Where is Your Trust: Man or God. 2 Kings ch. 24

 

As we come to the end of our study of 2 Kings we see the collapse of the southern kingdom of Judah. This is a sad and heart-wrenching description of the defeat and destruction of this nation that had experienced the glories of God’s grace under David, had witnessed the expansion of the kingdom and it world-wide dominance under Solomon, and all of the glories of Solomon. And then  from the end of Solomon’s reign we have seen this trajectory down through the period of the divided kingdom where the people were constantly being tempted to follow everybody else, to follow the other nations and peoples, to worship at the altars of all of their false gods, worship at the altar of prosperity and of fertility. We have seen that there had been a few high spots in their history, times when they were truly trusting on God; and yet, again and again we see the people fail. The area in which they failed was in the area of trust, in the area of what they relied upon for meaning if life, for happiness in life, for real sustenance in the midst of chaos and adversity. Again and again they failed to put their trust in God and they put their trust in man.

 

What we see when we come to the end of 2 Kings is, in the last chapter and a half, the description of the destruction of the kingdom, the destruction of the monarchy and what appears to be the end of the house of David. We see that the key principle in their destruction is arrogance. And just as arrogance is at the key of the destruction and collapse of the southern kingdom of Judah, arrogance is also the basic problem that we all face. The Scriptures again and again warn against arrogance. Arrogance is simply defined as self-sufficiency rather than God’s sufficiency. We no longer think of God as being the one sufficient to provide everything that we have in life; we no longer think of Him as the source of our meaning in life, the source of our happiness, the source of all of the blessings in life; we think that it is up to us and we get hung up in the finite details of life and we put our focus, our happiness on people, on things, and on things in terms of circumstances. But whenever we put our focus on people, circumstances or things as the source of our happiness or stability and meaning in life then we become slaves to whatever it is that we are putting our focus on. Because as those circumstances change, if they are good then our emotions swing one way, and if they are bad then our emotions swing the other way; and we are basically saying that the state of our happiness then become dependent upon whether we have pleasant circumstances or unpleasant circumstances, or whether the people around us are responding the way that we think they should, acting the way they should, or treating us the way they should. If people are treating us one way we are happy and if they are treating us another way then we are unhappy, and so we become slaves to those people. The same thing happens with the possession of things, materialism, and the upswing of the economy. The people are happy and fell good, they spend money and everything is going wonderfully, and then if things go down people lose their jobs and they become depressed, focused on themselves more and more. We see this in our country today as the level of uncertainty increases because of the status of the economy. We see an increase in depression, an increase in suicides, an increase in divorces as families and couples are unable to face those challenges and pressures together from the stability of God’s Word. All of this is because there is a failure to put their trust ultimately in God rather than in man.

 

So the challenges for us is to remain humble which means to remain obedient to God. Humility in the Scripture isn’t this idea of some sort of self-deprecation; it is an attitude of submission to the authority of God. The most humble man in Scripture was Moses and yet Moses was the most dynamic leader in the ancient world. He led two and a half to three million Jews through the desert for forty years. There were times when he did get impatient with them but he was the leader and so he demonstrated leadership skills, he had great authority over the people, and he understood the extent of his authority and operated within that. Yet the Scripture said he was humble because he was obedient to God in everything. The opposite of humility is arrogance. Arrogance is being dependent upon ourselves rather than being dependent upon God, it is basically an attitude of rebellion rather than an attitude of submission to God.

 

In our study of 2 Kings as we come to this end period which has covered the last few years of the reign of Josiah, to his successor for a brief period, Jehoahaz, then Jehoiakim and finally Zedekiah, that is the same time frame as the prophet Jeremiah. The prophet Jeremiah began to minister to the people for the Lord, to speak to them, to challenge them in their spiritual life. So roughly from 627 BC until Josiah’s death in 609 there was the constant preaching, Bible teaching, of Jeremiah, and he is constantly warning the people against their arrogance, their desire to go after the idols and the false gods, their disloyalty to God. He was warning the people about where this was going to lead them, and that God had already made His promise because of the evil of Manasseh’s reign that He will fulfill the promise that He made in Leviticus chapter twenty-six, as well as in Deuteronomy 28, that when the people reach a certain state of apostasy and rebellion against Him, a certain stage of spiritual perversion, then God will remove the nation from the land.

