The Evolution of Sin's Corruption

All right, we're in 2 Kings. If you want to find that, if you've got your Bibles or an app you can open, or if you've got a scripture journal, we're up to chapter 16 today. 2 Kings chapter 16. We're going to take the whole chapter, and it's another chapter in the saga of Judah's kings, and we've

2 Kings 16 · chapter mention

come up today to a king named Ahaz. Ahaz. We're in 2 Kings chapter 16 verse 1, and for those of you that know that we like to take a peek over at the parallel account in Chronicles, you might stick

2 Kings 16:1

your finger in 2 Chronicles chapter 28. We'll be referring to that a good bit, but please follow along with me as I read God's word for us beginning in verse 1. In the 17th year of Pekah, the son of

2 Chronicles 28 · chapter mention

Remaliah, Ahaz, the son of Jotham, king of Judah, began to reign. Ahaz was 20 years old when he began to reign, and he reigned 16 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, but 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. And he sacrificed and made offerings

on the high places and on the hills and under every green tree. Then Rezan, king of Syria, and Pekah, the son of Remaliah, king of Israel, came up to wage war on Jerusalem. And they besieged

Ahaz, but could not conquer him. At that time Rezan, the king of Syria, recovered Elath for Syria and drove the men of Judah from Elath. And the Edomites came to Elath, where they dwell to this day.

So Ahaz sent messengers to Tiglath, Peleser, king of Assyria, and said, I am your servant and your son. Come up and rescue me from the hand of the king of Syria and from the hand of the king of Israel,

who are attacking me. Ahaz also took the silver and the gold that was found in the house of the Lord and in the treasuries of the king's house and sent a present to the king of Assyria.

So the king of Assyria listened to him. The king of Assyria marched up against Damascus and took it, carrying its people captive to Kir, and he killed Rezan. When king Ahaz went to Damascus to meet

Tiglath-Peleser, king of Assyria, he saw the altar that was at Damascus. And king Ahaz sent to Uriah the priest a model of the altar and its pattern exact in all of its details.

And Uriah the priest built the altar in accordance with all the king Ahaz had sent from Damascus. So Uriah the priest made it before king Ahaz arrived from Damascus.

And when the king came from Damascus, the king viewed the altar. Then the king drew near to the altar and went up on it and burned his burnt offering and his grain offering and poured out his drink offering and threw the blood of his peace offerings on the altar.

And the bronze altar that was before the Lord, he removed from the front of the house, from the place between his altar and the house of the Lord.

And he put it on the north side of his altar. And king Ahaz commanded Uriah the priest, saying, On the great altar burn the morning burnt offering and the evening grain offering and the king's burnt offering and his grain offering with the burnt offering of all the people of the land

and their grain offering and their drink offering. And throw on it all the blood of the burnt offering and all the blood of the sacrifice. But the bronze altar shall be for me to inquire by.

Uriah the priest did all this as king Ahaz commanded. And king Ahaz cut off the frames of the stands and removed the basin from them. And he took down the sea from the bronze oxen that were under it and put it on a stone pedestal.

And the covered way for the Sabbath that had been built inside the house and the outer entrance for the king, he caused to go around the house of the Lord because of the king of Assyria.

Now the rest of the acts of Ahaz that he did, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah? And Ahaz slept with his fathers and was buried with his fathers in the city of David.

And Hezekiah his son reigned in his place. Let's pray once more, shall we? Heavenly Father, this morning we again come to your word. Lord, it is an ancient book with a lot of kings and a lot of stuff and a lot of things we don't understand.

And so Lord, help us to understand as I try to bring some detail and some organization and some thought, Lord, to what you have given us in your word.

And may my thoughts be pleasing and may they be helpful. And Lord, we trust in your word and know that it will not return void to us. And so we pray this in the name of our Savior, in Jesus' name.

Amen.

You know, I don't know about you, but sometimes when I read a book or even a chapter like this one, I get a sense that there's a little more backstory to what's going on.

And if you're getting that sense here, as we've read chapter 16, well, it's for good reason. And the sense that we all should be getting is that Ahaz is not a very good king.

In fact, he's maybe a pretty bad one. Our narrator here seems to relay this information about him kind of dispassionately, but I want you to understand that this is not the case over in Chronicles.

