2 Kings 22

Well, good morning, Grace. Good morning, those of you here in person. Good morning online. Thank you so much for participating online. Last week was a roaring success. We were blown away by how many of you brave souls showed up and braved the elements to be here. We were thrilled with how many folks watched online. And like I said last week, this is a new season in the life of Grace. We are going to exist this way for a long while where we meet either in our home or yours. So we are grateful for the opportunity to meet. We know that God has his hand on this place, and I have just really enjoyed this morning. I'm so grateful we have our music intern Dalton Hayes with us. This is wonderful. If quarantine brings him to us, the book of Kings in the Bible. And we understand that when it was originally written, it was one big long book that got divided in two for the sake of scroll length, and now it's 1 and 2 Kings. So that's where we are. This morning, we're going to start in 2 Kings chapter 22. So if you have a Bible, go ahead and open it. If you have one at home, go ahead and open it there. I'm going to try to highlight as much of the scripture and read it together as we can, but we're going to cover a lot of stuff. We're going to be, if you want to mark your Bibles already, we're going to be in 2 Kings 22, then we're going to jump to 2 Chronicles 34, then back to 2 Kings 23. So if you need to mark things, go ahead and do that. It's always great to interact with Scripture as we go through it. This morning we arrive at who I believe is one of the most unsung heroes in all of the Bible. It's a king named Josiah. We may have heard of Josiah before. We may have even heard a sermon on Josiah before, but I would be willing to bet that many of us here and many of us online have not heard of Josiah. Maybe we've heard of him, but we don't know what he did. We don't know what his role was. And as I went through and read the accounts of Josiah, both in Kings and in Chronicles, I realized, you know, there's really no way for me to preach about Josiah in the way that I normally do. If you've been paying attention to my sermons, which I realize is a big if, most of us come for the worship, but if you've been paying attention to my sermons, you'll know that I tend to try to drive to one point. I don't like to do the three and four point sermons. I like to drive to one point, mostly because I think it's difficult to remember more points than that. I think it's more engaging to just drive to one thing and take that home with us. But as I prepared this week, I realized, man, Josiah is too big of a topic to do that with, and what happens in his life and what's left from his example is too great to boil down to one thing. And when I grew up, I don't know about you guys that grew up in church, but when I grew up going to church, it was three and four points. I mean, the pastor took the passage, he read part of the passage, and then he made a point about the passage, and then he jumped back into the passage, right? It was just this old school way of preaching. So this morning, if you'll allow me with Josiah, I'm going to go a little old school, and I'm just going to throw things out to you as we go through a story. We'll drive to one main point, but there's going to be some other things along the way that if you're a note taker, you may want to write down. We encounter Josiah in 2 Kings chapter 22. And one of the first things we learn about him, which is pretty interesting, is that he was eight years old when he assumed the throne. He was eight years old when he became the king of Israel. He's the youngest king, I think, that Israel gets. And what's interesting about Josiah is if you read Kings and Chronicles, as soon as a king is introduced, the text will immediately say one of two things. The text will immediately either say, so-and-so was righteous and did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, or so-and-so was evil and did what was right in the eyes of the Lord. Or so and so was evil and did what was right in their own eyes. And there's a lot more kings that did what was right in their own eyes and did what was right in the sight of the Lord. But when we meet Josiah, we learn right away he did what was right in the sight of the Lord. He followed the God of his father, David. So it harkens all the way back to the second king of Israel, the greatest king of Israel, and said he embraced the faith that David had. And I think this is super interesting that he does this. Because his father, Ammon, and his grandfather, Manasseh, were evil. They were idol-worshiping, evil, greedy kings. He did not come from a heritage of faith. And yet at the age of eight, when he takes over the throne, he has a heart that follows our God. And it just makes me wonder, I was curious about this this week, who is the silent voice, the unseen voice in Josiah's life that was speaking Jesus into his ear? Who was the unseen voice in his life? Who was the one whispering? Who was the uncle? Who was the aunt? Who was the nanny? Who was the teacher? That every time they had time with this future king, they said, you know who the true God is? You know who really loves you? You know who really purposed you? You know who really created you? You know who got us free from Egyptian slavery? You know who sent the flood and then restored his creation? You know who that is, right? Who was the unseen voice in this young prince's life that turned his heart towards the Father? And it just makes me appreciate the role that unseen voices have in our lives. Teachers, you might have kids in your classroom that have no other voices pointing their hearts to Jesus. You might be the unseen voice in their life. Aunts and uncles, you might have nieces and nephews that you love and for reason, their parents' hearts don't track with your heart. You might be the unseen voice that points their little hearts towards Jesus. Keep speaking that truth into their life. Keep telling them about their God. Keep telling them about their Savior. We never know who these unseen voices are in our lives, and those of you that have influence, particularly with little ones and even with adults, you never know when you might be the unseen voice that turns their heart towards Jesus and impacts the rest of their life. I can't wait to meet the person who was in Josiah's ear saying, you know who the true God is. But at the age of eight, he takes over as the king, and he turns his heart towards God. And somewhere in there, we're going to find out, we're going to jump to Chronicles 34 and get the timing of it exactly right, because the timing to me is very interesting. But somewhere in there, he looks at everything that had built up in Israel over the years. Over the many different kings in Israel, they had erected different idols, different gods, and now there existed this clutter and clamor all over the nation that were monuments to other gods, to Baal and to Asherah and to anybody else that they may have worshipped, to the golden calves that we learned about last week. So much so that these images began to clutter the temple itself. Inside and outside the temple, the one place that was supposed to be the house of God and representative of God's presence with his children in Israel. Even that was cluttered with the presence of other idols. And so Josiah, like a madman, starts to clear away all of this clutter. And in the midst of doing that in the temple, they uncovered the book of the law. They uncovered the book of the law, which was the first five books of the Bible, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, written by Moses. This was the closest thing in this time in history that they had to the Bible. This was their holy text. It's our same holy text, and they found it. And I want you to look at Josiah's reaction to finding the Bible, to finding the book of the law tucked away in the temple. We're going to pick it up in 2 Kings 22, verse 11. When the king, that's Josiah, heard the words of the book of the law, he tore his clothes. So they found it, they brought it somewhere, and then they read it to him. He said, I want you to read it to me. So they read it to him. And when he heard it, he tore his clothes. And the king commanded a bunch of people. I'm not going to read all those names in verse 12 and embarrass myself. He commanded a bunch of people. And he said in 13, go inquire of the Lord for me and for the people and for all Judah concerning the words of this book that have been found. For great is the wrath of the Lord that is kindled against us because our fathers have not obeyed the words of this book to do according to all that is written concerning us. So in the midst of this cleanup, somebody finds the book of the law dusty and covered up with other things in the temple. They get it. News travels back to Josiah that they found it. He says, bring it to me and read it to me. And as they read the book of the law to him, he tore his clothes, which is a symbol of anguish. We're going to get to what that means a little bit later, but it's a sign of anguish. It's a sign of repentance. It's a sign of pain. He tears his clothes and he laments at what their fathers did. He said that the wrath of the Lord is kindled against us because of the sins of our fathers. He's acknowledging that over the decades, over the generations, the men and the women who had leadership in the country, who were saddled with spiritual leadership, led them off course. And now they're so far off course that he weeps at the reality of where they are. I picture it like this. I picture the book of the law, the Bible, God's word that Josiah read that day. As he's looking at it as the king, I picture it's a map of the ocean. And Josiah is supposed to be anchored over here, and they have drifted so far away that the faith of the nation is not even recognizable to David and to Abraham and to Moses. And he realizes in that moment that they've drifted so far off course, carried by the current of culture, by the shifting winds of preference and of intellect and of education and of convenience. They drifted away from who they were supposed to be and where they were supposed to be. And in the face of the law, in the face of God's word, he realizes, my goodness, we are so far from who we should be. Our fathers allowed us to drift, and God is rightly angry with us for the type of faith that we perpetuate. And it makes me realize, as I read that, that if we want to hand our children a solid faith, it must be anchored in Scripture. If we want to hand our children a solid faith, it must be anchored in Scripture. And so that's applicable to parents, it's applicable to those who lead young people, but it's applicable for us as we age, as we think about the next generation of grace. One of the things I got to see when I got here is we just had a group of girls graduate from high school, and they are all part of grace, and they're all, well, they went off to colleges, and now they're back home because, you know, COVID is a thing. But they went off for a minute together in faith, and then, and I've seen a picture of them as little girls playing soccer together at events at grace. And then yesterday was my little girl's first soccer game. And it was super fun. Everyone was terrible at it. But there's four kids on the team, including Lily, who go to Grace. And we got to take a picture with all of them yesterday. And that's the next generation of kids that's going to move through this place. And for those of us that care about God's church and care about his kingdom and care about the generations moving through this place, not just the children, but the parents of those young children and those of you moving into empty nests and people who have been through that before, each generation that follows, if we want to, if we care about handing the generations that will follow us a solid faith, it must be anchored in Scripture. And this seems like an obvious point. And I'm sure that all of you and all of you would agree with me. Sure, yeah, it must be anchored in Scripture. But do we practically do this? I'm not trying to poke too hard here. But how many of our ideas about the things going on in our culture are really us following the dictates of culture and the currents of change and the currents of intellect and the currents of education and not about anchoring ourselves in Scripture? How many of our attitudes towards homosexuality have to do with what the prevailing thought in our culture is and not what the prevailing teaching in our Scripture is? How many of our thoughts about politics have to do with the prevailing winds of culture and not anchored in Scripture? How much of the morality that we would pass on to our kids, how we discipline and what we tell them is right and wrong, is anchored in how we feel about things, is anchored in and shifted by what culture tells us should be important to us and not what Scripture tells us should be important to us. How many of us, me included, are guilty of looking at the way that culture shifts, of feeling that shift beneath our feet, and then beginning to try to bend this around what our community is telling us, rather than remaining anchored in God's Word. If we want to hand our children a faith that matters, it must be anchored in God's Word. And how can we anchor our faith in God's word if we are not students of it? Listen, I try the best I can to teach the Bible every week. It's my deep conviction that that's my responsibility, to teach you God's word, to enliven it, to make it so that you want to go home and read it on your own. But I will tell you this readily. If I'm the only Bible you're getting every week, it's going to be a shallow faith. If this is it, and then you just go from here, and you don't encounter God's word again, and we're not getting up and we're not reading it, we're not pouring over it, we're not learning it for ourselves, and we're not going back and going, what did he preach? Does that even make sense? If we're not doing that and this is all you're getting of Bible, of God's word, that's not enough. That's a paltry diet. We want to hand our children a faith that matters. It's got to be anchored in God's word. When I anchor our faith in God's Word, we have to be loving students of God's Word. But I thought that this was also interesting about Josiah. As I was studying him and I was looking at his life, some of the pieces weren't coming together all the way for me. So I flipped over to the Chronicles account of him. So if you want to flip to 2 Chronicles 34, you can. Really quickly, this is a good place for an aside. If you care about things like this, this is just kind of, here, Steve, I'm going to step this way, so get ready to move the camera. This is just an aside, okay? All right, good. Kings and Chronicles share the same stories. Kings shares the same block of time as Chronicles does. And so you may wonder, why did the Bible include two editions of the same stories with the same characters? Well, here's why. Kings was written during a time of slavery. The conclusion of both countries is that they were carried off to Assyria and Babylon as slaves. And there are generations of Hebrews being born into slavery, and their dads and their granddads are telling them, hey, you're the chosen people of God the Father, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. You are his chosen people. He has a special plan for you. He has land promised to you. And they're looking around going, you sure? Because I'm a slave right now. Really, it feels like that God's kind of impotent. There's a generation of people angry at God for not keeping his promises. And so Kings is written to break the hearts of a hard-hearted people and help them see it is your father's fault that you're here in the first place. It's a book of conviction. Chronicles was written to what's called the post-exilic community. Kings was written to the exilic community, the ones in slavery, but eventually they all wandered back. So if that's interesting to you, there's that. All right, I'm going to jump back into the sermon proper. So in Chronicles chapter 34, we have the account of Josiah. And I want to highlight two verses here for you. The first one is verse 3. It says this, and I thought it was interesting. Okay. If you're tracking along, he's 16 years old. For some reason at 16, he decides that he is going to pursue the religion of his father, David. That's when his heart is turned. That's when God captures his heart. And that's when he begins to pursue that faith. Four years after the internal changes begin, he begins to purge the nation of all the idols that are there. And then this happens in verse 8. Now in the 18th year of his reign, so this is now, he's 26, this is 10 years after. When he had cleansed the land and the house, he sent. Okay. I stopped there at he sent because that's where we pick up the story in Kings. The rest of that is when in his 18th year, he sent those people to the temple. They cleared out the temple. They uncovered the book of the law. And then we pick up the story in Kings. But what's so interesting to me is this. When he was 16 years old, his heart was turned towards the Lord. He began clearly to work on himself and his own understanding. As a result of his own understanding, he began to clear out the idols that existed. As a result of clearing out the idols that existed, he uncovered the word of the Lord. Do you understand? It was 10 years between a heart conviction and a deep life-changing encounter with the Lord. It was 10 years between his discovery of faith and a place where he went, oh my gosh, and tore his clothes and repented and realized what he had been doing. He waited 10 years on the voice of the Lord. Some of us get frustrated and spiritually discouraged if we have to wait one week and we don't feel the voice of the Lord. Some of us say, you know what? I'm going to do quiet times now. That's going to be a thing. I heard what Nate just said about being dedicated to Scripture. I should really do that. One of these days, I promise you I'm going to do this. I'm going to preach a sermon, and I'm going to come up here, and I'm going to say, good morning, Grace. My name is Nate. I'm the pastor. You should read your Bibles more. Let's pray. And that's going to be enough. That's going to be enough where all of us are going to go home and be like, yeah, that's actually a fair point. And so maybe you've decided to do that. And you go home. It's day one. You get up. You make your coffee. You sit down. You read it. Your wife says, what did you learn? You're like, stuff. Something. Josiah seems okay. All right, and the next day, what'd you learn? The next day, what'd you learn? I don't know, reading the Bible seems silly. We can't wait on the Lord three days. Josiah waited on him 10 years with all these obstacles in the way. I think another thing we can learn from the life of Josiah is to find God, remove the obstacles. To find God, move towards him. Some of us just sit passively waiting, God, why won't you speak to me? Why won't you talk to me? Why don't I seem to feel your presence and hear your voice like so-and-so does? Maybe it's because of all the junk that we have in our life, all the idols that have accumulated all over the country and even in the very temple that are covering up the book of the law. Maybe, just maybe, we should take some steps towards God. And this isn't how it works for everybody. Sometimes we take a step towards God and he comes in and he meets us right where we are. I've heard of miraculous conversions of somebody who was an alcoholic on Friday and on Saturday they weren't because they met Jesus. And that's amazing. But that's not everybody's story. Sometimes it's 10 years of pursuit before we finally go, oh, hang in there. Persevere. Pursue the Father. This is even true in the New Testament. Jesus tells the story of the prodigal son, and it's this miraculous story of the sinning son being met by the saving Father. But it wasn't until he started moving towards the Father that the Father met him. While he was still a long way off, the Father went to meet him, but when he was in that foreign country, he began to move towards the Father. If we want to pursue God, move towards him, remove idols, instead of passively wondering why we can't hear from him. I think it's worth it. But then we see, if we look back to 2 Kings chapter 23, we see the conclusion of the story of Josiah. And this is the thing that I'm most excited about. If you look at 2 Kings 23, after being convicted, after removing the idols, after finding the book of the law, and now after tearing his clothes and being fearful of the wrath of God because of the sins of the father, because of the shifting faith that they were handed, he goes on a rampage in chapter 23. It's a detailed chronicle of just everything that he removes from the country. Thing after thing after thing after thing, clutter after clutter after clutter. He strips it all down until all that's left are the things of God. And then he caps it off this way. And I think it's incredibly appropriate. I had to read this story three different times before I saw the magnitude of why it finishes here, but I think it's such a huge deal. He cleanses all of these things, and then he reinst of the moving towards, after all of the conviction, he reinstituted Passover. And I think that this is so important. The Passover hadn't been celebrated like this since the time of the judges. The kings had mucked it up so badly that this was an unrecognizable ceremony for them. But you might remember if you were here last fall, we looked at the festivals of the Hebrew people and the one that points to Jesus more than any other festival is the Passover. It's a reminder of the 10th plague in Egypt when God sent the angel of death over the nation of Egypt and he said, unless you have the blood of a spotless lamb over your doorpost, then I'm gonna take the life of your firstborn son. And in that plague, God, through the blood of the lamb, he protected his children. He took them away from slavery into freedom because of the blood of the lamb. And the whole thing is a picture of salvation. They didn't realize it, but they thought they were looking back on a time that they were saved. And Passover, every time they celebrated it, was really looking forward to a coming Messiah. You understand that? And so how he kept off his repentance is to focus on Christ. That is why I think that Josiah is a picture of repentance. We hear this word a lot in church, to repent of sin and what that means. And I talked about it before, so I won't belabor it today. But if you ever need to know what repentance actually looks like, because repentance is to be moving in one direction, stop what you're doing and move in the opposite direction. So they're moving towards deeper idolatry. He stops and he doesn't just say, we're not gonna worship those idols anymore, but he knocks away all the clutter as he pursues God and he finishes his repentance. He stops, and he doesn't just say, we're not going to worship those idols anymore, but he knocks away all the clutter as he pursues God, and he finishes his repentance. He stops his repentance. His repentance lands in a place where he's focused on Jesus. You see? This is proper repentance. Sometimes we stop short, and we forget where our focus belongs. Last week we looked at Jehu. We talked about how Jehu started all the cleansing process, but he didn't go the full measure. He wasn't the picture of repentance. Josiah is a picture of repentance, and he stops all of that by finishing, by reinstituting a ceremony that focused his eyes on Christ. Incidentally, all the clutter and all the movement and all the stuff that we need to do to find God works by focusing our eyes on Christ anyways. I was reminded as I thought about this and what proper repentance really is of Hebrews 12, 1 and 2, one of my favorite passages in the Bible. Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us throw off the sin and the weight that so easily entangles and run the race that is set before us. And this is what Josiah did. He's surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses, all the kings that came before him, all the people of Israel, all of heaven looking down on his reign saying, what will you do? And he began to throw off the sin and the weight that so easily entangled all the idols that would obedient to verse 2 in that chapter, which is this. How? How do we do this? By focusing our eyes on Christ, the founder and perfecter of our faith. We can't throw off those idols ourselves. We can't do a good enough job of that on our own. We can't live perfectly enough to satisfy God, but Christ has already done that for us. So the proper end of repentance is to say, God, I'm giving you everything here, but my eyes are focused on Jesus. Josiah took the repentance. He took the obedience of the people. He focused them back on the Father, and he capped it off with Passover and focusing their eyes on Christ, which is why we continue. That's our version of Easter. When we celebrate Easter, what are we doing? We're looking back on the sacrifice that saved us, and we are anticipating a future with that Jesus. Josiah's life, 2 Kings chapter 22 and 23 and 2 Chronicles chapter 34, are a living, breathing picture of what happens in Hebrews 12, 1 and 2, of throwing off the sin and the weight that so easily entangles and running the race that is set before us by focusing our eyes on Christ, the founder and perfecter of our faith. That's who King Josiah was. That's an example we're following. And I hope that we will learn from him this morning and carry forward just some of those as we go through our weeks this week. Let me pray for us. Father, we love you. We are grateful for you. God, we are grateful for your conviction when it is both gentle and when it's more forceful. Father, we are grateful for your word. Make grace students of it. Give us a heart for it. Help us to love it. Give us a deeper understanding of it than we've ever had. Jesus, focus our eyes on you. Let us trust in you to remove the obstacles. Let us trust in you to draw us near the Father. Make us a church that has our eyes focused on you. God, thank you for your servant, Josiah, and the examples that we learn from him. I pray that in little ways this week, you would make us all a little bit more like him and help us focus a little bit more on you. It's in your son's name we pray. Amen. All right. Thank you guys for coming in person this week. Thank you for watching online this week. We will see you in whatever capacity next week. Have a great week.

