God's Man for a Time of Crisis, Pt. 2

Daniel 1:1-2

Tonight again we come to the book of Daniel and I am anxious to finish our introduction tonight so that we can look forward to getting into the book.  "In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim king of Judah came Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon unto Jerusalem and besieged it.  And the Lord gave Jehoiakim king of Judah into his hand with part of the vessels of the house of God: which he carried into the land of Shinar to the house of his god; and he brought the vessels into the treasure house of his god."

Man faces the inevitable courses of sin throughout his history and that is the constant cycle of decaying societies.  We are all aware of it.  It's been going on since the Fall.  The cycle of corruption buries nation after nation while new ones rise from the rubble and become the rubble for the next cycle.  Historians like Arnold Toynbee and Eban Caldune{??}, Italian Veco{???} have given us plenty of information on the cycles of history, the rise and the fall of nation after nation after nation after nation.  It's an inevitability in human society.  And I really believe in many ways we are seeing in our own nation the decay and the corruption that leads to destruction.  You would have to say in looking at the history of America that we've reached the peak and we're on the way down to the inevitable rubble that happens to every society that follows the decadent cycle.  About three weeks ago in the September 10 edition of Time magazine there was an editorial on decadence in America written by Lance Morrow.  I want to draw some thoughts from that editorial because it speaks so pointedly to the issue.

Listen to what he says as he begins to write.  "It was partly the spectacle of western decadence that aroused the Ayatollah Khomeini to orgies of Koranic prescription.  Alcohol, music, dancing, mixed bathing all have been curtailed by the Iranian revolution.  If Iran has driven out its monarch and given itself over to a purification that demands even the interment of its beer bottles, then by what logic, what punishment and what purification would be sufficient for America?  The Ayatollah residing in some American consciences would surely have to plow under not just the beer bottles but an uncomfortably large part of U.S. society itself.  Americans face what moral calls a physical violence and spiritual heedlessness that makes them wonder if the entire society is on a steep and terminal incline downward."

Now he defines decadence from the Latin decadere, to fall down or away hence to decay.  He sees this decadence has having something to do with death.  In fact, he calls it a terminal decadence.  He suggests that decadence is a collection of symptoms that might suggest a society exhausted and collapsing like a star as it degenerates toward the white dwarf stage.

Now to be decadent is not just to be corrupt in Morrow's definition and the definition of history.  To be decadent is to be terminally corrupt.  And if America is decadent then there is a terminal element in this decadence.  In other words, it zeroes in on death.  Our country has some terrible symptoms of decadence.  There's no question about it.  Our music, our entertainment, our pleasure madness, our incredible materialism, our self-indulgence, our wild economics all speak of a decadent society. 

In the article, Morrow suggest that there are some signs that we might see as indications of our decadence.  For example, the Aspen, Colorado fan club that grew up two summers ago to celebrate murderer Ted Bundy with among other things T-shirts that read, "Ted Bundy is a one-night stand."  Or the work of photographer Helmet Newton who likes to sell high-fashion clothes with lurid pictures of women posed as killers and victims or trussed up in sadomastic...sadomasochistic paraphernalia.  One of his shots shows a woman's head being forced into a toilet bowl. 

He talks further about other things such as the Viennese artist Rudolph Scwartz Kogler {???} who decided to make a modernistic artistic statement by amputating inch-by-inch his own reproductive capacity while a photographer recorded the process and made it as a work of art.  The list would have to mention Keith Richards, a member of the Rolling Stones, who by one account in order to pass a blood test to enter the United States for a concert had a physician drain his entire supply of heroin-tainted blood and replace it with transfusions from more sedate citizens.  Some of the sadomasochistic and homosexual bars in New York and San Francisco would indicate to us an amazing amount of decadence. 

