Building for God—Renewal 2 Chronicles 34–35

For the past few weeks, as our church has launched into a Building Project, we have been looking at some of the great builders of the Bible.

1. We have looked at Nehemiah and seen how he was a man who captured God’s vision for rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem.

2. We have looked at David and seen his total commitment to providing for the building of the Temple, even though he was not going to be the man to build it.

3. We’ve looked at Solomon, the man who did build the Temple, and seen how he maintained his focus on God. He didn’t become preoccupied with the building itself.

4. Last week, we looked at the people priority in 1 Peter 2 and we remembered that the real building project that is going on today is what Jesus Christ is doing in the lives of people as he builds his church.

This week, in our final study, I want to focus in on the life of an OT king—a man who was described in the Bible in the most glowing terms. In fact, the book of Kings says this about him: “Neither before nor after (him) was there a king like him who turned to the Lord as he did—with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his strength”

And yet this king’s life was all too short. He died at the age of 39, at the very height of his successful career. He was tragically cut down in the prime of life, and after he died, all of the good he did seemed to come undone.

Who was he? His name was Josiah, and we read about him in 2 Chronicles 34–35. I would invite you to turn there now in your Bible. You might also want to refer to the study notes in your bulletin.

Josiah was raised to prominence by God at a very young age. As we read in verse 1, he was just eight years old when he became king. He didn’t have a particularly illustrious family tree. His grandfather was Manasseh, a man who is generally regarded to be the worst king that Judah ever had.

Unfortunately, he also had the longest reign, sitting on the throne for 55 years. (And you thought Queen Elizabeth has been around for a long time!) And for most of those 55 years, except for a brief period at the very end, Manasseh led the people astray spiritually. He encouraged them to worship other gods. He built many idols and temples and high places throughout the land. He even encouraged the practice of human sacrifice. And not surprisingly, during Manasseh’s reign, the Temple of God in Jerusalem fell into disrepair.

When Manasseh finally hurried up and died, his son Amon took the throne. And, as the children reminded us in their musical a couple of weeks ago, Amon was a bad, bad king. His administration was such a disaster that his own officials assassinated him just two years into his reign.

That’s why Josiah came to the throne at such a young age. And he certainly wasn’t ready, at the age of eight, to be a king—much less to turn his nation completely around spiritually.

Yet God, in his sovereignty, brought him to the throne. And there are many times in our lives when God puts us into situations that we feel we’re not ready for. We say “God, why are you doing this? I can’t take this! Not now! I can’t handle this!”

And that is precisely why God puts you into that situation. To show you that you can’t handle it by yourself. To show you that the only way to get through is to rely on God and his resources. At times like that, the Lord says to us, as he said to Paul: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”

One day author Norman Vincent Peale ran into a friend of his named George. George was downcast and really in the dumps, so Peale asked him how he was doing. Well, George took the next 15 minutes to tell him just how bad he felt. Finally he exclaimed, “Problems—I’ve got nothing but problems. I’m just stressed out, fatigued, and exhausted. I’m fed up with my problems. In fact, if you could help me get rid of my problems, I’ll give $5,000 to your favorite charity.”

Well, Norman Vincent Peale was never one to turn a deaf ear to such an offer, so he thought about it for a while and then he came up with an answer that was pretty good. He said “George, yesterday I went to a place where thousands of people reside. And as far as I could see, not one of them has any problems. Would you like to go there?”

George replied “Great! When can we leave? That sounds like my kind of place.”

Peale said “Okay, if that’s the case, George, meet me tomorrow morning at the Woodlawn Cemetery, because the only people I know who don’t have any problems are dead.”

Norman Vincent Peale used to say “If you have no problems at all—I warn you—you’re in grave jeopardy. You’re on your way out and you don’t know it. If you don’t believe you have any problems, I suggest that you immediately race from wherever you are, jump in your car and drive home as fast as you can, run into your house, and go straight to your bedroom and slam the door. Then get on your knees and pray “What’s the matter, Lord? Don’t you trust me anymore? Give me some problems.”

God raised Josiah to prominence in order to use him to do a great thing in Judah. Now look at verse 3: “In the eighth year of his reign, while he was still young, he began to seek the God of his father David.” Josiah is now sixteen years old.

You say, “Why did it take him eight years before he began to seek God?” I’ll tell you why. Because as a minor, he was under the thumb of the palace officials. It wasn’t until he was sixteen—beginning to be a man in his own right, making his own decisions, taking the reins in his own hands—that he was able to chart his own course, make his own decisions, determine his own destiny.

