2 Chro No.18 The Bible Re-Discovered

Good to have you all with us this morning. Let's read together, if you've got the NIV version of the Word of God, let's read the last two verses of Psalm 100, because they describe the attitude that should be ours as we come before the Lord and before His Word. Psalm 100 verse 4 and 5. Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise.

Give thanks to him and praise his name for the Lord is good and his love endures forever. His faithfulness continues through all generations. His kingdom come, his will be done, on earth as it is in heav'n.

Give thanks to him and praise his name for the Lord is good and his love endures forever. Water and shade and showering waters, waves of nations, forms of heaven, from his Father streams of living waters, raining from his sea a thousand times still. He who gives to him may he find her, he who gives to him may find her, he who gives to him may he find her.

Father, we offer this service to you. We thank you for one another. Thank you for the concept of family, of so many babies there in the crèche.

Be with them and bless those who are looking after them. Our own boys and girls here, our young people in the galleries, mums and dads, those who are single, those who are widowed, whatever our circumstances are, we ask your blessings to be upon this family service and make it meaningful to all of us, for Jesus' sake. Amen.

Our reading today is from 2 Chronicles chapter 36. In the previous chapter, we had been hearing about Josiah, who was basically a good king, we learned. After his death, Jehoahaz, his son, became king, but he only lasted about three months, and the king of Egypt made his brother king.

His name was Eliakim, but his name was changed to Jehoakim. Then there follows a succession of kings who did evil in the eyes of the Lord. Jehoakim, we read, he did evil in the eyes of the Lord, his God.

Then his son succeeded him, and we read that he did evil in the eyes of the Lord. He was then succeeded by his uncle, Zedekiah, and we read of him that he did evil in the eyes of the Lord, his God, and did not humble himself before Jeremiah the prophet. We read also, furthermore, all the leaders of the priests and the people became more and more unfaithful, following all the detestable practices of the nations, and defiling the temple of the Lord, which he had consecrated in Jerusalem.

Now we pick up the reading in verse 15, headed, in my Bible, the fall of Jerusalem. The Lord, the God of their fathers, sent word to them through his messengers again and again, because he had pity on his people and on his dwelling place. But they mocked God's messengers, despised his words, and scoffed at his prophets, until the wrath of the Lord was aroused against his people, and there was no remedy.

He brought up against them the king of the Babylonians, who killed their young men, with the sword, in the sanctuary, and spared neither young men nor young women, old men or aged. God handed all of them over to Nebuchadnezzar. He carried to Babylon all the articles from the temple of God, both large and small, and the treasures of the Lord's temple, and the treasures of the king and his officials.

They set fire to God's temple and broke down the wall of Jerusalem. They burned all the palaces and destroyed everything of value there. He carried into exile to Babylon the remnant who escaped from the sword, and they became servants to him and his sons until the kingdom of Persia came to power.

The land enjoyed its Sabbath rests all the time of its desolation it rested, until the 70 years were completed in fulfillment of the word of the Lord spoken by Jeremiah. In the first year of Cyrus, king of Persia, in order to fulfill the word of the Lord spoken by Jeremiah, the Lord moved the heart of Cyrus, king of Persia, to make a proclamation throughout his realm and to put it in writing. This is what Cyrus, king of Persia, says, The Lord, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and he has appointed me to build a temple for him at Jerusalem in Judah.

Any one of his people among you, may the Lord his God be with him and let him go up. Amen. And now it's my privilege to bring to you an address that's based on, though will encompass more than what is found in this last chapter of the second book of Chronicles.

Let me read to you just a couple of verses again from the 15th. The Lord, the God of their fathers, sent word to them through his messengers again and again, because he had pity on his people and on his dwelling place. But they mocked God's messengers, despised his words, and scoffed at his prophets, until the wrath of the Lord was aroused against his people, and there was no remedy.

Verse 19, They set fire to God's temple and broke down the wall of Jerusalem. They burned all the palaces and destroyed everything of value there. He carried into exile to Babylon the remnant who escaped from the sword, and so forth.