In a less specialized realm, disco and punk songs like "Bad Girls" and "I want to be sedated" have a decadent ring.  In fact, the entire phenomenon of disco, says Morrow, has a certain loathsome glisten to it.   Some might list Tiffany's $2,950 gold ingot wrist watch or a pair of one thousand dollar kidskin and gold shoes or a nineteen hundred dog collar which you could by at Herrods in London, or Zsa Zsa Gabor's 150 thousand dollar Rolls Royce with its leather-velvet leopard interior and so it goes.  Society, says Morrow, fattens its children on junk food and then permits them to be enlisted in pornographic films.  The nation is sub-divided into a dozen drug cultures, the alcohol culture, the cocaine culture, the heroin culture, the Valium culture, amphetamine culture and combinations thereof, legal abortions and the pervasive custom of contraception suggest a society so chary of its future that it has lost its will to perpetuate itself.  And so says British Christian author Malcolm Muggerage{?}, "What will make historians laugh at us is how we express our decadence in terms of freedom and humanism.  Western society...he says...suffers from a largely unconscious collective death wish."

Now in all of this, what he is saying is that we are decadent and our decadence has built into it a death wish.  It's a terminal disease.  Nations normally don't recover from this.  In fact, the cycles of history are starkly repetitive.  And I was fascinated in reading Morrow's article to note that while he was discussing the cycles of corrupting nations he only had one nation as an illustration of breaking the cycle, only one nation that really rose from its own ashes and strangely enough he said it was the nation of Israel...Israel.  God's people, Israel, came to decadence, to destruction and to death.  And yet because of the covenant of their God, they rose from their own ashes to live again even in this very day.

How did Israel break the cycle?  How did Israel overcome the corruption?  How did they get the way they were even becoming so decadent when all the while they had the trust of the scriptures, the Word of God?  What is the story of Israel?  How did it collapse?   And how was it restored?

Well, frankly, that story is part and parcel of the life of Daniel.  Daniel became God's instrument in the time of Israel's destruction.  And Daniel became, in a very real sense, one of the tools of Israel's rise again.  As we look at the book of Daniel then tonight I want us to see it in terms of the decadence of a dying people, most particularly the southern kingdom of Judah.

Judah had been destroyed by Daniel's time, not so much by outward enemies, although they finally did the mop-up operation.  But mostly because of internal corruption.  Judah became affluent and materialistic.  Judah worshiped false gods.  Judah had a religion that was external and not internal.  Judah had a nation of liars who knew not nor told the truth.  Judah felt everybody around them owed them something.  Judah began to trust in illicit alliances and increased technology.   There was a general apostasy among their political and religious leaders.  They pulled the mask over their eyes and said there was peace when there wasn't any peace, tried to kid themselves into thinking everything was fine when it really wasn't.  And God swept in in a terrible judgment and the nation was taken captive by the Babylonians.  And that was the time for Daniel, God's man for a crisis.

Now as you look at the first two verses we're going to look at five points.  We've covered two, we'll cover three more tonight...the places, the period, the person, the punishment and the purpose.  These five inter-lap...intertwine and overlap and so we'll kind of interchange our thoughts as we go.  And I want you to note the tragic decadence in the nation of Judah that led to their captivity and how Daniel fit into that picture and you'll see it as you go.

Now notice in verse 1 that there are two places mentioned as we saw last time.  There's the king of Judah and the king of Babylon.  Judah and Babylon really provide the scenario as we begin the book of Daniel.  We discussed each.  Judah was God's place and Babylon was the Devil's place.  We would think they had very little in common.  Judah was the place where Jerusalem was, the city of God.  Babylon was the place of the city of Babylon, the Tower of Babel where all false religion really began.  And so you have true religion pitted against false religion, God against Satan.  What do these two things have in common?  Well God raises up Babylon to be the chastening agency for His people in Israel.

We saw also the period last time.  Look at verse 1, "In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim."  And we discussed that in some great detail so we won't go into that again.  In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim king of Judah.  Now this particular year was the year 605, the first group of people from Judah were taken to captivity in Babylon.  And among that first group was a man named Daniel.  So it was in this very year, the third year of Jehoiakim, he had one year called the accession year in Babylonian terms, and three years.  He had actually been on the throne for four years and at 605 he takes the first group of captives from Judah to Babylon.

