Josiah & the Keys to Revival

Well, good morning again.

We're in 2 Kings, Chapter 21.

And I'm sort of excited about preaching this message, because Josiah is just a fantastic story.

We have our firstborn son named Josiah, second name David, good kings of the Bible.

But it is just a wonderful story, and I hope that you'll be encouraged by it.

But Lord God, I do want to ask for your help again here, and confess to you that I'm inadequate for the task of preaching your word, but may what you want to achieve happen today.

I know your word says that it will come to the earth like rain, and will achieve what you've called it to do.

And I pray that we might be challenged and encouraged this morning.

Lead us towards Jesus, we pray.

Lord, Holy Spirit.

Amen.

A little over a week ago, I walked into our lounge room as I woke up, and I walked in, I found Lockie, who's our 20-year-old son, who normally plays the drums.

And I said, Hey, did you hear what happened with the Australian-Afghanistan World Cup match?

And he looked at me and said, Do you know the score?

Have you seen anything?

I said, No.

And he goes, And I was like, Oh, what happened to it?

He just said, You have to watch this.

You have to watch this.

You haven't heard anything.

No.

Sit down, Dad.

Sit down.

Watch this.

And for the next eight minutes, I watched a highlight package that was of the greatest one-day innings that I've ever seen in my 49 years of avidly watching.

I probably started when I was five.

So, I thought 49 years, and Sachin Tendulkar agreed.

It was the greatest one-day innings that has ever been battered.

Glenn Maxwell scored 201 not out in 128 balls after his team.

The Aussies were 7 for 91 in the 19th over.

I certainly apologise if you know nothing about cricket, because that doesn't mean anything.

But suffice to say, it was a comeback story for the ages.

It really was.

The Australian cricket team's innings was totally decimated.

Their hopes of victory were basically dead.

The situation was hopeless.

And yet, one man, Glenn Maxwell, batting through horrendous cramping in India, horrendous fatigue.

He played the innings of his life really of all time and won the game.

I think it is a tremendous example of transformation, what the Bible calls in Greek metamorphou, a metamorphosis, a radical change, like a weight loss.

We just were talking about body transformation and health.

It's amazing when you see someone who's lost a lot of weight, the before and after, isn't it?

Or a house renovation, when you see a dilapidated house and then a lot of love put into that house, and it's just the before and after transformation.

People's lives, by God's grace, can be regenerated through faith in Him and utterly changed, amen?

Transformed completely.

In fact, when someone puts their faith in Jesus, they go from dead to alive.

I mean, talk about transformation.

But it's not just becoming a Christian, is it?

We sometimes, on the journey of faith, become lukewarm.

The faith in us doesn't quite die, but it becomes fairly unhealthy.

And there are times in our lives where the Spirit of God grabs hold of us and revives us again.

Have you ever experienced that?

Many people nodding.

In fact, history is replete with stories of churches going through seasons of revival.

It starts in individuals and it spreads to whole churches, and then really can spread to communities, cities, large groups, even countries have been changed by the Holy Spirit moving in what has been called revival.

We're in the sixth week, our second last, Lord willing, in this series we've called Kings and Characters of the Old Testament.

Today we're going to investigate King Josiah of Judah, a man who was a man after God's own heart, like David, and a man that God used to usher in revival, a revival of spirituality in Israel.

The story of Josiah is, if you haven't heard it, it's just extraordinary.

And I hope we can study it this morning and see if there are some transferable truths from the story that we could apply to our own lives and to the life we experience together as a church.

The story is set around 640 BC.

Now, Ben spoke about David last week.

This is 500 years after David.

So, there's a little bit of time span that has occurred between David, an early king of Israel, and Josiah.

So, 640 BC, the ten tribes in the north, known as Israel, they've already been exiled.

They've been defeated by the Assyrians.

And in the south is what's known as Judah, the nation of Judah.

They have two tribes, Judah and Benjamin.

And they're still going, but not going strong.

