Dr. Manny Arango (0:00)

Hey, Bible nerds. This is Dr. Manny Arango, and I'm your host for the Bible department podcast powered by Arma. This podcast follows a Bible reading plan we created to help you read the entire Bible in a year. You can head to the show notes or thebibledepartment.com to download our reading plan and join the journey. We are going to end the book of Second Kings. We are in our final stretch, and the end of the book of Second Kings is so sad. Like, I just have to admit it's sad. Deportation is going to come in three waves. We'll talk about all three waves of. Of deportation. And it's sad because, like, right when you think it's over, it's like, no, there's another wave, and then you think it's over and there's another wave. So it can be a little confusing if you're reading it for the very first time. My job is to bring clarity. If you've already done today's reading, then everything that I'm going to say is going to make total sense. If you haven't done the reading, then, yeah, you. You may be a little lost. So welcome to day 178. We're going to look at second kings, chapters 22, 23, 24, and 25. So four chapters of the Bible. If you have not done the reading for the day, then how about you just leave? Just go do the reading. Do the reading. Okay. All right. Chapter 22 starts off on such a hopeful note. Like, I mean, so much hope. So much hope. There's a king by the name of Josiah. The Bible tells us that King Josiah is actually like, an evil king. Okay, chapter 22. Josiah was eight years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem 31 years. His mother's name was Jedidiah, daughter of Adaiah. She was born from both Cath. He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord and followed completely the ways of his father. Not turning to the left or to the right. Okay. Other accounts are actually going to say that, you know, Josiah's. The beginning of Josiah's reign isn't the most upright. But then something like really, really incredible is. Is going to happen. They're going to find the book of the Law. And a lot of scholars think that this is just the book of Deuteronomy. It could be the whole Torah. It may be the first five books of Moses. It may be just Deuteronomy. This is chapter 22, verse 11 says, when the king heard the words of the book of The Law. He tore his robes. He gave these orders to Hilkiah the priest, Ahikam, son of Shaphan, Akbor, son of Micaiah Chaphan, a secretary in Aziah, king's attendant. Go and inquire of the Lord for me and for the people and for all Judah about what is written in this book. It's like, what is this book? What in the world did I just read? Great is the Lord's anger that burns against us because those who have gone before us, okay, have not obeyed the words of this book. They have not acted in accordance with all that is written there concerning us. So, Josiah, they find the Book of the Law. Like, just think about how wicked Israel has to be for the Book of the Law, probably Deuteronomy, to just be lost. No one's even read it. No, no one. Now, the Bible tells us in the Book of Deuteronomy that the king is actually supposed to keep a copy of the Law for himself, that he's supposed to write it himself and then read it day and night. This has not been done in years. And so Josiah is cut to the heart. Now this is the fascinating thing, Hezekiah. When Hezekiah hears there's a judgment from God, he doesn't do anything evil, but he's just kind of like, look, man, I did the best I could do. As long as there's peace in my lifetime. Josiah, not so much not the case. He goes, even if there's no hope for anything happening in future generations, I'm going to do everything in my power. So he has a public renewal of the covenant. The reading of God's law affected him so much, he now wants the Book of the Law read out loud in Jerusalem. So chapter 23 starts. Then the king called together all the elders of Judah in Jerusalem. He went to the temple of the Lord with the people of Judah, inhabitants, Jerusalem, the priests and the prophets, all the people from the least of the greatest. He read in their hearing all the word of the Book of the Covenant. That's the Book of the Covenant is why people think this is Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy is the book of the Torah. That's all about the covenant. It's actually the stipulations and the covenant between Yahweh and the people of Israel, which had been found in the temple of the Lord. And remember, there's all types of crap in the temple now. There's Ahaz has built altars to other gods, there's astropoles, there's this is the temple has become a collecting ground for idolatrous crap and stuff that profanes the name of Yahweh. So the book of Deuteronomy, a scroll of Deuteronomy, is just hanging out in the temple with all this other nonsense. The king stood by the pillar and renewed the covenant in the presence of the Lord. To follow the Lord and keep his commands, statues and decrees, with