2 Chronicles 12:1-16 - Homiletics

A model instance of Divine goodness and opportunity prolonged to one who annulled all, and vitiated every highest privilege vouchsafed to him, by the one fact of his own infidelity of heart.

We are strikingly taught, and we vividly recall from the contents of this chapter, the following lessons and facts.

I. HOW VERY PRONE FORGETFULNESS OF OUR PAST SINS IS TO FOLLOW WITH SWIFT RAPIDITY ON PRESENT RESPITE FROM FEAR , RELIEF FROM SUFFERING , REMISSION OF PUNISHMENT , RESTORATION OF OUR FORMER STATUS , IN WHATSOEVER KIND ! Yet retentive memory of that sin would constitute our duty, our best wisdom, one of our surest cautions for the future, one of the likeliest fertilizings of penitence, and springs of humble gratitude.

II. HOW VERY PRONE SECURITY , ABSOLUTE CONFIDENCE IN SELF , AND THE SPIRIT OF EITHER DEFIANCE OR RECKLESS DISREGARD TOWARDS WHAT MAY AGAIN INVADE , IN FEAR , IN PAIN , IN PUNISHMENT , IN LOSS OF EVEN THE EARTHLY POSITION WE LOVE SO WELL , ARE TO FOLLOW QUICKLY ON PRESENT RELIEF ! Too often, when the deeply useful memory of the sin is put far away out of sight and out of memory, it is but the precursor of the springing up of a very crop of positively harmful growth. The ground that is unoccupied by sweet pasture will be sure to seed itself, of all floating ill weeds; and to bring forth even of its own self, and own emptiness, or own pravity, the baneful, the noxious, the poisonous herb!

III. HOW KIND THE PUNISHMENTS OF GOD ARE ! They are essentially so. Their intent is to recover, to reform, to improve. With lesson in them, with suggestion in them, with caution and warning in them, with course and system of discipline, they offer exactly what it were impossible to get of self, or to get of others, or to get from anywhere except from the touch of the hand or the finger, or the rod of that tenderest to smite, the all-knowing Father of us all! So 2 Chronicles 12:8 says deliberately, distinctly, that God would teach Rehoboam and condescendingly wait near him some while, to teach him, the comparison of services, the difference by experience of his yoke, burden, and service most ennobling, and those of such a one as Shishak King of Egypt. Rehoboam would find a greater difference between the two than that of his own well-known figurative language, the "whip" and the "scorpion." In tenderer connection, equally truly and sweet, did Caroline Fry, once on a time, teach every chastened child of God, and of sorrow, and of smart, and of even woe, to sing—

"Often the clouds of deepest woe

So sweet a message bear,

Dark though they seem, 'twere hard to find

One frown of anger there!

"It needs our hearts be weaned from earth,

It needs that we be driven,

By loss of every earthly stay,

To find our hope in heaven!"

IV. How READY TO FORGIVE , TO GRANT RESPITE AND FURLOUGH , TO GIVE "ROOM AND SPACE FOR REPENTANCE ," THE LORD GOD OF US ALL IS ! Fully thirteen years, as it appears, did such manner of long-suffering, of forgivingness, even when it could not be precipitated into objective forgiveness, hold out—sparing, pitying, prolonging probation, repeating trial, accepting the words, the posture, the fastings, the tears, the petitions of humiliation, the partial and transient amendments of life and conduct, in case anything real, deep, lasting, might haply come of them. Fully thirteen years (see 2 Chronicles 12:2 , 2 Chronicles 12:13 ) was Rehoboam kept on the throne, and all this long-suffering, considerate mercy shown to him, as though for him alone, or for him first, or for him chiefly, it bad been written, "For he knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are dust" —who all the while was neutralizing and cancelling Divine goodness, gift, opportunity, by the one damning vice that wrote itself as his epitaph, itself history's last memorandum of him, the lamentable summary in a sentence, "Because he fixed not his heart to seek the Lord!"