Wicked Ahaz

2 Kings chapter 16, and reading from verse one. In the 17th year of Pekah, the son of Remaliah, Ahaz the son of Jotham, king of Judah, began to reign. 20 years old was Ahaz when he began to reign, and reigned 16 years in Jerusalem. and did not that which was right in the sight of the Lord his God, like David his father. So that tells us that Ahaz was one of those wicked kings of Judah.

But he walked in the way of the kings of Israel, yea, and made his son to pass through the fire, according to the abominations of the heathen, whom the Lord cast out from before the children of Israel. and he sacrificed and burnt incense in the high places and on the hills and under every green tree.

Then Rezan king of Syria and Pekah son of Remalia king of Israel came up to Jerusalem to war and they besieged Ahaz but could not overcome him. At that time Rezin king of Syria recovered Eilath to Syria and drave the Jews from Eilath and the Syrians came to Eilath and dwelt there unto this day. So Ahaz sent messengers to Tiglath-pelazar king of Assyria saying, I am the servant of thy son. Come up and save me out of the hand of the king of Syria and out of the hand of the king of Israel, which rise up against me.

And Ahaz took the silver and gold that was found in the house of the Lord and in the treasures of the king's house and sent it for a present to the king of Assyria. The king of Assyria hearkened unto him, for the king of Assyria went up against Damascus, and took it, and carried the people of it captive to Kir, and slew Rezin. and King Ahaz went to Damascus to meet Tiglath-pel-pelizer, king of Assyria, and saw an altar that was at Damascus, and King Ahaz sent to Eurygia the priest the fashion of the altar and the pattern of it, according to all the workmanship thereof. Uriah the priest built an altar according to all that King Ahaz had sent from Damascus. So Uriah the priest made it against the King Ahaz came from Damascus.

And when the king was come from Damascus, the king saw the altar, and the king approached to the altar, and offered thereon. And he burnt his burnt offering, and his meat offering, and poured his drink offering, and sprinkled the blood of his peace offerings upon the altar. And he brought also the brazen altar, which was before the Lord, from the forefront of the house, from between the altar and the house of the Lord, and put it on the north side of the altar. And King Ahaz commanded Eurygia the priest, saying, Upon the great altar burn the morning burnt offering, and the evening burnt offering, and the king's burnt sacrifice, and his meat offering, with the burnt offering of all the people of the land, and their meat offering, and their drink offerings, and sprinkle upon it all the blood of the burnt offering, and all the blood of the sacrifice, and the brazen altar shall be for me to inquire by. Thus did Uriah the priest according to all that King Ahaz commanded. Amen. May the Lord bless to us this reading from his word.

Following the death of Elijah, Jehoash, or Joash, the king of Israel, defeated the king of Syria three times in battle, just as Elijah had said he would. Perhaps you will remember that Joash had hit his arrows three times on the ground, and Elijah says, you should have hit it five or six times, and then you would have totally defeated Syria. He only hit it three times on the ground and therefore he was given these three victories in battle. But what this reminds us of is the fact that these three countries, Judah, Israel, and Syria, regularly fought one another.

The kings of these countries were always fighting with one another. They fought battles, they fought skirmishes, they captured each other's towns. And generally, they were a trouble to one another. One king would have supremacy for a few years, then another king would have supremacy for a few years. And so the battles continued over the decades and over the successive reigns of the different kings. But something else was happening. While these kings squabbled together, two great powers were becoming established in the region. And these powers were becoming more aware of the smaller nations. Egypt in the southeast and Assyria in the northwest. Both were building great armies. And both of these nations were wary of each other. Syria was wary of Egypt, and Egypt was wary of Syria. And Judah, Israel... Let me say that again. Egypt was wary of Assyria, and Assyria was wary of Egypt.

And Judah, Israel, and Syria, because Assyria and Syria were different nations, Judah, Israel, and Syria were becoming like the jam in the middle of a sandwich. They had Egypt to the south, they had Assyria to the northwest, and these little countries, Judah, Israel, and Syria, well, they were trapped in the middle.

A man called Amaziah became king in Judah and he challenged Joash, that's the same Joash that had these victories against Syria, he challenged Joash to face him in battle. At first Joash refused but Amaziah was full of pride and he would not be deterred. He wanted to fight with Israel and the two armies ultimately did meet and Amaziah was beaten. The king of Judah was beaten and he was captured. And Joash, who had recently watched Elisha come to the end of his life, rode all the way to Jerusalem, took all the gold from the temple and the city, captured hostages, took them as slaves, and then to humiliate Judah, broke down part of the wall, the city wall, which then had to be rebuilt. so that Judah and Jerusalem, the capital city of Judah, were in a sorry state, and Israel and Syria both took advantage of Judah's weakened condition.

