FBC Daily Devotional – January 3,2022

Well, good morning and happy new year. I trust your new year, 2022, has gotten off to a good start already. I hope you had a good New Year's Eve and New Year's Day weekend. I don't know if you did any celebrating or just took it easy and got some extra R &R, whatever you did, I hope you had a good weekend.

And I hope you got your new year off to a good start by being at church yesterday. I can't think of a better way to begin and set the tone for the new year than gathering together with God's people on the first Sunday of that new year.

Josiah's Concern for God's House

At our church, we had communion and we always enjoyed doing that the first Sunday of the month. So that's the first Sunday of the year, again, sets the year off, gets the year off to a good start. Well, today in our Bible reading schedule, we're reading in 2 Kings 22 and 23, and there are a couple of good examples in a part of Josiah that challenge us at a good time, you know, at the beginning of a year to ask us a couple of questions about ourselves and about our attitudes.

And the first thing has to do with Josiah's attitude toward God's house. So this is a guy who was eight years old when he became the king. So, you know, he grew up in an environment. He knew what he knew and that's the best you can say.

When he got to be 26 years of age, he started to look around and realize, you know, this is the way things are supposed to be. He's looking at God's house at the temple and it's in disrepair. It hasn't been taken care of.

And that bothers him, that grieves him. So he sends his scribe to God's house, to Hilkiah the priest, and he says, look, get the money that has been collected by, you know, offerings of God's people, and let's get this place repaired.

Let's get this place fixed. And what that communicates to me is that Josiah had a good, healthy attitude toward God's house. He made it a priority in his thinking, in his administration, in the policies he was establishing as the king.

And that challenges me, and I hope it does you as well, to get us to think about, you know, what are my attitudes toward God's house? Do I make it a priority? Do I make it a priority with my attendance and my worshiping with God's people?

Do I make it a priority with my financial affairs, with my giving? You know, taking care of a church and its functions, I mean, it costs money to do that kind of thing. It's just a reality of life, and you know, different parts of the world have different levels of need and requirement, but here we are in the Western world, in the United States of America, and you know, we have certain responsibilities to take care of God's house so that it is in good repair, and it is a good testimony to our communities.

And so, is that a priority in our lives? I think it ought to be. But that's a priority in Josiah's life, and should be in ours, because of another priority, and that has to do with my attitude toward God's word.

Josiah's Response to God's Word

So here's what happened. When they started doing the repair work on the temple, they found a copy of the law, of God's law, God's word. And that's a pretty sad commentary on the state of things, isn't it?

Because, I mean, the thing's been buried and nobody's really noticed. Man, that's sad. Nevertheless, they find it. Hilkiah finds it, and when he finds it, he sends word to the king. He takes this to the king and says, look, this is what we found in doing our temple repairs, and he starts reading what God's word has to say, and when the king, Josiah, hears what God's word says, we read in verse 11, chapter 22, that he tore his clothes.

He tore his clothes. Now, why did he do that? Well, that was a cultural expression of grief and of distress, because what he heard wasn't measuring up with the way people were living. He goes on to say, to send these, Hilkiah the priest and some other messengers, to go inquire of the Lord.

He says, go inquire of the Lord for me, for the people and for all Judah concerning the words of this book that have been found, for great is the wrath of the Lord that is aroused against us, because our fathers have not obeyed the words of this book to do according to all that's written concerning us.

In other words, he's heard the law and he's looking around. He's looking at his own history, and he realizes we have neglected God and neglected his word for years. No wonder the temple is in disrepair, because God has been diminished and God's word has been diminished.

So both of those, both of those things go together, I think. And I think they should be a challenge to us. What is my attitude toward God's word? What is my attitude toward God's house? Is the Bible something I look at, you know, once a week when I go to church?

Is it something I want to be in every day? Do you have some kind of a plan for this new year to read the scriptures? There are all kinds of them available. One of the things that you can do is that if you have a smartphone, you can download an app called YouVersion, and that's Y-O-U version, and it has all kinds of Bible reading plans that you can follow.

You know, we have one for the church. We're in the middle of a two-year Bible reading plan. But the key is that you want to be in the word, and a plan like that just helps to encourage us to be in the word.

I hope that's our attitude, that we want to find out what God is like and what God likes, and the way we find that out is in his word. So two good questions to start off the new year. What is my attitude toward God's word?

And what is my attitude toward God's house? I hope in your case that both are very good. So, Father in heaven, thank you for challenging us right at the dawn of a new year with our attitudes toward your word and toward your house.

May they be healthy, we pray. And if they're not, heal us. Heal us from those deficient attitudes. This we ask in Jesus' name. Amen. All right. Well, have a good Monday. Hope your first week of the new year gets off to a great start.

Good day.