The Worship Blinders, a devotional thought

There's this interesting place in 2 Kings 23, where King Josiah, in an effort to purge and reform the spiritual life of his nation, orders all the "articles made for Baal and Asherah" to be removed from the house of the Lord. The way the story's told, the impression it gives is that he brought all the people of Judah together (v.2), read the Book of the Covenant to them all (v. 3) and then, in plain sight of everyone, started bringing out all the idolatrous nick-knacks that had accumulated in the Temple.

What strikes me here is that, as far as the people were concerned up to that point, there was nothing especially wrong with the baalistic syncretism that had crept into their worship. It must have been quite shocking to stand there in that crowd and see all these articles brought out of the temple and find out that they didn't, after all, have any place in the House of Israel's God.

It sort of makes me wonder: "What would Josiah have to pull out of the North American Church in the sight of everyone, if he were to 'spiritually clean house' today'?"  It's probably not what we'd expect, any more than the people of Judah expected to see the altars to Baal and the Asherah poles thrown on the 'discard pile' of their worship practices.

It all leaves me praying that God would remove my spiritual blinders, and help me identify any idolatrous "clutter" that I've maybe let accumulate in my life with him; that he would do some spiritual 'house cleaning' in my worship of Jesus, and give me single-hearted devotion to him.

The Seed of Revival, A devotional thought

There's this very powerful story about the power of God's Word in 2 Kings 22 that has, I think, something very important to say to our world, some 2500 years or more after it was first written.

It's about a young king of Judah named Josiah, who is, the text takes pains to point out, the best king Judah's seen in years.  He's having the Temple of YHWH renovated, and as the workers are cleaning out one of the back rooms, they find a book of the Law--a forgotten book of the long neglected Torah.  No one knows what to do with it.  They give it to the priest, who gives it to the scribe, who brings it to the king, who reads it and realizes how far off track God's people have gone.  He will tear his robe when he hears it, and institute massive religious reforms among his people.

This is, in some ways, the ultimate picture of revival among God's people, and what I notice is that it all starts with re-discovering the neglected, near forgotten Word of God, and bringing it out into the light. I've seen stats and heard recent studies that suggest biblical literacy, Bible memory, habitual Bible-reading, even *basic* acceptance of the Bible as God's Word is at an all-time low among Canadian Christians.  Among Christians, mind you, not non-Christians. You can watch this video for more: http://vimeo.com/93482675.

The poignancy of this story, I think, should hit us deeply: the people found God's book, forgotten in God's house, and when they read it they tore their robes in dismay that they had let it lie neglected for so long.

May God help us all to re-discover his book in a similar way today, fresh and new and life changing; and may revival for us start there.

On God-Anger, a devotional thought.

In 2 Kings 19, there's this interesting line about "raging against the Lord," that bears careful reflection. It's in 2 Kings 19:27 specifically, and God's speaking against Sennacherib, the King of Assyria, through the mouth of his prophet Isaiah. He says, "I know where you stay and when you come and go and how you rage against me."

The word he uses there to describe King Sennacherib's "rage" (ragaz) actually refers to physical agitation-- to quiver, tremble or quake with intense emotion. On the one hand, of course, it's a bit of a stretch to take what was happening in ancient Israel, when Assyria "raged" against God by attacking God's people in an imperialistic campaign for world domination, and apply that to the anger towards God that this or that individual might express in our modern-day society. But on the other hand, on a spiritual level, it's not that big of a leap at all. "Rage" towards God is not only an ancient Assyrian phenomenon, and expressing that anger through hostility towards God's people is not something that only happened way back then, when emperors ruled the world.

Put simply: I've heard people express quite real, quite serious anger towards God, and even once in a while seen it come out in actual physical agitation.

Sometimes, even, I've let the fear of encountering someone's hostility towards God prevent me from being transparent and open about my faith. And perhaps that's where, in particular, 23 Kings 19:27 speaks to us, especially, today. After all, God's not really speaking to the King of Assyria there, but to his people who are taking the brunt of Assyria's hostility towards Him. And he's asking his people simply to trust him to handle it, in his own time, in his own way, and not to let anyone's god-anger cause them to dismay.

May God give us the grace to do the same.

