Scripture: 2 Chronicles 28: 1-15

Sermon: Rules of Engagement

Topics: Ahaz, idolatry, mercy,

Preached: January 6, 2002

Rev. Mike Abma

Context

Before we read our passage, it perhaps would be best to place it in its context.

The year is about 733 B.C.

In only 11 years the northern kingdom of Israel would be totally destroyed by the Assyrian Empire. The shadow of Assyria darkens this whole passage.

There are three other nations mentioned in our passage.

1. Starting in the south there is the kingdom of Judah with Jerusalem as its capital city where Ahaz has just recently become king.

2. Just north of Judah is the northern kingdom of Israel, also sometimes referred to as Ephraim. Samaria is its capital city. King Pekah, the second-to-last king of the northern kingdom is near the end of his 20 year rule.

3. Just north of Israel is the kingdom of Aram, some translations may have Syria. It’s capital is Damascus. It’s king, we know from 2 Kings 16, is King Rezin.

To set the stage, King Pekah of Israel and King Rezin of Aram are both somewhat allied together because of an ever larger and greater threat to the northeast of them – the Assyrian Empire.

What they wanted was for Judah to join this anti-Assyrian alliance as well.

But King Ahaz was doing the opposite. He was pandering to the power of the Assyrian king.

(You may recall that it was exactly at this time that the prophet Isaiah comes to King Ahaz in chapter 7 with the promise that a virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son and will call him Immanuel.

And in Isaiah 9 there is the promise:

“For to us a child is born, to us a son is given

and the government shall be upon his shoulders and he will be called

Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of

Peace.”)

King Ahaz’s too cozy relationship with the King of Assyria is what prompted both the king of Israel and the king of Aram to go to war against him.

This, then, is the context of our reading.

Read 2 Chronicles 28: 1-15

Ahaz was twenty years old when he began to reign; he reigned for sixteen years in Jerusalem. He did not do what was right in the sight of the Lord, as his ancestor David had done, ²but he walked in the ways of the kings of Israel. He even made cast images for the Baals;³and he made offerings in the valley of the son of Hinnom, and made his sons pass through fire, according to the abominable practices of the nations whom the Lord drove out before the people of Israel. ⁴He sacrificed and made offerings on the high places, on the hills, and under every green tree.

5 Therefore the Lord his God gave him into the hand of the king of Aram, who defeated him and took captive a great number of his people and brought them to Damascus. He was also given into the hand of the king of Israel, who defeated him with great slaughter. ⁶Pekah son of Remaliah killed one hundred and twenty thousand in Judah in one day, all of them valiant warriors, because they had abandoned the Lord, the God of their ancestors. ⁷And Zichri, a mighty warrior of Ephraim, killed the king’s son Maaseiah, Azrikam the commander of the palace, and Elkanah the next in authority to the king.

The people of Israel took captive two hundred thousand of their kin, women, sons, and daughters; they also took much booty from them and brought the booty to Samaria. ⁹But a prophet of the Lord was there, whose name was Oded; he went out to meet the army that came to Samaria, and said to them, ‘Because the Lord, the God of your ancestors, was angry with Judah, he gave them into your hand, but you have killed them in a rage that has reached up to heaven. ¹⁰Now you intend to subjugate the people of Judah and Jerusalem, male and female, as your slaves. But what have you except sins against the Lord your God? ¹¹Now hear me, and send back the captives whom you have taken from your kindred, for the fierce wrath of the Lord is upon you.’ ¹²Moreover, certain chiefs of the Ephraimites, Azariah son of Johanan, Berechiah son of Meshillemoth, Jehizkiah son of Shallum, and Amasa son of Hadlai, stood up against those who were coming from the war, ¹³and said to them, ‘You shall not bring the captives in here, for you propose to bring on us guilt against the Lord in addition to our present sins and guilt. For our guilt is already great, and there is fierce wrath against Israel.’ ¹⁴So the warriors left the captives and the booty before the officials and all the assembly.¹⁵Then those who were mentioned by name got up and took the captives, and with the booty they clothed all that were naked among them; they clothed them, gave them sandals, provided them with food and drink, and anointed them; and carrying all the feeble among them on donkeys, they brought them to their kindred at Jericho, the city of palm trees. Then they returned to Samaria.

This is the Word of the Lord

Thanks be to God

THE STORY

I have tried to give you the context of this story because Israelite history tends to be the story of one upheaval after another. Recently we read in the news that when Hamid Karzai became the leader of Afghanistan, it was the first peaceful transition of power in that country this century. Well, welcome to the world of the Old Testament. Read the history of the kings of Israel, and you will read the story of one military coup after another, one assassination after another.

