Joash

By Odon Bulamba (17th August 2011)

Before Jesus left He said, you are not alone, I’ll send you someone to help you but that someone is not welcome in the church today. It’s not very often you will hear the church talking or preaching about the Holy Spirit. How can we survive without remembering the Holy Spirit. The church today doesn’t want to walk with the Holy Spirit which is why the church isn’t functioning properly.

II Kings 11, talks about a young boy called Joash who was only 7 years old (II Chron 24:1) when he became a king. His grandmother had all the children of the king killed and she reigned as the queen but Joash had an aunty who saved his life and hid him in the temple for six years. During the time he was hiding, he saw all the problems in the temple and so when he became king he knew what needed repairing and he knew to encourage the people to worship God.

Joash had a good committee that he worked with to fulfil the plans of God but later in life, he kicked out that committee and found new friends who advised him and allowed him to worship other gods and God wasn’t pleased.

Oneday, Zechariah (the son of Joash’s uncle) when to see the king and told him it’s not good what you are doing. Joash was unhappy and sent people to stone Zechariah saying, “God sees all and will bring you to justice”.

When satan comes and tries to stamp you out, when satan visits your family, when things become difficult in your family and in your life, what do you do?

We are descendants of David, God has chosen us and we are His children and He gives us power to lead the world (in the same way Joash was a descendant of David and chosen to lead Israel). Conflict comes and tries to attack us in the same way the grandmother in this story came to attack God’s chosen.

Grandmothers, in general, are very different from us, they talk differently, walk differently, wear different clothes, listen to different music and enjoy different things to us. Grandmothers try to make the like of children easier and when the child is wrong, they try to protect them from rebuke. Satan is like a grandmother playing with us sometimes, he tries to protect us from discipline so we won’t learn and we something take refuge in that grandmother (satan). This is not a good protection. Satan will come to us and show us all the securities in the world; we need to have a degree from university, we need to have money, we need a secure job….but he won’t talk about the true security in the Holy Spirit.

People today are trying to grab everything they can from the world and satan opens up the opportunities to slowly bring you away from God’s will. For example, satan will give you a job on Sundays which kills that desire to go to church and you leave God for your own personal interests. But the Holy Spirit hides a portion of your life in the temple so that you can return to God and rebuild the temple and remember to worship Him again.

For example, here at Little Bethlehem Church, we used to meet on Fridays to read the Word of God together, but it would be very difficult to go back to meeting on Fridays again. We are more and more absent. Eleven years ago when we met at Springfield, there were many people coming and now there are less people. This small group are in the temple, we now need to repair the temple, we need to read the Bible, pray, and go to church and we have to pass from words to action.

Sometimes we will face circumstances and if we are not tough with ourselves, we’ll allow circumstances to push us away from our plan with God. If I have a plan today to pray at 11am, be sure the phone will ring at 11am. We have to fight the temptation and stick to our plans for God.

Sometimes we appear to be Christians in front of others but we are sick in front of God, yet God continues to call us His children. To love someone, you’ll first feel it in your heart. God loved us so much that He sent His only son, He didn’t say it with words but with actions. The greatest commandment is to love God with all your soul, mind and heart. We have to show God with our actions how much we love Him and we have to first feel that love in our heart and if we don’t feel it, we have to pray and ask God to feel the love we have for Him.

The temple was 125 years old and needed repairing. You might be an old Christian but you might also need repairs in your life; maybe your love has decreased. Whenever we see something wrong in our lives, we must fix it, don’t wait.

Sometimes we try to choose the wrong friends (as Joash did) but we need to be careful to choose friends that will support us and bring us closer to Jesus otherwise we might be mislead to adore the wrong things in the world. How often do we go back to doing wrong things in our lives like Joash building the gods.

Who influences us; our friends, ourselves, our envy? If we stop and repair what is wrong in our lives, we will be successful. Search how to love God with all your heart, mind and soul. Ask God to teach you, “Let me feel how much I love You O God”. The first step is to ask God to teach you to love Him and then you’ll learn slowly, slowly how to feel God’s love for you.

After Joash was advised by Zechariah, he had him killed and how many times to we hate people because they tell us to come back to Jesus or how many times do we accept to be stoned by people to bring them back to Jesus?