Living Out the Word

Welcome to our women's Bible study on 1st and 2nd Kings, which is entitled Learning from Leaders. And today's our final lap, this Bible study, week 9. We're going to cover 2nd Kings 22-25, primarily learning from the life of Josiah. So the first thing that we want to do is look at our chart of kings for this week. So it'll be our last one. And as we put that up, we see that, of course, Israel was taken into captivity by Assyria already. And so in the left-hand column with the kings of Judah, we have Josiah and then four of his descendants. You can see I put one in red. That means that he is a grandson. The other three are actually sons of Josiah. And they reigned in this order until Judah was taken into captivity by Babylon. So let's get started on chapter 22, verse 1.

verse 2 says,

Now between verse 2 and 3, there's quite a bit of information about Josiah's life that is not given us in 2nd Kings. But we do find it in 2nd Chronicles. I'm not going to send you there. I'm just going to tell it to you that they both agree that Josiah began to reign when he was eight years old. But 2nd Chronicles tells us that when he was 16 years old, he began to seek the God of David. We don't know how. We don't know what that looked like. We don't even know why. But he began to have a spiritual renewal himself at age 16. At age 20, it tells us in 2nd Chronicles that he began to purge Judah and Jerusalem from all the junk that came in from Manasseh and from Ammon, his dad and his grandfather. You know, all of those, all the idolatry that came in. Now remember that Hezekiah, that great king we had last week, he is the great grandfather of Josiah. And we're going to see a lot of similarities between them. So now by the time we get back to verse 3 in our current text, from 3 through 7, now we find him making repairs to the house of the Lord because he had already done the purging. And so now he's making repairs. And when we get down to verse 8, we find that this restoration project yielded something very interesting. Look at verse 8. Hilkiah, the high priest, said to Saphon the secretary, I have found the book of the law in the house of the Lord. And they read it and they took it to the king and they read it to him. And then in verse 11, it says, when the king heard the words of the book of the law, he tore his clothes and then he sent his officials in verse 13, go inquire of the Lord for me and for the people and for all Judah concerning the words of this book that's been found. For great is the wrath of the Lord that is kindled against us because our fathers have not obeyed the words of this book to do according to all that is written concerning us. Now, it's fascinating to us how they determined to inquire of the Lord because verse 14 says they went to Huldah the prophetess, who was married to Shalom, who was the keeper of the wardrobe. And this seems a little odd to us that we have a high priest who seems to us like should be the highest guy in connection with God, right? We have this high priest that goes to a woman who's probably a seamstress herself to inquire of the Lord. Again, we don't know why and we don't know how she gained this reputation, but clearly she had a reputation of speaking for the Lord. And so they went to her. And so we see in verse 16 that she said to them to say to Josiah,

Verse 18,

And they brought back word to the king. So we find out that number one, she confirmed to Josiah that what he read was actually the truth. Number two, she confirmed the reason for God's wrath on the people because they had rejected God. Number three, she confirmed that Josiah's humility, his tearing his clothes, being humbling himself before the Lord had been seen by God. And because he repented on behalf of himself, on behalf of the people, that he would not be in the path of God's wrath. And we are reminded once again in this passage, God gives grace to the humble. How many times in how many of our Bible studies have we stumbled upon the concept mercy in judgment and we see it here again. And humility is always the key to unlock God's mercy during times of judgment. But we want to go back to Hulda because we want to ask, what do we make of her? She popped up out of nowhere, kind of in the same way that Deborah, wife of Lapidoth, popped up out of nowhere. Both of them are defined by their husbands, which is to be expected, especially in Bible times. But she must have cultivated a quiet reputation for serving the Lord in her own world. That Hilkiah would go and seek her out. And I see in this picture of this woman, because we're learning from leaders, right? So I see in her a great example of a heart to serve. And a heart to serve quietly cultivates the gifts that God has given us. And when it is time that God wants to use us, we are ready, like Hulda, to step up to the plate and to serve God in the way that he desires to use us. And when he is done with that, we are willing to step back into obscurity and just resume the life that God has given us. And that might happen repetitively over the course of our lifetime. But I think that she's a great example. It doesn't matter who you are, what you do. If God wants to use you for his purpose, he will make that happen. But the question is, are we willing when that moment arrives? So now we're going to move into chapter 23, where we realize how motivated Hulda's words from the Lord had made Josiah. And so we're going to begin to see how he is living out the word. I've made a simple chart for this week, which is called Living Out the Word of God. And the order in Josiah's life went like this. I'm going to give you the first three of the four points of what it looked like. Number one, hearing the word. Number two, committing to follow the word. It's kind of like if you're going to go on a diet. Once you look at the diet, then you say, I'm going to do this. So hearing the word, committing to follow the word, then acting upon the word. So watch for those three elements as we begin to read. Chapter 23, verse 1.

