Second Kings Chapter 25. Repent or face destruction.
God fulfilled what he said would happen because of Juda's sin. Jerusalem was totally destroyed, even God's Temple was destroyed. The one thing that could have prevented this whole destruction was if Judah would have repented of their sins and returned to the Lord. Instead they make choices apart from God and as result face destructive consequences for the choices.
Sadly it's no different for us as it was for them. God is asking us to repent of our sins and to love the Lord our God, Jesus, with all of our hearts soul mind and strength. To make that choice, even though we may suffer on this Earth, will result in spending eternity with God in heaven.
To choose not to repent of our sins and turn to Jesus by faith, is to face deadly consequences and total destruction. To choose a life without Christ means we face the consequence of spending eternity in the eternal lake of fire called hell, total separation from God forever and ever!
Knowing this, I am driven to want to make choices that demonstrate my love for the Lord but also to be concerned about those around me who don't know the Lord. God use me to reach the Lost!
So much destruction, sadness, and death throughout this chapter and those are the consequences that come with sin. For Judah the destruction was very obvious and could be seen by all. The destruction that is a result of our sin is not always that obvious. Sometimes it’s a slow destruction that slowly eats away at our relationships, our health, or our minds. We continue in sin thinking we can stop or it’s not that bad and one day we will stop and repent. Yet the destruction within us has already begun, until we can fully turn to God and give him our life and turn away from our sins and repent. Each day we can reflect on what might be causing the slow destruction in my life?
What a blessing this daily study is to me! Thanking the Lord for each one of you participating in our reading of the Bible from start to finish. We are ready to begin Chronicles and fill in some of the gaps and questions we have had on the kings of Judah and their activities!!
Verse 7 of this chapter stood out to me.
“They 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.”
How horrible it would have been to have the last thing that you ever saw on earth be the killing of your sons and then to lose your freedom and be taken away after that. This chapter seems to me to be much about condemnation and I want to share a few Bible passages that relate to that from the New Testament. I don’t think that God takes any pleasure in punishing people, but sin can’t go unpunished. We can be so thankful for Jesus who came to take the punishment for our sin because of God’s great love for us!
John 1:29
The next day he (John the Baptist) saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!”
John 3:17-21
“For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through Him. Whoever believes in Him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.”
Romans 8:1-6
There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.”