Episode Transcript
We're in 2 Kings chapter 24.
And we're in verse 8.
That's our text this morning.
2 Kings 24, verse 8.
We welcome our online audience.
And we're now in the reign of another king in Judah.
Seems like that happens every week, doesn't it?
According to our last study, the Egyptian forces, the military forces, had returned to Egypt and did not come back.
And Babylon was now the predominant world power.
And of all the times when Judah needed a strong king.
There was not one to be found.
And their last king, Jehoiakim, was an evil king.
So let's look at his son, who is the next king of Judah.
I think we've got some more coming in back there.
Y'all come on in.
Good to have you.
We're in Second Kings twenty-four, verse eight.
So now we look at Jehoiakim's son, the next king of Judah, here in verse 8.
So look with me in 2 Kings 24, 8.
Jehoiakin, now that's with an N, not an M, was 18 years old when he began to reign.
Now he was not a baby king like Josiah was, but he was still a very young king.
In fact, his brain hadn't fully developed yet.
And you'll know when a young person's brain fully develops because it's around the age of twenty five.
And the best indicator of full brain development in a twenty five year old is when they say something like this, you know?
My parents have suddenly grown wiser than they were when I was a teenager.
That's how you know their brain's developing.
And to put Jehoiakin's age in perspective, he wasn't even old enough to buy a handgun.
Imagine placing the responsibility of ruling a nation, a nation of people in turmoil.
On an 18-year-old man.
And that's what happened.
Now you remember when Josiah became king.
He was only eight years old, but he was a godly man, young man, and that's the difference.
Even though Josiah's voice hadn't changed yet before he took the throne, he had a better start at the age of eight than Jehoiakim did at the age of eighteen because he was a godly young man.
Now let's see why.
Verse 8, look down in there, it says, And he reigned in Jerusalem three months.
He didn't make it over three months before his reign ended.
Now, Josiah, on the other hand, reigned thirty-one years.
But Jehoiakin's beginning was very close to his end.
It says in the verse, and his mother's name was Nehushta.
The daughter of El Nathan of Jerusalem.
Now, this verse is the only place where we see the name of his mother.
And in the Old Testament, and we know his father was Jehoiakim.
That is already, it's already been told to us.
And the name of his grandfather, El Nathan, is also mentioned in the book of Jeremiah.
And Jeremiah prophesied during the reign of five kings, and this was one of them.
So Jeremiah is a contemporary prophet who did his thing during the time we're reading about.
But it's not clear to me whether the L.
Nathan in our text is the same one referred to in Jeremiah.
But that's who his grandfather was.
Verse 9.
Speaking of King Jehoiakin, and he did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord.
Now that's clearly a disadvantage for this young man.
He was young and he did evil.
And I'm sure he thought he was doing right.
Because he did according to all that his father had done.
Now, if you take a young person who's raised by an evil father.
That's the only fatherly influence they know.
And they grow up thinking that what they're doing is the right thing.
And from time to time, they may think This doesn't feel right.
Other people don't like it when I do this, but my dad taught me to do it, so it must be right.
So the natural inclination of a sinner, that's all of us, is to just copy your dad, your mom, the people around you, your friends.
And the words according to all there in the text are from one Hebrew word that means the whole, W-H-O-L-E.
Or it means everything.
So, what that tells us, in other words, is that King Jehoiakim did everything his father did.
He copied him in every area.
So he did evil the way his father did evil.
And you know it's impossible in the flesh to break this cycle.
But by God's grace, it's not automatic that the child of a terrible father will turn out like his father.
It doesn't have to be that way.
And God's grace is what makes that possible.
For you to, as you've heard, break that cycle.
And God can and He will break that chain.
When a person repents.
And maybe some of you here, or maybe somebody watching, had a terrible father or mother.
I don't know.
I hope not.
But if you did, You know it, and don't let that make you think you have to turn out like them, because you don't.
Maybe you had a cruel, godless mother.
Well, you don't have to do as she did.
God's grace and mercy are there for the taking, and Jehoiakim didn't have to do evil like his father did.
But he made a choice to do so anyway.
Look in verse 10 at that time The servants of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, came up against Jerusalem.
Now, as we already know from reading prior verses.
Pharaoh Nico, the Pharaoh of Egypt, had returned to Egypt.
And so now You think, well, good, the enemy went home.
Well, another enemy took its place.
It's always that way.
When people think, I wish the devil would leave me alone, he's not going to leave you alone.
You can get over that.
And Nebuchadnezzar's servants are now knocking at the door of Jerusalem, where Pharaoh Nico's servants had been before.
