Episode Transcript
All right, good morning.
It's 10 o'clock.
We've got a great looking group this morning, and I'm sure we have a few online watching us too.
We are in 2 Kings chapter 25.
And we finished verse 9 last week.
But we'll look at a couple of things.
I wanted to, I was reading this bulletin this morning and on the very back.
I noticed the verse that was put on there, and I thought about how from a pastor's point of view, this is a wonderful verse to use to measure the growth of your church.
And I don't mean the Numerical growth.
We'd love to have more people here, but we're more concerned about the individual growth in the church because God's going to add those who He wants here. over time.
So we're not trying to use worldly methods to get people to come and stay.
We're just using truth.
And if people love truth, they'll stay and if they don't, they won't.
And they may not love the way we s we teach it.
They may want to hear truth somewhere else.
That's fine too.
But I read this verse.
It says, We're bound to thank God always for you, brethren, as it is meet.
Because that your faith groweth exceedingly, and the charity of every one of you all toward each other aboundeth.
So there's two things that we look at from this verse as a pastor.
To see if the church grows.
And one, does your faith increase?
Do you know more about the Bible when you leave here than you did when you got here?
And two, Do you love each other?
Do you show that love to one another?
And absolutely we love seeing that here at this church.
Brother Fulton, now the stand back and just watch people.
And we love it.
So if if you ever wonder uh what we think about how the church grows and what our evaluation of of the church is when it comes to growth.
That's it.
Did your faith increase?
And do you show love toward one another?
God will add the numbers as he sees fit.
We're not worried about that.
All right, we're in 2 Kings chapter 25.
See, even the bulletin can be a blessing to us.
And it is.
We read about the judgment Nebuchadnezzar executed over the city of Jerusalem.
In particular, verse 9 told us About the burning down of the Lord's house and the king's houses, in fact, all the houses in Jerusalem.
And especially mentioned was the burning down of the great men's houses.
And last week.
We looked at that toward the very end of the lesson, and we had to hurry and close on that point because of time.
So I wanted to pick back up with it for a few minutes this morning because I wasn't through with some of the things that I think we need to learn. from the fact that these great men's houses were burned down.
And I've narrowed it down to a couple of things here that Or takeaways for us.
The fact of the judgment of the great men whose houses were burned ought to do two things. for the reader, for those who read that passage.
One, it ought to warn the great men and women.
When this talks about great men, we're just put great women in there too.
It ought to warn the great men and women that their earthly greatness cannot exempt them from judgment.
So it doesn't matter who calls them great or what the earthly reason is.
He's a great athlete.
He's a great businessman.
He's a great neighbor.
He's a great this or that.
None of that exempts a person from judgment.
And two, the second thing it ought to do is to comfort the poor. in this world, the weak in this world, the cast out in this world, the ones of whom society has a low view That that condition they're in cannot exclude them from salvation.
Cannot.
You can be as poor, as weak.
As helpless in the view of the people on this earth, and you are a perfect candidate still for salvation.
And I love that.
So, whether great or small, the Bible is clear that the unbeliever Will stand condemned at the white throne judgment.
And we read about that last week in Revelation chapter 20.
And I wanted us to look this morning at some of the things the so-called great man will say at this judgment.
Because they're going to have something to say.
In Matthew chapter 7, Jesus spoke about righteous judgment and prayer.
He spoke about what we call the golden rule, and then he talked about two kinds of gates into which a person may enter And I'll pick up there, it's Matthew 7, verse 13, if you're taking notes.
Enter ye in at the straight gate, for wide is the gate.
And broad is the way that leadeth to destruction.
And many there be which go in thereat, or as we might say, right there, thereat.
Now, this gate Jesus is speaking of is wide enough for many people to enter.
And the way that leads to that gate is broad enough for many people to travel.
And its destination is destruction, which means perdition or waste or damnation.
I think destruction is clear enough.
But what it does not say Is that only the small and the undeserving or the weak or the cast-offs or the fugitives travel that broad road or enter that wide gate?
Or suffer that destruction.
Now verse 14, Matthew 7, 14, Jesus continued.
Because straight is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.
So many found the broad way and the wide gate that leads to destruction.
And he said, few find the narrow way and enter the straight gate, which means narrow.
And few there be that find it.
Not only is the gate narrow, but so is the way.
So it doesn't have many travelers on it.
But this way and this gate lead those travelers to life.
What does the other one lead them to?
Destruction.
However, what it does not say about this narrow way and this narrow gate that lead to life is that only the great and the privileged and the rich in this world.
