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I'm turning to Second Chronicles chapter thirty four, and here in this section, I believe we have the final, uh, message of the four great revivals, or five, that were found in the book of Second Chronicles itself. Probably, if any book in the Bible has as its central theme revival, this must be the book, because half of the chapters of the thirty six chapters in the book, almost one half of them are dedicated to this particular theme. You remember too that we said the controlling verse is probably our Lord's response to Solomon's prayer in second Chronicles chapter seven verse fourteen.
If my people, I mean the ones who are owned by me, who have my name called over them, if they will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their evil ways, then I will hear, I will answer them from heaven, and I will heal their land. I take it that that is a principle of scripture which applies to any who call themselves God's people, or over whom he has called his name so that they are owned by the living Lord. And I take it that there are four injunctions that are given there, if we will humble ourselves.
And I take it that that theme appears first during the days of Rehoboam in chapter twelve and thirteen, where three times the verb there to humble oneself appears. And as if by bracketing or by way of inclusion, he comes to the last one, and here once again in two Chronicles thirty four, we have the theme of Josiah's reign. And if you notice in chapter thirty four, verse twenty seven, the Lord says through the prophetess Hoda, because your heart was responsive and you humbled yourself before God when you heard what was spoken against this place and its people, and because you humbled yourself before me, therefore, the Lord says, I will not bring the catastrophes upon this people or upon this government in your days, but you shall pass off in peace.
It is an interesting story of this young king who came to the throne in chapter thirty four verse one when he was only eight years of age. He is the, the greatest demonstration that indeed those who say that in the Old Testament that when the fathers had sinned, the children were going to pay for it, is incorrect as a matter of fact, it cannot be correct because his grandfather was the most wicked of all the men in Judah. For fifty five years, well over half a century, Manasseh tore up the lid. He did everything that was wrong.
Only towards the end of his life, on almost the deathbed scene, in chapter thirty three verse twelve, There, in his distress, he sought the favor of the Lord, or he made smooth the face of the Lord, if you please, a literal translation. And he humbled himself greatly before the God of his fathers. And when he prayed to him, the Lord was moved by his entreaty and listened to his plea, so that he brought him back to Jerusalem to his kingdom. Then Manasseh knew that the Lord was God. But I must tell you that for fifty five years before that, he sowed wickedness with both hands, and his son was no different.
For in verse twenty one of the thirty third chapter, when Ammon was twenty two, he came to the throne and he did evil in the eyes of the Lord, as his father Manasseh had done. It was too late now to save the son, apparently, and the text specifically says in verse twenty three, he did not humble himself. The, the grandfather Josiah humbled himself, albeit very, very late in life. The son did not humble himself, or the father, Josiah, but Josiah, eight years of age, humbled himself when he heard the word of God.
Moreover, just being an eight-year-old, year older, in verse three, he began to seek the God of his father David, not the God of his father Ammon or the God of his strange father Manasseh, but he goes all the way back to David and uses King David as the model. And already he began to purge Judah, and he took down the high places. He took down the cult of Asherah and the carved idols and the cast images, and he tore down temples of the, the altars of Baal. He cut in pieces the incense altars. He smashed the Asherah poles, the idols and images, then he broke the pieces and scattered them over the graves of those who had sacrificed him to, uh, to Baal.
I take it that the timing here in the call of this passage is to us as well. I don't think we ought to tell a story about Josiah. God's word is profitable for all peoples and for all times, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, for a reproof. We need all of these things. We need to be comforted. We need to be spanked, as it were. We need to be encouraged. And our text, I think, makes this proclamation. It's high time to humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God. There are 3 abacements that are found here.
We ought to abase ourselves, first of all, before our Lord, and you'll notice that that is the theme in chapter thirty four verse twenty seven. This king humbled himself before the Lord, and he tore his robe, and he wept in the presence of God. When he saw the pure standard and the crystal clear character of God, and when that was put over against his culture and over against his time and over against his own life, he ripped his robe in grief and he openly wept. There's the theme, and I would take it that that is the first debasement that's found here.