A Tale of Two Covenants, a devotional thought

In 2 Kings 18:31-37, the city of Jerusalem is under siege by the Assyrians, and the people come out to parlay with the Assyrian general. He says some utterly shocking and blasphemous things about what they intend to do to the inhabitants of the city once they've conquered it (it really is R-rated), and how YHWH can't stop them, any more than any of the other gods of the other nations could. And then in 2 Kings 18:31, he says, "So this is what the king of Assyria says: make a covenant with me, and every man can 'eat from his own vine and drink from his own cistern.'"

Considering what they'll be eating and drinking if they don't (see v.27), this seems like a fair deal.

Only: the word he uses there, "covenant," is a really loaded one. Because the people, right from the beginning of the story, have been in covenant with YHWH. That is the story: God covenants with his people, promises to guard them and guide them, and invites them to love him and serve him. So, in suggesting that the Jerusalemites make a covenant with him, the king of Assyria is also telling them to abandon their covenant with YHWH.

Of course, I'm not standing on a city wall listening to a horde of ruthless barbarians threaten to slaughter me and mine if I don't surrender, so I can't imagine the very real terror that must have swept the city that day, and how tempting it would have been for Hezekiah to cut covenant with Assyria and be done with it. But at the same time, this passage leaves me wondering: where, and how, and when have I made a covenant with the systems of this world, because they promised to bring me peace or spare me difficulty, even though in cozying up like that, it meant abandoning, or at the very least neglecting the covenant God's made with me?

May God help us all see the "worldly covenants" in our lives for what they are; may he keep us faithful in covenant with him, even as he himself is faithful.

You gotta cleave to someone, A Devotional Thought

In 2 Kings 18, you come across a simple single verse that, if you'd been reading 2 Kings right from the start, would, and should turn your head.  It's at the start of King Hezekiah's reign and it simply says, "he did right in the eyes of the Lord."  After years, and years, and years of kings who piled sins upon sins upon sins, along comes a king who "did right in the sight of the Lord, just like his father David." 

This is extremely rare. A few other kings get this accolade (Asa, Jehoshaphat, Josiah), but Hezekiah is in a category all his own. He even removed the high places, and he's the only king in 2 Kings to do so. 2 Kings 18:4 is a sit up and take notice kind of verse, about a sit up and take notice kind of king.

And here's what I notice when I sit up: the secret to Hezekiah's spiritual success is that he "clung" to the Lord (dabaq, 18:6). The word there that describes Hezekiah's commitment to YHWH is actually the same word that Genesis 1 uses when it talks about Adam and Eve and the first ever marriage, and it says, "for this reason, a man will leave his mother and father and cleave (dabaq) to his wife." Hezekiah's faithful commitment to YHWH was of marriage-vow quality: he clave to the Lord. There're a few other times this word gets used in 2 Kings, and all the rest are bad: Solomon "clung" (dabaq) to his foreign wives and they led him astray, King Jehoram clung (dabaq) to the sins of his father and led Israel astray. 

To modify Bob Dylan only slightly, "You gotta cleave to someone..."  We are designed, that is, to be betrothed to something, to someone.  We have clingy hearts. Unlike the Kings before him, who set their clingy hearts on anything but the Lord, Hezekiah clung to God, and millenia later he's still remembered for it. And the challenge of his story is that we would do the same, and fix our clingy hearts on Him.

The battle belongs to the Lord, a devotional thought

There's a place in 2 Kings 16, where King Ahaz is under attack by the Arameans.  These are the same Arameans that, a few chapters earlier, YHWH had miraculously and quite handily routed, delivering his people from their war-mongering ways.  Chapter 16, however, comes a few chapters later, and now, things are looking rather grim for King Ahaz.

Ahaz does what any worldly military leader would do in that situation.  He sends messages down the road to the King of Assyria, telling him, "If you get me out of this mess, I will be your servant and your vassal."  To seal the deal, he takes gold and silver from the temple of YHWH, and send it to Assyria as a tribute.

This should, I think, strike to the heart of any serious reader of the Book of Kings-- and certainly it would have for those it was originally written for:  Instead of turning to the Lord for deliverance from the enemy, Ahaz turns to the Assyrian war-machine for help, the very same Assyria that, in just a few chapters, is going to surround Jerusalem and utter blasphemous defiance against YHWH and his people.  As if that wasn't bad enough, he pays him with gold from YHWH's own house.  The gold that ought to be adorning the house of the Lord is used to hire a mercenary army to deliver Ahaz from an enemy that the Lord has shown himself time and time again quite capable and willing to defeat.

