Immanuel Sermon Audio
2 Chronicles (14:66)
All right, take your Bible out. Yeah, we have some outlines at the front if you need one. Find second chronicles. We studied first chronicles last week and I don't want to just totally rehash all of that, but I'll just remind you, we talked about why are there so many names in first chronicles, just lists and lists and lists of names and we talked about this is a record of what God has really done. This is not just speculation. It's not just philosophy. It's not just nice stories, but it's real history. We also talked about why do we even need chronicles when we have Samuel first and second and King's first and second. We have the story. Why do we need it again in chronicles and we talked about chronicles in the Septuagint is actually not called chronicles. It's called things left out in the chronicler possibly Ezra leaves a bunch of things out of the story and in leaving things out of the story, he makes a unique point and basically he leaves out some of the worst things that happen in David in his line and so we talked about there's no David and Bathsheba and there's no some of these more embarrassing stories when we get into second chronicles, it tells a story of Solomon. It doesn't tell some of the more negative things, some of the scandalous things from Solomon's life. Those things just get left out and we talked about there's a reason for that. Samuel and Kings were written right as the people are being taken into exile and they're written to say to the people this is why you're going into exile. Israel and Judah, you are both wicked, you have sinned, God is doing exactly what he told you he was going to do. Chronicles first and second, originally one book was written after the exile when the people are getting ready to come back into the Promised Land and if Ezra's the one who wrote it, the chronicle or whoever, Ezra's point is saying this is who God is and this is who you are and you've been punished but now God is bringing you back to this land and you need to remember who God is and you need to remember who you are in the nature of your relationship. So that's first chronicles in a nutshell. Tonight is second chronicles and I'm going to start with a picture up on the screen. Somebody tell me who that is. Anybody know? There's a great mustache, isn't it? It's a good mustache. You ever heard of Frederick Nietzsche? This is Frederick Nietzsche. A few things about his life, born October 15th, 1844, died August 25th, 1900. So personally, when I think about 1900, I think about my great-grandmother who was born and I believe it was 1904. So she was born four years after Nietzsche passed away. He was a German philosopher, poet, composer, lots of different things but he lived in Germany. When he was 24 years old, he was named the chair of classical philology at the University of Basel. Anybody know what philology is? Anybody? The study of language or writing. Think about that. 24 years old named the chair of a department at a university. That'd be like a 24 year old today being named chair of the physics department at MIT. That would be a remarkable thing. So he did that 24 years old, the youngest ever, to hold that position. Of course he's called the father of existentialism, the father of postmodernism, the father of poststructuralism, all these things that he apparently fathered. And really what that means is he was the first guy that clearly and openly said, "I do not believe in a supreme being of any kind. I do not believe in any sort of absolute morality or absolute truth." He articulated those things pretty openly and he was one of the first guys and one of the loudest voices to do that. He is a very quotable guy, very, very quotable and so I'm going to share with you some of my favorite quotes, maybe not favorite but well known quotes and yes some of them are my favorite quotes. So you've heard this quote, okay? God is dead, that's pretty to the point of where he's coming from. God is dead. Next quote is, "Man merely a mistake of God's or God merely a mistake of man's." Something to think about. Next quote from Nietzsche, "Egoism is the very essence of a noble soul." And so I believe it was last week we talked about selfishness and pride and thinking that we are the end of all things and we talked about preachers today fall into this trap, philosophers fall into this trap, all sorts of people fall into this trap, well there you go. Egoism, making you number one in every area of life that is morality, that is the essence of a noble soul. Next quote, "There are no facts only interpretations," okay? No facts only interpretations to which a smart person says is that a fact or is that only your interpretation. There you go. You have your way, I have my way, as for the right way, the correct way and the only way it does not exist. Sound like people today, okay? This is why he's called the father of all these isms because he said these things that just filtered down and have impacted us today. Next quote, "You know he said that? How many of you have ever said that in some sort of context, whatever doesn't kill us makes us stronger?" So when you said that you were quoting Frederick Nietzsche, congratulations. Yeah, here at the gym. This is a great one, women. They make the highs higher and the lows more frequent. Take that one or leave it and this is a really good one. A pair of spectacles has sometimes sufficed to cure a person in love, so yeah. He had a unique view of the ladies. I'll be honest with you. I've read a lot of things about Nietzsche. If you go to seminary, you're going to read about him a lot and lots of different books. I have only read one book written by Frederick Nietzsche and it is this book and it's a short book and the title of the book is called The Antichrist, a Criticism of Christianity. The Antichrist