Sermon on 2 Chronicles 13: Trusting God's faithfulness over self-reliance
A sermon by James de Costobadie at Latimer Church on 2 Chronicles 13:1–14:1.
Summary
Preaching through 2 Chronicles 13, the sermon uses the account of King Abijah's battle against Jeroboam to draw out two practical lessons for Christian living: do not rely on yourself, and always rely on the Lord. He argues that Jeroboam's rebellion against God's appointed king mirrors the universal human tendency to build one's own kingdom rather than serve God. The sermon's central claim is that God's kingdom will be built regardless — but only through God's own faithfulness, not human effort or resources. He closes with the story of Condoleezza Rice — who, as a young girl of eleven or twelve, prayed alongside her dying mother that God would spare her mother's life and bring good out of the situation — and traces how those prayers eventually contributed, through a chain of decades, to Rice's role in securing HIV medicine for Africa, credited with saving over 50 million lives, many of whom came to faith in Christ. This is offered as an illustration of God doing 'more than we could ask or imagine.'
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Introduction: Uncertainty and the relevance of 2 Chronicles 13
James de Costobadie: We live in a world of great uncertainty. In fact, I can't quite remember a time like this within my own lifetime — wars, nuclear uncertainty, unpredictable politicians, in other parts of the world a revolving door of politicians, food and fuel prices through the roof. And if you didn't feel anxious beforehand, treat yourself to a couple of hours of YouTube and that should sort out your problem and create a whole lot more anxiety.
In the face of which, 2 Chronicles chapter 13 is a very helpful chapter to read, because it teaches us to trust the Lord in any and every situation. It's actually a very simple chapter with a very simple message: to trust the Lord in any and every situation. Whatever you have going on in your own life, whatever we have as a church, and whatever's happening in this world — trust the Lord in every situation.
Recap of Chronicles so far
As we noted last week, the book of Chronicles — originally one book, split in two because of its length — was written to help God's people see that God's grace is much greater than our failings. And the original readers needed to understand that just as much as we do.
Just a quick recap. 1 Chronicles chapters one to nine helped them to see that they still stood in the line and the genealogy of God's people — that had not been eroded just because of the exile. In other words, his grace was greater than the people's failings. Chapter 10 of 1 Chronicles through to the end of 1 Chronicles is all about King David, and God promised that one day he would reign through a descendant of David — in other words, that he wouldn't leave his people after all that they'd done. He'd remain with them because his grace is greater than their failings. 2 Chronicles chapters one to nine is then all about Solomon, David's second son, who builds the temple and God comes down to be with his people — because he wants to be with his people even despite their failings. His grace is greater.
And then last week we saw the next of this whole set of kings that come afterwards. So you get David, you get Solomon, chapters 10 to 12 you get Rehoboam, who was not a great advert for a king. He listened to the wrong people — the people he'd grown up with. He married the wrong women, foreign women who worshipped other gods. And he followed the wrong law — as we would say, he was a law unto himself, didn't follow the law of the Lord. But even so, God doesn't bring an end to things, because his grace is greater than our failings, even when it's the failure of the king.
Abijah: the lesser-known king with a crucial lesson
And so today we come to Rehoboam's son Abijah, who perhaps is one of the lesser-known kings. We'll see some kings that are better known. Abijah, I think, lesser known — but he's one who teaches us a crucial principle. And the principle is that God's kingdom will be built, whatever happens, because his grace is greater than our failings. God's kingdom will be built, but it will only be built by the faithfulness of God himself. He'll make sure it happens. We need to line up with his promises. There may well be Jeroboams, as we'll see, who oppose the kingdom of God — but God will ensure that his purposes stand and his plans come to pass. The kingdom will be built by God's faithfulness.
The setting: a kingdom divided and at war (verses 1–3)
The reign of Abijah is set up for us in verses one and two of chapter 13. Have a look down.
