All Heart - Josiah, Part 2

It's good to be with you. Good to see you here on this first Sunday after Easter. And I'm really excited to dig into God's Word with you today.

We're in the book of 2 Kings. If you're not surprised to hear that, that's probably because you've been around for a bit. If you're new with us, we are all the way up to chapter 23.

2 Kings chapter 23. We're not going to quite take the whole chapter. We'll stop at verse 25. Let me read this for us as you're finding that on your phone or tablet or in your good old-fashioned Bible or Scripture journal.

2 Kings 23 · chapter mention

Then the king sent, and all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem were gathered to him. And the king went up to the house of the Lord, and with him all the men of Judah and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem and the priests and the prophets, all the people great and small.

And he read in their hearing all the words of the book of the covenant that had been found in the house of the Lord. And the king stood by the pillar 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 all his soul to perform the words of this covenant that were written in this book. And all the people joined in the covenant.

And the king commanded Hilkiah, the high priest, and the priests of the second order, and the keepers of the threshold to bring out of the temple of the Lord all the vessels made for Baal, for Asherah, and for all the hosts of heaven.

He burned them outside Jerusalem in the fields of the Kidron and carried their ashes to Bethel. And he deposed the priests whom the kings of Judah had ordained to make offerings in the high places at the cities of Judah and around Jerusalem.

Those who also burned incense to Baal, to the sun and the moon, and the constellations and all the host of heavens. And he brought out the Asherah from the house of the Lord outside Jerusalem to the brook Kidron and burned it at the brook Kidron

and beat it to dust and cast the dust of it upon the graves of the common people. And he broke down the houses of the male cult prostitutes who were in the house of the Lord, where the women wove hangings for the Asherah.

And he brought out all the priests of the cities of Judah and defiled the high places where the priests had made offerings from Geba to Beersheba.

And he broke down the high places of the gates that were at the entrance of the gate of Joshua, the governor of the city, which were on one's left at the gate of the city.

However, the priests of the high places did not come up to the altar of the Lord in Jerusalem, but they ate unleavened bread among their brothers.

And he defiled Topheth, which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom, that no one might burn his son or his daughter as an offering to Moloch.

And he removed the horses that the kings of Judah had dedicated to the son at the entrance of the house of the Lord, by the chamber of Nathan-Melech, the chamberlain, which was in the precincts.

And he burned the chariots of the son with fire. And the altars on the roof of the upper chamber of Ahaz, which the kings of Judah had made, and the altars that Manasseh had made in the two courts of the house of the Lord, he pulled down and broke in pieces and cast the dust of them into the brook Kidron.

And the king defiled the high places that were east of Jerusalem, to the south of the Mount of Corruption, which Solomon, the king of Israel, had built for the Ashtoreth, the abomination of the Sidonians, and for Chamash, the abomination of Moab, and for Milcom, the abomination of the Ammonites.

And he broke in pieces the pillars and cut down the asherim and filled their places with the bones of men. Moreover, the altar at Bethel, the high place erected by Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin, that altar with the high place he pulled down and burned,

reducing it to dust. He also burned the Asherah, and as Josiah turned, he saw the tombs there on the mount. And he sent and took the bones out of the tombs and burned them on the altar and defiled it, according to the word of the Lord that the man of God proclaimed, who had predicted these things.

Then he said, What is that monument that I see? And the men of the city told him, It is the tomb of the man of God who came from Judah and predicted these things that you have done against the altar at Bethel.

And he said, Let him be. Let no man move his bones. So they let his bones alone with the bones of the prophet who came out of Samaria. And Josiah removed all the shrines also of the high places that were in the cities of Samaria, which the kings of Israel had made, provoking the Lord to anger.

He did to them according to all that he had done at Bethel. And he sacrificed all the priests of the high places who were there on the altars and burned human bones on them.

Then he returned to Jerusalem. And the king commanded all the people, Keep the Passover to the Lord your God, as it is written in this book of the covenant.

For no such Passover had been kept since the days of the judges who judged Israel, or during all the days of the kings of Israel, or of the kings of Judah.

But in the 18th year of King Josiah, this Passover was kept to the Lord in Jerusalem. Moreover, Josiah put away the mediums and the necromancers, and the household gods and the idols,

and all the abominations that were seen in the land of Judah and in Jerusalem, that he might establish the words of the law that were written in the book that Hilkiah the priest found in the house of the Lord.

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 the law of Moses, nor did any like him arise after him.

