Episode Transcript
We are in 2 Kings chapter 23.
2 Kings chapter 23.
And while I'm thinking about it, if you have one of these or if you have a nicer one than this, just be sure you silence it so we don't have any early pizza orders during Sunday school.
We've been in 2 Kings chapter 23 for some time, and I'd like us to go back, even though we stopped in verse 26 last week.
I want us to go back, and I'm just going to read verses twenty four through twenty six, and then kind of pick up with a theme that we looked at last week about witnessing, or we were about to look at it.
Hopefully, everybody's there by now.
2 Kings 23, and I'll start reading in verse 24.
Moreover, the workers with Familiar spirits, and the wizards, and the images, and the idols, and all the abominations that were spied in the land of Judah, and in Jerusalem, did Josiah put away.
That he might perform the words of the law, which were written in the book that Hilkiah the priest found in the house of the Lord.
And like unto him, that is Josiah.
Was there no king before him that 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?
Neither after him arose there any like him.
Notwithstanding, the Lord turned not from the fierceness of his great wrath, wherewith his anger was kindled against Judah, because of all the provocations that Manasseh had provoked him withal.
Okay.
So in all of this, King Josiah has been a witness to Judah and to Israel as well, and to the whole world if they'll receive it, and to us as we read about it.
But what we're going to learn about this witnessing is that there are two primary reasons for it.
And the reason we're doing this is to understand why King Josiah witnessed to the nation of Israel.
Hoping for their reconciliation, but knowing that God was going to bring evil upon them.
And it is also to remind us that God says and does things, has done things, has said things that.
Are for the purpose of leaving us a witness.
God doesn't just put words in here saying, well, you can read those if you want, but if you don't get around to it, don't worry about it.
No, every word in here is for a witness for us.
And even though Josiah did a mighty work in cleaning the filth out of Judah and Israel.
We know God was still going to bring the evil upon him that he had promised.
Now, the command to witness and the one That we normally think of, if you've been in church long, is found in Acts chapter 1, verse 8, where the Lord told his disciples But ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you, and ye shall be witnesses unto me.
Now listen to where that is both in Jerusalem now that's where Josiah was and in Judea and in all Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.
So the first purpose of witnessing that we'll look at is that of drawing people To the gospel that they might be saved.
Whether it's Old or New Testament, when he drew the people, when Josiah had the book of the law brought out and read and That was to bring people to the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ.
And that's our purpose today as well.
John chapter 1, verses 6 through 7.
John chapter 1, verses 6 through 7.
There was a man sent from God whose name was John.
Now, if you're not familiar with the book of John, The book of John was written by the Apostle John.
The John he's speaking about here is John the Baptist.
They're two different people.
So there was a man sent from God whose name was John, the same came for a witness to bear witness of the light that all men through him might believe.
Now we preach the gospel because God commanded it.
And God commanded it that all men through Jesus might believe.
But the second purpose for preaching the gospel is to serve as a witness against those who reject it.
And that's what we found in the Deuteronomy passage that I read to you last week.
And I'll read it again.
It was Deuteronomy chapter 6, verses 4 through 6.
Deuteronomy 6, verses 4 through 6, that said, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord, and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.
And these words which I command thee this day shall be in thine heart.
And so when we read back in verse 25 of our text that Josiah turned to the Lord with all his heart, with all his soul, and with all his might.
That's where he got this from.
And he was proclaiming.
We good?
Did y'all hear a noise?
I thought I heard somebody hollering.
A sneeze, outstanding.
I didn't want to have to get the AED out this early in the Sunday school lesson, but we have it if we need it.
But when Josiah proclaimed the words of the book of the law, When Moses warned the children of Israel to keep the covenant, when John the Baptist bore witness of the gospel, they all witnessed with that twofold purpose that God ordained.
To draw the people to the saving knowledge of the truth and to warn those who reject it.
Now, when we preach the gospel here, We pray that those who hear it will also believe it and be saved.
And many have.
And we're so thankful for that.
But because we know that most people in the world, according to the Lord Jesus Himself, most people in the world will not choose this narrow way.
This narrow gate that leads to life, but they'll take the broad path and the wide gate that leads to destruction.
Because we know that, then we also preach the gospel as a witness against those people.
And we don't know who's going to do what.
Only God does.
But what we can tell people who have rejected the gospel is: you've been warned.
And Judah's been warned by their own gracious, loving king.
We witnessed to draw people to the Lord.
