Living Water Community Church

We worked our way through chapter 16 dealing with the rulership of king Ahaz of Judah. There is a lot of detail about his life especially when we consider how he is described as a king who did not do what was right in the eyes of the Lord. This is the first time this kind of description is applied to a king of Judah. It is a sad commentary an a life spent turning away from God at every point. He was even said to have sacrificed his son to an idol. Yet we see in the book of Isaiah how God reached out to Ahaz in his time of need as Jerusalem was being attacked by both Israel and Syria. But Ahaz refused to trust God and accept His help. Instead he sent money to Tiglath-pileser the king of Assyria and asked him for help. The Assyrian king came down and conquered the Syrians killing their king. This of course aided the kingdom of Judah but the Assyrian king demanded Ahaz submit to him and even came down and executed his own attack against Jerusalem. Ahaz also lost soldiers and cities to the Philistines and the Edo