Today, I am reading and commenting on  2 Kings 17-18.

Hoshea became the last king of Israel, the Northern Kingdom.   The writer tells us that he did evil in the eyes of the Lord, but not as bad as his predecessors.  Nevertheless, God had the Assyrians take the people of Israel into exile because of their sins.  God had told the Israelites to live holy lives and forbade them from imitating the nations around them.  Yet they did not listen and desired to be like those around them.   There are two different points I want to make here, maybe they will come together into one.  Initially the people of the Northern Kingdom made their own gods to worship, but kept most of the practices which God had commanded them.  But, over time they began to worship the gods of their neighbors.  First, those whose worship was somewhat similar to that which God commanded, but with sexual licentiousness.  Soon, they went on to gods whose worship called for them to kill their own children.   They had been called to live as an example to others, but they didn’t want to be different.  Rather than trust God to care for them, they tried to obtain success by being like the people around them.  This is a mistake that we make again and again, both as individuals and as nations.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.