Lessons from the Life of King Asa
- (2 Chronicles 14-16)Intro:
Romans 15:4 - For whatever was written in earlier times was written for our instruction, so that through perseverance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.
A Person Who Truly Seeks God is One Who:
- Is Serious about it. (2 Chron 14:2-7)
- Makes it Personal. (2 Chron 14:11)
- Perseveres in their seeking. (2 Chron 15:7)
- Is Serious about it. (2 Chron 15:8-16)
- Is not without Flaws. (2 Chron 16:1-12)
HBCPN Elder - Mark Ort
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Sermon Notes (PDF): BLANK
Hint: Highlight blanks above for answers!
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Pastor Jeff:
00:22-00:27
Our guest speaker this morning, also no stranger, Mark Ort, if you would come up here.
Pastor Jeff:
00:28-00:31
I first met Mark Ort in prison.
Pastor Jeff:
00:32-00:33
That is a true story.
Pastor Jeff:
00:34-00:36
And I love telling that story just for the look on people's faces.
Pastor Jeff:
00:37-00:38
Well, you would be surprised.
Pastor Jeff:
00:38-00:44
In prison, if you needed somebody roughed up, if you gave this man a pack of smokes, he would break some knees.
Pastor Jeff:
00:45-00:47
That's what I... We were cellies for a while.
Pastor Jeff:
00:47-01:19
And I just thought I love saying we met in prison because you always get that reaction of like You guys you guys were in jail and we were how many times were we in jail mark literally like a hundred literally hundreds of times we've been in jail and doing Bible study We went every week for like two or three hours, but that's how I met mark I was involved at North Street Christian Church, and there was a guy in our church that was involved in prison ministry and I'm like, "Hey, I'd really like to get involved in that." And you were at First Baptist at the time, and you were, right?
Pastor Jeff:
01:19-01:20
Weren't you at First Baptist?
Pastor Jeff:
01:21-01:25
Okay, whatever, but anyways, you weren't at, that's where we had met.
Pastor Jeff:
01:26-01:27
And here there was a connection.
Pastor Jeff:
01:28-01:38
Mark is actually married to Kristen, who my wife and I went to high school with, and three absolutely beautiful children, Jack, Jessie, and Livvy.
Pastor Jeff:
01:39-01:46
No stranger around here, but if you're visiting with us, maybe this is something you don't know about Mark, but something I really appreciate about Mark.
Pastor Jeff:
01:46-02:04
He loves God, he loves God's word, he loves his family, and every time Mark gets up to bring the word, you should have your Bible, you should have your sheet for your notes, and you should have your pencil ready, and you should be ready to write down a lot, because Mark always has a lot to say.
Pastor Jeff:
02:05-02:08
So let's welcome him, and let's get ready to get into God's word with him.
Pastor Jeff:
02:08-02:09
Mark Ort, thank you, brother.
Mark Ort:
02:10-02:10
Thank you.
Mark Ort:
02:13-02:16
Thank you for the kind words, Jeff, I appreciate that.
Mark Ort:
02:17-02:19
Why don't we just take a second and pray.
Mark Ort:
02:21-02:25
Lord God, we are about to open up your Word.
Mark Ort:
02:27-02:28
That's no small thing.
Mark Ort:
02:29-02:32
You're going to show us things from your Word.
Mark Ort:
02:32-02:40
It's just an amazing thing to be able to go into this book that you've given us and learn from it.
Mark Ort:
02:41-02:52
And Lord, it's impossible for a mere man to understand your word apart from your Holy Spirit, and infinitely more so to try to teach it.
Mark Ort:
02:52-03:00
And so God, I pray you'd give me just the wherewithal through your spirit to communicate the things that I've learned in your scripture.
Mark Ort:
03:01-03:04
Thank you, Lord, for what you're doing in our church.
Mark Ort:
03:05-03:09
I thank you for all these smiling faces out here that I call my friends.
Mark Ort:
03:10-03:16
And so God, we look to you now and ask that you would do amazing things through your word.
Mark Ort:
03:16-03:18
In Jesus' name, amen.
Mark Ort:
03:20-03:29
If you would turn in your Bibles to 2 Chronicles 14, I like to spend a little bit of time in the Old Testament.
Mark Ort:
03:31-03:36
And I've been asking myself recently, why do you spend time in the Old Testament?
Mark Ort:
03:36-03:38
Like, aren't we under the new covenant now?
Mark Ort:
03:39-03:40
And we are, of course.
Mark Ort:
03:41-03:44
And so I spend time in a New Testament, you guys do too, hopefully.
Mark Ort:
03:45-03:46
Why would we go to the Old Testament?
Mark Ort:
03:48-03:51
Paul in the New Testament actually says why we do that.
Mark Ort:
03:52-03:57
And I have a scripture up here from Romans 15.
Mark Ort:
03:58-04:09
And the apostle Paul says, "For whatever was written in earlier times was written for our instruction, so that through perseverance and the encouragement of the scriptures, we might have hope.
Mark Ort:
04:10-04:14
And so Paul says, and he's talking about the Old Testament here.
Mark Ort:
04:15-04:18
This stuff was written in earlier times and what was it written for?
Mark Ort:
04:18-04:19
It was for our instruction.
Mark Ort:
04:20-04:31
It wasn't written so that we could leaf through the Old Testament and win some kind of Bible Bee contest or something in Sunday school.
Mark Ort:
04:32-04:40
It wasn't written so we could look great in a living room with our parents, like watching Jeopardy or something in a Bible category.
Mark Ort:
04:41-04:43
I mean, it's nice to have some facts, right?
