JUL 14 2024 | Josiah S1E1 | Josiah Reigns in Judah

Sea Change Church · JUL 14 2024 | The Revival Collective – S1 Ep 1: Josiah Reigns in Judah
2 Kings 22:1-7
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

Bless the remainder of our service. Bless the word that Pastor Adam is about to bring, O Heavenly Father. And continue. Let us know that we are loved by you. For we thank you and we praise you. For it's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Amen. The scripture from 2 Kings, chapter 22, verses 1 through 7. Josiah was eight years old when he began to reign, and he reigned thirty-one years in Jerusalem.

His mother's name was Jedidah, the daughter of Adaiah of Bozkath. And he did what was right in the eyes of the Lord and walked in all the way of David his father. And he did not turn aside to the right or to the left. In the eighteenth year of King Josiah, the king sent Shaphan, the son of Azaliah, son of Meshulam, the secretary, to the house of the Lord, saying, Go up to Hilkiah, the high priest, that he may count the money that has been brought into the house of the Lord, which the keepers of the threshold have collected from the people.

And let it be given into the hand of the workmen who have the oversight of the house of the Lord. And let them give it to the workmen who are at the house of the Lord repairing the house, that is, to the carpenters, and to the builders, and to the masons. And let them use it for buying timber and quarried stone to repair the house. But no accounting shall be asked from them for the money that is delivered into their hand, for they deal honestly.

This is the word of the Lord. Right on. We are in a brand new series. And if you don't know, that was Coldplay there at the beginning. They are the millennial version of U2, as you remember, and did their best to follow in that footsteps. No one remembers that? That's what we called them? Okay. Forget about the early 2000s. I didn't bring that up. If you have your Bibles, open up to 2 Kings 22, 1 through 7.

We're in a brand new series. And we're looking at this incredible king of Israel who did it different. If you look through the history of the kings of Israel, I found over 40 kings, and I only found four or five where it says that they followed in the ways of their father David, or followed in the ways of David, or followed God with all of their heart.

Sometimes it will say that, and they'll say, but they didn't really pull down all the idols in the northern part of Israel, or whatever it would be. But there's just a few that go after it. And Josiah is one of those kings who is not willing, from a very young age, to accept second best or an A- on the test, so to speak. He wanted to go fully after God, and we see him doing this.

The one thing that we see is when it comes to kings, when it comes to our political leadership, one of the things that you see with the nation of Israel is God never wanted a king for Israel. He says that. God had wanted a theocracy with a powerful church people, a powerful priesthood, and then a really purposeful people. People that are part of Israel, and those two were supposed to work together, where God was sovereign and in charge.

But they kept wanting a north star other than God. And so they said, we want a visible representation, somebody that will keep us safe. So give us a king, give us a king. He says, well, these kings are going to do this to you. And the majority of the kings did the bad things God said that those kings would do. It's interesting, as you look at kings, why does God allow kings to be raised up?

Why does he protect some? Why does he cast others down? The scripture is really clear. And if you're rooted in scripture, when you look at what is happening in the political scape, you will be put at ease knowing that God is sovereign. I want to read you just a couple scriptures about this. It'll show you about these different kings and how God, and what I said two weeks ago, God is sovereign.

Sovereignty means that he is in charge. Let me give you the first one from Daniel 4, 17. These are not in your notes. I added these. But after yesterday, I thought it was good, and it was an interesting start to the passage to show what God is doing. Daniel 4, 17, the decision is announced by the messengers. The Holy One declares the verdict. That is a judicial term.

So that the living may know that the Most High is sovereign over all the kingdoms of the earth. And he gives them to anyone he wishes. And he sets over them the lowliest of people. You look at Jeremiah. Jeremiah was a contemporary of Josiah. So, interesting, if you didn't know that, during the reign of Josiah here, who reigned for, I think, 39 years or something close to 28 years, I forgot the exact number, Jeremiah was the prophet in that age.

And so they were working hand in hand to restore Israel. But Jeremiah says this, with my great power and outstretched arm, I made the earth and the people and the animals that are on it, and I will give it to whom I please. Well, you can say, well, that's just all Old Testament. It's different in the New Testament. Just give me something from the New Testament.

