Image: CRBCers participating in last Sunday's livestream.
Note: Devotion taken from last Sunday's sermon on 2 Kings 14.
For the LORD saw the affliction of Israel, that it was very
bitter: for there was not any shut up, nor any left, nor any helper for Israel
(2 Kings 14:26).
Most Bible readers will not testify that 2 Kings 14 has the
most stirring of spiritual content. There are a few gems in this chapter, however,
that will richly reward those who find these truths and meditate upon them.
One key theme found here is the compassion of the LORD for
his people. It begins to be
articulated most clearly in v. 26a: “For the LORD saw the
affliction of Israel, that it was very bitter.” The historian then adds that
there was not “any helper for Israel” (v. 26b).
In v. 27, the historian continues: “The LORD said not that he
would blot out the name of Israel from under heaven.” This recalls the time
during the Exodus when Israel worshipped the golden calf, and Moses intervened
for them (cf. Exod 32:31-33).
But at the time of 2 Kings 14 Israel had no Moses, and they had no
godly king like David. They had no helper, and yet the Lord condescended to
save them even by means of the ungodly king Jeroboam (v. 27b).
I
read one commentator on 2 Kings who said that it seems all through 2 Kings, it
is as though the Lord is “looking for another David” to help his people in
their spiritual oppression (Davis, 2 Kings, 208).
Consider
how that search was only fully satisfied in the Father sending forth his own
dear Son. Consider what a greater thing that the Lord has now done through
Christ. He has looked upon our precarious state, our bitter affliction in sin,
and saw that we had no one to help us. And he sent not another Moses, godly as
he was, and certainly not another Jeroboam, ungodly as he was, but he sent to
us the best of the best, the purest of the pure, the most righteous of the
righteous, even our Lord Jesus Christ to take on flesh, to live a sinless life,
to lay down that life on the cross, a ransom for many, to be gloriously raised
from the dead, to appear to his disciples, to ascend in glory with the promise
that he will come again, to send forth the Spirit to convert and to teach, to save
us, and to preserve us, to keep us saved, so that all who are in him will never
have their names blotted out of the Lamb’s book of life.
Christ
is our one and only hope, our Helper, in all times, including in times like
these.
Grace and peace, Pastor Jeff Riddle
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