When success turns to failure

After a prayer, we'll sing that doxology, ascribe greatness to our God, the Rock. His work is perfect and all his works, his ways are just. That's 18 in Songs of Fellowship, but first a prayer.

Father, we do just bring to you this service today. We thank you for who you are and for what you've done for us and the possibilities of the Lord's day as God comes amongst his children and speaks through his word and later in the day enables us to remember the death of our Lord Jesus. Now, whoever we are and whatever's brought us into this lovely sanctuary this morning, we pray that you will meet with us.

We commit ourselves to you. The ministry of today amongst boys and girls and young people, the fellowship over at Maybridge and all the communities of Christian people in this town, will you bless and get honor and glory to your name for Jesus' sake, amen. Now ascribe greatness.

His work is perfect and all his ways are just. The glory of faithfulness and great love in justice, good and upright is his. The glory of faithfulness and great love in justice, good and upright is his.

We can never make too much of the cross of our Lord Jesus. Whenever the cross is eclipsed, the Christian message no longer exists because our hope for eternity rests upon the fact that that Son of God hung and bled and died for us. Not just the cross, also his mighty resurrection.

Likewise, you can make, you can never make too much of that. Go then to 2 Chronicles and chapter 14. We'll not read all these three chapters.

I'll give you a synopsis in terms of the readings and try and fill in in my attempt to address. Verse 2, chapter 14, 2 Chronicles. Asa did what was good and right in the eyes of the Lord his God.

He removed the foreign altars and the high places, smashed the sacred stones and cut down the Asherah poles. He commanded Judah to seek the Lord, the God of their fathers, and to obey his laws and commands. He removed the high places and incense altars in every town in Judah, and the kingdom was at peace under him.

He built up the fortified cities of Judah since the land was at peace. No one was at war with him during those years, for the Lord gave him rest. Let us build up these towns, he said to Judah, and put walls round them with towers, gates and bars.

The land is still ours 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.

Verse 9, Zerah the Cushite marched out against them with a vast army and three hundred chariots and came as far as Marisha. Asa went out to meet him, and they took up battle positions in the valley of Zephathah near Marisha. Then Asa called to the Lord his God and said, you've got the NIV, read this with me.

Lord, there is no one like you to help the powerless against the mighty. Help us, O Lord our God, for we rely on you, and in your name we have come against this vast army. O Lord, you are our God.

Do not let man prevail against you. Now we'll go on with me reading into the 15th chapter. The Spirit of God came upon Azariah son of Obed.

He went out to meet Asa and said to him, listen to me, Asa and all, Judah and Benjamin, the Lord is with you. When you are with him, if you seek him, he will be found by you, but if you forsake him, he will forsake you. For a long time Israel was without the true God, without a priest to teach him, without the law, but in their distress they turned to the Lord, the God of Israel, and sought him, and he was found by them.

In those days it was not safe to travel about, for all the inhabitants of the lands were in great turmoil. One nation was being crushed by another, and one city by another, because God was troubling them with every kind of distress. But as for you, be strong and do not give up, for your work will be rewarded.

When Asa heard these words and the prophecy of Azariah son of Obed the prophet, he took courage. Verse 7 of chapter 16, another prophet features on the scene. Hanani, the seer came to Asa king of Judah and said to him, because you relied on the king of Aram and not on the Lord your God, the army of the king of Aram has escaped from your hand.

Were not the Cushites and Libyans a mighty army with great numbers of chariots and horsemen? Yet when you relied on the Lord, he delivered them into your hand. For the eyes of the Lord range throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him. You have done a foolish thing, and from now on you will be at war.

Asa was angry with the seer because of this. He was so enraged that he put him in prison. At the same time, Asa brutally oppressed some of the people.

The events of Asa's reign from beginning to end are written in the book of the kings of Judah and Israel. In the 39th year of his reign, Asa was afflicted with a disease in his feet. Though his disease was severe, even in his illness he did not seek help from the Lord but only from the physicians.

Then in the 41st year of his reign, Asa died and rested with his fathers. I want to address you in this series from 2 Chronicles on when success turns to failure. I am using the overhead projector because that will help us at least this morning with such a large span of Scripture to just home in on the main points.

There are three or four snapshots that you get of Asa, this king of Judah, in these three chapters. You get the snapshot when he is right at the beginning of his reign, verse 2 of the 14th chapter, Asa did what was good and right in the eyes of the Lord his God. You get another snapshot in his 15th year when we read in the 15th chapter that Asa was determined to do those things which were pleasing to the Lord.

