Better Than Them

Better Than Them

The Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity – 8/25/2024

2 Chronicles 28:8-15

Rev. Christopher W. Brademeyer

That portion of God’s holy Word for consideration this morning is our Old Testament lesson from the Second Book of Chronicles in the twenty-eighth chapter with special emphasis on verses eight through eleven which read as follows:

“ The men of Israel took captive 200,000 of their relatives, women, sons, and daughters. They also took much spoil from them and brought the spoil to Samaria. 9 But a prophet of the Lord was there, whose name was Oded, and he went out to meet the army that came to Samaria and said to them, “Behold, because the Lord, the God of your fathers, was angry with Judah, he gave them into your hand, but you have killed them in a rage that has reached up to heaven. 10 And now you intend to subjugate the people of Judah and Jerusalem, male and female, as your slaves. Have you not sins of your own against the Lord your God? 11 Now hear me, and send back the captives from your relatives whom you have taken, for the fierce wrath of the Lord is upon you.””[1]

Thus far the Scriptures.

In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

                Today’s Old Testament reading gives us an interesting, bizarre, and terrible  episode from the history of Israel. To set the stage, we need to rewind a bit. At this point in time, it had been two hundred years since Israel, the kingdom of God’s own people, was divided in two by civil war. The northern kingdom was founded by those who rebelled against Solomon’s son, Rehoboam, and kept the name Israel. At this time it was ruled by Pekah, who would be the second to last king of Israel before the kingdom was destroyed by the Assyrian Empire. The southern portion of the formerly united kingdom called itself Judah and was ruled by the descendants of David and Solomon. At this time, it was ruled by Ahaz, who is noted as being a particularly bad king. Particularly, he prevented the Temple worship of the true God and promoted open idolatry in its place.[2] 

                Now Pekah make an alliance with the king of Aram, also known as Syria, to make war on Judah.[3] Indeed, they had more than just warfare on their mind. As shown here in this passage, it seems that Israel and Aram wanted to destroy Judah. This passage records that 120,000 men were killed and that 200,000 women and children were taken into slavery. This was more than what God had commanded. The people of Judah had forsaken the Lord their God and so God gave them into the hand of Pekah, the king of Israel and his ally in the king of Aram. But they went beyond what God had ordained and brought on themselves the wrath of God in turn.

                To be fair, Israel was never led by a faithful king after they rebelled against the house of David by setting up their own king. Each generation of kings was faithless and refused to return to the Lord preferring instead to follow their own idols. But, in that nation of Israel, there were, apparently, some faithful men. There was Oded, a bold prophet who stood before the combined armies of the Israelites and the Arameans and told them that they had sinned. This was a pretty bold thing to do. It takes great courage to stand up before such overwhelming power and to speak the truth, but prophets are bound to speak the Word of God, even when the odds are not in their favor. And so Oded did.

                But it is not only Oded that can be seen to be faithful here. There were a few men who were as well: Azariah son of Jehonanan, Berekiah son of Meshillemoth, Jehizkiah son of Shallum, and Amasa son of Hadlai. These four men of Israel stood up to the crowd as well, brought to strength of character by the prophet’s words and gave them good counsel, good advice, to return the prisoners and the plunder, that is the goods taken from Judah, and to return to their own land. This they did.

                Now behind all of this are a few things. I will not bore you with the intricacies of ancient Levantine politics, but suffice it to say that all of this led to Israel and Aram being destroyed by the Assyrian Empire only a few years’ time from this point in history. Judah escaped being conquered by becoming a vassal or client state to Assyria.

                Now there is much that can be said about the evils that bad rulers bring on a nation. If any of you find yourselves in a position of leadership, no matter how small or how great, understand that God put you there to serve Him and all those people He put under your authority. And you should not become overzealous and go beyond what God has given you to do, nor should you be lazy and not do those duties that He would have you do. In other words, you must do your job and do it like a Christian, that is, in faith, fear, reverence, and love of God and thereby concern for your neighbor under your care.

                But even more, there is an attitude at play here that is distressingly common amongst us Christians, the “holier than thou” attitude that destroys Christian humility and replaces it with self-righteous arrogance. The Israelites, with their Aramean buddies, had allowed themselves to not only subjugate Israel, but sought to destroy it utterly. They cut down the men and carried off the women and children. This was no mere raid; these numbers would have been a rather sizable portion of the people of Judah at that time. To put it another way by borrowing a modern word, this was genocidal in scope. The attitude is laid bare by the prophet and the four men I mentioned a short while ago: Israel has her own sins and guilt to worry about. But she apparently did not see or consider that she too is guilty before God and let her sense of superiority lead her to utterly destroying the Judahites that she encountered.

                Now it is not quite the same thing, and I understand that comparing catty church basement ladies and  smug men puffing themselves up at a voters’ meeting to genocidal warfare shows a difference of many great degrees. But the kernel is the same, and it is one that if left unchecked can lead to great and nation-wide evils. We must never underestimate the danger of false righteousness, of self-righteousness. Whether it comes forth in a small thing like a rude comment or in a great thing like the warfare we see here, we cannot allow ourselves to see others as worse sinners than us. Even if the sins are very obvious, even if they are disgusting or repulsive, we cannot see ourselves as superior and treat others accordingly. After all, don’t we have sins of our own before God? What makes us so great that we get to decide which sins are worthy of being brought before the Lord in repentance and which are not? Dear friends, the only fitting and proper posture for Christians to take in sin and righteousness is as a humble servant, someone who knows that his place in the house of the Master is purely at the Master’s discretion and is not based on what the servant brings to the table.

                Now the good news in this text is that God does indeed care about His people and does intervene in history for their good. This does not mean that we will be free from evils like war and violence, but is to remind us that God  has in fact intervened in history in a decisive and final way in the giving of His Son Jesus Christ to defeat the devil, destroy death by death, and to atone for our sins. Even more, He has granted us true and real righteousness from His own perfect Self which does not lead to arrogance or self-importance. But, instead, leads us to recognize our need for salvation and grace and the need of it in others.

In the holy Name of + Jesus. Amen.

The peace of God that passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.

[1] 2 Chronicles 28:8-11 English Standard Version

[2] 2 Chronicles 28:2

[3] 2 Kings 16:5