[0:00] We ask it in Christ's name. Amen. Take your Bibles, go into 2 Chronicles chapter 24.! 2 Chronicles chapter 24 will be our text.! 2 Chronicles chapter 24.
[0:12] We will read the chapter in its entirety. It's a number of verses. There is a parallel passage to this found in 2 Kings.
[0:24] But there's new information given to us from this passage. As a matter of fact, when we preached through the book of 2 Kings and we were looking at this story, we used this passage to kind of give us the background, really the understanding of what was going on in the 2 Kings.
[0:44] So now we have the opportunity to look at it on its own. So 2 Chronicles chapter 24. If you remember, let's put it in context so that we can understand this.
[0:57] The priest Jehoiadaia has kind of spearheaded a revolt against Athelia, who was the queen mother reigning in the place of her son, who was slain as judgment because of God's judgment.
[1:11] When she ascended to the throne, she killed all the royal offspring. Now if you know anything, you've got to remember that Athelia is a descendant of Ahab. So it is the enemy's plan to get into the lineage of David, to destroy the lineage of David.
[1:24] But there was a daughter who preserved Joash, who was the young infant son of the seed of David. He lived with his, it would have been his aunt, and her husband in the temple of the Lord for seven years.
[1:42] In the seventh year, Jehoiadaia the priest kind of spearheaded a revolt and made Joash king. So he's a seven-year-old king. He is the rightful descendant of David, set upon the throne of Judah. So we've just kind of come out of the only time in the history of Judah in which a non-descendant of David set upon the throne, and that would be Athelia.
[2:00] And instead of another dynasty rising up, they maintain, again, God's faithfulness. The Davidic dynasty never fails. And so now he's king.
[2:10] They kill Athelia. They kill those who are leaders in the worship of Baal and the idolatrous. And so that's where we're at until we get to this point in chapter 24.
[2:21] It says, It says, And you should do the matter quickly.
[2:53] But the Levites do not act quickly. So the king summoned Jehoiadaia the chief priest and said to him, Why have you not required the Levites to bring in from Judah and from Jerusalem the levy fixed by Moses, the servant of the Lord, on the congregation of Israel for the tent of the testimony?
[3:10] For the sons of the wicked Athelia had broken into the house of God and even used the holy things of the house of the Lord for the bells. So the king commanded, and they made a chest and set it outside by the gate of the house of the Lord.
[3:22] And they made a proclamation in Judah and Jerusalem to bring to the Lord the levy fixed by Moses, the servant of God, on Israel in the wilderness. All the officers and all the people rejoiced and brought in their levies and dropped them into the chest until they had finished.
[3:36] It came about whenever the chest was brought into the king's office by the Levites. And when they saw that there was much money, then the king's scribes and the chief priest officers would come, empty the chest, take it, and return it to its place.
[3:49] Thus they did daily and collected much money. The king and Jehoiada gave it to those who did the work of the service of the house of the Lord.
[3:59] And they hired masons and carpenters to restore the house of the Lord and also workers in iron and bronze to repair the house of the Lord. So the workmen labored, and the repair work progressed in their hands.
[4:12] And they restored the house of God according to its specifications and strengthened it. When they had finished, they brought the rest of the money before the king and Jehoiada, and it was made into utensils for the house of the Lord, utensils for the service of the burnt offering and pans and utensils for gold and silver.
[4:29] And they offered burnt offerings in the house of the Lord continually all the days of Jehoiada. When Jehoiada reached a ripe old age, he died. He was 130 years old at his death.
[4:42] They buried him in the city of David among the kings because he had done well in Israel and to God and his house. But after the death of Jehoiada, the officials of Judah came and bowed down to the king, and the king listened to them.
[4:59] 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.
[5:09] Yet he sent prophets to them to bring them back to the Lord. Though they testified against them, they would not listen. 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?
[5:30] Because you have forsaken the Lord, he has also forsaken you. So they conspired against him at the command of the king, and at the command of the king, they stoned him to death in the court of the house of the Lord.
[5:41] Thus Joash the king did not remember the kindness which his father Jehodiah had shown him. But he murdered his son. And as he died, he said, May the Lord see and avenge.
[5:54] Now it happened at the turn of the year that the army of the Arameans came up against him. And they came to Judah and Jerusalem, destroyed all the officials of the people from among the people, and sent all their spoil to the king of Damascus.
[6:08] Indeed, the army of the Arameans came with a small number of men. Yet the Lord delivered a very great army into their hands, because they had forsaken the Lord, the God of their fathers.
[6:19] Thus they executed judgment on Joash. And when they had departed from him, for they left him very sick, his own servants conspired against him because of the blood of the son of Jehodiah, the priest, and murdered him on his bed.
[6:31] So he died, and they buried him in the city of David, but they did not bury him in the tombs of the kings. Now these are those who conspired against him, Zebad, the son of Shemith, the Ammonitess, and Jehozabad, the son of Shemrith, the Moabitess.
[6:47] As to his sons and the many oracles against him and the rebuilding of the house of God, behold, they are written in the treaty of the book of the kings. Then Amaziah, his son, became king in his place.
[6:58] 2 Chronicles chapter 24. I want you to see this evening a propped-up leader. A propped-up leader. It is refreshing when we make the transition out of the kings which have just reigned and did what was wicked in the sight of the Lord, and judgment has come upon the household of Ahab, which has found an inroad into the home and the house of David.
[7:23] And we are waiting for this young man who has been raised in the temple, and now he becomes king. And admittedly, when he becomes king, he cannot make every decision. So we have the high priest Jehoiada still making decisions for him.
[7:38] It is in the 23rd year of his reign in which the reforms take place to the temple. We see in the parallel passage found in 2 Kings that the reforms were originally supposed to go through the Levites.
[7:50] Again, the chronicler is really focusing on three things, the Davidic lineage, the temple worship, and the role of the Levites, which leave many of us to think that maybe it was a Levite who wrote 1 and 2 Chronicles.
[8:03] But either way, the work was supposed to go through the Levites. We are told that in 2 Kings. They failed to do so, so then the work is brought in to the king's realm, if you will, and they hire that labor out, which in hindsight, if you remember just giving you a little bit of background information when we looked at 2 Kings, was really the wise thing to do because the Levites were not workmen.
[8:27] They were not the craftsmen. They were to be leading in worship. So now we have everybody doing what they ought to do. So we have the tendency to think, okay, well, everything is good, but we know that Joash begins his reign well, but a good beginning is not really what matters.
[8:43] He ends his reign doing what is wicked. And the key to that is what was holding him up for the first half of his reign, and that would be Jehoiada the priest.
[8:57] So I want you to see this evening the propped-up leader found in chapter 24. First, we notice there is a cleansed house. And we notice this because we are told so clearly in the passage.
[9:11] Joash was 7 years old when he became king, and he reigned 40 years in Jerusalem. He had a long reign, most of that because of who was holding him up for the greater majority of it. But then it tells us, and his mother's name was Zibiah from Beersheba.
[9:24] Now this is important, and why this is important is because we know his father is of the seed of David. But we also know that his father was the offspring of Athaliah, who was the daughter of Ahab.
[9:38] So what we are told here is now that this young man who is up on the throne no longer has any direct relation to the house of Ahab.
[9:50] The house has been cleansed. As a matter of fact, his mother is from Beersheba. She is one that was not of the lineage of Ahab. So now we have noticed that not only is the rightful lineage up on the throne, it has been cleansed.
[10:06] The Davidic lineage will be preserved. Jehodiah takes two wives. It leads some people to say, well, is that right or wrong or indifferent? Is he doing this because of the expediency of needing offspring? We don't know.
[10:16] We do know that the son that does reign in his place comes from a wife that is from Jerusalem. So we now have this cleansing of the house, and we know that the Davidic lineage has been preserved because of the faithfulness of the Lord God.
[10:32] But it is not that house alone that is cleansed because as we've already noticed, in the 23rd year of his reign, it says, now it came about after this that Joash decided or had within his heart to restore the house of the Lord.
[10:47] And he labors and he oversees and he makes sure that the house of the Lord is restored because the two kings prior to him and even the queen, Athelia, had no concern for the house of the Lord.
[11:01] We're told here in this passage in 2 Chronicles that actually those two kings who were descendants from the lineage of Ahab through their mother's side plundered the house of the Lord and took it to the house of Baal.
[11:14] So they used even the sanctified objects within the house of the Lord and used it for idolatrous worship. So when the house of Baal was torn down in the chapter prior to that, these things would have been destroyed as well.
[11:28] This is why when we find in the parallel passage of 2 Kings that there are not even any utensils left within the house of the Lord. They had really plundered it to the greatest extent.
[11:39] They had taken everything out of it. So now Joash has within his heart and he desires to restore and rebuild this and we know the reason he's doing it is because he lived there, right?
[11:51] He understood it. He knows what's going on. He charges the Levites with the work. They don't do it. So then he comes and he asked Jehoiadaim, why aren't they doing it? And they come up with a plan.
[12:02] You know what? They build the chest. They bore a hole in the center and they set it out there. But we notice what it says. It says, All the officers, in verse 10, and all the people rejoiced and brought in their levies and dropped them into the chest until they had finished.
[12:16] With the restoration work going on, there was also the restored command of Moses to bring in the levy. Two times Moses is mentioned in this passage and both times he is mentioned as the servant of the Lord.
[12:32] What a, just a side way, what a great way to be referred to, right? As Moses, the servant of the Lord, commanded. As Moses, the servant of the Lord, commanded. He has declared to them that they should bring in this levy or this tax and it should be used for the construction of the tabernacle in his day and now the temple here.
[12:52] And the craftsmen, they labor. They do their work. It says that the workers labored and restored and brought it back and strengthened the house. The money that was left over, they took the money that was left over and formed and fashioned it into utensils.
[13:08] So by the time this is done, the temple is back to how it ought to be. Worship is going on. The Levites are not the ones working and laboring as they were originally charged to do.
[13:22] No, the craftsmen, the masons, the carpenters. And things are done so decently and in order. We notice in the passage, there's no accounting, right? They gave the money to them. They didn't have to give an accountant of their work.
[13:34] They just trusted. There was faithfulness in the work that was going on. Now the sad irony of it is, is that at the end of his reign, Joash, we find in our second Kings parallel, again plunders the house of the Lord and tries to pay off the king of the Arameans.
[13:54] But right now, in the beginning part of it, he's laboring, he's trying to do what is right. Now the question is, why? Why is there such a difference? Why do we have one who's walking faithfully?
[14:06] And why do we have one who fails so miserably at the end? And the answer to that is found in our second point, that is, the consistent voice. So we see the cleansed house, and we see the consistent voice.
[14:19] It tells us in verse 2, Joash did what was right in the sight of the Lord, but here's this little caveat, all the days of Jehoiada the priest. He did what was right in the sight of the Lord all the days of Jehoiada the priest.
[14:34] A couple of weeks ago, we looked at the importance of that which we allow to influence us. And the greatest influence in Joash's life, the first part of his ministry, is the man who raised him, which was the high priest.
[14:49] And we are told that this man had a great voice and say so to him. When the Levites weren't completing the work, he called Jehoiada in. And Jehoiada is the one who led them to build the chest and to bore the hoe.
[15:01] It was Jehoiada and the priest who would distribute the money to the workers. It was Jehoiada who was really spearheading all of the work that's going on. Sure, he's doing it through Joash the king, but Joash, mind this, is not doing these matters because of a personal conviction.
[15:20] He is doing it because of a personal influence. It's a big difference. He's not obeying because he loves the Lord God with all of his heart, with all of his soul, with all of his mind.
[15:31] He's doing it because Jehoiada is instructing him to do it. Now that's not to belittle the work and the ministry of Jehoiada at all. We see this consistent voice that is influencing those around him.
[15:44] It's telling even here, and we saw in verse 10, that the officers and all the people rejoice to bring their money in. Here in just a minute, we'll find out that these same officers come with something totally different than their levy.
[15:55] And it is the impact and the influence of this consistent voice. And how consistent was he? Look at what it says in verse 15. Now when Jehoiada reached a ripe old age, he died.
[16:07] Now what was that ripe old age? He was 130 years old when he died. Now put it in context. Jehoiada would have been born during the reign of Solomon and had lived through the reign of every successive king.
[16:27] He had seen the division of the nation. He had seen every good king and wicked king that had risen up to this point. He had been consistent during periods when temple worship was going on and during times when the temple was closed.
[16:45] And his voice, now we don't know anything about him. Some people will tell you, oh, that's a misprint. He wasn't, surely he wasn't 103. Some people think maybe he was 100 or 130. Some say, well, maybe he's 103 or some people think it's 83.
[16:57] But the text says 130. So we're going to stand beside 130. And at that point, his voice had been consistent longer than anybody else's because that age is an irregularity at that time.
[17:11] Now we go further. We go back in biblical history. We know that 130 is a young man in the early pages of Genesis, right? But here we find one who had lived consistently and his voice had been consistent, though we know very little about his life up until the context of these few chapters which surround Joash.
[17:32] But now we begin to understand a little bit of why he has such great influence. As a matter of fact, his influence is so great and his voice had been so consistent that when he died, look at what it says.
[17:42] This is something that is very abnormal. They buried him in the city of David among the kings. The two kings prior to him had not been buried among the kings.
[17:54] Joash will not be buried among the kings. Jehoadiah, who is not of Davidic lineage, but he married a lady from Davidic lineage, but he himself is not, was buried among the kings.
[18:09] What an honor and what a testimony. Why was he given such honor in his death? It tells us because he had done well in Israel and to God and his house.
[18:23] Never underestimate the power of a consistent voice. Jehoadiah's voice had been so consistent for so long that they gave him great honor at his death and in his burial, but it was so consistent for so long it had a great impact upon Joash for the first half of his reign.
[18:45] And he did what was right. But the problem is, is that Joash was leaning upon Jehoadiah, not learning from him.
[18:57] He was leaning upon this one with wise voice. He was leaning upon this one to make decisions. He was leaning upon him for guidance and direction.
[19:09] He was even leaning upon him for rule, but he was not learning from him. And we know that he was not learning because immediately after his death we get to this third thing, a convenient opportunity.
[19:22] But after the death, it tells us in 17, but after the death of Jehoadiah, the officials, we've met these people, these are the same ones, rejoicing in giving, right? The officials of Judah came and bowed to the king and the king listened to them.
[19:41] Now, if Joash, he's not a new king at this point because it was in the 23rd year of his reign that he began the reconstruction of the temple and the reconstruction and the completion of the temple had already taken place by the time Jehoadiah dies.
[19:56] He only reigns for 40 years so we know that at least for over the first half of his year, Jehoadiah is there. He had ample opportunity to learn from him but he just leaned upon him and now immediately after his death the officials come before him.
[20:13] And now we begin to see his failures. We begin to see the degradation of his reign and we see how far down he can go and it all begins with someone bowing before him.
[20:26] Make no mistake about it wickedness will often appeal to the flesh before it leads us astray. They bow before him and give him homage give him position.
[20:41] It was Jehoadiah who was worthy to be respected not Joash. They know that because they come before him with a concern and they come before him with a desire and the desire is that he will loosen the regulations of worship and allow them to again begin to worship idolatrous matters.
[21:06] And because they appeal to his flesh and bow down to him it says and the king listened to him. He listened to them and he gave them an ear.
[21:16] Why? Because that which he had been leaning upon was no longer there. Evil knows when to approach us. It knows how to entice us.
[21:29] And it knows how to lead us down the path it wants us to go. Isolation is a wonderful opportunity to be persuaded to go how we should not.
[21:43] It says in verse 18 they abandoned the house of the Lord. They have just rebuilt it. They have just strengthened it. They were just celebrating the reality of being able to give to it.
[21:58] But they abandoned the house of the Lord the God of their fathers and served the ashram and the idols. Why? Because that consistent voice had been removed.
[22:08] And now is a convenient opportunity because we have a king who does not operate by conviction. We have a king who is operating by leaning upon someone.
[22:20] He was a propped up leader so now that his prop has been removed now we can go before him. We can bow before him pay him homage and request of him to do something which he would have never done the whole time Jehoiada was alive.
[22:35] While we need to be careful on who we allow to influence us even when we have great influences around us we also ought to be careful to be learning not necessarily just leaning.
[22:49] It's a matter of discipleship that even Christ said the whole model of Christ is what? Come and watch come and do with me and then you go and do. Discipleship Jesus said come and watch me do this now come and do it with me.
[23:06] And now go do it on your own. Even with our children I've tried to do that. Come watch me do what I'm about to do. Why? Because you'll never learn how to do it unless you watch someone else do it.
[23:19] Now come do it with me. Why? Because I want to make sure you know how to do it. Now go do it on your own but I don't want to and my response is I don't care. It's not unloving.
[23:31] It's when you know that you've equipped them to do what they can do. the repeated refrain around my house is I will never do for you what I know you can do on your own. Because if I know you can do it then you ought to do it.
[23:47] I don't want you leaning upon me all the time and that's discipleship. That's how it ought to be. that's exactly the thing that Joash missed. He was allowing Jehoadiah to do great and wonderful things but the problem is is that he would never accept the responsibility to do it on his own so then wickedness found a convenient opportunity because it found one who had never learned.
[24:14] Bowed before him. Pampered him just a little bit. And made a request and he listened to them. Why? Because if what we're leaning upon is kicked out from under us if we're not careful we'll find something else to lean upon and maybe it's not that good.
[24:33] You see this convenient opportunity. The fourth and final thing that we notice is the condemning judgment. First notice before we see the condemnation that comes upon them be amazed at the mercy of God.
[24:53] It says in verse 19 after it tells us in verse 18 that they abandoned the house of the Lord the God of their fathers and they served the ashram. Now the word ashram is a unique word.
[25:05] It doesn't necessarily mean an idol. When we read the word bell that's like a proper name of an idol. Ashram literally means the grove. So it's like a place to go and there were pillars built up and there were a multitude of idols and idolatrous objects there and ashram is used to reflect a place that they would go to.
[25:23] So they abandoned this house of God and they went to that place and they served idols there. And so the wrath came upon Judah and Jerusalem for this their guilt. So they were guilty of it.
[25:34] But notice what it says in 19. Yet he, that is God, yet he sent them prophets to warn them and to bring them back to the Lord. Notice his mercy, right?
[25:46] God is not rash in his judgment but his patient and his loving kindness and his mercy. He sent them prophets to bring them back to the Lord.
[25:57] Though they testified against them, they would not listen. over and over again, God is wooing his people to come back. He's warning his people.
[26:08] He's declaring their desire. And yet they would not listen. And here we have one of those unique opportunities in the Old Testament. Then the Spirit of God came on Zechariah.
[26:21] The literal reading there is the Spirit of God clothed, covered as a cloak, Zechariah. This is not some, and it kind of goes back and forth here.
[26:33] This is not the Zechariah of the prophetic book Zechariah because Zechariah, the book of prophecies, Zechariah the son of Berechiah who prophesies during the second year of the reign of Darius.
[26:47] And this is definitely not during the second year of the reign of Darius. Okay? Because Darius' reign was after the Babylonian captivity. We're not here at that point yet. So this is Zechariah, the son of Jehoiada.
[26:59] Though we do find this Zechariah mentioned in the New Testament, even as we see him mentioned in passing in the book of Matthew, and we see him mentioned again in the book of Acts, when it speaks of the one, the blood calling out who was slain between the door and the altar and the temple, that's this one.
[27:18] It says the Spirit of God came on Zechariah, so unique in the Old Testament that when the Spirit of God comes upon an individual, this is one of the unique attributes, is that the Spirit of God cloaks or clothes that human being.
[27:32] It covers as if you were putting a coat on. In the New Testament, the Spirit of God dwells within the believer, right? Changes us from the outside or from the inside out. We have the Spirit of God residing from within us, and it's such a gift.
[27:46] We're not just covered with him. We are filled with the Holy Spirit. Why? Because of Christ ascending to the Father. Jesus says that if I ascend to the Father, then he will send back the paraclete or the Spirit to dwell within you, right?
[28:00] That is the gift of the seal being sealed until the day of redemption of salvation. In the Old Testament, that Spirit is not within the individual. That Spirit cloaks and covers that individual and moves them and can move from person to person.
[28:14] This is why even Saul could be cloaked with the Holy Spirit and prophesy with the prophets, though Saul definitely is not a man of God. And one of the unique ones, and I know we're kind of on a tangent here, but it bears looking at, in the Old Testament that is told that he is covered with the Holy Spirit from that day forward is David.
[28:34] From the time he's anointed by Samuel, it says that he is cloaked with the Holy Spirit from that day forward. So, not filled like we are, but cloaked or covered.
[28:44] So, now the Spirit of God came on Zechariah, the son of Jehodiah, the priest, and he stood above the people and said to them, notice he's in the temple. He's probably the temple porch.
[28:57] It tells us in the book of Matthew that he is between the altar and the door. It says that he stood above the people and he declared to them, thus God has said, why do you transgress the commandments of the Lord and do not prosper?
[29:11] Because you have forsaken the Lord, he also has forsaken in you. So, here's the prophetic word. Verse 21 says, so they conspired against him and at the command of the king, Joash.
[29:28] At the command of the king, they stoned him to death in the court of the house of the Lord. Now, that's amazing. Because when Joash was made king, he was made king in the temple, right?
[29:41] And when he was announced king, he was standing in the temple and Athaliah comes into the room and sees him and cries out, treason, treason. But they will not kill Athaliah within the confines of the temple.
[29:55] They take her out to the horse gate and kill her. Now, she is deserving of judgment. She has definitely sinned greatly against the Lord God and is deserving of the punishment that comes upon her.
[30:07] But they will not shed her blood within the temple. But yet now, we have Zechariah, the son of the very man who raised Joash, prophesying in the temple.
[30:22] And the king gives the command to stone him to death within the temple. Notice just how far we have gone. Notice the disparity of leaning upon someone but not learning from them.
[30:44] This was the son of the man who raised him and influenced him so long and all it took was a short time and opportunity for wickedness to bow before him and to consume him.
[30:55] And all of a sudden, he's leaning upon these officials. Because one who is not walking by personal conviction is always walking by someone else's conviction.
[31:09] One of the things that I think drives me in ministry is I want to know what I believe and I want to believe what I know. And my desire is for all those before me to know what they believe and to believe what they know.
[31:30] I have never had a desire for anyone to know what I believe and to believe what I know. There's a big difference. I want them to know what they believe and believe what they know.
[31:45] Because Joash knew Jehoadiah and as long as Jehoadiah was there, he believed what Jehoadiah believed. The moment he was gone, he was believing what the officials believed and were stoning the prophet.
[32:06] The people of the reason Jesus speaks of this in the book of Matthew and the reason it's alluded to by Stephen in the book of Acts. Those are, by the way, two great witnesses to the history of the Jewish nation is because the Jewish people themselves in later accounts were convinced that the blood of Zechariah continued to cry out to them for it had been spilled upon the floor of the temple.
[32:34] There was no atonement for this innocent blood. And they saw that as being the reason that Nebuchadnezzar, when Nebuchadnezzar encircled the city walls of Jerusalem and Nebuchadnezzar came in and destroyed it.
[32:47] They believed that the judgment of Nebuchadnezzar was because of the blood of Zechariah calling out. And now we've reached this new low.
[32:59] And we notice there are those who cry out in Scripture while they're dying. The two testimonies of this event, Jesus and Stephen, are two of them, right?
[33:13] Jesus says, Father, forgive them for they know not what they do. Stephen cries out that this charge would not be held against them for they did not know what they were doing. We know that God answers those prayers of mercy and restoration and grace.
[33:31] But here, they were doing it knowingly and willingly. And we see the prayer here that God answers as well. May the Lord see and avenge. That is not a cry for mercy.
[33:43] That is a cry for judgment. May the Lord see and avenge, he says. And just so that we understand that this condemning judgment that is declared upon them, that the Lord God would see and act accordingly, it is answered accurately in the very next verse.
[34:06] Verse 23. Now it happened at the turn of the year that the army of the Arameans came up against them and they came to Judah and Jerusalem and destroyed. Who did they destroy? All of the officials.
[34:21] Who was it that bowed down before Joash? The officials. It was the officials who said, please, Joash, let us go back to worshiping idolatry.
[34:34] And so when judgment came, the Arameans came in and they destroyed the officials. God will not be mocked.
[34:46] And judgment came upon those who had led so many astray. And they came and it says, and destroyed all the officials of the people from among the people and sent all their spoil to the king of Damascus and were told that indeed the army of the Arameans who came was a small number of men.
[35:05] And though they were small, yet the Lord delivered a very great army into their hands. That is, it didn't matter how large the military force of Judah and Jerusalem was.
[35:17] Judgment had already been declared. The Arameans did not send a large military force. There was a small force. And they did not fall because they were overpowered by the Arameans.
[35:27] It says they fell. It tells us in the text because they had forsaken the Lord, the God of their fathers. Thus, they executed judgment on Joash. We're again reminded of God's sovereignty that he brings judgment through and how ever he sees fit.
[35:47] When they departed from him, for they left him very sick, his own servants conspired against him because of the blood of the son of Jehodiah the priest and murdered him on his bed. Two of his own servants. Two slaves within his own house.
[35:59] We are told that they are descendants of an Ammonitess and a Moabitess. And yet, they slay him. Why? Because this is the judgment. May the Lord see and avenge.
[36:12] Make no mistake about it. God does see and God does avenge. And when he does, he does not get the honor or the respect that Jehoiada did.
[36:24] It says that they did not bury him in the tombs of the kings. Why? Because he didn't have those convictions. He did not do much good in Israel and to the Lord God and to his house.
[36:39] He was just leaning upon the one who did. In our death, we will be judged according to our own measure, not the measure of those we leaned upon. We'll be judged about our own convictions and who we are, not how good those we put around us were or were not.
[37:00] Joash's judgment was based upon who he was. So he did not receive the honor because he was a propped up leader. He was not one who had convictions or a proper love.
[37:13] Had a great beginning, but a horrible ending. We see the power of the influence, but we also see the tragedy of the one who fails to learn from it.
[37:26] And it's recorded for us in 2 Chronicles chapter 24. Thank you, my brothers. Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes