Sermons

The walls of Jerusalem are broken through, and the king flees, only to be captured. After being made to watch his sons die, he has his eyes put out and is led away to Babylon. The temple is burned, and all of its vessels are carried off.

This judgment did not come because Babylon was strong. It was the fulfillment of the word God had long spoken in warning through the prophets. The people held fast to the confidence that, with the temple standing, they could not perish. Yet what God desired was not the temple but a sincere heart at its center.

The church can fall, and so can church office and long years in the faith. But God’s covenant does not fall. A king taken into captivity was later released and given a seat at the king’s table, and his name remained in the genealogy of Jesus Christ.

After King Josiah died, the southern kingdom of Judah fell within twenty-three years. In that time the throne changed hands four times, and the nation swayed back and forth between Egypt and Babylon. King and people alike reckoned only which power to cling to in order to survive.

Aligning first with Egypt, then with Babylon, then turning back to Egypt once more, the kings chose differently each time. Yet as God saw them, they were all one and the same. They had simply shifted their ground as circumstances changed, and not one of them stood upon the word of God. Though Jeremiah cried out for them to turn back, the king would not listen, while other voices proclaiming peace rang louder.

Even as the nation crumbled, God kept Jeremiah safe and left people here and there to help him. The kingdom fell, but those who held fast to the word remained. Today God still asks the same question: not whether it is Egypt or Babylon, but whether you are standing on my side.

Josiah became king at the age of eight and led a reform that no one before him had achieved. When the book of the covenant was found during the repair of the temple, he tore his clothes before it; he pulled down the idols and high places throughout the land, and with the people he kept the Passover. Yet this same king went out to war against the king of Egypt, was struck by an arrow, and died to no purpose.

Measured by the logic of reward and retribution, it is a death that cannot be understood. The Hebrew word ‘to know’, however, speaks not of grasping information but of a deep union in love. It was in this way that God knew Josiah, and the promise that he would go to his grave ‘in peace’ meant not a death free of suffering but wholeness and completion.

Josiah’s early death was a merciful removal, which delivered him from the terrible destruction at the hands of Babylon and the captivity that were soon to overtake Judah. As with Abraham, with Joseph, and with the cross of Jesus Christ, the work of God is always accomplished in ways that overturn our expectations.

While the temple was being repaired, the Book of the Law was found, and as its words were read aloud, Josiah tore his clothes and wept. He did not lay the blame on his fathers but counted himself among those under God’s wrath, and though he already knew judgment was coming, he sent men to inquire once more of God’s will.

That the Word had to be found at all shows how long it had lain buried in dust within the temple. The people held fast to the assurance that the temple stood among them, while the Word that belonged at the center of their lives was nowhere to be seen. To be pierced and unsettled before the Word is nothing strange; it is the response of a spirit that is still alive.

The prophetess Huldah declares that the judgment on all Judah would not be withdrawn, yet God had heard the tears of one man, Josiah. God looks not for the flawless but for a broken spirit. Wherever there is even one person whose heart is torn in this way, whether in a home, a church, or a nation, God will not forsake that place.

Manasseh became king at twelve and reigned for fifty-five years. In his day Judah, the southern kingdom, stayed loyal to Assyria and prospered. It rebuilt the high places Hezekiah had torn down, served Baal and Asherah, and shed innocent blood. Yet outwardly all was at peace.

The heart of the problem was not the number of idols. Life was comfortable and prosperous, so the people stopped listening to the word of God, and that was the most wicked state of all. The same deception is at work today, when technology and success brainwash people into thinking they can live without God.

Only after Manasseh was taken captive by Assyria and dragged away in chains did he humble himself greatly and fall on his knees before God, and God brought him back to the throne in Jerusalem. What matters to God is not who succeeded but who obeyed. The only strength that can overcome the last days is obedience that is faithful unto death.

After Assyria is driven back, Hezekiah is healed even of a mortal illness; fifteen years are added to his life, and his nation is delivered as well. Yet when envoys arrive from Babylon, at the very moment he ought to bear witness to God, he shows them all his wealth as if to boast of it. Isaiah then brings him a word of judgment: everything in the palace will be carried off to Babylon.

Pride is not a particular act but a condition of the heart that leans on something other than God. The moment just after a blessing, when vigilance slackens, is the most dangerous time in the life of faith. Even after hearing the word of judgment, Hezekiah let it pass, content that his own generation would have peace; this was not repentance before God but a selfishness concerned only with being safe himself.

The place of blessing is not where faith ends. Hezekiah was granted a longer life, yet in those years he fathered Manasseh, the most wicked king in the history of Judah. The true blessing lies not in living long but in living in dependence on God alone, and only when we humbly hold fast to his grace can we overcome Satan.

Sennacherib, king of Assyria, has surrounded Jerusalem, and though he has already received an enormous tribute, he sends yet another threatening letter. Hezekiah has stripped even the gold from the temple to pay him, yet nothing is resolved, and at last he takes the letter up to the temple and stands before God.

