God Disciplines a Rebellious People

Leader Guide ESV, Unit 15, Session 5

© 2019 LifeWay Christian Resources. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute within the license agreement with purchaser. Edited by Rev. Lex DeLong, M.A., Mar. 2023.

Summary and Goal

God is a God of mercy and patience, but when His word is continually rejected, correction and judgment is certain.

In the closing chapter of 2 Chronicles, Judah finally suffered the consequences of her idolatrous actions. God’s prophets had warned the kings of Judah to repent, but their compassionate appeals fell upon deaf ears.

This rejection of God’s prophets and His word resulted in hardened hearts, outright rebellion, and God’s punishment.

Yet as Judah ultimately discovered, God administers discipline as a means of grace in hope of restoration. We too should understand God’s discipline as an act of compassion. For those who repent of their rebellion against God, there is a promise of mercy and future hope.

Session Outline

++Rebellion against God results when the heart is hardened (2 Chron. 36:11-14).

++Rebellion against God results when God’s Word is rejected (2 Chron. 36:15-16a).

++Rebellion against God results in God’s wrath [response] being stirred (2 Chron. 36:16b-21).

Background Passage: 2 Chronicles 36

Session in a Sentence

God’s wrath is just, yet it is not [never] without the promise of grace and mercy to those who repent of their rebellion against Him.

Christ Connection

God righteously punished His people for their sin, but He remained faithful to them and kept the promise He had made to David to preserve a remnant and provide a king.

Ultimately, God punishes sin, but offers grace and mercy through His Son, Jesus, for all who repent of their sin.

DDG (p. 112) Rabbi Kushner’s conclusions on God and the problem of evil.

In 1981, Rabbi Harold Kushner penned his book “When Bad Things Happen to Good People,” raising important theological questions about the existence of God, His goodness, and His authority over evil in the world. Kushner, having experienced the death of his teenage son after a lifelong illness, addresses these questions in a winsome and personal manner, making it easy for readers to resonate with his conclusions.

While Kushner is to be lauded for writing a candid book asking readers to wrestle with such important questions related to God and the problem of evil, unfortunately, his theological conclusions are less than biblical.

Essentially he concludes that while God is good and just, the random chaos in the universe is outside His power. The wrongs of life, whether occurring to a “good” or “bad” person, are simply a result of chance and completely unrelated to personal behavior.

Ask:

What are some explanations you have heard for why bad things happen to good people?

(everything is the result of random chance; there is no God; God is not good; God is not all-knowing; God is not all-powerful; God does not care; God is evil and capricious; there are no good people)

The author of Chronicles wrote from a distinctly different theological vantage point than Kushner because he believed in an omnipotent God who is sovereign over His world where “whatever one sows, that will he also reap,” generally speaking (Gal. 6:7; see also Job 4:8; Prov. 11:5).

Galatians 6:7 NASB95

7 Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, this he will also reap.

Job 4:8 NASB95

8 “According to what I have seen, those who plow iniquity And those who sow trouble harvest it.

Proverbs 11:5 NASB95

5 The righteousness of the blameless will smooth his way, But the wicked will fall by his own wickedness.

The theological truth that we reap what we sow is clearly in play as we survey the demise of the kingdom of Judah as recorded in 2 Chronicles.

God had repeatedly sent prophets to warn Judah of the consequences of their habitual rebellion.

God’s promised discipline of His people by means of the Babylonians. The rejection of God’s prophets and His word resulted in hardened hearts, outright rebellion, and God’s punishment. Yet as Judah ultimately discovered, God administers discipline as a means of grace in hope of restoration. We too should understand God’s discipline as an act of compassion. For those who repent of their rebellion against God, there is the promise of mercy and future hope.

Point 1: Rebellion against God results when the heart is hardened (2 Chron. 36:11-14).

Read 2 Chronicles 36:11-14 (DDG p. 113).

11 Zedekiah was twenty-one years old when he began to reign, and he reigned eleven years in Jerusalem. 12 He did what was evil in the sight of the Lord his God. He did not humble himself before Jeremiah the prophet, who spoke from the mouth of the Lord. 13 He also rebelled against King Nebuchadnezzar, who had made him swear by God. He stiffened his neck and hardened his heart against turning to the Lord, the God of Israel. 14 All the officers of the priests and the people likewise were exceedingly unfaithful, following all the abominations of the nations. And they polluted the house of the Lord that he had made holy in Jerusalem.

DDG (p. 113)

The last of Judah’s kings was Zedekiah, who reigned for eleven years. He was a deceptive ruler, based on his interactions with foreign nations. Though he was installed as king over Judah by Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, and swore an oath of allegiance by God, he only pretended to submit to Babylon while simultaneously wooing Egypt for help in defeating Babylon (Ezek. 17:11-21). Zedekiah broke his oath when he thought it suited him politically and militarily.

