Let's read further in 2 Chronicles chapter 34. I'm reading now from verse 14 through to the end of the chapter. Now text for this morning is somewhat really the whole of this chapter, but it's centered on verses 27 and 28 of this. So if we particularly look at those verses as we read them. You're reading from verse 14. And when they brought out the money that was brought into the house of the Lord, Hilkiah the priest found a book of the law of the Lord given by Moses. And Hilkiah answered and said to Shaphan the scribe, I have found the book of the law in the house of the Lord. and Hilkiah delivered the book to Shaphan. And Shaphan carried the book to the king and brought the king word back again saying, all that was committed to thy servants, they do it and they have gathered together the money that was found in the house of the Lord and have delivered it into the hand of the overseers and to the hand of the workmen. Then Shaphan the scribe told the king saying, Hilkiah the priest hath given me a book and Shaphan read it before the king. And it came to pass when the king heard the words of the law that he rent his clothes. The king commanded Hilkiah and Ahicham, the son of Shaphan, and Abdon, the son of Micah, and Shaphan the scribe, and Asaiah, the servant of the king, saying, Go, inquire of the Lord for me and for them that are left in Israel and in Judah concerning the words of the book that is found. For great is the wrath of the Lord that is poured out upon us, because our fathers have not kept the word of the Lord to do after all that is written in this book. And Hilkiah, and they that the king had appointed, went to Huldah the prophetess, the wife of Shalom, the son of Tikvath, the son of Haserah, the keeper of the wardrobe. Now she dwelt in Jerusalem in the college, and they spake to her to that effect. And she answered them, thus saith the Lord God of Israel, tell ye 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 curses that are written in the book, which they have read before the King of Judah, because they have forsaken me and have burned incense unto other gods that they might provoke me to anger with all the works of their hands. Therefore my wrath shall be poured out upon this place and shall not be quenched. And as for the King of Judah, who sent you to inquire of the Lord, so shall you say unto him, thus said the Lord God of Israel concerning the words which thou hast heard, because thine heart was tender, and thou didst humble thyself before God when thou heardest his words against this place and against the inhabitants thereof, and humblest thyself before me, and didst rend thy clothes and wheat before me, "'I have even heard thee also,' saith the Lord. "'Behold, I will gather thee to thy fathers, "'and thou shalt be gathered to thy grave in peace. "'Neither shall thine eyes see all the evil "'that I will bring upon this place "'and upon the inhabitants of the same.' "'So they brought the king word again. Then the king sent and gathered together all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem. And the king went up into the house of the Lord and all the men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem and the priests and the Levites and all the people, great and small. And he read in their ears all the words of the book of the covenant that was found in the house of the Lord. And the king stood in his place and made a covenant before the Lord to walk after the Lord and to keep his commandments and his testimonies and his statutes with all his heart and with all his soul and to perform the words of the covenant which are written in this book. And he caused all that were present in Jerusalem and in Benjamin to stand to it. And the inhabitants of Jerusalem did according to the covenant of God, the God of their fathers. And Josiah took away all the abominations out of all the countries that pertain to the children of Israel and made all that were present in Israel to serve even to serve the Lord their God. And all his days they departed not from following the Lord, the God of their fathers. Amen. Thus far we read in God's perfect and inspired word. Beloved congregation of the Lord Jesus Christ, our text concerns part of the history of Judah, the Southern nation. Remember that the nation of Israel had been split into two, the 10 Northern tribes and the two Southern tribes, the two Southern tribes of Judah. This nation is really the visible church. It's the Old Testament visible church. And this history that we read of here, as you can tell from where we are in 2 Chronicles, it's not very far to the end of Chronicles here. This occurs quite late in the Old Testament times. This is after the ten northern tribes have been completely taken over and taken away captive and really the land destroyed by the Assyrians and that had happened almost a hundred years before this history. In fact, it will only be another 11 years after the end of the reign of Josiah that Nebuchadnezzar will come up against Jerusalem for the first time before he then comes up subsequently the second and final time in 588 BC. But this is also a time where there has been so much wickedness, so much apostasy in the visible church. After the godly Hezekiah had died, his wicked son Manasseh arose. And there was not another king of Judah like unto him. who hated the Lord and turned away from the Lord, who sinned