Dennis Tuuri

Well, this morning I’m going to share a few observations on the life and times of King Josiah. We’ll be covering a lot of scripture and I’m going to ask several of you to help us in reading the scripture this morning in a little bit. The scriptures are found in 2 Kings chapters 22 and 23 and 2 Chronicles chapters 34 and 35. So if you want to turn to those places in your scriptures and maybe get a little piece of paper so you can go back and forth.

We’ll be reading from both portions of scripture: 2 Kings chapters 22 and 23 and 2 Chronicles chapters 34 and 35. These are remarkable chapters in the word of God for what occurred during that time under King Josiah. What’s more remarkable maybe is the fact that you hear very few messages or sermons preached on this reign of King Josiah. At least I did in the churches we attended prior to this one.

And that’s a shame. There are many things here to be gleaned. 2 Kings chapters 22 and 23. 2 Chronicles chapters 34 and 35. And I’m going to read the first portions. And I’m going to jump around a little bit. So you probably won’t be able to follow this first portion of scripture, but after that you’ll be able to. We’ll be sort of mixing together some verses here.

Josiah was 8 years old and he began to reign. And he reigned 31 years in Jerusalem. And his mother’s name was Jedidah, the daughter of Adaiah of Bozkath. And he did that which was right in the sight of the Lord, and walked in all the way of David his father, and turned not aside to the right hand or to the left. For in the eighth year of his reign, while he was yet young, he began to seek after the God of David his father. And in the 12th year, he began to purge Judah and Jerusalem from the high places and the groves and the carved images and the molten images.

Now, in the 18th year of his reign, when he had purged the land and the house, he sent Shaphan the son of Azaliah and Maaseiah the governor of the city and Joah the son of Joahaz the recorder to repair the house of the Lord his God. And when they came to Hilkiah the high priest, they delivered the money that was brought into the house of God, which the Levites that kept the doors had gathered of the hand of Manasseh and Ephraim, and of all the remnant of Israel, and of all Judah and Benjamin.

And they returned to Jerusalem. And they put it in the hands of the workmen that had the oversight of the house of the Lord. And they gave it to the workmen that wrought in the house of the Lord to repair and amend the house, even to the artificers and builders gave they it to buy hewn stone and timber for couplings, and to floor the houses which the kings of Judah had destroyed. Howbeit, there was no reckoning made with them of the money that was delivered into their hand, because they dealt faithfully.

And the men did the work faithfully. And the overseers of them were Jahath and Obadiah, the Levites, of the sons of Merari; and Zechariah and Meshullam, of the sons of the Kohathites, to set it forward, and other of the Levites, all that could skill of instruments and music. Also, they were over the bearers of burdens, and were overseers of all that wrought the work in any manner of service. And of the Levites, there were scribes and officers and porters.

Let’s pray. Father God, we thank you for your word and for graciously giving it to us, Lord God. And we thank you for the life you’ve given us in Jesus, your son, our Savior, Lord, and King. We thank you for the Holy Spirit to teach us things from your word and to cause us to act in obedience to them. We pray, Lord God, that this service this morning would be an honor and a worshipful service toward you.

That we would leave it edified and built up in the faith and quicker to act in obedience to all that you’ve commanded us to do. We ask it in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

My first observation this morning on the life of King Josiah is that God works through faithful men to affect reconstruction. God works through faithful men to affect reconstruction. There was some joking around earlier about falling asleep during this morning’s talk, and that’s okay if you wait till after this one point. If you fall asleep after this point, that’ll be okay. But this point, I want us to really focus in on.

God has done some very good things for Reformation Covenant Church, both as a corporate body, as a church, and also for us all as individuals this past year and a half. We read in the scriptures that the people perish for lack of vision. Well, this group won’t perish for that lack. We certainly have vision if we have nothing else. We have other things. But we have a lot of vision in this church.

We have in the last couple of years seen the blessings that God will shed upon the nation that acts in obedience to him in the scriptures. We’ve seen the applicability of God’s law word to every area of life, including the civil magistrate. We’ve gotten involved to various degrees with electoral politics. We have visions of starting Christian schools, political action committees, health clinics, businesses, Christian businesses, engineering firms, political parties, and if there’s to be a reconstructed cookie, I think Vic Couture will have a big hand in that.

We have vision for what can be done in accordance with the word of God. But it’s quite easy to forget the essential ingredient to achieving any of these goals is faithfulness. Josiah in the passage we just read was faithful, not turning aside either the left or the right hand. The overseers of the workers were faithful and hence no accounting of the money given to them was required. That’s a lot of faithfulness.

The workers themselves were faithful and God speaks of this faithfulness in these verses we just read for good reason. God tells us in 1 Corinthians 4 that it is required of stewards that they be found faithful. It’s not asked for or it’s not hoped for. It’s not expected even—it’s required. In Luke 16, God states clearly what’s taught throughout the scriptures and that is that a man must be faithful in little things before he will be entrusted with much.

We’ve got some big tasks. We’ve got some large tasks ahead of us over the next few years and even this year. We’ll talk a little bit more about some of the stuff we have planned later on. But if we think that we can be faithful in these big goals, of trying to affect a reconstructed Portland to try to rebuild the state of Oregon from a theonomic base and yet fall down on the little things and not be faithful in the small minutia of life that make up those big tasks that according to this scripture we have a difference of opinion with God.

God will not entrust the faithfulness for large things to those people who have failed in small things and the large things are made up of small things. I was talking to Judge Beers Friday night at dinner about a song by Johnny Cash and then when I shared it over at McMinnens with Dan, he mentioned that he heard that very song that night on his way home from work. He listens to the country western stuff a lot.

