Sunday Morning, June 16, 2019 AM Part 1

Christ the Image of God and the Word Made Flesh

Let's pray together. Heavenly Father, I pray that you have indeed received these prayers that we've been praying through our singing. Lord, I pray that you would indeed show us Christ. This is what we need.

You've made us in your image to live by your word so as to accomplish your will. You've given us your Son, Jesus Christ, who is the image of the invisible God, the Word made flesh, the light of the world, the way, the truth, and the life.

And we need to see Christ. So I pray that as we look at this passage together in Jeremiah, Father, that you would show us Christ, that we would get a clear vision of Jesus Christ, that as we look at him in his word that we will look like him in this world.

To your glory, we pray these things. Amen. I invite you to open your Bibles to Jeremiah chapter 29. Jeremiah 29, and we'll be reading verses 15 through 32. Jeremiah chapter 29, and we'll be reading verses 15 through 32.

As you recall, Judah is divided. Some of them are living in exile in Babylon. Some of them are still living in the land of Judah, huddled around the city of Jerusalem. And so Jeremiah has sent a letter to the Jews in exile, and now he begins to hear some of the responses of the exiles about this letter.

And then he writes a letter back. We're going to find a little bit more about the state of these exiles living in Judah. Anytime the Word of God makes an impact with a people, with a family, with your own person, you learn more, don't you?

About who we are, what our family is all about, what our church is about, what our culture is about. Every time the Word of God makes impact, we learn who we really are. So I invite you to stand with me as I begin to read Jeremiah chapter 29, verses 15 through 32.

Jeremiah's Letter and the Judgment on False Prophets

These are the words of our King and Savior Christ. Because you have said, the Lord has raised up prophets for us in Babylon. For thus says the Lord concerning the king who sits on the throne of David, and concerning all the people who dwell in this city, your brothers who did not go with you into exile, thus says the Lord of hosts, behold I am ascending upon them the sword, famine, and pestilence, and I will make them like split-open figs that cannot be eaten due to rottenness.

I will pursue them with a sword, with famine, and with pestilence, and I will make them a terror to all the kingdoms of the earth, to be a curse, and a horror, and a hissing, and a reproach among all the nations where I have driven them.

Because they have not listened to my words, declares the Lord, which I sent to them again and again by my servants, the prophets, but you did not listen, declares the Lord. You therefore hear the word of the Lord, all you exiles whom I have sent away from Jerusalem to Babylon.

Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, concerning Ahab, the son of Kaliah, and concerning Zedekiah, the son of Maasaiah, who are prophesying to you falsely in my name. Behold, I will deliver them into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, and he will slay them before your eyes.

Because of them a curse will be used by all the exiles from Judah who were in Babylon, saying, may the Lord make you like Zedekiah, and like Ahab, whom the king of Babylon roasted in the fire. Because they have acted foolishly in Israel, and have committed adultery with their neighbors' wives, and have spoken words in my name falsely, which I did not command them.

I am he who knows, and am a witness, declares the Lord. To Shammaiah, the Nehilimite, you shall speak, saying, thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, because you have sent letters in your own name to all the people who were in Jerusalem, and to Zephaniah, the son of Maasaiah, the priest, and to all the priests, saying, the Lord has made you a priest instead of Jehoiada, the priest, to be overseer in the house of the Lord, and over every madman who prophesies, to put him in the stocks and in the iron collar.

Now then, why have you not rebuked Jeremiah of Anathoth, who prophesies to you? For he has sent to us in Babylon, saying, the exile will be long. Build houses, and live in them, and plant gardens, and eat their produce.

Zephaniah, the priest, read this letter to Jeremiah, the prophet. Then came the word of Lord Jeremiah, saying, send to all the exiles, saying, thus says the Lord concerning Shammaiah, the Nehilimite, because Shammaiah has prophesied to you, although I did not send him, and he has made you trust in a lie.

Therefore, thus says the Lord, behold, I'm about to punish Shammaiah, the Nehilimite, and his descendants, and he will not have anyone living among this people, and he will not see the good that I'm about to do to my people, declares the Lord, because he has preached rebellion against the Lord.

