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Context No. 2035 of 4322 · 2 Chronicles

Context · Reflection

2 Chronicles 16:1-6: in context

1In the thirty-sixth year of Asa’s reign, Baasha king of Israel went up against Judah, and built Ramah, that he might not allow anyone to go out or come in to Asa king of Judah. 2Then Asa brought out silver and gold out of the treasures of the LORD’s house and of the king’s house, and sent to Ben Hadad king of Syria, who lived at Damascus, saying, 3“Let there be a treaty between me and you, as there was between my father and your father. Behold, I have sent you silver and gold. Go, break your treaty with Baasha king of Israel, that he may depart from me.” 4Ben Hadad listened to King Asa, and sent the captains of his armies against the cities of Israel; and they struck Ijon, Dan, Abel Maim, and all the storage cities of Naphtali. 5When Baasha heard of it, he stopped building Ramah, and let his work cease. 6Then Asa the king took all Judah, and they carried away the stones and timber of Ramah, with which Baasha had built; and he built Geba and Mizpah with them.

King Asa of Judah, once a man who had trusted God for deliverance against overwhelming odds, faces a new threat from Baasha king of Israel. But this time Asa does not turn to God. He takes silver and gold from the treasuries of the LORD's house and his own, and sends them to Ben Hadad king of Syria, buying an alliance: break your treaty with Baasha, so that he may leave me alone. The scheme works politically; Baasha withdraws. But Asa had leaned on a foreign king and his own arrangement rather than on the God who had delivered him before.

The sadness of this episode is that Asa, who had once trusted God, now trusts his own scheme instead. Earlier in his reign, facing a far greater army, Asa had cried to God and relied on him, and God had delivered. Now, facing a lesser threat, he does not turn to God at all; he empties the temple treasury to buy a worldly alliance, leaning on human power and political arrangement rather than on the God who had proven faithful. It is a drift from reliance on God to reliance on his own means, all the sadder because Asa had known better. This is a drift we are prone to as well. We may have known seasons of genuine trust in God, times when we relied on him and saw his help. And yet, faced with a new difficulty, we can slide into leaning on our own arrangements instead, our schemes, our alliances, our resources, trusting in what we can arrange rather than in God. The very success of our arrangements can hide the drift: Asa's alliance worked, Baasha withdrew, and yet Asa had turned from God to do it. Worldly means may achieve the immediate aim while marking a real departure from trust in God. Scripture warns against this leaning on worldly power. Woe to those, Isaiah says, who go down to Egypt for help, and rely on horses, but do not look to the Holy One of Israel. Some trust in chariots and some in horses, the psalm says, but we trust in the name of the LORD our God. The temptation is to trust what we can see and arrange rather than the God we cannot control. This searches where we actually lean when trouble comes. Do we turn to God, as Asa once did, relying on him? Or do we slide, as Asa later did, into trusting our own schemes and alliances, leaning on worldly means rather than on God, even after we have known his help? The call is to keep trusting God, not to drift from reliance on him to reliance on our own arrangements, remembering that the God who delivered us before is the one to lean on still.

When trouble comes, do I turn to God and rely on him, or do I slide into leaning on my own schemes, alliances, and resources, trusting what I can arrange rather than the God who has helped me before, and can I take Asa's drift as a warning to keep trusting God rather than drifting into reliance on worldly means, even when those means seem to work?

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