all his heart and all his soul, thus confirming the words the covenant written in this book. Then all the people pledged themselves to the covenant. The king ordered the high priest and the priest next in rank and the doorkeepers to remove from the Temple of the Lord all the articles made for BAAL and Asherah and all the starry hosts. He burned them outside Jerusalem in the fields of the Kidron Valley and. And took the ashes to Bethel. Why would he take the ashes to Bethel? Well, because if you burn something, it. Putting ashes on something is how you desecrate it. So pagan gods won't even allow you to build a holy site on a place that's had ashes poured on it. Okay, so he's not just destroying the idolatrous places, he's desecrating them so they can't get reused in the next generation. He did away with the idolatrous priests appointed by the kings of Judah to burn incense. Verse 6. He took the Asher pole from the Temple of the Lord to the Kidron Valley outside of Jerusalem and burned it. He ground to powder and scattered the dust over the graves of the common people. He also tore down the quarters of the male shrine prostitutes that were in the Temple of the Lord. They're. They're male. Male shrine prostitutes that you would use for pagan worship in the Temple of God, which would mean homosexuality is being practiced at the Temple of God. The quarters where women did weaving for Asherah, they're weaving air for Asherah. Josiah brought all the priests to the towns of Judah and desecrated the high places from Geba to Beersheba, where the priest had burned incense. He broke down the gateway at the entrance of the gate of Joshua, the city governor, which is on the city gate. Although the priests of the high places did not serve at the altar of the Lord in Jerusalem, they ate unleavened bread with their fellow priests. He desecrated Joseph. This is the. This is the key word, desecrated. When you desecrate something, it means that you cannot use it for religious purposes again, which is what Hezekiah failed to do. Hezekiah destroyed the stuff, but didn't desecrate it. Josiah is desecrating this stuff. This is a nerdy nugget for you to know the difference between destruction and desecration. So no one could use it to sacrifice their son or daughter in the fire to Molech. Okay, so which is in the valley of Ben Hinnom. This is the Hinnom Valley. This is the word that's going to get associated with Gehenna. Ok, so when Jews start believing in not just Sheol, but hell, okay, that's, that's a transition that's going to happen. But with Jews go moving from believing in Sheol, which is a place of the dead, which is kind of like Hades in Greek mythology, to she, to, to Gehenna, the place of burning. And the reason that the root of this place of burning is in sacrificing children to the God Molech. He removed from the entrance to the temple of the Lord the horses that the kings of Judah had dedicated to the sun. What in the world? They were in the court near the room. Anything idolatrous? Josiah's like it. Gotta go. Josiah then burned the chariots dedicated to the sun. He pulled down the altars. I mean, this dude, verse 14. Josiah smashed the sacred stones and cut down the astral poles and covered the sites with human bones. Covering with human bones means you desecrate it. It cannot be reused at all. Even the altar at Bethel, the high place. And then there's going to be a massive fulfillment of prophecy. And I remember probably days, days, days ago, maybe it was even First Kings, there was this prophet of God that randomly comes and then he gets tricked by another man of God and they bury their bones together. There's this whole elaborate scheme. Well, the fulfillment of that prophecy is actually in the person of Josiah. Think about this. Josiah goes all the way up to Samaria. He's like, I don't even care if that's a different country. I don't care. He's so full of zeal for God that he goes outside of his own jurisdiction. His jurisdiction as king is Judah. But when he reads the book of Deuteronomy, he realizes that God didn't just make a covenant with Judah. God makes a covenant with the whole land. So he goes all the way up to Bethel, a place where he doesn't even have jurisdiction. A place where the Assyrians are in control right now. And he brings justice there as well. And then you're going to see this in verse 17. This is the prophecy that is going to get fulfilled. The king acts. What is the tombstone? I See, the people of the city said it marks the tomb of the man of God who came from Judah and pronounced against the altar of Bethel the very things you have done to it. So prophecy fulfilled. Leave it alone, he said. Don't let anyone disturb his bones. So they spared his bones and those of the prophet who had come from Samaria. Remember the the prophet from Samaria tricked the prophet from Judah. So it worked. The trick worked. His bones do not get destroyed. So good job, bad prophet from Samaria. Just as he