Mark Ort:
04:45-04:49
But the Old Testament here, Paul's saying it was written for our instruction.
Mark Ort:
04:49-04:50
And what's instruction?
Mark Ort:
04:51-04:58
You know, when you send your kids off to school to get instruction, they're not just filling their brains up with facts and mathematical equations and things like that.
Mark Ort:
04:59-05:04
They're doing that so that they can learn and do something with it, right?
Mark Ort:
05:04-05:09
Eventually they're going to maybe go to college a job and be fruitful.
Mark Ort:
05:10-05:11
That's what this word is here.
Mark Ort:
05:12-05:13
It's for your benefit.
Mark Ort:
05:13-05:15
You're going to do something with it.
Mark Ort:
05:15-05:16
It's not just facts.
Mark Ort:
05:17-05:21
And so Paul says, this is why we go to the Old Testament.
Mark Ort:
05:21-05:22
And that's good enough for me.
Mark Ort:
05:23-05:29
I wanna go to the Old Testament and I wanna not just get trivial facts.
Mark Ort:
05:29-05:33
I wanna get something and learn from it and use it.
Mark Ort:
05:34-05:38
Now, when we go to the Old Testament, we have things in there that are complicated.
Mark Ort:
05:38-05:45
There's prophecy, there's genealogies, there's measurements of the temple and things like that.
Mark Ort:
05:45-05:47
And there's a lot of narratives in there.
Mark Ort:
05:48-05:59
And one thing we need to be careful of, and this is just a quick warning before we dive into our passage, is that there's a tendency for some people to do what's called spiritualizing of passages.
Mark Ort:
06:00-06:00
And what does that mean?
Mark Ort:
06:01-06:13
Spiritualizing of a passage is kind of like allegorizing it to fit something that is maybe going on in your life, a circumstance or something.
Mark Ort:
06:13-06:20
And there's a more technical definition of that, but I might be able to explain it better through a couple of examples.
Mark Ort:
06:21-06:22
And tell me if you've ever heard this kind of thing.
Mark Ort:
06:24-06:27
The story of like David and Goliath, for instance.
Mark Ort:
06:28-06:36
David was a small kid, he picks up a small stone, he wings it at Goliath and hits him in the forehead and he kills him, he slays him.
Mark Ort:
06:36-06:44
So when you're a Christian, maybe even a baby Christian will say, you're gonna have giants in your life.
Mark Ort:
06:45-06:53
And the little things that you do, staying in the Word and going to church and things like that, you can slay the giant.
Mark Ort:
06:53-06:55
You can slay the giants in your life.
Mark Ort:
06:56-06:59
That would be an example of spiritualizing the passage.
Mark Ort:
06:59-07:03
That's not what that passage is getting at at all.
Mark Ort:
07:04-07:07
And similarly, how about the Jericho walls?
Mark Ort:
07:07-07:11
And I've heard this, the Israelites, they march around the Jericho walls, you know that story?
Mark Ort:
07:12-07:17
And they blow the trumpets and they yell and stuff, and the walls go crumbling down flat.
Mark Ort:
07:18-07:37
And people in books and on the internet and pastors will say things like, "We need to tear down the walls in our life." "just like the Jericho walls, we need to tear no walls." And I'm looking at that passage and I'm like, "I don't get that at all out of that passage." That's not what these passages are saying at all.
Mark Ort:
07:37-07:40
These passages are talking about how great God is.
Mark Ort:
07:41-07:49
And so when we go to the Old Testament, we don't wanna do stuff like that, but we do wanna get principles from the Old Testament.
Mark Ort:
07:49-07:54
There's principles that we can glean out of the Old Testament that we can apply directly to our lives.
Mark Ort:
07:55-08:10
And that's kind of what we're going after this morning is we're gonna go through this narrative of King Asa, and we're gonna pull out some principles that were characteristic of his life and say, is this something that maybe I could employ in my life?
Mark Ort:
08:11-08:12
Would this work in my life?
Mark Ort:
08:13-08:16
And so let's take a look at the life of King Asa.
Mark Ort:
08:17-08:21
Now, before we get into the scripture, we need to have a little historical background.
Mark Ort:
08:22-08:23
Who in the world was Asa?
Mark Ort:
08:23-08:26
And where does he fit in with history?
Mark Ort:
08:27-08:28
Where does he fit in?
Mark Ort:
08:28-08:33
So this is a lot of stuff on here, but I just want you to get the gist of this, okay?
Mark Ort:
08:33-08:39
If you go back in your Old Testament and learn about Saul, Saul was the first king of Israel, right?
Mark Ort:
08:40-08:41
You know, Israel wanted a king.
Mark Ort:
08:42-08:43
And so they clamored for a king.
Mark Ort:
08:43-08:44
They wanted to be like everybody else.
Mark Ort:
08:45-08:48
And so they get a king and his name's Saul.
Mark Ort:
08:48-08:49
And right after Saul was David.
Mark Ort:
08:50-08:51
And right after David was his son Solomon.
Mark Ort:
08:52-08:54
That was what they called the United Kingdom.
Mark Ort:
08:56-09:03
And right at the end of Solomon's life, there was a split and you can read about this in 1 Kings.
Mark Ort:
09:04-09:09
You can read about what happened with Jeroboam up at the top there and Rehoboam.
Mark Ort:
09:09-09:15
And you can see in the light colors here, you have Israel on the top and Judah on the bottom.
Mark Ort:
09:16-09:19
And the kingdom split at that time.
Mark Ort:
09:19-09:28
And if you read through these historical narratives of the kings and you don't understand about how the kingdom split like that, it can be very confusing.
