Episode Transcript
All right, good morning. 10 o'clock, and good to see everybody here.
Good to have Miss Vivian back.
We missed you, sister.
We missed all of you if you're not here, but we missed her.
She's been recovering.
We're in 2 Kings chapter 25 in verse 5.
2 Kings 25, verse 5.
That nice iPad that Brother Fulton got me a while back, for some reason my email wouldn't load onto it, so I have a smaller iPad today.
With my notes on it.
Always good to have a backup, isn't it, Brother Doug?
We begin in verse 5 today.
And Jerusalem, in our text, has been besieged.
And the puppet king, whose name was Zedekiah.
Had been placed on the throne by the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar.
And in that position, Zedekiah reigned in Jerusalem.
For over nine years before he began to rebel.
And because he began to rebel.
Nebuchadnezzar sent the Babylonian army back to Jerusalem to besiege it.
And so they surrounded this capital city.
And until the Jews inside Jerusalem ran out of food.
And so at that time, those soldiers in Jerusalem fled.
And the king and his personal guard fled.
And although it's maddening to me that the king Of Judah would abandon his capital.
It's understandable when you consider who King Zedekiah really was.
And the Bible told us when we were first introduced to him that he did evil in the sight of the Lord.
Another thing we should understand is that the Babylonian king, Nebuchadnezzar, and we've learned a lot about him in the book of Daniel, he was no dummy.
And he wouldn't have put a strong Jewish king on the throne in Jerusalem.
No way.
So when he put Zedekiah on that throne, he probably figured him to be a weak, pathetic coward, and he is, was.
So let's look at verse 5 now.
It says, And the army of the Chaldees, now that's the same as the Babylonians.
Pursued after the king and overtook him in the plains of Jericho.
That didn't take long.
King runs away, king gets caught.
Jericho is about seventeen miles from Jerusalem.
Now watch what Zedekiah's guards did when he was captured.
It says, and all his army were scattered from him.
And that's about what he deserved, isn't it?
He abandoned his capital and all those people instead of staying and fighting, and went it.
When he got captured, rather than his guard, his personal guards surrounding him and fighting to the death for their king, they ran.
They fled.
And now they have abandoned the very king they were supposed to protect.
But what does an evil king expect?
His soldiers' loyalty was conditioned upon them being comfortable and well taken care of.
And the minute danger arose, they fled.
Spiritually speaking.
This tendency of man to do that is addressed in Mark chapter 4 by the Lord Jesus Christ.
When he told his disciples about the parable of the sower, the seed being sown in that parable was the gospel, and he explains that.
But listen to what a certain kind of person does when he hears the gospel.
And it's found in Mark 4, verses 16 through 17.
Jesus said, And these are they likewise.
Which are sown on stony ground, who, when they have heard the word, immediately receive it with gladness. and have no root in themselves, and so endure but for a time.
Afterward, when affliction or persecution ariseth for the word's sake, immediately they are offended.
So in our flesh, man does not want to endure affliction or persecution for having the right convictions.
So he chooses not to have them, but pretends that he does.
These guards, the army who protected Jerusalem and who protected King Zedekiah.
Pretended they were loyal, but they really weren't in their hearts.
And whether it be afflictions that abide us when we profess to believe the gospel.
Or the afflictions that come with the attack of the Babylonian army, a man's inability to withstand afflictions will show him to be a pretender.
And persecution and affliction showed us that Zedekiah was a pretender and that his army We're also pretenders rather than defenders.
Now that's a big difference for us when it comes to the gospel.
The gospel, the loyalty we have to the gospel is this: my faith is in what Christ Jesus did on the cross when He died for my sins.
I am his.
I am in him.
I'm no longer of myself.
Yes, you see a human body here.
When this human body dies, the good part begins.
The really good part.
This is good right here.
But the best part begins.
And so I am therefore a defender of the gospel.
I'm not defending Jesus.
He took care of himself just fine.
He is God.
But my defense of the gospel is that when someone says, What must I do to be saved?
I don't sugarcoat it and say, Well, Just try to do the best you can.
That doesn't work for any of us.
Tell them you need to repent and put your faith in what Jesus did at the cross.
And if they say, well, that's that's a That's not right.
If I'm not a true defender, if I'm a pretender, I'll go, oh, well, okay, well, what do you think you should do?
Well, I think I should go and be baptized in water, and I think I should do the rosary in my hands and say these prayers.
And if I just said, oh, well, you know what?
That might just do it.
