GOD RESPONDS TO EVIL LEADERS

I Chronicles gives the report on a very evil king of Judah [the southern kingdom]. His name was Ahaz and he was twenty when he became king. His father, Jotham, had been a weak leader who tried to do right and accomplished some things of significance, but he failed to restrain or impact the people who pushed right on in their lives of corruption. [II Chronicles 27:2 ™]. However, In God’s eyes he lived a good life… [II Chronicles 27:2  -  All quotes from The Message Bible unless otherwise noted].

A REMINDER:

Leaders bear responsibility for all who are under their influence! And God sees it all!  And sometimes, God responds! 

This is true for leaders at ALL levels: presidents, ambassadors, chairpersons, foremen, superintendents, pastors, executives, and even group leaders.  When we step into a role that impacts other people’s lives directly, we are held to a higher standard.

 II Chronicles 28:1 reports: He (Ahaz) didn’t live right in the eyes of God. His bad choices include:

ü  Casting metal figurines for worshipping the pagan Baal gods

ü  Burning incense inappropriately

ü  “passing his sons through the fire, a truly abominable thing he picked up from the pagans GOD had earlier thrown out of the country [v.3].

ü  He also joined in the activities of the neighborhood sex-and-religion shrines that flourished all over the place

God saw all of this and responded by allowing the king of Aram to beat Ahaz’s forces badly – taking many prisoners back to Damascus. This defeat caused the king of Israel [northern kingdom] to also attack Judah. Their armies killed 120,000 Judeans in one day all of them first-class soldiers, and all because they had deserted GOD [v.6]. In addition, Ahaz’s son, also the palace steward and the king’s second in command were killed! Then, to add insult to injury, the Israelites carried off 200,000 men, women and children along with cartloads of plunder!

But – as we said earlier – God sees it all!

As the Israelite army crossed back into Israel, God had a prophet in the neighborhood who met them at the border with a message from God:  [vs.9-11]

God’s prophet Oded…met the army when it entered Samaria and said, “Stop right where you are and listen! God, the God of your ancestors, was angry with Judah and used you to punish them; but you took things into your own hands and used your anger, uncalled for and irrational, to turn your brothers and sisters from Judah and Jerusalem into slaves. Don’t you see that this is a terrible sin against your God? Careful now; do exactly what I say—return these captives, every last one of them. If you don’t, you’ll find out how real anger, God’s anger, works.”

A number of Israelite elders also responded: Don’t bring the captives here! We’ve already sinned against GOD; and now you’re about to compound our sin and guilt… [v.13].

As a result, Personally designated men gathered the captives together, dressed the ones who were naked using clothing from the stores of plunder, put shoes on their feet, gave them all a square meal, provided first aid to the injured, put the weak ones on donkeys, and then escorted them to Jericho, the City of Palms, restoring them to their families. Then they went back to Samaria [v.15].

After all of this, Ahaz asked the king of Assyria for help, but instead, he came and humiliated Ahaz even more. Ahaz raided the Temple of God and paid it to the king of Assyria. In addition, the Philistines captured cities in the south and west of Judah!

BUT IN SPITE OF ALL OF THIS TROUBLE, Arrogant King Ahaz, acting as if he could do without God’s help, unleashed an epidemic of depravity…at the very time that everyone was turning against him, he continued to be against GOD [v.19]!

He:

o   began to worship the Assyrian gods since they had led to his defeat

o   he cleared out anything of value from The Temple and boarded up its doors!

o   he set up pagan shrines all over Jerusalem and throughout the country

THE RESULT?

And was GOD ever angry  [v.25]!

HOW DOES THIS ALL END?

When Ahaz died, they buried him in Jerusalem, but he was not honored with a burial in the cemetery of the kings.

IS THERE ANY GOOD NEWS HERE AT ALL?

Only this, His son Hezekiah was the next king…he was a good king; he kept to the standards of his ancestor David [v.27 and II Chronicles 29:2].

__________________________________

WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM THIS HISTORICAL LESSON?

For whatever reasons, Ahaz was evil from the start and never repented or softened toward God!

1.    Utterly rejecting and opposing God can only end badly!

2.    If a leader openly and rebelliously opposes God, s/he will suffer as will all those who are under their direction!

3.    God is ALWAYS WATCHING! Nothing can be hidden from His sight!

4.    God advocates on behalf of those who suffer because of poor leadership! He loves His people and comes to their aid!

Perhaps you made even more observations from this horrible man’s life…

NO ROOM IN THE INN

 [A recording of this post was also placed on my Facebook page as a Christmas Devotion!]

