Year Two, January 3

All We Like Sheep Have Gone Astray1

2 Kings 16:1-4

1In the seventeenth year of Pekah the son of Remaliah (king of Israel), Ahaz the son of Jotham, king of Judah, began to reign.

He was the bad son of a good father. Under him the kingdom of Judah fell back into the sad state it was in before Jotham improved it.

2Ahaz 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, 3but 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. 4And he sacrificed and made offerings on the high places and on the hills and under every green tree.

Ahaz was not satisfied with the ordinary forms of idolatry. He searched for the most horrible superstitions and practiced the unnatural and cruel rituals of the demon god Moloch. Old historians claim that the image of Moloch was made of brass. It was heated red-hot and then children were placed in its arms as human sacrifices. What shame that the ruler of the chosen people should be guilty of such a terrible crime as putting his own son to such a death! An old writer once described Moloch as half-beast and half-devil and he was very close to being right.

When people act as wickedly as they did in the times of Ahaz, inspired words like those found in the first chapter of Isaiah are greatly needed.

  

Isaiah 1:2-9

2 Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth;

for the LORD has spoken:

“Children have I reared and brought up,

but they have rebelled against me.”

It is not the heathen or strangers that the Lord is rebuking here. These are his own highly favored people. Sin is twice as sinful when it is found in the lovingly nurtured children of the Lord.

3 “The ox knows its owner,

and the donkey its master’s crib,

but Israel does not know,

my people do not understand.”

People can be more vicious than animals. They receive everything from the Lord and then totally forget him. Alas, Lord God, that you should be treated like this!

4 Ah, sinful nation,

a people laden with iniquity,

offspring of evildoers,

children who deal corruptly!

They have forsaken the LORD,

they have despised the Holy One of Israel,

they are utterly estranged.

5 Why will you still be struck down?

Why will you continue to rebel?

The whole head is sick,

and the whole heart faint.

6 From the sole of the foot even to the head,

there is no soundness in it,

but bruises and sores

and raw wounds;

they are not pressed out or bound up

or softened with oil.

During the next few days we will be reading about the extreme troubles of the people during the reign of Ahaz. But they were none the better for their suffering. The nation was like a man who had been beaten until there was not a place on his body that was not bruised and yet they still loved their idols and their sins.

7 Your country lies desolate;

your cities are burned with fire;

in your very presence

foreigners devour your land;

it is desolate, as overthrown by foreigners.

8 And the daughter of Zion is left

like a booth in a vineyard,

like a lodge in a cucumber field,

like a besieged city.

Jerusalem was abandoned and in great disrepair. She was like a temporary hut that keepers of a vineyard put up quickly to shade them from the sun. Their palace city was like a rundown shack. The cities in the valleys and hillsides around her were deserted.

9 If the LORD of hosts

had not left us a few survivors,

we should have been like Sodom,

and become like Gomorrah.

They were so wicked that if it were not for the few remaining faithful ones, God would have cursed the land like he did the cities of the plain. Oh, the miserable troubles of a favored people. May the Lord save our country from the same backsliding!

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¹ Isaiah 53:6