'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 nearly ruined the kingdom.
He did not plunge into idolatry for want of good advice. The greatest
of the prophets stood beside him. Isaiah addressed to him
remonstrances which might have made the most reckless pause, and
promises which might have kindled hope and courage in the bosom of
despair. Hosea in the northern kingdom, Micah in Judah, and other less
brilliant names were amongst the stars which shone even in that dark
night. But their light was all in vain. The foolish lad had got the
bit between his teeth, and, like many another young man, thought to
show his 'breadth' and his 'spirit' by neglecting his father's
counsellors, and abandoning his father's faith. He was ready to
worship anything that called itself a god, always excepting Jehovah.
He welcomed Baal, Moloch, Rimmon, and many more with an indiscriminate
eagerness that would have been ludicrous if it had not been tragical.
The more he multiplied his gods the more he multiplied his sorrows,
and the more he multiplied his sorrows the more he multiplied his
gods.
From all sides the invaders came. From north, northeast, east,
south-east, south, they swarmed in upon him. They tore away the
fringes of his kingdom; and hostile armies flaunted their banners
beneath the very walls of Jerusalem.
And then, in his despair, like a scorpion in a circle of fire, he
inflicted a deadly wound on himself by calling in the fatal help of
Assyria. Nothing loth, that warlike power responded, scattered his
less formidable foes, and then swallowed the prey which it had dragged
from between the teeth of the Israelites and Syrians. The result of
Ahaz's frantic appeals to false gods and faithless men may still be
read on the cuneiform inscriptions, where, amidst a long list of
unknown tributary kings, stands, with a Philistine on one side of him
and an Ammonite on the other, the shameful record, 'Ahaz of Judah.'
That was what came of forsaking the God of his fathers. It is a type
of what always has come, and always must come, of a godless life. That
is the point of view from which I wish to look at the story, and at
these words of my text which gather the whole spirit of it into one
sentence.
I. First, then, let me ask you to notice how this narrative
illustrates for us the crowd of vain helpers to which a man has to
take 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. Amongst Ahaz's new gods
are, for instance, the golden calves of Israel and the ferocious
Moloch of Ammon, to whom he sacrificed, passing through the fire at
least one of his own children. The ancient sacred places of the
Canaanites, on every high hill and beneath every conspicuous tree,
again smoked with incense to half-forgotten local deities. In every
open space in Jerusalem he planted a brand-new altar with a brand-new
worship attendant upon it. In the Temple, he brushed aside the altar
that Solomon had made and put up a new one, copied from one which he
had seen at Damascus. The importation of the Damascene altar, I
suppose, meant, as our text tells us, the importation of the Damascene
gods along with it.
Side by side with that multiplication of false deities went the almost
entire neglect of the worship of Jehovah, until at last, as his reign
advanced and he floundered deeper into his troubles, the Temple was
spoiled, everything in it that could be laid hands upon was sent to
the melting-pot, to pay the Assyrian tribute; and then the doors were
shut, the lamps extinguished, the fire quenched on the cold altars,
and the silent Temple left to the bats and--_the Shekinah_; for
God still abode in the deserted house.
Further, side by side with this appealing all round the horizon to
whatsoever obscene and foul shape seemed to promise some help, there
went the foolish appeal to the northern invaders to come and aid him,
which they did, to his destruction. His whole career is that of a
godless and desperate man who will grasp at anything that offers
deliverance, and will worship any god or devil who will extricate him
from his troubles.
Is the breed extinct, think you? Is there any one among us who, if he
cannot get what he wants by fair ways, will try to get it by foul? Do
none of you ever bow down to Satan for a slice of the kingdoms of this
world? Ahaz has still plenty of brothers and sisters in all our
churches and chapels.
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 gods are they
worshipping instead? Scraps from Buddhism, the Vedas, any sacred books
but the Bible; quackeries, and charlatanism, arid 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. There are men and women in many congregations who, in modern
fashion, are doing precisely the thing that Ahaz did--having abandoned
Christianity, they are trying to make up for it by hastily stitching
together shreds and patches that they have found in other systems.
'The garment is narrower than that a man can wrap himself in it,' and
a creed patched together so will never make a seamless whole which can
be trusted not to rend.
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 may fill the heaven all over with
stars, bright and thickly set as those in the whitest spot in the
galaxy, and it will be night still. Day needs the sun, and the sun is
one, and when it comes the twinkling lights are forgotten. 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
is sufficient. There is no end of 'cures' for toothache, that is to
say there is none. There is no end of helps for men that have
abandoned God, that is to say, every one in turn when it is tried, and
the stress of the soul rests upon it, gives, and is found to be a
broken staff that pierces the hand that leans upon it.
Consult your own experience. What is the meaning of the unrest and
distraction that mark 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. We have not got beyond St.