May travel its way and enter its gate.
It doesn't say that.
It does say that few will find it.
So the small and the weak can find comfort.
In that truth, that if they are among the few who travel that road, then they may be saved.
And what is that road?
It's the gospel.
It's The way, Jesus said, I am the way, and he talked about two ways there, didn't he?
I am the way, the truth, and the life or destruction.
The life I am the way, the truth, and the life.
But the unbeliever who considers himself to be great And whom others consider to be great is going to be traveling down the ro the Wide, broad way, entering in that wide gate, and you know what he's gonna be looking for?
Life.
He's gonna seek life when he enters that wide gate.
And those people will include Priests, pastors, politicians, company owners, star athletes, or anyone else who falls into the category of great ones.
According to this world.
And we know what many of those unbelievers will say because the Bible tells us.
Jesus tells us in Matthew 7 verses 21 through 22. 7 verses 21 through 22.
Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the will of my Father, which is in heaven Now, to stop right there, he later tells us the will of his father is that we believe on the one who sent him So it's not about doing all these works to be saved, and you should be comfortable knowing it's not your works that save you.
He said, But he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven, many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord.
Now I want you to picture all these great men and great women in society's view.
Have we not prophesied in thy name?
Now there's your religious people right there.
And in thy name have cast out devils, and in thy name done many wonderful works.
Why I donated a billion dollars to this charity over here. in this poor little country.
Wonderful.
Wonderful work.
The great will suddenly call Jesus Lord The great will present their works done in Jesus' name as wonderful works, as great works Because Jesus said they themselves will tell him that they've done wonderful works.
They'll claim to have cast out devils in Jesus' name.
And all of these great men will say they've done all of these great things on earth in Jesus' name.
Well, then, how could Jesus refuse such great men?
After all, what a case that is to plead before him.
But listen to the next verse in verse 23, where Jesus said, And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you.
Depart from me, ye that work iniquity.
Jesus isn't buying it.
He knows these great men.
He knows their evil works.
He knows their hypocrisy.
And he tells them he never knew them.
That means they're not his sheep.
That doesn't mean he's never heard of them.
He knows all things.
It means there is no relationship there.
They're not his sheep.
So they don't get to be with him.
They don't have eternal life How do we know they're not his sheep?
John 10, 27 through 28.
John 10, 27 through 28 My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.
Now, what did he say to those who will be at that judgment seat, saying, or that great white throne judgment, saying, Lord, Lord.
He said, I will tell them, I never knew you.
But he says about his sheep, my sheep hear my voice, and I know them.
There is a relationship there.
And they follow me.
And I give unto them eternal life.
And they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.
If you are seeking assurance of your salvation, it's found in that verse right there.
Jesus doesn't profess to his sheep, I never knew you.
He says, I know them.
He doesn't say to them, Depart from me.
He says unto them, I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish.
They'll never depart from him.
Now, thinking about these great men of Judah, and the great men anywhere, everywhere of all time.
How can the great and the small be held accountable like this?
Well, I want to read from 2 Chronicles chapter 34 verse 30 2 Chronicles 34 verse 30, which is another telling of the reign of King Josiah, as you know, if you've been in this class long.
What you read in the books of the 1 and 2 Kings and the 1 and 2 Chronicles will be about the same time periods.
You'll see details in 2 Chronicles about a king that you didn't see in 2 Kings, just like you do in the four Gospels in the New Testament.
No different.
And so in that passage speaking of King Josiah, who was on the throne, but at our point in our study, he is not.
He's dead.
And his sons have reigned, and they're wicked.
Here's what happened.
It said, and the king went up to the house under the house of the Lord.
And all the men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem and the priests and the Levites and all the people, listen, great and small And he read in their ears all the words of the book of the covenant that was found in the house of the Lord.
So every one of them, the great and the small, heard the word of God read to them by their own king on that day They can be held accountable.
They will be held accountable, and they cannot say, we didn't know.
No, your king read it To all the people, to the great and the small.
So when Nebuchadnezzar burned the houses of the great men, they were without excuse Their greatness did not excuse their sin or their judgment.
And remember, it was God who ordained Nebuchadnezzar, who used Nebuchadnezzar as his servant.
To do all these things.
He delivered Judah into the hands of the Babylonians.
Babylon didn't come and overtake Judah and with God up there wringing his hands going, oh no, what am I going to do now?
No.
He ordained and orchestrated every bit of it And knowing that the judgment of Nebuchadnezzar would fall upon the small and the great, the only hope for the Jews was Jesus Christ.