Now we mentioned that Jehoiakim was an evil king.  Jehoiakim led Israel down a path of disaster.  During his reign then the first group were taken captive and the punishment of Judah really began.  Now you remember this, in backing up, once the kingdom was united under Saul, under David, and under Solomon, but Solomon lost control of everything at the end of his life and as a result after Solomon the kingdom split.  Ten tribes went to the north and two to the south.  And you had the Northern Kingdom known as Israel with its capital city of Samaria and you had the Southern Kingdom known as Judah with its capital city Jerusalem.  And they were not only split, they were warlike toward each other.  Israel seemed to decay faster.  In fact, in all the history of the Northern Kingdom there was never so much as one good king.  So their slide was fast and by the year 722 Samaria was crushed by the Assyrians and the Northern Kingdom was swept into captivity.  And the Southern Kingdom alone remained.  And the first blow came in 605 and the second blow came in 597 and by 586 B.C. the third and final crushing blow described in 2 Kings 25 took place.  Jerusalem was destroyed.  Tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of Jews were swept away into captivity and the country was turned into a province of Babylonia. 

Now before the final fall in 586, nineteen years before in 605 Daniel was taken captive.  And in that first captivity in the reign of Jehoiakim apparently the Babylonians wanted to pick the cream of the crop, some young men they could use in their government training program.  They wanted to pick the very best men to develop them, to train them for usefulness in their country.  And so by the time the majority of people arrive in the captivity of 586, Daniel's already been there nineteen years.  He's already been well-trained and he's already risen to a place of prominence among the Babylonians so the Jews have their man in the palace and he becomes a key man in what God wants to do with Israel, the people of Judah, in their captivity and in the future.  And so, last time we covered that, the places and the period.  And that was just a review.

Let's look thirdly at the punishment...the punishment.  The captivity, of course, is a punishment.  God is a God of great grace, but ultimately His grace runs its course and when men take a very firm stand in their...in their position against God, He acts in judgment and chastening and punishment.  And so that's what we see here.  Judah had forsaken God's law.  In fact, it had gone so far that God realized there wouldn't be any turning back.  They were resolutely determined to disobey God.  They turned their back on God.  And so Isaiah 24:1 says, "Behold, the Lord makes the earth empty and makes it waste and turns it upside down and scatters abroad the inhabitants thereof and it shall be as with the people so with the priests, as with the servants so with his master, as with the maid so with her mistress, as with the buyer so with the seller, as with the lender so with the borrower, as with the taker of interest so with the giver of interest to him."

In other words, God's going to come in judgment and nobody's social strata is going to be able to affect that.  In other words, nobody is going to escape.  "The land shall be utterly emptied and utterly spoiled for the Lord has spoken this word.  The earth mourns and fades away.  The world languishes and fades away.  The haughty people of the earth do languish.  The earth is defiled unto the inhabitants thereof because they have transgressed the laws, changed the ordinance, broken the everlasting covenant therefore hath the curse devoured the earth and they that dwell therein are desolate.  Therefore the inhabitants of the earth are burned and few men left."

What you have there is a mini-apocalypse.  You have a taste of the Tribulation in the Babylonian captivity.  And God says to the prophet Isaiah that He's going to come and He's going to make that place an empty place, a languishing place because they have disobeyed God's law, they have broken the covenant and the commandments.  They had, of course, ignored the Sabbath.  They ignored the Sabbath day and they ignored the Sabbath year.  And it always interests me that the Babylonian captivity was seventy-years long and one of the reasons I believe it was a seventy was because that's the number of the Sabbath and I think God was in judgment recovering the Sabbaths that they never gave Him.  They had engaged in gross idolatry.  Even though they had been repeatedly warned of its consequences, they had turned their backs on God and they worshiped idols.  It says in Jeremiah 7:24, "They hearkened not, nor inclined their ear, but walked in the counsels and the imagination of their evil heart.  They went backward and not forward."  They retreated to idolatry.  "They hearkened not unto Me, nor inclined their ear, but hardened their neck and did worse than their fathers."

And what would be the result?  "At the same time, saith the Lord in Jeremiah 8, they shall bring out the bones of the kings of Judah and the bones of his princes and the bones of the priests and the bones of the prophets and the bones of the inhabitants of Jerusalem out of their graves and shall spread them before the sun and the moon and the host of heaven whom they have loved, whom they have served and after whom they have walked and whom they have sought and whom they have worshiped, but shall not be gathered nor be buried.  They shall be for refuse upon the face of the earth and death shall be chosen rather than life by all the residue of them that remain of this evil family who remain in all the places to which I have driven them, saith the Lord of hosts."  They have gone into all kinds of pagan idolatry and God says I'm going to put them away in a severe judgment.

