The Downward Spiral of a Foolish King Text: 2 Kings 16:1-4
Introduction: The Anatomy of Apostasy
When a nation begins to unravel, it does not happen overnight. The rot begins in the heart, in the place of worship, and it works its way out into every facet of the culture. A nation’s politics, its foreign policy, its laws, and its family life are all downstream from its theology. What a people worship determines what they will become. When you abandon the living God for idols of your own making, you should not be surprised when your civilization begins to look as deaf, dumb, and dead as the gods you have chosen.
In our text today, we are introduced to Ahaz, the king of Judah. He is a case study in covenantal apostasy. He is a man who inherited a great legacy, the throne of David himself, and yet he squandered it with a breathtaking recklessness. The story of Ahaz is not simply an ancient history lesson; it is a stark and relevant warning to our own generation. We too have inherited a great legacy, the legacy of Christendom, and we are watching our leaders, both political and ecclesiastical, walk in the way of Ahaz. They are trading the worship of the true God for political expediency, cultural relevance, and pagan abominations dressed up in modern garb.
The writer of Kings gives us a concise and damning indictment of this man’s reign. He does not waste time on the minutiae of his economic policy or his infrastructure projects. He goes straight to the heart of the matter: his worship. Because for God, and for any sane historian, the worship of a nation is the ultimate diagnostic tool. You tell me what you sacrifice for, and I will tell you who you are. Ahaz shows us that the path to ruin is paved with syncretism, fear of man, and a desperate attempt to be like the cool kids on the international block. He wanted to be a modern, progressive king, and in the process, he became a fool who set his own nation on fire.
As we walk through these four verses, we will see the standard by which a king is judged, the path he chose instead, the ultimate expression of his depravity, and the public normalization of his rebellion. This is the anatomy of apostasy, and we must pay close attention, lest we find ourselves walking the same well-trodden path to destruction.
The Text
In the seventeenth year of Pekah the son of Remaliah, Ahaz the son of Jotham, king of Judah, became king.
Ahaz was twenty years old when he became king, and he reigned sixteen years in Jerusalem; and he did not do what was right in the sight of Yahweh his God, as David his father had done.
But he walked in the way of the kings of Israel, and even made his son pass through the fire, according to the abominations of the nations whom Yahweh had dispossessed from before the sons of Israel.
He also sacrificed and burned incense on the high places and on the hills and under every green tree.
(2 Kings 16:1-4 LSB)
The Unchanging Standard (v. 1-2)
We begin with the historical setting and the divine evaluation.
"In the seventeenth year of Pekah the son of Remaliah, Ahaz the son of Jotham, king of Judah, became king. Ahaz was twenty years old when he became king, and he reigned sixteen years in Jerusalem; and he did not do what was right in the sight of Yahweh his God, as David his father had done." (2 Kings 16:1-2)
The biblical historian is meticulous. He sets the scene with chronological precision. But immediately after the facts of who, when, and where, he gets to the ultimate fact, the divine verdict. Ahaz reigned for sixteen years. He was a young man when he took the throne. But his entire reign is summarized in one devastating sentence: "he did not do what was right in the sight of Yahweh his God."
Notice the standard. The standard is not his father Jotham, who was a decent king. The standard is not public opinion, or the gross national product, or the approval rating of the surrounding nations. The standard is David. "As David his father had done." For the chronicler of the kings of Judah, David is the benchmark. Why? Because David was a man after God's own heart. This does not mean David was sinless; far from it. It means that when David sinned, he repented. He loved God's law, he established right worship in Jerusalem, and his heart was fundamentally oriented toward Yahweh. The king's primary job description was covenant faithfulness. Everything else was secondary.
This is a crucial point. God does not grade on a curve. He does not say, "Well, Ahaz wasn't as bad as Jezebel." He lays down an absolute standard. For the Christian, that standard is not even David anymore; it is David's greater Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. We are to walk as He walked. The central question of our lives, our families, our churches, and our nations is this: are we doing what is right in the sight of the Lord? Not what is right in our own eyes, which is the definition of chaos (Judges 21:25), but what is right in His.
