2 Chronicles 36:1-23 - Homiletics

The final indictment, sentence, and execution of it.

It is in 2 Chronicles 36:11-21 of this chapter that we are given to read the final summary of, first, the folly and sin of Judah, her king, princes, and people; and second, the just displeasure and necessary punishment of Jehovah after an unparalleled forbearance. The historic incidents of the four reigns which occupy this chapter abound in pathetic, tragic interest. The account of them given in the parallel (2Ki 23:31-25:30) is fuller. And both are illustrated and extraordinarily enhanced in interest by the light and by the cross-lights flung on the scene in the prophecies of Jeremiah and Ezekiel (particularly Jeremiah 21:1-14 ; Jeremiah 24:1-10 ; 27-29; 32-34; Jeremiah 37:1-21 ; Jeremiah 38:1-28 ; 51:59-52:34; Ezekiel 1:1-3 ; Ezekiel 12:13 ; Ezekiel 40:1 ). Many of these portions of history write, and loudly utter forth as well, their own emphatic and impressive homilies. The present Scripture, however, offers matter of most solemn reflection, in summarizing the long indictment of centuries that lay against Judah, and in a most pathetic rehearsing of the compassionate, forbearing, ever-forgiving ministration of Divine love which had for equal length of time striven to prevail over her infidelity, yet all in vain! Her day of visitation had been not one day only; it had been many a day! She "knew" them not, and "now they are hid from her eyes." Judah's long-drawn sin, of many a day, year, generation, and even century, had been, in one word, idolatry. That sin incurs the guilt of the first two commandments set at nought. There is a sense, only too obvious and too certain, in which it is the world's fundamental source of sin and snare of sin. No age, no people, exempt from the danger, and every individual exposed, at any rate, to it.

I. THE CLAIM OF GOD UPON MAN IS THAT MAN WORSHIP HIM . The honoured word "worship" is often dishonoured, in our not keeping in vivid memory all its strangely beautiful import. To love supremely, to obey perfectly, to serve perpetually, to express praise and render homage intelligently, and to say without a reserve that all this is the simple due of the object adored— this is to worship! Notice:

1 . The claim is absolute, one undivided and unshared, and always operating without intermission.

2 . It is natural, reasonable, vindicable in every sense, and from every point of view. Nothing else could be thought, nothing else would ever have been thought, except from one circumstance.

3 . It postulates the consent, not the conflict, of that in man which is called his free-will. That free-will is a great fact in human nature-solemn, responsible, and inspiring fact—but it is the central fact of a moral nature, instead of a merely physical or merely animal nature. Nay, more; it is the head and the crown—the very crown of that moral nature, resting on its brow, and by rights resting there as an imperishable crown. Unless miserably and most mournfully forfeited, it is such. There belongs to it by equal rights immortality of honour, and the honour of immortality. The lesson Judah never learnt effectually was that she was not her own. The last lesson any of us learns absolutely perfectly is—just that same. Happy is the fresh full life, the patience, the strength, the confidence, the love, of that man who has learnt, "rising up betimes," that he is not his own; and that he ought not to be sin's and Satan's, but the blest property of God, and prized (with and because of his freewill and all) of that God! It is when our free-will becomes an infatuated will, perverse will, self-will, that our glory is dragged in the dust, and our crown and diadem fall. There is no so great, broad, practical, ennobling rule for any man's and every man's life than to study to remember well and absolutely that he is God's and Christ's, and not (as also a man often says, oftener thinks in his heart, of his money), NOT his own, to do with himself, his lifetime, his powers, his heart, his tongue," what he likes. "

II. DIVINEST MINISTRY IS VOUCHSAFED IN SUPPORT OF THAT CLAIM .

1. That gracious ministry helps by informing. The force of habit, of example, of hereditary misinclinations and disinclinations, has been potent to put out the truth in this matter. "The Lord God of their fathers sent to them by his messengers, rising up betimes, and sending; because he had compassion on his people" (verse 15).

2 . The informing ministry is the ministry of revelation.

3 . It is a graciously persistent one, repeating over and over again its various methods.

4 . It is a warning, and, if needs be, a threatening ministry—sometimes so to the last degree, confronting a man, and standing awhile in his actual way, as the angel in the way of Balaam.

5 . It is also an encouraging and rewarding ministry. None who heed it doubt this, or ever find it otherwise. Sin, how often it gave heart-ache and life-ache to king and people! but "the turning to the Lord God of Israel" (verse 13) never failed to do the contrary.

6 . It is a punishing and again relenting and forgiving ministry. How often punishment is learnt, before it is experienced—if, alas! it should be so by any—for the long last time!

7 . When, after all, that ministry is sinned against, "mocked, despised, misused, till there is no remedy" (verse 16), then comes the wreck of "wrath," that wrath which can no longer be made light of, decisive, irrevocable, and in itself dreadful.

III. AFTER JUDAH 'S IRREVOCABLE SENTENCE OF PUNISHMENT , AND THE DREAD SEVENTY YEARS OF HUMILIATION AND CAPTIVITY , THERE IS THE SUDDEN , UNEXPECTED , HEAVEN - SENT INTERPOSITION OF A GREAT REDEMPTION . After the banishment from Eden it was so; after the deluge of Noah it was so; now, after Israel and Judah had run their course as separate kingdoms, it was so; after Malachi, the last of "the prophets," it was most chiefly so. And it is so now. The world of sin, the "mocking, despising, misusing" world of sin, the ever-suffering world of sin, pitiless toward itself, and mercilessly inflicting self-punishment, knows the announcement of an interposition great beyond all before, and the offer of a Heaven-sent, free, priceless hope and redemption!