Good morning.
It's good to see all of you here.
It's good especially to have our visitors with us.
We're grateful for your presence and we hope that you'll stick around for a little while afterwards and allow us to have time to get to know you better.
This morning, wanted to take some time to examine some lessons on obedience.
As a child, this was not my favorite topic, but I don't think it is anybody's favorite topic when they're a child.
uh They have lessons to learn still.
But there was a child in the days of Judah who became king.
Turn your Bibles to 2 Chronicles.
In 2 Chronicles chapter 34 we are introduced to Josiah.
Josiah will become king when he is but eight years old.
If you're wondering if it would be a good idea if we all put Micah in charge as of today, no.
But Josiah will come to the throne of Judah at age eight after his father Amnon is assassinated, or Ammon, sorry, is assassinated by his own servants because of the evil
that he was participating in.
His father Manasseh had been evil, had participated in the destruction of the prophets, of killing the righteous, so much so that
that it was said that the blood of the righteous ran in the streets of Jerusalem, and his son would follow in his steps.
At age eight, Josiah will come to the throne.
And in the life of Josiah, though he only lives and reigns for 31 years, he dies at age 39, we find some lessons on obedience.
In 2 Chronicles chapter 34, one of the very first lessons that we learn from Josiah is it is possible to determine to serve the Lord from a young age.
At age eight, Josiah will become king, but from day one, Josiah will be a stark contrast from his father and his grandfather.
In chapter 34 and in verse 1 we read, Josiah was eight years old when he became king, and he reigned 31 years in Jerusalem, and he did what was right in the sight of the Lord, and
walked in the ways of his father David,
he did not turn aside to the right hand or to the left.
For in the eighth year of his reign, while he was still young, he began to seek the God of his father David, and in the twelfth year he began to purge Judah and Jerusalem of the
high places, the wooden images, the carved images, and the molded images.
Josiah will come to the throne, and yes, there will be a period of time in which
not much occurs, but by the time he's at the eighth year of his reign, which is when he is sixteen years old, he will begin to follow the Lord.
He will begin to seek to understand what the Lord would have him to do as king.
You might not be surprised, but most likely during much of the time, from the time he was eight until the time he was sixteen,
He wasn't really making a whole lot of the decisions.
He was more in a guardianship, as you might surmise from that.
But as he truly begins to come to power, at age 16, he begins to seek the Lord's will for his life as king.
And the 12th year of his reign, when he is but 20 years old, he will begin to destroy that which his father and his grandfather
had erected.
His great-grandfather had been a good king in Israel.
Not a perfect king in Israel, but a good king in Israel.
And as a result of that, as a result of the lineage of David and Hezekiah before him, Josiah will begin to correct the things that were wrong in his nation.
He will begin to tear down the high places, something that even some of the good kings had not done in restoring that which was right in Judah.
He will begin to tear down the altars and the images and the things that they had erected to the idols and in their idolatrous worship.
Because at a young age, Josiah determined to serve the Lord.
I've had it said to me before.
usually by parents who struggle to understand the decisions their children are making.
Well, I guess children just have to go off for a while and then you gotta hope that they come back.
That is not the biblical example of what a child should do.
That is not a consolation or a solace to parents who are watching their children depart from what they have been taught, depart from righteousness, and go off into sin and
wickedness, and it is certainly not necessary.
It is not a natural progression unless, of course, children have not been raised to do
what the Lord has said and determined their path in righteousness from a young age.
We have far too many examples in Scripture.
We have far too many individuals like Daniel, like Joseph, like Jesus, like all of the Apostles.
The likelihood is that the Apostles would have at least been three to five to ten to twelve years younger than Jesus.
It's possible that as Jesus begins his ministry at age 30, some of his younger apostles are but 18 or 19 years old.
and yet they will be faithful in following Jesus in being obedient to the Lord as they had already been receptive to the teaching of John the Baptist.
It is not necessary for a good, godly young person to go off into sin in order to come back to God.
It is possible for them to choose to be right and to serve the Lord from a young age.
and we learn that lesson from Josiah.
But then consider as well we also learn that we should not participate in evil.
