Have you drifted from your passionate worship of God? (110-1)
As we enter the study of some specific leadership principles tucked away in 2 Chronicles, it is helpful to get an overview of the book. This being the fourth book (1 and 2 Kings and 1 and 2 Chronicles) detailing the actions of many of the same individuals, it is helpful for understanding the leadership lessons to know the major theme God is seeking to communicate in the book. John Maxwell in The Maxwell Leadership Bible gives summary notes at the beginning of the book that are very helpful.
Summary
If 2 Chronicles develops one major theme or offers one major lesson, it is this: Leaders need to finish well.
Four kings – Solomon, Asa, Uzziah, and Jehoshaphat – all began their monarchies well, but failed to finish strongly. Each enjoyed both success and fame as a leader, but they let the good times get to them. Their perspective got fuzzy; they began to overestimate their own importance; they grew blind to their weaknesses and refused accountability; and they started to trust in human ingenuity rather than in God – all “alarm bells” appropriate for leaders yet today!
What accounts for these poor finishes? Second Chronicles considers the Jerusalem worship center as symbolic of God’s covenant with His people (ch. 7). The temple represented His presence, His promises, His provision, and His protection. Indeed, it symbolized His very Person. As each leader drifted away from his calling, his worship grew cold and sterile, becoming nothing more than an item to be checked off of a “to-do” list. While God was still there, they grew emotionally absent – and eventually God’s presence and blessing began to fade.
Second Chronicles delivers a sobering warning to leaders who are drifting from their passion. When our leadership activities become mere routine, we have wandered from our original call. When we become distracted by peripheral issues and deviate from the purpose that first drove us to lead, we have wandered from our original call. When we overestimate our importance and allow ourselves to become exceptions to the rules – we have wandered away from our leadership call.
Second Chronicles demonstrates that leaders cannot separate their spiritual condition from their success as a leader. While intimacy with God does not automatically make anyone a great leader – plenty of deeply spiritual people do not lead well – yet one cannot be a godly leader apart from intimacy with God. Our leadership must begin with our relationship with God. Had the kings of Israel and Judah remained intimate with Yahweh, they would have avoided many of their mistakes, pride, blindness, presumption, and failures. Nearly every king desired to lead his people in reform, yet most of them failed. The lesson for us – leaders cannot execute public reform until they experience personal repentance.
Have you noticed a drifting from your passionate worship of God? Even if God is still in your life, have you grown emotionally distant from Him? Have God’s blessings i.e. joy, peace, self-control, etc. started to fade from your daily leadership responsibilities? Pray that God will open your eyes through your daily activities and through some of the leadership lessons over the next few weeks.
Tags: Finishing Well, Worship
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Comments (1)
To be sure, the chronicler consistently argues that success and blessing come solely to those who worship and obey the God whose temple stood in Jerusalem. The chronicler also accents the lives of those who had at least some holy inclinations and pretty much ignores the pseudo-God worshiping northern kingdom save for southern missionary excursions northward. Yet the record of Kings shows the majority of monarchs north and south “desired to lead [their] people” not in righteous reform, but in sin. Most kings in effect sold themselves to do evil in the eyes of the Lord.
Among the relatively righteous minority of monarchs, the chronicler is not reticent to display the sinful census taking of David and the pride of Hezekiah as well as the failures of Solomon, Asa, Uzziah, and Jehoshaphat. The reforms of Josiah late in the game even show that the reforms of the earlier righteous kings were far from complete. Even the best monarchs drifted from obedience despite the clarion calls of prophets. And hence the final outcome where the chronicler ends his story: national destruction and banishment.
That followed by only a few words mentioning the return of the people at Cyrus’s decree. There is none righteous. No, not one. But the grace of God does not end either.
By way of application, then, religious exhortation has its place, but the power of righteous reform lies elsewhere. As we know, it lies in the gospel, in identification with the death and resurrection of Jesus, and in the power of the Spirit of Holiness. The ubiquitous sinfulness of the people and the temple sacrifices in Jerusalem for sin pointed in that direction.