This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. The Oxford English Dictionary defines a blog thus, a regularly updated website or web page, typically one run by an individual or small group, that is written in an informal or conversational style.

I don't know how helpful that is, but I decided to include it just in case you do not know what a blog is. A blog is an open letter on a website. A blog is an open letter on a website, and what we have in our text are several public letters being traded back and forth, and they're not encouraging each other.

They're not being positive towards one another. They're at war with each other, and thus we have something of a blog war. I don't know if you've ever been caught up in a blog war. They can get pretty messy and devour all your time, even if you're not fighting on one side or the other.

If you have to read everything that they make reference to, then you spend a long time. One blog war broke out September 25th, 2017, when John Piper thought it would be important to stress that although we are justified by faith alone, final salvation, meaning getting into heaven, is obtained by both faith and good works.

And apparently he's been stating this from time to time in different parts of his published works, and you can go find them and read them for yourselves in context, though it takes a lot of time. And although it had been said before, this was near the 500th anniversary of the and so people were paying attention.

Several blogs fired back, and you know, what in the world are you thinking? What's going on? And so Desiring God's Twitter account helped matters out by stating, quote, you are not saved by faith alone, be killing your sin, period.

Well you can tell that that was really helpful and helped calm things down. At some point a homeschooling mom, having examined John Piper's published statements in accordance with scripture, and she found several concerning errors, she shared her thoughts in the growing blogus frenzy.

And yes, I just made up that word. She then became the target of many Piperites who ridiculed her uneducated approach. One particularly credentialed wag wrote a piece explaining how this mother had never read Witsius in the original Latin, like he had, had no PhD, like he had, and had not published two peer-reviewed journal articles on the subject, like he had.

And so she had no business trying to understand or critique Piper's statements about good works not just being necessary in salvation, but also for obtaining salvation, albeit in an unmeritorious way.

Which I think you have to be very educated indeed to know how that works. Others then fired off blogs in defense of homeschooling moms everywhere, detailing the doctrine of the priesthood of the believer, and for a time the air was thick with good old fashioned Protestantism, where we hash things out in a theological hockey game rather than kiss the Pope's big right toe.

Why is that a good thing? Why is the good thing? Why is that a good thing? No name, no tradition, no denomination in evangelicalism or Protestantism is too big, too famous, too beloved to be called to account to the Holy Scripture.

The Jews in exile, the Jews in exile are commanded by God, verses 8 and 9 of chapter 29, we looked at this last week, they are commanded not only to refuse to listen to the false prophets but also to refute the false prophets no matter who they were.

And so Jeremiah is following through on that, although he can't be with them in exile, he's doing what he can in love of his countrymen, in love of his relatives and friends. And so he sends a letter and we've read that letter together in the first part of chapter 29.

He sends this letter by the hand of two friends and they make this a public letter. Everybody should be listening in to this, it's an open letter to be published for everybody in exile to read and to deal with.

And then the responses start coming and then he has to give his response and so on and so we have a blog war that that breaks out. And yet it advances the truth and so it glorifies Christ as God gets in the last word and this is the theme for our passage, our sermon this week and next, God always gets the last word.

Some blog wars never stop, you know, some people get exhausted and the die-harders just keep on going and just keep on going. But in this particular situation and in all other blog wars, God always gets in the last word.

His word is always the last word and so we must make sure that our words are in agreement with his. So blog wars, like physical wars, have a background to them. If you were going to study the war between the states you would spend some time reading the historical socio-political background to the wars to better understand the nature of the conflict.

Anytime you would read a book about the Civil War you would read several chapters before you ever got to the outbreak of the war to understand what's going on. And in like manner we need to understand what's going on behind the hostile exchange of letters in Jeremiah 29.

What's happening behind it? And verse 15 lets us know what's cooking. Verse 15 is one of those examples of the beginning of a conversation sounding like the middle of a conversation. But verse 15 is something new.