and introduced more idolatry than any other king before him, killing the prophets of God, creating idols and putting them in the courts of the temple, and finally even putting an idol right inside the temple itself. There was one small glimmer of hope during this time when he was converted right at the end of his life. He started to serve the Lord, but he died two years later, and his son Ammon arose, and Ammon was just as bad as his father, and plunged the land back into wickedness again. Seeing that Israel was destined to slide further and further into destruction when Ammon, in fact, was murdered, and then his son, Josiah, came to the throne, but Josiah was only eight years old. And with a grandfather and a father like that, what hope could there be, as it were, for Judah? But God caused Josiah to be a godly man. How did this come about? We're not told in the scriptures. How it was that he was godly. Perhaps he had a godly mother who taught him from a young age. Perhaps it was that the regents who cared for him when he was but really a boy in eight years old, that they were the ones who instructed him in the true things of God. But what we do know is that he did that which was right in all of his life. He didn't turn to the right hand or to the left according to verse two of our chapter. Yet he's also a man that needed to be humbled. He's a man that needed to be humbled. And that's really the emphasis of this chapter. You see, you enter into seeing what Josiah does in the first part of the chapter, but then you see the coming of the Word of God, which had been hidden away in the dusty recesses of a broken down temple for so long. And the Word of God is brought forth. This, as he hears the truth of the word of God, read from the book of the law, it humbles him. In fact, it causes a huge amount of grief and distress to him. But there is also, through these means, a bringing of a great blessing and an encouragement. Yeah, even a joy we will see that comes out of this. Next week, Lord willing, we come to the Lord's Supper to celebrate the supper together as God's people. And we know that there is a calling that is given to us in the scripture. Examine yourselves before you come to the supper to examine yourselves in the light of God's word. And the purpose of that is that we may be humbled. that we may be humbled before our great God, that we may be humbled to see our need of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Let's then take up our text in the way of that preparation and come to know spiritually the blessing of this in our lives. We take as our theme, Josiah is humbled. We'll consider that under three headings. First of all, the cause of this humbling. Secondly, the results of his humbling. And thirdly, the blessing of his humbling. Josiah is humbled. We see from the earlier parts of this chapter that Josiah, despite his young age, was a man who delighted in following the ways of God very, very carefully. From a young child, he had known in some sense the ways of God. He had not been a Willful rebellious child or a rebellious teenager and so forth so that from a very young age He already had that sense of God and a sense of desiring to love him and to serve him the picture that's given in scriptures of one whose heart was soft to the things of God as he had been taught and He walked in those ways we read in verse 3 that in the eighth year of his reign while he was yet young He began to seek after the God of David if his father now We're not to understand by that. Is it up to that point? He hadn't been seeking after the God of David but rather this when he came to the age of 16 at that time when teenagers have grown up to the point where they are very self-conscious and they know who they are as an individual person and that they know the reality that there is a God and there's a consciousness of what is my life about then he gave himself fully, consciously at that age, this is what my life is about, and this is what I will be about doing. We ought to note that, especially young people, notice that. Can you imagine being such a man as Josiah? He's the king. He's the king. I mean, he's got all these riches. And here he is, a young man, all right? Ah, all the power, all the riches. Sort of thing that young people dream about, isn't it? Can't do this and can't do that because there's not enough money and I'm not allowed to because so-and-so says I can't do that. Well, he can do whatever he likes. And he's got all the money in the world to do it. And what's more, his grandfather and his father before him had done just that, whatever they wanted to. But instead, as one who was a believer, he set himself, he set the whole course of his life to know God and to walk with Him. You see, as we even look at that, the fact that Josiah did that, that's one reason why he could in fact be somewhat proud of himself, couldn't he? Look at me. I'm not doing what my grandfather and father did. Look at me, I'm not doing what all the kings of all the other nations around about do, but I am giving myself to serve Jehovah God. Therefore, I'm quite a bit better than others. And I really know. But even more than that, you see, he could have even grown in pride because of his very energetic and zealous work for God's kingdom. And we read about that beginning in verse 3. It says there, in the 12th year, he began to purge Judah and