MINISTER, Rev. Thomas
Scarborough.
2 Chronicles 25. King
Amaziah (Part II).
Two
Sundays ago we began to look at King Amaziah
-- and we’ll be continuing
with King Amaziah this morning.
Amaziah was one of those kings who began
well -- but then he ended in tragedy and disgrace.
The
Bible says about him: “He did what was right
in the eyes of the Lord, but not wholeheartedly.”
That seems a bit of an understatement,
because he also seemed to do plenty that was wrong
in the eyes of the Lord.
But
anyway, let’s note right at the start this morning that King
Amaziah was not wholehearted
about his religion. He didn’t always have his whole heart
in it. He wasn’t always dead serious
about his relationship with the Lord.
And
this morning we are going to see what can happen
if you open up that door of halfheartedness
-- if you are not wholehearted all the time.
The Bible makes it clear that we are in the midst of spiritual
warfare
-- and if you think it doesn’t matter
that for a moment or for a while you become halfhearted,
you could be in a very dangerous place.
This
morning we are going to look at King Amaziah’s worst
ever
act of halfheartedness.
And although it was bad,
we strangely find those words repeated
in the Bible at the end
of his reign: “Amaziah did what was right
in the eyes of the Lord.”
So
probably, Amaziah’s great failure that we are going to see this
morning
was only a temporary
failure, and he put things right
with the Lord after
this disaster. But we also read that that failure
led to some very sad consequences,
leading eventually to his death.
* * * * * * * * * *
Two
Sundays ago, we saw how Amaziah took a great step of faith,
when he threw away what is the equivalent of one billion
rands.
The
prophet said to him, “Write it off
-- the whole billion.” And King Amaziah said, “But that’s
really a lot of money.”
And the prophet said -- quote -- “The Lord
can give you much
more than that.”
And we saw last Sunday that the Lord did
return much more
than that one billion
-- because
of Amaziah’s act of obedience,
and his faith.
Strangely,
it’s straight after
this -- maybe just days
after this -- that King Amaziah commits his greatest sin.
Amaziah won
the battle we spoke about two Sundays ago -- he defeated
the Edomites -- that is in chapter 25 verse 14 -- but then, let us
read from
verse 14: "When King Amaziah returned from slaughtering the
Edomites, he brought back the gods
of the people of Seir. He set them up as his own
gods, bowed down to them and burned sacrifices to them."
Coming
straight after Amaziah’s great act of faith with the one billion
rands he wrote off, this seems hard to explain
-- and I’m not going to try
to explain this -- and as I said a moment ago, it seems that Amaziah
eventually came to repentance
over what he did
here. Amaziah turned back
to the Lord. This isn’t spelled
out
in the text, but it looks as though this was so.
So
Amaziah brought back the gods
of Seir.
And he set them up as his own
gods, and burned sacrifices
to them. And one of the astonishing
things about Amaziah's idolatry
in these verses is that usually, in those days, people bowed down to
the gods of those who had conquered
them. If you conquered
me, then your gods were stronger, and I would now worship those gods.
But King Amaziah
bowed down and sacrificed to the gods of the people he
had conquered.
Where
were the gods of the Edomites when the Edomites needed them? And yet
Amaziah brings these gods back to Jerusalem, and he worships them.
In fact a prophet
says
to Amaziah: “These gods could not save their own
people from your hand.” That is in verse 15.
Now
let’s pause for thought
for a moment -- because actually,
so many people today
do a similar thing.
Perhaps
they once chased after wealth, or ambition -- and it completely
failed
them -- it left them empty and humbled, just as it did so
many others. But tomorrow they are chasing after it again. The gods
that did no good -- the gods that were of no help before
-- they bow down to and worship.
Others
neglect their worship of God and their attendance of Church and their
daily devotion to God, and then they discover to their dismay
that they have lost the freshness and power of their personal
relationship with the Lord -- but tomorrow they are neglecting their
faith again.
They are bowing down to that foreign god that was defeated once
before.
Some
people decide to put their trust
in the Lord, and obey
Him with their lives -- and the Lord blesses them beyond anything
that they had expected
-- but tomorrow they are back in a lifestyle of disobdience again.
They go back to gods which failed -- gods which could not help them
or anyone else.
There
is a passage in the New Testament book of Titus, in which the apostle
Paul outlines the things he wants the Church to stress -- to
emphasise above all else -- and the first item on the list is this --
"(Stress that) at one time we too were
foolish, disobedient, deceived, and enslaved by all kinds of passions
and pleasures."