Have you ever thought that the Bible is a book that makes a lot of reference to cities? You don't go very far into the Old Testament before you come across a man by the name of Nimrod, one of the early descendants of Adam, who was famed for the establishment of centers of civilization. And as you move on into the Bible, you come up against such great cities as Nineveh and in the New Testament, Rome. You think of Babylon and the problems that that rather large nucleus of civilization was for Jewish people.

And then, of course, you think of Jerusalem, the city of the great God. And sometimes when reference is made to Jerusalem, the psalmist will wax lyrical and he will give to that city characteristics which seem to suggest that he has more in mind than just the historical geographical location of the headquarters of the Jewish people. The city Jerusalem is sometimes referred to in the Bible as Zion, the city of the great king, the joy of the whole earth.

And on occasions as the psalmist brings praise to Jerusalem, it seems as though he has in mind something beyond Jerusalem as a physical entity. He's thinking of the headquarters of God himself, the place where God perpetually is. And so you get dawning in Scripture with its antecedents in the Old Testament and a full description of it in the New Testament.

The thought of Jerusalem the golden, the heavenly Jerusalem, the eternal Jerusalem. And in one sense, one of the most pertinent questions that confronts you and me today is the one that asks you about your citizenship. Are you, do you know that you are a member of the Jerusalem that is above? John Newton puts it, "'Savior, if of Zion's city, I through grace a member am.

Let the word deride or pity. I will glory in thy name. Fading is the worldling's pleasure, all his posted pomp and joy, solid joys and lasting treasure, none but Zion's children.' No.

The question that I put to you is this. Are you aware that you hold, if you like, the passport into the city of God? Are you bound on a journey that will ultimately lead you to the place that the physical Jerusalem stood for and pointed to?" There was a man by the name of Baruch who lived around the time of A.D. 70 or thereabouts. He was used to write a book, which of course was not contained in the New Testament, but the writing is of very significant value.

Baruch has a comment made to him by the Lord on the downfall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70, and he is told and gives the record in the book to which I have referred that that Jerusalem is not the important Jerusalem. It's not the Jerusalem of which the Lord would have each member of the human race directed towards. It's an important city, but it's not the most important city at all.

And so Baruch is told that the true city of God is encapsuled in all that physical Jerusalem stands for, and it's necessary for him to be assured that as he makes his way through earth, he will find his destination ultimately with God in heaven. Now, that was not just some fanciful talk that Baruch entered into in his book. Let's go to Hebrews chapter 11, shall we? For in the tenth verse reference is made to Abraham, and we are told that Abraham was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God.

Then we are told again in the 16th verse, of these great men of faith, therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them. And when you go on from the book of Hebrews into the final book of the New Testament, there you get this tremendous vision of John on the Isle of Patmos, and he tells us in the twenty-first chapter of that book, Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God.

And he continues to tell us about that city in the fifteenth verse of the chapter, and he goes on in the twenty-second in the following chapter also to underline the importance of ordinary folk being aware that their final destination will be in the city of God. In fact, he gives a warning about those who would detract from Holy Scripture. If anyone takes words away from this book of prophecy, God will take away from him his share in the tree of life and in the holy city which are described in this book.

So, the most important thing in our world today is for you and I to be assured that our final destination will be in what the Bible calls the new Jerusalem. All that the old Jerusalem stood for ideally, we should be aware that one day we shall be there in the presence of our God. It seems to me that further light is thrown on this study as we look into the historical passage of this Old Testament history and there find more reference in this thirty-sixth chapter to the ancient city of Jerusalem.

So, let's look at the Chronicles city as we find some of the happenings recorded in this last chapter of the second book of Chronicles. You know, if you were to just read the first two or three chapters of this book, you might have thought that the whole of the history of Israel was a very encouraging one. I mean, by that you are introduced to Solomon, and you remember how great a king he was.

Your heart warms as you discover Solomon erecting to the Lord a great temple. And then the presence of God falls upon the temple and it is manifest inside and outside. You get that lovely eighth chapter which describes what happens when the Lord comes down amongst his children.

And one is, at the beginning of reading the book of Chronicles, 2 Chronicles, filled with enthusiasms, here is a theocratic people, here are a people who know their God. But alas, the story did not continue like that, did it? The good kings were replaced by the bad kings with an occasional cropping up of a better one. And that grand edifice of the ancient world, the temple, was neglected by the Jews and ultimately it became a ruin.

