A Good King and an Evil King before God
(1 Kings 22: 41~53)
Before wrapping up the book of 1Kings, lets see the difference between a good king and an evil king before the Lord through todays passage.
1. Jehoshaphat a good king before the Lord
1) He inherited his parents faith, which matters. Whenever the kings of Judah were enthroned, the kings mother was introduced as if it were a custom. Jehoshaphats maternal grandparent seems to be from a famous family of warriors. His daughter Azubah means cast away or broken, which seems to reflect her feeling of being cast away because of her fathers obsessive patriotism. Thanks to her desperation for God, Jehoshaphat, her son was able to establish himself as a good king. Faith starts from recognizing our absolute inability. What made Jehoshaphat a good king was not her mothers excellence, but her desperate situation which drove her to rely only on God, who revives the dead. The name of Jehoshaphats maternal grandparent recorded in the Scripture shows us that he is from a family of faith, which held to Gods redemption history with faith. We can also make our reputable family of faith through our right interpretation based on the Word.
2) He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord. Doing what was right in the eyes of the Lord implies doing before the Lord has the same meaning as doing what is right. Doing what is right means not to turn aside to the right or to the left from the way of the Lord but to walk straight. For this purpose, we need to stay close to the Lord, ready to receive and follow Gods instruction. In order to receive Gods instruction, we need to belong to a godly community. Trying to be righteous by ourselves is dangerous behavior. It can be a self-righteousness that pricks others. We can understand Gods righteousness only when we recognize that we cant be right and righteous by ourselves.
3) Yet he didnt remove the high places. When Gods temple was built, the Lord commanded that the Israelites should worship him in that place. However, Solomon didnt give up on the high places, intoxicated with the prosperity God brought him in response to his one-thousand-offering. Thus the worship in the high places became a hotbed of chronic religious crimes of Israel. We cry out to the Lord in our urgent situations, yet back in our comfortable place, we tend to backslide into the world looking for the pleasure of diversity. Jehoshaphat didnt leave the Lord, yet failed to remove the high places of idolatry.
4) He made a fatal mistake. The war between Israel and Judah went on. Both kingdoms, however, enjoyed prosperity after defeating their large enemies. In the midst of his heyday, Jehoshaphat committed the fatal blunder of marrying his son to Ahabs daughter. Even the reformer made a mistake. We are no match for our circumstances. Because of the political marriage, Jehoshaphat was swept into the unnecessary war against Aram and had a narrow escape from the battlefield of Ramoth Gilead. From a modern perspective, Jehoshaphat might have been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for his marriage alliance. However, through this marriage, the one person Athaliah brought the custom of Israels idolatry into Judah and worst of all the great massacre, which could have terminated the dynasty of David and Jesus. Then he had a narrow escape from being killed in a battlefield after ignoring Gods warning through a prophet. However, he repented of his sins and relied on God only, which enabled him to conquer the Moabites and Ammonites. God is the Lord of wars. Absolute authority is to be avoided. We need to avoid the trap of depravity by inquiring of our community from time to time.
(5) He made a big U-turn through Gods last punishment. Gods final judgment seems to be finished in verse 45. Yet there were more verses, which explain why he was able to be ranked as a good king. Jehoshaphat built a fleet of trading ships to carry some gold in Edom in order to revive the glory of Solomons reign, working with Ahaziah son of Ahab. However the ships were wrecked at Ezion Geber, which brought a great financial loss to Judah. After repenting of his sins according to the counsel of Eliezer the prophet, Jehoshaphat gave up seeking great wealth and rejected Ahaziahs suggestion of resuming their project. He also rid the land of the male shrine prostitutes. These were his great applications that make up for his fatal mistakes, which enabled him to remain as a good king.
2. Ahaziah an evil king before the Lord
Ahaziah, the successor of Ahab, is recorded as an evil king, walking in the ways of his father and mother and in the ways of Jeroboam. The general review on Ahaziah was that he did evil as his father, who enraged God by worshiping Baal. While Jehoshaphat made the mistake of his marriage alliance, a negative example of his weakness, Ahaziah deliberately committed the sin of worshiping Baal and went to hell. Verse 53 points out that he did evil 'just as his father had done' in order to bring up Ahabs sins once again. Despite Ahabs many sins, however, God allowed his son Ahaziah to succeed him smoothly, noticing his Ahabs humbleness in his last years, saying that he would delay his judgment to Ahabs next generation. Thus God takes much account of repentance.
Heres the report from a small group about an evil Ahaziah deacon of our church, who brought news about his company founder, whose home was broken. The founder opened his company with an opening worship service to God. Later, however, he stopped going to church, walked out on his wife, and married a female staff member. Then he sold his companys stock for 24 billion won. Later, the deacon heard, he died of pancreatic cancer, and his children divorced with a pile of debts. Such is the way of Ahaziah, the evil king before the Lord He enjoyed the prosperity on earth and went to hell. The key to being a good king is to make a U-turn through a disaster at his last moment. May God bless us to see ourselves from Gods perspective and do what is right before the Lord!
Then Jehoshaphat rested with his fathers and was buried with them in the city of David his father. And Jehoram his son succeeded him. (1 Kgs 22:50)
