Sermon on 2 Chronicles 34–35: Josiah and the path to spiritual renewal
A sermon from Latimer Church on King Josiah's reign and what it teaches about personal and corporate spiritual renewal.
Summary
This is a sermon by James de Costobadie, Senior Pastor at Latimer Church, preaching through 2 Chronicles 34–35. Drawing on the reign of King Josiah, he argues that genuine spiritual renewal — both personal and corporate — flows from two sources: the rediscovery of God's Word, and the remembrance of God's works. He traces Josiah's trajectory from a boy king who began seeking God at sixteen, through his radical purge of idolatry, to the dramatic finding of the Book of the Law during temple repairs and the subsequent national covenant renewal. The sermon culminates in the celebration of the Passover under Josiah, which de Costobadie connects directly to the death of Jesus as the fulfilment of all that the sacrificial lambs pointed toward. Throughout, he draws pointed practical applications for individuals and for Latimer Church itself, including a challenge to restore more Scripture reading to Sunday services.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Introduction: Learning from those who shaped us
I wonder, as you look back on your life, what kind of people you're grateful for — people who taught you things that you learned from. Maybe on Father's Day we think of our own dad who taught us something, whether it's something practical, or something relational, or something spiritual. Or maybe a teacher who meant a lot to us when we were back in school, primary or secondary. I think of Mr. Carr from my primary school who taught us the value of facts — big on facts, learn the dates and learn the places. Not because of the facts themselves, but because he taught us that facts are the pegs by which you understand the human story. That's why they're important. Or maybe the person who first taught us about Christ, or who discipled us at a formative stage.
Well, today we come to learn from King Josiah, a man from the seventh century BC, who teaches us so much about how to bring about spiritual renewal. Spiritual renewal first for ourselves — how we grow spiritually, how when we find that we're in a dry spot, we get out of that and actually flourish, like the plants or trees that flourish. How do we become the kind of Christian that flourishes, so that we actually have an enthusiasm that wants to live for the Lord? But as a king over God's people, a messiah with a small 'm', he also shows us something else: what kind of leader would be needed for the people to flourish. What kind of leader does a church need, a denomination need? What kind of leader would a country need to flourish spiritually?
Here are valuable lessons. And to the faithful community of Israelites who lived post-exile, who struggled along — such as the readers of Chronicles — Josiah helps them to lift their eyes, both showing what they need personally and also what kind of leader they need as the people of God. And this morning we'll learn the same.
Josiah: the boy king who sought the Lord
Josiah himself was still in primary school when he became king. He gets a glowing report from the Chronicler. If you have a look down at verses 1 and 2: Josiah was eight years old when he became king, he reigned for thirty-one years, he did what was right in the eyes of the Lord and walked in the ways of his father David, not turning aside to the right or to the left. In other words, out of all the kings covered by the Chronicler, Josiah and his great-grandfather Hezekiah are the two who are said to walk in the ways that David did — faithful to the Lord. We know that David himself had his moments, but by and large these were people who loved the Lord, whose heart wanted to honour the Lord and walk in his ways.
Now for Josiah, his first big moment comes in his eighth year of being king — in other words, when he was sixteen. Have a look at verse 3: In the eighth year of his reign, while he was still young, he began to seek the God of his father David. I think we should take note of that. It's really emphasised here: while he was still young. He was the boy king who was becoming a young man, but at sixteen he developed a spiritual sensitivity, a spiritual seriousness, and he began to seek the Lord. That's not just coming along once a week like a potato — that is a spiritual awakening. He began to seek the Lord. The Lord mattered to him in life. He took his faith seriously, took the Lord seriously.
Which shows that we can reach that stage of spiritual hunger or sincerity quite young in life, where Christ can become the first thing to us — not the second or third thing, but actually the first thing. We begin to displace other things so that Jesus can come first, knowing that he is the most important thing. And that should encourage any of us here who are teenagers: maybe now is the moment when we need to seek the Lord and make that change. If Jesus has been there but he's been there somewhere in the background — he's on the plate, but he's on the side of the plate — maybe now is the time to seek him, make him the first.
