God: Promise Keeper

2 Kings 15:8-12
“Not the book of Kings!” I hear you thinking it. Your eyes already have glazed over as you think that nothing good can come from that historical book. After all, it is not just that it is a history book, but it is a confusing history book. Who can keep track of all the different kings as they enter stage left and exit stage right in the span of a few short verses? More than that, who can keep straight which Jehoahaz or Jehoram or Jeroboam or Jehoash is which? (There seems to be two of each of those, if you can believe that.) I totally understand. As I was reading through 2 Kings, I had to pull up a family tree online to help me keep all of them straight! The books of 1 & 2 Kings are not for the faint of heart. Nevertheless, they are part of the word of God, and as Paul tells his young protégé, they are “profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness” (2 Tim 3:16).
So, as I was reading, I stopped at the end of this section where we read, “This was the promise of the Lord that he gave to Jehu, ‘Your sons shall sit on the throne of Israel to the fourth generation.’ And so it came to pass” (2 Kings 15:12). That seemed interesting to me. After all, this is after the short description of Zechariah, a king of Israel who “did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, as his fathers had done” (15:8-9). Why would God have promised something like this to a king of Israel? I may not retain much from these books, but I know that the kings of Israel are the bad guys and the kings of Judah are the good guys, generally speaking. Can it really be that God made such a promise? After turning back to 2 Kings 10, I find that God did, indeed, make this promise. I was stunned.
As I pondered this series of events, the answer to why God would make and fulfill this promise seemed clear to me: God rewards those who serve him and he is faithful to his promises. Jehu had done great work for the Lord by destroying the entire house of Ahab and slaughtering all of the prophets of Baal. That was wonderful work, and God rewarded him for it. This was not cancelled out by the fact that Jehu persisted in the sins of Jeroboam and failed to follow God’s Law. Furthermore, God’s promise was not nullified by the sins of Jehu’s sons. God had given his word to Jehu, and even though Jehu was not around to receive the reward or to make sure that God was faithful, God did what he said that he would do.
While this may seem like a small thing from a small story in the Old Testament, I think it is just one more example of what God always has done: he makes promises to his imperfect followers and is true to them even when his followers are not true to him. We could list people like Abraham, Moses, David, Solomon, and many others, who received such promises and then were unfaithful to God. Ultimately, I think it points us toward the God who was willing to make a promise in Jesus Christ that anybody who comes to him can receive salvation, and because of his faithfulness to that promise, we are not under threat of losing it because of our failings. Praise be to God for this gift and for his faithfulness to us! -TL

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