Asa's Religious Reforms

 

2 Chronicles 15:16-19

 

July 6, 2023

 

Asa's Religious Reforms

Even Maacah, his mother, King Asa removed from being queen mother because she had made a detestable image for Asherah. Asa cut down her image, crushed it, and burned it at the brook Kidron.  But the high places were not taken out of Israel. Nevertheless, the heart of Asa was wholly true all his days.  And he brought into the house of God the sacred gifts of his father and his own sacred gifts, silver, and gold, and vessels.  And there was no more war until the thirty-fifth year of the reign of Asa.

 

Long before Jesus said; ^“Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.  And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me.  Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”  (Matthew 10:37-39) King Asa, had been taught another Scripture, Exodus 20:3-5, “You shall have no other gods before me.  “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.  You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me,”

I can only imagine the difficulty of such a decision, removing Mom from being queen mother.  By doing so Asa said, Mom, I love you but God is first and you have put an image, a stick, over Him and you do not qualify to have the title of Queen Mother.

Now that was all that Bob was thinking and the Scripture does not go into details, they just tell us the action that he took.

From the Back Porch,

Bob Rice