II Chronicles 30:26 So, there was great joy in Jerusalem: for since the time of Solomon the son of David king of Israel there was not the like in Jerusalem
I’m kind of a sentimental guy. I like family traditions and the rhythms of life that help you to know where you are in the year and where you are in life. For instance, at Christmas I have a number of family traditions that I really cherish and value. We take a vacation each year in August, and there are some things about that vacation that are very precious to me indeed. So, I like tradition and I’m all about tradition, but all of us have to decide what will be the driving authority for our lives. Is it going to be some tradition, what we’ve always done, or something deeper and more meaningful than that?
In II Chronicles 29 and 30, you find a battle between traditions, what we have always done, and authority, what God has said, as the governing vector in the life of two different kings. Ahaz was a king who “provoked to anger the LORD God of his fathers;” he shut the doors of the temple and never turned back. For whatever reason, his son Hezekiah had a better heart. It is worthy of note that oftentimes when a king is introduced, the Bible will tell us how old he was, how long he reigned, and whether he was a good king or a bad king. It also tells us who his mother was, which may be one of the major factors in why kings turned out to be good or bad. Sometimes a good king can have a bad son or a bad king could have a good son.
So, wicked King Ahaz had a son who turned out to be a man who was not perfect but had a heart for God. The Bible tells us of this in II Chronicles 29 where it says, “Hezekiah began to reign when he was five and twenty years old, and he reigned nine and twenty years in Jerusalem. And his mother’s name was Abijah, the daughter of Zechariah. And he did that which was right in the sight of the LORD, according to all that David his father had done.”
The Bible is making a picture of the kind of king he started out to be because he was like his ancestor David, not like his actual father, King Ahaz. The Bible goes on to say that he sought God, opened the doors of the temple, and began to clean out the temple. What follows in the next two chapters is a real contrast between what the fathers had always had done, the traditions or men, the orthodoxy, what seemed to be right because it is what we have always done, and the Word of God through David, seers, prophets, and the law of Moses.
If you look in II Chronicles 29-30 your will find a running contrast between the traditions of the kings of this divided kingdom and the authority of what God had actually said. That contrast is brought to a head In II Chronicles 30:26 where it says, “So there was great joy in Jerusalem: for since the time of Solomon the son of David king of Israel there was not the like in Jerusalem.” In other words, for the first time since King Solomon, they had come back to the worship that God had instituted in the first place.
Shortly after King Solomon there was a man named Jeroboam, and he had begun a tradition for political expedience that was contrary to the word and law of God. Numerous kings for hundreds of years did the wrong thing, did not worship God Jehovah in the prescribed way, and the Bible will often say of such kings “he walked in the ways of Jeroboam.” After many years, King Hezekiah, who had a heart for God, returned to what God had said.
Now, tradition is fine, but tradition in not the law of God. In churches we have quite a bit of tradition and there is nothing wrong with that. Sometimes I think we make such an emphasis on tradition that we forget what the real authority is. It is much easier to throw off tradition that to throw off the law of God. Therefore, when I make my arguments on what we’ve always done, it is easy for people who may not be doing the right things to dismiss me because, after all, it is just a tradition.
In church services we may see a sign that says, “Traditional services at 10:30.” Now it may be traditional and that may not be wrong, but the bottom line is that what is authoritative is what God has said. It may be that a traditional service is the one that most honors God, but it does not honor God because it is tradition. It most honors God insomuch as it follows what God has said in His Word.
In law we often talk about legal precedent, that is, this must be right legally because it is what we have always done throughout the years. It is easier to stick with a legal precedent.
We talk about traditional marriage, and I would be an advocate for traditional marriage. However, I somewhat object to that term because what tradition do you mean? Do you mean the tradition of Las Vegas, Salt Lake City, San Francisco, or Nashville? Traditions for marriage have changed drastically in the last ten years alone. Traditions and your bias or feelings about marriage cannot be authoritative. It must be what God says in His Word. I understand that politicians are not going to easily be elected if they go around talking about Biblical marriage, but anything less than an authoritative answer on a social question is not conclusive and it cannot last because traditions can change.
When people in good Bible-preaching churches think about how a church should be planted, how an invitation should be given, or what their position is on what Bible is the Bible, they often go back to our conception for what we have always done. If we are not careful we can ignore the authority of the Word of God.
The bottom line is that you will have to decide whether your authority for life and action is man’s tradition or God’s authority. Let me hasten to add, simply because something is a tradition does not mean it is wrong. It just means that unless you have some ethic stronger than mere tradition, you are going to have a hard time maintaining that position. You must consider what God actually said. You also have to apply what God has said. There are principles in the Bible that demand application in real, everyday life.
If we are going to make the right decisions in our church, home, and world, we will have to decide whether our primarily authority is simply what we have always done or what God has said, God’s Word for our life.