I live in Speedway, Indiana right next to the world famous Indianapolis Motor Speedway where the 100th running of the Indy 500 race was just completed. Being a local we get to watch all the clean up crews clean up after the campers and other race fans who leave their garbage all about town. We also get to watch drunken fans pass out in our yards and exhibit lewd behavior throughout the weekend. Speedway is a quiet community, but when the races come to town, it's a different story. I never thought I would raise my children in place where there are erotic dance halls and erotic clothing stores, which we drive by routinely, and widespread public intoxication three weekends a year.
John Fogerty wrote a song called "Gunslinger."
Lookin' out across this town
Kinda makes me wonder how
All the things that make us great
Got left so far behind
This used to be a peaceful place
Decent folks hard workin' ways
Now they hide behind locked doors
Afraid to speak their minds
I think we need a gunslinger
Somebody tough to tame this town
I think we need a gunslinger
There'll be justice all around. Gunslinger lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC
Judah could have used a gunslinger to clean up their town's mess. 2nd Chronicles continues the annals of the Judean kings from Joash's son Amaziah to Hezekiah. In between these two good kings is one Uzziah who was a good king for a time, but God's blessings on him for his obedience lead to his arrogance. He went to offer incense directly at the altar where only sons of Aaron may go. The priests confronted him for breaking the holy restriction. He cursed them in anger and was immediately stricken with a skin disease. We know where his bones are buried in Jerusalem today. When his skin turned diseased the priests rushed him out of the temple. They had to clean out the holy place of this blemish.
King Ahaz, grandson of Uzziah was really bad. He returned Judah to Baal worship and even sacrificed some of his children to pagan god's in the Valley of Hinnom. When the curses for covenant unfaithfulness occurred, Ahaz did not wake up from his stuper, but decided to begin praying to the Assyrian gods in hopes they my bless him for his offerings to them (2 Chr. 28:22-23)!
Don't we do that today? If God doesn't behave as we expect Him to, blessing our wants and desires, then we turn away looking elsewhere for comfort and satisfaction. How many have lost faith in God because of the death of a child or a spouse? What of those who come on hard times through physical illness, deformity or mental disorder? Sometimes the only One to blame is God, so faith is lost. We will put our faith in something even if it is trusting there is no God to answer our prayers.
Hezekiah succeeded Ahaz and he lead religious reforms to turn Judah back to Yahweh. He reopened the temple that his father Ahaz had shut down and desecrated. He instructed the priests and Levites to cleanse the temple and consecrate it so that it would be a holy place again for the Holy One of Israel to dwell (2 Chr. 29:3, 15). They cleaned out the temple of all common and unclean things and threw them into the Kidron Valley just east of the temple with the Mount of Olives on the other side.
Think of the Christian import here (And it is import. The text was never meant to be read this way)! Jesus crossed the Kidron Valley from Bethphage during His triumphal entry into Jerusalem celebrated as Messiah. He descended into the valley where unclean things were disposed. In fact this valley is filled with graves today including famous monuments to dead kings and prophets. Jesus descended into the unclean and the dead and came up to the temple to sacrifice Himself as atonement for our sins...our uncleanness.
Micah the prophet announces a cleaning out of Israel and Judah. Their capital cities of Samaria and Jerusalem will be destroyed because of their injustices against the poor and their negligence of Yahweh's covenant Mic. 1:6; 3:12). But this destruction is a cleansing that makes possible a beautiful future.
In the last days
the mountain of the LORD's house
will be established
at the top of the mountains
and will be raised above the hills.
Peoples will stream to it,
and many nations will come and say,
"Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD,
to the house of the God of Jacob.
He will teach us about His ways
so we may walk in His paths."
For instruction will go out of Zion
and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem (Mic. 4:1-2)."Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD,
to the house of the God of Jacob.
He will teach us about His ways
so we may walk in His paths."
For instruction will go out of Zion
The apostle John wrote his first letter to the church after the Herod's temple (the third temple) was destroyed along with Jerusalem (85-95 A.D.). He writes to encourage the church in a time of great disarray. He addresses the church as made up of three kinds of members: Fathers, Young Men and Children.
Children have received forgiveness, the cleansing from sin through the blood of Christ.
"If we walk in the light as He Himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin (1 Jn. 1:7)."
Young men have experienced victory through the power of God given them in faith. They have begun to learn that forgiveness is only the beginning. The cleansing from all sin through Christ makes possible a fresh start and a place for the Holy Spirit to take up residence in the believer's heart. This seed from God grows to full fruitfulness over time as the young man in faith obeys His leading. They find that they are indeed a new creation with a divine ability to resist sinful temptation like never before.
Fathers have come to "know the One who is from the beginning (1 Jn. 2:13-14)." John wrote that knowing God the Father and His Son whom He sent is eternal life (Jn. 17:3). The word "know" in Greek is "ginosko" which is where English get words like "prognosis" and "diagnosis." To know is to perceive and understand, to grasp and behold. This knowing of the One is mature faith. The fathers in the church have "proved Him o'er and o'er" [from the hymn 'Tis So Sweet To Trust In Jesus]. They have had many victories through God's power at work in them. They know the right ways of God and do not doubt them. They know the power of God and lean on Him.
"Everyone who has been born of God does not sin, because His seed remains in him; he is not able to sin, because he has been born of God."
John writes to clean out of the church false teachers who say that Jesus Christ did not come in the flesh, that He was some kind of angel or super being and not human. That's how He lived a sinless life. "But we are only human," the false teacher says! How many times have your heard this sentiment, "Don't beat yourself up over sin. God forgives you?"
John teaches to take sin seriously. Do not be in error. People who sin are not of God. They have not been born of the heavenly seed. For the heavenly seed will enable righteousness. The heavenly seed will empower the Christian to love.
This is how we have come to know love: He laid down His life for us. We should also lay down our lives for our brothers (1 Jn. 3:16).
Dear God, help me to open my heart to You and let You clean out of me all that is unclean, sinful, evil and not of You. Let Your Holy Spirit perfect me that I might have a clear conscience before You and love others in freedom. In Jesus' name, Amen.
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