Christ in the OT - The..

Welcome to Cornerstone Reformed Baptist Church. Thank you for using and sharing our resources. What you're about to hear is God's Word from one of our teaching elders. We trust that God's Word will inspire, instruct, and bless you. For further teachings or information on our ministry, please visit us on our website at cornerstonerbc.

com. That's cornerstonerbc.com. Well this evening we will continue our study in the series that we began many months ago and we will retain our study this evening in the Old Testament. We've been in the Old Testament for a couple of months now and we have one more study after this and then we'll find ourselves in the New Testament.

But this week the topic of our study is going to be, in particular, we're going to be concentrating our efforts on the downfall of Israel and the downfall of Judah and the people who went down with that nation. In other words, we're going to look at why is it that Israel and Judah were destroyed by pagan nations. Why did God allow for that? Why did actually God bring forth that destruction on that nation? And then we're going to look at the consequence.

Many died through those battles. Many died. But there are a remnant that did not die and who were taken into exile. We call them the exiles. And then we're going to look at the exiles and have a look at what the Lord did in their lives during that exile and what were the consequence of their sin.

was in that matter. So if you remember last week, our topic of study was the kings and if you recall we spoke about the fact that the monarchy in Israel was established upon a united kingdom. The first king was Saul and he was the people's choice and fairly early into his reign the Lord deposed him because Saul was disobedient to God. He's shown himself to value his own opinion and his own thoughts, his own inclinations, that above the Word of God. So God deposed Saul and rejected him as king and gave that kingship to the one who is after his own heart.

He gave that kingship to David. However, Saul, he continued to reign until he was killed in battle, the battle that he was killed in, as well as his sons. And then David then takes or assumes the throne in Hebron for seven years. And then later on, once Saul's son is deposed, he then becomes the king of the United kingdom, the monarch of the United Kingdom for another 33 years. So David was a king for 40 years over the whole of Israel.

And the Bible tells us that during David's reign that the people or Israel experienced a peace. because David was a man after God's own heart. In many, many areas he was a sinful human being. No one would claim him to be perfect by any stretch, but he knew what worship is, he knew what repentance is, and he knew what it is to walk in the ways of the Lord. But then after David came his son Solomon, who received wisdom from God, and for a period it seemed like he was reigning well, but then Then his heart got involved, the corruptness of his heart.

He allowed himself to be allured by the things of the flesh, giving himself over to the desires of the world, doing the very thing that God had commanded him not to do in the book of Deuteronomy. If you remember or recall what we spoke about last week, he now wanted more wives for himself. So he had 700 wives and 300 concubines, giving in to the flesh, also making alliances with all these nations, And the very reason why God said not to do this is because these women will take your heart away from the only true God. And in fact, that's what happened under Solomon's reign. He brought in the gods of his wives and into the nation of Israel, into the nation that belongs to God, Yahweh, the only true God.

And so what we have is we have God looking upon Solomon and God is upset with what he sees. So he decrees that this kingdom will split after Solomon dies. The kingdom will be split. There will be a northern kingdom and there will be a southern kingdom. So this takes place.

Solomon's reign was from 970 to 930. Now in 930, his son Rehoboam takes position as king in the southern kingdom. If you remember, the southern kingdom was two tribes. We have Judah and Benjamin, but he will be known in the Bible from this point on as Judah. And the northern kingdom is ten tribes, and it will be known from this point on, for the most part at least, in the Bible, as Israel.

Israel is the north, and Judah is the south. And as we said, Last week, the northern kingdom was the one that was destroyed first, but the northern kingdom also did not have any righteous kings. King after king after king. 19 consecutive kings in the northern kingdom, and every one of those kings did evil in the eyes of the Lord. None were deemed righteous.

King after king. And warning after warning that the Lord had given to these people, and yet they continued to rebel. The kings did at least And the kings, it's not as though they just didn't serve God. As you would remember from last week, an evil king also brings in the pagan worship practices from the surrounding nations and he brings them into Israel. He brings in and he builds shrines and he makes monuments from metal.

He builds what they call high places, places of worship. He synchronizes, that is to say, the worship is still in the temple, well that's in the South, but they worship, they still believe in Yahweh, but they also bring in other gods. So Yahweh is a God, we'll worship Him as well as other gods. And by doing that, of course, what are they doing? They're violating the first and most important commandment, thou shalt have no other gods before me.

And so it was only a matter of time after they did not heed the warning of God that what was prophesied in Hosea chapter 11 was to take place and that is complete destruction and overtaking by the Assyrian then superpower led by the king Shalmaneser V. Now, I want us to open our Bibles just to get a bit of a grasp of how this all panned out in the Bible. So if you can open to 2 Kings, and we're going to be reading from chapter 17, and we'll be reading from verses 6 through 24. I was going to look at reading the whole chapter, but we'll just isolate it to 6 to 24. Just so we can get a bit of a grasp of the sin of the Northern Kingdom and the reason why God gave them over to this Assyrian superpower.

And don't think for a moment that Assyria was more noble. Not at all. They were a wicked nation. They didn't even recognize God. However, God even used this wicked nation to come and destroy His own people and the Northern Kingdom.