So then we see after that in verses 4 to 20, he began to act upon the word. And I'm just going to summarize what Josiah did to act upon the word of the Lord. It goes like this. He broke down the high places, which his grandfather had done. And then Manasseh and Ammon came in and put them all up again. So he had to clean up the place. He burned the Asherah at the brook Kidron. He deposed priests from foreign gods. He put away the necromancers and mediums. He broke down the houses of the male cult prostitutes. He smashed the demon altars that Ahaz and Manasseh had put up in the courts of the Lord. And he burned all the vessels made for the demon gods Baal and Asherah and the host of heaven. And then we find this really interesting section in the midst of Josiah's action, because he did something here that had been prophesied way back during the first week of this Bible study. When we started 1 and 2 Kings, part 2, the first week, it was a little bit rough reading about Jeroboam and Rehoboam, but you might remember that Jeroboam set up these two altars, Bethel and Dan. And then there was this man from Judah that came and prophesied. I'm going to put it on the screen to remind you where we started with this. It's 1 Kings 13 verses 1 to 2.

Alright, that was the prophecy we read in 1 Kings 13 at the beginning of this lesson. And now here comes the conclusion to that. We're back in our text, verse 15.

Hundreds of years later, the exact man that God had told that prophet to predict, Josiah by name, did exactly what he said. He not only cut down the idols and the altars, grinding them to powder, but then he took the bones of the, you know, priests who were involved in the paganism and he did the same with them. This is extreme purging. You might also remember in that first lesson that there was that really tricky business about that same man of God that came and prophesied that. And then an older prophet came to him. You know, God had told him, go back, just speak your mind and get out of there. But then this older prophet said, hey, come to my house. He goes, no, I can't because God said I can't. And the older prophet said, no, you should. God says you're supposed to. So he did do that. Remember that weird lesson? And anyway, so they did share a meal together. And then the older prophet said, yeah, you weren't supposed to do this. And so God is going to judge you. And then he was killed by a lion. And then the older prophet said, I want him buried in my tomb. And so they eventually laid together in the same tomb, even though they faced judgment, like they were men who spoke the word of God. Look how it relates to this lesson. So look at verse 17. Then he said, what is that monument that I see? And the men of the city told him, oh, it's the tomb of the man of God who came from Judah. The one that we just read that predicted these things that you've done against the altar of Bethel. And he said, let him be, let no man move his bones. So they let his bones alone with the bones of the prophet who came out of Samaria. So we have a conclusion to that as well. Middle of verse 20, it says, then he returned to Jerusalem. And so we said in our chart that living out the word went from, I'll put the chart back up again. It went from hearing the word to committing to follow the word and then to acting upon the word, which he just did. And then here, the final thing we see Josiah do is celebrating the Lord as the word instructed him. And so look at verse 21,

It must have been a great revival. This whole season must have felt like an extreme time of revival. And, you know, one time someone asked the evangelist, Billy Sunday, do revivals really last? And he said, well, no, they don't last, but neither do baths, but both are good to have from time to time. And that is true that, you know, nothing is going to last forever, but if you can do it, do it. And Josiah did it. He celebrated the Passover in such an extravagant way. This is no one had done that, you know, before, since the days of Samuel. And so that's also an inspiration for us. If you can do it, if you can extravagantly celebrate the Lord, do it. Even if it's unsustainable, if you got the time, do it. So verse 25,

Now we're not quite done with Josiah. Do you remember last week, we had sort of Hezekiah part one and Hezekiah part two. And the same thing is true with Josiah. We have Josiah part one and Josiah part two. And I titled Josiah part one, Living Out the Word. That's the title for this lesson. But as we get to this next section, I want to give this section a different title. And I'm going to call it Minding Our Own Business. And maybe you'll see why. Verse 29.

