Sermon: Josiah - The Way Up is Down - 2 Chronicles 34

This sermon is part of a series called "Keeping the Story Alive."

Introduction:

Romans 15:4 speaks to us about the great relevance and value of the OT to our lives when it says, …whatever was written before was written for our instruction, so that through our endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we may have hope. (Rom. 15:4). Our study of some of the lesser-known saints of the OT has given us just that—relevant life lessons and the strong encouragement of the Scriptures through the lens of ancient lives lived well. In the first three Sundays of this study, we have looked at Gideon, Ruth, and Jabez—very ordinary people who have cast long shadows of godly influence because of they choose the road less traveled and trusted in the Lord their God.

This morning, I call you to an examination of a young man named Josiah, whose times thrust him into a role he did not choose to fight for the very soul of his people. The story of Josiah is remarkable on a number of levels, one of which is highlighted in v. 1-4

Josiah was eight years old when he became king; he reigned 31 years in Jerusalem. 2 He did what was right in the LORD’s sight and walked in the ways of his ancestor David; he did not turn aside to the right or the left. 3 In the eighth year of his reign, while he was still a youth, Josiah began to seek the God of his ancestor David, and in the twelfth year he began to cleanse Judah and Jerusalem of the high places, the Asherah poles, the carved images, and the cast images. 4 Then in his presence the altars of the Baals were torn down, and the incense altars that were above them he chopped down. The Asherah poles, the carved images, and the cast images he shattered, crushed to dust, and scattered over the graves of those who had sacrificed to them.

Would all the 8 year olds in the room please stand? Imagine what it would be like if, instead of going into the third grade, you became the President of the United States! That’s what happened to Josiah. But there are a couple of other factors that you need to know that combine to raise our esteem for this boy-king. Let me profile…

Josiah’s world.

To get a handle on the political scene in Josiah’s day, go back hundreds of years before Josiah to the death of Solomon, which marked the beginning of a fractured and divided Israel. A civil war would soon break out, eventually forcing the creation of two separate kingdoms where there was once one nation. Ten of the twelve tribes of Israel united to form what was called the northern kingdom of Israel; the remaining two tribes formed the southern kingdom, known as Judah.

By the time Josiah came to the throne of Judah, the northern kingdom of Israel was no more. Eighty years before Josiah, God brought an end to the northern kingdom because of their continued rebellion against Him and the idolatrous practices that pervaded the land. The Almighty appointed the ruthless Assyrian army as the instrument of His judgment. The death toll for the Hebrew people was massive, and those that survived were deported to Assyria, never to return to their homeland again.

Now you would think that such a stunning judgment from God would sober the last remaining remnant of the Hebrew people—that such grave consequences for trifling with Almighty God should bring fear into the hearts of Judah, causing them to align their lives to His will and ways. But it was not so. In the 8 decades that followed the fall of the northern kingdom, Judah sank deeper and deeper into sin. The prophetic preaching of Micah and Zephaniah, of Jeremiah and Habakkuk all took place in Judah during this time, each of them warning of impending judgment unless there was repentance. But their cries fell on deaf ears.

So when Josiah comes as a child to the throne of Judah, he inherits a kingdom where moral anarchy and rampant idolatry were common. Let me also profile for you…

Josiah’s personal history.

Josiah’s grandfather was Manasseh, who ruled for 55 years in Judah, and led the most disgusting and vile life imaginable. What would it be like as an 8-year old to have your recollections of your grandfather be of a man who dedicated himself to removing God’s Word from Judah and replacing the worship of God with idols (2 Chron. 33:3)? How would it affect Josiah to know that Grandpa sacrificed some of his own children to satanic gods (2 Chron. 33:6)? Or to read the accounts of the wholesale slaughter of innocent people that marked his reign, such that the Bible says of him, Manasseh also shed so much innocent blood that he filled Jerusalem with it from one end to another (2 Kings 21:16)? Add to this the brief reign of Josiah’s father, Amon, who followed in Manasseh’s footsteps, and was assassinated in his second year as king by the palace servants.

