Josiah was eight years old when he began to reign.
A monarch of rare virtue, and a God of retributive justice
I. A monarch of rare virtue. Josiah was eight years old when he began to reign.” In this monarch we discover four distinguished merits.
1. Religiousness of action. “He did that which was right in the sight of the Lord.” We discover in Josiah--
2. Docility of mind. “It came to pass when the king had heard the words of the book of the law, that he rent his clothes.” In Josiah we see--
3. Tenderness of heart. See how the discovery of the book affected him. “He rent his clothes.”
4. Actualisation of conviction. When this discovered document came under Josiah’s attention, and its import was realised, he was seized with a conviction that he, his fathers, and his people, had disregarded, and even outraged, the written precepts of heaven.
II. A God of retributive justice. Such a God the prophetess here reveals. “Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, Tell the man that sent you to Me, thus saith the Lord, Behold I will bring evil upon this place, and upon the inhabitants thereof, even all the words of the book which the king of Judah hath read.” The government over us, and to which we are bound with chains stronger than adamant, is retributive, it never allows evil to go unpunished. It links in indissoluble bonds sufferings to sin. Sorrows follow sin by a law as immutable and resistless as the waves follow the moon. “Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap.” In this retribution
(1) The wicked are treated with severity, and
(2) the good are treated with favour. (David Thomas, D. D.)
Josiah and the Book of the Law
This lesson gives us the account of a remarkable revival of religion which took place something over six hundred years before the Christian era, under the good reign of the boy-king Josiah. The history of the progress of the kingdom of God on earth is the history of revivals. Like the ebb and flow of the tides has his kingdom apparently advanced and receded, but with this difference, that each spiritual flood-tide has marked a substantial advance upon any previous flood-tide. Every revival has left the Church mightier than it ever was before, and has been a prophecy to the world of the time when “the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.” In matters of religion it had been a period of ebb-tide for many years before our lesson opens.
I. We learn that the agency God uses in a revival of religion is the agency of men, and often of a single man. Some one torch must first be kindled. Some one soul must be quickened. In some one closet the voice of prevailing prayer must be heard. There was but one voice crying in the wilderness, but it inaugurated the first Christian revival. There was but one Jonathan Edwards in America, and one John Wesley in England, when the great revivals in which they were instrumental began; but thousands were warmed at their fires, and lighted by their torches. Nor is it always a great man intellectually, or one who wields a wide influence, whom God uses to inaugurate the revival: it may be some praying mother, some unknown Christian, some uninfluential brother. As the majestic river rolls onward to the sea, we do not think much of its source, but only of the broad meadows which it waters, and the whirring factories which it has set in motion, and the bustling cities to which it bears the white wings of commerce; but, after all, away back in the hills is a little rivulet which is its source, and back of the rivulet perhaps a hidden spring on the mountain-side, which no eye has ever seen. Back of every revival is some hidden spring which has made it possible; and that spring, as likely as not, is in the chamber of some very humble Christian. That God uses such instrumentalities, our lesson plainly tells us, for Josiah was but a boy of sixteen when this revival began. He might well have objected that he was too young and inexperienced to be the leader in such a reformation. Very likely he had many struggles and misgivings which are not recorded, but it was God’s way to revive his work under the leadership of a boy. What, now, let us ask, are the characteristics of a true revival? We must take the parallel account of this revival which is given in Second Chronicles, as well as the one given in Kings, into consideration.
1. Taking the two stories together, we learn that one remarkable characteristic was the destruction of idolatry. When the king was twenty years old, four years after he “began to seek after God,” we read that “he began to purge Judah and Jerusalem from the high places, and the groves, and the carved images, and the molten images.” Idols of all descriptions were cut down and ground to dust, and strewn upon the graves of those who had sacrificed to them. This work of destruction must be well done before the work of construction can be begun. So, very often, is it in the Church and the individual heart, before the reviving work of the Holy Spirit can be accomplished. There are false gods which must be deposed; there are sins of long standing, with deep roots and wide-spreading branches, which must be cut down. There we have a suggestion of the reason why in many a heart and many a church the revival work is only partial and incomplete. The uglier idols are cut down, the grosser sins are abandoned, nevertheless there is some high place especially dear which is not removed--nevertheless there is a pet sin of envy, jealousy or ill-will, or self-indulgence, which is spared; and because no thorough work of reform is accomplished, because the account must needs be qualified by a “nevertheless,” the soul remains unsaved, the revival fails to come.