We’re all familiar with the story!  We know that Joseph and Mary had to travel to Bethlehem because of a census ordered by Caesar Augustus.  It was certainly an inconvenience for this couple – especially with Mary being very pregnant.

They’d already had a difficult time getting their relationship established.  After revealing his intentions to make Mary his wife, she revealed that she was already pregnant.  We can only imagine Joseph’s hurt and shock!  Bitter, angry and vengeful thoughts surely filled his mind.  However, God had chosen well on Mary’s behalf.  Joseph was indeed a good man and chose to end their relationship quietly.  If nothing else, it revealed that he really did love this girl and had no desire to hurt her further. 

Then, God decided to fill Joseph in on the details by sending him a message in a dream.  Dreaming became God’s preferred way of speaking to Joseph and it would happen quite a few times before this story is complete.  Now, Joseph is convinced by the word of God that this was all part of God’s plan.  He took Mary as his wife but had no relations with her until after Jesus was born! 

Once all this was finally sorted out, they still had to deal with the rejection of family, friends and neighbors who didn’t know all the details and considered them illegitimate. 

The decree from Caesar could almost be perceived as a respite from God – although a very challenging one.  Joseph had no choice.   He had to go to Bethlehem – the city of David – to register since he was of the house and lineage of David.  He chose to take Mary with him, perhaps thinking that they would have a better start by transplanting in Judea instead of Galilee.

Joseph – being a godly man – could surely see the hand of Yahweh in all that had transpired.  He was driven by his faith and willingly left any preparations he had been making in Nazareth to head for Judea with his very pregnant wife.  It was an arduous journey of nearly one hundred miles.  It is likely that Mary was able to ride a donkey at least some of the way.  If they were able to make ten miles per day, then it probably took the better part of two weeks to complete the journey.

After passing through Jerusalem, they were very close – about five and a half miles.  It would have been mostly downhill. Somewhere along this part of the trip, Mary indicated that her time to deliver was drawing close!  Joseph hurried to get her to Bethlehem! 

Bethlehem at that time was probably a village of around five hundred people who lived in modest stone houses on a slight geographical rise.  It is likely that it was primarily populated by farmers, shepherds, and artisans who made their living through agriculture and small-scale crafts.  It was likely surrounded by olive groves.

Being the birthplace of King David, it was a desirable place to visit and apparently had some inns where visitors could stay.

Imagine Joseph’s consternation when he couldn’t find an inn with space for him and Mary!  Hadn’t they suffered enough?  If this child was to be God’s Son, then where was God when they needed Him?  Why hadn’t God prepared better and planned ahead?  This was NOT an easy start for this confused yet obedient young couple! 

We can only imagine the urgency!  Mary’s water had likely broken and she was probably in hard labor.  They were exhausted from their long trek from Nazareth over rugged terrain and travelling with meager resources.  This was no way to start a family! 

Yet we are given no picture of Joseph or Mary shaking their fists at Heaven.  There is no hint of anger or frustration.  There is simply the compelling need to find a place – any place – where Mary could safely deliver her child. 

Joseph’s sense of urgency and the persuasive appeals he made upon their arrival in this little village had an impact.  After being turned away from the inns, he desperately appealed to a man for any place where Mary could be sheltered and deliver her child. 

Now we come to the crux of the story.  An unnamed man [or woman], heard the desperation in Joseph’s voice.  Perhaps they saw and heard Mary from a brief distance and could tell that she was in labor?  Without hesitation they offered the best they had – a stable or cave where they sheltered their animals.  Surely, Joseph gave them a quick bear-hug and then rustled Mary into the safety of their temporary home. 

Quickly, he gave order to the space and created a clean corner for Mary.  He unpacked their meager belongings and began to attend to her needs.  And in the moments to come – with sheep, cattle and perhaps other animals as witnesses – Joseph helped his wife as she delivered to the world THE GREATEST GIFT OF ALL! 

As they eventually collapsed into one another’s arms with the baby – wrapped in swaddling cloths – laying across Mary’s breast, they surely experienced the deepest satisfaction and joy available to couples of any age! 

And so it was that the Son of God – who had left the courts of Heaven nine months earlier – made His appearance on earth under the light of a guiding star!   

WHEN GOD SAYS 'NO'

This message was delivered at the Celebration of Life for Sarah Lyke of The Foundery Free Methodist Church in Wellsburg, West Virginia, on September 7, 2024, after a two-year struggle with cancer!  Perhaps - as you read this [about 15 minute read] - you'd like to lift a prayer for her husband, Gene, and their twelve-year-old-son, Gage.  This blog is posted with Gene's permission.

