Our sermon this evening is going to come to us from 2 Kings chapter 22, 1 through 20. As I said in the introduction, we're going to be leaving for a few weeks the study on the book of Proverbs so we can discuss themes related to the Reformation as we're celebrating the 500th anniversary of the Reformation beginning with Luther. So, I want to talk about the importance of Reformation, not just in the context of the Reformation that started in Europe in the 16th century, but rather the idea of Reformation as it has always been needed in the Church and how it continues on to the present day. Before we go to the Word of God, let's instead turn our attention first to the God of the Word and let's beg Him to help us to understand and apply these things in our own lives. Please join me. Oh, Heavenly Father, Lord, I know that as we come to the reading of the Word and its preaching, we are entering into the trenches of spiritual warfare. First, we need your help to understand this Word and to be willing to be conformed to it. It is so often the case that when your Word is read, theology, the natural man comes out. And He seeks to defy you, saying, who is this who tells me how to live my life and what I should do? That's our natural reaction. But we pray, Lord, that you would subdue that and that you would remind us of who you are and how much we need you. We also pray, Lord, that you would make us attentive. We know that the devil's always seeking to snatch the Word away whenever it's falling, and we pray that you would not allow him to do that. May your Word change us. May it go in through the ear gate and then go down to our hearts. May it find their soil that's been broken up and is ready, O Lord, to receive it. And then may we produce that harvest that you desire. May it be that this Word changes us and works through us. And we pray this in Jesus' holy name. Amen. 2 Kings, chapter 22. I'm going to be reading the entire chapter. I remind you, this is the word of the Lord. Josiah was eight years old when he became king, and he reigned 31 years in Jerusalem. His mother's name was Jedidiah, the daughter of Adiah of Bozkath. And he did what was right in the sight of the Lord, and walked in all the ways of his father David. He did not turn aside to the right or to the left. Now it came to pass in the 18th year of King Josiah that the king sent Shaphan the scribe, the son of Azaliah, the son of Meshulam, to the house of the Lord saying, go up to Hilkiah, the high priest, that he may count the money which has been brought into the house of the Lord, which the doorkeepers have gathered from the people and let them deliver it into the hands of those doing the work who are overseers in the house of the Lord. Let them give it to those who are in the house of the Lord doing the work. to repair the damages of the house, to carpenters and builders and masons, and to buy timber and hewn stone to repair the house. However, there need be no accounting made with them of the money delivered into their hand, because they deal faithfully. Then Hilkiah the high priest said to Shaphan the scribe, I have found the book of the law in the house of the Lord. And Hilkiah gave the book to Shaphan, and he read it. So Shaphan the scribe went to the king, bringing the king word, saying, your servants have gathered the money that was found in the house and have delivered it into the hand of those who do the work, who oversee the house of the Lord. Then Shaphan the scribe showed the king, saying, Hilkiah the priest has given me a book. And Shaphan read it before the king. Now it happened, when the king heard the words of the book of the law, that he tore his clothes. Then the king commanded Hilkiah the priest, Ahicham, the son of Shaphan, Achbor, the son of Micaiah, Shaphan the scribe, and Isaiah, a servant of the king, saying, go, inquire of the Lord for me, for the people and for all Judah concerning the words of this book that has been found. For great is the wrath of the Lord that is aroused against us, because our fathers have not obeyed the words of this book to do according to all that is written concerning us. So Hilkiah the priest, Ahicham, Achbor, Shefan, and Aziah went to Huldah the prophetess, the wife of Shalom, the son of Tikva, the son of Harhas, keeper of the wardrobe. She dwelt in Jerusalem in the second quarter, and they spoke with her. Then she said to them, "'Thus says the Lord God of Israel, "'Tell the man who sent you to me. "'Thus says the Lord, "'Behold, I will bring calamity on this place "'and on its inhabitants. "'All the words of the book which the king of Judah has read, "'because they have forsaken me "'and burned incense to other gods "'that they might provoke me to anger "'with all the works of their hands. "'Therefore, my wrath shall be roused against this place "'and shall not be quenched.'" But as for the king of Judah, who sent you to inquire of the Lord, in this manner you shall speak to him. Thus says the Lord God of Israel concerning the words which you have heard, because your heart was tender and you humbled yourself before the Lord when you heard what I spoke against this place and against its inhabitants, that they would become a desolation and a curse, and you tore your clothes and wept before me. I also have heard you, says the Lord. Surely, therefore, I will gather you to your fathers, and you shall be gathered to your grave in peace, and your eyes shall not see all the calamity which I shall bring on this place." So they brought back word to the king. The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever. In 2008, the renowned church historian Mark Noll brought out a book titled, Is the Reformation Over? An Evangelical Assessment of