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God’s message to me: your heritage means nothing. many good and God fearing kings had sons who were pure evil and Evil kings had sons who turned good. Hezekiah served God more thoroughly than any king since David and destroyed all false worship in Judah. His son rebuilt those high places and idols, He sacrificed his sons to false gods, he killed and destroyed in the name of false gods, he practiced witchcraft and consulted mediums. He was pure evil. His son Amon did the same. His grandson Josiah became king at age 8 and turned Israel back to god destroying idolatry and bringing back the law of God and begging God’s forgiveness for the sins of his father and grandfather and others. Josiah’s son went right back to all the evil of his grandfather and great-grandfather. His rule only lasted 3 months. Pharaoh made his brother king and he did all the same evils. When his brother was captured by Babylon, the king of Babylon made his uncle king and he continued the evil of his predecessors.
Promises: It’s hard to miss fulfilled prophecy. Hezekiah was warned that he showed Babylon all their treasures and now we can see where Babylon comes and takes those treasures.
Commands: Serve the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind and with all your soul.
Timeless principles: God fulfills his promises. Because he humbled himself before God and asked forgiveness for past sins, God withheld judgment during the time of king Josiah. The evil of Manaseh and Amon had caused God to promise judgment that would make it clear He didn’t tolerate disobedience and turning from God. The judgment would be terrible enough to make the ears tingle of those who heard it.
How can I apply what I’ve learned: God is just. I cannot expect to live like the devil then receive a full pardon and entry to heaven. God has always preserved a remnant who do not turn from His name and they have been made secure despite the troubles that come because of the evil of others. Noah, Abraham, the remnant of Benjamin, the survivors taken captive by Assyria and Babylon. He preserves this remnant and allows them to rebuild in His name that no one can ever say they over came Him.
more to learn for in-depth study: Josiah was zealous for God as no king before or after him. He destroyed all signs of Idolatry in Judah and in the cities of Samaria, some of which dated back to the time of Solomon. He eliminated the mediums, witches and perverted people who served false Gods with acts of evil. He read the law to all of his kingdom and swore to uphold it.
The king of Egypt at this time is Necho. Judah is captured by Babylon in the 8th year of king Nebuchednezer. The king of Babylon appointed Mattania as king and renamed him Zedikiah.
Chronicles is just that. History. It will involve a lot of lineages(begats) and reference material that some may wish to make notes on and use to clarify the timelines they already have. Some of it can be dry reading and boring but, it is important. Not only is every word of scripture meaningful, this section will help to clarify history and prophecy by laying out the details of events.
tomorrow: First Chronicles 1-3
Showing posts with label Captivity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Captivity. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Second Kings 16-17
God’s message to me: God will give many chances to return to Him but, eventually, he will punish. It had been around 300 years since Solomon brought false worship into Israel but, most of the nation, ruled from Samaria, never turned back despite the warnings of the prophets and the minor judgments brought against them until the entire nation, except Judah, was taken captive by Assyria.
Promises: Our God is patient. I can count 12 generation between the time the Israelites began serving false God’s and the time when God sent them into captivity. Judah went back and forth with false worship but mostly chose to serve God while Israel never turned back from idolatry. The nation of Israel except Judah was taken as captives for the first time since the captivity in Egypt.
Commands: “thou shalt not have any other gods before Me”
Timeless principles: Patience waits for the appropriate time. Unending chances would be laziness and God is not lazy.
How can I apply what I’ve learned: Stand up against false worship and lead people only to worship as God has prescribed. Defy false teachings that contradict the bible and boldly teach the truth as God has given it to us.
more to learn for in-depth study: Ahaz turned to the ways of Israel. He sacrificed his child, he worshiped false gods on the high places and under the trees(nature gods). When besieged by both Israel and Syria he sent gifts to the king of Assyria and asked his help to save Jerusalem. After the Assyrians took Damascus and turned aside the armies of Israel and Syria Ahaz went to visit the Assyrian king and saw an Alter that king had for worship. He made the chief priest build one to the same specifications and it was ready when he returned home. He immediately worshiped before it and put his sacrifices on it then he had it moved into the temple of God to replace the proper alter and removed many of the items that had been there for other use. In other words, he spit in God’s face repeatedly.
