Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - How to Keep Your Head Up | The Writings | 2 Chronicles 36

Episode Date: April 5, 2024

Living life in exile is exhausting. How can Christians keep going? How can you continue to follow God? In today's episode, Jeff studies 2 Chronicles 36 to bring hope to the exhausted Christian. Read the Bible with us in 2024! This year, we’re tackling a group of Old Testament books traditionally known as “The Writings”— Psalms, Chronicles, Proverbs, Daniel, Ruth and more! Download your reading plan now. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it so that others can find it, too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: 2 Chronicles 36

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Jeff Parrott. Very few people can handle the race across America. It's one of the most difficult races in the entire world. Even though it's a race for cyclists, it's respected by all kinds of endurance athletes, kind of a pinnacle of human endurance. The race crosses three major mountain ranges, 12 states, and makes up 3,000 miles,

of unique terrain from California to Maryland. But that's not the only thing that sets this race apart. See, many races like the Tour to France, they play out in stages with scheduled times to stop and rest, but not the race across America. In this race, the timer never stops. There is no pause button. The clock starts, and it keeps running until you finish.

As the longest time trial in the world, this race is especially exhausting. Exhaustion is one of the more interesting features of this race. Of course, there are the ways that you'd expect exhaustion to take its toll, things like leg fatigue and the limits of lung capacity. But there's a special condition among cyclists in the rates across America that proves to be even more challenging and dangerous than tired legs or labor breathing. It's called Shermer's Neck.

Shermer's neck is a condition where a cyclist's neck muscles begin failing from fatigue, making it impossible for your head to be held up. And that's scary. I mean, think about it. You can keep pedaling and breathing and working your leg muscles, but if you can't keep your head up and see where you're going, you're done. Shermer's neck is a deal breaker for cyclists because it creates an exhaustion that ends the race. If you can't look ahead, you can't move ahead. it becomes impossible to keep going.

That race-ending exhaustion from Shermer's neck, it's like a small picture of the effect that the end of Second Chronicles creates. That's true for us as modern readers as we engage it, but also for the first audience of this passage, the people of God living in exile. Second Chronicles ends with a kind of exhaustion that makes you wonder if this is the end of the story.

The people of God can't keep their heads up. They can't see a way forward. Does their exhaustion and exile mark the end of the race? Second Chronicles 36 marks the conclusion of the writings for the chronicler. In a whirlwind fashion, it traces the story of the last four kings of Judah before the Babylonian exile. This closing chapter helps the exiled people of God see how they got where they are, but at the same time it offers the only hope for them to keep going. As we prepare to explore this final chapter of Second Chronicles,

prepare our hearts and minds in prayer. Heavenly Father, we thank you for the gifts of life and breath, and we thank you for your word. Jesus, help us abide in you as we engage with your truth. Holy Spirit, we ask you to move in and through this time as we finish Second Chronicles. And as we read these words, let these words read us and restore us. In Jesus' name, amen. Second Chronicles 36 begins by revisiting themes of faithfulness and good. throughout the work of the chronicler. But it shows us those themes and how meaningful they are by revealing how they are rapidly coming undone by the sin of God's people. So let's remember a huge theme throughout these two books is the establishment of the temple as the place where God's

special presence is with his people, where heaven and earth meet. And yet in this closing chapter, we see parts of the temple being carried away by oppressive foreign powers, culminating and the burning of it in verse 19. The goodness and beauty of the temple that the book has been moving toward is now ruined. We see another theme unraveled when we look at the behavior of the four kings in this chapter. These kings commit evil, detestable things in the side of the Lord. The corrosiveness of their sin reaches a climax in the description of Zedekiah. We can note two details here that really shed light on how corrupt the kings have become. come. So first, let's remember Second Chronicles 714. That's such a pivotal verse in these books for

the chronicler, but also the entire Old Testament. There in Second Chronicle 714, God says that if his people humble themselves and turn to him, then he will forgive their sin and heal their land. But notice here with Zetakaya, this guy does the exact opposite of those two things. He refuses to humble himself, and he refuses to turn to God and respond to the gracious offer of forgiveness. There's an inversion of who the king was supposed to be in this presentation of Zedekiah. There's also another uncomfortable on-the-nose statement here that really hurts to read if you're living in exile. In verse 13, we read that Zetekiah is stiff-necked and that he hardens his heart against God. Now, these two phrases are powerfully linked to some of the darkest moments in Israel's history from

