At the church where I serve, we
just came to the conclusion of a sermon series that looked
at the lives of kings who were placed in a position of leadership over the
Jewish people. This week, I would
like for us to pick up where we left off last week. Upon King Manasseh’s death
in 642 B.C., his son Amon
became King over the Jewish people at twenty two years of age. However, King
Amon led the Southern Kingdom of Judea to trust and follow the false gods of
the Northern Kingdom of Israel instead of the one true god.
And unlike his father Manasseh,
who humbly repented of his selfishness and rebellion that led him to lead the
Jewish people to worship false gods, King Amon arrogantly opposed the Lord and
multiplied his guilt before the Lord. As a result of his corrupt leadership, in
640 B.C., after only two years as king, King Amon was assassinated by his own
servants in his royal palace.
After his assassination, the
Jewish people responded in two specific ways. First the Jewish people executed
justice on those who assassinated King Amon by killing them. Second, the Jewish
people appointed King Amon’s son, a man named Josiah, to be king of the Jewish
people. And it is in this context that we jump back into a
historical account of the Jewish people that is recorded for us in the Old
Testament of the Bible called the book of 2 Chronicles,
beginning in 2 Chronicles 34:1:
Josiah was eight years old when he became
king, and he reigned thirty-one years in Jerusalem. He did right in the sight
of the LORD, and walked in the ways of his father David and did not turn aside
to the right or to the left.
Ezra
brings us into this event from the history of the Jewish people by introducing
us to King Josiah. King Josiah became King of the Jewish people in 640 B.C.,
when he was only eight years old. King Josiah proceeded to lead the Jewish
people for a period of thirty one years. Now a natural question that arises here
is “How could Josiah be king when he was only eight years old?”
Most
scholars and historians believe that up to the age of sixteen King Josiah ruled
with the assistance of a regent, who mentored and counseled the king in his
duties and responsibilities as a king. After being introduced to the new king,
we are given a summary statement of the overall leadership of King Josiah. Ezra
explains that King Josiah did right in the sight of the Lord.
In other words, King Josiah placed his
confident trust in and followed the Lord in a way that pleased the Lord. King
Josiah conducted his day to day life in a way that did not turn from following
the Lord, but instead placed his confident trust in the Lord. Ezra then unpacks
exactly how King Josiah placed his confident trust in and followed the Lord in
verse 3:
For in the eighth year of his reign while he
was still a youth, he began to seek the God of his father David; and in the
twelfth year he began to purge Judah and Jerusalem of the high places, the
Asherim, the carved images and the molten images. They tore down the altars of
the Baals in his presence, and the incense altars that were high above them he
chopped down; also the Asherim, the carved images and the molten images he
broke in pieces and ground to powder and scattered it on the graves of those who had sacrificed to them. Then he
burned the bones of the priests on their altars and purged Judah and Jerusalem.
In the cities of Manasseh, Ephraim, Simeon, even as far as Naphtali, in their
surrounding ruins, he also tore down the altars and beat the Asherim and the
carved images into powder, and chopped down all the incense altars throughout
the land of Israel. Then he returned to Jerusalem.
When he was sixteen years old, King Josiah began to
pursue a personal relationship with the Lord. And as King Josiah grew in his
love of the Lord; as King Josiah grew in his relationship with the Lord, King
Josiah began to lead the Jewish people to remove the things that had turned the
Jewish people away from following the Lord. King Josiah led the Jewish people to
remove the various altars and elevated shrines that were for the
worship of false gods that had been rebuilt under the leadership of his father
Amon and his grandfather Manasseh.
But not only
did King Josiah encourage and lead those who were under his rule to turn from
the worship of false gods to the worship of the Lord as the One True God. King
Josiah extended his influence to lead the Jewish people who were under the rule
of the Assyrian Empire to turn from the worship of false gods to the worship of
the Lord as the One True God. Even those Jewish people who were not under his
rule were influenced by King Josiah to remove the altars and elevated shrines
from their lands and to recommit their lives to following the Lord.
For six
years, King Josiah traveled throughout the Jewish nation, calling the Jewish
people to revive their relationship with the Lord and remove the worship of
false gods from the nation. After removing the altars where the worship of
false gods occurred, King Josiah turned his attention to restoring the Temple
in Jerusalem, where the worship of the One True God was to occur. We see King
Josiah’s efforts to restore the Temple in 2 Chronicles 34:8:
Now in the eighteenth year of his reign, when
he had purged the land and the house, he sent Shaphan the son of Azaliah, and
Maaseiah an official of the city, and Joah the son of Joahaz the recorder, to
repair the house of the LORD his God. They came to Hilkiah the high priest and
delivered the money that was brought into the house of God, which the Levites,
the doorkeepers, had collected from Manasseh and Ephraim, and from all the
remnant of Israel, and from all Judah and Benjamin and the inhabitants of
Jerusalem. Then they gave it into
the hands of the workmen who had the oversight of the house of the LORD, and
the workmen who were working in the house of the LORD used it to restore and
repair the house. They in turn gave it
to the carpenters and to the builders to buy quarried stone and timber
for couplings and to make beams for the houses which the kings of Judah had let
go to ruin. The men did the work faithfully with foremen over them to
supervise: Jahath and Obadiah, the Levites of the sons of Merari, Zechariah and
Meshullam of the sons of the Kohathites, and the Levites, all who were skillful
with musical instruments. They were also
over the burden bearers, and supervised all the workmen from job to job; and some of the Levites were scribes and officials and
gatekeepers.
In 622 B.C., King Josiah turned his attention to
repairing and restoring the Temple in Jerusalem, which had fallen into
disrepair after fifty seven years of neglect by King Manasseh and King Amon. The
king initiated a Temple Restoration Fund drive that involved the investment of
the treasure of the Jewish people over and above their regular giving.
And as the Jewish people responded to King Josiah’s
leadership in restoring the Temple by providing the resources to repair the
Temple, those resources were then allocated to those who were responsible for
making the repairs to the Temple.
And as the Temple restoration project moved forward, an
amazing discovery was made. A discovery that we will look at tomorrow…
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