Year 5, Day 13: 2 Kings 15

Theological Commentary: Click Here

Discipleship Focus: Ambition, Appetite, Approval

• Approval: We all need to feel as though we are accepted.  When we seek the approval of God, our Up is in the right place.  But when we seek the approval of other people besides God, we open the door to pursuing false gods and risk putting someone or something other than God in our Up position.
• Appetite: We all have needs that need to be filled.  When we allow ourselves to be filled with the people and things that God brings into our life, we will be satisfied because our In will be in proper focus.  But when we try to fill ourselves with our own desires we end up frustrated by an insatiable hunger.
• Ambition: We all need a goal to which we can strive.  When our ambition comes from God, we find fulfillment in our obedience into that for which we have been equipped because our Out is in proper focus.  But when our ambition comes from ourselves, we find ourselves chasing after our own dreams and trying to find fulfillment in accomplishments of our own making.

I don’t feel like I have a bead on a single thread through this passage.  But what I do pick up on is this string of Israelite kings.  We get one king after another.  And as we’ve entered the death throes of the kingdom of Israel, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that they go from one king to another king to another king in rapid succession.  It shouldn’t surprise us to see political coup after political coup.

But the more important question is why does this happen?  I believe it is happening because the kings of Israel chase after the world and the world’s ways instead of God’s ways.

• When they are seeking human approval instead of God’s approval, it makes sense that God’s protection won’t cover them when those who do not approve of them come to usurp their power. 
• When they are seeking to feed their own appetite for wealth, power, and other things it should make sense that God isn’t there to protect them against others who are looking to satisfy their own human appetite for those same things.
• When they are seeking their own ambition rather than leading people into the ways of God, it shouldn’t surprise us when God doesn’t protect them from other people who are likewise seeking their own ambitious ways.

It shouldn’t surprise us to see kings rise and fall once God is abandoned in Israel.  Likewise, it shouldn’t surprise us to see it in our own culture, either.  When a culture no longer pursues the consistent things of God, we should expect cultural fads to come and go.  In this circumstance we should expect to see a culture whose trends change as often as the wind.  That’s what we see in the death throes of Israel as their kingdom is coming to an end.

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