2 Kings 16:1–20
16 In the seventeenth year of Pekah the son of Remaliah, Ahaz the son of Jotham, king of Judah, began to reign. 2 16:2Ahaz was twenty years old when he began to reign, and he reigned sixteen years in Jerusalem. And he did not do what was right in the eyes of the Lord his God, as his father David had done, 3 16:3but he walked in the way of the kings of Israel. He even burned his son as an offering, 1 according to the despicable practices of the nations whom the Lord drove out before the people of Israel. 4 16:4And he sacrificed and made offerings on the high places and on the hills and under every green tree.
5 16:5Then Rezin king of Syria and Pekah the son of Remaliah, king of Israel, came up to wage war on Jerusalem, and they besieged Ahaz but could not conquer him. 6 16:6At that time Rezin the king of Syria recovered Elath for Syria and drove the men of Judah from Elath, and the Edomites came to Elath, where they dwell to this day. 7 16:7So Ahaz sent messengers to Tiglath-pileser king of Assyria, saying, “I am your servant and your son. Come up and rescue me from the hand of the king of Syria and from the hand of the king of Israel, who are attacking me.” 8 16:8Ahaz also 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 a present to the king of Assyria. 9 16:9And the king of Assyria listened to him. The king of Assyria marched up against Damascus and took it, carrying its people captive to Kir, and he killed Rezin.
10 16:10When King Ahaz went to Damascus to meet Tiglath-pileser king of Assyria, he saw the altar that was at Damascus. And King Ahaz sent to Uriah the priest a model of the altar, and its pattern, exact in all its details. 11 16:11And Uriah the priest built the altar; in accordance with all that King Ahaz had sent from Damascus, so Uriah the priest made it, before King Ahaz arrived from Damascus. 12 16:12And when the king came from Damascus, the king viewed the altar. Then the king drew near to the altar and went up on it 13 16:13and burned his burnt offering and his grain offering and poured his drink offering and threw the blood of his peace offerings on the altar. 14 16:14And the bronze altar that was before the Lord he removed from the front of the house, from the place between his altar and the house of the Lord, and put it on the north side of his altar. 15 16:15And King Ahaz commanded Uriah the priest, saying, “On the great altar burn the morning burnt offering and the evening grain offering and the king’s burnt offering and his grain offering, with the burnt offering of all the people of the land, and their grain offering and their drink offering. And throw on it all the blood of the burnt offering and all the blood of the sacrifice, but the bronze altar shall be for me to inquire by.” 16 16:16Uriah the priest did all this, as King Ahaz commanded.
17 16:17And King Ahaz cut off the frames of the stands and removed the basin from them, and he took down the sea 2 from off the bronze oxen that were under it and put it on a stone pedestal. 18 16:18And the covered way for the Sabbath that had been built inside the house and the outer entrance for the king he caused to go around the house of the Lord, because of the king of Assyria. 19 16:19Now the rest of the acts of Ahaz that he did, are they not written in the Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Judah? 20 16:20And Ahaz slept with his fathers and was buried with his fathers in the city of David, and Hezekiah his son reigned in his place.
Section Overview: Something Rotten in the State of Judah
In this tragic chapter, the cracks at the heart of Judah widen, as Ahaz, Jotham’s son, “walked in the ways of the kings of Israel.” His idolatry even stretches to sacrificing his own son, a new low in the history of Judah. His reign takes place under considerable pressure from the newly formed alliance between Syria and Israel, which leads him to take the catastrophic step of seeking to enlist Assyria as his protector. While this does ease the immediate pressure, it sows the seeds of disaster, as Ahaz visits the newly conquered Damascus. After viewing the temple in Damascus, he decides to remodel the Jerusalem temple along idolatrous lines. A new altar is installed and the temple furnishings adapted to conform to the new decor. Ahaz then commissions his new worship center, which appears to revolve around his personal preferences and needs.
Section Outline
Response
Ahaz is an interesting character, not least because he is a man who seems to lack conviction. He is deeply pragmatic. Rather than being driven by selfishness or a thirst for power or even a desire to honor God, he just “goes with the flow.” His basic “worldliness” comes out when he is under pressure from the Assyrians. Ahaz’s strategy undeniably brings short-term gain (16:9). Going with the flow often does so. But it leads very rapidly to disaster—there is no future in worldliness. And this is Ahaz’s basic problem. He thinks he can solve his political and military and economic issues without any reference to God. He has a choice between Yahweh and the king of Assyria, and he chooses the king of Assyria. That is where his trust is. This should not surprise us, because as chapter 16 goes on, it becomes clear that this is where his heart is too. Ahaz loves the world.
