Untended Fires Soon Die

Let's just commend ourselves to the Lord in prayer before we begin. Our Father, we come before Thee in the name of the Lord Jesus to thank Thee again for this day, the Lord's Day. We thank Thee for the opportunity to gather around Thy Word and we pray, our Father, as we do so that we might know Thy help and Thy blessing.

We thank Thee for Thy Word. We love to hear it, we love to read it and learn from it and we pray as we look into it this evening that the Holy Spirit would help us in our understanding of what we read and what we consider. And we pray, our Father, that our hearts might be soft and that we might, our Father, be able to receive what is given from the Scriptures and that it might have an impact upon us, we do pray.

Our Father, we thank Thee most of all for the Lord Jesus, the one who binds us all together. We thank Thee again on this day for His sacrificial death and His resurrection. And our Father, we bless Thee for the wonderful salvation that He has brought us into as Thy people.

And our Father, we just pray that our time spent together would be profitable and helpful. So give help, we ask of Thee, as we commend each one to Thee now in the name of the Lord Jesus. Amen.

Now I'm going to take you to the Old Testament, please, to the book of 2 Chronicles and chapter 14. And I want to speak to you about the life of King Asa from 2 Chronicles chapter 14 through to chapter 16. Now I'm not going to read these three chapters just for the sake of time that we have, but that is the subject matter and that's the section of Scripture that we're going to spend some time in.

And so 2 Chronicles chapter 14, I want to read a verse from chapter 15 by way of introduction, and then we'll go back and read chapter 14 together. So 2 Chronicles chapter 15 and verse 2 says this, and he went out to meet Asa and said unto him, Hear ye me, Asa, and all Judah and Benjamin. The Lord is with you, while ye be with him.

And if ye seek him, he will be found of you. But if ye forsake him, he will forsake you. Now back into chapter 14, and let's read the narrative from verse number one.

So Abijah slept with his fathers, and they buried him in the city of David. And Asa his son reigned in his stead. In his days the land was quiet ten years.

And Asa did that which was good and right in the eyes of the Lord his God. For he took away the altars of the strange gods in the high places, and break down the images, and cut down the groves, and commanded Judah to seek the Lord God of their fathers, and to do the law and the commandment. Also he took away out of all the cities of Judah the high places and the images, and the kingdom was quiet before him.

And he built fenced cities in Judah for the land at rest. And he had no war in those years, because the Lord had given him rest. Therefore he said unto Judah, Let us build these cities and make about them walls and towers, gates and bars, while the land is yet before us, because we have sought the Lord our God.

We have sought him, and he has given us rest on every side. So they built and prospered. And Asa had an army of men that bear targets and spears out of Judah three hundred thousand, and out of Benjamin that bear shields and drew bows two hundred and four thousand.

All these were mighty men of valor. And there came out against them Zerah the Ethiopian with a host of a thousand thousand and three hundred chariots, and came unto Marisha and so forth. And then down to verse number 12.

So the Lord smote the Ethiopians before Asa and before Judah, and the Ethiopians fled. Now that's all our reading. I will refer to different verses in that section of chapter 14 through to 16 as we go on.

I want to give you a quote just at the beginning, and it's a quote, some of which is in the title to what I have to say to you today. And the quote is this, Untended fires soon die and become just a pile of ashes. Now anyone, many of you are from the UK and some of you have been in my home and you know I have a little stove and I love my little stove and I love to poke it and prod it and tend it.

But we all know that if you just leave a fire and don't tend it, then it will soon die and turn to ash. That is really a comment on the life of King Asa, and we're going to see that this evening. Well some background.

Some of you may be familiar with some of these Old Testament characters and there may be many who are not familiar, so just a bit of background by way of introduction. When you come into the Old Testament, so much of the Old Testament is taken up with the history of that special people called Israel, that people that were chosen by God to be a people to himself and represent him upon earth, that people who were the recipients of special covenant promises and blessings. And we read their sad story in the Old Testament and we read how that nation eventually divided into two nations and you have the northern part of Israel and the southern nation of Judah and they went their separate ways.

Ten tribes in the north, two tribes in the south. And their histories are similar but not the same. What happened was that the northern tribe of Israel, they were walking away from God from that point of division and they kept walking away from God.

