2 Chronicles 34 February 10, 2008
I Saw the Lord – Part 2
“What Will it Take?”
Rev. Meagan M. Boozer
Every Saturday night I have a little tinge of worry that I won’t wake up on Sunday morning on time. I’m concerned the alarm won’t go off and John and I will wake up at 10:00 or something (not that we ever sleep until 10 a.m. unless we’re sick or something!) I know some people have this same trouble on the night before they’re leaving on a trip – especially if they have a plane to catch!
I distinctly remember one time when I was in junior high school, getting up, getting dressed, and yet at the same time feeling like something wasn’t quite right. I remember looking over at the clock again and again trying to comprehend what it was showing, and then all of sudden, after I was completely dressed and ready for school, I woke up enough to realize that the clock was showing 1:30 a.m. I was half awake and half asleep! That was freaky!
What a wake-up call it must have been for Tom Brady and the Patriots last Sunday night. Compared to the Giants, the Patriots seemed to be playing half awake and half asleep. They were probably hoping to wake up on Monday morning and find it was all a pre-Super Bowl nightmare with the game still ahead of them!
It’s important to be fully awake at the right time. That’s what our Scripture from 2 Chronicles 34 is all about. Let’s listen to the story of King Josiah.
Josiah was eight years old when he began to reign; he reigned thirty-one years in Jerusalem. He did what was right in the sight of the LORD, and walked in the ways of his ancestor David . . . In the eighth year of his reign, while he was still a boy, he began to seek the God of his ancestor David, and in the twelfth year he began to purge Judah and Jerusalem of the high places, the sacred poles, and the carved and the cast images . . . and demolished all the incense altars throughout all the land of Israel. Then he returned to Jerusalem. So, this young king, at the age of 20, which would have been the age that he assumed full authority as king according to some previous verses in 1 & 2 Chronicles (1 Chr. 23:24, 27; 27:23; 2 Chr. 31:17), this young king who wanted to follow the God of his ancestor David, was committed to cleaning out all of the pagan worship sites and committed to getting rid of the people who were responsible for the sacrifices to these false gods in both the southern kingdom of Judah and the northern kingdom of Israel. That’s pretty brave at any age, and especially at the tender age of 20, if you ask me. Then, when he was 26 years old, after he had purged the land and the house, he started the repairs and restoration of the house of the Lord. Let’s continue reading in v. 12:
The people did the work faithfully. While they were bringing out the money that had been brought into the house of the LORD, the priest Hilkiah found the book of the law of the LORD given through Moses. Shaphan [the secretary of Hilkiah] brought the book to the king, and further reported to the king, “All that was committed to your servants they are doing. They have emptied out the money that was found in the house of the LORD and have delivered it into the hand of the overseers and the workers.” The secretary Shaphan informed the king, “The priest Hilkiah has given me a book.” Shaphan then read it aloud to the king. When the king heard the words of the law he tore his clothes. Then the king said, “Go, inquire of the LORD for me and for those who are left in Israel and in Judah, concerning the words of the book that has been found; for the wrath of the LORD that is poured out on us is great, because our ancestors did not keep the word of the LORD, to act in accordance with all that is written in this book.”
So those Josiah appointed, visited the prophetess Huldah, who, in a nutshell, prophesied that disaster was going to come upon the land because the people had forsaken their Lord and made offerings to other gods. Then, continuing in v. 29:
Then the king sent word and gathered together all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem. The king went up to the house of the LORD, with all the people of Judah, the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the priests and the Levites, all the people both great and small; he read in their hearing all the words of the book of the covenant that had been found in the house of the LORD. The king stood in his place and made a covenant before the LORD, to follow the LORD, keeping his commandments, his decrees, and his statutes, with all his heart and all his soul, to perform the words of the covenant that were written in this book. Then he made all who were present in Jerusalem and in Benjamin pledge themselves to it. And the inhabitants of Jerusalem acted according to the covenant of God, the God of their ancestors. Josiah took away all the abominations from all the territory that belonged to the people of Israel, and made all who were in Israel worship the LORD their God. All his days they did not turn away from following the LORD the God of their ancestors.
One of the lessons I really “got” in this chapter was this one: Leadership matters. As your pastor, studying this story again was a strong reminder of the responsibility I have to faithfully seek the Lord in my own life, and the responsibility I have to constantly be a foghorn, calling all of us to faithfulness to God’s word, for there are eternal consequences that I can’t pretend do not exist. All committed Christians who have been placed in a position of leadership must not take their positions of leadership lightly. We must lead responsibly, and whether you are leading in the business world, the world of education or healthcare, or in ministries of the church, we must lead with the eternal destination of the people we influence foremost in our hearts. Yes, I know there is a bottom line, and I know there are deadlines that can mean millions of dollars if not met. But in the midst of the work, are you leading with integrity and Christian character so that others know that being a follower of Christ isn’t just a Sunday duty?