Would you pray with me once more?

Heavenly Father, this morning we come to you, and we do submit ourselves to your word. We pray that you would teach us. We pray, Father, that you would lay out for us what you want us to see.

Father, we recognize that there are indeed concerns that we come with, burdens that we carry into a moment like this one. We pray for those with appointments coming up this week.

Father, we pray for Erin Hollister and the grief that her family is working through with the loss of her father. Father, we thank you for raising up this church in the city of South Bend and so many other gospel preaching churches that right now are doing the same thing, worshiping you and hearing from your word.

We pray for them as well. And we pray all of this in the name of Jesus, our Redeemer. Amen. Amen.

I don't know if you follow professional sports.

Excuse me while I try to get my allergy throat to work. But they had a little thing called the NFL draft this week or this weekend. I don't know how much you pay attention to that.

And as often is the case in the draft, there were a few surprises. But this year it seems that raw talent and performance and stats and promise, it seems that for at least the quarterback position,

one more quality was thought to be essential. And that's heart. A team leader, especially if he's the face of a franchise, they have got to have heart.

Are you going to give up when the going gets tough? Are you going to let your teammates down with a bad attitude? Are you going to embarrass the franchise with your off-the-field conduct?

These are very real questions. And apparently the total package is more than just the numbers and the talent and the stats. It's also the heart.

And the reason I mention this is because heart, this is what the leader of this kingdom of Judah is going to have to have. And I don't know if you got much out of what I just read, but I hope you at least got this.

It's pretty clear that this king has heart. Josiah is all heart. I mean, read that last verse again. Verse 25. Before him there was no king like him.

That's a pretty big statement. No king like him ever before or ever after him. Of course, there aren't going to be very many kings left. But let's turn back just a bit, because if you were not able to be with us last time, here's what happened last week.

We've got a young 20-something king in Josiah. He begins the cleanup of his kingdom starting in the temple. And we learned last week that as he's giving his attention to this much-needed renovation in the house of the Lord, that the workmen stumble upon something.

Something holed up somewhere in the masonry or in a wall somewhere. They discover the book of the law. And we know that it's probably a large swath of the book of Deuteronomy.

Stands to reason it's the part that has all of the covenant requirements with all of the blessings and the curses. And suffice it to say, when it's read out loud in front of the king, he is mortified by what he hears.

He tears his robes, an act of great humility and distress. And he sends a delegation to the prophetess Huldah. And what she tells him is, yeah, it is too late for the kingdom.

Judah is doomed. However, for you personally, King Josiah, you are going to be able to go to your grave in peace.

So what's our king do? As we open chapter 23, verse 1, that's the last thing that he heard. Does our king, we ask ourselves, say the same thing that a predecessor of his said, like Hezekiah?

Like, well, it's too bad for the kingdom, but at least I get to go to my grave in peace. Does he do that? No, he doesn't. Instead, what he does is he sets out on a literal one-man campaign, a rampage of reform,

a campaign to totally purge this land. Listen, this is a man, a king, who could have rested in the assurance of his own personal reprieve. He could have coasted through his reign without a care, but instead he becomes what one scholar calls

a one-man iconoclast who sets out on a relentless, I mean, ruthless, relentless campaign to reform the land, and he does it simply because reform is right.

It's the right thing to do. And so it all starts out in verse 1. Our king calls everybody together, all the elders of the land, the priests, the people, everybody, both great and small.

He says, everyone in the city is coming to the temple. And Josiah goes on to read from God's word all the words of the book of the covenant that had been recently found.

Can I ask for a bump in the volume just a bit? Thanks, Egboula. Thank you. By verse 3, it's covenant renewal time. And our king's actions, man, they say it all.

He stands, doesn't he? And that's a posture, they say, for covenant making. And look at where he stands. It's very intentional. It's by the pillar.

It's one of two pillars that are outside the temple. He stands there just like a predecessor named Joash had once done before when he renewed the covenant.

And there, we're told, with all his heart and all his soul and all his might, he vows to literally perform the words of the covenant. Hang on to that word.

Perform. He stands there and he commits to walk and to keep and perform everything God's word tells him to do. And he commits to it, we're told, with all his heart.

And for the moment, the people join in too. And then comes verse 4. And what you see in that paragraph from verse 4 all the way on down to the end of the paragraph is a king who I think we could say is literally walking the talk.