Every king took them further into evil and it was a story of evil and wickedness and eventually God moved in discipline and took them out of the land of Israel into captivity through the Assyrian Empire. Now the history of Judah, the smaller nation, Judah and Benjamin, that small two tribe nation was similar but different in that they were good kings and they were bad kings. The overall trend was away from God but yet they were good kings along the way that brought the people back to God in repentance and restoration.

And we can see that King Asa is one of the kings of Judah and one of the kings that did that very thing. He was the grandson of Rehoboam. He was the third king to rule the southern kingdom of Judah and so the kingdoms had split and then you have this king coming in down the line, King Asa.

He was a rare king. He ruled with stability for 41 years and in fact in verse number two we read this, he did good and right in the sight of the Lord his God. He began well and not all the kings began well.

He really began to reign and he began to reign on the back of a bad legacy. His father and his grandfather had not done well for God. In fact Abijah had reigned for three years and these were years of wickedness and warfare.

In fact Abijah was a wicked king and it says in 1 Kings chapter 15 and verse 3, he committed all the sins his father had done before him. His heart was not fully devoted to the Lord his God as the heart of David his forefather had been. And so when Asa comes to the throne, the nation that he became king of had been marred by warfare for generations and now he comes to the throne and it's going to be different and there had been civil war and conflict and wickedness and so Asa comes and Asa's first 10 years were marked by peace.

He did that which was good and right in the sight of the Lord his God. Now that begs the question, what did he do that was good and right and what can we learn from that? So often people nowadays love to blame their spiritual background and their spiritual inheritance if you use that, allow me to use that language, and their context and they will say well my spiritual condition is really because of so many other things and it's not possible for me to flourish in this context, it's not possible for me to walk for God and with God, you don't know my environment and you don't know what happened before I arrived on the scene here. Well that may be true but listen there's a lesson to be learned here from Asa for his forefathers had not done well but he did and he began well and he did that which was good and right, no excuses.

Well what was good and right well we're not left to speculate, speculation often causes trouble when we come to the scripture, we're actually told in this passage what was good and what was right. Let's just look at that verse 2 and verse 3 of chapter 14 begin to explain to us what was good and right. It says this, it says that Asa did that which was good and right in the eyes of the Lord his God for, so here's our for and that word is now going to explain why that accolade is given to him.

He did that which was good and right in the eyes of the Lord his God for, for what? Well look at the text if you have it in front of you, first of all he purged sin, he purged sin. It says this, he took away the altars of the strange God. It says this, he break down the images and cut down the groves.

You see the people had become idolaters, worshipping all sorts of things apart from the living God and they had created shrines on high places, hills for the Canaanites who used to occupy the land and were not the people of God and were idolaters. They had set up altars and shrines to worship the God Baal, the false God and then what had happened was this, the people of God did not at first set up these shrines as explicit idolatry, they began to look at the way that the pagans worshipped and they decided to imitate that and bring it into their worship of the Lord. Well Asa says well I've none of that, that has to go and Asa sought to remove the false worship and pagan influence amongst the people of God and so he purged sin and he started off at the point of their worship and their devotion to God.

Now it seems he did it in Jerusalem and then he tried to do it throughout the whole nation, you get that in verse number five for it says this, also he took away out of all the cities of Judah, the high places and the images and the kingdom was quiet before him. It may well be that he failed to do it effectively but this was his program, this is where he started. Now just stop there and think about that.

He started to change the nation at the point of their worship. It's very hard, it must have been difficult to remove ingrained and institutionalized idolatry in that national context. In fact it's easier to adopt it and bring it in than it is to remove it and purge it and remove it from the national worship but he understood this, this was his starting point.

He needs to clear the decks of the rubbish before he can build positively in the national worship of Jehovah and that principle was right throughout scripture. We don't need to get too particular in our application because we're so different in our context on this webinar and in our lives and what is idolatry to you may not be to me and vice versa and so rather than be too specific, take the general point and make the application. We are all idolaters to one extent or another.

If we're honest with ourselves, there are things that we have a tendency to put before God in terms of priority in our life, whatever that may be and in order for our worship to flourish and our restoration to our walk with the Lord to take place, we need to purge the idolatry from our life. Now that's not me just saying that. When you come to the New Testament, listen to James in his epistle in chapter 1 and verse 21.

