Rescue of a King
2Ki_11:2-3 : ’93Jehosheba, the daughter of king Joram, sister of Ahaziah, took Joash, the son of Ahaziah, and stole him from among the king’92s sons which were slain; and they hid him, even him and his nurse, in the bedchamber from Athaliah, so that he was not slain. And he was with her hid in the house of the Lord six years.’94
Grandmothers are more lenient with their children’92s children than they were with their own. At forty years of age, if discipline be necessary, chastisement is used, but at seventy, the grandmother, looking upon the misbehavior of the grandchild, is apologetic and disposed to substitute confectionery for whip. There is nothing more beautiful than this mellowing of old age toward childhood. Grandmother takes out her pocket-handkerchief and wipes her spectacles, and puts them on, and looks down into the face of her mischievous and rebellious descendant, and says: ’93I don’92t think he meant to do it; let him off this time; I’92ll be responsible for his behavior in the future.’94 My mother, with the second generation around her’97a boisterous crew’97said one day: ’93I suppose they ought to be disciplined, but I can’92t do it. Grandmothers are not fit to bring up grandchildren.’94 But here, in my text, we have a grandmother of a different type.
I have been at Jerusalem, where the occurrence of the text took place, and the whole scene came vividly before me while I was going over the site of the ancient temple and climbing the towers of the king’92s palace. Here in the text it is old Athaliah, the royal murderess. She ought to have been honorable. Her father was a king. Her husband was a king. Her son was a king. And yet we find her plotting for the extermination of the entire royal family, including her own grandchildren. The executioners’92 knives are sharpened. The palace is red with the blood of princes and princesses. On all sides are shrieks, and hands thrown up, and struggle and death-groan. No mercy! Kill! Kill! But while the ivory floors of the palace run with carnage, and the whole land is under the shadow of a great horror, a fleet-footed woman, a clergyman’92s wife, Jehosheba by name, stealthily approaches the imperial nursery, seizes upon the grandchild that had somehow as yet escaped massacre, wraps it up tenderly but in haste, snuggles it against her, flies down the palace stairs, her heart in her throat lest she be discovered in this compassionate abduction. Get her out of the way as quick as you can, for she carries a precious burden, even a young king. With this youthful prize she presses into the room of the ancient temple, the church of olden time, unwraps the young king, and puts him down, sound asleep as he is, and unconscious of the peril that has been threatened; and there for six years he is secreted in that church apartment. Meanwhile old Athaliah smacks her lips with satisfaction, and thinks that all the royal family are dead. But the six years expire, and it is time for young Joash to come forth and take the throne, and to push back into disgrace and death old Athaliah. The arrangements are all made for political revolution. The military come and take possession of the temple, swear loyalty to the boy Joash, and stand around for his defense. See the sharpened swords and the burnished shields! Everything is ready. Now Joash, half affrighted at the armed tramp of his defenders, scared at the vociferation of his admirers, is brought forth in full regalia. The scroll of authority is put in his hands, the coronet of government is put on his brow, and the people clapped and waved and huzzaed and trumpeted. ’93What is that?’94 said Athaliah. ’93What is that sound over in the temple?’94 And she flies to see, and on her way they meet her and say: ’93Why, haven’92t you heard? You thought you had slain all the royal family, but Joash has come to light.’94 Then the royal murderess, frantic with rage, grabbed her mantle and tore it to tatters, and cried until she foamed at the mouth: ’93You have no right to crown my grandson. You have no right to take the government from my shoulders. Treason! Treason!’94
While she stood there crying that, the military started for her arrest, and she took a short cut through a back door of the temple, and ran through the royal stables; but the battle-axes of the military fell on her in the barnyard, and for many a day, when the horses were being unloosened from the chariot, after drawing out young Joash, the fiery steeds would snort and rear passing the place, as they smell the place of the carnage.
The first thought I hand you from this subject is that the extermination of righteousness is an impossibility. When a woman is good, she is apt to be very good, and when she is bad she is apt to be very bad, and this Athaliah was one of the latter sort. She would exterminate the last scion of the house of David, through whom Jesus was to come. There was plenty of work for embalmers and undertakers. She would clear the land of all God-fearing and God-loving people. She would put an end to everything that could in anywise interfere with her imperial criminality. She folds her hands and says: ’93The work is done; it is completely done.’94 Is it? In the swaddling-clothes of that church apartment are wrapped the cause of God and the cause of good government. That is the scion of the house of David; it is Joash, the God-worshiping reformer; it is Joash, the friend of God; it is Joash, the demoralizer of Baalitish idolatry. Rock him tenderly; nurse him gently. Athaliah, you may kill all the other children, but you cannot kill him. Eternal defenses are thrown all around him, and this clergyman’92s wife, Jehosheba, will snatch him up from the palace nursery, and will run down with him into the house of the Lord, and there she will hide him for six years, and at the end of that time he will come forth for your dethronement and obliteration.
