Day 362: 2 Chronicles 25-27 | Read The Bible In A Year | Bible Study Commentary by Dr. Manny Arango

We're a couple days away from the end of our reading plan, which means you're about to be a part of the 6% of Christians that have actually read the entire Bible cover to cover. So stay tuned until the very end of this episode to hear about something special that we have planned just for you. Bible nerds, let's dive in to today's episode. Hey, Emily, welcome to day 3, 6, 2, day 362. We're in 2 Chronicles, chapters 25 through 27. We've been looking at four chapters at a time for, I feel like the last couple of days at least. Today, we've got three chapters on the docket and three kings to examine, three kings to look at. And I'm going to give you a theme up at the top of the episode, lukewarm and lucky. These three kings are lukewarm, and we're going to get a lukewarm report on all of them. Like, they're good, but they could have been better. They're not terrible. Like, they're definitely better than the kings from yesterday. This would definitely be on the... If there's kings that are actively declined, Judah, and then kings that actively reform, I would say we're on the incline, but definitely not at reform. Anywho, if you haven't done the reading for the day, how about you, stop this video, pause the audio, go get the reading done. We've got chapter 25, which is going to cover King Amaziah, chapter 26, which is going to cover King Isaiah, and chapter 27, which is going to cover King Jopham.

So, three chapters, three kings. The action is actioning. The script is scripting. The narrative is moving, and for all of us that have done the reading, let's jump in. All right, context for the day is that in terms of the historical moment that these three kings find themselves in, honestly, we are in recovery mode, and we're in kind of like a second golden age, okay? If you actually take the kingdoms of the north and the south combined, their actual land area would be equal to David and Solomon's reign. So, these guys are not like terrible, but they're all just very like lukewarm, okay? So, I'll read my context clues straight from my notes on my laptop. Due to under these three kings was bigger, richer and more powerful than it had ever been, all right? Think second golden age. But this was not due to their righteousness. That's the caveat. As Israel also expanded during this time, reaching a high point under Jeroboam, the second. The golden age of Israel. In fact, if you added Jeroboam, the second, and Eusiah's territory, it would cover the same area as the kingdom

of David and Solomon. Now, just in terms of a geopolitical reality, okay? To put these three kings into their historical context, these guys represent Judah in the House of David's political recovery after the disaster of the intermarriage between the House of David and the House of Amra. That would be the marriage to Atholiah. Big mistake. I mean, big mistake. So, they take place in a space in history, a space between expansions of the Assyrian Empire, all right? Again, it's not because of righteousness. It's just kind of like they got lucky, okay? And here's what I mean by they got lucky. Assyria hasn't really come into the story yet. As up until this point, Israel had more interaction with the Assyrian threat, but Assyria had a series of weak kings, okay? Which may correspond to the ministry of Jonah to Assyria. So, the empire contracted rather than expanded. So, Assyria is just not on the move. Like, Assyria is not pumping on all cylinders at this point in Israel's story, which just, that's just how, that's a luck of the draw, okay? It's not because of Israel's righteousness. It's just, that's just what's happening geopolitically in the world. Assyria is just not that serious of a threat. This added to the weakness of the Arabs of Iran and Syria

also meant that both Israel and Judah had space to recover without a great threat, an outside threat, that is. And so, beginning in Amaziah's reign and then finding a climax in Yuziah's reign, Judah recovered all the lands it had lost since the time of Reabbom. Judah, under these three kings, was bigger, So we're gonna experience a golden age and I call this just lukewarm and lucky. That's gonna be my theme for our context, for our nerdy nuggets and our timeless truths for the day. Don't skip, don't skip, hey! If you are in the home stretch of reading your Bible, first of all, I'm so proud of you! Second, you probably know this, but you're my kind of people. I thoroughly enjoy hanging out with Bible nerds. So, I've got exciting news for you and it's called the 6% Club. For anyone that has finished their entire Bible in a calendar year, we have exclusive content, newsletters, giveaways, live events. Oh yeah, live events baby and more all throughout the year. You can find out about all of that. If you go to thebibledepartment.com/club to officially join the 6% Club. Why do we call the 6% Club? 'Cause only 6% of Christians have actually read their entire Bible cover to cover.

And every year, Bible nerds like you finish our Bible reading plan and we get asked, what's next? Well, we've got an answer and you don't wanna miss out. So head over to thebibledepartment.com/club or click the link in the description to get access. We'll see you in the club. Let's go! Last bit of context, by this point in Chronicles, we're also starting to get the ministry of the written prophets. So, Micah and Isaiah would be active during these chapters right here, especially when we get to Uzziah, right? The famous passage in Isaiah, which is in the year that King Uzziah died. I saw the Lord high and lifted up. I believe that's Isaiah chapter six. And so, by the time we get to this point in Chronicles, there are prophetic ministries that are 100% up and running. So just wanted to put that in context as well. And I think that's all the context that we need for today's episode. Let's dive into our nerdy nuggets. I'll try to give you one per chapter, okay? Chapter 25. Amaziah's story starts off great. I mean, it's kind of like, all right, this kid goes somewhere, okay?