Mark Ort:
09:29-09:39
I remember a time in my life I'd be reading and I'd be like, you know, they're talking about King Basha and Asa, he's the king too, like, why is there two kings?
Mark Ort:
09:39-09:41
I thought, you know, why are there two kings?
Mark Ort:
09:41-09:43
But this is the reason why.
Mark Ort:
09:43-09:48
You had Israel, they were to the north on your map and Judah was on the south.
Mark Ort:
09:49-09:58
And you can see in the orange there, I have a couple of prophets kind of by date, and it goes through Elisha.
Mark Ort:
09:58-10:02
Now there's more kings after that, I just didn't have room to put them on the screen.
Mark Ort:
10:02-10:07
And you can read all about these kings as you go through 1 and 2 Kings and 1 and 2 Chronicles.
Mark Ort:
10:09-10:16
And 1 and 2 Kings and 1 and 2 Chronicles, I chose 2 Chronicles because the account is a little more in depth.
Mark Ort:
10:17-10:19
There's four chapters spent on Asa.
Mark Ort:
10:19-10:22
and I think there's like a half a chapter in 1 Kings.
Mark Ort:
10:22-10:24
It's a little more detailed account here in Chronicles.
Mark Ort:
10:25-10:32
So you can see in Judah on the bottom, you had Rehoboam, Ahijah, and then Asa.
Mark Ort:
10:33-10:36
And that's about 9, 10 BC, somewhere around that timeframe.
Mark Ort:
10:37-10:46
Now, Asa is pretty important because if you look in Matthew chapter one and look at the genealogy of Jesus, who shows up in that genealogy?
Mark Ort:
10:46-10:47
There's a bunch of kings in there, right?
Mark Ort:
10:48-10:49
And Asa is one of them.
Mark Ort:
10:50-10:52
So Asa has a pretty important place in history.
Mark Ort:
10:52-10:58
He's like the 21st, if I counted right, he's like the 21st great-grandfather of Jesus.
Mark Ort:
11:00-11:01
So kind of an important guy.
Mark Ort:
11:02-11:08
So that's the historical landscape of this guy, Asa.
Mark Ort:
11:09-11:12
And what about the spiritual condition of Israel at the time?
Mark Ort:
11:12-11:15
What was going on spiritually back at this time?
Mark Ort:
11:16-11:23
Well, the children of Israel always had issues with immorality and idolatry.
Mark Ort:
11:23-11:25
That was nothing new to them.
Mark Ort:
11:26-11:27
They always had issues with that.
Mark Ort:
11:27-11:29
And this was no exception.
Mark Ort:
11:30-11:35
Rehoboam, his grandfather, and Abijah, they were wicked guys, Ahijah.
Mark Ort:
11:36-11:39
Different versions of the Bible will say Ahijah or Abijah.
Mark Ort:
11:39-11:40
It's the same guy.
Mark Ort:
11:42-11:43
They were wicked people.
Mark Ort:
11:43-11:48
In fact, all the kings on the north up there were referred to as being wicked.
Mark Ort:
11:48-11:57
We had some good kings on the bottom, like when you get to Josiah, there were some good kings, the people who wanted to honor the Lord.
Mark Ort:
11:58-12:00
And Asa was one of those guys.
Mark Ort:
12:01-12:04
He was one of the guys that wanted to honor the Lord.
Mark Ort:
12:04-12:07
So historically, that's what's going on.
Mark Ort:
12:07-12:14
Spiritually, you had apostasy, you had immorality, rampant, ideology, rampant.
Mark Ort:
12:16-12:24
Now, the focus of this passage, when I went through this, I noticed there was some repeating words in here.
Mark Ort:
12:25-12:33
And when you're trying to interpret scripture, one of the things, if you see repeating words, that's probably something that you ought to take note of.
Mark Ort:
12:33-12:44
And if you go through these four chapters, 14, 15, 16, I'm sorry, just three chapters, nine times, at least nine times, some form of the word seek appears or sought.
Mark Ort:
12:45-12:47
And so I thought, that must be pretty important.
Mark Ort:
12:48-12:50
They're getting to something here by repeating that word.
Mark Ort:
12:50-12:57
So the focus of this passage for when I studied it, appears to be seeking God.
Mark Ort:
12:57-13:02
Now, I don't know if I really need to define seeking, but I'm going to.
Mark Ort:
13:03-13:04
We kind of know what seeking is.
Mark Ort:
13:05-13:08
When I looked it up, it's, we're gonna search intently.
Mark Ort:
13:08-13:10
We're gonna investigate thoroughly.
Mark Ort:
13:10-13:14
Diligently going to great lengths to find in order to obtain.
Mark Ort:
13:15-13:21
I mean, there's no real need to define that any further, is there?
Mark Ort:
13:21-13:22
I mean, you guys know what seeking is.
Mark Ort:
13:23-13:25
Has anybody been on Google this morning?
Mark Ort:
13:26-13:27
Have you been on Google this morning?
Mark Ort:
13:27-13:28
Yeah, some of you guys have been on Google.
Mark Ort:
13:29-13:29
How about this past week?
Mark Ort:
13:30-13:33
Everybody goes to Google when you're searching for stuff, right?
Mark Ort:
13:33-13:34
You know how to seek.
Mark Ort:
13:34-13:36
You know how to look for things.
Mark Ort:
13:36-13:38
And what do we look for?
Mark Ort:
13:38-13:42
We're a culture that's like really intent on information.
Mark Ort:
13:42-13:43
We love information.
Mark Ort:
13:43-13:46
And so we have Google and we go there and we search for stuff.
