Two Greats & A Grand, Down the Line (Part 3)

What’s happening: Asa king of Judah is a good king. Unlike kings before him, he tears down foreign idols and altars and instead reinstates/revives the worship of the one true God. Asa goes as far as calling all of Judah—and some from Israel—to Jerusalem where they all take a solemn oath to obey and follow the Lord their God (the one true God) all the days of their lives.

In the course of time the kingdom of Judah was once again attacked. The invaders were the next-door country of Israel, and they had seized a key city (Ramah) just five miles away from Jerusalem. By fortifying Ramah, Baasha king of Israel had made sure that no one would enter or leave the kingdom of Judah.

Asa was in one big figurative pit. What to do? Well, Asa decided to go make a treaty with the king of Aram, who rules in Damascus. Damascus is just north of the kingdom of Israel. The agreement basically stated that the king of Aram would invade Israel on behalf of Judah, for a pricey sum of much gold and silver. The logic was that if the king of Aram attacked the king of Israel, the king of Israel would stop bottlenecking Judah and go fight the king of Aram. Then in a much-needed breather Asa and his men would go collect the building supplies at Ramah and make sure that this kind of thing would never happen again!

When I first read about the plan (check out 2 Chronicles 16), I thought it sounded pretty logical. I mean, kings were making treaties and fighting other nations all the time; what’s different about this one? So I’m sure you can understand my amazement as I read 2 Chronicles 16:7-9:

“At that time Hanani the seer came to Asa king of Judah and said to him: “Because you relied on the king of Aram and not on the LORD your God, the army of the king of Aram has escaped from your hand. Were not the Cushite and Libyans a mighty army with great numbers of chariots and horsemen? Yet when you relied on the LORD, he delivered them into your hand. For the eyes of the LORD range throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him. You have done a foolish thing, and from now on you will be at war.”

I had to think about this one for a while. Hadn’t Asa made a good move? It sure seemed logical to me! But then I read this passage a few more times, and a light popped in my head. Years and years ago, at the very start of his reign, Asa had been challenged by the Cushites. They outnumbered him ten million to one, yet he still won the battle because he had trusted in God. Now, the prophet was saying to Asa, why didn’t you trust God now?

Good point.

So once I finally wrapped my brain around Hanani’s message, I kept on reading. I fully expected that Asa-good-king-of-Judah would repent like David his predecessor did many years previous to the prophet Nathan. But no. I was quite surprised and indeed shocked as I kept on reading, particularly verse 10:

“Asa was angry with the seer because of this; he was so enraged that he put him in prison. At the same time Asa brutally oppressed some of the people.”

Huh?!? Good king Asa putting this prophet in prison? Brutally oppressing his people? This surely didn’t sound like the Asa I had gotten to know over the last few chapters.

As I have seriously pondered this story, I have only been able to come to one conclusion, that being that in the interlude of Asa’s reign—which the Bible doesn’t talk about—Asa must have gotten a bit self-reliant. He might have forgotten where victory truly comes from, and in Whom we need to trust. That’s honestly the only explanation that I can come up with; how else would a grand king like Asa go from doing good one second to doing bad the next? I really don’t think that it happened overnight. It was those small, seemingly insignificant daily decisions that brought about this sad change of character.

The good news, however, is this: the same small, seemingly insignificant daily decisions that brought Asa down can bring us up. With God’s help, we can choose to make the good decisions, even if they are only “small” daily ones. As you can see in the story of Asa, those “small” decisions weren’t too small after all!

The end of Asa’s life is a very sad tale. Three years after his bout with the prophet, Asa developed a nasty foot disease. He was still so angry at God—still holding onto that grudge—that he refused to call on God for help, even when his disease became quite severe. Two years later, Asa died.

There are many lessons that we can learn from this descendant of David. We can learn from the good things he did in his life, and that can encourage us to tear down the foreign “idols” and “altars” in our own lives. In like manner, we can take heart from Asa’s battle with the Cushites and realize that with God on our side, we can never lose.

But we can also mark and remember the not-so-good actions of Asa. How towards the end of his life he relied not on God, but on himself and other men. And how when God reproved him he wouldn’t repent. In conclusion, let me share with you a favorite proverb of mine. It’s found in Proverbs 2:7-8.

“[God] holds success in store for the upright, 
   he is a shield to those whose walk is blameless, 
  for he guards the course of the just 
   and protects the way of his faithful ones.”