The Sacred Dragging of Feet Text: 2 Chronicles 24:4-7
Introduction: The Peril of Pious Procrastination
There is a kind of spiritual inertia that can settle upon the people of God like a fine dust, covering everything with a layer of gray respectability. It is not open rebellion. It is not flagrant apostasy. It is simply the slow, quiet cooling of first love. It is the comfortable assumption that because things have been a certain way for a long time, they must continue to be that way. This is the peril of institutionalism. The forms of godliness remain, the meetings are held, the budgets are passed, but the fire has gone out on the altar. The urgent has been replaced by the routine.
In our text today, we see a young king, Joash, whose heart is stirred by God to undertake a great work of reformation. He sees the dilapidated house of God, the center of Israel's life and worship, and he rightly determines to restore it. This is a godly impulse. A nation's spiritual health can be accurately gauged by the condition of its churches. When the house of God is neglected, it is a sure sign that the God of the house has been neglected. Joash sees the problem and proposes the solution. He gives a clear command to the men whose very job it is to care for these things, the priests and the Levites. And he adds a crucial stipulation: "you shall do the matter quickly."
But the text tells us, with a kind of brutal honesty, "But the Levites did not act quickly." Here we have a collision between righteous royal zeal and entrenched ecclesiastical lethargy. The king wants reformation now, but the spiritual leaders are content with the status quo. They are not opposed to the project, you understand. They just don't see the hurry. This is not a story about ancient temple repairs. This is a story about us. It is a warning against the subtle but deadly sin of pious procrastination. It is a lesson on what happens when the men of God must be prodded into doing the work of God by the men of the state. It is a reminder that zeal for the house of the Lord should burn hottest in the hearts of those who serve in that house.
We will see that this lethargy was not harmless. It was the direct result of a previous generation's apostasy, and it required a sharp rebuke from the civil magistrate to overcome. This passage forces us to ask ourselves: Where have we grown comfortable with decay? Where has our urgency for God's glory cooled into a manageable, slow-moving committee meeting? Where are we dragging our feet when God has commanded us to run?
The Text
Now it happened afterwards, that Joash had in his heart to restore the house of Yahweh. And he gathered the priests and Levites and said to them, “Go out to the cities of Judah and gather money from all Israel to repair the house of your God annually, and you shall do the matter quickly.” But the Levites did not act quickly. So the king called for Jehoiada the chief priest and said to him, “Why have you not required the Levites to bring in from Judah and from Jerusalem the levy fixed by Moses the servant of Yahweh on the congregation of Israel for the tent of the testimony?” For the sons of the wicked Athaliah had broken into the house of God and even used the holy things of the house of Yahweh for the Baals.
(2 Chronicles 24:4-7 LSB)
A Heart for the House (v. 4)
The story begins with a righteous desire in the heart of the king.
"Now it happened afterwards, that Joash had in his heart to restore the house of Yahweh." (2 Chronicles 24:4)
This is where all true reformation begins. It begins not with a committee or a strategic plan, but with a burden in the heart of a leader. "Joash had in his heart." The Hebrew says it was "with the heart of Joash." This was not a passing whim or a political calculation. It was a deep-seated conviction. And what was the conviction? To "restore the house of Yahweh."
Notice the priority. Before any other national project, before military expansion or economic reform, the king's heart is set on the place of worship. This is the biblical pattern. When the heart of a nation is right with God, its central concern will be the public and corporate worship of God. A people's theology is displayed most clearly in their architecture and their liturgy. A dilapidated church building or a careless worship service is a public confession of a dilapidated and careless faith. Joash understood that the physical state of the temple was a spiritual barometer for the nation. To restore the one was to begin the process of restoring the other.
This is a principle that we in the modern church have largely forgotten. We have spiritualized the faith to the point where the physical realities of our gathering places are seen as secondary, or even irrelevant. But God gave meticulous instructions for the building of the tabernacle and the temple. He cares about beauty, order, and permanence. He cares about the house where His name dwells. Joash's desire was not for a monument to himself, but for a fitting place to honor Yahweh. His heart was in the right place because his heart was fixed on God's house.
A Clear Command and a Slow Response (v. 5)
With this righteous desire in his heart, Joash issues a command to the proper authorities.
"And he gathered the priests and Levites and said to them, 'Go out to the cities of Judah and gather money from all Israel to repair the house of your God annually, and you shall do the matter quickly.' But the Levites did not act quickly." (2 Chronicles 24:5)
The king's plan is straightforward. He summons the clergy, the men set apart for the service of the temple. He instructs them to implement the long-standing temple tax, established by Moses, to fund the repairs. This was not a new tax; it was a return to the law. Reformation is always a return to the Word of God. And then he gives the crucial adverb: "quickly."
The king's zeal is palpable. He sees the need, and he wants immediate action. But then we get that devastating little sentence: "But the Levites did not act quickly." The original language is even more blunt. It simply says, "the Levites did not hasten." They dragged their feet. They ambled when they should have sprinted. Why? The text doesn't give us their excuses, but we can imagine them. Perhaps they were comfortable. The temple may have been in disrepair, but their own routines were not. A massive restoration project would mean more work, more oversight, more hassle. Perhaps they had grown accustomed to the decay. When you live with something long enough, you stop seeing it. The peeling paint and crumbling stones had become part of the landscape. Perhaps they lacked faith that the people would actually give. They had a low view of the congregation and therefore a low motivation for the work.
Whatever the reason, the result was disobedience. A delayed obedience is a form of disobedience. God loves a cheerful giver, and He also loves a quick obeyer. The Levites were guilty of institutional inertia. The system was more important than the mission. Their own comfort was more important than the glory of God's house. This is a perpetual temptation for those in full-time ministry. The sacred calling can devolve into a mere job, and when that happens, urgency is the first casualty.
A King's Rebuke (v. 6)
The failure of the Levites necessitates an intervention from the civil magistrate. The king has to call the high priest onto the carpet.
"So the king called for Jehoiada the chief priest and said to him, 'Why have you not required the Levites to bring in from Judah and from Jerusalem the levy fixed by Moses the servant of Yahweh on the congregation of Israel for the tent of the testimony?'" (2 Chronicles 24:6)
This is a remarkable scene. The king is rebuking the high priest for his failure to enforce spiritual duties. Joash, the head of the state, is holding Jehoiada, the head of the church, accountable. This runs contrary to all our modern sensibilities about the separation of church and state. But the biblical model is not one of separation, but of distinct, cooperating spheres under the authority of God. The king is God's minister for justice and order (Romans 13), and the priest is God's minister for word and sacrament. When the priest fails in his duty, it is the king's job to call him back to it.
Joash's question is sharp and to the point: "Why?" He doesn't just observe the failure; he demands an explanation. And notice how he frames it. He appeals to the ultimate authority: "the levy fixed by Moses the servant of Yahweh." He is not imposing his own will; he is calling the priest back to the Word of God. The king knows the law better than the priest seems to, or at least he is more zealous to apply it. This is a righteous use of civil authority. The magistrate's job is to ensure that the church is free to do its job, and when the church is lazy, to remind it of what its job is.
Jehoiada, who had been Joash's mentor, is now being corrected by his pupil. It is a credit to Jehoiada that he appears to have received the rebuke and changed course. Leadership requires both the courage to give correction and the humility to receive it. The house of God was more important than anyone's personal pride.
The Root of the Rot (v. 7)
Finally, the Chronicler gives us the backstory. He explains why the temple was in such a sorry state to begin with. The present lethargy had deep historical roots.
"For the sons of the wicked Athaliah had broken into the house of God and even used the holy things of the house of Yahweh for the Baals." (2 Chronicles 24:7)
The problem didn't start with the lazy Levites. It started with the open apostasy of the previous generation. Athaliah, the daughter of Ahab and Jezebel, had seized the throne, murdered the royal seed, and instituted Baal worship in Judah. Her sons had not just neglected the temple; they had actively vandalized it. They "had broken into the house of God." This was an act of violent sacrilege. And worse, they took the "holy things," the sacred vessels dedicated to the worship of Yahweh, and repurposed them for the worship of demons, for the Baals.
This is the ultimate profanity. It is taking what belongs to God and giving it to an idol. And this is what always happens when the true worship of God is abandoned. The vacuum is not filled with nothing; it is filled with idols. The sacred things of life, whether they be marriage, sexuality, art, or government, are stripped of their God-ordained meaning and offered on the altar of some pagan deity, whether it be Baal, Mammon, or the modern god of Self.
The Levites' lethargy now comes into sharper focus. They were living in the wreckage of this apostasy. The sheer scale of the desecration was likely overwhelming. The habit of neglect, born out of a season of persecution, had hardened into a permanent mindset. They had gotten used to the ruins. This is a profound warning. A generation of compromise and worldliness will produce a generation of lazy and ineffective churchmen. The open idolatry of our parents' generation becomes the institutional inertia of our own. The solution is not just to get busy; it is to repent of the idolatry that caused the decay in the first place.
Conclusion: Hasten the Matter
This story is a call to action for the church in every age. We are all tempted by the slow creep of spiritual entropy. We are all tempted to get comfortable in the ruins. But God has called us to be a people of zeal, a people with a heart for His house.
The king had to bypass the lazy Levites and set up a new system for collecting the funds, which the people then gave to with great joy. The work was finally done, not because the clergy got their act together, but because the king and the people were zealous for God's glory. This is both an encouragement and a rebuke. It is a rebuke to all pastors and elders who are content to manage decline, who lack the vision and the urgency to restore the house of God. But it is an encouragement to all faithful laymen who see the need and are willing to act, even when their leaders are slow.
Ultimately, this story points us to a greater King and a greater temple. King Jesus is the one with ultimate zeal for His Father's house (John 2:17). He came to find the temple of God, His own people, in a state of ruin and decay because of sin. He did not drag His feet. He did not procrastinate. He went to the cross with resolute purpose to cleanse and restore His people. He is building His church, and the gates of Hell will not prevail against it.
Our bodies are now the temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 6:19), and the church is the house of the living God (1 Tim. 3:15). The call to restore the house is therefore a call to pursue personal holiness and corporate purity. It is a call to recover the beauty and glory of biblical worship. It is a call to "hasten the matter." Let us not be like the lazy Levites. Let us shake off our spiritual slumber, confess the sins of our fathers that led to the decay, and set our hearts to the joyful, urgent work of restoring the house of the Lord.