had done at Bethel, Josiah removed all the shrines at all the high places that the kings of Israel had built in the towns of Samaria and that that had aroused the Lord's anger. Josiah slaughtered all the priests of those high places on the altar and burned human bones on them. Then he went back to Jerusalem. Why has he burned human bones? Because he's desecrating them. The next part blows my mind. The king gave this order to all the people. Celebrate the Passover to the Lord your God. Okay? As it is written in the Book of the Covenant, neither in the days of the judges who led Israel, nor in the days of the kings of Israel and the kings of Judah had any such Passover been observed. These jokers hadn't had Passover like 2, 300, 400 years. They haven't done the Passover like the the thing that marks them as a people. They haven't celebrated the remembering that God brought them out of Egypt with a mighty hand and outstretched arm. They haven't reenacted any of the scenes of being passed through the Red Sea or God serving the the nation of Egypt with plagues. So under King Josiah, they finally start doing Passover again. This Passover was celebrated to the Lord in Jerusalem. Furthermore, Josiah got rid of mediums, spiritists, household gods, idols, and all other detestable things seen in Judah and Jerusalem. This he did to fulfill the requirements of the law written in the book that Hilkiah the priest had discovered in the temple of the Lord. Neither before nor after Josiah was there a king like him who turned to the Lord as he did. This is repentance. True repentance. There's nothing to gain. Josiah knows the people are going to go into exile. The end's been cooked. He's not trying to get God to change his mind. He's repenting out of a pure place. I'm sorry. And here I'm skipping ahead to the timeless truth. But when you don't have the word of God, you don't have truth. The thing that kickstarts this entire revival is they find Deuteronomy in the temple and they finally decide to read it, which means that the generations before Josiah are in sin, but they're in sin because they're in ignorance. And if you have a Bible but you don't read it, you may as well not have a Bible at some point. You have to go, this brings revival. You want revival, get a Bible. Revival doesn't happen when there's miracles. Revival doesn't happen because we were in a 15 hour prayer service. Revival happens when we come back to the book of the law and we go, you know what? I. I could feel anything in a prayer service, man. Even Buddhists can do miracles. But you want to know what our anchor is? The word of God, the truth. So there's a whole lot of modern definitions of revival. This is revival right here. Josiah finds the book of Deuteronomy in the temple and goes, huh, let's obey this. Let's. Let's do what this says to do. And then leads an entire nation to repent from their sin. My prayer, if you want to know why I started Arma, if you want to know why I do anything that I do, it's so that the American church would read the Bible and that we would find a renewal of a hunger for the word of God, man. The answers that you want, that you think are found in sermons, they're not in sermons. They're in this book right here. If you would read this, if you would start to consume the word of God like, like never before, you would, you would experience new life, you would experience new vigor. Everything that you need for life and godliness is found in his word. I promise you. The story of Josiah is so invigorating for me as an individual because I'm like, yeah, man, all this has started by just finding the scroll of Deuteronomy and actually reading it. And as soon as he reads it, he's cut to the heart. He repents. And then what great leaders do is that great leaders cause other people to, to act righteously before God. Family. The wait is over. My brand new book, Crushing Chaos, is out now and available everywhere. Books are sold, literally. Today I walked into a Barnes and Noble and I signed a bunch of copies at a physical location. So you can grab this book at a physical Barnes and Noble or you can go to a Books a million or Amazon or anywhere books are sold and grab a copy. If you enjoy reading the Bible from an ancient perspective, if you understand that the beauty of scripture is actually knowing it in context, then you'll love this book. And if there's any chaos in your personal life, I think that reading the Bible from an ancient perspective can actually help to crush the chaos in your life. I think this book is going to be a New York Times bestseller. I really do. I think we wrote a good one. I think you should get a copy today. All right, back to the episode. I was at a Passion conference, and I'm pretty sure this is David Platt preaching. It was such a good message. I actually don't remember who was preaching. And he preached on this. Josiah finding the book of the Law. And then for the next 90 minutes, from memory, this man starts to