Hoshea ruled at a time when the king of Egypt was named So and the king of Assyria was Shalmaneser. These give room for independent coverage from the history of other nations. Also, the Author makes it clear in 2 kings 17:23 that these books are being written during the first period of captivity in Assyria, while Judah was still free.
The Assyrians took people from their homes and put them in the cities of other nations they had captured. The did this with the cities of Israel and as the captives proceeded to worship their false gods, God sent lions among them to kill them. The king of Assyria sent a Jewish priest to teach them how to serve Jehovah but, while they feared God they continued to worship false gods.
tomorrow: Second Kings 18-19
Promises: Our God is patient. I can count 12 generation between the time the Israelites began serving false God’s and the time when God sent them into captivity. Judah went back and forth with false worship but mostly chose to serve God while Israel never turned back from idolatry. The nation of Israel except Judah was taken as captives for the first time since the captivity in Egypt.
Commands: “thou shalt not have any other gods before Me”
Timeless principles: Patience waits for the appropriate time. Unending chances would be laziness and God is not lazy.
How can I apply what I’ve learned: Stand up against false worship and lead people only to worship as God has prescribed. Defy false teachings that contradict the bible and boldly teach the truth as God has given it to us.
more to learn for in-depth study: Ahaz turned to the ways of Israel. He sacrificed his child, he worshiped false gods on the high places and under the trees(nature gods). When besieged by both Israel and Syria he sent gifts to the king of Assyria and asked his help to save Jerusalem. After the Assyrians took Damascus and turned aside the armies of Israel and Syria Ahaz went to visit the Assyrian king and saw an Alter that king had for worship. He made the chief priest build one to the same specifications and it was ready when he returned home. He immediately worshiped before it and put his sacrifices on it then he had it moved into the temple of God to replace the proper alter and removed many of the items that had been there for other use. In other words, he spit in God’s face repeatedly.
Hoshea ruled at a time when the king of Egypt was named So and the king of Assyria was Shalmaneser. These give room for independent coverage from the history of other nations. Also, the Author makes it clear in 2 kings 17:23 that these books are being written during the first period of captivity in Assyria, while Judah was still free.
The Assyrians took people from their homes and put them in the cities of other nations they had captured. The did this with the cities of Israel and as the captives proceeded to worship their false gods, God sent lions among them to kill them. The king of Assyria sent a Jewish priest to teach them how to serve Jehovah but, while they feared God they continued to worship false gods.
tomorrow: Second Kings 18-19
Second Kings 12-15
God’s message to me: God will tolerate wrong for only as long as necessary. He promise Jehu that his sons would sit on the throne to the 4th generation. Jehu and each generation after him, continued to lead the people in idolatry and Jehu’s great -great-grandson(the fourth generation) held the throne 6 months be fore being killed in a coup.
Promises: God’s covenant stands through all time. His blood covenant to keep Israel forever has never been taken back. Despite the sins of the Israelites, God never allowed the oppression they suffered as punishment to destroy them. God always preserved a remnant to keep his promise.
Commands: Follow God or suffer the consequences. Continued idolatry led to the nation of Israel losing more cities and territories to neighboring Syria and Assyria. Eventually, the failure to fully remove false worship in Judah led to similar attacks against them by neighbors including Israel.
Timeless principles: It’s hard to overcome momentum. While Judah, routinely, went through purges of false religion, the “high places” remained from the time of Solomon to the time of this passage and beyond. Many of the false religions sought to gain a closer relation ship with the gods by sacrificing, burning incense and worshiping at the highest point available. Natural high points, like hills and mountains were enhanced by building mounds to reach higher, places that lacked high points would add towers to large structures. The idea went back to the tower of Babel which was meant to be the ultimate high place.
