to the last four verses in the
book of Jeremiah. Jeremiah 52. We'll read the last
four verses. I've titled this, Out of the
Prison House into the King's House. And you'll see why in
a minute. Jeremiah 53. I begin reading in verse 31. And it came to pass in the seventh
and thirtieth year of the captivity of Jehoiachin, he'd been in prison
thirty-seven years, Jehoiachin, king of Judah, in the twelfth
month, in the five and twentieth day of the month, that Abel-Meradoc,
king of Babylon, in the first year of his reign, lifted up
the head of Jehoiachin, King of Judah, and brought him forth
out of prison, and spake kindly unto him, and set his throne
above the throne of the kings that were with him in Babylon,
and changed his prison garments. And he did continually eat bread
before him all the days of his life, and for his diet there
was a continual diet given him of the king of Babylon every
day a portion until the day of his death all the days of his
life. This account of Jehoiachin being
brought forth out of prison is also found almost word for word
in 2 Kings 25 verses 27 through 30 and there are very few places
in the Old Testament that a story is repeated twice. So it would
seem to me that the Holy Ghost intends for us to be taught something
from this story of Jehoiachin and his fall from grace and his
recovery. And we'll see that there's many
parallels to be seen concerning how the king treated Jehoiachin
and how our God deals with his elect. Before we look at his
recovery, we have to ask, how did Jehoiachin end up in prison?
What events took place that found him once raped, and powerful
king, falling from such a position of honor and esteem to one of
utter ruin?" And we find that answer in 2 Kings 25.9, because
it is stated that he did that which was evil in the sight of
the Lord. And because he chose to do evil,
God sent one to take him captive along with all whom he represented,
because we're told in the same twenty-fifth chapter of 2 Kings,
that Nebuchadnezzar carried away all Jerusalem, and all the princes,
and all the mighty men of valor, even ten thousand captives, and
all the craftsmen and smiths, all who Jehoiachin represented
paid the consequences for him doing evil in the sight of the
Lord, which is exactly how we ended up in prison. The prison
of bondage to sin and death and the law. Our father Adam did
that which was evil in the sight of the Lord. He plunged all whom
he represented into captivity and bondage and despair. Into
the bondage of sin. Hebrews 2, 14 and 15 tells us
that Christ hath delivered them who through fear of death were
all their lifetimes subject to bondage. All their lifetimes. Since the day that we were born,
we have been in bondage. And our Lord warned us in John
8.34, He said, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whosoever committeth
sin is the servant of sin. Sin is your master, and you are
a slave to it. Paul bemoaned our condition in
Romans 7, Verses 23 and 24, he said, But I see another law in
my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing
me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am, who
shall deliver me from the body of this death? The fact that
we need deliverance is every indication that we are in bondage. Otherwise, obviously, there would
be no need of deliverance. Peter tells us in 2 Peter, for
when they speak great swelling words of vanity, they allure
to the lust of the flesh through much wantonness those that were
clean escaped from them who live in error. While they promise
them liberty, They themselves are the servants of corruption.
For of whom a man is overcome of the same as he brought into
bondage, and how quickly, how easily are we overcome with sin. It's in every strand of our DNA. It's not just simply what we
do, it is who we are. But there is hope for those soul
under sin, for those who are under bondage of the law because
Paul tells us in Romans 6, 14, and 18, for sin shall not have
dominion over you, it won't control you, for you're not under the
law, but under grace. What then, shall we sin because
we're not under the law but under grace? God forbid. Know ye not
that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants
are ye to whom ye obey, whether of sin unto death, of obedience
unto righteousness. But God be thanked that we are
not the servants of sin, but ye have obeyed from the heart
that form of doctrine that was delivered to you. Being then
made free from sin, ye became the servants of righteousness."
What a blessed, blessed servitude that we have to be the servants
of righteousness. In Romans 8, 1 and 2, we read,
There is therefore now no condemnation. to them which are in Christ Jesus,
who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. And he
tells us why. For the law of the Spirit of
life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and
death. There's a word from that old
hymn, free from the law, oh happy condition. Now are we free, there's
no condemnation. Why? Because Jesus provides a
perfect salvation. No longer under bondage. Completely
free. Free in Him. Now verse 31 of
our text tells us that the king lifted up his head, speaking
of Jehoiachin. This would suggest that Jehoiachin
was in such a weakened condition that he could not so much as
hold his head up. Near death. Ready to perish. The conditions in which he lived
in that prison had taken their toll over time. 37 years he had
been there. And he was completely helpless
to improve his condition. The only thing he could do was
to lay in his filth and his corruption and wait to die. And this was
our state when the Lord found us and had compassion on us.