The Path of Apostasy (v. 3a)
Having established the standard Ahaz rejected, the text now shows us the alternative path he chose.
"But he walked in the way of the kings of Israel..." (2 Kings 16:3a)
This is spiritual treason. The kingdom had been divided for generations. The northern kingdom of Israel, from its inception under Jeroboam, had been institutionally apostate. Jeroboam set up golden calves in Dan and Bethel precisely to keep the people from going to Jerusalem to worship, which was a political solution to a spiritual problem. "The way of the kings of Israel" was a well-defined path of rebellion. It was the state-sanctioned, institutionalized worship of false gods. It was a religion of convenience, a religion that served the state rather than the state serving God.
For Ahaz, the king of Judah, the king in Jerusalem, the heir of David, to walk in this way was an utter betrayal. He looked north to the rebellious, syncretistic, and politically unstable kingdom, and he said, "That's what I want." He imported their rebellion into the heart of Judah. This is what happens when the fear of man replaces the fear of God. Ahaz was in a political jam, threatened by Israel and Syria, and instead of trusting Yahweh, he decided to become like his enemies. He thought he could find security by imitation. But when the church imitates the world, it does not win the world; it becomes the world, and is then good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.
The Depths of Depravity (v. 3b)
The text then gives us the most horrific example of Ahaz's apostasy, showing just how far down this path he walked.
"...and even made his son pass through the fire, according to the abominations of the nations whom Yahweh had dispossessed from before the sons of Israel." (2 Kings 16:3b)
Let that sink in. This is not just setting up a rival altar. This is child sacrifice. He took his own son, the heir to the throne of David, and offered him up as a burnt offering to a pagan deity, likely Molech. This was the pinnacle of Canaanite depravity. This was the very reason God had commanded Israel to drive out and dispossess the nations from the land. Their culture was a death cult, and its most grotesque expression was the burning of their own children in the arms of a bronze idol.
And now, a king of Judah is doing it. He has not just adopted the sins of his rebellious cousins in Israel; he has leapfrogged them and embraced the vilest practices of the pagans God had judged. The text explicitly says he did this "according to the abominations of the nations whom Yahweh had dispossessed." This is high-handed, defiant rebellion. It is looking God in the face and saying, "The people you kicked out for their wickedness? I want to be just like them."
We must not sanitize this. We live in a culture that is also making its children "pass through the fire." We sacrifice them on the altars of convenience and self-fulfillment through abortion. We sacrifice them on the altar of sexual ideology, confusing and mutilating their bodies. We have embraced the abominations of the pagans, and we call it progress. Ahaz was not a monster from a bygone era. He is a mirror.
The Public Square of Idolatry (v. 4)
Finally, the text shows us that this was not a private, personal sin. Ahaz made his rebellion public and pervasive.
"He also sacrificed and burned incense on the high places and on the hills and under every green tree." (2 Kings 16:4)
This is the complete decentralization and paganization of worship. God had commanded that sacrifice was to be offered only in one place: the temple in Jerusalem (Deuteronomy 12). This was to guard the purity of their worship and to constantly remind them that there is only one way to God, a way He prescribes. But Ahaz rejected this entirely. He took worship out of the temple and spread it everywhere, just like the Canaanites.
The "high places" were traditional sites of pagan worship. "Under every green tree" was associated with fertility cults and the worship of Asherah. Ahaz was not just adding another god to a pantheon; he was fundamentally changing the grammar of worship. He was making it immanent, not transcendent. He was making it naturalistic, not covenantal. He was making it convenient, located wherever you happened to find a hill or a shady tree. He turned the entire landscape of Judah into a pagan shrine.
This is the end result of apostasy. It begins with a compromised heart that does not do what is right in God's sight. It then looks to the world for its models and methods. It descends into unspeakable depravity, sacrificing the next generation for the sake of its idols. And it concludes by making this rebellion the established, public religion of the land. The downward spiral is complete. The stage is set for judgment, but it is also in this very context, in the reign of this wicked king, that the prophet Isaiah would speak of a virgin conceiving and bearing a Son, Immanuel (Isaiah 7). Even in the deepest darkness of human rebellion, God is preparing the ground for His greatest act of salvation.