Well, let me give you a little bit of Romans, right? Romans says this in Romans 13, 1. Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. When God wants to remove a political leader, he will remove a political leader. When God wants to protect a political leader, he will encapsulate that leader within his protection for his purposes and his time.

And God has purposes for political leaders. And the two purposes are, one, to bless a nation according to their works of righteousness, or their works of unrighteousness, or to curse and punish a nation. That's what the scripture says. And he raises up and he pushes down. The key is this, God's sovereign. And God does what God wants to do when God wants to do it.

And we see God in this passage raising up Josiah. Now, if you've seen Star Wars, at the beginning of Star Wars, before the movie starts, there's like this scrolling thing that happens, right? And it says in Dagobah, land far away or whatever. We're going to have to do that a minute because there's a lot of context before we can get into the actual movie of this passage, into the actual scripture of what's happening.

And I need to set this up because this is a very unique story as we look into it. And the first thing I want to say is that there's a main point for this message, for the entire message series over the next six weeks. Revival begins, and there's three words here in your notes, there's four R's. Revival begins with repentance, reformation, and restoration.

It begins with that process. And so you have four R's there. And I would say it's not just true for nations. We see revival happen in Israel in this passage. But this is an algorithm that you can apply to your life if you want to see not only reformation in your life, but restoration in your life. Easy to look at those words. When I saw those words, I began to look at restoration and reformation.

I was like, well, those are the same thing. When we were going through our kind of putting this together, how is that any different? To reform something is not to restore it. And let me give a metaphor from the tax code. And this is not giving any thumbs up for our current tax code or thumbs down for the current tax code, although I wouldn't mind a 10% flat tax for everybody.

Nonetheless, I won't say that. But reformation, to reform the tax code, would mean to change the laws about how we do something. Reformation is the process that creates a process for something to be rebuilt. So if I were to look in regard, once again, to the tax code, to reform the tax code would be to change the laws and to change the way we do it.

The restoration would be to take the income that comes from those taxes to rebuild cities, to rebuild schools, to rebuild. And so there was a difference between reformation and restoration. And if you want your life restored to something beyond what it is now, or something that maybe it used to be, because sometimes going back to what it was is better than where it has become, you rarely are going to see that happen without reforming some of the practices in your life.

Josiah comes in this passage. He first repents for the sins of his actual father, Amnon. He repents for his grandfather, Manasseh, the most evil king in all of Israel. And there were some others as well. And then he repents. Then he reforms, as we will see. And then after the reformation, he restores. And Israel is restored just for a moment. Israel had been so evil during the time of his grandfather, Manasseh, that God promised, I'm going to wipe it out.

I'm done. And God was ready to do that until one king stepped in and there was a pause during his entire reign. God stopped the judgment. He said, this will not happen in your time. He says, you will not have this happen until after you pass away. And for a short time, because of a, you know, a priest, because, you know, we see this priest here, because of the prophet Jeremiah, because of the potentate, our leader, to use another P, the potentate Josiah, and because of a people, a nation, a pause button was put on what was going to happen to a nation and there was restoration and revival.

There's a recipe here that we can see that we can actually use for our lives. Let me just go through the scroll now of the Star Wars to give you a little bit of an understanding what is happening and who Josiah is. Josiah is found in the book of 2 Kings. His life is also found in the book of 2 Chronicles. The six books in the Old Testament, 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings, 1 and 2 Chronicles, mimic in a way the Gospels in the New Testament.

The Gospels in the New Testament, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, are a narrative story. It is basically Jesus camping in the wilderness with his buddy for about three years, with his buddies, and then going into Jerusalem and doing miracles all over. It is a narrative movie, so to speak, of Jesus going with his disciples and it's easy to read.

I would say that the similar books of 1 Samuel, 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings, and 1 and 2 Chronicles read the same way. Except for the really boring first 10 chapters in 1 Chronicles where it's just names, okay? So you can skip that part for right now, okay? Until you want to. You will find the story of Josiah not only in Chronicles, you will find it in Kings.

