The Last 3 Kings of Judah- Jehoiakim
CCCAG, Sept 18th, 2022
Scripture: 2 Kings 23:36-24:4
Have you ever trusted in the wrong person? (Feelings of betrayal)
We had a discussion recently at work about trusting people. The opinions varied from “I don’t trust anyone” to “I’m by nature a trusting person who gets hurt a lot”.
When they asked me, I said I trust everyone. They were a bit astonished by that as I’m one of the most skeptical people out there.
I clarified my statement with “I trust everyone to be who they really are”
If they are a weak person, I will expect them to lie when confronted.
If they are a prideful person, I will expect them to do everything they can to maintain the image that people have of them.
If they are timid, I expect them to crawl into their shell and sulk and not talk if the conversation becomes difficult.
I expect people to be human, with all of the interesting reactions that comes from the huge variations of personalities we see on a daily basis.
Jesus did the same- John’s Gospel- the apostle and not me, said he didn’t put his trust in humans, because he knew what was inside all humans.
So I do the same, and I don’t blame people for doubting me on occasion.
However, that doesn’t lessen the sting of betrayal when you have a person that you thought you could trust brazenly turn their back on you.
That’s one of the things that we will explore today in the 2nd of the last three kings of Judah. His name is Jehoiakim, and he was the older brother of the previous king who only reigned for 3 months before he was deposed.
Scripture
2 Kings 23:36
36 Jehoiakim was twenty-five years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem eleven years. His mother’s name was Zebidah daughter of Pedaiah; she was from Rumah. 37 And he did evil in the eyes of the Lord, just as his predecessors had done.
24:1 During Jehoiakim’s reign, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon invaded the land, and Jehoiakim became his vassal for three years. But then he turned against Nebuchadnezzar and rebelled. 2 The Lord sent Babylonian, Aramean, Moabite and Ammonite raiders against him to destroy Judah, in accordance with the word of the Lord proclaimed by his servants the prophets. 3 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, 4 including the shedding of innocent blood. For he had filled Jerusalem with innocent blood, and the Lord was not willing to forgive.
Prayer- healing the sting of betrayal
Trusting the right people
Not compromising
Repentance is always available
Jehoiakim’s life is a study in the perils of pragmatism.
If you don’t know what that is, pragmatism believes whatever works, do it regardless of the moral or ethical ramifications that action might produce.
Pragamatism is often what causes people to act in ways you’d never expect- like breaking a confidence or betraying you in ways that really hurt.
There is an extreme example of modern day pragmatism seen in those who believe in global climate change.
In the extreme fringes of that movement, there are those who hold to the belief that we need to reduce the world population from the current 8 billion people to only 500,000 to save the planet. What that means is we need to have 7 billion, 999 million, 500 thousand people die immediately.
My answer to them on that is, “Ok, you first”
Jehoiakim was a pragmatist in that he believed doing what was the easiest thing to do at any given situation. Unfortunately, he had no moral compass to guide those decisions so the decisions we pretty exclusively devoid of anything remotely resembling God’s will for that time.
In fact, the prophet Jeremiah sends him a written message giving him God’s instructions for a situation. Apparently, it was a lengthy scroll because as he read it, he would cut off the piece he had just read and throw it into the fire.
He trusted more in his own ideas and wisdom more than he trusted in Gods.
Let me show you an example here in 2nd Kings 23:35
I. He Trusted in Egypt 2 King 23:35 (Josephus)
2 Kings 23:35
35 Jehoiakim paid Pharaoh Neco the silver and gold he demanded. In order to do so, he taxed the land and exacted the silver and gold from the people of the land according to their assessments.
The Jewish historian Josephus gives us some background into why Jehoiakim paid off Pharoah Neco. Neco had just deposed his younger brother as King, and placed Jehoiakim on the throne of Judah. Basically, Neco wanted a puppet king in Judah as a buffer against Babylon should King Nebuchadnezzar decide to come west and try to conquer Egypt.
Judah was too weak to defend themselves against either nation, so Jehoiakim paid Egypt to be their mercenaries, and he heavily taxed his people to pay for that.
