8.23.08
The Blessed Life, Part 1:
Abijah
2 Chronicles 13:10, 11
I think we all would like to
have a blessed life. Isn’t that
right? It doesn’t have to be peachy; it
doesn’t have to be perfect; life doesn’t necessarily need to be totally free
from strain or worry or complication.
But most of us still would like to have a life that is blessed of God—a
life that He is clearly in approval of.
A life of peace and goodness.
It’s possible to be
relatively free from trouble, and yet not be living a blessed life. Indeed, it’s quite common for people in all
walks of life to consider themselves successful, if they’ve accomplished
certain things. But they aren’t
necessarily blessed.
In God’s view, a truly
blessed life is a life that is driven by giving honor to God; a life that is
ordered after His ways; an obedient life.
In the pages of Scripture, we see time and time again real accounts of
real people, some of whom trusted God and were faithful to God, and because of
this were blessed. And we see others who
chose to go their own way, and their lives were not truly blessed.
We also see examples of
people who at times were blessed because of their obedience and trust, and at
other times lost the blessing of God because they did not continue to trust and
obey.
Today we are looking at King
Abijah of
Rehoboam was the successor of
Solomon. As you probably know, the
latter part of Solomon’s reign was marked by idolatry, due to the evil
influence of Solomon’s many pagan wives.
It was during Rehoboam’s reign that the kingdom was divided. Jeroboam and the people of
Rehoboam told Jeroboam and
the people that he would make things even harder for them than his father
Solomon had done. As a result, Jeroboam
and the ten tribes separated from
The context of Abijah, quite
simply, is his father Rehoboam, and his counterpart Jeroboam, king of
Rehoboam: Abijah’s Father
Rehoboam, son of Solomon, had
a golden opportunity to guide his people back to serving the living God. But instead, Rehoboam continued in the sins
of his father Solomon. He continued the
oppressive measures of Solomon’s reign.
Because of his pride and love of power, he lost the majority of his
people, and his kingdom became divided.
We are told in 1 Kings 12:15 that “the cause was from the Lord.” In other words, God had specific plans for
his people, and Rehoboam was interfering with God’s plans. So God took the kingdom from Rehoboam.
Even so, Rehoboam prospered
in the early part of his reign. He
fortified the cities of
But the Bible indicates that
after a while Rehoboam got comfortable.
Things were going good. The
priests were back, the cites were strong, and he had 18 wives and 60 concubines. Life was good. We take it up at this point, in 2 Chronicles
12:1.
“Now it came to pass, when
Rehoboam had established the kingdom and had strengthened himself, that he
forsook the law of the LORD, and all
The blessed life is ours when
we are living our lives according to the law of the Lord. When we depart from the ways and teachings of
God, we lose the blessedness that we had.
The power of example comes
into play here.
“As with Solomon, so with
Rehoboam--the influence of wrong example led many astray. And as with them, so
to a greater or less degree is it today with everyone who gives himself up to
work evil--the influence of wrongdoing is not confined to the doer. No man
liveth unto himself. None perish alone in their iniquity. Every life is a light
that brightens and cheers the pathway of others, or a dark and desolating
influence that tends toward despair and ruin. We lead others either upward to
happiness and immortal life, or downward to sorrow and eternal death. And if by
our deeds we strengthen or force into activity the evil powers of those around
us, we share their sin.” Prophets and Kings, 94
Rehoboam led his people in
To punish Rehoboam and his
people, God allowed Shishak of Egypt to attack.
Shishak came with “twelve hundred chariots, sixty thousand horsemen, and
people without number” (2 Chronicles 12:3).
The Lord spoke through Shemaiah the prophet to Rehoboam and the leaders
of
“Thus says the LORD: ‘You
have forsaken Me, and therefore I also have left you in the hand of
Shishak.’” 2 Chronicles 12:5
When we forsake God, when we
don’t listen to what He is trying to tell us, He simply withdraws His
protection and safety net from us. Bad
things happen when we forsake God. When
we follow Him and obey Him, His angels are surrounding us and safeguarding
us. Everything that comes at us from the
enemy first goes through the protection filter of God’s grace. But when we forsake God, that layer of
protection is removed. Then the enemy
can more or less have his way with us.
How very important it is for
us to do what God says, even when it cramps our style, or lifestyle.
Now, when the people of
Isn’t it better to live
right, instead of waiting to turn to God out of fear and impending doom?
God acknowledged Rehoboam’s
and Judah’s repentance and humility, and He lessened the severity of the attack
of Shishak. Instead of being wiped out,
He simply allowed the Egyptians to raid the temple and the king’s house, taking
away treasures and gold shields that Solomon had made. And the Lord caused His people to be
servants, or in service to, the Egyptians.
