Calvary Lutheran Church

Character Studies of the Old Testament: Josiah

May the God of peace fill you with all joy in believing. Amen.

2 Kings 22 & 23

“He (Josiah) did what was right in the eyes of the Lord and walked in all the ways of his father David, not turning aside to the right or to the left”(2 Kings 22:2). 

Dear Christian friends,

This morning I wish to continue with part three of my four-part sermon series entitled “Character Studies of the Old Testament.” So far, we have studied an incident in the life of Abraham who lived during the time of the patriarchs. Last time we studied the life of Samson who lived during the time of the judges. This morning we want to move on to the next period of rulers in Israel’s history, and that is the time of the kings. The most famous kings, of course, were the first three: Saul, David, and Solomon. After Solomon, however, the kingdom divided into two kingdoms, nineteen kings ruled in the southern kingdom of Judah and nineteen in the northern kingdom of Israel.

A king in the southern kingdom that I would like to focus on this morning is perhaps not so well-known, but one who again teaches us important lessons in our relationship with God. His name is Josiah.

CHARACTER STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMET: JOSIAH

Josiah was the 16th king of Judah who became king when he was just eight years old. He reigned in the southern kingdom for 31 years from 640 b.c. to 609 b.c. His father was Amon and his mother Jedidah. In 2 Kings 23:25 we read this amazing commentary on the life of Josiah, “Neither before nor after Josiah was there a king like him who turned to the Lord, as he did–with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his strength, in accordance with all the Law of Moses.” This is a man we need to know more about. But what makes him even more amazing is that Josiah’s father and grandfather, who were also kings in Judah, were both heathen. They participated in all the idolatry that was running rampant in Judah at the time.

So what made Josiah so different? Well, for one thing both his heathen father and grandfather died before Josiah was very old, so their influence was minimal. But also, Josiah’s great-grandfather, King Hezekiah, was a man of God and a great reformer in Judah. Perhaps the stories about his great-grandfather influenced Josiah. Or, perhaps it was through the influence of his mother, Jedidah, or his maternal grandfather, Adaiah, that Josiah learned to trust the true God. However it happened, he is described in this text as walking in the ways of David—which is another way of saying he had a heart for the Lord.  

So also today, unfortunately, many children have to make a choice between following the Lord or following the examples of their own parents. Today, many parents are not setting a good example to their children when it comes to worship and instruction in the word of God and living that word in their everyday lives. And when children walk in the way of the Lord in spite of their parents, it is a testimony to the power of this word in their lives.

It is also a testimony of the influence others besides parents can have on children. I’m thinking of pastors and teachers, grandparents, aunts and uncles, even neighbors who in the brief time they are with a child can teach them Christian principles that stay with them the rest of their lives.

We had a young girl in Antigua in the West Indies where I use to serve who started coming to our St. John’s Lutheran Church on her own. Her parents were dead set against it. They wanted her to have nothing to do with the church or religion. They had made it through life just fine without God, and what was good enough for them was good enough for their daughter. And so she would have to walk to church on Sunday morning and Sunday evening, we had two worship services on Sunday, and she walked to confirmation classes and did her confirmation homework when the parents were not around to see her. 

But she came under the influence of the pastors and teachers and members of the church. And this young girl grew up to be a fine Christian woman. In fact, while yet in high school she came into contact with a woman who had simply come to the island on vacation. But after returning to the states  she continued to correspond with Tracey and eventually became her sponsor, supplying her with gifts of money and a complete college tuition. And where did Tracey Jarvis want to go to college? Well, of course, Martin Luther College, in sunny, warm New Ulm, Minnesota. Tracey got her teaching degree there and returned to Antigua to teach.  

That’s the influence others besides parents can have on children. Hopefully, children have Christian parents who bring them up in the nurture of the Lord. But even if they don’t, God has a way to reach them through you in this Word.

So just the way Josiah came to faith was amazing enough, but the way he showed his faith teaches us all an important lesson. It appears that the conditions of the temple had deteriorated, and the people didn’t seem to care. They didn’t volunteer their services to come in and see what they could do to improve the conditions. For that matter not even the priests and the religious leaders who led the worship in the temple, seemed too concerned. They were just content to leave things as they were.

They were perfectly content to worship God without some of the furnishings inside the temple like basins and snuffers, and trumpets and vessels of gold and vessels of silver, which they once had. Most of these items had been removed during the days of Baal worship and confiscated by the prophets of Baal. But the people didn’t seem to miss them. What they didn’t have they could simply do without. That’s what seemed to be the attitude at the time.

But it was Josiah who said, “Listen, the physical conditions of our temple reflect the spiritual conditions of the people who use it. Our place of worship reflects the value that we place on God in our hearts.” And he was absolutely right.