I believe it's in chapters 34 and 35 of Chronicles, but we are focusing in on the Kings portion of it. Kings 22 and 23. We're starting with chapter 1. And it begins, go to verse 1. Well, Josiah was eight years old when he began to reign. He reigned 31 years. And his mother's name was Jedidah and the daughter of Adadiah of Bozkath. Let me just tell you, there's some key moments in his life.

And it mentions his life in two linear forms. Now, I understand this can be a little bit confusing. You're probably going to have to listen to this message two or three times if you really want to unpack it. But it tells how old he was. And then beside it, it gives a timeline of in the year of his reign. So sometimes it's saying when he was this age, and it's just his biological age.

And other times it's saying, well, in the fourth year of his reign. Well, if he started reigning when he was eight, in the fourth year he would be what? Twelve, right? I'm going to talk about that. I'm just going to give this quick timeline. Because one, I think it shows the power of God working in anyone's life. And that there's no child-sized portion of the Holy Spirit.

If God wants to touch a young person, like Joan of Arc, like he did in France at the time, if he wants to touch a young person at the age of four or three or two, there is no limits to what God can do. And we always treated our children, maybe not as mature in the faith as we were, but my wife and I made a decision that we were going to treat them as spiritual equals in regard that God could speak to them.

And I would ask my children at a very young age, because I knew that the Holy Spirit could speak to them, what do you think about this appropriately? What do you think about this? And I would raise them up and give them the keys. I wrote a book called Give Your Kids the Keys. And we see Josiah taking the keys, but where did he get those keys from?

Well, we see that those keys are coming from his mother. We'll talk about that in a second. But he became king when he was eight years old. When he was 16 years old, he began to follow God. If you would look through the, if you look in the scripture, it says in verse two, and he did what was right in the eyes of the Lord and walked in all the ways of his David father, did not turn to the right or to the left.

It says that he began to follow, if you go to the Chronicles passage, he began to follow God when he was 16. So he became king at eight. He began to follow God when he was 16. At 20, he purges the nation of all the idols. There was massive idols all over Israel. They had actually desecrated the temple. They had taken the temple of God, and they had put idols to all these starry hosts, to Baal, in the temple of God.

They had put male prostitutes in the temple. They had defiled the temple. And at 20 years old, he went in, he said, enough is enough. And as king, he began to purge. He began to purge the nation at 20. At 26, he began the process of rebuilding. That's the restoration. 39 years old, he died in battle. I think one of the things that's interesting about this is in the process of reformation and restoration, you're not going to get restoration immediately.

Some people think, oh, as soon as I do a couple reforms in my life, or I stop drinking, or this other thing, whatever we're in bondage to, immediately it's going to be what it should be. Or we expect results. It is pretty clear that as we walk in the paths of the Lord, as we reform our lives, we look at the things, we reform our churches, we reform our governments, it takes time.

And it takes time here before they begin to restore the temple. We'll get to that later on in this passage. But we see a young person changing the world. Never let age, no matter if you're an older person or a younger person, stop you from what God can do in your life. I'm going to lift that up. Okay, so the first thing is this, we have repent, reform, restore.

Go to verse one. Josiah was eight years old when he began to reign. He reigned 31 years in Jerusalem. His mother's name was Jedidah, the daughter of Adadiah of Bozkath. And verse two, and he did what was right in the eyes of the Lord and walked in all the way of David his father. And he did not turn to the left or the right. Well, the first thing in chapter two, verse two, you're going to see is it mentions his father being David.

We know David's not his father. His father is Ammon. Ammon was an evil king. And it is clear that while he knew he should respect his father, because the Bible says to honor your mother and father, okay, that is a command from God, he no longer saw his father as the role model to follow. His father had passed away at this time, but instead he looked to a surrogate father, and that was King David.

He looked beyond his current family to break the chain. There was a chain going through his family, a generational curse, a generational legacy of evil and wickedness that he stood up and he said, enough is enough. And at 16 years old, according to the scriptures, he began to follow his father, David. David said in the first service that some of us might have to have some hard conversations with our fathers.