And then God will then, as we see in the prophecies, He will also destroy Assyria for their wickedness. So we'll read 2nd Kings chapter 17 from verse 24, my apologies from verse 6 to 24. 2nd Kings chapter 17 from verse 6 through to 24. In the ninth year of Hosea, the king of Assyria captured Samaria, and he carried the Israelites away to Assyria and placed them in Hala, and on the harbor, the river of Gozan, and in the cities of Medes. And this occurred because the people of Israel had sinned against the Lord their God, who had brought them up out of the land of Egypt from under the hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and had feared other gods, and walked in the customs of the nations whom the LORD drove out before the people of Israel, and in the customs that the kings of Israel had practiced.

And the people of Israel did secretly against the LORD their God things that were not right. They built for themselves high places in their towns, from watchtower to fortified city. They set up for themselves pillars and asherim on every high hill and under every green tree. And they made offerings on all high places, as the nations did, whom the Lord carried away from before them. And they did wicked things, provoking the Lord to anger.

And they served idols, of which the Lord had said to them, You shall not do this. Yet the Lord warned Israel and Judah by every prophet and every seer, saying, Turn from your evil ways and keep my commandments and my statutes in accordance with all the law that I command your fathers, that I may send to you that and that I sent to you by my servants the prophets. 14. But they would not listen. but were stubborn, as their fathers had been, who did not believe in the Lord their God.

They despised his statutes and his covenant he made with their fathers, and the warnings that he gave them. They went after false idols and became false, and they followed the nations that were around them, concerning whom the Lord had commanded them that they should not do like them. And they abandoned all the commandments of the Lord their God, and made for themselves metal images of two calves. And they made an Asherah, and worshipped all the high hosts of heaven and Serb Baal. And they burnt their sons and their daughters as offerings.

and used divination and omens and sold themselves to do evil in the sight of the Lord, provoking him to anger. Therefore the Lord was very angry with Israel and removed them out of his sight. None was left but the tribe of Judah. 19. Judah also did not keep the commandments of the Lord their God, but walked in the customs that Israel had introduced.

20. And the Lord rejected all the descendants of Israel, and afflicted them, and gave them into the hand of the plunderers, until He cast them out of His sight. 21. When He had torn Israel from the house of David, they made Jeroboam the son of Nebat king. 22.

And Jeroboam drove Israel from following the Lord and made them commit great sin. The people of Israel walked in all the sins that Jeroboam did. They did not depart from them until the Lord removed Israel out of his sight. And as he had spoken by all his servants, the prophets, so Israel was exiled from their own land to Assyria until this day, 24. And the king of Assyria brought people from Babylon, Qathar, Avar, Hamath, and Sepharvarim, and placed them in the cities of Samaria instead of the people of Israel.

And they took possession of Samaria and lived in its cities. Amen. That's the word of the Lord. Samaria is the northern kingdom of Israel. It's the great city up in the north.

But as we can see in that passage, in verse 6, we can see why it is that the Lord why the Lord brought about the destruction of the Northern Kingdom. Why the Lord had brought in the superpower, the Assyrians, in the way of the then king Shalmaneser or Sargon II. But now Shalmaneser V and other kings before that were afflicting Israel, the Northern Kingdom, before that. And He brought them in so that they would oppress them and eventually destroy them, taking many back. It says in verse 6, that they deported a great deal of people from Israel back into Babylon.

But also, we're told in the last verse we read, in verse 24, that they repopulated Israel from surrounding nations. They brought people in to intermingle, so that Israel would lose its identity, and its culture, and its religion. Israel would never again be an independent nation. Israel now is lost. It's destroyed.

And this took place, beloved, in 722 BC. It's a year that we should try to remember. 722 BC. 930 or 931 is when the kingdoms split. So this is only a little over 200 years later.

that king after king after king after king rebelled against God and then they would not listen they would not repent we heard that in the passage and therefore God gave them gave them over gave them over that's the northern kingdom Then you have the Southern Kingdom. The Southern Kingdom also had 20 kings. However, they weren't 20 consecutive evil kings. There were a few righteous kings. Some were definitely evil.

We think of kings like Ahaz who sacrificed his son. to false gods. Or we can look briefly last week at King Manasseh and we saw the evil that he brought about in the southern kingdom. 55 years of reign. There was reformation towards the end where God disciplined him after him being taken captive into Babylon and brought back.

However, he was an incredibly evil king. And when you think about the evil kings, you're thinking about the righteous kings like Hezekiah, who was a king who established everything according to the law of God and reinstituted the temple, for example. He restored the temple, and then he reinstituted the priesthood in the temple. but the evil kings do the opposite. So it's like a vicious circle whereby they will come in and destroy the things that Hezekiah had put into place as a righteous king, as an example, and the evil king will now set up those things that are abomination in the eyes of God, the things that are detestable before the Lord.

That is building high places, that is to look at what the nation is doing in the way of idols and and their pagan worships and bring that into the nation and build up and make and establish metal images and altars and shrines to false gods. That's what they did, even to the point where we have kings that are noted to have sacrificed their own children. to these false gods this is how serious sin became and so we have in this time when the northern kingdom 722 BC when the northern kingdom was overtaken by the superpower of Syria the king that was in reign in the southern kingdom was king Hezekiah he came into reign a few years before that in 720 around 727 725 27 BC he came into reign And he was the king in the south at that time. And beloved, he was a good king. As I said earlier, he broke down all the rebellious things and the abominations before God.

