40 Minutes In The Old Testament - 2 Kings 16:1-20 (Episode 340)

Episode Date: December 9, 2022

Ahaz goes down as one of the worst kings ever as he engages in false worship on a whole new level and begins to distance the kingdom from the identity that God gave them. Chad and Daniel discuss it. Have a listen! 1517 Podcast Network 1517 YouTube Donate

Welcome to another episode of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. 40 Minutes in the Old Testament is a 1517 Podcast Network podcast. You can go to 1517.org slash podcast and check out all the other podcasts that are living over there. And while you're over there, check out all the other things that 1517 is doing, which is a lot of things. Events, academies, daily articles, videos, 1517 music. I mean, there's just so much for you to check out. It's all free, so why not check it all out? Chad, we are in 2 Kings 16.

uh we're we're cruising up on the on the end of the northern kingdom we've had uh we we see some some powers last episode that i've risen up of there's new powers that we uh that have kind of become the powers and it would have been nice if the northern and southern kingdoms had gotten together and decided they needed to really figure out how to you know reconcile with their actual brothers and uh you know because hey there's a lot of enemies on the right enemies on the left maybe we should come together so we can be a unified force uh that's not what happens instead sometimes they decide to unify with enemies and do other things uh and oppress one another so that's that's not great and that's sort of uh the chess board as it were

uh heading into second kings chapter 16 yeah it's uh to change the metaphor it's like you drive you ever drive you drive along sometimes and you see like there's smoke in the distance like a lot of smoke you're like hmm wonder where that's coming from you go a bit closer and then you like you go over a hill and you're like oh yeah that huge conflagration is where it's coming from that's kind of where we're at you know chapter 16 like you see smoke and like hmm wonder where that fire is at. Well, chapter 17 is where we're going to see it. It's going to be like total, total conflagration of the Northern Kingdom. So it's going to be a, it's going to be interesting chapter to get to. We're, we're almost there. What we're going to have in 16 is just kind of the,

the last stage before that, before that happens. So we are going to be introduced to Ahaz, who's the king of the southern kingdom. This is the 17th year of Pekah, the son of Ramaliah. And Ahaz, the son of Jotham, he begins to reign as the king of Judah. He's like many of these guys, not very old. He's 20 years old when he starts to reign. Reigned 16 years in Jerusalem. And here is the evaluation. 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. So right away, you know that the thing's not going to go well with Ahaz. In fact, if you know your Isaiah, then you know at least some of the other stories about Ahaz.

So if you turn, for instance, to chapter 7 of Isaiah, then you're going to be introduced to some of the conversations that Isaiah had with Ahaz. And he is by far, well, maybe not by far, but he is he is the king of the south who receives probably as much, if not more condemnation than anybody else in the south. We've had some bad kings. We've had some kings who who ate their the northern neighbors in idolatry. But it has, as we're about to see in the rest of the chapter, I mean, he's he goes all out. His purpose is basically to take the worship of Baal, inspired by the Assyrians and others, and to import that into the southern kingdom. A lot of times we have this, here's this guy, and he did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and walked in the ways of Jeroboam. This one's a little different. He just says, he didn't do what was right.

I'll tell you that. Didn't do what was right. And we're going to find out that the very next line, which we haven't gotten to yet, one of the major things that he didn't do right, which of course is tied to idolatry, and you hear what he does, and you're like, yeah, that's definitely not right in the sight of the Lord. But this going full in on the Baal worship, is this due to the looming threat of other nations and him trying to say, hey, our God is your God, and we're the same? Is it trying to have a commonality that would detour someone from invading you?

Like, hey, you wouldn't invade us. We worship the same gods. We're the same. Why would you come and do this to us? Is that potentially what's going on here, why he takes it this far? I think so. We're going to see later in the chapter how that decision is made concrete, for instance, in his instructions to his priest to make an altar.