So let's read chapter 25. It says this in verse two. He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, but not wholeheartedly. We get like, I don't know if I'm grading that, if I'm like translating that into like a letter grade, I'm like, ah, it's a C minus. Like, he did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, but not wholeheartedly. So, let's dig in. What does that actually mean? For whatever reason, Amaziah is obedient to the Lord and he actually is going to pay some Israelites to fight along with him and he gets a prophetic word that he shouldn't trust foreigners. Again, I need you to see that. That the nation of Israel in the North, which are ethnically Jews are not gonna be considered to be like brothers and sisters. They are 100% gonna be treated as foreigners, okay? They are literally regarded as a foreign power in Amaziah obeys. So like this dude is showing so much potential. It's like, and he's obeying in a moment that has the potential to cost him a ton, but this is a really, really cool thing that he says here. And honestly, I would use this for an offering appeal, to be honest. Chapter 25 verse six says this, "He also hired 100,000 fighting men from Israel

for a hundred talents of silver." So, "A hundred talents of silver is on the table, but a man of God came to him and said, 'Your majesty, these troops from Israel must not march with you, for the Lord is not with Israel.'" Like they are essentially foreigners. Like you cannot, you cannot like be in bed with them at all. Like in any way, not with any of the people of Ephraim. So they also let us know it's the tribe of Ephraim, okay? Even if you go and fight courageously in battle, God will overthrow you before the enemy, for God has the power to help or to overthrow. And so many stories in second Chronicles have already proven that, that like God just has the ability to like win battles, just like do stuff militarily that's absolutely illogical. Like totally, like can't even make it. It's kind of like, like the math is not mathy, okay? Amaziah asked the man of God, but what about the 100 talents I paid for these Israelite troops? The man of God replied, and sent them home. They were furious with Judah and left for home in a great rage. Okay, so Amazon approves that he has the ability, the capacity, the willingness, the faith to trust Yahweh to obey Yahweh and literally goes out to the battlefield is successful and then wants to take on the gods of the group that he just defeated. Now that's odd. Verse 14, then Amazon returned from slaughtering the Edomites. Okay, so he's defeated the Edomites. He brought back the gods of the people of Seer. He set them up as his own gods, bowed down to them and burned sacrifice to them. This is odd because in the ancient world, the God who represented the victorious army was seen as the stronger, more dominant, the successful God. And so I don't understand why he wants to worship a God who just lost. That makes absolutely no logical,

reasonable, wise sense, but alas, here we are. And so, Amazonia, however, would not listen to verse 20, "For God so worked that he might deliver them into the hands of Jehoash because they sought the gods of Edom." So this whole deal with the gods of Edom, big, big thing, it is going to be his downfall. Okay, Jehoash, king of Israel, captured Amazon, king of Judah, the son of Joash, the son of Aziah at Beth Shemesh. So he gets captured, and that's the end of that, okay? He lived for 15 years after the death of Jehoash, son of Jehoash in king of Israel, as for the other events. Essentially, it's going to say you can, you know, go read about it in the book of kings, like, like, you know, the book of kings, a great book, okay? And then he turned away from following the Lord, they conspired against him in Jerusalem, and he fled to Lakeish, but they sent men after him to Lakeish and killed him there. He was brought back by horse and was buried with his ancestors in the city of Judah, okay? So, Amazonia starts out great, and then it just unravels, okay? But here's just a, I guess, a detail. His heart posture towards Yahweh changes after victory. And, you know, a professor in college used to always say this, the way that you respond to great failure and great victories both reveal what you believe about God, because those are the hardest moments to walk with the Lord. During great failure, you feel abandoned by God. You feel like I'm disappointed with God. But then in moments of great success, you feel like you don't need God. And so both of these extremes have to be intentionally experienced. You have to walk through these extremes in an intentional way, like as a believer. And that could be a Thomas truth for the day. It's not the one that I have written down, but it's a helpful one that success really does make you and I susceptible to pride and arrogance and pride become pride always comes before the fall, okay? So, that's the big idea in chapter 25. Big idea in chapter 26 is Eusiah is now king versus three. And four says this, Eusiah was 16 years old when he became king and he reigned in Jerusalem to 52 years. Long reign, 52 years. That's incredible. His mother's name is Jekylliah. He was from Jerusalem. He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, just as his father, Amaziah had done. Wait a second. Amaziah started strong, ended bad. So, is that a clue that that's exactly what's about to happen with Eusiah, okay? Verse 16. But after Eusiah became powerful, his pride led to his downfall. God, Lee, he's going to win. He's going to become successful. He's going to be powerful. And now all of a sudden, he wants to exert a certain level of control over the temple. And you already know when it comes to Ezra in this temple, they don't play, okay? So, leprosy breaks out on his forehead. Verse 21. King Eusiah had leprosy until the day he died.

