“Semper Reformanda”

Sermon Text

Please turn with me in your Scripture this time to the book of Second Kings, Chapter 22, and please remain standing for the reading of God’s Holy and inspired Word, which I pray you receive it as such.

Hear, now, the Word of God:

2 Kings 22:1–13 ESV

1 Josiah was eight years old when he began to reign, and he reigned thirty-one years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Jedidah the daughter of Adaiah of Bozkath. 2 And he did what was right in the eyes of Yahweh and walked in all the way of David his father, and he did not turn aside to the right or to the left. 3 In the eighteenth year of King Josiah, the king sent Shaphan the son of Azaliah, son of Meshullam, the secretary, to the house of Yahweh, saying, 4 “Go up to Hilkiah the high priest, that he may count the money that has been brought into the house of Yahweh, which the keepers of the threshold have collected from the people. 5 And let it be given into the hand of the workmen who have the oversight of the house of Yahweh, and let them give it to the workmen who are at the house of Yahweh, repairing the house 6 (that is, to the carpenters, and to the builders, and to the masons), and let them use it for buying timber and quarried stone to repair the house. 7 But no accounting shall be asked from them for the money that is delivered into their hand, for they deal honestly.” 8 And Hilkiah the high priest said to Shaphan the secretary, “I have found the Book of the Law in the house of Yahweh.” And Hilkiah gave the book to Shaphan, and he read it. 9 And Shaphan the secretary came to the king, and reported to the king, “Your servants have emptied out the money that was found in the house and have delivered it into the hand of the workmen who have the oversight of the house of Yahweh.” 10 Then Shaphan the secretary told the king, “Hilkiah the priest has given me a book.” And Shaphan read it before the king. 11 When the king heard the words of the Book of the Law, he tore his clothes. 12 And the king commanded Hilkiah the priest, and Ahikam the son of Shaphan, and Achbor the son of Micaiah, and Shaphan the secretary, and Asaiah the king’s servant, saying, 13 “Go, inquire of Yahweh for me, and for the people, and for all Judah, concerning the words of this book that has been found. For great is the wrath of Yahweh that is kindled against us, because our fathers have not obeyed the words of this book, to do according to all that is written concerning us.”

and continuing on in Chapter 23:1–3…

2 Kings 23:1–3 ESV

1 Then the king sent, and all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem were gathered to him. 2 And the king went up to the house of Yahweh, and with him all the men of Judah and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem and the priests and the prophets, all the people, both small and great. And he read in their hearing all the words of the Book of the Covenant that had been found in the house of Yahweh. 3 And the king stood by the pillar and made a covenant before Yahweh, to walk after Yahweh and to keep his commandments and his testimonies and his statutes with all his heart and all his soul, to perform the words of this covenant that were written in this book. And all the people joined in the covenant.

The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God!

Opening Prayer

Sovereign God, our blessed heavenly Father,

Oh LORD, we pray that you would shape and fashion us by Your Word Inscripturated that we might be reformed according to the Image of the Word Incarnated, Your dearly beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we pray. Amen.

[You may be seated.]

i. Introduction

Beloved brothers and sister in the Lord Jesus Christ,

On this Reformation Sunday, it is rather fitting that we wrap up our seven-part series on our distinctive of Reformed Confessionalism.

So far, we’ve looked at key biblical concepts that were recovered during the 16th-century Protestant Reformation as expressed in the Five Solas, which derived therefrom. (1) We’ve explored in two-parts the biblical foundation for true knowledge: that all of God’s Word (tota Scriptura) and it alone (sola Scriptura) is the sole infallible rule for faith and life.

All of Scripture, and only Scripture, is the sole infallible standard for all of life.

(2) Next we examined Reformed soteriology (the doctrine of salvation), by first examining– solus Christos–how Christ alone is the sole Saviour, the Saviour of our souls, the only Mediator between God and Man.

and that (3) sola gratia–that we are saved by God’s grace alone, in which He freely and sovereignly offers up the Person and Work of Christ in the Gospel to those who…

(4) with the open hand of faith alone –sola fide– cling to the Person and Work of Christ alone as the means by which they are justified by God alone, and thus enabled to live lives of living faith and worshipful obedience in thankfulness to God.

and (5), and finally, how all of these things beautifully work together for the vindication of God’s righteousness as displayed in the Gospel all to the praise of His Glory, for which all things exist.

