2 Chro No.11 Time to seek the Lord

Father, we're grateful for today we commit this service to you. We thank you for one another. We thank you for all your gifts.

We pray that each one of us may today show you our praise and our gratitude in the way that we live our lives for Jesus' sake. Amen. Let's turn to 2 Chronicles and chapter 22, 2 Chronicles in the Old Testament, just before the book of Ezra and just before and just after 1 Chronicles and chapter 22.

And we pick up in verse 10 and we go all the way through to chapter 23. When Ataliah, the mother of Ahaziah, saw that her son was dead, she proceeded to destroy the whole royal family of the house of Judah. But Jehoshabah, the daughter of King Jehoram, took Joash, the son of Ahaziah, and stole him away from among the royal princes, who were about to be murdered, and put him and his nurse in a bedroom.

Because Jehoshabah, the daughter of King Jehoram, and the wife of the priest Jehoiada, was Ahaziah's sister, she hid the child from Ataliah so that she could not kill him. He remained hidden with them at the temple of God for six years, while Ataliah ruled the land. In the seventh year, Jehoiada showed his strength.

He made a covenant with the commanders of units of a hundred, Azariah son of Jehoram, Ishmael son of Jehohanan, Azariah son of Obed, Masiah son of Adiah, and Elishaphat son of Zechariah. They went throughout Judah and gathered the Levites and the heads of Israelite families from all the towns. When they came to Jerusalem, the whole assembly made a covenant with the king at the temple of God.

Jehoiada said to them, the king's son shall reign, as the Lord promised concerning the descendants of David. Now this is what you are to do. A third of you priests and Levites who are going on duty on the Sabbath are to keep watch at the doors, a third of you at the royal palace, and a third at the foundation gate, and all the other men are to be in the courtyards of the temple of the Lord.

No one is to enter the temple of the Lord except the priests and Levites on duty. They may enter because they are consecrated, but all the other men are to guard what the Lord has assigned to them. The Levites are to station themselves round the king, each man with his weapons in his hand.

Anyone who enters the temple must be put to death. Stay close to the king wherever he goes. The Levites and all the men of Judah did just as Jehoiada the priest ordered.

Each one took his men, those who were going on duty on the Sabbath and those who were going off duty, for Jehoiada the priest had not released any of the divisions. Then he gave the commanders of units of a hundred the spears and the large and small shields that had belonged to King David and that were in the temple of God. He stationed all the men, each with his weapon in his hand, round the king, near the altar and the temple, from the south side to the north side of the temple.

Jehoiada and his sons brought out the king's son and put the crown on him. They presented him with a copy of the covenant and proclaimed him king. They anointed him and shouted, Long live the king! When Ataliah heard the noise of the people running and cheering the king, she went to them at the temple of the Lord.

She looked and there was the king standing by his pillar at the entrance. The officers and the trumpeters were beside the king and all the people of the land were rejoicing and blowing trumpets and singers with musical instruments were leading the praises. Then Ataliah tore her robes and shouted, Treason, treason! Jehoiada the priest sent out the commanders of units of a hundred who were in charge of the troops and said to them, Bring her out between the ranks and put to the sword anyone who follows her.

For the priests had said, Do not put her to death at the temple of the Lord. So they seized her as she reached the entrance of the horse gate on the palace grounds, and there they put her to death. Jehoiada then made a covenant that he and the people and the king would be the Lord's people.

All the people went to the temple of Baal and tore it down. They smashed the altars and idols and killed Matin, the priest of Baal, in front of the altars. Then Jehoiada placed the oversight of the temple of the Lord in the hands of the priests who were Levites, to whom David had made assignments in the temple, to present the burnt offerings of the Lord as written in the law of Moses, with rejoicing and singing as David had ordered.

He also stationed doorkeepers at the gates of the Lord's temple so that no one who was in any way unclean might enter. He took with him the commanders of hundreds, the nobles, the rulers of the people, and all the people of the land, and brought the king down from the temple of the Lord. They went into the palace through the upper gate, and seated the king on the royal throne.

And all the people of the land rejoiced. And the city was quiet, because Ataliah had been slain with the sword. I don't know what you think about preaching, whether you ever think about the act of preaching and what the task of the preacher is.

Obviously, folk like Gordon and myself, and later on increasingly David, as well as Tim and Hugh, were constantly engaged in analyzing why it is that we're preachers, and what our objectives are. I think it would be true to say that the task of the preacher is to look into the Word of God and to find what is particularly relevant for his congregation on the occasion when next he brings that Word to them. If you like, you could perhaps sum it up like this, it's up to the preacher to come before the Lord and find what you might call the now Word, the now Word, the Word that's relevant on this particular occasion.

