Have you ever forgotten something that was super important? Like a friend’s birthday or a big test that you forgot to study for? Believe me, I forget things like that all the time. So when I know there’s something really important that I have to remember, I make sure I write a reminder somewhere. That way, I can look at a piece of paper or some message on my phone and know exactly the stuff I need to remember.
But just because something gets written down doesn’t mean
that a reminder is foolproof. Stuff can still go wrong. You could accidentally
drop your phone in a puddle and lose all those reminders. Or if you’re still
using good, old fashioned paper, it could get lost in a pile of other papers.
Or accidentally get recycled. Or get stapled to the back of your math homework,
never to be seen again!
Well, if something like this has ever happened to you, then
today’s story is perfect for you. Today, we’re going to be learning about a guy
named Josiah and how he found probably the most important reminder of all time!
Well, he didn’t actually find it himself… He has people for that. After all,
Josiah was a king.
And quite an interesting king at that. You see, Josiah
became king when he was only 8 years old! When I was 8, I was stuck in school
learning how to spell words, respect animals, and starting on my times tables.
But here Josiah was ruling an entire kingdom!
This kingdom was the kingdom of Judah. Judah was a small
kingdom that had split off from the kingdom of Israel a long time before Josiah
ever started to rule. And good thing too, because Israel had been taken over by
this people called the Assyrians and didn’t really exist anymore. As for Judah,
they weren’t in great shape either. The people of Judah had stopped listening
to God a long time ago, so God had been warning them that soon the kingdom of
Judah would be destroyed, just like Israel had been.
Part of the problem here was that most of the kings of Judah
hadn’t been good people. They worshipped idols – false gods – and cared more
about themselves than following the one true God. In fact, the Bible tells us
that these kings “did what was evil in the eyes of the LORD.” And when the
people saw their king disobeying God and doing whatever he wanted, they thought
they could do whatever they wanted too!
This wasn’t the case for Josiah, though. The Bible tells us
that Josiah was like David, a good king who did right in the eyes of the LORD
and obeyed what God told him to do. Now we don’t get to see a lot of what
Josiah did in the early part of his reign, but what we do see shows that Josiah
was a good king who cared for his people.
When Josiah was 26 years old, he sent some people to fix up
the temple where the people worshipped God. I said before that the people of
Judah had been worshipping idols for a long time now, so God’s temple wasn’t in
the best shape anymore. But Josiah was going to change that. He trusted these
builders to do their jobs well, to be honest, and to get the temple back up and
running the way it should be.
But Josiah got a little more than he bargained for. See,
while these builders were out there repairing things, I’m sure that the priests
were still trying to worship God however they could. But that would be tough
when there are a bunch of guys lifting giant stone blocks and 2 x 4’s all
around you.
Anyways, the high priest – that’s the priest in charge of
all the other priests – at this time was named Hilkiah, and he found something
pretty important while all this temple repair work was going on. Maybe the
builders had put a hole in one of the walls, maybe they had emptied out one of
the storage rooms for the first time in years, I don’t know… But somewhere in
this half-rebuilt temple, Hilkiah found an old book.
He saw the book and picked it up. I wonder what this is, he thought. It’s super dusty. Maybe some priest from years ago wrote down some of
the stuff going on while he served in the temple! He blew on the cover.
Dust scattered everywhere and Hilkiah coughed a few times. But after the dust
settled down, he opened the cover and started to read. “In the beginning, God
created the heavens and the earth…”
Hilkiah’s eyes widened. He slammed the book shut and clutched
it to his chest. Then he ran over to Shaphan, Josiah’s secretary and the guy
overseeing this whole rebuilding project. Shaphan probably laughed a little
bit, thinking, I don’t think I’ve ever
seen one of the priests run like that!
Hilkiah was shaking as he held the book out in front of him.
His throat was dry. “I’ve found the Book of the Law!” he finally croaked, as tears
came to his eyes.
Now let’s stop right there. Some of you might be thinking,
“What’s the big deal? I’ve heard that opening sentence before. That’s how the
Bible starts!”
But that’s exactly the point. At some point in Israel’s
history, between the evil kings and the worshipping of all those idols, the
people of Israel and Judah had lost their Bible. They didn’t live in an age
where making books was easy or where they could just look on the Internet if
they wanted to look up a Bible passage. And sure, the priests knew the stories
of Creation and Abraham and Moses and could tell the stories to the people, but
this was the first time a priest had seen a written copy of those stories and
the laws God had given to Israel in a really long time! Finding the Book of the
Law was a huge deal!
Anyways, Shaphan and Hilkiah brought the Book of the Law
back to Josiah and read some of it to him. But the more Shaphan read, the more
Josiah got upset. And when Shaphan finished, Josiah was so sad and so angry
that he tore his robes. Back in Bible times, this was a sign that someone was
deeply angry or deeply sorry about something.
See, finding this Book of the Law was like finding the
reminder of how God wanted His people to live. And when Josiah heard all of
these laws, all he could think about was how the people of Judah had been
breaking these commandments left and right. They had been disobeying God in so
many different ways, and the worst part was that many of the Israelites
probably didn’t even realize that some of the stuff they were doing was wrong!
“Quickly,” Josiah said to Hilkiah and Shaphan. “Go. Ask the
LORD for advice. Ask him about what is written in this book that has been
found. Do it for me. Also do it for the people and the whole nation of Judah.
The LORD is very angry with us. That’s because our people who have lived before
us didn’t obey the words of this book. They didn’t do everything written there
about us” (2 Kings 22:13, NIrV).
Well off they went. Hilkiah found a prophet named Huldah and
gave him Josiah’s message. And Huldah’s response was one of those “good news,
bad news” kind of things. Huldah said that God was angry, like Josiah guessed.
And God was still going to bring punishment on the people of Judah like He had
promised for so many years. But because Josiah had humbled himself and cried
out to God for help on what to do, God was going to wait to send that
punishment until long after Josiah and his family had lived and died.
But Josiah didn’t just stop with feeling bad. He didn’t
breathe a sigh of relief and say, “Glad that’s over with.” No, now that Josiah
had this reminder of how the people of Judah were supposed to live, he wasn’t
going to let things just continue like they had before. So he gathered up all
the people, “from the least important to the most important,” and had the Book
of the Law read out to all of them! And when that was done, Josiah agreed again
to all the laws and promises that God had made with Israel long ago.
And then… Well, Josiah went on a cleaning spree. Not only
did Josiah finish rebuilding the temple, but he got rid of all the temples and
places of worship for those false idols in Judah. He sent out teams to destroy
every idol they could find and tear down any decorations in the kingdom that
didn’t honour God. The kingdom of Judah destroyed every statue, every carving,
and every place of worship that was involved in worshipping anything other than
the one true God.
Finally, Josiah did something with the people that hadn’t
been done in a long time. They celebrated the Passover. This was a feast where
the people remembered how God had saved them from death and from slavery way
back in Moses’ time.
With that, Josiah completely transformed Judah. For the
first time in a long time, Judah was worshipping God and only God. And the
Bible praises Josiah quite highly for pulling this off, saying, “There was no
king like Josiah either before him or after him. None of them turned to the
LORD as he did. He obeyed the LORD with all his heart and all his soul. He
obeyed him with all his strength. He did everything the Law of Moses required”
(2 Kings 23:25).
Sadly, though, things didn’t stay this way forever. Josiah might
have been a good king, but he eventually died. And these new kings ended up
being just as evil as the other kings had been. And soon, Judah was back to
worshipping idols and disobeying God, even though they had the law again. And
because the people kept disobeying God, God sent the Babylonians to take over
Judah about 20 years after Josiah’s death…
It’s sad, because unlike all these other kings, Josiah got
it. When Josiah was reminded that the people of Judah had been disobeying God,
he immediately changed what was wrong so that the people could do right again.
He understood our lesson for today: Get
rid of what’s wrong when God reminds you of what’s right.
As Christians, though, we have something even better than
the Book of the Law to remind us of what’s wrong and right. When we believe in
Jesus and ask Him to forgive us for our sins, we get to enter into a
relationship with God. And because of that relationship, God gives us the
strength to actually do those right things. And there’s no reminder more
important than that.
________________________
That’s all for today’s post. Sorry for the delay. I’m on vacation right now and kind of forgot to post yesterday. Ironic that, I know. But
we should be back to our regularly scheduled Thursday posts next week. Hope you’ll check it out then!
~Brentagious
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