Now listen, God says there's going to be judgment on Judah.  He waited over a hundred years after He judged Israel in the north, but Judah had progressed a little more slowly in the cycle of terminal decadence.  But they were there by 586 and that was the end.  But may I hasten to add this less you misunderstand God and His nature.  Before judgment ever falls God always warns.  God always warns.  That's always the way it is.  There will never be, mark this, there will never be in this world a divine judgment that is unexpected or unannounced.  God always warns.

In the book of Jonah chapter 3 and verse 5.  "So the people of Nineveh believed God, proclaimed a fast, put on sackcloth from the greatest of them to the least of them, for word came unto the king of Nineveh and he arose from his throne and he laid his robe from him and covered himself with sackcloth and sat in ashes.  And he caused it to be proclaimed and published through Nineveh by the decree of the king and his noble saying, 'Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock taste anything.  Let them not feed nor drink water but let man and beast be covered with sackcloth and cry mightily to God.  He let them turn everyone from his evil way and from the violence that is in their hands and who can tell if God will turn and repent and turn away from His fierce anger that we perish not?  And God saw their works that they turned from their evil way and God repented of the evil that He said He would do unto them and He did it not."

God said I'm going to punish Nineveh.  Before I do I'm going to send a prophet.  Now He had a hard time getting the prophet to go there.  He took a short trip on a long fish but eventually he got turned around in the right direction.  And when he finally got to Nineveh and he preached the warning, the whole city repented.  God always gives time for repentance.  To His own people in Chronicles He says, "If My people which are called by My name shall humble themselves and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, I'll hear them and I'll heal them."  God has always been eager to respond.  Ezekiel says two times that God has no pleasure in the death of the wicked ones. 

But Israel in the north would never repent and Judah in the south would never repent even though the warnings were abundant.  Now let me just give you an idea.  If you were living in Judah at that time in a decadent, descending, corrupting society moving fast toward death these are the warnings you would have seen.  Number one, the disaster of the Northern Kingdom.  The people in the south were able to see what happened in the north.  They could see it.  It should have stood as a tremendous warning to them.  They had engaged, for example, in...in the north in gross idolatry under Jeroboam I.  They had, get this, actually erected the worship of golden calves, a reversion back to the time of the wilderness wandering.  They had set up golden calves at two ends of the north at Bethel and Dan.  And Bethel means "the house of God."  And so at the either ends of the Northern Kingdom they set up the worship of golden calves.  And it became a national disgrace and they wouldn't listen to their prophets.  They had two wonderful prophets in the north, one by the name of Amos and one by the name of Hosea and they wouldn't listen.  And so God stopped speaking and God raised up the merciless Assyrians and in Isaiah 10:5 God says the Assyrians are the rod of My anger and the staff of My indignation.  In other words, He used the Assyrians as His weapon to punish Israel.

How did it happen?  Well there they were living in the Northern Kingdom.  At that time in history around 750 B.C. the Assyrians ruled that part of the world and Babylonia was just a little state in Assyria.  And the Assyrians were a ruthless, merciless, wild bunch of people, killers and they ruled and their capital city was Nineveh.  They had a ruler by the name of Tiglath-Pileser, you can spell his name Pul, that's another rendering, Pul.  He moved in, according to 2 Kings 15, he moved in and this was the first wave of Assyrian intervention.  He moved in to Israel and put them under heavy taxation.  It was really intimidation.  He said, "You pay me taxes or I'll declare war on you."  Discretion being the better part of valor they decided to pay the taxes.  But that put them under Assyrian domination. 