He says, therefore putting aside all filthiness and all that remains of wickedness, one translation puts it, in humility receive the word implanted which is able to save your soul. So in order for the word to flourish, the rubbish needs to be removed which will stifle progress for God. So there's our first point.

Second point, they sought the Lord and so they purged sin and they sought the Lord. Look at verse number four, he commanded Judah to seek the Lord God of their fathers and to do the law and the commandment. Purging sin is not enough.

That's the negative. There always needs to be the positive. We've heard this so often and it's true.

If you take the negative out, you create a vacuum and it's not long until that vacuum is filled by sin and so we need to have an emphasis upon both, upon the negative, yes, but also upon the positive for the vacuum created by the purging of sin needs to be filled by us seeking the law and seeking the commandment and seeking the Lord. They sought the Lord. Now I'm going to stop here because I love the little word picture here.

The word seek in verse four, I understand, literally means to trample underfoot. The picture is to beat a path. Now I was just saying to Caleb, we're just back from a couple of days walking in the hills in Scotland.

If you've never done it, you have missed out on one of the great pleasures of life, let me assure you. Anyway, if you go walking anywhere, Scotland or anywhere else, and you go into an area that is not a kind of urban area, but you go into a rural context and you would understand this, that if you go out into the hills, you follow the path. If you stray off the path, you need to know what you're doing.

You see, there usually is a beaten path. We were climbing a couple of Scottish mountains and one of them, to get to the bottom of the mountain, there was no path. You had to cross over boggy ground and so on and make your way to the bottom before you could climb it.

On the other one, however, there was a clear path. Just fix that in your mind. There is a beaten path.

You see, the path is beaten because so many people have followed that way. So many shoes have trodden down the ground. Just take that picture into the scripture here.

The idea is this, that they sought the Lord God, they beat a path to the Lord. It became a habit to travel that pathway. It became a route that they often went down as they sought the Lord.

They were seeking the Lord continually, so it became a beaten path in their life, a familiar thing, a safe path in life, something that was familiar to them, something that they didn't stray off. And the verb is the nuance of seeking with care and inquiring after knowledge, insight or advice, etc. So the idea is this, that they carefully pursued the Lord as the source of wisdom and holiness to keep the law and the commandment.

You see, the idea is this, you cannot separate seeking the Lord from the law and the commandment. And how is it that they beat a path? One writer put it this way, you beat a path to the Lord through learning and obeying his word. How well-worn is that path? Or in my life, do I need to get a machete out and clear the way again because it's all overgrown? It's so long since I have sought the Lord.

It's so long since I have walked down that pathway to him through studying and submitting to his revealed word and truth and the revelation of himself and the revelation of the instruction. That's all been so foreign to me for so long. I have to cut the path again.

Or is that a well-beaten path? Well, here's the picture. They sought the Lord. May we seek the Lord as a habit.

May we seek the Lord as something that's familiar and regular. And we're going to see that that was very important when peacetime changed to wartime. It's okay in the peacetime sometimes, but when the war comes, you need that beaten path.

You need that familiar route in wartime. Well, what else did they do? So we've seen that they purged sin. We've seen from chapter 14 that they sought the Lord.

But notice a third thing that we want to see from verse six. They prepared for war in times of peace. Now, I love history and I love reading about history.

And one of the great mistakes that's repeated throughout history is that nations tend not to prepare for war in times of peace. So, for example, our history is replete with that. Even in the 20th century, when you think about the time between the two world wars, the first and second world war, and there was a great time of peace to Neville Chamberlain, the British Prime Minister, he appeased Adolf Hitler and he came back with this piece of paper.

And there's these famous pictures of Chamberlain who sought peace at all costs. And the consequence of that emphasis was that our nation was not ready for war when it came. We were not ready for war when it came.

The signs were there, but the nation had not mobilized its economy or its military or anything. And we were caught unprepared. And it took us a number of years again to gear up for war.

Well, that's not the case with Asa, because Asa is seeking the Lord. And one thing someone who seeks the Lord does is he prepares for spiritual conflict in times of spiritual peace. There was no complacency here.

He wasn't just saying, well, all's well. I can forget reading my Bible today. I can forget, you know, prayer times because, you know, things are going well.

I don't have any spiritual conflicts. I'm not committing serious sin. Things are good in my relationships.

Things are good in my friendship and assembly. And then, boom, that's what happens. Conflicts come so unexpectedly.

