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Hello my “Walking with Jesus” friends,
10 days from now is Christmas! I’m sure you know that, but does it feel like Christmas is almost lost in the chaos of a resurgence of COVID and therefore increased lockdowns of activity? And the frenzy over several companies producing millions of injections of COVID vaccines and the chaos over who will be eligible to receive their vaccine and when? And of course the ongoing furry over a US election which was held 40 days ago, yet still is not formally ratified by the US authorities who have that responsibility? Are you, my “Walking with Jesus” friends, struggling this year to find Christmas joy, Christmas peace and even Christmas hope?
Join me today in the Bible at a time very similar to ours. Over the past week or so we’ve been listening to Mr. Jeremiah, who has been courageously speaking God’s truth and God’s warnings to the city of Jerusalem. But he’s been largely ignored…. until suddenly things changed dramatically. Pharaoh Neco started marching his Egyptian army north to join a huge war which would ultimately change the global power at that time from the Assyrian Empire to the Babylonian Empire. Their northward march took them right through Israel and king Josiah rallied his little army to try keep the Egyptians out. It wasn’t even a fight. The Israeli’s were vastly outnumbered, and king Josiah was killed in the battle. (2 Chronicles 35:20-24)
2 Kings 23:31-35 tells us the crown prince “Jehoahaz was 23 years old, and was made king in place of his father Josiah. He reigned only 3 months in Jerusalem… Pharaoh Neco of Egypt dethroned Jehoahaz, put him in chains and made Eliakim, his brother also a son of Josiah, king in his place and changed his name to Jehoiakim. Pharaoh Neco took Jehoahaz and carried him off to Egypt as a captive, and there he died.”
Suddenly in a matter of months, Jeremiah’s stern warnings from God became reality for the people of Jerusalem who had mocked him and ignored him! This was the first of what would be four different invasions of Jerusalem, and for the first time, since the days of king David, Jerusalem was under the control of a foreign government, Egypt!
Oh how things can change so quickly and affect life so dramatically, right? Remember exactly one year ago at this time, wherever you live in the world, we were all first hearing about a virus outbreak in a town we’d never heard of…Wuhan, China. And yet within weeks, our world, our lives changed…dramatically! That’s how it was in Jerusalem in 609bc, only months after everything seemed so quiet, calm and good.
King Jehoiakim reigned in Jerusalem 11 years, although Jerusalem was formally under the control of Egypt to begin with. So they paid a huge financial tribute to Egypt, thus heavy taxes had been imposed on the people of Jerusalem. Does that sound familiar in the Christmas story? The authors of the historical records of Kings & Chronicles both summarize Jehoiakim’s leadership in this way: “Jehoiakim was 25 years old when he became king in Jerusalem, and he reigned 11 years. He did evil in the eyes of the LORD…” (2 Chron. 36:5)
In God’s mercy and kindness to His people, God continued to speak fresh messages to Jeremiah who brought them to king Jehoiakim and the people, as he had been doing for the past several years, with king Josiah. If you’d like to see some of those messages, you’ll find them in Jeremiah chapters 19-26,36,45,46 etc.
Sadly Jehoiakim was not at all like his father Josiah. He totally rejected everything Jeremiah said, and even at one point imprisoned him to silence him. So God raised up another prophet, Mr. Zephaniah. You’ll find his three chapters of God’s warnings for the people of Jerusalem, in the little book which bears his name, following Habakkuk in your Bible. But king Jehoiakim further hardened his heart and refused to hear God’s warnings from Zephaniah. So let me ask a question friends? What is God supposed to do when His people, especially the leaders of His people, refuse to hear God’s messages to them?
My dear friends, it’s very, very important you and I keep our hearts tender, our ears and eyes open, and our humility before God. When God speaks, either we listen and respond, or we suffer the consequences. Do you agree? Have you learned that lesson yet? Have you taught it to your children and grandchildren? So, HOW has God been speaking to you and WHAT has God been saying to you my “Walking with Jesus” friends, all around the world in this crazy year of 2020? And how are you responding to God’s Word to you?
King Jehoiakim was a hard hearted, prideful man, and he refused to listen to Jeremiah and Zephaniah and the messages of God they both tried to speak to Jehoiakim. The proud king was evidently not aware an international rivalry was brewing. King Nebuchadnezzar, the emperor of the new global power the Empire of Babylon, had visions of reigning over the entire world, and so his armies were busy conquering surrounding nations, most recently Egypt! So in 605bc guess who came marching into Jerusalem leading one of his Babylonian armies?
