Episode Transcript
Alright, if you take your Bibles and turn to the book of Daniel chapter 1.
Daniel chapter 1 beginning a brand new study and a brand new book of God's Word.
This is an amazing book.
It's historical, it's prophetic and it's very powerful.
So the book of Daniel, God willing, will be expounding chapter 1 verse 1 this morning and I've already fallen in love with the book.
And they said love at first sight, this is love at first verse.
I absolutely love it.
The title of the message this morning is "To Rise and Fall."
To rise and fall.
And I couldn't help but think of what an incredible timeliness this is to go through the book of Daniel after going through the book of Hosea.
It seems to be following our nation in a sense.
And Hosea did and Daniel is too.
Daniel 1,1 our text begins with a time of great moral decline.
And this time of great moral decline occurred after a time of great moral revival.
And that's very significant for us this morning.
It happened in the land of Judah and by the Holy Spirit of God the prophet Daniel is now going to take us back in time, back to a sad time in Judah's history.
A time, if you'll look now in your text, that's in the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim.
Let's pray.
Father we thank you for your precious Word.
And I thank you Father for the amazing Scriptures you've given us.
For the incredible communication that you provided to us Father from the third heaven down here to earth.
And Father you teach us the mysteries of your Word.
You enlighten our paths.
You show us the things that have taken place, the things which are and the things which will come.
And we're so grateful for all these things.
May all eyes be on you Lord throughout this study and all studies we have here.
And Lord I pray Father we'll just hear from you today our hearts and ears open to your Word and inclining Father to everything you tell us.
We ask it in Jesus wonderful name Lord.
Amen.
This happened in the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim.
And the only way to understand what the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim means to us is to understand how Jehoiakim began to reign in the first place.
What transpired in the years before Jehoiakim's time?
Jehoiakim was the son of King Josiah.
King Josiah was a godly king.
King Josiah rose to power also during a time of great moral decline in the land of Judah.
I tell you what America has been in a time of great moral decline, the greatest moral decline in our nation's history.
And Josiah rose to power during that time of great moral decline in Judah's history.
And when Josiah took the throne he sought the will of God.
And Josiah worked hard to turn that wayward kingdom of Judah back in a godly direction.
Second Chronicles chapter 34.
Second Chronicles chapter 4 verse 3 through 5 says, "For in the eighth year of his reign," speaking of Josiah, "while he was yet young, he began to seek after the God of David his father."
Boy, any time that happens in the Bible, good things are going to take place.
You can read some of the most terrible things in the Bible historically.
And then when it comes to someone deciding, "I'm going to seek the will of my God," all of a sudden things begin to change.
God begins to bless.
The nation begins to rise in greater power and autonomy underneath the rule of God.
And every time that it is said that of a nation in the Scripture, it is teaching us that it will happen in your house if the man of that house will rise up and seek after the God of his fathers too.
But it says here, "He began to seek after the God of David his father and in the twelfth year he began to purge."
You know what we call that today?
Draining the swamp.
Isn't that what we call it today?
This is exactly what we are seeing here folks.
He began to purge Judah and Jerusalem from the high places.
We talk about high places this morning, remember?
In the Genesis to Jesus.
From the high places and the groves and the carved images and the molten images and they break down the altars of Balaam in his presence and the images that were on high above them he cut down and the groves and the carved images and the molten images he break in pieces and made dust of them.
So he is getting all these idols.
Josiah is, he is saying I am about to drain the swamp.
He gets these idols, he starts breaking them down, all these false idols, these false gods, he starts grinding them into powder so you can't polish them back up and set them back on the shelf and worship them again and by the way that is how we are to handle all of our sin too.
You don't take your sin, put it in a box, stick it somewhere in a closet so you can bring it back out later.
You get rid of it.
Get rid of it.
And so he goes on to say, "He break in pieces and made dust of them and strode it upon the graves of them that had sacrifice done to them."
That is like spitting on the grave and saying here, your idols can die with you.
We are not letting them live with us.
And then he says, verse 5, "And he burnt the bones of the priests upon their altars and cleansed Judah and Jerusalem."
Man the priests that were offering sacrifices, these false gods, he burns their bones on their own altars.
Talking about defiance, talking about draining the swamp, King Josiah was a real man of God.
In his reign was a great time of moral revival in the land and I believe the book of Daniel is timely for our nation today.