Look at the 15th verse of the 15th chapter, they sought God eagerly and he was found by them, so the Lord gave them rest on every side, a comment that refers to the king and to the benefits of his reign. But then in the 39th year of his reign, you discover things start to go somewhat off course and Asa does not respond to what he knows to be the will of the Lord. Thus the prophet Hanani in the 7th verse and onwards chastises him and in the 9th verse says, the eyes of the Lord range throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to Him.

You have done a foolish thing. And the last snapshot, in the 41st year of his reign, we read in the 13th verse, Asa died and rested with his fathers and just prior to that we are told that though he was ill and his disease was severe, verse 12, he did not seek help from the Lord. It's not a word that's in the English dictionary because it's slang, but it's a good word.

It's the word stickability. And it's a word that's basic, I think, to the teachings of the Old Testament and the New Testament in terms of what God wants from you and from me, my dear friends. We're looking into the book of Chronicles, not because we've got a particular fascination for Old Testament history, but simply because God has ordained that records of men's lives be encapsulated in these Scriptures so that you can learn from their strengths and also from their weaknesses.

Now, our Lord Jesus, when He was on earth, talking about ideal discipleship, makes reference to the man who puts his hand to the plow and doesn't look back. Such a man is fit for the kingdom of heaven. He gets the congratulations of the Savior.

He also says, he who endures to the end shall be saved. And all that has a lot to do with stickability. So, here's a rating, one to ten.

One, no stickability at all. I'm not talking about perspiration. There's a lot of stickability in the congregation at this point in that area.

Ten, high stickability. Where do you rate yourself? Where are you? Have you been at point ten and slipped back to point five? Are you at point five and possibly slipping back to zero? Well, that's the sort of challenge from the Word of God for you this morning as we discuss this business about turning success into failure. Generally, we think people learn from their failures and move to success, but in this instance, it was the reverse order unfortunately.

Now, from the second verse, or if you please, from the first verse down to the eighth verse of the fourteenth chapter, you find that Azar exercises when he becomes king of Judah a surprising prudence. Prudence means discretion. Surprising? Well, if you check the twenty-first verse of the thirteenth chapter, you'll discover that his granddad did not exactly help him.

I mean, he had fourteen wives and twenty-two sons and sixteen daughters. And if you drop down the chapters to the fifteenth chapter, you'll discover that his grandmother, Nica, she also wasn't very helpful to the young Azar as he developed, as he grew up, because she had made some obnoxious idol. She had placed it in the temple area, and this obscene thing became the focal point of worship.

So, when I tell you that when Azar became king, he exercised a surprising prudence, that's what I have in mind. He, like many of us, was perhaps enthused when he was called into the service of God, and a clean sweep occurs, as in the fifth verse, he removes the high places and incense altars in every town of Judah. You see, there there was a great deal of idolatry, and idolatry is something that's offensive in the eyes of God.

And idolatry didn't start with the Old Testament or the New Testament. It's still with us today. There are people who make their bank balance their idol, their television their idol.

Anything that takes priority over against God is in effect your idol. But Azar sweeps these things on one side, and he is given ten years' rest. Look at the sixth verse, as he becomes the king of Judah, the Lord gave him rest because of his prudence.

I think that one of the missing factors in the lives of many people today is entering into the rest of God. That doesn't mean having a snooze on a Sunday, even when somebody is preaching. What it means is being peaceful in your heart, being able to cope as some of those dear Russian people I was with with Rowena last Sunday in a church almost packed with basically older people, being able to rest, though many of them had run seventy years on this earth and had known the horrors of two world wars and the problems of communist philosophy being worked through in their society.

And yet you discover that they had entered into the rest that God grants. Now when you feel restful, when you feel peaceful, that's a time to stock up on your spiritual reserves, as politically Azar used the opportunity to make himself stronger militarily. Verse eight, Azar had an army of three hundred thousand men from Judah equipped with large shields.

He decided that he would use these ten years of tranquility to make the land as firm and as strong as it could be. The land is ours, he says, verse eight, because we have sought the Lord our God, verse seven rather, we sought Him and He has given us rest on every side so they built and prospered. One of the things I thank God for was that when I was a kid my parents sent me to Sunday school and in our Sunday school you had to learn the good old authorised version of the Bible, not all of it by heart but chunks of it.

I've never forgotten those earlier days and the memory that I still have of the authorised version as built into my mind and hopefully worked through in degree in my personality were the truths of Scripture, build and prosper during days of calm and tranquility. That's what Azar will teach us in terms of our Christian discipleship. He exercises a surprising prudence.

