The High Places of a Borrowed Faith Text: 2 Kings 12:1-3
Introduction: The Danger of a Good Start
We live in an age that loves a good start. We celebrate new beginnings, fresh resolutions, and the apparent sincerity of a promising young leader. The world is full of self-help gurus who will sell you a twelve-step plan to a better life, a new you. But the Christian faith is not concerned merely with good starts; it is concerned with faithfulness to the finish line. The world celebrates the man who says he will run the race. The Lord commends the one who actually finishes it. And as we see in the life of King Jehoash, it is entirely possible to have a spectacular beginning, to do many commendable things, and yet to harbor a fatal flaw that will, in the end, undo it all.
The story of Jehoash is a story of a dramatic rescue, a godly mentorship, and a promising reformation. Pulled from the jaws of death as an infant, hidden in the temple from his murderous grandmother Athaliah, he is the embodiment of God's covenant faithfulness to the house of David. When all seemed lost, God preserved a remnant, a single heir to the throne. His early reign, under the guidance of the faithful priest Jehoiada, was marked by a return to righteousness. And this is where we are tempted to cheer and move on. But the Holy Spirit does not permit us to do so. He inserts a fatal qualification, a spiritual asterisk that hangs over the entire account: "Only the high places were not taken away."
This is not a minor detail. It is the key that unlocks the tragedy of Jehoash's later life and the recurring problem in Judah. It is a warning against a borrowed faith, an incomplete repentance, and a reformation that stops short of total war against every idol. We are good at spring cleaning, but we are often hesitant to fumigate. We will rearrange the furniture in the house, but we refuse to deal with the termites in the foundation. The story of Jehoash is a cautionary tale for every Christian, every family, and every church. It teaches us that a righteousness dependent on another man is a fragile righteousness indeed, and that any reformation that leaves the high places standing is no reformation at all. It is merely a temporary truce with the enemy.
The Text
In the seventh year of Jehu, Jehoash became king, and he reigned forty years in Jerusalem; and his mother’s name was Zibiah of Beersheba. And Jehoash did what was right in the sight of Yahweh all his days in which Jehoiada the priest instructed him. Only the high places were not taken away; the people still sacrificed and burned incense on the high places.
(2 Kings 12:1-3 LSB)
God's Providential King (v. 1)
We begin with the historical setting and the establishment of the king.
"In the seventh year of Jehu, Jehoash became king, and he reigned forty years in Jerusalem; and his mother’s name was Zibiah of Beersheba." (2 Kings 12:1)
The very existence of Jehoash on the throne is a staggering testimony to the faithfulness of God. His grandmother, Athaliah, that daughter of Ahab and Jezebel, had sought to exterminate the line of David. She was a manifestation of the serpent's ancient rage against the seed of the woman. She murdered her own grandchildren in a demonic frenzy to secure her own power and snuff out the messianic line. But God, in His meticulous providence, arranged for the infant Jehoash to be rescued by his aunt and hidden away in the house of God itself. For six years, the promised king was concealed while the usurper reigned. This is how our God works. In the darkest of times, when evil appears triumphant, God is always hiding His king, preparing him for the appointed time.
So when Jehoash is revealed and crowned at the age of seven, it is a direct fulfillment of God's covenant promise to David. God had sworn that David would never lack a man to sit on the throne, and not even the murderous ambition of a pagan queen could thwart that decree. His forty-year reign, a significant number in Scripture, speaks of a full generation of stability. This was a gift of God's common grace to Judah. After the tumult and wickedness of Athaliah, God granted them a long period of relative peace and outward righteousness. We should never despise such providences. God is kind to His people even when their hearts are not fully His.
A Mentored Righteousness (v. 2)
Verse 2 gives us the divine assessment of Jehoash's early reign, but it comes with a crucial condition.
"And Jehoash did what was right in the sight of Yahweh all his days in which Jehoiada the priest instructed him." (2 Kings 12:2)
At first glance, this is high praise. He "did what was right in the sight of Yahweh." This sets him apart from the wicked kings of Israel and from his immediate predecessors in Judah. He was not an idolater. He promoted the worship of the true God. He would go on to repair the temple, which had fallen into ruin. These are not small things. And we see the instrument God used to accomplish this: the instruction of Jehoiada the priest. Jehoiada was a faithful man, a godly mentor who had saved Jehoash's life and guided his administration. This highlights the profound importance of godly counsel and discipleship. A young man under the tutelage of a wise, older man of God is a blessing to the entire nation.
