2 Chronicles 27 1ff Jotham - ANOTHER King of Israel who was PERSONALLY righteous BUT FAILED to lead the PEOPLE into righteousness; - he even failed to lead his own SON into righteousness - ANOTHER example of a godly man who FAILED as a father; a powerful lesson: personal godliness is NO guarantee one's children will automatically become the same as well - one has to WORK at it, to SEEK it for them; SO Israel continued to be corrupt - he never called for NATIONAL repentance 1-5 perhaps Israel had grown SO corrupt, NO amount of godliness on the part of the leaders would be able to reverse them... 6 he grew powerful - became, developed AS he walked steadfastly before the Lord; 2 Chronicles 29 1ff Hezekiah! 2 Blessed be this woman Abijah for raising up a GODLY son! 3 no delays! ASAP he CLEANED HOUSE! 4ff he was MORE than just PERSONALLY righteous, he was PUBLICLY righteous! He required godly behavior of the NATION! 21ff "...because the King had ordered..."! how marvelous to work for a righteous King - what a JOY his commands are!! 29 the KING knelt down, leading/causing ALL with him to ALSO worship God; 34 Alas! The levites were READY for a Hezekiah when he came and so prepared themselves ASAP - I bet they started the moment they heard Hez had ordered the Temple re-opened! 36 "done quickly" oh God, that I were as eager to do so quickly what your Spirit prompts me to do! 2 Chronicles 30 2 AGAIN, a failure to prepare, to be ready! 10-11 many "scorned" - "nevertheless" SOME returned, some humbled themselves; 12 GOD was at work here! This was NEVER just the Kings initiative, God honored and responded to his heart; 14 having prepared their hearts, they began to prepare their city - not everyone who was prepared to give up idol worship, but the righteous purged their city of evil! How politically Incorrect! 15 the character of the people SHAMED the religious leaders - this revival began with the king, who led the people who motivated the priests - how sad and bitter an indictment against them that THEY were the LAST to respond to the revival - a trend ALSO seen during the Great Awakening of the 18th Century; 18-20 Hez KNEW what ultimately mattered to God; that their hearts were set on seeking after Him. WHY? Because that was HIS heart as well! What a powerful object lesson to any who would place ritual over relationship, who would bury themselves and/or others in legalism as a substitute for a heart yearning/seeking after God; 20 WHY "healed" the people? 22 Hez was a Barnabus - an encourager; the Levites hadn't done their stuff for GENERATIONS and now here they are doing it before God, the king, and the nation - they NEEDED encouragement! 23 having tasted the cup of joy in worshipping God in truth and righteousness, they were parched for more! They had to drink deeply from that cup, draught after heart restoring draught! How could they KNOW of the drought and famine that awaited them?! Were Daniel's parents alive now? Was this where THEIR spiritual rebirth occurred, producing such a man of God?! 2 Chronicles 31 1 Revival of the heart, GENUINE revival COMPELLS a life lived out for God Again, how politically incorrect! A heart filled with God canNOT abide, canNOT tolerate evil, wickedness, perversity; 16-19 they were faithful because they continued to enroll their children as Levites long after God ceased to be worshipped, long after BEING a Levite ceased to mean much in or to the Nation of Israel; although Israel had forgotten, the LEVITES had not; faithfulness on the face of such apostasy, in the face of such utter cultural rejection is faithfulness INDEED; though all Israel rejected Him, yet they would remain faithful AND they were the ones who continued to keep the genealogies alive, and thereby sustain the proofs and validations for Messiah hundreds of years hence; 2 Chronicles 32 1 just because your faithful and honor God, does NOT mean you'll be free from hassle and heartache; 4 1st he prepared the people, THEN he prepared the walls; for he knew regardless of how good the walls and other machinery of military might were if the people were weak, all ELSE would fail, too; 7-8 how to keep the people strong? Did he point to their new and improved walls? NO. He reminded them of WHO their REAL source of Power and Hope was! He focused their attention on WHO really mattered - NOT them, but HIM, the Lord! 10-19 a really very reasonable rational argument! Up to now, God had NOT done anything really amazing or miraculous; this had been a revival sans special effects! The message also demonstrated the Assyrians lack of understanding of Judaism, assuming it to be the same standard variation on a theme found everywhere else; 18 Psy-Ops!! What a clever fellow Sennacherib was! He clearly had done this before!! 