But then I argue he demonstrates a recurring principle. Now what is that? Well, when things have been going quiet for a while, God in His grace, even though you perhaps don't think it is grace at that point, allows things to come that completely ruffle the surface, that cause the sea that was a calm, that was becalmed to become tempestuous. Now, you remember that with the disciples of our Lord.

On occasions they had this particular problem to cope with. What was He training them for? Well, the day when He would be removed from them, when they wouldn't have the sort of rest and calmness of knowing the physical presence of Jesus and things got tough. Well, our Lord teaches them on two or three occasions during His public ministry that as the sea gets, and the waves get high and the winds come in strong, so the man who is called to belong to Him is still to cope and to be able to persevere during difficult days because of those blessings that He has harnessed and taken into the fiber of His personality during the days of calm and ease and quietness.

Now, for Esau the problem was a man who boasted with the name of Zerah. Zerah the Cushite or Ethiopian, verse 9. He was the bully of the Middle East. In fact, here is, if you like, a sort of anticipation.

Or to put it another way, what you've had during these past few days with Kuwait and Iraq is a replay of this. Zerah comes into the land of Judah and he's got a vast army. If you check the NIV's footnote at the bottom, you will see that the army actually numbered one million.

Whether that's a literal number, I think perhaps not. I think it's perhaps hyperbole. In other words, it's used symbolically to describe that it was a mammoth number of people that Zerah brings into the land of Judah and threatens Esau the king.

And the bottom line is this. How will he cope? How do you cope when difficulty comes your way? When like Pastor Lamb in Canton you don't know whether the next day will bring news that you are going to be executed or not. Not many of us are tested like that, but we are tested, aren't we? Sometimes it may be defection in our family circles.

Perhaps our dearest and most loved leaves us or plays fast and loose with us. Perhaps the whole of our world seems to collapse in terms of materialism and the loss of goods and jobs and so forth. Many of you have known that.

Now here is the challenge. How do you cope in that situation? Well, how does Esau cope? Now, it's interesting that Esau has good theology. Look at verse 10.

He doesn't just sit in a rocking chair and allow Zerah to come in. He knows the nature of the problem, but he goes out to meet him. And I like this next expression.

They, the king and the people, took up battle positions. But realizing the enormity of the problem, verse 11, Esau comes towards the Lord and he cries, and here is a little bit of intercession squeezed into the narrative, which is actually one of the finest prayers in the whole of the Old Testament. Thank you brothers who helped us in prayer earlier on.

Prayer can be brief and sometimes it can be prolonged. Well, here is brevity if you please. Lord, there is no one like you to help the powerless against the mighty.

Help us, O Lord, our God, for we rely on you and in your name. We have come against this vast army. O Lord, you are our God.

Do not let man prevail against you. This king has sized up a political problem in terms of a theological dimension. You say, there you go again, using your big words.

What do you mean? Seventy years ago, the British Museum, Karl Marx is pushing his pen. He gives the world das Kapital. Lenin is influenced by what he has to say.

Vladimir Ulyanov, the Russian name of Lenin, talks about religion being the opium of the people. Looks for a day when religion will be taken from the surface of the world. And he seems to harness all power.

And the microscopic church in Russia has to say, O Lord, you are our God. Do not let this man prevail against you. You see, the problem is not just political.

Neither is the one with Kuwait and Iraq and the whole of the Middle East theater. Do not you understand? Are you so simplistic as Christian people that you have got no conception of this great sovereign God working out His plan and purposes? You will have the nations as the dust in the balance. He will have these proud men as grasshoppers before Him, says the prophet Isaiah.

And here is this King Esau demonstrating this recurring principle in his life that when God brings testing, it enables a man who has become mature to rise to the heights of his maturity and to relate his problem to the sovereignty of God. Work through your Christianity, my friends. You ask why on a hot Sunday we look into the Word of God? Because here is basic wisdom without which you will be impoverished in your life.

Here are principles bound up for those who have zeal in unpackaging them that will bless the ones who make these discoveries through time and on into eternity. Esau exercises a surprising prudence. He demonstrates a recurring principle.

God was involved in this problem, in this political difficulty. God did come to the aid, and this magnificent army of Zerah was routed by the force of the living God. But then Esau experiences, along with the rest of the children of Judah, a sensational reversal.

You say, what do you mean? Well, you've got to get the back cloth of history before you can really come in close to this point. Drop into verse 3 of the fifteenth chapter. In fact, I think we'll go on further to verse 5, which discusses the economic conditions of the world in these days.

If the Times or Independent or Guardian or what have you, newspapers have been about in those days, this is the sort of comment that they would be making. In those days it was not safe to travel about. All the inhabitants of the lands were in great turmoil.

