Wednesday Night Bible Study - 2 Chronicles 15:12-15

Before I begin the reading, one of the leafs I got was the wrong passage, so I ordered a replacement. And I just got that. I'll pass it around if anyone wants to look at it. This is from, let's see, this was printed in 1549.

This is from the Matthews Bible, which the Matthews Bible was a printing of Tyndale's translation of the Bible. This passage is interesting because up here in the upper left-hand column, it talks about Gehazi trying to get Naaman to pay him money.

And then he's cursed with leprosy because of this. And later on in writings about Simoni, they all observe that those who commit acts of simony become lepers. Now the reason why they say this, while there was some real superstition about it because they lived at a time with a lot of plagues and everything, the reason why they said that is because Gehazi is told that his descendants would have leprosy forever.

And Ambrose and those after him observed that if someone has leprosy, they're not going to have descendants forever. So who could his descendants be but his spiritual descendants who engage in the same sin that he does?

So after that, you look at Wycliffe, you look at Hus. They use the term leprosy to describe simoniacs just constantly. So if you'd like to look at it, I will pass this around. Also note that this is, see there are four I's before it says kings spelled with a Y.

So the spelling is interesting. Four I's and then K-Y-N-G-E-S for kings. Why four? Why is this fourth kings? Well, it's fourth kings because first Samuel is first kings. Second Samuel is second kings.

First kings is third kings. And then this is from second kings. So this is second kings chapter five that talks about Gehazi. I'll pass it around. All right. I will go ahead and read Second Chronicles 15.

We are in verses 12 through 15. So I'll start at verse eight. As soon as Asa heard these words, the prophecy of Azariah, the son of Oded, he took courage and put away the testable idols from all the land of Judah and Benjamin and from the cities that he had taken in the hill country of Ephraim.

And he repaired the altar of the Lord that was in front of the vestibule of the house of the Lord. And he gathered all Judah and Benjamin and those from Ephraim, Manasseh, and Simeon who were residing with them.

For great numbers had deserted to him from Israel when they saw that the Lord, his God, was with him. They were gathered at Jerusalem in the third month of the 15th year of the reign of Asa. They sacrificed to the Lord on that day from the spoil that they had brought 700 oxen and 7 ,000 sheep.

And they entered into a covenant to seek the Lord, the God of their fathers, with all their heart and with all their soul. But that whoever would not seek the Lord, the God of Israel, should be put to death, whether young or old, man or woman.

They swore an oath to the Lord with a loud voice and with shouting and with trumpets and horns. And to all Judah rejoiced over the oath, for they had sworn with all their heart and had sought him with their whole desire.

And he was found by them. And the Lord gave them rest all around. Amen. Okay, so in 2 Chronicles 15, it opens up with, and they entered into covenant to seek Jehovah, to seek the Lord. All right, so what covenant is this?

This is the covenant made through Moses. This is the old covenant that they are just renewing. This isn't a new kind of covenant. It's just a renewing of the covenant that already binds them. They are observing some degree of neglect.

They have begun taking it seriously again by destroying idols and worshiping the Lord. And they are committing themselves to that. Notably, we, in a sense, renew the new covenant with the Lord's Supper.

At least we, yeah, rededicate ourselves to our commitments in that covenant by the Lord's Supper. That is, it is a, our confession describes it as a bond and a pledge to each other, even. Good. All right, he goes on.

This is to seek the Lord in that it requires a zeal for right worship. And how does this relate to the preceding passage? Well, this follows a celebration as the people return to the city. They return to the city and they really are going to commit themselves to right worship.

The God of their fathers with all their heart and with all their souls. So they're going to seek the Lord who is the God of their fathers with all their heart and all their soul. All right, what does it mean to seek the Lord with all one's heart and soul?

Yeah, to worship him sincerely, not half-heartedly, not like Isaiah keeps mentioning throughout the book that people do without a whole heart, where their lips praise him, but their hearts are far from him.

That's not the, that's not sufficient. They should worship with a whole heart. Deuteronomy 6, verses four through nine say, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.

These words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise.

You shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. Okay, so when he says all their heart and all their soul, that is, well, first of all, it's a merism.

I point out that term pretty often. Like the heavens and the earth describing all of creation by two different parts. With heart and soul though, it's not really a merism in the sense of being two completely distinct halves of something, but being near synonyms that describe the same thing with different connotations.