basically is a reference to the idea in the book that he thinks religion in general and Christianity in particular are laughable and not just laughable but evil and that the ethic promoted by the Christ of the New Testament is immoral and that it goes against what egoism, the only true morality, says that you ought to do in life and so in saying the Antichrist, he's not talking about Satan at the end and he worships Satan who's going to come back someday, he's saying I am the anti of this of what Christ stands for and so he says it's a criticism of Christianity. Let me just read you from the very last pages of the book. This is an interesting book, I'll be honest with you, it's easier a lot of times to just read people like this than to read about them, does that make sense? Sometimes you read about them and your head just gets foggy and sometimes if you just pick them up and read it you say oh that's what you meant by that, that makes more sense. So here's just a few sentences from the conclusion of this book, he says with this I will now conclude and pronounce my judgment, this is in italics, I condemn Christianity and confront it with the most terrible accusation that an accuser has ever had in his mouth. To my mind it is the greatest of all conceivable corruptions. It has had the will to the last imaginable corruption. The Christian church allowed nothing to escape from its corruption, it converted every value into its opposite, every truth into a lie and every honest impulse into an ignomini of the soul and he kind of goes on a little bit and listen to what he says here at the end. I call Christianity the one great curse, the one enormous and inner most perversion, the one great instinct of revenge for which no means are too venomous, too underhand, too underground and too petty, I call it the one immortal blemish of mankind. That's his conclusion, at least he's honest, telling us what he really thinks and he wrote this book, late in life, he'd written a lot of different things and done a lot of different things and he wrote this book. This was going to be part one of four of his magnum opus, his great life work. He says, okay, I've written all these things, I've thought through all these things, I'm going to give it one last two raw and I'm going to write four books and he wrote this one as part one of those four and he wrote it in 1889, he was 45 years old and within months of writing this he completely lost his mind and he spent the last, remember I told you, yeah, he spent, I told you he died in 1900, he spent the last eleven years of his life, his mom and his sister took care of him and he basically stared out a window and drooled on himself for eleven years and then he died in 1900 and so I have a cousin who thinks Frederick Nietzsche is the greatest teacher who has ever walked the face of planet earth and he would say to you, that's an unfortunate thing that happened to him before he could finish his magnum opus and I would say to him, and he laughs at this, I mean we've had this discussion, he laughs at this, I would say you can't, you can't really believe these things and live them in life and there not be consequences, maybe you're, maybe you could say that God smote him in some way, shape or form, I'm not even suggesting that, all I'm saying is if this is what you really believe, this book front to back and you really do live it, right? There's a lot of people who say they believe this stuff and they don't live as if it's really true, they don't, but if you really believe it and you really live it, there are consequences and when a person tries to deny that there is a God and that there is truth and that there is right and wrong, everything falls apart, that's true for an individual and it's also true for a nation. When a nation as a whole says there is no God, we do not believe that there is any sort of absolute truth and we do not believe there is any sort of absolute morality, eventually everything is going to fall apart. Guess what happened to Israel and Judah? They said there is no one true and only God. We can worship whoever and however we want to worship. We don't have to follow these commandments that the Lord gave us, we can do whatever we want to do, they did that and everything went to pop. So second chronicles is the story of Judah trying to live like there was no God or morality or truth and in the end surprise, surprise, everything fell apart, we'll put this on the front row in case lightning strikes. No God, no morality, no truth and in the end everything falls apart. You remember first chronicles and second chronicles leave out Israel, right? Israel is not part of this story, Judah is the focus of this story, I give you the outline of the book. It's really, really simple. Chapters one to nine focus on Solomon. Chapters 10 to 36 on the other kings of Judah who came after Solomon. So after Solomon, Rehoboam and Jeroboam split the kingdom and at least as far as chronicles is concerned Israel fades into the background and it focuses on Judah and on the kings of Judah. So that's the outline. There's a couple of things in chronicles we don't have time to look at, but you need to look at and I don't even think I put these on your outline, but you might just write them down. Look at chapter 18 on your own, it's a story of Ahab and Jehosephat and they go into battle. We talked about this story briefly and Ahab somehow convinces Jehosephat, let's go fight. You dress like the king and I'm going to disguise myself knowing in battle they're going for the king. He says I'm going to disguise myself, you go out dressed as the king, they're going to be coming for you but I'm going to hide in the background. And for some reason Jehosephat says that's a great idea, let's do it, let's go. He had trouble making decisions sometimes, made bad ones