I think what I both love and hate the most about the bible is how real it is.

There are some absolutely horrible things to read in the bible, evil acts done even by the ones God calls his chosen people. Part of me doesn’t want to believe that people can really be so awful.

That may be a uniquely American trait; we’ll do just about anything we can to view the world as a good place, to view people as for the most part good, nice people.

We live in a world of corruption and greed and slavery and oppression. Yet television ratings show that on the news, we would much rather watch stories about pets and the weather than the latest humanitarian crisis in Africa or border skirmish in Asia.

So part of me hates that I have to read the bad stuff in the bible. After all, in the Old Testament, these are God’s chosen people, the ones he loves, the ones he rescues out of Egypt and brings to the promised land. He splits the seas for them, fights their battles for them, gives them food in the desert, and sends down fire from heaven when Elijah asks. I hate the fact that all of those miraculous signs of God’s provision don’t make more of a difference in their behavior.

The history of Israel, God’s chosen people, is depressing and horrifying.

The few bright points are almost completely overwhelmed by pride and disobedience and ungratefulness, a flat out in-your-face rejection of the God of the universe who let Israel call him by name. Part of me really hates it.

And part of me loves that the bible is so real.

The bible puts it all out there, all the good, and a whole lot of the bad. There isn’t any sugarcoating, or propaganda. It’s human life, with all the good and the bad that humanity brings.

And think about it: if God can love these losers, you and I are in pretty good shape!

Today, we want to look at one of the many honestly bad examples in the period of the kings.

David and Solomon’s united kingdom, which included all twelve of the tribes of Israel, is now a distant memory. Solomon’s death brought about a split that never healed, a split between the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah. Israel is the larger kingdom, with 10 of the 12 tribes, and is centered in Samaria. Judah is smaller, but is centered in Jerusalem, with kings who remain descended in an unbroken line from David and Solomon.

We’re looking today at one of the kings of Judah, the southern kingdom, at a crucial time when war threatens both Israel and Judah from every side.

Turn with me to 2 Kings chapter 16, page ___ in the bibles in front of you.

[READ v. 1-4]

Even if you don’t have a clue about the history of Israel and Judah, you can pick up from words like “detestable” and “did not do what was right” and “sacrificed his son in the fire” that this guy is not looked on in a favorable manner.

We’re continuing this rapid-fire race through the Old Testament to get ready for a closer look at the book of Micah, a prophet who lived during the time of Ahaz. We’ve moved more than 200 years later than the time of Solomon and the building of the temple that we looked at last week. That means that for Ahaz, Solomon would be as far back in time as the founding fathers of the United States are to us.

Those years have not been kind to the kingdom that David and Solomon built.

1 and 2 Kings are books of history completed long after David and Solomon, and they are shaped by the wisdom of hindsight. Notice that Ahaz, who clearly is not a good guy in the author’s mind, is described as walking “in the ways of the Kings of Israel.”

The kingdom of Israel actually comes to an end while Ahaz is on the throne of Judah. God’s chosen people, even divided as they are into separate kingdoms, still assume that God has given them the promised land. How is it possible that the Assyrian army could bring an end to the Kingdom of Israel, and come close to wiping out Judah, too?

The writers of Kings see the evil done by Israel. They draw attention to their rejection of God, and Ahaz is described as walking in the same evil ways as those horrible kings of Israel.

Turn a few pages ahead to chapter 17 of 2 Kings.

[READ 17: 1-19]

Here’s the laundry list of reasons why Israel’s nation has come to an end in judgment. The same people chosen by God, rescued out of Egypt, brought up and into the promised land, these same people are the ones who turn their backs on the rescuing God, and follow the religious practices of the people who live around them.

The “high places” and the Asherah poles and worshipping other gods like Baal are all mentioned here. These are the common sins seen over and over again in the book of Kings.

The high places were sacred hills where shrines and altars were built to other gods. Even some of the good kings, the ones who didn’t themselves turn to other gods, even the good kings are sometimes scolded as they are remembered in the book of Kings because they did not remove the high places.

These high places and poles and other gods become for Israel and Judah very much like the mildew in the upstairs bathroom at our house: you can clean it and wipe it away, but it just keeps coming back!

At their worst, Israel and Judah take on the practice of human sacrifice as well.

Ahaz isn’t quite the worst king in Judah’s history.

His grandson Manassah wins that coveted award. But Ahaz pretty much has the whole package: he’s described as not walking with God, unlike David his ancestor; the high places of worship are there, the abomination of human sacrifice is there, as well as pride in his own ability to work out the politics of his time.

And this is Judah, the “good” one out of the divided kingdom! What kind of chosen people is this?

