The Danger of Companions

In 2 Chronicles 19:2 the Lord, speaking through Jehu the son of Hanani, admonishes King Jehoshaphat of Judah for his alliance with the exceedingly wicked King Ahab of Israel. Jehoshaphat had joined Ahab in going off to war.  During the battle, Ahab was killed, and Jehoshaphat was nearly killed. He was only saved from death due to the intervention of the Lord who delivered the king from those who sought to kill him. However, prior to riding off to war with Ahab, Jehoshaphat had entered into an alliance with Ahab by having his son marry Ahab's daughter, Athaliah. This alliance would eventually lead to the elimination of the religious reforms Jehoshaphat had made in Judah by his daughter in law, for when Athaliah became queen she reintroduced the worship of idols and false gods to Judah which Jehoshaphat had eliminated. Eventually, Judah's continued worship of these idols and false gods would lead to the nation's defeat at the hands of Babylon, the destruction of Jerusalem and the captivity of many of the people of Judah in Babylon.

The Lord's admonishment spoken through Jehu the son of Hanani reads: "Should you help the wicked and love those who hate the Lord, and so bring wrath on yourself from the Lord?"

During Jehoshaphat's time as king he instituted religious reforms which the Bible says in speaking of the people of Judah, ". . . brought them back to the Lord, the God of their fathers."(2 Chr 19:4b).  God showed Jehoshaphat mercy because his mostly faithful service to Him showed that Jehoshaphat truly loved the Lord. However, his decision to make Ahab his companion in both the alliance they formed and in battle was ultimately a disastrous one. Speaking of this instance in a devotion, the Puritan pastor David Clarkson explains what we as Christians can learn from this part of King Jehoshaphat's life. He writes:

"What danger was there in Jehoshaphat's familiarity with Ahab? This, those that knew Jehoshaphat to be a good king, walking in the commandments of the Lord, and seeing him choose Ahab for his friend, might conclude that Ahab's ways are not so abominable, otherwise Jehoshaphat cold not be so intimate with him. And thus the bad opinion of Ahab being something taken off, they might be more inclined to comply with him in his ways and worship, and thus Jehoshaphat's familiarity with Ahab would be a snare to others. We judge of a man by his companions, and men are apt to think we approve of those whom we choose for our friends. And so by our company, you may approve of wickedness, and thereby partake of it, though you never act it out."

We don't really know what people thought of Jehoshaphat's companionship with Ahab, but we do know that once Jehoshaphat died the people of Judah accepted the idol worship which his daughter-in-law replaced the worship of the Lord with. Perhaps Jehoshaphat's companionship with Ahab in both war, and in joining their families together made some doubt the sincerity of Jehoshaphat's reforms. Regardless of the answer to that question, what we do know is that Jehoshaphat's closeness with Ahab bore no good consequences.

Those of us who are Christians should be wary of what intimate relationships we foster and maintain. Certainly, we do not want to cut ourselves off from the rest of the world. Certainly, we want to have relationships with those who are lost in sin in the hope that God will use us to bring them to faith in him through the gospel. There are too many parts of scripture which instruct us to share our faith wit the lost to think either of those things are true.

However, as it is dangerous to hold onto a drowning person because they can pull us down to the depths with them, we need to be careful in our intimate relationships with those who are lost in sin because if it is not God's will for us to have an intimate relationship with them so that we may share the Gospel with them, we may be courting disaster in our lives, or possibly the lives of our brothers and sisters in Christ.

Pastor Wayne

Death in the Flowers

During my morning devotions the other day I read the following story told by the Puritan scholar Joseph Mede:

"I once walked into a garden with a lady to gather some flowers. There was one large bush whose branches were bending under the weight of the most beautiful roses. We both gazed upon it with admiration. There was one flower on it which seemed to outshine all the rest in beauty. This lady pressed forward into the think bush, and reached far over to pluck it. As She did this, a black snake, which was hid in the bush, wrapped itself around her arm. She was alarmed beyond all descriptions; she ran from the garden, screaming, and almost in convulsions. During all that day she suffered very much with fear; her whole body trembled, and it was a long time before she could be calmed . . . Such is her hatred now of the whole serpent race, that she has never since been able to look at a snake, even a dead one. No one could ever persuade her to venture again into a cluster of bushes, even to pluck a beautiful rose."

Joseph Mede uses this story to make the following point:

"Now this is the way the sinner acts who truly repents of his sins. He thinks of sin as the serpent that once coiled itself around him. He hates it. He dreads it.He flees from it. He fears the places where it inhabits. he does not willingly go into the haunts. He will no more play with sin than this lady would afterwards have fondled snakes."

In a short devotion, Mede makes a powerful point. Consider where the snake which wrapped itself around the lady hid - in the most beautiful bush of roses. The one that someone would most certainly be drawn to. It is only after the woman makes herself completely vulnerable that the snake attacks. 

This is the way of sin. It deceives. it disguises. It ambushes. We see this first in the book of Genesis, chapter 3, when the serpent deceives Adam and Eve by making that which God had commanded them not to do seem like the most wonderful thing in the world and by convincing them that God wouldn't really be upset with them if they did what he told them not to do. Sin works the same way in the lives of Christians today. It disguises itself as something which is harmless but in reality is dangerous to our spiritual well-being. It disguises itself as something desirable and yet in reality is something destructive. It disguises itself as the way of wisdom, but actually leads to the way of fools. When sin has successfully deceived the believer with the disguise it has chosen, it proceeds to ambush the believer. 

Mede's solution for the Christian who truly has repented of their sin is to avoid sin and the places it inhabits. In his devotion, he cites I Timothy 6:11 which reads, "But as for you O man of God, flee these things. Pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness."(ESV)  What are the "these things" mentioned in the verse? Well verse 11 follows a section of scripture which describes various sins which arise from false teaching and the love of money. So the "these things" are sin. In Genesis 4, God warned Cain, the son of Adam and Eve, that sin was crouching at his door ready to harm  him. Cain did not heed God's warning. The snake wrapped itself around him, and he was not able to escape, and and as a result he murdered his own brother. In the book of First Peter chapter 5, the apostle warns the church to beware of it's enemy the Devil, who is the father and master of sin, because he is roaming around like a lion looking for someone to devour. May we heed the warnings of scripture and be aware that sin is always seeking to attack us. May we remember it will attack us by working to deceive us, and then it will hurt us. Let us be like the woman in the story who was attacked by the serpent. Let us hate sin, and stay as far away from it as we can always remembering that as Christians we have been born of God and through the faith God has granted us, we can overcome the world (I John 5:4)

Pastor Wayne