Episode Transcript
All right it's 10 o'clock and Jonathan's here so we can start.
He's got his Bible with him.
We're in 2nd Kings chapter 22 verse 6. 2nd Kings 22 verse 6 is our text and we are studying the reign of Josiah the king of Judah and at this point in our study he's more than halfway through his reign and more recently we've studied his efforts to have the breaches and the house of the Lord repaired and you remember those are holes or tears or places that have just fallen apart and continuing with our analysis of how bad the house of the Lord got to be and how it got to be as bad as it was, we're going to look at the next thing.
Now the first thing was the tolerance of the gradual falling apart of the house of the Lord.
But as you may have concluded, that neglect of the physical house was a symptom of the neglect of the spiritual house beginning with the high priest.
And wherever the high priest is spiritually, the people will be at or below that level.
That's a pretty good maxim to take away with you.
And wherever the pastor is spiritually, the people will generally be at or about that level or below it.
Because a spiritually mature person won't tolerate a spiritually immature pastor for very long.
They'll pick up on that.
I did way too long, but they'll pick up on that and say I don't I don't think I need to be here anymore I need to go somewhere where I can grow or we need to get a pastor who will feed us.
I once served under a pastor years ago, quite a long time ago now, and he began his Sunday morning messages with blonde jokes just about every Sunday.
And he'd either have the congregation laughing or sighing and most likely he offended some of the blonde haired women who were in attendance there.
And after his little comedy routine, he tried to get everyone to be serious again, settle back down and turn to whatever passage he was going to use for his sermon and people would still be talking to each other about the joke and laughing and all of that.
And I didn't like that.
I came to church, I mean Richard and I are funny, oh we're funny.
I'm not sure who's funnier.
But that's not the purpose of getting up here to speak.
It just kind of happens naturally during the course of our messages.
But one year this pastor that I had replaced our Sunday evening service with volleyball.
That's right.
Oh, he gave a quick devotional outside under the trees next to a busy state highway.
Nobody could hear anything he said because all the cars going by and the squirrels and you know, you're outside, you're going to be distracted.
And I approached him after one of those volleyball revivals and I asked him, "Could we continue with our normal Sunday evening services inside?"
Because I really missed the preaching and the singing that we did.
And he said, "No, it costs too much to air condition the building to keep it on all day on a Sunday during the summer."
I said, "Well, I'll tell you what.
I'll pay the difference in the electricity bill out of my own pocket.
How's that?
And so then he said, well, the Bible doesn't say you have to have Sunday evening service.
Well, I should have taken my family and left that night.
That should have been it.
But I stayed and did everything I knew to do to lead the members in the right way.
I was just a trustee.
I didn't have any particular office there. did one of the adult Bible studies.
And some of the things I did I now wish I had not done.
I got in the flesh just like some people do.
But eventually I concluded that teaching his people the Bible wasn't as important to this pastor as I thought it ought to be.
So my family and I left that church.
And in my estimation there, the spiritual house of the Lord had been neglected.
Now in our case, who among these Jews stood up before Josiah and said, "Hey, Hilkiah," that was the name of the high priest, "you're neglecting the house of the Lord.
Your priests are defiled. doorkeepers are corrupt.
This place is falling apart and apparently nobody did until Josiah did.
And neglect of God's Word will lead to a lot of things but it will lead to neglect of God's house.
If you neglect God's Word you won't see his house is anything special at all.
In fact, if you neglect God's Word, you'll neglect your own house too.
You'll neglect your spouse and your children.
You may not think you are.
You may think, "Oh, I do a lot of things with them."
Yeah, but you're neglecting them spiritually.
If you neglect God, you're not going to teach your kids right spiritually.
You're not going to do it.
And when I consider the calling that God has placed on me and the gifts he's given me to teach his word, it's exciting and it's very humbling at the same time.
I'm excited because he's placed me as a workman in his kingdom's work and I don't have to be ashamed.
And I'm excited because I get to rightly divide the word of truth, which doing every Lord's day.
I'm excited because God's never failed me when I've committed myself to Him to study, to show myself approved unto God, not unto man.
Not to make people laugh, not to see how catchy my phrases are or any of that, but to study, to show myself approved unto God.