And sometimes it grips the soul of a man before he comes into the pulpit, it can happen two or three minutes before, it can happen several days before, it can be something that he wakes up with on his mind the first hours of the morning. And that was my experience just today. The verse that was on my mind was the one discovered in Hosea chapter 10 and verse 12, where you read in the NIV version of the Bible, sow for yourselves righteousness, reap the fruit of unfailing love, break up your fallow ground, for it is time to seek the Lord until He comes and showers righteousness upon you.

I've written that out because you've not all got the NIV and I'd like you to repeat it. So, will you repeat it with me? Sow for yourselves righteousness, reap the fruit of unfailing love, break up your fallow ground, for it is time to seek the Lord until He comes and showers righteousness upon you. Just once more to get it into our minds.

Sow for yourselves righteousness, reap the fruit of unfailing love, break up your fallow ground, for it is time to seek the Lord until He comes and showers righteousness upon you. I'd like you now, with that in mind, to turn your attention to the passage that was read to us from 2 Chronicles, and let's start to have a look at this rather difficult passage of Scripture from the perspective of a harvest festival. You may say, well, this has got nothing whatsoever to do with harvest, and I would agree that at the first reading of Chronicles 23, the second book of Chronicles 23, and what is really an overspill from the 22nd chapter, which also tells more of the narrative sets the scene for the 23rd chapter, at first glance it's got nothing to do with harvest at all.

But look, in Scripture there are two sorts of harvests that are referred to. We folk who live in Worthing are not agricultural people, we're not pastoral people, maybe one or two are exceptional and fit into that category, but not the majority of us. And in one sense, we're not well poised to understand Scripture, because Scripture was immediately directed to, by and large, pastoral people, certainly in the Old Testament and the writers of the Gospels directing their comments to Jewish readers on first instance, they also were directing their remarks to people who were agricultural and pastoral in background.

And sometimes when you go through the Old Testament Scriptures, you will find that the writers there speak about the natural harvest. Reference to this is made in some of the Old Testament Psalms in particular. Reference to the cycles of nature are made in the book of Genesis.

But when you move also into the Old Testament, you'll find, like in Proverbs in chapter 11 and the 18th verse, this sort of Scripture, and there are many other examples of it, Proverbs 11 and verse 18, reference made not just to the physical harvest, but also to the spiritual harvest. The wicked man earns deceptive wages, but he who sows righteousness reaps a sure reward. When the Apostle Paul picks up that theme in Galatians chapter 6 and verse 7, he tells us that a man actually reaps what he sows, Galatians chapter 6 and verse 7. And it's most important therefore that you and I in our lives are concerned about what we sow in the fabric of our personality even more than the farmer is concerned about what he sows in the land that he owns.

Paul, writing specifically, says, Be not deceived, God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction.

The one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life. And I am so concerned this morning that the time has come for action on the part of many of us to be as concerned for our spiritual well-being as we are legitimately concerned to have food in our pantries as a result of the farmers and the shepherds and so forth whose ministry provides that for us, albeit via the shops. Well, when you come to 2 Chronicles 23, what you do discover is an illustration of people and one in particular who in terms of their own spiritual well-being were living recklessly, that the spiritual harvest of their own lives was totally displeasing to the Lord.

If I mentioned the word Queen Mum to you, you would immediately have your thoughts filled out by the mother of our own Queen, one of perhaps the most popular of the royals in the land today, and rightly so. But not all Queen Mums are like the one that we are graced to have in our country. And if you went into the Old Testament, you will find references to a woman called Jezebel.

And if you went into the New Testament, you'd find reference to a woman called Herodias. Both these were Queen Mums, and they weren't in the same category as the one of whom we read and have some increasing knowledge of. Now, when you move into the twenty-third chapter of 2 Chronicles, and in those verses just before the twenty-third, you come across a woman by the name of Athalia, and she is a lady who has done some pretty awful things.

When her son died, she got rid of all the family tree, because she liked the prestigious position of being Queen Mum. So, when her sons died, when her son died, she got rid of all the relatives, and she became what we call in history a pretender to the throne. And as a result of her reign, the people of Israel were plunged further and further into paganism and into a spiritual crisis.

Now listen, when sometimes you read of the kings of Israel, you read in terms of their seed. Seed is, if you like, a synonym with descendants. Seed has also got another meaning in Scripture.