Josiah witnessed to draw the people of Judah back to the Lord.
But we also witnessed to warn the rebel of the wrath of God.
Now look in verse 27.
We're in 2 Kings chapter 23 and verse 27.
And the Lord said, I will remove Judah also out of my sight, as I have removed Israel.
Now God used the Assyrians and the Babylonians to remove Israel, the northern kingdom.
Remember, they were separated.
You had Israel and you had Judah.
And because Judah did not learn what God was teaching them by removing Israel, then they would suffer the same kind of removal.
It's tragic.
When I taught on the book of Jeremiah, one of the glaring things to me was That Israel, that Isaiah had already testified against Israel, and Israel suffered A, B, C, and D for turning away from God.
And all Judah had to do is say, wow, man, my sister Israel, they did wrong and God made them pay for it.
We don't want any part of that.
But they didn't.
And because Judah did not learn what God was teaching them by teaching them about Israel.
They would suffer the same kind of removal.
And just as Israel, the earthly nation, is no better than any Gentile nation, neither was Judah.
The nation, any better than Israel, the nation.
God is no respecter of persons, and He is no respecter of nations.
And the Lord is very gracious, but he is very consistent as well.
And all the judgments that happened to Judah.
As written by the prophet Jeremiah, he was one of them who told about the judgments of Judah.
All of them could have been avoided had they learned from what God did to their sister nation Israel.
You see how that witness works?
Jeremiah chapter 3 verses 6 through 8.
Jeremiah 3, verses 6 through 8.
And you know, Nella, it's been a long time since we were in Jeremiah.
We were there a long time, but it's been a really long time since we were in Jeremiah chapter 3, hasn't it?
Here's what it says.
The Lord said also unto me in the days of Josiah the king.
Hast thou seen that which backsliding Israel hath done?
She has gone up upon every high mountain. and under every green tree, and there hath played the harlot.
And I said after she had done all these things, Turn thou unto me, but she returned not.
And her treacherous sister Judah saw it.
And I saw when for all the causes whereby backsliding Israel committed adultery, I had put her away, and given her a bill of divorce.
Yet her treacherous sister Judah feared not, but went and played the harlot also.
God gave that whole that whole description about what he did to Israel as a witness to Judah and they said no we're we're good The key phrase in that Jeremiah passage, in my estimation, is this: Judah feared not.
Judah not only failed to reverence the Lord, but she failed to even dread the Lord.
If nothing else, Judas said, Well, you know, we are terrified right now because the same thing that happened to Israel is going to happen to us if we don't turn to the Lord.
But apparently they weren't even terrified.
They were just foolish.
You know, if you talk to the average person.
Regardless of whether they're affiliated with a religion or not, there are some things they're afraid of, and one of them is death.
Another is what happens after death.
I knew a person who was an atheist.
The person called herself a free thinker, but she was an atheist.
And an atheist just believes once you die, that's it.
There's not anything else.
Body goes in the ground, and that's it.
You cease to exist in all forms.
And her parents had both passed away and had been cremated at different times, many years apart, and she wanted to put their ashes in the same box.
And have them reburied.
And in the middle of that box, you put a partition with a little mouse hole cut in the bottom of it so their ashes could mix.
And it made me think that she really doesn't believe that nothing happens after death.
That was an indication to me that she thought somehow there's something after death.
And it's so sad that people will go to great lengths to imagine those things about what happens after death.
I read of a another I read another obituary.
Y'all know I love reading obituaries.
Ann told me her brother's obituary is that long.
I said, that's far too much money.
Spent on those words.
It's by the word.
Well, I read an obituary the other day, and it talked about a man who Died, and they said, you know, he went to be with Jesus, and he's riding motorcycles on the streets of gold.
And I thought, man, I hate when I see that.
I can't stand that.
It's irreverent to put those things down.
The Bible doesn't teach that, that you go up there and ride a motorcycle.
Or I know of one man who says he's ready to go to that great golf course in the sky.
Some of the worst temper tantrums I've ever seen have happened on a golf course.
Why would you want to play golf in heaven?
You're not going to.
But people are afraid of death and what happens after death.
And even those who don't know God in a saving way are afraid God will strike them down or send them to hell.
I was sharing with my wife one day that I listened to a recorded phone call from a police officer just before he committed suicide, and this was years ago.
And in that recorded phone call, he made a recording is what he did.
I don't know if he used a phone or if it was a cassette tape.
I don't know.
