2 Chronicles 27&28

2 Chr 27
Jotham succeeds Uzziah. The word says that he did right in sight of the Lord, after his father Uzziah, which I can remember not doing that right because of his pride. Jotham built some armaments and won some battles against the Ammonites. He succeeded in all this because he ordered his ways before the Lord (v6).

2 Chr 28
Now Ahaz succeeded Jotham, and he is the first king in a short stretch in Judah to NOT do right in the sight of the Lord. He served the Baals and made idols for himself in the temple. You really hate to see this happen. I mean, you know God is going to judge this dude, and he does. God uses the King of Aram and the King of Israel to inflict heavy casualties on the army of Judah, like 120,000+. Ahaz lost a son in this and his second in command. Then Israel took away 200,000 others of Judah as slaves.

Israel, in all of this, half followed the Lord. They struck down Judah, but then God sends a prophet to let them know that taking their brethren captive as slaves is evil; so Israel actually does the right thing, and clothes, feeds, and even anoints those captives and takes them to Jericho.

Ahaz then seeks help from Assyria, but even, after giving them a bribe from the temple of the Lord, Assyria still comes and attacks Judah instead of helping. Then Ahaz sacrifices to the gods of Damascus, thinking that they will help him and builds more altars to burn incense on throughout Judah.

It's crazy to me to see how one generation of Judah could follow the Lord and then another just totally disregard him. I pray that the Lord would give me the wisdom to guide the next generation towards him and not away, through my actions and my words!