SERIES: Enlightening Epitaphs of the Kings and Prophets
Asa: “He Did Not Seek Help from the Lord, But Only from the Physicians.”
Introduction: Dr. John Piper is a well-known pastor and writer in Minneapolis. This past week I came across a prayer he used before preparing a sermon:
Lord, I have a text and I have an idea and a mind and hands and a computer and health and energy and a free day and safety from interruption. If I rely on these things–these good things that you yourself have given me–then what the people will get on Sunday morning will be what a man can produce. And, Lord, they don’t need another man-made thing. They live with man-made things and ideas all week long. What your people need–what I need–is something beyond what man can make. Something supernatural from you.
So I now renounce reliance on these things. I know the text is good, the idea is good, my mind and fingers and computer and health and energy and freedom are good. But I renounce reliance on them and look to you, and I ask that in and under and over and around and through all those good things you would work so deeply and so decisively and so graciously that what I say on Sunday would not be the work of a mere man, but the work and the word of God.1
That, friends, is a great prayer, and it is a prayer I suggest might well be on all of our hearts, for it is not just applicable to preaching but to accounting and housekeeping and marketing, in fact, to everything we do. In fact, the better you are at whatever you are doing, and the greater your resources, the more you may need to pray that prayer. Most of us are naturally inclined to turn to God when we are at the end of our rope and hopelessly inadequate to meet a particular challenge. But it’s when we feel completely adequate and think we can do it on our own that we most need to rely on God.
If that sounds strange to you, then you definitely need to consider the life of Asa, King of Judah. His experience demonstrates that our greatest failures often come at our points of greatest strength. Reliance on our own resources, our own skill, and our own adequacy can be fatal. The epitaph I have chosen for this man comes from an incident very late in his life: “He did not seek help from the Lord, but only from the physicians.” I acknowledge up front that if an epitaph’s purpose is to accurately summarize a person’s life, this one may not be entirely fair, for Asa was, for the most part, a godly king and a successful ruler. However, at two decisive points in his life he failed to trust in God, and the results were national and personal tragedy.
I’m actually going to spend more time on the positive aspects of Asa’s life than on the negative, first because most of his life was indeed exemplary, and second because we need to recognize that there is danger in failing to trust the Lord even for those who are, for the most part, godly and spiritually successful. In other words, this message today is not primarily for spiritual losers, though there is also something you can learn if you view yourself that way; rather it is for those who are successful spiritual leaders.
Let’s begin, as we do each week, by trying to put our text in historical perspective. Asa’s life is recorded for us in both 1 Kings and 2 Chronicles. We’re going to focus this morning on the account in 2 Chronicles.
Historical background
The United Monarchy of Israel was divided upon King Solomon’s death in 931 B.C., and his son Rehoboam succeeded him. As we learned two weeks ago, however, Rehoboam followed his father in his mistakes but not in his wisdom, and his kingdom was split by civil war into two parts. Jeroboam became the king of Israel, taking the northern ten tribes, while Rehoboam was left with just two tribes constituting the Kingdom of Judah. Rehoboam reigned for seventeen years and was followed by his son Abijah, who had an unremarkable reign of three years. Abijah, in turn, was followed by his son Asa, who ruled in Jerusalem for 41 years.
That remarkable length of time is made even more astounding when we discover that his reign in Judah spanned that of the first eight kings of Israel:
Jeroboam– he died in Asa’s second year (1 Kings 15:25)
Nadab–2 years
Baasha–24 years
Elah–2 years
Zimri–7 days
Omri with Tibni (co-regency)–4 years
Omri alone–8 years
Ahab–he became king of Israel in Asa’s 38th year (1 Kings 16:29)
There were two distinct periods in Asa’s life. The first 35 years of his reign were peaceful and prosperous; the latter six years were quite the opposite. Why? The writer makes it abundantly clear that when Asa did what was good and right in the eyes of the Lord, he received the blessings of peace and prosperity. But when Asa failed to trust in the Lord, he experienced defeat, disease, and death. That is the simple outline we will use this morning.