Well, good morning, Grace. Good morning, those of you here in person. Good morning online. Thank you so much for participating online. Last week was a roaring success. We were blown away by how many of you brave souls showed up and braved the elements to be here. We were thrilled with how many folks watched online. And like I said last week, this is a new season in the life of Grace. We are going to exist this way for a long while where we meet either in our home or yours. So we are grateful for the opportunity to meet. We know that God has his hand on this place, and I have just really enjoyed this morning. I'm so grateful we have our music intern Dalton Hayes with us. This is wonderful. If quarantine brings him to us, the book of Kings in the Bible. And we understand that when it was originally written, it was one big long book that got divided in two for the sake of scroll length, and now it's 1 and 2 Kings. So that's where we are. This morning, we're going to start in 2 Kings chapter 22. So if you have a Bible, go ahead and open it. If you have one at home, go ahead and open it there. I'm going to try to highlight as much of the scripture and read it together as we can, but we're going to cover a lot of stuff. We're going to be, if you want to mark your Bibles already, we're going to be in 2 Kings 22, then we're going to jump to 2 Chronicles 34, then back to 2 Kings 23. So if you need to mark things, go ahead and do that. It's always great to interact with Scripture as we go through it. This morning we arrive at who I believe is one of the most unsung heroes in all of the Bible. It's a king named Josiah. We may have heard of Josiah before. We may have even heard a sermon on Josiah before, but I would be willing to bet that many of us here and many of us online have not heard of Josiah. Maybe we've heard of him, but we don't know what he did. We don't know what his role was. And as I went through and read the accounts of Josiah, both in Kings and in Chronicles, I realized, you know, there's really no way for me to preach about Josiah in the way that I normally do. If you've been paying attention to my sermons, which I realize is a big if, most of us come for the worship, but if you've been paying attention to my sermons, you'll know that I tend to try to drive to one point. I don't like to do the three and four point sermons. I like to drive to one point, mostly because I think it's difficult to remember more points than that. I think it's more engaging to just drive to one thing and take that home with us. But as I prepared this week, I realized, man, Josiah is too big of a topic to do that with, and what happens in his life and what's left from his example is too great to boil down to one thing. And when I grew up, I don't know about you guys that grew up in church, but when I grew up going to church, it was three and four points. I mean, the pastor took the passage, he read part of the passage, and then he made a point about the passage, and then he jumped back into the passage, right? It was just this old school way of preaching. So this morning, if you'll allow me with Josiah, I'm going to go a little old school, and I'm just going to throw things out to you as we go through a story. We'll drive to one main point, but there's going to be some other things along the way that if you're a note taker, you may want to write down. We encounter Josiah in 2 Kings chapter 22. And one of the first things we learn about him, which is pretty interesting, is that he was eight years old when he assumed the throne. He was eight years old when he became the king of Israel. He's the youngest king, I think, that Israel gets. And what's interesting about Josiah is if you read Kings and Chronicles, as soon as a king is introduced, the text will immediately say one of two things. The text will immediately either say, so-and-so was righteous and did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, or so-and-so was evil and did what was right in the eyes of the Lord. Or so and so was evil and did what was right in their own eyes. And there's a lot more kings that did what was right in their own eyes and did what was right in the sight of the Lord. But when we meet Josiah, we learn right away he did what was right in the sight of the Lord. He followed the God of his father, David. So it harkens all the way back to the second king of Israel, the greatest king of Israel, and said he embraced the faith that David had. And I think this is super interesting that he does this. Because his father, Ammon, and his grandfather, Manasseh, were evil. They were idol-worshiping, evil, greedy kings. He did not come from a heritage of faith. And yet at the age of eight, when he takes over the throne, he has a heart that follows our God. And it just makes me wonder, I was curious about this this week, who is the silent voice, the unseen voice in Josiah's life that was speaking Jesus into his ear? Who was the unseen voice in his life? Who was the one whispering? Who was the uncle? Who was the aunt? Who was the nanny? Who was the teacher? That every time they had time with this future king, they said, you know who the true God is? You know who really loves you? You know who really purposed you? You know who really created you? You know who got us free from Egyptian slavery? You know who sent the flood and then restored his creation? You know who that is, right? Who was the unseen voice in this young prince's life that turned his heart towards the Father? And it just makes me appreciate the role that unseen voices have in our lives. Teachers, you might have kids in your classroom that have no other voices pointing their hearts to Jesus. You might be the unseen voice in their life. Aunts and uncles, you might have nieces and nephews that you love and for reason, their parents' hearts don't track with your heart. You might be the unseen voice that points their little hearts towards Jesus. Keep speaking that truth into their life. Keep telling them about their God. Keep telling them about their Savior. We never know who these unseen voices are in our lives, and those of you that have influence, particularly with little ones and even with adults, you never know when you might be the unseen voice that turns their heart towards Jesus and impacts the rest of their life. I can't wait to meet the person who was in Josiah's ear saying, you know who the true God is. But at the age of eight, he takes over as the king, and he turns his heart towards God. And somewhere in there, we're going to find out, we're going to jump to Chronicles 34 and get the timing of it exactly right, because the timing to me is very interesting. But somewhere in there, he looks at everything that had built up in Israel over the years. Over the many different kings in Israel, they had erected different idols, different gods, and now there existed this clutter and clamor all over the nation that were monuments to other gods, to Baal and to Asherah and to anybody else that they may have worshipped, to the golden calves that we learned about last week. So much so that these images began to clutter the temple itself. Inside and outside the temple, the one place that was supposed to be the house of God and representative of God's presence with his children in Israel. Even that was cluttered with the presence of other idols. And so Josiah, like a madman, starts to clear away all of this clutter. And in the midst of doing that in the temple, they uncovered the book of the law. They uncovered the book of the law, which was the first five books of the Bible, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, written by Moses. This was the closest thing in this time in history that they had to the Bible. This was their holy text. It's our same holy text, and they found it. And I want you to look at Josiah's reaction to finding the Bible, to finding the book of the law tucked away in the temple. We're going to pick it up in 2 Kings 22, verse 11. When the king, that's Josiah, heard the words of the book of the law, he tore his clothes. So they found it, they brought it somewhere, and then they read it to him. He said, I want you to read it to me. So they read it to him. And when he heard it, he tore his clothes. And the king commanded a bunch of people. I'm not going to read all those names in verse 12 and embarrass myself. He commanded a bunch of people. And he said in 13, go inquire of the Lord for me and for the people and for all Judah concerning the words of this book that have been found. For great is the wrath of the Lord that is kindled against us because our fathers have not obeyed the words of this book to do according to all that is written concerning us. So in the midst of this cleanup, somebody finds the book of the law dusty and covered up with other things in the temple. They get it. News travels back to Josiah that they found it. He says, bring it to me and read it to me. And as they read the book of the law to him, he tore his clothes, which is a symbol of anguish. We're going to get to what that means a little bit later, but it's a sign of anguish. It's a sign of repentance. It's a sign of pain. He tears his clothes and he laments at what their fathers did. He said that the wrath of the Lord is kindled against us because of the sins of our fathers. He's acknowledging that over the decades, over the generations, the men and the women who had leadership in the country, who were saddled with spiritual leadership, led them off course. And now they're so far off course that he weeps at the reality of where they are. I picture it like this. I picture the book of the law, the Bible, God's word that Josiah read that day. As he's looking at it as the king, I picture it's a map of the ocean. And Josiah is supposed to be anchored over here, and they have drifted so far away that the faith of the nation is not even recognizable to David and to Abraham and to Moses. And he realizes in that moment that they've drifted so far off course, carried by the current of culture, by the shifting winds of preference and of intellect and of education and of convenience. They drifted away from who they were supposed to be and where they were supposed to be. And in the face of the law, in the face of God's word, he realizes, my goodness, we are so far from who we should be. Our fathers allowed us to drift, and God is rightly angry with us for the type of faith that we perpetuate. And it makes me realize, as I read that, that if we want to hand our children a solid faith, it must be anchored in Scripture. If we want to hand our children a solid faith, it must be anchored in Scripture. And so that's applicable to parents, it's applicable to those who lead young people, but it's applicable for us as we age, as we think about the next generation of grace. One of the things I got to see when I got here is we just had a group of girls graduate from high school, and they are all part of grace, and they're all, well, they went off to colleges, and now they're back home because, you know, COVID is a thing. But they went off for a minute together in faith, and then, and I've seen a picture of them as little girls playing soccer together at events at grace. And then yesterday was my little girl's first soccer game. And it was super fun. Everyone was terrible at it. But there's four kids on the team, including Lily, who go to Grace. And we got to take a picture with all of them yesterday. And that's the next generation of kids that's going to move through this place. And for those of us that care about God's church and care about his kingdom and care about the generations moving through this place, not just the children, but the parents of those young children and those of you moving into empty nests and people who have been through that before, each generation that follows, if we want to, if we care about handing the generations that will follow us a solid faith, it must be anchored in Scripture. And this seems like an obvious point. And I'm sure that all of you and all of you would agree with me. Sure, yeah, it must be anchored in Scripture. But do we practically do this? I'm not trying to poke too hard here. But how many of our ideas about the things going on in our culture are really us following the dictates of culture and the currents of change and the currents of intellect and the currents of education and not about anchoring ourselves in Scripture? How many of our attitudes towards homosexuality have to do with what the prevailing thought in our culture is and not what the prevailing teaching in our Scripture is? How many of our thoughts about politics have to do with the prevailing winds of culture and not anchored in Scripture? How much of the morality that we would pass on to our kids, how we discipline and what we tell them is right and wrong, is anchored in how we feel about things, is anchored in and shifted by what culture tells us should be important to us and not what Scripture tells us should be important to us. How many of us, me included, are guilty of looking at the way that culture shifts, of feeling that shift beneath our feet, and then beginning to try to bend this around what our community is telling us, rather than remaining anchored in God's Word. If we want to hand our children a faith that matters, it must be anchored in God's Word. And how can we anchor our faith in God's word if we are not students of it? Listen, I try the best I can to teach the Bible every week. It's my deep conviction that that's my responsibility, to teach you God's word, to enliven it, to make it so that you want to go home and read it on your own. But I will tell you this readily. If I'm the only Bible you're getting every week, it's going to be a shallow faith. If this is it, and then you just go from here, and you don't encounter God's word again, and we're not getting up and we're not reading it, we're not pouring over it, we're not learning it for ourselves, and we're not going back and going, what did he preach? Does that even make sense? If we're not doing that and this is all you're getting of Bible, of God's word, that's not enough. That's a paltry diet. We want to hand our children a faith that matters. It's got to be anchored in God's word. When I anchor our faith in God's Word, we have to be loving students of God's Word. But I thought that this was also interesting about Josiah. As I was studying him and I was looking at his life, some of the pieces weren't coming together all the way for me. So I flipped over to the Chronicles account of him. So if you want to flip to 2 Chronicles 34, you can. Really quickly, this is a good place for an aside. If you care about things like this, this is just kind of, here, Steve, I'm going to step this way, so get ready to move the camera. This is just an aside, okay? All right, good. Kings and Chronicles share the same stories. Kings shares the same block of time as Chronicles does. And so you may wonder, why did the Bible include two editions of the same stories with the same characters? Well, here's why. Kings was written during a time of slavery. The conclusion of both countries is that they were carried off to Assyria and Babylon as slaves. And there are generations of Hebrews being born into slavery, and their dads and their granddads are telling them, hey, you're the chosen people of God the Father, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. You are his chosen people. He has a special plan for you. He has land promised to you. And they're looking around going, you sure? Because I'm a slave right now. Really, it feels like that God's kind of impotent. There's a generation of people angry at God for not keeping his promises. And so Kings is written to break the hearts of a hard-hearted people and help them see it is your father's fault that you're here in the first place. It's a book of conviction. Chronicles was written to what's called the post-exilic community. Kings was written to the exilic community, the ones in slavery, but eventually they all wandered back. So if that's interesting to you, there's that. All right, I'm going to jump back into the sermon proper. So in Chronicles chapter 34, we have the account of Josiah. And I want to highlight two verses here for you. The first one is verse 3. It says this, and I thought it was interesting. Okay. If you're tracking along, he's 16 years old. For some reason at 16, he decides that he is going to pursue the religion of his father, David. That's when his heart is turned. That's when God captures his heart. And that's when he begins to pursue that faith. Four years after the internal changes begin, he begins to purge the nation of all the idols that are there. And then this happens in verse 8. Now in the 18th year of his reign, so this is now, he's 26, this is 10 years after. When he had cleansed the land and the house, he sent. Okay. I stopped there at he sent because that's where we pick up the story in Kings. The rest of that is when in his 18th year, he sent those people to the temple. They cleared out the temple. They uncovered the book of the law. And then we pick up the story in Kings. But what's so interesting to me is this. When he was 16 years old, his heart was turned towards the Lord. He began clearly to work on himself and his own understanding. As a result of his own understanding, he began to clear out the idols that existed. As a result of clearing out the idols that existed, he uncovered the word of the Lord. Do you understand? It was 10 years between a heart conviction and a deep life-changing encounter with the Lord. It was 10 years between his discovery of faith and a place where he went, oh my gosh, and tore his clothes and repented and realized what he had been doing. He waited 10 years on the voice of the Lord. Some of us get frustrated and spiritually discouraged if we have to wait one week and we don't feel the voice of the Lord. Some of us say, you know what? I'm going to do quiet times now. That's going to be a thing. I heard what Nate just said about being dedicated to Scripture. I should really do that. One of these days, I promise you I'm going to do this. I'm going to preach a sermon, and I'm going to come up here, and I'm going to say, good morning, Grace. My name is Nate. I'm the pastor. You should read your Bibles more. Let's pray. And that's going to be enough. That's going to be enough where all of us are going to go home and be like, yeah, that's actually a fair point. And so maybe you've decided to do that. And you go home. It's day one. You get up. You make your coffee. You sit down. You read it. Your wife says, what did you learn? You're like, stuff. Something. Josiah seems okay. All right, and the next day, what'd you learn? The next day, what'd you learn? I don't know, reading the Bible seems silly. We can't wait on the Lord three days. Josiah waited on him 10 years with all these obstacles in the way. I think another thing we can learn from the life of Josiah is to find God, remove the obstacles. To find God, move towards him. Some of us just sit passively waiting, God, why won't you speak to me? Why won't you talk to me? Why don't I seem to feel your presence and hear your voice like so-and-so does? Maybe it's because of all the junk that we have in our life, all the idols that have accumulated all over the country and even in the very temple that are covering up the book of the law. Maybe, just maybe, we should take some steps towards God. And this isn't how it works for everybody. Sometimes we take a step towards God and he comes in and he meets us right where we are. I've heard of miraculous conversions of somebody who was an alcoholic on Friday and on Saturday they weren't because they met Jesus. And that's amazing. But that's not everybody's story. Sometimes it's 10 years of pursuit before we finally go, oh, hang in there. Persevere. Pursue the Father. This is even true in the New Testament. Jesus tells the story of the prodigal son, and it's this miraculous story of the sinning son being met by the saving Father. But it wasn't until he started moving towards the Father that the Father met him. While he was still a long way off, the Father went to meet him, but when he was in that foreign country, he began to move towards the Father. If we want to pursue God, move towards him, remove idols, instead of passively wondering why we can't hear from him. I think it's worth it. But then we see, if we look back to 2 Kings chapter 23, we see the conclusion of the story of Josiah. And this is the thing that I'm most excited about. If you look at 2 Kings 23, after being convicted, after removing the idols, after finding the book of the law, and now after tearing his clothes and being fearful of the wrath of God because of the sins of the father, because of the shifting faith that they were handed, he goes on a rampage in chapter 23. It's a detailed chronicle of just everything that he removes from the country. Thing after thing after thing after thing, clutter after clutter after clutter. He strips it all down until all that's left are the things of God. And then he caps it off this way. And I think it's incredibly appropriate. I had to read this story three different times before I saw the magnitude of why it finishes here, but I think it's such a huge deal. He cleanses all of these things, and then he reinst of the moving towards, after all of the conviction, he reinstituted Passover. And I think that this is so important. The Passover hadn't been celebrated like this since the time of the judges. The kings had mucked it up so badly that this was an unrecognizable ceremony for them. But you might remember if you were here last fall, we looked at the festivals of the Hebrew people and the one that points to Jesus more than any other festival is the Passover. It's a reminder of the 10th plague in Egypt when God sent the angel of death over the nation of Egypt and he said, unless you have the blood of a spotless lamb over your doorpost, then I'm gonna take the life of your firstborn son. And in that plague, God, through the blood of the lamb, he protected his children. He took them away from slavery into freedom because of the blood of the lamb. And the whole thing is a picture of salvation. They didn't realize it, but they thought they were looking back on a time that they were saved. And Passover, every time they celebrated it, was really looking forward to a coming Messiah. You understand that? And so how he kept off his repentance is to focus on Christ. That is why I think that Josiah is a picture of repentance. We hear this word a lot in church, to repent of sin and what that means. And I talked about it before, so I won't belabor it today. But if you ever need to know what repentance actually looks like, because repentance is to be moving in one direction, stop what you're doing and move in the opposite direction. So they're moving towards deeper idolatry. He stops and he doesn't just say, we're not gonna worship those idols anymore, but he knocks away all the clutter as he pursues God and he finishes his repentance. He stops, and he doesn't just say, we're not going to worship those idols anymore, but he knocks away all the clutter as he pursues God, and he finishes his repentance. He stops his repentance. His repentance lands in a place where he's focused on Jesus. You see? This is proper repentance. Sometimes we stop short, and we forget where our focus belongs. Last week we looked at Jehu. We talked about how Jehu started all the cleansing process, but he didn't go the full measure. He wasn't the picture of repentance. Josiah is a picture of repentance, and he stops all of that by finishing, by reinstituting a ceremony that focused his eyes on Christ. Incidentally, all the clutter and all the movement and all the stuff that we need to do to find God works by focusing our eyes on Christ anyways. I was reminded as I thought about this and what proper repentance really is of Hebrews 12, 1 and 2, one of my favorite passages in the Bible. Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us throw off the sin and the weight that so easily entangles and run the race that is set before us. And this is what Josiah did. He's surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses, all the kings that came before him, all the people of Israel, all of heaven looking down on his reign saying, what will you do? And he began to throw off the sin and the weight that so easily entangled all the idols that would obedient to verse 2 in that chapter, which is this. How? How do we do this? By focusing our eyes on Christ, the founder and perfecter of our faith. We can't throw off those idols ourselves. We can't do a good enough job of that on our own. We can't live perfectly enough to satisfy God, but Christ has already done that for us. So the proper end of repentance is to say, God, I'm giving you everything here, but my eyes are focused on Jesus. Josiah took the repentance. He took the obedience of the people. He focused them back on the Father, and he capped it off with Passover and focusing their eyes on Christ, which is why we continue. That's our version of Easter. When we celebrate Easter, what are we doing? We're looking back on the sacrifice that saved us, and we are anticipating a future with that Jesus. Josiah's life, 2 Kings chapter 22 and 23 and 2 Chronicles chapter 34, are a living, breathing picture of what happens in Hebrews 12, 1 and 2, of throwing off the sin and the weight that so easily entangles and running the race that is set before us by focusing our eyes on Christ, the founder and perfecter of our faith. That's who King Josiah was. That's an example we're following. And I hope that we will learn from him this morning and carry forward just some of those as we go through our weeks this week. Let me pray for us. Father, we love you. We are grateful for you. God, we are grateful for your conviction when it is both gentle and when it's more forceful. Father, we are grateful for your word. Make grace students of it. Give us a heart for it. Help us to love it. Give us a deeper understanding of it than we've ever had. Jesus, focus our eyes on you. Let us trust in you to remove the obstacles. Let us trust in you to draw us near the Father. Make us a church that has our eyes focused on you. God, thank you for your servant, Josiah, and the examples that we learn from him. I pray that in little ways this week, you would make us all a little bit more like him and help us focus a little bit more on you. It's in your son's name we pray. Amen. All right. Thank you guys for coming in person this week. Thank you for watching online this week. We will see you in whatever capacity next week. Have a great week.