Mark Ort:
13:46-13:49
You know, last week we weren't here because we were on a little bit of a vacation.
Mark Ort:
13:50-13:53
And I spent hours prepping for this thing.
Mark Ort:
13:53-13:53
Where?
Mark Ort:
13:54-13:54
On Google.
Mark Ort:
13:54-13:55
I was searching.
Mark Ort:
13:55-13:58
I was hunting for the perfect place to stay.
Mark Ort:
13:58-14:03
You know, I'm reading reviews and I'm looking at websites and I'm searching.
Mark Ort:
14:03-14:05
I'm hunting for something in order to obtain.
Mark Ort:
14:06-14:10
And, you know, we do that in other ways like clothing, for example.
Mark Ort:
14:10-14:14
You're going to go to a store and you're looking through all the racks to find the perfect thing.
Mark Ort:
14:15-14:17
You're going from store to store.
Mark Ort:
14:17-14:20
You're trying to find the perfect thing, school shopping or whatever.
Mark Ort:
14:20-14:22
In fact, we've done that.
Mark Ort:
14:23-14:25
I've actually gone to Kohl's.
Mark Ort:
14:26-14:31
I've gone to three different Kohl's department stores in the same day looking for a specific shirt.
Mark Ort:
14:32-14:33
Has anybody else done that?
Mark Ort:
14:33-14:34
Am I the only one that's done that?
Mark Ort:
14:35-14:37
We know what seeking is.
Mark Ort:
14:37-14:38
You lose your keys or something.
Mark Ort:
14:38-14:44
It's like, "Oh, okay, I don't really need my keys." Well, you're gonna search, you're gonna turn your house upside down, right?
Mark Ort:
14:45-14:48
So this is not a foreign concept about seeking or searching.
Mark Ort:
14:49-14:55
And so let's get into this passage here and kind of discover what's happening with Asa.
Mark Ort:
14:55-15:01
And let me just give you like Reader's Digest version of this account because it's three chapters long.
Mark Ort:
15:01-15:07
Typically, like Jeff has said every Sunday is, we do expository preaching here.
Mark Ort:
15:08-15:09
we go verse by verse.
Mark Ort:
15:09-15:14
And if you want me to do that, I can, but we're gonna be here a really long time today.
Mark Ort:
15:15-15:24
So what I decided to do was kind of give you like the Reader's Digest version and hit the high points, and then we'll go back through and fill in the blanks.
Mark Ort:
15:25-15:31
So Asa, he's the next king in line here after a Bajah or a Hajah.
Mark Ort:
15:32-15:40
And it says here at the beginning of chapter 14 that Asa did good and right in the sight of the Lord his God.
Mark Ort:
15:41-15:47
So the writer, inspired by the scripture, said that because he was doing things that were good and right.
Mark Ort:
15:47-15:48
He was tearing down altars.
Mark Ort:
15:49-15:50
He's like, "Hey, we're gonna have a reform.
Mark Ort:
15:51-15:58
We're gonna get rid of this bad stuff." And so he starts ripping down all these altars and then they have a time of peace.
Mark Ort:
15:59-16:02
And so he says, "Well, I'm gonna fortify the cities now.
Mark Ort:
16:03-16:04
I'm doing some kind of action here.
Mark Ort:
16:04-16:08
I'm gonna fortify these cities in case we ever do have a time where there's not peace.
Mark Ort:
16:09-16:10
We have a little bit of strength behind us.
Mark Ort:
16:10-16:12
So he's fortifying cities.
Mark Ort:
16:13-16:15
You got this guy from Ethiopia.
Mark Ort:
16:15-16:20
He comes against Judah, and he has a million people with him.
Mark Ort:
16:20-16:25
And Judah, it says, if you total up the numbers, it's like 580,000 or something like that.
Mark Ort:
16:25-16:28
So there's a little discrepancy in the number of people.
Mark Ort:
16:28-16:30
Now, is it exactly a million?
Mark Ort:
16:30-16:33
The scripture does this sometimes, and we do this too.
Mark Ort:
16:34-16:38
Like, I have a collection of baseball cards that I was trying to get rid of.
Mark Ort:
16:38-16:42
And I would tell somebody, I have a million baseball cards.
Mark Ort:
16:43-16:48
Well, I didn't sit there and count them, you know, 999,000, you know, I didn't count them.
Mark Ort:
16:48-16:50
I just looked at them, I said, I have a million of them.
Mark Ort:
16:51-16:52
And scripture will do this too.
Mark Ort:
16:52-16:59
And I don't know if that's what's happening here or not, but it says that this guy from Ethiopia had a million soldiers.
Mark Ort:
17:00-17:01
Hey, so he's outnumbered.
Mark Ort:
17:01-17:03
And so immediately he goes to prayer.
Mark Ort:
17:03-17:07
He prays to his God, and it's a great prayer, and we're gonna look at it in detail.
Mark Ort:
17:07-17:10
He prays, bam, God answers.
Mark Ort:
17:10-17:12
He defeats the Ethiopians.
Mark Ort:
17:12-17:16
And the next chapter, you have this prophet named Azariah.
Mark Ort:
17:17-17:20
It looks like he's warning him a little bit, like, "Hey, you just had a really big victory here.
Mark Ort:
17:22-17:25
"So don't get too prideful here, "but you need to stay the course.
Mark Ort:
17:25-17:26
"You need to do what you're doing.
Mark Ort:
17:27-17:29
"Be careful, be strong.
Mark Ort:
17:30-17:35
"Don't lose heart, don't lose courage." And so Asa, he's all pumped up.
