SPEAKER_00: All right, church.
SPEAKER_00: That's a blessing.
SPEAKER_00: Singing with you, the gathered saints, the family of God.
SPEAKER_00: It's the pinnacle of the week for me.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm just glad to be here with all of you.
SPEAKER_00: At this time, I just invite you to get out your Bibles or get out a Bible app.
SPEAKER_00: And I want you to go to the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_00: We're going to the book of 2 Kings, chapter 23.
SPEAKER_00: We're going to be looking at verses 1 through 20.
SPEAKER_00: It's a large text, and I want you to understand as we get towards the bottom, the last part of it, I'm not going to be hitting every verse, but I will be pulling out truths really from most of the verses.
SPEAKER_00: But you can also take your study guide and you can your worship guide.
SPEAKER_00: You can take notes as well.
SPEAKER_00: We started, I believe, three weeks ago, this new series we've called Restoring Joy, and what we're doing is we're looking at the life of King Josiah and seeing how joy can be restored.
SPEAKER_00: I do want to say this as we were singing and we were worshiping, I was thinking about this.
SPEAKER_00: The word of God, we study it because it is the revelation of God to us, who He is, what pleases Him, His characters, His attributes.
SPEAKER_00: But contained in the Word of God are a lot of different stories of men and women who have come before us.
SPEAKER_00: King Josiah being one of them.
SPEAKER_00: We're separated, you know, by, I don't know, 4,000, 5,000 years.
SPEAKER_00: But sometimes you get in this situation where you think you're going through something that no one else has gone through, but that's just not true.
SPEAKER_00: King Josiah is going through something that many of us have gone through or may be going through, not in all, but at least in part.
SPEAKER_00: And I'll tell you what, one of the things that life teaches you is that you learn from your own mistakes.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm telling you right now, it's even better if you can learn from someone else's mistakes.
SPEAKER_00: And so we're studying his life.
SPEAKER_00: We're seeing a man who had lost joy in the steps that were taken that came to him so that he would receive joy, joy in the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Week one, we saw him come to faith.
SPEAKER_00: Last week we saw that they found the Bible in the church, and he read it, he repented, he did all of that.
SPEAKER_00: Now we're moving kind of to the next kind of step, and we're going to see that sin must be removed.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: I think this is something we all understand, but there is a difference between finding out something is wrong and then actually doing something about it.
SPEAKER_00: I think we all get that.
SPEAKER_00: It's something we've all experienced, you know.
SPEAKER_00: Like you can go to the doctor and you can take all the testy tests, you know, and you can get the results, and the doctor can say, you know, you know, this is the problem.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, this is the problem.
SPEAKER_00: Now that's one thing.
SPEAKER_00: That's one thing.
SPEAKER_00: But it's another thing for the doctor then in turn to say, now here is what needs to change in order to address the problem.
SPEAKER_00: That's when it becomes difficult.
SPEAKER_00: And that's when it becomes hard, man.
SPEAKER_00: It gets personal.
SPEAKER_00: It's one thing to hear the doctor say something like, maybe you got high cholesterol.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, I get that.
SPEAKER_00: It's a whole nother thing when the doctor says, you know what, you need to eat healthy and get more exercise.
SPEAKER_00: You know, you gotta actually address it.
SPEAKER_00: If you don't address it, there's not much you can do.
SPEAKER_00: Information by itself does not bring transformation.
SPEAKER_00: The diagnosis by itself does not lead to, you know, health.
SPEAKER_00: You need to do something.
SPEAKER_00: That is where we find Josiah at right now.
SPEAKER_00: Last week you got the diagnosis.
SPEAKER_00: You've sinned.
SPEAKER_00: You've sinned against God.
SPEAKER_00: Now he received it and he repented, but this is going to lead us to 2 Kings chapter 23.
SPEAKER_00: From there, he's going to move on to actually doing something about it.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm telling you right now, that that doing something about it, that is something that often for me, for us, I think, can be a breakdown.
SPEAKER_00: Josiah does not, you know, hear the word of God and say that is interesting.
SPEAKER_00: He goes, No, I'm going to do something about it.
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to make some changes, right?
SPEAKER_00: I'm not going to go back to the same idols.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not going to go back to the same altars.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not going to go back to the same compromises, you know.
SPEAKER_00: So he begins removing what had been competing with God in his life.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm telling you, that is what makes this text so challenging.
SPEAKER_00: Because we all want the joy of forgiveness, but you know, sometimes we don't really like the pain of removal.
SPEAKER_00: And so we're just going to walk through the text.
SPEAKER_00: We're going to see exactly what Josiah does.
SPEAKER_00: All right.
SPEAKER_00: There's really kind of, as I was reading it, I believe there's four steps that he took.
SPEAKER_00: And so we're just going to begin with step number one.
SPEAKER_00: Returning to God's word.
SPEAKER_00: All right.
SPEAKER_00: 2 Kings chapter 23, verse 1.
SPEAKER_00: He's heard the word, he's received the word.
