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Good weekend to you my ‘Walking with Jesus’ friends,
I presume most of us on this “Walking with Jesus” journey are old enough to recall some of the horrific, cataclysmic events of the past several decades. Perhaps you even remember where you were when you first heard the news of…
* The 9/11/2001 New York City Twin Towers terrorist attack
* The Christmas Eve 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami wave which killed 225,000 people in 15 nations
* The January 2010 Port-au-Prince, Haiti earthquake killing upwards of 200,000 people
* The August 2005 Hurricane Katrina flooding of New Orleans, Louisiana
* The COVID-19 global pandemic of 2020 which killed more than 3 million people
Over the past few days, we’ve been looking at the Biblical record of events leading up to one of the darkest times in world history, the destruction of the city of Jerusalem and the great Temple of God in 586bc. by King Nebuchadnezzar and his Babylonian army.
We’ve looked at the months leading up to this final collapse of Jerusalem through the prophetic warnings of Jeremiah living inside Jerusalem under siege and Ezekiel living in captivity in Babylon. Over and over, for decades, in fact centuries, God had sent His prophets to His people and their kings with appeals to return to God and abandon their idols and immorality.
Their response had almost always been rejection of God’s offers and therefore God sent warnings through His prophets and usually those too were rejected by Jewish kings, priests and people.
Finally, as we’ve seen over the past few days, God’s warnings were very descriptive of what was about to happen to Jerusalem. In Jeremiah 32 we have one of Jeremiah’s prayers and God’s painful, final response: “Ah Sovereign LORD, You have made the heavens and the earth by Your great power…nothing is too hard for You. You show love to thousands but bring the punishment for the parents’ sins into the laps of their children after them. Great and mighty God, whose name is the LORD Almighty, great are Your purposes and mighty are Your deeds. Your eyes are open to the ways of all mankind; You reward each person according to their conduct and as their deeds deserve...” (Jeremiah 32:17-19)
That clear, definitive statement of ‘God truth’ could be proclaimed by any person, of any generation, from anyplace on the face of planet earth, do you agree? Sadly, it isn’t, nor has it been acknowledged as true by most people of our human race down through history from the days of Adam to present day in 2025.
How about you, my friends? Look again at those words from Jeremiah’s prayer. Can you proclaim those words to be true in your part of the world, your ancestral family, your life today? Do the children in every place grow up either in the shadow of either blessings or curses of the choices made by generations before them?
YES, we sure do, and that is exactly what was happening in 586bc in Jerusalem. Those alive in that great city at that time had been living for more than 2 years under siege by Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylonian army. They were starving to death inside Jerusalem and the Babylonians had the city sealed off from anyone or anything entering that city with any supplies including food. God had warned and appealed to His people, but for generations, with only rare exceptions, both leaders and people in Jerusalem had turned their backs on God, thus God’s warning was now reality! Jerusalem was being strangled, suffocated to death!
Hear the words of God through Jeremiah in response to Jeremiah’s prayer: “I am the LORD, the God of all mankind… Therefore this is what the LORD says: ‘I am about to give this city into the hands of the Babylonians and to Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon who will capture it. The Babylonians who are attacking this city will come in and set it on fire; they will burn it down along with the houses where My people aroused My anger by burning incense on the roofs to Baal and pouring out their drink offerings to other false gods… From the day it was built until now, this city has so aroused My anger and wrath that I must remove it from My sight. The people of Israel and Judah have provoked Me by all the evil they have done – they, their kings and officials, their priests and prophets, those living in Jerusalem.” (Jeremiah 32:27-32)
Oh my, what a remarkable, clear statement of final judgment by God Himself on this great city which David and Solomon had first built about 400 years before.
