Josiah Finds the Scroll

I. The story is too long for us to be able read the whole passage, so I will summarize first.
A. About 2600 years ago there was a king of Judah named Josiah. (He was the great-grandson of good King Hezekiah, famous for the story of Sennacherib’s siege of Jerusalem.)
B. Well, Josiah’s grandfather was Manasseh, who for 55 years was probably the most evil king Judah ever had, filling the land with idolatry. Josiah’s father Amon was also evil, though he reigned for only two years. When Josiah was only eight years old, his father was murdered and the young Josiah became king. So, from the age of eight on, Josiah grew up without a father.
C. But God worked in young Josiah’s heart in spite of his upbringing and the other influences around him and Josiah “did what was right in the eyes of the LORD and walked in all the way of David his father, and did not turn aside to the right or to the left.” –2Kings 22:2
D. Now for probably 55 years, God’s temple in Jerusalem had not been used for worship because idolatry held sway in Judah. In the 18th year of his reign, King Josiah sent his secretary Shaphan to order the priests to begin to clean out the temple and prepare it for use again.
E. While cleaning out the temple, the priests discovered a scroll containing the Book of the Law, which was probably either the book of Deuteronomy or the whole Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible), ending with the book of Deuteronomy. (“The phrase "the book of the Torah" (ספר התורה) in 2Kings 22:8 is identical to the phrase used in Joshua 1:8 and 8:34 to describe the sacred writings that Joshua had received from Moses.”)
F. Hilkiah gave the book to Shaphan.
G. 2Kings 22:9-13 So Shaphan the scribe went to the king, and showed the king, saying, “Hilkiah the priest has given me a book.” And Shaphan read it before the king. 11 Now it happened, when the king heard the words of the Book of the Law, that he tore his clothes. 13 “Great is the wrath of the LORD that is aroused against us, because our fathers have not obeyed the words of this book, to do according to all that is written concerning us.”
1. Photo of Josiah
H. There are several more parts of the story you need to be aware of:
1. At this time Huldah the prophetess prophesied that it was too late for God’s judgment against Judah to be turned aside, but that Josiah would be spared the experience of it: “Because your heart was tender, and you humbled yourself before the LORD when you heard what I spoke against this place and against its inhabitants, and you tore your clothes and wept before Me.” (2Kings 22:19)
2. 2Kings 23 tells us the story of five things Josiah did after reading God’s holy scroll.
a. He tore his clothes (v. 11)
(1) You would too.
(2) Deut.28 is horrifying. I wish I had time to read you all 54 verses of what God warned Israel He would do to them if they did not remain faithful to His covenant.
(3) Let me read a little bit of it to you. I will read the part that most obviously came true, the part about being conquered by another nation. At the time of Josiah this had already happened to Israel, the northern kingdom, and to much of Judah, at the hands of Assyria. The job was finished by Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians not long after Josiah.
(4) Deut.28:32 Your sons and your daughters shall be given to another people, while your eyes look on and fail with longing for them all day long, but you shall be helpless. 33 A nation that you have not known shall eat up the fruit of your ground and of all your labors, and you shall be only oppressed and crushed continually, 34 so that you are driven mad by the sights that your eyes see...36 “The LORD will bring you and your king whom you set over you to a nation that neither you nor your fathers have known. And there you shall serve other gods of wood and stone. 37 And you shall become a horror, a proverb, and a byword among all the peoples where the LORD will lead you away...41 You shall father sons and daughters, but they shall not be yours, for they shall go into captivity...*47 Because you did not serve the LORD your God with joyfulness and gladness of heart, because of the abundance of all things, 48 therefore you shall serve your enemies whom the LORD will send against you, in hunger and thirst, in nakedness, and lacking everything. And he will put a yoke of iron on your neck until he has destroyed you. 49 The LORD will bring a nation against you from far away, from the end of the earth, swooping down like the eagle, a nation whose language you do not understand, 50 a hard-faced nation who shall not respect the old or show mercy to the young. 51 It shall eat the offspring of your cattle and the fruit of your ground, until you are destroyed; it also shall not leave you grain, wine, or oil, the increase of your herds or the young of your flock, until they have caused you to perish. 52 “They shall besiege you in all your towns, until your high and fortified walls, in which you trusted, come down throughout all your land. And they shall besiege you in all your towns throughout all your land, which the LORD your God has given you...64 “And the LORD will scatter you among all peoples, from one end of the earth to the other, and there you shall serve other gods of wood and stone, which neither you nor your fathers have known. 65 And among these nations you shall find no respite, and there shall be no resting place for the sole of your foot, but the LORD will give you there a trembling heart and failing eyes and a languishing soul. 66 Your life shall hang in doubt before you. Night and day you shall be in dread and have no assurance of your life. 67 In the morning you shall say, ‘If only it were evening!’ and at evening you shall say, ‘If only it were morning!’ because of the dread that your heart shall feel, and the sights that your eyes shall see.
(5) There are 54 verses of this in Deut.28. I just read you 16 of them, less than 30%.
(6) I have chosen this part not because it is the most horrifying. In fact, I have left the most horrifying part of it out (v.53-57).