Trials and tests come. And we find this, that we're unprepared for spiritual conflict because we have been complacent in times of spiritual peace. Asa did not make that mistake.

I think so many of us do. And when the conflict comes, we go down like that because we're not prepared for war in times of peace. Well, what did he do in verse six? He built fortified cities in Judah for the land had rest.

The rest gave him time to fortify the cities. We could stay here all night. I love this.

I know some of you, many of you who are listening are either Bible teachers or those with spiritual responsibility as shepherds amongst the people of God. And I wonder if we get complacent in times of peace in our assemblies and we don't build the fortified cities and we don't equip the people for the conflict that will come, for it will. And we don't take the times of peace to build in systematic spiritual nourishment in Bible teaching, consecutive expositional teaching of the word of God to build the saints and strengthen the saints so that they will stand when the conflict comes and not be torn apart.

Asa does a great job here because he builds the fort. He takes the opportunity that peace gives him. If I tell you this from bitter experience, and some of you have had it, when the conflict comes, your mind will become absolutely frozen in terms of positive, proactive leadership, and you end up firefighting all the time.

And so it's in times of peace that we need to prepare for war. That's what he did. You say, well, I didn't know that my Christianity was going to be a scene of war.

Oh, listen, when you come to the New Testament, you may not be familiar with this, but when you come to the New Testament, warfare is a big theme to describe the Christian experience. You know, before we came to Christ, we only had one enemy. We only had one enemy, and that was God.

We did that in Romans chapter 8 and verse 7 and 8. The carnal mind is enmity against God. It's not subject to the law of God. Neither he can be so that they that are in the flesh cannot please God.

Everything else is our friend and facilitates that animosity toward God. But when we get saved, things change. And he who was our enemy is now our friend and our friends become our enemies.

Spiritually, I don't mean the people, I mean the spiritual aspect. For example, when you come into the book of Ephesians, we are introduced as we learn so young in our Christian faith, we're introduced to the three great enemies that we have to battle with as the believer in the Lord Jesus. You were dead trespasses and sins in which you walked following the course of this world, the prince of the power of the air, the passions of the flesh.

And so the world, the flesh, the devil, and I won't go into that, but these are the three main enemies that we face as a believer. Listen, before we were a believer, they were our friends. They facilitated our hatred of God.

When we become a Christian, it's a role reversal. They then are against and oppose our living relationship with God and seek to disturb it and destroy it. So often, warfare is the theme when it comes to the life of a believer.

Well, he says enjoying peace. I tell you, this peace is a precious thing in our walk with God. You know, the peace of Christ and peace with one another and let us live at peace with one another and also peace in our community.

Let's not seek out warfare in our community. Let's, insofar as we can, live at peace with those round about us. It's a wonderful thing, but you need this in this chapter, that the peace that Asa enjoyed, which came from the Lord, by the way, was disturbed by conflict.

10 years of peace and then devastating conflict. You come to verse number 11 and you discover this, that when the enemy raised his head, Asa was not soft and unprepared and scared and he didn't run and hide. He faced his foe after 10 years of peace.

Why? He'd been preparing for war in times of peace. He didn't run and hide when the enemy came. He stood up and was counted for God.

You know, sometimes we're so complacent because in our own lives, we have very little conflict, very often spiritually, and we get into a rhythm of life with a structure. I call it a scaffolding round about us, a support network round about us that helps us stay stable and facilitates the good life rhythms that we have and our conversations and relationships are good. So we often speak of the Lord.

We often are listening to Bible teaching. We're often going to be with Christians where sin is not front and central and facing us. And all of that helps us.

But you know, there are some times that goes and we're face to face with conflict, spiritual conflict, temptation, out the blue. And there is no more dangerous time to be tempted than a prolonged period of spiritual peace. For very often we become complacent and spiritually flabby and unprepared for the conflict.

That was not the case. And you come to verse number 11 and Asa cries unto the Lord his God. Here's a man who's known peace from God and when conflict comes, he'd built up a huge standing army.

He'd fortified his cities, but still he was not going to rely on his preparations. His dependence was on God when the conflict came. And their fight was God's fight.

A bit like David going down to face the giant. There's kind of echoes in the language used in 1st Samuel chapter 17 with a difference. David had experience of God helping him in conflict and he relied upon it.