This was the spiritual heritage handed to Josiah. And this was the reason he came to the throne at such an early age. He had no godly model to follow in his immediate family. He faced an unpredictable and volatile political climate in his world. And his nation was spinning out of control, headed for the judgment of God. What possible difference could a child make in such dire conditions?

I tell you, brothers and sisters, that before his death in battle at age 39, this young man would be used of God to lead his nation in one of the greatest revivals of her history! Just an unlikely youngster—weak by every standard for the task to which he came and with extraordinary obstacles before him—yet he became the one who guided his people back to God! How? What was it about Josiah that made him great before God and men?

One simple, direct, obvious answer that everyone who is a Christian in this room knows, yet so very few take seriously. It is so plain, so straightforward that you might be tempted to dismiss it, but I tell you 3rd graders and you teenagers, and all us adults—it was the secret to Josiah’s influence. What am I talking about?

Josiah chose wholehearted devotion to God.

Let me clarify my meaning. By wholehearted, I mean the opposite of half-hearted. This is the stark contrast to the popular brand of Christianity these days that has divided loyalties; that operates on mild enthusiasm, partial obedience, and convenience-driven service. D. A. Carson defined the Christianity of our times. “We drift toward compromise and call it tolerance; we drift toward disobedience and call it freedom. We cherish the indiscipline of lost self-control and call it relaxation; we slouch toward prayerlessness and delude ourselves into thinking we have escaped legalism; we slide toward godlessness and convince ourselves we have been liberated.” (quoted in "Reflections," Christianity Today, 7-31-00)

That cheap version of Christianity is foreign to what marked Josiah. Wholehearted means “holding nothing back.” It is genuine, not pretending. It is fervent, not tepid. It is complete, not partial. Wholeheartedness toward God is single-minded in its pursuit, with no reservations, no compromises, and no excuses.

Josiah and the Great Commandment

Let me show you this in Josiah’s life. But first I ask you a question: What is the Great Commandment? Remember when the teacher of the Law came to Christ Jesus with that question: Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law? What did Jesus quote? Deut. 6:5: Love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. This is the core command, the starting place for all the other commands of God. If you don’t get this one right; if you don’t have God at the center of your life, then it doesn’t matter what you do—it’s not going to make any difference as far as God is concerned.

Now listen to this summarization of Josiah’s 31-year reign from 2 Kings 23: Before him there was no king like him who turned to the LORD with all his mind and with all his heart and with all his strength according to all the law of Moses, and no one like him arose after him (2 Kings 23:25). Josiah lived the Great Commandment! Not perfectly, of course! He was just like any of us. But the compass needle of his heart always pointed to the true north of loving God. He began right where he was, and as best he knew how, he gave all of himself to God, every day, all through the day. Josiah chose wholehearted devotion to God.

I want to make one other connection that holds out to us an awesome promise. 2 Chron. 16:9: For the eyes of the LORD range throughout the earth to show Himself strong for those whose hearts are completely His. I cannot hear that verse without deep longings rising up in me to be that kind of man. The omniscient eyes of Jehovah God are everywhere always. He tracks our motives. He sifts our attitudes. He scrutinizes our hearts even now!

What motivates this unceasing search by God? He is eager! He stands ready at all times. He so wants to show Himself strong on behalf of any boy or girl, any man or woman whose heart is whole toward Him! His eyes rested on a young boy named Josiah, who had everything against him, and found a heart that was completely devoted to Him. Josiah’s story is one example of the power of God at work in an ordinary man, and how the ripple effects were felt throughout his nation!

But how do you make this happen? Please notice the choices Josiah made that have up-to-the-minute relevance in fostering a God-centered heart.

Josiah set his eyes on a single, simple goal—to so live that God is pleased with all my ways.

(…he did what was right in the Lord’s sight, v. 2a) He didn’t take his cues from his own family. He rose above the spiritual emptiness at home. He didn’t succumb to the anti-God attitudes and godless choices of his nation. He rose above peer pressure. Josiah swam against the current of his day by setting a simple personal priority at the core of who he was: More than anything else, he wanted to live a life pleasing to God!