Yet all of that that excites me about this calling also humbles me and makes me tremble with awe.
And I'm humbled because I know who I am.
I know what my flesh is, and it's unworthy.
And that's what keeps me grounded.
Recently I was sharing with Brother Fulton some of the encouraging words that I'd heard from some people about different Sunday school lessons.
And I told him, those words are precious to me.
But they also reminded me that there are people in this auditorium and online who are depending on our pastor and me to teach spiritual truth and to help them understand it and apply it in their lives.
And that's humbling.
Now if you You take that principle and you apply that to the high priest of Judah, Hilkiah.
We have a small church with a small congregation.
The high priest of the house of the Lord in Jerusalem had the entire nation of Israel looking to him for spiritual leadership.
That's a lot of people.
Millions and millions of people.
They needed a strong high priest, not one who could lift a cow over his head with his bare hands, a strong high priest, one who was strong in the power of the Lord and his might, and they didn't have one right now.
They needed a priest whose priority was to serve God day and night in the temple. and to be an example to others, but they had Hilkiah instead.
So continuing now in verse six, we see that the silver was given to the carpenters, the builders, and the masons.
Look back with me in a second Kings 22.
I was still in Proverbs from our wonderful Wednesday night lesson.
I hope you didn't miss that.
But if you did go back and listen to it And I'm gonna continue in verse 6 here in 2nd Kings 22 to buy timber and hewn stone to repair the house That's why this silver was given to these carpenters masons and builders To buy timber and hewn stone hewn means cut Now we don't say hewn much unless we're reading from the Bible If you remember the passage in Haggai that we looked at last week you may recall that the ones who would repair the breaches of the house of the Lord in Haggai's day were sent up a mountain to cut new wood and bring it down.
Now the workers in Josiah's time ought to be glad they weren't living in Haggai's time because they were allowed to purchase the wood and stone, to cut stone, rather than having to go up the mountain and cut it fresh like they did in Haggai's time.
And going back in second Kings to chapter 12, which has been quite some time since we were there, there was a king named Jehoash and he was a king of Judah also and he undertook a similar repairing of the house of the Lord during his reign.
However, there was a problem in his day.
Uh, just like there, there may have been here, but it was stated very clearly in Joe Ash, Jehoash's day, he had a problem getting the ones who gathered this silver, this money, to actually use it to repair the breaches.
They were just holding on to it.
They had the money, they just didn't use it for what the Lord wanted them to use it for.
In fact, they were just like many government officials and politicians today.
And Jehoash had to push those priests into doing what they were supposed to do with that money.
And when he did, the ones who actually did the work, the masons, the carpenters, the builders, they showed themselves to be faithful men.
The priests were not, but those workers were faithful men.
And as we're going to see, that's also the case with the men in our text.
So look down in verse 7, "Howbeit there was no reckoning made with them of the money that was delivered into their hand, because they dealt faithfully."
Let's study those several things in there.
"Howbeit there was no reckoning made with them of the money that was delivered into their hand."
That is, from the hands of the people to the hands of the priests, there was a reckoning.
There was an accounting that had to take place because the people had given money, had given silver and the keepers of the gate, of the door of the temple had not counted it.
The high priest had not made sure it was counted.
It was just sitting there and as I said last week, there's no telling if some of it was stolen, misappropriated, or so forth.
But from the hands of the priest, now that it's been counted, we know how much money is in the, in the chests from the hands of the priest to the hands of the workers, there was no reckoning.
It wasn't necessary to recount the money.
Do you know why money has to be recounted between two people?
One is to avoid a mistake.
Mistakes happen, don't they?
Excuse me.
But a second reason is in order to avoid theft.
Now theft can look like a mistake, but it's not, because theft carries an intent with it, an intent to deprive a person of their rightful ownership of money, property, whatever it may be.
So reckoning or counting reduces that possibility of a mistake and it discourages theft.
When you receive change at a grocery store, a good cashier will count that money back to you.
All right, I realize some of you may not know what I'm talking about because you use debit cards and Venmo and PayPal and credit cards and that's all right.
Others such as I use self-checkout.
But there was a day, and many of you remember it, when a cashier had to be pretty competent in math.
