And there was war

And there was war between Rehoboam and Jeroboam all their days. – 1 Kings 14v30

I could not put it more aptly than US General William T. Sherman once put it – ‘You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it…’

There is nothing nice about war. We often think about war in the terms of movements and strategies and numbers of casualties and fronts and movements and so on and so on. The cruelty of war though is that people, mostly young people, die. Father and mothers, sisters and brothers, mommies and daddies all die.

Even worse, there is not escaping it, no matter how hard man tries.

Immediately after Israel and Judah split up Reboboam and Jeroboam went to war. They were at war ‘all of their days.’ This phrase pops up a few more time in relation to the kings of Israel and Judah. Though there were a few breaks, we have something of a centuries long civil war between the two nations. All of these folks were part of God’s chosen people. Thousands died on both sides. Who was right? Whose cause was just?

War is a conundrum, but I don’t want to go into all that today. It is enough to say that wars like those fought between Israel and Judah are a part of life.

Why? Why can we not just all get along?

James 4 answers that one. ‘Where do wars and fights come from among you? Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members? You lust and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war.’

We war because we want. As long as we want we will war. We will want until the ‘wanter’ is fixed and the wanter is only fixed by the Prince of Peace.

We have always warred. We war today. We will war until Jesus comes to sort it all out.

War is cruelty. You cannot refine it. But Jesus can sort out the causes for it.