SPEAKER_00: He's repented of his sin.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 1.
SPEAKER_00: Then the king, that's King Josiah, sent.
SPEAKER_00: And all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem were gathered to him.
SPEAKER_00: Alright.
SPEAKER_00: Once again, you can see this is connected to what we talked about last week.
SPEAKER_00: You see that word then.
SPEAKER_00: That word then means then after he did this.
SPEAKER_00: He heard it.
SPEAKER_00: He received.
SPEAKER_00: God saved him.
SPEAKER_00: He got the word.
SPEAKER_00: He read it.
SPEAKER_00: Then, then he's going to act upon it, right?
SPEAKER_00: Then, then he did something.
SPEAKER_00: He's going to move.
SPEAKER_00: He's going to make some action.
SPEAKER_00: There's going to be some change in his life.
SPEAKER_00: He gathers the elders.
SPEAKER_00: He gathers the leaders.
SPEAKER_00: And once he does that, what does he do?
SPEAKER_00: Verse 2.
SPEAKER_00: Here's what he does.
SPEAKER_00: That's cool, dude.
SPEAKER_00: I love it.
SPEAKER_00: He goes, okay.
SPEAKER_00: And the king went up to the house of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: He's going to go up to the house of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: He's going to go to church.
SPEAKER_00: That's what he's going to do.
SPEAKER_00: And with him, he's going to bring some people with him.
SPEAKER_00: All the men of Judah and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem and the priests and the prophets, all the people, both small and great.
SPEAKER_00: And he read, we're going to read the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: He's going to read the Bible in their hearing all the totality.
SPEAKER_00: Man, that brings up something here, man.
SPEAKER_00: All the words.
SPEAKER_00: Think about this, man.
SPEAKER_00: It's very convenient to go and just read the verses you like.
SPEAKER_00: He goes, No, we're going to read all of them.
SPEAKER_00: All of it.
SPEAKER_00: All the words of the book of the covenant that had been found in the house of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: This is awesome.
SPEAKER_00: He gets all the people.
SPEAKER_00: He gets all the leaders.
SPEAKER_00: He gets all the people.
SPEAKER_00: And he takes them.
SPEAKER_00: He goes, nation, we're going to go to church, you know?
SPEAKER_00: And when he gets there, what does he do?
SPEAKER_00: He opens the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: He reads it.
SPEAKER_00: He just read it.
SPEAKER_00: Last week it was read to him.
SPEAKER_00: He read it.
SPEAKER_00: He heard it.
SPEAKER_00: He goes, you know what we need?
SPEAKER_00: We all need.
SPEAKER_00: He likes, hey, we in a big mess.
SPEAKER_00: I'm in a mess.
SPEAKER_00: We in a mess.
SPEAKER_00: What we need to do is we need to get to church.
SPEAKER_00: We have sinned and we need to hear the word of God.
SPEAKER_00: And that is exactly what he did.
SPEAKER_00: And as I was reading that, and I'm thinking on it, I believe there is a principle for you and I in this.
SPEAKER_00: Alright?
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes you may not know what to do.
SPEAKER_00: Like you go, man, I'm you know you're in a mess.
SPEAKER_00: You know you be doing ugly.
SPEAKER_00: You know all this stuff.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you've even repented of it, but the results of the sin in your life is just messy.
SPEAKER_00: And you don't even know where to begin.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you're here right now.
SPEAKER_00: You go, I got, I'm gonna mess.
SPEAKER_00: I've done some things I shouldn't have done.
SPEAKER_00: I know all this stuff.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna I don't know how to address it.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know the next step.
SPEAKER_00: Let's learn from Josiah.
SPEAKER_00: He just says, hey, maybe you just go church.
SPEAKER_00: Just go to church.
SPEAKER_00: That could that that that's the first, maybe that's the first step, man.
SPEAKER_00: Put yourself in a position where you are around God's people.
SPEAKER_00: Put yourself in a position where you're hearing the word of God proclaimed, man.
SPEAKER_00: That is the first step, right?
SPEAKER_00: Listen, I'm telling you, the first step is often just show up, man.
SPEAKER_00: Just show up.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what it does.
SPEAKER_00: He guides everybody.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna go to church and we're gonna hear the word of God.
SPEAKER_00: And he says, and I love this, both small and great.
SPEAKER_00: That tells us something.
SPEAKER_00: That tells us that no one is too important and no one is too insignificant to sit under the proclaimed word of God.
SPEAKER_00: The king needs it.
SPEAKER_00: You can do the list right there.
SPEAKER_00: The priests need it, the leaders need it, the people need it, we all need it.
SPEAKER_00: You ain't met nobody, seen nobody, been around nobody who ain't be needing to hear the word of God proclaims, right?
SPEAKER_00: Proclaim.
SPEAKER_00: Because we listen, church, we are a people that cannot be formed by the culture.
SPEAKER_00: You got all these voices going around.
SPEAKER_00: We're not formed by that.
SPEAKER_00: We are a people formed by revelation, the revelation of God.
