At that time Hanani the seer came to Asa king of Judah and said to him, “Because you relied on the king of Syria, and did not rely on the LORD your God, the army of the king of Syria has escaped you. Were not the Ethiopians and the Libyans a huge army with very many chariots and horsemen? Yet because you relied on the LORD, he gave them into your hand. For the eyes of the LORD run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to give strong support to those whose heart is blameless toward him. You have done foolishly in this, for from now on you will have wars.”—2 Chronicles 16:7–9

In an effort to avoid the very mistake that I want to caution us against this morning, let’s turn once again to the God who is eager to meet us.

Prayer 

Introduction

I chose this passage because I’ve been living in it for the last least three months. It has been a place of refuge for me, especially this semester. For many of you that might not know me, I’m in my third year at Bethlehem Seminary. I am married to my beautiful wife, Jessica, who is “with child” with our fifth. In the meantime, as I’ve been in seminary, I have continued part-time in my previous insurance profession of ten years. And then I decided I needed a little bit more of a challenge, so I took a position as Pastoral Assistant to Dan Holst here at the North Campus. My plate has been full. For a guy who at least used to take great pride in his ability to juggle many things at once, there have been a couple of key points during this semester where the demands in front of me and my resources to meet those demands simply didn’t match up. In my flesh, there was no making it happen. But I’m so thankful that this year started off with 2 Chronicles 16:9 as one of the first Fighter Verses of the year. Over and over again, I have turned to this verse. More than ever in my life, when faced with challenges that seem unresolvable at times, the question has been before me: will I commit the folly of Asa? I would suspect that many of you (if not all of you) have come in this morning with some level of stress, some level of anxiety in your own lives. Perhaps it’s work. Perhaps it’s school. Perhaps it’s marriage or illness. For many here at the North Campus, where the average family size is 11.3 children per household, perhaps its parenting or homeschooling. Are we going to commit Asa’s folly in the midst of these circumstances? 

The last sentence of today’s passage concludes like this: “You have done foolishly in this, for from now on you will have wars.” I want to begin with the question how has Asa “done foolishly?” The immediate reason given at the end of verse 9 is “for from now on you will have wars.” But though the presence of wars will certainly be a result of his folly, they are more consequential than primary.  So what then is Asa’s folly? Simply put, he relied on man and not God. But it goes deeper than that, and I want to propose three layers to this foolishness from the text, and each layer is going to drive the stake of his folly deeper into the ground. 

1. He Overestimated Man’s Ability (v. 7)
2. He Disregarded Past Grace (v. 8)
3. He Underestimated God’s Eagerness (v. 9)

And as we go through each of these layers, I want you to be mindful of the main thesis of the message this morning. The thesis is this: the characteristic mark or external display of the kind of God-exalting, God-reliant dependence that is antithetical to Asa’s folly is prayer. Let me say it again more concisely: the characteristic mark or external display of reliance on God is prayer. 

1. He Overestimated Man’s Abilities (v. 7)

At that time Hanani the seer came to Asa king of Judah and said to him, "Because you relied on the king of Syria, and did not rely on the Lord your God, the army of the king of Syria has escaped you."

Now, to understand this verse, and really our entire passage rightly, we’re going to have to rewind a little bit; we’re going to have to take a few steps back in the narrative. My wife and I love this show called Flashpoint. It’s our favorite show. Actually, it’s the only show we watch, thanks to someone here at the North Campus that I won’t name (but their first name starts with “Liz” and their last name ends with “Holst”). But the story almost always starts in media res, which I have learned is the term used when a show begins “in the midst of things,” or in the middle of the action. We’ve all seen shows like this, where the story then kind of rewinds to the back to the beginning of the narrative in order to show how the characters got there. Since we’ve entered Asa’s story in media res, we’re going to have to do the same thing. So we’ll begin by taking one step back to chapter 16, verse 1: 

In the thirty-sixth year of the reign of Asa, Baasha king of Israel went up against Judah and built Ramah, that he might permit no one to go out or come in to Asa king of Judah. Then Asa took silver and gold from the treasures of the house of the Lord and the king's house and sent them to Ben-hadad king of Syria, who lived in Damascus . . .