We should not even allow the vestiges of evil to persist in our lives.
When Josiah comes to the throne, Judah, his nation, is participating in evil.
They have been involved in evil for more than
Five decades.
And yet, when he comes to the throne, as he comes to his power, as he comes to the realization of what God would have him to do, he begins to correct and set right the
nation and no longer allow them to persist in doing evil.
But Josiah also realizes that they cannot even continue to have the vestiges of the evil they had participated in
around them.
You know, when God told Israel to go into the land that He was going to give them, God commanded Israel, when you go into the land, you tear down the altars to the false gods.
You burn them with fire and you don't even pick up the gold and the silver that is in the fire that's been melted when you burn them.
You just leave it there.
God wanted Israel to make such a separation between themselves and the idolatry of the nations that they were going to judge on behalf of God that they had no remains left of
that nation and their idolatry.
But unfortunately for Israel, that is not what they did.
Israel rather allowed those things to remain.
They did not take them all away as they had been commanded to do, and slowly but surely, and all too often, quickly.
They went from having those things as just objects of history to objects of worship.
In verse 3 we read, in the eighth year of his reign while he was still young, he began to seek the God of his father David.
In the twelfth year he began to purge Judah and Jerusalem of the high places, the wooden images, the carved images, and the molded images.
They broke down the altars of the Baals in his presence, and the incense altars which were above them he cut down.
And the wooden images, the carved images, the molded images, he broke in pieces and made dust of them, and scattered it on the graves of those who had sacrificed to them.
He also burned the bones of the priests on their altars and cleansed Judah and Jerusalem, and so he did in the cities of Manasseh, Ephraim, and Simeon, as far as Naphtali and all
around with axes.
When he had broken down the altars and the wooden images, he beat the carved images in the powder and cut down all the incense altars throughout all the land of Israel, he returned
to Jerusalem.
When Josiah set about correcting what had been done wrong in Israel, he did not just make the worship stop.
He did not just put a halt to the idolatry.
He put a halt to the idolatry and then he annihilated everything that was left having to do with the idolatry.
You notice there in the text that he made dust of the altars and scattered them on the graves.
Do you want to know why he scattered them on the graves?
Because he had already put to death those who were participating in the sin.
Their judgment, according to the law, was that they were to be put to death.
And that is what occurred.
And then their graves had their altars scattered on top of them.
Josiah said, no more idolatry.
We learn from Josiah that when we are dealing with sin in our lives, it is important that we cease from sin.
but it is also important that we remove the vestiges of sin out of our lives.
Jesus as He is teaching.
will tell people if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off.
If your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out.
Now Jesus isn't promoting the maiming of oneself.
Jesus is talking about your life and your spiritual actions, and Jesus is telling you if there is something in your life that is continually pulling you back into sin, get rid of
it.
Jesus will tell us it is better to enter into heaven maimed or lacking that thing which we had attachment to than to go to hell whole.
Josiah knew his nation had been stuck on sin, had participated in idolatry to such a degree that there was no way for them to have those things around them and pull themselves
out of it.
And so in Judah and Jerusalem, He will tear down the altars, He will destroy the altars, He will grind them to powder, He will scatter them.
He doesn't take the gold into the treasury.
He doesn't take these things and set them aside just because they were valuable.
No.
He gets rid of them completely.
But He doesn't stop in Judah.
By the way, He is going to be reigning after the northern kingdom of Israel is already gone.
They've already been taken into captivity.
And yet as He reigns, He's going to go into the tribes that remained and the pieces that remained out of Israel, and He's going to begin to extract the idolatry out of their place
too.
and ultimately he will return to Jerusalem.
But we learn in verse 8, sometimes evil will not be removed quickly, but over years of diligent effort.
One of the challenges that we have in our own lives is the challenge that Josiah had.
He begins to reign.
He begins to do that which is right and to seek the will of God in his eighth year.
He begins to tear down these vestiges of idolatry in his twelfth year.
It's a process and it takes time.
Josiah was benefited by never departing from the Lord, but his nation didn't have nearly that same scenario.
Josiah knew that he needed to take the time and spend the time and the diligent effort necessary to extract the evil out of the nation.