They're struggling along, poorly led by evil kings.

And these are the ones who were looking after the temple in Jerusalem.

So, I want to read about the state of play in 2 Kings 21.

If you have a Bible, it's a great thing to have it open, so you can sort of see where we are in the chapters.

Manasseh was 12 years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem 55 years.

He did evil in the eyes of the Lord following the detestable practices of the nations the Lord had driven out before the Israelites.

He rebuilt the high places.

His father, Hezekiah, had destroyed.

He also erected altars to Baal and made an Asherah pole, as Ahab, who was a very bad king, king of Israel, had done.

He bowed down to all the starry hosts and worshiped them.

The people of Israel were told explicitly not to do this.

He built altars in the temple of the Lord.

Did you hear that?

The temple, built for the glory of Yahweh, had all these altars to other gods in it.

In the two courts of the temple of the Lord, he built altars to all the starry hosts.

He sacrificed his own son in the fire.

This is the king of Israel.

He practiced divination, sought omens, and consulted mediums and spiritists.

He did much evil in the eyes of the Lord, arousing his anger.

He took the carved asherah pole he had made and put it in the temple.

Amon, verse 19, Amon was 22 years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem two years.

He also did evil in the eyes of the Lord, as his father Manasseh had done.

He followed completely the ways of his father worshiping the idols his father had worshiped and bowing down to them.

He, Amon, was buried in his tomb in the Garden of Uzzah, and Josiah, his son, succeeded him as king.

Then I want to pick up in 2 Kings 22, verse 1.

Josiah was eight years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem 31 years.

His mother's name was Jededar, daughter of Adair.

She was from Boscath.

He, Josiah, did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, and followed completely the ways of his father David, not turning aside to the right or to the left.

Josiah didn't have a very godly father, did he?

Nor did he have a godly grandfather, but Josiah reigned as a godly king like his spiritual dad, David, and he was powerfully used by the Lord to usher in revival.

So how do we prepare for revival when we consider the story of Josiah?

Number one, I think we respond to conscience.

You want to see a revival of spirituality in your life, in your community, in your church?

Someone has to respond to conscience, and I think it's moving to the right.

And I don't mean a political right, I just mean what is good and right and correct.

When the Spirit of God is working on a person, would you agree?

He graciously tends to partner with that person's conscience.

He pricks their conscience and says, you know what, that's not good.

Yes?

Like there's just a sense, a growing unease in a person's life.

The way I'm living is not right.

And it's the Spirit of God working through the conscience.

And I think this diagram we looked at last week is helpful.

We were talking about cognitive dissonance that occurs when my actions don't match my belief.

I get this awkward feeling.

And there's conscience that starts speaking in there, saying, you know what, maybe you're a bit hypocritical.

Not just that I feel like I'm doing the wrong thing.

It's not life-giving.

So, we can do a few things.

We can change our actions to match our belief.

We can change our belief to match our actions.

Or as we said last week, you can take a deal.

Take a deal with yourself.

It's called accepting self-deception.

You just have to attention manage.

Just don't look when you're not doing the right thing.

And if you feel convicted, use procrastination to feel all the good stuff about doing the right thing without doing it.

So this is a helpful idea when we think about what the beginning of revival is all about, because we're meant to sit in that dissonance and feel what's not right, and then start doing something about it.

After 18 years as king, Josiah is 26 years old.

And he has this nagging feeling.

It's fascinating.

For those of you who your main calling is in the workplace, which is the secular workplace.

It's most of us here.

Josiah has this sense that the workers doing the restorative work on the temple, they're not getting paid their wages.

So as a godly manager, as a godly king, he says, hey, pay those carpenters what they're due.

Pay them, and in fact, I suggest you give them down payments for the goods and the materials they need to buy so they can get on and do the work.

I just don't feel right about this, and that's what we read in 2 Kings, Chapter 22.

King Josiah sent Secretary Shafan, son of Azaliah, the son of Meshulam to the temple of the Lord.