 

The description of the fifth stage of divine disciplines as outlined in Leviticus 26:27-33 NASBYet if in spite of this you do not obey Me, but act with hostility against Me, then I will act with wrathful hostility against you, and I, even I, will punish you seven times for your sins. Further, you will eat the flesh of your sons and the flesh of your daughters you will eat. I then will destroy your high places, and cut down your incense altars, and heap your remains on the remains of your idols, for My soul shall abhor you. I will lay waste your cities as well and will make your sanctuaries desolate, and I will not smell your soothing aromas. I will make the land desolate so that your enemies who settle in it will be appalled over it. You, however, I will scatter among the nations and will draw out a sword after you, as your land becomes desolate and your cities become waste.”

               

We see the fulfillment of that in the description of what happens in this last stage of the kingdom of Judah. This is the end result of the life of a nation that has failed to trust God, failed to fulfill the plan that God had for them, failed to give their loyalty to God, and the result is that they have collapsed completely. At the same time that this happens, this time period in Jeremiah’s ministry from roughly 527 BC up through the collapse of Jerusalem in 586, Jeremiah is bringing a message from God. And it is in this context that we have Jeremiah’s message given in Jeremiah chapter seventeen. Jeremiah 17:5 “Thus says the LORD, ‘Cursed is the man who trusts in mankind And makes flesh his strength, And whose heart turns away from the LORD.’” As many times as we have heard that passage referred to the historical context for that is in this time period of the collapse of the southern kingdom of Judah; and it expresses the ultimate indictment on the life of the southern kingdom. Why does God bring all this horror upon Israel? Why does the southern kingdom collapse? What brought this about? It is summarized in this indictment that is expressed in this verse.

Historically, what we have seen is the last period of God’s grace blessing to Israel under the reign of King Josiah. It exemplifies the principle of grace before judgment. Whenever God brings this kind of discipline on the life of a nation or the life of believers it is preceded by God’s grace. Not only was there the grace blessing period of Josiah who was a godly king, who was leading the nation in terms of the Mosaic Law and seeing that that was implemented, but also at this time were numerous prophets who are raised up by God. After the death of Josiah and into the evil reigns of Jehoahaz, Jehoiakim and Zedekiah, again and again and again God sends prophets. He sent dozens and dozens of prophets to the kingdom of Judah announcing God’s grace, extending His favor, giving them again and again the opportunity to turn away from their idols, to turn away from their rebellious ways, to humble themselves under God and to turn to Him to experience His grace blessings and provision during this time when He would be bringing judgment upon the nation. Yet, again and again the people rejected that; they preferred the words of the false prophets—like Hananiah who is described in Jeremiah chapter 28 who told the people that within two years the yoke of Babylon would be broken and that all of the treasures that had been stolen by Nebuchadnezzar would all be returned to Jerusalem and that God would once again bless the nation. All of this was just an outright lie.

So what they had within the nation, within the history of the southern kingdom, was something very similar to what we have within Christianity today and within world religions. There is one group that is teaching and proclaiming the truth but it is not what people want to hear. It is not positive; it is not something that motivates people. It is that which causes people to think wonderful thoughts about each other and think that everything is going to be great, we just have to think positive thoughts and we can be successful in whatever we do. That was the message of the false prophets. Again and again we see that kind of message echoed down through the centuries in many different places, but especially today in the 21st century in America. We hear pulpits in some of the largest churches in the land filled with pastors and messages that focus only on the positive. Never do we hear them discuss sin, the gospel, divine discipline or God’s judgment, or even explain the Word. All that is ever heard is nice human viewpoint philosophy, motivational speaking, very positive comments about people, but it is not based on the truth of God’s Word. It is focusing on trusting on man rather than trusting in God.