And with Josiah, that comes against a background of having Amon as his dad and Manasseh as his granddad — in other words, two wicked kings. Hezekiah was now in the dim and distant past, the great-grandfather. Not many people here remember their great-grandfather — none, really. Well, that was the same for Josiah, so that was like a previous era. All he'd known had been negativity on the spiritual front. Which again goes to prove that our past doesn't have to define us. We may have no spiritual background at all to speak of, but in the grace of God, the future doesn't have to mirror the past. And sometimes you can come from a spiral that is going down, but when God cuts into it and brings a person to a living faith in Jesus, it can get turned around and become a positive spiritual spiral — as we heard from Lucas, where it gets passed on from one generation to the next.
Josiah's radical purge of idolatry
Josiah then begins this holy purge. Everything God hates, Josiah now hates. So he goes into full attack mode and chops down the Asherah poles and the carved idols and the cast images. We've seen that before — the Asherah poles and the carved idols — but this time he actually goes further than some of his predecessors. For example, verse 5: he burned the bones of the priests on their altars. So he goes digging, gets up the bones, and then burns them. In other words: we're never going back to that state of affairs. Which sadly didn't prove to be true in the long run, but in his lifetime it proved to be true. We're not going back there.
And we read in verse 7 that he crushed the idols to powder and cut to pieces all of the incense altars. Before, we've had it where they've been chopped down, but now this is going a stage further — they've been chopped down, and now he's going to chop them up. In other words, there is no possibility of these ever being put back together. They're gone, gone, gone, gone. And as if that wasn't enough to make his intentions clear, look geographically at where he goes. Verse 6: in the towns of Manasseh, Ephraim and Simeon, as far as Naphtali and in the ruins around them. In other words, he goes to the extremities of the kingdom, everywhere. These things are going. He's not having them anywhere in this kingdom.
Others have done it before, but he goes further. He really does hate what God hates. And that's a lesson to us here — of going to the maximum, not just going through the motions. He tackles everything he knows shouldn't be there. He's not half-hearted, only tackling the easy ones. This is not a man who's hedging his bets. He's a man who's being ruthless.
And maybe lastly on this: it's instructive that he does this before the great moment comes — which we'll come to in a moment — when they find the Book of the Law. In other words, Josiah doesn't know everything at this point, but he acts on what he does know. Which is always a sign of spiritual health. We might feel that we're a bit short on knowledge, that we don't know the Bible terribly well, but always the question is: do we act on what we do know?
You might be here this morning as someone who's not a Christian, and maybe this is quite new to you. Do you act on what you do know about Jesus? Or maybe you need to find out more about Jesus. You'll never find everything out — but that's a bit like saying you don't need to find everything out about someone before you get married to them. You just need to find out enough to know: do you trust this person? And that's what it is with Jesus. Do I know enough to find out if I can trust this person? If I don't, I need to find out more. But if I do, maybe I need to act on what I do know, rather than trying to find answers to everything in this world.
And for those of us here who are Christians, it's a challenge: do we apply what we do know? Let's not worry about what we don't know — we can fill in the pieces over the years — but are we acting on what we do know? Josiah definitely did.
For example, you might be reading through the New Testament and you come to that command that comes in several places: love one another, or love your brothers and sisters. Now the question is, do you skate over it, or do you actually do something with it? I remember, not long after I'd become a Christian, hearing from the minister of the church: if you love other Christians, you'll come to church early and you'll leave late. I'd never thought about that before. I thought you'd just sort of come when you want to come and leave when you want to leave. He was making a point — he was probably frustrated with people — but he also had a point he wanted to make, which was that you don't just come to an event. When we come to Sunday service, you come for the people, to encourage people. And if you love other Christians, it's not just about me coming to an event like I'm going to a concert — come when you want, leave when you want. It's a love for the people. So as we come across that phrase, that command — love one another — we need to think about what that might mean for me. How can I show my love for people? How can my interest in other Christians grow? It's about acting on what we do know, not worrying about what we don't know.
The rediscovery of God's Word
Now, Josiah had already got cracking in one direction. Then, at age twenty-six, he gets going in another direction, which is the restoration of the temple. The temple had been built, but this is to do with its restoration and repair. The money comes in, the labourers work faithfully, the temple gets repaired — presumably having deteriorated over the years. And then two things happen which mark out Josiah's reign and really instruct us, inform us, as to how to bring about spiritual renewal.
