Faith Revealed When We Stand Alone

Noting how hard it is to finish well as the year draws to a close, this passage deals with the life of King Joash, who became king at a young age and repaired the temple. While he was under the protection of the godly high priest Jehoiada, he did what was right before God and accomplished the great work of repairing the temple. But after that protection was gone, he fell back into a compromising faith without removing the high places, the breeding ground of idolatry, and in the end met a miserable death.

The sermon points out that Joash's failure to remove the high places was not a simple failure but a half-hearted obedience that leaned on someone else's faith. Even behind the outwardly beautiful achievement of repairing the temple, he had not removed the idols in his heart, so his faith collapsed as soon as the protection from outside was cut off. It warns that this is no different from believers today who compromise God's commands for their own standards or convenience and live holding on to something like the high places.

True faith must have the staying power to stand alone and hold on to God even when the protection of those who went before us, or our circumstances, are gone. As the new year approaches, the sermon calls us to look back at whose spiritual protection we are sheltering under, and to check whether our faith is ready to stand on its own.