Following Pul, or Tiglath-Pileser, came another name you might remember Shalmaneser IV, sounds like a lizard but it's not.  Shalmaneser IV, now he moved in more directly, not just taxation but he attacked the capital of Israel which was the city of Samaria.  And he began the attack and the attack was finalized by the man who followed him and his name was Sargon II, S-a-r-g-o-n, a very famous name in Middle Eastern history.  Sargon II who lived from 722 to 705 literally crushed Samaria out of existence and he carried the whole mass of people away.  This is the ten tribes.  People have wondered, they said, "Does that mean...?" and you always hear the phrase, "The ten lost tribes"?  Does that mean we'll never be able to find the people of those tribes again?  Well we never know where they went, there is no historical information as to where those ten tribes went.  They were amalgamated, they were intermarried, they were lost forever in mixture with the people of that part of the world.  But as God would have it, during the time after the split and before the fall of Samaria, during that period of time many of the ten tribe people in the north moved to the south so that the two tribes in the south became sprinkled with people of the ten tribes in the north so that Judah really became, in a sense, representative of all twelve tribes so that in the history of Israel all twelve tribes have still be preserved.  And that's very important because in the Tribulation in Revelation 7 it says, "In the end time God is going to take 12,000 from every tribe of Israel to be His witness in the world."  The ten lost tribes were lost insofar as the historical identification of those people, but enough of them filtered to the south so that God could preserve every tribal line for the future.  But the rest of the captives never returned.  They were lost.  Israel had sinned away its day of grace.  Israel had brought itself to a place of terrible judgment.  In fact, Hosea said it well, he said, "Ephraim," and that was his term for the Northern Kingdom, "Ephraim is joined to his idols," and then these terrible words, "let him alone."  Let him go, too far gone. 

You know what happened?  After the Assyrians took over the Northern Kingdom they got to feeling their oats and they got to looking at the Southern Kingdom.  Now the Southern Kingdom had a lot to offer.  That was a wonderful land.  Remember, that was the promised land, rich and fertile and beautiful, productive.  And so Sargon kind of got the idea they ought to just go down and take the south while they were at it.  Well Sargon died in the battle moving toward Judah, but he was replaced by his son and his son is a very famous name in Middle Eastern history, his name is Sennacherib...Sennacherib.  Sennacherib took the invasion into Judah.  Now get this, this is around 700 or so, this is a hundred years before they actually go into captivity and already God is warning them by giving them a firsthand look at what it's like to be taken over by some great power.  They stood there and watched the Northern Kingdom go into oblivion.  And now Sennacherib literally invaded Judah and put a vice grip on Judah. 

There was really only one thing that saved Judah from Sennacherib, you know what it was?  In the line of bad kings a good one popped up, his name was Hezekiah...Hezekiah.  And you know at the time of Hezekiah there was also a good prophet, his name was Isaiah.  The good life of Hezekiah, the tears and the prayers of Hezekiah and the life of Isaiah crying out to God in behalf of Judah touched the heart of God and in grace He spared that nation.  And you...you have to...you have to remember the story.  The Assyrians were moving to destroy Judah and they prayed and God answered and God sent...get this...one angel.  You remember that?  One angel and he slaughtered 185 thousand Assyrians in one shot.  Wow...those angels are something, 185 thousand Assyrians...and Judah was spared.  God was gracious.

But do you know something?  Archaeologists tell us that even during that time though Judah was spared under Sennacherib, at least 200 thousand people from Judah were taken into Assyrian captivity.  So they got a good taste of what judgment was coming, not only from what they saw in the north but what they actually experienced themselves.  They had seen tens of thousands of people driven from their homes, deported into foreign lands.  And Werner Keller says in his bookThe Bible As History, "The fertile crescent was plowed up, its people tossed about hither and thither, instead of a varied range of races and religious...religions existing side by side, the result was a jumble.  All investigation into what became of the ten tribes who had their home there has so far come to nothing," end quote. 

You say, "Boy, I'll bet Judah learned their lesson."  No, Hezekiah had a son and Hezekiah's son had a name Manasseh and Manasseh was a vile, wretched, idolatrous, grasping, self-centered, evil king who plunged Judah right back into the pit of idolatrous sin.  So you know what happened?  God says, "Let me warn you again."  Sennacherib was followed by another ruler of the Assyrians named Esarhaddon.  And Esarhaddon moved in and he forced Manasseh to pay him taxes under the threat of war.  Esarhaddon was followed by another man and we mentioned his name last week, Ashurbanipal.  He took Manasseh captive, wrapped him in chains and took him away.  And all the while God was saying, "This is what it's going to be, people, if you don't repent of your sin."

Well you know something?  When Manasseh was dragged away in chains in the midst of his sorrow and captivity and the land without a king, Manasseh got his heart right with God.  He got down on his knees and he turned to God and he repented and he reached out to God and God picked him up and restored him and he had the Assyrians bring him back and stick him on his throne.  And God again was gracious, just maybe Manasseh learned finally and maybe the nation will come around.  You know something?  They never did.  Following Manasseh again the decline into final oblivion.

