Overcoming Your Heritage

Historic turnaround

In 1978, Lee Iacocca was brought in as the CEO of the Chrysler Corporation when the company was on the brink of going out of business. Essentially, he was placed at the helm of a sinking ship. Due to several expensive recalls and a line of vehicles that weren’t popular during the gas crisis, Chrysler was losing market share and in dangerous debt. At one point it had lost $1.8 billion! Iacocca knew that the company was in dire straits and proceeded to implement what became a remarkable turnaround for the company. Within five years, Chrysler was receiving media coverage for how well it was doing. So how did the change happen? According to a 1983 New York Times article by John Holusha, there were a variety of factors. Chrysler was quick to make changes, including the introduction of the ever popular “K-cars.” I like what one investment analyst said: “When the alternative is oblivion, you move fast.” So Iacocca introduced changes quickly, including painful but necessary cuts to the companies divisions and workforce. Another factor was a common sense of purpose. The employees began to see a connection between the quality of their work and the success of the company. I suppose when the alternative is unemployment, you work hard. By the early 80’s, Chrysler went from being in debt billions of dollars to having $1.5 billion cash on hand with strong profit projections. At the center of this success story stood Lee Iacocca, who led the company through the change. He showed that course corrections are always possible, even drastic corrections.

Today we cover the young king, Josiah, who also took the helm of a sinking ship. His story begins in – go ahead and turn there in your Bibles. Israel faced not financial bankruptcy but spiritual bankruptcy. The people had largely forgotten God and mixed their faith in with other religions. Josiah, however, stopped this downward spiritual trend and brought about great change. We’ll see why he is credited with turning back to God like no other king.

We’ll also be reminded of this truth: Course corrections are always possible – God allows U-turns!

Because of the length of this passage, we will read a few select texts. ; .

2 Kings 22:1–2 ESV

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. And he did what was right in the eyes of the Lord and walked in all the way of David his father, and he did not turn aside to the right or to the left.

2 Kings 23:25 ESV

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

2 Kings 23:25 ESV

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

2 Kings 22:1–2 ESV

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. And he did what was right in the eyes of the Lord and walked in all the way of David his father, and he did not turn aside to the right or to the left.

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Josiah’s reign

So what made Josiah’s reign so remarkable? To answer that, we need to do a brief flyover of the events of his reign, including the events leading up to it. Josiah was the king, not of all Israel but of Judah. After King Solomon’s reign, Israel had a civil war of sorts and divided into the northern nation of Israel and the southern nation of Judah. Judah maintained the lineage of David on the throne. You also may know that each king received an evaluation on whether he did what was right in God’s eyes or what was evil. To get a rough gauge the spiritual health of the nation, we can simply look at the evaluations of prior kings and the lengths of their reigns. Of the previous four kings in Josiah’s line, only one of them – Hezekiah – was good. Hezekiah made incredible reforms during the first part of his reign, but he seems to have turned inward during the latter half, becoming a bit prideful and caring more about his own time and not that of his posterity. He showed off his wealth to envoys from Babylon, and Isaiah the prophet was sent by God to call him out on it. He told Hezekiah in that Babylon would one day raid the temple and remove all of its wealth and even take Hezekiah’s own sons away into captivity. Hezekiah’s response was one of contentment, because he realized it wouldn’t happen to him. So perhaps only the first twenty of Hezekiah’s twenty-nine years on the throne were filled with strong, active leadership for God.

What of the other three kings? They are characterized with idolatry, turning from God and to other religions all around. Two of these kings – Ahaz and Manasseh – each sacrificed one of their own sons as burnt offerings to foreign gods. They spent more energy setting up temples and statues of these other gods than they did following the one true God. Even after Hezekiah’s reforms, Manasseh undid them all and made things even worse. All told, Josiah came to the throne when for the past 57 years his predecessors established evil practices in the land. Only 30 of the past 100 years had good kings on the throne and some of those 30 years were when Hezekiah let the people drift spiritually. Josiah entered into a culture where a people who used to be committed to God had drifted from God and embraced many other faiths and ideologies. Sound familiar? To make matters worse, his own father was murdered by his servants after reigning for only 2 years. That makes for a weakness in the monarchy; compound that weakness with the fact that Josiah became king at only 8 years of age.

So what did Josiah do? For the first eight years, not much. But when he turned 16, he began to seek after God. Four years later, this young king begins to purge the false religions from the land. Josiah is very thorough and passionate in his work. He doesn’t simply remove the altars; he robs the graves of the false priests and burns them on the altars before destroying them. He doesn’t simply remove the carved images; he grinds them to powder and sprinkles them on the graves of those who worshiped them. We’ll see later just how extensive the idolatry was in the land.

Then, when Josiah is twenty-six years old, he starts a temple renovation project. During that project they find a dusty old scroll that happens to be God’s Word – possibly the book of Deuteronomy – and Josiah’s temple makeover project turns into a worship restoration. He repents on behalf of the people for not adhering to the temple worship as God had prescribed. This included a massive reinstitution of the Passover observance. The Bible says () that “there had not been celebrated a Passover like it in Israel since the days of Samuel the prophet; nor had any of the kings of Israel celebrated such a Passover as Josiah did.”