No. Over in the parallel account in 2 Chronicles chapter 28, I want you to listen to assessments like this. 2 Chronicles 28 verse 5. Therefore the Lord his God gave him, gave Ahaz into the hand of the king of Syria who defeated him.

2 Chronicles 28 · chapter mention 2 Chronicles 28:5

He was also given into the hand of the king of Israel. And then there's also this, a few verses later, verse 19. We read that the Lord humbled Judah because of Ahaz king of Israel, for he had made Judah act sinfully and had been very unfaithful to the Lord.

Or even this, 2 Chronicles chapter 28 verse 22. In the time of his distress, he, Ahaz, became yet more faithless to the Lord. So there you really have it.

2 Chronicles 28:22

You have the assessment of Ahaz in Chronicles. We're told he is faithless. It's even said at one point that he became yet more faithless. This is a bad king who has led Judah into sin and compromise to the point that

the Lord is literally giving him over to his enemies, right? And yet, I want you to understand this reality today. The reality is that although the kingdom is very much now awash in compromise and corruption, I want you to understand that it did not get here in a quick minute.

We'll remember that Ahaz's own father, Jotham, he took some steps into compromise. He was the one who, like the other kings before him, left those high places, left the people to follow their corrupt practices.

And so, I think that we can understand the corruption that we're seeing here in 2 Kings 16 as actually something that started long before him.

I would submit to you that it really was a first step into corruption that was taken long before we got to Ahaz, long before Ahaz got to this throne.

And yet, as he has now come to the throne, what we're seeing right here this morning is a really quick succession of steps further down the road into corruption.

Because doesn't corruption happen that way? Doesn't it happen by degrees? Not necessarily overnight? In stages? Doesn't the evolution of sin's corruption tend to happen in steps?

I think so. And it surely does here today. And so, what I'd like to do this morning, a little different as we walk through this story, I would like to lay things out for us in a series of successive steps.

Today, I'm going to structure things according to five steps. Five steps where people give way to the voice of sin. Because sin, yes, as Genesis says, it does crouch at our door, but as it crouches, we've got to understand,

it also speaks to us. And it beckons us toward total corruption in a series of simple steps. And so, let's get started by looking at this first step.

And as I just mentioned, we have to back up even before our king to see this one. The first step is this. Step number one, sin says, tolerate me.

Tolerate me. If we were to back up to not just chapter 1 of verse 16, but into the last chapter, verse 15, we would meet the grandfather of Ahaz, a king named Uzziah.

And I want you to hear again what we read about King Uzziah a couple of weeks ago. 2 Kings chapter 15, verse 4. Nevertheless, the high places were not taken away.

2 Kings 15:4

The people still sacrificed and made offerings on the high places. High places remained. People still sacrificed there under King Uzziah, Ahaz's grandfather.

And then right after him, of course, we came to Ahaz's own father, Jotham. And we ask ourselves, is it any different? Is it going to be any different with Jotham?

Well, 2 Kings 15, verse 35. Nevertheless, I mean, it's a copy and paste. The high places were not removed. The people still sacrificed and made offerings there.

2 Kings 15:35

Still nothing done about them. And so I want you to understand that even before Ahaz begins his reign, this is the legacy. This is the heritage that's been passed on to him.

The example left for him. You don't get controversial Ahaz. Can you hear his parent, his father, his grandfather telling him? We don't get into controversy.

You don't mess with the status quo. You don't grab the bull by the horns. No, no. Neither grandpa nor I did that. We lived and let live. We left the people alone.

Let them do what they want on their high places. And it's just fine. Keep your nose out of it. And I would suggest to us that this is the first step into compromise.

Sin wants this. Sin asks for this. And sin tells us to do this, to tolerate me. After all, sin says, you didn't start anything. You're not doing anything.

It's not your problem. It was here before you. And it'll be here after you. So just look the other way and focus on your own little kingdom.

And live and let live. Tolerate me, sin says. But that's simply a setup for the next step that gets taken here this morning. And it meets us as we open chapter 16, verse 1.

And it's a big one. The second step, number two, is this. Sin says, engage with me. Engage with me. Verse 4 verses here.

