II Chronicles 23:13 …Then Athaliah rent her clothes, and said, Treason, treason
Here are three people. See if you know what they all have in common. The first is Judas, one of the twelve disciples. The second is Benedict Arnold. The third is a married couple, Jehoiada and Jehoshabeath of the kingdom of Judah. What do all three of these have in common? Judas was the betrayer of Jesus Christ. Benedict Arnold was a turncoat in the Revolutionary War. Jehoiada and Jehoshabeath were accused of treason by a woman named Athaliah.
Athaliah was the queen mother of Judah. When her husband died, her son reigned, and when her son died, the Bible says, “She arose and destroyed all the seed royal of the house of Judah.” Thankfully, one prince, Joash, was rescued by Jehoshabeath. The reason Athaliah killed all the royal seed was because she wanted to become the monarch and take control. Had she done that, it would have infringed on the Davidic line which God had ordained. She was a ruthless woman who wanted power for herself. But when Jehoiada and Jehoshabeath took the young prince Joash and arranged to have him crowned as king, she rent her clothes and cried, “Treason. Treason.”
What this pair had done was gather the captains, Levites, the congregation, and all of Judah to crown this young man Joash the king. Earlier Joash is called the son of the king and later in verse 20 the Bible says that they “set the king upon the throne of the kingdom.” He became king himself. Because of this Athaliah felt her power slipping away, and she accused these two and all who were with them of treason.
What is treason? Treason is a betrayal of one’s country. Is that indeed what they were doing? Were they being disloyal? What does it mean to be loyal? That is an interesting question because the object of your loyalty reveals the ethic of your life. For instance, sometimes we think we are being loyal to an institution or something higher when really what we are being loyal to is ourselves. We hear about being true to yourself. I am all about honestly, but a lot of times that is just cover for being selfish, doing whatever you want to do. That is popular right now. You be you. You do what you want to do. The problem with that is the Bible says, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” So, there has to be something in life that is transcendent, bigger than self, longer lived than self, more virtuous than self, more of a governing purpose than I can find in myself.
Louis XIV of France was supposed to have said, “I am the state.” Whether he said that or not, it has come to represent absolute monarchy where I am the king of my life and the kingdom. That is what Athaliah was talking about. She wasn’t talking about treason to anything higher or nobler than herself. She had murdered everyone to get to where she was, and now she felt these people had committed treason against her.
A second ethic or governing principle that some people have that determines their loyalty is loyalty to safety. You might say it is loyalty to power, which is to say there is no loyalty beyond whatever is the safest thing. I don’t know how many people followed this wicked Athaliah, but I do know that if she killed all the royal seed, there were a lot of people who were party to what she was doing. Most people just stick their moistened finger to the wind and think, “Where are things going and how am I safest? What must I do to keep my name, reputation, power, or money?” A lot of people’s loyalty is not to what they pledge loyalty, but to safety. Maybe that is a different sort of loyalty to self.
The third loyalty which is given here is loyalty to God. You see this in several ways. First, there are eleven mentions in this chapter of all that was done in the house of the Lord. When Jehoiada took Joash and called all of Judah, this was done in the house of God. It wasn’t in the palace or king’s house; it was in God’s house.
Second, verse 11 talks about the testimony. They gave him the testimony and made him king. Very likely the testimony was the Word of God. Verse 16 has a reference to their governing ethic. It says, “And Jehoiada made a covenant between him, and between all the people, and between the king, that they should be the LORD’s people.” This wasn’t just a covenant between him and the new king. It was between him and the people and the king and God that they would be the Lord’s people, not the king’s people.
Later the Bible says that they offered “burnt offerings to the LORD, as it is written in the law of Moses, with rejoicing and with singing, as it was ordained by David.” So, there is the house of the Lord, the testimony, the covenant, the law of Moses, and that which was given by David from God for the guidance of Israel. So, what guided Jehoiada and Jehoshabeath? I don’t think their actions were self-serving or self-protecting. They wanted to keep the Davidic line alive, and they were working with God to do it. It was not the matter of loyalty to some little kid or rebellion against this wicked Athaliah. It was loyalty to a higher power, God Almighty.
Today, there are a lot of people who are going to be asking for your loyalty. Loyalty is not something you demand; it is something you earn by being loyal to something higher, nobler, and more authoritative than yourself. The authority must be God because the object of your loyalty reveals the ethic of your life.