In 2nd Chronicles Ezra chooses to spend 70% of the time focusing in on the eight kings who did it right and only 30% writing about the 12 wicked kings. Oh, dear ones Isn’t it wonderful to realize that our Lord is much more interested in spending time speaking to us about what we are doing right and only as a point of correction because of His love speaking to us about the things we are doing wrong? Of general observation looking at both of these two books and the time they were written, it seems as though the compiler, Ezra, (who would have been rebuilding the 2nd temple), wanted the nation not to repeat the two mistakes the nation had made.
•In 1 Chronicles Ezra wrote of the importance of the “temple” in the life of the nation. Before David, the nation seemed to say “We can manage without God” and after Saul, they were given a man after God’s own heart who put the worship of the living God at the center of his life and by placing the tabernacle and the building of the temple in his backyard he put worshipping God at the center of national life. David’s passion was the necessity of man’s and a nation’s remembrance of God’s government over all of human affairs.
•2nd Chronicles takes a look at what can happen to men and a nation when what began as worship becomes a mere ritual of religion. Here we see that a form of religion that in the end denies the power of a relationship that God has established, and man is blessed to maintain is utterly worthless, no matter how close a person dwells next to the temple. In the end, religion instead of saying “We can manage without God” drops only the word “without” and says instead, “We can manage God” but the outcome is the same!
Listen carefully to the words of G. Campbell Morgan as he wrote over 100 years ago in his commits about this book. “The Bible knows nothing of the establishment of the Church by the state, but it teaches forevermore that the Church must establish the nation.
In order to do this, formal religion is infinitely worse than none. By formal religion, I mean high Church doctrine without full church life. What is high Church doctrine without full Church life? The doctrine of the Church that is forevermore arguing for the correctness of its views and cursing the man who does not share them!”
“If the Church is not what it ought to be, we have a nation without salt and without light, a nation rushing headlong to Godlessness…” “If that be the national condition, the blame is with the Church of God.” “A world that means business is never going to be influenced by a Church that is playing. What we need is the Church, the temple, filled with the presence of God, flaming in His glory!”