read from memory. So I was not reading the first eight chapters of the Book of Romans. I couldn't believe it. I'd never seen anything like it. From Romans chapter one all the way to Romans chapter eight. He just go, like. As if he was reading after, like, the first chapter. I just grabbed my Bible and I just followed along. And I could not believe that this man had committed eight chapters of Romans to memory. And all over the stadium, you just hear crying, weeping, people breaking down, no added words. He didn't have to educate the text. He didn't have to tell any stories. He didn't have to. Nothing from memory. He recited. That's the word I was looking for. Recite. He recited eight chapters of the Bible. Eight chapters of the Bible. And by the end of it, his altar call was, if anyone wants to return to the Lord by loving the Scriptures, come on down to the altar. And a packed stadium full of college students just got down to the altar and was like, I'm sorry that your word has just been lost in the temple somewhere and I've neglected it. I'm so sorry that I don't read my Bible. I'm so sorry that I don't memorize Scripture. I'm so sorry. Because at the end of the day, if this is collecting dust on a shelf, if this thing right here is not something that you use as a daily sword, then you cannot believe by promise what you deny by principle. We are believing by promise. God's going to send revival. That's the promise we're believing for. But you deny that promise. By the way you live your life. You don't live your life with someone who's saying, I, I've hidden your word in my heart so that I may not sin against you. You're not living your life like someone who's saying, man, the flowers fade and the grass withers, but the word of the Lord remains forever. You're not living your life like someone who would say, man. Man doesn't live by bread alone, but on every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. And, and you can't believe God for revival, but you don't anchor your life in the Scriptures. Josiah's life, absolutely incredible. All right, we have spent all of our time on day one 70, what was today 178 on second kings chapter 22. And I actually think that that's totally fine. So tomorrow is going to be day 179, and we're going to camp out in Second Kings chapter 23, 24 and 25. So I thought that we could get all this done in one day, but we're actually going to do it in two days. And I think that we needed a day to just look at Josiah's life. Tons of gold to mine out of Josiah's life. I want you to compare him with Hezekiah. Remember, Hezekiah brings reform, but not revival. Hezekiah brings repentance, but not revival. Josiah is able to bring a real spiritual renewal, a true spirit, spiritual and biblical revival. And it's anchored on the truth of God's word. And Josiah knows we're still going to get destroyed. God's still going to burn this all to the ground, you know, but sometimes we can have this mentality like, why should I make my bed? I'm just going to sleep in it. And it's going to get messy again. But Josiah doesn't have that. He cleans the temple, even knowing it's going to get burnt down. But we're gonna do what God told us to do. And that is radical repentance, radical obedience. Tomorrow we are going to dive in to essentially the decline, how the people of Israel are going to wind up gone. They're going to be in Babylon. It's going to happen in three waves. And we'll get into that tomorrow for day 179, but today for day 178, here's my challenge. Can you root your life on the word of God? I promise you, I promise you, I promise you. I promise you the best decision I've ever made in my life, second to following Jesus with. With my. With all my life, with surrender my life to the lordship of Jesus has been anchoring my life on the foundation of God's Word and letting the. A daily diet of God's word change me from the inside out. Second best decision of my entire life was spending nine months of my life in England with Andy Thomas reading the Bible five times in nine months. And if you if, if there's a soapbox that I will stand on till the day I die, it is that the Bible will change your life. And Obviously, if you're 178 days into this podcast, then you are someone who wants the Word of God to change your life. So if you're on a streak, don't break it. And if you're not on a streak yet, then please let the life of Josiah inspire you to get on a street. Because the Word of God will radically change your life. I'm so proud of you. I love you so much. I'll see you right here tomorrow for day 179 as we look at two kings chapters 23 to 25. Love you. Thanks so much for joining us on the Bible Department podcast. You can find us online and learn more about the show@thebibledepartment.com and on Instagram hebibledepartment. If you enjoyed this episode and want to dive deeper into the Bible, you can get free access to our library of courses@thebibledepartment.com we'll see you back here tomorrow.