As around the city of God came the armies of the Babylonians. We are told in this nineteenth verse they set fire to God's temple and broke down the walls of Jerusalem. They burned all the palaces and destroyed everything of value there.

Here is the chronicler's city. And when you read a bit and remember that this was the place where God had manifested his power and set his name, then you are filled with a sense of tragedy and pathos. And you ask yourself, why? Why was it that the citizens of this ancient city never maintained their spiritual heritage? And you have to honestly come to the conclusion that the fault was entirely on their side.

It was not on the side of God. Look at the fifteenth verse again. References made to the messengers that God sent to his children.

Again and again he brings them face to face with the yardstick, the standards that he wants for the control of their society. And Jeremiah in his prophecy several times will use exactly the same phraseology. In the authorized version of the Bible they use an anthropomorphic expression.

God gets up early in the morning and sends his men to warn the citizens of Jerusalem as to the danger that is in front of them. Of course, our God neither slumbers nor sleeps. That is what I mean by an anthropomorphic expression.

It is a managed thing to do. It is a human thing to do. But God is so depicted in the book of Jeremiah that you find him almost like a man rising early with a job to do as he sends his ambassadors into Jerusalem to warn the message of God, the mercy of God.

That is directed towards his children and yet they do not accept it, do they? They are told that God had pity on his people. They are told that God remembers his dwelling place where he set his name. But these three things which were very much in the favor of the inhabitants of the city of Jerusalem, they were bypassed by the people.

The messages of God, the mercy of God, the fact that they were held in the memory of God. They mocked God's messengers. They despised his words and scoffed at his prophets until the wrath of God was aroused against the people.

We are told in some of the most tragic words in the whole of the Old Testament, there was no remedy, verse 16, no remedy at the human level for people who reject when God sends his word to them. You see, the Old Testament Hebrews looked upon the promises of God as though they had no qualifications whatsoever, as though there were no conditional clauses. They thought of Jerusalem almost as a city-type fetish, or if you like, as a city-type symbol, where if you were a member of Jerusalem, then in no sense, even independent of the way that you lived your life, would God's wrath ever be poured against you.

But we find that that was not the case. The chronicler's city becomes a city not of great joy but one of sorrow. As the king of Babylon sends his armies and destroys the city of God, there was no promise, no hope at the human level.

And yet, if you go down the chapter a little bit, you will discover that the children of Israel are to be away from Jerusalem for some seventy years. The reference is made to seventy Sabbaths. They were not very particular in keeping the Sabbath day.

They often fell short of the promises that Moses had made on behalf of the people of Israel to God. They fell foul of the covenant that Solomon had enacted. And as they are taken away after four hundred and ninety years of being in that land, there are seventy years removed from Judah, removed from Israel.

And after that, well from the twenty-second verse to the end of the chapter, you get almost a repetition of what you will find in Ezra chapter one and the opening four verses. God in His grace nonetheless brings His people back to their own land. The chronicler's city, I say, is one of sorrow over which the chronicler might well weep.

But when you move on into the New Testament, you find almost the same sort of thing, if you please, in a rerun. It is the ministry of our Lord Jesus that I refer to and His reaction to the city of Jerusalem. Have you ever thought of the irony when our Lord Jesus was born, when the Gospeler Matthew talks about the Magi, and the way that the Magi come to Jerusalem and tell Herod of the birth of the Son of God.

Now remember that the psalmist has called Jerusalem the city of the great King. And yet the chronicler says that when Herod hears of the birth of Jesus, he was troubled and all Jerusalem was troubled with him. The city that should have rejoiced when our Lord Jesus was born is plunged into trouble as its citizens hear from Herod the news.

But it is not just Jerusalem that is troubled about Jesus. Our Lord Jesus becomes increasingly troubled about Jerusalem. Listen to Him as you make your way through the gospel of Luke and see what the Savior has to say as He comes near to the city on a couple of occasions.

In the thirteenth chapter and the thirty-fourth verse, filled with remorse as He realizes what is in store for Jerusalem, He wails, O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those who are sent to you. How often I have longed to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing. Look, your house has left you desolate.

