Joy Begins with Seeking God | Rediscovering Joy - 2 Chronicles 34:1-7 | Matty Finlay

ABOUT SILVERDALE BAPTIST CHURCH

Silverdale exists to lead people into an authentic relationship with Christ so they will worship God, grow in their faith, and serve the Lord in our community and world.

Silverdale's Lead Pastor is Tony Walliser.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:26

Well, hey, good morning and welcome to Silverdale. Listen, we are one church that meets in many locations of whatever campus or venue you are joining us from. We are so grateful and thankful that you've chosen to worship with us this morning. If I haven't a chance to meet you yet, my name is Maddie, and I have the privilege of serving as a part of the team here on our Barney Oaks campus. And this morning, I have the joy of opening God's word with you. So this weekend we are kicking off a four-week series where we'll take a look at a relatively unknown but highly influential king named Josiah. And Josiah ruled in Judah. And a break walk through history would tell us that in 1 Kings chapter 1, Solomon is anointed king. And he builds a temple and he leads Israel through the season of peace and prosperity. But as Solomon ages, we begin to see him drift away from God and into a life of sin. He marries a foreign woman, allows pagan worship in Israel, and 1 Kings 11, verse 4 tells us this. And Israel becomes the northern kingdom, and Judah is the southern kingdom. Well, several kings come and go. We'll jump back in in 2 Kings chapter 16, where we're introduced to King Ahaz. And Ahaz was Josiah's great-great-grandfather, and he led Judah further away from God than they had ever been. And Ahaz was arguably one of the most wicked kings to ever rule in Judah. After Ahaz, there comes some respite in the form of Hezekiah, who calls the people back to God, back to worship, destroys the idols, and then reopened the temple that Ahaz had closed. Then comes Manasseh. And 2 Chronicles 33:9 says this about him that Manasseh led Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem astray to do more evil than the nations whom the Lord had destroyed before the people of Israel. And King Manasseh, while he's king, he rebuilds the pagan altars, he worships false gods, he makes child sacrifices even of his own sons. He kills, he murders, he practices witchcraft, he consulted mediums. Idolatry became this normal way of life in Judah. And God's law, his word were both neglected and then rejected. And the nation had become spiritually hardened. Well, near the end of his life, he repents, but the damage had already been done. And then Amon takes the throne, and he continues to drive Judah further and further and further away from God. Well, Amon, after only two years, is killed, and then Josiah takes the throne. Josiah steps into his role as king and is tasked with leading a nation filled with corruption and idolatry. A nation that neglects the temple, that neglects worship, a nation that has turned its back on God and his word. A nation, a people that are doing unspeakable acts. It's a people that have wandered far from God and maybe further than anyone would have ever anticipated or expected. And what I believe is that as we look at Josiah's life this morning, the culture he lived with, and over the next few weeks, what he was tasked with leading the people through, that many of us can relate to that. Just this weekend, right, we celebrated the 250th birthday of our nation, and many of us would say that we have drifted far from the guiding principles, the biblical principles that this nation was founded on. Like we can relate as a country to where Josiah finds himself. But I think many of us can relate personally to. Most of us will not ever be the king of a nation, but if you are, I would love to be your friend. Love to get you know to know you. But many of us are husbands who never had an example of a godly marriage in our lives. Many of us are husbands who come from a long line of broken marriages that are filled with adultery, but we know and believe that that's not the life we want for ourselves and for our family. Some of us in the room are watching online, joining us as other campuses, you professionals who've been thrown into environments where making an extra dollar is the goal, and lying, cheating, and stealing are all the norm. Some of us are single parents who are having to walk through broken situations that we didn't create. Maybe you are a college student, thrusting into an environment where faith is mocked, truth is relative, and sex, drugs, and rock and roll are all the norm. That list could go on and on and on. But our reality, the reality for many of us, is that we find ourselves in family environments, professional environments, relationships that can, in many ways, mirror the culture that Josiah found himself in. But can I share with you something remarkable this morning? When Josiah took the throne, he was just eight years old. Yet during his reign as king, Josiah would lead Judah into a major spiritual revival that would bring them back into a right relationship with God. And over the next four weeks, we're gonna take a look at how he did that. We're gonna look at what that looked like in his life personally, and hopefully we can take away some practical applications for our lives. But before we get into Josiah's life, if you're taking notes, I want you to jot this down on the top of your outline for me. It's this that your past does not have to predict your future. That your past does not have to predict your future. If we