The Lord is awe-inspiring, fearsome, fascinating, intriguing, majestic, and full of splendor: breathtaking! Here is what I saw of him and what came to my heart and mind in 2 Kings 17:14-15,
"They [the Israelites] would not listen and were as stiff-necked as their ancestors, who did not trust in the Lord their God. They rejected his decrees and the covenant he had made with their ancestors and the statutes he had warned them to keep. They followed worthless idols and themselves became worthless."
This chapter in 2 Kings provides some of the details concerning the last king, Hoshea, of the northern tribes of divided Israel. It explains what happened when the Assyrians attacked and destroyed them. A part of the account enumerates why the Lord had the ten tribes destroyed- the above two verses are a sample.
The bottom line is that the people had rejected God. They failed to place their faith and trust in him and to live that out by following the "decrees and the covenant he [the Lord their God] had made with their ancestors and the statutes he had warned them to keep."
What catches my eye this morning is the observation they "became worthless." In what sense? We are told they became as worthless as the idols they turned from God to embrace. Did it mean the Lord no longer loved them? That cannot be the case, as it is the very of love of God for lost and fallen sinners that prompted him to send his Son to pay for the many sins committed by all mankind. Israel "became worthless", but all of mankind is unworthy of anything from God.
The thought strikes me that the sense of "worthless" the Israelites had become relates to the overriding agenda of the Lord: his program of redemption. God chose the offspring of Abraham (God's example of a man of faith to us), the nation of Israel, as the tool through which he would prepare the world for his coming Son. He chose to use them to tell the world about his coming, he used the religious calendar of the nation, the temple and the worship to be practiced there, the priesthood, the prophecies, the Scriptures as a whole. He provided a unique lineage to bring Jesus Christ into God's own creation through Israel to provide a sacrifice of atonement for mankind that those who embrace him in faith become heirs of salvation.
However, Israel had placed themselves in a position of being entirely useless to the Lord for his purposes and so he made course corrections for the nation. As history tells us, the Lord was very effective at preparing the nation through the destruction of the northern ten tribes by Assyria and later, the destruction of Judah by Babylon, and the resulting rebuilding of it to provide the context for the earthly ministry of Jesus Christ to find its fulfillment.
It was that uselessness Israel had brought herself to relative to the agenda of God that made her worthless. Through the destruction that ravaged the nation, the Lord took what man had made worthless and brought about the singularly most significant event ever to have occurred in God's creation - the atonement for the sins of mankind and the launch of God's great program of redemption. The building of God's kingdom among man!
We all have a part to play in the building of God's kingdom. May we all avail ourselves of the Scriptures to find our part to play in God's agenda and may we all be found to have worth to God in his agenda of building his kingdom!
Anything of the Lord capture your heart from Scripture today? Share what moved you about him from your Bible reading today. I'd love to hear from you!
If you have someone you would like to receive these ruminations, send me their email address. I'm happy to add them to the list. If you are receiving this and would like to be removed from the list, just respond and let me know.
Trevor Fisk
trevor.fisk@gmail.com
"They [the Israelites] would not listen and were as stiff-necked as their ancestors, who did not trust in the Lord their God. They rejected his decrees and the covenant he had made with their ancestors and the statutes he had warned them to keep. They followed worthless idols and themselves became worthless."
This chapter in 2 Kings provides some of the details concerning the last king, Hoshea, of the northern tribes of divided Israel. It explains what happened when the Assyrians attacked and destroyed them. A part of the account enumerates why the Lord had the ten tribes destroyed- the above two verses are a sample.
The bottom line is that the people had rejected God. They failed to place their faith and trust in him and to live that out by following the "decrees and the covenant he [the Lord their God] had made with their ancestors and the statutes he had warned them to keep."
What catches my eye this morning is the observation they "became worthless." In what sense? We are told they became as worthless as the idols they turned from God to embrace. Did it mean the Lord no longer loved them? That cannot be the case, as it is the very of love of God for lost and fallen sinners that prompted him to send his Son to pay for the many sins committed by all mankind. Israel "became worthless", but all of mankind is unworthy of anything from God.
The thought strikes me that the sense of "worthless" the Israelites had become relates to the overriding agenda of the Lord: his program of redemption. God chose the offspring of Abraham (God's example of a man of faith to us), the nation of Israel, as the tool through which he would prepare the world for his coming Son. He chose to use them to tell the world about his coming, he used the religious calendar of the nation, the temple and the worship to be practiced there, the priesthood, the prophecies, the Scriptures as a whole. He provided a unique lineage to bring Jesus Christ into God's own creation through Israel to provide a sacrifice of atonement for mankind that those who embrace him in faith become heirs of salvation.
However, Israel had placed themselves in a position of being entirely useless to the Lord for his purposes and so he made course corrections for the nation. As history tells us, the Lord was very effective at preparing the nation through the destruction of the northern ten tribes by Assyria and later, the destruction of Judah by Babylon, and the resulting rebuilding of it to provide the context for the earthly ministry of Jesus Christ to find its fulfillment.
It was that uselessness Israel had brought herself to relative to the agenda of God that made her worthless. Through the destruction that ravaged the nation, the Lord took what man had made worthless and brought about the singularly most significant event ever to have occurred in God's creation - the atonement for the sins of mankind and the launch of God's great program of redemption. The building of God's kingdom among man!
We all have a part to play in the building of God's kingdom. May we all avail ourselves of the Scriptures to find our part to play in God's agenda and may we all be found to have worth to God in his agenda of building his kingdom!
Anything of the Lord capture your heart from Scripture today? Share what moved you about him from your Bible reading today. I'd love to hear from you!
If you have someone you would like to receive these ruminations, send me their email address. I'm happy to add them to the list. If you are receiving this and would like to be removed from the list, just respond and let me know.
Trevor Fisk
trevor.fisk@gmail.com
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