Taking pride in the right things...

At the church where I serve we are spending our time together looking at the lives of kings who were placed in a position of leadership over the Jewish people. And as we look at the lives of these kings, we are going to discover several timeless truths that have the potential to powerfully impact how we live our lives today.

Last week, we looked at the man who succeeded King Rehoboan, a man named Asa. And it is in the life of King Asa that we discovered the timeless truth that our response to difficult circumstances reveals the true object of our trust. We talked about the reality that it is easy to say that we trust and follow Jesus when life is easy. However, it is when life becomes difficult that we really discover what the object of our trust is. And just as it was with King Asa, we discover the true object of our trust by how we respond to difficult circumstances. We discover the true object of our trust by who or what we run to and lean on in times of difficulty.

This week, I would like for us to pick up where we left off last week. As a result of King Asa trusting in the King of Aram instead of the Lord: as a result of King Asa placing the prophet who came to correct him in prison, King Asa suffered a disease in his feet that was so severe that King Asa was incapacitated.

Yet, when faced with another desperate and difficult situation, King Asa chose to lean on the physicians instead of the Lord for help. Actually these "physicians" were magicians who were involved in cultic practices that worshipped other gods than the one true God. And after forty-one years ruling the Southern Kingdom of the Jewish people, King Asa died in 870 B.C. as a crippled man who was unable to lead his people.

And it is upon the death of King Asa that we jump back into a section of a letter that is recorded for us in the Old Testament of the Bible, called the book of 2 Chronicles. As we talked about last week, the books of 1^st and 2^nd Chronicles are a record of the history of the Jewish people from Adam to the Babylonian captivity and the Persian Emperor Cyrus’ decree to allow the Jewish people to return to the Jewish nation in 538 B.C.

The books of Chronicles were written around 450 B.C. by a man named Ezra, who was a scribe and priest who led a group of Jewish people back to Israel in 458 B.C. With all that in mind let’s jump back into this historical account of the Jewish people, beginning in 2 Chronicles 17:1:

Jehoshaphat his son then became king in his place, and made his position over Israel firm. He placed troops in all the fortified cities of Judah, and set garrisons in the land of Judah and in the cities of Ephraim which Asa his father had captured. The LORD was with Jehoshaphat because he followed the example of his father David's earlier days and did not seek the Baals, but sought the God of his father, followed His commandments, and did not act as Israel did. So the LORD established the kingdom in his control, and all Judah brought tribute to Jehoshaphat, and he had great riches and honor. He took great pride in the ways of the LORD and again removed the high places and the Asherim from Judah.

Ezra brings us into this account of the history of the Jewish people by introducing us to the man who would take the place of King Asa after his death. King Asa’s son Jehoshaphat became king over the Southern Kingdom of the Jewish people in 870 B.C. However, most scholars believe that he actually began to lead the Jewish people in 873 B.C. while his father was incapacitated by the severe foot disease that led to his death. King Jehoshaphat would go on to rule the Southern Kingdom of the Jewish people for twenty five years.

After introducing us to the new king, Ezra provides us summary statement of the early days of King Jehoshaphat’s rule. During the early days of his rule, King Jehoshaphat strengthened the military defenses of the southern kingdom against potential attacks from the northern kingdom of Israel that had occurred repeatedly during his father’s reign. In addition, Ezra tells us that King Jehoshaphat followed the example of the other kings of the Southern Kingdom who placed their confident trust in and followed the Lord.

King Jehoshaphat did not follow the footsteps of the Jewish people who lived in the Northern kingdom of Israel who followed and worshipped false gods instead of the One True God. Instead King Jehoshaphat led the Jewish people to remove the worship of these false gods. And as a result of King Jehoshaphat’s willingness to trust and follow the Lord, Ezra explains that the Lord blessed the new king. The new king’s rule became firmly established and the Jewish people viewed the new king with high regard and respect.

As a matter of fact, the new king was viewed with such high regard and respect that the Jewish people, along with other nations, brought tribute to the new king. In other words, the Jewish people and surrounding nations presented King Jehoshaphat with gifts in order to honor him. King Jehoshaphat responded to the gifts and honor that he received from others by deflecting all of the glory to the Lord. Instead of becoming proud, King Jehoshaphat took pride in trusting and following the Lord.

However, King Jehoshaphat would soon make a decision that would impact his life in a powerful way. A decision that we will look at tomorrow….