SPEAKER_00: In order to know it, you gotta read it.
SPEAKER_00: In order to be, I don't know, just impacted by.
SPEAKER_00: You gotta be on God's people.
SPEAKER_00: You gotta hear it proclaimed.
SPEAKER_00: You gotta let it sit on you.
SPEAKER_00: You gotta let you know.
SPEAKER_00: It's like a little, I don't know, it's kind of like a washing machine, man.
SPEAKER_00: You get in here and you get the God the Spirit moving, and he does, you know what God the Spirit does, and you gotta put yourself in there, and you gotta sit there, and you gotta hear it, and you gotta let it hit you, and you gotta, I don't know.
SPEAKER_00: I've been there, put that pressure cooker on you, man, and that's what they're doing, man.
SPEAKER_00: First step, first step you see here is he returns to God's word.
SPEAKER_00: All right.
SPEAKER_00: You're gonna keep reading, we're gonna keep on reading.
SPEAKER_00: They're gonna do a second thing.
SPEAKER_00: They're going to renew their covenant.
SPEAKER_00: You see this renewing your covenant.
SPEAKER_00: Now check this out.
SPEAKER_00: So you got you got everybody up in the church, everybody in the church, you got the word of God being, you know, read.
SPEAKER_00: Look what goes down.
SPEAKER_00: And, so in addition to reading, the king stood.
SPEAKER_00: He get we see where he's standing by the pillar.
SPEAKER_00: That's the center of the church.
SPEAKER_00: That's the main, you know, kind of pinnacle, and made a covenant before the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: It's a covenant, man.
SPEAKER_00: Here's his covenant: to walk after the Lord and to keep his commandments and his testimonies and his statutes.
SPEAKER_00: How?
SPEAKER_00: With all of his heart and all of his soul.
SPEAKER_00: All right, to, in addition, perform them, to do them, to work them out in his life, the words of the covenant that were written in the book, in the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: And all the people joined in the covenant.
SPEAKER_00: All right.
SPEAKER_00: So it gets real here.
SPEAKER_00: He's getting real real.
SPEAKER_00: You get the people all gathered in the church.
SPEAKER_00: They're hearing the word preached, proclaimed, and read.
SPEAKER_00: They make a covenant, a commitment.
SPEAKER_00: This is this is more than a reading.
SPEAKER_00: This requires a response, right?
SPEAKER_00: He's by the pillar, man.
SPEAKER_00: That's the foundation.
SPEAKER_00: This guy is serious.
SPEAKER_00: He's saying, Man, I read the word of God.
SPEAKER_00: The word of God has impacted me.
SPEAKER_00: It has informed me.
SPEAKER_00: It has taught me, man.
SPEAKER_00: There's things contained in it that I want to orient my life around, and I am going to sit here and I'm going to do business, right?
SPEAKER_00: Things are about to change, is what he's saying.
SPEAKER_00: Things in my life are about to change.
SPEAKER_00: Things in the nation are about to change.
SPEAKER_00: We renew our allegiance to God.
SPEAKER_00: Made a covenant.
SPEAKER_00: You know, what's a covenant?
SPEAKER_00: It's a solemn commitment before God.
SPEAKER_00: He's saying, hey, church, he's saying, people, nation, everybody, hey, I want to be clear here.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord, our God, is not going to be an option among many other options.
SPEAKER_00: We're not going to just add him to things we already have, right?
SPEAKER_00: We got all these idols.
SPEAKER_00: There's idols everywhere.
SPEAKER_00: I want you to know he's not going to be, he's not going to be added to our idols.
SPEAKER_00: We belong to him.
SPEAKER_00: We belong to him alone.
SPEAKER_00: And we're going to nail that down right now.
SPEAKER_00: We are submitting everything to God, right?
SPEAKER_00: Not just, I don't know, not just the parts, not just the parts that are culturally acceptable.
SPEAKER_00: Not just the parts that fit into my schedule, you know.
SPEAKER_00: I all of it.
SPEAKER_00: All of it.
SPEAKER_00: Everything.
SPEAKER_00: My time is his.
SPEAKER_00: My life is his.
SPEAKER_00: My resources are his.
SPEAKER_00: The gifting that he's given me, they belong to him, and ain't nothing going to compete with that.
SPEAKER_00: And he says, and then he says it with all my heart and my soul.
SPEAKER_00: I'm all in.
SPEAKER_00: You got it.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord God Almighty, He got everything.
SPEAKER_00: He got it all, you know.
SPEAKER_00: You know, you know, this may, I don't know.
SPEAKER_00: This may, you know, some Christians may not know this, but you know, God is not looking for weekend custody, you know.
SPEAKER_00: Some people, some people think, you know, He got weekend custody, man.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna give, you know what I'm gonna do?
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna give Jesus the visitation rights.
SPEAKER_00: You know, you got this little slender part of my schedule, man.
SPEAKER_00: No, Jesus church wants the whole house.
SPEAKER_00: He's not bashful about saying it either.
