Category: Kings

After a lot of talking about it, God finally did send His people away from the Promised Land. They didn’t just relocate to another home, but their removal from the Promised Land meant that they suffered the loss of the promise given to Abraham and thus to them. They had no reason to believe they would ever return, no reason to believe there was any hope of a future relationship with God, unless they were fortunate enough to hear Jeremiah’s prophecies. Even if they did hear them, many of them still wouldn’t believe, reaping the consequences of their choices not to believe. It was a sad ending to what could have been an unendingly bright future.

Understand that this is the fruit borne by sin. It cuts short a bright future. It results in destruction, ruin, suffering, and death. It removes hope of anything better. Do you think you could have done better than God’s Old Testament people did? I used to get frustrated reading their story, believing that I would have been faithful where they were unfaithful to God. That is a lie of Satan designed to keep us from looking to God for hope and help, running to Him for salvation from enslavement to our own desires. God’s Old Testament people are examples given to us so that we are warned to keep from pursuing the same choices and suffering the same consequences that they did. We will never do any better than they did without some kind of help from God.

And God has given that help in the form of Messiah. That is the only reason we enjoy hope of ending up any better than the sad fate of Judah in these chapters.

One lesson from this life that “did not turn aside to the right or the left” from doing “what was right in the eyes of the Lord” is that action followed Josiah’s seeking the Lord. Action to get rid of what had lured the people away from God, destroying and defiling in such a way that it was not easily coming back. Then replacing it with worship of God, God’s way. That distinguished him from other kings of Judah who had promoted the worship of pagan gods in various ways. Turning to the Lord with all one’s heart and with all one’s soul and with all one’s might takes a visible form. Is it visible in your life?

Can you imagine the Book of the Law being lost in the Temple? That speaks descriptively of what shape the Temple was in and how faithfully it was being used to worship God. Further, that book was lost so long that it was unknown to those who found it; it was “a book.” Think about that: the God-given Law by which this people was supposed to live had been lost so long that they no longer missed it. Further yet, when they wanted to know what God thought, the people holding the offices of spiritual leadership were unable to inquire of Him. Can you imagine how it would be, not to be able to expect an answer from God in your deeply felt need? This is our reminder of how precious gifts to us God’s word and Holy Spirit are.

For a long time I thought God was unfair to use another king to punish His people, and then get angry with that king and punish Him for his brutality in doing the very thing that God had wanted him to do. I believe the reason that God was unhappy with His instrument of punishment is that the power he wielded in fulfilling his mission always corrupted him, and he took the brutality too far. This inevitable result reminds us that there is no controlling sin; it controls us before we know it, and then we are too damaged by it to perceive the truth of what has happened to us. God’s word describes what happened to His Old Testament people as, “They followed worthless idols and themselves became worthless.”

II Kings 17 is a sobering chapter. Those tribes that had made up the northern kingdom of Israel were scattered, and blended in with the people among whom they were settled. They were not dedicated enough to any of their distinctive traditions to turn back to them in exile, and thus failed to remain distinct as a people. They didn’t know God well enough to turn to Him in the midst of suffering. These tribes of God’s people have disappeared so that they are forgotten.

Comments are brief today to focus attention on this fearsome reminder of how destructive sin is. Please take a little time to contemplate prayerfully that reality of life in a sin-cursed world ruled by Satan, and ask God to give you the same hatred for sin that He has.

How would you like to live in the chaotic years of Israel’s history described in today’s reading? The government was overthrown three times in 33 years; how great could any of the new leaders be, having taken control of the government by force, and then continuing in the same sin as the previous king had committed? Such a leader generally maintains order enough to gain a foothold on his kingdom only through more force. That couldn’t have made Israel a pleasant place to live, but that was only part of the fun. Assyria was a frightening threat. They seemed unstoppable in building the largest empire that part of the world had ever seen, and they did it with extreme and horrific cruelty. Israel’s king exacted his tribute to Assyria from the people, and yet the Assyrians came back for more, this time capturing towns with their brutal tactics, and deporting their inhabitants. Who would be next? They were unsettling and terrifying times for the people of Israel. This is what their sin brought them. This is what sin brings still today: instability, suffering, chaos. Why would we want anything to do with it, if we have a choice? And we do have a choice, “thanks be to God, through Jesus Christ our Lord!”

The stability of a single king in Judah during those years is quite a contrast. Uzziah’s (Kings calls him Azariah) seeking the Lord made a vast difference for the people of Judah: power, fame (meaning a reputation such that no one wanted to mess with Judah), building, rebuilding, fortifying, developing technology…. Does it make you wonder what would happen in our nation if our leaders would seek God? It’s too bad that we’re powerless to elect leaders whose primary interest is not in rebuilding the economy or making life easier for a segment of the population, but in seeking God for the benefit of the people…. Of course, the leaders we have in place right now could be transformed. Could God fill their hearts with the desire to seek Him, if we prayed that for them?

It’s interesting to note from II Chronicles 26:6-7, that some things never change. We call the descendants of the Philistines Palestinians. King Uzziah was striving against the neighboring Philistines and Arabs. How does the perspective of millennia of history make you feel about the tense situation in the Middle East today? God is in control of the situation as much today as He was then.

