Episode Transcript
Our time left us at the Mount of Corruption, and we don't want to stay there at the Mount of Corruption.
So let's see what the king did to it.
It says about the mount of corruption.
Did the king defile?
Did the king defile?
Now again, King Josiah was no respecter of persons.
And if you've learned much about him, you've learned that.
He did not honor the altars of the king Ahaz or the king Manasseh.
And now he doesn't alter, or excuse me, doesn't even honor these high places that were built by the wisest king ever to rule Israel.
And from this, we ought to learn that God's righteous judgment will be upon every evil work.
And that's comforting to me.
No matter how famous or how powerful the builder of that evil work is, God's righteous judgment will be upon it.
Now if you tuned in or came to church Wednesday night, or maybe you watched that lesson later on.
You already have a better understanding of what it means for the king to defile a place that was called the Mount of Corruption.
After all, isn't it already defiled?
And we've studied that paradox before.
But from our lesson Wednesday night, if you remember the word evil, we studied the word evil.
You'll remember it means to break into pieces.
So, what we learn from that is when God commits evil, it's not because He's sinful or wicked.
He's keeping true to the definition of the Hebrew word translated evil.
And we learned that God breaks into pieces the things that are contrary to what is good.
And we learned that only God made that which is good.
The only good that can come from anything is when it comes from God.
Even when it comes through people, you say, Well, I have a good neighbor.
They're faithful, they're good people.
Well, the reason they're good is because God is good.
And Genesis testifies of God's goodness every time.
Particularly in the creation account, when it says, and God saw that it was good.
And God never breaks into pieces that which He made good.
But he does break into pieces what man has called good, which is what evil is.
So if you want more on that lesson, go home today and play the message from Wednesday.
And in the same way, in our text, in our study, King Josiah is a type of Jesus.
He is a type of Jesus who defiled things, the evil things that the false worshipers called good.
After all, every false worshiper who went to this altar that Ahaz built, or the one Solomon built for his wives.
When they went, they thought, oh, this is good.
We're doing a good thing here.
And in fact, This king, Josiah, defiled the evil things that three prior kings had called good.
So, do you know what he's doing?
He's defiling things that his daddy said were okay.
Now, that's pretty tough, isn't it?
You look back and you think, well, I don't want to dishonor my dad or my mom.
Well, you don't have to, but you don't honor the things that are evil, regardless of who did that, whether it was your own mom or dad.
And that's what Josiah is showing us right here.
Here are some more scriptures that teach us What Josiah is teaching us, and therefore what God is teaching us.
First one is Job chapter 20.
Verses 4 through 7.
Job chapter 20, verses 4 through 7.
Knowest thou not this of old, since man was placed upon the earth, that the triumphing of the wicked is short?
And the joy of the hypocrite but for a moment, though his excellency mount up to the heavens now, that's what a king does. and his head reach into the clouds yet he shall perish for ever like his own dung.
They which have seen him shall say, Where is he?
Now, if only the prideful man, whether he's a king or not, would see what a fleeting, short life he has.
If he would only understand that, then that would change his mind if he understood that his life is but a vapor.
Which appeareth for a little time and then vanisheth away, as James wrote.
And neither the excellency of Ahaz nor Manasseh Nor even Solomon kept Josiah from destroying their altars.
Now, let's look in verse fourteen.
And it says, and he broke in pieces the images and cut down the groves and filled their places with the bones of men.
After all, who were the perpetrators of these evil actions?
Men.
That's who the perpetrators were.
The images and the groves didn't create themselves.
Men made them.
The hands of wicked men, to be more specific, made those groves and those images.
Jesus was delivered into the hands of wicked men to be crucified.
And what's fitting here, and what we're going, we're going to learn a little bit about what it means that these Bones were placed in these places, and we're going to see that they were burned as well.
It's fitting that these bones will fill what is left of the void that was caused by the removal and the destruction of the images and growths.
Those things occupied a place.
They occupied a physical space, and now they've been taken down.
