Rediscovering the Book

Amen. Christ is worthy. Amen. Turn your Bibles please to 2

Chronicles 34. Christ is worthy. He is worthy of our devotion.

He is worthy of our time. Christ is worthy of a healthy church. This week on Tuesday, to be in fact, we celebrate

Reformation Day. October 31st, 506 years ago,

Martin Luther nailed his 95 Thesis on the castle door of the church in Wittenberg, Germany.

Now, one thing I was reminded this afternoon is that's not like such a dramatic kind of Hollywood moment as we think.

It was really just kind of an ordinary thing. Like today you think nailing something on someone's door, that's out of the ordinary.

But to do that at that time period, this was ordinary. It was just an ordinary thing.

What Luther was trying to do with this 95 Thesis against indulgences, he was trying to have debate.

This was a customary sort of thing. In other words, the music in the background and crowds of people and Martin Luther taking his hammer and just whack, whack, you know, on the door.

It didn't happen that way. It was just an ordinary thing. And the reason I start with that is to remind us.

This encourages me greatly. God uses ordinary things in extraordinary ways for his own glory.

I don't wanna take away from Luther's intelligence and the gifts that God had given him.

He was gifted in many ways and really an impressive man in many ways.

However, don't take away from the ordinary. God is willing to use everyday ordinary things.

The young mother who is changing diapers and wiping noses and working in the home or whatever the case may be, working outside the home, whatever the case may be,

God is able to use faithfulness. The father who is working hard and leading his family and pointing them to Christ, God is able to use faithfulness and he will use it.

And we reminded that in the Reformation. Now the formal cause of the Reformation is sola scriptura, that is scripture alone.

We talked about it this morning. Scripture alone is our highest authority in the church.

And it's my premise tonight that the church in America in 2023, 506 years from the beginning of the

Reformation, the church in America in this year of our Lord, 2023, will not experience true revival or reformation until we rediscover the book.

So that's what I wanna do tonight. The reformers in essence rediscovered the book.

They, through their efforts, translated the book into languages of the people.

Luther himself working in the German language and then others who came along working in other languages.

And once the book got in people's hands, the Reformation spread like a wildfire.

Friends, I'm afraid tonight that the book is hiding in plain sight. And so what

I want us to do tonight is rediscover this great book and I wanna show you the true hero of this book is the one we sing about tonight who is worthy.

It's Christ. Christianity doesn't need heroes. We already have a hero.

It's Christ. But what we do need tonight are people who are willing to take up this book, read what it says and believe it.

I wanna show you tonight a time period in the history of God's people where this happened.

2 Chronicles chapter 34. Would you stand with me? I'm tempted to read the whole thing. It's just so long.

I'm gonna start in verse eight. 2 Chronicles 34, we will cover most of this. But let me just read for our reading now, 8 through 21.

So some of this you'll just have to pick up and you will as we go along. Now in the 18th year of his reign, that is the reign of King Josiah, when he had cleansed the land and the house, he sent

Shaphan, the son of Azaliah, and Massiah, the governor of the city, and Joah, the son of Joahaz, the recorder, to repair the house of the

Lord, his God. They came to Hilkiah, the high priest, and gave him the money that had been brought into the house of God, which the

Levites, the keepers of the threshold, had collected from Manasseh and Ephraim and from all the remnant of Israel and from all

Judah and Benjamin from the inhabitants of Jerusalem. And they gave it to the workmen who were working in the house of the

Lord. And the workmen who were working in the house of the Lord gave it for repairing and restoring the house.

They gave it to the carpenters and the builders to buy quarried stone and timber for binders and beams for the buildings that the kings of Judah had let go to ruin.

And the men did the work faithfully. Over them were set Jahab and Obadiah, the Levites of the son of Moriah and Zechariah and Meshalom of the sons of the

Kohathites to have oversight. The Levites, all who were skillful with instruments of music, were over the burden bearers and directed all who did work in every kind of service.

And some of the Levites were scribes and officials and gatekeepers. Quick pause, they're repairing the temple.

Okay, they're repairing the temple. And this happens in verse 14. While they were bringing out the money that had been brought into the house of the

Lord, Hilkiah the priest found the book of the law of the

Lord given through Moses. Then Hilkiah answered and said to Shaphan the secretary,

I have found the book of the law in the house of the Lord. And Hilkiah gave the book to Shaphan. Shaphan brought the book to the king and further reported to the king, all that was committed to your servants they are doing.

