FBC Daily Devotional – February 16, 2022

Faith Baptist Church

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Well, a good Wednesday morning to you. Here we are in the middle of the week already. Hope your week has been going well, and that you're seeing the

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Lord bless, in some way, the fruit of your labors. I trust that he is. Today, in our

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Bible reading schedule, we're reading in 2 Chronicles 14 -16, and reading about the reign of King Asa in Judah.

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This guy takes us on quite a ride, doesn't he? The bulk of what you read is so encouraging, because Asa points out the truth that you are not destined to repeat the sins of your father.

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You do not have to follow in your parents' footsteps, or your ancestors' footsteps. We see this in Asa's life, because of the way his reign and his life is summarized for us in chapter 14.

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To get a good sense of what I'm getting at here, you have to understand what the character of the life of his father was like.

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Now, Chronicles doesn't tell us, but the writer of Kings does. In 1

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Kings 15, we read about the character of Abijah. Kings spells his name differently.

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It spells with an M at the end, Abijum, rather than Abijah, but it's the same person.

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Here's what Kings tells us about Abijah. It says, in the 18th year of King Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, Abijah became king over Judah.

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This is Asa's dad. He reigned three years in Jerusalem. His mother's name was

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Meachah, the granddaughter of Abishalom. He walked in all the sins of his father, which he had done before him.

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His heart was not loyal to the Lord his God, as was the heart of his father David.

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Abijah followed in the evil footsteps of his father. He wasn't loyal to the

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Lord. You would expect that his son would probably follow in his footsteps.

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That's sort of the way things go. Some people even think it's inevitable.

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I've heard Christian teachings, teaching from Christians, who say that you have inbred within you the unique sins of your ancestors.

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You need to confess those, and you need to rebuke those sins, or you will be destined to repeat them as well.

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I don't buy that. I think we're all sinners by nature, sinners by birth.

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While we may be influenced in certain ways towards certain sins, there's not necessarily this genetic predisposition to a specific kind of sin.

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I think the relationship between Abijah and Asa bears that out because we just read the summary of Abijah's life.

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Listen to what we read about Asa. It says in 2 Chronicles 14, verse 2, that Asa did what was good and right in the eyes of the

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Lord his God. How did he show that? He removed the altars of the foreign gods in the high places and broke down the sacred pillars and cut down the wooden images.

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He commanded Judah to seek the Lord God of their fathers and to observe the law and the commandments.

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He did exactly the opposite of his father. He showed loyalty to the

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Lord his God. He showed a heart that was good and right in the eyes of the

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Lord his God. If there was such a thing as generational sins that are passed down from one generation to another,

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God in his grace stopped that with Asa. He completely cut that off.

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Take encouragement from that. You do not have to be weighed down with the fear that, the inevitability that, somewhere you're going to end up repeating the sins of your ancestors.

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That doesn't have to be the case. If you're a follower of Christ, follow

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Christ. Reject all that. Put that kind of thinking out of your mind and your heart.

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Follow hard after Christ. Asa takes us on quite a ride because a couple of chapters later, near the end of his life, for some reason, he makes this really stupid decision.

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He makes a treaty with Syria, the armies of Syria, the king of Syria. The problem was the king of Israel, Baasha, came out and threatened

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Judah and Asa. In a panic,

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Asa sent a message to the king of Syria and Ben -Hadad and said,

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Hey, break your treaty with Baasha and form a treaty with us and save me from Baasha.

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Ben -Hadad said, Okay, you're my brother. I'll do that. Let's form this alliance.

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The problem is the Syrians were not the people of God. They were pagans.

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They were ungodly. They were idolaters. Asa had no business forming an alliance with Ben -Hadad, with the

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Syrians. God has been fully capable of protecting Asa all through the years.

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Why he cowered in fear at this point is anybody's guess.

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But he did. He made this terrible mistake. He sinned against the Lord by not trusting in him for deliverance and protection.

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He went to the enemies of God for that protection. That warranted

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God's rebuke. God sent a rebuke. He sent the rebuke by the words of a prophet.

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The prophet Hanani comes to Asa and says, Because you've relied on the king of Syria and have not relied on the

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Lord your God, therefore the army of the king of Syria has escaped from your hand. But how did

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Asa respond to that? Let me ask you this. How do you respond when you're confronted with error, with wrongdoing, with sin?

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Do you respond humbly, with repentance, with a bowing of the head, with a sense of brokenness in your heart, and a response of repentance, confession, and rejection of your sin?

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We read in verse 10 of chapter 16 that Asa was angry with the seer and put him in prison for he was enraged at him because of this.

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In his anger, Asa then turned around and oppressed some of the people at that time.

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It seems that Asa had enjoyed such favor with God through his reign that his life had been characterized by doing what was right, and the

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Lord blessed him in all of that. It's almost like he got the idea that, I can do anything

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I want and God will bless it. He got rebuked for that mentality, and instead of humbling himself and repenting, he got angry.

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He took his anger out not only on the man of God, the spokesman from God who rebuked him, but on other people as well.

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Oh, how often that happens. But don't let that happen to you. Don't let that happen to you.

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Don't have a heart like Asa's that, when confronted with wrongdoing, you turn from the

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Lord instead of following hard after him, even in repentance.

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As I said, Asa takes us on quite a ride, and we can learn much from his good things, but also from his error.

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May we learn. Our Father and our God, we thank you for even the negative examples in your word.

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We can learn from the positive things. We can learn from the negative things.

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Give us teachable spirits. Help us to learn. We pray in Jesus' name and for his sake.

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Amen. All right. Well, have a good rest of your Wednesday, and I trust our