What Happens When You Don’t Stay Committed to God?: 2 Chronicles 16:1-10

You're listening to The Bible Guys, a podcast where a

couple of friends talk about the Bible in fun, in

practical ways. Hey, Jeff, say, good morning.

So Jeff took a bite of a kitcat Kitcat, and

all of a sudden, they're rolling in out.

All of a sudden, Zachary starts the.

Rolling Thanks for that. Yeah, it was a good cat.

It was. Hey, my name is Chris, this is Jeff.

Welcome to the Bible Guys, and we're going to jump

right into it. Okay. So Desiree has given us a

brand new challenge that she's never done before. Yeah. Uh,

and and I kind of like it. And I have

no idea how it's going to go. It may be horrible,

it may be a miserable failure.

So I was struggling with this one a little bit,

and so I asked chat GPT to help me. And

then I'm expanding off of that idea.

Oh okay, So Jeff, by the way, I saw this

no more than three minutes minute ago.

So I just typed in, Uh, give me a random

funny sentence to start a story.

Okay. And so this this, this this segment is called

the no Context Challenge.

I knew I was in trouble.

Wait, okay, explain the rules. Okay, Jeff, Sure is a

random sentence or event with absolutely no context, and then

Chris must create a story around it.

I knew I was in trouble when I woke up

in a chicken coop wearing a tuxedo and clutching a

rubbered chicken like it was my lifeline.

Are you kidding me? That's my challenge. Say that again.

I knew I was in trouble when I woke up

in a chicken in a chicken coop, wearing a tuxedo,

clutching a rubbered chicken like it was my lifeline. Wow,

that's a tough one.

Yeah.

So so what's the backstory?

Because the backstory is is that that's actually that's actually

a spy. A spy, Yeah, a spy.

You you were actually a spy because it's I woke.

Up okayologized, I missed the me. Okay. Yeah. So this

one time I got recruited by the government and they

wanted me to do a secret mission. And I said, well,

I don't understand. Why are you grabbing me. I'm just

an average Joe. And they said, well that's the point,

you're just in close proximity and we need somebody. And

we assessed the area, and what we assessed based on

our observation is you're the best looking, most talented, most

athletic looking person. And so they said, what we're going

to do is we're going to give you this secret

medicine that's going to take over. So don't ey morey

about it, because this secret medicine is going to allow

you to behave like a spy. And so I said, okay,

and and and and they said, okay, here's what you

got to do. And they told me that we have

to infiltrate this farm. And this farm was actually a

place where they were holding this secret meeting. And it

was so unbelievably you know, disguised, because who, after all,

who would have a secret meeting on a farm?

Right, that's right?

Yeah? And so then I took this medicine and I

and I was coming from a ball, like a fancy

like a fancy ball. So I went ahead and followed

the group from the ball back to this farm. So

I was wearing a texedo. I took this medicine and

then the next day, all of a sudden, it's just

light out. I had no memory of what had happened.

But all I know is I was in trouble because

I did not know, you know, if everybody was dead

or alive. But I was laying in this chicken coop

holding a rubber chicken. And then later on, you know

what they told me. They told me that I used

the rubber chicken to beat everybody up and subdue them. Yeah.

I was hoping that like the secret message or something

was in the rubber chicken.

Oh were you? I was well, I was doing the

best I could.

How did you know? How did you know what it was?

You just woke up right? Yeah?

Right? Yeah, So after all, that's what the story indicated.

It makes sense to me. So it's the it's the

handsome part and the talented got your recruited. That's really

something that was hard.

That is hard because you said, you said, I woke

up as if he had no memory, right of a

rubber chicken and a chicken.

Car clutch clutching rubber chickens.

So it's either two options. You're drunk well as as

you don't remember it.

Yeah, as evil farmers do after after a ball, they

go back to their farms. To plot some kind of

evil global takeover, believe it or not.

Like, have you ever seen the movie Get Smart? Yes, okay,

Get Smart. I used to watch Get Smart the show, yes, yes, yes,

and I remember episode yeah, but but you remember it

Gets Smart. They were at this ball at this mansion, right.

What they do is they leave there and they go

to this you know, random shot.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. It's it's the evil farmers

of the world. They're uniting, yes, to take over the

world or something. But they have a ball first. Yes,

they always have balls, so I can imagine you know,

that's why you were wearing the tuxedo.

