Don’t assume that hard times always bring people closer to the Lord. Sometimes it’s just the opposite.
Winston Churchill said, “Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.” Ahaz was such a man. Depending on the arm of flesh, he had lost to the Syrians “one hundred and twenty thousand in Judah in one day, all valiant men, because they had forsaken the Lord God of their fathers” (2 Chron 28:6). His own son had been killed, as were several of his administrators. And if not for the pleading of the prophet Oded, he would have also lost “two hundred thousand women, sons, and daughters” to be slaves. He also lost “much spoil” (v 8). But without a moment’s hesitation, when attacked by the Edomites in the southeast and the Philistines in the west, he turned to Assyria for help rather than seeking the Lord. Assyria helped all right—they helped themselves to “part of the treasures from the house of the Lord” (v 21), but refused to help Judah militarily. It was so evident Judah had become the region’s Number 1 loser, that no one was foolish enough to be drawn into a foregone defeat. Why? “The Lord brought Judah low because of Ahaz king of Israel, for he had encouraged moral decline in Judah and had been continually unfaithful to the Lord” (v 19). Here’s the next mile marker on Ahaz’s road to ruin: “In the time of his distress King Ahaz became increasingly unfaithful to the Lord” (v 22). He worshiped the gods of his enemies. He “cut in pieces the articles of the house of God, shut up the doors of the house of the Lord, and made for himself altars in every corner of Jerusalem” (v 24). The more the Lord chastened Ahaz, the more he hardened his heart. The same sun that melts wax hardens clay. When he died, his own people refused to bury him with the kings.