Episode Transcript
Good morning.
It's ten o'clock.
Let's go ahead and begin.
I've got the The heat on both sides now.
When you came in it was 60 degrees, which is quite scriptural because Jesus told the church at Laodicea, would there weren't hot or cold.
But they aren't lukewarm.
And we don't want to be a lukewarm church, spiritually or physically.
So we try to freeze you out and then warm you up, okay?
So I hope it's it'll be comfortable for you in a few moments.
Our text is 2 Kings chapter 25 and verse 17 2 Kings 25, verse 17.
Last week we ended with verse 16 and learned an important truth about the judgment of God.
And just to remind you, God was using the nation of Babylon, and boy, this was an empire. to execute judgment on the nation of Israel.
And God's very clear about that.
And specifically in our text, he was executing judgment upon Judah, the southern kingdom. and its capital, Jerusalem.
And we've learned a lot about what he did or what he had the Babylonians do in Jerusalem And the Babylonians, and if you've been following us for a little bit, you'll know they're also referred to as the Chaldees or the Chaldeans.
Chaldean was the language they spoke.
So they're interchangeable.
As far as our study is concerned.
And they had destroyed the houses and the walls of Jerusalem, had burned down the Lord's house.
And in verse 16, brother, I set it for temporarily.
I don't know what the schedule is on it, but I set it and put it.
Yeah, yeah, we're good.
Thank you, sir.
All right.
And in verse 16, the Chaldeans took even the things that were built by Solomon.
Several reigns before the time we're reading about.
And what we learned about that verse is that God is no respecter of persons.
Whether it's Solomon or Ahaz or any of the other kings, good or bad, he's not a respecter of persons.
And so when he judged Israel Through the Chaldeans, through the Babylonians, he didn't take into account how rich or how famous or how wise or influential Solomon was.
And now we're going to look at another truth concerning God's judgment.
And this is referring to the same pillars. and the sea, which is a very large bowl that contained water.
And then the bases, these are all construction terms in the Bible. and the bases that were made by Solomon.
So look with me in verse 17 as we continue looking at what the Babylonians took out Of the house of the Lord.
It said, The height of the one pillar was eighteen cubits, and the chapter upon it was brass.
And the height of the chapter three cubits.
So not only does the man who made these Fixtures not matter.
But the size of the fixtures also doesn't matter.
That's something we see right here.
To give you an idea of the height of one pillar, it said it was 18 cubits.
Now That may not mean much to you if you don't know what a qubit is, but a qubit is the distance between the tip of your middle finger and the crook of your elbow.
So as you can imagine, that may be a little different from person to person.
Some may have a longer distance and others a shorter distance.
But it's approximately 18 inches.
And the reason I say approximately is for the reason that I just gave you.
You don't want a child to measure a qubit, do you?
It won't even be, might not even be a foot long.
So these pillars, one of these pillars was approximately 27 feet tall.
In Genesis chapter 11, the Bible tells us that the whole earth was speaking the same language.
And that was a problem.
And those people there in the land of Shinar decided to build a tower.
And I want you to listen to Genesis 11, verse 4.
And here's what those people said.
And they said, go to, let us build us a city and a tower whose top may reach unto heaven.
And let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.
The aim of these people was to build a tower that would reach heaven, that was so tall it would reach heaven Now that'd be an awfully tall tower, wouldn't it?
And they probably hoped their efforts would be recognized.
Because of the height of that tower.
After all, that was the purpose of building the tower is to reach heaven.
So it has to be a tall tower, whatever their version of heaven was.
Now, what do you think God thought of that tall tower?
We're going to look at verses 5 through 9 and tell you what God thought. about that tall tower, and then you'll understand why these tall pillars in Solomon's temple didn't matter when it came to the judgment of God.
Genesis 11, 5 through 9 says, And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded.
And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language, and this they begin to do.
And now nothing will be restrained from them which they have imagined to do.
Go to, let us go down there and confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech.
So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth.
And they left off to build the city.
Therefore is the name of it called Babel, because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth.
That's where we get the term Babbling from.
If you have a supervisor, you know what babbling is.
And from then did the Lord scatter them upon abroad upon the face of all the earth.
So the reason the people gave for building the tower was so they wouldn't scatter, be scattered across the earth.
And so, what is the very thing that God did?
He disregarded their tower and he scattered them across the earth, confounded their language.
