Father, we come to you in the name of Jesus, our living head, and we ask that you would continue your work of building us up as a people into Jesus, into Christ. The promise of your gospel is that By faith, we are united with your Son. And so we want our hope to rest solely in Christ. I ask even this morning in the preaching of your word that you would show us the places where our hearts might be tempted to place hope in really good things, but to place that hope in really good things outside of Jesus. Help us to see where we're tempted in those ways, and then help us to turn again to you, to long for communion with you, to be fed and nourished by you. We pray that you would do all that now through the preaching of your word, through the power of your Spirit. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.
Well, it's interesting we just watched that mission brief video from the Wilsons because we talk about some cross-cultural challenges in the video. And if you think about it, there's some things that are just difficult to grasp culturally. If you're from one culture and you're interacting with a different culture, there's some things that are just hard to wrap your minds around. Things that we take for granted another culture might not do. Things that they do that are totally normal to that culture just seem totally foreign to us. And I'm sure you've all experienced examples or times in your life where you've engaged with another culture and you felt that gap.
I remember one time I felt that more acutely than I typically do was a summer that I spent on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. And the Pine Ridge Reservation is in South Dakota, it's the Lakota people. And I spent a whole summer there. And one of the things that was just difficult to kind of wrap my mind around was I was in the midst of this culture, and the Pine Ridge Reservation especially, is a place that has a ton of poverty, and there's a lot of unemployment, and most people don't graduate from high school. It's really in the middle of nowhere. They were given a sliver of land by the government that's kind of intentionally off the beaten path, not with a lot of resources. And as I got to know the Lakota people, you kind of heard the story, and you realize how much they valued the land, and how much they valued the place where they'd originally been. And it was this huge section of land on the Great Plains where they would hunt, and seek to live out their lives. And so there was this strange moment of kind of cultural misstep when I found out part of their history was the United States government, a couple decades ago, actually gave a formal apology to the Lakota people for taking their land and breaking some of the treaties they'd made, and they offered them over $150 million. So a massive sum of money that the US government offered as an apology to this people for the way that they were wrestled from their land. Now that's a huge sum of money, I don't care who you are. And here's this people that are in the midst of incredible poverty, in a lot of ways it's like a third world country in the middle of South Dakota. And they refused the money. And it was just, I remember, you know, I was young, I was only 19, but just trying to fathom how on earth you would refuse that amount of money when you look around and you see all the need. And what I was experiencing was there was this cultural gap. To them, the land that they had lost, there was no price tag to put on it. And it was almost offensive that the government had said, "Here's a big chunk of change you can have," when they said, "We don't want the money, we want the land back." And so there was just this significant cultural gap that I was feeling and sensing, and really the whole summer just, you never get over that, you never get to the point where it's like, "Oh, now I understand what they're thinking." there's a difference in how they approach it and how they think through those concepts.
And we're going to see in today's text a sort of cultural gap like that. Now, by God's help, through the word, through the power of the Spirit, we can bridge that gap. We can hope to bridge that gap. We're going to approach something that at first blush is not going to seem as tragic to us as it seems to the characters in the story.
And one of the ways you can kind of draw a modern analogy to it is when you think of the Western Wall in Jerusalem. You guys familiar with what the Western Wall is? The Western Wall, it's also called the Wailing Wall, is the last remnant of Herod's Temple in the city of Jerusalem. And it's this place where Jewish people will go, Orthodox Jews will go, and they go to pray and they go to be close to God's temple. They're not actually at the temple. The temple's been destroyed. This is actually not even a part of the temple. It's the wall that surrounded the outer courtyard of the temple. But the Temple Mount itself is controlled by the Muslim population of Jerusalem, so they can't get any closer than this wall. And so you'll see people going to this wall and just crying out and mourning, and their hearts are just broken as they see this wall. And for us, it's a strange thing to watch. I can't think of a place where I would go to and just by being at that place, it's a place that I'm going to go and I'm going to cry out and I'm going to mourn for what I've lost because that place just exists. In the way that it does. But that's what Orthodox Jews feel at the wall. They feel the loss that 2,000 years ago the temple was destroyed. And it's not even the temple they're at, it's just this section of the wall. It's as close as they can actually get.
They're not just mourning the loss of Herod's temple, they're not just mourning the loss of the temple we see in Jesus' day. They're mourning the loss of the original temple, Solomon's Temple, all the way back in 587 BC when Nebuchadnezzar and Babylon rise up and finally totally conquer God's people and carry them out of the land. They've lost something. They've lost something incredibly precious to them. Something that's hard for us to wrap our minds around. That's part of our task this morning.