The previous letter runs verses 4 through 14. For reference you can go back and read that for yourself. But the previous letter sent by Jeremiah by the hand of Elisha and Gemariah to the exiles, that letter actually runs verses 4 through 14.

And then now something new is happening. It's not apparent right at the first, but this is part of the response of the exiles to Jeremiah's letter. Essentially he has posted his blog and comments are beginning to be posted.

Disagreeable comments. Verse 15 says, Because you have said, the Lord has raised up prophets for us in Babylon. This is one of the comments that came back. Jeremiah has sent the letter by the hand of Elisha the son of Shaphan and Gemariah the son of Hilkiah.

You can see that in verse 3. And so they come back from that and saying, hey you know we read your letter, we proclaimed the truth of the letter you sent, we spread it around. And this is one of the things that they said to us.

And they said this, the Lord has raised up prophets for us in Babylon. What are they saying? What are they saying? This is the kind of like your former friends who you found out were going to the movies and you asked what time to meet them there and they said something like, oh sorry our car is full.

They're saying to Jeremiah, look we've already got our own prophets here. Why are you sending letters all the way out here to us in exile? The Lord has already raised up prophets for us out here. We don't need your interference.

Stay in your lane. Leave us alone. But part of his letter after all, verse 8 and 9, was being ignored because he told them in the letter God sent word to them about not trusting the false prophets who were in their midst.

So it looks like they're repeating some of these old patterns that got them into exile in the first place. The statement they make, their attitude, the false prophets in their midst being accepted and supported, all of these point to the fact that the old patterns have been successfully transplanted from the toxic context of Jerusalem to the pagan culture of Babylon.

And so Jeremiah responds, this is verse 16, for thus says the Lord concerning the king who sits on the throne of David and concerning all the people who dwell in this city, your brothers who did not go with you into exile, thus says the Lord of hosts, behold I am sending upon them the sword, the famine, and pestilence, and I will make them like split-open figs that cannot be eaten due to rottenness.

I will pursue them with the sword, with famine, and with pestilence. I will make them a terror to all the kingdoms of the earth to be a curse and a horror and a hissing and a reproach among all the nations where I have driven them.

This is kind of an odd response to the exiles. All they did was say, we've got prophets over here. Why is he talking about the sentence of judgment that is about to be unleashed on those who remained in Jerusalem?

What's the connection? One possible connection is that the false prophets that Jeremiah has been dealing with have consistently denied that that kind of judgment was going to occur. They continually say that it's not going to be that bad or it's not going to happen at all, or in the case of Hananiah at the end of chapter 28 saying that the exile was only going to be two years long.

The false prophets are continually dealing with the truth of God and trying to make it less severe, more palatable. And so Jeremiah reminds them of the truth. This is going to help them understand whether or not these so-called prophets that supposedly the Lord raised up for them in exile, are they actually the prophets of God?

Are they actually speaking according to the revealed word that we already have? Are they in agreement with God or are they saying something different? But that's not the only reason why he brings all these things up.

Notice he says, verse 19, the reason why this terrible judgment is falling upon Jerusalem. Because they have not listened to my words, declares the Lord, which I have sent to them again and again by my servants the prophets.

So he says, okay, the word of the Lord has come to you, exiles. Your response is, oh we've already got people to listen to. And then Jeremiah says, listen up, the reason why Jerusalem is about to be destroyed is because they would not listen to the Word of God.

And now here you are, also not wanting to listen to the Word of God. And he actually says that. Verse 19 continues, but you did not listen, declares the Lord. So Jeremiah moves from saying, they have not listened to my words, and then he says to the exiles, and you have not listened to my words.

And they are currently in the middle of the consequences. Verse 20, you therefore hear the word of the Lord, all you exiles, whom I have sent away from Jerusalem to Babylon. And so Jeremiah says to them, okay, so I've sent you the word, I've sent you the letter, which basically says, build houses, live in them, plant gardens, harvest them, get married, have children, make sure they get married and have children.