He also is the one who, under his reign, the law of God was discovered. For in the eighteenth year of, uh, Josiah's reign, which would now bring him, since he was eight years old when he began, to his twenty sixth year of life, he began to purify the land and the temple, and he decided that it was time to rebuild and to restore the temple of God. In the midst of doing that, would you imagine they discovered a brand new, brand new concept. They found the book of the law. In six twenty BC, the greatest discovery for that whole epoch was the five books of Moses were rediscovered.
Here in the house of God, where worship was going on at a pulpit reads, not only had they set the law of God aside, they lost it, and they found it in the trash. And in cleaning it out, lo and behold, they came forth and they said, what is this? The king, who up to this point had sought the Lord, apparently had never been caught out of the book of the law. For they ran to him, and when they heard it, he said, this is awful. If this is what God expects, and this is where we are, what can we expect? And he wept openly. For even though he had done everything that he could, even though he rejected his father's lifestyle, his grandfather's lifestyle, even though he was the demonstration and the proof that God only carries out the judgment to the third and fourth generation of them that hate me, where they second the father or grandfather or great-grandfather's motion, and they said, my grandfather hated God, so do I.
Only then is it carried out, but to those that love him. Thousands of generations, not just three or four, but for thousands, the debentures continue to roll. They pay dividends, one generation after another generation after another generation. Some people ask why, in light of such great wickedness in high places, do we continue to experience so much of the blessing of God? We're living off the adventures of those who truly sought God. And it has come down to us, their children, not because we're deserving, but because someone else lived righteously and wholly before God.
Bow to the generation, to them that love me. So where did Josiah get this good word? He was just a young boy, I take it it had to be through oral tradition, through his nursemaid or someone who took care of him. There's a great verse for junior, uh, uh, worship services and for Sunday school and for teaching people who you think are too young. Kids will never hear that. I remember ministering in Chicago with the, the, the, uh, black Sunday schools when we had, uh, volunteer movements in the college here. About fifty or sixty of us went down to the thirtieth from south to south, down to thirty fifth Street.
I did so for every Sunday for about uh five years when I was here in college and graduate school. I remember one Sunday, we had one of those typical Sundays. I mean, when you have eight hundred children, when you gathered up from the projects nearby and brought them into a, uh, large place, it is difficult. We were operating on less than ideal conditions, breaking every Christian ed rule in the book. Uh, we could do no better than what we had to work with. Now, I remember one Sunday particularly, we had a very, very difficult Sunday. Two twins, Nehemiah and Jeremiah, got to strapping. One pulled the seat off of the near the opera seats and pulled it off and broke it over the other.
I don't know whether it was Nehemiah or Jeremiah that went down, but sure enough, out pulled lightning right in the middle of the lesson. I had flounder in this hand and the Bible in this hand and it hit in front of me, and there it was. I said, how can anything happen good for the, the, the kingdom of God under circumstances like this? But an eight-year-old, either on that Sunday or the following Sunday, I've forgotten now, by the name of Freddy came up, and he said in the style they addressed this, Mr. Wall, he said, I want to receive Jesus into my heart. I, I thought for sure he was not saying the right thing.
Uh, certainly under these conditions, no one receives the Lord. Uh, you can't understand, get the word through, the attention span was too small. This cannot happen here. I said, it is sure, Brady, why do you want to receive him? He said, because, because Jesus asked me to receive him. He said, he went on, take him into my heart. I sat down with him in the midst of all that clamor. Meanwhile, my root partner was trying to gather thirty five, fifty kids to keep them all in a huddle while, uh, and take from the cars on the street while I was trying to conduct this in the building. Now we're through with the plane of salvation. Yes, he understood that Jesus died for him. Yes, he understood that he was a sinner, yet he would pray, would I help him to pray?