People had a tendency to adapt these places to worshiping God. Tradition told them to go to a high place in order to be close to god so they felt that the high place brought them closer to God, the Father. Of course, it also left an opening for those who continued to practice false religions as well. After so many years of doing it momentum carried them along the same path even when they were trying to do right.
Christians today are no different. A large part of the mistakes made in modern churches come from momentum and adapting “good parts” of false worship to true worship. This has led to political correctness, acceptance of things the bible calls sin, protests against practices the bible endorses, and even the idea of biblical evolution. They are wrong but, they creep in and get accepted because people do not want to stand up for the word of God. They think if they attack what is wrong and preach what is right they will offend someone and cause them to leave the church.
Here’s a basic principle. If the truth causes someone to lose faith and leave God then they never had Him in the first place. The truth can be a jarring thing. Consider how many new Christians you know that would be offended by the passages we have been reading if they heard them and believed them. This is the reason they are so eager to see the bible as allegorical and inaccurate. It allows them to dismiss the parts they find offensive. If they cannot reconcile with God over the parts they don’t like then they are not His servants. You need to begin again to teach them the truth until God can help them accept it.
How can I apply what I’ve learned: When God gives you a task do it thoroughly. Even if it is silly, symbolic or hard to understand. Jeroboam was told to strike the ground with a bundle of arrows when he was told to strike Syria and destroy them. He struck the ground 3 times and Elisha told him that he would only strike Syria 3 times and not destroy them. I can’t say I would have done differently under the circumstances but, given what I learned here, I wouldn’t stop hitting the ground until I was told to. The order came from God and so the task was from God.
more to learn for in-depth study: Here is a quick rundown of several kings. The passage just touches on some highlights from each administration with emphasis on the kings relationship to God and the results of that relationship. They say “the good die young”. I have to say that the bible shows they get long lives and long administrations while the evil ones get proportionally shorter amounts of time to cause damage. Having studied the gunfighters of the Old West the same seemed to hold true there. Without wasting to much time on details, the ones who sold their skill for a fast buck and personal gratification at the expense of the innocent never lasted 20 years. From the day of their first gunfight to their death was always under the 20 year mark and often much less. A few, who served others and made their reputations as peace officers or helped peace officers, not only lived much longer but died peacefully.
Jehoash and the high priest establish the offering box in this portion. The priests had been ordered to bring all the offerings, that the law did not specifically grant to them, to the temple to be used for construction and repair. When they didn’t do it the box was established so that all offerings brought to the temple that were not, by law, dedicated to the priests, would be collected and used to fund the repair of the neglected Temple of God.
The year count seems to get more out of sync the farther we get from David and Solomon but that was not unexpected. These accounts were pieced together after the fact from multiple sources and dates could be a bit mangles since years are measured but not months. In these circumstances, 23 months would count as 2 years but so would 14, since portions of 2 years were involved. Worse yet, if a six month period included the new year it might be marked as 2 years or compare to 2 years in the other kingdom.(king 1 rules six months king 2 rules 12 years. King 2 took the throne at the same time as king 1 and king one died in the second year that he was on the throne. You see how, after several generation, this gets the time line skewed over 2 kingdoms) This lines are repeated elsewhere with more details so, for those keeping track of the time line like I am, you will find details later to make them more accurate. The coup of Shallum over Zachariah in Israel is a perfect example. Zechariah took the throne in the 38th year of Azariah’s reign and was replaced in the 39th year of his reign but he only held the throne for 6 months.