6 · Reads the primary text aloud from 2 Kings 25:8-17, detailing Babylon's destruction of Jerusalem, the temple, and the plundering of its bronze furnishings, establishing the scriptural foundation for the entire sermon
So look with me at 2 Kings 25. We're going to jump in at verse 8. So hear God's holy and authoritative Word. In the 5th month, on the 7th day of the month, that was the 19th year of King Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, Nebuzaradan the king, the captain of the bodyguard, a servant of the king of Babylon, came to Jerusalem, and he burned the house of the Lord and the king's house and all the houses of Jerusalem. Every house he burned down. And all the army of the Chaldeans who were with the captain of the guard broke down the walls around Jerusalem, and the rest of the people who were left in the city and the deserters who had deserted the king of Babylon, together with the rest of the multitude, Nebuzaradan, the captain of the guard, carried into exile. The captain of the guard left some of the poorest of the land to be vinedressers and plowmen. And the pillars of bronze that were in the house of the Lord, and the stands, and the bronze sea that were in the house of the Lord, the Chaldeans broke in pieces and carried the bronze to Babylon. And they took away the pots and the shovels and the snuffers and the dishes for incense and all the vessels of bronze used in the temple service, the firepans also and the bowls. What was of gold, the captain of the guard took away as gold, and what was of silver as silver. As for the two pillars, the one sea, and the stands that Solomon had made for the house of the Lord, the bronze of all the vessels was beyond weight. The height of the one pillar was 18 cubits. And on it was a capital of bronze. The height of the capital was 3 cubits. A latticework and pomegranates, all of bronze, were all around the capital. And the second pillar had the same with the latticework. Hear the word of the Lord. May He write its truth upon our hearts.
7 · Traces the history of Solomon's temple from David's conquest of Jerusalem through Solomon's construction of the temple as a wonder of the ancient world, establishing that the temple was not merely the best religious building but the qualitatively unique dwelling place of God's presence and glory among His people, making its destruction not just the loss of architecture but the loss of access to God Himself
Now when you hear that, it probably doesn't stir up heartbreak and mourning. You hear the description of a bunch of bronze things and pillars and this strange bronze sea, right? You read weird names and the Chaldeans, right? You read it, and if you're just going through this devotionally, you can almost just pass over what's happening in the text. So what I want to do this morning is help us to get a sense of the significance of what's being described in 2 Kings 25. And to do that, first, we're going to look back. So the first thing we're going to do this morning is look back in the story of Israel and try and get a sense of why when a Jewish person read 2 Kings 25, there would be tears on the page. Does that make sense? So the tragedy that's described here as we look back in 2 Kings, it becomes clear when we grasp the significance of the temple for Israel. The temple, I think sometimes we can make the mistake of thinking the temple is like the biggest and best church in ancient Israel. It's like the temple is the church that's got the coolest designs and the best architecture and it seats the most people, and that's what the temple is. It's just quantitatively different than the other places that people worship. But that's not it. The temple is qualitatively different. It's a different thing altogether. The temple, even more than the palace, was what made Jerusalem the functional capital of Israel. Now, we don't think this way. You know, there's a National Cathedral in Washington, D.C.? How many of you think when you think of Washington, D.C., that it's the capital, you think, "It's the capital because the National Cathedral's there"? None of us think that way. A lot of us have probably never even thought of going to visit the National Cathedral when we go to D.C. We think of D.C. as the capital because that's where the government is, that's where Congress is, that's where the White House is. Well, it's not that way in ancient Israel. Jerusalem really becomes the center and the capital of the nation when the tabernacle comes. It's not like our nation where there's a separation of church and state. We're talking about an ancient theocracy where the government, the government rules because God reigns. And so the reason Jerusalem is such an important city for ancient Israel and such an important city for God's people is because the temple is there. That's why Jerusalem is significant. It's not just a strategic place. It is that. That's why David first conquers it. When they come into the land initially, Jerusalem doesn't get conquered. They conquer all these other parts of the land and there's these people, the Jebusites, who live in what is Jerusalem. And it's not until David comes to power that they go and conquer the Jebusite city. They conquer and they take it, and they take it because it's on a hill and it's got strategic importance, and David can send out military groups from there and help to control and conquer the land. But what really makes it significant is when David calls for the tabernacle to be brought. Because when the tabernacle comes, God's presence comes with it. Remember, David doesn't build the temple, does he? No, God tells David, "You're a man of war. You're a king of war." And that's not an indictment. He's done what God has called him to do. But it's a recognition that there's blood on your hands. "And the one who builds my temple will be a king of peace." And so the task falls to David's son, Solomon. Now, if you remember your Sunday school lessons, who is Solomon? He's the wisest man who ever lived. God gives him the option. He tells him when he's a young man, comes to the prophet and says, "What do you want?" And he has the option of saying, "I want to be filthy stinking rich." But in humility, he says, "I want to be wise. Make me wise that I may know the Lord and walk in His steps." And so God grants Solomon wisdom, and with it, He grants him the other things he offered that Solomon wisely didn't ask for. So Solomon is wise, but in his wisdom, if you read, 2 Kings earlier in the book. And 1 and 2 Kings, Solomon is wise, and because of his wealth, because his wisdom becomes incredibly wealthy, people start coming to Jerusalem, coming to Israel from all over the world. This— the Queen of Sheba, sort of this mysterious character, comes to just sit and hear and learn from Solomon. During this period, Israel is more powerful and more wealthy than even Egypt and all the other nations, and there's this massive amount of capital and and funds that