Asa had none. His dependence on the Lord did not come through experience. Where did it come through? That beaten path.

That beaten path when he sought the Lord. That familiarity, that regular dependence on God during peacetime had built into Asa a mindset and a way of reacting to circumstances that turned him to God when the trouble came. Because even in the peacetime, he turned to God.

So this wasn't unfamiliar. It was a beaten path. It was a familiar reaction to something in his life.

It wasn't unfamiliar. It wasn't new. He wasn't doing it for the first time or he wasn't doing it for the first in a long time.

This is what he did. Listen, this is what we do. I can only speak for myself, but I anticipate my experience will be no different from many, if not all of us.

We are all tempted to sin. We all have to battle with the flesh. We all go through periods of time where we know, if not victory, then certainly we have the upper hand in that conflict.

But I've faced times, and I'm sure you have, when suddenly and out of the blue, the conflict becomes severe. Satan seems to bring an evil day into your life of temptation. And I'm not just talking about moral temptation, sexual temptation.

There's temptation to all sorts of sin, whatever that may be. I tell you this, let us learn the lesson from Asa. Let us understand this, that if we have developed good habits, if we regularly have times of devotion and worship and meditation and confession in our life, when the heat gets turned up, you will follow the same pathway you always follow in peacetime.

And that's what Asa did. He sought the Lord. And this is such, if I had known this when I was younger, I tell you this, it would have been a great help to me in my Christian life.

I don't know how many times I say this. I say it repeatedly. Folks here are fed up listening to me say it.

But when you're young, you think that spiritual success is the spectacular. It's a big thing. And then you get older, you become a grandparent.

And you learn this, that no, that's not true. That the key and the big thing in life is doing the good small things repeatedly and get into good habits and good life rhythms, so that when the obstacle comes, it's already established, your reaction and response will be good and Godward. So Asa learns the lesson.

And perhaps, well, perhaps in so doing and winning a victory, for you come to the end of chapter 14, I'm just skipping a wee bit of the narrative for the sake of time, but you come to the end of chapter 14, you discover this, that God did help, they did win the victory. So here you are, imagine it, 10 years of peace, big spiritual conflict, victory accomplished, all good. Asa is doing well.

And now he's faced with an issue. Will he be content with doing well or will he want to do better? That's the issue. That's often the issue for us, isn't it? We're so easily contented.

Are we content with doing well? Or do we want to do better? Do we want to walk closer to the Lord? Do we want to sin less? Do we want to be more sensitive to failure? Do we want to be more like the Lord Jesus in character and conduct? These are the big things. Do we want to be better as salt and light in the community? And do we want to represent Christ better? Now take all of these things individually and then escalate them into a corporate sense as well, because we are individuals, but we're also part of a local assembly, a local church. And ask the same questions.

Are we satisfied with doing okay, with doing well? Or do we want to do better? Do we want to shine brighter? Do we want the gospel to be heard further and deeper into our community? Or are we content to sit back, two or three come to our gospel meeting? That'll do us. We have an audience. Is that it? Or do we really want to make an impact for God in our community? Well, you need to answer that and I need to answer that.

Asa did well, but then he did better. He did better. God brought a challenge to him at the point of his victory.

He might have thought he'd climbed a mountain and hit a peak. God meets him on his false summit and says, Asa, there are other summits. There are other summits.

Do you want to go up or do you want to stay here and trickle back down? What do you want to do? Verse 1 of chapter 15, the Spirit of God came upon Azariah, the son of Oded, and he went out to meet Asa at the point of his victory. He has scaled the false summit. Now he's faced with a question and God brings it to bear upon his life.

Up again or stay here and dribble down? He went out to meet Asa and he says, Hear ye me, Asa. This is verse 2 in Old Judah and Benjamin. The Lord is with you and he brings a challenge and the challenge is just this.

It begins with the word of God being brought to bear upon someone who's known spiritual victory and the challenge, I think, is the same for us. Well, Asa embraces the challenge. I don't have time to go into the detail, but really it's worth reading these three chapters to get the detail.

The challenge was this, for example, in verse 7b, strong therefore let not your hands be weak for your work shall be rewarded and so forth and he's challenged to go further in his reforms. He's challenged to take the people higher in their devotion. He's challenged to purge the sin to a greater degree in the nation.

What's he going to do? Well, I love this about Asa. He embraces the challenge. He removes idols from the whole land.