the time of the Exodus. So that phrase stiff-necked was the descriptor of the rebellious, unfaithful Israelites who died in the wilderness. And when Zedekiah hardens his heart, he's doing the same thing that Pharaoh did in opposing God while oppressing the people of God. So the kings have become so bad here at the end of Second Chronicles that they're not only like our ancestors at their worst moments, they're like the enemies of our ancestors. And if all this wasn't bad enough, the corruption of the kings has bled into the life of the people as well. Verse 14 tells us that not only the leaders, but the people were exceedingly unfaithful. Now, some translations say that the people became more and more unfaithful or multiplied their

unfaithful deeds. Those are great translations for just one Hebrew word, ma'al. And that word ma'al plays a key role in the writings of the chronicler. It appears throughout First and Second Chronicles as the paradigmatic sin of God's people. Scholar Martin Selman describes this in a way that reminds us of the first rebellious act in the Garden of Eden. Ma'all is failing to give God what is due to him and taking it for oneself. Ma'al is a broken faith, broken trust, a broken relationship. It's the reason why God's people end up in exile, away from home with him. Verse 16 describes the wrath of the Lord rising up against his people until there was no remedy, literally until there was no healing. Enter the destructive might of the Babylonian Empire, while a remnant of God's people end up in exile.

Let's consider the perspective of the original audience here, the exhaustion of God's people who are living in exile. They're reading or hearing about the downfall that they're currently living in. This creates a kind of spiritual Shermer's neck condition. Makes them ask the question, how can we keep our heads up? We've been on the spiral of ma'al, of rebelling against God, of unfaithfulness. We're still living under enemy occupation. We're still without a king.

It seems like there is no healing ever. How can we keep going? God's people are exhausted in exile, and yet in the last two verses of Second Chronicles there is a pivot, and it's an unexpected pivot. We meet a king, but it's not a king of Judah. We meet Cyrus, the king of Persia. The word of the Lord stirs Cyrus to make a proclamation in his kingdom, and he says this, the Lord, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and has charged me to build him a house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Whoever is among you of all his people, may the Lord His God be with him. Let him go up. And that's it. Second Chronicles ends with God speaking through this foreign king,

promising the rebuilding of the temple and the return of God's people to their land. So what do we make of the ending here? Let's make three observations. First, we see that there is a hope through and beyond the experience of exile. Cyrus is charged to build a house, but God's plans are much bigger than just that house. He's going to rebuild, reconstitute, and restore his people through the arrival of King Jesus. This is a little preview of that. Second, we see that this restoration only comes from the grace of God. And that grace often reveals itself in unexpected ways. Here, the word of the Lord comes through a Persian king. Later, it will come through a carpenter from Nazareth. And third, we see that the hope of God's restoration creates a response in us.

The ending to Second Chronicles strikes us as an abrupt statement, and that's intentional. This final phrase is really just one word in the Hebrew, let him go up. It's the chronicler's way of saying to you and to me, God is restoring his people. The story is not over. The race is still happening. Go up. In many ways, we are incredibly different from the first audience of Second Chronicles. Yet in so many ways, maybe in the most fundamental ways, we are so much like them, aren't we? Wondering how we can keep going when trying to be faithful in exile leaves us exhausted. Let's go back to the race across America. When cyclists encounter Shermer's Neck syndrome, the only way they can finish the race

is by doing everything they can to keep their heads up, even if they don't have the strength to do it themselves. So some cyclists, they will resort to things like bringing pre-made support frames that they attach to their necks that hold their heads up with a chin strap. For others, that means taking a roll of duct tape and taping their heads to their backs whenever they sense weakness in their necks, because you have to keep your head up to finish the race. These last two verses in Second Chronicles are like that duct tape for the people of God,

keeps our heads up, focused on where we're going and who's getting us there. It's the duct tape and the support frame that helps us see hope on the horizon. So yes, we are exhausted by exile, but there will come a day when exile itself will be exhausted, extinguished, and a new life will take root in the life of God's people. For the original audience, they looked ahead to that day in the arrival of King Jesus. And for us, we look back to what Jesus has done for us through his death and resurrection. And yet also, we like them, we look ahead as well.

To the return of King Jesus, when he will restore all things. Until then, we live into the truth that there is hope beyond existence. We depend on the restorative grace of God, and we respond by living faithfully in this time, in this day. God is restoring his people. The story is not over. The race is still happening.