I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Does not that have a slight ring of familiarity about it, that scripture? It is almost a re-presentation of the chronicler's lament as he looks upon Jerusalem in his day. There is a great deal in common between the Jerusalem of the Savior's time and the Jerusalem of the historian's time.

Let us proceed in the gospel of Luke and let us go on to the nineteenth chapter and to the forty-first verse where another reference is made to the weeping of our Lord Jesus. And this time, again, it is because He is coming into proximity with the holy city. As He approaches it, verse forty-one, as He approached Jerusalem and saw the city, He wept over it and said, If you, even you, had known on this day what would bring you peace, but now it is hidden from your eyes, the days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side.

They will dash you to the ground, and the children within your walls, they will not leave one stone on another because you did not recognize the time of God's coming to you. Our Savior wept over Jerusalem. He wept over what it had been.

With a mind saturated in scripture, He knew of the glories of Jerusalem in David's time and in Solomon's time. He wept because of what it had become, a place so insensitive when the King of Jerusalem enters the gates, the people do not even appreciate who He is. He weeps over what will happen to Jerusalem.

He sees not the armies of Babylon, but the armies of Rome coming around the beautiful city gates and the walls of Jerusalem. And our Savior perceives with that prophetic gaze all that the Jews will have to endure as a result of what? Rejecting the message that God directed to them, spurning the mercy that He offered them, and refusing to acknowledge that they had been very much within the memory of God and He had thought kindly towards them. You see my point and the reason why I call this address? Sorrow over God's city.

The Chronicler being sad. Our Lord Jesus being sad. But then when we move into the remainder of the teaching of the New Testament, we see a change, not just in style but also in substance, a change and a development in the teaching.

For we are confronted by a very interesting reference which flows from the pen of the Apostle Paul. When writing to the Galatians in the fourth chapter and in the 26th verse, he has this unusual comment to make. He refers to Jerusalem that is above.

And he says that the Jerusalem that is above is free. And he goes on even more mysteriously, it seems like clues in a daily telegraph crossword. She is our mother.

What does he mean? All right, let's put the clock back a little bit, half an hour or so to when I started this address. Remember I took you to some scriptures from the Hebrews and I told you how reference was made, not just to Jerusalem the physical city, but all that Jerusalem embodied as though Jerusalem was a reflection of heaven itself. Indeed, if you read the Chronicler very carefully and also buttress the reference with one from the Psalmist, you will find that ideally the dimensions of the temple, as were the dimensions of the tabernacle earlier, were released to David and also to Moses as though they were a physical copy of God's dwelling place in heaven.

David refers to him actually receiving the instructions from the Lord in the building of the temple as though he got it from the hand of God, and there is a correspondence between the dimensions of the temple and the heavenly courts in the celestial realm. And if you were to translate Psalm 122 and verse 3 literally from the Hebrew, you would find the same thing. So, let's link back up on the thought.

Here is Abraham. He is looking for a city. It is not an ordinary city.

It is really nothing to do with the fact that God has given him the promised land. He knows this, but the Hebrew writer says that Abraham is going on, he is looking for a city whose maker and whose builder is none other than God, eternal in the heavens. Do you see the point? And here is the apostle Paul and he is talking about Jerusalem that is above.

Now let's clinch the argument. You go back to Revelation in chapter 21 and also chapter 22, and what do you find there? Well, reference to heaven coming down on earth. Here is John in that great vision and he tells us, I remind you again of his majestic words, I saw a new heaven and a new earth for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away and there was no longer any sea.

I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God prepared as a bride, beautifully dressed for her husband. There is a sense in which all that the new Jerusalem stands for is encapsulated in that Old Testament city of Jerusalem. There is a sense in which all that Jerusalem stands for historically is spiritually in the present, fleshed out in terms of the church of Jesus Christ.

Let's go to 2 Corinthians 6 and verse 16 just to give you a little insight into the teaching of Scripture in that area. Here is the apostle and he is telling us with whom does God make his dwelling place in these days? Well, he goes on, for we are the temple, this is 2 Corinthians chapter 6 and verse 16, for we are the temple of the living God. As God has said, I will live with them and walk among them and I will be their God and they will be my people.