Your responsibility is to not decrease but increase in hopes of God bringing about the good promises of restoring you to your land. Good things ahead of you, so do what you're supposed to. That letter that Jeremiah sends to them, they're not willing to hear because it's so negative.

In what way? In that the 70 years for Babylon have to be completed before they can go back. They don't like the long wait aspect of that letter. So they're not wanting to listen. Jeremiah says, you better listen.

The reason why you're in exile is that you didn't listen. The reason why Jerusalem is going to be destroyed is because they didn't listen. So you need to listen to the Word of God. You see, they're going through the school of hard knocks but they're not learning their lessons.

They're not learning their lessons. They're gonna flunk the school of hard knocks. And he doesn't want them to flunk. And so he says, pay attention. Don't you understand that God always gets the last word?

Pay attention to his Word. Don't reject it out of hand. When God says these types of things, when he says, I sent them again and again, I sent my servants the prophets, I sent them to you again and again, but you would not listen.

Reminds me of the parable that Jesus told in Matthew 21. He tells a story about a vineyard owner. And using language from Isaiah 5, which describes Israel as a vineyard that God put his heart and soul into building and making beautiful and getting everything right, Jesus talks about the story of a vineyard owner who builds a vineyard.

And he went on a long journey. And as he was gone, he left several tenants in charge of the vineyard. They were to cultivate the vines. They were to make sure to harvest the fruit. And when they received their harvest in abundance, they were to set those earnings aside for the owner who was coming back.

He owned the vines. He owned the vineyard. He let them work there. They would get their blessings and livelihood from being there. But they were to set aside the profits for the vineyard owner when he came a-calling.

And so the vineyard owner would send from time to time servants to his vineyard. And they would show up and they would say, it's time to pay the rent, essentially. It's time to to pay what you owe. It's time to show your loyalty to the vineyard owner.

And they would treat these servants in various ways. Sometimes they would mock them. Sometimes they would just ignore them. Sometimes they would actually try to harm them. They even killed more than one, refusing to pay the vineyard owner what he was owed.

Until finally, one day, the vineyard owner says, I will send them my son. If they're not going to respect my other servants as my representatives, surely they can't deny the connection between my son and me.

So I will send them my son. They will respect my son and they will show their allegiance to me and pay what is owed when my son arrives. When the son comes, the tenants of that vineyard conspire together and say, look, here's the heir.

He's the one who's going to inherit all this property. If we kill him, then the owner from a long distance won't be able to do anything about it. There's no legal heir and we will become the legal owners of this property.

And so they kill the son and cast his body outside the vineyard. And then Jesus looked to the crowd and said, what will the owner of that vineyard do? And the people gave him the answer. The crowd says to Jesus, he will bring those wretches to a wretched end and will rent out the vineyard to other vine growers who will pay him the proceeds at the proper seasons.

And Jesus then begins to identify the tenants of the vineyard as the scribes and the Pharisees, the chief priests, the scribes. The people who were basically running Jerusalem at that time. The people who were the safeguarders of the Word of God.

And he identifies himself as the son of the owner, prophesying that indeed he would be killed outside the walls. And indeed, the destruction did come in AD 70. The crime of the murder of the Son of God, a horrendous judgment fell upon Jerusalem.

Now, in this story, Jesus makes a note of the fact that the God, or the vineyard owner, sent his servants again and again. He kept on sending them. And in some sense, we might begin to disagree, being, you know, good Americans and advocates of pragmatism.

And, you know, that didn't work very well. Shouldn't you, after the second or third servant you send out and they reject it, shouldn't you stop? I mean, obviously that's not working. Stop. But we see the long-suffering and the patience of God.

How many prophets did he send to Israel and Judah? How many prophets did he send? How often did he sustain them through decades of prophetic ministry, of preaching and preaching and preaching to a people who continually rejected them, often beat them, mocked them, and killed them?

Jeremiah included. God has called Jeremiah to this thankless task of being his servant to go to his vineyard and say, pay what you owe, be obedient, honor God who has made you. Jeremiah is in the midst of doing that right now.