every now and then. So they go into battle, Jehosephat's about to be killed and sort of by a strange circumstance, he just sort of Jehosephat, the king, they all know he's the king, they just don't kill him and then it just says it just so happened, an archer takes an arrow, flings it into the sky and it hits Ahab. And so it's really a funny story reminding you that God is not going to be mocked by people like Ahab. So you can look at chapter 18, you can also look at chapter 20, Jehosephat prays a prayer in chapter 20 that is a really, really great prayer, 2 Chronicles 20 and just really, really a neat prayer. One of my favorite lines of any prayer of the Bible is in 2 Chronicles 2012 where Jehosephat says, "We're powerless against this great horde that is coming against us, we don't know what to do but our eyes are on you." And I think a lot of times when we pray, we ought to pray that more often. Instead of trying to instruct God or direct God or inform God or give our plan to God or tell God what we want him to do, we just need to say, "You know what, I don't know what to do here. So I'm looking to you to do what is right and to give me deliverance, to be my champion, to fight for me and I'm trusting in you." So good prayer there. Let's ask two real simple questions. What does 2 Chronicles teach us about the kings of Judah and what do 2 Chronicles teach us about the God of Judah, about the kings and about the God of Judah? First, the kings, and the first thing you need to know is that most of them were wicked. You could say they were all sinners and you could find evidence for that in this book. But even taking it a step beyond saying they're all sinners, some of these kings fall into a different category and they are just wicked, wicked men. And so, look at a couple of examples with me, chapter 21, verse 11, this is Jehoram, 21 verse 11, says, "He made high places in the hill country of Judah and he let the inhabitants of Jerusalem, led the inhabitants of Jerusalem into hoardom and made Judah go astray." That's God's opinion of how Jehoram led the people. He led them into spiritual hoardom. That's the kind of language we don't use on an everyday basis because it's really not appropriate to apply to somebody or to say to somebody. It's almost on the verge of profanity. And God says, "This is how he led my people." He led them into hoardom. Look at Amaziah in chapter 25, verse 14. After Amaziah came from striking down the Edomites, so he had a victory, he brought the gods of the men of Sayer and set them up as his gods and worshiped them, making offerings to them. You remember one thing we saw last week in chronicles, it talks about David, David had this victory, why? because God did it for him. David won this battle, why? Because God won the battle. David subdued his enemies, why? Because God was with him. God is doing these things. And here's God doing this for Amaziah and in return, he comes back from a victorious military campaign and he says, "I'm going to think bring the gods of these guys with me and I'm going to set them up and these are going to be my gods." So these are wicked men. Look at chapter 28, a king named A has, chapter 28, verse 3, verse 2. He walked in the ways of the kings of Israel, he made metal images for the bales, he made offerings in the valley of the son of Hanam and burned his sons as an offering. Sons plural, burned his sons as an offering according to the abomination of the nations whom the Lord drove out from before the people. He sacrificed and made offerings on the high places and on the hills and under every green tree. So God kicks these people out of the land when Joshua leads the conquest because they're wicked. Not because the Israelites are so great because the people are wicked. And now here's A has doing exactly what these people used to do and what got them kicked out of the land in the first place. You know what's coming. Look at chapter 28, verse 23 about A has. Verse 22 is an ironic verse, "In the time of his distress he became yet more faithless to the Lord, the same king A has. He sacrificed to the gods of Damascus that had defeated him and said, "Because the gods of the king of Syria helped them, I will sacrifice to them and they will help me, but they were the ruin of him and all of Israel." So you got one king saying, "I go out and I win a victory and I'm going to bring home the defeated gods and worship them." You got another king saying, "I just got my tail whooped so I'm going to worship their gods because they gave the victory over the Lord over Yahweh." So you got all kinds of wickedness in these guys. One last king, look at chapter 33, verse 2. This is about Manasseh, it says that he did what was evil in the sight of the Lord according to the abominations of the nations whom the Lord drove out before the people of Israel, where he rebuilt the high places that his father Hezekiah had broken down. He erected altars to the bales and made ash daras and worshiped all the host of heaven and served them and he built altars in the house of the Lord, of which the Lord had said in Jerusalem, "Shall my name be forever." And he built altars for all the host of heaven in the two courts of the house of the Lord. And he burned his sons as an offering, again sons plural, in the valley of the son of Hanam and used fortune telling in omens and sorcery and dealt with mediums and necromancers. He did much evil in the sight of the Lord, provoking him to anger and the carved image of the idol that he had made. He set in the house of God, of which God had said to David and Solomon, his son in this house and in Jerusalem, which I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel, I will put my name forever and I will no more remove the foot of Israel from the land that I pointed for your fathers, if only they will be careful to