They've emptied out the money that was found in the house of the Lord and have given it to the hand of the overseers and the workmen.

Then Shaphan the secretary told the king, Hilkiah the priest has given me a book.

And Shaphan read from it before the king. And when the king heard the words of the law, he tore his clothes.

And the king commanded Hilkiah, Ahiakim the son of Shaphan, Abedin the son of Micah, Shaphan the secretary, and Asaiah the king's servant saying, go inquire the

Lord for me for those who are left in Israel and in Judah concerning the words of the book that has been found for great is the wrath of the

Lord that is poured out on us because our fathers have not kept the word of the Lord to do according to all that is written in this book.

Let's pray. Father, thank you for the book. We pray tonight that we would not let this book hide in plain sight.

We pray that we'd be people of the book, not just in name, not just in a rah -rah chant, but truly day after day.

We'd wake up tomorrow and read the book. We'd go to, before we go to bed tomorrow, we would read the book with our children.

We'd wake up on Tuesday and read the book. We would share the book on Wednesday. We would preach the book

Sunday after Sunday after Sunday. We would put the book in our brains and in our hearts. We would talk about the book as we walk along the way.

We would share the book with unbelievers. We would encourage believers with the book that we would resolve to have our lives centered around and in and upon this book that you have given us.

It is the king's book. King Jesus. And it points to him.

And I pray that we would honor this book rightly as the very voice of God in written form.

And we know that we need your grace. And we know that there's no revival or reformation in a church or in a nation that's disconnected from your book.

We need revival in our land. We think about the state of our nation, and I'm the worst to start complaining about gas prices or food prices.

And these are terrible things, Lord. And we pray for reprieve in these things.

But we know they're just symptoms. And the greatest need that our country has is to see

Christ and to bow the knee to him. Would you use our church in a small way in that way?

We're just ordinary people, but we have such an extraordinary God. We pray that you would use us, weak, helpless.

Struggling sinners for the glory of Christ. We pray it in his name, amen.

You may be seated. On May 1st, 2016, I preached from this text here at Providence Baptist Church on Sunday morning.

So that was seven, almost seven and a half years ago. And at that point,

I was coming in view of a call, kind of. It was kind of a thing we'd worked out.

I told the search committee, I don't want to come preach one time. I want to preach several times. I want people to kind of hear me preach and know kind of what they're getting, right?

And so this was from seven and a half years ago. And I was reminded about this message a couple weeks ago because the

Turnages had told me that they had listened to it. And it reminded me about this sermon. And I thought that tonight would be an appropriate time to bring this out and look at this text again.

Since we're right on the cusp of Reformation Day 2023, because two things about the

Reformation that really drove it. One is the Gospel, the other is the

Bible. And we'll see tonight, these really end up going hand in hand. We keep them distinct. The Gospel's not the

Bible. The Bible's not the Gospel, of course. But we see in the Reformation, these things go hand in hand.

As the Bible is rediscovered, right, they understand that the Gospel is there.

It's there in the Bible. It's not what Rome had said that it was. And so it had been treated cavalierly.

The Bible had been set sometimes on equal standard as church history, sometimes underneath church history, church authority, creeds, councils, those things.

They had treated the Bible wrongly. But the Reformation rediscovered ultimately the necessity, clarity, authority, and sufficiency of the

Word of God. I told you in the introduction, the Bible began to be translated into the language of the common people.

And here's what the common people began to do when the Bible was in their language. They began to read the Bible, and they began to believe the

Bible. And so 150 years after the Reformation, you have our Baptist forefathers.

When I say Baptist forefathers, I mean we can trace Baptists in America today historically right to the

Reformation. And so our Baptist forefathers wrote things like in 1689, chapter one, it's really 1677, but in chapter one of the 1689, they say this.

The Holy Scripture is the only sufficient, certain, and infallible rule of all saving knowledge, faith, and obedience.

And understand that the Baptists have always believed that the Word of God is supreme.

We are, they used to pejoratively say of Baptists, they're people of the book, right?

Hey, let's make that great again, right? Let's embrace this mantra.

