2 Kings 24; 2 Kings 25; John 5:1-24

1 It was during his reign that Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon invaded the country. Jehoiakim became his puppet. But after three years he had had enough and revolted.

2 God dispatched a succession of raiding bands against him: Babylonian, Aramean, Moabite, and Ammonite. The strategy was to destroy Judah. Through the preaching of his servants and prophets, God had said he would do this, and now he was doing it.

3 None of this was by chance - it was God's judgment as he turned his back on Judah because of the enormity of the sins of Manasseh - Manasseh, the killer-king,

4 who made the Jerusalem streets flow with the innocent blood of his victims. God wasn't about to overlook such crimes.

5 The rest of the life and times of Jehoiakim is written in The Chronicles of the Kings of Judah.

6 Jehoiakim died and was buried with his ancestors. His son Jehoiachin became the next king.

7 The threat from Egypt was now over - no more invasions by the king of Egypt - for by this time the king of Babylon had captured all the land between the Brook of Egypt and the Euphrates River, land formerly controlled by the king of Egypt.

8 Jehoiachin was eighteen years old when he became king. His rule in Jerusalem lasted only three months. His mother's name was Nehushta daughter of Elnathan; she was from Jerusalem.

9 In God's opinion he also was an evil king, no different from his father.

10 The next thing to happen was that the officers of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon attacked Jerusalem and put it under siege.

11 While his officers were laying siege to the city, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon paid a personal visit.

12 And Jehoiachin king of Judah, along with his mother, officers, advisors, and government leaders, surrendered.

13 Nebuchadnezzar emptied the treasuries of both The Temple of God and the royal palace and confiscated all the gold furnishings that Solomon king of Israel had made for The Temple of God. This should have been no surprise - God had said it would happen.

14 And then he emptied Jerusalem of people - all its leaders and soldiers, all its craftsmen and artisans. He took them into exile, something like ten thousand of them! The only ones he left were the very poor.

15 He took Jehoiachin into exile to Babylon. With him he took the king's mother, his wives, his chief officers, the community leaders,

16 anyone who was anybody - in round numbers, seven thousand soldiers plus another thousand or so craftsmen and artisans, all herded off into exile in Babylon.

17 Then the king of Babylon made Jehoiachin's uncle, Mattaniah, his puppet king, but changed his name to Zedekiah.

18 Zedekiah was twenty-one years old when he started out as king. He was king in Jerusalem for eleven years. His mother's name was Hamutal the daughter of Jeremiah. Her hometown was Libnah.

19 As far as God was concerned Zedekiah was just one more evil king, a carbon copy of Jehoiakim.

20 The source of all this doom to Jerusalem and Judah was God's anger - God turned his back on them as an act of judgment. And then Zedekiah revolted against the king of Babylon.

1 The revolt dates from the ninth year and tenth month of Zedekiah's reign. Nebuchadnezzar set out for Jerusalem immediately with a full army. He set up camp and sealed off the city by building siege mounds around it.

2 The city was under siege for nineteen months (until the eleventh year of Zedekiah).

3 By the fourth month of Zedekiah's eleventh year, on the ninth day of the month, the famine was so bad that there wasn't so much as a crumb of bread for anyone.

4 Then there was a breakthrough. At night, under cover of darkness, the entire army escaped through an opening in the wall (it was the gate between the two walls above the King's Garden). They slipped through the lines of the Babylonians who surrounded the city and headed for the Jordan on the Arabah Valley road.

5 But the Babylonians were in pursuit of the king and they caught up with him in the Plains of Jericho. By then Zedekiah's army had deserted and was scattered.

6 The Babylonians took Zedekiah prisoner and marched him off to the king of Babylon at Riblah, then tried and sentenced him on the spot.

7 Zedekiah's sons were executed right before his eyes; the summary murder of his sons was the last thing he saw, for they then blinded him. Securely handcuffed, he was hauled off to Babylon.

8 In the nineteenth year of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, on the seventh day of the fifth month, Nebuzaradan, the king of Babylon's chief deputy, arrived in Jerusalem.

9 He burned The Temple of God to the ground, went on to the royal palace, and then finished off the city - burned the whole place down.

10 He put the Babylonian troops he had with him to work knocking down the city walls.

11 Finally, he rounded up everyone left in the city, including those who had earlier deserted to the king of Babylon, and took them off into exile.

12 He left a few poor dirt farmers behind to tend the vineyards and what was left of the fields.

13 The Babylonians broke up the bronze pillars, the bronze washstands, and the huge bronze basin (the Sea) that were in The Temple of God and hauled the bronze off to Babylon.

