How do we ever learn?

Every day we’re asking four questions about part of the Bible. Today Bern Leckie answers:

What did I like about today’s passage?

If you’re feeling some frustration at this point of Chronicles along the lines of, “I get it! Good leaders trusted God and bad leaders didn’t – why is this still carrying on?” I’m sharing that, to be honest. There just happened to be a long line of leaders who got it, or didn’t get it, to varying degrees. If this is frustrating you, can you imagine how God felt about it?!

I’m struck by the inconsistencies, both from generation to generation as each king went their own way to different extents, and also within the life of each ruler. Amaziah “did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, but not wholeheartedly,” and so did his son Uzziah, until he didn’t and “his pride led to his downfall.” His son Jotham did much better personally, despite his people who “continued their corrupt practices.” But his son Ahaz went off-track completely with Baal worship, child sacrifices and desperate looting of the temple and his own palace to try and win allies to stop his country’s crushing defeats.

How could this happen? Why this pattern of bits of faithfulness and progress mixed with blunders and disasters? It could be that these rulers were unenlightened and ignorant of the ways of the Lord. After all, this account was only written after they all died. But given how much seems constantly “written in the book of the kings” as well as the ongoing witness of Jerusalem’s structures – its social structure and priesthood as well as the physical structure of the temple and its focus on divine presence – I doubt that they were ignorant of God.

It’s as if they had God there but missed him. They had God’s law but it didn’t sink in. What got in the way? Can we learn from their lack of learning?

What did it show me about Father God, Jesus or the Holy Spirit?

God sees the efforts we make to be faithful and follow his ways. He credits these, even in leaders who may ultimately make mistakes and suffer the consequences. The Spirit’s inspiration of this account, showing some of what was on people’s hearts, seems to confirm what we might already feel, that it’s impossible to be right with God by own efforts alone.

However, God faithfully kept his promise to David for his family line of rulers to endure. Some did quite well, others were disastrous, but all of them were part of the family God used to deliver a better way to live, learn and grow in closeness and faithfulness to him.

Ultimately, God let these people demonstrate the inadequacy of relying on traditions and a physical temple while their motives and values were mixed up and compromised. Perhaps the temple’s changing state reflected that of the human heart in its own strength. This is where God would intervene through Christ and how we could start to learn his ways.

What am I going to do differently as a result?

Thank God for living in me, making me a temple of his Spirit and, through this, making it possible to change my mind, letting God’s values become mine. I’m still learning.

Who am I going to share this with?

My family and others I follow Jesus with.