Where Do You Turn?

2 Chronicles 16:7-11

Intro:

Have you ever been walking down a trail, or a walkway and you walked through a spider web? You can feel it, but most of the time you can’t see it. It feels like you are tangled in a net. You just kind of reach and pinch and you hope that you grab the web, but you’re guessing. You’re hoping your reaching in the right place, but you won’t know until you feel it.

Sometimes that is a lot like our lives. Sometimes we walk into situations, circumstances, or unexpected troubles of life. We don’t see how to make it better so we just start reaching for solutions and hoping things will get better.

Sometimes we react to what is happening by reaching for a solution in the wrong place.

MAJOR POINT: Problems can cause us to panic, but where we turn in times of turmoil can have a dramatic effect on our future.

TRANSITION:

we need to always beware of solving problems without including God.

Today’s message is on Where Do You Turn to address major problems or concerns you have.

The main characters:

3 Main Characters:

1. The Lord

2. Hanani the seer

a. Whenever he is mentioned, Jehu is identified as the “son of Hanani,” likely to distinguish this Jehu from another Jehu, son of Jehoshaphat. The two prophets, father and son, are set in parallel in Chronicles: Hanani critiques Asa, and Jehu, Hanani’s son, later critiques Jehoshaphat, Asa’s son (2 Chr 19:1–3; Knoppers, “Relationship,” 284). However, Jehu, son of Hanani, goes to Baasha, King of Israel, in Kings (1 Kgs 16:1–4), not to Asa, King of Judah, like in Chronicles; the reason why is debated.1

b.

3. Asa king of Judah

a. the son of Abijah and Maacah.2

b. Asa’s religious reforms included:

i. ridding the kingdom of his ancestors’ idols (Solomon, Rehoboam and Abijah) (1 Kgs 15:12);

ii. abolishing the qedoshim (קָדֵשׁ, qadesh; often translated “male cult prostitutes” [ESV]; 1 Kgs 15:12);

iii. removing Maacah from her position as queen mother and destroying the object she made for the goddess Asherah (1 Kgs 15:13).3

Best guess on personality of Asa: ambitious to do well and succeed.

Asa was successful:

“In his days the land had rest for ten years.”4 — 2 Chronicles 14:1

And Asa did what was good and right in the eyes of the LORD his God. 3 He took away the foreign altars and the high places and broke down the pillars and cut down the Asherim 4 and commanded Judah to seek the LORD, the God of their fathers, and to keep the law and the commandment5 — 2 Chronicles 14:2-4

MAJOR POINT: There are personality types that the minute you mention a problem the mind starts searching for a solution. These are the types of people that get a tremendous amount of things done. These are the people that no job is too big. They are driven by ambition and solution.

However, there is a challenge that comes with it. What do you do when you can’t fix your problem with your own strength? WHERE DO YOU TURN?

Recipes for dangerous decisions:

1. Turning to our own resources to do God’s calling.

a. One of the subtle dangers we can meet following God is to allow his blessings to become our source instead of the blessing giver.

b. This seems to be exactly what Asa does. He turns to the blessings God had supplied to fix his problem.

2. Not every problem we face is ours to solve.

a. Fix-it-up Felix

i. My nickname in CHBOLC

ii. It was meant in a positive way

iii. But I was always trying to solve every issue.

b. Some problems are existing fully for his glory not our solution.

c. Asa was SO SOLUTION focused that he LOST SIGHT OF GOD.

3. Trusting in mankind with God-sized problems

a. Because you relied on the king of Syria6 “did not rely on the LORD your God, the army of the king of Syria has escaped you”7

b.

THE BIBLICAL PROCESS FOR FACING PROBLEMS:

1. Examine your heart.

2. Ask the Lord what to do.

3. Be patient if the solution isn’t what you’d hoped.

4. Remember what God has done in the past.

5. Use discernment from the Lord.

6. Do not do anything without God.

9 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.”8 — 2 Chronicles 16:9

9 And the head of Ephraim is Samaria,

and the head of Samaria is the son of Remaliah.

If you are not firm in faith,

you will not be firm at all.’ ” 9 — Isaiah 7:9