Yes, Jackie Chan and Jennifer love Hewett rivet riveting in

the movie called the Tuxedo. What did they do? They

went to a place where you had to go to

a dance where you know, where all the hob knobs,

all all the villains are. Right then, what does he do?

He goes to listen.

Have you ever noticed how many how many balls?

Uh?

And and parties like that? The big dances and fancy

dresses that villains have.

Dude, think about it, about this? Every mission impossible.

Yeah, there's always some kind of big fancy ball. Yeah yeah, yeah, okay,

Well that was riveting, Chris, thank you. That was a

tough one.

It was tough.

It was a tough on every level.

I think if I would have had maybe perhaps minutes

to think about it, I could have told the story better.

I was just sort of rambling, right, But I liked it,

ok I was.

I was riveted.

Okay, thank you.

Okay. So, speaking of riveting stories, oh, in Second Samuel

or Second Chronicles, chapter sixteen, like it? I like it

is a riveting story about King Basha. Ooh, and Asa

invading ASA's territory. Ooh, remember we said it's thirty five

years no war, right, yes, well, all good things come

to pass.

Yes, as to all bad things, all good things. Yep.

So in first our Second Chronicles, chapter sixteen, verse one,

it says, in the thirty sixth year of ASA's reign,

King Baasha of Israel invaded Judah and fortified Rama in

order to prevent anyone from entering or leaving King Ace's

territory in Judah. Asa responded by removing the silver and

gold from the treasuries of the Temple of the Lord

in the Royal Plat Palace, and he sent it to

King Ben Haydad of Aram, who was ruling in Damascus,

along with this message, let there be a treaty between

you and me like the one between your father and

my father. See, I am sending you silver and gold.

Break your treaty with King Basha of Israel so that

he will leave me alone. Ben Haydad agreed to King

ASA's request and sent the commanders of his army to

attack the towns of Israel. They conquered the towns of

I John, Dan, Abobeth, Maka, and all the store cities

in Naphthali. As soon as Basha of Israel heard what

was happening, he abandoned his project of fortifying Rama and

stopped all work on it. Then King Asa called out

all the men of Juda to carry away the building

stones and timbers that Basha had been using to fortify Rama.

Asa used these materials to fortify the towns of Giba

and Mizba. At that time, Hanani the Seer came to

King Asa and told him, because you have put your

trust in the King of Arim instead of in the

Lord your God, you missed your chance to destroy the

army of the King of Aram. Don't you remember what

happened to the Ethiopians and Libyans and their vast army

with all of their chariots and chariot tears. At that time,

you relied on the Lord, and he had them over

to you. The eyes of the Lord searched the whole

earth in order to strengthen those whose hearts are fully

committed to him. What a fool you've been. From now on,

you'll be at war. Asa became so angry with Hanani

for saying this that he threw him into prison, put

him in stocks. At that time, Asa also began to

oppress some of his people. There you go and Asa Asa, he's.

Like Solomon here a little bit right.

Yeah, he makes a mistake. He doesn't go, he doesn't

go worshiping other gods, gods. He just deviates from what

he always had done in the past, and that was

completely rely on God.

So I'm wondering about why did he react to what's

this guy's name, Hana I Yeah, and Hanani Hanani? Okay?

Why did he react to him? But would he get angry?

Why did he throw him in the stocks?

Well, because the phrase exists in English, don't kill the

messenger right, it's because we don't like bad news. Yeah,

that was it.

Yeah, But like, okay, so for instance, Asa had heard

the prophet last chapter right as Ariah, son of obed

O dead. He was the one that said, you know, hey, listen, repent,

do all these things turn from these multiple gods? And

so and so what does he do? Sa gets totally

inspired from from Azariah. And now here we have Hanani

whatever his name is. He comes over and it says

he's a seer rich by the way, a seer. That's crazy.

Yeah, it could have been a prophet. They would call

prophet seers, would they Yeah.

Okay, yeah, because I was wondering about that. But anyway,

either way, Hanani has he had this incredible message, right,

and the message is, hey, you screwed up, and what

you should have done is trust to God. And that's

sort of a sermon in there talking about we should

allow people to challenge us in our lives. Yeah, right,

you know we should. We should allow people to come

up and and and and just say, hey, Chris, I've

noticed that you're behaving in a certain way, and uh,

here's what's true, and uh, you know, I'm going to

challenge you from either a mistake you've made or you

know you reacted poorly to this person. You need to apologize.