But God wanted to be sure those who first heard Jeremiah’s words and all of us over the past 2600 years who have read these words, would have no misunderstanding of the specific assessment God was making of His city Jerusalem. So God continued speaking to Jeremiah and Jeremiah carefully wrote these words about the people of Jerusalem: “They turned their backs to Me and not their faces; though I taught them again and again, they would not listen or respond to My discipline. They set up their vile images in the house that bears My Name and defiled it. They built high places for Baal in the Valley of Ben Hinnom to sacrifice their sons and daughters to Molek...” (Jer, 32:33-35)
The guilt of generations of Jerusalem Jewish leaders and people was clear and dreadful. God was just in His judgment. Jerusalem would be destroyed and even the great Temple Solomon had constructed, demolished by the Babylonians!
The actual record of this horrific, God predicted disaster is recorded both in 2 Kings 25:1-21 and 2 Chronicles 36:11-21. As painful as they are these words are important for us to hear: “…the famine in Jerusalem had become so severe that there was no food for the people to eat. The city wall was broken through and the whole Israelite army fled at night through the gate between the two walls near the king’s garden…but the Babylonian army pursued them and overtook them.
The king of Judah was captured and taken to the king of Babylon at Riblah, where sentence was pronounced on him. They killed the sons of king Zedekiah before his eyes. Then they put out his eyes, bound him with bronze shackles and took him to Babylon.” (2 Kings 25:3-7)
Proud and defiant Jewish king Zedekiah was defeated, humiliated and violated. Blind and shackled he was led as a captive to Babylon. God’s judgment was executed upon a wicked man who had refused God’s warnings and refused to humble himself and call his people back to God.
Back in Jerusalem the Babylonian army “…set fire to the Temple of the LORD, the royal palace and all the houses in Jerusalem. Every important building they burned down… they broke down the walls around Jerusalem and carried into exile most of the people who had remained in the city. The Babylonian commander left behind some of the poorest people of the land to work the vineyards and fields.” (2 Kings 25:8-12)
It should not be difficult for us to envision the total devastation of this once great city of Jerusalem.
Sadly, that total devastation included the spectacular temple of God constructed by King Solomon so many years before. (1 Kings 6) I urge you to carefully read the next verses of 2 Kings 25 and the detailed efforts the Babylonian army made to both destroy that glorious temple and haul off to Babylon anything of value, in particular all the golden objects inside the Temple used in worship of Holy God.
If they had not already been taken by previous invasions of Jerusalem, now in 586bc the Golden lampstands, the Table of Shewbread, the Altar of Incense, the Ark of the Covenant and all the golden censors and other articles used by the priests were carted off to Babylon where most of it was placed inside the temples of the Babylonian false gods. The author of the 2 Kings records this concluding statement: “So Judah went into captivity, away from her land.” (2 Kings 25:21)
As we close today, I urge you to imagine yourself sitting on the Mount of Olives, to the immediate east of Jerusalem. You recognize the famous photograph of modern day Jerusalem from that vantage point. Can you even imagine watching all this destruction described in 2 Kings 25 & 2 Chronicles 36? Can you envision watching the smoke billowing up from every part of the city and the massive piles of rubble everywhere as the last of the Babylonian army marches out the last of the Israelites in shackles, leading them away from demolished Jerusalem, into captivity in Babylon?
This was no accident, no horrific natural disaster. This was the long-awaited judgment of God upon a place He loved and a people He loved but a rebellious, unresponsive, unrepentant people who totally rejected God and His love reach to them.
It’s a picture my friends of what the eventual, ultimate judgement of God will be upon our earth and the human race which has rejected Him for millenia! This weekend we need to ponder this harsh reality and on Monday we’ll look at God’s amazing love and hope poured out to His people after judgement!
For today… don’t rush away from the smoldering ruins until you understand the WHY of God’s fair Justice, His Holiness, His goodness and His desperate desire for humanity to live in sin-forgiven relationship with Him!
And here’s a worship song to help us consider these important realities.
Today’s Scriptures: Jeremiah 32:17-35 & 2 Kings 25:1-21 & 2 Chronicles 36:11-21.
Choose below to read or listen.
Jeremiah 32:17-35
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2 Kings 25:1-21
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2 Chronicles 36:11-21
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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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