TOGETHER FOR GOD (34 OF 52)
Scripture: 2 Kings 10:15
This content is part of a series.
Together for God (34 of 52)
Series: Discipleship Part Three
Christopher B. Harbin
2 Kings 10:15
We all want to belong, to be included, to be accepted. We long for community, safety, and a place where we can feel at rest. The world we inhabit, however, is full of contrariness, division, discord, and voices clamoring to classify people into groups, separating us from them and demeaning all who are somehow other. To allow for the fulfillment of that yearning, we need to move beyond our penchant for sowing discord and division. How then do we deal with those with whom we disagree? How do we build a community in the midst of disharmony, disagreement, and so many issues that would divide us?
Jehonadab was an interesting character. We do not really know a lot about him directly, other than what his descendants have to tell us about him. In Jeremiah 35, we learn that Jehonadab forbade his descendants from ever living in houses or drinking wine. Rather, they were enjoined to live in tents perpetually. In today's passage of 2nd Kings 10 that would already have stood out as strange. Israel and Judah had long since settled the Promised Land, taken over or built homes, planted orchards and vineyards, and looked upon wine as the basic symbol of Yahweh's blessings and receiving the fullness of Yahweh's provision. For Jehonadab to make such injunctions upon his descendants would have stood out from the most basic assumptions of Israel and what it meant to bask in Yahweh's provisions. He would have stood out in his day akin to the Amish in Pennsylvania, holding fast to the lived realities of a former time as though in defiance of how the world has shifted and continues to shift around them.
On one hand, that Jehonadab stood fast for following Yahweh despite the whirlwind of religious change in Israel under Ahab and Jezebel's influence marked him as an ally for Jehu. On the other hand, Jehu was not wholeheartedly consistent in his allegiance to Yahweh and standing agai ...
Series: Discipleship Part Three
Christopher B. Harbin
2 Kings 10:15
We all want to belong, to be included, to be accepted. We long for community, safety, and a place where we can feel at rest. The world we inhabit, however, is full of contrariness, division, discord, and voices clamoring to classify people into groups, separating us from them and demeaning all who are somehow other. To allow for the fulfillment of that yearning, we need to move beyond our penchant for sowing discord and division. How then do we deal with those with whom we disagree? How do we build a community in the midst of disharmony, disagreement, and so many issues that would divide us?
Jehonadab was an interesting character. We do not really know a lot about him directly, other than what his descendants have to tell us about him. In Jeremiah 35, we learn that Jehonadab forbade his descendants from ever living in houses or drinking wine. Rather, they were enjoined to live in tents perpetually. In today's passage of 2nd Kings 10 that would already have stood out as strange. Israel and Judah had long since settled the Promised Land, taken over or built homes, planted orchards and vineyards, and looked upon wine as the basic symbol of Yahweh's blessings and receiving the fullness of Yahweh's provision. For Jehonadab to make such injunctions upon his descendants would have stood out from the most basic assumptions of Israel and what it meant to bask in Yahweh's provisions. He would have stood out in his day akin to the Amish in Pennsylvania, holding fast to the lived realities of a former time as though in defiance of how the world has shifted and continues to shift around them.
On one hand, that Jehonadab stood fast for following Yahweh despite the whirlwind of religious change in Israel under Ahab and Jezebel's influence marked him as an ally for Jehu. On the other hand, Jehu was not wholeheartedly consistent in his allegiance to Yahweh and standing agai ...
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