Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Weakness as Power | The Writings | 2 Chronicles 26-27

Episode Date: March 29, 2024

Where does your strength come from? Where do you look for power? In today's episode, Jeff discusses 2 Chronicles 26-27 and encourages you to find strength through God's power alone. 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 26-27

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. Sometimes the most striking observations come from unexpected places. One of my favorite reflections on how we as people live comes from the fictional character, Linus, from the Peanuts comic strip. Linus has this hilarious yet piercing line. He says this, I'm never quite so stupid as when I'm being smart.

It's so funny. and smart, and yet it's tragic because of how accurately it names the nature of the human condition. When we think we're being smart, we're often being magnificently stupid. When we think we're strong, we're actually weak. We have a tendency to deceive ourselves with our conceit. That word conceit is really interesting. It comes from a combination of two other words, conceive and deceit. so we consider ourselves wrongly. We trick ourselves. We're never quite so stupid as when we think we're being

smart. We live out of touch with reality. We're not seeing the real world and that hinders our ability to live in the real world. And conceit, it's corrosive. It destroys our connection to God and others and even ourselves. The destructive power of conceit shows up in many places. throughout the Bible, and Second Chronicles 26 through 27 is one of them. As we explore this narrative, we'll clarify how conceit ruins our lives and consider how to combat that so that we can grow in faithfulness during a time of exile. Before we dig in, let's ask for God's grace to move through our time in the Bible. Heavenly Father, thank you for the gift of life and breath, and 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 in Second Chronicles. As we read these words, let these words read us and restore us. In Jesus' name, amen. Second Chronicles 26 begins with the reign of Uzziah over the kingdom of Judah in the south. And as we meet Uzziah, we find out that his reign starts on a really good note. Let's start in verse 3. Uzziah was 16 years old when he began to reign and he reigned 52 years in Jerusalem. His mother's name was Jekuliah of Jerusalem and he did what was right in the eyes of the Lord

according to all that his father Amazai had done. He set himself to seek God in the days of Zechari who instructed him in the fear of the Lord and as long as he sought the Lord, God made him prosper. So Uzziah starts by doing what's right in the eyes of the Lord. He is seeking the Lord. He's living in the fear, all, reverence of God Almighty. The chronicler is making a big point here. Uzziah has a successful beginning to his reign

because he's depending on the Lord's strength, the Lord's help. Now this theme continues into the first half of verse 15, where we read, in Jerusalem, he, Uzziah, made machines invented by skillful men to be on the towers and the corners, to shoot arrows, and great stones. So Uzai is doing some impressive stuff with his military might. When he is using his strengths under the lordship of God's strength, he's successful. But then we get to the second half of verse 15 and things get more complicated. We read this, and his fame spread far, for he was marvelously helped till he was strong. And this is a huge turning point. There is

something about the kind of strength that Uzziah grasped that changed over time. In his success, he exchanged the source of his strength. It's no longer God's strength, but his own. We see that unfolding as we pick up in verse 16. But when he was strong, he grew proud to his destruction. But when he was strong, he grew proud to his destruction. For he was unfaithful to the Lord, his God and entered the temple of the Lord to burn incense on the altar of incense. But Azariah, the priest went in after him with 80 priests of the Lord who were men of valor and they withstood King Uzziah and said to him, it is not for you, Uzziah, to burn incense to the Lord, but for the priests, the sons of Aaron, who are consecrated to burn incense.

Go out of the sanctuary, for you have done wrong, and it will bring you no honor from the Lord God. Let's pause here. Uzziah's pride has led him to desire a power and a place and an authority that God has not given him. In addition to being king, he's trying to take on the role of the priest. He's conceded. He has a wrong, unrealistic view of himself and of other people and ultimately of God. And notice Uzziah, at this moment, he has a choice. His sin has been called out. He can't. He can repent, he can change the direction he's going, or he can double down on his conceited trajectory. Let's see what happens. Verse 19. Then Uzziah was angry. Now he had a censer in his hand to burn incense, and when he became angry with the priests, leprosy broke out on his forehead in the presence of the

priests in the house of the Lord by the altar of incense. And Azariah, the chief priests, and all the priests looked at him and behold he was leprous in his forehead. And they rushed him out quickly and he himself hurried to go out because the Lord had struck him. And King Uzziah was a leper to the day of his death. And being a leper lived in a separate house, for he was excluded from the house of the Lord. Instead of confessing, Uzziah is comfortable in his conceit. There's an important juxtaposition happening here. When Uzziah is humble and dependent on God's strength, he's building, he's constructing, he's developing. And that construction is in stark contrast to the destruction brought about by his pride. The judgment of leprosy is kind of a physical representation of the damage that

his pride causes. Conceit is corrosive. It can turn faithful strength into a fatal weakness. Now, like Uzziah, one of our greatest weaknesses is thinking that we can be strong on our own, with our own power, on our own terms. Uzziah's pride causes him to go outside of God's will for his life as king, and it leads to his destruction. And the same thing happens for us. We might like to imagine that we can observe the events of Uzziah's life from the comfortable distance of our modern day, but the truth is the heart behind Uzziah's.

