Woo Hoo! We Are Half Way Through the One Year Bible, June 30th
Hoshea Rules in Israel
Hoshea did what was evil in the Lord's sight but apparently not as bad as the previous kings. While that is saying something, it is not saying too much. The king was paying a heavy tax to the king of Assyria but eventually colluded with the king of Egypt, which landed him in prison.
Hoshea Rules in Israel
Finally, the inevitable happened. The king of Assyrian invaded Israel and totally beseiged the city of Samaria, the capital of the Northern kingdom of Israel. The people of Israel were exiled to Assyria. If you think this seems harsh, you haven't read the previous chapters, where Israel kept on worshipping idols and making sacrifices to pagan shrines and various abominations to the Lord. It is amazing God was so patient and merciful for the sake of His covenant promise. God sent prophet after to prophet to warn them, but they refused to listen to them as their stubborn ancestors also refused to listen to Moses. It got so bad they even sacrificed their children to these pagan gods.
There comes a time when God judges a nation, even His own. By the way this will also happen when Jesus returns to judge the living and the dead some day. In this case he used a foreign superpower to do his bidding. Only the tribe of Judah remained, and they were not exactly obeying the Lord either. More to come on them. The text reminds us that Israel was torn from Judah when Jeroboam introduced these evils ways to the Jewish people.
Foreigners Settle in Israel
The king of Assyria brought other people from Babylon to settle into Samaria to replace the Israelites. They started to worship of their own pagan gods and the Lord sent a lion, who killed some of them. When this was reported, the king asked them to obey the religious practices of the Israelites, whose God was still the God of the land. So the new immigrants came in and practiced a mixture of their previous pagan practices, and the Jewish religion, though it was just that religion not a relationship with God.
They feared the LORD, yet served their own gods: This described the pagan peoples that the Assyrians brought in to populate the area of the Northern Kingdom of Israel. They gave a measure of respect to the God of Israel – after all, they did not want to be eaten by lions. Yet they also served their own gods and picked and chose among religious and spiritual beliefs as it pleased them.
· This accurately described the pagan peoples who re-populated Israel.
· This accurately described the Northern Kingdom of Israel before they were conquered and exiled.
· This accurately describes common religious belief in the modern world. (Guzik)
“Are you sure this is not a true description of your own position? You pay an outward deference to God by attending his house, and acknowledging his day, whilst you are really prostrating yourself before other shrines.” (Meyer)
Hezekiah Rules in Judah
I don't know about you, but I don't know how much more bad news I could take. Finally, today we meet King Hezekiah. This passage describes what a man of God he was!
He did what was pleasing in the Lord’s sight, just as his ancestor David had done. 4 He removed the pagan shrines, smashed the sacred pillars, and cut down the Asherah poles. He broke up the bronze serpent that Moses had made, because the people of Israel had been offering sacrifices to it. The bronze serpent was called Nehushtan.[f] 5 Hezekiah trusted in the Lord, the God of Israel. There was no one like him among all the kings of Judah, either before or after his time. 6 He remained faithful to the Lord in everything, and he carefully obeyed all the commands the Lord had given Moses. 7 So the Lord was with him, and Hezekiah was successful in everything he did.
We haven't seen these words in a while. Hezekiah also refused to pay tributes to the Assyrian king and recovered land from the Philistines. As we have said before, the spiritual leader of any organization has a huge influence on the blessings God wants to give it. In the church there is not only the leadership of the pastor(s), but also the elders (church council) and deacons (key ministry team leaders). As the leaders go so goes the church.
Pray for all your church leaders and church leaders around the world that they will be like Hezekiah! As you have seen his leadership was rare in his time and God used him mightily!
Paul Goes to Macedonia and Greece
After the uproar was over, Paul said goodbye to the Ephesians and headed back to Macedonia and Greece. Paul spent three months in Greece and then decided to go back to Syria, but when he discovered a plot against him he went back to Macedonia. You see a list of several men who traveled with Paul.
We don't know a lot about these men, but each one of them gave up their lives to travel with Paul to preach the gospel and win new converts. Apparently Luke was not with them because it says, "They waited for us in Troas".
Paul’s Final Visit to Troas
In Troas, Paul was celebrating Holy Communion with the local church. He was also preaching. So we see two of the mainstays of the early Christian church. Celebrating the Lord's Supper together and hear the preaching of the Gospel. While Paul was preaching, a young man named Eutychus fell asleep, fell out of a window, and died. Paul immediately went down and took him in his arms and said, "Don't worry he is alive!"
It is hard to imagine the impact this miracle done by Paul by raising someone from the dead had upon the church. But we know the church was" greatly relieved.
Paul Meets the Ephesian Elders
Paul went back to Ephesus and met with the elders. Note the role of the elders was to run the church in Ephesus, exercising spiritual authority over the church. Paul reminded the Ephesians of the ministry he had there among them for three years, and the sacrifices he made to preach the singular message of the gospel. He says to them, " I have had one message for Jews and Greeks alike—the necessity of repenting from sin and turning to God, and of having faith in our Lord Jesus."
This is the message the church will continue to need to preach until Jesus returns. Repent from living life your own way and turn and receive the grace of God in Christ Jesus. This is the only message that has any hope of transforming our society. If we look at the societal ills around us, the only true solution is the conversion of men and women through the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Paul then shares that his mission is now to return to Jerusalem, and he knows that trouble awaits him in this journey. The Holy Spirit is tells him, he is going to face suffering, but for him this is not enough to deter him from finishing the work of telling all people about the Good News of God's grace.
This is the last time Paul will ever see these people, and he wants them to know he has given them every opportunity to believe in the Good News of Jesus. He is innocent of their blood, because he has fullfilled his duty to share the Good News with them. This mission is worth more than life itself to Paul.
Is it to us? Do we have the same passion to share the Good News with everyone we know and meet, as Paul did? This is very convicting to me. I hope I can be as faithful as Paul was with God's call in his life with the call God has put on my life!
And lest we think Paul was only about ministry tasks, we see at the end of this chapter the great love he shared with the Ephesian Christians. Paul not only shared the gospel, he shared his very life!
"When he had finished speaking, he knelt and prayed with them. They all cried as they embraced and kissed him good-bye. They were sad most of all because he had said that they would never see him again. Then they escorted him down to the ship." Acts 20:36-38
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