Amen. Good morning, Grace. Good morning online. Thank you, Steve. That was wonderful. It's good to see everybody. We've got some new folks venturing in this week, Braving the Elements. My name is Nate, for those of you that I haven't gotten to meet yet or for those watching online. This is the last part in our series called A Time of Kings. And as we think about questions like that, I really believe that there's one loud message that should come from the book of Kings. And I want us to see that this morning. And as I think about Kings, and remember I call it a book because originally it was written as one big long book. So as I think about the book of Kings, I really have realized as we've studied it together that this is a tragic book. This book is really sad. It's really sad because of the hope with which it starts and the devastation with which it ends. If you think back to the very beginning of the book of Kings, if you have a Bible at home, you can flip it there. If you have a Bible with you, you can look at 2 Kings 25. That's where we're going land today, and then we're going to jump to, I think, Samuel, and then Revelation, and John. So, you know, we'll be all over the place this morning. But if you think about the way that Kings begins, it's like the climax of hope. David is the king. You'll remember in the very first week of this series, if you've been watching along or listening along, that David is the king, that the nation of Israel clamored for a king, and Samuel the prophet said, you don't need one, God is your king. And they said, we really want a king. We think that a king is going to bring about all the promises that God made to us, because they are God's chosen people. They live in an awareness of the promises that they have received, that the land of Canaan, that Israel is going to be theirs, that they're going to have a multitude of descendants, and that one of their descendants is going to bless the whole earth. And so they cling to these promises. And they don't see them coming to fruition in the time of judges. It was a dark time in the nation of Israel. And they said, you know what? If we have a king, that person can lead us into prominence and be God's chosen person. And so they elected Saul. He made the most sense. He was head and shoulders above everybody else. He was really good looking. When you looked at him, you thought, that guy should be king. If you need a good picture of who Saul was, he looked a lot like me. But that didn't work out. And David is God's chosen man to be king, and he was a great king. He established Israel into international prominence. He, in him, was this man who walked closely with God, who wrote the Psalms, who led well, who conquered enemies, who won victories, and certainly this king is the king that's going to lead us in the prominence that we have been promised. And David asks the father, can I build your temple? I want to build your home. He goes to God and he says, I want to build your home where your presence can reside with us. Because all the way back in the desert, when Moses was in charge, 450 years prior, God gave him instructions about setting up a tabernacle that could move with them. That's where they put the Ark of the Covenant. That's where they had the Holy of Holies. That's where the presence of God rested among his people. And it was time to build God a permanent home. And David said, let me do this. And God says, I can't let you do that. There's too much blood on your hands, but I'm going to make you a promise. And we're going to look at that promise in a minute. He said, among those promises, your son is going to build my house. And so the book of Kings picks up with the end of the incredible reign of David that has launched Israel into international importance. This high watermark in the kingdom. And then he has assembled all the goods and materials so that as soon as his son Solomon takes over, he can build the temple. And he does. And much of the beginning of Kings is dedicated to the dedication and construction of this temple. And there's a beautiful prayer that Solomon prays for the people then and for you and I. It's really wonderful. You should go read it. It's this high watermark in the history of Israel. It's the culmination of 450 years of hope. And you have to think, man, look at us. These kings are bringing about the desired results. They're pushing us into prominence and they're bringing about the promises of God. This king thing is really working out. Hope is high. Then Solomon's son is terrible. They descend into civil war, and the northern tribes never get a good king. The southern tribe gets some that they get to hope in. And in the northern tribes, when it looks like hope is lost and they have evil kings like Ahab, they're putting their hope in kings, and it's not going to be Ahab. He's not going to bring about the future that God desires for us. But God does bring some strong prophets into the reign of Ahab. He brings Elijah, who wins the victory on Mount Carmel, against the 450 prophets of Baal. And you read that and you go, okay, now, now God's promises are going to come true. Now we're going to have the king that we are waiting for that's going to set everything right. It seems like the tide has turned and the hearts of God's people are going to be turned towards him, but they're not. And then God sends Elisha to secede Elijah, and he does twice the miracles that