It’s sort of depressing to find out that people you really admire aren’t all that great.

Some of my best friends in high school loved to sing, and were part of our best small singing ensemble. They loved a capella music, and they went through a phase where they loved the Manhattan Transfer, a great group made up at the time of two husband and wife couples.

I remember how excited they were when the Manhattan Transfer came to Portland for a concert. They got tickets the first day they were available, and talked about it for weeks beforehand.

I remember asking them how it was the day after at school. “Oh, the concert was great,” they said, in a tone that communicated incredible disappointment.

“So why do you sound like it was a let down?” I asked.

My friends had all stayed after the concert for over an hour in the parking lot by the tour busses, wanting to get autographs and maybe even pictures with the group. When they finally emerged out of the Coliseum, each couple was having a huge, knock-down drag-out fight. They raced straight to their busses, yelling the whole way, never even acknowledging that my friends were there.

It was a huge letdown, because this group that my friends loved, this group that had acted like a big happy family on stage, wasn’t what they seemed.

Israel and Judah are much worse than that. They completely rejected life as God intended it. They were ungrateful, prideful, and trusted themselves much more than they trusted God.

Perhaps one of the biggest lessons we learn from both Israel and Judah is that it just doesn’t pay to reject God for what we think is a better, more clever scheme.

Back to 2 Kings 16.

After we meet Ahaz, after the author is sure that we realize he’s not one who wears the white hat like the good guys do in the old western movies, we realize things aren’t looking too good for Judah. The kings of Israel and Aram are attacking from the north. That’s sort of like being attacked by your cousin and the most annoying bully on the block.

What do you do when things start looking bad? The constant problem with Israel and Judah is that they try to take life into their own hands.

Ahaz thinks of himself as a brilliant diplomat or military strategist of some kind. He thinks, if these big bullies are gonna pick on him, well, then, the thing to do is to go find a bigger bully to pick on them.

Human nature hasn’t changed much, has it?

Isaiah, one of the other biblical prophets, is also a contemporary of Ahaz, and has something to say about this in Isaiah chapter 7.

[READ Isaiah 7: 1-9]

I love the prophets! They paint great word pictures: “smoldering stubs of firewood” don’t sound very scary at all, do they?

Through Isaiah, God says to Ahaz what he constantly says to Israel and Judah. “Don’t give up on me. Don’t be afraid. Trust me. Don’t take matters into your own hands. I will take care of you if you trust me.”

Trust may be one of the most difficult words in any language.

Ahaz can’t pull it off. He can’t wait for some miracle that may never come. He scrounges up all the gold and silver he can find, a lot of it from the temple itself, and sends it off to the king of Assyria. He visits the king himself, and realizes this Assyrian king has got himself a hot new model of altar, the latest design, with all kinds of fancy new features, and Ahaz simply has to have one of his own.

He draws up a detailed description of it and sends it back home to have one just like it made for the temple in Jerusalem.

Trusting and waiting on an invisible God is so much more difficult than playing by the rules of the very visible bigwigs all around us.

Ahaz does quite a lot of things wrong, but I think we let ourselves off too easily if we think we’re ok because we don’t worship other gods or sacrifice our own children.

Ahaz is just a very dramatic example of a basic human reality, a basic human failing: we tend to think that we are the best ones to fix what’s wrong in our lives. Like Ahaz, we think we’re smart enough to wheel and deal and scheme and make things work out for us.

Ahaz does buy some time for Judah. The Assyrians end up wiping Israel off the map, but Judah manages to escape destruction…for awhile. But in keeping his own neck out of the noose, Ahaz has led Judah down the same path that Israel has been on. The God who brought them up out of Egypt is old news.

In what ways are we like Ahaz?

What things in the world around us attract us, like the shiny new model of Assyrian altar that caused Ahaz to turn his back on Yahweh?

When things begin to look bad, are we more likely to settle in and trust the invisible God, or to plot and scheme and take matters into our own hands?

We don’t have time to cover it all today. The injustice of kings who got their wealth on the backs of slaves and suffering people. Our own tendency to be like Israel and Judah and ask God, “What have you done for me lately?”

Perhaps our task is to follow the bible’s example, and turn the spotlight on ourselves in its full brightness.

Perhaps our task is to look at honestly ourselves, at all of our strengths, at all of our weaknesses and failings, in order that we may see the evidence of God at work…the God who is so different than we, the God whose steadfast, faithful love stands out quietly in stark contrast to the fickle flakiness of ourselves and the world we live in.

We’ll do this next week. It’s the 128^th anniversary of the beginning of our church, and we’ll take an honest look at our history.

God, may you help us see ourselves as we are…but more importantly, may we see YOU as YOU really are!