But we must read carefully. The praise is qualified. He did right "all his days in which Jehoiada the priest instructed him." The righteousness of Jehoash was coextensive with the life of his mentor. This is what we might call a second-hand, or a hot-house, righteousness. It was real in its external expression, but it was not deeply rooted in Jehoash's own convictions. His moral compass was, in effect, Jehoiada. As long as the priest was there to point north, Jehoash walked in the right direction. But what happens when the compass is removed? The rest of the story, told in 2 Chronicles 24, gives us the tragic answer. After Jehoiada died, Jehoash turned away from the Lord, listened to wicked counselors, and even murdered Jehoiada's son, Zechariah, when he rebuked him. The good start curdled into a wicked finish.
This is a sober warning for us. It is good for our children to obey us. It is good for young Christians to follow the guidance of their pastors and elders. But the goal of discipleship is not to create perpetual dependence. The goal is to cultivate a faith that is personally owned, a conviction that stands on its own two feet, rooted and grounded in the Word of God. A faith that lasts only as long as the mentor is alive is a borrowed faith, and it will not withstand the day of trial.
The Lingering Compromise (v. 3)
Here, in verse three, we find the seed of Jehoash's future apostasy. We see the crack in the foundation.
"Only the high places were not taken away; the people still sacrificed and burned incense on the high places." (2 Kings 12:3)
What were the high places? They were local, unauthorized shrines, often on hilltops, where the people would offer sacrifices. While some of these may have been intended for the worship of Yahweh, they were a direct violation of God's command in Deuteronomy 12. God had commanded that sacrifice was to be centralized at the place He would choose, which was the temple in Jerusalem. The purpose of this was to guard the purity of worship and to prevent the infiltration of pagan practices. The high places were, therefore, an exercise in syncretism. It was worship on their own terms, blending convenience and tradition with disobedience. It was an attempt to worship Yahweh in the manner of the Canaanites.
Jehoash's failure to remove them was not a small oversight. It was a failure of nerve and a failure of conviction. Tearing down the high places would have been politically difficult. It would have meant confronting the cherished traditions and corrupt worship of the common people. It was easier to fix the temple in Jerusalem, a central project everyone could agree on, than to engage in the messy, unpopular work of rooting out idolatry from every corner of the kingdom. So he left them. He tolerated them. And in doing so, he left the spiritual infrastructure of idolatry in place, ready to be fully utilized once his godly mentor was gone.
This is the anatomy of all spiritual compromise. We do the right things up to a point. We reform our lives, but we leave a few pet sins, a few "high places," untouched. We tell ourselves they aren't that bad. We tell ourselves that we are worshipping God there, after a fashion. Perhaps it is a habit of gossip, a love of worldly entertainment, a refusal to forgive, or a compromise in business ethics. We clean up the main temple of our lives, but we leave the little hilltop shrines alone because tearing them down would be too costly, too embarrassing, too difficult. But a tolerated idol will always, eventually, demand full allegiance. An incomplete reformation is a future apostasy waiting to happen.
Conclusion: Tear Down Every High Place
The reign of Jehoash begins with the great hope of covenant faithfulness and ends in the tragedy of covenant rebellion. And the turning point, the fatal flaw, is identified for us right here at the beginning: the high places were not taken away. His faith was a borrowed faith, dependent on his mentor. His reformation was a partial reformation, dependent on what was easy and popular.
This is a word for us today. Are there high places in your life? Are there areas of compromise you have cordoned off, refusing to bring them under the total lordship of Jesus Christ? You cannot serve God and a well-managed idol. You cannot have the God of the Bible on your own terms. True repentance does not negotiate. It does not compromise. It lays the axe to the root of the tree. It tears down every high place, grinds the idols to dust, and scatters the ashes on the water.
The good news of the gospel is that we have a better king than Jehoash. King Jesus did not come to conduct a partial reformation. He did not come to make a truce with our high places. He came to conquer, to utterly destroy the works of the devil. His obedience was not borrowed; it was His own. And He did not stop when it became difficult; He went all the way to the cross. Through His death and resurrection, He has given us not only the command but the power to tear down every stronghold and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God (2 Cor. 10:5).
Let the story of Jehoash be a goad to us. Let us be grateful for every Jehoiada God places in our lives, but let us not build our house on them. Build your house on the rock of Christ and His Word. And by His grace, let us resolve to be done with all compromise. Let us finish the work of reformation. Tear down the high places. All of them.