You're in this reading. We go on now to our gospel lesson text for this morning, which is from 2nd Chronicles Chapter 33 and this morning we move on from Manasseh and Read about his son Ammon who took the throne in in Judah. That's found on page 331 in the Bibles that are better in your seats Please go ahead and turn there
God's kingdom at this time was split into two kingdoms the north was known as Israel and the south took on the name Judah The north was evil through and through with their kings Judah and the south had some good kings and some bad kings and we saw the past three weeks as we looked at King Manasseh that he was bad at first but came to his senses and God greatly blessed him for his repentance and return to the Lord however Manasseh had a son named Ammon and Ammon was not So good we read of him here. This is God's word eternally true 2nd Chronicles chapter 33 verse 21 Ammon was 22 years old when he became king and he ran into Jerusalem two years He did evil in the eyes of the Lord as his father Manasseh had done Ammon worshiped and offered sacrifices to the idols Manasseh had made But unlike his father Manasseh he did not humble himself before the Lord Ammon increased his guilt Ammon's officials conspired against him and assassinated him in his palace Then the people of the land killed all who had plotted against King Ammon and they made Josiah his son King in his place Hearings are reading for this morning of our gospel lesson text. Let us respond in thankfulness to God We have a responsive thankfulness printed for you in your bulletin at the bottom left The word of the Lord Let us pray Our God and Father. We are grateful to you that you give us your word and you direct us and guide us in our lives But more importantly than that you direct us and guide us by giving us what you're like in your word And so as we look to your word Jesus We ask that you would preach to us through it and buy your Holy Spirit that you would grant us understanding of it Causes to see your character causes to see your gospel That our lives might be conformed to it For the sake of our joy For the sake of those who are around us and for your glory Amen When I grew up my dad was not a harsh father But compared to some of my friends perhaps it may have appeared so now my friends were not afraid of my dad as much as I was afraid of my dad Not really afraid of him in fact my friends all really liked my dad They would almost congregate around him when he would come to pick me up from a basketball practice or whatever it was and They are really enjoyed him, but my dad was firm and He indeed like every he was 12 years. We've read it this morning and see this is a good description of my dad He disciplined me For my best and that wasn't just I'm not just talking about when I was in trouble But the positive aspects of discipline of teaching and instructing me and You've heard from me before if you've been around for for a while that my dad would frequently say John or whoever it was that was in our family to whom he is speaking John I know everybody does that, but we are not Everybody there are some things that people can do and sure they won't get in trouble But they're not helpful to you. That's not who you want to be And I'm really grateful for that. I think about I was asked by the Clerk of our regional association of churches if I would take over being the clerk of this regional association of churches essentially a Secretary in an organizer for this At the at the front of the year and I've been asked that before by others and and I kind of smile because I know within me in my heart in my mind. I am not a disciplined nor organized person But I appear that way to everybody and that's what I tell people when they ask me to do these kind of things I say I appear very disciplined and organized to you, but I'm really not And the reason I appear disciplined and organized is because of the discipline my father gave me the instruction He gave me the self-control. He developed within me, which for the most part at least publicly Overrides my desire to be loose and free and Unencumbered by anything even if it leads to my harm Now I remember as a boy as well a certain show coming on TV if you look at the title of this sermon You see what that show was Eight is enough and this show came on maybe around 1977 78 76 somewhere around there. I remember we were in Pittsburgh, New York and this show coming on and and Dick Van Patten was the The father of eight kids in this show called eight is enough and I remember this show really bothered me I never got more through more than five ten minutes of it and probably just one time What bothered me about it was Dick Van Patten's role as father and I looked him up on the internet movie database And I saw what his character's name was and it had the same last name as one of you So I just went with Dick Van Patten. Dick Van Patten's an okay guy. I'm sure But his character on this show eight is enough really bothered me and here's why because the show is basically and I'm a little bit off Here's because I didn't watch the show that much, but I watched enough of it to see that The kids basically ran over him as Father and as Dick Van Patten was in various characters that he played he was the the bumbling No nothing no nothing kids running all over You know kind of the if you're familiar with the PBS. He is kind of the kai you of fathers afraid Afraid of everything afraid of the doctor's appointment afraid of this afraid of that and the kids just took advantage of this to the Left and to the right and