Who would one day be offered for their sins.
See, at this time in history, Jesus had not yet come to be born of a virgin and live his life A perfect life and die for the sins of man.
So all of the Old Testament saints, those who were saved, did it or bec or became Christians by looking forward and believing in that Messiah who would come, believing that all of those sacrifices and ordinances, the words of the prophets, all represented that truth that one day would be fulfilled.
In the person of Jesus Christ.
And so knowing that the judgment of God is sure.
And will fall upon the condemned, their only hope was the Christ who would once be offered for their sins.
And in each case.
Whether they were believers or unbelievers, whether they were great or small, they were going to die, and they were going to lose all their earthly possessions.
And so are you, and so am I.
You can tell me, well, I've got a bunch of money saved up in my 401k.
Wonderful.
You're not taking it with you.
You're going to leave that behind.
Or I've got uh all my beautiful children and grandchildren, you're going to leave them behind.
You're not taking any earthly possessions with you when you die, not a one.
In fact, Solomon wrote that when a man dies, his excellency dies with him.
You you go into the ground just like you came at your naked and helpless and Job said, Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked thither shall I return.
The Lord is given, the Lord is taken away.
Blessed be the name of the Lord.
But with Christ as their hope, the great and the small in Judah, had a future that Nebuchadnezzar could never take away and one he could not burn with fire.
If their hope was in their things, then certainly he could destroy their hope.
But if their hope was in the Lord, then nothing he could do to them could take that away.
And it's the same with you if you're a Christian.
Now look with me down in verse 10.
We're back in 2 Kings 25 and verse 10.
Let's begin to expound upon that verse as well.
And all the army of the Chaldees that were with the captain of the guard break down the walls of Jerusalem round about.
Now remember, when you see the Chaldees or Chaldean, it's the same as the Babylonians.
And burning the Lord's house, burning the king's house, and the houses of the great men, and all the other houses of Jerusalem.
Was not enough because now we see that the walls were broken down.
Now if you think about this from a military point of view, from a strategic point of view.
If you burn all the houses down inside the walled city and then you leave and you leave some people there because we know that the poor were left, some of the poor. then they you've left the poor inside of a fenced city.
And all they've got to do is shut the gates and build up their power, and they might be something to contend with later on.
But this would this breaking down of the walls after burning all the houses down, this breaking down of the walls Would prevent the people who were still in Jerusalem from fortifying their city against the Babylonians.
It would expose them and make them vulnerable.
And allow the Babylonians to enter the city at will without having to go through a gate or climb over a wall.
And all the way back in the book of Deuteronomy, in chapter 28, God warned the children of Israel.
About an enemy that would one day come upon them as Babylon did.
I'm going to read this to you.
And if you remember what the Babylonians have done to Jerusalem, you're going to say, hey, hundreds of years before this, God seemed to be talking about Babylon.
To the children of Israel before they ever even went into the promised land.
Deuteronomy 28, and I'll read verses 47 through 50. 47 through 50.
Speaking to the children of Israel, Moses said, Because thou servest not the Lord thy God with joyfulness and with gladness of heart for the abundance of all things.
Therefore shalt thou serve thine enemies, which the Lord shall send against thee in hunger.
Now what happened when Babylon surrounded Judah or Jerusalem?
They ran out of food, didn't they?
Hunger and in thirst and in nakedness and in want of all things, and he shall put a yoke of iron upon thy neck until he have destroyed thee The Lord shall bring a nation against thee from far, from the end of the earth, as swift as the eagle flieth, a nation whose tongue thou shalt not understand.
A nation of fierce countenance which shall not regard the person of the old nor show favor to the young.
Now, having already read in some detail how God brought Babylon against Judah and how Jerusalem was starved out.
And the people were carried away, all of them except for just a few, it said a certain of the poor were left there We can see that those things were at the very least an earthly fulfillment of what God warned Israel about.
If they departed from him spiritually.
Because that's what that passage from Deuteronomy is.
The children of Israel were gathered together, and Moses was reading to them and Talking about what would happen, and he told them, because God told him, one of these days, this people is going to depart from me.
One of these days they're going to serve idols.
One of these days they're going to leave me.
And these are the things that were going to happen when that occurs.
God's got the perfect foreknowledge.
He already knows in advance every step we're going to take, every misstep we're going to take.
And so he gave those prophecies.
Looking further down in that same chapter in Deuteronomy 28, if you'll just write down verse 52, speaking of this same enemy.