It's just like the one he sees up in Damascus. so he's yeah ahaz is a he's he's a political calculator he's a politician and what he what he seems to do is and of course then well then as now you can't separate religion and politics i mean we we talk like we can but they're all when you understand religion in the in the broad sense they're all blended together uh but anyway what's happening here with him is he so he's a he's a politician it's what he does seems to me anyway is he's using religious pluralism you know the worship of yahweh along with these other gods he's using that to his political advantage because he knows he realizes that his greatest threat and potentially his greatest ally is assyria right

and he so he realizes you know the assyrians they're bigger and they're badder than the northern kingdom and then the the syrians who are uniting against uniting against him so maybe he's thinking this you know what what i can do is uh i can ally myself not only to the assyrians but also to their god and in in so doing you know if they are a threat to me i can reach out and say hey we're kind of religious brothers here right you worship this god i worship the same god and Yeah, I mean, I also have this worship of Yahweh on the side here, but we are united in that common religious front. Yeah, and that having Yahweh on the side is not that big a deal in this world.

I mean, it's not like they are like, wait, these aren't—we've established. I mean, these aren't monotheist nations running around surrounding Israel. They're not going to think it's weird if you have a couple gods that you worship, especially if you're building huge altars and stuff to the same god they have, I mean, and you say what you say, which tells me this about him. It doesn't actually worship any god. This is all just political maneuvering. So you could say, is he an idolater?

Well, he is, but he's a non-believer. I mean, does he really believe in Baal? Probably not. Does he believe in Yahweh? Probably not. No, he's just using them. And this is how a lot of this stuff works, you know, is this guy's probably, I mean, I don't know if there were any bona fide

atheists back then, but this guy is not a worshipper. You can tell the difference between a true believer and somebody who's trying to figure out what needs to be done to gain an advantage. It's religious utilitarianism basically.

He's a politician using religion for his own purposes, which of course never happens. No. It's just ancient stuff. But yeah, that's who Ahaz is I mean he's he's put his finger

to the wind and he's seeing which which way it's coming from and he realizes hey it's blowing from Assyria so I better make sure that those guys are on my team and not on the other side so what kind of guy is he well if all we knew about him was from verse 3 we would probably

know enough to provide an evaluation for him so here's how the second half of verse 3 begins 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 then it wraps up that paragraph by saying he sacrificed and made offerings on the high places and on the hills and under every green

tree so what we're seeing happen and we've seen this of course happening for a long time is the uh the canonization the re-canonization we might say of israel because before the israelites came in what was happening well the canaanites and the parasites and the hivites and the jebusites and all these other ites were doing despicable things like offering the children to sacrifices and burning sacrifices to all these gods and goddesses where on the high places and on the hills and every green tree so what what's what's been happening and now is happening with great gusto is the very practices that caused the lord to use the israelites to drive out the canaanites have now become the very practices which have been adopted by the israelites so that they are

re-canonizing the land and as a result as we're as we're going to see they are going to be driven out. They'll be exiled, dispersed from the land by God, just like the original Canaanites, Perizzites, and Amorites had been. If you're trying to convince a potential threat that you're a true believer, I mean, this is going all the way, right? I mean, you can go no further than this. Causing your children to pass through the fire, which is literally the way the Hebrew reads here. It just paraphrases burning his son as an offering. That's talked about all way back in Leviticus. Leviticus 18 talks about this. Deuteronomy 18 talks about this. It's brought up again in the book of Ezekiel. So the idea seems to be that, well, if you want the very

best from God, well, then you have to give God the very best, right? Even if that includes your own offspring. You know, human sacrifice was not uncommon in the ancient world. And so it happening in Israel is not uncommon either. Unfortunately, you have reached the basement level of the human propensity for evil when you get here. But that's what he did. And he used, of course, his idolatry as a mask for this. So that's a very optimistic introduction to Ahaz. Just a great, great guy yeah what happens with him i think i think this feels yeah yeah i think three verses in you know you're like i think this is the beginning of the end you know i mean imagine you know in whatever country you live in uh this is what your leader's like i'm also going to

sacrifice my son to this god of the neighboring nation i don't know about you chad but i'd be I think it's over for us. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. The end is not only like on the horizon, it's staring us square in the face. So verse five introduces us to a little bit more of the details. We're told that Rezan or Razin, king of Syria.

