Accountable

Sometimes we make the error of assuming that because we know God that we can pretty much do whatever we want. Not only is that pretty arrogant, it's also wrong.

King Manasseh of Judah may have thought that because his father Hezekiah followed Yahweh that that pretty much gave him a free pass. Manasseh was an evil guy through and through. For other kings that turned away from God the Scriptures often describe them as following the ways of Jeroboam, but Manasseh followed the ways of the kings around them. He burned his son in the fire and did worse sins than the Amorites that God wiped out when he brought Israel into the land.

But God did not let Manasseh lead the nation into utter abhorrent sin without cost. Just because they were the Chosen People did not mean that God would not deal with them severely.

In 2 Kings 21:11 "I am bringing upon Jerusalem and Judah such disaster that the ears of everyone who hears it will tingle."

If we sin without the blood of Jesus Christ covering us, we will be encounter just such a disaster: separation from God, not for 70 years like Israel, but for eternity. If we continue to sin as believers God will deal with us with severe discipline. His aim is to bring us back to Him, the source of all goodness. All we must do is repent - change our minds about our sin and agree with God.

We are accountable to God. Though He disciplines us, it is a good thing. Peter tells us that God disciplines every son whom He loves.

Pastor Tom

Holding Fast

As you read through the book of 2 Kings it gets a little depressing. King after king in both Judah and Israel "do what was evil in the sight of the Lord." Then comes Hezekiah. What a breath of fresh air.

Hezekiah, it says in 2 Kings 18:3, "did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, according to all that David his father had done." Hezekiah broke down the pillars and anything else that Israel had used as a way to worship other gods.

But I noticed something else that I hadn't seen before - its in verse 6: "and he held fast to the Lord."

You know, in our world where money and power and youth and beauty and political correctness are worshiped as gods, it is vital more than ever for us Christians to be like Hezekiah. We need to break down those altars in our lives and homes and we need to "hold fast" to the Lord.

Our culture is like a hurricane wind that seeks to blow Christianity out of the water and carry us away in a whirlwind of rhetoric and argument against the character of God. Hold on to Him no matter what your culture tells you.

And, by the way, as you hold fast to Him, He is holding fast to you. Just read John 15 for more on that.

Pastor Tom

The Godly Influence

Judah was in a pretty bad way in 2 Kings 11. Athaliah was ruling over the nation - a brutal and evil woman. She was so evil that she ordered all the possible heirs to the throne killed. But thanks to the foresight and courage of a woman and a priest, the nation changed.

Jehosheba took Joash, the dead king Ahaziah's son and hid him away. Later Jehoiada the priest guarded him and raised him. When it was time they declared Joash king. During all the time Johoiada was alive, many wonderful things happened in Judah, including the repairing of the Temple.

The simple lesson is that it is a valuable thing to have a godly influence over a young person. Joash's father Ahaziah was an evil man, and Athaliah the grandmother was horribly evil, but a couple of adults who took the time to nurture and protect an evil man's son reaped tremendous benefits.

Take the time to teach the young and care for them. Even if their parents do not know the Lord, who knows what good you will create in the presence of evil?

Pastor Tom

Who Is With You?

Do you ever feel surrounded by life? You wake up in the morning and go out to get the morning paper and realize that your circumstances are conspiring against you like an army surrounding your house. You despair and are ready to give up.

That's actually just where the Lord wants you. I know it sounds strange, but it is the way He works over and over. Barren women who could not have children did, a land that could not be overthrown was, and lives that could never be redeemed - are.

I'm reminded of the story in 2 Kings 6. Elisha's servant got up one morning to get the paper and saw his city surrounded by a terrible army. He panicked and said "what shall we do?" But Elisha asked God to give him a new perspective - a godly perspective. If you know the story, God opened the servant's eyes and he saw that the army surrounding him was surrounded itself by an army of angels with chariots of fire.

Elisha then said this: "2 Kings 6:16 Do not be afraid, for those who are with us are more than are with them."