He said he's going to perform what the law says. And that, my friends, ladies and gentlemen, is exactly what he does here in the kingdom of Judah.

He starts by commanding Hilkiah, the high priest. He says, I know we cleaned up the temple, but you know all that Baal, Asherah stuff, all that paraphernalia?

I want you to gather it and bring it out and take it down to the Kidron Valley. Now the Kidron Valley in this day is basically like a graveyard.

It's a cemetery. And what Josiah does down here in this cemetery is he burns all this cult paraphernalia. Although he does save the ashes for something later.

Next, in verse 5, it's a long overdue house cleaning of the priesthood itself. Apparently, a lot of these priests, and actually, if you've got a different translation than the ESV, it probably calls them idolatrous priests, which is a better rendition.

They are idolatrous. These guys have all compromised themselves by serving up at the high places all throughout the land, doing who knows what with who knows who to who knows what deity.

They're all out of jobs, Josiah orders. Unemployed, deposed from the priesthood entirely. Verse 6, Now the Asherah idol itself gets carried out and taken down to the brook Kidron and not just burned.

No, that's not enough. It is then beaten to dust and ground up and cast on the graves of the common people. You know, you read something like that and you think, that sounds a little excessive.

What did these common people ever do to get the dust of an idol thrown on their graves? Clearly an act of desecration. Well, these would be the idolatrous worshippers in Judah.

The ones who wanted to be buried near this stuff. And what Josiah the king is doing is both ritualistic and symbolic. He scatters the ashes all over people's graves.

These are the ashes of the gods that they were worshipping. It's a way to desecrate them, but really it's a double desecration because you desecrate both the false god and his worshippers.

By verse 7, we begin to realize the extent of the horrors of the immorality and idolatry that would have been running so rampant under Manasseh and Ammon and others.

We've got these male cult prostitutes. That's apparently been a thing. Engaging in their perverse and demented acts in the name of worship. Josiah says, demolish all their residences.

They're done. They're gone. They're out of here. He even sees to it that these hangings for the Asherah, which is probably their vestments, their wardrobe, he sees that they get trashed too.

Whether it's out in a high place in the country or in the city by some gate from Geba at the far northern border of Judah's territory, which you can see on a map, to Beersheba in the south.

Verse 8, verse 8 shows us that Josiah is ordering the total demolition, obliteration of everything idolatrous anywhere and everywhere. And he's not only destroying them, he is deliberately defiling them because that will render them

unusable in the future. A couple of places get particular mention is where especially heinous forms of evil had occurred, like child sacrifice, verse 10.

The Topheth, as it's called, in the Valley of Hinnon. That word Topheth in the Hebrew actually combines the consonants for the word for fire, hearth, with the word for shame.

And how appropriate when you've had people burning their own children at this site to a false demon god. Did you see verse 11? Check out verse 11.

We learn there's even more creative wickedness than we've ever heard of before. We have never heard about this, that now we've got people in Judah dedicating idols to the sun god and placing them outside the entrance to the temple.

And yet again, Josiah burns all the sun god horse cult nonsense too. By verse 12, Josiah's reforms take him home to his own palace. He goes up onto the roof where he removes some more altars that have been put there by his ancestors, breaks them into pieces,

literally pulverizes them to dust so he can carry that dust again out to the brook Kidron. By verses 13 and 14, his idol smashing campaign reaches its culmination in the city of Jerusalem.

And what he does is he now sets his sights on the big three. You say, well who are the big three? Well they're named here in verses 13 and 14.

Ashtoreth, Chamash, and Milcom. And apparently each one was a favorite of one of his predecessors. The sad thing is that it goes back pretty far.

It goes all the way back to the great King Solomon some 300 plus years earlier who claimed the neighboring Mount of Olives, the very mount that Jesus would be on in about 600 years or so from now.

Solomon claimed the Mount of Olives for one of his idols and built shrines up there. And even the way that our narrator here in Kings describes it, he deliberately corrupts the word for olives.

It's kind of funny how he would do this with a feather stroke of a change. He would change it to where it meant Mount of Corruption. Yes, even as Josiah is defiling all these altars with human bones and ashes, we've got our narrator mocking these gods too.

Well, Judah's clean. The kingdom is clear of all idols and shrines now and you'd think that our king is done but he's not because in verse 15 he actually jumps across the border and moves north to Bethel.