Wouldn't you know, but it looks like Ahaz is right off the bat obliging the request. Noticeably in verse 2, we read that he, unlike his father and grandfather, he himself did not do what was right in the eyes of the Lord.

And then take a look at verse 3. We're told that he walked in the way of the kings of Israel. And that's a pretty bad indictment. Because as we've seen, those northern Israelite kings have been walking very badly.

In fact, I would say they've not just been walking. They've kind of been running headway into evil. We've been reading how they've continued in the sins of Jeroboam.

That they have been serving the ashram. In fact, next week, when we watch the northern kingdom finally fall, we're going to, you know, really have kind of the covers lifted off of what's been going on in the northern kingdom.

And it is terrible, terrible, terrible. Worshipping idols. Walking in the ways and the customs of all the nations that God abhorred. Israel have been doing that.

And now, apparently, King Ahaz of Judah in the south is himself doing it. And he's leading his nation to do the same thing. But worse than that is what we read in the last half of verse 3.

Did you catch this? That he, verse 3, even burned his son as an offering according to the detestable, despicable practices of the nations whom the Lord drove out before the people of Israel.

I don't think I have to tell you that this is one of the most despicable practices, unimaginable practices. The practice of child sacrifice.

Very clearly prohibited in God's law. Listen to Deuteronomy 18. 18, verses 9 and 10. God said, when you come, my people, when you come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you, you shall not learn to follow the abominable practices of those nations.

There shall not be found among you anyone who burns his son or his daughter as an offering. And truly, this is one of the reasons that God had literally vomited out the pagan nations, the Canaanites, from the promised land.

Was for things like child sacrifice. The Canaanite god Moloch was notoriously worshipped by burning your firstborn son for him. And I don't know about you, but for me personally, these are the moments where I look into the Old Testament

and I see these so-called gods, these false gods of the Canaanites, and I say, you know, I think I did read somewhere that actually demons are behind them.

And so we ask ourselves, Ahaz, you've been practicing your whole life to look the other way. Are you looking the other way on this one? Are you overlooking child sacrifice?

Oh no, I'm quite well aware. In fact, I'm directly involved in it myself. I have in fact offered my own son. Verse 4 goes on to detail the king's personal participation in not just child sacrifice,

but also in what's described to us as offering sacrifices and offerings at the high places and the phraseology here, and on the hills and under every green tree.

You know, that's language that we find in Hosea and some of the other prophets, and it's language that clearly implies illicit sexual sin. It's the fertility cult now in full swing all over Judah.

All because this king, Ahaz, has listened to the voice of sin and taken the second step, engage with me. And just like that, the stage is now set for a third step in verse 5.

And the third step, number 3, is this. Sin says, run to me. Run to me. Because what happens in verse 5? Your friendly neighborhood invasion.

That's what? Rezan, king of Syria and his army. Pekka, king of Israel with his army. And in a coordinated attack. We're told that these two hit Judah from both sides.

You've got Syrians coming from the east and the north. You've got big brother Israel coming directly from the north. It's often called the Syro-Ephraimite alliance.

And the reason that they're coming at king Ahaz is because he has refused to join their alliance. It seems that Assyria, Assyria, not Syria, Assyria, the big bully, further out, has been threatening and posturing and is getting ready to attack.

And the locals, the Syrians, the northern Israelites, others are joining an alliance and they want Ahaz to join as well. And basically what they do is they come to king Ahaz and they say, hey, if you don't join us, we're going to make big trouble for you.

And 2 Chronicles chapter 28 tells us that they are successful in making trouble because Ahaz refuses to join them. And yet what's interesting, if we were to look back in the last chapter in 2 Kings 15 verse 37, we read that the Lord was in this,

2 Chronicles 28 · chapter mention 2 Kings 15:37

that the Lord had actually sent Rezan king of Syria, Pekka king of Judah, Pekka king of Israel against Judah. We read that God's hand is actually in this.

And you know what? Even over in another book of the Bible, we learn a bit more. Surprisingly, over in the book of Isaiah. In the book of Isaiah chapter 7, we learn that the Lord speaks through his prophet directly to king Ahaz.

