2 Kings 21–25

0:00 You ever been in one of those cringeworthy moments where you can see something disastrous coming from like five miles away, and there's nothing you can do to stop it? It's just coming, and that's the way it is. I remember having several of those experiences in my life. One of them was a few years ago. Some of you may remember this, actually, because it was so much one of those things. When the University of Louisville was playing Duke University in a basketball game, you remember this?

0:32 Louisville actually jumped out to something like a 15-point lead in the first half. But then as the second half of the game began, you could just feel the lead slipping away. So by the time, you know, five minutes had gotten into the second half of this game, Louisville was still up by something like 11 or 12 points. But just everyone literally in the Yum Center, I was there, you know, it was one of the saddest moments of my time. As a Louisville Cardinals fan, everyone in the Yum Center could see it 15 minutes out that the game was going to be lost, even though we were like 11 or 12 points ahead.

1:05 It wasn't even like the Duke players were chipping away at the lead either. It was just like a slow rising tide that was completely unavoidable. I remember another situation like that where you could just kind of see a disaster coming and there was nothing to stop it from happening. When I was a kid and my family went snow skiing in Colorado for the first time, and I watched this sort of thing happen to my sweet mother on the side of the mountain. Can I tell this?

1:39 We had taken a ski class on the first day that we were there, and if you've ever been snow skiing, you know that one of the things they teach you in ski class is how to do what they call a snow wedge, right? So you push the skis out kind of like this, right, with your feet, and you create a sort of wedge. And what this is supposed to do as you're headed down the mountain is make you go slow. And if you want to go a little faster, you loosen the wedge a little bit. If you want to go slower, you push the wedge out, and, you know, you start to plow a little bit of snow in front of you. But it keeps you from, you know, flashing down the mountain in a ball of fire as you go down.

2:14 Well, my mother learned how to do the wedge really, really well. And on the bunny slope, you could just see her sort of slowly making her way down the mountain. In fact, she got so good at the wedge that she announced to us at the end of the class that she was Her Majesty the Queen of the Wedgies. I don't know to this day if she gets the joke. At any rate, the first time we went up on the mountain, Her Majesty the Queen of the Wedgies took off down the mountain.

2:44 and she was doing it just right and me and my brother and I think a friend were standing there at the top sort of watching her head down the mountain and we noticed that she was just inexorably wedging herself over toward the tree line. It wasn't fast. It was very, very slow. The wedge technique was spot on. But she slowly made her way over toward the tree line and then turned a little bit and just wedged herself right into a parked snowplow.

3:17 It didn't hurt her because she was going too slow. But for about three or four minutes, my friends and brother and I would just look at her and then we'd look at the snowplow and look at her and look at the snowplow and we just know it's inevitable. She's going to run right into that thing. And so she did. That's kind of the feel, whether it's Louisville, Duke, or snow skiing, that you get from these last few chapters of the book of 2 Kings. Because there's a disaster coming at the end, and it just looks unavoidable.

3:50 It takes five chapters to get there, but you can see it coming from a mile away. So take a Bible, if you will, and turn over to 2 Kings, chapter 21. That's where we're going to begin looking at the story today. We're actually finishing up our study of the book of 2 Kings today, looking at the last five chapters of the book, 21, 2, 3, 4, and 5. If you're new, I know it can be a little bit weird. If you're new to 3rd Avenue, I know it can be a little bit weird stepping into the middle or even worse in this case, sort of the end of a story like this. But I really do think you'll be all right. So let me encourage you, even if this is your first sermon to hear on 2 Kings, like grab a Bible, engage with it.

4:26 And I promise you, you'll be able to keep up because this story moves fast and furious in these last chapters. almost as if the author is just ready to get the whole thing over with. He's ready to get it over with, of course, because it's been an incredibly long road. And if you've been with us through this whole thing, especially going back to the beginning of 1 Kings, which we studied last spring, you probably remember the story. I mean, 1 Kings started in the waning days of the great King David, ran through the golden age of Solomon. But then right about chapter 10 or so of 1 Kings, the nation split into two, north and south.

5:02 And since then, we've just been bouncing back and forth between those two kingdoms, watching how each one of those nations' kings responded to the word of God in various ways. Things would happen to them. The Lord would speak through his prophets. And then the question is, how is each one of these kings going to respond to that word? Well, for the north, which is where we've spent a whole lot of our time as we've made our way through 1 and 2 Kings, it's mostly a record of just unmitigated disaster. I mean from the very beginning, from the very first dude that sat on the throne of the north after they broke away from the south, from the very first guy, Jeroboam, their kings have led them into an just unbroken series of paganism and idolatry, away from the worship of the one true God, and there just hasn't been much at all to commend them.

5:51 And the result in the north is chaos. I mean, you start reading the story and you realize that a truly ridiculous number of their kings reign for a hilariously short amount of times. You get so many of them that reign for two years or three months, or in the case of this poor guy, Zimri, he gets one week before he gets assassinated. And in fact, most of the kings of the north, it seems, are dispatched not by lying in their beds and dying in peace, but by assassination. And worse, most of the kings of the north spend their entire reigns putting themselves at war with God, which is emphatically not a good place to be, whether you're a king or not.