So the Arameans, the Syrians to the north. We've been, we've heard a lot about them over the last few chapters. And then Pekah, the son of Ramali, king of Israel. So we've got the king of Syria. We've got the king of the northern kingdom. they joined together in order to do what well to attack the south they came to wage war on jerusalem and they besieged ahaz but they couldn't conquer him so if you turn to uh isaiah chapter seven that of course isaiah 7 is where we have the uh the famous prophecy of the virgin birth

but it begins this way isaiah 7 1 says in the days of ahaz the son of jotham son of uzziah king of Judah. Rezin, the king of Syria, and Pekah, the son of Ramaliah, the king of Israel, came up to Jerusalem to wage war against it. So Isaiah 7 and 2 Kings 16 are parallels with each other. And I'll, you know, on your own time, you can read all of Isaiah 7 and kind of get a feel for what kind of person Ahaz is. And I think it's helpful in that context, when you see the way that Ahaz addresses the king, I mean, the way that Isaiah addresses the king, when Isaiah comes out to him, he doesn't simply issue a blanket condemnation. He doesn't say, Ahaz, it's all over for you, buddy. You know, you're nothing more than fuel for the fire. He actually gives him

an opportunity. It gives him a chance to repent. It gives him a chance to turn to the Lord. It gives him a chance to believe, but he doesn't. He's given the choice, and he steadfastly refuses to bend the knee to the true God. And so as a result of that, you can also then see how all of the rest of the southern kingdom's history was coming unraveled. Well, they besiege, at that time,

the resident king of Syria. Also, he recovers a lot, or sometimes referred to as a lot. That's the city that is by the Gulf of Aqaba. Baa. Solomon once launched some ships from there. And so for whatever reason, they captured that port city. They drove the men of Judah from it. And then later the Edomites came and they dwelt in that city to this day. So the point is you can begin to see that around the southern kingdom, you have conquest taking place. And you have this impending threat from the joint

Syria and northern kingdom alliance that are attacking the south. So what does Ahaz do? Well, what he should have done, of course, is to turn from his evil ways and turn to the Lord and go to the temple and pray for God's deliverance, as indeed other kings did. But he doesn't. He turns instead to one that he thinks is going to be his helper. So he sent messengers to Tiglath-Pileser, king of Assyria, saying, I am your servant and your son of course son is here is meant metaphorically that is he is

pledging his loyalty to him 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 but he didn't just send a letter or didn't just send messengers with his request of course he's got to pay for this so what he does is he took the silver and gold that was found in the house of the Lord and in the treasuries of the king's house and he sent it as a well the esv has present to the king of syria this isn't a present the the uh the hebrew there is is show is shohad and uh every time that it's used it's used in a negative sort of way so it basically this you could translate this as he sent a a bribe or probably better he sent a protection money to the king of syria

so he's paying this is like he straight up sent desperation is what he sent i mean this is this is like this is just like here's everything i got you know i mean this is all of it uh please this is this is a bag is what this is oh yeah this is a complete bag yeah and and a bag that's uh you know got some gold and silver attached to it if you're wondering by the way why all these kings were always taking silver and gold in the house of the lord it's because that was the national bank so you didn't i mean you didn't have countries didn't have uh of course the kind of banks that that we have or fort knox or whatever a lot of the nation's wealth was stored in their temples so it was the same for israel as it would have been for egypt as it would have been for for

other nations as well so if you need money or if you have a foreign army that comes in and actually conquers you, where are they going to go? They're going to go to the bank, of course. They didn't come and conquer you just because they have a thirst for war. They're coming to conquer you because they want to get rich. They want to take your money. They want to take your people and sell them as slaves.