Did you catch that?  He took from the house of the Lord to pay off Ben-hadad!

. . . saying, “There is a covenant between me and you, as there was between my father and your father. Behold, I am sending to you silver and gold. Go, break your covenant with Baasha king of Israel, that he may withdraw from me.” And Ben-hadad listened to King Asa and sent the commanders of his armies against the cities of Israel.—2 Chronicles 16:1-6

We’ll stop there, mostly because I can’t pronounce half of the names of the cities listed here. So what just happened? Let me recap. After King Solomon, Israel had been divided into two kingdoms. When we get to this point in the narrative, Asa is the king of Judah (the southern kingdom) and Baasha is the king of Israel (the northern kingdom). So there is division and strife amongst the people of God. Baasha the king of Israel builds the city of Ramah in order to cut off access to Judah. When pushed into a corner, Asa comes up with this wonderful plan. Using his own ingenuity, he says: “I know, I’ll bribe the king of Syria into breaking his covenant with Israel and make a covenant with him myself.” By the way, this is significant because one of the highlights of Asa’s earlier reign is that he and the people of Judah had recommitted themselves to the Lord and entered into a covenant with Him to seek the Lord their God with all their heart and soul (2 Chronicles 15:12). Now Asa is explicitly entering into a covenant with the king of Syria. Well, his plan works perfectly. The king of Syria accepts the bribe, breaks his covenant with Israel, and turns around and pursues Israel. Baasha ceases building Ramah and flees. It’s a total success.

Hanani prophesies otherwise. What has actually happened is that Asa has simply displayed the first layer of his folly. Because Asa relied on ingenuity and on the king of Syria to deal with the problem at Ramah, instead of relying on the Lord, the king of Syria slipped right through his hands. Notice that Hanani doesn’t say, “the Northern kingdom slipped right through your hands.” That’s not what he says. No, the problem with Baasha would presumably have gone away, but what he actually missed out on was the opportunity to conquer this wicked enemy kingdom of Syria itself. If only he had relied on the Lord, Syria would have been eliminated. But Asa decided instead to escape the threat of the northern kingdom by relying on his brilliant plan. 

So Bethlehem, what’s your escape? When the pressures of life are heating up all around you, what is your instinctive reaction? Is your first inclination toward God or toward self-reliance? 

We live in the most prosperous society in the history of the world. We have more money, education, technology, information, access to medical care, food, and a billion other things that no society in the history of mankind has ever had. Self-reliance is the American battle cry. Or as we would say in Texas, “pick yourself up by your bootstraps.” It is no coincidence that Asa’s failure happens after over 30 years of unhindered prosperity, peace, and rest.

Earlier in the message, I mentioned the show Flashpoint and how it always begins in media res.  What I didn’t say is what this usually looks like. Normally, the show begins with something like a guy with explosives wrapped around his chest in the middle of a suburban mall, surrounded by cops and threatening to blow. Usually, the main point of the show is that the guy with the explosives wrapped around his chest didn’t begin that way. When the show does the “rewind,” you find the guy sitting at a Starbucks with his wife, laughing and talking about the kids. Life is great. And you wonder, “How in the world did he get from there to terrorist bomber?” The point is usually that the heat of life boiled up to the point where it was ignited, the “flashpoint.” I don’t think Asa became faithless overnight. I think that as the prosperity, rest, and peace increased in the land, he lost sight of his desperate need for God-glorifying reliance, and his heart became divided.

I want to submit to you as the first point of application that the very essence of prayer (at its core) is a realization of our own limitations.

Many of us know Proverbs 3:5, but notice how this theme is present in Proverbs 3:

Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean (rely) on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths. Be not wise in your own eyes.

Do you see that? The call here is to not rely on your own understanding but to acknowledge him. But what’s the corresponding antithesis to this type of God reliance? Self-reliant pride, wisdom in our own eyes. 

