Whose Faith Are You Living On?
Faith During Faithlessness • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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Faith During Faithlessness, Week Three: Joash
Faith During Faithlessness, Week Three: Joash
Text: 2 Kings 11:21 to 12:16 Supporting texts: 2 Kings 11:1 to 3; 2 Chronicles 24:15 to 25; Hebrews 7:23 to 25 Topics:Leadership, faithfulness, accountability
Big Idea: Joash did what was right for as long as the man who taught him was alive. A faith you have borrowed from someone else will last only as long as that person does.
Application Point: God is not asking you to admire somebody else's walk with him. He is asking you to have one.
Introduction
Introduction
Last week we watched Jehu do everything God told him to do without ever giving God his heart. This week the story moves south into Judah, and it begins with a seven year old boy on a throne.
If you have ever known someone who seemed rock solid for twenty years and then walked away from all of it in about eighteen months, this passage gives us some great insight. And if you have ever wondered whether the faith you are living on is actually yours, this story helps us to look into the mirror of our own lives.
Where is the text taking us today?
Where is the text taking us today?
First, how a child ended up as king.
Second, what he did with the throne.
Third, how it ended, which 2 Kings does not tell us and 2 Chronicles does.
And here is the sentence the whole message rests on. 2 Kings 12:2 says
Joash did what was right in the eyes of the Lord all the years Jehoiada the priest instructed him.
Read that slowly. There is a time limit built right into this statement on Joash’s life.
Part One: The Background
Part One: The Background
Turn to 2 Kings 11. To understand Joash you have to understand what his grandmother did.
Her name was Athaliah, and she came out of the house of Ahab. She was married into the royal family of Judah as part of an alliance, which means the corruption we watched God judge in the north last week had already traveled south by marriage.
Remember how last week ended. When Jehu carried out his purge, Ahaziah the king of Judah was visiting relatives in Israel at exactly the wrong moment, and Jehu killed him too. That is,
When Ahaziah king of Judah saw what had happened, he fled up the road to Beth Haggan. Jehu chased him, shouting, “Kill him too!” They wounded him in his chariot on the way up to Gur near Ibleam, but he escaped to Megiddo and died there.
Ahaziah was Athaliah's son.
Word reaches Jerusalem that the king is dead, and Athaliah does not grieve. She sees an opportunity. Verse 1 says,
When Athaliah the mother of Ahaziah saw that her son was dead, she proceeded to destroy the whole royal family.
She destroyed the whole royal family. Those were her grandchildren. She killed the heirs of David so she could sit on the throne herself, and she ruled Judah for six years.
Understand what is at stake. God promised David that his line would continue, and in this chapter that promise is hanging by one thread, and the thread is a baby.
Verse 2.
But Jehosheba, the daughter of King Jehoram and sister of Ahaziah, took Joash son of Ahaziah and stole him away from among the royal princes, who were about to be murdered. She put him and his nurse in a bedroom to hide him from Athaliah; so he was not killed.
She hid him and his nurse in the temple, and he stayed there six years while his grandmother ran the country.
In the seventh year Jehoiada brought the boy out, crowned him, and put a copy of the covenant law in his hands. Athaliah was executed, and Jehoiada led the nation in renewing its covenant with God.
So Joash owed everything to Jehoiada. His life, his throne, his understanding of God, all of it came from one man. That is a wonderful thing, right up until Joash became depended not on God, but a man to carry him through.
Part Two: 2 Kings 12
Part Two: 2 Kings 12
Joash was seven years old when he became king, and he reigned forty years.
Verse 2 gives the assessment.
In the seventh year of Jehu, Joash became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem forty years. His mother’s name was Zibiah; she was from Beersheba. Joash did what was right in the eyes of the Lord all the years Jehoiada the priest instructed him.
He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord all the years Jehoiada instructed him.
Look at that qualifier. Most kings in this book get a straight verdict. He did right, or he did evil. Joash gets a verdict with a condition attached, and the condition is another man's presence in his life. The writer is telling us something before we have watched Joash do anything.
Now the main action of the chapter. Joash gives an order. All the money coming into the temple is to be collected and used to repair whatever is broken in the building. The temple had been neglected badly, and during Athaliah's six years it had been stripped to support Baal worship. Joash sees it and acts. Good instinct. Good king.
