WWUTT 669 All the People Rejoiced to Give?

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To love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength means that you worship

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Him even in your giving. We see that kind of worship being done in Judah, giving to the

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Lord with a cheerful heart when we understand the text. This is

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When We Understand The Text, a daily Bible commentary to help encourage your time in the Word. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday we feature

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New Testament Study, an Old Testament book on Thursday and our Q &A on Friday.

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Now here's your teacher, Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky. Well, in our Thursday study in the

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Old Testament, we've been in 2 Chronicles and today we'll be looking at chapters 23 and 24.

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Last week we considered a period of three wicked rulers in Judah, Jehoram, Ahaziah and Athaliah, two kings and a queen.

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And where we pick up the story today in chapter 23, Athaliah is still on the throne. These really were some dark years in Judah.

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Some darker years are coming more toward the end when God finally gets fed up with Judah and turns them over to the hands of their enemies.

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But this period that we're in right now, this really is a picture of how bad company corrupts good character and how deep that goes.

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Because remember, we just came off of decades of righteous kings in Asa and Jehoshaphat who not only feared

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God, but brought many great reforms to Judah. But Jehoshaphat made an alliance with Israel.

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He thought he was doing the right thing. But Israel was a wicked nation who not only didn't fear

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God, but they worshipped many false gods, including golden calves. And part of that alliance meant that Jehoshaphat gave his son

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Jehoram to be married to the daughter of the king of Israel. So when Jehoshaphat died and Jehoram assumed the throne, he killed all of his siblings and some of the princes in Israel.

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He was a very gruesome king and he died a very gruesome death. The Lord afflicted him with a disease in which his bowels came out over a period of two years.

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So then after him, Ahaziah became king and had a very short reign.

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He was ultimately killed by Jehu in Israel. And then Athaliah, who was

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Ahaziah's mother, is now on the throne. And Jehoshabeth, the daughter of Ahaziah, has taken her son

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Joash and hidden him in the temple so that he will not be killed by Athaliah. So Joash is going to become king of Judah.

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And in the history of the kings of Judah, he's considered one of the righteous kings, but he's actually kind of a mixture of good and bad.

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There are great things about him, but there were some evil things as well. So it really is going to take some time for Judah to shake off the evil that came about after Jehoram became king.

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And they never really are the same, though. We'll see two wonderfully righteous kings in Hezekiah and Josiah coming up much later.

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Most of the rest of this period in Judah is steeped in sin. And it just shows us how a king cannot save his people, cannot bring righteousness to his people, no matter how righteous that king is.

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Because when we get to Hezekiah, the king that follows him is Manasseh, who was incredibly wicked. And though Josiah also brought many reforms to Judah and probably the most thorough reforms to Judah, it did not bring righteousness because after him was

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Jehoaz, Jehoiakim, Jehoiakim, Zedekiah, those wicked kings that would eventually result in the

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Lord turning Judah over to the hands of their enemies. So even the righteous kings could not change the hearts of the people.

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It would take a most righteous king to do that. All of this pointing toward Jesus Christ, who was going to come from the line of David.

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In first and second Kings, we bounced between the kings of Israel and the kings of Judah. But in first and second

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Chronicles, the chronicler is only concerned with who's on the throne of David, because that's where the covenant is.

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And God had promised that the Messiah was going to come from the line of David. So the people are looking for that Messiah.

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And likewise, we're anticipating that in the story. And we know that Christ is going to come to save more than just the

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Jews, but reconciling Jews and Gentiles to himself, forgiving their sins and making them righteous in the presence of God by his death on the cross and resurrection from the grave.

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So here we go. Second Chronicles chapter 23, beginning in verse one. But in the seventh year,

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Jehoiada took courage and entered into a covenant with the commanders of hundreds. And we have the names of those commanders there.

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Verse two. And they went about through Judah and gathered the Levites from all the cities of Judah and the heads of father's houses of Israel.

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And they came to Jerusalem. And all the assembly made a covenant with the king in the house of God. And Jehoiada said to them, behold, the king's son, let him reign as the

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Lord spoke concerning the sons of David. This is the thing that you shall do of you priests and Levites who come off duty on the

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Sabbath. One third shall be gatekeepers and one third shall be at the king's house and one third at the gate of the foundation.

