Today's Scripture Reading (January 3, 2023): 2 Chronicles 15
Michael Crichton (1942-2008),
the author of Jurassic Park, The Great Train Robbery, and so many other
wonderful works of fiction, once argued, "If you don't know history, then you don't know
anything. You are a leaf that doesn't know it is part of a tree." In so
many ways, we are the product of what has gone on before us. I am molded by my
personal history, the things that have happened to me, as well as societal
history or the events that have shaped the society in which I live. And to say
that history does not affect who we are is simply naïve. History affects our
beliefs and understandings in so many ways that we are probably completely
unaware of the depth of that influence. I am part of a tree, and the only way
to get off of the tree is to die.
The Prophet Azariah has a word for
King Asa. And part of that word is to remind the King of the nation's history. Israel
had a long history that extended back to the time of their slavery in Egypt,
and that history still affected the self-image of the nation. Azariah wants to ensure
that Asa understands the tree to which Israel is attached.
One of these influential moments in
history was that they once were a nation without a God, without a law that
connected the people with that God, and without a priest to make the connection
between the two. I guess it wasn't so much that they didn't have the law but
rather that they had never learned the law Moses gave to them, and so they lived
as if they were people who were not guided by some overarching principles. Azariah
recalls the time that episodic Judges led Israel. Sometimes they had a Judge overseeing
them, and sometimes they had more than one Judge, but while God chose those
Judges, these Judges sometimes did not lead the nation in a godly way. And
there were times during this era when there was no judge anywhere in the country
ready to lead the children of Israel into whatever was coming next. It is an
era that the Book of Judges sums up with this distressing epitaph "In those days Israel had no king; everyone did as they saw
fit" (Judges 21:25).
But that was not where the Kingdom of
Judah existed during the days of Asa and Azariah. Israel had a true God, and
his Temple was in Jerusalem. The Northern Kingdom might have left the ministry
of this God by building and serving idols in both the north and the south of
that Kingdom, but Judah still had Solomon's Temple. Judah still had the law; God
gave that to Moses and to which Israel's greatest King, David, had tried to
devote his life. And Judah still had the priests, who were involved not just in
the daily life of the Temple, but also involved in the everyday life of the
people by teaching them what God expected from them. Involvement in the people's
lives was one of the reasons the priests had been scattered throughout the
nation so that they could be the teachers of the people.
Azariah needed King Asa to understand
his responsibility to ensure that the nation didn't forget the gift they had
been given. It was a gift that the people had not always accepted because they
failed to recognize the tree on which they were growing. Historically, there
had been dark times. The King had the awesome responsibility to either lead his
nation into the Light of God available to them or a darkness without God, where
Israel had suffered in the past.
Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: 2 Chronicles
16
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