Kings of Judah, Pt. 5: "Sin is a Hard Habit to Break" (1 Ki 15)

SIN IS A HARD HABIT TO BREAK (1 KINGS 15:1-15, 2 CHRONICLES 14:4-13, 16:1-13)
Ducking into confession with a turkey under his arms, a man said, “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. I stole this turkey to feed my family. Would you take it and settle my guilt?” “Certainly not,” said the Priest. “As penance, you must return it to the one from whom you stole it.”

“I tried,” the man sobbed, “but he refused. Oh, Father, what should I do?” “If what you say is true, then it is all right for you to keep it for your family.” Thanking the priest, the visitor hurried off.

When confession was over, the priest returned to his residence. When he walked into the kitchen, he exclaimed, “Where’s my turkey?”

Sin is a hard habit to break.

God promised David his descendants would sit on the throne, but Solomon’s disobedience plunged the kingdom from its heights to its depths and his son’s stubbornness split the kingdom into the north and the south. The succeeding generations after David’s reign worsened things to no end. Worse than the kingdom’s division into two was the kingdom’s descent into idolatry. It took a young incoming king by the name of Asa to turn things around and initiate a reform.

Asa was a wise, godly and responsible king who had the courage and saw the opportunity to turn the course of the country around in a good and right way, and proceeded to make his court and life count.

How is spiritual decline arrested and how does revival occur? What is the outcome of the revival?

Don’t Let Things Slide; Straighten Things Up at Home
8 And Abijah rested with his fathers and was buried in the City of David. And Asa his son succeeded him as king. 9 In the twentieth year of Jeroboam king of Israel, Asa became king of Judah, 10 and he reigned in Jerusalem forty-one years. His grandmother’s name was Maacah daughter of Abishalom. 11 Asa did what was right in the eyes of the LORD, as his father David had done. 12 He expelled the male shrine prostitutes from the land and got rid of all the idols his fathers had made. 13 He even deposed his grandmother Maacah from her position as queen mother, because she had made a repulsive Asherah pole. Asa cut the pole down and burned it in the Kidron Valley. 14 Although he did not remove the high places, Asa’s heart was fully committed to the LORD all his life. (1 Kings 15:8-14)

When our family moved into our new house, the first thing on my mind was stopping the spread of weeds on the slope that came neglected for months with the house. Bending my stiff back and balancing my sore knees on the slanting hill was a challenge, followed up by the test of picking inches-long weeds that dotted the landscape on the new home. I resigned after an afternoon and hired a gardener since.

My next ambitious garden project was removing the cheap ugly-looking mini-shrubs that were planted to stabilize the slope and replacing it with pleasant eye-catching flowers. Of course, I couldn’t ask the gardener who comes every other week to do so because the plants and flowers I had bought could not wait that long.

The roots on the existing plants were so deep that I broke the original spade I brought with me to the new house. When I told a church member I bought a $1 dollar spade at Target, he exclaimed, “That would break in no time.” Sure enough it didn’t survive one workout! Next, I bought a $3 spade on sale and this time it worked, bending but not breaking the spade while working on the ugly deep-rooted mini-shrubs.

King Asa was the great-grandson of Solomon and the grandson of Rehoboam and the third king of Judah. He was a zealous, decisive, and passionate king who overturned all that his late father King Abijah had done, but he also did it to correct the wrongs his ancestors had committed. The phrase “all the sins” that marked the northern Israel kingdom occurs only five times in the Bible and makes its debut in 1 Kings 15:3. His father and grandfather were the only southern kings numbered with northern kings Jeroboam (2 Kings 13:11, 2 Kings 14:24, 2 Kings 17:22) and Baasha and son (1 Kings 16:13) as committing “all the sins” God was so opposed to.