All of Christ, and only Christ, for all of life for the Glory of God alone!

And, tonight, Lord-willing, we will see the continued necessity ofReformation, as reflected in the motto Semper Reformanda.

Beloved, this side of glory, the Reformation is never over because we are in constant need of being continually putting of the old self, renewing our minds according to Scripture, and putting on the new self after the Image of Christ.

Sadly, the reality is, Reformation must always continue because deformation is ever at hand.

Now, sadly, despite the continued necessity for Reformation, this motto, which was originated by the 17th-century Dutch Reformed minister Jodocus van Lodenstein, has been oft misunderstood.

In fact, it is the very motto which has been co-opted by many so-called “Progressive” churches, better known as apostate synagogues of Satan, to justify all-manners of biblical infidelity from women’s ordination to support of transgenderism, sodomy, abortion, euthanasia, and every abominationunder the Sun.

This apostasy is, most unfortunately, all around us today.

In fact, we do not have to look any further than our current circumstance.

We, at this very moment, are gathered in Knox Presbyterian Church, who graciously rents us this facility. This church was named by the Scottish settlers who were central to the establishment of the City of Selkirk after our Scottish Reformed forefather John Knox. It was planted as a confessionally Reformed Presbyterian Church in adherence to the Westminster Confession, a confession to which the broader assembly technically still adheres.

However, when talking with Knox about renting this very church, as they were asking questions about our church and its various confessions, they made clear that the historical confessions of their church are just that, nothing but history.

And, interestingly enough, the interim minister at the time justified their obvious disregard of their doctrinal standards through an appeal to, you guessed it, “Semper Reformanda.” No joke.

According to them, blatant apostasy and unbelief can be justified through an appeal to this motto.

However, this grave misunderstanding of the motto “semper Reformanda” has led to the great deformation, not reformation, of the church.

Indeed, the motto semper Reformanda must not be ripped from its broader context in isolation from the Solas of the Reformation, but in conjunction with the doctrines of the Reformation, by the totality of the phrase, which is:

Ecclesia reformata semper reformanda est secundum Verbum Dei.

That is, “The church reformed, always reforming according to the Word of God”.

Indeed, think about this for a second, does not the “Reform,” of anything necessarily presupposes that there exists a standard, a mould, a form according to which something can be re-formed. Obviously!

And van Lodenstein’s slogan, brilliantly pointed to the Word of God as the standard, as the form, by which the church, both individually and corporately, must always be Reforming.

So, with our theme before us today, let us now take a look at our text which brilliantly show us the centrality of the Word of God to one of the greatest Reformations ever recorded for us in sacred Scripture–the civic and religious reforms of the faithful theonomic King Josiah.

ii. Exegesis

First, let us look at…

The OCCASION for REFORMATION (vss. 1–7):

After Amon, that no-good very bad king, was assassinated by his servants in a coup. Josiah, Amon’s son, was established as the ruler of Judah by the people of the Southern Kingdom, after they had put down the conspirators who killed his father. The text tells us that he was made King of Judah at the ripe age of 8-years old.

Crowning the Boy-King: As these circumstances suggest, Josiah was installed during a period of great tumult in Judah.

Israel, the Northern Kingdom, had been swept off into captivity long ago, some 82 years prior, and, sadly, despite a period of reforms under faithful King Hezekiah, during the time of the prophet Isaiah (see. 2 Ki. 18–20, 2 Ch. 29–32, Isaiah 36–39), Judah continued in the evil ways of the rest of Israel under the lengthy 45-year abominable reign of King Mannaseh (2 Ki. 21 cf. 2 Ch. 33) and Amon, breif two-year reign after him.

During this nearly 5 decade period of great apostasy and degeneracy, not only did these evil kings institute all manners of false worship, they also let Solomon’s great temple to God, the Lord’s palace, go to waste.

It is under these circumstances of the Divided Kingdom and Judah’s great decline that Josiah begins his reign, which we are told lasted 31 years, from 640–609 B.C..