The default “worldliness” setting of Ahaz’s life also emerges when all of the pressure is off and he is “on holiday” in Damascus. After a quick tour of the Syrian religious sites, and with as much gravity and theological thought as on an episode of a home-renovation show, Ahaz decides to reconfigure everything in the Jerusalem temple. This is the ultimate triumph of style over substance. Ahaz just loves how things look and what is contemporary, and what the king of Assyria will say about it all. It seems that it does not enter his head to inquire of what Yahweh asks of his people. Ahaz loves the world. He trusts the world. If worldliness is starting to think, talk, act, and dream like everyone else, getting sucked into the anti-God patterns and rhythms of life on earth, then Ahaz is a prime example of what it means to be worldly. And this provides us with a helpful diagnostic of our own growth, or deterioration, in our trust in and love for God over and against the world.
There is, of course, a significant difference between the people we read about in 2 Kings 16–17 and those of us who are part of the church. The difference is that we live in light of Christ’s coming. Ahaz and the Israelites know all about God’s grace, and his patience, and that he is to be feared, and that they need God to forgive them. They know that they need a rescuer to come and that God has promised to send him. But we know more—that God has come, and that his name is Jesus Christ, who has poured his Spirit into our lives and shown us what it means to love and fear and serve him. Here is how Paul sums it up in Titus 2:11–14: “The grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.”
However, we still need to ask ourselves about where we run to when we are under pressure. One of the things I have noticed over the years is that pressure is actually normal. In the course of any year, I feel under pressure at least 70 percent of the time: looming deadlines, tricky pastoral issues, key strategic meetings, extra tasks to do at church, issues with the family, the arrival of a new puppy, and so on. I do not think it is unreasonable to say that for almost anyone serious about serving Christ, this is the way it usually is. The idea that we can expect at least fifty out of fifty-two weeks of the year to be a breeze is very common, but equally unrealistic! We spend far too much time trying to ease the pressure and far too little thinking about how to live under pressure. The question is, then, how do we cope? For many of us, our natural reaction is to panic, or to go into denial and switch on the television, or to eat junk food, or to throw ourselves into working even harder in the confidence that if only we are disciplined enough, we will be able to turn things around. The problem with all of this is that it is exactly the range of options taken by my friends who are not Christians. The great news is that we have another option: we can run to God in Christ as we stop and pray, admitting our weakness and asking for his wisdom. This is the difference between worldliness and godliness when we are under pressure.
When we are not under pressure, we actually face the same basic choice. This is why we also need to ask ourselves where our heart runs to when the pressure comes off, whether in the evening, over the weekend, or on vacation. When there are no demands on our time, it is all too easy to make it all about “me” as we reach for a glass of red wine or a beer, or grab the remote control, or head for the beach, or jump on our bicycle. Just to switch off. This is completely normal for fallen humans. But that does not mean it is good! In fact, the Bible’s word for this is worldliness.
Of course, I am not saying that time off, or exercise, or resting is bad; on the contrary, these are good gifts of God. The problem is that when we make them all about “me,” we are sucked into living without reference to God. And that is worldliness. Knowing that we belong to the living God should infuse our holidays, and our surfing, and our sleeping and eating and time on the beach with the family, and our watching sports, with greater delight—a delight shaped by the fact that we are men and women in Christ, and our delight and destiny is in him. Let us not get sucked in to living as if God does not exist and we do not belong to him. That is the message of Ahaz.
It is, of course, the Lord Jesus himself who holds the key to surviving in this deadly but deeply attractive world. John Owen wrote this in the seventeenth century: “When someone sets his affections on the cross and the love of Christ, he crucifies the world as a dead and undesirable thing. The baits of sin lose their attraction and disappear. Fill your affections with the love of Christ and you will find no room for sin.”2 The battle against worldliness—the battle to love Christ first and best, and through him to live the beautiful life he holds out to us—is a lifelong one, one won only by a steady progression of small decisions to cling to the grace of God. But this is the path of life. This is the way to fear God and give him glory. This is what it means to belong to the Lord Jesus Christ.