The country’s moral slide and bankruptcy did not make it easy on Asa, who worked extremely hard to reverse the moral climate. Asa had his hands full trying to undo three generations or sixty years of spiritual decline in the royal office, from Solomon to Rehoboam and his son Abijah. Judah’s new king was the first king to follow in the footsteps of King David, doing what was “right in the eyes of God” (1 Kings 15:11), a phrase describing eight southern kings but no northern king. The king did right, something even his great grandfather, the wise Solomon, failed to do, and his good influence extended to the immediate generation. Others doing right included Asa’s son Jehoshaphat (1 Kings 22:42-43), Jehoash (2 Kings 12:1-2), Amaziah (2 Kings 14:1-3) and his son Azariah or Uzziah (2 Kings 15:1-3), Jotham (2 Kings 15:32-34) and his grandson Hezekiah (2 Kings 18:1-3) and the last to do so, Josiah (2 Kings 22:1-2).

The third king of Judah broke new ground and was the pioneer of and model for future spiritual revival and cultural renewal. The first thing he did was to expel all the male shrine prostitutes that appeared in the land during his grandfather Rehoboam’s reign (1 Ki 14:24). The “idols” (v 12) that he removed were new to the land; the Hebrew word was not used for regular idols. The idols were probably the latest unknown idols that his errant fathers had imported and introduced to the nation.

The last thing the reform-minded Asa did on the home front was to remove his grandmother from being queen mother. He did it for a reason; the Asherah pole she worshipped (v 13) made its debut in the palace and stuck up like a sore thumb. The palace was just as idolatrous as the streets (1 Ki 14:23). It must be a gut-wrenching experience to remove one’s grandmother and burn her things, but Asa burned the pole at Kidron, an act that inspired the last good king of the south, Josiah, to replicate the practice and repeat it at Kidron, too (2 Ki 23:6). Even though Asa had trouble removing the high places that ushered in during his grandfather Rehobaom’s reign (1 Ki 14:23), he managed to set his house straight and clean up the mess.

Don’t Let Things Spread; Spell Things out to People
4 He commanded Judah to seek the LORD, the God of their fathers, and to obey his laws and commands. 5 He removed the high places and incense altars in every town in Judah, and the kingdom was at peace under him. 6 He built up the fortified cities of Judah, since the land was at peace. No one was at war with him during those years, for the LORD gave him rest. 7 “Let us build up these towns,” he said to Judah, “and put walls around them, with towers, gates and bars. The land is still ours, because we have sought the LORD our God; we sought him and he has given us rest on every side.” So they built and prospered. 8 Asa had an army of three hundred thousand men from Judah, equipped with large shields and with spears, and two hundred and eighty thousand from Benjamin, armed with small shields and with bows. All these were brave fighting men. 9 Zerah the Cushite marched out against them with a vast army and three hundred chariots, and came as far as Mareshah. 10 Asa went out to meet him, and they took up battle positions in the Valley of Zephathah near Mareshah. 11 Then Asa called to the LORD his God and said, “LORD, there is no one like you to help the powerless against the mighty. Help us, O LORD our God, for we rely on you, and in your name we have come against this vast army. O LORD, you are our God; do not let man prevail against you.” 12 The LORD struck down the Cushites before Asa and Judah. The Cushites fled, 13 and Asa and his army pursued them as far as Gerar. Such a great number of Cushites fell that they could not recover; they were crushed before the LORD and his forces. The men of Judah carried off a large amount of plunder. (2 Chronicles 14:4-13)

The golden age of Asa’s reign coincided with widespread revival and renewal in the land. Asa did not stop with house-cleaning at the palace. The reformation moved to the streets on a grand scale and at a furious pace. He pioneered the practice of removing altars, smashing images and falling Asherah poles (2 Chron 14:2). The people had never seen anything like that for a long time and never thought they would see it in their generation. For more than half a century, the previous three kings had led the people knee-deep and head-long into idol worship. The previous kings whose reign left much to be desired with included Solomon, who reigned for 40 years (1 Kings 11:42); Rehoboam, 17 years (1 Ki 14:21); and Abijah, three years (1 Ki 15:1), a total of 60 years decline. Things were so bleak in the land that the priests were swept out of a job (2 Chron 15:3).

