2 Chronicles 16:7-9 "Hanani's Prophesy"

Hanani’s Prophecy Against Asa

Our needs, in Jesus' name, amen. Please turn your Bibles to 2 Chronicles 16. Be looking at verses seven through nine of 2 Chronicles 16. At that time, Hanani the seer came to Asa, king of Judah, and said to him, because you relied on the king of Syria and did not rely on the Lord your God, the army of the king of Syria has escaped you.

Were not the Ethiopians and the Libyans a huge army with very many chariots and horsemen? Yet because you relied on the Lord, he gave them into your hand. 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.

You have done foolishly in this, for from now on you will have wars. Then Asa was angry with the seer and put him in the stocks in prison, for he was in a rage with him because of this. And Asa inflicted cruelties upon some of the people at the same time.

The acts of Asa from first to last are written in the book of the kings of Judah and Israel. In the 39th year of his reign, Asa was diseased in his feet and his disease became severe. Yet in his disease, he did not seek the Lord but sought help from physicians.

And Asa slept with his fathers, dying in the 41st year of his reign. They buried him in the tomb that he had cut for himself in the city of David. They laid him on a beer that had been filled with various kinds of spices prepared by the perfumer's art.

And they made a very great fire in his honor. Amen. All right, so Asa is now confronted by Hanani. Recall that he had already been confronted by a prophet before. And now, and that prophet being named, let's see, Azariah.

Azariah, and now he is confronted by Hanani. Okay, so who is Hanani? He is a prophet. He is the father of a other prophet named Jehu. And first King 16, I'll go ahead and read verses one through four.

In the word of the Lord came to Jehu, the son of Hanani, against Baasha, saying, since I exalted you out of the dust and made you leader over my people Israel, and you have walked in the way of Jeroboam and have made my people Israel to sin, provoking me to anger with their sins, behold, I will utterly sweep away Baasha and his house.

And I will make your house like the house of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat. Anyone belonging to Baasha who dies in the city, the dog shall eat, and anyone of his who dies in the field, the birds of the heavens shall eat.

Asa’s Alliance With Syria and the Meaning of Trust

All right, so Baasha, if you remember, is Asa's primary enemy across the boundary of Israel and Judah. Baasha representing a new power on the throne in Israel. And Jehu confronts Baasha. And we read about that in 1 Kings.

Now this passage that we're reading about here is not in Kings. It is something that the chronicler, it's details that he adds in addition to what we have from 1 Kings. So he tells us, not only did Jehu confront Hanani, but Jehu's, excuse me, not only did Jehu confront Baasha, but Jehu's father, Hanani, confronted Asa.

So he ends up, as you see in verse 10, he ends up putting him in prison. That might have something to do with why he put him in prison. Maybe it was a little easier to put in prison a prophet who is from Israel, who isn't just from Judah.

So this is a prophet of Israel. This is not a prophet of Judah who is in Judah. How has Asa relied on the king of Syria? Well, if you remember, he told the king of Syria to cut off his alliance with Israel and go ahead and attack them.

And so he's relying on them. Now, the land, the set of prohibitions against alliances, I think are a little more complicated than just the people weren't allowed to have any alliances with anyone at all.

My understanding, as I look at the prohibitions against making alliances with the people in the land, there's two ways of looking at it. I think they weren't allowed to have alliances with any people who were in the land.

And secondly, they weren't allowed to have alliances with any to advance the cause that God was going to give them through his own power. Okay, so Syria, if you remember him saying that they had had an alliance with Syria before, I don't think that that was necessarily wrong.

Basically some agreement that they wouldn't attack each other, et cetera. Syria is way over here. It's not a power within Canaan, but then to use the power of Syria to conquer the land that God has promised, that's the, I believe that that is the main violation that's going on here.

So this is how he's not relying on the Lord. It's not just in making any kind of alliance, but it's particularly using some outside power to conquer the very land that God has promised. That is the difficulty, rather than just using the strength that he would give him directly.

And of course he has not blessed taking over Israel at all anyway. That is the Northern kingdom of Israel. Also, just to reframe that, think about what's happening. Syria is, everybody understands their power is coming from their gods.

When Syria is conquering Israelite cities by the power of Syrian gods, there's something very strong religious that's being said other than just that Asa does not trust the Lord to defend him. It's specifically, he's trusting Syrian gods to attack Israel.

So think about it that way too, that all these armies have gods behind them. 7b, therefore is the host of the king of Syria escaped out of your hand? All right, the host, meaning the army, it is escaped in that they will avoid destruction.

Now, this is an interesting statement because you might think, well, Syria had nothing to do with Judah. They weren't attacking Judah. They weren't, Judah wasn't going to attack them. What does this mean that they're escaped?