SPEAKER_00: From the very beginning, he done said it over and over again.
SPEAKER_00: All the Bible, I want it all.
SPEAKER_00: I want it all.
SPEAKER_00: The word of God is not just to be admired, it's to be obeyed, man.
SPEAKER_00: And that's when it moves the difference.
SPEAKER_00: That's the difference, man.
SPEAKER_00: That's a dude, that's the difference between being moved and being changed.
SPEAKER_00: We all know what it's like to be moved.
SPEAKER_00: I know in my life, I have been in situations where the word of God has moved me.
SPEAKER_00: And I didn't change.
SPEAKER_00: I heard some, I've heard some.
SPEAKER_00: In my life, I have been blessed to just hear some amazing messages, and I was moved.
SPEAKER_00: I even made commitments in the service, but then I left and did not change a pattern that needed to be changed.
SPEAKER_00: We can come and we can worship with music, and you can get emotional, and I've done it before, but yet leave these doors.
SPEAKER_00: Once again, I talked about this last week.
SPEAKER_00: And do nothing.
SPEAKER_00: You can find a verse in the Bible and it can mean something to you, and you can post it on all the socials that you got and still not do anything to change.
SPEAKER_00: Change begins when you say, Lord, your my heart is yours.
SPEAKER_00: And I belong to you.
SPEAKER_00: Your word is right, your way is best, your authority stands over me.
SPEAKER_00: And it says, All the people joined in.
SPEAKER_00: I know everybody there.
SPEAKER_00: We're all in.
SPEAKER_00: Everybody is like, amen.
SPEAKER_00: We as a people are returning to the word of God.
SPEAKER_00: They renew their commitment, they renew this covenant.
SPEAKER_00: All right.
SPEAKER_00: So you kind of see this progression here.
SPEAKER_00: They hear it, they make a commitment.
SPEAKER_00: Now, once again, I can pattern this after my own life because I've been in this situation.
SPEAKER_00: Once the Lord saves you, you read the word, it cuts you, you make a new commitment.
SPEAKER_00: All right.
SPEAKER_00: There's a step after that.
SPEAKER_00: I've already briefly talked about it.
SPEAKER_00: You got to put in action what you just committed to.
SPEAKER_00: And that's where we find him next.
SPEAKER_00: Rejecting false worship.
SPEAKER_00: It's action time.
SPEAKER_00: Now, this is one of the longest sections that we're going to be going over, so we're not going to be hitting everything.
SPEAKER_00: But here's what I'm here's how we're going to handle it.
SPEAKER_00: And I want us to see this, all right?
SPEAKER_00: There's a pattern here, there's a broad sweep here, okay?
SPEAKER_00: What we're going to see is this Josiah will begin at the temple.
SPEAKER_00: He's going to begin in the church.
SPEAKER_00: He's making some changes.
SPEAKER_00: We go, they done said it, they made the commitment.
SPEAKER_00: We're going to live under the Lord's authority.
SPEAKER_00: Things are going to be different now.
SPEAKER_00: Nothing's going to compete with God.
SPEAKER_00: We've got to remove idols.
SPEAKER_00: He begins in the church, and then he goes broader.
SPEAKER_00: He's going to go into Jerusalem, and then he's going to go to the whole nation, to Judah.
SPEAKER_00: And so you see this, this, this, this pattern, this, this big kind of sweep.
SPEAKER_00: And here's what I want to say, because I was thinking about this.
SPEAKER_00: Um, this is good.
SPEAKER_00: I think there's a I think there's a principle here for you and I, all right?
SPEAKER_00: He has made a commitment.
SPEAKER_00: They are in a big mess.
SPEAKER_00: They got a lot of house cleaning to do.
SPEAKER_00: And the way he starts is this.
SPEAKER_00: He starts, I don't know, to what's nearest him.
SPEAKER_00: And as he tackles that, he's going to move out making these reforms, all right?
SPEAKER_00: I think that's, I think this is good.
SPEAKER_00: I think it's a good strategy, you're right.
SPEAKER_00: Because once again, you get in these situations, the Lord gets your attention, you repent of your sin, you make the commitment, and you're sitting there and you're thinking, my mess is a big old mess.
SPEAKER_00: And I don't even know where to begin.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know where to begin.
SPEAKER_00: They began by going to the church, but now how am I going to actually do this?
SPEAKER_00: Well, Josiah says, begin with what's nearest.
SPEAKER_00: Go for because if you think about everything, sometimes when I start thinking about everything, I just tap out immediately.
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, I don't know how I'm going to do that.
SPEAKER_00: Josiah does this little patter.
SPEAKER_00: He's like, you know, let's just start near.
SPEAKER_00: Let's start with the low-hanging fruit.
SPEAKER_00: I can't address everything at once, but I'm going to start near.
SPEAKER_00: So he starts in the church, verse four.
SPEAKER_00: And the king commanded Helkiah, the high priest, and the priest of the second order, and the keepers of the threshold to bring out.
SPEAKER_00: This is interesting.
