Tonight I want to preach a sermon that's a little bit different than the sermons that I normally preach tonight.
I try to preach a variety of sermons to try to give a balanced diet of Bible preaching.
But tonight I want to preach about a person who's Bible and I want to just basically go through the life of this particular Bible character
and understand him and what he did with his life, things he did right, things he did wrong, and that person is King Josiah.
Now, he's not necessarily a person that a lot of people know very much about in the Bible, but he has four entire chapters dedicated to his life,
2 Kings 22 and 23, and 2 Chronicles 34 and 35.
I turn back with you to 1 Kings 13, and he's also mentioned several times in the book of Jeremiah.
But if we go back to 1 Kings 13, we're going to see the first time that he's ever mentioned.
He's a really amazing character in the Bible. Look at 1 Kings 13, verse number 1.
The Bible reads,
Now, part of what's so amazing about this is that this was prophesied hundreds of years before Josiah was ever born.
And it's kind of an anomaly in the Bible that someone's birth would be announced hundreds of years in advance like this.
It's really unique to Josiah in this type of circumstance.
Well, this is back in 1 Kings 13. We just read about him in, what, 2 Kings 22. Hundreds and hundreds of years go by in between.
Look at verse 3.
The king answered and said to the man of God,
And we can go on and on and tell the whole story, but that's not the story. We're talking about Josiah.
But what happened? This man preached against this altar. Basically, Jeroboam the son of Nebak,
when he took the ten tribes and established the northern kingdom of Israel,
the king of Judah was Rehoboam, the son of Solomon.
And Jeroboam was afraid that when people went down to Jerusalem to worship the Lord at the set time each year,
and to offer sacrifices at the temple of the Lord,
that their heart would be turned back to their brethren, the children of Judah, and he would lose his kingdom.
So he built these altars up in Bethel and Dan, and he put golden calves there,
and he said,
Well, this man comes and prophesies and says that one day, a long, long time from now,
there's going to be a man named Josiah born, and someday he's going to come here and burn the false prophet's bones upon this altar.
And, of course, the king is upset, he's angry, and Jeroboam points and says, you know, basically to get him,
and as soon as he puts out his hand to point at this preacher, his hand dries up and just kind of freezes, stuck in that position,
and his hand is, you know, decayed. And, of course, the man of God prays for him, his hands are stored, and the story goes on and on.
But look at 2 Kings chapter 22. We're jumping way into the future here.
Look at 2 Kings chapter 22 and verse number 1. The Bible reads,
Let me give you some background on who he is. His grandfather was a king named Manasseh.
Now, Manasseh had a very long reign, and King Manasseh was very, very wicked.
In fact, he was one of the most wicked kings of Judah. He filled Judah, the Bible says, in Jerusalem with innocent blood.
I mean, he was killing people, you know, people were passing their children through the fire to these false gods,
kind of like an infanticide, like an abortion you could compare it to.
And he's practicing these awful practices of infanticide, worshipping the devil, the Bible says he used enchantments and sorceries.
But believe it or not, after all these decades of being so wicked, eventually, in his very old age,
he was carried away captive by the enemy, and while he was away captive, he finally got saved.
And he actually felt bad about all the things that he'd done after that, and he came back,
and for the very short end of his life, he actually began to serve the Lord in his life.
Well, he died, and his son, Ammon, A-M-O-N, took over and reigned in his stead.
Well, his son had already been, you know, grown up with him in his wicked days.
And so his son was very wicked, just like he used to be.
And so as soon as his father Manasseh died, he did not learn the lesson from Manasseh's life,
and he decided to just go back to worshipping Baal and all the wickedness and all the abominations.
Well, look, if you would, jump back to chapter 21, look at verse 19.
It says, Ammon was twenty and two years old when he began to reign, and he reigned two years in Jerusalem.
This is a pretty short reign. He reigned two years in Jerusalem.
His mother's name was Mesholemeth, the daughter of Herodotus of Japheth,
and he did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord, as his father Manasseh did.
You're talking about before Manasseh was converted, okay?
And he walked in all the way that his father walked in and served the idols that his father served
and worshipped them, and he forsook the Lord God of his fathers and walked not in the way of the Lord,
and the servants of Ammon conspired against him and slew the king of his own house.
Now think about it. If Josiah was eight years old when he began to reign,
because that's the son of Ammon, think about this.
That means that he was six years old when Ammon began to reign.
So he still knew his grandfather Manasseh.
He still saw in his early young days what happened with Manasseh.
Manasseh finally, you know, repenting of all the wickedness that he'd done,
and actually serving God a little bit at the end of his life and so forth.
He saw that happen. He watched Ammon rise up.
He saw Ammon go down a wicked path and be cut off in two years time.
Now he's coming to the throne at only eight years old.
Now think about that. Solomon is what, seven and a half?
And so, you know, similar age to my son Solomon.
Imagine inheriting the kingdom.
Now obviously there was a regency, you know, there were other people that were,
you know, guiding him and molding him and helping him,
but he became king. He began to reign, the Bible says,
at the age of eight years old.
And this is the one who'd been prophesied hundreds of years ago.
But you see, people had probably, and really it's evident as we get into the story,
had pretty much forgotten about that probably hundreds and hundreds of years later,
about one day a man coming named Josiah and so forth,
but it's so long in the coming.
Look at verse two, it says,
And he did that which was right in the sight of the Lord,
and walked in all the way of David his father,
and turned on his time to the right hand and rode to the left.
And it came to pass in the eighteenth year of king Josiah,
that the king sent Shaphan, the son of Azaliah,
the son of Meshulah, the scribe of the house of the Lord,
saying, so he's eighteen years old now,
Go up to Okiath the high priest, that he may sum the silver
which is brought into the house of the Lord,
which the keepers of the door gathered of the people,
and let them deliver it into the hand of the doers of the work
that had the oversight of the house of the Lord,
and let them give it to the doers of the work
which is in the house of the Lord, to repair the breaches of the house.
So basically, God's house, the temple in those days,
today of course we know our body is the temple of the Holy Spirit,
and the church is the house of God, the church of the living God,
but in those days they had a physical temple,
where they had a physical altar and they would sacrifice a physical lamb and so forth,
but in this temple there was great disrepair
because of the wicked kings who had gone before Josiah.
Josiah had let it fall apart, they'd let it go into disrepair,
and all this money was coming in and Josiah said,
wait a minute, let's take the money that's coming in here,
let's take these offerings and let's put them to good use,
let's give them to the people who are the doers of the work,
who have the oversight of the house of the Lord,
to repair the breaches of the house of the Lord,
let's fix it up, let's get it back to its normal condition.
Now obviously, you know, a figurative reference that we can get here,
obviously we take the literal interpretation as we read this,
but really we see that there are people that have the oversight of the house of the Lord,
and the Bible talks about in the New Testament,
pastors and deacons having oversight, basically an overseer,
somebody who, hey, they ought to be the doer of the work.
