Well, brothers and sisters, let me ask you to open up your Bibles to 2 Kings. 2 Kings. We're gonna begin reading in verse, excuse me, chapter 11, verse 21. And we'll read down through chapter 12 and verse 21. 2 Kings 11, beginning in verse 21. This is the true word of God. Jehoash was seven years old when he became king. In the seventh year of Jehu, Jehoash became king, and he reigned 40 years in Jerusalem. His mother's name was Zibia 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 burn incense on the high places. And Jehoash 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 damage 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 more money from your constituency, but deliver it for repairing the damages of the temple. And the priests agreed that they would neither receive 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 the priest who kept the door put there all the money 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. And 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 stone cutters, 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 were not made for the house of the Lord basins of silver, trimmers, sprinkling bowls, trumpets, any articles of gold or articles of silver from the money 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. Haseel, king of Syria, went up and fought against Gath and took it. Then Haseel 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 Haseal, king of Syria. Then he went away from Jerusalem. Now the rest of the acts of Jehoash, and all that he did, are they not written in the book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Judah. And his servants arose and formed a conspiracy and killed Joash in the house of the Milo, which goes down to Silla. For Josichar, the son of Shimeith and Jehoshabod, the son of Shomer, his servants struck him. So he died, and they buried him with his fathers in the city of David. And Amaziah, his son, reigned in his place. Well, the grass withers and the flowers fade, but the word of our God endures forever, may it bless it to our hearts this evening. Well, dearest congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ, our account begins with a child king. Jehoash was only seven when he became king. Now, in case his name is a bit confusing, Jehoash is just a longer form of Joash. Think of it this way, a man's name might be Frederick, but sometimes it's shortened to Fred or Freddy. That's what we have here. Joash is the shorter form of Jehoash. And I'm going to just call him Joash because it's easier for me to pronounce. Now, last time we learned that This young man almost didn't make it to the throne. His grandmother, Athaliah, had gone on a satanic tirade to slaughter all the line of David. It was her intention to cut off every living heir to the Davidic throne. But there was actually a faithful remnant in evil Athaliah's inner circle. Little Joash had a godly aunt named Jehoshaba and a godly uncle who's a priest named Jehoiada. And when the killing started, they whispered this descendant of David away and hit him. for six years. And during that six-year period, Athaliah reigned as the queen mother of Judah. And lest we forget, she was the daughter of Ahab and Jezebel. And so those six years involved a push to make Baalism the religion of the southern tribes. But God worked in a powerful way, and her evil and idolatrous desires would be crushed. At around the seven-year mark, Jehoiada the priest implemented a coup. They executed Athaliah, they tore down the Baal temples and altars, and they also executed the high priest of Baal. It was a successful coup, and most importantly, Joash, an actual descendant of David, was sitting on the throne. And that's where we pick up this evening. Now, I would imagine we're all familiar with the phrase, one step forward, two steps backward. And I wanna tell you upfront, that seemingly describes the text that's before us this evening. We're gonna encounter some developments in Judah under Joash that are positive. There's gonna be some real improvements made in Judah and in Jerusalem and specifically to the temple. But in the end, we're gonna see much of that progress is tragically reversed. It always seems with the kingdom, it's one step forward. two steps backward. Now, what I wanna do is divide our passage up into four sections. In verses one through three, we're basically given a snapshot of Joash's reign. And in verses four through six, we're gonna see that Joash will repair and restore the temple. In verses 17 and 18, he's gonna plunder and pilfer the temple. And then in verses 19 through 21, he meets a grisly end. So let's begin with this brief snapshot of Joash's reign. As I mentioned, he became king at the age of seven, which coincides with the seventh year that Jehu was reigning in the north. We spent several weeks looking at King Jehu, so you'll remember who he was. And we're told that the boy king is gonna end up reigning a full 40 years, and that's a long reign, one of the longer reigns in Israel's history. And typically, long reigns of kings implied stability. Joash's mother was Zibia, which means something like gazelle, and she's from Beersheba. So she was not only from the southern kingdom, Beersheba was sort of what we might call the deep south of Judah. It was about 55 miles south-southwest of Jerusalem. Now, the general appraisal of Joash's reigns indicates legitimate approval. And this is gonna be hard for us to accept as we move through the text, but that's what we're told and we have to receive it as such. Nonetheless, there are some qualifiers attached to his commendation that right up front ought to raise some red flags. So verse two tells us he did what was right in the sight of the Lord. That's