Episode 103: 2 Kings 16:1-20 God Patiently Waits and Calls

Living Water Community Church

We worked our way through chapter 16 dealing with the rulership of king Ahaz of Judah. There is a lot of detail about his life especially when we consider how he is described as a king who did not do what was right in the eyes of the Lord. This is the first time this kind of description is applied to a king of Judah. It is a sad commentary an a life spent turning away from God at every point. He was even said to have sacrificed his son to an idol. Yet we see in the book of Isaiah how God reached out to Ahaz in his time of need as Jerusalem was being attacked by both Israel and Syria. But Ahaz refused to trust God and accept His help. Instead he sent money to Tiglath-pileser the king of Assyria and asked him for help. The Assyrian king came down and conquered the Syrians killing their king. This of course aided the kingdom of Judah but the Assyrian king demanded Ahaz submit to him and even came down and executed his own attack against Jerusalem. Ahaz also lost soldiers and cities to the Philistines and the Edomites. Overall his time as king was one of continual decline. The one thing which stands out is God’s patience with him and the kingdom of Judah. Ahaz led the people into idolatry of all kinds and yet God did not destroy them. This ongoing patience of God had to be an encouragement to the people in exile who were reading this account. They were living among a people who were idol worshippers. They were probably under the kind of pressure Christians face today to just be quiet and not say anything about their faith. In the meantime the false faith of the pagan is declared loudly and without consequence in the public square. The fact God was there constantly showing mercy in the midst of an unfaithful kings rule had to be a comfort to those who were afraid and felt like they were failing in their pursuit of God. This same kind of comfort is available to us today. God is faithful in the midst of our unfaithfulness. This does not give us license to just ignore God’s call for us to be faithful. On the contrary it should call us to abandon hope in man and put our hope in God alone. To live lives of uncompromising faith in the midst of a pagan and fallen world.