are flowing into the nation. And so because of that, when Solomon goes to build the temple, he builds a temple. He has this abundance of gold and silver, and he puts it to use in building God's house. No expense is spared. There's a church in Dallas, Texas, recently built, I think it exceeds $100 million. It's an incredible amount of money that they spent on a church in Dallas. And you hear that and you're like, whoa! The amount that Solomon spent on the temple is so much more than what is spent on that church in Dallas. Solomon's temple is considered a wonder of the ancient world. There's all sorts of— well, they talk about the cedars of Lebanon, right? Rich, intricate woods, all of these artisans and craftsmen who carve the blocks of stone and who pound the metals into beautiful shapes and patterns. It's an incredible thing to see. In our passage, we read about some of the things that are still left over. In 2 Kings 25, there's already been two deportations. There's been two times when people have come, when Babylon's come, and they've carried away a part of a part of the people of Judah. And they've carried away earlier the true king, a young king. He's been sitting on the throne for 3 months and they come and they grab him and they take him away. And the second deportation that happens in chapter 24, another nation comes and they take all the gold out of the temple. So the things that are left are the bronze things. And we read about these massive bronze pillars, right? They're actually named. There's names for them. They take these huge bronze pillars and it says there's a sea That sea is like this massive tub of water that's made of bronze. It just holds an enormous amount of water, and that water is there then for using in the rituals of the temple. The text says the things of bronze, you can't even calculate the weight, there's so much of it. All those things are things that Solomon accumulated. It's this huge collection of things worth a lot of money to Babylon and priceless to Israel. 2 Kings 25 portrays the destruction of the city, but also the loss of the last portions of Judah's wealth. They've been getting robbed blind and stripped bare for years now. And this is the final straw. The last bit of what they have is taken away. But those precious things pale in comparison. All that bronze and the gold and the silver, all of that pales in comparison to what the temple is. The author of 2 Kings is intentional not to call it the temple. Nowhere in the text does it talk about the temple. Verse 9, it says, "And he burned the house of the Lord." Throughout the passage, it tells us this is the house of the Lord that was destroyed. It's the house of the Lord that was plundered. It's the house of the Lord that was brought to the ground. This is no church building. It's not the biggest and best synagogue in town. What had fallen into the hands of God's enemies is God's house. You see the significance of this when Solomon dedicates the temple. It's all the way back in 1 Kings 8:10. We read this: When the priests came out of the holy place— so they're coming out of one of the inner parts of the temple— A cloud filled the house of the Lord, so that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud. So the cloud is so thick, the priests can't even stand to do their duties. For the glory of the Lord filled the house of the Lord. Then Solomon said, "The Lord has said that He would dwell in thick darkness. I have indeed built You an exalted house, a place for You to dwell forever." Then the king turned around and blessed all the assembly of Israel, while all the assembly of Israel stood. The temple isn't just the house of the Lord, it's the place where the Lord dwells. It's the place where God's glory rests. Israel's not just losing a really cool church in a day when there's no fire insurance. They're losing the place where God was, where they could come to meet with him and to fellowship with him. That's the tragedy of losing the temple. It's God's home, it's his dwelling place, and it's been destroyed.
8 · Pivots from historical background back to the primary text, framing what follows as examining the immediate crisis described in 2 Kings 25
So look again now at 2 Kings 25. This is the present crisis.
9 · Details the comprehensive nature of Jerusalem's destruction — temple burned, walls demolished, people left defenseless — and juxtaposes this against God's promise in Psalm 132 to dwell in Zion forever, revealing the depth of the crisis as the apparent failure of divine promises
The house of God gets burned. It gets razed. The palace and it says all the homes get destroyed. And then the city wall gets ripped all the way down. Now we don't have city walls today, right? We have like wooden fences that we hire a company to come put. And it's like, what kind of fence do you want? I want a shadow box fence. You know, that's what we think of when we think of fences. It's just to keep little kids from getting outside the yard. Or maybe neighbors outside. I don't know why you build your fences. But in the ancient world, you don't feel secure unless you live behind a wall because the ancient world is dangerous. The enemies are at your doorstep and they come and they raid and they come to carry off your women and your children. They come to steal your cattle and your livelihood and they come to put you to the sword. And so you feel secure when you live in a city with a massive wall. And the bigger your wall, the safer you feel. But when Babylon comes, they rip down the wall of Jerusalem. And so the city is burned to the ground and it has no wall. So even the people who are left are totally vulnerable. Now, in the preceding chapter, it says in one of the previous deportations, you know who they take? They take everybody who's gifted. Everybody who's anybody is already gone. So it's like who's in Jerusalem in chapter 25 is like the leftovers. It's like the older people, the cripples, the people that aren't very talented. It says in chapter 24, all the mighty men, all the valiant warriors, Essentially, their army has already been taken away. The true king has been taken away. They've got this puppet king sitting on the throne. And so they ripped down the walls and everybody who survives is already the poorest of the poor. And now they're left there without any strong men to protect them, without any walls, and they're totally vulnerable. So you consider the lost hope of Psalm 132. It says, for Yahweh the Lord has chosen Zion. Zion is another word for Jerusalem, right? He has desired it for His dwelling place. This is My resting place forever. Here I will dwell, for I have desired it. You get a sense of the crisis? It's not just losing their home. There were promises built into this place. God told us we were going to dwell in the land. He told us we were going to be His people. He told us He was going to be present with us. He told us that Zion was His city. And now it's destroyed.