Why is that a big deal? Well, later on, they will be at war. That's the main contention that's going on in Isaiah chapter seven, when Isaiah really opens up and you get the Emmanuel prophecy and all these things.

What's happening there is that Syria is coming against Judah and there'll be a number of battles fought. Eventually God does protect them from Syria, but it will not be as, there will be more conflict than there would be otherwise because Asa has failed to honor the Lord in this.

The Ethiopians, the Libyans, and God’s Faithful Deliverance

All right, 8a, we're not the Ethiopians and the Lubam, a huge host with chariots and horsemen, exceedingly many. All right, how large were the hosts of the Ethiopians? Who looked this up and figured this out?

Because it was just a little bit earlier in the book. Anybody? So in second Chronicles 14, nine, it said, Zerah the Ethiopian came out against them with an army of a million men and 300 chariots. Okay, so a million men and 300 chariots.

And then the Lubam, who is that? They're probably part of the same army. If you go all the way back to 1213, it says, so King Rehoboam grew strong in Jerusalem and reigned. Rehoboam was 41 years old. See, is that not the passage that I wanted?

12 .3, excuse me, not 12 .13, 12 .3. With 1 ,200 chariots and 60 ,000 horsemen and the people were without number who came with him from Egypt, Libyans, Sukkim, and Ethiopians. I think if you're looking at different translations, it says different things.

What did, what is the word instead of Lubam that's here in second Chronicles 16 and the ESV says Libyans. Yeah, so here you have the Libyans mentioned before. So the Libyans being near Egypt come and attack with Egypt.

They come and attack with the Ethiopians, et cetera. So probably part, he is probably referring to the battle that we already heard about where the Ethiopians came. It's just that the Libyans weren't mentioned at that, in that earlier passage where they attacked Asa.

All right, so God had protected them even though the Ethiopians and Libyans had many chariots, had many horses. Remember chariots and horses are a common symbol of power. I mean, they're not just a symbol of power, they are power but they're the kind of power that God has specifically forbidden his people to have much of because he wants to show his own strength and their weakness.

So even though the Ethiopians and Libyans had very many horses and chariots, God gave Asa strength to resist them and defeat them. And how? Well, Asa prayed and God gave strength. 8b, yet because you relied on Jehovah, he delivered them into your hand.

Okay, so he prayed to him, God gave strength. In fact, he gave them so much strength that they were able to go get the spoiled Gerar in the neighboring cities, et cetera. Remember, they kept following them until they ended up, was it the Philistines they ended up conquering because they were so full of zeal as they were chasing the Ethiopians.

And the point of all this is that God has been faithful to Asa. He's protected him from things in the past. So there was no reason to fear. God had already demonstrated how good he is, how much he can protect.

So this is especially foolish. 9a, for the eyes of Jehovah run to and fro throughout the whole earth. Okay, let's go ahead and look at this related passage here. Zechariah 3, nine through 10 says, for behold on the stone that I have set before Joshua on a single stone with seven eyes, I will engrave its inscription, declares the Lord of hosts.

And I will remove the iniquity of this land in a single day. And that day declares the Lord of hosts. Every one of you will invite his neighbor to come under his vine and under his fig tree. And later on, and four, eight through 10 says, then the word of the Lord came to me saying, the hands of Zerubbabel have laid the foundation of this house, his hands shall also complete it.

Then you will know that the Lord of hosts has sent me to you. For whoever has despised the day of small things shall rejoice, shall see the plumb line in the hand of Israel. Oh, rest of the verse, sorry.

The seven eyes, the seven are the eyes of the Lord which range through the whole earth. Okay, so it talks about a stone before with seven eyes and the, it's likely talking about facets, right? Like a gym has different facets, the facets being the different faces of the gym.

But this is saying that these are the spirit's eyes. He sees through the whole earth. These are the eyes of the Lord. And in Revelation, you have that picture a number of time. There's the seven spirits who are before the throne, who go out before the whole earth, et cetera.

Same picture, it's talking about the Holy Spirit. The seven spirits are the one spirit. His omniscience is described as just a sevenfold vision or being a sevenfold spirit. So yeah, God, the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, just like as though seven spirits running through the whole earth.

Proverbs 15, verse three, says that the eyes of the Lord are in every place keeping watch on the evil and on the good. The question that we have for the catechism this week is what are the words before me and the first commandment mean?

These words before me and the first commandment means that God who sees all things, takes notice of and is much displeased with the sin of having any other God. That's what's going here. He, God has seen everything and he has seen that he has relied on the gods of Syria, ultimately by relying on the armies of Syria.