Isaiah 7 · chapter mention

And through his prophet Isaiah, he challenges Ahaz. And I want you to hear what he says. Verse 4, Isaiah 7, 4. Be careful, be quiet, do not fear, and do not let your heart be faint because of these two smoldering stumps of firebrands at the fierce anger of Rezan in Syria

and the son of Remaliah. Isaiah would go on to tell Ahaz that this coalition coming against him was doomed. It was going to be smashed. And that all Ahaz has to do is remain firm in his faith.

Chapter 7 of Isaiah, verse 9. Be firm. If you are not firm in faith, you will not be firm at all. I often think that's just a good life lesson.

We should probably put that on a t-shirt or something. If you are not firm in your faith, you will not be firm in life at all. And firm he needs to be because with some early defeats against Rezan and Pekah and what we learned from Chronicles with the Edomites now coming in

and taking advantage of the situation down south and retaking that port city of Elath. And 2 Chronicles 28, 18 tells us, of course, the old enemies, the Philistines, they decide, you know, now's a good time that we can retake a few of our cities too.

What we realize is that Ahaz is feeling the threats from all directions. And he now pushes the proverbial panic button even though the Lord told him to be still, be quiet, be firm.

He panics and he cries out for help. Does he cry out to the Lord? Does he pray to the Lord and say, I'm your servant, I'm your son, Lord. Come and rescue me from the hand of the king of Syria and the hand of the king of Israel.

They're attacking me. Well, he does actually make that cry. You may have seen it in verse 7, but it's not a cry that he makes up to heaven. It's a cry that he makes over to Assyria.

Verse 7 tells us that Ahaz sent messengers to Tiglath-Pileser, king of Assyria, and he cried out to him for help, to a foreign king. Just after the prophet Isaiah clearly warned him that the Assyrians, they're not your friends.

In fact, in Isaiah, he goes on to say that they're just as bad, if not worse, they are ravaging destroyers. They will milk the land for all they can get, which they end up doing.

But still, somehow, our king Ahaz decides it's a better idea to enter into a new covenant with a foreign pagan king than to cry out to Yahweh.

You might say that once again he's heard the beckoning call of sin. Because that's what sin says to do. In the third step, it calls out, run to me.

Run to me, and I will make everything all better. Sin says, run to me, and I will make all your problems go away. But it always comes at a cost.

And you could ask Ahaz about the cost. He would tell you. We see it in verse 8 here. Some of the cost. It's silver and gold from his own royal treasury.

It's even silver and gold out of the temple treasury. All put together to go as a bribe to King Tiglath-Pileser, king of Assyria. And he sends him the bribe.

And of course, the king of Assyria, you don't have to ask him twice. He hates King Rezin of Syria. He hates King Pekka of Israel. And he's all too happy to answer, which he does.

We read in verse 9 of how he comes, and he marches up against Damascus, and he took it, killing King Rezin and deporting all the people of Syria.

But sadly, sin isn't done with our king, with Ahaz. Our king still has sin's whispering voice in his ear. And as we come to verse 10, most significantly, that voice, we find, has followed our king all the way up north to Damascus,

the former capital city of Syria that's now fallen to the Assyrians. Ahaz has now come up here to do what every vassal does for his lord after the victory, which is to pledge his allegiance to his new lord.

That's what he's doing here in Damascus in verse 10. He's traveled here to pledge his fealty, as every vassal was expected to do. And it's right here, while he happens to be in the city of Damascus, that he stumbles upon an altar that the king of Assyria

probably didn't even care about. But our king Ahaz, he hears sin's voice yet again, and it's telling him to take this fourth step. Step number four.

Sin says, legitimize me. Make me legit. Legitimize me.

Apparently, the altar in Damascus must have been something pretty impressive, at least in the eyes of Ahaz. Scholars draw our attention to this connection in the passage between his seeing it and his desire to have it.

He sees it and thinks, I would like to take that. Like the forbidden fruit in Eve's eye. If you remember the story in the garden, she too saw and she took.

Well, in verse 10, that's what Ahaz does. Ahaz saw and what he took, he can't take the altar itself, so what he does is the next best thing.

He takes a bunch of measurements and does a bunch of sketches. He is right there drafting out, making blueprints, taking out his tape measure, I guess, and his pencil and drawing a mock-up of this altar because he wants to send it back home.