The chronicler dedicated more space to recording the acts of good kings over evil kings. For example, chapters 34–35 are devoted to describing the thirty-one-year reign of Josiah, Judah’s last godly king.

In contrast, the author condenses the reigns of Judah’s last four kings, totaling around twenty-two years, into just fourteen verses in chapter 36. Kings Jehoahaz, Jehoiakim, Jehoiachin, and Zedekiah lacked not only competency as rulers but, more importantly, devotion to God. Each one “did what was evil in the sight of the Lord” (see 2 Kings 23:32; 2 Chron. 36:5,9,12).

Zedekiah was a prideful ruler who refused to listen to God’s prophet. As the Babylonians laid siege to Jerusalem, the prophet Jeremiah counseled Zedekiah to surrender to King Nebuchadnezzar in hopes of saving the city and the people (Jer. 21:8-10; 27:8-15; 38:1-3,17-18).

Instead of obeying, he allowed Jeremiah to be imprisoned (Jer. 37–38). Over time, Zedekiah’s pride resulted in a hardening of his heart toward the Lord. He thought he knew best, and as a result, he failed to grasp his dependency on the Lord’s counsel and soon witnessed the consequences of his pride.

Pride has a dangerous numbing effect

Pride has a dangerous numbing effect on our lives in that it inhibits our ability to fully grasp or even recognize our dependency on the Lord. When pride thrives, our lives are marked by a lack of forgiveness, strangled communication, and ignoring godly counsel. Pride also keeps us from being great, as properly defined by Jesus (Mark 10:42-45).

Ask:

What are some ways we demonstrate pride in our lives?

(we refuse to listen to counsel from God’s Word and God’s people; we make choices to do what we want to do without concern for God’s desires; we choose to sin; we belittle others to make ourselves look important; we forget to pray; we forsake the gathering of the church)

DDG (p. 113)

“Sin will take you farther than you want to go, keep you longer than you want to stay, and cost you more than you want to pay.”

Zedekiah most certainly experienced this reality in his life. And worse, the ramifications of his actions seeped down from the king’s palace to the home of the common peasant. Even the priests, those commissioned with maintaining the temple’s purity, were involved in revolting acts. Zedekiah and his people, therefore, paid a steep price for their sin and hardened hearts—Judah and Jerusalem’s utter destruction.

Voices from the Church (Nancy Leigh DeMoss)

“Pride manifests itself in so many subtle but lethal ways. In my own life, pride can sometimes be seen in a hidden desire for the praise and admiration of men, an insistence on being ‘right,’ the desire to be noticed and appreciated, fear of rejection, or just preoccupation with myself—my feelings, my needs, my circumstances, my burdens, my desires, my successes, my failures. These are all fruits of that deadly root of pride.” 1

· Judah was merely twenty years removed from the revival experienced under King Josiah. Zedekiah was around ten years old when his father, King Josiah, died. He was old enough to remember a time when a godly man ruled Judah. At that time, it would have been unimaginable for the priests to defile the temple with pagan worship practices. Yet this was the state of Judah under Zedekiah’s weak leadership, as Zedekiah along with the priests and the people defiled the temple by engaging in the detestable religious practices of the pagan nations. Instead of giving himself over to God’s glory in humility, Zedekiah pursued his own glory because of his pride.

Point 2: Rebellion against God results when God’s Word is rejected (2 Chron. 36:15-16a).

Read 2 Chronicles 36:15-16a (DDG p. 114).

15 The Lord, the God of their fathers, sent persistently to them by his messengers, because he had compassion on his people and on his dwelling place. 16a But they kept mocking the messengers of God, despising his words and scoffing at his prophets,

DDG (p. 114)

In 2 Chronicles 36:15, the author highlights God’s familial love for the people of Judah, displayed in His compassion and patience.

God longs for His people to repent without the use of discipline, so He granted them a season of mercy to respond to His loving appeals through the prophets. We shouldn’t pass over this without considering our own lives and how God does the same for us.

Sometimes God’s compassion comes in the form of a friend who comes to rebuke us because of sin they perceive in our lives. The word of correction may sting, but sometimes it takes a sting to grab our attention.

Three ways God demonstrated familial love for the people of Judah:

++God’s Persistent Faithfulness

++God’s repeatedly sent prophets

++God’s unfaltering compassion

· First, the chronicler speaks to the long-term nature of God’s relationship with Judah in referring to the Lord as “the God of their fathers.” Pointing to the past, the chronicler recalls to the reader’s mind God’s persistent faithfulness throughout the generations. The Lord delivered their ancestors out of Egypt, fed them with manna and quail from heaven while in the desert, and secured for them a great victory over the Canaanites as they entered and conquered the promised land.