Contemporary Roman Catholicism. And I'm just going to cut to the chase and tell you what happened. Disappointingly, his answer was, yes, the Reformation is over. And he concluded that not only was the Reformation over, but it should be over. Throughout this work, he and his co-author, Carolyn Nystrom, were extremely critical of evangelicals who want to keep their distance from the Church of Rome, who believed that the Reformation should be something ongoing and essentially they took the time writing this book to tell evangelicals that it was time to seek unity with Catholicism. They said we need essentially to heal the breach between Protestants and Roman Catholics and with all the problems in the world we need to work together. The need for division within the body of Christ on this count was apparently over. But was it? Is it over? On October 31st, 1517, when Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the church door at Wittenberg, we sometimes forget that he was a man who had gone through a profound change himself. Martin Luther, as you know, was an Augustinian monk, and he had gone into the monastery, trying to find peace in that monastery by following the traditions of the church. But the peace that he was seeking had remained elusive. He hadn't found it there. And no amount of works or devotions could heal his conscience, could assuage his conscience. He was always conscious that he was a sinner, naked as Adam before a holy God, and that all the prayers and the vespers and the self-flagellations and the confessions and the penances that he tried, they all added up to so many fig leaves. He had not found peace in the traditions of the church. Where he eventually did find peace, however, was in the Word of God. He found it in the Greek text that had been rediscovered in the 15th century, and Luther had poured over Erasmus' Greek version of the Bible, finding critically, especially in the Book of Romans, the key to peace with God, and he found it, of course, in that great doctrine of the church, justification by faith alone. In Romans 117, he was struck to the core by the words, for in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith. As it is written, the just shall live by faith. In a moment, what he had been seeking was revealed to him. He had been looking for his righteousness in himself, in his own works, in the traditions and the teachings of the church, and instead he realized that righteousness was to be found in Christ and in his completed work alone. And that is what he turned to. And having found that, it was his desire then to share that discovery with everyone. To bring once again the great truth of the gospel that we are justified through the imputed righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ, given to us as a gift, received by faith alone. So that others might share the joy of knowing God, not as an angry judge, but as a loving father. And Luther had realized that what had happened was that over the centuries, the church had departed from the teachings of God's word. It had departed from the scriptures, and it had begun to add in over the centuries, doctrine by doctrine, the teachings of men, bits and pieces of other pagan religions that it had encountered. And what needed to happen very, very badly was a reform where they swept away all of these man-made additions, all of these traditions, all of these non-Christian practices, and returned instead to the great source of our faith, which is the Word. The Word, he said, was the fountainhead of our faith. So we need to go back to the source of our faith, the spring of faith, and the sole foundation for our faith and our practice as Christians. He said it was the word alone, it was the scriptures alone. So when he nailed those 95 theses to the church door in Wittenberg, Luther wasn't trying to start a new church. He wasn't trying to invent a new denomination. What he was doing was questioning the practices of the old denomination. questioning the current practices of the church, and attempting to show the church that they had made not just moral mistakes, because immorality at that point and corruption were rife throughout the church. Rome, he'd gone to Rome on a pilgrimage and had been disgusted by what he saw there. The brothels, the concubines of the church leaders, the buying and selling of church offices. He said words to the effect that if hell had a lid, then Rome was certainly built upon it. What he saw in the church was not just immorality, though, but gross theological error, because they had departed from the word of God. And by adopting the thoughts and practices of mere men, they had, in essence, turned their back on the commands of the Lord. Therefore, when Luther was pressed at the Diet of Worms to recant everything that he had ever taught, He did not frame his objection to doing that as a difference of opinion. He didn't say, well, you think this, and I think that, and we're going to have to agree to disagree. I'm sorry, Emperor. Rather, instead, he framed his objection to recanting in terms not of I'm smarter than you are, but rather in terms of where do we find our authority for the Christian faith? Where do we find the source of all teaching? Where should we go to to find an authority that will tell us what we should believe and what we should practice? And he concluded that the answer to that question must be Scripture alone. Therefore, when he was called upon to recant, this is how he answered. He said, unless I am convicted by Scripture and plain reason, I do not accept the authority of the popes and the councils, for they have contradicted each other. My conscience is captive to the word of God. I cannot and I