JOASH REPAIRS THE TEMPLE.

(2 Kings xii:4-15.)

I. The Analysis.

1. The Failure of the Priests (verses 4-6).—It appears from verses 7 and 8 that the money brought to the temple under the varied requirements of the law had been appropriated by the priests, and not expended upon the repairs of the temple.

2. The Temple Repaired (verses 7-15).—This division calls for no comment. Jehoiada, with that practical wisdom which he manifested in the dethronement and execution of Athaliah, and the enthronement of Joash, took measures to secure the temple revenues for the repair of the temple.

II. The Heart of the Lesson.

Every revival in Israel centered itself upon the temple. The first thought of a good king, especially in the first flush of his faith and gratitude, was for the restoration of the honor and authority of Jehovah, of which the temple and its rituals were the manifestation. The temple, too, was the token of the unity of Israel. In no other place could the offerings under the law be brought; nowhere else could Jehovah's priests lawfully minister; nowhere else were the ark of the covenant and the shekinah glory.

It was inevitable, therefore, that a truly spiritual revival should be first of all solicitous for the temple, God's earthly abiding place. Any movement, for example, which sought only to bring one tribe back from a low to a high state of obedience, ignoring the eleven tribes, would have been infinitely below the Spirit's level—even though calling itself a revival, it would have been clannish, sectarian, divisive. The revival under Elijah may seem to form an exception, but really establishes the rule, for (1) the temple was in the power of Ahab and Jezebel, and, (2) when Elijah repaired the altar of the Lord on Carmel—an old altar antedating the temple—"he took twelve stones, according to the number of the tribes of the sons of Jacob." Of the tribes ten were wholly unrepresented, but a prophet of Jehovah could not ignore the unity of Israel, of which temple and altar were the token.

And all this is typical, as we learn from Eph. ii:19-22, of the church, which "groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord builded . . . . together for an habitation of God through the spirit." Thank God, that temple can never have "breaches" nor fall into ruin (Matt, xvi:18); but the greater part of our modern talking and modern working for what we are pleased to call revivals, wholly ignores the temple. The sense of the unity of the one body is gone, together with the yearning for blessing for every member of that body—every living stone in that temple. In the multiplicity of sects we have lost the vision of the unity. We need a renewal of that vision, and with it a yearning for a revival of holiness and of power which shall hold in its longing not man-made sects, but God-made saints.