as a special people, constituted by God, ruled by God, either directly or through his agent, the Davidic king. Goliath comes forward and he says, I've got a new idea. We are going to continue to dwell in the land and worship God and be God's people We have not lost our identity as the people of God, but to it we've added a new political allegiance. Dwell in the land, something Israel had always wanted to do, dwell in the land, but add to it this idea, serve the king of Babylon. That was an idea that Judah was simply not ready for. That was a bridge too far for them. Psalm 137, how can we sing the Lord's song in a strange land? Here it seems to be, how can we worship God when our political allegiance is to a pagan, idolatrous, evil king named Nebuchadnezzar? We can't serve Nebuchadnezzar and serve God. The two are incompatible. Ishmael, son of Nethaniah, kind of works that out practically with some cold steel. He and his band of 10 men come and they assassinate Gedaliah and his court, his entire palace bureaucracy, the Jews and the Chaldeans who were with him at Mizpah. And then everyone realizes, uh-oh, Babylon is not going to like the fact that we just killed their client governor. And so they get up. and they all flee to Egypt, and Jeremiah recounts more about that at the end of his book, if you're interested. Now, over the next 70 years of exile, after the return, Ezra, Nehemiah, the prophets who helped him, would start to forge this new identity that said, yes, we can serve God, even while being politically subject to pagan kings. But Judah was not ready for that within the months after the Babylonian invasion. And sometimes, as God's people, we feel like we're still not ready for it. How can I serve God and serve the king of Babylon? How can I serve God and maintain allegiance to my earthly ruler? And again, that's a question that would be addressed over the next centuries of exile. Sort of culminate in the Apostle Paul saying, do it. Obey the governing authorities. The powers that be are ordained of God and whoever resists them resists God's ordinance. And that is already present here in 2 Kings 25. It's clear that the narrator doesn't think much of Ishmael, the son of Nethaniah, and his little policy of assassinating Babylonian collaborators. Already, the text is implying, dwell in the land and serve the king of Babylon and it shall be well with you. That is, there's a way to do both, to have an earthly political allegiance to a suboptimal state and to have an allegiance to the God of heaven and earth. Pioneers like Daniel went to Babylon and showed exactly how that could be done. The question that Gedoliah posed was answered for the time being as a no. Judah, as we've always thought of it, as a place where God's people live subject to God's king and God's land, Judah thus understood cannot exist subservient to Babylon. For centuries, God's people had believed that they would either live in the land with God or that they would not live at all. But this text, this first epilogue, makes it clear that the future of the people of God does not lie in having a physical, political territory ruled in the name of God by a man of God's choosing. That option appears to be definitively closed. Judah, don't expect that David's line is going to come back and rule you in this territory. At least as far as the Book of Kings is concerned, that's not going to happen. Judah remains, in other words, right where the final sentence of the book proper has it. Thus, Judah was carried away captive out of its own land. But then we get to epilogue two. We fast forward 25 years. We've gone from 585 BC to 560 BC. The son of Nebuchadnezzar, a fellow named Amel Marduk, or in Hebrew, evil Merodach, ascends the throne of Babylon and it was customary apparently for Babylonian monarchs to curry favor at the beginning of their reign by issuing some orders of clemency, releasing various prisoners that they find in the dungeons. So Amel Marduk finds this Judean monarch in the dungeon, this guy named Jehoiachin, and he releases him. Now, your text probably says something along the lines of the New King James. Release Jehoiachin, king of Judah, from prison. But the word is not release. The Hebrew word is lifted up the head up. And we're supposed to think of Joseph in Egypt telling the butler and the baker, Pharaoh will lift up your head. Notice the other thing. How is Jehoiachin identified? Two times in verse 27. Jehoiachin, King of Judah. Jehoiachin, King of Judah. Judah is no more. Jehoiachin has been in prison for 37 years. That's a long time. Those of you who have lived that long probably were not doing similar things to what you're doing now 37 years ago. Jehoiachin had sat in a Babylonian dungeon for 37 years. But Amel Marduk lifts up his head. Jesus, remember, told us when we see the signs at the end of the age, what phrase did he use? Lift up your heads. Redemption draws near. He said the son of man must be lifted up. and of course he tells us that he's the head of the church. I think we're supposed to think of all these things, to think of the full significance of the phrase lifted up the head when we read it here in 2nd Kings. Christ the head of the church will be lifted up just as Jehoiachin had his head lifted up. Jehoiachin as a type of his greater descendant is freed from this Babylonian prison. The fate of the land, the fate of the people, mirrors the fate of the king. So what's going to happen to God's people? Our text lists six things that Amel Marduk did for Jehoiachin. First of all, he freed him from prison. That in itself is something. But like Joseph, he also Or like Pharaoh to Joseph, he also spoke kind words to him. Very different than the fate of Zedekiah, who had his son slaughtered in front of his eyes. Huge, huge change to go from wanton cruelty to having the king of Babylon say a few nice things to you. He's given the highest seat among the other captive kings there in Babylon. His identity is still a POW, but he's the highest ranking POW in the palace. So, could be a lot better, but also could be a lot worse. He gets new clothes, again, symbolizing a changed condition of life. Clothes are a sign of who you are, what your status is, People can discern a lot about you from your clothing. And these new clothes, again, like Joseph received, show that Jehoiachin status has gone up big time. He gets a place at the table, just like Saul's grandson, Mephibosheth. And indeed, some of the commentators say, see, Jehoiachin has a seat at the table of the king of Babylon and eats bread continually all the days of his life. The only other character in Samuel the King's who does that is Mephibosheth. And when Mephibosheth