Now over the border into this land that was once neighboring Israel's kingdom and here's where the narrator starts to kind of slow us down just a bit because as Josiah and his idol smashing party now comes to Bethel and to that original altar with the golden calf the original

high place that was erected by Jeroboam. This is Jeroboam I son of Nebat. He was the first king in Israel after the kingdom split. He's the one who is blamed with making, leading Israel into sin.

We're told that Josiah pulls this altar down, burns it and pulverizes it too. And then he turns to the hillside behind him and our king notices something.

He notices that the whole hillside is filled with tombs. These would be worshipers likely wanting to be buried near what they worshipped. And so again it's graves opened up, graves disinterred with Josiah ordering their bones now removed

and burned on this very altar. again as a way to completely defile it. Again to render this location forever unusable. And it's right at this moment where our king's narrator directs our attention to an event that happened in the past.

You could call it a blast from the past from 1 Kings 13. An event that happened again under the very first Jeroboam. He takes us back to this startling and memorable event that happened about 300 years earlier to this time where an unnamed man of God from Judah a prophet

came north showed up in front of the king Jeroboam one day while he's in an idolatrous act and basically delivered a word from the Lord and that word was a prophecy of judgment.

Here it is in 1 Kings chapter 13 verse 2 And the man the man of God cried against the altar by the word of the Lord and said O altar altar thus says the Lord behold a son shall be born to the house of David Josiah by name and he shall sacrifice on you

1 Kings 13:2

the priests of the high places who make offerings on you and human bones shall be burned on you. What did we just see in verse 16? Human bones being burned on this very altar and what did we read about in verse 20?

That Josiah sacrificed all the priests of the high places who were up here in Samaria and that surely includes those here at Bethel. Listen what this means is that Josiah's desecration of this altar here at Bethel with pagan priestly blood being spattered on it with exhumed human bones

being burned on it from the hillside it's all a fulfillment a fulfillment of a prophetic word uttered 300 years ago down to the name of the king Josiah by this mysterious man of God from Judah

a man of God who knew the book of the law pretty well because what he prophesied would happen has happened and actually it's what the law called for to have happen in these kinds of cases here it is in Deuteronomy chapter 13 verse 16

Deuteronomy 13:16

this is a passage talking about if you find idolatry in the land this is what God says you shall gather all of its spoil into the midst of its open square and burn the city and all its spoil with fire as a whole burnt offering to the Lord your God it shall be a heap

forever it shall not be built again of course if you know the story back in 1st Kings 13 it's really a fascinating one by the way you might remember that things didn't really end so well for our man of God from Judah he disobeyed part of his instructions and it actually

got him killed by a God sent lion and he ended up being buried up north away from his home buried by a sympathetic older prophet from Bethel in the old man's own tomb that's what he wanted so that after the old prophet himself died he told his sons when I

die I want you to bury me with him so imagine this two prophets corpses stacked on top of each other in the same grave as the older man wanted somebody standing next to Josiah points out a landmark a specially marked grave and he explains just whose

grave it is and whose bones are lying inside it's the bones of these two faithful prophets and Josiah clears his throat he has a special order for this tomb verse 17 what is that monument that I see the men of the city told him it's the tomb of the man of God who came from Judah

and predicted these things that you have done against the altar at Bethel and he Josiah said let him be let no man move his bones so they let his bones alone with the bones of the prophet who came out of Samaria Josiah honors both of these men

and he will not allow their graves to be desecrated finally our king crosses back over the border into Judah and at the end of verse 20 he returns to Jerusalem back in the city and now what he does in verse 21 is he reinstitutes the Passover

but not like before like other times or other kings like Hezekiah who also celebrated the Passover no remember that Josiah what's he been reading lately he's been doing his personal devotions in the book of Deuteronomy and from his

reading particularly from chapter 16 of Deuteronomy he would know that Israel has not been celebrating the Passover properly it was supposed to be celebrated at a central shrine which is now the temple it was supposed to be celebrated with all the prescribed offerings being made by

the specially dedicated temple personnel not just in individual homes which is what had been happening but that's not by the book and Josiah is going to do everything completely by the book with all his heart and that's why we read over in the parallel account if we

look over in 2nd Chronicles 35 of how generous he is not only does he say it's got to be done right it's got to be done at the temple we read over there in Chronicles that he actually offers 33,000 of his own animals for the slaughter third and you might think I don't know what the value of an animal is but in

the ancient world it's a lot 33,000 goats and bulls is a lot of money a lot of treasure and if you want to know where a person's heart is right didn't somebody once say that in the New Testament with our curtain now closing on Josiah's reforms

