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Episode 598: In this episode, Chris and Jeff dive into a passage from 2 Chronicles 16, which recounts the story of King Asa of Judah. Chris and Jeff explore Asa's decision to seek help from King Ben-Hadad of Aram instead of relying on God during a conflict with King Baasha of Israel. They discuss Asa's previous successes when he depended on God and how his reliance on diplomacy and material resources led to his downfall.
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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