· Second, we read that God repeatedly sent prophets (e.g., Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Habakkuk, Zephaniah) to warn Judah of the consequences of her disobedience. The author’s use of the word “persistently” conveys the idea of a father pleading with a wayward child to turn from a destructive path.

· Third, we are told that the posture of God’s heart was shaped by compassion for His people and His temple, even after Judah’s continual disobedience.

Ask:

What are some ways (good or bad) that we might respond to correction, and what might those responses reveal about a person’s heart?

(rejection, showing pride and hardness of heart; justification for actions, revealing a self-centered heart; repentance, revealing a humble heart before the Lord)

DDG (p. 114)

Zedekiah surely did not take the crown desiring for his kingdom’s demise. His intentions for his reign likely were good; unfortunately:

Good intentions devoid of godly character never end well.

Zedekiah’s pride bears its fruit in verse 16 as he and the people reject God’s word through His prophets. Zedekiah lacked the ears to hear God’s counsel and lacked the eyes to see God’s imminent judgment.

· In examining Judah’s rebellion, we learn that pride leads us to reject God’s Word, and in its place we cling to something that better suits our sinful desires. Pride grows in our lives in the most diabolical way—imperceptibly from within our own hearts. Before we know it, pride has affected our ability to see rightly our own ugliness. The apostle Paul’s call to renew our minds daily (see Rom. 12:2; Eph. 4:22-24) becomes all the more urgent when we consider the deceptive nature of pride.

Pride is the soil in which all manner of sin germinates and grows, whether it is envy, bitterness, greed, deceit, hypocrisy, or arrogance.

Consider Proverbs 16:18-19: “Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall. It is better to be of a lowly spirit with the poor than to divide the spoil with the proud.”

Fill in the blanks: DDG (p. 114)

Sin as Rebellion: Because the Bible portrays people as responsible beings, called to respond in faith and obedience to God’s revelation, the Bible often portrays sin in terms of defiance and rebellion toward God the King.

Isaiah 1:2 is one of many passages that describes sin in terms of rebellion against God: “Children have I reared and brought up, but they have rebelled against me.” Seen in this light, sin is personal and willful disobedience, the raising of a clenched fist toward the One who made us.

Ask:

What are some ways we might disdain or reject God’s Word because of our pride?

(not read it; refuse to submit to the preaching/teaching of God’s Word; defy God’s Word in our sin; misuse God’s Word to justify our sinful actions)

Point 3: Rebellion against God results in God’s wrath [response] being stirred (2 Chron. 36:16b-21).

God’s wrath isn’t discussed much these days. It doesn’t really align with today’s modern sensibilities. It is thought to be too callous, too judgmental, too narrow-minded.

But because the doctrine of God’s wrath is not in vogue is all the more reason for Christians to understand what the Bible teaches about it.

Read: 2 Chronicles 36:16b-21 (DDG p. 115).

16b until the wrath of the Lord rose against his people, until there was no remedy.

17 Therefore he brought up against them the king of the Chaldeans, who killed their young men with the sword in the house of their sanctuary and had no compassion on young man or virgin, old man or aged. He gave them all into his hand. 18 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 of his princes, all these he brought to Babylon. 19 And 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. 20 He took into exile in Babylon those who had escaped from the sword, and they became servants to him and to his sons until the establishment of the kingdom of Persia, 21 to fulfill the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed its Sabbaths. All the days that it lay desolate it kept Sabbath, to fulfill seventy years.

DDG (p. 115)

For too long, the kings, priests, and people of Judah rejected God’s word through His prophets. God’s wrath was finally stirred up against Judah, with her stiffened neck and hardened heart, and “no remedy” remained. In the absence of any repentance in the hearts of His people or their king, the Lord’s ax of judgment was now set in motion with no recourse for stopping it. Like a tool in the hand of God, Nebuchadnezzar and the Chaldeans obliterated Jerusalem.

· The Babylonians’ approach to war was nothing less than barbaric as they massacred the people.

The godly suffered along with the ungodly.

Children suffered for their parents’ sins.

Even those who sought the protection of the temple were killed—a sign that God’s wrath could not be evaded. The temple was looted and burned and the city walls were destroyed as Judah reaped the evil she had sown.

· Some have misguidedly referred to the God of the Old Testament as a moral monster for His wrath demonstrated in passages such as 2 Chronicles 36. But this unbiblical belief fails to understand that God’s anger is how goodness responds to evil.

Our Hollywood vigilante heroes are all born out of a longing for the wrongs of this life to be righted. God has placed within us a sense of His existence and attributes. One of those attributes is an innate desire for evil to be corrected. All these super heroes are the object of our subconscious’ longing for this confrontation of evil to be stopped and right to be established. Yet, many struggle with God’s “right” to manifest the same longing.