And sometimes when individuals become Christians, there's a lot of old habits.
There's a lot of old conditions.
There's a lot of things that they've participated in for their entire lives.
that need changing.
And it doesn't all change overnight.
It changes through diligent effort and taking the Word of God and comparing the Word of God to our lives and going, I'm going to be more like the Word of God tomorrow and today
than I was in the past.
I'm going to become more like Christ and the Son of God tomorrow and the next day and the next day than I've ever been before.
Josiah knew that it wasn't going to be an overnight change.
Hezekiah, his great-grandfather, had restored worship in Israel, had restored many of the right things, had done away with many of the idols, and as soon as Hezekiah died, the
nation went full force back into idolatry under his son Manasseh.
Josiah realized the difficulty of the things he was trying to do, and he took the time to diligently execute those actions.
Sometimes we struggle with the fact that we're not perfect.
Sometimes we struggle with the fact that we don't always do it right.
Sometimes we struggle with the fact that we're not much better tomorrow than we were a year ago.
And sometimes we get discouraged at our progress.
But the truth is this, we often overestimate what we can do in a year.
We often overestimate what we can accomplish and how we can change in a year.
And we often underestimate how we could change in ten.
If we would be diligent and persistent in making those changes.
Josiah took the time
and put forth the effort to continue to persist in correcting the evil that had been done.
But then consider as well that we learn from Josiah that it is possible to spend years removing evil from your life and still not be right with God.
Sometimes we look at the world around us and we look at someone who is not a faithful Christian, but we look at where they were.
Maybe we knew them when they were growing up and they were the epitome of a heathen.
Everything that was wrong, they loved.
Every action that they could participate in that was immoral, they were all for it.
everything that they thought could bring them a moment of joy, they would participate in.
And perhaps we have observed them over the span of their life, and at some point they changed what they were doing.
At some point they realized the destructiveness of their path, and they started to remove the evil out of their lives, and we look at that and we applaud that, we're grateful for
that.
That's wonderful.
But we learn from Josiah that just removing evil isn't the same as being right with God.
and Josiah is going to find that out.
In 2 Chronicles chapter 34, we read in verse 8 in the 18th year of his reign, when he had purged the land and the temple, he sent Shefan the son of Azaliah, Maceiah, and governor
of the city, and Joah the son of Jehoahaz the recorder, to repair the house of the Lord his God.
When they came to Hilkiah the high priest, they delivered the money that was brought into the house of God, which the Levites, who kept the doors, had gathered from the hand of
Manasseh and Ephraim, from all the remnant of Israel, from all Judah and Benjamin, and which they had brought back to Jerusalem.
And they put it in the hand of the foreman, who had the oversight over the house of the Lord, and they gave it to the workmen, who worked in the house of the Lord, to repair and
restore the house."
They gave it to the craftsmen and builders to buy hewn stone and timber for beams and to floor the houses of the kings of Judah and to the floor the houses which the kings of
Judah had destroyed.
And the men did the work faithfully.
Their overseers were Jehath and Obadiah the Levites of the sons of Merari and Zechariah and Meshallim of the sons of the Kohathites to supervise.
Others of the Levites, all of whom were skillful with instruments of music, were over the burden bearers and were overseers of all who did work of any kind of service.
And some of the Levites were scribes, officers, and gatekeepers.
Now when they brought out the money that was brought into the house of the Lord, Hilkiah the priest found the book of the law of the Lord given by Moses.
Here they are, they're repairing the temple.
They're hiring the workers.
The Levites, whose role it was to care for the temple, are overseeing the workers.
And as they're doing this, Hilkiah has gone into the treasury, I believe the idea is, and he has gathered the money that had been collected, and he brings it out, in the midst of
the treasury,
They find the book of Deuteronomy.
They find the book of the law.
And they begin to read.
Hilkiah is going to take the book of the law to Shefan, the scribe.
Verse 15, he says, have found the book of the law in the house of the Lord, and Hilkiah gave the book to Shefan.
So Shefan carried the book to the king, bringing the king word and saying, all that was committed to your servants they are doing.
