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Good to have all of you here. We had a great time last week when we had hymn sing going on. Wasn't that great? You know, I always wonder, I don't know why you're applauding. I didn't leave it, you know. No, I know why you're applauding because we had a great time, didn't we? It was so wonderful to revisit those classic hymns of the faith. Can you guys in the back hear me? Okay, very good. Um, it's always interesting when we come back uh after hymn sing because you don't know if the number is going to jump, if it's going to climb, if it's going to be flat. You just never know. Great to have all of you here. We've got over 60 people in the room again today, so that's really nice. Now, this just came across our wire, if you will, in the back office, just a few minutes before we came out to prepare for the lunch. Uh, every year for the past several years, the UAFS incoming freshmen have decided that they are in a position to demand fresh homemade cookies from First Baptist Church. I don't know exactly what's going on with that, but this year, once again, we are partnering with the BCM at UAFS to make fresh homemade cookies for their incoming freshmen. We're going to collect all of those cookies over the next several days. The deadline will be 5 o'clock next Thursday here downtown. If you can just bring in some fresh homemade cookies, we're going to spoil the freshmen who are going to UAFS. And don't be surprised if we talk a little bit more about that as the day goes on. I've had a lot of questions about what is happening next Wednesday here at the church because last night we had our pool party out at Creekmoor, and our new Revelation series doesn't begin for another week after. And I'm going to be leading a First Baptist Church prayer night in the sanctuary next Wednesday at 6 o'clock. We're going to be praying over all the events that we have coming up over the next four to six weeks, Chaffee and downtown, as well as praying about just things that a church needs to pray about. We'll have a little bit of devotion time, a lot of time in prayer. Hope that you'll be able to make it. We'll be in the sanctuary next Wednesday at 6 p.m. Also coming up pretty soon, we have Promotion Sunday. Now, Promotion Sunday is when the new first grade kids move out of preschool and they move up to be with Pastor Eli on the second floor, and the new sixth grade kids move out of the kids' ministry to go to student ministry. Some people have said before, well, Pastor Dave, what are we in the 60 plus supposed to do on Promotion Sunday? And I kind of get a little somber at that point because there's only one way to get promoted out of the 60 plus group. All right? And I want you guys to stick around for as long as you possibly can. So Promotion Sunday for us is just something where we sort of focus on the kids and we say, thanks that the Lord is blessing us. We've got a big promotion class moving into the children's department this year out of preschool. It's going to be great to see. I've had a lot of questions about the Revelation Bible study. How many of you have been hearing about the Revelation Bible study? Okay. So first off, there's a little bit of confusion because the Revelation Bible study is being taught by David Burton, not David Skarupa. Okay? So David Burton is going to be leading the new Revelation. And it's not that there's new revelation, it's just a new study about the book of Revelation, okay? That's going to start on Wednesday, the 19th, at 6 o'clock. Right now, we're looking at having that in room 201, but that location may change. We think that classroom might not be big enough. We may be moving it somewhere else between now and then. So just stay tuned. Did I mention about the freshmen at UFAS getting, you know, wanting to get cookies, fresh homemade cookies? Again, that's Thursday next week by 5 o'clock. Bring the fresh homemade cookies in for the freshmen at UAFS. Let's see. We have down the hall here a black table, black table that we usually have a lot of different sign-up things going on. This time that table is filled with lots and lots of small cards. Each card represents a different school in the River Valley. And this we've been doing this now for the last several years. We try to get our people to commit to regular prayer for a school in the Fort Smith Public School System or just the River Valley in general. And each year, even though each year the pile grows because each year someone comes up and says, You forgot this school. And so we print more cards. If we forgot a school, it's not that we don't want you to pray for that school, it's just that we haven't had the light bulb go off to get cards for it. So we've already got the cards in place. They'll probably talk about this again on Sunday during the service. But school starts up in the Fort Smith Public Schools next week. Next week. Some of the Oklahoma schools started school today. So we need to be in prayer for the students, the parents, and especially the teachers and schoolworkers as a new school year is beginning. And speaking of new school year, we have a new year of awanas that's coming up. And we've got awanas is our children's programming during the school year. Pastor Eli wanted me to say two things. First, we are in need of some preschool volunteers, not necessarily every week and can rotate in. Those of you that have done this work before, a big part of awanas is scripture memory, memorizing scripture verses. So how do we know if a kid has memorized the scripture verse or not? Do we just take their word for it? No, we don't do that. What