And he established what he believed was rightful and consistent with the law of God. Even to the point, just to give you an indication, if we remember back in the wilderness, you remember how the children of Israel were rescued from Egypt and they rebelled against God. And God then sent them a plague of fiery serpents. And you remember what Moses was instructed to do, and these people were dying, they were flocking everywhere, there was no remedy. God told him to put up a bronze serpent, and everyone who looked to the serpent, in faith, looked to the serpent, was healed.

They kept it. So they brought this back to the land, and they set it up, and began to offer sacrifices to the bronze serpent. This is incredible. Hezekiah destroyed that bronze serpent. He got rid of it.

He got rid of everything that he thought was anti-Yahweh. And so he did the best he could. Now, he wasn't the perfect king. He did make mistakes, but he was seen as a righteous king because of his intentions and because of what he did. He did uphold the law of God.

Now, the reason why I bring Hezekiah is because he was the king in place when the northern kingdom was taken over by Assyria. And you might think, well, why is it that Assyria didn't attack the south? Well, in fact, it wasn't as though they didn't want to. Because the facts are the southern kingdom was also on the brink of being destroyed even in that time. even in that time.

You see, the Assyrian superpower was on the move for many years and Hezekiah, he made an enemy with the Assyrians. So the Assyrians were going around and claiming much land over in the east. They were all over the place and they went down to Egypt as well and they conquered Egypt and they destroyed Egypt. And they were going all over the place, this Assyrian empire, to conquer land, or what they would do is either take the land, or what they would do is they would bring a king in the foreign land in subjection to them. And that's what we call a caesarean and a vassal treaty.

So there's a great king and there's a lesser king. The vassal is the lesser king. So the king would come and say, we're gonna overpower you. The other king, the lesser king says, we can't defend ourselves against such a mighty, forbiddable force. So the lesser king would then give in to the demands of the greater king and the greater king would say I need you to pay this tribute every year this amount of gold and it was an exorbitant amount of money or gold or silver or whatever now Hezekiah refused to pay tribute to the then Assyrian king so he made an enemy and the king noted that because at that point Hezekiah had made alliance with Egypt but when the Assyrians had gone down and destroyed the alliance in Egypt And they came through, and they were fixed to come through a few years later towards Jerusalem, and they pretty much all but destroyed Judea.

They really went through and destroyed much of Judea. And as they approached Jerusalem, Hezekiah said, I'll pay the tribute. And he did. He gave the king all the gold, all the silver in the temple. He gave him all the gold and all the silver in his palace, because he knew at this point This king means business and we're not going to be able to stand against him But even with that tribute it didn't the peace didn't last very long because it was only a matter of time when the the king and then it's a king by the name of Sennacherib because this is a few years later.

So this is about maybe six or seven years later Sennacherib comes round and and he now lays siege of Jerusalem. He comes and Hezekiah can't pay him off. He's given him all his gold and silver from the temple and from his palace. He has no ally in Egypt which was wrong of him to do anyway because Yahweh never says go and become an alliance or ally yourself with the Egyptians. It's always to refrain from that.

Yeah, and so he finds himself in a pretty big predicament, this Hezekiah. And the army comes to the walls of Jerusalem and they start to taunt the people. One of the king's officials shouts out in a language, and you've got to remember in these days everyone spoke a different language, right? But this person knew how to speak the language of the Jews. He was probably speaking Hebrew at this point in time.

And he starts to taunt the people who are listening and are afraid because they're being sieged in. And he says to them, don't believe this Hezekiah. He keeps telling you that you're God, that Yahweh will deliver you. He won't. He's lying.

Don't believe him. don't believe him. But beyond this, he begins to go further and now he begins to defile God himself. Because one by one, speaking on behalf of Sennacherib the king, who sees himself as the almighty king of this almighty empire, you know, he's gone around defeating all these nations and he's got his real pride and arrogance issue. And he comes and his spokesman speaks on his behalf and says, and starts naming the cities that Sennacherib had conquered.

And with the city, he would name the God and says, that God could not stand in front of Sennacherib. He'll name another city and that God, he'll say, that God could not stand against the mighty forces of Sennacherib, one by one. And then he comes and says, as to you, Judah, and your God will not stand before this. Mighty King Sennacherib. And so when Hezekiah hears this, what does he do?

He falls on his knees, he tears his clothes off, he dresses in sackcloth, and he comes before the Lord in prayer. He comes before the Lord in prayer. And then the Lord gives him assurance. He says to Hezekiah, he says, Judah will not fall yet. It will not fall yet.

Sennacherib, this mighty king, will not conquer Judah. Yet. So Sennacherib, this was his army were there and his spokesman and now Sennacherib finishes the battle that he was fighting and now he makes his way to Jerusalem, comes around Jerusalem with a whole bunch, tens of thousands of his his soldiers and Then the Bible tells us in that night the angel of the Lord comes and slaughters a hundred and eighty five thousand Assyrian soldiers the people of Jerusalem wake up the next morning to find corpses bodies all Over because the Lord had given victory What a lesson for Hezekiah. What a lesson you you aligned yourself with Egypt Egypt was all but destroyed. You thought you could pay them off and give them the tribute and that would not be enough to satisfy a hungry tyrant like Sennacherib.

