We begin by studying the message the Lord gives her and, as I said in our last study session, the message contains both bad news and good news. It begins with the bad. "She said to them, 'This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: I am going to bring disaster on this place and its people, according to everything written in the book the king of Judah has read. Because they have forsaken Me and have burned incense to other gods and aroused My anger by all the idols their hands have made, My anger will burn against this place and will not be quenched.'" (2 Kings 22:15-17, 2 Chronicles 34:23-25) The book contains the blessings the people will receive if they remain faithful to the Lord and it contains the curses that will come upon them if they do not remain faithful to the Lord. When He says that He will bring disaster "according to everything written in the book", it is to these curses that He is referring.
When we studied the book of Deuteronomy we found a list of blessings and curses in Chapter 28. The list of curses contained things like crop failure, breakouts of illnesses, raids by enemies, and eventually---if they continued on a downward spiritual spiral---the fall of the nation and being taken captive to foreign lands. This news is the news Josiah was afraid of when he said, in Friday's text, that he feared the Lord's judgment was upon the nation for all the things that had been done there.
But what about Josiah's heart for the Lord? What about his removal of so many of the idolatrous images and altars throughout the land? What about the spiritual revival that has been taking place during his reign? The remainder of the Lord's message has to do with that and it's the good news portion of the prophecy. The revival won't be permanent, unfortunately, which is why the Lord can confidently assert that the curses of Deuteronomy 28 will eventually come upon the people. In time they will become as idolatrous as the people of the northern kingdom. And we know what happened to the northern kingdom: the Lord allowed it to fall to the Assyrians and the majority of its citizens deported to other lands. The curses of Deuteronomy 28 already fell on the northern kingdom and it's only because it's taking the southern kingdom longer to fall into as much depravity that it still stands in the text we are reading today. It's only because there were several godly kings during that time who tried to turn the hearts of the people back to the Lord. Because Josiah is one of those godly kings, the Lord will continue to preserve the nation of Judah during his lifetime.
The prophetess relays the remainder of the Lord's message to the men Josiah sent to her. "Tell the king of Judah, who sent you to inquire of the Lord, 'This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says concerning the words you heard: Because your heart was responsive and you humbled yourself before the Lord when you heard what I have spoken against this place and its people---that they would become a curse and be laid waste---and because you tore your robes and wept in My presence, I also have heard you, declares the Lord. Therefore I will gather you to your ancestors, and you will be buried in peace. Your eyes will not see all the disaster I am going to bring on this place.' So they took her answer back to the king." (2 Kings 22:18-20, 2 Chronicles 34:26-28)
The Lord spoke a similar message to Josiah's great-grandfather, King Hezekiah, through the prophet Isaiah. Hezekiah attempted to ally himself with Babylon, showing the visitors from Babylon all the riches of his kingdom in order to make himself look like a valuable friend to have in the fight against the Assyrians. But Hezekiah, although he remained faithful to the Lord and did not stray into idolatry, was a prideful man about all of his successes according to what we studied about his reign. In speaking with the Babylonian officials, he apparently did not give the Lord credit for his wealth and power. He also was trusting in heathen idolaters to help him defend Judah instead of trusting in the Lord who had already miraculously spared Jerusalem from siege by the Assyrians. Because Hezekiah had shown the Babylonians the riches of Judah, Isaiah warned him that a day was coming in which the Babylonians would remember these riches and would be powerful enough (having overthrown their Assyrian overlords) to come and conquer the nation of Judah and take all these items home with them, as well as taking large numbers of the people of Judah captive to Babylon. But this would not happen during Hezekiah's lifetime and Hezekiah responded to this news by being pleased that there would be "peace and security in my lifetime". (2 Kings 20:19b) The Lord had miraculously healed Hezekiah from a deadly illness and had promised him fifteen additional years of life, but it does not seem as if he spent those fifteen years helping his subjects or his own family to be spiritually upright. His son Manasseh, who was born during those extra fifteen years, was one of the most wicked and idolatrous kings Judah ever had. Even though Manasseh converted near the end of his life, he had already done a great deal of spiritual damage and his son and successor, Amon, was very wicked too. If Hezekiah had taken the words of the Lord to heart and had done more to set his son and the future generations up for spiritual success, his son and grandson would perhaps not have been so wicked and the people would not have fallen into so much sin during their reigns.
Josiah is the opposite of Amon and Manasseh. He also responds to the message of the Lord in the opposite way of his great-grandfather Hezekiah. He doesn't hear the message and say, "Oh, well, at least the disaster isn't coming in my lifetime. If there's nothing I can do to avert it, I might as well enjoy the days left to me on earth." Instead, as we will see in our next study session, he takes steps to improve the spiritual condition of his nation right now and to hopefully set succeeding generations up for spiritual success. He doesn't sit back with a fatalistic attitude and do nothing, as Hezekiah did.
It may be that he thought, as King David did when the prophet Nathan brought him bad news, "Who knows? The Lord may be gracious." (2 Samuel 12:22b) David thought the Lord might relent of the disaster if he repented and humbled himself. Perhaps Josiah thinks that if there is widescale repentance and obedience to the Book of the Law, the Lord will never bring this dire prophecy to pass. There have been occasions where, in the portions of Scripture we've already studied, the Lord pronounced a coming judgment and relented when the people humbled themselves and repented. Many judgments of the Bible, like many promises of the Bible, are conditional. Josiah might be taking the Lord's words as a warning issued in order to get the people to get with the program and stay on it; he does not necessarily know for certain that the Lord is saying the people will not stay with the program. He does what he can to help the people stay with it, in tomorrow's study, and even though his efforts may not be capable of encouraging people on down the line to stay with it, it could be that he thinks at least he can delay the judgment that is coming. He cares about his children's generation and about his children's children's generation and about all the generations after that. Unlike Hezekiah, who in his later years seemed to be mainly concerned about himself, Josiah cares about all the people who are to come. I think it's important to note this about him and to give him credit for having such a loving attitude toward the people of his nation now and toward the people of his nation in the future.
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