Josiah’s Personal Reformation: In vs. 2 of our text, we see a rarity in the Kingdom history of God’s people, namely the commendation of a King. We are told in 2 Kings 22:2 that Josiah “did what was right in the eyes of Yahweh and walked in all the way of David his father, and he did not turn aside to the right or to the left.”

God commends Josiah, by way of the Holy Spirit, as a man, who like His Father David, pursued the will of God. He was a man after God’s own heart.

That is to say he was a man who walked according to the way of life, God’s Law, and in the manner commanded to the people of God in Deuteronomy 5:32, where after Moses’ recapitulation of the covenant constitution to God’s covenant people, God warns them: “You shall be careful therefore to do asYahweh your God has commanded you. You shall not turn aside to the right hand or to the left.”

Sadly, however, throughout the history of the Kingdom, God’s covenant people have been primarily ruled by wicked kings with but a few exceptions, Josiah being one of them.

And in the parallel account of our text today record in 2 Chronicles 34–35, we are told in vs. 3, that “in the eighth year of his reign, while he was yet a boy, he began to seek the God of David his father.”

Despite the many unfaithful kings before him, his father included, as a 16 year-old boy, Josiah began to follow Yahweh.

And, in the same verse 2 Chronicles 34:3, we are told that his piety went from his heart to his hands, and “in the twelfth year” at the age of 20, “he began to purge Judah and Jerusalem of the high places, the Asherim, and the carved and the metal images.”

As the boy-king grew and matured in his faith, he naturally, as all pious believers do, worked out the faith that the Lord graciously worked in Him with fear and trembling.

Here we see Josiah exhibiting a true living faith, in the words of the Westminster Confession.

And thanks be to God, Josiah’s piety did not dissolve into pietism.

In fact, Josiah’s regeneration necessitated jis godly action. It obligated him to begin to enact sweeping reforms in Judah.

As the Spirit of God worked in Him, it convicted him evermore that He must work to rid Judah of the false worship in land.

No doubt, in his conversion, Josiah was confronted with the obvious, blatant idolatry of his day. Unsurprisingly then, his first reforms targeted the open manifestation of the religious rot of Judah.

Against the suppositions of our multicultural age, Josiah is commended by Scripture for removing the cancerous idolatry of His age.

We see here, that as God’s deacon, the civil magistrate has the responsibility to destroy open displays of public idolatry.

Indeed, the Bible nowhere condemns and everywhere commends state-sanctioned iconoclasm.

This is a work not of private individuals or families but of the lawfully appointed magistrate.

In fact, if you read the whole account of Josiah’s life carefully, you will see he even went so far as to destroy idolatry in the remains of the Northern Kingdom of Israel as well in faithfulness to God’s Law.

Take notice also, in the case of King Josiah, we see that true cultural and civic renewal begins with religious renewal.

I’m sure you have heard that politics is downstream from culture. Well, the the fact is culture is down stream from cultus. Because the root of culture is cultus, culture is merely religion externalized.

Therefore, true Reformation must begin with worship. This is the biblical pattern for cultural renewal!

Because worship is man’s first duty.

In the words of James B. Jordan, “When the Church as a sacramental instructional, and governmental body has become established in a locality, kingdom influences flow oyt into society and a neww Jerusalem is built around the new sanctuary”

It is for this reason, beloved, that in our work of Reformation we have started primarily with the worship of the church. For, cultural renewal flows from Reformed worship, and the regenerate hearts.

And King Josiah, in his sanctified wisdom, knew Judah’s civic problems were a direct result of its religious problems.

Sadly, in their folly, this is a fact which our rulers refuse to admit. They prefer to ignore the directional, or religious, root of culture and politics. Instead, blaming political problems on man’s structure and environment.

Indeed, they are so committed to the utterly insane idea that somehow culture and politics can be severed from their religious root, that they refuse to reckon with the true problem, namely, our civic apostasy.

They are willfully ignorant to the fact that what we worship, the God of any given culture dictates how we worship, our liturgy, and our liturgy shapes our culture.

Thus, they seek to make tiny reforms in man’s political, cultural, and economic environment, in hopes that that will produce the desired outcome.

In contrast to our wicked rulers, Josiah was not at all confused at this point.

Notice also, we see that regeneration precedes Reformation, and Reformation is first a matter of direction not structure.

That is, true Reformation and revival, is an organic, Spirit-wrought work of God.