When Asa did what was good and right in the eyes of the Lord, he received the blessings of peace and prosperity. (2 Chronicles 14, 15)
Frankly, it’s hard to imagine how a ruler could be any better than this great-grandson of Solomon was for his first 35 years in office. In fact, I was tempted to choose his epitaph from 2 Chron 15:17: “Asa’s heart was fully committed to the Lord all his life,” but that wouldn’t tell the whole story. Let’s begin our Scripture reading with verse 2 and read through verse 7 of 2 Chr. 14:
Asa did what was good and right in the eyes of the LORD his God. He removed the foreign altars and the high places, smashed the sacred stones and cut down the Asherah poles. He commanded Judah to seek the LORD, the God of their fathers, and to obey his laws and commands. He removed the high places and incense altars in every town in Judah, and the kingdom was at peace under him. He built up the fortified cities of Judah, since the land was at peace. No one was at war with him during those years, for the LORD gave him rest.
“Let us build up these towns,” he said to Judah, “and put walls around them, with towers, gates and bars. The land is still ours, because we have sought the LORD our God; we sought him and he has given us rest on every side.” So they built and prospered.
The first thing we discover here is that Asa . . .
He removed the pagan altars, idols, and high places. (14:3, 5) Some of this pagan stuff was left over from Solomon, who built temples for his foreign wives, but it’s amazing how widespread it had become among the common people in Judah. “Leaders set the standard,” you know. Solomon should have known he couldn’t admit idolatry into the royal house without it impacting the rest of the country.
I think we need to realize that Asa’s actions here took a great deal of courage. People become very attached to false worship; in fact, they can become quite fanatical in defending their false views of God. But Asa didn’t just hang a “closed” sign on the pagan shrines. He smashed the sacred stones and cut down the Asherah poles, which were both representations of these false deities. To put it in modern terms, he shut down the adult bookstores, ran the abortionists out of town, and sunk the casino boats. He cleaned house. Yet Asa was aware that it is never enough to remove evil, for something worse can take its place; evil must be replaced with good, so …
He commanded Judah to seek the Lord and to obey His laws and commands. (14:4) He knew that obedience to the revealed will of God, as we saw so clearly last Sunday, is the secret to spiritual victory. Eleven different times in Asa’s reign the term “seeking God” is used. The message is clear throughout: When God’s people seek Him, they find Him, because He is not hiding. And when they find Him, they experience His blessing and spiritual prosperity. But seeking God always involves obedience. One can’t at the same time seek God and violate His commands.
He built up the defenses of the country while there was peace. (14:6-7) It’s a curious thing that in the OT God seemed to approve the strengthening of defenses in times of peace, but He often rebuked the nation for doing the same thing in times of war. When threatened severely they were to rely on God; when not threatened, they were to take wise precautions. There may be a universal principle here: If we act wisely when times are good, we may not face so many bad times.
He enjoyed a miraculous victory over his enemies after calling on the Lord. (14:8-15). In the last half of chapter 14 we read about a major military threat against Asa in about the tenth year of his reign. We are told he had a strong army of 580,000 brave fighting men, equipped with shields, spears, and bows. However, coming against them was a vast army from Cush or Ethiopia, and this army was equipped with chariots, comparable to tanks in our day. Asa went out to meet this threat, and battle positions were set up not far south of Jerusalem. And Asa prayed.
Then Asa called to the LORD his God and said, “LORD, there is no one like you to help the powerless against the mighty. Help us, O LORD our God, for we rely on you, and in your name we have come against this vast army. O LORD, you are our God; do not let man prevail against you.” (2 Chr 14:11)
I love this prayer. It’s short, it’s direct, it’s effective. First, he declares his confidence in the supremacy of God: “There is no one like You.” Second, he recognizes his own inadequacy–he himself is powerless against the mighty. Third, he asks God to help and declares his total reliance on God. It’s possible, you know, to ask God to help but then not rely on Him. How many times have we prayed something like this, “Lord, I have no idea how to solve this problem. It’s way beyond me. I need Your help. I’ve turning it over to you.” Then as soon as we get up off our knees, we say to ourselves, “Now what am I going to do about that problem!” Not Asa. He gave the problem to God and relied on Him to resolve it.
Asa is doing nothing other than what Solomon, his great-grandfather, called upon the people to do when he dedicated the Temple perhaps 65 years earlier. He prayed,
“When your people go to war against their enemies, wherever you send them, and when they pray to you toward this city you have chosen and the temple I have built for your Name, then hear from heaven their prayer and their plea, and uphold their cause.” (2 Chr 6:34-35)
And the result is that God gives Asa a great victory. The enemy suffers a terrible defeat and the men of Judah carry off a huge amount of plunder, returning triumphantly to Jerusalem. Though we aren’t given any details about how He did it, it is made absolutely clear that the Lord won this great victory.