Elijah does. And it's this glimmer of hope that maybe the hearts of God's people will be turned to him, but they're not. And then God sends sporadically these good kings, Hezekiah, who defeated the armies of Sennacherib through prayer, by taking the threatening letter and laying it down before the Lord in the temple and saying, God, please protect your people. And God does because of Hezekiah's faithfulness. And you think, maybe this is a good king. Now, as you're reading the narrative and you're following along and it's just bad news, bad news, bad news, this is when there's going to be good news. And by the end of his life, he's no good anymore. We wait for some generations and Josiah, this glimmer of hope that we talked about last week, comes along. And he eradicates all of the idols and he turns the hearts of the people towards the Lord. But God says, you know, it's too late. My people are already turned away from me. I'm going to take the kingdom from you in four kings. And sure enough, he does. Jehoahaz and Jehoakim and Jehoachin and then Zedekiah and then it's done. Four generations. And the very end of Kings, this book that began with so much hope, a king is going to come and he's going to set everything right and the world for God's people is going to look exactly as God intended it to look. The book of Kings ends like this in chapter 25. I'm going to read you a summary of what's happening in verse 8. This is pretty much what they're looking at. That's the scene as we finish this hopeful book. We watch king after king come in. Maybe he's the one. Maybe the prophet's the one. Maybe the tide is going to turn. And we're waiting for the hero. We're waiting for the uptick. We're waiting for the climax. There's going to be a resolution to this. And at the end of the story, King Nebuchadnezzar sends in his army. They burn down God's temple, Solomon's temple that he built. They burn it down. They burn down the palace. They burn down the homes of all the prominent people in Jerusalem. And they tear down the walls. It's left in shambles. It is an ash heap of a city, and they take all the richest and wealthiest and most capable with them, only leaving behind the most impoverished and the most destitute. That's the picture of God's chosen people at the end of the book of Kings. It's utter devastation. It's utter and complete devastation. And you're reading this book and you're waiting for someone to come along. You expect to turn the page and then it's like, but then this happened and it's not. It's just somebody else telling the story, telling the same stories in Chronicles. There's no page turn here. You're expecting the hero to come. You're expecting the king to come, the right one to come along and restore everything, and it doesn't happen. As I'm studying in my office this week, I'm going, man, this really stinks that the book of Kings ends this way. Really find another story to just talk about and maybe we'll just let them discover this on their own, their own leisure. But it dawned on me that the devastation in Kings is very purposeful. This is really the point of the book. It's meant to end this way when we place our hope in earthly kings. The devastation is designed to display the reality that an earthly king will never be enough. The devastation in kings is designed to display the reality that an earthly king will never be enough. They kept waiting on an earthly leader. They kept waiting on someone to come and sit on the physical throne and usher them into prominence and make them a great nation, and it just wasn't going to happen, and God was letting them slowly, painfully realize the thing you're hoping in to fix your lives is not the thing that's going to do it. Boy, that's a whole sermon in and of itself, isn't there? How many slow, painful lessons have we learned putting our hope in the wrong thing? But it's meant to show his people an earthly king will never be enough. And if you're paying attention to the Old Testament, if you're paying attention to the things that God is saying to his people, even in the time of kings, when their hope is placed in an earthly king, if you're listening to what he's saying to his people, you will hear that he is telling them you are looking for the wrong kind of king. I referred earlier to 2 Samuel 7. This is where God made David a promise. It's referred to as the Davidic covenant. It's where he doubles down, he triples down, he reminds the people of his promise to them. And he promises that he's going to send a king to sit on David's throne. And these are the words of God. Look at what he says in verse 14. He says, So he's talking about Jesus here. He's going to be a son for me. He is going to pay a penalty for you. And then when he does that, he's going to sit on the throne forever. This is kingdom language. This is king language in the middle of the time of kings that they're not listening to. And then God sends prophet after prophet that we have in the major and the minor prophets in the rest of the Old Testament to tell them of their coming king, of the coming Messiah, most pointedly in the book of Isaiah. When Isaiah tells God's people, Isaiah is a prophet during the reign of Hezekiah, one of the good kings during this time. And he says that God is going to send someone and that by his stripes we will be healed and that he will be Emmanuel, God with us, and that he will be the King of kings and the Lord of