Bible Devotion

Meditative Reflection
The Calling to Priesthood

“It is not right for you, Uzziah, to burn incense to the Lord. That is for the priests, the descendants of Aaron, who have been consecrated to burn incense.” (2 Chr. 26:18)

While the Bible makes clear that it was pride that led King Uzziah to enter into the temple to burn incense himself, one wonders what Uzziah’s own rationale might be! Perhaps, he had the same thought that Korah and his gang had in opposing Aaron when they challenged Aaron with these words:

“You have gone too far! The whole community is holy, every one of them, and the Lord is with them. Why then do you set yourselves above the Lord’s assembly?” (Num. 16:3)

In all these years of ministry, I have heard something rather similar to the above over and over again in churches. The basis of such opposition to the pastoral leadership is mostly based on 1 Peter 2:5, 9, “you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ… But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession…”.

However, Peter was not really talking about anything new; he was quoting from the OT, “you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Exod. 19:6). We are priests, just like the Israelites were priests, or in the words of some commentators, we are the “spiritual Israel”.

And just like the Israel of old—the entire people was the royal priesthood, God still called a particular group of people, Aaron and his descendants to be exact, to be set apart to serve as priests on behalf of the whole people. Today God still calls a special group of people to serve Him full-time as His servants—some call them priests and others pastors. No, they are not holier; they do not and cannot set themselves above the Lord’s assembly. However, the fact remains, they are called by God to serve Him on behalf of His people, just as Aaron and his descendants were set apart for the same reason. Therefore, we need to heed the word of Ambrose, as unpopular as it is today:

“Let the dissidents learn to fear the agitation of the Lord and to obey the priests. What does this mean? Did the cleft in the earth not swallow Dathan and Abiram and Korah because of their dissention? For when Korah and Dathan and Abiram incited 250 men to rebel against Moses and Aaron and separate themselves from them...You are considering then what the causes of their offense were. They were willing to exercise the priesthood unworthily, and for that reason they dissented. Moreover, they murmured and disapproved of the judgment of God in their election of their priests. (As a result) The guilty are snatched up and removed from every element of this world, so that they will not contaminate the air by their breath, or the sky by their sight, or the sea by their touch or the earth by their tombs. ...For that reason, too, [God] Himself chose Aaron as priest, in order that not human cupidity but the grace of God would be the preponderant force in choosing the priest. It would not be a voluntary offering or one’s own assumption but a heavenly vocation. The one who can suffer on behalf of sinners may offer gifts on behalf of sins, because ‘even He Himself,’ Scripture says, ‘bear infirmity.’ No one should assume the honor for Himself but be called by God, just as Aaron was. In this way even Christ did not claim the priesthood but received it.”
(ACCS, OT III, 228-9, 234)

Meditative Reflection
The Snare of Success and Power

“Jotham grew powerful because he walked steadfastly before the Lord his God.” (2 Chr. 27:6)

As I was reading the lives of successive kings in Judah, it appears that there was a pattern being developed:

- For at least 23 years, Joash honored the Lord and even put an effort in repairing His temple, only to abandon it and turn to worship Asherah poles and other idols in his latter years (2 Chr. 24:17-18).

- Joash was succeeded by his son, Amaziah who also did what was right in the eyes of the Lord in his early years. He was so blessed by God that his country became strong and organized, and he was able to defeat the Edomites and killed ten thousand and threw another ten thousand down a cliff (2 Chr. 25:11-12). Unfortunately such a success only fed his pride and he brought back with him the gods of the Edomites and he “bowed down to them and burned sacrifices to them” (2 Chr. 25:14).

In both cases, when they experienced a time of peace and success, they forgot about the Lord who had made them successful and fell in the snare of pride. As the Book of Proverbs puts it, “Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall” (Prov. 16:18). Such was also the case with the son of Amaziah, Uzziah, whose pride “led to his downfall” (2 Chr. 26:16ff) as he usurped the role of the priest to offer sacrifices himself before the Lord and was inflicted with leprosy the rest of his life.

As a result, when I was reading about the success and power that Uzziah’s son, Jotham had, I was anticipating the same failure and was decently surprised to read that, “Jotham grew powerful because he walked steadfastly before the Lord his God” (2 Chr. 27:6), and he did not fall into the snare of pride that usually comes with great success.

I guess while most cannot handle great success and power, some, by the grace of God, can.