And when he came of age, Josiah sought God. There was another boy king who lived a couple of hundred years before Josiah. He came to the throne of Israel at the age of seven. His name was Joash. And the Bible tells us that he served God. But he served God only as long as Jehoiada was the high priest. When Jehoiada died, Joash stopped serving God. Why?

Because he had never internalized his faith. He was riding on Jehoiada’s coat-tails, spiritually-speaking. He hadn’t made his own commitment to God. He was living on second-hand faith.

Young people, are you ready to seek God as Josiah did? You can’t get to heaven on second-hand faith, you know. Just because your parents follow the Lord doesn’t mean that you will. You’ve gotta make your own decision. Josiah made that decision. He began to seek God.

And one of the results of that decision was that he began to remove the false gods that were all over the country. He began to clear away all of the distractions and deceptions that would stand in the way of him and his people knowing and serving the living God. Look at verse 3 again…

In his twelfth year he began to purge Judah and Jerusalem of high places, Asherah poles, carved idols and cast images. Under his direction the altars of the Baals were torn down; he cut to pieces the incense altars that were above them, and smashed the Asherah poles, the idols and the images.

You say “Well, we don’t have idols today.” Oh no? We certainly do have idols. An idol is anything that takes the place of God at the center of your life. It is anything that you elevate and make the most important thing in your life—the thing that you think will give you happiness and contentment and fulfillment in life. It occupies that high place in your life—that place that is reserved for God alone.

Now for some people, it’s money. They think if they just had a little bit more, they’d be happy. For some people it’s time—they think if they just had more leisure time—more time to pursue their own interests, their own hobbies, whatever.

For some people, it may be a particular interest that they have placed at the center of their lives—it may be sports, it may be cars, it may be crafts, it may be cooking, it may be computers. It could be anything. But it’s an idol, because it is crowding God out of the high place in your life.

You need to remove the idols like Josiah did before you can put God at the center of your life. Does that mean that you can’t have any hobbies or past-times as a Christian? No. It means that those things have to be subordinate to your devotion to God. If those things start getting in the way of your relationship with God and your service for God; if they start crowding God out—then you’ve got an idol problem.

Now Josiah was seeking God. He was removing the idols. And he was interested in God’s house. He became aware that the Temple was in disrepair. So look at what he does in v. 8

In the eighteenth year of Josiah’s reign, to purify the land and the temple, he sent Shaphan son of Azaliah and Maaseiah the ruler of the city, with Joah son of Joahaz, the recorder, to repair the temple of the Lord his God.

If you are really serious about your relationship with God, it’s going to show in your attitude toward the church—and by the church, I mean the body of Christ—not just the brick and mortar structure, but the people who make up the church of Jesus Christ.

Because the church is the Temple of today. It’s where God is worshiped. It’s where God is served and honored. Remember Peter said that we are like living stones being built up into a spiritual house to the Lord.

So if you’re really serious about seeking God and knowing God and following God, you are going to be really committed to what God is doing in and through the local church. You’re going to be really willing to give your time and energy and material resources to it. Because you know that what Jesus Christ is doing is building something that is going to last for all eternity.

Josiah repaired the Temple of God so that the people could worship and grow. Just like Jesus, he was zealous for God’s house.

And in the process of repairing and renovating the Temple of God, his workmen rediscovered the Law of God. The written Word of God had been neglected and ignored under the reigns of Manasseh and Amon. It seemed as though it had just disappeared. There were no copies of it circulating. But look at what happens in v. 14…

While they were bringing out the money that had been taken into the temple of the Lord, Hilkiah the priest found the Book of the Law of the Lord that had been given through Moses. Hilkiah said to Shaphan the secretary, “I have found the Book of the Law in the temple of the Lord.”

Shaphan took it to the king, and he read it to Josiah. Now look at verse 19…

When the king heard the words of the Law, he tore his robes.

Josiah was so powerfully convicted by the Word of God that he tore his royal robes in anguish. You see, because the Word of God had been ignored for so long, the people were just living life according to their own set of rules. They were doing what was right in their own eyes.

And that is so true of what has happened to America today. People have abandoned and ignored the Word of God. We have set up our own standards for living—our own moral code.

And there will never be a revival; there will never be spiritual renewal in our land unless we get back to the Bible.

You hear a lot about a spiritual renaissance that is supposedly taking place today. People are showing more interest in spiritual things—in prayer, in meditation, in worship, and so forth. But this is not a biblical revival, because there has not been a turning back to the Word of God.

If anything, the Bible is held in less regard in America today than ever before. Even people who profess to be Christians claim not to believe certain parts of it. They don’t believe what the Bible says about God and man and sin and heaven and hell. They want to have a spirituality without the Bible. And you know what that means? That means that they will be wide open to any deception that Satan throws their way.