they were all swirling around them and and he was just completely hapless and I think what bothered me as a kid is I didn't like that I thought that's not what a father's supposed to to be He's not providing form and anything for his kids his kids are just doing whatever they doing whatever they want But in contrast to Dick Van Patten and his role and eight is enough in contrast to his Push-over father that he exemplified very much and in groove with late 70s cultural thought God is not like that Now we say as we start out here in our introduction and if you like to fill out blanks in an outline You're welcome to or you can just listen either is fine But God is a father. That's the first thing we say here God is a father certainly. He's called that throughout scripture We say that as we pray to him Jesus refers to him as that God is a father and the question is what kind of father is God? And this passage about am on here Gives us what kind of God what kind of father rather that God is To us his people. He's not like Dick Van Patten. He's not man-be-pamby
He doesn't let his kids run all over him He doesn't let us do whatever we want and just like my dad Would say to me John I care too much about you to let you do that and a lot of times that was a bummer for me Because I wanted to do whatever it was that was out there But he said I care too much for you to let this be who you are and that's the way God is With us. That's the way our heavenly father is It's children of our of our father in heaven We also see from this passage that it is a priority To listen to what our father has to say to us Because he loves us And he knows more than us He's lived longer than us He's seen it all He knows how the world works He knows how things affect us He knows that when we say such and such to a certain person how it's going to come back to us He knows all the principles that are at work in relationships That are at work in our vocations that are at work in our relationship to our parents above and to our kids below and So he instructs us and so we look to him. We don't run by him like the eight kids Run by Dick Van Patten We listen to him So first of all we say here as we see from this passage God says as number one in your outline here Jesus shows us in the gospel that Faithfulness is important. That's your blank faithfulness. Jesus shows us in the gospel that faithfulness is important We see it as a negative example here with Emma He didn't think faithfulness was important and well we saw what happened to him But we see in Hebrews 12 that we read this morning in the first three verses of this the writer of Hebrews is convincing his readership who is now us That faithfulness to God is important. That is as children of God Faithfulness is important and how does he go about convincing us that faithfulness is important? Well, the first three verses of Hebrews 12 say this Jesus was faithful even though it costs to cost him shame and his life And then the writer of Hebrews reasons with us and says none of us have resisted temptation to the point of shedding blood But Jesus sought faithfulness to his father was so important that he was shed his blood meaning he would die to be faithful and indeed that's what that's what Jesus said That's the gospel message. Jesus died to be faithful to his father To do everything his father to ask them to do and Jesus decided to be faithful to us his people Jesus knew we needed his death to substitute For us because the penalty for our sins is death The penalty for our rebellion against God is death And we needed Jesus to be faithful to his father to go to the cross like his father instructed him in order for us to have forgiveness of sins And so we see here that faithfulness on the positive side looking at Jesus is important Jesus did faithfulness and accomplishing the gospel for us But on the negative side we see with Manasseh the lack of faithfulness being one of God's people Sorry, I said Manasseh didn't I am in that lack of faithfulness Is disastrous in its consequences And we have a choice between being blessed by God being one of his people enjoying his presence Enjoying life and the peace and the joy gives us or Experiencing his discipline now he disciplines us because he loves us And he will discipline us he's committed to disciplining us because he loves us because he wants us to learn Whether it be by the easy way or the hard way The way to live so that we can experience his joy. That's what John 15's about that we read about in our declaration of the gospel this morning Now we see here in this passage That Ammon isn't faithful and he here's your blank he increases He increases his guilt. Ammon does whatever he wants Whatever he wants to do He does Whatever he thinks might float his boat or or or be something that would entertain him or help him out He does it in disregard to what his father in heaven was saying to him through his word