Unlike what was taught during the revivalist movement of the Second Great Awakening, led by the like of men such as, Charles Grandison Finney, which maintained revival could be synthetically manufactured through the due use of pragmatic methods, what he called “new measures,” true Reformation is rooted in the Spirit’s work by the Word.

Reformation cannot be synthetically ginned up, or coerced, by changing man’s structural environment.

No, as we are clearly told in John 3, the Spirit of God is sovereign, and it cannot be manipulated for it blows where it will (John 3:8).

And in God’s sovereignty He chose the boy-king Josiah to shame the many kings that came before him.

In this way, not only does Josiah shame the “wisdom” of the wisest kings before him, but he also shames the religious leaders of His day.

The fact that, with the exception of the relatively few faithful prophets of his day, Jeremiah and Micah being among them, that religious renewal had to come from the King heaps shame and condemnation upon all those who the Lord had put in place to guard His house and preach His Word.

In this way, we see, as well as throughout history, that true Reformation is both top down and bottom up, but it always flows from the directional change that comes from regeneration.

Indeed. Yet, while Josiah’s work of ridding Judah of idolatry was commendable. For true reformation to take place, it was not enough! No!

False worship must be replaced by the true worship of the one True Triune Living God. There can be no half-measures.

And as we see in vs. 3, the work of Reformation is often a slow thing.

In the eighteenth year of his reign, some 6 years after his initial reforms, and an entire decade after his conversion, Josiah was convicted to set about restoring the Temple of Yahweh.

Here we see, Reformation is not a work for the impatient and imprudent. It is a long-term commitment to follow after God in long-obedience in the same direction.

And, it is in the pursuit of further Reformation, we see in vss. 3–7, Josiah commissions the governor Shaphan to instruct the High-Preist Hilkiah to use the tithe to rebuild the House of Yahweh.

The RECOVERY (vs. 8):

It is in this context, during the repair of the Temple, that God bestows upon Judah a most-happy providence, namely, the recovery of the Book of the Law (or Torah).

And is this not the promise of God come to fruition, that those who earnestly seek after Him will find Him, and those who are faithful in little will be given great reward?

In the words of Matthew Henry, “Those that do their duty according to their knowledge shall have their knowledge increased.”

This is a great principle for all of us. We must be faithful in little before the Lord gives us much.

Hilkiah Gives the Law to Shaphan: While our text doesn’t specify exactly which portion of the Law was recovered, the general consensus, given the further reforms that take place afterwards, is that the Book of the Law was the Scroll of Deuteronomy.

Notice, too, at it’s discovery Hilkiah delivers the news posthaste to Shaphan the Kings secretary.

Hilkiah understood the Law of God is not merely of concern within the Temple of God, but it is a rule for all of life, which concerns civil magistrates too.

The REPORT (vss. 9–10):

After reading the Law Shaphan gives the report to the King.

First, in vs. 9, Shaphan gives report to the King that the renovation project is coming along as planned, and secondly, that they discovered a Book of the Law.

Shaphan Gives the Law to Josiah: In vs. 10, we see Shaphan, too, recognizing the importance of the discovery like Hilkiah before him, brings report to the King.

Far from dismissing the Scriptures as irrelevant to the civic life of Judah, Shaphan makes haste to deliver what was delivered to Him to the King.

Not only did he deliver the report of its discovery, Shaphan read the words of the Book of the Law to the King.

The Law of God, beloved, is not a thing that should be placed on the shelf in the King’s palace, but laid open before the King, for His reading.

The RELIGIOUS RESPONSE (vss. 11–13):

Here, I want you to notice King Josiah’s religious response at it’s reading. Vs.11:

2 Kings 22:11 ESV

11 When the king heard the words of the Book of the Law, he tore his clothes.

Here we see the power of the Word of God Inscripturated to cut to the core.

At the reading of the Law-Word of God, the Pious King Josiah is so overcome with depths of his sins and the sins of his nation, that, signifying the rending of his heart, he rends his garments.

Being renewed, by the Spirit of God, Josiah had an inkling of the sorry state of Judah, but it was not until he was confronted with the Inscripturated Word of God, the true form, our true standard, that he truly realized the extent of the deformation of Judah.

