2 Kings 16:14 The bronze altar that
stood before the LORD, Ahaz had brought from the front of the temple--from
between the new altar and the temple of the LORD--and put it on the north side
of the new altar.
King Ahaz was a wicked ruler of ancient Judah. The Bible
states that he didn't do what was right in the eyes of God. He set up pagan
shrines and sacrificed his first born son into the fires of the idol Molech. He
sought political help from the Assyrians instead of God, and he changed the
furnishings inside Solomon’s Temple by replacing them with Assyrian décor. He was
a man of his time who was greatly influenced by his peers. He didn't keep to the
traditional ways and ended up becoming a vassal king in the Assyrian Empire. He
changed the religious and political culture of his nation through policies of
appeasement and syncretism. By the end of his reign, Judah was greatly
diminished and the people of God were deeply confused, as well as divided.
What King Ahaz thought would bring about success, power,
and esteem to his sovereignty only weakened him further. He thought that he
would be lauded by the powerful Assyrians for adopting their ways; instead he
was reduced to being a servant of their empire and paid taxes and tribute for
protection. What seemed like a good idea at the beginning of his reign ended up
ruining him. By paying more attention to what the nations around him possessed,
instead of focusing on the blessings God could give him, Ahaz lost everything that
a king desires – pride, prestige, and power. In Biblical terms, he was a
foolish ruler who gave everything away and ended up with nothing.
I see mainstream Christianity heading down the same path.
People want the Church to be more like the world and emphasize the need to be
relevant religiously, culturally, and politically. Even though we have followed
this cultural shift towards relevance for almost 25 years, church numbers in
the Western hemisphere are declining. The elephant in the room about the church’s
yearning for relevance in order to grow, instead of pursuing reverence of God, is
that it
gets us nowhere. The Ahaz-ism of our churches has turned out to be a detrimental
road to indifference, ineffectiveness, and irrelevance. If we don’t make some
sort of a U-turn in order to get back to God, then the decline will reach
unfixable depths which will require an influx of a new generation of
missionaries from South America, Africa, and even Asia to re-ignite the Faith
in the West.
Questions
for personal reflection
Why are church people less connected to God now, than they
were 25-40 years ago? How can those connections be remade?
Prayer: Lord
Jesus, the simple truth is that we have wandered from the pathway that leads us
to God. We've allowed ourselves to be deceived by the world and distracted by
our own pursuits. Help us all to turn our lives around so that we may
re-connect our spirits to You, in both a strong and devoted way. In Your Holy
Name, we pray. Amen.
John Stuart is the pastor
of Erin Presbyterian Church in Knoxville, Tennessee. If you would like to make
a comment or ask questions about today’s message, please send him an email to Traqair@aol.com.
Today’s image is one of
John’s wildlife drawings called ‘African Sunset’. If you would like to view a
larger version, please click on the following link: Elephant.
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