Israel's Roller Coaster History in 1 & 2 Kings

   The history of the children of Israel is a lot like a roller coaster. Every time they plummeted, the Bible shows us it was because of their idolatry. I was thinking about this, and I wondered if it's because so many churches today are full of statues and pictures that this doesn't shock us so much anymore.  But it should because it's a big deal to God.  In fact, the first two commandments are concerned with idolatry:

     I am Jehovah your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the slave house;
      You shall have no other gods before Me.
      You shall not make for yourself an idol, nor the form of anything that is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water beneath the earth.
     You shall not bow down to them, and you shall not serve them; for I, Jehovah your God, am a jealous God,...     Exodus 20:2-5A

Family walk

     We know from the account in Exodus 32--which is the meanwhile back at the ranch account of what happened back in the camp when Moses was up on Mt. Sinai so long.  Aaron made a golden calf because  the children of Israel supposedly made him do it (See Exodus 32:23-24).  In one fell swoop the Israelites had broken God's law before they had even received it.  The footnote from my Recovery Version on verse   of this chapter is very enlightening. Aaron made this calf in the name of Jehovah, and he even offered offerings to it in the way God had ordained. 

    But I learned from my reading that this was a mixed up worship. We can see it in Exodus and then again in 1 Kings 12:25-33 when Jeroboam set up two calves in Bethel and Dan so the Israelites in the north wouldn't go back to Solomon's son King Rehoboam and worship in Jerusalem like God commanded.  He did all of this  because he didn't want to lose his kingdom.  And it says in verse 30 that those Israelites worshipped these calves. What were they thinking?!

     I learned from reading the Life-Study of Joshua, Judges & Ruth that the Israelites got ensnared by the nations that surrounded them in Canaan, and many of them fell into pagan idolatry. And it's not like God didn't warn them.  When Moses was speaking to the Israelites on the plains of Moab right before they entered Canaan, he told them:

     Beware that there is not among you any man or woman or family or tribe whose heart turns away, even today, from Jehovah our God, to go and serve the gods of those nations,...
     Indeed all the nations will say, 'Why has Jehovah done this to this land? Why the burning of this great  anger?
     And they will say, It is because they forsook the covenant of Jehovah, the God of their fathers, which He made with them, when He brought them out from the land of Egypt.
    ...And they went and served other gods and bowed down to them,...
     ...And Jehovah plucked them off their land in anger and in burning wrath and in great indignation, and sent them to another land, as they are this day.'   
                                             Deuteronomy 29: 18, 24-25A, 26A, 28

     So as I was reading the chapters in the Life-Study of 1 & 2 Kings It seemed like it was one roller coaster drop after another.  Some of those kings were so vile that God sent His enemies in to judge them.  And I learned that He also gave them prophets like Elijah, Elisha, Jeremiah, and Isaiah to warn them.  But just like us they didn't always listen to God.  And it seems even God had run out of ultimatums, and that's when God sent the Assyrians to capture the Northern Kingdom of Israel and later the Babylonians to take Southern Kingdom of Judah into captivity. 

    In chapter 23 of the Life-Study of 1 & 2 Kings Witness Lee says that of the 41 kings of Israel 30 were evil, and on page 157 Witness Lee points out that in the book of Jeremiah God tells His people that the root cause of their idolatry is that they forsook Him as the fountain of living waters (Jer. 2:13).  What I get from all of this is if I ever start to  feel dizzy by the world and other things claiming my heart's attention, it's time to get off! Because God doesn't want us to be on a roller coaster in our relationship with Him.

List of Other Posts on 1 & 2 Kings:

Taking a Look at Solomon's Prayer in 1 Kings 8:48
Elijah & the Showdown on Mt. Carmel in 1 Kings 17
How Does Elisha's Ministry Parallel the Lord's in the Gospels?