So when it says all your heart and all your soul and all your might and all your strength, you know, et cetera, that is, those are not totally different things. Your heart is not different than your mind.

A lot of people will talk about those like they're totally different things and they do have different connotations, but they really aren't distinct things. So also when the Bible talks about your heart and soul and spirit, that's not distinguishing three things as though the spirit and the soul are different, right?

The spirit is the soul. There are different connotations with the word soul and the word spirit, but they are not different things. So with that, let's see. Okay, yes. Well, so that's one of the connotational differences, right?

Soul tends to refer to man and his relationship as being a creature breathed into, God breathing into dust, okay? Every time the word soul is used, you know, the word nefesh, breath, like it has to do with man, particularly as a creature of the dust of the earth.

And that doesn't really apply to angels, but it is a spiritual creature of the dust. So yeah, the term spirit is more distinct for angels. So for example, in 1 Corinthians chapter 15, when it talks about the natural body and the spiritual body, the Greek word that's being used there is not really the normal word for natural.

It's just the word that means soul, okay? So it's the soulish body and the spiritual body that's being described there. So when it's talking about the natural body, it's talking about Adam being breathed into dust, but then the spiritual body being one that's made fit for heaven, you know?

That's the difference that's being described. So when he talks about worshiping God with all their heart and with all their soul, that is alluding to this passage in Deuteronomy, which is a foundational passage about worship.

Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is one. Anyone know what this is called? The Shema, right? Yeah, Shema meaning hear. Hear, O Israel. That's how a lot of things are referred to in older writing just by the first word that starts them, Shema, just like Mary's song is the Magnificat because it starts off, my soul magnifies the Lord.

Okay, so when they are committing themselves in this way, they're committing themselves to the heart of that covenant. Remember, it says they're entering into the covenant and here we are, this is the covenant Moses made with the people, et cetera.

This is their original commitment to the Lord that they're renewing. Verse 13, in that whoever would not seek Jehovah, the God of Israel, should be put to death. All right, so what would constitute failing to seek the Lord?

At what point would someone be put to death if they don't seek him? Because obviously, you could seek him half-heartedly or something like that and no one would know on the inside. The idea is worshiping idols, right?

If you're going to turn away from the living God and worship idols or you're going to totally neglect the worship of God, these are things that would jeopardize the whole corporate commitment of the people that they had made covenantally to seek the Lord and so that would authorize them being put to death.

Now, today, there's certainly a implication when people do not serve the Lord. When people serve the Lord, it brings blessings of God on the whole land. This is a concept you can see repeated through scripture.

I did a sermon on this a while ago talking about the land mourning. At the same time, if a country does not have a particular covenant with God and cannot make a covenant with God because, yeah, these are things that need God to establish them and initiate them, there wouldn't be the same kind of authorization to kill someone just because they are not, they are not worshiping the Lord.

So it is by nature of this national covenant that they have that it is right to enforce the death penalty. A lot of people think, when they think about government and they look at passages like this, they either ask very simply questions like, well, what does the Bible say that the law should be?

And then look exactly at what Israel's doing, not realizing that there's a lot of special kinds of laws that are authorized by God because of the nature of that covenant. Or two, they just assume that whatever is going to produce good effects should be done.

And if that's the case, it would be good if there were only Christians in our land. So therefore, we should punish all those who are not Christians. Neither of those are really sound ways of going about it.

We should look at what has God actually authorized. Christianity is of course good and there are certain ways that it should be encouraged. But the, but yeah, the punishment of false worship as such privately is not, I do not believe is authorized by God for nations today.

Now, you could expand this though and talk about public kinds of worship. I don't necessarily have a problem with there being laws against public blasphemy because as you go around in public places, you should have somewhat of guarantee that you're not going to be assaulted or your kids aren't gonna be corrupted, et cetera.

And so there I could see some place for distinguishing between different religions, but as far as the, yeah, the enforcement of people's private worship, not the same authorization. Okay, next, what is the significance of the Lord being called the God of Israel in this context?

He demands people's fidelity and He is the God of their fathers. Remember, they are the true Israel. So therefore, yeah, therefore they should serve Him. And just as a reminder, because I know maybe some people are new, that is a constant theme throughout Chronicles is that Judah is the true Israel, okay?