You had to be able to add and subtract and multiply and divide right here in your head.
And if someone purchased an item that was $15.81 and the purchaser, the customer gave the cashier a $20 bill, that cashier had to perform that subtraction in her head.
She'd place that $20 bill right on top of her register.
You all seen the cash drawer?
She didn't put it in there.
If she was good, she put it on top of the register.
Do you know why she did that?
That's part of reckoning right there.
Because that way there's no question about whether you gave her a 20, a 10, or a 5.
It's right here on top of the register.
And then the cashier would take $4.19 out of the register.
And she had to know that she needed four one-dollar bills and a dime, a nickel, and four pennies, all right here, before the computer figured all that out.
And if she were out of dimes, then she had to be able to multiply three times five to grab three nickels to make that 15 cents and add that to those four pennies.
Now, when she got all that, she didn't just dump that change into your hand like some of these brain-dead products of public education do.
That's why I use self-checkout, by the way.
No, that cashier counted your change back like this.
She announced the amount of your purchase, 15.81, as she held your change, and that was her starting point.
And then she'd hand you the change, the pennies first, 15.82, 83, 84, 85.
Here comes the nickel, 15.90.
Here comes the dime, 16.
Here comes the four one-dollar bills, 17, 18, 19, and 20.
And then you know what that was all about?
That was all about reckoning.
You and the cashier were now settled up with each other.
And she could now put that 20-dollar bill in the register.
And you could take your merchandise and change and leave the store.
Bank tellers do this.
A driver who delivers pallets of bread to a grocery store does this with the shipping or the receiving manager.
They both make sure that the amount of bread or the amount of pallets of bread that are on the invoice are actually on the truck and that all of those get over here to the receiving doc.
My first job or two had to do with groceries.
The kind you eat, Brother Doug, and the kind you don't eat, the kind you cook with.
So I know a little bit about it.
I was a cashier too.
I knew how to do all this.
But it was all about reckoning and it was strongly emphasized when I was an employee as a teenager.
You be sure you count your drawer, your cash drawer.
Don't you just let somebody else come take your place when you go and break.
You count down that cash drawer and you deposit it.
They didn't want any mistakes, no theft.
But in our text, there was no reckoning made like that.
Now let's see why.
Back in the text it said about these men, "Because they dealt faithfully.
How wonderful yet also how disheartening the masons, the carpenters, the builders could be trusted, but the priests and the keepers of the door could not the keepers of the door of the Lord's house who were Levi's in this day could not be trusted.
The workmen were honest, so honest that reckoning the money they were given was not necessary.
And it's rare to find people like that, it really is.
And if you own a business, or you're a manager, or you hire people, if you find an honest one, you just do whatever you have to to get them.
Because you're not going to, they don't fall off the tree every day like that, and that's sad.
This is the kind of person who will see a man drop a $20 bill on the ground and then pick it up and run after him and say, "Sir, you dropped this money."
Boy, I love it when I hear a child doing something like that, showing that honesty, or an adult, either one.
But in children, we want to encourage and praise that behavior.
Now let's look further at this word faithfully.
Our text tells us because they dealt faithfully and as Christians, perhaps we look at faithfulness mostly as it pertains to our service in the Lord, in the way of church attendance, somebody who comes to church regularly would be called a faithful church goer or faithful member. or in giving or any other service of the Lord, but faithfulness extends to all parts of your life.
In fact, I can't think of any subject, any part of my life where faithfulness would be unacceptable.
It's always good to be faithful.
Listen to some of the other words that this Hebrew word translated faithful is translated into in the Old Testament.
Here it's faithfully, but other words for faithfulness are translated as truth, office, stability, and steady.
I'll say those again, truth, office, stability, and steady.
And from those biblically used words, we can make some valid assumptions about what it means to be faithful.
First of all, as I said, as the Bible shows, truth is one of the words that's used.
So a faithful person operates from a position of truth.
An employee who clocks in at 8 o'clock is truthfully counting his time.
But an employee who's late to work and who calls you and says, "Hey, can you clock me in?
I'm running late this morning."
That's not a faithful employee because he's not operating from a position of truth.
He's not at work and he shouldn't clock in until he gets there.
Two, office was one of those words.
