The Bible Binge: Lost and Found (2 Kings 23:1-3)

Lost and Found

We lose things all of the time. Tiles and AirTags exist now to help us find what we’ve lost, or, in the case of luggage, what has been lost for us. Earlier this year, police in Washington D.C. were handing out free Airtag and Tile trackers to help people get their cars back in the event they are stolen. There’s also the stalking problem… people are using AirTags and Tiles to stalk people who unknowingly have the devices placed on them. And there are those people who would rather be “lost” than “found”… AirTags and Tiles have made “lost and found” a new art form. “Lost and found” is at the heart of our Bible talk today.

We are working our way through the Bible Binge… we’re in the book of Kings and we’ve just begun Chronicles… making our way through the Bible. We have a new Bible Binge bookmark… you’ll want to check this out. And it’s about this time… you may be wondering… is this supposed to be exciting? If you’re looking at your bookmark, you’re looking at books we don’t spend a lot of time in.

You may be like me… why is this even in the Bible? What’s the point? Why do we have to know about all these kings and all these weird stories and people with weird names? And Kings and Chronicles… they have a lot of the same stories. What’s up with that?

The Bible is about Jesus

I want to remind us of a verse we read a few weeks ago… and it is still true. The Bible’s purpose or thesis statement, given to us by one of Jesus’ best friends, John. He writes this at the end of his biography of Jesus:

John 20:31 Everything I’ve written has been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

What John says about his biography he believes to be true of the whole Bible.

Purpose statement of the Bible: Everything in the Bible is written so that we would believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

The entire Bible is about Jesus. And it has been given to us so that we would continue to believe that Jesus is the Messiah and through that Word we would have forgiveness and life. And these stories and events and people in Kings and Chronicles are doing just that. Showing us that Jesus is the Messiah and that he is the one in whom we place our hope and trust. It’s why we have these books in the Bible and why we have weird stories and people with weird sounding names… and even boring details. Showing us something about Jesus.

Reading the Bible as a Community

At the same time… I get it. I struggle through these books too. I have the same thoughts. And so here’s also something to think about… just keep with the Bible Binge where you can. But there is value in us doing these things together on Sunday for precisely the same reason… these tell us something about the Jesus who gives us our identity.. both as individuals and as a church body. We do this in community. We read these words and then we talk about it… and we discuss it on Wednesdays at our Bible study. This is a 14 month journey through the Bible and we are in June now which means we only have 6 months left and if you can get through these next few weeks it is going to get a bit easier.

The cycle of belief and unbelief in Kings

This morning, we’re going to be in Kings one more time. Again, the book of Kings is following the stories of the Kings in David’s storyline… David and his son Solomon are the beginning of the reign of David’s line.. and that is tracked throughout the book of Kings. But the stories are all playing the same tune… the cycle of belief and unbelief, over and over and over. God’s people, Israel are making the same mistakes time and again.

Emily and I have been watching a show on TV where the main character keeps making the same mistake over and over. And you begin to wonder… is this all there is? It starts to be boring. That’s the book of Kings. There is this struggle. Belief and then unbelief… God judges and then there’s is salvation and relief. And more unbelief. Just doing the same thing over and over.

Emily and I visited a shop on the riverwalk and there was this coaster for sale. I didn’t buy it. But I did empathize with the expression so I snapped a picture:

(Picture)

We all know what this is like. This is why we repeat the same mistakes over and over. We pray… don’t bring us into temptation because, well, we just don’t do very well avoiding the temptations.

God is compassionate and slow to anger

Yet over and over and over again. God is slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, forgiving their sins. Here’s the verse from Exodus 34 again, one of the most important verses in the entire Bible. God says this to Moses hundreds of years before the Kings:

Exodus 34:6–7 “The Lord—the Lord is a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger and abounding in faithful love and truth, maintaining faithful love to a thousand generations, forgiving iniquity, rebellion, and sin.”

God is gracious, and yet Israel continues their unbelief and their sin. God is constantly sending the prophets to call them back to faith and repentance from sin. At some point though, it is fair to ask the question: how do you know you’ve sinned?

How do you know you’ve sinned?