learn anything from King Josiah, let it be that our past failures, the generational sin that may have been a part of our families, the cultures we have come from, don't have to be the playbook by which we live our lives. That this morning, wherever you are joining us, wherever you are joining Silverdale, can I remind you that what has happened in your past, what you have experienced, what you have seen, what you have been a part of, what you have been exposed to, does not have to be the playbook by which you live your life. If we learn anything from King Josiah this morning, can it be to lift our head and our hearts and be reminded that your story is not over until God says that it's over? That God has a plan and a purpose for your life. If there is breath in your lungs, God is not through with you yet. It doesn't matter what you've been a part of, it doesn't matter what you've seen, it doesn't matter what is in the past behind you, it does not have to be the predictor of your future. That you don't have to follow along. So in the midst of brokenness, what does Josiah do? What does Josiah show us about seeing joy restored in our lives? If you're taking notes, this is number one. Do you have this down on your outline for me? That God can raise up passion even in spiritually dark times. That God can raise up passion even in spiritually dark times. Look at how 2 Chronicles 34 begins. It'll be on the screens behind me. Verses 1 through 3 say this Josiah was eight years old when he began to reign. And he reigned for 31 years in Jerusalem. And he did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, and he walked in the ways of David his father, and he did not turn aside to the right hand or to the left. For in the eighth year of his reign, while he was yet a boy, he began to seek the God of David his father. And in the twelfth year he began to purge Judah and Jerusalem of the high places, the asherim and the carved and the metal images. So Josiah grew up in a nation shaped by idolatry, corruption, and perversion. Yet there is this moment when he's sixteen years old that he begins to seek God. Look again at what it says, 2 Chronicles 34, 3. For in the eighth year of his reign, he took the throne when he was eight. While he was yet a boy, he began to seek the God of David his father. In the midst of this crooked generation that he lived in, in the midst of the broken and sinful culture that he found himself a part of, in the midst of everything he had learned and everything that he had seen, there was this moment when this 16-year-old boy began to seek God, began to look for God. And the Bible doesn't tell us, scripture doesn't tell us why or how that happened. But maybe he's just looking at this lost and broken world and figures this is not the way I want to live my life. This is not what I want to be a part of. Maybe there's this moment he begins to reach back and think about King David and think, man, I want that. He had it good back then. God was good to them. I want my life to look like that. Maybe there was just this moment that God spoke to him supernaturally and said, Josiah, I want something different for you. Whatever it is, we don't know, but there's this moment that he says, I'm gonna live my life differently than everything I've known before me. I'm gonna live my life differently than what's expected, what is coming, what is the norm, what everybody else is doing around me. I'm gonna do different. There's this moment where Josiah says, My past will no longer predict my future. And in the New Testament, the apostle Paul would challenge the church in Rome by saying something pretty similar. Look at Romans 12:2. He says, This do not be conformed to this world. And then he'd go on and say, But be transformed by the renew of your mind. What Paul tells the church is don't just do what everybody else is doing. Don't just follow suit. Don't look around and say, Well, everybody else is doing it, so I'll just do it as well. Josiah models this idea for us, right? This principle that no matter what the world around us looks like, we don't have to be conformed to it. We don't have to follow the model that has been set for us. That we can do something different, we can be something different, we can seek God even if nobody else is. Church, I need you to hear me when I say this. We have gotta stop allowing the past, our failures, the sin of our families to be an excuse for our spiritual passivity. We have got to stop saying things like I am not because I don't do this because of that. We've got to stop looking at where we are spiritually and saying I'm not where I should be because of these things that happened in my past. At some point, church, we have got to own where we are spiritually. We've got to do what Josiah did and say, I'm not gonna allow the past to be the predictor for my future. I'm not gonna allow the past to tell me the way I should live my life. I'm gonna own it and I'm gonna take responsibility and I'm gonna begin to seek God. I've shared this with you before, but but that's my story. Like I lived my life just following the crowd, doing what everybody else had done. I lived my life following the model, doing the thing that I had seen because I thought that it was the right thing to do. I was angry, drinking, living this party lifestyle, and I was miserable in the midst of all of it, but I had chosen to conform to the thing that I thought was right, to what seemed normal. And I think that's where many of us find ourselves this morning. One way or another, we're just going through the motions, we're