Mon.’s Devo - The Law of Love

Read: 2 Kings 20:1-22:2; Acts 21:17-36; Psalm 150:1-6; Proverbs 18:9-10
Hezekiah was told by Isaiah that he was not going to recover from his sickness so he needed to get his house in order. Hezekiah cried out to the Lord reminding him of all he had done for him and the Lord relented and sent Isaiah back to tell him he would give him 15 more years to live. As a sign, he was given the choice of having the light go forward on the steps of time or backward. He should have said forward. It was a foreshadow of his rule because it went backward for sure. He obviously had no heir because his son, Manasseh was only 13 when he died 15 years later. This son led Judah backward into sin in such an evil way. He built altars in the two houses of the Lord to worship the stars. He set graven images inside God’s temple and totally desecrated the altar. He shed much innocent blood which means he sacrificed infants. He led Judah to do more evil than the nations that they had destroyed. Now, Judah would get the same judgment that Israel and Ahab’s house had gotten which was the total wipe out of their name.
Manasseh did his evil for 55 years and when he died, he was buried in a garden of Uzza in his own house. Uzza means “his own strength”. His 22 year old son Amon ruled two years and was buried the same place. Josiah became king at the age of eight and he did right in the Lord’s eyes. That means that his father, Amon was 16 when Josiah was born.
In Acts we have all the things that Paul had been shown would happen. The Jews there had heard how Paul had ministered to the Gentiles and taught them they didn’t need to be circumcised. They were outraged that Paul had fallen away from the truth of the law and wanted to kill him. If not for the Roman officers, he would have been killed, but instead he was taken to prison.
Religion will put up a fight for its laws where grace has only one law and that is the law of love. Paul was operating under the latter.
Lord, help us to operate our lives under the law of grace and love and not religion.