We have seen in our study that Josiah was killed at Megiddo in a battle that he brought on himself—not necessarily in disobedience to God, we don’t know the circumstances and why he made the decision—and upon his death he was succeeded by his son Jehoahaz who was ultimately captured by Pharaoh Necho after just the short time of three months, is taken to Egypt and never sees the land again, and he dies in Egypt. He is replaced by his younger brother Jehoiakim. He reigns for eleven years and dies at the end of vv. 6, 7 of chapter 24 and Jehoiachin comes to the throne. He is also known as Jechoniah or simply Coniah.  

2 Kin 24:8 NASB “Jehoiachin was eighteen years old when he became king, and he reigned three months in Jerusalem; and his mother’s name {was} Nehushta the daughter of Elnathan of Jerusalem. [9] He did evil in the sight of the LORD, according to all that his father had done.” So he continues to carry out the policy of idolatry that is the major policy that has been reintroduced into the southern kingdom with Jehoahaz. [10]

“At that time the servants of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon went up to Jerusalem, and the city came under siege. [11] And Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon came to the city, while his servants were besieging it. [12] “Jehoiachin the king of Judah went out to the king of Babylon, he and his mother and his servants and his captains and his officials. So the king of Babylon took him captive in the eighth year of his reign.”

To summarize, what we know about Jehoichin is this. First of all he had several alternate names. He reigned for three months and ten days, from 6 December, 598 to 16 March, 597. After Nebuchadnezzar’s defeat of Pharaoh Necho at Carchemish in 605 Egypt basically retreats to Egypt and it is no longer in a position to challenge the dominance and increasing power of Nebuchadnezzar. So Nebuchadnezzar’s first invasion into Judah was in 605 and he took back a number of captives, including Daniel, Azariah, Mishael, and Hananiah. So a number of members of the royal family had already been deported back to Babylon and Nebuchadnezzar is ruling with something of an iron fist. In this period of time Jehoiakim had been subservient to the Babylonian power and the authority of Nebuchadnezzar and it seems that Nebuchadnezzar, probably in 605, we are told in the Chronicles account, was going to take Jehoiakim a prisoner back to Babylon and he put him in chains. But that was about the time that Nabopolassar died and Nebuchadnezzar had to get back to Babylon as quickly as he could. He released Jehoiakim and he continued out the remainder of his reign. But when Jehoiakim died and Jehoiachin came to the throne this did not please Nebuchadnezzar. Jehoiachin was viewed as being pro-Egypt and not being pro-Nebuchadnezzar and therefore Jehoiachin was taken as a prisoner back to Babylon. At that time Nebuchadnezzar came in and plundered the palace and the temple. We are told he took 10,000 captives back to Babylon, including all of the royal family, the key military leaders, everybody in a leadership position. This would just decimate the population there and they would have no ability to effectively have another rebellion against the king. Also this included many of the artisans, the craftsmen, the merchants; basically the upper class and most of the middle class was decimated at this time as all of the key people are removed to Babylon. Not only did those ten thousand go back but there is an additional 7000 military unit that was removed back to Babylon. What this would do in effect was destroy the capability of the southern kingdom of Judah to organize an effective resistance and to rebel against Nebuchadnezzar.

We are told at the end of this that Nebuchadnezzar replaces Jehoiachin with his uncle, Mattaniah, and he renames him Zedekiah. It is a name that sounds positive, it means God is righteous, and so it is more of a traditional name, but Zedekiah was only a puppet king set up by Nebuchadnezzar. What is interesting is that when we read in Jeremiah and in Ezekiel various passages they will date themselves not according to the reign of Zedekiah but according to the reign of Jehoiachin. He was only the effective leader for three months in Jerusalem but the prophets would date their prophecies according to when Jehoiachin came to the throne. He was taken back with all of his family to Babylon where he received favorable treatment from the Babylonians. They had a lot of freedom; he lived with his family in an area where most of the other officials that had been taken back to Babylon lived.

