Because of Him! (Part A)

Foolishness comes easier to the younger because they haven't got their fingers burning. And he did not do what was right. This phrase is, it shows up in the Hebrew once more and it's in Chronicles and it's about the same guy.

It doesn't really show up like this in this identical form. And he did not do what was right. We don't want that said about us. He did not trust God. That's the trouble. And he did not trust God when trouble came. But for now, let's join Pastor Rick in the book of 2 Kings chapter 16 as he begins his message, Because of Him. It's so easy to do, even after you become a Christian.

You've got to guard against that. And this king seems to have been one who practiced blaming the only true God. And throughout his reign, this is King Ahaz, who had a great grandfather who was great, Uzziah, and a father got them. They were righteous men. His son will be one of Israel's or Judah's best kings, Hezekiah.

But he, he is not so. And throughout his time on the throne, Isaiah the prophet ministered. Isaiah had ministered back with his grandfather and will be ministering through the days of his son Hezekiah. And then Hezekiah has a rotten son Manasseh, but Isaiah will be there too. Micah the prophet is also delivering the word of God at this time in Judah. And these were righteous prophets dealing with religious sinners.

That alone is a thought. What is a religious sinner? And well, Ahaz is one with his fake altars and what he did to the house of God. So we look now at verse 1. In the 17th year of Pekah, the son of Ramaliah, Ahaz, the son of Japhetham, king of Judah began to reign. Chronologically out of order again.

We read about the death of Pekah in chapter 15, but he has, he has his character as revived because we're going back in time. Judah is going to the southern kingdom. And they are going to suffer because of this apostate king.

We know about this to history is just an overflow with rulers who have caused their people misery in various degrees of misery. The old King James in Chronicles says this about him, for he made Judah naked. The new King James in the second Chronicles changes the language a little bit without doing violence to it.

It is interpretive rendering because it means to strip bare, to expose. And he did this to Judah spiritually and as a kingdom. Hundreds of thousands of people in Judah are going to suffer because of him. Second Chronicles in the new King James, Yahweh brought Judah low because of Ahaz. Ergo the title, because of him. Because of Ahaz, king of Israel, for he had encouraged moral decline in Judah and had been continually unfaithful to Yahweh.

That sets the pace for all that's going to happen. That is the basis of all that flows out of the lesson on this character. Now he is called the king of Israel. Well Jehoshaphat is called that too in Chronicles because in Chronicles they're talking about the southern kings, but to them they were Israel's kings. They were of the line of David.

That line of David would carry into the kingdom age what we know as the millennial reign of Christ. And they never forgot it. So it is, you have to know the Bible to understand that's what they're doing.

You have to be familiar with it. They had this style of writing. And so here you have Israel's the northern kingdom. Judea is the southern kingdom. These kings were kings in the south, but as far as the historians were concerned, they were the legitimate kings. Yeah, Jeroboam I was allowed to be king because God sent the prophet. And you know, strip the garment, you'll receive ten tribes.

But he blew it. He forfeited all of it with his apostasy. And so the historians kind of stick it back in there and say, yeah well, David's line is the king. And the prophets are going to come along, especially Ezekiel. All of them though, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and they're going to say, David is the king.

And it is his line. And so there you have it show up in Chronicles by right. It is the throne of David and Solomon and their ancestors. We move further down to verse two now.

Ahaz was 20 years old when he became king and he reigned 16 years in Jerusalem. And he did not do what was right in the sight of Yahweh, his God, as his father David had done. Well again, this is a history book as well as a scripture. And so it's sort of like in the New Testament, Paul comes along, he's writing letters. And so the other apostles, but they start writing letters. It's becoming scripture. When they wrote the letters, they didn't say, okay, I'm writing scripture. The Holy Spirit overruled anything that would keep it from being scripture and made it scripture.

They say it in a backwards way like that. Well here, they're writing a history of their people. And now it is the word of God to us.

God is the great editor of the Bible. What does a person know concerning life and what's going to happen in life at 16 years old, or 20 years old, when he becomes king? He reigns for 16 years. And so he's 36 when he dies. But still, at 36, what are you really, you're just learning life. You're just finding out who you are.