That's the Scripture plucked from the Old Testament. What did it refer to historically? Well, it referred to the temple, this great occasion. You remember Solomon? I made reference to it before.

The way that the presence of God came down and the glory of the Lord was experienced by the people, that's ideally how Jerusalem should have always been. But they didn't retain the blessings that were theirs because, well, they pushed on one side the sovereign graces of God as he extended his hand towards them. When our Lord Jesus weeps over Jerusalem and appreciates all that's going to happen to it in the future, he also has in mind that what Jerusalem stood for at its best will now be fulfilled, not within a literal building made with hands like ours, but it will be fulfilled as men and women confess that Jesus Christ is Lord and Savior as they become part of the new spiritual temple, in other words, the church of God around the world.

There is a sense in which the new Jerusalem is already with us. It's amongst you and me, brothers and sisters, as we sense the presence of God and as we live our lives for the honor and the glory of God. But of course, there is also a future realization of this.

Our Lord Jesus Christ is going to come back. He will set up his kingly reign. I have from Scripture the understanding that heaven and earth will, if you like, merge.

This new Jerusalem will come down onto earth. It's very hard for us to be able to put any more precise language to it than just reproducing the metaphorical language of Scripture. But here is this gigantic thought that John can hardly put across the page as he pushes a stylus across the parchment.

Here is the new Jerusalem coming down like a bride adorned for her beloved. John is so concerned that those who read the book that he authors never betray their claims on citizenship in this Jerusalem. If anyone takes away from the book of prophecy, God will take away from him his share in the tree of life and in the holy city which are described in this book.

So you see how right it was to quote to you that stanza from John Newton's great hymn on Zion, "'Savior, if of Zion's city I through grace a member am, let the world deride or pity. I will glory in thy name.'" Thus my question comes back to you. Are you a member of the heavenly Jerusalem? Is your citizenship guaranteed in heaven? The apostle Paul said that he was a citizen of no mean city.

He referred to Tarsus with the same sort of affection as I refer to my native city in Yorkshire. But at the spiritual level, your native city, your place of birth is utterly unimportant. So the apostle goes on as he is writing to the Philippians and he talks about our citizenship which is in heaven.

So here again is the challenge. Are you sure that you have entered into the blessings of being a member of the new Jerusalem? The message that God has sent to you, have you responded to the message of his Christ, the message of Calvary, the message of your sins, of sins forgiven through the shed blood of Jesus? Have you received it? It's just as though God had got up early and woken you in the morning and sent you many, many a reminder of his grace and of the means of salvation. He tells you of his mercy.

It's not his wish that any man should perish. He wants all to come to a knowledge of Jesus Christ and of him through Christ. He wants to tell you that you are in his memory.

He recalls you. He never forgets you. You have standing.

You have worth. You have potential in his sight as he considers you. Are you aware of this? Are you responding to it? Are you bypassing the grace of God as those ancient Hebrews did in the days of the chronicles? Or are you like the people that sent the tears coursing down the cheeks of our Lord Jesus as he lamented over Jerusalem? Or are you like the Apostle Paul? Are you like the Abraham and all the heroes of the Old Testament who realized that they were on a journey, their ultimate destination was heaven, and what happened to them here was relatively unimportant provided they knew that one day they would be with God in heaven? The book of chronicles will tell you that God has got the whole world in his hands.

He will control the affairs of men. He will call Cyrus to give up the people who have been taken into exile, and he will allow Jerusalem to be rebuilt. God in his grace will control the whole of the human story until that day dawns when our Lord Jesus comes back, when the new Jerusalem comes down from heaven on earth.

In that day will you be able to sing, save you not if, but I of Zion city am indeed a member, and it was to your grace, it was as a result of your blessings that I find myself with you in this eternal era. My friend, there is no question more important than this one. Are you a member of, a citizen of the heavenly Jerusalem? Let us pray.

In a moment we're going to sing as our final act of worship that great prayer which our Lord Jesus taught us, which finishes with a wonderful doxology, for thine is the kingdom, the power, the glory forever and ever. But just a pause as in the quietness. You ensure that you are destined for that Jerusalem because you have exercised serving faith in the Lord Jesus.

Let's stand and sing the Lord's prayer.