You'd go right ahead.
I'm not a defender of the gospel.
I need to say, no, that's a heresy.
That's not how you're saved.
There's only one name given under heaven among men whereby we must be saved.
And so Zedekiah and his armies were pretenders and not defenders, and many are when it comes to the gospel, when it comes to truth.
Verse 6, look down there, please.
So they took the king and brought him up to the king of Babylon to Riblah.
Now we're continuing here to look at these phases of captivity.
And we saw in our last lesson and the lesson before that the captivity of Jerusalem really began when the people turned their hearts away from God.
The enemy hadn't even shown up at their gates yet.
That's when it really began.
And we're watching these phases of the captivity.
Zedekiah, let's just get down to the king, rejected the Lord.
He yielded himself and his family and his servants, in fact, all of Judah.
He yielded them to Nebuchadnezzar.
And Zedekiah became the captive of Nebuchadnezzar, just like the rest of the people did.
And now Nebuchadnezzar becomes the king's judge.
And it is true that everyone will be judged.
Now, if you're an unbeliever, if your faith is not in Jesus, you've rejected the gospel, you said, nope, not for me.
Then, if an unbeliever is your judge, like we had here, we had an unbelieving king who was judged by an unbelieving king.
Then his verdict is going to be the one that's the most important to you.
You're going to live and die by that verdict.
But when you're a believer and an unbeliever is your judge, as was the case with Daniel, he was a believer, and an unbeliever was his judge.
Then his judgment is not the most important to you.
What's the worst thing that judge can do?
Take your life.
And then what happens, Brother Doug?
The best part begins, right?
For the Christian.
Now, from an earthly perspective, the judgment of Nebuchadnezzar could, at the very most, condemn Zedekiah to death.
Now he could have imprisoned him instead, could have tortured him, made him a slave, but death is the worst thing he could do to Zedekiah.
Now for a Christian, being sentenced to death by an earthly judge, which as we speak is happening in different countries in the world, in Nigeria most recently.
Christians being absolutely slaughtered by the Muslims for no other reason than the fact that they are Christians.
But for a Christian, and let's think of our brothers and sisters in Nigeria right now, being sentenced to death by an earthly judge is not the worst news you could ever hear.
Because upon your death you go to be with the Lord for eternity.
So, while the slaughter of these innocent Christians, meaning innocent in the eyes of any earthly law, is terrible.
We're not worried about where they are when they're killed.
It's amazing.
And this assurance that we have is how the Christian martyrs, including many of the apostles, We were able to boldly approach death even after they had been condemned by earthly judges.
John Hus was a Czech priest, and he was burned at the stake.
For allegedly committing heresy against the doctrines of the Catholic Church.
And in particular, John Huss spoke out against the doctrines of ecclesiology and the Eucharist as the Roman Catholic Church taught.
At the ecclesiology, meaning that the Catholic Church believed that their priest, their Pope.
Was originally Peter, Simon Peter, that he was the first pope, that's what they believe, and that their popes have the ability and the authority from God to serve as God's representative on the earth.
And to forgive people's sins and to tell them to do this penance and that penance, and they can purchase indulgences, it's insane.
And so John Huss basically told him what we would tell him.
It's not in the Bible.
The Bible doesn't say that.
And he was, John Huss was an early reformer.
He lived before the time of Martin Luther and John Calvin.
Who are also other reformers of Roman Catholicism.
But John Hus was martyred.
He was killed on July the 6th, 1415.
And he, even under the sentence of death, he refused to recant his position on the charges that were brought against him.
And on the day he died, he is quoted as saying, God is my witness that the things charged against me I never preached.
In the same truth of the gospel which I have written, taught, and preached, drawing upon the sayings and positions of the holy doctors, I am ready to die to day.
That's boldly approaching death because of the assurance of the gospel.
Now, after King Zedekiah was brought to Nebuchadnezzar, look back in your Bible in verse 6, it says, and they gave judgment upon him.
That is, a verdict was rendered.
And that's what judgment is: it's the verdict.
Of he or those who judge a case.
And Zedekiah had been found guilty.
Probably of treason because it said in our text earlier that he rebelled against Babylon against the king.
And he attempted to flee the authorities who were sent there to arrest him.
So now he's got an escape charge that was probably added to the count.
Now, this pitiful Jewish king is going to be judged by an unbeliever.
And this judgment is terrible.
Look now in verse 7.
And they slew the sons of Zedekiah before his eyes.