Mark Ort:
17:35-17:37
He's like, yeah, I'm gonna go, I'm gonna take more.
Mark Ort:
17:37-17:40
We're gonna search the country and we're gonna take more idols down.
Mark Ort:
17:40-17:42
We're gonna do this right.
Mark Ort:
17:43-17:49
And so he has the people, he wants them to swear that they're gonna seek the Lord with all their heart and soul.
Mark Ort:
17:51-17:53
He does some other things with these idols.
Mark Ort:
17:53-17:56
He throws them, he burns them and throws them into this body of water.
Mark Ort:
17:57-18:04
And then later on, Asa doesn't, it appears like he's not seeking the Lord.
Mark Ort:
18:05-18:14
It almost looks like it's a tragic end to his life where this Basha guy wants to come down to Judah and war against him.
Mark Ort:
18:14-18:16
And so he's like, "Well, how can I finagle this?
Mark Ort:
18:16-18:23
I'm gonna bribe some people." And he works out this bribery scheme with an alliance of the guy from the North.
Mark Ort:
18:24-18:26
And he's doing it all on his own power.
Mark Ort:
18:27-18:30
And then he gets sick and gets a disease in his leg.
Mark Ort:
18:31-18:39
And you know, when we get sick, Hopefully we're praying to the Lord and saying, "Lord, I have this illness, I have this sickness, "will you please help me?" And Asa doesn't do that.
Mark Ort:
18:39-18:44
He doesn't consider the Lord and he dies with this disease in his feet.
Mark Ort:
18:45-18:47
It's like, man, that's kind of a tragic ending.
Mark Ort:
18:50-18:52
So what do we wanna do with this passage here?
Mark Ort:
18:53-18:58
Well, on your outline, I don't have any secrets to you about seeking.
Mark Ort:
18:58-19:00
Like I said, we know what that is.
Mark Ort:
19:01-19:11
I don't have any tips or advice about, you know, well, if you do this or do that, but I wanna tell you about the person who's seeking God and that person's characteristics, all right?
Mark Ort:
19:12-19:17
So on your outline, the first one, the person who truly seeks God is one who is serious about it.
Mark Ort:
19:18-19:20
We gotta be serious about this if we're gonna seek God, right?
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I'm just gonna read a couple of verses here at the beginning.
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Asa did what is good and right in the sight of the Lord as God.
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And he removed the foreign altars and the high places and tore down the sacred pillars, cut down the Asherim, and commanded Judah to seek the Lord God of their fathers and to observe the law and the commandment.
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He also removed the high places and the incense altars from the cities of Judah, and the kingdom was undisturbed under him.
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And then there were a couple of passages about when he's fortifying the land, but I'm just gonna focus on tearing these altars down.
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This was a big deal, tearing these altars down.
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It was a huge deal.
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If you think about who the Asherah is, or the Asherim, Asherim is just a plural word for Asherah.
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And Asherah was the goddess of fertility, the false goddess, of course.
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She was the false goddess of fertility, and she was depicted on statues.
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Now, the Bible doesn't say how she was depicted, but we have archaeological evidence of these Asherah.
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And those findings, it shows that Asherah is depicted as a naked, pregnant woman.
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And this was kind of like their good luck charm, I guess.
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You know, like we have this goddess of fertility.
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Look, she's pregnant, she must be fertile.
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So we can't part with her.
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Well, Asa comes in and he's like, you know, he tears this stuff down.
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high places, you know, there were mountains that they would put these poles on and try to get them higher. And this picture, you know, this statue of Asherah was on the top of this thing, and they would look to that as their good luck charm. So he's tearing this stuff down. So he's acting in a way that's serious. It's like he's serious about this.
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We're not leaving this stuff here. We're getting rid of it. They're steeped in this idolatry.
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and his grandfather and all the cultural things going on, and he's like, "We're doing away with it.
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"We're tearing it down." So he's demonstrating his seriousness about it.
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The people were commanded to seek God.
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He commanded Judah to seek the Lord God of their fathers.
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Did you know seeking God was actually a command?
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It's commanded throughout scripture.
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And you can write a couple of these references down, one from the Old Testament, one from the New, and you might be familiar with these.
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Isaiah 55, six says, "Seek the Lord while he may be found.
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Call upon him while he is near." So he's not suggesting you seek him, he's telling you to seek him, he's commanding you to.
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And to not do that is disobedience.
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In Matthew 7, seven, it's the famous ask, seek and knock passage.
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And you guys can look that up.
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You can go on Google and do a search, right?
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And look for seek.
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And you'll find it's all through the scriptures.
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So to be serious about seeking God would mean that we're rushing to be obedient in that.
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It would mean, if we're seeking God, it would mean that there's no half-heartedness in this.
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It's a careful and diligent search.
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There's no half-heartedness about this at all.
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So first thing is we're serious about it.
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The second point is a person who truly seeks God it personal. When Asa prayed in verse 11, listen to this prayer, this is this is a great prayer. In fact it might be one that's worthy of memorizing I think. Asa called to the Lord his God and said, "Lord, there is no one beside you to help in the battle between the powerful and those who have no strength." And he's like getting ready to get bombarded by these people from Ethiopia. And so So it's almost like he doesn't have a chance.
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He's outnumbered almost by double.
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So he says, "So help us, O Lord, our God, "for we trust in you, and in your name "have come against this multitude, O Lord.
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"You are our God.
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"Let not man prevail against you." So do you see the personal effects here?
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First of all, he's going to God.
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So he sees him as his father.
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But look at the personal pronouns in here.
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We have His God, our God, our God, repeated, help us.
