I’ve been reading through 1 and 2 Kings devotionally lately, and I’ll be honest, who is ruling when and with whom, and who takes over after whom is tough for me to follow and track without a nice chart. Thankfully, charts are easy to come by, and for the most part I trust the conservative scholars who have put those together.
In the middle of all the leadership progressions are fascinating accounts of events that occurred to and around these Kings. 1 and 2 Kings primarily deals with the events from the prospective of the Northern Kingdom, or Israel, and a good, honorable king was a rarity. What is inescapable is God’s view of the sin that occurs during the reign of these leaders. And when I came to chapter 17 of 2 Kings, I really had to pause to consider what God thinks of the sin of believers today, of my sin, because the passages read like they could apply today. And in a very real way, they do. I am looking specifically at verses 7 to 19.
Since God never changes, He thinks no different of sin today than He did back then. Granted, I will stop short of comparing our country to Israel, because Israel was to be run as a theocracy, directly under God’s leadership. Today, we as individual believers still serve God directly, yet our country is not corporately called to do so, yet the principles are still rock-solid.
Verse 7 of this chapter begins to describe why Israel fell. Simply put, they sinned against the LORD by fearing (reverently serving) other gods. Having anything placed in priority above God was never acceptable. 1 John 5:21 even tells us “…guard yourselves from idols”. We certainly have a direct parallel to put into practice today. Really, what else does God need to tell us about His expectations. Sin is ultimately putting something, anything, before Him, and is thus idolatry.
Verse 8 then describes the extent of their idolatry. God had judged nations because of their wickedness and abject immorality, and here we read that Israel followed their customs, not God’s commands. The leaders introduced the pagan ways to a nation of God-fearers, and as a result, God decided to separate Himself from His own people. Verse 9 shows how the people thought their wickedness was being done in secret.
So Israel served idols, false Gods, in spite of God saying quite clearly “You shall do no such thing” (verse 12). Yet God never left His people guessing. He warned them repeatedly, which is rehearsed in verse 13. He gave them the Law, He sent prophets, fathers needed to raise their families in God’s way. He made His expectations very clear.
“However, they did not listen” (verse 14). They rejected…they forsook…they stiffened their necks…followed vanity…made for themselves…and even made their own children practice the pagan rituals of verse 17 (passing through fire - child sacrifice, witchcraft, divination, prostitution, etc.). “So the Lord was very angry with Israel and removed them from His sight.”
Judah (the southern kingdom) was witness to all this. They had their own kings and leaders. So many of the minor prophets speak of Judah taking notice of Israel and what God was doing. Verse 19 speaks volumes, then, when you keep all that in perspective. “Judah…walked in the customs which Israel had introduced.” About 136 years later, Judah would go the way of Israel by way of judgment from God.
So what do we take from all this? I’ve already mentioned our own warning against idolatry. We, just like Israel and Judah have been warned directly by God. How closely do we associate with the pagan rituals surrounding us today? There may not be molten images of idols in our homes or in our society, but we have plenty to distract us from full-time attention to God. God promises that to follow Him will only result in eternal blessings, and yet we allow ourselves to regularly forget that.
God wanted a close relationship with His people in the books of the Kings. He wants the same thing now in the New Testament era. We are to pray to Him, hear from Him in His word, make decisions that demonstrate that He is central to our lives, be a shining light for the culture around us, that culture, while not being invaded by it. Israel and Judah both allowed their surrounding culture to dictate their spiritual walk. Quite the opposite was needed then. Quite the opposite is needed now from each of us. We as individual Christians can fall just as hard and devastatingly as Israel.
God loves us enough to warn us. He loves us enough to punish us. And He loves us enough to help us, if only we’d ask and yield to Him.
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