From the beginning you ought to have trusted in God and in God alone. He was a righteous king but as we can see that even those who are deemed as righteous kings were not perfect kings. They were not perfect kings. So the Lord spared Jerusalem. But beloved, that peace didn't last very long.

Because after Hezekiah, you remember me saying this last week, his son was Manasseh. Manasseh was born to him, which was an incredibly evil king. And he built up all the things that are detestable to God, once again, throughout the whole nation. And really, the Lord, the Bible speaks to Manasseh as being one of the most evil kings in the Bible. One of the most evil kings in the Bible.

And after Manasseh, we spoke about him last week, so we don't need to recollect this week, but after Manasseh, you have his son, which is Amon, who was evil again, and he reinstituted also the rebellious worship against God, idol worship and so forth. And although Amon's son is Josiah, and if you remember from last week, Josiah was that young righteous king who came into the kingdom at the age of eight, and he did reform to Judah like no other king. He found the law of God, which is the book of the covenant. He found it and it was read to him and he purposed in his heart with his elders and the priests and everyone to follow that law, the law of God, and to institute the reform that God would have. Now, he did what he could.

He reinstituted the priesthood. He cleaned up the temple. He broke down the asteros and the Baal worship and all the worship in high places. He reinstituted the Passover, which is something that was neglected. The Passover, as God had ordained for it to be, had been neglected from way back in the time of the judges.

Beloved, when the people first came into the land, it was the judges that were leading them. From that point, the Passover was neglected. So the kings would actually, there may have been practice of Passover, but not as the Lord had prescribed for it to be practiced. But Josiah brought some great reform to Jerusalem, to Judah. A lot of Judah was destroyed at this point in time.

However, the height of the evil and the apostasy that this people had already committed against Yahweh through previous kings had seen God's patience run its course. And now it would be His will to destroy Judah, to bring a total destruction of that place. Not with the Assyrians, because the Assyrians now have been conquered, their power had diminished finally in a battle called Carchemish in 612, but now we have the powerful forces of the Babylonians led by their king, Nebuchadnezzar. We know King Nebuchadnezzar because of the book of Daniel. And so the Lord will give them over to this king to be completely destroyed.

And I want you to hear the words of 2 Kings 23, 25 through to 27. If you want to open your Bible, 2 Kings 23, 2 Kings 23 from verse 25 and 27. And it reads this way, before him there was this speaking of Josiah, Josiah had died now, and he was actually killed, he was killed by the Egyptians, he had no business in a battle that was being waged, and he got involved, he got shot with an arrow, and it speaks this way, from verse 25, before him there was no king like him who turned to the Lord with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his might according to all the law of Moses, nor did any like him arise after him. Still, the Lord did not turn from His burning of His great wrath, by which His anger was kindled against Judah, because of all the provocations with which Manasseh had provoked Him. And the Lord said, I will remove Judah out of My sight, and I have removed Israel, and I will cast off this city that I have chosen, Jerusalem, and the house of which I said, My name shall be there.

They're devastating words, aren't they? So what we have is a succession of four evil kings after Josiah family members. And then we have one after the other, after the other, after the other, and finally in 586 BC, the temple is destroyed, Jerusalem is overtaken, and a whole multitude of people are taken into captivity, into exile. into Babylon, even though during this time, during the reign of those kings, there were good, noble, righteous prophets sent by God, like Jeremiah, to warn them so many times. But the kings treated even the prophets with contempt.

Even one of the kings took the words of Jeremiah, which are the inspired words, and he tore it up page by page and threw it in the fire, burned the Word of God. It's incredible the level of sin and apostasy and rebellion that these people had got themselves into. So if you have your Bibles, let's open up and let's just have a look at the last period before the exile. It's going to be found in 2 Chronicles 36. So 2nd Chronicles 36, and we're gonna be reading from verse one.

Okay, the people of the land took Jehoahaz, the son of Josiah, and made him king in his father's place in Jerusalem. Jehoahaz was 23 years old when he began to reign, and he reigned three months in Jerusalem. Then the king of Egypt deposed him in Jerusalem and laid on the land a tribute of a hundred talents of silver and talents of gold. And the king of Egypt made Eliakim his brother, king over Judah and Jerusalem, and changed his name to Jehoiakim. But Necho took Jehoahaz, his brother, and carried him to Egypt.

Jehoiakim was 25 years old when he began to reign, and he reigned 11 years in Jerusalem. He did what was evil in the sight of the Lord his God. Against him came up Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, and bound him in chains to take him to Babylon. Nebuchadnezzar also carried part of the vessels of the house of the Lord to Babylon and put them in his palace in Babylon. Now the rest of the acts of Jehoiakim and the abominations that he did and what was found against him, behold, they are written in the book of the kings of Israel and Judah.

And Jehoiakim his son reigned in his place. Jehoiakim was 18 years of age when he became king and he reigned three months and ten days in Jerusalem. He did what was evil in the sight of the Lord. In the spring of the year of that year, Nebuchadnezzar sent and brought him to Babylon with the precious vessels of the house of the Lord and made his brother Zedekiah king over Judah and Jerusalem. Zedekiah was 21 years old when he began to reign and he reigned 11 years in Jerusalem.