We are people of the book. And so it's my desire tonight to help us keep this principle of sola scriptura, the

Scripture alone is our highest authority. It's my desire tonight to keep this principle at the forefront of our minds, to encourage us in it, and that we would be people bowing to the supreme authority of the

Scripture and trusting in the sufficiency of the Scriptures. So simple outline tonight.

I want us to rediscover the book. So two big points. One, the story, two, the significance.

So let's talk about this story, historical context here a little bit. So let's go back up to verse one of chapter 34.

Josiah was eight years old when he began to reign. Now, our youngest son,

Haddon, is six, right? I cannot imagine him being a king in two years. But here we have

Josiah. He was eight when he began to reign, and he reigned 31 years in Jerusalem.

And he did what was right in the eyes of Yahweh. By the way, as a side note, that's all that matters, right?

Doing what is right in the eyes of God. That's all that matters for our church.

Whether the community says one thing, or this group over here says that, or that group says this, the most important thing about our church is that above all else, the most important thing about your life is that above all else, who your judge is that they are saying you live right is the

Lord. Doing right in the eyes of the Lord. And he walked in the ways of David, his father, and he did not turn aside to the right hand or to the left.

For in the eighth year of his reign, while he was yet a boy, he began to seek the God of David, his father.

And in the 12th year, he began to purge Judah and Jerusalem of the high places and the ashram and the carved and the metal images.

This is Josiah. At this time in the history of the Old Testament, the kingdoms have split.

There's Israel in the north. Actually, at this point, it's ruled by the Assyrians. And then you have Judah in the south.

The kingdom of Judah had 19 different kings and one queen over 350 years. Of all those, only eight of those kings are good kings.

Josiah, the text says, is one of those good kings. He was born sometime around 647

BC. And our text says, again, he came to be king when he was eight and just listen to 2

Kings 23 -25. This is talking about Josiah, 2 Kings 23 -25.

Before him, there was no king like him who turned to the Lord with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his might according to the law of Moses, nor did any like him arise after him.

Now, I'll skip over this a little bit, but just know a little bit of biblical history. His father and grandfather, so Ammon and Manasseh, you can read about them at the end of 2

Chronicles 33. They were two wicked kings. But then you have Josiah, who it says in our text, verse three, in the eighth year of his reign.

So however you figure that up, that's either he's age 15 or 16, right? Because his reign begins when he's eight and then in the eighth year of his reign, he begins to seek the

Lord. Well, how does he begin to seek the Lord? Because God first sought him, right? That's grace.

How did this king come from the lineage of two wicked kings, a grandfather and father who were wicked kings?

How did this king come to seek the Lord? Because we're reminded tonight of the principle of another sola of the

Reformation, sola gratia, which is what? By grace alone. I'll tell you tonight, it doesn't matter if your parents were good parents or bad parents.

Ultimately, your salvation stands or falls on the grace of God. It's God's grace that was shown to Josiah according to his sovereign prerogative.

Parents, I remind this to you, and I need this reminder as well.

You need to do family worship. You need to share the gospel with your children.

You need to read the Bible with your children. You need to show them Jesus. But can

I tell you that their salvation ultimately is not dependent upon those things.

I'm not diminishing those things. We absolutely should do those things. That's part of our duty as parents, to raise our children in the nurture and admonition of the

Lord. But the salvation of our children is not based upon their parents. It's based primarily upon the grace of God.

And this is our hope, because we serve a gracious God. Now, Josiah is saved by the grace of God.

In verse four, we see that he's a king with zeal for God's glory.

They chopped down the altars of the Baals in his presence. And he cut down the incense altars that stood above them.

And he broke in pieces the ashram and the carved and the metal images. And he made dust of them and scattered it over the graves of those who had been sacrificed to them.

He also, listen to this. I like, sometimes you read the Old Testament, wow. He burned the bones of the priest on their altars and cleansed

Judah and Jerusalem. So remember, so just think about this for a moment. For years and years and years, for a long time now, worship had fallen on hard times.

This happens sometimes, right? It happens in the history of God's people. The worship of God seems poor evangelicalism today.

You see it just kind of crumbling. And what you need is a group of people or sometimes just a person who's willing.

Maybe you see that, maybe you could think about Martin Luther or Calvin or Zwingli, those guys. But sometimes you just need someone who will stand up and say,

I believe God and we can't do this anymore. And here's what you have in Josiah.