will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. God help me. Amen. He said, I'm going to put my standard, plant my standard on the scriptures, and here I will stand and not budge. So when Mark Knoll and his co-author Carolyn Nystrom asked the question, is the Reformation over, and came up with their answer, yes, what I believe that they failed to do, they failed utterly to do, was to go to scripture and ask the critical question. Has the Roman Catholic Church returned to the authority, the sole authority of Scripture for all of its faith and practice? Or is it still relying upon centuries of the traditions and the practices of mere men? And any review of the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church needs to be viewed in that light. Any serious examination of Roman Catholic theology, which you'll find in their catechism, which was brought out in the 1990s, it's exhaustive, will show that no, they have not at all returned. simply to the teaching of scripture. In fact, the very crux of the 95 Theses, the sale of indulgences, these indulgences, kids, were pieces of paper that they sold to people telling them that after a Christian died, he still had the stain of sin upon him. And in order to have the stains of sin removed from him, they had to be purged away. And the place that God sent these Christians who had not done so many good works that they were to be counted as saints immediately, The place where God sent them was a place in between heaven and hell called purgatory. And there, the stain of their sins was purged away by centuries, indeed sometimes millennia, thousands of years in fire. And what the church said is, ah, but don't worry. We can sell you an indulgence. And an indulgence will get you out of either a certain number of years in penance or In the case of the indulgences that were being sold in Luther's time by Tetzel for the building of St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, these indulgences will get you out of all of your time in purgatory. So you can go directly to heaven when you die, and all you have to do is buy an indulgence. Now we look at that, don't we? And we say, where is that in scripture? Where do you find purgatory? Where do you find this idea that the church has entrusted to it a bank of grace that it can dispense to people so that they can get out of this time in purgatory? And Luther rightly asked, wait a minute, if the Pope can get people out of purgatory because they're giving him money, Why doesn't he just get everybody out of purgatory just because he loves people? Wouldn't that be the Christian thing to do? Well, as crazy as the sale of indulgences sounds to us, as unscriptural as it sounds to us, it's in the Roman Catholic Catechism published in the 1990s. They still have the sale of indulgences. And the Roman Catholic Church says, we are not capable of making an error. So they can't go back and say, we goofed really badly, and now we need to get rid of this doctrine that we once taught was what God wanted people to do. To this very day, indulgences are still taught by the Church as valid. And there's a host of other things that Luther pointed out aren't in the Word of God that are still taught and practiced. The seven sacraments instead of the two that Jesus gave us. Jesus gave us baptism and the Lord's Supper. But the Roman Catholic Church added five other sacraments, including auricular confession, that is, speaking to a priest, penance, and things like that. We find also within their teaching, Mary in devotion, the idea that people are to pray to Mary and to hold her as the co-redemptrix, somebody who came alongside Christ and without whom we could have no grace. They make her, in essence, almost the fourth person of the Trinity. And there are people who want to move her actually into the Trinity, making her part of what is called, quote, the family of God. We also find taught by the Roman Catholic Church the headship of the Church by the Pope, saying that he is the head of the Church on Earth, the mediator between God and man. We find things like transubstantiation, the idea that the bread and the wine in the Mass literally become the body and blood of Christ. Not that they represent the body and blood of Christ, but they actually become that. And I could go on all night pointing out these things that the Roman Catholic Church has not changed, that are not and have never been taught within Scripture. But more than asking whether or not the Roman Catholic Church has indeed reformed its teachings in light of scripture, Mark Knoll and Carolyn Nystrom, when they wrote, Is the Reformation Over? and concluded, yes, what they failed to see was that as long as we live in a fallen world, the need for reformation can never be over. In one sense, we see what happened with Luther in 1517. We call it the Reformation. But I am convinced we should rather call it a Reformation, because that kind of godly reassessment, looking at the practice of the people of God, and then judging it in the light of Scripture, and seeking to determine, are we worshiping God right? Are we doing what he says? That's something that should be happening in the church in every age. Even right now, it's something we should be doing in our own congregation. Are we following this word? We say this is the foundation for all of our faith and our life and our practice. What is it? Or are we out of keeping with God? That should be something that's happening all the time. Because you see, reformation isn't about making the people in the church get along. It's about being faithful to the gospel as it's taught in the word of God. It's about our being conformed to the teaching of Scripture rather than our own beliefs, our own preferences, and