lords. What God is trying to communicate to them that they can't seem to capture is that what they really need is a divine king. What they need is Jesus. What they're waiting on is the Messiah. They continue to look to an earthly king to make their problems right, to make things go away, to confirm and restore the promises of God. And what God is trying to tell them all along, through his promise to David, through the voice of his prophets, is, hey guys, you're looking for the wrong king. You're not paying attention to the right things. You don't need another earthly king. You need a divine king. You need Jesus. And this language isn't just in the Old Testament. We see king language throughout the Bible. You'll remember, if you were here in the spring of 2019, we went through the book of John for I think 12 or 14 weeks. And one of the themes we see is the people of Israel when they meet Jesus continually clamoring to make him king. He had to disappear from their midst so that they wouldn't start a revolution too early. He had to heal people and say, but don't tell anybody because he didn't want word to get out that the Messiah was here. He didn't want to foment revolution. This is why he did his ministry in the far-flung corners of northern Israel rather than coming down south to the capital of Jerusalem until later in his life because he knew that it would set into motion a series of events that he could not reverse because they were clamoring to make him king. They were clamoring so badly to make him king that at the end of his life when he was on trial with Pilate, the Roman governor, Pilate, he was accused by the people who were trying to kill him of being someone who was leading a revolution, who claimed to be the king of the Jews. And he's trying to overthrow Roman rule. And Pilate, you should care about this deeply. And so Pilate asked him, they say you're a king. Is that what you? And Jesus says, yeah, but not of this. You can have this. This is too small for me. I don't want this kingdom. I have a kingdom, but it's not here. If it were here, my angels would come and defend me, but they're not, because my kingdom is eternal. My kingdom is divine. My kingdom is universal. And with his death, he bought our citizenship into that kingdom. And then, as the narrative of the Bible continues to press forward, and we continue to wait for our king, along with the children of Israel, when is our king going to return and set things right? When is he going to restore things to the way that he intended them to be? And we fast forward to the book of Revelation, where we see more king language. In Revelation chapter 6, we have the cries of the martyrs. It's are the exact cries of the hearts of the saints in 2 Kings 25. And God's chosen people are in the middle of total devastation. Their hearts cry out, God, when will you make this right? How are you letting this happen? Why are you letting King Nebuchadnezzar do this? This is evil, God. This is not your plan. This is not your promise. Why is it going this way? Why are you allowing this devastation? It's the same cry that was in the hearts of the martyrs in Revelation 6. God, how long will you let this happen before you avenge what they've done to us? How long will you watch devastation occur in your creation? It's the same thing. It's the same cry of the hearts of the people who had to witness the terror of slavery, who had to endure the persecution of Nero, or the persecution that continues to happen in closed-off countries to this day. It's the same devastation that cries out to God in our own lives when we have a diagnosis or we have a loss or we exist in the rubble of a relationship. And we say, God, this doesn't feel right. How much longer will you let this happen? We need our king to make it right. And in Revelation 19, we get it. It's the most hopeful chapter in all the Bible when we see the king that we've always wanted, that we've always hoped for, that the nation of Israel longed for without realizing it. I love this passage. I always get emotional when I read this passage. Revelation 19, beginning in verse 11. This is the appearance of Christ as king as we finish the Bible. The one sitting on it is called Faithful and True. and fine linen, white and pure, were following him on white horses. From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron. He will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God Almighty on his robe and on his thigh. His name is written King of Kings and Lord of Lords. That's Jesus. And when he comes to make the wrong things right and the sad things untrue, when he comes to fix the devastation, when he comes to restore his creation and claim his throne, he is no longer coming as the Lamb of God. He is coming as the Lion of Judah. And he's going to answer those cries of our heart. And he's going to respond to the devastation. And he's going to speak right to the hearts of the people in Israel, watching their loved ones be carried away as slaves. As the palace burns and the walls lay in rubble, he is going to speak directly to their hearts as he establishes his divine eternal kingdom. And so what I want us to see as we think about the book of Kings and the lessons that we learn from it is that the entire book is meant to end in devastation and allow that devastation to point God's people for their need for Jesus so that they can see that Jesus is the hope of God's people in