Audio Transcript
We know the story. A guy starts out full of faith. He does everything right, or so it seems on the outside. But as the years pass, and maybe even right at the finish line, in the last few years of life, he completely blows it. He gets bitter, he loses faith, he relies on himself, he stops trusting God. This seems to be what happened to King Asa in the Bible. And it leaves us wondering: If someone so deeply devoted to God can just drift away at the end, what does that mean for the rest of us? Today on Ask Pastor John: why good men fail God.
This weekend in our Navigators Bible Reading Plan we are reading about King Asa in the Old Testament. And to get ready for reading his life story, here’s a question from an anonymous listener:
“Pastor John, thanks for the podcast and for taking questions. Mine is about 2 Chronicles 14–16. I’ve been thinking a lot about the trajectory of King Asa, especially in light of 2 Chronicles 16:9, where it says, ‘For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to give strong support to those whose heart is blameless toward him,’ a precious text you explained really well two years ago in APJ 2064: ‘God Is Eager to Work for You.’
“What I struggle with is the contrast between the start and end of Asa’s reign. Early, he’s described as doing what was good and right in the Lord’s eyes (2 Chronicles 14:2). But near the end, he’s rebuked for relying on the king of Syria instead of the Lord (2 Chronicles 16:7–10). And then, when he becomes seriously ill, the text says he sought help from physicians but not from the Lord (2 Chronicles 16:12). He also seems angry and bitter when confronted. At the same time, 2 Chronicles 15:17 and 1 Kings 15:14 say Asa was wholeheartedly devoted to the Lord all his life. So, how should we make sense of this? How can someone be described that way and still seem to drift or harden near the end? And what does Asa’s story teach us about finishing well, both for our own faith and for how we think about older believers whose lives maybe don’t end as spiritually strong as they were earlier?”
Yeah, that’s a really good question, and I share the struggle about Asa. You love him and then you say, “What?”
Sin Corrupts
It seems to me that one of the overarching lessons that God intends for us to learn from the Old Testament is that sin has corrupted the best of men. I think that’s one of the big lessons. And the implication of that lesson for the world (all of us, all the nations, not just Israel) is that God’s chosen people, Israel, under all his favors — if they could not produce a godly society, or even any persons who are not corrupted in some measure by sin, then there’s no hope for the rest of the world to be pleasing to God, and we’re all in need of a savior from God.
I think that’s the point of Romans 3:19–20:
Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law [that’s Israel], so that every mouth [that’s all of us] may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God. For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.
In other words, no matter how hard anyone has ever tried or ever will try, the human heart is simply too sinful for us to establish our own righteousness. We must have a savior, and Jesus is the one — the only one. There is, in the Old Testament, this strange mingling of judgment and mercy and hope. The stories, even the best of them, are tinged with sin.
“I should tremble that I could bring reproach upon the Lord by failing in old age to act consistently with my faith.”
Adam and Eve were created good, and they rebelled (Genesis 3:6). Noah was good, and then he failed in his drunkenness (Genesis 9:20–21). Abraham was good to his nephew Lot and less than perfect with his wife (Genesis 12:10–13; 20:2). Isaac was wrong to prefer Esau over God’s chosen seed, Jacob (Genesis 25:28). Jacob was a trickster all his life (Genesis 27:19). His sons sold their brother into slavery (Genesis 37:28). The period of the Judges is just anarchy without a king (Judges 21:25). And the first kings of Israel, they’re all mixed. Saul disobeyed and was deposed (1 Samuel 15:23–26). David commits adultery (2 Samuel 11:2–4). Solomon was ruined by seven hundred wives (1 Kings 11:3–4). And when the kingdom divides, all the kings are tainted — all of them — or worse. And one of those kings is Asa.
Wholly True?
So, Asa’s story, starting well and ending badly, fits the pattern. It shouldn’t be surprising, but what we have to figure out textually, exegetically, is what the author means in 1 Kings 15:11–14 when he says this:
Asa did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, as David his father had done. [So, there’s a clue, because David didn’t do everything well. That’s a clue.] [Asa] put away the male cult prostitutes out of the land and removed all the idols that his fathers had made. He also removed Maacah his mother from being queen mother because she had made an abominable image for Asherah. And Asa cut down her image and burned it at the brook Kidron. But the high places were not taken away. Nevertheless, the heart of Asa was wholly true to the Lord all his days.
That’s the perplexing sentence. So, he didn’t take away the high places, but his heart was wholly true to the Lord. This was pretty clear that the writer wants us to view Asa mainly in a positive light. He does. He only mentions that the high places were not taken away. And he says, “Asa did what was right in the eyes of the Lord” (1 Kings 15:11). And we know from 2 Chronicles that there were other sins. He relied upon Syria at one point. He didn’t consult God, but he consulted physicians when he got this disease in his feet. So, it’s clear that, both in 2 Chronicles and 1 Kings, Asa was a mainly good king but made some serious sinful blunders.
Devotion and Idolatry
So, the question is this: What does 1 Kings 15:14 mean when it says, “The high places were not taken away. Nevertheless, the heart of Asa was wholly true to the Lord all his days”? We’re not just dealing with a tension between 2 Chronicles and 1 Kings, as though two different authors contradicted each other — no. In the very same verse, the writer of 1 Kings says he didn’t take away the high places, yet his heart was wholly true to the Lord. So, we need to know what “wholly true to the Lord” means, and how it can coexist with something that God disapproves of.
Here’s my suggestion. I did a search on the Hebrew phrase behind “wholly true to the Lord.” What does that mean? Literally, it’s “whole with the Lord” — šālêm ‘im-Yahweh. And I just clicked on that and searched it. Here’s the interesting parallel in 1 Kings 11:4: “When Solomon was old his wives turned away his heart after other gods, and his heart was not wholly true to the Lord his God, as was the heart of David his father.”
So, there’s the exact phrase, and it seems to me that the author of 1 Kings means by a heart being wholly with the Lord is not the absence of sin but the absence of idolatry. Can we make that distinction? I think he wants us to make that distinction. Those high places that Asa did not remove, I don’t think, were a sign of Asa’s idolatry. That’s what we’re prone to think. I don’t think so, because in verse 12 it says he removed all the idols that his fathers had made. Those high places did not represent Asa’s turning to other gods.
My conclusion is that the writer of both 2 Chronicles and 1 Kings portrayed Asa as never turning away from the Lord as his true and only God. I think that’s what he means: the one he worships. He worships this God. But rather, there were lapses in some of his political and personal dealings that were inconsistent with that devotion to the Lord.
We Need a Savior
So, stepping back, then — old man John Piper, trying to think this through, for me — it seems to me that the lesson for me, and really for all of us, especially as older people, is first that we need a savior. Oh, how we need a savior. We will never be able to establish our own righteousness. We need the righteousness of Christ to be accepted before our holy God.
Second, we should tremble. I should tremble at the possibility that I could bring reproach upon the Lord by failing in old age to act consistently with my faith.
And third, we should take heart that God “knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust” (Psalm 103:14), and that our salvation does not depend on our perfection but on Christ and our cleaving to him.