He did what was evil in the sight of the Lord. He did not humble himself before Jeremiah the prophet who spoke from the mouth of the Lord. He also rebelled against King Nebuchadnezzar, who had made him swear by God. He stiffed his neck and hardened his heart against turning to the Lord, the God of Israel. All the officers of the priests and the people likewise were exceedingly unfaithful, following all the abominations of the nation, and they polluted the house of the Lord that he had made holy in Jerusalem.

Now I want you to hear these two verses that come next. The Lord, the God of their fathers, sent persistently to them by his messengers, because he had compassion on his people and on his dwelling place. 16. But they kept mocking the messenger of God, despising his words, and scoffing at his prophets, until the wrath of the Lord rose against his people. Look how scary these words are.

Until there was no remedy. In other words, there was no option other than for God to now destroy this obstinate, stiff-necked, rebellious people who have now apostatized against Yahweh. 17. Therefore he brought them up against the king of the Chaldeans, who killed their young men with the sword in their house, and this is the sanctuary, and had no compassion on young men, or virgin, or old men, or aged. He gave them all into his hand, and all the vessels of the house of God, great and small, and the treasures of the house of the Lord, and the treasures of the king and of his princes, all these he brought to Babylon.

And they burnt the house of God, that's the temple, and broke down the walls of Jerusalem, and burnt all its palaces with fire that destroyed all its precious vessels. He took into exile, into Babylon, those who had escaped from the sword, and they became servants to him. and to his sons until the establishment of the kingdom of Persia to fulfill the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah until the land had enjoyed the sabbaths all the days it lay desolate in keep in it all the days that it lay desolate it kept sabbath to fulfill 70 years truly a sad a sad day for the southern kingdom they did not heed the law of God, they did not heed the word of God, that's the prophets, and they did not heed his or obey his law because they lacked love for God. And therefore the things that God had spoken, the things that God had commanded, including what we saw in the last two verses, them keeping the Sabbath, the Sabbath giving the land, the rest, They even violated God. That was meant for them to trust the God of the Sabbath.

That God would be, in fact, the one who provides for them, even if the land did not produce produce in that year. That God would provide, but they lacked that faith. So, because of their apostasy, the southern kingdom of Judah and the temple, their homes, everything were destroyed in 586 BC and the temple was burnt to the ground. Now the thing that this text that we just read does not mention is, but it's mentioned elsewhere throughout the Bible and particularly in the prophets, is that when this took place the king, we're told, took a lot of the people with him back to Babylon But this actually happened over three deportations. Three deportations we see.

The first one took place in 605. 605, and we know of this one in Daniel chapter 1, where Daniel says, and he brings up the king, and you do the mass with the king, it's 605. B.C., and that is when Daniel and his three friends, for example, were deported into Babylon.

In that year, the king had gathered all the young men with aptitude, with skill, with knowledge, those men who had potential to work for the king and serve him in his palace. He took them. The second deportation took place in 597 B.C., also into Babylon, also by the Babylonians.

Nebuchadnezzar, still the king. and they brought them back into Babylon, and among this many, many people in that year, 597, among them is the prophet Ezekiel. So among them is the prophet Ezekiel, and the prophecies that we read in Ezekiel are prophecies that are written in Babylon. And the third deportation took place here. In 586, when the temple was completely destroyed, thousands upon thousands of people were slaughtered and killed.

We read the text. He had no mercy on the young or the old, the women or the children. He slaughtered everything. Not everyone, but many people, and he took a great amount of people and deported them back into Babylon. The siege took place, it was probably around 18 months.

It's hard to say, it could be either 18 months up to three years. But even if we looked at the lower amount, the 18 months, it was a great deal of terror for the people of Israel to be surrounded by this formidable army and being in that fear. especially when they were receiving false prophecies from some to say, it'll be okay, it'll be okay, when God has already said, I've given you over. The then king was Zedekiah, an evil, an evil king. And the last thing, or what they did is when they came and they burnt the city and burnt the temple to the ground, they brought Hezekiah and they brought his sons into his presence and then they slaughtered his sons in front of him.

And the last thing they did to Zedekiah was they put out his eyes. And then they took him back in chains back to Babylon. So the last thing that is etched in this man's memory was the death of his sons. And that act itself was actually prophesied in the book of Ezekiel, where the Lord actually spoke through Ezekiel and said, this is what's going to happen. But Hezekiah had no regard for the people of God.

He had no regard for the prophecies. He had no regard for Yahweh. He trampled on his word. He trampled on his temple. And he had no regard.

And the people had no regard for the name of Yahweh. And the thing that breaks our hearts, beloved, is we know the history. We know that when these people were saved from Egypt under bondage, we know that God took them and made a covenant with them and said that if I will be your God and you'll be my people, obey my commands, and if they were people who observed the things that Yahweh had given them, then the Bible tells us that no enemy would stand against them. Yahweh, God, would be their protection. They would not need to appeal to Egypt, they would not need to appeal to Syria like some kings had, they don't need to appeal to Babylon like Hezekiah did towards the end of his life.