He'd been placed in this position. And he said, I believe God and we can't do this anymore.

We can't worship this way. He doesn't just clean house in Judah, but into Israel.

Did you see that? He smashes the images into powder. He had zeal for the worship of God, zeal for the understanding of the things of God.

These things had consumed Josiah. Next he turns his attention to the temple and the temple of God, the place where God's presence was dwelling in a special way where God's people would come and worship him and sacrifice to him.

It had been neglected. So he turns his attention to the temple. We might even say that zeal for the house of the

Lord had consumed him. We might even say that someone with this kind of zeal today would be passionate about the church.

I can't read this with his zeal for the temple of the Lord without thinking about Christ. And let me just offer this application.

There are two ways to neglect the church. One way to, two primary ways, there's lots of ways.

Two primary ways. One way you can neglect the church is like in Josiah's day. And that is they just neglected the temple altogether.

It had fallen in ill repute disarray. They just neglected it. You have people today who just neglect the church.

They claim to be Christians, but they completely neglect the assembly of God's people and meeting

God in a special way, in a special place where God's people gather together. Another way that you can neglect the church today is like it was in Jesus' day.

So you remember, Josiah turns his attention to the temple here. You remember, Jesus turns his attention to the temple too in his day.

And when he turns his attention to the temple in his day, the temple wasn't in disarray, was it? The temple was great.

Everything was great outwardly, but they were treating it like what? Money hungry.

And he drives them out with a whip. They had made the worship of God into man's tradition.

Oh, the decay wrought by sin. But the point of our text tonight is it's during this repair that this great discovery is made in verse 14.

While they were bringing out the money that had been brought into the house of the Lord, Hilkiah the priest found the book of the law of the

Lord given through Moses. This book was probably at least Deuteronomy, if not more.

Hilkiah knows that it's important and he has Shaphan read it to Josiah in verse 18.

Then Shaphan the secretary told the king, Hilkiah the priest has given me a book and Shaphan read from it.

So he gonna read the book to the king, verse 19. And when the king heard the words of the law, he tore his clothes.

Now we don't know exactly what was read. The Bible doesn't record that for us, but we do know that Josiah here is broken.

He hears this and he believes it and he takes it seriously. And then he gathers others to hear it.

Go down to verse 29. Then the king sent and gathered together all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem.

And the king went up to the house of the Lord with all the men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem and the priests and the

Levites, all the people both great and small. And listen to this, he read from the book. He read and they're hearing all the words of the book of the covenant that had been found in the house of the

Lord. What an amazing thing, like just a simple thing, like what do we need to do to have revival and run around and jump around and maybe get some fog machines coming up in here and some laser lights.

We gotta do something, right, to create an atmosphere of revival. But here we're gonna see

God sends at least a small, brief revival simply based on his word.

People got serious about the book. As an aside,

I might warn us tonight, this will require humility, trembling.

You remember Isaiah 66. Who will God look to? The one who trembles at his word.

Brokenness on part of the people of God. A church cannot keep doing things its own way and not be convicted by the

Scriptures. So Josiah continues religious reform. We're gonna see later, we won't read this, but you'll see later if you're reading that he keeps the

Passover and Judah experiences a small, brief revival.

Now later, Josiah's gonna fight with the king of Egypt. He's gonna fight with Necho and he's gonna be killed in battle.

And then a little over 10 years after Josiah's death is when the first exiles of the people of God go into Babylon.

Really a sad chapter to consider. That's the story. Number two, the significance.

Okay. Wow. You just told us an Old Testament story.

What's its significance? Friends, the significance is great. But let me make a side note first.

It seems to me that the recovery of the Bible and the recovery of the church go hand in hand.

We see an example of that with Josiah and the temporal repairs and the book.

The repair of the temple and the recovery of the book, they went hand in hand.

But then you see that also 500 years ago in the Reformation. What the Reformation led to was a recovery of the church because they rediscovered the word of God.

I will go even farther to say this. The gospel and the word of God and the church are all interconnected.

That is, we have people today who claim that they have the gospel right. And they claim that they're trusting

Jesus, but there is no searching of the scriptures in their life. There is no love for the church in their life.

