The High Cost of Cheap Gods Text: 2 Chronicles 28:1-4
Introduction: The Downward Spiral
Every man worships. There are no exceptions to this rule. The only question is what, or whom, he will worship. The modern secularist likes to imagine he has outgrown all that, that he has ascended to a high plateau of pure reason, untroubled by altars and incense. But this is a delusion. He has simply exchanged the altar of Yahweh for the altar of Self, the altar of the State, or the altar of Mammon. He has not eliminated worship; he has only chosen a lesser god, a dumber god, a god who cannot save.
The story of King Ahaz is a case study in the velocity of apostasy. It shows us that the path away from God is not a gentle, meandering stroll; it is a steep, greased slide into the abyss. Apostasy is never static. It is always progressive, always digging deeper, always demanding more. What begins with a little compromise, a little syncretism, a little nod to the surrounding culture, ends with blood on your hands and your children in the fire. Ahaz did not begin his reign by sacrificing his sons. He began by tolerating the high places, by thinking he could manage a little bit of paganism on the side. But false gods are jealous gods, and they will not be managed. They demand total allegiance, and their wages are death.
This passage is not just a dusty record of a bad king in a bygone era. It is a stark warning to us. We live in a culture that is sprinting down the same path as Ahaz. We have exchanged the truth of God for a lie and have begun to worship and serve the creature rather than the Creator. The high places are all around us, the green trees of our paganized public squares offer their shade to every sort of abomination, and the spirit of Molech is alive and well in every abortion clinic. The story of Ahaz is our story, written in advance. It is a diagnosis of our cultural sickness, and we must attend to it, lest we suffer the same end.
The Text
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, as David his father had done. But he walked in the ways of the kings of Israel; he also made molten images for the Baals. Moreover, he offered offerings in smoke in the valley of Ben-hinnom and burned his sons in the fire, according to the abominations of the nations whom Yahweh had dispossessed from before the sons of Israel. He also sacrificed and offered offerings in smoke on the high places and on the hills and under every green tree.
(2 Chronicles 28:1-4 LSB)
The Standard Abandoned (v. 1)
We begin with the divine indictment against Ahaz.
"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, as David his father had done." (2 Chronicles 28:1)
The first thing the chronicler tells us is the standard by which Ahaz is judged. The standard is not popular opinion, or the spirit of the age, or even the example of his immediate predecessors. The standard is David. "He did not do what was right... as David his father had done." Why David? David was a sinner. He was an adulterer and a murderer. But David was also a man after God's own heart, and the central characteristic of his reign was his unwavering commitment to the exclusive worship of Yahweh. When David sinned, he repented. He shattered. He came back to the covenant. He understood that Yahweh alone was God and that all worship belonged to Him.
This is the covenant standard for kingship. The king's primary duty was not economic policy or foreign relations; it was to maintain true worship. The king was the nation's lead worshiper. If the king got worship right, God would bless the nation's economy and foreign policy. If he got it wrong, everything else would rot from the head down. This is what we call theonomy. God's law is the standard for all of life, beginning with the civil magistrate.
Notice the phrase, "in the sight of Yahweh." This is the only audience that matters. Ahaz may have been popular for a time. He may have been seen as pragmatic, as a man who knew how to get along with his neighbors. But God sees the heart. God judges not by the outward appearance, but by the direction of a man's worship. Ahaz failed the fundamental test of leadership: he did not fear God.
The Path of Apostasy (v. 2)
Having rejected God's standard, Ahaz adopts another one.
"But he walked in the ways of the kings of Israel; he also made molten images for the Baals." (2 Chronicles 28:2)
If you reject David's way, you will inevitably walk in Jeroboam's way. There is no neutral ground. Ahaz, the king of Judah, the southern kingdom, begins to imitate the institutionalized apostasy of Israel, the northern kingdom. This was a deliberate political and religious rebellion. The "ways of the kings of Israel" refers to the syncretistic, state-sponsored idolatry that began with Jeroboam's golden calves. It was a religion of convenience, designed to keep the people from going to Jerusalem to worship. It was worship on man's terms.
And from this state-sponsored compromise, he descends into outright paganism. "He also made molten images for the Baals." Baal was the Canaanite storm and fertility god. Baal worship was a nature religion, centered on the cycles of sex and death. It was a religion that promised rain for your crops and children for your house, provided you performed the correct rituals. It was a transactional religion. You give the god what he wants, and he gives you what you want. This is the essence of all paganism. It is an attempt to manipulate God, to put him in our debt. True worship, by contrast, is giving God what He is due simply because of who He is.
