Divine Blessing and Divine Discipline. 2
Kings 11:20 - 2 Kings
12:21
One of the most important
attributes in the character of God is His immutability: God never changes. And
as part of His character of immutability we frequently talk about His
faithfulness: God is always faithful. It is a combination of understanding His
immutability and His veracity: God is always true. He is true to Himself, He is
true to His Word, He is always true to His promises, and He is always faithful
to us. In the New Testament, 2 timothy 2:13
NASB “If we are faithless, He remains faithful, for He cannot deny
Himself.” This is part of a section in 2 Timothy where there is some
controversy over whether Paul is speaking of believers or unbelievers, but it
is clear that he is speaking of believers here and that there are times when we
are indeed faithless as believers. We are rebellious, we still have a sin
nature that sometimes we yield to even if it is only for a short time, and sometimes
we stay there for very lengthy periods of time.
There are those who would say
that of you live in carnality or continuous carnality maybe you were never
saved, because you are not living like a child of God. You might not live like
your father according to the principles whereby he reared you but that does not
mean that he is no longer your father, it just means you are a rebellious
child. So Scripture teaches that as we become members of God’s royal family by
trusting in Jesus Christ as savior we enter into His family, we are adopted
into that royal family, and He is now our Father is a unique and special way
and that relationship can never be lost. However, as members of the royal
family of God we can sometimes just begin to take life for granted, take God
for granted, ignore His Word, and live on the basis of our own arrogance.
Nevertheless God is still faithful to us and He continues to work in our lives.
That doctrine related to the
faithfulness of God is one that is the under pinning to everything we have
studied in both I and II Kings. Again and again and again we are reminded that
we are sinners, that in Israel the kings often failed, and yet God continues to
be faithful to the promises that He made in the Abrahamic covenant, the promises
that He made in the Mosaic Law, both to bless them when they are obedient and
to bring discipline into their life when they are disobedient. This is
illustrated in the life of King Joash who came to the throne as a young boy at
a time of tremendous apostasy in the southern kingdom of Judah.
But despite the efforts of Athaliah and many others in history to destroy the
plan of God, God always preserves His Word, always preserves His people, always
preserves His promise. This is because He is faithful.
2 Kings 11:17 NASB “Then Jehoiada made a covenant
between the LORD and the king and the people, that they would be the LORD’S people,
also between the king and the people.” This is a renewal ceremony where they
are going back to the Mosaic Law and reaffirming the fact that God has entered
into this covenant with them and now they are going to be obedient. It is also
between the king and the people in that within the Mosaic Law (Deuteronomy 17)
there are also specific principles laid down for the behavior of the king, one
of which was that he was to read the Torah daily so that he is reminded that
even though he is the king of Judah he is the servant of God and under God’s
authority.
For years in the southern
kingdom there has been chaos from the false teachers, from the idolatry, as
well as in the northern kingdom, and now there is the destruction of the last
living member of the house of Ahab. Athaliah has been executed and removed, the
temple to Baal has been removed, and there is a fascinating statement made in 2
Kings 11:20 NASB “So all the people of the land rejoiced and the
city was quiet. For they had put Athaliah to death with the sword at the king’s
house.” This is the result i9n the life of the believer who turns
to God and lives in obedience. The people of the land rejoiced, and that is a
part of worship. The city is quite because they have obeyed the Lord in
removing the evil in their midst. The Hebrew word translated “quiet” is shaqat, which means to be secure, to
have rest, to be undisturbed or to be without anxiety. It is a word that occurs
some 41 times in Scripture. It is a synonym of another word, nuach, which is the basis for the name
of Noah, and that word also means rest and is often used to describe the rest
of God as well. This word is often used in contrast to a period of war or
violence or a period of chaos.
Usually this rest is referred
to as something that comes after a period of military threat or military
dominion in Israel as a result of God’s discipline on Israel. After they turn to Him and after they get right with
God, then they have victory over the foreign invader, and as we read several
times in the book of Judges, “then they had rest in the land for forty years.”