The worst thing that could ever happen to a father is this, to see his own children executed before his own eyes.
In fact, had Zedekiah been able, he surely would have traded his life for the life of his sons, would have laid his life down, but he couldn't.
He was bound as a prisoner and forced to watch that.
He had to watch helplessly as his sons were executed for his crimes.
And it would have been horrible enough for Nebuchadnezzar to have killed Zedekiah's sons in a prison and then told him about it later.
Hey.
Zedekiah, your sons have been killed.
It would have been even worse than that for the boys to be killed.
And then for their dead bodies to be shown to their dad.
But the worst possible scenario was that he openly watched Their executions, watched them cry in agony and breathe their last breath, and then saw their lifeless bodies laying before him.
And after this wretched scene, look at the very next thing that happens in verse 7.
And put out the eyes of Zedekiah.
Do you understand what this means?
It means the last thing Zedekiah saw with his eyes was the execution of his sons.
That's the last thing.
And although he would never again see anything with those eyes, the last thing he ever saw was the most horrible thing he ever saw.
Have you ever wondered?
My mind goes all kinds of places.
Have you ever wondered or expressed a desire about what you want to see Last before you close your eyes in death.
If you had the ability to make that decision.
Now, some of us don't, but You know, if God grants you that, if He grants me that choice, I want to see the faces of my wife and my children.
I do not want to see the faces of my mother or father because that would mean they would have to watch another son pass away.
Before they do.
And we may not get to choose what we see before we die.
But by God's mercy I hope it will never be anything as terrible as Zedekiah had to witness.
They put out his eyes and looked back in the text and bound him with fetters of brass.
And that phrase fetters of brass, that's one Hebrew word that just means brass.
So these, the king was bound with brass shackles.
That comes with being a prisoner, doesn't it?
And if you remember, far back in our study of the Old Testament, we looked at The materials that were used in making some of the furnishings of the Old Testament tabernacle And you may recall that brass was one of the materials used to make what's called the brazen altar.
Brazen doesn't mean daring, it means made of brass.
In Exodus chapter 27, verses 1 through 2, if you're taking notes, Exodus 27, 1 through 2.
And thou shalt make an altar of shittim wood, five cubits long and five cubits broad.
The altar shall be four square, and the height thereof shall be three cubits.
And thou shalt make horns of it upon the four corners thereof his horns shall be of the same, and thou shalt overlay it with brass.
So it was made of shittim wood, it was overlaid with brass.
And in the Bible, if you study brass, you will come to the conclusion, or you may come to the conclusion, it represents judgment.
It is a type of judgment.
And on this brazen altar, this brass altar in the Old Testament, burnt offerings were made.
Parts of a bullock or a bull were burned on that altar for a sin offering.
And so that fire was the judgment of the sin that was represented by that innocent animal.
So it stands to reason that the brass fetters with which Zedekiah was bound were fetters of judgment.
A judgment that had been executed upon him and on his sons.
And they blinded him, bound with Bound him with brass fetters and look back in the text, it says, and carried him to Babylon.
Now, rather than turning this.
Hapless, blinded, grieving king.
Boy, he was a mess.
Rather than turning him loose to just live out his days, Nebuchadnezzar carried him away as a captive.
I want to read to you what the prophet Jeremiah wrote about Zedekiah's last days.
This is in Jeremiah 52, verses 10 through 11.
Jeremiah 52, verses 10 through 11.
And the king of Babylon slew the sons of Zedekiah before his eyes.
He slew also all the princes of Judah in Riblah.
Then he put out the eyes of Zedekiah, and the king of Babylon bound him in chains, and carried him to Babylon, and put him in prison till the day of his death.
Now there's a backstory here that you'll have to read about in the book of Jeremiah.
Now Jeremiah was a prophet who prophesied during the reign of five kings.
While he was in Jerusalem, Jeremiah had been put in prison as well.
And he was put in prison by his own countrymen.
Under King Zedekiah, on the false accusation that he was colluding with the Chaldeans, that he was trying to join the Chaldeans.
The enemies.
And while in prison, Zedekiah, knowing that Jeremiah was a prophet of the Lord.
While Jeremiah was in prison, Zedekiah asked him, You heard anything from God?
And when Jeremiah told Zedekiah, Yeah, I have you're going to be delivered into the hand of the king of Babylon.
Well, that wasn't the kind of preaching that Zedekiah wanted to hear.
So he committed Jeremiah back to the prison.
Sent him back to prison.
