Righteousness is a Personal Issue

God has no grandchildren. That's a common refrain of preachers. The idea is that every person is accountable to God for themselves. And that no person can bank on the righteousness of their parents to enter the kingdom of heaven. Consider the lineage of kings from Jotham through Hezekiah in 2 Chronicles. Jotham was a righteous king with a wicked son named Ahaz. Ahaz was a wicked king who had a righteous son named Hezekiah. The reality is, faith is as righteousness is, a personal issue. 

And so we turn the page to Ahaz's story. A story that shows the love of God at work in His judgment and discipline of those who are His.

2 Chronicles 28:1–4 (ESV) Ahaz was twenty years old when he began to reign, and he reigned sixteen years in Jerusalem. And he did not do what was right in the eyes of the LORD, as his father David had done, 2 but he walked in the ways of the kings of Israel. He even made metal images for the Baals, 3 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. 4 And he sacrificed and made offerings on the high places and on the hills and under every green tree.

Right off the bat, we see the Chronicler makes clear Ahaz is not interested in serving God at all. He abandons any sense of righteous living for the pagan alternatives of the nations around him, most notably, the wickedness of Israel to the north. But look at the phrase used to show how God dealt with him:

2 Chronicles 28:5 (ESV) Therefore the LORD his God gave him into the hand of the king of Syria, who defeated him and took captive a great number of his people and brought them to Damascus. He was also given into the hand of the king of Israel, who struck him with great force.

Notice the phrase, "the LORD his God." God does not disavow Ahaz but rather disciplines him with the foreign nation of Syria and Israel. Notice that the righteousness of Jotham his father did not save him from this. Nor would the righteousness of Hezekiah yet to come save him. He was accountable to God. And as such, he was in God's hands to receive God's discipline.

Now this discipline, as unpleasant as it seemed was in the hands of God. When Israel becomes too aggressive toward Judah and king Ahaz by decimating their valiant men, God sends a prophet to rebuke them!

2 Chronicles 28:9 (ESV) But a prophet of the LORD was there, whose name was Oded, and he went out to meet the army that came to Samaria and said to them, “Behold, because the LORD, the God of your fathers, was angry with Judah, he gave them into your hand, but you have killed them in a rage that has reached up to heaven.

Yet Ahaz failed to get the message. Turning to Assyria for help against the Edomites and Philistines. In that sense Ahaz is the prototype for how we should NOT respond to God's discipline. Rather than seeking God, he turned even further away. And he continued to do so more and more.

2 Chronicles 28:22–23 (ESV) In the time of his distress he became yet more faithless to the LORD—this same King Ahaz. 23 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.

What do we learn from the sad story of Ahaz? That God alone saves. That we must look at our hardship through the lens of God's loving grace to bring us back to Himself. No, not everything painful is discipline, but many things are. God loves us enough to do this for our good. Turning from Him more only brings ruin and disgrace. Sadly, Ahaz's actions sort of cross the line for Judah's history and impending doom is on the horizon.

Perhaps the most fitting description of Ahaz's testimony in scripture is simply this:

Proverbs 29:1 (ESV) He who is often reproved, yet stiffens his neck, will suddenly be broken beyond healing.

God has no grandsons. Only children that He loves enough to prick them back in place. Don't resist, repent and live.