The Pendulum Swings

Prayer

2 Kings 20-23, Great Moral Pendulum

So, this morning and next Sunday we’ll be back in the book of 2 Kings, covering the final chapters. After that, we’ll start a new series for the season of Lent. After Lent, we’ll take a look at the some of the prophets who spoke during and after the events we’ll be looking at in the final chapters of 2 Kings, that includes Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Daniel.

Quick recap to get us oriented in our biblical timeline. When we were last in 2 Kings, we had looked at the amazing story of Hezekiah and the Assyrian siege of Jerusalem led by Sennacherib. If you remember, the boastful declaration of Sennacherib that he had Hezekiah trapped like a “bird in a cage.” Sennacherib sent his officials to taunt the people behind the fortified walls. Hezekiah then cried out to the Lord for mercy.

And the Lord sent word through Isaiah, promising Hezekiah that no arrow would be shot and no Assyrian would step foot in the city of Jerusalem. Yahweh then sent his destroying angel, wiping out the Assyrian army, which sent Sennacherib back to Nineveh, where he was later murdered by two of his sons.

We pick up the story in 2 Kings 20.

Hezekiah becomes ill, and he is on the verge of death. Lying in his bed, weeping, he again cried out to the Lord for mercy, reminding him of how faithfully he has served him. And the Lord responds through Isaiah, 2 Kings 20:5, This is what the Lord, the God of your father David, says: I have heard your prayer and seen your tears; I will heal you. On the third day from now you will go up to the temple of the Lord.

Just a quick comment on this, but it’s worth pointing out, the Lord’s word to Hezekiah - I have heard your prayer. I have seen your tears. God hears us. God sees us. We are known by God. When we pray, when we cry out, he hears us. When we’re hurting, he sees us. Just a beautiful reminder of how attentive, how watchful our Lord is to us. But not just attentive, but moved to action - I will heal you, I will deliver you.

So Hezekiah is healed and soon after, envoys from Babylon arrive. And Hezekiah receives them willingly. Not just willingly, but eagerly. A little too eagerly. He shows them everything - the palace, the temple - and all the treasures therein. Which turns out to be a foolish thing to do - Isaiah again speaks a word from the Lord to him, but this time, it’s a word of rebuke. It seems that part of Hezekiah’s motivation here was to form an allyship with Babylon, over and against Assyria. In doing so, he is trusting another empire rather than the Lord.

And as part of the rebuke, the Lord tells Hezekiah this, 2 Kings 20:17-18, The time will surely come when everything in your palace, and all that your predecessors have stored up until this day, will be carried off to Babylon. Nothing will be left, says the Lord. 18 And some of your descendants, your own flesh and blood who will be born to you, will be taken away, and they will become eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon.”

So the very empire Hezekiah is seeking to be friendly with will one day come and destroy Judah, plundering it of all its treasures, and taking the people into exile. The only good news for Hezekiah in this is that it will not happen in his lifetime.

As we move in chapter 21, things take a huge pendulum swing when Hezekiah’s son, Manasseh, takes the throne at the age of twelve. Whereas Hezekiah was one of the most faithful and devoted kings of Judah, his own son is one of the worst, one of the most evil kings of all those who ruled over both Judah and Israel. What made it particularly bad is that he had the longest reign of them all, 55 years.

All the good that his father had done, he undid, rebuilding the high places that had been torn down. Went beyond that, as Manasseh built altars for the gods that the nation of Israel had worshiped under Ahab, Baal and Asherah.

2 Kings 21:4-6 gives us a vivid description, He built altars in the temple of the Lord, of which the Lord had said, “In Jerusalem I will put my Name.” 5 In the two courts of the temple of the Lord, he built altars to all the starry hosts. 6 He sacrificed his own son in the fire, practiced divination, sought omens, and consulted mediums and spiritists. He did much evil in the eyes of the Lord, arousing his anger.

It’s not just that he’s building altars to false gods, but that he’s erecting them in the temple area, in the house of the Lord, the place the Lord put his name. In a later passage we learn that he built quarters in the temple area for male shrine prostitutes. And worst of all, he sacrificed his own sons in the fire!