SPEAKER_00: Bring out of the temple of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: So we're talking about this is the church.
SPEAKER_00: Bring these things out of the church, all the vessels made for Baal, for Asherah, and for all the host of heaven.
SPEAKER_00: He takes them and he burned them outside of Jerusalem in fields of the Kedron and carried their ashes to Bethel.
SPEAKER_00: This is kind of shocking.
SPEAKER_00: And you're reading that, it's kind of shocking.
SPEAKER_00: He starts in the church and he says, you know what?
SPEAKER_00: In the church, contained in the church, we have these vessels to pagan gods.
SPEAKER_00: But look in the church.
SPEAKER_00: In the church.
SPEAKER_00: They're in the church, man.
SPEAKER_00: Objects devoted to pagan demon gods are found within the church, right?
SPEAKER_00: They're being displayed in the church.
SPEAKER_00: Church itself.
SPEAKER_00: He was going to start here.
SPEAKER_00: We're going to start in the church, man.
SPEAKER_00: The church had been become cluttered with idols.
SPEAKER_00: Demon idols, they're in the church, man.
SPEAKER_00: You know, that's how compromise kind of works, right?
SPEAKER_00: Like like compromise, man, it's not.
SPEAKER_00: Compromise is not necessarily just openly rejecting God.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes compromise begins when you just start adding something beside God.
SPEAKER_00: I guess that's what happened there.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know, because it was the churchy church, you know.
SPEAKER_00: Some point someone said, Hey, why don't we bring in this asherah?
SPEAKER_00: Why don't we bring this in?
SPEAKER_00: They they didn't remove God from the building.
SPEAKER_00: Like God was still in the building.
SPEAKER_00: They just said, let's crowd God with some rivals.
SPEAKER_00: That's what we're going to do, man.
SPEAKER_00: And that's that's one of the dangers, even of the human heart.
SPEAKER_00: That's one of the dangers of my heart, right?
SPEAKER_00: And most of us here today, we're not going to openly say, I don't want God.
SPEAKER_00: Like, we're not going to say that, man.
SPEAKER_00: The more common temptation is just to say, I want God, but I want this other stuff too, you know?
SPEAKER_00: But God don't share his throne, man.
SPEAKER_00: God don't share his throne.
SPEAKER_00: So Josiah says, bring that stuff out of the church.
SPEAKER_00: What's interesting?
SPEAKER_00: He goes, you're going to see him do this over and over again.
SPEAKER_00: He goes, bring that stuff out the church and burn them.
SPEAKER_00: Burn them.
SPEAKER_00: Notice this.
SPEAKER_00: Now I'm going to talk about this because this is interesting.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't say, he doesn't say, bring them out the church and put them in the storage.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't say bring them out, bring them out and box them up in case somebody wants them at a later date.
SPEAKER_00: He goes, no, we're going to burn them.
SPEAKER_00: We're going to burn them.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm reading this and I'm thinking, that speaks to me.
SPEAKER_00: That speaks to me.
SPEAKER_00: Like I'll know, man, because I've seen this.
SPEAKER_00: I've seen this work out in other people's lives too.
SPEAKER_00: But that people say, man, we don't, we, we want to, we want, we, we, we, we want to repent, and I want to stop doing this, but you know, I don't want to remove the sin.
SPEAKER_00: Here's what I'm going to do.
SPEAKER_00: I'm just going to, I'm just going to relocate it.
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to relocate it, put it somewhere else, right?
SPEAKER_00: I want to keep access to it.
SPEAKER_00: I want to keep the option open.
SPEAKER_00: You know, I I hate the sin.
SPEAKER_00: I repent of the sin, but I'm going to put it over here, you know?
SPEAKER_00: And you say, who would do that?
SPEAKER_00: I would.
SPEAKER_00: Because I have, man.
SPEAKER_00: I've done stuff like that, dude.
SPEAKER_00: You get all high and mighty.
SPEAKER_00: You keep it in the closet.
SPEAKER_00: Ain't nobody know.
SPEAKER_00: Let me tell you.
SPEAKER_00: It's a real story, man.
SPEAKER_00: Oh man, this will date me.
SPEAKER_00: This is gonna date me, okay?
SPEAKER_00: When we were in Africa, you know, this was before iTunes, and um didn't have access to music, but they had all these little different, I don't know, you know, sites you could go to and you could illegally download music.
SPEAKER_00: Now illegally, I would illegally download music.
SPEAKER_00: And I would burn them on.
SPEAKER_00: You may never heard of this as a CD, you know what I'm saying?
SPEAKER_00: And so I'd have my music on my CD so I could run and all this stuff.
SPEAKER_00: I justified in all sorts of ways.
SPEAKER_00: I went to church one Sunday, and I wasn't preaching that Sunday.
SPEAKER_00: And but I went to church and the pastor's preaching.
SPEAKER_00: And dude, the Lord was just, just whooping me, man.
SPEAKER_00: You know what the Lord told me?
SPEAKER_00: I'll tell you what the Lord told me.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know how the Lord speaks to you.
