The Judgement Of Ahaziah Series

A young boy came home from Sunday school one day and his father asked what they were teaching about in class. He said it was all about Israel crossing the Red Sea. Then he said the Israeli air force strafed the Egyptian army and the infantry set charges all around the camp while the engineers built a pontoon bridge. His father said, “Is that what they’re teaching you?” His son replied, “If I told you what they said, you’d never believe me.”

The judgement of Ahaziah II Kings 1:1-17a

I want you to see something of the historical setting so this story will make more sense to you. Moab had been in subjection to Israel since David had won a war over them about forty-six years before. They were taxed one hundred thousand lamb fleeces and a hundred thousand ram skins every year and now they decided they had had enough and broke away. Basically, they were tired of paying taxes for nothing.

Ahaziah was the king and he was the son of Ahab and Jezebel. From what I read of him he seems to be like one of these people that you wouldn’t hire to rake your yard let alone be king of a nation. He seems to be a lazy drunk and the only think we know about his reign is the end of it. But then again, he only lasted for about two years.

As we go through life we meet a lot of people like that. There are those who either inherit money or they were given a position because their parents owned the company and for the most part they don’t know what they’re doing. Not everyone who inherits a company is like this but some are. And that probably explains why the average business doesn’t exist beyond the second generation.

Ahaziah enjoyed all the privileges of ruling but wanted none of the responsibilities. And whether he was agitated over the lost revenues from Moab or in a drunken stupor we’re told that he fell through the lattice work of his upper balcony. So we can imagine him laying on a couch surrounded by cushions and he’s looking for some kind of comfort. Then the scripture says the pain was so bad that he decided to seek supernatural advice as to whether or not he would recover.

Ahaziah was someone with a difficult personality, he’s hard to understand and difficult to get along with and the question is why? Why are some people so difficult to get along with? Let me list a few reasons.

1. Some people have inherited personality traits. My wife claims our kids get all their good points from her and all the bad ones come from me. Maybe she’s right. One of my bad points is that I’m so easy to get along with that I’ll agree with anything. The fact is, Ahaziah didn’t have a lot to pick from when it came to the gene pool of life. His father was wimpy and wicked while his mother was dominant and evil. We can see where he got his negative personality traits but If he inherited any good points from either of them there is no record of it.

2. Some people are hard to get along with because they have what we might call the natural results of an inherited sin nature. Just as we all have unique personalities so we all have our own way of expressing our sin nature. Let’s face it, there are some non-Christians we meet who can only be described as vile and wicked and there are others who are nicer than many believers. It doesn’t matter how pleasant or cultured someone is, they might be nicer to deal with but they’re still just as lost. And whether we can see it or not, the sin is still present.

3. There are some people whose lives are marked by bitterness. There may have been a time when they made a half-hearted commitment to Christ and then they came to the conclusion that Christianity didn’t work for them. Maybe someone gave a weak message and said, “Accept the Lord and that will be the end of your problems.” And that’s true, they just didn’t tell them which end. So they have problems like the rest of the world and they come to the conclusion that their faith is useless. And their faith is useless because it wasn’t true faith to begin with. Job 5:7 says, “Man is born unto trouble, as sure as the sparks fly skyward.” Problems are natural. Some people may seem to have more than others but everybody has their share. I realize that we all meet people who never seem to have a problem. Let me assure you, they have their share of problems, they just react differently.