Meditative Reflection
No “Holier-than-Thou” Mentality

“Do you intend to add to our sin and guilt? For our guilt is already great, and His fierce anger rests on Israel.” (2 Chr. 28:13)

It is absolutely amazing to read that the leaders of Ephraim would respond to the words of the prophet by releasing the captives they took from Judah:

- For one, there was no love lost between the two nations: They were at odds all the time and during the reign of Ahaz, of Judah, the king of Israel were joining hands with Aram to attack Jerusalem (2 Ki. 16:5).

- The prophet Obed made it very clear that their victory over Judah was a result of God’s anger against Judah (v. 9)—in other words, their victory was sanctioned by God.

- Israel under Pekah was still worshipping the idols set up by Jeroboam (2 Ki. 15:28).

Why then would they listen to a prophet from the Lord whom they feared no more and why would they let go of 200,000 captives whom they intended to use as slaves—a huge fortune in those days!

The key seems to lie in these words by the leaders of Ephraim: “Do you intend to add to our sin and guilt? For our guilt is already great, and His fierce anger rests on Israel” (v. 13).

It appears that the general decline of the power of Israel and the constant threat from the Assyrians (who in less than a decade after the death of Pekah put an end to the Northern Kingdom) had at least caused these leaders in the tribe of Ephraim to foresee the coming judgment of the Lord on them. The fact that God had used them to punish Judah for their wickedness seemed to have served to allow them to see both the holiness of the Lord and their own sinfulness. Therefore, their victory was not a time for rejoicing, but a time for their own repentance.

I believe this should also be our attitude, as we see God punish the wicked among us—it is not a time of rejoicing, but a time for us to search our own hearts, lest we adopt a “holier-then-thou” attitude typical of the Pharisees.

Meditative Reflection
Where Does Our Help Come from?

“At that time King Ahaz sent to the kings of Assyria for help.” (2 Chr. 28:16)

One wonders why King Ahaz chose to seek help from the king of Assyria instead of from the Lord.

For one, he had the godly examples of both his father Jotham and his grandfather Uzziah to follow. Both had helped Judah become very strong and powerful and in the case of his father, the Bible clearly states that the reason for the growth of his power was “because he walked steadfastly before the Lord” (2 Chr. 27:6).

Furthermore, Ahaz had the good fortune of having the prophet Isaiah serving the Lord in his time. The Lord even used this occasion of the attack by Rezin and Pekah to announce through Isaiah the most wonderful prophecy of the birth of Jesus Christ, “Emmanuel” (Isa. 7:14), as a sign of His promise to deliver him from his enemies.

Also, his situation was not as dire as he thought. As much as the joint forces of Aram and Israel had inflicted Judah with losses, the Bible points out that “they could not overpower him” (2 Ki. 16:5; Isa. 7:1).

Therefore, there was no reason for Ahaz not to trust the Lord. However, as is always the case, the exercise of faith in God is always an exercise in complete obedience, in trusting in the unseen and its result is not necessarily instant. On the other hand, the help of another human ruler or authority can always be gotten by bribes, the power of which is visible and the results often far more instant.

The help of men is always temporal and is not dependable, but the help that comes from the Lord is not only dependable and lasting, it ushers us into a greater and deeper knowledge of His love.

Meditative Reflection
A Breath of Fresh Air

“In the first month of the first year of his reign, he opened the doors of the temple of the LORD and repaired them.” (2 Chr. 29:3)

Since Hezekiah ascended to the throne at the age of 25 (29:1), he must have witnessed how his father Ahaz had plunged the nation into idol worship, even “sacrificed his sons in the fire, following the detestable ways of the nations the Lord had driven out before the Israelites” (28:3). In other words, Hezekiah must have witnessed the sacrifice of some of his siblings by his father. That must have been a horrific experience. No wonder, upon the ascension to the throne, “In the first month of the first year of his reign, he opened the doors of the temple of the LORD and repaired them” (29:3).

He also went on and “removed the high places, smashed the sacred stones and cut down the Asherah poles” (2 Ki. 18:4a). To me the most precious thing he did was his breaking into pieces the bronze snake Moses had made, for up to that time the Israelites had been burning incense to it (2 Ki. 18:4b).

While many so-called believers visit in droves to worship places where miracles were supposed to have taken place these days, Hezekiah had such a clear-headed notion that “God is spirit and His worshipers must worship in Spirit and in truth” (Jn. 4:24). What caused him to have such a correct view of worship and desire to turn the nation to God to the point that he could not even wait, but to open the doors of the temple “in the first month of the first year of his reign”?

