December 23: Cyrus
[Read 2 Chronicles 36:22-23]
If you need something to temper the unbridled joy of the Christmas season, you might want to read the last chapter of 2 Chronicles (Chapter 36). I can guarantee it will curb your enthusiasm.
Here is a rehearsal of the final succession of the kings of Judah. They were awful. In each case, The Chronicler writes, “He did what was evil in the sight of the Lord.” As a result, the people of God spend a generation in exile.
Still, the chapter ends on a hopeful note. Eventually, the king of Babylon was deposed, and a new ruler came on the scene. Cyrus of Persia was a generous ruler, restoring exiled peoples to their homelands. In sending the exiles back to Judah and Jerusalem, he not only gave them permission to rebuild the Temple, but some resources to do so.
Here was an outsider through whom God was keeping God’s promises.
Jesus himself was not the king that the people expected. Born of poor, nearly anonymous parents, a refugee in Egypt, raised in the backwoods of Galilee in a carpenter’s shop.
Yet, through his life, ministry, death, and resurrection, he would be crowned not only as the king of God’s chosen people, but the king of the entire universe, so that “at the name of Jesus, every knee shall bend in heaven and on earth and under the earth.” (Philippians 2:10)
Pastor Jim Honig
Shepherd of the Bay Lutheran – Ellison Bay
If you need something to temper the unbridled joy of the Christmas season, you might want to read the last chapter of 2 Chronicles (Chapter 36). I can guarantee it will curb your enthusiasm.
Here is a rehearsal of the final succession of the kings of Judah. They were awful. In each case, The Chronicler writes, “He did what was evil in the sight of the Lord.” As a result, the people of God spend a generation in exile.
Still, the chapter ends on a hopeful note. Eventually, the king of Babylon was deposed, and a new ruler came on the scene. Cyrus of Persia was a generous ruler, restoring exiled peoples to their homelands. In sending the exiles back to Judah and Jerusalem, he not only gave them permission to rebuild the Temple, but some resources to do so.
Here was an outsider through whom God was keeping God’s promises.
Jesus himself was not the king that the people expected. Born of poor, nearly anonymous parents, a refugee in Egypt, raised in the backwoods of Galilee in a carpenter’s shop.
Yet, through his life, ministry, death, and resurrection, he would be crowned not only as the king of God’s chosen people, but the king of the entire universe, so that “at the name of Jesus, every knee shall bend in heaven and on earth and under the earth.” (Philippians 2:10)
Pastor Jim Honig
Shepherd of the Bay Lutheran – Ellison Bay
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