I think maybe it was just in Jerusalem before the whole land gets the treatment, verse 8 and verse 16. But notice this in verse 16, it says that he also removed his mother from her official position of Queen Mother in verse 16. So now he's going to deal with his family issues and this is exactly what he does.

Verse 8 and verse 18, he restores the altar in the temple. He returns all the sacred utensils. Verse 10 and verse 11, he gathers the people to worship.

Verse 12 to verse 14, he renews the covenant of the people with God and actually in verse 9, it's interesting, this led to many people leaving the northern kingdom of Israel and coming down to Judah and seeking God from that northern kingdom. Oh Asa, you've done well but actually Asa, you're now doing better. You're climbing another summit in your relationship with God.

There's more, there's more and God allows him to be found by that people and the nation enjoy an extended period of peace because Asa sought the Lord again and took the people with him. Verse 15, peace rests and no more war in fact until the 35th year of Asa's reign. I really think we should stop there for a moment and really challenge our hearts.

You know the fact that you've taken the time and I don't know so many of you but the fact you've taken the time and maybe regularly have taken the time to engage with Bible teaching on this forum indicates that you've made decisions to make space for the word of God in your life to some degree. The extent to which that's impacted your life is a matter for you but your presence here is an indication of interest and also of some action to facilitate that interest at the very least. So in that sense I might say to you, you're doing well, you're doing well but do you want to do better? If we are in positions of shepherding and responsibility in a local context, to what extent are we satisfied with how well the saints that we shepherd are doing or do we want them to do better? There's a challenge.

As I reflect upon my own assembly here in Bridge of Weir, I have that responsibility with others here locally of shepherding and leading. It's a challenge to me. What is the bar whereby I am satisfied at the spiritual progress and when someone crests past that, do we just sigh a sigh of relief and say well that's them sorted, they're fine, they're stable and they're doing okay and blah blah blah blah.

You know when you go into, it's interesting isn't it, when you go into the New Testament, Paul's prayers in his epistles often expose a heart of ambition for spiritual progress amongst the saints he loved and served. He never seemed to be satisfied. He always wanted them to go higher, to go further, to be more holy, to purge sin to a greater degree, to seek Christ and Christ-likeness because that's how he lived and so he was asking them to follow him in that life pattern and maybe the reason that my spiritual ambition for the saints here locally is not as it should be is because the spiritual ambition I have is like that for my own self.

Maybe that's true. Maybe we could all take that challenge. He started well and then he did better and then lastly, sadly, the last six years of his life were a disaster.

He said Stephen hold on, just finish your ministry now and it's living happily ever after. Stop! We don't want to hear about his last six years. Let's just talk about doing well and then doing better.

Let's just not bother stopping because this is real, this is history, this is true and this happened so many times. We need to learn this lesson. He did well and then he did better but listen, then he did badly.

The fact he started well and went on to do better was no guarantee that he would finish well and he didn't. Listen, this story does not have a happy ending. He finished badly.

41 years on the throne and the last six years were a disaster. 41 years. I'm 51 years old.

Assembly Bridge of Wee has been my assembly since I was 14 when I was received into fellowship. This is my home assembly. I have a fear and I trust it's a healthy fear of finishing badly.

And leaving a disaster. Passing on to another generation a disaster here. For the generation before me passed on the testimony and the generation before them did the same way back into the late 1800s here.

What a responsibility in leadership to finish well and not finish badly. What about my own walk? What about your walk with the Lord? Is it not a healthy thing to fear this? I think it is and so let's learn one or two lessons. We won't be long now but let's learn one or two lessons and here's the thing.

Untended fires soon die. Complacency is the enemy of spiritual progress and we can get so complacent. We think we know the Bible so we don't need to read it.

We think you know prayer has been well it's part and parcel. We don't really engage with God in that way. We think we don't need to be careful about the temptation traps that are all around us because we're older and we've lived a long time and never really felt challenged by them and so we get complacent.

Well listen that's exactly what happened to Asa and the fire was untended and went out and all that was left was ashes. It was another test of war that came after a prolonged period of peace. It was a very different Asa this time than the first time.

That beaten path was now like a jungle and he couldn't and didn't walk down that path. It had been so long. There was another path that had been beaten in the latter years of his life and that's the path he took.