I gave a prayer, he repeated it to me. It kicked Stanford off, and I didn't think much about it until I went back on Wednesday night of that same week. I was staying across the river in Tax here, rooming with an elderly couple, and they'd asked that every, uh, night we do the... Would you know that Wednesday night, here's Freddy's picture on the news, hit and run victim on that very week. Uh, there was no more time. That was the time for Freddy. I will never forget that that's the lesson in terms of the timing of it. And some said Versailles was only eight years old when he became, he came into a very prestigious situation, but he did what was right, verse two.
he walked in the ways of the Lord. And so I take it that early he exhibited that humility before God in which he was willing to replace all kinds of pride and arrogance. The humble person is not a person wise in their own eyes or in their own conceits. Proverbs three seven says, do not be wise in your own eyes, fear the Lord and shun evil. For Romans, uh, twelve three, do not think more highly of yourself than you ought to think, for the humble person is the one who recognizes that anything and everything they have is unremained.
It is from God. And so what we have, uh, is everything that we have received. That's what Paul said in First Corinthians four seven. What do you have that you have not received? What is it that we think we have by way of mental or emotional, human, or by way of relationships, or by way of possessions, or by way of friendship that has not been received from God? And so to humble ourselves is to turn to God with a contrite heart, with a broken heart, and the examples of humility are such as can be seen in Moses, the servant of the Lord. But as even one of the New Testamental books, uh, uh, comments, I think with truth, not that it was inspired, but it had the theme here, the greater you are, said Ben Sirach, the more you have to humble yourself in order to find favor with the Lord.
And so it was in this particular instance too. This man began to seek God's favor in spite of the high position that was given to him, and he walked in the lifestyle of David, and he fulfilled the prophecies that were spoken of him. For in verse five, he took, verse four and five— he took the, the bones of those who had sacrificed on these altars, pagan altars, some three hundred years ago. And he fulfilled the prophecy, that very strange prophecy in First Kings thirteen, where a man of God came from Judah and cried and pronounced against Jeroboam, and he said, oh altar, altar, this is what the Lord said, a son named Josiah will be born to the house of David, and on you he will sacrifice the priests of the high places who now make offerings here, and human bones will be burned on you.
And so, whether Josiah knew that prophecy or not, he probably did not, because the book of the law of God was gone. There was no record, apparently, in that day, so if they did not know the first five books of Moses, how could they have known about this incident from First Kings thirteen? But did he fulfill it? Yes, a man born three hundred years after the shot was called was named the same name. Was his mother free to name him Josiah? As much as Mary was when she named Jesus. So you have three people in the Bible, Jesus, Josiah, and Cyrus, who were predicted by name before they were born, and even the event of what they did, they still fulfilled that event because they walked in the will of God.
So I take it if we are to humble ourselves before God, that we are to early and constantly seek him with all of our heart, and we are to early and constantly do his will with all of our heart. For this man was still doing it when he was twenty six years of age. And those that seek me, the scripture says, shall find me. And so we need not put off, we should not put off our search for God, for the pure in heart shall see God, but the impure will not. And what is the difference? The difference is in the act of humbling ourselves, being willing to take up the servant role.
It is an amazing thing that the same word used for bondage in Israel, the Hebrew word for slave, is the most glorious word that describes the servants of the Lord who is to come, and describes God's people. They are his servants. Not servants, or if you wish me to put it in the raw form of the word, same word, slaves of Pharaoh, but slaves of God. Why? Because they humbled themselves, and so we ought to do too as well. But our text says that we must not only abase ourselves before God, but before his word.
Verses fourteen through twenty eight record the description here of the finding of the book of the law and the reading of it in the presence of the king. And then the king said, we've got to get some word on this. This was five years after Jeremiah the prophet had already begun to minister. And they went to Huldah. Her husband was in government, but they asked her what this meant. And she three times said in verse twenty three, verse twenty four, and again in verse twenty six, this is what the Lord, the God of Israel, said. This is what the Lord. This is what the Lord, the God of Israel says.
