After God's own heart

As king of Judah, Asa reigned for 41 years in the southern kingdom. I Kings 15:11-12 says, “And Asa did that which was right in the eyes of the LORD, as did David his father. And he took away the sodomites out of the land, and removed all the idols that his fathers had made.”

Jordan says, “Asa didn’t come from a line of good and godly kings, but he was one. Notice his fathers had polluted the land with idolatry (introducing Baal worship into the land) and took God’s Word out of the culture so thoroughly that the sodomites had taken over.

“It’s interesting when you go through your Old Testament and notice that every time the Word of God was removed from Israel, and false religions came in (in other words, God’s Word was not the cultural norm), almost always the sodomites came in.

“They’re there all along but they’re down in the gutter, under the cover, back in the dark where they belonged. But when the light of the Word of God to Israel became dim and the culture was darkened . . . Look, if you’re doing deeds in darkness and the darkness begins to spread out in the culture, where do you do your deeds? Everywhere.

“When there’s light in the culture, you do it in the closet. You don’t pass laws to have that happen; you preach God’s Word to have that happen. Every time the Word of God was not honored, the Israelites kept going back to these activities.

“Now, when you talk about sodomy, the homosexual lifestyle, you’re talking about the extreme in sexual perversion, which by the time you get to the extreme, you’ve walked through all the other things to get there.

“Oftentimes, the Bible will describe the extreme, understanding that you have to go through all this other to get to that extreme. So you have this complete cultural breakdown of morality, and what’s right and wrong, and Asa comes along and gets rid of it all and turns it around!

“The verse says he removed all the idols that his FATHERS had made. Think about it. Notice in verse 10 he does what his 'father' David did. But between him and David, he had a daddy and a granddaddy and a great-granddaddy before you get back to the great-great-granddaddy David.

“Asa didn’t grow up in a godly home. His grandfather, Rehoboam, if you look at the last verse in chapter 14: ‘And Rehoboam slept with his fathers, and was buried with his fathers in the city of David. And his mother's name was Naamah an Ammonitess. And Abijam his son reigned in his stead.’

“I Kings 15:8 says, ‘And Abijam slept with his fathers; and they buried him in the city of David: and Asa his son reigned in his stead.’

“Between Asa’s daddy, Abijam, and his granddaddy Rehoboam, these two guys were real rascals! They were bad kings. Asa’s daddy was a bad dude; he subverted Israel, followed Baal, and rejected God’s Word. His daddy and granddaddy were the same.

“Now Asa’s great-granddaddy (Rehoboam’s daddy) was Solomon, the guy whose ‘heart was divided.’ Solomon starts out great but then he gets hooked up with all this false religion and they turn his heart from the Lord.

“Solomon’s daddy was David. David was the great good king in Israel. ‘The man after God’s own heart.’ II Chronicles 14 says, ‘So Abijah slept with his fathers, and they buried him in the city of David: and Asa his son reigned in his stead. 'In his days the land was quiet ten years.
[2] And Asa did that which was good and right in the eyes of the LORD his God:
[3] For he took away the altars of the strange gods, and the high places, and brake down the images, and cut down the groves:
[4] And commanded Judah to seek the LORD God of their fathers, and to do the law and the commandment.
[5] Also he took away out of all the cities of Judah the high places and the images: and the kingdom was quiet before him.'

“Asa turns the whole culture around! Here’s how this came about. Chapter 15 says: ‘And the Spirit of God came upon Azariah the son of Oded:
[2] And he went out to meet Asa, and said unto him, Hear ye me, Asa, and all Judah and Benjamin; The LORD is with you, while ye be with him; and if ye seek him, he will be found of you; but if ye forsake him, he will forsake you.’

“You read on down through there and you see Asa does exactly what God said to do. And one of the great revivals in Israel came because Asa made a choice to ‘be ye strong therefore.’

“The prophet comes not to be like his fathers, but to go all the way back to David to the covenant God made with Israel and to stand on the Word of God, and he made that choice and that choice produced results. And Asa cleaned out the Baal worship and all of the social and moral effects that come from forsaking God’s Word.

“Now the question then is, ‘Well, what about his boy? What did his son decide to do? Where did he wind up?’

“When Asa dies at the end of chapter 16, in chapter 20: 32 you read of son Jehoshaphat that he ‘walked in the way of Asa his father, and departed not from it, doing that which was right in the sight of the LORD.’

“Jehoshaphat builds on what his daddy did. He doesn’t have to go around and destroy all the Baal worship. Having had the ground already cleared away for him, he can plant and, if you go down through II Chronicles 17: 5, it says, ‘Therefore the LORD stablished the kingdom in his hand; and all Judah brought to Jehoshaphat presents; and he had riches and honour in abundance. And his heart was lifted up in the ways of the LORD.’

“Not lifted up in the ways of his OWN thinking, but he’s encouraged in the Lord! What he does is he sends teachers out to teach the Word of God. In verse 8, he sends out Levites, the priests. Verse 9 says, ‘And they taught in Judah, and had the book of the law of the LORD with them, and went about throughout all the cities of Judah, and taught the people.’

“Whoa! They got the Book! They’ve got the Book that goes all the way back to Moses! We call it the Received Text. They’ve got God’s Book and He sends it out to be taught and re-establishes the teaching priests.

“They go out into all the towns and villages and Jehoshaphat sends them out to teach God’s Word, and when it begins to permeated Israel again, God’s Word and the truth of who Israel was in the program of God began to take root again in the nation and they had one of the greatest revivals in all of the nation’s history under Asa’s boy!

“In fact, if you go on down through there, you’ll see that not just Israel, but the heathen nations around Israel began to fear the Lord God of Israel because of the blessings of God on Israel as a result of them keeping His Word. We call that social impact. You ever hear anybody talk about, ‘We want to be socially relevant’? These dudes were!

“What a dad Asa was. Imagine the benediction it would have been for him to be able to look and see what his son did in Israel! What a heritage to pass on!”