It's not the Northern Kingdom named Israel that's the true Israel, Judah is the true Israel. All right, next, whether small or great, whether man or woman. Okay, the fact that it is applied to small and great, man and woman means that it is inflexibly supreme.

This is not a situation where they get to decide who might get some mercy and who wouldn't. That's not how this law would work. Those who turn away to other gods would be destroyed. Okay, let me go ahead and read some passages from Deuteronomy.

If your brother, the son of your mother or the son of your daughter or the wife you embrace or your friend who is your own soul, who is as your own soul entices you secretly saying, let us go and serve other gods, which neither you nor your fathers have known, some of the gods of the peoples who are around you, whether near you or far off from you, from the one end of the earth to the other, you shall not yield to him or listen to him, nor shall your eye pity him, nor shall you spare him, nor shall you conceal him, but you shall kill him.

Your hand shall be first against him to put him to death. And afterward, the hand of all the people, you shall stone him to death with stones because he sought to draw you away from the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.

You know, Jesus says you have to hate your own father and mother in order to follow him. This is what's being required in this picture that the law gives of that, is that if someone tells you to come serve other gods, it doesn't matter how close they are, it doesn't matter if it's your own spouse, you have to be the first one to cast the stone.

You should show them no mercy. Now, as I hear papers ripping over here, did that page make it around somewhere safe? Wait, where did it end up? Okay, okay, got it, all right, yeah, got it. All right, this next passage, Deuteronomy 17, two through seven, if there is found among you within any of your towns that the Lord your God is giving you a man or woman who does what is evil in the sight of the Lord your God and transgressing his covenant and has gone and served other gods and worship them or the sun or the moon or any of the hosts of heaven which I have forbidden and it is told you and you hear of it, then you shall inquire diligently and if it is true and certain that such an abomination has been done in Israel, then you shall bring out to your gates that man or woman who has done this evil thing and you shall stone that man or woman to death with stones.

On the evidence of two witnesses or three witnesses, the one who is to die shall be put to death. Persons shall not be put to death on the evidence of one witness. The hand of the witnesses shall be first against him to put him to death and afterward, the hand of all the people.

So you shall purge the evil from your midst. It's necessary for the people to purge the evil from their midst. Okay, how does this relate to the passage in Deuteronomy? It's showing that those terms that there's no mercy to be shown to the idolater in the land of Israel.

All right, verse 14, and they swore to Jehovah with a loud voice and was shouting with trumpets and with cornets. Okay, what do they swear when they swear with a loud voice? This is the covenant that they are making or that they are renewing.

What is the significance of this happening with a loud voice? They're doing so enthusiastically and unashamed as we near the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. You know that on the top of the list of signatures, there's one really massive one, right?

John Hancock, and that's why it's called John Hancock because he was just so enthusiastic to put his name to that, big letters. Okay, that's what the people are doing. They're yelling, yes, yes, this is, we are agreeing to this.

These instruments are, yeah, instruments that show that there's an enthusiasm about this. Let me go ahead and bring up a couple of passages that use these same instruments. Psalm 98, six says, with trumpets and the sound of the horn, make a joyful noise before the King of the Lord.

Okay, so trumpets and horn are described as joyful. And Psalm 98, six, Hosea 5, eight, blow the horn in Gibeah, the trumpet in Ramah, sound the alarm in Beth-Avon, we follow you, O Benjamin. So there, it's talking about destruction for the enemies of God and even those enemies of God that are among his own people, as we're describing here.

Okay, verse 15, and all Judah rejoiced at the oath, for they had sworn with all their heart and sought him with their whole desire. Just as we talked about heart and soul, now we have heart and desire.

So to do this with one's whole heart, without reservation or equivocation, you can imagine when someone swears something, you know, they've got their fingers crossed behind their back, they don't mean what they mean, you know, depends on what the word is, is, stuff like that.

Yeah, it gets me every time I watch a politician swear to uphold the Constitution, because most of them are completely dedicated to destroying very basic things in the Constitution. And maybe you've heard me make this illustration before, but I especially find that interesting for certain jobs whose whole purpose is to violate the Constitution.

I would argue that the TSA is a violation of the Fourth Amendment, which is supposed, or Fourth Amendment, excuse me, which is supposed to, yeah, give people free ability to travel. And TSA kind of prevents people from doing that.