Case Study: Meneham was a strong king whose government was quite effective in it’s goals. He executed the king and took over. Then he attacked a revolting city and brutally murdered all pregnant women. He continued to lead the Israelites in Idolatry. When the king of Assyria came to attack Israel, Meneham hired taxed the rich and gave the money to the Assyrians as a bribe so that they would work with him to force the Israelites to serve him then leave. This evil ruler held the country in an iron grip through his reign and his son’s reign until the coup that killed his son.
tomorrow: Second Kings 16-17
Promises: God’s covenant stands through all time. His blood covenant to keep Israel forever has never been taken back. Despite the sins of the Israelites, God never allowed the oppression they suffered as punishment to destroy them. God always preserved a remnant to keep his promise.
Commands: Follow God or suffer the consequences. Continued idolatry led to the nation of Israel losing more cities and territories to neighboring Syria and Assyria. Eventually, the failure to fully remove false worship in Judah led to similar attacks against them by neighbors including Israel.
Timeless principles: It’s hard to overcome momentum. While Judah, routinely, went through purges of false religion, the “high places” remained from the time of Solomon to the time of this passage and beyond. Many of the false religions sought to gain a closer relation ship with the gods by sacrificing, burning incense and worshiping at the highest point available. Natural high points, like hills and mountains were enhanced by building mounds to reach higher, places that lacked high points would add towers to large structures. The idea went back to the tower of Babel which was meant to be the ultimate high place.
People had a tendency to adapt these places to worshiping God. Tradition told them to go to a high place in order to be close to god so they felt that the high place brought them closer to God, the Father. Of course, it also left an opening for those who continued to practice false religions as well. After so many years of doing it momentum carried them along the same path even when they were trying to do right.
Christians today are no different. A large part of the mistakes made in modern churches come from momentum and adapting “good parts” of false worship to true worship. This has led to political correctness, acceptance of things the bible calls sin, protests against practices the bible endorses, and even the idea of biblical evolution. They are wrong but, they creep in and get accepted because people do not want to stand up for the word of God. They think if they attack what is wrong and preach what is right they will offend someone and cause them to leave the church.
Here’s a basic principle. If the truth causes someone to lose faith and leave God then they never had Him in the first place. The truth can be a jarring thing. Consider how many new Christians you know that would be offended by the passages we have been reading if they heard them and believed them. This is the reason they are so eager to see the bible as allegorical and inaccurate. It allows them to dismiss the parts they find offensive. If they cannot reconcile with God over the parts they don’t like then they are not His servants. You need to begin again to teach them the truth until God can help them accept it.
How can I apply what I’ve learned: When God gives you a task do it thoroughly. Even if it is silly, symbolic or hard to understand. Jeroboam was told to strike the ground with a bundle of arrows when he was told to strike Syria and destroy them. He struck the ground 3 times and Elisha told him that he would only strike Syria 3 times and not destroy them. I can’t say I would have done differently under the circumstances but, given what I learned here, I wouldn’t stop hitting the ground until I was told to. The order came from God and so the task was from God.
more to learn for in-depth study: Here is a quick rundown of several kings. The passage just touches on some highlights from each administration with emphasis on the kings relationship to God and the results of that relationship. They say “the good die young”. I have to say that the bible shows they get long lives and long administrations while the evil ones get proportionally shorter amounts of time to cause damage. Having studied the gunfighters of the Old West the same seemed to hold true there. Without wasting to much time on details, the ones who sold their skill for a fast buck and personal gratification at the expense of the innocent never lasted 20 years. From the day of their first gunfight to their death was always under the 20 year mark and often much less. A few, who served others and made their reputations as peace officers or helped peace officers, not only lived much longer but died peacefully.
Jehoash and the high priest establish the offering box in this portion. The priests had been ordered to bring all the offerings, that the law did not specifically grant to them, to the temple to be used for construction and repair. When they didn’t do it the box was established so that all offerings brought to the temple that were not, by law, dedicated to the priests, would be collected and used to fund the repair of the neglected Temple of God.