6:33 In fact, a big chunk of the story of first and second kings is telling about the struggle between the prophet Elijah, who's a representative of Yahweh, and the wicked king Ahab, who is the worst king that exists, at least until that portion of the story. And then a big chunk of the story after that struggle is just sort of waiting for God to keep his promise to fully and finally destroy the house of Ahab. He says he's going to do it, but then you have to wait like 16 chapters of the book for God to finally do it. It's literally the story for, you know, almost a third of the entire run of 1 and 2 Kings, just waiting for Ahab to be destroyed.

7:10 But it finally happens, right about halfway through 2 Kings, and then the story focuses not just on the fall of the wicked house of Ahab, but on the total annihilation of the northern kingdom. Well, that happens. Finally, we saw it in the last couple of weeks. It's about 700 B.C., so we're talking from us 2,700 years ago, from Jesus 700 years before his birth. In about 700 B.C., the Assyrian Empire sweeps into the land from the north, deports the people, and the northern kingdom is never heard from again. There's just nothing left of it.

7:41 In the south, it's all different. I mean, in the south, you've got this kind of golden glow over the land. You've got this kind of peaceful music that sweeps through the land because their kings tend to reign for much longer, and they usually, though not always, die in their beds. The south is prosperous, where the north is chaotic. The south does not go to war, where the north is constantly wracked by war. The biggest difference that causes that between the chaos of the north and the relative peace of the south, though, is that while the throne of the north is held by a succession of families that keep killing one another off, it's got several different dynasties that own the throne in the north, the throne of the south is held by one unbroken dynasty.

8:27 You know whose it is? David's. The throne of the south is held by one unbroken dynasty, the house of David. Now, if you've been with us, you understand a little bit at least of how important that is. If you've not been with us or maybe you've forgotten, you've just got to understand how important it is that the house of David holds the throne of the south. It's so important because back in the golden days when David, the great king, first united the tribes of Israel into one nation, God had actually promised him that he was going to secure his dynasty forever.

9:01 There's going to be a man that sits on your throne forever, David. Remember that? Here's what the prophet said to him. He said, moreover, David, the Lord declares to you that the Lord will make you a dynasty. When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you who shall come from your body and I will establish his kingdom. And your house, God said, and your kingdom will be made sure forever before me. Your throne shall be established forever. So why is the south better off than the north?

9:33 Why is the throne of the south not on this, you know, rickety, chaotic path like the throne of the north is? Well, it's because it's secured by God's promises to David. In other words, it's secured by the Davidic covenant. So even when there are bad kings in the south, and there are, there are occasionally bad kings in the south. But even when there are, normally you'll get something written in the text like this. But God was not willing to destroy the south because he remembered his promises to David. So they got a good deal going because they're under the protection of the Davidic covenant.

10:06 But here's the problem that we've started to see over the last few chapters. The problem is that that sense of security under the Davidic covenant has gotten a little bit shaky in the story. The beams look like they're starting to creak a little. And we have to be wondering here at the end of 2 Kings if maybe, just maybe, we've put a little too much stock in that Davidic covenant. maybe that forever in those promises just meant a kind of long time, like 400 years.

10:42 And why do we have that sense of shakiness? Well, I mean, there are several reasons. But it's because by the end of 2 Kings, you start to see a few things happening. You start to see a few things taking place. One of those things is that the kings in the south, the Davidic kings, start to be even more evil than the kings in the north. You know where the worst king of the north was Ahab, right? The toad king. Not even that guy sacrificed his sons to the false god Molech.

11:13 But Ahaz in the south did so. If Ahab was a toad on the throne of the north, Ahaz in the south is an outright snake. Led his people into paganism and even sacrificed his son to Molech. What's worse, as all of this starts to happen and the kings in the south start to get more and more wicked, you stop getting those references to the Davidic covenant. You have a wicked king and all of a sudden you get no reference to the Davidic covenant. There's just silence at first.

11:46 In fact, in chapter 16, Ahaz, that snake of a king, literally profanes the Davidic covenant by quoting it. He quotes the promises of God that God had made to David. But he puts the king of Assyria in the place of God, securing the throne of the south. And it's just stunning what he does. So by the time you get to chapter 21, where we're going to start today, the house of David even is quite, it's bad.

12:19 Smoke is pouring out the engines of the plain. Well, as usual in these long Old Testament passages, we're not going to be able to read the whole thing. It's just too long, but I'll give you an extremely quick overview. It's very easy. You can just kind of see these things developing through this if you look at the subtitles in your Bible. So in chapter 21, you've got the story of literally the worst king in the history of either kingdom. This guy named Manasseh, and he turns out, he's in the south, he turns out to be the worst king of either kingdom in all of history. We'll talk about him a little bit. Chapter 22 and 23 tell the story of this one last good king, Josiah, who basically does everything he can to try to pull this plane out of its tailspin.

13:01 It doesn't work. And then in chapter 24, 25, you've got the story of the final fall of the southern kingdom to the empire of Babylon, and that's the end of the story. So here's the main idea. Here's the main idea that's running through this. It's about this inevitability of judgment. God decrees a day of judgment, there's no way you're going to escape that. When God decrees a day of judgment for you, there is no way you'll escape that. But thank God, the lock has not clicked shut for you yet. Thank God the lock has not clicked shut for you yet. I want to look at this text by talking in terms of three main points, just looking at the three main developments in this story. So chapter 21, then 22 and 23, then 24 and 25. Here are the points. Number one, destruction decreed. Destruction decreed. Number two, destruction delayed.

14:03 And number three, the demise of the dynasty of David. I get no applause for that, like none. Let me give them to you again and see if you can do better than that. Destruction decreed, destruction delayed, and the demise of the dynasty of David. Thank you. I don't like alliteration, but that one worked, so here we go. I mean, that's amusing, right? But I don't want you to miss the point. I don't want you to miss the point of these five chapters.

