The High Cost of Low-Cost Obedience Text: 2 Kings 12:17-18
Introduction: The Danger of a Borrowed Faith
There is a kind of man who appears for a time to be a model of faithfulness. He checks all the right boxes. He says the right things, supports the right causes, and makes all the outward motions of a man devoted to God. He might even undertake great projects for the kingdom, as King Jehoash did in our story. He began his reign with a flurry of righteous activity, guided by the wise priest Jehoiada. He was the boy king, rescued from the murderous plot of Athaliah, raised in the temple, and for a time, he did what was right in the eyes of the Lord. He initiated the repairs of the house of God, a noble and necessary task.
But a faith that is dependent on the presence of another man is a borrowed faith. And a borrowed faith is a fragile faith. It is a secondhand conviction, and it will buckle under the first real pressure. As soon as Jehoiada the priest died, the true character of Jehoash began to surface. The godly influence was gone, and the king's heart, which had never been truly circumcised, began to follow the flattering counsel of the princes of Judah. The slide began, as it always does, with small compromises, but it ends here, in our text, with a catastrophic act of spiritual treason.
This passage is a stark warning to us. It demonstrates a principle that runs through all of Scripture: pragmatic compromise in the face of fear is really just faithlessness with a good public relations team. When the heat is on, when the enemy is at the gates, what is really in your heart will come out. Do you trust in the living God who delivered David from Goliath, or do you trust in your own cleverness and the resources you can see with your eyes? Jehoash had a choice between the unseen arm of Yahweh and the visible gold in Yahweh's house. He chose the gold. He thought he was buying peace, but what he was really doing was selling his soul, and the soul of his nation, for a temporary reprieve.
We live in an age of pragmatism. We are told constantly to be reasonable, to find the middle ground, to not be so dogmatic. But what the world calls reasonable, the Bible often calls rebellion. What the world calls compromise, God calls adultery. Jehoash's decision was eminently practical. It was sensible. It avoided a siege, it saved lives, and it got the big scary Syrian king to go away. But it was a profound act of apostasy, because it treated the holy things of God as mere bargaining chips. It was a declaration that the fear of man is a greater reality than the fear of God.
The Text
Then Hazael king of Aram went up and fought against Gath and captured it, and Hazael set his face to go up to Jerusalem. And Jehoash king of Judah took all the holy things that Jehoshaphat and Jehoram and Ahaziah, his fathers, kings of Judah, had set apart as holy, and his own holy things and all the gold that was found among the treasuries of the house of Yahweh and of the king’s house, and sent them to Hazael king of Aram. Then he went away from Jerusalem.
(2 Kings 12:17-18 LSB)
The Threat on the Horizon (v. 17)
We begin with the external pressure that reveals the internal reality.
"Then Hazael king of Aram went up and fought against Gath and captured it, and Hazael set his face to go up to Jerusalem." (2 Kings 12:17)
Hazael of Aram, or Syria, was a brutal and ambitious king. He was God's razor, a tool of judgment that God would wield against both the northern and southern kingdoms for their faithlessness. Here we see him on the warpath. He has already taken Gath, a major Philistine city, which puts him on the doorstep of Judah. And now, we are told, he "set his face to go up to Jerusalem." This is a statement of determined intent. The enemy is not bluffing. The threat is real, it is imminent, and it is marching toward the holy city.
This is how testing always comes. It is not theoretical. It has a name, like Hazael. It has a direction, and it is heading straight for you. It could be a financial crisis, a rebellious child, a hostile government, or a dire medical diagnosis. The question is not whether the Hazaels of this world will set their faces toward you. They will. The question is, when they do, to whom will you turn? Where will you look for deliverance?
Jehoash had a rich history to draw upon. He could have remembered how Jehoshaphat, his own ancestor, faced a massive coalition of armies and responded not by gathering gold, but by gathering the people to fast and pray, saying, "we have no power against this great multitude that is coming against us; nor do we know what to do, but our eyes are upon You" (2 Chronicles 20:12). And God brought a mighty deliverance. Jehoash could have remembered how David, the founder of his dynasty, faced Goliath with nothing but a sling and a steadfast faith in the God of Israel. But Jehoash remembered none of this. His faith was in Jehoiada, and Jehoiada was in the grave. Now, faced with a crisis, his spiritual bankruptcy is exposed.
The Treasonous Transaction (v. 18)
The response of Jehoash is swift, decisive, and utterly faithless.
"And Jehoash king of Judah took all the holy things that Jehoshaphat and Jehoram and Ahaziah, his fathers, kings of Judah, had set apart as holy, and his own holy things and all the gold that was found among the treasuries of the house of Yahweh and of the king’s house, and sent them to Hazael king of Aram. Then he went away from Jerusalem." (2 Kings 12:18)
Notice the scope of this sacrilege. He doesn't just take the gold from the royal treasury. He raids the house of God. He takes "all the holy things." These were not just valuable objects; they were items set apart, consecrated, dedicated to the worship and glory of Yahweh. They were gifts given by his faithful forefathers, Jehoshaphat, Jehoram, and Ahaziah, and even items he himself had dedicated in his better days. These things belonged to God. They represented the devotion of generations. They were tangible reminders of God's covenant faithfulness.
And what does Jehoash do with them? He liquidates them. He turns them into a bribe. He takes the sacred and treats it as common. This is the essence of profanity. He is taking the very symbols of God's glory and using them to placate a pagan thug. He is saying, in effect, that the favor of Hazael is more valuable than the glory of God. He is ransoming the holy to buy safety from the profane.
This is a picture of every spiritual compromise. When a pastor waters down the preaching of the law and the gospel to make it more palatable to unbelievers, he is taking the holy things of God and sending them to Hazael. When a Christian man compromises his integrity in business to close a deal, he is taking the gold from the Lord's house to pay off an enemy. When a Christian woman marries an unbeliever because she fears being alone, she is taking what God has declared holy, her own body, and yoking it to the profane. It is the great satanic exchange: trading the glory of God for a pot of pagan stew.
And notice the result: "Then he went away from Jerusalem." The bribe worked, for a moment. The immediate threat was neutralized. The pragmatist always gets his short term results. The coward always gets to avoid the immediate conflict. But the cost is astronomical. Hazael left, but the glory of God had also departed. The temple, which Jehoash had so diligently repaired, was now stripped bare by his own hand. He had a form of godliness, but he denied its power. He was willing to fix the building, but he was not willing to trust the God of the building.
The Folly of Fear-Based Faith
This story is a profound illustration of the difference between a religion of works and a relationship of faith. Jehoash's early reforms were all about external actions. Repairing the temple was a good work, a necessary work. But it was a work that could be done without a heart of true faith. It is one thing to give money to repair God's house; it is another thing entirely to trust God to defend your house when the enemy is at the gate.
The first is religion; the second is relationship. The first is about what we do for God; the second is about trusting what God has promised to do for us. Jehoash was a man of religion, but when the pressure came, he had no relationship. His trust was not in God's power, but in gold's power. His fear of Hazael was greater than his fear of Yahweh.
This is the choice that confronts every believer. We will all face our Hazaels. And we will all be tempted to look at the resources at our disposal, the "gold" in our treasuries, our intelligence, our connections, our savings, and think that this is our salvation. The temptation is to believe that we can buy our way out of trouble. But God has not called us to be clever deal-makers. He has called us to be faithful children.
The irony is that Jehoash's pragmatic solution was a long term disaster. The text tells us that Hazael "went away," but 2 Chronicles 24 fills in the rest of the story. The Aramean army returned the next year, and though they were a small company, the Lord delivered a very great army of Judah into their hand, "because they had forsaken Yahweh, the God of their fathers" (2 Chron. 24:24). They destroyed all the princes of the people, the very ones who had counseled Jehoash to compromise, and they left the king severely wounded. His great act of pragmatic appeasement bought him one year of peace, and it cost him everything. Soon after, his own servants conspired against him and assassinated him in his bed. He traded God's glory for a temporary safety that was no safety at all.
The True Treasure
Where does this leave us? It drives us to the cross. For in the story of Jehoash, we see a king who stripped God's house to pay off an enemy. But in the story of the gospel, we see a King who stripped Himself to ransom His enemies.
Jehoash took what was holy and gave it to the profane. Jesus, who was holy, gave Himself for the profane. Jehoash sacrificed God's treasure to save his own skin. Jesus, who was God's treasure, sacrificed His own skin to save us. The bribe of Jehoash was an act of faithless treason. The ransom of Christ was an act of faithful love. "For you know that you were not redeemed with perishable things like silver or gold... but with precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ" (1 Peter 1:18-19).
All the holy things and all the gold in the temple could not truly save. They could only buy a temporary truce with a human enemy. They were powerless to deal with the great enemy, which is our sin and God's righteous wrath against it. Only one treasure was sufficient for that transaction. Only one payment could truly turn away the wrath of God and purchase an eternal peace. That was the blood of the Son of God.
Therefore, when our Hazael comes, when fear sets its face toward us, we are not to look to the gold in the temple. We are not to look to our own resources or our own cleverness. We are to look to the cross. We are to remember that the God who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things? (Romans 8:32). If God has already paid the ultimate price to save us from His own wrath, will He not also deliver us from a tin-pot dictator from Syria? The logic is airtight. The gospel is the end of all fear-based pragmatism. Because Christ is our treasure, we no longer need to raid the temple to buy our safety. We are already safe in Him. Our deliverance is not purchased with gold that perishes, but with blood that redeems forever.