And in their place have been put these bones of these men.
After all, what else?
Does an image or a grove have to offer but death?
That's all that it's good for.
Look in verse 15 now.
Moreover, the altar that was at Bethel, and the high place which Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin, had made.
Both that altar and the high place, and we'll stop and then we'll see what was done with that in just a moment But do you remember hearing the name Jeroboam in the beginning of the study of 1 Kings?
Actually, it was around.
It was after Solomon's death.
But after Solomon was the last king of a unified Israel.
That was quite a landmark.
And after his death, God tore the kingdom in two.
And Solomon's son Rehoboam ruled over the southern kingdom, which is called Judah, where we are now.
And then Jeroboam became the king over the northern kingdom, which was Israel or Samaria.
And in our text, we learn, or maybe we're just reminded, that Jeroboam's altar and his high place were in Bethel.
Now there was a prophecy that was associated with that very altar, and it's found back in 1 Kings chapter 13, verses 1 through 3.
1 Kings 13, verses 1 through 3.
And behold, there came a man of God out of Judah by the word of the Lord unto Bethel.
And Jeroboam stood by the altar to burn incense.
And he cried against the altar in the word of the Lord, and said, Now, this is what the man of God said: O altar, altar, thus saith the Lord: Behold, a child shall be born into the house of David, Josiah by name.
And upon thee, that is upon that altar, he shall offer the priests of the high places that burn incense upon thee, and men's bones shall be burnt upon thee.
And he gave a sign the same day, saying, This is the sign which the Lord has spoken.
Behold.
The altar shall be rent, that means broken in pieces, and the ashes that are upon it shall be poured out.
Now, let's look back in our text at the rest of the verse we're studying to see what happens to Jeroboam's altar in Bethel.
It says, he broke down and burned the high place and stamped it small to powder and burned the grove.
What happened to this altar and all that was associated with it was exactly what God said would happen hundreds of years before.
And God even gave the name of the king under whom it would happen.
Now that I'll tell you what, if you ever thought, well, you know, some of these prophecies seem pretty general, that one is very specific, isn't it?
And in verses like these, and then the fulfilled prophecies that we read about.
My faith is strengthened in God's word.
Now, I believe God's word already, but I always want my faith to be strengthened.
Because every one of us have times where we have a doubt, or we think, well, Lord, is that really going to happen?
You need your faith strengthened when that happens.
And so that's what happens when I read about these fulfilled prophecies.
And what does that do for you when it comes to prophecy?
The ones that have not yet been completely fulfilled, it makes you believe, hey, that's going to happen.
This is not a weather forecast.
This is an absolute 100% probability that it's going to happen because God said it would, and He's always kept His word before.
And I believe that's why God lets us read about prophecies that were fulfilled in the Bible, is so that we will believe the ones that are yet to be fulfilled.
And Jeroboam's response to this man of God back in those days, rather than repenting, was to command him to be arrested.
Now, a repentant king, upon hearing a prophecy like that, would have torn his clothes. thrown dust on his head or done something, some act of repentance, and put his trust in God's word and said, Oh Lord, what have we done?
And that's what God wants.
And I told you earlier that Solomon was the last king of the unified nation of Israel.
And so what Josiah is doing, if you'll see him as a type of Jesus Christ right here, he's pointing us to a day when the last king and the true king Of the unified Israel of God will break down all false religions and gather his kingdom unto himself.
That's what Josiah is trying to do here.
And we'll see it further.
Gather the kingdom.
Unify the kingdom.
Not just worry about Judah.
He is very concerned about Samaria.
And all the people who are divided will become one in him, those who believe.
Those whom he gathers.
So the fact that the king of Judah broke down the altar In Israel, in the northern kingdom where Bethel was, called Samaria, that tells us that he cares for the whole kingdom, not just Judah.
And when Jesus judges this world in righteousness and destroys the wicked, he will show us his love for the whole kingdom.
The kingdom of God.
One kingdom, not divided.
Now look back in your text in verse 16.