The year count seems to get more out of sync the farther we get from David and Solomon but that was not unexpected. These accounts were pieced together after the fact from multiple sources and dates could be a bit mangles since years are measured but not months. In these circumstances, 23 months would count as 2 years but so would 14, since portions of 2 years were involved. Worse yet, if a six month period included the new year it might be marked as 2 years or compare to 2 years in the other kingdom.(king 1 rules six months king 2 rules 12 years. King 2 took the throne at the same time as king 1 and king one died in the second year that he was on the throne. You see how, after several generation, this gets the time line skewed over 2 kingdoms) This lines are repeated elsewhere with more details so, for those keeping track of the time line like I am, you will find details later to make them more accurate. The coup of Shallum over Zachariah in Israel is a perfect example. Zechariah took the throne in the 38th year of Azariah’s reign and was replaced in the 39th year of his reign but he only held the throne for 6 months.
Case Study: Meneham was a strong king whose government was quite effective in it’s goals. He executed the king and took over. Then he attacked a revolting city and brutally murdered all pregnant women. He continued to lead the Israelites in Idolatry. When the king of Assyria came to attack Israel, Meneham hired taxed the rich and gave the money to the Assyrians as a bribe so that they would work with him to force the Israelites to serve him then leave. This evil ruler held the country in an iron grip through his reign and his son’s reign until the coup that killed his son.
tomorrow: Second Kings 16-17
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Exodus chapters 3-6
God’s message to me: Never worry about what you will say to share the Gospel. When the time comes, God will give you the words. This was one of my more foolish arguments with God. When called to the ministry I argued I wasn’t knowledgeable and couldn't’ express the ideas. God brought me to a friends house as the friend was witnessing to a Muslim. God guided me through the bible to the prophecies of Christ and the passages which answered his questions and arguments. It was more than a year later before he came to be saved but, by guiding me to so many passages I hadn’t realized I had learned, God showed me he could put the words in my mouth and the knowledge in my hand that I would need when the time came.
Promises: My job is just to be a messenger. God will change the hearts. That is His job.
Commands: Deliver God’s message. No matter what. No matter how often the message is ignored, no matter how much ridicule and oppression I receive for giving the message, I must do my job.
Timeless principles: “I AM” God is the uncaused cause. Creator of everything and not created himself. God has always been and always will be. Philosophy and logic do not apply to this concept. They only confuse and obscure it. Many theories have been given as to how the universe came to be but none, when carried to their logical conclusion, can deny that it began with the conscious will of a supreme creator. One who was there all along and not created by another.
more to learn for in-depth study: It’s just about time for another time chart. We are coming to the end of Egyptian captivity. In order to understand the timing, the history, the fulfillment of prophecy and the documentation of the history I will be adding a timeline with some explanation in the next few days. Many of the details will be filled in in from today's study but, specific timing goes on through the entire book of Exodus until the 40years in the wilderness. From there we will take a break from timelines until Joshua except to clarify a few points of the line in the book of Numbers, which is a census and genealogy of Israel.
Promises: My job is just to be a messenger. God will change the hearts. That is His job.
Commands: Deliver God’s message. No matter what. No matter how often the message is ignored, no matter how much ridicule and oppression I receive for giving the message, I must do my job.
Timeless principles: “I AM” God is the uncaused cause. Creator of everything and not created himself. God has always been and always will be. Philosophy and logic do not apply to this concept. They only confuse and obscure it. Many theories have been given as to how the universe came to be but none, when carried to their logical conclusion, can deny that it began with the conscious will of a supreme creator. One who was there all along and not created by another.
more to learn for in-depth study: It’s just about time for another time chart. We are coming to the end of Egyptian captivity. In order to understand the timing, the history, the fulfillment of prophecy and the documentation of the history I will be adding a timeline with some explanation in the next few days. Many of the details will be filled in in from today's study but, specific timing goes on through the entire book of Exodus until the 40years in the wilderness. From there we will take a break from timelines until Joshua except to clarify a few points of the line in the book of Numbers, which is a census and genealogy of Israel.
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