Christian Giving

2 Corinthians 8 Our friends, we want you to know what God's grace has accomplished in the churches in Macedonia. ²They have been severely tested by the troubles they went through; but their joy was so great that they were extremely generous in their giving, even though they are very poor. ³I can assure you that they gave as much as they could, and even more than they could. Of their own free will ⁴they begged us and pleaded for the privilege of having a part in helping God's people in Judea. ⁵It was more than we could have hoped for! First they gave themselves to the Lord; and then, by God's will they gave themselves to us as well. ⁶So we urged Titus, who began this work, to continue it and help you complete this special service of love. ⁷You are so rich in all you have: in faith, speech, and knowledge, in your eagerness to help and in your love for us. And so we want you to be generous also in this service of love.
⁸I am not laying down any rules. But by showing how eager others are to help, I am trying to find out how real your own love is. ⁹You know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ; rich as he was, he made himself poor for your sake, in order to make you rich by means of his poverty.
¹⁰My opinion is that it is better for you to finish now what you began last year. You were the first, not only to act, but also to be willing to act. ¹¹On with it, then, and finish the job! Be as eager to finish it as you were to plan it, and do it with what you now have. ¹²If you are eager to give, God will accept your gift on the basis of what you have to give, not on what you don't have.
^13-14I am not trying to relieve others by putting a burden on you; but since you have plenty at this time, it is only fair that you should help those who are in need. Then, when you are in need and they have plenty, they will help you. In this way both are treated equally. ¹⁵As the scripture says, "The one who gathered much did not have too much, and the one who gathered little did not have too little."

Titus and His Companions

¹⁶How we thank God for making Titus as eager as we are to help you! ¹⁷Not only did he welcome our request; he was so eager to help that of his own free will he decided to go to you. ¹⁸With him we are sending the brother who is highly respected in all the churches for his work in preaching the gospel. ¹⁹And besides that, he has been chosen and appointed by the churches to travel with us as we carry out this service of love for the sake of the Lord's glory and in order to show that we want to help.
²⁰We are being careful not to stir up any complaints about the way we handle this generous gift. ²¹Our purpose is to do what is right, not only in the sight of the Lord, but also in the sight of others.
²²So we are sending our brother with them; we have tested him many times and found him always very eager to help. And now that he has so much confidence in you, he is all the more eager to help. ²³As for Titus, he is my partner and works with me to help you; as for the other brothers who are going with him, they represent the churches and bring glory to Christ. ²⁴Show your love to them, so that all the churches will be sure of it and know that we are right in boasting about you.

King Hezekiah's Illness and Recovery
(Isaiah 38.1-8, 21, 22; 2 Chronicles 32.24 -26)

2 Kings 20 About this time King Hezekiah became sick and almost died. The prophet Isaiah son of Amoz went to see him and said to him, "The LORD tells you that you are to put everything in order, because you will not recover. Get ready to die."
²Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed: ³"Remember, LORD, that I have served you faithfully and loyally and that I have always tried to do what you wanted me to." And he began to cry bitterly.
⁴Isaiah left the king, but before he had passed through the central courtyard of the palace the LORD told him ⁵to go back to Hezekiah, ruler of the LORD's people, and say to him, "I, the LORD, the God of your ancestor David, have heard your prayer and seen your tears. I will heal you, and in three days you will go to the Temple. ⁶I will let you live fifteen years longer. I will rescue you and this city Jerusalem from the emperor of Assyria. I will defend this city, for the sake of my own honor and because of the promise I made to my servant David."
⁷Then Isaiah told the king's attendants to put on his boil a paste made of figs, and he would get well. ⁸King Hezekiah asked, "What is the sign to prove that the LORD will heal me and that three days later I will be able to go to the Temple?"
⁹Isaiah replied, "The LORD will give you a sign to prove that he will keep his promise. Now, would you prefer to have the shadow on the stairway go forward ten steps or go back ten steps?"
¹⁰Hezekiah answered, "It's easy to have the shadow go forward ten steps! Have it go back ten steps."
¹¹Isaiah prayed to the LORD, and the LORD made the shadow go back ten steps on the stairway set up by King Ahaz.

Messengers from Babylonia
(Isaiah 39.1-8)

¹²About that same time the king of Babylonia, Merodach Baladan, the son of Baladan, heard that King Hezekiah had been sick, so he sent him a letter and a present. ¹³Hezekiah welcomed the messengers and showed them his wealth--his silver and gold, his spices and perfumes, and all his military equipment. There was nothing in his storerooms or anywhere in his kingdom that he did not show them. ¹⁴Then the prophet Isaiah went to King Hezekiah and asked, "Where did these men come from and what did they say to you?"
Hezekiah answered, "They came from a very distant country, from Babylonia."
¹⁵"What did they see in the palace?"
"They saw everything. There is nothing in the storerooms that I didn't show them."
¹⁶Isaiah then told the king, "The LORD Almighty says that ¹⁷a time is coming when everything in your palace, everything that your ancestors have stored up to this day, will be carried off to Babylonia. Nothing will be left. ¹⁸Some of your own direct descendants will be taken away and made eunuchs to serve in the palace of the king of Babylonia."
¹⁹King Hezekiah understood this to mean that there would be peace and security during his lifetime, so he replied, "The message you have given me from the LORD is good."