Whatever it is, somebody needs to call you out. And

if they're a trusted friend, you know this person is

a title of a seer and hopefully it's a prophet. Yeah,

and if they are, then Asa should have received the

news then, right, you should have allowed himself to be challenged.

So Asa, it's not wrong to work channels of diplomacy, correct, Right.

So he reaches out to the king who is in

Damascus at the time, which is modern day Syria now,

and he reaches out to him and says, hey, break

off your treaty with Baasha and help me fighting. That's that,

in and of itself, good diplomacy from kings. Solomon had

great diplomacy. You have lots of kings that figure out diplomacy.

It's a good thing. It's not a bad thing. Where

Asa gets off track is that is not how he

wound up having success in his kingdom. He had turned

his people back to God. When they go to war

against the Ethiopians, when they go to war against the

what was the other group? This wasn't Algerians. There's another

group that he mentions there the Libyans, right, same thing, God,

we don't have anywhere to turn, but yeah we don't.

We don't have anybody but you to trust in. Yeah right,

we don't have any any anywhere else to turn. And

so he had led the people we only win when

God's on our side. So this isn't so much like

an overt rebellion against God. It just shows a spiritual drift.

There was a time he was really on fire, totally

dialed in, and the only place he turned for help

was God. Yeah, and God promised. Because God didn't promise, Hey,

I'll send you some help. God said, I am the help.

And so you see, now there's kind of a spiritual

drift where I'm a pretty clever king. God, I don't

need your help on this one. I can handle it well.

And let's not overlook the fact that he removed the

silver and gold from the temple of the.

Lord, right, the stuff he had dedicated to God.

Yes, that's that's the real crime here, right. I mean,

if you think about it, he had uh you know,

he probably didn't have uh you know, he didn't have

an excess of silver and gold elsewhere obviously because he

had to dip into the temple. But he's thinking, okay,

what do we have left, Well, we have the silver

and gold in the temple. So he sort of desecrates

the temple and grabs all the silver and gold to

use this as a bribe for the treaty, right, and

so yeah, if you think about that, that's sort of blasphemous.

These things were set apart for God, they were holy,

and they got then he used them to navigate his

own problem. You know, he was trying to do the

right thing the wrong way. Yeah, that's right, that's what happened.

Yeah. Hey, by the way, since now that we've taught

and we were all serious, do you know where that

quote was from the Libyans? No, it's back to the future.

Oh that's right. Do you remember?

Yeah? I remember that.

Yeah, they found me. I don't know how, but they

found me. Who found you?

That's right? So uh I forgot that.

Yeah. So so yeah, so Asa has blown it right

at the end there, And again he hasn't worshiped other gods, right,

just like Solomon has compromised. Uh. But yeah, at the

same time, uh, you know, he goes ahead and he

does these things and then and then Hanani Hannah and

I whatever his name is, he says, you will always

from now on, you always be at war. This guy

has to be a prophet, right, because he's not just saying, hey,

you behaved in this way, let me call you out.

He's actually saying, this is now what what God will decree? Right?

What a fool you have been? From now on, you'll

be at war. Right. So I'm gonna I'm gonna go

on a limb here and say.

Well that the notes in Life Application Study Bible call

him a prophet.

Oh, there you go, there you go. Yeah. So Asa

is still somebody to be revered and admired. Still, he

is still an unsung hero of the Old Testament. He

just you know, falls under pressure and gets scared and

thinks to himself, we're going to die unless we get creative.

So there's a note, you know, Life Application Study Bible.

There's a whole thing that describes, you know, kind of

the character of who Asa is. And it says here

along lines of what we were talking about a minute ago.

God does not condone the idea that the end justifies

the means, Right, he is just imperfect in all his ways.

People on the other hand, are far from perfect. That

a bond can exist between a loving and merciful Creator

and his rebellious creation is a great miracle as creation.

It is as great a miracle as creation itself. As

a king, Asa came very close to being good. He

traveled a long way with God before getting off track.