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It's this relationship that He has.
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And you think about like your husband or your wife.
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You know, when I talk about Kristen at work or whatever, I talk about my wife, she belongs to me, we're in relationship together.
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my daughter, my son, my other son.
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That's how we talk, right?
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We're in relationship with these people, so they're ours, they belong to us.
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We're in this vital relationship together.
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That's what Asa's doing here.
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He didn't like refer to God as like, oh, the big guy upstairs, you know, the big man.
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That drives me crazy when I hear people talk like that.
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It's like, he's not the big man upstairs, okay?
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He's Father God, and He's my Father.
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This really could be a model prayer here, I think.
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Help us.
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He's like, help us, oh Lord, our God.
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We trust in you.
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He's seeking God here, right?
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He's making it personal.
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So not only is he serious about it, but he's making it personal.
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And the third blank on your outline, A person who truly seeks God perseveres in their seeking.
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And you'll see that in chapter 15.
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This prophet, Azariah, was coming to warn Asa.
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You know, he just had this great victory over this Ethiopian.
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God heard the prayer.
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He answers the prayer and routs the Ethiopians, destroys them.
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And it's like, wow, God showed up.
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You know, all these people, and these million people, and you had this other army of 500 and some thousand people, and God showed up and destroyed it.
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It says in verse 14, "They destroyed all the cities.
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"They struck down those who own livestock." I mean, this was a route, and it was from God.
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He answered this personal prayer.
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And so, Azariah comes and says, "Now the Spirit of God came to Azariah, the son of Odette, and he went out to meet Asa and said to him, "Listen to me, Asa and Judah and Benjamin.
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The Lord is with you when you are with him.
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And if you seek him, he will let you find him.
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But if you forsake him, he will forsake you." In their distress, in verse four, they turned to the Lord God of Israel and they sought him and he let them find him.
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And right after that, in verse seven, Azariah says to Asa, "But you be strong and do not lose courage for there is reward in your work.
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And he's telling them, okay, you just need to keep doing what, don't lose heart.
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He's on a high right now.
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It's probably not like he's not gonna lose heart, but you know how it is.
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There's ebbs and flows.
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We're on a high point.
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We get down the hill and rollercoaster ride kind of thing.
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And he says to him, I want you to be strong.
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Do not lose courage.
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There's reward for your work.
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And so Asa encourages him, one, against possible pride, and two, he gives him a charge to keep up his reforms and keep seeking the Lord.
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So as Christians, things come along and bring us down.
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Like, what are we gonna do, give up?
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Are you serious?
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Like, we're not giving up.
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We have God on our side, right?
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We're not giving up.
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And that's what he's telling him here.
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You need to persevere because be strong, do not lose courage, why?
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Because there is a reward for your work.
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You're gonna be rewarded for that perseverance.
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And keep that word reward in your mind just for a second, because we're gonna come back to that toward the end here.
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The person who seeks God is, he's serious about it.
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He makes it personal, he perseveres in it, right?
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Now, the fourth thing is, he's serious about it.
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Am I allowed to put two series in here, Jeff?
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Okay, no more series after this, right?
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Are you serious about that?
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I think this is in here for us because the writer wants to emphasize that this is serious, this is serious business, okay?
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So Asa, he takes courage, he takes encouragement with this, and he's like, you know what?
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We're gonna go take some more idols down.
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We're gonna go throughout the country.
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And you see that happening here in verse eight.
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He took courage and removed the abominable idols from the land of Judah and Benjamin and from the cities which he had captured in the hill country of Ephraim.
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He restored the altar of the Lord.
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Let's keep going down here.
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He sacrificed to the Lord.
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So that's something serious.
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God requires certain sacrifice or whatever in Old Testament accounts here, that he's sacrificing 700 oxen and 7,000 sheep.
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That's a lot.
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I mean, he's serious about this, right?
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Now, here's the thing that really struck me when I read through this part is, if you get on to verse 16, it says, "He also removed Maahka, the mother of King Asa," which actually is his grandmother.
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Sometimes the Old Testament uses language like that.
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We'll talk about their fathers, but it wasn't actually their father, it was like their ancestors.
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This was his grandmother, actually.
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She was the queen mother.
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She was removed from her post as queen mother because she had made a horrid image as an Asherah.
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And Asa cut down the horrid image and crushed it and burned it in the Brook Kidron.
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This would be the equivalent of Kate and William, the prince and the princess, taking down Queen Elizabeth.
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Do you realize what a big deal that would be?
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I mean, the whole world would be in an uproar.
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You can't do that.
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She's the queen.
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She's the queen.
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And so he's taken her down because she made a horrid image of Asherah, and he cut this thing down and he crushed it and he burned it in the Brook Kidron.
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Now, we can pass over that passage really quickly and think, oh, it's the brook.
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This is really cool.
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You need to do a study on the Kidron Valley.
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'Cause the Kidron Valley is, it's a ravine outside of Jerusalem.
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And you can go there right now and walk through the Kidron Valley.
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It's still there.
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The river's still there.
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But back then, it was such a steep ravine that the bottom of that ravine would never see the sunlight.
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the Sun wouldn't get there because the ravine was so was so so steep. You've probably been in places like that it's like man this place never gets Sun. Well this this is what that place was like and so what people did was whenever their relatives died or if a criminal would die they would take their relatives and they would take them down there and they would bury them there and they would take criminals in some places and just throw them down there and that's land and people had like this eerie feeling about that, about that place.
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It was like, I don't want to go there.
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It's like, they actually called it the valley of death.