we do is we have what's called table leaders who work with the kids. Kids come in, they recite the scripture verse that they've memorized either fully or to the best of their ability. And if they need a little bit of help getting the verse ingrained, then time is spent with that child to help memorize the verse, but even more importantly, to understand the verse that they're memorizing. How many of us memorize scripture verses at a kid and all we were doing was just reciting words? Some of us are brave enough to admit it there. Yeah, so what we want to do is we want to make sure that these children understand the word that they are memorizing. So if you're interested in serving as a table leader, call Pastor Eli here at the church office. He can give you more information about that. They're gonna have the big kickoff for Iwanas with all the water slides and all the fun and the snow cones and all. That'll be Wednesday, the 19th, at 6 o'clock, and that'll be over on our South Lot. Hope I'm pointing the right direction. If I'm not, forgive me. So that same night, our men's and women's discipleship groups are gonna start back up again. Those have been really successful. Been really great to see what's happening in the men's discipleship group. Younger men growing in the faith, taking on new responsibilities that they hadn't done before. It's a great, great program that we have. And the freshmen over at UFOS want us to bring some cookies next Thursday by five o'clock. Okay? So if you hadn't heard that, just making sure that we get the word out about that. Today, we are, how many of us are still plugging along with the chronological Bible study? All right. So all of these kings, most of them lousy, most of them leading the people away from God. How many of you have already read the story of Manessa, the King Manessa? Alright, and then, you know, King Manessa, Pastor Greg taught a great lesson on King Manasseh during our men's lunch on Tuesday. And King Manessa has a son, and King Manessa's son is Ammon, and he ends up being terrible. And yet King Manasseh's grandson ends up being one of the greatest kings of them all. And since this is our last Thursday lesson on the kings in the chronological Bible study, I wanted to end on a good note rather than ending on a sour note. And so today we're going to be talking about King Josiah in a lesson that I like to call The Child Who Turned a Nation to God, or another title could be a lost book found for a lost people. We're going to be in 2 Chronicles chapter 34 if you brought your Bibles. If you didn't, don't worry, we'll have the verses up here on the screen. And before we begin, let's go to the Lord in prayer. Bow with me. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this time that you have given us. We thank you for the fellowship that we've enjoyed, the food that we've enjoyed. Thank you, Lord, for this time and this building and our volunteers and our workers who help prepare the lunch. Thank you for those who give to the church so that it's easy for us to get all of those elements in to make a meal. Lord, we just give you the credit because we know that every good thing comes from you. Lord, now as we move into a time of reading your word, meditating upon your word, open our eyes, open our minds, open our very spirits to hear from you in this inspired word. And Lord, if we are reminded of something that we have forgotten, if we are encouraged in some way that we need encouragement, if we learn something new today that helps us in our walk with you, let us remember to give you all the honor, all the credit, and all the glory. We pray this in the matchless name of our Redeemer and Savior, Jesus Christ the Lord. And God's people said, Amen. 2 Chronicles 34. Now, 2 Chronicles 34 recounts the story of Josiah. Josiah is the last of the good kings of Judah. And he ends up being a tremendous king. Josiah was born some over 600 years before the time of Jesus in the Gospels. Josiah, as we're going to read in just a few moments, came to the throne when he was just eight years old. Now, that's not too unusual in the ancient world. Child kings were a common enough thing in the ancient world. But when a child came to the throne, more often than not, there was a period of great unease in that kingdom. Because everyone understood that while there was a child on the throne, other people were really making most of the decisions about how to run the country. Those of you that have run any kind of business or any kind of organization would understand that you would never want to leave your business or organization in the hands of an eight-year-old. Most of us wouldn't want to leave our business or organization in the hands of a teenager. Matter of fact, in some ways, the eight-year-old might be a better choice than the teenager. The fact that I have a teenage girl should not color my judgment on that. But we just know how these things work. And normally when you see a child coming to the throne, the nation would be a little bit on tender hooks a little bit. And the idea was just keep things going the way that they're going until the child reaches an age of maturity, and then we'll see how the child is going to function as a king. Well, this child, Josiah, comes to the throne at eight years old, but he's not like most of the kings that we've been reading about in Kings and Chronicles in our chronological Bible study. As a matter of fact, we see that even at a young age, King Josiah has a heart to seek after the Lord. And so let's go ahead and get into our reading. We're in 2 Chronicles chapter 34. I'm just going to pick up in verse 