When we confess our sin here at church, we sometimes confess the sins we know about and the sins we don’t know about. Because there’s a lot that we just don’t recognize as sin. That’s a problem. For all of human history, that’s been a problem. In fact, when I was growing up, I was told that if there was a sin I didn’t repent of, God wouldn’t hear my prayers. I couldn’t be forgiven if I didn’t own up to all of my sins. And what happens when you can’t remember all of your sins? Yeah… that was me… a lot of questioning whether Jesus loved me or not because I couldn’t think of all the sins. That is a terrible weight to put on anybody. One of Luther’s primary complaints about the church was just that… repentance and forgiveness were tied to knowing all of your sins. He pointed out that God’s forgiveness of our sins is unconditional. And that as sinners, we’ll never own up to all the sins we know or don’t know. We ask God to forgive, knowing he knows them all.

Hope in a child king

That problem is in our text today. One of Judah’s good kings was a guy by the name of Josiah. Because things were bad in Israel, there were killings and assassinations and all sorts of bad stuff going down. He is line to be king.. and to keep the cycle from happening again, Josiah becomes king at the age of 8… a mere 2nd grader.

2 Kings 22:2 Josiah did what was right in the Lord’s sight and walked in all the ways of his ancestor David; he did not turn to the right or the left.

This is the writer’s way of saying Josiah was a good dude. This guy placed his faith in the promise. He didn’t chase after false idols and false gods.

Josiah is such a good dude, he decides he’s going to repair Israel’s house of worship, the temple that had fallen into disrepair because the guys before him had been not so interested in proper worship.

When Josiah is 26 years old, he orders that the temple be repaired. So, this multi-million dollar project gets underway… serious renovation… and as do the Grand Temple makeover, they make the discovery of a century. Or two.

2 Kings 22:8–11 The high priest Hilkiah told the court secretary Shaphan, “I have found the book of the law in the Lord’s temple,” and he gave the book to Shaphan, who read it. Then the court secretary Shaphan went to the king and reported, “The priest Hilkiah has given me a book,” and Shaphan read that book in the presence of the king. When the king heard the words of the book of the law, he tore his clothes.”

Oh my. That book was the Bible. The book of the law.. what we call Torah, the first five books of the Bible. Found in the temple. Missing for at least 50 years, probably many more than that… the Bible had been so disregarded, it went missing. In those days, the Bible was written on large scrolls. They didn’t have a printing press. There were probably only a few copies in Jerusalem, and most had most likely been destroyed by those who worshiped false gods. But the main copy… missing for years in the temple.

Moses warned about the Bible going missing

This is not what Moses had in mind when he instructed Israel regarding all of this about this Word and it not just being something that was in the temple read by the priests but each King was to write their own copy of it under supervision of the priests and it was to be with him all the time. Hundreds of years before, Moses had an idea that something like this might happen… God’s word would go missing. He says this before Israel enters the Promised Land. Moses says, someday you’re going to have a king. And when you do...

Deuteronomy 17:18–20 “When your king is seated on his royal throne, he is to write a copy of this Word of God for himself on a scroll in the presence of the Levitical priests. It is to remain with him, and he is to read from it all the days of his life, so that he may learn to fear the Lord his God, to observe all the words of this instruction, and to do these statutes.”

The king was always supposed to have the Word of God around. And it’s expected of him to read his Bible every day. But that’s not happening in the book of Kings. Year after year, king after king… the Bible is not being read every day. Josiah is 26 years old… and for the first time in his life, he hears the Word of God. He didn’t get it from dad… or granddad. The Word of God was missing. And now it is found.

Hearing God’s Word

As we read.. Josiah has someone read the first five books of the Bible to him. When Josiah hears what’s in the law, he tears his clothes which was a sign of sorrow and grief and repentance. Based on what he has read, he knows Israel is in trouble. Israel has been in unbelief for so long… chasing after other gods for so long… is there any hope? The prophet Hilkiah informs Josiah that God is indeed angry with Israel, but because of Josiah, judgment will be delayed.

The great thing about Josiah… his belief in the Promise is so strong, he doesn’t give up. What he has come to know, he wants all of his people to know… that God is a God of compassion and love and patience. Here’s what Josiah does… we read this moments ago:

2 Kings 23:2–3 “Then the king went to the Lord’s temple with all the men of Judah and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, as well as the priests and the prophets—all the people from the youngest to the oldest. He read in their hearing all the words of the book of the covenant that had been found in the Lord’s temple. Next, the king stood by the platform and made a covenant in the Lord’s presence to follow the Lord and to keep his commands, his decrees, and his statutes with all his heart and with all his soul in order to carry out the words of this covenant that were written in this book; all the people agreed to the covenant.”

Just like God and Israel had done at Mount Sinai centuries before, Josiah and Israel remind themselves of God’s commands and promises. And all the people agreed to the covenant. This covenant is based on God’s love and compassion. The covenant began with God’s salvation and redemption of His people from Egypt. And he tells his people at Sinai that he would be their God and they would be his people.

