2 Chronicles 31:1-21 - Homiletics

The works that came of faith.

This chapter discloses to our view the perfection of activity. The rest of the Sunday, so to say, is followed by most laudable industry, and "the fervent in spirit" are "diligent in business" worthy of them. The picture is, indeed, of a living, moving scene. An army of volunteers issues forth from the recently purged city of Jerusalem to engage in worthy warfare, extirpating "images," "groves," "high places , " "altars," and utterly exterminating them from "Judah and Benjamin, Ephraim and Manasseh." They do not stay their hand till the work is done. The "camp" (verse 2) also at home, the sacred camp of the temple, is once more set in array, that shall make it answer to its name, and in higher sense show forth that Church, wherein all should be "decent and in order." King and people, priests, chief priest, and Levites, work with one surprising consent. The destruction of images and all the other signs of idolatry is followed by the restoration of David's arrangement of the courses, dishonoured so grievously by the neglect of worship in the temple, even to the closing of that temple, and by the re-ordaining of tithes and firstfruits, the king himself setting the example. Everywhere the work glows, everywhere there is plenty; the work of God is no more starved, and sacred "barns" and storehouses have to be "prepared" for tithes, which in their "heaps" were so plentiful that they take the name—auspicious omen—of "free-will offerings" (verse 14). In this busy, happy, holy scene, it is not difficult to pick out, even in the human elements of it, four features which embody noble principles, offer inspiring example, and lend dignity to our faith in the possibilities of human nature when once divinely set on the pursuit of the right. We notice—

I. THE THOUGHT , DESIRE , DEVOTION TO GOOD , OF ONE MAN BECOME THE ADOPTED EXAMPLE , THE CREED , AND THE HEARTY PRACTICE OF A VERY ARMY , THAT SEEMS THERE - UPON TO NEED NO OTHER TRAINING . (Verses 20, 21, 1, 2, 8.)

II. THE DEEPEST SOUNDINGS OF RELIGIOUS MEMORIES , AND RELIGIOUS FEELINGS FITTED TO PRODUCE , AND ACTUALLY PRODUCING , THE TRUE PRACTICAL LIFE . Every grateful work of this chapter was the outcome of the religious heart-stirrings recorded in the former.

III. IN OUR MORAL AND SPIRITUAL LIFE ( WHETHER AS INDIVIDUALS OR AS COMMUNITIES OF PEOPLE ), WHEN YEARS HAVE ACCUMULATED UPON US , WITH ALL THEIR MIXED CONTENTS , A MERCILESS DESTRUCTION OF THE OLD WRONG IS THE WAY TO LAY SURE FOUNDATIONS OF CONSTRUCTION . Hezekiah had found " good and right and truth" nothing less than choked up of evil when he entered on his reign. But the key-note of his reformation was its thoroughness and completeness, and his own heartiness of work, in the "service of the house of God, and in the Law, and in the commandments " (verses 20, 21, 2, 4, and passim ) .

IV. UPON ALL THE RIGHTEST AND HARDEST WORK IT IS THAT THERE FOLLOWS THE GOING HOME IN PEACE AND BENEDICTION . (Verses 1, 21.)