Happy Birthday (I Think)

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Here in Canada we just celebrated our 145th year as a nation. Our neighbours to the south are about to celebrate their birthday as a nation. There is cause for celebration in two of the most favoured places on the planet. But for how long?

Israel is coming to the end of its days as a nation. Assyria is about to descend and take her people into exile. We all know why. Even God comes to end of his patience, and though He will not forsake them, even in exile, nor will He continue to tolerate their rebellion.

Judah, the southern kingdom, still has a few years of grace left before she follows her sister into exile. But things don't run smoothly there either. Though Judah had many good kings, some were not. Ahaz, is a classic example of why Judah finally ended up in exile. He is also a frightening parallel to the modern church age.

In 2 Kings 16, Ahaz begins to reign in Judah. But he is one of Judah's kings who doesn't follow the Lord. In fact when Aram and Israel team up to attack Judah, Ahaz goes, not the Lord, but to Assyria, for help. He paid for Assyria's assistance with the priceless objects from the temple. Tiglath-Pileser, king of Assyria, attacked Damascus and took the city and it was there that Ahaz, now essentially Assyria's vassal, met the Assyrian king.

As bad as an alliance with a pagan king was, there was worse to come. To please his new lord, Ahaz had the temple in Jerusalem remodelled to suit the king of Assyria. It doesn't sound like much, but considering the specific instructions that God had laid down during Moses time for how all the pieces were to fit and how they were to be treated, what Ahaz did had to have been offensive to God.

2 Kings 16:18 (NIV) says, "He took away the Sabbath canopy that had been built at the temple and remove the royal entryway outside the temple of the Lord, in deference to the king of Assyria."

Matthew Henry writes in his commentary: "He removed the covert for the sabbath, erected either in honour of the sabbath or for the conveniency of the priests, when, on the sabbath, they officiated in greater numbers than on other days. Whatever it was, it should seem that in removing it he intended to put a contempt upon the sabbath, and so to open as wide an inlet as any to all manner of impiety. 3. The king's entry, which led to the house of the Lord, for the convenience of the royal family (perhaps that ascent which Solomon had made, and which the queen of Sheba admired, 1 Ki. 10:5), he turned another way, to show that he did not intend to frequent the house of the Lord any more. This he did for the king of Assyria, to oblige him, who perhaps returned his visit, and found fault with this entry, as an inconvenience and disparagement to his palace. When those that have had a ready passage to the house of the Lord, to please their neighbours, turn it another way, they are going down the hill apace towards their ruin."

As I read the passage I was reminded again of how often we accommodate the world at the expense of things of God. We are vassals to the standards and expectations of others rather than to the standards and expectations of Almighty God.

We know what happened to Israel. We know what happened to Judah. Are we not just the tiniest bit afraid of what will happen to us, as a nation and as individuals, as the hold other "gods" have on us tightens? Are we not exercised to follow the instruction given to Solomon: "…if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and heal their land" (2 Chronicles 7:14, NIV)?