Well, good morning, Grace. Good morning, those of you here in person. Good morning online. Thank you so much for participating online. Last week was a roaring success. We were blown away by how many of you brave souls showed up and braved the elements to be here. We were thrilled with how many folks watched online. And like I said last week, this is a new season in the life of Grace. We are going to exist this way for a long while where we meet either in our home or yours. So we are grateful for the opportunity to meet. We know that God has his hand on this place, and I have just really enjoyed this morning. I'm so grateful we have our music intern Dalton Hayes with us. This is wonderful. If quarantine brings him to us, the book of Kings in the Bible. And we understand that when it was originally written, it was one big long book that got divided in two for the sake of scroll length, and now it's 1 and 2 Kings. So that's where we are. This morning, we're going to start in 2 Kings chapter 22. So if you have a Bible, go ahead and open it. If you have one at home, go ahead and open it there. I'm going to try to highlight as much of the scripture and read it together as we can, but we're going to cover a lot of stuff. We're going to be, if you want to mark your Bibles already, we're going to be in 2 Kings 22, then we're going to jump to 2 Chronicles 34, then back to 2 Kings 23. So if you need to mark things, go ahead and do that. It's always great to interact with Scripture as we go through it. This morning we arrive at who I believe is one of the most unsung heroes in all of the Bible. It's a king named Josiah. We may have heard of Josiah before. We may have even heard a sermon on Josiah before, but I would be willing to bet that many of us here and many of us online have not heard of Josiah. Maybe we've heard of him, but we don't know what he did. We don't know what his role was. And as I went through and read the accounts of Josiah, both in Kings and in Chronicles, I realized, you know, there's really no way for me to preach about Josiah in the way that I normally do. If you've been paying attention to my sermons, which I realize is a big if, most of us come for the worship, but if you've been paying attention to my sermons, you'll know that I tend to try to drive to one point. I don't like to do the three and four point sermons. I like to drive to one point, mostly because I think it's difficult to remember more points than that. I think it's more engaging to just drive to one thing and take that home with us. But as I prepared this week, I realized, man, Josiah is too big of a topic to do that with, and what happens in his life and what's left from his example is too great to boil down to one thing. And when I grew up, I don't know about you guys that grew up in church, but when I grew up going to church, it was three and four points. I mean, the pastor took the passage, he read part of the passage, and then he made a point about the passage, and then he jumped back into the passage, right? It was just this old school way of preaching. So this morning, if you'll allow me with Josiah, I'm going to go a little old school, and I'm just going to throw things out to you as we go through a story. We'll drive to one main point, but there's going to be some other things along the way that if you're a note taker, you may want to write down. We encounter Josiah in 2 Kings chapter 22. And one of the first things we learn about him, which is pretty interesting, is that he was eight years old when he assumed the throne. He was eight years old when he became the king of Israel. He's the youngest king, I think, that Israel gets. And what's interesting about Josiah is if you read Kings and Chronicles, as soon as a king is introduced, the text will immediately say one of two things. The text will immediately either say, so-and-so was righteous and did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, or so-and-so was evil and did what was right in the eyes of the Lord. Or so and so was evil and did what was right in their own eyes. And there's a lot more kings that did what was right in their own eyes and did what was right in the sight of the Lord. But when we meet Josiah, we learn right away he did what was right in the sight of the Lord. He followed the God of his father, David. So it harkens all the way back to the second king of Israel, the greatest king of Israel, and said he embraced the faith that David had. And I think this is super interesting that he does this. Because his father, Ammon, and his grandfather, Manasseh, were evil. They were idol-worshiping, evil, greedy kings. He did not come from a heritage of faith. And yet at the age of eight, when he takes over the throne, he has a heart that follows our God. And it just makes me wonder, I was curious about this this week, who is the silent voice, the unseen voice in Josiah's life that was speaking Jesus into his ear? Who was the unseen voice in his life? Who was the one whispering? Who was the uncle? Who was the aunt? Who was the nanny? Who was the teacher? That every time they had time with this future king, they said, you know who the true God is? You know who really loves you? You know who really purposed you? You know who really created you? You know who got us free from Egyptian slavery? You know who sent the flood and then restored his creation? You know who that is, right? Who was the unseen voice in this young prince's life that turned his heart towards the Father? And it just makes me appreciate the role that unseen voices have in our lives. Teachers, you might have kids in your classroom that have no other voices pointing their hearts to Jesus. You might be the unseen voice in their life. Aunts and uncles, you might have nieces and nephews that you love and for reason, their parents' hearts don't track with your heart. You might be the unseen voice that points their little hearts towards Jesus. Keep speaking that truth into their life. Keep telling them about their God. Keep telling them about their Savior. We never know who these unseen voices are in our lives, and those of you that have influence, particularly with little ones and even with adults, you never know when you might be the unseen voice that turns their heart towards Jesus and impacts the rest of their life. I can't wait to meet the person who was in Josiah's ear saying, you know who the true God is. But at the age of eight, he takes over as the king, and he turns his heart towards God. And somewhere in there, we're going to find out, we're going to jump to Chronicles 34 and get the timing of it exactly right, because the timing to me is very interesting. But somewhere in there, he looks at everything that had built up in Israel over the years. Over the many different kings in Israel, they had erected different idols, different gods, and now there existed this clutter and clamor all over the nation that were monuments to other gods, to Baal and to Asherah and to anybody else that they may have worshipped, to the golden calves that we learned about last week. So much so that these images began to clutter the temple itself. Inside and outside the temple, the one place that was supposed to be the house of God and representative of God's presence with his children in Israel. Even that was cluttered with the presence of other idols. And so Josiah, like a madman, starts to clear away all of this clutter. And in the midst of doing that in the temple, they uncovered the book of the law. They uncovered the book of the law, which was the first five books of the Bible, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, written by Moses. This was the closest thing in this time in history that they had to the Bible. This was their holy text. It's our same holy text, and they found it. And I want you to look at Josiah's reaction to finding the Bible, to finding the book of the law tucked away in the temple. We're going to pick it up in 2 Kings 22, verse 11. When the king, that's Josiah, heard the words of the book of the law, he tore his clothes. So they found it, they brought it somewhere, and then they read it to him. He said, I want you to read it to me. So they read it to him. And when he heard it, he tore his clothes. And the king commanded a bunch of people. I'm not going to read all those names in verse 12 and embarrass myself. He commanded a bunch of people. And he said in 13, go inquire of the Lord for me and for the people and for all Judah concerning the words of this book that have been found. For great is the wrath of the Lord that is kindled against us because our fathers have not obeyed the words of this book to do according to all that is written concerning us. So in the midst of this cleanup, somebody finds the book of the law dusty and covered up with other things in the temple. They get it. News travels back to Josiah that they found it. He says, bring it to me and read it to me. And as they read the book of the law to him, he tore his clothes, which is a symbol of anguish. We're going to get to what that means a little bit later, but it's a sign of anguish. It's a sign of repentance. It's a sign of pain. He tears his clothes and he laments at what their fathers did. He said that the wrath of the Lord is kindled against us because of the sins of our fathers. He's acknowledging that over the decades, over the generations, the men and the women who had leadership in the country, who were saddled with spiritual leadership, led them off course. And now they're so far off course that he weeps at the reality of where they are. I picture it like this. I picture the book of the law, the Bible, God's word that Josiah read that day. As he's looking at it as the king, I picture it's a map of the ocean. And Josiah is supposed to be anchored over here, and they have drifted so far away that the faith of the nation is not even recognizable to David and to Abraham and to Moses. And he realizes in that moment that they've drifted so far off course, carried by the current of culture, by the shifting winds of preference and of intellect and of education and of convenience. They drifted away from who they were supposed to be and where they were supposed to be. And in the face of the law, in the face of God's word, he realizes, my goodness, we are so far from who we should be. Our fathers allowed us to drift, and God is rightly angry with us for the type of faith that we perpetuate. And it makes me realize, as I read that, that if we want to hand our children a solid faith, it must be anchored in Scripture. If we want to hand our children a solid faith, it must be anchored in Scripture. And so that's applicable to parents, it's applicable to those who lead young people, but it's applicable for us as we age, as we think about the next generation of grace. One of the things I got to see when I got here is we just had a group of girls graduate from high school, and they are all part of grace, and they're all, well, they went off to colleges, and now they're back home because, you know, COVID is a thing. But they went off for a minute together in faith, and then, and I've seen a picture of them as little girls playing soccer together at events at grace. And then yesterday was my little girl's first soccer game. And it was super fun. Everyone was terrible at it. But there's four kids on the team, including Lily, who go to Grace. And we got to take a picture with all of them yesterday. And that's the next generation of kids that's going to move through this place. And for those of us that care about God's church and care about his kingdom and care about the generations moving through this place, not just the children, but the parents of those young children and those of you moving into empty nests and people who have been through that before, each generation that follows, if we want to, if we care about handing the generations that will follow us a solid faith, it must be anchored in Scripture. And this seems like an obvious point. And I'm sure that all of you and all of you would agree with me. Sure, yeah, it must be anchored in Scripture. But do we practically do this? I'm not trying to poke too hard here. But how many of our ideas about the things going on in our culture are really us following the dictates of culture and the currents of change and the currents of intellect and the currents of education and not about anchoring ourselves in Scripture? How many of our attitudes towards homosexuality have to do with what the prevailing thought in our culture is and not what the prevailing teaching in our Scripture is? How many of our thoughts about politics have to do with the prevailing winds of culture and not anchored in Scripture? How much of the morality that we would pass on to our kids, how we discipline and what we tell them is right and wrong, is anchored in how we feel about things, is anchored in and shifted by what culture tells us should be important to us and not what Scripture tells us should be important to us. How many of us, me included, are guilty of looking at the way that culture shifts, of feeling that shift beneath our feet, and then beginning to try to bend this around what our community is telling us, rather than remaining anchored in God's Word. If we want to hand our children a faith that matters, it must be anchored in God's Word. And how can we anchor our faith in God's word if we are not students of it? Listen, I try the best I can to teach the Bible every week. It's my deep conviction that that's my responsibility, to teach you God's word, to enliven it, to make it so that you want to go home and read it on your own. But I will tell you this readily. If I'm the only Bible you're getting every week, it's going to be a shallow faith. If this is it, and then you just go from here, and you don't encounter God's word again, and we're not getting up and we're not reading it, we're not pouring over it, we're not learning it for ourselves, and we're not going back and going, what did he preach? Does that even make sense? If we're not doing that and this is all you're getting of Bible, of God's word, that's not enough. That's a paltry diet. We want to hand our children a faith that matters. It's got to be anchored in God's word. When I anchor our faith in God's Word, we have to be loving students of God's Word. But I thought that this was also interesting about Josiah. As I was studying him and I was looking at his life, some of the pieces weren't coming together all the way for me. So I flipped over to the Chronicles account of him. So if you want to flip to 2 Chronicles 34, you can. Really quickly, this is a good place for an aside. If you care about things like this, this is just kind of, here, Steve, I'm going to step this way, so get ready to move the camera. This is just an aside, okay? All right, good. Kings and Chronicles share the same stories. Kings shares the same block of time as Chronicles does. And so you may wonder, why did the Bible include two editions of the same stories with the same characters? Well, here's why. Kings was written during a time of slavery. The conclusion of both countries is that they were carried off to Assyria and Babylon as slaves. And there are generations of Hebrews being born into slavery, and their dads and their granddads are telling them, hey, you're the chosen people of God the Father, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. You are his chosen people. He has a special plan for you. He has land promised to you. And they're looking around going, you sure? Because I'm a slave right now. Really, it feels like that God's kind of impotent. There's a generation of people angry at God for not keeping his promises. And so Kings is written to break the hearts of a hard-hearted people and help them see it is your father's fault that you're here in the first place. It's a book of conviction. Chronicles was written to what's called the post-exilic community. Kings was written to the exilic community, the ones in slavery, but eventually they all wandered back. So if that's interesting to you, there's that. All right, I'm going to jump back into the sermon proper. So in Chronicles chapter 34, we have the account of Josiah. And I want to highlight two verses here for you. The first one is verse 3. It says this, and I thought it was interesting. Okay. If you're tracking along, he's 16 years old. For some reason at 16, he decides that he is going to pursue the religion of his father, David. That's when his heart is turned. That's when God captures his heart. And that's when he begins to pursue that faith. Four years after the internal changes begin, he begins to purge the nation of all the idols that are there. And then this happens in verse 8. Now in the 18th year of his reign, so this is now, he's 26, this is 10 years after. When he had cleansed the land and the house, he sent. Okay. I stopped there at he sent because that's where we pick up the story in Kings. The rest of that is when in his 18th year, he sent those people to the temple. They cleared out the temple. They uncovered the book of the law. And then we pick up the story in Kings. But what's so interesting to me is this. When he was 16 years old, his heart was turned towards the Lord. He began clearly to work on himself and his own understanding. As a result of his own understanding, he began to clear out the idols that existed. As a result of clearing out the idols that existed, he uncovered the word of the Lord. Do you understand? It was 10 years between a heart conviction and a deep life-changing encounter with the Lord. It was 10 years between his discovery of faith and a place where he went, oh my gosh, and tore his clothes and repented and realized what he had been doing. He waited 10 years on the voice of the Lord. Some of us get frustrated and spiritually discouraged if we have to wait one week and we don't feel the voice of the Lord. Some of us say, you know what? I'm going to do quiet times now. That's going to be a thing. I heard what Nate just said about being dedicated to Scripture. I should really do that. One of these days, I promise you I'm going to do this. I'm going to preach a sermon, and I'm going to come up here, and I'm going to say, good morning, Grace. My name is Nate. I'm the pastor. You should read your Bibles more. Let's pray. And that's going to be enough. That's going to be enough where all of us are going to go home and be like, yeah, that's actually a fair point. And so maybe you've decided to do that. And you go home. It's day one. You get up. You make your coffee. You sit down. You read it. Your wife says, what did you learn? You're like, stuff. Something. Josiah seems okay. All right, and the next day, what'd you learn? The next day, what'd you learn? I don't know, reading the Bible seems silly. We can't wait on the Lord three days. Josiah waited on him 10 years with all these obstacles in the way. I think another thing we can learn from the life of Josiah is to find God, remove the obstacles. To find God, move towards him. Some of us just sit passively waiting, God, why won't you speak to me? Why won't you talk to me? Why don't I seem to feel your presence and hear your voice like so-and-so does? Maybe it's because of all the junk that we have in our life, all the idols that have accumulated all over the country and even in the very temple that are covering up the book of the law. Maybe, just maybe, we should take some steps towards God. And this isn't how it works for everybody. Sometimes we take a step towards God and he comes in and he meets us right where we are. I've heard of miraculous conversions of somebody who was an alcoholic on Friday and on Saturday they weren't because they met Jesus. And that's amazing. But that's not everybody's story. Sometimes it's 10 years of pursuit before we finally go, oh, hang in there. Persevere. Pursue the Father. This is even true in the New Testament. Jesus tells the story of the prodigal son, and it's this miraculous story of the sinning son being met by the saving Father. But it wasn't until he started moving towards the Father that the Father met him. While he was still a long way off, the Father went to meet him, but when he was in that foreign country, he began to move towards the Father. If we want to pursue God, move towards him, remove idols, instead of passively wondering why we can't hear from him. I think it's worth it. But then we see, if we look back to 2 Kings chapter 23, we see the conclusion of the story of Josiah. And this is the thing that I'm most excited about. If you look at 2 Kings 23, after being convicted, after removing the idols, after finding the book of the law, and now after tearing his clothes and being fearful of the wrath of God because of the sins of the father, because of the shifting faith that they were handed, he goes on a rampage in chapter 23. It's a detailed chronicle of just everything that he removes from the country. Thing after thing after thing after thing, clutter after clutter after clutter. He strips it all down until all that's left are the things of God. And then he caps it off this way. And I think it's incredibly appropriate. I had to read this story three different times before I saw the magnitude of why it finishes here, but I think it's such a huge deal. He cleanses all of these things, and then he reinst of the moving towards, after all of the conviction, he reinstituted Passover. And I think that this is so important. The Passover hadn't been celebrated like this since the time of the judges. The kings had mucked it up so badly that this was an unrecognizable ceremony for them. But you might remember if you were here last fall, we looked at the festivals of the Hebrew people and the one that points to Jesus more than any other festival is the Passover. It's a reminder of the 10th plague in Egypt when God sent the angel of death over the nation of Egypt and he said, unless you have the blood of a spotless lamb over your doorpost, then I'm gonna take the life of your firstborn son. And in that plague, God, through the blood of the lamb, he protected his children. He took them away from slavery into freedom because of the blood of the lamb. And the whole thing is a picture of salvation. They didn't realize it, but they thought they were looking back on a time that they were saved. And Passover, every time they celebrated it, was really looking forward to a coming Messiah. You understand that? And so how he kept off his repentance is to focus on Christ. That is why I think that Josiah is a picture of repentance. We hear this word a lot in church, to repent of sin and what that means. And I talked about it before, so I won't belabor it today. But if you ever need to know what repentance actually looks like, because repentance is to be moving in one direction, stop what you're doing and move in the opposite direction. So they're moving towards deeper idolatry. He stops and he doesn't just say, we're not gonna worship those idols anymore, but he knocks away all the clutter as he pursues God and he finishes his repentance. He stops, and he doesn't just say, we're not going to worship those idols anymore, but he knocks away all the clutter as he pursues God, and he finishes his repentance. He stops his repentance. His repentance lands in a place where he's focused on Jesus. You see? This is proper repentance. Sometimes we stop short, and we forget where our focus belongs. Last week we looked at Jehu. We talked about how Jehu started all the cleansing process, but he didn't go the full measure. He wasn't the picture of repentance. Josiah is a picture of repentance, and he stops all of that by finishing, by reinstituting a ceremony that focused his eyes on Christ. Incidentally, all the clutter and all the movement and all the stuff that we need to do to find God works by focusing our eyes on Christ anyways. I was reminded as I thought about this and what proper repentance really is of Hebrews 12, 1 and 2, one of my favorite passages in the Bible. Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us throw off the sin and the weight that so easily entangles and run the race that is set before us. And this is what Josiah did. He's surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses, all the kings that came before him, all the people of Israel, all of heaven looking down on his reign saying, what will you do? And he began to throw off the sin and the weight that so easily entangled all the idols that would obedient to verse 2 in that chapter, which is this. How? How do we do this? By focusing our eyes on Christ, the founder and perfecter of our faith. We can't throw off those idols ourselves. We can't do a good enough job of that on our own. We can't live perfectly enough to satisfy God, but Christ has already done that for us. So the proper end of repentance is to say, God, I'm giving you everything here, but my eyes are focused on Jesus. Josiah took the repentance. He took the obedience of the people. He focused them back on the Father, and he capped it off with Passover and focusing their eyes on Christ, which is why we continue. That's our version of Easter. When we celebrate Easter, what are we doing? We're looking back on the sacrifice that saved us, and we are anticipating a future with that Jesus. Josiah's life, 2 Kings chapter 22 and 23 and 2 Chronicles chapter 34, are a living, breathing picture of what happens in Hebrews 12, 1 and 2, of throwing off the sin and the weight that so easily entangles and running the race that is set before us by focusing our eyes on Christ, the founder and perfecter of our faith. That's who King Josiah was. That's an example we're following. And I hope that we will learn from him this morning and carry forward just some of those as we go through our weeks this week. Let me pray for us. Father, we love you. We are grateful for you. God, we are grateful for your conviction when it is both gentle and when it's more forceful. Father, we are grateful for your word. Make grace students of it. Give us a heart for it. Help us to love it. Give us a deeper understanding of it than we've ever had. Jesus, focus our eyes on you. Let us trust in you to remove the obstacles. Let us trust in you to draw us near the Father. Make us a church that has our eyes focused on you. God, thank you for your servant, Josiah, and the examples that we learn from him. I pray that in little ways this week, you would make us all a little bit more like him and help us focus a little bit more on you. It's in your son's name we pray. Amen. All right. Thank you guys for coming in person this week. Thank you for watching online this week. We will see you in whatever capacity next week. Have a great week.

