2 Kings 17:1-18:12, Acts 20:1-38, Psalm 148:1-14, Proverbs 18:6-7
Today is the 30th day of June, which makes it the last day of the month of June, which means that as we take our next step forward together today, we are…we are reaching the halfway point. I can hardly believe that’s true, but here we are again in the dead center of the year. And so, it is great to be here with you in the middle and grateful for every day that we’ve been able to gather together and take another step forward. And so, we end months, and we begin months, and we end months, and we begin months, and they all add up to a year and we do that by keeping going day-by-day, step-by-step. And so, let’s finish this month well, so that tomorrow we can begin a new month anew. So, we will go back to where we left off and that leads us, at this point, back into the book of Second Kings, and today we will read Second Kings chapter 17 verse 1 through 18 verse 12 today.
Commentary:
Okay, so, as we end this 30th day of the sixth month of the year and find ourselves basically at halftime, here we are in the middle of it all. The Bible brings us to a point of melancholy. It’s a somber reading in both the Old and New Testaments today. And as we go forward from here into the second half of the year, starting tomorrow, we’re kind of changing again the complexion. In the Old Testament true to, true to the Bible’s kind of understated way, when these massive, massive things happen. We were, we were told of the Assyrian invasion of Samaria. The northern kingdom of Israel. Now, let’s remember without going back through exhaustive review, let’s remember that after Solomon’s reign, the nation, the kingdom of Israel split into two, and so we’ve been moving along with the northern and the southern kingdoms. So, the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah and the northern kingdoms capital city was the city of Samaria. The Assyrians attacked the northern kingdom, the 10 tribes of the north. And in today’s reading they besieged Samaria for three years and Samaria fell. What that means is that 10 of the tribes of Israel were defeated and conquered and according to the Scriptures the people were deported, they were carried away into exile by the Assyrian Empire. And we’ve talked about some of the strategies of Empire building at this time and we see it on, in plain display today in our reading. The peoples that were conquered in the northern tribes of Israel were deported to a different land; they were carried away to a different part of the Assyrian Empire. Another part of the Empire that had been conquered. They were resettled in a new land. Meanwhile, other conquered peoples were moved into the land of Samaria. These new peoples who had been settled in the new land, who were also facing exile. They didn’t want to be there any more than the Israelites wanted to be in a different land. They were being mixed into the Empire; conquered peoples were relocated to other parts of the Empire. This is empire building because over the generations, as the Empire brings prosperity to all the people, people stop, start to forget about their history or their homeland. They start thinking, hey, things are pretty good here. Like, this is a good life, we have a good life, and you start to forget where you came from. So, you become a product of the Empire. That’s what you know. That’s the only thing you know that’s how you were born into it. This is what you know. And so, over time conquered peoples over the generations become assimilated and don’t know anything different. That’s not a good plan though for the children of Israel, because God had a different plan and that was to reveal himself through this people. But rather than revealing God to the nations, they did everything that they could to assimilate themselves into being like the other nations, including worshiping the gods of the other nations, not revealing the one true God to all the nations. And they eroded, and we watched all this, we read all this. Like we got here somehow. We started in Genesis and went through the whole story that led us here. The back-and-forth of idolatry. The back-and-forth of looking around for something to give us life and then offering our hearts in worship to that thing. So, we end the first half of our year in a very, very different place than how we started it. We followed this story all the way to the formation of the children of Israel, and now we step through the threshold, tomorrow, into the second half of the year, and 10 of the tribes of Israel are missing. And here’s the thing, they never materialize again. What we read today, was the end of the chapter or an era, of the 10 tribes of Israel were assimilated and disappeared, never to be cohesive tribes again, until today. So, as we step forward, Israel is gone. The kingdom of Israel is gone and all that remains is the smaller kingdom of Judah in the south, but it does contain the holy city of Jerusalem. So, as we go forward now in Kings, we don’t have kings of Israel to learn about anymore. We’ve reached the end of that story. There are no more kings of Israel. We’ll continue our story forward with the kings of Judah and find out what happens to them.
We also have a somber scene in the Book of Acts, the apostle Paul was on his third missionary journey. The Holy Spirit has instructed Paul to return to Jerusalem, and Paul has a pretty strong sense of what that will mean and that, that imprisonments and persecution are probably in front of him, as he makes his way back to this holy city, after the same fashion of Jesus who knew, he was going to Jerusalem and knew how he would be received there. So, we are watching Paul’s final days of what he believes to be his freedom. So, as he’s passing by, he sends messengers to take to get the elders from the church at Ephesus to come, basically, meet him by the ship. He can’t take the time stay in Ephesus because he is trying to get to Jerusalem by Pentecost. But he has a very weighty meeting with the leaders of Ephesus because this is the last meeting that they will ever have. And he makes a declaration like, I have withheld nothing from you. I’ve given you the gospel I did everything that I could to share Jesus with you. I am clean. And we’ve seen that pattern before, we saw Moses doing that when he’s standing befor the children of Israel, saying, like I have led you, I have been faithful to you, I haven’t stolen anything from you. Like, if there’s something against me, say it now, so that everything can be made right. We saw Samuel do the same kind of thing. So, we’re seeing Paul do something similar, which is to say, if you have anything against me, then speak it to me now, and I’m letting you know I know anything against you, and I have done what I came to do, I’ve given everything that I had that God gave me to give you, I’ve given to you. But in this life we will never see each other again. If anything needs to be addressed, let’s do that. And so, we’re left with a bit of melancholy scene of people who love each other very, very much. Who are very, very much following the leading of the Holy Spirit and the roads are going in different directions. And so, they will never see each other again and that is how we land at the halfway point of our journey through the Scriptures this year.
Prayer:
Father, we thank You, we thank You for bringing us here, halfway through the year. It’s hard to believe that it’s been that long since New Year’s Day, but here we are and that’s just the nature of our experience of time. Sometimes it feels like it’s taking 100 years to go five minutes and sometimes it feels like a year goes by in a breath, but we are marking the time, we are marking the fact that we have come halfway through our journey together. So, at this halfway point, we lift our hands in worship, we throw open the doors of our hearts and say come, Holy Spirit. Nothing is off limits to You, lead us in the second half of the year to everything that we need for the journey that we are on, and may we become more and more aware not only of your presence, but of your activity and that we are part of Your story, and You are not a part of ours. You have invited us into the dance of life in the journey that we get to experience together, not the other way around. So, we love You, we humble ourselves before You, and we ask that You lead us into all truth, as we prepare for the second half of the year. I pray this in the name of Jesus. Amen.
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