Jerusalem from the high places and the groves and the carved images. He's only 20 years old, but already he's going about to rid the land of idolatry. And that wouldn't have been easy. because there would have been very many in power, in all sorts of levels of power, that enjoyed the idolatry. That's the reason why the land was full of idolatry, because the people loved that and they were going after that. He would have had a huge amount of opposition against him. Here he is, a young king of 20, against all of these supposedly older, wiser people, and yet he set himself to do it. And he did that, destroying all of these idols which would have been worth huge amounts of money, ground them to powder, got rid of them out of the land. And notice that this wasn't just in the land of Judah. It was not just in his nation, but remember to the north of that was all that area of Canaan that the Assyrians had stripped and they'd left then brought in some other people of other nations as well as the poor of the land that they'd left there. Well, Josiah went from there and went north into Ephraim, Manasseh, Naphtali, and he broke down all the altars of worship there as well. This was prophesied, in fact, way back in the days of Jeroboam. When Jeroboam had set up those calves, there was a prophet came out of Judah and said, there will be a king that comes and he will break down this altar and burn the prophet's bones upon it. And that's exactly what Josiah ended up doing. This was a huge work of reformation and all done when he was so very young. Brethren, do we hear that? So young, despite all the opposition that came, he still went about to do this. Sometimes, you know... we can have this idea that tends to come in and particularly from the world around about us that says, you can't expect young people to really have a good sense and understanding of the things of God. You can't expect them to be too zealous for the things of God. You can't expect them to be doing lots of reading and to understand all those things. You need to let them grow older. And then when they're older, then they'll have that kind of zeal. You need to understand they're gonna have a little bit of the idols of this world. They need to sow their wild oats and Is that so with Josiah Not so not so at all and notice this He did not have the knowledge, the teaching, the understanding that our children and our young people have in our day and age. And not only that, as we can see from the later part of the chapter, He did not even have the solid teaching directly out of the Word of God given to Him. And yet, He sought the Lord with all of His heart against great opposition. So it is we need to encourage our young people to be zealous for the Lord and for the truth, not to have all sorts of other things and, well, they need to do this and they need to do that and they need to experience the world. May we keep right away from such thinking. But with all this, you would think that Josiah would have a pretty good opinion of himself. I am pretty good. Puffed up, you know, lots of bravado and hot air. Man, am I a good king. Man, am I a good person. Look at everything that I have done for God. I'm living a godly life. I'm serving Jehovah. No one can tell me that I'm not what I ought to be. Yet he's humbled when the word of God comes to him. God caused this to happen. He caused his word to come before his face and to enter into his ears. As part of Josiah's reforming work, he wasn't just about the destroying of all the evil, which by the way, if you have a look at the the parallel passage in Second Kings, you will find that he not only was destroying the idols, he was also about getting rid of all those that were practicing witchcraft and magic and all that sort of thing. He also was destroying all the houses of the homosexuals. Another aspect of the going into immorality and turning away from God is always the rise of such things as homosexuality, such as you see in our land. And Josiah destroyed all of their houses and got rid of them out of the land and said that would have no place in a godly nation. But he's also about the positive work. He is busy about putting into place and restoring the right and proper and true worship of God. So he says, the poor old temple that had been so neglected, he makes sure that money is gathered and money is brought forward and lots of workmen are applied to repair the temple, to scrub it out, to polish it up, to restore it to its beauty so that the people of God may come and worship God as they ought to. But as this is going about, and as it's happening, they find the book of the law. Tucked away, and they're clearing away the rubbish, and there, you know, behind the curtain, is the book of the law. Dusted all off. And Hilkiah reads it and realizes what it is and says, this is most important that the king read this as well. Gives it to Shaphan who goes and then reads it before the king. It's referred to the book of the law, the book of the Torah. It's referring to the first five books of the Old Testament. Notice it's the law of Jehovah, not the law of Moses, the law of Jehovah, the law of the covenant God. Because those first five books of the Bible, they set forth, yes, the Ten Commandments and so forth, but what they really set forth is the whole of the Gospel. The truth of the fact that we are sinners condemned before God, and