Psalm 3 verses 2 and 3 says, Many there be which say of my
soul, there is no help for him in God. But thou, O Lord, art
a shield for me, my glory, the lifter up of my head." We see an example of this also
in the story of the Good Samaritan, how that he found that certain
man, as the Scriptures tell us, stripped of raiment and wounded,
and he had compassion on him. Which is how our Lord found us,
wounded, by death, by sin, naked, cast out and left to die as that
infant described in Ezekiel 16, that Scripture that we're so
familiar with. Verse 6 tells us that the Lord
passed by and saw us polluted in our own blood. Now, that's
not the end of the story, because verse 8 tells us in that same
chapter of Ezekiel 16, now when I pass by thee, and looked upon
me. Behold, thy time was a time of
love, and I spread my skirt over thee, and covered thy nakedness. Yea, I swore unto thee, and entered
into a covenant with thee, saith the Lord, and thou becameest
mine." Now we read that the king brought him forth out of prison.
Now, we need to understand, and I think we certainly do, that
the prisons in those days were nothing like the prisons that
we have in America. They were breeding grounds for
disease, filled with rats. There were no showers. There
were no bathrooms. Your bathroom was in the corner
of your cell. The prisoners lived with a sense
that was overwhelming. The cells reeked with the smell
of human waste and body odor and the smell sometimes of rotting
corpses. of prisoners who had died in
those conditions and had yet to be removed. And this is a
pretty good description of us when the Lord sought us out and
found us. Sin is all we have ever known.
It is all around us. It is within us from the day
we were born. We lived in the filth of our
own sins and self-righteousness, which are called a stench in
God's eyes. We by nature were so used to
those conditions that we didn't even know there was anything
wrong until God sent a gospel preacher our way and made us
aware that we were dead and rotting in sin. And you, Hethy Quicken,
you were dead in trespasses and sin. Next, our text tells us
that the king spake kindly unto him. In every instance that we
find in the four gospels of Christ dealing with sinners, he deals
with them in tenderness. He only reserves contempt and
harshness and hatred for the self-righteous tribes and Pharisees
that he came in contact with. And this is how our Lord deals
with His elect people, is it not, when He brings them into
His fold, He gently woos His people. He treats them with kindness
as a shepherd does his sheep. Romans 2, 4 tells us that the
goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance. Not the harshness
of God, not the judgment of God, all those two is hard in men's
hearts. The scripture is plain, but it
tells us that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance.
That verse in the 23rd Psalm that speaks of our Good Shepherd
says, Thy rod and thy staff They comfort me. This is a description
of how a shepherd used to use his rod to tap each of his sheep
as he called them out of the sheepfold and counted them and
gathered them together. He would gently touch each of
the sheep as they passed under his rod and no sheep would be
comforted by that touch. Never, ever was that rod used
to smite or punish a sheep, but only to comfort them. and knowing
that their shepherd was there, and all was well. In Ezekiel 20, I want to read
a few verses describing God dealing with the nation of Israel and
gathering them. Ezekiel 20, verses 33-38. Ezekiel 20, 33-38. As I live, saith the Lord, surely
with a mighty hand, with a stretched out arm, and with fury poured
out, will I rule over you. And I will bring you out from
the people, and will gather you out of the countries wherein
you were scattered, with a mighty hand, and with a stretched out
arm, and with fury poured out. And I will bring you into the
wilderness of the people, and there will I plead with you face
to face. Like as I pleaded with your fathers
in the wilderness of the land of Egypt, so will I plead with
you, saith the Lord. For I will cause you to pass
under the rod, and I will bring you into the bond of the covenant. And I will purge out from among
you the rebels and them that transgress against me, and I
will bring them forth out of the country where they sojourned.
and they shall not enter into the land of Israel, and ye shall
know that I am the Lord." This is why Christ describes himself
as the Good Shepherd. The Good Shepherd leads his sheep,
protects his sheep, and if necessary, gives his life for the sheep
to save them from death and destruction. We have such a good example of
this in David. Turn with me over to 1 Samuel.
