Jesus Weeps

John 11 ²⁸After Martha said this, she went back and called her sister Mary privately. "The Teacher is here," she told her, "and is asking for you." ²⁹When Mary heard this, she got up and hurried out to meet him. ( ³⁰Jesus had not yet arrived in the village, but was still in the place where Martha had met him.) ³¹The people who were in the house with Mary comforting her followed her when they saw her get up and hurry out. They thought that she was going to the grave to weep there.
³²Mary arrived where Jesus was, and as soon as she saw him, she fell at his feet. "Lord," she said, "if you had been here, my brother would not have died!"
³³Jesus saw her weeping, and he saw how the people with her were weeping also; his heart was touched, and he was deeply moved. ³⁴"Where have you buried him?" he asked them.
"Come and see, Lord," they answered.
³⁵Jesus wept. ³⁶"See how much he loved him!" the people said.
³⁷But some of them said, "He gave sight to the blind man, didn't he? Could he not have kept Lazarus from dying?"

Lazarus Is Brought to Life

³⁸Deeply moved once more, Jesus went to the tomb, which was a cave with a stone placed at the entrance. ³⁹"Take the stone away!" Jesus ordered.
Martha, the dead man's sister, answered, "There will be a bad smell, Lord. He has been buried four days!"
⁴⁰Jesus said to her, "Didn't I tell you that you would see God's glory if you believed?" ⁴¹They took the stone away. Jesus looked up and said, "I thank you, Father, that you listen to me. ⁴²I know that you always listen to me, but I say this for the sake of the people here, so that they will believe that you sent me." ⁴³After he had said this, he called out in a loud voice, "Lazarus, come out!" ⁴⁴He came out, his hands and feet wrapped in grave cloths, and with a cloth around his face. "Untie him," Jesus told them, "and let him go."

The Plot against Jesus
(Matthew 26.1-5; Mark 14.1, 2; Luke 22.1, 2)

⁴⁵Many of the people who had come to visit Mary saw what Jesus did, and they believed in him. ⁴⁶But some of them returned to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done. ⁴⁷So the Pharisees and the chief priests met with the Council and said, "What shall we do? Look at all the miracles this man is performing! ⁴⁸If we let him go on in this way, everyone will believe in him, and the Roman authorities will take action and destroy our Temple and our nation!"
⁴⁹One of them, named Caiaphas, who was High Priest that year, said, "What fools you are! ⁵⁰Don't you realize that it is better for you to have one man die for the people, instead of having the whole nation destroyed?" ⁵¹Actually, he did not say this of his own accord; rather, as he was High Priest that year, he was prophesying that Jesus was going to die for the Jewish people, ⁵²and not only for them, but also to bring together into one body all the scattered people of God.
⁵³From that day on the Jewish authorities made plans to kill Jesus. ⁵⁴So Jesus did not travel openly in Judea, but left and went to a place near the desert, to a town named Ephraim, where he stayed with the disciples.
⁵⁵The time for the Passover Festival was near, and many people went up from the country to Jerusalem to perform the ritual of purification before the festival. ⁵⁶They were looking for Jesus, and as they gathered in the Temple, they asked one another, "What do you think? Surely he will not come to the festival, will he?" ⁵⁷The chief priests and the Pharisees had given orders that if anyone knew where Jesus was, he must report it, so that they could arrest him.

An Egyptian Invasion of Judah
(1 Kings 14.25 -28)

2 Chronicles 12 As soon as Rehoboam had established his authority as king, he and all his people abandoned the Law of the LORD. ²In the fifth year of Rehoboam's reign their disloyalty to the LORD was punished. King Shishak of Egypt attacked Jerusalem ³with an army of twelve hundred chariots, sixty thousand cavalry, and more soldiers than could be counted, including Libyan, Sukkite, and Ethiopian troops. ⁴He captured the fortified cities of Judah and advanced as far as Jerusalem.
⁵Shemaiah the prophet went to King Rehoboam and the Judean leaders who had gathered in Jerusalem to escape Shishak. He said to them, "This is the LORD's message to you: 'You have abandoned me, so now I have abandoned you to Shishak.'"
⁶The king and the leaders admitted that they had sinned, and they said, "What the LORD is doing is just."
⁷When the LORD saw this, he spoke again to Shemaiah and said to him, "Because they admit their sin, I will not destroy them. But when Shishak attacks, they will barely survive. Jerusalem will not feel the full force of my anger, ⁸but Shishak will conquer them, and they will learn the difference between serving me and serving earthly rulers."
⁹King Shishak came to Jerusalem and took the treasures from the Temple and from the palace. He took everything, including the gold shields that King Solomon had made. ¹⁰To replace them, Rehoboam made bronze shields and entrusted them to the officers responsible for guarding the palace gates. ¹¹Every time the king went to the Temple, the guards carried the shields and then returned them to the guardroom. ¹²Because he submitted to the LORD, the LORD's anger did not completely destroy him, and things went well for Judah.