He's in the midst of being repulsed by the very people of God. Why would God send them to do that? Well, God was not sending the prophets to do something he wouldn't ask his own son to do. And he did send his own son.

He did send his own son. The Father, in his delight for his son, something we need to think about on Father's Day, sent his son to preach the word. And in this, to give the final word. God always gets the last word, even if they kill the son, God gets the last word in judgment, and it's not even in judgment because God gets the last word in the resurrection of Christ and the ascension of Christ and the reign of Christ and the return of Christ.

He always gets the last word. You know, I think that all of us have probably had enough of proving the veracity of God's Word by our folly and our sin. You know, the messes we make in our lives through sin, like the Jews in exile, the Jews back in Jerusalem, here's God's Word, it's plain as day, it's proclaimed loudly and clearly, it's as basic as, it's so basic it's like Lady Wisdom standing at the crossroads and calling out to all the passers-by and yet there is continual disobedience to the Word of God and so we mess up our lives through sin and patterns of pride and lust and selfishness.

And over and over again, when the mess is made, God's Word is proven true. You know, the mess we make of our lives through sin just proves God's Word is so true. But that's not the only way we can prove the truth of God's Word.

And we need to grow very weary of doing that and very wary of doing that. We can also prove the veracity of God's Word by our allegiance, by our appetite, by our appraisal. Psalm 34 verses 1 through 8 says, I will bless the Lord at all times.

His praise shall continually be in my mouth. My soul will make its boast in the Lord. The humble will hear it and rejoice. O magnify the Lord with me and let us exalt his name together. I sought the Lord and he answered me and delivered me from all my fears.

They looked to him and were radiant and their faces will never be ashamed. This poor man cried and the Lord heard him and saved him out of all his troubles. The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him and rescues them.

O taste and see that the Lord is good. How blessed is the man who takes refuge in him. You don't necessarily have to go through the school of hard knocks to be faithful followers, do we? I would much prefer the school of praise, the school of faith, and the school of obedience to the school of hard knocks like Israel is going through in this context.

I'm conscious that it's Father's Day and I also am conscious of the fact that in my previous readings, several readings of Jeremiah 29 verses 1 through 14, that I would often speed through the linguistic aerobics necessary for verse 3.

When we read that the letter was sent by the hand of Elisha, the son of Shephon and Gemariah, the son of Hilkiah, whom Zedekiah, the king of Judah, sent to Babylon, to Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon.

And sometimes you just don't know what you do with the verse of Scripture, though you know it's profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness. But being Father's Day, I began to look through chapter 29 and there were several names that of course are often, as in the Scriptures, we often read the son of so-and-so.

And I wondered if there was anything to that. So I want to highlight a few of the father-son dynamics in the text which serve as part of the background to the blog war that we'll look at more next week.

But I want you to look at the sons of Maasaiah, the sons of Shephon, and the sons of Hilkiah. Because those are the three groups of sons that we read about in Jeremiah 29. Now who were Maasaiah, Shephon, and Hilkiah?

Who were they? They were all servants of King Josiah and they all worked together in the restoration and the repair of the temple. Josiah was a good king. His heart was inclined to the Lord. He wanted to undo the decades of idolatry and pagan rot that had afflicted his nation.

And so from a very young age he began to call for national repentance, national reform. And part of what they did was to repair the temple. The temple was in horrible shape. And so they began to repair the temple.

Three men that he put in task in charge of this task. Hilkiah, who was a priest. Shephon, who was a scribe. And Maasaiah, who was a city official. And they all worked together primarily when it came to the finances.

They helped collect the money that was brought in and they were distributing it to the different laborers and for the supplies to repair the temple. So these three men, Maasaiah, Shephon, and Hilkiah, all worked together to repair the temple under the reign of King Josiah.

And now their sons are the go-to guys. Now their sons are the leaders in Judah. Now their sons are faced with another kind of repentance and repair project. And only this one's going to last a long time.

