March 9, 2024

Passage Read: 2 Chronicles 26-29
Meditation Verses: 28:2-5

Thought

How quickly the fortunes of God's people can turn! Uzziah and Jotham were good kings, faithful and obedient to the Lord (except when Uzziah thought he deserved to burn incense to the Lord like the priests), and the Lord prospered them and made them powerful, so that they ruled over all the nations around them. Then Ahaz comes on the scene and turns to worship other gods, and God turns them over to be plundered and humbled by their neighbors. In his distress, he shuts the doors of the Lord's temple and stops the worship of God, and builds even more altars to foreign gods throughout the land. The only thing that keeps the Lord from completely abandoning His people is His mercy. They suffer terribly under Ahaz, so much so that when Hezekiah reestablishes the worship of God, everyone is quickly on board.

Application

God's discipline is real, as is His protection. We don't realize how much good we enjoy because of the faithfulness of those over us; we don't realize how much good we enjoy because we choose to worship the Lord with obedience and gratitude. And because He is merciful, we don't realize how much we offend Him when we are unfaithful. He still extends a measure of grace, even when things start to go sideways. And when things go way off the rails, things still could be much worse if not for the Lord's mercy. It is a foolish thing to trust in other things along with God; it is a sad thing not to see when the Lord begins to discipline us for our overlooked unfaithfulness. It is even worse when we think God is being unfair to us and so we turn our back completely on Him, as if we could punish Him by cutting Him off, when He's already been punishing us by withdrawing His nearness and protection because of our unacknowledged faithlessness. God deserves all my worship and all my faith and all my trust; He alone must I please in obedience. If I am tempted to do something He forbids or ignore something He commands, I must not give in, but if I do, that points to the thing I love above Him, and that is the thing I need to let go of, so that I can be wholeheartedly devoted to Christ.