Josiah’s Bold Reforms
Josiah
reforms the land. I give a tremendous
amount of credit to Josiah for what he does here in this chapter. Do you know
how many enemies Josiah must have made as he went about this business? How many people did he make upset, especially
those who believed that these foreign gods! They would be angry at him for tearing down
the idols and altars! I can only imagine
the potential backlash against Josiah.
Furthermore,
Josiah’s reforms have a direct impact upon the economy. How many times are we told about the cult
priests and prostitutes having their places of worship disrupted? Each of those places that Josiah overturned
was a profit machine, employing all kinds of people for very nefarious
jobs. But Josiah knows that this kind of
economy must be sacrificed for morality and spirituality if they are to truly
be God’s people.
In all of
this, Josiah does it. In fact, I give
Josiah even more credit because he knows that judgment has already been
pronounced by God against Judah. Josiah
knows that God is still angry and while the judgment may not come in Josiah’s
days, it will certainly still come. In
spite of knowing that this judgment is still coming, Josiah goes about the
reforms. He could have rested on his
heels and glorified that at least destruction wouldn’t come in his day. But Josiah doesn’t. He makes reforms while looking to the future.
Only after
“putting the house in order” can Josiah turn to asserting spiritual
growth. This is a huge lesson, one that
I often forget and I need to remember.
Josiah knows that he can’t assert growth in God until the false gods
have been put away. The false gods and
their ways must be destroyed so that the whole land can focus on God. This is the difference between Josiah and the
many kings before him of whom it was said “They did right in the eyes of the
Lord, but not like David.” Those other
kings made small steps of progress, but Josiah purified the whole land!
Learning Josiah’s Lesson
Spiritually,
this is no different than for us. How
many times do Christians stagnate in their spiritual growth because they still
have remnants of false gods and ungodly desires in their heart? Until we purify the whole land (or the whole
body – heart, mind, and soul) we cannot really hope to become the spiritual
person God wants us to be. Josiah was
remembered as one of the great ones because he was willing to purify it all.
Passover
So we hear
about Josiah reinstituting the Passover.
I am surprised when I read that the Passover wasn’t kept since the time
of the judges. That is several hundreds
of years of time – more than half a millennium, even! No wonder God was angry with them. The Passover is a celebration of remembrance
of how God has delivered them and it wasn’t even remembered for about a half of
a millennium!
This is
another lesson we can learn. I have
often been a person who proclaims that we should embrace the new things that
God is doing in our midst, but neither should we throw out the traditions that
matter to God. The Passover (or in
Christianity we might say The Lord’s Supper) is vitally important to
remembering God’s salvation of His lost.
We should not neglect the remembrance of those times. Like Josiah, we need to call forth the
remembrance of His grace.
However, I
do think that we need to be careful and not let the traditional approach
stagnate us. Our relationship with God
must remain relevant to the culture around us while retaining the wonderful
connection to God. When our practices
mean nothing to anyone but ourselves, evangelism stops. I am sure that Josiah reinstituted the
Passover, but I am likewise sure that the Passover celebration happened
slightly differently than when Moses was alive.
No doubt there were culture improvements to cooking methods, serving methods,
even changes to speech that were present with Josiah’s Passover that would have
been different than with Moses. The
focus should not be on maintaining everything (including methodology) exactly
the same. The focus should be on
retaining God’s Spirit and being able to relate it to people’s lives.
The Last of the Chapter
The
chapter ends with Josiah’s death in battle and the evil reign of his child and
grandchild. It also mentions that the
Pharaoh of Egypt was getting a little too big for his britches. After all Josiah did, it seems so pointless
when we know the people fell into evil as soon as he went away. But I doubt it was pointless to Josiah,
Huldah, and the priests of the temple.
And for Josiah’s contemporaries who found God in those reforms, it was
not pointless. Even though the future
may not look bright, we should still be a people of reform. We may not know what the future holds or how
faithful the future will be, but we can change lives in the present. That’s another lesson that we can learn from
Josiah’s life.
<><
No comments:
Post a Comment