10 · Reframes the destruction not as God's defeat but as His judgment against covenant-breaking Israel, noting that generations of idolatry and wickedness preceded this moment despite even good kings like Josiah receiving prophetic warnings
But it isn't a defeat of God at the hands of Babylon that's taking place. You read the history books, and that's what they're going to say. They're going to say, you had Nebuchadnezzar becomes this emperor in Babylon and is raised up, and the king of Babylon comes out and bam, he knocks down Israel. Babylon versus Judah, Babylon wins. That's not what happens. It's the judgment of God against Judah through the hands of Babylon. For generations, the people have drifted from God. The preceding chapters in Kings talk about idolatry growing. The kings become more and more wicked. Even King Josiah, the last good king who starts a revival and a reform and puts the Word of God back in the center of God's people, he's warned and told by the prophet, your children will be carried off into captivity. The people of Israel are violating the covenant with impunity.
11 · Exposes Israel's fatal superstition — they treated the temple as a protective talisman that would keep them safe regardless of covenant obedience, ignoring Jeremiah's warnings that possessing the temple while violating God's statutes was deceptive and deadly
But somehow, here's the issue. As long as they had the temple, they felt invulnerable. So here's what's going on. They think, hey, you go to Psalm 132 and it tells us Zion is God's chosen place. He's told us, I'm going to dwell here forever. We got nothing to be worried about. We can have our cake and eat it too. We can do whatever we want with our lives, and as long as we've still got Jerusalem and the temple, nobody's going to hurt us. God's not going to let the temple get destroyed. It doesn't matter what we do with our lives. We've got this lucky charm in the temple, kind of in our back pocket. Well, they forget in that same text in Psalm 132, there's a preceding statement that says, if you keep my statutes, if you keep my covenant, All of these things will happen. Well, they've stopped doing that. Jeremiah is actually a contemporary of what's happening in 2 Kings 25 here. Jeremiah and Ezekiel are contemporary prophets. And Jeremiah tells the people of Israel, he tells them Babylon is going to come. And Babylon is coming as God's judgment against us. And we would be good, we would do well to surrender to Babylon. God wants you to surrender. And to be carried off and to live well in Babylon as His remnant. And the people ignore Him. And He warns them in Jeremiah 7:4. He hammers on them for their superstition. "Do not trust in deceptive words. This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord." You see the idea of what He's saying there? You are sitting here and you're disobeying God in all of these ways, just flagrantly doing it. But you're kind of treating God's temple like it's a little rabbit's foot. "Oh, the temple of the Lord," you know. You're fooled. Don't delude yourself into thinking you're safe just because you have the temple.
12 · Applies the lesson directly to the congregation, warning against treating church attendance, tithing, or any religious practice as protective talismans that can substitute for genuine heart worship and relationship with God
And we need to hear that. Now I don't think anybody probably goes out about their life and just lives any way they want and goes about thinking, "I'm good to go." 10113 Lenexa Drive! 10113 Lenexa Drive! No one's thinking that way about this building, right? I hope not. This is not the temple. We don't have near the gold. We got some fake, like, what is that, like brassy stuff? I think it's probably sprayed on, it probably flakes off. What do you think? I don't do that. Ritual and religious practices don't protect us from judgment. That's Jeremiah's point. That's what's being lived out in 2 Kings 25. Our church attendance is not a little rabbit's foot that we get to rub. I can do whatever I want Monday through Saturday. And then I say, "I worshiped at 10 AM! I worshiped at 10 AM!" It doesn't matter. Tithing is not a little temple that protects us from judgment. Our good works, any of our good works, are no more insurance than the temple against God's anger for hearts that depart from Him. You can't replace worship and love for God with religious trinkets.
13 · Extends the application more specifically, identifying subtle religious trinkets — the right Bible version, correct theological doctrine — that can become functional temples if they replace genuine relationship with God, carefully balancing that right doctrine matters but cannot substitute for heart devotion
What we have to do in 2 Kings 25 is ask, "Do I have my own religious trinkets?" Do I have my own little places that I place my hope? The temple, the temple can just as easily become the ESV, the ESV. I'm good because I have the right version of the Bible. You can even take correct doctrine and make it something like that. I cognitively believe the right things theologically about God, and so I'm good to go. I believe in penal substitutionary atonement. I believe that that is what the Bible teaches about Jesus. So I can do whatever I want throughout the day because I've checked that box off. I believe in justification by faith. I believe that's what the Bible teaches. So I can go live however I want. The temple. The temple. Right doctrine is important. I'm not minimizing it. But right doctrine without right relationship is not what God calls for.
