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Dr. Manny Arango
Hey, Bible nerds. This is Dr. Manny Arango and I'm your host for the Bible department podcast. Powered by Arma. This podcast follows a Bible reading plan we created to help you read the entire Bible in a year. You can head to the show notes or thebibledepartment.com to download our reading plan and join the journey. Let's be honest, a lot of us are still treating digital ministry like it's a backup plan from 2020. But discipleship isn't just happening on Sundays anymore. People need gospel centered connection every day of the week. And if you're stuck juggling five different platforms, one for giving, another for sermons, something else for events, it's no wonder engagement feels off. That's not ministry. That's a mess. Subsplash changes that one platform. Everything you need. Media, giving, events, messaging, your app, your website, built specifically for churches. No hacks, no workarounds, just clarity and simplicity. Because every day you wait, families scroll past your sermons, new guests click away from clunky sites, and real people miss real moments with Jesus. Don't waste another summer stuck in digital survival mode. Use it to get ahead, simplify, upgrade. Get back to what matters. Head to subsplash.combible-dept and schedule a free no pressure demo. And let this be the summer your church gets focused and fully equipped family. Welcome to day 179. Today we are gonna cover the decline of Judah. It is gonna end really bad. Okay, we're supposed to cover this yesterday, but yesterday we got caught up in chapter 22 and 23, which means today we're really gonna cover chapter 24 and 25. So we took a day that was supposed to be one day, and we split it into two days. So we got pretty deep into the story of Josiah yesterday. After Josiah, it's all downhill, actually. Chapter 23, right in the middle, right around verse 31, we get jehoah has becomes king. He reigned in Jerusalem for three months. Okay. He did evil Pharaoh Nico. Put him in chains. Okay, so what's going on? What. What is happening with Pharaoh, Egypt and Assyria. So I got to give you context, like always. Context clues. Egypt and Assyria are now in an alliance against Babylon. So let me actually like just give you a good amount of history and that'll give you context. You could Google this. A lot of these dates that I'm going to give you aren't necessarily in the Bible, but they impact the story of what's happening in scripture and they provide context. Like always, I'm going to give you context Clues and I'll give you a bunch of nerdy nuggets and then I'll give you a Thomas Truth. So 625bc is when this part of the story really starts. 625bc we get a king by the name of Nabopolassar. Okay, Nabopolassar. N A B O P O L A S, S A R. Nabopolassar. Who's Nabopolassar? Well, this is Nebuchadnezzar's father. Nabopolassar becomes king of Babylon in 626 BC and immediately, first order of business is we got to wipe out the Assyrians. The Assyrians are to the north of the Babylonians, which means he's got to cross a mountain range. No one brings armies across mountain ranges. But he forms a pseudo alliance with Persian Medo Medes and essentially conscripts them to to fight with him and essentially have some serious victories over the Assyrians. And then in 612, 612 B.C. nineveh gets conquered. And then fast forward again to 605 B.C. there's a last battle. And in this battle, Egypt and Assyria are fighting against the growing and pretty formidable enemy of the Babylonians. Okay, so Nabal Pilasser and his son Nebuchadnezzar are going to completely destroy the assyrians. And in 605 BC in 605 BC the only thing in this entire region that is not a part of the Assyrian empire is Judah. So the Babylonians essentially take over all conquered territories that were ruled by the Assyrians. The Assyrian empire is swallowed up by the Babylonian Empire. And then the Persian Empire is going to swallow up the Babylonian Empire. And then the Greeks are going to swallow up the Persians and the Romans are going to swallow up the Greeks. Cause so these empires just keep growing and growing and growing and growing and growing. If I own 10 properties and someone who owns 20 properties buys all my properties, now they have 30. So the reason they're growing is because you just keep conquering something that's a little bit smaller than you. The Babylonians are going to totally take over everything that is the Assyrian empire. When this happens, the only thing Nebuchadnezzar can see, the only thing that I don't have possession over in this entire region is Judah. So let's go get Judah. This is why Pharaoh Nico is even mentioned at all, is because the king of Judah has trusted in Egypt and Egypt has lost. So now obviously Babylon is, is involved. So here we go. Also the last Thing we need to know about Jehoiakim, chapter 23, all the way at the end, verse 35. Jehoiakim, this is Josiah's son, paid Pharaoh Nego the silver