In the first ten years of Asa’s reign there was peace and prosperity in the land of
Judah and Benjamin because he demolished all the foreign altars and pagan shrines and commanded his people to seek the Lord their God. Anyone who turned their backs on God would be sentenced to death. God granted his peace and rest upon Judah for thirty-five years.

In thirty-sixth year of Asa’s reign Israel came to attack and prevented anyone from leaving and entering the territory of Judah. Asa then sought help from the king of Aram by sending him the gifts and silver and gold and making a treaty between the two nations. Israel withdrew its troops from Judah on account of Aram’s help. However a seer named Hanani came to King Asa and said to him, “Because you relied on the king of Aram rather than on the Lord you God, you missed your chance to destroy the army of the king of Aram” (2 Chronicles 16:7). Asa became so enraged that he threw the seer into prison. Later in the thirty-ninth year of his reign he came down with a severe foot disease. As the Bible says, “Even in his severity of his illness, Asa didn’t seek the Lord his God for healing instead of his doctors” (v. 12). When he died, he was buried in the tomb he’d prepared for himself and the people of Judah built a huge funeral fire in honor of his name and achievements.

How could a man use to commit himself to seeking God and forsook him completely? In verses 7 and 12 we read that Asa put his trust in the king of Aram and his doctors instead of God. When Asa became king of Judah he was fully committed to God because he was a new king and his nation was weak having no foreign relations with other nations. He couldn’t help but trust the God of his fathers, the only God he knew. As he grew stronger and “wiser” the wisdom of this world, he began to trust the visible rather than the invisible which is actually more powerful than the world. When he was severely sick he didn’t seek God for help. Instead he assumed that his palace and personal physicians would cure of his illness. He relied on them but refused to seek God’s help.

Are we like King Asa who ignore the Lord’s commands in his later years as we became sophisticated and worldly-oriented? Let us come before God and humbly seek him.