Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz
HOR Book 4 Studies • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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Scripture reading:
and Uzziah the father of Jotham, and Jotham the father of Ahaz, and Ahaz the father of Hezekiah,
Uzziah
Uzziah
King Uzziah’s father was King Amaziah, and his mother was Jecoliah from Jerusalem.
Uzziah was his official regal name, while Azariah was his birth name.
Uzziah is a combination of oz (strength, power) and yah (Yahweh). So his name means “The Lord is my strength. Azariah means “the Lord has helped.”
Uzziah began his time as king at 16 years old. And he has a spiritual mentor, Zechariah, who instructed him in spiritual matters.
He set himself to seek God in the days of Zechariah, who instructed him in the fear of God, and as long as he sought the Lord, God made him prosper.
And this is how the first half of his story goes. Uzziah becomes king at 16 years old. He seeks God and prospers the kingdom (2 Chr. 26:6-15)
Military victories against the Philistines, Arabians, and Meunites.
Ammonites give tribute to him.
He increases the nation’s defence structures.
He grows the army and upgrades their inventory.
God gave him this prosperity because he sought the Lord. Now, does that mean that whenever we seek God, He will prosper us? If we go to church, will God give us good grades at school and money in our pockets? No. This is only describing Uzziah’s story.
Can you guess what happens to Uzziah after all of these great accomplishments?
He becomes proud. And in his pride, he tries to do something that’s forbidden for the king to do. Kings were forbidden from burning incense on the altar of incense. That was the priest’s job. But Uzziah goes and does it anyway.
But when he was strong, he grew proud, to his destruction. For he was unfaithful to the Lord his God and entered the temple of the Lord to burn incense on the altar of incense.
See, pride causes us to go beyond our boundaries. What are boundaries? Boundaries are the limits that help us meet our responsibilities. Our boundaries are what we choose not to do, so that we can do what’s important.
So as teenagers, what are our responsibilities?
School matters – We have a responsibility to our school.
Family matters – We have a responsibility to our family.
Church matters – We have a responsibility to God.
Social matters – We have a responsibility to our friends.
For many years, I lived without proper boundaries. I didn’t dedicate any time of my day, not even 10 minutes, to read the Bible and pray. One time, I came to church and opened my bible for the first time in months, and a cockroach jumped out.
And here’s the thing. At first, I felt guilty for not living the way I was supposed to. But after some time, I stopped feeling guilty. I stopped feeling like something was wrong with how I was living. Do you know what we call that? We call that spiritual leprosy.
When Uzziah crossed the boundary, when he offered incense on the altar, leprosy broke out on his forehead.
Then Uzziah was angry. Now he had a censer in his hand to burn incense, and when he became angry with the priests, leprosy broke out on his forehead in the presence of the priests in the house of the Lord, by the altar of incense.
And for the last 12 years of his life, Uzziah has to live in isolation, unable to fulfil his duties as a king. And so his son Jotham has to rule as a coregent king in place of his father.
So we have to be very careful about the sins or sinful lifestyles that we don’t feel bad about.
Here’s another question: is there such thing as a private sin? In other words, is there a sin that only affects you and no one else?
Josephus, the ancient Jewish historian, records that Uzziah’s sin caused an earthquake throughout the nation.
The words of Amos, who was among the shepherds of Tekoa, which he saw concerning Israel in the days of Uzziah king of Judah and in the days of Jeroboam the son of Joash, king of Israel, two years before the earthquake.
And you shall flee to the valley of my mountains, for the valley of the mountains shall reach to Azal. And you shall flee as you fled from the earthquake in the days of Uzziah king of Judah. Then the Lord my God will come, and all the holy ones with him.
Our pride and our sins bring about consequences not only for our own lives, but also for the lives of those around us. If you’re a leader over a group of people, or over a ministry, your sin affects those under your leadership. That’s why if I’m leading worship or preaching, I have to do my very best to stay holy and pure before God.
So from Uzziah’s life, we need to realize that our initial faith isn’t the most important thing. The most important thing is to be consistently unwavering in faith while maturing in personal character, to learn how to live in humility.
Jotham
Jotham
Jotham’s the son of Uzziah and Jerusha.
His name is a combination of yahweh and tam (perfect, complete). So His name Jotham means ‘The Lord is perfect.”
And his story is quite uninteresting. When his father caught leprosy, Jotham had to sit on the throne all of a sudden. He saw what happened to his father and he learned the lesson. He never entered the temple of the Lord. Not because he hated God, but because he revered the holy place of God.
And the Bible says that he reigned for 16 years.
Jotham was twenty-five years old when he began to reign, and he reigned sixteen years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Jerushah the daughter of Zadok. And he did what was right in the eyes of the Lord according to all that his father Uzziah had done, except he did not enter the temple of the Lord. But the people still followed corrupt practices. He built the upper gate of the house of the Lord and did much building on the wall of Ophel.
Moreover, he built cities in the hill country of Judah, and forts and towers on the wooded hills. He fought with the king of the Ammonites and prevailed against them. And the Ammonites gave him that year 100 talents of silver, and 10,000 cors of wheat and 10,000 of barley. The Ammonites paid him the same amount in the second and the third years. So Jotham became mighty, because he ordered his ways before the Lord his God.
All that’s recorded about Jotham is that he invested in the defence force. That’s basically all of it. But because of this, when the Ammonites came to attack, Jotham could fight back without depending on other foreign allies.
