Open your Bibles, if you would, to 2 Kings chapter 12. 2 Kings chapter 12. In the seventh year of Jehu, Jehoash became king, and he reigned 40 years in Jerusalem. His mother's name was Zibiah of Beersheba. Jehoash did what was right in the sight of the Lord all the days in which Jehoiada the priest instructed him. But the high places were not taken away. The people still sacrificed and burned incense on the high places. And Jehorash said to the priests, all the money of the dedicated gifts that are brought into the house of the Lord, each man's census money, each man's assessment money, and all the money that a man purposes in his heart to bring into the house of the Lord, let the priests take it themselves, each from his constituency, and let them repair the damages of the temple wherever any dilapidation is found. Now it was so by the 23rd year of King Jehoash that the priests had not repaired the damages of the temple. So King Jehoash called Jehoiada the priest and the other priests and said to them, why have you not repaired the damages of the temple? Now, therefore, do not take any more money from your constituency, but deliver it for repairing the damages of the temple. And the priests agree that they would neither receive any more money from the people nor repair the damages of the temple. Then Jehoiada the priest took a chest, bored a hole in its lid, and set it beside the altar on the right side as one comes into the house of the Lord. And all the priests who kept the door put there all the money that was brought into the house of the Lord. So it was, whenever they saw that there was much money in the chest, that the king's scribe and the high priest came up and put it in bags, and counted the money that was found in the house of the Lord. Then they gave the money which had been apportioned into the hands of those who did the work, who had the oversight of the house of the Lord, and they paid it out to the carpenters and builders who worked on the house of the Lord, and to masons and stonecutters, and for buying timber and hewn stone, to repair the damage of the house of the Lord, and for all that was paid out to repair the temple. However, there was not made for the house of the Lord basins of silver, tremors, sprinkling bowls, trumpets, any articles of gold or articles of silver from the money that was brought into the house of the Lord. But they gave that to the workmen and they repaired the house of the Lord with it. Moreover, they did not require an account from the men into whose hand they delivered the money to be paid to workmen, for they dealt faithfully. The money from the trespass offerings and the money from the sin offerings was not brought into the house of the Lord. It belonged to the priests. Now Hazael, king of Syria, went up and fought against Gath and took it. So Hazael set his face to go up to Jerusalem. And Jehoash, king of Judah, took all the sacred things that his fathers Jehoshaphat and Jehoram and Ahaziah, kings of Judah, had dedicated, and his own sacred things, and all the gold found in the treasuries of the house of the Lord and in the king's house, and sent them to Hazael, king of Syria. Then he went away from Jerusalem. Now the rest of the acts of Joash and all that he did, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah? And his servants made a conspiracy and killed Joash in the house of the Millo, which goes down to Silla. For Jazachar, the son of Shemiath, and Jehazabad, the son of Shomer, his servants, struck him. So he died, and they buried him with his fathers in the city of David. Then Amaziah, his son, reigned in his place." Thus far, the reading of God's Word. Let's pray. Almighty God, We implore the presence of Your Spirit now. We pray, Father, that You would open the eyes of our understanding, that You would grant us to see Yourself in this text before us. Help me to speak boldly as I ought to speak. Help me to speak clearly and plainly and powerfully. We pray these things in the name of Jesus, the true son of David. Amen. Well, we saw the last two Sunday nights how Joash came to the throne. He did it over his own grandmother's bloody corpse. Of course, she would have killed him had she had the opportunity. She tried hard and eliminated all the other royal seed in the beginning. of chapter 11. As we saw last week, the joy and peace that come from returning to the rule of David's son. Well, the narrator of Kings takes the time here tonight to describe Joash's reign at some length. Basically, he shows us Joash as a man caught between two heritages. On the one side is his Davidic heritage that leads him to serve the Lord, to focus on repairing the temple, to have some zeal for doing what was right in the sight of the Lord all the days in which his mentor Jehoiada instructed him. And yet we have on the other side his death by assassination, his failure to trust God in the face of Syrian aggression, His compromised religious policy with regard to the high places In short this man Was part David and part Ahab we could say And in that he is like us because all of us are born in Adam and And yet, from the moment we became believers, we have Christ living in us. You, too, are part Ahab and part David. You, too, have these two competing strains in your heritage. Which one will you go with? The house of Ahab, the house of Adam, the sinful path, or the house of David, belonging to Jesus Christ? That, roughly, is the choice that Joash faced. The text describes how he did with it. It begins, though, by saying, there was a blessing on this man. He actually came to the throne. And he reigned 40 years in Jerusalem. And his mother's name was Zibiah of Beersheba. As one commentator said, When you're brushing your teeth in the morning, putting on your clothes, shaving, sometimes you feel like, why am I doing this again? I just did this yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that, for the last 65 years. But there's a blessing in it. You're still alive. You still have the ability to