If you are looking for an example of courageous leadership, you’ll find it in Josiah. If you want to find someone who stood in contrast to the surrounding culture, Josiah is your man. If you know something ought to be done but don’t quite know how to go about it, look to Josiah. He spent ten years seeking after God and restoring the nation’s spiritual purity before he learned of God’s Word. It reminds me of God’s promise in , “You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart.”

Jeremiah 29:13 ESV

You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart.

,“And you, Solomon my son, know the God of your father and serve him with a whole heart and with a willing mind, for the LORD searches all hearts and understands every plan and thought. If you seek him, he will be found by you, but if you forsake him, he will cast you off forever.”

1 Chronicles 28:9 ESV

“And you, Solomon my son, know the God of your father and serve him with a whole heart and with a willing mind, for the Lord searches all hearts and understands every plan and thought. If you seek him, he will be found by you, but if you forsake him, he will cast you off forever.

, “Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you.”

James 4:8a ESV

Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.

says, “The eyes of the Lord run to and fro…to give strong support to those whose heart is blameless toward him.”

James 4:8a ESV

Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.

says, “The eyes of the Lord run to and fro…to give strong support to those whose heart is blameless toward him.”

1 Chronicles 28:9 ESV

“And you, Solomon my son, know the God of your father and serve him with a whole heart and with a willing mind, for the Lord searches all hearts and understands every plan and thought. If you seek him, he will be found by you, but if you forsake him, he will cast you off forever.

2 Chronicles 16:9 ESV

For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to give strong support to those whose heart is blameless toward him. You have done foolishly in this, for from now on you will have wars.”

2 Chronicles 16:9 ESV

For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to give strong support to those whose heart is blameless toward him. You have done foolishly in this, for from now on you will have wars.”

Lessons from Josiah’s life

God’s Word brings true change

First, God’s Word brings true change. As I look at Josiah’s early years I see a man who had some vague understanding of following God. He knew that the foreign gods needed to be removed, and he wanted to restore God’s house of worship, but beyond that he knew little. There were surely other people in his life who feared God, but when did Josiah’s real connection with God and awareness of truth come? It came when God’s Word was read to him. The external reforms became internalized and gained real traction. The overview of Josiah’s life I shared a moment ago actually came from 2 Chronicles, starting in chapter 34. That’s the chronological account as to when Josiah started what. Our passage in places a thematic emphasis on the source of the change. The pivotal moment in Josiah’s life was when he connected with God’s Word. The king recommitted his life to God and then the people did. This is what says:

2 Kings 23:1–3 ESV

Then the king sent, and all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem were gathered to him. And the king went up to the house of the Lord, 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 the Lord. And the king stood by the pillar and made a covenant before the Lord, to walk after the Lord 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.

From there Josiah cleaned house and cleared out the idolatry of the land.

From there Josiah cleaned house and cleared out the idolatry of the land.

What surprises me is that the scroll that contained God’s law had to be discovered. The people had strayed so far from God that the priests weren’t even using God’s Word to carry out their duties. How could the priests be priests for God if they didn’t know what God commanded? The answer is that they followed the practices of other religions. They saw all the other false priests who made up their practices because they didn’t have any words from God, and they did the same.

Now you might bring up the possibility that they still had some scrolls and had lost only Deuteronomy, and you might be right. If so, that highlights a different but similar danger, a more dangerous danger that we likely struggle with: The people were only following some of God’s law. What little they followed they didn’t follow well, and they mixed in other beliefs and practices of the day. There was no purity to their worship in the slightest. We face the same danger.

Has anyone ever gotten watered down gas in their car? If you have, you probably noticed periodic sputtering of the engine when you wanted to speed up. Your car acts like it has lost power. It can get so bad that the engine refuses to start. The whole point of an internal combustion engine is to spark fuel on fire, and water has been known to put out fire. How do gas tanks get water in them? It usually isn’t on purpose. Sometimes the guy in the tanker truck forgets to put the cover over the underground tank at the station. Condensation in a poorly sealed tank can introduce the water. If the gas pumps aren’t frequently inspected, the problem may go unnoticed, and even the gas station doesn’t know.

Well, it’s inspection time for us. Are we paying attention to the entire counsel of God? Are there parts that we ignore, skip, or only partly give a nod to? Our generation has Bibles coming out of our ears. We aren’t in danger of losing it but of ignoring it. Have we been careless and not kept the tank of our minds properly insulated from the elements? Have other beliefs been integrated with God’s Word so that its effectiveness is diluted? Trust in the true change of God’s Word means we must be diligent in keeping it central in our lives.

Generations have responsibility

Another lesson we learn is that generations have responsibility. The title of the message is “Overcoming your Heritage.” Josiah had fifty-seven years of heritage from the reigns of his father and grandfather to overcome. After the pure reign of his great grandfather, Hezekiah, Manasseh doubled down on the idolatry. Josiah had every reason to blame the system, the past, the culture, or the parents, but he took ownership of the problem himself. He also set his own son up for success in seeing the spiritual turnaround of the nation. God gives us a pattern for passing the faith down to the next generation.

One generation must tell, the other must choose. says,

Deuteronomy 6:6–9 ESV

And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

speaks of sharing God’s words, saying,

True change requires action, not mere sentiment

Psalm 78:4 ESV

We will not hide them from their children, but tell to the coming generation the glorious deeds of the Lord, and his might, and the wonders that he has done.

Israel faced a generational failure, where the older generation did not share with the younger. This was a repeated problem. The younger generation has the responsibility of choosing to follow God. Josiah’s son, Jehoiakim, later wound up on the throne as a puppet king for Egypt. There is an account in , where Jeremiah the prophet has spoken judgments for God, and Jehoiakim has these words from God read in his hearing. How did Jehoiakim respond? As it was read, he would cut the read portions from the scroll and burn them in a fire until the entire scroll was consumed. says, “The king and all his attendants who heard all these words showed no fear, nor did they tear their clothes.”

So Josiah discovered God’s Word and responded with true repentance; his son was sent God’s Word and responded by making a mockery of it. Each generation has a task. Your circumstances don’t really matter, but your response does. Josiah had every reason to not follow God, but he did. Jehoiakim had every reason to follow God, but he didn’t. Ironically, each of them followed in the footsteps of their own great grandfather. We choose whom to follow.

Real change requires action, not mere sentiment

A third lesson teaches us, real change requires action, not mere sentiment. Josiah could have privately attempted to seek God and follow him. He could have prayed for God to work in the hearts of the people that they would turn back to God. He could have prayed for the priests to do their job while he did his. We are told he began to seek God at age sixteen and by twenty he was bringing about nationwide change. Josiah knew that actual steps must be taken to implement change.

Understand that the attitude – the intention of the heart – is still important. But if that attitude does not lead to action, it is impotent for bringing about change. No turnaround comes to the one who merely wishes it to be so. Where do you see a need for turnaround? Could it be that God is leading you to take real steps to bring about the necessary change?

Have you ever heard of Ann Makosinsky? In 2013, Ann was 16 years old and learned that her friend in the Philippines had a problem. There was no light – or electricity – for her to complete her homework at night – the only time she could get it done. Ann felt bad for her friend, but she didn’t stop there. She spent a mere $26 to develop a prototype flashlight powered by body heat rather than batteries or even kinetic energy. With a mere 5 degree temperature difference, the LED can power up and create enough light for her friend. If Ann had stopped at sentiment, no change would have taken place.

Do you tend to pine away for change without actually helping to implement it? I get encouraged by a guy like Josiah who knew he should enact change, even though he wasn’t sure how to go about it. Sometimes getting started is the most important step. In our Befriend small group - which has been fabulous - one of the topics we have discussed is the need for us to be open and vulnerable about our own difficulties and needs. Beginning spiritual change often starts with opening your mouth and sharing a need. Find someone to connect with on a deeper level and see how God brings some important, mutual course correction through it.

Beware the creep of idolatry

Beware the creep of idolatry

As we close, I want to share one final lesson from Josiah’s life: Beware the creep of idolatry. In Israel, all kinds of idols had to be removed from the temple! There were idols for Baal, Asherah, and others right in the temple dedicated to the one true God. There were male prostitutes dedicated to Asherah. There was a mixing of religions where the worship of Yahweh blended in with other false religions. If you want hard evidence, look at the Taanach cult stand. It shows images of the goddess Asherah on two sections and Yahweh on two others. The top one with the horse and sun above is even referenced in 23:11, where Josiah “removed the horses the kings of Judah had dedicated to the sun.” In other words, even their worship of the true God was tainted.

This week I took a good look at my yard and realized that much of the spots that I thought were grass are actually weeds. I’m a bit too timid to take a Josiah approach to this. I think he would rip out the weeds and burn them in the street, content to have bare spots. But I did buy some weed killer for the lawn. I know the long term health of a lawn that looks green can’t last long with weeds. Without realizing it, somehow a lot of my grass has given way to invasive weeds. They crept in without me even noticing, even while I was doing good things.

Idols can creep into the holiest of spaces. Israel’s temple wasn’t immune. Our church isn’t immune. Your family isn’t immune. It’s the subtle shifts we have to be wary of. We enter a time of communion, and we do it with Josiah’s example fresh in our minds. He took and evaluation and knew changes needed to be made. Celebrating the Lord’s Supper is a time for us to evaluate our own lives. Just as in Josiah’s days Israel observed the Passover with renewed emphasis, we can do that today with the Lord’s Supper. Just as Josiah’s heart was changed by the word of God, we know that Jesus was also called the Word who became flesh for us. Jesus died to bring about the ultimate change in us. Today we remember his sacrifice and the change it brings to those who place faith in him. This time of communion is open to everyone who has placed their faith in Christ for salvation. If that doesn’t describe you, then we invite you to observe; but if you are a Christian who has placed faith in Christ for salvation – if you are his – this is yours.