14:36 By this point, the southern kingdom and the house of David are just on a nauseating, unstoppable, twisting nosedive into the ground. The whole thing is going down. Judgment has been decreed. And the tragedy that shows up in chapters 22 and 23 is that even a good king like Josiah can't do anything to stop it. Now, that's a sobering thought, isn't it? Judgment has been decreed. And even the best king to ever sit on the throne of either kingdom of Israel, Josiah, can't do anything to stop that judgment from coming. So here's the question that I hope will kind of haunt you throughout this entire sermon.

15:12 What if that is your situation now? What if that is your situation now? What if, like these people, you have already in the eyes of God crossed that last line and there's no hope? What if the last chapters of your life are just going to be a stomach-churning free fall into judgment? Is that where you are?

15:44 Let's take a look at the story. Number one, destruction decreed. Destruction decreed, looking at chapter 21. Last week we saw God carrying out what turns out to be his sort of last act of divine protection for the house of David. He miraculously saves Hezekiah, if you remember, in Jerusalem from Sennacherib, the king of Assyria, and his Rabshakeh, that's his commander who comes out and taunts the Lord. Then in one night, the Lord kills 185,000 Assyrian soldiers and sends Sennacherib packing off back to Assyria with his tail between his legs.

16:17 It's a moment of great victory because God has acted to save Jerusalem, to save the house of David from destruction. And by the end of that story, you're feeling pretty good about yourself. But even that doesn't turn out very well because Hezekiah ultimately tries to make a treaty with Babylon. In other words, he looks to this huge, powerful empire over across the desert to protect him. He looks to them for security instead of looking to the God who had just killed 185,000 soldiers in a night in order to defend him.

16:48 As Hezekiah turns his eyes away from the Lord and toward Babylon, it's hard not to just sigh and shake your head. And then, in the wake of that failure, comes chapter 21, where we pick up the story today. Look with me at chapter 21, 2 Kings chapter 21. If you're using one of these Red Pew Bibles, it's on page 328. So here's what is written. Manasseh was 12 years old when he began to reign. And he reigned 55 years in Jerusalem. His mother's name was Hephzibah.

17:21 And he did what was evil in the sight of the Lord according to the despicable practices of the nations whom the Lord drove out before the people of Israel. For he rebuilt the high places that Hezekiah his father had destroyed and he erected altars for Baal and made an Asherah as Ahab king of Israel had done and worshipped all the host of heaven and served them. And he built altars in the house of the Lord of which the Lord had said in Jerusalem will I put my name. And he built altars for all the host of heaven in the two courts of the house of the Lord. and he burned his son as an offering and used fortune telling and omens and dealt with mediums and with necromancers he did much evil in the sight of the Lord provoking him to anger in the carved image of Asherah that he had made he said in the house of which the Lord had said to David and to Solomon his son in this house and in Jerusalem which I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel I will put my name forever and I will not cause the feet of Israel to wander anymore out of the land that I gave to their fathers if only they will be So you don't have to read very far there to figure out and see

18:42 that this guy, Manasseh, is without a doubt the worst king ever to rule in either one of the kingdoms, either north or south. And you can see that the author of Kings, as he writes, just seems kind of shocked at it. I mean, look there at verse 2. The author says there in verse 2 that this guy did evil, but he didn't even do the sort of Israelite evil. It wasn't even evil just like the northern kingdom did. This guy did evil of the kind like the nations that the Lord drove out of the land in the first place. He was like the pagans that were there before the Israelites.

19:16 And the Lord said, their sin has been filled up to the brim, and now I'm casting them out of the land. And the author of Kings is saying, this guy is even worse than them. You look at verse 9. He says that Manasseh led the people to do even more evil than those nations. And you can see what he did if you look at verses 3 to 8. He sacrificed his son to a foreign god, Molech. He erected altars to foreign gods in the temple of Yahweh. Basically, what you had was the altar of the Lord in the center of the temple.

19:46 And what Manasseh did in order to relegate the God of the universe to just a corner is that he built altars all around that and even shunted the altar of the Lord over to the side, another place tells us, so that the God of the universe was no longer alone, much less central. He was relegated to being just one among a pantheon of gods that Manasseh wanted the people to worship. And in his own house, God was relegated to the side. And when he sacrificed his son to Molech, no king of the north, even wicked king Ahab, never did that.

20:26 And Ahab's dynasty was wiped off the face of the planet, and we cheered when it happened. Because he deserved it, and now Manasseh is doing even worse things. I want to pause for a second, though, and just notice one little detail. It's not the point of the story. It's a kind of sidebar. But I want you to notice one little detail in here that I think is worth noting. We've sort of passed over this detail again and again and again through the story. But I want you to look at verse 1. And I wonder if you've noticed this pattern.

20:57 Do you see that line, his mother's name was Hephzibah? Why is his mother mentioned here? I mean, is this just a matter of history? We just note down these details for posterity so that people in the future will know who the parents of Manasseh were. Why is his mother mentioned? I don't think it's just history. There's definitely something more because this happens over and over again. King's mothers are named right at the beginning of their reigns. Like at the moment they take the throne, their mothers are again and again named.