He said, go up to Hill Kya, the high priest, and have him get ready.

The money that has been brought into the temple of the Lord, which the doorkeepers have collected from the people.

Have them entrust it to the men appointed to supervise the work on the temple.

Have these men pay the workers who repair the temple of the Lord, the carpenters, the builders, the masons.

Also have them purchase timber and dressed stone to repair the temple.

But they need not account for the money entrusted to them, because they are honest in their dealings.

I have no doubt that some of us are here today.

You're sitting here today because the Spirit of God is pricking your conscience about something in your life.

There's too many of us in this room to not have some of us in the process of conviction.

Maybe you're giving in to a known sin right now, and you're like, oh, it doesn't feel good.

You have the choice to take the deal, to just look away or to feel what God is giving you, a sense of wrong and lean towards the right.

Maybe you're starting to slip in areas of ethics at work, going with the flow, taking the deal.

Typically, I think this is how Revival begins.

You don't take the deal, amen?

You don't take the deal.

Change equals dissatisfaction greater than apathy.

Have you heard us say that before?

Change equals dissatisfaction greater than apathy.

And Josiah has lost his appetite for apathy.

So no, no more.

I'm not doing this anymore.

We are going to change.

So he gives the order to Shafan.

Now, just a side note, we started this series by saying, there are no small parts, only small actors.

Shafan, who is he?

What a small part.

A very significant part, wouldn't you agree?

Shafan's role in being the messenger to take this decision to change how things are done.

Josiah responds to conscience and moves towards what is right and so, first up, let me ask you, what is the Lord prompting you to lean towards?

When you lean towards righteousness, how do we prepare for revival?

We rediscover God's Word.

Hilkiah, the high priest said to Shafan, the secretary, and this is in the work of the temple restoration, I have found the book of the law in the temple of the Lord.

Can you imagine?

This is the book of Deuteronomy.

It's been lost for about 50 years.

Can you imagine?

You come into church and there are none of these anywhere.

There's no Bibles.

And after 50 years, we're doing some work on the dilapidated old red building, and somewhere in the foundations, as it's getting knocked down, we thought, what's this?

It's a Bible.

Oh, what does it say?

And now, it's interesting that what they found was the book of the law, Deuteronomy.

Now, who remembers Deuteronomy?

It says, Then Shafan the secretary informed the king, Hilkiah, the priest has given me a book.

Shafan read from it in the presence of the king, and we know it was the book of the law.

Deuteronomy is the book most quoted by Jesus.

It is a very significant book.

It talks about the way God will bless you if you behave a certain way, and He's going to curse you if you behave a certain way.

These are good things for kings to know, amen?

That behaviour is not going to be helpful, and so they find it and they read it, and they are floored.

Josiah is just like, wow.

He is cut to the heart like the hearers of Peter's first Pentecost sermon.

Can you relate to what's happening here?

Have you ever opened up the word of God and had it just like shine light into your soul, and you were just arrested by it?

I grew up in a Christian family, like I guess some of you here today, and I gave my life to Jesus when I was about eight years old.

But it wasn't until I got to really the age of, look, 20.

I had just turned 20, and a new youth pastor turned up at church, and he behaved in a way that was new to me.

He was only there for about three years.

And he used to ask questions like, who are you, God?

And I used to think, why are you asking that question?

Read the Bible, mate.

We all know who he is.

But he would hold his hair and he'd say, who are you, God?

He was a bit mysterious, this guy.

And then he'd say, do you know that you're saved?

Do you know what it feels like to have the Spirit of God fill you and take a hold of your heart, to grab hold of your life?

Do you know what it's like to want to give everything to follow the most important one that could ever take hold of your life?

The living God.

And I was captivated and I was drawn to respond to God in a sense of a desperate plea on a young adult's retreat.

You know, these things, they often are places where you have significant encounters with God when you get away with a group of young people maybe.