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And all the people shall be in the courts of the house of the Lord. Let no one enter the house of the

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Lord except the priests and ministering Levites. They may enter for they are holy, but all the people shall keep the charge of the

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Lord. The Levites shall surround the king, each with his weapons in his hand. And whoever enters the house shall be put to death.

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Be with the king when he comes in and when he goes out. And this king that we're talking about here is

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Joash. The Levites and all Judah did according to all that Jehoiada the priest commanded.

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And they each brought his men who were to go off duty on the Sabbath with those who were to come off duty on the

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Sabbath for Jehoiada the priest did not dismiss the divisions. And Jehoiada the priest gave to the captains the spears and the large and small shields that had been

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King David's, which were in the house of God. And he set all the people as a guard for the king.

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Every man with his weapons in his hand from the south side of the house to the north side of the house around the altar in the house.

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Then they brought out the king's son and put the crown on him and gave him the testimony and they proclaimed him king and Jehoiada and his sons anointed him and they said, long live the king.

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So this is something that is being done for Joash while he is very, very young. And this covenant with the king that was made probably included the arrangements under which

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Joash would rule, including those who would make decisions in his stead until he reached adulthood.

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Because as we read in chapter 24, Joash was seven years old when he began to reign and he would reign in Judah for for 40 years.

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So while he is this young, this is the this is what is going to be done in the temple to protect him and also continue to provide judgment over Judah.

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Then verse verse 12, we read about how Athaliah's reign came to an end when

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Athaliah heard the noise of the people running and praising the king. She went into the house of the

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Lord to the people. And when she looked, there was the king standing by his pillar at the entrance and the captains and the trumpeters beside the king and all the people of the land rejoicing and blowing trumpets and the singers with their musical instruments leading in the celebration.

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And Athaliah tore her clothes and cried treason, treason.

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Then Jehoiada, the priest, brought out the captains who were set over the army, saying to them, bring her out between the ranks and anyone who follows her is to be put to death with the sword.

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For the priest said, do not put her to death in the house of the Lord. So they laid hands on her and she went into the entrance of the horse gate of the king's house and they put her to death there.

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Remember, we've read in several places in the Old Testament that often the judgments of the city were made in the gates because that's where the people would come.

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That's where the judges would be and they would make their official judicial decisions there. And so that's where Athaliah was ultimately killed there, where a judgment was made against her in the gates for her wickedness.

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So this would end the really dark period in Judah, that that period that was dominated by those three wicked rulers that we talked about last week.

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So now we come into a period of kind of partial righteousness and there's still some bad things that will go on during that period as well.

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And the four kings are Joash, Amaziah, Azariah and Jotham.

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Then we get to Ahaz, who is supremely wicked. That will be a later time. So here's what we read about Jehoiada's reforms.

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Remember the the priest and then Joash is going to take over where Jehoiada left off when we get to chapter 24.

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And Jehoiada made a covenant between himself and all the people and the king that they should be the

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Lord's people. Then all the people went to the house of Baal and tore it down.

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His altars and his images, they broke in pieces and they killed Matan, the priest of Baal before the altars.

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And Jehoiada posted watchmen for the house of the Lord under the direction of the Levitical priests and the

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Levites, whom David had organized to be in charge of the house of the Lord to offer burnt offerings to the

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Lord, as it is written in the law of Moses, with rejoicing and with singing according to the order of David.

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So before we keep going here, notice that when Athaliah was put to death, she was not to be put to death in the temple, not in the house of God, but it was to happen in the gates of judgment.

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Whereas when Matan, who was the high priest of Baal, was killed, he was killed in the house of Baal.

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They didn't take him out to the gates. They killed him right there in the temple to this false god. Why? Because the people of Judah feared the

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Lord God, the true God who created all of heaven and earth, whereas they had no fear whatsoever of Baal because he's a false god.

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He's made up, doesn't even exist. And they showed that they had no fear of Baal by putting the priest of Baal to death in his own house rather than in the gates.

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So then going on here, verse 19, he stationed the gatekeepers at the gates of the house of the Lord so that no one should enter who was in any way unclean.

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And he took the captains, the nobles, the governors of the people and all the people of the land. And they brought the king down from the house of the

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Lord, marching through the upper gate to the king's house. And they set the king on the royal throne, royal throne.