His sin was not so much deliberate disobedience, that's what

you said. His sin was not so much deliberate disobedience

as choosing the way, the easy way, rather than the

right way. That's what he did. He chose the easy

way rather than the right way when the when the

odds seemed impossible. In the battle with the Ethiopians, Asa

recognized his need to depend on God. Following that victory,

God's promise of peace based on obedience spurred the king

and people to many years of right living. But A

had to face a tougher test, years of animasi between

Asa and Israel's king Basha took an ugly turn. This

lasted a long time where Basha, even though inside of

Judah there was peace, all the time, Basha was always

causing pressure and problems. Right he was a bad guy. Basha,

a king of the rival Northern kingdom was building a

fourth that threatened both the peace and the economy of Judah.

Asa thought he saw a way out. He bribed King

ben Haydad of Aram to break his alliance with King Basha.

The plan worked brilliantly, but it wasn't God's way. When

God's prophet Hannah and I or Hanani or whatever confronted Asa,

he flew into a rage, jailed Hanani, and took out

his anger on his people. Asa rejected correction and refused

to admit his error to God. His greatest failure was

missing what God could have done with his life if

he'd been willing to be humble. His pride ruined the

health of his reign. He stubbornly held on to his

failure until his death. Right. That's the issue. It's not

so much that he overtly sinned against God. It was

that he decided to do the easy thing rather than

the right thing. That first promise from God is if

you keep me first, I'll keep giving you victory and prosperity.

That's what he said. And then he doesn't. He goes

and relies on another man instead of him.

Wanting you to finish it. Because the application turns. It says,

does this attitude sound familiar? Can you identify justifying the

means such a belief lends leads to sin and failure.

That the stubborn refusal to admit failure due to sin

can become quite a big problem because it can make

you spend It makes you spend time rationalizing rather than

learning from your mistakes and moving on. You know what

I actually think. I think I'm starting to need reader's glasses.

Yeah, well, you skipped part of a sentence there.

Yeah, I was having a hard time there. The lighting

is bad in here. But I think I'm going to

start to do that because this writing is really small.

It is small, but you don't have anything, but it's

really powerful. With the reading lessons, I can read it

up close, I can't see far away. Jeez at that

age aren't getting old? That's okay, it's the it's the old.

It's the old. Uh, it's our age that helps bring wisdom.

That's right, that's right wisdom. You know i'd mentioned I

think it was yesterday's podcast or maybe the days before.

Remember we talked about the priests. He says, you don't

have real priests, right r And he and he says.

He says, you need, you need to have a real religion.

This was I'm really I'm really bringing something up because

for you and me, this was only I go, like

thirty minutes ago, forty five minutes ago. For our listeners

who watched daily, this was yesterday or the day before.

You know what I wanted to say is I wanted

to say. You know what it reminds me of is

people who get ordained online. But when a church is

technically legally a church, but it's really not a church, right, right,

So for years and years and I think and I'm

just randomly bringing this up because we haven't or two

so so for years and years. Uh, God gave the

the ability or the responsibility of the church to marry people, right,

and so you know, separations of the church and states.

So now it's both captains and judges, right, they could

marry people. But the church has always it's always been

on the church side of things. It's always been held like,

you know, a pastor will be the one to control.

You know who they married, Yeah, because a Christian is

asking for God's blessing on the marriage. Yes, so they're

coming into God's leaders and saying, hey, would you give

God's blessing too?

Yes? And and uh and so consequently, the church would

sometimes say, hey, we're going to require marriage counseling. We're

going to require this, We're gonna require this in order

to have God a part of your wedding. Uh, you know,

you know, then then you've got to jump through the

hoops sometimes of of what the church decrease and then

and so I guess people didn't like that. They're like,

wouldn't it be great if you could have got a

part of your wedding and be married in a religious

fashion and yet not have to deal with the ridiculousness

of some churches. So here's what we're going to do.

We're gonna go online. We're going to establish and create

a church. Because it is easy to say we're going

to create a church, but they didn't really create a

real church. They created a church for the sole purpose

of selling the rights to be an ordained minister. Because dude,

you're an ordained minister. Yeah, in order to be ordained,

what did you have to go through?

Well, I was ordained at the end of my Bible

college time, so I'd had to have graduated and then

we had to go through an ordination council where there

was the challenge of you know, theology and biblical literacy

and all those things. We had to be able to

defend our faith and defend our theological positions to a

board of other ordained, highly trained pastors, and then they

gave a group approval and then laid hands on us

and prayed over us and ordained us.

And was that was that a private ceremony? Was that

public in front of people? That was public in front

of how many people? Yeah?

Yeah, the defense was private, the you know, just with

the others that were getting ordained. The the ordination was

public and there were seven hundred people there.