"In the eighteenth year of the reign of Jeroboam, Abijah became king of Judah. He reigned in Jerusalem three years. His mother's name was Maakah, a daughter of Uriel of Gibeah."
There's a back story here. Because of Rehoboam's folly, the kingdom had split in two. And Jeroboam now ruled in the north — called Israel, with ten tribes there. And Abijah rules in the south with just two tribes. We see that Abijah ruled in Jerusalem for three years, and at the end of verse two we read this rather chilling line: there was war between Abijah and Jeroboam.
For the reader, they know this should not be. What has happened here is the dispute between Rehoboam — Abijah's dad — and Jeroboam has carried into the next generation. You're not supposed to have civil war within the people of God. There's division in this world, but when you think in Bible terms, God is gathering his people to be united together. Where there's division, it's between God's people and the Egyptians, for example, or God's people and the Canaanites. You're not supposed to have division within God's people.
I remember my dad, when I was growing up, we were watching TV — I think it was during the Falklands crisis in 1982 — and he said, "There's only one thing worse than war in this world, which is civil war. And there's only one thing worse than civil war, which is civil war amongst the people of God." And that's what was happening here. And the reader knows it should not be that way.
Abijah's speech before the battle: God's covenant promise (verses 4–9)
Abijah, we're told, goes into battle with 400,000 troops in verse three — which you think, gosh, that's a massive army, until you see what Jeroboam has got on his side. Don't forget he's got the ten tribes, he's got more people to choose from. He's got an army, we read in verse three, of 800,000.
And before the battle commences, Abijah stands on a hill and makes his speech before the battle. He calls on Jeroboam, the king in the north, to remember that God had made a promise — a promise that, as we would say, was cast iron. Although here the phrase is "built on salt" — I think because salt lasts, salt doesn't degrade, it doesn't deteriorate. Well, God's promise would be similarly enduring. When God makes a promise, he doesn't forget about it. He doesn't have to wait to see whether he's got the means to come good on it. What God promises, he always delivers — because he is, above all things, the God who is faithful. Faithful to himself, faithful to his words, faithful to his promises, faithful to his people. Yes, God is loving — but what kind of love does God show? A faithful love. That's what God is like. He doesn't change with the circumstances. He doesn't bend with the wind. He doesn't change with the pressures of life. He is committed.
And this, says Abijah, is where Jeroboam had gone wrong — he'd forgotten what God had promised. Have a look at verse five:
"Abijah says to Jeroboam: 'Jeroboam and all Israel, listen to me! Don't you know that the Lord, the God of Israel, has given the kingship of Israel to David and his descendants forever by a covenant of salt? Yet Jeroboam son of Nebat, an official of Solomon son of David, rebelled against his master. Some worthless scoundrels gathered around him and opposed Rehoboam son of Solomon when he was young and indecisive and not strong enough to resist them.'"
Jeroboam, you've forgotten what God had promised. God had a plan to establish his kingdom, and at the heart of the plan was his king who would reign over the kingdom. And this king would be a descendant of David. There's a clear line down here: David, Solomon, Rehoboam — and Rehoboam's son is Abijah. So Jeroboam, what are you doing setting up your own kingdom? What are you doing proclaiming yourself as king when God has said the king will come through David's line?
In fact, I think it's rather instructive when you look at verse six. Have a look down. You see what Jeroboam has done here:
"Yet Jeroboam son of Nebat, an official of Solomon son of David, rebelled against his master."
Jeroboam had had a privilege, and the privilege was of serving Solomon. He'd been part of Solomon's administration. But it seems here that that wasn't good enough for Jeroboam. He didn't just want to be an administrator in Solomon's kingdom. He didn't just want to be a servant. He wanted to be a king. And so he announced himself as the king of the northern tribes, and as it says here, he rebelled against his master.
And verse eight: "Now you plan to resist the kingdom of the Lord, which is in the hands of David's descendants."
