2 Chronicles 15
At this period of Asa's history, the prophet Azariah the son of Oded comes to encourage and exhort the king. The prophets of Judah, compared to those of Israel, are distinguished by their great number. Even Hosea and Amos, prophets of Israel, have a special mission for Judah. It is true that Elijah and Elisha, those great prophets, were sent exclusively to Israel, but their ministry was a very special one. When the prophets of Baal and the false prophets were multiplying, they performed miracles in the midst of an apostate people fallen into idolatry. Their miracles were given for unbelievers and not for those who worshipped the true God. We have remarked elsewhere that we rarely see a prophet of Judah performing a miracle such as, for example, that of Ahaz's sundial. The first prophets of Judah speak; their successors write their prophecies. Under Rehoboam, the prophet Shemaiah, under Abijah the prophet Iddo, under Asa other prophets are not yet writing; it is only beginning with the reign of Uzziah that the major and minor prophets with their writings appear. In Israel, Elijah is a prophet of judgment; Elisha brings grace in the midst of a scene that is judged; the prophets of Judah announce judgments, but exhort the king and the people to repentance so that they may find mercy, for they persist in grace. Only in their written prophecies do they predict a future day when the counsels of God concerning the kingdom will be accomplished; oral prophecy does not go so far, announcing events near at hand, whereas written prophecy has another range: "The scope of no prophecy of Scripture is had from its own particular interpretation" (2 Pet. 1:20).
Here the prophecy of Azariah, or rather that of Oded his father whose messenger he is (2 Chron. 15:8), bears the character of all spoken prophecy. It addresses the king first of all, then the two faithful tribes, Judah and Benjamin. Azariah presents the conditions of the covenant of law: "Jehovah is with you, while ye are with Him; and if ye seek Him He will be found of you, but if ye forsake Him He will forsake you" (2 Chron. 15:2). It was necessary that this covenant be observed by both sides; on Jehovah's side it is always observed, for He is faithful, whereas Israel, if they were to be unfaithful, would of necessity fall under the judgment of God who must forsake them. Azariah then recalls the former days when all the people had been unfaithful; alluding particularly to the time of the Judges, when through Israel's disobedience the most complete disorder had reigned: "Now for a long while Israel was without the true God, and without a teaching priest, and without law, but in their trouble they turned to Jehovah the God of Israel, and sought Him, and He was found of them. And in those times there was no peace to him that went out, nor to him that came in, but great disturbances were amongst all the inhabitants of the countries. And nation was broken against nation, and city against city; for God disturbed them with all manner of distress" (2 Chron. 15:3-6). God, the priesthood, and the law had disappeared, so to speak; every man had been a law to himself. It was the reign of iniquity. Then how many times the people in their anguish had cried out to the Lord and returned to Him! And each time they had found God to be a Deliverer. There is "no peace" in forsaking God-no rest, no peace for the wicked, says Isaiah-but trouble upon trouble; on the contrary, from the moment the king returns again, as Asa did, there was peace and rest (cf. 2 Chron. 14:1).
Azariah does not speak of the ten tribes; he considers Judah and Benjamin the people of God; Israel is already conclusively given up as a testimony of the Lord, although centuries must yet pass before her final rejection.
After the exhortation we find encouragement: "But as for you, be firm and let not your hands be weak: for there is a reward for your deeds" (2 Chron. 15:7). Do not we also, though we are under the regime of grace, need to pay heed to this exhortation? According to God's government, now hidden, but which exists no less in all its reality, there is a present reward, not only a future one, for our acts. This reward is peace, rest, and strength. This is what Asa had experienced, but the continuation of his history will show us just how much he needed to be exhorted — and all we together with him.
As soon as Asa had heard the words of this prophecy, "he took courage." Here we find a new characteristic of strength, which does not consist, as previously, of victory over the Ethiopians, but rather in practical purification. Asa "put away the abominations out of all the land of Judah and Benjamin, and out of the cities that he had taken from mount Ephraim" (2 Chron. 15:8). So it must be for us too: Everything that is abominable in the sight of God, every defilement, must be resolutely banished from our lives so that we may enjoy unmingled fellowship with Him. This can only take place through the strength and energy of faith, that energy which the apostle Peter calls "virtue." The Christian life does not allow letting things go. The prophet tells us, "Be firm." We have at our disposal the strength, the power of the Spirit of God, based on His Word. We lack nothing; therefore let us make profitable use of our strength.
Asa does not confine himself, as he had done previously (2 Chron. 14:3-5), to purifying the cities of Judah: he also put away the abominations "out of the cities that he had taken from mount Ephraim." After the king's victory God had enlarged his sphere of activity (2 Chron. 14:14), and he was now responsible that the same principles of holiness be adopted there as in the territory of Judah. But that was not sufficient: Asa "renewed the altar of Jehovah" (2 Chron. 15:8). I have no doubt that here it is a matter, as in many other passages, of renewing the sacrifices regularly offered on the altar according to the law. This altar, built by Solomon, was still whole and did not need to be renewed, as when ungodly Ahaz substituted another altar in its place (2 Kings 16). In brief, Jehovah's worship according to the prescriptions of the Word — this worship, already neglected under the preceding reigns — was re-established according to God's mind. Wherever we find true and energetic separation from the defilement of the world, it does not take long for the worship of God's children to resume its honored place.