The relatively stable days of David and Solomon are 200 years in the past. Since the kingdom split with Rehoboam taking the south and Jeroboam the north, it was the northern kingdom that experienced more turmoil, more chaos. Generally it was the kings of the north, like king Ahab, who are described as sinking to new depths in terms of evil.

But in the story we just read this evening, the roles are reversed.

In this story the southern kingdom of Judah under king Ahaz is portrayed as being worse than the Northern Kingdom. The reason is King Ahaz. He is the worst of the worst in the whole litany of the Kings of Judah. And the authors of the Chronicles make sure we get a sense of how bad he was.

He was so bad,

he walked in the ways of the kings of Israel, their northern neighbors.

He was so bad,

he not only worshipped idols, but had them manufactured.

He was so bad,

he participated in the detestable practice of sacrificing his own

children to the gods.

And we know from what is written in 2 Kings, that Ahaz also regularly imported the pagan practices of other more successful nations hoping that some of that success would rub off on him – which it never did.

King Ahaz is the only king of Judah the Chronicles has absolutely nothing good to say about.

Not one redeeming quality.

So when King Ahaz goes to war against Rezin the king of Aram and loses and when he goes to war against Pekah, king of Israel and loses,

the reason is clearly given:

God had given the evil King Ahaz into the hands of both the Aramean

and Israelite armies.

Even though we know that neither King Rezin nor King Pekah was able to take the actual city of Jerusalem, nevertheless, the casualty numbers are stunning: 120,000 soldiers dead. The number of prisoners is also incredible; 200,000 women and children. Imagine a trail of 200,000 prisoners then imagine the size of the army that would be leading this many prisoners. It is not hard to speculate that there were 400,000 people or more on their way back to Samaria after a successful campaign.

PROPHET ODED

But this is where something happens.

This is where a monkey wrench is thrown into the regular grinding wheels of war, retaliation, and revenge. A lone prophet by the name of Oded goes out to meet the army and stands in the road to stop them. Remember the massacre in Tianamen Square in June of 1989. Remember that image of a lone Chinese student standing squarely in front of a column of 4 tanks refusing to move. Refusing to let the tanks enter the square to do even more damage.

That is the image I have of this prophet, Oded.

Oded not only stops them, but he also speaks to them.

He tells them that it is God who gave them the victory because God was angry at the sins of Judah.

But Oded also makes these points:

He reminds them that they are not blameless – the stench of their slaughter of 120,000 soldiers of Judah is reaching heaven itself.

He also reminds them that to make this train of 200,000 captives into slaves would only add to their sin and guilt.

Then Oded concludes by saying that the only right thing to do would be to send these prisoners, these fellow countrymen, these neighbors, back to where they belong.

Notice what happens.

Nowhere is King Pekah mentioned.

But 4 leaders of the army, 4 chiefs of Ephraim,

listen to the words of the prophet.

They are struck to the heart.

They do not want to add to their sin and guilt.

So they convince the whole army to do something armies

simply do not do normally.

They convince the army to give up not only the prisoners but even the plunder – which is how armies got paid back then.

And in a wonderfully touching scene so opposite of the bloodshed and back-stabbing that characterizes much of this history.

The army clothes the naked,

They give food and drink to the starving and thirsty,

They care for the injured

And they put the weakest who could barely walk on donkeys for the return

trip to Jericho — Jericho would be a convenient city to act as a

transition point.

THE POINT

How do we listen to this story?

I think most of us would naturally want to identify with those 4 merciful leaders, those 4 compassionate commanders.

We would want to be merciful like they were merciful.

And then we would pray,

“Lord, help me be merciful, help me forgive, so that I might also be

forgiven.”

That is how we tend to hear things. We tend to hear things in such a way that we stay in control. We hear them in such a way that we simply want to tap into our own great reservoir of righteousness and reach out in mercy and forgiveness to all those who may have injured us or hurt us.

But the challenge of this text is to read it and hear it as the prisoners of Judah.

I will tell you why.

Chronicles was written after the exiles of Judah returned from Babylon. In other words, Chronicles was written by people from Judah, for people of Judah. Unlike the way the war between Israel and Judah is described in 2 Kings,

2 Chronicles purposely tells of their own defeat.

Chronicles purposely tells of how they were shown mercy.

