A thoughtful young prince was growing up in Jerusalem during the years that Rehoboam and his son Abijah ruled the kingdom of Judah. This young prince was Abi jail’s son and Rehoboam’s grand-son. His name was Asa.
When Abijah died, after ruling Judah only three years, Asa be-came the new King. And Asa began at once to rule his people wisely. He had seen that the cause of all their trouble had been due to their forgetfulness of the true God, and now he endeavored to turn his people’s minds back to the right kind of worship. He began by command-ing his servants to tear down and destroy every; idol they could find in the land, and to break tin pieces the altars that had been built to worship strange gods.
One day Asa learned that his own grandmother, who had been Queen since the time that Rehoboam ruled in Judah, was worshiping an idol. Asa thought, “This will never do at all. My grandmother can no longer be Queen, for she sets the wrong kind of example before my people.” So he refused to allow her to be Queen any longer, although she was an old lady. And he tore down her idol, stamped it in the dust, and then burned it near the brook outside the city. He wanted his people to forsake their idols entirely and turn to serve the true God.
For ten years King Asa had peace in his country. During that time he strengthened his kingdom and ruled wisely. And his people loved him. Then God allowed a strong army from the country of Ethiopia to come against his kingdom and try to destroy it. Asa’s soldiers could not drive this enemy away. But Asa believed it would be just as easy for God to drive away a strong enemy as a weak one, so he prayed earnestly, and God heard his prayer. The Ethiopians were defeated before Asa’s men and they ran back toward their own land. Asa and his soldiers followed them and found many valuable things that these frightened strangers had thrown away in their haste to escape. God caused his fear to fall upon the people who lived in the country places where Asa and his soldiers followed after the Ethiopians, and from these places Asa’s men gathered many sheep and cattle to take back to Jerusalem. So this was a great victory for the King of Judah and his people.
After this victory God sent a prophet to speak to Asa and urge him to be always true. The prophet said, “The Lord is with you now, for you are trying to please him. If you will ask his help at any time, he will bless you; but if you forsake him as your fathers have done, then he will forsake you.” And Asa decided to keep true to God.
Soon the people who lived in the kingdom of Israel began to hear that God was blessing the King of Judah, and they went again to worship the Lord in Jerusalem. They brought many animals for sacrifice, and they joined with Asa’s people in seeking God with their whole hearts. And God was well pleased with them. For twenty years he did not allow an enemy to trouble the land of Judah.
But Baasha, the king of Israel, grew jealous of Asa because some of his people had gone to live in Judah. He planned to build a strong city at the southern part of his country and station soldiers there to prevent any of his people from going down into Judah to worship God. Neither did he want any of the people from Judah to come up into his kingdom, for fear they would teach his people to love God and try to go to Jerusalem to worship.
King Asa heard about Baasha’s plan and he was much displeased. He tried to think of a way to prevent Baasha from carrying out his plan. But he did not ask God to help. Instead, he took some gold and silver coins out of the money-box in the temple and sent them as a gift to a heathen king who lived north of the kingdom of Israel. He asked that king to trouble Baasha’s country on the north and cause him to leave his work at the southern part of his land. The heathen king did as Asa requested, and Baasha left his work and hastened up to drive his enemy away. While he was gone, Asa and his soldiers destroyed all the work that Baasha had done in trying to build the strong city of Ramah.
God sent a prophet to tell Asa that he had done wrong by asking a heathen king to help him instead of asking help from the Lord. “Because you have done this,” the prophet said, “you shall have wars as long as you live.” But Asa did not believe the words of the prophet. He became angry and commanded his servants to cast the prophet into the prison-house.
Some years later King Asa became diseased in his feet, and he suffered a great deal. But he did not ask God to heal him of his disease. He spent much money hiring doctors, who tried to cure him, but they could not. After two more years Asa died, and he Was buried in his own sepulcher, or tomb, in Jerusalem. He had ruled as. King longer than any of the kings of Judah before him.