Day 217 – 2 Kings 22-23, 2 Chronicles 34-35

Talking Points

• One of my favorite accounts — the namesake for our ministry. In a day of rampant wickedness, when God had been so long neglected, hardly even remembered, one man turns to Him. In doing so, God is honored and His name is exalted. One man, wholly given to God, impacts much!
• All the LORD desires is a humble, repentant heart, and He provides abundant pardon.
• Cleaning out the temple, the priest finds “a book,” the Word of God (2 Kings 22:10). God’s voice is heard again, and through that, everything changes. As the Book of the Law is read, King Josiah is convicted and responds in personal repentance and sorrow for sin. The Book exacts its impact, and Josiah grows in his disdain for sin and burns for God’s honor. He institutes many God-honoring reforms, and true worship results. Where evil once reigned, obedience becomes the hallmark. May we never grow cold to the power of that “Book.”
• Josiah is remembered as a God-honoring good king, in the tradition of King David. Maybe the most telling statement about him is that “he did not turn aside to the right or to the left” (22:2). With a heart given to God, Josiah was not just a hearer of the Word, but a doer (James 1:22). Nothing has changed. God’s Word calls for radical obedience. But, look at the joy and blessing that it brings!

Thoughts

Our hearts seem to be naturally hard. As we travel through life, they tend to grow even harder. Pride and jealousy brew and make them calloused and tough. Our love for rebellion and sin require them to be harder still. And, just like that, we find ourselves unbending, unloving, selfish — hard-hearted. What an ugly thing.

Josiah seeks God’s direction in how they should respond to His Word. Through a prophet, God tells Josiah, “because your heart was tender and you humbled yourself before the LORD when you heard,” he will not see God’s judgment. The word for tender means “soft.” Josiah’s heart was soft enough to truly hear God’s Word. Get that, Josiah, living in a world that was hard as a rock, had a soft heart. And, because it was, he had the greatest blessing — God’s voice, shut out for generations, was heard again.

God, help me to not grow jaded, cynical, and mean. Help my heart to be tender enough to hear Your voice, to long for it. And, please forgive me when it has been otherwise.