14 · Traces Ezekiel's vision revealing the temple's progressive profanation with idolatry and the slow departure of God's glory from the Most Holy Place to the gates, establishing that by the time Babylon physically destroys the temple, God's presence has already abandoned it — the people's superstitious trust was placed in an empty shell
To the very end, Judah holds out this irrational hope that she won't be crushed by Babylon because we possess the temple. We've got a phony king, not even our king, the king of Babylon has set up as a puppet king. That's who's in the capital. But we think the phony puppet king is going to protect us from the guy who set him up. We don't even have an army anymore. All of our mighty men have totally been carried off. They've already gotten their butts whooped in battle. They're gone. They're not here. We got like the lame and the cripples and the people that they can't even lift up a sword. That's what we got left in the city. But don't worry, we don't need to repent. Jeremiah specifically warns them and they ignore it. The other contemporary prophet, one of the other ones, is Ezekiel. Ezekiel is interesting in the sense, you know where Ezekiel is when he makes his prophecies? He's in Babylon. He's one of the men who's been carried off in the earlier deportation. So you think of what's going on in 2 Kings 25. It's not just that you got some people sitting in Jerusalem thinking, "We just gotta hold on to hope that we're going to get delivered." You got some people that are sitting in Babylon that are looking back and they're probably thinking, At least this temple's still there. At least Jerusalem is still standing. Maybe in a year or two, God will deliver us, we'll get to go back, and the temple's going to be there. Ezekiel is sitting there, and he's giving prophecies to the people in exile, and he tells them in Ezekiel 8-10, he has this vision, and he says, God's given me a vision, and I've seen the temple. And in the vision, God takes him on this tour around all the different parts of the temple, and what he sees is just abomination after abomination. It's tragic what he sees. He sees idolatrous worship happening in God's temple. It's not just that Israel and Judah are going off into the hills and worshiping the wrong gods and then coming back and killing some lambs to make up for it. They've brought the idolatry into God's house. They're profaning God right in front of His face. They're worshiping the sun. In the temple of the true and living God. There's women who are priestesses for false gods who have taken up residence in God's temple. As the vision progresses, there's this fascinating imagery that you see, and it's tragic imagery. God's glory, His presence, is actually shown. There's this chariot And it's got these four wheels, and the wheels, each wheel spins in basically all directions all at once. And this, this representation of God's glory rises up from the cherubim, rises up from the tabernacle, and it moves to the outer doors of the Most Holy Place. As the vision continues, it moves to the outer doors of the Holy Place. As the vision continues, it moves, the glory of the Lord, God's presence, out across the courtyard of the temple, and it moves out past the palace. Ezekiel says he sees it moving past the gates. What's happening is God's presence is leaving the people. When Babylon comes and knocks down God's house, God has already left. And the people are still sitting there, "The temple of the Lord! The temple of the Lord!" It's not the temple of the Lord anymore. It's bricks and mortar and a bunch of precious metals. God's presence leaves the temple slowly, and the people don't even sense it.
15 · Notes the literary technique in 2 Kings where the narrative rushes through years of history but slows dramatically to catalog the bronze furnishings, interpreting this as the author's mournful remembrance — taking time to inventory everything lost because the loss is so profound it demands detailed memorial
Two kings is where that is fulfilled. The true King is in captivity. The mighty men are gone. You see the detail in our passage about the things that are left, right? We've touched on it already. These massive pillars that actually have names, these huge bronze pillars, 18 cubits high, and then things on top of them 3 cubits high. This massive sea, this bowl of bronze. What's fascinating is the 2 chapters at the end of Kings are just sort of whizzing by this huge momentous occasion. I mean, there's entire years that are being covered in like 3 or 4 verses. And it's just sort of this fly-by view. I was reading one commentary, it said really interestingly, it's sort of like the author of 2 Kings is looking at this and just thinking, "This is like the low point of our history, and I'm going to treat it like a Band-Aid. We're not going to spend time and just look at this and think, Wow, look at all the details of how horrible we were. He's like, I'm going to grab this thing and I'm going to rip this bandit off as quick as I can. But when it comes to our passage and it comes to the details of the things in the temple, the entire narrative slows down. Why does it do that? Why is he just— people getting defeated, people getting carried off, the king's gone, fake king in his place. Slow down. There's big brass pillars. There's a big brass sea. He's doing it because it's a mournful remembrance of the glory past and the glory now departed. In the last two chapters, he takes pains to recount everything that's lost. All the gold and the bronze. There is an unmistakable gloom about the passage. The place where Yahweh the Lord dwelt, the place of his presence, the assurance of his blessing, is nothing more than a smoldering ruin in a sacked city. He takes time and slows down because he's mourning what they've lost.
16 · Uses the contemporary image of disaster survivors returning to devastated neighborhoods to help listeners grasp the emotional weight of what the author of 2 Kings is doing — creating a mournful inventory of what was lost
It's like, you've seen footage, I'm sure, people that are like survivors of a tornado, survivors of a hurricane, and they return back. And you sort of see these people and they're just, hands are sort of on their head and just looking around. This used to be a neighborhood. It's just gone. You see some people, it's just— they're picking through the debris and they're walking away from their homes and it's like, this was a home, a couple thousand square feet filled with stuff, and they walk away with an armful of salvageable possessions. There's this heartbreak in that moment and seeing those images.
17 · Introduces the paradoxical concept of 'faithful doom' — that the destruction represents not God's failure but His faithfulness to warn, to judge covenant-breaking, and to fulfill His word that disobedience would bring judgment, making this tragedy a demonstration of divine integrity rather than divine defeat
That's what's happening in 2 Kings 25. It's like he's looking through a photo album of everything that was lost. It's gone. It's carried off. It's been melted down. But what it describes is a sort of faithful doom, if that makes sense. Judah's collapse at the hands of Babylon is not random. The history books are all about the rise of Nebuchadnezzar. We just talked about this, but 2 Kings pulls back the veil and says these events have a spiritual foundation, have a spiritual starting point. Yeah, Nebuchadnezzar is winning the battle, but if you pull it back, Yahweh is doing it. And He's being faithful to His word. He's warned them. This isn't a sense you read 2 Kings and you should be thinking, "God's a liar. He told them they would always have Zion, and now they don't have it." It's the exact opposite. It's God told them, "You must keep my statutes. You must keep my covenant. And if you do, I'll be your God and you'll be my people. You will dwell in Zion. And if you don't, there will be judgment." And the closer they get to this day, the more he stirs up the prophets to warn them, and the more they ignore them.
