Zion down but not out

[0:00] Now to our Bible reading today, and we are reaching the finishing post at long last in the book of Jeremiah. We read the last chapter of Jeremiah, Jeremiah 52, which you'll find on page 683.

[0:20] This is the 36th session on Jeremiah. It could have been longer, it could have been 52, or even more, but our salvation is nearer than when we believed.

[0:37] And just notice, before we read chapter 52, the last words of chapter 51, which we looked at last week, thus far are the words of Jeremiah, or as the NIV says, the words of Jeremiah are ended.

[0:52] And one of the questions we have to ask is, well, if the words of Jeremiah are ended, why do we have chapter 52? But we do have chapter 52, which we're going to read.

[1:03] Zedekiah was 21 years old when he became king, and he reigned 11 years in Jerusalem. His mother's name was Hamutal, the daughter of Jeremiah of Lydna, obviously not our Jeremiah.

[1:16] And he did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, according to all that Jehoiakim had done. For because of the anger of the Lord, things came to the point in Jerusalem and Judah that he cast them out from his presence.

[1:31] And Zedekiah rebelled against the king of Babylon, 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.

[1:45] And they built siege works all around it. So the city was besieged, so the eleventh year of King Zedekiah. 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.

[2:02] Then a breach was made in the city, and all the men of war fled and went out from the city by night, by the way of a gate between the two walls by the king's garden, while the Chaldeans were around the city.

[2:13] And they went in the direction of the Arabah, of the army. The Chaldeans pursued the king and overtook Zedekiah in the plains of Jericho, and all his army was scattered from him.

[2:26] Then he captured the king and brought him up to the king of Babylon at Riblah, in the land of Hamath. And Nebuchadnezzar passed sentence on him. The king of Babylon slaughtered the sons of Zedekiah before his eyes, and also slaughtered all the officials of the king of Judah.

[2:44] He put out the eyes of Zedekiah and bound him in chains. And the king of Babylon took him to Babylon and kept him in prison until the day of his death.

[2:56] In the fifth month, on the tenth day of the month, that was the nineteenth year of King Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar, the captain of the bodyguard who served the king of Babylon, entered Jerusalem.

[3:09] And he burned the house of the Lord, and the king's house, and all the houses of Jerusalem, every great house, he burned down. And all the army of the Chaldeans, who were with the captain of the guard, broke down all the walls around Jerusalem.

[3:26] And Nebuchadnezzar, the captain of the guard, carried away captive some of the poorest of the people, and the rest of the people were left in the city, and the deserters who had deserted to the king of Babylon, together with the rest of the artisans.

[3:41] But Nebuchadnezzar, the captain of the guard, left some of the poorest of the land to be vinedressers and ploughmen. 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 all the bronze to Babylon.

[4:01] They took away the pots and the shovels and the snuffers and the basins and the dishes for incense, and all the vessels of bronze used in the temple service. Also the small bowls and the firepans and the basins and the pots and the lampstands and the dishes for incense, and the bowls for drink offerings.

[4:20] 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, the twelve bronze bowls that were under the sea, and the sands which Solomon the king had made for the house of the Lord.

[4:36] The bronze of all these things was beyond weight. As for the pillars, the height of the one pillar was eighteen cubits, its circumference was twelve cubits, and its thickness was four fingers, and it was hollow.

[4:50] On it was a capital of bronze. The height of the one capital was five cubits, and network and pomegranates, all of bronze, were around the capital. And the second pillar had the same with pomegranates.

[5:04] There were ninety-six pomegranates on the side. All the pomegranates were a hundred upon the network all around. And the captain of the guard took Sarai, the chief priest, and Zephaniah, the second priest, and the three keepers of the threshold, and from the city he took an officer who had been in command of the men of war, and seven men of the king's council were found in the city, and the secretary of the commander of the army who mustered the people of the land, and sixty men of the people of the land were found in the midst of the city.

[5:37] Nebuchadnezzar, the captain of the guard, took them and brought them to the king of Babylon at Riblah. And the king of Babylon struck them down and put them to death at Riblah in the hand of Hamath.

[5:49] So Judah was taken into exile out of its land. This is the number of the people whom Nebuchadnezzar carried away captive in the seventh year.

[6:01] Three thousand and twenty-three Judeans. The eighteenth year of Nebuchadnezzar he carried away captive from Jerusalem. Eight hundred and thirty-two persons. In the twenty-third year of Nebuchadnezzar, Nebuchadnezzar, Nebuchadnezzar and the captain of the guard carried away captive of the Judeans.