2. Another characteristic of this ancient revival and of every true revival was liberality on the part of the people. There was evidently a large sum of silver collected for the repair of the temple, for large repairs were needed. True liberality is both a cause and an effect of a true revival. The beginning of this century was a time of dearth and languishing in the churches. Infidelity was rampant, and threatened to sweep everything before it. But, at the same time, the cause of missions, home and foreign, began to assume proportions they had never known before; the purse-strings of Christian people were loosened; a revival of charity and money-giving spread over the land, and revivals of religion, pure and undefiled, followed in quick and glorious succession. “Is his purse converted?” was frequently a question of one of John Wesley’s co-labourers when he heard of a rich man who had become a Christian. It is a question which might be appropriately asked in every revival season--“Have the purses been converted?”
3. Another characteristic of this ancient revival in Judah seems to have been the honesty and faithfulness of the people, which extended even to the small details of life. Money was given, we are told, to the carpenters and builders and masons; “howbeit there was no reckoning made with them of the money that was put into their hand, because they dealt faithfully.” That is the legitimate effect, always and everywhere, of a revival of religion; and every revival is spurious that does not tend to produce this result. The merchant feels it as he measures every yard of cloth, and weighs every pound of sugar. The carpenter feels its influence as he drives his plane, the housewife as she wields her broom, the banker as he counts his money, the schoolboy as he studies his lesson. “Is such and such a man a Christian?”--“I don’t know; go home and ask his wife,” used to be the answer of a famous religious teacher.
4. Another characteristic of this old revival about which we are studying to-day was honour for the house of God. Every true revival has just this characteristic--reverence, honour for the house of God.
5. Once more: the most striking characteristic of this revival of Josiah’s reign was honour for the word of God. It hardly seems possible that the “Book of the Law” could have been utterly lost for years, and that the very remembrance of it should have become a dim tradition. Then the king gathers together all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and reads in their ears all the words which have so awakened him. He renews his covenant with God; he carries out more completely the work of reformation which he had begun, destroying every idol, and restoring the worship of the true God in every part of his domain. It was a wonderful revival; and no characteristic is so striking as the king’s reverence for, and ready obedience to, the word of God. But King Josiah is not the only one who has lost the word of God, not the only one from whom it is buried out of sight, under the dust of years. Though copies of the law are dropping from the printing press by the million every year, though it lies in all our houses and is read in all our churches, it is a lost book to-day to thousands, as it was in Josiah’s time, Our very familiarity with it hides it from our eyes as effectually as the rubbish of the temple hid it from the Jews; and only a powerful revival of religion can bring it from its hiding-place, and put it in our hands and in our hearts. (Monday Club Sermons.)
Josiah’s reformation
Josiah was only twenty years of age when he set about a national reformation of religion as radical and as complete as anything that Martin Luther or John Knox themselves ever undertook. But with this immense difference. Both Luther and Knox had the whole Word of God in their hands both to inspire them and to guide them and to sustain them and to support ‘them in their tremendous task. But Josiah had not one single book or chapter or verse even of the Word of God in his heathen day. The five Books of Moses were as completely lost out of the whole land long before Josiah’s day as much so as if Moses had never lifted a pen. And thus it was that Josiah’s reformation had a creativeness about it: an originality, an enterprise, and a boldness about it, such that in all these respects it has completely eclipsed all subsequent reformations and revivals--the greatest and the best. The truth is, the whole of that immense movement that resulted in the religious regeneration of Jerusalem and Judah in Josiah day, it all sprang originally and immediately out of nothing else but Josiah’s extraordinary tenderness of heart. The Light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world shone with extraordinary clearness in Josiah’s tender heart and open mind. And Josiah walked in that light and obeyed it, till it became within him an overmastering sense of Divine duty and an irresistible direction and drawing of the Divine hand. And till he performed a work for God and for Israel second to no work that has ever been performed under the greatest and the best of the prophets and kings of Israel combined. It is a very noble spectacle. (Alex. Whyte, D. D.)