It's search and seizure just applied across the board. So, yeah, imagine that as a TSA agent to swear to uphold the Constitution and your whole job essentially to violate it, and probably not even considering the question.

You know, maybe some people consider it very seriously and they come to a different conclusion, that's one thing, but many people aren't even thinking about it. You know, they're just, oh, whatever, I'll just swear this thing that I'm supposed to do to get a job, get a paycheck.

All right. Common question. Yes. How would you update air and all that?

Yeah, if I were a king for a day, I would privatize it. So you could make it something that the airport provided, you could make it something that the airline provided. And then maybe there would be certain airspace restrictions depending on what kind of policies different airlines or airports enforce, you know, et cetera.

But yeah, just the inability to travel period, you know, is pretty, yeah, that's heavy handed. And if the Constitution needs to change, then the Constitution needs to change, but people should not take those sorts of commitments lightly when they make an oath.

Yeah, and just to make that clear, what I'm pointing out is not the absolute goodness of the Fourth Amendment. I'm pointing out the seriousness of making an oath to uphold something and then not really caring about it.

Okay, 15b, did we get there? How does this motivate rejoicing at the oath? I don't think I answered that. Yeah, okay, they're seeking this with all their desire, unmitigated zeal, yeah. All Judas swears with all heart and seeks with all desire.

That's, you know, notice the all repeated here. And this wholeness of devotion motivates rejoicing because it gives the people pleasure to honor the Lord. And you can imagine that there's like a communal force behind this too, that they're all excited because they're all excited.

Think about how that, you know, affects the body when you're excited to serve the Lord. It affects others. When you're really, you know, emotionless about serving the Lord, it affects others. So think about your duty to encourage others just by having a good attitude about the faith.

If you go about your life gloomy, if you go about worship gloomy, and maybe there's kind of a sense of holiness that you have in your mind about it, like I'm really pious because I'm really suffering, et cetera.

Depending on what the situation is, you could just be discouraging everybody needlessly just to kind of get pity or sympathy for yourself. Don't do that. Think about the need to be excited about the Lord so that others are excited about the Lord because there is something that happens communally in all this.

I mean, I'm sure you've been in a situation, some kind of church situation before where everyone is excited about what the Lord is doing and it affects you, you know, it really does encourage. So just think about that, that you don't have to be a hapless victim of your circumstances around you.

You could actually be the cause affecting others, stirring them up to joy and devotion. All right, 15b, and he was found by them and Jehovah gave them rest all around. Remember that was the promise. If you seek the Lord, he will be found by you.

That's what the prophet Azariah said. And so it happened. They sought the Lord with all their heart and with all their desire and he was found. So what does it mean that he was found? They had favor with him.

They received his favor. So they did not suffer wars. They had peace for many years. First Kings 15 reports that there was a war with Baasha. So it's possible that the intention here is to refer to external wars with other nations rather than things that would happen with Israel.

But regardless, the point of the framing is to show that God fulfilled his promise in the measure that he intended to. So yeah, there's great blessing for seeking the Lord, for worshiping him with your whole heart and not turning away to other things.

Everyone here knows, hopefully, that the prosperity gospel is wrong. The idea that if you serve the Lord, you're gonna get health, wealth, et cetera. What's wrong with that is not that God blesses with prosperity those who serve him.

That's true. The wrong part about that is the assumption that it would be immaterial things. So don't think that the answer is instead that, oh, well, there's absolutely no relationship between me seeking the Lord and me receiving any kind of blessing from him.

No, there's a great relationship. You just shouldn't assume what the nature or what the nature of the reward would be. Don't assume that it's a material thing. Also, it is not a meritorious reward. It's not as though the things that we do have real merit and so God is exchanging them.

It's still a merciful gift of his, but as we seek him, he gives us this guarantee that he will uphold us as we serve him. All right, he gives them rest all around. Explain that. That means they have peace.

How does it relate to this covenant? They are, yeah, they're just, it is by virtue of them upholding the covenant that he upholds their end, is his end, excuse me, of the covenant. All right, do you seek the Lord with your whole heart?

How are Christians today to demonstrate their commitment and zeal for the Lord? What blessings do Christians receive today? And they're seeking the Lord. So that last one, getting at what I was getting, what blessings do Christians have?