The renewal that God brought to Judah in Josiah’s day was a renewal that was based upon the Word of God. Josiah took steps to obey the Word. He took it seriously. He built his life upon it.

And one of the things he did was he renewed Israel’s covenant with God. Look at verse 29…

Then the king called together all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem. He went up to the temple of the Lord with the men of Judah, the people of Jerusalem, the priests and the Levites—all the people from the least to the greatest. He read in their hearing all the words of the Book of the Covenant, which had been found in the temple of the Lord. The king stood by his pillar and renewed the covenant in the presence of the Lord—to follow the Lord and keep his commands, regulations and decrees with all his heart and all his soul, and to obey the words of the covenant written in this book.

I’ll tell you, our nation needs you and me to do that today. America needs Christians who name the name of Jesus Christ to stand up and affirm that we will follow the Lord and keep his commands with all our heart and soul, no matter what it costs.

Josiah led the people by example. Something else that Josiah did—he restored the Passover of God. Look at 2CH 35:1…

Josiah celebrated the Passover to the Lord in Jerusalem, and the Passover lamb was slaughtered on the fourteenth day of the first month.

Now look at what it says down in verse 18…

The Passover had not been observed like this in Israel since the days of the prophet Samuel; and none of the kings of Israel had ever celebrated such a Passover as did Josiah, with the priests, the Levites and all Judah and Israel who were there with the people of Jerusalem.

The Passover was the celebration of how God had delivered the Israelites from bondage in Egypt. It was a Feast of Redemption. And it pointed to the Lamb of God—the Messiah—who would one day come and redeem us from our bondage to sin by the shedding of his own blood.

But the Passover had not been celebrated in Judah for many years. The people had forgotten what God had done for them as their Redeemer. Until Josiah came and put the Passover back in its central place in Israel’s life.

If we are ever going to see spiritual renewal in our churches and in our land, we are going to similarly have to put the emphasis back where it belongs—on Jesus Christ, our Passover Lamb, our Redeemer, who died for our sins to bring us to God.

I fear that the church has somehow forgotten that. Because the church so often appears to think that reform and renewal are going to come to America through legislation, or better government, or political action. But that is not going to happen.

Spiritual renewal revolves around the issue of sin. Man is a sinner. And the only answer to the sin problem is Jesus Christ, who came to take away our sin. And only the proclamation of the gospel is ultimately going to bring results.

When Josiah restored the Passover, he was saying to the people of Israel, in effect “God is our only hope. He is our Redeemer. He is our Deliverer. He was in the past and He is today.” And that’s what we need to proclaim to America. We need to share Christ with our neighbors; we need to help them understand that the only answer to the problems we are facing is to have faith in his shed blood.

I wish the story of Josiah had ended there. He was a wonderful king who had a wonderful career. And it would have been nice if he could have lived to a ripe old age. But he didn’t. Josiah was replaced by God.

He got himself involved in a war that he should have stayed out of. He didn’t listen to advice, and he ended up being tragically killed in battle at the age of 39.

You say “Why?” Why does God allow things like that to happen? Why would God take such a valuable godly man home in the prime of life? Believe me, I’ve asked that question myself. Because my life has been touched by those events, too.

My father Tom McKnight died suddenly at the age of 56—a man who was a widely respected Christian businessman. My brother Phil—also a key leader in the evangelical community in Canada, a man really being used of God—died at the age of 44, leaving behind a wife and five children. Why does stuff like this happen?

Well, I’ll tell you—we don’t always know the answer. But I’ll guarantee you one thing—God knows what he’s doing, and he always does the right thing. If this has ever happened to you, please don’t get bitter. Don’t get angry at God. That’s the biggest mistake you could ever make.

When God took Josiah home, it was to get him out of the way so that he could discipline his people. And not long after Josiah died, the children of Israel went into exile. And that was a time when God really dealt with them, and cleansed them.

But if weren’t for the fact that Josiah had rediscovered the Word of God, and renewed the Covenant with God, and restored the Passover of God, the Jews probably wouldn’t have survived that time of exile in Babylon. You see, God had a purpose for Josiah’s life. He began the work of renewal that the people so desperately needed. And God had a purpose for Josiah’s death coming when it did.

And God has a purpose for your life. Your life can really count in God’s program if you’ll just do what Josiah did. Seek God. Remove the idols. Repair the Temple—be committed to the local church. Rediscover the Word of God and make it a priority in your life. Renew your covenant with God. And put the Cross of Jesus Christ at the center of your life.

Not long before he was killed by an assassin’s bullet, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. said “The worst of all tragedies is not to die young, but to live until you are old and yet not ever truly to have lived.” Like Josiah, Martin Luther King was 39 years old when he died.