And that one sentence makes it seem like Josiah just came out with coffee and brownies to meet Pharaoh Necho, and he just murdered him in cold blood. Well, that's not exactly how it happened. If we go to 2 Chronicles, we find out a little bit more about the story. We find out what really happened. And what really happened was that Josiah got caught up in something that was none of his business. You know, in the 90s, I was able to go to a great women's conference up in Seattle that featured Elizabeth Elliott. And I was a much younger woman, probably in my late 30s or 40s, and dealing with different things in my life. And one of the things that I wrote in my notebook from that conference that she had said, and I don't recall the context, but the phrase that I wrote down is, very little is any of my business. And that really resonated with me at the time. And it taught me that I don't have to champion everything that comes across my path. I don't have to correct everything that comes across my path. I don't have to get in the middle of every injustice that I see. I can choose to back off. I can choose to let things go. And that is a truth that can save me from a lot of grief in my life. That is a truth that could have saved Josiah his entire life. And since we're learning from leaders in this Bible study, let's take a deeper dive into what really happened. I'm going to put these passages on the screen for you. So we'll start with 2 Chronicles 35, look at verse 20.

So his servants took him out of the chariot. and carried him in a second chariot and brought him to Jerusalem. And he died and was buried in the tombs of his fathers. And Judah and Jerusalem mourned for Josiah." And we want to mourn for him too. We're really disappointed. He's only 39 years old when this happens. He was such a great king of renewal and revival. And we just feel like, wow, this is such a waste. We feel the sense of disappointment. But all that's left for us is to learn here from Josiah's actions. Where did he go wrong? Well, he got wrapped up in something that was none of his business. And he paid the price. Remember the words of Elizabeth Elliot, very little is any of my business. And, you know, we could, if we just read the king's narrative, we could have thought he was a victim of war. But look, you can't be a victim when you stick your nose in somebody else's business. And you can't be a victim when you've been warned to back off. So it was a pretty sad ending. Middle of verse 30 says, and the people of the land took Jehoahaz, the son of Josiah, and anointed him and made him king in place of his father. Obviously, Josiah didn't plan to die. He didn't make a path for succession to his son. And so what was left, the people had to make a plan. So they picked Jehoahaz. And he's also called, by the way, Shalom in some other writings in the Bible. He did evil and he reigned for three months. You may have noticed when you were doing your study guide, this pattern at the end where we have these last four kings reigning three months, 11 years, three months, 11 years. There's probably some amazing reason behind it that I do not know, but I thought that was interesting. Verse 34, and Pharaoh Nico made Eliakim, the son of Josiah, king in place of Josiah, his father, and changed his name to Jehoiakim. But he took Jehoahaz away. He came to Egypt and died there. Verse 36 says that Jehoiakim was 25 years old when he began to reign and he reigned 11 years in Jerusalem. He did evil as well. In fact, if you remember that story in Jeremiah, where Jeremiah had written all of his prophecy on a scroll and Barak, his scribe, had taken it into the king of Judah. This was Jehoiakim. This is him. And Barak read it to him and he'd read a couple sentences and Jehoiakim would cut it off with his knife and throw it in the fire. What a contrast we see between Josiah, the father, who first read these words from the book of the law, tore his clothes and said, we got to do something about this. And then his son, Jehoiakim, who reads the words and just burns them as if they mean nothing. So that's, that was him. But here comes the beginning of the end. We're in chapter 24 now. We have two kings remaining and it says, in his days, Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, came up and Jehoiakim became his servant for three years. And then he turned and rebelled against him. And the Lord sent against him bans from all these surrounding nations that did him in, brought judgment. Verse six, so Jehoiakim slept with his fathers and Jehoiakim, okay, one is an M, one is an N, Jehoiakim, his son, reigned in his place. He also followed the evil of his father. He only reigned for three months and he was carried into Babylon. Just remember that for a moment. Okay. And here's how it went. Verse 10.

