Asa’s Blunder
This is
an important story, because up until now it seems as though Asa has done really
well. But he’s not perfect. Asa makes a few mistakes along the way. Unfortunately with leaders, when a leader
makes a mistake it is usually magnified.
Such is the case here with Asa.
Baasha, the
king of Israel, has come to Asa’s border and began to build a fortification to
limit the number of people who could get to Judah. In other words, Baasha wanted to harass
people who intended to come to Judah to trade, to do business, to arrange for
political treaties, and things like this.
Baasha wanted to cut Judah off from the north. This would naturally cause Judah to diminish
in power as their economy would suffer and their political network would diminish.
Asa
responds by sending some resources to Ben-hadad, the king of Syria (Some Bibles
use the ancient name Aram here). Asa
asks Ben-hadad to attack Israel from the north so that Baasha’s attention would
be split. As Baasha’s attention would be
split, then Asa could attack Baasha from the south and destroy this new
fortification. Ben-hadad agrees to the
plan and the plan succeeds. The new
fortification is destroyed and Asa carts away all of the cut rock and timber
that had been used in construction.
From the
world’s perspective, we would call this an incredible success, wouldn’t
we? Here is a person who saw a future problem
and had the forethought to deal with the problem before it actually became a
real problem in the present. Here is a
person who leveraged some of his own resources in order to astutely resolve the
issue. The plan was put into motion and
it worked. From a worldly perspective,
this is an incredible plan!
There’s
just one issue. God hates the plan. Even though it worked, God hates the
plan. God hates the plan so much that He
sends His prophet to Asa to tell him about it.
God hates the plan so much that the rest of Asa’s reign is spent just
surviving conflict. Here we have a great
story to indicate that just because something is successful it doesn’t mean
that it is God’s will and brings pleasure to Him.
So what
does God hate about the plan? God hates
the plan because God is not involved with the plan. Asa doesn’t consult the Lord. Asa schemes on his own. Asa doesn’t rely upon the Lord. In fact, this is perhaps the best way to
state Asa’s perspective. When things are
out of hand, Asa turns to the Lord; but when he can manage on his own, Asa only
relies upon his own reason and strength.
God finds that offensive.
I find
this particularly humbling today. How
easy is it to do exactly what Asa does here?
How easy is it to convince ourselves that a particular problem is easily
solved and we don’t need to go to God about it?
While this might be true in many circumstances, the danger is the
pattern we create. When we don’t go to
God in the little stuff, chances are that we don’t go to God in the big stuff
either. The issue is bigger than solving
the problem. The issue is about setting
up the repeatable rhythm that can take us to God.
We can
truly see the heart of the problem through the lens of Asa’s foot disease. What is it that is reported about Asa as he
has a foot disease? Asa doesn’t seek the
Lord. Instead he seeks help from the
physicians. This is the lesson to be
learned from Asa. As great as he has
been praised over the last two chapters for the occurrences of his reign, Asa
relies too much upon himself and not enough upon God.
Jehosophat’s Reform
In
chapter 17 we hear that Asa’s son Jehosophat reigns after Asa died. Jehosophat is generally regarded as a very
good king – although he is not without his faults, either. With Jehosophat we hear that he walked in the
ways of David. He sought God. All of Judah saw the wisdom of his ways and
they brought him tribute. As his reign
begins, he tears down the high places that Asa had left standing.
What the
chronicler desires for us to remember at this point is that Jehosophat
instituted an educational reform.
Jehosophat commissions a movement of priests and Levites to go through
the cities of Judah and teach about the Lord.
Jehosophat understands something.
People need to do more than just see an example and have things done to
them. They need to learn why things are
happening.
You see,
Jehosophat had taken the religious reforms of Asa one step further and completely
removed the high places away. Those who
had been worshipping there would need to know why. If all that happened was that their places of
worship were torn down, the people would rebel.
But if the people had an opportunity to be legitimately taught, then the
people would have an opportunity to reform.
This is the important part.
As we
shall see in the end of Jehosophat’s story, by the end of his life there are
high places of worship to false gods standing again. Clearly not all of the people do reform. And clearly as Jehosophat ages his fervor in
fighting false teaching dwindles. But we
can learn a great lesson from the beginning of his story. In the beginning Jehosophat fights with
fervor against the false gods. But he also
understands the importance of educating the masses. In order for people to have a closer and more
meaningful relationship with God, there has to be some access to teaching from
those who have such a relationship.
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