3. I'm going to have to skip some verses around because it's a very long passage and we don't want to go through all of it. But we'll pick up in verse 3. In the eighth year of his reign, while he was still young, he began to seek the God of his father David. And in the twelfth year, he began to purge Judah and Jerusalem of the high places, the wooden images, the carved images, and the molded images. As we pause here, we see the eighth year of his reign would have made Josiah 16 years old. And so at the age of 16, he begins to seek the God. He begins to pursue Yahweh. Now his father definitely didn't put him on this path. His father was terrible. His father encouraged the worship of idols and images and things like this. His grandfather, who he did not know, their lives did not overlap in time. His grandfather was Manasseh, who was one of the worst kings of all, but who did repent and reform later in his life, and who did remove many of the idols from the land. What we have here is a young man at the age of 16 who just decides that he wants to seek the God of his father. You know, when a young child or when a teenager has that desire to learn more about Jesus, we should fan that flame with everything we've got. We should never discourage that child from learning more about Jesus. We should throw gasoline on that fire, if you will, in order to have that flame burn all the higher. And Josiah is a great testament to this. Let's continue. We see that here in the twelfth year of his reign, which would have made him 20 years old, he is now at an age of maturity, because 20-year-olds in the ancient world, well, a lot smarter than 20-year-olds today. But he's 20 years old, he begins to purge Judah and Jerusalem of the high places, wooden images, carved images, molded images. You see the repetition here? All these different types of images? What the author is doing is the author is showing us that there were any way that a person could make an image to worship, they were doing it. If they could mold one, they'd mold it. If they could carve one, they'd carve it. They were just always interested in carving something to worship so that they wouldn't have to worship the one true God. During Josiah's time, there were even idols in the temple itself. Things had gotten so bad that the people who truly followed the Lord among the priesthood, they had already taken the Ark of the Covenant out of the temple and put it somewhere else because they recognized that the temple was so polluted that they didn't want God's throne seat, the ark, to be in the temple proper. That's pretty sad, isn't it? That's really sad when the church building, if you will, is so corrupt that you don't even feel like God's presence should be there. And so you take steps to remove the most obvious symbol of God's presence, the Ark of the Covenant, and they took it out of the temple. Well, Josiah is now on this reform campaign. He is truly seeking the Lord, and he's doing something about it. Let's jump over to verse 8. Verse 8. In the eighteenth year of his reign, so now he's 26, in the 18th year of his reign, when he had purged the land and the temple, he sent Shaphan the son of Azaliah, Messiah the governor of the city, and Joah the son of Joahaz, the recorder, to repair the house of the Lord his God. What's Josiah doing? Well, now that the temple's been cleaned out of all the terrible idols and things that were there, the temple needed some repair. You know, when people have free reign to put whatever they want into a place, disrepair takes place. And it was one thing to cleanse the temple, but now we see the heart of Josiah. Not only does he want the temple to be clean, he wants it to be restored. And so he is sending these trusted men to repair the house of God. Let's jump forward some more to verse 14. When they brought out the money that was brought into the house of the Lord, Hilkiah the priest found the book of the law of the Lord given by Moses. Pause here. The temple was in such bad shape that they didn't know that the word of the Lord, the scrolls recording the word of the Lord, was inside it. Imagine if church was so bad that there wasn't a Bible to be found anywhere. And then suddenly a man just finds the Bible. This shows you how distant the people were from the will of God and the word of God, that the discovery of the scrolls of the word of God is an event. It's something that is remarkable in the eyes of the people of Josiah's time. Let's go to verse 15. Hilkiah answered and said to Shaphan the scribe, I have found the book of the law in the house of the Lord. Hilkiah gave the book to Shaphan. Shaphan carried the book to the king, bringing King Josiah word, saying, All that was committed to your servants they are doing, and they've gathered the money that was found in the house of the Lord. They've delivered it to the hands of the overseers and the workmen. Shaphan the scribe told the king, saying, Hilkiah the priest has given me a book. And Shaphan read it before the king. Thus it happened when the king heard the words of the law, that he tore his clothes. There's a lot of debate in theological circles as to which book of the law was found. Some people think it was the entire Torah, the first five books of the Bible. One thing's for certain, given the words that Josiah is going to say in response to finding the book, it's clear they found the book of Deuteronomy. Now, we've been doing the chronological Bible study. And you remember the book of Deuteronomy because you soldiered through that and all of those laws and all of those observances and all of the rules that were present in Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy is not an easy read. But nonetheless, they found the book of the law, and Hilkiah reads the book of the law to the king, and the king's response is to tear his clothes. Now, tearing your clothes in the ancient world was a symbolic way of showing many different things. First off, times of great grief or great sorrow, people would tear their clothes. Or if a person had been insulted deeply, they might tear their clothes. In the New Testament, when Jesus proclaims himself to be the Son of God, and he tells the high priest, You're going to see me coming back on the clouds of heaven. The high priest tears his clothes in response. The idea there is that you, what you're hearing, what you're experiencing is so overwhelming. We have an expression that says, You feel like you're going to jump out of your skin. That old Southern expression, you know? Well, tearing your garments. In the Old Testament was a way of sort of having that same idea that it's so overwhelming that you don't know what else to do, and you tear your garments. And this is what the king did. Now, if the king tears his clothes, that's going to be on the front page of the Jerusalem Times the next day. Okay? That word is going to get out to everybody, that the king, in his royal garments, probably the most expensive garments in the kingdom, when the king tears his clothes in response to something, that word is going to travel fast. And so we see that Josiah, he hears the law of God. Now, would we say that Josiah has been doing a pretty good job up to this point? He's been pursuing the Lord. He's been removing the idols and the images from the land. He's even been removing them from the temple. He has got money going into the temple for the repair of the temple. Josiah, by all accounts, is a man who's doing everything right. And yet, when he is confronted with the word of God, he tears his clothes because he realizes that even though he's been doing good, he hasn't reached the standard of good that God has required. You know, it's amazing when we think about Manasseh, the evil king who was Josiah's grandfather. Manesseh was doing everything wrong. Manesseh was not, Manasseh did so much evil that the Bible says that he did the same type of evil as the Canaanites who were in the land before the Israelites came in to replace them in the land. And here's his grandson who's doing everything right, and yet when he's confronted with the law of God, his response is to tear his garments. Tearing his garments, he is humiliating himself in light of the standard of perfection that God's law calls for. So what does Josiah do? Well, skip over to verse 21. Josiah says, Go, inquire of the Lord for me and for those who are in Israel and Judah concerning the words of this book that has been found. For great is the wrath of the Lord that is poured out on us, because our fathers have not kept the word of the Lord to do according to all that is written in this book. So Hilkiah and those the king had appointed went to Huldah the prophetess, the wife of Shalom, the son of Tohath, the son of Hesrah, keeper of the wardrobe. She dwelt in Jerusalem in the second quarter. They spoke to her to that effect. Pause here for a moment. Josiah's response when he realizes that not only he has been falling short of God's standard, but also his kingdom of Judah has fallen short. He even expresses a desire to find out because the northern kingdom of Israel, he knows they have fallen short as well. And so being a serious king, he wants to know what does God think of all this craziness that's been going on around here for the last several generations. And the person that the people go to, they go to a prophetess by the name of Huldah. And we have prophetesses in the Bible, right? We've got Deborah in the book of Judges. Now we have Huldah here in 2 Chronicles. It's not a hard and fast rule, but it is a general principle that more often than not, when a prophetess is consulted, it's because the men are so lousy that there's not a good prophet that they can go to to get an answer. I don't know if that's necessarily the case here because there were lots of prophets preaching at the time. But they trusted Huldah, who lived, they trusted her so much that for some reason we're given, we're given a rough idea of her address, that she lives in the second quarter. She's not living there at the temple, she has to live a little bit away. And they speak to her to say, What does God think of all of this? She answered them, verse 23, she answered them, Thus says the Lord God of Israel. Tell the man who sent you to me, thus says the Lord, behold, I will bring calamity on this place and on its inhabitants, all the curses that are written in the book which they have read before the king of Judah, because they have forsaken me, and they have burned incense to other gods, that they might provoke me to anger with all the works of their hands. Therefore my wrath will be poured out on this place and not be quenched. All right, pause here for a minute. This is one of the reasons why we know that Deuteronomy was part of what was read before the king. Deuteronomy made a promise that said, If the people will worship me as their God, they will have long life and happiness in the land that they're going to receive under the leadership of Moses and then Joshua. Deuteronomy also says, If the people turn away from me, I will have the people removed from this place, and they will not enjoy all of the blessings. And so Huldah, as she is sharing the word of the Lord with Josiah's representatives, Huldah doesn't mince words. Huldah does not