The Last Days of Joash

The Last Days of Joash Early Promise not Realized

All that Joash had done was to give his heart to Jehoiada, not to Jehovah. It is very easy to be outwardly religious by giving your heart to your mother, or your father, or your aunt, or your uncle, or some good person who helps you to do what is right. You are doing all this out of love to them, which is at best but a very secondary motive. God says, "My son, give Me thine heart." If your religion is taken up to please any creature, it is not the religion which pleases the Creator. Your homage is due, not to anyone here below, but to Him who sitteth in the heavens, whose kingdom ruleth over all. This yielding to godly influences may exist without any personal, vital godliness whatever. You may meet with God's people, and yet not be one of God's people. You may give attention to God's servant, and yet not be yourself God's servant. A young man may yield to his mother's advice, and yet never be really repentant on account of sin. He may listen to his father's word, and pay respect to the externals of his father's religion, but yet never have believed in the Lord Jesus Christ. You must yourselves repent, and yourselves believe in Christ, or else all the rest will aggravate your sin by increasing your responsibility, but it will not go even a hair's breadth towards your salvation. I would have every person examine himself to see whether his religion is vital to his own soul. Have you been born again? I enquire not now about your mother, or father, or friends. Have you been born again? Are you now condemned under sin, or are you justified by faith in Jesus Christ? There can be no proxies, and no sponsors here; every man must give account for himself to God; and each man, each woman, must come to the Saviour personally, and accept Him, and be saved by Him, or else eternal ruin is certain.

I do believe also that a character like that of Joash, a yielding character, an externally pious character, may even prevent men from being saved at all. I mean, you may take it for granted that you are saved; but you must not take anything for granted between God and your soul. I charge you to make sure work here; take your wealth for granted if you like; take the title-deeds of your estate for granted if you please; but between God and your soul let everything be settled, and straight, and clear, and sure, and have no mistakes about this matter. It is so easy to have been under religious influence from our youth up, and then to go on, year after year, never having raised the question whether we are Christians or not, saying to ourselves, "Of course it is all right." You will be much nearer the truth if you say, "Of course it is all wrong." You will be much more likely to come to an honest conclusion if you rather suspect yourself too much than believe in yourself too much; I am sure that, in speaking thus, I am giving you sound teaching.

After all, to be Under godly influences year after year, without any great trial or temptation, may leave the personal character altogether undeveloped. Some put children under restraint continually, never suffering them to have any sort of temptation. It is so with children sometimes in large institutions; they have not any money, and they cannot steal any, because there is nobody else who has any; they are kept out of the world altogether, they live only amongst their own company, and there is very much of prayer and everything that is good; and often, when they go out into the world, those who have trained them are altogether disappointed with them; yet they need not very much wonder. If a person on dry land thinks he can swim, it is not certain that he will swim when he gets into the sea. We must have some kind of test, or else we cannot be sure of the character; we cannot know whether a child is honest or not if it never has any chance to take that which is not its own. You cannot be sure about principle being in any young man if he has been kept under a glass case, and if his principles have never been tried. That was the condition of Joash; the real character of the man had never come out at all, because Jehoiada, as it were, covered him. He was guided and influenced by the high priest; but his own disposition only wanted an opportunity of developing itself.

I have heard of an officer in India, who had brought up a young leopard. It was completely tamed, apparently it was as tame as a cat, and the officer had no fear of his leopard. It went up and down the stairs, and entered into every room of his house; he never suspected for a single moment that it would be guilty of blood-shedding; but, while he was asleep, one afternoon, in his chair, the leopard licked his hand in all tenderness as a cat might have done; but after licking for a while, it licked too hard, and a little blood began to flow. It no sooner tasted blood than the old leopard spirit was up, and his master was his master no more. So does it happen to many that, by being shut in, and tamed, as it were, but not changed, subdued but not renewed, kept in check but not converted, there has come a time afterwards when the taste of blood has called out the old nature, and away the man has gone. You would never have thought that he could act as he did; but he did so because he had not a new nature. It was human nature held in check for a while, not the Spirit of God creating a new life, and infusing a new character into the soul. Do you see where I am coming to? I am speaking to those who have not passed from death unto life, to you who have never been renewed in the spirit of your mind. I do pray you not to imagine that natural religion is spiritual religion. Do not mistake the lessons learnt at your mother's knee for the teachings of the Holy Ghost, do not confuse a change with the change; and do not think that anything that can come to you by your first birth can serve your turn without a second birth. "Ye must be born again," or else, though you spent the first six years of your life in the house of God, and though you were started under the most hallowed influences, you only want an opportunity, a temptation, a peculiar stress laid upon you, and you will go off whither the old nature carries you, and you will find out for yourself, and to the horror of others, that all your early training had effected nothing, because it stopped short of the kingdom of God and His righteousness.