So convicted was he by the Word that he wastes no time in beseeching a group of men led by Hilkiah the preist, to go inquire of the prophets of God concerning his fate and the fate of the people.

This inquiry, which is recorded for us in 2 Kings 22:14–20, is mixed. Huldah the prophetess, gives report…

Firstly, concerning the fate of Judah and its inhabitants, that Yahweh will destroy Judah and lead them captive for their manifold sins and idolatries.

And, secondly, because of Josiah’s love for the Lord and contrite repentance, the Lord will spare him from witnessing such a calamity. Yet, he will do so by taking His life, which happened during the battle of Meggido agianst King Neco of Egypt, which is recorded for us in 2 Kings 23:28–30.

And before moving on to the Reformation and renewal that came from the discovery of God’s Law-Word, what are we to make of Huldah the prophetess?

Well, beloved, both Josiah the boy-King and Huldah the prophetess show just how bad the state of Judah is at the time of this great reform, because as we learn from Isaiah 3:12 when infants and women rule over a land it is a great deformation.

Egalitarianism is deformed and devilish.

THE REFORMATION AND RENEWAL (vss. 23:1–3):

Nevertheless, and I want you to see this, despite the prophecy of Josiah and Judah’s impending doom, Josiah acts in a remarkable way. Rather than laying down in despair, the great King Josiah makes further preparation for Reform, which we see in…

2 Kings 23:1–3 ESV

1 Then the king sent, and all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem were gathered to him. 2 And the king went up to the house of Yahweh, and with him all the men of Judah and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem and the priests and the prophets, all the people, both small and great. And he read in their hearing all the words of the Book of the Covenant that had been found in the house of Yahweh. 3 And the king stood by the pillar and made a covenant before Yahweh, to walk after Yahweh and to keep his commandments and his testimonies and his statutes with all his heart and all his soul, to perform the words of this covenant that were written in this book. And all the people joined in the covenant.

As a good King, one after God’s own heart, Josiah, much like Solomon at the initial dedication of the Temple (1 Kings 8), gathers a great assembly of the people, from the greatest to the least, and much like Moses in the wilderness beyond the Jordan, he leads his people in a service of covenant renewal according to the Law Word of God. And in this way Josiah is established as a great King in the annals of the Kingdoms.

Here, too, we also see a clear example of the dual nature of civic covenanting. One that has been central to the development of Reformed political theology.

We see, that Josiah as the federal representative of God’s covenant people, as in the words of 2 Kings 11:17, first, “made a [vertical] covenant between Yahweh and the king and people, that they should be Yahweh’s people, and”secondly, a horizontal covenant “also between the king and the people,” that they would be mutually obligated to each other to walk according to the Law of God.

This gets at the heart of an important principle. Biblically speaking, Kings and Magistrates are never merely political figures, they are representatives of the people, federal heads of the corporate body covenanted to God.

Covenant is the core of nationhood. And notice, too, that the horizontal covenant is predicated upon the vertical covenant.

For this reason, Protestants have fiercely fought against the notion of the divine rights of Kings and magistrates, rejecting the notion of Rex Lex (the King is Law), and promotion the idea of Lex Rex (the Law is the King), and historically the Higher Law of God’s Word was seen as the ultimate rule for faith and life.

And this is what we see here in their covenant renewal ceremony, the King and the people recommit themselves to God, according to the promise of God that if they would be God’s covenant people; He would be to them their God.

And,in the Anglo-sphere, thanks to the work of the Scottish Covenanters, the British Crown signed onto the Solemn League and Covenant which bounds us and our forefathers to a similar oath.

And, beloved, as Westminster Confession - Chapter 22: Of Lawful Oaths and Vows, according to the Word of God, makes abundantly clear God takes covenants seriously, and he holds us accountable to them. Whether we take them seriously or not.

After reconstituting the covenant between Judah and Yahweh, Josiah would go on to continue His reforms by not only continuing to to rid the land of idolatry (2 Kings 23:4–20), even more importantly, after having purging the nation of the old leaven, he…

2 Kings 23:21–23 ESV

21 commanded all the people, “Keep the Passover to Yahweh your God, as it is written in this Book of the Covenant.” 22 For no such Passover had been kept since the days of the judges who judged Israel, or during all the days of the kings of Israel or of the kings of Judah. 23 But in the eighteenth year of King Josiah this Passover was kept to Yahweh in Jerusalem.