I think this is why we are called to a life of praying without ceasing. In Luke, Jesus tells us that he “told a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not to lose heart.” This type of life that constantly draws near to God in prayer is one way to guard ourselves against the temptation to think of ourselves more highly than we ought to think. 

Having said all that, however, I do want to be clear about something. I am not saying that we don’t utilize our resources. We’re going to see in the next section that Asa had an army. It was a greatly outnumbered army, but it was an army nevertheless. He had resources. It does not mean we don’t go to doctors, or don’t read books on parenting (or whatever other resources that might be helpful in our walk of faith), or that we don’t work hard on preparing for a sermon. But it does mean a heart that recognizes its finite limitations and gladly yields to and inclines toward God in the circumstances of life. I’ll just be honest, my heart is inclined to say, “I can do this!” I can balance two jobs, a family, seminary, ministry, and everything else. My degree is in industrial engineering after all. I literally majored in efficiency! But that was the first layer of Asa’s folly, and it is our’s too if we’re not careful. The truth is that I cannot do one of the things on my list apart from Christ. Jesus says:

I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.—John 15:5

The essence of prayer is a realization that apart from Christ, we can do nothing. This leads us to the second level of Asa’s folly.

2. He Disregarded Past Grace (v. 8)

Were not the Ethiopians and the Libyans a huge army with very many chariots and horsemen? Yet because you relied on the Lord, he gave them into your hand.

There was a time in Asa’s life that it might have appeared that Isaiah’s words might be coming true. In Isaiah chapter 10, Isaiah says:

In that day the remnant of Israel and the survivors of the house of Jacob will no more lean [rely] on him who struck them, but will lean [rely] on the Lord, the Holy One of Israel, in truth.—Isaiah 10:20)

We’re about to see that Asa began his reign in exactly this way, wholly relying on the Lord. Let’s take another step further back into the narrative to 2 Chronicles 14, starting with verse 8:

And Asa had an army of 300,000 from Judah, armed with large shields and spears, and 280,000 men from Benjamin that carried shields and drew bows. All these were mighty men of valor.  Zerah the Ethiopian came out against them with an army of a million men and 300 chariots, and came as far as Mareshah. And Asa went out to meet him, and they drew up their lines of battle in the Valley of Zephathah at Mareshah. And Asa cried to the Lord his God, ‘O Lord, there is none like you to help, between the mighty and the weak. Help us, O Lord our God, for we rely on you, and in your name we have come against this multitude. O Lord, you are our God; let not man prevail against you.’ So the Lord defeated the Ethiopians before Asa and before Judah, and the Ethiopians fled.—2 Chronicles 14:8-12

In this scene, the men of Judah and Benjamin have drawn up their lines for battle and are staring at an army almost twice their size. Keep in mind that this is in the context of “peace” and “rest” that had been established in Judah due to Asa’s prior faithfulness. His reign began with great faithfulness. Let me just list a few of the things that the Chronicler highlights. Here was a king who had done what was right and good in the eyes of the Lord his God (14:2). This included taking away foreign altars, high places, pillars, and Asherim (14:3); commanding Judah to seek the Lord and keep the law (14:4); and clearing the cities of the high places and altars (14:5). The result was “rest.” The kingdom was at rest. And the Ethiopians are the first threat to this rest. Here’s where Asa’s response reveals that the characteristic mark of reliance on God is prayer. It’s worth reading again:

"O Lord, there is none like you to help, between the mighty and the weak. Help us, O Lord our God, for we rely on you, and in your name we have come against this multitude. O Lord, you are our God; let not man prevail against you."—2 Chronicles 14:11 

Asa’s blunder in chapter 16 is shocking to the prophet Hanani. The foolishness of overconfident self-reliance is driven deeper by the fact that it was done after such a massive act of grace in the past. He has completely disregarded God’s past faithfulness.

