He did evil because he did not set his heart to seek the LORD.
— 2 Chronicles 12:14
In this single sentence we find both a sad epitaph for Rehoboam’s life and a warning that every one of us needs to hear. After being strengthened and established by God, Rehoboam forsook the Lord — and that was a turn from which he never recovered. And the Chronicler, in his summary of the king’s life, gives us the root cause: he did not set his heart to seek the LORD.
The Universality of Sin
Before we get to the antidote, we should sit honestly with the diagnosis. We are told that the king did evil. And while his failure was dramatic and public, it is not as foreign to our own experience as we might like to think. Every one of us will find ourselves falling into sin at one point or another. We find ourselves falling short of the glory of God, failing to do what is right, and drifting from His law.
Solomon had already acknowledged this in his dedicatory prayer for the temple — there is no one who does not sin. And John makes the same point with even greater directness in 1 John 1:8:
If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us.
— 1 John 1:8
Sin is universal. It is common to every person’s life — cunning, prevalent, and always present.
The Antidote
But the Chronicler does not leave us simply with the diagnosis. Embedded in his summary of Rehoboam’s failure is the very antidote to it. The king did evil because he did not set his heart to seek the LORD. The implication is clear — the way to resist evil, to cling to God, and to forsake sin is to set the heart to seek after God.
This is not passive or accidental. The language of setting the heart speaks of deliberate intention — of making a conscious, wilful decision to orient the whole of one’s inner life toward God. It is the opposite of drift. It is purposeful pursuit.
Paul expresses the same idea to the Colossians:
Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth.
— Colossians 3:2
And to the Philippians he gives the practical shape of what this looks like:
Whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things. And the God of peace will be with you.
— Philippians 4:8-9
Seeking the Lord as the Path of Sanctification
What is deeply encouraging is that this seeking is not something we generate from within ourselves alone. As we set our hearts to seek the Lord, it is the Lord Himself who enables and sustains that seeking. The Holy Spirit works within us — helping us to die more and more to sin and to live more and more to righteousness. Our seeking and God’s enabling are not in competition. They work together.
May we be a people who understands that the heart set on seeking God is the heart most protected from the pull of evil — and may we make the deliberate, daily decision to set our hearts on Him.
Come, let us seek the Lord.
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