Summary of Rehoboam's Reign

¹³Rehoboam ruled in Jerusalem and increased his power as king. He was forty-one years old when he became king, and he ruled for seventeen years in Jerusalem, the city which the LORD had chosen from all the territory of Israel as the place where he was to be worshiped. Rehoboam's mother was Naamah, from the land of Ammon. ¹⁴He did what was evil, because he did not try to find the LORD's will.
¹⁵Rehoboam's acts from beginning to end and his family records are found in The History of Shemaiah the Prophet and The History of Iddo the Prophet. Rehoboam and Jeroboam were constantly at war with each other. ¹⁶Rehoboam died and was buried in the royal tombs in David's City and his son Abijah succeeded him as king.

Abijah's War with Jeroboam
(1 Kings 15.1-8)

2 Chronicles 13 In the eighteenth year of the reign of King Jeroboam of Israel, Abijah became king of Judah, ²and he ruled three years in Jerusalem. His mother was Micaiah daughter of Uriel, from the city of Gibeah.
War broke out between Abijah and Jeroboam. ³Abijah raised an army of 400,000 soldiers, and Jeroboam opposed him with an army of 800,000.
⁴The armies met in the hill country of Ephraim. King Abijah went up Mount Zemaraim and called out to Jeroboam and the Israelites: "Listen to me!" he said. ⁵"Don't you know that the LORD, the God of Israel, made an unbreakable covenant with David, giving him and his descendants kingship over Israel forever? ⁶Jeroboam son of Nebat rebelled against Solomon, his king. ⁷Later he gathered together a group of worthless scoundrels, and they forced their will on Rehoboam son of Solomon, who was too young and inexperienced to resist them. ⁸Now you propose to fight against the royal authority that the LORD gave to David's descendants. You have a huge army and have with you the gold bull-calves that Jeroboam made to be your gods. ⁹You drove out the LORD's priests, the descendants of Aaron, and you drove out the Levites. In their place you appointed priests in the same way that other nations do. Anybody who comes along with a bull or seven sheep can get himself consecrated as a priest of those so-called gods of yours.
¹⁰"But we still serve the LORD our God and have not abandoned him. Priests descended from Aaron perform their duties, and Levites assist them. ¹¹Every morning and every evening they offer him incense and animal sacrifices burned whole. They present the offerings of bread on a table that is ritually clean, and every evening they light the lamps on the gold lampstand. We do what the LORD has commanded, but you have abandoned him. ¹²God himself is our leader and his priests are here with trumpets, ready to blow them and call us to battle against you. People of Israel, don't fight against the LORD, the God of your ancestors! You can't win!"
¹³Meanwhile Jeroboam had sent some of his troops to ambush the Judean army from the rear, while the rest faced them from the front. ¹⁴The Judeans looked around and saw that they were surrounded. They cried to the LORD for help, and the priests blew the trumpets. ¹⁵The Judeans gave a loud shout, and led by Abijah, they attacked; God defeated Jeroboam and the Israelite army. ¹⁶The Israelites fled from the Judeans, and God let the Judeans overpower them. ¹⁷Abijah and his army dealt the Israelites a crushing defeat--half a million of Israel's best soldiers were killed. ¹⁸And so the people of Judah were victorious over Israel, because they relied on the LORD, the God of their ancestors.
¹⁹Abijah pursued Jeroboam's army and occupied some of his cities: Bethel, Jeshanah, and Ephron, and the villages near each of these cities. ²⁰Jeroboam never regained his power during Abijah's reign. Finally the LORD struck him down, and he died.
²¹Abijah, however, grew more powerful. He had fourteen wives and fathered twenty-two sons and sixteen daughters. ²²The rest of the history of Abijah, what he said and what he did, is written in The History of Iddo the Prophet.

God the Victor

Psalm 76 God is known in Judah;
his name is honored in Israel.
²He has his home in Jerusalem;
he lives on Mount Zion.
³There he broke the arrows of the enemy,
their shields and swords, yes, all their weapons.

⁴How glorious you are, O God!
How majestic, as you return from the mountains
where you defeated your foes.
⁵Their brave soldiers have been stripped of all they had
and now are sleeping the sleep of death;
all their strength and skill was useless.
⁶When you threatened them, O God of Jacob,
the horses and their riders fell dead.

⁷But you, LORD, are feared by all.
No one can stand in your presence
when you are angry.
⁸You made your judgment known from heaven;
the world was afraid and kept silent,
⁹when you rose up to pronounce judgment,
to save all the oppressed on earth.

¹⁰Human anger only results in more praise for you;
those who survive the wars will keep your festivals.

¹¹Give the LORD your God what you promised him;
bring gifts to him, all you nearby nations.
God makes everyone fear him;
¹²he humbles proud princes
and terrifies great kings.