As if to make the point crystal clear. This is what God is saying, not what I am saying. And what was the problem? Israel was erring because they did not know the scriptures. We too err when we do not know the scriptures. That has been Jesus' estimate in Matthew twenty two verse twenty nine. Imagine the whole book of the law lost. No one knew where it was. No one knew what it said. But when it was read, there was a self-authenticating ministry of that word. They knew it right away, and the king, when he heard in verse nineteen and verse twenty seven, he tore his robe and he wept before God.
There is not only the self-authenticating ministry of the Word of God, but there is the power of the Word of God, which was immediate, in spite of the previous reforms that Josiah had carried out. Had he not carried out reforms for all of those years, since he was eight years old, now to his twenty sixth year? Of course he had. The scripture is replete with a long, long list of what he did in verses three down through thirteen. But still, when the word of God was heard, it exceeds even the reforming activity of those of us who operate in this day and age. It exceeds anything else, all the good things that were done.
And when the heart truly seeks God, he satisfies them with a greater understanding of himself and of his word. And that is what we need. I still think that there exists a gigantic famine of enormous proportions. It is a famine for a hearing of the word of God. I think Amos eight is still the label that can be put even over evangelicalism. There's too much description about God's word. There are too many editorials. This is not a holding the finger on the verse and going line by line and phrase by phrase and chapter by chapter. It is the death also of our teaching, for if we teach about scripture without teaching the scripture itself, it still does not have the authentic aid and power of God.
It is God's word that he promised to bless, not our illustrations. It is God's word that he promised to bless, not our logic. It is God's word that he promised to bless, not our kind of jumping off and saying, here's my text, and now close the book, and let me tell you what I have to say. It is the book which we must hold open constantly, and the whole book, the whole counsel of God. For we are still poorly nourished. We have too much iron in our blood, too much calcium on the one hand, and not enough balance of the other vitamins. Our day and age is taken up with physical fitness, and it's good. We are also taken up with a concern over junk food.
That's good. But what about junk theology? What about disproportionate teaching? What about the whole counsel of God? Where is the cry from the body of Christ for that too as well? For where we have your pen eyes. My old teacher, Dr. Tenney, I remember in his sedacious moment, whenever he would kind of, uh, adjust his shoulders and would square off and, and would make a comment. I used to keep wide margins on the side of my notes for just those little tidbits of wisdom. And I remember on one occasion I wrote down, leave an area of God's word, uh, and neglect it, and that will become the seedbed for heresy of the next generation.
Neglect a portion of God's word, and that will become a ripe area for someone to come to town and say, God has raised this up in these latter days to emphasize neglected truth. And they will take that truth and run crazy with it, and will put their own kind of flavor on it. No, we need whole counsel of God, all of scripture. And this is the strangest thing. Ours could be the generation that fought for the most wonderful definition of the doctrine of scripture and the inerrancy of scripture, and in our practice, de- so that what we have fought for in theory, our children will come and say, yes, but in practice, mom and dad didn't really do that.
I'll tell you what they did. They sort of said the Bible is the word of God, but they were very selective, and then when they read it, they didn't listen to what it was saying, they said rather, well, this is what I get out of it, and the Bible became the word of God to them rather than was the word of God as written. And welcome back the ghost of Karl Barth, we'll welcome back all of you as not too. And a whole generation will be swept away easily, easily because they will form a theory of inspiration to match the practice of the believing body of our day.
No, we must abase ourselves before the text and wait humbly and patiently before God's word, for the basis of all true preaching is to be found in the phrase repeated here three times over, this is what the Lord, the God of Israel said. And the text also, I don't have time to share this with you, but straight out of Deuteronomy twenty nine, there are at least eight phrases repeated here in verse twenty four and twenty five. He takes, or she takes in this instance, a number of phrases, and they are brought to the fore, and bringing them to the floor, there he repeats the, the verses from verse twenty and twenty one m and twenty five, twenty six, twenty seven, line after line, straight out of Deuteronomy twenty nine.