And they have gathered the money that was found in the house of the Lord and have delivered it to the hand of the overseers and the workmen.
Then Shefan the scribe told the king, saying, Hilkiah the priest has given me a book, and Shefan read it before the king.
Thus it happened when the king heard the words of the law that he tore his clothes.
Then the king commanded Hilkiah, uh Haikam the son of Shefan, Abdon the son of Micah,
Shefam the scribe and Asiah the servant of the king saying, inquire of the Lord for me and for those who are left in Israel and Judah concerning the words of the book that is found.
For great is the wrath of the Lord that is poured on us because our fathers have not kept the word of the Lord to do according to all that is written in this book.
Josiah has set right many of the things that were wrong.
Josiah has torn out many of the things that were evil.
Josiah has decimated the practices of the idolaters, but now and only now Josiah realizes they haven't been keeping the law.
And it's not just that his father hadn't kept the law.
It's not just that his grandfather hadn't kept the law, but that for generations they hadn't kept the law.
And Josiah admits what we should all realize, that it is because of their failure to keep the law that the wrath of the Lord was poured out on them.
Josiah knows that there is a difference between removing evil and doing what God commands.
And Josiah knows and Josiah realizes having been faced with the word of the Lord that it is not enough to pat oneself on the back and say, look how far we've come.
if we're still not doing what God commands.
Hilkiah, and those who are at the appointment of the king will go to the prophetess and she will tell them, "'Thus says the Lord,' verse 24, "'behold, I will bring calamity on
this place and on its inhabitants all the curses that are written in the book which they have read before the king of Judah.
The law gave both blessings and curses.'"
And when Josiah sends word to find out and inquire of the Lord about the thing which he has now been, had read to him, he finds a message delivered back to him from the Lord that
says, I'm going to carry out every single curse that I put in that book.
on your nation.
because they have forsaken me, verse 25, have burned incense to other gods, that they may provoke me to anger with all the works of their hands.
Therefore my wrath will be poured out on this place and not be quenched.
But as for the king of Judah, who sent you to inquire of the Lord, in this manner you shall speak to him thus says the Lord God of Israel.
concerning the words which you have heard, because your heart was tender, and you humbled yourself before God.
When you heard His words against this place and against its inhabitants, and you humbled yourself before Me, and you tore your clothes and wept before Me, I also have heard you,"
says the Lord.
Surely I will gather you to your fathers, and you shall be gathered to your grave in peace.
And your eyes shall not see all the calamity which I will bring on this place and on its inhabitants.
So they brought back word to the king.
Josiah inquires of the Lord, and the Lord's answer is, yes, I will keep my word.
Everything I promised your forefathers would happen to them because they would not keep my word, I'm going to carry out.
but because of your humility, because of your humbleness, because of your contrite heart, because of your righteousness, you won't live to see it.
Josiah doesn't receive that word, throw up his hands and say, well, so much for all the good that I've done.
No, as a matter of fact, we read verse 29, 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 the Levites and all the people, great and small.
And he read in their hearing all the words of the book of the covenant which had been found in the house of the Lord.
Josiah knows it's not enough for Josiah to read the book of the law.
Josiah knows it's not enough for Josiah to know what God has commanded.
Josiah knows it's important that all the people know what God has commanded.
And so he gathers all the nation together.
He gathers all the people great and small, brings them to the temple, and they read the book in their hearing.
Then the king stood in his place, verse 31, and made a covenant before the Lord to follow 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.
There's a reason why I said it was the book of Deuteronomy.
It is in Deuteronomy where you find the command, thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy strength and with all thy might.
And when Josiah read the command, Josiah made a covenant with the Lord to do exactly what the book said.
and all who were present in Jerusalem and Benjamin take a stand.
Or he made all who were present in Jerusalem and Benjamin take a stand so the inhabitants of Jerusalem did according to the covenant of God the God of their fathers.
Thus Josiah removed all the abominations from all the country that belonged to the children of Israel and made all who were present in Israel diligently serve the Lord their
God.
All his days they did not depart from following the Lord God of their fathers.
For the thirty-one years of Josiah's reign, from this point forward till the end of his reign, Israel followed God.