Unfortunately, Neco didn’t live up to his end of the bargain, and when Babylon attacked Judah, he didn’t come to their aid.
Neco and Egypt betrayed Jehoiakim and Judah in the worst possible way.
Jehoiakim trusted in Egypt for his protection, and when it came time to fulfill that promise they practically bankrupted the nation to buy, crickets.
I used to do prison/jail visitations and services when I lived in Kenosha, and one of the myths about being in prison is that when you are a new person entering prison for the first time, you grab the biggest guy you think you can beat and fight him to gain the respect of the other inmates so they won’t mess with you.
The problem is- that person you just beat up is probably part of one of the gangs or cliques in the prison, and now you end up fighting an entire gang so you are forced into joining one that you might not want to be a part of just to survive.
That’s where Jehoiakim is right now. He’s paid off the second biggest bully on the planet to protect him from the biggest bully on the planet, and now Neco refuses to help Judah at all.
That shows us an important point.
Never trust in Egypt.
I’m not talking about the modern nation or it’s people. I’m sure there are many wonderful people who currently live there. I’m talking about Egypt as it’s typically portrayed in the bible-
Egypt is type, or example of the fallen world, or a metaphor for sin or following a path not approved by God.
All Jehoiakim would have had to do is repent, then lead his nation in repentance, and God would have fulfilled his promise to Solomon in 2 Chronicles 7:14 that says
2 Chron 7:14-15
if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.
NIV
But he didn’t want to have anything to do with God. He wanted to do it his way, and his way lead to failure, after failure, after failure.
Do you know anyone like that? They won’t turn aside from a horrible idea and keep trying and trying and trying the wrong way, only to get bad results.
Albert Einstein is famously quoted as saying, “The definition of idiocy is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result”
Do you know anyone that saying fits?
Can we be honest with ourselves and say, “Yeah, this is or was me many times in life”
If that’s you- I point you back to 2 Chron 7:14. The main word there is “If”. If means you have to make a choice to turn from your stubbornness and yield to God.
Because if you don’t, your heart will grow harder, and you’ll get worse and worse.
The second thing we can learn from the life of Jehoiakim is that he followed the worst of the worst in his moral life.
In the scriptures this morning, we heard about something called the Sins of Manasseh
II. Sins of Manasseh (rampant sexual sin followed by child sacrifice) Seen in 2 Kings 24:3- the shedding of innocent blood
Manasseh was the great grandfather of Jehoiakim, and probably the worst, most evil and sinful king that Judah ever had.
A couple of his greatest hits if you will from 2 Kings 21
• He rebuilt the high places (explain)
• Erected altars to Baal
• Built Asherah poles (totem pole)
• Worshipped astrology
• Built pagan altars in the temple
• Sent his own children through the fire (Child Sacrifice)
• Practiced witchcraft
• Consulted mediums
• Killed the innocent to the point that the streets ran with blood
Nice guy right?
Jehoiakim had a Godly example in his father, Josiah, but instead he chose to follow his grandfathers into sin and evil.
What that says to us today and teaches us is that sin has a very powerful pull, especially on the young, and in spite of a boy who was mostly likely raised in a home where God was honored.
It also shows the absolute malignity of sin. Sin usually starts out small, like a slow moving cancer. You don’t feel it, but it’s sending out cells throughout your body, looking for a weak one to corrupt and change into another cancer cell. If left unchecked, it will change every single cell in the body into a cancer cell, but the organism it’s infecting usually dies long before that happens.
An example from our time-
2008 there was a lot of debate in our time about rights and recognition being given to LGBT people- focused mostly around marriage but also around general rights. Those who opposed said if we open this door for them, they will blow the door right off the hinges and we will have all kinds of crazy trying to get recognized as legitimate societal practice.
Those on the LGBT side said that we were fearmongering and using the slippery slope argument and that wouldn’t happen.
Today- furries- people who believe they are really animals want legal recognition as such.
If you think that’s just in the cities- saw it at in public in BRF last week- big long tail.
Not only that, we are drugging and mutilating children based of a pseudoscience called gender identification.