When you feel life surrounding you like an opposing army, realize that if you belong to God through Jesus Christ, there is a much larger army of angels and God's Holy Spirit that will deliver you safely to his kingdom - that nothing can happen to you outside of God's power to redeem - and that He will in fact take care of you and cause all things to work together for the good in your life.

Pastor Tom

Who Ya Gonna Call?

When life really gets tough, the trials mount up, and life is at stake, a lot is revealed about a person's character and who he or she trusts.

In the beginning chapter of 2 Kings this happens to Ahaziah. Ahaziah becomes king of Israel and promptly falls through the lattice in his upper chamber in the palace. As he lay dieing, Ahaziah calls out for help. He tells his servants to inquire of Baal-zebub, one of the demon-gods left over from the Canaanites.

Besides the fact that there was no real Baal-Zebub god, the problem here is that Ahaziah is trusting in someone other than the LORD God. In fact, Elijah stops the servants of Ahaziah with these words:

2 Kings 1:3 "Is it because there is no God in Israel that you are going to inquire of Baal-Zebub?"

It is a rhetorical question. There was a God in Israel: Yahweh. Ahaziah is turning away from the only real God to go after a fake god in his time of trouble. God wants him to acknowledge who God really is. The trouble is that Ahaziah knows he has sinned and that to face God he must face his rebellion against God, so he thinks he can find answers outside of God. He can't.

Neither can we. When life gets tough we don't want to reach out to God because to do that we must deal with our sin and our failures. So we go to any source we can to find answers: self help books, pop-psychology, friends advice, fake healing scams, getting money wherever we can, or even lying and cheating to get ourselves out of trouble.

It won't work. Trouble won't go away. The only way to permanently deal with it is to face your sin and failures, take them to the cross where God put them to death, and then seek Him with all of your heart. The answer won't always be what you want - Ahaziah's answer from God was that he was going to die - but it will be the answer God wants, and that is always the best answer.

Pastor Tom

Food For the Journey

Elijah was having a great day followed by a terrible day. In 1 Kings 18 we see one of the high points of the war against God's enemies as Elijah sets up an altar and the priests of Baal set up their altar and God sends down fire from heaven on Elijah's altar and nothing happens to the one put up by the priests of Baal - proving which god was the real God.

But right after than Elijah is threatened by Jezebel and he runs away. Not only that, but Elijah is so afraid that he basically lays down under a broom tree and gives up. Here is the mighty prophet of God afraid of a woman and telling God to kill him.

But something interesting happens to Elijah while under that tree. He is not done with his pity party and not finished questioning God and his role. But we see the compassion and understanding of God while Elijah is on his journey.

Twice an angel appears to Elijah and encourages him to eat. The food and water appear supernaturally and the angel says he should eat because "the journey is too great for you." God is helping Elijah not to die, but to survive and continue his wandering until it is over.

Maybe you are having a hard time with something and are maybe even questioning God and perhaps want to just lay down under a broom tree and die. Know this, that God is watching over you, not judging you, and will actually help you in your quest - not to die - but to know Him more and your relationship to Him.

"Come let us reason together," God says. He encourages the journey because it will ultimately bring you closer to Him.

Pastor Tom

Spiraling Down

1 Kings 17:25 "Omri did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, and did more evil than all who were before him."

I know this isn't the most encouraging verse, and its far more common than I thought in the annals of the kings of Judah and Israel.

King after king was more evil than the last. It's a sign of the human nature. Humans, without God, will tend to drift downward into sin. Without God man quickly loses sight of what is after the character of God and what is after the character of Satan. We become like our king.

Sometimes we experience sin in the lives of those we trust, or even in our parents or loved ones. The natural tendency might be for that sin to infect us, influence us, move us away from God. It doesn't have to be that way.

When Jesus came and died to pay for those sins, he changed that dynamic. Instead of going from bad to worse in a continually downward spinning spiral, we are transformed, as Paul says, from "from one kind of glory to another" as our character is made to be like God's character.

