2 Chronicles 36:11-23: Stop it!

Presented to Swift Current Corps 29 August 2010
By Captain Michael Ramsay


We watched this wonderful video at Officer’s camp about counseling that I thought that I would share with you because I think it relates to the text that we are looking at today – John you’ve studied some different counseling theorists and techniques than I have in my training. Let me know if you have encountered something similar to this:[1]




2 Chronicles 36:15-17:

15 The LORD, the God of their fathers, sent word to them through his messengers again and again, because he had pity on his people and on his dwelling place. [He told them to stop it!] 16 But they mocked God's messengers, despised his words and scoffed at his prophets until the wrath of the LORD was aroused against his people and there was no remedy. [They wouldn’t stop it!]. 17 He brought up against them the king of the Babylonians, who killed their young men with the sword in the sanctuary, and spared neither young man nor young woman, old man or aged. [God stopped it for them!] God handed all of them over to Nebuchadnezzar.

God totally wipes out the nation-states of first Israel (which should have been a warning to the southern kingdom) and now -in our text today- Judah because, Verse 14: “ …all the leaders of the priests and the people became more and more unfaithful, following all the detestable practices of the nations and defiling the temple of the LORD, which he had consecrated in Jerusalem.”[2]

God told them to stop it. He sent them many prophets who foretold the events of our text today including Amos, Isaiah, and Jeremiah who is mentioned by name in Verse 12: “He [King Zedekiah of Judah] did evil in the eyes of the LORD his God and did not humble himself before Jeremiah the prophet, who spoke the word of the LORD.”

The country’s leader, Zedekiah -as we just read here- and the country’s religious leaders and the general population – as we read in Verse 12 – they did not humble themselves before God. God sent His prophets to tell them to stop it and they wouldn’t listen to Him. ‘They mocked God's messengers, despised his words and scoffed at his prophets’ (Verse 16). They believed that they could just keep on sinning and it wouldn’t matter. They believed that no matter what they did that they couldn’t lose their independence, their salvation, because God lived in their country, in their temple. They believed God chose them so no matter what they did, none of them would not lose their inheritance in the promised land (See TSA Doctrine 9)[3] and as a result of this false belief, ‘ …all the leaders of the priests and the people became more and more unfaithful…’ (Verse 14). Instead of being faithful to God, they put their faith in earthly powers (2 Chronicles 36:2-13), their election and their temple building – which they end up defiling anyway in their contempt for and rejection of the LORD.

They were very wrong to put their faith in people and symbols rather than God. Verses 15-16: 15 The LORD, the God of their fathers, sent word to them through his messengers again and again, … 16 But they mocked God's messengers, despised his words and scoffed at his prophets until the wrath of the LORD was aroused against his people and there was no remedy.

The people, the political, and the religious leaders - instead of following God - seemed by their actions to believe that because of who they were (the ‘chosen’ people) and where they lived (Jerusalem, God’s city) that they were safe and they believed that nothing could change that. They seemed to believe that it did not matter what they did since they controlled the land around God’s temple they seemed to believe that in that they controlled God or at least that He would protect his temple and that those who were put in charge of taking care of it – even if, verse 9, they themselves were even defiling the temple. God told them again and again through the prophets to stop it but they didn’t and so He stopped them, removing them from His temple which they defiled.

He is likewise telling us to stop it! In our society what have we been following instead of God? Some denominations and churches tell us that the fact that we have money shows that God approves of us. Nothing else matters if we have money. This prosperity heresy, which is very prevalent in North American culture says that the fact that you have money shows that you are doing well. That viewpoint is not a Christian one; it is a capitalist one: 'he who dies with the most toys wins'. There are also large denominations in North America that tell us that it doesn’t matter what we do, we all sin all the time so don’t worry about it – that stands in direct contrast to our text today. There are still other denominations in Canada that tell you that the Word of God is no longer relevant and it is just a guide book and there are people who tell you that everyone will ‘get into heaven’ as long as they are just nice and don’t kill anyone. These are a sampling of the contemporary teachings of people and an example of how, as verse 14 records, ‘ …all the leaders of the priests and the people became more and more unfaithful, following all the detestable practices of the nations’. Our country is becoming more and more unfaithful and quickly turning our back on the commitment of our nation's founders to ‘peace, order, and good government’ and Psalm 72 – the verse that our cultural identity in this country was founded upon. How far we have strayed: Now we can’t even read the Bible and pray in our schools! All across this country, we seem to be more and more, as it says in verse 16, mocking God’s message and His messengers. I think we would be very naïve to think that we will not suffer consequences just like the people of Judah did in our text for turning their back on a God who loves them. He also loves us.