But there is one other important note about Jechoniah. It begins in Jeremiah 22:24ff. where God pronounces a judgment on the line of Jechoniah. This is called the Coniah curse or the Jechoniah curse. NASB “As I live,” declares the LORD, “even though Coniah the son of Jehoiakim king of Judah were a signet {ring} on My right hand, yet I would pull you off [rejection of his lineage]; [25] and I will give you over into the hand of those who are seeking your life, yes, into the hand of those whom you dread, even into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon and into the hand of the Chaldeans. [26] I will hurl you and your mother who bore you into another country where you were not born, and there you will die. [27] But as for the land to which they desire to return, they will not return to it. [28] Is this man Coniah a despised, shattered jar? Or is he an undesirable vessel? Why have he and his descendants been hurled out And cast into a land that they had not known? [29] O land, land, land, Hear the word of the LORD! [30] Thus says the LORD, ‘Write this man down childless, A man who will not prosper in his days; For no man of his descendants will prosper Sitting on the throne of David Or ruling again in Judah.’” No direct descendant of Jechoniah ever really ruled from the throne of David in Jerusalem or had prosperity there. He is mentioned in Matthew 1:16 as being in the legal line of Joseph. Matthew traces the lineage of Joseph; Luke traces the lineage of Mary, and they are distinct. Mary’s line goes back to Nathan, a son of David, whereas the line of the kings of the southern kingdom of Judah goes back to Solomon, and Jechoniah was in that line.

Usually when this is taught the focus is on Jechoniah, but if we think about it this entire lineage from Solomon down was a lineage of descendants from David that, with a few exceptions, had not honored the Lord. So that line has been rejected from being the direct physical lineage for the Lord Jesus Christ. That is the legal line for the kingship of Judah. Joseph is in that line but what Matthew is showing in his genealogy is that Jesus could not have been the physical son of Joseph because Joseph was in that direct lineage from Jechoniah and God had announced that no one from that line could prosper on the throne of David. Joseph could not have been the father of Jesus. What Luke does in his genealogy is show that Jesus has a direct physical line through Mary going back to Nathan, another son of David, so that He has royal blood in Him. He is a direct descendant of David and therefore can fulfill the covenant that God had made with David. So the Coniah curse is an important thing to understand in terms of those genealogies in relationship to the lineage of the Lord Jesus Christ.

When we come to 2 Kings 24:17 we get a summary of the reign of Zedekiah. He is the uncle of Jehoiachin; he is placed on the throne by Nebuchadnezzar; he is the younger son of Josiah, and brother to Jehoiakim and Jehoahaz, and yet he becomes just a puppet figure under the control of Nebuchadnezzar. His original name was Mattaniah but he was renamed Zedekiah which means the Lord is my righteousness. [18] NASB “Zedekiah was twenty-one years old when he became king, and he reigned eleven years in Jerusalem; and his mother’s name was Hamutal the daughter of Jeremiah of Libnah.” Then  we again read the indictment. [19] “He did evil in the sight of the LORD, according to all that Jehoiakim had done. [20] For through the anger of the LORD {this} came about in Jerusalem and Judah until He cast them out from His presence. And Zedekiah rebelled against the king of Babylon.” So what happened here with Zedekiah is that he was subservient initially in those first seven or eight years, from 597 down to about 590 or 589; but he is under a lot of pressure internally. He is being pressured on the one hand by the few that are still obedient to God, by Jeremiah’s continuous announcements about how God is going to bring judgment upon the land, and God continues to offer grace to Zedekiah and to the people. In fact Jeremiah comes to Zedekiah and says, “If you will humble yourself to God, surrender to Nebuchadnezzar then you will live out your life in peace.” So again and again God offered these blessings to Zedekiah but Zedekiah refused. His heart was hardened against God and he listened to the false prophets that there would be hope and deliverance through the enemies of Babylon, and so he dug in his heels, went into battle and Jerusalem came under siege from the Babylonians in which the people were starving to death. This is described in chapter twenty-five.