21:31 And the point seems to be that their mothers have enormous influence over them and how they turn out. You know how many times this happens in the Bible? It happens 15 times. Of all the kings of Israel, 15 different times, their mothers are named as being an influence on them. Now, here's a question for you. What do you think the count is between good kings and bad kings when their mothers are named? What do you think the count is between the ones that turn out good and the ones that turn out bad when their mothers are named?

22:08 Maybe you're thinking, well, probably, like we know that Manasseh is bad, but surely it's like 14 to 1, right? Surely if the mother is an influence in her son's life, they're mostly going to turn out good, right? And this is the exception that proves the rule. Surely the score at the end of the day when mothers are named is that it's 14 good and one bad. No, that's not. It actually turns out that the score is 6 to 8 with one tie. Six good kings when their mothers are named, eight bad kings when their mothers are named, and one that doesn't get any judgment at all.

22:42 Now that's complicated, isn't it? It's complicated. It's not as nice and tidy as we might like it to be. Because the Bible's not really interested in making some, you know, just blunt point by naming these mothers. That's not the point. The point isn't that when a mother is there, the king is good, and when a mother is not there, the king is bad. It's just that for good or for ill, these mothers had a huge influence on their sons. Some of them taught their sons to worship the Lord. Some of them taught them to know his word and obey his word.

23:14 Others taught their sons to abandon the God of the universe. I know it may seem like an obvious thing for me to say up here, but I just want you to see, Before we go on with the story that the Bible does not overlook the work of these mothers. God holds the work of these mothers in high regard, both for good and for ill. He knows how important they are. The line from one king to another is not just king to king to king to king. It's kings influenced and shaped by their mothers.

23:48 Friends, don't let that slip by. If you're a mom right now, you are doing one of the most important things that any human being could possibly do. In fact, you're doing one of the most important things that a Christian could possibly do. Every minute that you live with your children is teaching those children either to love and obey God or to turn away from him. Don't take that for granted. Don't underestimate the importance of it. Don't underestimate the regard in which God holds your work as a mom.

24:20 It is sweet to him, and it is noticed by him. It's not just mothers, though. It's fathers, too. I mean, skip down to verse 19 of chapter 21. Ammon was 22 years old when he began to reign. He's the son of Manasseh. Ammon was 22 years old when he began to reign, and he reigned in Jerusalem, two years in Jerusalem. His mother's name was Meshulameth, the daughter of Haruz of Jotbah. So there's his mom. She's got influence.

24:51 But look at verse 20. And Ammon did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, as Manasseh his father had done. He walked in all the way in which his father walked and served the idols that his father served and worshipped them. Yeah, the mother's mentioned again there for Ammon. But in verses 20 and 21, the father is mentioned three different times. Ammon walked in the ways of his father. So what's my point here? My point is that parenting, being a parent, is hard, glorious, wonderful, taxing, and critical work.

25:30 It's not just an accident that God has made you a parent. And it is not a low calling. God holds parents in high, high regard. Don't you do anything less. Anyway, that's just a kind of extra observation about these mothers being mentioned. The real point is not parenting. That's not the point of chapter 21. The real point of chapter 21 is that Manasseh's wickedness, just his rank wickedness, is what puts the plane of the southern kingdom into a death spiral. So back up to chapter 21, verse 10.

26:02 Here's kind of the judgment on Manasseh. The Lord said by his servants, the prophets, because Manasseh, king of Judah, has committed these abominations and has done things more evil than all that the Amorites did who were before him, and has made Judah also to sin with his idols, therefore thus says the Lord, the God of Israel. Behold, I am bringing upon Jerusalem and Judah such disaster that the ears of everyone who hears of it will tingle. I will stretch over Jerusalem the measuring line of Samaria. That's the capital of the north. In other words, I'm going to do to you what I did to the north. And I'm going to stretch over Jerusalem the plumb line of the house of Ahab. That's the wicked king.

26:37 And I'm going to wipe Jerusalem as one wipes a dish, wiping it and turning it upside down. And I will forsake the remnant of my heritage and give them into a hand of their enemies, and they shall become a prey and a spoil to all their enemies, because they have done what is evil in my sight, and have provoked me to anger since the day their fathers came out of Egypt, even until this day. You see what that's saying? After Manasseh, any hope of pulling this plane of the southern kingdom out of its death spiral is over. Now friends, I don't know about you, but that kind of judgment being said like that about the southern Davidic kingdom, leaves me incredibly unsettled as I read the story.

27:17 And it's supposed to leave you unsettled as a reader of the story, too. I mean, the anchor of the southern kingdom through all of these centuries, it's been like four centuries, and the anchor of the whole thing has been the Davidic covenant, and now it looks like even that has been pulled loose. I mean, look at 13 again. It's just chilling. He's going to stretch out over Jerusalem, the great city of the south. He's going to stretch out the measuring line of Samaria, the capital of the north.

27:48 And he's going to treat the house of David like he treated the house of Ahab. Wiped it off the face of the planet. That is not good. And in fact, the only bright spot in this chapter is kind of hidden there in verse 24. Look down at verse 24. You basically have Ammon. He gets assassinated by some of his servants. But look what happens after he's assassinated. But the people of the land struck down all those who had conspired against King Ammon. And the people of the land made Josiah, his son, king in his place.

28:18 That's literally the only bright spot in the whole thing. And why is that bright? Well, because probably what was going on is that when the servants assassinated Ammon, the king, they were going to try to get rid of the dynasty of David and start their own. And the people don't have it. Which is an amazing thing, actually, because why should these people be loyal to the line of David at this point? I mean, they've had a series of kings for like the last 70 years that have brought them nothing but paganism and idolatry and sadness and awfulness. I mean, why not try something else? Manasseh was the worst king that ever lived.