[6:18] Seven, four, five persons. All the persons were four thousand six hundred. And in the thirty-seventh year of the exile of Jehoiachin, king of Judah, in the twelfth month, on the twenty-fifth day of the month, Abel Merodach, king of Babylon, in the year that he became king, lifted up the head of Jehoiachin, king of Judah, and brought him out of prison.

[6:43] And he spoke kindly to him and gave him a seat above the seats of the kings who were with him in Babylon. So Jehoiachin put off his prison garments.

[6:53] And every day of his life, he dined regularly at the king's table. And for his allowance, a regular allowance was given him by the king, according to his daily need, until the day of his death, as long as he lived.

[7:09] Amen. This is the word of the Lord. Now if you could turn again, please, to page 683, and we'll have a moment of prayer and ask the Lord's help.

[7:26] God our Father, as we have sung, we need your gracious Holy Spirit, the one by whom the prophets wrote and spoke. We pray again these words.

[7:37] As the key to all God's truth, now come, unseal the sacred book. And as we listen to the words of Jeremiah, the story of Jeremiah, we pray indeed that your spirit will bring these words right into our hearts and lead us to the living Christ himself, to whom they so faithfully and fully point.

[8:02] And we ask this in his name. Amen. Amen. It would be difficult not to realize that we are a hundred years from the First World War, the so-called Great War.

[8:17] So many books, so many programs have been put on in the last months about this tremendous event which is still shaping the world in which we live a century later.

[8:30] Now out of that war, as out of any tragedy, often comes little gleams of hope. I remember reading a letter which a soldier wrote from the trenches, the horrific trenches with all their mud, with all their squalor, with all their disease, with all their agony and death.

[8:49] He wrote home describing these conditions. He was about to seal the letter. And at that moment, a brightly colored butterfly fluttered in the air in front of him.

[9:03] Now that didn't mean he was taken out of the trenches. It didn't mean the war was over. But what he said was, it gave me a window of hope.

[9:14] He looked at this beautiful creation of the Lord, fluttering amid the squalor caused by evil, caused by sinfulness and fallenness. There was a little door of hope.

[9:25] And it seems to me that is what the last chapter of Jeremiah is giving to us. The end of the words of Jeremiah, chapter 51, but not, obviously, the end of the book of Jeremiah.

[9:40] There's a couple of things I want to say before we look at the chapter. First of all, why is this chapter here? When Jeremiah, or Baruch, taking down his words, appears to say the book is ended.

[9:54] Now that's not the only example in the Bible of this. There's probably a much better known example. In John 20, the apostle says many other things Jesus did which are not written in this book.

[10:07] But the book doesn't end at chapter 20. It goes on to that glorious resurrection appearance by the Sea of Galilee in chapter 21. Now that's a hugely important chapter, but obviously it's not our concern today.

[10:22] My question is not why is there a John 21, but why is there a Jeremiah 52? Now one very straightforward answer is because the events described in this chapter are so hugely important, this fall of the city, the destruction of the temple, and the depopulation of the people is described four times in the Old Testament.

[10:49] There is a briefer account in chapter 39, which I touched on very lightly because obviously I knew we're coming to this chapter. 2 Kings 25, the end of 2 Kings, is virtually identical.

[11:04] Some of the rabbis argue that Jeremiah may have written the books of 1 and 2 Kings. That's possible, although there's no proof of it. And then in 2 Chronicles chapter 36, we have the same event.

[11:16] Clearly, the Spirit is saying this is something hugely important. We need to grapple with it. This is no minor episode which we can ignore. And probably, as Baruch put together the book of Jeremiah, he was guided by the Spirit to put this chapter in.

[11:34] And that brings me to my second introductory point. Seems to me that this chapter sums up the heart of what the book of Jeremiah is all about. I was going to say many years ago.

[11:46] It was actually only two years ago when we began Jeremiah. I suggested as a title for the series The Prophet of the Costly New Covenant. We couldn't just say The Prophet of the New Covenant because that was missing out a great deal of the book.

[12:02] Couldn't just jump to the happy ending straight away. But the essence of Jeremiah is that God's covenant promises are unilateral. They are unbreakable.

[12:14] And yet, they also need faithfulness as his people respond to them. And what this chapter is telling us is Jeremiah's prophecies of judgment were fulfilled.

