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Context No. 1656 of 4322 · 2 Chronicles

Context · Reflection

2 Chronicles 24:15-19: in context

15But Jehoiada grew old and was full of days, and he died. He was one hundred thirty years old when he died. 16They buried him in David’s city among the kings, because he had done good in Israel, and toward God and his house. 17Now after the death of Jehoiada, the princes of Judah came and bowed down to the king. Then the king listened to them. 18They abandoned the house of the LORD, the God of their fathers, and served the Asherah poles and the idols, so wrath came on Judah and Jerusalem for this their guiltiness. 19Yet he sent prophets to them to bring them again to the LORD, and they testified against them; but they would not listen.

Jehoiada the priest, who had guided King Joash from childhood and led the nation back to God, dies at a great age, honored and buried among the kings. But after his death, the princes of Judah come and flatter the king, and Joash listens to them; they abandon the house of the LORD and turn to idols, and wrath comes upon the land. God sends prophets to call them back, but they will not listen.

The turn in Joash's life is sobering. As long as Jehoiada lived, Joash did what was right; the old priest's steadying influence kept him on the path. But the moment Jehoiada died and that influence was gone, Joash drifted, listened to flatterers, and abandoned the God he had seemed to serve. His faithfulness, it turned out, had leaned on another man; it was not truly his own, and when the prop was removed, it collapsed. There is a searching warning in this. It is possible to appear faithful while we are held up by someone else's faith, a godly parent, mentor, spouse, or friend whose influence keeps us on the path; and yet for that faithfulness never to have become genuinely our own. The test comes when the influence is removed, when the godly person dies or moves away or is no longer there to steady us; then it becomes plain whether our faith stands on its own or fell with the prop. Joash did right while Jehoiada lived and abandoned God when he died, and the tragedy is that his devotion was really Jehoiada's, borrowed and not owned. It is worth asking whose faith we are living on. If our walk with God depends on someone else's influence, it is fragile, and will not survive that person's absence. The faith that lasts is the faith we have made our own, rooted in our own relationship with God, that stands even when those who once steadied us are gone.

Whose faith am I living on, my own or someone else's, and if the godly influence that steadies me were removed, would my devotion stand on its own or, like Joash's when Jehoiada died, collapse, and have I made my walk with God genuinely mine rather than a thing propped up by another?

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