And he shall besiege thee in all thy gates.
What did Babylon do?
They besieged Jerusalem.
Until thy high and fenced walls come down.
What did Babylon just do?
They broke down the walls of Jerusalem.
And it says about those high and fenced walls, wherein thou trustedst throughout all thy land, and he shall besiege thee in all thy gates throughout all thy land, which the Lord thy God hath given thee.
Now in our text and the verses before, Babylon besieged Jerusalem.
They surrounded Jerusalem.
And most recently in our text, they broken down the walls.
That were around about the city.
And the Deuteronomy text says, Until thy high and fenced walls come down, wherein thou trustest?
In other words, God said the children of Israel would one day depend upon the walls of their city.
To repel the invasion of an enemy that God sent against them because of their sin Now that's as foolish as trying to hide from God's judgment or run from God's judgment.
But that's what they would do.
God said it, and that's what they were doing.
He said, you're going to trust in those walls, and those walls are going to be torn down by the enemy.
And that's what the Babylonians did.
After Adam and Eve sinned in the garden, they did a similar thing as the children of Israel.
Who trusted in their high and fenced walls.
And you'll find this in Genesis chapter 3, verse 7.
Genesis 3, verse 7.
Adam and Eve have already eaten from the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
So they're in trouble.
And it says, and the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked, and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons.
So they first tried to hide their nakedness from God by putting fig leaf aprons on.
Now that's foolish in and of itself, isn't it?
Now I'm glad Abigail doesn't make fig leaf aprons for people.
They might look pretty at first, but they'd wilt and wither and finally fall apart, wouldn't they?
Aprons by Abigail has a high standard of workmanship and uses only the finest materials.
So Abigail, if you're running out of slogans for your advertising, I'll let you go back and listen to that and you can claim it as your own.
I think she's not having any trouble selling aprons at all.
But continuing down in the Genesis passage that I read you, we read verse 8.
This is Genesis 3, verse 8.
Speaking of Adam and Eve.
And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day.
And Adam and his wife hid themselves.
From the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden.
So they tried to hide their nakedness from God.
Now they've just tried to hide themselves from the presence of the Lord altogether.
Now, how foolish it is to think you can hide from God, but that's what sin does to your mind.
Sin deceives you.
And speaking of, we move way forward in the Bible Speaking of the events that are that follow the opening of the sixth seal in Revelation chapter 6.
Verses 15 through 17 say this.
That's Revelation 6, verses 15 through 17.
And the kings of the earth and the great men.
Now, did you hear that?
The great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains.
And the mighty men, and every bondman and every freeman, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains.
And said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb.
That's a capital L, that means Jesus. for the great day of his wrath is come, and who shall be able to stand?
So these will be both great men, who are particularly described as kings, And rich and great and chief and mighty.
But there will also be those who are bondmen and freemen, not necessarily rich, or great, or mighty, or chief.
And all of them, whether great or small, have been deceived by sin.
Just like Adam and Eve were Just like the inhabitants of Jerusalem who trusted in their walls to protect them from the wrath of God, and based on the words in the Revelation passage I just read you.
Those deceived men are going to be hiding in the dens and the rocks of the mountains Hoping that their hiding place will keep them from having to withstand the wrath of God They actually will believe that the mountains and the rocks falling on them will prevent them from having to endure that wrath.
Now we just learned about the earthly efforts by men to avoid the earthly effects of the wrath of God.
That's what Jerusalem was doing, trusting in those walls to keep the enemy up.
And those people who are deceived by sin are going to trust in earthly barriers.
To keep God's wrath away.
Now that's you have to be deceived to believe that that's going to be effective.
But I also want us to consider what these walls mean spiritually.
Because there's always, always a spiritual lesson to be learned from an earthly lesson.
If you don't, if you spend all your time in the Bible learning about the earthly lessons, then you've profited some.
But if you are able to see the spiritual lessons, you've profited greatly.
If you learn everything you can about the marriage between a man and a woman just from an earthly perspective, you've profited greatly.
You've learned it. that you should be the husband of one wife or the wife to one husband, and that you should be faithful and you should love each other and not defraud each other.
And if if that's all you learn You have profited.
You're going if you stay with that, you're going to have a better marriage than most of the people do in this world.
But if you learn that the marriage teaches about Jesus and his church, which Ephesians chapter 5 clearly tells you, and other places too, then you're going to profit greatly.
And then you're going to see that the faithfulness that Jesus, the groom, has to his bride, the church, ought to be the kind of faithfulness that you have for your wife, and it'll make your marriage even better.
