Fully Devoted: Israel, Act 2Sample

Elisha and Jehu

Jehu was the 10th king of Israel and the man God told Elijah to anoint after the whole scene with Ahab, Jezebel, and the prophets of Baal. Jehu is an example of a king who almost gets it right. 

See, Jehu was the one who finally stepped up and eradicated Baal worship from Israel. He stood up against Ahab’s family and thus their influence on the nation. Ahab’s wicked bloodline was done away with after three full generations without repentance—Ahab was the seventh king of the northern kingdom of Israel, and Jehu was the 10th. The reckoning had come for the way this family had led Israel astray. And it came through Jehu. 

Jehu had some pretty janky methods, but he got the job done. That’s good, right? From what we see in Jehu’s life, not only do our methods matter, but often, our methods actually reveal our motives. Jehu goes about destroying the service of Baal, but he does so by deception. He sets up this mock service in honor of Baal, brings the people who served him together, marks them with specific robes, makes sacrifices to Baal so that everything seems “normal”... and then proceeds to take them all out. Did it work? Yes. But if you’ve decided you need to break God’s moral code in order to establish it, are you really trying to establish it? 

The first command was to have no other gods before the one true God. But the second was not to make or worship idols. Even though his ruse was aimed toward obedience to the first command, it violated the second. James 2:10 NIV reminds us: For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it. 

The ends don’t justify the means and God doesn’t quantify sin like we may be tempted to. Jehu had the right mission—ridding the nation of Baal worship—but he had the wrong methods. And sadly, these methods demonstrated, as with Solomon, a willingness to compromise. 

So Jehu destroyed Baal worship in Israel. However, he did not turn away from the sins of Jeroboam son of Nebat, which he had caused Israel to commit—the worship of the golden calves at Bethel and Dan. 2 Kings 10:28-29 NIV

God actually commended Jehu for ridding the land of Ahab’s influence. Jehu’s family maintained the throne for four generations. But God began to reduce the size of their kingdom and they experienced loss and defeat at the hands of nations they used to be able to beat because they still maintained this practice of idol worship.

Jehu almost got it right, but our methods matter to God. God was trying to build a family that looked different from the rest of the world. They were meant to be holy and set apart in order to represent a holy, set apart God. The purpose of the law was to show them how to be that kind of people, and that’s why it lays out such clear methods for doing things. God was teaching them a different way—a better way. 

Under the new covenant that came through Jesus, we’re still called to be holy and set apart in order to represent our holy, set apart God. And the countercultural way of doing that can be summed in one word—love. This is how we’re called to look different from the rest of the world. After all, Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, said that the world would know who He is by the way we love.

Journaling Questions 

• Write down a verse (or verses) from today’s reading. What stands out to you about that verse?  
• Do you try to justify sins in your life with some sort of ranking system? Like “at least I’m not doing that …” How can you release that tendency and choose to practice repentance?  
• What do you think it looks like to be holy and set apart as God’s people in today’s culture?

Memory Verse

Don’t you realize that you become the slave of whatever you choose to obey? You can be a slave to sin, which leads to death, or you can choose to obey God, which leads to righteous living. Romans 6:16 NLT