What we learn here as a second characteristic of Zedekiah’s reign is that the people lived according to a fantasy. They were completely divorced from reality. The false prophets would come and give them all of these glowing reports that God would deliver the nation, that within two years the yoke of Nebuchadnezzar would be broken, that all of the temple treasures would be restored to the temple, and that God would once again restore the nation to a point of glory. Yet in contrast to the message of the false prophets the few true prophets preached that judgment was coming, that the nation would be destroyed unless they humbled themselves under God and surrendered to Nebuchadnezzar; but they refused to do that. Under pressure from another group in the nation, a group that was pro-Egypt, who thought that by alliance with Egypt that the Egyptians would then come and deliver them. So Zedekiah entrusted himself to them, yielding to their pressure, and he rebelled against Nebuchadnezzar. The people were living in a fantasy world, they weren’t believing the truth, they were believing a lie, and when people believe a lie and start living as if that lie is true then they are living in just a complete fantasy world that is divorced from reality. They will make decisions based on that view of the world and the result is a complete collapse, which is what happened with Israel.

The basis, the bottom line, the foundation for that lie, was their rejection of the first two commandments in the Ten Commandments. Exodus 20:1 NASB “Then God spoke all these words, saying, [2] ‘I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. [3] You shall have no other gods before Me.’” What they did was replace the worship of God with the worship of all of these other false gods of all the other nations. So that was an act of treason under a theocracy, an act of complete rebellion against God. Second, they replaced God with the worship of these idols and they constructed these figures of stone and wood and metal. [4] “You shall not make for yourself an idol, or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water under the earth. [5] You shall not worship them or serve them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and the fourth generations of those who hate Me, [6] but showing lovingkindness to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.” Notice there is always mercy in the midst of judgment.

So God is going to fulfill this judgment and bring this judgment upon the nation. The nation was filled with false optimism because they were building their life on a lie, and as long as you do that—whether it is building it on the lie of Darwinism, the lie of Marxism or any of these other false philosophies, the lies of a human utopia in socialism—it will eventually collapse. So Zedekiah takes them to the point of collapse and the siege of Jerusalem begins in 588 or 587 BC; probably January 15th of 587. The city is taken on the ninth day of the fourth month of 586 and a month later the walls of the city are burned to the ground. It is believed in Jewish tradition that the date of the burning of the city of Jerusalem was the same day that the city was destroyed in AD 70. That shows the consistency of God’s plan and another sign that this wasn’t just some circumstantial event but was under the sovereignty of God.

At the time of the collapse we read that the king, Zedekiah, attempted to escape. 2 Kings 25:5 NASB “But the army of the Chaldeans pursued the king and overtook him in the plains of Jericho and all his army was scattered from him. [6] Then they captured the king and brought him to the king of Babylon at Riblah, and he passed sentence on him. [7] They slaughtered the sons of Zedekiah before his eyes, then put out the eyes of Zedekiah and bound him with bronze fetters and brought him to Babylon.”

Then we are told that there is another mopping up operation in Jerusalem. This is when the head of Nebuchadnezzar’s palace guard, Nebuzaradan, goes back to Jerusalem and gathers up all of the upper level leaders that he can find. He finds the high priest, the one who is under the high priest, a number of military commanders and a few of the advisors to the king. He takes them back to Riblah where they will be executed and he burns the rest of the city down. Only the poorest of the poor are left in the land. 2 Kings 25:12 NASB “But the captain of the guard left some of the poorest of the land to be vinedressers and plowmen.”

We are then given a description in vv. 13-17 of what remained of value in the temple, the bronze, metal that was there, melt it down and take it back to Babylon. Then we are told that all of the leaders were executed that had been taken captive. Then we come to the last section, the epilogue, vv. 22ff. There are two parts. One has to do with what happens to the newly-appointed leadership in Jerusalem and then second, what happened to Jehoiachin who has been a prisoner all of this time in Babylon. In vv. 22-26 we are told that Nebuchadnezzar appointed a man named Gedlaiah to be the administrator of Jerusalem, the new province, under the control and domination of Nebuchadnezzar. The people despised him and it is only a month or six weeks after he is appointed that he was assassinated by a group that had conspired together to kill him. But after assassinating him they were in fear for their lives and they left. Another large group of those who had been left in Judah departed for Egypt.