does that, what does it mean? It means that David is now king. That Mephibosheth's time is over, that Saul's dynasty is finished, that Mephibosheth is such a non-threat that David can afford to keep him and feed him and support him. So just as the kings of France for centuries would take in ousted kings of Scotland, feed them, take care of them, give them everything they needed. So long prior to that, David fed Mephibosheth. And that's certainly half true. Would David's line ever rise to political prominence again? No. The highest office that any descendant of David held in the period between Jehoiachin and Jesus was as governor of this Persian province beyond the river. And you can read about that in Ezra. There was one particular guy, Zerubbabel, son of Shealtiel, who was mentioned in some of the prophets and in, I think, the book of Nehemiah. He was a governor. There were no more kings from David's line. David's line never again exercised independent political power. But that's only half the story. Because God deliberately headed off comparisons with Saul's house in 2 Samuel 7. He specifically told David, I will not take the kingdom from you as I took it from Saul. So even though Jehoiachin is sitting there at the table of the king of Babylon, eating Babylonian food, we're not supposed to think of him as being like Mephibosheth, one whose time is over and whose political capital is at zero. There's still hope. The end of Kings leaves open the possibility for God to fulfill his promise to David in some as yet undreamed of way. It hints broadly that David's line will have its head raised and that God's people will be raised along with that rising. Now this book is not Revelation or even Daniel. That is, it's a work of history, not a prophecy. It's about the past not the future. It ends with an opening that's open to the future, but it ends as a work of history saying, here's what happened. Here's how God demonstrated His faithfulness over time. It leaves us with only a hint. A hint that better things are coming for God's anointed, and for God's scattered, suffering people. But that's still future. Those things are still hidden in the plan and purpose of God who directs all things for the sake of His suffering people. The question that this book leaves us with is, can you trust God? Can you believe that He will keep His promise to Christ and all those who are in Christ? And do you recognize that humiliation comes before exaltation? Judah was humiliated. Jehoiachin was humiliated. The book of Kings is not a glory story where Judah comes to the land and they reach heights under David and new heights under Solomon and each king is better than the previous king and by the end of the book We're looking at the greatest empire the world has ever seen. This is not what historians call Whig history, which tells the story right up to the present and says, and look at us. We are the culmination of everything that's happened in history to this point right now, today. You know why Washington crossed the Delaware? It was so that we could be here. It's rightly mocked in academic circles these days. But that's not the book of Kings. Far from it. Remember how the book began? King David is in bed, too weak to do anything. They find the cutest virgin in the kingdom and bring her. Nothing happens. Why does the text tell us that? It wants us to know that in one sense, God's kingdom is always on the ropes. God's kingdom just about fell apart in the first chapter of 1 Kings. David was too weak to do anything. And if it hadn't been for Nathan and Bathsheba and Joab doing their jobs, the kingdom would have failed then and there. But God does preserve His kingdom in His own way. Yes, His earthly kingdom fell apart. to the point where there was nothing left to rule, Goliath was struck down by the cold steel of Ishmael and his cronies. But nothing can shake God's promise, not Babylonian armies, not the cold steel of Jewish fanatics, not even the reality that everything Judah held dear had been destroyed. The message of this book from first to last is that God preserves his kingdom. He does it in His own way, on His own terms, not by might, not by power, but by My Spirit, says the Lord of hosts. And it's so true that God's way, as we see over and over and over in this book, is not the way of the well-funded, the way of the overpowering force, the way of the juggernaut that rolls over everything in its path. That's not what Israel was and that's not what Judah was a Little tiny state modern Israel tiny state of about 8,000 square miles Judah of course was only a fraction of that Campbell County is 4,000 square miles This is a tiny little place a few hundred thousand people Through which God brought about his plan to save the world God may change his kingdom's form. He certainly changes its earthly leaders and judges them. He himself is the same. He rules from everlasting to everlasting. His kingdom is forever. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we pray that you would help us to understand the lesson of this book of Kings. We praise you that nothing can shake your promise. Nothing can shake your kingdom. Indeed that you are preparing for us a kingdom that cannot be shaken. That you are shaking away over the course of history the things that can be shaken so that only the unshakable remains. Help us to endure this shaking, we pray. We know that the times are coming when nation will lift up sword against nation and kingdom against kingdom. There will be wars and rumors of wars, famines and earthquakes in various places, and that's not even the end. But Father, we pray that you would teach us to trust you. No matter what your kingdom's earthly status is, whether it seems to be totally destroyed, the bloody corpse of Gedoliah, or whether it seems to be flourishing as under Solomon, Father, help us to seek first your kingdom and righteousness. that all these other things may be added to us. Help us to dwell in the land, serve the political regime you put us under, knowing that David's line will have its head lifted up, that Christ has been exalted, and that he rules history for the sake of the church. We pray these things in his blessed and glorious name. And all God's people said, Amen. Well, let's sing number 92. How could we sing anything else? A mighty fortress is our God. And remember, this is Martin Luther's setting of Psalm 46. Psalm 46 is all about what do we do when Babylon is at the gates? The nations rage, kingdoms totter, he utters his voice, earth melts, The Lord of hosts is on our side, our safety to secure. The God of Jacob is for us a refuge strong and sure. So hymn 92, let's sing this together.