How about each of us individually: Do we ever fall into that same trap of turning our back on God? Do we believe that if we don’t do anything: if we don’t serve God; if we don’t read our Bible and don't pray; if we don’t take care of the marginalized in society; do we believe that we will still be on His team and by extension experience His salvation (Cf. Matthew 7:15-21, 25:31ff; cf. Numbers 21:4-9, 2 Kings 18:4)? It is interesting in Greek the most common word for faith and faithfulness are the same (ek pisteōs). Our beliefs and our actions are necessarily linked. James puts it quite succinctly where he writes that faith without deeds is dead (James 2:17; see James 2:14-26). The Salvation Army’s ninth doctrine states ‘We believe that continuance in a state of salvation depends upon continued obedient faith in Christ.’

If we say we have faith in God but are not faithful than our actions prove our words to be a lie (cf. Matthew 7:15-21; 25:31ff.). It is then the righteous who will live by faith. And this faith is both, as the theologian James Dunn declares, “the initial act of receiving the gospel and the continuing process toward salvation.”[4] Faith is a result of righteousness (Romans 3:22; 4:5, 9,11,13; 9:30; 10:6) and righteousness is from God (Romans 3:22, 24; 10:3, 17; cf. 5:19; Psalm 72:11; Isaiah 46:13; Isaiah 61:10; Joel 2:23) for it is God who is righteous (Romans 3:5; cf. Psalm 35:24; 48:10; 50:6; 51:14; 65:5; 71:19; Isaiah 5:16) and it is His righteousness that enables us to be righteous, just as it is Christ’s faithfulness that enables us to live by faith. If we serve God then we will be faithful (Matthew 7:15-21). God is faithful. If, however, we reject the opportunity to faithfully serve God then we will not reap the benefits of faithfully serving Him. He has already won the war against sin and death. He has already secured our salvation. It is just our choice as to whether we want to experience it or not.

In our world today we know that even though the battle still rages, God has already won the war. Sin was defeated between the cross and the empty tomb. We know that the war is over and we are just waiting for our Lord to return and that it is only those of us that keep playing, those of us that keep pressing on towards the goal (Philippians 3:14; 1 Corinthians 9:24; Cf. Colossians 2:18); those of us who don’t give up; those of us who those of us who make it our goal to please God and Jesus who has already won the victory. If we stay with Christ we will claim the victory. But the sad thing is of course, some people do – like the political and religious leaders and the people of 2 Chronicles 36 here; and it seems like the leaders of and many people in this country and like some folks that each of us probably know and love here; the sad thing is many of them -it seems- will choose to reject God and die. This is sad. It grieves God’s heart.

But just when they are at their worst, just when everything seems to be lost, as the nation suffers the consequences of its sins (Romans 6:23), just after the chronicler in 2 Chronicles 36:1-21, retells the tragic story of the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple, and the exile of the people; in Verse 22, he tells us, as in Ezra 1:1 that God moves the heart of Cyrus[5] and God rebuilds His temple so that God’s people can go there to worship God again (cf. Isaiah 44:28; 45:1ff).[6]

This is exciting. Even when God’s chosen people choose to reject Him; even when they are faithless, God is faithful (Romans 3:3,4). Those that rejected God suffered the natural and logical consequences of their sin, they were deported and they even saw their holy temple destroyed. They rejected God’s offered salvation and so they didn’t experience it BUT God is still faithful and take a look at 2 Chronicles 36:23: ‘This is what Cyrus king of Persia says: The LORD, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth and he has appointed me to build a temple for him at Jerusalem in Judah. Anyone of his people among you—may the LORD his God be with him, and let him go up.' Even though the evil generation died in its sin, God offered another generation the same opportunity to worship Him in a Holy Temple dedicated to His Glory (see Ezra 1-6). God is faithful even when we are faithless. But for us to experience the joy of our salvation and His faithfulness – pertaining to our bad actions that come from rejecting Him – God, like Bob Newhart, says. ‘Stop it!’

