The Life of Josiah

Well, welcome again this morning and we are going to be in 2 Chronicles this morning in the Old Testament. It's a wonderful section we're going to be looking at in 2 Chronicles chapter 34, which is the life of Josiah.

He was a godly king and one of few, but I'm going to spend a little bit of time in 2 Chronicles 33 looking at his grandfather, Josiah's grandfather, which was Manasseh and so that's where we're going to start and it'll give us a contrast between what Manasseh did as king of Judah and what Josiah did as king of Judah.

So let's go to the Lord in prayer and we'll begin that way. Heavenly Father and gracious God, we thank you for our time this morning and for each one that are gathered here. We thank you for those that are gathered at the church camp and can worship you also this morning.

We give our hearts to you, O Lord, and ask that you would guard us and protect us even as we studied this morning in the Bible study of Psalm 121. We ask you, Lord, on our journey that you would be with us and keep us close to you, put your shade, your shadow over us, O Lord, and protect us.

We ask, Lord, that you would be with me this morning, that you would give me the words that you would want me to speak, and we ask, O Lord, that your Holy Spirit would sharpen our minds and soften our hearts to your word.

In the name of your Son, Jesus Christ, we pray. Amen. Well, I'm not going to go verse by verse. It's just too many verses to cover 33 and 34, but if you want to kind of be in that section of your Bible, 2 Chronicles 33 and 34, we're going to be talking about that, these interesting stories.

Manasseh’s Idolatry and Judah’s Corruption

And the first, it begins in the year 697 BC. Manasseh becomes king of Judah at age 12. He reigns as king for 55 years in Jerusalem. His story is chronicled in 2 Chronicles chapter 33, and although I've touched on the highlights of his life, the interested Bible reader is referred to 2 Chronicles 33.

When you get home, you can read all the details that the Holy Scripture provides. But our study this week is actually going to be concentrated, once I get there, on the life of Josiah. For the historical and biblical context, though, it's a good idea to look at Josiah's grandfather, Manasseh.

Now, Manasseh did evil in the sight of the Lord according to the abomination of the nations whom God disposed before the sons of Israel. In other words, under King Manasseh, Judah adopted many of the idolatrous practices of the pagan nations who previously occupied the promised land.

Specifically, the Bible tells us that he rebuilt the high places of worship, which his father Hezekiah had broken down. He erected altars for Baal, he made Asherah, and he worshipped all the hosts of heaven and served them.

Baal was the masculine idol god of strength and fertility, among other alleged attributes. His female counterpart, or consort, if you would, was Asherah, who was the goddess of fertility. The Asherah spoken of here was generally a carved wooden post or a carved figure that was placed near the altar of Baal.

Manasseh's appetite for idolatry knew no end, for the Bible also tells us that he even built altars right in the house of the Lord itself, that is, the temple. He brought idols from all the hosts of heaven into the two courts of Solomon's temple, and the apostate worship of these starry hosts had evil origins as far back as the time of Moses.

But this evil practice of astrology was especially a sin of the Assyrian and the Babylonian cultures, but now had been adopted by God's own people in Israel. Manasseh, king of Judah, sacrificed his own sons by fire to another god called Molech, and he practiced witchcraft, he used divination, he practiced sorcery, he dealt with mediums and spiritists.

It's not difficult to see that he did much evil in the sight of the Lord, provoking the Lord to anger. Galatians chapter 5 instructs us to avoid the sinful deeds of the flesh, which are immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, distinctions, factions, envying, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these.

Well, that's a pretty comprehensive list of sins many of which are mentioned common to the house of Manasseh. Each sin Manasseh committed seemed to be compounded by an even greater sin, more outlandish.

The Bible tells us that Manasseh misled Judah to do more evil than the nations God destroyed before the Israelites occupied the promised land. Now think about that. How could God's people be worse than the pagans that preceded them?

And yet that's what the Bible is telling us. So you're beginning to get a feeling for how sinful Manasseh was, and of course the people were following this. But God is always at work, and his sovereign plans are not thwarted by the evil of men, even when that includes his own people.

Second Chronicles 33 10 declares that the Lord warned Manasseh and his people, but they paid no attention. Therefore the Lord brought another evil people against Judah. He brought the commanders of the Assyrian army against them, and they captured Manasseh the king with hooks and bound him with bronze chains, and they hauled him off to Babylon.

At this point the Bible tells us Manasseh repented before God, and when God heard his prayers in exile, the Lord God brought him back to Jerusalem. And then Manasseh knew that the Lord was God, so he had a complete change of heart.

He removed the foreign gods and the idols from the house of the Lord, as well as the altars which had been built on the house of the Lord, and in Jerusalem, and he threw them outside the city. He ordered Judah to serve the Lord God of.