But I heard the recording.
And at the end of it, he said, Well, I don't know if I'll go up or down, probably down, but I'll check y'all later.
And he turned it off and then he killed himself.
And it was so sad.
To hear a man say, I know something's going to happen after I die, but I'm not real sure where I'm going.
It was terrible.
But most people would rather just try to forget about all that rather than seeking the truth of God's word.
Now, there's many who are just arrogant.
And they say, I'm not afraid of anything.
I've never been afraid of anything or any man.
And I doubt they're being truthful about that.
But you know, my fear of God is a deep, abiding reverence, and that's by His grace.
I could have been just like these that I'm telling you about, but by His grace.
My fear of him is that deep, abiding reverence.
I don't fear the wrath of God for one reason.
Jesus took it for me, he absorbed it for me.
I don't have to be afraid of it.
I don't have to cower in a corner or try to hide from the wrath of God because the Bible says I'm not appointed to wrath, but to obtain salvation through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Judah did not fear God's wrath.
They were foolish.
And that put them in dire straits.
And as we read, God said he would remove them out of his sight.
They saw what he had done to Israel and they feared not.
And looking back in our text now, God further warns.
And will cast off this city, Jerusalem, which I have chosen.
Now he said he'd remove Judah out of his sight.
That's the nation.
He said, I'll cast off the city, Jerusalem, which I have chosen.
And to cast off means to reject.
God said he would reject the city he had chosen.
Now, if you have a mind that's like mine, you think, wait a minute, how's he going to reject the city he chose?
It's a great question.
You're probably wondering, well, how could that happen?
How could God choose a city and then turn around and reject it?
Well, let's go back to the first time that God said he chose Jerusalem.
And you'll find it in the life of King Solomon.
It's in 2 Chronicles 6, verses 4 through 6.
This is rich.
2 Chronicles 6 verses 4 through 6.
King Solomon is addressing the children of Israel, and he said, Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, who hath with his hands fulfilled that which he spake with his mouth to my father David, saying, Since the day that I brought forth my people out of the land of Egypt, I chose no city among all the tribes of Israel to build a house in.
That my name might be there.
Neither chose I any man to be a ruler over my people Israel.
But I have chosen Jerusalem.
That my name might be there, and have chosen David to be over my people Israel.
So in that passage, God gave us two reasons.
He chose Jerusalem.
One, that his name might be there.
And because Israel was sinful, because Judah was sinful, the whole nation.
And under Solomon, they had not yet been divided.
They tarnished Jerusalem.
They worshiped other gods there in Jerusalem.
They defiled the temple in Jerusalem.
And they had an unholy priesthood in Jerusalem.
Now, the Jerusalem God chose, the one in which his name was to be glorified, was not the same Jerusalem.
Oh, it was the same city, but it wasn't in the same spiritual condition.
It had become an unholy place.
Listen to the conversation between Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well.
It's found in John chapter 4, verses 19 through 24.
John 4, verses 19 through 24.
The woman saith unto him, Sir, I perceive that thou art a prophet.
Our fathers worshipped in this mountain, and ye say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.
Jesus saith unto her, Woman, believe me, the hour cometh when ye shall neither in this mountain nor yet at Jerusalem worship the Father.
Ye worship, ye know not what.
We know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews.
But the hour cometh, and now is.
When the true worshipers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for the Father seeketh such.
To worship him, God is a spirit, and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.
Did you notice that Jesus said there would come a day.
When God would neither be worshipped in that mountain nor in Jerusalem, even though that was the city God chose to put his name in?
The people of the city rejected him.
That's what they're doing in Josiah's day.
You know, there would come a day when the Jews would be scattered all over the earth.
And then finally, the United Nations.
And we the whether the United Nations blesses a nation or not means nothing to me.
That's a worldly, sinful, man-led congregation of people.
But they were Israel was given this small piece of land in 1948, and the United Nations recognized them as Israel.
Far from the Israel that God, far from the land that God had given Israel in Joshua's day.
But during all that time, and even now, God is not worshipped in spirit and in truth by the majority of those in Jerusalem.
They have their own religion. which consists of various mixtures of the law and traditions of men.
And in the passage I read to you from John chapter 4, Jesus said this about the true worshipers.
Who would worship him in spirit and in truth?
He said, For the Father seeketh such to worship him.
The original Jerusalem God chose was a place where God was worshiped in the way he ordained.
The Jerusalem over which Josiah is presiding is not, even as hard as Josiah tried to fix the problems that were there.