And I did and I had, I was crying out to God saying, fill me like Billy Graham, you know, fill me with your spirit, take a hold of my life.

And I came home and I couldn't put the word of God down.

I read the New Testament in that week.

And, you know, I'd read the Bible before, but I'd never read much past the resurrection.

And I was reading it and I've said this so many times to you guys over the years.

I thought, why didn't anyone tell me this was so good?

It was like I found the book of the law.

I found the Bible.

And what was weird was I found some stuff that I didn't know was in there like Josiah did.

And I found Galatians 5.19 and where it says, The acts of the flesh are obvious, sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery, idolatry and witchcraft, hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, orgies and the like.

I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.

And I wasn't involved in all those sins, but I was given to a lot of drunkenness at the time.

And I remember thinking, I didn't know the Bible said anything about drunkenness.

In fact, I didn't know the Bible said that there were so many no-go zones in behavior.

And it changed me.

Have you discovered that conviction of sin arises when you are exposed to the truth of God?

In His Word.

It's just something that tends to need to happen.

If you look historically at all the revivals in the last two thousand years, good luck looking for one that doesn't involve the people coming under the Word of God in a fresh way.

And the Word brings conviction.

Because it's challenging, it's confronting us with our sin and the purity of a holy God.

When the Bible is alive and true to what it is, it's overwhelming, it is cathartic, it's jarring, it's comforting.

But what it is not, when it is what it's meant to be, the living words of the living, eternal God, it is not a little shot of coffee once every three or four days that comes in my Instagram feed.

Now, if that's happening and that's great for you, more power to you.

But it can't be just that.

If it is, you've given in to something less than what your relationship with the Word of God should be.

Amen.

It's easy.

No matter who you are, how long you've been on the journey of following Jesus, it's easy for the word to get lost, to just become so much less than it has to be.

I think every Christian at some point needs to be overwhelmed by the Word of God.

And if it's boring and met to you, in Jesus' name, may God be gracious to you and give you a fresh revelation, because we need it.

We need it if we're going to be revived.

How do we prepare for revival?

We restore the fear of the Lord.

Second Kings 22, 11, when the king heard the words of the Book of the Law, he tore his robes.

He gave them these orders to Hillchiah the priest, to Ahikam the son of Shafan, Akhbor son of Micaiah, Shafan the secretary, and Isaiah the king's attendant.

Go and inquire of the Lord for me and for the people and for all Judea about what is written in this book that has been found.

Great is the Lord's anger that burns against us, because those who have gone before us have not obeyed the words of this book.

They have not acted in accordance with all that is written there concerning us.

And this is part of what they discovered.

Deuteronomy 4, be careful not to forget the covenant of the Lord your God that he made with you.

Do not make for yourselves an idol in the form of anything the Lord your God has forbidden, for the Lord your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God.

And Josiah is hearing this looking out the window at some idols in the temple.

He's like, that can't be good.

They're not meant to be there.

And so he is struck by what we can only call the fear of the Lord, which is reverential awe.

Again, I would say to you that every revival in history has been marked by the declaration, holy, holy, holy.

It's not average, average, average.

When it comes to knowing God, He invites us so graciously into a deep and personal knowledge, doesn't He?

Where we explore His grace and His love and His mercy, His immensity.

Where we learn how He helps us and wants to help us, how He cares for us, how He provides for us, how He never fails us, how He's working things out for our good, that He's full of wisdom, that He's rich in counsel, that He never changes.

He's always everywhere yet loves us individually.

He's full of justice and He's kind.

He's gracious, infinitely beautiful and powerful and glorious.

And then with all this knowledge, you and I must know that also He is holy, holy, holy.

If we don't get that, we will slip into the type of living we see that these kings do because we need the fear of the Lord.

Without the fear of the Lord, we lose wisdom.

Amen.

That's what the Proverbs say.

Knowledge and wisdom come from the fear of the Lord, which is an adequate understanding of who He is in His glory.

