Josiah: When Reform Is Not Enough
2 Chronicles 34:16-21
The story of Josiah, King of Judah, is one of the most unusual in the Old Testament in many ways. He was only eight years old when he took the throne. He is one of the last kings to reign before the nation was overrun by the Babylonians. Josiah’s father and grandfather were evil kings, but in the eighteenth year of Josiah’s reign, he decided to repair and restore the Temple of the Lord. The Temple was in a disastrous state, and it symbolized the calamitous spiritual condition of the people. Let me just list some of the things, recorded in 2 Kings 23, that Josiah had to do to in order to clean out the Temple area and repair the Temple itself. He had to have the priests remove all the articles and altars dedicated to pagan gods, including Baal and Asherah, which means there was child sacrifice taking place there in the Temple area. Josiah had to remove all the pagan priests that now served in the Temple. Homosexual male prostitutes had actually set up their quarters in the Temple. Other rooms in the Temple were occupied by women making religious objects for the goddess Asherah. Josiah had to remove the chariots and images of horses that past kings had dedicated to the sun. He had to rid Jerusalem of the mediums and spiritists. He told the people to get rid of their personal household gods. He tore down the high places all over the land of Judah and Israel where people worshiped pagan gods and offered human sacrifices.
Is it any wonder that God was bringing the nation to an end? Then another shocking thing happened as the priests were cleaning out the Temple. A scroll was found. And not just any scroll — it was the Torah, the book of the law — the Scriptures of the Jewish people. In following the practices of the world and worshiping pagan gods, the people had first ignored and then lost the Word of God. It was buried under a pile of debris somewhere in the Temple. Hilkiah the priest gave the scroll to the king’s secretary. The king had the scroll read to him, and when it was read, he tore his robes, because he knew the people had broken every command in the book of the law, and the judgments pronounced in the law were sure to follow. So Josiah extended his reforms from just removing the pagan altars and repulsive religious practices from the Temple. He restored the worship of the true God, and had the people return to the religious feasts and rituals which were a part of their history. The Scripture tells us that Passover was observed in Israel for the first time since the days of the judges. None of the other kings of Israel or Judah had celebrated the Passover. Great reforms were taking place.
But something seems to be missing in the story. The people are told to turn back to the Lord, and begin once again to observe the holy days and religious rituals of their faith, but they are never told to repent for all the things they had done. He does not tell them to seek God with all their hearts, only to follow the rituals and feasts from their past history. The priests read the law to the people, but it does not have the effect of convincing them that they have sinned, or causing them to grieve over their sin. There is no concern about how they have sinned against God. There are no tears of repentance. They begin to observe the feast of Passover, but it is mostly out of respect for Josiah, the king, who tells them to do it. The Bible says, “The king stood by his pillar and renewed the covenant in the presence of the Lord — to follow the Lord and keep his commands, regulations and decrees with all his heart and all his soul, and to obey the words of the covenant written in this book” (2 Chronicles 34:31). The Bible says, “Then he had everyone in Jerusalem and Benjamin pledge themselves to it” (2 Chronicles 34:32). It goes on to say, “So at that time the entire service of the Lord was carried out for the celebration of the Passover and the offering of burnt offerings on the altar of the Lord, as King Josiah had ordered” (2 Chronicles 35:16). Josiah is faithful to do this, but it doesn’t seem to translate into the hearts of the people. Josiah is a great king, a great reformer and a great man of God. The Bible says, “Neither before nor after Josiah was there a king like him who turned to the Lord as he did” (2 Kings 23:25).
Josiah does many good things, but what is interesting is that we never hear Josiah pray — at least there is no prayer by him in Scripture, or any record of him praying. By contrast, we have an entire book of King David’s prayers. Neither is anything said about the people praying. He asks them to follow the ancient religious rituals of Israel and to stop following other gods, but there is nothing to suggest that this affected their hearts in any way. Under Josiah’s leadership there is great reform, but there is no revival, because reform is never enough. This id why the Lord did not change his mind about bringing an end to the nation. The people’s hearts were unchanged, and therefore God’s heart was unchanged. The Scripture says, “Nevertheless, the Lord did not turn away from the heat of his fierce anger, which burned against Judah. . . So the Lord said, ‘I will remove Judah also from my presence as I removed Israel, and I will reject Jerusalem, the city I chose, and this temple, about which I said, “There shall my Name be”’” (2 Kings 23:26-27). God saw the heart of Josiah and spared him from the coming judgment; he put his hand of blessing on him, but God did not spare the people of the land whose hearts were unchanged. The revival seemed to be a revival of one. The reforms Josiah brought were widespread, but the revival was very limited in its scope.