Even our language is under attack with this movement- The definition of words that have meant one thing in the English language for 500 years are being changed to suit the needs of a very few.
Words like mother, father, male, female are all becoming fluid instead of hard and fast definitions.
It shows how a nation can go from a Josiah- a man who loved God and ruled his people with justice and goodness and in less than 3 months after his death go right back into the worst evil imaginable.
But that isn’t just a lesson for a nation. It’s a lesson for you and me as well.
What’s your secret sin that you hide from others?
Do you have a sinful attraction or addiction that Jesus needs to bring healing to?
Because left unchecked, you will begin to slide down that slippery slope toward things you never thought possible.
I’ve sat across from a lot of couples who went through a time of adultery or sexual sin in the marriage. Either one cheated on the other, or they both decided to try an open marriage thinking they could be the exception to the rules that God has placed in the bible for our own protection.
I’m just using this as an example. Adultery never starts with two people looking at each other and the next second they are in bed. It starts with a longing look. Maybe some risqué conversation and joking. In the modern era, some texting that moves into more and more sexual topics. Then the sexting starts- maybe a few pictures or phone calls. Then before you know it, they end up in bed.
It's the slow progression.
We have all heard about the frog in the pot of water.
If you put a frog in a pot on an unlit burner on the stove with some room temperature water it will happily stay there waiting for a fly to come near for it’s lunch. If you turn the burner on very low, the water will slowly heat, and the frog won’t even notice the change. You can keep increasing the heat, and the frog being cold blooded won’t feel the danger coming until it’s too late, and he is cooked.
The enemy of your souls does that in our society, and he does that to you personally.
He starts out small, dangling a bait in front of our eyes. We take a nibble or two and find it to be exciting, a little dangerous, and enticing so we take a bigger bite and that’s when the hook is jerked and it imbeds itself into our jaw and we are his.
If that is you today- if satan has a hook in you that you are too ashamed to admit to anyone, there is hope, and there is help for you.
That brings us to our last topic we see in Jehoiakim’s life.
III. In the midst of all of this evil, God still offered them a chance to repent- Jeremiah 36/Josephus commentary
In the fourth year of Jehoiakim son of Josiah king of Judah, this word came to Jeremiah from the Lord: 2 “Take a scroll and write on it all the words I have spoken to you concerning Israel, Judah and all the other nations from the time I began speaking to you in the reign of Josiah till now. 3 Perhaps when the people of Judah hear about every disaster I plan to inflict on them, they will each turn from their wicked ways; then I will forgive their wickedness and their sin.”
The bible records that God sent word through his prophet to Jehoiakim that he was on a dangerous path in trusting Egypt and not God. We mentioned earlier that Jehoiakim’s response was to cut the pieces of the scroll off as they were being read to him and throw them in the fire. Not only that, but he tried to have Jeremiah put to death because of the message- it just didn’t fit his plans so it was easier in his eyes to kill the messenger to stop the message.
The irony- the people of Judah where already in fasting and prayer for God to deliver them, but Jehoiakim put a stop to that, and therefore sealed the fate of the nation.
It wasn’t enough for him to doom his own soul- he has to doom the souls of others as well.
Sound like what we see today?
Today we have a lot of Jehoiakim’s among us. They are social media influencers, broadcasters, commentators, politicians, local leaders, college professors….
They are all around us.
But God’s word still stands true to us- both as a nation, and as individuals-
2 Chron 7:14-15
if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.
Again, the key word here is “If”
IF
If
If
“My people, who are called by my name”
That’s the promise available to anyone who has become a follower of Jesus Christ.
But it comes with a condition.
That “if” word
If Jehoiakim would have humbled himself, and prayed, and turned from his wicked ways, he would be remembered much differently this morning.
But he didn’t, and it eventually cost him his freedom, and then his life.
If you would humble yourself, and pray, and seek his face, and turn from any wicked way,
God will forgive
God will touch
God will heal you
And your land.
But the choice is yours.
You and I are HIS people. God judges the nation based on the actions of the church, not the sinful world.
Altar call.
Prayer for fellowship
Prayer/reminder for movie night
Landing Strip