Did you see that?
Because he says here, to the oversight, look at verse 75,
and let them deliver it into the hand of the doers of the work
that have the oversight of the house of the Lord.
Wouldn't it God that doers of the work would have the oversight of the house of God
today in 2009 in America.
I mean, good night.
A pastor is supposed to lead by example.
He ought to be out doing the work.
Not to be ministered unto, but to minister.
That's what Jesus said.
The son of man came not to be ministered unto,
but to minister, to give himself a ransom for many.
And we as pastors or preachers or deacons should be doing the work of the house of God.
And by the way, notice he said, take the money that comes in,
the offering, and give it to those that do the work.
People ought not to be paid to sit around and do nothing
just because it's a ministry job.
I mean, pastors, deacons, church employees shouldn't be paid to sit and read the Bible.
Did you know that every Christian who works a job and gets a paycheck
should read the Bible without being paid to read the Bible?
We should all go soul winning without being paid to go soul winning.
We should all pray without being paid to pray.
People who are in the employ of the church, they ought to be doing some work.
That's who ought to get the money from the offerings.
People are doing the work.
Now, I'm not taking any salary right now at all.
I took a salary for a while last year when I was considering and pondering
making the transition to being a full-time pastor.
I decided against it.
We hired Brother Matthew Stuckey, and he is in our employ.
You better know this guy works.
Otherwise, we'll stop paying him.
Okay?
He works hard because we're not a welfare service.
And many churches, it's almost like a welfare program,
just paying people to do nothing.
Now, I thank God that we have somebody who works, that works for us,
that does the work, and earns the money that he gets in his paycheck.
Now, I personally don't receive a paycheck.
But you know what?
You don't receive a paycheck.
We're Christians, though, and so we serve God, and we work and love God,
because, you know, now let's say I want to be a full-time pastor.
Let's say another pastor is full-time.
You know, the Bible does say that God ordained for those that preach the gospel
to live up the gospel.
Paul said, I've chosen not to use that.
Paul continued his tent-making business,
and he did not live off of the tithes and offerings of God's people.
I choose to do the same thing.
I enjoy my work.
I like the balance that I have right now of preaching and soul winning
and working my job, and that's the way it is.
But I'm going to tell you something.
People who oversee God's house, whether they're full-time or not full-time,
whether they're getting a paycheck or whether, like me,
you know, they're working a secular job, hey,
they ought to be leading the way and doing the work.
And so there will never be a deacon in Faithful Word Baptist Church
that's not doing the work of Faithful Word Baptist Church.
And when we say that, we're talking about soul winning.
That's the biggest thing we're talking about.
That's 90% of what we're talking about, soul winning.
And so that's what I wanted to point out about that.
But look at verse number 6.
The carpenters and builders, back to the literal interpretation
of building a physical house,
and to buy timber and huge stone to repair the house.
Howbeit there was no reckoning made with them
of the money that was delivered in their hands,
because they dealt faithfully.
And Hilkiah the high priest said unto Shaphan the scribe,
I have found the book of the law in the house of the Lord.
And Hilkiah gave the book to Shaphan and he read it.
And Shaphan the scribe came to the king
and brought the king of the Lord again and said,
Thy servants have gathered the money that was found in the house
and delivered it into the hand of them that do the work
that have the oversight of the house of the Lord.
And Shaphan the scribe showed the king saying,
Hilkiah the priest had delivered me a book.
Now notice what he says there, had delivered me a book.
He doesn't really identify it there, he just says,
it's a book, we found a book.
It says, we found a book, and he said,
and Shaphan read it before the king and it came to pass
when the king had heard the words of the book of the law
that he rent his clothes.
And the king commanded Hilkiah the priest
and Hilkiah the son of Shaphan and Atbor the son of Micaiah
and Shaphan the scribe and Asaiah the servant of the king said,
Go ye and inquire of the Lord for me and for the people
and for all Judah concerning the words of this book that is found.
For great is the wrath of the Lord that is kindled against us
because our fathers have not hearkened unto the words of this book
to do according unto all that which is written concerning it.
Now this is really interesting because they find this book,
they don't really know what it is.
I mean, imagine, he started reigning when he was 8 years old.
It wasn't until he was 18 that they found the Bible.
I mean, I'm sure he heard the word of God preached by prophets and so forth,
but he did not even have a copy of the Bible
because his nation had gotten so far away from God
that even in God's house the Bible wasn't even there.
They had to dig it out of a junk heap
as they started to repair the wood and repair the stone,
the carpenters, the masons.
Digging through the rubble they found this book
and isn't it amazing that as soon as that book was read
that they immediately knew that it was God's word.
I wonder if they got an archaeologist or a specialist to come.
I wonder if they got a historian or somebody to establish it
and to carbonate it and to understand, is this authentic?
You can know God's word when you hear it, my friend.
If you're saved, you know the voice of the shepherd.
I mean, when I was growing up, for example,
I had no idea, I had not learned anything about being King James only
or that the other versions were bad.
Nobody had taught me that.
And I remember sitting in churches as a teenager
that preached out of the NIV.
I mean, we were going to that church that preached the NIV.
I mean, that's where we went as a family.
But I had the King James Bible on my lap
and something always told me to never exchange that King James for an NIV.
And I had no idea why.
I mean, no one taught me why.
No one explained to me any justification for it.
And I remember many people would sit me down,
youth leaders and pastors sat me down through those years
and said, why are you using the King James Version?
They said, it's too hard for you to understand.
And they would try to reason with me.
And I would try to defend why I was using it.
I couldn't even defend it because I didn't know what to say.
And I'd stand there and say, I don't know.
You know, I like it.
And they said, I like it. I like it.
I like the Bible. It's God's Word.
And I just said, I don't know. It just sounds like God's Word.
I said, it just is powerful.
I said, I can't explain it.
And I said, isn't it closer to the originals?
And they said, no.
I said, well, I guess I don't know why.
But I just remember sitting in the pew,
listening to preaching out of the NIV,
following along with my King James.
I could just tell the difference.
See, this is weak. This is powerful.
This is watered down. This is the truth.
And I didn't know why,
but somehow I just recognized the voice of God.
And I could recognize the voice of a stranger.
That that is not God's Word. That is not right.
And again, I couldn't put my finger out.
Later on, as a seventeen year old boy,
that's where I learned.
At sixteen, actually, I was almost seventy.
That's where I understood and learned what the difference was.
I didn't even know until I was almost seventeen
that the King James Bible and these modern versions
were translated from different manuscripts.
I thought they were all translations of the same Greek and Hebrew.
I mean, that's how little I knew about it.
I just didn't know anything about it.
I just thought that they were just two different translations,
that the King James Bible was better.
I didn't even know that it was preserved or anything like that.
Nobody had taught me that doctrine.
And yet somehow I knew.
And that's the way it was with these people.
They heard that book. They heard those words.
And boy, it was like a two-edged sword.