Even if you're 16, there's a lot of high school kids that come to the first service. They come to this and then they go to that, and I'm just so, I'm elated to see that high schoolers want to come sit and listen to me teach. I mean, it's pretty cool. And I said to them, some of you might need to have a difficult conversation and say, I respect you and I'm going to honor you, but I can't follow the way you're going anymore.

That's a hard conversation to have, and not every person can have it. David was willing to have that. And I would say to the men that are here, maybe it's time to step up and get to that verse two part where you're a father, you're a husband that does not turn to the left or to the right, but you walk a straight path. Now, we know that, we don't know, but we assume that his mother, if you look at verse one there, it says his mother's name was Jedidah.

We assume that he had a godly mother. Why do we assume that? Because in the Bible, your name usually matches who you are. There's very few times, if any, that I know of in the Bible where it says the name means bitterness, but actually you're the most joyful person in the whole congregation. Usually if your name means bitterness, you're kind of bitter in the scriptures, right?

You just taste that bitterness. His name, his mother's name was interesting. The name Jedidah means beloved or the darling of Yahweh. Man, I love that. His mother's name means the darling of Yahweh, but she was married to this guy named Ammon who followed in the ways of Manasseh, who was the most evil king that had said blood flowed from one gate to the other under his reign.

We'll talk about his grandfather in a moment. But there is a lineage of godly mothers and single moms or mothers who are living in homes where fathers will not lead spiritually that are keeping the lamp alive and aflame. And I want to encourage you to do that. I had a mother that did that, was not able to partner with her husband in godliness, and on her own volition at 49 years old, repented, got sober, stayed sober.

She's 92 now. She says, quit calling me 93. She's 92. And has stayed sober since then and created and broke the chain. And become that person that you want to be if you're their son or you're their daughter. And I would say to you mothers that are having to do that soldier on because to a midst there was a lineage, somehow the message got to this beloved of Yahweh, this darling of Yahweh, Yahweh, and made it to Josiah's heart and he became king and he restored.

And he said, I will not follow after the ways of my father, of my grandfather Manasseh. Let's just look at Manasseh real quick. I'm going to read one scripture about Manasseh that I think will tell you enough about him. You don't have it in your notes. You can find it in the 2 Kings story about his grandfather. And that's in 2 Kings 24, 4 through 6.

You can write that down. Let me just read this to you. You're going to get the point, right? Manasseh built altars in the temple of the Lord, of which the Lord had said, In Jerusalem, I will put my name. In the two courts of the temple of the Lord, he built altars to all of the starry hosts. That's the demons that are worshiped. He sacrificed his own son in the fire, practiced divination, sought omens, consulted mediums and spiritualists.

He did much evil in the eyes of the Lord, and he aroused the Lord's anger. It actually says that he did more evil in the sight of the Lord than all the Ammonites that were there before him. Now, God gave the promised land to Israel because the nations that were there were so evil. Killing their babies, killing their children, burning their children alive, sacrificing them to the Molech and the fire.

I mean, just so evil that it says that the ground itself spat them out. It wasn't even just God who, you know, brought the retribution to them. He spat them out. And it says the earth itself will spit you out. Well, how can that happen? Well, where do humans come from? There is a connection between the way we live and the earth. Why? Because we are made from the dust.

And I think you can make a biblical argument that if the environment were to change to match the sin of the people, there would be a biblical reasoning to say behind it that the earth reacts as we sin. And they were kicked out because of Manasseh. Well, he stands up. Go back to verse 1. He stands up. Excuse me. In your notes. In 2 Chronicles. This is the Chronicles passage.

Not the one we're currently in, but it is the side story, the parallel story. It says, For in the eighth year of his reign, while he was yet a boy, 16 years old, he began to seek the God of David, his father. And in the 12th year, that is when he was 20, he began to purge Judah and Jerusalem of the high places of the Ashram and the carved and the metal idols.

At 20 years old, he went to the places that his grandfather and his father had built to worship the starry host, to seek mediums, and he began to purge. And if you have a note, if you have your pencil, circle the word purge. He began to reform. Joshua not only repented when he was 16 years old and began to follow in the way of his father David because he didn't have a father he could follow after, he repented.

