“People to meet in heaven: Josiah”
II Kings 22:1-2
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus.
Who do you think was the youngest king (or queen!) ever?
There’s King Tutankhamen, (also known as King Tut!). He ruled over Egypt when he was only nine, but died, in battle, ten years later at the age of nineteen.
Murad IV began his reign over the Ottoman Empire when he was only eleven, and ruled for the next thirty-seven years. And for those thirty-seven years, he banned tobacco and alcohol, closed coffee and wine shops, and ordered the execution of anyone who dared to violate his laws!
In April of 1992, Oyo Nyimba Kabamba Iguru ascended the throne of the Toro kingdom in Uganda when he was only three. And Henry Pu Yi was crowned the emperor of China at the age of two.
But no one, no matter how young, can beat Shapur II, the tenth king of the Sasanian Empire, of the kingdom of Persia. He’s the only known royal leader who was crowned in the womb. Legend has it that his mother wore his crown on her stomach. That’s a young king!
In the Bible, in the book of II Kings, we meet one of the youngest kings ever—a boy named Josiah, someone we want to meet in heaven.
Please turn with me in your Bible to page 417 as I read the words of our text. I’ll start at chapter 22, verse 1: “Josiah was eight years old when he began to reign, and he reigned thirty-one years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Jedidah the daughter of Adaiah of Bozkath. And he did what was right in the eyes of the Lord and walked in all the ways of David his father, and he did not turn aside to the right or to the left.”
I’ll stop there for just a moment.
To better understand what’s going on here, we need to go back a few hundred years to the time of King Solomon. He reigned for forty years and, throughout his time, there was peace in the land.
But just as soon as he died, civil war broke out, fracturing the nation in two—one kingdom to the south, ruled by his son Rehoboam, and the other kingdom to the north, ruled by a man named Jeroboam.
And as time passed, there were some good kings. Jehoshaphat was good, and so were Jotham, Uzziah and Hezekiah.
But most every other one was bad, some of them really bad, like Omri, Jehoiakim and Ahab, even queens like Athaliah and Jezebel.
But now by Josiah’s time, three hundred years later, the northern kingdom was no more. The people had rebelled against God for so long and allowed idols to fill the land, He sent the Assyrian army to destroy them and to carry them off into captivity, far from the land they loved, never to return again.
Now you would think that after such a stunning judgment from God, they would have wisened up—that such grave consequences would have forced them to obey God’s will and ways.
But that’s not what happened at all. In the years that followed, Judah sank deeper and deeper into sin. And there was little that the prophets Micah, Zephaniah, Jeremiah and Habakkuk could do to stop them. All their preaching, no matter how good, fell on deaf ears.
So when Josiah finally took the throne, he inherited a kingdom that had long since lost its heart for God.
Even more, think of the ones in whose footsteps he followed. His grandfather was Manasseh, who ruled for fifty-five years. And he wasn’t just bad. He was wicked! The Bible says he led the most disgusting and vile life imaginable. Look for a moment at chapter 21, verse 16. It says: “Moreover, Manasseh shed very much innocent blood, till he had filled Jerusalem from one end to another, besides the sin that he made Judah to sin so that they did what was evil in the sight of the Lord.”
And if you think he was bad, Josiah’s father, Amon, wasn’t any better. Look at chapter 21, verse 20: “And he did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, as Manasseh his father had done.”
How bad was he? He was so bad, his own servants assassinated him. That’s what it says in chapter 21, verse 23: “And the servants of Amon conspired against him and put the king to death in his house.”
And that’s why, even at the tender age of eight, Josiah became king over the nation of Judah.
Now you would think that if his father, Amon, was bad and his grandfather, Manasseh, was bad, Josiah would turn out even worse. But by the grace of God, and only by the grace of God, that’s not what happened at all. Look at chapter 22, verse 2: “And he did what was right in the eyes of the Lord and walked in all the ways of David his father, and he did not turn aside to the right or to the left.”