And so God's response here was at least threefold when it came to this tall tower.
Well, it wasn't a tall tower because it didn't get finished.
It was an imagination of their hearts.
They said, we're going to build a tall tower.
And God said, no, you're not.
You're not going to finish the city.
You're not going to speak the same language.
You're not going to live in the same place.
But his response was threefold.
One, he did not let them finish the tower.
Two, he confounded their language, and three, he scattered the people.
It is in the heart of man, and I think if you're a student of history, and I hope you are, if you're not, become one.
It is so interesting.
If you're a student of history, You'll see that it is in the heart of man to have a one-world government ruled by man.
That is just in the heart of man.
And the only government that's pleasing to God is not a one-world government, it's a one-God government.
And that's called a theocracy.
That means God rules.
A democracy, people rule.
An autocracy, one person rules himself.
And all the other acracies.
And then the best, in fact, the original government And the best government ever known was the theocracy that God instituted, not the one man instituted.
Man wants uh a certain section of this world wants Sharia law.
That's not a theocracy.
That's another man-made religion and a man-made government.
So that's why it doesn't work.
It won't work.
God's religion, the one true religion, is not oppressive.
It is liberating.
It gives us freedom to serve and worship our God.
But the others are oppressive.
And in heaven, God was and is the sovereign.
He's the ruler of all things.
He's the most high.
And on earth He was to be man's one source of life, of truth, and authority.
And the name Babel in the passage I read you is also translated in the Bible as the name Babylon.
Which we are studying both in the book of Daniel and in our text right here.
And Babylon had its origin, In rebellion against God.
It's exactly where its origin was, and that rebellion had its origin in Satan So it will help you to understand the origin of Babylon, the continuation of earthly Babylon, like what we're studying in Daniel and in our text here.
In order to understand the Babylon that is referred to in the book of the Revelation.
If you can learn these, you'll understand those a lot better.
That's why it pays to stay in here and do verse-by-verse study, be patient, learn these things one by one in their order.
And the Bible makes so much more sense.
But in the days of the Tower of Babel, the people tried to build a tall tower to reach heaven.
And what that did, it signified their desire to exalt themselves rather than God and to reign over the world.
In the days of Daniel, rather than a tall tower, Nebuchadnezzar dreamed of a great image, a tall image. that had the head of gold and the breast of and the arms of silver and then the thighs of brass and the legs of iron and the feet of iron and clay.
And that great image was like the great tower that the original Babylonians tried to build.
Because both of them, both then and in the day we're reading about, were the result of self-exalted rulers.
Remember what God did to the Tower of Babel.
He didn't let the Babylonians finish the work.
He scattered them and confounded their language.
And as you may remember this, the word Babel means confusion And I couldn't help but notice that when those rebels wanted to speak the same language, God confounded it.
Because they were doing that to exalt themselves.
But in the book of Acts, on the day of Pentecost, God took languages that were confounded and made them one.
Acts chapter 2 verses 6 through 7.
Acts 2 verses 6 through 7.
Now when this was noised abroad, the multitude came together and were confounded Because that every man heard them, that is the apostles, speak in his own language.
And they were all amazed and marveled, saying one to another, Behold!
Are not all these which speak Galileans?
So what we learn and what the Bible teaches is that God is not the author of confusion, but of peace, as the Apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthians.
And another way of saying it is God is not the author of Babylon, but of peace.
So when the people exalted themselves, they tried to speak one language and God confounded it.
When the apostles exalted God, God took what would have been a confounding, a confusing bunch of babbling.
Can you imagine if you weren't a Galilean, you were a Parthian or a Mead or an Elamite or wherever you were from, and you heard somebody speaking Galilean and said, I have no idea what they're saying.
That's confusion.
But when God is exalted, he takes confusion and he makes peace.
Now, just as old Babel or Babylon Could not build a tower that was high enough to impress God.
The height of the pillars that Solomon made were also not high enough to impress God.
God didn't tell the Chaldeans, hey Don't remove those pillars.
After all, they're very tall.
Leave them where they are.
That's an impressive work And it's interesting to me that just in my lifetime, which is now 60 years and two days, Three score years in two days.
See, it's I'm I'm getting to where I can say that I'm three-score years old.
That man has had the desire to build the world's tallest tower.
And right now that title of the world's tallest tower goes to a place called the Birj Khalifa in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.
And that tower stands. 2,717 feet tall.