Two things. First of all, the rediscovery of God's Word. Verses 14 and 15: While they were bringing out the money that had been taken into the temple of the Lord, Hilkiah the priest found the book of the law of the Lord that had been given through Moses. Hilkiah said to Shaphan the secretary, I have found the book of the law in the temple of the Lord, and he gave it to Shaphan.
This is a moment of monumental importance in the life of the nation. There they are, digging through the temple — you'd imagine like a cathedral in the middle of town — doing their repairs, and someone lifts up this scroll, dusts it off, unfurls it, and they realise this is part of the law of the Lord. It's the living words of the living God. It gets delivered to the king. At the end of verse 18, Shaphan read from it in the presence of the king. And as the word is read, the king who hears this is filled with a devastating panic in his heart as he realises that the nation is exposed to God's judgment.
Verse 19 — have a look down: When the king heard the words of the law, he tore his robes and he gave these orders to Hilkiah, Abdon son of Micah, Shaphan the secretary and Azar the king's attendant: go and inquire of the Lord for me and for the remnant of Israel and Judah about what has been written in this book that has been found. Great is the Lord's anger that has been poured out on us because our fathers have not kept the word of the Lord. They have not acted in accordance with all that is written in this book.
God has made this devastating truth plain: that because the people have turned away, because Josiah's ancestors — the kings that preceded him — have turned away, they are now sitting under the judgment of God.
Now this is what the Word of God does to us. It brings the truth of God home to our hearts. It's the disturbing nature of God's Word. God's Word is an inconvenient truth. When I was growing up, I didn't come from a Christian background, but I did go to a church a bit, and I sort of remember things like the Sermon on the Mount being read. I thought they were soothing words — Jesus amongst the buttercups and dandelions, patting small lambs and saying lovely things. And then later, as an adult, I came to the Word of God and it told me what I didn't want to hear: there is a real God that I had really turned away from, a God before whom one day we will stand in judgment, and I realised that I wouldn't have a leg to stand on. It is an inconvenient truth that cuts into our lives and cuts into our hearts. Our conscience might whisper these things to us occasionally, but the scriptures confirm them in black and white. And the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, of which the scriptures speak, proves that he is the judge who one day we will all meet.
Huldah's word and the covenant renewal
Well, here the scroll from which he was reading very likely came from the book of Deuteronomy, which outlines the blessings and curses that the covenant would bring. Now, looking for a contemporary word, I think we have to realise that things were different in those days — they didn't have the completed Word of God. Josiah looks for a contemporary word from a prophet, and so he goes to Huldah, who is the prophetess. This is a category that we might say doesn't transfer into the New Testament in the same way — the New Testament has the apostles. When you get the word "prophets" in the New Testament, they're not the same as Old Testament prophets. In the New Testament, prophecy is a much wider term — for example, in Acts chapter 2, where all of God's sons and daughters will prophesy, will speak the truth. In the Old Testament it's quite specific: the prophets declare the truth. And Huldah seems to be one of those people, because of the way she introduces it.
Verse 23, she says: "This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says." It's a definite word. It comes with the authority of God. "Tell the man who sent you to me, this is what the Lord says," verse 24: "I am going to bring disaster on this place and its people, all the curses written in the book that has been read in the presence of the king of Judah. Because they have forsaken me and burned incense to other gods and provoked me to anger by all that their hands have made, my anger will be poured out on this place and will not be quenched."
Although Josiah, she goes on to say, because he has humbled himself, will escape this judgment for himself. The word from Huldah is not a good one. It is a detailed explanation for Judah's coming exile.
And what follows is then the important bit that comes out of this: the king takes responsibility for the nation to place the word back at the centre. Have a look at verse 30: He went up to the temple of the Lord with the men of Judah, the people of Jerusalem, the priests and the Levites — all the people from the least to the greatest. He read in their hearing all the words of the book of the covenant which had been found in the temple. And the king stood by his pillar and renewed the covenant in the presence of the Lord — to follow the Lord and keep his commands, regulations and decrees with all of his heart and all of his soul, and to obey the words of the covenant written in this book.
So he receives this inconvenient truth, and notice what he doesn't do. He doesn't ignore it. He doesn't bury it. He doesn't just walk out of church and think, well, if I just get out of that place and get away, life will all return to normal. He takes it seriously. He knows it's true. And so he calls all the people to come with him to the temple, and he reads it out to them. But he doesn't just read it out — he then leads them in a ceremony to follow what has been said. In other words, he reads it with a heart that wants to follow it. He believes the Lord, he wants to follow the Lord. This wasn't a case of them drifting off as they read it, in one ear and out the other. This was a reading which brought a conviction that flowed into their hearts and out into their lives.
