Secret of Successful Kings

Seeking God, the Secret of Successful Kings 

© 2012 WF Cobb Truthbase.net  DailyTruthbase.Blogspot.com

Set heart and soul (decisions and delights) to seek God and His will/blessings wholeheartedly

1Ch 22:19 (David to Solomon) Now set/devote your heart and your soul to seek the LORD your God.

Dt 4:29 But from there you will seek the LORD your God, and you will find Him if you seek Him with all your heart and with all your soul.

2Ch 12:14 Rehoboam did evil (forsook law and God). because he did not prepare/cause his heart to be established to seek Yahweh

Ps 10:4 The wicked (who know & don't obey law -Ps 50:16,23) in his proud wrath does not seek God; God is in none of his thoughts.

Ps 14:1 The fool has said in his heart," There is no God." They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none who does good. 2 The LORD looks down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there are any who understand, who seek God. 3 They have all turned aside, they have together become corrupt; there is none who does good, no, not one. 4 Have all the workers of iniquity no knowledge, who eat up my people as they eat bread, and do not call on the LORD? 5 There they are in great fear, for God is with the generation of the righteous.

2Ch 19:3 Nevertheless Jehosaphat there are good things found in you...taken away groves...and have prepared/set your heart to seek God

Ezra 7:10 For Ezra had prepared his heart to seek the Law of the LORD, and to do it, and to teach statutes and ordinances in Israel.

Exclusive allegiance (leave to cleave) [What have you denied yourself in order to seek God this past week/year?]

1Ch 16:11 (ark) seek the LORD and His strength; seek His face evermore! Remember His works...wonders...judgments...covenant

1Sam 7:3 return to Yahweh with all your hearts, put away foreign gods, set your hearts for Yahweh, serve Him only; and He will deliver

2Ch 11:16 from all the tribes of Israel, who set their heart to seek Yahweh...came to Jerusalem to sacrifice to the God of their fathers.

Ezra 6:21 returned from the captivity..ate with all who had separated themselves from the filth of the nation in order to seek Yahweh

Ps 78:7 That they may set their hope in God, and not forget the works of God, but keep His commandments; 8 and not be like their fathers, a stubborn and rebellious generation, a generation that did not set its heart aright, and whose spirit was not faithful to God.

2Ch 15:12 (Asa) Then they entered into a covenant to seek the LORD God of their fathers with all their heart and with all their soul; 13 and whoever would not seek the LORD God of Israel was to be put to death, whether small or great, whether man or woman.

Enquire Daily for His will, and your wants and needs [“What's Your will for me this evening/weekend Lord?”]

Ps 34:10 The young lions lack and suffer hunger; but those who seek the LORD shall not lack any good thing. (cf Ps 84:11)

2Ch 20:3 Jehoshaphat feared, and set himself to seek Yahweh 4 Judah gathered to ask help from Yahweh...they came to seek Yahweh

2Ch 27:6 So Jotham became mighty, because he ordered/caused his ways to be established before the face of Yahweh his God.

2Ch 16:12 Asa became diseased in his feet, and his malady was severe; yet in his disease he did not seek the LORD, but the physicians.

Isa 31:1 Woe...go to Egypt for help, rely on horses, Who trust...But who do not look to the Holy One of Israel, nor seek the LORD!

Keep, know and do wholeheartedly, all that's right in the sight of God (including influencing others – selling on change)

Ps 105:3 Let the hearts of those rejoice, who seek Yahweh! 4 Seek the LORD and His strength; seek His face/favor evermore! 1Ch 16:11

2Ch 14:4 Asa commanded Judah to seek the LORD God of their fathers, and to observe the law and the commandment.

2Ch 26:4 Uzziah did that which was right in the sight of Yahweh, acc to all that his father Amaziah 5 He set himself to seek God in the days of Zechariah, who had understanding in the vision (instructed him in the fear) of God: and as long as he sought Yahweh, God made him to prosper.

Isa 55:6 seek the LORD while He may be found, Call upon Him while He is near.

Hosea 5:6 With their flocks they shall go to seek the LORD, But they will not find Him; He has withdrawn Himself from them.

Jer 26:19 Did Hezekiah king...fear the LORD and seek his favor? And the LORD relented concerning the doom which He had pronounced

Hosea 3:5 the children of Israel shall return and seek Yahweh their God..They shall fear Yahewh and His goodness in the latter days.

Zeph 2:3 seek the LORD, all you meek of the earth, who have worked/upheld His justice. seek righteousness, seek humility....

Acts 15:17 (rebuild) So that the rest of mankind may seek the LORD, even all the Gentiles by whom My name is called, says the LORD 17:27

Heb 11:6 6 without faith it is impossible to please Him...must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him

Mt 6:33 But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. Cf Rm 2:7; Col 3; Heb 11:6

Questions for Reflection/Discussion/Response:

1. How can you tell what a person seeks? What do people seek if they don't seek God? What does seeking God look like?

2. How many significant, valuable and eternally worthwhile things happen automatically or by accident? What makes them a reality?

3. How are seeking God, knowing/obeying His word, trusting Him, and prosperity related? What roles do accountability/submission play?

4. If the chronicler were to summarize and evaluate your life in a couple of sentences, what would they say? What would you want them to say?

