Hello my “Walking with Jesus” friends on this first day of August,
On rare occasions new leaders make ‘culture shift decisions’ which have long lasting impact on the people they lead. Come with me again back to Jerusalem in the year 715bc and let’s witness one of those cataclysmic decisions and the action plan to implement this radical decision. As we witness this remarkable event I urge you to consider the place where you live in the world, and your leaders, and imagine what type of decisions they could make today which could have similar, long lasting, radically positive impact on the people where you live, maybe even for generations to come.
As we’ve seen in the past few days King Hezekiah, at age 25, was the new king of Judah with Jerusalem as its capital. Hezekiah followed a wicked king, his father Ahaz. Among other dreadful things, Ahaz had shut the doors of the great Temple of God in Jerusalem, something which had never been done since it was first built and dedicated 240 years before! In addition, Ahaz had shrines for idol worshiping built on every street corner in Jerusalem and in all the towns and villages of Judah! (2 Chronicles 28:24,25) It was a very dark time spiritually in Jerusalem and Judah.
When Ahaz died, his son Hezekiah ascended to the throne and immediately began making radical decisions and implementing those decisions and the result was a dramatic culture shift! Spiritual revival happened in Jerusalem while Temple worship was restored, as we saw yesterday in 2 Chronicles 29.
The northern kingdom Israel had been decimated by the invading armies of Assyria 7 years before and by the time of this spiritual revival in Judah, life was nothing short of miserable for the few Israelites who had been left behind when a great many of the inhabitants of Samaria and other towns and villages of Israel had been killed or dragged off to Nineveh as captives of war!
As King Hezekiah and the people of Jerusalem were celebrating God’s goodness to them, as they restored holy worship of God and destroyed all the evil idols Ahaz had built, the Spirit of God began stirring King Hezekiah’s heart and he began thinking about the remaining Israelites in the northern cities.
I’ve often wondered how Hezekiah’s officials responded when Hezekiah first mentioned the outrageous, radical idea of inviting all Israelites who remained alive in the north to come to Jerusalem and join with the Jews of the southern kingdom in the greatest of all Jewish events, the Passover Festival! Now let’s remember the Temple had been closed and locked for about 7 years, so this would have been the first Passover for Judah and Jerusalem for quite some time.
There is no record of a unified Passover uniting Israelites from both Israel & Judah since the days the united kingdom of Israel divided in 930bc, more than 200 years before! Now don’t rush past this my friends, think about how radical the concept was of bringing together Jews from both northern & southern kingdom, in Jerusalem, to be gathered at the great Temple now experiencing a restoration revival!
The record says: “The king and his officials…decided to send a proclamation throughout Israel, from Beersheba to Dan, calling the people to come to Jerusalem and celebrate the Passover to the LORD, the God of Israel… At the king’s command, couriers went throughout Israel and Judah with letters from the king which read: ‘People of Israel, return to the LORD, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, that He may return to you who are left, who have escaped from the hand of the kings of Assyria…” (2 Chronicles 30:1-6)
You may recall my friends that the phrase “from Dan to Beersheba” was used to describe the entire land of Israel from the extreme northern town Dan, to extreme southern town Beersheba. In this case the record uses the phrase: “throughout Israel, from Beersheba to Dan” because it was Hezekiah, king of the southern kingdom where Beersheba was still an Israelite town but Dan had been captured by Assyria and very likely significantly damaged.
Do you notice Hezekiah’s unifying salutation: “People of Israel, return to the LORD, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, that He may return to you who are left, who have escaped from the hand of the kings of Assyria.“? Can you imagine how that encouraged those who survived the Assyrian invasion in the north? While their towns and villages lie in ruins, those Israelites who remained alive were still God’s chosen people, descendants of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Jacob’s 12 sons and an olive branch of peace and inclusion was being extended to them from King Hezekiah, who was a direct descendant of King David & King Solomon.
But it wasn’t only towns in the northern kingdom Israel which had been devastated. The Assyrian army as well as other marauders from surrounding nations including the Philistines, the Moabites, the Ammonites and others had pillaged many towns in Judah as well, very much like what we saw on October 7th, 2023. (2 Chron. 28:18,19) King Hezekiah didn’t mince words in his courageous, radical invitation.
Listen to the next lines of the invitation: “Do not be like your parents and your fellow Israelites who were unfaithful to the LORD, the God of their ancestors … Do not be stiff necked, as your ancestors were; submit to the LORD. Come to His sanctuary which He has consecrated forever. Serve the LORD your God, so that His fierce anger will turn away from you.” (2 Chronicles 30:7,8) King Hezekiah was striking a strong and emotional cord with the people.
Those living in ravaged northern Israel knew it was true, their plight was because their parents and ancestors had abandoned the God of Israel and advanced wicked idol worship throughout Israel for several generations. (2 Kings 17:7-11) But the people of Judah also knew many of their parents and grandparents had followed the wickedness of Israel. (2 Chronicles 27:2)
King Hezekiah was calling all Israel to remember the prayer of King Solomon at the dedication of this great Temple 240 years before: “When Your people Israel have been defeated by an enemy because they have sinned against You, O God, and when they turn back and give praise to Your name, praying and making supplication before You in this Temple, then hear from heaven and forgive the sins of Your people Israel and bring them back to the land You gave to them and their ancestors…” (2 Chronicles 6:24,25)
You may recall my friends, it was God’s response to Solomon’s prayer which is the famous statement of 2 Chronicles 7:14 “If My people, who are called by My name will humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, THEN will I hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and I will heal their land.”
King Hezekiah knew the prayer of King Solomon and the response of God and Hezekiah was counting on the fact that you can count on God to be faithful to His promises, thus Hezekiah sent this remarkable letter of invitation to every village and town throughout Israel and Judah.
Tomorrow we’ll look at how the people responded to this radical, dramatic, seismic action taken by King Hezekiah. As we close today, I urge you to listen to the dramatized audio Bible link below as this historic moment of 2 Chronicles 30:1-9 comes alive! Would you consider it a fresh invitation from God to you and me, to come to Him with a fresh expectation of something new He would like to do in our lives, and maybe even in our land… and here’s a song to help us with that.
Today’s Scripture: 2 Chronicles 30:1-9.
Choose below to read or listen.
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Bible images provided with attribution to www.LumoProject.com.
Have a comment or question about today’s chapter? I’m ready to hear from you, contact me here.
Pastor Doug Anderson
“Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, with our eyes fixed on Jesus…” (Heb. 12:1,2)
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