a good thing. but he didn't do it without some help. His faithfulness was tied to the positive influence of Jehoiada the priest. As long as Jehoiada was alive and his counselor, he actually did quite well. But we're gonna discover in a few minutes that when Jehoiada is out of the picture, things will go downhill incredibly fast. But this tells us up front something about Joash, he doesn't have a lot of spiritual fortitude in his life. He's definitely not a spiritual leader. His life of faith, such as it is, was really dependent on the influence and counsel of another. So that's a red flag. But there's another red flag. Like other kings before him, Under his reign, we see the high places were not taken away. The people still sacrificed and burned incense on the high places. Now, we've read that phrase so many times in this study of 1st and 2nd Kings, that the high places weren't removed, that we can sort of get used to it and not realize that from God's perspective, which is the only perspective that matters, this is actually an abomination, that those high places remained. So I wanna set this in the broader biblical context to sort of get our minds wrapped around this, So let me ask you to turn in your Bibles back to Deuteronomy 12. Deuteronomy 12, we're gonna look at verses one through five. Deuteronomy 12, beginning in verse one, this is Moses actually preparing the people to take possession of the land in Canaan. Deuteronomy 12, verses one through five. These are the statutes and judgments which you shall be careful to observe in the land, which the Lord God of your fathers is giving you to possess all the days that you live on the earth. You shall utterly destroy all the places where the nations which you shall dispossess serve their gods on the high mountains and on the hills and under every green tree. And you shall destroy their altars, break down their sacred pillars, burn their wooden images with fire. You shall cut down the carved images of their God and destroy their names from that place. You shall not worship the Lord your God with such things. Verse five, but you shall seek the place where the Lord your God chooses out of all your tribes to put his name for his dwelling place. And there you shall go. So Moses is telling the old covenant church about to enter the promised land that God's people aren't to worship him any way or any way, anywhere or any way they wish. There will be high places and sacred pillars and wooden images in the land they're about to depossess the people from and they're to destroy those things to obliterate them. And notice they're in verse four. They're not to worship God with such things. They're only to worship God in the place where he puts his name. Now, turning your Bibles forward to 1 Kings 14, 1 Kings 14, the kingdom is divided at this point. And Rehoboam is the first king of Judah after the split between the kingdoms of the north and the south. First Kings 14, and I want to read verses 21 through 23. And you're going to hear an echo of some of the language from Deuteronomy 12. First Kings 14. beginning in verse 21. And Rehoboam, the son of Solomon, reigned in Judah. Rehoboam was 41 years old when he became king. He reigned 17 years in Jerusalem, the city which the Lord had chosen out of all the tribes of Israel to put his name there. His mother's name was Nehemiah, the Ammonitess. Now Judah did evil in the sight of the Lord, and they provoked Him to jealousy with their sins, which they committed more than all that their fathers had done, for they also built for themselves high places, sacred pillars, and wooden images on every high hill and under every green tree." So Jerusalem is the city where the Lord chose to put His name for worship. Good news. That's awesome. What a grace of God. Nonetheless, Judah responded to this glorious reality by building the very high places that God abominates. So, let that sink in. About a century later, Joash is king and the high places are still there. And he leaves them there, even though he knows the people are worshiping at these abominable places. As I've said, we've read this phrase so often, it becomes old hat. You know, the high places, they just seem to be a fixture in Judah. Why not just tolerate them? But we can easily miss how significant this phrase would have been to the original audience. Remember, 1 and 2 Kings was written after the kingdom was destroyed. Most of her citizens had been carried off into Babylonian captivity. And what was the chief cause for their captivity? Idolatry, idolatry. So every time they hear The phrase, the high places were not taken away. It must have stung. It was supposed to sting. I suspect it caused some to cry out, why didn't the kings get rid of those things when they had the opportunity? Why didn't we force the king to destroy these things? And perhaps even, why did we engage in this idolatry? Why did we think we could worship God in the way we wanted and simply get away with it? You see, that phrase would have been powerful and convicting. to the original audience. That's the brief snapshot of Joash's reign. Yes, there are definitely some commendable aspects to his reign, but also some serious red flags. That brings us to our second heading. We're gonna see that Joash will repair and restore the temple once more. This is surely a positive. And a chief reason for sure, he received that positive commendation. And Joash wants to improve the temple. And again, keep in mind at this point, it's probably a little over a century since Solomon concluded his work on the temple. So imagine your house 100 years from now, you haven't done much to it. It's gonna be in a state of disrepair. So it's not hard to imagine that things were getting pretty