We're going to look at several Scriptures. If you don't prefer
to turn, you can just listen. But 1 Samuel chapter 17. 1 Samuel 17. This is where David was willing to go up against
Goliath and fight with him. Starting in verse 33 it says,
And Saul said to David, Thou art not able to go against his
Philistine to fight with him, for thou art but a youth, and
he is a man of war from his youth. And David said unto Saul, Thy
servant kept his father's sheep, speaking of himself. And there
came a lion and a bear, and took a lamb out of the flock. And
I went out after him, and smote him, and delivered it out of
his mouth. And when he arose against me,
I caught him by the beard and smote him. Thy servant slew both
the lion and the bear, and this uncircumcised Philistine shall
be as one of them, seeing he hath defiled the armies of the
living God." Now David may have been a youth, but apparently
he was a fearless youth. He says he caught the lion by
his beard and slew him. It's no wonder he wasn't intimidated
by Goliath. He had done hand-to-hand, or
I guess more correctly, hand-to-paw combat with a bear and a lion
and killed them both. And when he volunteered to go
toe-to-toe with Goliath, he was confident that the same God gave
him strength to slay a lion and a bear, would also give him strength
to slay this Philistine. And this is what a good shepherd
does. He is not willing to lose even one sheep, but rather will
put his life on the line to protect all his sheep. And notice in
verse 34 of this, it says these sheep that didn't actually belong
to David, they were his father's sheep. His father's sheep. But he was responsible for those
sheep. and was not going to let even one be taken. And much more
so it is with our Lord Jesus Christ, who tells us in John
6.39, And this is the Father's will which hath sent me, that
of all which he hath given me I should lose nothing, but should
raise it up again at the last day. Next, in our text, it tells
us that the king set his throne above the throne of the kings
that were with him, speaking of Jehoiachin. Now I have to
admit that I'm not sure what all this means, but it certainly
indicates that Jehoiachin had a place of honor that the other
kings did not. Back in those days, men were
given places of honor in the king's dining hall. Usually the
king's family sat closest to him, and then those of higher
regard in the kingdom, higher office, sat close to the king. And when our God created man,
as detailed in Genesis 1, 26, He said, Let us make man in our
image, after our likeness, and let him have dominion over the
fish of the sea, and over the fowls of the air, and over the
cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing
that creepeth upon the earth. So God gave dominion to the human
race in general when He created man, but there is a group of
these people that He has elevated, Do the work of Christ over the
others. And those people are, of course,
the saints of God, God's elect. There was nothing, I should say,
in Jehoiachin that made the king elevate him above the others.
It was simply the king's sovereign choice. It's what he chose to
do. And so it is with our God when
He sets His elect over the rest of the human race. He does it
because that's His sovereign choice to do so, not because
of any merit on our part. In 1 Corinthians chapter 1, Paul
tells us that the saints shall judge the world. And in verse
3 of that same chapter, he tells us that we shall judge angels. So clearly, our God has set our
throne above the throne of others. And in verse 33, it says that
the king, after he had brought Jehoiachin out of prison, changed
his prison garments. Now you can just imagine what
the clothes that this man had been wearing for 37 years looked
and smelled like. Probably mere rags stained with
the corruption and the filth that surrounded him. And our
righteousnesses are described in Isaiah 64 6 in just the same
way. But we are all as an unclean
thing and all our righteousnesses are as filthy ragged. The garments
that Jehoiachin wore in prison could not be washed enough to
remove the stench and the smell and the filth that accumulated
there over time. They had to be changed. Turn
with me, please, to Zechariah. I want to read a few verses in
Zechariah, chapter 3. Let's go to the last book in
the Old Testament. Zechariah chapter 3. Speaking of our God changing
our garments. And He showed me Joshua the high
priest standing before the angel of the Lord and Satan standing
at his right hand to resist him. And the Lord said unto Satan,
The Lord rebuketh thee, O Satan, even the Lord that hath chosen
Jerusalem rebuketh thee. Is not this a brand plucked out
of the fire? And Joshua was clothed with filthy
garments, and stood before the angel. And he answered and spake
unto those that stood before him, saying, Take away the filthy
garments from him. And unto him he said, Behold,
I have caused thine iniquity to pass from thee. And I will
clothe thee with a change of raiment. And I said, Let him
set a fair mitre upon his head. So they set a fair mitre upon
his head, and clothed him with garment. And the angel of the
Lord stood by." This is a description, just such an apt description
of what our God does for lost sinners. When He brings them
into His fold, He takes away their filthy garment. and clothes
them in the robe of the righteousness of Christ. That robe that covers
to such a degree as the holy, all-seeing eye of our God cannot
find fault in it. This robe is more fair than the
clothing of silk and purple with golden embroidery that you find
in king's palaces. There is no beauty So fair is
that righteousness of Christ. In Revelation 19, speaking of
the marriage of the Lamb, it says, Let us be glad and rejoice,
and give honor to him. For the marriage of the Lamb
is come, and his wife hath made herself ready. And to her was
granted that she should be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white. For the fine linen is the righteousness
of the saints. Isaiah 61.10 tells us, I will
greatly rejoice in the Lord. My soul shall be joyful in my
God. Why? For he hath clothed me with
the garments of salvation, and he hath covered me with the robe
of righteousness. As a bridegroom decketh himself
with ornaments, and as a bride adorneth herself with jewels,
Now if the very hem of the garments that Christ wore when he was
on this earth was enough to dispel sickness for those who touched
it, how much more does the robe of righteousness of the glorified
Christ heal our plague of sin? When that prodigal son returned
to his father, His father commanded the servants and said, bring
forth the best robe and put it on him. And is there any better
robe to be had than the robe of the righteousness of Christ?
