2 Kings 12:2 “And Jehoash did that which was right in the sight of the LORD all his days wherein Jehoiada the priest instructed him.”

I remember the first time I read about king Joash in the Bible many years ago. His story is recorded twice in the Bible, and given my upbringing and experience in life to date, his story is one that took a lot of relevance to me.

Because I don’t want to be like Joash. I’ve seen many professing Christians who’s lives have followed the same trajectory of this man, it happens a lot these days, but I don’t want my life to read like that.

Joash was a king who began to reign at the age of seven. You can read for yourself about the series of events that lead to this, about how he was a survivor of a mass murder of all his siblings, and how he was brought up in the house of God by a very Biblically minded man by the name of Jehoiada.

It’s impossible to read about Joash’s life without also reading about Jehoiada’s life. Because Jehoiada had great influence on Joash. And Joash listened to Jehoiada’s instruction, and under that instruction, Joash “did right” and was a very good king.

But during his reign, after many years, Jehoiada died. And from that event, you can literally divide Joash’s life into two parts “before Jehoiada died” and “after Jehoiada died”… because Joash was a completely different person either side of Jehoiada’s death.

After Jehoiada died, Joash became a rotten, foolish, wicked king. Where he had diligently done right before Jehoiada’s death, now he did evil in turning against God’s word after Jehoiada’s death. And it all ends up being quite a sordid sad sorry story.

But what does this all mean? Well, what Joash’s story teaches us is that your Christianity must come from your own repentance of sin, your own saving faith in Jesus Christ and your own personal walk with God in accordance with his word.

… Because Joash did not have that. He “did right” yes, but he did right because of Jehoiada’s influence, not because it was in his own heart to follow God.

Like Joash, who and what many Christians are is based on influence of others, context, environment and circumstances… but their Christianity does not come from within. Like Joash, they follow a person or people, not God’s word for themselves.

As a result, who and what they are changes from church to church, place to place, peer group from peer group, time to time. What Jehoiada’s death showed was that Joash had no godliness or true spirituality of his own.

Joash’s story is an incredible warning to Christians today who have grown up in church or a godly home or even just around religion in general… but who’ve never been saved and sealed to the truth of God’s word themselves, who flip flop around depending on where they’re at and who they’re with.

Maybe you are doing “right” and what you’re “supposed to be doing” for now according to whoever’s influential in your life, but it’s not who you really are… and like with Joash, life’s changing circumstances and the passage of time will inevitably reveal the lack of the substance that is supposed to be within.

True Christianity is the Lord Jesus Christ in you, dwelling in your heart by faith… but if that personal ownership of truth and reality is not where your Christianity is flowing from, you will wash out in time exactly like Joash did. Tick tock.

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