WHY ARE SO MANY AMERICANS 'FORMERLY-CHURCHED'?

At our annual session of the Harvest Conference (Free Methodist Church), our new bishop, Kaye Kolde painfully acknowledged that our American membership has dropped from 99,000 in 2015, to 62,000 in 2022.  Her acknowledgement pointed out that when we look at our world today, we have to recognize that many people are not 'unchurched', but 'formerly churched'.  

This leaves us wondering: Why the exodus from the church?

There are two primary reasons why people bail out and leave the faith.

       I.  God doesn’t conform to our expectations.  We want a God that we can control.  Many of us want faith to be a power that moves God in a direction that we prescribe.  We want faith to be a code that unlocks the door to God’s unlimited resources – so that we can use them at our discretion.  Essentially, we want faith to be a way for us to get what we want from God. 

This attitude is especially prevalent in American culture where we are used to getting our own way.  When God doesn’t cooperate with us the way we think He should we tend to give up on Him!  We use the spoiled logic that if God doesn’t give us what we want, then He must not really be good and He must not really love me. 

How do we arrive at these unbiblical conclusions?  How can we become so distanced from the biblical concept of a sovereign God.   God is God and there is no other.  

We must get our thinking and beliefs right about God.  There is no better way to do that than by getting involved in a good, thorough Bible study with a godly, reliable teacher.  We must also engage our logic and reasoning capacity.  Think about it.  If God can be manipulated and controlled by me – then who is really god?  If we would simply think seriously for a moment, we would all realize that we want a God who operates on a different level than we do.

^{Isaiah 55:8-9}    “For my thoughts are not your thoughts,

neither are your ways my ways,”

declares the LORD.

    “As the heavens are higher than the earth,

so are my ways higher than your ways

and my thoughts than your thoughts.

This is the kind of a God that we want in control of the universe and in control 

of my life.  Especially when we know that he is good and loving and cares for us. 

       II.  The second main reason that people leave their beliefs in God is that He allows bad things to happen in their lives.  To be blunt, we become disappointed with God and even angry with Him because He fails to protect us from evil people, things, or circumstances. 

Unexplainable tragedy tends to undermine our faith.  Painful or adverse circumstances don’t fit our understanding of the character of God or the Christian faith.  We ask: “How could a good God allow this to happen?  Why didn’t He stop it?” 

Let’s take a closer look at this:

A father is carrying a four-year-old into a doctor’s office to receive a tetanus shot.  When the doctor pulls out the needle, ask him if his father loves him.  In that moment, he will have doubts.  But ask him after some years pass.  He will have a completely different perspective.  He will know that his father showed his love by caring enough to protect his son’s health. 

Just as a child cannot correctly judge his parent’s character based upon one scary trip to the doctor, so we cannot draw conclusions about God’s goodness based upon the immediate circumstances of life. 

Judging the significance of current events can only be justly done by examining them in the context of a lifetime.  Many of us have a hard time seeing past our immediate surroundings.  If God doesn’t answer our prayer immediately, we wonder if He exists.  We begin to lose confidence in our belief that God loves and cares for us. 

     Here’s the key point:  Authentic faith looks at the whole picture!

     Consider a couple of biblical examples:

•      Joseph spent 15 years as a slave in Egypt after his brothers sold him to a traveling caravan.  Yet his “tragedy” was part of a beautiful tapestry that God was weaving behind the scenes to save an entire region from famine!
•      Then there was Moses, who spent 40 years in the wilderness before God sent him back to Egypt – freeing a nation from slavery and unfolding a wonderful purpose in his seemingly purposeless existence.

We must get our theology right!  God has not promised to keep bad things from happening to us.  God has not promised to heal every illness.  He has not promised to reverse the consequences of sin. 

Yet there are occasions when God intervenes and does all of these things.  Why?  Because He is a good God who loves to give good gifts to His children. 

But these are not promises.  He is under no obligation.  The fact that divorce occurs and people die and plans don’t work out is no reflection on the goodness or the presence of our heavenly Father. 

Just look at the Apostles.  They were certainly men of great faith.  Yet their lives were not free of difficulty;  all of them but one, died as martyrs!!!!  God didn’t always intervene to save them.  But an answer of “no” did not undermine their faith.  They didn’t have to get everything they wanted to keep their faith intact.  Their faith was grounded in Jesus and His resurrection – not on how their lives went or what happened to them.

I can almost hear you thinking.  But what are we to do when tough times come?  How are we to handle the unexplainable tragedies that occur in our lives?  What should our response be when it feels like God has let us down or abandoned us?  Good questions!