So we're going to look at what these walls mean spiritually.
So in building walls, there has to first be laid a foundation.
In Ezekiel chapter 13, verse 14, Ezekiel 13, 14, speaking through the prophet Ezekiel to these false prophets of Israel, here's what God said.
So will I break down the wall that ye have daubed with untempered mortar.
Now y'all know what daubing is.
If you don't, do you know what a dirt dauber is?
Yeah.
They make these little nests of mud on your windowsill or on the you know wherever they can get and it takes them a long time to do it, but they go and get a little mud and then they daub it on there.
So they're dirt daubers.
I'm sure there's a long scientific name for them, but we call them dirt daubers or mud daubers He said, I'll break down the wall that ye have daubed with untempered mortar and bring it down to the ground, so that the foundation thereof shall be discovered, and it shall fall.
And ye shall be consumed in the midst thereof, and ye shall know that I am the Lord.
Now the walls of the false prophets that were referred to there in Ezekiel aren't physical walls.
They're the false doctrines that they propped up and taught the people.
They are the idolatry into which they led the people.
They are the false prophecies they told the people.
But when God promised to break those walls down, He didn't just promise to break the walls down and say, okay, that's good enough.
He did it so, the Bible says, so that the foundation thereof shall be discovered or uncovered.
The foundation that supported those walls was the religion of this world.
And that religion is rooted in rejection of the one true God.
That religion is founded by the devil.
It's like bumping the tree and seeing what kind of fruit falls from it.
And when you see what kind of fruit falls from the tree, then you can Make a determination about the true nature of the tree.
Now, if I don't know much about trees and I'm no expert at them, But because I grew up in Lubbock and we had pecan trees, mesquite trees, and everything else was cotton.
So I knew about two kinds of trees out there.
But if I don't know much about trees and a man tells me he wants to sell me an orchard of western sly pecan trees, and I picked a bunch of those up off the ground on the half-shell when I was a teenager.
Then I might look at those trees and say, oh, well, those are pretty trees, and pay them the money.
And when those trees bloom later in the spring, And then they begin to bear acorns.
All I've got to do is bump one of those trees.
And watch some acorns fall down, and what do I quickly conclude?
I have not purchased a western sly of country.
Now God said he would tear down the walls and discover or uncover the foundation of those walls.
Here's the difference in the religions of this world and the one true religion of God.
Both have foundations and both have walls.
But the worshipers of the religions of this world trust in the corrupt walls which are held up by the corrupt foundation.
That supports them.
And those who worship according to the one true religion, worship the foundation, which is steadfast and sure, and we practice that religion that's Represented by the walls.
Now, who's that foundation?
The Bible tells us.
1 Corinthians chapter 3, verse 11.
1 Corinthians 3, verse 11.
For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ.
Very clearly tells us the foundation of the one true religion is Jesus Christ.
That's why when you meet up with somebody who says, well, I'm a Mormon.
We believe in the Bible.
We just have a second book.
The pearl of great price, and we believe that the in Joseph Smith's revelations, or you talk to somebody who's a Muslim, they say, Well, we we believe in God.
We have a Quran and all that.
Ask them What do you believe about Jesus Christ?
If you have one question, you have one question you can ask somebody Who comes to you with whatever their religious beliefs are, even if they say, well, I'm a Baptist, ask them, what do you believe about Jesus Christ?
And they will tell you by their words whether Jesus Christ is the foundation of all the other doctrines they believe.
That doesn't mean all their doctrines are going to be exactly correct, because it's easy to make a mistake if you get led astray.
But what's your foundation?
Is it Jesus Christ?
If that's the case, then when you tell me what your doctrine is, and I say, now you know the Bible says something different.
If your foundation is Jesus Christ, you'll say, oh, well, show it to me.
And then if the Bible corrects you, you'll say, praise God, thank you for that, because my foundation is Jesus Christ, and I want my walls to be true walls.
I want them to be good doctrine.
But spiritually speaking, the foundation Jerusalem and Judah at large, but we're talking about Jerusalem here, laid for its walls was not Jesus Christ.
It did not represent Jesus Christ.
And therefore, it was not worth anything more than to be a pile of rubble, to be torn down.
So the Chaldeans or Babylonians broke those walls down.
And remember, the houses of the families of Jerusalem, including the king's house and the Lord's house. were so defiled that they were also good for nothing but firewood.
Now let's look at verse 11 and 12 in our text.
I'm going to read them together and then we'll make some comments.
