Alrighty, so following on the heels of our little quiz yesterday, we’ve covered about 2 centuries of royal history since the construction and establishment of Israel’s first temple.
So this now brings us to Ahaz, the king of Judah, who began his reign around 740 B.C.
As I mentioned earlier, this demon on steroids takes the prize for being one of the most wicked of all of Israel’s kings.
He ruled for about 17 years, and His desecration of the Temple was unprecedented at that point in history.
Now, what exactly did Ahaz do that was so horrific?
Let’s go to Scripture for some of the details.
First, check out this passage from 2nd Kings:
“King Ahaz cut off the side panels and removed the basins from the movable stands. He removed the Sea from the bronze bulls that supported it and set it on a stone base. He took away the Sabbath canopy that had been built at the temple and removed the royal entryway outside the temple of the Lord, in deference to the king of Assyria.”-2 Kings 16:17-18
Next, let’s dive into even more details by cross-referencing with this passage from 2nd Chronicles:
“Tiglath-Pileser, king of Assyria, came to him, but he gave him trouble instead of help. Ahaz took some of the things from the temple of the Lord and from the royal palace and from the officials and presented them to the king of Assyria, but that did not help him.
In his time of trouble, King Ahaz became even more unfaithful to the Lord. He offered sacrifices to the gods of Damascus, who had defeated him; for he thought, ‘Since the gods of the kings of Aram have helped them, I will sacrifice to them so they will help me.‘ But they were his downfall and the downfall of all Israel.
Ahaz gathered together the furnishings from the temple of God and cut them into pieces. He shut the doors of the Lord’s temple and set up altars at every street corner in Jerusalem. In every town in Judah, he built high places to burn sacrifices to other gods and aroused the anger of the Lord, the God of his ancestors.“ – 2 Chronicles 28:20-25
So, as you can see, Ahaz went hog wild into idolatrous practices, utterly enraging the Lord.
Now, there are a couple of key takeaways here that I want you to pay attention to because they’re so applicable to our day and age.
FIRST, notice the entire kingdom of Judah paid the price for the wicked behavior of one person.
This was a perfect example of one apple ruining the whole bunch in the freakin’ barrel!
SECOND, notice that it was the mixing of other gods in his worship of the God of Israel that made Ahaz so wicked.
I think that’s a point a lot of people overlook.
Ahaz didn’t think he was abandoning worship of the God of Israel.
He just considered himself progressive.
Thus, he had no problem doing away with God-ordained rituals and institutions.
Kinda sounds like Christianity, doesn’t it?
THIRD, Ahaz assumed his kingdom would be better off if he embraced the “enlightened” ideas and politics of the goyim nations around him.
But he couldn’t have been more wrong.
His choices brought disaster on Judah and its people.
And that’s your takeaway for today.
The so-called politically correct and “enlightened” ideas of our modern age have spelled disaster for the West.
And they’ll spell even more disaster for Israel if the holy land adopts them…which unfortunately, it seems like they have already done.
Taking a look at the current state of affairs, I don’t think there are a lot of folks who would disagree with me.
Alrighty, that does it for today.
Next time, we’ll take a look at the king who came after Azah, his son Hezekiel.
Fortunately, the apple fell far from the tree in this case.
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