The Lord Has Chosen You (2 Chronicles 29:11)

 


Monday, August 19, 2024


Psalms 110; 111

2 Chronicles 28:16-29:11

Romans 11:13-24


The Lord Has Chosen You (2 Chronicles 29:11)


What a mess that King Hezekiah has inherited! His predecessor, Ahaz, had turned from the Lord, found failure, and doubled down on it. Not only does Hezekiah need to fix the physical Temple, he has to reform the entire religion!


It sounds like it must have been a very big job. We read that Ahaz had put places on every street corner for demon worship; the rot had gone deep.


Is not our own place and time eerily similar? Walk down any street you like and you will find altars to the gods of greed, money, vanity, and existential dread.


To take our sword and our trowel to our own situation is not an enviable task. Yet this is the time and place in which God has placed us. It is not for us to complain about it; it is for us to rise to the occasion.


Hezekiah chose some interesting words: “do not be negligent”. Usually we would expect to hear words of courage and bravery, such as those which God gave to Joshua before his invasion of Canaan, or those which Jesus spoke to his disciples in the storm. But in this particular situation, Hezekiah is concerned that the people will be half-hearted in their work because it doesn’t seem all that important.


This work is, however, very important; perhaps the most important work anyone could ever be given.


In your own work in building the kingdom of heaven on earth, are you being negligent? Is there any work that you could be putting a little more time and effort into?


God of my redemption and our redemption: fan up the flames of my love for your work, so that I may never be accused of negligence in my love for you.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Knowing The Difference (2 Chronicles 12:8)

Image
  Wednesday, June 26, 2024 Psalms 137; 138 2 Chronicles 12 James 2:8-26 Knowing The Difference (2 Chronicles 12:8) Let’s be honest for a moment. It is all too easy to look around ourselves, at the world around us, to see how non-Christians are living their lives, and wonder if the grass over there might be greener. Our Lord’s commands often seem confusing, or burdensome, and if we were to pack it all in and go our own way, might not things be easier? Becoming lords of our own destiny is the ongoing temptation of the human race. From the fruit in the Garden of Eden, to today’s mantra of “be all you can be”, we have been trapped in this to-and-fro between the intentions of our Creator and the desires of our own hearts. And why not, thought Rehoboam? Why shouldn’t I look at the success of my own rule, and abandon the law of the Lord? Or perhaps he justified his apostasy not from his success, but from his failure to bring the northern kingdom back in line. P
Read more

Anxiety For All The Churches

  Tuesday, June 18, 2024 Psalm 107:1-22 2 Chronicles 6:32-7:6 2 Corinthians 11:16-29 Anxiety For All The Churches (2 Corinthians 11:28) A phrase I often come across when talking with people about life is “I can’t complain; others have got it much worse.” I appreciate the sentiment; when life turns around and smacks you about, one of the most difficult problems to solve is trying to figure out how to deal with it on a spiritual level. For Australian Christians, it seems like an easy lifeline to consider how good our life is from an overall perspective compared to many other people around the world. But then I read this passage from St Paul and I wonder: is that attitude good enough? What if things get really bad – I mean, really bad – will I be able to say “I can’t complain; others have got it much worse”? Because the apostle had it worse than most: beatings, imprisonment, starvation, homelessness, shipwrecks, he had it all. Who could say they had it wor
Read more

The Lord’s Plumb Line (Amos 7:7)

Image
  Tuesday, July 23, 2024 Psalms 54; 55:1-12 Amos 6:8-7:9 Romans 2:1-11 The Lord’s Plumb Line (Amos 7:7) For all these terrifying words about death and destruction, can we find any positive words about God’s judgement? First, there is a vision of locusts devouring a harvest. This seems pretty bad; and Amos intercedes for the people, and God says that “this will not happen”. Then there is an enormous fire that devours everything, a supernatural nuclear holocaust. Again, Amos intercedes, and God replies that “this will not happen either”. But God is coming to pass judgement. And it is not a judgement of a capricious or arbitrary type. It is a fair judgement. It is the judgement of the eye of the careful builder. God sets a plumb line against his people. We use something similar, and we call it a “level”; that small capsule filled with water, with a single bubble within, set on a straight piece of metal or timber. Line it up against whatever you
Read more