Dear God, in Sunday school they told us what You
do. Who does it while you are on vacation? Jane
Dear God, Are you really invisible or is that a
trick? Lucy
Dear God, Is it true that my father won’t get in
Heaven if he uses his bowling words in the house? Anita
Dear God, Instead of letting people die and having
to make new ones, why don’t You just keep the ones You have now?
Jean
Dear God, My brother told me about being born but
it doesn’t sound right. They’re just kidding, aren’t they?
Marsha
Dear God, I read the Bible. What does “begat” mean?
No one will tell me. Love, Allison
Dear God, Did you mean for the giraffe to look like
that or was it an accident? Norma
These kids felt comfortable asking God their questions, even if it
might have seemed a little forward. These examples should remind us that we can
approach God with our own questions. What would happen if we did that this
morning? What kind of letter would you write to God if we handed out pen and
paper? If we did just that and then reviewed the letters, I bet one of the common
themes would be ‘God, why do bad things happen to good people?’ I am sure this
is something that all of us have questioned at one point in time. If you think
about some of the people on our prayer lists, I am sure this question would
fit. ‘Why do bad things happen to good people?’
If you read chapter 16 of The Story this week, you may have been asking
yourself that exact question when reading about the Southern Kingdom, Judah.
King Hezekiah was a one of the 5 good kings and bad things were going to happen.
Before we look at that lets review a little bit. Over the last couple of weeks
we have seen the 12 tribes of Israel turn their back on God and then be torn
into 2 different kingdoms. Israel the Northern Kingdom was made up of 10
tribes, and none of the kings that lead the Northern Kingdom were considered a
good king. Judah, the Southern Kingdom was made up of the tribes of Judah and
Benjamin. In a 208 year period God sent 9 prophets whose basic message was
‘Return to the Lord, obey His laws, and beware of His judgment.’
2nd Chronicles
36:15-16
“15 But Yahweh, the God of their
ancestors sent word against them by the hand of His messengers, sending them
time and time again, for He had compassion on His people and on His dwelling
place. 16 But they kept ridiculing God’s messengers, despising
His words, and scoffing at His prophets, until the Lord’s wrath was so stirred up against His people that there was no
remedy.”
For over 200 years God warned His people that they were not doing what
they were told. He blessed them repeatedly and continued to give them chance
after chance after chance after chance to repent. Prophet after prophet after
prophet was sent, but the people refused to listen, and as verse 16 tells us
they kept ridiculing them. The people of both kingdoms refused to listen to God
and were going to suffer the consequences.
The Northern Kingdom, Israel had zero good kings. If you remember their
first king had two golden calves made so the people could worship them instead
of God, and it did not stop there. They continued to worship other gods; they
took on the religious practices of nations that had inhabited the land before
them. Idols, Asherah poles, and Baal took the place of the One True God. They
rejected God and His messengers. God warned them and they did not listen.
2 Kings 17:18
“18 Therefore, the Lord was very angry with Israel, and He removed them from His presence.
Only the tribe of Judah remained.”
In 722 BC the Northern Kingdom, Israel fell to the Assyrians. Hoshea
was king of Israel and the nation of Assyria attacked. At first the king
surrendered and paid a tribute to the king of Assyria. But then Hoshea thought
he could find a way out of this and partnered with Egypt. The king of Assyria
found out and attacked Israel and threw Hosea in prison.
2 Kings 17:23
“23 Finally, the Lord removed Israel from His presence just as He had declared through
all His servants the prophets. So Israel has been exiled to Assyria from their
homeland until today.”
Israel turned their back on God, He let the Assyrians come in take over
and from then on the ten northern tribes of Israel were no more. To be clear,
the ten northern tribes would never return, they are known as the Lost Tribes
of Israel.
If you remember last week we reviewed how God did not need all 12
tribes to fulfill His promises or His plans. All He really needed was one man,
but He chose to continue to work through the Southern Kingdom, Judah. Over the
208 years we are looking at Judah had a mixture of good and evil kings. Some
followed the same wickedness that the Northern Kingdom was doing and others did
what they could to turn Judah back towards the Lord. The king over Judah during
the time of Israel’s fall was one of those Good kings. Hezekiah did what he
could to honor God.
2 Kings 18:3-6
“3 He did what was right in the Lord’s sight just as his ancestor David had done. 4 He removed the high places, shattered the sacred pillars, and cut down the Asherah poles. He broke into pieces the bronze snake that Moses made, for the Israelites burned incense to it up to that time. He called it Nehushtan. 5 Hezekiah trusted in the Lord God of Israel; not one of the kings of Judah was like him, either before him or after him. 6 He remained faithful to Yahweh and did not turn from following Him but kept the commands the Lord had commanded Moses.”
Hezekiah was a good king who trusted in God. As these verse point out, Hezekiah did what he could to get rid of the false gods and idols in Judah. Scripture also tells us that he repaired and opened the temple, reinstituted the sacrificial system, and brought back the practice and celebration of Passover. From what I can tell he was far more than a king, he was also a spiritual leader and was guiding his people back to God. Despite all the good things he was doing, bad things came his way.
It was during the 6th year of Hezekiah’s reign over Judah that Israel fell to the Assyrians. A handful of years later Assyria sets its target on Judah and attacks and captures a some of its cities. Hezekiah negotiates and believes he pays off the Assyrian king, but the Assyrians came back with a huge army.