And from that, we learn that a faithful person does his job as it is written.
Now the word office was used in the old Testament to describe the type of job that a Levite had.
I'll read from 1st Chronicles chapter 9 and verse 31. 1st Chronicles 9 verse 31.
"And Mattithiah, one of the Levites, who was the firstborn of Shalom the Korahite, had the set office," now that's the same as faithfulness, "the set office over the things that were made in the pens.
So he had a pretty specific job, a pretty specific office.
And a faithful person will stay in his lane when it comes to his job.
He does his job, not his supervisor's job, ideally not someone else's job, although sometimes you may be called on to do yours and someone else's work, and that diminishes the quality of both.
A third thing, a third word that was used is stability.
So from that we may conclude that a faithful person is a stable person.
When I was a young highway patrol trooper, I learned a lot about stability from three senior troopers with whom I had the greatest pleasure to work.
They were veteran troopers.
They never got into trouble.
They worked hard and they worked consistently hard.
They were wise and knowledgeable.
They showed up with the same attitude every day and they didn't let negativity, because there's always negativity in a workplace.
I don't, I could go to you, I don't even know anything about your job, Brother Doug.
I in about five minutes.
That's just the way people are, right?
But these men, these troopers, did not let negativity diminish their work quality or their productiveness, even if they didn't like what was going on around them.
They were stable.
They were faithful troopers.
And I am so thankful that I got to work around them because they taught me, I was an immature 22 year old with a gun and a badge and a car that would go 150 miles an hour.
That's pretty dangerous, isn't it?
And I made it, thank God I made it through all that.
But I needed those kind of men in my life and so that's what I've tried to be to the younger law enforcement officers that I've had the privilege of working with.
And then four, a faithful person is a steady person.
That was one of the words used in the Old Testament.
Steady.
I want you to listen to how the word steady is used to describe Moses' hands.
Exodus 17 verse 12.
Exodus 17 verse 12.
And in that chapter, the children of Israel were fighting the Amalekites.
And when Moses hands were up, the children of Israel would be prevailing.
And when his hands got tired and began to drop, the children of Israel would start losing.
And so Aaron and her prop Moses's hands up.
If you ever want to do anything for a pastor, prop his hands up, not physically, but spiritually. take a load off of them and there will always be something you can do to take a load off your pastor but they they steadied Moses hands up and so here's what that passage says about it but Moses hands were heavy and they took a stone and put it under him and he sat there on and Aaron and her stayed up his hands the one on the one side and other on the other side and his hands were steady.
There's our word for faithfully.
Until the going down of the sun.
Now Moses was physically tired.
My father has been a conductor of music for most of his life.
Starting in a Baptist church when he was about 15 he was voluntold that he would be leading music.
And so he did and he fell in love with it.
And I've watched him conduct concerts that were an hour, hour and a half long and his arms stayed up the whole time and they moved.
And I'd try to imitate that at home and boy my shoulders would get tired pretty quickly.
My dad's hands were faithful when he conducted a rehearsal or a concert.
They were steady.
And he didn't, he couldn't have somebody come hold him up. had to do it himself and that took hundreds and hundreds of hours and days of practice to be able to do that.
But it's because he did what he did faithfully.
Moses hands were tired but he couldn't give that job to someone else.
Otherwise those Amalekites would defeat the children of Israel.
So in the matter faithfulness, be sure that you do what you're called to do, whether it's at work or home, but especially in the areas where God's gifted you for his service.
And looking at those various English words that are synonyms to one another, to the word faithfully, we should have a better understanding now of the character and the habits of these masons and builders and carpenters.
And those character traits and habits made it so that there needed to be no reckoning of the money given to them to perform the work in repairing the breaches of the Lord's house.
Look in verse 8, "And Hilkiah the high priest said unto Shaphan the scribe, I have found the book of the law in the house of the Lord.
And Hilkiah gave the book to Shaphan and he read it.
Hilkiah said I found the book of the law.
Boy does this ever tell house of the Lord, everything, but the reading and preaching of the book of the law was taking place.
Money was being collected still.
Wasn't it?
How many churches this morning using that name very loosely, by the way, church, how many churches this morning in the United States of America collected money from their people, but neglected to preach the word of God to them.