It is also used of the quiet peace that a believer can have because they are
right with God. Isaiah 32:17 NASB “And the work of righteousness
will be peace [shalom, a synonym of
this word for rest], And the service of righteousness, quietness [shaqat] and confidence forever.” First,
the work of righteousness will be peace, and second, the effect of
righteousness quietness [calm or rest]. No matter what else may be happening in
life when the believer is rightly focused on God and living on the basis of His
Word then in his soul he can have tranquility, stability, and rest and absence
of stress an anxiety.
2 Kings 11:20 brings us to the introductory summary of Joash’s
[also Jehoash] reign. The summary is from 11:21-12:3.
2 Kings 12:1 NASB “In the seventh year of Jehu, Jehoash became king,
and he reigned forty years in Jerusalem; and his mother’s name was Zibiah of Beersheba.”
This tells us that Joash was born about the same time that Jehu entered into
his cleansing role as God’s instrument to rid the northern kingdom of the house
of Ahab. Athaliah’s murder of the Davidic children in the house is just after
Jehu has killed off her relatives in the north. Joash/Jehoash had one of the
longest reigns of the Old Testament period. His mother was from Beersheba far in the south and so she would be far removed from
the apostasy in the north that would be seeping in from the northern kingdom.
Then his spiritual
evaluation. 2 Kings 12:2, 3 NASB “Jehoash did right in the sight of
the LORD all his days in which Jehoiada the priest instructed him.
Only the high places were not taken away; the people still sacrificed and
burned incense on the high places.” Despite his later apostasy and
disobedience still God gives him a positive grade. We see that his life is
negative later but there is not a negative assessment. His initial years,
approximately 25-30, were positive. There is always a qualification. We run
into this same thing and have ever since we saw Solomon, that the kings, even
the best kings in the south, will only go ninety per cent of the way in obeying
the Lord. They never fully rid the land of all of the high places and all of
the idolatry that is there, there is always an incomplete sanctification, as it
were. But the person who is the real influence behind Jehoash is Jehoiada. We
read about him in 2 Chronicles 24. Even Jehoiada who is considered one of the
great spiritual giants of the Old Testament had only partial obedience, we are
told.
2 Chronicles 24:2 NASB
“Joash did what was right in the sight of the LORD all the days of Jehoiada the
priest. [3] Jehoiada took two wives for him, and he became the father of sons
and daughters.” He had two wives; that is the compromise. Deuteronomy 17: the
king was not to multiply wives to himself, he was to have only one wife. In the
Old Testament polygamy was always related to the influence of the world, the
influence of apostasy. Even though God made provision for taking care of those
who had multiple wives within the Mosaic Law that was a concession in order to
make sure that second, third, fourth wives were taken care of and not just
abandoned and abused; it wasn’t an approval or a prescription for polygamy.
Joash is under Jehoiada’s influence and as long as Jehoiada is there Joash is
obedient, but we see that his spiritual life isn’t coming out of his own soul,
his own commitment to the Lord, his own understanding of the truth of God’s
Word; it is strengthened by the presence of Jehoiada. As soon as Jehoiada is
gone Joash falls apart.
We get a look at the value
of Jehoiada in 2 Chronicles 24:15, 16 NASB “Now when Jehoiada
reached a ripe old age he died; he was one hundred and thirty years old at his
death. They buried him in the city of David among the kings, because he had done well in Israel and to God and His house.” At this time in Israel’s history living beyond one hundred or one hundred
and ten years of age was extremely unusual. God stretched out Jehoiada’s life
in order to give blessing and extended grace to Jehoash. We don’t know exactly
when he died but it was near the time when Joash was probably about thirty
years of age, or somewhere near that period of time. At the last part of his
life after Jehoiada dies Joash goes into rebellion against God. That would mean
that Jehoiada was close to one hundred years of age when he received Joash as
an infant. Jehoiada was buried. He was honored so much for his leadership in
the nation and for his spiritual maturity that when he died they buried him in
the city of David among the kings, “because he had done well in Israel and to God and His house.”
