Josiah

Today in the Bible reading we meet Josiah for the second time. We read about him for the first time back in 2 Kings 21-22. Josiah is one of my favorite Bible characters and at the same time he is also a very interesting character to study deeper. Josiah becomes King at 8 years old. Wow, God can use anyone at any age for His purposes. I have a 9 year old and could never imagine him being King over God’s people, so this shows that even at 8 God can and will use anyone for His plans and will give that person the wisdom needed to fulfill said plans. At the age of 16 Josiah begins to earnestly seek after God. This shows again that any person at any age can be a true pure worshipper of God. There should never be any excuse from anyone that they cannot serve God because of age or whatever else can be an excuse. When I was 16, I went to church and would worship God on Sundays, but I would not have said that I was seeking wholeheartedly after God in all that I did. And I grew up in the church. Josiah did not grow up at a young age in Yahweh worship, yet here he is at 16 seeking after only God. That means we can seek after God only at any age, any life circumstance, and with any background. There is never any excuse. Then at 26 Josiah becomes a full fledge leader in reforming the worship in Israel back to God only. Josiah, already seeking God, humbles himself and leads others with him back to God alone. This shows us that God can use anyone, young or old, to be a leader for Him. Do you have God honoring worshipful influence on others? Then you’re a leader for God to, just like Josiah was. Because Josiah is faithful to God and is leading God’s people back to a worship of God only, God makes a promise to Josiah telling him that Josiah would not see the promised coming destruction of the Temple and Israel. God tells Josiah, “because you were faithful to Me, I will be faithful to you and not allow you to see the coming judgment”. And how does God keep His promise? This I find to be one of the most interesting things about Josiah. Josiah at 39, still a younger man, gets full of pride and picks a fight he should have never done with Pharaoh Neco, who is passing through the land. See Pharaoh Neco was passing through the land to do God’s bidding in going to help destroy the Assyrians. Neco tells Josiah, “God has sent me on this mission, please do not stop me or fight against be but let me do God’s bidding”. Josiah does not listen to Neco, gets prideful and goes to war and gets killed. Josiah dies at a young age because of Hs pride. This strikes me very interestingly in that God keeps His promise to Josiah in not seeing the coming judgement by using Josiah’s sin against Him. God fulfills His plan, keeps His promise, and does His will by using the sin of Josiah, while using Neco to fulfill it, against himself. This always makes me wonder,

 

How many of my own sins, that I freely myself chose to commit against God, does God use against me to keep His promises with me???