[12:26] All the things that he predicted, all the things that he was mocked at for predicting, these all happened. But, he also talks about God's steadfast love, the new covenant in 31 and 32, the everlasting covenant.

[12:43] And this is showing, this chapter is showing us then how the judgment came, why it came. It is also telling us it is not the end of the story.

[12:55] There is a butterfly of hope. There is a door of hope. We're going to look at this chapter as a drama in four acts. The first three are tragic.

[13:08] But, the fourth act opens a door of hope into the future. My title is Zion Down, But Not Out. As a Newcastle supporter, that's quite a comforting title.

[13:22] Anyway, whatever is true about Newcastle, Zion is down, but not out. And that's my title today. So, the first three acts tell us that Zion is down.

[13:34] Zion is in deep, deep, and apparently terminal trouble. Act 1, verses 1 to 11, David's king is dead.

[13:45] Zedekiah, the last Davidic king to sit on David's throne, blinded, humiliated, taken to Babylon where he dies. Thoroughly unworthy son of David, a man who played for safety first.

[14:01] If he had had more courage, if he had been less of a wimp, the fate that overtook him would have been less horrific than actually happened. Remember what the Lord Jesus Christ said, he who saves his life will lose it.

[14:13] And that's perfectly illustrated here. This king is a failed shepherd. The kings were shepherds of their people.

[14:24] Remember, of course, God is the shepherd. Jacob, way back in the book of Genesis says that God has been my shepherd all the days of my life. And shepherds were appointed in ancient Israel to look after the flock.

[14:40] Zedekiah was a failed shepherd. Now, Zedekiah could have honorably surrendered to the king of Babylon. Earlier on in the book, Jeremiah says, if you surrender, Nebuchadnezzar is still going to come.

[14:53] He's carrying out the task I gave him. But your life will be saved. But it's difficult to imagine a more abject failure of leadership. He neither surrenders nor puts out a fight.

[15:05] When the wolf comes, he simply runs away. And earlier in chapter 39, that failure was not just cowardice, it was a failure to believe the word of God through Jeremiah.

[15:17] the shepherd is the one who believes in the word of God and leads the people according to that. Hebrews 13 speaks this way of leadership.

[15:27] Remember your leaders, those who spoke the word of God to you. Now, obviously, leaders come in different styles, different shapes, different emphases.

[15:39] According to Hebrews, the essence of leadership among the people of God is to shepherd the people, to lead them into the green pastures of scripture. Fail shepherd, the king of the world has conquered, hasn't he?

[15:55] The city was besieged, verse 5, and then a breach was made in the city and the Chaldeans were around the city.

[16:07] You see, last week, if you were here, you remember, looked at that great ode on the fall of Babylon, chapters 50 to 51. Why is Babylon, why after that, Babylon the great, the world passing away, why is it rearing its head again?

[16:24] And it's rearing its head again because Jeremiah is reminding us we are still in this world where Babylon often triumphs. John is to say in Revelation 13 about the beast, the devil summons a beast out of the sea, the persecuting power of the state.

[16:41] And John says this, it was allowed to make war on the saints and to conquer them. And this has so often happened throughout history. Church-driven, underground, unbelief flourishes, the church itself becomes, it becomes disobedient to the covenant.

[17:00] At any given time, Babylon is riding high. What about the promises? What about the promise to David? 2 Samuel 7, 16, your house and your kingdom will stand before me forever.

[17:14] There will never cease to be a man on the throne of David. Do you read that chapter? And if you read Psalm 98, which is, sorry, Psalm 89, I beg your pardon, which is also about the covenant with David, the Lord says, if his sons disobey me, I will punish them.

[17:32] And he is a disobedient son if ever there was one. But I will never take away my steadfast love from David. David's king is dead.

[17:44] Act 1 of the tragedy is bleak. As Act 1 fades into Act 2, the kings are gone. The captains and the kings depart.

[17:58] Act 2, God's city and God's temple are destroyed. Verses 12 to 23. The end of a dream. With salvation's walls surrounded, you can smile at all your foes.

[18:16] Where is Zion now? Verse 13. He burned the house. This is the captain of the guard, the Lord, the king's house and all the houses of Jerusalem. Everything that Zion stood for, the kingship, the temple, had gone.

[18:33] The flames would spread rapidly and the temple is looted and then burned. Now, in this particular section, this was not the case in chapter 39, the emphasis is on the temple.

[18:48] And there's a little phrase here that, verse 20, which Solomon the king had made for the house of the Lord.