and gold he demanded. In order to do so, he taxed the land and exacted the silver and gold from the people. So this is just terrible. Okay, he's oppressing the people in order to pay taxes to a foreign power. Just want to throw that nerdy nugget in there that. This is like really bad. This is really, really bad. Chapter 24 starts. During Jehoiakim's reign, Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, invaded the land and Jehoiakim became his vassal for three years. So everybody knows what a vassal is because we've looked at Deuteronomy, suzerain vassals. Okay, so why does Nebuchadnezzar come invade the land? He invades the land because he's just. This is 605bc okay? He's just taken over the Assyrian empire. He's hot on a victory. The Bible wants us to know that it's not just the force of Babylon, it's not just momentum. This isn't just momentum. But surely verse three of chapter 24, surely these things happened to Judah according to the Lord's command. This isn't just cause Nebuchadnezzar is a great military leader. This isn't just because his father Nabal Palasser had a plan to eliminate Assyria. That God uses things that are happening in the world. But he's able to wipe out 185,000 Assyrians over overnight if he wants to. So God is allowing this to happen now, right here in 605. This is what's called the first wave of deportation. This right here is when Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, they go off to Babylon. Okay, you can also read about this in Second Chronicles. I want to say chapter like 36. You can fact check me. I may be wrong, okay? But I'm pretty sure It's Chronicles chapter 36. Now there's going to be a second wave in 597 under Jehoia Kim's son, Jehoia Chin. Okay? In 597, Jehoia Chin is going to be in rule and Nebuchadnezzar is going to come down again. Okay, so this is the second time Nebuchadnezzar is coming to Jerusalem. Verse 10. At that time, the officers of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, advanced on Jerusalem and laid siege to it. And Nebuchadnezzar himself, himself came up to the city while his officials were besieging it, and they all surrender. So Jehoiachin is going off to Babylon as a prisoner. In the eighth year, the reign of the king of Babylon, he took Jehoiachin prisoner as the Lord had declared it. Nebuchadnezzar removed the treasures from the temple of the Lord and the royal palace and cut up the gold articles that Solomon, king of Israel, had made for the temple of the Lord. I want you to see this, that there's an emphasis on what's being destroyed. It's not the Holy of holies. It's not the Ark of the Covenant. It's all the crap Solomon added. The stuff that Solomon added that God never asked for. We're making a point that this is the stuff that Nebuchadnezzar is going to destroy. First, he carried all Jerusalem into exile. That's really misleading because he really doesn't carry all of Jerusalem off to exile. But this is 597 in 11 years. He's coming back. And when he comes back, it's really. He's really going to take everybody. So this is the second wave, okay? These verses right here, verse 14. He carried all Jerusalem into exile. All the officers and fighting men and all the skilled workers and artisan. A total of 10,000. Only the poorest people of the land were left Nebuchadnezzar. Like, I don't want no broke people, okay? I'm leaving all these poor people right here. They can be. They can be. All they going to do in Babylon is be poor. They can be poor right here. So he's taking artisans, skilled workers, and a lot of people believe this is when Ezekiel is taken out to that first wave I told you about in 605. That's Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. The second wave here in 597, Ezekiel's going and Jehoiachin is going. Nebuchadnezzar took Jehoiachin captive to Babylon. He also took from Jerusalem to Babylon the king's mother, his wives, his officials, prominent people of the land. The king of Babylon, also deported to Babylon. The entire force of 7,000 fighting men, strong and fit for war, and a thousand skilled workers and artisans. He made Mattaniah, Jehoiachin's uncle. Okay, so now Jehoiachin's uncle is gonna get made king, but he's no king. And then he renames him Zedekiah. So Zedekiah is really, really, really the last king. But the last true king is gonna be Jehoiachin. And the book is gonna actually end with Jehoiachin. In 586, Nebuchadnezzar is coming back again. Obviously Zedekiah is going to do evil in the eyes of the Lord. And then chapter 25, okay? In the ninth year of Zedekiah's reign, on the tenth day of the tenth month, Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, marched against Jerusalem with his whole army. So now this is a third wave of deportation. And now it's really over. Jeremiah is prophesying during this time, okay? Now when Jeremiah's prophesying, Ezekiel has already gotten a prophetic word in Babylon that God has left the temple. So the reason that the whole temple