In this case, he takes the money from the temple as well as from his own house. Then he sends this as protection money to the king of Syria. No surprise here, the king of Syria did what he wanted listen to him he marched against damascus which is the capital of syria

and he conquered it carried its people captive to a place called keter and he killed their king he killed he killed resin so that worked out well for uh seemingly worked out well for ahaz in the southern kingdom but the problem is the problem always is you know when you when you when you become an ally to somebody like the Assyrians, when they get their foot in the door, they're not going to be content simply with a foot being in the door. They're going to move in and take over, or at least they're going to try to, as we'll see in the rest of the history. So what does Ahaz do? Well, he wants actually to meet the king of Assyria. So he goes to Damascus, this Syrian city that the Assyrians have conquered, goes up to Damascus

to meet Tiglath-Pileser. And while he's there, he sees an altar that was at Damascus. And he's evidently pretty impressed with this altar. So he made a model out of it, kind of a sketch I suppose. And he sent this to Uriah the priest whom I assume is the high priest. But anyway, he sent this to Uriah the priest this model this pattern exact in all its details and we're told that Uriah the priest back in Jerusalem built the altar in accordance with all that king Ahaz has sent from Damascus

so uh he he made this he had a prototype and he made this huge altar that was a model of the of the Damascus altar now there's a there's there's a word that's used here in the Hebrew which is with significance so when we have a description it's translated as pattern here so uh a model of the altar and its pattern so the hebrew there is top neat that is the word that is used back in exodus 25 9 and in exodus 25 40 for how moses was to make the tabernacle and all its furnishings according to the top neat the pattern that he had seen on the mountain so you have you have the complete opposite happening here. So Moses makes the altar and the tabernacle and all these things according to the tabernacle pattern that God showed him on the mountain. And of course,

the tabernacle then becomes the pattern for the temple. And what's Ahaz doing? Well, Ahaz is going to a Gentile nation, to a pagan altar, and he's saying, you know what? I like this better than the altar we have so let's make a new altar according to the pattern of this uh altar built for false gods so that's that's exactly what is happening now at jerusalem jerusalem is devolving into into basically a place of of the worship of the worship of false gods and an altar that's constructed according to the worship of false gods so this altar uh the king comes from damascus he checks it out. He's very impressed with it. He, uh, he goes up to it. He burns his burnt offerings and his grain offerings. He pours out his drink offerings. He's throws the blood of the peace

offerings on the altar. So you might be wondering, okay, but what did they do with the altar that was already there? I mean, they had a bronze altar, the altar that, that God, uh, that was God's was Yahweh's altar. Well, I mean, it, uh, it, it sort of stayed there. He says the bronze altar that was, that was before the Lord, he, he moved it. See, he removed it from in front of the house and he put it on the north side of his altar so now i got two altars you got the you got the pagan altar directly in front of the house that's where now all these sacrifices are offered now you get the bronze altar yahweh's altar that's directly beside it and the king instructs you ride the priest he says you know on my altar on this new damascus style altar i want you to offer all

the offerings, the daily burnt offerings and all that kind of stuff on it. And the bronze altar, that is Yahweh's original altar, shall be for me to inquire by. The Hebrew verb there is bakar,

which can be translated inquire, seek. Maybe he used that for prayer. Who knows what he might use it for. If I need to talk to Yahweh, I'll go over there. Yeah, I mean, if something, you know if i'm in some kind of you know dire circumstances and have no other choice and i

can always just go in front of that altar and and seek yahweh's help as a last resort of course yeah oh goodness yeah does it seem that i'm not i'm not familiar enough and maybe nobody is with exactly how what these other deities we don't you know have like specific details like we do for grain offerings and how the sacrificial system is going to work and all this kind of stuff. We know all this stuff for Yahweh. But it sounds like, unless it's very, very similar,

