2021-6-13 AM, The Counsel of Ancient Kings: King Asa Teaches Us that a Mistake Does Not Define Us. 2 Chronicles 15:17
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What is character? Look it up and you see that it is composed of a whole sum of distinctive qualities which generally define our us.
Our personalities have character traits as do our bodies. Our hearts have character as well. We can have good character or bad character depending on the general quality of the sum of our traits.
It takes more than one decision to shift the overall quality of our character. If you have good character, then one bad decision is probably not going to make you a person of bad character. If you have bad character, you are probably not going to flip this by doing a nice thing for a person.
Character changes with the repetition and magnitude of decisions.
As we look through the story of the kings, we learn this is true.
Take King Asa’s father Abijah. 2 Chronicles says that he did some things that we would say are very honorable. He was in a way with Jeroboam, king of Israel, and was outnumbered 2-to-1. Before the battle, Abijah had a stirring speech full of truth and he said...
Behold, God is with us at our head, and his priests with their battle trumpets to sound the call to battle against you. O sons of Israel, do not fight against the Lord, the God of your fathers, for you cannot succeed.”
Was he right? Yes. Were the other things that he said right? Yes. Was his heart in the right place? Likely. However, he remained a man of poor character...
And he walked in all the sins that his father did before him, and his heart was not wholly true to the Lord his God, as the heart of David his father.
So, Abijah, like Saul, may have had a share in some good things of the Lord, but his heart never belonged to the Lord and it was weighted with poor character.
Asa is a case study in the opposite. As read last week, he was a man whom God deemed to have good character.
And Asa did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, as David his father had done.
However, we see that Asa made a couple mistakes.
First, he was not as thorough as he needed to be in his reforms.
He put away the male cult prostitutes out of the land and removed all the idols that his fathers had made. He also removed Maacah his mother from being queen mother because she had made an abominable image for Asherah. And Asa cut down her image and burned it at the brook Kidron. But the high places were not taken away. Nevertheless, the heart of Asa was wholly true to the Lord all his days. And he brought into the house of the Lord the sacred gifts of his father and his own sacred gifts, silver, and gold, and vessels.
Asa did not follow through far enough, yet there is the last line, “Nevertheless, the heart of Asa was wholly true to the Lord all his days.”
This means that his heart character remained weighted toward the Lord’s ways.
Asa made another mistake which was a big one.
Let me give you just a little context. When Asa was a little younger and his dad, Abijah, was king, they were at war with Jeroboam and outnumbered 2-1. Jeroboam had Judah surrounded. However, something incredible happened...
And when Judah looked, behold, the battle was in front of and behind them. And they cried to the Lord, and the priests blew the trumpets. Then the men of Judah raised the battle shout. And when the men of Judah shouted, God defeated Jeroboam and all Israel before Abijah and Judah.
Asa saw the Lord miraculously deliver against an enemy.
Then, just a little later when Asa became king, Zerah the Ethiopian came out against him with 1 million men and 300 chariots. Here was Asa’s cry to the Lord,
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.”
And this was God’s response...
So the Lord defeated the Ethiopians before Asa and before Judah, and the Ethiopians fled. Asa and the people who were with him pursued them as far as Gerar, and the Ethiopians fell until none remained alive, for they were broken before the Lord and his army. The men of Judah carried away very much spoil.
In both of these cases, Asa witnessed the Lord leading Judah to victory as the men called on God for deliverance.
Well, when a new threat appeared, Asa forgot the mighty ways in which the Lord moved and his faith faltered.
Jeroboam died and his son Nadab reigns in Israel. A man named Baasha murders him and takes the crown. Baasha fortifies a town called Ramah which prevents travel and trade through Judah’s northern border. This is an act of war.
So what does Asa do? He calls on the Lord for deliverance from this aggressor to the north? No.
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, 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.”
In an act of fear and faithlessness, Asa used money from the temple treasury to buy the loyalty of a pagan king named Ben-hadad.
Asa’s plan worked...
And Ben-hadad listened to King Asa and sent the commanders of his armies against the cities of Israel, and they conquered Ijon, Dan, Abel-maim, and all the store cities of Naphtali. And when Baasha heard of it, he stopped building Ramah and let his work cease. Then King Asa took all Judah, and they carried away the stones of Ramah and its timber, with which Baasha had been building, and with them he built Geba and Mizpah.
Well, it looked like Asa made a decision that was pragmatically good. However, it was spiritually bad.
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.”
So, Asa may have won the battle with Baasha, but the way he did it meant that he lost much more. He could have had not only victory over Israel, but Syria as well.
Then it gets worse. None of us like it when someone calls us out, but we have a choice as to how we will respond. Asa responded in a way that was out of character for him...
Then Asa was angry with the seer and put him in the stocks in prison, for he was in a rage with him because of this. And Asa inflicted cruelties upon some of the people at the same time.
Don’t govern angry!
How about one more mistake by Asa. In his final years, he became diseased in his feet. Some believe this was gangrene.
Again, instead of pleading with the Lord, he sought help only from the physicians.
In the thirty-ninth year of his reign Asa was diseased in his feet, and his disease became severe. Yet even in his disease he did not seek the Lord, but sought help from physicians.
Okay, these are some pretty heavy blows to Asa’s godly character.
These were mistakes which look really bad. However, we have to remember God’s assessment of Asa’s heart. “Nevertheless, the heart of Asa was wholly true all his days.” (2 Chron. 15:17)
Asa’s heart was a heart of faith
There are some lessons in this for us.
It is good to know that God looks at the content of our whole hearts and not just at our mistakes. Our heart
It is comforting to know that our mistakes do not define us in His eyes. Even when we make mistakes, we still belong to Him.
And when we make mistakes, He provides instruction for repentance.
All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness,
and...
If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
Nevertheless, the goal we should be is to be a people who’ve given their hearts to God and do what we can to live consistently.
Yet there is comfort when we fail.
The first question for today- is your heart with the Lord or not?
How does it come to belong to Him?
What is the assurance that you have if your heart belongs to Him in faith?
For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
I don’t believe He will ever let you go if you are really His. We trust in this.
ABC
Come and belong to Christ
All of us who belong to Him will make mistakes and sin.
The call this morning is to repent of sin according to the Word.