Reverential awe, because the whole earth is full of His glory.

Holy means set apart, sacred.

It means, God, your weight and your worth cannot be measured.

You are not only holy, you are three times holy.

Holy, holy, holy.

Have you noticed that you can spend a lot of your life playing in the shallow end of a swimming pool when it comes to God's Word?

You can spend years and years, like I did, up until I was 20.

You sort of know a bit, but it's sort of splashing around, and then someone comes and says, have you ever tried swimming in the ocean?

Because you go in the ocean, in the metaphor that's like the Word of God is, and God himself is the water.

I'm a surfer, I have sat beneath waves that are four times as high as a person standing up.

And when you do that, it's very different, your sense of awe for the ocean, amen?

For water, God is a consuming fire.

He is worthy of our absolute awe.

Maybe we need to leave the shallow end of the swimming pool and go into the ocean, dive in, ask for help, say, God, I need you to show me who you are, because I don't have much reverential awe in me.

And God will answer that prayer, and he will restore the fear of the Lord to you.

And as we receive that fear, we are drawn to him in love, amen?

Like it's not that we stay away, we're drawn to him as we understand who he is.

How do we prepare for revival?

Return to the Lord in confession and repentance.

Verse 18 says, Tell the king of Judah who sent you to inquire of the Lord, this is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says concerning the words you heard.

Because your heart was responsive and you humbled yourself before the Lord, when you heard what I have spoken against this place and its people, that they would become a curse and be laid waste.

And because you tore your robes and wept in my presence, I also have heard you, declares the Lord.

Therefore, I will gather you to your ancestors and you will be buried in peace.

Your eyes will not see all the disaster I am going to bring on this place.

Josiah hears the truth of God's word and he responds with appropriate awe and wonder and then repents of his sin.

His heart was responsive.

He humbled himself, tore his robes, which is an ancient way of repenting.

And what does repentance mean?

It means change your allegiance.

Often we hear it's a 180.

It is a 180, but in more nuanced understanding of the word repentance, it's you were giving allegiance to this way of life, and you go, no, I'm not doing, you are no longer my Lord.

That world view, that direction, that focus of my heart and my head, my life, now I'm going to give my allegiance to a different king.

That's repentance.

It is to forsake one way for another.

1 John 1, 8, many of us know this beautiful passage, if we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just, and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.

To be revived by the grace of God, to find new life again, to find the freedom that is ours by belonging to Jesus, it requires repentance, a forsaking of evil, a forsaking of the wrong, and by the grace of God, a turning to the right.

Who is a person?

Jesus.

If you have never experienced a genuine repentance and confession of sin before the Lord, can I encourage you to consider what Ben was talking about last week, that secret place?

That secret place.

Why do you reckon Jesus went to the secret place in the dark so often?

At night.

He wasn't repenting of sin, interestingly, because he was sinless.

But still he was falling before the Lord.

I can't imagine that he didn't get on his knees sometimes.

And I want to put it to you that we need to embrace physically because we are physical beings.

If you are a person who's like, I've just never really felt much about God and my faith.

Never really felt that bad.

Can I encourage you get on your knees?

And the posture will help your whole body change and understand all.

And then consider, who am I in the presence of a holy God?

And you will feel what Isaiah feels.

I'm an unholy woman or man.

I need your grace, Lord God.

Can I suggest putting your hands out and going full prostrate on the ground?

It's powerful.

That youth pastor I was talking about before, he used to joke about wanting to lament and wanting to repent and wanting to seek the Lord with tears.

So he used to say, get on your knees and pull the hairs out, out of your nose.

Never did that, but it was a joke.

It was a joke, but what his point, it always stuck with me that if you've never called out in that place, that secret place and you've actually done some lamenting, some grieving about the state of the world, about the state of maybe your family, about the state of your heart, you're missing out on something.

There's a secret place to be found.

And again, I would just suggest there's a reason why he went at night.

I think it's quite hard to find a secret place that you could wail to the Lord privately on your knees.