But the people still sacrificed in high places only to the Lord their God. So what is that telling us? The people were not to be inconvenienced. They were willing to worship the one true God by order of their king, but only at the place of their choosing.

They didn't want to go necessarily to Jerusalem. They would worship on any nearby high place that they had established. In other words, the hearts of the people were not genuinely changed, and when his 22-year-old son Ammon became king after Manasseh's death, Judah returned immediately to idolatry just as wicked as it was before.

And after only two years, Ammon's servants conspired against him. In other words, his own regimen, if you will, conspired against him and killed him in his own house, and the people made his son Josiah the king.

Josiah’s Early Reforms and the Destruction of Idols

So that brings us to 2 Chronicles 34. Oh, well, that was kind of a long introduction to the reign of King Josiah, but I think it was worth it because if you look at the evil that permeated Judah when Josiah became king at the tender young age of eight, it shows you what Josiah was up against.

He could not possibly have known how deeply entrenched idolatry was in the realm of Judah. But God knew. God knew exactly what was going on. For we read in 2 Chronicles 34 verse 3 that in the eighth year of his reign, Josiah began to seek the God of his father David.

Now, isn't it interesting that the Bible declares that Josiah's father was David, not Ammon? And Ammon would have been the son of Manasseh, his grandfather. Because the Bible is telling us, the Lord's Word, God's Word is telling us that Josiah was following the God of David.

For David was the godly king after God's own heart. Isaiah 11 .10 declares this, it says, the nations will resort to the root of Jesse, who will stand as a standard for the people, and his resting place will be glorious.

That is a prophetic reference to King David, but also a prophecy to the Lord Jesus Christ, who was to come from the line of David. So we began to see that even from a young age, at 16 years old, Josiah, that the Lord was doing something special with Josiah.

Josiah would reign 31 years in Judah. Now, Josiah was truly a man of God, and he was one of only a few, when you read through the Old Testament, destined to rule God's people in Judah. He was 20 years old, and in the 12th year of his reign, when he began to purge Judah and Jerusalem of the high places, the wooden idols of the goddess Asherah, the carved images and the molten images of the idolatrous gods of the pagans, idolatry was deeply entrenched.

But Josiah tore down the altars of Baal in his presence, and I read that to mean that Josiah was there. He was physically present when the altars were chopped down, along with the ashram, and they were broken into pieces, and they were ground to powder and scattered on the graves of those who had sacrificed to them.

Consider the imagery of all of this. Before the people, the king stands personally to oversee the complete destruction of the idols on high places, and to watch as all the altars and the carved and molten images were chopped and ground into a powder to be spread over the graves of those who vainly worshiped the same idols.

What a message that would have sent to the people of Judah. It brought true meaning to the first two commandments. You know, you should have, you shall have no other gods before me. That's the first commandment.

And the second commandment, you should not make idols, you should not make for yourself an idol, you shall not worship them or serve them, for I, the Lord God, am a jealous God. So Josiah dealt not only with the sinful places of idol worship, but he also dealt with the sinful people of idol worship.

He burned the bones of the idolatrous priests on their altars. His reform was more than skin deep. He knew the idol altars and images must be destroyed, but true reformation could come only from a repentant heart of the people.

The priests that were leading sinful idol worship must be dealt with, and he did. The land of the northern kingdom had been conquered by the Assyrians, and many of the people of that land were being exiled.

This allowed Josiah to spread his reform to the weakened northern kingdom of Israel, which represented the other 10 tribes of Israel. And after overseeing the destruction of idols throughout the land of Israel to the north, he then returned to Jerusalem.

Idols in Our Own Lives

Now before we go any further, think of what idols are standing in in our lives. Do we put the Lord God first in everything we do? While we consider carved images to be old and antiquated, there really are many idols in America.

Anything we put before God can be an idol, and this includes our work, it includes our hobbies, our entertainment, our government, our finances, it can even include our family. If you put your family before God, that becomes an idol.

All of these must come second to God. For God is our strength, he is our hope, he is our salvation. What a different nation we would live in if the reforms that Judah brought to the land of Israel were adopted in our nation today.

Imagine everyone living unified under one God and worshiping only that true God of the Bible. Well, for now that's just a dream, but one day God will gather his people and we will know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God and to those who are called according to his purpose.

And that verse, of course, comes directly from Romans. On that day, there will be no idols before him, and that will be a different day than we live in now. Now back to the story of Josiah in chapter 34, and I'm kind of picking up here in verse 8.