[19:00] If you go back to 2 Kings 8, that glorious chapter about the finishing of this splendid building and Solomon's great prayer of dedication, go, the Lord live in this house, the highest heavens cannot contain him.

[19:13] How will he live in this house? And all this sense of wonder and excitement, the Lord in the midst of his people. But now, it's all gone. Has Yahweh, the God of Israel, been defeated by the gods of Babylon?

[19:30] He did handle the gods of Egypt. That was the great story which begins Israel's history as a nation, isn't it? Exodus 12, verse 12, against all the gods of Egypt, says Yahweh, I will execute judgment.

[19:44] He managed to defeat Amun-Ra and Osiris. Is he now weaker than Marduk, the chief god of Babylon? Where is he? Now, in order to find that out, you have to read the book of Daniel and the book of Ezekiel.

[20:00] In the book of, there's a wonderful picture and a tragic picture in the book of Ezekiel. In chapters 8 to 10, Ezekiel's in Babylon, but the Lord shows him a vision of the temple.

[20:12] The temple is full of idolatry. The temple is full of images, of Asherah poles, of pagan worship. Remember, Jeremiah, back in chapter 7, had said, this is not the temple of the Lord any longer.

[20:26] And Ezekiel has a vision of the glory lifting from the temple, from the Ark of the Covenant and lingering on the Mount of Olives and then actually going to Babylon.

[20:38] How is the glory of the Lord in Babylon? The glory of the Lord is in Babylon because God's servants are in Babylon. Ezekiel, Daniel, faithful. Remember, Daniel opened his windows to Jerusalem at a time when Jerusalem was a smoking ruin.

[20:54] The glory of the Lord leaves Jerusalem in judgment. If you flash forward to the big picture, when you come to the end of the Gospel of Luke, once again, the glory of Yahweh embodied in the Lord Jesus Christ, stands on the Mount of Olives, this time lifting up his hands, not in judgment, but in blessing, the promise he will come again.

[21:17] That's in the future, though. At this time, it appears Yahweh is weaker than Marduk. His nation has been conquered and in those days, if you conquered a nation, that meant you conquered its gods.

[21:33] And also, this emphasis, I found this particularly entrancing reading in verses 17 and following, the emphasis on the furniture and the vessels of the temple.

[21:43] Why is this here? I think it's here for two reasons. I mentioned one already. Back to 1 Kings 6-8, the loving detail there of how Solomon and his skilled workers made a temple that was beautiful, that was magnificent, a temple that was not only a place of worship, but a place of beauty.

[22:09] But it's mentioned here for another reason. What happens to these during the exile? And if you read in Daniel chapter 5, the last king of Babylon, Belshazzar, has a drunken and blasphemous party as the Persian hosts gather around the city of Babylon, just as Claudius in Hamlet had a drunken party as Fortinbras of Norway was massing on his borders.

[22:42] These are the, and these vessels are brought out of the house of Marduk. And Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar says, go and get these, go and get these vessels from the temple of Marduk.

[22:54] The vessels, the text says, off the god who is in Jerusalem. You can imagine the buffoon rivalry. Remember that god in Jerusalem? Remember Marduk defeated him? That's why it's best. And then, with terrible suddenness, Yahweh, believed to be defeated, breaks into the story and his fingers right on the wall, the doom of Babylon.

[23:16] So the vessels are mentioned again. And then when they're mentioned again, they're mentioned in the book of Ezra as they're lovingly collected and taken home to rebuild the temple.

[23:27] That's the future, but the city is now in ruins. The book of Lamentations talks about this. Our heart has become sick for Mount Zion which lies desolate.

[23:40] Jekylls prowl over it. And similarly, that psalm that we sang together, Psalm 74, your enemies have smashed into the holy place.

[23:51] They have broken down your altars. And the city lies in ruins. Now the city, of course, would rise again. But of course, it was to be destroyed in AD 70 when the Romans destroyed it.

[24:03] Remember, the Lord himself had prophesied this 40 years from when he spoke that Jerusalem would be surrounded with armies, once again destroyed. And the amazing thing is that even with this story behind them, many of the rabbis were still seeing in AD 70, Yahweh will come to the rescue of his city.

[24:27] But you see, by that time, the gospel that Jeremiah preached, the gospel of the new covenant was spreading over the world. God's people were being gathered into Zion.

[24:38] So I began with these verses from Hebrews 12. You have come to Mount Zion, the city of the living God, not the Zion of bricks and mortar which can be destroyed over and over again.