run down. In fact, in the parallel passage in 2 Chronicles 24 7, we learned that during the six years of Athaliah's reign, her followers had actually vandalized the temple, had decimated it, and took a number of the valuables and used them for Baal worship. So the temple needs a facelift. They've got to put a capital a capital campaign in place. The Joash calls together the priest and begins to lay out his plan. And like any remodeling project, one of the things you necessarily need is what? Money. You gotta have some money. So he's in this position where he has a need to raise cash. And the king presents his budget plan to the priest the way he wants to fund the improvements. Now, if you look there at verse 4, the priests sort of tap into three revenue streams. Again, these are all mentioned there in verse 4. The first revenue stream is from each man's census money. Now, this harkens back to Exodus 30, verse 12 and forward. Every child of Israel, when they went to the temple to worship, whether they were rich or poor, they were required to pay half shekel, right? Part of that was for the upkeep. of the temple and to support the priests. Then there's each man's assessment money. And this was money used to satisfy vows that might've been taken in regard to temple service or maintenance. Let me give you an example so you can kind of wrap your mind around this. Imagine a person said, look, I can see that the temple needs a new coat of paint. And while I don't have the ability to paint it, or the time to paint it. I know that this particular job is worth 50 shekels. So I'm going to pay the cash value of the service to fulfill my vow. And again, if you're inclined to do so, you can go back and read about this kind of vow in Leviticus 27. And then the third revenue stream are offerings that a man purposes in his heart to bring into the house of the Lord. And these are simply voluntary gifts from a heart that's moved to be a blessing to the Lord. It was these voluntary gifts that were initially given to construct the tabernacle under Moses' authority in Exodus 25. So that's Joash's plan. When these three types of offerings are presented to the priest, they're to set aside the funds to refurbish and beautify the temple. Sounds like a solid idea, don't you think? But it doesn't work out that way. Verse 26 tells us, it was so by the 23rd year of King Joash that the priest had not repaired the damages of the temple. Now, we don't know exactly when Joash had issued this order to the priest, so we can't know for certain how much time passed till the 23rd year of his reign, but certainly the narrator has put it here because he wants us to recognize a lot of times passed, a year, three years, five years, we don't know, but a lot of time. And when the king realizes that his orders haven't been obeyed, and that the work hasn't begun, he calls a powwow with these priests, and he kind of dresses them down. He says, look, don't you take another cent from worshipers till you start repairing the temple. And what's surprising is the priests basically give the king the hand. Talk to the hand, right? They say, okay, we're not going to take any money. and we're not gonna remodel the temple. That's quite a quandary, isn't it? A standoff. I would love to have been a fly on the wall during these negotiations, right? As the first Levite union, labor union is working out a contract deal with the king. Why were the priests so disobedient? So obstinate? Were they lazy? Were they greedy? Were they dishonest? We don't really know for sure. I suspect part of the reason they sat on their hands is that the first two types of offerings that the king mentioned actually contributed to their wages. It was part of the priest's stipend, and it may very well have rubbed them the wrong way that the king wanted them to absorb a good part of the cost for the project, right? It's hard for us to imagine a political leader saying, I'm gonna go into your pocket to do something else. We could never in a million years imagine such a thing, could we? And I do doubt that the priests were dishonest Otherwise Jehoiada would likely have removed them and they're not removed, they still end up serving. But it's a striking quandary here that we really don't get a solution for. The king and the priests had a bit of an impasse. Well thankfully the ever wise Jehoiada, the chief priest at the time, he has a plan and he knows this kind of work requires a different kind of offering, not the standard offerings that are taken at the temple. This requires a free will offering, one that's above and beyond the basic gifts and ties of the church. So Jehoiada does something that would make every fundamental Baptist proud. He gets a wooden box and he puts it in the back of the church. He puts a hole in it. He sets it off to the side of the altar. And the doorkeepers of the temple, they're to keep an eye on the box. And when they see that the box is getting filled, they're to call Jehoiada and a representative of the king's court, because he wants to keep his eye on the money too, and they're to count out the offering. They'd then transfer this money to the foremans, who in turn would pay the carpenters, the stonemasons, so that they could buy the timbers, the hewn stones, and all the things that they need. And verse 13 tells us that they didn't spend money on things that were decorative, things that were simply to beautify. This was a more pragmatic building project. No new stained glass windows for this temple. But the work gets done. And by some blue collar men who were so trustworthy, they didn't even have to keep receipts. And in the end, even after the kerfuffle between the priests and the king, The priests even continued to