Brother Tomlin, a chaplain, left the ivy covered, brick building, of the city mission. He stood for a moment, putting his pocket Bible into the pouch inside his suit jacket. Looking around at the multi-colored leaves still clinging to the trees this crisp, autumn evening, he noticed the man again. Every night, the same man. He just sat on the bus stop bench and watched as the chaplain came out. Then, he would turn his back. “You know what?” he thought to himself, “I’ve had enough.” So, Brother Tomlin strode over to the man and tapped him on the shoulder. He turned, and the young chaplain got his first good look—long, stringy hair, scraggly beard, and an odor that just about knocked him down. “See here, Sir,” Brother Tomlin began.
“Yeah?” “Why do you hang around here all the time? Where do you belong?” He watched as the man looked down at his feet and then back into his eyes. “Ain’t breakin’ any laws, am I?”
“N-no.” He paused. You had to be so careful nowadays. He didn’t want to incite the man. “Well thin, there ya go.” He was chewing on a piece of straw from a broom. Brother Tomlin didn’t even want to think what could be growing in that piece of filth. The old man chewed on his straw and continued looking Brother Tomlin over from head to toe. “Lemme ask you something,” he said. Brother Tomlin raised an eyebrow. “What do y’all do in there?” He pointed toward the building. The chaplain drew himself up—proud. “We feed and clothe the poor and homeless.” “Feed and clothe.” The old man grimaced and shook his head. “Sir. We try to help those less fortunate than ourselves and point them to our Lord. Why are you so disgruntled?”
“Your Lord? And who might that be?” “Why, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” “Jesus Christ, huh,” the man said. He squinted his eyes and wrinkled his nose. “Ya point people to Him, do ya?” “Yes, we do.” Brother Tomlin’s gaze sized the man up. “You are in need of a savior, too, you know.” “Oh, I am, am I?”
“Yes.” He got more animated, as he extracted his crisp, little pocket-sized Word of God from his jacket. “Just let me show you.”
“Ain’t no need fer you to pull that little book out and show me nuthin,”
“But, Sir, wouldn’t you like to be sure you’re going to Heaven?”
“Sonny, let me tell you somethin’.” “All right,” Brother Tomlin said, in resignation. Another soul, lost forever. “You guys have money donated and you give one meal a week to people if they come in and listen to ya preach. Right?” “Yessir. Every week.”
“Ever so often, ya give somebody an old pair of jeans or somethin’” He gave the chaplain a sideward glance. “Y-yessir.” “Ya think that points ‘em to Jesus, do ya?” “We show them their sin and their need of a savior.”
“Well, Boy,” the old man pulled a large, well-worn Bible from beneath his jacket. As he opened it, Brother Tomlin saw that nearly every passage was underlined, and the margins were full of notes. “My Bible says in James, chapter 1 and verse 27, ‘Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.’ Do you visit the fatherless and widowed?” “Well, no. We ask that they come here.” “What if they can’t get here?” “Well…I don’t know. God will lead someone to them,” “What about you. Maybe God wants you to go to them?” “No, God wants me here.”
The old man looked at the young preacher a moment and then flipped through the pages again. “It says in my Bible, in Luke, chapter 14, and verse 23, ‘And the lord said unto the servant, Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled.’ Whaddya got to say about that?” The chaplain hung his head and said nothing.
“You may not recognize me, but I came down here and begged ya ta talk to my son. I know, it was my place, and I tried. But he wouldn’t listen to me. Too much bad blood over the years. I begged ya to try to reach him for Christ, but ya didn’t want to go to his neighborhood. Well, Jesus would have gone. My Lord Jesus would have gone.”
“I’m so sorry,” Brother Tomlin said. He rummaged in his shirt pocket and pulled out a pen and paper, holding them out to the old man. “Please give me his address. I’ll go now.” The wizened old gentleman scratched his chin, then gave him a shrewd look taking the items. “Okay,” he said. He scribbled down an address and handed him back the paper. Brother Tomlin looked at the note and lowered himself to the bench. “God! he cried out. “Forgive my sin of pride, that I thought myself to be too good to visit this man.” He sat on the bench, weeping, as the old man walked away.
A wake-up call. That’s what that chaplain needed, but at the same time that he was waiting for that wake-up call, people were dying apart from Christ.
What will it take for the church to stop and visit the poor, the down-trodden, the lonely, the lost? What will it take for the church to start picking people up and bringing them with us to this house of God, instead of waiting until we’re standing in line at a funeral wondering what the minister’s going to say? What will it take for us to talk to the people in our lives about eternity and Jesus? What will it take to break our prideful habits that find us bowing down to the gods of fear and apathy and procrastination? What will it take for us to wake up?
For Josiah and the people he served, it took finding the book of the law – which, most likely, was the book of Deuteronomy. In chapters 4-13 of Deuteronomy, Josiah would have been convicted about the wicked things the nation had already done. Chapters 14-18 would disturb him because of what the people had not done, and the covenant spelled out in chapters 27-30 of Deuteronomy would warn him of what God would do if the nation didn’t repent. Josiah was only 26 years old and had only been seeking the Lord for 10 years, yet his response to the word of God was that of a mature believer.