[24:50] But the city which is genuinely surrounded by salvation's walls, the city that no one can destroy, the city which is still growing.

[25:01] But at this moment, it's tragic. It's black night. God's city and temple are destroyed. Act 1, David's king is dead. Act 2, God's city and temple are destroyed.

[25:14] Act 3, verses 24 to 30, God's people are deported. Sometimes an understatement can be terribly, terribly effective.

[25:29] Look at the end of verse 27, that last sentence. So Judah was taken into exile out of its land.

[25:40] See, Lamentations, Psalm 74, other passages in poetry, in great oratory, described this event. Sometimes, you know, an almost throwaway statement, the chilling reality, Judah is away from home.

[25:59] Judah is gone. Now, it had happened, of course, before this. As I've said, before the event we call the exile happened in stages.

[26:09] Before this, Nebuchadnezzar had come and taken the elite youth, including Daniel, away to Babylon. probably Ezekiel was deported at that time. So the numbers actually in Jerusalem by now are fairly small, which is why the numbers in 26 to, 28 to 30 are fairly small.

[26:30] And leaving behind only a kind of skeleton number of people, taking away all the people who were involved in the administration, all the people who were involved in worship, all the people who were leaders, leaving only a few people to scratch out a subsistence living on the soil.

[26:52] So it's a bleak record. Hopes are dashed and the future is uncertain. It seems to me these small numbers remind us of another biblical theme, an important biblical theme, the theme of the remnant will carry out God's purposes.

[27:08] Interesting, the first time this word remnant occurs in the Bible is in Genesis 6 to 9. Noah and his family, tiny number of people, the remnant, who carried God's purposes beyond the flood.

[27:23] Then again, as the darkness falls, the prophets, the great prophets, particularly Isaiah, Jeremiah, and others, speak about the remnant. The Davidic tree is cut down, says Isaiah in chapter 6, but there's still life in its roots.

[27:37] It will grow again, the remnant. And God's work so often seems pathetically small. You mustn't forget, even if we're in a well-attended church, all you need to do is go out the door and see the thousands upon thousands of people were not here or not at any church.

[27:56] It's easy to become obsessed with numbers. God works through remnants. This, and just as a remnant was preserved through the flood, just as a remnant was preserved in the land of Egypt up to the Exodus, saw now a remnant who go to Babylon.

[28:11] They are the future, not the people who defied the word of the Lord and went down to Egypt, but the people taken to Babylon, at least because they include people like Ezekiel and Daniel.

[28:24] And of course, Daniel's friends, whom we only hear of once, but who make this tremendous stand. But it's the loss of land, what C.S. Lewis is called the Pilgrim's Regress.

[28:37] They are back in the land that Abraham left. Abraham left out of the Chaldeans, part of the great Babylonian Empire, but now they're back.

[28:50] And of course, God is weaning them away from identifying a piece of real estate at the eastern end of the Mediterranean as the city of God. The city of God is not to be associated with any earthly spot.

[29:06] That's why at the end of Hebrews we read that Jesus suffered outside the camp, outside the sacred enclosure, so that he would call all nations to him.

[29:18] And if you read Hebrews 11, you'll find that Abraham himself recognized this was not the destiny. Hebrews 11, verse 8, Abraham, we are told, lived in the land of promise as a stranger, as an exile.

[29:34] Abraham realized there was something beyond this. We must realize that too. A missionary returning from South America in the early years of the 20th century in the days when there were still ocean liners, happened to be on the same ship as President Roosevelt.

[29:53] And of course, when the ship arrived, there was tremendous excitement, banners, bands, the National Guard, all the rest of it, to welcome the President home. When the missionary and his wife arrived, there was not a single soul to meet them.

[30:10] They'd been out there for 40 years. It was in the days when communications were not what they are. Now letters would take months and so on, and very difficult to travel home.

[30:21] And as they went to their modest little guest house after they got off the ship, they wouldn't have been human if he hadn't felt sad and upset and forgotten.

[30:37] As they prayed together that night, the missionary said, it was as if the Lord said, but you're not home yet. This is not what it's about. Home is still in the future.

[30:49] That's always true for the people of God in this world. They looked for a city which had foundations, whose builder and maker is God. Act 1, David's king is dead.

[31:02] Act 2, God's city and temple destroyed. Act 3, God's people deported. Act 4, 31 to 34, long live the king.