Chronicles purposely tells of how their grandparents or great-

grandparents would have ended up as slaves in Samaria,

had it not been for the mercy shown to them that day.

That is where mercy starts.

It always starts when and where we know we have been the recipients

of mercy.

That is why, in the Lord’s Prayer, we first ask “Forgive us our debts”

We first ask for mercy and forgiveness before we can presume to give

it.

We first come to God vulnerable, exposed, empty-handed.

The courage to forgive, the courage to show mercy, begins with a

humility that realizes we have received forgiveness,

we have received mercy.

NEW TESTAMENT PARALLEL

Remember the story of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10?

How does it start? An expert in the law asks what he must do to inherit eternal life.

Jesus answers, “What is written in the Law?”

The expert answers, “Love God with all your heart, and love your neighbor as yourself.”

Jesus answers, “Do this and you will live.”

The expert then gets technical and asks for a definition of neighbor – who is my neighbor?

Jesus responds with the story of a man coming from Jerusalem to Jericho.

He is robbed and beaten and left to die.

A Priest passes by on the other side.

A Levite passes by on the other side.

But a Samaritan (note a person from the northern kingdom) has mercy. He clothes the man, puts balm on his wounds, puts the injured man on his donkey, and takes him to an inn where he will be cared for. How much like the story in 2 Chronicles 28?

Notice that Jesus tells this parable in such a way that the expert in the law must identify with the injured man, the man beaten and robbed. Jesus tells it in such a way that the expert in the law is out of control. He no longer controls who is his neighbor and who is not. He receives mercy and love from a most unexpected source. He is treated like a neighbor. Now the challenge is for him to live likewise.

RULES OF ENGAGEMENT

We live in a world in which we tend to see ourselves only as innocent victims.

We live in a world in which we do not want to acknowledge the mercy we have received from God or anyone else.

We live in a world where we feel we have not received mercy and therefore we are not ready to give mercy either.

In such a world, the rules of engagement are all too clear: if we get hit hard, we hit back,

harder.

This is a world with a Star Wars spirituality – if the evil empire strikes, its an act of war, the gloves are off, and anything goes.

We see these rules of engagement played out in many different countries of the world:

Perhaps most notably in the middle east. Both the Palestinians and the Israelis are convinced that the other side deserves whatever misery they can inflict.

This cycle of misery that afflicts many countries also afflicts many households and families, and marriages, and workplaces. We all know that the scene of the most violence in the world is not Afghanistan or Rwanda, but it is the living rooms and kitchens of the world.

If we think the other person is wrong, we feel justified in doing them an even greater wrong in return.

On the September 20^th edition of the O’Reilly Factor, the rather outspoken Bill O’Reilly had the author Tom Clancy as a guest. In the course of the interview, O’Reilly praised the Israeli airline El Al and the Israeli secret service, the Mossad, for doing an effective job of dealing with terrorists. If Israel gets hit, they at least know how to hit back harder, said O’Reilly.

Clancy was surprisingly unimpressed. He effectively silenced O’Reilly by noting that the Mossad has been eliminating people for 30 years and look, they are still at war…. We do not want to emulate Mossad.

So what are better rules of engagement?

Jesus Christ brings new rules of engagement. We do not simply treat people the way we think they deserve to be treated – that is the way of Aristotle, not Christ.

No, we treat people the way Christ has treated us.

While we were yet sinners, while we were nailing him to the tree, Christ had mercy on us. Christ forgave us. Why? In order to save us.

As forgiven people, we do not treat others as they deserve, but we treat them in such a way that they too have what they need in order to be saved. This is the only way to put a stop to the cycle of violence and hate, and to start a new cycle going of forgiveness and love.

Because we have been embraced by the merciful arms of God, we must be willing to mercifully embrace others. This was the theme of the address Miroslav Volf, the theologian from Croatia who now teaches at Yale, gave on September 11 at the 16^th Annual International Prayer Breakfast at the United Nations in New York.

Miroslav Volf told the 200 foreign dignitaries present that demanding justice before there is any willingness to reconcile is always a dead-end. The result is simply two sides demanding justice, all the while pummeling each other half to death – the middle east is a case in point.

Volf noted that there must always first be a willingness to embrace the other person as neighbor. There must always be the willingness to begin reconciliation and only then can justice be worked towards. The reason for this, he says, is that we can only have justice when we strive for something bigger, greater, deeper than justice – and that is love.

And that is the only true rule of engagement – love.

Amen