There was a second category of warnings.  Not only the fall of the north and the powerful presence of the Assyrians, but the preaching of the prophets.  All through this time of decadence, God had His preachers.  You know, in a very real sense I feel that way in America about many men of God who are standing up in this evil day and saying, "We cannot continue to live like this and avoid the judgment of God.  We can't any longer with a clear conscience sing about America as a nation of Godly people."  Just can't do that.  We must speak against this generation, not on its behalf but against it like the prophets.  They had some great prophets in those years.  There was Isaiah, then there was Micah, then there was Nahum, and later on there was Zephaniah and after him there was Jeremiah and then there was Habakkuk and all of these great prophets of God poured out their hearts and cried out with a message of infinite judgment coming that the people never dreamed.  And they had had some pretty good illustrations, but they were so captive to their sin that they never really heard the message.  Isaiah said in chapter 6, "lord, h ere am I, send me, send me to tell this people, send me to preach this people...to preach to this people."  And he did, spent his life doing it.  He said to the Lord, "How long do you want me to preach?"  He said, "You just keep preaching till the cities be wasted without inhabitants, till the houses are without man and the land be utterly desolate the Lord remove men far away and there be a great forsaking in the midst of the land."  Just keep preaching till the whole thing crumbles.  And the prophets were faithful but the people never really listened.  They never really heard the message they were so wrapped up in their sin, so smug in their self-confidence. 

I'm thinking of a verse, I think it's Isaiah 39, "Then said Isaiah to Hezekiah, 'Hear the word of the Lord of hosts, behold the days come that all that is in thine house and that which thy fathers have laid up in store unto this day,'" listen to what Isaiah said 100 years before it happened, "'shall be carried to Babylon, nothing shall be left,' saith the Lord, 'and of thy sons that shall issue from thee whom thou shalt beget shall they take away and they shall be eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon.'"

You mean our best young men, the men of noble birth will be eunuchs, emasculated for the purposes of the ruler of Babylon?  That prophecy came to pass in the life of Daniel himself who became that eunuch in the court of Babylon because the people never heard the prophets.  They never learned from history and they never listened to prophecy. 

There was a third way, I think, God warned them and that was in the revival under Josiah.  Josiah reigned for 31 years, having given his heart to God at the age of 15 or 16.  He had a father named Amon and a grandfather Manasseh.  The vile Manasseh was followed by Amon who was just as bad but here Amon had this young son Josiah who at 15 or 16 gave his heart to God and it was almost as if God said, "You wouldn't see from history what was going to happen, and you wouldn't listen to the prophets preaching a negative message and so I'll give you one other alternative, I'll bring a revival to see if that will change your hearts."  And so along came Josiah and he had a prophet on each side of him, Zephaniah and Nahum and they preached and Josiah prayed and he cleaned up the nation.  And he brought about a great revival.  First of all he said, "Let's repair Solomon's temple."  The temple wasn't even of concern to anybody anymore, they had moved completely into idolatry.  They were worshiping in the high places...Baal and the like.  Josiah said, "Let's redo the temple of Solomon."  And as they rebuilt it they discovered the law of God lost in the temple.  It's kind of like liberalism today, where the truth of God is lost in the church.  And when they found the writing of the Word of God in the temple as they repaired it, they took it out and they read it and it led to a great revival...a great revival.  And in Josiah's time they were having this great revival.  And you know what happened?  What happened was Ashurbanipal who was ruling the Assyrian Empire that was holding this club over the kingdom of Judah, Ashurbanipal died and then Nabopolassar who was his vice-regent down in Babylon swarmed up and conquered all of Assyria and slaughtered all the Assyrians and oh, it looked so good. 

"Boy, just think, we're having a revival.  And our greatest enemy, Assyria, is having to fight a civil war against the area of Babylonia and this man is going to conquer the Assyrians.  Boy, we're in great shape.  The Assyrians are getting their deal and we're having a revival."  And it all looked so good.