And we don't know whether it's because he's just impressed with its artistic innovation, maybe, or just the sheer size of it because this is one that you can walk up on.

He's like, man, I love this thing. I gotta have one of these back home. And we're told that he sends these blueprints, this model of the altar and its pattern exact in all its details, he sends it back home to the high priest Uriah.

And what's Uriah do in verse 11? In the king's absence, he's still away in Damascus. Uriah gets the, you know, he gets the manila envelope and he opens it up and there's these plans and a message from the king, I'd like you to build one according to these specifications and a pagan altar for me.

And what's he do? He gets to work right away. No questions asked. Uriah the priest. And if you noticed, his name gets repeated a few times. Five different times his name is mentioned.

It's like Uriah did this and then Uriah did that. It's like the king's wish is his command, literally, without question.

And what is Ahaz's motivation here? We wonder, why is he doing this? Has he felt pressure from the king of Assyria, his new overlord, to do this?

You know, if I want to be on the good side of my lord, I'll copy his altar. Well, there's the thing, it's not his altar. It's Assyrian altar to the god Rimen.

This is an altar of Damascus and history tells us that the Assyrians, frankly, didn't care how you worshipped. They weren't really into that.

They were kind of their own thing. nowhere do we get so much as a hint that there is pressure or even so much as a suggestion from the king of Assyria that Ahaz should do this.

Ahaz's desire to produce a replica ark is the result of one thing and only one thing. He is impressed by it. He thinks it looks cool and it will represent a way for him to pull in the Damascan gods

who can bless him too. You say, well, I don't see that here, anything about the gods of Damascus and you're right, we don't see that in kings but again, let me take you over to Chronicles for the fuller picture.

2 Chronicles 28 verses 22 and 23. In the time of his distress, Ahaz became yet more faithless to the Lord, this same king Ahaz for he sacrificed to the gods of Damascus that had defeated him and said, because the gods of the kings of Syria helped them,

2 Chronicles 28:22

I will sacrifice to them that they may help me but they were the ruin of him in all Israel. I mean, at this point when he's saying this, the Syrians are no more.

Resident king of Syria is dead. The people are deported. He's referring to earlier victories like Hazael and Ben-Hadad and other Syrians had had against them and basically, now that the city has been taken and the altar is just sitting there, the Damascus altar, he's like, oh, you know, this thing worked against me

for a long time. I could take something like this at home and I could now have the gods of Damascus on my side. That's what he's thinking. Take a look at verse 12.

So our king finally comes home to Jerusalem, comes back to the city of David, to the temple complex, to the palace, and we get this sense in verse 12, like he can't hardly wait to see the altar.

Without so much as even like dropping off his bags or kissing his wife, he's over at the temple to check out his brand new altar. It's like he goes in there and he's like, yes, that's exactly what I saw, Uriah.

Great job. Look at this thing that you've made. We imagine him walking up on it and trying it out and getting a feel for it. Next thing you know, he says to Uriah, you know what?

The arrangement of the furniture here in the court, I think we need to do something different. You ever get that sense at home? You're in your living room or wherever and you're like, let's move the furniture around.

This is what he decides to do, but it's in the Lord's temple court. You can't do that. The Lord prescribed exactly where everything would be and needed to stay.

It was a heavenly vision given originally to King David that Solomon built. He says, you know what? That bronze altar to Yahweh that's right in the middle of everything, why don't we push that off to the north side and make room for this great altar that I just had you build?

And that's just what they do. And after consecrating this new pagan altar in verse 14 with sacrifices, he has the priests push the bronze altar of Yahweh to the side, the one that was before the Lord, the one that was positioned there purposely, all according to

the original plans and blueprint that the Lord gave to David. David, it's now removed from its place of prominence and put off to the side. And then in verse 15, in a move of, I guess, classic syncretism, the blending of different religious faiths

and gods, King Ahaz actually commands Uriah to begin burning, get this, all the normal sacrifices that the Mosaic law prescribed. All the, I mean, you read them, burn offering, grain offering, wine offering, blood sprinkled, all the stuff

that Leviticus and Numbers and Deuteronomy talks about, all the prescribed, down to the letter, he's not going to miss a one, on a pagan altar.

