2 Chronicles 28:1-27 - Homiletics

This King Ahaz: the progress of a king literally devoid of religion.

In such words, the significance of which no one can mistake, is the royal person who is the chief subject of this chapter pointed to ( 2 Chronicles 28:22 ). Ahaz is the bad son of a good father. He is a type of those who begin badly, who are untaught by experience, who grow worse by suffering and adversity, and who end by maddening themselves, to their own destruction! The career of his father Jotham is written, apparently, without a fault, and without a reflection to be cast on him; the career of this son is written, apparently, without one redeeming feature to be put to his account. The contents of this chapter look like a series of pictures, marking a royal progress in wrongness, and which, in the issue, led to a very insanity of irreligion! In this progress notice how the king—

I. FORSOOK THE RIGHT MODEL . To be not "like his father David" was at once to want the stamp of a true royalty. To be "like the kings of Israel," the schismatic line, was to be stamped with the stamp of a base and ungenuine royalty. This description ( 2 Chronicles 28:2 ) of "the ways" in which Judah's king "walked" was, indeed, on the other hand, a fearful characterization for that same schismatic line of Israel. For Ahaz, however, thus to be, and be described, as at the beginning of his reign, when he was already arrived at the twenty-fifth year of his age, was an evil, anyway, of that worst calamity, viz. hope for an altered future almost hopelessly shut out! The augury proved too true. Ahaz counts for nothing Moses, as well as "his father David." He systematically "framed mischief by" his own "law," and the law of heathendom. He flagrantly breaks, and teaches the breaking of, the first two of the ever-venerable ten commandments—that vital Heaven-graven foundation-code of legislation of his kingdom. Sacrilege, idolatry, and each most heathenish practice and rite of un- "natural religion" he honours and follows. He gets as far as it is possible to get from "fearing" and "loving" and "serving" the Lord God of his fathers "with all the heart, and mind, and soul, and strength." For a young man, for any man to forsake the right model, the one Example, is to leave himself to pick among many, uncertain in every direction, except in the one certainty of all being wrong! One only safe right rule is ours to follow; "If the Lord be God, follow him" ( 1 Kings 18:21 ). Examples abound, but absolute safety and rightness can be found in one only.

II. NEGLECTED WARNING . The warning which Ahaz neglected, with a long succession, to say nothing of all those who may have gone before, was not merely warning written, preached loudly and earnestly and with prophet ' s voice proclaimed, but it was that practical warning, the ultimatum of all, the warning of consequences. Defeat, and the captivity of many of his people at the hand of the King of Syria; defeat, and the captivity of many of his people at the hand of the King of Israel; the slaying of his son, of the governor of his house, and of the man that was "the second to him in the kingdom;"—all these judgments, offering to bring closer and closer home to him and to his conscience the facts of the case, of his own sins, and of the consequences of those sins, he is blind to, or, not blind, he nevertheless disregards them to the very point of infatuation. But, again, not only are the practical warnings of "wrath" thus set at nought. Providences of mercy compete with those of "wrath" In one of the most remarkable and pathetic passages of all history, startling us by its lifelike and more than dramatic reality—a very monograph of pathos—seven verses (9-15) here record this providence. They tell us how, by the side of Judah's king, who refuses to give ear, to repent, or to learn, "certain of the heads of the children of Ephraim in Samaria," listen attentively to the remonstrance and teaching of the Prophet Oded, are open to the impression of the justness of what he says, see in a moment the truth of things for themselves, and reason without delay with the people, producing salutary convictions in them; and then, even with the atoning addition of all tenderest ministrations ( 2 Chronicles 28:15 ), lead back their captives of Judah to Jericho, to the shade of that "city of palm trees," and to the yet kinder shelter of "their brethren." What a practical message that was for a hardened heart like that of Ahaz! What an appeal and suggestion for the better feelings, if any, of Judah's king! But this too, this species of warning was in vain!

III. IMPROVED ADVERSITY TO THE GREATER INIQUITY , AND TO THE REAPING OF GREATER PUNISHMENT AND DEEPER DEGRADATION FOR HIMSELF AND NATION , The Edomites have successfully "smitten" him; the harrying incursions of the Philistines are ever on him; they take village after village, and also so take them, that they are safe in taking up their abode in them, for they dwelt there ( 2 Chronicles 28:18 ), Ahaz does not repent, and does not for a moment "seek to the Lord." The strickennees of sin is on him; the persistence in evil is his disease; the fatal aggravation of folly and infatuation of obstinacy cloud his brain, eclipse his reason, "make gross" his heart. He seeks to the King of Assyria, and bribes him with the sacred things of the house of the Lord, with the precious things of his own palace, with the robbed things of his princes. And that king takes all, but gives no help—"he helped him not" ( 2 Chronicles 28:21 ); mocks his defencelessness; makes sport of his supplications to him! To one deeper depth, in his deafened despair, he descends. Ahaz vows for his own the gods of those who "smote him" ( 2 Chronicles 28:23 ). His logic is that the house too of "the gods of the kings of Syria" may possibly prove a house divided against itself! It was a last, cruel, hapless resort! The refuge was the refuge of ruin—"the ruin of him, and of all Israel" ( 2 Chronicles 28:23 ), He ends all by entreating for his memory loathing unqualified. He hacks to pieces the collected "vessels of the house of God;" but shuts up (by just so much too late) "the doors of the house" itself; rears every wild altar; profanes with "high places every several city of Judah" to burn there the "incense of abomination;" excludes his own bones from the sepulchres of the best of his ancestors; and leaves us one more fearful lesson, that none and nothing make so sure a mock as sin itself makes of the "fool, who makes a mock" at it!