They didn't need to do any of that. They needed to trust in the God of the universe who says, if you are my people and I am your God, then I will be your provision. I will be your protection. And that's the heartbreaking thing, because they did not observe these things. then they lost the covenant blessings and what came upon them are the covenant curses.

The other thing we need to realize is although many exiles were taken into the land of Babylon, we need to realize that many of the poor people remained in Judah. because the king said that many of the poor people can remain, can stay behind. And what he did is he actually put a governor over them to lead them, because there was not much there, the place was pretty much in ruins. He put a governor over them, but what happened is that the people did rebel against this governor that Nebuchadnezzar had put over them, and they end up assassinating him, and then in fear of Nebuchadnezzar then wanting to retaliate, wanting to avenge what they had done, they picked themselves up or many did at least and they made their way down to to Egypt and among them was Jeremiah he went down to Egypt in that time and Baruch which was his scribe But before he did, before Jeremiah went to Egypt, he foretold of the demise of Judah. He foretold of what would come to Judah.

He warned them time and time again to repent and seek the Lord and seek forgiveness of God. You saw in the passage we read earlier in Chronicles, how God would say, just come back, seek forgiveness. And time after time he was persistent with his warnings because he cared for his people. He cared for his holy place, his sanctuary. But they would not listen.

They would not listen. And because of the people's idolatry and their apostasy against God, he sends them into this exile. And beloved, if you think about it, at that point, Humanly speaking, we're thinking this is a disaster. It is. It's a very serious thing that people lose their land, they lose their temple, they lose their homes.

Many, many, many lost loved ones. This is a disaster. However, can you see the grace in this? Can you see that if any were spared, That's grace. Because the Bible tells us that the wages of sin is death.

And that's not only a New Testament concept. Because in Ezekiel chapter 18, it's written, the soul that sins shall die. So everyone had not only sinned, but they've committed apostasy against God. They've gone ahead and they've broken the great commandment that thou shalt have no other God before me. and their rebellion and the acts that they did before God are noted as the heaviest word probably in the Bible would be abomination or things that are detestable to God.

They're the descriptive words that are used against the king's and the people's actions towards God. Yet look at the grace that God would give them, that he'd enable them to go into exile and not destroy them. And if you don't see the grace in this, listen to what Ezekiel says. He says this in Ezekiel chapter 6, verse 8 and 9. You don't have to open now, I'll read it to you.

Speaking about the destruction of Jerusalem, Yahweh is speaking to Judah, and this is what he says, Yet I will leave some of you. Speaking about the exiles, I will leave some of you. When you have among the nations some who escaped the sword, And when you are scattered through the countries, then those of you who escape will remember me among the nations when they are carried captive. How I have been broken over their whoring heart, and how they have departed from me, and over their eyes that go whoring after their idols. And they will be loathsome in their own sight for the evils they have committed, for all their abominations.

10. And they shall know that I am the Lord, that I have not said in vain the things that I said or the evil that I'll do to them. You see what's going on here, that them being sent into exile, is indeed a grace from God, because God has allowed for them to be sent, so that through that suffering, through that action, He would teach them how abominable, how detestable, how offensive their sin is before Yahweh. They didn't see it in the land. They continued to act in rebellion, but now they've lost everything.

Now they're going into a land where they have nothing. A pagan nation. They don't know what to expect. And they have time to contemplate and think through, why did this happen? And possibly a lot of the prophecies would come to their mind and say, we should have listened to the Word of God.

We should have known that this depravity would not be overlooked, that God must deal with our sin. And beloved, this text tells us that their hearts were given true repentance, true repentance from their idolatry. The words used here is a whoring heart, and the description there is an adulterous heart, because the people of Israel were covenanted with God, right? It was like God was their husband, and they are his bride, and they should seek only their security, and their safety, and their joy, and their pleasure from God alone. Instead, their eyes went to the left and to the right, and they were seeking the things that belonged to God alone, or the things they should receive from God alone, from other false gods.

They were whoring, they were adulterating their hearts to other pagan gods. And so the Bible tells us when they were carried into exile, many would look upon their lives and they would loathe their sins. They would look upon their sins and they would have the same attitude towards their sin. as God has towards their sin. In other words, they would begin to have the heart of God.

That which is detestable to God becomes detestable to them, and they recognize how sinful they are. And beloved, it's sometimes that in the times of hardness or hardship, it's sometimes in those times that we recognize God's voice most clearly. And it's sometimes in those times that we become intimately familiar with His truth. You see, there's so much deception, and there was so much deception back in Judah amongst the people. There were so many false prophets, but that didn't change in their exile.

Because in their exile, they were receiving prophecies from false prophets that were telling them, don't worry, you'll be okay. Some of the prophets said, you'll be out of here in two years, this won't last. That's what they were saying. But even in the exile, even in that foreign land, in a place that is away from the temple, a place that is away from the land that was promised to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, in a foreign pagan land, God would still be their God and he would still give him or them his word. And this is so clear for us when we look at Jeremiah 29.