our own practices, and our own culture setting the standard for the church. In every age, brothers and sisters, we need to go back and compare our practice to the Word of God and ask ourselves, are we following His rules or are we attempting to make Him follow ours? Thornwell put it this way regarding the need for reformation. The great error of the church in all ages, the fruitful source of her apostasy and crime has been a presumptuous reliance upon her own understanding. Her own inventions have seduced her from loyalty to God and filled her sanctuary with idols and the hearts of her children with vain imaginations. The Bible cuts at the very root of this evil by affording us a perfect and infallible rule of faith and practice. The absolute perfection of the Scriptures as a directory to man was a cardinal principle of the Reformation, and whatever could not be traced to them, either directly or by necessary inference, was denounced as a human invention, as mere will-worship, which God abhors so deeply that an inspired apostle has connected it with idolatry or the worshiping of angels. Now, in the verses that we just read, we saw how reformation, a reformation, came to ancient Judah. how the Lord brought them a reformer who, for a time, got the people of God moving in the right direction, in a scriptural direction. Now, the reformer, of course, that's spoken of in 2 Kings 22, is a king by the name of Josiah. Josiah's rule didn't start auspiciously. He was only eight years old when he began to rule, and he came from a line of ungodly parents. He had the worst grandma in the Bible, and his father was not a man of God either. And so it was likely that if he continued on in the way that his parents had gone, that he too would have grown up as a man who did not like the Lord nor follow his word. But what we read in the word, especially in the book of Chronicles, is that Josiah began to seek the God of his father, David, in the eighth year of his rule. Now, if he started reigning when he was eight, how old was he when he started to seek the God of his father, David? Eight when he began to rule, eighth year of his rule. Eight plus eight is 16. So when he was 16 years old, he began to seek the God of his father, David. He wanted nothing to do with the false practices of his father. And so what he did was he sought after the practices of his, well, I don't know what it was, great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather, David. I think there's a few more greats I'm missing, but in any event, He followed the practice of David in listening to the Lord and in seeking his face. And one of the things that he began to do immediately was he started removing the obvious points of departure from the word of God. He started to remove the high places, the Asherah poles, the carved idols, and the cast images. He started doing that when he was 20 years old. So he waited four years. And then he began to remove them. And therefore, it's not strange that in his 26th year, having begun the process of removing that which was wrong, he wanted to restore that which was right. And he senses that obligation that all the kings had to repair the temple, to put it back into right repair. So he begins to organize this repair. And apparently, the church leadership in his time was righteous, so much so that he's able to deliver money into their hands and to know that they would contract faithfully with workers to repair the temple. And he says, you don't need to audit these guys. I trust them. They love the Lord and therefore they are not going to act corruptly with the money that we place in their hands. And so it begins the needful practice of rebuilding the temple, which was the center of Israelite worship. This was the physical representation on earth of the throne room of God. This was where the sacrifices took place. This was where all of those things that we said foreshadowed the coming of Christ, foresignified his coming. Things like the killing of the Passover lamb, all of those things happened at the temple. And they were the focus, or should have been the focus, of the worship of ancient Judah. And so the repair work begins, and during repairs, God's Word is found in the temple. Now this should alarm us. God's Word is found in the temple? Wait a minute, what does that mean? It means essentially that they had lost God's Word. They find a copy of the scrolls. Now we don't know whether it was just the book of Deuteronomy or the whole Torah, the first five books of the law, but we know it was at least Deuteronomy because Josiah's reformation is clearly based on the instructions of Deuteronomy and clearly he's aware of the curses that God had pronounced would fall upon his people if they were guilty of apostasy, if they went out after false gods. And so he conducts a reformation that reflects the things that God says they're supposed to be doing in Deuteronomy. So we know it's at least Deuteronomy. A lot of exegetes believe it was a full set of the Torah, all of the books of the law. But what happened? Well, God's word, as Paul House puts it, emerged from God's house and confronted the king. How will Josiah respond? That was the crucial moment. He had heard, as the scribe begins to read this book that Hilkiah had put into his hands, Shaphan reads it in the hearing of the king and hears all these curses on idolatry, curses on the common practices, not only that were going on still in Judah, but which had been going on for centuries. Perhaps he had heard Deuteronomy 27 and 28, and those strong curses from God upon anybody who turns against him and his way and his word once they enter into the land. And when God's word with its curses on disobedience is being read to us, when the law is being read to us, it will produce one response generally or another. If we take it seriously, it will either make us contrite, that is, it'll convict us. So for instance, you remember when Peter preached his Pentecost sermon, And he put it straight to the people who were gathered. He said, you took the Messiah, the one you said you were waiting for. God sent him to you, God's only son. And what did you do? You took him with unrighteous hands and you handed him over to the Gentiles to be crucified. You killed the Lord of glory. And their response at that point was to be cut to the heart, as we're told in the book of Acts, and they cry out, men and brethren, what must we do? They're convicted of their sin. The law is read to them. They realize what a terrible situation they're in. They're convicted, and they're now looking for rescue. That's one of the ways we can respond. The other way we can respond when God's law is read, though, is we can become really, really angry. So, for instance, when Josiah's descendant Jehoiakim hears the word of God with its curses being read to him, a scroll is read in his presence, the scroll of Jeremiah, essentially the book of Jeremiah is read in his hearing, and how does he respond? He is so angry as each word is being read, he takes a small knife and he cuts pieces off of the scroll and he casts them into the fire. This is what I think of your word. This is what I think of your word. And it's condemnations on me and my practices. And although people may not sit in the pews and cut pieces out of their Bible and crumple them up or light them up with a lighter saying, this is what I think of your word. Many a time, that is exactly what's going on in their heart. They hear the word of God condemning their sin, telling them that they're on their way to hell and they are filled with fury. Whenever in my unregenerate state, I heard the word of God being preached, I just responded with this unreasonable anger. And as I've said before, it never occurred to me, wait a minute, I don't get upset by Buddhism, Islam, Norse mythology, any of these things, but this word of God from the Christians just drives me nuts, bonkers, makes me angry, because I was being convicted of sin, and my response was to push back. How dare you? Who do you think you are, God, to tell me that I'm a sinner? I don't know, God, the one who created you?" But of course, we're not willing to admit that. But in this case, Josiah's response, unlike his descendant Jehoiakim's, is not one of anger. He does not push back. Instead, he rends his garments. He's filled with woe at that point in time, recognizing, we're in trouble. We as a people have not been following God's instructions, following God's Word. And he sends, therefore, these representatives to ask a prophetess, Huldah, ask God what's going to happen? What's he going to do now? I see that we've failed for hundreds of years now to do the things that he's told us to do. And I know what he said would happen to us. These curses would fall upon us if we failed to do them. What does God intend to do? What are the consequences of the idolatry that we've been involved in for so long? And Hulda sends a word that's not very optimistic. She says, yes, the Lord's wrath is going to fall upon the nation for turning away. But then she offers words of encouragement, kind of like we heard this morning, words of encouragement and exhortation. But you, because your heart was soft, because you rent your garments, because you're concerned about my word and you love me, because your response was one of faith, I will be kind to you, Josiah. And Josiah, even though he has heard that Israel is going to be punished for their apostasy, he yet still embarks on a program of reformation. Next week we'll talk about what it was Josiah did and the application of that in our own lives. But here I want to step back and think for a moment. Now, when Josiah heard those words being read from the Word of God, somebody could have come in before he started rending his garments and said, whoa, whoa, whoa, before you rend your garments. Wait a second. Josiah, come on. You've been doing really well. You've removed some of the idols, the high places. I mean, you've been following the Lord your God for the last 10 years since you were 16 years old. Look at what you're doing now. You're repairing the temple. You've once again made it a place of popular worship. You've re-emphasized the fact that this is the place where the Israelites need to come and gather. You are a popular king. You're a good guy, Josiah. Don't rip your garments to pieces. Surely a good God isn't gonna hold this against you if you just, you know, try to do the right thing and we get as many people as we can into the temple. All right, so we've got a little bit of, you know, we're not doing the right thing on the right day and not doing it God's way, but we don't need to be that precise. It's about numbers. As long as people are attending the worship, as long as they're contributing to the work of, you know, repairing the temple and building up the kingdom, that's enough, Josiah. So don't get all, you know, we gotta do it exactly the way God tells us in his word. Come on, close enough for kingdom work, Josiah. Let's just, you know, let's give a little to the people. They like some of these things that were in pagan religion, that were attractive. And hey, if we can use those things to get them into the temple so that they can hear the word of God, so much the better, right? Right, Josiah? Josiah doesn't think that way for a second. He hears what God has commanded, and he recognizes we haven't been doing it God's way. Therefore, we've been sinning, and there's no