SPEAKER_00: This is how he spoke to me.
SPEAKER_00: Travis, you a thief.
SPEAKER_00: That's harsh, dude.
SPEAKER_00: What do you mean a thief?
SPEAKER_00: You steal stuff.
SPEAKER_00: What are you stealing?
SPEAKER_00: You steal music.
SPEAKER_00: I was convicted.
SPEAKER_00: I was convicted, man.
SPEAKER_00: So I gotta go home and take care of business.
SPEAKER_00: And um, I go home and you got all the man, you got all the CDs you bought, you got all the work you put into it, and you know I'm sitting there, I'm like, it's so lame.
SPEAKER_00: I'm so lame.
SPEAKER_00: I like maybe I could give it to somebody.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord's like, trash, you can't give stuff you stole to somebody.
SPEAKER_00: You know?
SPEAKER_00: You know, what if I what if I want it later?
SPEAKER_00: It's still sin.
SPEAKER_00: So that day I broke all my music up, you know.
SPEAKER_00: But I wanted to keep it.
SPEAKER_00: I wanted to keep it.
SPEAKER_00: But Josiah, he's like, no, man, I'm gonna burn it.
SPEAKER_00: You're gonna see this pattern.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna run through a lot of this.
SPEAKER_00: He burns a lot of stuff, all right?
SPEAKER_00: Close that door.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 5.
SPEAKER_00: Keep going.
SPEAKER_00: And he deposed, this is so crazy to me.
SPEAKER_00: And he deposed the priest whom the king of Judah had, look at that, ordained to make offering in the high places at the cities of Judah and around Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: Frightening.
SPEAKER_00: They had actually ordained priests to make offerings to demon gods, idols, right?
SPEAKER_00: Verse 6.
SPEAKER_00: He disposed of them.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know what that means.
SPEAKER_00: It can't be good.
SPEAKER_00: Anyway, verse 6.
SPEAKER_00: And he brought he brought out the Asherah from the house of the Lord outside of Jerusalem, outside Jerusalem, to the brook Kedron.
SPEAKER_00: Once again, what does he do?
SPEAKER_00: Burned it at the brook Kedron.
SPEAKER_00: He didn't only burn it and beat it to dust and cast the dust of it upon the graves of the common people.
SPEAKER_00: He burns it.
SPEAKER_00: He's intense, man.
SPEAKER_00: He's like, guys, life's gonna be different.
SPEAKER_00: This is what he's saying.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna do things differently.
SPEAKER_00: Burn it, beat it, scatter it.
SPEAKER_00: Now check this out.
SPEAKER_00: This is this this is all this is all real, dudes, guys.
SPEAKER_00: Listen.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 7 will grieve you.
SPEAKER_00: And he broke down the houses of the male cult prostitutes who were in the house of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Did I read that right?
SPEAKER_00: In the house of the Lord?
SPEAKER_00: What in the world is going on?
SPEAKER_00: What is going on?
SPEAKER_00: This is meant to grieve us.
SPEAKER_00: Sexual immorality had been attached to worship.
SPEAKER_00: That's what the pagans did.
SPEAKER_00: They adopted it.
SPEAKER_00: What God created as holy has been twisted.
SPEAKER_00: It was outside the church.
SPEAKER_00: They like, you know what, we want it inside the church, right?
SPEAKER_00: It's connected to the temple.
SPEAKER_00: Once again, he keeps going after everything.
SPEAKER_00: All these things.
SPEAKER_00: He keeps hitting them.
SPEAKER_00: And I guarantee you, these are sensitive.
SPEAKER_00: People loved all this stuff.
SPEAKER_00: He's going after things are different.
SPEAKER_00: Things are going to be different.
SPEAKER_00: You get to verse 8 and 9.
SPEAKER_00: He keeps burning.
SPEAKER_00: He keeps beating the stuff to dust.
SPEAKER_00: Then if verse 7 wasn't dark enough, verse 10 is the darkest verse in the whole passage.
SPEAKER_00: Church, okay, I don't raise the hands here.
SPEAKER_00: If you've never read the Old Testament, this is going to absolutely shock you.
SPEAKER_00: I remember, I remember, no, dude, I remember when I was, this is my undergraduate and I was in an Old Testament class.
SPEAKER_00: And I hadn't read this, man.
SPEAKER_00: And I read this, and I'm like, what?
SPEAKER_00: The people of God.
SPEAKER_00: Look, verse 10.
SPEAKER_00: And he defiled Tolfeth, which is in the valley of the son of Henam, that no one might, look at this, burn his sons or his daughters as an offering to Molech, a pagan demon.
SPEAKER_00: That's what.
SPEAKER_00: What in the world?
SPEAKER_00: There's no way to soften that.
SPEAKER_00: The nation had fallen so far into idolatry that children were being sacrificed for real.
SPEAKER_00: The people of God.
SPEAKER_00: The people of God would take their sons, their daughters, and burn them on an altar to a demon.
