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I. A CONSPICUOUS EXAMPLE OF PERSISTENT WICKEDNESS. He pushed on in face of many and powerful barriers placed in his way.

1. He had a godly ancestry. "Oh, sir," said an aged sinner who came to his minister in great distress, "to think of my father's and mother's prayers, and then of the vile wretch that I have been!"

2. It would seem that other like influences continued to surround Ahaz in his own palace. The mother of his son Hezekiah was the daughter of the wise and good Zechariah.

3. God often makes use of goodness to bring men to repentance. He tried this upon Ahaz. In a time of peril and alarm Isaiah was commissioned to "say unto him, Take heed and be quiet; fear not, neither be faint-hearted."

4. When goodness fails, it is God's way to try severity.

II. WHAT CAME OF ALL THIS?

1. The king's life was one of ill, not of good.

2. Ahaz brought ill upon others: "He made Judah naked." "If," says Dr. South, "a man could be wicked and a villain to himself alone, the mischief would be so much the more tolerable. But the case is much otherwise. The guilt of the crime lights upon one, but the example of it sways a multitude. Especially is this true if the criminal be one of note or eminence. For the fall of such an one by any temptation is like that of a principal stone or stately pillar tumbling from a lofty eminence into the deep mire of the street. It does not only plunge and sink into the black dirt itself: it also dashes or bespatters all that are about it, or near it, when it falls."

3. In character and influence Ahaz went from bad to worse.

4. He went to an unhonoured and hopeless grave.

(Monday Club Sermons.)

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KJV: And in the time of his distress did he trespass yet more against the LORD: this is that king Ahaz.

WEB: In the time of his distress did he trespass yet more against Yahweh, this same king Ahaz.