He lived in a separate house, leprosy, and banned from the temple of the Lord. Jotham, his son, had charged the palace and governed the people of the land, okay? So, now we get a new king. Jotham comes into leadership. And so, we've got a president, a king that starts off strong and then ends bad. Starts off strong and says about him in chapter 27. Verse 2, "He did what was right in the odds of the Lord, just as his father's eye had done, but unlike him, he did not enter the temple of the Lord." Okay, so great. You didn't disrespect God's temple. He didn't dishonor God's temple. That's awesome. We'll take it, Jelthim. The people, however, continued their corrupt practices. Ah, lee, dude. You didn't have the hutzpah to do anything good or bad. So just another passive lukewarm leader. He doesn't do anything super bad, but also doesn't do anything incredibly good either. Just ahh, just kind of like a ahh, leader. And so, um, we got three kings, neither of them finish well. Two of them start really well, and the link between all of them is either pride or passivity. Pride or passivity. And I've learned in leadership that if you're not putting a car and drive, it will, it will go in reverse. Like there is no neutral. And so passivity is not a game you can really afford to play. Like passivity is not something that you can really afford to do in the kingdom, okay? So Jelthim is passive. It's not that he's evil, it's not that he's bad, it's just that he's passive. It's passive, but it seems like personally, he leads his own life. Fine. Says this in verse 6. Jelthim grew powerful because he walks steadfastly before the Lord is God. So it doesn't say that he didn't need anything wrong or bad or evil. It just also didn't say that he doesn't need anything good. And this is where I would say when we define leadership, I would say leadership is character and charisma combined, you know? And there's a lot of people who have great character. That means they lead themselves well. The only issue is they don't have any kind of influence to lead others well. They have integrity, but no influence. On the other end of the spectrum, there's a lot of people with a lot of charisma, a lot of influence, but they're able to lead others, but they don't lead themselves well. And the reality is that, you know, Jelthim seems to fall in this category where he's not going to do anything wrong, but he's not going to actively influence other people to do the right thing, which means he's not a leader. Leadership is not mean you

know how to steward yourself well. That's a part of leadership, but leadership is your active ability to influence those around you for like to make godly decisions. So in terms of drive and initiative, my man Jelthim just doesn't seem like the guy for that, which leads us to our Thomas truth. All three of these leaders are lukewarm. They're not the hot nor cold. They're just kind of lukewarm, but they get lucky. They just so happen to be leading in a time where it's not that hard to lead. And I think this is a valuable lesson for all of us. I think that sometimes we can experience success and we just assume that the success that we're experiencing is a blessing from the Lord or favor from God, but there's over and over and over and over and over again throughout second chronicles where when God's pleased, it'll say that there's a cause and effect relationship happening. But there is none of that here. It's not saying that, yeah, in Israel, prospered or Judah prospered because of this king's decision. It's kind of just more like Israel and Judah are prospering because there's just a season for prospering right now. I'll say it this way. A broken watch still correct at least twice a day. So sometimes we attribute success to look how much God has favored us. Look at how much the Lord is blessing us, but sometimes it's just you got a lucky hand. You just got dealt a lucky hand. You're lucky that the Assyrians are not at full power right now. You're, you're just, you're lucky and that's okay. And if the wisdom literature has taught us anything, it's that luck's real. Luck is a hundred percent real. So these guys, all three, lukewarm, but lucky. And I think that's a valuable lesson for us, for us to learn that every single time there's a success, especially in a ministry context, doesn't mean that God was pleased. It just means that you did something that was successful. And these guys are actually building nations that are wealthy, that are strong, but they just, it's not because of them. It's because of events that are completely outside of their control. And, and I think it takes a lot of discernment to know when you're in a season of, man, it's not necessarily God. It is just like the circumstances of life have positioned us to be lucky. And our goal isn't to know whether or not we're successful based on or think that we're blessed based on whether or not there's earthly success.

Like that's way too simple of an equation. And the wisdom books have taught us that life is just way more complicated than that. I was listening to a documentary of a church that kind of imploded, had a big moral failure. And they were like, yeah, like, you know, we all knew there was kind of sketchy things happening, but we would all just really just celebrate, look how many people getting baptized. Look how many, look at our attendance. And like, clearly God's pleased, 'cause look at this. But it's like, there could be a lot of reasons why church attendance is increasing. There could be a lot of reasons why there's so many people getting baptized. So immediately just jump to this sign that God's pleased. I don't think it's consistent with the testimony of scripture as a whole, it could be an exception to the rule, but it didn't feel like the rule to me. All right, that's our timeless truth for the day. 'Cause I don't think that that's just true for Jotham or for Isaiah, for Amaziah or for Ezra, for that matter. I think that is true for you and me. I think it's a timeless truth. Tomorrow, we got 2nd Chronicles chapters, 28, 29, and 30. Oh, tomorrow's day, 363 here on the podcast. It's our final week together. I am so excited. I'll see you tomorrow, right here, same time, same place.

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