It was personal — they were to follow the Lord, verse 31 — and they were to show that by keeping his commands. And those two sit together. How do you know someone who follows the Lord? Because they want to keep his commands. If you see someone who's keeping his commands, what does it show? That they want to follow the Lord. Well, that was Josiah here, leading them back to God.
The Word at the centre of life
And this spiritual renewal happens by rediscovering the word and putting it back at the centre of their lives. And it's the same for us. If we want to grow spiritually, you have to put the word back into the centre of our lives.
The Christian life begins when we take the Word of God seriously. If we're here this morning and we're not a Christian, that's where we need to begin. Will we obey the word of Jesus? Jesus calls on every person to repent — not to put him on the side, not to walk away from him, but to repent, to turn back to him, to acknowledge our sins and to ask him for forgiveness. That's the word of the gospel.
And then we grow as Christians by putting that word back at the centre of our lives — not occasionally snacking on it, but putting it right into the centre. Sometimes that means making more time practically. You always find time in life for the things that are important. At the end of the day, you can tell what someone thinks is important — that's the thing they give time to. Well, maybe we need to shovel some things a bit to the side to promote time for the word, rather than rushing here, rushing there, and then having a list of things we didn't do. How about doing the one thing that we do need to do, which is to put the word back into the centre? We're not told how much we have to read every day, but a little bit of the word is far more important than none of it.
I've never forgotten the preacher David Cook speaking of an Italian man in his church whose son was leaving home. The man took his son to the train station to wave him off. He was there on the platform with the other people, and the young fellow had his bags with him. The dad turned away, began to walk away, and then turned back to him and said, "Roberto" — with an Italian flourish — "read the Bible. If you cut the Bible out of your life, you cut God out of your life." And then turned away and walked off the platform.
Same word for us. If you cut the Bible out of your life, you cut God out of your life. But restore the Bible into your life and you restore God into your life — individually and as a church together.
I've been challenged by this. Anglican churches used to have four readings in their service: a Psalm, an Old Testament reading, a New Testament reading, and the Gospel — because the reading of the word matters. We've reduced it down. Normally two readings. On a bad day, one. Today was a good day because we started with the Psalms — that's two and a half. But not four. And in the old prayer book, it was four. I think we need to revisit this. Because the reading is not just a prelude to the sermon. It's about being soaked in the Word — as we sing wonderful words that convey wonderful truths, as we hear the word during the sermon, and then afterwards it's about speaking the word of God to one another. It's about seeing the word as our meat and drink, our lifeline, our oxygen, the thing on which we depend for life. It is food for our souls and essential for living.
You cannot keep a Bible shut and prosper as a Christian. And we know how this happens in life. If that's true of your life — you know the Bible's gone to the edge, been shut, dust is gathering — now is the time to take it off, blow off the dust, open it, and actually get the word into our lives and into our hearts. Rediscover the Word of God.
Remembering God's works: the Passover
And then secondly: remember God's works. That really flows out from the first. The Book of the Law had commanded that the Israelites keep celebrating the Passover once a year without fail. They were to do so so they would never forget what the Lord had done for them. The Passover was a visible sign of his grace, a reminder of how the Lord had rescued his people from Egypt. Do you remember how he did that? Bringing them out from under his judgment by allowing a lamb to be sacrificed in each household rather than the oldest son. And it established the principle of substitution — that God would accept the death of an animal in the place of a person. And so while the Egyptians died that night in their beds, including the son of Pharaoh king of Egypt, the Israelites were safely rescued.
Now what's very notable here is how invested Josiah the king was in getting this back on track. Have a look at chapter 35 and verse 7: Josiah provided for all the lay people who were there a total of thirty thousand sheep and goats for the Passover offerings, and also three thousand cattle — all from the king's own possessions.
