Judah #3 Asa. 2 Chronicles 14:1-16:14 Reigned 41 years. Good

Asa removed a the foreign altars and cut down the Asherim. He had an army of 580,000 men but was facing Zerah the Ethiopian who had one million men. Asa prayed a very humble prayer, trusting in God, and God gave him the victory over Zerah. The prophet Azariah gave Asa a warning: 15:And if you seek Him, He will let you find Him; but if you forsake Him, He will forsake you.” Jesus said, “Seek and you will find”. God is ready to help us in our battles, but we must seek Him. He will not force Himself on us and make us make moral choices (which is what Calvinism teaches). In the 15th year of his reign, Asa began more reforms, removing idols from the land and getting the people to make a covenant that whoever would not seek God would die. Asa even removed his own mother, Maacah, from being queen b/c she had a horrid image. In the 35th year of Asa’s reign he changed: Baasha the evil king of Israel (the northern kingdom of 10 tribes) attacked Asa. Instead of praying to and trusting God for victory, he bribed the king of Syria with gold and silver to attack Baasha to get Baasha to leave attacking Asa, and it worked. Baasha withdrew. Hanani the prophet rebuked Asa for not trusting in God like he did when facing Zerah, but Asa became angry with Hanani and imprisoned him. Obviously Asa had become pride-filled, trusting in his own ingenuity instead of God. Do you ever do that when facing a challenging problem? Is prayer to God the first thing you do or do you start thinking of your own strategies for dealing with the problem? Do you trust your resources or do you trust God for victory? 15:¹² In the thirty-ninth year of his reign Asa became diseased in his feet. His disease was severe, yet even in his disease he did not seek the Lord, but the physicians. It is sad to see a king who did so much good for God end up like that after an otherwise faithful reign of 41 years. I am 76 and I hope that I don’t end up my life in pride, trusting in my money, possessions, retirement plan, and medical plans. I’m sure that I will face some major problem like Asa did with Baasha, but I hope I turn to God for wisdom before I panic and trust in my own plans.

Judah #4 Jehoshaphat. 2 Chronicles 17:1-20:37 Reigned 25 years. Good

Jehoshaphat also removed the high places and Asherim. He also sent the Levites throughout Judah teaching them the Law of Moses. He had a large army and even the Philistines and Arabians paid tribute gifts to him. Jehosphaphat’s thorn in the flesh was his alliances with some of the evil kings of the northern kingdom. He allied with the evil king of Israel Ahab at Samaria to go fight the Arabians and retake Remoth-gilead. 400 prophets of Baal said they would be victorious but Jehoshaphat asked if there was a prophet of Yahweh to consult with and Micaiah the prophet, who after sarcastically saying they would be victorious, said they would be defeated. The unbelievable thing is that Jehoshaphat went with Ahab to battle even after hearing the prediction of Micaiah. Micaiah said that deceiving spirits were in the Baal prophets. Ahab disguised himself as a regular soldier instead of the king and was fatally wounded by a random, God-guided, arrow through a tiny joint in his armor. We will continue in 1 Chronicles 19 in the next blog.

AI: “King Jehoshaphat’s political and military alliance with King Ahab was cemented—and in many ways enabled or sealed—by the marriage alliance in which Jehoshaphat’s son, Jehoram, married Ahab and Jezebel’s daughter, Athaliah. King Jehoshaphat arranged for his son Jehoram to marry Athaliah, which brought the southern kingdom of Judah and the northern kingdom of Israel into a dynastic and political relationship.” We will read much more about how this marriage affected both kingdoms.