God loves His people, He is faithful when we are faithless and He commissions King Cyrus to build a new temple. Now this new temple we know was eventually destroyed too as future generations -when it came to their bad faith and actions, refused to 'stop it' - and thus declined their salvation as well but God is still faithful even when we are faithless and an exciting thing happened when the final pre-Christian temple was destroyed in 70 CE, followers of our Lord never rebuilt it because God had already by then sent His only begotten son to live and die and rise again and to –himself- stand as the new temple of the new covenant. Through the death and resurrection of Jesus the purpose of the Temple has been fulfilled –And this is neat too: if we flip to Revelation 21, we will note that when all is said and done, at the end of the end, when Jesus does come back, when God recreates the heavens and the earth anew and when the New Jerusalem descends here to earth there is NO TEMPLE in it at all. We don’t need it. Christ now fulfills that roll: He is the new Temple.

Christ lived and died so that we may all be saved and all of us who – pertaining to our bad actions and rejection of Him – ‘Stop it!’ will indeed experience the paradice of worshipping God for always through the Temple of His risen Son, Jesus Christ.

Let us pray.

http://www.sheepspeak.com/
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[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1g3ENYxg9k
[2] Other reasons for their removal from the land include their contempt for Him, and their disrespect for the land (Leviticus 25:1-23), and the poor, the widow, the immigrant (Cf. Exodus 23:6,11, Leviticus 19:10,15, 23:22, 27:8, Deuteronomy 15:7, 15:11, 24:12-15, 1 Samuel 2:8, Psalms. 22:26, 34:6, 35:10, 82:3, Isaiah. 61:1, Ezekiel 16:49, 18:12, 22:29, Amos 2:7, 4:1, 5:11-12, 8:4-6, Zechariah 7:10.); and their disregard for His very important covenant (Cf. Genesis 12-17; Deuteronomy 4-26, 31; Leviticus 25:1-23; Jeremiah 52:4-27; Amos 3-4; Lamentations 4; Ezekiel 21,22; Joel 1-2:10). The people are removed from the land, just like the Lord told them they would be if they disregarded His covenant and they are removed for the period of time that God told them that they would be removed for disregarding His covenant (2 Chronicles 36:21; Jeremiah 25:11-12, 29:10). God told them that they would earn the loss their territorial inheritance if they continued to sin but they continued so they earned the wages of their sin (cf. Romans 6:23). They did. This was a traumatic time and it caused a lot of people to lose their faith and even their identity – the whole concept of the ‘missing tribes of Israel’ relates to the deportations starting with Assyria and some of these deportees’ descendants never did come back home. Cf. Donald E. Gowan, Amos. (NIB 7. Nashville, Tenn.: Abingdon Press, 1996), 347, 383. Cf. also Thomas E. McComiskey, The Expositor's Bible Commentary, Pradis CD-ROM:Amos/Introduction to Amos/Theological Values of Amos/The doctrine of election in Amos, Book Version: 4.0.2 and Edwin Yamauchi, The Expositor's Bible Commentary, Pradis CD-ROM: Ezra/Introduction to Ezra and Nehemiah/Background of Ezra and Nehemiah, Book Version: 4.0.2: Deportation began with Tiglath-pileser III, who attacked Damascus and Galilee in 732 (2 Kings 15:29), carrying off at least 13,520 people to Assyria (ANET, pp. 283-84).
[3] Salvation Army’s Doctrine 9: ‘We believe that continuance in a state of salvation depends upon continued obedient faith in Christ.’
[4] James D.G. Dunn, Romans 1-8 (WBC 38A: Word Books: Dallas, Texas, 1988), 21.
[5] Cf. Derek Kidner: Ezra and Nehemiah: An Introduction and Commentary. Downers Grove, IL : InterVarsity Press, 1979 (Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries 12), S. 36: According to Josephus, however (Ant. xi. 1), Cyrus had been shown the prophecy of Isaiah 44:28, which names him, and was eager to fulfil it. While this is not impossible, it has no corroboration; and Cyrus’s own inscription shows that any knowledge he may have had of the Lord was nominal at best. Isaiah 45:5f. insists that to know the Lord involves acknowledging no god beside him.
[6] Cf. ‘Cyrus Cylinder’ in Ancient Near Eastern Texts edited by J. B. Pritchard, 1955, page 316. Cf. also Derek Kidner,: Ezra and Nehemiah: An Introduction and Commentary. Downers Grove, IL : InterVarsity Press, 1979 (Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries 12), S. 16 for a discussion of the Persian leaders’ position on religious tolerance and diversity.