close enough for kingdom work. It's God's way or the wrong way. Those are the only two choices. Now, I want to make an application of that. Something very similar happened during the Reformation in England. The English got to the point where they began a reformation. They removed a lot of the obvious idolatry, the things that were in-your-face departures from the Word of God. But then the Queen of England first, Elizabeth, and then James, and then Charles. Three successive regents all said, time out, enough Reformation. Okay, we're going to stop here. We've gotten rid of most of the obvious stuff, but we're not going to remove all the traditions and ceremonies of the Church. In fact, we think we have authority to decree these things. It doesn't have to be Scripture alone. It can be Scripture and the old and happy traditions that we've had for so long. So we're going to keep bishops, we're going to keep vestments, We're going to keep a lot of the pomp and the circumstance. We're not going to get down to the simple religion that we find in the Bible. That's not happening. I'm so sorry. And besides, the people love their traditions, and we don't want to make them resentful. We're going to keep it that way. Enough Reformation. We're not going to do it exactly the way God wanted. There's no need for you to be precise. It's funny, William Perkins was writing one day with a nobleman during this period of time. William Perkins was well known as a Puritan, and they got that name. It was a word of opprobrium. It was a word of condemnation. And this nobleman was discussing theological topics with Perkins, and he didn't like his answers. And he turned to him and he said, why do you Puritans have to be so precise? And he turned to him, and he answered the nobleman, oh, sir, I serve a precise God. The Lord has given his instructions in the word, and he says, do it this way. And we know as parents how irritating it is when our kids interpret our rules very, very loosely. I know you said that I was supposed to be home by 11 o'clock, but in Bangladesh, it was not 11. That kind of thing. We can find lots of excuses for not doing it the way that our parents want us to do it, and we can find ways of getting around what the clear instructions of the Word of God say as well. We make the same mistake today. We put our efforts into rebuilding the temple. and getting as many people as we possibly can in. And we declare some of the things in the culture, we'll say, yes, these things, or in the church, are just too idolatrous. We need to get rid of them. We'll cut down some of the Asherah poles in modern evangelical worship. But brothers and sisters, as I look around and I try to assess what the big problem in the evangelical church is, and I mean we could talk about lots of different things, but I think ultimately when it comes right down to it, we're dying of a famine of Scripture. The absence, the great absence in our worship these days is the Word of God. Bible reading in the average evangelical church during a worship service has been cut down to almost nothing. Yeah, prayer's gone out the window as well, but Bible reading, the Word of God, the thing that does the changing is out in most places. There's very little of it. And instead, we've brought in the things of the culture, the entertainment-oriented stuff, the singing, the skits, and so on. There's no part of the culture we won't consider importing as long as we can, you know, put a Christian veneer over it and bring it in. And when one points out the lack of scriptural warrant for doing that kind of thing, saying, where does it say in the Word that we can add things to God's worship, where we can improve upon His worship, where taking the Word out, taking prayer out, taking, you know, the solemnity of worship, taking out the right practice of the sacraments and things like that, where does it say that we can do that? I mean, doesn't Jesus say when he sends out his apostles to the nations, he says, teaching them to obey all the things that I've commanded you, not a few of the things that I've commanded you and a lot of the stuff you come up with by yourself. Isn't that the Great Commission? Aren't we supposed to be following his rules, doing it his way and obtaining blessings that way? But when we do that, the response is outrage. You know, you're being a legalist. You're being too precise. Josiah, you don't need to reform that much. Come on, as long as we're basically getting it right and people are coming into our new evangelical temple, we're close enough. But that's not the teaching of the Word. And we need to remember that, as Calvin put it so well, man's nature, so to speak, is a perpetual factory of idols. We're constantly churning out new ones, and that's why we constantly need reform. We constantly need to be assessing where we are and then going to the Word of God and seeking to determine, are we on the right track or not? And in doing this, remember, we are following the practice of the greatest reformer. And who was the greatest reformer in the Bible? Jesus Christ. One of the things that we may not recognize is that Jesus came to a church in need of reform. Jesus came to the covenant people of God at a time when they were piling tradition upon tradition upon tradition. And I'm not just talking about the theological liberals. We know that there were three different camps within Jewish society at that time, three different factions. All right, what were the three different factions? Let's see how good you guys are. Okay, there was the Sadducees, the Pharisees, and the, starts with an H, named after a king. Herodians, Sadducees, Pharisees, and the Herodians. Now, the Herodians, they'd be just the worldly