Now when you think about this in the cold light of day, you can see what a folly this is. God was creating a kingdom. God had anointed a king. So how on earth did Jeroboam think he was going to get away with this? You cannot resist the plans of God and expect your plans to work out.
Jeroboam as a mirror of humanity
But in Jeroboam is the story of humanity — the story of all of us, the story of all people everywhere. Jeroboam, in fact, is humanity. A humanity that is not content with being a servant, even when it's a servant of the king.
When Theresa and I first got married, we lived in a flat the size of a postage stamp. Our neighbour was an older man who was a delightful man, rather self-effacing — it was hard to get too much out of him. But eventually we discovered what he'd done in his line of work: he had been for decades a butler to the Queen. Now, this of course got our lips somewhat wetted, and despite our best efforts to get him to spill the beans on people he may have met, banquets over the years, foreign dignitaries and all this sort of thing, his lips were completely sealed and he would give absolutely nothing away. The only thing you could extract from him was the enormous and glowing privilege he had found serving in this role. If you had asked him whether he had wanted to do anything else in life, he would have looked at you as if you'd walked off the moon. Because to him, what could be a greater privilege than being a butler to the Queen of England? To him, it was the greatest privilege there was.
And if that was true for him, how much more true should it be for every person in this world? Because you and I were made to be servants — servants of the living God. We were designed not to be automatons doing our own thing in this world. We were designed to know God, to love him, and to serve him. And when you have someone who is the King of kings and Lord of lords, when you have someone who is the greatest of all, why would you want to do anything else?
But in Jeroboam you see the heart of humanity — that to people like us, to be a servant is not good enough. We don't want to be a servant, we want to be a king. We don't want someone else to tell us how to live life. We don't want someone else to stick their oar into our lives. We want the freedom to live as we want to do. And you know what that's really called? It's called setting up your own kingdom. We don't think of it like that. We just think of it like putting a fence up in life and filling it with as much stuff as we can materially, doing what we want to do in life, giving the kids the best upbringing we can — and you know, all of that. But that's what it is. It's building our own kingdom. A kingdom where we can see what we have, a kingdom where we get the respect of people around us, a kingdom where we're able to live as we want to live and we make up the standards and decide what is right and wrong.
So really, as we see Jeroboam, we see a mirror of what we are naturally like, and what all people are like.
Lesson one: Do not rely on yourself (verses 8–9)
And the passage has two lessons for us. The first of which is this, that comes from those verses: don't rely on yourself. We were not made to rely on ourselves, so we shouldn't rely on ourselves.
When you look at Jeroboam and where he went wrong, where he went off the rails — he was full of self-reliance. Here was a man you couldn't tell what was right and wrong. He was determined. He made himself king and he was on a track he wanted to live in life. But you see the folly of it. Have a look at verse eight. You can see what's going on in Jeroboam's mind and in his heart. Abijah says:
"And now you plan to resist the kingdom of the Lord, which is in the hands of David's descendants. You are indeed a vast army and have with you the golden calves that Jeroboam made to be your gods."
So you can see — Jeroboam's got this vast army, and it's very difficult when you've got a lot of resources on your side not to trust in those resources. Jeroboam thought, I've got 800,000, I can do whatever I want here, I can roll into the southern kingdom and take it for myself. He also had alongside some golden calves that he'd made to be his gods. And in verse nine he noticed something he didn't have:
"Didn't you drive out the priests of the Lord, the sons of Aaron and the Levites, and make priests of your own, as the peoples of the other lands do?"
So he had 800,000 people. He had a few golden calves that he could worship as God, so he persuaded himself he's still a religious person, still a good person. And then one thing he doesn't have is any priests, because he's got rid of them. In other words, he doesn't have anyone who will contradict him. He doesn't want to hear from someone who will contradict him. He doesn't want to hear from God, even when God will contradict him.
