This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

Welcome back to day four of our sixth week of Looking Through First and Second
Kings. We've turned today to begin to look at the faith of some of the good
kings of Israel and especially Judah. When I think about their faith, I really
think about what it's like to have to swim upstream in difficult waters.

I can remember the swimming hole that I used to swim in in the Russian River
when I was a kid. Big swimming hole. Most of it you could swim in and really
enjoy, but if you got too far out, there was a portion of it where the current
was so fast, you could actually swim as fast as you could against the current
and get nowhere.

And if you stopped swimming for just a second, you would just go straight
downstream because the current was so strong. Well, that's the way our world is.
There is a current of evil in our world that's very, very strong.

And many times as followers of Christ, trying to live the life that He wants us
to live, we feel like we're in that current trying to swim upstream. And the
truth of the matter is, you get tired. Sometimes we feel like we're having to
fight it like a swimmer.

And we feel like years of swimming and we've gotten nowhere. I want to share
with you, and we're going to see in the lives of these kings, that there is
another alternative. It's called getting in a boat with a motor.

It's called trusting in a power source that's outside of yourself. We don't just
trust in ourselves in this world, we're trusting in God's power. My power, it's
not greater than the current of this world, but God's power is much greater and
it's going to last forever.

So as we come to the end of Second Kings, read through these chapters, Israel
and Judah, the nations, the Northern Kingdom and the Southern Kingdom are about
to fall. And following the ministries of the prophets Elijah and Elisha, it's
going to be mostly downhill. There's a lot of kings that don't do what the Lord
told them to do, do not follow in the ways of the Lord.

And yet there are a few kings who stand up for what's right in the midst of the
wrong. They seem to be able to find that boat with a motor in it to carry
themselves and their entire nation out of a time of decline and into a period of
faith during their reign. The prominent three of these are named Joash and
Hezekiah and Josiah.

Each of them were faithful to the Lord when it wasn't the pattern of their day.
And each of them found the power to change a nation during their reign. And as
we look at their lives, I want to ask the question, what made the difference?

Because we can learn from them what made the difference. We're going to see,
looking at their lives over the next several days, that they show us where to
find the kind of power to have an outstanding faith, a faith that stands out
from the crowd, that makes a difference even when no one else is making a
difference. There was a significant accomplishment that the faith that each of
these had brought to their reigns.

Joash rebuilt the place of worship, the temple, because he had faith. Hezekiah
removed the high places of idol worship, of false worship, because he had faith.
And Josiah rediscovered God's word.

He renewed the covenant with God's people because he had faith. These
accomplishments, each of them, teach us about what it takes to have an
outstanding faith. So we're going to start today by looking at Joash.

He was the man who repaired the temple, who rebuilt the place of worship. Listen
to what happens in 2 Kings chapter 12, starting in verse 1. In the seventh year
of Jehu, Joash became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem forty years.

His mother's name was Zubiah, and she was from Beersheba. Joash did what was
right in the eyes of the Lord. All the years, Jehoiada the priest instructed
him.

And one of the things that he did that was right is he rebuilt the place of
worship. There's something in my life, in your life, that we can learn from
Joash. If you're going to have an outstanding faith, the place of worship has to
remain strong in your life.

It is the foundation of your faith. Years ago, when Shondell and I, my wife and
I were younger, we were in a flood that completely destroyed our community. All
the houses were destroyed.

The street that was in front of us was totally destroyed. It just became dirt.
It just was washed away.

But the main street that was a few streets over from us, it wasn't affected at
all. We drove on it after the flood, just as before the flood. The difference
was our street had been just laid on dirt.

This other street, one of the main streets, they'd brought in gravel. They'd put
in a really good foundation under this street. So even when the flood came
through, it didn't destroy the street.

It had a good foundation. Worship provides the foundation that you need in a
busy world. How long has it been since you really worshiped?

How often do you worship? Not just attend worship, that's not what I'm talking
about. But give your attention to worship.

When you look at Joash's experience, it reminds us of some wonderful truths
about keeping worship at the center of our inner lives. If I'm going to keep
worship at that foundational place in my life, there are three or four things
I've got to do. First, you have to be willing to pay the price.

There is a price to be paid. In Joash's case, he was rebuilding a temple, there
was a literal cost to be paid. In verses four down through verse five, Joash
said to the priest, "Collect all the money that is brought as sacred offerings
to the temple of the Lord.

" The money collected at the census, the money received from personal vows, and
the money brought voluntarily to the temple. Let every priest receive the money
from one of the treasurers and let it be used to repair whatever damage is found
in the temple. It takes money to invest in this place of worship.

That's part of the cost. And when you look at your life, at my life, there is a
personal cost to worship. The greater cost is not financial, really the greatest
cost is your time.

