Devotions

On his way home after a great military victory, King Asa of Judah was intercepted by a prophet. This man did not come to congratulate Asa but to give him a warning: “As long as you rely on the Lord, fully trusting Him, you will be blessed. He will walk with you and give you victory after victory. But if you turn away from Him, trusting in your flesh, you will have disorder and chaos in every area of your life” (see 2 Chronicles 15:1-6).

A GLORIOUS TIME

Asa took this message to heart and walked faithfully with the Lord for thirty-six years. During that time, God greatly blessed Judah. It was a wonderful, glorious time to live in that land but after all those years, another crisis came. The backslidden king who ruled Israel (which had divided itself from Judah) launched an attack on Asa. He captured Ramah, a town just five miles from Judah’s capital, Jerusalem, cutting off that vital trade route to the city. If something didn’t happen quickly, Judah’s entire economy would collapse.

FEAR AND PANIC

This time, King Asa moved in fear. Instead of trusting the Lord, he turned for help to a notorious enemy, the king of Syria. Unbelievably, Asa stripped Judah’s treasury of all its wealth and offered it to the Syrians to deliver Judah. It was an act of absolute unbelief.

It is often said that the hardest part of faith is the last half hour. The fact is, God already had put into motion his plan to deliver Judah, but Asa aborted that plan by acting in fear and panic.

ANOTHER PROPHETIC WORD

Asa received another word, “Because you didn’t trust the Lord, from now on you will have wars” (see 2 Chronicles 16:9). And so it was in Judah.

Acting in unbelief always brings total disorder and chaos.

Scripture makes clear that God does not take unbelief lightly. The New Testament gives an example of this in the story of Zacharias. In Luke 1, God promised the aging priest a miracle child, a son who would be a forerunner to the Messiah.

The angel Gabriel appeared to him, saying, “Your prayer has been heard, Zacharias. You will have a son, and you will call him John.” Zacharias, a godly, faithful servant who had prayed his whole life for the coming of the Messiah, was burning incense in the temple when he received this news.

A PROMISE TOO WONDERFUL TO BELIEVE

Zacharias knew that since he and his wife were well past the age of conceiving a child, this was a heavy promise. He had to wonder, “How can this be? Elisabeth and I are both advanced in years.” He was stricken with unbelief.

Yet God did not excuse Zacharias’ lack of faith. He had no pity for his age or his service of devotion in the past. The fact is, God was not about to overlook unbelief even in such a dedicated servant. Instead, the angel told Zacharias:

“Behold, thou shalt be dumb, and not able to speak, until the day that these things shall be performed, because thou believest not my words, which shall be fulfilled in their season” (Luke 1:20).

This was a grievous punishment for Zacharias. His own son was going to herald the coming of the Messiah, but the priest himself would not be able to celebrate the news for the duration of his wife’s pregnancy.

From the very beginning, God sought a people who would live before Him without fear. He wanted His children to be at rest in body, soul and spirit by fully trusting in His promises. God called this “entering My rest.” So He led His people into a barren wilderness, without water, food or any source of sustenance. Giving Israel only His promise to keep them, His message to them was simply, “Have faith in Me.” He called them to place all their trust in Him to do the impossible for them.

According to the author of Hebrews, God’s people at that time never entered into His rest, because they didn’t trust in His promises (Hebrews 3:11).

In the passage about the fig tree, Jesus refers to an unnamed mountain:

“Whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith” (Mark 11:23).

Jesus was saying to His disciples, as well as to us today: “Unbelief in your heart is like a hindering mountain that cannot be moved. If it is not cast out, I cannot work with you.”

The fact is, Jesus was unable to perform miracles in a certain town because of the people’s unbelief:

“He did not do many mighty works there because of their unbelief” (Matthew 13:58).

The same holds true for Christ’s church today: wherever there is unbelief, He is unable to work. Unbelief is always the mountain that hinders the fullness of God’s revelation and blessing in His children. 

Jesus was in His last days of ministry. He had just cleansed the temple, driving out the moneychangers, and now He was spending time with His disciples to prepare them as the pillars of His future church. Yet at this point they were still faithless, “slow to believe.” Jesus had chided them for their unbelief at various times, asking, “Can you not see?” He saw in their hearts a hindrance that had to be removed or they would never come into the revelation necessary to lead the church.

One day as Jesus and the disciples passed by a barren fig tree, Jesus cursed it:

“[He] said to it, ‘Let no one eat fruit from you ever again.’ And His disciples heard it” (Mark 11:14).

Later, as the group came by the fig tree again, Peter pointed out, “Lord, the fig tree You cursed has dried up.”

Without giving Peter an actual answer, Jesus said simply, “Have faith in God.” We know from Jesus’ amazing response that the message to follow was all about faith.

SOMETHING NEW

The withered fig tree was another of Christ’s illustrated sermons. This dried-up plant represented God’s rejection of the old religious system of works in Israel. That system was all about trying to earn salvation and God’s favor by human effort and self-will.

Something new was about to be birthed in Israel: a church in which God’s people would live totally by faith. Salvation and eternal life would come only by faith.

To this point, God’s people knew nothing of living by faith. Their religion had been all about performance: appearing for worship services, reading the Torah, keeping extensive sets of rules. Now Jesus was saying, “That old system is over, headed for judgment.” A new day was dawning: the church of faith was being birthed.

Whenever Christians speak of the Upper Room, they usually are referring to Pentecost. But the Bible mentions an upper room incident that occurred several weeks earlier, where the disciples had a different type of experience. This upper room was the setting for the Last Supper on the night before Christ’s death on the cross. On that evening He talked about difficult subjects:

• The suffering He would endure
• His approaching death
• The fact that He was leaving His closest friends, the disciples

My father used to call this first upper room experience “being taken to the woodshed.” It’s about addressing things in our lives that aren’t honoring to God. At those times, He tells us, “You’re drifting from Me. You’ve placed your affections on earthly things and lost your first love for Me. I cannot allow you to go any further without addressing this.”

At the first upper room, Jesus wanted to deal with the mixture in His disciples’ hearts. The clearest example is Peter, who told Jesus he would follow Him to the death. The Lord challenged him on that:

“Truly, I tell you, this very night, before the rooster crows, you will deny me three times” (Matthew 26:34).

Are you experiencing a first upper room right now? Are there things in your life you know aren’t pleasing to God? He wants to deal with them and He will not pull any punches. His response to Peter was harsh, but we know from the outcome that it was an act of love. Jesus was saying, in essence, “I know you love me, Peter, but there’s an agenda in your heart that isn’t God’s. I’m confronting it now because I don’t want it to become palatable to you. I have greater things in mind for you.”