do these things for yourself. And in the same way, this formula, in the seventh year of Jehu, Joash became king and he reigned 40 years, saying the Davidic promise is still alive. Jehu and Athaliah between them weren't able to cut off God's promise. David still has a seed. He still has someone who's reigning for him on the throne of Judah. And this is good news. And not only that, notice that Joash reigns 40 years, just like who? David and Solomon, who each reigned 40 years. And despite the northern influence of his grandmother, Athaliah, his grandfather, Joram, had married Athaliah, the princess from Samaria. Who did his dad marry? Zibiah of Beersheba. Beersheba, of course, is the southernmost town in Israel proper, We could say, of course, that Ezeon-Geber, or Elath, is farther south, down there on the northern tip of the Gulf of Aqaba. But Beersheba is still in Judah. So it's the same as saying that New Orleans is the most southern town in America. Yes, Miami is further south. But culturally, New Orleans is more southern. And in the same way, Beersheba is more Judean. The narrator is telling us this man had a mother, now maybe he didn't know her very long, but his dad had tried to restore some focus on Judah. We're not going to walk in the ways of the house of Ahab, we're going to try to return to the ways of the house of David. We're gonna marry somebody from Judah. So there's good news here. He's under the blessing that God sent on the house of David. At least he's alive and at least he's on the throne. The bulk of the chapter tells us about his religious policy. It starts with a warning, the bad practice. The high places were not taken away. The people still sacrificed and burned incense on the high places. What is a high place? Well, as you know, the idea is gods live on hills. It's where you get Mount Olympus in Greek mythology. So how do you get in touch with the divine? Go climb a mountain and you'll meet with the gods on top of this mountain. So that's what the people in Judah did. They had high places, little local shrines, sacrifice to God, burn incense to God, sacrifice to some other deity of your choice, burn incense to him. Basically we could say that high places represent self-driven religion. I get to worship God on my terms. I've told you all many times about the woman we met here in town who hasn't been in church for years. And I said, well, what are you looking for in church? What's the number one thing you want? And she said, I want a church that I can go to on my own terms. Well, that's high place religion. I worship God in my way, on my time, as I see fit, doing what's important to me. And under Joash, this kind of thing flourished. But Joash also was interested in the temple. He wanted to repair God's house. Now what does that say to build a temple? Well, to build any kind of civic monument or big architectural project like this says We are not on the verge of collapse. Our society has some extra energy. We have some civic pride. We have some money. We want to build something, some kind of monument, some kind of building that will show our greatness, our grandeur, our commitment to remembering God and his ways. So that's what Joash said by building the temple. Our culture is good. We have some strength. We have some civic pride. We have some ability to pull things together. But it also made a religious statement. The centralized worship Moses commanded was important to Joash. He wanted to build this temple in such a way as to show off and say, Moses said, worship at a central shrine. I agree. Let's do it. By this time, the temple was almost 150 years old and probably somewhat dilapidated. So Joash summons the priest, tells him what to do. You have three sources of income, priests, census money, assessment money, and heart money. Take that and use it to repair the temple." Well, the 23rd year of his reign rolls around and nothing has been done. So the king summons the priest and says, what's the deal? What's going on? I said repair the temple and you haven't done squat. So verse eight, the priests agreed that they would neither receive any more money from the people, nor repair the damages of the temple. Now when I first read that verse, I went back and re-read it about four times. I thought, surely there's a misplaced not in there, right? The priests agreed that they would not receive any more money from the people, and that they would repair the damages from the temple. Okay, we've accumulated enough money, now we'll build something, but That's not what it's saying. As Dale Ralph Davis commented, basically the cold prose of verse 8 probably doesn't capture the warm and spirited atmosphere of this meeting between the king and the priests. Let's just say that how it boiled out was that the king ended up curtailing the privileges of the priests. You didn't do what you were supposed to do? We just took the axe to your area of responsibility. You are no longer responsible for temple maintenance and you are no longer going to collect any money from these three sources of fees that we just mentioned back in verse four. No more money, no more responsibility. Joash was a king who knew how to play hardball. Joash takes the priest to task, but the priests are still working with the royal officials. They put a chest up and they launch a capital campaign to repair the temple. It's really the system was best for all concerned. The priests still got their salaries. The temple still had money given for its maintenance. They didn't use this money for liturgical items, lesser stuff. They just used it on the capital campaign. Well, the text seems to be saying, hey, religious people, priests, church leaders, if you don't do your job, the state is going to step in. And you might not like that. But it's also warning us as the people of God to just remember that even the best religious leaders are far from perfect. The best of men are men at best, and if you remember this, it will save you a lot of heartache and frustration in