just following along with the crowd. Well, they do it, so I guess that's okay for me to do it too. This is how they live their life, and they go to church, so I guess that's just okay for me as well. Here's the second thing that we seek. Shut this down for me. Seeking God requires intentionality. Seeking God requires intentionality. Nobody ever drifts towards God, nobody ever drifts towards spiritual growth. None of us ever drift toward becoming like Jesus. Hebrews 2:1 says it this way. Therefore, we must pay much closer attention to what we've heard, lest we drift away from it. Then we've got to pay attention to the truth of God's word so that we don't drift away from it. Our natural bent because of our sinful nature is to drift from and not towards God. It's to prioritize and move towards success, comfort, sin, whatever that thing may be for us. But look again at what verse 3 tells us. In the eighth year of his reign, while he was yet a boy, he began to seek the God of David, his father. Josiah began to seek, he began to search, he began to look. He was intentional about seeking something different than what he saw around him. And in Matthew 7, verses 7 through 8, Jesus would say it this way: He'd say, Ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find. Knock and it will be open to you. For everyone who asks receives. The one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks, it will be open. Seeking and finding God begins with intentionality. I vividly remember this playing out in my life. I was a sophomore at Carson Newman College. I was eyeballs deep in my sin. But there was this group of guys that I had become aware of whose life looked entirely different from mine. I was miserable and should have been living the dream, and they were joyful. They smiled more than I did, they laughed more than I did, they had more fun than I did, they seemingly had more joy than I did. And I remember learning that these guys called themselves Christians and that Jesus had changed their life. So I did the only thing that made sense to me at the time, noticing that they were different, I wanted to seek and figure out what this Christian thing meant, who this Jesus person was that they were talking about. So I would go to church with them, I drove at Christian clubs on campus with them. I would ask questions of them. Don't get me wrong, I was still living in my sin. I was still doing the things I thought should bring me joy. I was still living the life that I thought would get me where I wanted to be, but I intentionally began to seek after God, to ask questions, to learn about this Jesus guy that changes people's lives. And we, church, are to do what Josiah did. We are to actively seek after God. To ask questions, to be where he is, to be around people who are like him, to remove ourselves from the environments and people that push us away from God. We are never gonna naturally drift towards God, so we have to seek him intentionally. Listen, it's one of the reasons we say week after week after week that you should be reading God's word every single day. Because that is an everyday intentional step to seek after God. That is you and I every day saying, God, I'm choosing to seek you. In a world that tells me everything else is more important. I'm choosing to seek you first. I'm choosing to seek after a relationship with you. Here's the next thing that we learn from Josiah's life. It's this that God must be more than an addition to your life. That God must be more than just an addition to your life. Second Chronicles 34, 3 through 7. I want to read it for us. So in the eighth year of his reign, while he was yet a boy, he began to seek the God of David his father. And in the twelfth year he began to purge Judah and Jerusalem of the high places, the asherim and the carved and the metal images. And they chopped down the altars of the Baals in his presence, and he cut down the incense altars that stood above them. And he broke in pieces the asherim and the carved and the metal images, and he made dust of them and scattered it over the graves of those who had sacrificed to them. He also burned the bones of the priests on their altars and cleansed Judah and Jerusalem. And in the cities of Manasseh and Ephraim and Simeon, and as far as Naphtali, in their ruins all around, he broke down the altars and beat the ashram and the images into powder and cut down all the incense altars throughout all the land of Israel. Then he returned to Jerusalem. Josiah didn't just acknowledge God. Josiah didn't just look at Judah and say, Hey, there's another God. I know we've got all these idols, but there's another God, and he's better than the rest of them. Josiah didn't just say, Hey, there's this other God that I've become aware of, and he's gonna be another one of the gods that you can worship. He didn't just say, Hey, now we've got one more to the list, and we should all just coexist. Josiah said, There is no one more important than this God, and everything else must go. This is the one true God, the only God who should be worshipped, and he purges the land of all of the other idols. He gets rid of all of them and says that this is the one true God. He reorders his life and the nation of Judah around God. But so many of us show up at church week after week. Our lives are not anything like we had hoped they would be. We don't have the joy in our life that Scripture talks to. We don't have the peace in our life that Scripture tells us we would. We don't see God at work in our lives. Because many of us are showing up with the belief