This weekly feature is dedicated to Adventists who are looking for biblical insights into the topics discussed in the Sabbath School lesson quarterly. We post articles which address each lesson as presented in the Sabbath School Bible Study Guide, including biblical commentary on them. We hope you find this material helpful and that you will come to know Jesus and His revelation of Himself in His word in profound biblical ways.
Lesson 3: “When Your World Falls Apart”
This week’s lesson uses the story of Ahaz, a wicked king of Judah, to make a point that leaning on human alliances will fail, but believing in God will cause one to be established. In a superficial sense, this point can be drawn from this story. The lesson, however, misses the core of the account: God faithfully kept His covenant promises to His people—even His promises of destruction and exile if they persistently apostatized.
The story of Ahaz in Scripture is not the story of a man who made bad decisions; rather it is a story of God’s sovereign, unwavering intervention and provision—and judgment. It tells the story of God keeping His word.
The story for this week’s lesson can be found in Isaiah 7 and 2 Kings 16. Ahaz did not honor God. He had led the nation of Judah into idolatry, and he even made his son to “pass through the flames”—he offered his son as a child sacrifice to the pagan gods. When he heard that the nation of Syria and the northern kingdom of Israel, or Ephraim, were partnering to attack Judah, hoping to break Judah’s power and to get the southern kingdom to go to arms with them against the Really Big Threat of the brutal nation of Assyria, Ahaz became afraid. Israel and Judah had gone to war with each other before, and Ahaz wanted nothing to do with Israel’s schemes with Syria.
Ahaz was terrified when he heard the threat of this attack, and God sent Isaiah to him. In short, God’s message was that Ahaz was not to fear the kings of Israel and Syria. In fact, Ahaz did not need to fear that the attack would even materialize. God told Ahaz that those two nations would be destroyed and reminded him that they were headed by human kings. Ahaz, though, was not Judah’s “head”; Judah had God defending her.
And then God said to Ahaz, “If you will not believe, you will not be established.”
Ask for a sign
Then God told Ahaz through Isaiah to ask for a sign that God would fulfill what he promised regarding the destruction of Judah’s foes. Ahaz, though, was unmoved. In spite of God’s saying that he would not be established if he would not believe, he refused to ask for a sign. God then said He would give him a sign anyway: a virgin would conceive and bear a son named Immanuel.
We do not know for sure who fulfilled that sign in the immediate future for Ahaz, but we do know that ultimately Mary and her baby Jesus fulfilled the sign. God never stopped keeping His promises to His people. He sent God With Us to them, and He kept all His promises to send the Messiah.
At the same time, God kept His promises to discipline His people if they persisted in apostasy.
After hearing of the threat to his nation from Israel and Syria, in spite of God’s promise that those nations WOULD be destroyed and Ahaz only needed to believe, Ahaz decided to take the matter into his own hands.
He sent a message to the king of Assyria, the wicked Tiglath-pileser, and asked to form an alliance with him agains Israel and Syria. In fact, Ahaz sweetened the deal by taking the gold from the temple and from the king’s treasuries and sent it to Tiglath-pileser.
The king of Assyria, impressed with the gold and the offer, agreed to work with Ahaz, and Assyria captured Damscus, the capital of Syria, exiled the people, and killed the king. Ahaz went to Damascus to meet Tiglath-pileser, and when he saw the altar at Damscus, Ahaz sent its pattern to the priest in Jerusalem and asked him to build one just like it and establish it at the temple.
When Ahaz returned to Jerusalem, he moved the altar of the Lord to a different location and proceeded to offer all his sacrifices at the copy of the pagan altar of Damascus. Interestingly, perhaps superstitiously or because he knew the original altar was the real altar of God, Ahaz used the removed bronze altar to inquire of the Lord when he felt compelled to seek advice. Meanwhile, he dismantled all the accouterments for cleansing and sacrifice that had always been part of the pattern God had originally given Moses for use in the worship of Yahweh.
Thus Ahaz not only led the nation into idolatry and refused to trust God to deal with his enemies, but he made a deal with an enemy king and adopted pagan forms of worship on the temple grounds.
A bitter end
Ultimately Tiglath-pileser led the northern kingdom of Israel into captivity, and that nation never returned from its exile. Ironically, after taking Ahaz’s two nemesis nations into captivity, Assyria ultimately invaded Judah as well, scattering the people and destroying the land and the crops.