And as you get older, you know, you find out a lot of things about life and yourself that you didn't have before. You're just too tired to execute what you've learned. Yeah, I know that, but I'm not doing that. That was nap time. Anyway, here is this king. He's young and it doesn't mean he has to be a fool. It's not written anywhere in the universe that the young must be fools.

Foolishness comes easier to the younger because they haven't got their fingers burnt enough. And he did not do what was right. This phrase is, it shows up in the Hebrew once more and it's in Chronicles and it's about the same guy.

It doesn't really show up like this in this identical form. And he did not do what was right. We don't want that said about us. He did not trust God.

That's the trouble. And he did not trust God when trouble came. And the prophets rallied to his support. He didn't care.

Isaiah offered him a miracle. Nah, I don't want, he acted all holy, you know, I don't want to put God through that kind of stuff. He really didn't want God. He did not want Yahweh to be God. You meet Christians, well not Christians, you meet people who do not want Christ to be Christ. And they'll do anything they can to cover up the evidence, to look the other way. They are just determined to be anti-Christ.

Well you had that in Israel with Jews who do not want to follow their God, who is our God, Yahweh. Second Chronicles 22 rings in again. He says, now in this time, now in the time of his distress, King Ahaz became increasingly unfaithful to Yahweh.

That is that King Ahaz, that's what it says. That guy right there points the finger right in his face. Inflammatory speech. I had a, many years ago, a visitor, she was I think at Fort Lee, you know, one of the military bases here in town for classes. And she says, you know, she's trying to be so nice. She's trying not to be inflammatory, telling me I was being inflammatory. She was surprised when I, no I didn't.

I was very nice to her in my thinking, in my language. I don't know how it's interpreted. But anyway, you know, telling the truth is inflammatory. You know, I love Martin Luther King, not Martin Luther King, Martin Luther. He said, I don't know how not to offend guilty people. They're not going to like it. Well anyway, coming back, I guess if you want to class on this, watch those shows like Cops. Well they have to deal with people who refuse to be held accountable or to own the evil that they do.

It is Satan at work. Anyway, it says here in verse two, in the sight of Yahweh, his God and his father David had done. He did not do what was right in the sight of Yahweh, his God, as his father David had done. He didn't think David was all that. He wasn't impressed by him. Can you imagine a Christian not impressed by Paul? Yeah, yeah, you know, he was all right. He took a few beatings. I mean, he would be crazy. Poor Paul. He didn't have Calvinism to help him on. But anyway, we won't go into that right now. When you come across stupid theology that's out there, ask them, did Jesus have this?

Did he need this? How come he doesn't preach on this? You know, I'm glad we got the psychologists to straighten those pastors out.

Anyway, I always feel bad when I hit those things because I don't hit them hard enough. Anyway, he wasn't impressed with David nor his father or grandfather. David, as I mentioned, is a legitimate king. Verse three, when 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 Yahweh had cast out from before the children of Israel. Well, that points all the way back to the days of Moses. God said, I'm bringing you into this land and I need you to throw these people out. Here's what they're doing. Don't you do it. And if you do it, I'm going to throw you out. And that's what happened. That's a quick overview of the law of the Lord concerning the people of Israel and the promised land. So here, this Judean king is being rebuked for walking like the kings of the north. Well, everyone's doing it. It's the rave. I mean, why can't I have fake gods too?

You can get to put them all on your robe and get a good embroidery machine or something. Anyway, it's pathetic. It's a pathetic reason to do anything. Everybody's doing it. I mean, there are some times where, you know, whatever everybody is doing, you have to, you should do it too. Like if the building's on fire and everybody's running out. It's probably a good idea to join the crowd. There may be some exceptions.

You know, oh my God, he's kidding. They tell you not to do that. Anyway, what would you go back for? Well, a loved one. Anyhow, coming back to the Psalm 119 verse 15. Depart from me, you evildoers, for I will keep the commandments of my God.

That's what the response should have been by this king to the northern king's behavior. For you youth and those of you very impressionable. Proverbs 1. My son, if sinners entice you, do not consent. Don't go along. Hey, taste this. Hey, smoke this. Hey, do this. How about no? I don't want to do that.

