Today we come to the end of our walk through Kings. In all these months, we haven’t come close to touching it all, let alone processing it all! Here’s a quick overview of where we’ve been.
We picked up the story in 1 Kings, with the great warrior king David fading fast. There was a terrible transition of power, but in the end his son Solomon became king. Solomon was young and humble; he asked God for wisdom, and he got it. This started an upward spiral: wise king, blessing, provision, temple, palace. Israel was respected by the surrounding nations.
As the temple was finished and dedicated, Israel seemed to be in a utopia moment. The presence of God was in the temple. In 1 Kings 8-10, there’s a tone of “they made it!”
But there’s a turn in the very next chapter, as we see Solomon taking hundreds of wives and beginning to worship their gods. Solomon himself died before the end of chapter 11, and the trajectory was already set for the great nation of Israel to be torn apart.
Through all of this and all that was to come, God was persistent, sending warnings and directives through prophet after prophet, offering grace after grace. Yet the nation—the kings—for the most part persisted in rejecting relationship with God and choosing to pursue false gods. There were so many consequences, both natural and supernatural, including famine and disease and war and division and so many terrible leaders. The nation was split into two, with Israel in the north and Judah in the south. There were a few kings who were okay or even good, but the overall narrative was of a downward spiral.
In 2 Kings 17, the northern kingdom of Israel was conquered by Assyria, and so many of the people were sent into exile. And now as we come to the end of 2 Kings, the southern kingdom of Judah is about to fall. The king is about to be taken captive. The people are about to be taken into exile. The city is about to be burned. The temple is about to be destroyed. Surely it’s all over.
But remember, this text is initially written to the people living in exile in Babylon who were asking the question, “How did we get here?” And even after all of this—after their forced removal from the promised land, the destruction of the city and the temple, the countless deaths, and the potential loss of all their culture and history—it was actually not all over.
As we saw last week, the Torah (the books of Moses) had been found and preserved—this was their sacred text connecting them to God. And the covenant with God had been reaffirmed and the celebration of Passover re-established. Can you imagine what it would have been like if these things had been missed? But they weren’t.
So when Judah fell, it seemed like an “it’s all over” moment. But 2 Kings ends with a glimmer of hope, which we will look at today. First, let’s skip forward a bit and summarize the history.
In 586 BC (and in 2 Kings 24-25), Babylon under King Nebuchadnezzar II conquered Judah and destroyed both Jerusalem and the temple. Judah was taken into exile. Judah’s kings like Jehoiachin and Zedekiah were under Babylonian authority.
But Babylon eventually fell. In 539 BC, Cyrus the Great of Persia defeated Babylon and conquered its empire, becoming the new world power. The Old Testament book of Ezra tells us what happened next:
“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 of his people among you may go up to Jerusalem in Judah and build the temple of the Lord, the God of Israel, the God who is in Jerusalem, and may their God be with them. And in any locality where survivors may now be living, the people are to provide them with silver and gold, with goods and livestock, and with freewill offerings for the temple of God in Jerusalem.’” Then the family heads of Judah and Benjamin, and the priests and Levites—everyone whose heart God had moved—prepared to go up and build the house of the Lord in Jerusalem. (Ezra 1:2-5)
It wasn’t all over! It certainly wasn’t simple from this point, but it wasn’t all over.
As we’ve worked through 2 Kings, we’ve repeatedly asked the question, “How will you persist?” And here at the end of the book, the people were facing their worst moment—and yet it was not all over. There was a glimmer of hope. And today, we’re talking about persisting even if the glimmer of hope is almost invisible.
Let’s talk about “worst moments” like that. I’m going to give you a list of 22 difficult moments in life. These are times when people feel like they’re at an impasse, like it’s all over and they want to give up. I want you to give each of these moments a score from 0-7, where 0 means this moment would not (or has not) set me back and 7 means this moment would (or did) bring me to my breaking point. Also please underline each moment you have personally navigated in life.
