Little Messages with Big Impact
The phrase that commends Joash is also the phrase that qualifies him, and the qualification deserves a long, honest look. Joash did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, all the years Jehoiada the priest instructed him. Not all the years he reigned. All the years Jehoiada instructed him. The integrity of this king was inseparable from the presence of his mentor. Remove Jehoiada and you remove the scaffolding that was holding the building upright.
Sending singers ahead of soldiers is not a military strategy, that is faith on another level. When Jehoshaphat positioned the worshippers at the front of the army, he was not being naive about the nature of warfare. He was making a declaration about the nature of the victory: this battle belongs to God, and what belongs to God should be preceded by His praise. The singers were not the warmup act before the real action. They were the advance unit of a different kind of force entirely.
It is one of the most disarmingly honest prayers in all of scripture, and it came from a king. A vast alliance of three nations had mobilised against Jehoshaphat. The intelligence report was overwhelming: a great multitude is coming against you. The military calculus was clear. Judah was outnumbered, outresourced, and facing a coalition that had never been assembled against them before. Any leader in that situation would have been justified in reaching for every strategic tool available. Jehoshaphat reached for none of them first. He proclaimed a fast throughout Judah and stood before the assembly and prayed.
Asa’s beginning was one of the finest in Judah’s royal history. But the book of his leadership closes on a note that should make every long-serving leader pause and take stock. In his later years, when threatened by Baasha king of Israel, Asa did something he would never have done in his earlier chapters: he emptied the temple treasury to buy a military alliance with the king of Aram, relying on foreign muscle rather than the God who had given him every victory he had ever known. When the prophet Hanani confronted him about it, Asa had the prophet thrown into prison and brutally oppressed some of the people at the same time.
Asa inherited a kingdom soaked in idolatry. Not the kind that crept in gradually during his watch, but the kind that had been normalized over generations, embedded in the culture, protected by powerful interests, and, most uncomfortably of all, installed by his own grandmother Maakah, who had made a repulsive Asherah pole and held the position of queen mother. This was not a situation Asa created. It was a situation he woke up to. And the first question his leadership had to answer was whether he would challenge what his family had allowed.
God handed Jeroboam ten tribes on a plate. Not through ambition or scheming, but through a direct prophetic promise delivered by the prophet Ahijah, who tore his cloak into twelve pieces, gave Jeroboam ten, and declared that God was giving him ten tribes because of Solomon’s unfaithfulness. The condition was straightforward: walk in my ways, keep my commands, and I will build you an enduring dynasty. It was as generous and as clear a divine mandate as any leader could ever receive.
He had the most powerful throne in the ancient world handed to him on a plate. He destroyed it in a single meeting. Rehoboam was Solomon’s son, inheriting a kingdom at its absolute peak, unified, wealthy, internationally respected, and feared. All he had to do was hold what had been given to him. He did not need to be brilliant. He simply needed to not be catastrophically foolish. He chose catastrophic foolishness.
Before Israel ever had a monarchy, before Samuel anointed Saul, before any palace was built in Jerusalem, God had already established His governance model for humanity. Genesis 1:26 records the original mandate: “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule.” The word translated “rule” is radah, the same word used elsewhere for the dominion of a king. From the very beginning, every human being was designed to reign over something. Dominion is not an upgrade for the specially qualified. It is the original factory setting of every person made in the image of God.
In the ancient Roman world, a triumphal procession was one of the most spectacular events in public life. When a general returned from a decisive military victory, Rome would grant him a triumph, a ceremonial parade through the streets of the city. At the front of the procession marched the conquering general, robed in purple, elevated in a chariot. Behind him came the spoils of war. And behind the spoils came the captives, the defeated enemy generals, bound and on display as visible proof that the battle was over and the victory was complete.
Paul uses this image in 2 Corinthians 2:14 in a way that should stop us in our tracks. He says God always leads us in Christ’s triumphal procession. The procession has already happened. The victory parade is already underway. The enemy has already been publicly displayed as a defeated foe. The war has not been won in some future, hoped-for sense. It has been won. And we are participants in the celebration of a victory that has already been secured.
The lone warrior is a compelling image. The solitary figure who faces impossible odds alone, who needs no one, who draws from an inner reserve that the ordinary person does not possess. It is a powerful image. It is also a dangerous lie.
In the brook where David’s stones were smoothed, the stones did not become smooth in isolation. They became smooth through contact with one another. The water worked on all of them simultaneously, but the friction that produced the finest smoothness was the friction of stone against stone. Community is not an optional extra in the spiritual life. It is one of the primary instruments God uses to form us.
Hebrews 12:14-15 issues a sobering warning about what happens when bitterness takes root in a community: it springs up and defiles many. One bitter stone can destabilize many. One wounded, unprocessed, unreconciled heart in a community is not just a personal problem. It is a corporate spiritual liability. The enemy knows this. Division is not just emotionally painful. It is tactically strategic. A broken formation is a vulnerable formation.