“An Insatiable Lust for Power”

Well, good Monday morning to you. Hope you had a wonderful weekend. Did you get together with God's people yesterday, learned something from God's Word?

I hope you had a good day and a good time over the weekend. But today we're starting a new week, and with a new week, a new series of Bible readings for our schedule.

So today we're reading in 2 Kings 11 and 12, and in 2 Chronicles 22 through chapter 24.

So today I want to focus on a couple verses in chapter 11 of 2 Kings. Now I don't know about you,

I have grandchildren. Do you? Do you have any grandchildren? How many do you have? I have five grandchildren that are by blood, and two of them live really close by.

Two of them were actually born in my house, and my wife and I were present with the birth of three of the five grandchildren.

There's probably not anything I wouldn't do for them. If something came up and it meant my life or theirs,

I'm done. I'm out of here. Take me. But not everybody's like that.

Some people can be so filled with greed and a lust for power and ambition that they're willing to do just about anything.

It doesn't matter who it hurts. They want what they want, and they're going to get it no matter the cost.

We see a powerful, nasty illustration of that here in the beginning of 2

Kings 11. Athaliah is grandma, and grandma's son was the king of Judah, and her son died.

We read about that in chapter 10 of 2 Kings. Jehu was responsible for the death of her son, who was the king in Jerusalem.

Well, he died. So the way things worked was there was a natural sequence of ascension to the throne.

Some son of Ahaziah would come to the throne and take over and be the king.

Well, Athaliah was hungry. Grandma, Ahaziah's mom, is hungry for power and control and probably the supposed prestige that goes along with it.

So what does she do? Says, when Athaliah, the mother of Ahaziah, saw that her son was dead, she arose and destroyed all the royal heirs.

I have a hard time wrapping my head around that. I mean, I think about how deeply my wife, grandma, loves her grandchildren.

And she feels the same way I do, that she would lay down her life for their welfare.

The last thing in the world that she would do is anything to hurt them. And yet here's this grandmother who is not only willing to hurt them, but to kill them.

Why? Because she wants to be the queen. She wants to be the queen. Again, that's really kind of unfathomable.

How does a person get to such a point? Well, again, it all goes to the matter of the heart, doesn't it?

Just how wicked the heart can be. Just how filled with a lust for power and control the heart can develop.

Now, this is a very extreme example. And I don't think we should let the lesson get lost in the extremity of the example.

In other words, my question is, what are some things that you're passionate about? Some things you're very ambitious about?

Something that you want to accomplish? That you want to have for yourself? Maybe it's a good thing.

Maybe it's a noble thing. Maybe it's a worthwhile thing. I think of many dads, many men, who they want to do well in their career.

They want to advance in their career and move up the ladder, if you will.

That can be a wholesome thing. We need to have a holy ambition in life.

But we always have to check that ambition. And we have to check it by asking ourselves the question, what is the cost of pursuing this ambition?

What's it going to cost? Is somebody going to get hurt? Who's going to get hurt?

How and why? What am I going to lose if I pursue this ambition?

Am I going to lose my family? Am I going to lose my marriage? Am I going to lose the respect and admiration of decent people?

What is it going to cost me? Those are some very pertinent questions.

And they should sober us in our goal setting and our goal pursuit.

The last thing we want is to have hearts that become so consumed with the desire for the fulfillment of our ambitions that we will walk over anybody and we will hurt anybody in order to get them.

Let's think soberly about that which consumes us, those things that are our ambitions.

So may the Lord challenge us in that today. And so our Father and our God, we do thank you today for this horrible example in the

Old Testament because it causes us to stop and ponder and to think. May we do so in Jesus' name.

Amen. All right. Well, have a good rest of your Monday. And you have goals, you have ambitions this week.