Our need for total reliance upon God

The news hit everybody like a sonic boom. Second Chronicles 14:9 reports, “Then Zerah the Ethiopian came out against them with an army of a million men and three hundred chariots, and he came to Mareshah.”¹ For 10 years, the sirens had not sounded in Judah. Now they screamed of the enemy’s advance from every corner. Nearly twice the size of Asa’s army and stopping just about four miles (six kilometers) short of the capital (Jerusalem) in Mareshah, Zerah’s forces threatened Judah with obliteration.

So Asa went out against him, and they set the troops in battle array in the Valley of Zephathah at Mareshah. And Asa cried out to the Lord his God, and said, “Lord, it is nothing for You to help, whether with many or with those who have no power; help us, O Lord our God, for we rest on You, and in Your name we go against this multitude. O Lord, You are our God; do not let man prevail against You!”

So the Lord struck the Ethiopians before Asa and Judah, and the Ethiopians fled (vv. 10–12).

When life knocks you to your knees, pray there—for the right thing. Asa had an army filled with “mighty men of valor” (v. 8), choice men, armed with the finest weaponry. The king could have relied on his military might, but instead he fell on his knees before God, declaring, “Armies are not the decisive thing, oh God. You are!”

God broke their power

In answer to Asa’s prayer and complete reliance upon the Lord, God broke the power of Ethiopia. And as Judah’s rejoicing troops returned to Jerusalem, laden with spoil, a man filled with the Holy Spirit met them.

Now the Spirit of God came upon Azariah the son of Oded. And he went out to meet Asa, and said to him: “Hear me, Asa, and all Judah and Benjamin. The Lord is with you while you are with Him. If you seek Him, He will be found by you; but if you forsake Him, He will forsake you. . . . But you, be strong and do not let your hands be weak, for your work shall be rewarded!”

And when Asa heard these words and the prophecy of Oded the prophet, he took courage, and removed the abominable idols from all the land of Judah and Benjamin and from the cities which he had taken in the mountains of Ephraim; and he restored the altar of the Lord that was before the vestibule of the Lord (2 Chron. 15:1–8).

Azariah, whose name means “Yahweh has helped,” tells Asa that because he had made it his lifestyle to seek the Lord, God had been able to bless him. God had fought for Judah and won. Therefore, the victory and the glory were all God’s. And it still is all God’s. There has never been, nor will there ever be, room for human glory in the spread of the gospel.

It is important to notice Azariah’s instruction to Asa: “Be strong and do not let your hands be weak” (v. 7). The Christian’s strength lies always in seeking and clinging to God. It was the key to revival in Asa’s day, and it has not changed. Asa was so encouraged by the “preaching” of God’s prophet that he threw himself into the work of purifying Judah. Israelites longing for godly leadership in the Northern Kingdom flocked to Judah to join in the movement.

Pentecost

Scripture reports that they gathered for a national convocation on the fifteenth day of the third month. According to the Bible, Passover always occurred on the fourteenth day of the first month. Exactly 50 days later, or whenever the barley and wheat harvests were ripe (Lev. 23:15–21), the Feast of Weeks convened. This means that the convocation described here during the third month was most probably the occasion for the Feast of Weeks, otherwise known in Greek as Pentecost (meaning “50”).

Now when we think of Pentecost today, we remember 120 believers of one accord, in an upper room, with tongues of fire above their heads. But the first Pentecost marked Israel’s earliest national convocation after the Exodus, when God presented the Ten Commandments to Israel on Mount Sinai (Exod. 19:1). There He proclaimed the Ten Commandments to make clear three things to His people:

1. The nature of sin—“for sin is the transgression of the law” (1 John 3:4, KJV).
2. The qualities of the law of righteousness (Rom. 9:31).
3. The inescapability of the judgment (James 2:12), for we shall all be judged by the perfect law of liberty.

In the book of Acts, on the last day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit was poured out upon the church in response to Jesus’ promise, reinforcing what happened at Sinai. He came “to convict the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment” (John 16:8).

The plot thickens

Returning to Asa’s time,

Then they [the people of Judah] entered into a covenant to seek the Lord God of their fathers with all their heart and with all their soul; and whoever would not seek the Lord God of Israel was to be put to death, whether small or great, whether man or woman. Then they took an oath before the Lord with a loud voice, with shouting and trumpets and rams’ horns. And all Judah rejoiced at the oath, for they had sworn with all their heart and sought Him with all their soul; and He was found by them, and the Lord gave them rest all around” (2 Chron. 15:12–15).