One nation was being crushed by another, one city by another. And the reason for this anarchy, this international disorder, is again theological. Because God was troubling them with every kind of distress.

You see, that was the sort of situation prior to Esau coming to the throne. So if ever a man needed to be informed of and commit himself to the belief in the sovereignty of God, it is Esau. What is the most desperate situation that can ever hit a nation? Well, it's not the stock market plummeting downwards.

It's not the freezing of oil supplies. The most difficult situation for any nation to deal with is when God goes silent. Did you hear that? Martin Luther, on an occasion when he was very troubled, he said, Be not silent before me, O my God.

Send me sword, send me pestilence, send me disease, but God, be not silent to me. When God is silent, the world is in trouble. Verse 3, chapter 15, For a long time Israel was without the true God, without a priest to teach, without the law, without God, without a preacher, without the Bible.

I argue that that is the most serious condition that any nation can find itself under. But the teaching is this, that when a nation comes to the end of its own resources and turns to the Lord, they discover that God is prepared to turn to them. It's what one theologian calls the mirror theology.

Here is a man turning to the Lord. Here is a people turning to the Lord. And they discover as they look in the mirror that that's always been the attitude of God.

They seek out God and are found by God. The last part of verse 4. Do you know what? Now, some of you don't know me at all. Others of you do, and I address my remarks basically to the latter, because you have 20 years here at the Tab to judge me by.

If I was not the pastor of Worthing Tab, but just was a resident in Worthing, do you know as a Christian person what I would look for? It would be Sunday by Sunday to come into a church. I'm not necessarily saying the Tabernacle, though I would choose the Tab inasmuch as I always delight to hear my colleague Tim Saunders preach. I would want a church where I was constantly being reminded and sometimes disturbed by the Word of God.

Let me illustrate my point. A young couple that I married years ago, I remember wrote to me. This is my London days.

They wrote to me when I was down in Worthing telling me a little bit as to what had happened in their lives. And the girl went on to say, we are being stretched under the ministry of, and I named the pastor. Now, that's a good old-fashioned phrase, to be stretched under the ministry.

You see, I congratulate this young woman. She was about 25 at the time of writing to me. She wanted herself and her husband constantly to be brought face to face with the living Word of the Lord.

You do need that, my friend. You do need to try and concentrate to the Word of God being proclaimed, and then to modify your behavior as a result of hearing that proclamation. That's why you need to be consistent in church attendance and listening to men who are prepared to take the Word of God in the Old Testament and in the New Testament and blow the critics, say this is God's Word for the 20th century.

And it is so important that you hear it as individuals, and the nation hears it as a whole. Well, you see, here's the great reversal. Israel for a long time had been without the true God, without a priest to teach, and without the law.

But, verse 1, the Spirit of God comes upon Azariah, son of Oded. He goes and he talks to Esau. And as a result of hearing the Word of God, verse 8, the king takes courage, and the reforms that he has instigated, he now deepens so that his reformation begins to affect the fabric of Israel's society, of Judah's society, to the extent that even his grandmother, or mother if you're reading it in the authorized version, Maka, is castigated by her son or grandson because of this obnoxious, obscene idol.

The Word of God comes, and there is a reversal in the whole life pattern of Judah. And that's what I would love to see, wouldn't you, in this country? Oh, I do hope you'll come out this evening, because I want to tell you of a country, the like of which I've never been in before. God knows in His grace and with your kind permission, I've traveled in many areas of this world, but never, never come across a land so ripe for the gospel.

Esau takes courage. He repairs the altar that had broken down in front of the portico of the Lord's temple, verse 8. He gets things right, not only in his own life, but throughout the nation, and in his family life, and that is so marvelous, and no wonder that Esau is so acclaimed by God and by Israel at that point in his ministry. And we read in the 19th verse, There was no more war until the thirty-fifth year of Esau's reign.

Esau experiences a surprising prudence, demonstrates a recurring principle, experiences a sensational reversal, and now, and sadly, portrays a tragic decline. Chapter 16 will tell you all about it. I don't understand how men can preach the gospel of God around the world, and suddenly in their old age defect.

It doesn't happen often, but it does happen. Some of you remember Don Hattersley, the man who most impressed John Macara when he first came to this church. If I remember John's testimony right, John said, I want to be like that man.

Now he was a man who maintained an enthusiasm. From one to ten, he hit ten and stuck. But there is a possibility, I speak tenderly to older people, there is a possibility that at the end, because the devil has special pressures for older people, that you can retreat and drop back from the position that you had known earlier in your life.