dealing with any particular church or church establishment. Jehovah was a good man. A really good man. But even he didn't repair the temple the way he should until the king took him to task. But the other thing we can see is how stupid this all is. Why should the priest and the king be feuding over the best way to repair the temple? We're on the same team, guys. Somebody should have said that at that meeting. We all want the temple to be a vibrant, beautiful institution that flourishes at the heart of Judean society. And it really points us to the need to have a priest and a king all rolled into one. There's no opportunity for this kind of shenanigans, that these kind of fights don't happen because your priest and your king are the same person. That, of course, is what we have in Joash's descendant, Jesus. Someone who doesn't fight with himself because he's both the great high priest and the true king of kings. Well, they managed to get the temple repaired, it appears. Rebuilt the endowment, made the temple flourish, and then Hazael from Syria went on a rampage. Verse 17. Hazael went right across Judean territory. Gath is over on the Mediterranean coast, and of course Syria is on the eastern side of Israel. Hazael marched right through Judah, conquered Gath, and on his way back says, you know what? Jerusalem has a lot of plunder too. Why not? Army. And what's Joash's response? I don't want to fight Syria. I don't want to, you know, rather than letting them come up and destroy my city, I think I'll just give them some plunder and send them on their way. But he doesn't just empty his own treasury. He empties the temple endowment too. All the things he had given to the temple, everything his father and his grandfather and his great-grandfather, everything that had been put into the temple to say, we want to support the worship of God, we as kings are endowing this temple so that it has money for daily operations. I'm just gonna take all that and hand it over to the Syrians to try to get them to go away. Now, as a military strategy, probably not too bad. Military strategists tell us that it's often much smarter to bribe your enemies not to fight than to actually fight them. Well, that's what Joash did. But theologically, religiously, this move was disastrous. What does it say? It says, I put politics over religion. National security is more important to me than the worship of Jehovah God. Military safety is more important than spiritual health. God, I trust money more than I trust you. Because God had said, you're my people, I'll protect you. Joash says, well, maybe you will, maybe you won't, but I know what will definitely protect me is if I raid the temple's treasuries and send it all on donkeys over to Hazael. That'll make him happy. That'll protect us. And of course it worked. Then he went away from Jerusalem. But we're still seeing the influence of Ahab in him. God is taking away his territory. We saw this in chapter 10. Or rather, in chapter 10, verse 32, In those days the LORD began to cut off parts of Israel, and Hazael conquered them and all the territory of Israel. Jehu obeyed God, but not wholly. And so God sent Hazael to come and lop off pieces of his territory. And here we see the same thing. Joash obeys God, but not completely. And God sends Hazael to attack him, take away his stuff. You cannot serve God and mammon, Jesus says. And Joash said, well then, I pick mammon. I trust Mammon. Now the rest of the acts of Joash and all that he did, are they not written in the book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Judah? And his servants assassinated him. Well that came out of nowhere. Why did his servants assassinate him? One commentator, a particularly obtuse one, commented Well, the narrator obviously wants us to believe that his servants assassinated him because of his faithlessness in handing over the temple treasures to Hazael. But, because these two things are right next to each other, he handed over the temple treasures, he was unfaithful to God, boom, he got assassinated. The commentator said, that's ridiculous. Obviously, there were people who were dissatisfied with his political moves, thought that he had left Judah vulnerable, and wanted somebody else on the throne. Well, the point is, God works through both. But the reason he died was not necessarily any dumb policy decision. It was because he was under God's curse, pure and simple. What were Elijah's words to Ahab? We'll cut off from your house everyone who pisses against the wall. Bond and free the dispirited and forsaken in Israel. That was God's promise to Ahab. You sinned, Ahab. I am going to wipe out every last one of your male descendants. So Ahab's daughter, Athaliah, is assassinated. We saw that in the previous chapter. Athaliah is the first generation, and God promises to visit the iniquities of the fathers on the children, to the third and the fourth generation. So Athaliah is the first generation. We saw her assassinated in the previous chapter. Ahaziah is the second generation, son of Athaliah. We saw him assassinated back in chapter nine. Treachery, O Ahaziah, yells Joram of Israel. Whips his hands around, right, to turn the chariot and flee. And what happens? Jehu's arrow punches through his guts. Well, Ahaziah, second generation, has been struck down. Now, in this chapter, Joash, the third generation, gets struck down. Maybe these assassins were motivated by political grievances. Maybe they were motivated by religious grievances. It doesn't matter. The point is, Joash is under God's curse as a descendant of Ahab. He's under God's blessing as a descendant of David. We saw that in verses one and two, but he's under God's curse as a descendant of Ahab. And we'll see in chapter 14, his son, Amaziah, is also assassinated. Right down to the fourth generation. And as we also saw in our Matthew reading tonight, Ahaziah, Joash, and Amaziah have all been quietly scrubbed from Matthew's genealogy of Jesus in Matthew 1. Where did they go? Well, they