Today we are on week 9 of walking through the book of 2 Kings, where we have been processing this theme: How will I persist? Life constantly is pleading for persistence. And over and over again, we are invited to persist in walking out God’s will and way.
So much has happened in the text so far, as we’ve talked about king after king. And today, we are covering chapters 13-16. There is a lot of narrative in these chapters, and twelve different kings are mentioned:
The Kings of Israel • Northern Kingdom • 2 Kings 13-16
Jehoahaz • ch 13
Jehoash (Joash) • ch 13–14
Jeroboam II • ch 14
Zechariah • ch 15
Shallum • ch 15
Menahem • ch 15
Pekahiah • ch 15
Pekah • ch 15–16
The Kings of Judah • Southern Kingdom • 2 Kings 13-16
Amaziah • ch 14
Uzziah (Azariah) • ch 15
Jotham • ch 15
Ahaz • ch 16
Today we will be mainly focusing on Ahaz in chapter 16. But to give some perspective (and a spoiler alert!), what is coming is the fall of Jerusalem in Judah and of Samaria in Israel—not just a defeat, but people being taken into exile. And 2 Kings was most likely written to the people of Judah living in exile in Babylon, those who had just survived the destruction of Jerusalem. The initial audience reading this book would have been asking the question—while in Babylon—How did we get here?
The book will not end with hopelessness but with a glimpse of hope: God has not forgotten them. But as to the question of how they got there, the readers would have read the book as a moment of honest evaluation.
We can so quickly come to a shortsighted conclusion: we got here because God doesn’t care. But the readers, in captivity, would have read the text and would start to feel the weight of honest evaluation. The kings of the past had the opportunity to persist in a trajectory towards God or away from God, and their decisions had and are having impact.
Now if we were going to grade the kings, the report card might look like this:
The Kings of Israel • Northern Kingdom • 2 Kings 13-16
Jehoahaz • ch 13 • D
Jehoash (Joash) • ch 13–14 • D
Jeroboam II • ch 14 • D
Zechariah • ch 15 • F
Shallum • ch 15 • F
Menahem • ch 15 • F
Pekahiah • ch 15 • F
Pekah • ch 15–16 • F
The Kings of Judah • Southern Kingdom • 2 Kings 13-16
Amaziah • ch 14 • C
Uzziah (Azariah) • ch 15 • B
Jotham • ch 15 • B
Ahaz • ch 16 • F
Some did okay, but there are so many Ds and Fs! Maybe that has something to do with how we got here!
We might also ask, is this just a story of God getting madder and madder until He snaps? No. I have said this before and am saying it again: Scripture as a whole narrative is not a story of people striving and seeking to have relationship with God, but it is a story of God striving and seeking to have relationship with humanity.
2 Kings is not a narrative of the people making God more and more angry until He snaps. It’s a narrative of the people persisting in running from God. We don’t see God crushing people. We see God saying, I am trying to help you out here!
And today we will rest on Ahaz for a moment, one of the twelve kings mentioned in these chapters. And again, this moment is not about him doing something so bad that it made God mad. Instead, we’ll see God’s help, warnings, and cautions—and yet Ahaz ignores that and turns to the enemy for help instead of to God.
What is happening in a person—what is happening in us—when we turn to the hurtful for help?
This isn’t about blame or guilt or being amazed at other people’s failures. It’s about adjusting our trajectory. As the initial audience was living in exile in Babylon asking how did we get here?, this narrative would have been a clear reminder to ask, Who are we asking for help?
I want the skill of asking for help from the right people and things. What if we had a growing skill in asking for help from the truly helpful? I can’t be responsible for how people help, but I can be responsible for who and what I look for help from.
To get us to a shared starting point and to build some foundation for conversation and processing, we’re going to do a survey!
For each of the items in the list below, I want you to think about your personal ideal. How closely do your actions match that ideal in these areas? Give each one a score from 0-7, where 0 means I always ignore my ideal and compromise in this area of life and 7 means I always hold my ground and never compromise from the ideal in this area of life.
Sleep
Hitting the snooze button
Binge watching
Entertainment choices
Screen time
Taking days off
Exercise
Diet
Exercising restraint
Spending money
Vehicle maintenance
Time with God
Time with family
Work-life balance
What I say
Talking things out
Keeping promises
Asking for help
Showing up on time
Following the rules
Multitasking
Cleaning the house
Laundry
The junk drawer
Returning the shopping cart
Okay. I have three questions for us to discuss springing off this survey. Here are the first two:
What stands out to you as you see your answers on this survey?
Where do your ideals for different areas of life come from?
