2 Chronicles 21:1-20 - Homiletics

A reign of unmitigated shame.

To the career of Jehoshaphat of almost exemplary excellence, that of Jehoram, his son, forms a contrast most humiliating. Obviously it is not the least painful feature of this latter that it so inevitably forces into our memory the parental fault, which, if it were not the cause and very foundation of an eldest son s abandoned character and course of conduct, could not fail to have given opportunity for it, and could not fail to incur the responsibility before all the world of having lent the occasion. This chapter teaches us significantly—

I. THE RARE VANITY OF HUMAN ENDEAVOUR TO PROVIDE BY ANY CONTRIVANCES AGAINST THE CONSEQUENCES OF ITS OWN FAULTS AND SINS . No disposition in his will, no disposition of the gifts of his property on the part of Jehoshaphat, sufficed to avert these in this instance ( 2 Chronicles 21:3 , 2 Chronicles 21:4 ).

II. THE IMMENSE ADDITION OF PAIN AND PUNISHMENT FOR SIN THAT ARE INVOLVED HEREIN IN EVEN SUCH POOR MEASURE OF FORESIGHT AS BELONGS TO HUMAN NATURE . This is an indication of the great mercy that lies in the limited measure of the powers of human nature. To be hunted and goaded by the forces of memory from behind, and at the same time terrified by the only too just apparitions of anticipation, and the pictures of what awaits us in front, even in this life,—how dreadfully might they at times add to the misery of life! How often might they induce remorse, and the despair that comes of remorse!

III. THE SPECIAL ROYAL HUMILIATION AND PUNISHMENT WHICH CONSIST IN VICTORY , POSSIBLY VICTORY ON VICTORY , WITHOUT CONQUEST . ( 2 Chronicles 21:8 , 2 Chronicles 21:10 , 2 Chronicles 21:16 , 2 Chronicles 21:17 .) It is the Sisyphus of kings and rulers and nations, and Jehoram was the Sisyphus of this time and history. But it involves also misery and a scourge for the nation cursed with such rulers.

IV. THE ACCUMULATION OF RETRIBUTION THAT COVERED AND CROWDED THE END FOR JEHORAM . Forewarned by the great Prophet Elijah, perhaps the very last, certainly among the very last, of the acts of his ministry, a horror of a bodily disease; a plague for his people, his children, his wives, and his goods; the slaughter of all his sons save one—the one necessary to carrying on the line of Judah; an unhonoured death, and the forfeiting of a place in the ancestral sepulchres of the kings; — these were "the portion of his cup," and the filling up of its bitterness—the retribution of an iniquitous and godless career, apparently unrelieved by a single virtue or single good deed! It was impossible, indeed, that his father could learn from notice and experience of the son; but "all these things were written for our admonition" for all succeeding generations, and tell their gravest lessons, and offer their most fearful warnings for many another father.