Week 1 continued

Good morning everyone, I was without ISP on Sunday and Monday, so I was not able to post a new study for this week. Since no one blogged last week I will leave up the reading and questions for one more week. The questions posted are just meant to be a jumping off point...if there is something you come across in the reading that you want to discuss instead...go for it. I would love to hear what God is speaking to you.

I have been listening to these passages of Judah's history over and over for the past few weeks. I love www.biblegateway.com I go to to 2 Chronicles or 2 Kings and plug in the chapters and then listen to the Word being spoken. Each time I have listened I have gotten something different that stood out to me. I am going to share a few of those things with you.

2 Kings 23:26 Nevertheless the LORD did not turn from the fierceness of His great wrath, with which His anger was aroused against Judah, because of all the provocations with which Manasseh had provoked Him (NKJV) One day while listening this just stood out and I have been thinking about it ever since. Josiah was a good king and he genuinely wanted to follow the ways of the Lord. When the law was found and read to him he repented and sought to do everything possible to bring Judah back into fellowship with their one true God. His heart was broken for his people and God honored him for it. But with all the reforms, the cleansing of the land and the Temple and the great Passover that was celebrated it still was not enough to turn God from his wrath. It is from passages like these that people get the mistaken notion that God in the Old Testament is an angry God. But I am realizing more and more how patient God is. He had given them several hundred years and miracle after miracle to help them to turn to Him. He sent the prophets to warn them, and Jeremiah is a good example. They had times of plenty and times of being under siege to give them opportunities to see the Lord work.

But it all goes back to the covenant that God had made with Israel in the desert after they had been delivered from Egypt. They swore to abide by this covenant and bound all future generations to it. With covenant there is always a provision for blessings and curses. The Israelites fully understood this concept and had agreed to all of it. The main point was that only God would be their God, there would be no others that they would worship. In the law provisions were made so they could atone for failure to follow the law completely, but their heart had to be right in order for it to make any difference. Blessings would follow obedience and we see God delivering them over and over when they would turn back to Him. But the covenant also contained curses. And the time had come when the Lord had to punish them for their continual disobedience. He had given them every chance to repent but we see that as soon as Josiah is dead they returned to the evil practices of worshipping the false idols from the surrounding kingdoms. These practices were so hideous that the Bible only alludes to them. It included child sacrifice, ritual prostitution and any perverse sexual activity imaginable. It was so bad that God says they were worse than Sodom.

But what does this have to do with us today? We are under a new covenant, Paul even says we are dead to the law in Romans and Jeremiah says that the new covenant is written on our hearts. So when we read that the Day of God's Wrath is still to come in John's Revelation....what does that mean to us? How are we to live? what is our responsibility to the world?