It’s a bit like watching a ping pong match — keep at it and it can put a crick in your neck. Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth — if you’re at all engaged with the text, that’s what reading in 2Kings is kind of like.

King of Israel? “He did what was evil in the sight of the LORD.” King of Judah? “He did what was right in the eyes of the LORD.” Read your way through the throne successions of the northern and southern kingdoms and that, with a few exceptions on the Judah side, is the pattern. One set of monarchs consistently cast as doing evil, one set of monarch, for the most part, doing what is right.

But as I read this morning of the beginning of Israel’s end, as people are carried captive into Assyria (2Ki. 15:29), it occurs to me that what will soon befall Israel, Assyrian dominance, will also eventually be Judah’s lot, Babylonian captivity. So, for all the back and forth of the royal ping pong match, how come no one comes out a winner? More to the point, how come there wasn’t a right outcome for the kings who did what was “right in the eyes of the LORD”? Short answer, I think; Because of the high places.

In the second year of Pekah the son of Remaliah, king of Israel, Jotham the son of Uzziah, king of Judah, began to reign. He was twenty-five years old when he began to reign, and he reigned sixteen years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Jerusha the daughter of Zadok. And he did what was right in the eyes of the LORD, according to all that his father Uzziah had done. Nevertheless, the high places were not removed. The people still sacrificed and made offerings on the high places.

(2Kings 15:32-35a ESV)

Nevertheless, the high places were not removed. That is the foreboding bell’s toll concerning the spiritual health of Judah. The kings did what was right, but the high places were not removed. The kings lived in Jerusalem, so it was easy to worship in Jerusalem. The temple was in their backyard, so sacrificing in the place where the LORD told His people to sacrifice was convenient for them. But the pseudo-altars or worship; the fake altars of worship; the convenient altars of worship; what had become for many the traditional and common altars of worship, they were not removed. While the king drew near to where God said his glory would reside, the populace worshiped in vain, their religious actions accompanied by cold hearts with little desire to seek the glory of God’s presence.

The king — regardless of the example he set or the reforms he tried to enact — couldn’t make the difference as long as the high places were not removed and the people’s hearts were not drawn near.

We can go through the motions, but if those motions are on the high places of self-serving, personally convenient, everybody-else-is doing-it this way worship, then distant hearts will become cold hearts. And cold hearts run the risk of eventually being taken captive by the world and assimilated into its ways.

Oh, for wisdom to recognize the high places in our worship. Oh, for courage to go against the flow and repent and return to the ways God has commanded for offerings and sacrifice. Oh, for a thirst for His presence as the only place where we’ll offer our gifts.

By His grace. For His glory.