Sermon - Trinity XIII 2023 - 2 Chronicles 28:8-15

Parable of the Good Samaritan, Jan Wijnants, 1670

Who are God’s people?

1. Intro: God’s people are decided by the heart, not merely by external qualities.

2. History of the two kingdoms.

3. The faithful remnant in Samaria is more faithful than Israel.

4. Let us look to the faith in our hearts more than our external qualities.

Today one of my goals for all of us is that by looking at the history of the two kingdoms of Israel and the Samaritans we might better understand the issues with Samaritans in the Gospels in general, and particularly the meaning of the Good Samaritan in today’s parable. Secondly, my bigger overarching goal is that we also ponder the question: who are God’s people?

The lawyer asked Jesus: “Who is my neighbor?” Or from the Old Testament we might phrase it: “Who is my kinsman?” In other words, as Christians we might ask: “Who are God’s people?” The fact of the matter is that like prefers like. The Israelite lawyer would’ve preferred that his neighbors just be priests and levites. The surprising part of Jesus’ parable is that the Samaritan helps the Israelite, because the Samaritans and Israelites do not like each other. You would’ve expected priest or levite to be the good guy, not the Samaritan.

Like prefers like. This is the problem behind racism. Put in the negative sense, racism says I don’t like you because you’re not like me. Put in the positive sense, what racism is for, racism says I like you and prefer you because you are like me. We’re hyper aware of this sort of preference in terms of skin color, but this same thing happens in terms of families. We do this all the time, we prefer someone and will overlook their faults and problems because they’re family. We wouldn’t let others off the hook, but if they share our last name, then we’d let them get away with murder. By this sort of logic we end up saying that God’s people are those we’re related to and who we like.

But that’s explicitly not what we see in our readings today. God’s people aren’t decided based upon external qualities, like family or race or ethnicity. Instead, God’s people are those filled with a living and active faith in their hearts. This is incredible! Instead of fleshly ties to other people, like familial, racial, ethnic, and linguistic, we are connected through the living hope in Christ Jesus. 

To help us see how we come to that conclusion, we have to understand the Biblical history at play in our readings today. Before we can understand 2 Chronicles 28 and Luke 10, we need to remember who the Samaritans are. Go to 2 Chronicles 10. Firstly, you remember Jacob, later named Israel, had twelve sons. During the time of the great famine, Joseph helped bring Israel and his sons all into Egypt. After a few generations, the Israelites were subjected to slavery by the Egyptians and God brought them out of Egypt and eventually into the promised land. The descendents of the twelve sons of Israel were organized into twelve tribes, and God alloted to each tribe a piece of land.

Initially God was the King of the twelve united tribes, known as Israel, and He ruled over the Israelites through human intermediaries called judges. In time the Israelites rejected God as their King and they wanted human kings. So God set over the Israelites King Saul. In time Saul rejected God, so God replaced Saul with King David. After David’s death his son Solomon reigned as king. It should be noted that thus far the twelve tribes were united as one kingdom: Israel. But that unity doesn’t last.

In 2 Chronicles 10 Solomon’s son Rehoboam becomes king of Israel. But as punishment for Solomon’s wicked living, marrying pagan women and worshiping their false gods, God took away most of the kingdom from Solomon’s son, Rehoboam. He did this through a man called Jeroboam. Jeroboam approached Rehoboam on behalf of the northern tribes of Israel, asking that Rehoboam would treat them better. But Rehoboam refused to show them mercy, so Jeroboam led the northern tribes to revolt against the southern tribe of Judah. They said in v. 16: “What portion have we in David? We have no inheritance in the son of Jesse.” So they abandoned Rehoboam as their king.

Rehoboam tried to go to battle against them in order to return them, but God forbade it, saying (ch.11, v.3): “You shall not go up or fight against your relatives. Return every man to his home, for this thing is from me.” Rehoboam and Judah had as their capital Jerusalem, meaning they retained the temple of the Lord. Jeroboam and the northern kingdom made their capital the city of Samaria. Thus, the northern kingdom is Samaria, they are the Samaritans. All of the northern kings did evil and led the Samaritans to worship false gods. The southern kings were a mixed bag, but about ⅓ of them did right.

So, fast forwarding about 150 years to 2 Chronicles 28, these two kingdoms have a long history of enmity. And at this point both kingdoms have evil kings. Pekah is king of Israel/Samaria. Ahaz is king of Judah. We read starting at v.1: “Ahaz was twenty years old when he began to reign, and he reigned sixteen years in Jerusalem. And he did not do what was right in the eyes of the LORD, as his father David had done, but he walked in the ways of the kings of Israel. He even made metal images for the Baals, and he made offerings in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom and burned his sons as an offering, according to the abominations of the nations whom the LORD drove out before the people of Israel. And he sacrificed and made offerings on the high places and on the hills and under every green tree.”

As a result of this wickedness, God punished Judah: “Therefore the LORD his God gave him into the hand of the king of Syria, who defeated him and took captive a great number of his people and brought them to Damascus. He was also given into the hand of the king of Israel, who struck him with great force. For Pekah the son of Remaliah killed 120,000 from Judah in one day, all of them men of valor, because they had forsaken the LORD, the God of their fathers.”

God used the northern kingdom of Israel to punish the southern kingdom of Judah. However, Israel went too far. Here we see that not all of the people in the northern kingdom were evil. Not every Samaritan was bad. A prophet of the Lord from Samaria, Oded, confronted the Samaritan army, saying, v.9: “Behold, because the LORD, the God of your fathers, was angry with Judah, he gave them into your hand, but you have killed them in a rage that has reached up to heaven. And now you intend to subjugate the people of Judah and Jerusalem, male and female, as your slaves. Have you not sins of your own against the LORD your God? Now hear me, and send back the captives from your relatives whom you have taken, for the fierce wrath of the LORD is upon you.” 

Then, what’s incredible, the Samaritans listen! It’s not just Oded with faith, but Azariah, Berechiah, Jehizkiah, and Amasa stand up and say v.13: “You shall not bring the captives in here, for you propose to bring upon us guilt against the LORD in addition to our present sins and guilt. For our guilt is already great, and there is fierce wrath against Israel.” Then these Samaritans take the captives of Judah, clothed them, fed them, anointed them, and carried them on donkeys back home to Jericho. The faithful remnant in Samaria was more faithful than Judah! If all of that sounds familiar to the parable of the good Samaritan, it should, because it’s essentially the same story!

The Samaritans and the Israelites hated each other. By Jesus’ day they had been at enmity for nearly 1,000 years! Nevertheless, a Samaritan with an active faith in God is God’s child, and a priest and a Levite without faith are not God’s children. So the lesson for us today is that we would be God’s people. Let us look to the faith in our hearts more than our external qualities. It’s not about a last name, the right ethnicity, the years of service on various church boards; it’s about the faith in your heart which clings to Christ Jesus. Let’s be like those ancient Samaritans, recognizing our own sins and guilt, and remembering God’s great mercy towards us. In great compassion God the Father sent the only-begotten Son Jesus Christ to have mercy upon us, bear the burden of our sins upon the cross, and pay whatever we owe with His precious blood.

Who are God’s people? Those who know their sins and trust in God’s great mercy shown to them in their Savior Jesus Christ.