Which, again, Uriah, verse 16, obliges without question. At some point, the king looks over to the north side and he sees the bronze altar of Yahweh.

He's like, oh yeah, hey, Uriah, you know what, I think I've got a use for that. How's our king put it at the tail end of verse 15, very end of verse 15, he says, the bronze altar, make that for me to inquire by.

Now that might sound kind of harmless until we realize that what he is most likely talking about is the practice of divination. Basically, what he's saying is I'd like to keep the bronze altar, the Lord's altar, as a sort of side gig for practicing divination.

Divination, which is trying to gain insight into something through an occultic ritual. In Ahaz's day, typically what you would do is slaughter an animal and pull out its intestines and examine them for irregularities.

I mean, how gross is that? How familiar with intestines do you have to be to say, this is irregular? I think it's a sign. That's what he's going to do on the bronze altar.

Divinate. Divinate.

I'm sure God's going to be pleased with this. The same God who, by the way, expressly forbid divination in the law. the same God who put divination in the same category as talking to the dead and all those kinds of occultic practices.

The same God who gave, again, careful and meticulous instruction and literally heavenly blueprints for every square inch of this space in his house.

But our king sees fit to rearrange, reinvent, syncretize, and effectively bring in unclean things to taint the Lord's sanctuary and to try to pass it off as if it's going to be the normal and usual way

we do worship around here. He has listened to sin's voice yet again. And that voice has told him, legitimize me. And that's exactly what he's done.

And Uriah, his priest, has gone right along with him. But it's not over. Because as we come to the last little section of verses here in our chapter, we come to find out that sin's been talking and asking and prompting and now it's going

to do even more. It's going to take charge and it's going to lead. The fifth step is when sin says, serve me and please me. Serve and please me.

you know, in these last couple verses, it's not so much anything that our king says. We're not given any verbiage from the king. It's in what he does.

It's in his actions. I want you to try to understand what's going on here. I'm not sure that our translation gets it the clearest. Verse 17, King Ahaz, we're told, cut off the frames of the stands and remove the basin from them.

Scholars say these would be the decorative bronze panels on the bronze altar. On these panels were carved the cherubim, the angels, the literal guardians and protectors of Judah.

He's removing them. Next thing we read is that he took down the sea. That's that big large basin used to hold a bronze basin used to hold the ritual waters for temple purification rites.

He removes that bronze basin from the backs of these 12 bulls, representative for the 12 tribes, 12 bulls, all sculpted out of bronze. And then we're told he gives it a new base.

Let's just put it on a stone base. That's a lot of bronze that he looks like he's scrapping out. And if that's what it looks like, like he's scrapping, like he's some kind of a scrapper king stripping bronze everywhere he turns in the temple, he is.

The only question is what's all the bronze for? And it's actually a question that's left unanswered for us here in this passage. Some think maybe this is for future tribute, maybe to make another gift, or maybe just a way to signal

to his Assyrian overlord, hey, a stone pedestal is just fine for the Yahweh worship utensils. We Judahites, we're not too obsessive about Yahweh worship.

A lot of scholars think this is actually the motivation that's behind his actions, that he's motivated to show his new Assyrian overlords that we're not overly devoted to Yahweh, we're not holy rollers with Yahweh, we're not exclusively devoted to the Lord.

that also appears to be what's behind his little temple complex renovation project in verse 18. Take a look. Verse 18, the word removed should be there.

The sense in the Hebrew is there. We're told that the covered way, the canopy, this would be a covered canopy that would basically connect the temple complex to the palace complex.

So every Sabbath, this was the ceremonial walkway that the king of Israel, king of Judah, would make to the temple. It had a canopy and next thing we know, King Ahaz is giving orders, tear that thing out, remove it, because of the king of Assyria.

End of verse 18 tells us. And again, we ask ourselves, did Tiglath-Pileser, the king of Assyria, order him to do these things? To scrap out all the bronze, to make these renovations?

No. It seems more like Ahaz is simply doing this because I don't want to give the appearance that Yahweh worship is our main gig. It's really a move of deference, you could say, to serve and please his new overlord, the king of Assyria.

I don't know what it would be like today. Maybe it would be like a Christian. If you're a Christian and you go to school, or you go to a place of work, or you're maybe even just traveling in an airport, or somewhere, and you don't want to be seen with your Bible.