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And some of the theologians that I read believe that whenever David was writing Psalm 23, and he said, "Yea, though I walk through the valley "of the shadow of death," that he could have been referring to that place.
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Like, when you walk through there, it's not the most fun place to walk through.
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There's hints of dead things, and things that are in there are like cast off forever.
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And so it was kind of spooky.
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And so, you know, David, when he wrote that, was he referring to this valley?
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Likely.
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Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me.
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Why do I say all that?
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Because when he threw that stuff, the idol that was burned up and he threw that in there, what he was saying was to everybody around him, like, "This stuff is dead to me.
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I'm done with it.
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We're getting rid of it.
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It's down here where nobody wants to go and we're done with it." It would be a good visual for the people to see.
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So he was serious about it.
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And when you're serious about going after God, You do whatever it takes.
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Do you think that you're gonna experience the fullness of God if you're only half in?
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Do you think that?
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I mean, hardly.
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There's no way that we can experience God's fullness if we're only in this part way.
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We gotta be serious about it.
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A.W. Tozer said this, "How tragic that we in this dark day have had our seeking done by our teachers." I mean, are we content with letting other people do your seeking for you?
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Seeking is not just for me, it's not just for your pastor, it's not just for the guy on Word FM, the preacher, it's just not for them.
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Seeking is a commandment for all of us and we need to be seeking Him and be serious about it, 100%.
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Just like Asa, getting rid of his idols, that's what we need to be doing.
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We don't have Asherahs in our homes, I don't think, We have other idols in our life, right?
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We need to be like Asa and throw them away, get rid of them.
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They're dead to us, they're gone.
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And this last point here, a person who truly seeks God is one who is not without flaws.
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To me, this was like the most encouraging thought from the whole passage.
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Here you have a guy where I read a lot of stuff about Asa, And I think Asa gets a bad rap, because at the end of his life, he bribes this ally of Bashar, Ben-Hadad, the king of Aram.
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He has an alliance with the king up north.
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And so Asa comes in and he says, you know what?
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I'm going to bribe you, and you're going to break your alliance with him.
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And it worked.
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I mean, he defeated-- he carried away things and was able to have some victory here, but he did it without God.
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He did it in his own power. He did it without the Lord and he didn't seek God here. And so, you know, the things that I read, people were crushing him about that.
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And you can see here where this, this seer, Hanani, the seer came to Asa, and this is is in 16, verse 7.
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The seer came to Asa, king of Judah, and said to him, "Because you have relied on the king of Aram and not relied on the Lord your God, therefore the army of the king of Aram has escaped out of your hand.
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Were not the Ethiopians and Lubam an immense army?" He's referring back to this big victory that happened.
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"Because you have relied on the Lord, he delivered them into your hand." So you relied on the Lord back then, but now you didn't.
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"For the eyes of the Lord," in verse nine, "move to and fro throughout the earth, "that he may strongly support "those whose heart is completely his.
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"You have acted foolishly in this.
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"Indeed, you from now on will surely have wars." Asa was angry with this and he put the guy in prison.
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And if you go on to the last verse, I believe it is, two verses up from the end.
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"The 39th year of his reign, Asa became diseased in his feet.
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His disease was severe, and yet in his disease, he did not seek the Lord, but the physicians." And I'm looking at that, and I'm like, this was a hard passage for me.
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And there's some other hard things in here that you guys need to go home, and I'm giving you homework.
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You can read this and study it.
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There's a couple of things we need to wrestle with in this passage that we don't have time for today.
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But here's Asa, he doesn't seek the Lord.
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He does this bribery thing.
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He doesn't seek the Lord in his illness, and he died with his feet disease.
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And I had a problem with that.
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I thought Asa was seeking God, and now he isn't.
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So who does Asa remind me of?
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He reminds me of me.
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He reminds me of us.
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We do this, right?
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We're seeking God, we're on fire, we're doing our disciplines, we're praying, we're studying, we're doing the things.
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And then all of a sudden it's like, we do something and it looks like, oh, I thought you were seeking God.
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Like, what are you doing?
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It's the flaws that we have, it's the faults that we have.
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And I'm not excusing that, but I'm saying that we're just like this guy.
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And so for somebody to come along and say, well, Asa abandoned God and Asa, He really wasn't sincere, he wasn't serious.
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I think they may be wrong with that, because Asa is just like us.
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And the reason I can say that is just not because of what I think.
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But take a look at a couple of verses, alright?
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If you take a look at 2 Chronicles 15, 17, it says, The high places were not removed from Israel.
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We got a problem there, right?
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Because I thought they removed the high places.
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Well, he did remove the high places in Judah, but Israel was to the north, remember?
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So I don't think he had jurisdiction over that.
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And so I don't have a problem with that.
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It's like he didn't remove those places because he wasn't up there.
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But it says, "Nevertheless, Asa's heart was blameless all his days." And there's a similar verse in 1 Kings 15, 14, you can just write that down.
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It says that he was wholly devoted all his days.
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Now, how can he be wholly devoted and blameless in his heart all his days?
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And then at the end of his life, he's not.
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That appears to be a contradiction, but it's not.
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And let me tell you why.
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This Hanani guy, it says that he was a seer.
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I don't know much about Hanani.
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Now, I don't know, was he a...
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It doesn't say much about him in here.
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Is he a self-proclaimed seer?
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What is he?
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And what's a seer?
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Is it really a prophet of God?
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We don't know a lot about Hanani, but I can tell you one thing, Hanani doesn't see one thing.
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He doesn't see Ace's heart.
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The writer of this passage, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, God sees the heart, right?
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And God, I believe God, it says here that he was blameless all his days.