Josiah didn’t just love God when he felt like it. He didn’t worship only on weekends. He devoted his life to prayer and fasting and worship. For him, God was “before all else.” There was no one more important than Him.
Isn’t that the way it always should be?
When men came to ask Jesus which of all the commandments was most important, He answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind, with all your soul, and with all your strength.” And in Matthew chapter 6, in His Sermon on the Mount, He said: “Do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them.” Then He said, “But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you as well.”
Just like Josiah, if only we could love God more than anything else.
Then what happened? Look at the heading at the top of the second column—“Josiah repairs the Temple.”
“In the eighteenth year of King Josiah,” it says, when he was twenty-six years old, he turned his father’s and his grandfather’s kingdom upside down. With carpenters, builders and masons, he rebuilt the temple in Jerusalem, so God’s people could worship Him once more.
And there was more. Lots more. Turn a page to page 418 to read the words of chapter 23, verse 1: “Then the king sent, and all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem were gathered to him. And the king went up to the house of the Lord, and with him all the men of Judah and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem and the priests and the prophets, all the people, both small and great. And he read in their hearing all the words of the Book of the Covenant that had been found in the house of the Lord.”
Now skip down to verse four: “And the king commanded Hilkiah the high priest and the priests of the second order and the keepers of the threshold to bring out of the temple of the Lord all the vessels made for Baal, for Asherah, and for all the host of heaven. He burned them outside Jerusalem in the fields of the Kidron and carried their ashes to Bethel.”
Now skip down to verse ten: “And he defiled Topheth, which is in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, that no one might burn his son or his daughter as an offering to Molech.”
Then verse thirteen: “And the king defiled the high places that were east of Jerusalem, to the south of the mount of corruption, which Solomon the king of Israel had built for Ashtoreth the abomination of the Sidonians, and for Chemosh the abomination of Moab, and for Milcom the abomination of the Ammonites. And he broke in pieces the pillars and cut down the Asherim and filled their places with the bones of men.”
You know what I think? I think America needs a Josiah.
It’s been said that our nation is worse than it’s ever been before. What else would cause a sixteen-year-old high school student to go on a stabbing rampage through his school in Pennsylvania, or would cause two eighteen-year-olds to beat a thirty-year-old man to death with a baseball bat, just so they could steal his Xbox, or would cause a new father to put six-week-old daughter in a freezer to keep her from crying?
America is worse than it’s ever been before.
Back in 1960, 72 percent of all adults in the United States were married. Today, it’s 51 percent. Each year, more babies are killed by abortion than American soldiers were killed in battle in all our wars combined. And on 9/11, as we watched in horror as 3,000 Americans lost their lives, every day, 3,000 children die by abortion, yet we hardly bat an eye. Eleven percent of all Americans over the age of twelve (!) said they’ve driven home, under the influence of alcohol, at least once this past year. And while mosques are springing up in towns and villages across our country, Christian churches are empty. It’s no surprise. Sixty-six percent of all U.S. adults think religion has lost its influence on life.
America needs a Josiah!
You know the name, and perhaps some of his story. Terry Anderson was an American journalist serving in Beirut. But in March of 1985, Islamic terrorists kidnapped him, stuffed him in the trunk of their car, took him from one secret location to another, and imprisoned him for six years and nine months. The only blessing he had, he said, was they let him read the Bible, which he had never done before.
Terry was not a good man. In his book entitled, Den of Lions, he wrote, “I drank too much, but there was no alcohol in my captivity; I chased women—no women here; I’m arrogant—what better thing than to put me in the hands of these arrogant, uncaring young men; I’ve been careless of others’ feelings—these people gave not one tiny thought to mine; I’ve been agnostic most of my life—my only comforts here are the Bible and my prayers.”
What changed him? God’s grace. God’s Word. And that’s the only hope we have today.
That is, after all, what it says in II Chronicles chapter 7: “If My people, who are called by My name, will humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”
We thank You, dear Lord, for Josiah, and the peace he sought to bring. But we thank You even more, for Jesus, who died, yet who rose again, that we might be sons and daughters of the King. We ask it in His name. Amen