Notice that there is
nothing said about the temple since we studied it under Solomon. Now all of a
sudden the temple mount comes back into focus. We are told that Jehoiada was
faithful toward God and toward His house or the temple there is Jerusalem, and he is buried among the kings. When Jehoash dies
he has become so evil that there is a conspiracy against him, they assassinate
him, and they bury him but not with the kings. Nobody likes him by this time.
Here is this king who brings in a great revival, a true and genuine spiritual
restoration, and yet in just the last part of his life hr fails to hang in
there, fails to be consistent with his dedication to the Lord which had been
there from the time he was a young boy, and he turns his back on the Lord. We
see someone who is a faithful believer, used by God, who goes into some of the
worst evil that we can see in human history.
Early is Joash’s reign he
recognized that the temple had been pretty much abused for the last hundred or
so years since Solomon dedicated it and it was in a state of disrepair. There
had been times when it had been plundered, times when some of the gold and the
silver had been taken out of the temple and used to bribe and pay off foreign
invaders rather than trusting in God to protect and take care of Judah. They put their trust in money, in material things
for their protection. So Joash sets his heart on repairing the house of the
Lord. 2 Chronicles 24:5 NASB “He gathered the priests and Levites
and said to them, ‘Go out to the cities of Judah and collect money from all Israel to repair the house of your God annually, and you
shall do the matter quickly.’ But the Levites did not act quickly.” Joash
recognizes that it is not all going to come in in one year, it is going to take
time. But the Levites dawdled. They collected some money but they never got
started on the project. We are told that this went on for some 23 years before
Joash went back to the Levites to question why they had not completed the
project.
2 Kings 12:4 NASB “Then
Jehoash said to the priests, “All the money of the sacred things which is
brought into the house of the LORD, in current money, {both} the money of each man’s
assessment {and} all the money which any man’s heart prompts him to bring into
the house of the LORD…” In the Hebrew it has the sense of whatever comes upon a man’s heart. It has the
idea of when the Lord moves an individual in terms of their own spiritual life
that they give as a result of that, so that their giving might honor the Lord
and not be part of the normal process of the tithes that were given in Israel. In Israel there were really two kinds of offerings. The first
was a mandatory offering and it was related to the tithe system. Tithing means
ten per cent and there were three different ten per cent offerings that were
given under the Mosaic Law. Two of them were annual (Deuteronomy 14:21-24; Numbers 18:21,
24) and one was every three years. The first two were designed to support the
priesthood, basically the bureaucracy, the administration of the theocratic kingdom of God
in Israel. It was the priesthood that administered the kingdom
and took care of the house of the Lord. Obviously this system had broken down
over the last 100 years since the time of Solomon. People were not giving, not
following the Law, and they were also supporting apostate religions. The
offering every third year was designed to provide for the widows and orphans,
those who were incapable of taking care of themselves.
There were also free will
offerings, offerings that were motivated by an individual’s desire to give in
support of the Lord. Cf. Exodus 35:5 NASB “Take from among you a
contribution to the LORD; whoever is of a willing heart, let him bring it as
the LORD’S contribution: gold, silver, and bronze.” There were various other
voluntary offerings that were given in the Old Testament, as well as other
mandatory offerings. The one that is referred in 2 Kings 12:4 is the
half-shekel temple offering that every male over the age of twenty had to pay
as a ransom. That is, it is a picture of redemption because of sin. They were
to pay this every time the people were numbered or when a census was taken.
Exodus 30:13 NASB “This is what everyone who is numbered shall give:
half a shekel according to the shekel of the sanctuary (the shekel is twenty
gerahs), half a shekel as a contribution to the LORD.” Also Joash would use money
that came from vows. That relates to the second category, each man’s assessment
money, related to Leviticus 27:2, also 23:18-23,
as well as money from free will offerings.
2 Kings 12:5 NASB
“let the priests take it for themselves, each from his acquaintance; and they
shall repair the damages of the house wherever any damage may be found.”
Time now passes. 2 Kings
12:6 NASB “But it came about that in the twenty-third year of
King Jehoash the priests had not repaired the damages of the house.”
It seems that 23 years is a long time before following up on the purpose for
collecting the offerings. At the rate that the money was given it would take
some time but 23 years seems a long time and the temple wasn’t being repaired.
Finally Joash goes to the priests to find out why this hasn’t taken place. [7] “Then King Jehoash called for Jehoiada
the priest, and for the {other} priests and said to them, ‘Why do you not
repair the damages of the house? Now therefore take no {more} money from your
acquaintances, but pay it for the damages of the house.’” He takes the
responsibility of the repair of the temple and the collection of funds away
from the priests because they have been negligent in fulfilling their
responsibilities. [8] “So the priests agreed that they would take no {more}
money from the people, nor repair the damages of the house.” So
there is a restructuring of the responsibilities of the priests that takes
place here as well as the collection of the money.
2 Kings 12:9 NASB
“But Jehoiada the priest took a chest and bored a hole in its lid and put it
beside the altar, on the right side as one comes into the house of the LORD; and the
priests who guarded the threshold put in it all the money which was brought
into the house of the LORD.” Each day that money would be set aside
and secured and they would only repair that which they could pay for. [10]
“When they saw that there was much money in the chest, the king’s scribe and
the high priest came up and tied {it} in bags and counted the money which was
found in the house of the LORD. [11] They gave the money which was
weighed out 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 the
builders who worked on the house of the LORD.” All of the ways in which this was done was done
with integrity. [15] “Moreover, they did not require an accounting from the men
into whose hand they gave the money to pay to those who did the work, for they
dealt faithfully. [16] “The
money from the guilt offerings and the money from the sin offerings was not
brought into the house of the LORD; it was for the priests.” That is, that
money was not used for the repair of the temple.
In these verses we have a
clear picture of the spiritual priorities of Jehoash. He is focused on honoring
God, and to honor God the house of the Lord need not be a place that is torn
down or seen to be a place of disrepair. The Lord is to be the highest priority
in Judah and they are to glorify God by making sure that the
physical house of the Lord was in proper condition. It was not restored to the
glories of the Solomonic temple. They don’t have that wealth now because of the
years of disobedience to God. They have been under divine discipline and have
lost their prosperity and so they can’t go back and restore the temple to what
it was when Solomon built it because God hasn’t blessed them due to their
disobedience. Their disobedience had had clear economic consequences in their
lives.
It is at this time
following the repair of the temple that Jehoiada finally dies and things begin
to change, just like with Rehoboam the son of Solomon under the evil counsel of
his advisors who are not focused on spiritual priorities. In the second part of
Joash’s life his priorities shift, he is influenced by the wrong people, and it
is not long before he doesn’t value the Lord, the Lord’s house or the Lord’s
will anymore. 2 Chronicles 24:17 NASB “But after the death of Jehoiada
the officials of Judah came and bowed down to the king, and the king listened to them. [18]
They abandoned the house of the LORD, the God of their fathers, and served the Asherim and
the idols; so wrath came upon Judah and Jerusalem for this their guilt.” This means that God is going
to start bringing in the aspects of divine discipline as outlined in Leviticus
26. [19] “Yet He sent prophets to them to bring them back to the LORD; though
they testified against them, they would not listen.” Even in judgment God is
always gracious and He sends prophets to Israel to warn them and to call them back in obedience. This
is the idea of return again, the idea of true repentance, meaning turning back
to the Lord. The word “testified” here means they were bringing a law suit, as
it were, to those who were violating the law. But they would not listen.
We are then told of an
example and this shows how far Joash has deteriorated in his spiritual life. 2
Chronicles 24:20 NASB “Then the Spirit of God came on Zechariah
the son of Jehoiada the priest; and he stood above the people and said to them,
‘Thus God has said, ‘Why do you transgress the commandments of the LORD and do not
prosper? Because you have forsaken the LORD, He has also forsaken you.’” Zechariah the son of
Jehoiada! This would have been a friend, someone he would have grown up with,
someone he had a personal relationship with. His question indicates that the
economic prosperity of the nation is directly related to the spiritual
condition of the people. The reason they cannot prosper, the reason they are
under economic duress, is because they have disobeyed the law and have forsaken
the Lord, and because of that He has also forsaken them.
How did they respond? They
completely rejected his message; they blamed the messenger for their problems.
E.g. if we would just get rid of the Christians then all of these other things
would come in. Christians get blamed for brining the message. The message is
that the reason that we are in the state we are in in this nation is because we
have turned our backs upon God and upon the principles that are contained
within the Scripture. 2 Chronicles 24:21 NASB “So they conspired
against him and at the command of the king they stoned him to death in the
court of the house of the LORD.” Remember back when he is young and he is crowned
Athaliah shows up in the temple where they are having the coronation ceremony,
and Jehoiada said not to kill here there but to take her outside of the temple.
They had to respect the house of the Lord and execute her outside, not on
consecrated ground. Joash doesn’t care anymore and so they execute the
messenger of God in the house of the Lord. [22] “Thus Joash the king did not
remember the kindness which his father Jehoiada had shown him, but he murdered
his son. And as he died he said, ‘May the LORD see and avenge!’” Someone who has no gratitude has
lost his understanding of humanity and are operating on pure arrogance.
The next event: 2 Kings
12:17 NASB “Then Hazael king of Aram went up and fought against
Gath and captured it, and Hazael set his face to go up to Jerusalem.
[18] Jehoash king of Judah took all the sacred things that Jehoshaphat and
Jehoram and Ahaziah, his fathers, kings of Judah, had dedicated, and his own
sacred things and all the gold that was found among the treasuries of the house
of the LORD and of the king’s house, and sent {them} to Hazael king of Aram. Then
he went away from Jerusalem.” Instead of trusting God as Hezekiah
does later on, who humbled himself to God and prayed to God to deliver them
from the enemy, he puts his trust in things, the material possessions, and he
takes all of that which he and others have put in the temple and use it to buy
off Hazael. He plunders the house of the Lord, steals from the Lord, and gives
it to Hazael the king of Syria.
Then we are given the
summary of Joash. 2 Kings 12:19 NASB “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? [20] His servants arose and made
a conspiracy and struck down Joash at the house of Millo {as he was} going down
to Silla.” We learn from 2 Chronicles he is wounded in a battle.
Then we are told who was involved in the conspiracy, the assassination plot.
[21] “For Jozacar the son of Shimeath and Jehozabad the son of Shomer, his
servants, struck {him} and he died; and they buried him with his fathers in the
city of David, and Amaziah his son became king in his place.” But in Chronicles
we are told that when he died they buried him in the city of David but they did not bury him in the tombs of the kings.
He is dishonored, they do not respect him. He has died in spiritual rebellion
against God and he has brought the people to a terrible end because of his
personal apostasy.
Things
to remember from this passage:
God’s
blessing is always tied to His faithfulness. His discipline is always tied to
His faithfulness because God is faithful to His Word. He blesses us when we are
in right relationship to Him, not because of what we do but because of the fact
that we possess the perfect righteousness of Christ. In the church age we
recognize that that blessing is not because of obedience but because we possess
the righteousness of Christ.
The
second reason is because we are in right relationship to God in terms of
fellowship, that we are walking with Him.
We
need to recognize that when we live in extended disobedience to God it destroys
our perspective, wipes out our values, and reverses our priorities as we saw
with Joash. What he loved as a young man for most of his life he hates by the
time he is old. He turns his back on everything he has committed himself to and
everything he has been devoted to for the first 30 or more years of his life.
He hates what he formerly loved and seeks to destroy anything that reminds him
of God. This is the same thing we see in the lives of people. As they are
suppressing the truth by unrighteousness in their soul then whenever anything
comes along and takes the lid off of that a little bit so that that rebellion
is exposed then they just react in extreme hostility.
Illustrations