But if you find it, you'll find God there.

You will.

Of course, these things don't earn God's favour.

We're not twisting God's arm.

It's completely a joke about pulling hairs out as though tears somehow make you more holy.

But it is a helpful way to fully engage in expressing our confession and repentance to God.

How do we prepare for revival?

The final point, I think, is renew spiritual commitment to God's rule over my life.

1 Kings 23, verse 1.

Then the king called together all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem.

He went up to the temple of the Lord with the people of Judah, the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the priests and the prophets, and 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 law.

The king stood by the pillar and renewed the covenant in the presence of the Lord, to follow the Lord and keep his command, statutes and decrees with all his heart and all his soul, thus confirming the words of the covenant written in the book.

Remember, Deuteronomy 6.5, that's exactly what it says, give me everything, heart, soul, mind and strength.

Then all the people pledged themselves to the covenant.

Would you agree in your life, conviction is one thing, but you got to do something about it.

You have to act, we have to act, we have to embrace and implement for change to make a difference.

We often feel convicted in life, I think, about starting a new habit, but how do you start a new habit?

You stop an old one, typically.

You replace habits.

You have to actually find out what needs to stop to get out of this stronghold, this pattern of living that's been unhelpful, that's taken me down the path that I don't want to be on anymore.

Stopping habits so that I can start the right ones.

Old strongholds, life rhythms often need to be dismantled.

In fact, as we're just about to read, sometimes they need to be smashed to pieces, to dust.

The king ordered Hilkiah, the high priest, the priest next in rank, and the doorkeepers to remove from the temple all of the Lord, all the articles made for Baal and Asherah, and all the starry hosts.

He burned them outside Jerusalem in the fields of the Kidron Valley and took the ashes to Bethel.

He did away with the idolatrous priests appointed by the kings of Judah to burn incense on the high places of the towns of Judah and on those around Jerusalem, those who burned incense to Baal.

So this is just so across the culturally ingrained in society.

Incense to the sun and the moon, to the constellations, and to the starry hosts.

He took the Asherah pole from the temple of the Lord to the Kidron Valley outside Jerusalem and burned it there.

He ground it to powder and scattered the dust over the graves of the common people.

He also tore down the quarters of the male shrine prostitutes that were in the temple of the Lord.

The quarters where women did weaving for Asherah.

Did you hear that one?

It was so ingrained that prostitution, the prostitution cult, and the abuse, typically of young boys, there are quarters in the temple for male shrine prostitutes.

Just enshrining abuse and ungodliness.

Talk about falling from grace.

This is how far the consciences of the leaders had been seared.

Throughout history, it's really interesting to read about revivals, and you find resolutions often made.

Which, to our modern ears, sounds like legalism on steroids.

Just what?

So this is one of the products of revival in 1742.

Jonathan Edwards was used by the Lord to preach one sermon.

Some of us know sinners in the hands of an angry god, and people were holding onto pillars because they thought that hell was coming to get them.

And so anyway, there was a revival of religion, and they came up with these promises, these resolutions.

They said things like this.

I think I've got it there.

In all our conversation concerns and dealings with our neighbour, we will have strict regard to rules of honesty, justice and uprightness.

Furthermore, we promise as a community that we will not allow ourselves in backbiting.

They're trying to put in place ways of righteousness.

We promise we will be very careful to avoid anything to our neighbour out of doing anything out of a spirit of revenge.

If any of us find that we have an old secret grudge against any of our neighbours, we will not gratify it but cross it and endeavour to our utmost to root it out, crying to God for his help.

That goes on.

I think you get the picture.

What does a renewed, revived commitment to Christ's Lordship over every aspect of your life look like in practical terms?

One word that will cover us all, it will be intentional.

Amen?

There will be a sense of intentionality about it.

It's like, Lord, thank you for that pricking of my conscience.

Thank you for that word from a kind friend, from a brother sharpening flint, sister sharpening each other.