So he goes on and does whatever he wants and here's the description that scripture gets of him He increases his guilt Wow None of us would want that you know if we had our lives described you know or a thing written across our tombstone John must grave during his life he increased his guilt How would that be for our little inscription there on our tombstone But that's the inscription that scripture gives to Ammon He increases his guilt How does he increase his guilt by not listening to his father but not looking to him And how does that lack of faithfulness work for him how does it play out? Well, Ammon meets here's your next blank. Ammon meets a terrible and And the writer of scripture here the writer of Hebrews or a writer of chronicles here shows us what that is not only did he die a a slow painful natural death He doesn't do that He only reigns for two years, which is a sign that he's accursed Assign that he's under God's judgment doesn't have a long reign, but but he's assassinated Not only does he die, but he's hated in his death Somebody is there hating him putting him to death Ammon meets a terrible and there in verse 24 For a non-Christian let's talk about us today for a non-Christian Unfateleness ends in hell that's your blank there. Jesus talks plenty about hell Luke Luke 12.5 He talks about those who haven't do don't believe in him that that's there that that's their end Unfateleness for the non-believer for the non-believer in Christ Leads to hell knows the words of Jesus so we don't need to apologize for that For a Christian one who is a son or a daughter of God the father in heaven for a Christian Unfateleness ends in what we've been talking about in Hebrews discipline Discipline that's your blank unfateleness leads to God's Discipline because God has committed to us and he is a loving father to us
Now let's take a look at the other aside of this for Jesus. How does this wind up for Jesus? Well, Jesus is not unfatel Jesus is faithful. How's that work for him? Well, Jesus is faithful and it ends up with him sitting down at the right hand of the here's your blank throne Throne of God in heaven. That's Hebrews 12 too Jesus is faithful and for him here's how that works out He winds up getting getting the most honored place in all the universe The right hand of the throne of God Faithfulness works out. Well, that's the message to us Unfateleness is disaster So for us for us believe in Jesus to go to heaven. That's our blank there to be real clear
So going to heaven is based on believing in Jesus and that's it Not believing in Jesus and and doing all these other kind of things But God says this in this passage and throughout scripture When you become a believer When you become my son or daughter that means I care about you And I'm committed to you to teach you my ways To help you to live your life in a way that's beneficial to you in which you'll experience my blessing And that's what we're talking about here when we come into being a believer in Jesus a member of his church We must be and here's your next line here We must be faithful to experience his blessing in day-to-day life So when we're unfaithful it's we don't lose salvation When we're unfaithful it doesn't mean that we lose being a son of God or a daughter of God When we're unfaithful having come to believe in Jesus where his child just like if I were to disobey my father You were to disobey your parents There's no way you could disobey him or her your parents in a way that would mean you cease to be their child anymore Once you believe in Jesus as many as received him to then he gave the right to become children of God So there's nothing we can do having believed that will cause us not to be his child anymore But because we're his children God says to us here we can wind up like a man here God's discipline is real For us why because he loves us The writer of Chronicles was writing to a group of people who had they'd gone to Babylon with Daniel and those folks And they had returned to the promised lands and they returned to the promised land and Chronicles is written to them by inspiration The Holy Spirit and you know they just they read about themselves in manasa They read about manasa held manasa was unfaithful But when he was in exile and Babylon he repented and God returned him graciously and wonderfully and quickly back to the promised land and back to blessing That was the story of God's people when Chronicles was written They had been evil They had in the nation been exiled in the Babylon and they had been restored to the land and this message of Ammon was a warning to them That though God has graciously restored us While God has graciously shown himself to be our father God has committed To us as his people And part of that commitment part of that love is disciplining us for our own good and for his glory So we have been saved from hell Through faith and Jesus And because of this God loves us and disciplines us The people who originally received the book of Chronicles they had been saved from the hell of their day That was Babylon But this was a message to them That Should you return to unfaithfulness like you were before you went into that discipline over there in Babylon God has committed to Disciplining you so that you can experience his blessing day to day Indeed Jesus shows us in his life that faithfulness is important For for followers of our living God our father in heaven he is faithful The writer of Hebrews holds up to us Jesus As our example of what we should be like in our lives faithful to the point of shedding blood Less God or loving father here's your blank discipline us Less God or loving father discipline us There are a couple ways. What do we mean by discipline a couple of things one God can discipline us through Or via as you have in your outline here under your a point the interest discipline Jesus and the apostles when they write the New Testament they bring up Old Testament themes in here And they speak of God's people us being disciplined through the admonishment of the leaders of the church Through elders in the church admonishing people when they start Getting a stray and and leaving the way of Jesus They admonish people to get back on the way But also