That's over a half a mile straight up in the air.
And as impressive and expensive as that tower is.
God's not impressed.
He's not impressed at all.
He could take that tower and squish it with his little finger And the day, there will come a day that that tower will come down.
And I don't mean I hope not through an act of terrorism where it causes people.
However, that day is going to come in a day of judgment when God pours his wrath out upon all the earth, and the ones who will be in there will be the unbelievers, if there's anybody in there at all.
And that tower, along with all the other towers that have ever been built, along with all the other man-made uh structures, in fact all the elements on the earth.
Will be burned with fire.
And God's not going to say, leave that tower in Dubai.
It's a very impressive structure.
It's coming down.
Now look back in our text in 2 Kings 25 verse 17 to see what else the Chaldeans took with them to Babylon.
It says, and the wreathen work and pomegranates upon the chapiter round about all of brass.
And like unto these had the second pillar with wreath and work.
So the two pillars were the same.
Now we see another aspect Of this construction that God totally disregarded.
He had no respect for it.
And that was the intricacy.
Of the things that were taken.
We've looked at the author or the designer of the things that were taken, Solomon, and the height of the things, such as the pillars.
Now we're looking at the intricacy, the fine detail.
When you talk about wreathen work, that's uh decorative.
Those things were tediously and expertly woven and formed.
And they were pleasing to the eye, just like a work of art might be.
And we see a better description of them if we refer back to 1 Kings chapter 7 verse 17, which we've studied before, it's probably been a year, where it says speaking of these uh designs, and nets of checker work and wreaths of chain work.
For the chapters which were up on the top of the pillars, seven for the one chapter and seven for the other chapter.
Now let's look at the lesson here.
The intricate work.
Represents the skill of the ones who made the wreathen work.
God had given Solomon, just like he did Moses whenever the tabernacle was built.
Well, when the temple was built, God had given Solomon men who were experts in their field to do all this work.
And there would have been no finer craftsman or craftsmanship in the world at that time than what was carried out for the house of the Lord.
And it was amazing.
And we studied it in great detail when we studied the reign of King Solomon.
And yet what we see here Is that the judgment of God, as executed by the Chaldeans, the Babylonians, did not spare even the finest, fanciest works of man's hands?
No matter how wonderfully made it was, God's judgment did not spare it.
And just as the fame of Solomon And the height of the pillars did not exempt the breaking up of all those things in the temple, so the finest efforts of skillful men Also, did not prevent their works from being taken away.
You know, man's pretty impressed with himself.
Mankind is pretty impressed with himself in the flesh.
Speaking of the sixth trumpet in the Revelation, chapter 9, verse 20.
It's Revelation chapter 9 and verse 20.
The Bible says.
And the rest of the men which were not killed by these plagues yet repented not of the works of their hands.
That they should not worship devils and idols of gold and silver and brass and stone, and of wood, which neither can see nor hear nor walk.
The key phrase there is that those men, and this is a future event, but it's speaking of it as though it were in the past, because it's it's a done deal as far as God is concerned.
We're just waiting on time to catch up with truth.
But it says they repented not of the works of their hands.
So what did they do?
They saw the works of their hands as being far too intricate. for them to look away from and to look unto the one who could save them.
And because they repented not of the works of their hands, they relied on the works of their hands.
That's what happens.
If you rely on the works of your hands, you don't repent of the works of your hands.
And because of that, they did worship devils and idols and silver and brass and stone and wood and worship things that cannot see nor hear nor walk.
So when men rely on the works of their hands to save them, Then they will worship the things they see, whether that thing is an idol or another person or even the so-called worshipper himself.
And in the case of the people in Jerusalem, all the works of their hands were destroyed And as the Revelation verse told us, there will be those who repent not of the works of their hands.
But that doesn't have to be you.
And in fact, if you've put your trust in Jesus as your Savior, then you've ceased from your own labors trying to save yourself with the works of your own hands.
You said, I can't do it.
And you've trusted in the hands that were nailed to the cross, the hands that healed the sick, the hands that said, Come on to me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I'll give you rest.
The hand in which we are kept by the power of God, according to John chapter 10 There's a wonderful verse that tells us how to go from trusting in the works of our hands to trusting in the works of Jesus.
And it's found in 2 Corinthians 5, verse 1.
2 Corinthians chapter 5, verse 1.
And before I read this, just know that the tabernacle being referred to here. has two meanings.