His reforms paved the way for major revival. (15:1-15) In the 15th chapter of 2 Chronicles, we see further reforms on the part of Asa, which pave the way for major revival. A prophet named Azariah comes to Asa after this victory over the Cushites. His message is one of hope and promise:
“Listen to me, Asa and all Judah and Benjamin. The LORD is with you when you are with him. If you seek him, he will be found by you, but if you forsake him, he will forsake you. (Then the prophet goes back through history to show how God had always been there for them.) But as for you, be strong and do not give up, for your work will be rewarded.” (2 Chr 15:2-7)
And indeed, Asa does not give up but rather takes courage and renews his reformation efforts. He removes any leftover idols from the whole country, he repairs the altar of the Solomonic temple, and then he calls all the people together for a solemn assembly. Large numbers come from all over from the country of Judah, and even from the northern kingdom of Israel, too, when they see that the Lord his God is with Asa. A great revival results, including sacrifices, worship, the making of covenants and oaths, and exuberant demonstrations through shouting and musical instruments. It is summarized this way: “They sought God eagerly, and he was found by them. So the Lord gave them rest on every side.” (2 Chr 15:15)
Then a very interesting thing is noted for us in verse 16:
Asa deposed his own grandmother due to her idolatry. (15:16) That’s significant. Generally kings were of the mind that laws were for other people and the king’s family was exempt. Not so for Asa. No one was exempt from the expectation of whole-hearted loyalty to God. Since the queen mother had made a repulsive Asherah pole (not unlike a Totem Pole), he removed her, cut down her pole, broke it, and burned it in the Jerusalem dump. That must have had quite an impact on the country!
Leaders have to set the standards high for their own lives and for their families. The Apostle Paul recognizes the importance of this when he gives qualifications for leaders in the church. He says, “If anyone does not know how to manage his own family, how can he take care of God’s church?” (1 Timothy 3:5). This is not an unrealistic call of perfection on a leader’s family; it is a call for leaders to put their responsibilities as spouses and parents ahead of their responsibilities as leaders so that they have the moral authority to lead. Asa was a good example in this regard.
His heart was fully committed to the Lord all his life. (15:17) In verse 17 we read, “Although he did not remove the high places from Israel, Asa’s heart was fully committed to the Lord all his life.” Now if you are really alert, you may have noticed an apparent contradiction with 14:5, where we read, “He removed the high places and incense altars in every town in Judah.” But it’s actually not a contradiction, because 14:5 says he removed them from Judah, while 15:17 says he did not remove them from Israel. Asa was king of Judah and he did indeed remove the high places from his own country. What he did not do is to remove all the idolatry from the parts of the neighboring country of Israel which his armies occupied. Perhaps he should have, but God doesn’t seem to hold him responsible for that.
But there’s another confusing issue raised here, and that is how Asa can be said to be fully committed to the Lord all his life when we are going to discover in chapter 16 that he failed to trust the Lord in two major areas during his last six years as king. I think the answer is that deep devotion to the Lord does not imply perfect behavior. I’m glad for that reminder. It’s easy to beat ourselves up and question whether we really love the Lord or are even truly converted after a miserable failure. Nor is it always wrong to ask such questions. But Asa’s case convinces me that it is possible to experience spiritual failure while still being fully committed to the Lord. The question is, “Where is our heart?” Do we feel deep sorrow when we do fail Him? Are we like David, who blamed no one but himself and humbled himself before the Lord? Do we run back to God and earnestly seek restoration?
He enjoyed peace until the 35th year of his reign. (15:19) Peace was one of the principal blessings God gave to Asa in response to his godly actions. Throughout the OT “peace” connotes not only the absence of war but economic prosperity and social well-being as well. Imagine 35 consecutive years of peace and prosperity. America has never experienced that; few countries ever have. Asa and his nation of Judah did experience it because he did what was good and right in the eyes of the Lord.
But now we come to the latter part of Asa’s reign; and here we discover a second fundamental truth:
When Asa failed to trust in the Lord, he experienced defeat, disease, and death. (2 Chr 16:1-12)
Chapter 16 opens with these words: “In the thirty-sixth year of Asa’s reign Baasha king of Israel went up against Judah and fortified Ramah to prevent anyone from leaving or entering the territory of Asa king of Judah.” Israel and Judah were never very friendly to one another, but Baasha now decides to act very aggressively toward his southern neighbor. He fortifies Ramah, a town six miles north of Jerusalem, to cut off a major trade route from the east. We learn from 1 Kings 15:16 that there were skirmishes between Baasha and Asa throughout their reigns, but this is certainly the biggest threat yet.