(7) Now do you understand why Josiah tore his clothes?
b. He called together all of the people of Judah and read to them “all the words of the Book of the Covenant which had been found in the house of the LORD.” (2Kings 23:2)
c. Then he entered into a covenant “to follow the LORD and to keep the words that were written in this book with all his heart.” (2Kings 23:3) And all the people joined in with him.
d. And then King Josiah began to clean house. (2Kings 23:4-20, 24)
(1) got rid of all the idols which had been stored in the temple.
(2) removed the idolatrous priests
(3) got rid of those who had consulted mediums and spiritists
(4) banished all the household gods and idols
(5) tore down all the idol altars which Manasseh had built
(6) he even went up out of Judah to the north, Israel which had been conquered by Assyria and destroyed all the idols and altars there.
e. Then the king reinstituted the Passover. “Such a Passover had never been held since the days of the judges who judged Israel, nor in all the days of the kings of Israel and the kings of Judah.” (2Kings 23:22)
II. Explanation
A. The preservation of God’s word
1. We can see why God had His word put into written form. In this period of history, virtually everyone had turned away from the Lord and gone after idols. But because the word of God had been reduced to writing, it wasn’t dependant on some person to keep the truth going.
2. We don’t know if this was the only copy of the Book of the Law or not. But it might have been. Who protected the scroll from mice and from mildew while it sat forgotten for 55 years in the temple? God. But how did He do so? Through His normal providential preservation of things, just like He is protecting the books you have on your bookshelf at home right now.
3. But no miracle was necessary. There is a difference between God's supernatural preservation of His word and His natural preservation. Once it is in written form, it can be guarded and preserved through normal, natural means.
B. The severity of God’s word
1. If you’ve ever seen the movie Pollyanna, you know about the happy parts of the Bible. And there are many very happy parts of the Bible.
2. But the happy parts of the Bible are not the only thing God uses to transform hearts and lives.
3. Warnings also have a role. The warnings God gives in Deuteronomy had a powerful effect.
4. Fear is a part of faith.
5. Part of the good news of Jesus is the bad news about sin and God’s righteous wrath against it. In Acts 24:25 we are told that when the apostle Paul talked about Christ with King Felix, part of what he talked to him about was “the coming judgment.”
6. Sometimes you need a hammer to shatter a rock. “Is not My word like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces?” – Jeremiah 23:29
7. God’s word is not just a hammer. It’s also a tender stroke, a pat on the back, a bear hug.
a. But in addition to many other things, it is a hammer.
b. And today the use of hammers is not very popular in the pulpit.
C. The power of God’s word
1. A few weeks ago, we talked about Psalm 126:5 “My soul clings to the dust; revive me according to your word.
2. We saw that life in this world often presses us down and discourages us. We saw that the word of God is the primary instrument for personal revival.
3. In this story we see that the community of faith sometimes gets off track. And we see that once again the word of God is His tool for reforming the church, the community of His people.
4. “Without a vision the people perish.” – Proverbs 29:18
a. This truth that ‘without God’s word the people are a mess’ applies to the church as well.
b. That was the issue of the Reformation. And it’s the issue of every generation.
5. That’s the reason we’re having this series. It’s in recognition of the Protestant Reformation which began 500 years ago.
6. Reformations don’t just occur as world-changing movements.
a. The Reformation didn’t end: Always reforming
b. We’re not just conservatives who would like to go back to some superior time in the past.
c. We are constantly looking to reform ourselves and our churches through God’s holy book.
d. This is why we can’t oppose change just because we don’t like change. We need to be changing. Not just or the sake of hanging but fr the sake of conforming ourselves to Christ according to His word.
D. The response to God’s word
1. God blesses the one who has a good heart toward His word.
2. Why did God spare Josiah from the trauma & devastation Deut.28 describes? His “heart was tender, and [he] humbled [him]self before the LORD when [he] heard what [God] spoke” — 2Kings 22:19
3. Isaiah 66:2 “This is the one I esteem: he who is humble and contrite in spirit, and trembles at my word.”
4. This is the way it is with the truth of God.
a. Most are headed for destruction because they refused to listen to His word. But those who do listen, who tremble at His word and give heed to it, they escape the coming judgment.
b. The one who heeds the word of God will live. The one who resists will perish.
5. A few years later, Josiah was killed and his reformation died with him.
6. But we have a greater Josiah, who paid attention to God when almost no one else did, and who instituted an even greater reform than Josiah.
7. And though He was killed, He rose again, and continues His great reformation through an even greater word of Scripture, for His gospel includes not only the book of the law, but the prophets and the gospels and the epistles, and much more. We have the good news of His coming and of His sacrificial death on the cross for sinners, and His pouring out of the Spirit, and of His promise to build His church, and of His promise to come again and make all things right.
8. Jesus Christ’s reformation continues all over the world, where sinners come to Him in faith and find forgiveness of their sins, and, throwing aside their idols, find new, abundant life in Him.
9. So, what about you? Listen to God’s word. Tremble at His word. Don’t turn away. Don’t refuse it. His word is life.