Jehosheba: when it all hung by a single thread

The Word for today:
2 Kings 11, 12











mark this: 2 Kings 11:1-2 --
When Athaliah the mother of Ahaziah saw that her son was dead, she proceeded to destroy the whole royal family. But Jehosheba, the daughter of King Jehoram and sister of Ahaziah, took Joash son of Ahaziah and stole him away from among the royal princes, who were about to be murdered. She put him and his nurse in a bedroom to hide him from Athaliah; so he was not killed. He remained hidden with his nurse at the temple of the LORD for six years while Athaliah ruled the land.

Athaliah was the daughter of Ahab and Jezebel, and she was just as vicious as they had been.

When her son Ahaziah died, she seized the opportunity to rule. She violently assumed control of Judah. She reigned for six years, using her authority to promote the worship of Baal.

The previous deaths of Jehoram's brothers (1) and Ahaziah's brothers and relatives (2) left only her grandchildren for Athaliah to put to death to destroy the Davidic line.

Athaliah was determined to wipe out David's royal line--and she came within one baby of doing just that (3).

Had she succeeded, the family line of God's promised Messiah would have been severed. God's entire plan to bring his people back into a restored relationship with himself rested at this point in history on the intervention of one courageous woman--Jehosheba, who hid little Joash from Athaliah.

There would come another day, when King Herod would learn that a king, a rival to his throne, had been born in the region of Bethlehem. In order to remove any threat to his position, he ordered that all the infants and toddlers in the vicinity were to be annihilated.

But before he could carry out his evil plan, God sent a warning to the little king's father:
Behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, "Rise, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you, for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him."
And he rose and took the child and his mother by night and departed to Egypt, and remained there until the death of Herod (4).

Our own contributions may at times seem insignificant. Jehosheba almost certainly had no inkling that God's plan to redeem a lost world hung by a thread--and she was the thread.

The "insignificant" work and prayer and sacrifices that we perform in the name of the king from Bethlehem will have far-reaching consequences that we are incapable of counting. So much can hang upon a single thread.

(1) 2 Chronicles 21:4; (2) 2 Kings 10:12-14; 2 Chronicles 21:17; (3) see 2 Kings 11; (4) Matthew 2:13-15

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