Donald Trump is no Josiah.
Don't make a mistake there, at the same time our nation is experiencing a small moral revival in the land and I am so grateful for it.
His reign was a time of great moral revival and I believe the book of Daniel is timely for us today because of the small revival we have in our land right now.
Friday night Tammy and I were in a restaurant and I heard a woman mentioning how glad she was that America seems to be turning away from some of her wicked and immoral ways of thinking that we had recently embraced.
Wokeness is beginning to be abandoned.
President Trump recently pledged his support for the nation of Israel and he also said that Christianity would increase during his presidency.
I thank God for things like that.
I saw on the news last week that Bible cells are beginning to shoot up at an increasing rate here in America and I believe that's because Americans are breathing a great and thankful sigh of relief and beginning to seek their God again.
And because of what we've experienced in the past few years, I believe that we have an idea, a small taste at least, of what it must have been like for the believers in Judah when Josiah took the throne and started cleaning up that land.
Thank God for Josiah.
Boy I never thought we'd see this stuff being rid out of our land and it's such a wonderful time for the nation of Israel.
Again Josiah was a godly king, so godly in fact that the prophet Jeremiah cried, he wept when king Josiah died.
Second Chronicles 35 verse 25, second Chronicles 35 verse 25, and Jeremiah lamented for Josiah and all the singing men and the singing women spake of Josiah in their lamentations to this day and made them an ordinance in Israel and behold they are written in the lamentations.
Why did Jeremiah cry when Josiah died?
Well I believe he cried because the land lost a godly leader.
But I believe Jeremiah cried most of all because he knew that when Josiah died the revival would die also.
I believe that's why he cried.
God gave the wicked land of Judah a much needed reprieve from the damage that sin had caused in their land.
God has given us a much needed reprieve for the damage that sin has caused in our land but one man can't have revival for the whole kingdom.
It was a great blessing when king Josiah saw the Lord as his God.
But if the people in the kingdom don't seek the Lord their God then the revival will die when the king dies.
It's amazing, have you all noticed that when people voted president Trump in, have you all noticed that suddenly a lot of the other leaders begin changing their tune too?
It's very obvious.
Why?
Because what's popular among the people is what the leaders want to be.
They lead from behind.
You can't lead from behind, that's the tail wagging the dog.
And so, but you see that change there.
And so when something becomes popular then suddenly people follow the popularity but when it's not popular anymore when the leader dies off then they look for something else to follow.
You seen those football players doing the Trump dance?
You all seen that?
Yeah.
Now, a lot of times when a man gets popular like that the way people follow religion and follow conservative ideas and things like that, they follow them like they follow the Trump dance.
It's popular for the time but it's not an inward conviction of the heart.
And that's what happened with king Josiah.
King Josiah, man, it was popular at the time.
You didn't want to be on the wrong end of king Josiah.
He might burn your bones on the altar.
You don't want to be going the wrong way when king Josiah was in charge.
But when king Josiah died, those people's hearts that never changed under his leadership, they went right back to the same old stuff they were doing before.
And I promise you that that's the way people still are today.
And if you get a different leader in, that leader gets popular and he starts sending the American in the wrong direction, I guarantee you they'll abandon anything that they're praising God for now and they'll go after that.
That's how fickle people are.
If the people in the kingdom don't seek the Lord their God then the revival dies when the king dies.
I'll read the kingdom truth for you this morning.
The only way revival can continue in our nation is if it continues in us.
The only way revival can continue in our nation is if it continues in us.
When Josiah died, the revival didn't continue in the land because it didn't continue in the people.
And after Josiah died, 2 Chronicles 36 one says, "Then the people of the land took Jehoahaz the son of Josiah and made him king and his father's stead in Jerusalem."
The problem was Jehoahaz didn't love the Lord like his daddy Josiah did.
And Kings 23 31 and 32 says, "Jehovahaz was twenty and three years old when he began to reign, and he reigned three months in Jerusalem.
And his mother's name was Hametl, and the daughter of Jeremiah of Libnah.
And he did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord according to all that his fathers it is his the wicked fathers who reigned before Josiah had done.
The kingdom of Judah was in a mess when Josiah inherited it.
And by God's grace it really turned around when Josiah started turning the people back to God.
But boy how quickly we forget.