The irony here, I think, is meant to make us tremble.  But it's also meant to make us wonder: how and where do we rely on the systems of this world, and especially, the enemies of God--to get us out of our messes, instead of turning to the true and living Lord, who alone is able to deliver? And worse, do we pay them the tribute due to him, is only they'll pull us out of the mess?

May he show us what it really means, where it's written, "The battle belongs to the Lord."

The High Places, a devotional thought

You can't spend any serious amount of time in the Book of 2 Kings without eventually asking some difficult questions about "the high places" in your life.  2 Kings 15:31-38 is a good example.  It's talking about a King named Jotham of Judah.  It starts off by saying that "he did right in the eyes of the Lord"-- and for the record, this is pretty rare, in of itself.  Most of the Kings who get mention in 2 Kings are noted for their wickedness.  Of very, very few is it said that they actually did right in YHWH's sight.  So this should cause us to sit up and take notice.

But then comes the qualifying small print:  "Only," it adds, "the high places were not removed.  People continued to sacrifice and burn incense there" (v. 35).

The idea in 2 Kings is that, unlike the surrounding pagan nations, that would have had shrines and temples to their Ba'als and Ashteroths sprinkled all over the countryside, God's people were meant to have one single place of worship for the people, the Temple in Jerusalem.  This is a big deal in the Hebrew Scriptures.  There's only one place where YHWH can and should be worshipped, and maintaining that one place helps to ensure that his worship doesn't get watered down and mixed up with the worship of other things and other gods.  The "high places" in 2 Kings compete with and muddy-up the single-minded, single-hearted devotion to him that God wants for his people.

And it's interesting: however good any of the kings in 2 Kings might have been, it's (almost) always qualified with this disclaimer:  only they didn't tear down the high places.  And we're meant to find something, I think, humbling and challenging in this.  Because like Jotham, we, too, have things that compete with, or muddy up, single-minded devotion to God.

I won't go into detail on the high places in my own life, except to say that Jotham's example leaves me praying, that God would gently but surely point them out to me, and help me put an end to any sacrifice or worship that may be going at their altars.  May his mercy give us all grace to tear down the high places.

On Doing it Wrong but Getting it Right, a devotional thought

A few days ago, I shared some thoughts about King Jeroboam in 2 Kings 14, and how God used him to deliver Israel in spite of his sin.   In 2 Kings 15:1-10, you see a similar thing happening with a king named Azariah, in a way that is both encouraging, but also deeply challenging.

It says that while Jeroboam was reigning in Israel, a king named Azariah came to the throne of Judah. Azariah, it says, did right in the eyes of the Lord, just as his father Amaziah had done. It's far less frequent for 2 Kings to say a king did right in God's eyes, so this stands out. 

But then, just as you're ready to pat Azariah on the back, verse 5 says that the Lord "afflicted Azariah with leprosy." Another book of the Bible, 2 Chronicles, will explain why (apparently Azariah tried to offer incense in the Temple when only the priest was supposed to...a big no-no) but in 2 Kings it just sits there unexplained and rather starkly. 

Azariah did right in YHWH's eyes, and yet he was afflicted with leprosy. 

This story sort of directs our thoughts in two equal and opposite direction. On the one hand, it humbles us, to realize that "doing right in God's eyes" does not necessarily mean we will be spared difficulty, hardship or struggles; Azariah "did right in God's eyes" but still faced affliction.   At the same time, however, it encourages us, or should, to know that our afflictions (even those afflictions we bring on ourselves, as Azariah did his) do not exclude us or preclude us from "doing right in God's eyes," and accomplishing beautiful things for him.

On Grace, a devotional thought

There's a spot in 2 Kings that gets me thinking about the mysterious ways that God is able to use us for his purposes, in spite of our worst spiritual failures. In 2 Kings 14:23-24, it says that a king named Jeroboam came to the throne in Israel, and he as bad as any King they've ever had (in v.24 we read the familiar refrain: "he did evil in the sight of the Lord").