that you have this pagan altar, but then very similar offerings that Yahweh had instructed, whether it's grain offerings or throwing blood and all this stuff. does it seem as though they're even taking the the rituals or the ceremonies and like blending those together as well i mean or or was everybody or is bail doing all the same kind of offerings that yahweh looks this is very like this this language it sounds like the same kind of offerings you're going to do for yahweh now you're just doing them on a pagan altar

yeah i think uh from from what i've read most of the uh most of the worship the sacrificial worship that was uh given to the goddesses outside of israel had a lot of parallels with what happened in israel i mean grain was offered and animals were offered the thing is the kinds of animals that were offered for instance to uh to baal or to to asherah or to any of the other gods ancient near east i mean there were there were much there was a much broader number of animals that could be offered right i mean you could offer pigs for instance or you could offer deer uh as as offerings to them but in general yeah you had you had bloody sacrifices and you had non-bloody sacrifice you had grain offerings you had wine offerings and oil offerings you had animal

and animal offerings uh but what you're really seeing happen here is just a not only a syncretism of where you're worshiping Yahweh along with other gods, but you have a kind of architectural syncretism too, where now you have an altar that originated in a pagan setting now being brought into the worship of Yahweh. I guess a modern parallel might be like you have a pastor who takes a trip to India, and while he's over there, he sees a Hindu altar.

He's like, that's really cool. I really like the way that is used. And when he gets back, he has a replica of that Hindu altar made, and he puts it in the sanctuary, and that's where the Lord's Supper is celebrated. Well, of course, you're going to have all kinds of issues. I mean, you've got a blending that can't be blended. And so you're going to have inevitable syncretism that's taking place as a result. So they did that with the altar.

we're also told, verse 17, that King Ahaz cut off the frames of the stands and removed the basin from them. And he took down the sea, this is the bronze sea, that massive water basin made out of bronze, and that was in front of the temple. He took down the sea from off the bronze oxen that were under it and put it on a stone pedestal now i wish that we were told more about this so you got uh if you remember back well whenever we talked about that long time ago yeah you have the bronze seas of this massive water receptacle there and it's held up on the backs of 12 oxen so you've got uh three so they're facing the rear ends are inward toward each other and you can see got three facing north with their heads outward three facing north three south three west three

east and these oxen and holding up this massive massive bronze sea for whatever reason and i could speculate as a reason but it'd be only speculation he he takes that down and instead he puts it on a on a stone pedestal did he need the bronze was there some uh symbolism of the of the oxen that he thought might be upsetting to the king of assyria man i wish we knew but uh there must have been a pretty significant reason for him for him doing this i mean it seems like i think when we were talking about uh this being constructed the yeah i mean the 12 i think it seems pretty obvious like what we're doing here right so you have 12 oxen you have 12 tribes yeah and uh and it seems that as though he's this is a way

to say to, you know, maybe you don't want the other king asking, what's the 12 oxen about? Oh, it's this great sign of unity with the people down there, you know, because we're all one, you know, we're all one people. One nation.

Instead, you put it on a single thing. To me, there's something symbolic happening here where you really—this is sort of a very physical way of saying to everyone and God, you are no longer like his people, because you are no longer the 12 tribes. You're not—in some way, you have disassociated yourself with your father. So you've disassociated yourself with Jacob. Yeah, and I would agree. And just to piggyback on that,

so the sea in the Scriptures is a representative of the Gentile world, right? So anytime you have reference to the seas, you have, symbolically anyway, a reference to the non-Israelite nations. And so a lot of people argue that the representation that's taking place here in front of the temple is that you have 12 oxen, 12 tribes of Israel.

And what are they doing? Well, they are the very support for the rest of the world. That is the sea. And so the symbolism, and I find this pretty convincing, the symbolism of the 12 oxen holding up the sea is that Israel is supposed to be the foundation, the foundational blessing that is to go to the rest of the world. And so by removing the 12 oxen and placing it on a single stone pedestal, Ahaz is basically saying, hey, we are actually just like the sea.

