KING AHAZ (II KINGS 16; II CHRONICLES 28)

If anyone doubts that there have been no changes in the attitude of God's people toward society and politics over the year, they have only to consider the reign of King Ahaz of Judah approximately 2,750 years ago. The kings of Judah and Israel during the Divided Monarchy were for the most part sad successors to King David in every way. However, Ahaz hit a new low even though the prophets Isaiah, Hosea and Micah were active during that time period, and Isaiah pleaded with Ahaz personally to change his evil ways (Isaiah 7:1-12).

Both II Kings 16 and the corresponding passage in II Chronicles 28 outline a whole litany of Ahaz' sins including even child sacrifice. But I would just like to highlight two incidents that, at least in my own mind, illustrate faults that characterize the church today and its leaders.

To be fair to Ahaz, we must admit that he faced many challenges since Judah was attacked successively by Aram (with its capital in Damascus), the northern kingdom of Israel, Edom and the Philistines. But rather than relying on God's power as Isaiah had counseled him, Ahaz decided to form an alliance with the Assyrians by giving them money out of the temple treasury in return for military help. At this point in the story, there is a sharp contrast between what II Kings and II Chronicles say regarding this treaty:

    “The king of Assyria heeded him and marched against Damascus. He took it, carried its people captive to Kir, and then killed Rezin [its king].” II Kings 16:9

    “So King Tilgath-pilneser of Assyria came up against him [Ahaz] and oppressed him instead of strengthening him. This was because Ahaz had plundered the house of the LORD...and given tribute to the king of Assyria; but it did not help.” II Chronicles 28:20-21

So which account is correct? Did the alliance with the Assyrians help or hurt Judah? As Williamson said, “such a policy secured relief from one direction only to open the door to an even worse disaster in the other.” And Oswalt puts it another way: “Ahaz could not see the long-range issues. He could only see in the short range, and he was to pay the full price for his short-sightedness.” P.R. House concurs with these opinions when he explains, “Judah, Ammon, and Moab benefit temporarily from Assyria's victory...Such 'freedom' comes with a high price, however...since all these nations are now directly under Assyria's authority.”

Ahaz made the same Faustian bargain with Assyria that a large chunk of American evangelicals and their leaders have been making with politicians for years. We seem to be more than willing to give votes, money and vocal support to anyone who promises to push our moral agenda despite their own obvious moral failings. In return, we may get a short-term return for our time and resources if we are fortunate. But it is at the high price of trading in our prophetic witness to the world and causing us to being looked on in disgust by those to whom we should be presenting a winsome and welcoming face.

I find it interesting to look back on President Nixon's downfall. If you recall, he was a favorite of many evangelical leaders until the secret White House tapes were made public. One famous evangelist, who will remain nameless, was utterly horrified by what was revealed in those private conversations of Nixon with his staff. But what totally turned that evangelist off was not the attempt to cover up a crime designed to influence the election results or even Nixon's snide comments regarding the gullible Christians who had supported him. No, the only thing that upset this church leader was the crude language that Nixon had used. I think it is time that we got our priorities back on track.

While I am on my soapbox (and thankfully for you I don't do it too often), the second lesson for the church revealed in King Ahaz' reign is described in II Kings 16:10-18. The Assyrian leader apparently invites Ahaz to visit Damascus, the scene of the Assyrian conquest. While there, Ahaz sees an altar and is quite taken with the design. He makes a copy and sends it to his architect so that an identical one can be built in Judah for him to worship at.

At this point, my strong temptation is to move forward to the modern application I had in mind to make from these verses. However, honesty makes me admit that there is a sharp difference of opinion between scholars regarding the exact import of what happened in Damascus. These differences seem to boil down to three competing interpretations of the event:

1. What Ahaz saw in Damascus was an Assyrian altar set up by Tiglath-pileser after his conquest of the Aramaeans. And since it was customary, or even compulsory for vassal states of Assyria to adopt worship of the Assyrian gods, Ahaz went ahead and imported that sort of pagan worship to Judah. This view sees no relationship between II Kings 16:10-18 and II Chronicles 28:23, which states that Ahaz worshiped the gods of Damascus. There are many Bible scholars who hold to this interpretation, such as Ellul, House, LaSor, Oswalt, and Waite.

