Focus passage: 2 Chron. 36, Jeremiah and Ezekiel
How many warnings does it take? Watch out for rattlesnakes! Stay away from the fire! Wear your seat belt when driving! We hear the warnings all the time and ignore them. How many warnings does it take from God before people start to listen? The last forty five years of Israel’s history were filled with warnings from people like Jeremiah and Ezekiel. No one seemed to take the warnings seriously. In the end, they paid the price. Yet mixed into those warnings was a parent’s love. God wasn’t angry with the people of Judah, he was just concerned for them. Like any parent whose kids misbehave, you know that someday your child will get hurt. They may not always listen, but you warn them again and again because you care that much. 
Countdown to Oblivion
A. 50 years away – Words of warning Jer. 3:6 The first set of warnings would come from Jeremiah and start over 50 years before the captivity would be final. The people talked about God, but worshipped the gods of the surrounding nations. Jeremiah would continue to warn the people through five kings and three attacks by the Babylonians. He would be arrested, beaten and thrown in a well to die. Yet, God would not stop warning the people through this prophet even if his warnings made him a thorn in the side of the kings of Judah.
B. 20 years away – First Captivity warning 2 Kings 24:1 Jeremiah had warned of the “boiling pot facing north (Jer 1:11), but King Jehoiakim refused to listen. In his fourth year of kingship, the Babylonians came and conquered Judah. They took Daniel and the best of the young men. They took the gold of the nation and the temple and made Judah a vassal of Babylon as a warning of things to come. It should have made them turn to the Lord, but they still ignored God’s warnings.
C. 11 years away – Second captivity and more words of warning Ezekiel 6:3-4 After four years of rebellion, the Babylonians had seen enough and came and attacked the nation for a second time. All of the treasures and leaders were taken leaving Judah desolate. They had been a separate nation, now they were a conquered state with a puppet king put in place to rule them. All that Jeremiah had prophesied was coming true. God even added another voice at this time. Ezekiel began prophesying to the Jews in Babylon, but the Jews in Palestine refused to listen.
D. O years - 586 BC – Judah is taken 2 Chronicles 36:19 After eleven years of the Jews trusting Egypt to save them instead of the Lord, the Babylonians came the last time and laid siege to the city. In the end, they would break down the walls of the city, capture and maim the wicked king and destroy the temple. Judah ceased to exist as a nation for a time. The Jewish people would not have their own nation again for 400 years and would lose that nation to the Romans in the years before Jesus. The powerful nation of David seemed to be gone or was it? The people would not listen so God found another way to teach his children.
Destruction is not God’s final word (Ezekiel 36:24-25). The Lord through the prophet Jeremiah had promised that the people would return to the Promised Land 70 years from the time of the first captivity. In Ezekiel, God promises to bring a revival in the nation of Israel. Not only will he gather them back, the people who come back will be forgiven and taught to put away their idols. In common language today, we would call it tough love. You can talk all you want, but sometimes you have to give tough love. Such is the depth of God’s love for His people. Many will not listen to the Lord even today, but there will always be a remnant who will find the Lord at their side caring for them and loving them no matter how far the nation has fallen. God can’t stop loving even when so many don’t love Him back. He loves even when it gets tough, because He wants as many as possible to be saved.
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