Isn’t that astonishing! The Covenant People of God those who were supposed to be, in the words of Isaiah 42:6, “a light to the Gentiles,” an example to all the nations of the world, those who had the temple of God at the very heart of their society, those who were rescued by God out of Egypt by the blood of the Passover Lamb, had not properly kept the Passover in full national fidelity for roughly 480 years!!!

According to God’s Law, this religious practice was to be the very centrepiece of covenant renewal worship, yet so deformed had their worship become it, much like the Book of the Law, was left to languish in obscrurity.

Yet, thanks be to God, that He graciously brought this religious Reformation to Judah. To a people most undeserving.

And these religious reforms follow a very simple principle, which is central to the Wilsonian vision of “Christian Nationalism,”namely, a fierce commitment to not doing things that make God angry. This was Josaih’s impetus.

King Josiah implemented a Reformation never before seen in God’s Kingdom along these lines, because of His fierce desire to obey the Word of God in every sphere of life no matter the outcome. And in His wisdom, He knew that the health of His nation depended upon its worship. The same is true to this day,

Finally, notice, too, the primary means of Josiah’s reforms–the Word of God.

While some of his reforms began prior to the rediscovery of the Book of the Torah, the narrative of the Reforms centres around the centrality of the Word of God as the means of Reformation.

As the sole infallible rule for faith and life, it couldn’t be otherwise.

In fact, and this is an interesting note.

While the Book of the Kings, begins by focusing much on Solomon’s great wisdom in the 1 Kings 1–11. Wisdom drops from the scene after Solomon’s reign, which is as Leithart puts it “a sign that wisdom is not capable of preserving Israel from division and ultimately dissolution unless it comes as an incarnation of divine wisdom.”

Indeed, here is a very interesting note, the while the Four Books of the Kingdoms focus primarily on the acts of Israel’s Kings, the hero throughout is the Word of God spoken through the prophets.

In fact, most of the Kings lives are abbreviated and tumultuous, while the Word of God, the Rock stands firm throughout.

In fact, a great tragic irony of Scripture, which never ceases to amazes me, that the great wise King Solomon who correctly wrote, in Proverbs 1:7,“The fear of YAHWEH is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction,” too often failed to apply this basic principle during his own reign, setting a horrible destructive president for all the kings after him.

For all His wisdom, Solomon failed to obey the clear Law of God in Deuteronomy 17:18–20:

Deuteronomy 17:18–20 ESV

18 “And when [the king] sits on the throne of his kingdom, he shall write for himself in a book a copy of this law, approved by the Levitical priests. 19 And it shall be with him, and he shall read in it all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the Lord his God by keeping all the words of this law and these statutes, and doing them, 20 that his heart may not be lifted up above his brothers, and that he may not turn aside from the commandment, either to the right hand or to the left, so that he may continue long in his kingdom, he and his children, in Israel.

And because He failed to heed the clear commands of Scripture, Solomon’s reign ends in great folly.

In contrast to Solomon, however, the narrator holds up Josiah, as the great Torah-observant, or in a word, theonomic king.

He is the only king in the history who actually hears Torah and reads it and applies it in the way that was instructed in the Law, and for this is how the inspired Scriptures recount His reign:

2 Kings 23:25 ESV

25 Before him there was no king like him, who turned to Yahweh with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his might, according to all the Law of Moses, nor did any like him arise after him.

Oh, what a precious Word!

Would to God that He would smile upon us by giving us such wise rulers today.

iii. Application & Conclusion

Beloved, it struck me as I was studying this text, that there is a hidden profundity in it. Not only is it plainly one of the greatest Reformations recorded in Scripture, it has to be the least pragmatic Reformation and Renewal in history.

Josiah instituted the Reformation of Judah, despite its guaranteed failure, simply out of principle, because it was the right thing to do according to the Law Word of God. This is true piety!

Beloved, we are called to the task of Reformation and Renewal in our day. And, frankly, there is no guarantee of its success. Our nation, like Judah, has become so polluted with idolatries, and our fathers have so forsaken the God to whom they covenanted that it might be too late.