Based on his friendship with the prophet Isaiah and how he listened to his advice as described in Isaiah 36-38, it is quite obvious that the teachings, exhortations and prophecies of Isaiah must have had a profound impact of him, so while waiting for his turn to be king, he had already decided what to do to turn the nation back to God.

While the nation of Judah would eventually plunge itself into destruction in the hands of successive wicked kings, Hezekiah was indeed a breath of fresh air. I guess the lesson to learn is this: While the world is destined to head towards its eventual destruction and even the church, as prophesied in the Scripture, will head toward the path of apostasy, we can still be that “breath of fresh air” until the Lord’s return.

Meditative Reflection
A National Repentance

“They brought seven bulls, seven rams, seven male lambs and seven male goats as a sin offering for the kingdom, for the sanctuary and for Judah.” (2 Chr. 29:21)

At the time of King Hezekiah, the worship at the temple of the Lord had been halted for at least 16 years which was the length of the reign under the wicked king Ahaz (28:1). Not only did the worship service, together with the offering of sacrifice and praises through the singing of psalms accompanied by various musical instruments, disappear from the temple of the Lord during this period of time, but many profane objects related to idol worship were brought into the temple. This represented not only the desecration of the temple itself, but the blatant sins of the kingdom under the king, and those of the people in Judah. As a result, immediately upon the cleansing of the temple, King Hezekiah ordered the presentation of a sin offering, very much after the requirement under the Law of Moses concerning the Day of Atonement (Lev. 16).

However, since their sins were so great and they involved basically every one of the nation, King Hezekiah ordered seven bulls, seven rams, seven lambs and seven goats to be used for the sin offering. While “seven” is the “number indicating completeness” (JFB, 560), the use of all kinds of animals fit for sacrifice also indicated King Hezekiah’s recognition of the gravity of their sins, and thus they combined to form one huge “sin offering” (29:21):

- For the kingdom: recognizing the sins of the kings who had led the nation astray, not following the ways of the Lord;

- For the sanctuary: recognizing the sins of the priests and Levites in not only failing to maintain the worship of the Lord, but also in allowing the temple to be trampled upon by idols; and

- For Judah: that is, the people within their land. They were just as sinful as the king and the clergy.

This was an awesome picture and a great example of how a nation should turn to God. For a nation to have any hope of revival, it has to involve the repentance of the leaders, the clergy and all the people. As impossible as it seems in our days, the Sentinel Group has documented national repentance not unlike that in Hezekiah’s time during the last few decades of our time in various parts of the world. You may visit www.sentinelgroup.org for more information.

Meditative Reflection
Successful Evangelism

“The couriers went from town to town in Ephraim and Manasseh, as far as Zebulun, but people scorned and ridiculed them.” (2 Chr. 30:10)

Hezekiah’s effort to call the wayward Israelites of the Northern Kingdom to repent and turn back to the Lord was indeed very admirable.

Based on the contents of his letter of invitation, it was obvious that such an invitation was not given in his first year of reign, but at a later time when the Assyrians had put the Northern Kingdom of Israel to an end (in 722 B.C.). However, I cannot help but anticipate a rather cool reception from these Israelites, because

(1) They had been so used to idol worship under various wicked kings since Jeroboam (975 B.C.), there could hardly be any knowledge of Yahweh, let alone faith in Him;

(2) To them, the Southern Kingdom was their enemy and they did not want to have anything to do with the tribe of Judah even in their plight; and

(3) The punishment under the Assyrians was so harsh that, even if the Lord is the One True God, they only held resentment rather than submission to Him.

So, without reading the rest of the story, we could safely anticipate that most, if not all of the Israelites from the ten tribes would not be receptive to Hezekiah’s invitation to celebrate Passover in Jerusalem. As it turned out, the “people scorned and ridiculed” the couriers sent by Hezekiah. One wonders why Hezekiah even bothered to do such a futile exercise?

I believe it is not unlike our effort to evangelize the world today. Jesus has already warned us that “small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.” (Matt. 7:14). However, He still commissions us to “go and make disciples of all nations” (Matt. 28:19), because “He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance” (2 Pet. 3:9).

Likewise, Hezekiah knew the heart of the Lord, and as much as he might also anticipate a cool reception, he did what he could, what he was moved to do and what needed to be done. The result was not entirely futile, because “some from Asher, Manasseh and Zebulun humbled themselves and went to Jerusalem” (30:11).

Indeed, successful evangelism is not defined by the outcome, but by our obedience. Our part is to go and invite people to come to Christ, and leave the result in God’s hand, as we see that even the unity within Judah was in “the hand of God” (30:12).