Sermon Outline, June 25

INTRODUCTION
After Hilkiah finds the book of the law in the temple, Josiah embarks on a thorough reform of Judah's worship. But his reformation extends beyond the borders of Judah; Josiah not only reverses the sins of the kinds of the South but the sin of Jeroboam the son of Nebat who made Israel sin.

THE TEXT
"And the king commanded Hilkiah the high priest, the priests of the second order, and the doorkeepers, to bring out of the temple of the LORD all the articles that were made for Baal, for Asherah, and for all the host of heaven; and he burned them outside Jerusalem in the fields of Kidron, and carried their ashes to Bethel. . . ." (2 Kings 23:4-30).

PROPHECY FULFILLED
2 Kings 23 fulfills the prophecy of the man of God from Judah (1 Kings 13), and the two passages share many similarities: in both passages, the king is rarely named but referred to as “the king”; the word "bone" appears in both passages and nowhere else in 1-2 Kings; the phrase "high places of the cities of Judah" occurs in both; the phrase "cities of Samaria" appears only in these chapters and in 2 Kings 17. All this reinforces the obvious fact that Josiah is the king prophesied in 1 Kings 13.

REFORMING CIRCUIT
Josiah is a one-man reforming movement. He is the grammatical subject of nearly every action in this chapter, and the sections of the chapters are marked by Josiah’s commands (vv. 1, 4, 21). By the text, he single-handedly reverses the sins of Jeroboam. The material in verses 4-23 appears to be randomly organized, but follows a fairly clear sequence. Chapter 23 is framed by the covenant-renewal (vv. 1-3) and the Passover (vv. 21-23), and within this frame the story moves from the temple (vv. 4-9) to the shrines of the kings of Judah (vv. 10-14), to the territory of the Northern kingdom. Like the apostles in Acts, he moves from Jerusalem to Judea, to Samaria, though not yet to the uttermost parts of the earth. Josiah's reformation is largely a work of destruction. The word "burn" appears six times in the chapter (3x in Judah, vv. 4, 6, 11; 3x with Bethel, vv. 15, 16, 20). Like Nebuchadnezzar a few generations later, Josiah destroys shrines and purges the land with fire.

CONCLUSION
As we saw when we last looked at Kings, Josiah's efforts, faithful as they were, are ineffective. The Lord is determined to destroy Judah because of the sins of Manasseh (2 Kings 23:26-27). And He will fulfill that threat as surely as He fulfilled the threat against Bethel.

posted by Peter J. Leithart on Thursday, June 22, 2006 at 11:38 AM

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