My name is Kyle Tolbert. I am the student pastor here at Grace. I am not the head pastor, so if this is your first time and you leave here and you're like, that guy does not know what he's talking about, I promise Nate will be back next week. He heard the student pastor was preaching and he headed right down to Florida, which is a joke. He actually, one of his good friends had his father pass away, so we definitely want to keep Nate in our prayers as well as keeping his friend and their family. Fun story about that song, when I was in high school, that song was popular. And by popular, I mean amongst like Christian folks because they just played it on the Christian radio station that we listened to all the time. And so me and one of my buddies, my best friend Brandon, we would ride around in the car. And when you don't have girlfriends, you sing two-part songs with your bros. And so he's got a great voice. He's kind of got a rocky feel to his voice. And so he obviously did the guy part. And then because of my just like immense, incredible range, I do the girl part, you know, the real high stuff. And so I came in and I was very excited to let Steve know that because he was like, this is the song we're going to do for this week for the hero. And I was like, dude, what if we do it, and I sang it for him, and I was like, what if we did it, and it's just me singing? And so fast forward a couple weeks, and it is now right now. And so apparently he decided that that was not the move, because clearly that was not me singing, because it sounded just, it was good, but I mean it was a little off. But it's awesome to be here this morning. We're talking about Obscure Heroes, the series basically that we've been doing for the entire summer of just talking about different people, different people and different stories within the Bible that maybe don't get told all the time, maybe that people don't quite know quite so well. And so this morning I am going to be talking about Josiah, which is a great name, so very excited to be doing so. But before I jump into really talking about Josiah, I want to jump into a little bit of history behind the Israel that Josiah was coming into. Josiah was a king in Israel, and so before we talk about him, we need to know what's going on behind the scenes, because who doesn't love history before I tell you history? And so basically, Israel was formulated by somebody who is not an obscure hero in the Bible is Moses. So God goes, tells Moses, hey, go get my people, tell Pharaoh to let my people go. We've seen the movie. Maybe we've even heard or read the story. But Moses goes, he brings Israel out of the Israelites, he brings his people out of slavery in Egypt and is basically walking them to what is referred to as the promised land, aka where Israel will establish roots. As they're going through this process and as they're in their camps and they're doing these things, they're basically building a nation. God is bringing them laws and he's bringing them rules. We know the Ten Commandments. We know these commandments. We've heard these things. God is giving these people the list of rules and laws of how this is how I want your society to function. This is what it'll look like. This is how you will live. These are the things that you need to value. These are the laws and the rules that you need to follow. And so as they go into this nation, there's something called a covenant that God makes with his people. And he says, you are my people. I've brought you here. I will continue to provide for you. I love you. I will provide for you. I will bring rain for your crops. I will protect you against other nations. I will do all of these things. But you have to uphold your end of the bargain. You have to continue to serve, to love, to worship me and me alone. There should not be other gods. There should not be other idols among you that you are worshiping or that you are following. In the same way, you should be living through these rules. They called it the book of the law. It's basically what we know and what we see as just like the Bible up to this point is what they had and what they walked through. And so he's saying, you need to follow these rules. You need to follow these laws. If you can't do these things, then I will send you into exile. There will be peace. I'll bring you peace. I'll do all this stuff. But if you can't uphold your end, then there will be consequences. And so there's a lot of listed there, the good and the bad, a lot of the covenant you can find in Leviticus 26. And so I'm just going to read all of it. Just kidding. But I am going to read Leviticus 26, 17, because I think it sets us up well for where we're going. It says, I will set my face against you so that you will be defeated by your enemies. Those who hate you will rule over you, and you will flee even when no one is pursuing you. Basically, this is just part of it. There's plenty more things. There's a lot of turmoil and death and disease that will come if they don't uphold this covenant. But this is where it talks about that he is basically going to send these people into exile. I think we know what exile is. It's basically sending people to live amongst people that are not theirs. And normally, just away from their home, away from their families, and away from the people who are like them. They're basically trying to live wherever they can, and in this time, normally what it means to be in exile is you're oftentimes slave labor, or you're just trying to find whatever you can to survive. And so it's, let's just say it's not good. And so now this, so we know that, now we know that as Josiah is coming into rule, he's coming into rule in Jerusalem, there are parts of Israel that have already been overcome and overtaken by other empires. And so this has already been going on. And so Josiah comes into rule in Jerusalem. And I think the way to intro Josiah is by the way that it intros him in scripture. And so that's what I want to do. We're going to be reading out of 2 Kings 22. And the reason why I want to do it, as opposed to just telling you who he was, is because I think it establishes well who he is. It establishes that he was the king. And it also establishes that my man was the king. And what I mean by that is this dude was the absolute man. Very clearly, you read three, it's like he's the guy who when he walks in, everyone goes, this guy, this guy's here, and you know it's going to be a great night because our boy Josiah is in the house. And so that's where we're going to start. We're going to start off with 2 Kings 1 and then 3. Number two is a lot of names. No need to read a lot of names because we're talking about Josiah this morning. Josiah was eight years old when he became king and he reigned in Jerusalem for 31 years. So off the bat, it's like, wait, what? He was eight? He was eight years old? Yes, he was eight years old when he became king and it said he reigned for 31 years. So clearly he was doing something right. I know sometimes people rule a long time because they're bad or whatever, but hey, that's why we have verse 3, because we realize that he was not bad. And so verse 3, to continue, said, And before we keep going, and this isn't my main point, or I guess it kind of is, but how incredible and what an incredible thing to be described as. That the description of Josiah is one, that he was king when he was eight, so this guy's been the king forever, figuratively and literally, but that he was seen as right in the eyes of the Lord, that he never wavered, he never turned to the left or to the right, but he did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, and he followed in the footsteps of David, who is considered the greatest king of Israel. That's a good intro. That's good stuff. That's awesome. The first record after that, as it continues, of the first thing that the Bible talks about build up the temple. Also, go buy some wood to make it look nice. Essentially, as you guys have probably picked up, even this nation is in a bad spot. There's not people that are really following, worshiping God. And so, therefore, the temple is kind of run down. And so he's like, I feel like this is important. I feel like we need to build this up. I feel like this needs to be something that we're paying attention to. And so they go. They go. They give the money. They build up the temple. They make it look nice. And in the midst of that, the high priest at the time goes to Josiah's secretary and, and, and says, hey, I found the, the book of the law. And as we've already discussed, the book of the law is basically the book of rules of, of how they were meant to live, of the way that society runs, of, and it's, it's scripture. It's who God is. It's what God is. It's what God has done. And then it's also outlines the covenant that they have to follow. And so, um, he's like, oh, okay. So he reads some of it to the secretary, and the secretary goes, this is important. Like, this is something that I need to bring to Josiah. And so robes after you read things. I don't often, nor do I own robes. So maybe if I did, I would do it more, but I don't know. But basically, in this time, in biblical times, the reason why people would be overwhelmed with sorrow and torment, and they would tear their robes. And it was basically this look of, it was either sorrow or guilt or whatever it was. And basically what had happened is he was overcome with grief and guilt of, I have been living in this nation, and I've been ruling these people, and I had no idea that I was doing it so wrong. I had no idea that this is how I should have been leading, that I should have been leading my people this entire time to follow this book and to get rid of all of these idols and these gods that are trying to overtake this area and dealing with these false prophets who are basically talking about, hey, this is all okay. This is all good. People who are saying they're hearing from God and they're really just lying. All of these things were happening in his empire and in his country. And he realized, I'm at the forefront of this. I am the king who's allowing this to happen. And therefore he tore his robes because he was so overwhelmed. Because what he finally realized is, oh my gosh, look at this God. This God is so much better and so much greater than anything I ever knew or realized. How could we not be living our lives for them? And so he reacts. He said, so his next move, he tells Shaphan and he tells some of his other men, he said, go and inquire of the Lord for me and for the people of all Judah about what is written in this book that has been found. Great is the Lord's anger that burns against us because those who have gone before us have not obeyed the word of this book. They have not acted in accordance with all that is written there concerning us. So he's like, I just read the covenant, and I know for a fact that what God said not to do, we're doing. I know for a fact that it's because of our fathers, the people who came before us, that they have built into this nation, and because down the line, people cared less and less about God to the point that it's a big deal for them to find the word of God. To the point that this book that should have been at the helm of what they did in this society is something that is a big deal that they found. It's like, oh wait, what is this? And so he's like, I need you to go and talk to our forefront prophetess and ask her what she has to say. So at this time, prophets and prophetesses, they're not people who, they're not preachers, they're not pastors, they're literally people who have a direct line and a direct contact with God, and they're able to tell the people what God has to say. And so they go and they talk to her. We go verses 15 through verse 20. This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says concerning the words that you have 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, then 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 this place. So they took this answer back to the king. I imagine this has to be a hard thing, right? It's got to be a hard thing to hear. In one hand, you're happy to hear, oh, wow, so because of my repentance and because of my tearing my clothes and realizing that the rest of my life was spent worshiping and serving this God, because of that, I get to die in peace, but that doesn't mean that the rest of my people do. I feel like there has to be a serious confliction inside of him of, I'm so happy that I get this, but at the same time, it sounds like, regardless of what I do and regardless of what I bring for these people, it's not going to matter. They're still going to experience this hurt, this exile, and this pain. I'm sure he's hit with a crossroads, but instead, we get his response. It starts in 23. The entire 23 basically just outlines his immediate response and then what he does for the remainder of his rule. So I'm going to read the first three verses. It says, Then all the people pled of God to my people. I have to let them know who this God is and this God that they should be loving and they should be serving because of how great and how vast he is. And this God who's telling us not to do all of these things, yet we're doing them. And the rest of his time, everything else in this story is basically him saying and doing all of the things that it asks him to do in this covenant and within this relationship. He goes and he starts burning up all of the other gods and he defiles all of these things that build up those gods and lift them up. As it talks about, he brings the covenant and has everyone commit to that covenant. And so for the rest of his life, his goal and his mission is to make sure that Israel knows this God and they have the ability to worship him. And that's a cool story, right? Let's get a thumbs up for that story. Like, it's great. That's awesome. That's awesome to hear. But when I started to think about it and when I started to read it and look more in depth, I was like, wait, I think not only was it really cool that he did this for God, I think that Josiah realized something that sometimes we forget or sometimes it's very hard to forget in this life. And it reminds me of this guy in my AP calculus class. I don't know if you know AP, advanced placement. It's just like, it's basically just hard classes. AP stands for hard classes, essentially. I know the letters don't match up, but trust me, I'm right. So we had AP calculus, and I had it with a bunch of my buddies because there was only one class offered for AP calculus at the time. And so a lot of my friends were in the class, and it was tough. I mean, I love math, and I worked hard, and so I was really growing from it and whatnot. But like, I'm not going to lie, it was tough. It was the hardest math that I had done. And so because of that, I'm like having to really like work at it. I'm working hard on homeworks. I'm like staying after class sometimes. I'm doing a lot of studying, all this stuff. One of my buddies was kind of in the same boat as me of, like, having always been good at math. He had never really had to try much in math, and that was kind of the way that he went about his AP calculus, you know? Like, we'll just say he was more concerned with getting a level 50 in Halo 3 than he was about getting a grade 100 in AP calculus, which is a funny joke for maybe two people in here, but those two people loved it. So, but the deal was he just didn't put the time and he didn't put the effort into preparing and getting ready for that first test. So here comes that first test. We take it. He gets the grade back, and my man got closer to a 50 on that test that he did in Halo. And what I mean is he got a 47 on the test. And so, which is bad. Like, 47 is bad out of 100. I think we can all agree. He had failed a test. And the thing is, he's a smart dude, especially in math. He had never come close to failing a test. So he's freaking out, you know? Like, he's like, what do I do? I don't know what to do. And so we so we're like, well, why don't you just like stay after, like when we head to lunch, you stay after for a couple minutes, just ask if you can take a retest. It's a first test, maybe she'll let you. And so he does, he stays after, we head on to lunch. And so he shows up a few minutes later, comes to the lunch table, and you know, we're like, I mean, we're good. Like, we're like, we're supportive guys or whatever. So we're calling him 47 the whole time at lunch. But we're like, so 47, like, did, what did she say? You know, like, is she going to let you take a retest or not? And he's like, no, she said no. And so everyone's like, oh, she's the worst. Like, you know, whatever. I can't believe she's like, you take a retest. Which like none of us really thought or believed because it was like early enough on syllabus day that she read that we couldn't take a retest where we weren't all not paying attention. So we knew it was happening, but sometimes you got to stand up for a homie. So she was the worst at that moment. And then he goes, but I asked if I could stay after a few days this week and next week to learn the stuff. And so once again, being supportive or whatever, we're just making fun of them. Like, dude, I don't think you get it. Like, you failed the test. It doesn't matter anymore. Like, you don't understand it. And so it was really funny until we get to the other fun thing about AP classes is that you take an AP test at the end of the year. And this test is basically just, it's a list of all, a bunch of the stuff that you worked on. It's very hard. It's even harder than the class, which is just, I was so thankful for. You always just say so thankful of like, this was the hardest thing I've ever done. Now let's take a test that's way harder than that. But that's what it was. And so we get into it. And the deal with AP tests is if you get a good enough grade, you don't have to take the class in college. And so that's the goal, you know. And so we take this test. Well, wouldn't you know that a lot of the questions had to do with that first test, the stuff that we had learned in that first section. So we get our AP tests back, and he passed it. And he's thrilled, and he's so excited. And I was like, what a smart guy. You know, like a guy who I originally called 47 and thought was quite a dummy actually was a really smart dude because what he realized is right now this is awful. I just failed a test. This is really bad for me right now. But there is something that is far more important and a far bigger deal on down the line that I know that I need and I'm going to be prepared for. I think that that is what Josiah realized for his people. I think when he read the book of the law, he truly realized and he truly understood his purpose, his life, and the life of the people on the planet. And I think what he realized is that this word of God is meaningful. It's real. It's a huge deal that it had changed his entire life. It had changed the way he looked. It had changed the way he thought. It had changed the way he acted. And it had changed his perspective on his life and the people's lives. You like how I backtracked because I forgot to say that? Me too. But it did. It changed his life, and it changed his entire perspective. And I think that what happened is the same thing that happened to my buddy 47 back in high school. I think what he realized is there's no way that I can save these people from what's to come here. Regardless of what I do, regardless of what I do to bring these people, regardless of how many people I have commit to this covenant and live out this covenant life, they're still going to deal with this exile. But what I think he understood and what I think he saw for the first time when he was hit with the word of God is that spiritual exile was far more devastating than physical exile. I think what he realized is, yes, I can't save these people on this earth. Yes, I can't save my people from the death, from the destruction, from the exile that's to come, but I will not be the person that allows them to be exiled for eternity. That there is an eternal home, there is an eternal resting place, that is the goal. Yes, I'm going to do everything I can to protect these people here, but my main and my ultimate goal is to make sure that these people are pushing ever more, ever more onto this this road heading to eternal life with God. Because what he realized is the ultimate prize is not on this life and not what you get to do in Israel or what we get to do here in Raleigh. It's what we get to experience when we finally get to meet God face to face for the first time in a perfect eternity. He said, is going to be built around the promise of I am going to make sure you know who this God is and you know that regardless of what happens to your home right here, that you have a true and an ultimate home in heaven. Turns out, my man was super right. They end up being exiled. Israel's able to come back in the future and is built up again, and yet still people talk about that they feel like wanderers, that they feel like sojourners, that even in their own home, the home that was built for them by God and given to them by God, they still didn't feel fully at home, like there was something missing. Jesus came, and he gave the perfect explanation for why. Jesus comes, and he describes why why and he tells you how you can figure it out. And so he comes and he basically, he looks at him, he says, Wanderers, this is not your home. You don't feel fully at home because you're not home. He says, you are citizens of heaven. Your heart belongs to heaven. Your heart belongs to God in eternity. You're here now, but your heart belongs to God in eternity. And so I am building a road. I'm making a path for you to go to your true home. Jesus comes. He lives a life of homelessness. He literally embodies a sojourner. He embodies a wanderer. Someone who walks from place to place is constantly put down. Most people hate him. A lot of people are following him as well. Basically embodying the fact that I am here to tell you that this is not your home. I'm here to tell you that this place is temporary and you should look forward to forever. That I have a Father who created you and His sole mission is to bring you to Him and all it takes is for you to come to Me. I've provided the path by dying for you, by killing the sin that has created this world that is imperfect and I want you to come and be a part of it with me. And my man Josiah, he knew it all along. His whole perspective, his whole mindset, everything that he did was completely changed when he was hit with the word of God because he understood for the first time, this isn't for me. This place, I'm going to do what I can here, but I've got a promise of eternity. And he realized that for his people. He said, I want these people to know that it is going to get bad, and it is going to get rough, and there are going to be bad things that happen and hard things that happen, but I promise you that this is not it, that there is far more than this. And so what did he do? He read this book to everyone. He wanted to make sure everyone could hear it and had access to it. And then he spent his entire life dedicated and devoted to these people getting to know God and to experience God. And so my question is when we're hit with the Word of God, when we spend time in the Word of God, when we're going to church and listening to sermons, when we're reading for ourselves, when we're listening to things, when we're doing devotions, when we're doing these things, are we allowing the gospel? Are we allowing the word of God? Is the word of God impacting our life? Is the word of God impacting my life? I put my because I think we should think about it in a very specific to me answer. I know a couple months ago, we kind of talked a little bit about this. We talked about reading Scripture. And Nate preached. He posted a question on Facebook. He said, just looking for some genuine answers, if anyone's willing, I just want to know how many of you feel like you get an adequate amount of time in the day or in a week spent in Scripture, getting to just spend time diving into Scripture and focusing on it. And he said he got a few responses that were kind of like, well, I just do devotion books, or I just listen to the Bible. I don't read it, I listen to it, or I just listen to sermons or whatever. And then all of that to say that the question at the end said, does that count? And his point, the point of that message and the point of him talking about that was to say, if you're asking if it counts, then you're probably not doing it in the right way. That if you're trying to do it as something as a check box of, I know I should read my Bible, so I'm just going to get through some of it. If you're doing it that way, then you're probably off. But what I will amend is that there is kind of a way to tell if it counts, and that is, is the Word of God impacting your life? It changed everything about Josiah. Has it changed everything about you? Or is it consistently changing you? Is your attitude, is your mindset, is your heart, and are your actions being impacted by this word of God? And so the first question, how do I see God? Are you consistently growing in who you see God and the way that you see God working in your life? One thing that my campus pastor at UGA used to say a lot is, are you worship by that, is are we worshiping God because of the things that he's provided for us? Because this is a church with a lot of awesome families, with great friends, with great jobs, and all of these incredible things. Are we worshiping God? Do we see God as someone who gives us those things and therefore we worship him? Or are we worshiping him because he's incredible and he's good? And yes, we're thankful for these things, but mostly we're thankful for him, for who he is, for his creation of us, for his son. Why is it different? Because when you worship someone for what they give you, then that builds a contingency plan. It means I'm only going to worship you while these things are going well. When you worship the benefactor, when you worship the person for who he is, then you can be Israel, then you can be exiled from your nation, you can be split from your family, you can see people die, or you can lose people in your lives, and you still love God. We just sang about, we just sang It Is Well. It Is Well was written after a man lost his wife and his kid. He wrote, It Is Well With my soul. He wrote those beautiful words amidst the biggest tragedy that he's ever experienced and that any of us could even imagine experiencing. That's someone who knows God. That's someone who has been impacted by the word of God enough to know that God is good regardless of what's going on in this life. The next question kind of stems from that is how do I view my life? Do you feel like you're wanderers or like you're sojourners on this earth? Like I love my life, I love my family, I love the people that are in my life, but man I cannot wait for heaven because I just can't