Second Kings chapter 16. This text too is more than appropriate for a Sanctity of Life Sunday sermon. Second Kings 16. In the seventeenth year of Pekah, the son of Remaliah, Ahaz, the son of Jotham, king of Judah, began to reign. Ahaz was twenty years old when he became king, and he reigned sixteen years in Jerusalem. And he did not do what was right in the sight of the Lord his God, as his father David had done. But he walked in the way of the kings of Israel. Indeed, he made his son pass through the fire, according to the abominations of the nations whom the Lord had cast out from before the children of Israel. And he sacrificed and burned incense on the high places, on the hills, and under every green tree. Then Rezan, king of Syria, and Pekah, the son of Remaliah, king of Israel, came up to Jerusalem to make war. And they besieged Ahaz, but could not overcome him. At that time, Rezin, king of Syria, captured Elath for Syria and drove the men of Judah from Elath. Then the Edomites went to Elath and dwell there to this day. So Ahaz sent messengers to Tiglath-Pileser, king of Assyria, saying, I am your servant and your son. Come up and save me from the hand of the king of Syria and from the hand of the king of Israel who rise up against me. And Ahaz took the silver and the gold that was found in the house of the Lord, and in the treasuries of the king's house, and sent it as a present to the king of Syria. So the king of Assyria heeded him, for the king of Assyria went up against Damascus and took it, carried its people captive to Ker, and killed Rezan. Now King Ahaz went to Damascus to meet Tiglath-Pileser, king of Assyria, and saw an altar that was at Damascus. And King Ahaz sent to Uriah the priest the details of the altar and its pattern according to all its workmanship. Then Uriah the priest built an altar according to all that King Ahaz had sent from Damascus. So Uriah the priest made it before King Ahaz came from Damascus. And when the king came from Damascus, the king saw the altar. And the king approached the altar and made offerings on it. So he burned his burnt offerings and his grain offering, and he poured his drink offering and sprinkled the blood of his peace offerings on the altar. He also brought the bronze altar, which was before the Lord, from the front of the temple, from between the new altar and the house of the Lord, and put it on the north side of the new altar. Then King Ahaz commanded Uriah the priest, saying, On the great new altar burn the morning burnt offering, the evening grain offering, the king's burnt sacrifice, and his grain offering with the burnt offering of all the people of the land, their grain offering and their drink offerings, and sprinkle on it all the blood of the burnt offering and all the blood of the sacrifice. And the bronze altar shall be for me to inquire by. Thus did Uriah the priest, according to all that King Ahaz commanded. And King Ahaz cut off the panels of the carts, and removed the lavers from them. And he took down the sea from the bronze oxen that were under it, and put it on a pavement of stones. Also he removed the Sabbath pavilion which they had built in the temple, and he removed the king's outer entrance from the house of the Lord, on account of the king of Assyria. Now the rest of the acts of Ahaz which he did, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah? So Ahaz rested with his fathers and was buried with his fathers in the city of David. Then Hezekiah his son reigned in his place. Let's go before God in prayer. Almighty God, we pray that you would help us to see that you hate unfaithfulness. Show us yourself in this text tonight. Come to us again, we beg, in word and in sacrament. I ask that you would help my mouth, give me wisdom and boldness to speak the things which I ought to speak. Through the grace of your Spirit, we pray, and all God's people said, Amen. Well, our last full chapter on a king of Judah was all the way back in chapter 12. In general, the author of Kings seems more interested in northern kings than in southern ones. Here he takes the time to give us a little more rounded picture of Ahaz's life. Remember, our previous chapter we had seven kings. This chapter, the whole chapter deals with just one king. The main thing we see in this chapter is how hard it is to be faithful and how much God hates unfaithfulness. Ahaz's life shows us that it's not easy to be faithful. He had a lot of pretty good reasons to do what he did in many cases. But the disapproval of the writer almost drips off the page. It's hard to be faithful. but God hates unfaithfulness. We see this again in four points, Ahaz the idolater, Ahaz the pragmatist, Ahaz the liturgical innovator, and Ahaz the father of Hezekiah. So Ahaz the idolater, that's where our text begins. Ahaz comes to the throne, he's 20 years old, And it's a bad time to be king. The political situation is not good. And our chapter doesn't give full background on the political situation. But basically, a new power was rising, if you want to use the hackneyed cliche. Assyria was gaining strength out east. So the minor states of the Mediterranean coast were attempting to stay out from under Assyrian control. And all of Judah's neighbors formed this coalition to stand up to Assyria and decided that they were stronger together. So there was this Western group of states that included northern Israel, Syria, Philistia, and to some extent, Edom. So all of Judah's neighbors, Syria is on the northeast corner, and then Edom is on the southeast corner, Philistia is on the southwest, and Tyre and Sidon directly north, all of these states banded