Told You So

One of the consequences of the format of this blog is that you read the newest posts first, and if you're not a regular reader, you don't necessarily follow the flow of the posts unless you intentionally go back and try to read the posts in the order they were written. This is a day in which you will ABSOLUTELY WANT TO read my post of Sunday, which contained a chart of the kings and prophets of Israel and Judah. I don't have any idea how you'll keep any of these kings, prophets or kingdoms straight without some kind of reference, and going forward, you can find it by selecting either "Kings" or "Prophets" along the right side of the blog in the Labels section about a third of the way down the page.

One brief side note--some of you who have heard my thoughts on David find I'm a little harsh on him. I know he was a man of God and did what he commanded, but the whole incident with Uriah bothers me immensely. As such, I was heartened to read in 1 Kings 15:5 "For David had done what was right in the eyes of the LORD and had not failed to keep any of the LORD’s commands all the days of his life—except in the case of Uriah the Hittite." It's good to see the author(s) of Kings saw it my way also.

In 2 Chronicles 15:2, the Spirit of God said to Asa, the third king of Judah:

"The LORD is with you when you are with him. If you seek him, he will be found by you, but if you forsake him, he will forsake you"

We're all familiar with Christ's command to ask, seek and knock, but this is a solid 900 years before the birth of Christ, and Asa is being reminded that the Lord is with his people when his people are with the Lord. Recall from the reading that Asa is returning the people of Judah to the Lord--it's not just Israel that is worshipping idols at this point. No, we're going to read clearly that God is with BOTH Judah and Israel when they are with God, and we have that same assurance today. Absolutely nothing has changed in the intervening 2,900 years to make that message any less true. In fact, since we have the knowledge of Christ and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit as commemorated yesterday, we have even less of an excuse to not know this. Of course, knowing something and living it are two completely different things. God isn't interested in the former, but our eternal reward is dependent on the latter.

One last quick note--you will find minor discrepancies between my chart dates and the NIV dates. I used a different source, and in most cases the difference is a year, which I didn't consider to be significant.

Scott