Of course, one we get our image of the tabernacle from the Old Testament, but then it's also speaking of the body.
It says, For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved We have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.
The tabernacle being described there is the body, but the other truth is that there was a tabernacle that was made with hands in the Old Testament. of which we've read and studied great length before.
If you've been with us for some time and you've touched on it in the Genesis to Jesus class as well.
And the tabernacle in the wilderness was a portable building.
The temple in Solomon's day was designed to be a permanent structure, but what do we know about that structure?
It was not in fact permanent, was it?
Because it was ransacked and torn down and rebuilt and torn down again, and every time it lost the glory that it once had.
It was not permanent because it was built by man's hands.
When the Babylonians tore down the temple and carried away its parts and its furnishings.
The children of Israel should have claimed the truth that is in 2 Corinthians 5. 1 that we just read.
Looking around them and seeing everything torn down, everything burned.
They should have said, huh, y'all can do all this.
I still have a body.
I'm part of a building.
That's not made with hands.
And you can destroy everything around me, and you can even destroy my body.
But you can't take me away from that building of which I am a part.
Because Jesus is its foundation.
You know the Apostle Paul hadn't yet come to write this truth, but it was always there.
The children of Israel had allowed the works of their hands to be their religion, and they had ignored the works of God.
That's a very simple way to put it.
Now let's look back in our text in 2 Kings 25.
If you've just joined us on the internet, let's look at verse 18 to see yet another truth about God's judgment.
Verse 18, and the captain of the guard took Sariah the chief priest and Zephaniah the second priest.
Okay, let's look at that.
So not even the chiefest religious men were spared.
Now let's look at the chief priest, who as far as I can tell was the same as the high priest.
And the high priest was the one with the greatest responsibility because he represented the people to God and he represented God to the people.
Once a year he went into the Holy of Holies, that inner sanctuary of the temple or the tabernacle too.
And he offered blood for his sins first, and then for the sins of the people.
And he was the only one who could go in there, and he could go in there only once a year, and he could go in there only with blood.
There are all kinds of reasons he could die inside that holy place if he did not obey God's word.
And in doing this, that high priest or chief priest was a type of the Lord Jesus Christ, except Jesus didn't offer blood for his own sin because he had none.
He offered it for our for us, his blood for us.
The high priest, just to tell you how exacting and how prohibitive their life really was in some aspects. was not allowed to touch a dead body.
Not even his dead mother or dead father.
You know we sometimes when our loved one pass away we may put our hand on their hands or kiss em on the forehead or something.
High priest couldn't do that.
In fact, he couldn't go out of the sanctuary.
He couldn't have certain physical deformities.
And even though the high priest was a sinner, just like you and I, one who needed to be saved by the grace of God, He had to maintain a pattern of living and worship and service that was beyond reproach.
And when Israel walked with the Lord, when the children of Israel walked with the Lord, this high priest would have been under the protection of the Lord's hand, he would have been surrounded by Levites who were willing to give their lives for him.
He would have been embraced by the people camped round about the tabernacle as it moved through the wilderness.
And those people would have loved him and respected him and would have fought for him.
However, just like the kings we've read about, many of the high priests and Levites defiled themselves too.
And we've studied the accounts of that through our journey of 1 and 2 Samuel and 1 and 2 Kings.
And what we're seeing in our text here, because the Babylonians took the chief priest and the secondary priest away, We're seeing that the title of high priest alone does not spare man from God's judgment God didn't say, you know, I've sent the Babylonians to tear down the king's house, the house of the Lord that's been defiled.
These tall pillars and this intricate work and all of that doesn't matter, but I'm not going to mess with the high priest.
Didn't matter to God.
This high priest high priest had defiled themselves.
And for us today, it would be the same as a a church pastor.
Saying, well, I'm exempt from the judgment of God, or I'm exempt from these rules because of my title.
In fact, our text text tells us the second priest was also taken away.
So that means associate pastors can't use their titles to avoid judgment either, right?
I wouldn't count on the finest title man could bestow on me to try to escape the judgment of God because there's not one.
There's not a title that can deliver me from that, except child of God We are the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus.
That's the title.
That's the only one that matters.
And the only high priest in whom we may be exempt from judgment.
Is the great high priest, Jesus Christ.
In Hebrews chapter 4, verse 14 tells us, seeing then that we have a great high priest.
That is passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession.
And it's too bad.