And since they had already carried away Jehoiakim to Babylon, in verse 17, it says the king of Babylon made Mattaniah, Jehoiakim's uncle, king in his place. And he changed his name to Zedekiah. And he reigned 11 years and he did evil. And we'll read about this in just a moment as we begin now chapter 25, the last chapter of this Bible study. It says,

Drop down to verse 6.

Which is dreadful, but he's not the last descendant of David standing. Jehoiakim is still in Babylon. And then I want to read this next section, read most of it, about Nebuchadnezzar's captain coming in and taking so many elements of the house of the Lord. You know, when we did First and Second Kings part one, Solomon and the house of the Lord, there was so much narrative and description of all of these same elements. So I want to read this so that we feel the weight now of all of that being taken away. So starting in verse 9,

Now the author told us that the priests and the officers were taken away and they were put to death and then all we have left is the one final sentence in verse 21.

And that's it. That is the final sentence. That is the final condition of Judah. Israel's gone. Now Judah is gone. It would be 70 years and then God would arrange for them to be able to return. And I'm just going to read a little portion of that. I'll put it on the screen from Jeremiah 29 so that we see God's heart and we don't interpret this and say, well, so God just crumpled them up and threw them away. No, no, no. Look at this.

God did not conceal his ultimate plan for his people. He told them exactly how it was going to go through his prophet Jeremiah. He would not abandon them. In fact, he would give them instructions for how they could actually flourish in captivity until 70 years was ended and then he would bring them back. But in the meantime, Second Kings ends with two footnotes about two leaders that we can also learn from. The first footnote is about a man named Gedaliah because we mentioned that Nebuchadnezzar didn't take every single person to Babylon. The land was productive and so he left the poorest people there, probably the ones that weren't going to rise against him, to tend the land to make the produce and send it to him, you know. Well, if there's people in the land, people need governing. So he chose someone from among their people to be governor and this man was Gedaliah, you know, who's a great guy. And he even gave them really good advice in the middle of verse 24. He told the people, don't be afraid because of the Chaldean officials. Live in the land, serve the king of Babylon, and it shall be well with you. Unfortunately, Gedaliah didn't get to have a long life to live out his own advice because he was killed by a man named Ishmael. And what's interesting about the killing of Gedaliah is that it was actually due to an error on his part that was very similar to the error on Josiah's part. And that's why I want to slow down a little bit to mention it because we're learning from leaders. Josiah would not listen to the advice of Necho, who warned him to mind his own business. And Gedaliah would not listen to the advice of Johanan, who warned him about Ishmael. Now in 2nd Kings, it merely tells us in verse 25, it says, Ishmael came with 10 men and struck down Gedaliah. It sounds like nothing could have been done about that. But we have more. In Jeremiah 40, which I'm not going to show you, I'm just going to tell it to you. Jeremiah 40 tells us the rest of the story by telling us that this guy named Johanan came to Gedaliah and he said to him, do you know that the king of the Amorites is going to send Ishmael to come and kill you? And that was the warning I was talking about. But Gedaliah chose not to believe him. And Johanan begged him. He says, no, for reals. He's coming. He is going to come and he's going to kill you. I know about this. In fact, I'll go. I'll kill him first for you. No one will know about it. And then if he's gone out of the picture, stability will reign in Judah. If you're gone, it's going to be an unstable place. And Gedaliah still wouldn't believe him. In fact, he said, no, invite him over for dinner. And he did. And he killed him. And that was the end of it. And instability reigned. The people were really upset. And a lot of them fled then to Egypt. So again, we have these two men in this story. I'll leave it to you what to make of both of those incidents with Josiah and Gedaliah. But I want to end with the second footnote, which is about Jehoiachin. And this is how the book is finally brought to a close. At first, it might seem very odd for the narrative to return to him. Because we think to ourselves, yeah, we know Zedekiah is the last king. But then for some reason, we're going back to Jehoiachin. Well, he is significant for a couple of reasons. And I'll tell you why. Reason number one, he was considered by the Jews to be the last living legitimate king from the line of David. Number two, he is the grandfather of Zerubbabel, which will be very important to us when we finally get to Ezra and Nehemiah. And he is the father of Shealtiel, where the lineages of Mary and Joseph converge. We'll talk about that in a minute. That's just a teaser. And fourthly, he, in this next text, this last text that we're going to read, he enjoys a partial freedom from the bondage of being in Babylon. He is freed to some degree, which gives us a symbol of hope for the entire nation. Let's see if we can feel that in these last verses. Verse 27,