I don't want, you know, I got a Bible and another book to read, but maybe the other book will be on top. I don't want people to think I'm fanatical.

But you and I both know that when you do things like this, like what Ahaz is doing, you are doing it to keep in the good graces of people you are more concerned with pleasing.

Because our king is not concerned about pleasing the Lord, or serving him, no. here's what the chronicler goes on to tell us at the end of chapter 28 of 2nd Chronicles verse 24.

And Ahaz gathered together the vessels of the house of God and cut in pieces the vessel of the house of God and he shut up the doors of the house of the Lord and he made himself altars in every corner in Jerusalem, in every city of Judah.

He made high places to make offerings to other gods provoking the Lord to anger the God of his fathers.

It's pretty bad when you're shuttering the temple doors. It's pretty bad when you're setting up all kinds of worship stations across the land that will be more convenient, that will be more cosmopolitan, that will be more inclusive.

You can do all kinds of worship in all kinds of ways to all kinds of gods in this land.

What? The king of Judah?

But that's what you do when sin has spoken. And it's become your master. When sin says jump, your only question is how high? It's the fifth step in sin's corruption.

It's when it says serve and please me and you do just that. Just like Ahaz has done.

Well, we're at a point where we want to wrap some things up today. This morning, I want us to be aware, I want all of us to be aware, to beware of the evolution of sin's corruption because with its five easy steps from starting out by saying tolerate me,

to engage with me, to run to me, to legitimize me, and finally you get to that point where it says serve me and please me. I think sin wants to corrupt the life of each and every child of God.

Understand sin wants to corrupt your life and it wants to corrupt the lives of your family and it wants to corrupt our church.

And so before we finish, maybe I could offer us just a few quick cautions, some practical takeaways that maybe you will heed as a warning this morning.

Here's the first one I would offer you. The first one is this. Number one, resist the temptation to run to worldly helps and answers in times of need.

Resist that temptation, the temptation to run to worldly helps and answers in your times of need.

We of course know that this is not the only sin that we see in King Ahaz here this morning, but it is certainly the one if you haven't been able to judge it by the amount of material devoted to what happens with this altar in Damascus, the temple renovations.

That's the focus for our narrator. That Ahaz succumbs to this very temptation. He has cracked to the temptation in spite of a prophetic warning through Isaiah to run to

worldly help, to run to worldly answer in a time of need. We must resist this temptation, folks.

Young people, students, you need to resist this temptation. Maybe you want your friends at school and your classmates to like you and accept you and think you're cool.

Do not run to the world for their answer on what it's going to take to be cool. You will get bad advice. You will receive bad answers. Or if you're here today as a married person, married folks, we have marriages.

Marriages mean trouble sometimes. Nobody has a perfect marriage and sometimes in a marriage things get to a point where, man, I need some help.

And don't go to a secular counselor who might tell you that what you've got to do is do what's best for you. You deserve to be happy and fulfilled and you should probably leave that loser and be done.

Don't seek worldly answers in your time of need. Seek biblical answers. Or maybe you're facing some financial challenges in life. If you run to the world for help and answers when you have financial trouble, you're going

to hear things like, you give to your church? Are you crazy? You have student loans to pay. You have a mortgage. You have kids in college. You can't afford charitable giving.

You might even have a financial planner that tells you that. But the Lord's answer is to trust him when you think the oil might run out. The Lord's answer is to trust him for what he describes as good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over.

Or maybe it's at your job and you've got a supervisor, maybe a co-worker, or even a boss that's telling you that, hey, in this job, this is what it takes.

This is what you've got to do to make a sale, to land the contract, to please the customer. This is what you have to do. And they're telling you to do a worldly thing.

Resist the temptation to run to worldly helps and answers in your times of need, brothers and sisters. That's the first caution. Here's the second one.

Number two, very quickly, we're almost done. Number two, don't let your faith, let me put some air quotes on this. Evolve. Don't let your faith evolve according to the world's standards.

Listen, if you get nothing else from Ahaz and his little extreme temple makeover, we want to call it, something like that. Get this. What he thought he was doing, evolving the faith that Yahweh had given to his people with his great new altar, with his new furniture

arrangement, with his more cosmopolitan and tolerant and pluralistic look to faith all across the kingdom. It was not an evolution. It was a devolution.

