God Promises and Delivers

Their prince shall be one of themselves;
    their ruler shall come out from their midst;
I will make him draw near, and he shall approach me,
    for who would dare of himself to approach me?

declares the Lᴏʀᴅ.

And you shall be my people,
    and I will be your God.  (Je 30:21-22)

Jeremiah has been describing the future restoration of Israel and Judah.  Among these is the promise one who will arise from among them and is one of them—i.e. one of their flesh-and-blood brethren.  This is important because he will have two offices in regard to his brethren: king and priest.  God will supply one who will both rule and intercede for the people by drawing near to God.  The only other mention in Scripture of one having this dual role is Melchizedek, king of Salem and priest of the Most High God (Ge 14:18).  There must be one chosen of God to be priest after the order of Melchizedek, who will also rule in peace (as Salem is translated).

After assuring their election, the Lord promises that He will be their God.  This is a wonderful, comforting promise to a nation acting wickedly, but I realize two things.  First, He wants a people.  He wants His elect.  Second, He promises to draw them to Himself and to make Himself available as their God as an act of divine volition and not of their desire.  And being on the heels of the king-priest promised, we might assume that the promised on coming to the people to do all this work is God Himself.  No other person would be able to function in the way needed to bring reconciliation between God and man.

Perhaps you know that I am describing what could only be accomplished and explained through the person and work of Jesus Christ.  It bears repeating.  Here in Jeremiah we have yet another promise of a messiah, who would fulfill, beyond our expectations, all that our God required of both us and Himself and reconcile Creator with created.

What a great God!  What a great Savior!  What a great salvation!

The King Who Took a Stand

There were eight good kings of Judah, after the kingdom divided in 931 BC, with the first of these being Asa whose 41-year reign began in 911 BC.  His famous great-grandfather, Solomon, had begun well but allowed his many wives to turn his heart from the Lord.  In return He brought retribution on the nation by dividing it after the king's death.  When Asa took the throne, peace came to the land (2 Chr 14:1-2), but his was an uphill climb.  In different areas, the new king had to make a stand.¹

Stand against an awful heritage (2 Chr 14:3-7; 15:16-19)
The two kings of Judah preceding Asa, Rehoboam and Abijah, both did evil in the Lord's sight.  The former did so passively by turning away from the Lord after he had been established (2 Chr 12:1) and allowed worship on high places to Asherim as well as cult prostitution (1 Ki 14:23-24).  Even the king's mother had to be dealt with directly because of idolatry.  Asa had made a decision that the sin which marked the last two kings was not going to rule over him.

Stand against a dreadful enemy (2 Chr 14:8-15)
An army numbering almost double that of Judah came up from Ethiopia and was making its way north.  We are not told what stirred the invasion: perhaps their ruler heard of the reforms being done in Judah and thought such drastic action would cause dissent in Judah, making it an easy target.  Asa saw the threat and went out to meet it.  Acknowledging the immense force of the enemy and understanding that his own brave army of valorous men faced certain defeat, Asa turned to the Lord as the only one capable of winning the victory.  Because the army of Judah was fighting in the Lord's name (i.e., servants of all the Holy One of Israel represented) and not for their own glory, they won the day.

Stand upon God's unshakable promises (2 Chr 15:1-15)
While the spiritual and military victories were impressive, one must ask why Asa had made such a turn from his fathers to the Lord his God.  We are not told directly, but a logical assumption ties his actions with what he knew of God's word plus Azariah's visit in chapter 15.  The prophet seems to have come at some point while Asa was bringing reforms to Judah and encouraged the king with the certainty of the Lord's presence and blessing if he continued to walk in his commands and precepts.  With this encouragement, Asa was able to make sweeping reforms and lead the people in worship and a renewal of the covenant.  The divinely-inspired scriptures were necessary to understand the present condition and what the Lord had done for a fallen world that they might have life.

The Wheels Fall Off (2 Chr 16:1-14)
As with any man of Adam's race, sin remains a very present reality.  So it is with a man who reigned wisely for 35 years but forgot who had provided him the wisdom and peace.  Baasha, king of Israel, was building Ramah to prevent those in the north from going south after seeing the reforms happening in Judah.  Asa wanted to stop this, so he bought off the king of Assyria to break the latter's treaty with Israel.  Though this had its desired result to stop the building, but because Asa relied on Assyria to handle the problem instead of going before the Lord, God sent a prophet to point out the sin with the consequence of continuing war the rest of his days.  Rather than repent, Asa jailed the prophet and treated some of the people cruelly.  Finally, he became diseased in his feet, yet still refused the Lord's help by seeking out physician's.

Asa's refusal to confess his sin and repent allowed bitterness to reign in the last few years of his life and rule.  This is a problem that can overcome Christians today, if allowed.  Lives have been ruined because bitterness from unconfessed sin has been allowed to fester and spread like gangrene, not only in the individual but to the church body.  The solution is to fall on the grace of Christ.  His death, burial, and resurrection is the final solution for all sin for all time.  Receiving the gift of grace that covers that sin allows the person to live in freedom.  This sounds like an easy solution: it is because the work of grace has been done on my behalf, yet accepting can be difficult because, even as a Christian who has been taught and known the release of sin's guilt, we can stumble because of pride.  Early on the believer has won early victories with the Lord help but now has become self-satisfied in his walk and relies more on himself or the world than the Lord who bought him.

Consider what God told Asa, "The Lord is with you while you are with him.  If you seek him, he will be found by you, but if you forsake him, he will forsake you" (2 Chr 15:2).  Does this mean we must work to build ourselves up to somehow become better in God's eyes?  No, but we come before the Lord of glory, recognizing that he alone is sufficient to remove our sin and to whom we go for our daily bread.  The life of faith is lived in knowing there is nothing within ourselves, but all comes from our Lord.


¹ My thanks to Aaron Telecky for the first three points as given in his sermon of 9/25/11.