We like young people to be obedient, we are very glad to have to do with those plastic characters that are readily shaped; but, at the same time, we ought never to be too sure about them. A person with grit in his character, if really affected by the grace of God, may turn out a far better man than your too plastic, pliable character. How many we know who are very good, but there is nothing in them at all! We have known some others who were dreadfully hard to manage, and to get at; but when at last a change has been wrought by Divine grace, that very obstinacy and wilfulness of theirs, when sanctified, has given a strength to their character, and instead of being a drawback, it has been a help. This young Joash was exceedingly supple in the hand of Jehoiada, but alas! Jehoiada was dead. Other counsellors came and flattered him: "Now after the death of Jehoiada came the princes of Judah, and made obeisance to the king." Do you not see those gentlemen coming, bowing and scraping a hundred times before they get up to him? They "made obeisance to the king." Jehoiada had not often made much obeisance to him; he had treated him with due respect as his king, but he had also spoken to him honestly and faithfully. Joash had somebody to look up to while Jehoiada lived, and now he found himself a great man with everybody looking up to him; and the princes of Judah, the fashionable part of the realm, the respectable people who never had been worshippers of Jehovah, but who had always preferred the more recondite, ritualistic, and sensuous service of Baal, the philosophical god, came, and bowed, and made obeisance to the king.

I think I can hear what they said: "Royal sir, we congratulate you upon being released from leading-strings. Now you can think for yourself. It is a fine thing for a young man to be delivered from the power of his old uncle; he was no doubt a very excellent person, we were present at his funeral, and we paid him all due respect; still, he was a regular old fossil, one who never had made any progress at all. He clung to the worship of Jehovah, and served the God of his fathers. Royal sir, we congratulate you upon the liberty to which you have attained. Besides that, we fear that you have been considerably priest-ridden. This Jehoiada was a priest, and of course you respected and venerated his character; but you could not indulge yourself as long as he lived. We have always had high thoughts of you, royal sir, we always believed that you would break out one of these days; and now that the good man is laid asleep, we are sure that you will not let his dead hand rest upon you, but you will wake up, and be abreast of the age, and keep up with the spirit of the times."

You know how they do it; it is always being done, this pouring of drops of poison into the ear, these soft, subtle flatteries. Even when a man has reached Joash's age, he is not beyond the power of flattery; I wonder how old a man would be when he would be too old to love flattery. Of course, he always likes to be told, "Ah, dear sir, I know that you could not bear flattery," being at that moment more highly flattered than at any other time in his life. So these princes of Judah did; and poor Joash, good Joash, Joash who repaired the temple, Joash who was even more intensely earnest than Jehoiada himself, was led astray by the soft words of the deceivers, and we find him burying his religion with his uncle. In Jehoiada's grave he buried all his piety. Some whom I have known, and over whom I have wept, have acted in the same way.

After that, he went off to sin. The images which he had broken down were set up again; the groves which he had cut down were planted again; and he who seemed so zealous a servant of Jehovah had now become a worshipper of the foul Ashtaroth, and bowed before the accursed Baalim. Oh, sad, sad, sad mischief this! There was a want of principle in Joash, and it is of that I want to warn all. Do not be satisfied with the practice without the principles of piety. It is not enough to have a correct creed; you must have a renewed heart. It is not sufficient to have an ornate ritual; you must have a holy life, and to be holy you must be renewed by the Holy Spirit. If this change is not wrought in you by the Holy Ghost, you who yield so readily to good will yield just as quickly to evil.