Back in the UK, they used to do the rich list — the Forbes rich list — and the monarch was usually on there, but quite low down, because most of the monarch's wealth comes with being the monarch, not with them as a person. That's a very different thing — they're not free to just sell the palaces for themselves, that kind of thing. I think it's really instructive here: it's emphasised that it's Josiah's personal contribution — all from the king's own possessions. Thirty thousand goats and lambs — that's a lot of goat. Three thousand cattle — that's a lot of beef. So that they could have a proper Passover. And then afterwards his officials contribute some supplements as well, because their hearts are in this. They knew it was important. They wanted the people to do it.
Which takes us through to verse 16: At that time the entire service of the Lord was carried out for the celebration of the Passover and the offering of burnt offerings on the altar of the Lord, as Josiah had ordered. The Israelites who were present celebrated the Passover at that time and observed the feast of unleavened bread for seven days. The Passover had not been observed like this in Israel since the days of the prophet Samuel, and none of the kings of Israel had ever celebrated such a Passover as did Josiah.
So this had fallen on hard times over the years, but now under Josiah's leadership they remember what the Lord had done for them — his mighty works to save them, to bring them to himself. Because that's what the rescue of God's people was about: God rescued them so they might come to know him and live for him and enjoy him in the promised land of Canaan.
Josiah pointing forward to Christ
And Josiah, you see, points us forward to the leader of God's people. Sadly, at the end of his life — as with so many of the kings — Josiah does go off the rails. What was needed was another king. And years later, another king would come. Another king who would also head to Jerusalem, to the temple — this time not to celebrate the killing of the lambs, but to be the lamb who would be killed. You remember how John saw Jesus and said, "Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world." These thousands of lambs here would find their fulfilment in the blood of one person, who would do in his one death — his one full and final death — what they could never do. They could never take away sin. But he would be sacrificed once to take away the sins of all of his people.
And spiritual renewal begins when we remember God's work at the cross. Perhaps again — or for the first time — understanding that Jesus died for us. And there does come a point for all of us when that has to happen for the first time. When we realise that, yes, maybe we knew that Jesus died for the sins of the world, but then we discover it wasn't just for the sins of the world — it was for you personally. That God saw you in your sins and me in mine, and in love took action. That he lowered himself into this world for you, to die for you.
If you never realised that before this morning, maybe today is the day that you realise it. Not talking here about hypotheticals — talking here about God who gave his Son out of love for you. The Word of God tells us we stand under the judgment of God, but it also tells us of the work of God: that that judgment was borne in Jesus on the cross. And in a sense it was our sins that put him there. And we need to acknowledge that. Until we see the cross as that which is done by us, we will never see that it has been done for us.
But God was pleased to do it. He was pleased to give his one and only Son. God gave Jesus not because he had to, but because he wanted to. Not because he needed to, but because he chose to, out of love.
The transforming power of remembering the cross
And when we understand that, when we remember God's works, it changes everything. It changes our view of God. We see that he is the God who loves us, whose face is always smiling towards us — whatever your state in life, whatever the year has been like for you so far. When you see that he gave Jesus, you see that God's smile upon you, his favour turned towards you, is always the same and never goes up and down, whatever the circumstances of life. If God loved us enough to give his own Son — not just thirty thousand lambs — will he not give us all things?
It reminds us too of the completeness of what he's done. That he has paid for every single sin — the little ones, the big ones, the ones we're aware of and the hidden ones, the ones we've done once and the ones we've sadly done a thousand times. He's paid for every sin and has cleansed our conscience.
This week I was talking with an older man from Latimer, asking him a bit about his life. He's someone who's nearer the end of life than the beginning. He reflected back on his life and said, "I've done some silly things in life." And then he smiled and went on and said, "But I know that Jesus paid for every one of them." And I wonder if you can say the same. As you think back on the work of Jesus, it brings a peace, it brings a joy, it brings an assurance for the future.
Here is the place of spiritual renewal. And so often when things have gone dry — maybe we've been busier than we've ever been in life, but maybe at the same time we've lost sight of and forgotten that which is most important — these two things: the word, which needs to be rediscovered, which has perhaps moved to the outside rather than the inside, which we've been distracted from; and the work of God through Jesus, forgotten — what a mighty thing God has done for us, on which hinges our whole future, what has brought us into the family of God, which assures us of God's love for us.
Here is the solution: to rediscover the joy of reading the Bible, and to remember how great God's love for us is in Jesus. Here is the way to spiritual renewal — a renewal secured for us by God through Jesus, by his Spirit, at the cross.