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Good morning my “Walking with Jesus” friends on this Thursday,
Have you ever had the painful experience of watching a person disregard the appeals, the warnings and even the desperate warnings of those who love them as they pursue a dangerous path of rebellion that led them to a desperate place like divorce court or bankruptcy or prison or maybe even death?
In our journey together, my friends, I’m grateful the Biblical record of human history is honest and does not gloss over tragedy caused by people, even God’s people, refusing God’s warnings.
Yesterday we stood at the potter’s workshop in Jerusalem and listened as the courageous prophet Jeremiah told us what God’s message was that he was to proclaim to the kings and the people of Jerusalem 2600 years ago. As we saw, God also, sadly, informed Jeremiah that the people would not listen to him.
In fact, God was accurate in His prediction, as He always is. Jeremiah 18:18 records this response of the people: “They said, ‘Come let’s make plans against Jeremiah…let’s attack him with our tongues and pay no attention to anything he says.” In our day it’s called the ‘cancel culture’. It’s blasting a person on social media with such a vicious attack that their reputation is destroyed, and no one will listen to anything they say. That’s what happened to Jeremiah who was attempting to faithfully proclaim the messages he received from God.
God was watching then as He is now, and as the people rejected Jeremiah’s claim that his words were messages directly from God; as the people of Jerusalem even more enthusiastically embraced the idol worship and lifestyles of the wicked nations around them; God took action.
Look with me at the record of what God did in 2 Kings 24:10 “At that time the officers of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon advanced on Jerusalem and laid siege to it, and Nebuchadnezzar himself came up to Jerusalem while his officers were besieging it. In the eighth year of the reign of the king of Babylon, Jehoiachin king of Judah in Jerusalem, along with his nobles and officials all surrendered to King Nebuchadnezzar...”
The 8th year of Nebuchadnezzar’s reign was 597bc, only a few months after Jeremiah had given Jerusalem God’s message from the potter’s house as recorded in Jeremiah 18. Do we understand what the siege of a city is, my friends? It means the enemy army encircled Jerusalem, and no one went in or out without their permission. It means no food from the farms was permitted into the city. It means within only weeks life in Jerusalem turned to desperation survival, which is why, at the demand of the Jewish people, their king Jehoiachin surrendered himself and the city of Jerusalem to Nebuchadnezzar and his great army. What Jeremiah had predicted was happening right before the eyes of those who had refused Jeremiah’s message!
Please understand this is now the second time King Nebuchadnezzar and his army have come to Jerusalem and laid siege to it and taken a Jewish king captive. It happened 8 years before in 605bc and that time young Daniel was one of the captives taken by Nebuchadnezzar back to Babylon. This time, 8 years later, Nebuchadnezzar does it again.
Listen to the record of 2 Kings 24:13 “As the LORD had declared, Nebuchadnezzar removed the treasures from the temple of the LORD and from the royal palace and cut up the gold articles that King Solomon had made for the temple of the LORD. Nebuchadnezzar carried all Jerusalem into exile: all the officers and the fighting men, and all the skilled workers and artisans – a total of 10,000 people. Only the poorest people of the land were left…”
Look at them my friends, a caravan of 10,000 Jewish captives, with Babylonian soldiers marching alongside them to keep them in line, walking away, leaving their homes, their great city Jerusalem, leaving the long history of Israel, about 500 years of Jews living in Jerusalem under a Jewish King, going all the way back to King David & Solomon. It would be a walking journey of about 700 miles to the great city of Babylon where captivity awaited them.
Undoubtedly his majesty King Nebuchadnezzar rode in a golden chariot surrounded by soldiers on stallion hoses and shining armament. The most powerful man in the world was once again proudly elevated and exalted in victory as the straggling Jewish victims stumbled along behind him, helpless to do anything but beg for mercy.
God had warned His people, repeatedly, but their stubborn hearts refused His prophets and rejected any word from God. As they looked back over their shoulder to bid farewell to their precious city Jerusalem they could see him, the weeping prophet Jeremiah standing at the city gate with some of the poorest of the poor at his side. God, in His kindness, had moved in Nebuchadnezzar’s heart to leave Jeremiah in what was left of the city, with these poor people, as God’s ambassador to His people. God’s voice would not be silenced as God had yet more to say to these, the last of His people who remained in Jerusalem.
And in the middle of that stumbling long line of captives was a 25-year-old man named Ezekiel. He was a devout man who sought to honor God with his life, even when surrounded by idolatrous, wicked people in Jerusalem. God had been working in Ezekiel’s heart and while the angry, brokenhearted Jews stumbling along the road all around him had no idea, Ezekiel was God’s great kindness to them. How? Ezekiel would be God’s spokesman to the captives, living among them as a Jewish captive just like them, in Babylon.
Five years later, Ezekiel began to receive messages from God for the exiles and he began his first record with these words: “When I was 30 years old…while I was among the exiles by the Kebar River, the heavens were opened, and I saw visions of God. It was the fifth year of the exile of King Jehoiachin, and the word of the LORD came to Ezekiel the priest…” (Ezekiel 1:1-3)
Do you see the strategic sovereignty and great compassion of God displayed here my friends? At this moment in history Jeremiah had been living in Jerusalem as God’s spokesman to the Jewish people for 35 years. (627bc-592bc) Daniel had been living in Babylon for 13 years, (605bc-592bc) 10 of those as senior advisor to King Nebuchadnezzar and the highest officials of the Babylonian empire. And now Ezekiel had been living as a Jewish captive in Babylon for 5 years (597bc-592bc) as God’s spokesman to thousands of captives from Israel in exile in the Babylonian kingdom.
God’s voice would NOT be silenced. God’s love for His people and God’s commitment to His larger plan and purpose would NOT be thwarted by the rise and fall of kings and kingdoms. For the next several years of history these three courageous men were receiving, proclaiming and writing God’s distinctive messages aimed at these three different audiences… the last of the Jews left in ravaged Jerusalem: thousands of captives in Babylon, and the most powerful men in the world in their palaces!
I’m awed, stunned, overwhelmed by God’s strategicness in the midst of world turmoil; and it gives me great hope to know the very same God is still communicating to this world He loves, with His spokesmen all over the world, as much of the world disregards anything God has to say!
But what about you and me, my friends? Are our ears attentive to hear God’s voice, no matter where you live or what the circumstances of your life? Are you confident God sees you, loves you and is working to draw you into His global purposes TODAY? Think about that, my friends, as we worship together with this song…
Today’s Scripture: 2 Kings 24:10-17 & Ezekiel 1:1-3.
Choose below to read or listen.
2 Kings 24:10-17
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Ezekiel 1:1-3
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Bible images provided with attribution to www.LumoProject.com.
Have a comment or question about today’s chapter? I’m ready to hear from you, contact me here.
Pastor Doug Anderson
“Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, with our eyes fixed on Jesus…” (Heb. 12:1,2)
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