He did evil because he had not set his heart on seeking the Lord. (2 Chronicles 12:14) One of the teachers on staff in the children’s ministry of our church wrote this beautiful op-ed piece about this subject just a few days ago. You should read the short essay here. In essence, she says that the only way to get other people’s heart set on the things of God is to have your own heart set into the things of God. It was brilliant. I want to tell you how we arrived at our Bible verse today. There was a king named Rehoboam ruling Israel. The Bible says that “he had become strong, [and] he and all Israel with him abandoned the law of the Lord” (v1). Here’s what that means very plainly– he thought he didn’t need God anymore because he was able to muster up his own strength and power to do and obtain what he wanted. This is a natural human inclination– to be able to do without the assistance of another. In fact, it’s exactly what the serpent sold Eve in the Garden of Eden. When a king becomes Biblically “strong” it means that he is conquering a lot of territory. It means other nations are looking at the king as a threat to conquer their countries and territories. In an instant, the king who was in the shadow of David and Solomon is now making his own name and the countries around him are taking notice. More importantly, it is this mentality that God notices. If Rehoboam had a heart set on God as David and Solomon did, God may have historically blessed this king as well. However, Rehoboam had his hearts set on something else. God detested that. The reason he detested that was because Rehoboam feigned setting his heart on God, but it was a front and not true. In the movie, “Avengers”, Thor says something like this: “Your work with the Tesseract is what drew Loki to it… and his allies. It is a signal to the Realm that Earth is ready for a higher form of war!” That’s exactly what Rehoboam was doing. His work in “becoming strong” drew enemies and the Bible says God uses those enemies to teach a lesson to Israel. This is exactly how we end up at our passage today. Are you doing evil because you’re evil or are you doing evil by pretending to have your heart on God while it’s somewhere else? Perhaps, you don’t even pretend to have your heart on God and you’re just more adamantly rebellious against God because you believe whatever microcosm of achievement you earned was done with your own strength. Whatever it is, we need to take a reading of where our hearts are set. If it is for God, then don’t do evil by pretending it’s with God when it’s not. If its not with God, then I beg you, come back to God, He has your best interests at heart, even if you don’t think so.
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