It's linked to the word promise. God promises that David's seed would continue forever. Right? So, here is this woman, Athalia, and she's pitched herself against the promises of God.

The possibility is that God's seed promise to Israel will never, from that time onward, come to complete fruition and fulfillment, because this woman has tried to exterminate all the descendants of David. So, the question comes, is there such a thing in Scripture as an indestructible seed? Stay with the thought, and I'll open it up for you, and you'll understand. Keep shaking your heads, and you get those little cogs, as A.W. Tozer said, working, and on this hot morning, you'll still be following what I have to say.

The Egyptians, right? They built pyramids, and in the pyramids, they had entombed the remains of the pharaohs. Now, with the pharaohs went sometimes the accoutrements of rain, not only servants who also, presumably unwillingly, were dragged into the tomb, but sometimes they would take part of their lifestyle with them. They would take grain, because the idea would be that when they went to heaven, they did the grain in order to be able to plant in heaven.

It was a very interesting concept that the Egyptians had. Now, those tombs have been rifled down the years, but there has been traces left of seeds that have spanned two millennia, that still remain, and still have all the potentiality for life after 2,000 years. Now, the Word of God is like the seed of those Egyptian pharaohs.

It continues to have potential. It continues to have power, because when God speaks, He never pulls back on what He has said. And when God promises David that He will have a seed, that He will have a descendant on the throne of Israel forever, He means just what He says.

So, here you are faced, in this twenty-third chapter of 2 Chronicles, with a woman who pitches herself against the purposes of God, and you ask yourself, is God's seed destructible or indestructible? The seventh verse of the twenty-first chapter, you get an illustration of the point that I am trying to make. It has to do with a different king. We will not get into the history of it, because there is not the time.

But here is the argument that I am putting, expressed, nevertheless, because of the covenant the Lord had made with David, the Lord was not willing to destroy the house of David. He had promised to maintain a lamp for him and his descendants forever. Always the Old Testament Scriptures will go back in the reasoning of the writers to what God spoke to David or Abraham or Noah in the promises, the covenants that He gave.

So, here is the point. If Italia has got rid of all the descendants of David, then there is a destructible word that has come from the mouth of God. But, if in God's overarching providence, one of the grandchildren has been secreted away, then the possibility is that what God promised to David can still be fulfilled.

Do you understand? There have been times when evil men, provoked by the devil, have tried to thwart the purposes of God. That's why Moses was put in the bulrushes, because his mum and dad realised that he was born under the threat of death. That's why Jesus is secreted to Egypt, because Herod wants to destroy all the male children under the age of two.

So, here when reference is made to the decree of Italia for all the descendants of her son to be exterminated, one of her son's sisters takes a little boy and has him placed in the temple, one of the rooms, and becomes his nurse. And the future of God's purposes will swing around that little infant. Look, don't you understand? Let's get this away from history.

Let's apply it biblically and theologically to you and to me. What God has said, He will not withdraw. God's seed and God's promises are synonyms in many senses.

And when God has said, if you believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, you will be saved, He will not renege on His word. He kept Jesus and His ministry on this earth safe until the point when God had predetermined for the Lord Christ to be handed over to the priests and to the Roman authorities and to be damnably done to death. He allowed that to happen, so that there would come the possibility of salvation to the whole world.

And what God promised to Israel in terms of the seed of David, God promises to the world in terms of the efficacy of the gospel of His Son. The word of God is indestructible. And that's what the first part of our chapter will tell you.

There's an indestructible seed. There is a brave nurse who has taken into one of the ante-rooms of the temple a successor to the previous king. Verse 11 of chapter 22, Jehoshibah, the daughter of King Jehoram, took Joash son of Ahaziah and stole him away from among the royal princes who were about to be murdered and put him and his nurse in a bedroom.

And if you read 2 Kings and the parallel chapter, you'll discover the room was in the temple. An indestructible seed. Now, as we come into the first fifteen verses of the twenty-third chapter, you will find there an inevitable sequence.

But we're still approaching this chapter from the point of view of harvest. You know about the cycles of nature. Spring gives way to summer.

Summer gives way to autumn. Autumn gives way to winter. It's the way that God has built His laws into the whole phenomenon of creation.