Then look at verse 6. By the twenty third year of King Joash, the priests still had not repaired the temple.
But by the twenty-third year of King Joash the priests still had not repaired the temple.
Twenty three years. The order was given, everyone agreed it was a good idea, the money was coming in, and two decades later nothing was fixed. Every one of us has been part of something like that, and some of us have led it.
So Joash calls in the priests and asks a direct question.
Therefore King Joash summoned Jehoiada the priest and the other priests and asked them, “Why aren’t you repairing the damage done to the temple? Take no more money from your treasurers, but hand it over for repairing the temple.”
Why is the temple not repaired? Then he changes the system. He takes the repairs out of the priests' hands. Jehoiada bores a hole in the lid of a chest and sets it by the altar. The gatekeepers put the offerings in. When it fills, the king's secretary and the high priest count it together, and it goes straight to the men supervising the work, who pay the carpenters and masons and buy the timber and stone.
And then verse 15 says,
They did not require an accounting from those to whom they gave the money to pay the workers, because they acted with complete honesty.
Two things worth noticing.
The first is that Joash said it out loud. For twenty three years everybody in Jerusalem could see the temple was still in pieces. The priests knew. People walked past it every day. And as far as we can tell, nobody said anything until the king did. I do not think that was because they were wicked men. I think it was because they had walked past it so many times that they stopped seeing it.
That is how it happens with us. Nobody decides to let something fall apart. It just slowly becomes the way things are.
The conversation you and your spouse stopped having four years ago, so now you are just two people running a household together.
The son or the daughter you only text on birthdays.
The friendship that went quiet after something was said and neither of you ever brought it back up.
The prayer life that burned with passion at one time, but now has become cold.
The bill you have moved from one pile to another so many times that the pile has become furniture.
What in your life has become normal that is actually broken? Not the worst thing you have ever done. The thing you have simply gotten used to.
The second is that Joash made a change. He did not call the priests together and preach at them about commitment. He looked at an arrangement that had failed for twenty three years and he changed it, and then the work got done.
There is grace in that. Some of what is broken in us is a matter of the heart, and only God does that work.
But some of it has gone on for years not because you do not love God and not because you do not care about your marriage, but because nothing about the arrangement has ever changed. Some of you may be hell bent on being right, and God is calling you to change the way you speak or how you approach your spouse.
If prayer has not happened at five in the morning for nine years, it is possible you do not need more guilt. It is possible five in the morning was never going to work for you. If the two of you never talk anymore, you may not need a better attitude. You may need a standing Thursday night that nothing else is allowed to take.
Joash was king enough to look at something that had failed for two decades and say, we are not going to keep doing this the same way and hope for the best. He decided that a change was necessary.
Part Three: The Outcome of Joash’s Life
Part Three: The Outcome of Joash’s Life
Second Kings does not tell us how Joash ended. For that you go to 2 Chronicles 24
Now Jehoiada was old and full of years, and he died at the age of a hundred and thirty.
Jehoiada died at a hundred and thirty. They buried him with the kings, which almost never happened for a priest, because of the good he had done for God and his temple.
Then verse 17.
After the death of Jehoiada, the officials of Judah came and paid homage to the king, and he listened to them.
That sentence is the hinge of the entire story. He listened to them.
They abandoned the temple of the Lord, the God of their ancestors, and worshiped Asherah poles and idols. Because of their guilt, God’s anger came on Judah and Jerusalem. Although the Lord sent prophets to the people to bring them back to him, and though they testified against them, they would not listen.
Then it gets worse.
Then the Spirit of God came on Zechariah son of Jehoiada the priest. He stood before the people and said, “This is what God says: ‘Why do you disobey the Lord’s commands? You will not prosper. Because you have forsaken the Lord, he has forsaken you.’ ”
The son of the man who saved Joash's life, Zechariah stood in front of the people and told them the truth. And by order of the king they stoned him in the temple courtyard. The text says,
But they plotted against him, and by order of the king they stoned him to death in the courtyard of the Lord’s temple. King Joash did not remember the kindness Zechariah’s father Jehoiada had shown him but killed his son, who said as he lay dying, “May the Lord see this and call you to account.”
Zechariah's last words were, may the Lord see this and call you to account.
