Mining Treasures From God’s House
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/…
Here we get an overview of the first part of Joash’s reign. He sets out to restore the temple of the Lord, he gathers money, he sticks with it, he makes repairs, he remakes the utensils of silver and gold etc. What he did was good! He was remaking what God had commanded Solomon to make. He was setting apart the house of God, the place where He would come to His people in His promises as the most important thing in the kingdom – in the world! But Joash does not stick to his guns. As soon as he hears that Hazael, King of Syria, is going to come and attack Jerusalem, he abandons all that he had been doing before and takes all the riches of the temple of the Lord and sends them to Hazael to appease him.
Foolishness! Joash had taken the wrong riches from the house of God. There God had promised to be with His people. There God had promised to bless them and to establish David’s throne and through His line to send a savior. There were the rich promises of Heaven for the taking. Joash could have grabbed those and known that God would not deliver them over to Syria. Instead, he took the cheap, fading treasures of this world away from God to give to Hazael because Joash’s fear of Hazael was greater than His fear of the Lord, greater than His trust.
And we do the same thing. When you give in to peer pressure to do something that you know is wrong, you are fearing men more than God. When you worry about difficulties that arise in your life and turn your attention away from God’s Word and God’s forgiveness to the problem, you are turning away from the promise treasure-trove that God has given to you. When you fail to give freely to the Lord out of love for what He has given to you, you are valuing the treasures of this world more highly than the inestimable treasures of grace and mercy which are yours in Christ Jesus. Peter said it right when he said that you were not redeemed with corruptible things like silver or gold but with the holy, precious blood of Christ. That has far more value. Mine those riches from God’s house and give Him the best that you have.
In Christ
Pastor Ude