After purging the land and the house of God from idols, Josiah now directs Shaphan and Joah to repair the house of the Lord his God. Well, he's now, Josiah is now 26 years old, and he rightly declares the Lord Yahweh as his God.

And with God as his focus, he sees the need to renew the God-directed practices, the sin sacrifices, and worship in the temple. Josiah addresses these issues first by delegating Hilkiah, the high priest, to collect the necessary funds from all of Israel.

And second, by organizing the workmen to accomplish a restorative work in the temple. The foreman on the job then hired skilled carpenters, stone layers, and craftsmen. The word tells us these men work faithfully, that is, that they work diligently and with honesty to accomplish the work of the Lord.

They were skilled in music and in construction, and this implies that they worked with ingenuity, which served both purposes well. The work also included strong men of labor who could handle the heavier work.

While all of this was being accomplished faithfully, Hilkiah the priest finds the book of the law of the Lord given by Moses. His response to this discovery brings a note of excitement as he declares, I have found the book of the law in the house of the Lord.

Obviously, this book had been misplaced and neglected during the reign of Manasseh, his grandfather, and Ammon, his father. Josiah's scroll, as it is sometimes called, is closely connected with Deuteronomy chapter 28 through 31, which records the renewing of the covenant on the plains of Moab, which the Lord commanded Moses to make with the sons of Israel.

This particular passage of scripture contains the blessings for obeying the law of the Lord, but also the terrible curses for those disobedient who would corrupt both the word and the worship of the Lord.

Well, once the word of God has been found, it spreads quickly. It goes from Shaphan to the king Josiah, and the word of God, of course, never goes out void. As the word spread, revival could be expected.

But before revival, there was a need for repentance. When the king heard the words of the law, what did he do? He tore his clothes. This was an expression of horror, of deep conviction of sin on behalf of the nation.

Josiah knew of the apostasy of his people, and he grieved deeply over it. Matthew reminds us on the Sermon of the Mount, blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. And he also reminds us, blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

Here we find Josiah in that same mindset. He's poor in spirit, and he's mourning. What is he mourning over? He's mourning over his sins and the sins of the nation Israel. With these truths, what was Josiah to do?

Now that he knew all of this, what was he to do? Well, he wisely turns to the Lord for answers and commands Hilkiah, the chief priest, and his trusted colleagues to inquire of the Lord concerning the words in the book.

For clearly great wrath of the Lord which is poured out on us, for clearly there will be a great wrath of the Lord poured out on us because our fathers have not observed the word of the Lord. Josiah knew that the judgment of God on Judah was well deserved.

He goes to Huldah, and one extra, he could not hear the word of the law. This is a good point. He could not hear the word of the law without seriously confronting the sin of the kingdom. I mean, one was telling him, one was, it was convicting his heart.

I mean, there's just no question here. So Hilkiah then goes to Huldah, a prophetess who lived in the second quarter of Jerusalem. Now she was not the only prophet in Judah. There were other contemporary prophets at the time of Josiah, and these included Jeremiah and Zephaniah, who were at work during the reign of Josiah, warning the people of the upcoming judgment of God.

But Hilkiah chose Huldah, we are not sure why, but Hilkiah chose her to speak a prophetic word from the Lord. And she declares, thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, I am bringing evil on this place and on its inhabitants, because they have forsaken me and they have worshiped other gods.

They have brought me to anger over their evil deeds and the work of their hands. My wrath will be poured out and will not be quenched. God keeps his promises. He had faithfully warned Judah repeatedly of the consequence of their sin, and his judgment was not far off.

We consider that his judgments are pure and perfect, and it is clearly implied in this that the people of Judah had no true heart for turning from their wicked ways. They were not genuinely repentant.

They had no excuse. Judah had the word of the law dating all the way back to Moses, and God had sent Isaiah and Jeremiah and other prophets to warn them of his judgment. Judah would be conquered and exiled by Babylon, and that would happen in only 40 years.

But here we see the great conviction and courage of Josiah. Despite this devastating news, Josiah doesn't give up. He goes forward with the truth from God and delivers God's words to all the people of Judah, from the greatest to the least.

He carries out his commission faithfully with a heart devoted to God. Huldah also has a word from the Lord to Josiah himself. Picking up in verse 26, you'll see the words, but to the king of Judah who sent you to inquire of the Lord, thus you will say to him, thus says the Lord, because your heart was tender and you humbled yourself before God, when you heard his words against this place and against its inhabitants, and because you humbled yourself before me, you tore your clothes and you wept before me, I truly have heard you.

Behold, I will gather you to your fathers and you shall be gathered to your grave in peace, so your eyes will not see all the evil which I bring on this place and on its inhabitants. Now here Spurgeon points out that there is a great difference between being humble and being humbled, and it is very possible to be humbled without being humble at all.

But here King Josiah demonstrates true humility before God. In his epistle, James quotes Psalm 138, which declares, God is opposed to the proud but gives grace to the humble. Matthew records from the Sermon on the Mount, blessed are the humble for they shall inherit the earth.

This was then God's mercy to Josiah. Although Josiah died in a battle at the hands of the enemy, God's words came true. His prophecy was realized. Josiah did not see or experience the evil of captivity and the exile of Judah by the hands of the Babylonians, and Josiah was buried in peace with his fathers.

Covenant Renewal and the Response of the People

We pick up now in verse 29, where Josiah realizes he must go forward with God's word. The reformation of Judah must begin with him, but he cannot do it alone. So he gathers all the elders of Jerusalem and Judah, and with a broken and contrite heart, they take the word of the law to the people, that is to all the people of Judah, and he reads in their hearing all the words of the book of the covenant.

He then made a covenant with the Lord to walk after the Lord and to keep his commandments and his testimonies and his statutes with all of his heart and soul to perform the words of the covenant written in the book.

Moreover, he made all who were present in Jerusalem and Benjamin to stand with him, so the inhabitants of Jerusalem did according to the covenant of God. He removed the abominations from all the lands belonging to the sons of Israel and made all present in those lands to serve the Lord their God.

Throughout his lifetime, they did not turn from following the Lord God of their fathers. But we know from history this reformation was short-lived. As at Josiah's death, the people of Judah quickly returned to their idolatrous ways, and God's judgment occurred exactly as he declared only 40 years later.

New Testament Lessons on Obedience, Confession, and Idolatry

Now how do we as New Testament believers relate to Josiah? How do we test the word of God against the sin of idolatry in our day? First John chapter 2 verses 3 through 5 tells us, by this we know we have come to know Jesus if we keep his commandments.

The one who says I have come to know him and does not keep his commandments is a liar and the truth is not in him, but whoever keeps his word, in him the love of God has truly been perfected. Then in first John chapter 3 verse 18 to 19, John writes to us, little children let us not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and truth.

We will know by this that we are of truth and we will assure our heart before him. And then first John chapter 5 verse 3 reads, for this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments and his commandments are not burdensome.

Do we keep his commandments perfectly? No. No one but Jesus led a sinless life, but to love the Lord is to make every effort by heart and mind to keep his commandments and that includes avoiding idolatry.

It includes putting God first. It includes considering God in everything that we do in all our ways and only by the blood of his sacrifice on the cross are we cleansed from that sin. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

So we can learn much from the life of Josiah. It's good and it's right to remove all the idols from our lives. Place God first over everything and then work to restore his place in our lives and hearts as Josiah worked to restore the temple.

If our relationship with God has been neglected or tarnished by sin, we need to repent and revitalize and repair it as Josiah did the temple. We need to discover the misplaced or forgotten word of the Lord.

Don't let the dust collect on your Bible. Stay active in God in reading God's word and remain humble before him especially when God convicts you and I of sin. Then spread the word of the Lord as Josiah did to the people.

Spread the word of the Lord to our family, to our colleagues at work, to our neighbors. His words bring justice but without his words we have no standard for justice. His words bring mercy even as they did to Josiah.

We must continue to pray for our nation and those that lead us that God would have mercy and change the hearts and the minds of those who oppose him. And as from 1 John, we must keep his commandments and prove to ourselves that we are God's people not only by word and tongue but in deed and in truth.

And when we fail we must confess our sins knowing that we have a high priest in Jesus who understands our weaknesses. And finally we must trust that he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

As we saw with Josiah, we too need to start by seeking the Lord. We seek his truth, his grace, and his mercy and we trust that those will follow as we follow him. So let's let's end in prayer. O Lord God of heaven, hear our prayer.

Give us a heart like that of your servant Josiah who sought to know you. Grant us the conviction and courage to tear down the idols that we place before you. Allow us Lord to repair our relationship with our brothers and sisters and with you.

To identify those areas where we've been neglectful to forget and restore those areas. Draw us close O Lord to your word and allow us to open your Bible to to your word. Draw us O Lord to a close abiding relationship with you, your Holy Spirit within us, strengthen us and us within you.

Keep your word fresh in our hearts O Lord that we might live by your commandments which are written on our hearts and allow us to humble ourselves before a just and a mighty God who will not despise a broken and contrite heart.

Give us the courage and opportunity to take your word to our community, to our state, to our nation, and to the world as you direct. Make us your faithful servants and witnesses of your great glory, your greatness as we continue to be the salt and light to the world.

In the name of your son Jesus I pray, Amen.