2 Chron 36:15 &16
15
The LORD, the God of their fathers, sent word to them through his messengers
again and again, because he had pity on his people and on his dwelling place.
16 But 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.
A wise man once said that a good preacher would do well to approach each week's message with a Bible in one hand and a newspaper in the other. I've always found that to be good advice. The task of the preacher is to help folks apply God's Word to the everyday situations of life in our time. That challenge has never been needed more than today and yet today... I struggle to find the words.
With all that has gone on in our world this week, frankly I struggle to know where to start. We've wept with families of those victims who were slain while they were worshiping in Charleston. We've seen terrorist attacks in France. In our country, politics has overtaken common sense as the discussion has shifted from mental illness to hate to gun control to an antique flag that flies over a state house in South Carolina. We've been told that "southern pride" is no longer acceptable... but "gay pride" is to be celebrated. Indeed, just today the Supreme Court of the United States made official what has been a steady but seismic shift in our culture over the last several decades... redefining the meaning of marriage and making of mockery of God's design & desire for his creation. I am disappointed in my country today.
Interspersed between my daily doses of news, I've been digging again into the story of Israel. As I read thru chapters 16 & 17, "The Beginning of the End" and "The Kingdom's Fall"... it is summed up pretty well in the text above from 2 Chronicles. After the kingdom divided (itself a national tragedy) one bad king after another occupied the thrones of both kingdoms and led their respective nations steadily farther and farther away from the Lord. In chapter 16 we saw that God finally allowed the pagan empire of Assyria and their idol-worshiping king, Shalmanesar, to come against and destroy Israel... wiping it off the map and out of history. This week, ch. 17, the same thing is happening to Judah- though God must've given them some additional time only because of a few good kings who did lead the people righteously. Josiah was one of those (there were only five.) When Josiah became king they cleaned out the closets at the Temple and somebody found -lo & behold- a copy of the OT Law. Most scholars believe that what they found was the book of Deuteronomy. It had been so long since anybody had read it... this was quite a find! Josiah led the people to reclaim God's Word and it sparked a great revival in the land! But his reforms and the subsequent resurgence of faithfulness was short-lived. His son and others resumed their previous practices and again led the nation into despair.
And it wasn't like they hadn't been warned! No, that's the worse part! God has sent one messenger after another to warn the people. "You continue down this path, God will not contend with you forever!" But they refused to listen. They mocked God's messengers. They hated their words-- probably called them "intolerant" or "hateful" or "judgmental" or something like that. They scoffed and ridiculed them... until God had had enough. And in a series of raids that culminated in 586 BC, God allowed (directed?) the pagan nation of Babylon and their crazy evil king, Nebuchadnezzar, to lay siege to Judah and burn the capital of Jerusalem to the ground... including the Temple of the LORD. As one of God's messengers, Jeremiah, watched it burn... Nebuchadnezzar hauled Judah's once privileged residents into captivity where they would spend the next seventy years as exiles in a foreign land. No wonder Jeremiah is known as the weeping prophet. You would have wept, too, if you'd seen the things he saw.
God had had enough. And he acted. He acted in judgment. It doesn't sound very kind until you read "the rest of the story" and realize that God was indeed demonstrating great grace & mercy as he was preparing his people for the sending of the Messiah... and making a way for them to return not just to their homeland but to Him! That's all that God wants... his people to return to him... in the kind of relationship unmarred by sin that he had with them in the beginning. But first they must realize that they are lost without him and that they need him more than anything else.
I've never been one of those "hellfire & brimstone" preachers or prognosticators of "doom & gloom" but I just can't help but notice more than a few similarities between their time and ours. It makes me wonder how long God will contend with us today until he acts in judgment. I for one am praying, "Lord come quickly" for I know the world God has in store for us is far grander than the one we are currently experiencing. I find solace in the fact that "this world is not my home" and that my true citizenship resides in heaven where "we anxiously await a savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ." (cf. Phil 3:20)
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