Just think for a minute about what God has done in the past for Asa. Can you imagine forgetting this level of miraculous provision in your life? I can because I do it all the time. If you are a Christian, whether you’ve been one for ten seconds or ten decades, you have certainly experienced God’s provision in your life, because if nothing else, you’ve experienced the ultimate provision of Christ’s atoning work. But I would venture to say that you’ve experience exponentially more than that. When God called Jessica and me to leave our previous life in Texas and come to seminary in Minneapolis, MN (where I woke up yesterday to a cozy five degrees), one of the greatest gifts was that we “journaled” all of the ways that God had spoken to us, moved in us, and provided for us.  When times have been hard these last two-and-a-half years, there have been key junctions where going back and remembering God’s faithfulness was crucial to our persevering into the future. 

The second layer of Asa’s folly was that he forgot the past grace of God in his life. But Asa’s folly is deeper still. 

3. He Underestimated God’s Eagerness (v. 9)

For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to give strong support to those whose heart is blameless toward him.

Asa is foolish because he overestimated his own ingenuity and disregarded the past grace of God in his life. But the true depth of his folly is seen in his failure to realize God’s eagerness "to give strong support to those whose hearts are blameless toward him." The reason God delivered Asa in the past is the great ground provided in verse 9. Asa failed to recognize that God’s deliverance in the past was not an anomaly but rather a reflection of God’s very nature and character—his eyes are roaming to and fro throughout the whole earth to give strong support to those whose heart is blameless toward him. 

If you have an ESV this morning, your translation will say “blameless” and then have a footnote that says, “complete.” I’m going to point you to the footnote and say, "Go with that one." Because if the eyes of the Lord are roaming the entire planet to give strong support to a certain kind of person, a certain kind of heart, I want to know what kind of heart that is. And it is not a perfect person, which is the connotation that the word “blameless” carries. This is the adjectival usage of the word “shalom.” Even if you don’t know any Hebrew, the one word you’ve probably heard before is “shalom,” which is commonly translated “peace.” The idea is one of wholeness or completion.  No other time in the entire Old Testament is it translated blameless. And, in fact, we have already seen what the Chronicler means by this word. Six other times in Chronicles, it is used in connection with the word heart and is translated as “whole heart” or “wholly true heart.” The point is this: the eyes of the Lord are not roaming the earth looking for perfection; his eyes are looking for whole-hearted dependency, reliance upon him. O, that God would do that in our hearts this morning!

I’ve already said that the essence of prayer is a realization of our own limitations. It is certainly not less than that. But there is more. Prayer is also the embrace of future grace promised by a God who is eager to strengthen himself on our behalf. If what you’re hearing in this message is a guilt-ridden call to pray more, to do more, to try harder, to fill-in-the-blank more, then you’re missing the point.

Bethlehem, North Campus, if you don’t hear anything else that I say this morning, I pray that you would hear this. The God of the universe, the God who made the earth by his power, who established the world by his wisdom, who stretched out the heavens by his understanding (Jeremiah 10:12), the God who makes the mute speak, the crippled whole, the lame walk, and the blind see (Matthew 15:31), the God who, when he utters his voice, there is a gathering of waters in the heavens, who makes lighting for the rain and brings forth the wind from his storehouses (Jeremiah 10:13), the God who upholds the universe by the word of his power (Hebrews 1:13), the God who has swallowed up death and the grave (1 Corinthians 15:54-55), this God, this God does not only stand ready, but is eager, he is roaming the earth with his eyes in order to give the full weight of his strength to support you in your time of need.

To give the full weight of his strength to support you in your marriage. To give the full weight of his strength to support you in your parenting, in your homeschooling, in your struggle against sin, in your joblessness, in your sickness. 

Name it. Is there an act of obedience that God is calling you to that feels impossible? Is there a project, a meeting, a situation coming where temptation will be great, a lost friend, a lost family member, anything looming on the horizon that is filling your heart with stress and anxiety? He’s ready. Brothers and sisters, he’s ready. God is working in all of these things to draw you in to himself, to make you desperate for him. 

