The Kingdom’s Fall
February 6, 2010
The Story 17
As we’ve been moving through the Story, amazingly we are coming towards the end of the OT teaching. It seems like we just got started and we’re very quickly moving through the Bible. We’ve been taking a look at the Bible through a condensed version called The Story. It has given us a broad overview of the Bible and I hope it has helped the Bible to become a little more alive in your eyes.
Well, we’re going to dive in. Last week we looked at the nation of Israel being deported to Assyria. We drew an arrow from Israel to Assyria, indicating they were deported in 722 BC. After 208 years, God’s patience was gone and the nation of Assyria came and defeated the Israelites and took them into exile. The Assyrians also assimilated the people of Israel into their culture and they brought many of their people to live in the land of Israel. This was an intentional act on the part of the Assyrians, as this would further weaken the nation as the Israelites would marry Assyrians and their allegiance to their nation would diminish. This was also another reason for the animosity between the southern kingdom and northern kingdom, which we see in the days of Jesus.
Today as we come to chapter 17, it’s time for Judah to hear God’s plan in light of their persistent evil. A good summary is found in 2 Chronicles 36:15-16, 15 The LORD, the God of their ancestors, sent word to them through his messengers again and again, because he had pity on his people and on his dwelling place.
16 But they mocked God’s messengers, despised his words and scoffed at his prophets until the wrath of the LORD was aroused against his people and there was no remedy.
Can you imagine when you get to the place where the God of the universe says, “I’ve done all I can to help you, there is only one remedy to this problem.”
Now we need to listen carefully, and I mentioned something like this a couple of weeks ago, if God continued to bless Judah while they were living so inconsistent with His word and life, it would’ve sent a confusing message about God’s nature and character. God was trying to implant a vision of a kingdom that would come through faith in the Messiah. It would restore the idea He had in the garden of Eden where there was no wickedness, no evil, no mistreating one another; and there would be an open and passionate love for God. But if Judah got away with this kind of living, it would send the wrong message, not only to Judah, but to all the surrounding nations whom God loves . . . about God’s character. So, God must discipline them. He does so with a distinct purpose in mind.
One of the prophets God raised up in the southern kingdom was a man named Ezekiel. He was instructed to give the people a message. It’s found in Ezekiel 36:23, as Ezekiel tells the people of Judah, after you have experienced God’s discipline, and you look back at what God has done, you and the surrounding nations will see my glory. He said,
23 I will show the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, the name you have profaned among them. Then the nations will know that I am the LORD, declares the Sovereign LORD, when I am proved holy through you before their eyes.
The express purpose of God’s relationship with Israel was to demonstrate that He’s the One true God and wants people to have a relationship with Him. Many times He’s expressing His love and grace, and here God is expressing His holiness. Standing up for what is right and declaring that He has noticed the evil of Judah and He wants to make sure that all of the surrounding nations know that this is not acceptable in the community of God.
So, what does God do? We learn that God raised up another pagan nation who will do to Judah, what Assyria did to Israel. And over a period of 20 years, they will capture them, burn their city, destroy the temple Solomon built, and they would send them into exile.
If you’ve been marking your maps, then I would like you to take out your maps and mark on them showing the nation of Judah being deported to Babylon in the year 587 BC. This was the year Jerusalem and the temple were finally destroyed.
Now, these last few weeks haven’t been the most up messages, they’re downers, but there’s always a point, a plan to where God is leading us. Yet, these are the true stories about the people of God and their behavior towards God. We can’t just skip over the hard parts of the Bible, we need to open the whole Word, not just the nice parts. That’s part of the beauty of the Bible. God preserved the difficult stories.
He wants us to proclaim them, study them and learn from them. We’ve got to study the tough parts. And one lesson is that grace is not all that fantastic if you don’t need it. We’re learning that they need grace more than anything. And the truth is, in our own lives, wouldn’t you say, the real truth in our lives is that we too, need lots and lots of grace. Grace doesn’t mean much if you haven’t been exposed to the raw truth of life without God.
But there were so many bright spots in this chapter. And that is always the case with God. One had to do with the call of the prophet Jeremiah, one of the major prophets who spoke to Judah. We find it in the book of Jeremiah 1:4-5 ~
4 The word of the LORD came to me, saying,
5 “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
before you were born I set you apart;
I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.”
Did you capture that? God is coming alongside of Jeremiah and God is saying, “I knew you and even before I formed you in your mother’s womb, I had a job for you to do. I set you apart to be a prophet to the nation.” That’s amazing. He said to Jeremiah, I have role for you to play in the unfolding of my upper story. That’s overwhelming. But the reality is, this is true of every single person sitting in this room today.