Jerusalem, and this is the city where God said many times, He said, I will put my name there.
But as we learned several lessons ago, God would not put his name in a defiled and rebellious city.
And Jerusalem had become that kind of place.
They were serving idols and bowing to other nations' kings and doing as the Gentile nations did all of that meant they were rejecting their Creator, rejecting the God who delivered them from the bondage of Egypt.
And so, by God's providence, we learned about that a few weeks ago, he brought this enemy nation of Babylon against Jerusalem.
Listen to what God told Jeremiah about Judah, about this Judah, in Jeremiah chapter 25, verses 8 through 9.
Jeremiah 25, verses 8 through 9 Therefore, thus saith the Lord of hosts.
Because ye have not heard my words, behold, I will send and take all the families of the north, saith the LORD, and Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon, my servant. and will bring them against this land, and against the inhabitants thereof, and against all these nations round about, and will utterly destroy them. and make them an astonishment and an hissing and perpetual desolations.
God called Nebuchadnezzar This Gentile king, this enemy of Israel and Judah, he called him my servant.
So by extension, the servants of Nebuchadnezzar were also God's servants in this respect.
God had a specific purpose in bringing Babylon Against Judah.
This didn't just happen in a vacuum It wasn't some chance occurrence that was out of God's control, where God wringing his hands saying, Oh no, Babylon's come up against my people.
He brought them against Jerusalem.
God did.
It was foreordained before the foundation of the world.
God knew that his people would rebel.
And he had a plan to use Babylon to punish the children of Israel there in Judah.
Look back in your text.
It says, and the city was besieged.
Now we've run across that word besieged before, and it means pretty much what it sounds like it means.
It means surrounded or seized.
You've heard of something laying siege, an army laying siege to a city.
In Jerusalem, the city where the temple was, the city where the house of the Lord was, where King David once reigned.
Was now ruled by an eighteen-year-old godless king.
In David's time, the enemy nations would have been ill-advised.
Excuse me, to come up against Jerusalem.
They feared King David.
They heard of his might.
In his day, many Philistines were slain, and the children of Israel were a united nation, then.
They weren't divided like they are.
In the time that we're reading about, there was not Judah or Israel.
There was just Judah.
Judah was simply one of the tribes, it wasn't its own nation.
And I suppose they thought in those days they were invincible.
They had God as their shield and their defender.
But sin, as it always does, brings down a nation.
And I'm sure there are people who get tired of hearing preachers talk about that, but we're going to do it until Jesus comes.
We have to. there's not some cool subject to move on to besides that.
That is necessary for us to holler from the pulpits.
We don't have to scream and Stomp around, but we need to proclaim that sin brings down a nation, brings down a person, brings down a family.
Brings down a city, a country, a nation, a world.
It brings down the human race, and that's exactly what it did.
And this new Judah was a fractured, rebellious, weak.
Nation and was an easy prey for the Babylonians.
The United States will one day.
Maybe even very soon, I don't know, but one day be like Judah.
And in those days, people will say.
Well, what happened to the once mighty United States of America?
Were they not the strongest nation in the world and all of these glowing things?
And the answer is going to be the same for us then as it is for Judah in our text.
They turn their back on God.
They rejected the one who made them strong, and he has delivered them into the hands of their enemies.
Now, we don't know exactly what God has determined for this nation or when it will happen.
We don't know that.
Preachers who point to different scriptures and say, Now that right there is the United States.
The United States wasn't even thought of by anybody except God in the Bible.
And so be careful if you hear somebody say something like that.
If the Bible doesn't declare it's the United States, then don't shout where the Scripture is silent.
But what we do know and what gives us a clue about what will happen to this country is how God dealt with Israel and Judah when they sinned and continued in sin.
And God's the same yesterday and today and forever.
So therefore, even though we have no specific prophecy concerning the United States, There's no reason for us to believe that our end will be any different than Judah's in the passages we are reading.
And let me tell you.
On one hand, I don't look forward to that day if I'm still alive, but on the other hand, I'm excited as I can be because that means just closer to time for Jesus to come.
So I have.
Two sentiments about it.
Look down in verse 11 now.
And Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, came against the city, and his servants did besiege it.
Now, representing God's servant Nebuchadnezzar, because we've already read in Jeremiah that he was God's servant in this matter.
And representing God's servant Nebuchadnezzar, his servants actually besieged Jerusalem.
It was no longer a possibility, a dream.
Something on the horizon or some future event that would be talked about, it was happening.
It really happened.
And sometimes that's what it takes.
In fact, that's usually what it takes.
For people to realize that God means business, they have to actually experience the consequences their behavior has earned them.