18 · Uses the humorous illustration of parents who don't follow through on discipline threats to demonstrate that God's judgment against Judah, far from being harsh, actually demonstrates His integrity — He warned repeatedly and then did exactly what He said He would do
You ever seen a parent who never follows through on the threats to the kids? You gotta stop doing that! Don't make me come over there! One more warning! Don't make me count to 3! 6, 7, 31, 108. You know what I'm talking about, right? Nobody looks at them and thinks, wow, I need to take a note. This is great parenting. And this really brings about obedience. This is really helpful for those kids that they just kind of sit there and the kids figure it out, don't they? I can do whatever I want. Dad's just going to sit there on the couch and keep giving warnings.
19 · Reframes the destruction as a strange kindness — God is refining His people, preserving a remnant, and even liberating the temple from its abuse through exile, though the horror of Zedekiah's fate reveals the devastating completeness of judgment that needed to happen
That's a faithful doom in a strange way. The end of 2 Kings tells us about the unraveling of everything that the beginning of 1 Kings describes. The golden age of King Solomon dissolves before our very eyes. The temple he built is now demolished. The bronze pillars and gold objects, all those things are carried off. But in a sense, it's a kindness. God is refining the people. He's scattering the majority and He's preserving a remnant. There's a sense in the text where God is actually being kind to the temple. This temple is like a woman caught in an abusive relationship. And God breaks it and sends her off. The temple kind of goes into exile in this passage. And that's a blessing for the temple that's been corrupted in the way that people are worshiping. The hopelessness of the situation is really summed up in Zedekiah. He's the king in the preceding verses of chapter 25. He's the false king that gets propped up on the throne. So he's this little puppet king of Nebuchadnezzar. Zedekiah, as a puppet king, he has no power, he has no army, even still tries to rebel. I mean, he's just a total idiot. He really is. But you see the hope, you see how bad things have gotten in verse 7. Right before our passage, they, the Babylonians, 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. They kill his children right in front of him, and then they gouge out his eyes so that the last thing he's ever seen is the loss of his offspring, knowing that his name is wiped out.
20 · Returns to the Western Wall image from the introduction, now with the listener equipped to understand why Jewish pilgrims mourn there — the loss being mourned is not architecture but the presence of God and the promises that seemed to fail
You can sense that horror even today. That's what they're mourning at that wall. Kinda seems weird. Why are they all worked up about a bunch of bricks?
21 · Details the rabbinical requirements for mourning at the Western Wall — rending garments, reciting specific liturgies from Lamentations — connecting contemporary Jewish grief directly to the events of 2 Kings 25 and establishing that this loss still shapes Jewish identity 2,600 years later
Jewish pilgrims, when they come to the wall today, it's a requirement. The rabbis teach them, when you come to the wall, you rend your garments. When you come to the wall, you come knowing, I'm going to go to the wall and I'm going to tear my clothes as a sign of what we've lost. They come, and if they've come before and it's been more than 30 days since they were the last time, they have to tear their garments again. And they come and they have to recite a phrase when they get there. Our holy temple, which was our glory, in which our forefathers praised you, was burned and all our delights were destroyed. That's what they recite when they gather at that wall. And finally, they recite from Lamentations. It's a book written while the people are in exile. Lamentations 2:9, they recite this at the wall: Her gates have sunk into the ground. He has ruined and broken her bars. Her king and princes are among the nations that are scattered. The law is no more, and her prophets find no vision from the Lord. That's what 2 Kings 25 is about. That's why they mourn at that wall 2,000 years after Herod's temple crashed, 2,600 years after Nebuchadnezzar brought down Solomon's house.
22 · Introduces the hope element required by the Testify series — God's glory departs east to dwell with the exiled remnant, who eventually return and rebuild the temple, though the rebuilt structure is so inferior that old men weep at its dedication, demonstrating that while God's grace brings restoration, sin leaves permanent scars that even forgiveness does not erase
But there's a hope. Remember, we're in the Testify series, right? There's a place of hope in 2 Kings 25 in the midst of all of that downer and hopelessness. It's a future hope. In Ezekiel's vision, at the very end of that passage in 8 to 10 where he sees all this stuff happening, in Ezekiel 11 there's hope given out and you actually see this chariot, which is the glory of God and the presence of God, and it rises lifted up from Jerusalem and it departs. And you know where it departs? It departs to the east. And Ezekiel assures them God is leaving Jerusalem. He's leaving the temple, but He is going to dwell with the remnant of His people. And a remnant ends up getting sent back. You read about it in the book of Ezra. Zerubbabel starts building, right? Nehemiah, they start rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem. They start rebuilding the temple. It takes them over 20 years and there's this point in Ezra 3 where They've finally laid the foundations and they've got the temple back up and they gather and there's this strange scene where there's like rejoicing and people are excited like, "The temple's here again!" There's just this ragtag group. It's not the whole remnant, just a few people who've been sent back. The temple's there again. You know what it says? It says the old men who are there weep because they know what they had and they see this pitiful attempt to rebuild the temple. Now, before we keep going with the hope, I want to pause there and just point out the fact that there's a remnant, the fact that they return, is an evidence of God's grace. But there's a telling thing in the fact that they come back and they can't rebuild the way it was before. That's what sin does. God's grace is real, and there is forgiveness offered in Jesus. But sin leaves scars, and those weeping men in Ezra 3 are feeling the scars of the sins of their people.