wait to be with God. I know that it's very easy. A lot of us would say, obviously, yes, we want to go to heaven over going to hell, but how many of us are ready to go to heaven and leaving this earth? Oftentimes, I think we just think about it's the next place we'll be with our family, but guys, there's so much more important thing. Like when we realize who God is, what we realize is that heaven isn't just the next place that you'll be. It's the most perfect and incredible place that you'll be because you're finally with this God who created you and you no longer have anything that is pulling you away from him. You just get to experience the greatest joy that you could ever fathom. Pastor named John Piper, he writes good books and he's insane to listen to. Check him out. He said, There's a lot of big claims in that. And I'm not standing up here saying everyone needs to feel this way or you're not going to heaven. But what I am saying is that when we spend time in the word and when we allow the word to truly change our hearts and impact our hearts the way that I believe Josiah did, then it will change our hearts to move us to a place that we just love God and we love Jesus and we're so ready to see him and to meet him face to face. We're so tired of this earth and the things that are weighing us down and the things that are hurting us and the things that are causing us depression. We just want this joy of getting to know what this is. Are we ready for heaven because we're ready for perfection or are we ready for heaven because we're ready to see the face of God, and we're ready to meet Jesus? And the final question is, how do I live my life? This is a big step, and this is the scariest step. The consequences are far bigger for this one than for the other two, because those are personal. But you look, you see the way that Josiah reacted. You hear the words from the prophetess basically saying, you're good. You've figured it out. You've given your life to God and because of that, he's going to spare you from this exile and he's going to bring you to him. Was his reaction, all right, great, I'm good. Now I'm just going to keep leading and we'll just do our thing. No. His reaction was, if I'm good and I get to have this relationship and I get to go home where I get to meet my maker, then I want everyone else to have this ability too as well. I want everyone to understand that it gets better than this. I want everyone to understand that this is a God who wants to meet them and wants to bring them to his home. I want them to understand that regardless of how good or how bad this life is, your heart rests in heaven, and therefore, you've got something to look forward to that is better than any day that you'll spend on earth. Is that our hearts for people? Because I think if we believe that we are wanderers on this earth, I think if we believe that this earth is not our home and our home is in heaven, then we start to look and care a lot less about the consequences that come from bringing the gospel and from living out a Christian life in the open, in public, around the people that you interact with. I think we worry a lot less about those consequences and worry a lot more about the eternal consequences of what it means if I know that I have this gift and I have this salvation and I have this overwhelming joy that I'm holding back from you and I'm not bringing you, then I'm basically looking at you and saying, I know that this isn't it. I know that there's this perfect home that is greater than anything you could imagine and this God who created and loved you with every single aspect of his being, but I'm not going to tell you about him because I'm a little bit nervous about how you'll feel about me. And I'm not saying this to say, oh, you're the worst if you don't do it, because it'd be saying, Kyle, you're the worst for not doing it. I understand that it's hard. I understand that it's difficult, but that's why it's so important to figure out the first two. It's why it's so important to figure out and to understand who God is and therefore understand who you are and the fact that your life, the reason why when you accepted Christ, you didn't immediately die and go to heaven is because you are here to bring people to heaven with you. And it doesn't have to be an entire nation of people. We're not Josiah. It doesn't even have to be standing up on stage and preaching. I know not everyone has this gift. I know some people are nudging right next to you and saying, who does this guy? But when you start thinking about the world, when you start thinking about the nation, it gets big and it gets hard. But when you start looking at people and when you say, Thomas, Rachel, I know these people. I know they don't know about this. They need to know. Because it's the biggest, it's the most important aspect of my life. And much more importantly, it should be the most important aspect of them. I want them to come and experience this joy that comes from Christ. And I want them to ultimately have the ability to experience the joy of that eternal life with this God who loves us and created us and has given us everything. Let's pray. God, thank you for who you are. God, thank you that regardless of our situation here on this imperfect world, God, that we always have you to look forward to. That one day we will be able to see you face to face and be overwhelmed with the joy of who you are and get to spend eternity with you without death and disease and heartache and heartbreak and exile. God, I can't wait for that day. God, I pray that as we read scripture, as we grow closer to you and learn more about you, God, that we continue to be overwhelmed by the magnitude of you, of your love, of your goodness, and of your mercy. And I pray that that leads us on to bringing people with us. That our whole goal, our whole mission is to go and make more disciples of you so we can have more people in our true home. We love you. Amen.

My name is Kyle Tolbert. I am the student pastor here at Grace. I am not the head pastor, so if this is your first time and you leave here and you're like, that guy does not know what he's talking about, I promise Nate will be back next week. He heard the student pastor was preaching and he headed right down to Florida, which is a joke. He actually, one of his good friends had his father pass away, so we definitely want to keep Nate in our prayers as well as keeping his friend and their family. Fun story about that song, when I was in high school, that song was popular. And by popular, I mean amongst like Christian folks because they just played it on the Christian radio station that we listened to all the time. And so me and one of my buddies, my best friend Brandon, we would ride around in the car. And when you don't have girlfriends, you sing two-part songs with your bros. And so he's got a great voice. He's kind of got a rocky feel to his voice. And so he obviously did the guy part. And then because of my just like immense, incredible range, I do the girl part, you know, the real high stuff. And so I came in and I was very excited to let Steve know that because he was like, this is the song we're going to do for this week for the hero. And I was like, dude, what if we do it, and I sang it for him, and I was like, what if we did it, and it's just me singing? And so fast forward a couple weeks, and it is now right now. And so apparently he decided that that was not the move, because clearly that was not me singing, because it sounded just, it was good, but I mean it was a little off. But it's awesome to be here this morning. We're talking about Obscure Heroes, the series basically that we've been doing for the entire summer of just talking about different people, different people and different stories within the Bible that maybe don't get told all the time, maybe that people don't quite know quite so well. And so this morning I am going to be talking about Josiah, which is a great name, so very excited to be doing so. But before I jump into really talking about Josiah, I want to jump into a little bit of history behind the Israel that Josiah was coming into. Josiah was a king in Israel, and so before we talk about him, we need to know what's going on behind the scenes, because who doesn't love history before I tell you history? And so basically, Israel was formulated by somebody who is not an obscure hero in the Bible is Moses. So God goes, tells Moses, hey, go get my people, tell Pharaoh to let my people go. We've seen the movie. Maybe we've even heard or read the story. But Moses goes, he brings Israel out of the Israelites, he brings his people out of slavery in Egypt and is basically walking them to what is referred to as the promised land, aka where Israel will establish roots. As they're going through this process and as they're in their camps and they're doing these things, they're basically building a nation. God is bringing them laws and he's bringing them rules. We know the Ten Commandments. We know these commandments. We've heard these things. God is giving these people the list of rules and laws of how this is how I want your society to function. This is what it'll look like. This is how you will live. These are the things that you need to value. These are the laws and the rules that you need to follow. And so as they go into this nation, there's something called a covenant that God makes with his people. And he says, you are my people. I've brought you here. I will continue to provide for you. I love you. I will provide for you. I will bring rain for your crops. I will protect you against other nations. I will do all of these things. But you have to uphold your end of the bargain. You have to continue to serve, to love, to worship me and me alone. There should not be other gods. There should not be other idols among you that you are worshiping or that you are following. In the same way, you should be living through these rules. They called it the book of the law. It's basically what we know and what we see as just like the Bible up to this point is what they had and what they walked through. And so he's saying, you need to follow these rules. You need to follow these laws. If you can't do these things, then I will send you into exile. There will be peace. I'll bring you peace. I'll do all this stuff. But if you can't uphold your end, then there will be consequences. And so there's a lot of listed there, the good and the bad, a lot of the covenant you can find in Leviticus 26. And so I'm just going to read all of it. Just kidding. But I am going to read Leviticus 26, 17, because I think it sets us up well for where we're going. It says, I will set my face against you so that you will be defeated by your enemies. Those who hate you will rule over you, and you will flee even when no one is pursuing you. Basically, this is just part of it. There's plenty more things. There's a lot of turmoil and death and disease that will come if they don't uphold this covenant. But this is where it talks about that he is basically going to send these people into exile. I think we know what exile is. It's basically sending people to live amongst people that are not theirs. And normally, just away from their home, away from their families, and away from the people who are like them. They're basically trying to live wherever they can, and in this time, normally what it means to be in exile is you're oftentimes slave labor, or you're just trying to find whatever you can to survive. And so it's, let's just say it's not good. And so now this, so we know that, now we know that as Josiah is coming into rule, he's coming into rule in Jerusalem, there are parts of Israel that have already been overcome and overtaken by other empires. And so this has already been going on. And so Josiah comes into rule in Jerusalem. And I think the way to intro Josiah is by the way that it intros him in scripture. And so that's what I want to do. We're going to be reading out of 2 Kings 22. And the reason why I want to do it, as opposed to just telling you who he was, is because I think it establishes well who he is. It establishes that he was the king. And it also establishes that my man was the king. And what I mean by that is this dude was the absolute man. Very clearly, you read three, it's like he's the guy who when he walks in, everyone goes, this guy, this guy's here, and you know it's going to be a great night because our boy Josiah is in the house. And so that's where we're going to start. We're going to start off with 2 Kings 1 and then 3. Number two is a lot of names. No need to read a lot of names because we're talking about Josiah this morning. Josiah was eight years old when he became king and he reigned in Jerusalem for 31 years. So off the bat, it's like, wait, what? He was eight? He was eight years old? Yes, he was eight years old when he became king and it said he reigned for 31 years. So clearly he was doing something right. I know sometimes people rule a long time because they're bad or whatever, but hey, that's why we have verse 3, because we realize that he was not bad. And so verse 3, to continue, said, And before we keep going, and this isn't my main point, or I guess it kind of is, but how incredible and what an incredible thing to be described as. That the description of Josiah is one, that he was king when he was eight, so this guy's been the king forever, figuratively and literally, but that he was seen as right in the eyes of the Lord, that he never wavered, he never turned to the left or to the right, but he did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, and he followed in the footsteps of David, who is considered the greatest king of Israel. That's a good intro. That's good stuff. That's awesome. The first record after that, as it continues, of the first thing that the Bible talks about build up the temple. Also, go buy some wood to make it look nice. Essentially, as you guys have probably picked up, even this nation is in a bad spot. There's not people that are really following, worshiping God. And so, therefore, the temple is kind of run down. And so he's like, I feel like this is important. I feel like we need to build this up. I feel like this needs to be something that we're paying attention to. And so they go. They go. They give the money. They build up the temple. They make it look nice. And in the midst of that, the high priest at the time goes to Josiah's secretary and, and, and says, hey, I found the, the book of the law. And as we've already discussed, the book of the law is basically the book of rules of, of how they were meant to live, of the way that society runs, of, and it's, it's scripture. It's who God is. It's what God is. It's what God has done. And then it's also outlines the covenant that they have to follow. And so, um, he's like, oh, okay. So he reads some of it to the secretary, and the secretary goes, this is important. Like, this is something that I need to bring to Josiah. And so robes after you read things. I don't often, nor do I own robes. So maybe if I did, I would do it more, but I don't know. But basically, in this time, in biblical times, the reason why people would be overwhelmed with sorrow and torment, and they would tear their robes. And it was basically this look of, it was either sorrow or guilt or whatever it was. And basically what had happened is he was overcome with grief and guilt of, I have been living in this nation, and I've been ruling these people, and I had no idea that I was doing it so wrong. I had no idea that this is how I should have been leading, that I should have been leading my people this entire time to follow this book and to get rid of all of these idols and these gods that are trying to overtake this area and dealing with these false prophets who are basically talking about, hey, this is all okay. This is all good. People who are saying they're hearing from God and they're really just lying. All of these things were happening in his empire and in his country. And he realized, I'm at the forefront of this. I am the king who's allowing this to happen. And therefore he tore his robes because he was so overwhelmed. Because what he finally realized is, oh my gosh, look at this God. This God is so much better and so much greater than anything I ever knew or realized. How could we not be living our lives for them? And so he reacts. He said, so his next move, he tells Shaphan and he tells some of his other men, he said, go and inquire of the Lord for me and for the people of all Judah about what is written in this book that has been found. Great is the Lord's anger that burns against us because those who have gone before us have not obeyed the word of this book. They have not acted in accordance with all that is written there concerning us. So he's like, I just read the covenant, and I know for a fact that what God said not to do, we're doing. I know for a fact that it's because of our fathers, the people who came before us, that they have built into this nation, and because down the line, people cared less and less about God to the point that it's a big deal for them to find the word of God. To the point that this book that should have been at the helm of what they did in this society is something that is a big deal that they found. It's like, oh wait, what is this? And so he's like, I need you to go and talk to our forefront prophetess and ask her what she has to say. So at this time, prophets and prophetesses, they're not people who, they're not preachers, they're not pastors, they're literally people who have a direct line and a direct contact with God, and they're able to tell the people what God has to say. And so they go and they talk to her. We go verses 15 through verse 20. This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says concerning the words that you have 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, then 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 this place. So they took this answer back to the king. I imagine this has to be a hard thing, right? It's got to be a hard thing to hear. In one hand, you're happy to hear, oh, wow, so because of my repentance and because of my tearing my clothes and realizing that the rest of my life was spent worshiping and serving this God, because of that, I get to die in peace, but that doesn't mean that the rest of my people do. I feel like there has to be a serious confliction inside of him of, I'm so happy that I get this, but at the same time, it sounds like, regardless of what I do and regardless of what I bring for these people, it's not going to matter. They're still going to experience this hurt, this exile, and this pain. I'm sure he's hit with a crossroads, but instead, we get his response. It starts in 23. The entire 23 basically just outlines his immediate response and then what he does for the remainder of his rule. So I'm going to read the first three verses. It says, Then all the people pled of God to my people. I have to let them know who this God is and this God that they should be loving and they should be serving because of how great and how vast he is. And this God who's telling us not to do all of these things, yet we're doing them. And the rest of his time, everything else in this story is basically him saying and doing all of the things that it asks him to do in this covenant and within this relationship. He goes and he starts burning up all of the other gods and he defiles all of these things that build up those gods and lift them up. As it talks about, he brings the covenant and has everyone commit to that covenant. And so for the rest of his life, his goal and his mission is to make sure that Israel knows this God and they have the ability to worship him. And that's a cool story, right? Let's get a thumbs up for that story. Like, it's great. That's awesome. That's awesome to hear. But when I started to think about it and when I started to read it and look more in depth, I was like, wait, I think not only was it really cool that he did this for God, I think that Josiah realized something that sometimes we forget or sometimes it's very hard to forget in this life. And it reminds me of this guy in my AP calculus class. I don't know if you know AP, advanced placement. It's just like, it's basically just hard classes. AP stands for hard classes, essentially. I know the letters don't match up, but trust me, I'm right. So we had AP calculus, and I had it with a bunch of my buddies because there was only one class offered for AP calculus at the time. And so a lot of my friends were in the class, and it was tough. I mean, I love math, and I worked hard, and so I was really growing from it and whatnot. But like, I'm not going to lie, it was tough. It was the hardest math that I had done. And so because of that, I'm like having to really like work at it. I'm working hard on homeworks. I'm like staying after class sometimes. I'm doing a lot of studying, all this stuff. One of my buddies was kind of in the same boat as me of, like, having always been good at math. He had never really had to try much in math, and that was kind of the way that he went about his AP calculus, you know? Like, we'll just say he was more concerned with getting a level 50 in Halo 3 than he was about getting a grade 100 in AP calculus, which is a funny joke for maybe two people in here, but those two people loved it. So, but the deal was he just didn't put the time and he didn't put the effort into preparing and getting ready for that first test. So here comes that first test. We take it. He gets the grade back, and my man got closer to a 50 on that test that he did in Halo. And what I mean is he got a 47 on the test. And so, which is bad. Like, 47 is bad out of 100. I think we can all agree. He had failed a test. And the thing is, he's a smart dude, especially in math. He had never come close to failing a test. So he's freaking out, you know? Like, he's like, what do I do? I don't know what to do. And so we so we're like, well, why don't you just like stay after, like when we head to lunch, you stay after for a couple minutes, just ask if you can take a retest. It's a first test, maybe she'll let you. And so he does, he stays after, we head on to lunch. And so he shows up a few minutes later, comes to the lunch table, and you know, we're like, I mean, we're good. Like, we're like, we're supportive guys or whatever. So we're calling him 47 the whole time at lunch. But we're like, so 47, like, did, what did she say? You know, like, is she going to let you take a retest or not? And he's like, no, she said no. And so everyone's like, oh, she's the worst. Like, you know, whatever. I can't believe she's like, you take a retest. Which like none of us really thought or believed because it was like early enough on syllabus day that she read that we couldn't take a retest where we weren't all not paying attention. So we knew it was happening, but sometimes you got to stand up for a homie. So she was the worst at that moment. And then he goes, but I asked if I could stay after a few days this week and next week to learn the stuff. And so once again, being supportive or whatever, we're just making fun of them. Like, dude, I don't think you get it. Like, you failed the test. It doesn't matter anymore. Like, you don't understand it. And so it was really funny until we get to the other fun thing about AP classes is that you take an AP test at the end of the year. And this test is basically just, it's a list of all, a bunch of the stuff that you worked on. It's very hard. It's even harder than the class, which is just, I was so thankful for. You always just say so thankful of like, this was the hardest thing I've ever done. Now let's take a test that's way harder than that. But that's what it was. And so we get into it. And the deal with AP tests is if you get a good enough grade, you don't have to take the class in college. And so that's the goal, you know. And so we take this test. Well, wouldn't you know that a lot of the questions had to do with that first test, the stuff that we had learned in that first section. So we get our AP tests back, and he passed it. And he's thrilled, and he's so excited. And I was like, what a smart guy. You know, like a guy who I originally called 47 and thought was quite a dummy actually was a really smart dude because what he realized is right now this is awful. I just failed a test. This is really bad for me right now. But there is something that is far more important and a far bigger deal on down the line that I know that I need and I'm going to be prepared for. I think that that is what Josiah realized for his people. I think when he read the book of the law, he truly realized and he truly understood his purpose, his life, and the life of the people on the planet. And I think what he realized is that this word of God is meaningful. It's real. It's a huge deal that it had changed his entire life. It had changed the way he looked. It had changed the way he thought. It had changed the way he acted. And it had changed his perspective on his life and the people's lives. You like how I backtracked because I forgot to say that? Me too. But it did. It changed his life, and it changed his entire perspective. And I think that what happened is the same thing that happened to my buddy 47 back in high school. I think what he realized is there's no way that I can save these people from what's to come here. Regardless of what I do, regardless of what I do to bring these people, regardless of how many people I have commit to this covenant and live out this covenant life, they're still going to deal with this exile. But what I think he understood and what I think he saw for the first time when he was hit with the word of God is that spiritual exile was far more devastating than physical exile. I think what he realized is, yes, I can't save these people on this earth. Yes, I can't save my people from the death, from the destruction, from the exile that's to come, but I will not be the person that allows them to be exiled for eternity. That there is an eternal home, there is an eternal resting place, that is the goal. Yes, I'm going to do everything I can to protect these people here, but my main and my ultimate goal is to make sure that these people are pushing ever more, ever more onto this this road heading to eternal life with God. Because what he realized is the ultimate prize is not on this life and not what you get to do in Israel or what we get to do here in Raleigh. It's what we get to experience when we finally get to meet God face to face for the first time in a perfect eternity. He said, is going to be built around the promise of I am going to make sure you know who this God is and you know that regardless of what happens to your home right here, that you have a true and an ultimate home in heaven. Turns out, my man was super right. They end up being exiled. Israel's able to come back in the future and is built up again, and yet still people talk about that they feel like wanderers, that they feel like sojourners, that even in their own