When we study the history of Israel during the period of the Northern and Southern Kingdoms, it can be easy to get lost in all the narrative that we are presented with. This king was this many years old when he became king…he did what was right or evil in the sight of the Lord…he accomplished this and that, but he failed in this area…he died and was buried with his fathers in the City of David, and so on. We see this pattern that the Spirit indeed intends for us to observe, but we sometimes get caught up in the repetition in a way that can hamper our endeavor to meditate on these passages with due diligence in the same manner that we would with other biblical genres.
As my wife and I have been working our way through the book of 2 Chronicles in our daily devotionals, we have been challenging ourselves to not simply gloss over the text, but to actually understand each individual ruler and what we can glean from the lives of these kings of old. In this two-part blog series, I am going to be focusing on one such king that doesn’t usually get much attention, but I believe the Spirit can use his life to teach us some powerful reminders. His name is King Asa, and we are first introduced to him in 2 Chronicles 14 (or the parallel passage in 1 Kings 15). First, we learn that he reigned over Judah starting in the 20th year of Jeroboam’s reign over the northern kingdom of Israel (1 Kings 15:9). His father, Abijam, was a wicked king, and his grandfather, Rehoboam, was the one who listened to his peers instead of the wise elders; a decision that backfired and ultimately culminated with the splitting of the kingdom. Therefore, Asa’s reign was about one generation removed from the kingdom split! It may be easy for us to think, “Wow…only a couple of decades after Solomon? How could their spiritual health decline so much?” Until, we reflect on our own society and how far we have fallen in the last 20 years. The truth is the same today as it was in the days of the judges and later the kings; it only takes one generation to lose any sense of godly virtue or acknowledgement of the true God.
By the time Asa ascended to the throne, the land of Judah was very much in need of spiritual reform, and the Lord would use this righteous king to do exactly that. In his early years as king, Asa walked in step with his great-great-grandfather David as he “removed the foreign altars and high places, tore down the sacred pillars, cut down the Asherim, and commanded Judah to seek the Lord God of their fathers and to observe the law and the commandment” (2 Chronicles 14:3-4). And he didn’t stop there! In the very next verses we read, “He also removed the high places and the incense altars from all the cities of Judah. And the kingdom was undisturbed under him. He built fortified cities in Judah, since the land was undisturbed, and there was no one at war with him during those years, because the Lord had given him rest” (v.5-6). Asa was wholly devoted to the Lord and even put to death those who did not seek the God of Israel (v. 13)!
Sounds like a life well lived and pleasing to the Lord, right? It sure does! But sadly, Asa did not continue on this path of righteousness, and in the last few years of his reign, we see a very different character. When Asa went to war against Baasha, king of Israel, his impeccable record began showing cracks. First, he made a treaty with the king of Aram, which was effectively a demonstration of a lack of trust in God, who promises to fight for His people Israel (Exodus 14:14). Secondly, when he was rebuked by Hanani for his actions, he responded not with repentance as his father David had done when confronted about his sin with Bathsheba, but with rage, and had Hanani thrown in prison (2 Chronicles 16:10). Lastly, when Asa was afflicted with a disease in his feet, the text reads, “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” (v. 12).
That is how Asa’s life ends according to the narrative. He died only a couple of years after his feet became diseased, and the text never indicates any hint of a deathbed repentance or sorrow over his sin. So what do we make of this? Was this king truly after God’s own heart as was his father David? Or was he performing righteous deeds outwardly but from an unconverted heart?
While only the Lord ultimately knows for sure if Asa was a saved man, I believe the Bible gives us a pretty good clue that he was. In 1 Kings 15:14, it is written, “But the high places were not taken away; nevertheless the heart of Asa was wholly devoted to the Lord all his days.” The key words here are “wholly” and “all,” meaning that despite all of Asa’s shortcomings and failures, God saw him as “wholly devoted…all his days”. This is a man whose heart is characterized by righteousness. Even though we read about him repeatedly failing to trust in God in 2 Chronicles 16, that was not the overall direction of his life.
2 Chronicles 16, therefore, describes not an unsaved king who only pretended to be righteous on the outside until it inconvenienced him, but rather a man who truly loved the Lord and His precepts, yet was not perfect and eventually fell into some snares when times got tough. Is that not true for each of us, even as believers? As I pondered the life of King Asa and the parallels that I find in my own life, there are some clear applications that I believe the Lord is teaching us in this passage. Next time, we will be taking a look at four of these applications.