God’s Word for You

2 Chronicles 24:13-16 a lifetime of service

by Pastor Timothy Smith on Sunday, April 27, 2025

13 So those who were engaged in the task worked hard, and the repairs went ahead in their hands. They restored the house of God to its measurement, and they strengthened it. 14 When they had finished, they brought the rest of the silver to the king and Jehoiada, and they used it to make items for the house of the LORD, utensils for the service and for the burnt offerings, such as small dishes, and vessels of gold and silver. They offered burnt offerings in the house of the LORD continually all the days of Jehoiada.

When the temple was built in the days of Solomon, the large blocks were all dressed at the quarry and not at the building site. “No hammer, chisel, or any other iron tool was heard at the temple site while it was being built” (1 Kings 6:7). We don’t know whether those kinds of precautions were taken in the days of King Joash. There may have been a great deal of noise up on the temple mount. And the offerings were always going—all the days of Jehoiada the high priest. When I was in my final year of college, our campus was about to amalgamate with another school, and there was a lot of construction going on during those final weeks. When Professor Eickmann handed us a photocopy of a page of Hebrew text and a couple sheets of blank notebook paper for sight translation, he had no more said “Begin” than a couple of men began to jackhammer the sidewalk just outside our classroom window—scarcely ten feet from where I sat with my wildly shaking pencil. I think I remember him saying, “Things like this will happen in your ministry,” but I don’t recall that coming quite true, at least not so far.

The temple was repaired to its “measurement,” a term that I think implies the original design for the temple by David which was carefully followed by Solomon’s builders. David had said, “I have in writing from the hand of the LORD upon me, and he gave me understanding in all the details of the plan” (1 Chronicles 28:19). In addition, the workers “strengthened it,” which must mean that some things such as walls, pillars, or doors were reconstructed or reinforced.

After the work was finished there was silver left over. This was used to make new furnishings for the sacrifices such as bowls and other things. After more than one hundred years of use, it’s easy to understand why new dishes would be desirable.

Speaking of more than one hundred years, it was shortly after this that Joash’s foster-father and mentor, the high priest Jehoiada, was gathered to his fathers in death.

15 Jehoiada grew old and full of days, and he died. He was one hundred thirty years old at his death. 16 They buried him in the City of David among the kings, because he had done good things in Israel, for God and for God’s house.

A chronological detail is given in verse 14, which is that the temple repairs had been completed before the approaching death of Jehoiada. In 2 Kings 12:6-9, we learn that the provision of the chest or box for the tax offering was made in Joash’s twenty-third year. The collection proceeded quickly after that, and the repairs were finished. Would one year be enough time for all the repairs? Judging from the knowledge that it took seven years to build the temple in the first place (1 Kings 6:38), it’s reasonable to guess that the repairs could not have been completed more quickly than, say, half that time, or three and a half years. Such items as the foundation and the gathering of the cedar logs took at least part of the original time frame. Therefore, adding three years or so to Joash’s twenty-third year, we arrive at a guess that the work on the new temple was completed sometime in Joash’s twenty-sixth or twenty-seventh year, and that the small items were made after that. If Jehoiada died that same year, then he would have lived from 940-810 BC. That is to say, Jehoiada was born when the temple itself was just 19 or 20 years old—and ten years before the death of King Solomon. He had lived during the entire time of the divided kingdom so far, and beginning with Asa (Rehoboam’s grandson) he had served as a priest in that temple.

A thousand years before, the patriarch Jacob had entered Egypt and had met a Pharaoh (possibly Sesostris III), and he had confessed that at a hundred and thirty, he was young for a patriarch, compared to his ancestors (Genesis 47:9). He had died seventeen years later (Genesis 47:28). Now Jehoiada was the last of the very long-lived men in the Scriptures. It was unusual, even unique, for a priest to be buried in the royal cemetery in Jerusalem, but this was granted to Jehoiada on account of the good he had done.

Death itself is a proclamation of the Law of God, because death entered the world on account of sin (James 1:15; 1 Corinthians 15:56). The believer has a single lifetime in which to come to faith and to pass along their faith (Psalm 78:5). Will I help the kingdom of God with my life, or will he be angry with me because I did nothing with my faith, like the servant with the one talent (Matthew 25:26)? Jehoiada is an example of what can be accomplished with a single lifetime, a lifetime of service to the Lord. But one doesn’t need to become the high priest of Israel to serve the Lord. Every parent, every child, every friend, every lonely Christian can serve the Lord with their life. Pray for the people you love. Search and study the Scriptures. Learn your catechism. Catch your enemy’s wandering ox and return it to him (Exodus 23:4). Be the sound of the windblown leaf that terrifies those who have forgotten their God (Leviticus 26:36). Be the one friend who sticks closer than a brother (Proverbs 18:24). Be the heroic wife worth far more than rubies (Proverbs 31:10), or be the loving husband who tells her, “You surpass them all” (Proverbs 31:29). Wait for the return of Jesus and the consolation of the true Israel like Simeon (Luke 2:25). Show your faith with your life, even when the jackhammers are roaring outside your window.

In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith

 

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