Jehoahaz didn't learn from his daddy.
Jehoahaz didn't learn from Judah's history.
Jehoahaz didn't learn from God's Word.
God blessed Judah for the godliness of Josiah.
And as soon as he died Jehoahaz started instituting the things that got Judah in trouble to begin with.
Went right back to them.
And beware America can do the same thing just like that.
We've got to grind stuff to powder.
Don't tolerate this wickedness.
Don't say well there's a place for abortion.
There's a place for homosexuality.
We'll just keep it at a minimum here and we won't let it rule as it did before.
You've got to grind that stuff to powder.
You've got to grind the wickedness of our land to powder and get rid of it and make sure you keep leaders in power who want to follow the will of God.
That's the only way to do it and it's got to continue in us.
Because of this, because Jehoahaz went right back to the things that they had done before to get them in trouble.
That man only lasted three months in the throne.
Only three months before Judah lost their sovereignty.
Second Chronicles 36 verse 2 through 4 says Jehoahaz was 20 and 3 years old when he began to reign and he reigned three months in Jerusalem.
And the king of Egypt put him down at Jerusalem and condemned the land in a hundred talents of silver and a talent of gold.
And the king of Egypt made Eliakim his brother king over Judah in Jerusalem and turned his name to Jehoakim.
And Necho took Jehoahaz his brother and carried him to Egypt.
Why was Jehoahaz put down in defeat by the king of Egypt?
Jehoahaz was put down three months into his reign because he didn't raise God up in his heart to rule the land.
He didn't lift God up so the king of Egypt put him down.
The king of Egypt takes Jehoahaz captive and then he puts his brother, now called Jehoakim, on the throne instead which brings us up to the third year of his reign.
Church a nation knows it's in trouble when another nation has the power to choose its leader.
We came very close to that, very close to that.
But a nation knows it's in trouble when another nation has the power to choose its leader.
So Jehoakim is put on the throne after his brother was taken captive and the book of Daniel begins in the third year of the reign of Jehoakim.
So we're all caught up where we are now in verse 1.
And in the third year there was a saying they used to teach in pastoral leadership.
Takes about three years for a pastor to really get a good leadership position in the church.
And the folks who were there before began to trust the leadership and people began to actually let him lead as he should.
It's just a common figure, three years.
And you apply that to the reign of Jehoakim here and he's in his third year now at the book of Daniel 1.1.
I imagine he's feeling pretty confident right now in what he's doing.
In the third year the kings are just now getting the swing of things and learning the political ropes.
And I would imagine about now that Jehoakim was feeling confident, look back in your text, as the king of Judah, the king of Judah.
The problem was Jehoakim did not fear the word of God.
Jehoakim cared more about what the king of Egypt said since he put him in charge than what God said.
The prophet Jeremiah who wept when Jehoakim's godly daddy Josiah died, he tried to warn Josiah's son Jehoakim to turn back to God like his daddy did.
He tried to tell him how the kingdom should be run.
He tried to tell him how to be successful.
He tried to tell him how to get out from underneath Pharaoh Niko's rule and to be an autonomous body under the leadership of Almighty God.
Listen, God loved the people of Judah.
So God spoke to them through the prophet Jeremiah warning Jehoakim, warning Jehoakim's servants that God was going to judge the kingdom of Judah if they did not turn back from their wicked ways and follow God's word.
In Jeremiah 36-3 God said, quote, "It may be that the house of Judah will hear all the evil which I purposed to do unto them, that they may return every man from his evil way, that I may forgive their iniquity and their sin."
Why did God send Jeremiah to the people of Judah?
Because he said, "Maybe they'll hear all the evil, all the bad that I planned to do to them for disobeying me, and maybe hearing Jeremiah they'll return every man from his evil way, and then I can forgive their iniquity, I can forgive their sin, I can heal their land like I did during the time of Josiah."
God wanted those people to repent and turn from their sins.
God wants America to repent and turn from their sins.
And so God warned them through the prophet Jeremiah and God is warning us through his pastors today who are taking the words of the prophet and continuing them fresh and anew to his people in a similar time.
But Jeremiah 36-24 says, "Yet they were not afraid, nor rent their garments, neither the king nor any of his servants that heard all these words."
Here comes Jeremiah filled with God's Spirit, speaking God's words saying, "Folks, this is what's going to happen to you.