Another result of Asa's faithfulness was the regathering of Israel: "And he assembled all Judah and Benjamin, and the strangers with them out of Ephraim and Manasseh, and out of Simeon; for they fell away to him out of Israel in abundance, when they saw that Jehovah his God was with him" (2 Chron. 15:9). Worship having been re-established, Israel's unity is realized in the feeble measure befitting a time of division and ruin: the sight of God's favor manifested toward His faithful people acted upon the consciences of those who up till now had formed part of the ten tribes and who from their origin were found associated with Jeroboam's idolatry.
"And they assembled themselves at Jerusalem in the third month of the fifteenth year of the reign of Asa. And they sacrificed to Jehovah in that day, of the spoil that they had brought, seven hundred oxen and seven thousand sheep" (2 Chron. 15:10-11). The results of the victory are here consecrated to the Lord, and so it should always be. If our successes lead us to depend on ourselves, to be self-satisfied, to increase our own well-being, victory will become a snare for us and will turn us aside from God instead of bringing us closer to Him.
The renewal of the covenant following the revival brought on by the prophetic word is accompanied by great joy, for they "sought [Jehovah] with all their heart; and He was found of them" (2 Chron. 15:15). Every renewal of the covenant accompanies a true work of conscience in the people. They had broken the covenant, they acknowledge it and humble themselves, they return to it and feel the blessing immediately. It was likewise under Hezekiah, Joash, Ezra, and Nehemiah — however we must add that the covenant was violated anew each time, for the man who still does not know himself must learn what he is on the basis of responsibility. Be that as it may, joy is the result of every restoration, even of one that is partial and temporary. Jehovah "was found of them," and never, even in the darkest moments of man's history, has He hidden Himself from those who seek Him. To find the Lord! What a treasure! Why should they not rejoice! What rest when He is found! "Jehovah gave them rest round about." In the preceding chapter we saw the strength that follows rest; in our present chapter we see the rest that follows strength, and so it is that in a faithful life, strength and rest are continually renewed, the one by the other.
Asa does not content himself with repelling evil publicly; he purifies his own house. These two things must be accomplished together, otherwise our Christian life will be only an empty show. "And also Maacah, the mother of Asa the king, he removed her from being queen, because she had made an idol for the Asherah; and Asa cut down her idol, and stamped it, and burned it in the valley Kidron" (2 Chron. 15:16). Actually Maacah was Asa's grandmother who had probably been called to be regent with the title of queen at the time of Abijah's death. With what energy Asa passes over natural ties, making no allowance for them when the honor of his God is involved! Nothing stops him; he takes away all hope of Maacah's exercising any influence whatever over God's people, and in the sight of all treats her as an enemy of Jehovah. May we imitate him! We are altogether too apt to treat Satan cautiously when it is a matter of sin in our own families, and this often obliges us to do the same when it is a matter of the family of God. We excuse evil while at the same time blaming it; we try to avoid spreading it about in order, so we think, not to produce scandal; we put up with doctrines contrary to God's Word and Christ's honor to avoid offending those who are circulating them and who perhaps are close to us, and thus evil spreads and defiles many. If the people had seen Asa tolerating idolatry in his own house while condemning it everywhere else, would they not have been led to follow his example, or at least not to deal too carefully with it?
All these decisions were to Asa's credit, yet nevertheless he failed in one detail which seemed insignificant. The Word tells us (2 Chron. 14:5) that "he removed out of all the cities of Judah the high places," but we learn in 2 Chron. 15:17 that they "were not removed from Israel," that is to say, I would believe, from the cities of Israel which he had conquered (2 Chron. 15:8). This seemed to be of little importance, for he had removed all the abominations from these same cities. But when it is a matter of separation from evil, nothing is unimportant. Beyond doubt Asa's heart is depicted as being "perfect all his days" (2 Chron. 15:17), a heart that was intelligent concerning what was befitting the Lord's holiness, but he failed to fully realize this in practice. This toleration of the high places was a grain of sand, compared to his overall activity, but a grain of sand can stop even the best constructed of machines; a flaw in an iron beam will cause the most solid bridge to break; and Judah's full security was based on Asa's scrupulous faithfulness to His God. From this moment on, after ten years of rest and prosperity, we notice decline in this man of God. Up till now Asa's faithful conduct had been the magnet attracting not only Judah to the Lord, but also to a certain degree, Israel, at a time when without this conduct Ephraim's loose ways would have brought a corrupting element into the midst of the two tribes. In his zeal Asa had not been a pleasant man according to the flesh; his attitude toward his grandmother proves this, for he might have been content with removing her idol, without publicly proclaiming its fall. This was an honorable deed of Asa's; he knew that worldly amiability never wins hearts to God and that it only smiles at hearts that are carnal. Love is quite different from amiability; it comes from God and shines out from Him onto all men, passing through the heart of the one who loves Him. Amiability is a pleasant characteristic of the natural heart, has no divine source, and never produces anything for God.
What we have seen up to this point was the effect of grace in the king's heart. God had prepared him long ago so that he might be an instrument of blessing, a lamp at Jerusalem for David's sake. The following chapter will show us how this lamp loses its brightness.