people. They were trying to follow the Greek and Roman example and to conform to their practices as much as possible. Then, there were the so-called theological liberals, although they were in charge of the temple and they had the high priest's office and so on, they didn't believe the scriptures, they didn't believe the word. They went through these things as traditions and formalities. What would have been the evangelical wing of the culture at that point in time? The one that really believed the word and the prophets and was really fanatical about scripture? The Pharisees. And yet when Jesus comes to them, he comes to a Pharisaic wing. that says they love the Word of God, and they study the Word of God, and yet they are adding to the Word of God all over the place. And they were badly in need of reform. I'll give you just one example from Matthew 15-2. The Pharisees come to Jesus, and they say, Why do your disciples transgress the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands when they eat bread. He answered and said to them, why do you also transgress the commandment of God because of your tradition? For God commanded, saying, honor your father and your mother, and he who curses his father or mother, let him be put to death. But you say, whoever says to his father or mother, whatever profit you might have received from me is a gift to God. Then he need not honor his father or his mother. Thus you have made the commandment of God of no effect by your tradition. Hypocrites. Well did Isaiah prophesy against you, saying, These people draw near to me with their mouth, and honor me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. And in vain they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men. So he comes to them, and he says, You know what you're doing? You are taking the word of God and then you're constantly seeking to get around it. Rather than being convicted by it, you add all of your own additions to it. I mean, for instance, they would say that they were without sin because they didn't get sin into them. And one of the ways that they made sure that sin didn't enter into them, making them unclean, was that they would ceremonially wash their hands before eating. This is not something that was commanded in scripture, but they added it. It's a good idea. We'll ceremonially wash and get rid of any Gentile dust or having touched something defiling and not realized it, we'll wash that off us and then we won't be sinners. And Jesus comes to him and says elsewhere, don't you realize that sin is something in you that comes out of you? It's not something out there that you contaminate yourself with. But it's the fault of a defiled conscience, a fallen heart. He tells them, your traditions are actually making it impossible for you to repent and to follow the Messiah. You search the Scriptures, and these are those which speak of me, he says, and you're not finding me in the Scriptures because of all of the things that you've overlaid on the Scriptures, all of the false theology, all of the traditions. He tells them, in essence, to get back to the Word of God with all of its convicting and life-giving power. to wipe away all of their traditions, all of their ceremonies, all of their additions, all of their ways of getting around the commandments of God, and instead to accept that they are sinners in need of a Savior, which is what the Bible teaches, Old Testament and New Testament. They can't accept the gospel because they've created ways, they think, of keeping the law. And he says, you know what? You've so obscured the law that you're keeping traditions of men, not the Word of God, not the law. But it's not just Pharisees who can do that. We can do that as well. we can make the Word of God into something that shows us how to be good. In many of our churches today, all that the people hear is moral and therapeutic deism. which essentially tells them, you know, try to be good enough, try to live a good life. And it doesn't tell them that they're sinners and in need of a Savior. It doesn't tell them that without the saving righteousness of Jesus Christ, without His blood cleansing us from sin, we have no hope. And instead, it says, you're good enough, you're smart enough, and God should like you, really. But that's not the teaching of the Word. That's not what we need to hear. We need to hear what Scripture teaches, and that's why we need Reformation so very badly, so that the gospel is always being reinforced. Well, we'll talk more about what actually going through the process of Reformation involves, looking once again at 2 Kings, this time chapter 23, as we see Josiah's Reformation coming into place. But I pray that as we look at the topics in Reformation, we would be seeking to apply these to our own lives, our own hearts. Reformation needs to begin within the church. Let's pray that the Lord would be gracious to do that for us. Let's go before him now. God, our gracious Father, we are so thankful, Lord, for Your Word, for the conviction that it gives us, and for the hope that it gives us, too. It teaches us what we are to believe and what we are to do, things to be known, things to be done. It shows us how while we are all fallen in Adam, there is a Savior, and His name is Jesus Christ. And through His grace, we can have salvation freely and fully. But if we attempt to create a religion whereby our works we are saved, we will always fail. Help us then, O Lord, to take Your Word seriously and to seek to follow You as closely as we possibly can, knowing that we will fall and fail in many respects. but nonetheless knowing that it should be our heart's desire to keep your commandments out of love for you. We pray this in Jesus' holy name.