Now I hope you are feeling this: Ideal is complicated! Maybe you feel the extreme differences in ideals. Maybe you feel the extreme differences in the measuring of compromise. Now let’s get to the really good stuff. Remember what I said earlier about wanting a growing skill in asking for help from the truly helpful? So with your survey answers in mind:
In your life, what makes someone or something truly helpful in getting to your ideal?
Looking for help or advice or direction or inspiration in less-than-helpful places reminds me of the text in Matthew 23.
Here’s some context for this passage. Jesus has entered the final week of His public ministry in Jerusalem and has already had repeated clashes with the religious leaders (Pharisees, scribes, chief priests, Sadducees). These leaders have questioned His authority, tried to trap Him with legal and theological questions, and challenged His teaching on the law, Sabbath, resurrection, taxes, and identity. Just before this chapter, Jesus tells a series of parables that expose the leaders’ rejection of God’s messengers. The tension has now reached a peak—the leaders are not just misunderstanding Jesus; they are actively opposing Him.
So now we walk into Matthew 23, and Jesus delivers a public, final warning about their leadership and spiritual authority.
Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples: “The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. So you must be careful to do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach. They tie up heavy, cumbersome loads and put them on other people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them.” (Matthew 23:1-4)
The people in front of Jesus looked to the teachers of the law for help in connecting with God. Jesus did tell them that they were to be honored for their position—they should be listened to—BUT.
This is a complex “but.” He says, “But do not do what they do.” They made religious rules that were expanded, detailed, and demanding. Everyday life became morally and ritually complex. The people were held accountable to standards they struggled to carry—while the leaders often failed to provide compassion, flexibility, or help that matched the weight of those demands.
In this moment, Jesus is holding out a tension that is deeply complex for us to process: We should respect the authority God has entrusted to people and take God’s truth seriously, but we should not blindly, thoughtlessly follow.
Let’s dive in:
How do you seek help from others while still being discerning and realistic about human imperfection?
As we come to 2 Kings 16, let’s grab some context. We are about to see King Ahaz ask for help from their enemy, Assyria. We are about to see King Ahaz in essence loot the temple. We are about to see King Ahaz construct a pagan altar in the temple. But before all that, something incredibly important happens.
God tries to help.
That changes how I read this story! If I only read 2 Kings 16, I might conclude that Ahaz made terrible choices. Which is true. But Isaiah 7 lets us step behind the scenes.
Isaiah 7 and 2 Kings 15 and 16 cross over. We get to watch God pursue a frightened king—Ahaz. Isaiah tells us that Judah is surrounded, that its neighbors Israel and Aram have formed an alliance and Jerusalem is under threat. Listen to Isaiah’s description:
Now the house of David was told, “Aram has allied itself with Ephraim”; so the hearts of Ahaz and his people were shaken, as the trees of the forest are shaken by the wind. (Isaiah 7:2)
This is honest. These don’t feel like people that are looking to make bad decisions. They feel like people who are terrified. They are shaking.
Some of us know exactly what that feels like. A doctor’s appointment. A marriage that’s struggling. A child who’s trying to figure life out. A financial crisis. A future that suddenly feels uncertain.
There is no question that moments of fear will come in life. And in those moments, fear can make us shrink, can cloud our vision so that in our minds we don’t know what is true. When we’re calm it can be easier to make thoughtful decisions, but when we’re terrified, we often grab the first thing that promises relief.
And in that fear, God speaks to Ahaz. Not after Ahaz gets everything together, but right in the middle of his panic. God sends Isaiah with a message: Be careful. Keep calm. Don’t be afraid. Don’t lose heart.
Say to him, ‘Be careful, keep calm and don’t be afraid. Do not lose heart because of these two smoldering stubs of firewood—because of the fierce anger of Rezin and Aram and of the son of Remaliah.’ (Isaiah 7:4)
All the things you’re afraid of—they will not happen.
Yet this is what the Sovereign Lord says: “‘It will not take place, it will not happen, for the head of Aram is Damascus, and the head of Damascus is only Rezin. Within sixty-five years Ephraim will be too shattered to be a people. The head of Ephraim is Samaria, and the head of Samaria is only Remaliah’s son. If you do not stand firm in your faith, you will not stand at all.’” (Isaiah 7:7-9)
And then God says,
“Ask the Lord your God for a sign, whether in the deepest depths or in the highest heights.” (Isaiah 7:11)
Any sign. As deep as the middle of the earth. As high as heaven. Ask. God isn’t hiding. God isn’t saying, “You should already know what to do,” or “figure this out yourself.” God invites Ahaz to depend on Him. God almost says,”Please... let me show you that I’m with you.”
But Ahaz refuses.