23 · Traces the temple's history forward to Herod the Great's reconstruction, which restored the temple to wonder-of-the-world status with its gold facade catching the sunrise, setting up the context for Jesus' confrontation with this supposedly restored glory
So that remnant returns, they rebuild. You fast forward to the time of Jesus. Now you've got Herod the Great, and Herod the Great has come along. Quasi-Jewish. He's trying to put himself up as the King of the Jews. He does a lot of stuff to tick the Jews off. But one thing he does right is he rebuilds the Temple, and he rebuilds it in style. It is massive. It's maybe even bigger. The Temple itself might even be bigger than it is in Herod's day, but the Temple complex, the courtyard and everything, is certainly bigger. And he restores the gold and the silver and all these riches. They call his Temple one of the wonders of the world. And the The facade of the temple, the front wall of the temple is laid with pure gold so that when the sun rises in the morning, when the sun rises in the east, the sun shines off the face of the temple. And it's just like it almost lights up. It's almost like artificial light at the dawn over the whole city of Jerusalem from the Temple Mount. It's this incredible restoration of what the temple is. And when they would have the Passover time, remember this time of the year when they would come back During Jesus' day, He comes back to the temple, and there's a significance to the temple in the Gospels.
24 · Recounts Jesus' temple cleansing at Passover — disrupting the sacrifice system and declaring that the true temple is His body, which will be destroyed and raised in three days — revealing that all previous temples were shadows pointing to Him as the substance
Well, in one of the stories, Jesus comes back in one of the episodes in John 2. He comes back to Jerusalem. He goes up to Jerusalem. He climbs the hill of the Lord, and He comes back for the Passover. Now, here's what happens at the Passover. 2 million Jews come back to the city to make sacrifices. And Josephus tells us he estimates they sacrifice over 200,000 lambs. Through the Passover. Think about that. Yeah, Craig Scherff going, "Phew." He knows. That's a whole lot of lamb chops. It's a whole lot of blood. They have to build special canals out of the temple because there's going to be so much blood that's sacrificed on the altar, they've got to make a way for it to drain out of the temple. And so it drains out of the temple into a spring outside Jerusalem. And so when it's the Passover time, this spring is just bloody water. Because so much being sacrificed there. It's during the Passover in John 2 that Jesus goes up to Jerusalem. The Temple of the Lord, it looks glorious again! The men in Ezra wouldn't weep! But Jesus picks up a whip and clears the Temple. There's this massive courtyard outside the actual temple itself. The wall that people go to is actually a wall to that courtyard. You think about this, 200,000 lambs and there's 2 million people traveling. They're not traveling with their animals. They come to Jerusalem, they have to buy in the temple, and Jesus comes and He clears the house because they're just profiting off of the fact that people have to come and make atonement for sin. And so He grabs a whip and He literally starts flipping tables of the money changers, literally cleanse house. And it's this shocking action. It's disrupting. What it's disrupting, you think about this, what He's disrupting is sacrifice for sin. He's throwing everything all over the place. These money changers have to go back and like, "That's my bag. That's my coin purse. I gotta get those coins back." "No, this is mine." They're fighting over stuff. It's chaos. They can't continue the sacrifices that day. It's disrupting the whole Passover celebration, what Jesus does. And they get a sense as He's doing this, what point is He trying to make here? And they say in John 2:18, "So the Jews said to Him," after He cleans house, "What sign do You show us for doing these things?" What's the symbolic point? Well, it's another judgment against the temple, against its leadership, against people's corrupted worship. And so Jesus answered them in verse 19, Destroy this temple, and in 3 days I will raise it up. And the Jews said to him, it has taken 46 years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in 3 days? But he was speaking of the temple of his body. When therefore he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the Scripture. And the word that Jesus had spoken.
25 · Makes the explicit typological connection: 2 Kings 25's destruction of God's house foreshadows Jesus as the true temple who will be destroyed through God's judgment against sin so that God's presence can return to dwell among His people
In 2 Kings 25:9, God's righteous judgment falls because there's just been this accumulation of sin for generations. Judgment destroys God's own house. And everything that's happening in 2 Kings 25 is foreshadowing Jesus. What Jesus says in John chapter 2 is, I, me, this man with a body, this Nazarene, I am the true temple. I am the place where God dwells. I am the place filled with His glory. And like 2 Kings 25, He's saying, I'm going to be destroyed. Through the judgment of God against sin. It's a foreshadowing of the destruction—2 Kings 25—of a coming human temple. When the Son of God takes on flesh, he takes on flesh so he can be broken, so God's presence can dwell in the midst of his people again. Once again, the temple is abused. The temple's mistreated. The temple becomes a place for the shedding of innocent blood. The temple endures another exile, this time outside of the city on the hill of crucifixion.