Don't let your faith evolve, which is really to devolve like this.

Because the world is telling us right now that we've got to evolve. We've got to get on the right side of things. It is telling us that Christians are too exclusive.

Christian faith is too exclusive. The gospel is too exclusive. Thinking that you need Jesus Christ to be saved, that it's only by his cross.

And better yet, it's by explicit faith. People have to know who Jesus is, understand what he did on the cross, and personally accept that. And if they don't, they're lost.

They go to hell.

An evolved faith would be much more inclusive. And see the Spirit's good work in many good faiths of the world. I mean, who really knows for sure, right?

You know, the blind men. We're all blind men touching different parts of the elephant.

That is letting your faith evolve according to the world's standards.

And we see it in our ethics too, about what's right and what's wrong. Especially right now with our bodies, with our sexuality. The world right now has made, sadly, great inroads into God's church and convinced some of our people that they should push aside

God's design for sexual relations in a marriage. And they are now up to about one-fourth of the alphabet as acronyms.

Shouldn't your faith evolve past the prudish and narrow-minded and unenlightened views of those older generations? No. Can I say that? No. It shouldn't.

Because we have a faith, as Jude says, a faith that was handed down once for all. A deposit given to us to preserve and protect and bask in the goodness of it.

Always remember, we cannot let our faith evolve according to the world's standards. And finally, let me leave you with one last point of caution.

Number three. Last point is this. Number three. Do not relegate God to being your side hustle. Don't make God a side gig. That once bright and beautiful bronze altar of Yahweh.

Think about that. At the very center of things where God wanted it. At its proper place for all the temple offerings and sacrifices. Now, pushed off to the side.

Now, a side hustle. A side gig for our king. When he's in the mood for divination.

Hey, you know what? Just because. Uriah. You know what? I, the king, I would like to keep that bronze altar. Would you just move it over there?

And then when I see it or when I think of it or when I want to just make a little extra inquiry, we'll slaughter an animal, grab its intestines, and I'll do my thing.

When it suits me. When maybe I just need a little extra assurance. A little extra guidance. Or maybe when it's a big problem. Maybe when I'm in a big crisis again.

I might even, I might even go over and grab it at its side location. And if things get bad enough, I might scoot it back to the center for a bit.

Do people do that with God?

You ever find yourself in moments treating God like a side hustle? A side gig? Let me tell you, the God of heaven does not make a very good side hustle.

Not when he has made once for all center stage and offering to redeem every last one of us who come to him. Any and all of us who would come to him through his son, Jesus, and receive him.

This morning, I hope that you will recognize the voice of sin when it speaks to you. When it whispers in your ear. Whether it's just simply using the word tolerate.

Or it's saying engage. Or legitimize. Or serve and please. I'm going to ask the team if they'd come now. And as they do, let me ask you, if you would stand with me.

And I want to ask you to bow your head and pray for one another. Pray for ourselves. Pray for our church. Heavenly Father,

sometimes we read ancient stories, Lord. Accounts of kings and people and priests and wars. And we think so far removed. So much different than what we are today.

So much more refined. So much more evolved. But we are not, Lord. Much different. We are the same people with the same kinds of hearts. Lord, we move about in our world faster.

We process information faster. We climb higher. Build bigger. But we're the same people. And so, Lord, this morning, will you just remind us again, sin does crouch at every one of our doors.

And it does speak to us, Lord. And it really wants to begin in maybe a simple step or two. But Father, wake us up. Make us aware. By your Spirit, equip your people.

Equip us as adults. Equip us as teens, Lord. As children. Equip us as parents and grandparents. So that we will know when compromise is at the door.

So that we will know, Lord, when it is, in fact, worldly, ungodly standards that are creeping in to take hold of the things that you've given us.

And to twist them. We want to be a pure people. We want to be a holy people, Father. So guide us and lead us. And in your grace, Lord, forgive us where we stumble.

Lord, unlike a king of Judah, let us heed the voice of your word, the voice of your prophets and your apostles. And we pray all these things in the name of your Son, whom you've given us.

In Jesus' name, amen.