Day 170 – Five Wicked Kings (Northern King 40 years)

• Are you keeping up with all the kings? I hope so! Today we meet five kings of Israel, the northern part of the now-divided country. All these kings come during the reign of Asa down in Judah; take a look at your timeline to get a better picture. You may recognise one of the northern kings’ name as it was mentioned in yesterday’s passages.
• First up is Nadab, who is quickly killed by Baasha. Cast your mind back to day 168 and Jeroboam, the king of the the north. We read then, in chapter 14 of 1 Kings, that Jeroboam’s family line would be destroyed. Baasha gets to work on this right away, as recorded 1 Kings 15:29-30, just as God said would happen.
• Spend a moment thinking about this. It’s not been that long since the days of David and Solomon who, despite their own personal failures, tried to put God first and rule the country under His Word. What must they have thought (and what must God have thought too) about the evil actions of Baasha?
• Look at each of the kings – Nadab, Baasha, Elah, Zimri and Omri. Were any of them “good” in God’s sight? List the poor choices (or outright disobedience!) of each one.
• Look at how each king died. It’s not written completely chronologically so it may take a minute or two to sort it out. Two of them were murdered by the next king, weren’t they? This happens quite a lot during the time of the Israelite kings.
• How do you think God might have used these kings to show the nation something of Himself, even though all the kings were bad?
• Think back to when the land initially split. We looked at it in day 167. The split between Judah and Israel was cemented by Jeroboam (look back at 1 Kings 12:26-30 where he made idols in Israel to stop his people worshipping God in Jerusalem, in Judah). What started as a couple of false idols/altars has led to a nation doing evil, being led by kings doing evil. Sin is so destructive, isn’t it? It just leads to more sin and more misery, and leads us further and further away from God.
• How long does king Zimri hang about? Your chart may help you.
• Omri is listed as “the worst” (1 Kings 16:25) when it came to sinning. He had an alliance with other countries, and married a foreign bride, leading to widespread creation, and worship, of false idols.
• Look at the verses from the prophet Isaiah. What is God’s perspective, according to these verses, towards the kings and the people? Think about yourself. Are you a follower of God or are you in rebellion against Him? What actions or attitudes are in your life that show this?

It might seem inconceivable that this nation – a nation saved and brought into being through God’s loving care – could fall any further than the sin-drenched mess we read about today. We’ve seen a split of the country, effectively causing a civil war, and even a split amongst the people of Israel, causing a second conflict (1 Kings 16:21). We’ve seen king after king today murder each other and others around them, with barely a single passing mention about any understanding or relationship they might have had with God. I shudder to think how the people living in the country at the time would have managed to live godly lives during these times, or whether the priests were able (and indeed willing) to perform their special roles.

But I’m afraid we’re only at the start of a pretty awful pattern of events, and there are many more kings to come who lead the country even further away from God. Things will get much worse yet! Keep reading and we’ll find out what happens.

But, all these thousands of years later, we can see in the words of Scripture and of history how human sin never shook God’s promises or His plans. Despite all the evil and mess that God’s people found themselves in during these dark times, salvation in Christ still came, and Christ still reigns on high today.

Whatever you might make of the world around us which drifts (and sometimes even sprints) away from God and His teachings, you can be sure that there is nothing that anyone or anything could ever do to tear you away from Christ or disrupt the awesome plans he has for you. Hold firm to his Word in the darkness and let that be your guiding light!