Now a second reason God said he chose Jerusalem was that he chose David to be over his people Israel.
Not only did he choose Jerusalem as a place to put his name, but he chose it as a place to put his king.
And David represented the Lord Jesus Christ, who as a man descended through the line of Judah through David.
And you can find the family tree of the Lord Jesus Christ in Luke chapter 3 and also in Matthew chapter 1.
It's worth reading through.
Don't say, oh, I read through all the bagats.
Listen, they're important.
That's really important.
In fact, the true Israel does not consist of the multitudes of people in a certain geographical location.
The true Israel consists of a great multitude of people who have one thing in common: their faith is in the true king of the Israel of God.
And any other king and any other people who claim to be the Israel of God are impostors.
And God will cast them off just as he cast off Jerusalem in Josiah's day.
If you read in the book of Revelations, you will read about a new Jerusalem.
That's why God rejects the Jerusalem He chose, because it's not the Jerusalem where He wanted His name to be put.
The people rejected Him.
There will be a new Jerusalem.
And it says in our text: God would also cast off.
Look back in the text, please.
The house of which I said my name shall be there.
Notice the order he gives.
First, he'll remove Judah, the nation.
Then he will cast off Jerusalem, its capital.
And thirdly, he will cast off the house of the Lord that is there.
Now, by no means is God saying he rejects the thing he commanded to be built.
When God created The earth and all things that are in it, and all the heavens, all the living creatures, he saw that it was good.
He saw that it was good.
Was it good after Adam sinned and the earth was cursed?
No, it wasn't.
That's why this earth will have to be redeemed.
That same principle applied to Jerusalem, the city God chose to put his name there and to put his king over.
It wasn't the same city, he rejected it.
There will be a new Jerusalem.
Now we're down to the very specific thing called the house of the Lord, or the temple, as it were.
And God gave very specific instructions concerning the people.
The building, the furnishings, the sacrifices, the offerings, and the ordinances that pertain to the house of the Lord.
And everything God commanded had an earthly purpose and a spiritual purpose.
The problem came Not in God's design of the house of the Lord, but when the rebels decided to change God's commandments and make their own traditions.
And when this happens, when it happened then and when it happens now, it always starts small and it grows into an uncontrollable mess.
And Josiah tried to attack the problem by clearing out the defiled priests, the sodomites, the images.
The altars, everything that polluted the house of the Lord, everything physical that polluted the house of the Lord.
And he had the book of the law as his guide and his authority.
It's what he relied on.
But because the whole thing was so out of hand, God decided to cast it off.
Now, let's apply this to the church today.
Brother Fulton and I, and as well as many of you, have been to funerals where a church pastor Gets up and speaks about life and death and God and what happens when a person dies.
And some of those pastors have made some pretty ridiculous Unscriptural statements about those things.
And if I were an unbeliever, I would be so thoroughly confused about how to be saved after listening to some of that.
And I shudder to think what some of those pastors teach from week to week in their churches and how confused their people must be.
I feel sorry for them.
So, in my mind, I tried to imagine: if I were asked to go into such a church and try to fix it, what would I do?
And in my solution, the first thing I thought I would do is teach everyone there about the gospel.
I can't think of a better place to start.
Everybody, gather around.
Let's get this straight.
And it's going to take a while.
Everyone would have to go through a Genesis to Jesus class or something like that.
And then a building on Jesus class, some discipleship about what to do with this new faith, how to express it, how to serve God in your church.
And nobody would be teaching a Sunday school class but me.
And it would be a big one.
We'd have everybody in here.
Because I wouldn't be able to trust the doctrine.
That those Sunday school teachers were teaching.
I couldn't just leave them in place and then have my own class and try to get everybody in my class right doctrinally and then hope they did the same.
That would be foolish.
And secondly, I'd try to bring in a good Bible teacher to help me out.
That's a load.
And whether we be Apollos and Paul or Richard and Andy, it's nice to have support.
In fact, it's vital to have support from a like-minded Bible teacher.
It really is.
We bounce things off each other all the time, sometimes just to make sure we're not crazy.
Did I see this wrong?
Did I study this wrong?
And thirdly, I would eliminate any activity or program that is not tied to the teaching of God's Word because churches are full of them.
All the books, the lesson plans, the gospel tracts, any literature in the church or produced by the church. would be subject to close examination and tossed out if it's not biblical.
And those are just some things off the top of my head.
