1 Kings 15 part 11
Since it has been several weeks since have looked at the book of kings I want take just few min to bring us back up to speed of what we have looked at thus far.
A quick review
The Southern Kingdom –
Rehoboam – Solomon’s son reigns for 17 years
•
He was
good for at least 3 years but turned bad by his 5th year as king.
•
He
started doing idol worship.
Abijah – Rehoboam’s son reigns for 3 years
•
He
relied upon God for his victory over the northern tribe but over all he was a
bad king.
The Northern Kingdom –
Jeroboam – servant of Solomon reigns for 22 years
•
He was
bad early on and he setup golden calves and false God’s for the people to
worship.
He has three major prophecies against him.
1. A future king named Josiah would burn men's bones on
him 1 Kings 13:2.
2. A future king would kill him and his whole household 1
Kings 14:14
3. All of
Nadab – Jeroboam’s son reigns 2 years
•
He
follows in dads footsteps
•
While
trying to conquer the Philistines at Gibbethon Baasha, a fellow Jew, kills
Nadab and his family fulfilling one of the prophecies against Jeroboam.
Baasha reigns 24 years
•
He was
also a bad king
•
A
prophet named Jehu let Baasha know that all his family will die just as
Jeroboam’s did because of his wickedness.
Elah – Baasha’s son reigns 2 years
•
He
gets drunk and his servant Zimri kills him and his family fulfilling Jehu’s
prophecy against Baasha
Zimri – Elah’s servant reins for 7 days
•
He
commits suicide by burning himself up in the kings house
Next we have 2 kings at once Tibni and Omri.
•
They
reign at the same time for about 4 years until Tibni dies.
•
Omri
takes over as king.
•
At
this point he is called the worse of all kings as he rebels against God.
•
He
reigns for 12 years.
Our primary focus tonight is going to be the long reign Asa
over southern
2 Chronicles 14:2 Asa did
what was good and right in the eyes of the LORD his God, 3 for he removed the altars of the
foreign gods and the high places, and broke down the sacred pillars
and cut down the wooden images. 4
He commanded
Finally we have another
king that is actually trying to be a good a servant of God and tearing down the
idols and high places in his kingdom and he doing what he can to make sure his
people are obeying God’s commands. During this 10 years of peace he doest just
sit around and do nothing instead he uses this time to fortify his cites so
that he can be prepared to do battle. As I thought about this concept I
couldn’t help but think how you and I need to be like this king by not sitting
around and doing nothing when we have peace in our life. In similar way we
should be preparing ourselves for whatever may come our way and we should
especially be preparing ourselves for the spiritual battle that will come our
way and of course we can prepare ourselves by building up our knowledge and
faith in God.
2 Chronicles 14:9 Then
Zerah the Ethiopian came out against them with an army of a million men and
three hundred chariots, and he came to Mareshah. 10 So Asa went out against him,
and they set the troops in battle array in the
We need to remember that
Asa’s army is only 580,000 strong and they are about to go to battle against 1
Million soldiers not mention their 300 chariots. Asa was a great disadvantage.
But, watch what he does to overcome these odds as we read in,
2 Chronicles
Asa did the right the he
relied upon God and trusted in him for victory and because of this despites the
odds he wins the battle and runs them off and chases them down and walks away
with more than what he had. We must have the same attitude today. We need to
trust in God first because he there for us and will help up through whatever we
are going through.
2 Chronicles 15:1 Now the
Spirit of God came upon Azariah the son of Oded. 2 And he went out to meet Asa, and
said to him: "Hear me, Asa, and all Judah and Benjamin. The LORD is with
you while you are with Him. If you seek Him, He will be found by you; but if
you forsake Him, He will forsake you. 3
"For a long time
This Prophet Azariah
wants Asa to know that he must be faithful to lord if you want him to be with
you because if you are not he will not be there to help you. I want to remind
every time you see
2 Chronicles 15:8 And when
Asa heard these words and the prophecy of Oded the prophet, he took courage,
and removed the abominable idols from all the land of Judah and Benjamin and
from the cities which he had taken in the mountains of Ephraim; and he restored
the altar of the LORD that was before the vestibule of the LORD. 9 Then he gathered all Judah and
Benjamin, and those who dwelt with them from Ephraim, Manasseh, and Simeon, for
they came over to him in great numbers from
The message that Azariah
spoke Asa really moved him and got on fire for the Lord. You really have to
respect Asa because he was man who knew he needed God in his life and so he set
forth to do whatever he could to make sure that he stayed faithful and that
others would obey and honor God’s commands. Azaraih’s word rekindles Asa
courage and went and torn down the idols and high places in his land. Because
God was with him even some of those from
2 Chronicles 15:16 Also he
removed Maachah, the mother of Asa the king, from being queen mother,
because she had made an obscene image of Asherah; and Asa cut down her obscene
image, then crushed and burned it by the Brook Kidron. 17 But the high places were not
removed from
This shows the Asa was
putting God even before his family because he removed his mother or as have
some have suggest his grandmother from being queen and making images of
Asherrah. Now Asherrah was Canaanite
goddess of fortune & happins and she was considered to be mother of
Baal. She was represented by a sacred pole or tree usually setup by an altar
for Baal. But, Asa put a stop to this because he loved first and put his will
above his mother’s idolatry. This never an easy thing today but we must do this
same thing today by putting God first our lives even if it means making our
family upset at us. One thing you will notice is one place it says that Asa removed
all the high places but here it says that they were not all removed. Is, there
a contradiction? NO. In fact there are several way to explain this but the
easiest one to me is that in this verse it says he didn’t remove high places from
2 Chronicles 16:1 In the
thirty-sixth year of the reign of Asa, Baasha king of
Now the reason why Baasha
was building at Ramah was to keep the people
2 Chronicles 16:7 And at
that time Hanani (hah-nah-nigh) the seer came to Asa king of Judah, and
said to him: "Because you have relied on the king of Syria, and have not
relied on the LORD your God, therefore the army of the king of Syria has
escaped from your hand. 8
"Were the Ethiopians and the Lubim (lou-beam) not a huge army with very many chariots and horsemen? Yet, because you
relied on the LORD, He delivered them into your hand. 9 "For the eyes of the LORD
run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show Himself strong on behalf of those
whose heart is loyal to Him. In this you have done foolishly;
therefore from now on you shall have wars." 10 Then Asa was angry with the
seer, and put him in prison, for he was enraged at him because of this.
And Asa oppressed some of the people at that time.
At first I am sure that
Asa was well pleased with himself as he really put it king Baasha but the
problem was is Asa relied upon man to help him with his predicament instead of
God. After all these years of trusting in God and serving him for whatever
reason he set that aside in this instance and because of this Hanani (hah-nah-nigh) tells him he will have
wars now. Hanani (hah-nah-nigh) reminds
him of he concurred the 1 million men that came up against him by rely upon the
lord and he also lets him know if you would have had that same confidence in
the Lord you would have be able defeat Baasah and Ben- Hadad. I love what he says in verse 9 "For the eyes of the LORD
run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show Himself strong on behalf of those
whose heart is loyal to Him.
Isn’t that a great
thought knowing that God is constantly watching out for those who are loyal to
him? Well, Asa did like the message so he locks him up and even oppresses some
of his own people. A similar thing happens like this today. When someone
preaches the truth from God’s word and someone doesn’t like many times they
will take their rage out on the messenger instead of accepting God’s truth.
2 Chronicles
As we come to the end of
Asa life we see that in the last 3 years of his life he had some kind of
diseases in his feet and once again instead of seeking Lords help he relied upon
his physicians. This tells me that if he had relied on God his feet would have
been healed. Now I wish I knew why his trust in God grew cold at the end of his
life, but whatever the reason it is always sad to see someone who had so much
passion to serve God to get to the point where he did not seek rely upon him.
From this we learn a great lesson and that is that we should do our best to
always rely upon the lord all of our lives.
Finally we can see that
he built his own tomb in the city of
We have learned in this
lesson that Asa was a good King overall and walked in the footsteps of
Romans