receive pay from the sin and trespass offerings. At this point, things sure seem like a win-win, don't they? Joash has managed to repair and restore the temple. Certainly the kingdom has just taken a step forward under Joash. Unfortunately, they're about to take two steps back. In verses 17 and 18, Joash plunders and pilfers the temple. Now there are a few details I want to fill in from the parallel account in 2 Chronicles 24. You may recall I gave you a handout several weeks back with a list of the kings and it sort of harmonizes the events in Kings and Chronicles. There's a couple more of them back there if you need one, but it's helpful to understand and to read both. I will tell you, it's difficult to know how much to rely on the parallel passage because we're preaching in Kings and that's our focus. But I do think we need to fill in some of the details from that account. So these are some of the events that took place before the Syrian threat in verses 17 and 18. If you were to go back and read in 2 Chronicles 24, And particularly in verse 15, you'd find that Jehoiada died, and he died at the ripe old age of 130. And this guy was so highly esteemed that he was buried in the city of David and buried among the kings. So think about that, a priest buried among the kings. That shows how precious he was to the faithful in Judah. But not long after Jehoiada's death, some princes of Judah approached Joash and after sweet talking the king, they eventually persuaded Joash to revert, wait for it, to idolatry. Listen to 2 Chronicles 24, 18. The king and his new advisors were told, 2 Chronicles 24, 18, they abandoned the house of the Lord the God of their fathers and serve the Asherim and the idols and wrath came upon Judah and Jerusalem for this guilt of theirs. Now God in his great mercy he raised up a prophet to call Joash to repentance. And the prophet that God raised up should have had an incredible impact on Joash. The prophet's name was Zechariah, and he was Jehoiada's own son. But instead of listening to God's prophet, he had him executed. He had Jehoiada's son murdered. the man who had been so dear to him. Again, this goes back to how idolatry twists our minds. And you see, God's actually using Syria to punish Joash and Jerusalem for idolatry. You see, again, 2 Chronicles tells us it was actually a rather small contingent of the Syrian army that approached Jerusalem, but the Lord gave them victory over a vastly superior Judean force. You see, that's behind the Syrian threat of verses 17 and 18. Joash was in a panic. Again, we don't know this from 2 Kings, but he had actually been wounded in the skirmish. And he's overwrought trying to figure out what to do. So he decides that he'll buy off Hesael, the Syrian king, with the precious treasures from the temple. Verse 18 tells us of our text, that he took all the sacred things that his father, 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 he sent them to Haziel, king of Syria. Then he went away from Jerusalem. He had spent, Joash had spent great resources and great political capital to restore the temple. But after Jehoiada died and he became an idolater, the temple became little more than a personal piggy bank to pay off his enemies. So Joash had repaired and restored the temple, then he plundered and pilfered the temple. One step forward, two steps backward. That brings us to our fourth heading. There in verses 19 through 21, rather, he meets a grisly end. He was wounded in battle, and we're told in 2 Chronicles, and it's his own servants who conspired against him. The reason I'm filling out this background is because we might read this and think, Those servants were wretches. But no, much of this happened because they wanted to avenge Jehoiada's blood, that his son had been killed by Joash. So in his own court, they instituted a conspiracy and they killed him. And what's interesting is he died and he was buried in the city of David. But he was not buried with the kings. Jehoiada had that honor. Again, 2 Chronicles 24. Jehoiada had that honor, but he didn't. Well, I want to take a couple minutes and work through just a couple lines of application here. First, we're reading through this passage, and one of the things that ought to strike us is the importance of godly influences. the importance of godly influences in our lives. Namely, it's a great blessing when other believers we admire or look up to love us enough to speak truth into our lives, to keep us faithful, to keep our path on the narrow way. And certainly, that's what Jehoiada was for Joash. Proverbs 13, 20 tells us whoever walks with the wise becomes wise and the companion of fools will suffer harms. Good companions bring wisdom and life to us. Foolish companions will end up causing us harm. Jehoiada had been a good companion to Joash and so long as he was alive, it was a blessing to him. But after Jehoiada died, he surrounded himself with the companions of fools. And it brought this grisly end to bear. We get a picture of here how valuable a godly influence can be to move the winds and ties of morality, immorality, idolatry, faithfulness. But there's a second application we have to derive from this as well. That is the limit that godly influences can have. Certainly Jehoiada was probably precious to Joash because he had rescued him from death. And so he probably honored him out of a sense of obligation his entire life. But it would seem his heart was never ever transformed by the power and good news of Yahweh. One writer said it this way, Joash is like the person who only talks spiritual things when the minister comes over for dinner. And that's probably true. He was only interested in faithfulness so long as Jehoiada was alive. I think Joash was probably very much in the same camp as the Pharisees that the Lord Jesus rebuked in Mark 7 when he said, well, did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites? As it's written, this people honors me with their lips, but their heart's far from me. As long as Jehoiada was alive, Joash honored Yahweh with his lips, but ultimately his heart seemed to be far from him. A second thing that, or excuse me, a third thing we learn from this passage is the importance of worshiping the true God in the true way. I made much of the fact that we keep reading that phrase and we're going to continue reading that phrase as we march through second Kings. This king did right in the eyes of the Lord. Nevertheless, the high places It seems like such a small thing. Even some commentators write, well, you know, they were probably worshiping Yahweh there because it was a matter of convenience. It wasn't a matter of convenience. It was a matter of disobedience. That's what it was. We have to get this fixed in our mind. The only way we can worship God rightly is the way God tells us to worship. A third thing we see in this passage, and I need to move quickly here, is we do see the grace of giving at work, again, under the leadership of Jehoiada. It's interesting that Joash was trying to put a financial plan in place and manipulate the funds, and I'm gonna take from the pre, and it didn't work. Jehoiada said, let's put a box in the back of the church and God's people will respond. And you know what happened? God's people responded, right? And again, it just shows the grace of giving that exists in the heart of true believers. I often say this when we take up our offering, especially in the morning. When we give, when we're charitable, when we open our hands, What we're doing is reflecting God's image in us, who is a giving God. And you see, Christians have every reason to be benevolent because we've been given the most precious gift, Jesus Christ and eternal life in him. Paul says something beautiful in 2 Corinthians 8, 9, for you know the grace of the Lord Jesus, though he was rich, Yet for your sake, he became poor that you through his poverty might become rich. So believers are always big-hearted. They're always charitable. But we come back to 2 Kings. What do we do with this narrative? One step forward, two steps back. But maybe that's not the case. That certainly seems to be the case. And that seems to be the history unfolding. But let me suggest to you that what we've just read this evening is one step forward, another step forward, another step forward. You see, at the end of the day, God's hopes, excuse me, God's promises and our hopes were never grounded in David. or Solomon, or Rehoboam, or any other kings, our hope has always been grounded in the king who would come to bring in and usher the full and final kingdom of God. We're waiting for King Jesus. You see, even the best kings have caveats. He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, but He did what was right in the Lord, nevertheless. We need a king who did what was right in the Lord, period. That's a king that we not only worship, but that's a king who would be qualified to be our savior. That's the king we worship. And eventually on this side of glory, we continue to take steps until we enter into the glory of the kingdom in the new heavens and the new earth. Amen. Well, as you know, I always try to give you a couple minutes to ask any questions you might have about the passage or if you want to make a comment. So any questions, comments? What do we make of 17, verses 17 and 18? I mean, what is this, because this is, I'm thinking of Hezekiah when he showed, I mean, there are other kings that gave up the treasure to the temple, right? And what's the implied, is it a lack of faith or how do you read that? Yeah, it is a lack of faith to be sure. I mean, if you go back and look at Asa and Jehoshaphat, the first two, the godly kings that existed in the line of Judah, they both did the same thing. They came under attack and instead of saying, God help us, they opened up the temple as their little piggy bank to pay off their enemies. And again, I can't remember where this is. I'd have to look it up. I'm trying to, yeah, I can't remember. But this is where the Lord says to Jehoshaphat, I am the Lord. I am the one. I fight your battles. And see, that's what the kings of Judah needed to know. And ultimately, that's what Hezekiah mucked up on, right? So yeah, they should have known. They're God's special people. They can rely on him. But well, that's what I was gonna say. This is also an interesting situation because Syria was being used by God. As I said, if you go back and read 2 Chronicles 24, it was a small group who was whipping up on a larger Judean army because God had given them over. It was a judgment for sure. Any other? Well, let's pray. Our great God in heaven, as we study your word and we see the trajectory of kings rising and declining. We often see acts of faithfulness and then acts of faithlessness. They help us to look beyond these kings, to look to the king who would come and be perfect, who would be righteous, who would be holy, the son of God, the son of man. and to know that this King has redeemed us and He rules and reigns over our lives in perfect justice and righteousness and that we can submit to Him with all joy and to know that He always is working out all things for our highest good. Bless us with the knowledge of this King and this Savior as we go from here this evening. We ask this in Jesus' name, amen. Let me ask you to stand, brothers and sisters, to receive the Lord's benediction. The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. And all of God's people said, Amen.