and the intention that I can just live my life how I feel. However I want. While still living my life, and nothing was changing. What I had assumed was that if I did the same things as those guys, it would produce the same results. That if I lived my life how I wanted, but added in the things that they were doing, then I would get the same results they were getting. I'd assume that I could just add God into my life and I would be blessed. I would have joy, I would have the same peace that they did. But if you're taking notes, I want you to jot this down for me this morning. Many of us want the joy of God without ever surrendering to God. Many of us want the joy of God, but we never surrender to God. Many of us live our lives wanting God to bless the sin in our lives, wanting God to bless our disobedience. We want to put money and relationships and work and school and hobbies and all those things before God. We want to add God in there at the bottom of the list somewhere and hope that He blesses us. But Matthew 6.33 says this seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all of those things will be added to you. You want joy in your life, seek first the kingdom of God. You want peace in your life, seek first the kingdom of God. You want purpose for your life, seek first the kingdom of God. But many of us live in this place. I want God, I want to go to church, but I really like that drink because it just takes the edge off every day. My 12-year baseball team is way more important than showing up on a weekend. I want God and I want church. But he or she may leave me if I don't give them this thing. And many of us show up here week after week after week. Not experiencing God moving, working all die. Because we show up expecting we can just continue to live our lives, live in our sin, live in our disobedience, and that God will bless it because we show up at church. But notice how Josiah didn't start seeking God and leave everything else as it was. We'll talk more about this in the coming weeks, but he tore down the altars built to these false idols. He burned those idols and he destroyed them. He didn't add God to the list of idols, he got rid of everything else. Everything that was an idol in the land of Judah, he got rid of it. He burned it, he crushed it. He essentially said, God, there will be nothing in the land of Judah or my own life that will compete with you. He centered his life and the nation of Judah around God. But I think many of us show up here unwilling to do exactly that. Here's the last thing I want you to jot down it's this that joy begins with relationship. As we continue to read about how Josiah led the nation of Judah into a spiritual revival over the next few weeks, we'll see how he instructed them and what he asked them to do. But as we go through these next few weeks, what I want you to remember is that it all begins with this very simple statement. We've read it three times already this morning. That he, Josiah, began to seek the God of David. Long before Josiah ever asks anybody to do anything else. Long before he implements any sort of spiritual practices throughout Judah. Even before Josiah initiates any sort of spiritual disciplines himself, he seeks God. He goes looking for God. And there's a principle here that I want us to know and write down, and it's this that God wants your heart, not your outward performance. That God wants your heart, not your outward performance. God is not interested in us just having a religious checklist and just checking the boxes. God is not interested in us just adding this list of things to our lives. Read my Bible, check, went to church, check, raised a hand in worship, check. God desires our hearts. God wants to be in a relationship with us. Listen, I'm not saying that what we do doesn't matter. I'm not saying the things that we think, say, and do are not important. But what I am saying is that the motives behind those things are more important. Does God want us to read our Bibles resoundingly? Yes. But not out of an obligation so we can say, check, I did it today. Because in our hearts, he wants us to desire him, to long to know him more. He wants us to know Jesus better so we can live our lives in such a way that it brings him glory. Does God want us to be in church? Yes. Not so we can say, well, I've gone twice this week. This month, I don't have to go the rest of the month. But so we can be a part of a community, so we can love and encourage one another, so we can serve one another, so that we can be encouraged by others. That's the difference between Christianity and most other world religions. Most other religions are focused on the do, they're focused on the checklist. Jesus is focused on a relationship with us. Jesus wants a heart. God wants our heart, not an outward performance. I remember being in Southeast Asia about 18 months ago when with a small group and we were backpacking across some islands, and we get to one specific island in this one village, and we meet this guy, and we strike up this real cool relationship, and we spend a couple days with him actually getting to know his family. And in the midst of those couple days, his wife's grandmother, I believe it was wife's, and someone in their family passed away. And he says, Hey, I would love to invite you to come and be a part of the funeral. So we agreed, and we show up at this house one afternoon, and we're sitting outside, and there's the whole village. All these men are sat outside and they're praying and singing and chanting, and I can't figure out if it's cool or