But when the gospel comes in, by gospel I mean the good news of Christ, the virgin birth of Christ, the righteous life of Christ, the fulfilling of the law of Christ, the death of Christ for sinners, on the cross, the resurrection of Christ and the ascension of Christ.

When this lays hold in someone's heart, they're not just hymn hall about the church and they're not just hymn hall about the

Bible. It all goes together. The gospel and the Bible and the church, they're interconnected. And so I wanna consider four important truths from our text.

Significant to us, 500 years post -reformation. And I wanna encourage us as we think about these four factors that we would be a people that are always carrying around this principle of semper reformanda, which means always reforming.

That the church would always be ready to take up the Bible, to read it, to apply it, to make changes where it needs to be.

So four important truths from our text. Number one, number one, you're like, whoa, this is so, wow,

God wrote a book, right? That's just so obvious, right?

That doesn't take a seminary degree to see. But it's important.

God wrote a book. Verse 14, it says, the book, they were bringing out the money that had been brought into the house of the

Lord. Hilkiah the priest found the book of the law of the

Lord. The word book is used 10 times in 2

Chronicles 34. Now, listen to me. They didn't find a leather -bound copy of the 1611

King James Version of the Bible. And they for sure didn't find an LSB in there.

It was probably on a scroll. But still, here's the truth. That's a book.

It's the book of God. In chapter 35, verse six, it says, and slaughter the

Passover lamb and consecrate yourselves. This is talking about gonna keep the Passover. Prepare for your brothers to do, now listen to this, according to the word of the

Lord by Moses. Listen, the word of the Lord by Moses.

What we believe about the Bible as Baptists, as Christians, as followers of God is this.

The Bible was written by men as instruments of God, as God worked in and through the human authors in their cultural time period, in their skills as authors.

That's why you say Luke wrote this way, John wrote this way, Moses wrote this way. He took people from a certain time period.

He took people from a certain culture. He took people with certain intentions. They wrote this for this.

Paul wrote to the Ephesians for this purpose. John wrote Revelation for this purpose. Moses wrote the Pentateuch for this purpose.

God took all of that, and yet he took it in such a way that what we have in this book is the word of God.

God wrote a book. I wish God would speak to me. I wish he'd speak to me. I wish he would just tell me what it is.

He has spoken in the book. You say today, preacher, do you believe

God talks to people? Do you believe that God speaks today? Amen.

I believe that God talks to people in the Bible. I believe

God speaks today in the Bible. That is, the Holy Spirit speaks by, in, and through the written word of God to the people of God.

We don't have an old book that's dead. We have a living book, the living and active word of God.

This is God's book, and God has given us a book. Praise God.

Charles Simeon says this. It is scarcely to be conceived how great a benefit has arisen to the

Christian cause from the invention of printing. The word of God is that whereby the work of salvation is principally carried on in the souls of men, and the multiplying of copies of Holy Scriptures in such a form as to be conveniently portable and at such a price as to be within the reach of the poor has tended more than any other thing to keep alive the interest of religion, both in the hearts of individuals and in the community at large.

What a glorious book. I'm just gonna make a comment. I haven't thought through this really well, so I'm kind of shooting from the hip on this, but as I think about that quote,

I think about this. It really is a travesty what a money -making endeavor the

Bible has become for certain companies. Translations come out sometimes, not all translations, but sometimes translations come out just because of copyright issues.

You have to spend large amounts of money in order to get a good, solid Bible. And I understand cost,

I understand Leather's cost, I understand all of that, but what a travesty to try to make money off, or at least big amounts of money, on the word of God.

But what an even greater travesty is that this book is not prized today in the land.

America does not cherish this book. America laughs at this book, gets angry at this book, rejects this book, calls those fools who would believe this book.

But I'm reminding you tonight that God has written a book.

And God, we have the very voice of God in written form in this book.

And yet, listen to me, church, it lies closed in many homes. Husbands and wives don't read it together.

Parents don't read it to their children. For many, it's not even read personally on a regular basis.

Yeah, I got the Bible, I got the Bible. I got the Bible on my phone, got the Bible on the internet. I got three Bibles, two in my home.

I got another one in my car. Sometimes I got the church Bible. I leave my Bible at church, because I got this,

I don't got. You understand, we have such access to God's word, and yet we don't read it. I maintain this position,

I have for a while, that in terms of the access we have to the Bible, we are the most biblically ignorant generation maybe that has ever existed, ever, in terms of access that we have.

