Josiah, Part 1
By Pastor Matt Black
05
December 2007
Midweek Prayer Meeting
2 Kings 22:1-20
Where to read Josiah's story: 2 Kings 22:1 - 23:30; 2 Chronicles 34:1 - 35:27
Scripture and Theme: Open your Bible to the book of 2 Kings 22 this evening. We are looking at the life of Josiah tonight. His name in the Hebrew sums it up, “The Fire of the Lord”. The title of our message this evening is: “The Fire of Personal Revival”.
Introduction: Tonight we come to the life a young man that lived a very short life. Josiah died when he was 39 years old, yet he turned the world upside down. Josiah is the last godly king of Judah before the Babylonian exile. What drove Josiah is what drives every true believer. It is an on fire walk with God. We call that revival. We speak of revival as something that is not common to the Christian. Yet the Bible we read speaks of certain constants in a Christian’s life:
These are not simply character traits, but ALL are results of looking into the face of God!!
Rejoicing, prayer, and a tender broken spirit are sure fruits of being filled with the Spirit and the presence of God.
We see this fruit in the life of Josiah. Now for the sake of this evening’s study, I mainly want to give you an overview of the events of Josiah’s life, the circumstances Josiah faced, and then take a look into his spiritual commitment to God and what made him the man that he was.
The name of Josiah means “The Lord’s fire” or “The Lord’s fire is given”. God gives these people something they don’t deserve: a godly king before He sends His judgment. He sends the fire of His reviving Spirit before He sends the judgment of His wrath.
I. So let’s begin by giving a history of the main events of the life of Josiah who was going to be a fire given to Judah! Look at verse 1, “Josiah was eight years old when he began to reign, and he reigned thirty and one years in Jerusalem.” As an eight year old, Josiah became king. According to 2 Chronicles 34:3, we read that “in the eighth year of his reign, while he was yet young, he began to seek after the God of David his father: and in the twelfth year he began to purge Judah and Jerusalem from the high places, and the groves, and the carved images, and the molten images.”
· Josiah is born in 640 BC.
· Josiah is 8 years old when he becomes king (632 BC).
· He is 16 when he is converted and gives his life to the Lord.
· According to 2 Chronicles 34:3, He is 20 when he begins to tour the countryside and tear down the high places and groves of the wooden and metal images of Baal, Ashteroth, and Molech. Baal and Ashteroth were sites of temple prostitution, and the Molechs were the sites of human sacrifice. Josiah even exhumed the bones of idol priests and burned them in those places, to desecrate them so no one would use them again for idol worship.
· Jeremiah began his ministry as a prophet in the thirteenth year of Josiah (Jer. 1:1). He is known as the “weeping prophet.” Jeremiah 2-12 are messages given during Josiah’s reign. Chapters 2-6 cover the first five years of Jeremiah’s ministry which would have been the earlier reforming campaign under King Josiah (13th to 18th years as king).
· At 25 years of age, Josiah decided to rebuild the LORD's temple, deteriorated with age. As the workers were cleaning, Hilkiah the high preist found an obscure book that no one had ever heard of — the Bible, forgotten by previous generations. Shaphan the scribe read the entire book to Josiah.
· Finally, Josiah hosted the Passover celebration, commemorating the LORD's work in freeing Israel from slavery in Egypt. This was the first complete Passover celebration since the days of the prophet Samuel in the days of the Judges, about 400 years earlier.
· Josiah dies at age 39 in battle as a hero against Egypt.
Josiah comes to the throne and in a short time initiates a revival among the kingdom due to the discovery of the Book of the Law. In 22:1-2, we learn that Josiah becomes King. Previously, Manasseh and Amon had been kings over Judah. It seems like unfortunate timeing that Josiah comes into a situation already gone badly. Manasseh reigned the longest (fifty-five years), and Amon one of the shortest (two years)[1]. The Scriptures say of Josiah’s grandfather, “Manasseh seduced them to do more evil than did the nations whom the LORD destroyed before the children of Israel” (2 Kings 21:9).
Both of these kings were wicked in the eyes of the Lord, and subjected the people to false gods, idols, and all kinds of abominations. God was so displeased and angry with the sins of Manasseh and the people’s willingness to be seduced by his wickedness, that the Lord said, “Behold, I am bringing such evil upon Jerusalem and Judah, that whosoever heareth of it, both his ears shall tingle” (2 Kings 21:12). Literally the Hebrew “tingle” means “to quiver with fear.” The people seeing the judgment that God would bring will be amazed at it. This was the kingdom that Amon continued, and Josiah inherited.
Turn over to 1 Kings 13. Three hundred years earlier, Josiah’s birth was prophesied way back in the days of Jeroboam, the first and most wicked king of the Northern Kingdom. 1 Kings 13:1-2, “And, behold, there came a man of God out of Judah by the word of the LORD unto Bethel: and Jeroboam stood by the altar to burn incense. 2 And he cried against the altar in the word of the LORD, and said, O altar, altar, thus saith the LORD; Behold, a child shall be born unto the house of David, Josiah by name; and upon thee shall he offer the priests of the high places that burn incense upon thee, and men’s bones shall be burnt upon thee.”
