Who Ya Gonna Call?

When life really gets tough, the trials mount up, and life is at stake, a lot is revealed about a person's character and who he or she trusts.

In the beginning chapter of 2 Kings this happens to Ahaziah. Ahaziah becomes king of Israel and promptly falls through the lattice in his upper chamber in the palace. As he lay dieing, Ahaziah calls out for help. He tells his servants to inquire of Baal-zebub, one of the demon-gods left over from the Canaanites.

Besides the fact that there was no real Baal-Zebub god, the problem here is that Ahaziah is trusting in someone other than the LORD God. In fact, Elijah stops the servants of Ahaziah with these words:

2 Kings 1:3 "Is it because there is no God in Israel that you are going to inquire of Baal-Zebub?"

It is a rhetorical question. There was a God in Israel: Yahweh. Ahaziah is turning away from the only real God to go after a fake god in his time of trouble. God wants him to acknowledge who God really is. The trouble is that Ahaziah knows he has sinned and that to face God he must face his rebellion against God, so he thinks he can find answers outside of God. He can't.

Neither can we. When life gets tough we don't want to reach out to God because to do that we must deal with our sin and our failures. So we go to any source we can to find answers: self help books, pop-psychology, friends advice, fake healing scams, getting money wherever we can, or even lying and cheating to get ourselves out of trouble.

It won't work. Trouble won't go away. The only way to permanently deal with it is to face your sin and failures, take them to the cross where God put them to death, and then seek Him with all of your heart. The answer won't always be what you want - Ahaziah's answer from God was that he was going to die - but it will be the answer God wants, and that is always the best answer.

Pastor Tom