However, removing the foreign altars and the high places, smashing the sacred stones and cutting down the Asherah poles were not enough to sustain a revival (2 Chron 14:3). The start was great, but the revival succeeded when Asa urged the people to seek the Lord and obey His commandments and the people responded by entering into a covenant to seek the LORD (2 Chron 15:12). Ridding the land of external forces and factors does nothing if internal change and personal repentance do not occur or follow. The fierce stipulation that any idolaters would be put to death showed that they meant business (2 Chron 15:13). As a result, there was stability in the land (2 Chron 14: 5), fortification of the cities (2 Chron 14:7) and victory over their enemies (2 Chron 14:14).

Asa had a challenge like no other king before him and he purged and reorganized the nation like no other king before him. He urged the people to obey the law (2 Chron 14:14), the very thing his grandfather, the first king of Rehoboam, had abandoned upon assuming office (2 Chron 12:1). Asa reigned 40 long years or four fruitful decades. Ray Stedman puts Asa’s reign in perspective: “To put this in present-day terms, what King Asa did was to clean out the adult bookstores, close the massage parlors, confiscate all the pornographic films, close the adult movie theaters, jail the drug pushers, and restore the reading of the Bible and public prayer in the schools and the courts of the land…All the degrading, disturbing, defiling things were put away. But they were not eliminated. Legislation does not change people’s hearts. It does, however, inhibit the manifestations of evil in crime, and public shame and disgrace. The kingdom, therefore, entered into a period of rest; a moral breathing spell was introduced by this legislation.”
http://pbc.org/dp/stedman/otpray/3744.html&SermonID=1968

Asa’s triumph at the palace and in the nation translated to victories on the battlefield. He is the only king in the Bible who called on the name of the Lord (2 Chron 14:11) and the Lord gave him the victory. Surprisingly, the southern kingdom had never won a war against a foreign power up to this point. The last battle was against Egypt during Rehoboam’s reign, and it resulted in a resounding defeat. Shishak king of Egypt carried off the treasures of the temple of the LORD and the treasures of the royal palace, taking everything, including all the gold shields Solomon had made (1 Kings 14:26-27). 2 Chronicles 16:8 records that even though the Cushites were a mighty army with great numbers of chariots and horsemen, yet when Asa relied on the LORD, He delivered them into his hand. The Cushites did not bother or threaten the south again.

Don’t Let Things Simmer; Settle Things in Your Heart
16:1 In the thirty-sixth year of Asa’s reign Baasha king of Israel went up against Judah and fortified Ramah to prevent anyone from leaving or entering the territory of Asa king of Judah. 2 Asa then took the silver and gold out of the treasuries of the LORD’s temple and of his own palace and sent it to Ben-Hadad king of Aram, who was ruling in Damascus. 3 “Let there be a treaty between me and you,” he said, “as there was between my father and your father. See, I am sending you silver and gold. Now break your treaty with Baasha king of Israel so he will withdraw from me.” 4 Ben-Hadad agreed with King Asa and sent the commanders of his forces against the towns of Israel. They conquered Ijon, Dan, Abel Maim and all the store cities of Naphtali. 5 When Baasha heard this, he stopped building Ramah and abandoned his work. 6 Then King Asa brought all the men of Judah, and they carried away from Ramah the stones and timber Baasha had been using. With them he built up Geba and Mizpah. 7 At that time Hanani the seer came to Asa king of Judah and said to him: “Because you relied on the king of Aram and not on the LORD your God, the army of the king of Aram has escaped from your hand. 8 Were not the Cushites and Libyans a mighty army with great numbers of chariots and horsemen? Yet when you relied on the LORD, he delivered them into your hand. 9 For the eyes of the LORD range throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him. You have done a foolish thing, and from now on you will be at war.” 10 Asa was angry with the seer because of this; he was so enraged that he put him in prison. At the same time Asa brutally oppressed some of the people. 11 The events of Asa’s reign, from beginning to end, are written in the book of the kings of Judah and Israel. 12 In the thirty-ninth year of his reign Asa was afflicted with a disease in his feet. Though his disease was severe, even in his illness he did not seek help from the LORD, but only from the physicians. 13 Then in the forty-first year of his reign Asa died and rested with his fathers. (2 Chronicles 16:1-13)

There is an old fable in which the mighty oak tree which stood for over one hundred years finally was blown over by a storm. The tree feel into a river that floated it downstream until it came to rest among the reeds growing along the riverbank. The fallen giant asked the reeds in amazement, “How is it that you were able to weather the storm that was too powerful for me, an oak tree, to withstand?”