In
other words, remember where you have come from. Remember what the
Lord has saved you from.
Don't go back to those things that once left you empty and sinful
and defeated. Remember that they are all useless
-- and serve the Lord your God with wholeheartedness.
Remember
the power
you had when you trusted in Him. Remember the joy
you had when you walked closely with Him. Remember the blessing
He gave you when you decided to walk in obedience to Him.
So
don't go back to those gods of Edom
-- the gods which were defeated
in the battle -- but serve the Lord your God with all your heart.
I
said that Amaziah opened the door
to halfheartedness
-- and the rest
of this text shows us that it had very sad consequences.
We read in verse 20
that God then caused
him to have wrong thoughts and to make wrong decisions.
We read in verse 22
that therefore
his troops
were routed.
We read in verse 23 that he was taken captive
-- and yet he survived. In verse 24, he lost all the treasures of
the temple.
And then finally, in verse 27 -- a whole fifteen years later
-- he was assassinated.
But
notice here the connection
between a halfhearted
commitment
to God and all the woes that came upon
him. The Bible explicitly tells us here that the two are connected.
In verse 20
we read, “for God
so worked”. We’ll come back to those few words in a moment.
That
is still the same today.
I don’t think this is talking so much about the sincere
person who makes a mistake, or commits a sin, or struggles to walk
with God -- but this is more about the person who drifts into a state
of not really caring about their relationship with God.
That seems to be the thrust of what we find here in 2 Chronicles 25.
Someone
once said, “What will it take for God to wake you up
from your slumbers?” That is what you risk
if you drift away.
* * * * * * * * * * *
There
are two more things in particular that I would like to look at this
morning -- and these are details
that we might easily miss
in this story. You’ll see them both on the Sermon Outline.
The
first of these details we find in the word of a prophet,
who came to see
the king, to bring a message from God.
Let’s
first read what the prophet said,
in chapter 25 verse 15.
In verse 15 we read: "The anger of the Lord burned against
Amaziah -- and He sent a prophet
to Him, who said:
'O King, why
do you consult this people's gods, which could not save their own
people from your hand?'
“And
while he was still speaking, the king said to him: 'Have we
appointed you an adviser to the king? Stop! Why be struck down?'
So the prophet stopped -- but said: 'I know
that God has determined to destroy you, because you have done this
and have not listened to my counsel.'"
And
let’s focus on the words of King Amaziah: “Have we appointed
you an adviser to the king?”
You
might remember that very much the same happened to the Lord Jesus.
The Pharisees came to Him one day, and said: "By what authority
do You do these things? Who gave
You authority to do this?" (Mark 11:28).
Well,
we know
of course Who
appointed this prophet, who came to Amaziah,
and that was God.
The prophet was on a mission
from God, to try to bring the king to repentance
-- and so he didn’t need
for anyone else to appoint
him.
But I
see in this brief exchange between the prophet and the king two
different ways of living our lives.
Some things we do in life because people
appointed us -- my boss
appointed me to do this -- or my teacher
appointed me to do this -- but other things we do in life because God
appointed us to do them.
I
think that every Christian
should
have things in life that God
appointed them to do. For a start, we were gifted
for something. Every Christian received a gift
from the Holy Spirit, and the Bible says, “Do not neglect that gift
that is in you.”
You’ll
remember also the story of the talents
-- where the Master gave each servant a talent
-- and he expected them to use
those talents, and not just bury them under the ground.
And
if we have a gift
-- which each one of us does,
when we have received Christ as our Saviour -- then God will also
provide the place where we can exercise
that gift -- the same way that Jesus Christ called Paul
to witness before kings -- and then He put
him before kings.
Basically,
each one of us as Christians is called by God.
That means that the Lord God calls you and me by name, and He asks
us to fulfil certain tasks for Him. Some people receive a grand
calling from God, such as “Go to China”, or “Bring an end to
the slave trade,” and that fills their whole lives.
Others
have a more immediate
calling, such as “Prepare your children
for a God-loving life,” or “Witness to your neighbour.” Those
callings can be just
as important at the end of the day, if they come from the Lord.
A
famous Christian writer once said that the whole problem with our
modern lifestyles,
where we have so much personal tension and pressure
-- is that we are not focusing on what God
appointed us to do -- we are chasing after all the things that I
appointed me to do, or someone else
appointed me to do. --- But we need to get our focus on what God
appointed me to do, and then
we shall find our right balance,
and we shall find the blessing of God.