SPEAKER_00: The people of God had fallen so far that they would actually embrace a form of worship that destroyed their children.
SPEAKER_00: It's appalling.
SPEAKER_00: There's no words here, but I want to back it up a bit, man.
SPEAKER_00: Let me say this.
SPEAKER_00: This is what idols do.
SPEAKER_00: Idols make a promise that they cannot keep.
SPEAKER_00: All idols.
SPEAKER_00: They promise freedom.
SPEAKER_00: They give you bondage.
SPEAKER_00: Once again, I could ask any of you to raise your hand and give a testimony, and many of you could, because you know what I could tell you.
SPEAKER_00: They promise you pleasure.
SPEAKER_00: What do you get?
SPEAKER_00: You get shame.
SPEAKER_00: They promise you life, you get pain and sacrifice.
SPEAKER_00: Here is a universal truth.
SPEAKER_00: Whatever becomes ultimate in your life will eventually demand sacrifices from your life that God never asked for.
SPEAKER_00: If success becomes ultimate, you may sacrifice your family.
SPEAKER_00: If comfort becomes your ultimate, obedience will be sacrificed.
SPEAKER_00: If sports, if money, if image, if politics, if pleasure becomes ultimate, it will start asking you for offerings that God never required.
SPEAKER_00: And you see it.
SPEAKER_00: We're going to move kind of rapidly here.
SPEAKER_00: He's doing the same thing.
SPEAKER_00: He's getting smaller.
SPEAKER_00: He's going out, out, and out.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 11.
SPEAKER_00: He burned the chariots of the sun with fire.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 12, the altars of Manasseh he pulled down and broke into pieces.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 13, once again, this stuff, oh, this is yeah.
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: Let's talk about verse 13.
SPEAKER_00: It goes even farther back.
SPEAKER_00: And the king, Josiah, defiled the high places that King Solomon, the king of Israel, had built.
SPEAKER_00: That'll stop you.
SPEAKER_00: King Solomon?
SPEAKER_00: King Solomon had built pagan worship sites?
SPEAKER_00: The son of David?
SPEAKER_00: The wisest man to walk on earth apart from God in the flesh, Jesus Christ?
SPEAKER_00: What I find interesting here.
SPEAKER_00: You got Solomon building something.
SPEAKER_00: Josiah looks at it and says, I don't care who built it.
SPEAKER_00: I don't care who built it.
SPEAKER_00: It's coming down.
SPEAKER_00: It's coming down, man.
SPEAKER_00: And I think about that.
SPEAKER_00: Once again, we can fast forward to us right now.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes we protect a compromise because it has history.
SPEAKER_00: It does.
SPEAKER_00: Can you say stuff?
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
SPEAKER_00: That's just how my family is.
SPEAKER_00: I was raised that way.
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to keep on doing it.
SPEAKER_00: It's a family tradition.
SPEAKER_00: It's our tradition.
SPEAKER_00: That's our tradition.
SPEAKER_00: You know, don't be talking about my tradition, man.
SPEAKER_00: But if God's word calls it a sin, your tradition doesn't make it not sin.
SPEAKER_00: He goes, I don't care Solomon built that.
SPEAKER_00: It comes down.
SPEAKER_00: It's coming down.
SPEAKER_00: It's coming down, right?
SPEAKER_00: Verse 14, he broke the pillars.
SPEAKER_00: You're going to say it over and over again.
SPEAKER_00: Just over and over again.
SPEAKER_00: Bring it out, burn it, remove it, break it down.
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to say it again.
SPEAKER_00: I've been saying this to myself all week long.
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to keep saying it to myself, right?
SPEAKER_00: Travis, bring it out, burn it, remove it, break it down.
SPEAKER_00: Any and all things that's in your life that opposes the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: And the problem is, okay, I know this ain't confession time, but I'm still confessing.
SPEAKER_00: The problem is, sometimes, man, I can repent, but still flirt with sin, you know?
SPEAKER_00: Flirt, you know, flirt with it.
SPEAKER_00: You know, I'm not going to do it.
SPEAKER_00: I'm just going to flirt with it.
SPEAKER_00: You know, I'm not going to actually partake of it.
SPEAKER_00: I'm just going to see how close I can dance around it.
SPEAKER_00: But we can't negotiate with what God has told us to destroy.
SPEAKER_00: Josiah says, get after it ruthlessly.
SPEAKER_00: Burn it.
SPEAKER_00: Remove it.
SPEAKER_00: Break it down.
SPEAKER_00: Burn it.
SPEAKER_00: Remove it.
SPEAKER_00: Break it down.
SPEAKER_00: And it's not to steal from you, it's to give you joy.
SPEAKER_00: We're going to get to the fourth, the fourth, fourth step here.
SPEAKER_00: Refusing old compromise.
SPEAKER_00: Moreover, now he's moving out even larger.
SPEAKER_00: Church, Jerusalem, bringing to Judea.
SPEAKER_00: Moreover, the altar at Bethel, the high place erected by Jeroboam, the son of Nabot, who made Israel the sin.