As you might imagine, this all confirmed the Lord’s decision to destroy Judah, because it wasn’t just Manasseh who did evil, but the people of Judah as well, they were willing participants. Turns out that Manasseh’s son, Amon, the next king of Judah, followed in his footsteps, doing evil as well. But he only reigned for two years, until he was assassinated by some of his own servants. Same dynamic we saw with all the assassinations in the northern kingdom of Israel - evil begets evil. The conspirators are put to death and Amon’s son, Josiah, is placed on the throne at the tender age of eight.

This brings us to chapter 22, under Josiah’s reign, where the again the pendulum swings wildly back in the opposite direction. 2 Kings 22:2, He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord and followed completely the ways of his father David, not turning aside to the right or to the left.

Eighteen years into his reign, when Josiah is 26 years old, he orders that repairs be made to the temple. In the midst of the repairs, the Book of the Covenant is found in the temple. Likely, this included the writings of the book of Deuteronomy. The book is brought to Josiah and read. And upon hearing the words, Josiah is immediately gripped by how unfaithful the people of Judah have been to their covenant with the Lord. It explains why the Lord’s wrath has been kindled against them.

Josiah is so upset, he tears his robe and moves into action, sending his officials to the prophetess, Huldah, to inquire of the Lord. And the Lord speaks his word through Huldah, expressing just how great his wrath will be on his people. But regarding Josiah, he says this, 2 Kings 22:19, Because your heart was responsive and you humbled yourself before the Lord when you heard what I have spoken against this place and its people—that they would become a curse and be laid waste—and because you tore your robes and wept in my presence, I also have heard you, declares the Lord. And like Hezekiah, the Lord promises that this destruction will not happen in Josiah’s lifetime.

In 2 Kings 23, we see Josiah respond in two significant ways. First, he gathers the people together and he reads to them the words of the Book of the Covenant. And then this, 2 Kings 23:3, The king stood by the pillar and renewed the covenant in the presence of the Lord—to follow the Lord and keep his commands, statutes and decrees with all his heart and all his soul, thus confirming the words of the covenant written in this book. Then all the people pledged themselves to the covenant.

Then they move into action - undoing all that Manasseh had done, purging the land of every vestige of idol worship they can find and reinstituting proper worship of the Lord, including celebration of the Passover, which apparently the people had not celebrated for hundreds of years - not since days of the judges, long before even the monarchy was established in Israel. As Josiah’s story ends, he is described this way, 2 Kings 23:25, Neither before nor after Josiah was there a king like him who turned to the Lord as he did—with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his strength, in accordance with all the Law of Moses.

Turning to the Lord with all our might

I’m fascinated by the extremes in the reigns of these kings. Up until these last kings, most of the kings of Judah had been generally faithful to the Lord. Not fully, they never moved to remove all the high places, the places of idol worship that existed in the land. But then we get these wild swings, back and forth - if we start with Ahaz, who was the first king in a long time to be evil in the land of Judah. His son, Hezekiah, one of the most faithful, top of the list. Then to Manasseh, his son, one of the absolute worst. That continued with his son, Amon (briefly, two years), then back to again, one of the most devout kings, Josiah. Spoiler alert, it’ll swing back to an evil king, as we’ll see next week.

My hope and prayer is that for us - obviously we don’t want to follow in the examples of Ahaz and Manasseh and Amon, but that our heart’s desire would be more than the kings of Judah who preceded Hezekiah. Faithful, but not fully committed. Instead, we would keep turning more and more to the Lord, as we’ve talked about numerous times here, ever-deepening surrender, fully committed to him. Josiah offers us a beautiful example of what that requires.

Begins, first and foremost, with a responsive heart. Remember how the Lord spoke to Josiah through the prophetess Huldah, what he said about Josiah, “Because your heart was responsive and you humbled yourself before the Lord when you heard what I have spoken against this place and its people...and because you tore your robes and wept in my presence.”

The Hebrew phrase there refers to the softness of your heart. Josiah had a soft, responsive heart, to the word of the Lord. When the Bible refers to the heart, its referring to the center of who we are, our spirit, our will. Not just our emotions, but our thinking, our desires, as well. The heart is what ultimately directs our actions.

Point is this - if your hearts are not soft, if they are not responsive to the Lord and his word to us, we will not be inclined toward obeying him. Something else will drive our actions. We will not turn to the Lord. Our faith, at best, will always be lukewarm, tepid, shallow. Josiah heard the word of the Lord, the Book of the Covenant, and because his heart was soft, he immediately humbled himself, weeping, tearing his clothes.