And hundreds of years later… people who have not believed the promised and people that have rejected God being their God, are given the assurance and promise that even though they have been sinful and faithless… they are still God’s people. God has not abandoned them.

From faith to action

And because they are believing the promises again, they get rid of all their false gods who are not gods at all, but fake gods. And they got rid of the priests who served those fake gods. Here’s what the writer says:

2 Kings 23:24 In addition, Josiah eradicated the mediums, the spiritists, household idols, images, and all the abhorrent things that were seen in the land of Judah and in Jerusalem. He did this in order to carry out the words of the law that were written in the book that the priest Hilkiah found in the Lord’s temple.

Josiah is making good on their end of the covenant. He does the words of the law. The hearing of the Word of God that produces faith then leads to actions that are in line with God’s Word. But then there’s this unbelievable tidbit provided by the writer:

2 Kings 23:21–23 The king commanded all the people, “Observe the Passover of the Lord your God as written in the book of the covenant.” No such Passover had ever been observed from the time of the judges who judged Israel through the entire time of the kings of Israel and Judah. But in the eighteenth year of King Josiah, the Lord’s Passover was observed in Jerusalem.

Just three verses… but one of the greatest episodes in the history of Israel. They observe passover as a nation. And it’s been hundreds of years… almost a thousand years since they had done passover together as a nation. The greatest feast in their history… in the middle of all the bad kings and all of the unbelief and all of the increasing threat of Israel’s enemies because of her unbelief and disobedience… against this backdrop of idolatry and sin… is this feast.

Word and Sacrament

And in just a matter of days, we see two things happen that are always connected together:

hearing the Word; feasting at the Sacrament.

Josiah makes sure that God’s people hear the Word of God and then feast at the Passover… salvation in picture form. Israel had gone for years without either… not hearing the Word of God and not feast at the Passover, their sacrament. And all of that changes with finding what was lost… God’s Word.

Can you imagine not knowing and being able to read or hear the Word of God?

We have the Bible in many translations and in many languages. Many of us have multiple Bibles in our homes. We certainly have access to it on our phones and our tablets and our laptops. But that doesn’t stop us from neglecting the Word.

We break the third commandment all of the time. The third commandment is this:

Exodus 20:8 “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy:”

This isn’t simply about Sunday worship. As Luther points out in his small catechism, what the third commandment is really about is our attitude and our posture toward God’s Word. Luther asks the question, what does this third commandment mean? and his answer is this:

We are to fear and love God, so that we do not despise preaching or God’s Word, but instead keep that Word sacred and gladly hear and learn it. - Luther

Is that our attitude and posture toward God’s Word? Do we keep his Word sacred and gladly hear it and learn it? Making sure that God’s Sabbath Day is holy means that we value and prize our gathering around God’s Word and his sacrament to hear the Word again. This is why we spend time when we gather to read the Bible to each other.

When the Bible goes missing, Jesus goes missing

One of the things we do here… those Bible readings are always connected to our main passage in our Bible talk. We read the Bible reminding ourselves that the entire Bible is connected to Jesus and the entire Bible has something to say about increasing our faith in Jesus. That is how we keep the Sabbath Day holy.

In Josiah’s day the Bible was lost and then it was found. The Gospel went missing. Not just God’s commands, but also God’s promises. We gather every week to make sure the Bible doesn’t go missing in our lives. It’s like discovering the Bible all over again. We hear how we are sinners. We’re reminded of our sin. And then we are reminded of God’s grace and forgiveness. And we hear about Jesus. The Bible is all about Jesus. For the Bible to go missing, means Jesus has gone missing from our lives.

This is why we have been highlighting the Bible in our Bible Binge and our Bible studies on Wednesdays at Arnie’s. We remind ourselves of our need to hear from Jesus. Our need for Jesus himself. Our reminded that we are narcissists by nature and need Jesus and his forgiveness and grace. We are lost… lost in our sin and selfishness and then we read our Bibles and we are found all over again, by the Jesus who loves us.

Let’s pray.

The Table

Josiah read the Bible aloud to the people. And then, he administered Passover… the precursor to this meal. They had Word and then they had Sacrament. We are doing the same here. God’s Word is His promise. And in this Table that Promised is realized as He gives us His body and His blood for the forgiveness of sins.

Benediction

Numbers 6:24–26

May the Lord bless you and protect you;

may the Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you;

may the Lord look with favor on you and give you peace.