28:51 Ammon, his son, was not much better than him at all. Why don't we just try a whole other house? Because the house of David seems to be completely corrupt. And who's to say that this little kid, Josiah, who they're about to stick on the throne, who's the son of Ammon, is going to be any better than Manasseh or Ammon himself? Nobody's to say that. And he could have turned out as bad as all of them. But what do the people do? What do the people do? Even knowing that the storm is starting to kick up, what they do is the only thing they can do.

29:22 Instead of throwing off the house of David, which they might have been probably were tempted to do, Instead of trying to start the whole thing over with a different dynasty, they cling to God's promise like a sailor clinging to the mast of his ship. It's the only thing they've got left. This promise from 2 Samuel 7 that I'm going to bless the dynasty of David. For 70 years it doesn't look like that's happened. And yet the people cling to that promise. You know, sometimes that's what we have to do too. Sometimes all we can do is cling to the promises even when they look thin.

29:57 and we're christians right and as christians we are a people who live and die on the promises of god we don't live and die based on things that we can see or touch or even hear we live by faith and not by sight we live and die on the promises of god on the things that god has said he will do but which he has not yet done we're people of the promise i mean sometimes it's true we hold on to those promises in the sunlight and when we can hold on to those promises in the sunlight we revel in them and we celebrate them and we sing them but sometimes when the sunlight fades and the storms start to kick up in our lives we don't sing the promises we just hold on to them for dear life because they're what anchor us they're what steady us in the midst of the storm and here's what i want you to hear here's what i want you to learn even from the sermon this morning those promises will never break god has a track record of making promises

31:05 and keeping them and that track record track record is 100 he never fails so friend if God has promised that he's working out all things for good if God has promised that he's going to take you to see his face at the end if he's promised you that he's going to get rid of injustice and get rid of evil and get rid of the works of evil he will do those things there is no doubt he's not failed once in all of history to keep a promise and he's not going to start now with us so friend if if for you right now the storm is raging if you feel like you've lost your footing the very best thing you can do is grab onto the promises of God and cling to them with all your might don't try to cling to the raindrops that are falling in your life don't try to cling to the lightning that's striking don't try to cling to the thunder. Don't spend your time meditating and thinking about your problems. Cling to the promises,

32:12 not the storm. And you'll find that those promises will hold like an anchor in your life until the last day. We stand as children of the promise. And that's the only way we stand. That's what the people did, but for us as Christians, that's not yet, and it's not yet for the people in the story either. For now, Manasseh, this evil king, is left no doubt at all. Destruction is decreed. Destruction is unavoidable. But before it gets there, there's one final twist in the story.

32:45 Point number two, destruction delayed. Destruction delayed. So up through chapter 21, I suppose, everything that's happened so far leads us to believe that when a new king is announced in chapter 22, So after Ammon is dead, Josiah is put on the throne, when this new king is announced, everything's led us to believe so far that he's going to be just like the ones that have come before him. Just like his father Ammon, just like his father Manasseh. So what we're expecting is that it's going to be said and we're going to read that, you know, again, he did evil in the sight of the Lord.

33:17 More evil than any king before him. He didn't cut down the Asherah poles. He didn't destroy the altars of Baal. He even sacrificed his son in the fires of Molech. That's what we're expecting when we get this new announcement in chapter 22. But look what we get. Chapter 22, verse 1. Josiah was eight years old when he began to reign. And he reigned 31 years in Jerusalem. His mother's name was Jedidiah, the daughter of Adiah of Bozkath. And he did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and walked in all the ways of his fathers and did.

33:51 No, it's shocking. It's utterly different than that. He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord and walked in all the way of David, his father. And he did not turn aside to the right or to the left. It's just a stunning thing to read because we, in our reading of 2 Kings, have almost gone numb just reading, and he did what was evil in the sight of the Lord. So for somebody to show up who does what's right is a shocking, shocking thing. It's an incredible thing that is said there. And it's not just that he followed after the ways of his father David. Do you see that phrase, the last one there in verse 2?

34:23 He did not turn aside to the right or to the left. That's actually a direct quote from Deuteronomy 17 that's describing the ideal king. Like the best king that you could ever imagine is described in Deuteronomy 17 as being one who does not turn to the right or to the left. And the author of Kings is saying that was Josiah. He's the only king that that's ever said of. It's not even said of David that he never turned aside to the right or the left. This is the best king ever to sit on the throne.

34:55 And if that's not clear to you, look down to chapter 23. Like, turn the page. Go to the end of Josiah's story. Go to verse 21 of chapter 23. The king commanded all the people, keep the Passover to the Lord your God. So I'll tell you the story that leads up to this in a minute. But just know that he says, for the first time in hundreds of years, we're going to keep a Passover. Keep the Passover to the Lord your God, as it is written in this book of the covenant. For no such Passover had been kept since the days of the judges who judged Israel, or during all the days of the kings of Israel, or the kings of Judah.

35:33 You see what that's saying there? Not even David and Solomon made the nation keep the Passover. This guy is like good in spades. He's better than even David. Well, the whole of, we're not going to go into much detail about it. You can read it later. It's all very easy to understand. The whole of chapter 22, 23 tell us why this King Josiah is so good. And it does so in just exacting detail. It's just supposed to pile up good feelings on you.

