Author: Pastor Bob

Talk about cleaning house.  While in the past we see the king take the initiative in ensuring that God’s will would be done and that order was established in the land, here it is the high priest who takes the reins and reinstates the king, drives out the false queen, Athaliah, and throws out the gods and their temples and reinstates not only the political king but also the presence of the Lord as the sole presence of the deity.  Jehoiada is the reformer who brings back that which the Lord wanted from Israel all along.

The most pernicious cycle that we see happening in the life of Israel is that they do that which is evil in the sight of the Lord which primarily consists of worshipping false gods.  God raises up someone to bring order and a refocus on the priorities of the people of God, that person reigns and then they die and then confusions reigns.  

We find ourselves in the state where Athaliah is dethroned.  She enters the temple and see that Joash is being crowned the new king, he was the son of the king after all, and she yells treason expecting the crowd in the temple to follow after her.  Well, they do follow after her but only to kill her.  Joash is now king and we hope that this also means an instilling of peace and the pursuit of God as a result.  Let’s see what happens next.

Remember when I mentioned that I believe in the inerrant truths of Scripture?  That is far different from believing that every single word is inerrant.  Here we have what we call a text critical issue.  The king Jehoram dies when he is 40 (21:18-20) and his son takes over, according to the text, when the son, Ahaziah, is 42.  How in the world can the son be older than the father?  While the Hebrew may say 42 it is thought that there was a misrepresentation over time and it should be 22.  I do not have an issue with the text not representing accurately for every single line.  Have you seen my typos?

But back to the Scripture.  Jehoram followed the ways of the north as they worshipped false gods, his son does the same.  This ill fated rule which was set up because all of the royal family and specifically the brothers were killed only lasts a single year.  Then something historic happens.  The mother of Ahaziah takes over the throne.  This was unheard of because it is not like what we find in the United Kingdom.  There was no such thing as the queen, it was the male who took over the throne.  Only a male could be crowned king.  But not here since everyone else was killed the mom of Ahaziah, Athaliah, takes over and her first step is to kill the entire royal family.  

But she misses someone.  Joash was hid by his mom and you will see that he ends up taking over as time goes on.  But that is for another chapter.

Now we start to see the decline of Judah as we transition to a king who loved God, Jehoshaphat, to his son who was in it for himself.  Look at what he does in his first 100 days in office.  Jehoshaphat had many sons, but his eldest was Jehoram.  As soon as he takes office he kills all of his brothers.  They were a threat to him.  Instead of rooting for his rivals he decides to root up his rivals and destroy them.  He does so.  He also “walked in the way of the kings of Israel.”  That is not a good thing.

God does not destroy him and his lineage because he had promised to David that his kingdom would last forever.  As a result we have these splinter groups break out from Judah because they saw the unfaithfulness of the king and wanted to obey God in ways that would give God glory.  Edom was one of them.  

We also see the prophet Elijah, remember him, the one who killed the prophets of baal.  He sends word from God that God will punish him and destroy his family except for one to take over the throne.  The king is also promised to receive a disease of the bowels that would ultimately destroy him and cause a lot of pain and suffering.  In the meantime the Philistines came and carried away all of the possessions of the land.  

Once Jehoram dies they bury him but do not give him a kingly burial.  I love the understatements that are used in this passage.  Look at vs.20: “He departed with no one’s regret.”  Basically, no one was sorry that he died.  He was buried in the Jerusalem but not in the tombs of the kings.  He was not respected as a king because he was so bad.  I guess that’s what happens when you try to go rogue and govern as you want to and not as God wants you to.

We find ourselves stepping back a bit into time when Jehoshaphat had not teamed up with Ahab and the northern kingdom.  We see that the surrounding countries of Judah were intent on invading the land where Jehoshaphat was king.  Moabites, Ammonites, and some more Ammonites were encamped ready to conquer.  As you can imagine all of the people and the king themselves were terrified for what would come next.

The king calls the people to fast and to come before the Lord asking for guidance and direction.  “We cannot overcome the invading armies by ourselves, there are too many of them.”  God then chooses one of the people there present to speak to the entire population.  He chooses Jahaziel to tell the king and the people of Israel that they do not need to worry about it, God will conquer and God will win this battle.  

What happens next is a bit confusing.  It seems like all of the armies of the invading countries end up fighting against themselves.  The king looks down in the valley and sees a mass of corpses and the battle was already fought and Judah did not lose.  Technically they didn’t win either because they actually didn’t fight it, but they did not lose because all of the invaders were gone.  Before the battle the people of Judah were encouraged to: “Give thanks to the Lord, for his steadfast love endures forever.”  This was before God provided the victory in such an obvious way.  He then follows through.  

The people of Judah return to Jerusalem with joy.  Yeah, that would be an understatement.  I wonder if they were singing this as they returned.

When the king of Judah arrives home after he teamed up with the king of Israel to go against he Arameans, a battle which they lost, he is confronted with his own prophet.  Jehu comes out and and scolds him for teaming up with Ahab.  Why would you team up with the wicked even if you think you are doing a good thing?  God is very angry with you, but since you are a good person and have done good things, then you will be okay.