Oh, there's a lot of speaking going on.
A lot of romping around the stage and hollering and shouting and making all kinds of, uh, hubbub, but truth is absent.
Well, that's what was happening here.
But nobody in the priesthood was reading the Bible and the book of the law was their Bible at the time.
And it was more than enough for them to know God and to be saved.
If you've been through Genesis to Jesus, you know, you start there in Genesis and you can tell somebody how to be saved right there in Genesis.
It's helpful to have the gospel to be able to show them the fulfillment of what was promised in Genesis.
But that's what they had.
And Hilkiah, you notice the word used, he found that book.
Now the first time this Hebrew word is used in the Old Testament is in Genesis, excuse me, chapter 2, verse 20.
Genesis two, verse 20, and it's used in the negative form here.
The word found it said, and Adam gave names to all cattle and to the foul of the air and to every beast of the field, but for Adam, there was not found and help me for him.
So what that means is that Adam was not complete without that help me.
And the house of the Lord, the priesthood, the children of Israel, were also not complete without the Word of God which was called the Book of the Law.
And now the high priest has found it.
Now it's easy enough for me to be disgusted with the fact that the high priest just now found the book of the law because that means he had neglected it for some time probably his entire priesthood but we know he neglected it for some time perhaps he never read it at all it's hard to know that but to temper my disgust I have to remember that I too once found the book of the law, just like he did.
I too neglected the Bible in favor of worldly things and thank God Hilkiah found the book of the law.
So let's celebrate that.
Now I'm still celebrating that.
I, through the grace of God, found the book of the law.
It's easy to kick myself and I've done that before and it's really pretty useless doing that, but I've kicked myself before and yes, brother Jonathan, I can kick myself in the ear.
I'm so flexible, but I don't want to show off and try to do that today.
Uh, but I've, you probably engaged in some of that self bashing too about, well, boy, I sure wasted a lot of years.
I wasted a lot of time.
All right.
But you found the book of the law, didn't you?
And don't think for a moment that the title high priest here is equivalent to master of the law.
It's not don't think that just because a man has a doctorate degree in the divinities or theology or some other religious subject, that he is a master of the doctrines of the Bible.
He should be, but just like many churches, there are many seminaries that are filled with lost professors teaching lost students bad doctrine.
And those lost students who learn bad doctrine come out and they go find a church and they begin pastoring.
And what do they begin teaching the people?
The same thing they were taught in the seminary, bad doctrine.
And I'm thankful for seminaries that teach good doctrine.
I'm thankful for professors who make sure that they're Bible students.
They take them seriously, like a pastor ought to his congregation.
They take these young men who want to be preachers and teach them God's Word, teach them how to study the languages, all of that.
I'm thankful for that.
But many do not.
And they may know their Greek and their Hebrew and their Chaldean and their Aramaic and how to translate and all of that.
They may be powerful speakers and convincing teachers, but some of them are like Hilkiah.
And I wish more of them would find the book of the law, really find it, and study it to show themselves approved rather than rolling with this religious tied of their peers and whatever their denomination now says is truth, whatever their association now decides to go by.
In Acts chapter 5 verse 24, Acts 5 24, "Then stood there up one in the council, a Pharisee named Gamaliel, doctor of the law had in reputation among all the people and commanded to put the Apostles forth a little space."
Now there's some context with this.
The Apostles were being persecuted by the Pharisees and this particular Pharisee who was also a doctor of the law like the other Pharisees said, "Hold on just a minute.
Now Gamaliel was a doctor and what that means is a teacher.
A doctor of the law and teacher of the law are from the same Greek, long Greek word that makes those up.
In fact that phrase teacher of the law, as I said it means doctor of the law, it's found in 1st Timothy 1 verse 7, 1st Timothy 1 verse 7 where Paul was speaking of those who taught bad doctrine saying this, "Desiring to be teachers of the law, understanding neither what they say nor whereof they affirm."
So it's possible for a doctor of the law to have a doctorate degree in the divinities and not understand what he's saying.
Paul said there were people like that in his day.
And in fact, the apostle Paul was one of those at one time.
Because he wrote this about himself in Philippians chapter 3 verses 5 through 6.