It cut to the heart when they heard it.
So, number one, the first thing I want you to see from this
is that, number one, they knew God's word when they heard it.
Immediately they identified it as being,
oh, it's a book.
Okay, well, read that book to me.
They heard it, they said.
Number two, number one, they knew it was a Bible.
Number two, they were surprised.
They were surprised by how it condemned their lifestyle.
And that's the way it is when you first start reading the Bible.
Because you start out thinking that you're pretty good
and everything's good and church is good and everything's great.
When you crack open the Bible, it'll raise the standard a little bit
about what is right than maybe what church thinks is right
or what our society thinks is right.
And notice, they were shocked when they heard these words.
And listen, Josiah's heart was in the right place from the time he was eight.
But it wasn't until he was 18 that he read the whole Bible
that he had at that time.
He heard parts of it, but not until he read the whole thing
at the age of 18, you know, what was available to him at that time,
did he really understand his condition and the condition of his nation.
He said in verse 13,
Go ye, inquire of the Lord for me and for the people
and for all Judah concerning the words of this book that is found.
For great is the wrath of the Lord that is kindled against us.
But he didn't realize that until he read this book.
And he said, because our fathers have not hearkened under the words of this book
to do according unto all that which is written.
Concerning us.
So they say, okay, we got to inquire of God.
We got to find out. I mean, what are we supposed to do?
Is it too late?
I mean, our fathers have broken the laws in the book of Deuteronomy.
And in the book of Deuteronomy, it lists all the curses that are going to come upon us.
And they're wondering, is there any hope?
I mean, God said, if we do this, he will do this curse upon us.
Is it too late? What do we do?
How are we going to fix this?
We got to inquire of God.
So they're searching for some prophet.
They're trying to find some preacher, some prophet
that can give them some guidance and tell them what God says concerning this.
And they look everywhere.
And all they can find is a woman preacher.
So first they can't even find the Bible.
Then they find the Bible in a pile of rubble.
Now they got to find somebody to try to preach it to them.
They find a woman preacher and they go to a Bible college.
That's where you got to go, I guess, to try to find a woman preacher
to tell you what the truth is.
So they finally go to some Bible college
and find some woman preacher that's going to tell them what's going on.
That's how bad the condition was.
And by the way, this was prophesied as a judgment,
women shall rule over thee and children shall be thy masters,
it says in the book of Isaiah.
And that's the day that we're living in, by the way.
The governor of Arizona is what?
A woman who went from Janet to Jan.
Wow, you know.
I don't know the difference.
Janet, Jan, you know, Jenny, I don't know.
We get a man for governor, please, but it says in verse 15,
And she said unto them, Thus saith the Lord God of Israel,
Tell the man that sent you to me, Thus saith the Lord,
Behold, I will bring evil upon this place.
And upon the inhabitants thereof, even all the words of the book,
which the king of Judah has read.
See, God's word can't be broken.
And so he's saying, look, he said he would do it
and he's going to do it.
God's judgment is coming because of what Manasseh and Ammon have done.
But he said, Because they have forsaken me,
and have burned incense under their gods,
that they might provoke me to anger with all the works of their hands.
Therefore my wrath shall be kindled against this place,
and shall not be quenched.
But, to the king of Judah, which sent you to inquire of the Lord,
Thus shall you say to him, Thus saith the Lord God of Israel,
As touching the words which thou hast heard,
Watch this part, because thine heart was tender,
and thou hast humbled thyself before the Lord,
when thou hurtest what I spake against this place,
and against the inhabitants thereof,
and that they should become a desolation and a curse,
as rent thy clothes and wept before me,
I also have heard thee sayeth the Lord.
Behold, therefore, I will gather thee unto thy fathers,
and thou shalt be gathered into thy grave in peace,
and thine eyes shall not see all the evil which I will bring upon this place,
and they brought the king word again.
That verse is important. Remember that verse, verse 20.
I'm going to read it one more time,
but I want to say it out of your mind because of something later in this sermon.
Behold, therefore, I will gather thee unto thy fathers,
and thou shalt be gathered into thy grave,
what's the next two words, in peace,
and thine eyes shall not see all the evil which I will bring upon this place,
and they brought the king word again.
Okay, so, here is Josiah.
Eight years old when he begins to reign,
he chooses not to follow the ways of Ammon,
not to follow the former ways of Manasseh,
but to follow the ways of his father David.
And he begins to do the best he can with the knowledge that he had,
and he begins to repair the house of the Lord.
Ten years later, he's 18 years old,
they find the book, he hears the Bible read,
Genesis to Deuteronomy, he wrens his clothes,
his heart was humble and tender to God's word being preached and read to him.
You see, this is the greatness of the man here in chapter 22.
The greatness of the man was that he didn't gristle and get mad
when he heard a book that condemned him and his nation and his ancestors
as being sinful and wicked and deserving of the judgment of God.
He had a tender heart that said,
wait a minute, I'm going to confess my sin,
I'm going to wren my clothes, I'm going to put ashes on my head
and say I'm sorry to God for the sin that I've done in ignorance
and that my fathers have done and that my nation has done,
and he got on his face and humbled himself before God.
That's the greatness of the man.
Humility and tenderness to God's word.
He understood God's word, he recognized God's word as being the word of God,
he was tender to it and he humbled himself.
That's the attitude that we ought to have when we read the Bible
or when we hear the Bible preached.
It's to not gristle and not get upset and resist the truth
but to be tender hearted and say, wait a minute, I'm wrong here.
I've made a mistake, I'm going to get this right.
And that was the greatness of the man in chapter 22.
Now, he's got the Bible's knowledge in his mind now,
he knows what God expects now.
He was doing the best he could before
but now he's got a more perfect knowledge of what God expects,
what God's laws are.
So in 23 he's going to begin to put this into practice.
And the king sent and they gathered unto him
all the elders of Judah and of Jerusalem.
And the king went up into the house of the Lord
and all the men of Judah and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem with them
and the priests and the prophets and all the people both small and great.
And he read in their ears all the words of the book of the covenant
which was found in the house of the Lord.
So now he reads it to the whole nation.
He said, I want the whole nation to hear what this book has to say.
And the king stood by a pillar and made a covenant before the Lord.
It's basically a promise, an oath that he's swearing before the Lord
to walk after the Lord and to keep his commandments
and his testimonies and his statutes with all their heart
and all their soul to perform the words of this covenant
that were written in this book.
And all the people stood to the covenant.
And the king commanded Hilkiah the high priest
and the priest of the second order and the priest of the door
to bring forth out of the temple of the Lord
all the vessels that were made for Baal
and for the grove and for all the hosts of heaven.
And he burned them without Jerusalem in the fields of Kidron
and carried the ashes of them on the bed.
What are these vessels?
Glasses, plates, forks, bowls, spoons,
you know, chalices, glasses, pictures.
That's what these vessels are.