Nine B, to show himself strong on behalf of them whose heart is perfect before him. Okay, what does it mean for the Lord to show himself strong, for him to demonstrate his greatness in salvation? How is this to those whose heart is perfect toward him?

He is faithful to those who are faithful. How does this relate to the eyes? It's a natural implication of the eyes, right? If he's going throughout the whole earth to find the opportunities of who should be delivered, who should not, et cetera, he knows.

He knows who are those who are faithful to him. And it's interesting that Hanani spoke of a perfect heart because earlier, if you remember in 1517, it had said, but the high places were not taken out of Israel.

Nevertheless, the heart of Asa was wholly true all his days. This is the same phrase here, his heart is wholly true. He has a perfect heart. So Asa has been described as having a perfect heart all his days.

But then in this final chapter of his life, he's kind of forfeited that. Yeah, he's forfeited the fullness of the reward that he would have. 9C, in this you have done foolishly, for from now on you shall have wars.

Okay, so in what sense were Asa's actions foolish? Well, he knew the mercy of the Lord. It's not just that it was foolish to not trust God. It's especially foolish because he knew better. He already knew that God was a strong God and able to save.

God had already saved him from much. He could save him again. Yeah, I've heard an analogy before. I'm trying to remember what the analogy was. If you all know who Sitan Brutoncate is, he used this analogy one time that I think is pretty good.

It's about a man who had just immigrated here and was trying to figure out how to make tea. And he started to rip open the tea bag. And someone said, no, no, no, you just throw the tea bag in. And so he throws the tea bag in and then he's trying to put sugar in it.

So he takes sugar and throws the sugar bag in because he thinks that's what you're supposed to do. Like, that's not really foolish because he didn't know any better. He was trying to, you know, or it's, so the Bible uses foolish in a lot of different ways.

Sometimes it does use it as ignorance, but the kind of sinful, evil foolishness that the Bible talks about is where you do know better and you still act contrary to that knowledge. So it's not like just being ignorant.

It's knowing and acting contrary to the knowledge that God has given. All right, what wars will he have? He will have wars outside the land of Canaan. If you remember, it said that we had looked at two verses that looked contradictory before.

One said that he had no war all those days, all that time. And then in 1 Kings, it said he warred with Baasha all his days. So it seems that he has the standard civil war that's just going on all the time, but he's been free from external wars.

So at this point, he's gonna start having external wars. That's the, that's really the only sensible way, I believe, of resolving these things. All right, and how does this compare to former times? Well, before he was, he did not have those wars outside the land of Canaan.

Walking by Faith After God Has Already Shown Mercy

Okay, so that is the end of this passage here. In what ways has the Lord demonstrated his faithfulness to you? What implications does this have for your obligation to the Lord? How does the Lord discipline foolishness?

God has been merciful to us, especially if you have been saved from sin and death. You have been saved in an incredibly great way that extends beyond all the other ways that you will be saved for the remainder of your life, really, until you go to be with him and are raised from the dead.

Until that point, the salvation, your initial salvation really is the greatest one. So any other time that you come up against some situation and you choose not to trust the Lord because you don't know whether or not he could pull you out of it, you have something greater that you're looking at behind you, and you're saying, well, he saved me from this greater thing, but I don't know if I can trust him in this lesser thing.

Now I know that a lot of the things that we face are different than sin and death. A lot of things that we face are more, they affect our eyes more differently, but you have to walk by faith and not by sight.

It can't just be about what you see and what appears to be the level of danger. So yeah, God's eyes are going throughout the whole earth. He upholds those whose hearts are perfect before him. We can make all the standard caveats of none being righteous before God and the only righteousness being righteousness in Christ, but if you are walking in his ways, there is no need for correction.

And the only kind of, yeah, and you will find him upholding you through every trial if you trust in him. Any questions?

Yes. So then, when it says that the king of Syria scared his hands, then was there an actual mission to actually, he was supposed to destroy him?

No, he just wasn't supposed to rely on Syria. He wasn't supposed to go ask Syria to attack Israel. But later on, when there is a war between Judah and Syria, it would have gone better for Judah if he had not trusted in Syria.

And this is exactly what happens a number of times too, because they trusted in Assyria, Assyria ends up attacking them. It's every nation they end up trusting ends up attacking them. Doesn't really work out for them.

Okay, anything else? All right, let's go ahead and close in prayer. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word. We ask that it would guide us today that as we come before you, just like Asa had prayed for strength when he faced the Ethiopians, and he found it and he did not pray at this moment, and he rather trusted the Syrians.

We are coming to you in prayer. We are coming to you because we know that you are capable of bringing us through all things. Jesus' name, amen.