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Now, blamelessness isn't perfection, right?
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We can't be perfect.
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Blamelessness is a characteristic of our, it's our character, right?
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We live a blameless life, but we're not perfect.
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The writer of Scripture here, the author of this passage, says that his heart was blameless all his days.
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That gives me hope because when I screw up, when I mess up, yes, I'm seeking God, but I messed up in a certain situation.
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That doesn't make me a non-Christian.
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That doesn't make me going to hell.
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It makes me flawed, right?
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I'm a flawed human being.
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And that gives me hope because if there's hope for somebody like an Asa, God saw his heart, there's hope for us, right?
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There's hope for us flawed people, how?
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By faith.
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Now, remember when I asked you to remember that thing about the reward?
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Here's where that comes into play.
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And we're gonna wrap this up with this.
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In Hebrews 11, verse six, By faith, we're able to please God, it says.
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In 11.6 in Hebrews, it says, "Without faith, it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him." Well, what's the reward?
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It's God Himself.
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When we seek God, there's a lot of benefits to seeking God.
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I mean, if you think about what we get when we seek God by faith, and what is that?
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I mean, if you're here and you're like, "What's he talking about faith?" You know, we're sinners, we're sinners and we're on our way to hell, and God intervened.
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He sent Jesus Christ to be the substitute.
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There had to be a penalty for our sin, right?
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And so Jesus Christ came and died on the cross to bear the burden, to pay the penalty for our sin.
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And we have to choose to accept that.
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We accept it by faith.
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And this is what's pleasing to God.
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We put our faith, our hope, our trust in Christ alone, only Him, not in the church, not in our tradition, not in our family, not in some creed.
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We put our faith alone in Jesus Christ.
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And by that faith, we're able to please God.
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And He rewards us with Himself.
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We get other things.
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I mean, we get rewards like, we get Jesus Christ, we get heaven, we get a fellowship of believers that care about us and love us and the salvation of our souls, eternal life, a place.
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I mean, all the beautiful things God gives us, but primarily the reward is God himself.
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So I ask you a couple of these questions here.
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Is everything going okay for you?
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I mean, are you in a point of your life where you're having victory?
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And we have those, right?
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And that's great.
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That doesn't exempt you from seeking God.
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You still need to seek Him.
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But I know that there's a lot of people in my circles and in this church that struggle with different things.
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Is there a relationship problem?
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We need to seek God in that.
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It sounds pat, it sounds trite.
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You need to get serious about it.
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We talked about that, right?
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If you're having a relationship problem, seek God in it and see what he has to say about it.
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What about a health issue?
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You got a health issue?
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You got some relatives?
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I have relatives that have health issues.
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Are we trying to do that on our own?
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Or are we seeking God in it?
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We need to get our face buried in the scripture, looking for God in here.
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And we need to be praying regularly, heartfelt prayers.
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You know, when I said I don't have any secrets to seeking God, I mean, that is what we do.
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We seek God through the reading and the study of his scripture, pouring over it and going to him in prayer.
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He's right there.
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He's waiting for us to talk to him.
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So we need to seek him in that.
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Jobs or financial issues, pursue the Lord, go after him 100%, not 50%, not 70%, not even 99%.
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We need to seek Him in that.
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What about a spiritual battle?
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A wayward child or something like that.
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We need to go hard after God and His strength.
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If we seek God, what do you think we're gonna get?
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We're gonna get God.
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So in your victory and in your disappointments, God will let you find Him if you seek Him.
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Why don't we bow our heads and pray?
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Heavenly Father, Lord, there is no possible way that I could do this passage justice in 40 minutes.
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And Lord, as we take the things that we've learned this morning, just about Asa and his seriousness about seeking you and his perseverance, or at least his encouragement to persevere, making it personal, Lord, we wanna come to you and make this seeking a personal thing.
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God, help us with those things.
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We're weak.
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We have our flaws as we discovered.
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Lord, if Asa could seek you, despite his flaws, certainly we can attempt to seek you.
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And Lord, I pray that we would be all in with the seeking, that we would put aside everything that distracts us, that we would throw away the things that dishonor you and that drag us down and that push us away from you and push us in another direction.
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Lord, I pray that today would be the day that we do away with these things, that we would set our gaze upon you and seek you with all of our hearts because you promised us that if we seek you With our whole heart, you will be found by us.
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And we thank you for that, Lord.
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Lord, I wanna thank you for the blood of Jesus Christ that cleanses us from our unrighteousness.
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Lord, he's the reason why we're even breathing and the reason why we exist.
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So Lord, we thank you for him.
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Lord, forgive us of our sins and our trespasses, Lord.
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Lord, we're weak and we need you every hour.
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Thank you, Lord, for loving us.
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Lord, I thank you for the opportunity to share from your word.
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And I thank you for this church that I love very much.
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And Lord, I thank you for them.
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Bless them, Lord.
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Lord, as we sing our last song, I pray that we would sing it with all of our hearts, that we would bring you glory through our voices and through our attitudes.
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Thank you, thank you so much, Lord, for what you're doing in our lives.
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In Jesus' name, amen.
Small Group Questions (Whole Group):
Read 2 Chronicles 14-16
Christians live under the New Covenant. So why is it important to study the Old Testament?
Describe what 'seeking God' really means?
What obstacles are in your way that prevent you from a serious pursuit of God? What kind of plan will you put into place to change that?
How can other believers help you in your quest to seek the Lord? In what ways will you help them in their quest?
Breakout Questions:
Pray for one another to act on their plan to intentionally seek God this week. Hold each other accountable in this plan.