Now the rest of the people that were left in the city, and the fugitives that fell away to the king of Babylon, with the remnant of the multitude did Nebuzeradon The captain of the guard carry away.
But the captain of the guard left of the poor of the land to be vine dressers and husbandmen Now I couldn't help but notice that the Babylonians considered the fugitives to be more of a prize catch than the poor of the land.
The fugitives were those who had fallen away, which is what the Hebrew word for fugitive means, fall or fall away.
There's some different applications for it.
But the poor were not seen as a threat to the kingdom of Babylon.
And the Babylonian strategy was to burn down the houses, tear down the walls, and carry away all the Jews into captivity, except for the poor, certain of the poor.
Who would be left to dress the vines and be husbandmen?
And vine dressers, those who tended to the vines, the grapevines, the any fruit that grew on a vine.
And husbandman, the word means to plow or to dig.
So that's what farmers do, isn't it?
That's what if you have a garden, that's what you do, that's what I do.
Now why wouldn't the Babylonians take them captive as well?
Well, we already discussed the low view that the world has of the poor.
And let me tell you, the politicians who get up and say, what about the poor?
Most of them aren't any more concerned about the poor than they are anything else.
They're concerned about their pocketbook and their special interest.
And if they can take some of your tax dollars and launder it and say, well, you know, this is for the foundation for whatever cause it is, the poor, the children, the needy.
Well, we've had about 50 years of that kind of drivel, and it just seems to be the same as it was when I was a little boy.
It's not changed any.
But because the world has a low view of the poor.
And certainly that had to play some part in the captain of the guard's decision to leave them in Israel.
And I'm sure that decision came from his king and he simply executed it.
But another thing we have to consider when asking, why would he leave the poor in Jerusalem, just a remnant of people?
Who had nothing, who could, who were assigned to just do two things, dress the vines and plow, plant, garden.
We have to remember the greater plan that God had for Israel He had a plan to restore their land one day.
Ecclesiastes chapter 9, verses 14 through 18.
Ecclesiastes 9, verses 14 through 18.
And remember, if you didn't know, Solomon wrote the book of Ecclesiastes many years before King Josiah reigned in Judah.
And he wrote this.
There was a little city and few men within it.
Now, what comes to mind right now?
Jerusalem.
And there came a great king against it and besieged it and built great bulwarks against it.
Now who would that be?
That's Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians.
Now there was found in it a poor wise man.
Who's left in Jerusalem?
The poor.
And he, by his wisdom, delivered the city.
Yet no man remembered that same poor man.
Then said I, Wisdom is better than strength.
Nevertheless, the poor man's wisdom is despised, and his words are not heard.
The words of wise men are heard in quiet. more than the cry of him that ruleth among fools.
Wisdom is better than weapons of war, but one sinner destroyeth much good.
Now he wrote those last two sentences just like he wrote the Proverbs.
Why was that poor, wise man still in the city after it was besieged?
He was left there because the king esteemed him very little.
And yet that man was wise and delivered the city not with weapons of war, but with wisdom.
Now when you read this, you may wonder, well, who who was that poor man?
Are we going to get a name?
The prophet Nehemiah went to Jerusalem after this to encourage the people to rebuild the Lord's house and to rebuild the walls of the city.
And I don't know that he was a poor man because the Bible tells us he was the Persian king's cupbearer.
So he served the Persian king.
But when he went to Jerusalem, he did present himself as poor.
He didn't take a big entourage with him.
He kind of just rode among the people and observed.
But regardless of who the poor wise man was from an earthly perspective.
There was a poor, wise man who would save a city, and his name was Jesus.
Listen to Matthew man, this is beautiful.
Matthew chapter 8, verse 20.
And Jesus saith unto him, The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man hath not where to lay his head.
Now that's poor.
2 Corinthians chapter 8 verse 9.
2 Corinthians chapter 8 verse 9.
For ye know that the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor.
There's a poor wise man That ye through his poverty might be rich.
Jesus became poor for us.
And that poor man saved a city.
In fact, the name of that city. is something we're going to talk about when we meet again here next week.
And we'll finish out that thought.
It's beautiful.
So y'all come back or tune in again if you're on Facebook.
Let's pray.
Father, we're so grateful for your word.
And Lord, I can't think of anywhere more exciting to be than your house when truth is taught And I thank you for those who are hungry for it, who've paid attention to it today, and I pray that we'd now take that with us, meditate upon it throughout the week, and may it help our walk with you in Jesus' name.
Amen.