It was around the thirty-ninth year of the reign of Esau that he got himself into trouble. And if you want to analyze his problem, well, really it's quite absurd. You see, from the first verse of the sixteenth chapter, you've got spelled out the fact that he has a difficulty similar to what you discovered in the eighth verse of the fourteenth chapter, namely a foreign army came into Israel and he was afraid, into Judah, and he was afraid.

Now the incredible thing was that the temptation to be afraid earlier in life was much greater because the numbers were far superior. You see, this is like comparing a whale to a small fish. He's not been afraid of the major, then why should he be afraid of the minor? Now some of you older friends will know this, and as I say, I speak with tenderness in my heart.

Sometimes as the years go by, the problem that you could have coped with last decade and got into proportion now seems to be mountainous. This is why we need to pray for older friends as we beseech their intercessions on our behalf. And so Esau, he uses the ingenuity of the years, but it's a secular ingenuity.

It's not something that has been given him by the Lord. He does a treaty with another king and so on. The historical details are really quite irrelevant.

The principle is this, that eclipsed in the mind of the aging Esau is the God who has been faithful yesteryear. So what does God do? Well, in His mercy, He sends a prophet to speak to him, verse 7. And unfortunately, Esau becomes the first king of Judah ever to incarcerate a prophet because he didn't like what the prophet had to say. The eyes of the Lord, verse 9. Reigns throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to Him.

You have done a foolish thing, and from now on you will be at war. So what does Esau do? He increases his foolishness. He's angry with the seer.

He's enraged. He puts him in prison. Do away with the dreamer, you get rid of the dream.

That was the folly of Jacob's brothers, of Jacob's sons. Here is Joseph. Let's put him in prison.

We'll not bow down to him. What he says of the Lord is untrue. Silence him and you'll silence the revelation.

Isn't that absurd? You cannot silence the Word of God. You cannot chain the Word of God. You couldn't do it in China.

You can't do it in Russia. You can't do it in Israel or Judah. So Esau is angry.

But God in His mercy, and I use that word advisedly, He allows a sickness to come to Esau. God will sometimes chastise His children. I have no truck with the theology that says that God does not punish.

He does punish. But He doesn't punish as though He's a tyrant or a savage, wanting to inflict pain. He causes difficulties to come into life often in order to get His children back into line.

So this Esau has diseased feet. And instead of going to the God who can heal every disease, He turns to physicians, probably just quackery. In those days, he did not seek help from the Lord, but only from the physicians.

Then, in the forty-first year of his reign, Esau died and rested with his fathers, success turning to failure. But there is no reason why it had to be like that, nor why it has to be like that for you. I preached an address which is a balance on this one some two years ago at the town.

Change but not decay. And I brought to you Israel, Jacob, the final moments of his life as he recovered his spirituality. And as he went out into the brightness of God's tomorrow as a man full of faith.

Revelation 21 talks about the overcomers. This is what God wants you and me to be. Those who will overcome.

How do you overcome? How do you remain in faith? By taking heed to the word of the Lord. By listening to the prophets and to the preachers. By coming before the Lord and making Him the priority of your life.

By cleansing yourself continually of those idols which would otherwise infest you. I'm not saying that Esau wasn't saved. I think he was.

But I think that he left an unhappy testimony right at the end. So, let's learn from this negative example. Seize on to what was good in the earlier years of his life.

And for us and all the people especially, may the last part of your life be the best. As one poet once said, speaking of old age, all the sugar is at the bottom of the cup. Let's pray.

Loving Father, we thank you for your word. Tucked away in the dusty corners. Sterling truth.

For us to live by. Bless everyone here, Lord. Some folk have had a rough ride in the last few months.

Maybe years. Some, Lord, have perhaps felt guilty at times when they've been in the tab. Because it's been pointed out that you did a lot in early years and middle years.

And now they're letting go somewhere. Lord, may the word not just come as discipline, but as balm. Because you show in your mirror theology that when a man seeks for you, he discovers that you've been seeking for him.

You're always waiting. You're always the God of Asa. Ever wanting Asa to return.

Ever wanting us, however crippled our feet, however diseased our hearts, to come back to you. We thank you that you're a gracious, compassionate God. The Father of all mercies.

We, your humble servants, entreat you for your forgiveness. And ask that as for us, the following days of our lives may be lived in such a fashion that when eternity dawns, we'll hardly notice the difference as we pass out from this world into the immediate, beautiful presence of our Lord God. Grant it, and throughout eternity, to you be all honor, praise, and glory.

Amen. Let's stand and sing the Lord's Prayer.