A Sickbed in Jezreel
Introduction: The Contagion of Compromise
We live in a world that loves to blur distinctions. Our age despises sharp edges, clear definitions, and firm boundaries. This manifests in every area of life, from the most profound questions of male and female down to the murky compromises of our political allegiances. The modern evangelical church, tragically, has often been more interested in getting a seat at the world's table than in overturning it. We want to be seen as reasonable, cooperative, and helpful. We make alliances of convenience, thinking we can manage the risk, and we call it cultural engagement.
But the Word of God is a sword, and a sword is made for dividing. It separates light from darkness, truth from lies, and the holy from the profane. When God's people forget this, when they decide that a little strategic compromise is the shrewdest way forward, they inevitably find themselves entangled in a web of sin that is far stronger and far more intricate than they ever imagined. Sin is a contagion. You cannot form a strategic alliance with a leper colony and expect to remain healthy. The leprosy always wins.
The story of the kings of Judah and Israel during this period is a multi-generational case study in the folly of the unequal yoke. What began with the ostensibly wise political marriage between Jehoshaphat's son and Ahab's daughter has now metastasized. The infection has crossed the bloodstream from Israel to Judah. The house of David has intermarried with the house of Ahab, and the result is not that Ahab's house gets better, but that David's house is nearly extinguished. In our text today, we see the grandson, Ahaziah, continuing this family tradition of compromise. He walks in their counsel, he fights in their wars, and he makes a sick call that will prove to be fatal. This is not just a story about bad foreign policy. It is a story about covenantal unfaithfulness and the meticulous, sovereign providence of a God who will not be mocked.
The Text
He also walked according to their counsel, and went with Jehoram the son of Ahab king of Israel to wage war against Hazael king of Aram at Ramoth-gilead. But the Arameans struck Joram. So he returned to be healed in Jezreel of the wounds which they caused by striking him at Ramah, when he fought against Hazael king of Aram. And Ahaziah, the son of Jehoram king of Judah, went down to see Jehoram the son of Ahab in Jezreel, because he was sick.
(2 Chronicles 22:5-6 LSB)
The Family Business of Rebellion (v. 5)
We begin with the diagnosis of Ahaziah's entire reign:
"He also walked according to their counsel, and went with Jehoram the son of Ahab king of Israel to wage war against Hazael king of Aram at Ramoth-gilead. But the Arameans struck Joram." (2 Chronicles 22:5)
The first clause is the key to everything that follows: "He also walked according to their counsel." Whose counsel? The previous verses tell us plainly: the counsel of his mother Athaliah, the daughter of Ahab, and the whole wicked house of Ahab. They were his counselors "to his destruction" (v. 4). Sin is not something that just happens to us; it is a path we choose to walk. Ahaziah was not a passive victim of his circumstances. He was an active participant. He listened to the wrong voices, and then he put one foot in front of the other and walked straight down the path they laid out for him.
This is the legacy of compromise. Jehoshaphat, his great-grandfather, made the initial alliance. His son Jehoram married the wicked Athaliah. Now Ahaziah is simply running the family business. When you invite the world's counsel into your home, do not be surprised when your children speak with the world's accent. When you yoke yourself to unbelievers, do not be surprised when your heirs adopt their business plan.
And what does this counsel lead to? It leads him to join Jehoram of Israel in a military adventure at Ramoth-gilead. This is a fool's errand from the start. This was the very place where Jehoram's father, Ahab, had been killed years before, after rejecting the word of a true prophet of God. It is a place stained with rebellion and defeat. For the king of Judah to be fighting alongside the king of Israel to reclaim a city for Israel is the height of covenantal confusion. Judah's king was to be concerned with Judah's covenant faithfulness, not with the territorial squabbles of the apostate northern kingdom.