36:05 I mean, the story itself is pretty fascinating. Josiah wants to do a kind of renovation project in the temple. And so he sends one of his servants to go to the temple and make sure that the renovations are working right. Make sure the money is being changed with the craftsmen and all the rest. and everything is happening, and one of the priests comes up to Josiah's servant and says to him, hey, I have found this old book down in the basement of the temple, and the servant says, well, what is it, and he reads it, and he realizes that it is the book of Deuteronomy that they found, and so the servant takes it back to Josiah, and Josiah reads it, and he's just struck to the heart. He realizes that for centuries now, we haven't been obeying this book. And so he calls the people to a reform. He puts them in covenant with God again. And then he begins this reform throughout the entire nation. As soon as he finds the book, though, if you look at chapter 22, verse 14, he sends some people to check with a prophetess to see if there's anything that can be done to stave off this coming judgment. Look at 22, 14. So Hilkiah the priest and Icom and

37:11 Nachbor and Shaphan and Isaiah went to Huldah, the prophetess, the wife of Shalom, the son of Tikvah, son of Haraz, keeper of the wardrobe, and she lived in Jerusalem in the second quarter. And they talked with her. And here's what she said. Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, tell the man who sent you to me, thus says the Lord, behold, I will bring disaster upon this place. Oh, good gracious. They found the book, they've started the reform, and yet this prophetess is saying, still, I'm going to bring disaster upon this place, and upon its inhabitants, all the words of the book that the king of Judah has read. because they have forsaken me and have made offerings to other gods that they might provoke me to anger with all the work of their hands.

37:47 Therefore, my wrath will be kindled against this place and it will not be quenched. That's the bad news. Only good news you get is in 18. But to the king of Judah, who sent you to inquire of the Lord, thus shall you say to him, thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, regarding the words that you have heard because your heart was penitent and you humbled yourself before the Lord when you heard how I spoke against this place and against its inhabitants that they should become a desolation and a curse and you've torn your clothes and wept before me. I have heard you, declares the Lord. And therefore, behold, I will gather you to your fathers and you shall be gathered to your grave in peace and your eyes shall not see all the disaster that I will bring upon this place.

38:26 And they brought word to the king. So there's good news and bad news, right? I mean, for Josiah, there's good news. You're not gonna have to see the disaster, but the bad news is the judgment is still coming. you can read chapter 23 for yourself it's it's literally just a fireworks display of good stuff that josiah does even after that prophecy he does what no king of judah or israel had ever done he absolutely eradicates pagan worship from the land not only in the south but he also turns to the north and eradicates pagan worship in the north too and even more you can read it but he doesn't just destroy the altars of the Baals he desecrates them in other words he makes them places that no one is ever going to worship at again he does it by you know digging up the bones of people who had been buried and burning them on the altar of Baal and then smashing the altar so he desecrates the worship of Baal so that it'll never be used again I mean this guy Josiah throughout 23 is

39:28 basically an idol smashing hero and by the end of chapter 23 seeing all this stuff that he does You're supposed to be cheering along and you're actually supposed to be wondering and thinking that maybe, just maybe, the house of David with this idle smashing hero at the helm is going to be able to pull out. Maybe Josiah is going to be able to pull this plane up. Maybe, just maybe, the Lord will relent and Josiah is going to be able to save the day.

40:00 Which is why chapter 23, verse 26 almost stops our hearts. Look at 23, 26. Still, even after all this, even after all this good, still, the Lord did not turn from the burning of his great wrath by which his anger was kindled against Judah. Because of all the provocations with which Manasseh had provoked him.

40:33 And the Lord said, I will remove Judah also out of my sight, as 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. Oh my goodness, what are we supposed to do with that? What are we supposed to do with that? Because for two chapters now, through 22 and 23, all we've been hearing are celebrations of this guy, Josiah, who is the best king to ever reign. And yet, at the end of his reign, all we get is, still the Lord did not turn from the burning of his great wrath.

41:08 I mean, that's shocking because it's not supposed to work like that, is it? I mean, the way it's supposed to work, the way we kind of expect it all to work is bad kings, bad things. Good kings, good things. I mean, isn't that supposed to be the logic? Isn't that the way it's supposed to work? If you do good things for God, God does good things for you and vice versa. That's how it's supposed to work, right? Well, sometimes it does. But I think what this text is trying to teach us and trying to show us is that God is not a machine like that.

41:43 I think sometimes we can think of God like that, just a kind of moral machine. If I put good things in, good things will come out. And it leads us to believe, as human beings, it leads us to believe that when we are good and ready, we can just stop sinning and put our lives in reverse and start doing good stuff. And God will have no choice but to not judge us on the day of judgment. We think we can live a life of rebellion against him.

42:15 And then when we get good and ready, we'll throw it into reverse, and God won't have any choice but to save us. This story, though, right here, this story right here seems to be aimed like a missile at exactly that kind of thinking. You cannot treat God like that. Manasseh had crossed a line for the kingdom of Judah. And at this point, no amount of regret, no amount of reform would change that now.