were left out, in part, no doubt, because they were under the curse on Ahab. So Joash reigned 40 years like David, and he died in blood like Ahab. He was under the blessing of God as a descendant of David and under the curse of God as a descendant of Ahab. So what do we take from this? The first thing to say is how do you worship? Joash's life was defined by his religious policy. Do you allow high places, that is Do you insist on worshiping God on your own terms? God, I can come into your presence however the bleep I want. Obviously, it's important to worship God on his terms. And for us, especially, that means make sure your heart is engaged. Showing up is good. It's a huge proportion of success, right? But being in worship, isn't all that God wants. My son, give me your heart. He wants us not only to be in worship, but to be here thinking about what we're doing, focusing our affections on him as much as possible. So how do you worship? And then the second question, what drives you, politics or religion? Joash devoted a lot of attention to repairing the house of the Lord. He was interested in religious questions, no doubt about it. But when things got tough, when his life looked like it might end at the hands of an angry king of Syria, Joash said, I pick politics. I pick mammon. I'm not going to live by trusting God, not here. The stakes are too high, I'm sorry. I am going to live by trusting money. So the question for you is how do you react when your health, your prosperity, your status, your job, your child is on the line? When these things come up, When the stakes really get high, do you say, okay, now God is nice when the stakes are low, but now I'm going to trust money. Now I'm going to trust the way of the world. Now I'm going to trust politics. Whatever worldly thing it might be. Well, what does it look like to actually trust God when the stakes are high? Things like continuing to give to God your tithe or whatever amount you're convicted in your conscience is right to give. Even when your home is being foreclosed on. Raising your children for Christ even though your parents disapprove. Choosing the more modest home and car so you can invest in God's people. Giving up your internet connection to fight pornography. Buying a gift for your wife instead of a gun or a book for yourself. Listening to the Bible instead of talk radio on your daily commute. Talking to God instead of the world. Or talking about God instead of the world. Talking about God in relation to the world. Foregoing sports for the sake of family worship. And on and on and on. There are so many things we can do that will show whether our deepest allegiance is to this world, to money, to politics, whatever you want to call it, or to the next. Where is your trust in hard times and in difficult situations? The harder things get, the more we need to trust God. But again, it's very, very easy, as it was easy for Joash to say, okay, this is really important. And when it's this important, we're going to trust money. God is not even an option here. Well, if you insist on remaining in Adam, if you insist on buying the toy for yourself, not your wife, if you insist on spending your time on pleasure rather than God, if you insist on worshiping in a cool way rather than a God-approved way, you will meet the fate that Joash met. in Adam all die. We can say Ahab was cursed that his descendants would die to the fourth generation. But how was Adam cursed? Well, that his descendants would die to every generation. Can you imagine being told that? You've just been created. As far as you know, you're immortal. You'll live forever. Then you eat one little fruit and God comes to you and says, by the way, Every one of your kids will die. Every one of your grandkids will die. Every one of your great-grandkids will die. Every single last human being who comes from you will die. Period into discussion. That was God's message to Adam, and he warned Adam of that before Adam ate the fruit. So this whole thing of judgment coming to the fourth generation of Ahab's house is simply a microcosmic example of that macrocosmic reality that every one of Adam's descendants is under a curse. You stay in Adam, you're cursed. But if you live in David's house, you receive the mercies shown to thousands, to those who love God and keep his commandments. God is very clear about that. I visit the iniquity of the fathers on the children of the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but I show mercy to thousands to those who love me and keep my commandments. Well, that's the message of Joash's life. Love God and keep his commandments. And the way to do that is to embrace your lineage through Jesus Christ. Say, Jesus, I want you to be my ancestor. I want God the Father to be my father. I want to live in the tents of David's house. Do you want to die with Adam or live with Christ? Do you want to be assassinated with Ahab or live and prosper with David? Choice is obvious. Let's pray. Father God, we pray that you would teach us to live with Jesus Christ. We thank you that all in Christ shall be made alive. We pray that you would help us to not be like Joash, to not turn away from you towards the end, to not choose to go with this world instead of with your promises when the going gets tough. Teach us to trust You and Your promise to live in Your house forever. We thank You, Father, that You have intervened, that You have brought life to our dying race, that though all in Adam die, so many, so many thousands have been incorporated to Christ. You show mercy to us. You teach us to love You and keep Your commandments. Help us to fit that description. Father, don't let us be those who hate you, those whose descendants are cursed down to the fourth generation. Show mercy to us in Christ. Teach us to follow Him and His example, to trust Him, to live in the tent, in the booth of David that He has restored. We pray these things in His name, by the help of Your Holy Spirit, and all God's people said, Amen.