26 · Details the geographical and theological symbolism of Calvary in the shadow of Herod's temple, where the true temple (Jesus) is broken while the physical temple watches, culminating in the tearing of the temple veil at Jesus' death as Mark's proof that Jesus is the true temple and Son of God
Even the location of Calvary, the location of Golgotha. The location of it to the Temple Mount is symbolic. The Temple Mount is on a hill, and you've got this temple. It's 16 stories high. Think how tall that is for the ancient world. And it's 16 stories high. It's huge. It just, it just hangs over the city. And outside the city, you go down the hill, and there's a smaller hill called Golgotha. And there is symbolism in what happens to Jesus at Calvary. The architectural temple hovers over the city walls and over this little hill where three wooden crosses sit. And the physical temple overlooks everything that happens, and the leadership of the physical temple have ensured that what happens on that hill will happen. And on that little hill in the shadow of the physical temple, the true temple is broken. The physical temple, with all the glory that Herod can muster, looks down as God's true glory is split open. And as Jesus dies, just like in Ezekiel, God's presence departs the temple. Mark 15:33, and when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour. At the ninth hour, Jesus cried out with a loud voice, 'Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?' which means, 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?' The presence of God has left. And Jesus uttered a loud cry and breathed his last, and the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. Jesus utters a loud cry and breathes his last. The true temple dies, and the physical temple, the veil, this massive tapestry that's tall, and it's tall enough to cover a 30-cubit-high ceiling in the Most Holy Place, And it's thick, and it gets ripped in two. And Mark explains to us why. The curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. And when the centurion who stood facing him saw this, that he had breathed his last, he said, truly this man was the Son of God. When His sacrifice is finished, the veil in Herod's temple This massive tapestry gets just ripped apart. Mark is stating the obvious. The tearing of the veil, this accidental revelation, this accidental testimony of the centurion, they prove beyond a doubt that Jesus is the most real temple the earth has ever seen.
27 · Reverses the common assumption that Jesus spiritualizes the temple, arguing instead that Jesus is the substance and reality while all previous temples were mere shadows and placeholders pointing forward to Him as the true dwelling place of God's glory
Everything about The original temple prefigures Jesus. The incense they burn in the temple is supposed to make the killing of all these animals smell better. Jesus becomes an acceptable fragrance, an acceptable aroma in the nostrils of God. Every aspect, every little thing, every lampstand and piece of the old temple, Jesus fulfills. Here's the thing you kind of think of. Well, is Jesus kind of the spiritualized version of the temple? Wrong way. Jesus is the real thing. The tabernacle all the way back with Moses, the first temple that Solomon builds, the rebuilt puny imitation that Ezra's people build, those are the spiritualized versions of Jesus. Jesus is the substance. Jesus is the real thing. The previous temples are shadows of what was to come in Christ. The temple is just a forerunner. It's a placeholder until Christ comes to finally finish sacrifice for sin. God's presence and glory, they can't ever be contained in an earthly building. There's just sort of this odd thing going on throughout the Old Testament. It's like, really? God's glory is just hovering over this building? I realize it's got tons of gold and it's really cool and tricked out, but Really? No. God's presence is contained in the Son. His glory is seen in the Son.
28 · Announces the culminating wonder: Christ's resurrection extends God's presence to all believers through the new covenant, making the mourning at the Western Wall theologically obsolete because God's glory now dwells in His people rather than a building
And here's the amazing thing. When the true temple gets broken and crushed, when he gets raised from the grave, God's presence gets extended to all God's people. At the end of worship, we read from Jeremiah 31. There's going to be a new covenant. He's going to write His law upon our hearts. What the Jews mourn at the wall is wrong. The law is not gone. God's glory is not gone. It's not there anymore. You're right, it's not at that wall. It's seen in the face of Jesus, and by our union with Christ, it's extended to all God's people.
29 · Applies the theological claim directly to the gathered congregation: believers together constitute God's temple, His dwelling place, making their gathering the true temple reality regardless of the physical building they occupy
So you know what happens then? Christ is called the temple, right? And what are all of us called? We are called the household of God. We are called the temple of God. It says we're being built up into a living structure, living pieces and people who together, filled with God's Spirit, now make up His household, make up the temple, make up the place where God dwells. Dwells when we come together, there is a temple thing going on here. Not because of the building, not because of a converted funeral home, but because people indwelt by God's Spirit are gathered together. Now it's nice to have a roof and nothing's raining on our heads, right? But it's especially nice that we're sitting next to people who have been saved and indwelt by the Spirit of God.
30 · Grounds the corporate temple claim in 1 Corinthians 3:16 and expresses pastoral longing for the congregation to experience God's presence as thick as the cloud in Solomon's temple, so tangible it disrupts planned ministry activity
1 Corinthians 3:16: Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you? When His people gather, His presence is thick. Thick like the cloud Solomon described 3,000 years ago. I want that to happen at Providence. I want us to gather together and that the Spirit of God is so thick in the room that it's like the priests can't even do their duties because the Spirit's so thick. I want to have it on a Sunday morning that it's like the Spirit comes and it's so thick and so disruptive that it's like, man, we just got to audible what we're doing.
31 · Concludes with 1 Peter 2:4-6, establishing Jesus as the cornerstone and believers as living stones built into a spiritual house, replacing the superstitious chant 'the temple, the temple, the temple' with the true object of faith: 'Jesus
Conclude with this. 1 Peter 2:4. As you come to him, Jesus, a living stone— hear the language— rejected by men, but in the sight of God chosen and precious. You yourselves, like living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For it stands in Scripture, "Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone chosen and precious, and whoever believes in him..." Not the temple, the temple, the temple. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Whoever believes in him will not be put to shame. You bow your heads.