Well, my friends, just as poor a botch does the world always make of extinguishing righteousness. Superstition rises up and says: ’93I will just put an end to pure religion.’94 Domitian slew forty thousand Christians, Diocletian slew eight hundred and forty-four thousand Christians. And the scythe of persecution has been swung through all the ages, and the flames hissed, and the guillotine chopped, and the Bastile groaned; but did the foes of Christianity exterminate it? Did they exterminate Alban, the first British sacrifice; or Zwingli, the Swiss reformer; or John Oldcastle, the Christian nobleman; or Abdallah, the Arabian martyr; or Anne Askew or Sanders or Cranmer? Great work of extermination they made of it. Just at the time when they thought they had slain all the royal family of Jesus, some Joash would spring up and out, and take the throne of power, and wield a very scepter of Christian dominion.
Infidelity says, ’93I will exterminate the Bible,’94 and the Scriptures were thrown into the street for the mob to trample on, and they were piled up in the public squares and set on fire, and mountains of indignant contempt were hurled on them, and learned universities decreed the Bible out of existence. Thomas Paine said: ’93In my ’91Age of Reason’92 I have annihilated the Scriptures. Your Washington is a pusillanimous Christian, but I am the foe of Bibles and of churches.’94 Oh, how many assaults upon that Word! All the hostilities that have ever been created on earth are not to be compared with the hostilities against that one book. Said one man, in his infidel desperation, to his wife: ’93You must not be reading that Bible,’94 and he snatched it away from her. And though in that Bible was a lock of hair of the dead child’97the only child that God had ever given them’97he pitched the book with its contents into the fire, and stirred it with the tongs and spat on it and cursed it and said: ’93Susan, never have any more of that damnable stuff here!’94
How many individual and organized attempts have been made to exterminate that Bible! Have its enemies done it? Have they exterminated the American Bible Society? Have they exterminated the British and Foreign Bible Society? Have they exterminated the thousands of Christian institutions, whose only object it is to multiply copies of the Scriptures, and spread them broadcast around the world? They have exterminated until instead of one or two copies of the Bible in our houses we have eight or ten, and we pile them up in the corners of our Sabbath-school rooms, and send great boxes of them everywhere. If they get on as well as they are now going on in the work of extermination, I do not know but that our children may live to see the millennium! Yea, if there should come a time of persecution in which all the known Bibles of the earth should be destroyed, all these lamps of life that blaze in our pulpits and in our families extinguished’97in the very day that infidelity and sin should be holding jubilee over the universal extinction there would be in some closet of a backwoods church a secreted copy of the Bible, and this Joash of eternal literature would come out and come up and take the throne, and the Athaliah of infidelity and persecution would fly out the back door of the palace, and drop her miserable carcass under the hoofs of the horses of the king’92s stables. You cannot exterminate Christianity! You cannot kill Joash!
The second thought I hand you from my subject is, that there are opportunities in which we may save royal life. You know that profane history is replete with stories of strangled monarchs, and of young princes who have been put out of the way. Here is the story of a young king saved. How Jehosheba, the clergyman’92s wife, must have trembled as she rushed into the imperial nursery and snatched up Joash! How she pushed him, lest by his cry he hinder the escape! Fly with him, Jehosheba! you hold in your arms the cause of God and good government. Fail, and he is slain. Succeed, and you turn the tide of the world’92s history in the right direction. It seems as if between that young king and his assassins there is nothing but the frail arm of a woman. But why should we spend our time in praising this bravery of expedition when God asks the same thing of you and me? All around us the imperiled children of a great king. They are born of Almighty parentage, and will come to a throne or a crown if permitted. But sin, the old Athaliah, goes forth to the massacre. Murderous temptations are out for the assassination. Valens, the emperor, was told that there was somebody in his realm who would usurp his throne, and that the name of the man who should be the usurper would begin with the letters T, H, E, O, D, and the edict went forth from the emperor’92s throne: ’93Kill everybody whose name begins with T, H, E, O, D.’94 And hundreds and thousands were slain, hoping by that massacre to put an end to that one usurper. But sin is more terrific in its denunciation. It matters not how you spell your name; you come under its knife, under its sword, under its doom, unless there be some omnipotent relief brought to the rescue. But, blessed be God, there is such a thing as delivering a royal soul! Who will snatch away Joash?