home, the home that was built for them by God and given to them by God, they still didn't feel fully at home, like there was something missing. Jesus came, and he gave the perfect explanation for why. Jesus comes, and he describes why why and he tells you how you can figure it out. And so he comes and he basically, he looks at him, he says, Wanderers, this is not your home. You don't feel fully at home because you're not home. He says, you are citizens of heaven. Your heart belongs to heaven. Your heart belongs to God in eternity. You're here now, but your heart belongs to God in eternity. And so I am building a road. I'm making a path for you to go to your true home. Jesus comes. He lives a life of homelessness. He literally embodies a sojourner. He embodies a wanderer. Someone who walks from place to place is constantly put down. Most people hate him. A lot of people are following him as well. Basically embodying the fact that I am here to tell you that this is not your home. I'm here to tell you that this place is temporary and you should look forward to forever. That I have a Father who created you and His sole mission is to bring you to Him and all it takes is for you to come to Me. I've provided the path by dying for you, by killing the sin that has created this world that is imperfect and I want you to come and be a part of it with me. And my man Josiah, he knew it all along. His whole perspective, his whole mindset, everything that he did was completely changed when he was hit with the word of God because he understood for the first time, this isn't for me. This place, I'm going to do what I can here, but I've got a promise of eternity. And he realized that for his people. He said, I want these people to know that it is going to get bad, and it is going to get rough, and there are going to be bad things that happen and hard things that happen, but I promise you that this is not it, that there is far more than this. And so what did he do? He read this book to everyone. He wanted to make sure everyone could hear it and had access to it. And then he spent his entire life dedicated and devoted to these people getting to know God and to experience God. And so my question is when we're hit with the Word of God, when we spend time in the Word of God, when we're going to church and listening to sermons, when we're reading for ourselves, when we're listening to things, when we're doing devotions, when we're doing these things, are we allowing the gospel? Are we allowing the word of God? Is the word of God impacting our life? Is the word of God impacting my life? I put my because I think we should think about it in a very specific to me answer. I know a couple months ago, we kind of talked a little bit about this. We talked about reading Scripture. And Nate preached. He posted a question on Facebook. He said, just looking for some genuine answers, if anyone's willing, I just want to know how many of you feel like you get an adequate amount of time in the day or in a week spent in Scripture, getting to just spend time diving into Scripture and focusing on it. And he said he got a few responses that were kind of like, well, I just do devotion books, or I just listen to the Bible. I don't read it, I listen to it, or I just listen to sermons or whatever. And then all of that to say that the question at the end said, does that count? And his point, the point of that message and the point of him talking about that was to say, if you're asking if it counts, then you're probably not doing it in the right way. That if you're trying to do it as something as a check box of, I know I should read my Bible, so I'm just going to get through some of it. If you're doing it that way, then you're probably off. But what I will amend is that there is kind of a way to tell if it counts, and that is, is the Word of God impacting your life? It changed everything about Josiah. Has it changed everything about you? Or is it consistently changing you? Is your attitude, is your mindset, is your heart, and are your actions being impacted by this word of God? And so the first question, how do I see God? Are you consistently growing in who you see God and the way that you see God working in your life? One thing that my campus pastor at UGA used to say a lot is, are you worship by that, is are we worshiping God because of the things that he's provided for us? Because this is a church with a lot of awesome families, with great friends, with great jobs, and all of these incredible things. Are we worshiping God? Do we see God as someone who gives us those things and therefore we worship him? Or are we worshiping him because he's incredible and he's good? And yes, we're thankful for these things, but mostly we're thankful for him, for who he is, for his creation of us, for his son. Why is it different? Because when you worship someone for what they give you, then that builds a contingency plan. It means I'm only going to worship you while these things are going well. When you worship the benefactor, when you worship the person for who he is, then you can be Israel, then you can be exiled from your nation, you can be split from your family, you can see people die, or you can lose people in your lives, and you still love God. We just sang about, we just sang It Is Well. It Is Well was written after a man lost his wife and his kid. He wrote, It Is Well With my soul. He wrote those beautiful words amidst the biggest tragedy that he's ever experienced and that any of us could even imagine experiencing. That's someone who knows God. That's someone who has been impacted by the word of God enough to know that God is good regardless of what's going on in this life. The next question kind of stems from that is how do I view my life? Do you feel like you're wanderers or like you're sojourners on this earth? Like I love my life, I love my family, I love the people that are in my life, but man I cannot wait for heaven because I just can't wait to be with God. I know that it's very easy. A lot of us would say, obviously, yes, we want to go to heaven over going to hell, but how many of us are ready to go to heaven and leaving this earth? Oftentimes, I think we just think about it's the next place we'll be with our family, but guys, there's so much more important thing. Like when we realize who God is, what we realize is that heaven isn't just the next place that you'll be. It's the most perfect and incredible place that you'll be because you're finally with this God who created you and you no longer have anything that is pulling you away from him. You just get to experience the greatest joy that you could ever fathom. Pastor named John Piper, he writes good books and he's insane to listen to. Check him out. He said, There's a lot of big claims in that. And I'm not standing up here saying everyone needs to feel this way or you're not going to heaven. But what I am saying is that when we spend time in the word and when we allow the word to truly change our hearts and impact our hearts the way that I believe Josiah did, then it will change our hearts to move us to a place that we just love God and we love Jesus and we're so ready to see him and to meet him face to face. We're so tired of this earth and the things that are weighing us down and the things that are hurting us and the things that are causing us depression. We just want this joy of getting to know what this is. Are we ready for heaven because we're ready for perfection or are we ready for heaven because we're ready to see the face of God, and we're ready to meet Jesus? And the final question is, how do I live my life? This is a big step, and this is the scariest step. The consequences are far bigger for this one than for the other two, because those are personal. But you look, you see the way that Josiah reacted. You hear the words from the prophetess basically saying, you're good. You've figured it out. You've given your life to God and because of that, he's going to spare you from this exile and he's going to bring you to him. Was his reaction, all right, great, I'm good. Now I'm just going to keep leading and we'll just do our thing. No. His reaction was, if I'm good and I get to have this relationship and I get to go home where I get to meet my maker, then I want everyone else to have this ability too as well. I want everyone to understand that it gets better than this. I want everyone to understand that this is a God who wants to meet them and wants to bring them to his home. I want them to understand that regardless of how good or how bad this life is, your heart rests in heaven, and therefore, you've got something to look forward to that is better than any day that you'll spend on earth. Is that our hearts for people? Because I think if we believe that we are wanderers on this earth, I think if we believe that this earth is not our home and our home is in heaven, then we start to look and care a lot less about the consequences that come from bringing the gospel and from living out a Christian life in the open, in public, around the people that you interact with. I think we worry a lot less about those consequences and worry a lot more about the eternal consequences of what it means if I know that I have this gift and I have this salvation and I have this overwhelming joy that I'm holding back from you and I'm not bringing you, then I'm basically looking at you and saying, I know that this isn't it. I know that there's this perfect home that is greater than anything you could imagine and this God who created and loved you with every single aspect of his being, but I'm not going to tell you about him because I'm a little bit nervous about how you'll feel about me. And I'm not saying this to say, oh, you're the worst if you don't do it, because it'd be saying, Kyle, you're the worst for not doing it. I understand that it's hard. I understand that it's difficult, but that's why it's so important to figure out the first two. It's why it's so important to figure out and to understand who God is and therefore understand who you are and the fact that your life, the reason why when you accepted Christ, you didn't immediately die and go to heaven is because you are here to bring people to heaven with you. And it doesn't have to be an entire nation of people. We're not Josiah. It doesn't even have to be standing up on stage and preaching. I know not everyone has this gift. I know some people are nudging right next to you and saying, who does this guy? But when you start thinking about the world, when you start thinking about the nation, it gets big and it gets hard. But when you start looking at people and when you say, Thomas, Rachel, I know these people. I know they don't know about this. They need to know. Because it's the biggest, it's the most important aspect of my life. And much more importantly, it should be the most important aspect of them. I want them to come and experience this joy that comes from Christ. And I want them to ultimately have the ability to experience the joy of that eternal life with this God who loves us and created us and has given us everything. Let's pray. God, thank you for who you are. God, thank you that regardless of our situation here on this imperfect world, God, that we always have you to look forward to. That one day we will be able to see you face to face and be overwhelmed with the joy of who you are and get to spend eternity with you without death and disease and heartache and heartbreak and exile. God, I can't wait for that day. God, I pray that as we read scripture, as we grow closer to you and learn more about you, God, that we continue to be overwhelmed by the magnitude of you, of your love, of your goodness, and of your mercy. And I pray that that leads us on to bringing people with us. That our whole goal, our whole mission is to go and make more disciples of you so we can have more people in our true home. We love you. Amen.

All right, man, that's got to, that may be the grooviest song I've ever walked up to stage to, so pretty excited about that. Good morning, everyone. My name is Kyle. I am the student pastor here at Grace, and if you receive like our email communication, our Grace Vine, then you came, then you woke up this morning anticipating to see Nate preaching from stage and talking about marriage. And guess what? So did I. I woke up to a phone call this morning that Nate was sick and that he wasn't going to be able to come in and preach this morning. And so here I am. And I know that Ashlyn and I are probably like 98% towards solving marriage because we've officially hit two years as of a few days ago. Yeah, I didn't do that, but you know what? I'll take the applause. I'm feeling nervous up here and your applause is soothing me, so thank you. But while we're close to solving it, let's give it about six more months and then I'll do my marriage sermon for you guys. But no, so Nate at some point is going to serve you well by hopefully getting to preach a sermon on a prayer for marriage. But this morning, instead, I'm going to let you guys get a peek behind the curtain as to some stuff we've been doing in youth group on Sunday nights. So for those of you who don't know, on Sunday nights is when our sixth through 12th graders meet. We all come, we meet in here, we get rid of a lot of these chairs because they're in the way of fun. And we set up games, we set up all this different stuff. And then ultimately, we always have some sort of message and some sort of small groups and whatnot. And the last few times we have been meeting, we have been discussing and reading and going through this one simple verse in Deuteronomy 6, 5. So there's not going to be any slides. So like, that's kind of your like wink, wink. If you want to grab your Bible and read along, this is probably your time to do it. Because I'm going to pause here and I'm going to be any slides. So like, that's kind of your like wink wink. If you want to grab your Bible and read along, this is probably your time to do it. Um, because I'm going to pause here and I'm going to pick up on asking, and you don't have to tell me verbally because that would just be too wild, but with a, with a nice head nod or a nice head shake as anyone in here set up or, or, or did anyone have new year's resolutions this year? I've actually apparently heard that three people for sure in this room had New Year's resolutions, as Haley just told me. So I'm very glad to hear that. But I've got, all right, I got to see some heads moving. Yay? Nay? We've got some people who did. I am the king of setting New Year's resolutions. And I would not say I'm the king of New Year's resolutions, because that probably means actually doing the things that you set. And I'm not good at that. But boy, do I love thinking that I'm going to do things in the new year. This year, I went classic. I went very cliche. I didn't want to, you know, get too interesting or get too whatever. And I was like, you know what? It's probably time I got in shape. I wear big enough clothes to where people still go, nice, you look nice. No, you don't need to. It's like, trust me, you'll never see me with a shirt off, but if you did, you'd be like, ah, that's a bummer. And even getting in shape, you're still not going to see with my shirt off, but at least it wouldn't be false. But I was locked in in December. You know, we're going to see our families. We traveled in a week's time, about 29 hours on the road. And through that time, I'm like thinking through what I'm going to do when we get back. You know, I'm going to eat all of this bad food and do like nothing that's helpful or useful or important to my life and my being while I'm at my family's house because it's Christmas and Christmas doesn't count as we all know. But once I get back, like I'm doing stuff, hey, what can I cut out? What is something easy that I could get better? I could eat a little bit healthier here. Or what are some workouts that I would do that would really benefit what I'm looking for? I did research. I've got the Nike Training Club app and you can can highlight, and you can find different workout programs, or I bookmarked workouts. Oh, this one's perfect for me. It's like, I don't know any of this stuff, but I'm acting like I'm an expert when I'm scrolling through that app. But I'm figuring out, I'm planning it out, I'm locked in. And honestly, as I'm driving, and I'm like, man, my back hurts, that's probably a core thing. All I'm thinking of is like, this is going to be wonderful when I'm finally here. I'm locked in, I'm ready. I know the stuff. I've done the research. I'm excited about it. I have all of this will. My heart is ready to be healthy. And yet, as I told my students last Sunday when we were talking about some of this stuff, the most I've done is one night, I think Saturday night, because I had been thinking about this message, I decided to lay on the floor and do some sit-ups while we watched TV. So I'm like 10 sit-ups in to a new year, which is less than what I had planned, which is less than what I had been ready to do. And ultimately, as I thought about that, and as I began to think more about New Year's resolutions and why I'm simply the king of starting them as opposed to continuing them, what I recognized and what I realized is I am so good at having the heart that is ready to do the thing. I am so good at having a will of doing a thing and setting my heart on what I want to do and what I want to value in the person that I want to be, but I have a much more difficult time at marrying that heart and that will with action. I have two, a left and a right hand, so handshakes like this don't look right, but that's a handshake. What's in my head, what's in my heart, often stays there. Especially when it comes to resolutions, when it comes to setting and walking out goals, when it comes to doing those things. And I wonder if any of y'all have felt the same way. Speaking of what Haley mentioned, there's people in this room that have the New Year's resolution of joining a small group. What I know for sure is that those people know the importance of joining a small group. They know why it's valuable. They know why it builds and grows their faith. They know why building relationships with friends inside of a small group is deeply beneficial to them and to their hearts and to their lives. But as long as that's all that happens, as long as it's only what's in your heart, then it's incomplete, right? Because then you're still just sitting there on a Tuesday night when all of your peers are meeting together and growing together. And it's the same with anything that we do and with all of those things. And so now I'd like to come back to what I think we learn and what I think we begin to understand in our faith if we want to marry and we want to couple our heart and our action. And that is in Deuteronomy 6, 5. So some of you guys open with me and we can read it together. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might. Love the Lord your God with all of your heart, with everything inside of you. I understand that. I understand what it takes to do that. I get to know Christ. I come to church every week and I get to learn about this God that loves me so deeply and so uniquely. And I get to learn about Jesus, God's son, this savior who God sent down to live a perfect life and yet die so that I can experience an eternal life with God in heaven through salvation, simply through faith. Love the Lord your God with all of your heart. That is easy and understanding and tangible. I can tangibly understand, okay, how do I go about that? What does it look like to love God with my inside? Well, it looks like going after and pursuing God. Sitting in church and learning more about him. Waking up and reading scripture and spending time in prayer. Sitting in small groups and listening to how the Lord works and how the Lord moves and allowing our hearts to be shaped and molded and changed and transformed in the goodness and in the love of God. But as we move forwards, the point of these verses is not simply to internally love God, but it's to love God with all that we are. I learned some Hebrew as I was reading through some of this, and so guess what? We're all learning some Hebrew this morning. The word soul here is actually translated to this word called nefesh in Hebrew. And nefesh, while it's translated in our Bibles as soul, the nefesh more has to do with the soul of who we are as a physical presence in this world. Who we are and the people that we are as we are living in our lives. And when we understand that, and then when we translate might to being with everything and with all that we have, the goal and the purpose of this is not simply to love God internally, inside of our hearts, worshiping him and loving him, being like, God is the best, I've got this down. The goal and the point of this is to recognize and to realize when we put these three words together, love God with all of our hearts, our souls, and our might, is to say that every part of your life should be dedicated to loving God. So yes, do all of the things to where you can continue to fall in love and be transformed internally in your heart by this God that loves you, created you, and wants a relationship with you every single day, but at the same time, just like me trying to do a New Year's resolution, if you're simply starting internally, then this call is incomplete in your life. And so then the question becomes, okay, well, what does it look like to love God with our physical selves? Does it look like, oh, well, I guess like if my body needs to love God better, maybe I should like raise my hands during worship, which, hey, you know, try it maybe. But I love that Jesus actually gives us this perfect and beautiful definition and explanation in Matthew 25. And so if you want to read with me, because we're going to like, it's going to be a few verses. So here's what I'm going to do. Normally what I do with students is I say, first one to find it, yell out the page number. Well, guess what? I'm the first one to find it. So I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to yell out this page number and it is page number 984. If you have one of the Bibles in the back of the seat in front of you, we are going to be reading verses. We're going to start in 31 and I'm going to just read this story. So if you guys are committed, I am going to read for a chunk. Sometimes that can get boring. And so let's all just like lock eyes and go, you know what? I'm not going to be bored because this is God's word and it's probably good. So we're going to lock in and we're just going to do it. So if you will read or listen along with me, please. He will put the those on his right, I was a stranger and you invited me in. I needed clothes and you clothed me. I was sick and you looked after me. I was in prison and you came to visit me. Then the righteous will answer him, Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in or needing clothes and clothed you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you? The king will reply, I will tell you the truth. Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me. How do we love God in our lives? We do so by loving his people. How do we serve God with our physical presence? We serve the people that are in and amongst us within our lives. One of my favorite stories in all of the Bible is the story of King Josiah. So much so that if Ashlyn and I ever have a kid, I've asked that we could name our son King Josiah. I haven't decided if I want to do like King Josiah and then still give a middle name or if I just wanted to be King Josiah Talbert, which would be sick, which Ashlyn said no. So maybe if you guys are moved enough, if you could just have a couple words with her this morning, that would be great. Thank you. But I love the story of King Josiah because Josiah became the king in a weird and difficult and troubling time for a few different reasons. Let me go ahead and give you the background. This is how King Josiah's story starts out in 2 Kings as I turn and make sure I found it. In 2 Kings 22, I'm just going to read 1 and 3. Don't worry about finding it. I'll just listen along. Josiah was eight years old when he became king. Awesome. Genuinely, I would have thought you'd at least have to be 10 to be a good king, but he ended up doing it at eight. And he reigned in Jerusalem 31 years. Here's his description. Here is how he is described before his story is even told. He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord and followed completely the ways of his father David, not turning aside to the right or to the left. Josiah's descriptor as a king is that he did what was right in the eyes of God, and he followed after the footsteps of the one chosen king, David, that God had placed in front of him. Josiah took over a kingdom in Jerusalem, a group of people who had been set into this place to be God's chosen people, to be a people that would experience the love of God, who would get to have their hearts truly transformed by God. And through that, that as a part of the covenant that God made with his people in Israel, in Jerusalem, that his people would not only love him, serve him, and whatever, but that they would go and that they would bless the entire world. Their call was to know God, was to love God, and was to bring God and to bring goodness about the world through God. This was not a covenant or a call that Josiah had ever heard about. Because Josiah took over rule of a nation that was completely walking in opposition to God. What we learn actually in this story is it was a nation that was actually moving forward into exile. That soon enough after Josiah's reign, that Judah was going to be taken over by another nation and the people within that, but within Jerusalem were going to be taken into exile. Why? Because they had fallen short of their covenant. For generation after generation, they had walked farther and farther from God. And that is where Josiah took over. And about 18 years into his reign, he came into contact with a high priest. He encountered a high priest, and this high priest basically brought him, Josiah, for the first time in Josiah's life, the law or the word of God. And through Josiah being able to interact with this word of God, he was able to learn who God was. And as he was able to learn who God was, he was completely transformed. Truly burdened by the fact that he had lived such a life that would be walking anywhere except towards God because he realized for the fullness of the love and the goodness that was offered by God and his heart was completely changed. This child, I mean, even still at 18 plus eight, you do the math, he was 26 at this time. This young guy with all of the power in his, with all of the power you could ever ask for was forever changed and his heart was forever marked by the fact that he had encountered this God who loved him. And upon that encounter, and upon learning about this, and upon having God change and mold and shape his heart to becoming a new person, changed everything he did and everything he valued. And so, as he turned back around, the rest of his reign as king was a reign that was marked by, I'm going to continue to lead and I'm going to continue to serve my people the best that I can. But what I recognize now is while I'm doing that, the only way I can do that well and the only way I can truly love and serve my people rightly is if I do so for God, in God, and through God. He rebuilt the temple so that his people would have a place that they could go and encounter God. He got rid of all of these false idols so these people wouldn't have these temptations in front of them to walk and to go and serve other gods. He made the word of God readily available and made the word of God a foundational piece of these people who lived there. What Josiah did is when God got a hold of his heart and transformed his heart, he realized that that would be incomplete unless he turned that love around and he showed it and he gave it to his people. Josiah offered the love and the goodness of God to his kingdom because he knew that a heart for God is not enough. But a heart for God only takes full effect when I turn that around and I share that with my kingdom. And guess what? I know that none of you are kings. You're kings in like the cool sense. Like I think you're all kings and queens. You're awesome. You know, great. But all of us have kingdoms. All of us have a kingdom that we are living and, as Nate often says, that we are building. You have a family at home. You have people that you interact with on the way to work, inside of work. You have sports or you have kids that are at sports and you're standing around with parents. There are kingdoms that all of us have in our lives. And if we want to truly live out this Deuteronomy 6, if we want to truly love the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul, and might, then that means that as we are taking steps forwards and growing in our love of God, then at every step, we should be taking steps forwards just along with it of loving the people that are in our lives. Because guess what? God placed them in front of you for a reason. There's this old hymn that I think is beautiful that I love. It's called Christ Has No Body But Yours. We're called to love people out of the love of God, certainly to make our faith whole and to make our faith what God describes and how it's described in Deuteronomy and throughout scripture. But we're called to do the same because guess what? Christ isn't here. Christ hasn't been here for 2,000 years. God takes up residence inside of his believers, inside of the people whose hearts he has gotten a hold of. And through us and through our hearts, Christ has a body now. And through our hands, our feet, our actions, our lives, our words, we share the love of God that we have experienced so that these people can experience the same. There are people in your lives and in your worlds that will not know God the same way if we don't bring it to them, if we don't tell them about him, if we don't show him his love, who he is and what he's done. And so as we normally wrap up in students, I always send to small groups. And when I send to small groups, I normally want to have a couple things, a couple tangible things that I can grab onto. And it's normally, hey, you know what, this week, let's do this. So if you're willing, since I've decided that this morning, I'm letting you guys into what a youth group would look like, I'd like to do something similar. And I'm going to give you guys the same call. So if you find somebody who looks like a student, ask them how they did it. They might can give you some help. But what I asked them to do and to think about was this. If we're trying to marry the heart with the action, then to really love people this way requires us not simply to do it because we're supposed to, but to do it because our hearts are truly for these people. So maybe you have someone in your world right now that you can think of this week. Someone who you know in some way you could serve well or you could love well. You could love or serve uniquely to your relationship with that person. Maybe it's a group of people. Maybe it's a small office and this is the people. So, write that person down. Write that group down. And here's what I want us to commit to. Not simply going, you know what, when I get to work, I'm going to be really nice to those people. But when I wake up in the morning, before I ever interact with these people, I am committed to praying for them. Praying that God would mold and shape our hearts to having a deep burden and a deep love for these people, that I can love them in a way that is going to glorify the God that is sending me to love them. And in and through that, as you interact with them, being prayerfully aware of what the Lord would have you be in their life. When I translate these Matthew verses, feeding the hungry, taking care of the sick, what I translate it as is this. Everyone has different needs, and everyone needs love in a certain way. So my call for everyone in here is this week, whether it be one person, two people, a few people, can you be the people that loves these people well? Can you be the people that serves them? And can you couple this heart that you have for our God that loves us so deeply with the actions of letting these other people know just how deep that love is through how we love them. Let's pray. God, we love you so much. I pray that we never grow tired and weary in growing closer to you and diving deeper into your love. But God, I just pray that it never stops there, but that you give us a heart for your people. You give us eyes to be able to see where we can serve and where we can love in any possible way that would glorify you. Lord, allow us to be prayerfully aware of the people in our lives and how we could show you to them. We love you so much. We are so thankful that you let us come and be here to rest and to worship in your love. Amen.

All right, man, that's got to, that may be the grooviest song I've ever walked up to stage to, so pretty excited about that. Good morning, everyone. My name is Kyle. I am the student pastor here at Grace, and if you receive like our email communication, our Grace Vine, then you came, then you woke up this morning anticipating to see Nate preaching from stage and talking about marriage. And guess what? So did I. I woke up to a phone call this morning that Nate was sick and that he wasn't going to be able to come in and preach this morning. And so here I am. And I know that Ashlyn and I are probably like 98% towards solving marriage because we've officially hit two years as of a few days ago. Yeah, I didn't do that, but you know what? I'll take the applause. I'm feeling nervous up here and your applause is soothing me, so thank you. But while we're close to solving it, let's give it about six more months and then I'll do my marriage sermon for you guys. But no, so Nate at some point is going to serve you well by hopefully getting to preach a sermon on a prayer for marriage. But this morning, instead, I'm going to let you guys get a peek behind the curtain as to some stuff we've been doing in youth group on Sunday nights. So for those of you who don't know, on Sunday nights is when our sixth through 12th graders meet. We all come, we meet in here, we get rid of a lot of these chairs because they're in the way of fun. And we set up games, we set up all this different stuff. And then ultimately, we always have some sort of message and some sort of small groups and whatnot. And the last few times we have been meeting, we have been discussing and reading and going through this one simple verse in Deuteronomy 6, 5. So there's not going to be any slides. So like, that's kind of your like wink, wink. If you want to grab your Bible and read along, this is probably your time to do it. Because I'm going to pause here and I'm going to be any slides. So like, that's kind of your like wink wink. If you want to grab your Bible and read along, this is probably your time to do it. Um, because I'm going to pause here and I'm going to pick up on asking, and you don't have to tell me verbally because that would just be too wild, but with a, with a nice head nod or a nice head shake as anyone in here set up or, or, or did anyone have new year's resolutions this year? I've actually apparently heard that three people for sure in this room had New Year's resolutions, as Haley just told me. So I'm very glad to hear that. But I've got, all right, I got to see some heads moving. Yay? Nay? We've got some people who did. I am the king of setting New Year's resolutions. And I would not say I'm the king of New Year's resolutions, because that probably means actually doing the things that you set. And I'm not good at that. But boy, do I love thinking that I'm going to do things in the new year. This year, I went classic. I went very cliche. I didn't want to, you know, get too interesting or get too whatever. And I was like, you know what? It's probably time I got in shape. I wear big enough clothes to where people still go, nice, you look nice. No, you don't need to. It's like, trust me, you'll never see me with a shirt off, but if you did, you'd be like, ah, that's a bummer. And even getting in shape, you're still not going to see with my shirt off, but at least it wouldn't be false. But I was locked in in December. You know, we're going to see our families. We traveled in a week's time, about 29 hours on the road. And through that time, I'm like thinking through what I'm going to do when we get back. You know, I'm going to eat all of this bad food and do like nothing that's helpful or useful or important to my life and my being while I'm at my family's house because it's Christmas and Christmas doesn't count as we all know. But once I get back, like I'm doing stuff, hey, what can I cut out? What is something easy that I could get better? I could eat a little bit healthier here. Or what are some workouts that I would do that would really benefit what I'm looking for? I did research. I've got the Nike Training Club app and you can can highlight, and you can find different workout programs, or I bookmarked workouts. Oh, this one's perfect for me. It's like, I don't know any of this stuff, but I'm acting like I'm an expert when I'm scrolling through that app. But I'm figuring out, I'm planning it out, I'm locked in. And honestly, as I'm driving, and I'm like, man, my back hurts, that's probably a core thing. All I'm thinking of is like, this is going to be wonderful when I'm finally here. I'm locked in, I'm ready. I know the stuff. I've done the research. I'm excited about it. I have all of this will. My heart is ready to be healthy. And yet, as I told my students last Sunday when we were talking about some of this stuff, the most I've done is one night, I think Saturday night, because I had been thinking about this message, I decided to lay on the floor and do some sit-ups while we watched TV. So I'm like 10 sit-ups in to a new year, which is less than what I had planned, which is less than what I had been ready to do. And ultimately, as I thought about that, and as I began to think more about New Year's resolutions and why I'm simply the king of starting them as opposed to continuing them, what I recognized and what I realized is I am so good at having the heart that is ready to do the thing. I am so good at having a will of doing a thing and setting my heart on what I want to do and what I want to value in the person that I want to be, but I have a much more difficult time at marrying that heart and that will with action. I have two, a left and a right hand, so handshakes like this don't look right, but that's a handshake. What's in my head, what's in my heart, often stays there. Especially when it comes to resolutions, when it comes to setting and walking out goals, when it comes to doing those things. And I wonder if any of y'all have felt the same way. Speaking of what Haley mentioned, there's people in this room that have the New Year's resolution of joining a small group. What I know for sure is that those people know the importance of joining a small group. They know why it's valuable. They know why it builds and grows their faith. They know why building relationships with friends inside of a small group is deeply beneficial to them and to their hearts and to their lives. But as long as that's all that happens, as long as it's only what's in your heart, then it's incomplete, right? Because then you're still just sitting there on a Tuesday night when all of your peers are meeting together and growing together. And it's the same with anything that we do and with all of those things. And so now I'd like to come back to what I think we learn and what I think we begin to understand in our faith if we want to marry and we want to couple our heart and our action. And that is in Deuteronomy 6, 5. So some of you guys open with me and we can read it together. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might. Love the Lord your God with all of your heart, with everything inside of you. I understand that. I understand what it takes to do that. I get to know Christ. I come to church every week and I get to learn about this God that loves me so deeply and so uniquely. And I get to learn about Jesus, God's son, this savior who God sent down to live a perfect life and yet die so that I can experience an eternal life with God in heaven through salvation, simply through faith. Love the Lord your God with all of your heart. That is easy and understanding and tangible. I can tangibly understand, okay, how do I go about that? What does it look like to love God with my inside? Well, it looks like going after and pursuing God. Sitting in church and learning more about him. Waking up and reading scripture and spending time in prayer. Sitting in small groups and listening to how the Lord works and how the Lord moves and allowing our hearts to be shaped and molded and changed and transformed in the goodness and in the love of God. But as we move forwards, the point of these verses is not simply to internally love God, but it's to love God with all that we are. I learned some Hebrew as I was reading through some of this, and so guess what? We're all learning some Hebrew this morning. The word soul here is actually translated to this word called nefesh in Hebrew. And nefesh, while it's translated in our Bibles as soul, the nefesh more has to do with the soul of who we are as a physical presence in this world. Who we are and the people that we are as we are living in our lives. And when we understand that, and then when we translate might to being with everything and with all that we have, the goal and the purpose of this is not simply to love God internally, inside of our hearts, worshiping him and loving him, being like, God is the best, I've got this down. The goal and the point of this is to recognize and to realize when we put these three words together, love God with all of our hearts, our souls, and our might, is to say that every part of your life should be dedicated to loving God. So yes, do all of the things to where you can continue to fall in love and be transformed internally in your heart by this God that loves you, created you, and wants a relationship with you every single day, but at the same time, just like me trying to do a New Year's resolution, if you're simply starting internally, then this call is incomplete in your life. And so then the question becomes, okay, well, what does it look like to love God with our physical selves? Does it look like, oh, well, I guess like if my body needs to love God better, maybe I should like raise my hands during worship, which, hey, you know, try it maybe. But I love that Jesus actually gives us this perfect and beautiful definition and explanation in Matthew 25. And so if you want to read with me, because we're going to like, it's going to be a few verses. So here's what I'm going to do. Normally what I do with students is I say, first one to find it, yell out the page number. Well, guess what? I'm the first one to find it. So I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to yell out this page number and it is page number 984. If you have one of the Bibles in the back of the seat in front of you, we are going to be reading verses. We're going to start in 31 and I'm going to just read this story. So if you guys are committed, I am going to read for a chunk. Sometimes that can get boring. And so let's all just like lock eyes and go, you know what? I'm not going to be bored because this is God's word and it's probably good. So we're going to lock in and we're just going to do it. So if you will read or listen along with me, please. He will put the those on his right, I was a stranger and you invited me in. I needed clothes and you clothed me. I was sick and you looked after me. I was in prison and you came to visit me. Then the righteous will answer him, Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in or needing clothes and clothed you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you? The king will reply, I will tell you the truth. Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me. How do we love God in our lives? We do so by loving his people. How do we serve God with our physical presence? We serve the people that are in and amongst us within our lives. One of my favorite stories in all of the Bible is the story of King Josiah. So much so that if Ashlyn and I ever have a kid, I've asked that we could name our son King Josiah. I haven't decided if I want to do like King Josiah and then still give a middle name or if I just wanted to be King Josiah Talbert, which would be sick, which Ashlyn said no. So maybe if you guys are moved enough, if you could just have a couple words with her this morning, that would be great. Thank you. But I love the story of King Josiah because Josiah became the king in a weird and difficult and troubling time for a few different reasons. Let me go ahead and give you the background. This is how King Josiah's story starts out in 2 Kings as I turn and make sure I found it. In 2 Kings 22, I'm just going to read 1 and 3. Don't worry about finding it. I'll just listen along. Josiah was eight years old when he became king. Awesome. Genuinely, I would have thought you'd at least have to be 10 to be a good king, but he ended up doing it at eight. And he reigned in Jerusalem 31 years. Here's his description. Here is how he is described before his story is even told. He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord and followed completely the ways of his father David, not turning aside to the right or to the left. Josiah's descriptor as a king is that he did what was right in the eyes of God, and he followed after the footsteps of the one chosen king, David, that God had placed in front of him. Josiah took over a kingdom in Jerusalem, a group of people who had been set into this place to be God's chosen people, to be a people that would experience the love of God, who would get to have their hearts truly transformed by God. And through that, that as a part of the covenant that God made with his people in Israel, in Jerusalem, that his people would not only love him, serve him, and whatever, but that they would go and that they would bless the entire world. Their call was to know God, was to love God, and was to bring God and to bring goodness about the world through God. This was not a covenant or a call that Josiah had ever heard about. Because Josiah took over rule of a nation that was completely walking in opposition to God. What we learn actually in this story is it was a nation that was actually moving forward into exile. That soon enough after Josiah's reign, that Judah was going to be taken over by another nation and the people within that, but within Jerusalem were going to be taken into exile. Why? Because they had fallen short of their covenant. For generation after generation, they had walked farther and farther from God. And that is where Josiah took over. And about 18 years into his reign, he came into contact with a high priest. He encountered a high priest, and this high priest basically brought him, Josiah, for the first time in Josiah's life, the law or the word of God. And through Josiah being able to interact with this word of God, he was able to learn who God was. And as he was able to learn who God was, he was completely transformed. Truly burdened by the fact that he had lived such a life that would be walking anywhere except towards God because he realized for the fullness of the love and the goodness that was offered by God and his heart was completely changed. This child, I mean, even still at 18 plus eight, you do the math, he was 26 at this time. This young guy with all of the power in his, with all of the power you could ever ask for was forever changed and his heart was forever marked by the fact that he had encountered this God who loved him. And upon that encounter, and upon learning about this, and upon having God change and mold and shape his heart to becoming a new person, changed everything he did and everything he valued. And so, as he turned back around, the rest of his reign as king was a reign that was marked by, I'm going to continue to lead and I'm going to continue to serve my people the best that I can. But what I recognize now is while I'm doing that, the only way I can do that well and the only way I can truly love and serve my people rightly is if I do so for God, in God, and through God. He rebuilt the temple so that his people would have a place that they could go and encounter God. He got rid of all of these false idols so these people wouldn't have these temptations in front of them to walk and to go and serve other gods. He made the word of God readily available and made the word of God a foundational piece of these people who lived there. What Josiah did is when God got a hold of his heart and transformed his heart, he realized that that would be incomplete unless he turned that love around and he showed it and he gave it to his people. Josiah offered the love and the goodness of God to his kingdom because he knew that a heart for God is not enough. But a heart for God only takes full effect when I turn that around and I share that with my kingdom. And guess what? I know that none of you are kings. You're kings in like the cool sense. Like I think you're all kings and queens. You're awesome. You know, great. But all of us have kingdoms. All of us have a kingdom that we are living and, as Nate often says, that we are building. You have a family at home. You have people that you interact with on the way to work, inside of work. You have sports or you have kids that are at sports and you're standing around with parents. There are kingdoms that all of us have in our lives. And if we want to truly live out this Deuteronomy 6, if we want to truly love the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul, and might, then that means that as we are taking steps forwards and growing in our love of God, then at every step, we should be taking steps forwards just along with it of loving the people that are in our lives. Because guess what? God placed them in front of you for a reason. There's this old hymn that I think is beautiful that I love. It's called Christ Has No Body But Yours. We're called to love people out of the love of God, certainly to make our faith whole and to make our faith what God describes and how it's described in Deuteronomy and throughout scripture. But we're called to do the same because guess what? Christ isn't here. Christ hasn't been here for 2,000 years. God takes up residence inside of his believers, inside of the people whose hearts he has gotten a hold of. And through us and through our hearts, Christ has a body now. And through our hands, our feet, our actions, our lives, our words, we share the love of God that we have experienced so that these people can experience the same. There are people in your lives and in your worlds that will not know God the same way if we don't bring it to them, if we don't tell them about him, if we don't show him his love, who he is and what he's done. And so as we normally wrap up in students, I always send to small groups. And when I send to small groups, I normally want to have a couple things, a couple tangible things that I can grab onto. And it's normally, hey, you know what, this week, let's do this. So if you're willing, since I've decided that this morning, I'm letting you guys into what a youth group would look like, I'd like to do something similar. And I'm going to give you guys the same call. So if you find somebody who looks like a student, ask them how they did it. They might can give you some help. But what I asked them to do and to think about was this. If we're trying to marry the heart with the action, then to really love people this way requires us not simply to do it because we're supposed to, but to do it because our hearts are truly for these people. So maybe you have someone in your world right now that you can think of this week. Someone who you know in some way you could serve well or you could love well. You could love or serve uniquely to your relationship with that person. Maybe it's a group of people. Maybe it's a small office and this is the people. So, write that person down. Write that group down. And here's what I want us to commit to. Not simply going, you know what, when I get to work, I'm going to be really nice to those people. But when I wake up in the morning, before I ever interact with these people, I am committed to praying for them. Praying that God would mold and shape our hearts to having a deep burden and a deep love for these people, that I can love them in a way that is going to glorify the God that is sending me to love them. And in and through that, as you interact with them, being prayerfully aware of what the Lord would have you be in their life. When I translate these Matthew verses, feeding the hungry, taking care of the sick, what I translate it as is this. Everyone has different needs, and everyone needs love in a certain way. So my call for everyone in here is this week, whether it be one person, two people, a few people, can you be the people that loves these people well? Can you be the people that serves them? And can you couple this heart that you have for our God that loves us so deeply with the actions of letting these other people know just how deep that love is through how we love them. Let's pray. God, we love you so much. I pray that we never grow tired and weary in growing closer to you and diving deeper into your love. But God, I just pray that it never stops there, but that you give us a heart for your people. You give us eyes to be able to see where we can serve and where we can love in any possible way that would glorify you. Lord, allow us to be prayerfully aware of the people in our lives and how we could show you to them. We love you so much. We are so thankful that you let us come and be here to rest and to worship in your love. Amen.