So you might be ready to write this guy off, but then in verse 27, it says that YHWH saw the sufferings of his people (presumably from the military aggression of the surrounding nations), and he saw how bitter it was for them, so he saved them by the hand of Jeroboam.

This is fascinating, and, I think, good news.  As big a spiritual failure as he was, the Lord was still able to work deliverance for his people through King Jeroboam. And when you ask why and how, verse 27 gives the answer very clearly. It had nothing to do with Jeroboam himself and everything to do with YHWH's faithfulness: he had promised never to blot out the name of Israel from under heaven, and he was committed to his word, whatever it took.

I find this encouraging, because, truth be told, I'm no spiritual super-star, either, and I'm not sure but if I were on the throne in Jeroboam's day, my reign would probably have gotten the familiar disclaimer of verse 24, too. And yet, God's purposes for us transcend our sin; to augment the U2 song only slightly, "His grace makes beauty out of ugly things." May God grant us the grace simply to rest in that knowledge.

The Word and the Prophet, a devotional thought

There's a story in 2 Kings 13:21-25 that gets me thinking about the life-giving power of God's Word.  In a nutshell:  some Israelites are burying someone, when they see a band of Moabite raiders coming.  In fear they hide the body in Elisha's tomb, the Prophet of God who had died only few years (and a couple of verses) earlier.  When the body touches Elisha's bones, it says, the man comes to life and stands up again on his feet.

During his life, of course, Elisha was the representative of the God's Word, guarding it, preserving it, speaking it's truth to power; and even now in death, the prophet-- the locus of God's Word-- is still working wonders.

There are probably a number of directions we could go with this, but it gets me thinking, like I say, about the miraculous power that God's Word still has, today, to bring things to life. I've seen it. However dead and dusty this old book may seem-- however much like old bones lying silent in an ancient sepulchre it may feel in our modern hands-- it is still able to work life-giving, life-changing miracles in us and among us.

Even the slightest brush with it, it would seem, has the power to bring dead things to life and set them on their feet.

Living the Whole-hearted Life, a devotional thought

There's a very strange story in 2 Kings 13:11-20 that gets me thinking about the ways and the times I "low-ball" my expectations of God. Elisha's on his deathbed and the king of Israel comes for a final visit (Israel is, incidentally, under siege again by the Arameans). So Elisha tells the king to take a bow and arrow and strike the ground with it. It's an altogether bizarre request, but King Jehoash complies. 

I can only imagine Jehoash's arched, incredulous eyebrow as he tentatively taps the ground with the arrow, watching Elisha skeptically the whole while. I have to imagine it, because, although it's not stated, it's strongly implied that Jehoash's response to Elisha's directive was a half-hearted flop. He only tapped the ground three times instead of five or six, Elisha says, and because of that, he'll only win three battles against Aram, but he won't win the war. 

I used to think this was a somewhat capricious thing for Elisha to do. How could Jehoash have known that the fate of his entire country rested on his hitting the ground six times with a bow and arrow rather than only three? But this morning it occurred to me that there is a deeper kind of "half-hearted obedience" going on in Jehoash's life. In 2 Kings 2:11, we're told that he did not lead Israel away from the idolatrous evil that the kings before him had committed. He continued in the sins of his fathers. 

With that in mind, this is my reading of the arrow-tapping incident: Jehoash has woefully low expectations of YHWH's ability to deliver, prosper, and keep his people at all--period-- and this is evident, not in his feeble response to the arrow-tapping thing-- but in Baalism that he's allowed to continue unchecked in his kingdom (why not keep Baal in your corner, just in case YHWH can't pull through, right?). And the deep spiritual half-heartedness of his life shows up in his superficial half-heartedness with the arrow thing, only "playing along" with Elisha and tapping the ground three times...you know ... to humour YHWH's prophet. 

And the thing is: God is prepared to live up to the low expectations of his king.  Jehoash will win a battle or three, but Aram will win the war. And it leads me to wonder:  where, and when, and how I'm like Jehoash. In what areas of my life doI set the bar pitifully low for God, and how are my low expectations of him evident in my half-hearted obedience to him?

Because if God can put his finger on that for us, I think that's where we'll start to discover what a whole-hearted life with him might look like.