we get to this last part it's very interesting in verse 24 and maybe at a quick reading we think well I guess they forgot to mention this it should have been organized better but actually there's something a little different going on here what's happening in verse 24 is that we're moving away from all the public spaces

the public reforms and now what we're doing is we're seeing reform go into individual homes all the idolatrous priests are gone all the wicked shrines are gone all the paraphernalia has been burned and pulverized Passover's reinstituted but Josiah's heart is so

committed to reform that he is concerned about the smaller spaces the private spaces individual homes throughout the land and so what he does is he orders all the mediums all the necromancers apparently these two employment professions whatever they are

they work their wares in the homes of the people and he orders them all out as well as what he described what's described as the household gods and idols he says all of it must go all must be put away scholars say that these are probably personal idols that people

had been collecting in their homes you know figurine type idols that you put up on your mantle and pray to maybe it's a Canaanite god probably also figurines of family members that they would pray to or have a medium reach out to on their behalf

all that is now gone because again as our last verse reminds us verse 25 this king is different he's got a different heart he's got a heart that's all in like no other king either before him or after him because he turned to the

lord with all his heart and all his soul and all his might so where are we this morning does what we see here seem a little excessive to us to our modern day sensibilities maybe

but you know what they say extreme circumstances and I think circumstances are pretty extreme in Judah disasters coming because of them extreme circumstances call for extreme measures and know that everything

Josiah does he's not going out on his own he does everything that he does here by the book and he does it with all his heart and actually that's a really key phrase that actually comes out of the book of Deuteronomy it comes from a little section you've probably

heard of called the Shema which is the Hebrew word for here it's one of the most famous passages in all of the Old Testament let me read it to you Deuteronomy chapter 6 verse 4 5 and 6 here O Israel the Lord our God the Lord is one you shall love the Lord your

Deuteronomy 6:4

God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might and these words that I command you today shall be on your heart they were certainly on Josiah's heart right he certainly walked after the Lord and kept his commandments

with all his heart and so I suppose the question for people like us to ask ourselves this morning is this one what does it look like to turn to the Lord with all your heart because that's essentially what I think we have seen in these 25 verses an illustration

of an ancient king who turns to the Lord with all his heart so what's that look like for people like us who are not kings and who do not live in a land with literal idols well maybe we do and I would suggest to you that our passage very vividly shows us three things

three things that it looks like and here's the first one number one pretty obvious it looks like the total obliteration of all sin it looks like the obliteration of sin as in total destruction

you know what fun things pastors do during the week when they study they grab pens and they start underlining verbs I did that this week there's a lot of verbs in our story a lot of action you want to hear the verbs real fast rapid

fire burn deposed brought out burned burned beat the dust cast the dust upon the graves broke down broke brought out broke down more defiled removed burned broken pieces defiled removed burned pulled down broken pieces dust cast into the brook defiled broken pieces reduced it to dust burned

removed sacrificed I don't know about you but that sounds like the language of total obliteration to me obliterating everything wicked that is causing people to sin whether it's astral worship of the stars

or some Asherah pole fertility cult device whether it's a pagan bail altar or a pagan priest serving at it from the chariots of the sun to the figurines of the household gods to the necromancers and mediums it's all gone all of it is

destroyed all desecrated and rendered unusable there's a few things I observe in Josiah's heart in the things that he's obliterating the first thing I observe is commitment

commitment he had total commitment it doesn't stop once he starts he keeps at it he's not satisfied until every ounce of wickedness is purged from the land right down to the last pulverized burned altar

another word here that comes to mind is clarity would you say that there's clarity in what he does is our king looking at things and like I don't know it's kind of shiny talking to priests like I don't know you probably were well

intentioned no he has absolute clarity it doesn't matter who it is it doesn't matter where it is if it's in the temple or on his own palace roof or in your house if it's in the land of Judah proper or across the border in Samaria it doesn't matter he's got clarity it's gotta go

there's also a completeness to it right completeness a thoroughness that does take him as far north as Bethel in the old northern kingdom he knows that's not very far across the border people could go up there and get some ideas and maybe start patterning those things again bring them down here

this is not a halfway purge it is a wholehearted complete purge and then I think maybe the last thing we could say about it is that it's ruthless isn't it there is a ruthlessness in all that Josiah does nothing gets spared