A devastating diagnosis
The death of a loved one
A broken marriage
Losing a job
A failing business
Overwhelming debt
Unanswered prayers
A painful rejection
A crushed dream
Perpetual loneliness
Losing a child
A child walking away
A betrayal by a friend
A failing ministry
Public criticism
Addiction relapse
A ruined dream
A season of waiting
Facing prison
Losing your purpose
Running out of time
A community in crisis
We’re not going to share or compare our lists, but I do have a couple of questions for us to discuss. Here’s the first one:
What are some of the elements that make a moment extraordinarily difficult?
Resilience is the ability to recover, adapt, and keep moving forward after experiencing hardship, loss, failure, or adversity. We could ask about what makes someone resilient or not, but I want to go a different direction:
Where is the line between healthy resilience and unhealthy resilience?
Before we get to the third question, I want us to look at the crazy call at the start of the New Testament letter of James. The people receiving James’ letter were Jewish Christians who had been displaced from their homes because of persecution. They likely faced the loss of their homes and stability, economic hardship, social rejection discrimination because of their faith in Jesus, and uncertainty about their future. And James says this:
Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. (James 1:2-4)
He is not minimizing the pain or saying it doesn’t hurt or asking us to ignore it or pretend. He’s asking us, in and through it all, to embrace the growth. I believe in the wisdom of this, but I also know that accepting it can be difficult!
What has to change in a person before he or she can embrace James’ call to consider trials as joy?
There are so many moments in Scripture where people find themselves at an impasse, where it seems to be “all over.” Here are some examples:
Abraham & Sarah • The promise seems impossible • Genesis 18:11–14; 21:1–7
Israel at the Red Sea • Trapped with no way out • Exodus 14:10–14
Israel in the wilderness • Will we survive? • Exodus 16–17
The widow of Zarephath • The last meal • 1 Kings 17:8–16
Elijah • Exhausted and ready to quit • 1 Kings 19:3–18
Job • Everything taken away • Job 1–42
Naomi • Life has become empty • Ruth 1:20–21; 4:14–17
Hannah • Years of disappointment • 1 Samuel 1:10–20
David • Hunted before becoming king • 1 Samuel 16–31
Joseph • Betrayed, enslaved, forgotten • Genesis 37–50
Shadrach, Meshach & Abednego • The fire awaits • Daniel 3
Daniel • The lions’ den • Daniel 6
Esther & Israel • A death sentence • Esther 3–8
The woman with the bleeding disorder • Twelve years of suffering • Mark 5:25–34
Jairus • It is too late • Mark 5:35–43
Lazarus • Four days too late • John 11:1–44
The disciples • Jesus is dead • Luke 23–24
One of my favorites here is Joseph, and I want to talk about him for a few minutes.
Now, Joseph had some issues. He was proud, he was his father’s favorite, and his relationship with his brothers was broken. Finally, after so much conflict between them, his brothers turned against him.
But they saw him in the distance, and before he reached them, they plotted to kill him. “Here comes that dreamer!” they said to each other. “Come now, let’s kill him and throw him into one of these cisterns and say that a ferocious animal devoured him. Then we’ll see what comes of his dreams.” When Reuben heard this, he tried to rescue him from their hands. “Let’s not take his life,” he said. “Don’t shed any blood. Throw him into this cistern here in the wilderness, but don’t lay a hand on him.” Reuben said this to rescue him from them and take him back to his father. So when Joseph came to his brothers, they stripped him of his robe—the ornate robe he was wearing—and they took him and threw him into the cistern. The cistern was empty; there was no water in it. (Genesis 37:18–24)
Can you imagine how it felt to Joseph, to be betrayed? But then he was also sold into slavery.
