Day 27 & 28
2 Kings
Sin and spiritual blindness cause King after King to rise and fall, refusing to listen to the message the prophets have tried to share.
2 Kings 17:7 shares that "All this took place because the Israelites had sinned against the Lord their God, who had brought them up out of Egypt from under the power of Pharoah king of Egypt. They worshiped other gods and followed the practices of the nations the Lord had driven out before them, as well as the practices that the kings of Israel had introduced. The Israelites secretly did things against the Lord their God that were not right.....But they would not listen and were as stiff-necked as their fathers, who did not trust in the Lord their God. They rejected his decrees and the covenant he had made with their fathers and the warnings he had given them. They followed worthless idols and themselves became worthless......So the Lord was very angry with Israel and removed them from his presence."
Once again the lines of black and white are allowed to become gray and morality unravels. In my Bible I have a commentary section and this sums up these days pretty well: "Compromising God's standards will result in moral and physical collapse. Obedience is the only sure path to blessing."
(Women of Faith Study Bible)
I want to go back to 2 Kings 17:7. It speaks to me quite loudly in how quickly I forget my blessings. In how quickly this Easter season can be turned into the commercialism of bunnies and Easter egg hunts and gardening and spring cleaning. When this season, this Lent season that I have chosen to do this "Bible in 90 Days" challenge, -- is for Christians to remember why Easter took place in the first place! All of what I have in eternal life takes place because God first sacrificed his son on a cross for my sins. If there is sin in my life, I need to read that line and think about why 'all this is taking place.' If there is unease in my life, I need to go back and perhaps make things right. When there is bad in my life, I need to think about all the really bad things in life God has saved me from! Where he has 'brought me out from' in my own captivities of the past. All of the things in our life take place because of something. All the blessings, all the challenges, all the joys and all the sorrows.
"All this took place because the Israelites had sinned against the Lord their God, who had brought them up out of Egypt from under the power of Pharaoh king of Egypt..."
And sometimes when you can't think why 'all this took place' - when it's not because of your sin or your child's -- it's simply because of God's sovereignty and because there is a purpose in it we are not ready to know or simply don't need to know in this life.
For all that God has done for them since their captivity in Egypt to the freedom of the promised land - they showed their thanks by disobedience and I just can't help but gulp at that -- in my own disobedience at times. That sentence is like God asking me, "Do you remember where I brought you from? Brandon from? Do you remember how I provided?"
I can see how many of the Kings fell into the traps they did. It's easy to lose sight of God when things are going good, and only call on him when things aren't going so good. What chuckles me most is seeing people post when they're having a good day, about how "Life is Good!" I want to ask them where that status update was on the days when it's not so good. Those are the days, being able to say "Life is Good" -- counts. Sometimes you have to be like the widow in 2 Kings 4 where in times of such hardship and basic needs - you just listen to how the Lord said he would provide and just shut your door to the outside world, do what the Lord said for you to do, and simply trust! As she found out, God does provide, above and beyond. And when others around us are tempting us to not trust, or pull us away from God, we just need to shut the door to those lies and pour the last drop of oil we have into more jars than we can count. Pour out the last shred of faith we have and watch it get us through more than we could have ever imagined.
In short, I want to be Hezekiah in 2 Kings 18:5 which says, "Hezekiah trusted in the Lord, the God of Israel. There was no one like him among all the kings of Judah, either before him or after him. He held fast to the Lord and did not cease to follow him; he kept the commands the Lord had given Moses. And the Lord was with him; he was successful in whatever he undertook...."
I want it to be said of me that I trusted in the Lord, the God of Israel, who delivered me from all my "Egypt's". There was no one with a faith like mine... I held fast to the Lord and did not cease to follow him.... I kept the commands the Lord had given me....
That the Lord was with me and I needed more jars to pour my faith into.
(And that I did it all wearing Camo....)