Let's open there, Jeremiah 29. to say that people don't adopt or hold on to false hope. the Lord gives them a true prophet amongst the many false prophets amongst the many false prophecies they'd heard they get a true prophecy and listen to what is written here in Jeremiah chapter 29 from verse 1 it says these are the words of the letter that Jeremiah the prophet sent from Jerusalem to the surviving elders of the exiles and to the priests the prophets and all the people who Nebuchadnezzar had taken into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon this was after King Jeconiah, which is Jehoiachin, also known as Jehoiachin in our Bible, and the Queen Mother, the eunuchs, and the officials, and Judah, and Jerusalem, the craftsmen, and the metal workers had departed from Jerusalem. The letter was sent by the hand of Elisha, and the son of Shapah, or Shapan, and Gamaria, the son of Hilkiah, who Zedekiah, king of Judah, sent to Babylon, to Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon. It said, verse 4, Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon, build houses and live in them, plant gardens and eat their produce, take wives and have sons and daughters, take wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters, multiply there and do not decrease, but seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile.

and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find welfare. For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, do not let your prophets and your diviners who are among you deceive you, and do not listen to the dreams that they dream. For it is a lie that they are prophesying to you my name. I did not send them, declares the Lord. 10.

For thus says the Lord, when 70 years are complete for Babylon, I will visit you and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place. For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord. Plans for welfare and not for evil. To give you a future and hope. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you.

You will seek me and find me. You will seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you, declares the Lord, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, declares the Lord, and I will bring you back to the place for which I sent you into exile. What a word of hope to a people who have lost everything. The word of truth.

The Lord sends them this prophecy, instructions of how to live their lives, these people who are destroyed, who have lost everything, their land, their temple, all their homes burnt to a crisp. But the Lord says to them in this that, I am still your God. that even in a pagan land, you're not in Jerusalem, and you're not before the temple, that's gone, you can still pray, and I'll hear your prayers. And he declares that they ought to be praying, not only for anything, but also even praying for that pagan land, to pray for their leaders. It's very reminiscent, isn't it, of what Paul says in Romans 13, that there is no authority under heaven that which is not ordained or decreed by the Lord.

And it's very similar to what Paul says in 1 Timothy 2, where he tells the Christians to pray for their leaders and those who are in authority. So here the Lord's telling his people, go, marry, give your daughters, give your sons in marriage, multiply, build homes, plant produce, you're going to be eating from the produce, which in itself is telling them that you're not going to be bound in the same way that you were in Egypt, right? Because there they couldn't do much at all. It's not the same here. There is some form of freedom that they will enjoy over the 70 years, and God has their back.

God is still their God and He still is going to be merciful over them, but do not worship their gods. Now do as the Babylonians in that, live there, enjoy, give over in marriage, be married, plant, build your lives there, but do not do the thing that caused me to send you there in the first place. You know, that when they would have received this letter from Jeremiah, no doubt their hearts would have been enlightened, especially when they read the 70 year bit, right? Because their exile is not an indefinite exile. It's not as though God said, I've finished with you for good.

I'm going to send you into Babylon and I'm going to forget about you. That's what they deserve, beloved. That's what we deserve. As sinners, we don't deserve any better from God. But God doesn't say that.

I love the fact that He gives them warning after warning when they're in the land, warning after warning after warning, and threatens what He will do, and they don't listen. But when He does pour out His judgment, He's just gracious. He's mercy. There is a beautiful graciousness and a mercifulness of Yahweh upon His people. He's now telling them, look, I've punished you, but I'm a merciful God.

And you are to live in this place and I'll preserve you, you are to grow. In other words, he says don't decrease, increase. God is in the increase always. So you grow and I will one day bring you back in 70 years time. Now maybe not that generation, because if you're 20 it's unlikely you're going to get to 90, but at least they know their children and their children's children will be back in the land.

At least they know that the land that was promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is not forever lost. That God is not saying, I'm done with my people. I'm done with you forever. That's not what they are to believe anymore. And beloved, this is the other thing you need to see here.

that although they are to live in Babylon, the fact that God has given them the prophecy that they are going to return, or to set their hearts, their minds, and all their affection upon that return. They are to look towards the promise of God to come and work towards that, that their eyes would not be fixed upon the there. They are to exist, but they are to realize that they are exiles, they are strangers, they are sojourners. That is not their land. God has promised something better.

God has promised that he'll bring them back out of the exile, back into a place where they can say, ha, this is home. God promised them to take them home. Now we know that they were in anguish when they first went to Babylon. We know this because of Psalms like Psalm 137 on the rivers of Babylon or by the waters of Babylon where we sat down and he says we wept and wept when we remembered Zion. You remember that Psalm?

There was anguish in their heart because they didn't want to be there. They wanted to be back in Jerusalem. They want to be back with the temple. They want to be back in the land that God had given them. They wanted to be back as the covenant people of God.

And God has said, I have not neglected you. I have punished you because of your sin and your rebellion, but I will bring you back. So in other words, he's saying, be careful. You're living amongst a pagan nation, but that's not home. Don't assimilate.

Don't get too comfortable and feel like, I'm good here, I've set myself up, I'm pretty happy, I'm good. No. God is saying, I'm going to draw you out, and I'm going to take you back to that land. Don't get too comfortable. You're going to be there for 70 years, but make sure you put your hope and your trust on the thing that I have promised that will come.