The reeds replied, “All these years you stubbornly resisted the winds that swept your way. You took such pride in your strength that you refused to yield, even a little bit. We, on the other hand, have not resisted the winds, but have always bent with them. We recognized the superior power of the wind and so, the harder the wind blew the more we humbled ourselves before it.” (Appleseeds.org)

Asa’s downfall was in his pride. Pride has been called “the sin of sins,” “the beginning of all sin,” “the universal sin” and “the most serious, and the most subtle, sin.”

It’s been said, “Many folks want to serve God, but only as advisers.”

Asa reigned forty-one long years, longer than David’s (1 Ki 2:11) and Solomon’s (1 Ki 11:42) 40 years on the throne. However, the last five years were rocky and controversial due to Asa’s accord with Syria (v 3), his anger with Hanani (v 10) and his arrogance in sickness (v 12). When the rival northern king Baasha of Israel closed the borders of Judah (v 2), the aging king did not seek help from the Lord or seek to engage the northern army. Instead, he begged for help from Syria in the north, using all the silver and gold that was in the treasuries of the LORD’s temple as bribe and for capital. When that was insufficient for a truce, Asa added the silver and gold from his own palace (1 Ki 15:18). The desperate and bankrupt king plundered the temple and robbed the treasury. He did not seek help from the Lord and his actions were not pleasing to Him.

The treasures were sacred to the LORD (Josh 6:19) and did not belong to the king. Whenever temple treasures were mentioned in the Bible, they were treasures of the Lord, (Josh 6:19), treasures of His house (Josh 6:24, 2 Ki 24:13) or treasures of His temple (1 Kings 7:51, 1 Kings 14:26, 1 Kings 15:18, 2 Kings 12:18). In the only instance when treasures were not said to be of the Lord, silver and gold were said to be found but in the temple of the LORD (2 Kings 16:8).

The disobedient king did not repent and exploded when confronted. He did not shoot the messenger, but he sure chained him. The Hebrew word is usually translated into “stocks” in all three other occurrences of the word (Jer 20:2, 3, 29:26) except the light “prison” word here. Asa’s actions were unjustified, inexcusable and disgraceful. He was extremely harsh and ruthless in implementation, and he made it very uncomfortable for Hanani, who was, as the Chinese say, “a good heart with no good recompense好心無好報.” Asa was a classic nasty person making the first move and pointing the finger first. His anger was completely out of the ordinary and out of range. His anger was misguided, mishandled, and misdirected. He was so outraged that the Hebrew word “enraged” (v 10) was original to Asa. The act of throwing the prophet into jail was so heartless, brainless and pointless. One violent behavior led to another. Eating crow and humble pie was not his cup of tea. Asa next oppressed his people – the only king known to have done so (v 10).

Not only was the recorded rage original with Asa, the affliction (v 12) was original with him. Through sickness and death, the embattled and embittered king still did not seek help from the Lord. He sought help from physicians, and not God (v 12).

Although Asa’s life ended tragically, he was still a good king historically despite his bad mistakes and poor choices later. His act was an act of foolishness (2 Chron 16:9), not an act of idolatry. His sin was in behavior, not in belief. He disobeyed but he did not deny God. He was unfaithful, but not faithless. His reign was not characterized by corruption, bloodshed or chaos. Asa was a decisive, aggressive and strong leader but in the end he used his strengths weakly and wrongly. His downfall and destruction was of his own making. Nobody masterminded his downfall better than himself.

Conclusion: For revival to occur we must first put our house in order, make society around us better and humble ourselves in God’s sight. Don’t go to the extreme of befriending your enemy, believing your enemy and becoming your worst enemy. Trust in the Lord must be steady, not spotty or sporadic; continual and consistent, not convenient. Is your spiritual life in decline? Have you got rid of the idols in your life? Is the world better with you in it? Have you made a difference in society and have you made things right at home?