42:54 It's a sobering thought, isn't it? It goes back to that question I asked near the beginning. What if that's where you are? What if, like the kingdom of Judah, you've crossed some kind of line, and you don't even know it was there? well there is there is a line like that there is a line that once you cross it there's no possibility of salvation there's no possibility of repentance there's no possibility of going back and changing it you know when that is it's the day that you die it's the minute that you die or the minute that the trumpet sounds and the sky is split and jesus declares that he has return. That's the line after which there is no return. But the problem is you don't know when that will be. You don't know when you're going to cross that line. You don't know when your heart is going to stop, when your breath is going to stop and you die. And even if you have it in your

43:58 mind that the actuarial tables say that most of us are going to have some warning of our impending death whether through a diagnosis of some disease or something like that or some lingering thing after a few days after an accident even if the actuarial tables tell you that that's the case and therefore you don't have to worry I promise you you're not going to have any warning when Jesus splits the skies you don't know when you're going to cross that line but you know what the good news is if you're here right now and you're hearing this you haven't crossed it yet you haven't crossed it yet. It's what Paul means in 2 Corinthians when he says this right here is the favorable moment. This is the good moment. This is the right time. Today, right now, is the day of salvation. And the reason today is the day of salvation. The reason today needs to be the day of salvation for you is because you don't know that another day will come.

44:59 Manasseh crossed that line and there was no going back. And one day you'll cross that line and you can be as godly as godly Josiah on the day of judgment. But if you've crossed the line without knowing Jesus, it's all over. Come to Jesus in faith, repent of your sins, put your trust in him and be saved. The southern kingdom crossed the line and it was all over. And so you get point number three, the demise of the dynasty of David, chapters 24, 25.

45:36 Really, this section begins in verse 28 of chapter 23, because starting there, 23, 28, and moving on through the last two chapters of the book, events move rapidly and tragically. This good king, Josiah, dies a bloody death in battle. He's killed by the Egyptian pharaoh Necho. And then, until the end, you really only have four kings left after Josiah. And they reign in a pattern of three months, 11 years, three months, 11 years. You can read it on your own. It's a tragic story.

46:07 You know, I can tell you the kind of headlines of it. You can follow along with the subheadings there. Josiah's son, Jehoahaz, reigns only three months before he's replaced by Egypt with his brother who was renamed Jehoiakim. So, you know, Egypt decides they don't want one brother, one son of Josiah reigning. So they depose him and put his brother in there. But they change his name, right? Why do they do that? Why did they change his name? Well, because it's an act of dominance, right? If you change a guy's name, you say you can't go by the name that your father and mother gave you. You have to go by the name that I, your new king, am giving to you. It's an act of dominance to show that that king is under the authority of Pharaoh.

46:41 That's what happens there. Jehoiakim, this guy who gets his name changed, was terrible. You can read about him in other places of the Bible. I mean, he's the guy that the prophet Jeremiah speaks to. And the prophet sends this book of his prophecies to Jehoiakim. And Jehoiakim reads it. And then he starts just tearing it into little pieces as he reads and throwing it into the fire. Just one sentence at a time, throwing the words of Jeremiah into a fire. He's awful. He rejects the word of God from start to finish. It's during this guy's reign that we first meet Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon.

47:14 You can see that in chapter 24, verse 1. Nebuchadnezzar there who shows up is going to be a problem for a long time. Anyway, there at the beginning of chapter 24, Jehoiakim dies. This guy named Jehoiachin, whose name is also Jeconiah. He's got two different names, just a translation deal. Jehoiachin, Jeconiah, his son became king. And then things get really, really bad. Look at chapter 24, verse 10. At that time, the servants of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, came up to Jerusalem and the city was besieged.

47:48 And Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, came to the city while his servants were besieging it. And Jeconiah, Jehoiach, and the king of Judah gave himself up to the king of Babylon himself and his mother and his servants, his officials and his palace officials. The king of Babylon took him prisoner in the eighth year of his reign and carried off all the treasures of the house of the Lord and the treasures of the king's house and cut in pieces all the vessels of gold in the temple of the Lord, which Solomon, king of Israel, had made, as the Lord had foretold. He carried away all Jerusalem and all the officials and all the mighty men of valor, 10,000 captives and all the craftsmen and the smiths.

48:20 None remained except the poorest people of the land. Now skip over to chapter 25. His son Zedekiah is stuck in there, right, in his place. Jehoiachin is carried off to Babylon. Zedekiah reigns in his place, and look what happens to him in 25 verse 1. In the ninth year of Zedekiah's reign, this is the last king of Judah, in the tenth month, on the tenth day of the month, Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, came with all his army again against Jerusalem and laid siege to it.

48:51 They built siege works all around. So the city was besieged until the 11th year of King Zedekiah. On the ninth day of the fourth month, the famine was so severe in the city that there was no food for the people of the land. And then a breach was made in the city and all the men of war fled by night by the way of the gate between the two walls by the king's garden and the Babylonians were around the city. And they went in the direction of the Arabah to the south. But the army of the Babylonians, Chaldeans, pursued the king and overtook him in the plains of Jericho and all his army was scattered from him.

49:22 And then they captured the king and brought him up to the king of Babylon at Riblah and they passed sentence on him. They slaughtered the sons of Zedekiah before his eyes and put out the eyes of Zedekiah and bound him in chains and took him to Babylon. It's just a stunning, stunning end. to the house of David. And think about the last four or five kings.

49:56 Josiah was killed by the Egyptians. His son Jehoahaz is taken to Egypt and dies there. Another son of his, Jehoiakim, is dead. Jehoiachin is taken away to Babylon in chains. And now the last king of Judah, Zedekiah, watches the king of Babylon slaughter all of his sons, everyone who could sit on the throne of David after him. All of those sons are slaughtered. And then his own eyes are put out so that the very last thing he sees is the house of David being wiped out.

