2 Chronicles 36:17 says. Therefore he brought upon them the king of the Chaldees, who slew their young men with the sword in the house of their sanctuary, and had no compassion upon young man or maiden, old man, or him that stooped for age: he gave them all into his hand. Since the people of Judah refused to listen to God's prophets and even mistreated them, God allowed the Chaldeans to defeat them. No one was spared by the defeating army, whether they were young or old, male or female. All those who refuse to listen to the gospel today, which we as Christians should be sharing with them, will never be spared from God's judgment once they are old enough to know right from wrong, and it won't matter who they are. We are all individually responsible for accepting or rejecting Jesus Christ as our personal Savior and Lord. Verse eighteen adds, And all the vessels of the house of God, great and small, and the treasures of the house of the Lord, and the treasures of the king, and of his princes; all these he brought to Babylon. All the vessels of the temple, those things dedicated to the worship of God, and all the treasures of the king and princes of Judah were brought to Babylon. There are still places in the world today where Christians are imprisoned and have all their property confiscated, but if that happens, we need to pray it is because they remained true to God and not because they turned away from Him as the people of Judah had. Verse nineteen adds, And they burnt the house of God, and brake down the wall of Jerusalem, and burnt all the palaces thereof with fire, and destroyed all the goodly vessels thereof. The temple was also destroyed by being burned, and the walls Jerusalem were torn down as well as all the palaces and any vessels that remained. All that Solomon had built was destroyed. Matthew Henry says that vessels here refer to all the furnishings of the temple used in worship. We as followers of Christ should never allow anything to come between God and us, and if it does, we need to remove it from our lives. The temple was ultimately done away with by Jesus Christ, when He, instead of the temple, became the way to get to the Heavenly Father, and if we don't accept Him, then everything we have will one day be destroyed and we will be sent away to everlasting punishment. Even if we do accept Him, one day everything we have in this world will be destroyed and only those treasures that we have laid up in Heaven will last. Verse twenty-states, And them that had escaped from the sword carried he away to Babylon; where they were servants to him and his sons until the reign of the kingdom of Persia: Those who weren't killed were taken away to be servants in Babylon until the Persians came into power. We are going to be held captive by sin and serve the powers of this world until we are set free by accepting Jesus Christ as our personal Savior and Lord, and there is no other way to be set free. Verse twenty-one adds, To fulfil the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed her sabbaths: for as long as she lay desolate she kept sabbath, to fulfil threescore and ten years. This captivity lasted for seventy-years, and the land if Israel, of which Judah was a part, lay fallow for that time. God had given the people of Israel a land flowing with milk and honey, but when they rebelled against Him, the land was still there, but they no longer benefitted from it. God has given us a heavenly home if we accept His gift of salvation, and it will always be there, but if we do not accept His gift of salvation, we will never benefit from it. Verse twenty-two continues, Now in the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, that the word of the Lord spoken by the mouth of Jeremiah might be accomplished, the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom, and put it also in writing, saying, When the Persians defeated the Babylonians, God worked through Cyrus to begin to restore the kingdom of Israel. We will never have an earthly ruler restore us to a right relationship with God, but He has already sent His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, to make restoration possible. Verse twenty-three concludes, Thus saith Cyrus king of Persia, All the kingdoms of the earth hath the Lord God of heaven given me; and he hath charged me to build him an house in Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Who is there among you of all his people? The Lord his God be with him, and let him go up. Cyrus said that he had been called by God to restore the temple in Jerusalem and made a proclamation to this effect, and then asked who of the Israelites would go to do the work. Jesus Christ has set us free if wea accept Him, calls on us to do His work in the world today, then the question becomes will we accept Him and do so. No earthly power should determine whether we do or not.
