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Meditative Reflection
Our Compassionate God

“By the word of the LORD a man of God came from Judah to Bethel, as Jeroboam was standing by the altar to make an offering.” (1 Ki. 13:1)

The kings of Israel were notorious for their evil deeds; one after another, the Bible comments that they “did evil in the eyes of the Lord”; but it all started with Jeroboam. His building of the altars in Dan and Bethel with the worship of the golden calves had opened the floodgate of idol worship to the successive kings. However, God kept on giving him chance after chance to repent.

Not all evil kings had the privilege of having a prophet who would be so brave and faithful to rebuke them. Jeroboam did. This prophet from Judah was willing to risk his life in obedience to God’s command to come to warn him. Not only that, in order to prove the certainty to His prophecy, a sign was given and it came to pass before his very eyes — the splitting of the altar. Not only that, his shriveled hand was healed upon the intercession by the prophet. Why did God do all these? The answer was obvious — He desired that as evil as Jeroboam was, he might repent. Unfortunately, with all these chances, we read in the Bible that “Even after this, Jeroboam did not change his evil ways” (13:33).

Nonetheless, we should learn to identify with the heart of God to intercede even for those who do evil in His eyes, especially those who rule over us.

Meditative Reflection
Absolute Obedience

“You came back and ate bread and drank water in the place where he told you not to eat or drink. Therefore your body will not be buried in the tomb of your ancestors.” (1 Ki. 13:22)

I think we would all have pity on the prophet who was killed by the lion for these reasons:

- He was an obedient prophet who dared to risk his life to go all the way from Judah to Bethel to rebuke and prophesy against the king of Israel; and as expected, king Jeroboam did not take kindly to his rebuke and wanted to seize him (so that he could kill him obviously).

- He was certainly a compassionate prophet because he was willing to intercede on behalf of such a wicked king, identifying with the heart of the God who desired to give the king a chance to repent.

- He was not swayed by fortune as he turned down the king’s request to eat and drink in obedience to the Lord’s command.

- He was tricked by another prophet who lied to him, using an angel as his authority.

However, as much as the old prophet had, for his part, to bear the blame for lying, (most likely out of jealousy in that God had chosen a prophet from Judah instead of a local one like him), the fact remains that God had commanded this prophet from Judah, in no uncertain terms, that he was not to eat and drink at Bethel, because it was an important sign of God’s rejection of Israel and their king.

As a servant of the Lord, he should know that God does not change, as the Apostle Paul points out to the Corinthians, “For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was preached among you by us — by me and Silas and Timothy — was not ‘Yes’ and ‘No,’ but in Him it has always been ‘Yes.’ ” (2 Cor. 1:19)

And, he should also know that God demands absolute obedience.

As sad as this story was, it is a very important lesson for us to follow the will of God in absolute obedience.

Meditative Reflection
Stubborn Sinner!

“They buried him, and all Israel mourned for him, as the LORD had said through his servant the prophet Ahijah.” (1 Ki. 14:18)

We reflected on the mercy of God in giving Jeroboam chance after chance for repentance, even though he did evil that was basically unparalleled by other kings of Israel. The last chance appeared to be the prophecy and its fulfillment concerning the death of his son.

One wonders if it was too late for Jeroboam to repent!

The answer was obviously no. It was not too late. The fact that the death of his son was foretold in advance and its reason being given as well (14:7-13) was proof that God still desired his repentance. He still could confess his sins and get rid of all the altars, high places and idols. Not that God would, therefore, continue to make him and his descendants kings over Israel; at least he would receive forgiveness, and prevent plunging his people further into idolatry.

Unfortunately, he did none of the above. Such hardness of heart was hard to imagine, but not totally beyond understanding. As a king, he enjoyed 22 years of power, authority and luxury that he would not want to relinquish, not to mention his pride — to openly confess and undo what he single-handed had created — it took great humility which he did not possess. He forgot that he was a mere man, and to refuse to repent in spite of repeated chances given by God was sheer stupidity; just as Our Lord Jesus told Saul who was bent on persecuting the church “It is hard for you to kick against the goads" (Acts 26:14).

Meditative Reflection
The Façade of Piety

“So King Rehoboam made bronze shields to replace them and assigned these to the commanders of the guard on duty at the entrance to the royal palace.” (1 Ki. 14:27)

While the sins of Jeroboam were repeatedly emphasized in the last two chapters, one would expect that Judah—with its temple and Leviticus priesthood intact, strengthened by the priests and Levites who emigrated to Jerusalem from the ten tribes to pledge loyalty to Rehoboam (2 Chr. 11:13)—would maintain some loyalty to the Lord, in spite of the fact that at the latter part of Solomon’s reign, idol worship had already crept into the life of the nation.

And yet, we read that apart from all kinds of idol worship, they even had male shrine prostitutes as “the people engaged in all the detestable practices of the nations the Lord had driven out before the Israelites” (14:24).

In other words, for all intents and purposes, they had severed their relationship with the Lord and it was only a matter of time that God would show His displeasure through not only His judgment on the nation, but through the destruction of the very temple which bore His name.

God is such a patient God that He only allowed Shishak king of Egypt to loot the treasures of the temple and of the royal palace without completely destroying the nation. This should have been enough a sign to show His “jealous anger” as a warning to Rehoboam (14:22).