You know what happened?  Josiah died and the revival, like so many revivals, was attached to his personality and when he died...the revival ended.  It ended.  It had no effect on the nation.  Following Josiah were four kings, all evil: Jehoahaz, Jehoiakim, Jehoiachin and Zedekiah, evil, evil, evil, evil.  The revival had no effect.  Listen, they never learned from history, and they never listened to prophecy, and they never even responded in the graciousness of God when He brought a revival.  People, that's how terminal decadence is.  It's irreversible when it reaches its full fury. 

God, help us, because that's what I see in America.  We haven't learned from history.  We don't listen to the prophets and daresay the revival going on today doesn't seem to be having much impact on our country.  Amazingly...amazingly, I want you to hear this, Assyria was destroyed by Babylonia.  Babylonia then grew to take over that whole part of the world.  Habakkuk says that bitter and hasty nation rose up to take the place of

Assyria.  Why?  Habakkuk 1:12, you want to know why there was a neo-Babylonian Empire?  Here it is, God said, "I have ordained them for judgment and established them for correction."  Now listen, God allowed the Babylonian Empire to defeat Assyria.  You want to hear something fascinating?  The Babylonian Empire came into existence just at the time of Israel's captivity and just when Israel was released to go back to the land, it went out of existence.  Did you know that the whole neo-Babylonian Empire only last about a hundred years, which is exactly the amount of time from the first captivity of Judah till the final return back to their land.  God simply raised up the whole Babylonian Empire as an instrument of judgment.  Just as He has raised up the Assyrian Empire as an instrument of judgment against the Northern Kingdom.  That nation came and went in a hundred years.  And during those hundred years it reached an apex, it became literally the monarch of the world.  It was a rod in God's hand.  I don't think Nebuchadnezzar had any idea about that.  But that's the truth because God controls history. 

So, the people were taken into captivity.  You say, "They must have sinned terribly for God to bring such a horrible judgment."  Look at Psalm 78 for a minute.  I don't have time to read the whole Psalm, I think it's the best account of captivity that you could possibly read because it approaches it from the emotions of the people involved.  In Psalm 78, and the Psalms, by the way, were written at all different periods of Israel's history, all different periods of Judah's history, as well as the life of David, they were written at all different times to express the emotion of the people and the history of what was going on from a very personal view.  Not so much the narrative/academic view as that very personal involvement.  And here we find the reason God took the Northern Kingdom captive and really they're the same reasons God took the south captive.  Verse 10, "They kept not the covenant of God and refused to walk in His law.  They forgot His works and His wonders He had shown them.  Marvelous things did He in the sight of their fathers in the land of Egypt, in the field of Zoan.  He divided the sea and caused them to pass through; He made the waters to stand as an heap.  In the daytime He led them with a cloud and at night with a light of fire.  He split the rocks in the wilderness, and gave them drink as out of the great depths.  He brought streams also out of the rock and caused waters to run down like rivers.  And they sinned yet more against Him by provoking the Most High in the wilderness.  And they tested God in their heart by asking food according to their desire."

In other words, it didn't matter what He did they were so bent on their sin.  Verse 22, "They believed not in God and trusted not in His salvation.  And though He had commanded the clouds from above and opened the doors of heaven and rained down manna upon them to eat and given them out of the grain of heaven, man did eat angel's food...that's manna...He sent them food to the full, He caused an east wind to blow in the heavens and by His power He brought in the south wind.  He rained flesh also upon them like dust and feathered fowls like the sand of the sea."  In other words, they got birds every day to eat.  And on and on, the whole chapter just telling all that God has done.  Verse 41, "Yea they turned back and tested God and limited the Holy One of Israel.  They remembered not His hand nor the day when He delivered them from the enemy.  How He had wrought His signs in Egypt and His wonders in the field of Zoan."  And so it goes...so it goes.

They continued to reject.  "God, when he heard this...verse 59...was angry and greatly abhorred Israel."  Verse 61, "He delivered His strength into captivity and His glory...what is His glory?...His people into the enemy's hand.  He gave His people over also to the sword and was angry with His inheritance.  And the fire consumed their young men and their maidens were not given in marriage.  Their priests fell by the sword and their widows made no lamentation.  Then the Lord awakened as one out of sleep and like a mighty man who shouted by reason of wine and He smote His enemies in the hinder parts.  He put them to a perpetual reproach."  And there you get into the fact that even though they had gone into captivity, God woke up and brought them back.