it is so ruthless in the complete obliteration of everything idolatrous that even the priests themselves get sacrificed on their own pagan altars I mean this guy's raiding the graves of dead worshipers so he can bring out their bones and put them on altars

and burn them and defile everything entirely I would call that ruthless now I'm guessing for you you probably don't have a pagan altar at home right I'm guessing you probably have not

recently been to see a necromancer or a medium probably not your biggest struggles I'm guessing you probably have not prayed the little figurines maybe that's not your greatest temptation although then again we do live in a catholic town

but that sin that pops up in your life that struggle that you have those temptations that beset you can I ask you what is obliterating sin in your life going to look like

back back in the day I'm old enough to remember when they actually brought all the really evil satanic records vinyl records and they used to burn them anybody remember that I remember cassette tapes and you destroy them and burn them I mean

pornography was in magazines and so you'd burn those as well maybe you could at least purify your playlist on Spotify or Apple Tunes or whatever it is right maybe you could at least consider eliminating that streaming service

that's too much of a temptation for you maybe you could at least use a filter for your family and monitor your kids devices monitor maybe your own device have some accountability maybe you could possibly reconsider some of the events some of the concerts

that you attend or let your kids attend because listen obliterating sin from our lives is going to take commitment right it's going to take clarity especially for you parents it's going to take a completeness

and might I even suggest you might have to be a bit ruthless ! about it I'm not saying be ruthless with the people in your life be ruthless against the sin that's the first way we see a man turning to the Lord with all his heart here's the second way it looks like this number

two it looks like the honoring of God's word the honoring of God's word first thing we see is Josiah rediscovers God's word in the book of the law what's the first thing that he does after consulting the prophetess he reads it he

publicly reads the word and notice that he does this before the extensive war on idolatry starts that war on idolatry that war to obliterate sin starts grows out of the reading of the word

this is not a hard one to apply to our lives today my friends the public reading of God's word is good we're doing it right now again today yet another week and by being here or watching at home you are honoring that you are honoring the reading of the word

honoring God's word but how about the personal reading because we need that too we need to personally self feed throughout the week are you in God's word I'm asking some of us do we need to have a rediscovery of God's law God's book in our own homes

do you need to pull it off a shelf somewhere does it need pulled out of the nightstand or out from under the coffee table and dust it off do you need to rediscover the word and more than just read it notice how Josiah lets its

words affect him what does he do first thing he hears he tears his robes he humbles his heart that's another way that he honors the word is by allowing it to convict him ask yourself am I affected by what I

read in the Bible do I hear about God's standard and know that I don't meet it often and am I drawn to remember what's been done for me in Christ who's been offered for me for my forgiveness so that my heart can be drawn humbly

to repent again you know what else I see here today and this part's very interesting to me we see we see this king also honoring others who minister the word right now I'm not talking about the prophetess Huldah

I don't know maybe he sent her a thank you note you know thanks for the prophecy kingdom's going to be destroyed maybe he sent her flowers I don't know but what I do know what you and I have read is how Josiah honors God's word by honoring its messengers

the ones that were buried 300 years ago in that special landmark tomb these two prophets one from Judah one from Samaria buried together he honors the word when he honors them because that's what prophets are about they're men of the word verse 18

he says let him be let no man remove those bones this was Josiah's way of honoring those who served in the ministry of the word I mean one of them served at the cost of his life so what might this look like for you and I today

does it mean that after I die you shouldn't exhume my grave and desecrate my bones I would rather you didn't but seriously we ask ourselves is there some place in scripture that talks about this idea of honoring those who minister the word

strangely enough yes it pops up in the new testament here's what it says over in first timothy chapter five first timothy 5 17 listen to this let the elders who rule well be considered worthy of double honor especially those who

labor in preaching and teaching couple things here first double honor the context of the chapter is talking about financial remuneration physically taking care of first it was widows and then Paul moves on to talk about the elders the second thing to notice is when he says those who labor

in preaching and teaching he's talking about those who are employed those who take the time they would otherwise use to work another job and devote their time and attention to rightly dividing the word of truth which is labor what Paul is

jason be a full time pastor the bible says you're supposed to to care for those who give their full time attention to the word to the labor of preaching and teaching and by the way let me just add even those of us who receive a portion of what you give even we we are accountable for what

we get we publish what we get and we tithe off what we get somebody told me before I even started pastoring I showed up at a conference a regional conference and I was just weeks away from coming to redeemer it was another lay person and you know what he told me he said make sure that you are tithing he said

