Like Father, like son…

Read 2 Chronicles 25

Focus on verses 2, 8 & 15

King Amaziah was the son of Joash. Like his father he began his reign doing “what was right in the eyes of the Lord, yet not with a whole heart” (v. 2) When he goes up in battle against the Edomites, the Lord rebukes him for hiring extra men from Israel reminding him that the battle is not about how many men or who is stronger, but about who God ordains to win the battle. Amaziah listens to the Lord and sends the Israelite army back home. The Lord gives him a great victory of the men of Seir. This is where Amaziah does a most irrational thing. He brings home the gods of the men of Seir and sets them up for himself and worships them and makes offerings to them. The Lord sends him a prophet who asks Amaziah a very pointed question: “Why have you sought the gods of a people who did not deliver their own people from your hands?” At this point Amaziah does not listen to the prophet, and the prophet informs him that the Lord has determined to destroy him because of his rebellion. By the end of the chapter Amaziah is dead, killed by his own people who were angry with him for abandoning the Lord and bringing disaster on the nation.

In this way Amaziah was much like his father Joash. He began well, but in the end he abandons the wisdom of his youth and his life ends in disaster.

One would think that perhaps Amaziah would have learned from the mistakes of his father, but he opted rather to duplicate them. Apparently the apple did not drop far from the tree in this case…like father, like son. Perhaps this could serve as encouragement to us as fathers to be careful of the pattern we set with our lives. It is entirely possible that our sons will not be far behind. It would seem to me that if this tendency is true of negative behavior, it may also be true of positive traits.