Some of us have been coming to a church building on a Sunday morning for way longer than 10 years, and yet our faith remains the faith of a spiritual infant. What will it take for us all to grow up and truly follow the ways of the Lord? What sin is holding you back?
His ways are good. When God says “don’t sin,” what God is saying is “don’t suffer.” God’s love for us is based on what he knows about us and about the world in which we live. We cannot know what tomorrow will bring, but God knows, and his instructions through the voice of the Holy Spirit within us and the teaching of the Holy Spirit to us as we read the Bible, will keep us on solid footing no matter what tomorrow brings. Remember those words from Psalm 139 (and I’m going to read from The Message):
God, investigate my life; get all the facts firsthand. I’m an open book to you; even from a distance, you know what I’m thinking. You know when I leave and when I get back; I’m never out of your sight. You know everything I’m going to say before I start the first sentence. I look behind me and you’re there, then up ahead and you’re there, too—your reassuring presence, coming and going. This is too much, too wonderful—I can’t take it all in! Is there anyplace I can go to avoid your Spirit, to be out of your sight? If I climb to the sky, you’re there! If I go underground, you’re there! If I flew on morning’s wings to the far western horizon, You’d find me in a minute—you’re already there waiting! God’s instructions for us are good for he knows more about us and the world than we could ever know. He wants to lead us in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.
After King Josiah heard the wake-up call for his people, as their leader, he called them to renew their covenant (agreement) with the Lord. Covenants in Bible times were usually confirmed by an identifying sign or mark. A rainbow identified God’s covenant with Noah (Gen. 9:12-13). Circumcision marked God’s covenant with Abraham (Gen. 17:9-13). In the Jewish betrothal ceremony in Bible times, the bridegroom gave his bride a gold ring that would remain in her possession throughout the betrothal. The ring was a sign of their holy covenant until the bridegroom would return to take the bride to their new home.
In 2 Corinthians 1:21, 22 the apostle Paul says this: But it is God who establishes us with you in Christ and has anointed us, by putting his seal on us and giving us his Spirit in our hearts as a first installment. In Ephesians 1:13,14 we read: In him you also, when you had heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and had believed in him, were marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit; this is the pledge of our inheritance toward redemption as God’s own people, to the praise of his glory.
Just as the ring marked the Jewish betrothal covenant, the Holy Spirit signifies the divine covenant between Jesus, the bridegroom, and the Church, the bride. By the Holy Spirit, we are marked as belonging to God. When Jesus was with his disciples in the Upper Room on the night on which he was betrayed, he spoke to his disciples about the Holy Spirit. Around that first communion table, he promised to send the Holy Spirit to them after he was gone. The fruit of the Spirit is: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. If we are not displaying that kind of fruit in our lives in a way that leads people to Jesus, then we know one of two things:
Either we have not really received Jesus as Savior of the world and Lord of our lives, or
We are living in defiance of the teaching of the Spirit within us.
Does anyone hear a foghorn? Might this be a wake-up call for us?
If there’s someone here who hasn’t received Jesus Christ into your heart as your savior and Lord, today is the day to receive that gift. No more hedging. No more fighting the call. Today is the day of salvation. Let us bow our heads. If you are willing to receive Christ and begin the most exciting relationship you will ever experience, I invite you to pray the prayer I am going to pray silently in your heart:
Dear Father in Heaven, I come to you in the name of Jesus. I acknowledge to You that I am a sinner, and I am sorry for my sins and the life that I have lived; I need your forgiveness.
I believe that your only Son Jesus Christ shed His precious blood on the cross at Calvary and died for my sins, and I am now willing to turn from my sin.
Right now I confess Jesus as the Lord of my life. With my heart, heavenly Father, I believe that you raised Jesus from the dead. This very momen,t I accept Jesus Christ as my personal Savior and according to His Word, right now I thank you that I am saved for all eternity from the darkness of despair. I welcome the fullness of the Holy Spirit to live within me forever. Transform my life so that I may bring glory and honor, not to myself, but to you alone. In Jesus' precious name I pray, Amen.
That was for any here who were ready to begin their life as a committed follower of Jesus Christ. God bless you – and I challenge you to share your new relationship with God with someone else here in this room before you leave today so that we may encourage you in prayer and in any other way God leads.
But what about those living in defiance of God’s Spirit within us? We’re either going to follow the teaching of the Spirit, or we’re not, forgoing the peace that faithfulness brings. We’re either going to continue to live in ruts that keep getting deeper with walls that increasingly shut out our view of the needs of the people around us, or we’re going to repent by turning around, getting out of these ruts we’re in, and trusting God to use us in new and amazing ways for his eternal work.
This meal should always be a renewal of the covenant God has made with us to be his faithful people. As we share in the bread of life and the fruit of the vine, may we renew our commitment to bear much fruit, fruit that will last. Amen.
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