And then after that, when he was 16 years old, he began, it says he began to follow. And then when he was 20 years old, he began to tear it all down. Josiah goes hard when it comes to, like, going after God. He is willing to tear down anything, any image, any thought that stands in the way between him and his God. And he goes and he tears down the things that his fathers had built and the things that his father had built.

I put in reform as this. Josiah reformed the ways of the people by purging the ways of the past. This is the idea when it comes to clearing out our lives and reforming our lives. And I asked people in the first sermon, is there something in your life that needs to be purged? Now, you're going to see when Josiah purges things, it isn't like, you know, I think I'm going to stop doing that.

I really want to stop doing that. Yeah, we'll think about that more if I'm on Sunday. No, after multiple years of reform, because as you'll see next week, they had lost the scriptures. Hilka, the high priest, was, like, in the temple one day. And he's all, what's this? It's the book of the law. We haven't seen this for 300 years. And they bring it to Josiah and read it to him.

And then he starts tearing his clothes. He's like, whoa, what have we been doing? They actually lost total touch with what God had been doing. And he begins to look at that, and then he begins to see and realize that he's under a curse, according to the book that they found underneath all the mattresses from the temple prostitutes. And they bring it to him, and he says, no more.

And he begins to break down these idols. He goes so hard that he turns them into dust. It says at one point, I think I have the scripture here. Actually, I do have it. This is it. In 2 Chronicles. And when it comes to purging, one, I'm not going to tell you what to purge for the most part. You will know if you seek the Lord of what to purge. It are the things that hold you into bondage.

But this is a good way to do it. 2 Chronicles, the parallel passage that you're going to read as we study this text for the next few weeks together. In the eighth year, 2 Chronicles 34, 3 through 5, of his reign, that's when he was 16, while he was still young, he began to seek the God of his father David. In the 12th year, when he was 20, he began to purge Judah and Jerusalem of the high places, the Aserah poles and the idols.

Under his direction, here's the good part. Under his direction, the altars of the Baals were torn down. He cut them into pieces, and the incense altars that were above them. He smashed the Aserah poles and the idols. These he broke into pieces, and then he scattered them over the graves of those who had sacrificed them. He burned the bones of the priest on the altars, and so he purged Judah and Jerusalem.

There might be something in your life that needs to be purged in that way. Everyone doesn't have the same sins. Something that someone is not under a bondage to, somebody else might be. But I said in the first sermon, maybe it's time, if you're in bondage to your phone in one way or another, maybe you're just addicted to it, or maybe there's things on there you shouldn't look at, it might be time to take that phone, turn it into dust.

That cost me $1,200. So what? What's your soul's worth? Burn it down. Find that thing in your life. I'm not telling you to judge other people's lives. I'm not telling you to listen to me what it is. You know what it is. Maybe it's whatever. You choose what it is. Maybe there's relationships that have been evil, whatever that looks like. I'm not telling you to attack people, but maybe you need to stop doing certain things.

Maybe it's time to get off some dating sites for a while. I don't know. You know what your thing is. But when it comes time to purge, you are not going to see restoration unless there's reformation. And it says about Josiah he was not willing to turn to the left or to the right, but God made his ways straight. I think you really want to walk in straight paths.

The scripture's really clear. We have this little, like, you know, tiny, like, garden hoe, you know. And we're trying to make a little straight path, right? And in front of this, it says that if we do that with our little tiny garden hoe of our life, we're trying to make it straight and get it all going, that God will come in with, like, this John Deere tractor, one of those massive, like, 20-foot things like this.

And he'll put it into the ground, and he'll go in front of you. And then he'll go. For he who tries to make his paths straight, God will make his paths straight. And so all of a sudden, you are going to have a wide open margin. When you reform your life, we repent, we reform the way we do things, and then God will begin to restore things to you.

He might restore your mental health. He might restore your family. He might restore your marriage. He might begin to restore, but it's not a microwave. It happens over years of continuing to make righteous and good decisions. And this is what he does. Because I guess the question is, are you willing to tear it down? I don't know about you, but I too often repent with a little bit of, like, oh, I don't really want to repent of that.

I repent, but I kind of want the thing I want. What I've been praying is, Lord, if I have anything like that in my life, would you get me to the place where I want to repent? At least take me to the place. The only prayer I can offer you in faith right now is get me to the place where I don't want to have that thing in my life anymore. Where you get to the place after multiple years to be willing to take out the hammer of whatever it is in your life and say, no, mas.

I'm turning that into dust and blowing it into the sea. And God, no more, and I want to follow you with all my own heart. Of all the kings that I saw, only four or five ever followed in this way. Then we see restoration. In the 26th year, go to verse 3 and 4. In the 18th year of King Josiah, that's the 26th year of his life, the king sent Shaphan, the son of Azaliah, son of Meshulam, the secretary to the house of the Lord, saying, Go up to Hilkiah, the high priest, that's a lot of names, that he may count the money that has been brought into the house of the Lord, which the keepers of the threshold have collected from the people.

I think that's really, really interesting because what we see here now is that all these years later, after this repenting and after reformation, the people's heart starts to change. And he begins the work of restoring the temple. He's eight years old when he becomes king. I believe he's 16, or he's 12, or 16 when he begins to follow after the way of his father David.

He's 20 when he starts to purge. And he's 26 when he finally gets to restoration. You see, reformation and restoration are different things and they're a process. But until you know what needs to be repented of, until you're willing to reform the processes and the ways that you walk in, you won't see that restoration. Don't look for the restoration of your family or your business or your marriage or anything else unless you're willing for the reformation and to do the work of that process.

And we see that happen. The cool thing is, is that, I named this sermon, if you look at the title of the sermon, The Revival Collective. The revival happens when you see a powerful trifecta in a nation. One, you have godly leadership. You see Josiah as the godly leadership. Two, you have a penitent priesthood. What does that mean? A penitent priesthood.

It means that they are asking forgiveness. We see Hilkiah go there. He finds the book of the Lord in this, like, you know, drug den of a temple that used to be God's temple. He finds the book of the Lord and then he repents. And then he has the courage, as you'll see. I want to just read this real quick. In 2 Kings 20 through 8 through 10. And Hilkiah, after he found the book of the law, the high priest said to Shaphon the sacred, I have found the book of the law in the house of the Lord.

Hilkiah gave the book to Shaphon and he read it. This is the first time. Imagine a priest. It's like giving, like, I'm here and they're, hey, here's, by the way, you've been running that church for 10 years? Here's a Bible. Check it out. It's amazing. Verse 10. Then Shaphon, the secretary, told king, Hilkiah, the priest, has given me a book. And Shaphon ran and read it before the king.

To have priests or to have pastors or people that are in the work of the church to be willing to speak the truth in front of a king who maybe wouldn't want to hear it, that takes a lot of courage. Because he found a book that said something opposite of everything that generation after generation of this man, Josiah's family, had done incorrectly year after year after year.

And this priest finds a book, reads it, and he's like, whoops, I'm going to go read this before the king. Not only do you have a powerful, godly person leading the country, a king, but you have a church that only has one gospel, so to speak. It only has one law. We call it the gospel in the New Testament. They call it the law of Moses or the Lord in the Old Testament.

And you have a church that is not willing at this point, because of Hilkiah and others with him, to preach any other message than Jesus Christ crucified is Lord, Jesus Christ crucified is returning, and the blood of Jesus sets us free. That is the message of the gospel. And no social gospel, no matter how much we love people, goes before that gospel.

No message of prosperity goes before that gospel. No message of any kind goes before that gospel, because that is the gospel that gives us eternal life. The scripture says in Galatians, let any other gospel that is being preached, even if it's by man or even an angel, come and preach a gospel other than we preach. Let that gospel be accursed. Let that word be accursed.

Let them be accursed. And I would say to the Lord in all humility, God, I pray that we preach a pure gospel here, and God, teach me to repent before I would ever be accursed. But if I ever get to a place where I preach a false gospel from this pulpit or any other place, God, will you curse me and kill me and take me out, because I never want to do that, and I will say that for the Lord today.

And God, through your grace, keep me on track. That's the gospel. And we need pastors who are willing to stand up and preach the blood of Jesus under his grace. And it's only by his grace that a believer can say something like that. Because under his blood, we have the ability to preach a true gospel. And crap, we might get wrong on some doctrine, on here and there, some non-important doctrine of, you know, different issues.

That's fine. But when it comes to one way to heaven, one God to heaven, Jesus Christ, the blood of Jesus, the death of Jesus, that's the gospel that this, you know, priest was willing to preach. I would say go to a church that preaches like that. Not only that, I told you Joshua has this incredible helper during his ministry. Who does God send? Jeremiah.

Come on, Jeremiah. Jeremiah is an incredible prophet. Have you read the book of Jeremiah? Jeremiah comes in. I wrote this. Josiah and Jeremiah, the prophet, were contemporaries. Living and serving in Judah during the same period. Josiah reigned as king approximately from 640 years before Jesus to 609 years before Jesus. And Jeremiah began his prophetic ministry in the 13th year of Josiah's reign.

Right? When all that purging was happening. You'll find that in 2 Chronicles 35, 25. He's such a great king that Jeremiah writes a lament. There's a lament in Scripture that he wrote that, you know, that the Jews to this day will still sing that lament to King Josiah. That's how incredible this king was. And the final thing, the final point is this.

Not only was there incredible godly leadership from governance, there was an incredible church that was not willing to forgo the actual book of the law. We would call it the gospel in the New Testament because we've moved on from that. But you had a people that were purposeful. I've got to tell you, all the governance in the world and great church leadership in the world doesn't matter if the people won't follow.

And if the people themselves will not seek God themselves and agree to the covenants of the Lord. And the Lord has challenged me to raise the bar here at this church. To call people who want to be part of a local church that makes a difference. And it's you that makes the difference. I've got to do my job. Our staff has to do our job. But we need a people who want to pray, who want to love the local church, who want to care for the local church, who want to serve, who want to give.

We see that their call goes out to restore the temple. The people bring so much money in years later, right? This is like when he's 26 years old. Years later, they bring so much money in they can restore the temple. And it's such godly leadership that Josiah says, hey, just give it to the builders, that money. They're so godly. They are so trustworthy that I'm not even going to take an account of them.

Now, we don't do that here in this way. I mean, I'm not asking to do that in the modern church. But in this setting, they said, just give them the money. They'll take care of it. Now, I will tell you something. The costs were a little higher if you steal from the king back then. They're going to chop your head off. So a little bit higher. So I understand that.

I just want to read this last bit before we end. In 2 Kings 23.3, the king stood. Remember, he's 26 years old at this point. The king stood by the pillar and made a covenant before the Lord to walk after the Lord and to keep his commands and his testimonies and his statues with all of his heart and his soul to perform the words of the covenant that were written in the book.

And here's the best part. And all the people joined the covenant. All the people joined the covenant. My prayer was just one person today at church. One person will say yes. That was my prayer today. I hope everyone says yes. I pray that just one person repents, completely purges their life. It could be a process. Reforms their life and begins to step in to restore not only the church, because when the church is restored, when the people are restored, you're going to see the governance restored.

Because God's kingdom will begin to expand. There's three practical takeaways from today's message. First is this. Repent. You need to sit before the Lord and ask him what you need to repent of. And where you don't have the faith to repent, ask him for faith to repent. Ask him for dunamis power. I gave that word last week. That Greek word dunamis is a Greek word.

It means power. And it means the power for moral change. Not just, you know, heal blind eyes. We always think about, oh, the power. You know, we'd love to see someone raised from the dead. The greatest miracle is someone repenting and finding eternal life in Jesus Christ. There is no greater miracle than eternal life. Everyone who gets their eyes healed is going to go, you know, blind again at some point when they hit the grave.

It is only through eternal life and faith in Jesus that we repent. That's the greatest miracle, and we need to repent. Sit before the Lord, and if you don't know how, say, God, give me a heart that wants to go fully after you. The next one is reform. You will know the root by the fruit. Look at your life. Look at the relationships. Look at the things that you're surrounded by.

Look at your, whatever the thing is, take a look at your life. You should be getting away regularly and taking a look at your life and saying, what needs to be reformed? What is reform? Reform, once again, is the practices in which you do things. As you continue with those practices, reading the word of God, reading the word of God with your family, and I would say to fathers that are here and to husbands that are here, even if you don't have children, is there a time every week, and I have not been faithful to this.

The Lord challenged me with this. I'm not saying this. I have not been faithful to this since my kids became teenagers. Because once I got to them being teenagers, I let my hands off the reins a little bit. Just be honest with you. It's just, you know, hey, we raised them up in the way they should go, and I got two kids that are rule followers, so it's been pretty easy.

They're both really good rule followers. But one of the things I used to do is have the Bible that was, I would open a Bible in the house and have it there. I would highlight a scripture. I will guarantee you, if you open a Bible, get a really nice Bible for your house and get a stand like we have right there. Put it up in your house and highlight a passage.

Guarantee you, your kid will walk by, they will stop, and they will read the passage. Love your parents. Have that one highlighted really well. Repent, reform, and the final one is restore. God wants to restore. He wants to build into those things. It's not going to happen immediately. He wants to rebuild your homes. He wants to rebuild your vocabulary.

He wants to rebuild your emotions. I'm in the process right now of trying to rebuild some of my reactions to things, the ways that I speak. It has come so far from where I was, but it's not far enough. And I want to continue to move and repent and reform, and it's not going to happen overnight. I thought when I got to this church, what has happened in 10 years would happen in 18 months.

I was that good. No, I wasn't, I found out. But it was incredibly difficult. And God doesn't really do a lot of things microwave speed. We are 10 years in now of over and over again, trying to do the right things over and over again, and you are starting to see God move in such a powerful way. I believe that we, I believe as a church, guys, we are on the edge of something really special in a society that needs it really bad.

And it's as we come in with just a group of leaders who want to go after the Lord, who want to have prayer rooms, who want to have worship nights, and a group of you that say, yes, I want to be all in, that we will see change in our society and see change in our lives. Amen? Stand if you would. We're going to have the worship team come forward. This is a time for prayer.

Our prayer team is going to be here. If you just want to come and chill before the Lord, do some repentance, you can come sit in the front row. No one's going to mess with you. If you need prayer for healing, your emotions, anxiety, whatever it would be, or you have never accepted Christ and you want to accept Christ, come forward today. We will pray with you.

We have baptisms coming up next week, I believe. We can get you baptized. But we're going to sing this song, and let's begin to just seek the Lord now as we sing this final song. Amen. I'm a one-h li'e-e-d, Who will never fail He will never fail I trust in God My Savior, the one Who will never fail He will never fail I sought the Lord And He heard and He answered the Lord and he heard and he answered that's why I trust him that's why I trust in God my Savior the one who will never fail he will never fail if you need prayer today take the opportunity I want to pray for you I want to see breakthrough in your life you extend your hands I want to bless you today before you go ask for God's heart Lord Jesus I want to bless those that are here today I bless everyone in this congregation with a spirit of wisdom it says in James that if you ask for wisdom he will give you wisdom and some of you need wisdom you need clarity I just want to pray that opening over the book of Proverbs the book of 1st Corinthians over you over this congregation that those two books would just be opened if people dive into those that all the book of Proverbs and 1st Corinthians just open those up God we want to repent Jesus God I pray you would just it is only by your blood that we are saved I pray for the blood of Jesus and a desire upon each person to repent Lord God the person came up after the first service and said to me I've been sober 40 days 40 days my wife's sober too we got sober together 40 days ago God I just pray for a lifetime of that I just pray you bless them anybody who's struggling with that God as a church we want to repent reform and restore I bless these homes I bless this nation I bless God our political leaders we bless our enemies Lord God and those that hate the church we bless them God give us soft baby skin hearts Lord Jesus and I send you out now in the power of the Holy Spirit in the name of the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit