Sunday, August 9, 2009: The Sacred and the Profane

The Sacred and the Profane
2 Kings 16: 1 – 20.

I. Introduction.

Let me tell you something about our church. Most of you already know this, but it is one of those things that is worthwhile for us to remind ourselves as often as possible. Our church believes the Bible. We believe the Bible is inspired by God. Since the Bible is inspired by God, we also believe the Bible is the authority for all of our faith and the practice of our faith.

The word “inspired” is a reference to God’s role in bringing the Bible to us today. In a very literal sense, the word “inspire” means “to breathe in.” I believe this is based on the fact that both the Old Testament word for Spirit (ruach) and the New Testament word for Spirit (pneuma) can be translated “Spirit,” “wind” or “breath.” In other words, the Holy Spirit is the “breath of God.” To say that the Bible is “inspired by God” is the same as saying the Bible is “filled with the breath of God.” This is no ordinary book. This book has been breathed—or spoken—by God.

Allow me to suggest something fairly radical… It is not enough for us to say we believe the Bible. We must also READ the Bible! Of course, it will not do us any good simply to read the Bible. We must practice what the Bible teaches!

Here is the most radical thing I am going to say all day… Don’t try to argue that you believe the Bible unless you are willing to read the Bible and practice what the Bible teaches!

One of my goals in life is to read the Bible through every year. I started doing this eleven or twelve years ago, when I was seriously looking to make the transition from being an associate pastor to being the pastor. I had read the Bible, but I wasn’t very systematic about it. I started to feel like I was reading the same sections of the Bible over and over again. The first two times I read the Bible through in a year, I used The One Year Bible—it is the entire Bible broken up into 365 daily readings from the Old Testament, New Testament, Psalms and Proverbs. Then, I started reading the Bible through from Genesis to Revelation. Now, I keep a checklist in the front of my Bible and mark off the books I have already read.

One of the great lessons I have learned by reading the Bible is that God has not changed. God has always loved human beings and pursued us for a relationship with himself. This relationship is our salvation. There no other way for human beings to be saved apart from a relationship with God.

I’ve also learned that human beings have not changed either. Despite the fact that God has continually pursued us, we persistently resist God’s calling. We are sinners, and we struggle with the trials and temptations that result from our sinful resistance.

So, when we read the Bible, we read stories that are thousands of years old. Yet, these stories are contemporary, because they describe the same trials, temptations and stubbornness we experience in the Twenty-First Century.

Read 2 Kings 16: 1 - 20.

II. Verse 1 – 4.
In this passage, we read about a period in Israel’s history known as “The Divided Kingdom.”…The Northern Kingdom was known as Israel…The Southern Kingdom was known as Judah…
What was the difference between Israel and Judah?…

Judah was the fulfillment of the promise God made to David…There would always be a descendent of David on the Throne.

The kings of Israel, on the other hand, were NOT descendents of David and usually turned the people away from God’s will & way…

Were the kings of Judah always good kings? NO! In fact this is one of those examples…Ahaz led the people of Judah away from following God’s commands.

The biblical author used 3 expressions to capture this…

1. He walked in the way of the kings of Israel…This is a reference to idol worship…Allowing the people to turn away from proper worship to do as the surrounding nations did…

2. He made his son to pass through the fire…Probably a reference to worship of the god Molech…Practiced “child sacrifice.”

3. He sacrificed on the high places…Reference to the many different altars & sanctuaries devoted to false gods…General belief was that the higher the altitude, the closer to god…Therefore altars set up in all high places rather than keeping one in Jerusalem…

III. Verses 5 – 7.
Judah had a problem. The nations of Israel & Aram began to attack Judah…

There is a secondary lesson in this problem… God had originally told King Ahab of Israel to utterly destroy the Arameans…Yet he disobeyed God and allowed the King of Aram to live…Therefore, Israel & Judah both experienced future problems based on Ahab’s disobedience…

We read a longer version of this story in Isaiah 7…Word came to King Ahaz that the Israelite army had camped outside the borders of Judah…This frightened King Ahaz, so he sent for the Prophet Isaiah…Isaiah told the king not to worry, because neither Israel nor Aram would last very much longer…In fact, Isaiah gave Ahaz a sign…Isaiah 7: 14ff, “The young woman will be with child and bear a son, and she shall call his name Immanuel…For before the boy will know enough to refuse evil and choose good, the land whose two kings you dread will be forsaken.”

But Ahaz refused to listen to the words of Isaiah…In other words, Ahaz refused to listen to the Word of the Lord…

So, he took matters into his own hands and did the unthinkable…He called on the King of Assyria to help Judah…This was unthinkable because Assyria was evil, wicked, vile…The ultimate expression of what it meant to be Pagan in that day…

IV. Verses 8 – 9.
Evidently, the King of Assyria refused to come to the aid of Judah, because Ahaz had to send a bribe to get his help…This Hebrew word does NOT usually mean a “gift” as the NIV translated here…Usually it refers to a “gift” intended to change the outcome of justice…In this case, it was a “bribe” intended to get the King of Assyria to take sides in a matter that did not involve him…

But this was not ordinary “gift” or even an ordinary “bribe.”…Ahaz looted the Temple of God to send a bribe to Tiglath-Pileser…

V. Verses 10 – 12.
Once the bribe had worked and Assyria had defeated the enemies of Judah, King Ahaz traveled to Damascus to thank Tiglath-Pileser…

Once again, we should probably be surprised by Ahaz’ actions…He went into a Pagan Temple to participate in a worship service to another god…Can you imagine the heir of David standing in that worship service? Now, can you imagine his participating in the service?…It’s hard to imagine, but that is exactly what happened…

Not only did Ahaz worship…He ENJOYED the worship so much he thought he might try to imitate it once he returned home…

Ahaz quickly drew a rough sketch of the fancy altar and sent a copy of it to his priest back home…The instructions were to make a replica of this Pagan altar to replace the altar currently in the Temple of the LORD…

Can you imagine the audacity of King Ahaz at this point? He is replacing an Altar that was designed by God himself with a human altar just because it is bigger and fancier.

VI. Conclusion.

Sometimes we read the Bible and find positive examples of how we should worship and serve God. Other times we read the Bible and find negative examples of how we should NOT live our lives. This story is one of those negative examples. It is written for us as a kind of warning… “Do not be like Ahaz.” In other words, Ahaz is a perfect example of how we are not supposed to live and worship God…

The temptations Ahaz faced are not extinct…They surround us even today…Many of us will face these temptations daily…Maybe even when we get home this afternoon…

This story or description about the life and reign of King Ahaz illustrates several dangers we must avoid in our own lives…

A. Becoming Desensitized to Evil…

Cf. earlier kings of Judah…2 Kings 14: 1 – 4; 15: 1 – 4; 15: 32 – 35; 16: 1 – 4…

The only difference between Ahaz and previous kings was that he acted out what earlier kings had allowed the people to do…

There is a danger for us to watch others sin so much that it becomes easier for us to take the next step and join them…Think about your TV and Internet habits as an example. Watching other people commit adultery on TV may or may not be a sin. But, the longer you allow yourself to be exposed to this kind of programming, the more likely you are to cross the line yourself.

B. Entering into Unholy Unions…

Ahaz rejected the Word of the Lord from Isaiah & took matters into his own hands…

We are supposed to have relationships with non-Christians, but these relationships are not supposed to take precedence over our relationship with God. Does your relationship with the world affect your relationship with God? Does your relationship with the world prevent you from reading your Bible? Worshipping God? Growing in your faith?

The union Ahaz made was with the culture of his day…God called his people to be “holy” or set apart… In the same way, Jesus has called us to be holy, set apart, different…This is seen most clearly in the Sermon on Mount…We are supposed to be different from the world, not exactly like the world.

The reason the church is failing in our efforts to penetrate the culture is because the culture has penetrated the church. The reason the church cannot change the world is because the world has changed the church.


C. Using the Holy for Unholy Purposes…Taking the Lord’s Name in Vain…

This is the meaning behind the 3rd commandment…There was little temptation for Israelites to curse or swear using the name of God, because they were afraid to speak his name at all…The temptation was to invoke the name of the LORD to accomplish human, ordinary, profane, unholy purposes. This temptation usually makes me think of politicians in our modern context… Invoking the name of God to accomplish a purely human agenda. This is not a Democrat versus Republican issue. Both political parties are guilty.

This is where we get our concept of something being “profane.” Typically, we only use the word “profane” to refer to profanity, or profane language. The word “profane” can be used either as an adjective or as a verb. As a verb, “profane” refers to taking something that is sacred—or holy—and using it in an unholy manner. Like the Lord’s name. The Lord’s name is holy; and anyone who has used the Lord’s name for ungodly purposes has “profaned” the name of the Lord.

However, language is not the only thing that can be profaned. Anything created by God and given to us for godly purposes can be misused in a profane manner. A good example might be the physical, sexual relationship between a man and a woman. This was created by God to be shared in a marriage relationship. Any sexual activity outside of marriage is profane—or unholy and ungodly.

D. Replacing the Holy with the Unholy…

What are some things we have today that have been “designed by God?”…Bible…Church…Marriage

Any time we take something God designed and use it for ungodly purposes, we have exchanged the holy for the unholy. Our world does not think God’s creations are good enough. The world tries to convince us to replace God’s creations with human things that seem bigger, fancier, more exciting…