Jeremiah was a preacher of truth, and he wasn't afraid of the judgment of liars like Zedekiah.
He could have told Zedekiah, King.
The Lord has shown me that you will be a great and mighty king, and you will defeat the king of Babylon, and you will once again join Israel and Judah together and rule all the world.
In peace for forty years.
He could have told him that, but that wasn't the truth.
That wasn't what God said.
His own people, Jeremiah's own people, refused to accept the prophecies that God sent to them through that mighty prophet.
And they would rather imprison the truth-teller and therefore imprison the truth than to accept God's will on the matter.
Romans chapter 1, verse 18 tells us about people like this.
Romans 1.
18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who hold the truth in unrighteousness.
And that word hold in the Greek language means to hold down, to detain it, to arrest it.
And that's what suppression is.
And those who suppress the truth, Have another thing coming their way, as told to us by the Apostle Paul in Second Thessalonians.
And in that chapter, we read about the man of sin and the revealing of that man of sin in those last days.
And there will be many who follow him.
In fact, most will, according to the Bible.
Such as the ones we read about in Romans 1:18, such as the ones like Zedekiah.
Who literally imprisoned the truth-telling prophet Jeremiah?
So 2 Thessalonians 2, verses 10 through 12.
2 Thessalonians 2, verses 10 through 12 say About these people, and with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish, because they received not the love of the truth that they might be saved.
And for this cause, God shall send them strong delusion that they should believe a lie, that they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.
So the ones who hold down the truth, who suppress the truth, will be subject to this very thing right here.
Now look in verse 8 with me in our text, 2 Kings 25, verse 8.
And in the fifth month.
On the seventh day of the month, which is the nineteenth year of king Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, came Nebuzaradon, captain of the guard, a servant of the king of Babylon, unto Jerusalem.
Verse 9 And he burnt the house of the Lord.
Now picture that.
What was formerly a holy place.
A place into which no unclean person would ever have entered was now turned to ashes.
I want to read you a portion of Leviticus chapter 21 to give you an idea of just how far gone the house of the Lord was.
Now, in.
The days in which Leviticus was written, the instructions were given to build a tabernacle.
That was the tent of meeting.
That was the one they could take down, move as God guided them through the wilderness, set back up.
And now, since Solomon built the temple, that's what we're referring to as the house of the Lord now, because it's a permanent fixture.
So the passage in Leviticus tells you in great detail how particular the Lord was About the sons of Aaron.
And as you may remember, the line of Aaron is where the earthly high priests come from.
Leviticus 21, and I'll read verses 16 through 23.
And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Speak unto Aaron, saying, Whosoever he be of thy seed in their generations that hath any blemish, let him not approach to offer the bread of his God.
Now, speaking of the high priest lying here.
For whatsoever man he be that hath a blemish, he shall not approach, a blind man, or a lame, or he that hath a flat nose, or anything superfluous. or a man that is broken footed, or broken handed, or crook backed, or a dwarf, or that hath a blemish in his eye, or be scurvy, or scabbed Or hath his stones broken?
No man that hath a blemish of the seed of Aaron, the priest, shall come nigh to offer The offerings of the Lord made by fire.
He hath a blemish.
He shall not come nigh, that means near, to offer the bread of his God.
He shall eat the bread of his God, both of the most holy and of the holy, only he shall not go in unto the veil, nor come nigh unto the altar.
Because he hath the blemish, that he profane not my sanctuaries, for I the Lord do sanctify them.
Now, if the blemish of a man of the line of the high priest, and let me just, if you don't understand that, let me remind you.
God's not saying that a person has to be physically perfect before he can be saved.
Not even close.
Because that renders all of us unqualified, right?
What he said is that for the line of the high priest, Aaron's lines, if you are going to be a high priest.
And you had any of these blemishes, yes, you could eat of the holy things.
No, you could not enter within the veil to make an offering.
And here's the only reason for that.
The high priest represented the Lord Jesus Christ, who was without spot or blemish.
That's why that was so important.
So don't go away thinking, well, I'm not sure I was supposed to be saved because I got a flat nose or I got a blemish on me somewhere.
Has nothing to do with it.
Now, If the blemish of a high priest could profane the sanctuary or the tabernacle.
How bad would it be if an unbelieving Gentile king not only entered into the sanctuary But also burned the house of the Lord to the ground.
Now, had the house of the Lord been respected by the Jews in those days, And had the Levites in the house of the Lord been godly men, Nebuchadnezzar would not dare to have approach.
