May 4, 2024
2 Chron. 14:1-8
Anthony L. Wilson, lead servant
Church 180, Locust Grove
The Christian life is all about Christ-and Christ alone. A lot of things will pull for our attention, but what comes first? Christ does. As we seek Him, our attention will be pulled toward those things that are most needful. As king, Asa surely felt a lot of responsibility for leading the nation, but his desire to please God kept him focused. By centering on God, Asa served his country well.
Asa’s life is one that give us a clear example of a man who made the conscience, critical, courageous, and commendable decision to dedicate his life to pleasing God. Verses 1 and 2 says, “Asa did what was good and right in the sight of the Lord.”
This is powerful for several reasons: 1) Asa was a man. This is noteworthy because most equate manhood with having complete independence from anyone or anything. In order to please God, a person must have a healthy dependence on God. 2) Asa was a king. This is important to feature because as a king, he had every lavish luxury at his disposal. Asa was clear on the fact that he had things, but things didn’t have him. 3) Asa came from a great heritage. One must be fair in saying that his heritage was great, not perfect. Asa shows us he had not only the desire to want to please the Lord, but also the discipline it took to want to please the Lord.
Asa shows us by example how a person should go about their walk with God. The first two verses of 2 Kings 14 let us know that before a person tries to move things out of their life, they must have God in their life. The declarative statement that Asa “did what was good and right in the sight of the Lord,” tells us that he worked on his relationship with God before trying to make changes around him.
Before we can remove things around us, we must be sure that God is moving things around in us. The text says in verses 3-5 that Asa began a time of reformation and restoration of the people of God back to God. He realized that one of the best ways to keep God first was to remove anything or anyone that would hinder their walk with God. The worship of Asherah was a plaguing problem in those days because of the sensual nature of its worship. Asa decided not to play with the practice or the props that go along with this pagan worship and had all its instruments removed from the people. One of the keys to pursuing godliness is to remove the people, places, or things that would “so easily beset” us.
We see finally in this pericope that Asa begins to further provide reform among God’s people by not only removing all traces of pagan practices, but also he fortified the cities with walls to keep pagan’s out. Symbolically, we must do the same in our lives. Worship, prayer and studying the Word always places the believer in the middle of spiritual warfare.
Asa shows us a spiritual principle through physical means by getting rid of barriers from within the cities, but also keeping them from without by building walls. The same is true for us today. We must set guard against all temptations and attacks of the enemy by putting on the whole armor of God so that we can stand and survive whatever comes our way. We must also surround ourselves with godly family members, working the spiritual gifts that we have, and maximize all the spiritual tools available in order to have victory.
