Sometimes it take a new generation to clean house. Josiah became king of Judah at the age of eight. Even at a young age, he did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, staying true to God when so many before him had failed.
When he was 26 years of age, he told his men to take the money collected at the temple and use it to make repairs. All these years, they’d been collecting money and not taking care of the building. Obviously, that wasn’t all they’d neglected, because when they began their work, they found the Book of the Law.
As Ravi Zacharias says, “Something had to be wrong” for the Book of the Law to be lost in the one building it was meant to be in. The Law was the centerpiece of God’s message to his people. What had they been following all these years?
Josiah recognized the problem right away. You couldn’t blame him. He’d been only a child when they made him king. The book had not been read for decades. Yet, because his heart was right with God, he knew they would have to do something quick.
Great is the Lord’s anger that burns against us because our fathers have not obeyed the words of this book; they have not acted in accordance with all that is written there concerning us. (2 Kings 22:13)
Josiah acted and called the people to repentance. He immediately had them restore the practices required in the Law, and for the first time since the days of the judges, they celebrated the Passover.
The Bible says, “Neither before nor after Josiah 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, in accordance with all the Law of Moses.” (2 Kings 23:25)
Even in the midst of our Christian religion, we can can get lost, because we neglect the foundational element of our faith — God’s Word. We can also get lost when we become preoccupied with peripheral concerns and take our eyes off Jesus.
Jesus told Pilate, “In fact, for this reason I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.” (John 18:37)
Are you still on the side of truth, or have you gotten lost in the House of God? All religions, all faiths are susceptible to perversion, but woe to us, if we call ourselves followers of Christ, and we no longer listen to his truth.
I pray that God will raise up young men and women in this new generation to restore His House to the Truth before it’s in complete disrepair. All we have to do is confess and turn to God with all our hearts, soul and strength, and keep our eyes on Jesus.
Grace and Peace