Don't fret at a world that more and more embraces sin as sainthood, and instead embrace the God who gave all to make us like Him.

Pastor Tom

Be Careful Who You Love

Solomon appeared at first to be just like his father David - loving the Lord, humble before the Lord. But later something happened, and Solomon following the flesh found himself being bitten by the very thing he liked.

Solomon's weakness was that he loved women of all types. In 1 Kings 11 it says he loved women from tribes the Lord commanded be destroyed and that Israel not intermarry with them. Among those that Solomon was attracted to were Edomite women. These women drew Solomon's heart away from serving God and he instead served the god's of his wives.

Then God showed his anger against Solomon and sent an adversary to torment him. The man is identified in 1 Kings 14:14 "And the Lord raised up an adversary against Solomon, Hadad the Edomite."

Being friends, even lovers, with an Edomite did nothing to stop this enemy of Israel from attacking. Being friends, even lovers of the world will not stop the king of this world, Satan, from attacking you to make you weak and ineffective for God.

Our lesson? Don't think giving into worldly attitudes buys you any goodwill from a system diametrically opposed to God and you as a child of God.

Pastor Tom

David Learns His Lesson

In a previous post I suggested that David had problems dealing with family or relationship problems. I noticed that finally, at the end of his life, David learned his lesson.

In 1 Kings 1 David is about to die. His second oldest son Adonijah decides that he would like to be king and gets some allies among David's leaders.

Like David's other sons, Adonijah was not disciplined as a child (vs 6). So he thinks he can just steal away the throne. This time, though, when David catches wind of this plot he acts decisively. He calls Solomon and the High Priest and hands over the throne to Solomon.

The old David, when confronted with the Absolom coup, ran away. This time he confronts the situation and makes it right right away.

I think one of the things that made the difference was that David realized this was his legacy, this was what he was leaving behind to influence the world in his place. And David wanted that legacy to be a godly one.

Our lesson? Take the time to bring your children up in the "training and admonition of the Lord" and watch out for opportunities to create a godly legacy, not avoiding relational problems, but handling them with love and firmness.

Pastor Tom

Which God do You See?

2 Samuel 22:26-28 With the merciful you show yourself merciful; with the blameless man you show yourself blameless; 27 with the purified you deal purely, and with the crooked you make yourself seem tortuous.28 You save a humble people, but your eyes are on the haughty to bring them down.

I sometimes hear people say that God is mean, unfair, vindictive, and judgmental. How dare he tell us not to judge others when he is so free to judge anyone he pleases and without apparent reason.

Well, for one we misunderstand who God is and who we are. God is pure good. He is so pure that anything that is not good cannot withstand his goodness. For anyone who is not pure it would be like walking unshielded into the middle of a nuclear reactor. You could not hope to survive. But through the washing of the blood of Jesus Christ, who died for all of our impurities, we become like a nuclear reaction ourselves - we become like God.

In the process from a human stand point we are transformed into his image and we actually begin to think like him - to have his character.

God appears differently to different people because to those who belong to him and have his character and act like he acts his purity makes sense. But for those who do not belong to him they experience his repulsion against evil as a foreign entity.

And look also at the character traits: mercy, purity, and humbleness. Gives you a clue what God is like, huh?

Pastor Tom

Getting What's Due You

David gets some disturbing news as he flees Jerusalem, news that causes him to make an error in judgment. That error could have cost an honest man his life.

In 2 Samuel 16, as David runs from a coup brought about by his son Absalom, he is met by Ziba, servant of the former king's son Miphibosheth. "And where is you master's son?" David asks. "Ziba answered the king, 'Behold, he remains in Jerusalem, for he said, 'Today the house of Israel will give me back the kingdom of my father..."