As you listen to this description in 2 Kings 24:1-4 imagine yourself living in Jerusalem during the wonderful years of Josiah, then after the death of Josiah, a few years under Egyptian rule and now suddenly a Babylonian army is invading: “During Jehoiakim’s reign Nebuchadnezzar, emperor of Babylon invaded the land. The LORD sent Babylonian, Aramean, Moabite and Ammonite raiders against Jehoiakim to destroy Judah, in accordance with the word of the LORD proclaimed by His servants the prophets. Surely these things happened to Judah according to the LORD’s command, in order to remove them from His presence because of the sins of Manasseh and all he had done…and the LORD was not willing to forgive.”
Now my friends, it’s very important we understand what’s happening here. GOD is demonstrating His Sovereignty over all things, including the movement of armies, even against His people Israel and Jerusalem. You see Jeremiah and Zephaniah were more than preachers, they were actually God sent ambassadors, sent to the kings and people of Israel, giving them God’s very specific messages of warnings and instructions in how to repent and avoid calamity. But their hard hearts refused. So God removed His hand of protection over Jerusalem and God allowed King Nebuchadnezzar’s global domination aspirations to overrun Jerusalem and Judah!
YES, God can maneuver international political and economic and even scientific/virus circumstances to accomplish His global purposes! Don’t limit God to only the spiritual domain. God is sovereign over and involved in EVERYTHING, since He is God and creator of all. Always, God is continually inviting all people of our world to turn to Him and repent of their sin and be saved. Remember Isaiah 45:22 ‘Turn to Me and be saved, all you ends of the earth, for I am God and there is no other. By Myself I have sworn, My mouth has uttered in all integrity, a word that will not be revoked. Before Me every knee will bow and by Me every tongue will swear…”
God’s patience had run out on His people Israel and Jerusalem. God had sent prophet after prophet and they spoke God’s messages of warnings and invitation clearly, but they were mostly rejected. So, God acted in judgment, as He had promised He would since the people refused to repent and turn to Him.
But in closing today, it’s important you see something very significant: God is timeless. He sees history, the present and the future all at the same time, and all under HIS Sovereignty and HIS global, unchanging purpose of Redemption for any who will repent and turn to HIM for salvation…any generation, anywhere in the world, anytime.
Right at this moment, about 100,000 people per day are turning to Jesus Christ for their sin rescue. At the end of my notes today I have a link to an exciting real time glimpse of what God is doing in our day…today!
While God was unleashing the beginning of His judgment on Jerusalem in this 605bc invasion of Nebuchadnezzar, God was also looking ahead in time and coordinating the details of God’s plan, that 70 years after the final destruction of Jerusalem, the emperor at that future time would hear of God’s plan and release thousands of Jews he held in captivity and allow them to return to rebuild Jerusalem and their Temple. But how could that happen? God would need a strategic ambassador, like Jeremiah, INSIDE the Babylonian empire, at a very high, trusted level, so he could speak directly to the emperor, telling him about God. Can you imagine such a strategy? But God did it! And in that 605bc invasion of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, when he returned to Babylon, he took with him several of the young men who had been in preparation for future leadership roles in Israel. Among them was a young man named Daniel!
Listen to Daniel 1:1,2 “In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came to Jerusalem and besieged it. The LORD delivered Jerusalem into his hands, and he took some of the articles of the Temple of God and carried them back to Babylon and put them in the temple of his god.”
Tomorrow we’ll see how Daniel and his three friends were among the captives taken by Nebuchadnezzar and how they were quickly put into training in Babylon to become leaders in Nebuchadnezzar’s global domination strategy. What Nebuchadnezzar didn’t know was. . . God was working HIS larger plan for HIS great glory!
I urge you my friends to hold onto that, even in the chaos of this December 2020, God is on His throne. He is Sovereign over all, and He sees YOU and me, and our families, our cities this December and He is beckoning again this year to any and all people to turn to HIM and find hope, even in the chaos. Imagine if you were a young couple in Jerusalem in those crazy days, yet you believed in God, even when everything was collapsing around you. Perhaps you go into your barn with a guitar and record a song just like this:
Click to read today’s chapter: Daniel 1:1-2. (At the top you can choose a different translation.)
NEW FEATURE: Click here to listen to a dramatized reading of Daniel 1.
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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 262.441.8785
“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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