The Almost Reformation: Jehu's Lethal Obedience and Fatal Compromise Text: 2 Kings 10:29-31
Introduction: The Anatomy of a Halfway House
In the Scriptures, God gives us portraits of men, not cartoons. He does not paint in monochrome, but in full and sometimes startling color. We see men of great faith who stumble badly, and we see men of great wickedness who sometimes do the right thing, even if for the wrong reasons. And then we have men like Jehu, a thunderbolt in the hand of God, a man of spectacular, bloody, and righteous zeal, who nevertheless builds his entire kingdom on a foundation of sand. He is a fascinating case study in the anatomy of a halfway house. He was a man who obeyed God with terrifying precision up to a point, and then stopped cold.
Our modern evangelical sensibilities are often troubled by a man like Jehu. We like our heroes neat and tidy. We prefer a gentle Jesus, meek and mild, and we want our Old Testament saints to behave like respectable Presbyterians. But Jehu drives a bloody chariot straight through all that. He was commissioned by God to be a divine instrument of wrath, to utterly annihilate the corrupt and idolatrous house of Ahab. And he did it. He did it with cunning, he did it with gusto, and he did it thoroughly. He waded through blood to obey a direct command from God, and for this, God commended him.
But this is where the story gets complicated, and this is where it gets intensely practical for us. Jehu was a great reformer, but a failed statesman. He was a brilliant executioner, but a poor worshiper. He tore down the temple of Baal, but he propped up the golden calves. He eradicated one form of idolatry with extreme prejudice, only to perpetuate the state-sponsored idolatry that had been rotting Israel for generations. He obeyed God when it aligned with his political interests, and he disobeyed God when it threatened his grip on power. In this, Jehu is a perennial warning to the church. He is a picture of every man, every family, every church, and every nation that is willing to deal with the flagrant sins out there, but refuses to repent of the respectable, foundational sins in here. He shows us that it is possible to do many things right in the eyes of God and still not have a heart that is right with God.
This passage is a divine audit of Jehu's reign. We see God's commendation and His condemnation, side-by-side. We see a temporal blessing for a partial obedience. And in this, we are forced to ask ourselves: where have we stopped short? Where have we confused our zeal for God's work with a heart that truly walks in God's law?
The Text
However, as for the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, which he made Israel sin, from these Jehu did not depart, even the golden calves that were at Bethel and that were at Dan.
And Yahweh said to Jehu, “Because you have done well in doing what is right in My eyes, and have done to the house of Ahab according to all that was in My heart, your sons of the fourth generation shall sit on the throne of Israel.”
But Jehu was not careful to walk in the law of Yahweh, the God of Israel, with all his heart; he did not depart from the sins of Jeroboam, which he made Israel sin.
(2 Kings 10:29-31 LSB)
The Lingering Poison (v. 29)
The narrator begins his summary of Jehu's reign not with his triumphs, but with his foundational failure.
"However, as for the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, which he made Israel sin, from these Jehu did not depart, even the golden calves that were at Bethel and that were at Dan." (2 Kings 10:29)
This is the great "however" of Jehu's life. He had just finished a spectacularly successful and righteous purge. He had lured the prophets of Baal into their temple under false pretenses and slaughtered every last one of them. He turned their temple into a latrine. This was not a man afraid to get his hands dirty for God. But when it came to the "sins of Jeroboam," he stopped. Why? What were these sins?
We have to go back to 1 Kings 12. When the kingdom split after Solomon, Jeroboam became king of the northern ten tribes. His first thought was not theological, but political. He said in his heart, "If these people go up to offer sacrifices in the house of the LORD at Jerusalem, then the heart of this people will turn back to their lord, Rehoboam king of Judah, and they will kill me." His solution was to create a state-sponsored, alternative worship system. He set up two golden calves, one at Bethel in the south of his kingdom and one at Dan in the north. He told the people, "It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem. Here are your gods, O Israel, which brought you up from the land of Egypt!"
This was not atheism. It was syncretism born of political pragmatism. Jeroboam wasn't denying Yahweh; he was redefining Him. He was making Yahweh convenient. He was making Him controllable. He was making Him a national mascot. The calves were not intended to be new gods, but rather new, visible representations of Yahweh, much like Aaron's golden calf at Sinai. This was a direct violation of the second commandment. It was worshiping the true God in a false way. And it was done for one reason: to secure his throne. The calves were political anchors. To worship in Jerusalem was to recognize the legitimacy of the Davidic dynasty in the south. So Jeroboam created a counterfeit religion to prop up his counterfeit kingdom.
And Jehu, the great reformer, kept it. Why? For the very same reason. He had wiped out the house of Ahab. He had destroyed the foreign cult of Baal-worship that Jezebel had imported. That was good. It was like pulling a gaudy, invasive weed out of the garden. But he left the poison in the soil. The Baal worship was an external threat; the sin of Jeroboam was the constitutional foundation of the northern kingdom. To remove the calves would be to tell the people that the only legitimate place of worship was in Jerusalem, which would be political suicide. It would be admitting that his throne in Samaria was, in the end, illegitimate. Jehu was willing to be zealous for God, but his zeal stopped at the border of his own self-interest and political security.
A Commendation and a Temporal Blessing (v. 30)
Despite this foundational compromise, God acknowledges and rewards Jehu's obedience in the task he was given.
