2 Chronicles 16:1-14 - Homiletics

The disappointing relapse of what had seemed tried worth, knowledge, and proved goodness.

Mournful to the last degree is the impression made on us by what we are given to learn last of the career of King Asa. It is a reversal—not the reversal from bad to good, but of what seemed good and seemed sure, to bad. The humiliating lesson and fresh illustration of human caprice and weakness must be in like spirit and with proportionate humility noted and learned by ourselves. It is, indeed, a chapter of biography which brings again to our lips the reproving and stirring question of the apostle, "Ye did run well; who did hinder you that ye should not obey the truth?' and which reminds us also of language of far lower inspiration (Keble's ' Christian Year:' Eighth Sunday after Trinity)—

"The grey-haired saint may fail at last,

The surest guide a wanderer prove;

Death only binds us fast

To the bright shore of love."

Among all uncertainties, mournful is the certainty of human uncertainty, and necessary the prolongation of human probation to the extreme limit of life. Let us listen with fresh veneration to the just expression of the virtual beatitude of final perseverance, as pronounced by the lips of Jesus Christ himself, "He that endureth to the end shall be saved." Side by side with the broad lesson of human fickleness and liability in the very end to fall, there seem to be peculiarities attending the present history which may yield something to careful notice and analysis, which are replete indeed with instruction, and with the finer of the suggestions of caution and warning. Thus, for instance—

I. THAT ASA WAS WICKED AND TEMPTED TO DEFECTION WAS PROBABLY LARGELY DUE TO THE CLOSENESS OF THE PRESSURE OF APPREHENSION IN A DOUBLE SENSE . Family quarrels are, to a proverb, the bitterest. The foe, the competing king, the dissentient people, were abiding neighbours—nay, of one and the same house, though that a house divided against itself. All this, no doubt, should have had exactly the contrary effect, but did not . As in great stress of illness, and under great pressure of mortal apprehension brought close home, men will often resort to the trial of remedies, and flee to medical aid they had been the first to disdain and the loudest to condemn under milder and less domestic circumstances, so , strange though it were, the subtle influence worked upon Asa, which was powerless to delude him when it was Zerah of Ethiopia, and not Baasha of Israel, who was the confronting enemy.

II. CONVERSELY , ASA WAS PROBABLY DELUDED INTO SUPPOSING THAT THE NEARER DANGER FROM THE NEARER FOE AND NEIGHBOUR FOE , WAS A DANGER HE COULD BETTER COPE WITH BY HIS OWN UNAIDED RESOURCES , HIS OWN SUPPOSED WISDOMS AND HIS OWN SUFFICIENT DIPLOMACY . It is too true that the more distant enemy we are prone to fear more than the enemy, who is really tenfold dangerous because he u Be near us, and very probably has this great and subtle consequent advantage, that he knows us and our weak points better than we know them or know ourselves. There is oven such a thing as the Church having greater zeal for the heathen far off than for those worse heathen (and more to be pitied for themselves) who are dread corrosion and canker to the whole body politic at home. It means that men have greater fear of the enemy at a distance than of the serpent in their own bosom! Even Christian men am unconsciously the victims of such beguilement. Distance lends enchantment sometimes; distance lends large-looming apprehension sometimes. But in the matter of our enemy sin, it is ever one thing that constitutes our chiefest danger—its nearness ; the great risk of our overlooking it, because of familiarity with its countenance; of our trifling with it, because we underrate its power to hurt; and of our flattering ourselves that we must be a match for so near a neighbour.

III. ASA IN AN EVIL MOMENT FALLS BACK UPON A MISCHIEVOUS MEMORY OF A FATHER 'S ERROR INSTEAD OF A HOLY MEMORY OF A FATHER 'S EXCELLENCE . He recalls his father's league with the King of Syria to copy it, and adopt it, and furbish up afresh its dishonourable conditions. He relies on that king, and forgets to "rely on the Lord his God," who had but so lately shown him such wonderful deliverance. He relies on that King of Syria, and gets his work done apparently; but it was done also but very partially, very slightly, very temporarily, and at this immense penalty that "the host of that King of Syria would escape out of his hand;" the meaning of which sentence was only too plain, taught by too many an analogy. The help God gives he does give. The help we buy of sin, of guilty compromise, of doubtful friendship, we buy dear often to begin with; but before we have done with our bargain, we find it dear indeed, wastefully dear, exhaustingly dear, ruinously dear!

IV. ASA BOUGHT HIS HELP AT GRIEVOUS AND SACRILEGIOUS EXPENDITURE . The things he should have kept for God, his people, and his temple and its worship, he takes from them.

V. ASA LOST ALL COMMAND OVER HIMSELF . He is wroth with the faithful seer; he was "in a rage" with him for "this very thing," that he was faithful; he imprisons him, because he cannot imprison the truth; "and oppresses some of the people at the same time." All went wrong with him, for all was wrong in him. Disease, exceeding great, overtakes him; but he had lost moral force, for even then "he sought not to the Lord, but to the physicians." A long life and a very long reign close under the cloud. These had been good in him; and though he dies an unhonoured death, he goes to a not unhonoured burial and sepulchre; but they were what "he had made for himself," and the fragrance and perfume of which were "of the apothecaries' art"!