sugarcoat it at all. Huldah says, God is going to pour out calamity on this land. But, verse 26, but as for the king of Judah, who sent you to inquire of the Lord, in this manner you will speak to him. Thus says the Lord God of Israel, concerning the words which you heard, because your heart was tender, and you humbled yourself before God when you heard his words against this place and its inhabitants, and you humbled yourself before me, and you tore your clothes and wept before me, I also have heard you, says the Lord. Surely I will gather you to your fathers, and you shall be gathered to your grave in peace. Your eyes shall not see all the calamity that I will bring on this place and its inhabitants. And so they brought back word to the king. Pause here for a moment. You see, when the word of the Lord, the book of the law, was read before the king, the only person who really seemed to have any reaction, at least it's recorded in the scripture, was King Josiah. He was the only one who heard the word of the Lord and responded with humility, and now we see that he also wept. He realized that even though he had been seeking the Lord, even though he'd been trying to do what the Lord had called him to do by removing all those places, he realized that he was still falling so short of God's standard of perfection that he repented and he wept and he humbled himself and tore his clothes. And God saw that, and God said, Yes, I'm going to bring great calamity. The word wrath is even used upon this land. But Josiah, because you repented, because you humbled yourself, you will not have to go through the wrath to come. Verse 28. Then the king sent and gathered all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem. The king went up to the house of the Lord with all the men of Judah and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the priests, the Levites, all the people, great and small. And he read in their hearing all the words of the book of the covenant which had been found in the house of the Lord. Pause here for a minute. Josiah hears the report from Holdah the prophetess. Holda had basically told him, Great calamity is coming, but not for you, Josiah. You're going to be spared that great calamity. Josiah could have said, Well, I'm okay. I'm alright. I'm in the clear. I'm glad I'm not going to be here when all of that happens. The rest of the kingdom can just go along its merry way, but that's not what he did, is it? Instead, what he does is he wants to share that word of the Lord with all of the kingdom, all of the leaders, all of the followers, as the Bible says, the great and the small. He reads the words of the Lord to the people. Would have been easy for Josiah to hire somebody to do the reading for him, right? He's the king. He could have pointed to someone and said, You're going to read the book to all the people. But instead, what we see in Josiah is he is taking, he's taking an ownership stake in making sure that the word is shared. He's getting personally involved with the sharing of the word. Let's go to verse 31. The king stood in his place and made a covenant before the Lord, to follow the Lord, to keep his commandments and his testimonies and his statutes with all his heart and all his soul to perform the words of the covenant that were written in this book. What you need to understand is as the king has everybody there. Everybody there is listening to the king. Everybody there is watching the king. The king makes a public profession of faith in the Lord. He says he's going to follow the Lord. He is putting his identity, he is linking his identity as the king to the identity of the God of Israel. I love verse 32. And he made all who were present in Jerusalem and Benjamin take a stand. So the inhabitants of Jerusalem did according to the covenant of God, the God of their fathers. So basically, what Josiah did is he made a covenant with the Lord, and then as king, he commanded everyone in his kingdom to also obey this covenant with the Lord. Now there's more to read about Josiah. I hope you'll take the time to read more about him. He fulfills some prophecies later in his story. He's a fantastic king. He ends up dying before all of the calamity comes, just like Holda the prophetess had prophesied to him. He dies defending the nation from the Egyptians. He dies a hero's death and is collected into the kingdom in heaven. But I have some takeaways that I want to share with you as we wrap things up here. First off, let's remember that Josiah sought God at a young age. We get the impression that he takes the throne at eight, and then for eight years he's ruling and he begins to seek God between eight and sixteen. You know, it's never too early for someone to be pursuing the Lord. Don't raise your hands, but just give me a gentle nod of the head if you were saved before the age of ten. Okay, you're quite a few folks nodding here. You know, for the longest time, as a Bible teacher, as a as a minister, I used to get real worried when I would hear people say that they got saved before the age of 10. Because I remember what a knucklehead I was before the age of 10, and I wouldn't have trusted any decision that I made before the age of 10 as having any kind of lifelong implication. I've changed favorite football teams a few times since then, you know. But it's never too early for a man or a woman, a boy or a girl, to come to faith in God. If you know that you were saved at eight years old and you know that that's true, don't let anyone try to talk you out of it. You're in good company. King Josiah takes the throne at eight and begins seeking the Lord, and