All right, man, that's got to, that may be the grooviest song I've ever walked up to stage to, so pretty excited about that. Good morning, everyone. My name is Kyle. I am the student pastor here at Grace, and if you receive like our email communication, our Grace Vine, then you came, then you woke up this morning anticipating to see Nate preaching from stage and talking about marriage. And guess what? So did I. I woke up to a phone call this morning that Nate was sick and that he wasn't going to be able to come in and preach this morning. And so here I am. And I know that Ashlyn and I are probably like 98% towards solving marriage because we've officially hit two years as of a few days ago. Yeah, I didn't do that, but you know what? I'll take the applause. I'm feeling nervous up here and your applause is soothing me, so thank you. But while we're close to solving it, let's give it about six more months and then I'll do my marriage sermon for you guys. But no, so Nate at some point is going to serve you well by hopefully getting to preach a sermon on a prayer for marriage. But this morning, instead, I'm going to let you guys get a peek behind the curtain as to some stuff we've been doing in youth group on Sunday nights. So for those of you who don't know, on Sunday nights is when our sixth through 12th graders meet. We all come, we meet in here, we get rid of a lot of these chairs because they're in the way of fun. And we set up games, we set up all this different stuff. And then ultimately, we always have some sort of message and some sort of small groups and whatnot. And the last few times we have been meeting, we have been discussing and reading and going through this one simple verse in Deuteronomy 6, 5. So there's not going to be any slides. So like, that's kind of your like wink, wink. If you want to grab your Bible and read along, this is probably your time to do it. Because I'm going to pause here and I'm going to be any slides. So like, that's kind of your like wink wink. If you want to grab your Bible and read along, this is probably your time to do it. Um, because I'm going to pause here and I'm going to pick up on asking, and you don't have to tell me verbally because that would just be too wild, but with a, with a nice head nod or a nice head shake as anyone in here set up or, or, or did anyone have new year's resolutions this year? I've actually apparently heard that three people for sure in this room had New Year's resolutions, as Haley just told me. So I'm very glad to hear that. But I've got, all right, I got to see some heads moving. Yay? Nay? We've got some people who did. I am the king of setting New Year's resolutions. And I would not say I'm the king of New Year's resolutions, because that probably means actually doing the things that you set. And I'm not good at that. But boy, do I love thinking that I'm going to do things in the new year. This year, I went classic. I went very cliche. I didn't want to, you know, get too interesting or get too whatever. And I was like, you know what? It's probably time I got in shape. I wear big enough clothes to where people still go, nice, you look nice. No, you don't need to. It's like, trust me, you'll never see me with a shirt off, but if you did, you'd be like, ah, that's a bummer. And even getting in shape, you're still not going to see with my shirt off, but at least it wouldn't be false. But I was locked in in December. You know, we're going to see our families. We traveled in a week's time, about 29 hours on the road. And through that time, I'm like thinking through what I'm going to do when we get back. You know, I'm going to eat all of this bad food and do like nothing that's helpful or useful or important to my life and my being while I'm at my family's house because it's Christmas and Christmas doesn't count as we all know. But once I get back, like I'm doing stuff, hey, what can I cut out? What is something easy that I could get better? I could eat a little bit healthier here. Or what are some workouts that I would do that would really benefit what I'm looking for? I did research. I've got the Nike Training Club app and you can can highlight, and you can find different workout programs, or I bookmarked workouts. Oh, this one's perfect for me. It's like, I don't know any of this stuff, but I'm acting like I'm an expert when I'm scrolling through that app. But I'm figuring out, I'm planning it out, I'm locked in. And honestly, as I'm driving, and I'm like, man, my back hurts, that's probably a core thing. All I'm thinking of is like, this is going to be wonderful when I'm finally here. I'm locked in, I'm ready. I know the stuff. I've done the research. I'm excited about it. I have all of this will. My heart is ready to be healthy. And yet, as I told my students last Sunday when we were talking about some of this stuff, the most I've done is one night, I think Saturday night, because I had been thinking about this message, I decided to lay on the floor and do some sit-ups while we watched TV. So I'm like 10 sit-ups in to a new year, which is less than what I had planned, which is less than what I had been ready to do. And ultimately, as I thought about that, and as I began to think more about New Year's resolutions and why I'm simply the king of starting them as opposed to continuing them, what I recognized and what I realized is I am so good at having the heart that is ready to do the thing. I am so good at having a will of doing a thing and setting my heart on what I want to do and what I want to value in the person that I want to be, but I have a much more difficult time at marrying that heart and that will with action. I have two, a left and a right hand, so handshakes like this don't look right, but that's a handshake. What's in my head, what's in my heart, often stays there. Especially when it comes to resolutions, when it comes to setting and walking out goals, when it comes to doing those things. And I wonder if any of y'all have felt the same way. Speaking of what Haley mentioned, there's people in this room that have the New Year's resolution of joining a small group. What I know for sure is that those people know the importance of joining a small group. They know why it's valuable. They know why it builds and grows their faith. They know why building relationships with friends inside of a small group is deeply beneficial to them and to their hearts and to their lives. But as long as that's all that happens, as long as it's only what's in your heart, then it's incomplete, right? Because then you're still just sitting there on a Tuesday night when all of your peers are meeting together and growing together. And it's the same with anything that we do and with all of those things. And so now I'd like to come back to what I think we learn and what I think we begin to understand in our faith if we want to marry and we want to couple our heart and our action. And that is in Deuteronomy 6, 5. So some of you guys open with me and we can read it together. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might. Love the Lord your God with all of your heart, with everything inside of you. I understand that. I understand what it takes to do that. I get to know Christ. I come to church every week and I get to learn about this God that loves me so deeply and so uniquely. And I get to learn about Jesus, God's son, this savior who God sent down to live a perfect life and yet die so that I can experience an eternal life with God in heaven through salvation, simply through faith. Love the Lord your God with all of your heart. That is easy and understanding and tangible. I can tangibly understand, okay, how do I go about that? What does it look like to love God with my inside? Well, it looks like going after and pursuing God. Sitting in church and learning more about him. Waking up and reading scripture and spending time in prayer. Sitting in small groups and listening to how the Lord works and how the Lord moves and allowing our hearts to be shaped and molded and changed and transformed in the goodness and in the love of God. But as we move forwards, the point of these verses is not simply to internally love God, but it's to love God with all that we are. I learned some Hebrew as I was reading through some of this, and so guess what? We're all learning some Hebrew this morning. The word soul here is actually translated to this word called nefesh in Hebrew. And nefesh, while it's translated in our Bibles as soul, the nefesh more has to do with the soul of who we are as a physical presence in this world. Who we are and the people that we are as we are living in our lives. And when we understand that, and then when we translate might to being with everything and with all that we have, the goal and the purpose of this is not simply to love God internally, inside of our hearts, worshiping him and loving him, being like, God is the best, I've got this down. The goal and the point of this is to recognize and to realize when we put these three words together, love God with all of our hearts, our souls, and our might, is to say that every part of your life should be dedicated to loving God. So yes, do all of the things to where you can continue to fall in love and be transformed internally in your heart by this God that loves you, created you, and wants a relationship with you every single day, but at the same time, just like me trying to do a New Year's resolution, if you're simply starting internally, then this call is incomplete in your life. And so then the question becomes, okay, well, what does it look like to love God with our physical selves? Does it look like, oh, well, I guess like if my body needs to love God better, maybe I should like raise my hands during worship, which, hey, you know, try it maybe. But I love that Jesus actually gives us this perfect and beautiful definition and explanation in Matthew 25. And so if you want to read with me, because we're going to like, it's going to be a few verses. So here's what I'm going to do. Normally what I do with students is I say, first one to find it, yell out the page number. Well, guess what? I'm the first one to find it. So I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to yell out this page number and it is page number 984. If you have one of the Bibles in the back of the seat in front of you, we are going to be reading verses. We're going to start in 31 and I'm going to just read this story. So if you guys are committed, I am going to read for a chunk. Sometimes that can get boring. And so let's all just like lock eyes and go, you know what? I'm not going to be bored because this is God's word and it's probably good. So we're going to lock in and we're just going to do it. So if you will read or listen along with me, please. He will put the those on his right, I was a stranger and you invited me in. I needed clothes and you clothed me. I was sick and you looked after me. I was in prison and you came to visit me. Then the righteous will answer him, Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in or needing clothes and clothed you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you? The king will reply, I will tell you the truth. Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me. How do we love God in our lives? We do so by loving his people. How do we serve God with our physical presence? We serve the people that are in and amongst us within our lives. One of my favorite stories in all of the Bible is the story of King Josiah. So much so that if Ashlyn and I ever have a kid, I've asked that we could name our son King Josiah. I haven't decided if I want to do like King Josiah and then still give a middle name or if I just wanted to be King Josiah Talbert, which would be sick, which Ashlyn said no. So maybe if you guys are moved enough, if you could just have a couple words with her this morning, that would be great. Thank you. But I love the story of King Josiah because Josiah became the king in a weird and difficult and troubling time for a few different reasons. Let me go ahead and give you the background. This is how King Josiah's story starts out in 2 Kings as I turn and make sure I found it. In 2 Kings 22, I'm just going to read 1 and 3. Don't worry about finding it. I'll just listen along. Josiah was eight years old when he became king. Awesome. Genuinely, I would have thought you'd at least have to be 10 to be a good king, but he ended up doing it at eight. And he reigned in Jerusalem 31 years. Here's his description. Here is how he is described before his story is even told. He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord and followed completely the ways of his father David, not turning aside to the right or to the left. Josiah's descriptor as a king is that he did what was right in the eyes of God, and he followed after the footsteps of the one chosen king, David, that God had placed in front of him. Josiah took over a kingdom in Jerusalem, a group of people who had been set into this place to be God's chosen people, to be a people that would experience the love of God, who would get to have their hearts truly transformed by God. And through that, that as a part of the covenant that God made with his people in Israel, in Jerusalem, that his people would not only love him, serve him, and whatever, but that they would go and that they would bless the entire world. Their call was to know God, was to love God, and was to bring God and to bring goodness about the world through God. This was not a covenant or a call that Josiah had ever heard about. Because Josiah took over rule of a nation that was completely walking in opposition to God. What we learn actually in this story is it was a nation that was actually moving forward into exile. That soon enough after Josiah's reign, that Judah was going to be taken over by another nation and the people within that, but within Jerusalem were going to be taken into exile. Why? Because they had fallen short of their covenant. For generation after generation, they had walked farther and farther from God. And that is where Josiah took over. And about 18 years into his reign, he came into contact with a high priest. He encountered a high priest, and this high priest basically brought him, Josiah, for the first time in Josiah's life, the law or the word of God. And through Josiah being able to interact with this word of God, he was able to learn who God was. And as he was able to learn who God was, he was completely transformed. Truly burdened by the fact that he had lived such a life that would be walking anywhere except towards God because he realized for the fullness of the love and the goodness that was offered by God and his heart was completely changed. This child, I mean, even still at 18 plus eight, you do the math, he was 26 at this time. This young guy with all of the power in his, with all of the power you could ever ask for was forever changed and his heart was forever marked by the fact that he had encountered this God who loved him. And upon that encounter, and upon learning about this, and upon having God change and mold and shape his heart to becoming a new person, changed everything he did and everything he valued. And so, as he turned back around, the rest of his reign as king was a reign that was marked by, I'm going to continue to lead and I'm going to continue to serve my people the best that I can. But what I recognize now is while I'm doing that, the only way I can do that well and the only way I can truly love and serve my people rightly is if I do so for God, in God, and through God. He rebuilt the temple so that his people would have a place that they could go and encounter God. He got rid of all of these false idols so these people wouldn't have these temptations in front of them to walk and to go and serve other gods. He made the word of God readily available and made the word of God a foundational piece of these people who lived there. What Josiah did is when God got a hold of his heart and transformed his heart, he realized that that would be incomplete unless he turned that love around and he showed it and he gave it to his people. Josiah offered the love and the goodness of God to his kingdom because he knew that a heart for God is not enough. But a heart for God only takes full effect when I turn that around and I share that with my kingdom. And guess what? I know that none of you are kings. You're kings in like the cool sense. Like I think you're all kings and queens. You're awesome. You know, great. But all of us have kingdoms. All of us have a kingdom that we are living and, as Nate often says, that we are building. You have a family at home. You have people that you interact with on the way to work, inside of work. You have sports or you have kids that are at sports and you're standing around with parents. There are kingdoms that all of us have in our lives. And if we want to truly live out this Deuteronomy 6, if we want to truly love the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul, and might, then that means that as we are taking steps forwards and growing in our love of God, then at every step, we should be taking steps forwards just along with it of loving the people that are in our lives. Because guess what? God placed them in front of you for a reason. There's this old hymn that I think is beautiful that I love. It's called Christ Has No Body But Yours. We're called to love people out of the love of God, certainly to make our faith whole and to make our faith what God describes and how it's described in Deuteronomy and throughout scripture. But we're called to do the same because guess what? Christ isn't here. Christ hasn't been here for 2,000 years. God takes up residence inside of his believers, inside of the people whose hearts he has gotten a hold of. And through us and through our hearts, Christ has a body now. And through our hands, our feet, our actions, our lives, our words, we share the love of God that we have experienced so that these people can experience the same. There are people in your lives and in your worlds that will not know God the same way if we don't bring it to them, if we don't tell them about him, if we don't show him his love, who he is and what he's done. And so as we normally wrap up in students, I always send to small groups. And when I send to small groups, I normally want to have a couple things, a couple tangible things that I can grab onto. And it's normally, hey, you know what, this week, let's do this. So if you're willing, since I've decided that this morning, I'm letting you guys into what a youth group would look like, I'd like to do something similar. And I'm going to give you guys the same call. So if you find somebody who looks like a student, ask them how they did it. They might can give you some help. But what I asked them to do and to think about was this. If we're trying to marry the heart with the action, then to really love people this way requires us not simply to do it because we're supposed to, but to do it because our hearts are truly for these people. So maybe you have someone in your world right now that you can think of this week. Someone who you know in some way you could serve well or you could love well. You could love or serve uniquely to your relationship with that person. Maybe it's a group of people. Maybe it's a small office and this is the people. So, write that person down. Write that group down. And here's what I want us to commit to. Not simply going, you know what, when I get to work, I'm going to be really nice to those people. But when I wake up in the morning, before I ever interact with these people, I am committed to praying for them. Praying that God would mold and shape our hearts to having a deep burden and a deep love for these people, that I can love them in a way that is going to glorify the God that is sending me to love them. And in and through that, as you interact with them, being prayerfully aware of what the Lord would have you be in their life. When I translate these Matthew verses, feeding the hungry, taking care of the sick, what I translate it as is this. Everyone has different needs, and everyone needs love in a certain way. So my call for everyone in here is this week, whether it be one person, two people, a few people, can you be the people that loves these people well? Can you be the people that serves them? And can you couple this heart that you have for our God that loves us so deeply with the actions of letting these other people know just how deep that love is through how we love them. Let's pray. God, we love you so much. I pray that we never grow tired and weary in growing closer to you and diving deeper into your love. But God, I just pray that it never stops there, but that you give us a heart for your people. You give us eyes to be able to see where we can serve and where we can love in any possible way that would glorify you. Lord, allow us to be prayerfully aware of the people in our lives and how we could show you to them. We love you so much. We are so thankful that you let us come and be here to rest and to worship in your love. Amen.