And he read in the Bible where God had told them
to take all the instruments that people used to worship the heathen
and that they should burn them with fire, destroy them.
And he read that in the law.
So he pushed that in practice.
He said, wait a minute.
I know it's just a glass that you're drinking out of,
but it's going in the trash because it had to do with false religion, you know,
because it was used in the worship of Baal.
And so he cleanses the temple right now.
He brings them all in, reads it to them.
They perform an oath and swear that they will follow the Lord.
They'll follow his law.
We're done with Baal.
They take all his trash and get it out of God's house.
And he says, and by the way, we shouldn't have things
that are associated with false religion and false gods.
We need to get rid of them as well.
Idols, idolatry, you know, some picture of Jesus
or a statue of Mary or a statue of the saints.
He's saying it's a decoration.
We ought to not have that type of decoration.
I mean, if somebody had used, if somebody,
the Bible teaches in Revelation chapter 2, for example,
that it was a sin to eat meat that was sacrificed on the idols,
and that's also taught in 1 Corinthians chapter 10.
So wait a minute.
You know, of course, Scofield, in all his wisdom,
says at the beginning of 1 Corinthians 8, questionable things.
No, there's nothing questionable about it, Scofield.
Read chapter 10.
He condemns eating things sacrificed on idols.
Read Revelation 2.
He condemns it twice out of the mouth of Jesus Christ himself
in Revelation 2, condemning eating things sacrificed on the idols.
He said, it's a piece of meat.
The idol is nothing.
In 1 Corinthians 10, Paul said, yes, we know the idol is nothing,
but that idol represents, he said, they're not worshipping idols.
He said, they're worshipping devils.
He said, the things that they sacrifice to idols,
they're sacrificing to devils.
And he said, I will not, that you have fellowship with devils.
And so he said, even if you eat that meat
that's been sacrificed on the devils,
you are fellowshipping with devils.
And so we ought to be careful not to have little icons
and idolatry and things associated with witchcraft
or with Catholicism or other wicked religions.
We ought to not have those accoutrements
and those items and those symbols and those things.
We ought to clean them up and get rid of them.
That's what he did here.
That's an interesting look at verse number 5.
When you put down the idolatrous priests
whom the kings of Judah had ordained
to burn incense in the high places in the cities of Judah
and in the places right about Jerusalem,
them also that burned incense unto Baal,
now watch this, to the sun.
So people were worshipping the sun to add to the moon
and to the planets and to all the hosts of heaven.
So people throughout history and in the Bible
worshipped the sun, worshipped the moon, worshipped the stars.
They worshipped and served the creature
more than the creator who is blessed forever, amen.
And so they worshipped the planets.
Even our days of the week are based on a planet worship.
And it's funny because some people will say
that we shouldn't celebrate Christmas with a pagan origin
even though we're celebrating the birth of Christ.
Or we shouldn't celebrate Easter because of a pagan origin
because even though we're celebrating
the resurrection of Christ with that.
But it's, wait a minute, we can't call this Sunday either.
Or Moonday, we don't want Sunday, Moonday.
Or Tuesday, which is worshipping the Norwegian false god
that's spelled T-I-W in Old Norse.
Or Wednesday, which is Odin, you know Odin,
the Norwegian Scandinavian god with the hammer.
And how about Thor, the lightning god, Thor's day.
Those are where the names of the days of the week come from.
I don't know if you know that, but they come from
Sunday, Moonday, Tuesday, Odin's day is Wednesday.
That's why it's spelled funny.
Thor's day, Thursday.
Friday was a female false goddess of the Norwegians.
And then Saturn day, you know, Sunday, Moonday.
You know, good night.
Even the days of our week are pagan.
We don't need to change days of the week though.
Because it's not that we're worshipping the sun
or worshipping the moon or worshipping Ashgroth
when we celebrate Easter and so forth.
These are just days on our calendar.
And pretty much this world has been a wicked place
for a really long time.
And it's always going to be a wicked place.
But at the same time, you know, we need to realize
that there is a tendency for people to worship
the sun, the moon, the stars.
And that's why we're against looking at the zodiac.
Now there's nothing wrong with studying constellations.
And the Bible even mentions some constellations.
But when you begin to use constellations
to predict the future, and you're trying to decide,
well, I don't know if I should marry this girl
because I'm a Leo and she's a Pisces
and I'm, you know, the year of the horse
and she's the year of the ram and all this kind of stuff.
That is, you know, witchcraft.
And the Bible talks about, you know, looking into heaven
and using enchantments and so forth.
And so these people are worshipping the sun, moon, stars and planets.
It's made that they worship planets
because they didn't have a telescope.
Did you know that sometimes the planets
actually come into view with the naked eye?
I have seen Saturn one time with my naked eye.
It was a phenomenon.
It was an amazing once-in-a-lifetime thing
where Saturn came into view.
And I actually saw it with my eye.
It was amazing.
And it's rare, but sometimes you can see the planets.
And it's hard to tell.
I believe I've seen Mars at one time
and I was abducted by aliens.
No, I'm just kidding.
But anyway, sometimes you can see the planets with the naked eye,
believe it or not.
But people will worship them.
And it says he brought out the grove
from the house of the Lord, without Jerusalem,
under the brook Cai-dron, and burned it at the brook Cai-dron,
and stamped the small to powder,
and cast the powder thereof
upon the graves of the children of the people.
And watch as verse 7.
And he break down the houses of the Sodomites.
Now that wasn't very nice, was it?
Why does he have to break down their house?
And he break down the houses of the Sodomites
that were by the house of the Lord,
were the women low-pangings for the grove.
Now here, this society had become so wicked
that there were queers, homosexuals, fags,
I'm just trying to use as many words as I can
to make sure you don't miss the meaning here,
Sodomites, homos, perverts, weirdos,
whatever you want to call them,
they were living next door to God's house.
I mean, their house was right there.
And he said, that house is going down.
That house is getting the wrecking ball.
No fag is going to live next to God.
But today, we're taught, now listen to me now,
today we're taught, welcome the Sodomites into church.
Now wait a minute, hold on now.
Here they were living next door to church
and they had to go.
So Messiah had to break down the house
to get them out of there, even being next door.
And now it's like, come on in.
We've come a long way, baby.
But that's not what the Bible teaches.
You say, oh, the Sodomites should be welcome in our services.
That's what David Gibbs taught us
from the Christian Law Association.
He said to put in our church constitution,
he told, listen to me, he said,
put in your church constitution
that the homosexuals are welcome in your services.
And anybody who was in,
I was in a class with about 40 or 50 other people,
they could all vouch for the fact
that that's what he taught us.
To put in the class, put in the dark,
and this is what he said, come on.
What kind of a church are you
if sinners aren't welcome?
You ought to be ashamed of yourself.
You need to put in your church constitution
that homosexuals are welcome in your services
as long as they behave themselves.
That's Missouri's exact words.