I want you to write down a NT passage, Ephesians 2:10. The apostle Paul was writing to the church in Ephesus. And Paul said — not just to the leaders of the church, but to the entire church these words, because we have a mission to do, listen to Paul’s words, “For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus, to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”
Do you know what that means? It means that everyone who professes Jesus as Lord and Savior, God is doing the same thing for you that He did for Jeremiah. This is for everyone who belongs to Christ. He already has something in mind for you. He has a part for everyone of us to play in the unfolding of His upper story plan which is still going on today. Every single one of you.
You may be saying, “Woe, that’s way too overwhelming for me. I’m just trying to make it through the day. Now you’ve got to lay on me an extra burden that God has a plan for me, no way.”
And Jeremiah said that too. He was overwhelmed with God’s call in His life, too. Jeremiah gave excuses, saying he was too young, and he couldn’t speak in front of others. And that’s how we should feel when we realize the God of the universe has a plan for us to play if we would yield our lives to His upper story. We should feel overwhelmed. I’m too young, or I’m too old, I’m not smart enough, I can’t talk in front of people, I’m not disciplined enough, you make up the excuses.
And after Jeremiah had given his excuses, in Jeremiah 1:9-10, God reached down and touched Jeremiah’s mouth. Then He told Jeremiah I’m going to be with you every step of the way. When God touched Jeremiah’s mouth, God was telling him ‘these are my words I’m putting in your mouth. It’s not about you, Jeremiah, it’s about me working through you.’ And the same is true for us.
And again in Ephesians 4, Paul tells us that when Jesus was crucified and resurrected and went to be with the Father, just as He promised, He sends His Holy Spirit down upon the church and the Holy Spirit touches each of our lives. He gifts us for the assignment God has for us, and He equips us and He told us I am going to be with you every step of the way.
So, if you have the audacity to align yourselves with the upper story plan God has for your life, you shouldn’t sense this is coming from your own strength . . . in and of yourself you should feel totally inadequate . . . but only by God touching your life and gifting you and giving you everything you need for the assignment; with you every step of the way, then and only then should you feel confident.
Now what was Jeremiah’s assignment? He was assigned the task of being the weeping prophet. Now that was a great assignment. God told him, he was going to have to stand during this difficult time, and God told Jeremiah in advance the people weren’t going to listen. God basically told Jeremiah, you’re going to fail. God needed Jeremiah to speak to the nation of Judah during this dark time, so they would know that what was happening was not from the hands of the Babylonians, but came through the loving discipline of God.
In God’s employment contract with us, God doesn’t ask us to be successful by the worlds standards. He only invites us to be faithful to Him. He isn’t asking us to bring great results to Him, He’s simply asking us to be faithful to His assignment. And many times we don’t know what the outcome is, and sometimes it looks like what didn’t accomplish what we thought we were to accomplish, but if we were faithful and obedient to God, then God looks at us as successful.
The people ultimately take Jeremiah with them to Egypt as some seek to escape. He didn’t want to go, he wanted to stay in his homeland, but God still had another message for Jeremiah. God also wrote much of these events down in a little Bible book called Lamentations, which means to weep.
We don’t often turn to this small book in the OT to find inspiration. Much of what Jeremiah wrote wasn’t positive and hopeful, and you’re wanting something good and positive. But, there were bright spots. God told Jeremiah to yell out to the people, over and over . . . “God is going to bring you back home. This is not your final destination. This is not how it ends. God will bring you back home.”
In fact, there are some words in Lamentations that many of you have heard before, but you may not have realized they came from Jeremiah. In Lamentations 3:21-23, we read,
21 Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope:
22 Because of the LORD’s great love we are not consumed,
for his compassions never fail.
23 They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.
That is a song many of us have sung. Morning is coming and God’s compassion never ends. We are reminded God is faithful and will never abandon us. We may not realize these words were written during a terrible time. Yet, at its darkest, Jeremiah wrote these words.
God will bring you back home, because Great is His faithfulness.
Everyone who hears these words and has accepted Jesus as their Savior has a Jeremiah story. God knew you and set you apart before you were born. The question is, will you accept that assignment God has for you in your life? Will you align your life with God’s upper story plan. Remember God promised to gift us so that we would be equipped to go into the world and do the work God called us to.
If God has given us an assignment and equipped us to do the work, then please understand and believe that God will not send you, then walk away from you. God will always, always be with you, wherever you go. He gives you His strength, His courage, His power, and His love to go with you . . . everywhere.