Clinging to human means is like having the power line cut. Only when Hezekiah confessed his helplessness and turned to seek God’s glory was that line connected again. He did not ask for his own restoration; he asked only that God’s name be exalted.

That night the angel of the Lord struck down a hundred and eighty-five thousand men of the Assyrian army, and Sennacherib returned to his own land, where he died at the hands of his own sons. Hezekiah’s prayer did not bring about the deliverance; it simply opened the channel through which God’s zeal could flow. God is the one who accomplishes to the end what he has spoken, so one must lay aside human methods and come to the place of prayer.

Hezekiah becomes king amid a temple defiled by Ahaz and a faith mixed with other worship. As soon as he took the throne, the first thing he did was cleanse the temple. He tore down the high places that had taken root deep in the people’s lives, and he even broke in pieces the bronze serpent of Moses that the people had been worshiping, calling it Nehushtan.

The high places were not places where God had been abandoned but places where God was set alongside other things. The bronze serpent was originally God’s grace, but it became an idol when people came to worship the thing itself instead of God, its true reality. Even something God has given, if it comes before God in the heart, becomes a bronze serpent that must be broken.

The starting point of faith is whether one is upright by God’s standard. Hezekiah relied on God alone and kept his commands, and as a result he could stand boldly even before Assyria. Treating God as God: that is the essence of faith.

When Assyria rose to become a great power, King Hoshea withheld his tribute and allied himself with Egypt. Egypt gave him no real help, and after a three-year siege Assyria took Samaria and scattered the people of northern Israel across many lands.

The cause of the fall was not a political misjudgment but a heart that had betrayed God. A small turning aside, begun with the golden calf, became a road no one thought to question; as hearts hardened, it set in motion a vicious cycle of unbelief that led to wrath and judgment. That cycle is broken only when a heart that loves and fears God is set at the center.

The fall did not mean that God had given up on his people; it was part of the way toward restoration. The Samaritans, a people born out of that scattering, were the very ones Jesus went in person to meet, and to the end he never abandoned his purpose of saving them. So long as we are still in the flesh, it is never too late in the sight of God.

The combined forces of Aram and the northern kingdom of Israel attack Jerusalem, and Judah suffers a heavy defeat. Ahaz, however, was a king sunk in idolatry, who went so far as to make his children pass through the fire as human sacrifices. Even in the face of crisis he refuses the word bidding him ask God for a sign, and turns to Assyria for help instead.

The human sacrifice of Molech worship looks outwardly like devotion carried to its extreme, but in truth it is an utter self-centeredness that will give up even what is most precious to protect its own prosperity. When Ahaz said he would not put God to the test, that too was not humility; it was disobedience, a way of escaping God’s clear answer and holding to the course he had set for himself. God had foretold that the invaders would come to ruin, yet Ahaz would not believe his word and entrusted his own fate and that of his nation to the power of the world.

However strong the powers of this world may appear, they are in the end only instruments God makes use of for a time, and judgment and destruction await them. No worldly power, by contrast, can lightly lay a hand on one who stands rightly before God. Just as Noah, Moses, Job and David received their names from God, to stand before him under a name that is wise in what is good and simple in what is evil: this is the conclusion of the message.

In the years when the northern kingdom of Israel was falling apart, its royal house overthrown four times in thirty years, Jotham of Judah in the south quietly kept his nation safe, repairing the gate of the temple and strengthening the city wall. Scripture gives him only a few verses, and the people still would not leave the high places.

Jotham himself was upright before God, yet he could not change his people. But because he walked the right path to the end, Judah did not crumble overnight as the northern kingdom had, even under the wicked king who followed him, and the covenant with David and the line of faith passed on to Hezekiah and Josiah. Timothy, too, who stood in Paul’s shadow, was timid and frail in body, with no miracles or revivals to his name, yet through his obedience Paul’s faith has been handed down even to us today.

The world remembers only heroes and winners, but God treasures not only those who open a new age but also those who endure their age and carry it on to the next generation. Even without any achievement that catches the eye, a life that steadily and honestly holds its place is one God never takes lightly.

Uzziah became king at sixteen, and as long as he sought God, he prospered. He defeated the Philistines in battle, built cities and even equipped his army with new weapons, making the nation strong and wealthy. But as his power grew, his heart grew proud, and he went into the temple to burn incense himself, an offering only the priests were permitted to make.

When the priest tried to stop him, the king turned on him in anger, and in that moment God struck his forehead with leprosy. The grace he had received had not vanished; rather, he could no longer enjoy it. No one betrays God in a single moment. It happens gradually, as priorities are slowly overturned amid wealth, power and praise.

Until the day he died, Uzziah was shut away in a separate house, denied both a king’s authority and a king’s tomb. It was not that he was especially wicked. A nature that loved the world more than the unseen Kingdom kept him from overcoming sin. What allows God’s people to enjoy to the end the grace he has granted is a humble heart that never stops giving thanks for that grace.