problem resides in our hearts as well. And the same thing was true for God's people hearing the story in exile. Our conceit, it's corrosive and it damages everything it touches. So think about your life for a moment. Are there relationships with other people that have been distorted because you don't see yourself rightly? Because you think too highly of yourself? Are there ways that fame or success or an inflated ego have caused you to elevate yourself over other people, over God. This narrative is trying to humble us. So let's not dodge its aim at our hearts as we keep going. As we head into chapter 27, Uzziah is contrasted with his son Jotham.

So Jotham is also a builder. He also has military success. He earns the respect of others. But there's a big difference, a massive difference between Uzzi and Jotham. We see it in verse 6. So Jotham became mighty because he ordered his ways before the Lord His God. Jotham shows us that it is possible to be ambitious, to work hard, to build, to develop, and not do it out of our own strength, but gods.

Jotham became mighty because he ordered his life under the reign of the Lord Almighty. So while conceit is corrosive, humility before God is healing. Here's the thing about our struggle with conceit and pride. It can so easily become a spiritual fluff word. So when someone asks how I'm doing, how I'd like to be prayed for, I often say, hey, I'm really struggling with pride. Pray for my prideful heart. And I usually mean this in an honest way.

I really want them to. But it also becomes a way to stay above the surface. and not actually get to the heart of things. Pride is kind of a placeholder for sin in general. So here are two ideas to help us more clearly recognize and combat the pride in our lives. First is this, consider using some synonyms for pride that alert you and others to its serious nature. So instead of sharing your struggle with pride, consider saying something like this,

I feel like arrogance is really running my life. or my ego is out of control. I think I might be conceded, self-important. If I'm honest, I sometimes think I'm better than other people. Gosh, it just feels ugly saying those things, but in my heart sometimes it's true. One of our problems is that we get comfortable with the word pride. So by choosing other related words that are distinct, we can invite some discomfort into our lives, revealing how corrosive pride really is.

Second idea to more clearly recognize and combat pride in our lives is to get specific. So I'm reading a book right now called Made for People. And the author, Justin Whitmore Early, he describes the difference between being honest and being vulnerable. So being honest is saying, I'm wrestling with pride or arrogance or superiority. That's true. But it's also giving just enough information to not really say anything at all. Being vulnerable is saying, my arrogance is causing me to have negative. thoughts about a coworker whom I see as my competition. It's making me hard to love that person.

Vulnerability is specific. Vulnerability would say, my conceit is making me obsess about what other people think about me. And I feel like it's getting in the way of me being present with my friends, with my spouse, with my kids. The idea behind all of these things is to build a clearer awareness of our pride. So Uzziah was blind to the corrosive effects of his conceit. We want to open our eyes and face it. And not just for the sake of seeing it, but also for the sake of experiencing gospel transformation of the heart. That layer of gospel transformation at a heart level, it's so vital.

Because notice how Jotham isn't just playing defense against his sin. He is going on offense. He is pursuing the Lord. He ordered his ways before the Lord is God. So that is proactive. That is something you have to cultivate. It has to do with the orientation of your entire life, your entire day. This isn't just about running from conceit.

It's about running toward the glory and the goodness of God. So to cultivate this proactive movement toward the Lord, you may think about incorporating some breath prayers, to humble yourself before God and rely on his strength throughout the day. Here's just a few examples. God, this day, this moment, this meeting, it's about your kingdom, not mine. help me live for you. Jesus, let this project, let this meal, this conversation be for your glory,

not mine. Spirit, help me see myself as I am and see you as you are. When these simple prayers become rhythms in our lives, they help us follow the example of Jotham. They order our lives before the Lord our God. If you have some extra time and want to consider how this dynamic plays out in our union with Jesus, try studying Colossians 3 versus 12 through 17. There's a beautiful, magnificent picture there of pursuing humility, not just as individuals, but as a community of faith. These chapters in Second Chronicles, they show us that Linus is right. We're never quite so stupid as when we're being smart.

We're never so weak as when we think we're being strong on our own terms. The Second Chronicles also shows us a different way to live. we're never stronger than when our weakness causes us to cling to the strength of the Lord. In our humility, there is hope for healing our hearts, an invitation for God's kingdom to move through our lives to bless those around us. God, out of your abundant grace, bring us into a process of humble dependence on you. We need you more than we know. In Jesus' name, amen.