Augustine's saying:--'Oh, God! my heart was made for Thee, and in Thee
only doth it find repose.' The many idols, though you multiply them
beyond count, all put together will never make the One God. 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 on one hand, he had the king of Assyria on
another. 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. As for the gods, his helpers, one of
his sons at least went into the furnace to secure their favour; and
what other sacrifices he may have made besides the sacrifice of his
conscience and his soul, history does not tell us. These were
considerable subsidies to have to be paid down before any aid was
granted.
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. Ah! he has bought his
prosperity very dear. Political economists have much to say about the
'appreciation of gold.' I think if people would estimate what they pay
for it, in an immense majority of cases, in treasure that cannot be
weighed and stamped, they would find it to be about the dearest thing
in God's universe; and that there are few men who make worse bargains
than the men who give _themselves_ for worldly success, even when
they receive what they give themselves for.
There are some of 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, of an
incapacity to rise above the flesh: and some of us have bought it at
the price of health. 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? What is
the difference? You have been fooled out of the inheritance which God
meant for you; and you have got for it transient satisfaction, and
partial as it is transient. If you are not Christian people, you have
to buy this world's wealth and goods at the price of God and of your
own souls. And I ask you if that is an investment which recommends
itself to your common sense. Oh! my brother; 'what shall it profit a
man if he gain the whole world, and lose himself?' Answer the
question.
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 of which the king of Judah was afraid
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.
Ay! and that is what this world always does. In the case before us
there was providential guidance of the politics of the Eastern nations
in order to bring about these results; and we do not look for anything
of that sort. No! But there are natural laws at work today which are
God's laws, and which ensure the worthlessness of the help bought so
dear.
A godless life has at the best only partial satisfaction, and that
partial satisfaction soon diminishes. 'Even in laughter the heart is
sorrowful, and the end of that mirth is heaviness.'
That is the experience of all men, and I need not dwell upon the
threadbare commonplaces which have survived from generation to
generation, because each generation in turn has found them so
piteously true, about the incompleteness and the fleetingness of all
the joys and treasures of this life. 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. The greater part
of life is but like drinking out of empty cups, and the cups drop from
our hands. What one of our purest and peacefullest poets said in his
haste about all his kind is true in spirit of all godless lives:--
'We poets, in our youth, begin in gladness,
But thereof cometh, in the end, despondency and madness.'
'Vanity of vanities! saith'--not the Preacher only, but the inmost
heart of every godless man and woman--'vanity of vanities! all is
vanity!'
And do not forget that, partial and transient as these satisfactions
of which I have been speaking 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, they
say, spoken too loud, brings down the avalanche, and beneath its
white, cold death, the active form is motionless and the beating heart
lies still. 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.
It is well enough for candle-light. Would you like to try the testing
acid upon it? Here is a drop of it. 'Know thou that for all these
things God will bring thee into judgment.' Does it smoke? or does it
stand the test? Here is another drop. 'This night thy soul shall be
required of thee.' Does it stand that test? My brother! do not be
afraid to take in all the facts of your earthly life, and do not
pretend to satisfy yourselves with satisfactions which dare not face
realities, and shrivel up at their presence.
These fatal helpers come as friends and allies, and they remain 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. Ay! 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
with it, 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. The sides of the pit are very
slippery; it is gay travelling down them, but when the animal is
trapped at the bottom there is no possibility of getting up again. So
some of you, dear friends! have got masters in your delights, masters
in your pursuits, masters in your habits. These are your gods, these
are your tyrants, and you will find out that they are so, if ever, in
your own strength, you try to break away from them.
So let me plead with you. With some of you, perhaps, my voice, as a
familiar voice, that in some measure, however undeservedly, you trust,
may have influence. Let me plead with you--do not run after these
will-o'-the-wisps that will only lure you into destruction, but follow
the light of life which is Jesus Christ Himself. Do not take these
tyrants for your helpers, who will master you under pretence of aiding
you; and work their will of you instead of lightening your burden. The
same unwise and hopeless mode of life, which we have been describing
this evening by one symbolic illustration, as calling vain helpers to
our aid, was presented by Ahaz's great contemporary Isaiah, in words
which Ahaz himself may have heard, as 'striking a covenant with death,
and making lies our refuge.' Some of us, alas! have been doing that
all our lives. Let such hearken to the solemn words which may have
rung in the ears of this unworthy king. 'Judgment also will I lay to
the line, and righteousness to the plummet, and the hail shall sweep
away the refuge of lies.' I come to you, dear friends! to press on
your acceptance the true Guide and Helper--even Jesus Christ your
Brother, in whose single Self you will find all that you have vainly
sought dispersed 'at sundry times and in divers manners'--among
creatures. Take Him for your Saviour by trusting your whole selves to
Him. He is the Sacrifice by whose blood all our sins are washed away,
and the Indweller, by whose Spirit all our spirits are ennobled and
gladdened. I ask you to take Him for your Helper, who will never
deceive you; to call whom to our aid is to be secure and victorious
for ever. 'Behold! I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried
stone, a precious cornerstone, a sure foundation: he that believeth
shall not make haste.'