the midst of devastation. Kings ends that way on purpose. It's not a mistake by God. It's not like God was watching history and go, well, that didn't work out as expected. I was really hoping one of these kings would be the guy. He knew that it would end bad. He told Samuel when they were clamoring for a king, he says, you give them one, but it's not going to end well. And it didn't. He knew this was going to happen, but he let it happen so that his people would see their need for a divine king, and that devastation would point them to Christ. Jesus was their hope in the midst of devastation. And in the same way, our lesson from Kings is that Jesus is our hope in the midst of our devastation too. When things aren't going right, when we identify with the martyrs crying out to God, how much longer are you going to let this happen? You've made me some promises, God. You've said that everything I pray will be yes in your name. You said that if I ask for things that you will give them to me. You've said in Romans 28 that one day everything's going to work out for the good of those who love you and are called according to your purpose. When's that coming, God? Because this stinks. That frustration and devastation is meant to point you to Christ and remind you that we all collectively are waiting for Revelation 19. We all collectively are waiting for the return of our King who will make the wrong things right and the sad things untrue, who will sit on the throne of David forever, who will restore his creation to exactly what it is meant to restore, who will bring about the reality of Revelation 20 where it says God will be with his people and his people will be with their God and there will be no more weeping and no more crying and no more pain anymore for the former things. All the things that caused devastation, all the things that caused us to cry out with the martyrs, those things have passed away because Jesus has won a victory over them. And for all of eternity, we exist in a perfect kingdom with our perfect king. Kings is designed to help us anticipate that future and cling to that hope. And when we experience devastation in our own life, that is there to point us to our need for Jesus. Sometimes it's a simple devastation of our souls. We come to the end of ourselves, and we realize that our way is not working. We realize that there is something about this life that is making me unhappy. There is something that is missing. There is something that I need. That devastation is designed to point us to our need for Christ. If you're here this morning or you're watching online and you're experiencing that devastation of your soul, you need Jesus. You don't need another earthly king. You don't need another earthly fix. You don't need to read another book or a new regimen of discipline. You need Jesus. The devastation of our relationships points us to our need for Jesus. When people disappoint us, it points us to a person who won't. When we lose someone that we love so much and we cry out and we say, God, this isn't fair. Why'd you take them? It was too early. Our King has died for us and conquered that death to assure us that we will see that person again one day. So we turn our eyes with hope to Revelation 19 when faithful and true comes out of the sky. When Jesus comes as the Lion of Judah to restore his kingdom and restore order to the way that it should be. And the devastation of finances and the devastation of just life events and the devastation of disappointment, big and little. Little disappointments are meant to turn our eyes to Jesus and say, yeah, this place isn't perfect. We need you to come make it perfect, God. We usher in, we pray for your return. Come soon, Lord Jesus. Big devastation, huge things from which we don't know if we will recover are intentionally designed to point our eyes towards Christ and say, yes, Jesus, this stinks. We are waiting for you. We are yearning for you. We are inviting you in. Come soon, Lord Jesus. The devastation in Kings is intentionally left in the Bible and is allowed intentionally to occur so that it will forever point God's people to Jesus in the midst of their devastation. If we remember nothing else from the book of Kings, remember that the whole book is designed to point us there. And remember that if you are experiencing some form of devastation or disappointment or disillusionment in your life, that the point of that, just like the point of it happening in Kings, is that you would point your eyes towards Christ and eagerly anticipate the return of your King, who is going to make all the wrong things right and the sad things untrue. Let's pray. Lord, we love you. We are grateful for you. Jesus, we need you. Come soon to get us. God, you have watched from your throne all kinds of devastation. You have watched all sorts of divisiveness and violence. You have watched evil. And you are as fed up with it as we are. God, now in our time, it's hard to turn on the news or pick up your phone and not see something that disappoints us, something that breaks our heart, something that seems evil. God, you see it too. We need our king. Would you send him soon to rescue us? And God, while we wait, would you set our eyes on him? Would you set our gaze on you? Would you fill us with your spirit and give us the peace of hope? May we be a people who continually turn our eyes towards you. It's in our king's name that we pray. Amen.