Philippians 3 verses 5 through 6, Paul said he was circumcised the eighth day of the stock of Israel of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the Hebrews, as touching the law a Pharisee.
And we learned earlier that Pharisees were doctors of the law or teachers of the law.
Concerning zeal, persecuting the church. the righteousness which is in the law blameless.
So he said, I was a Pharisee, he was a doctor of the law, and I persecuted the church.
Now does anybody who is a doctor of the law, who teaches the Bible the right way, going to persecute the church?
No.
They're not going to do it.
Well he was doing it.
That's because he was like Hilkiah.
And he was probably more educated in the law than Hilkiah.
We don't know for sure but what he tells us is a doctor of the law persecuted the church at one time.
And this happens today as well.
Don't let the title fool you.
Let the doctrine that the teacher teaches be your guide and if they've studied to show themselves approved unto God then they will not lead you astray from God's word.
Hilkiah found the book of the law where look back in the text in the house of the Lord of all places.
Now that's where it should be in the house of the Lord, but Hilkiah and the book of the law hadn't gotten together in the house of the Lord had they?
You had him one place in the book of the law somewhere else and I don't know where he found it in the house of the Lord, but that's it been the whole time.
The book of the law was sitting right where it was left.
Now that's where your glasses are or your car keys when you find them sitting on top of the dryer or in the top of your closet or anywhere else.
They're right where you left them.
Nobody stole them and hid them from you, right?
Yeah.
And so that's where the book of the law was.
You get the picture?
Your Bible is exactly where it was left.
For some it's just an ornament put on a coffee table.
Gets dusted every once in a while but it's not going to get open.
Maybe to impress the visitors about how religious you are.
For others that Bible is sitting on their desk with the pages well worn from much reading and studying.
But in either case, the Bible's right where you left it.
My maternal grandfather, that's my mother's dad, was a Baptist pastor in Frederick, Oklahoma.
And on April 15, 1981, he was at home with my grandmother and she said he went into the garage and he never came back.
He went out there and had a massive heart attack and she found him lying dead on the floor and she didn't know CPR and so he passed away.
And I was 15 years old and he was my hero absolutely in every way and I was devastated.
And when we went to his house in preparation for his funeral and to comfort my grandmother and each other I walked into his study and his Bible was sitting on his study table and I don't I wish I've taken note what the passage was but it was open to some passage that he had been reading do you know the last thing he did before he got up to go out in the garage and have his heart attack was to study his Bible.
And that is always left a profound impression on me.
And by God's grace, I never want to have to find my Bible the way he'll Kaya did.
Perhaps my last act on this earth will be studying my Bible, like my grandfather.
It may not be, it doesn't have to be, but what a sweet thought that is.
But if it's not, I want my last act to be one of obedience to the words that are in that book, whether I have it open in front of me or it's open in my heart and I'm abiding in it.
And looking back in at the end of the verse, verse eight, and Hill Kaya gave the book to Schaffin and he read it.
That's another amazing statement.
Why didn't Hill Kaya read the book himself?
Could he not read?
Oh I imagine he could read.
Maybe he was ashamed to be the one who opened that book that he had neglected for all those years.
Maybe he felt like he didn't deserve to be the one who read it.
I don't know.
But once again rather than getting caught up in why Hilkiah didn't read the Bible then we need to celebrate this event that the book of the law has been found in the house of the Lord and now it's being read.
That's the answer for every church that is falling apart that has breaches spiritual breaches whether they're physical or not spiritual breaches in the house is to find the book of the law and read it and And my prayer for churches is that they may find the book of the law in the house of the Lord and read it.
And my prayer for this church is that we will never lose the book of the law and we'll never quit reading it and we'll never quit hungering for it so we never have to find it and have someone else read this strange book.
May it never be strange to you.
With that we'll pray and be dismissed.
Thank you so much for your word.
And thank you, Lord, that by your grace, we found the book of the law.
And we get to teach from it and learn from it and live by it.
And I pray that you would help us to do that.
Give us the grace as we continue into this next hour to hunger for your word, to learn from it.
We ask that you give our pastor all the liberty and clarity of thought that he needs to teach what you've taught him from your precious word.
In Jesus' name, amen.