What does it take for real revival to happen? What would it take for there to be a spiritual awakening across the USA? There are several things we could talk about, but the most important of these is that, first of all, a spiritual awakening comes when there is: A Call to Prayer. I wonder what would have happened if Josiah had called the people to prayer. It was not enough for Josiah to experience a personal spiritual renewal, even though he was king; it had to spread to the people of the land. What if he had called for fasting, prayer and seeking God, rather than reinstating the rituals and festivals of Israel’s history? Josiah cleaned out the Temple of pagan gods and immoral practices, but there was nothing to fill the spiritual void when they were taken away.
Jesus talked about this kind of reform where someone turns over a new leaf, but there is no real repentance or change of heart — no invitation for the Spirit of God to fill them. He said, “When an evil spirit comes out of a man, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, ‘I will return to the house I left.’ When it arrives, it finds the house unoccupied, swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and takes with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that man is worse than the first. That is how it will be with this wicked generation” (Matthew 12:43-45).
So I wonder how long it was before the people were right back at serving the pagan deities they had grown to love? How long was it before the carved images, cast idols and Asherah poles were once again in the Temple area? Not long. As soon as Josiah was gone, they were right back at it. How long was it before the Temple had one altar to a pagan god, then two, then more than there had been before? Not long. How long before they were committing gross immorality in the very Temple whose God called for moral purity? Not long. Not long, because it takes more than sweeping your life clean of evil and immoral things — it takes praying for a new heart that will love God more than it loves sin. The unoccupied house must be filled with the Holy Spirit. There is a vast difference between obedience that is perfunctory and an obedience of the heart. There is a difference between an obedience that is coerced and an obedience that springs from a heart that loves God and wants to do his will. It takes seeking God as fervently and passionately as you sought the gods of this world. It takes more than just putting some religious habits and ritual in your life, it takes praying that God will give you a new love for him. You have to pray that you will love righteousness more than you loved the immorality in which you were involved. You have to pray for more than a new lifestyle; you have to pray for a new way of thinking, new attitudes, new motivations — a new heart. Pray, and keep praying until you break through. Pray until a real change comes. God is on your side, and works in you and for you. “For it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose” (Philippians 2:13).
This is how revival comes. We could have a president like Josiah, and a congress who would work with him to pass all the right laws, so that there would be great moral reform. It would be wonderful, and I would be glad to see it. I pray for that kind of reform, because our country would be a better place. But let’s not confuse that with revival. Let’s not fool ourselves into thinking it would change the heart of the people of our country, or that it would change God’s mind about our country. It would not do so any more than Josiah’s reforms changed the hearts of the people of Israel, or God’s attitude toward them. The best of reforms are short lived without changes in the hearts and minds of people. And that is where the church comes in. That’s where you come in. It’s through our lives and witness that people are drawn to the truth. It is through seeing the change in us that people will believe it is possible for them to change — and long to experience a change of their own. So may I issue a call to prayer for us to be those people, and for God to work in the hearts of others?
Secondly, a spiritual awakening comes when there is: A reemergence of God’s Word. The Word of God must again become important in people’s lives. Things started happening when God’s Word was discovered and read. Maybe your Bible isn’t buried under a pile of rubble in the house, but it might as well be if you never read it. The people of Israel had been so busy serving other gods that they not only lost the Scripture, they had forgotten about it altogether. No one even missed it. No one ever asked where the scroll was.
