Not quite good enough

In the seventh year of Jehu, Jehoash became king, and he reigned forty years in Jerusalem. His mother's name was Zibiah of Beersheba. Jehoash did what was right in the sight of the Lord all the days in which Jehoiada the priest instructed him. But the high places were not taken away; the people still sacrificed and burned incense on the high places. – 2 Kings 12.1-3

This section of 2 Kings is a whole list and series of descriptions of the kings of Israel and Judah. They kind of jump back and forth with names and dates and parents and ages and lengths of reigns of the kings. We get a brief description of the kind of King they were and what they did as king. I didn’t try to look at all of them, but just picked out a couple to look at.

In Jehu’s seventh year as king of Israel Jehoash became king of Judah to rule from Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Zibiah and the chief priest was Jehoiada.

Jehoash was a pretty good king. But pretty good is not enough. He did what was right. He listened to the instruction of the priest. But he did not deal with the issue of false gods and the people still sacrificed and offered sacrifices to the false gods.

The problem all through these years is that most of these kings did everything except one or two things. They left some of the important things undone and therefore there were constant battle and struggles because they left just a little nugget of sin in the land. They did a lot of right, bit their hearts never really changed.

I think a lot of Christians are just like that. We do a lot of good and we deal with a lot of issues, but there too often seems to be that little but of sin that we don’t really want to deal with.

And we don’t deal with it all we too are going to have problems. Lets make sure that when we ‘do right in the sight of the Lord’ we also get rid of our own high places that keep us from perfect obedience.