It would be Babylon that would ultimately carry out God’s full judgment on Judah when Nebuchadnezzar would take them into exile to Babylon, but Ahaz’s self-protection and refusal to trust God to keep His promises ended in dreadful suffering.
Covenant faithfulness
The underlying foundation of this story is not moralism as the Sabbath School lesson attempts to say. The real story is that God kept His covenant promises to the nation of Israel. In spite of their persistent sin and idolatry, God continued to call them to repentance. He didn’t see them fall and strike them down; He sent prophets and messages and called them back to Himself.
The northern nation of Israel had no good kings after the monarchy divided. All were wicked and did not honor God. The nation of Israel, however, did have a handful of good kings scattered throughout its history. Ahaz was not one of them, but his son Hezekiah was. Whenever a good king would arise in Judah, he would destroy the altars and pagan worship sites, and God would bless the nation again.
Ultimately the apostasy in Judah became intractable. In spite of Hezekiah’s reforms, the downward spiral continued after his death in spite of his grandson Josiah’s reforms a few years later.
The last kings of Judah were exceedingly wick and “did evil in the sight of the LORD”. Babylon, exactly as God had prophesied through the prophet Habakkuk, invaded Judah, and the Lord brought judgment on His people.
This pattern was not unknown to the Israelites. When God first gave the covenant through Moses He had promised them blessings for obedience and curses and ultimate exile for disobedience. In the one conditional covenant recorded in Scripture between God and man, Israel promised to do all God told them to do.
We know the rest of the story. They couldn’t keep their promises. In fact, the increase of sin was the point of the law! Romans 5:20 states that “the law came in to increase the trespass.” Galatians explains the law was a tutor to lead us to Christ “so that we may be justified by faith” (Gal. 3:24).
In fact, before Moses died, God said to him:
“Now therefore write this song and teach it to the people of Israel. Put it in their mouths, that this song may be a witness for me against the people of Israel. For when I have brought them into the land flowing with milk and honey, which I swore to give to their fathers, and they have eaten and are full and grown fat, they will turn to other gods and serve them, and despise me and break my covenant. And when many evils and troubles have come upon them, this song shall confront them as a witness (for it will live unforgotten in the mouths of their offspring). For I know what they are inclined to do even today, before I have brought them into the land that I swore to give” (Deuteronomy 31:19–21).
The Mosaic covenant was doomed from the start; Israel was sinful and unable to keep their own promises. As a nation, they relied on their status as “chosen” and corporately refused to humble themselves before God. Finally, hundreds of years later after many years of mercy and grace, God meted out His judgment on Israel’s apostasy and exiled them.
But judgment wasn’t the only promise God kept. He also promised to send a redeemer and to restore them. Exactly on schedule, Jesus came in fulfillment of the law and the prophets, and God is still keeping His promises to Israel to restore the land and to bring them to Himself.
The point of the story of Ahaz isn’t a moral lesson that if we make wise decisions God will bless us. The point is that God was keeping His covenant promises with His people, even as He dealt with a wicked king and offered him a way of escape from the immediate disaster of his enemies.
We serve a sovereign God who is not surprised by our sin and unbelief. We also serve a merciful God who paid the price for our sin in the person of His incarnate Son. Through Jesus we all, both Jew and gentile, are reconciled to God and receive new hearts and new spirits when we repent of our sin and trust the Lord Jesus and His finished work and enter His new covenant established in His blood.
When we trust Jesus and are born again, we know our sovereign God, and we can trust Him to keep us faithful to Him. We can submit to His word and lean on Him, knowing that He disciplines His people in order to glorify Himself through our lives. †
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Colleen,
Good summary and discussion! But, when you wrote: “In the one unconditional covenant recorded in Scripture between God and man, Israel promised to do all God told them to do.” didn’t you mean the one conditional covenant? Not unconditional? Maybe I am just misunderstanding what you meant…
Jeanie
Hi Colleen, thank you for your weekly lesson updates. My study group finds it very useful for proper understanding of various biblical perspectives. I have, however, noted that the lesson 3 above is not from the current lesson study but from the past. Would you mind to attach the correct one? Be blessed.