But Ahaz said, “I will not ask; I will not put the Lord to the test.” (Isaiah 7:12)
This sounds so noble, not putting God to the test, but it isn’t about that. But this is not an act of unwavering belief or of faith in practice. This is refusal. Ahaz had already decided where he was going to look for help. His mind was already made up. Ahaz wasn’t going to trust God. He had already chosen that he was going to get help from Assyria
I think it’s easy to judge Ahaz. But before we do, let me ask something.
Why would someone ask their enemy for help?
There are many possible answers to that question: fear, survival, desperation, lack of trust, short-term thinking. Maybe fear has become greater than discernment. He’s panicking.
Assyria wasn’t a friend. Assyria was brutal. Everyone knew that. They conquered nations. They demanded loyalty. They absorbed cultures. They took people into exile. Yet Ahaz looks at Assyria and says, “You can save me.”
Fear can make unhealthy options look reasonable. Fear doesn’t just make us run. Fear can change what looks trustworthy. Loneliness causes us to trust unhealthy relationships. Anxiety causes us to trust control. Exhaustion causes us to trust whatever gives immediate relief. Shame causes us to trust people who only deepen our shame. We don’t usually choose the harmful thing because we love the harmful thing. We choose it because we’re desperate for help.
That changes how I read this story. Ahaz isn’t just an evil king at this moment. He’s a frightened man making increasingly destructive decisions about where to find safety.
And then something heartbreaking happens. Assyria actually helps. Sort of. They defeat Aram. They rescue Judah. At least for a moment. 2 Chronicles says it directly:
Tiglath-Pileser king of Assyria came to him, but he gave him trouble instead of help. (2 Chronicles 28:20)
The thing Ahaz believed would rescue him became another source of pain. Hear what started to happen. It wasn’t enough for Ahaz simply to receive Assyria’s help. He began reshaping worship to look like Assyria. He visited Damascus and saw an altar he liked. He sent the plans for it home, where a priest built a copy.
And in the temple in Jerusalem—the temple built at the time of Solomon, where God’s Name dwells, the temple that was a place of prayer and forgiveness, the temple meant to be a house for all nations and a reminder of God’s covenant—the altar of the Lord gets pushed aside. The new altar built from the Assyrian plans becomes the center.
Think about what just happened. Ahaz didn’t merely borrow military assistance. He reshaped Judah and Jerusalem and the temple to resemble Assyria. What began as “I just need a little help...” ended with “I’ll rearrange my entire life around the thing that promised to save me.”
Let’s go back to those words from Isaiah to Ahaz when he was so afraid:
Say to him, ‘Be careful, keep calm and don’t be afraid. Do not lose heart because of these two smoldering stubs of firewood—because of the fierce anger of Rezin and Aram and of the son of Remaliah.’ (Isaiah 7:4)
So the people who were first reading 2 Kings, after they were taken into exile, were asking, how did we get here? Well, a king made some poor decisions—not because he was just some bad person, but because he was flailing in fear. Let’s process:
What are some keys to making good decisions when fear feels crushing?
So what is the state of Judah at the end of 2 Kings 16? Judah is still standing, but has become dependent on the Neo-Assyrian Empire. King Ahaz has rejected God’s help and trusted Assyria instead. The temple in Jerusalem has been altered to resemble an Assyrian place of worship. Temple furnishings have been removed or modified to please the Assyrian king. Judah’s worship has become mixed with pagan influence. Jerusalem remains the capital, but its king is serving under the shadow of Assyria.
Such a shadow of what it was generations ago. The nation has gained short-term security but sacrificed spiritual faithfulness and political independence. So much compromise along the way.
I bring Isaiah’s words to us here today now:
Say to him, ‘Be careful, keep calm and don’t be afraid. Do not lose heart because of these two smoldering stubs of firewood.’ (Isaiah 7:4)
When life is extremely heavy, what do these calls to action mean to you?
What is their impact?
Take It Deeper Questions
Read Matthew 23:1-4.
Who has invested in you, making you a better person?
How do you measure that person’s impact on your life? How do you think they would measure their impact on you?
How are you impacted as you see a person live out a principle as opposed to just talking about it?
How would you like to refine your actions in order to be a great teacher?
How are you challenged, focused, encouraged, and/or confused by this text?
Bible Reading Plan
Ezekiel 34 • False Shepherds
Isaiah 58 • True Worship
Micah 6 • What God Requires
Mark 10 — Servant Leadership
John 13 • Jesus Washes Feet
James 3 • Teachers Judged Strictly
1 Peter 5 • Shepherd God’s Flock
2 Kings 15 • Unstable Kings
2 Kings 16 • Ahaz’s Compromise