As I read this brief passage from 2 Chronicles 28, verses 22 and 23. Now in the time of his distress, King Ahaz became increasingly unfaithful to the Lord. This is that King Ahaz. For he sacrificed to the gods of Damascus, which had defeated him, saying, 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 all Israel. Father in heaven, we thank you for your word, and it is a light to our path. May it illumine our minds and the knowledge of Christ here today as we prepare to partake of him spiritually at this precious Lord's table. I pray for your people in Jesus' name, amen. What a person thinks and does in times of distress says a lot about who their God truly is. This kind of adversity has a tendency to, in a way, peel away the social niceties, the cultural habits we develop and put on to convince ourselves and to convince others that nothing is a mess everything's okay we put on that cloak and try and pretend but when the distress comes people go for what they think will solve the problem for what they think will bring relief so let us look at this brief text And I want to do it in two steps, gaining a better understanding briefly of the distress, the word chosen there, distress, and then the response to the distress. And I hope that the Holy Spirit will use this to bring us true comfort, not false comfort, not temporary relief, but true comfort. So first, the divine author chose to use the Hebrew word translated into the English here as distress. Other forms of the word carry the idea of being bound up or confined, sort of restricted. The form here refers to trouble coming upon a person. The idea is that the trouble is sort of forcing you into a corner. You're confined because of the distress, the trouble coming upon you. The person feels trapped, as it were. In context, and certainly it's clear if you read through all of chapter 28, you'll see that Ahaz was facing great difficulty. He saw limited options, didn't know what path to pursue, as if he was backed into a corner. The story as it unfolds here informs us that he'd failed miserably in battle, hundreds of thousands of his citizens being taken captive, many, many deaths. This certainly was a time of great distress. Our distresses probably aren't of this same category, but seem urgent nonetheless, whether they're financial distresses, distresses within our family, changing jobs, moving, deaths, illnesses, they can all press upon us as distresses. So that's the word there. Now the response. How do people in general respond? How does Ahaz respond? Well, sadly, his response here is not all that surprising. From the very first description of him, and it's in both 2 Kings and in 2 Chronicles, he is a man, and I'm quoting here from the beginning of our chapter, who did not do what was right in the sight of the Lord. So sadly, he continues that pattern in how he responds to this distress. The text explains to us in the earlier paragraphs that he made molded images, he burned incense, he burned his children in the fire, he made sacrifices on the high places. Then, in response to this distress of the catastrophic defeat in the battle, What do you think he did? Something different, right? Natural man continues in the path he's in, so he did much the same thing. Our text simply says, and I read it a moment ago, King Ahaz became increasingly unfaithful to the Lord. Another translation reads, he became yet more faithless. The meaning is that he was unfaithful before, he was faithless before, and the same thing continued only to a greater decree. degree. He was faithless and before the distress, when the distress came, it became even worse. Not good. Tragic, really. Calls to mind how, as I already said, natural man responds to problems. I think about things in the media today, certainly the story Not to get too sidetracked or press a separate point, but think of our own national leader, our king, our president, you know, in his youth, in his business dealings. How did he respond to attacks and criticisms? Does the exact same thing now. Vulgar language, angry outbursts. What happens is things become increasingly difficult for him, more of the same and worse. That's how natural man responds. For Ahaz here, verse 23 informs us of the tragic consequences of his faithless response to the distress. He copied the religious practices of the heathen nations, those nations that had defeated him. Really he was thinking, hey, if their gods help them win against me, maybe I'll buy into that and gain some advantage. They seem to have power. Maybe they will help me, he thought. Then he proceeded to change the order of worship in Judah into a copy of what was happening in Syria. He even ordered his own priests to build a replica of the altar that he had seen in Damascus. Kind of makes you want to cringe, right? Suffice it to say, the foreign gods were of no help to Ahaz. They only brought further condemnation. He wasn't defeated because they were powerful. He was defeated because God had withdrawn his hand of protection. So for him to go after and seek that power was false and was going to provide no relief. So what then, we can ask ourselves, is the better response for the individual that is facing distress? And again to emphasize, there could be a whole range of distresses. What then is the better response? God's Word tells us that difficulties are a common part of the Christian life. We can't just place this on people that have been rebels from their youth. They're going to be the ones that are going to have the difficulty. New Testament calls them tribulations or troubles or afflictions. They can come on us when we do the wrong thing, and God brings them on us as a loving chastisement. They can come upon us when we do the right things. The New Testament even emphasizes, you know, if you're going to suffer, at least suffer for doing well, right? And so they can come on us when we sin or even when we're doing righteously. Ahaz's distress led him to more unfaithfulness. God willing, our distresses can and will, by grace, bring us to greater faithfulness. I have to admit that I've certainly felt beaten down, trapped, kind of pushed into a corner as I defined this word for us earlier at the end of my rope. The solution God gives us is not to push harder, not to copy the ways of the heathen either. The solution is the way of the cross. I want to draw our attention to how the Apostle Paul in his letter to the second Our second letter to the Corinthians explains it. He opened his lines, sorry, the opening lines of that epistle, say it this way, reading chapter one, verses three through five. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort those who are in any trouble with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. or as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation also abounds through Christ. And notice the progression of thought there. He sees a doxological use of distresses, an evangelical use of distresses, and what I'll term a missiological use of distresses. And very briefly, doxological, of course, pertains to praising God. In the first verse there, he sets an example for the Christians of Corinth and for us in later generations by himself praising God for His comfort and mercy extended in the midst of distresses, right? In the midst of those distresses, Paul can praise God's mercy, praise God for His comfort. And secondly, evangelical means gospel-focused. Christ's sufferings abound in us as we are united to Him in faith, and by that same union, we receive His comfort. And thirdly, I use the term missiological, sort of a play on the word missions, as in bearing witness, leading to the conversion of believers. As we suffer and receive true comfort, Paul says, we can comfort others. They have no other hope than what we can bring them, pointing them to the same source of comfort that we have found. The comfort we offer is not the platitudes of the world, but rather, I'm quoting here again, verse four of what I already read, the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. So friends, trials will come apart from Christ and His sufferings on your result, on your behalf, the result is not pretty. And indeed, it was tragic for Ahaz. At the end of our passage here, he passes away. He's buried in Jerusalem, but as the text says, not with his fathers. He did not have that esteem and that respect that he could have had. had he walked faithfully. God in mercy raises up a faithful son from him, but his life did not go so well." So my prayer for you is that you would follow the words of Paul, that we would praise God the Father in the midst of our distresses, that we would embrace the Son and His gospel, trading pride and self-worth for humility and hope, and that we would have the power of the Holy Spirit to offer the same hope to those who are in any trouble, offering them the same mercy, the same hope in God that we ourselves have embraced. Amen. Father God, we thank you for these trials, for these distresses, for the examples of those who've gone before us that we might learn from them. I pray that as we come to the table now, we would look upon Christ, the one pierced for us, that he has suffered on our behalf. He, in the maximum penalty due for our sin, bore that distress on our behalf, that we might receive his priceless comfort. May this be true in our lives today and going forward. Pray in Jesus' name.