2 Chronicles 36:11-17 “Zedekiah was twenty-one years old when he became king, and he reigned eleven years in Jerusalem. (12) He did evil in the sight of the Lord his God, and did not humble himself before Jeremiah the prophet, who spoke from the mouth of the Lord. (13) And he also rebelled against King Nebuchadnezzar, who had made him swear an oath by God; but he stiffened his neck and hardened his heart against turning to the Lord God of Israel. (14) Moreover all the leaders of the priests and the people transgressed more and more, according to all the abominations of the nations, and defiled the house of the Lord which He had consecrated in Jerusalem. (15) And the Lord God of their fathers sent warnings to them by His messengers, rising up early and sending them, because He had compassion on His people and on His dwelling place. (16) But they mocked the messengers of God, despised His words, and scoffed at His prophets, until the wrath of the Lord arose against His people, till there was no remedy. (17) Therefore He brought against them the king of the Chaldeans, who killed their young men with the sword in the house of their sanctuary, and had no compassion on young man or virgin, on the aged or the weak; He gave them all into his hand.”
God is merciful and His desire is for the nations to walk in peace and prosperity. And so when nations begin to rebel against His ways, His first step is to send men to those nations to counsel them to repent of their ways and begin to walk in His statutes once again. However, if those nations refuse to hear the messengers that He sends to them then the Lord escalates His warnings to them by allowing certain judgements to begin to fall on that nation, such as reducing the size of their borders as discussed in an earlier section. Nevertheless, if a nation continues to persist in resisting God’s counsel then the time finally comes when God pronounces a final judgement on that nation, thus bringing an end to that nation. The above passage of scripture clearly reveals this truth to us because it states that the nation of Judah consistently rejected God’s counsel, until they reached the point where there was no more remedy for them. In other words, they had reached a point of no return and God’s wrath was then poured out on that nation. God did that by bringing the nation of the Chaldeans against them to conquer them and remove them from the land off Judah, thus causing them to cease to exist as a sovereign nation.
Michael E.B. Maher
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