And before this, many of the Jews had written off God's warnings.
God would send his prophets, and they would say, these bad things are going to happen.
And the prophets would be mocked.
You remember when Elijah tried to warn Ahab, hey.
You better get it right.
And what did Ahab do?
Ahab wanted to kill Elijah for bringing that news.
And so these Jews in Judah had written off God's warnings.
Well, not anymore, because now they probably wish they would have listened to those warnings.
I was at my daughter Lauren's house last week, Monday, and her oldest daughter is three.
I've got that's my number three granddaughter.
And just to remind you, a three-year-old is just a smarter two-year-old.
That's exactly what they are.
So those years can be trying, right?
Moms and dads and older siblings, they can be trying.
And my granddaughter has a large personality with big emotions, and I love it because I'm not having to deal with it every day like my daughter.
Well, that day I was there, she decided to challenge her mother's authority, which happens with three-year-olds.
And my granddaughter did something wrong.
And my daughter corrected her and then told her to say, I'm sorry.
Of course, my granddaughter disobeyed.
So my daughter said, you say you're sorry, or are you going to time out?
Now time after this new invention that have not taken the place but seem to have supplemented more traditional forms of discipline from when I was younger.
Anyway, so my granddaughter refused again, so away she went to the timeout cell.
And while her mother was beginning to execute the punishment by picking her up and taking her to jail, my granddaughter said, I'm sorry, mommy, but it was too late.
And that's what my daughter told her.
She said, You do it the first time I tell you.
Now, what was my daughter trying to teach my granddaughter?
She was trying to teach her the same thing that God is trying to teach Judah.
When I give you a command, you do it the first time that I tell you.
When I warn you of the consequences of obedience through my prophets, You obey immediately, not when it's convenient for you.
And I've heard our pastor give this quote before.
Delayed obedience is disobedience.
It's absolutely true.
And God is long-suffering and patient with us.
But his commands are not to be put off like Judah did.
He means what he says, and he means it the first time he says it.
Now look in verse 12.
And Jehoiakim, the king of Judah, went out to the king of Babylon.
Now, let's pause right there and just look at the impression that image gives us.
You have the king of Judah, ideally the king of God's people in Jerusalem, and should be the most powerful and protected nation on the earth.
But now you have that king going out, leaving his palace, leaving the safety of his headquarters, and going out to meet an enemy king.
Whose army has laid siege to Jerusalem.
And I can think of only two reasons for him to do this: one, to fight against Nebuchadnezzar. or two to surrender to Nebuchadnezzar.
They're not going out there to play a chess match.
And not only did Jehoiakim go out to meet Nebuchadnezzar, but look back in the text, it says, his mother and his servants and his princes.
And his officers.
So they went with him.
Now, this gives us a little better idea of why the king went out to meet the Babylonian king.
If he were going to fight against Nebuchadnezzar, he certainly wouldn't take his mother to be with him.
So this meeting was.
Based on what we've read so far, going to be a peaceful meeting.
At least Jehoiak can hope so.
And when he did this, when Jehoiakin went out and took his mother and, of course, his servants and his officers with him, he either showed great confidence in his own negotiating abilities, or he Showed faith in Nebuchadnezzar's goodwill.
One of the two, maybe both.
And it says in the next part of the verse: And the king of Babylon took him in the eighth year of his reign.
Now, because we know and we have been told already that Jehoiakin reigned three months In Jerusalem, then the eighth year must be the eighth year of Nebuchadnezzar's reign.
That's what makes the most sense to me based on our text.
So Jehoiakim, the evil 18-year-old king of Judah, took his own mother, servants and officers out to meet an enemy king and then just handed the whole lot over to that king.
And look back in the text, it says, and he, that means Nebuchadnezzar, carried out thence all the treasures of the house of the Lord and the treasures of the king's house.
Now, this is so instructive for us.
God gives his people great treasures.
And it's not just talking about silver and gold here, although that's what was taken from the house of the Lord and from the king's house.
But the treasures that God gives are even more precious than the treasures of silver and gold.
When Adam and Eve were put in the garden, God gave them everything they could have ever dreamed of, and more.
And because of sin, they yielded up all of those treasures.
But the most valuable treasure they gave up.
Was the unbroken fellowship they had with God, and they would never get that back.
I want to go back to the scene in the Garden of Eden as told to us in Genesis chapter 3, verses 1 through 6.
Genesis 3, verses 1 through 6.
And I want you to listen for the similarities.
Between what Adam and Eve did and what King Jehoiakim did in our text.
Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made.
And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden.
And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden, but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.