It wasn't a path to the Lord, it was a path away from the Lord and he had been trodding, treading that path increasingly and it had become the beaten path of his life. So when the war came that's the path he walked. Listen don't let us think we can be complacent with the rhythm of life and the routines and the habits of life for if we let them go when the pressure comes don't think we're suddenly going to transform into the way we used to live.

We will just go down the pathway we had been going down in recent years. That's what happened to Asa, he gets attacked by a man called Bashar Bashar who fortified Rama town north of Jerusalem. He panics, he panics.

Well there's no seeking the Lord now, no. He's now thinking like the world thinks. He's thinking about dealing with this without God and so he strips the temple and his own house of all the gold and silver and he bribes Ben-Hadad it's all murky, it's all worldly.

To be frank it just sounds like the politics of our world and the way people do business without God. It's all about cash, it's all about influence, it's all about alliances, it's all that stuff and the plan works. You know I was speaking recently with Jonah and he's running away from God and you know it's as if God just makes everything work and he ends up on a boat going to where he wants to go having paid the fare and the providence of God seems to have let him go.

No, let him run but not let him go and so here what happens is that Asa, his plan works and so is the seed of his spiritual disaster. Asa does dismantle fortifications and all the rest. It seems a good plan.

What's the problem? Well the problem is just this that God sends a prophet again. Remember he did at the beginning of chapter 15. So there's a parallel, there's victory at the beginning, the prophet comes.

Do you want to continue to be doing well or do you want to do better? No, we'll do better and so it's all positive. They sought the Lord, the victory was gained, they went on in the things of the Lord. Here it's different, time has passed and so they don't seek the Lord, they do gain the victory, the prophet does come but it comes with a different message.

The message is just this in verse 7 of chapter 16. Because you relied on the king of Syria, this is the message. You didn't rely on the Lord your God this time.

Number one, the army of the king of Syria has escaped you. That's the first consequence. Second consequence is verse 9. From now on you will have and not peace.

There were two consequences pronounced by the prophet. God would not only have protected Asa from Bashar and Israel, he would have given the entire Syrian army into the hand of Asa so his victory was not as it could have been and now he's no longer going to know peace in his life but hardship. Well I tell you this, God was gracious in sending that message but there was his point of repentance.

He actually reacted badly and in verse 12 we just read this and Asa in the 30th and 9th year of his reign was diseased in his feet until his disease was exceeding great yet in his disease he sought not to the Lord. You see the enemy comes, he's not seeking the Lord. So God sends him a disease in his feet, he goes down the same beaten path, he's still not seeking the Lord and then very sadly verse 13 and Asa slept with his fathers.

That's it, it's done. Imagine that being your epitaph. 41 years in the throne, you started well, you went on to do better and you finish with this, he sought not to the Lord but to his physicians and Asa slept with his fathers.

Full stop, full stop. How often do we sing only one life will soon be past, only what's done for Christ will last. When you ponder and think about your value system in life, ask yourself the question, have I gone off track somewhere? Am I now an idolater? Am I living in the same way as I did with the same relationship with the Lord or have I strayed off that beaten path? Well let me encourage you and appeal to you, if that be the case, perhaps this is the voice of God to you, perhaps this is the very point of your repentance.

Get back in the path, seek the Lord, don't finish badly, don't finish badly. Don't be like Solomon and others that we could speak about, far better to be like Jacob, far better to finish well than to finish badly. I just trust that Lord would give you a little word of encouragement from that and challenge and that we might know a little bit of honest reflection in our lives as we consider King Asa from 2nd Chronicles.

Let's just pray and conclude our time together, thank you. Our Father we bow in thy presence and we do confess, Father, feeling just slightly hypocritical even speaking on a subject like this just because we're all aware of our own inconsistencies in life and Father we are not ashamed to confess that. How often we've strayed to one degree or another off that beaten path and not saw the Lord and when the trouble has come we've perhaps sought something else.

Oh God we just pray that thy voice might be heard in the hearts and lives of many of thy people. Help us Father to repent and get back on that path and seek thee with our whole heart. Help us to build again these rhythms and habits of devotion and reading and praying and these desires, help us stir them up within us our Father to make good decisions in life.

That are Godward and not the opposite. We thank thee for the privilege of handling that word and communicating it to thy people. We just ask thee Father to bless it in the name of the Lord Jesus.

Amen.