Yes, exactly. So here so here, my ordination was very

similar exactly what you just described in front of about

four hundred people and so and and it lasted an

hour and a half, right, and so you know you

you were just absolutely held accountable to receive ordination. So

therefore your name minister. So you have the right to

perform a marriage. Right. It's like it's like an honorary doctorate, right,

Like you know, you can be called doctor just because

you donated a bunch of money to a to a

college or university, but you didn't earn the title doctorate. Anyway,

I want to bring that up because I had that thought, uh,

you know when when you're a boem. Yeah, allowed people

to be, you know, ministers, but they really weren't ministers. Sure,

So anyway, that's it. I just wanting to mention it.

The idea of that ordination thing isn't so much about

jumping through hoops as much as it is like the

Book of First Corinthians, chapter fourteen. It's in a passage.

So if you remember chapter eleven and twelve start talking

about spiritual gifts, then chapter thirteen is all about love.

God says, oh hey, wait man, let me pause while

we talk about spiritual because people want to fight about

spiritual gifts all the time. So hey, don't forget. It's

really all about love, and that's the most empowered, the

most powerful thing. But then in chapter fourteen he pivots

back to spiritual gifts again. He's talking specifically about tongues

and miracles and prophecies and things like that in the church,

and he's talking about being careful with those things because

sometimes lost people are in the service and you don't

want to confuse lost people right, just because you're indulging

in the joy of using your spiritual gifts. And then

there's a phrase there that says the prophets are subject

to the prophety. He's saying, you can control this. Some

people say, oh, all, with your spiritual gifts you can't

control or whatever, and Paul saying, no, you can. You

can control what you say and how you behave right,

And then it says the profits are subject to the prophets,

meaning those who have certain spiritual gifts are the ones

who acknowledge and ordain the others who are claiming they

have it right. And so that's the idea of ordination,

is those that have gone before us and have been

affirmed by the ones that were before them. Yes, these

people do have the call of God in their life

and they are capable, capable carriers of the knowledge and

the information and the spirit of God to lead the people.

Right.

Then, that's just being subject to the ones before us,

the ones before them, and it's making sure that we

have a purity to the line of theology and teaching

and training. That's the idea behind it, as opposed to

anybody being able to go and fill out a form

online and get the legal right to be able to

do a wedding.

That's not the same ordained by quote unquote a church, right, Right, It's.

Not a real ordination. It's just jumping through a hoop

so that you can be able to legally do a wedding. Right,

that's the legality versus an ordination.

So when somebody comes up to me in the lobby

and they just don't understand any of that because they

don't understand the premise, and they're like, hey, I want online.

I'm a to regained minister like you, I'm like, okay,

but but anyway, yeah that listen, I'm going to bring

it around full circle. So you talked about the subjects

being sub you know, subject to profits, being subject to

other prophets. Uh. That's what Asa missed. He missed allowing

those who are in authority, in spiritual authority, uh to

give him accountability. Right.

So Ifani comes in and goes, hey, dude, yep, I

got message from God, and he's like, I don't want

to hear from God anymore, right, which is an astounding response.

Astounding and throws him in the stocks.

Yeah.

Yeah, so there you go. It seemed like a random

thought that.

We've been and then he was so grumpy about it, Yeah,

that he oppressed his people from that, he was a

good king, right his his kingdom was so good. People

were leaving Israel and coming down to Judah because God's

blessing was on them. Then he fades in his commitment

to God to the point where finally he doesn't seek

God's help. He goes and diplomatically tries to get help

from a king uses God's treasures to pay off this king.

Hanani confronts him on it, and he gets mad in

prisons Hanani and persecutes and oppresses his own people at

the end, and.

He's really mad in himself. Yeah.

Man, you know it's amazing. The fact that you were

on fire for God a year ago or five years

of God does not carry through to today. Every day.

The Bible says his mercies are new every morning, but

that means my commitment to his mercies need to be

new every morning too.

You have to have this.

Ongoing commitment to a long term relationship, and that's that's

something that has to be cultivated. Just because you planted

seeds five years ago doesn't mean you're going to have

a harvest today, right. You have to cultivate that field,

you have to cultivate the relationship with God. And that's

what you see is he did early and he wasn't

late in his life, and so shifts from being a

great king to an oppressive king.

Well, that's our time for today, so hopefully we will

see you tomorrow on the bibble gush