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Sorry. So all the people of the land rejoiced and the city was quiet after Athaliah had been put to death with the sword.

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Chapter 24, Joash was seven years old when he began to reign and he reigned 40 years in Jerusalem.

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His mother's name was Zebiah of Beersheba. And Joash did what was right in the eyes of the

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Lord. All the days of Jehoiada the priest, Jehoiada got for him two wives and he had sons and daughters.

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After this, Joash decided to restore the house of the Lord and he gathered the priests and the

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Levites and said to them, go out to the cities of Judah and gather from all

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Israel money to repair the house of your God from year to year and see that you act quickly.

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But the Levites did not act quickly. So the king summoned Jehoiada the chief and said to him, why have you not required the

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Levites to bring in from Judah and Jerusalem the tax levied by Moses, the servant of the Lord and the congregation of Israel for the tent of testimony for the sons of Athaliah?

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That wicked woman had broken into the house of God and had also used all the dedicated things of the house of the

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Lord for the bales. We still see this continued pattern of bad company, corrupts, good character.

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The evils of these kings that had been over Judah still hasn't been completely abolished because the effects of their evil are seen in their posterity.

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So verse eight, so the king commanded and they made a chest and set it outside the gate of the house of the

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Lord and proclamation was made throughout Judah and Jerusalem to bring in for the Lord the tax that Moses, the servant of God, laid on Israel in the wilderness.

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And all the princes and all the people rejoiced and brought their tax and dropped it into the chest until they had finished.

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And whenever the chest was brought to the king's officers by the Levites, when they saw that there was much money in it, the king's secretary and the officer of the chief priest would come and empty the chest and take it and return it to its place.

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Thus, they did day after day and collected money in abundance. Now, I want to say something about this, even though I don't believe that the temple tax or the tithe system or things like that in the

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Old Testament is the way that giving is supposed to be done in the church today. Nonetheless, we are supposed to give, as the apostle

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Paul told the Corinthians related to their giving in second Corinthians, chapter nine. He who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly.

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But he who gives bountifully will also reap bountifully for everyone should give according to what he believes in his heart, that he should give and not with reluctance or under compulsion, but that they should be a cheerful giver.

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And that's exactly what we see Judah doing here. They are giving cheerfully. They rejoiced and brought their tax and dropped it into the chest until they had finished.

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That's in verse 10. All the princes and the people rejoiced. Our giving in church is supposed to be an act of worship.

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It's part of our worship. Several years ago, I had I was considering how we do things in our church.

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I just basically making sure that everything that we did was according to what God said the church was supposed to do in the scriptures.

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So we were bringing reformation to our church, going back to the originally intended purpose of the church.

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Everything was being considered, even the order of service positions that people had, making sure the teaching was right in our classes and coming from the pulpit.

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Of course, that was that was central. But letting that teaching affect even the way that the church operated.

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And one of those things that I considered was the offering during service, passing around the offering plate. Is this the way that we need to be taking up the offering?

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And I listened to several different preachers talk about that, one of whom was a more reformed preacher.

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I think in recent years it's kind of been revealed that he was not as biblically sound as was originally thought.

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I'm not going to say who that was. But in the in the message that he gave about giving to his church, he said that that they don't pass offering plates at all.

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They have a box in the back, very similar to what we're reading about here in Second Chronicles 24.

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Only it wasn't in the back. It was there before the people. But but they had this box that people could go and drop money into if they wanted.

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And there was no sort of guilt trip or obligation to give by passing the offering plate around. And so I presented that to my.

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Deacons at the time, we had not yet installed plurality eldership. Like I said, everything was under consideration, but I brought that to the deacons and offered that as an idea.

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What if we don't do an offering plate anymore during service and we just have that box in the back? And one of my deacons, very wise man who is now one of our elders,

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Davis, his name, he really convicted my heart when he said, no, I don't think that we should do that, because everything that we do during our worship service on Sunday morning is worship.

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And that includes giving. We are to worship in giving and let our church be full of cheerful givers who would gladly drop their worship offering into the plate as an act of worship unto the

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Lord. And I think he was absolutely right that the giving that we do, even during church, is supposed to be an act of worship.