together to resist Assyria. So you had this Western coalition on this side. The only thing that gave this Western coalition a fighting chance was the fact that Babylon was attacking Assyria from the east, trying to throw off Assyrian domination that way. So the idea was that these Western states were in something of a coalition movement with Babylon and that Either side would fight Assyria and thereby give the other half of the coalition some kind of fighting chance. So obviously, this left Judah in a really bad spot. Judah is surrounded north, south, east, and west with people who really don't like the fact that Judah has refused to join their anti-Assyria alliance. Judah has no natural allies at this point other than Assyria based on the principle of the enemy of my enemy is my friend. So this was the political situation when Ahaz came to the throne. Ahaz came to the throne at a time when Judah was isolated and more or less alone on the international scene. 20 years old, probably feeling that dad died at just the wrong time, left me with this mess. What in the world am I going to do? So how did he respond? He responded by choosing the way of evil. How am I going to cope? I'm going to turn to false God. He walked in the way of the kings of Israel, that is, by following some kind of false religion, Jeroboams, golden calves, whatever form that took, that's what Ahaz did. He subordinated religion to politics. We've talked a lot about the sin of the northern kingdom and that's the sin that Ahaz followed as well. He did not do what was right in the sight of the Lord his God. He walked just like Jeroboam son of Nebat, just like the other kings in northern Israel. And the culmination of this, again verse 3, was he became a supporter of abortion rights. Or, well, that's not how the text phrases it, but we've talked about this. He made his son to pass through the fire. In those days, they called it child sacrifice. And they sacrificed to various gods that had different names, like Molech, Chemosh, Ashtaroth, whatever god it might be. They didn't sacrifice their children to the gods of modern America like convenience and pleasure and whatever gods we sacrifice our children to, but it was the same result. We've talked about this. Anytime people start worshiping false gods, you can tell by how they treat their children. How do we know whether you worship a false god? Well, it's easy to tell based on whether you're sacrificing your children to that god. Sometimes it's really, really obvious. I worship the god of alcohol and so I'm drunk and passed out on the couch all day and my kids are running around naked. Other times it's not so obvious. I worship the god of success, power of prestige, and so I push my kids to excel. But there are many, many ways of sacrificing our children. It might be something really, really basic, like I yell at my kid when he interrupts my TV show. Same thing, though. You're sacrificing your child to the God of your pleasure. So that's what Ahas did. He sacrificed his children to his idols. He saw that as a way to achieve some measure of coherence, apparently, in the political situation he had inherited. And he sacrificed and burned incense on the high places, on the hills, and under every green tree. He worshiped God according to his own lights, just according to whatever took his fancy. Just whatever was culturally relevant, that's what Ahaz did. And the narrator includes this threat here in verse three. It was all according to the abominations of the nations whom the Lord had cast out from before the children of Israel. Why were those people banished from the land? Because they did these kinds of things. They sacrificed their children. They worshiped false gods in an abominable way. And the threat, of course, is that if Israel continues to do these things, then Israel is going to get sent out of the land. Now we believe, again, that it's not possible to lose our salvation. But don't be the Christian who's constantly doing things that look like an attempt to get God to take your salvation back. Israel was promised the land forever and ever and then they kept doing their darnedest to get kicked out of it And there are people seemingly in this world who say yeah, God has promised me eternal life He's promised me eternal salvation And I'm gonna continue to do my darnedest to lose it Of course that's all of us at some level But don't be that at an Ahaz level Don't do things that, if it were possible, would get you kicked out of the kingdom of God. But at the same time, recognize that it's hard to be faithful. It was hard for Ahaz to be faithful. And it will often be hard for us to be faithful. Well, verse 5 explains the results of the political situation that Ahaz inherited. The king of Syria and the king of Israel came to attack Judah. They said, we're done with this. We can't have this neutral territory here on our rear as we're fighting Assyria. Not going to do it. Not going to stand for this anymore. We're going to come and wipe you out, Judah. And we're going to set up this puppet king, the son of Tabeel, that was mentioned in Isaiah 7, and he's going to ally with us against Assyria. And the king of Syria was powerful enough that he was able to go down to the southern tip of Judah and capture the city of Elath that's there on the Gulf of Aqaba. That city is still there, by the way, if you go to Israel you can see it. The king of Syria captured this city. He's taking territory right out of Ahaz's pocket. What does Ahaz do in this situation? It was this very situation in which Isaiah came to him as he was inspecting the city's defenses and