The Two Books of the Days of Our Lives, a devotional thought

There’s a simple line in 2 Kings 8:21-29 that’s easy to breeze by, but should give us pause if we stop to notice it.  It's describing the reign of king Joram of Judah, and in verse 23 it says, "all the stuff he did, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah?"

You actually see this a lot in 1 & 2 Kings. The author will mention a king, describe a few details about his reign (usually focusing on whether he did right in the eyes of YHWH or not) and then he'll say, basically, "If you want to find out the stuff he did, you can read a different history book."   And like I say, it doesn’t look like such a big deal, unless you stop and ask why. 

Because it suggests to me that there are, in fact, two records of the days of our lives-- the record we keep ourselves, and the record that God keeps. In a way, when you read 1 & 2 Kings, you're reading God's own record of each king's reign; and if you want the world's record of how things went down, you'll have to look elsewhere.  It's sort of a truism that "history is written by the winners," but as far as the author of 2 Kings is concerned, that's bunk. History, in fact, true history, is written by God, and he sifts all the winners and losers through a much different sieve than we do.

And this is where it can, and should, give us pause. Because I know I keep my own "book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah"-- that is to say, I've got my own record of my life story. There are times I failed, and times I accomplished things. I have a list of stuff I've done and gone through that I'm pretty sure "matter," and a million things I've already forgotten about because they seemed so insignificant. Oh, the stories I could tell.

And I don’t think I’m alone in this all-too-human impulse.

But through 2 Kings 8:23, and all the other places in the Book of Kings where you come across that same refrain, God seems to be saying to us:  “Listen.  I will tell the true story of your life, in the end, and you may be surprised by all the plot twists you never noticed while you were living through them. The things you think are so important may only get a footnote, and the things you're embarrassed by or wish you could forget, they may turn out to be key elements of the story in the end. You just keep living it and let me write the history."

May God grant us all the grace to just keep living it and let him tell the story of it, when it's all said and done.

When the Tough get Going, a Devotional Thought

There's an especially sobering story in 2 Kings 6:30-33 that's meant I think, to send a spiritual chill down the spine.  The city of Samaria is under siege by the Syrians. There's a horrible famine, the people are starving, and in his despair, the King sends soldiers to have Elisha the Prophet beheaded.

This seems a bit capricious, until you remember that in the passage just before this story (the chariots of fire episode), a huge contingency of the Syrian army had fallen into the King's hands, and he stayed their slaughter at Elisha's command (6:21-22). Elisha told him to let them go, and faithfully he did, and now here they are, in greater numbers, attacking his city. The siege itself is one of the most gut-wrenching and horrifying episodes in the whole Bible, and when the king hears a story about a mother forced to eat her own child just to survive, he finally snaps: if he hadn't listened to Elisha and spared those Syrian warriors, maybe they wouldn't be at his doorstep now, terrorizing and dehumanizing his people. So, like I say, he sends his men to have him beheaded.

Verse 33, in particular is especially haunting: "All this evil is from the Lord," the King says, "Why should I wait on him any longer?" Back in 6:21, he was quite happy to obey the Word of God and spare the Syrian warriors (he even called Elisha "my father" back then), but now, in the face of what must have been unimaginable stress, pain, terror and despair, he's ready to turn his back on God altogether. After all: look where obedience got him.

It gets me wondering if, and how, I'm like that King. Like him, I'm usually willing to obey when the going's good; would I, like him, let go as easily in the midst of such pain (it's easy to sniff self-righteously at this poor king, sitting here in my brightly-lit living room, but it's pretty hard to imagine myself on the city wall in 6:29 and not feel my blood run cold with his)? So I'm praying ahead of time, that God will grant me deep faithfulness if and when I go through desperate times, and despite what struggles may come, he'll keep me holding on. It doesn't hurt to plan ahead.

Chariots of Fire and Other Things Unseen: A Devotional Thought

In 2 Kings 6:11-20, we get one of those stories that is profoundly mysterious, and profoundly moving because of the mystery.

The Prophet Elisha and his servant are surrounded by a terrifying army come to haul him off to the king of Syria. Things look hopeless; the situation desperate; the odds overwhelming. And Elisha's servant tells him so, failing into despair. But Elisha, entirely unperturbed, says: don't worry, because "those who are with us are more than those who are with them." Then he asks the Lord to open the young man's eyes to see just who, exactly, is fighting on their side. And this despairing servant looks again and sees the hills thronged with a host of heavenly warriors in flaming chariots, the Lord's angelic army hemming them in and guarding them.