And this would assume church members are open to that sort of correction.
Our pastors tried to help some of those churches before.
And did you know that there are people who will not be open to such correction?
They call themselves church members.
They have, and they will tell you.
When you tell them what the Bible says, they'll say, I don't care.
That's the way we've always done it.
And that is a death statement.
But they do.
And they don't want to change.
And that is most likely what Josiah encountered with the people of Judah.
If everybody wanted it to be like he wanted it to be, then we wouldn't have this section in the Bible.
Israel would have been, Judah would have been living for the Lord.
And God saw in his judgment, which is perfect, there's no fixing that.
And God didn't order a remodel.
He ordered a demolition.
And sometimes you just have to start over.
Verse 28.
And there's certainly more that could be said about that, but we'll keep going here.
Verse 28.
Now the rest of the acts of Josiah and all that he did.
Are they not written in the book of the Chronicles of the kings of Judah?
Now, if you're new to our class, or if you're old to our class and your memories failed you.
I'll remind you what this verse means.
The word Chronicles, you know, I misunderstood this for a long time.
I thought, okay, everything that a king did, if it's not written in the book of the kings, it'll be written in the book of the Chronicles in the Bible.
And I thought, well, how can a guy be on the throne for 55 years and we have about that much information about what all he did?
What chronicles are, the word chronicles here is not capitalized.
It's normally translated as the word words.
So these chronicles would be a combination of historical writings as well as the books of the chronicles in the Bible.
The Bible told us when we studied about Solomon that he wrote thousands of proverbs.
Well, we don't have a thousand proverbs.
In the Bible, I guess, if you counted every verse.
But there are obviously other Proverbs he wrote, and we don't have.
And that's fine.
Because anything that's God's word is not going to contradict any other part of God's word, and so I don't worry about that.
So, not all the things that Josiah did are contained in the books of the Chronicles of the Bible.
Many of them would be contained in historical writings, just like the kind we have in our country.
We have books and books and libraries of the history of the United States.
In fact, did you know that not all the works Jesus did are contained in the Bible?
John chapter 21, verse 25.
John 21, verse 25.
And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written, everyone, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written.
Amen.
Or amen, if you're not a Methodist.
Everything in the Bible is true, but not everything that is true is written in the Bible.
Do you understand that?
Everything in here is true.
But not everything that's true is written in the Bible because even John testified the world couldn't hold all the books of the works that Jesus did.
Verse 29.
In his days, that is in Josiah's days, Pharaoh Necho, king of Egypt, went up against the king of Assyria to the river Euphrates.
Now the Hebrew word translated against doesn't necessarily and always mean what we think it means today.
It's also translated as the words upon, in, on, over, by, for, both, beyond, through, throughout, against.
Beside, forth, off, and from off.
And some of the translations, some of the other translations indicate that Egypt Fought against Assyria.
Other translations indicated Egypt joined Assyria to fight against Judah.
Based on the geography, And based on the internal evidence in this verse, my view is that Egypt was going to fight against Assyria.
Now, if I'm wrong about that, it's not going to kill our lesson, okay?
But to get there, for Egypt to get to Assyria, they had to go through Judah.
They had to go through the promised land there.
And so let's look further at the verse for a little more evidence.
Still in verse 29.
And King Josiah went against him, that is against Pharaoh Necho, and he slew him at Megiddo when he had seen him.
And we have some pronouns here that don't tell us who he is, who is who.
You look at he and him, and you think, oh, who are we talking about here?
Who killed who?
So we have to examine the verses before and after to figure this out.
And because what's written In those verses, and in this verse, I would conclude that Pharaoh Necho killed Josiah in battle.
Now Megiddo is a place where many battles were fought, and it was located in Israel.
So how do we know it was Josiah who was slain and not Pharaoh Nico?
Why did I say that?
Look in the next verse.
And his servants carried him in a chariot dead from Megiddo and brought him to Jerusalem and buried him in his own sepulcher.
Now, had it been Pharaoh Nico, the king of Egypt, who was slain, his servants would certainly not have carried him to Jerusalem to bury him.
They would have carried him back to Egypt.
And also, Pharaoh Necho would not have his own sepulchre, his own burying place in Jerusalem, but Josiah would.
So when you study your Bible verse by verse, then you end up studying it in its context.
You don't skip verses.
You don't just.
Pick a passage out of the Bible and teach on it, and then come to some other passage later on.
That breeds confusion.
