06/01/2021
Devotions 6/1
But if you or any of your descendants disobey my commands or start worshiping foreign gods, I will no longer let my people Israel live in this land I gave them. I will desert this temple where I said I would be worshiped. Then people everywhere will think this nation is only a joke and will make fun of it. This temple will become a pile of rocks! Everyone who walks by will be shocked, and they will ask, “Why did the Lord do such a terrible thing to his people and to this temple?” Then they will answer, “We know why the Lord did this. The people of Israel rejected the Lord their God, who rescued their ancestors from Egypt, and they started worshiping other gods.” 1 Kings 9:6-9 (CEV)
From Solomon on, the Davidic monarchy is a hot mess. Rehoboam, Solomon’s heir, inherits an already crumbling kingdom, and it is not long before Jeroboam, a former part of Solomon’s government that Solomon tries to have killed because of a dream, returns from exile, and leads the rebellion of the ten northern tribes, resulting in the kingdom of Israel, sometimes known as Samaria. The unified kingdom of Israel will never reunite as it was under Saul, David, and Solomon.
The kings of Israel and Judah who follow are generally underachievers in the whole faithfulness to God thing. They are prone to self aggrandizement and idolatry, injustice and greed. It’s during the period of the divided kingdoms that the prophets come to prominence, and this period will end with the exile of both kingdoms. These kings are particularly prone to idolatry and cultural assimilation, choosing to place their trust in false gods or other means of security.
Moses’ words to Israel in Deuteronomy as they prepare to enter Canaan are haunting: “The Lord promised your ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob that he would give you this land. Now he will take you there and give you large towns, with good buildings that you didn’t build, and houses full of good things that you didn’t put there. The Lord will give you wells that you didn’t have to dig, and vineyards and olive orchards that you didn’t have to plant. But when you have eaten so much that you can’t eat any more, don’t forget it was the Lord who set you free from slavery and brought you out of Egypt. Worship and obey the Lord your God with fear and trembling, and promise that you will be loyal to him. Don’t have anything to do with gods that are worshiped by the nations around you. If you worship other gods, the Lord will be furious and wipe you off the face of the earth. The Lord your God is with you, so don’t try to make him prove that he can help you, as you did at Massah. Always obey the laws that the Lord has given you and live in a way that pleases him.” (Deuteronomy 6:10-19)
Israel, Judah, its kings and its people have forgotten. God continues, through the prophets, to call them to faithfulness, but they won’t listen.
We sometimes struggle with a malformed image of an angry Old Testament God. We take descriptions of God’s wrath and jealousy out of the context of the covenant, the mutually held understanding of God and Israel, and create an image of God that simply isn’t accurate. God is clear from the beginning of the Exodus from Egypt — what God wants is Israel’s trust and dependency. That’s the deal, and Israel agrees to it, at least in word. But it’s not long before they’re making golden calves and chasing foreign gods and generally making a mess of the whole thing. It’s somewhere between 600-800 years of this kind of behavior, depending on what biblical history timeline we follow, before God finally is fed up enough that the deal is off. When we suggest that God is unloving, unkind, or impatient because of God finally running out of patience with Israel’s unfaithfulness, we neglect the centuries of God putting up with Israel’s stuff.
If we were to believe that the God of the Old Testament is somehow different than God today, all of this might seem a bit trivial. There certainly have been theologians who have tried to suggest that Jesus somehow changes God’s mind, but that neglects the obvious scriptural witness in both the Old and New Testament. It’s hard to fathom how such a conclusion could be reached with passages like John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that…”
There are multiple conclusions that might be fitting, but at the heart of the Old Testament’s witness are two things. God continues to love and pursue us, even when we let down our end of the deal, and we are prone to let down our end of the deal. Prone does not mean inexorably bound, as some have understood it, but the witness of the history of the people of God is that we carry a propensity to choose our own way over God’s way. What keeps the story of the kings of the Old Testament away from being simply helpful information in Trivial Pursuit is the way that we see ourselves reflected in them.
When you are in positions of power or control, how are you open to God’s guidance?Do you put your trust in God, or are you more likely to practice self reliance?What idols or cultural “gods” find their way into your life?