If you were to read in Genesis God's promise to Noah, you would discover that He refers to seed time and harvest following in logical sequence. When our Lord Jesus Christ is on earth, He speaks on one occasion to His disciples, and He says, harvest is not four months away, and yet there's a spiritual harvest that's already there to be reaped. So here is our Lord, you see, and He twins together the two concepts that I brought to your attention ten minutes ago, the spiritual and the physical.

And Jesus says that what there is in terms of laws controlling the natural, so there are controlling the spiritual. So if nature has a cycle, does not the purpose of God in our world have a cycle? Will there not be times when though everything seems to be absolutely hopeless, by the expression of His will He will bring hope into a despairing situation? An inevitable sequence there is indeed. Look at the twenty-third chapter in the first verse.

In the seventh year Jehoiada showed his strength. Now he's a priest. He's a good priest.

He's a good preacher. He's not false. In no way is he in the pay of the Queen Mother who has brought bale prophets and caused them to infect the whole of Judah with their false teaching.

In the seventh year the high priest decides it is time to move. It is time to seek the Lord. It's time to bring the young king from out of the room where he's had sanctuary in the temple and for people to realize that there is still a seed of David.

There is still a descendant of David to fulfill the purposes of God. And he goes about this in a very methodical fashion. As he gets all the people who are going to be involved in the coup d'etat, in the revolution against the Queen Mum, into order, he assigns them appropriate tasks, as you will understand if you read the second and third verses of this chapter.

He will ensure that the weapons that David used to use in the days when he fought the Philistines are made available to the soldiers who will need them during this revolution. There are all trophies which will be put to new uses. Verse 9, Then he gave the commanders of units of a hundred the spears and the large and small shields that had belonged to King David and that were in the temple of God.

And what's more, he gave all the people a common goal, and that was that they were to keep their eyes upon the king and to ensure his safety and security. He stationed all the men, verse 10, each with his weapon in his hand around the king near the altar in the temple from the south side to the north side of the temple. You see what's happening? It's the time to act.

It's the inevitable sequence. God will not allow evil to in any way thwart His divine purposes. As autumn and winter will have to give way to spring, so the season of sinfulness and rebellion against God will give way to reformation, will give way to renewal, because God does not allow history to be controlled simply by the conniving of man, just by the capriciousness of the devil.

Working out His purposes is the Lord God, and He will bring to pass in Israel in the days of the chroniclers that which He has predetermined, as He will bring it about today. There is an inevitability, a sequential system behind nature. And so I'm arguing there is a sequential system, an inevitable sequence behind the purposes of God in this world for men and women.

Notice how when this king is suddenly produced, and it is apparent that a revolution is in sway, as the people shout, Long live the king, verse 11, the latter part, when the queen Mum hears the noise of the people running and cheering the king. She went to them at the temple of the Lord. She looked, and there she saw the king standing by his pillar at the entrance, and she says, last part of verse 13, treason, treason.

Was there ever such a prostitution in language? How did she get to the position that she was in? By treachery. And when you engage in treachery, when you are evilly inclined, there is no such thing as morality, and you take good words and you use them in a corrupt fashion. It wasn't treachery, it was fidelity.

It was the reinstituting of the purposes of God. It was a cycle, you see. God's time had come to show the people that He actually was in control.

The seed was indestructible. The sequence was inevitable. God was to return Israel to what He wanted her to be.

And finally, as I bring you to the end of this rather difficult but most important chapter, from the perspective of Harvest, let me argue there is an incredible consequence, an incredible consequence. These people were brought by their brave priest to consider the two issues that confronted them. Were they to serve the queen, or were they to serve the Lord? There was no pussyfooting around.

How long will you halt between two opinions, the evangelistic expression of the Old Testament, do you remember? Well, the Israelites had to decide on whose side were they on. You and I must decide in terms of this indestructible seed of the gospel. How do you respond to it? Well, if you respond positively.

As these people responded under the leadership of the priest, so I say there are certain consequences that are utterly inevitable. Look at verse 18, will you? Jehoiada placed the oversight of the temple of the Lord in the hands of the priests who were Levites, to whom David had made assignments to the temple to present the burnt offerings of the Lord as written in the law of God. Any turn of your life to the authority of God means submission to Scripture.

Did you hear that? Some people want to know why this church is built as it is with the pulpit so central. Not because the man in the pulpit is important, it doesn't really matter and I'm not being falsely humble. Who is doing the preaching? The pulpit stands for the place where God pulls people from the pit of sin.

Did you know that? Pul-pit. That's the etymology, the history of the word. And the important thing is that from the pulpit is offered the word of God to the people.

