Basic HTML Version
Ahaz Almost Ruins the Kingdom
The crowning of Ahaz as king brought Isaiah face to face with
conditions more appalling than any that had ever existed up to that
time in Judah. Many were now being persuaded to worship heathen
deities. Princes proved untrue to their trust; false prophets led people
astray; some priests worked only for the money. Yet the leaders in
apostasy still kept up the forms of divine worship and claimed to be
the people of God.
The prophet Micah declared that sinners in Zion, while blasphe-
mously boasting, “Is not the Lord among us? No harm can come
upon us,” continued to “build up Zion with bloodshed and Jerusalem
with iniquity.”
Micah 3:11, 10
. Isaiah lifted his voice in stern rebuke:
“To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices to Me? ... When
you come to appear before Me, who has required this from your
hand, to trample My courts?”
Isaiah 1:11, 12
.
Inspiration declares, “The sacrifice of the wicked is abomination;
how much more when he brings it with wicked intent!”
Proverbs
21:27
. It is not because God is unwilling to forgive that He turns
from the transgressor; rather, because the sinner refuses the abun-
dant provisions of grace, God is unable to deliver from sin. “Your
iniquities have separated you from your God; and your sins have
hidden His face from you, so that He will not hear.”
Isaiah 59:2
.
Isaiah called the attention of the people to the weakness of their
position among the nations and showed that this was the result of
wickedness in high places: “The Lord, the Lord of hosts, takes away
from Jerusalem and from Judah the stock and the store, the whole
supply of bread and the whole supply of water; the mighty man and
the man of war, the judge and the prophet, and the diviner and the
elder; the captain of fifty and the honorable man, the counselor and
the skillful artisan, and the expert enchanter. ‘I will give children to
be their princes, and babes shall rule over them.’” “For Jerusalem
stumbled, and Judah is fallen; because their tongue and their doings
are against the Lord.”
Isaiah 3:1-4, 8
.
148