And go on their website,
download their church constitution,
that's the template,
and it mentions in there that they're welcome in services.
He said, you know, as long as they behave themselves,
what, so that they're not making out in church, or what?
What's that supposed to mean,
as long as they behave themselves?
As long as they don't molest any children,
well, by the time they've done that,
I guess it's too late, right?
Why don't we just not even let them in
because it's never going to happen, thank God.
And then he said, well, just let them come,
but just put in your church constitution
that they can't be a Sunday school teacher or a deacon.
Thank you, David Gibbs, for making that deception for us.
No, I don't want to look at some fag while I'm preaching.
Because then every sermon I'm just going to be breathing fire.
And sometimes I like to preach nice sermons.
I don't want to just get up and rattle my cage
and breathe fire every single service, okay?
And that's what I do, and we've had fags.
Did you know that when Faith for Baptist Church
started on December 25, 2005,
Sunday night service, the second service,
there was a homosexual sitting in the service.
The second service!
And man, I gripped on it, and he didn't like it at all.
And that's, you know, it's gotten worse ever since.
But anyway, the point is that, you know,
we are to the point in America now
where we want to accept them into our churches
and say that they're welcome in our churches.
And today is coming when they will infiltrate churches
and just be in every independent Baptist Church in America.
Accept Faith for Baptist Church,
and anybody else who wants to stand up for what's right
according to the Bible.
We're not going to have some pervert,
some pedophile in our church.
Help us.
But anyway, they broke down his house
just because he was next door.
He just lived in the wrong place.
And so he got his house torn down.
And you know, King Asa, also king of Judah,
he got rid of every sodomite in the land, the Bible says.
But he missed a few.
So then it says Joseph and his son,
all the ones that Asa missed, it said,
that remained from the days of Asa his father,
he combed it a second time
and got rid of every single sodomite out of the land
the second time.
And so that's the way it used to be
back when people believed the Bible.
But it says in verse number 8,
And he brought all the priests out of the cities of Judah
and defiled the high places
where the priests had burned into them.
So basically he's desecrating their places of worship.
It says,
And break down the high places of the gate
that were in the entering in of the gate of Joshua,
the governor of the city,
which were on a man's left hand at the gate of the city.
Nevertheless, the priests of the high places
came not up to the altar of the Lord in Jerusalem,
but they did eat of the eleven bread of one their brethren.
And he defiled Topheth,
so this is more desecration of worship place of Paul's gods,
which is in the valley of the children of Hinnom,
that no man might pass his son or his daughter,
might make his son or his daughter
to pass through the fire to Molech.
So this was a place where they would
burn their children in the fire.
Human sacrifice to Molech.
So what did he do?
He tore down the abortion clinic, right?
He tore down the house of the Sodomites,
he tore down the gay bar,
and then he decided to tear down all the abortion clinics.
Then he tore down Planned Parenthood.
Then he tore down all these fertility, you know.
It's funny how everything's called the opposite
of what it really is, right?
Planned Parenthood is all about killing children
and not being a parent.
Isn't that sick, you know?
The way they call things the opposite
of what they really are, you know,
and on and on.
But he says in verse 10, you know,
he destroyed this horrible, horrendous place
where they would burn children alive
to Molech, the false god.
And he took away the horses that the kings of Judah
had given to the son at the entering in
of the house of the Lord
by the chamber of Nathan Neilech, the chamberlain,
which was in the suburbs,
and burned the chariots of the son with fire.
You see, this is more son worship.
Now, you know, and this goes back,
it's interesting, even just on our money,
the kind of weird stuff that's on our money,
you know, just to go back to this kind of worship.
But there was a god in Egypt who was called Ra,
and he was the son god.
And if you remember when Louis Farrakhan
led the, you know, the Million Man March
back in the 1990s on the Capitol,
and of course, Louis Farrakhan is what religion?
Muslim.
Muslim, right?
And he got up and preached,
and I was watching on TV,
this was when I was a teenager,
I watched Louis Farrakhan speaking
at the Million Man March,
and he brought up the ancient Egypt worship of the son
in his speech.
And he talked about King Amminipus IV,
Pharaoh of Egypt, who moved the capital of Egypt,
and who took away the gods of Egypt,
which was a polytheistic religion,
Amminipus IV changed his name to Atenaton,
which means the one in whom Aton is pleased,
and he worshipped a son god called Aton,
and he had a monotheistic religion worshipping the son.
Okay?
Now, Farrakhan was saying that that god
that Amminipus IV was worshipping
was the same god of Constantine the Great,
was the same god, basically, of the Roman Catholic Church,
was the same god of Islam, known as Allah,
and that there was one god,
and basically that all of the monotheistic religions in this world
were worshipping the same god, the son god.
That's what he said, I listened to it as a teenager.
And I was listening to him and thinking,
this guy is ready for the antichrist.
He wants to bring all the religions of the world together.
Well, Amminipus IV, the pharaoh of Egypt,
who changed his name to Atenaton,
this man was studied by Constantius Chlorus,
the father of Constantine the Great,
who's basically the founder of the Roman Catholic religion.
You know, you could maybe call it founded at 313 AD, for example.
But his father was a student of Amminipus IV,
who basically worshipped the son,
and worshipped this son god,
and passed this on to his son, this paganism,
to Constantine the Great.
And so Constantine the Great had this strange religion
that was kind of an amalgamation of Christianity
and worshipping of the son, and paganism,
and that's where you get these crosses
that have a sun behind the cross.
You know what I'm talking about?
They're all like a sun,
and you have a cross with a circle around it, and so forth.
And you get these symbols,
and like the ancient Egyptian symbol,
it looks like a cross, but instead of the top,
there's a circle at the top.
There's that symbol, and you see,
sometimes teenagers will be wearing that symbol.
It's a cultic symbol.
But basically, on our money,
we have this symbol right here of a pyramid,
and the top is missing from the pyramid,
and it's shining like the sun,
and it has an eye, which is the all-seeing eye of Ra.
And it's descending down.
The tip of the pyramid is descending down
and landing on top of the pyramid,
basically prophesied kind of like a coming of their Messiah
that's coming one day, that, you know,
we're looking for the second coming of Jesus Christ.
You know, the Jews are looking for the coming of the Messiah
because they are anti-Christ
because they don't believe that Jesus is the Christ,
1 John chapter 2.
And then the Muslims are looking for a Savior to come.
They're looking for their Messiah to come.
The Buddhists have, you know, the fifth Buddha,
or whoever they're expecting,
and this is basically, you know, a paganistic symbol
going back to ancient Egypt of a pyramid
with this tip coming down,
and it says,
anerit keptis novus ordu seclorum.
Novus ordu seclorum means new world order.
Okay? So that's what's on your money.
You know, the new world order.
And so don't think that this is obsolete preaching or anything.
You know, this false religion
that existed in the days of Josiah
is really similar to the false religions of today
to the beliefs of a false prophet like Farrakhan,
to the beliefs of the false prophets of the Catholic Church
like Constantine the Great, who's not a prophet,
but he's pretty much the founder of the Roman Catholic Church.