And then the word comes in verse twenty six, tell the king of Judah who sent you to inquire of the Lord. This is what the Lord says, because your heart was responsive, because you humbled yourself before God when you heard what was spoken against this place and its people, because you humbled yourself before me. I've heard you. I've heard you. And so you will have this king on the thirty ninth year, only thirty nine years of age, a tragic event from our perspective. It is one in which the biblical writers puzzled over quite a bit. He went out to stop Pharaoh Necho.
You will have it in chapter thirty five verse twenty one. But Pharaoh Necho sent messengers to, to Josiah to say, what's the quarrel between you and me, O King of Judah? I'm not attacking you. God told me to hurry and to get up to Assyria. And as a matter of fact, Josiah, however, would not turn away. He disguised himself and went into battle. He would not listen. Listen to what the biblical writer says, verse twenty two. It's the most amazing verse that I know of in the Bible. Josiah would not listen to what Necho had said at God's command. Can a pagan speak the word of God?
In this instance, he did. Necho said what God had told him to say. So he went to fight, and the archer shot King Josiah, and he died. thirty nine years of age, the year six oh nine. Three years later, Daniel will be carted off with Meshach, Shadrach, and Abednego, or as I try to tell my students, my shack, your shack, and a bungalow. The three of them were carted off and were taken into captivity just three years after this tragic battle here. And then in five ninety eight, Ezekiel was carted off in the second invasion which Babylon came back, and once more in five eighty six, five eighty seven, Babylon came back, and this time everything went.
The whole place was burned to the ground, including the temple of the Lord. Three times, but he was not there. Jeremiah mourns for him. There's a great lament that goes up in scripture, and there's a great puzzle too. Why was this good king, why did he not listen at this most crucial moment? Why, in the height of his career, only thirty nine years of age, what could have happened if he stayed around? But as soon as he stepped aside, the, the people reverted to true form, and you can tell that it hadn't been a revival that had penetrated into all the people, it had only penetrated into the palace and some of the leadership.
So when they were removed, it was in a matter of months and years, the whole thing was over. It was over completely. The last point that I bring to your attention is the third of eight in verses twenty nine through thirty three. We must humble ourselves before the living Lord, point one. We must humble ourselves before the word of God, point two. We must humble ourselves before God's people. Point three, verses twenty nine through thirty three. The interesting thing here is that eleven times, if you believe it in the original text, eleven times he talks about all.
Then the king called all the elders. In verse thirty, the they went up to the temple of the Lord with all the men of Judah, actually in the original, and all the people from the least to the greatest, he read in their hearing all the words of the law. And so he talked about following the Lord in verse thirty one with all their heart, all their soul, to obey the words of the covenant written in this book. And Josiah removed all the idols, verse thirty three, from all the territory, from all who have been present in Israel, and all his days, is the text literally, they did not fail to follow the Lord.
It's smoothed out in English as long as he lived. For all his days. The implication is, though, and the facts were that when he died, so did faith, and so did the practice of the people. Revival must touch everyone. It must touch all the people. It must touch all classes. It must touch all of the land. Every class of people were there in verse thirty, whether they were great in, in their, uh, status in the community or whether they were insignificant. They came to hear God's word, and the words were read in the hearing of the people, and the people consented.
They said, we will do these things. However, notice the difference in the king's heart, though. He responded with all of his heart and with all of his soul to do all that was contained in the covenant written in this book. The difference is startling. The difference is startling. For you have the people saying here they will pledge themselves, verse thirty two, They will do what it says, but the king had an eternal change of all of his heart and soul. My brothers and sisters in Christ, it is time, it is high time, I think, for us to take the towel and to take the servant's role to one another.