It's going to be bad.
You're going to be conquered.
Your people are going to be slain.
You're going to be taken captive.
Please turn from your wicked ways and turn back to the Lord God who loves you and brought you out of the land of Egypt and put you in this place.
God loves you."
But they wouldn't hear God's Word.
They weren't afraid of what God said He would do to them.
They figured, "Nah, we'll be alright on our own.
We're not going to be afraid."
"Yet they were not afraid," the Bible says.
They heard everything God said.
They heard what God said He would do to them if they did not repent.
Yet they were not afraid.
That's exactly the way our people are today.
Do you know what wicked leaders do?
Do you know what wicked men do when Christians try to warn the nation about the judgment that God's going to bring on our land?
You know what they do?
They call us fear mongers.
Have you all ever heard them call us fear mongers?
They call us fear mongers.
Now, the people calling us - I heard them call us that just the other day, by the way.
Just within the past two weeks, I've heard them call us fear mongers.
Now these are the same people who tried to make us afraid to go to church back in 2020.
These are the same people who tried to make us wear one, two, three masks.
These are the same people who tried to make us afraid to go see our own parents and grandparents in the nursing homes.
These are the people who call our ways of thinking dangerous.
The same people who only a few years back, perhaps you'll remember, they showed a video of a Republican shoving an elderly woman in a wheelchair off the cliff.
You all ever saw that video?
Trying to make people afraid to vote for Republicans.
Well you vote for Republicans, they'll just take your old grandma, or if you're old, they'll just shove you off the cliff.
They don't care about you.
Jehoiachim and his staff were not afraid at God's Word, nor did they rent their clothes and repent of their sins.
Now you compare Israel's lack of fear in the third year of the reign of Jehoiachim to the time when Israel was afraid to go into the Promised Land.
Same country, same Jewish people, same covenant.
Here they are in the land, they're not afraid of God.
They're not afraid of what's going to happen to them, what God says is going to happen to them.
And then you had them in the wilderness and they were too afraid to go into the Promised Land and fight like God told them to do in Numbers 14, 1-2 because they were afraid that they would lose the war.
In Numbers 14, 1-2 the Bible says, "And all the congregation lifted up their voice and cried and the people wept that night."
Now that's what should have happened with Jehoiachim.
When Jeremiah came in in the third year of Jehoiachim's reign, and when he comes in, he begins to tell him, "This is what's going to happen to you."
That's when the people should have cried and lifted up their voice and wept.
But instead they weren't afraid.
However here where they should have been emboldened to go into the land when God told them to, they lifted their voice and cried and the people wept that night.
And all the children of Israel murmured against Moses and against Aaron and the whole congregation said, "Would God," said unto them, "Would God that we had died in the land of Egypt."
Isn't that amazing?
Would God we had died in the land of Egypt.
Let me, I'm sorry I just, my notes just jumped up when they weren't supposed to.
Let me get to that text and I'll finish it out.
Or would God we had died in the wilderness.
Here's a kingdom truth.
The wicked mock fear when they are called to repentance.
But they promote fear when they are called to obey.
The wicked mock fear when they are called to repentance.
And they promote fear when they are called to obey.
Just the opposite of what they should do.
Jehoiakim was called to repentance.
He mocked fear.
The Israelites were called to obey, go in and take the land.
They promoted fear.
Listen, Christians don't deal in fear.
We're not fear mongers.
We don't deal in fear.
We deal in wisdom.
But if you reject the wisdom of God then you'll surely face the judgment of God and that's something to be afraid of.
Jehoiakim rejected God's wisdom.
And that means the nation would receive God's judgment.
That's exactly what took place.
We'll get into that here in a little bit.
Just like Jeremiah warned them, in the third year of Jehoiakim's reign, look back in your text now, came Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon.
Here he comes.
Nebuchadnezzar was going to be an instrument of God's judgment against Judah.
God wasn't going to take his mysterious spiritual finger and come do a whirlwind and destroy them.
He was going to use an enemy nation to come destroy them.
Here was God's people living in God's land under the protection of God's covenant promise.
And they have a temple, they have priesthood, they have everything that they should have to operate as God tells them to.
And now here comes Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon as an instrument of God's judgment against him.
Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came to begin a campaign against Judah and against Jehoiakim.
