PSA Bible Reading Challenge 2023-2024

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.

The son of Rehoboam, who was the king after his father Solomon died, is Abijah.  Abijah and Jeroboam, from the north, were constantly at war with each other.  We find described in this chapter what could be described as the definitive battle.  Abijah goes out with his 400,000 warriors against Jeroboam’s 800,000 warriors.  He reminds those who were gathered that God had promised the household of David, of which Abijah was a part, to carry on the line.  He reminded all those gathered that the Israelites, the north, that would be Jeroboam and his overwhelming soldiers, had turned their backs on the Lord.  He reminds them that this war was not just between the two of them and their nations, but between the two of them and their gods.  Abijah who continued to follow the Lord God and Jeroboam who was worshipping calves made of human hands.

Well, you probably could have predicted it but the Lord wins this battle and the 2 to 1 odds do not hold up and those who served Jeroboam fall in defeat.  He warns them that they are fighting against not only the warriors but also “against the Lord, the God of your ancestors.”  You see that in vs.12.  As a result king Abijah is considered a strong king who doesn’t unify the monarchy, but at least provides some sense of pride for the south which it had been missing for a while.

It doesn’t take long for Rehoboam to turn his back on the Lord, even though he was probably present when God spoke to his father, Solomon, when he told Solomon that if the people obey my commandments and don’t worship other gods then I will protect and keep them.  Well, that doesn’t happen.  We read that five years into his reign, Rehoboam and the people of Israel because they had been unfaithful to God and had abandoned his commandments, he allows Egypt to invade and take over up to Jerusalem.  

At that point the king and the officers bow down before God and God allows Jerusalem to be saved.  But it was saved up to the point that the king and his followers were not killed.  But the house of the Lord was ransacked and everything was taken out of the temple.  What we read in vs.9 is that he took everything.  I’m assuming that this means that he also took the ark of the covenant.  

After this defining moment we read about the reign of Rehoboam and that he was in power for 17 years.  He came into power when he was not a young man.  He was already 41 when he began to rule.  The Scripture says that he did evil in the sight of the Lord.  We can only hope that his son who succeeds him does a better job.  We will see the next chapter.

We now find the kingdom divided.  Just like that, after decades of rule by David and Solomon the first in line after them loses the northern kingdom, which is called Israel.  God tells the king not to go after Jeroboam in the north because this was from God.  Notice, that no sooner had the kingdom divided then the north begins to worship calves and other gods which were not inspired by the Lord.  All those who wanted to serve the Lord had to flee to the south in order to be in the presence of the Lord in the temple and to be out of the way of those who were sacrificing to false gods.

We then find the king and his wives and his concubines.  It always strikes me that this was a normal thing back then not only to have multiple wives but also to have multiple concubines.  He alone had 16 wives and 60 concubines.  There is never a word of explanation or any word that would give us the context as to why this is okay.  It is just a matter of fact.  As a matter of fact we know that today this is not okay and not at all what God would want any of us to do, either male or female.