Zichri, a mighty man of Ephraim, killed Maaseiah the son of the king, Azrikam the governor of the palace, and Elkanah the second to the king. Sermons
I. AN EVENT WHICH FREQUENTLY OCCURS. 1. Sometimes to the nation. We have a notable instance of this in the reaction from the Puritan strictness of the Commonwealth to the unbounded licence of the Restoration. 2. Sometimes to the Church. A sudden passing from the ardour of some fervent enthusiasm to the rigour of utter indifference and inactivity. 3. Sometimes to the family. When a godly, devoted, and useful parent is succeeded by a dissolute and mischief-working son (as in the text). 4. Sometimes in the individual. A man is led to the appearance (if not the reality) of piety and zeal; he worships regularly in the house of the Lord, and takes a prominent part in the activities of the Church; then with more or less of suddenness he declines; he abandons his religious convictions and his moral principles, and stands before society as a spiritual renegade, living to injure and destroy all he had appeared to love and had busied himself to promote. II. ITS EXPLANATION. 1. Not in any law of human change. It may be contended that there is in the mind and in the history of man a constant ebb and flow as in the tides of the sea; that when a mental or moral movement has proceeded long and far in one direction, the time has come for a counter-movement in the opposite direction. But there is no reason, in the nature of things, why we should not move steadily on in the direction of wisdom and virtue. Such a tendency as this is not properly a law; it is only a generalization from a comparatively small number of particulars. Hence we also say: 2. Not in any inherent human fickleness. Man is more or less fickle; i.e. many men are very fickle, and some men are seriously so, and others slightly so. But other men are constant, faithful, loyal to the last. Man, as man, is under no necessity to change his course, to reverse his direction, to pursue what he has shunned, to pull down what he has built up. We find the explanation we seek: 3. Partly in the unwisdom of the good. Possibly Jotham may have been an unwise father in some material respects; he may have so acted, so ruled his royal household, as to present to his son an unattractive aspect of godliness; he may have failed to distinguish between the requirements of manhood and of youth. Certainly, if he did not, very many parents do, and this their folly is the account of the departure and defection of their sons. It is clear that the unwise austerity of the Puritans had much to do with the excesses of the following generation. Very often, indeed, the intemperate heats of some body of Christian or philanthropic men account, in a large degree, for the repugnance and retrogression of the community. Unwisdom in the good may be as mischievous in its results as the very transgressions of the wicked. 4. Partly in the shallowness of the piety or morality in question. When this is nothing more than mere habit, especially when that habit is of the body rather than of the mind, is fleshly rather than spiritual, it is not to be expected that loyalty will last; it is to be expected that the first strong wind of inclination, or of worldly interest, or of social pressure, will carry such a one away and bear him whithersoever it wills. The great lesson for parents, teachers, pastors, reformers, patriots, is this - dig deep if you would have your house stand. If you would not see your sons and daughters, your fellow-members or fellow-citizens swept round with the current, facing the wrong goal, exerting their influence for evil instead of for good, then do not be content with scattering seed anyhow and anywhere. Dig the deep furrow, sow the seed well; plant living convictions in the judgment and in the conscience of men. Get the whole nature on the side of truth and righteousness. If the man himself, and not only his external habits, not only his feelings and inclinations ? "if he himself, through his whole spiritual nature, gives himself to the service of Christ and of man, you need not fear the coming of an adverse tide; you need not fret about the fickleness of our kind; you will witness no painful and pitiable reaction; the path of those you serve will be one of continuous ascent; it will be "the path of the just, shining brighter and brighter unto the perfect day." - C.
Because the gods of the kings of Syria help them, therefore will I sacrifice to them. We may not try to substitute one god for another, or to patch out our tattered theology by borrowing and misappropriating the ideas of the enemy. There is one fountain at which we may draw and draw evermore, and that is the Bible. We never knew any man oppose the Bible who had really comprehended its inner meaning. No man can doubt the inspiration of the Bible who has read it, not galloped through it. But once lose the feeling, "Surely God is in this book: this is none other than the book of God," and we take the course of Ahaz; we go down and see what is being done in the world. One man has been delivered by wealth, and we begin to worship the golden idol; another has been delivered by various factitious circumstances, and we instantly become artificers in life, and try to mechanise life and set into motion forces that can co-operate with one another and modify one another, and issue in a plentiful harvest of good fortune for ourselves. And after all this toil we come home wasted, weakened in every joint, the subjects of a complete and disastrous collapse.(J. Parker, D. D.) But they were the ruin of him How many men have been mistaken in seeking false inspiration or in coveting false benedictions? The young man says he has a difficult task to-morrow, he has to meet persons with whom he has no sympathy and from whom he expects no quarter; constitutionally he is nervous, self-distrustful, somewhat afraid of a certain aspect of controversy; he therefore says, I will fortify myself, I will take wine, the wine will quicken the flow of my blood, will pleasantly and usefully excite the nervous centres, and I shall go forward boldly and confidently and make the best of myself"; — but it was the ruin of him. There are others who will sacrifice at the altar of appearances. Over their poverty they will put some borrowed rag in the hope that observers will look at the rag and not at the poverty, and treat them as occupying a certain social position. False pride will be the ruin of them.(J. Parker, D. D.) I. First then, let me ask you to notice how this narrative illustrates for us THE CROWD OF VAIN HELPERS WHICH A MAN HAS TO TAKE TO WHEN HE TURNS HIS BACK UPON GOD. If we compare the narrative in our chapter with the parallel in the Second Book of Kings, we get a very vivid picture of the strange medley of idolatries which they introduced. This story illustrates for us what, alas! is only too true, both on the broad scale, as to the generation in which we live, and on the narrower field of our own individual lives. Look at the so-called cultured classes of Europe to-day; turning away, as so many of them are, from the Lord God of their fathers; what sort of things are they worshipping instead? Scraps from Buddhism, the Vedas, any sacred books but the Bible; quackeries, and Charlatanism, and dreams, and fragmentary philosophies all pieced together to try and make up a whole, instead of the old-fashioned whole that they have left behind them. But look, further, how the same thing is true as to the individual lives of godless men. Many of us are trying to make up for not having the One by seeking to stay our hearts on the many. But no accumulation of insufficiencies will ever make a sufficiency. You cannot make up for God by any extended series of creatures, any more than a row of figures that stretched from here to Sirius and back again would approximate to infinitude. The very fact of the multitude of helpers is a sign that none of them are sufficient. There are no end of "cures" for toothache, that is to say, there is none. Consult your own experience. What is the meaning of the unrest and distraction that marks the lives of most of the men in this generation? Why is it that you hurry from business to pleasure, from pleasure to business, until it is scarcely possible to get a quiet breathing time for thought at all? Why is it but because one after another of your gods have proved insufficient, and so fresh altars must be built for fresh idolatries, and new experiments made, of which we can safely prophesy the result will be the old one. You are seeking what you will never find. The many pearls that you seek will never be enough for you. The true wealth is One, One pearl of great price. II. So, notice again, how this story teaches THE HEAVY COST OF THESE HELPERS' HELP. Ahaz had, as he thought, two strings to his bow. He had the gods of Damascus, and of other lands up there, he had the King of Assyria down here. They both of them exacted onerous terms before they would stir a foot to his aid. As for the northern conqueror, all the wealth of the king and of the princes and of the temple was sent to Assyria as the price of his hurtful help. Do you buy this world's help any cheaper, my brother? You get nothing for nothing in that market. It is a big price that you have to pay before these mercenaries will come to fight on your side. Here is a man that "succeeds in life," as we call it. What does it cost him? Well! It has cost him the suppression, the atrophy by disuse of many capacities in his soul which were far higher and