Year 3, Day 323: 2 Chronicles 24

Repair of the Temple

Joash became king when he was seven years old.  Jehoida served as a counselor to the king in addition to being a priest.  For the people of Judah, this is a great move.  Jehoida had protected Joash from Athaliah and her wicked pursuit of the worship of Ba’al.  Jehoida would help keep the young king from being impetuous and falling into the pitfalls of youth.

Eventually – perhaps as many as twenty years after he took the throne – Joash gets around to restoring the temple.  {See 2 Kings 12, where Joash is called Jehoash.}  There could be a couple of reasons for this delay – and not all of them bad.

• It is possible that it was low on Joash’s and Jehoida’s priority list.  If this is true, then it would indicate a lack of faith.  I find this possibility hard to swallow as Jehoida would need a strong faith to keep Athaliah’s wrath at bay while he was hiding Joash from her presence.
• It is possible that Joash needed to wait until he was an adult in order to make the changes to the tax policies that were required.  Again, this possibility seems unlikely as Jehoida was a strong man of faith and could have helped bring about the changes if desired.
• Most likely, the country had to have time to lay at rest between the turbulent rule of Athaliah and the young king Joash.  There can be little doubt that Athaliah’s reign would have made the people suspicious of leadership.  Furthermore, there would have been the need for time with respect to acceptance of the change from worshipping Ba’al to returning to worship God.  Joash was a young ruler, and he likely didn’t have the strength of character or the maturity to win over the leaders of the people while he was young.  As he becomes an adult, the time would be more right to bring back the changes to God and the restoration of the temple.

Eventually – no thanks to the slowness of the Levites – the people of Judah do bring the money required to restore the temple.  This policy of Moses can be found in Exodus 30:12-16.  The people willingly contribute to the effort.  Stonemasons and other craftsmen come to repair the damage that had been done to the temple.

I do find it interesting to note that the temple had been plundered by the priests of Ba’al.  Of course, this was under the leadership of Athaliah, who learned the worship of Ba’al from her father, Ahab.

What I find sad about this is that we are beginning to see a cycle among the people.  When the people are obedient to God, the people prosper and the temple is adorned out of their prosperity.  However, eventually the people fall away.  The temple is robbed by worshippers of false gods or invading foreign armies.  Thus, the adornments of the temple are lost and the next time a faithful king comes along the process has to start all over again.

I wonder how much of our own lives are governed by this cycle.  We get things straightened up and begin to follow God.  Life begins to go well.  The next thing that you know, our focus shifts onto something else.  Soon the godly things in life are being robbed to make way for the ungodly.  Eventually we fall into disrepair.  God humbles us.  As we look around our life and begin to pick up the pieces we realize we have much work to do.  Eventually we get things back in order through God’s help.  But wouldn’t it have just been easier to stay faithful to God?

I know.  That is easier said than done.  But I still feel as though I need to name it.

Joash Turns from Truth

Eventually Jehoida dies.  Remember the opening verses from this chapter?  Joash was faithful and walked in the ways of the Lord as long as Jehoida was alive.  But once Jehoida dies, Joash’s heart is swayed.  Joash meets with the princes of the land and they persuade him to follow the false gods instead of the one true God.  Remember that cycle I was just talking about?  Here we go again.  This time it’s even the king who restored the temple in the first place who begins to let things go astray!

With Jehoida’s death we get to see the true nature of Joash.  Joash simply isn’t a strong leader.  He is malleable, capable of being formed by the strong leaders around him.  Now don’t get me wrong.  I think we should be malleable enough to allow God to use the leaders around us to form us according to His ways.  There’s nothing wrong with becoming a better person.  But that isn’t what we see here in Joash.  What we see in Joash is not a man who is malleable enough to improve.  We see a man who is spineless enough to be formed into whatever the people around him want him to be.

It is good to have a spiritual mentor as Joash had in Jehoida.  But at some point the faith must become personal.  If I am faithful only because I am surrounded by faithful people, then is it really me who is faithful?  If my relationship with God is only strong because I am in relationship with someone else who has a strong relationship with God, then is my relationship with God all that strong?  Our relationship with God must be personal and we must take personal responsibility for it.

Vengeance Paid Back

 To make matters worse, Jehoida’s son Zechariah steps up to try and bring the focus of the land back to God.  You would think that Joash would have relationship with Zechariah.  After all, Zechariah was probably in the house while Jehoida was hiding Joash from Athaliah!  At the very least you would think that Joash would have respect for Zechariah because of all that Jehoida did for Joash in his life.  But this is not true.  Joash is so malleable that when the princes desire to do away with Zechariah on account of his message, Joash gives the order to have him stoned.

Zechariah’s words are haunting.  “Because you have forsaken the Lord, He has forsaken you.”  These words take me back to the prophet Shemaiah’s warning before Rehoboam in 2 Chronicles 12.  God desires to love us and embrace us.  But He also must give us the ability to reject Him if the relationship is to be genuine.  When we push against Him hard enough, He will allow us to be forsaken.  What a scary place to find oneself!

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