II. Now we’ve looked at Josiah’s life, I want you to see the circumstances Josiah faced.
In the eighteenth year of his reign—that makes Josiah 25 if he began ruling as an eight year old—At age 25, Josiah begins a Temple restoration project. We read about that in 2 Kings 22:3-7. As the workers were cleaning, they found an obscure book that no one had ever heard of — the Bible (at this time this was the five books of Moses), forgotten by previous generations.
A. So we find that the Word of God had been forgotten completely!
B. We also find that the country was almost wholly given to idolatry. The reason the Temple was in need of repair is because people were more concerned about Baal and Ashteroth and Molech worship.
C. Finally, we see that the judgment of God was hanging over the whole country.
a. Remember, again, this is the time of Jeremiah’s ministry!
b. Times were so bad the people were being lead spiritually by women. This is seen by the fact that after Josiah was read the book of the law, they went out to find Huldah who was a prophetess. We see this down in verse 14, “So Hilkiah the priest… went unto Huldah the prophetess” And we find out that she lived, “in Jerusalem in the college”. And it says that Hilkiah and the others “communed with her” (verse 14).
c. Now listen to Huldah’s words of judgment in verse 15, “And she said unto them, Thus saith the LORD God of Israel, Tell the man that sent you to me, 16 Thus saith the LORD, Behold, I will bring evil upon this place, and upon the inhabitants thereof, even all the words of the book which the king of Judah hath read: 17 Because they have forsaken me, and have burned incense unto other gods, that they might provoke me to anger with all the works of their hands; therefore my wrath shall be kindled against this place, and shall not be quenched.”
d. But she then gives good words to Josiah. She says because Josiah’s heart was tender and Josiah lived a life of revival, basically God was holding back the fires of judgment because of this spiritual giant of a king.
verse 18, “But to the king of Judah which sent you to enquire of the LORD, thus shall ye say to him, Thus saith the LORD God of Israel, As touching the words which thou hast heard; 19 Because thine heart was tender, and thou hast humbled thyself before the LORD, when thou heardest what I spake against this place, and against the inhabitants thereof, that they should become a desolation and a curse, and hast rent thy clothes, and wept before me; I also have heard thee, saith the LORD. 20 Behold therefore, I will gather thee unto thy fathers, and thou shalt be gathered into thy grave in peace; and thine eyes shall not see all the evil which I will bring upon this place. And they brought the king word again”.
III. Finally So I want to make just a few points about Josiah’s commitment to God briefly.
1. Josiah was radically God-focused. Personal revival depends on nothing and no one else but your heart and your communion with God. This simple ingredient has amazing results.
A person who is God-focused stands by God’s unchanging principles regardless of how popular they are or how easy they are. Remember Jesus did not say, “indulge thyself, take up thy remote control, and do your own thing”. He said, “deny thyself, take up thy cross and follow me” (Matthew 16:24).
2. Josiah was radically Word-focused. Whatever the Word of God said, he was going to do. Whatever the Word forbade, he was going to tear down! We find Josiah going through the country side tearing down the idols and groves!
It is only as you conform your heart first and then your life to God’s Word that you will walk in His presence. Conform your heart to God. Surrender. Yield control of your life to the Lord. That is the message tonight.
Josiah began to purge the land of their idols and of their immoral rituals at the age of twenty. This was not in-line with the latest and greatest opinion polls. His focus led him to a radical commitment to holiness. He even exumed the bones of pagan priests and burned their bones in order to eradicate the land from pagan influence. Do you have a radical commitment to holiness? Does your thought life reflect the mind of Christ? A lack of holiness will cripple your walk with God.
So do what Josiah did: break down the altars!! Stop drinking at the fountains that can never satisfy you. Covetousness is trying to satisfy with earthly things what God has intended that He alone to satisfy.
Do you have the fire of God in your soul? Is your heart in constant communion with God? What you need in your heart is an invasion of heaven and a conscious awareness of God!
We see that “true revival means nothing less than a revolution, casting out the spirit of worldliness, making God's love triumph in the heart” (Andrew Murray).
Conclusion: I want to close by reading a few accounts of revival.
Wheaton Revival: You know when the spirit of prayer is poured out on the church. People love to pray. Time stops in prayer meetings and they last into the night. The prayers are fervent, and sometimes tearful.
In 1936 revival fires broke out on the campus of Wheaton College west of Chicago. A senior named Don Hillis arose in chapel to voice a plea for revival. Students responded with an all-day prayer meeting on Saturday. Both faculty and students confessed sin and made things right with one another.
The Wheaton campus was touched again in 1943 following a message on confession of sin during special services. The captain of the cross-country team arose to confess that he had violated college policy by leading his team in a Sunday race. Pride, criticism, and cheating were confessed by other students. Lunch and dinner slipped by unnoticed while the meeting continued into the evening service.
Great Awakening: On New Year's Eve 1739, John Wesley, George Whitefield, and some of their friends held an “agape feast” which became a watch night of prayer to see the New Year in. At about 3 a.m., Wesley wrote, "the power of God came mightily upon us, insomuch that many cried for exceeding joy, and many fell to the ground." Revival always begins with a restoration of the sense of the closeness of the Holy One.
Do you have a closeness of the holy one? Are you a Josiah? Is the fire of God burning in you from day to day? If not I want to invite you to pray during this time for personal revival in your life.
[1] It seems Shallum reigned the shortest, one month, due to his assassination (2 Kings 15:13). But in an overall survey of the kings, two years, though applied to a few of them, were short reigns.