We're just like the rest of the world. We are no different. And so the removal of the 12 oxen removes the symbolism of Israel being that foundation for the sea of the rest of the nations. However you take the symbolism, it does seem to hinge on the removal of the 12. so no longer do you have any kind of distinction here made between Israel and the rest of the nations I mean you have a a gentiling of of the people of Israel you're saying that you are no longer Israel because what is Israel Israel is the name that God gives to Jacob at a 12 that's why it's the 12 the 12 tribes of Israel is just the 12 tribes of Jacob that's I mean that's his

name right and so by removing by separating this out and saying hey we're not that we're not going to be that anymore that you and how into how much you're thinking about this when you're doing it i don't know but like this is a a physical act that that is essentially says that like we're removing ourselves from our history removing ourselves from the patriarchs we're going to be our own thing, a separate thing, and in doing so have said, we're removing ourselves from the promises made to them as well. And I think that's the big thing, is we're not going to be Israel. And guess what? If you're not going to be Israel, well, we'll see how God treats you. If you're like, we're not doing that anymore. We're not going to be the children of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

We're going to be something different. Well, that's a dangerous game to play. Yeah, it is. I mean, it's the same dangerous game that people are still tempted to play today. The church is still tempted to play today. I mean, if who we are and what we say is not much different than the, quote, nations, than the world around us, then why is the church even here? I mean, if basically all we're doing is saying a bunch of shoulds and should nots and do this and don't do that, if we're basically nothing more than a club for moralizing or politicking or whatever it might be, well, then the church no longer is the 12 oxen holding up the sea of the world, to use Old Testament imagery. But we're no different than anybody else. I mean, that's a danger of kind of a religious pluralism that happens within the church, is if we are no longer—if the message that we're holding forth is no longer the gospel, the message we're no longer holding forth is foolishness to the world, but has the world actually nodding along saying, yeah, yeah, we see that, then how's the church of any more a light to the world? Yeah, if you remove yourself from all your history and the thing that has made you what you are, now you're just another corrupt institution. There's nothing different about it. And in this way, they're saying, we're not a unique nation, we're just another nation.

Yeah, and in so doing, they have removed themselves, not just from what sets them apart, but of course, most importantly, from the God who set them apart. to begin with. And we're going to see this made explicit in chapter 17. But what we're really talking about is they have divorced themselves from fearing, loving, and trusting in God above all things. They divorced themselves from saying, we are Yahweh alone worshipers. And the minute that they did that, in an hour, and then the year, and then the decade, and the centuries that they that they did that was their doom. Well, there's an insanity here because they're doing this out of fear.

There's this anxiety about these other nations that are being built up around them and that are becoming powerful. And instead of doing what should be obvious based on your own history, what you should do is get out the sackcloth and ashes and figure out how you're going to get in right relationship with Yahweh, who has been the only thing that has ever delivered you in such times,

instead of doing that, getting down to the other kingdom and saying, we've got to get our stuff together, man. If we don't come together and we don't get our worship right, Yahweh is the only thing that's going to be able to protect us from what's going on all around us. Instead of doing any of that, you do the opposite of that and tell Yahweh, you're the problem. What we need to do is be like every other nation.

The problem, they're going to come destroy us, and it's actually because of you. The more we worship you, the more fidelity we have to you, the more danger we're in, and nothing could be further from the truth. If there's anything that can put down the Assyrians and Assyrians and whoever else, it's Yahweh. And you should know this, but that's not what they do.

Well, it's right there at the beginning of one of the most well-known parts of the Torah. I'm the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt. That is to say, I'm the God who rescued you from the powerhouse nation of the day. I mean, I destroyed Egypt. I mean, you weren't even able to fight, right? I brought you out of slavery. I brought you out from under the Egyptians.