And in that he's very like Rehoboam — remember who we saw last week. You remember who Rehoboam chose to listen to. It's really emphasised in those chapters before: the people he grew up with. In other words, the people who thought just like him. They were not people who were going to correct him. They were not people who were going to bring him back onto God's way. They would be people who would affirm him in what he thought.
And isn't that like us? We love people to affirm us in the decisions that we make. So often we don't want someone who will say something different. We don't want someone who will tell us that we're on the wrong track. We don't want someone who will tell us that actually, they're not sure that what we're doing is the right thing, that maybe we've wandered away at this point. We don't want that. We want people who will reaffirm us as the people we are, on the path that we've chosen.
That's Jeroboam, and we should learn from that. Do not rely on yourself. We shouldn't rely on ourselves. We shouldn't rely on the fact that life may be going well and we can find security in what we can see and touch and feel. We shouldn't rely on the fact that others may look up to us or admire us for the path of life. All we're doing is falling into what the culture around us tells us to be. The culture around says: be the master of your own life, trust your own judgment. I mean, if I was to ask you who is the person in life best able to know what your life should be, you would say, "Well, I am — it's my life." And that's the sin of Jeroboam: resisting the plans of God to have another king in charge, even when we are that king.
The world says: chase your dreams, be whoever you want, create the life you want to live. The Bible warns: do not rely on yourself. And we should know from the history of humanity the truth of that — because when it comes to the end of our life and we're hooked up to some machine and gasping our last breaths, we won't be able to help ourselves, and no one else will be able to help us either. It shows the folly of the whole way of living that we've bought into. Do not rely on yourself, in anything big or small.
Lesson two: Always rely on the Lord (verses 10–18)
Now that takes us on to the second half of the passage, where Abijah now makes a definitive statement. Verse ten — have a look at those first few words:
"As for us, the Lord is our God."
It's a statement against Jeroboam. Jeroboam, you may proclaim yourself as your own king — but as for us, the Lord is our God. First of all, it's a theological statement. The Lord is God. He's saying there's only one God. The Lord is, and he is Yahweh — the God who made this world, the God who rescued his people at the time of the Exodus, the God who brought them into the promised land, the God who has provided for them. There is no God but he. There is one God, the Lord.
But it's also a personal statement: as for us, the Lord is our God. Abijah here is putting all his eggs in one basket. He's putting all of his weight in one place. The Lord would be his God, would be their God, and they would have no other.
And he shows the Lord is his God and their God by their faithfulness to the commandments God had given them around the worship in the temple. Have a look at verse eleven:
"Every morning and evening they present burnt offerings and fragrant incense to the Lord" — talking about the priests here in the southern kingdom — "they set out the bread on the ceremonially clean table and light the lamps on the gold lampstand every evening. We are observing the requirements of the Lord our God. But you have forsaken him."
And then look at verse twelve: "God is with us; he is our leader."
What a statement of clarity. The Lord is our leader. Isn't that a clear statement? Who are they? They are the Lord's people, and they want to be the Lord's people, and they want to be led by the Lord.
I wonder if you could say that for yourself in your own life — "The Lord is my leader" — or of your family, "The Lord is our leader," or, may God have mercy on us, of this church, "The Lord is our leader." It's such a clear statement from the king of the southern kingdom.
And I always think it must take a lot of humility for a king to acknowledge someone else as their king. I've never really been in that position, but imagine what it's like to be a king or queen of a kingdom, and all day long people are deferring to you and bowing and scraping and washing the carpet in front of you and brushing up behind you and serving your food on silver platters and all of this. It takes a very humble person in that situation to acknowledge someone else as their king. But that's what Abijah does. He says, "The Lord is our leader. I'm not the leader of this kingdom — the Lord is our leader."
And he shows, and they show, that they're with the Lord by obeying his commands in the temple. You see, who is the person who trusts the Lord? The one who obeys what he commands. And who is the person who obeys the commands of the Lord? The one who trusts him. In other words, you show you trust the living God by doing what he says. Our obedience is the acid test of where our faith actually lies.