So
the story of King Amaziah shows us these two things -- it shows us
that there are people-appointed
tasks, and that there are God-appointed
tasks.
And
the Lord wants us to have a purpose and direction in life that is not
just people-appointed.
His design
for us as His children is certainly not that we should drift
aimlessly through life -- either not knowing what we are here for, or
on the other hand serving things that are meaningless or sinful --
instead of Him.
The
Lord wants the very best
for us -- and you and I should
in fact come to a point in our lives where we hear God's voice, and
we can sense that we are following His call
on our lives.
And
there is another
simple truth about King Amaziah and the prophet.
You
don’t need the approval of people
to do the things that God calls
you to do. You might not
have
the approval of people -- you might not have the support
of people -- but what matters is that you follow the one who truly
has appointed
you, which is the Lord.
* * * * * * * * * *
Let’s
turn to another detail
in the text this morning, and we find
this detail in verse 20
-- words that describe Amaziah’s response to some wise words of
advice,
which he received from another king.
Let
us look at verse 20: "Amaziah, however, would not listen, for
God
so worked that He might hand him over to Jehoash -- that’s the king
of the North -- because
they sought the gods of Edom."
It is
a short sentence -- but it speaks volumes. It speaks about a great
truth that we find throughout
the Bible.
These words say, very simply, that God
worked in King Amaziah’s heart and mind.
God
caused him not to listen.
This
does not mean, I believe, that God overruled Amaziah's heart.
God didn't force him to be a bad
man when he wasn’t
a bad man. Rather, the way
that God worked in Amaziah was a perfect reflection of what was
already
going on in King Amaziah's heart.
A
while back, we dealt in my Bible study group with the subject of
miracles.
And I began by asking: "What is the definition of a miracle?"
One
of the definitions of a miracle is something that is supernatural
-- something that tears apart the laws of nature -- that goes against
all that humans have come to expect from their observation of nature.
And
without a belief in miracles like that,
it is impossible to be a Christian -- because the biggest miracle
that ever happened is the fact that Jesus Christ rose from the dead.
If we reject miracles -- if we say it is impossible for them to
happen -- then we reject the very core of the Christian faith.
But
there is another definition of a miracle also. This is the kind of
miracle that we find here in 2 Chronicles 25 this morning -- namely
that God
caused Amaziah not
to listen at a crucial juncture in his reign. We came across this
before
in 2 Chronicles, when King Rehoboam
listened to the wrong people
-- and we read: “This turn of events was from God.”
And
that, too,
is a supernatural event. The fact that Amaziah would not listen
was not just a chance
happening, or a human choice
-- we read here in verse 20 that this was the working of God.
In
fact we need to understand as Christian believers that this is how
God works all the time.
Not
only does God at times disrupt the normal course of nature -- but He
is doing things all the time
that might appear to be natural and normal to a person without
spiritual sight
-- but they are
the hand of God
in this world.
There
are those events where one person looks at them and says they are
just chance
or the laws of cause and effect -- but the believer looks at them,
and says in faith -- "This is the hand of God."
You
do not need to read very far through your Bible to discover that the
Lord God has power over everything
that comes to pass. It is not just the obvious
miracles, but He works through
the laws of nature -- without disrupting
the laws of nature -- to reign over this entire world.
In
fact just as we cannot do without the first
kind of miracle -- the miracle that disrupts the laws of nature
-- such as the resurrection of Jesus from the dead -- so we cannot
do without this second
kind of miracle as Christians. You cannot fully
lead a Christian life without a belief that God acts supernaturally
through everything that comes to pass in this world.
You
cannot trust
in God in every situation
of life if God does not
truly have power over all events.
You
cannot
believe that all things work together for good
for those who love the Lord if He does not have
the power to work
such good.
You
cannot have the peace and the blessing of knowing that God is in
control
of everything if unless He really has power
over everything.
You
cannot commit things to the Lord in prayer
if unless God can respond
to those prayers, and intervene
in this world
-- and intervene in the world of the spirit
-- to forgive our sins, or to protect us from spiritual
forces.
So
the second
detail
that we learn from this story of King Amaziah
is that so often when we see people
making decisions, and people
listening to advice -- or not
listening to advice -- and company decisions, and the things that
bosses say, and hiring and firing -- and you name
it -- God
is in those things.
* * * * * * * * * * *
Well
my time is at an end this morning -- and may God bless His Word to
us.
AMEN.