Based upon his past experience and behavior, we might assume that Asa would go to the Lord and seek His help with this new threat. But Asa is no longer a young king; he is more secure now; he has a larger army; he certainly has more diplomatic experience. So, he decides to handle this threat by himself.
Threatened by Baasha, king of Israel, he relied on political solutions instead of the Lord. He concocts a plan: he will take silver and gold out of the treasuries of the Lord’s temple, as well as out of his own house, to bribe Ben-Hadad (there’s the same nemesis from Syria or Aram we saw last Sunday). The plan is for Ben-Hadad to break his treaty with Baasha and begin to attack the northern cities of Israel. Then Baasha will have to abandon his threat against Judah in order to protect his northern flank. There are two problems here. First, Asa is establishing a political alliance in lieu of dependence upon God. Second, he is calling upon a pagan nation to help him fight against his fellow-Israelites. Although Israel was in apostasy and was acting aggressively toward Judah, conspiring with foreign nations against them is outrageous.
But it worked. In fact, it worked so well that Baasha abandoned Ramah entirely, allowing Asa’s men to carry away from Ramah all the stones and timber Baasha had been using for his fortifications. With the materials Asa was able to build up two of his own cities. Most people would be tempted to give Asa an A for diplomacy and skill in removing a major threat. But God gave him an F. In fact, God sent another prophet, this one named Hanani, to say to him:
“Because you relied on the king of Aram and not on the LORD your God, the army of the king of Aram has escaped from your hand. Were not the Cushites and Libyans a mighty army with great numbers of chariots and horsemen? Yet when you relied on the LORD, he delivered them into your hand. For the eyes of the LORD range throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him. You
have done a foolish thing, and from now on you will be at war.” (2 Chr 16:7-9)
Instead of congratulating the king for his clever victory, the prophet predicts judgment upon him for his foolish behavior. He was foolish because he did not take into consideration the character of God, particularly His omniscience and omnipotence. God’s omnipresence, represented by His eyes roving throughout the earth, enables Him to know those whose hearts are fully committed to Him, and His omnipotence strengthens them. John Piper says of this work of God:
This is not something God does on the weekends. It is not something he does just in church or holy places. It’s not his hobby or after-hours recreation. This is what god is doing all the time everywhere (cf. Zech. 4:10). God’s eyes are everywhere always, so that he never misses one single opportunity anytime, anywhere to demonstrate his power on behalf of weak people who rely on him and not man. This is why Asa’s unbelief was folly.2
King Asa reacts to the prophet’s words in two ways, both bad. First, he throws the prophet in prison, and second, he brutally oppresses some of the people, presumably those who were sympathetic to the prophet. How tragic when we react to the discipline of the Lord with more sin! But how often we do that! We get caught up in some wrong behavior, we begin feeling guilty, so we quit coming to church and pull away from our Christian friends. We end up actually compounding the problem! Or we fail to give as we should and end up in financial trouble, and so we quit giving altogether. Or we have a fight at home with our spouse, and instead of asking for forgiveness, we go out and confide in someone else who takes our side and confirms us in our sinful attitudes. There’s only one right way to deal with sin–repentance, confession, and acceptance of God’s forgiveness.
There is a second event in which Asa failed to trust the Lord in his final years. Let me read from 2 Chr 16:12-13:
In the thirty-ninth year of his reign Asa was afflicted with a disease in his feet. Though his disease was severe, even in his illness he did not seek help from the LORD, but only from the physicians. Then in the forty-first year of his reign Asa died and rested with his fathers.
Afflicted with a severe disease, he relied on his doctors instead of the Lord. There seems to me to be a parallel in these two stories. Asa believed he had sufficient resources in both cases to handle the problem by himself. With Baasha he had diplomatic resources. In regard to the disease in his feet he had medical resources. But the sin for which Asa is rebuked (be sure to catch this!) is not that he sought help from his doctors. It’s that he sought help only from his doctors. If we were to conclude from this passage of Scripture today that it is wrong to consult with medical doctors, we would miss the whole point. There are people who draw such conclusions, but they cannot justify their views from this story, or, in my estimation, from any Scripture text rightly interpreted. The Scriptures show no hesitation about taking advantage of good medical care, either in the OT or the NT. But using ordinary means is never to be divorced from seeking divine assistance. The reason is simple: God can heal without doctors, but the doctors can heal only with God’s help and permission.