And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die for God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.
And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her, and he did eat.
Now I want you to notice several things here.
One, the text tells us the serpent was the most subtle.
That means shrewd, crafty, prudent.
The most subtle beast the Lord God had made.
And as we later learn in the Bible, the devil spoke through that serpent.
That serpent was the embodiment of the devil.
In fact, Revelation 20, verse 2 tells us that.
And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the devil, and Satan and bound him a thousand years.
So there's no doubt that the serpent was the devil.
Now, Nebuchadnezzar, in our text, was the representative of the kingdoms of this world.
And the God of this world, the one over all those kingdoms, is Satan.
So you had Satan and Nebuchadnezzar working for him while he was also a servant of God.
He was a servant of God, but he was not a member of the kingdom of God.
Big difference.
Two, in order to have a conversation with the serpent, Adam and Eve had to go out and meet him.
They had to leave the safety of their relationship with God, of their unbroken fellowship with God, and go out and meet this serpent wherever he was in the garden.
Jehoiakin also had to go out and meet with Nebuchadnezzar in our study.
And thirdly, when Adam and Eve obeyed the serpent rather than God, they not only yielded themselves To the kingdom of darkness, the kingdoms of this world.
But they also took the rest of their earthly family with them.
That's you and me.
And just like Jehoiakin's mother and servants and officers went out with him to meet Nebuchadnezzar, we also went out. with Adam and Eve to meet the serpent.
Not physically, we weren't there.
1 Corinthians chapter 15, verse 22 tells us that all die in Adam.
So we all die.
Adam died, wherefore is by one man?
Sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.
So we were in this way present with Adam at this meeting with the serpent.
Another observation we make is just as Jehoiakin And his mother and his officers and his servants were taken captive by Nebuchadnezzar.
So were we.
We were taken captive by the serpent through sin.
We yielded ourselves into his captivity.
Listen to how Paul puts it in 2 Timothy 2, verses 24 through 26.
2 Timothy 2, 24 through 26.
And the servant of the Lord must not strive, but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient. in meekness instructing those that oppose themselves, if God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth And that they may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil who are taken captive by him at his will.
You see, that it's the same thing.
That Jehoiakim did when he took his family, his servants, his own mother out to meet Nebuchadnezzar and were taken captive by him.
Adam and Eve, and every one of us.
Where their descendants went out to meet the devil in the garden and were taken captive by him through sin.
When Adam and Eve sinned, they made a choice.
And their captivity was a consequence of their choices.
And without their obedience to the serpent, he couldn't have taken them captive.
And Judah's king Jehoiakim made a choice to do evil.
And although Nebuchadnezzar was the enemy of Judah, God used him as his own servant.
To carry out the consequences of Jehoiakim's and Judah's choices.
So Nebuchadnezzar took them captive at his will, just like the devil.
Took us captive at his will.
And not only did Nebuchadnezzar take them captive.
But we read that he also took their treasures out of the house of the Lord.
Matthew chapter six Verses 19 through 21 Matthew 6, 19 through 21 Jesus said, Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt. and where thieves break through and steal but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal.
For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.
Now to King Jehoiakin The treasures in the house of the Lord were nothing more than earthly treasures.
They held no spiritual value to him whatsoever.
They represented nothing.
He didn't understand or accept the deity, the God, they represented.
He rejected the redemption picture that the silver painted.
He didn't understand the meaning of the candlesticks, the table of showbread, the incense altar, the ark, the mercy seat, all the instruments and all the furnishings there.
Of the tabernacle and the temple.
And all of those treasures to Jehoiakin were just earthly possessions to him, and so they were to the people of Judah as well.
And so what happened?
Thieves broke through and stole them, just as we read.
Now what did Nebuchadnezzar do with all these treasures?
Look back in your text in verse 13.
It says, and cut in pieces all the vessels of gold which Solomon, king of Israel, had made in the temple of the Lord.
This is what the world thinks of our treasures.
When you try to teach an unbeliever About the significance of every element used in the construction of the tabernacle in Moses' day and then the temple in Solomon's day.
The unbeliever will often listen and say, Oh, that's foolish.
How could all of that represent something so grandiose?
But to the children of Israel in Moses' day, The Ark of the Covenant was a holy thing, not because it was made of beautiful gold, but because of how God used it and how it represented God.
The Holy of Holies was a holy place to them because of what God said would happen in there and who had access and how often that one man had access to that place.
But to the kingdoms of this world, all of those treasures are good for nothing but cutting up and melting and selling to the highest bidder.