God’s attributes are never to be pitted against one another; rather, they are to be understood as working in concert. The biblical authors saw God’s goodness and holiness as tied to His right and willingness to exercise judgment.

God’s wrath is in perfect proportion to human sinfulness (Rom. 2:5; Prov. 24:12). God is always just in His execution of judgment against sinners.

Ask:

What problems arise if we downplay God’s wrath in our theology?

(God ceases to be a God of justice; we have no expectation of God’s just judgment against sin, either in the present or in eternity; we lose a proper understanding of the cross of Christ as Jesus taking our punishment for sin upon Himself to save us and give us eternal life)

DDG (p. 115)

It’s counterintuitive to think God’s wrath against Judah was for her good, but God always accomplishes His good purposes through His actions.

Proclaiming the faithfulness and grace of God, the chronicler stated that Judah’s purification and restoration from her waywardness would come through temporary judgment—a remnant survived the destruction and seventy-year exile and received a promise to return home. These promises were communicated through the prophet Jeremiah, the one King Zedekiah refused to listen to (Jer. 29:10; 33:7-8) and was read by Daniel in Daniel 9:2.

· Rebellion against God unfailingly leads to painful consequences, even when genuine repentance occurs. The exiled remnant would experience God’s forgiveness, but it wasn’t without great loss.

God knew punishment was necessary for His faithfulness and justice and to bring His people to repentance and restoration, hence the reason His judgment was an act of compassion.

Fill in the blanks: DDG (p. 115)

· God’s judgment for the sin of believers has already fallen upon Christ on the cross; therefore, God’s wrath no longer remains for those who are in Christ (Rom. 8:1). Instead, God uses only faithful, loving discipline to correct His beloved children in their sin and guide them on the path of holiness.

· When experiencing seasons of adversity, the mature believer in Christ questions if the adversity is simply the result of human fallenness or if it’s God’s chastisement for sin that we would repent and return to Him. One way or the other, however, God is disciplining us, and we must not forget that His discipline is for our good and always purposeful (Heb. 12:5-11). Also, we should never interpret God’s discipline to mean He has withdrawn His gift of salvation from us.

My Mission

God knew all along that Judah’s rebellion needed a greater solution than the Babylonian exile. The exile served only as a temporary bandage to an eternal sin problem.

A greater, everlasting judgment was and is coming, and a perfect sacrifice is the only remedy. God, therefore, kept His promise to King David in preserving a remnant and providing a future King—Jesus Christ.

The reality is that God’s wrath against our rebellion is only satisfied in the perfect sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Only when we place our faith in Christ are we able to listen to God’s Word with softened hearts as we proclaim the gospel to a rebellious world in need of rescuing.

DDG (p. 116),

Because the punishment of our sin has been taken from us and paid by Christ, we listen to God’s Word with softened hearts as we proclaim God’s patience and righteousness to others while there is still time for them to repent.

· How will you respond in faith and repentance because of who God is?

· What are some ways your group can use God’s Word for correction and encouragement in the faith?

· With whom will you share God’s call to repentance and faith in Christ this week because of the reality of God’s mercy and justice?

Voices from the Church

“God relentlessly offers his grace to people who do not deserve it, or seek it, or even appreciate it after they have been saved by it.” 2

–Timothy Keller

Close in prayer:

References

1. Nancy Leigh DeMoss, “Nothing Between,” excerpted from Revival Commentary, vol. 2, no. 2, January 29, 2019, https://www.reviveourhearts.com/media/uploads/pdf/articles/NothingBetween.pdf.

2. Timothy Keller, Judges for You (Purcellville, VA: The Good Book Company, 2013) [Wordsearch].

3. Brian E. Kelly, “1 and 2 Chronicles,” in ESV Study Bible (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2008), 798, n. 36:11-16.

4. Havilah Dharamraj, “2 Chronicles,” in South Asia Bible Commentary, gen. ed. Brian Wintle (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2015), 537.

5. J. A. Thompson, 1, 2 Chronicles, vol. 9 in The New American Commentary (Nashville, TN: B&H, 2003) [Wordsearch].

6. Andrew E. Hill, 1 & 2 Chronicles, in The NIV Application Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2015) [Wordsearch].

7. Winfried Corduan, “1, 2 Chronicles,” in CSB Study Bible (Nashville, TN: B&H, 2017), 695, n. 36:15-17.

8. Andrew E. Hill, 1 & 2 Chronicles, in The NIV Application Commentary [Wordsearch].

9. Dan Gentry Kent, “2 Chronicles,” in The IVP Women’s Bible Commentary, eds. Catherine Clark Kroeger, Mary J. Evans, and Elizabeth Kroeger Elliot (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2011) [Wordsearch].