It’s interesting that
afterward Rehoboam made more shields, but instead of using gold he used
bronze. Now, gold in the Bible
represents righteousness. Rehoboam’s
shields of bronze represented man’s way; man’s righteousness; the way of
pride. It is true that
The Bible says, in verse 12,
that “When he humbled himself, the wrath of the LORD turned from him, so as not
to destroy him completely; and things also went well in
So once again, Rehoboam
experienced a relatively peaceful existence.
But the blessedness of God did not continue, because he once again fell
away from God. We are told, quite
simply, in 2 Chronicles 12:14, “And he did evil, because he did not prepare his
heart to seek the LORD.” Indeed,
Rehoboam not only allowed idol worship to return, he participated in it
himself. He failed to learn the lessons
that God was trying to teach him.
There is a principle in the
Bible that comes into play here in Chronicles, as well as in our own
lives. You can call it the Ezekiel
Principle, or the Law of Present Reality, or the Get-Real Principle. But it’s found in Ezekiel chapter 33, verses
12-20:
“Therefore you, O son of man,
say to the children of your people: ‘The righteousness of the righteous man
shall not deliver him in the day of his transgression; as for the wickedness of
the wicked, he shall not fall because of it in the day that he turns from his
wickedness; nor shall the righteous be able to live because of his
righteousness in the day that he sins.’ 13 When I
say to the righteous that he shall surely live, but he trusts in his own
righteousness and commits iniquity, none of his righteous works shall be
remembered; but because of the iniquity that he has committed, he shall die. 14 Again, when I say to the wicked, ‘You shall surely die,’ if
he turns from his sin and does what is lawful and right, 15
if the wicked restores the pledge, gives back what he has stolen, and
walks in the statutes of life without committing iniquity, he shall surely
live; he shall not die. 16 None of his sins which he has
committed shall be remembered against him; he has done what is lawful and
right; he shall surely live.
17 “Yet the children of your people say, ‘The way of the
Lord is not fair.’ But it is their way which is not fair! 18
When the righteous turns from his righteousness and commits iniquity, he shall
die because of it. 19 But when the wicked turns from his
wickedness and does what is lawful and right, he shall live because of it. 20 Yet you say, ‘The way of the Lord is not fair.’ O house of
God looks at our present
behavior, our present state of mind, our present attitude. We can’t rely on our former days. It’s a lifelong process. God looks at the overall tendency and
direction of our lives. Therefore how we
live right now—today—determines our own happiness, our own future with God.
The blessed life is the life
that stays connected to God and His righteousness. Though we are saved by the blood of
Christ—saved by grace—the Lord looks at your life to see if it is the life of a
truly redeemed person. That is why we
are actually judged by our works, our deeds, even though we are not saved by
them. The grace of God brings the presence
and power of God into our lives. Are we
allowing Him to change us?
That was Rehoboam. The Bible says, in 2 Chronicles 12:16, “So
Rehoboam rested with his fathers, and was buried in the City of
Jeroboam: Abijah’s Counterpart
Jeroboam started out as
Solomon’s right-hand man. Solomon made
him the officer over the labor force (1 Kings 11:28). He was initially a man of sound judgment. When Rehoboam came to power, Jeroboam tried
to reason with him to set forth some much-needed reforms in the way people were
treated. But God knew that Rehoboam
would follow the wrong advice, and harden his heart. God had already promised Jeroboam, even while
Solomon was yet alive, that he would rule over the ten tribes of
In 1 Kings 11:37, 38, at the
tail-end of God’s prophetic message to Jerboam, He says: “So I will take you,
and you shall reign over all your heart desires, and you shall be king over
God promised to be with
Jeroboam, just like He had been with David.
If he would obey God and walk
in His ways. A bright future was
Jeroboam’s, but it was conditioned on obedience. A bright future is ours as well, but it is
conditioned on obedience.
When the division occurred,
and Jeroboam was made king over
Jeroboam became intensely
paranoid. He was afraid that his
people—the ten tribes—would change their minds and return to
Therefore the king asked
advice, made two calves of gold, and said to the people, “It is too much for
you to go up to Jerusalem. Here are your gods, O Israel, which brought you up
from the
32 Jeroboam ordained a feast on the fifteenth day of the
eighth month, like the feast that was in
Now, to see just how evil and
wrong this was, we have to go back to the book of Leviticus, chapter 23,
starting with verse 27:
“Also the tenth day of
this seventh month shall be the Day of Atonement. It shall be a holy
convocation for you; you shall afflict your souls, and offer an offering made
by fire to the LORD. 28 And you shall do no work on that
same day, for it is the Day of Atonement, to make atonement for you
before the LORD your God. 29 For any person who is not
afflicted in soul on that same day shall be cut off from his people. 30 And any person who does any work on that same day, that
person I will destroy from among his people. 31 You
shall do no manner of work; it shall be a statute forever throughout
your generations in all your dwellings. 32 It shall
be to you a sabbath of solemn rest, and you shall afflict your
souls; on the ninth day of the month at evening, from evening to
evening, you shall celebrate your sabbath.”
