Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - What's In Your Heart? | The Writings | 2 Chronicles 2-4

Episode Date: March 14, 2024

Are you putting on a front for other people? Are you half-hearted when it comes to your faith in Jesus? Your faith isn't something to be careless about. In today's episode, Patrick uses 2 Chronicles 2-4 to warn against half-hearted devotion to God. Sign up here to receive the "Our Good King" Holy Week Devotional beginning on Palm Sunday, March 23rd, 2024. 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 2-4

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 Patrick Miller. When I was a kid, several movies came out around the same time exploring how humans love to mask over pain with the happiest of times. The most famous movie was called The Truman Show. Some of you may remember it. It starred Jim Carrey. And it follows the almost picture-perfect life of one man who is living in a picture-perfect community, perfect house. Perfect houses, manicured beaches, perfect people who are nicer than Minnesotans.

The best part is that he's lived his whole life there. He knows everyone and always feels happy. But there's a dark secret. The entire town is fake. All the people in it are actors. Cameras are secretly situated throughout the entire city to capture everything that happens. Only Jim Carrey's character is real. He has no idea that everybody around him from his parents,

parents, to his friends are actors, and that he's the subject of a reality TV show. Sometimes there's a darkness in the best of times. Sometimes a house looks perfect, but in truth, there's a rot growing in the walls. How's your life going? Do you put on a good face for the people around you? What's actually happening in your heart? Do you find you actually desire the best things? Want God?

Want to walk in his ways? Or, in your heart, are you distracted from God? half-hearted in your devotion. In First Chronicles 2 to 4, we read a story that sounds incredibly happy on the surface. Solomon is finally building a temple for God, and these are the best of times. Israel will have a permanent place to worship and offer sacrifices and center their lives upon Yahweh. But if you read the story carefully, the author puts in subtle signs that there's a rot beneath

this building, a rot that will one day lead to Solomon's own unfaithfulness. a rot that will one day culminate in Israel's downfall and Israel's decline into idolatry. But in the best of times, it's often hard to see the darkness. Let me give you some examples of what's wrong with Solomon's building project, these tiny little hints of a darkness of a rot beneath the happy veneer. First thing, Solomon doesn't build the temple himself. He asks a foreign idolatrous king to make the materials. Maybe you're thinking that's not too bad.

Let's keep going. Second, he asks that king to send him a master craftsman who turns out to be the son of a marriage between an Israelite woman and a pagan man. That's a marriage that the law banned. But maybe you're thinking, well, maybe that's not so bad. Let's keep going. Third, if you go back to the time when God had Israel construct him a tent to dwell in, that's the tabernacle, well, if you read those passages, you'll learn that the lead builders were filled with the Holy Spirit. But the lead builder on the Temple Project isn't filled with the Holy Spirit. Okay, let's keep going. Fourth, Solomon does a census to find labor for the temple. Now, the author compares it explicitly to David's census,

and you may or may not remember this, but God condemned David's census profoundly. Why? Because he said the census was an act of pride, and even more importantly, ancient censuses were a way for ancient kings to control their population, and God abhorred this kind of monarchical That leads to our fifth item. After taking the census, Solomon conscripts every foreigner in Israel into slave labor in order to build the temple. Let's just read this part. Second Chronicles 2 verses 17 to 18. Solomon took a census of all the foreigners residing in Israel after the census his father, David, had taken, and they were found to be 153,600. He assigned 70,000 of them to be carriers and 80,000 of them to be stone cutters in the hills, with 3,600 foremen working over them to keep the people working.

Moses' law commanded the Israelites to treat the foreigners in their midst as native-born people. Solomon breaks that law, and in doing so, he becomes exactly like the Egyptian Pharaoh, just like the Pharaoh enslaved Israelites because they were foreigners and forced them to build his buildings. In the same way, Solomon is enslaving foreigners in his kingdom and forcing them to build a temple. Compare what Solomon did to what Moses commanded in Exodus. Do not mistreat or oppress a foreigner, for you were foreigners in Egypt. You see, these are the best of times in Solomon's kingdom. They're also the beginning of the worst. Beneath the shiny new temple to Yahweh is the blood and sweat of slaves. How often is the same true of us? When things are going well, do you

find that you are slowly growing more careless about your faith. You find yourself praying less. Do you find yourself coming before God less? Do you find yourself slowly cutting corners and giving yourself moral passes on small sins like gossip or pride or greed or materialism? You're doing so well, after all, these small things aren't a big deal, are they? The same goes, not only when we're experiencing financial prosperity, but also success. At work, perhaps you're being celebrated right now. But what's the truth when you're not at work? Do you have a dark addiction to pornography, nicotine, a little too much alcohol? In my own life, I've discovered that it's precisely when things are going well that I do well to pay more attention to the things in my heart,

to walk with God more faithfully. When things aren't going well, the darkness is often obvious. It's often grieving and disappointing. You know you need God's help and cry out to him and he answers. So in a strange way, I think the deepest test of maturity is not only what we do when we suffer, it's what we do when we succeed. Now, the strangest part of this story is that later God actually enters this temple. He doesn't deny his presence because it's not a perfect story. Yes, sacrifices were made for forgiveness to purify the space, but God's willingness to dwell with us reminds us that no matter how bad the darkness is

when everything looks great externally, he hasn't turned his back on us. If you feel like your insides are rotting and dark and God wants no interest in you, it is not too late. Jesus died to purify you, to forgive you, to make you into a block in his temple. That's his body, the church, the place where his presence dwells. So in the best of times, confess. Throw yourself before God. Never forget that you need him.