That the chief priest and the second priest in our study, trusted in themselves and in their titles rather than in the living God Because had their trust been in God, they still may have been carried away.
Daniel was.
But had their trust been in God, they would have never allowed the practice of idolatry in the temple.
They would never have allowed the sodomites to build houses near the house of the Lord.
They would not have permitted those women to weave the hangings for Asherah, their false gods, in that area.
But the title of chief priest and second priest would avail them nothing When it came to God's judgment through the hands of the Babylonians.
Now let's notice another group of men who were not spared.
Look back in your text.
It says And the three keepers of the door.
Now that would be the door of the temple.
And the word keeper means a guard Now how ironic is it that the captain of the guard of the Babylonians took as prisoners the guards of the temple Now one who is a dedicated guard would fight an enemy who threatened that place or threatened the person whom he was guarding.
And the temple of the Lord was worth fighting for.
But that fight had actually been lost long before the Babylonians entered the city of Jerusalem.
When the temple was turned into a center of idolatry, then its security was already compromised before they knew it.
In fact, it had really been surrendered quietly, just as the keepers of the doors here were taken away quietly.
We don't see in our text that there was any kind of fight or tussle.
They were just taken away.
Now the word keeper is also translated in the Old Testament as the word watchman.
And the Bible has some things to say about watchmen So let's follow it as we keep in mind that these were the guards of the door at the temple.
Isaiah 62 verse 6.
Isaiah 62 verse 6.
Here's what the Lord said, I have set watchmen upon thy walls, O Jerusalem.
Which shall never hold their peace day nor night.
Ye that make mention of the Lord, keep not silence And give him no rest till he establish, until he make Jerusalem a praise in the earth.
And the word watchman here is the same as the word keepers in our text.
Now let's imagine that these watchmen or keepers of the door of the house of the Lord Had been like the watchman of whom Isaiah wrote, they would have never held their peace about God's word.
They would never have allowed unholy things to enter into the temple and defile it.
But they kept their peace.
They didn't glorify God's word.
And we learn that a keeper, and by the way, let me say something about that.
If you're still working at a at a job around other people, It's amazing how people are allowed to talk about all kinds of stuff at work.
A lot of it's inappropriate.
Boy, you bring up religion and you want to tell somebody the gospel all of a sudden, hey, you can't be pushing religion on people.
And I'm not saying to be pushy.
You're a witness.
You're a witness.
You tell people what you saw.
You tell people what has happened.
You tell them what God's word says.
And if they say no, you shake the dust off your feet and you go to the next person.
But it's amazing how all of a sudden, and it's been that way for some years, that that is a subject you can't talk about.
Well Don't get yourself fired, but don't let your light go out either.
Alright?
There's a way to do that.
And uh I I s stand in the same place you are, even though I have a different job.
I stand in the same place you are.
It's a difficult place, but God's put me there for a reason.
And we learn that a keeper or a watchman is not just someone who stands there keeping their mouth shut like Some guy on an elevator just punching a button.
Those watchmen are heralds.
They make mention of the Lord and they don't keep silent.
Now, what kind of watchmen are in many churches?
They're silent watchmen.
Oh, they say a lot, but they're silent.
When it comes to declaring the gospel of Jesus Christ, they don't preach the fall of man, they preach how good man is They don't preach the hopelessness of man to save himself.
They preach that, oh, everybody will get there originally.
You know, God's a loving God.
Everybody will get there eventually.
They don't preach the sure judgment of God upon sinners or the lake of fire or the narrow way to life that's found only in the gospel of Jesus Christ to the exclusion of all other religions.
And because those watchmen are silent concerning the gospel, then they will be taken away, just like this chief priest and the second priest were.
And these silent watchmen who don't declare the gospel, who don't believe it themselves, they'll be cast into the lake of fire.
And then their title as watchmen will not matter.
Verse 19 in our text, and out of the city he took an officer that was set over the men of war Now, this is demoralizing for a nation.
When the leader of the military is captured, the hearts of the soldiers often faint.
And just as the chief priest and the second priest could not rely on their titles to avoid judgment, neither could this officer use his title to escape the same.
It's especially humiliating for an officer to be captured.
That's the prize catch for the enemy, is to capture an officer.
And that's why some soldiers would rather die fighting than to be taken alive as prisoners.
The shame.
And the verse continues, and five men of them that were in the king's presence which were found in the city.