For 20 more years, God’s sunny providence shone upon Asa in every direction. For 35 years, the king walked with God and enjoyed the blessings of an abiding relationship with Christ! Even though I have never been one for fairy tales, I want so much to be able to say, “And Asa lived happily ever after.” But, instead, the plot thickens.

One day, Baasha, king of Israel, barricaded Judah by fortifying Ramah, a city just 7.4 miles (12 kilometers) north of Jerusalem. The military blockade had the potential of seriously crippling Judah’s economy. Something had to be done, or the nation would starve because Ramah was right along a vital trade route.

Being a fool

Unfortunately, no prayer meeting took place this time. Instead, 2 Chronicles 16:2, 3 tells us that Asa bribed Judah’s archenemy, the king of Syria, with temple money to attack Israel from the north as a distraction and get Baasha off his back. Did it work? It did. “Now it happened, when Baasha heard it, that he stopped building Ramah and ceased his work” (v. 5).

Asa’s “two-front war” plan forced his enemies’ withdrawal. He avoided war, made strategic allies, and established himself as a great leader, and he did it all by himself! I can see him now, having a Nebuchadnezzar moment, thinking: “Is not this great Judah that I have saved?” Strategically, politically, and militarily, it had been a brilliant move. But spiritually, it was a disaster. The prophet Hanani came and said to him, “ ‘Because you have relied on the king of Syria, and have not relied on the Lord your God, therefore the army of the king of Syria has escaped from your hand. . . . For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show Himself strong on behalf of those whose heart is loyal to Him. In this you have done foolishly; therefore from now on you shall have wars’ ” (vv. 7–9).

They say that fools rush in where angels fear to tread, and Asa was such a fool. Oh yes, news analysts might have crowned him “the most brilliant politician in Judah’s history.” But heaven assessed the situation differently. Nothing is hidden from God. In the entire world there is not one heart that can escape His gaze. “At a glance He takes in our position; not a sorrow, trial, or temptation visits us without exciting His notice and sympathy.”² And God is always looking for the same kind of people—those who have a heart completely surrendered to Him. “It is for lack of this that we remain unhelped, and spend our days in the midst of wars.”³

Refusing correction

Norman Vincent Peale stated, “The trouble with most of us is that we would rather be ruined by praise than saved by criticism.”⁴ This was Asa’s problem. Asa should have fallen to his knees, confessed the error of his ways, and prayed for repentance. Instead, Scripture records, “Then Asa was angry with the seer, and put him in prison, for he was enraged at him because of this. And Asa oppressed some of the people at that time” (v. 10).

Asa did not just get angry with Hanani the prophet; in the haughtiness of his heart, he even put the prophet in prison! But you cannot abolish the message by getting rid of the messenger. It was all downhill from there. No wonder author Ellen G. White wrote, “I have been shown that the greatest reason why the people of God are now found in this state of spiritual blindness is that they will not receive correction.”⁵

Some pleaded with Asa to listen to the prophet, so the king oppressed them too. What began as just a bad day turned into a fundamental characteristic of his life.

And in the thirty-ninth year of his reign, Asa became diseased in his feet, and his malady was severe; yet in his disease he did not seek the Lord, but the physicians.

So Asa rested with his fathers; he died in the forty-first year of his reign (vv. 12, 13).

His feet told the story of his heart. A once mighty monarch who had walked with God now walked away from Him and never walked again. Nothing is worse than losing God. Asa was not the first general to win the battle but afterward lose the war.

Finish well

A great lesson is to be learned here. Like Asa, we are at risk the moment we start taking for granted our desperate need for God. “It is not only at the beginning of the Christian life that this renunciation of self is to be made. At every advance step heavenward it is to be renewed. . . . Therefore, there needs to be a continual reaching out of the heart after God, a continual, earnest, heartbreaking confession of sin and humbling of the soul before Him. Only by constant renunciation of self and dependence on Christ can we walk safely.”⁶

God’s desire for us, especially as pastors, is to finish well. Asa did not finish well, but by God’s grace we can. How? We simply need to rely fully, daily, upon the Lord in our ministry or whatever we do. All the resources of heaven are available to support the person whose heart is fully committed to Him. If we seek Him, He will be found.