Three major problems with this view are that (a) there doesn't seem to be enough time between Assyria's conquest of Damascus and Ahaz' visit for them to have constructed a brand new altar in the Assyrian mode; (b) there is no historical record even hinting that the Assyrians imposed worship of their gods on her vassal states; and (c) the temple worship of Yahweh continued uninterrupted at Jerusalem except for the change in architecture.

2. What Ahaz saw in Damascus was an Aramaean altar, and he liked its modern style and imported it for temple worship of Yahweh at Jerusalem. However, “this importation becomes for our author [of II Chronicles] a worship of the gods of Aram because of their apparent superiority over the God of Israel.” (Myers)

Although this view appears to be more plausible than that of #1, (a) there is no direct proof that there is a direct parallel between the accounts in II Kings 16:10-18 and II Chronicles 28:23; (b) it would make little sense for Ahaz to have begun worship of an Aramaean god because of its apparent strength just after that same god had obviously not been able to save Damascus from the Assyrians; and (c) temple worship of Yahweh carried on as usual after the change of altar.

3. The design that Ahaz copied was of an Aramaean altar and, “The construction of this new altar of striking dimensions...should be viewed as motivated rather by a spirit of assimilation to the current international fashion.” (Cogan and Tadmor) The comment in II Corinthians regarding the worship of Aramaean gods probably refers to the earlier time period just after Damascus had defeated Judah. Ellison concurs with this view. The main difference between views #2 and 3 is whether there is any relationship between the II Kings account and II Chronicles 28:23.

I see another great temptation to the modern church in this incident (assuming either the second or the third school of interpretation) – the desire to constantly borrow novel ideas and trends from the world and try to adapt them to church practices and teachings. One church which I attended for years was especially addicted to that mode of operation. Almost all of the elders were independent businessmen, and so one time the members of the congregation were subjected to a customer satisfaction survey. The results of this survey revealed that the one thing above all that we wanted was excellence in performance during Sunday morning worship services. The whole premise of this exercise, which can work well in a business setting, was flawed from the beginning. As our current pastor never tires of reminding us, during worship service all of us are the “performers” for an audience of one – God. It is not the staff who are performing for us.

As a result of that particular survey, our pastor at the time (who was indeed a perfectionist in his sermon presentations) actually gave us the identical sermon two Sundays in a row since the first time he had been suffering from a mild cold and happened to stumble over his words once or twice. So to salvage his personal ego, we had to listen to the same message twice.

Then the elders decided to do a cost-benefit analysis on the staff to see how much value they were adding to the church. As a result of that exercise the minister in charge of pastoral care, an excellent pastor and a godly man, was fired and his job responsibilities given to another pastor who was already in charge of both the music ministry and missions (another loss-leader item that soon took a back seat in the church priorities). A little later, a further cost-benefit analysis revealed that the church was probably catering too much to the elderly in the congregation who were on a fixed income. And so, the traditional worship service was disbanded, and the music minister (who believed in a good balance of recent worship songs and classic hymns) was fired.

Jacques Ellul points out the similarity between this attitude and that of King Ahaz: “He sought above all things efficiency at the human level,” but “we cannot separate our objectives from the person of Jesus Christ. Peace and justice [or whatever other goals we set for ourselves as a church]...have no importance or value in themselves.”

The same sort of looking for the latest and greatest trend carried over to the actual teaching in the church. A new best-selling Christian book had come out written by a popular speaker. In fact, the book was roundly criticized by most evangelical scholars as totally misconstruing biblical teachings. However, some of the church elders loved it and decided that several of the on-going Sunday school classes would have to give up their classroom space in order that some of the elders could present a series of lessons on the book, even though these elders were not exactly gifted as teachers.

The elders presented their series and then just failed show up after the last presentation, leaving those who had left their regular classes in order to attend these special teachings wandering around asking people in the other classes if we knew where their teachers were. Basically, the elders just did their thing and then left once they had thoroughly disrupted the other Sunday school classes.

We should keep in mind that the “latest and greatest” is usually one of the first things to become passe'.