HEART OF THE STAFF
October 15, 2022
I’ve recently been reading through 2 Chronicles and was impacted by the life of a priest named Jehoiada. When we are introduced to him at the beginning of chapter 23, an evil woman named Athaliah is reigning over the southern kingdom of Judah. Jehoiada takes courage and leads the other Levitical priests to come and take a stand against Athaliah by proclaiming Joash as the rightful king of Judah while they are in the temple together.
As you read this story, you can almost feel the tension in the air as they are proclaiming this kid (Joash is 7 years old at this point) as king from within the temple, awaiting the arrival of a powerful, wicked Queen who is currently ruling and has a history of brutally executing anyone who gets in her way. When she arrives to the temple, the priests led by Jehoiada stand firm and have Athaliah removed from the temple and put to death.
While I was reading I couldn’t help but notice the similarities of this story with that of David and Saul. Both stories include a rightful king of God’s people who is not currently able to reign. Both stories include a current leader who is not following God. Both of these stories include a righteous man taking a tremendous amount of courage to stand up to do what’s right when it’s dangerous and very difficult to do so.
What’s maybe even more intriguing than the similarities between these stories are the differences. Even though these were righteous men following God in the midst of extreme challenges, the manner in which they faithfully followed God looked a lot different. David refused to lay a hand against the Lord’s anointed, even though he had the opportunity to do so multiple times, whereas Jehoiada immediately had Athaliah executed because she 1) was not anointed by God to rule and 2) she made no attempt to even try following Gods way in her leadership.
Jehoiada teaches us several valuable lessons. First, faithfully following God will very often look different for you than it does for others. Second, the influence of one righteous man taking a stand for what is right in the midst of evil all around him has a tremendous impact on society. If you continue to follow the story of Jehoiada, you see that he continued to have a godly influence on King Joash for many years, but as soon as Jehoiada died, Joash was influenced for evil very quickly. Once the influence of Jehoiada was gone, things turned a much different direction very quickly.
Edmund Burke is noted for saying “the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” I love this quote, but would personally change it slightly by saying “the only necessary for the triumph of evil is for godly men to do nothing.” Do our lives resemble that of Jehoiada, a godly man who stood for what was right in the face of evil? What will your impact on society be when your story is written?
In Christ Alone,
Caleb Hecox