The answer to these questions is also found in some key verses of the book of Hebrews. 

^4:15-16  For  we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet was without sin.  Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.

Here’s the best news you’re going to hear today.  Because you have Jesus as your High Priest, you can draw near to God with confidence!  Some might say, “Confidence in what?  I already know that He may not give me what I want.  He might say no to my prayers.  How can I ask for anything with confidence?” 

But you can have confidence because God will always give you two things that are critical in your times of need. 

The first thing He will give you is mercy.  Our Savior, Jesus, knows far more about what you are experiencing than you may think.  Jesus is able to enter into your pain and understand how you feel because he also knew:

Temptation.  He experienced temptation at the hand of Satan himself.

Rejection.  He was rejected by both friends and family members.

Failure.  He saw everything He had lived for and worked for crumble around Him.

Fear.  In the Garden of Gethsemane, He spent an entire night dreading the events of the next day.

Abandonment.  His friends ran away when He needed them most.

Loneliness.  He even faced death alone. 

Jesus understands your pain and/or sorrow.  You can come boldly to Him with total transparency and openness, confident that He will never mock or ridicule you.  He is a mercy-giving God because He knows from experience what it is like to need mercy.  Mercy is the assurance that God will never allow the pressures or heartbreaks of life to overwhelm you.  He will ALWAYS be there to help or carry you!

The second thing He will give you is grace.  Grace in this context means the strength to endure or the ability to carry on.  Remember, He has not promised to deliver you from your circumstances;  but He has promised to deliver you through them.  You can ask Him to change your circumstances, but we’ve already stated that God rarely intervenes to do so.  However, He has promised to give you the grace to endure in the meantime. 

Even the great Apostle Paul experienced this painful reality.  In II Corinthians 12 he tells about what seems to be a physical problem that had plagued him for many years.  Now this is a man who had the spiritual gift of healing, but he struggled with a personal malady.  He tells us that he asked God three times to deliver him from this problem.  Each time God said no.  Paul accepted his consequences and came to realize that there was a reason for God’s unwillingness to heal him.  It was to keep him humble.  He was a man who had experienced phenomenal spiritual privileges – including a supernatural glimpse into heaven where “He heard inexpressible things, things that man is not permitted to tell.”  (12:4).  Anyone experiencing this kind of privilege would certainly be vulnerable to spiritual pride.  Consequently, God left this godly man – who had the gift of healing others – with a physical malady to keep him appropriately humble and to remind him of his dependence on God.  God’s actual answer to Paul on his third request was:  “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”  (12:9). 

So there it is – the evidence that you can trust God with every area of your life!  Let’s review it:

1)   Authentic faith is properly grounded in Christ!

2)  Authentic faith recognizes the sovereignty of God.

3)  Authentic faith looks at the whole picture.

4)  Authentic faith anticipates the mercy and grace of God when the going gets tough!

INTERRUPTIONS

The day would go a lot better if we didn't have to deal with interruptions - right?  Interruptions keep us from our plan for the day!  They stall us and distract us.  The best thing to do when people interrupt us is deal with them quickly and get back to the task at hand!

Dr. David McKenna (Never Blink In A Hailstorm) suggests that Jesus' most beautiful stories began as interruptions:

• the leper who stops Him on the road (Mark 1:40-45)
• the paralytic who is let down through the roof (Mark 2:1-12)
• the man with the shriveled hand (Mark 3:1-6)
• the demon-possessed man of the tombs (Mark 5:1-20)
• Jairus, the ruler of the synagogue, whose daughter is dying (Mark 5:21-24, 35-43)
• the woman with the chronic blood disease who touches Jesus' clothes (Mark 5:25-34)
• the Syrophoenician mother whose daughter has an evil spirit Mark 7:24-30)
• the blind man of Bethsaida (Mark 8:22-26)
• the father with the epileptic boy (Mark 9:14-29)
• the parents wanting their children to be blessed (Mark 10:13-16)
• the rich, young ruler (Mark 10:17-31)
• blind Bartimaeus (Mark 10:46-52)
• the woman who violates the protocol of the feast in the home of Simon the Leper in order to anoint Jesus (Mark 14:1-11)

I'm glad Jesus didn't view interruptions the way I can.  Perhaps I need to change the way I look at the interruptions in my plan for the day? 

PRAYER
God, help me to see the interruptions of my day as opportunities in the adventure of serving You.  Help me to change my language:  they're not interruptions - THEY'RE OPPORTUNITIES!  Amen.