There's actually a beautiful irony here that I can't resist pointing out: after the servants eyes are opened to see them, the angels blind the Syrians, and Elisha leads them captive to Israel, where he asks the Lord to open *their eyes* in turn, to see their predicament.  God blinds the eyes of the faithless-seeing and opens the eyes of the faithful-blind.

Anyways, it's a beautiful story and artfully told, and it always leaves me thinking about the heavenly host that surrounds God's people, unseen, often unnoticed, but still (I believe) very real. Sometimes I feel like Elisha's servant, cowed by what seem overwhelming odds and tempted to despair, and this morning it felt like Elisha was praying for me, too, as much as for him: Lord, open his eyes that he might see the heavenly reality he moves in, the angelic host that surrounds him, the odds as they really stand. There are things unseen at work in the world around us (our battle is not against flesh and blood....) and in those moments of spiritual despondency, this reminder that His angels stand guard on our behalf is moving and strengthening.

Faithfulness Big and Small: A Devotional Thought

In 2 Kings 5:11-20, we find some well-worn Sunday-School flannel graph material that raises some poignant questions about faithfulness, obedience and the life of a disciple. The back story goes like this: Naaman, a wealthy, influential and powerful Syrian Warrior, was suffering from leprosy and went to the Hebrew prophet Elisha for healing. Elisha sends a message that Naaman must wash 7 times in the Jordan river and he'll be miraculously healed. Naaman is deeply offended. He expected Elisha to come out and do some grand gesture befitting a general of his stature: laying on of hands, elaborate incantations, bells and whistles. Instead he gets a simple directive to wash in the Jordan. Naaman leaves in a huff, but his servants ask him a very obvious, but very profound question: "If the prophet had told you to do some great thing, you'd have done it, why, then will you not do this small thing he's asked you to do?" (v. 13). Why, indeed, except that the small act of obedience-- the simple thing-- doesn't appeal to his pride, as much as the grand gesture of spiritual super-heroism might have. Naaman can't prove how deserving he is of God's mercy and blessing, in the small act of obedience; he can't show God justified in choosing to heal the likes of him, through a simple act of straight-forward and relatively easy obedience. Can he? And that, I think, is Elisha's point.

It gets me thinking about the ways I neglect the small acts of obedience-- the simple, straight-forward stuff that God asks me to do-- because they don't appeal to my spiritual pride (even as I tell myself that, if God were to ask for some grand act of surrender or sacrifice, surely I'd do it). And it reminds me of Jesus' words about how those who are unfaithful in the small things won't be faithful in the big. And it leaves me praying God would give me deeper and truer faithfulness in the little things, that my discipleship would turn on that.

On Coming Second Last, a devotional thought

There's this interesting story in 2 Kings 2, where the prophet Elijah passes on his prophetic mantle to his successor, Elisha, just before he's taken up to heaven in a whirlwind. I call it interesting because this "passing on" of the spiritual baton reflects a consistent, if somewhat mysterious pattern in the Old Testament. There always seems to be a "leader yet to come" who will accomplish for God's servants what they cannot accomplish on their own. Moses was not able to lead the people into the Promised Land; Joshua came after him to do that. Saul was not able to rule as king in Israel; David came after him. But David was unable to build the temple; Solomon came after him for that. And then there's Elijah and Elisha. None of God's servants, it seems, are ever "ultimate" (the final word). They are only ever "penultimate" (i.e. the second last word).

None, of course, but one.

Because John the Baptist was pretty clear that he fit the pattern of "being second last."  "One is coming after me," he said, "whose sandals I am unfit to untie." But the one who came after him--the Ultimate Elisha to his penultimate Elijah--was Jesus Christ, and after him we are no longer waiting for one yet to come, only for one to come yet again.

Once you see this pattern, it raises some soul-searching questions.  Am I living as though I get the final word on the matter (you name the matter) in my life, or am I living as though I were penultimate? That is to say: am I letting Jesus have the final word on everything, and acknowledging, with Moses, David, Elijah and John the Baptist, that I just can't do it on my own?