Ahaz
211
thee, but to fear the Lord thy God, to walk in all His ways, and to love
Him, and to serve the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy
soul, to keep the commandments of the Lord, and His statutes, which I
command thee this day for thy good?”
Deuteronomy 10:12, 13
. From
age to age these counsels were repeated by the servants of Jehovah to
[327]
those who were in danger of falling into habits of formalism and of
forgetting to show mercy. When Christ Himself, during His earthly
ministry, was approached by a lawyer with the question, “Master,
which is the great commandment in the law?” Jesus said to him, “Thou
shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul,
and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And
the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On
these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”
Matthew
22:36-40
.
These plain utterances of the prophets and of the Master Himself,
should be received by us as the voice of God to every soul. We
should lose no opportunity of performing deeds of mercy, of tender
forethought and Christian courtesy, for the burdened and the oppressed.
If we can do no more, we may speak words of courage and hope to
those who are unacquainted with God, and who can be approached
most easily by the avenue of sympathy and love.
Rich and abundant are the promises made to those who are watchful
of opportunities to bring joy and blessing into the lives of others. “If
thou draw out thy soul to the hungry, and satisfy the afflicted soul; then
shall thy light rise in obscurity, and thy darkness be as the noonday: and
the Lord shall guide thee continually, and satisfy thy soul in drought,
and make fat thy bones: and thou shalt be like a watered garden, and
like a spring of water, whose waters fail not.”
Isaiah 58:10, 11
.
The idolatrous course of Ahaz, in the face of the earnest appeals
of the prophets, could have but one result. “The wrath of the Lord
[328]
was upon Judah and Jerusalem, and He ... delivered them to trouble,
to astonishment, and to hissing.”
2 Chronicles 29:8
. The kingdom
suffered a rapid decline, and its very existence was soon imperiled
by invading armies. “Rezin king of Syria and Pekah son of Remaliah
king of Israel came up to Jerusalem to war: and they besieged Ahaz.”
2 Kings 16:5
.
Had Ahaz and the chief men of his realm been true servants of the
Most High, they would have had no fear of so unnatural an alliance as