When a thief steals a catalytic converter off of your car The price he receives for it is nowhere near what it actually costs to buy one brand new and to have it installed I take my aluminum cans to a place not too far from where I live, and sometimes I'll get up sixty five cents a pound for them, not too bad.
And every once in a while, I'll see somebody come in behind me, and I already know what they've done.
They've stolen conduit Some kind of metal off of somebody's air conditioner or out of some new construction, and they're just about to drop dead because they need some more meth.
And so they traded in.
For pennies on the dollar and go get their next fix, and then they come back and do it again next time.
What they get for it is nowhere near what it costs, brand new and installed.
But the thief neither realizes that the catalytic converter costs a lot of money to buy and install or that the owner has to take the trouble to pay for it and have it redone what should have never been undone?
And the thieves in our text stole treasures from the house of the Lord because they saw no spiritual significance, no value.
Other than the financial reward that they would receive from its sale and from its use.
And the last part of the verse said, As the Lord had said.
So what we read in the above verses, in fact, all of the verses above, was a fulfillment.
Of what the Lord prophesied back in 2 Kings chapter 20.
And then verses 16 and 17.
I'll read 2 Kings 20, verses 16 and 17.
And Isaiah said unto Hezekiah, Hear the word of the LORD Behold, the days come that all that is in thine house, and that which thy fathers had laid up in store unto this day, shall be carried into Babylon nothing shall be left, saith the LORD.
Boy, God hit it right on the head, didn't he?
And now, generations later, we're reading about Babylon doing the very thing that God told Hezekiah would be done.
Now, look in verse fourteen with me.
And he carried away all Jerusalem.
And all the princes, and all the mighty men of valor, even ten thousand captives, and all the craftsmen and smiths.
Now that's not the Smiths and Jones.
Those are the Smiths or people who made things.
None remain save the poorest sort of the people of the land.
Now it's one thing for the enemy to come against your capital, yet another thing for the enemy to besiege your capital.
But when the enemy easily carries away your king and all the people except for a few poor.
And all the treasures, then you have been conquered.
You've been conquered in almost every sense of the word.
But however, I love the glimmer of hope we see right here with all this.
Who was left in the land?
It said it was the poorest sort of people of the land.
Now, we've already looked at how Nebuchadnezzar views the treasures of the house of the Lord.
But now this shows us what he thinks about the people of Judah, how he views the people of Judah, probably how he views anyone.
He viewed them according to their power and their possessions.
He viewed them according to their, you may say their earthly power and their earthly possessions, because that's more accurate.
If we look ahead to chapter 25, we hadn't gotten there yet, but as we look ahead to chapter 25, verse 12, we read this about those poor people.
But the captain of the guard left of the poor of the land to be vine dressers and husbandmen.
So the reason for leaving them there was twofold.
One, they're the poorest of the poorest, so they couldn't possibly be a threat.
And two, somebody's got to take care of the vines and till the garden and do all that.
But in 1 Samuel chapter 2, verses 7 through 10 1 Samuel 2 verses 7 through 10 Where Hannah, the mother of the prophet Samuel, sang a song after she gave birth to her son.
Do y'all know she was a singer?
And here are some of the verses of that song.
I don't know the tune, so I'm just going to say them, if you don't mind.
The Lord maketh poor and maketh rich.
He bringeth low and lifteth up.
He raiseth up the poor out of the dust, and lifteth up the beggar from the dunghill, to set them among princes, and to make them inherit the throne of glory For the pillars of the earth are the Lord's, and He hath set the world upon them.
He will keep the feet of His saints, and the wicked shall be silent in darkness. for by strength no man shall prevail.
The adversaries of the Lord shall be broken to pieces out of heaven shall he thunder upon them.
The Lord shall judge the ends of the earth, and he shall give strength unto his king, and exalt the horn of his anointed.
The world doesn't see the poor like God does.
And it's not just the financially poor, but those who are poor in spirit as well.
The world writes them off.
But God doesn't look at people the way the world does.
Blessed are the poor in spirit.
For theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
That's in Matthew 5:3.
And as Jesus said, In Luke chapter 7, verse 22, at the end of the verse, he said, To the poor the gospel is preached.
It's the poor who have hope.
And without realizing what he did, Nebuchadnezzar left hope in Judah when he left the poor there.
Let's pray.
Father, what an encouraging message this is, especially the latter part.
And Lord, we thank you that you don't look at treasures and people the way the world does.
And help us not to see them that way either, but to see them as you do.
And we thank you for the hope we have in the gospel of Jesus Christ.
And pray you'd find us faithful as a church continuing to teach it and also to spread it abroad.
In Jesus' name, amen.