You understand that used to, and even around the world today, man, I gotta be careful, I'm just gonna go along.

It's not what I'm trying to do, but even around the world today, people gather together, and there's a little lamp, because they don't wanna get in trouble by the authorities, and they gather around, and they've got this little strip here, and they have three chapters of Romans, and they huddle in together, and they're shoulder to shoulder and they're just feasting on the word of God, because it's the only piece of scripture they have in their language.

And here we are with a Bible here and a Bible there, here a Bible, there a Bible, everywhere a

Bible, Bible, and we don't know it, and we don't care to know it.

And I'm encouraging us tonight that this is terribly sad. This book isn't buried under stones.

It's disregarded in plain sight. You have pastors who won't read the book.

A man who is not striving to read the Bible every day should not be a pastor, particularly in America.

Now I understand, someone's like, yeah, well, what about this, this, this? Exceptions aside, if a man's not gonna read the

Bible, he shouldn't pastor. We have pastors in churches all across this land that give such little time to such a glorious book.

Is there any wonder why our nation is in the condition that it is? We've neglected the book.

So I'm telling us tonight, let us think about these things and let these things not be true of Providence Baptist Church.

May we always strive to value this book and be people of the book. And remember, this is

God's book. He wrote a book, he gave it to us, that we could know him, right? Not to just like arbitrary rules or whatever.

When we open this Bible, what do we see? Christ, he gave us the Bible so that we could know him through Christ.

What a glorious God to speak to us, to condescend to our level, and to give us his words that we can know them so that we can know him.

I gotta move on. Secondly, God expects you to know what is in the book.

Now, I will always probably remember this illustration, but we had some difficulties in the church.

I first pastored and we sat around in a room one time and this man who was on the search committee, they met with me and trying to work through some things and he, let me put up, let me put my bookmark in here so I can close it.

He held up his Bible like this. He's sitting down across the room from me. He picked up his

Bible and he said, now he said this nicely, okay? He wasn't being rude. He said, Brother Quattro, is it your position that God really expects us to know everything in this book?

Friends, why did God give us this book? To serve as a paperweight?

To look nice on our coffee table so that we could just talk about how great a book it is?

No, friends, that we would know what was in the book.

Now, look down in our story in verse 22. So Hilkiah and those whom the king had sent went to Huldah the prophetess, the wife of Shalom, the son of Takas, son of Hasra, keeper of the wardrobe.

Now, she lived in Jerusalem in the second quarter and spoke to her to that effect. And she said to them, thus says

Yahweh, the God of Israel, tell the man who sent you to me, thus says the Lord, behold,

I will bring disaster upon this place and upon its inhabitants, all the curses that are written in the book that was read before the king.

Now, listen to that. I will bring all the curses on the people, verse 25, because they have forsaken me and have made offerings to other gods that they might provoke me to anger with all the works of their hands.

Therefore, my wrath will be poured out on this place and will not be quenched. So listen to this.

The book shows us who God is, what he expects, what he requires. God requires us to know this.

Now, God says that he's gonna bring this judgment upon Judah. But listen, just think through the logic of this.

They haven't had the book, you understand? They haven't had it.

It's been disregarded in the temple. They haven't had the book, yet God is going to bring his judgment on the people because of what was written in the book.

But wait a second, they didn't have access to the book, but God still holds them accountable, you understand?

He still holds them responsible. So what does this say today about churches and families in America who don't know

God's word? Is it your position that you think they're gonna stand before God one day and they're gonna give, get a pass?

Or do you believe what Jesus says? To whom much is given, much is required.

God has given us the book and we're actually responsible whether you read the book or not. Listen to me tonight, church.

Whether you read the book or not, you're responsible to know what is in this book.

Will we listen? Does the Bible hide in plain sight for you?

Dads, moms, children, children.

Does it hide under the rubble, families, of busyness and poor excuses?

Will churches listen? I'm not, like sometimes you say things about other churches, a person may say things about other churches in order for them to feel better.

No, I'm not saying negative things about other churches for us to feel better. I'm saying that it would break our hearts because churches today are doing unbiblical things in worship or in the name of reaching people.