do all that I have commanded them all the law statutes and rules given through Moses. The NASA led Judah in the inhabitants of Jerusalem, Mestre, to do more evil than the nations whom the Lord destroyed before the people of Israel. So these guys are wicked. What about the good kings? Because there are a few in there. You read through and you read about Uzziah, and you read about Jehoshaphat, and you read about Hezekiah. But even these guys, even the good kings, were fools, all of them. So you read about these kings and every now and then it says he was a good guy. You love God, he tried to do what was right. But even these guys are idiots and so you can read about Hezekiah and he is an ungrateful arrogant king. God does amazing things for him and he turns around and takes all the credit for it. You can read about Uzziah, a good, good king who rained a long time in Israel over 50 years, and at one point in his life he decided king is not enough for me, I want to be the priest too. And so he went into the temple and he began to offer the sacrifices that only the priests, the Levites were allowed to offer, and God struck him with leprosy. So a good king, but he made a mistake and he did something foolish. Jehoshaphat already mentioned him. I don't know, I wish I could tell you why in reading chronicles and kings, why Jehoshaphat liked to hang out with Ahab. I have no answer for that. They did not agree on truth, on philosophy, on religion, on worship, but he hung out with this guy and he listened to him and he took advice from him and he did whatever he told him to do. Even these good kings are fools and then you see, as we just read about Manasseh, as the kings go, the people go. And so the kings influence the people for good or for bad. And you see a bad king and they take three steps backwards and then here comes Hezekiah and they take one step forward. And then they take three more backwards with the next wicked king and three more backwards. And then here's Jehoshaphat, one step forward and then three backward again. So these are wicked, wicked people and their wickedness impacts the nation of Judah. What does Second Chronicles teach us about the God of Judah? About the God of Judah. Remember, this is written for people who have already gone into exile and now they're coming back with Zerubbabelle and they're coming back with Nehemiah and they're coming back with Ezra and Ezra possibly or the chronicler is writing this saying, "You got kicked out because you're wicked. Now that you're coming back, you need to remember who you are and you need to remember who God is." So what does the book teach us about God? Number one, God is unique. That is unique. Chapter two, I'll let you look these up on your own. Chapter two talks about preparations to build the temple and basically they're saying God is not going to live in this building. He cannot live in a building. He's not like the other gods of the peoples. This building can't contain him. He's different than all the other gods. He's unique. Number two, God is sovereign and we talked about all through chronicles. Somebody wins a victory and then the chronicler says God did it. Chapter one, verse one begins the book that way. Number three, God deserves worship. He deserves worship. Chapter six is solemn and praying when they're dedicating the temple and part of that prayer and part of that conversation with God in the nation, he says there's going to be a time when the nations come here to the temple to worship God. In the implication is, of course they would. When they see how great he is and they see how unique he is and they see how powerful he is, they're going to come here and he's going to be receiving their worship. So he deserves worship. Number four, he's faithful. He's faithful and again, that's in the prayer where they're dedicating the temple. They talk about God not forsaking his promises, not turning away from his people. God is faithful. God is just. Number one, two, three, four, five. He's just. Chapter 19 is Jehoshaphat making reforms in the nation and one of the things he did is he appointed new judges throughout the country, throughout the nation and he said to them, "You need to be a judge like God is a judge." He's just and he always does what is right. He doesn't take bribes. He's not impartial. That's the kind of judge that you guys need to be. So God is just, lastly God is kind. He's kind. Or you could say gracious. Chapter 34 down in verse 26 and 28 talks about Josiah is the king and God has promised bad things are going to happen, but he delays this for the sake of Josiah and his obedience and it talks about the patience of God, the grace of God, the kindness of God. So that's what we learn about the kings. That's what we learn about God. Now I want you to think about the big picture, the second chronicles. Remember I told you last week, first chronicles, we ignore Israel and we focus only on Judah - focusing only on Judah. And the capital of Judah, the most important city in Judah is Jerusalem. So we're laser beaming in Judah, we come down to Jerusalem and the most important, the most holy place in Jerusalem is the temple and so we're focusing in on the temple and you come to the temple and the most important room in the temple is the holy of holies. And it's so holy because something special is in it and that something special is the ark and the ark, remember we read a verse last week that said God is enthroned above the cherubim. There's these two angels on the lid of the ark and their wings touch in the middle. The Bible says this is God's throne as it were. And so you see we are focusing on the very place where God is, the very place where his glory dwells among his people. Do you see why that's important for people who are coming back from exile, right? They've disobeyed God, their city