In the seventeenth year of Pekah the son of Remaliah, Ahaz the son of Jotham, king of Judah, began to reign. 2 Ahaz 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 but he walked in the way of the kings of Israel. He even burned his son as an offering, according to the despicable practices of the nations whom the Lord drove out before the people of Israel. 4 And he sacrificed and made offerings on the high places and on the hills and under every green tree. (II Kings 16)
Israel, the northern kingdom, had a foundation of compromise and idolatry, so the kinds of things we find in Kings is not that surprising. But to have a king do the things Ahaz did as king of Judah seem astounding. He went beyond the evil of many of the Northern kings, even sacrificing his own son and proliferating idolatry. The chapter goes on to say that he went on to seek the help of the king of Assyria, and adopting the idolatry he brought into the region, as well as "taking apart" the sacrificing area of the temple of the Lord. He did not just put idols alongside temple worship; he replaced it with them. Twenty years - a long time for evil to reside, settle in, and become embedded in the culture. Yet, our God is a God of Hope. The story does not stop here. Amidst all the evil man can come up with, God still has a plan. Even when it seems it couldn't be any worse.
No comments:
Post a Comment