Because there are 70 years that have to be accomplished for Babylon before the people can be brought back to Jerusalem to do the repair that is necessary. So it's not even going to really rest with the sons of these three men.

It's going to rest with the grandsons and the great grandsons of these men. But in our text, in Jeremiah 29, involved in the blog war are the sons of Maasaiah, Shephon, and Hilkiah. Let's think about who these men are.

There are two sons of Maasaiah spoken of in our passage, Zedekiah and Zephaniah. These are not the king and the prophet that we know most about. Zedekiah was, there was a Zedekiah who was king in Jerusalem, a puppet king, Uncle Zed.

But it's not this guy. And there was a prophet during the reign of Josiah named Zephaniah, but it's not this guy. These two guys are brothers and they're sons of Maasaiah. So Zedekiah, who was he? Zedekiah, the son of Maasaiah, had been taken into exile.

He was in exile. He was out there in Babylon. He was one of those who heard what Jeremiah wrote originally. And Zedekiah was a bad egg. You can read about that in verses 21 through 23, Jeremiah 29. He was a bad egg whose teachings and character were so cracked, no one, no one could put him back together again.

And God said, he's going to be cooked in Nebuchadnezzar's wood-fired brick oven. And it's probably the very same one that he tried to use to fry Daniel's friends. Zedekiah was going to be killed by King Nebuchadnezzar as a false prophet.

This was the judgment of God upon Zedekiah, the son of Maasaiah. His brother, Zephaniah, had been left back in Jerusalem. Zedekiah is in exile. Zephaniah is back in Jerusalem. He was a priest. He was actually second in command over the temple.

And we find him consulting with Jeremiah from time to time in Jeremiah 21 and 29 and 37. And he seemed either neutral or positive to Jeremiah based on how desperate the situation was. But after Jerusalem fell, Zephaniah was taken to Riblah, a Gentile city far north of Damascus, on the way to Babylon.

And there Nebuchadnezzar struck him down and he died. And that was the end of Zedekiah and Zephaniah. Now there may be nothing to it at all, but Maasaiah recorded activities with Josiah's reforms had nothing to do with the discovering, reading, searching, and applying of the Word of God.

It was all restricted to physical and logistical matters. And his sons offer two sad tales, one a false prophet, the other a passive priest. There may be no connection of it at all, but we can say this.

Although a parent cannot determine the ultimate path of a child, we certainly know what path God has deemed best. The image of God must have the Word of God to live in the will of God. Your children are made in the image of God.

So what do they need? More than the necessary food, rather than just bread alone. Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word proceeds from the mouth of God. So we need the Scriptures. May our children know us to be wise, industrious, and servants of the kingdom.

Yes, yes. But may they also know us to be students of Scripture, willing to learn, teach, and apply the Word of God. Fathers and grandfathers and great-grandfathers, talk to your children, your grandchildren, your great-grandchildren, how the Scriptures inform your choices, your ethics, your schedule.

Take opportunities to show how the Word of God teaches you, how it rebukes you, how it corrects you, how it trains you. Show them that. They need that. Now the sons of Shiphon. There is one son of Shiphon in Jeremiah 29, but the other sons also factor importantly in the story of Jeremiah.

So Jeremiah sends this message, build houses, plant gardens, have families, pray for Babylon, refute false prophets, good things are coming. That's his letter. That was delivered by two men. Elisha, the son of Shiphon, was one of them.

Whenever you're reading through Jeremiah, Shiphon and second Kings, Shiphon's sons seem to show up when the Word of God is on the line. Just always there in the mix. When it's critically important that God's Word be heard and followed, Shiphon's sons show up.

Shiphon's son Hyakum saved Jeremiah from being martyred for preaching God's Word. Jeremiah 26 -24. Shiphon's son Gemariah, we see in our Elisha, helped deliver Jeremiah's written message to the exiles, and then Shiphon's son Gemariah helped deliver his written message to Jehoiakim.

Jehoiakim was a couple of kings back. There was this moment where Jeremiah had been kicked out of the king's presence in the temple. He was kind of cut off. This is what happens when people speak truth.

