2 Chronicles 25:1-28 - Homiletics

Another type of uncertain character.

We are at once advised, in refer-once to Amaziah, that he "did right in the sight of the Lord, but not with a perfect heart." The expression might be supposed to cover the description of a man whose life was in the main right, but who was betrayed by temptation into some serious sins, of which, like David, he bitterly repented, but genuinely repented, and was restored to peace -rod favour. No such interpretation, however, is here possible. And as there are some very marked features in the character of the folly and sin of Amaziah, they must not be overlooked or missed, having due regard to the brevity and exactitude of Scripture biography. We have here, then—

I. A MAN WHOSE DISCERNMENT WAS SUCH THAT HE WAS EQUAL TO SEEING AND TAKING WARNING AND GODLY ADVICE . It is in the heart of Amaziah to fight with the Edomites. It is a temptation with him again, as with predecessors of his on the throne, to borrow and pay for the help of the separated kingdom of Israel. Certain kinds of friendship are certain to turn out certain snares. Our safety is often simply a complete separation from persons or things that have been found to partake of the nature of a snare. These two things look strange only too natural, if we know enough of our own weak, self-deceiving hearts—in the attitude of Amaziah at this moment. He listens to the teaching of the prophet, is no doubt startled and vexed thus to be called on to forfeit his methods and arrangements for the warfare that he would war, but seems to take his stand rather on the money that he perceives he will forfeit for nothing, as it seems to him! This is one side of the matter. But the other shows him, happily, both amenable to the prophet's reminder that God was "able to give him much more" than that hundred talents; and also equal to the effort of dismissing his hired mercenaries of Israel, and of encountering thereby their fierce indignation. Amaziah had heeded the warning of the prophet ( 2 Chronicles 25:8 ), and he now heeds the assurance with trustful faith of the same prophet; he goes up to war, and has a splendid Success.

II. A MAN WHOSE DISCERNMENT , UNDER SOME UNTOWARD INFLUENCE , SEEMED ALMOST SUDDENLY TO BECOME SO BLUNTED THAT HE CANNOT BROOK A GODLY PROPHET 'S REMONSTRANCE , BUT DEFIANTLY AND WITH MENACE REJECTS IT . There is scarcely room to doubt what had wrought in the interim the disastrous change. Success! Boastfulness and self-confidence had been the untimely growth of the very ground where gratitude, obedience, self-distrust, and the profoundest disposition of reliance on God and his prophet should have been found. Success had more than turned the brain of Amaziah. He worships the gods who had not delivered him. He worships the gods who had not delivered "their own people," whom he had destroyed. He worships not, and glorifies not, his own God and the God of his fathers, but is a marvel of an apostate, and a monster of blinded ingratitude, and a monument of blunted discernment, of perverted fatuity!

III. A MAN FOR WHOM HIS TOWERING SELF - SUFFICIENCY AND SELF - GLORIFICATION EXCITE THE PITY , BEG THE WARNING , AND RECEIVE THE BEST AND THE HONEST ADVICE OF THE VERY FOE WHOM HE INSULTINGLY CHALLENGES TO FIGHT . It is evident that the King of Israel was able to read the human nature that was in Amaziah of Judah ( 2 Chronicles 25:18-20 ). And it is evident that the King of Israel did not desire to be answerable for the blood of the same Amaziah. He "puts him to the worse," takes much spoil of him, breaks down the walls of his city—the holy city; and, bathos of humiliation for Amaziab, "took him," "brought him to" that, his own city, and left him there, in all his fallen glory and mulcted wealth, to meditate on "the wages of sin," even when they fall short of death. Men's enemies sometimes love their lives and souls better, alas! than they do themselves.