180

[1]

Monday, August 10, 2019

Manasseh was twelve years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem fifty-five years.  He did what was evil in the Lord’s sight, following the detestable practices of the pagan nations that the Lord had driven from the land ahead of the Israelites.  He rebuilt the pagan shrines his father, Hezekiah, had broken down.  He constructed altars for the images of Baal and set up Asherah poles.  He also bowed before all the powers of the heavens and worshiped them.  He built pagan altars in the Temple of the Lord, the place where the Lord had said, “My name will remain in Jerusalem forever.” He built these altars for all the powers of the heavens in both courtyards of the Lord’s Temple.  Manasseh also sacrificed his own sons in the fire in the valley of Ben-Hinnom.  He practiced sorcery, divination, and witchcraft, and he consulted with mediums and psychics.  He did much that was evil in the Lord’s sight, arousing his anger.  Manasseh even took a carved idol he had made and set it up in God’s Temple, the very place where God had told David and his son Solomon:  “My name will be honored forever in this Temple and in Jerusalem—the city I have chosen from among all the tribes of Israel.  If the Israelites will be careful to obey my commands—all the laws, decrees, and regulations given through Moses—I will not send them into exile from this land that I set aside for your ancestors.”  But Manasseh led the people of Judah and Jerusalem to do even more evil than the pagan nations that the Lord had destroyed when the people of Israel entered the land.  The Lord spoke to Manasseh and his people, but they ignored all his warnings.  So the Lord sent the commanders of the Assyrian armies, and they took Manasseh prisoner.  They put a ring through his nose, bound him in bronze chains, and led him away to Babylon.  

But while in deep distress, Manasseh sought the Lord his God and sincerely humbled himself before the God of his ancestors. And when he prayed, the Lord listened to him and was moved by his request. So the Lord brought Manasseh back to Jerusalem and to his kingdom.  Then Manasseh finally realized that the Lord alone is God!  After this Manasseh rebuilt the outer wall of the City of David, from west of the Gihon Spring in the Kidron Valley to the Fish Gate, and continuing around the hill of Ophel.  He built the wall very high.  And he stationed his military officers in all of the fortified towns of Judah.  Manasseh also removed the foreign gods and the idol from the Lord’s Temple.  He tore down all the altars he had built on the hill where the Temple stood and all the altars that were in Jerusalem, and he dumped them outside the city.  Then he restored the altar of the Lord and sacrificed peace offerings and thanksgiving offerings on it.  He also encouraged the people of Judah to worship the Lord, the God of Israel. However, the people still sacrificed at the pagan shrines, though only to the Lord their God.  2 Chronicles 33:1-17

One of the realities of being broken is the inability to see just how broken you are; another is how to fix the brokenness.  Like the New Testament Apostle to the Gentiles, Paul, the remedy for King Manasseh’s spiritual brokenness could only come by being knocked to his knees, a prisoner to the truth that he had become so irretrievably broken against his solemn trust to serve the one true living God, there was only one direction left to redemption – 180°!

For You Today

Let’s give the last word today to Paul, who understood that just and righteous solutions for citizens of any era will never come from within the corridors of the capitol; true redemption only comes from above.  Here’s what Paul says to do about brokenness in leadership:

 I urge you, first of all, to pray for all people. Ask God to help them; intercede on their behalf, and give thanks for them. 2 Pray this way for kings and all who are in authority so that we can live peaceful and quiet lives marked by godliness and dignity.                    1 Timothy 2:1-2

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day.

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[1] Title Image:  Courtesy of  Pixabay.com
                          Unless otherwise noted, Scripture used from The New Living Translation©

The God of ALL Favorites

[i]

Friday, January 20, 2017

Then fourteen years later I went back to Jerusalem again, this time with Barnabas; and Titus came along, too.  I went there because God revealed to me that I should go.  While I was there I met privately with those considered to be leaders of the church and shared with them the message I had been preaching to the Gentiles.  I wanted to make sure that we were in agreement, for fear that all my efforts had been wasted and I was running the race for nothing.  And they supported me and did not even demand that my companion Titus be circumcised, though he was a Gentile.

And the leaders of the church had nothing to add to what I was preaching.  (By the way, their reputation as great leaders made no difference to me, for God has no favorites.)  Instead, they saw that God had given me the responsibility of preaching the gospel to the Gentiles, just as he had given Peter the responsibility of preaching to the Jews.  For the same God who worked through Peter as the apostle to the Jews also worked through me as the apostle to the Gentiles.  Galatians 2:1-3, 6-8^(NLT)

When you compare him to the other apostles, Paul came late to the game, not being one of Jesus’ original twelve.  Paul also came with a vastly different game plan than anyone else.  Peter, James, and John had their eyes on a Jewish kingdom; God gave Paul an assignment to bring the Gospel to the Gentiles.  In writing about this to the churches of Galatia Paul expressed the reality that God had no favorites, which means we are ALL favorites of the Father.  And the way Paul operated…coarse, blunt, fearless and really hard to understand or harness, Paul was, undoubtedly, hard to get along with.  Let’s just say sometimes it caused more than a few eyes to roll at the apostles’ convention.

On this morning of the Inauguration of Donald Trump as President of the United States, I have a sense that the President-elect is something of a Paul in the 21^st century.  And as he is about to assume the helm of these nowhere-near-united states, I sense a certain Doctor Seuss-ness as to what to think about the condition of this country and the uneven nervousness across the aisles of red and blue.  America is like the Zode who split his pants because he got on his horse and rode off in all different directions.

Besides those on the far-left and far-right politically or religiously, other factions of age, socio-economic, race, gender, and others who have a chip in the political-agenda game, well…suffice to say there is enough lightning to go around when it comes to opinions of whether Trump belongs in the White House or not. 

This day, and dare we say the next four or eight years, will NOT be uninteresting; it will be more surreal than we could imagine. 

And yet, here we are.

Like Paul walking into the meeting with the apostles in Jerusalem, Trump will walk down Pennsylvania Avenue later today, amid fanfare and wailing.  And most of the nation will, like Peter, James, and John did with Paul, begin to hold its’ collective breath as to what will happen next.

And, because we serve a God of ALL favorites, I believe  what will unfold in the days ahead is the working-out for good the purposes of God[ii].

I am reminded of the inside joke that circulates in preacher’s circles about the choices God sometimes makes to bring about His will, especially when the not-present preacher they’re gossiping about seems to be having a strong success.  It goes something like, well, if God could use Baalam’s ass to speak to a prophet, He can use that guy too.

I have an idea that applies to The Donald, as well as to you and (especially) me.

For You Today

Whether you’re on the far-rabid right, or far-rabid left, or somewhere in the nervous middle, please join me today in praying for our new President[iii], and all those in authority.  They’re going to need it because the road just got a little rockier!  May God bless and have mercy on us all.

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road…have a blessed day!

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NOTES

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[i] Title image: © José Luiz Bernardes Ribeiro / , via Wikimedia Commons

[ii] Romans 8:28

[iii] 1 Timothy 2:1-2

NOTES

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[i] Title image: © José Luiz Bernardes Ribeiro / , via Wikimedia Commons

[ii] 1 Timothy 2:1-2