And those are the final words of the book. Did you feel that ray of hope, as dim as it was? But the ray of hope that if God could miraculously free this one king in captivity in a foreign country, could he perhaps miraculously free his people from captivity? And why was this one man, this last living descendant of David significant? Well, now is where I get to show you a chart because of who his son is and who his grandson is. So I'm going to put this chart of the lineage of Mary and Joseph, who, of course, from which we get the Christ. It's a little bit difficult to read. It's kind of condensed on there. But I'll just guide you a little bit. The first red portion shows from Adam to David, which is both Mary and Joseph share a lineage from Adam to David because they are both descendants of David. And then from David, it breaks off with pink and blue. Yeah, pink for girl, blue for boy, OK? So then the blue line shows the lineage of Joseph through Solomon. Now, these are from the Gospels. This is from Matthew and from Luke. And the pink line shows the lineage of Mary through Nathan. So their two genealogies converge at one point. And look exactly where it is that they converge. With Jehoiachin's son, a descendant of David, Shealtiel, and then his son, Zerubbabel. For those two generations, Mary and Joseph's line comes together. It's because Jehoiachin was not killed in Babylon that he was actually able to carry forward the line of David. And of course, we know that the coming king, our Messiah, is from the line of David, a direct descendant of line of David, through both the legal line of Joseph and the bloodline of Mary through this last king, Jehoiachin. But here's what I find so interesting about right where we're at in our Old Testament study. If we were to take the entire unfolding story of redemption, the Bible, and if we were to divide it into scenes, acts, if you will, like it's a play, we're just bringing to a close the act of the kings. It started with Samuel, and it ends right here. There are no more kings. This is the end. But that doesn't mean that Jesus is not a descendant of King David. And this is what we get from this right here. The next act that we're going into as we move forward in the Old Testament, I don't know what I'll call it yet. Maybe we'll just call it the restoration. But it's really amazing to see that the Messiah, the coming king here, will burst on the scene in the New Testament. And he will be from the line of David. But first, we have a couple of things. First, the nation of Israel, God's people, they must feel the weight of their rejection of God. 70 years is going to go by while they are in captivity. But he will restore them, and he will continue his purpose for them in his unfolding plan of redemption. There's one other thing I want to close with. And that is, it's easy for us to look at this chart of the lineage of Mary and Joseph and say, see, all's well. It's fine. The Messiah, line of David, it's all good. We know about it. They did not know about it. In the moment for Israel and for Judah, everything was dark. Everything was gloomy. Everything was, they thought their life was over. And you know what? Every one of us gets to those points at some time in our life where we think, now it's all done. It's all over. Nothing can be done about this. And so I hope that as we finish this, you see that, no, no. God has a plan. God has a plan, and there is a restoration coming. You know, our next Bible study, which will be Esther, the subtitle is When God Works in the Shadows. And that is exactly what's going on here. God is working in the shadows. What the people at the time didn't really know, and I'll bet that some of you that think your life is about over right now because something terrible has happened, God is working in the shadows. And you don't know. 10 years from now, you'll be able to see it clearly. But God is working. And I want to encourage you to rest in that. I want to encourage you to pray for that. I want to encourage you to take the humility that we see in Josiah and to apply that to your lives because humility is the key that unlocks mercy in judgment. Let's pray. Father in heaven, I thank you for this word. I thank you for this whole Bible study. Some of it has been a little bit difficult to get through. There's just a lot of history and a lot of information. But Lord, I know that we have learned a tremendous amount not only about your character, but we have learned from kings, queens, and prophets as well. And I hope, Lord, that you would help us to apply those things to our life, that we would learn from your word. Just as we called this lesson Living Out the Word, Lord, we would hear the words, we would commit to following them, we would act upon them. I pray this for everyone doing this Bible study. In Jesus' name, amen.