Now these men would probably have been the soldiers who personally attended to the king.
You might call them the palace guard.
The men of war, we learned, have already fled the city.
But these five remained.
And just like the king The chief priest, well, the officer over the men of war, and these five men Could not use their positions to escape capture.
These five men couldn't say, hey, wait a minute.
We need to stay here Because we're the king's guard, and one of these days, if a king comes back to Jerusalem, we need to be here to guard him.
No, Babylon didn't need that.
They didn't want to leave those guards.
When the king fled, these guards probably thought, oh, we're off the hook.
If he gets in trouble, we won't be with him.
But they were not, and neither was, look back in your text. the principal scribe of the host which mustered the people of the land.
Now the word mustered just means to assemble for war.
So this man was in charge of the conscription or the draft of fighting men.
And so the Babylonians would surely not want to leave him in Jerusalem.
That's all they needed was a Jew who knew how to assemble other Jews for war.
So the captain of the Babylonian guard took him away, and also, look back in the text, threscore men of the people of the land that were found in the city.
I know what three score is.
Score is 20, so three-score is 60.
And these Babylonians. were quite exact in their capture of the Jews.
And we read prev previously that only certain of the poor were left in Jerusalem.
They didn't even leave all of the poor, but just certain of them.
And they didn't spare 60 people of the land as it's expressed in this verse.
You would think, well, what what does sixty matter?
That's not that many.
The Babylonians were very exact.
And because of the positioning of this group of men in this verse, these sixty, It may be that these were fighting men who did not flee, or at least men who could have served in the army.
It's not real clear, but in either case, they were captured and taken away.
Now look in verse, I'll read verses 20 through 21, and then we may have a little time to go over some of that.
And Nebu Zarodon, the captain of the guard, took these and brought them to the king of Babylon to Riblah.
And the king of Babylon smote them and slew them at Riblah in the land of Hamath.
Now it would appear that the ones mentioned in verse 19 were the ones who were slain here.
If he had slain everybody who was taken, then we wouldn't have a Daniel or a Hananiah or Michel or Azariah.
And they are clearly alive in the book of Daniel, as are some of the other Jews who were captured.
But slaying the men that were mentioned in verse 19, who appear to be men of war, men of uh significance when it comes to military.
Slaying those men would be further assurance that they wouldn't rise up against the Babylonians even in captivity.
I mean after all, if you took a bunch of fighting men and you colonized them in a new country, they still know how to fight.
And they still know how to get together and train.
So this took care of that.
And there toward the end of the verse, so Judah was carried away out of their land.
In other words, in this manner, Judah was carried away out of their land.
And I want us to notice this possessive pronoun their, T-H-E-I-R.
They were carried away out of their land.
I'm going to go back to Leviticus 14, verses 33 through 34a.
Leviticus 14, verses 33 through 34a.
And the Lord spake unto Moses and unto Aaron, saying, When you become into the land of Canaan, which I give to you for a possession, now stopped right there.
Because I wanted to show you that God gave this promised land to the children of Israel for a possession.
It was theirs.
And it was theirs not because they earned it, but because God gave it to them.
And God's warning to the children of Israel, which included Judah, is found in Deuteronomy 4.
1.
He said, I'm going to give you this land.
And then later in Deuteronomy 4. 1, he said, Now therefore hearken, O Israel. unto the statutes and unto the judgments which I teach you, for to do them, that ye may live and go in and possess the land which the Lord God of your fathers giveth you.
Now this was a really simple principle.
God would give them the land.
In that land they would live.
God would teach them his statutes and his judgments, and he already had.
And if they would hearken to those statutes and judgments, then they could not only live in the land, but they could possess it.
It would be theirs.
And in the verses we just read, Judah was carried away out of her land.
Can you guess why?
They were no longer possessors of the land.
And if they were no longer possessors of the land, then they could no longer live there.
All because they hearkened not to the statutes and the judgments of the Lord.
It really was that simple.
When you read of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, you'll see that from Abraham to King David was 14 generations.
And from King David to this place right here.
The carrying away of the Jews into Babylon was 14 generations.
Guess what happens 14 generations after this?
The birth of our Savior.
Let's pray.
Father, thank you so much for the ones who came, the ones who tuned in, for the good attention.
And Lord, I thank you that when we hunger for your word, you feed us every time.
You never fail.
And we're grateful for that today.
And may it make a difference in our lives in Jesus' name.
Amen.