Even Judah, much less Jerusalem and the house of the Lord.
But now He's judging that defiled, profaned house by burning it with fire.
Listen to what the Apostle Peter said about that kind of judgment.
It's found in 1 Peter 4, verse 17.
1 Peter 4, verse 17.
For the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God.
And if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God?
The house of God is the beginning place for judgment.
God had already given Judah over to her enemies because of Judah's sin.
And Judah's capital, Jerusalem, had been besieged by her enemies, to whom God delivered that once great city.
And the house of the Lord, now defiled and profaned, had been surrendered to the Gentile king Nebuchadnezzar.
You know, when the structure itself Ceases to serve the purpose for which it was built, then it's no better than firewood.
Now, this is a precious building to me, and I know it is to many of you all who've been here longer than I have.
When I come into this building, my heart's glad.
But you know, if I came into this building and none of y'all were here, and we had a We had a bunch of heretics in here, people who just accept anything as the truth.
My heart wouldn't be glad.
Now it'd be the same building.
But you know, I'd rather see it burned down than to house a bunch of people who don't believe the truth of God's word.
The most beautiful church in the world is arguably St.
Peter's Basilica in Rome.
And it was built over the place, allegedly, where St.
Peter, which is Simon Peter.
Where he was buried.
And there are over ninety popes built under that or built.
Ninety popes buried under that structure.
And it's got a dome that stands over 400 feet tall.
The inside of it is breathtaking.
I haven't been there, but I've looked at a lot of photographs of the inside of it.
And when it comes to architecture and the mosaics and the paintings and the design, all of that, it is absolutely breathtaking.
But the people who worship there are mostly Catholics.
And they believe, by their own admission, that Peter was the first pope.
And that each pope, as I explained to you earlier, is God's vicarious representative.
On earth, having the power to forgive sins and all that.
So, because of the heresy that's taught there.
Do you know what that marvelous St.
Peter's Basilica is good for?
It's good for burning, and if it were all wood.
It would burn swiftly.
But even the stones and the metals that were used to make it are good for nothing but to be burned because this So-called house of the Lord denies so many of the doctrines of Christ, such as the sufficiency of his atonement for our sins.
The worshipers, as they're taught by the priests, as they're taught by the Pope, hail Mary and ask for blessings from her, pray to the saints.
Two incredible structures: the House of the Lord built by Solomon and St.
Peter's Basilica.
And both have been defiled, and they're as useful to mankind spiritually as a bunch of firewood.
Now, this is even more ironic.
Were Simon Peter still alive, he would have fallen on his face and wept.
Over the primacy that the Catholic Church assigns to him.
If he would have walked, if he were able to be alive and walk in, they say, Oh, there's our first Pope, he would have fallen on his face and say, No.
I was not your first pope.
I'm a servant of the Lord.
Apostle.
He would have said, just like John the Apostle.
He must increase, or John the Baptist, excuse me, he must increase, and I must decrease.
This is not about me.
He would have said to these worshipers, Arise, do not worship me, do not bow to any statue of me.
He would have said, Listen to the Son of God, for he has the words of life.
Remember when Jesus told those few remaining disciples, He said, Will ye also go away?
And Peter said, To whom shall we go?
For thou hast the words of life.
The very presence and destructive actions of these Babylonians Was ordained by God.
He was not going to let the house of the Lord stand defiled.
It had to be burned.
And not only did Nebuchadnezzar burn the house of the Lord, but he also burned, look back in your text, the king's house.
Judgment began at the house of the Lord, and now it extends to the ruler of this disobedient nation of Judah.
You know, during times of strength, when King Josiah was on the throne, when David was on the throne, when Solomon was on the throne.
The enemy would not only have feared to approach the house of the Lord, but they would have also dreaded to approach the house of the king.
No Jewish army would have allowed it.
The Levites would have fought to the death to keep somebody out of that temple who did not belong, out of that tabernacle who did not belong.
And in those times of obedience, God's protective hand was over Judah, and he would not have allowed it.
But, as mankind almost always does, Judah took the goodness of God for granted.
And the king Zedekiah took God's goodness for granted.
In fact, he took Nebuchadnezzar's goodness for granted.
You may think, well, how was Nebuchadnezzar good to him?
Well, he didn't kill him right away.
In fact, he let him reign in Jerusalem for 11 years.
In the ninth year, he rebelled.
And Zedekiah's brother was locked up in a prison.
And Zedekiah wasn't yet there.
Now he is.
