God offered him a personal word of encouragement!

A “sign” from Heaven!

And he scoffed.

Refused.

Belittled the Creator of the universe!

KING AHAZ OF JUDAH did such a senseless thing.

“Ahaz, your enemies (Syria and Israel, specifically) will be defeated,” I promise (God was talking!) 

“Here, let Me prove it!” (God condescending to man!) 

“Ask thee a sign of the LORD thy God; ask it either in the depth, or in the height above.” You name it, from the depths of the oceans to the heights of the stars! (Isaiah 7:11, our Text today.) The noun for “sign” is spelled “oth” in Hebrew, meaning “a signal, a token” or even “a miracle!”

Wow!

But King Ahaz disobeyed! (Yes, I just checked. That verb “ask” is an imperative, a mandate from God, an absolute command!)

“But Ahaz said, I will not ask, neither will I tempt the LORD.” Isaiah 7:12

Almost sound pious, doesn’t it?

“I’ll not trouble the Almighty!”

But in reality there was a deeper reason why Ahaz did not want a “sign” from God, or anything else from the Lord for that matter!

And it had nothing to do with “tempting” God!

The King had already decided how HE was going to solve the problem at hand!

How he would defeat his enemies, that perilous coalition of Syria (King Rezin) and Israel (King Pekah) … without God’s help at all!

He needed no advice!

Because … Ahaz had already entered into a peace treaty (paid a bribe, really) to a much more wicked King than either Rezin or Pekah! To the ultra-heathen King of Assyria! Specifically, Tiglathpileser, King of Assyria.

2 Kings 16:7 … “So Ahaz sent messengers to Tiglathpileser king of Assyria, saying, I am thy servant and thy son: come up, and save me out of the hand of the king of Syria, and out of the hand of the king of Israel, which rise up against me.”

Capitulation!

The reason I used the word “bribe” is found in the very next verse: “And Ahaz 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 it for a present to the king of Assyria.” He paid “protection” money to an ungodly Monarch! (2 Kings 16:8)

God’s money!

What foolishness!

Leaning on a mere man … and spurning the freely offered Help of the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob! 

Ahaz did not want God’s “sign!”

He had already decided to “go another direction.”

Oh, how the King needed Proverbs 3:5 that fateful day: “Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.”

In retrospect: the Assyrians did NOT protect Judah in the long run. Rather, they ultimately tried to decimate the Kingdom! And, had God not miraculously intervened in the days of Ahaz’s Son (King Hezekiah) … Judah would have fallen to those fierce Assyrians!

What a lesson for us today!

Let me close with one more Passage … “Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths. Be not wise in thine own eyes: fear the LORD, and depart from evil.” Proverbs 3:5-7

Had Ahaz only heeded.

— Dr. Mike Bagwell