This is not an “I’ve gotta do more” message. This is a call to acknowledge the greatness of God and the fact that this great God is ready to pounce on the opportunity to show his might on your behalf. God loves to show off his power for weak people who trust in him. This is the essence of faith. 

Without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.—Hebrews 11:6

Do you believe that? Do you believe that the eyes of the Lord are roaming throughout the earth to reward those who seek him, to give you strong support? Do you believe that if you who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, that your Father who is in heaven desires infinitely more to give good things to those who ask him (Matthew 7:11)?

We began by asking the question how has Asa “done foolishly”? The answer has been that Asa’s folly was an overestimation of man’s abilities, deepened by a disregard for the past grace of God and deepened still by an underestimation of God’s eagerness. 

What we find in the life of Asa is the story of a king in Judah that reads like a story of two different kings. Hence the title of this sermon, “A Tale of Two Kings.” The first half of his reign involved fidelity, victory, prophetic approval, and obedience. The second half is like a rerun gone bad. It is a complete reversal of the previous two chapters, fraught with infidelity, failure, prophetic rebuke, and disobedience.

The two scenarios could not be more incongruent, and the key word around which the two halves of Asa’s life revolve is reliance, which I believe is characterized by prayerful dependence in the first king Asa and by the opposite folly in the second king Asa. Now I want to close with this . . .

A Greater King

Why can we pray? Ultimately, this sermon is titled “A Tale of Two Kings” because Asa’s role in the grand narrative of Scripture is to point to another king. We can pray because King Jesus is the greater Asa. Asa was an anointed king. The people of God anxiously awaited the fulfillment of the promise that a future king would come along and crush the power of death (Genesis 3:15). Like Asa, he would be a Son of David (2 Samuel 7). 

Israel had been looking for and in desperate need of the faithful Son of David who would rise up, who would be loyal to Yahweh, relying on Him only, who would defeat their enemies and bring peace. The first half of Asa’s life showed real signs of hope. This could be the one. His early life was a life marked by faithful reliance on God. But Asa, like all those before him, would fall short; the people’s hopes for the warrior-king would come crashing down. 

Jesus had every opportunity to rely on his own strength. There was the wilderness, the garden of Gethsemane, and ultimately the cross; but he relied on God. Listen briefly to the narrative of Jesus at Gethsemane in Matthew 26: 

Then Jesus went with them to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to his disciples, “Sit here, while I go over there and pray.” Then he said to them, “My soul is very sorrowful, even to death; remain here, and watch with me.”  And going a little farther he fell on his face and prayed, saying, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.”  And he came to the disciples and found them sleeping. And he said to Peter, “So, could you not watch with me one hour?  Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.”  Again, for the second time, he went away and prayed, “My Father, if this cannot pass unless I drink it, your will be done.”  And again he came and found them sleeping, for their eyes were heavy.  So, leaving them again, he went away and prayed for the third time, saying the same words again.  Then he came to the disciples and said to them, “Sleep and take your rest later on. See, the hour is at hand, and the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners.”—Matthew 26:36-46

By the way, it’s worth noting that the way God shows his might toward us might not be what we would expect. We know the end of the story. Jesus is still crucified. But God’s strong support was certainly there. See Phillipians chapter 2: 

And being found in human form, [Jesus] humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.—Philippians 2:8-11 

The Father certainly showed his strength on behalf of the Son as he lifted up his dependent son out of death and seated him on a throne where all of his enemies are being put under his feet. He would be the king who defeated his enemies, bringing rest to his people (Hebrews 2-4). Why? Because the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth seeking to show himself strong on behalf of those whose hearts are completely his. 

Why can we pray? We can pray because Jesus perfectly relied on God and was obedient unto death, even death on the cross. Jesus is both our example of prayerful reliance and the one who has purchased our prayer and who died for our lack of it. Did you catch that? He died for our lack of prayer. He died for our folly.  

Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.  Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.—Hebrews 4:14-16

Let us draw near to the God of heaven with confidence, and we will find mercy and grace in our time of need.