Leviticus 23:27-32
God had established that the
tenth day of the seventh month was to be the annual Day of Atonement—a time for
deep soul-searching and repentance before the Lord. This is the time that we are in right now—the
real Day of Atonement that is happening in heaven, just before the Second
Coming of Christ. It is to be a time for
deep soul-searching; of radical reformation; of repentance; a time of spiritual
revival and activity and growth in God’s Kingdom.
Let’s read on. Verse 33 and following:
Then the LORD spoke to Moses,
saying, 34 “Speak to the children of
37 ‘These are the feasts of the LORD which you
shall proclaim to be holy convocations, to offer an offering made by
fire to the LORD, a burnt offering and a grain offering, a sacrifice and drink
offerings, everything on its day— 38 besides the
Sabbaths of the LORD, besides your gifts, besides all your vows, and besides
all your freewill offerings which you give to the LORD.
39 ‘Also on the fifteenth day of the seventh month, when
you have gathered in the fruit of the land, you shall keep the feast of the
LORD for seven days; on the first day there shall be a sabbath-rest,
and on the eighth day a sabbath-rest. 40 And you
shall take for yourselves on the first day the fruit of beautiful trees,
branches of palm trees, the boughs of leafy trees, and willows of the brook;
and you shall rejoice before the LORD your God for seven days. 41
You shall keep it as a feast to the LORD for seven days in the year. It
shall be a statute forever in your generations. You shall celebrate it in
the seventh month. 42 You shall dwell in booths for
seven days. All who are native Israelites shall dwell in booths, 43 that your generations may know that I made the children of
Israel dwell in booths when I brought them out of the land of Egypt: I am
the LORD your God.’” Leviticus 23:33-43
So, immediately following the
Day of Atonement, in which the people were made clean, and the whole camp was
rendered clean before the Lord—immediately following this was the Feast of
Tabernacles, in which the people of
Notice that the Feast of
Tabernacles was on the fifteenth day of the seventh month. The Day of Atonement was when? On the tenth day of the seventh month. These are very specific days that God
established. And the reason, the basis given for the Feast of Tabernacles
is found in verse 43. God explains that
He wants the future generations to understand that He provided miraculously for
His people, and that they lived in booths and tents while they were in the
wilderness.
Notice how Satan counterfeits both the timing and the
basis of God’s holy convocations, when he moves upon Jeroboam to blaspheme
God. Let’s return to 2 Chronicles 12:32,
33. Here we find that Jeroboam establishes a solemn feast day on a COUNTERFEIT
day—the fifteenth day of the EIGHTH month.
And he sacrifices to the golden calves, instead of to God—and the Bible
says that this was the month “which he had devised in his own heart.”
Jeroboam was deliberately
changing the month, and substituting a different sacrifice—one which did not
represent Jesus Christ. A sacrifice to
Satan. This was how bad things had
become in
Jeroboam—a man singled out by
the Lord for greatness—turns his back on his God, and does things his way. Jeroboam led an entire nation into sin and
ruin. As a direct result of Jeroboam’s
example, 500,000 men would be slaughtered in the very near future in
Someday soon the devil will
move upon religious leaders and government leaders to counterfeit God’s holy
Sabbath day. That day is fast coming
upon us! He has already counterfeited
the sacrifice of Jesus Christ in our day—the Roman Catholic Church claims to
recrucify Jesus every time they have a mass.
And millions of Christians follow them in this blasphemy. The time is coming, my friends, when God will
have had enough of the counterfeits and the supposed religion of man, and He
will bring it to a swift end.
God sent another prophet to
curse the altar that had been set up at
And behold, a man of God went
from
4 So it came to pass when King Jeroboam heard the saying
of the man of God, who cried out against the altar in
So the man of God entreated the LORD, and the king’s hand was restored to him,
and became as before. 1 Kings 13:1-6
Amazing account! Josiah is named in advance of being
born. God causes the altar to crumble,
and Jeroboam’s hand to wither, then He restores Joroboam’s hand. Amazing power of God! God is to be feared in the assembly of the
saints, amen?