Verse 3 tells us that as he grew older, his devotion to the Lord increased so that it was obvious to those around him. By the time he was sixteen, his determination to pursue and worship God so marked his public life that the historian who wrote 2 Chronicles made a record of it for us. By his twentieth birthday, his character had been so shaped by God that he used his office to institute a nationwide purging of every trace of idolatry.

It took six years to take away all the false crutches that people were looking to. And then, when he was twenty-six years old, Josiah turned his attention on the dilapidated Temple, which had not been attended to in over 250 years (since King Joash). Look at v. 8: In the eighteenth year of his reign, in order to cleanse the land and the temple, Josiah sent Shaphan son of Azaliah, along with Maaseiah the governor of the city and the recorder Joah son of Joahaz, to repair the temple of the LORD his God. At every stage of Josiah’s life—from elementary years into high school and onto into young adulthood, Josiah’s pursuit of this simple goal never waned. He wanted his life to be pleasing to God.

Josiah supported this goal with holy habits.

(and walked in the ways of his ancestor David, v. 2b) The phrase “walk in the ways” is talking about a lifestyle. In other words, his pursuit of God wasn’t an on-again, off-again thing. It wasn’t only expressed when he went to worship on the weekend. Josiah wove specific habits into the rhythms of his days that kept him on a path of holiness and tuned his heart to the Lord.

The ways of…David are easy to discern from his writings. A devotion to the Word of God, to prayer, to fasting, to regularly worshipping God in the sanctuary—these are the frequent themes of David’s writings. These were the regular practices of Josiah’s life.

That his private life was strengthened by these holy habits was seen when a copy of Deuteronomy was found while the Temple was being repaired. Josiah’s grandfather had all but wiped out every copy of God’s Word, so when this copy was brought to Josiah, he immediately responded to the Lord with fresh renewal, and called all of Judah to hear it read aloud. After this, Josiah lead to publicly made a covenant to obey the Word of God with all his heart and with all his soul (v. 31), and all of Judah pledged the same.

Josiah made up his mind before the temptations came that he would not be turned aside by what the world had to offer.

(he did not turn aside to the right or the left., v. 2c) The wisdom of Prov. 4:25-27 speaks to this resolve: Let your eyes look forward; fix your gaze straight ahead. 26 Carefully consider the path for your feet, and all your ways will be established.27 Don’t turn to the right or to the left; keep your feet away from evil.

There is a simplicity to the life of the godly. All through the Bible, the way of righteousness is a straight ahead. It calls us avoid the detours off this path; they promise much, but lead you to dead ends and death. Josiah won the battles with temptations before they came by determining what he would and would not do.

Tell me something: Who says that just because you’re a teenager, you have to back off on godliness? And why has it become the norm for college-age students to fall away? Are there any Josiah’s in the house today who will make this your goal—“Oh God, that I might please you, in how I respond to my parents, in how I dress, in what I listen to, in the movies I attend. My body is Yours, Lord, so be glorified by what I do on a date and what I take into Your body and what I participate in. I want to please You!”

Are there any here who would pledge themselves to developing daily habits that support that goal? Or are you just coasting through your week, trying to survive on someone else’s Bible study or prayers? Have you already decided what you will do in the day of temptation so that you are prepared to win? Or are you just taking it as it comes and deciding in the moment?

But I would add, why is it that in the passing of the years into older adulthood, there is a corresponding loss of zeal? Why aren’t there more adults showing these students what wholeheartedness looks like? God grant that many adults who have grown lukewarm will return to this simple pursuit—so to live that God is pleased with all my ways. But that’s not all—Josiah chose certain disciplines to support this pursuit.

Pastor Lloyd Stilley has been married to Leeanne for 23 years, has two sons, Joey (20) and Craig (16), and has served as a pastor for 20 years. The past 7 years he has served FBC, Gulf Shores. He is a graduate of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.