David Bahn – Reflections

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These devotions are part of the Follow the Word Bible reading program at St. John Lutheran Church in Cypress, Texas. This year we are reading through the Scriptures together, listening for how God speaks through his Word day by day. I hope you will join me on this journey.

Today’s readings are 2 Kings 18, 2 Chronicles, 29-30, Psalm 33.

2 Chronicles 29:31-36

Then Hezekiah said, “You have now consecrated yourselves to the LORD. Come near; bring sacrifices and thank offerings to the house of the LORD.” And the assembly brought sacrifices and thank offerings, and all who were of a willing heart brought burnt offerings. ³² The number of the burnt offerings that the assembly brought was 70 bulls, 100 rams, and 200 lambs; all these were for a burnt offering to the LORD. ³³ And the consecrated offerings were 600 bulls and 3,000 sheep. ³⁴ But the priests were too few and could not flay all the burnt offerings, so until other priests had consecrated themselves, their brothers the Levites helped them, until the work was finished—for the Levites were more upright in heart than the priests in consecrating themselves. ³⁵ Besides the great number of burnt offerings, there was the fat of the peace offerings, and there were the drink offerings for the burnt offerings. Thus the service of the house of the LORD was restored. ³⁶ And Hezekiah and all the people rejoiced because God had provided for the people, for the thing came about suddenly.

It would be good if the challenge facing our church body were because too many people wanted to worship God and we simply needed to re-consecrate pastors who had been disengaged from their pastoral calling. That, however, is not the case. More about that later.

But that was the case in the days of Hezekiah. The king had instigated a significant revival of the faithful practices of David. He was diligent to worship the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and to do so in the forms that had been prescribed in the Law of Moses. But it proved to be a sudden need. People were coming to Jerusalem at Hezekiah’s urging. They desired to honor God faithfully at the Temple. But there were not enough priests to make all the sacrifices.

So they did an extraordinary thing: they enlisted the Levites to help with the Temple sacrifices. And this even before all the priests were fully consecrated. This is noted in 2 Chronicles 30:17-19:

Therefore the Levites had to slaughter the Passover lamb for everyone who was not clean, to consecrate it to the LORD. ¹⁸ For a majority of the people, many of them from Ephraim, Manasseh, Issachar, and Zebulun, had not cleansed themselves, yet they ate the Passover otherwise than as prescribed. For Hezekiah had prayed for them, saying, “May the good LORD pardon everyone ¹⁹ who sets his heart to seek God, the LORD, the God of his fathers, even though not according to the sanctuary’s rules of cleanness.”

The episode ends with this summary:

So there was great joy in Jerusalem, for since the time of Solomon the son of David king of Israel there had been nothing like this in Jerusalem. ²⁷ Then the priests and the Levites arose and blessed the people, and their voice was heard, and their prayer came to his holy habitation in heaven.
2 Chronicles 30:26-27

Our challenges today are similar. We do not have enough pastors to serve God’s people in the congregations of our LCMS church body. This is true in many other church bodies as well. There is a near crisis of the shortage of pastors. I know this because I work with churches that are seeking to call a pastor. Jesus’ words ring clear: “The harvest is plentiful but the laborers are few.”

My preferred solution to this crisis is to find more ways to train faithful pastors. This is a controversial idea for some (many?) in our church body, and I won’t go into all the reasons for my conviction here. But wherever people fall in that debate, we all agree on this: we must pray that the Lord of the harvest will send laborers into his harvest fields.

Why does Jesus call us to pray for laborers? Because he has not saved us merely so that we can go to heaven. God desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. That truth is wonderfully simple: “God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” His Son also told his disciples, “As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.” And he has promised, “I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

Let the blessings flow. Let the people hear. Let God be praised!