Today is the 29th day of July. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I am Brian and it is wonderful

to be here around the global campfire together with you as we bring another of the weeks that we

get to share together to a close. And we're bringing a week to a close but we're right here at the

end of a month as well. So we have some endings and some beginnings in front of us and that

seems to be the nature of life. So let's step forward together. Our next step forward in the

scriptures leads us back into the book of 2 Chronicles and today 2 Chronicles chapters 24 and 25.

Joe Ash was 7 years old when he became king and he reigned in Jerusalem 40 years. His mother's name

was Zebiyah. She was from Bershiba. Joe Ash did what was right in the eyes of the Lord all the years

of Jehoyadah the priest. Jehoyadah chose two wives for him and he had sons and daughters.

Sometime later, Joe Ash decided to restore the temple of the Lord. He called together the priests

and Levites and said to them, go to the towns of Judah and collect the money due annually from

all Israel to repair the temple of your God. Do it now. But the Levites did not act at once.

Therefore the king summoned Jehoyadah the chief priest and said to him, why haven't you

required the Levites to bring in from Judah and Jerusalem the tax imposed by Moses the servant

of the Lord and by the assembly of Israel for the tent of the covenant law. Now the sons of that

wicked woman, Atalia, had broken into the temple of God and had used even its sacred objects for the

bails. At the king's command a chest was made and placed outside at the gate of the temple of the

Lord. A proclamation was then issued in Judah and Jerusalem that they should bring to the Lord the

tax that Moses the servant of God had required of Israel in the wilderness. All the officials and all

the people brought their contributions gladly dropping them into the chest until it was full.

Whenever the chest was brought in by the Levites to the king's officials and they saw that there

was a large amount of money. The royal secretary and the officer of the chief priest would come and

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