Downward Slide

 

READ 2 Kings 14–17

In this country, we elect leaders thinking they will improve our lives, but within a short time many demand a new leader. The OT people of Israel and Judah would have been happy to exchange our system for theirs. Back then, kings ruled because of lineage or military power. Their term of office lasted until they died, and most of them were terrible leaders.

For example, Jeroboam ruled in Israel. He lasted forty-one years doing “what was evil in the sight of the Lord” yet the Lord used him to restore a border because God “saw that the affliction of Israel was very bitter, for there was none left, bond or free, and there was none to help Israel. But the Lord had not said that he would blot out the name of Israel from under heaven, so he saved them by the hand of Jeroboam . . . .” (2 Kings 14:23–27) Can we see the hand of God in even our bad leaders?

During the reign of Jeroboam, Azariah reigned in Judah. He ruled fifty-two years doing what was right in the eyes of the Lord, but “the people still sacrificed and made offerings on the high places. And the Lord touched the king, so that he was a leper to the day of his death.” (15:1–5) Does God still afflict leaders because the people are sinful?

Jeroboam’s son Zechariah reigned over Israel a mere six months, doing evil in the sight of the Lord. A man named Shallum conspired against him, put him to death and reigned in his place — for one month. Then another man called Menahem killed Shallum and took out those who opposed him, even “ripped open all the women in it who were pregnant.” (15:16) He did evil, made his people sin, and took money from them to pay the king of Assyria to protect his power trip. Have our politicians done these things? Are we headed in that direction?

The next king lasted two years, and the one after him lasted twenty years. Both were evil in the sight of the Lord. So was the next king after them, yet he stayed in power for nine years before captured by the king of Assyria and put in prison. Then that foreign king invaded and besieged Israel, taking the people into captivity also. (17:1–5) Are we praying that will never happen to us?

And this occurred because the people of Israel had sinned against the Lord their God . . . And the people of Israel did secretly against the Lord their God things that were not right . . .  they did wicked things, provoking the Lord to anger, and they served idols, of which the Lord had said to them, “You shall not do this.” Yet the Lord warned Israel and Judah by every prophet . . . . But they would not listen, but were stubborn, as their fathers had been, who did not believe in the Lord their God. They despised his statutes and his covenant that he made with their fathers and the warnings that he gave them. They went after false idols and became false, and they followed the nations that were around them, concerning whom the Lord had commanded them that they should not do like them. And they abandoned all the commandments of the Lord their God . . . . And they burned their sons and their daughters as offerings and used divination and omens and sold themselves to do evil in the sight of the Lord, provoking him to anger. Therefore the Lord was very angry with Israel and removed them out of his sight. None was left but the tribe of Judah only. (17:6–18)

Judah did not keep the commandments of the Lord either, but at this point God “rejected all the descendants of Israel and afflicted them and gave them into the hand of plunderers, until he had cast them out of his sight” after they “walked in all the sins that Jeroboam did.” Israel was exiled and the Assyrian king replaced them with pagan people who did not fear the Lord. Therefore God sent lions among them until the Assyrian king ordered an Israeli priest to go back and “teach them the law of the God of the land.” This did not stop these people from serving their own gods. The Lord also told His people also to fear and obey Him but they “served their own gods, after the manner of the nations from among whom they had been carried away.”

These nations “feared the Lord and also served their carved images. Their children did likewise, and their children’s children—as their fathers did, so they do to this day.” (17:19–41)

Because the sentence against an evil deed is not executed speedily, the heart of the children of man is fully set to do evil. (Ecclesiastes 8:11)

Comparing ourselves to these events, are we also on a slippery slope? There is outcry against poor leaders but what about the wisdom of those who elected them? If our leaders are corrupt, do their followers become corrupt too? Certainly these thoughts must govern my prayers. Leaders and the people need to unite and fear the Lord in repentance and in full obedience. Me too.