This all will set the stage for what happens during the time of the Babylonian captivity and in to the inter-Testamental period between the end of the Old Testament and beginning of the New Testament. There will end up being two very large and significant groups of Jews in the ancient world at this time, one in Egypt and the largest in Babylon. Then after the return from that captivity there is a third group that is in the land. But there is never a return from Egypt or from others who were scattered up to the north into what is now Turkey and into Europe. They stay in the diaspora. It is primarily those who are in Babylon who are the ones that return to the land. So we have this group that goes to Egypt and then the book of 2 Kings closes in vv. 27-30 going back to Jehoiachin and what takes place in terms of his captivity. He stays in captivity, probably in more of the form of a house arrest, until approximately 561 BC after a time of some 37 years. Then he is released from his imprisonment, continues to live in Babylon with his family, is treated with honor by Evil-merodach who is a successor to Nebuchadnezzar and is allowed to eat all of his meals at the king’s table. He is treated with honor and respect for the remaining days of his life.

This is how this study ends. In 1 Kings there are the glory days of David and Solomon at the beginning, and then from that point it has all been down hill. We just see how the nation fragments into the northern kingdom and the southern kingdom because of their apostasy and rebellion against God and we see all of the military and economic problems that come as a result of their rejection of God’s Word and their refusal to obey God’s Word. We end with both the northern kingdom out, completely scattered and dispersed by the Assyrians, and now the southern kingdom of Judah is destroyed and the people are taken captive to Babylon. Others have fled to Egypt, and again we see all of God’s people, the nation of Israel, the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, not in the land. They are in a place of judgment, they have been scattered throughout the world and it looks hopeless. It looks as if God has turned His back on them. But the message really is that God has not forsaken them. The message of the prophets of Jeremiah and Ezekiel is that this will only be for a time of seventy years and then God will restore them to the land. But that restoration is only a foreshadowing of a future restoration that will take place at a still future time when God will restore all of the Jews to the land and establish His glorious kingdom in the land. But that cannot happen until the people turn completely to God and submit themselves to Him. This takes us back to our opening passage in Jeremiah 17:5ff.

Jeremiah 17:5 NASB “Thus says the LORD, ‘Cursed is the man who trusts in mankind And makes flesh his strength, And whose heart turns away from the LORD. [6] For he will be like a bush in the desert And will not see when prosperity comes, But will live in stony wastes in the wilderness, A land of salt without inhabitant.’” This is the man who doesn’t trust in the Lord, he is in a place of judgment without prosperity, without fertility, without hope.

In contrast there is the man who trusts in the Lord. 

Jeremiah 17:7 NASB “Blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD And whose trust [confidence, hope] is the LORD. [8] For he will be like a tree planted by the water, That extends its roots by a stream And will not fear when the heat [adversity] comes; But its leaves will be green, And it will not be anxious in a year of drought Nor cease to yield fruit.” The contrast is between this huge tree that is well watered versus this shrub that is shriveled in a parched land. The water represents the Word of God and the grace of God. He has that which sustains him in the period of drought and adversity.

Then there is the reminder: Jeremiah 17:9 NASB “The heart is more deceitful than all else And is desperately sick; Who can understand it?” There is always the problem that we have, and that is the sin nature. There is always the threat that we can be deceived and be like those in both the north and the south of Israel who let their hearts be deceived and they turned away from God and looked for life and meaning and happiness and sustenance some place other than in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. And that can happen to any of us, to anyone at any point in time. We can never just relax and rest on what God has provided for us. But God is always there offering hope, offering grace. Throughout the period of judgment on Judah He was offering grace, He was always there, and He is the one who will sustain them even in the time that they are out of the land. It is always God’s grace that brings about the victory and eventually He will bring about what He promised to the kingdoms of Israel and Judah when He restores them in the end times when He establishes the kingdom of the Messiah.

A fundamental message is what God said to Solomon in His answer to the prayer of dedication at the temple in 2 Chronicles 7:14 NASB “and My people who are called by My name humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, will forgive their sin and will heal their land.” The message is that we have to reject arrogance, reject self-sufficiency, and make sure that we are focused on the Lord and dependent upon Him in humility. Otherwise the only thing that comes is collapse, divine discipline, hardship and difficulty with no happiness or meaning in life. The only solution is in the Lord Jesus Christ and in right orientation to God.  

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