And a lot of A lot of pastors and teachers do that.
I'll tell you what happens: you end up running out of topics, so then you start trying to get cute, and I'm neither.
So I just take it verse by verse, and it's worked just fine.
But it keeps you, when you study your Bible in context, it keeps you from making wild assumptions about what you've read.
In fact, For those of you who are new to our class, man, I told Brother Fulton, I'm so glad to see you.
I really am.
I'm not just saying that.
It just thrills my heart.
It's the continuity of what begins on day one of Genesis to Jesus.
It's what we hope for.
The graduates, and then they go to building on Jesus and come in here and start getting the strong meat and learning that Bible even more.
But if you're new to our class, I want to give you the five C's for studying your Bible.
I came up with the five words.
I didn't come up with this concept.
This is God's work here.
If you'll do these pretty much in this order, it'll profit you in your own study of the Bible.
You'll be able to take your own Bible at your own house and open it up.
And take a verse that you've been reading and learn about it.
The first thing Is the word content, C-O-N-T-E-N-T.
Now, content is, what does it say?
What did I just read?
God created the heavens and the earth.
Well, that's what I just read.
God created the heavens and the earth, so God created the heavens and the earth.
That's good enough.
That' Simple enough The second C is the word context.
Context.
That means with the text.
Context.
And the context of a passage has to do with its setting.
Where is it happening?
Who's involved?
What do the verses before and after it say?
What is the story or the lesson that's being taught here?
Then the third C would be companion verses.
Companion verses.
So if you want to see what another passage in the Bible says about the very thing you're studying, you would be looking for companion verses.
Your companion verse may be nowhere near the verse you're studying.
You may be studying Leviticus, and you may look over in the book, the Gospel of John, for a companion verse.
The fourth C is the word concordance.
C-O-N, C-O-R, dance.
And concordance is the dictionary.
I'm not a scholar of anything, but I'm certainly not a Greek or Hebrew scholar.
And so I need a lot of help in determining what these words mean.
So when you hear the pastor or I tell you.
The Hebrew word for this means this.
That's important for you to listen to.
Don't think, well, here they go with the Hebrew and Greek again.
Hey, that's the only way we know exactly what the word means.
Because the English word may not mean the same thing today as it did in the 1700s.
Or in the 1600s or 3,000 years ago.
So the Concordance helps you determine what that word means.
And then the fifth C is commentary.
And I would give you a 6C, and you could put a hyphen out there, and that is caution.
Be careful with commentaries.
Some commentaries are a great help.
The primary reason, and I don't use them very often, but the primary reason I will look at a commentary is that a Bible scholar Has already done the legwork to find out where else in the Bible this particular thing is talked about.
And I will go to that verse.
Shut the commentary and then read what it says myself.
It kind of shortens my journey to get to that point.
But don't take a commentary and go, Well, you know, this commentator says this, so that must be the way it is.
You'll get led astray in a hurry.
Some of them are very good.
But even some of the very, very best ones, and Brother Fulton knows what I'm talking about.
Some of the very best ones, you'll read something and say, Nope, nope, I can't live with that one.
That's not what the Bible says.
All right, so content, context, companion verses, concordance, and commentary with caution.
There are some study helps for you.
And before we leave Josiah.
I want us to consider in our last few minutes here the significance of his death.
When God told Josiah he would have peace in his days, he would go to his grave in peace, he also told him, Thine eyes shall not see all the evil which I will bring upon this place.
And when Josiah took it upon himself to go out to battle against Pharaoh Necho, he was trying to keep evil from coming upon Judah.
But God told him, I'm going to gather you to your grave in peace, not violence.
And strangely, and we don't see that Josiah ever consulted the Lord about going out against Pharaoh Nico.
He just did it.
And strangely, he took it upon himself to try to prevent evil from coming upon Judah.
It reminds me of Simon Peter trying to keep.
Those Romans and the chief priests from arresting Jesus in the garden.
He said, I cut off that ear of that servant, Malchus.
Jesus said, No.
Put that ear back on.
And Peter knew that Jesus would have to be arrested and have to be crucified for his sins.
But God wasn't having it, and he took Josiah home.
And next week, we'll read about.
Who took the throne after Josiah?
Let's pray.
Father, thank you so much for the good attention of the people.
Thank you for your word.
Thank you for the teaching that it gives us.
And now may we carry these truths away in our hearts, live by them, refresh ourselves with them, and be encouraged.
In Jesus' name, amen.