These were "molten images." They were man-made. Man created his gods, and then bowed down to the work of his own hands. This is the height of absurdity. But do not think we are any different. Our culture is filled with molten images. We worship the god of Economic Growth, the god of Personal Fulfillment, the goddess of Sexual Freedom. We pour our time, our money, and our devotion into these idols, hoping they will give us prosperity and happiness. But they are dumb idols. They have no breath in them, and they cannot save.
The Altar of Molech (v. 3)
The downward spiral accelerates. The worship of false gods always leads to the shedding of innocent blood.
"Moreover, he offered offerings in smoke in the valley of Ben-hinnom and burned his sons in the fire, according to the abominations of the nations whom Yahweh had dispossessed from before the sons of Israel." (2 Chronicles 28:3)
This is the nadir. This is the logical conclusion of turning from Yahweh. The Valley of Ben-hinnom, just outside Jerusalem, became the site of this horrific ritual. This is the place that would later be called Gehenna, the very word Jesus used for hell. Hell is a place where men get what they want: a world without God, a world where they are their own gods, a world where they sacrifice their children for their own benefit.
He "burned his sons in the fire." Let that sink in. This was not some abstract policy decision. This was a king, a father, taking his own flesh and blood and offering them up to a demon god, Molech. Why? To secure a blessing. To gain military victory or economic prosperity. He was sacrificing his future on the altar of his present. He was trading his own children for power and convenience.
And if you think we are too civilized for such things, you are blind. We do not call him Molech anymore. We call him "Choice." We do not use a bronze statue. We use a sterile clinic. But the abomination is precisely the same. Every year, we sacrifice nearly a million of our children on the altar of convenience, career, and sexual freedom. We have filled our own Valley of Hinnom with the blood of the innocent. The text says Ahaz did this "according to the abominations of the nations whom Yahweh had dispossessed." God drove the Canaanites out of the land for this very sin. And now, His own covenant people, led by their king, are imitating them. This is high-handed, defiant treason against the throne of heaven. And it is a reminder that when a nation embraces the sins of the people God has judged, it will receive the same judgment.
Widespread Corruption (v. 4)
The king's personal apostasy becomes the nation's public policy.
"He also sacrificed and offered offerings in smoke on the high places and on the hills and under every green tree." (2 Chronicles 28:4)
The corruption was not confined to the Valley of Hinnom. It was everywhere. The "high places" were local shrines, originally used for Canaanite worship, that were never fully purged from the land. They represented a decentralized, syncretistic approach to religion. It was a refusal to worship God in the way He commanded, at the place He commanded, which was the Temple in Jerusalem. This is the sin of liturgical autonomy. It is the belief that we can worship God however we see fit.
"Under every green tree." This phrase points to the worship of nature itself. It is pantheism. It is the deification of the creation. Instead of worshiping the Creator who made the trees, they worshiped the trees themselves, or the spirits they imagined inhabited them. This is the foundation of modern environmentalism, which often treats Mother Earth with a reverence due only to God the Father, and which is willing to sacrifice human flourishing for the sake of a pristine landscape.
From the capital city to the rural hills, the entire land was polluted with false worship. This is what happens when leaders abandon their post. Ahaz did not just sin personally; he led his entire nation into sin. He normalized perversion. He made idolatry the state religion. And the consequences, as the rest of the chapter shows, were catastrophic. God handed them over to their enemies. Apostasy always leads to judgment.
Conclusion: The One True Sacrifice
The story of Ahaz is a dark one. It is a story of a man who rejected the living God and embraced gods who demanded the blood of his children. It is a story of a nation that followed its leader into the abyss. And it is our story. We live in the ruins of a Christian civilization that is rapidly becoming a pagan one. The altars to Baal and Molech are being rebuilt all around us.
But this is not where the story ends. The Bible is not ultimately about the failure of kings like Ahaz. It is about the success of the one true King, Jesus Christ. Ahaz sacrificed his sons to false gods. But God the Father sacrificed His only Son for His enemies. On the cross, God did what Molech could never do. He offered a sacrifice that actually saves.
Jesus Christ is the true Son of David. He is the king who did what was right in the sight of the Lord, perfectly and completely. He did not walk in the ways of the kings of Israel but walked in perfect obedience to His Father. He did not bow to any molten image but cast down every idol. He did not offer his children in the fire, but offered Himself in the fire of God's wrath to rescue us, the rebellious children.
The answer to the apostasy of Ahaz is not to wring our hands in despair. The answer is to look to the throne of David, where Jesus Christ now sits, ruling and reigning over all things. The answer is to repent of our own idolatries, to tear down the high places in our own hearts and in our own land. And the answer is to proclaim the gospel of this King, who alone can forgive sin, who alone can cleanse a land polluted with blood, and who is making all things new. Ahaz shows us the high cost of cheap gods. Christ shows us the high cost of true grace, a grace that was purchased not with the blood of our children, but with the precious blood of the Son of God.