is about to get destroyed, ransacked, burned to the ground, is because Yahweh's already up out of there. But Ezekiel sees this while he's in Babylon. But Ezekiel went out into exile in 597, okay? So by the time we get down into 586, Jeremiah's prophesying and Jeremiah is saying, hey guys, don't fight against the Babylonians. This is the most unpatriotic thing anybody could ever say, okay? Imagine if China were to invade or Russia were to invade America. And prophets, American pastors standing up like, look, guys, just let them. It's okay. Guys, just let them take it. Just surrender, okay? This is what Jeremiah is doing, okay? The Babylonians are knocking on the door and Jeremiah is like, hey, look, if you just bow down, okay, God has risen up Nebuchadnezzar. This is the Lord for all of our disobedience. This is why Jeremiah gets persecuted. He's getting persecuted because he's saying very unpatriotic things. But that does not mean that they're not biblical, that they're not God. Just cause something ain't patriotic don't mean it ain't God. That's a whole word. And I don't want to get in trouble, so I ain't gonna go further. But anyway, Jeremiah not a fan favorite, ok? Not popular. Not popular. He does not get the people going. Verse 2. The city was kept under siege until the 11th year of the king of Zedekiah. So two years of sieging. By the 9th day of the 4th month, the famine in the city had become so severe, there was no food for the people to eat. Then the city wall was broken through and the whole army fled at night to the gate. And bronze is a Nerdy nugget. Bronze is the symbol of judgment. Okay, Judgment. So with the bronze serpent, remember in the desert with Moses, Okay. Serpents are symbols of chaos and bronze is a symbol of judgment, which means God is judging the chaos. So when you look at it, you're looking at God judging the chaos. And that's why the people are healed, because healing happens when God judges the chaos. That's a whole sermon. I could preach a whole sermon about that. That's a nice little nerdy nugget. Family. The wait is over. My brand new book, Crushing Chaos is out now and available everywhere. Books are sold. Literally. Today I walked into a Barnes and Noble and I signed a bunch of copies at a physical location. So you can grab this book at a physical Barnes and Noble or you can go to a Books a million or Amazon or anywhere books are sold and grab a copy. If you enjoy reading the Bible from an ancient perspective, if you understand that the beauty of scripture is actually knowing it in context, then you'll love this book. And if there's any chaos in your personal life, I think that reading the Bible from an ancient perspective can actually help to correct crush the chaos in your life. I think this book is going to be a New York Times bestseller. I really do. I think we wrote a good one. I think you should get a copy today. All right, back to the episode. The reason the Bible gives us this little nerdy detail. That verse 7. They killed the sons of Zedekiah before his eyes. So now Zedekiah's sons are murdered in front of him. Then they put out his eyes so they let him see that his sons are dying. And then they pluck out his eyeballs because this the. I want this to be the last thing you ever see. Us killing your kids. Now we're going to take out your eyes. And they bound him with bronze shackles and took him to Babylon. This is judgment because bronze is the metal or the symbol of judgment. On the seventh day of the fifth month, the 19th year of Nebuchadnezzar's king of King of Babylon. Now they're in Jerusalem. He set fire to the temple of the Lord, the royal palace and all the houses of Jerusalem, every important building. He burned down the whole Babylonian army under the commander of the imperial guard, broke down the walls around Jerusalem. Nebuzaradin, the commander of the guard, carried into exile the people who remained in the city along with the rest of the populace and those who had deserted to the king of Babylon. But the commander left behind some of the poorest people in the land to work the vineyards, in the field. They keep leaving. The poor people. The poor people can't catch a break. Every wave, they're like, dad, they're too poor. Then they come back, they get more people. They're like, yeah, no, y' all still too poor. They do not. They are like, nah, you not about to be. You're not about to be homeless in Babylon. Yo, we're not bringing no homeless people to Babylon. This is just what the Bible says. Here we go. Verse 13. The Babylonians broke up the bronze pillars, the movable stands, the bronze sea that were at the temple of the Lord, and they carried the bronze to Babylon. This is all the stuff that Solomon added, okay? They also took away the pot, shovels, wick trimmers, dishes, all the bronze articles used in the temple service. The commander of the Empirical Guard took away the censors, and the temple is gone. Yo, it's a wrap. Skip down all the way to verse 23 there. In Ribla, in the land of Hamath, the king had them executed. This is like anyone who's of royal blood, okay? So Judah went into captivity away from her land. You may be thinking, I thought they already went into captivity. No, this is final. This is a third wave of captivity. This is 586 BC. And who gets appointed Gedaliah? Now, the Bible tells us in Jeremiah, Gedaliah and Jeremiah are actually friends. Okay, so Gedaliah agrees with Jeremiah. Like, yeah, man, if we fight, they'll kill us. But if we just surrender, they'll just take us to Babylon and we can live. There's no point fighting against Nebuchadnezzar because God has raised up Nebuchadnezzar to judge us for our idolatry. But don't nobody want to hear that. Jeremiah keeps trying to tell them the reason that Nebuchadnezzar is here is because Yah was worshiping baal. Why you. You was worshiping Asherah. You was using the mediums and the prophets and all that stuff. So in the seventh month, the son, Royal Blood came with 10 men and assassinated Gedaliah. So these are people with royal blood. They're like, we don't like this governor that they've set up. We've got to assassinate him. And. And where do they go? They flee to Egypt. Verse 26. All the people from the least of the greatest, together with the army, fled to Egypt. I just need you to see the story. This whole story started with what? With God rescuing these people from Egypt, establishing a covenant with them that he would bring them into their own land. And they live in the land they forgot about God. And now where do they end back up? Right back in Egypt. These people who are refusing to listen to the voice of prophets, refusing to listen to Jeremiah, refusing to listen to Isaiah, refusing to listen that God has risen up Nebuchadnezzar for this very purpose, these people are now having to flee to Egypt. And now the book ends with a glimmer of hope. I mean, if there was a glimmer, like, I mean, a glimmer, a glim, just a glim of hope. Zedekiah's nephew, okay, the last true king, Jehoiachin, while he's in Babylon, he's released from prison. He did this on the 27th day of the 12th month. He spoke kindly to him and gave him a seat of honor higher than any of those other kings who were with him in Babylon. Because Babylon's acquired tons of territories from tons of kings. So there's a bunch of prison kings in Babylon that have all been exiled off, carted off back to Babylon. So Jehoiachin put aside his prison clothes and for the rest of his life ate regularly at the king's table. Day by day, the king gave Jehoiachin a regular allowance as long as he lived. And so this glimmer of hope is that God is gonna bring restoration because he has brought a tiny morsel of restoration to the last king of Judah. This is David's last descendant. And God has chosen, instead of him being a prisoner for the rest of his life, he's going to put off the prison clothes. He's still in exile. He's still in Babylon. He's still a prisoner. Like, he can't leave. He's like, it ain't like he can go leave and like, go back to Jerusalem. He can't go nowhere. But at least you got nice clothes and at least you not in a cell. He's at least now a respectable prisoner. And this is how the book of second of two Kings ends. It ends with a slight glimmer of hope that, yes, there's been judgment. Yes, the worst thing that could ever happen has happened. Jerusalem has fallen. The temple is burned to the ground. The people of Israel have been deported all over. They've spit been scattered all over the nations. But the book ends on a. On, on just from verse 27 to verse 30, just three verses of just hope that it's not as bad as it could be. And this gives us the hope to believe that maybe, just maybe one day after being in exile that God will bring the people back to the land and that he will restore to them everything they've lost. And of course, we know from history that that is going to happen, that they're going to spend 70 years in exile and then the Persians are going to come to power. And the Persians are going to send everybody back, not just the Jews, but they're going to send all conquered people back to their original homes. And with that, we end the Book of Second Kings. And we've got tomorrow. I'll be right here again for day I believe 180. Hey, if you're on a streak, don't break it. We got so much momentum. If you're not on a streak, how about you start one? I'm so proud of you. We are growing together. We say this awesome thing at church. I love it. If you keep showing up, you keep growing up. So keep showing up and I love you. Proud of you. See you tomorrow. Peace. Thanks so much for joining us on the Bible Department Podcast. You can find us online and learn more about the show at thebibledepartment.com and on Instagram hebible department. If you enjoyed this episode and want to dive deeper into the Bible, you can get free access to our library of courses@thebibledepartment.com we'll see you back here tomorrow.