And as Josiah turned himself, he spied the sepulchres that were in the mount.
Now, that's the mount of corruption we've been studying.
And the word spied just means he saw them.
These sepulchres or tombs were in the Mount of Corruption, and it says in the text, And sent and took the bones out of the sepulchers and burned them upon the altar and polluted it.
Now we can conclude here that those bones belong to unbelievers.
Who had died in corruption because they'd worship false gods in the Mount of Corruption Took a mount that was, from what I'd gathered, was the Mount of Olives, and they made it a place of corruption.
So I believe these bones, and I believe the text bears it out, were of those who worship the false gods on the Mount of Corruption.
And if you think back to 1 Kings 13, I read a minute ago a part of this.
It's 1 Kings 13:2, little letter B.
Which said, And upon thee, that is upon this altar, he shall offer priests of the high places that burn incense upon thee, and men's bones shall be burnt upon thee.
So these bones are being taken out of these tombs.
Josiah did all this back in your text according to the word of the Lord, which the man of God proclaimed, who proclaimed these words.
This man of God being talked about here was the same one in Jeroboam's day, and his name's not even mentioned.
His name's not even mentioned, but he's more important in the work of the Lord than any of the wealthy, powerful, long-reigning kings of Judah or Israel.
This man whose name is not mentioned prophesied these events we're reading about so specifically that he even named the king Who would perform them, Josiah?
Yet this man of God's name is not mentioned.
Look at verse 17.
Now, this is what King Josiah said when he looked at these sepulchres.
Then he said, What title is that I see?
So on the sepulcher was a title or a sign.
Now we have tombstones.
And the bones of the man whose sepulchre was marked by this sign had not yet been breached.
And it's a good thing.
Because it says in the text, and the men of the city told him, It is the sepulcher of the man of God, which came from Judah and proclaimed these things that thou hast done against the altar of Bethel.
So even the men of the city knew who this guy was.
As much as that man of God was hated by Jeroboam.
And probably, therefore, by many of the people who called him the same thing the Romans called Paul.
He's a pestilent fella.
He's stirring up the people.
That's probably what they thought of this prophet, this man of God in Jeroboam's day.
But as much as he was hated by Jeroboam and probably the majority of the people, they knew who he was.
And as much as the man of God was mocked after the king sat on the throne.
Yet none were named Josiah, none of those kings.
None of them defiled the altar of Bethel.
Josiah did not defile the altar of Bethel the way they did.
Here's the difference in the two defilings.
When Josiah defiled the altar of Bethel, it was a corrupt thing that the false worshipers had called good.
When the false worshipers defiled the altar, well, the first thing they did is they made an altar that wasn't supposed to be constructed in the first place.
God had two altars: brazen altar, the altar of incense.
That's it.
There was a specific location for each one.
Had somebody gone into the tabernacle and said, you know what?
Now that's this is why they didn't let women in the tabernacle.
They'd arranged the furniture like they wanted it.
The men don't care where it goes.
Just put it down.
The main thing we want to do is carry it one time, put it down, we don't want to move it again, right?
That's just our nature.
But God had a specific order for the furnishings in that tabernacle.
And if somebody had gone in and said, you know that altar of incense, I keep running into that when I try to get to the curtain of the Holy of Holies, we're going to put that right over here.
And we're going to move the candlestick over here.
That'd have been out of order.
So, if God had a specific place for every furnishing in the tabernacle, including the two altars, then there was no room anywhere else for any other altar.
So for these kings to defile the altar was for them to make something bad out of something which was already made good.
God said, Put those two altars where he wanted them.
That was a good thing.
When these men made their own altars, that was a bad thing.
But talking about this man of God whose name was not known, let me say this.
Your name does not have to be known by the world.
In fact, your name is not important when it comes to the work of God.
It's just not.
And anybody who thinks, well, I want to make a name for myself in religion or in the church, or you know, I'm a pastor of a large church.
I want to make a name for myself when I write my book or preach my sermons.
Not about you, not at all.