[31:14] That's what I'm going to call it. I've not got another D, but it doesn't matter because this is a very different kind of act anyway. I want to show it by the title I've given.

[31:25] It's a grim story. You see, we need to read verses 1 to 30 and take them seriously. We need to avoid cheap grace, the phrase of Bonhoeffer.

[31:36] We need to avoid a covenant that costs nothing. And we need to remember the chapter could have ended at 27, verse 27. So Judah was taken into exile out of its land.

[31:49] But here is the butterfly of hope, if you like, the door opening into the future. And just two things. The enemy unwittingly preserves the line of David.

[32:01] David's line is not, has not disappeared. Evil Merodach, to give him his Babylonian name, Amel Marduk, man of Marduk, the chief Merodach in the Old Testament is the Hebrew form of Marduk, the chief Babylonian god.

[32:17] Some of the commentators say there's a tradition that Amel Marduk, who was the son of Nebuchadnezzar, had offended his father and had been put in prison, and in prison he met Jehoiakim.

[32:29] That may well be the case. But, notice what it says, he lifted up the head. That's a way of expressing not just freedom, but privilege.

[32:40] We must go back to a much earlier story, mustn't we, in the Bible. Pharaoh lifted up the head of Joseph. And once again, the line of promise, the line of Zion, was preserved.

[32:54] And indeed, in Psalm 3, this is the very word that David uses of Yahweh. Psalm 3, probably coming from a time when he was deposed by Absalom, you, Lord, are the lifter up of my head.

[33:07] Jehoiakim, probably inhonorable, what would be called house arrest, nevertheless, it's still in prison. He's removed from prison to palace. And surely, that's a picture of the gospel itself.

[33:20] All of us removed from the prison of sin to the freedom of the children of God. The enemy unwittingly preserved. And so often throughout history that has happened.

[33:32] As the enemy has tried to destroy the people of God, regimes rise and fall, empires come and go, dictators strut across the stage, and then are heard no more.

[33:44] But the kingdom of God keeps on growing. The second detail is, notice verse 32, he gave him a seat above the seats of the other kings who were with him in Babylon.

[33:57] Now, it's still a long way to go before the son of David reigns over the nations. All the glorious words of Isaiah 2 that we sang at the beginning are fulfilled.

[34:10] But surely, this is a picture of that. Notice he is called the king of Judah. Twice he is called the king of Judah. In other words, as far as Babylon is concerned, Judah is dead, it's gone, it's been blotted out of history.

[34:26] As the Lord is concerned, neither Judah's unbelief nor Babylonian militarism can overturn the everlasting covenant. Now, I'm not saying the dungeon is flaming with light here.

[34:39] What I'm saying is that light is shining, the butterfly of hope is fluttering over the dark ruins and the mangled lives of the Judeans.

[34:53] You see, this man, Jehoiachin, also called Jeconiah, he appears again in scripture in Matthew 1 verses 11 to 12 in the list of those who are the line through which the Messiah himself is to come.

[35:11] Read that chapter, it's almost a summary of Old Testament history. Foreigners like Rahab and Ruth and rather uninspiring kings like Jehoiachin, they nevertheless form part of the family tree.

[35:29] A king on high is reigning as we'll sing in a moment or two. So you see, the book ends, and it's very significant, isn't it, not with Zedekiah, the disgraced and defeated son of David, but with Jehoiachin with all his limitations.

[35:47] He is still alive, not only still alive, but he is the king of Judah still and he is exalted by the king of Babylon. So you see, we end the book of Jeremiah not with Jehoiachin, after all.

[36:03] That's not what the scriptures are about. Jesus did not say in the Emmaus road, read the scripture, they speak about Jehoiachin. He said, read the scriptures, for they speak about me. And in this son of David exalted, however briefly, however temporarily, we are pointing forward to the prospect of great David's greater son, the one whom, as Gabriel said, will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom, there will be no end.

[36:33] Brothers and sisters, there's a long way to go. We don't know how long it will be, but the morning star is shining. The full day will dawn, and Jesus will reign.

[36:47] Amen. Let's pray. Father, we praise you for the one who one day the desert tribes will bow down before the kings of the earth will bring their tribute.

[37:02] The one who both is David's son and David's lord. And we look forward to that day. And we pray in the difficulties of this world as we still contend with Babylon and as Babylon is often ascendant.

[37:20] We look to the day of the triumph of the Lord Jesus Christ so that when he comes again we may not be ashamed before him at his coming.

[37:30] Amen.