The work that we are undertaking, our long-term plans, the hope we have for the repentance of our city, our province, and our nation, it could all come to naught. Perish the thought!

Yet, are we prepared to be like Josiah who, knowing full well his friends would end in the destruction of Judah, he nevertheless pressed forward on principle.

So committed to glorifying God and obeying His Word was Josiah, He pressed forward boldly by obedient faith knowing it is better to die in a losing battle fighting for the winning cause of righteousness than to despair and do nothing.

Beloved, perhaps you paralyzed by fear of the unknown? Perhaps, you are overwhelmed by the tumult of our moment and the uncertainty of it all.

Do not despair, beloved, press forward by faith, for it is better to die faithfully than live unfaithfully.

This type of Reformation can only be accomplished by principle and not pragmatism.

And is this not the true Spirit of Reformation?ֿ

The Spirit of at the Heart of Reformation is an unflinching dedication to the Word of God as the standard for all of life, no matter the outcome!

This is the sure foundation upon which Martin Luther boldly declared “Here I Stand, I can do no other.”

This was the sure Word upon which St. Athanasius stood contra mundum (against the world);

Christians throughout history have changed the world by their steadfast faith in the Word of God and the principles derived therefrom, even to the point of death.

In this way, we image our Lord and Saviour, do we not? Indeed, we do.

But, even more profound. As much as great as Josiah’s reforms according to the Law of God were, and as great a hero as he was, this account is a profound example of the fact that the law of God cannot save. While the Law is the way of life, it is not the means of life!

No, Judah needed far greater Reform than Josiah could offer. They needed a Saviour.

They needed Jesus Christ, the true Lion King of the tribe of Judah, the better Josiah, the better King who came after Him, who lived His entire life in perfect, perpetual, personal, obedient sonship to the Word of God.

In Him, the covenant of life which was broken by our forefather Adam was renewed in perfect faithfulness, that all those who are covenanted to God with this King, Yahweh shall be there God and they shall be His people, and by the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit be enabled to obey the Law of God from the heart.

As the true pious King, Christ humbled Himself and became condescended to earth on lead the greatest Reformation of worship in the history of humanity.

And he did all of this knowing that this divine rescue mission, would end in His most brutal death on the cross–His substitutionary death as the true Passover Lamb of God.

Oh, all praise and laud and honour and glory be to God for such a marvelous King as this!!!

And here is the amazing thing, beloved, just like our Lord, who died and rose again to new life, bold Christian witness, even unto death, has this funny way of living on.

Afterall, the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church. Is it not?

And who knows how the Lord will see fit use our humble faithfulness?

So, beloved, regardless of the outcomes let us press on with great confidence and bold Christian witness! For Christ is King!

And as the Church Reformed, Christ’s New-Kingdom Ambassadors, let us continually pursue further Reformation in obedience to the Word of God.

Individually, let us read, study, and faithfully obey the Word of God. Applying the Word to every area of our lives from our prayer closets, to our dinner tables, and even our work places, may our cry ever be “All of Christ for All of Life.”

Corporately, let us continue to stand firm upon the only infallible rule for faith and life. It’s not enough to merely be “Reformed” in name only, or even confessionally. We must be unceasingly dedicated to Reformation according to the Word of God as it applies to the entire life of the church. Not merely in matter of doctrine, but also practice.

For true Reformation has always been a whole of life thing, a comprehensive call for the church to conform her entire life—beliefs, liturgies, structures, and ethics—to the pattern set forth in Holy Scripture.

So, beloved, Semper Reformanda! Let the Reformation continue.

May we ever be reforming our whole lives to the Word of God Inscripturated that we may be evermore Reformed into the Image of the Word of God Incarnated!

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Closing Prayer

Sovereign God,

Lord, take hold of us, Your Church, break us apart, and reconstitute us. Reform us ever to your Image, that we might better bear the Image of Your Son, the express Image of God, the Lord Jesus Christ. And, Lord, in reforming our persons, in renewing our hearts and minds, Lord distribute us into the world, that the works of our hands may be a faithful witness to the renewed life that we have in Christ, that we might shine forth brightly as the Theopolis–the city of God–the New humanity that You have created in Christ Jesus by Your Spirit according to Your Word for your eternal glory, that we may witness a great Reformation in our day; through Christ our Lord, AMEN.