They're doing unbiblical things. Why? Why, just because we've left the book neglected.

We've pulled out, we've cherry picked verses here and there. We've not sat down on our faces. We've not wept. There's no tear stains on the pages of our

Bibles and we haven't read them and known them and even people sitting in the pews. So pastors are responsible, people in the pews, they just go along with things that they shouldn't go along with, all because we have this great travesty of neglecting this book.

The very thing God has given us so that we can know what it is that he would have us to do and we leave it unread, unknown, unheeded.

Okay, so number one, God's written a book.

Number two, God expects us to know what's in the book. Three, when God's people take God's book seriously, great things happen.

So we say, hey man, I came here on Sunday night and I'm kind of getting convicted.

That's not why I come on Sunday night. Well, I'm not trying to convict you, right? If the

Holy Spirit brings conviction, be encouraged because when God's people take

God's book seriously, great things happen. This is so encouraging to me.

There is power, I'm telling you tonight, there is power in this book.

Not because of its pages, not because of its ink, not because of the cover of it.

There is power in this book because this book is the word of God.

They try to stop us from reading the book publicly. They try to stop us from preaching the book publicly.

Companies and such, they don't want the book to be quoted. Why? Because the enemy is after the book because there's great power in the book and we are to be committed to preaching this book because when we take the book seriously, great things happen.

We ought to preach the word. We ought to never minimize the preaching of God's word. Same church, I'll give you another story real quick, but same church, you know, traditional things.

We had a Christmas cantata. We had a Christmas cantata. Choir sang after it,

I preached. Well, a few weeks later, I was at a Christmas party and one of the members of the church, they came up to me and they said,

Brother Quatro, you better not ever do what you did the other Sunday. I'm like, well, what did I do?

Did I run over a child, right? Did I knock a lady out of the way on the way to the buffet or something after church?

What did I do? And listen, I was like this 12 years ago, so I mean,

I was 25. Thanks, I make mistakes. So what did I do? You preached after the cantata.

Why? Yes, ma 'am. And I'll preach again next year.

Because we can't neglect the preaching of the word of God because the preaching of the word of God is the very means by which

God equips and encourages and brings about reformation and revival in the church. And I don't think it's wrong for me to mention this.

I don't think it's all glory to God. I think God has moved here. I think God is working in this place and that is exciting, but God has really moved here, but let that not make us arrogant.

It has to make us humble. And to see a place where God has moved, if you say, man,

God has moved here, and you walk away just kind of popping your collar and puffing your chest and saying, hey, you know what?

God has moved here. We must be something. Then you've missed it and you're in danger of ruining this whole thing.

Rather, when we see God moving, we ought to hunger for humility and even more trembling before the word and seeking him all the more and knowing this great statement, to whom much is given, much is required.

Let us be these type of people. Because when we take this book seriously, it means that we see it as our highest authority.

We believe what it says and we know that what it says, God says.

It means that we trust that it is sufficient for all that God would have us to know. When God's people take this book seriously, repentance happens.

We see this in our story. Look at verse 19. When the king heard the words of the law, he tore his clothes.

Why? Because it wasn't so much that he read the book, but the book read him and found him and the people wanting.

And so we take up the book and when we read it with the intent on seeking God, he will be found and he exposes our sins, our laziness, our pride, our excuses, our need for loving the church more, our need for loving the lost more and God leads us through repentance.

Through the words of this book. We need to be people who read the book and share the book because God brings repentance through it.

God brings reformation through the book. Verse 29, it says, then the king sent and gathered all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem.

The king went up to the house of the Lord with all the men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the priests and Levites and all the people, both great and small.

And he read in their hearing all the words of the book of the covenant that had been found in the house of the Lord. And the king stood in his place and made a covenant before the

Lord to walk after the Lord and to keep his commandments and his testimonies and his statutes with all his heart and all his soul to perform the words of the covenant that were written in this book.

Now, listen, how do we know that repentance is real? Where repentance is real, reformation will follow.

How do we know Josiah's repentance is real? He didn't just tear his clothes. God tore his heart.

And because of this, there was reformation in Judah. Things began to change. In 1517 and beyond, change swept across Europe.

How did this happen? The word. Martin Luther said, I simply taught, preached, wrote

God's word. Otherwise, I did nothing. The word did it all. Repentance, reformation.