19 Here's the bottom line! Here the author drives home the point! GOD IS NOT NOW AND NEVER HAS BEEN "LIKE" THE GODS OF OTHER PEOPLES OF THE WORLD! "...the work of men's hands..." How foolishly men follow after the work of their own hands! What a terrible tragic deceit to pour your life - my life- into the "work of men's hands" - lifeless empty gods who neither hear nor see nor care nor satisfy; how sad for men to define their lives by what they do, rather than by WHO they serve - how sad to live and die as only Hadley the Doctor, instead of Hadley the Man of God, the Servant of the Living God, of the Lord; 20 Sennacherib was merely a nuisance until he started slamming the Living God. But you gotta credit him with perceiving where the strength and resolve of Israel lay, NOT in their faith in a King, but their confidence in their God; 21 SOME ANGEL. Makes Rambo look pathetic; how grossly we underestimate our angelic colleagues! I consider the final tragic end of a man who once dominated the cultural landscape of the known world. Now reduced to a footnote, a Biblical afterthought, All his accomplishments, all his triumphs, all the laws and writings and things he did and said and felt and declared to be important, now generic obscure dust, of no lasting consequences, of no lasting value, not even the great buildings constructed by his command are still standing for others to use, to inhabit, to marvel at as they walk through them; they are only fragments, half-understood, hanging our great museums for us to wander by and stare at; they are shadows of former attempts, failed strivings after glory and permanence; Seeing this forces me to consider my own life, my own "strivings". Know this! ONLY TWO THINGS WILL LAST FOREVER: PEOPLE AND GOD'S WORD. EVERYthing else is destined to sink into meaningless obscurity; Don't agree? OK, name the greatest and most widely acclaimed Assyrian poet, or at least one of his (or her?) works? How about the greatest Phisitine builder? How about the greatest British businessman of the 19th Century? History is NOSE DEEP in the names of FORGOTTEN "famous" people, and their works perished soon after them; And again I wonder, what am I doing to participate in God's LASTING work, to engage in activities that are of eternal value - things of People and God's Word? It's not an issue of seeking fame, it's a desire to want one's work to COUNT for something, to be of lasting value, to be worth the effort put into it all; wanting to avoid the Solomonic perspective that at the effort's end, it's all seen to be "vanity", vain, a vapor; At least he got it right after wandering around all over the ideological countryside, apart from things that are of the Lord, it's a monumental waste of time; 24-26 you have to wonder just exactly what is WAS that Hez was so STUCK over and also exactly what form God's wrath took... 31 Again, what was it that occurred? HOW did God "leave" him to test him? HOW did he fare? What miraculous sign? v24? See also 2 Kings 20:12-20; 2 Chronicles 33 1 Manasseh! Oh Hez! How could you have served the Lord so faithfully and yet FAILED your own son, your own family so UTTERLY?? And he reigned almost 2 times longer than YOU did! Hez served essentially one generation; His failure as a father essentially undid ALL the good he established in Israel over his entire life! EXCEPT that generation under him produced Daniel and his 3 friends; Mannaseh was totally debauched and utterly committed to EVERY form of foul evil he could find to do! 9 GAD! Israel was WORSE than the Caanaites and Philistines??? Ugh! That's like someone saying my behavior even grossed out Jeffery Dahmer! Human nature being what it is, it didn't take long at ALL for the rest of the nation to follow right after him, even as we see today, people WILL sink to as low as their culture allows them, and even faster when their culture encourages them! 12-16 Oh Hezikiah! Perhaps not EVERYthing had been wasted on Manasseh! In the end, at the end of himself, he knew enough, he remembered enough to know he could call out to you, he could return to you... and it was a genuine conversion, too! 17 But alas! The damage was done! 24 WHY did they conspire? It never says - was it a final lasting residual of Mannaseh's reign? Seeing how terrible it was to HAVE such a king, did they decide to kill him or was it THEY were worse thatn Amon and merely sought the power? 25 A final tribute to Mannaseh? His people desired a Godly king so they GOT themselves one...perhaps the v24 notes applied to THEM instead of the assassins?! 2 Chronicles 34 Josiah: WHO raised him to be this way? Did his Grandfather Manasseh seek to do a better job with his grandson than he had done with his own son, Amon? Eight year olds don't just decide to be holy and God fearing men, they have to be raised that way, so WHO was the faceless minion, a Godly servant? His grandfather? WHO was directly responsible for 31 years of Godly reign? 3-7 he was 16 years old; after 4 years of seeking and growing in God, he TOOK ACTION, he started locally and then branched out; he BURNED his cultural bridges behind him when he burned, and ground to dust BOTH the idols AND the bones of their wicked servant-priests; He left NO doubt where he stood, and what the consequences for one's actions would be regarding the worship of the Living God vs idols; He searched HIGH and LOW, leaving NOTHING left that he could find; 8 He's now 26 years old, he took on the ENTIRE nations sin, and having spent TEN YEARS purging the nation of evil, he now turns his attention to restoring God's House; he understood that there was no point in doing the latter until he had completed the former; he PREPARED his people to return to their God; he cleared away all the obstacles and then gave them a place to which to return; he focused their attention, he captured their hearts for God; v 1-13 a management discussion - 19 he sought after God all his life but withOUT God's word to guide him - sounds like the life of Calvin, who reading about God, seeking and praying, finally ran across a latin Bible so he could see for HIMSLEF God's OWN words and it changed him TOO; 22 a Prophetess! 22-28 God OFFERS the King a deal, save yourself, I'm gonna BLAST the nation! Josiah ALSO had sinned, it wasn't because he was perfect, it was RATHER that HE CONFESSED and RESPONDED to God's CONVICTION