Within the year a small Aramean force defeated Judah, Joash was severely wounded, and his own officials killed him in his bed for what he had done. He was buried in the City of David, but not in the tombs of the kings.
That is the end of the boy from the temple.
Now hear what this passage is teaching, because it is not that Joash was a fraud all along. He was not. The repair was real. The forty years were real. The commendation in 2 Kings 12:2 was real.
Jehoash did what was right in the sight of the Lord all his days that Jehoiada the priest instructed him.
What we are looking at is a man whose obedience was real and whose foundation was somebody else's. As long as Jehoiada was in the room, Joash did right. When Jehoiada was gone, the officials came, and he listened, and there was nothing underneath.
This is not a warning against mentors. Jehoiada is the hero of this story, and if you do not have someone further down the road who tells you the truth, that is a real gap and you should go find one. The warning is about admiration for another person's faith becoming a substitute for having your own. You can sit in a church for thirty years, be moved every Sunday, know all the songs, and never once take personal responsibility for your own walk with God.
And here is the part that should slow all of us down. Joash did not know. There was no moment in forty years when he thought, I am running on borrowed faith. He felt like a believer. He funded the temple. He found out what was actually underneath him only when the support was taken away, and by then the collapse came fast.
Where This Points
Where This Points
Joash had a priest who stood between him and destruction. Jehoiada hid him, crowned him, taught him, corrected him, and kept him walking with God for as long as he lived. And then Jehoiada died, because that is what priests do.
Hebrews 7 takes up exactly this problem.
Now there have been many of those priests, since death prevented them from continuing in office; but because Jesus lives forever, he has a permanent priesthood.
In the Old Covenant — a priest would teach you and steady you and then be buried, and you needed another. But because Jesus lives forever, he holds his priesthood permanently, and so he is able to save completely everyone who comes to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them.
That is the answer to Joash. You need a Jehoiada, and I hope you have one. But no Jehoiada holds you up for a lifetime, because eventually we bury them. What you need underneath is a priest who does not die and spiritual roots with God that are your own roots.
So the invitation this morning is not, go find a better mentor. It is, come to God yourself. Not through your mother's faith or your husband's faith or the youth leader who first made the gospel make sense to you. Those people were gifts and you should thank God for every one of them. But the door is open to you personally, and the priest on the other side of it is not going anywhere.
Application
Application
First: find out whose faith you are living on.
Think about the last time your faith carried real weight.
Where did the strength come from? From what you know about God out of your own life with him, or from a person you called?
There is nothing wrong with calling somebody. But if every spiritual person were removed from your life for six months, would there be anything left? For Joash the answer was no, and nobody knew until Jehoiada was in the ground.
This week, do one thing with God that nobody set up for you and nobody knows about. Open the Bible yourself, read a chapter, and talk to him about it out loud. If that feels awkward, that is not a reason to skip it. You need to press in.
Second: name the thing you have been putting up with for twenty-three years.
For two decades everyone knew the temple was broken, and nothing changed because it had become normal. That happens in a marriage. It happens with a habit. It happens with a friendship that has been strained since 2020 that everybody walks on eggshells around at Christmas.
Joash did two things. He said it out loud, and then he changed the arrangement instead of wishing harder. So name one thing you have stopped seeing, and change one actual arrangement this week. Not your intentions. Not hoping it just gets better. Wishing harder has already been tested for twenty three years. Make a change this week.
Third: pay attention to who has your ear when the truth teller is gone.
2 Chronicles 24:17 is one of the most frightening verses in the Bible.
After the death of Jehoiada, the officials of Judah came and paid homage to the king, and he listened to them.
They did not come to attack him. They came to honor him. And a man who had just lost the one person who told him the truth was wide open to the first people who told him what he wanted to hear.
You will rarely be talked out of your faith by an enemy. You will be talked out of it slowly by people who are warm toward you and want nothing from you except agreement. You need to be careful in our culture what you decide to agree to.
So ask who in your life has permission to tell you that you are wrong. If you cannot name someone, this is urgent and deserves attention. If you can, call them this week and ask them to keep doing it, because a season is coming when you would rather they did not.
Joash was seven when a priest put a crown on his head and God's law in his hands. He carried the crown for forty years. The law he never made his own.
Do not settle for a borrowed faith. Ask God for to help you today to live a deeply rooted life in Him.
Let us pray.