eerie. I don't really know how to feel in that moment. But we're sitting down and we're listening and we're waiting, and then all of a sudden, someone says something, there's and all these men get up and they grab her makeshift casket, and she's at the front, and we go deep into the jungle. There's like 40, 50 men, they're all following this casket into the jungle, and they're praying and talking as they go, and as we get out to this dense jungle, there's this clearing, and in this clearing, there's this shallow grave, and they lay her casket in there, and then at least to me, in the moment, the most fascinating thing begins to happen. There's like four or five shovels that come out, and then all these men begin to jostle and fight for the shovel. Literally, like if you get three scoops in, and someone comes and he rips it from your hands, and he's going, and the next guy comes, and and they're just this constant for 20-30 minutes, this back and forth, and then taking this shovel from each other so they can put dirt on this lady's body. And I'm standing there thinking, man, this is incredible. This whole village, all these men have come to honor this lady to help bury her, like what a cool thing. And then our friend makes his way over, and I'm saying, Man, this is awesome, like watching this play out, and he kind of smirks. I'm like, hey, I'm I'm missing something on I. This is all going through a translator. I'm like, I'm missing something on I. He says, Yeah, you are. So what am I missing about this moment? He says, Well, it's not as cool as you think it is. And this guy that's translating for us, he's a Christian. I says, So what's actually happening? He says, Maddie, that they're fighting because this is one of their good works. If this is one of their good deeds. I'm like, what do you mean? It's like in Islam, they believe that you have to do enough good to outweigh the bad, and this is one of their good things that they can do today. So they're not fighting to honor this lady, but they're fighting to earn the favor of their God. And what went from this incredible, wow, they're here to honor this lady turned into this heartbreaking picture of selfishness. Miserable religious checklist that they wake with every day, having to figure out how do I do enough good to outweigh the bad. But can I remind us this morning that that's not the God that we serve? That's not who Jesus is. Jesus doesn't have a checklist for us. Jesus doesn't want our outward performance. God doesn't want our outward performance, He wants our heart. Following Jesus, walking with the one true God is about a personal relationship. It's action motivated by love, not desire for performance. And for some of us this morning in the room, we look around at our families, our businesses, our workplaces, our classrooms, our relationships, and we know that those places, those environments don't reflect a joyful relationship with God. That we want something different for our families than what they are experiencing currently. But can I encourage you this morning? Before we can ever address our families, we have to look at ourselves first. If we want those places to be places of joy, if we want those people to experience something different, if we want to see the joy of the Lord in those places, it begins with you having a personal relationship with God. It begins with you intentionally seeking God. So this morning, right now at all of our campuses, your pastor is making his way on stage, and we want to give you an opportunity to begin a personal relationship with God. So here's what I'm gonna ask you to do here. I'm gonna ask you for just a moment if you would, if you'd bow your head and close your eyes. Because I want to do exactly that this morning. I want to give you an opportunity to begin a personal relationship with God. See what scripture tells us is that in the beginning, God created us in a perfect relationship with Him. And sin entered into the world, and that relationship was broken. And that sin has a cost, sin has a price, and the price for that sin is death. And that God, in his justness and his kindness, in his love for us, God made a way for that sin debt to be paid, and he sent his son Jesus to die on the cross in our place and for our sin. Jesus would say, I am the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father except through me. That if we want a relationship with God, if we want to see joy restored, it begins by seeking a relationship with Jesus. So with every head bowed and every eye closed this morning, if you are in the room and you would say, I want to begin a relationship with Jesus this morning, right there in your seat, would you just raise your hand for me and just hold it up? It's just me looking around. Hold that hand high up in the air for me. I'm gonna pray for you here in just a moment. Amen. Hold them up. Amen. Amen. Those of you with your hands up, I want to pray for you this morning. Let's pray together. Father, thank you so much for the men and women who've indicated this morning that they want to begin a relationship with you, that they see the brokenness around them that they live in, and they want to choose something different. God, and we acknowledge this morning that that begins by choosing a relationship with you, by saying, God, I want to surrender my life to follow you. So, God, we celebrate their decision to do that this morning. We celebrate the life change that has happened in them even now. God, we ask that you would bless them. It's in Jesus' name that we pray. And everybody said, Amen.