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And this is what we see being modeled in Judah here with the giving that they gave when the giving was not front and center, when it was not something that all of Judah was being encouraged to do, that there was some thievery going on because it wasn't something that was in the mindset of all of the people of Judah.

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But then once everybody started coming and giving cheerfully, it's like they couldn't even keep the box empty.

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They had to empty it out and then put it back out there again so that the people would come and continue to bring their offering day after day.

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They collected money in abundance. So let that be an encouragement to you when you're considering what it is that you should be giving to your church, whatever that would be.

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Give with a cheerful heart. And remember that it is an act of worship unto

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God that you support the ministry of the church, what they are doing, not just in your community, but even around the world if they're sending out missionaries, which

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I hope truly they're doing. So verse 12 now. And the king and Jehoiada gave the money to those who had charged the work of the house of the

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Lord, 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 God.

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So those who were engaged in the work labored and the repairing went forward in their hands and they restored the house of God to its proper condition and strengthened it.

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And when they had finished, they brought the rest of the money before the king and Jehoiada and with it were made utensils for the house of the

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Lord, both for the service and for the burnt offerings and the dishes for incense and vessels of gold and silver.

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And they offered burnt offerings in the house of the Lord regularly all the days of Jehoiada. But Jehoiada grew old and full of days and he died.

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He was 130 years old at his death and they buried him in the city of David among the kings because he had done good in Israel and toward God and his house.

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Remember, he was not a king, but they treated him as a king because of how wonderfully righteous he was to have protected the rightful heir to the throne of Judah and also treated the house of the

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Lord with such reverence. Verse 17. Now, after the death of Jehoiada, the princes of Judah came and paid homage to the king.

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Then the king listened to them and they abandoned the house of the Lord, the

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God of their fathers, and served the Asherim and the idols. And wrath came upon Judah and Jerusalem for this guilt of theirs.

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Yet he sent prophets among them to bring them back to the Lord. These testified against them, but they would not pay attention.

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So remember, remember, I made the comment that even though Joash is considered a righteous king, we read that in chapter 24, verse 2,

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Joash did what was right in the eyes of the Lord. But there's a caveat to that. All of the days of Jehoiada, the priest.

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So once Jehoiada died, then Joash started listening to false counsel and Judah started falling back into the same sins that they were doing before Jehoiada brought the reforms that he did to Judah.

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So now we read about Joash's treachery. Again, he was a mix of righteous and bad, did some great things, but also did some evil things.

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This is verse 20. Then the spirit of God clothed Zechariah, the son of Jehoiada, the priest, and he stood above the people and said to them, thus says

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God, why do you break the commandments of the Lord so that you cannot prosper? Because you have forsaken the

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Lord. He has forsaken you. But they conspired against him and by command of the king, they stoned him with stones in the court of the house of the

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Lord. Thus, Joash, the king, did not remember the kindness that Jehoiada, Zechariah's father, had shown him, but killed his son.

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And when he was dying, he said, may the Lord see and avenge. At the end of the year, the army of the

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Syrians came up against Joash. They came to Judah and Jerusalem and destroyed all the princes of the people from among the people and sent all their spoil to the king of Damascus.

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Though the army of the Syrians had come with few men, the Lord delivered into their hand a very great army because Judah had forsaken the

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Lord, the God of their fathers. Thus, they executed judgment on Joash.

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When they had departed from him, leaving him severely wounded, his servants conspired against him because of the blood of the son of Jehoiada, the priest, and killed him on his bed.

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So he died and they buried him in the city of David. But they did not bury him in the tombs of the kings.

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Those who conspired against him were Zabad, the son of Shimeath, the Ammonite, and Jehozabad, the son of Shemreith, the

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Moabite. Accounts of his sons and of the many oracles against him and of the rebuilding of the house of God are written in the story of the book of the kings and Amaziah, his son, reigned in his place.

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And Amaziah, like Joash, is going to be a mix of righteousness and badness. And we're going to read about him next week in chapter 25.

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So notice here that Jehoiada was treated as a king, but Joash was treated as though he wasn't king because he was not buried with the kings.

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He was buried in the city of David, but not in the tombs of the kings. May the

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Lord keep us steadfast to the very end. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.

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And may your worship of God be reflected, even in your giving. You can find a complete list of videos, books, devotionals, and other resources online at www .tt