So here’s a question for us to think about.
How should we budget our time?
How many hours do we budget for our own spiritual defence? If we only budget 2 or 3 hours a week for spiritual defence, then when Satan comes to attack, do you think we can fight him off? We’ll end up depending on other spiritually foreign things to cope with Satan’s attack. Things like worldly-minded friends. Alcohol. Shopping. Good grades. Satan wants us to cope by depending on anything other than God.
So the smart thing to do is to invest more hours from our time budget into our spiritual defence. The Bible says that God is our refuge and our stronghold.
Psalm 18:2 (ESV)
The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer, my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.
When we focus on building up our stronghold, our story tends to be quite simple. We just live a godly life, not so much craziness happening, not so much noise or drama. All the drama comes when we depend on something other than God to solve our problems. But this isn’t the way we should live.
The Apostle Paul says that we should aspire to live a quiet life.
and to aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we instructed you,
Jotham’s story is the perfect illustration of what it means to live a quiet life. And you know who else’s story shows us a quiet life? Jesus. When did Jesus begin His ministry? 30 years old. What did He do when He was 15? What about 20? Isn’t it crazy that we have absolutely no idea? He lived a quiet life, preparing Himself for the mission. He probably was devoting Himself to God and to serving others.
Let us aspire to live a quiet life, like King Jotham.
Ahaz
Ahaz
Ahaz’s name means “He has grasped.”
His father was Jotham, and he reigned for a total 29 years from the age of 12, when he became a coregent king.
And it says that he worshipped idols.
but he walked in the ways of the kings of Israel. He even made metal images for the Baals, and he made offerings in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom and burned his sons as an offering, according to the abominations of the nations whom the Lord drove out before the people of Israel. And he sacrificed and made offerings on the high places and on the hills and under every green tree.
During his reign as king, the kingdom of Judah was attacked so many times.
The Arameans attacked and caused the city of Elath to fall, along with many Judeans being taken captive to Aram (2 Chr. 28:5).
The northern kingdom of Israel attacked and killed 120,000 and took 200,000 people as prisoners (2 Chr. 28:5-8).
The Edomites attacked and many people were taken as captives (2 Chr. 28:17).
The Philistines attacked and conquered several cities of Judah (2 Chr. 28:18).
And because of the Philistine attacks, King Ahaz asks someone for help. Do you think he asked God? He asked the king of Assyria for help.
So Ahaz sent messengers to Tiglath-pileser king of Assyria, saying, “I am your servant and your son. Come up and rescue me from the hand of the king of Syria and from the hand of the king of Israel, who are attacking me.” Ahaz also took the silver and gold that was found in the house of the Lord and in the treasures of the king’s house and sent a present to the king of Assyria.
The Assyrians are the worst of the worst. They’re the most brutal and violent kind of people. They would tear off your arm and beat you to death with it. And Ahaz knows how savage they are, so he takes some of the treasures of the temple and uses it as payment for the Assyrian army.
And while he’s there, he sees an altar for worshipping the Assyrian gods. And he likes it so much that he sends a model of the altar with all the details to his priest, so that they can have the same one made in Judah.
When King Ahaz went to Damascus to meet Tiglath-pileser king of Assyria, he saw the altar that was at Damascus. And King Ahaz sent to Uriah the priest a model of the altar, and its pattern, exact in all its details.
And so the Assyrians come, and Ahaz breathes a sigh of relief. But what happens next?
So Tiglath-pileser king of Assyria came against him and afflicted him instead of strengthening him.
Ahaz here experiences a painful lesson. What’s the lesson?
We all go through hard times in our lives. Whether it’s problems at home, or at school, or even at church. And in those hard times, we should seek for God’s help and God’s Word for the solution. But sometimes we don’t. And in those times, what happens is we make things worse.
Ahaz had a hard time, and he relied on something other than God. And it made things worse. Instead of having the Philistines attacking him, Ahaz have the terrible and brutal Assyrians attacking him.
The worldly methods that we rely on instead of God can become an even greater problem than our current problem.
And does Ahaz learn from this lesson? No. It says that even in this distressing situation, Ahaz sought even more idols.
In the time of his distress he became yet more faithless to the Lord—this same King Ahaz. For he sacrificed to the gods of Damascus that had defeated him and said, “Because the gods of the kings of Syria helped them, I will sacrifice to them that they may help me.” But they were the ruin of him and of all Israel.
And Ahaz gathered together the vessels of the house of God and cut in pieces the vessels of the house of God, and he shut up the doors of the house of the Lord, and he made himself altars in every corner of Jerusalem. In every city of Judah he made high places to make offerings to other gods, provoking to anger the Lord, the God of his fathers.
Ahaz’s sin became even worse because he led all the kingdom of Judah into idolatry.
Conclusion
Conclusion
Uzziah’s life is a lesson in boundaries.
And we’ve learned that pride makes us cross beyond the boundaries.
Jothan’s life is a lesson in budget.
He invested heavily in the nation’s defences, and so he didn’t need to rely on foreign nations for help. We need to invest in our spiritual defences by studying the Word of God and praying, so that we can endure it when Satan attacks us.
Ahaz’s life shows us what happens when our spiritual defences aren’t strong enough to handle Satan’s attacks.
Especially in those times, we need to cry out to God in prayer. But if we don’t, we end up reaching for things that make the situation even worse.