This afternoon, in your Sabbath-school class, there will be a prince of God’97some one who may yet reign as king forever before the throne; there will be some one in your class who has a corrupt physical inheritance; there will be some one in your class who has a father and mother who do not know how to pray; there will be some one in your class who is destined to command in Church or State’97some Cromwell to dissolve a parliament, some Beethoven to touch the world’92s harpstrings, some John Howard to pour fresh air in the lazaretto, some Florence Nightingale to bandage the battle wounds, some Miss Dix to soothe the crazed brain, some John Frederick Oberlin to educate the besotted, some David Brainerd to change the Indian’92s war-whoop to a Sabbath song, some John Wesley to marshal three-fourths of Christendom, some John Knox to make queens turn pale, some Joash to demolish idolatry, and strike for the kingdom of heaven. There are sleeping in your cradles by night, there are playing in your nurseries by day, imperial souls waiting for dominion, and whichever side the cradle they get out will decide the destiny of empires. For each one of those children sin and holiness contend’97Athaliah on the one side, Jehosheba on the other. But I hear people say: ’93What’92s the use of bothering children with religious instruction? Let them grow up and choose for themselves. Don’92t interfere with their volition.’94 Suppose some one had said to Jehosheba: ’93Don’92t interfere with that young Joash. Let him grow up and decide whether he likes the palace or not, whether he wants to be king or not. Don’92t disturb his volition.’94 Jehosheba knew right well that unless that day the young king was rescued, he would never be rescued at all. I tell you, my friends, the reason we don’92t reclaim all our children from worldliness is because we begin too late. Parents wait until their children lie before they teach them the value of truth. They wait until their children swear before they teach them the importance of righteous conversation. They wait until their children are all wrapt up in this world before they tell them of a better world. Too late with your prayers. Too late with your discipline. Too late with your benediction. You put all care upon your children between twelve and eighteen. Why do you not put the chief care between four and nine? It is too late to repair a vessel when it has got out of the dry-docks. It is too late to save Joash after the executioners have broken in. May God arm us all for this work of snatching royal souls from death to coronation!
Can you imagine any sublimer work than this soul-saving? That was what flushed Paul’92s cheek with enthusiasm; that was what led Munson to risk his life amid Bornesian cannibals; that was what sent Dr. Abeel to preach under the consuming skies of China; that was what gave courage to Phocas in the third century. When the military officers came to put him to death for Christ’92s sake, he put them to bed that they might rest, while he himself went out and in his own garden dug his grave, and then came back, and said: ’93I am ready;’94 but they were shocked at the idea of taking the life of their host. He said: ’93It is the will of God that I should die,’94 and he stood on the margin of his own grave and they beheaded him. You say it is a mania, a fool-hardiness, a fanaticism. Rather would I call it a glorious self-abnegation, the thrill of eternal satisfaction, the plucking of Joash from death and raising him to coronation.
The third thought I hand to you is that the Church of God is a good hiding-place. When Jehosheba rushes into the nursery of the king and picks up Joash, what shall she do with him? Shall she take him to some room in the palace? No; for the official desperadoes will hunt through every nook and corner of that building. Shall she take him to the residence of some wealthy citizen? No; that citizen would not dare to harbor the fugitive. But she has to take him somewhere. She hears the cry of the mob in the streets; she hears the shriek of the dying nobility; so she rushes with Joash unto the room of the temple, into the house of God, and then she puts him down. She knows that Athaliah and her wicked assassins will not bother the temple a great deal; they are not apt to go very much to church, and so she sets down Joash in the temple. There he will be hearing the songs of the worshipers year after year; there he will breathe the odor of the golden censers; in that sacred spot he will tarry, secreted until the six years have passed, and he come to enthronement.