the only way of salvation was through the blood of the Lamb, exemplified in things such as the Passover, and then the giving of the sacrifices on the altars, and therefore the looking forward to the One who would come and wash away the sins of the people. God caused this book to be preserved and God then brought it before Josiah through Hilkiah and Shaphan Brethren We need to deal with God's Word It's no good having all sorts of our own ideas about what Christianity is about having all sorts of good works. You know, we're off on this crusade to get this done and we're going to have this program and get this built and we need to deal with what God says. God knows that. And that's why for Josiah, he brings his word before him and has his word to be brought into his life. God causes his word to come to us. Just the same as that word was preserved by God in those dusty recesses of the temple and brought forth when needed, God has preserved his word for us. Satan has been trying to destroy the word of God down through the centuries, yet we still hold in our hands a beautiful and a good translation, a faithful translation of the very word of God. God gives it into your hand. God causes it to be owned by you. God causes that word to be set before you. Every week, you need to deal with what God brings to you. The question is, what's your response to that word? What's your response? What was Josiah's response when he heard that word? He was humbled to the ground. When He heard of the greatness and the glory of God in all of His creation and all that He had made and what man fell into, and yet God in His graciousness and His love and His mercy had laid hold upon a people that was so undeserving and caught up in the bondage of Egypt and had laid a hold upon them and brought them out with a mighty power. When God had dealt with them so mercifully through the wilderness, though they had been stubborn and complaining, and had brought them into a beautiful land that they didn't build. When He had destroyed their enemies and given them an inheritance that they did not deserve, and then He said to them, Worship me, adore me, serve me, obey me, and know of wonderful blessing in the way of all my worship that I've given to you. He stood as it were with all of the air taken out of him. What an incredible God. But that same God had said, don't go after the idols of this world. Don't turn away from me in whom is all life, because there is not any life anywhere else. Serve me and serve me alone with all of your heart. And Josiah recognized, what have we done? And God had said, if you turn away from me, if you turn away from me to serve all of the idols of this world, instead of trusting in me and my Messiah who was to come, then I will utterly destroy you. There is no life to be found in anywhere, but in me and my promises of salvation in my covenant that I've made with my true people. He was humbled. That word humbled, as you see it there in verse 27, where it says humbled, it's a very graphic, Hebrew words are often very pictorial, very graphic. And so that word means, it means to wrinkle, to fold and to collapse in on itself. It's a bit like an old balloon that's been blown up for quite some time and the rubber's a bit old and you pop it and it doesn't really even pop, it sort of just goes, and sags down until it's this sort of wrinkled, floppy nothing on the ground. That's the idea. That's what happened to Josiah. He just collapsed and folded down upon himself and was left utterly bereft of any strength before the Lord. He was humbled. The perfect law of God and the perfect way of living with God leaves us to know, I am utterly undone. That was Isaiah when he beheld the glory of God, wasn't it? I'm a man of unclean lips and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips. It's a bit like with us. As it were, you're just wandering along and going about your business and you come to a door and as it were, you just push open the door and step into the room and suddenly, as it were, you realize you're standing in the midst of a pristine white room. with glorious white hangings and beautiful pure white couches and a glistening mirror-like white floor and then you look at yourself and you realize I'm absolutely covered in excrement that stinks and is filthy and I'm covered in grease and black oil and I'm dripping muck all over this white floor. That's the kind of picture you get and you realize But the filth that is me, God has a wrath and a hatred against that. How can I stand? The only way to be put right, to be put clean, is through God, through His Son Jesus Christ, through the redemption that He has supplied. Brethren, this is what we need to know. We are in the way of death by nature. Josiah saw that clearly and it caused him to just collapse in humility before God. It ought to humble us as it humbled Josiah. What was the results of Josiah's humbling as he hears these things? He's obviously very outwardly shaken and distressed by this. What does he do outwardly? He grabs a hold of his clothes and rends his clothes as he hears it. That's a very common thing in those days. that it indicated great distress. You can have people today, when they're greatly distressed, can do things too, can't they? Like they might hit things or they may even cut themselves when people are incredibly emotionally distressed. But so often, some of those