SPEAKER_00: That altar with the high places he pulled down and burned, reduced to dust.
SPEAKER_00: He also burned the Asherah.
SPEAKER_00: Now, what this tells us right here is Bethel had a long history.
SPEAKER_00: So he's out here looking at, you know, um uh Judea and all the whole area out here.
SPEAKER_00: And this was their first king.
SPEAKER_00: In the northern kingdom, this was their first king.
SPEAKER_00: Once again, like Solomon, this goes all the way back to the very core of who they are.
SPEAKER_00: But he does not say that altar is too old.
SPEAKER_00: We're not going to mess with an old altar, just like with Solomon.
SPEAKER_00: He's like, no, dude, I don't care, man.
SPEAKER_00: I don't care, man.
SPEAKER_00: I don't care, dude.
SPEAKER_00: I don't care how long that altar's been in your life.
SPEAKER_00: I don't care how long it's been there.
SPEAKER_00: You got history.
SPEAKER_00: No, if it's opposed to the word of God, guess what?
SPEAKER_00: We're bringing it down.
SPEAKER_00: We're bringing it to down, man.
SPEAKER_00: Old compromise, once again, doesn't become acceptable because it's old.
SPEAKER_00: Still sin, man.
SPEAKER_00: You can get verse 16, 7.
SPEAKER_00: He's doing more and more and more of the same, but I want to get to verse 19.
SPEAKER_00: And Josiah removed all the shrines.
SPEAKER_00: Look at that word, all.
SPEAKER_00: I love it.
SPEAKER_00: It's been speaking to me, church.
SPEAKER_00: That's been all this stuff speaks to me.
SPEAKER_00: All the shrines.
SPEAKER_00: Also the high places that were in, the cities of Samaria.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't leave anything.
SPEAKER_00: He starts with the church.
SPEAKER_00: Get it out of there.
SPEAKER_00: Burn it.
SPEAKER_00: Break it.
SPEAKER_00: Tear it down.
SPEAKER_00: He gets larger to Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: I don't care what it is.
SPEAKER_00: I don't care if Solomon made it.
SPEAKER_00: I don't care.
SPEAKER_00: Destroy it.
SPEAKER_00: All of Jerusalem, all of Judea.
SPEAKER_00: I don't care what it is.
SPEAKER_00: It's coming down.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 20.
SPEAKER_00: Then he returned to Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: Church, that really hit me hard.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't stop.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't go home until it was all taken care of, right?
SPEAKER_00: It's not a half-hearted attempt.
SPEAKER_00: By the way, if you were to look at my life and all the attempts I've made, I'm pretty sure 75% of them or more have been what you would call half-hearted.
SPEAKER_00: It's easy to half-heart do things.
SPEAKER_00: You know what I'm saying?
SPEAKER_00: It's easy.
SPEAKER_00: It's really easy in the church, man, because you can half-heartedly go after something, but still have the vocabulary to convince all the people in the church that you were in full board.
SPEAKER_00: You know what I'm saying?
SPEAKER_00: You get the vocabulary.
SPEAKER_00: Vocabulary makes my half-hearted effort look like a real effort, but man, I'll know.
SPEAKER_00: Not Josiah.
SPEAKER_00: He refuses to leave untouched old compromises.
SPEAKER_00: New compromises, old compromises.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, hey, listen, by the way, old compromises are hard.
SPEAKER_00: You know?
SPEAKER_00: New sin, go after, I don't know.
SPEAKER_00: Some of us have old altars.
SPEAKER_00: In this room right now, we got some old altars.
SPEAKER_00: Got old anger, old lust, old pride.
SPEAKER_00: Once again, just because you're old, don't make them sin.
SPEAKER_00: Let me end this way.
SPEAKER_00: He hears they come to church, hear the word of God, make a covenant, then they get to work.
SPEAKER_00: Bring it out, burn it, remove it, break it down.
SPEAKER_00: That's the marching order for me.
SPEAKER_00: Travis, burn it, remove it, break it down.
SPEAKER_00: All of it.
SPEAKER_00: Old and new.
SPEAKER_00: Once again, it's not to take joy from you, it's to restore joy in you.
SPEAKER_00: So the call is simple.
SPEAKER_00: Church, let everything that competes with Jesus in your life come down.
SPEAKER_00: Burn it, remove it, break it down.
SPEAKER_00: I say it like this.
SPEAKER_00: Go, King Josiah, on it.
SPEAKER_00: You know what I'm saying?
SPEAKER_00: Go, King Josiah, on it.
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
SPEAKER_00: Father God, we thank you so much for this example of the life of King Josiah and his seriousness and what he did to remove sin in his life and in the nation's life.
SPEAKER_00: I pray that as we have met today and worshiped you and we've all read this and studied it together, I pray that as you have made aware each of us maybe certain sins in our life, that we would go King Josiah on it, that we would bring it out, that we would break it, burn it, and remove it, and give you all the glory.
SPEAKER_00: And we ask this in Christ's name, our Savior.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.