said, God has a promise for you in this scenario, Ahaz. God is going to give you Immanuel. But what was Ahaz's response? Well, Ahaz contacted Assyria and asked them to come and rescue him. Assyria, I'm surrounded by your enemies. They don't like me. Why don't you come and attack them for me? Now, tactically, there was probably almost no reason why Ahaz would need to do this. Assyria was more than capable of wiping out Syria and northern Israel on its own, and in fact, was more than likely to do so. As you all might remember, Germany's plan in the First World War was to knock Russia out quickly and then deal with the Western Front. Well, Assyria's plan was the opposite of that. Knock out the western front quickly, and then deal with the eastern front. Come attack Syria, come attack Philistia, come attack Edom, come attack these little tiny Mediterranean states that are trying to be a thorn in its side, take them out, and then mass forces for an attack on Babylon, which is the real adversary. So Ahaz didn't even need to invite Assyria to come. Assyria was almost certainly going to come anyway. But Ahaz did invite Assyria. And he didn't just invite them. He said, I am your servant and your son. Why is that language important? Well, remember God promised to King David I will be to your son a father and he will be to me a son. God promised the Davidic king will be my adopted son. So Ahaz, the Davidic king says, I don't care about that. Being God's son, what has that ever done for anyone? I would much rather be the son of the king of Assyria. He will actually help me in this scenario. So Isaiah says, what, Ahaz, be calm, be quiet, don't do anything. The forces of Syria and northern Israel are pinned down right here at Jerusalem, leaving their flanks wide open for an Assyrian attack. Assyria is going to be unable to resist the bait, and you just have to sit here. and trust God. What does Ahaz say? No way. No, I'm not going to trust God. I'm going to trust something I can see, something I can control. So he calls on Assyria, and Assyria comes and does exactly what he wants. Captures and destroys Syria, thus knocking out the senior coalition partner and making northern Israel go home. In other words, pragmatism worked. Ahas said, I'm not going to trust the sign of Emmanuel. I'm going to trust military hardware under the leadership of Tiglath Polisar. Somebody I can see, somebody I can talk to, somebody who will actually come through on his bargains. So we call that pragmatism. He refused to look to the birth of God's son because he calculated correctly that a Syrian intervention would protect him for the rest of his lifetime. Such as it was, he died at the age of 36. When do we think like this? When do we embrace pragmatism? And say, you know what? In this scenario, it's too scary to trust God. I couldn't possibly trust God here. I better call on something a little more controllable, a little more visible, a little more tangible. For instance, you might say, I don't dare trust God for my finances. I'd better, what, steal, cheat on my taxes, work on Sundays doing something I know is totally illegitimate, for that day, name it. Because I can't trust God for my finances, so therefore I'll pursue the root of pragmatism. Or, I don't dare trust God for my children. I better make them conform and bully them into accepting Christ. I don't dare trust God for my health. I better become orthorexic. Orthorexia, an unhealthy obsession with healthy eating. I don't dare trust God for my future. I'd better become a worry wart and constantly go over in my mind everything that could possibly go wrong. I don't dare trust God with my pleasure. I'd better do something I know is illicit, like making out with my girlfriend, visiting that website, name it. I don't dare trust God with my stuff. I'd better not give anything away to anybody, and certainly not to the church. I don't dare trust God with my time. I don't dare spend the Sabbath day with Him. Heaven forbid. I better use Sundays to catch up on my stuff that I'm behind on from a tough week. I don't dare trust God with my heart. I better find something safer and more manageable to love, like a dog, a child, a TV show, a toy. Have you ever thought this way? Of course you have. We've all thought this way. I don't dare trust God with XYZ facet of my life. Well, that was Hezekiah. I don't dare trust God with military security. God, I might be able to trust you with my next meal, but when it comes to national security, that's too big. Homeland security is too important. I'm going to call on Assyria for this one. Whenever you decide to trust something you can control more than you trust God, you're thinking like Ahaz. And God hates that. Why does God hate it when we say, God, I would rather trust Assyria than trust you? And the answer is, because the sign He's given us is worth all the hardship. The sign is everything. That sign of Emmanuel. Ahaz was offered Christ Himself and said, that's not enough. That won't help. Don't give me that, Isaiah. Why don't you give me, why don't I go find something that I can see? Now admittedly, sure, it was hard for Ahaz to trust God. Brutal. I'm not here to preach that it's easy to follow Christ. It's not. The apostles preached that it was only through much tribulation that you could enter the kingdom. And that's the message that needs to be heard again today. Everything was against Ahaz. Geopolitically, certainly. But what was his reaction? Become a pragmatist. Stop trusting God. Start trusting something else. But Ahaz was not just a pragmatist. He was also a progressive. Verse 10, he travels to Damascus.