reactions that people have are really self-centered. And they're really just stirring up of selfish anger and so forth. It can be in the Bible that you have some of that self-centered and even self-righteous rending of the clothes, such as the high priest in Matthew 26, verse 65, when supposedly he was so distressed about the Lord Jesus blaspheming when he said he was the Christ, the Son of God. But with Josiah, this was a real state of his heart and mind. Joel 2.13 says, rend your heart and not your garments and turn unto the Lord your God. We ought to rend our heart. Josiah did both. His heart was rent. We know that from what God says through the prophetess Huldah in verse 27. God says, he knows that Josiah's heart was soft and tender and that he was truly humbled. All the pride taken out of him. Is that the result for us? Is that the result for us? When the Word of God, when it comes to us, whether it be in our own private devotions as we take up and read it, whether it be in our family worship, whether it be in the meetings of the church when the Word of God is read and discussed, and particularly where God brings us to the worship services when he tells us that the preaching of the word is the power of God unto salvation and it's the words of Christ that come before us. What is the result of our heart when we go out of the worship services and go home? Do we listen and say, no thanks very much and away we go? Do we sort of just pull a few points out and say, oh, well, that was a nice point, and yep, yep. Oh, yes, yes, I hear that, and I do that. Tick, I'm good. Or do we sit there and say, boy, I hope so-and-so is listening to this, because this is a really good message for him. And then we go off in our life, and nothing changes. because we're full of our own importance and puffed up with our own pride and think that we've got things right in our life and I know how things are and so forth. And the Word of God doesn't do a thing to us. It doesn't make a single scrap of difference. In fact, maybe the only thing it does do is it gives our bit of a pride, a bit of a poke and we all even get steamed up against it and say, I don't like hearing that, I don't want that. Maybe that's what happens. Or does the Word of God, does it melt our heart? Does it cause us to be deflated so all the pride goes out of us? And we are humbled that we know I'm an unrighteous person who deserves God's wrath. I deserve for God to cast me off forever and to know that everything I do, nothing in and of itself that I do is worth anything before the sight of God. And that I am called to cast myself fully on my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ for life and salvation and all things. May that be the case. Notice that it's important that we do the latter. We don't just simply wallow, as it were, in the despair of unrighteousness. And that's not what Josiah did here. What did Josiah do? Did he simply say, I've had it, the nation's had it, and he goes and lies on his bed wallowing in despair? No. No, he doesn't. Neither does he say, I know what I need to do. I need to go and destroy more idols and that'll make me right before God. He doesn't do that either. Both of those responses would be utterly wrong. He seeks after God's mercy. He sends those five men to Huldah in verse 20. He knows that Huldah has been given by God to speak the word, to speak the truth. He wouldn't bother sending to ask her about what the Lord said if he did not truly believe that there was mercy and forgiveness to be found in God. Mercy and forgiveness for Israel, mercy and forgiveness for himself. And therefore he sends to her, is there mercy? Is there forgiveness for us as a nation despite all that we have done? Lord, I am a poor and a weak and a needy sinner. Is there good news for me? Josiah knows that God is a God of salvation. and therefore he seeks after that help that is to be found in God alone. When we are humbled, when we are truly humbled, then we will seek after God in the same way. It will be that we, with that sense of having been completely deflated and all the pride gone out of us, then we will seek after God and say, Lord, is there salvation for me too? You are a God of mercy. That's what's set forth in the scripture. There is a way for sin to be pardoned through the Lord Jesus Christ, through Him who has been sent to pay for all my sins. Lord, is this true? We want to hear that. We desire to know, is that so for me? Josiah, he is blessed. He's blessed. Notice the blessing of this humbling. Through God's work in Josiah, through grace softening his heart and humbling him and causing him to seek after God, Josiah receives a most wonderful blessing. It comes on the background, notice Holder's message, it comes on the background of God's severe judgment for sin. Holder does not just simply say, everything's wonderful, Josiah, peace, peace, everything's okay. She actually says, yes, God hates sin and will surely bring severe judgment for all the sins that have been committed. But on that background then comes the message of the good news. Wonderful gospel. Josiah receives the word of God spoken to him personally. Notice that? The gospel is not only a word that goes generally out and says that God is the saviour of sinners, but God comes by His Spirit and He speaks to every one of His people personally. And He says, sinner, hear my truth. I