You know, when our I don't know how many of you have listened to the messages on the knowimsaved. com website.
I imagine quite a few of you have.
But I remember the first time I went on that website when the pastor was still building it, if you will.
He had put his message on there, his original message, and he said, My name is Richard Fulton, and I thought, I love that.
You know he has a doctorate degree, don't you?
Many of you may not know that.
He didn't say, I am Dr.
Reverend Richard Fulton, senior pastor.
You have to say it, pastor like that, of Central Baptist Church.
He didn't do it.
My name's Richard Fulton.
You know why?
Because he knows, and I know, it's not our names that matter, it's the work of the Lord that matters.
And in fact, the words used to describe this man were the man of God.
And that's what's important, isn't it?
When a famous person dies, you can do a Google search on that person's name and find out all kinds of information.
And there is much coverage and millions of words used to describe that person's importance, their contributions to society.
Or perhaps their notoriety.
That's what Wikipedia is.
It's a gathering of all that information, whether it's truthful or not, I don't know, but it's there.
But if that person wasn't a man of God or a woman of God, the earthly name and all the things written about them don't matter.
They're just fun facts to know and tell.
Now you all know how cheap I am.
And if I were allowed to have only four words on my tombstone, they would be servant of the Lord.
That's all that matters.
All the things that my obituary might contain, like my education, my family members' names, my work history.
Mean nothing if I'm not a servant of the Lord because they're all tainted.
They may be special, but they're all tainted if I'm not a servant of the Lord.
So don't feel sorry for the man of God because his name is not known to us.
Verse 18.
So once King Josiah found out that was the man of God, he said, Let him alone.
Let no man move his bones.
Now, what King Josiah did with the bones of the men who were buried in the Mount of Corruption.
Was highly symbolic of what he thought about their religion.
He knew what they had done.
And no matter their name, their fame.
Or their positions in life.
It was what they believed and what they practiced that were important to Josiah.
That was how he judged them.
And that's how we'll be judged.
Are you a Christian?
then your dead bones or your scattered ashes are going to be changed into a glorified body.
Thank God.
If you're not a Christian, when you die, you'll be cast into the lake of fire.
Your name will not be important no matter how famous.
It'll be cursed because you've rejected God's gift of eternal life.
Through his son.
And this man of God died in the Lord.
So no matter what, how bad the king Of Israel hated him, he died in the Lord who loved him.
That's what matters.
Not does the world love you, does God love you?
And he does.
And that man who died in the Lord, that was his position, his spiritual position in the Lord.
From that position, he cannot be moved.
And so, as a symbolic gesture, King Josiah.
Left the bones of the man of God in their place, in their position.
He didn't move them from their position.
As we see in the text, continuing 2 Kings 23, verse 18: So they let his bones alone with the bones of the prophet that came out of Samaria.
Well, how about that?
Not only were the bones of the man of God left in place, but the bones of another prophet.
We're also left alone.
Well, who was this prophet?
We have the man of God, and we have the prophet who came out of Samaria.
We don't have his name either, do we?
Well, who is the prophet?
Well, when we studied 1 Kings chapter 13 during the reign of Jeroboam, we learned that this prophet from Samaria Actually, he lied to the man of God by saying that he was told to have the man of God stop by his house for a meal.
I'll just simplify it for you.
And even though the man of God had faithfully given a prophecy to Judah and told the altar, told Josiah, this altar, Excuse me, Jeroboam.
This altar is going to be used by a man named Josiah, a king named Josiah, to put the bones of the priests on and all of that.
He still disobeyed the Lord because he stopped by that prophet's house for a meal.
Now, you might think, well, that's really not that big a deal after all.
Wasn't he hungry?
It is a big deal because he disobeyed God.
And because the man of God did that, because he stopped by that prophet's house, God caused a lion to kill the man of God.
Kind of like with Moses, a servant of the Lord.
God said, Because you struck that rock, The second time, you're not going in the promised land.
And he killed Moses.
Moses didn't spiral downward, he didn't have a degenerative disease.