I don't care if you don't like me for not wanting to do that. Well, anyway, why not be influenced by a righteous person? He says here in verse 3, indeed he made his son pass through the fire. This is the disgusting, heinous practice of child sacrifice. And we are told elsewhere, I'll read it in a minute, that it was not just once.

We record it as plural. This horrific religion, this practice of that religion, the Canaanites, God explicitly condemned it, especially in Leviticus, Deuteronomy, and Jeremiah. God says at one point, this stuff was never in my mind to do such a thing.

It has now been polished and refined. They don't call it child sacrifice, they call it abortion. And after all, a woman has rights over the unborn and certainly over God, according to them. And this is, again, the devil's work. You know, if I were to write a book, I would write a book that would say, you know, Bible characters for unbelievers. I'd fix up the title somewhat because that wouldn't sell. The title would probably be like, you chump.

But anyway, it would just be these kind of people that just thought they could do this stuff. Where's Ahaz right now, right this moment? Where is his soul?

It is not annihilated. He is someplace. And we got a good idea where.

He didn't even make it to the king's graveyard, incidentally. Well, according to the abominations of the nations whom Yahweh had cast out. Yeah, they had become a Yahweh-less people. There are churches, there are denominations, there are, you know, Christ-less Christianity. A.W.

Tozier, I think, has a book or certainly a chapter called that. 2 Chronicles 28, verse 3, he burned incense in the valley of the son of Hinnom and burned his children, there's plural, in the fire, according to the abominations of the nations whom Yahweh had cast out before the children of Israel. This is why this guy caused so much problems.

God could not bless this. And the people were going, many of the people, were going right along with it. They were fine with it. Who was praying to God for righteousness to prevail? Hundreds of thousands of troops in one day, I think it's, I don't remember, we'll come to it, I wrote it down. 150,000, 200,000 in one day wiped out because God's judgment was on them. It says here, from before the children of Israel. This is according to the abomination of the nations whom the Lord had cast out from before the children of Israel. Joshua worked so hard to get these people out of the land not so that they could squat there and impress everybody with their sin.

Ooh, look at me, are you impressed? We burn out kids because we love our God so much. This is demonic, it is full-blown demonism. And God did not want his people to be like that, or anybody else. God did not want them to be that way. And Israel was supposed to be a light to say, hey, here's an alternative to this craziness. Well, what he could have been had he been a righteous man. If God had no problem with it, he could have spared the Jews a trip across the desert in a time in the wilderness if everybody's thinking what they were doing was just fine. But it wasn't. Verse 4, and he sacrificed and burned incense on the high places on the hills under every green tree.

I was just watching the, I don't know, 1956, I think, around the world in 80 days. No profanity in it. And nobody chasing anybody with guns anyway. There's a scene, of course, where there's a practice in ancient India that the British empire really stomped it out, the Christian influence there, where they would burn the surviving wife with the dead husband. Who thought of that? I mean, who can? You know what? Your husband's dead.

We should burn you. And it just, of course, the characters say, but this is the world, the darkness that is out there. And there's much more darkness. There's plenty more darkness where that came from. Darkness doesn't travel at the speed of light.

It's just there when there is no light. Well, verse 4, and he sacrificed and burned incense on the high places on the hills and under every green tree. He infested the land of Judah.

God's land, he infested it with this paganism. But what is it with the king's burning incense? Solomon, of course, he burned incense to the gods of his wives.

He just thought, I just, you know, I don't believe in him, but I'm going to keep peace, you know, political stuff. And he'd go to their altars and wave the little incense. And then Jeroboam, he did the same thing. And Bethel and Dan and Uzziah, the good king, tried to do it to the true god and was withstood by the priest. And now we have this one burning incense all over the place. The incense, you know, is the prayers rising up the heaven, which it is supposed to represent, but it is voided out if it is, of course, the wrong faith, the wrong god.

Second Chronicles 28 again. Therefore, Yahweh, his god, delivered him into the hand of the kings of Syria. Notice that God says, whether he likes it or not, I'm still his god. I just won't be his savior.