So if you have a look down at verse twelve again, you get the positive and you get the warning:
"God is with us; he is our leader. His priests with their trumpets will sound the battle cry against you. Men of Israel, do not fight against the Lord, the God of your fathers, for you will not succeed."
In the end, if you make yourself king, you cannot win against God, who has declared someone else will be king. I cannot set myself up as king and then hope to win against the king that God has installed. And Abijah gives Jeroboam one last warning: don't do it, you cannot succeed.
The battle: crying out to the Lord (verses 13–18)
And in this he shows us the second lesson. First lesson: don't rely on yourself. Second lesson: always rely on the Lord. And you see that in the way that Abijah prepares for the battle. Verse twelve: "God is with us, he is our leader. His priests with their trumpets will sound the battle cry." He's relying on the priests that God has given to him.
And in verses thirteen to seventeen, his trust is shown to be vindicated, because in the battle it's an absolute rout. It actually doesn't begin that way. You see in verse thirteen that Jeroboam has a plan:
"Jeroboam had sent troops around to the rear, so that while he was in front of Judah, the ambush was behind them."
Abijah interestingly didn't seem to really have much of a plan, but Jeroboam does. So he sends his troops around to the back, then he kind of scares them at the front, and when Abijah's troops turn around, Jeroboam's expecting them to get slaughtered by the troops he's stationed there — like a sort of pincer movement.
But see what actually happens. Verse fourteen:
"Judah turned and saw that they were being attacked at both the front and rear."
And then the crucial words in verse fourteen: "They cried out to the Lord."
They depended on God. They depended on the Lord. They don't try to come up with a manoeuvre for themselves. They don't work out their own instincts. They don't solve the situation for themselves. They cry out to the Lord. There's an example for all of us there. Make the Lord your first port of call. Cry out to him in any situation, wherever we find ourselves in life, whatever's happening to us, whatever the odds feel like, however greatly they are stacked against us — cry out to the Lord.
And their faith in him is vindicated. At the sound of their battle cry, verse fifteen:
"God routed Jeroboam and all Israel before Abijah and Judah. The Israelites fled before Judah, and God delivered them into his hands."
Verse sixteen: "Abijah and his men inflicted heavy losses on them, so that there were 500,000 casualties among Israel's able men."
So they start with 800,000 and within a jiffy they're down to 300,000, because 500,000 have been wiped out by the Lord — because his people cried out to him.
And the rest of the passage makes clear the source of this victory. Have a look at verse eighteen:
"The men of Israel were subdued on that occasion. The men of Judah were victorious because they relied on the Lord, the God of their fathers."
And just to prove that it's not Abijah who is so great — he's then shown to do wrong. He seems to do well in verses nineteen and twenty, but then verse twenty-one: "Abijah grew in strength. He married fourteen wives and had twenty-two sons and sixteen daughters." This is not because he's such a great king — he's not. But it's because they relied on the Lord, who is so great he's able to bring the victory.
Application: relying on God, not ourselves
So we're not to build our own kingdom relying on ourselves, nor are we even to build God's kingdom relying on ourselves — but only relying on the one who does it for us.
And in that, Jesus himself shows the way. You remember Jesus, who had every right and every reason to trust in himself if he'd wanted to. Jesus who said that on the cross he could have called down legions of angels to rescue him. Jesus had his fate in his own hands, and yet even then chose to rely on God and trusted in him to deliver him — and was mocked in the process. We read in the New Testament that during Jesus's days on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to the one who could save him from death. He depended on God. And if that was good enough for Jesus, why would we approach life any differently?
It's easy to give up believing that God is establishing a kingdom which will last forever. It's much easier to do what everyone else is doing around us and try to build your own kingdom — put a fence around it, shove as much stuff into it as you can, and try to live a pleasurable life of ease and comfort here and now. But we should be reminded: there is no future in life that way. You cannot win against the Lord's purposes. The Lord is determined to set up his own kingdom, to build his own kingdom. And to that extent he has anointed his own king, Jesus Christ, over that kingdom. So we're to align ourselves with his plans. God will do that with us or without us. We're to align ourselves with his plans, but as we do so we're to trust in him and not in ourselves.
The church's prayer life as a measure of dependence on God
As a church, we're to rely on him — not on our own numbers or resources or buildings or anything else to build the kingdom — but purely to rely on God. On which point, it's sometimes said of a church that you can measure the health of a church by the health of the prayer meeting of a church, because it is a way by which the church comes together and says, "Our strength is not in ourselves. Our strength is in you, O Lord our God — you and you alone, your power, your strength, for your glory." And when a church prays, that's what a church is saying: we rely on you, on you to do what we cannot do.
And we should have learned by now that God is able to provide for his people, because he has provided for us as a church so often down the years. And God is able to do for us and within us what we could never do. That's why we're here today, because God's been at work in our lives. That's why we can pray he'd be at work in other people's lives. And when we do pray, we are reassured in the New Testament that God is able to do more than we can ask or even imagine.
The story of Condoleezza Rice: prayer answered beyond imagination
Let's think of that for a moment. God is able to do more than our imaginations can even picture in terms of the building of his kingdom. And just to illustrate that, I'll tell you a little story which I heard recently.
Some of you may remember Condoleezza Rice. She worked in the George W. Bush administration — actually his father's administration first, and then George W. Bush's administration. I think she was National Security Advisor for the first few years and then Secretary of State after that.
When she was a little girl — let's say aged eleven or twelve — she was brought up by her parents, but her mother was definitely the dominant figure. And her mother got a serious cancer and her life was in the balance. And Condoleezza, as a girl, and her mother prayed that God would enable her mother to live, to keep working, and to get her through her childhood, and that God would bring good out of bad in this situation.
Well, sure enough, her mother did live. She lived for another twelve years, until Condoleezza Rice was twenty-four. And in that time she was able to get her daughter to university — the University of Denver in Colorado. Her mother then died just a few years afterwards. But from that platform, Condoleezza Rice pursued the career that would enable her eventually to become Secretary of State.
Now, in that position, one of the things that she did — and she was one of the main movers for this — was to fight to promote the provision of HIV medicine exports to Africa at the height of the epidemic in Africa. And when the US gave their medical supplies of anti-HIV medicine to Africa, it was said to save the lives of over fifty million people. Now, she fought for that tooth and nail. And you can see there in her work how God used her.
But more than that — because of the nature of the spread of the gospel in that continent — many of those fifty million people who lived rather than died, lived and came to know Jesus as their Saviour and their Lord. And you see in that, when you trace it back, the prayers of a twelve-year-old with her mother, praying that God would bring good out of bad — here was a situation when, decades later, God used it to bring more good than they would have been able to ask or even imagine.
Closing application and prayer
So if you pray that God will expand his kingdom, and if you pray for people to come to know the Lord Jesus Christ, and if you pray that God would make us fruitful as a church, and if we pray that God would do more than we could ever imagine — God will answer those prayers in the building of his kingdom.
Two simple lessons. Don't rely on yourself in life — whatever you're facing, whatever situation you're in — and try to get through it yourself. But rather, secondly, rely on the Lord. Make him your leader, and he will use us to build his kingdom.
Let's pray.
Dear God in heaven, we simply thank you that we, who are not even worthy to be called your servants, you have now made us your sons and daughters through the Lord Jesus Christ. And we pray that you would help us gladly to make you our leader. And then we pray that you would use us, Lord — that you would do more than we could ask or imagine — to build your kingdom through the word of the gospel, through our proclamation. So please, we pray, would you direct our hearts always to rely upon you in every situation, and would you use us more than we could ask or imagine. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.