The Bible tells us.
His vision was fine.
His natural strength, his natural force was not abated.
He pulled his feet up in the bed and died.
So that's similar to what we have here with this man of God.
God said, Oh, you did a great thing for me, but you just disobeyed me, and he took him home.
Took him to be with it.
And that prophet from Samaria found that dead man of God's carcass.
And listen to what the prophet of Samaria did and said at that time when he found the carcass of the man of God.
Back in 1 Kings 13, verses 29 through 32.
1 Kings 13, verses 29 through 32.
And the prophet took up the carcass of the man of God and laid it upon the ass and brought it back.
And the old prophet came to the city to mourn and to bury him.
And he laid his carcase in his own grave, and they mourned over him, saying, Alas, my brother And it came to pass after he buried him that he spake to his sons, saying, When I am dead, then bury me in the sepulchre wherein the man of God is buried.
Lay my bones beside his bones, for the saying which he cried by the word of the LORD against the altar in Bethel, and against all the houses of the high places which are in the cities of Samaria, shall surely come to pass.
Now, both the man of God and the prophet from Samaria were men of God, but as we're reminded when we study the passage I read you that we studied before, they were not sinless in their flesh.
The prophet of Samaria died and, according to his wishes, was buried next to the man of God, and we still don't know the name of either one of them.
Isn't that something how by leaving out the names of the prophet and the man of God, God's word teaches us that the Christian life isn't about us, it's about the Lord.
It's about what he's doing.
We're vessels, we're instruments, we're his sheep, we're his people, and it's his name that's important.
Now, look with me in verse 19.
And all the houses also of the high places that were in the cities of Samaria, which the kings of Israel had made to provoke the LORD to anger, Josiah took away.
And did to them according to all the acts that he had done in Bethel.
Now, as we learned earlier, Samaria Israel, the northern kingdom, was not Josiah's country to reign over initially because the kingdom had been divided.
And at that time in history, as we studied a few months back, Samaria had been conquered by the Assyrians and then the Babylonians.
And to reconcile both nations into one people, as Jesus would do completely.
Josiah had to rid both earthly kingdoms of the high places.
He had to get rid of them.
And not only the high places, but also, look in verse 20, please.
And he slew all the priests of the high places that were upon the altars.
And burned men's bones upon them.
Now, this makes me think he may have slain the priests in Judah as well.
Verse 5 in our current chapter said about the priest in Judah that he put down the idolatrous priests.
So, whether he killed them in putting them down or not, we know he killed the ones in Samaria because it tells us he did.
And he not only killed them, but he killed them on the altars.
And this was also quite symbolic.
Now, follow me here.
When the Levites, who were the priests in the Old Testament, when they slew an animal, The blood and the flesh of that animal were offered upon the altar.
And for the sin offering.
That innocent animal served as a substitute for the guilty sinner.
That was the picture that was being painted over and over and over again.
So, figuratively, when the innocent animal was offered upon the altar, then the animal was taking upon itself the guilt of the person who offered it.
Therefore, also figuratively, the guilty person who offered the animal was taking on the innocence of the animal that was offered.
And I use the word figuratively there because the Bible tells us that the blood of bulls and goats can never take away sin.
So this was a figure, this was a type.
And speaking of Jesus, the Apostle Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians chapter 5, verse 21.
2 Corinthians chapter 5, verse 21.
Speaking of Jesus, for he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.
And that's what the offering of these innocent animals on the Old Testament altar meant.
And Paul very clearly explains here what we know as substitutionary atonement.
That is Christ, who is our sacrifice, the Lamb of God, who became sin for us.
There was a transaction there because he didn't just become sin for us who believe, we became righteous in him.
Now, this may be a refresher for you, but I like being refreshed by the gospel.
That's a good refresher, isn't it?
Better than lemonade.
You never get tired of lemonade.
I never get tired of the gospel either.
Now, let's apply this to the priests whom Josiah slayed on the altar.
Because the altar is what's in view here.
