Insightful Musings on the Scriptures
by
Raymond P. Sparre
Northwest University class of '67
Good morning.
Let’s sing, “…Happy Birthday, dear Becki—Happy Birthday to You!” Yup! She chalked up another. Besides presenting her with her usual cup of tea in bed, I cut up a mango and delivered that too. I didn’t wrap it—in fact I unwrapped before giving it to her.
The day is under way. We already did a walk/jog in the rain under umbrellas. The dog didn’t want one. Now I need to get ready for a guy coming at 10am to have me do some sawmill work.
May Becki’s birthday go well for you.
Love, Dad/Ray.
This Jewish historical documentary continues to unfold with dismal detail. And just because a king arises to perform with a basically good heart does not mean that his record is entirely clean—that he never falls into some STUPID and relative defeat. Amaziah, King of Judah, is an example of this kind of flip-flopping duplicity. It says of him, “He did what was right in the eyes of the LORD, but not as his father David had done” (14:3). So in the scenes before us, let’s picture him as a good guy wearing a white hat.
Jehoash, however, is a bad guy wearing a black had. He was king over the tribes of Israel and “did evil in the eyes of the LORD” (13:11). And even though he is basically a bad guy does not mean he is prevented from overpowering and defeating the basically good guy. Perhaps one of the reasons that God allowed it to be so was because the good guy yielded to some bad attitudes of arrogant power-hunger as evidenced by the STUPID challenge he puts before the bad guy—and needed to be brought down from his “high horse.” After all, “the Lord disciplines those he loves” (Hebrews 12:6), and can use bad guys to do it. In so many words the good guy is taunting the bad guy something like, “My dad can beat up your dad! Yet you think you’re so tough! Let’s meet behind the barn and we’ll have it out!” The bad guy makes a good decision and declines. The good guy makes a STUPID decision and perseveres with an attack. The record shows the bad guy beating up the good guy. So what’s the point and value of it all? It seems like just another episode of STUPID futility. How can we lace this story into a nice Sunday School lesson? It does nothing to demonstrate the benefits of being good or the consequences of being bad. Even their deaths mess up some common ideas about the cause and effect of blessing—the good guy is violently assassinated (14:19), while the bad guy appears to die naturally (14:16).
Just a minute—let’s not be too quick to draw rigid conclusions. A Biblical overview confirms that “it’s not over till it’s over.” It reveals that “…it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment” (Hebrews 9:27, KJV). So it’s not over till men stand to give account before a Holy Sovereign God, and receive the verdict, “Well done” (Matthew 25:22), or the sentence, “Depart from me” (Matthew 25:41). Suddenly we have here an important and powerful Sunday School lesson.