So a lesson we learn from Josiah is that he was a man who paid attention to the externals in his relationship with the Lord. One of those externals was the physical condition of God’s house. We often say that what is on the outside doesn’t matter, it only matters what is on the inside. But really it is both. If there is a love for God on the inside, it will show on the outside.

Why was it that Jesus himself overthrew the money-exchangers’ tables and drove out the animals from the temple? He could have said, “Well, what is going on on the outside doesn’t matter, it is just what is in your heart that matters.” No, those money-changers were destroying the sanctity, the reverence of the house of the Lord. They had turned a house of prayer into a den of thieves. The externals of God’s house matter.

Or take the externals of the way we worship—the liturgy we use, the music we choose, the hymnals we sing, the way we dress. They are a reflection of our faith. We are living today in the age of informality when it comes to worship structures and styles. The purpose of this informality, I guess, is to make the unchurched feel comfortable. But the result is often that God is denied his glory. The church is not to be more like the world, it is to be more like God. The Greek word for “church” means to “be called out of”. We are called out of the world to be and act differently from the world. The externals of worship matter.

Or, take the externals of the way we live our own lives. Some may say, “I can believe in God without going to church, without reading or studying his word, without praying, without serving in the church, without fellowship with other believers, yes, even without living in the will of God. After all, what is on the outside doesn’t matter, it is only my faith on the inside that matters.” No. John wrote in his first epistle, “We know that we have come to know him if we obey his commands. The man who says, ‘I know him,’ but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in him.  But if anyone obeys his word, God’s love is truly made complete in him. This is how we know we are in him: Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did” (1 John 2:3-6). Pay attention to the externals of your faith and the internals will take care of themselves.

That’s what happened to Josiah. Josiah’s attention to externals when it came to the repair of the temple was rewarded with an amazing discovery. In the process of repairing the temple a copy of the Law of Moses was discovered. I don’t know if it was hidden when Baal worship was introduced, or if it was just tucked away and forgotten. But apparently the contents of that book were forgotten as well. Because after the book was discovered, the high priest, Hilkiah, gave it to the king’s secretary, Shaphan, who read it, and he then read it to Josiah, and Josiah couldn’t believe what he was hearing. This was all new to him. He never realized what the Lord required, which neither he nor the people were doing.

Apparently the worship life of the people had deteriorated to the extent that the word of God was not even read or proclaimed. In fact, they didn’t even have a copy of the Pentateuch, the first five books of Moses, in the temple. I don’t know what they were doing for worship, but it wasn’t focusing on the word.

What would we do in this church if we didn’t have this word? I suspect we would just talk about how our lives are going and how we could make them better. We would talk a lot about self-image and self-improvement, I’m sure. We would probably talk a lot about how we should be nice to each other and how God loves us. And that’s O.K.

But the word of God teaches much more important truths than just that, as Josiah soon discovered. He discovered, for example, that God alone was to be worshiped–none of this mixing religions where they were saying that they all worship the same God. No, Josiah discovered in Exodus 20, “You shall have no other gods besides the one true God.” And Josiah discovered that God’s law demanded perfect obedience—none of this “I’ll try to keep his commandments and God will be satisfied with that.” Leviticus 19 says, “Be holy because I, the Lord your God, am holy.” But Josiah also discovered that God is a loving God, that God declares holy those who have faith in him, just as in Genesis 22 where Abram was credited with righteousness because he believed God’s promise to send a Savior. And Josiah discovered that God’s law demanded certain festivals and special observances like the Day of Atonement to remove sin, which neither Josiah nor the people were now doing.

So King Josiah after reading this newly discovered book tore his robes as a symbol of sorrow and repentance, and he had all the people assemble—every man, woman, and child—and they stood there as he read the book of the Law to them word for word, so they could start living it. Yes, Josiah’s life teaches us the lesson to pay attention to the externals of our faith lives and especially to stay close to the word.

And isn’t that what Jesus did. Jesus paid attention to the externals of his life. He worshipped the Lord on the Sabbath as was his custom, to listen to that word regularly. Jesus prayed regularly, sometime all night, to his heaven Father for strength and help. And Christ Jesus kept the Law of God perfectly. He was without sin. No deceit was ever found in his mouth. No one could accuse him of any wrong. And through his work of redemption on the cross he gives his righteousness, his holiness, his perfection to us by faith that we may live in holiness.

This word contains the law of God which shows us our sin and guides us in the way we are to live. But it also and most importantly contains the gospel of God, the good news that when we fail to live in that holiness, God in Christ Jesus does not count our sins against us.

Yes, there was no king before or after Josiah who turned to the Lord in faith early in life by the influence of others and who clung to God’s Word once he discovered it as he did with all his heart, with all his soul, and with all his strength. So now we have another Old Testament model to follow in our walk with God. Amen.