Through the Spirit, it's a huge one. You know, you serve the Lord, you're going to think about things rightly, you're gonna be joyful, you're gonna be peaceful in a way that those who are not connected to the vine are not going to be.

They're gonna be dead spiritually. So that's a very simple one. Any thoughts on this? Any questions? All right, how do you demonstrate your commitment and zeal for the Lord? Yeah, serving him with your heart and your soul in whatever circumstances he calls you, but most quintessentially in worship, which many people demote as being very secondary to everything else.

Now, on one hand, as I pointed out from Isaiah, there are people who would serve God outwardly, but then not inwardly. Certainly that is hypocrisy, that's not good. But to respond to that with getting rid of the outward and pretending like you could have some kind of inward that matters when there's no outward is also very silly, but that is what a lot of people do.

I don't need, you know, I don't need church to serve God. You know, I can just serve him at home. I can have church on my TV or whatever the case may be. A lot of people have these ideas that this more kind of organic service is the more real kind, and that's the kind that God appreciates, whereas if it has any of the trappings of religion, it's therefore not as meaningful.

That's a foolish way of thinking about it because God has ordained worship.

It is, yeah, right?

I mean, so I would memorize a verse, you know, whether it be Hebrews 10, 25 or something else, just memorize a verse that talks about the importance of gathering and keep appealing to the authority of God.

It's too easy to try to appeal to your own pragmatics over their pragmatics. That's not what you want to do. You want to appeal to God's authority. And then second, and I find myself doing this pretty often, is I'm working with a lot of scripture in the background, and I kind of, I have this tendency to assume the other person is too, so I will operate on summaries of scripture and assume they know where it's coming from.

But yeah, if you actually have real scripture, that can be powerful, you know, just to be able to quote it verbatim and say this is what the Lord requires, this isn't me, this is God. Not that I disagree with it or anything, you know, I'm not saying distance yourself from the command, just it's not your authority, it's God's.

That's something that gets me, too, is when people try to distance them from the commands of God. You know, like the apologist who will talk about homosexuality, like, you know, if it were up to me, I wouldn't have put it this way, but, you know, it's just so cowardly.

Pure and undue. How are we coming up in evangelicalism with this idea that Christianity is not about a religion? It's just a relation, but the Bible says, no, be religious.

Yeah. Be religious. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of things going on. I mean, there are a lot of churches in different eras were more guilty of this, where there was a lot of hypocrisy, a lot of formality without really seeking the Lord, and so it's easy to respond in the other direction.

Jonathan Lehman describes the union of the two, you know, religion and relationship or whatever you want to call it, as bones in the flesh of a man, right? Put those together, you've got something good.

If you just have flesh without the bones, it's got a messy pile of flesh. That's not a good look, but a lot of people think that that kind of organic only, no structure approach is more beautiful, but they, yeah, the Bible offers bones.

Okay, one more. Yeah, you see a lot of people, I mean, I do think it's funny, but also often seen in our culture, I know the flip side is of course, where this movement in culture looks like, so you know, like Eastern Orthodoxy and Catholicism, because they're trying to attain, you know, that exact form of religiosity.

How do we try to combat that as evangelicals to try to speak to this sort of increasing way where people are like, ah, I need some connection to tradition to feel like, therefore, I'm in the proper path.

Like, how do we speak to that? Right, yeah, more verses. More verses. Yeah, I mean, you could just, you know, memorize the second commandment, that's a good one. I don't know how strongly that will communicate to someone.

I'm trying to think about some other verses. Usually when I'm talking to a Roman Catholic or someone who's Eastern Orthodox, I have a particular doctrine in mind rather than trying to describe their idolatrous heart around wanting that structure.

But there's probably some good scriptural principles that are evading me right now to address that, too. Yeah, I know James has been thinking about this stuff lately. You have anything? Understanding what?

Right, yeah. Yeah, abiding in the vine has to happen by the Holy Spirit. Doesn't happen by some sacerdotal action of a priest or anything like that. All right, let's go ahead and pray. Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for your word.

We pray that we would be a people who seek you and who find you, especially tonight as we seek you in prayer. May you be found and may you give us peace all around for many years even. We pray for the prosperity of your kingdom as you conquer.

In Jesus' name, amen.