Then King Ahaz went to Damascus to meet Tiglath-Pileser king of Assyria. He saw an altar in Damascus and sent to Uriah the priest a sketch of the altar, with detailed plans for its construction. So Uriah the priest built an altar in accordance with all the plans that King Ahaz had sent from Damascus and finished it before King Ahaz returned. When the king came back from Damascus and saw the altar, he approached it and presented offerings on it. He offered up his burnt offering and grain offering, poured out his drink offering, and splashed the blood of his fellowship offerings against the altar (10-13).
My initial thought was who was really at fault, the king for ordering the construction of a new altar or the priest for carrying it out? But then I realized there was plenty of fault to go around.
The huge issue for Judah was it was both… both the king and the priests turned their backs on the Lord, building a new pagan and unauthorized altar in the Temple of the Lord. Poor Judah, the two institutions that were supposed to protect the people and lead the people in faithfulness to the Lord were, in fact, leading them away from the Lord.
Today we no longer live in a Theocracy, so I do not expect the government to lead us in faithfulness to God. I am thankful that at least in my country, the United States of America, the government is supposed to protect free access to the religion of one’s choice. So government is to be essentially neutral when it comes to religion.
With government out of the religious picture, church leaders –pastors, priests, elders, deacons, etc. –are the God-ordained protectors of the faith for the people… leading the people toward truth and living God’s declared way. What frightens me is that I see many sectors of the church leaders constructing new and unauthorized institutions and teachings. They change what God has declared about salvation and morality in order to dovetail more closely with our secular world than God’s written and revealed Word.
The priests under Ahaz simply discarded what God had said about the altar and built a ‘new fangled’ one after the likeness of a pagan altar in Damascus. Sometimes I fear some leaders in the church are doing the same thing today, moving the cross and salvation in Jesus alone to the side in favor of a more eclectic ‘way of salvation’ with many doors and many ways.
Oh, God, forgive us. Forgive us for disregarding and changing Your Word and Way. Correct Your church before we cease to be Your church. Raise up voices of orthodoxy who can speak to this new generation. I pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.
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