Sermons on 2 Chronicles
Corporate America’s fondness for mission statements has crept into the church’s own self-understanding, a borrowed vocabulary this sermon pushes back against. Josiah’s reform, like Paul’s ministry, is driven by nothing more or less than God himself, the same test Satan once put to Eve. Zechariah 4:6’s ‘not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit’ names the real alternative.
Scripture supplies real examples of church discipline that succeeded, beyond just warnings about discipline neglected, and the sermon insists God himself is actively involved in the process rather than a distant observer of it. Paul’s language in 1 Corinthians 5:3-5 assumes a ruling body of elders exercising real authority. Discipline, done rightly, is a divine transaction, never merely a human one.
A specific case of church discipline opens onto a much larger survey: discipline’s near-total collapse across the mainline denominations over the past century, a collapse Machen himself could not finally stop. Both Old and New Testament patterns of discipline are set against that decline. What looks like an isolated case belongs to a long, documented history.
The southern kingdom’s history of wicked kings runs remarkably parallel to the north’s, even as Hezekiah’s reign gets lifted up as a picture of the suffering servant to come. Spiritual wickedness, not merely political failure, is what both kingdoms share.