nobler than those that have been exercised in his success. It has cost him all his days; it has possibly cost him the dying out of generous sympathies and the stimulating of unwholesome selfishness. All! he has bought his prosperity very dear. There are some o! you who know how much what you call enjoyment has cost you. Some of us have bought pleasure at the price of innocence, of moral dignity, of stained memories, of polluted imaginations. The world has a way of getting more out of you than it gives to you. At the best, if you are not Christian men and women, whether you are men of business, votaries of pleasure, seekers after culture and refinement or anything else, you have given heaven to get earth. Is that a good bargain? Is it much wiser than that of a horde of naked savages that sell a great tract of fair country, with gold-bearing reefs in it, for a bottle of rum and a yard or two of calico? III. Lastly, we may gather from this story an illustration of THE FATAL FALSEHOOD OF THE WORLD'S HELP. Ahaz pauperised himself to buy the hireling swords of Assyria, and he got them; but, as it says in the narrative, "The king came unto him and distressed him, but strengthened him not." He helped Ahaz at first. He scattered the armies that the King of Judah was afraid of like chaff, with his fierce and disciplined onset. And then, having driven them off the bleeding prey, he put his own paw upon it, and growled "Mine!" And where he struck his claws there was little more hope of life for the prostrate creature below him. Ah! and that is what this world always does. A godless life has at the best only partial satisfaction, and that partial satisfaction soon diminishes. The awful power of habit, if there were no other reason, takes the edge off all gratification except in so far as God is in it. Nothing fully retains its power to satisfy. Nothing has that power absolutely, at any moment: but even what measure of it any of our possessions or pursuits may have for a time, soon, or at all events by degrees, passes away. And do not forget that, partial and transient as these satisfactions are, they derive what power of helping and satisfying is in them only from the silence of our consciences, and our success in being able to shut out realities. One word from conscience, one touch of an awakened reflectiveness, one glance at the end — the coffin and the shroud and what comes after these, slay your worldly satisfactions as surely as that falling snow would crush some light-winged gauzy butterfly that had been dancing at the cliff's foot. Your jewellery is all imitation. These fatal helpers come as friends and allies, and they stop as masters. Ahaz and a hundred other weak princes have tried the policy of sending for a strong foreign power to scatter their enemies, and it has always turned out one way. The foreigner has come and he has stopped. The auxiliary has become the lord, and he that called him to his aid becomes his tributary. Ah! and so it is with all the things of this world. Here is some pleasant indulgence that I call to my help lightly and thoughtlessly. It is very agreeable and does what I wanted, and I try it again. Still it answers to my call. And then after a while I say, "I am going to give that up," and I cannot. I have brought in a master when I thought I was only bringing in an ally that I could dismiss when I liked. (A. Maclaren, D. D.). People Ahaz, Amasa, Aram, Azariah, Azrikam, Ben, Berechiah, David, Edomites, Elkanah, Hadlai, Hezekiah, Israelites, Jehizkiah, Jehohanan, Johanan, Maaseiah, Meshillemoth, Oded, Pekah, Remaliah, Shallum, Tilgathpilneser, Timnah, ZichriPlaces Aijalon, Assyria, Beth-shemesh, Damascus, Gederoth, Gimzo, Jericho, Jerusalem, Negeb, Samaria, Shephelah, Soco, Syria, Timnah, Valley of HinnomTopics Authority, Azrikam, Azri'kam, Charge, Commander, Controller, Death, Elkanah, Elka'nah, Ephraim, E'phraim, Ephraimite, Fighting-man, Governor, Killed, King's, Leader, Maaseiah, Ma-asei'ah, Mighty, Officer, Palace, Ruler, Slayeth, Slew, Warrior, ZichriOutline 1. Ahaz, reigning wickedly, is greatly afflicted by the Syrians.6. Judah, being captivated by the Israelites, is sent home by the counsel of Oded. 16. Ahaz sending for aid to Assyria, is not helped thereby, 22. In his distress he grows more idolatrous 26. He dying, Hezekiah succeeds him Dictionary of Bible Themes 2 Chronicles 28:7Library Costly and Fatal Help'He sacrificed unto the gods of Damascus, which smote him: and he said, Because the gods of the kings of Syria help them, therefore will I sacrifice to them, that they may help me. But they were the ruin of him, and of all Israel.'--2 CHRON. xxviii. 23. Ahaz came to the throne when a youth of twenty. From the beginning he reversed the policy of his father, and threw himself into the arms of the heathen party. In a comparatively short reign of sixteen years he stamped out the worship of God, and … Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture That the Employing Of, and Associating with the Malignant Party, According as is Contained in the Public Resolutions, is Sinful and Unlawful. The Prophet Micah. 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