When the king had finished reading the words of God's holy law, he proceeded with an holy zeal to bear testimony to God's truth, in the destruction of all that God's holy law had forbidden. And what a blessed work was here wrought. Reader! are you not astonished to behold, and read the account! How was it possible for the great enemy of souls to have kept up his cursed empire in the heart, and even in the midst of God's own people, from generation to generation, in this manner! Reader! do you wonder at it? Look within! See what a body of sin and death, even in the midst of grace, (if in mercy the Lord the Spirit hath regenerated you) you carry about with you! if we recollect, moreover, that Josiah had sat upon the throne, at the time that this great work was done, about eighteen years; during which time he had set his people a good example, it is not a little wonderful that, under the blessings of such a reign, idolatry should have held out to such an extent. Reader! what will example do? nay, what will even reading the sacred word of God do, unless that reading of God's own word be accompanied with his own power? It is hardly possible to read this account of what Josiah destroyed, but with fear and trembling. There were vessels of Baal even in the temple of the Lord: there were idolatrous priests who, at the command of the former kings, had dared to burn incense in the high places: there were even houses for the transaction of such abominable filthiness and unnatural uncleanness, as are not to be once named among us, as becometh saints. And all these not merely in the suburbs of Judea; not near the cloisters of God's church; but in the very church itself. There were horses given to the sun, that were, as it should seem, kept for the worshipping of the sun by them. Perhaps, as some have thought, at sun-rising the idolaters went forth on them, to make exercises in honor of this creature of God, the sun. And strange to think, the stables of these beasts were in the very temple itself. And the image of Moloch, in the valley of Tophet, was among the horrible services of the people, where they committed these unnatural and unfeeling crimes, to make their own children, in honor of this dunghill-god, pass through fire. Reader! pause as you read, and let our souls he humbled to the dust in the view of such a state of degradation to which, by sin, the human mind is capable of being brought. Let us never lose sight of one unquestionable truth, as we read the awful account, namely, that by the fall of man, all men are by nature the same. What one man, or one nation is capable of doing, all are equally prone to. It is grace, free, sovereign, distinguishing grace which maketh all the difference. And therefore think, Reader, (and oh! my soul, do thou never, never for a moment lose sight of it) what unspeakable, what endless mercies do we owe to Jesus, who, in the fulness of grace and truth, came to repair the desolations of many generations, and to raise up the ruins of David which were fallen down. Oh! thou precious, blessed, adorable Redeemer! Hail! thou glorious, gracious Benefactor of mankind! Amos 9:11.
2 Kings 23:4-15
4 And the king commanded Hilkiah the high priest, and the priests of the second order, and the keepers of the door, to bring forth out of the temple of the LORD all the vessels that were made for Baal, and for the grove, and for all the host of heaven: and he burned them without Jerusalem in the fields of Kidron, and carried the ashes of them unto Bethel.
5 And he put down the idolatrous priests, whom the kings of Judah had ordained to burn incense in the high places in the cities of Judah, and in the places round about Jerusalem; them also that burned incense unto Baal, to the sun, and to the moon, and to the planets, and to all the host of heaven.
6 And he brought out the grove from the house of the LORD, without Jerusalem, unto the brook Kidron, and burned it at the brook Kidron, and stamped it small to powder, and cast the powder thereof upon the graves of the children of the people.
7 And he brake down the houses of the sodomites, that were by the house of the LORD, where the women wove hangingsa for the grove.
8 And he brought all the priests out of the cities of Judah, and defiled the high places where the priests had burned incense, from Geba to Beersheba, and brake down the high places of the gates that were in the entering in of the gate of Joshua the governor of the city, which were on a man's left hand at the gate of the city.
9 Nevertheless the priests of the high places came not up to the altar of the LORD in Jerusalem, but they did eat of the unleavened bread among their brethren.
10 And he defiled Topheth, which is in the valley of the children of Hinnom, that no man might make his son or his daughter to pass through the fire to Molech.
11 And he took away the horses that the kings of Judah had given to the sun, at the entering in of the house of the LORD, by the chamber of Nathanmelech the chamberlain,b which was in the suburbs, and burned the chariots of the sun with fire.
12 And the altars that were on the top of the upper chamber of Ahaz, which the kings of Judah had made, and the altars which Manasseh had made in the two courts of the house of the LORD, did the king beat down, and brake them downc from thence, and cast the dust of them into the brook Kidron.
13 And the high places that were before Jerusalem, which were on the right hand of the mountd of corruption, which Solomon the king of Israel had builded for Ashtoreth the abomination of the Zidonians, and for Chemosh the abomination of the Moabites, and for Milcom the abomination of the children of Ammon, did the king defile.
14 And he brake in pieces the images,e and cut down the groves, and filled their places with the bones of men.
15 Moreover the altar that was at Bethel, and the high place which Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin, had made, both that altar and the high place he brake down, and burned the high place, and stamped it small to powder, and burned the grove.