50:30 The rest of the chapter reads like a stunned soldier staggering through a war zone. With his ears ringing and his eyes blurred with sweat and blood. Babylonian soldiers invade Jerusalem. They destroy everything. They destroy the royal palace. They destroy the official buildings. They destroy even the temple of Yahweh. And the nation of Israel is being systematically destroyed. There's nothing left. The crown of David fell to the ground when Zedekiah's eyes were put out. And now even the temple, this place that was supposed to be the presence of God among the people, is burned and looted by these pagan soldiers.

51:04 And by the end of it, by the end of the chapter, even the hope that there would be some, like, rump group of people in Jerusalem who would rebuild the nation, who, you know, could find some weapons and put up a resistance against Babylon, even that's gone. I mean, look at 25, 26. Chapter 25, 26. I mean, even the rump of the people, anybody with any power at all, anybody with any military prowess at all, flees back to Egypt, and Israel is dead.

51:44 Now, that's a problem, isn't it? And that's a huge problem because we've just watched the crown and dynasty of David fall to the ground. We've just watched the sons of the last king of Judah slaughtered and then that last king carried off in chains to be a slave of the king of Babylon for the rest of his short life. The dynasty of David is gone, and that's a problem because from the very beginning of the Bible, the dynasty of David is what was going to produce the Messiah that would save the world.

52:21 All the promises of God are dependent on there being a Davidic king. You can't just start over. If God says the Messiah is coming from the line of David, you can't just say, oops, the line of David is dead, so we'll pick a Messiah from somewhere else. That would say that God's not in control of anything. And how can we trust him to save us by this new-lined Messiah? It's a problem. All the promises of God are dependent on this. And it goes back all the way to Genesis chapter 3, where God told Adam and Eve, look, Adam, you failed.

52:53 You didn't do what the king is supposed to do. But someday I'm going to send another king who is going to do what you failed to do. Runs to the book of Numbers when Balaam, the pagan prophet, weirdly says, I see him, but not near. I behold him, but not yet. But a king's gonna come out of Judah and a scepter's gonna rise out of Israel. Through Deuteronomy chapter 17, when God says this is what the ideal king is gonna be like. All the way through Judges, when the recurring theme through Judges is there was no king in Israel, there was no king in Israel.

53:28 And then to the struggle in the Samuel books, where David finally secures the throne of Israel. And God tells him, I'm going to build a dynasty for you that will last forever. And now that dynasty is just a burned out stump. One blind, wrecked guy with a hook in his nose being taken off to Babylon. So what happens now? What happens now?

54:00 How do you get from here to the Messiah, Jesus? Does God just, like, call a do-over? How do you get there? Well, look with me at verse 27 of chapter 25, right at the end. In the 37th year of the exile of Jehoiachin, king of Judah, in the 12th month, on the 27th day of the month, Abel-Merodach, king of Babylon, in the year that he began to reign, graciously freed Jehoiachin, king of Judah, from prison.

54:34 And he spoke kindly to him and gave him a seat above the kings who were with him in Babylon. So Jehoiachin, Jeconiah, put off his prison garments, and every day of his life he dined regularly at the king's table. And for his allowance, a regular allowance was given him by the king according to his daily needs as long as he lived. Jehoiachin yet lives, and so the dynasty of David is not dead. And you know where this comes to the payoff? You know where it all kind of comes to fruition? Matthew chapter 1. That's where it comes to fruition. Listen, you don't have to turn there, but listen while I read.

55:05 It's from the genealogy of Jesus. After the deportation to Babylon, this guy, Jeconiah, Jehoiachin, was the father of Shealtiel. And Shealtiel, the father of Zerubbabel. And then Abiud, and then Eliakim, and then Azor, and then Zadok, and then Achim, and then Eliud. And Eliud of Eleazar, and Eleazar the father of Matan. And Matan the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born. who is called Christ. And it's incredible, isn't it?

55:36 You know, in our call to worship, when we talked about this shoot coming out of the burned out stump of Jesse, do you understand that better now? The dynasty of David was a burned out stump and yet here's this tiny little shoot coming out of it because Jehoiachin yet lives. Friends, God always, always keeps his promises. Always. There's not a time when he doesn't keep his promises. even when it seems darkest and most hopeless. You can even say, especially when it seems that way, God keeps his promises.

56:10 And sometimes it looks thin. Sometimes it looks very, very thin. We've seen that in this book. It looked really thin when Athaliah killed the entire royal family. But there was little Joash hidden away in a dark room by his nurse. It looked thin when Zedekiah's sons were killed. But here's Jehoiachin trucking along and just surviving. and that was his role just survive and sometimes as Christians that's what we do too we survive to the glory of Jesus it's like we sang just a few minutes ago may he find us waiting with our lamps burning still keeping watch through the night till he comes for soon it's going to be morning and the sun will appear Christ who brought us this far will bring us home so press on all you saints press on to the end Christ with us ever with us until he comes again.

57:03 Let's pray. Our Lord God, we thank you that through all the ins and outs of history, even when it looks like the plane of history is nosediving into the land, you never, ever fail to keep your promises. Our Lord, we thank you for this. We thank you for the story of kings that reminds us of that so dramatically. And Lord, we pray that in all the ways that we struggle, in all the ways that we just sometimes have to survive. We pray that you would never let us forget, never let us forget that you always do what you have promised to do. Let us live in the light and in the strength of that every day of our lives. We pray that in Jesus' name. Amen.