How can I stop going that direct?

Well, I've got to stop some stuff.

I've got to get some accountability.

There's some intentionality about effort.

And I'm not earning God's grace with this effort.

But grace is not opposed to effort.

It's opposed to earning.

There are things we need to stop.

And there are things we need to start.

One of the amazing things that Josiah does is he discovers that the people of Israel, since the time of the judges, so for 500 years, his opinion is we have never taken Passover seriously.

It's not that they haven't celebrated Passover.

The great festival, the greatest one, where God redeemed them from Pharaoh, the Passover lamb.

There's nothing bigger than this.

Through the Exodus, through the sea, the Red Sea, Josiah comes to this and he's like, you know what, we're going to celebrate Passover with oomph.

We are really going to make this a celebration and it's going to be part of our holy rhythms.

And I would put it to you, there's a cost to living out your faith like you mean it.

What is that cost?

What's it going to cost you to decide, I'm not living that way, I'm going to live this way?

Because this is the story of Josiah's Revival in verse 21 of chapter 23.

The king gave this order to all the people, celebrate the Passover to the Lord your God as it is written in this book of the Covenant.

Neither in the days of the judges who led Israel nor in the days of the kings of Israel and the kings of Judah had any such Passover been observed.

This is over 500 years, it hasn't been done properly.

It's been done, but not with oomph.

But in the 18th year of King Josiah, this Passover was celebrated to the Lord in Jerusalem.

Verse 24, Furthermore Josiah got rid of the mediums and spiritists, the household gods, the idols and all the other detestable things seen in Judah and Jerusalem.

This he did to fulfil the requirements of the law written in the book that Hilkiah, the priest, had discovered in the temple of the Lord.

Neither before nor after Josiah was there a king like him who turned to the Lord as he did, with all of his heart, and with all of his soul, and with all of his strength, in accordance with all the law of Moses.

Go Josiah.

What a response.

We tend to find things in life, don't we, that like there's, you fill in whatever's in the box.

You decide you're going to buy the black box.

And once you've made that decision, have you ever had a situation where that box, whatever's in it for you, dictates much of the rest of your life?

And you go, I can't do the XYZ that I feel like I'm meant to do, as God leads me, as the Word of God convicts me.

Because you say, but the black box needs to be paid for.

The black box demands a sacrifice.

And I'd love to do this, Lord, but the black box has my allegiance.

What's in your black box?

Why would, why would Manasseh?

Burn his child!

Because of an earlier dumb decision.

That's why.

Just a bad decision to buy the black box of idolatrous worship and think, my hope is what I put in that box.

The gods of the nations will give me what I need to be someone in the community I'm living in.

And every generation has had different black boxes.

No one gave their heart and soul for their brand new car 2,000 years ago.

But they did it for something else.

And in Australia, we have certain things that we will think is above everything.

And once you make that decision, it's just weird that I can never make another decision that will be completely so whatever.

I get emotional because I think this is the core of Christianity.

It gets back to self-deception because I'm not above it.

You sort of get caught up in what society tells you you need, and then that becomes the shape of your life's decisions.

It's a good challenge, isn't it, Josiah?

You won't get much light on your current world view that the culture around you is giving us without this, because this doesn't change.

So if we go back to that and then we hold that up as a filter and say, no, that's not changing.

And then I would say to you, and even the Book of Deuteronomy, as old as it is, if I can't live out Deuteronomy by God's grace, there's a problem.

If I look back and go, oh, that's just outdated.

That means nothing in today's society.

That's a problem.

The story of Josiah finishes with his son who takes up all the idolatrous worship again.

Got to work out a way to do our best to pass on our faith, don't we?

It seems like it's not an easy thing to do, especially when Samuel failed.

It's not an easy job, but we got to try.

So ushering in revival, maybe, maybe we could consider respond to conscience, rediscover God's Word, restore the fear of the Lord, return in repentance, renew spiritual commitment and holy habits.

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