You know, many Christians take for granted God's goodness, too, especially when they're in prosperity, great comfort, ease of living.
I noticed, and I try to steer clear of too much political commentary up here, but I noticed that On September 11, 2001, when I was at a certain office doing some work, and you all remember where you were when the Twin Towers, some of you were still in your mother's womb, but it's okay.
But when the Twin Towers collapsed and we were under attack by the enemy, man, people put their differences aside pretty quickly around that time and came together.
And one of the things we saw or that was Announced that we saw was a great awakening, spiritual awakening.
Most of that was fake, I'm going to tell you, because those people went right back to the same thing.
And that very city where that took place 20 years later has elected a Muslim for their mayor.
How quickly they forgot.
In Romans chapter 2, the Apostle Paul was addressing those who judged people.
When they themselves were doing the very thing they were judging people for.
In verse 4, Romans 2:4, he wrote, Or despisest thou the riches of his goodness, speaking of God's goodness, and forbearance and long-suffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance?
Now hold that thought for a moment.
The goodness of God should not lead us to gloat or to turn away from Him or to take our own road.
It ought to lead us to repentance.
Not despite.
And Judah had despised the riches of God's goodness.
They despised his forbearance.
That is what he tolerated, what he permitted to happen.
They despised his long suffering, which was his patience toward them.
And to despise is to disdain or to think very little of.
And Judah thought little of God's goodness.
And because of this, not only was the house of the Lord burned, and the house of the king burned, but look back in your text also, and all the houses of Jerusalem.
So the very houses of the people who were subject to the king of Judah were burned.
And you know, the king, in his role, had the responsibility.
To ensure the safety of the people of his land.
That goes without saying.
And so, what he did in his actions, in his rebellion, is to fail to ensure the domestic tranquility of that country.
And even the preamble to our Constitution Reveals the importance of ensuring domestic tranquility because that was one of the reasons given by the framers for ordaining and establishing our Constitution.
It's found in the preamble.
And any ruler in this country, regardless of their political persuasion, and I'm going to tell you, it's all sides are guilty.
Any ruler in this country who does something that compromises our domestic tranquility has betrayed his or her oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States from all enemies, foreign and domestic.
And I'm going to tell you something.
Domestic enemies are our worst.
We're our own worst enemy in this country.
Yes, we have external enemies, but we're our own worst.
And Zedekiah betrayed the people.
Of Judah, of Jerusalem, by disregarding the heavenly constitution he had been given, which was the law of God, which is the word of God.
And look further in your text.
It says, And every great man's house burnt he with fire.
And although those houses were included in the phrase, all the houses of Jerusalem, they're specially mentioned here for a reason.
Let's look at what the Bible teaches us about the great man when it comes to judgment.
And it's in Revelation 20, verse 12.
Revelation 20, verse 12.
And I saw the dead.
Small and great, stand before God.
And the books were opened, and another book was opened, which is the book of life.
And the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books according to their works.
Did you hear that?
The small and the great will be judged at the same throne by the same judge using the same book.
Their works, the standard by which the small and the great will be judged, is also the same, and that is for the unbeliever.
That is what is called the white throne judgment.
If you are saved, you will not be judged at that throne.
You were judged in the person of Jesus Christ at Calvary 2,000 years ago.
So, you're not going to stand before this white throne judgment and have to tell God, well, you know, I mean, I trusted Jesus, but I do need to make my case about why I should be led into your heaven.
Nope.
Jesus made your case.
Your case was rested at the cross.
But for these who are small and great, the unbeliever.
They're going to be judged by the same standard.
And in burning every house with fire, Nebuchadnezzar's actions teach us that None who are condemned, regardless of their status, will avoid judgment.
None.
And I'll close with Hebrews 9:27 through 28.
Hebrews 9:27 through 28.
And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this, the judgment.
So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many, and unto him, them that look for him, shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation.
Our judgment is the judgment seat of Christ, where we receive rewards or loss of rewards, but we're saved. even so as by fire.
And next week we'll pick up with this truth and continue looking into this terrible ending for King Zedekiah and Judah.
Father, thank you for every person Who came, every person who tuned in this morning.
And Lord, we have great confidence that if our hearts are open to your word, you'll feed us.
And I thank you for the people who are hungry for your word, that don't require all sorts of entertainment and extracurricular things.
But just desire to hear truth and have it explained to them.
And I pray you've, Lord, that we've done that acceptably in your sight this morning.
In Jesus' name, amen.