And so, you know, we could go into that all day,
but it doesn't really matter.
The point is that he's talking about
here people worshiping the sun,
and he took away the horses that the kings of Judah
had given to the sun at the entering in
of the house of the Lord
by the chamber of Nathan-Nelac the Chamberlain,
which was in the suburbs
and burned the chariots of the sun with fire.
And the altars that were on the top
of the upper chamber of Ahaz,
which the kings of Judah had made,
and the altars which Manasseh had made
in the two courts of the house of the Lord,
did the king beat down and break them down from thence
and cast the dust of them into the brook Kidron.
And the high places that were before Jerusalem,
which were on the right hand of the malach corruption,
when Solomon the king of Israel had builded for Ashtoreth
the abomination of the Zidonians,
and for Chemosh the abomination of the Moabites,
and for Milcom the abomination of the children of Ammon,
did the king defile."
Now notice the work, he filed them to get a man,
he defiled them, he defiled them,
he defiled them, he's destroying,
he's desecrating them basically.
It says he break in pieces the images,
he's destroying idolatry,
and cut down the growths
and filled their places with the bones of men.
So basically he's taking their holy place
and throwing a dead body in it,
and saying, okay, how holy is it now?
Let me take your statue of an idol and shatter it to pieces,
which is what God had commanded them to do in Deuteronomy,
that they were to tear down their pictures,
destroy their images.
He said in verse number 15,
Moreover, now here's that prophecy,
it's finally being fulfilled,
Moreover, the altar that was at Beth-El,
and the high place which Jeroboam the son of Nebat,
who made Israel the sin, had made,
both that altar and the high place,
he break down and burned the high place,
and stamped it small to powder and burned the growth.
Now watch this.
And as Josiah turned himself,
he spied his Teflkers that were there in the mouth.
That's an interesting word.
It's spy.
Who's ever played the game I Spy?
Spy is when you kind of just notice,
you maybe notice something that other people don't notice.
It's not something that's really out in the open and obvious.
When you spy something,
it means that maybe you see something off in the distance,
and you know, I spy.
How does it go?
What do you say?
I spy.
Anyway, you know, I spy with my little eye, or whatever.
I think we had a different rhyme when I was growing up.
It was better than that.
And I spy and it's red,
or it's blue,
or it's green,
and you're looking,
and it's this, no.
It's this, no.
You know, you go through.
So you understand what it means.
He basically,
it's something that you'd almost miss.
But God didn't want him to miss it
because this was fulfilling his wording.
So he just saw something off in the corner of his eye.
God just caused him to pick this up, way off in the distance, he spied the sepulchres that were there in the mountain.
And he had this bright idea, it says,
And then he took the bones out of the sepulchres, and burned them upon the altar, and polluted it.
Right, that's similar to what he was saying before, he filed it.
According to the word of the Lord, which the man of God proclaimed, who proclaimed these words.
Then he said,
What title is that, that I see?
And the man of the city told him,
It is the sepulchre of the man of God, which came from Judah, and proclaimed these things, that thou hast done, against the altar of Beth-el.
And he said, let him alone, let no man move his bones.
So they let his bones alone, with the bones of the prophet that came out of Samaria.
So they were in kind of a grave diggy mood.
Cause at first sight, why didn't he tell them to leave those bones alone?
Cause I've read this many many times, I always wondered,
So why is he telling them, let his bones alone?
It's like, were they going to dig it up?
Cause I remember, they just dug up a ton of bones of all the false prophets.
And they burned their bones on the altar, on this bad altar that never should have been created.
It was created by Jeroboam, that caused the whole nation to turn away from God.
He desecrated with the bones of the prophets by burning, you know.
You know, there's something in our world, in our society, that's sacrilegious about digging up somebody's dead body.
You know what I'm saying?
And personally, I believe, I believe firmly in bury the dead.
And today, people want to save money, and just, you know, pre-made grandma, and pre-made grandpa, and so forth.
But I don't believe it's right.
And you can get upset about that, and get irritated by that.
But if you understand what burial is representing, it is a picture of that dead body being sown into the ground.
Because one day, it's going to spring up, okay, to a new life.
Except the corn of wheat, Jesus said, fall to the ground and die, and bide it alone.
But if it die, it brings forth much fruit.
There's a symbolism of a plant, you know, withering and dropping its seeds.
You know, a piece of fruit, for example, falls to the ground, withers, dies, so to speak, and the seed goes down into the ground.
The seed is not alive.
The seed has no life in it, until it goes into the ground, and then it begins to, you know, receive the moisture and the nutrients from the soil,
and it springs up a new life, right?
So it's a death, and then a resurrection is what it symbolizes, okay?
And that's what we're symbolizing when we bury the dead.
Because you say, well, you know, are you making this up?
I didn't make that, it says in I Corinthians 15.
It says, it is sown a natural body, it is raised up a spiritual body.
So he uses the word sown, talking about people being buried, and these, you know, the dead in Christ will one day rise again at his second coming.
And so, if that's a representation of, hey, this body will one day rise again, what do you think it would be representative of?
Hey, let's light them on fire.
You know what I'm saying?
Now, obviously, if somebody's saved and their body is burned, okay, they're still saved and still going to heaven, that's not the point.
But the point is, is that the Christian way to dispose of a dead body?
No, it's not.
You ought to bury your dead.
Abraham buried his dead out of his sight.
Jacob was buried in the same place.
Isaac was buried in the same place.
All their wives were buried in that same plot.
And Joseph gave commandment concerning his bones, Hebrews chapter 11.
It was important to him where he was buried, that he was buried.
You know, he was interred, he was, you know, mummified, actually, he was in particular.
But, you know, they put him in a coffin in Egypt.
But he said, when you come out of here, I want you to take my bones and bury them in the cave that belonged to Hamor and, you know, in the land of Hamath and so forth.
So, I believe it's important that people are buried when they're, you know, Christians especially should be burying their dead.
Not the heat and practice of, you know, burning dead bodies and so forth.
Because it's symbolic, you know, it's just respectful and so forth.
And so, you know, it's not that hard to dig a hole and, you know, go worry about money.
Just go dig a hole and bury them, you know.
My wife's shaking her head because I guess it's illegal.
But, you know, I'd rather break the law and bury them in my backyard than to sit there and, you know, torture them, okay?
I'm going to do what the Bible says.
Now, I'll just pray for the coffin and the cemetery and all that, so don't worry about that.
We'll put them in a black limousine and all that.
But anyway, I'm just saying, you know, hey, I'd rather obey the Bible and bury them.
I'm not going to let money tell me, right, to do a heat and practice.
That's all I'm saying, okay?
And so, here we see people having their graves dug up.
You know, this doesn't set well with people.
That he dug up the grave, pulled out the bones of these men that had preached heresy and preached lies,
and he put the bones all over the altar and lit them on fire.