And as a matter of fact, chapter thirty-one, verse one, we find
that they participated in the Passover feast, something that they had neglected to keep since the earliest days of Israel.
Chapter 35 verse 1, now Josiah kept a Passover to the Lord in Jerusalem and they slaughtered the Passover lambs on the fourteenth day of the first month.
That's what they were commanded to do.
And he set the priests in their duties and encouraged them for the service of the house of the Lord.
And he said to the Levites who taught all Israel who were holy to the Lord,
Put the holy ark in the house which Solomon the son of David king of Israel built.
It shall no longer be a burden on your shoulders.
Now serve the Lord your God and his people Israel.
Prepare yourselves according to your father's houses, according to your divisions, following the written instructions of David king of Israel and the written instruction of
Solomon his son.
And stand in the holy place according to the divisions of the father's houses of your brethren.
the lay people according to the division of the fathers houses of the Levites and he's going to set in order all the pieces all the ordinances all the instructions all the
sacrifices
We go down to the end of the chapter and we read verse 16, And so all the service of the Lord was prepared the same day, to keep the Passover and to offer burnt offerings on the
altar of the Lord according to the command of King Josiah.
And the children of Israel who were present kept the Passover at that time and the feast of the unleavened bread for seven days.
There had been no Passover kept in Israel like that since the days of Samuel the prophet.
And none of the kings of Israel had kept such a Passover as Josiah kept.
with the priests and the Levites, all Judah and Israel who were present and the inhabitants of Jerusalem in the eighteenth year of the reign of Josiah this Passover was
kept.
18 years into Josiah's reign.
At age 26, Josiah, under his command, sets in order the carrying out of the exact commands of the Lord.
And we are reminded.
that number one, removing evil isn't the same thing as being obedient to God.
But we are also reminded that if we are going to be obedient to God, we are going to obey God completely.
And we are going to obey God fully.
And we are going to do it exactly as He said to do it.
It is important and it is paramount for us to not think, well, you know what?
Just because the New Testament says that's how they did it in the first century doesn't mean we have to do it the same way.
Just because that's how they worshiped in the days of the apostles doesn't mean we have to do it the same way.
I know that's what it says, but times have changed.
I imagine times had changed quite a bit from the days of Moses to the days of Josiah.
And yet, in spite of the fact that nearly a thousand years had transpired from the days of Moses to the days of Josiah, Josiah did not argue that they didn't need to keep the
command simply because that was the way they used to do it.
No, Josiah was considered right in the eyes of the Lord because he did it exactly as they used to do it,
because that was what the Lord commanded.
We ought to be those who always obey God.
We ought to be those who persist in repentance.
We ought to be those who are ready to hear.
Josiah didn't have the high priest come to him with that book, the scribe come to him with that book and say, no, I'm not interested.
No, Josiah desired to hear what the book had to say.
We need to be those who obey immediately.
Josiah didn't say, well, let's hold off a few months.
Let's see if things change.
You know what, let's just give it some time.
We've made a lot of changes recently.
We need to just wait a little while.
No, Josiah sent his servants immediately to inquire of the Lord.
And then when he found the word of the Lord and heard what the Lord said to him, he immediately acted.
And when we obey, we are to obey completely.
We do not choose which commands of the Lord to keep.
We choose whether or not we will obey because obedience is keeping all of the commands of the Lord.
If you're here this morning and you're outside the body of Christ,
Christ has established how a person is saved.
And it's not by men's traditions.
It's not by the things taught by some church or some doctor of the law.
It's in accordance with the commandments of Jesus Christ.
Jesus said, he that believeth and is baptized shall be saved.
You want to do what the Lord says?
There it is.
But then he also said that they had to be faithful for the rest of their lives.
Because being right with God means continuing and persisting in repentance and continuing and persisting in obedience.
If you're here this morning and you're outside the body of Christ, why not change that?
If you're a member of the body of Christ and you realize that you have not persisted in obedience,
Perhaps Josiah's example is the example you need to immediately obey, to persist in diligently removing evil, and to persist in obeying every day.
If you have need of the imitation, why not come now as we stand?