Atheists can say, I don't believe in God. God says, well, that's too bad. I'm still your god. I'm still the creator. I'm not your father, but I am your god. And we love that our god doesn't back down.

Anyway, it continues here in Second Chronicles. Therefore, Yahweh, his god, delivered him into the hand of the king of Syria. They defeated him and carried away a great multitude of them as captives and brought them to Damascus.

Then he was also delivered into the hand of the king of Israel, who defeated him with a great slaughter. See the sorrow, because of him, all of these people are suffering. We're seeing this with the guy with the unfortunate name in Russia.

Okay, I'm not being crass, but I do think of it. So, Vladimir, that's not the name I'm referring to. Anyway, Mr. Unfortunate, look how much horror he's causing everybody.

Does anybody want to call out his last name? Oh well, you know, oh gosh, I don't want to get started. See what silliness does. Okay, so, this king, so spiritually blind, that he thinks the armies that defeated him, their gods, is the god to follow. And not the true god that he insulted, that was willing to give him evidence that he would bless him.

This guy's head is crazy. See, this is the kind of thing you want to show an unbeliever. He says, let me tell you about Ahaz, because you're not kind of a doofus like him. And maybe you can see this and turn around and repent, or get what he got. Anyway, he imagined that these gods might not hurt him if he sided with them. Again, let's go back, not to pick on India, but there's a lot of paganism there that matches what's going on here.

There are those in India that worship Satan, not as the cheap Westerners do, some of them do, but because they figure if we worship Satan, who's the bad guy, he won't hurt us. Satan has authored that kind of illogic. He's hurting you already by making you think such a stupid thing, because you still got to answer to his maker.

Well, anyway, that's some of what is going on in this guy's head. Well, if I side with those gods, man, then I won't, you know, suffer their wrath. So he worshiped the gods of those whom God, the true God, used to smite him.

So God says, I'm going to send these people to clunk you upside your head so you figure it out. And he sides with them. He goes deeper into his insanity. It says on the hills and under every green tree, he's burning his incense and making these altars. This was no accident. He embraced idolatry.

It was systematic. He got worse as God began to minister to him. He doubled down on his hatred. God knew he had a foul heart, and these kings that come against him from the north and from Syria, they wanted to assassinate him and put their own king on the throne, because politically what's happening is Syria is getting too big. So Syria, next to Assyria, sides up with an old enemy, the northern kingdom, to fight the Assyrians and says to Judah, we need you too. And Ahaz, the king of Judah, says, no, I don't want to go with you.

It's a lose-lose situation for us. And so that's when they come against him. And God, instead of God protecting him, God let them as the punishment. So he gave him a chance to be right with his creator.

He opted out of that. 2 Chronicles, again, 28, verse 22. Now in the time of his distress, King Ahaz became increasingly unfaithful to Yahweh. That is this King Ahaz.

So I reread that on purpose because it's such a strong statement. He's just hardening, blaming God. And in his blame, he's like, I'm going to show you. He knows those are fake gods.

How can you not? Well, anyway, he's going to try to redo the nation. He's going to vandalize the house of God and try to remove anything that would motivate the people to follow the true God. Again, 2 Chronicles 28, verse 23. For he sacrificed to the gods of Damascus, which had defeated him, saying, Because the gods of the kings of Syria helped them, I will sacrifice to them that they may help me.

But they were the ruin of him and all Israel. And this is the illogic that Satan likes to give people. And I bet you he's telling, patting him on the back, because he's so smart to figure this out. Where the world's been waiting for a king like you. Thanks for joining us for today's edition on Cross-Reference Radio. This is the daily radio ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville in Virginia.

We trust that what you've heard today in the book of 2 Kings has been something to remember. If you'd like to listen to more teachings from this series, go to Cross-Reference Radio dot com. Once more, that's Cross-Reference Radio dot com. We encourage you to subscribe to our podcast, too, so you'll never miss another edition. Just go to your favorite podcast app to subscribe. Our time is about up, but we hope you'll tune in again next time as we continue on in the book of 2 Kings. We look forward to that time with you. So make a note in your calendar to join Pastor Rick as he teaches from the Bible right here on Cross-Reference Radio.