God’s Word for You
2 Chronicles 13:10-12 Christ our head
by Pastor Timothy Smith on Friday, November 22, 2024
10 “But as for us, the LORD is our God, and we have not forsaken him. The priests who serve the LORD are sons of Aaron, and the Levites assist them. 11 They present burnt offerings and fragrant incense to the LORD morning after morning and evening after evening. They set out the regular rows of bread on the ceremonially clean table and they light the lamps on the gold lampstand evening after evening. We are keeping the requirements of the LORD our God. But you have forsaken him. 12 God is with us. He is our head. His priests with their trumpets will sound the battle cry against you. Men of Israel, do not fight against the LORD, the God of your fathers, for you will not succeed.”
Abijah’s speech concludes with an even more stinging accusation: “We have not forsaken God, but you have.” Where were the daily offerings to the LORD in the north? Were there morning and evening sacrifices that the high priest would offer up there at Dan and at Bethel? Was there anything like a high priest in the north at all? Were the loaves of showbread being set out in their “regular rows” in the Holy Place? Was the golden lampstand being lit?
The calf worship was nothing but a cult—this was Abijah’s point, and he hoped it would sway some of Jeroboam’s followers to come over to his side. He says, “God is with us.” And again: “God is our head.” This is taken up by Paul: “The head of every man is Christ” (1 Corinthians 11:3).
To a believer, Abijah’s words ring true. They stir the heart. The king is right; any worship apart from the worship of the true God is wrong, is useless, is frivolous, and more to the point, is sinful. The believer will feel the prick of the law in his conscience, and be turned through the gospel to full repentance. He will ask, “How must I change?” But the wicked, the opponents of God, “never change their ways and have no fear of God” (Psalm 55:19). Therefore, to the unbeliever, the words of Abijah are hollow, the desperate shout of a man about to die on the battlefield. Yet Abijah’s grandfather said: “the righteous man is rescued from trouble, and it comes on the wicked instead” (Proverbs 11:8).
In verse 11, Abijah describes the holy bread as being set in “regular rows,” or “ranks.” This is the word m‘areket, the same word used by God when he explained to Moses how he wanted the bread to be arranged “in rows” (or stacks?) on the small table of the bread in the tabernacle (Leviticus 24:6-7). While the “rows” are often described as stacks, something like pancakes, in commentaries by speculative Jews and by speculative Gentiles, the text in Leviticus also says that incense was to be poured “along each row” to be lit on fire, “pure incense as a memorial portion to represent the bread and to be an offering made to the Lord by fire” (Leviticus 24:7). Sometimes battle lines were also described with a similar word, as when Goliath stood and shouted to the “ranks” or rows of Israelites soldiers (1 Samuel 17:8).
You have your ranks, Jeroboam, lots and lots of warriors. But the people of Judah have the ranks of the showbread properly set where the Lord wants them to be. You have your ranks, Satan, lots and lots of your demons lined up against the people of God—vulnerable, hurting, swamped human beings, body and soul, struggling in this storm of chaos and fury that you have stirred up in the world to a frenzy of filth and wild temptations to doubt and turn to anyone other than the Lord. But we have Christ. Our head. He has lined up ranks of angels to watch over us and to fight unseen battles which we know almost nothing about, except that the battles are real, and that you, you lying devil, keep losing. Our God is Jesus Christ, and we will continue to put our trust in him. Through him our sins are forgiven. Through him we are at peace with God. Through him we have a place forever in heaven, a place that you, Belial, lost when you rebelled. But our rebellions are forgiven. And we love our living God.
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in New Ulm, Minnesota. To receive God’s Word for You via e-mail, please visit the St. Paul’s Lutheran Church website.