I want to close this morning by asking and answering this question:
What does it mean to “trust in the Lord,” and when should we do it?
Trusting in the Lord is relying on Him as the ultimate source of help for all of life. Proverbs 3:5-6 is one of the best-known passages that challenges us to trust Him: “Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.” The opposite of trusting in the Lord is leaning on your own understanding, your own resources, your own ability.
This verse answers the second part of our question as well, “when should we trust the Lord?”–“in all your ways”, i.e., at all times. There is no time when it’s not necessary to trust the Lord. But I return to where I started this morning. It is natural, almost automatic, to turn to God when we reach the end of our rope. It’s natural to lean on Him when we’ve been served papers by an angry spouse or when we discover one of our teenagers is on drugs or when we are laid off from work. Unless we are really hardened toward God, we automatically turn to Him at a time like that. But what Asa teaches us is that it is crucial for us to turn to the Lord even when we think we have the resources to handle it ourselves.
Reggie McNeal has written a book entitled “A Work of Heart: Understanding How God Shapes Spiritual Leaders.” I want to close with some powerful and profound thoughts from this book–thoughts which not only capitalize on what we have learned from Asa, but which also help us prepare for Communion:
Leaders often neglect communion (and he’s speaking of communion as intimacy with God, not the Lord’s Table, but it applies to both) more than any other heart-shaping arena. Many spiritual leaders seem oblivious to the battle that actually targets them. Perhaps they see the arsenal of weapons arrayed at them as benign. Fax machines, e-mail, telephones, beepers, an over-committed schedule, the press of people’s needs, program concerns, ministry agenda–these are the tools of mass destruction for spiritual leaders. Their development and deployment proceeds often without inspection. They threaten to shut down the spiritual leader’s communion with God. Once that happens, the leader’s effectiveness is destroyed. The leader becomes a casualty of a struggle that is as old as humanity–the drowning out of eternity by the screams of temporal concerns. God-time yields to “more pressing” concerns. The leader’s communication line with the commander begins to register static.
In response, the leader sometimes does exactly the wrong thing. Instead of repairing the communication by altering the busy schedule to make time for God, the leader compensates for the lack of divine guidance by increasing chat time with the established network. The only approval that satisfies, the “well-done” of the Commander-in- Chief, is set aside to curry favor from ministry constituents. Ministry efforts increase. So does the static. Episodic interruptions in the communication lines to God give way to a routine neglect. The leader goes off-line with headquarters.
Out of touch with command, the leader begins to operate from the memory of previous orders and directives. Activity replaces productivity. Genuine visionary enthusiasm and purpose give way to maintenance and routine, with an accompanying loss of joy and a rise in self-doubt. Leaders who continue to act in this way become cut off from genuine divine intervention on their behalf. They begin to rely on their own diminishing reserves of spiritual firepower. They bank on their talents, their smarts, their relationship skills, and their position to cover their basic failure at the critical core function of their call. That function is to reflect God’s heart to God’s people. This cannot be done apart from a leader’s firsthand knowledge of God’s heart. This knowledge does not derive from historical encounters in a leader’s past; it springs from a vibrant, up-to-date walk with the Almighty.
Devoid of a growing, personal, dynamic relationship with God, spiritual leaders become casualties. Some are removed from battle, too wounded to go on. Some remain engaged but are missing in action. Others desert, going AWOL on God and his people. Perhaps the worst scenario is the tragic figure of a spiritual corpse going through ministry rituals like the zombies of science fiction horror movies. No amount of promise or talent or intelligence can ultimately shield the spiritual leader from some variation of this fate if communion with God is neglected.3
Friends, that’s the bottom line: No amount of promise or talent or intelligence or power or wealth or cleverness or experience can ultimately shield the spiritual leader from such a sad fate as Asa experienced if communion or intimacy with God is neglected.
Prayer: Lord, we are taking time right now out of our busy lives and even our busy worship services for something we call communion. This is not just a ritual, Father; it is not just an ordinance or a sacrament. It is an opportunity to commune with the God of the universe. We express our trust in You, our total reliance. In the strong name of Jesus we pray, Amen.
DATE: May 5, 2002
Tags:
Military victory
Prayer
Revival
Physicians
1. John Piper, Asa’s Folly, sermon at Bethlehem Baptist Church , August 18, 1991, 1.
2. Piper, 4.
3. Reggie McNeal, A Work of Heart: Understanding How God Shapes Spiritual Leaders, 138-139. Some sentences are omitted without ellipsis so as to facilitate the flow of the argument.