During this period of Judah's weakness, several good kings ruled in Judah. Men like Uzziah, who was a leper, and Jothan, his son. But things again took a turn for the worse when Jothan's son Ahaz, this is the man that we've been reading about, came to power.

Although he was of David's line, he did not follow David's example. He was a wicked man. He was perhaps as wicked as ever there had been in Judah. and he re-established idolatry in the land, and we are told that he caused his children to be burned in sacrifices to the idol god Molech. When that says that the children were passed through the fire, it has been suggested that what this means is that they were burned in human sacrifice. and he again set up Baal worship in Judah. He was a terrible, terrible man.

Israel and Syria at this time made an agreement. They joined forces to finally depose Ahaz and put in place their own king over Judah. Rezin, the king of Damascus, and Pekka, the king of Syria, put Jerusalem under siege. But Jerusalem was a strong, fortified city, and ultimately, even the two kings combined couldn't capture it. They did, however, capture other cities in the country, and they took away many captives as slaves.

And it was at this point that this wicked idolater, Ahaz, made another major decision, a significant decision that would have great repercussions for many years to come. He believed he could not withstand another attack from the combined force of Syria and Israel. So he decided that he would ask the king of Assyria for help. That was the great kingdom up to the northwest, the growing empire. He knew it was much stronger than he was and he would ask the king of Assyria for help. Ahaz had no faith in God, and his own idol gods couldn't help him. So he determined that Judah would become an Assyrian vassal state, and he pledged allegiance to the king of this idolatrous nation.

However, God had not left himself without a witness, as indeed he never shall. Living in Jerusalem at this time was a man called Isaiah and he was a prophet of the Lord. This is the same Isaiah who wrote the book of Isaiah and Isaiah was opposed to seeking help from Assyria. By the Lord's arrangement, Isaiah was able to speak to Ahaz and told him not to be afraid of Rezan and Pekah, Syria and Israel.

God would deal with them. He didn't have to trust in the king of Assyria. God would deal with them. If Ahaz would trust the Lord, his kingdom would be established, even although he was an idolater. It would continue independent and it would be blessed by God. But of course, Ahaz didn't believe in God and he was unconvinced by the prophet's words.

A second time Isaiah came to the king and this time Isaiah told him that he could ask for a sign from God, any sign he wanted. to show that God would do what he promised. And we read about it in Isaiah chapter 7, verse 10. This is what it says. Moreover, the Lord speak again, that is through Isaiah, unto Ahaz, saying, ask thee a sign of the Lord thy God. Ask it either in the depth or in the height above.

But Ahaz refused. His mind was made up. He would go to Assyria. And pretending to be modest, he said, I will not ask, neither will I tempt the Lord. Instead, he took the wealth of Judah, the gold and silver, all that he could muster, all that he could gather, and he sent it to Assyria as a gift.

Well, Ehaz's appeal was successful and the Assyrian king attacked Damascus. He put Rezan to death and he besieged the city. Then leaving part of his force there, a portion of his army to continue the siege, he advanced towards Samaria, burning and looting as he went. And over the next few years, Samaria also fell to the Assyrians and the Kingdom of Israel was brought to an utter end. We're going to come back to that on another occasion. But Ahaz had been successful in gaining the help of Assyria. But there was another development too. And we read about that in our verses. Ahaz went to Damascus to congratulate the Assyrian king.

And there he saw an altar that greatly impressed him. And he wanted one of his own. So he gathered the dimensions and he copied the design and he sent it back to Jerusalem. And there a man called Uriah, who's probably the high priest, had a replica of that altar made. Remember that the altar had been made by Solomon. It had been put into the temple. It hadn't been made by Solomon. It had been made by Moses in the wilderness. It had been carried and positioned in the temple by Solomon. And this was the altar and the furniture of the temple that the Jews had always used to worship the Lord. And here is this man, Ahaz. changing everything, altering the altar, we might say. And he was flying in the face of the established patterns of worship that the Lord had given to the children of Israel and the people of Judah.

Ahaz didn't care about the Lord, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He thought that he had a new friend in the king of Assyria, and he was happy to completely identify with the Assyrian king and his gods. And despite Isaiah's warning, he went ahead and paid tribute to Assyria, became a servant, and for a time there was peace in the land. Let's draw a couple of applications from this if we can. Ahaz was a wicked man and he was a wicked king. From what is said of him, it would appear that he was even so wicked as to sacrifice some of his own children to Moloch, the god of fire. He was an idolater. He had no faith in God.