The End of Hezekiah's Reign
(2 Chronicles 32.32, 33)

²⁰Everything else that King Hezekiah did, his brave deeds, and an account of how he built a reservoir and dug a tunnel to bring water into the city, are all recorded in The History of the Kings of Judah. ²¹Hezekiah died, and his son Manasseh succeeded him as king.

King Manasseh of Judah
(2 Chronicles 33.1-20)

2 Kings 21 Manasseh was twelve years old when he became king of Judah, and he ruled in Jerusalem for fifty-five years. His mother was Hephzibah. ²Following the disgusting practices of the nations whom the LORD had driven out of the land as his people advanced, Manasseh sinned against the LORD. ³He rebuilt the pagan places of worship that his father Hezekiah had destroyed; he built altars for the worship of Baal and made an image of the goddess Asherah, as King Ahab of Israel had done. Manasseh also worshiped the stars. ⁴He built pagan altars in the Temple, the place that the LORD had said was where he should be worshiped. ⁵In the two courtyards of the Temple he built altars for the worship of the stars. ⁶He sacrificed his son as a burnt offering. He practiced divination and magic and consulted fortunetellers and mediums. He sinned greatly against the LORD and stirred up his anger. ⁷He placed the symbol of the goddess Asherah in the Temple, the place about which the LORD had said to David and his son Solomon: "Here in Jerusalem, in this Temple, is the place that I have chosen out of all the territory of the twelve tribes of Israel as the place where I am to be worshiped. ⁸And if the people of Israel will obey all my commands and keep the whole Law that my servant Moses gave them, then I will not allow them to be driven out of the land that I gave to their ancestors." ⁹But the people of Judah did not obey the LORD, and Manasseh led them to commit even greater sins than those committed by the nations whom the LORD had driven out of the land as his people advanced.
¹⁰Through his servants the prophets the LORD said, ¹¹"King Manasseh has done these disgusting things, things far worse than what the Canaanites did; and with his idols he has led the people of Judah into sin. ¹²So I, the LORD God of Israel, will bring such a disaster on Jerusalem and Judah that everyone who hears about it will be stunned. ¹³I will punish Jerusalem as I did Samaria, as I did King Ahab of Israel and his descendants. I will wipe Jerusalem clean of its people, as clean as a plate that has been wiped and turned upside down. ¹⁴I will abandon the people who survive, and will hand them over to their enemies, who will conquer them and plunder their land. ¹⁵I will do this to my people because they have sinned against me and have stirred up my anger from the time their ancestors came out of Egypt to this day."
¹⁶Manasseh killed so many innocent people that the streets of Jerusalem were flowing with blood; he did this in addition to leading the people of Judah into idolatry, causing them to sin against the LORD.
¹⁷Everything else that Manasseh did, including the sins he committed, is recorded in The History of the Kings of Judah. ¹⁸Manasseh died and was buried in the palace garden, the garden of Uzza, and his son Amon succeeded him as king.

King Amon of Judah
(2 Chronicles 33.21-25)

¹⁹Amon was twenty-two years old when he became king of Judah, and he ruled in Jerusalem for two years. His mother was Meshullemeth, the daughter of Haruz from the town of Jotbah. ²⁰Like his father Manasseh, he sinned against the LORD; ²¹he imitated his father's actions, and he worshiped the idols that his father had worshiped. ²²He rejected the LORD, the God of his ancestors, and disobeyed the LORD's commands.
²³Amon's officials plotted against him and assassinated him in the palace. ²⁴The people of Judah killed Amon's assassins and made his son Josiah king.
²⁵Everything else that Amon did is recorded in The History of the Kings of Judah. ²⁶Amon was buried in the tomb in the garden of Uzza, and his son Josiah succeeded him as king.

The Fall of Nineveh

Nahum 2 Nineveh, you are under attack!
The power that will shatter you has come.
Prepare the defenses!
Guard the road!
Prepare for battle!
( ²The LORD is about to restore the glory of Israel, as it was before her enemies plundered her.)
³The enemy soldiers carry red shields
and wear uniforms of red.
They are preparing to attack!
Their chariots flash like fire!
Their horses prance!

⁴Chariots dash wildly through the streets,
rushing back and forth in the city squares.
They flash like torches
and dart about like lightning.
⁵The officers are summoned;
they stumble as they press forward.

The attackers rush to the wall
and set up the shield for the battering ram.
⁶The gates by the river burst open;
the palace is filled with terror.
⁷The queen is taken captive;
her servants moan like doves
and beat their breasts in sorrow.
⁸Like water from a broken dam
the people rush from Nineveh!
"Stop! Stop!" the cry rings out--
but no one turns back.

⁹Plunder the silver!
Plunder the gold!
The city is full of treasure!

¹⁰Nineveh is destroyed, deserted, desolate!
Hearts melt with fear;
knees tremble, strength is gone;
faces grow pale.

¹¹Where now is the city
that was like a den of lions,
the place where young lions were fed,
where the lion and the lioness would go
and their cubs would be safe?
¹²The lion killed his prey
and tore it to pieces for his mate and her cubs;
he filled his den with torn flesh.

¹³"I am your enemy!" says the LORD Almighty. "I will burn up your chariots. Your soldiers will be killed in war, and I will take away everything that you took from others. The demands of your envoys will no longer be heard."