From Oblivious To Awake: Learning From Josiah

From Oblivious to Awake: Learning from Josiah

Introduction

Some people go through life completely oblivious! Do you see that?! You can bump into them almost every day! And you know why you can so easily bump into them? Yep, you guessed it, because they are oblivious! That which may be common sense to you, is like an uncommon sense to them! Have you ever met someone like that?

You’ve seen it: walking while glued to a phone, somehow missing a light pole until they crash right into it, or look out for that open man hole cover! When some are told some things are on a higher level, they look for an elevator?

It’s funny when it’s physical obliviousness… but spiritual obliviousness is no joke.

Missing a step can give you a bruise. Missing God can cost you eternity.

Question for you: If someone followed you around for a week, would they say you’re tuned in to God… or oblivious to God?

1. From Everyday Awareness to God-Awareness

As we get older, we usually get more aware of the world — how to work, fix things, make decisions.

But there’s an even greater kind of awareness: God-awareness.

What is that?

It’s knowing that all this had to come from somewhere: Romans 1:20 “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood from His workmanship, so that men are without excuse.”

It’s knowing that we are all sinners and need salvation.

It’s realizing that we all die someday and we need to figure it out before it’s too late!

Realizing as God so loved and forgave us, we should love and forgive others

Many sense there’s “something more,” but ignore it. Others hear about God yet still live as if He doesn’t exist. That’s what is called spiritual blindness. What’s worse, falling in a man hole, or being doomed for eternity?

What if you didn’t have religious friends or even the Bible, tho, to guide you, how would you even become God aware? How would you get there? There’s all sorts of things that point to God.

Question: What everyday things in your life point you back to God? Do you notice them, or do you rush right past them? Churches, Bible, where did that tree come from? Where did these complex humans with a brain, and automatic healing ability, that can walk, talk, think, and love come from?

2 Chronicles 34

34 Josiah was eight years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem thirty-one years. 2 He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord and followed the ways of his father David, not turning aside to the right or to the left.

2. Josiah’s Awakening

Josiah became king at just 8 years old. That’s pretty young!

His father and grandfather were wicked kings:

Josiah’s father Amon (ruled briefly - own servants killed him)

His grandfather Manasseh (ruled 55 years - very wicked)

They weren’t good role models, but he couldn’t have known them for long, but still interesting that Josiah turned out good!

3 In the eighth year of his reign, while he was still young, he began to seek the God of his father David. In his twelfth year he began to purge Judah and Jerusalem of high places, Asherah poles and idols. 4 Under his direction the altars of the Baals were torn down; he cut to pieces the incense altars that were above them, and smashed the Asherah poles and the idols. These he broke to pieces and scattered over the graves of those who had sacrificed to them. 5 He burned the bones of the priests on their altars, and so he purged Judah and Jerusalem. 6 In the towns of Manasseh, Ephraim and Simeon, as far as Naphtali, and in the ruins around them, 7 he tore down the altars and the Asherah poles and crushed the idols to powder and cut to pieces all the incense altars throughout Israel. Then he went back to Jerusalem.

So at 16, he began to seek God (v. 3).

So was Josaiah a good king or a bad king! Yay, a good king - did what was right in the eyes of the Lord!

At 20, he started tearing down idols (v. 3–7).

8 In the eighteenth year of Josiah’s reign, to purify the land and the temple, he sent Shaphan son of Azaliah and Maaseiah the ruler of the city, with Joah son of Joahaz, the recorder, to repair the temple of the Lord his God.

9 They went to Hilkiah the high priest and gave him the money that had been brought into the temple of God, which the Levites who were the gatekeepers had collected from the people of Manasseh, Ephraim and the entire remnant of Israel and from all the people of Judah and Benjamin and the inhabitants of Jerusalem. 10 Then they entrusted it to the men appointed to supervise the work on the Lord’s temple. These men paid the workers who repaired and restored the temple. 11 They also gave money to the carpenters and builders to purchase dressed stone, and timber for joists and beams for the buildings that the kings of Judah had allowed to fall into ruin.