Already God’s judgments were
starting to fall on
An interesting aside that we
are given in chapter 13, is that this unnamed man of God, who wasn’t supposed
to go to anyone’s house or eat in anyone’s house in
My friends, DON’T MESS WITH
GOD! IF HE IS TELLING YOU TO DO
SOMETHING, YOU BETTER DO IT! MAKE
WHATEVER CHANGES YOU NEED TO MAKE TO DO WHAT HE SAYS! HE HAS ALL POWER AND ALL AUTHORITY, AND HE
WILL NOT TOLERATE OUR DISOBEDIENCE FOREVER!
This is the context of
Abijah. A father who was wishy-washy and
didn’t follow God, and a contemporary who led his entire nation into idol
worship. You would think that Abijah wouldn’t
have a chance in this context. I mean—every
example he had every seen was evil.
The Short Reign of Abijah
“In the eighteenth year of
King Jeroboam, Abijah became king over
Judgment was about to fall on
Jeroboam and
Then Abijah stood on Mount
Zemaraim, which is in the mountains of Ephraim, and said, “Hear me,
Jeroboam and all Israel: 5 Should you not know that the
LORD God of Israel gave the dominion over Israel to David forever, to him and
his sons, by a covenant of salt? 6 Yet Jeroboam the son
of Nebat, the servant of Solomon the son of David, rose up and rebelled against
his lord. 7 Then worthless rogues gathered to him, and
strengthened themselves against Rehoboam the son of Solomon, when Rehoboam was
young and inexperienced and could not withstand them. 8
And now you think to withstand the kingdom of the LORD, which is in the hand of
the sons of David; and you are a great multitude, and with you are the
gold calves which Jeroboam made for you as gods. 9 Have
you not cast out the priests of the LORD, the sons of Aaron, and the Levites,
and made for yourselves priests, like the peoples of other lands, so
that whoever comes to consecrate himself with a young bull and seven rams may
be a priest of things that are not gods? 10 But
as for us, the LORD is our God, and we have not forsaken Him; and the
priests who minister to the LORD are the sons of Aaron, and the Levites attend
to their duties. 11 And they burn to the LORD
every morning and every evening burnt sacrifices and sweet incense; they
also set the showbread in order on the pure gold table,
and the lampstand of gold with its lamps to burn every evening; for we keep the
command of the LORD our God, but you have forsaken Him. 12
Now look, God Himself is with us as our head, and His priests with
sounding trumpets to sound the alarm against you. O children of
Truly God is with Abijah as
he utters these words. It was true that
You can detect a bit of
national pride in Abijah’s words, and a bit of conceit even. He is confident that since the temple is with
In actuality this division of
His people, and the ensuing battle, must have broken God’s heart! Yet He knew that Jeroboam’s evil course must
be stayed. God could not tolerate open
idolatry to go on unaddressed.
The Bible says that in the
battle that followed, God helped
“Then Abijah and his people
struck them with a great slaughter; so five hundred thousand choice men of
500,000 men of
Abijah had spoken for
God. He had been an instrument of
righteousness. He had led his people in
victory, for the glory of God. Abijah
was in a perfect position to lead his people into the future, with reforms, and
total re-vamping of the nation. Nothing
but blue sky ahead for Abijah. Truly a
blessed life was his, as he obeyed God.
But sometime after this
amazing speech and amazing victory, Abijah faltered in his faith, and stopped
talking regularly with the Lord. We’re
not told when, but we do know that it must have happened fairly soon, because
he only reigned for three years, the Bible says.
If all we had were 2
Chronicles, we would read about Abijah’s growing mighty, having fourteen wives,
twenty-two sons, sixteen daughters, that he rested with his fathers, and that
he was buried in the City of David.
But thanks to 1 Kings 15:1-3,
we get the rest of the story, as it were:
“In the eighteenth year of
King Jeroboam the son of Nebat, Abijam became king over
Yes, Abijah ended up walking
not in the Spirit, but in all the sins of his father, Rehoboam, and his heart
was not loyal to the Lord his God.
And so Abijah’s life ended
prematurely. And it ended in a
non-blessed state. Who knows what God
might have accomplished through Abijah, had he remained loyal to God.
Abijah. He could have charted a new course of
righteousness—a new direction than his father Rehoboam—a new direction than his
contemporary Jeroboam, whom he conquered.
Abijah could have been a lasting, blazing fire of holinesss that
continued for several decades. But
instead, Abijah was a little spark that appeared for a brief second in time,
and was out.
What will the record state
about you, about me, in the future? That
we shone for a brief time, and then turned away from God? Or that we continued on with our God, obeying
Him when He spoke to us, and that He accomplished much through us?
The truly blessed life. It’s a hard commodity to come by. You can’t really work for it, like
retirement. You basically have to
surrender for it. You have to surrender
your will and your life to your Creator, in order to live a blessed life; a
life that is pleasing to God.