we see in scripture that some are excluded From taking the Lord's supper and that same eternal principle exists today that Those who are in sin and unrepentant toward it that Elders of a church exclude that person from taking the Lord's supper As warning to them of we are concerned for you And for your soul and our desire for you is to experience God's blessing and you're not experiencing it now Because of your walking in sin But then also scripture speaks about this official church discipline of excommunication The big the big dirty E word and you know the the New Testament comes up with that idea Born out of the Old Testament principle of exile That is when God comes and calls for repentance and calls for repentance and calls for repentance from a believer and that believer does not repent They show themselves to be a non-believer perhaps and are excluded from the church So that can be the kind of discipline that develops but also there's kind of a more day-to-day unofficial Discipline that God can bring about and that's this B point you have here in your outline That is be discipline by God's removal from you frequent experience of hear your blanks joy and peace That is sometimes God's discipline to us when we are resisting walking in his ways Sometimes is disciplined to us is that removal of our frequent experience of joy and peace And we've already read a couple of passages this morning That speak that speak to this look in your bulletin there at John 15 9 through 11 the declaration the good news of Christ there on the left side
Jesus says is my father's love me so I have loved you Now remain in my love. How do you remain in his love? Jesus answers say if you obey my commands You will remain in my love Then look down at the end of that I told you this So that my joy may be in you and that's your joy may be complete How do you experience how do you have frequent daily day-to-day joy in your life It's by obeying his commands Abiding in his love Having the sense of God's love around us of joy in our hearts our mind and our souls Regardless of the circumstances that are that are surrounding us Jesus defines it here Why am I telling you to obey me? Jesus says here in John 15. Why am I telling you to obey me? Why am I telling you to be faithful? Because I want your joy my joy to be in you And I want your joy to be complete Or when we looked at Romans 8 6 It says that the mindset on the spirit the mind controlled by the spirit is life and peace And the mindset on the spirit is doing the will of God Paul writes for us there So as we do God's will as we live out what he's how he's told us to love him and love our neighbor Which is all of his commands and those two categories loving him and loving neighbor As this comes about is we're doing this we are experiencing peace How do we get joy in peace and we all we all know this in our lives I've made it I've made a crazy decision I've made it earlier in my life and then I quit doing it for a while And when we were going through our Sunday school series on the 10 commandments and we talked about I'm not taking the Lord's name in vain You know in vain means empty Don't have Christ's name beyond you and have it count for nothing Just to be a name an empty name that has no effect in your life I started thinking about this again at speed limit God says Thories over us. I've been sent by him and we should obey our authorities. I love to speed um, I love Pritchard Road over here. I love taking curves as fast as I can possibly take him I downshift. I use the laws of physics. You engineers out there. I love vectors Apply that brick apply that accelerator into halfway into that curve man and you hug that thing around and and I would love to go to Germany Right in the Autobahn It gives me great thrill I once got to the airport here from From my old neighborhood up there in like 32 minutes. I was in the airport Because I was late for a plane flight. I just I just love that But I realized God's name on me counted for nothing In that and so I think that's a good application now that I go back and I go back and forth on that But you know what I have when I ride in the road now with my right now cruise control in my car I've got peace There's never a time I set that thing at 25 miles per hour when I'm in a 25 mile per hour zone And when I'm pumped up to 35 you know where I'm talking about if you're going out of Neil Street Out to this way or if you're coming back in some of you know that 25 mile per hour zone Yes As you come in cover bridge road onto Neil Street there and it proves down to 25 It's easy to be going 45 right there But I knock that thing down and hit it so that when I go by and there's that Clayton police officer sitting there at K&W Auto service or our first batch of street parking lot. I don't have to worry. I've got peace Silly example navy, but it's part of you know when we'll bigots law We have peace We got us told us to do something it was hard to do but we do it anyway We have joy don't we? We know it was hard. We know we obeyed and we know I did the right thing I'm gonna feel good about that I remember growing up as a kid as a non-believer even I knew the weeks we went To worship I felt good Now I never wanted to go before But once I went and I got in that service and I heard this song song and I heard God's word red I felt good. I experienced joy My soul knew this was right for me to do and that's what Jesus is concerned about That's what our got our fathers concerned about he wants us to experience joy in our lives He wants us to have peace in our souls and