And you see, when the exile was almost up, we read in Daniel 9, And he's reading Jeremiah, probably very likely the letter that we just read, Jeremiah 29, that speaks of the 70 years. And Daniel's done the figures, and he's found that, hey, this time is almost up. The 70 years of exile is almost up, and so what does he do? Again, Daniel puts on sackcloth and ashes, and he comes and fasts before the Lord, and he says, oh God, do that which you have promised. That's his prayer.

Now he's seen the word of God says that he will do. But Daniel comes and says, God, do that which you have promised. Give us what you have promised, because what you have promised for your people is far better than what we're experiencing here in the land of Babylon. God, your promises is what we want. We want to be your people.

You are God. We want to be your covenant people. We now know what we've done. We understand the rebellion and the apostasy of our heart. We've looked back and we've learned, Lord, please give us what you have promised.

Help us. Take us back. Take us back to the land. Take us back to the place where you gave us your covenant and we were classed as your people. That's what Daniel was saying.

You see, Daniel was living there in Babylon. He was part of the first deportation. He's an old man now. He's been there close to 70 years. But as I said earlier, Daniel's home was Babylon, but Babylon was not in Daniel.

It wasn't in his heart. His heart was still yet captivated by God. It was captured by Yahweh. And so the people in exile were also meant to look to God, look to Him alone, look to His promise, trust in Him and desire more than anything else to receive the promises that Yahweh is to give and to place their hope and their trust in Him and in Him alone. And so when the time came, and the Lord, I'm not going to really dwell on this because our brothers are going to speak to us about this next week.

But when the time came and the opportunity came for those who were residing in Babylon to return back to Jerusalem, it is very sad to see that the majority of people A very small portion of those who went into exile, a very small portion actually picked themselves up and returned. And beloved, there's a massive lesson for all of us there. The massive lesson is that when they first went over there, they were in anguish. They didn't want to be there. They looked back and said, I want to be in Zion.

I want to be there in the land. I want to be there with the temple. I want to be there where God and the land that God had promised to give us, or give our forefathers Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. I want to be there. But when the time came, 70 years down the track, they were comfortable.

They'd assimilated amongst the people. Their hearts were captured with what they had there. And you know what? Only a very small portion decided to come back. Only that small portion.

Beloved, the world is so alluring. The world can captivate the heart if we're not careful. The flesh desires the things of the world. And so rather than them to look to God and His promises, they became comfortable in the things that they had around them in the world which once were so despising to them, which once were so distasteful to them. This Babylon has now become home and now we become comfortable in this exile.

And beloved, it's no coincidence that it is in both those prophets that we mentioned tonight, both in Ezekiel and both in Jeremiah, that speaks of the new covenant. You see the result of the old covenant is that you need to do this and live. You need to obey God or you have to get the blessings or the covenant curses come your way. The result is that even the northern kingdom and the southern kingdom were both exiled and given over to destruction because left unto himself man cannot and will not obey God. He needs a radical change.

You need a supernatural change. So it's no coincidence that the very prophets that wrote to the exiles, both Jeremiah and Ezekiel, Jeremiah 32 and Ezekiel, of course, chapter 36, speaks of the new covenant and the covenant, and Jeremiah 31, of course, of the covenant That is, the old heart of stone being taken out and the heart of flesh being given so that these people are not relying on their own strength or their own knowledge or their own ability, but rather a new heart is given and the Spirit of God is given and now they are able or enabled by God to obey Him, to love Him, to seek after Him in this wilderness. in this wilderness. And they're able to see now, if you are in Christ as Christians, if we are in Christ and in the new covenant, in the blood of Jesus Christ, we're able to know that we live in this world, but this world is not our home. How many times in the New Testament do we hear that we are exiles, that we are sojourners, It's so clear throughout the New Testament.

Look at Philippians 3.20. It says, But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. 1 Peter 2.11 says, Beloved, I urge you as sojourners, that is, travelers from one place to another, and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against the soul.

Hebrews 13, 14, for here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come. Beloved, we, yes, we are in this world. We are in this world. But this world is not in us. We are in this world, but this world doesn't belong to us.

As Christians, we ought to be looking forward to the new creation, that which is promised in Christ Jesus, that which is eternal, because the Bible tells us that if we are in Christ, we are a new creation. The old has gone and the new has come. We've been taken out of the domain of darkness and brought into the kingdom of the sun. We look forward to the things to come because we are exiles in this world. And that's why the Apostle John can write in 1 John 2, he can write, do not love the world or the things in the world.

If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and the pride of life is not from the Father, but is from the world. And the world, hear this, and the world is passing away. along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever." Beloved, we are exiles in this world, and we ought to, as the Lord says, we ought to be fruitful, and we ought to multiply, and we can build homes, we can do all these things.

for His glory, but our eyes must be fixed upon Him and His promises. Our hearts, our minds, our souls must not be rooted in the things of this world that will pass away. Because these are the things of the flesh. Our hearts must be fixed upon what it says here, that which abides forever. The Eternal.

May the Lord give us eyes stamped with eternity to look forward to the promises that we have and the blessings that we have which will become fully recognized in Jesus Christ and recognized now that we enjoy them even now but we fully recognize in Christ when he comes back and he consummates his kingdom and we are with him forevermore. As the Israelites were meant to live in Babylon but look forward to the day where God will redeem them and bring them back to the land, we too live in this world and we look forward to the day where the Lord Jesus Christ comes back and redeems his people. Amen.