The king of Assyria made an offer to Hezekiah and the people of Israel trying to convince them to submit to Assyria without the battle. He offered both Hezekiah and the people of Israel things, prosperity, and peace. He even said that Hezekiah was misleading them when he said that ‘the Lord will deliver us.’ By putting his trust in God, Hezekiah defied the Assyrian king who had already conquered the much bigger Kingdom of Israel. Hezekiah sought the guidance of the prophet Isaiah and we find him praying in verse 15.
2 Kings 19:15-19
“15 Then Hezekiah prayed before the Lord: Lord God of Israel who is enthroned above the cherubim, You are God—You alone—of all the kingdoms of the earth. You made the heavens and the earth. 16 Listen closely, Lord, and hear; open Your eyes, Lord, and see. Hear the words that Sennacherib has sent to mock the living God. 17 Lord, it is true that the kings of Assyria have devastated the nations and their lands. 18 They have thrown their gods into the fire, for they were not gods but made by human hands—wood and stone. So they have destroyed them. 19 Now, Lord our God, please save us from his hand so that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that You are the Lord God—You alone.”
Hezekiah trusted in the Lord and God intervenes as only He could.
2 Kings 19:35-36
“35 That night the angel of the Lord went out and struck down 185,000 in the camp of the Assyrians. When the people got up the next morning—there were all the dead bodies! 36 So Sennacherib king of Assyria broke camp and left. He returned home and lived in Nineveh.”
The Assyrian army was ready to destroy Judah, but due to the nation turning back to God and the faithfulness of Hezekiah, God himself destroyed the Assyrian Army. A bad thing turned good.
While Hezekiah is a good king, like others he made a grave mistake. Visitors from Babylon show up offering gifts. Hezekiah being the good host shows them around. He did not hold anything back; he showed them all the silver, gold, spices, and oil they had. He even showed them the armory; nothing was kept from his visitors. Then Isaiah comes and visits Hezekiah.
2 Kings 20:15-17
“15 Isaiah asked, “What have they seen in your palace?” Hezekiah answered, “They have seen everything in my palace. There isn’t anything in my treasuries that I didn’t show them.” 16 Then Isaiah said to Hezekiah, “Hear the word of the Lord: 17 ‘The time will certainly come when everything in your palace and all that your fathers have stored up until this day will be carried off to Babylon; nothing will be left,’ says the Lord.”
Even though Hezekiah has been a good king looking to God, he is now once again confronted with bad things happening to the nation of Judah.
Bad things happen to good people. I am sure we can find many examples in the Bible of exactly this. Job, he was a righteous man, but horrible things happened to him. Paul who spread the gospel to the gentiles ended up in prison and died a martyr. This is not limited to what we find in the Bible, there was a true movie a few years back about some missionaries being attacked and killed by the people they were trying to reach.
Bad things do happen to good people. Please understand that I cannot
fully explain why bad things happen to good people. As we go through life, we
do not see all the ins and outs and how each action causes another. Only God
can fully understand the impact of bad things happening as He is not limited
like we are.
Romans 8:28
“28 We know that all things work together for the good of those who love God: those who are called according to His purpose.”
We need to have faith that what Romans 8:28 is true. We need to trust God, even thought we do not understand and sometimes cannot possibly even begin to comprehend why something is happening we need to have Faith. Faith that God is in control. That is one of the reasons it is so important that we read our Bibles. It is through reading what God has done throughout history that we can see that the bad does not stay that way. Bad events can have a positive impact in the long run, in the Upper Story of God wanting to spend eternity with us.
If we pick up where we left off with the Nation of Judah we find that evil kings follow Hezekiah and eventually Babylon does come and conquers Judah and pretty much destroys Jerusalem. But it does not end there.
Isaiah 14:1-2
“14 For the Lord will have compassion on Jacob and will choose Israel again. He will settle them on their own land. The foreigner will join them and be united with the house of Jacob. 2 The nations will escort Israel and bring it to its homeland. Then the house of Israel will possess them as male and female slaves in the Lord’s land. They will make captives of their captors and will rule over their oppressors.”
Judah will be returned to their homeland, God will bless them once again. As we will see in the coming weeks that this is just one more step in God’s plan to spend eternity with us. Judah will return and eventually our Lord Jesus Christ will be born. God used Babylon to cleanse Judah and put it back on the right path.
Isaiah 49:23
“Kings will be your foster fathers, and their queens your nursing mothers. They will bow down to you with their faces to the ground, and lick the dust at your feet. Then you will know that I am Yahweh; those who put their hope in Me will not be put to shame.”
In the long run we can see God’s plan for the bad things that happened to the kingdom of Judah. Hezekiah did not see it, the people who were exiled did not see it, but for the last 2,000 or so years it can be seen.
Bad things do happen to good people. We cannot fully understand why they happen, it is not humanly possible. If we have faith in God and believe what the Bible tells us we will know that in the long run good will come out of it. Remember that no matter what you are going through God Loves You! That is the whole reason we exist and that is why He is trying so hard to spend eternity with us.
We have officially passed the half way mark on our journey through the Bible. It is never to late to join us and study the Bible chronologically and with a focus on God's Plan.
God Bless,
Robert
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