It will aid the body of Christ. It is time to take the towel and sit beneath the word of God and listen to that word of God and make it the mainstay of our life, and not to enter into a day without the word. I don't mean a tidbit. I don't think that we can get enough out of the, out of a little phrase over which then there's written a devotional. I know that's called the Daily Bread, and it has a ministry, but that is no substitute for living off of the Word of God itself. That is only a packaging of a little part of the Word of God, and it will never sustain life.
We must take the town, come before the whole of the Word of God. We must take the towel and come before the living Lord too as well. He is the Lord of the believing body. He has the right to send us and to minister as he will. And so am I moved? And am I moved at all by viewing my culture, my own sin, that of the believing body, and the sins of the believing body over against the the Word of God and over against the crystal clear character of the living Lord. Am I still teachable by his word? Can I still be corrected by that word?
Will I humble myself when I hear the word of God before the living Lord and before him? Have I ever wept in his presence over what is taking place in the believing community in the world today. Will you and will I bend low, and will we abase ourselves in the face of the shining spirit through the white heat of God's presence? May our God grant us the courage to do so, for I do think that's the prerequisite for everything else, for all of spiritual existence. The more God has blessed us and the more he put us in positions of prominence, the harder it is, the more difficult it is to bend the net.
No wonder Jesus said, blessed are the poor in spirit. For those who say I'm spiritually bankrupt, I'm bankrupt inside, blessed are they, blessed are they. And three times our Lord repeats in the gospel, whoever exalts himself shall be abased, but he that humbles himself shall be exalted. Brothers and sisters, the texts say it's time, it's time to humble ourselves before the great Lord. If my people, which are called by my name, if those in Beacon, if those in Illinois, if those in the United States, if those in Canada, if those the believing community, Lord willing, I'll be ministering to tomorrow night in Caracas, if they will humble themselves and pray, and if they will seek my face, and if they will turn from their evil way, then I will hear, I will answer them, and I'll also bring
healing to their land. Healing, yes, a writing of relationships, productivity, harmony between management and labor, harmony between student and teacher and administration and faculty, and between those, the places in the community and the righteous and the unrighteous, and God will give us a time of peace for the proclamation of his word. I do believe that. I do. And there are great signals still that these could be moments of unusual revival that we've never seen for the last eighty years, but I believe God could bring, he will.
It will depend on whether we will humble ourselves under his mighty hand. Pray. Don't do it as a flair or the sensational, but do it out of the deep poverty and out of the hunger of your own heart and soul that says, I have known much of the kingdom of God and of righteousness, but there's much more that I need to come to know. And may God help us with full heart to take the model of our Lord Jesus, who said, let this mindset be in you. Let this frame of reference and this mentality which was in our Lord Jesus, who had all of this and all of glory and all of eternity, yet he did not think it a big deal, but he took upon himself the form of a servant and humbled himself.
He came and ministered, therefore, bless him too. May our Lord Jesus help us so in his time. Amen. Amen. We thank you for these opportunities to address these words and to have my own heart encouraged through the challenge of the word of God. Now shall we pray. Spirit of the living God, so melt and move our hearts that indeed there may come a genuine moving that is only due to the prompting of your Holy Spirit.
And that there may come such a hunger after righteousness that it will be insatiable and unquenchable until we have had our fill of staying in your presence and being fed from your word and being ministered to as we pray together. We pray, Father, revive us again. Revive your church, revive your work, and hear our prayer of thanksgiving for every wonderful thing that is happening. And Father, we are experiencing much, even as Josiah experienced much in his early days, but these surely are mercy drops.
These surely are, are not to be compared with the downpour of your Holy Spirit, which is yet to come out on your people, even this which is in urns only a harbinger of another great day when we shall see you face to face. Lord God, meet our need, we pray, and hear the prayer of each one who sincerely from their heart prays out for your answer and calls out for your help during this hour. Heal us, we pray, and heal our land, for we pray it in your great and wonderful name, be in the name of our Lord Jesus.
Amen.