That was a lie. David believed it, and gave all of Miphibosheth's lands to Ziba. As it turns out, Miphibosheth was lame and when he tried to leave with David, Ziba left without him-no doubt an opportunist. Later, in chapter 19, Miphibosheth comes to meet David as returns, triumphant, to Jerusalem.

What I want to focus on is Miphibosheth's response. When David tells him to split the land with Ziba, Miphibosheth says "Oh, let him take it all, since my lord the king has come safely home."

In essence, this was David's way of telling which man was a liar. But because Miphibosheth is willing to give it all up, presumably David gave it all back to him. It sort of reminds me of what David's son, Solomon did with the baby claimed by two moms.

So how do you react when someone deceives you, lies about you, then steals from you? You get mad, don't you? You want to exact judgment against them, don't you? And if it comes time to get back what was taken you jump at the chance, right?

Well, it was worth more to Miphibosheth to show his loyalty to the king and tell the truth than get what was rightly his. It's a lesson in humility, loyalty, and priority. His relationship with David was more important that getting justice.

Kind of reminds me of when Jesus said that if someone forces you to walk one mile you should walk with them an extra mile. It might put you out, but it might also show that person that the love of God is more important than getting what's yours.

Pastor Tom

David's Biggest Weakness

2 Samuel 11-13 are among the darkest times for David. It shows the weakness in this man of God and in his kids.

It's among the few times we see David actually make mistakes. Usually we focus on the big mistake: sleeping with Bathsheba. But if you read all of these chapters there is another weakness that comes to light.

David was an avoider. He didn't like confrontation, especially when it came to problems with relationships. When it came to his sin with Bathsheba he did everything but confront Uriah, Bathsheba's husband. Instead he made up all this stuff to try to either obscure his sin or destroy the man.

Then when David's son Amnon raped his sister Tamar, and Absalom killed Amnon, David did nothing. We know he was angry but we also know that David avoided confronting Absalom and even when his son returned from exile it took a huge blow up just to get the king to bring his son back.

I'm not trying to fault David, especially since many of us avoid conflict and confrontation. Part of the problem is we don't know how to "speak the truth in love."

I think the lesson we take from these chapters is by contrast. When relationships are broken we should really try to fix them, instead of ignoring them hoping they'll get better on their own. They rarely do.

Pastor Tom

True Humility

What would you think if someone told you that you were going to be rich and powerful - that your family's power would not diminish over time and that even the God of the Universe was pleased with you? That's what happened to David.

I'm just amazed at David's response to a promise God makes to him that "your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me." (2 Samuel 7:16).

What is David's response? "Who am I, O Lord God, and what is my house, that you have brought me thus far?" (18).

If there was one thing that David did not suffer from, it was pride. David was among the greatest people that ever lived. He could kill you before you knew it, he was a leaders leader, he was a diplomat, an extraordinarily talented musician and poet, and a kind man to boot.

Yet for all this the key to David's success were not his talents but his attitude towards himself and God. David loved God more than he loved himself. David's life was not his own and he lived to please his master. All the successes were nothing compared with serving Yahweh.

David always knew who the truly great one was. Do we?

Pastor Tom

Don't Rush - Don't Grab

I have often wondered why David acted like he did. He was the anointed king of Israel yet he ran away from Saul instead of having one of his men kill him. And when Saul died David mourned his loss and executed those responsible. Not only that but David did nothing to overthrow Saul's house once Saul was dead and even came out against those who murdered Saul's military leaders and others.

We see this in 2 Samuel 1-5. David doesn't seem in a hurry to become king, nor does he try to grab for power but sticks to a true character, a godly character, and waits for God to lift him up.

When it was time, David assumed the throne, after a covenant was made with the other tribes. And immediately the fortunes of the nation changed. David captured Jerusalem and defeated the Philistines and God began speaking to the king of Israel again.

As David waited patiently and didn't compromise his character God rewarded him by accomplishing his goals, removing his obstacles and speaking wisdom from His heart.

It's a good lesson for us too.

Pastor Tom