You give your valuable time to worship the Lord. Time from your day, time from
your weekend. The price that you pay is an investment, it's an investment in
your faith, it's an investment in eternity.

It is worth it. So many times you think, "I don't have time to worship, I go
through the same feelings, I don't have time to go to small group, I've got
something more important to do. " When the truth of the matter is, if I'm going
to have an outstanding faith, I've got to pay the price to worship.

And many times that's the cost of giving it the time that it deserves. One thing
that we learn to do from King Joe Ash is, you have to constantly re-evaluate
your commitment to worship. You can't just say, "I'm committed to it," and then
forget it.

You have to keep re-evaluating it. Listen to what happens in verses 6 down
through verse 8, "By the 23rd year of King Joe Ash, the priest still had not
repaired the temple. Therefore, King Joe Ash summoned Jehoi to the priest and
the other priest and asked them, 'Why aren't you repairing the damage done to
the temple?

Take no more money from your treasurers, but hand it over for repairing the
temple. ' And the priest agreed that they would not collect any more money from
the people and that they would not repair the temple themselves. " Once you've
made a commitment to worship, you can't just put it on automatic, because you'll
automatically forget it.

By the 23rd year of the reign, the job was still not done. Jehoi said, "This is
what you're supposed to do, but it just went undone year after year after year.
" You know how easy it is to forget important things.

When you look at your own life, do you wonder what happened to your commitment
to daily worship the Lord? Maybe you're reading the Bible on a regular basis,
but you're not doing that anymore. You're listening to drive-time devotions.

If you're doing that on a regular basis, then you have been re-evaluating your
commitment. You are saying, "I want to give it valuable time. " When we go away
from time in worshiping the Lord by ourselves individually and also together on
the weekends at church, most likely there's no major break that causes that.

Usually it's just because we put it on automatic. We've got to recognize our
tendency to put our public worship on automatic. If you don't re-evaluate your
commitment, worship can easily turn into a rote habit rather than a meeting with
God.

Then you'll spend less and less time doing it, and sometimes even stop doing it
because of that. You have to re-evaluate in order to keep worship at the center
of your life. A third thing that you have to do that we learned from Joash is
you have to constantly re-organize to keep your commitment fresh.

Joash had to re-organize the way this work was being done in order to get it
done. Now, notice we just read the priest said, "We won't do the work ourselves.
" He fired them so that he could get the right people in to do the work.

He rearranged the accounting procedures, and later he's going to re-appoint some
different men to supervise the work. When you look at your life, if you're going
to keep worship at the center of your life, some reorganization is necessary to
renew your commitment to worship. Even one little change can make a huge
difference, and you have to do that to keep worship fresh in your life.

It can be small things like a different time or a different place for your daily
worship of the Lord. You begin to do it at noon or at night rather than in the
morning as you usually have, or usually you've gone into your office and you've
spent a few minutes before work there, but then you decide, "You know, during
this season I'm going to spend a few minutes outside talking to the Lord,
reading his word before I start the day. " It's amazing what a little change can
do for your worship.

It might mean a different weekend schedule. You get up a little bit earlier, or
you share the workload differently. Your family has changed.

There's more busyness in the morning. You've got to share the workload. Guys, if
you happen to be sitting out in the car waiting for your family, honking the
horn, hoping they're going to get there on time, guess what?

Maybe you need to share the workload a little bit more so that everybody can
worship in a better way. It could be simple things like going to bed earlier so
you can wake up more refreshed in order to worship the Lord. It could be trying
something different in your worship time.

Maybe you've never sung during that time. You can do it in your car or someplace
where nobody will ever hear you, but you can try singing a song or some other
different thing. Read more verses or fewer verses.

Read from a different translation. It's amazing how reorganizing just a few
little changes can make a huge difference in your time of worship. If your
worship has grown stale, try something different.

You don't go away from God's word. You don't go away from prayer. Those are the
foundations, but you just do it in a little bit different way.

These are the things that we learned from Joash about how we can keep worship at
the center of our lives. And that's one of the keys to living with an
outstanding faith. I want to pray for you and I both that God will give us
encouragement in this.

Lord, I pray that you'll encourage us in this habit of worship. Lord, help us to
remember that when we connect with you, it changes everything about us. And
Lord, if it has grown stale, if we are growing tired in our worship, I pray
you'd Wisdom in how to recommit to worship, wisdom in how to change one small
thing, wisdom in how to make sure it stays foundational and important in our
lives, because you're important in our lives.

And we never want to go away from that. In fact, in this moment right now, we
worship you. We just take a deep breath in and let it out and we relax in your
presence for this moment, Lord.

In your name, we worship you. Amen. Tomorrow, we're going to begin to look at
Hezekiah, who teaches us how to deal with the distracting influences in our
lives.