We all have desires in life, but what happens when our desires are so self-serving that the ripple effect has a long reaching negative impact on others. I was reading about the story of King Zedekiah and I learned that Game of Thrones is not an original idea.

Let me frame up the story.

The nation of Israel wanted a king, because it seemed to be the new trend in the surrounding nations. So they find Prophet Samuel and ask him to convince God that having a king is a good idea. Samuel tried to reason with them and to help them understand what they were really asking for here, but they were myopically fixed on having a king. Samuel shares something like this, “you really don’t want a king because they’re going to act like…well – a king!”

Seeing the hardness of their hearts, God says to Samuel, “they will regret this, but go and find them a king” and the age of kings started. King after king after king were dreadful, because they did whatever they wanted to do. They wanted be autonomous with absolutely zero accountability.

Here is the rub with the kings of Israel, all the prophets told them that if they rebel against God, there’s going to be consequences and most of them learned this the hard way.

Over and over and over again God sends in prophets to tell the kings that if they want to be king then they have to be a king under authority. They could not be autonomous and unaccountable.

We can relate to this, can’t we? There is something in all of us that wants to be “king”…we want to do, what we want to do. I have learned on the many miles I’ve put on the road of life that if we violate the principles of God on purpose or by accident there are consequences.

In comes Zedekiah.

King Nebuchadnezzar had his thumb on the affairs of Judah and puts Zedekiah on the throne with very specific rules; can’t raise an army, collect taxes and don’t repair the walls around the city. The strategy was to leave the people of Judah vulnerable, poor and submissive. As you could probably guess…life was not good.

The prophet Jeremiah tells Zedekiah that the nation is being punished because it rebelled against God from the actions of others before him. Jeremiah goes onto tell Zedekiah that he needs to bring the people back to God, not worry about Nebuchadnezzar and to stop trying to be king. Just repent and lead the people to repentance and God will restore the nation.

So what does Zedekiah do? Well, he’s the king and blows off Jeremiah, God and then Nebuchadnezzar. As you can imagine this doesn’t sit well with Nebuchadnezzar, so Zedekiah gets a visit from Nebuchadnezzar’s army. Surrounded, Zedekiah panics and runs to Jeremiah for help.

Jeremiah tells it like it is, “Zedekiah, God has just about had it you…but, if you open the gates, walk out with your family, repent and humble yourself Nebuchadnezzar won’t take your life and the city will be spared.” So, what does Zedekiah say, “I’m not doing that because I’m the king.”

Nebuchadnezzar’s army leaves to deal with some business elsewhere and eventually comes back and crushes the city.

Through all of this, Zedekiah just does whatever he wants and refuses to listen to anyone. God gives Zedekiah chance after chance after chance until enough was enough. Because of Zedekiah’s pride, this story does not have a good ending. There was war, drama, fear, terror and the stuff movies are made of. To some extent this story is a metaphor of what’s going on in many of our lives right now.

Being self-declared “kings” of our lives is the human condition, isn’t it? [Tweet that]

We get away with it for a while then all of a sudden the enemy surrounds us and we don’t know what to do. Even if we decide to run to God, we still chose to wrestle with Him. We’re convinced that if we release our control and give it to God that somehow we are giving up too much.

The broader context of the story of Zedekiah, God wasn’t punishing the nation, God was trying to win the nation back. The nation was at odds with God, but Zedekiah wanted to be king and ended up dealing with consequences he couldn’t manage and refused to listen to God.

Zedekiah became unreachable!

How does the story end? Read, 2 Kings 25.

God goes to great lengths to get our attention and God disciplines those He loves, just like a good father. In that moment of tension God feels like the enemy, but He created you and He knows what’s best for you. You will spin out of control until you finally get in sync with His will for your life.
Look, I can personally relate to this. I wrote a book on it!

If God wouldn’t spare His own son’s life in order to gain your salvation, do you think He would really spare anything else in order get your attention. If giving His son allowed Him to connect with you in a personal way, is there anything He would not sacrifice in order to make sure that you continued to walk in relationship with Him?

Stop trying to control your life! Bring all the chaos and wrongdoing you’ve done before God, repent and let Him walk it out with you.

So you see…Game Of Thrones is not an original idea because people desire and sit on that throne today and most will do just about anything to get it.

Are you ready to get off of your throne?