And when the people have not responded to the word of God, when it's been hidden from them, then they're in dire straits. Then the harvest of their lives is a corruptible harvest that satisfies them nothing and pleases God even less. So, the incredible consequence of this renewal in Judah is the recognition afresh of God's Word.

There is also the realization of who the people are. These people were not pawns of Italia, not at all. These people had a far greater destiny, a far more wonderful ownership.

Verse 16, Jehoiada then made a covenant that he and the people and the king would be the Lord's people. Do you know who you are? The Lord's people. You're not just ordinary folk.

In one sense you are, in another sense you're very peculiar. There used to be a denomination called the peculiar people. But because the word peculiar has now changed its meaning a little from what it was at the turn of the century, the denomination has called itself by something a little softer.

But there is a sense in which we are the peculiar people of the Lord. And when this indestructible seed has done its inevitable work, then the incredible confidence or the incredible consequence is that the people of God realize who they are. You remember the plea that I gave some while ago and repeated at the OM conference in Holland, let the church be the church.

What was I saying? Let's get proud of the fact we're worthy tabernacle not a bit. I care not one fig for this building. But I do care for the church.

I do care for the people of God. When I say let the people of God be the people of God, I mean let them live as God's people. Let them testify as God's people.

Because this is what the world wants to know. This is how you get rid of the modern Italians and the problems that they cause by bringing their paganism into contemporary society. And the only way to eradicate evil in this world is by the church being the church and living as the church and preaching what the church was entrusted to preach by the Lord Christ.

Incredible consequence. It was a realization of who they were. It was an elimination of all that was wrong.

Look at verse 17, will you? All the people went to the temple of Baal and tore it down. They smashed the altars and the idols. This is not very romantic, what they went about, but these were very dangerous times and the whole of God's purposes for the present and the future were in jeopardy.

And so there is a purge of all that is evil. As God wants, are you hearing me? God wants a purge of all that is evil from the lives of His children. Time to seek the Lord, the Now Word, the reinstitution of the divine order.

Look at verse 18. Jehoiada placed the oversight of the temple of the Lord in the hands of the priests who were Levites, to whom David had made assignments in the temple, to present the burnt offerings of the Lord as written in the law of Moses, with rejoicing and singing. God has an order for His children.

If you don't like preaching, coming around His Word and coming around His table and acknowledging the fact that God has placed elders and deacons and pastors and prophets and apostles within the body, then really you're arguing against Him. This is the order He wants. This is the decreed way of doing things.

The incredible consequence of this renewal of Israel, this spiritual renewal, is the restructuring of all that was wrong, bringing it into line with the Word of God. And then they broke out with joy, didn't they? Because when God is pleased and His presence is amongst the people, then another consequence is joy. He took with Him the commanders of hundreds, verse 20, the nobles, the rulers of the people and all the people of the hand, and brought the king down from the temple of the Lord.

They went into the palace through the upper gate and seated the king on the royal throne. And all the people of the land rejoiced, and the city was quiet. Psalm 126 and verse 6 has a comment to make which I think is quite relevant to this particular study.

Psalm 126 and verse 6, those who sow in tears will reap with songs of joy. He who goes out weeping, carrying seed to sow, will return with songs of joy, carrying sheaves with him. My dear brothers and sisters, we've looked at a difficult passage of Scripture.

And when I first saw it, I thought, what on earth is that to say about harvest? And then I realized it has such a lot. Because harvest has to do not only with physical harvest. It has to do with spiritual harvest.

It was a time for action in Judah in the days of the high priest. Now it's time for action for you and for me here at Worthing Tab as we respond to what I believe to be the now Word of God. Sow for yourselves righteousness.

Reap the fruit of unfailing love. Break up the ground in your lives that are fallow. It's time, brothers and sisters.

It's gone time. Time to seek the Lord. Not just time for preaching.

Not just time to come along on a Sunday for celebration. Both those things are honorable. But unless they lead you to seek the Lord, then really they're not achieving their final goal.

Until He comes and showers righteousness upon you. If you will respond to what I believe is God's Word for us right now, then on the count of three will you say out loud the verse that I have up on my overhead. One, two, three.

Sow for yourselves righteousness. Reap the fruit of unfailing love. Break up your fallow ground.

For it is time to seek the Lord until He comes and showers righteousness upon you. Let us stand. Let's sing together the Lord's Prayer.

And as we get to the final doxology, for thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory forever and ever. Then lift it in your volume as you sing it out before the Lord. And let that be the response to what's been shared right now.

Amen.