And while it might be thought by some that he was very clever to make a deal with Assyria to save his kingdom from its enemies, he ought rather to have listened to Isaiah, listened to God's prophet. Had he done so, he would have found deliverance from the Lord, not deliverance from the king of Assyria who made him his servant.

I was interested to note that both the father and grandfather of Ahaz did what was right in God's sight, but Ahaz quickly went astray. He did not care very much for what he had been taught as a child concerning the Lord. And you too, will have to decide whether the Lord is important in your life or whether, like Ahaz, you will forget about what you have been taught and go your own way.

Ahaz liked new things, new friends, new cities to go to, new religion, new ways of doing things. However, Ahaz's new friends led him into terrible sin and caused him to turn his back upon the God of his fathers and all the promised blessings of David. His new altar, his new religion, his new idol God was really a terrible master who demanded that he slay his own children. the very children, mind you, through whom God's promises to David would be realized. Do you see the lengths to which Satan has gone to destroy God's promise of salvation by destroying, if he could, the line of Christ? And even though the Lord twice sent Isaiah to caution him, Ahaz was already set in his purpose to leave the Lord behind and go his own way.

Young people, listen to me. Do not leave the Lord behind. Don't for a moment imagine that you can make a better job of your life without him than with him. Isaiah warned Ahaz about rejecting the Lord. He says in Isaiah 7 verse 9, if ye will not believe, surely ye shall not be established. And that warning is still true today. If you will not believe, you cannot be blessed of God. You cannot be part of the promises of God. And you cannot be part of the salvation of God.

Here's another thing that I want to leave with you. I want to briefly mention this man, Uriah. This man was a priest, probably the high priest in the temple, given the authority that he had to make this altar and the connection that he had with the king. Ahaz sent him a plan for this new altar that he had seen in Damascus. and Uriah had it built even before the king got home. There are many religious teachers and leaders like Uriah who ought to preach the gospel, who pretend to preach the gospel and to stand by the truth of Jesus Christ and instead they teach and preach whatever their audience want to hear. They preach what their people want to hear.

And I want to stress this point as well. Don't assume that all churches are the same, or that all preachers teach the same thing. Don't assume that every religious activity is as good as another, because that's a lie. You know enough now to know that there is truth and there is error, and you have to learn the difference.

Uriah was a lying priest. He was a corrupt and he was a devious minister. He claimed to speak for God. He claimed to be the high priest, but he did not speak for God. His name, his name, his very name means the Lord is my light, but his soul was full of darkness.

Listen, I am not for a moment saying that I'm the only preacher that you should listen to, or that this is the only church that you should attend. But I tell you this, don't attend a church that doesn't believe the gospel. Don't listen to a man who doesn't teach you the gospel. Don't follow a guide who doesn't lead you to Christ.

Here's my third and last point today. Today's study has introduced us to the ministry of Isaiah, God's prophet. When Isaiah spoke to Ahaz, he offered him a sign from God of his very own choosing. Imagine that. He said, Ahaz, pick a sign, any sign you want. God will give you that sign to prove to you that He will keep you and establish your kingdom. And Ahaz refused. He feigned humility and he rejected Isaiah's words, he rejected God's words. But let me tell you the wonderful thing that happened next. Isaiah told Ahaz, if he wouldn't choose a sign, God would give one of his own. And listen to what Isaiah said. It's chapter seven, verses 13 and 14. Hear ye now. These are the words of Isaiah.

Hear ye now, O house of David, Is it a small thing for you to weary men? But will ye weary my God also? Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign. Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Emmanuel. That was the sign that God would give. Isaiah told Ahaz that God would send the Messiah, whose name would be Immanuel, God with us. And that was the Lord Jesus Christ.

It would yet take many years. It would be something like 700 or 800 years before the Lord Jesus Christ came, but he was the sign that the promises of God were certain and sure. Ahaz would be dead and long forgotten. His wickedness would have gone the way of all judgment and condemnation, but Christ would save his people from their sins. All those years ago, Isaiah preached Christ to Ahaz. and yet the king's heart was hardened.

What of your heart? What of mine? May Christ soften our hearts. We shall pick up on this in the coming weeks again, God willing. But how blessed we are, not merely to have been given a prophecy and a promise, but to have received the whole gospel with Christ and the way of salvation fully revealed to us. May God grant us faith to believe what Ahaz never did. Amen.

Wicked Ahaz

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Wicked Ahaz

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