As they sat down to eat their meal, they looked up and saw a caravan of Ishmaelites coming from Gilead. Their camels were loaded with spices, balm and myrrh, and they were on their way to take them down to Egypt. Judah said to his brothers, “What will we gain if we kill our brother and cover up his blood? Come, let’s sell him to the Ishmaelites and not lay our hands on him; after all, he is our brother, our own flesh and blood.” His brothers agreed. So when the Midianite merchants came by, his brothers pulled Joseph up out of the cistern and sold him for twenty shekels of silver to the Ishmaelites, who took him to Egypt. (Genesis 37:25–28)
Joseph lost his freedom and any control over his future.
Now Joseph had been taken down to Egypt. Potiphar, an Egyptian who was one of Pharaoh’s officials, the captain of the guard, bought him from the Ishmaelites who had taken him there. (Genesis 39:1)
Joseph was no longer his own. He went from being the favorite, blessed and taken care of, to not even belonging to himself any more. But then it got worse.
and after a while his master’s wife took notice of Joseph and said, “Come to bed with me!” But he refused. “With me in charge,” he told her, “my master does not concern himself with anything in the house; everything he owns he has entrusted to my care. No one is greater in this house than I am. My master has withheld nothing from me except you, because you are his wife. How then could I do such a wicked thing and sin against God?” And though she spoke to Joseph day after day, he refused to go to bed with her or even be with her.
One day he went into the house to attend to his duties, and none of the household servants was inside. She caught him by his cloak and said, “Come to bed with me!” But he left his cloak in her hand and ran out of the house.
When she saw that he had left his cloak in her hand and had run out of the house, she called her household servants. “Look,” she said to them, “this Hebrew has been brought to us to make sport of us! He came in here to sleep with me, but I screamed. When he heard me scream for help, he left his cloak beside me and ran out of the house.” She kept his cloak beside her until his master came home. Then she told him this story: “That Hebrew slave you brought us came to me to make sport of me. But as soon as I screamed for help, he left his cloak beside me and ran out of the house.” When his master heard the story his wife told him, saying, “This is how your slave treated me,” he burned with anger. Joseph’s master took him and put him in prison, the place where the king’s prisoners were confined. (Genesis 39:7–20)
Joseph tried to do what was right, and he still ended up in prison.
Eventually, he had a chance to help the pharaoh’s cupbearer, and he asked to be remembered, but he was forgotten and nothing changed for two more years.
“But when all goes well with you, remember me and show me kindness; mention me to Pharaoh and get me out of this prison. I was forcibly carried off from the land of the Hebrews, and even here I have done nothing to deserve being put in a dungeon.”
The chief cupbearer, however, did not remember Joseph; he forgot him.
When two full years had passed, Pharaoh had a dream: He was standing by the Nile… (Genesis 40:14–15, 23; 41:1)
Joseph was able to interpret dreams with God’s help, and helping Pharaoh finally got him out of prison. He predicted a famine and was put in charge of preparing for it. He moved from being a slave and then a prisoner to being number two in the land.
And then his brothers came to Egypt to buy grain, and he had to face them. He’d come through so much, and this could have been his moment of ultimate revenge. The brothers who had tossed him in a pit, plotted to take his life, and sold him into slavery were in his power.
But Joseph saw that although he had experienced multiple moments where life seemed “all over,” God was preparing him in the places he never would have chosen. He was now well-placed to take care of his family.
Then Joseph said to his brothers, “Come close to me.” When they had done so, he said, “I am your brother Joseph, the one you sold into Egypt! And now, do not be distressed and do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here, because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you. (Genesis 45:4-5)
Remember the “worst moments” list we talked about earlier as you process this:
How have the hardships you’ve faced shaped you and prepared you for life?
As we turn the page to 2 Kings 24, the end has come. Jehoiakim was king of Judah—it didn’t go well. Jehoiachin became king. That didn’t go well either. He only ruled for three months, and like so many other kings, he did evil in the eyes of the Lord.