The people who are in charge start censoring. And so, okay, Jeremiah, you're not saying things that are culturally sensitive and what we want to hear, so you're no longer allowed to preach in the temple courts.

You're no longer allowed to come visit the king, and so we're gonna make sure that your voice isn't heard because your discourse is unhelpful. We have a safe space in the higher-ups of Jerusalem. And so, Jeremiah begins to send his message by his servant Baruch, and Baruch gets there, and even Baruch's not allowed because he's too attached to Jeremiah.

So Baruch has to hand off the scroll to other men who will bring it to the king, and one of those men was Gemariah, son of Shiphon. He brings it to the king Jehoiakim, and they begin reading the scroll to him.

Here's the word of the Lord, and Jehoiakim starts using a knife, he just starts cutting off bits of the roll, throw it in the fire. Cuts off bits of the roll, throw it in the fire. And nobody's protesting except three men, and one of those was Gemariah.

Now, I don't know how much you know about, you know, royal courts and stuff like that, but if you ever say, King, don't do that! What are you doing? Are you insane? When you start protesting against the king, you are literally sticking your neck out to be chopped off.

He was willing to risk his life, though. He wasn't successful in keeping the king from being a rebel against God, but he was willing to stand up and speak when the Word of God was on the line. So these are the sons of Shiphon, these are the things that they do.

Also, Shiphon's grandson, Gedaliah, son of Jehoiakim, he actually protected Jeremiah during the latter days of the siege, and he became the governor of Judah after Jerusalem's destruction. And you know what he did?

He said, God tells us to stay here and not flee to Egypt, so we're staying here and we're not fleeing to Egypt. He was a good governor, he governed according to the Word of God, and he was killed for it.

So it was that Shiphon the scribe who read the law of God to Josiah the king had sons and a grandson who loved the Word of God and, despite fierce persecution, followed the Word of God. We may look down upon the contributions of Shiphon's sons, they do not seem to amount to much.

Although they were defenders of God's prophet and they were the delivery boys of God's Word, their culture still committed suicide, their society still collapsed. But yet, here it is in the scripture, their faithfulness is not forgotten.

Their faithfulness is not forgotten. And so the Holy Spirit makes note that in a world of melting jello, there were the sons of Shiphon, men of backbone, men of courage. And what makes the difference is knowing and loving the scriptures.

As a father, that's what I want for my children. I don't know my father wants that for my brother and I. So let's teach our children that championing the Word of God is a win every time, no matter the immediate results.

Hilkiah's Zeal and the Need for Scripture in Every Generation

And then the sons of Hilkiah. The sons of Hilkiah. It's helpful to remember that Hilkiah and Maasaiah and Shiphon all worked together. Hilkiah was the priest who found the scroll, the law of God, who gave it to Shiphon.

Hilkiah was very zealous in his service to Josiah. He helped repair the temple, he cast out every last vessel of Baal and Asherah from the temple, he burned them, he evacuated their ashes from the land of Judah.

Hilkiah also helped restart the Passover celebration. He was a very zealous repenter, a very zealous reformer, and his sons show up in our context. And so it is that Elisha, son of Shiphon, and Gemariah, the son of Hilkiah, son of Hilkiah, brings Jeremiah's message to the exiles.

Here's a son of Hilkiah, bringing the Word of God to the people of God. That's a grandson of Hilkiah as well. At the end, Saraiah was the chief priest, and he was the grandson of Hilkiah. We don't know much about Saraiah, only that he was the top religious figure in Jerusalem when it was destroyed for its apostasy, and he was cut down by Nebuchadnezzar as well.

That's all we know about him. So a zealous grandfather serving the Lord, laboring for national repentance, is no guarantee of an Orthodox grandson, though we wish it would be. We are reminded of each new generation needing to take up the command to honor father and mother, that their days may be long on the earth.

We must inherit the lesson of vigilance from our forefathers if we would bequest the landscape of victory to our descendants. So that's the background for this week. This is the background. Blog war next week.