5/28/2011 7:48:53 AM
SPIRITUAL DIARY
My Worship Time Focus: Religious compromise
Bible Reading
& Meditation Reference:
2Ki.
16:10-20; 2Chron. 28:22-27
Message of the verses: “ 10
¶ Now King Ahaz went to Damascus to meet
Tiglath-pileser king of Assyria, and saw the altar which was at Damascus; and
King Ahaz sent to Urijah the priest the pattern of the altar and its model,
according to all its workmanship. 11 So
Urijah the priest built an altar; according to all that King Ahaz had sent from
Damascus, thus Urijah the priest made it, before the coming of King Ahaz from
Damascus. 12 When the king came from
Damascus, the king saw the altar; then the king approached the altar and went up
to it, 13 and burned his burnt offering
and his meal offering, and poured his drink offering and sprinkled the blood of
his peace offerings on the altar. 14 The
bronze altar, which was before the LORD, he brought from the front of the
house, from between his altar and the house of the LORD, and he put it on the
north side of his altar. 15 Then King
Ahaz commanded Urijah the priest, saying, "Upon the great altar burn the
morning burnt offering and the evening meal offering and the king’s burnt
offering and his meal offering, with the burnt offering of all the people of
the land and their meal offering and their drink offerings; and sprinkle on it
all the blood of the burnt offering and all the blood of the sacrifice. But the
bronze altar shall be for me to inquire by." 16 So Urijah the priest did according to all
that King Ahaz commanded.
“17 ¶ Then King Ahaz cut off the
borders of the stands, and removed the laver from them; he also took down the
sea from the bronze oxen which were under it and put it on a pavement of stone.
18 The covered way for the sabbath which
they had built in the house, and the outer entry of the king, he removed from
the house of the LORD because of the king of Assyria. 19 Now
the rest of the acts of Ahaz which he did, are they not written in the Book of
the Chronicles of the Kings of Judah? 20
So Ahaz slept with his fathers, and was buried with his fathers in the
city of David; and his son Hezekiah reigned in his place.”
“22 Now in the time of his distress this same
King Ahaz became yet more
unfaithful to the LORD. 23 For he
sacrificed to the gods of Damascus which had defeated him, and said,
"Because the gods of the kings of Aram helped them, I will sacrifice to
them that they may help me." But they became the downfall of him and all Israel.
24 Moreover, when Ahaz gathered together
the utensils of the house of God, he cut the utensils of the house of God in
pieces; and he closed the doors of the house of the LORD and made altars for
himself in every corner of Jerusalem. 25
In every city of Judah he made high places to burn incense to other
gods, and provoked the
LORD, the God of his fathers, to anger.
26 Now the rest of his acts and
all his ways, from first to last, behold, they are written in the Book of the
Kings of Judah and Israel. 27 So Ahaz
slept with his fathers, and they buried him in the city, in Jerusalem, for they did not bring him into
the tombs of the kings of Israel; and Hezekiah his son reigned in his
place.”
It
seems that Ahaz had sold his soul to the king of Assyria whom he went to see
and thus became a puppet of this evil king.
Tiglath-pileser was the king of Assyria and the one who would eventually
take the Northern tribes of Israel into captivity and would also try and defeat
the nation of Judah, but would not be able to do so, but I am getting ahead of
the story.
For
whatever reason Ahaz built an altar in Jerusalem like the one that he saw in
Damascus, whether Tiglath-pileser told him to do so or whether he did it on his
own is not the real point here, he did it.
And if the high priest in his day would have had the guts that the high
priest had in Uzziah’s day this would not have gotten done, but it seems like
much of Judah was going with the flow of what this evil king wanted. Compromise to the Law of Moses was happening
during this time, and it seems that there is a lot of compromise going on in
our churches today. Warren Wiersbe quotes
a portion from A. W. Tozer’s book “Keys
to the Deeper Life,” in his commentary on this section. Tozer writes:
“Aside from a few of the grosser sins, the sins of the unregenerated
world are now approved by a shocking number of professedly ‘born again’
Christians, and copied eagerly. Young
Christians take as their models the rankest kind of worldlings and try to be as
much like them as possible. Religious
leaders have adopted the techniques of the advertisers: boasting, baiting, and shameless exaggeration
are now carried on as a normal procedure in church work. The moral climate is not that of the New Testament
but that of Hollywood and Broadway.”
This
is the way it was back in the days of Ahaz and it seems to be that way in 21st
century America, and that way in many of the churches across our land.
Ahaz
eventually died but he was not buried in the place where the kings of Judah
were buried showing that he was not worthy of being buried there.
Spiritual meaning for my life today: Compromise and worldliness are much a part of
the church in America today and it is hard to find a church that is not affected
by the world. Seeker churches water down
the preaching and the truth of the Bible in order to attract unbelievers and thus
become more like the unbelievers that they are trying to attract than the faith
that they are to follow. I surely do not
want to compromise the faith that I believe and know to be true, but that is a
very difficult thing to do. Modern
technology is wonderful if used for the glory of God, but it is so easy to use
in a compromising way that it sometimes scares me to use it.
My Steps of
Faith for Today:
1.
By the grace of God I will not compromise with the
world.
2.
Give myself to the Lord for worship and for service.
3.
Continue to learn contentment.
4.
Remember the truth of Psalm 101:3a.
5.
Remember the truth of Psalm 139:23-24.
5/28/2011 8:37:19 AM
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