Jerusalem was under siege by Babylon, and King Nebuchadnezzar came in person to Jerusalem. In the end, Jehoiachin and all of his officials surrendered.
In the eighth year of the reign of the king of Babylon, he took Jehoiachin prisoner. As the Lord had declared, Nebuchadnezzar removed the treasures from the temple of the Lord and from the royal palace, and cut up the gold articles that Solomon king of Israel had made for the temple of the Lord. He carried all Jerusalem into exile: all the officers and fighting men, and all the skilled workers and artisans—a total of ten thousand. Only the poorest people of the land were left. (2 Kings 24:12b-14)
Jehoiachin is taken off to Babylon as a prisoner. Is it all over?
He (Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon) made Mattaniah, Jehoiachin’s uncle, king in his place and changed his name to Zedekiah. (2 Kings 24:17)
Changing the king’s name was a power move. It was meant to rewrite his identity and delete his past.
Zedekiah (also not a good king) eventually rebelled against Babylon’s oppression.
So in the ninth year of Zedekiah’s reign, on the tenth day of the tenth month, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon marched against Jerusalem with his whole army. He encamped outside the city and built siege works all around it. The city was kept under siege until the eleventh year of King Zedekiah. (2 Kings 25:1-2)
Babylon responded to Zedekiah’s rebellion by surrounding Jerusalem. There was no food. The wall was breached. The king ran. The Babylonians pursued, and caught him. This had to be the rock bottom, right?
He was taken to the king of Babylon at Riblah, where sentence was pronounced on him. They killed the sons of Zedekiah before his eyes. Then they put out his eyes, bound him with bronze shackles and took him to Babylon.
On the seventh day of the fifth month, in the nineteenth year of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, Nebuzaradan commander of the imperial guard, an official of the king of Babylon, came to Jerusalem. He set fire to the temple of the Lord, the royal palace and all the houses of Jerusalem. Every important building he burned down. The whole Babylonian army under the commander of the imperial guard broke down the walls around Jerusalem. (2 Kings 25:6-10)
It has to be all over. Everything is lost. But wait…
The last words of 2 Kings return to Jehoiachin, the king who had been hauled off to Babylon and put in prison:
In the thirty-seventh year of the exile of Jehoiachin king of Judah, in the year Awel-Marduk became king of Babylon, he released Jehoiachin king of Judah from prison. He did this on the twenty-seventh day of the twelfth month. He spoke kindly to him and gave him a seat of honor higher than those of the other kings who were with him in Babylon. So Jehoiachin put aside his prison clothes and for the rest of his life ate regularly at the king’s table. Day by day the king gave Jehoiachin a regular allowance as long as he lived. (2 Kings 25:27-30)
For the people of Judah, the story seemed finished. Jerusalem had been destroyed. The temple had been burned. The king had been captured. The people had been taken into exile. The Davidic kingdom appeared to be over. Then, almost unexpectedly, the final words of 2 Kings do not end with destruction; they end with a king eating at a king’s table.
How do you recognize God’s hope when your circumstances tell you the story is over?
We have processed so many things today, and in this whole series. Here’s one final question, following our theme in 2 Kings of “How will I persist?”
What do I need to keep in focus in order to remain faithful and persistent in my relationship with Christ?
Take It Deeper Questions
Read James 1:1-18.
What is the hardest scholastic test you remember taking?
Who do people in your family lean on in hard times?
What moments in life have shaped you for the better?
How does personal growth through struggles pair well with wisdom?
How are you challenged, focused, encouraged, and/or confused by this text?
Bible Reading Plan
Exodus 14 • Trusting God at the Red Sea
Job 1 • Faith When Everything Falls Apart
Psalm 46 • God Is Our Refuge
Isaiah 40 • Strength for the Weary
Romans 5 • Suffering Produces Hope
Hebrews 12 • Running the Race Faithfully
1 Corinthians 1 • God’s Wisdom Over Human Wisdom
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