What happened next? Joash refused reproof. God sent prophets to the people, and they came, and warned them, testifying against the idolaters: "But they would not give ear." This Joash, who had spent his first six years in the temple, now would not give ear to the Lord's prophets. He was always ready to listen to Jehoiada, but now he would not give ear. He was a tremendous zealot for repairing the temple, with most costly architecture, and gold and silver without limit; but now he will not give heed to God's servants at all. They may speak with all their heart and soul; but he is as the deaf adder that will not hear the voice of the charmer, charm he never so wisely.

Yet he was once your good young man, your pious young man! Oh, what a sifter London has been to many like Joash! Many do I remember whose story was like this. They had been to the house of God always; they were brought up where there was a family altar in the house; everybody reckoned them to be Christians; and they came to London. At first, they went where their father exhorted them to go, to some humble place where the gospel was preached; but after a time they thought it was not wrong to go on the Sunday to see one of the more showy religious places. That done, they went to some showy place that was not religious. They worked so hard all the week that they must go out a little into the fresh air on the Sunday; and by degrees they found companions who led them, little by little, from the path of integrity and chastity, till "the good young man" was as vile as any on the streets of London, and he who seemed to be a saint became not only a sinner, but the maker of sinners.

What did Joash do next? He slew his friend's son. Old Jehoiada's son, Zechariah, one of those who had helped to put the crown upon young Joash's head, was at last moved to come out, and speak in the midst of the temple service to the people, as he had a right to do; and he began to upbraid them for turning aside from Jehovah to the worship of the foul idol gods. Now, see, the tiger's blood is up! Joash bids them kill him. How dare he testify against his king? True, he is the son of his best friend, he is his own cousin, he is one who helped him to ascend the throne; but what matters all that to this once good young man? The milk of human kindness is soured now. The oil that was so soft burns fiercely when it once takes fire. "Let Zechariah die. Kill him in the temple. Bespatter the sacred altar with his blood. Stone him. He has dared to speak against me." See your soft clay, how hard and coarse, and rough it has become! I have seen this change come over men. I believe that the worst persecutors in the world are generally made of those who once were tender and soft-hearted. Nero would at first scarcely sign the death-warrant of a criminal; and yet he lived to delight in wholesale murder. When the son of perdition was wanted to betray his Lord, the raw material of the traitor was found in an apostle. You cannot make an out-and-out bad man except from one who seems to be good. You must take the man who has been six years in the temple, the man who has done that which is right in the sight of the Lord all the days of Jehoiada, to make such a devil as Joash turned out to be when he killed the son of his benefactor in the court of the house of the Lord. Oh, I could look steadily in the face of some, and in the spirit of prophecy I could burst out into tears to think of what they will yet be, what they will yet do, and what they will yet say! Perhaps you ask, "Is thy servant a dog that he should do this thing?" Oh, sir, you are worse than a dog; there lurks within you a heart "deceitful above all things, and desper-ately wicked, who can know it?" Oh, that you did know it, and would turn to God, and say, "O Lord, renew me! Lord, make a new creature of me! Lord, save me, that I never may do such things as now, to-day, I think it impossible that I should ever do!" This Joash, perishing, miserable, having no faith in God, robbed the temple, and gave all the gold and treasures unto Hazael the Syrian. Personally, he was full of disease, and by-and-by his own servants, disgusted with him for his conduct towards Jehoiada's son, slew him on his bed. What a death for the young man who was six years hidden away in the house of the Lord!

Oh, if I could tell some of you what will become of you, you would be so angry with me! If I could prophesy to some good young fellow—I mean, outwardly good as Joash was at first, but without a new heart, without the grace of God in his soul,—if I could prophesy to him what he will be, he would spit in my face in indignation that I should dare to foretell such a thing. There is not a man or woman who is safe from the most abominable sin until they yield themselves to Christ. There is not one who is sure that the deepest damnation of hell will not be your portion unless you come and commit your soul into the hands of Jesus, who is a faithful Keeper of them that put their trust in Him. Can there be a Character Insurance Society? There can be no such society formed by men that can insure our character; yet God has formed one. "The righteous also shall hold on his way; and he that hath clean hands shall be stronger and stronger." The Lord will keep him, and preserve him from evil, for "the path of the just is as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day." I do adjure you, by the living God, my hopeful young friend, yield yourself to Jesus Christ, and seek His guardian care, lest the fair blossom of to-day should never bring forth fruit, but end in disappointment!