He Did What Was Right, And Yet - 2 Kings 14:1-4

 

Amaziah son of Joash became king of Judah. He was twenty-five years old when he became king, and he reigned twenty-nine years in Jerusalem... He did what was right in the Lord ’s sight, but not like his ancestor David. He did everything his father Joash had done. Yet the high places were not taken away, and the people continued sacrificing and burning incense on the high places. 2 Kings 14:1-4

Keep Being Good

What is a believer? It is someone who believes in Jesus, the Son of God, who died for my sins and rose again, and ascended to the Father and sent the Holy Spirit to minister to His people.

How incredible is that?

And yet, I must regularly take out my compass and look to the north. I must fill my mind with Him. "Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God." The Old and New Testament are a compass.

What's that have to do with the passage above?

They are about Amaziah, a descendant of David, a mostly true descendant. He did what was right in the Lord's sight. What a wonderful sentence! Yet there is a postscript: but not like his ancestor David. The high places were not taken away.

And that's actually a pretty good summary for a bible king to have of his life. Most of those king summaries are much, much worse.

And still... yet not like His father David.

There's an ouch in there. In fact, Amaziah gets things so wrong that men find it necessary to assassinate him. He really quit being a good king by the end of his life.

Taking Down High Places

And this has me wondering. Are there high places in my life. Those things that the Lord speaks against yet I just won't do the work of taking them down.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that I think most believers have high places. Some of them are poured into us directly from our culture and seem so normal.

Some of them might come from our family, our upbringing. Some might even come from our church.

Some of them can be privately taken down. Some of them require public work. When our culture becomes ungodly, a moral that used to be taken for granted can become mocked, despised, and persecuted by people we thought were our friends.

Taking down the high places for the kings in the bible was a public thing to do.

I know in my life what I watch on television, what I look at on my phone, and what I am willing to talk about can be high places.

I know in the past week, I confess, I've participated in discussions where I gave seeming consent to a topic because I didn't want to catch people's ire. I wanted to be approved.

But God asks me to approve what is good and holy, not what helps me to fit in.

I am a child of God. I no longer belong to this world. He is the king of kings. And He is active. Today.

Lord, help me recognize and take down the private and public high places in my life. I don't want an * next to my life. I want to be true to Jesus. I want to be all in. You have not given me a Spirit of fear, but one of power, love, and discernment. I claim that reality today. You bought me with a price, snatching me from the clutches of Hell. May I live like that. Today. Blessed be the Name of the Lord.