It's indeed the best robe. And notice that he didn't say,
the father didn't say, bring forth the best robe and give
it to him to put on. Bring forth the best robe, he
said, and put it on him. Our God doesn't even expect us
to put on the robe of Christ's righteousness. He puts it on
us Himself. It isn't an offer. Here's Christ's righteousness.
If you're interested in putting it on, I'd sure appreciate it,
and sure would be happy if you'd just wear this robe of Christ's
righteousness. That's not what He does. He puts it on us. But
some would say, well, what if I don't want Him to put it on?
All I can say to that is, if you ever find yourself in the
place that his prodigal found himself, if you ever find yourself
naked before a holy God, you'll be more than happy to have Him
adorn you with the robe of Christ's righteousness. Because you'll
know that is the only place that you have to hide. And notice
in that story of the prodigal also, that they didn't wait until
the Son had returned. And the Father said, let's weave
Him a robe. That robe was already prepared
before He ever got there. And in the same way, when our
God brings a lost sinner to the feet of Christ, when that prodigal
sinner comes to the Father's house, that best robe, that robe
of Christ's righteousness is already prepared and waiting
for Him. The robe of Christ's righteousness
that was prepared before the foundation of the world. Now
lastly, in verse 34, it tells us, And for his diet, there was
a continual diet given him of the king of Babylon, every day
a portion until the day of his death, all the days of his life. The king didn't just release
Jehoiachin from prison and clean him up and say, Done my part
now, the rest is up to you." And so it is with our God. Romans
8 describes how He foreknew us, how He predestinated us, how
He called us, how He justified us, how He glorified us. Everything
that we need in this life and that life which is to come is
given to us by our Sovereign Lord. The Scriptures tell us,
and ye are complete in Him, lacking nothing. Our Lord prayed, give
us this day our daily bread. And our God provides our daily
needs, both earthly provisions of food, shelter, and clothing.
But He also gives daily grace as grace is needed. He has promised,
My grace is sufficient. Someone once came to Brother
Henry Mahan and said, Brother Mahan, I don't believe I have
dying grace. And Henry said, Are you dying?
And they said, No. And Henry explained to them that
God just doesn't give you a big pile of grace. He doesn't fill
your bank account up with grace and just tell you to draw on
it as you need it. Because our lives would not be
based on faith if that were the case. He gives us grace daily
as it's needed. And just as He provided manna
daily in the wilderness for the nation of Israel as they wandered
there for 40 years, so He provides all the necessary provisions
and blessings as we need them. Our Lord told us in Matthew 6,
8 that your Father knows what things you have need of before
you ask Him. That's marvelous. David tells
us in Psalm 32, 25, I have been young, I am old, yet have I not seen
the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread. In these
four verses we have a complete picture of God's grace and mercy
toward sinners. He finds us in our filth, dying
in bondage He lifts up our head. He speaks kindly to us. He changes
our filthy garments and clothes us with the righteousness of
Christ. He provides all of our needs, both physical and spiritual,
for the rest of our lives here on earth. Now perhaps there's
one sitting here tonight or listening over the streaming that sees
himself in the bondage of sin, helpless to help yourself. If
so, I have good news for you. Christ stands ready to deliver
you. Our God delights in mercy. I would encourage you to plead
with Him to show you mercy, to beseech Him to deliver you from
the bondage of sin and despair. You can take comfort in the promise
of Christ when He said, He that cometh to me I will in no wise
pass out." There is hope for hopeless sinners, and that hope
is found in the finished work and the person of Christ. You
don't have to clean yourself up. Jehoiachin was not able to
clean himself up before the king brought him out of prison. God
does not expect a sinner to clean himself up. It's impossible anyway. He'll change your prison garment,
and He'll provide you with a robe of righteousness. As that old
hymn says, all the fitness that He requires is to feel the need
of Him. I would encourage you that you
feel your need of Him, to petition Him for grace, to petition Him
for mercy. And I can guarantee you, based
on the promises of our God, that that mercy will be given Lord willing, this coming Lord's
Day, Paul Pendleton will be with us from West Virginia. Paul has been to our conferences
before, but he's never preached for us. And a week from tonight,
we are scheduled to have Frank Tate back with us. So be in prayer
for those men. I hope that this has helped you. It certainly helped me in the
study of it. Lord bless you. You're dismissed.