"And Yahweh said to Jehu, “Because you have done well in doing what is right in My eyes, and have done to the house of Ahab according to all that was in My heart, your sons of the fourth generation shall sit on the throne of Israel.”" (2 Kings 10:30 LSB)
This verse ought to stretch our minds. God is not a cosmic grump who only sees the flaws. He is a righteous judge who gives credit where credit is due. He gave Jehu a specific, bloody, and difficult task: to be the executioner of His wrath on the house of Ahab. And Jehu did it. He did it completely. God says he did "according to all that was in My heart." This tells us that God's heart can contain fierce and settled wrath against covenant-breakers. The judgment on Ahab's house was not an overreaction; it was divine justice, and Jehu was the appointed instrument.
And for this external, yet thorough, obedience, God gives him a real, tangible, historical reward. "Your sons of the fourth generation shall sit on the throne of Israel." This is a covenantal blessing, but it is a limited one. It is a temporal reward for a temporal obedience. God is a generous king, and even His hired hands are paid their wages. This promise was fulfilled exactly. Jehu's dynasty, through Jehoahaz, Joash, Jeroboam II, and Zechariah, lasted for four generations after him, the longest of any dynasty in the northern kingdom. God keeps His promises, even to flawed men.
This teaches us that God can and does use unregenerate or partially obedient men to accomplish His purposes in history. He can use a pagan Cyrus to free His people. He can use a zealous but compromised Jehu to clean house in Israel. God's sovereign purposes are never thwarted by the mixed motives of His instruments. But it also teaches us that it is possible to receive temporal blessings from God for certain actions while still being under His ultimate condemnation for the state of your heart.
The Heart of the Matter (v. 31)
The final verse of our text is the divine diagnosis. It cuts past the actions and exposes the heart.
"But Jehu was not careful to walk in the law of Yahweh, the God of Israel, with all his heart; he did not depart from the sins of Jeroboam, which he made Israel sin." (2 Genesis 10:31 LSB)
Here is the second "but" that frames Jehu's life. God commended his actions, "but Jehu was not careful..." The Hebrew word for "careful" is shamar. It means to keep, to guard, to watch over, to attend to carefully. Jehu was a meticulous man when it came to executing the Baalites. He was cunning and detail-oriented. But when it came to the law of Yahweh, he was sloppy. He was inattentive. He didn't guard it.
And the reason is given: he did not do it "with all his heart." This is the central requirement of the covenant. "You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might" (Deut. 6:5). God is not interested in renting out a room in your heart. He is not interested in a time-share. He requires total, unreserved, wholehearted allegiance. Jehu's heart was divided. Part of it was zealous for Yahweh's honor, and part of it was dedicated to Jehu's political survival. And a divided heart is, in the final analysis, a disobedient heart.
His external actions in destroying Baal worship were good. But they did not flow from a heart that loved God's law entirely. They flowed from a heart that saw the political utility in removing the party of Ahab and Jezebel. His zeal was real, but it was a zeal that served his own enthronement. True obedience is not just doing the right thing; it is doing the right thing for the right reason, which is the glory of God alone. Jehu's reformation was, in the end, all about Jehu. He dealt with the sins that threatened his kingdom, but he maintained the sins that secured it. And so, the text ends where it began, with the tragic refrain: "he did not depart from the sins of Jeroboam, which he made Israel sin." He perpetuated the national apostasy. He kept the people in the very sin that would eventually lead to their exile.
Conclusion: Wholehearted for the King
The story of Jehu is a stark and necessary mirror for the church in every age. It is easy for us to muster great zeal against the obvious and outrageous sins of our culture. We can get righteously indignant about the Baal worship of our day, whether it is abortion, or sexual perversion, or the follies of our godless rulers. And this is right. We should be indignant. We should take our stand and act.
But the warning of Jehu is that we can do all this, we can turn the temples of modern Baals into latrines, and still have hearts that are not right with God. We can fight the culture war with great vigor and still maintain our own respectable idols, our own golden calves of political pragmatism, or financial security, or denominational pride, or personal comfort. We can be zealous in our opposition to the sins of the Democrats while coddling the sins of the Republicans. We can be eager to reform the world out there, while neglecting to walk carefully, with all our hearts, in the law of God in here.
The problem with Jehu was that his reformation was ultimately man-centered. He did God's work, but he did it for his own kingdom. The gospel of Jesus Christ offers us a completely different foundation for reformation. The gospel tells us that we cannot fix our hearts, divided as they are. We are all Jehu. We are all compromised. We are all seeking to build our own little kingdoms on foundations of our own devising.
But God, in His mercy, did not send another Jehu. He sent His own Son, Jesus Christ. Jesus came not just to destroy the works of the devil, but to do so with a perfect heart. He walked in the law of His Father with all His heart, soul, mind, and strength. His zeal for His Father's house consumed Him. He did not stop at political expediency. He drove His chariot straight to Jerusalem, not to secure a temporal throne, but to be executed on a Roman cross, thereby destroying the very power of sin and death.
Because of His perfect, wholehearted obedience, God offers us not a four-generation dynasty, but eternal life. He offers to take our divided, compromised, Jehu-like hearts and give us new hearts, hearts of flesh that desire to walk in His ways (Ezek. 36:26). True, lasting reformation does not begin by looking at the Baals out there. It begins at the foot of the cross, confessing that we are Jehu, and asking the only true King to give us a whole heart, a heart that will love and serve Him completely, without reservation, and without compromise. For His is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen.