Joash had become a king of Judah, the southern kingdom. His grandmother was the daughter of Ahab and Jezebel of the northern kingdom. His grandfather died before he was even born. He was just a baby when his father died and his grandmother killed all of his brothers and all of the other heirs to the throne.
Joash was hidden by his aunt, the daughter of his grandmother, and her husband who was Jehoiada the high priest. And they were a godly couple, a man and woman, husband and wife that loved the Lord. It’s evident by all that they did.
Jehoiada was influential in raising Joash and from the time that he was 7 years old and Jehoiada held the anointing ceremony within the temple because he was the rightful king of Israel at the age of 7. Jehoiada was his main counselor and gave him the main direction when he was ruling on the throne at that young age. Jehoiada had a son and it’s interesting, Jehoiada raised Joash and his son in the same home and they appeared to be friends. But I want you to understand, we need to have a personal relationship with God and we need to be directed in our lives by the Lord.
We cannot rely on other people. And what we’re going to see this afternoon is a very sad account. As long as Jehoiada lived, he was a strong influence on Joash.
But the minute he died, things changed. And that’s where we’re going to pick it up this afternoon in chapter 24, verse 17. I’ll go back up to verse 15, it gives us the context of what happened right prior to this.
2 Chronicles 24:15-27
15 But Jehoiada waxed old, and was full of days when he died; an hundred and thirty years old was he when he died.
16 And they buried him in the city of David among the kings, because he had done good in Israel, both toward God, and toward his house.
17 Now after the death of Jehoiada came the princes of Judah, and made obeisance to the king. Then the king hearkened unto them.
18 And they left the house of the Lord God of their fathers, and served groves and idols: and wrath came upon Judah and Jerusalem for this their trespass.
19 Yet he sent prophets to them, to bring them again unto the Lord; and they testified against them: but they would not give ear.
20 And the Spirit of God came upon Zechariah the son of Jehoiada the priest, which stood above the people, and said unto them, Thus saith God, Why transgress ye the commandments of the Lord, that ye cannot prosper? because ye have forsaken the Lord, he hath also forsaken you.
21 And they conspired against him, and stoned him with stones at the commandment of the king in the court of the house of the Lord.
22 Thus Joash the king remembered not the kindness which Jehoiada his father had done to him, but slew his son. And when he died, he said, The Lord look upon it, and require it.
23 And it came to pass at the end of the year, that the host of Syria came up against him: and they came to Judah and Jerusalem, and destroyed all the princes of the people from among the people, and sent all the spoil of them unto the king of Damascus.
24 For the army of the Syrians came with a small company of men, and the Lord delivered a very great host into their hand, because they had forsaken the Lord God of their fathers. So they executed judgment against Joash.
25 And when they were departed from him, (for they left him in great diseases,) his own servants conspired against him for the blood of the sons of Jehoiada the priest, and slew him on his bed, and he died: and they buried him in the city of David, but they buried him not in the sepulchres of the kings.
26 And these are they that conspired against him; Zabad the son of Shimeath an Ammonitess, and Jehozabad the son of Shimrith a Moabitess.
27 Now concerning his sons, and the greatness of the burdens laid upon him, and the repairing of the house of God, behold, they are written in the story of the book of the kings. And Amaziah his son reigned in his stead.
Let’s just bow in prayer. Father, I pray that you just speak to us through your word, and help us to understand, it’s not good enough just to live partially for you, or have a strong beginning, but then turn from you at the end. Lord, may we learn from the rebellion of Joash.
This we ask in Jesus’ name. Amen. It’s very interesting as you look at this, that Zechariah was probably about the same age as Joash, and grew up, may have been a little older, but grew up in the same house as Joash, was experienced through the same teaching that Joash was experiencing in the house of Jehoiada and his wife.
Now Zechariah became a man of God, a man who desired to uphold the nation of Israel, that they would do that which was right in the eyes of the Lord, that they would follow after God, and he condemned the princes, and he condemned Joash when they turned the people against the Lord. Now I want you to see sometimes, and we read this morning in the psalm at the beginning of the service, Psalm 146, and that psalm talks about that you don’t have, you don’t trust the wisdom of men, for men die, and their so-called wisdom dies with them. But you trust in the wisdom and words and the ways of the Lord, because He’s eternal and He is true, and the ways of men are false.
What’s interesting, Joash did something that was very similar to an ancestor of his whose name was Rehoboam, the son of Solomon. And Solomon was supposedly the wisest man that had ever lived in the nation of Israel, but yet his wisdom did not help him in setting a standard for his own son who would rule after him. Solomon allowed false worship to once again enter into Israel.
He allowed his wives to come in and have their worship of their gods, and then we also saw that he began to worship with his wives. But also he put heavy burdens on the nation of Israel. Rehoboam did the same thing.
And the reason Rehoboam did it, instead of listening to the counselors who were wise, who were older, and who were godly in their wisdom, Rehoboam listened to his friends, young men who gave him wrong advice, who led him astray, and it resulted in the kingdom being a divided kingdom. And the kingdom of Israel suffered ramifications literally hundreds of years after Rehoboam made those decisions because of his decisions. And we see that this divided kingdom was still in place at the time of Joash, and the division of the kingdom and the wickedness that was in the northern kingdom had spread its tentacles into the southern kingdom, and it appeared that in the life of Joash perhaps there was going to be relief because Jehoiada, the high priest, had raised him and had instructed him well in what he should do.
And during his early reign, he had the high places tore down. He had the false worship stopped. He did that which was right in the eyes of God.
He called the people to once again worship the Lord. He did all of that at the instruction of Jehoiada, the high priest, who gave him godly counsel, good wisdom, and led him in the right ways. When Jehoiada died, who did Joash turn to? Instead of to the house of Jehoiada, to his own son, who was a godly man, he instead turned to the princes of Israel.
And the princes of Israel probably were his contemporaries, and his contemporaries were ungodly. And as we see in the text, his contemporaries encouraged him to bring back in the high places, to bring back in the false worship, to bring back in the worship of the pagan gods and the demonic spirits. And he did it.
And as we see here, the son, Zechariah of Jehoiada, was grieved in his spirit when he saw this. And he gathered those together that would hear him, and he condemned them. And we see in verse 20, and it says, And the Spirit of God came upon Zechariah, the son of Jehoiada, the priest, which stood above the people and said unto them, Thus saith God, Why transgress ye the commandments of the Lord, that ye cannot prosper? Because ye have forsaken the Lord, he hath forsaken you.
And he tells them like it is. He doesn’t wishy-washy it. Remember the prophets of Ahab, who was also a descendant of Joash from his mother’s side.
We see that the prophets would always tell Ahab what he wanted to hear, except Micaiah, the one godly prophet, who would always tell him the truth. And it would grieve Ahab, because he was telling him how judgment was coming. And Ahab didn’t want to hear it.
Well, this young man, who is the son of Jehoiada, this man Zechariah, was a prophet after that prophet. He didn’t care what Joash thought. He didn’t care what the people thought.
He only cared what the Lord’s word said and that the people would hear the Lord. Why? Because he knew the consequences of their disobedience. If they forsook God, God would forsake them.
And it was serious. And we see it’s very serious when they forsook the Lord. Joash didn’t believe it was a big deal, evidently, because not only did he not listen to Zechariah when he spoke these words, but he joined in a conspiracy against him.
You know, we think that conspiracies and desires to see godly men killed are something that’s just for our day. No, it goes way back. We see that the forces of evil always desire to silence the truth.
And that’s exactly what was happening here. The forces of evil, these young men, really inspired by Satan, who had the ear of the king, conspired against Zechariah and desired to put him to death. So they conspired against him and stoned him with stones.
And I want you to see at whose commandment it was. At the commandment of the king. Joash commanded it.
He had grown up with this man, Zechariah. Zechariah’s father had been a father to Joash. Joash had listened to his father when his father was alive, but the minute his father died, he wanted to listen to the false teachers of his day.
You know, we think that it’s something new in our era. We talked this morning about false doctrine and false teachers and coming in and deception and how we need to have, know what our foundation was built on. Is it built on the truth or is it built on lies? Well, Joash had no discernment and really didn’t have a heart after God.
He had a heart to obey Jehoiada because he appreciated what Jehoiada had done for him. But when Jehoiada was gone, he didn’t have a heart that desired to pursue the Lord, but he had a heart that desired to listen to those that were surrounding him, his contemporaries, even though they told him lies. And he had no desire to discern whether the lies were true or not, but joined in with them and became the chief perpetrator of the lies, having Zachariah killed.
And then also, it’s interesting, Joash the king remembered not the kindness which Jehoiada, his father, had done to him and slew his son. Later on, we’re going to see that he slew all the sons of Jehoiada, all the family. I mean, just turned wicked and evil.
And when he died, he said, the Lord look upon it and require it. In other words, when we see that Zechariah dies, he says, the Lord look upon this and bring judgment. Bring judgment, bring righteousness to that which is unrighteous.
And it came to pass at the end of the year that the host of Syria came up against him. Now, I want you to see this. Syria has constantly been a thorn in the side of Israel, going all the way back to the time of Jehoshaphat and prior to that.
Now, Syria had fought against Jehoshaphat. They fought against Jehoshaphat’s son. They fought against Jehoshaphat’s grandson.
And now they’re going to fight against Jehoshaphat’s great-grandson. But the Lord’s going to allow Syria to do this. And he is the one that is causing them to come up against Israel or Judah.
And one of the reasons he does is to bring judgment and to answer the dying prayer of Zechariah that justice would be dealt with on these young men. And I want you to see that Syria comes against Judah. And Judah has a huge army.
It says they have a strong force. Syria has a small army. Now, I want you to know that we studied about Jehoshaphat and how when he went into battle, he went into overwhelming odds against him.
And he went in praising the Lord, sending in the singers before the soldiers, praising God. And the Lord wiped out the whole army. He wiped out this mighty force.
Later on, Hezekiah, the same thing happens during the time of Hezekiah. We see that the same thing happened during the time of Gideon. God can take a few godly men and who trust the Lord and defeat the multitudes or defeat them Himself.
But also, if those who claim to be gods forsake the Lord, God can raise up ungodly men and use them in judgment against the godly. We see that not only does this happen here in the nation of Judah at this time, but it happened to Israel when the Assyrians came down and led them away into captivity because of their sin and rebellion against God. And we saw also that the Babylonians came down, an ungodly people who came down and led the southern kingdom of Judah into captivity because of their rebellion against God.
God will use the ungodly to bring justice upon those that claim to be His if those that claim to be His are forsaking Him. And that’s exactly what we see here. So God took a small amount of Syrian soldiers and defeated a huge army of those that were of Judah.
Why? Because those of Judah had forsaken the Lord. And they forgot where their power came from. They looked at the strength of their army and they looked at the strength of the Syrians.
Well, this is going to be a walk in the park. It’s not going to be an issue. Oh, it was an issue.
Not only did they come in and defeat the armies of Judah, but the text tells us that they immediately killed all the princes. All those that had been these great counselors to Joash were put to death. And not only were they put to death, but all of their possessions were taken by the Assyrians as their spoils of war.
And so all that they thought that their so-called, quote-unquote, gods could protect them from, instead of turning to the true God and incurring Joash to worship the true God, they paid a penalty. And Zechariah’s prayer was heard. Justice came.
But not only justice on them, but justice on Joash himself. And we see, it says here, For the army of the Syrians, in verse 24, For the army of the Syrians came with a small company of men, and the Lord delivered a very great host into their hand, because they had forsaken the Lord their God of their fathers. So they executed judgment against Joash.
And when they were departed from him, for they had left him in great diseases, and his own servants conspired against him for the blood of the sons of Jehoiada the priest. And so we see that his own servants conspired to take Joash’s life. They left him in great peril, the Syrians did.
And they took his life. And the reason they took his life was because he had killed all the sons of a godly man. And my guess is, the other sons were probably just about like Zechariah.
They’d followed in the footsteps of their parents. And that is why Joash despised them so much that he had them put to death. Now, sometimes we think, does God really bring justice on people? You know, right now in America, we had marvelous victories in the election, or at least it appears that way at the moment.
We need to pray for our leaders if they make right decisions. But it’s only by God’s mercy and grace that we didn’t have a continuing government desire to destroy everything, including our ability to meet as Christians. But if you look at it, it is God’s mercy and grace because our nation has killed how many millions of babies? And now they’re seeking to kill people by euthanasia.
Canada already has laws where your family members can’t stop you if you want to be put to death by a doctor. And horrible, just a cult of death that is tied to all the wickedness that we find here in worshipping the false gods, that God not only hated and despised or had abomination to them, but resulted in his hand of protection being removed from Judah. We need to continue to pray for God’s mercy and grace upon America, pray for repentance of God’s people, that they would turn back to him and understand the wickedness that our nation is involved in, and then call for true evangelism of those that aren’t Christians, that they come to know Christ.
Because God is merciful, God is long-suffering, but judgment will come, says the Lord. And judgment came on Joash. And it came very quickly.
And one last thing before we close this afternoon. It says, And Joash died and was buried in Jerusalem, but not in the sepulchres of the kings. Even though as a young man he tore down the high places, got rid of the false worship, he reintroduced it when he had the power and authority and Jehoiada was left.
Remember where it said Jehoiada was buried? Jehoiada was a high priest. But Jehoiada was acting and instructing Joash the king to do what God wanted a king to do. And it says that Jehoiada was buried in Jerusalem amongst the sepulchres of the kings.
It was a place where all of Judah, and earlier Israel when it was part of Judah, and later on when they would be reunited, they honored the burial places of the king. You go to Israel today, to Jerusalem today, and the sepulchre of David, they’re not exactly sure where it is, but they do honor the sepulchre of David. They acknowledge that he was the greatest king that ever governed in Israel.
And he was a man after God’s own heart. And even though many of the Jewish people today are not believers in Jesus as the Messiah, and many of them are still secular in their thinking, they still honor David. Because the Lord honored him.
The Lord honored Jehoiada. Even though he wasn’t a king, he was buried with the kings. Jehoash was buried outside the king’s sepulchres.
He was buried in another part of Jerusalem because of the wickedness of his heart. And it was for all the people to see and understand justice will come, justice will be paid, that which is an abomination to the Lord shall be dealt with. His mercy may be extended, His grace may be revealed, but there is a day where judgment will come.
And it needed to be understood in Judah that that day was at hand when Jehoash turned his back on God. Let’s just close in prayer. Father, I pray that you just help us to understand these truths, help us to apply these truths to our lives, help us to constantly seek your advice, not the counsel of our fellow men and even those that claim to be our friends, but may we seek your counsel above all else.
This we ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.