And basically polluted the altar and desecrated their remains and desecrated their dead body.
And so he said, wait a minute, leave his bones alone.
He was preaching the truth.
He was preaching the word of the Lord, so we'll leave his bones in peace and desecrate these altars.
And he said, wait a minute, I don't think that he should have done that.
I don't think he was right to break those images.
I don't think he was right to dig up a bunch of dead, you know, people's bones,
hundreds of years later, burn them on the altar, desecrate, you know, their places of worship.
But wait a minute.
This was prophesied before he was born.
This isn't something that he just dreamed up.
This was him fulfilling God's will for his life as prophesied hundreds of years before.
What were the characteristics of this man?
Humility.
You say, oh, what a jerk.
No, he was a very humble guy.
Oh man, can you believe how callous?
No, actually he was very tender-hearted toward the things of God.
But he also had a healthy hatred for false religion, lies, heresy,
you know, witchcraft, false gods, and male worship, and infanticide and abortion.
And so understand that sometimes when we're reading stories and we hear what people did,
we're not really sure if what they did was right or wrong.
In this case, we know that he was doing right because he was fulfilling God's word
that had been prophesied before he was even born,
commanding him to do this.
And it says in verse 18, he said,
Let him alone, let no man move his bones.
You know, slow down with digging up his graves.
Leave that one alone.
And he said,
So they let his bones alone with the bones of the prophets who came out of Samaria.
So he and the other prophet in the story, 1 Kings 13, if you know the story.
And it said in verse 19,
And all the houses also of the high places that were in the cities of Samaria,
which the kings of Israel had made to provoke the Lord to anger,
Josiah took away and did to them according to all the acts that he had done in Bethel.
So more desecrating of priests and worship.
And he slew all the priests of the high places that were there upon the altars.
And so he's killing basically false prophets and these wicked doers.
He's killing them.
And then he's burning their remains, in verse 20, on the altars.
And the king commanded all the people, saying,
Keep the Passover unto the Lord your God, as it is written in the book of this covenant.
Now watch verse 22,
Surely there was not holden such a Passover from the days of the judges that judged Israel,
nor in all the days of the kings of Israel, nor of the kings of Judah,
but in the eighteenth year of king Josiah, wherein the Passover was holden to the Lord in Jerusalem.
Now, this is what's interesting, and I don't have time to turn there,
but in 2 Chronicles 34 and 35, the parallel passage of this,
it talks about the fact that they had not truly kept the Passover the way that God commanded.
All the years of king Saul, David, Solomon, none of those kings did it properly.
They say you have to go back to the days of Samuel and the judges,
when they held a nationwide Passover.
So when they ditched the right form of government,
which was God's, you know, republican form of government,
and I don't want to talk about the stupid republican party,
but I'm saying, you know, a republic where they elected, you know, judges to rule them,
according to God's law, to interpret and enforce God's laws, judges,
they decided to say,
Nay, but we will have a king over us like all the nations.
We want to be like everybody else. We want to be like the heat and have a king.
And God warned them to say,
Your king is going to tax the fire on you, he's going to oppress you,
he's going to take your sons and daughters,
he's going to go fight a bunch of wars that don't matter,
and make your sons and daughters go.
And they said, No, give us a king anyway.
And they got a king anyway.
And ever since then, their nation had gone down the tubes in a lot of ways,
and they never once again held the Passover,
until this great man, Josiah, stood up and said,
and the people probably said, Wait a minute!
We haven't had the Passover in this way,
you know, where the whole nation comes together and has the Passover.
We haven't done that in, you know, 400 years!
Are you kidding?
And he said, Wait a minute!
I don't care if it hasn't been done in 400 years,
it's in the Bible, we're going to do it!
Oh, but that's not the way we used to do it.
We're going to do it because it's in the Bible, Josiah said.
He didn't care whether it was the tradition,
he didn't care if it was a thing of the past.
He said, I can't find any other church that do it.
He said, No, we're going to do it because it's in the Bible.
He said, We should have been doing this.
This is what they did in the days of the judges.
This is what we were doing.
And we're going to do it now.
That's a great man.
I mean, he went way back.
Talk about being old-fashioned.
I mean, he went back to the ways of David,
and even further back to the ways of the judges,
where they said, We will hold the Passover
straight out of the Bible exactly the way it's listed in the Bible.
And it says in verse 24,
Moreover, the workers with familiar spirits,
and the wizards, and the images,
these are all the stories that your kids read.
The Harry Potter, and Chronicles of Narnia,
and everything like that.
You know, the wizards, and the images, the idols,
and all the abominations that were spied in the land of Judah.
And in Jerusalem, the Josiah put away
that he might perform the words of the law,
which were written in the book
that Lachia the priest found in the house of the Lord.
And like unto him, was there no king before him
that turned to the Lord with all his heart.
I mean, even in some respects here,
he was even greater than David in some respects.
Right? I mean, there was no king before him
that just turned to the Lord with all his heart,
and with all his soul, and with all his might,
according to all the law of Moses,
neither after him nor was there any light.
This is a great man.
I mean, I think it's great to study him.
I think we need to read these chapters
and understand what he did, what he was like.
I mean, read these and say,
here's a man that could be an example for us,
that should be a role model for us,
a man who the Bible says there was nobody like him
who loved God just like the Bible said,
with all his soul, all his might, all his heart.
I mean, that's what the Bible commands.
But he said, boy, this guy really took that to heart.
He really had that love for God
to where he loved him with all his heart,
and where he said, we're going to do
all the words of the book of Moses.
He said, according to all the law of Moses,
neither after him arose there any light.
So in many respects,
Josiah was the greatest king
that the nation of Israel or Judah ever had,
in this respect of loving God,
okay, with all his heart,
and with just following God's laws to the letter.
I mean, there was none like Josiah.
He's a great man.
Look at verse number 26.
Notwithstanding, the Lord turned not away
from the fierceness of his great wrath,
wherewith his anger was kindled against Judah
because of all the provocations of Manasseh
that provoked him withalts.
So he's saying judgment's still coming,
not because of anything wrong with Josiah,
but because of Manasseh's sins,
there had to be punishment upon the nation.
And it was too late, basically,
to avert it, but God was merciful to Josiah
and let it happen after his lifetime.
Look at verse 27.
And the Lord said, I will remove Judah
also out of my sight, as I have removed Israel,
and will cast off this city, Jerusalem,
which I have chosen, and the house
which I said in my name shall be there.
Then the rest of the acts of Josiah
and all that he did are they not written
in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah.
In his days, Pharaoh Necho, king of Egypt,
went up against the king of Assyria.
Who did he go to fight against?
The king of Assyria?
To the river Euphrates, and king Josiah
went against him, and he slew him at the ghetto
when he had seen him, and his servants
carried him in a chariot bed from the ghetto
and brought him to Jerusalem and buried him
in his own sepulcher, and the people of the land
took Jehoahaz, the son of Josiah, and anointed him
and made him king, and his father's dead.
That's pretty much the end of Josiah.
But wait a minute.
Hold it now.
Back up in your Bible.
What does it say in 2 Kings 22-20?
Behold, therefore, I will gather thee
unto thy fathers, and thou shalt be gathered
into thy grave in peace.
Is that what happened?
Was he gathered into his grave in peace
in chapter 23?
No.
Now, when you read this, you say,
Whoa, wait a minute.
That doesn't make any sense.
You have to look at 2 Chronicles 35
for it to make sense.
Now, you can get it here without looking
at 2 Chronicles 35.
If you're very, very observant
about what we just read, you'll understand
why that happened.
But if you read 2 Chronicles 35,
it's very obvious.
That's where we're going to turn in a minute.
Notice what it said in verse 29.
Here's where the answer is.
In his days, Pharaoh Niko, king of Egypt,
what else against Judah?
Is that what it says?
No.
It says Pharaoh Niko, king of Egypt,
went up against the king of Assyria,
to the river Euphrates,
and king Josiah went against him.
Why?
Ask yourself that question.
Why?
Pharaoh Niko's going to fight against Assyria.
Josiah goes out against him.
Why?
Look at 2 Chronicles 35.
You see, God promised him.
He said, Wait a minute.
I'm not going to bring evil upon Judah.
He said, I will not bring evil upon Judah in your days,
and you're going to go to the grave in peace, he said.
It's not going to happen in your lifetime,
meaning God's judgment.
Yet, he died in battle.
He was shot by the archers in battle.
Why?
Look at 2 Chronicles 35, verse 19.
It says, In the eighteenth year of the reign of Josiah
was this Passover kept.
That's where we left off in the other story.
After all this, when Josiah had prepared the temple,
Niko, king of Egypt, came up to fight against Carchemish,
that's where, in Assyria, by Euphrates,
and Josiah went out against him.
Now here we get a little more insight into the story.
Look at verse 21.
But he sent ambassadors to him, saying,
What have I to do with thee thou, king of Judah?
So here's Pharaoh saying,
What in the world does this have to do with you?
He said, What have I to do with thee thou, king of Judah?
I come not against thee this day,
but against the house wherewith I have worked.
For God commanded me to make haste,
forbear thee from meddling with God who is with me,
that he destroy thee not.
This is Pharaoh speaking, right?
Look at verse 22.
Nevertheless, Josiah would not turn his face from him,
but disguised himself that he might fight with him,
and hearkened not unto the words of Niko,
From the mouth of God.
So who said the words?
Niko.
But he was speaking God's word.
I mean, this was God because he loved Josiah,
because Josiah was a great, great, great man who loved God.
God took the time to warn him and say,
Wait a minute.
This isn't your fight.
Wait a minute.
This is Pharaoh versus Assyria.
Stay out of this.
And he even used Niko.
Basically, the Spirit of the Lord came upon Pharaoh Niko
and caused him to give Josiah this warning,
From the mouth of God, the Bible says.
And he said, hearkened not unto the words of Niko,
From the mouth of God, and came to fight in the valley of Megiddo.
And the archers shot at King Josiah,
and the king said to his servants,
Have me away, for I am sore wounded.
His servants, therefore, took him out of that chariot
and put him in the second chariot that he had,
and they brought him to Jerusalem, and he died.
He was buried in one of the sepulchers of his father,
and all Judah and Jerusalem mourned for Josiah,
and Jeremiah were minted for Josiah,
and all the same men and the same women
spake of Josiah their lamentations to this day,
and made them an ordinance in Israel.
And behold, they were written in the lamentation.
Now, the rest of the acts of Josiah is goodness,
according to that which was written in the law of the Lord.
And as deeds first and last build,
they were written in the book of the kings of Israel and Judah.
Basically, this man, in the Bible,
and I'm sure you know he's a sinner, I mean, he wasn't perfect,
but in the Bible, we only read one mistake that he made, right?
I mean, the whole Bible, I mean, love God,
all his heart, all his soul, all his might,
I mean, he tore down the altars, he held the Passover,
he read the Bible, he preached the Bible,
he was tender to the voice of God,
but he made this one fatal mistake.
And even though God had told him,
you will not be harmed.
And so really, he wasn't being defensive here.
You know, he wasn't trying to defend himself.
Because first of all, Pharaoh was attacking Assyria,
nothing to do with Judah,
but second of all, he already had God's promise
that he would go to the grave in peace.
But yet, just because God said that,
you know, he still, he still, you know,
went and basically committed a suicidal act
of going and fighting a war
when God basically told him, don't do it.
You know, mind your own business.
And you know, this is something that we can learn.
Mind your own business.
Don't get involved in other people's,
I think I preached about this morning a little bit.
Don't get involved in other people's fights.
You know, I wish somebody would tell that
to the United States of America, by the way.
Don't get involved in other people's wars
and other people's fights
because you're going to end up being hurt needlessly.
You know, and that was the downfall of Josiah.
But what a great man.
You know, the one downfall,
it's kind of hinted at in 2 Kings where he said,
you know, basically Pharaoh went against Assyria,
Josiah goes out against him and dies.
You know, here we get the picture
that God even gave him a very clear warning
that there was a chance to back down and not do it.
And so what can we learn?
I'll close with this.
You know, great man.
You know, one fatal mistake,
but let's look at his life.
Take some time.
Read 2 Kings 22 and 23.
We just went through them verse by verse, those two chapters.
But you know, read the parallel account
over in 2 Chronicles 34 and 35.
Take the time to do that reading.
You say, why?
Who's Josiah?
And probably most Christians today
and most people in church,
if we ask them to document the life of Josiah,
those who read the Bible will know the answer.
You know, people who've read the Bible many times
could have given us a rundown of Josiah's life.
But you know, many people today have forgotten this great man
who's really a great character of the Old Testament,
really a hero to look up to.
And so we ought to look at him
and see what we can learn from his life.
2 Chronicles 34, 35, and say, wait a minute,
there's a God who loved God unlike any other king
that was ever on that throne.
More love for God, more humility, more righteousness
from this man, Josiah, great man.
Let's bow our heads in that word of prayer.
Father, please just help us to learn
from the life of this great man.
Help us to understand his life, his love, dear God.
Help us to have that same love for you,
that zeal, that tender heart that says
when we hear God's word, we're going to obey it,
whether it flies in the face of tradition,
flies in the face of false religion, dear God.
Help us to let the Bible be our authority.
Help us to hear the word God, be tender to obey every word.
Help us to be like a modern day Josiah, dear God.
Help us to be like this great man.
But Father, please guard us from making his fatal mistake
of getting involved in fights and strife
not belonging to us, dear God.
Help us to mind our own business
and do what we should be doing, dear God,
and not to fight those with whom we had no fight
just for the sake of fighting, dear God.