Would God that we were all as wise as Jehosheba, and knew that the Church of God is the best hiding-place! Perhaps our parents took us there in early days; they snatched us away from the world, and hid us behind the baptismal fonts and amid the Bibles and psalm-books. Oh glorious inclosure! We have been breathing the breath of the golden censers all the time, and we have seen the lamb on the altar, and we have handled the vials in which are the prayers of all saints, and we have dwelt under the wings of the cherubim. Glorious inclosure! When my father and mother died, and the property was settled up, there was hardly anything left; but they endowed us with a property worth more than any earthly possession, because they hid us in the temple. And when days of temptation have come upon my soul I have gone there for shelter; and when assaulted of sorrows, I have gone there for comfort, and there I mean to live. I want, like Joash, to stay until coronation. I mean to be buried out of the house of God.
O men of the world outside there, betrayed, caricatured and cheated of the world, why do you not come in through the board, wide-open door of Christian communion? I wish I could act the part of Jehosheba today and steal you away from your perils, and hide you in the temple. How few of us appreciate the fact that the Church of God is a hiding-place. There are many people who put the Church at so low a mark that they begrudge it everything, even the few dollars they give toward it. They make no sacrifices. They dole a little out of their surplusage. They pay their butcher’92s bill and they pay their doctor’92s bill and they pay their landlord and they pay everybody but the Lord, and they come in at the last to pay the Lord in his Church, and frown as they say: ’93There, Lord, it is; send me a receipt in full, and don’92t bother me soon again!’94 There is not more than one man out of a thousand that appreciates what the Church is. Where are the souls that put aside one-tenth for Christian institutions’97one-tenth of their income? Where are those who, having put aside that one-tenth, draw upon it cheerfully? Why, it is pull and drag and hold on and grab and clutch; and giving is an affliction to most people when it ought to be an exhilaration and a rapture. Oh, that God would remodel our souls on this subject, and that we might appreciate the house of God as the great refuge! If your children are to come up to lives of virtue and happiness, they will come up under the shadow of the Church. If the Church does not get them, the world will.
Ah, when you pass away’97and it will not be long before you do’97when you pass away it will be a satisfaction to see your children in Christian society. You want to have them sitting at the holy sacraments. You want them mingling in Christian associations. You would like to have them die in the sacred precincts. When you are on your dying bed, and your little ones come up to take your last word, and you look into their bewildered faces, you will want to leave them under the Church’92s benediction. I do not care how hard you are; that is so. I said to a man of the world: ’93Your son and daughter are going to join our church next Sunday. Have you any objections?’94 ’93Bless you,’94 he said, ’93objections? I wish all my children belonged to the Church. I don’92t attend to those matters myself’97I know I am very wicked’97but I am very glad they are going, and I shall be there to see them. I am very glad, sir; I am very glad. I want them there.’94 And so, though you may have been wanderers from God, and though you may have sometimes caricatured the Church of Jesus, it is your great desire that your sons and daughters should be standing all their lives within this sacred enclosure.
More than that, you yourself will want the Church for a hiding-place when the mortgage is foreclosed; when your daughter, just blooming into womanhood, suddenly clasps her hands in a slumber that knows no waking; when gaunt trouble walks through the parlor and the sitting-room and the dining-hall and the nursery, you will want some shelter from the tempest. Ah, some of you have been run upon by misfortune and trial; why do you not come into the shelter? I said to a widowed mother after she had buried her only son’97months after’97I said to her: ’93How do you get along nowadays?’94 ’93Oh,’94 she replied, ’93I get along tolerably well, except when the sun shines.’94 I said: ’93What do you mean by that?’94 when she said: ’93I can’92t bear to see the sun shine; my heart is so dark that all the brightness of the natural world seems a mockery to me.’94 O darkened soul! O brokenhearted man, brokenhearted woman! why do you not come into the shelter? I swing the door wide open; I swing it from wall to wall. Come in! Come in! You want a place where your troubles shall be interpreted, where your burdens shall be unstrapped, where your tears shall be wiped away.
Church of God, be a hiding-place to all these people! Give them a seat where they can rest their weary souls. Flash some light from your chandeliers upon their darkness. With some soothing hymn hush their griefs. Oh, Church of God, gate of heaven, let me go through it! All other institutions are going to fail; but the Church of God’97its foundation is the ’93Rock of Ages,’94 its charter is for everlasting years, its keys are held by the universal Proprietor, its dividend is heaven, its president is God!
Sure as thy truth shall last,
To Zion shall be given
The brightest glories earth can yield,
And brighter bliss of heaven.
God grant that all this audience, the youngest, the eldest, the worst, the best, may find their safe and glorious hiding-place where Joash found it’97in the temple!
Autor: T. De Witt Talmage