gets destroyed including the temple and the holy of holies and all of it. And there's a big interesting question, you can read all kinds of goofy stuff on the internet. What happened to the ark? Did they take it? Did Nebuchadnezzar haul it off? Did some people think Jeremiah hit it and stashed it away? There's a group of Christians, Orthodox Christians in Ethiopia that say they have it. And they've got a building there in Ethiopia and they've got a guy with a machine gun out front and they say it right in there, we've got it. We've been holding it ever since they took flat in the temple, Babylonians came, we snuck it out of here, we've got it right here. So who knows what happened to it? But these people, their temple is destroyed, their holy place is desecrated. They go off into exile, 70 years, now they're coming back and the chronicler is writing this book and he's focusing on this city to say to them, remember this place matters. This place is important. Here's the overarching story in Second Chronicles. First of all, God tells them, build the temple, right? And in the early chapters of Chronicles, you read all these instructions about preparations for the temple, bringing the art to the temple, the furnishings in the temple, Solomon's building the temple and the prayer of dedication, all this stuff, you say, why are we rehashing all of this stuff? Because they're coming back and there's no temple. They need to know what goes in it. They need to know how to furnish it. They need to know how Solomon prepared for it and David prepared for it in the first place. And so all these instructions are in there so they know how to build the temple. The second part of the story is God makes promises to Solomon and we're going to read these in just a minute. Third part of the story is God keeps the promises that he made to Solomon. And you notice that's a big jump, chapter 7 all the way to 36. You squeeze in there in the middle all those wicked guys and all those foolish, good guys we just talked about. God keeps his promises at the end. And then at the very end of the book it talks about the actual rebuilding of the temple. So look at these verses quickly just so you see the overarching arc of this story. Chapter 2 verse 4, this is Solomon speaking, so we're going way back. Solomon says, "Behold, I am about to build a house for the name of the Lord my God and dedicate it to him for the burning of incense of sweet spices before him and for the regular arrangement of the showbread and for burn offerings morning and evening on the sabbas and the new moons and the appointed feasts of the Lord our God is ordained forever in Israel." Look at chapter 3 verse 1, "Solomon began to build the house of the Lord in Jerusalem on Mount Moriah where the Lord had appeared to David his father at the place that David had appointed on the threshing floor of Ona in the Jebusite." So all these instructions, this is how Solomon did it the first time. And these people are reading this, they're coming back and they're saying we don't have a temple and the chronicler is saying this is how they did it the first time. Pay attention because you're going to have to rebuild this thing. This is how Solomon did it. Look at God's promises to Solomon. Chapter 7 beginning in verse 11, "Solomon finished the house of the Lord in the King's house. All that Solomon had planned to do in the house of the Lord in his own house he successfully accomplished. Then the Lord appeared to Solomon in the night and he said to them, "I've heard your prayer and I've chosen this place for myself as a house of sacrifice. When I shut up the heavens so that there's no rain or I command the locust to devour the land or I send pestilence among my people, if my people who are called by my name humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways then I will hear from heaven and forgive their sin and heal their land. Now my eyes will be open and ears attentive to the prayer that is made in this place. For now I have chosen and consecrated this house that my name may be there forever. My eyes and my heart will be there for all time. As for you, if you walk before me as David your father walked, doing according to all I've commanded in keeping my statutes and my rules I will establish your royal throne as I covenant with David your father saying you shall not like a man to rule Israel. But this is important. If you turn aside and forsake my statutes and my commandments that I've set before you and if you go serve other gods and worship them then I will pluck you up from my land that I have given you. In this house that I have consecrated for my name I will cast out of my sight and I will make it a proverb and a by word among all peoples. In this house which was exalted everyone passing by will be astonished and say why is the Lord done this to the land and to this house? Then they will say because they abandoned the Lord the God of their fathers who brought them out of the land of Egypt and laid hold on other gods and worshiped them and served them. Therefore he has brought all this disaster upon them. That happened word for word. It was not a threat, it was not God trying to scare them. It was God making a promise to them saying if you do this this is what's going to happen and they did it in all through these middle chapters of the book. Not as patient, he's patient, he's patient, look at chapter 36 verse 15. The Lord the God of their fathers sent persistently to them to his people by his messengers because he had compassion on his people and on his dwelling place, the temple. They kept mocking the messengers of God despising his words and scoffing at his prophets until the wrath of the Lord rose up against the people and there was no remedy. Therefore he brought up against them the king of the Chaldeans who killed the young