14 They also took the various bronze-crafted liturgical accessories used in the services of Temple worship,

15 as well as the gold and silver censers and sprinkling bowls. The king's deputy didn't miss a thing - he took every scrap of precious metal he could find.

16 The amount of bronze they got from the two pillars, the Sea, and all the washstands that Solomon had made for The Temple of God was enormous - they couldn't weigh it all!

17 Each pillar stood twenty-seven feet high, plus another four and a half feet for an ornate capital of bronze filigree and decorative fruit.

18 The king's deputy took a number of special prisoners: Seraiah the chief priest, Zephaniah the associate priest, three wardens,

19 the chief remaining army officer, five of the king's counselors, the accountant, the chief recruiting officer for the army, and sixty men of standing from among the people.

20 Nebuzaradan the king's deputy marched them all off to the king of Babylon at Riblah.

21 And there at Riblah, in the land of Hamath, the king of Babylon killed the lot of them in cold blood. Judah went into exile, orphaned from her land.

22 Regarding the common people who were left behind in Judah, this: Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon appointed Gedaliah son of Ahikam, the son of Shaphan, as their governor.

23 When veteran army officers among the people heard that the king of Babylon had appointed Gedaliah, they came to Gedaliah at Mizpah. Among them were Ishmael son of Nethaniah, Johanan son of Kareah, Seraiah son of Tanhumeth the Netophathite, Jaazaniah the son of the Maacathite, and some of their followers.

24 Gedaliah assured the officers and their men, giving them his word, "Don't be afraid of the Babylonian officials. Go back to your farms and families and respect the king of Babylon. Trust me, everything is going to be all right."

25 Some time later - it was in the seventh month - Ishmael son of Nethaniah, the son of Elishama (he had royal blood in him), came back with ten men and killed Gedaliah, the traitor Jews, and the Babylonian officials who were stationed at Mizpah - a bloody massacre.

26 But then, afraid of what the Babylonians would do, they all took off for Egypt, leaders and people, small and great.

27 When Jehoiachin king of Judah had been in exile for thirty-seven years, Evil-Merodach became king in Babylon and let Jehoiachin out of prison. This release took place on the twenty-seventh day of the twelfth month.

28 The king treated him most courteously and gave him preferential treatment beyond anything experienced by the other political prisoners held in Babylon.

29 Jehoiachin took off his prison garb and for the rest of his life ate his meals in company with the king.

30 The king provided everything he needed to live comfortably.

1 Soon another Feast came around and Jesus was back in Jerusalem.

2 Near the Sheep Gate in Jerusalem there was a pool, in Hebrew called Bethesda, with five alcoves.

3 Hundreds of sick people - blind, crippled, paralyzed - were in these alcoves.

5 One man had been an invalid there for thirty-eight years.

6 When Jesus saw him stretched out by the pool and knew how long he had been there, he said, "Do you want to get well?"

7 The sick man said, "Sir, when the water is stirred, I don't have anybody to put me in the pool. By the time I get there, somebody else is already in."

8 Jesus said, "Get up, take your bedroll, start walking."

9 The man was healed on the spot. He picked up his bedroll and walked off.

10 The Jews stopped the healed man and said, "It's the Sabbath. You can't carry your bedroll around. It's against the rules."

11 But he told them, "The man who made me well told me to. He said, 'Take your bedroll and start walking.'"

12 They asked, "Who gave you the order to take it up and start walking?"

13 But the healed man didn't know, for Jesus had slipped away into the crowd.

14 A little later Jesus found him in the Temple and said, "You look wonderful! You're well! Don't return to a sinning life or something worse might happen."

15 The man went back and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well.

16 That is why the Jews were out to get Jesus - because he did this kind of thing on the Sabbath.

17 But Jesus defended himself. "My Father is working straight through, even on the Sabbath. So am I."

18 That really set them off. The Jews were now not only out to expose him; they were out to kill him. Not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was calling God his own Father, putting himself on a level with God.

19 So Jesus explained himself at length. "I'm telling you this straight. The Son can't independently do a thing, only what he sees the Father doing. What the Father does, the Son does.

20 The Father loves the Son and includes him in everything he is doing.

21 for in the same way that the Father raises the dead and creates life, so does the Son. The Son gives life to anyone he chooses.

22 Neither he nor the Father shuts anyone out. The Father handed all authority to judge over to the Son

23 so that the Son will be honored equally with the Father. Anyone who dishonors the Son, dishonors the Father, for it was the Father's decision to put the Son in the place of honor.

24 "It's urgent that you listen carefully to this: Anyone here who believes what I am saying right now and aligns himself with the Father, who has in fact put me in charge, has at this very moment the real, lasting life and is no longer condemned to be an outsider. This person has taken a giant step from the world of the dead to the world of the living.