25July 2011 2 Chronicles 36:16

¹⁶But they mocked God’s messengers, despised his words and scoffed at his prophets until the wrath of the LORD was aroused against his people and there was no remedy.

These attitudes and actions sound very familiar today. Our culture has adopted this mocking, despising, and scoffing toward Jesus. They would fit right into this crowd. But just as wrath was in their future, wrath is in ours as well. No culture can stand without a moral center. When everyone does what is right in their own eyes, then a culture rapidly deteriorates. It is only when a culture carries an agreed upon moral standard that justice can happen. Some will obey the rules because they know it is the right thing to do. Others will only obey the rules out of fear of punishment. But when there is no agreed upon set of cultural rules, nothing binds the culture together. And today in the U.S. there is no accepted set of rules. There is no standard that binds us all together. We can see this in families when one person believes it is OK to have outside romantic attachments, and the other person does not. A marriage like this is destined for destruction. One or both partners will have to change in order for the marriage to survive. We see the media mocking, despising and scoffing at moral standards. They claim moral standards are a thing from a backward era. We have long since grown past them. We are smarter than they were. And yet they become angry when someone steps on their standard and they are hurt. We see this in the GLBT circle. They hate our standard, so they are pushing their standard on us. And when someone violates their standard, they are incensed. But when someone violates our standard, they are indifferent. Wrath is on its way.

24July 2011 2 Chronicles 32:25

²⁵But Hezekiah’s heart was proud and he did not respond to the kindness shown him; therefore the LORD’s wrath was on him and on Judah and Jerusalem.

King Hezekiah was proud. We might say that he was self-sufficient, that he felt like he didn’t need anyone or anything, including the LORD. Not a good place to be. Everyone needs someone. We are made for relationship and interdependence. The only person who doesn’t need anyone is the LORD Himself. Only God is self-sufficient. That is one of the characteristics of being God. Do you make your own air? Then you need another to make it. That other is the LORD. We need the simplest things to survive, and we don’t have the ability to provide them for ourselves, separate from the provision of God. Our ability to work, to communicate, to interact are all programmed into the very fiber of our being, our DNA. We might be able to slice it, but we don’t know how to build it from scratch. We don’t know its complexities and subtleties. We can do brute reshaping of the DNA, but we can’t program a living thing without copying what God has already made. Hezekiah did many things right during his reign, but he thought he was responsible for the positive things that happened. He took credit, at least to himself, for the good that happened. He should have been credit to the LORD. What things are you taking credit for that the LORD has done? In what ways are you not being humble?

23July 2011 2 Chronicles 29:26

²⁶So the Levites stood ready with David’s instruments, and the priests with their trumpets.

Worship in the Temple was a noisy affair. I am sure it was organized and was probably awe-inspiring. Imagine hundreds of musicians playing at church, and then add in the hundreds of singers. That would be an event worthy of the God we worship. Hezekiah has become king. The previous several kings have led lives and led the people in ways that did not honor the LORD. In fact, they were in outright rebellion against Him. The king led the way in the rebellion, promoting the worship of idols and desecration of the Temple. As a result Judah’s enemies have run rampant in their conquests. But one of the first things the newly crowned king Hezekiah does is clean up the Temple and reestablish the proper worship practices. He knows, and so do the people, that the reason they are in such trouble is because the LORD is disciplining them. He wants them to return so He is making it very difficult for them. He is putting pressure on them in an attempt to get them to turn and surrender to Himself. Sin brings pressure. Obedience brings pressure as well, but the pressures are different. Sin’s pressure brings a darkness and ever increasing doom. Obedience’s pressure offers the reward of further positive benefits if obedience is continued. It feels good to tell the truth. There is a lifting of a burden when the truth is told, rather than making up the lie. The lie carries a negative weight. The truth lifts a weight. Both have their pressures.

22July 2011 2 Chronicles 25:15

¹⁵ The anger of the LORD burned against Amaziah, and he sent a prophet to him, who said, “Why do you consult this people’s gods, which could not save their own people from your hand?”

Amaziah was the king and had just led his army into battle and returned victorious. He knew this happened because the LORD was with him. He had listened to the LORD’s instructions and refused to allow soldiers from Israel to fight with him. But now he comes home from victory and starts to ask the gods from the losing side for advice. That is just plain stupid! If they had any power they would have brought their side victory. It can be hard to have faith and exercise it. Often we trust the Lord through a difficult time, but then drop back into our old habits after the crisis is over. Our devotional life becomes less important. We start to think that we can handle this one by ourselves. We start trusting the old gods, the old coping mechanisms, instead of continuing to trust the Lord. We take the occasional drink to help us fall asleep after the hard day. We eat the extra brownie when the stress rises. We retreat to the video game. We chat with “friends” on FB and “get things off our chest,” because “they understand us.” We start with the little steps away from faith, and then take giant leaps into sin. We are not so different than this foolish king. If we trust Christ, we are on the winning side. So why in the world would we want to trust a loser?

21July 2011 2 Chronicles 23:7

⁷“The Levites are to station themselves around the king, each man with his weapons in his hand. Anyone who enters the temple must be put to death. Stay close to the king wherever he goes.”

PSD. Personal Security Detail. We know a lot about these. We see them in the news anytime someone of important walks through a crowd. This passage talks about all the security plans that are developed for the revealing of the King’s son. He has been hidden for seven years from his enemies. All his other relatives have been killed in an effort to steal his power. Now is the time he is going to be anointed king. Sometimes evil people plot evil things. In our day, we don’t need a reminder of this. We are at war with an evil that manifests itself though Islam. Not everything we have done in the execution of this conflict has been righteous, but evil can’t accomplish anything that is righteous. Nothing Islam does is righteous. Its root is evil, so all its fruit is evil. I know that this is not a politically correct statement, but it is true none the less. It is a shame that we have to think about personal safety so much these days. We get groped when we travel by plane. We have to have a passport to go across the border to Canada or Mexico. We can’t take a cruise without one. All this security and all because a few people were successful at living consistently with their belief system!

20July 2011 2 Chronicles 20:35

³⁵Later, Jehoshaphat king of Judah made an alliance with Ahaziah king of Israel, who was guilty of wickedness.

Sometimes even the best leaders make mistakes. King Jehoshaphat’s obedience and submission to the LORD has just been recounted earlier in this chapter. He did exactly the right thing when he was confronted with an overwhelming enemy. He sought the LORD wholeheartedly and he lead the people in seeking Him. There was no ambiguity is who won the battle. It was the LORD. They arrived at the battlefield only to find that the enemy had all killed each other. The Israelites only had to collect the plunder. Even when great decisions are made, and the Lord brings victory, that does not mean that every decision after that will be a correct one. We all can stray. We all have the capability to blow it. And so the King chooses to join together in a trading partnership with the King of Israel who has strayed from following the LORD. He might have had the best of intensions, but the result is catastrophe for that business venture. Everything is lost. We must be careful with whom we make alliances. You can’t make a pact with the Devil and expect him to keep his side of the bargain. You can’t make a deal with deceivers and expect them to be honest this time.