There was nothing wrong with the reforms of Josiah, they just didn’t go far enough. He ordered the people to follow the laws of God, but they missed the heart of God. He reintroduced them to ritual, but neglected relationship. He got the part about the law of God, but missed the love of God. God’s invitation is never to merely follow rules, it is always an invitation to enter into a relationship with him. But we never experience that unless we get into his Word. We don’t know how to enter into that relationship unless we open his Book. We will never really know who God is, who we are, and what he wants from us, unless we read the Scroll. Getting out the Word of God and reading it is very important, because you can’t believe just anything you want and still be a Christian. The Christian faith is defined by a specific set of beliefs, and you need to read the Word to know what they are.
The problem with many people is that they think they know what it is all about without reading the Bible. They really believe they can figure things out and live the Christian life on their own. Especially in this culture where we depend on our feelings more than our brain. We don’t want to take the time and trouble to dig for God’s truth.
The New Yorker had a cartoon where a young boy in math class is standing at the chalk board with other students. The teacher has written the problem on the board for each student: 7 x 5 = __ . All the other students have the answer right: 35. But this boy has written 7 x 5 = 75. The teacher has obviously told him it’s wrong, and he says to her, “It may be wrong, but it’s how I feel.” That is a perfect metaphor of our culture. Responding to the cartoon’s message, Stephen Carter, a professor of law at Yale University says, “Faith is dead, reason is dying, but ‘how I feel’ is going strong.” We are not interested in the Word of God because we are not interested in the truth. We are not interested in God’s will, because we are wrapped up in our will and doing what we want to do. We want to go by our feelings which are much more to our liking. The Word of God must reemerge in our lives.
The third point is that a spiritual awakening comes when there is: A sense of conviction and repentance. This is nothing less than a realization of the truth about ourselves. Conviction means that we are convinced that what God says about us is true. When you hear what you know to be the truth, you have to respond to the truth. When the Holy Spirit came at Pentecost, Peter began preaching to the crowds. He boldly warned them of the consequences of their sin of rejecting Christ and having him crucified. The Bible says, “When the people heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the other apostles, ‘Brothers, what shall we do?’” (Acts 2:37). Peter’s response was, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:38). And when they repented and turned from their sin, the Holy Spirit came upon them.
When this happened there was a deep inner change, and their lives became different. I become concerned sometimes about the pop Christianity of this culture which is so flippant, shallow and self-centered. There is a lot of lip service without much to back it up. We complain about the Ten Commandments not being displayed in our courts, and we can’t even name all ten — and keep fewer of them than we can name. We whine about there being no prayer or Bible reading in our schools, and then we don’t pray or read the Bible in our homes. We complain about gay marriages causing a decline in family values, when the divorce rate among Bible-believing Christians is the same as rest of the culture. When it comes to sexual ethics among Christians, I wonder if the culture has not already won that war. And our financial ethics are not much better. You cannot live just anyway you want and still be a Christian. The Bible says, “No one who lives in him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him” (1 John 3:6). If this is true in your life, then I call on you to repent. We need to live differently. But Christianity is more than just a reformation of morals. It is not about just trying harder to be good. It must be a turning from our sin and asking for a touch from God that makes us new people.
God’s desire is for an intimate relationship with us that gives us a new heart. He said, “This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time, I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people” (Jeremiah 31:33). There you have it all: transformation, a new heart and a new relationship.
Adrian Dieleman tells the story of one man’s transformation: “Oscar Cervantes is a dramatic example of the Spirit’s power to transform lives. As a child, Oscar began to get into trouble. Then as he got older, he was jailed 17 times for brutal crimes. Prison psychiatrists said he was beyond help. But they were wrong! During a brief interval of freedom, Oscar met an elderly man who told him about Jesus. He placed his trust in the Lord and was changed into a kind, caring man. Shortly afterward he started a prison ministry. Chaplain H. C. Warwick describes it this way: ‘The third Saturday night of each month is “Oscar Night” at Soledad. Inmates come to hear Oscar and they sing gospel songs with fervor; they sit intently for over 2 hours; they come freely to the chapel altar. . . . What professionals had failed to do for Oscar in years of counseling, Christ’s Spirit did in a moment of conversion.’”
Mere reform is not enough, there must be a transformation of who we are. When we open ourselves to that kind of deep renovation, God meets us and makes us new. It is the only hope for us as individuals, and the only hope for us as a nation.
Rodney J. Buchanan
November 11, 2012
Amity United Methodist Church
rodbuchanan2000@yahoo.com