That act of slaying those unbelieving priests on the altar.
Those who had rejected Jesus' offering of himself Is significant because in rejecting Jesus as their offering, they offered themselves as their offering.
They tried to become their own sin offering.
They offered themselves, their works, their defiled worship, hoping it would make them clean.
So, in effect, what you had was a sinner offering himself upon the altar.
That's the symbolism here.
There was no transaction.
There's no exchange of righteousness for unrighteousness.
A sinner literally, if you look at this picture, a sinner literally died in his own sin.
The offering of himself was no better than Cain's offering of the fruit of the ground.
It was no better than the offering of the worshippers of Diana, the Ephesian goddess.
False goddess.
They offered their own righteousness in life, these priests, these unbelieving priests, so their own righteousness was all they had in death.
That's it.
And after all that, King Josiah, back in the text, at the end of verse 20, says, and returned to Jerusalem.
Jerusalem, the place from which all other things proceeded.
The king reigned there, the temple was there, the high priest and his fellow Levites served there.
The people came there to offer sacrifices year by year.
But because of what was allowed in Jerusalem, all Israel and Judah were negatively affected.
Verse twenty-one.
And the king commanded all the people, saying, Keep the Passover unto the Lord your God.
This is wonderful.
The king's hope for Jerusalem and Judah, and yea, even Samaria, was not in developing a stronger army.
That might have been the first thing on his mind when he saw that Samaria had been taken over by the Assyrians and then the Babylonians.
He might have thought, you know what?
We need a stronger army.
Nope.
It wasn't cutting edge technology or lowering the interest rate or improving public education.
The hope for Jerusalem was their Passover lamb.
Not the furry animal, but the Savior, the Lamb of God.
And the importance of this command: keep the Passover.
Is emphasized to us and it's explained to us in Hebrews chapter 11.
If you ever want a commentary on the Old Testament law and how it applies, What it really means, read the book of Hebrews.
It's wonderful.
In Hebrews 11, chapter twenty-four.
Excuse me, Hebrews chapter 11, verses 24 through 28.
Hebrews 11, 24 through 28, where it says, By faith, Moses, when he was come to years, refused.
To be called the son of the Pharaoh's daughter, choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season.
Esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt, for he had respect unto the recompense of the reward.
By faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king, for he endured as seeing him who is invisible.
Through faith, listen to this.
He kept the Passover and the sprinkling of blood, lest he that destroyed the firstborn should touch them.
Now, Moses could have accepted the title of being the Pharaoh's son, but he elected to keep the Passover.
He could have enjoyed the pleasures of sin for a season, but he chose to keep the Passover.
He could have esteemed the riches of Egypt, but he kept the Passover.
He could have feared the wrath of the king.
But he kept the Passover.
The Passover, the gospel of Jesus Christ, meant more to Moses than all of the things this world could offer.
You know, Josiah didn't advertise the pleasures of sin, the relationship with the king of Assyria or Babylon or the riches of those countries.
And Josiah wasn't afraid of the wrath of those other kings.
He knew the only hope his country had was found in the Passover, the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.
So many in our country want us to have a stronger military, more wealth, more rules and regulations, or fewer rules and regulations.
And I want a strong military, but that's not where our hope is.
The hope of Israel is not in the strength of their iron dome to keep the Hezbollah missiles from striking their people and their infrastructure.
I want our country to prosper financially, but that's not where our hope is.
Our hope is in the Lord, and we better embrace that sooner than later.
They were to keep the Passover.
And we'll see next week what the rest of that verse says about their motivation for keeping the Passover.
Let's pray.
Father, thank you for the word that you've given us today.
Thank you for the Spirit who is our teacher, and thank you for the people who love your word and came or tuned in to hear it, or for those who will listen to it later on the recorded version.
And we know that your word builds us up in the most holy faith.
If we'll just believe what you've taught us, as we go into the next hour, we pray you'd give our pastor the same liberty you gave me.
To teach your word in the people ears to hear, in Jesus' name, amen.