However, Rehoboam still wished to maintain a façade of piety and pomp by replacing the ceremonial gold shields made by Solomon with bronze ones which he used to decorate his parade to the temple of the Lord. But it was such a fitting image of false religion in that we often use cheap substitutes for the loss of true piety, thinking that by maintaining our external worship, service and sacrifice, we can hide our sins and waywardness from God and from others. But the truth of the matter is we are only delaying the inevitable, and it is only a matter of time that such a façade will be torn apart by God for all to see.

Meditative Reflection
It is Our Own Choice

“Asa did what was right in the eyes of the LORD, as his father David had done.” (1 Ki. 15:11)

Asa was the great great-grandson of David; this meant that he was four generations apart from David, inheriting the idol-worship of Solomon, Rehoboam and Abijah. What was the chance that he could, all of a sudden, turn the tide of idol-worship back to the genuine worship of Yahweh? Very slim, I am afraid. And yet, that was exactly what happened.

It is true that Asa eventually proved to be a less than perfect king, but overall, the Bible comments that “Asa’s heart was fully committed to the Lord all his life” (1 Ki. 15:14). The fact that he could break the vicious cycle that had begun in the latter years of Solomon, and did not follow the footsteps of his grandfather and father, was very unusual. He even dared to cut down and burn the repulsive image of Asherah which his grandmother had made.

It is true that the prophet Azariah gave him great encouragement, but his encounter with him (2 Chr. 15) appeared to have come in Asa’s 11^th year of reign which was after he had already begun to turn the tide from idol-worship to the singular worship of the Lord.

While the Bible is silent on who or what might have influenced Asa in his breaking away from the idol-worship of his fathers, the truth is clear that ultimately whether a person would follow the Lord and His ways or not is a personal choice. We cannot blame our family heritage, our culture or our environment for our wrong choices. Each of us will be held accountable for our choices in life, just as the prophet Jeremiah affirms, “In those days people will no longer say, ‘The parents have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.’ Instead, everyone will die for their own sin; whoever eats sour grapes — their own teeth will be set on edge.” (Jer. 31:29-30)

Meditative Reflection
Nobody is Perfect

“Although he did not remove the high places, Asa’s heart was fully committed to the Lord all his life.” (1 Ki. 15:14)

For whatever reason, the Books of Chronicles tend to report more about the good deeds of the kings of Judah than their shortcomings, but not in the case of king Asa. 1 Kings 15 appears to speak of how he turned the tide of the spiritual life of Judah around, pointing to his expelling of (foreign) male prostitutes, getting rid of idols set up by his fathers and even destroying his grandmother’s image of the Asherah pole, culminating with the conclusion that “Asa’s heart was fully committed to the Lord all his life” (1 Ki. 15:11-14).

However, 2 Chronicles is more candid about Asa’s short-comings in that his alliance with Ben-Hadad was wrong because he “relied on the king of Aram and not only the Lord” , and as he was suffering from feet disease in his older years, “he did not seek help from the Lord, but only from the physicians” (2 Chr. 16:7, 12).

One wonders how the Book of the Kings would still affirm that Asa’s heart was fully committed to the Lord all his life.

I find that this particular issue with Asa clearly shows how we should approach the Scriptures, and that is what John Wesley taught us—“comparing spiritual things with spiritual”, meaning to “consider parallel passages of Scripture” (Mr. Wesley’s Preface to the Sermons, xix, 6), because all 66 books together form the complete revelation of God in His Word. Just like the Four Gospels give us different perspectives concerning the life and teachings of Jesus Christ and there are no contradictions but complements, and it is so with the Books of Kings and the Books of Chronicles.

While the Books of Chronicles are very candid with the failures of Asa, the Books of the Kings allow us to understand as much as that was the case, God overlooked even these shortcomings and counted him as fully committed to Him, because He knows that nobody is perfect.

I believe this is how we should view the lives of other brothers and sisters in Christ as well.

Meditative Reflection
Why Didn’t God Put an End to the Northern Kingdom Sooner?

“So he [Zimri] died, because of the sins he had committed, doing evil in the eyes of the LORD and following the ways of Jeroboam and committing the same sin Jeroboam had caused Israel to commit.” (1 Ki. 16:18-19)

As God kept His promise to David, we see the continuation of unbroken succession in the Southern Kingdom of Judah, with some of its kings having repented of the sins of their fathers and returned to the worship of Yahweh, like Asa. However, the same cannot be said of Israel, the Northern Kingdom.

It is quite typical for the kingdom in Israel (i.e. that of the ten tribes) to be overturned and the throne usurped by someone from another tribe, often through assassination, Not only that, king after king in Israel continued with the sins of Jeroboam; even Zimri, who really reigned for seven days, was accused of “doing evil in the eyes of the LORD and following the ways of Jeroboam, and committing the same sin Jeroboam had caused Israel to commit” (1 Ki. 16:19). It makes us wonder: Was it not obvious to the Lord that there was no hope of the Northern Kingdom returning to Him? Why did He “waste” His time in allowing the Northern Kingdom to continue?

On the one hand, it speaks to God’s long-suffering in that king after king, no matter how they ascended to the throne, the Bible would point out that these kings of Israel were “raised up by God” (1 Ki. 16:2) who desired that they would follow the ways of David and not the ways of Jeroboam.

On the other hand, their continued existence would serve as a thorn in the side of Judah to remind them of their own sins, while their judgment — as God wiped them out (1 Ki. 16:3) — would continue to serve as a warning to both Israel and Judah.