Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

The Lord was with Jehoshaphat because he followed the ways of his father David before him. He did not consult the Baals but sought the God of his father and followed his commands rather than the practices of Israel. The Lord established the kingdom under his control; and all Judah brought gifts to Jehoshaphat, so that he had great wealth and honor. His heart was devoted to the ways of the Lord; furthermore, he removed the high places and the Asherah poles from Judah.
In the third year of his reign he sent his officials Ben-Hail, Obadiah, Zechariah, Nethanel and Micaiah to teach in the towns of Judah. With them were certain Levites—Shemaiah, Nethaniah, Zebadiah, Asahel, Shemiramoth, Jehonathan, Adonijah, Tobijah and Tob-Adonijah—and the priests Elishama and Jehoram. They taught throughout Judah, taking with them the Book of the Law of the Lord; they went around to all the towns of Judah and taught the people.

• 2 Chronicles 17:3-9

Note that I have not copied the entire chapter.  If the Lord is willing and my health continues, I will eventually get to this chapter again in a Bible study and look at the chapter as a whole.  But this nine week series is a challenge for me to find a teaching point in this chapter that I have skipped in roughly six years of writing posts.

This parallels 1 Kings 22:41-59, but the detail that will be discussed is unique to 2 Chronicles.

King Jehoshaphat had his problems, but overall, he was a good king.  If you read through 1 Kings and 2 Kings, and the corresponding books of 1 Chronicles and 2 Chronicles, it is clear how a good king is defined.  Good kings worshiped and served the Lord and bad kings chased after the Baals and worshiped on the high places.  That did not mean that they did not observe the Passover and other festivals, but if they did, they were not exclusively worshiping God, thus they performed vile practices before God.

Some of the good kings fell short of Jehoshaphat’s removal of the high places and removal of Asherah poles, but they were considered good in that they worshiped the true God.  But in not getting rid of those places of false god worship, it would be easy to be drawn back into that bad lifestyle.

Even though Jehoshaphat removed these things, Jehoshaphat’s son, Jehoram, married Athaliah, the daughter of King Ahab of Israel, and they reinstated all the things Jehoshaphat had removed or destroyed.  They were married as part of a treaty with Israel.  While it may have strengthened the northern border of Judah, it led to a bizarre and evil chapter in the history of Judah.  Jehoram’s son became king when Jehoram died.  Shortly afterward, he died and his mother, Athaliah established herself as the ruler, killing all her children and grandchildren, except for Joash who was hidden.  Joash then became king at six years old.  Since the Ottoman empire did the same thing to strengthen the ruler’s hold on the kingdom, it may have been a common practice, although horribly evil.

But the key with Jehoshaphat’s reforms is that he did not stop with a simple removal of the implements of false god worship, he sent instructors and priests throughout Judah to teach them the proper way to worship God.

Being a career industrial instructor, I entered steel mills around the world.  Millions of dollars spent to design and build the equipment, but the people had no concept of how the equipment worked.  It took no time at all for them to have everything out of tune, performing inefficiently, and in some cases, falling apart – either major repairs or having to build new equipment.

It was my job to give them enough knowledge to understand what is going on so that they would not screw things up so quickly.

And that is what Jehoshaphat was doing.  Jehoshaphat had followed Asa, another good king, and if Judah could not clean up their ways, the line of good kings would end.  It did from a peace treaty with Israel and Jehoshaphat’s son married to the daughter of evil queen Jezebel.

We each make our decisions in life.  Set up the best system to clean up the nation and teach the nation the right way and you still may only succeed for a generation.

The rest of this chapter talks of how rich and powerful Judah became due to being in God’s favor, but the people quickly deserted God once the influence of Jehoshaphat was gone.

Yet, all these lessons of Judah’s failures should show us that we need to be diligent.  We need to instruct the next generations.  And we need to do a lot of praying.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory