2 Chronicles 25:9 "The LORD is able to give you much more than this."

No, I'm not changing sides. I haven't gone prosperity Gospel on all of you. I still wholeheartedly reject the Word of Faith, Name-it-and-claim-it, God wants you to be rich and safe and healthy and wealthy garbage of a theology. But, I also believe in the inspiration of 2 Chronicles.

Here's the situation in 2 Chronicles 25. Then king of Judah Amaziah, son of King Joash, wanted to go to battle with neighboring Seir. God was prospering him and the nation but he felt he needed still more troops to win the battle. He decided to ask their brothers to the north from the Northern Kingdom if they would be soldiers for hire (mercenaries I guess). He ended up hiring 100,000 men from the Northern Kingdom to help them fight at the steep price of 100 talents of silver, or about 7,500 pounds of silver. (Whew!)

As they were getting ready to set out for battle, a prophet came to King Amaziah and rebuked him. "Don't go to battle with all of these hired men." (At that time, the Northern Kingdom was very evil.) The prophet told the King that God didn't want him to use these northern brothers. But Amaziah was in a pickle. Number one, he felt like he needed the men. But number two, he just spent a boat load of money on them (actually more like a barge-load of silver). Wouldn't all of that money be wasted if he obeyed God?

And then the prophet's answer: "The LORD is able to give you much more than this."  Amaziah decided to listen to the prophet and he sent the men away before the battle.

Unfortunately, Amaziah didn't remain faithful to the LORD. The men he sent away caused a lot of trouble for his country as they passed back through on their way home, and Amaziah himself brought back idols and placed them throughout the land. His unfaithfulness eventually led to complete apostasy and a refusal to hear the Word of God. His own people eventually killed him in shame.

Here's the point: there are so many issues we are confronted with in the Word, but our flesh screams in our ears, "If we actually did that, think of the consequences. Think of what it would cost us. Think of what that would start, and what we'd have to give up or do without."

For instance, church membership. As I talk with people about biblical church membership and biblical church discipline, the response almost always begins with, "Yes, that would be nice if we could do that, BUT the problem is, so many people would be offended, and so and so would... and such and such would..." Consequences. Basically what we're saying is, It would cost us too much to obey God. The cost is too great.

But the prophet would say to us, "The LORD is able to give you much more than this." Is he not sovereign? Is he not completely in control? Does he not have every resource available in himself? Then how could obedience to such a God be too costly? The consequences are from him. The results are from him! It NEVER costs too much to obey God. And at the end of the day, we can turn that around and say, It will always cost more to disobey than to obey.

Afterall, in Mark 9, Jesus says, "If your hand/foot/eye causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than with two hands/feet/eyes to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire."

If obedience costs us a limb, it's nothing. It's nothing in contrast with the cost of disobedience.