II Chronicles 23:13 …then Athaliah rent her clothes, and said, Treason, Treason
The poet Coleridge once wrote in a poem that motherhood is the holiest thing alive. That is why when you hear of a mother who harms or even kills her own children, it is so against nature. It is so unthinkable and not understandable. It is unnatural. Recently there has been a court case of a mother who has been accused of killing her children. You wonder what could lead a person to do such a thing. What are the values there? What does she actually value?
In II Chronicles 23 we ask almost the same question because it is the story of two woman and a boy king. In II Chronicles 22:10 we read about evil Athaliah, the queen mother. She basically destroyed everyone in her way, including all the royal family she could find. The other lady is a heroic woman in verse 11, Jehoshabeath. She and her husband Jehoiada the priest spared the one remaining son of the previous king. All the others had been killed by the queen mother.
Long story short, this heroic couple protected and raised this boy king and they eventually put a crown on his head, gave him the testimony, and made him king. In II Chronicles 23:13 when Athaliah the queen saw this, she rent her clothes, and said, Treason, Treason.” She would have said that with great feeling and fervency. She was furious.
What gave such an evil woman the right to call anyone treasonous when she didn’t live for anyone or anything but herself? She wasn’t loyal. Why did she expect anyone to be loyal to her? It raises the question of what treason is and what loyalty is. Loyalty is “that which is faithful to a cause, idea, custom, institution, or product.” A similar word, allegiance, means “fidelity or faithfulness owed by a subject.” So, why was this woman so evil? The answer is that you will live to the level of your loyalty. You will live no higher than that to which to are devoted.
So, to whom or what are you loyal? There are many things to which we can be loyal. There is denomination. Denomination is important and should reflect what you actually believe, what your doctrine is and from whence you get that teaching. But for a lot of people denomination is nothing more than a tribe. It is tribal identity. If they can’t make it big somewhere, they make it big somewhere else. If they happen to be in a denomination, a church and religion, then all the better, but in many cases, people can be loyal to a tribe and not to conviction or truth.
There are many denominations that once stood for the truth, but now are preaching that which is diametrically opposed to that for which they once stood. There are people who are still loyal to that denomination even though it means they are no longer loyal to the tenets that founded it. They are no longer loyal to God. Denomination is important, but it is not God.
The bottom line is that a lot of people are only loyal to self. Someone says, “Be true to yourself.” Does that mean to be true to the principles that you have espoused, being consistent with yourself? In that case, it is good and noble. But if you just mean, “Do whatever is good for you. Get what you can. Be true to yourself,” then no, that is not good. Being true to yourself is only ennobling if it is loyalty to the truth and to principle. One poet has said, “Breathes there a man with soul so dead, who never to himself hath said, ‘This is my own, my native land!’” No loyalty is the idea. The poem goes to say that he will die unwept and unsung. Of a king in a previous chapter, the Bible says he departed without being desired. Why? It was because there was no loyalty beyond himself. He was merely selfish.
The thing that leads to success and nobility is loyalty to God. That is easy to say, but what do we mean by that. We mean that authority is derived from God. This is opposed to the kind of authority that comes from mere brute force, the idea that might makes right, which has been the watchword of a hundred tyrants from the last century, largely communists, where power comes from the end of a rifle.
So, what kind of loyalties should we have? Verse 16 says that Jehoiada, the priest who spared this boy king, “made a covenant between him, and between all the people, and between the king, that they should be the LORD’s people.” They were not Athaliah’s people or the king’s people, but the Lord’s people.” It continues, “Then all the people went to the house of Baal, and brake it down.”
Here is Athaliah, who was loyal to a false god and expected people to be loyal to her, yet she was treasonous against her own family, the line of David, and the law of Moses. Verse 18 says the people and nation changed course. They went according to that which “David had distributed in the house of the LORD…as it is written in the law of Moses…as it was ordained by David.”
There was something greater than and beyond a person to which these people were loyal. So, the porters and captain, the nobles and governors, and all the people fell behind this boy king because they had loyalty to God. Verse 21 says, “And all the people of the land rejoiced: and the city was quiet, after that they had slain Athaliah with the sword.”
Today, to what are you loyal? If you find someone who is not loyal to anything, not to family, church, employer, or country, don’t trust such a person because one gets the uneasy feeling that the only thing he is loyal to is to himself. A loyalty that is noble is one that is loyal beyond yourself, a loyalty to God, the loyalty upon which all other loyalties stand.
How am I toward my denomination or political party? My loyalty should be based upon where I am with the God who created me. Athaliah preached about loyalty, but she had none but to herself. Friend, you will live to the level of your loyalty. You will live no higher than that to which you are devoted. Give yourself to God who gave His Son for you.