5. What do you need to do to set your heart and soul to seek God this week/year? Will it be different or better than last week/year? Why? 

Week in Review - Questions on Judgment and Generations

Here's a question I was asked about the above, and a blurb in reply. Questions: I've been really enjoying Daily Truthbase. I did, however, have one question. The readings have, recently, talked about how God/God's actors strike down not only wicked kings, but also their children (Ps 109:9-10). How do you reconcile that with the western idea of individual, rather than corporate, responsibility (as in, you're not responsible for what your parents did wrong as long as you did good)? Also, somewhat related, how do you reconcile limited government with the Old Testament? As in, the kings tended to be frowned upon if they didn't remove pagan places of worship (I think it was Asa who did everything right, except for removing the high places).  Answers: Good questions. They show you're thinking (haven't you been warned about that?). The first is the trickier one to answer, because you have the command in Dt 24:16 "Fathers shall not be put to death for their children, nor shall children be put to death for their fathers; a person shall be put to death for his own sin." Which was actually obeyed in 2 Kings 14:6 "But the children of the murderers he did not execute, according to what is written in the Book of the Law of Moses, in which the LORD commanded, saying, "Fathers shall not be put to death for their children, nor shall children be put to death for their fathers; but a person shall be put to death for his own sin."" Then you have situations like Jehu, where he is anointed to wipe out the entire house of Ahab. As well as God's self revelation in Ex 34:7 "keeping hesed for thousands (of generations), forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children's children to the third and the fourth generation." And the passage you cited in Ps 109:9-10.  First let's distinguish between death and punishment. Death is total removal of a sinner from the community so the sin doesn't infect others. Wiping out the house of Ahab was to prevent any of the sons (who were already willing participants in Baal worship and thus worthy of death) for following in their father's footsteps. Anyone not walking according to the covenant and serving other gods was to be stoned. So in many, if not all, cases, the kids are following the parents' example and are worthy of death due to their own guilt. It in the Ancient Near East it was a big thing to have a heritage, and descendants to carry on your name. So an incentive to obey, was that your descendants would be cut off, either physically via death, or from blessing. Now the question becomes, is the kid punished for the sins of the parent? Yes and no. One could argue that the parents are responsible for training their kids, and failure to do so makes them the cause of the kids sin. On the other hand, all kids sin, and God would be just in punishing them for their own sin. Take the example in Ps 109. A wicked demonic parent is not going to have godly kids, hence the punishment  the psalmist asks for would be justly earned by the kid (there's no guarantee that they will get punished, the psalmist is just asking for it). Each of us commits enough sin on our own to merit punishment. God does extend grace in not letting the lightening strike every time we step over the line. God extends even more grace in forgiving and pardoning, and not having people reap the full consequences of their actions when they repent. The kids of the evil guy in Ps 109 could repent and reap blessing instead of cursing if they follow God. The likelihood of that happening is slim, but in Judah in Chronicles, you do have good kings following bad kings, and getting blessed, and bad kings repenting and having the announced punishment postponed (until the next time they step out of line).  The conclusion is that each person does indeed get judged/punished for their own sin. The deck is stacked a little against the kid of great sinners, but there are accounts of great sinners being followed by good people like Hezekiah. There is no account of a good kid getting punishment because of the parent that I know of. If there were, God would be unjust. The second question is resolved in understanding a theocracy. God is the supreme ruler. (See the Border Sacrifice in China and the Divine Righteousness of Kings in Genesis.) It was the role of a king to rule as the vice-regent of a god, and execute the god's rule in a territory. The kings of Judah were not autonomous agents, nor elected by the people, but were put in place by God to execute His rule and judgments, and evaluated on the basis of having done that or not. Yahweh was their king, and the earthly king, as His agent, was supposed to do God's will, which included shepherding God's people. God has specified the Israelite "constitution" and the even had the "consent of the governed", although in a different sense than Locke.  If the governed consented to God's rule they got blessed. If they rebelled, they got cursed, punished or destroyed. Removing pagan worship centers was a major task of Israel and her kings, which demonstrated loyalty to Yahweh. Failure to do so was disloyalty, and set up the nation for punishment, famine, invasion, etc. So in order to protect life, liberty and property (pursuit of happiness), the pagan worship needed to be eliminated. That was the Law of the land. If you've been following DailyTruthbase from the beginning, God's purpose in creating the nation of Israel as a holy, separate, distinct people, was not just to judge the pagans, but to make it clear that He was doing it, and to provide a point of contact between the world and Himself in a comprehensible way, ie, the Law.  Limited government isn't necessarily a Biblical principle, although considering what form a government should take is beyond the scope of this response. I'll touch on it when we get to the NT.  The NT recognizes individual liberty and conscience, and the responsibility of submission to a local Body of believers (submission is in the grey areas), but also the role of government for rewarding good and punishing evil (if a government fails to carry out this function, per Rm 13, one can wonder if it is a government ordained by God). The NT allows for governmental structures that are not a theocracy. Even in the OT, it is clear that God used Syria, Assyria, and Babylon as His agents in carrying out His purposes, but without the covenantal/constitutional arrangement He had with Israel, the only legitimate theocracy in history, in my opinion.