But notice the outcome. "But the Arameans struck Joram." This is the passive voice, but we know who the active agent is. God struck Joram, using an Aramean arrow as His instrument. God is sovereign over the flight of every arrow, the swing of every sword, and the outcome of every battle. This was not a stray shot; it was a divine summons. God wounded the king of Israel, not fatally, but just enough to send him scurrying back to Jezreel. This wound is a piece of bait, and God is setting a trap. The Lord of Hosts is arranging the chessboard, and He is maneuvering His rebellious kings into position for the final checkmate.
The Fatal Sick Call (v. 6)
The wounded king's retreat and the subsequent visit from his ally sets the stage for the final act.
"So he returned to be healed in Jezreel of the wounds which they caused by striking him at Ramah, when he fought against Hazael king of Aram. And Ahaziah, the son of Jehoram king of Judah, went down to see Jehoram the son of Ahab in Jezreel, because he was sick." (2 Chronicles 22:6 LSB)
Jehoram goes to Jezreel to recover. The very name of the place should have sent a chill down his spine. Jezreel was the site of Naboth's vineyard, which his parents Ahab and Jezebel had stolen through deceit and murder. It was ground zero for the wickedness of his dynasty. It was the place where the prophet Elijah had pronounced God's judgment on the entire house of Ahab. For Jehoram to go to Jezreel to be healed is like a mafia boss going to a rival's headquarters for a quiet convalescence. It is an act of profound spiritual blindness. He is returning to the scene of the crime, and God has prepared it as the scene of his execution.
Then comes the fatal courtesy call. "And Ahaziah... went down to see Jehoram... because he was sick." On the surface, this seems like a perfectly normal thing to do. He is visiting his ally, his relative, who was wounded in a battle they fought together. It has all the appearances of propriety and decency. But in the economy of God, this is Ahaziah's final, damning act of solidarity with the house of Ahab. He is not going as a missionary to preach repentance. He is going as a friend to offer condolences for a failed rebellion. He is demonstrating his allegiance. He is showing up at the sickbed to affirm his commitment to the very alliance that God has condemned.
The next verse in this chapter says it with chilling clarity: "Now the destruction of Ahaziah was from God, in that he went to Joram." His destruction was "from God." His decision to visit his sick friend was the very instrument God used to bring it about. God did not force him to go. Ahaziah went because his heart was already allied with Jehoram. He went because he had walked in their counsel. God simply used Ahaziah's own sinful desires and loyalties to walk him right into the path of the judgment He had already prepared, the judgment that was arriving in the form of Jehu's chariot.
Conclusion: Where Do You Make Your Visits?
This is a hard story, but it is a necessary one. It teaches us that there is no such thing as a small compromise with evil. There is no such thing as a harmless alliance with those who hate God. The path that begins with a "strategic" marriage ends at a sickbed in Jezreel, waiting for judgment.
We must ask ourselves, who are our counselors? Whose advice do we walk in? Do we take our cues from the Word of God, or from the spirit of the age? Do we form our alliances based on covenant faithfulness, or on worldly convenience?
And we must ask ourselves, where do we make our visits? When our friends and family in the world are "sick" and wounded by the consequences of their own sin, what is the nature of our visit? Do we go down to them to commiserate, to offer worldly comfort, to assure them that it's all okay? Do we go to show solidarity with their rebellion? If we do, we are making the same trip Ahaziah made. We are walking into a place of judgment.
Or do we go to them as ambassadors of the great Physician? Do we visit them in their sickness to tell them of the one who can truly heal? The Christian calling is not to avoid sinners, but to love them. But we must love them on God's terms, not theirs. We are to go to the sick, but not to catch their disease. We go to bring the cure.
The good news of the gospel is that there was another King, from the line of David, who also "went down" to visit the sick. Jesus Christ went down from the glory of heaven into our Jezreel, into our world of sin and death and rebellion. He made an alliance with us, not by joining our sin, but by taking our sickness and our judgment upon Himself. He visited us on our deathbed and died in our place, so that we might be healed of the fatal wound of sin. His visit was not one of solidarity in rebellion, but of substitutionary atonement. Because He went down into the grave for us, we can be raised to new life with Him, forever cured of the contagion of compromise.