Think about that for a moment, has God’s word’s every stricken you so deeply that you grieved? Whether or not you actually wept, but that you were sorrowful? Or perhaps you were filled with conviction? A readiness to say a firm “Yes” to Jesus? Or your heart was moved to praise and thanksgiving as the word of the Lord revealed his glory to you, his goodness, his grace? Our story here is an invitation to do a heart check. If week after week you remain unmoved by Jesus and his word to you, whether that be through this time of teaching, in your own daily reading of Scripture, in group Bible study, that may be a sign to examine the softness of your heart toward the Lord.

Second thing we see here in Josiah’s story is a readiness to commit. Josiah is immediately ready to give himself over to the Lord. He hears God’s word through the Book of the Covenant, pursues inquiry of the prophetess - when he receives that word he then gathers the people of Judah and reads the Book of the Covenant to them. Remember what he does next? Let me read it again, 2 Kings 23:3...

The king stood by the pillar and renewed the covenant in the presence of the Lord—to follow the Lord and keep his commands, statutes and decrees with all his heart and all his soul, thus confirming the words of the covenant written in this book. Then all the people pledged themselves to the covenant. There, in front of all his people, the king commits himself, with all his heart and all his soul, to keep the commands of the Lord. Commitment with no hesitation, no exceptions, no caveats - Josiah is in, fully in. And his people fall in line.

And this is so essential because our commitments define us. Who or what we commit ourselves to, how much we will give of ourselves, will define who we will become. They reveal our priorities. Our commitment to our marriages, time and effort we put into that relationship, as well as other family relationships. Our commitment to our work, our job. Good things, absolutely.

But we should be absolutely clear that there has to be a proper order to our commitments. Because our commitments will invariably conflict with each other. It’s vital to be clear about how we prioritize our commitments. Josiah was very clear on that - the Lord is first, all his heart, all his soul, to the Lord. As we consider our commitments, we ought to be honest about how they rank - marriages, children, grandchildren, jobs, pets, commitment to ourselves, our own comfort and happiness, our hobbies and activities, our church community.

As a church, one of our core values is Kingdom First. Seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness. In other words, Jesus, following him, that’s the top priority. We talked a lot last fall in the midst of our Practicing the Way campaign about the need to organize our lives around being with Jesus, becoming like Jesus, doing as Jesus did. I was talking to a dear friend at the National Gathering, catching him up on what’s been happening over the years since we last talked - to my shame I had to confess that for a long time, even though I had earned a Certificate in Spiritual Formation, I’d never taken it seriously. I knew it. But I wasn’t committed to it. Which is to say I wasn’t committed to organizing my life around being with Jesus, becoming like him, and doing as he did. I thank God that has changed. If you’re not there yet, I pray you will be. No greater commitment, nothing else is worth following Jesus first and foremost. He, and only he, is the one who can give abundant and everlasting life.

Josiah began with a responsive heart toward the Lord. Next, a readiness to commit, to covenant himself heart and soul to the Lord. Finally, Josiah put that willing heart, that firm commitment, into action. He demonstrated his heart and commitment through what he did.

Josiah purged the land of anything and everything that involved the worship of idols. Make no mistake, it was a costly effort - it took time and expense and effort to do that. Which is why so many of the kings that preceded him failed to do so, it wasn’t important enough to them. In the same way, our commitment to Jesus will cost us. We will have to give up, to sacrifice things in our lives, whatever idols we might have, whatever it is that we’ve put a higher commitment to. To be clear, some of these things we don’t want to cut out, but we do need to reprioritize, move down the list. But there are some things you may need to give up entirely.

Conversely, Josiah took up practices that would help him and the people of Judah to live out their covenant to the Lord. They read the Book of the Covenant - you can’t follow Jesus’ teachings if you don’t know what they are! They openly professed their commitment to the covenant - it was a public vow. Began to celebrate the Passover. Put things into their lives to help them be faithful to the covenant to the Lord. As such, so must we. Why we keep coming back to the spiritual practices. These are the things we can do in order to help ourselves be faithful to following Jesus.

Spiritual Practices - Closing Prayer - Prayer exercise as a congregation

Heart check - Softness of your Heart

Willingness to commit heart and soul to the Lord

Take action: Lord, what is the next step of faithfulness?