In fact we see the king of Judah settles in and appoints judges and they do a good job.  He then also set up priests who would give judgment for those cases which were disputed.  He tells all the people who were working for the Lord the following: “Deal courageously, and may the Lord be with the good!”  That is a bit of an unusual encouragement.  Do good and you will prosper.  Sounds more like Star Trek than it does the Bible.  

We find one of the few times in Scripture where the divided monarchy of Israel (the north) and Judah (the south) fight together united against a common enemy, the king of Aram.  Before they go into battle together they ask the prophets to prophecy whether they should go into this battle or not.  They all agree that God was going to give them the victory.  But king Jehoshaphat, the good guy, asks if there is another prophet that they could listen to.  He gets a sense that these prophets were basically hired to do the will and the bidding of the king and not really true spokespeople for God.

In comes Micah who says he can only speak that which God wants him to speak.  He says that Israel will be scattered across the land and destroyed, but does not say much, if anything, about Judah.  There is a somewhat entertaining scene as Ahab tells Jehoshaphat that this prophet doesn’t like him and only prophecies unkind things for him.  Sure enough, that prophecy comes true.  

Notice that the king of Israel goes into battle undercover and the king of Judah goes decked out.  The King of Judah cries out when he is being pursued so they know he can’t be anyone who is important, and by chance the king of Israel is stabbed in a significant place.  It is really difficult at times to be able to discern what is of God and what is not of God.  We can’t really ask God to show us his truth, I mean, we can, but we don’t always recognize God’s glory and God’s truth revealed clearly.  We wish we could.  Most of the time our desires get in the way.

If King Asa followed the Lord then King Jehoshaphat really followed the Lord!  Asa followed the Lord until the very end, but we read last chapter that he did not remove all the high places.  Well, his son takes care of that.  We read in vs.6 that “his heart was courageous in the ways of the Lord; and furthermore he removed the high places and the sacred poles from Judah.”  Now that is devotion.  He might not have kicked his mom off the throne like Asa, but he was still incredibly righteous.

In fact, we read that all of the surrounding countries were also afraid of him because he honored the Lord in a way that was awesome.  If you look at vs.10 you see that they did not make war with Jehoshaphat because it would be obvious that they would be fighting not only the king but the Lord God as well.  Let’s see how long he can make that last.

Like we find in just about all of the characters of the Bible we see another king who falls short of what they should have done.  Israel begins to cause trouble, so that would be northern kingdom.  So Asa, who is in the south, notices this and basically bribes the nearest ally to the north, the king of Aram.  He gives him gold and silver and tells him to tell Israel that they will no longer protect the southern Israelite border.  So as a result this foreign nation comes to the aid of Judah, or King Asa.  They go up against the north, or Israel, and begin to battle against it.  

As a result Israel backs away from the troop pile up that had been going on near Judah and king Asa considers this a victory and is able to expand his land even more.  But God was not happy.  Remember the Ethiopians?  Remember the million or more troops that were amassed against Judah?  God intervened and made sure that king Asa would win that battle.  God was not happy because Asa did not reach out to God and ask for help.

An object lesson to this is that we see Asa gets sick, his feet are all messed up, and he doesn’t even seek out God for help with that.  God moves away from Asa because Asa had first moved away from him.  He forgot all that God had done for him and tried to do it by himself.  Not a great lesson for any of us.  Continue to seek God in all times of our lives.

The story of Asa continues as we see the faithfulness of this king.  He is also able to rally his people and get them to profess loyalty to God in a way that had not been done for generations.  We read that he gathered all of the people and they all sacrificed to the Lord and they all swore an oath.  As a result we read in vs.15 that the Lord gives them rest all around.

The consecration of the people and the of the king is extreme enough that Asa finds out that his mother had desecrated herself by offering up an idol to the high places.  As a result he removed his mom from being the queen mother because of this action.  No one is spared and there is no nepotism.  You can see the loyalty of Asa by the fact that not even his mom is given a pass.

The most telling of the verses is probably vs.19 where we read that there was peace in the land for 35 years.  That is incredibly impressive for a land that has seen wars for generation upon generation since even before the time of David.  That certainly is not the case today as war continues to ravage that region.

Here is one that would fit for this Scripture.

We find ourselves with another king who was pleasing in the sight of the Lord.  One of the primary characteristics that makes a king pleasing in the sight of the Lord is the fact that they do not worship other gods and that they dismantle the high places for these other gods that other people may have established.  So while Asa did what was good in the sight of the Lord that consisted primarily of what we find he did in vs.3: “He took away the foreign altars and the high places…”  

As a result there was peace in the kingdom.  We find an example of where Asa and Judah was terribly outnumbered.  They were up against a million men, but notice only 300 chariots.  That is curious.  But still the sheer numbers you think would strike fear in anyone’s heart.  Can you imagine if you are a soldier and you see a million men staring at you ready to take the fight to you?  In fact, Asa goes to the Lord and asks for deliverance and it is provided to him.  It states that the Ethiopians “were broken before the Lord and his army.”  It is good to have the Lord on your side.

I ran into this video and I thought it was appropriate as we think about what it means that God is on my side.