I Am Listening: 2 Kings 22:1--23:3 - Christ the King Sunday

After church one Sunday, Elizabeth and I met some friends for lunch at a restaurant in Indiana. At the salad bar, a gentleman with a long beard dressed in a black suit and a cowboy hat said to me, “do you preach the bible at your church?”

I smiled and said, “nothing but!” He smiled back and said, “keep it up,” and that was the end of our conversation. 

Photo credit: churchart.com

As he walked away, I wondered if he thought I might say, “no, we don’t do that at my church,” as if we gather every Sunday morning to watch me do cooking demonstrations or something of the sort.

And yet, today’s Old Testament reading comes from a time when God’s own people neither worshiped God nor paid any attention to God’s Word. This also happened to be a very chaotic time for the Southern Kingdom of divided Israel.

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They had just suffered the fifty-five-year reign of King Manasseh, quite possibly the most corrupt and violent king to ever take the throne. He built altars to Ba’al and a statue to Asherah inside the Jerusalem Temple (21:4-7). This man was so evil that he sacrificed his son to idols (cf. 2 Kings 21:6). The Scriptures record that he shed enough innocent blood “to fill Jerusalem from one end to the other” (cf. 2 Kings 21:16).

When his reign of terror ended, his 22-year-old son Amon succeeded him, but he was just as evil as his dad. However, his reign lasted only two years, as he was assassinated by his own officials. Then the people assassinated the assassins, and after a bloody coup d’état, the people put Amon’s eight-year-old son Josiah on the throne. 

In the eighteenth year of his reign, Josiah gave orders for the Jerusalem temple to be repaired. As the renovations were taking place, the high priest found the Scroll containing the Law of Moses, in the same way that people remodel old houses and find priceless artifacts and antiques hidden behind the walls or underneath the floorboards.

The high priest informs the Josiah of what he found, and when Josiah reads the scroll, he tears his robes in anguish. In a moment of brutal clarity, Josiah understood that all the chaos and bloodshed which occurred under the reigns of his father and grandfather was a result of God’s Word being lost and forgotten. 

The king then ordered his secretary to visit the prophetess Huldah to inquire of the Lord. She declared that the Lord was indeed about to bring disaster upon the nation on account of their sins. But Josiah, being penitent for his people’s sin, would be spared. 

Josiah then ordered his officials to cleanse the land of all the idols and all their altars and statues. The Law of Moses was reestablished as the law of the land. For the first time in generations, the people of God celebrated the Passover.

Despite the chaos and terror, God never abandoned his people. God was still speaking. All it took was someone who would listen to that word and act on it.

God is still speaking today, speaking words of promise and hope but also words of warning and judgment. But who’s listening? 

All throughout the Old Testament, God punished his people by bringing disaster upon them, because that was the only way to break them away from their sin. It’s not for me or anyone to say that today’s calamities are divine punishments. What I will say, though, is that things in our world would not be the way they are if people obeyed the Word of God and loved their neighbor as themselves. 

Above, below, and within the chaos and suffering, God is calling, God is shouting for us to turn to him. What you must do is STOP and LISTEN. STOP worrying and rushing about. Stop trying to control things you cannot change. STOP blaming yourself and others for the way things are. It’s time to be still and listen because God is speaking. And God’s word is life.

In the instant that you stop and listen, God’s power takes hold of you. Suddenly, you can breathe again! You have the peace that comes with trusting that your life is in God’s hands. You have purpose, because the love of God that’s flowing into you will also flow out of you. You have hope that tomorrow can be better than today.

When we, as the Body of Christ, commit to hitting pause on the busyness of our lives and come together to pray and listen to the Word, God’s power is multiplied. When love is real and genuine among us, we find God in each other. And together, we become a loud, but loving voice, a mighty but gentle force for good in the community.

Whenever there’s an unmet need, we are a congregation that rolls up its sleeves and gets to work, and we make big things happen (with God’s help). But we all need more Christ in our lives. 

This is a HUGE growth opportunity for each of you, as well as for us as a congregation. Lest you rush through each day, frantically going from one task to the next; and you feel like you’re at your breaking point, given all the stress, the worry, and the fear… Why should anything else but the very Word of God be the driving force in your life? 

The greatest peace comes not from having everything in your life under control. It’s not dependent on circumstance. It doesn’t depend on how much money you have or how many creature comforts you can afford. It does not demand that you satisfy everyone’s great expectations of you. Your greatest peace is your relationship with God, which you claim by letting go of everything else and coming before God in prayer, opening the Scriptures for God to speak, and by sharing in the fellowship of believers who love you in Christ. 

God is still speaking. Those who have peace, those who have wisdom, those who have courage and hope are those who listen and obey. Will that be you?