2002-01-01
Good Morning Faithful Readers,
For the last two days, my messages have been about Judah’s King Josiah. He will figure prominently in this one too, but we need to look at the consequences that come from not trusting God. If we look at the events of the OT as a foreshadowing of those past, present, and future of the NT, we can learn a lot about what God wants of us. Too often the human ego is allowed to dominate in one’s thinking to the extent that people are blinded to the limit of where God’s sovereignty and human responsibility to respond to it exist. One of the big issues is mankind’s refusal to accept and even celebrate God’s supremacy-His omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence. We are so blessed that God is always righteous, and thus, His agenda for us is always in our best interests. If there has to be a supreme Being in charge of things, aren’t we blessed that Jehovah loves us so much? Instead, people led by their flesh arrogantly try to usurp God’s sovereignty and invariably this leads to disaster. Such was the case with ancient Israel when she rejected God, first as her political leader in favor of a human king, then as her spiritual leader by continuing the practice of idol worship. Included in this rejection of God was the political division of the land into two separate kingdoms, Israel in the north and Judah in the south. If I may be allowed an editorial comment, this disobedience toward God continues today with the spurious pacts to trade land for peace with the Arabs.
The bottom line in all of this is the question: To what extent are we willing to trust God? King Josiah demonstrated that he trusted God a great deal. That is why he destroyed pagan altars and reinstituted temple worship in Jerusalem and Judah. He did this amidst a period when the northern kingdom of Israel was going through a series of nineteen kings, all of whom were evil idol worshippers, who led the people into these practices which God finds so abhorrent. 2 K 23: 21-27 and 2 CH 35: 1-19 are passages, which I hope you will read, which describe how King Josiah of Judah led his people to celebrate the Passover and other changes which he made around 621 BC. You will remember that the High Priest Hilkiah had found the Book of the Law in the temple and how Josiah grieved when it was first read to him. That grief was Josiah’s acknowledgment of the seriousness of Jewish disobedience to God. He knew the people needed to join him in repenting of it. The 2 CH 35 passage gives a detailed account of the rituals of celebrating the Passover which King Josiah and the people carried out. 2 CH 35: 3, “He [King Josiah] also gave these instructions to the Levites, the teachers of Israel, who were dedicated to the Lord: ‘Put the sacred Covenant Box in the Temple that King Solomon, the son of David, built. You are no longer to carry it from place to place, but you are to serve the Lord your God and his people Israel.” That’s significant, because the Lord had originally ordered that worship required should bring the people of the land all to Jerusalem several times a year. In other words, King Josiah trusted God enough to obey His original commands, even through he might not have understood all of God’s reasons for doing this.
2 CH 35: 17-19 is a passage which helps us to understand just how long it had been that Judah had fallen into disobedience to God. “For seven days all the people of Israel who were present celebrated the Passover and the Festival of Unleavened Bread. Since the days of the prophet Samuel, the Passover had never been celebrated like this. None of the former kings had ever celebrated a Passover like this one celebrated by King Josiah, the priests, the Levites, and the people of Judah, Israel, and Jerusalem in the eighteenth year of Josiah’s reign.” This is a most interesting statement for two reasons. 1) The exact date of the events of the books of Samuel are impossible to pinpoint, but we do know that Samuel lived at the end of Israel’s commonwealth period when it was ruled by judges, that period being about 1210-1030 BC. He was the last judge and the first prophet, so he lived around 1000 BC. That tells us that this kind of Passover worship hadn’t happened for around 400 years. 2) Since we know that Israel was divided at the time of King Josiah’s rule of Judah, 2 CH 35: 19 tells us that even through the King of the northern kingdom of Israel was an evil idol worshipper, there were still some faithful people who came south to Jerusalem from that kingdom to worship with the others from Judah. What this says to me is that there will always be a “remnant” of faithful people who will go against prevailing evil to trust and obey God.
2 K 23: 26-27 follows the comment in (24) that King Josiah evicted the fortunetellers and mediums and got rid of the household gods and other pagan items of worship. “But the Lord’s fierce anger had been aroused against Judah by what King Manasseh had done, and even now it did not die down. The Lord said, ‘I will do to Judah what I have done to Israel: I will banish the people of Judah from my sight, and I will reject Jerusalem, the city I chose, and the Temple, the place I said was where I should be worshipped.’ “ On first inspection, this might seem like God was being unjust. However, to understand how righteous his wrath was here, one must look at the big picture-the disobedience that had gone on over a larger stretch of mankind’s history. Because of what had gone on right in God’s house, the Temple, and the other idolatrous actions that I described in yesterday’s message, we can better understand that even though King Josiah was obedient, it was still necessary for God to bring punishment upon Judah.
The prophet Jeremiah gave us God’s slant on this disobedience in JER 3: 6-10, “When Josiah was king, the Lord said to me [Jeremiah], ‘Have you seen what Israel, that unfaithful woman, has done? She has turned away from Me, and on every high hill and under every green tree she has acted like a prostitute. I thought that after she had done all this, she would surely return to Me. But she did not return, and her unfaithful sister Judah saw it all. Judah also saw that I divorced Israel and sent her away because she had turned from Me and had become a prostitute. But Judah, Israel’s unfaithful sister, was not afraid. She too became a prostitute and was not at all ashamed. She defiled the land, and she committed adultery by worshipping stones and trees. And after all this, Judah, Israel’s unfaithful sister, only pretended to return to Me; she was not sincere. I, the Lord, have spoken.’ “ That is why God allowed Israel’s enemies, the Assyrians, to capture this northern kingdom in 722 BC and hold her for the ensuring 160 years. It is also why Judah’s enemies, the Babylonians, were allowed to capture her beginning in 605 BC extending through the destruction of the Temple in 586 BC and hold her for the ensuing 70 years.
The real lessons applicable to us today are in reaching toward God’s perspective rather than looking at one single event to understand why and how He applies His sovereign right to punish His children. In addition to that, God is showing us that when we make a lifestyle out of refusing to trust and obey Him, there will be negative consequences. Is that a reason to be afraid of God? I don’t think so. It is a reason to have humility, reverence, willingness to trust and obey, and to know God personally through study of His word and an active prayer life.
PRAYER: O Lord, You are a wise, loving, and righteous Deity. The story of ancient Israel’s on-going disobedience and the valiant courage of faithful people like King Josiah are given to us, so that we might take the time to understand the limit of Your sovereignty and our responsibility to respond to it. Because You are so honorable, You cannot tolerate sin that doesn’t end. You are a responsible Parent Who must, at times, discipline Your children. Through Christ’s atonement, You have given us a way to avoid the consequences of sin. Our responsibility is to live “in Him” so that we will not make sin our lifestyle. While our limited human perspective won’t let us see every reason behind what You do, we can trust and rely on You to give us direction that is always in our best interests. We dedicate ourselves to making You the Lord of our lives. We accept Your invitation to a righteous lifestyle of service to You which is pleasing and acceptable. We take comfort in knowing You are always fair, loving, and patient with those of Your children who make the adjustments necessary in their lives to more closely conform to Christ’s paradigm. We praise, worship, adore, magnify, glorify, and honor You. In Christ’s name, amen.
Our Lord loves us more than we can comprehend. He does so every day of our lives, twenty-four hours a day. Take comfort in that and pleasure in spending time with the wonderful lessons He has to teach us both through prayer and in the Scriptures. The process can be a real blessing just as the end result is. Peter and I also send you our love.
Grace Be With You Always,
Lynn