After well over a century of good kings, Judah gets a bad apple. 🍎 Ahaz. And true to the proverb, this bad apple spoiled the whole barrel.

Ahaz was wicked from the start at age 20, which kind of makes you wonder about his upbringing. Jotham was a good and Godly king but the people were trending toward wickedness. Perhaps Ahaz thought of his father and grandfather as old-fashioned and narrow-minded. They only worshiped Yahweh. And there were so many other gods to consider.

Ahaz immediately goes off the rails and into demonic, child sacrifice rituals as well as any other occult ritual practice he can get his hands on. This draws an immediate discipline from Yahweh in the form of the kings of Israel and Syria attacking from the north while the Philistines raided towns in the west and the Edomites push in from the east. Judah loses a lot of territory, 200 thousand people were taken as slaves, and many soldiers were killed, including the king’s son, and 2 of Ahaz’s top guys.

We also learn about an obscure prophet named Oded who meets the returning army of Israel and rebukes them for bringing all the captured people as slaves. And, SHOCKINGLY – they listen to him, patch up the wounded, and return them to Jericho! This is a weird period in history where it seems that the sinful northern kingdom is actually slightly less wicked than Judah. Bizarre.

With all these attacks does Ahaz ask Yahweh for help? Does he summon a prophet for counsel? No. He asks the wicked Assyrians for help- you remember, the ones who flay their enemies alive, rip out tongues, and shish-kebab headless bodies. Those people.

Just look how nicely Ahaz worded his letter requesting help:

“So 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.”
‭‭2 Kings‬ ‭16‬:‭7‬ ‭ESV‬‬

Allow me to introduce you to Tiglath-pileser III, King of Assyria – a king who liked selfies:

And how does Ahaz pay for Assyria’s help? (Cause they ain’t doin’ it for free.) He loots the Temple. Who needs the Babylonians when you have Judah’s own king looting the temple treasury to hire the sadistic Assyrians?

At any rate the Assyrians take the job, and attack Damascus, (capital of Syria), and kill their king.

Ahaz – in a rather fan-boy move – goes to Damascus to congratulate Tiglath-pileser. While he’s there, he sees an impressive altar and decides he needs to have one just like it. So he sends a model of it back to the high priest in Jerusalem with instructions to build one just like it.

Not only does Ahaz get his pagan-inspired altar, he orders the HUGE brazen altar from the temple to be moved so it can sit next to it. He shutters the temple and moves sacrifices to his own personal altar and keeps the brazen altar “to enquire by.” That means he’s going to use it for divination.

Now, before we hate too hard on Ahaz, let’s look more closely.

He has visited another place and saw how they do worship. It’s impressive. It’s new and different. Powerful and famous leaders worship this way. And it works for them. They are very successful and effective.

We would never do that right? We would never look at something impressive that the world or a compromised version of the “church” is doing and say, “I want one just like that!” “Let’s copy it.” We would never make a “model” of it and use it to replace the sacrifice in God’s original plan.

I see in Ahaz an odd, Old Testament version of copying what other religious groups are doing or copying from the world. And he destroyed true worship and access to God in the process.

Real ministry requires sacrifice and faithful obedience. It’s not about doing what’s popular.

I pray that the Churches would stop looking at the world or even other churches and keep our eyes fixed only on Jesus.

One of my Bible college teachers said, “Why would we try to compete with the world when we have something the world can never offer?” We have Jesus.

And if the Lord assigns you to some obscure place it’s better to be faithful in obscurity than bail on the assignment to chase prestige and the applause of men.

If God told me to go preach on a street corner and He also told me that I would be 0% effective – no one would respond to my calls to repentance – would I do it? Cuz that’s exactly what He asked most of the prophets to do.

This is gonna sound shocking, but I think we need to sit with this statement for just a bit:

The goal is NOT to be “effective.” The goal is to be faithful and leave the results to God.

Let me leave you with this verse from the song Little Is Much When God Is In It by Kittie Suffield and made popular by George Beverly Shea of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. The link will take you to a fantastic rendition by the Gaither Vocal Band.

Does the place you’re called to labor

Seem so small and little known

It is great if God is in it

And He’ll not forsake His own

Little is much when God is in it

Labor not for wealth or fame

There’s a crown and you can win it

If you’ll go in Jesus’ name