I rescued you. I fought on your behalf. So I did that for you in the past. So don't for a minute think that I won't do that for you now, whether it's the Egyptians or the Syrians or the Assyrians. But I mean, that's the insanity of idolatry, is this willful rejection of the clear acts of Yahweh in the past delivering you in order to opt for seeking refuge in other nations

and seeking refuge in their gods. We would never do something like this. No, obviously. Not without our... I'd never be like, God's the only thing that could deliver me, so I'm going to go try to deliver myself. I would never do such a thing. No, I've never tried self-salvation projects myself.

Yeah, that's... Not for a moment. When you talk about God, you'll say, hey, I am the Lord your God who brought you out of land to Egypt. He's saying, hey, I'm your deliverer, I'm your savior, I'm your redeemer. and in this act you're like what we need is delivering saving uh and redeeming uh let's dismiss the person and remove ourselves with any from as much association with that person as we can it's crazy yeah yeah every every evil in human history and uh nationally uh internationally

familial individually all of that can be traced back to basically the four words they served other gods yeah yeah i mean that that's it idolatry is the is the uh is the fountainhead of of every every bad thing like this every evil thing like this that happens in the in the world i mean that's why that's why the old testament is uh is so contemporary it's not old at all it's just it's a description of of who humanity was and and still is today this is always our struggle, this orientation, disorientation of the human heart toward fearing, loving, and trusting in other gods more than the true God. Well, what you see in the history of Israel is that unbelief dominates the human heart,

and that's what this all comes down to. They just don't believe. That's your problem. There's not any faith. It's not that there's a little bit of faith. A little bit of faith is plenty of faith, as long as whatever little bit of faith—because we all have got just a little bit, just a mustard seed of faith—the question is, where is it located? What is it trusting in? So my faith, which is real tiny, Chad, just so happens that that little tiny faith, I've got it all on Jesus, right? It's not a great, big, giant, strong faith.

It's like a little tiny, weak faith, but it's all there. Yeah, even a tiny faith receives the entire Christ. That's right. He doesn't give himself to us, doesn't give himself to us, to us piecemeal. Yeah. And so as we'll see, we'll see this played out in the next chapter. This is going to give people the taste for what's coming. But one of the remarkable aspects of the next chapter, which is going to document the ultimate destruction and downfall of the Northern Kingdom, is that, and I think I'm right about this.

We'll see when we go through the chapter. but I don't think there is a single sin that's mentioned that we would expect to be mentioned. I mean, if we were just kind of approaching this from a kind of a, you know, if we didn't know all about this, this Old Testament history, you might expect there to be mentioned robbery and adultery and injustice and abuse of the poor and all these various things, no doubt which were going on. But when it comes to the downfall of the Northern Kingdom, all of those non-First Commandment-type specific sins are left unmentioned. The only thing that comes up over and over and over in a variety of different ways

is that Israel forsook the Lord their God. In other words, they broke the First Commandment. That is the capital sin that is talked about over and over. So all the things that you might think would come into play are not mentioned. They're there, of course. But the focus remains laser-like on that sin, the great sin of idolatry, which then spawned everything else. Yeah, God's looking around and seeing if he can locate a mustard seed of faith, and the answer is he cannot. He cannot.

There is none. So just to kind of wrap up this chapter, verse 18 says that there was some kind of covered way for the Sabbath that had been built inside the house. for the king to go to the house of the Lord, he took that away. We're not told why, but it was because of the king of Assyria. Maybe that was, again, something that kind of set them apart. But that's Ahaz, and the rest of the acts that he did, you can check out Chronicles. He slept with his fathers, was buried with his fathers in the city of David, and Hezekiah, his son, reigned in his place.

Now we're going to get to Hezekiah, and if you know kings, you know that Hezekiah actually is very unlike his father. He's one of the best kings of the Southern Kingdom. But we're going to have to pause before we get to him, because we have to go through all of chapter 17 and read basically the obituary of the Northern Kingdom. So that'll be coming up in the next podcast. All right. Well, we are out of time. We got through chapter 16, so we will be back next week with chapter 17

Chad I'll see you then alright see you then