Thirdly, revival. Josiah was 26 years old when these things took place.

Revival happened in the land. You can read that in chapter 35.

I'll read just two verses, 18 and 19. It says, no Passover like it had been kept in Israel since the days of Samuel the prophet.

None of the kings of Israel had kept such a Passover as was kept by Josiah. And the priests and the Levites and all

Judah in Israel who were present in the inhabitants of Jerusalem in the 18th year of the reign of Josiah, this

Passover is kept. God did a beautiful thing among the people of God. God did an amazing thing through repentance, reformation, and then he brought revival.

And there was revival because people hungered for God. You understand that hungering for God and hungering for the word of God go hand in hand.

Don't tell me you hunger for more of God if you're not hungering for the word of God. We see in scripture and we see in history that the

Bible is the instrument used by the Holy Spirit in bringing true reformation and revival. And we will not have an awakening without the word of God.

Okay, finally, quickly. God wrote a book. God expects us to know what is in the book. Great things can happen when we take this book seriously.

And finally, the book reveals our hero and our hope.

Josiah appears in the New Testament too. He is in the lineage of Christ. And so his life here in the

Old Testament points to a greater life that is to come after him. Josiah sought the Lord at age 16, but one after him,

Christ our King, sought the Lord perfectly his whole life, never wavering. Josiah repaired the temple, but one after him,

Christ our King, said he himself was the temple. It was destroyed, but he raised it up on the third day.

Josiah tore his clothes when he heard the curses from the book of the law, but Christ's own flesh was torn as he became a curse for us.

Josiah renewed the covenant with the people of Judah. Jesus is the lion of the tribe of Judah and perfectly kept the covenant with his father, fulfilled the covenant of works and meeting all the demands of law perfectly, dying in the place of covenant breakers.

Josiah provided thousands of lambs. If you go back and read this in chapter 35, he provided thousands of lambs for this great

Passover meal, but Christ our King provided the one lamb himself, all that we needed, his own flesh on that old rugged cross so that he himself could be our

Passover lamb for all those who will trust him by faith. Josiah foolishly fought

King Necho and died at the hands of Egyptian archers and he remains dead to this day. Christ faithfully fought sin and death and died at the hands of wicked men, but he arose again in victory, defeating death, hell, and the grave and is alive today and forevermore.

Barely a decade after Josiah's death, God's people were defeated, the revival was over, shame came and they began to be exiled to Babylon, but 2 ,000 years after Jesus' death, his church, though she is plagued with enemies, though she is imperfect, she still lives and is marching on to victory.

Josiah's life points us to the greater life of King Jesus. He's the hero that we need.

He is our hope. The Bible says cursed is anyone who does not obey the words of this book.

Cursed means cut off from God, but this is why this book tonight is so precious to us because though it tells us the reality of those who don't obey the book of the law are cursed, which includes all of us are not obedient, have not been obedient to the book of law, it also tells us of the one who became a curse for us.

Christ. Christ was cut off so that his people could be reconciled to God and all the do's that you've heard in this sermon, the reading the

Bible and picking up the Bible and knowing the Bible better and be better servants of the book, all of the do's in this sermon must be grounded in the done of Jesus Christ.

We don't read the Bible to be accepted by God, friends. We read the Bible because we believe by faith that he has already accepted us in Christ.

What manner of love is this? All your labor, all your sin, all your sorrow, all your shame, all your faults, all your falling short, all your neglect of this great book, bring it tonight to the king, bring it to him and trust that when he bore our sins in his body on the tree, he even bore the sin of us neglecting this book.

That brings you freedom tonight to go again to the king of grace and to repent by his grace and to take up the book and to go forward.

If you're not a Christian, repent, turn from your sin, trust this great king crucified for our sins, but who lives now forevermore.

I'm pleading with us in here tonight, rediscover this book. Let us rediscover this great treasure.

Let us take up this great book that God has given to us for our good. We need to be more humble in this area.

I'm so ready to fault people at times for not doing certain things that I think are biblical.

And how often am I not giving as serious time to the book as I ought to be giving?

And I'm just gonna tell you, friend, the same is true in your life. Will you rediscover the book?

Solely to your glory. Father, thank you for your word. Help us to be a people of the book, to take it up, to read, to trust it, and to live according to its promises.