Sober Warnings

Servants and Dumpsters

But Jehu was not careful to walk in the law of the Lord, the God of Israel with all his heart; he did not depart from the sins of Jeroboam, which he made Israel sin.  In those days the Lord began to cut off portions from Israel and Hazael defeated them throughout the territory of Israel.
II Kings 10: 31-32.

In the middle of the ninth century BC, God raised up Jehu to destroy the Baal worshipping Ahab and his wicked wife, Jezebel.  Both had set themselves to establish Baalism as the official religion of God's people, Israel.  Eventually, as Elijah had warned, God's judgment fell upon the house of Ahab as as result.  God raised up Jehu, a rebellious army officer, to exterminate everyone in Israel who was either descended from Ahab, or was allied with Baalism.  It was religious-cleansing on a national scale.  Jehu was successful: "Thus Jehu eradicated Baal out of Israel."  (II Kings 10: 28)

But Jehu was not a true servant of the Lord.
When his rebellion was successful and he and his family began to rule, he kept the idolatrous religious policy of Jeroboam in place: he supported the "will worship" of Yahweh in opposition to the true worship of God as instituted by God Himself in Jerusalem.  As a result, the Lord began systematically to judge the northern kingdom of  Israel by empowering another servant--the pagan king of Syria, Hazael.  The Lord began to "cut off portions" of Israel.  Syria began to rape, rob, pillage, and murder throughout the land (II Kings 8:12).

Dale Ralph Davis reflects on the way the Lord works in human history--and how it must drive us to fear and faithfulness:

This [II Kings 10: 31-32] is a sobering summary, for it is telling us that one instrument of Yahweh's judgment (Hazael) is raised up to bring judgment on a previous instrument of Yahweh's judgment (Jehu).  This tale will repeat itself.  Though Yahweh will use Assyria as the rod of his anger against his own people, as the axe that whacks down his own covenant nation, yet Yahweh will destroy the axe for forgetting that it was merely an axe in the divine Lumberjack's hands (Isaiah 10: 1-19).

Yahweh will give Judah and surrounding countries [including Assyria] to his "servant" the Babylonian Nebuchadnezzar, "until the time of his own land comes" (Jeremiah 27:7).  Yahweh presses kings and other reprobates into his service but such servants seldom accept servanthood and so Yahweh raises up another servant to consign the previous servant to the dumpster of history.

All this is scary, however, because it doesn't merely involve the movers and shakers and swelled heads of politics.  Jehu's story testifies that one can be used by God and judged by God.  We need go no further than Matthew 7:21--23 to find the Jehu paradigm in the New Testament.  You can be both used by Christ and rejected by Christ.  Just because you have at some time been the Lord's servant does not mean you are viewed with the Lord's pleasure.  It is very solemn.  Let Jehu haunt us--to fear and faithfulness.
Dale Ralph Davis, II Kings: The Power and the Fury (Fearn, Ross-Shire: Christian Focus Publications Ltd, 2005), p. 167

If not, we will earn the epitaph of Ozymandias: "Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"