am the one who works in you. Because that's what God had done with Josiah, hadn't he? God was the one who had been at work in his life. God was the one that by his grace enabled him to humble himself before that word that came to him. God by his grace also sends wonderful words of comfort and assurance to Josiah at this time. God says, Josiah, I have seen your life and I have heard your cry and I come to you with a message of peace. Peace. He says, Josiah, you will be gathered to your fathers and to the grave in peace, in peace with me. He's not just talking about a kind of a nice feeling. He's saying, you will have peace with me. You have a relationship with me, that your sins and the sins of the nation will not be held against you. He will not go to hell for the punishment which he deserves, but he will be in harmony with God who punishes all sins. How is this so? Do you notice what God is saying here? He says he will bring the punishment that is due to Josiah and all Judah, but Josiah will not experience it. How? How is that possible? It's because God will pour out his justice and his judgment upon another. God's justice needs to be fulfilled. And therefore, if any would know of true salvation, of indeed being right with God and have a peace and a harmony with Him, then that punishment needs to be taken by another, who is Christ Jesus. God gives the wonderful good news of salvation through the Messiah to Josiah. Do you wish to know of that peace? Do you need to know of that peace in your heart? Does the Lord come to you with his word, with the truth that he requires an absolute pure righteousness? Do you know of that stepping into a right room and knowing of your filth before an almighty God? Then God says to you also, I have provided my son Believe in Him. Repent of those sins and cast your trust upon Jesus Christ alone. And you'll know that peace. Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. There is that righteousness which I give to you which is His. Josiah, he came to truly experience that. How can we know that he came to truly experience that peace and that gladness of knowing the truth of the gospel that had been given to him? Well, we know this from the fact that later on we read that he no longer has his clothes rent, but he goes up to the temple in verse 30. With a joy and a gladness, he reads the book of the law in their ears. Notice that it no longer is a word to him that is condemnatory. Otherwise, how could he bear to have it read again to him? That he would end up deflated on the ground again. But now, knowing of the wonderful promises of the gospel given to his heart, the book of the law is beautiful to him. It's the way of thankful living. It's the way of showing forth his thankfulness to God. Josiah has come to realize that this word is the word of hope and joy the word of peace and comfort It's a book which contains the way in which the people of God may have a real and covenant life Josiah has been lifted up from mourning to joy We know that because of the way they come to celebrate the Passover then. The Passover was a beautiful picture of Christ and the celebration of it is described in the very next chapter. And so in chapter 35, verse 18, we read, there was no Passover like to that kept in Israel from the days of Samuel the prophet, neither did all the kings of Israel keep such a Passover as Josiah kept and the priests and the Levites and all Judah and Israel that were present. and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, there was a great rejoicing in all the truth of God's salvation, just as there is to be a great rejoicing in the Lord's Supper when we come to it. The Supper, you see, sets forth the same gospel truth, that though we deserve hell for eternity, We had a Saviour who was sent to Calvary, who there gave Himself so that the sins of all of His people were put upon Him. And we, trusting in Him, may know of a wonderful peace and a joy being brought back into a right relationship with our God. Then Josiah is also given the grace to walk more strongly in the Lord's ways. He encourages others in the scriptures in verses 31 and 32, encourages them to promise to serve the Lord. And he does further work then after that in removing idolatry from the nation. We will find that in our lives as well. As we truly give ourselves to be humble to repent before the Lord, to cast ourselves upon our Saviour. The more we come to know the wretchedness of our sin and yet the great glory of our Saviour and what He has done, the result will be greater joy and peace and a greater energy and zeal to serve Him in our lives. Let's then, in this week, as we prepare for the supper, Humble ourselves before our God and for his son our Savior that he may lift us up in due time Amen, let's stand to pray Our Lord and our God we pray that you may humble us and That we may be humbled before our Almighty God and before our Lord and Saviour. That we may know the greatness and the wretchedness of our sin. That we may know the almighty power and the glory and the mercy and the love of God set forth in Jesus Christ and in the only way of salvation. That we may have a faith in him that we may examine ourselves in this coming week And we may come with a humility and yet a joy to the lord's supper next week We pray by your grace. May you work it in us that we may glorify your name in jesus christ. Amen