he says the way to do that is to be faithful As we talked about a few weeks ago, God is not up in heaven with the fly-swatter waiting to knock us down when we're on faithful and one little thing God is up in heaven waiting on the edge of his seat so to speak To bless us Waiting for us to to follow him to be faithful in some way so that he can shower his blessing Down upon us. That is his that is his bent that is that the direction he is bent toward So God's removal from you a frequent experience of joy and peace can be his discipline And joy and peace your couple of blanks will knock out all it all quick for you Joy and peace come from being controlled. That's from Romans 8 controlled by the spirit Which is defined as this is from John 15 which is defined as obeying Jesus commands How you know someone's controlled by the spirit a good indicator Is it there obeying Jesus command love their neighbor and the love God When we obey then next blank we experience in our daily lives joy and peace This is how God is set up the world This is how God is hardwired our souls To experience joy and peace as we follow him Second thing and this is kind of just an end an end note here a final note for those who are in in fidelity to God There are always people in a group And probably all of us if we looked there are areas of our lives where we know I really should be doing this But I just don't have the What they call it with nuclear reactions the the core you need a certain amount for the Atomic explosion to happen. What is that? Critical mass. I just don't have the critical mass of will To do whatever it is that I'm that I'm thinking about where I'm I know I'm not quite being Faithful to God. Here's what I remind you of I remind you of the gospel And the gospel is the message that quick Jesus quickly receives sinners. That's your blank We see it over and over again. You don't have to go very far in any of the first four books of the Bible to see That Jesus is always quickly receiving sinners When we come to Jesus in repentance we don't have a period in front of us of of two weeks or one day Or two years where we're going to have to pay penance before he's going to smile at us Rather we have the prodigal son's father who's running to us before we can even get on the property
Jesus quickly receives sinners we see a hint of that in Ammon here We read in this short little passage, but unlike his father manasa He did not humble himself. He did not repent before the Lord. So I came to this dreadful end Those words, but unlike his father manasa. What's that mean? It means had he been like his father manasa The Lord would have extended his reign He wouldn't have been assassinated God would have blessed him greatly in his daily life. God was waiting to do that But he wasn't like his father manasa It's almost God cared that he was unfaithful But in the sense you understand the sense that I'm saying is God didn't God doesn't care about our past He cares about what we're doing right now in our hearts and our minds regarding him Manasa was the most labeled as the most evil king ever to reign over juda responsible for the exile The second king tells us But God doesn't care what he cares about is that manasa when he was exiled turned to the Lord and said what have I done? And the Lord gets him out of his prison in Babylon and sends him back restores him on his throne And he's the longest reigning king ever over God's people other than Jesus God cares about where we are right now And his quick is waiting to quickly Bless us always willing to receive sinners. He's not gonna tell us. I told you so I think that's what we're all afraid of when we realize we've been doing wrong If I admit this God will say I told you so and then he'll be sour Dower faced with me for the next two years. I don't want to face that But that's not the way God is with God Experiencing here's your next blank experiencing a lack of blessing is easily. That's your blank easily Remedyed that's the message here Experiencing a lack of joy Experiencing a lack of peace experiencing God's discipline is easily remedied by repentance By humbling ourselves before God and say I know this has been wrong I've known it's wrong and I've been doing this God's waiting for us to say that and eager to bless us last thing So no matter what you've done in your life no matter what you're involved in right now God is always ready to bless you But he does it Here's your blank through Through your repentance That's the key that's the message of this text And then could have been like manasa and repentance could have met with wild blessing 55 years of a rain, but instead there's no repentance there And ammon's life is cut short
God is a gracious God. We see this in Jesus in the New Testament. We see this with Jesus in the Old Testament as well In the lives of kings like manasa And ammon here Let our lives not be like ammon Unwilling to simply turn to God To seek His face But let our lives be like manasa When we find ourselves having gone astray So quickly repent and turn to God and to trust this truth That God is waiting to bless us Immediately Upon the repentance. Let's pray Our God Father we are grateful to you that you are Such a God That you see our frailty that you see our rebellion And that you are ever ready to receive the sinner That you're ever ready to receive your son or your daughter Who's gone astray Just like you demonstrated Jesus and you're parable of that prodigal son You are that Father running out to greet us Causes to be wise enough to go back home We ask Jesus in your name