men with the sword and the house of the sanctuary. He had no compassion on young men or virgin, old men are aged, gave them all in his hand and all the vessels of the house of God great and small and the treasures of the house of the Lord and the treasures of the king and his princes and all those he brought to Babylon. They burned the house of God and broke down the wall of Jerusalem and burned all its palaces with fire and destroyed all its precious vessels. He took into exile in Babylon those who had escaped from the sword and they became servants to him and his sons until the establishment of the kingdom of Persia to fulfill the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah till the land had enjoyed its sabbaths. All the days that it laid desolate it kept sabbath to fulfill seventy years and then here's the call to rebuild at the very end here. It says in the first year of Cyrus king of Persia the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled. The Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia that he made a proclamation throughout his kingdom and he put it into writing. Thus says Cyrus king of Persia the Lord the God of heaven has given me all the kingdoms of the earth and he has charged me to build him a house at Jerusalem which is in Judah. Whoever is among you of all his people may the Lord is God be with him and let him go up. And so you see this storyline. Build the temple with Solomon. God says if you mess up I'm going to blow it up. They mess up and God blows it up and then they come back in the end and they rebuild the temple. Now this is the last idea to summarize chronicles. You got to understand this. Our hope is not centered on a physical temple. Our hope is centered on Jesus. God who dwelt among us and our hope is pictured in Revelation 21. Here's the thing when you get to chapter 36 and Cyrus says go back and build the temple. God used a man named Zerubbabel to lead a group of people back and they rebuilt the temple. What happened to that temple? It got destroyed. It got defiled and eventually there was a temple Herod came along and he sort of fixed it up and built it up and there was Herod's temple this great temple that was there when Jesus was walking the earth. What happened to that temple? It got flattened, the Romans came in and 70 AD and they flattened the whole thing to the ground. Is there a temple there today? No, what's there today? There's a mosque sitting on the temple mount and some Christians are very, very concerned that we need a temple there. We need to restore this. We need to go back to this. We need to go back to this and what chronicles is saying and what the rest of the Bible is saying when you read John chapter one is our hope is not in a physical temple. God came and dwelt among us and he didn't come to a building. He came at Christmas in the form of a man and he took the form of a servant and he humbled himself being born in a manger and God, Emmanuel, dwelt with us and he walked among us. That's John 1. The word became flesh and he dwelt among us and we have seen his glory. His glory is from the one from the Father full of grace and truth. We don't need this temple to be rebuilt so that God's glory can come down and fill the holy of holies and above the ark. We have Jesus who dwelt among us and is the presence of God among us and look at Revelation 21. We'll end with this scripture just as a reminder that when you read chronicles and it focuses on Jerusalem and it focuses on the temple and it focuses on the ark and the presence of God, remember Revelation 21 verse 22. John says, "I saw no temple in the city, for the temple is the Lord, the Almighty and the Lamb." The city has no need of sun or moon to shine in it, for the glory of God gives it light and its lamp is the Lamb. By its light will the nations walk and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it. Its gates will never be shut. There will be no night there. They will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations, but nothing unclean will ever enter into it nor anyone who does what is a detestable false but those who are written in the Lamb's book of life. So our hope is in Jesus, our hope is not in a temple and all of these things in chronicles, the temple and the exile and the return, all of these things point us forward to Jesus who is our hope. I'm going to pray for us, we're going to watch a couple of missions, videos and then we will maybe sing a little bit before we finish up. Father, we love you and we're grateful for your word and we're grateful for the book of second chronicles. Father, we see ourselves and these kings in their wickedness and in their folly and Father, most of us, if we're honest, can admit the struggle of having a desire to follow you and love you but at times making foolish decisions and at times listening to bad advice and at times crossing boundaries that we're not supposed to cross. Father, we're grateful that you are a merciful God, that you're slow to anger and abounding instead fast love. We thank you that you are a God who keeps your promises, that you are faithful, that you are kind and gracious. Father, we believe that you are sovereign, we believe that you are unique and we pray for hearts that are undivided in devotion to you. Father, help us to not put our hopes in buildings or in old patterns of the things that were to come but help us to put our hope in Jesus as we celebrate Christmas and we think about a manual coming to be with us, about the eternal word taking on flesh and revealing to us your glory. Father, help us to be mindful of what you have done in sending Jesus, help us to center our hopes and our faith and all that we are and all that we have on your Son. Father, we love you, we're grateful for your word. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen.