Sermon Tone Analysis

Hope in Exile – 2 Kings 25

December 19, 2021

Adam Wiggins

Storyline Fellowship

There was a saying on the wall as I grew up that said the old adage: “Home is where the heart is.”

Funny enough, we have no idea where that saying first came from.

But it is true, isn’t it?

Four walls and square footage doesn’t make a house a home.

What makes a house a home are the relationships and the life and the memories that happen inside of it.

Jesus said something similar in the gospels: “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

The place you belong – your home – is wherever your heart craves most.

Which begs the question this morning, “Where is your heart?” “Where is it that you are trying to reach?” “Where is your home?”

Today as we continue to travel through the story of the Bible in this advent series, one thing we will see is that for believers, our Home isn’t tied to a place; it’s tied to a person and it’s tied to His presence.

I. God’s Presence Brings Life

To see this, I want us to take some long strides together through the Storyline of Scripture.

So that means we’re going to look at a couple different passages.

And the first is in 1 Kings 9.

In case you are just joining us, I want to briefly catch you up from where we’ve been in the series as we are turning there.

We began with Adam and Eve, who were at home in the garden, enjoying the very presence of God.

Genesis describes God as “walking with them” in the cool of day.

But all of that changed when they rebelled against God.

Sin and death and poverty entered the world, and they were kicked out of Eden, sent out into the wild in exile.

But if you remember, there was a promise made: that one day, a descendent would come from the woman who would crush the head of satan, the great deceiver.

One day, there would be a deliverer.

Then we fast forwarded on to Abraham, who God called out of a foreign nation and into His family.

And God made a promise – a covenant – with Abraham that one day, God would give him a great name, a dynasty, and a place to call home.

God promised that one day, the entire world would be blessed through one offspring of Abraham.

And last week, we left off with David, who was known as a man after God’s own heart.

He looked at his palacial surroundings and at God’s drab tent, and decided he wanted to build a new home for God to live in.

But God said, “No, you won’t build me a house.

I’m going to build YOUR house – your descendents.”

God made this covenant with David, promising him that a son from his own lineage would one day sit upon his throne, reigning as an eternal king, build a just kingdom, and rule with perfect righteousness.

One day, there would be true peace in the land under God’s son, the King.

And so we pick up with David’s son, Solomon, in 1 Kings 9. Listen to what God tells him:

1 Kings 9:6–9 (ESV)

6 But if you turn aside from following me, you or your children, and do not keep my commandments and my statutes that I have set before you, but go and serve other gods and worship them, 7 then I will cut off Israel from the land that I have given them, and the house that I have consecrated for my name I will cast out of my sight, and Israel will become a proverb and a byword among all peoples.

8 And this house will become a heap of ruins.

Everyone passing by it will be astonished and will hiss, and they will say, ‘Why has the Lord done thus to this land and to this house?’

9 Then they will say, ‘Because they abandoned the Lord their God who brought their fathers out of the land of Egypt and laid hold on other gods and worshiped them and served them.

Therefore the Lordhas brought all this disaster on them.’

”

God makes it clear to Solomon: The stakes are high.

If they don’t follow God faithfully and obey him, just like Adam and Eve before them, they will face exile.

The very center of Jewish identity – temple – and more importantly, God’s presence with them – would be destroyed.

If you’re familiar with the story of King Solomon, then you’ll know that he started off well.

God made him and Israel propser.

He became wealthy, and successful, and well-respected.

But like an unfortunate politician, the ego went to his head; the pride came before the fall.

And before we know it, the man has 700 wives, and theres no amount of marriage counseling that can help that mess.

Solomon spiralled downward, and as he did so, so did the hearts of the people.

Idolatry became commonplace, and the trajectory becomes clear: God’s people continued, over and over again, to turn away from God and disobey.

It was Adam and Eve all over again, and we see the exact same consequences for sin:

II.

Our Sin Brings Separation

To use another Bible word for it, sin results in exile.

In being sent away, far from home, where you belong.

I want you to flip over a few pages to our main passage this morning, in 2 Kings 24-25.

And as we arrive on the scene in this last passage in the book of Kings, exile is exactly what we see happening.

This passage shows us the last king of Israel in the Old Testament, and the destruction of Israel’s homeland.

It reads like the tragic end to a long, sad story.

2 Kings 24:18–20 (ESV)

18 Zedekiah was twenty-one years old when he became king, and he reigned eleven years in Jerusalem.

His mother’s name was Hamutal the daughter of Jeremiah of Libnah.

19 And he did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, according to all that Jehoiakim [his father] had done.

20 For because of the anger of the Lord it came to the point in Jerusalem and Judah that he cast them out from his presence.

Like many kings before him, Zedekiah is characterized by these haunting words: He did what was evil in the sight of the Lord.

And because of his sinfulness and the evil of the kings before him, God will send his people into exile.

But being taken from their homeland isn’t the tragedy here.

The tragedy is in the very middle of v. 20: “The Lord … will cast them out from his presence.”

God's King – and the people with him – are losing God’s presence.

He’s casting them out of the garden, away from His goodness, outside of the camp.

Let’s just pause and recognize this together: To lose God’s presence is to lose everything.

Irenaeus said it this way: “the life of man consists in beholding God.”

This harkens back to the very purpose for which the Bible shows man was created.

In the words of a Christian confessional statement from the mid 17-th century, “What is the chief end of man?

To glorify God and enjoy him forever.”

Each one of us was created to know God and enjoy Him.

Isn’t that amazing?

God didn’t create you to use you; God created you so that you might exist in a vibrant, life-giving relationship with Him in which you can enjoy His presence forever.

But to lose God’s presence, because of the separation sin creates, is to lose everything.

And how does this happen in the life of Israel?

God uses the enemy nations to bring about judgment.

Before we make some more connections here, I want you to continue in the story with me.

God has vowed to remove his presence from his people, and this is where we pick up in the last chapter of Kings:

2 Kings 25:1–11 (ESV)

1 And in the ninth year of his reign, in the tenth month, on the tenth day of the month, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came with all his army against Jerusalem and laid siege to it.

And they built siegeworks all around it. 2 So the city was besieged till the eleventh year of King Zedekiah.

3 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.

4 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 Chaldeans were around the city.

And they went in the direction of the Arabah.

5 But the army of the Chaldeans pursued the king and overtook him in the plains of Jericho, and all his army was scattered from him.

6 Then they captured the king and brought him up to the king of Babylon at Riblah, and they passed sentence on him.

7 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.

And if we keep reading in v. 9, we see that the Babylonians invade the city, burn down the palaces, tear down the markets and houses and walls.

Nothing is left standing.

The nail in the coffin is that the home of God – the one place on planet earth where God’s presence was known to reside – was also torn down and burned.

The temple is no more.

Most of the people are taken away as prisoners of war to the far-off country of Babylon, leaving Jerusalem and Judah desolate and empty.

And that’s all we have time for today.

Merry Christmas everyone.

This isn’t holly or jolly, why are we reading this?