Now Jehoshaphat . . . walked in the way of his father Asa and did not depart from it, doing right in the sight of the Lord. The high places, however, were not removed; the people had not yet directed their hearts to the God of their fathers. (II Chronicles 20: 31--33)
The Kingdom of God reached its high water mark in the reign of Solomon, "the Younger". Following Solomon's later unfaithfulness to the Lord, the Kingdom split after his death. The Northern Kingdom of Israel was substantially lost to the faith from that point, finally being destroyed by Sennacherib in 722 BC. The Southern Kingdom of Judah limped on for another century or so.
Judah had a mixture of good and bad kings. Jehoshaphat was one of the more faithful, God fearing kings. But so often we read a litany of even relatively faithful kings accepting idolatrous religion and worship and tolerating its admixture with the worship of the one true Living God. The "high places" were altars to idol gods scattered throughout Judah.
The declension of the Davidic line occurred for at least one very pressing reason: it made the hearts of the faithful long for the coming of David's promised greater Son, Messiah who would be utterly true to His God and Father and who would keep covenant perfectly all the days of His life. Every admixture with idolatry, every compromise, every expression of unfaithfulness in the Kingdom and the kings of Judah made the longing and yearning for Messiah deeper and more desperate.
We, now, are privileged to live in the days of Messiah. He has come forth. The promises of God in Him are yea and amen. He has taken the throne of David. He sits forever upon that throne in the heavens. He works, rules, and judges tirelessly to remould, remake, and perfect the Kingdom of God--which, as He taught us--is the matter of seeing God's will done upon earth as it is in heaven. No longer are we cast down in spirit when our rulers and the powers of this world turn away from God and His Christ. For Messiah rules and He will deal with each one. No longer do we need to accept unfaithfulness and defalcation, for Christ rules in heaven and all enemies are gradually being placed under His feet.
In the history of His Church since Pentecost we have seen, as in the line of David's house, admixtures of faithfulness and unfaithfulness, of true worship of the true God mixed with idolatry and unfaithfulness. But our longing and our labour to put these things right, whilst similar to the great reformers and prophets under the Old Covenant, is different in this one great respect: we no longer yearn for the coming forth of Messiah. He has come and He is now filling up the earth with the glory of God as the waters cover the sea. This work is infallible, sure, and certain for God has given Him the Kingdom, having accepted the perfection of His death and resurrection on our behalf. Therefore, feet are surer, hands are steadier, and hope is stronger.
But we must understand that God is not served by lies. There remains in far too many places a toleration of idolatry in the Church, just as in Judah of old. It will not do.
When a man mixes idol worship with the fear of the Lord he invariably and inevitably commits this great sin: he measures and balances and restricts and proscribes the Lord in his heart and mind, as he divides his loyalty and genuflects to, and makes room for, false gods. The root of the sin lies here: he is measuring God and making God, as it were, conform to the desires of his heart, rather than wholeheartedly submitting to God and accepting that God measures him, not the reverse.
This determination to measure God and make Him conform to our feeble reasoning lies at the root of much of the present weakness and enervation in the modern Church. We would believe about God only what makes sense to us. We would progress toward God by understanding before we believe. This makes God the servant and we the master. This makes God the creature, and we the creator. Whereas Augustine rightly declared that he believed in order to understand, an idolatrous rationalism has so infected the modern church that we have become as Judah of old. We would worship God, but only according to the way and precepts of our rationalistic consent, only if we keep the altars on the high places of our hearts and minds firmly in place.
It is the spirit of the age, and the Church has become all too unfaithfully devoted to it. The Church in the West remains fundamentally syncretisic--as it was during the days of the kings in Judah. But Messiah will never, ever accept it--not in the life of an individual believer, and not in His Church.
Casting out the idolatry by which we pay respect and homage to other authorities and powers must be done. It must be done in individual hearts and minds, person by person, believer by believer. It must be done in our families. It must be done in our congregations and places of worship. It is what the Lord commands us to be about. The high places of our hearts and minds, our families and our communities, and our holy places of worship must be removed and we must direct our hearts to King Jesus--and King Jesus alone. All else flows and cascades down from that.
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