Uzziah’s life offers an obvious lesson to us about the dangers of pride. Let’s not be too dismissive of his experience, thinking it couldn’t happen to us. Although we aren’t given enough details to know for sure, I don’t think it happened like our enemy wants us to think it happened: that he got so arrogant that he thought he could ignore the office of priest, foolishly thinking he was wonderful enough to function as both priest and king. Rather, I suspect that it was more subtle than that, that he thought he was demonstrating devotion to God to want to bring incense before him. Perhaps he thought it fitting that as the political leader of the people he should seek God in this manner. In his zeal he ignored God’s plan in favor of his own great ideas. David did that once: remember his disastrous first attempt to move the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem? Although he was angry at God for “breaking out” against Uzzah, David learned from that experience, obviously sought God’s ideas on how to move the Ark (which he didn’t even have to pray about, because it was already revealed in the Law), and proceeded to do it God’s way. He later initiated his own plans to build the Temple, but God stopped him and let His desire be made known, and David gave up his great ideas in submission to God’s ideas. I believe Uzziah’s problem wasn’t brazen arrogance, but a greater devotion to his own ideas than to God. He apparently never sought God’s mind on the matter. His story is a reminder to us to check our own devotion God: is there anything, even our ideas of worship, to which we are more devoted than we are devoted to God? Then we are in danger of the same kind of pride Uzziah demonstrated.

Tomorrow we begin reading in Isaiah. I hope the idea of prophecy doesn’t turn you off. Remember how rich the books of the Law turned out to be? The books of prophecy are RICH! The book of Isaiah is a particular favorite of mine, as its study stands out in my mind as a milestone in my walk with God, it has been that transformational for me. I’m praying you will find as great reward in reading prophecy. Please approach it with prayerful expectation!

Joash’s son learned from his father to do ”what was right in the eyes of the Lord, but not wholeheartedly.” This is yet one more lesson from so many of these kings’ lives: a child follows the example of his parent’s divided heart. It frightens me to think that my half-hearted devotion may teach my children to be content with the same, possibly jeopardizing their intimate knowledge of God. Let’s not miss the reminders in these history readings; let us use them as opportunities to re-evaluate our own hearts and lives, to renew commitments to God as needed, to seek God’s help as needed to live according to our commitment. The lessons here may seem repetitious, but that is because their lives reveal the need for such repetition. That is one of the reasons we need to be in God’s word daily, year after year, reading the same Bible over and over again. The assaults of life that work to wear us down are too unrelenting, and the enemy is too active, to allow us to remain faithful without constant reminders, and the stakes are too high. Peter told his readers in II Peter 1:12-15, “So I will always remind you of these things, even though you know them and are firmly established in the truth you now have. I think it is right to refresh your memory…, and I will make every effort to see that after my departure you will always be able to remember these things.”

Notice that the text equates Amaziah’s choice to worship the gods of Edom with his turning away from following the Lord. A choice to sin is always that, a choice to turn away from following the Lord. Our enemy doesn’t want us to see our choice from that perspective, and we may give in to his deception and refuse to see our choices as turning away from following God; however, God’s assessment of that situation is true whether or not we acknowledge it.

Amaziah’s choice to worship the gods of Edom after defeating Edom is astonishing. Any of us are capable of such incredible choices if we are not fully devoted to God. This is another reminder of how critical wholehearted devotion is, and why half-hearted devotion is no devotion at all. Even a fully devoted follower of God is vulnerable to such choices if he is not on guard. Sometimes the good times are more treacherous to our faithfulness to God than times of suffering. It may be tempting to think poorly of Amaziah, but we must appreciate that we are all capable of such stupidity. We are in the greatest danger of that when we least think we are.

Once Amaziah gave in to temptation, God so worked that he would not listen to reason, but made more poor choices in pursuit of the route by which God brought his judgment for his sin. Let us not miss the fact that sin’s consequences are most often unforeseeable, and worse than we can imagine. May these examples from other lives reinforce in us a hatred for sin that keeps us clinging to our Savior and faithfully doing all we know to do to guard ourselves from giving way to temptation!

Joash’s life is a sad example of what it means not to be established. Recall from King Jehoshaphat’s life, described in II Chronicles 17, that God established his kingdom because he sought God and followed His commands with a heart devoted to God’s ways. A heart that wasn’t devoted, and his failure to seek God resulted in Joash’s not being established enough to remain faithful to God once Jehoiada was gone. This story of his life challenges us to examine our own hearts and our own seeking. Is there something or someone propping you up so that you are following God’s commands without a heart fully devoted to Him? Recall that Jesus defined eternal life as knowing God; simply following God’s commands without a devoted heart does not promote that intimate relationship Jesus was describing in the word He used for “know.”

Are you a Jehoiada to someone else, propping him or her up so that it looks like he or she is following God, when he or she is really following you? Jesus’ command to His followers is that we “make disciples”; He didn’t mean for those disciples to be ours, but His. Think about the training you’ve provided for your children: are you preparing them in such a way that they love God whether you are here or not? Are they following God, or just following His commands?

If the truth of our lives is that we are not fully devoted in our following God, Satan doesn’t want us to know that. He wants to deceive us into thinking that we’re “all right,” and he does have the ability to blind unbelievers. God alone knows the condition of our hearts, and we must ask Him to search us and reveal to us anything of which we need to repent. We can’t so much as seek Him without His help; ask for whatever help you might need today. If an honest and open appeal to God reveals nothing lacking in your heart, your devotion, your seeking, your following, your knowledge, your intimacy with God, then don’t let Satan deceive you into thinking there is a problem that isn’t there. Rather, thank God for the privilege of relationship with Him and renew your commitment to go ever deeper in your intimacy with Him. Ask Him to establish you so that you are a Jehoshaphat, and not a Joash!