Jason I've never known of a church to have major struggles financially where the pastor was tithing and that never left me we tithe out of the tithes because it's right because it's part of how we honor the word along with you

so one way we turn to the Lord with all our heart is by obliterating sin another way we turn to the Lord is by honoring the word and let me give you a third way it looks like this number three it looks like the keeping of his ways

all the obliterating of sin that's the negative side you want to know what the positive side is it's keeping his ways look again at verse three and what our king commits to verse three

to walk after the Lord and to keep his commandments to perform the words of the covenant perform as an act them out live them out because it's one thing to sit under good

teaching right it's one thing to sit under good teaching it's one thing to read the word yourself but if you're not committed to performing the word in your life you're not there yet if you're not committed to keeping it by actually living out what it

says even the hard parts well here's what a new testament apostle said James chapter 1 verse 22 he says be doers be performers of the word and not hearers only deceiving yourselves NIV says

James 1:22

do not deceive yourself and Josiah did this our narrator reminds us at the end of the passage in verse 24 that he did all that he did for this reason let me give you that part of the verse again 2nd Kings 23 24 that he might establish

the words of this law establish the word let those three words sink in establish the word Josiah wanted that he wanted the words of God's law established in the public spaces

across the land in the temple in his own palace and he also wanted them establish the words of the law in individual homes too throughout Jerusalem and I don't know about you but that makes me think about my home and your home are you working to establish

God's word in your home so in my home this is meant talking about God's word whenever we can it's meant evaluating the events of the day or the events of the world that are going on through the lens of God's word it's meant praying the word with our

children which we've tried to do on a regular basis it's meant reading children's books conveying God's word when they were younger They don't go for that now they're too big we gotta wait for grandkids now it's coming I mean I don't know that all right

I have to be careful what I say now I have a married daughter it means establishing the word and everything from I mean the decor that we put up on our walls but more than that because putting words on the wall is one thing but it means establishing

the word in the way that I treat Terry in the way that we conduct our married lives because the Bible tells me that that's the greatest manifestation and demonstration of the power of the gospel in fact the marriage is a metaphor for what Christ is to us as our bridegroom we have

wanted to establish our home in God's word so that our children who are now mostly raised will one day do the same thing in their own homes and they'll know how to do it because they grew up seeing it and I want that not just for their homes but for all of

your homes and for all the homes of your children and of course the biggest way that Josiah really reestablished the words of the law was in this great celebration at the end of the chapter in his re-institution of the Passover we're told that he celebrated the Passover in Jerusalem

as 2nd Chronicles 35 says he did it like none of the kings of Israel didn't mean that nobody else celebrated a Passover it meant nobody ever did it quite like this king quite by the book it was corporately significant it was centralized at the temple it was

funded by the royal treasury and it was one that everybody took part in together commemorating what the Passover meant which was to celebrate God's work of deliverance for his people in an act of worship you know we still do that today as we

gather corporately like we are right now and the gospel of deliverance that we now commemorate of course is a work centered on the work of deliverance accomplished for us by his son by Jesus yes even this in coming together to worship

today as his church it is yet another important way that we keep the words of his law we keep his ways so if you want to have a heart like this king if you want to be

all heart like Josiah then be on that lifelong campaign to obliterate sin then be about honoring his word and be about keeping all of his ways let's pray

heavenly father we need help in this endeavor lord even those of us that have walked with you for a long time we recognize how difficult it is to remain rooted and grounded and established in our

homes in our marriages in our lives and so we pray for your holy spirit to help us you promised him to us and he has come and he is a comforter and he's also a guide and he is the helper and we need his help to do this so lord i pray for our marriages here in this

church i pray for my own marriage lord that you would give us the humility that you would give us hearts that submit to one another that you would give us

you would help us those of us that have children to be the parents to be the grandparents the aunts the uncles that we are to people who are looking up to us with big eyes and Jesus we know that you will we pray also lord that you would help us

to establish the word in our homes and to keep it to keep all of its ways lord there will be situations yet this week that are coming yet this month that are down the road going to meet us where we will be tested we will be challenged and the enemy will want to get a foothold and so

lord we want to root that out we want to obliterate it we know the story of this ancient kingdom is one where the idolatry is never really completely gone because there

our hearts are continually able to pump out new idols and so we ask for your help here too we love you Jesus we celebrate your resurrection and your power and we pray this together in your name in Jesus

name amen