For today, One Year Bible Online links here.
Once again, the NIV translation makes sense of this passage for me. The words we speak are like deep waters, containing and concealing many dangers. Wisdom in those words is like a rushing stream, refreshing and transforming the landscape around us.
Let us praise the Lord. He is great enough to count and name each of the stars, yet He will heal the brokenhearted and bind their wounds. It is not our strength, intelligence, wisdom, or beauty which gives God pleasure. Rather God is pleased when we obey His commands because we fear and love Him. Let us put all of our hopes in God’s unfailing love. I will glorify God, because even though none can stand against Him, He has sacrificed His own Son for each and every one of us.
There is an interesting story here. A group of Jewish exorcists attempted to use the name of Jesus and of Paul in order to cast out demons. They thought that Jesus’ name could be used as one more incantation in their “magic”. The name of Jesus is not an incantation we can use to get the results we are looking for. If we attempt to use Jesus’ name that way, it will end as badly for us as it did for these Jewish exorcists. However, the results will glorify God, just as the results in this story did. When the believers in the area heard the story of the exorcists they recognized their own sins and the dangers of practicing “magic” and “magical” thinking. They gathered the books and devices they used to practice magic and destroyed them. The key here was not the destruction of these items, but the irrevocable renunciation of the practices they represented.
Yesterday’s passage told us that Amaziah ruled Judah and did what was pleasing in God’s sight. Today we learn that his son and his grandson did likewise. However, none of the three kings destroyed the shrines in the high places. In the meantime, king after king rose to power in Israel and did evil in God’s sight. The kings of Israel abused their power and practiced idolatry. When Amaziah’s great-grandson, Ahaz, took the throne in Judah he began following the pagan practices which were practiced at the shrines in the high places and treated his subjects the way that the kings of Israel did. He actively imitated the pagan practices of the peoples surrounding Judah, going so far as to replace the altar in the Temple with one based on an altar set up by the Assyrians in Damascus. The implication of the description given is that King Ahaz transformed the Temple worship from worship of God to worship of the Assyrian gods.
The failure of Amaziah, his son, and his grandson, to root out pagan practices from among those who worshiped the Lord led to King Ahaz preferring those practices to the worship of God. We can see the same thing in the Church around us. When we look the other way when people fail to remain faithful to God, people will gradually “move the line” further and further from where God really wants us to be. When the Church in the United States stopped condemning divorce, it reduced the Church’s ability to defend God’s will for marriage. We need to relearn how to condemn sin without condemning the sinner. The failure of Amaziah, Uzziah, and Jotham to lead their people to complete faithfulness led to Ahaz, who sacrificed his own son in the fires of a pagan god. Yet Ahaz’ son was Hezekiah. God will use our failings to bring about revival. Let us pray that a spiritual leader arise today to lead us in a revival like the one which Hezekiah led.