This week we are looking at the
life of a king of the Jewish people named Josiah. Wednesday, we looked on as a
prophetess named Huldah revealed the Lord was going to respond to the
selfishness and rebellion of the Jewish people over the fifty seven year reign
of King Manasseh and King Amon by exercising His right and just response to
that selfishness and rebellion.
On the other hand, the Lord was going to extend
grace to King Josiah. Because King Josiah was brought to great grief as a result of what the word of the Lord
revealed about how the Lord felt about how the Jewish people had been treating
Him, King Josiah would not see the destruction of the Temple and the overthrow
of the Jewish nation. King Josiah would die with the peace that would come from
not seeing the Jewish people conquered as a result of the Lord’s right response
to their selfishness and rebellion.
Upon hearing the prophetess’s
words, the religious leaders returned to King Josiah and reported all that they
had heard. Today we see King Josiah’s response in verse 2 Chronicles 34:29:
Then the king sent and gathered all the elders
of Judah and Jerusalem. The king went up to the house of the LORD and all the
men of Judah, the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the priests, the Levites and all
the people, from the greatest to the least; and he read in their hearing all
the words of the book of the covenant which was found in the house of the LORD.
Then the king stood in his place and made a covenant before the LORD to walk
after the LORD, and to keep His commandments and His testimonies and His
statutes with all his heart and with all his soul, to perform the words of the
covenant written in this book. Moreover, he made all who were present in
Jerusalem and Benjamin to stand with
him. So the inhabitants of Jerusalem did according to the covenant of
God, the God of their fathers. Josiah removed all the abominations from all the
lands belonging to the sons of Israel, and made all who were present in Israel
to serve the LORD their God. Throughout his lifetime they did not turn from
following the LORD God of their fathers.
Instead of responding to the
prophet’s words by focusing on the good news and ignoring the bad news, King
Josiah did the exact opposite. Instead of focusing on the Lord’s promise of
personal peace, King Josiah focused on the Lord’s promise of corporate
consequences for the selfishness and rebellion of the Jewish people. King
Josiah called the Jewish nation together at the Temple so that they could hear
the word of the Lord that was recorded in the Law.
Instead of responding to the
prophet’s words by giving up on the Jewish people as a result of their history
of selfishness and rebellion, King Josiah led the Jewish people to recommit
themselves to follow the word of the Lord that was recorded in the Law. And as
a result of King Josiah’s selfless devotion to the Lord and servant leadership
of the Jewish people, throughout King Josiah’s lifetime the Jewish people did
not turn from following the Lord. In another account of King Josiah’s life that
is recorded for us in the Bible called the book of 2 Kings, we see King
Josiah’s rule summarized in 2 Kings 23:25-26:
Before him
there was no king like him who turned to the LORD with all his heart and with
all his soul and with all his might, according to all the law of Moses; nor did
any like him arise after him. However, the LORD did not turn from the
fierceness of His great wrath with which His anger burned against Judah,
because of all the provocations with which Manasseh had provoked Him.
And it is the life of King
Josiah that we see the Lord reveal for us a timeless truth that has the
potential to powerfully impact how we live our lives today. And that timeless truth
is this: An individual’s devotion to Jesus does
not eliminate a community’s responsibility when it comes to following Jesus. Just as it was
for King Josiah, just as it has been for humanity throughout history, an
individual’s devotion to Jesus does not eliminate a community’s responsibility
when it comes to following Jesus.
Just
as it was for King Josiah, a life of devotion to Jesus that trusts and follows
Jesus does not eliminate the responsibility that a community will have before
Jesus when it comes to how they followed Jesus. As followers of Jesus, we are
called to live a life of devotion that places our confident trust in and
follows Jesus in a way that reveals and reflects Jesus to our community. As
followers of Jesus, we are called to live in a way that invests and invites
those who are far from God to explore faith so that they may experience
forgiveness and the relationship with God that they were created for by
believing, trusting, and following Jesus as Lord and Leader.
However,
our individual devotion to Jesus does not eliminate the reality that we live in
a community that will be held accountable by Jesus for how they respond to
Jesus. Just like King Josiah, we are to live in a way that trust and follows
the Lord, while recognizing that we are part of a community that can experience
the consequences of the selfishness and rebellion have in a community. And for
King Josiah, the influence of his life on the Jewish people only lasted as long
as his life.
After
his death in 609 B.C., King Josiah was succeeded by a series of Kings who did
evil in the sight of the Lord. These
kings led the Jewish people to turn from the Lord to worship false gods instead
of the Lord. Then, in 586 B.C., the Lord fulfilled the promise that He had made
to the Jewish people when it came to what would happen if they turned
from following the Lord to instead follow false gods. The Lord rejected the
Jewish people as He had been rejected. The Lord removed the Jewish people from
the Promised Land and destroyed the Temple through the Babylonian Empire.
And from 586 to 538 B.C., the Jewish people lived as
a conquered people in that nation of Babylon. Then, in 538 B.C., the Persian
Emperor Cyrus, after conquering the Babylonian Empire, began to allow the
Jewish people to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the Temple. In 535 B.C., the
foundation of the Temple was rebuilt as the Jewish people placed their hope in
a promise from the Lord that the Lord had made to the Jewish people hundreds of
years earlier. A promise that the Lord would send a rescuer, a deliverer, a
Messiah, who would bring the Jewish people back to God and back to a place of
prominence in the world.
However,
while the Jewish people were building their own houses, they failed to rebuild
either the rest of the Temple of the walls around the city of Jerusalem. God
responded by sending the prophets Haggai and Zechariah to call the Jewish
people to rebuild the Temple. In 515 B.C., the temple was completed.
However, in 458 B.C. Ezra himself returned
from Babylon to Jerusalem and led the Jewish people to repent from selfishness
and rebellion that had once again arisen among the people. 14 years later, in
445 B.C. Nehemiah traveled to Jerusalem and led the Jewish people to rebuild
the walls around the city, which is recorded for us in the book of Nehemiah.
After traveling back to Babylon, Nehemiah ended up having to return to
Jerusalem in 427 B.C. in order to, once again, confront the continuing
selfishness and rebellion of the Jewish people.
However,
150 years after being conquered and deported by the Babylonians, where they
lived in captivity for fifty years; after spending over 100 years rebuilding
the Temple and the city of Jerusalem; the Jewish people were still selfishly
rebelling and rejecting the Lord. The Lord responded by sending the prophet
Malachi to the Jewish people with a message that reminded and warned the Jewish
people He was a promise maker and a promise keeper. The Lord would send a
Messiah to rescue the people and the Lord would execute His right and just response
on those who refused to follow Him. The Lord promised that the Messiah’s
arrival would be announced by His messenger.
And
so the Jewish people waited and the Jewish people hoped. The Jewish people
waited and hoped for a day when there would be an announcement of the arrival
of the Messiah. For 400 years the Jewish people waited and the Jewish people
hoped to hear that announcement.
Next
week, we will launch into the Christmas season by looking at that announcement...
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