And Daniel said he came, look back in your text, unto Jerusalem.
Now this is the capital of the Holy Land, Jerusalem.
This is the promised land.
This is the place God had brought his people to.
And what did he do with that promised land?
He said he came unto Jerusalem, look back in your text, and besieged it.
Besieged it.
Now to besiege a kingdom means to surround it in hopes of eventually capturing it.
Kind of like one of those anacondas or one of those pythons do.
They besiege their victim.
They can't just walk up and swallow a victim.
They can't just walk up and overpower something like that.
So they wrap themselves around it, they surround it.
Just a little at a time, they squeeze, and they squeeze, and they squeeze, until finally they take them down and then they swallow them up.
And so here comes Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon.
He besieges Jerusalem in hopes of eventually capturing it.
The king of one kingdom is besieging Jerusalem, the capital of Judah, another kingdom, in hopes of capturing it.
And the kingdom he's trying to capture was the kingdom of God.
Kingdom of God's people.
Here's a kingdom of truth for you this morning.
The devil's kingdom unceasingly desires to take from you what God has given to you.
This is what you see here with Nebuchadnezzar.
Jerusalem, God gave to King David.
David captured it, God gave it to him, God planted Israel there, God put the temple there, God put the priesthood there, God calls it his holy mountain.
And they thrive in that land under David and Solomon.
Here they are all set up, all this is handed to Jehoacom.
In this whole time, here's Nebuchadnezzar just awaiting, and finally he gets the right moment, and he says I'm going to come and I'm going to take that for myself.
I'm going to take it for myself.
That is a picture of the devil's kingdom.
His unrighteous kingdom, he unceasingly desires to take from you what God has given to you.
God gave all that to his people.
And here comes Nebuchadnezzar to take it away.
The people who didn't accept God's warning will now lose God's blessing to an enemy nation.
If you do not accept God's warning you will ultimately lose God's blessing.
Be warned, great moral decline can swiftly follow great moral revival.
That's what we're learning here.
In Josiah's time, Josiah took the throne during a time of great moral decline.
Josiah reinstituted God's word, they had great moral revival.
In that quick we see that great moral decline can swiftly come in the midst of great moral revival.
Just a few years earlier when Josiah was reigning, Nebuchadnezzar could have never done this.
Just a few years earlier, the besiegment of Jerusalem could have never happened when Josiah was in charge because he feared the Lord his God.
The nation that fears God will never have to fear their enemy.
The nation that fears God will never have to fear their enemy.
But Judah had forsaken God.
Bible says Jehoiachim and them did not fear God and now they are being besieged by their enemy.
How quickly we forget and how quickly we can fall.
God, I pray that won't happen to our nation.
I pray for continued revival.
When we go home today and throughout the week we need to pray that God will continue revival in our hearts.
We will continue to seek God's word.
We will continue to speak God's word.
Stand for God's truth, stand up against this wicked ideology in our land and not be afraid to condemn it.
They made us afraid to speak out and that's where the church went wrong.
Don't be afraid to condemn it.
I remember you say, now don't get political in the pulpit.
Man if you're not going to tell people how the world should run in the church, where are they going to hear it from?
The world?
The pulpit is the place of truth.
And all of this right here that we're looking at, the third year of the reign of Jehoiachim who followed his brother, who followed his daddy and all that.
You know what all that is?
It's politics.
It's all politics.
You have to get political in the pulpit.
Why?
Because the kingdom of God is a kingdom.
Do you know what a kingdom is?
It's politics.
We're God's kingdom.
We're God's city.
And Christ is our king.
And we've got to learn how to let Christ rule in us while we're living in this wicked world.
I don't ever want to shut my mouth.
God help us to be louder and bolder.
To shine bright in this dark, dark world.
Judah forsaken their God and now they're besieged.
And may God help our nation to fear His word.
For it is better to fear God than to fear the enemy.
And Lord willing we'll take back up in the next verse, the next Lord's day.
Daniel 1 to 2.
Father we thank you so much for your precious word.
Thank you Father for the great instruction Father that you give us here.
Thank you Father for the incredible background and insight that that Lord gives us light to be able to navigate our current situation.
Lord help us to fear your judgments.
To embrace your word and to live and speak your truth with all our hearts.
May the revival be in us that it may continue in our land.
We ask it in Jesus wonderful name.
Amen.