by the time he's 16, he is seeking the Lord. Let's remember that Josiah's father, Ammon, was not a spiritual leader. As a matter of fact, Amon did great evil and promoted idol worship. You know, from time to time we need to be reminded that your family history does not determine your path in the faith. And you know, as much as it pains me to say this, I know that there are great parents in this room whose kids are not following the faith. But I also know that there's great people in this room whose parents did not follow the faith, but God has brought them into the kingdom of God. We do not inherit spiritual maturity. We just don't. You know, I'm one of those guys that when I hear that someone is a minister and that their father was a minister, my eyebrow goes like this. You know, because you don't inherit the ability to be a minister. It's great to be a second generation minister, it's a wonderful thing, but uh it's not something we inherit. As a minister, sometimes I'll talk to people and I'll be getting their story, and the person will say, Well, you know, I don't go to church all that much, and I'm really not connected to anything. But you know, my uncle was a missionary to Africa. And I always think, well, that's great for your uncle. You know, that's good news about your uncle. I'm glad your uncle's active in things, but that doesn't rub off on you. You know, that we don't inherit spiritual maturity. We get it individually. Josiah's father was awful. His grandfather was awful for a good chunk of his life, but then later in his life, his grandfather reformed, he repented, and he pursued God, and he too was involved in getting rid of some bad idols. The story of Manasseh, one of the story takeaways there, is that it's never too late to turn to the Lord. It's never too late to turn to the Lord. You've got some friends, maybe, you've got some family members, and they're up in years, perhaps. And you know, we had this expression that we throw around like it really makes a lot of sense. We say, you can't teach an old dog new tricks. Guess what? You can. Or rather, let me rephrase that. God can. God can teach an old dog new tricks. We should never give up on praying for people to repent and receive Jesus as Lord just because they've gone up in years a little bit. Alright? God can change the path of a person's life in an instant. Don't believe me? Read the story of the Apostle Paul in the book of Acts. God can change the path of a person's life in an instant. Let's never give up on people because we think they're too far gone. Likewise with Manasseh, Manasseh sinned more than all of the kings before him. He sinned so bad that he sinned like the Canaanite peoples that had to be driven out before the Israelites. And yet God saw Manasseh. Manasseh repented of his sins, and Manasseh trusted the Lord. Don't let a person tell you that they've done too much bad to be saved by God. You can't do so much evil that you can overwhelm the grace of God in Jesus Christ. Alright? It's never too late, and there's never too much sin that has to be overcome. Let's jump back to Josiah, though, because what we see with Josiah is that he was seeking the Lord, but not only was he seeking the Lord, he was actually taking some action. He was destroying idols. He was cleansing the temple. He was repairing the temple. We see a person who was doing what he knew of God and doing enough of what, doing things based on what he did know. And what did God do? God revealed more of himself through that book of the law that was found in the temple. You know, the Lord's word in the book of the law, and also through the prophetess Holda, that revealed that God's calamity was coming upon the land because of their sins. And remember, it was going to hit everybody but Josiah, the man who was spared, because of his repentance. Now I could probably talk to everybody in this room, and you could tell me about some trouble or some difficulty or some challenge that you're going through in your life right now. And they would all be very legitimate things. But we should always remember that just because we have challenges and difficulties, that doesn't mean that God is pouring his wrath out on us. There's a difference between living in a sin-soaked world that's got lots of problems and having God pour his wrath out upon us. The principle that we see in Scripture is that if you've repented of your sins, if you're trusting Jesus Christ as Lord, if you're trusting the Word of God, then God doesn't pour His wrath out upon you. No, don't get me wrong. God will correct you. God will chasten you if you walk away from what it is that He's told you to do. If you're being disobedient to God, He will take your boat, take your ship, and He will write it and put it right on the right path. Okay? But that's different than God pouring out His wrath in judgment upon you. This is one of the reasons why when we hear about the rapture, we're so happy. Because it follows the same principle. The idea is that those who have Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior will be pulled out of the world before all of the tribulation gets poured onto the world. And we see this with Josiah. Josiah humbled himself. Josiah was repentant. He even was repentant to the point of tears. And God says, I've seen your humility, I've seen your tears, you will be spared the wrath that is to come. Let's keep going, because this is the last slide here I want to share with you. I want you to notice Josiah's pattern of growth. First off, we see that Josiah sought God even though he was somewhat immature at the time. No one seeks God from a place of knowing everything there is to know about God. When we seek God originally, we don't know all there is to know. There's a lot for us to absorb, there's a lot for us to learn. So we seek God in our immaturity like Josiah sought God earnestly in his immaturity. Josiah acted on what he knew of God. He got rid of those idols and he got rid of those images. You know, when we begin to seek God, we begin to act on what we do know of God. We try to do what we think God would have us to do, and we take our first faltering steps in our incomplete knowledge to act more like we think God would want us to act. And then we get God's word revealed to us. Someone presents the gospel to us. Or perhaps someone presents the gospel to us again. And this time we listen. And this time we understand. And this time we trust. And when we trust the message of the gospel, we respond with humility. We admit that we are sinners. We admit that we need a savior. We admit that there are things in our lives that need to be repented of. And then when we have made that confession, when we are trusting Jesus as our Lord and Savior for paying the price for our sins, we begin a new life where day by day we are asking the Lord what we should do next. We're seeking it in his word, we're praying, we're asking, what is it we should do? When Josiah heard the word of the Lord, he sent those guys to hold of the prophetess to find out what do I need to do next? What's my next step? But then we see Josiah, he doesn't just get assurance that he is going to be spared the calamity. He does get that assurance, but what he does with it is he makes it a point to publicly share God's word with the people that he is around. God's word with the people of Judah and Benjamin. Not only that, he uses his influence as king to basically force everybody to come and listen to it. He uses his influence as king to make his own covenant with God, and then he uses his influence as king to say, if you're part of the kingdom, you've got to do this too. Now I'd like to have that kind of influence. You want to talk about revival? No problem at all. All right. But what we see here is maybe we're not kings, maybe we're not royalty. This is America, after all. We haven't had that problem since 1776. But what we do have is we have influence with people. We've got influence with family members, friends, neighbors, loved ones. We have influence, and we should be willing to use our influence with people to share the word of God and share with them that this is what we believe, this is how we're trying to live, and we would like for them to follow suit. That's what Josiah did. Finally, we didn't go into this, but the next chapter, chapter 35, most of chapter 35 is dedicated to the Passover that occurred after these events. And Josiah threw the biggest Passover celebration that had ever been seen in the kingdom up to that point. It was so big they devoted almost a whole chapter of Scripture to it. What does that mean? Well, what it means is that Josiah wasn't content to simply embrace his salvation, try to share the gospel with others. He was also a person who was very dedicated to the true worship of God. He followed God's commands to be obedient, and he also followed God's command to be a person who worshiped the Lord. And so what we see in Josiah is a pattern of growth. From a young boy who doesn't know much about what's going on, to a teenager who begins to pursue the Lord, and he does what he can do based upon what he knows. He starts ridding the land of all the idols. And being obedient, God reveals more of himself. He reveals the word of the law to him. Josiah hears that word of the law, and he doesn't say, oh, that's too complicated. He doesn't say, oh, there's too much there. He doesn't say, that's hard to understand. He doesn't say, oh, I don't know if I can do that. Instead, what we see is that he makes a decision, I'm going to follow the Lord. I'm going to do what the Lord says, I'm going to talk to other people about the Lord, and I'm going to worship the Lord with everything I've got. Josiah is an Old Testament example of how a New Testament believer should behave and act. Each one of us in this room, we have something in our lives that needs improving to get to the level, perhaps, of where Josiah was. I've never thrown a giant Passover feast. That's not what I'm talking about here. But maybe my worship needs to be a little bit stronger than it's been lately. Maybe I'm not the king and I can't force everybody to listen to me in a grand ceremony, but I do have people in my life that I haven't shared the gospel of Jesus Christ with, and I haven't shown them that I'm trying to live this way, and I want you to have the benefits of this as well. We all have little areas where we need to improve. I hope today's lesson in the Old Testament causes us to be stronger believers and actors as New Testament believing Christians. Amen. Let's close in prayer. Heavenly Father, we love you. We thank you for your word. We thank you for the example of this Old Testament servant. And thank you, Lord, that his story points us to our story. He was following the law. We are following the Lord Jesus Christ. We should never let a person who followed the Old Testament law outshine us who are following a New Testament risen Savior, Jesus Christ. Lord, thank you for the example of your servant Josiah. May we please you. May we be dedicated to pleasing you just as he was dedicated to pleasing you for your honor and for your glory and for the spread of the gospel. We pray this in the blessed name of Jesus, our Savior and Lord, and God's people said, Amen.