There was a study done recently where it was reported among regular church goers that only 32% read their bible personally every day, 27% read it a few times a week, 12% once a week, and 28% percent a few times a month or less. This survey was done among regular church goer in the US, but I dare say it is not much different here. Today we have a story of a king who found the Word of God collecting dust. It had fallen out of use among God’s covenant people. They had sidelined it to do things a little more like the world around them.
When that happens, the people easily get lost on their way, for they no longer hear the voice of God. So, I ask you, how dusty are your bibles? Has it been a while since you sat alone before God and opened the word? And truly listened. Not just for the sake of reading your bible. But read for the sake of listening to God speak? How long has it been since you have memorized a piece of scripture to strengthen you spiritually? Maybe since catechism class? O I pray this may not be so. We all want the Lord Jesus Christ to dwell within us, and he does so through his word and Spirit. Its not for nothing that Jesus’ prayer for his people was “Your word is truth, sanctify them in the truth.”
The son of David brings about renewal and returns the Word of God to its proper place.
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Renewal of the Land
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Return to the Word
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Return to Egypt
Renewal of the Land
Josiah was eight years old when he began to reign. God had raised this boy up to be a leader in Israel. We read in verse 3, “For in the eighth year of his reign, while he was yet a boy, he began to seek the God of David his father.” This means he is about 16. Beautiful. there are a few young men and women in our church that are that age. Dear children you cannot start too early. Commit yourself now to seeking God, to praying to him. I love when I see the young men and women in our church around the age of 16 taking their faith seriously. Committing to following Jesus. God does not show favoritism according to age, importance, or work. The world may not notice – you may not be at the forefront of the church, but God see those who seek him. As we read in Psalm 145, “The LORD is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth.”
It’s important as we go through these chapters to see where it all started. In young man’s heart. It begins with a thirst for God. You can change all kinds of stuff, and do all kinds of outward things, but if the Holy Spirit of God does not in any way touch your heart nothing will happen. True worship begins here, in the heart. This heart change then flows over into action. And ends with nothing less the cleansing of a whole country.
In the 12th year of his reign, he started to purge Judah and Jerusalem of the high places. And as before you may notice the strong language – “He cut”; “he broke”; “they chopped”; “he made dust of them and scattered it over the graves of those who sacrificed to them.”. And you may ask why in the world would he scatter the dust on the graves of those who sacrificed there? Because idols don’t just magically appear. People put them there, people worship them. An idol is nothing – it is the sin in the persons heart – the rebellion against God that is the problem. That is what this symbolism is getting at. Josiah’s reforms did not only remove sinful things, but also the sinful people that promoted and permitted these sinful things. The idols that filled the temple did not get there or stay there on their own – there were priests who were responsible for these sinful practices.
The land is God’s land. This is a symbolic of his kingdom. He had given the land to them from Dan to Beersheba, and that is the land that he cleanses. The people of God are not satisfied until every idol, every other god, every temptation has been eliminated from the land. This is the kind of king that we are looking for. Not one that comes with words but with power as Paul says, “For the kingdom of God is not a matter of talk but of power.”
Indeed, our king of whom Josiah was just a faint picture is of Jesus our Lord. This is the work he is doing except on a grander scale! And he will not rest, until heaven and heart are his, until evil has been thrown out of every corner of his empire – completely eradicated. Until righteousness covers the land as the waters cover the sea. He will not rest until his will is done on earth as it is in heaven!
And it is not just the removing, but also the restoration that must be noted. Not only must we remove, but we must build. We must give. And again, we also have a picture of the people’s faithful involvement here, both financially and in terms of their gifting. We see again and again this is idea of collection coming up in 2 Chronicles trying to make a point again and again for the post-exilic people. Your money shows where your heart is at. For what are you giving? The Chronicler says in effect, put your money where your heart is. For the advance of the worship and the glory of God! This is an amazing book to encourage the church of Jesus Christ to give.
And as they are bringing out the money that is collected, they find a book.
Return to the Word bring judgment and mercy
As they are busy cleaning out the temple, one of the priests finds a book in one of the rooms in the temple. This is probably the book of the Deuteronomy. We can imagine this is now the 18th year of Josiah’s reign, and Amon reigned two years. There probably was not a copy made in Manasseh reign which was largely wicked, so this book is probably at least 75 years old. That’s almost two generations, and possibly more.
The word of God may be laying in a dusty little corner of your home. Or it may have been covered over with the traditions of the church through the ages, like it had been before the reformation. And it was the reformation that wiped off the dust and returned it to its rightful place. O may the word of God be rediscovered by God’s people in every age! In every home!
So Hilkiah brings out this dust scroll, probably last copied by Hezekiah. Now remember this was the king’s job to make a copy of this book in his reign, and to follow it. We read in Deuteronomy, “When he takes the throne of his kingdom, he is to write for himself on a scroll a copy of this law, taken from that of the Levitical priests. It is to be with him, and he is to read it all the days of his life so that he may learn to revere the Lord his God and follow carefully all the words of this law and these decrees and not consider himself better than his fellow Israelites and turn from the law to the right or to the left. Then he and his descendants will reign a long time over his kingdom in Israel.”
Here was Josiah they faithful king in his 18th year, past halfway through his reign and he had never read it. You can just imagine the king hearing it. First, he heard the history of how God brought them to the land (Duet 1-4), the he would have heard the ten commandments (Deut 5). His heart sinking lower. Then the Shema in Deuteronomy 6, “Here O Israel the Lord you God the Lord is one, you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, soul, and strength.” Then the many warnings against idolatry, then sexual sin, mixed with clean and unclean laws.”
You can imagine his heart sinking lower and lower as he realizes just how great their sin is. How much they had offended God. And then you can imagine his face when he hears the blessings and curses of the covenant in Deuteronomy 28. Then almost at the end of this book he would have heard the choice that Moses had set before the people all those years before, and how Moses has warned them in 31:29 that they would “surely act corruptly and turn aside from the way that he had commanded them.”
Wow! Devastating. The word of God had spoken! In the light of this word Josiah knew looking at his people’s history that there is no hope. All he could do was to cast himself upon the Lord’s mercy. And he asks the prophet to inquire of the LORD.
And the answer is Judgement. Disaster. Curses. The wrath of God was going to be power out over this place. There was no stopping it. God is faithful to his covenant. God would pour out his covenant wrath on his people. Exile is now an inevitability. But was there not a glimmer of hope you ask? Absolutely – if there was not, I would not have become a preacher. There is hope for the sinner.
For it says in Deuteronomy 30:4ff “if your outcasts are in the uttermost parts of heaven, from there the LORD you God will gather you, and from there he will take you. And the LORD you God will bring you into the land that you fathers possessed, that you may possess it…The LORD your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring, so that you will love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all you should that you may live.” Yes, even as this judgement is spoken, there is grace that there is a way of return. It is through true repentance and forgiveness. God would not give up on them, even after he had poured out his wrath on them, and they had been removed from his presence. He would circumcise their hearts. God would do it.
And there is also a message of mercy for Josiah. It would not happen yet. He would rest in peace. He would not see this disaster. Why. Because he humbled himself. He repented. He sought the LORD in prayer.
And this king immediately gathers all the people, and he reads them this book! The king speaks the word of the lord and covenant himself to live in total obedience (verse 31). This is a picture of what would one day happen, when the Word himself – Jesus would descend, and that word would change the hearts of his people forever. So that they would follow him.
Just look at the total renewal that Josiah brought about… read all the “all’s” in verse 33. “And Josiah took all the abominations from all the territory that belonged to the people of Israel and made all who were present in Israel serve the LORD their God. All his days they did not turn away from following the LORD, the God of their fathers.” (Jesus) This is a picture of Messianic King. Whose kingdom would be cleaned, there would not be any sin remaining. How? Through death. Through the Passover lamb. He would lead them from exile once and for all.
The Passover and Egypt
There is a Passover, there is an Egyptian pharaoh, and there is a death of the Lords Firstborn which is what the king is also often called in the ancient near east. But rather then a celebration of exodus from Egypt, our chapter ends with a king going to the Egyptian king.
This was the last Passover before exile – but also the greatest. We read in verse 18, “No Passover like it had been kept in Israel since the days of Samuel the prophet. None of the kings od Judah had kept such a great Passover!” Wow! The promises of God are still coming to fruition. The last Passover was the greatest! What does that remind you of? The very last Passover? The greatest of them all? The one which our Lord celebrated!
This is a Passover that ends in exile. There is only one other Passover that led to exile. It was the last Passover ever celebrated. The Passover of our Lord Jesus, on the night he was to be exiled from the father’s presence.
This is meal of such importance in the Old Testament. We can hardly underestimate it. This Passover was the first thing they celebrated when the left Egypt, the last thing they celebrated before they were exiled, the first thing they celebrated at the second exodus from Babylon, and the last one before the final and great exile of our LORD! And since then, we have not been celebrated the Passover. No! now we celebrate the LORDS supper until he comes. I hope you see this meal is full of theological weight. Of death. And deliverance. Of renewal
. Josiah is free. And instead of staying away from Egypt he goes to meet the king in battle. Leaving Jerusalem to go to battle is generally a bad sign in Chronicles. We wonder why? It probably was because Egypt was allied with Assyria to go and fight the rising Babylonian empire. And there was an alliance with the Babylonian empire stretching back to Hezekiah’s day.
We know what happens by now when the king of Judah allies with anyone except the LORD. We know what happens by now when a king of Judah leaves Jerusalem in Chronicles. We know what happens when a king disguises himself to escape the word of God. Yet Josiah does all these things. He listened to the word of the prophetess Huldah, but not to the word of the Lord that came through Pharoah Neco. That Yahweh’s word is coming from a gentile to the people of Israel fits the direction of these closing chapters, which ends with the final words spoken by Cyrus.
And it is no wonder then that he is shot by an arrow. It all starts with an arrow killing Saul and ends with an arrow killing Josiah. And in the middle, we had Ahab shot by a random arrow. Each arrow was the death blow to that house. Saul’s house ended that day, and it was the beginning of the end of the house of Ahab. So here to we have a sign – the house of David was going into exile.
The Passover was both a sign of freedom and rejoicing and at the same time a bloody event as the lamb stood in for the firstborn son. Here we have the firstborn – the preeminent one dying. He dies not on the field of battle but in Jerusalem and all Israel mourned. And look at verse 25, “to this day they remember sing about his death.” Amazing this is what we do at the Lord Suppers. We remember the death of the firstborn – the king until he comes. But our songs don’t end in lament! But in rejoicing! For the one who died, lives! The exile is done. FOREVER! We have been invited back through the blood of the eternal covenant!
And his acts are written the book! This book that we hold here! All that he did – and is doing even to this day! Jesus the great son of David has forever crushed the head of the serpent through his own death. Because of his death the wrath of God passes over us! Babylon – that legendary city of wickedness is being destroyed! And Jerusalem is the place of eternal safety!
amen