But it’s a song I don’t know if any of you remember it or not, but the song’s about a guy works in an automobile factory and he takes home or steals one part of a car at a time, nut, a bolt, a piston, and then at the end of the song he’s got himself a car and he built it one piece at a time. That’s the point of the thing. Well, we’re not in favor of stealing. But I think that practically speaking, we can see that tasks are made up.

Building a car is made up of one piece at a time being added to the frame. Scripturally, God tells us over and over again that he rewards faithfulness and that he curses faithlessness. So, we have to be faithful in the small things of life in order to attempt some of these tasks that we’re going to attempt in this church. We must strive to be faithful in all these things, big and small, that God has entrusted to us in our home, at our workplace and in the church and you must be careful to faithfully carry out your assignments that you’ve been given in all those places—big or small assignments doesn’t make any difference.

I think that one of my tasks trying to assist and encourage and exhort us all to faithfulness is to sometimes come alongside people and to encourage them in their faithfulness and to point out areas of unfaithfulness and try to help see whatever we can do together to solve some of these problems. Proverbs 27:12 we’re told that faithful are the wounds of a friend but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful. So it’s important that we encourage and come alongside each other to exhort this kind of faithfulness.

We of all people should be categorized as a faithful church. We’ve seen the applicability of God’s law word the abiding validity of his law and we know that God rewards both blessing and cursing—faithfulness and unfaithfulness and obedience and non-obedience.

God works through faithful men to affect reconstruction. And if we hope to be agents of reconstruction in this nation and in this state, then we must be agents of reconstruction in the marketplace, at our jobs, in our homes, and in our churches. Josiah, his overseers, his workmen, and also the prophet Jeremiah that prophesied during this time were faithful men, and God rewarded this faithfulness by giving them his law.

Judge, could you read 2 Chronicles 34:14-19, please?

And when they brought out the money that was brought into the house of the Lord, Hilkiah the priest found a book of the law of the Lord given by Moses. And Hilkiah answered and said unto Shaphan the scribe, I have found the book of the law in the house of the Lord. And Hilkiah delivered the book to Shapan. Shapan carried it to the king and brought the king’s word back again, saying, All that was committed to thy servants, they do it. And they have gathered together the money that was found in the house of the Lord, and have delivered it under the hand of the overseers, and to the hand of the workmen.

Then Shaphan the scribe told the king, saying, Hilkiah the priest had given me a book. And Shapan read it before the king. And it came to pass, when the king had heard the words of the law, that he rent his clothes. And the king commanded Hilkiah and Eliakim the son of Hilkiah and Abdon the son of Micah and Shaphan the scribe and Asaiah a servant of the king saying, Go inquire of the Lord for me and for them that are left that are left in Israel and Judah concerning the words of the book that is found.

For great is the wrath of the Lord that is poured out upon us because our fathers have not kept the word of the Lord to do after all that is written in this book.

Thank you very much.

My second observation from the life of Josiah is this: that God works through his law to affect reconstruction. God works through his law to affect reconstruction. We’ll see in the next couple of chapters or verses rather that we read that Josiah then because of the word of the Lord reinstitutes a covenant agreement between the people and their God and also reinstitutes the Passover.

I think these are symbolic of that covenant relationship that Josiah realized from the reading of the law that God had placed them in. Now, I know that we as a church know the importance of God’s law with the for that I greatly rejoice and I give thanks to Almighty God. I can’t begin to tell you of how encouraged I’ve been and how built up in the faith I’ve been by all of you over this last two years.

There have been times in Bible studies or in Sunday when I look around and I see the men and women that he has put me in the midst of here and I feel honored to share table with all of you. It’s been a real encouragement to myself personally and I’m sure that most of you feel the same way. But I’d like us here to think on just two things.

First, notice Josiah’s reaction to the law. He’s overcome with the sinfulness of his country. He tears his clothes. He rends his clothes. And he realizes God’s wrath comes upon covenant breakers and will come upon his nation. Now I think that many of us have gone through a similar repentance for sin when we came acquainted with the full understanding of God’s sovereignty and of his justice and his righteousness and his holiness.

I remember several years ago when we were going through Jerry Butler’s class introduction to systematic theology and reading A.W. Pink and some of the other reformed writers on the sovereignty of God and the abiding validity of God’s law. My wife and I had experienced a change in our prayer habits. We couldn’t lay in bed anymore and just kind of offer up prayers to God willy-nilly. We got down on our knees. We got out of bed at night. We got down on our knees before God. We had a fuller understanding of his godliness in our creaturliness.

I think this has occurred to a lot of us. I think it’s important we keep that sense of his holiness, of his justice, as a result of his justice, of his wrath upon sin. It’s easy thing to just eventually consider theonomy as a novel doctrine that we happen to hold and other churches don’t hold and we’re better for holding it. But what we’re talking about is the abiding validity of God’s law and our responsibility to keep it. It’s not a novel doctrine. It’s the plain teaching of the word of God.

And there’s Jesus talks about the parable of the wise and foolish man in the gospels. And he says that the a lot of people miss the point of that parable. They think that the wise man is the guy who reads his Bible every day and the foolish man is the guy who doesn’t. Well, that’s not what it says. It says that the wise man is the one who hears the word of God and does it. The foolish man is the one who hears the word of God, the theonomic principles involved that we’re talking about and fails to live in accordance to it.

How can we keep the sense of awe of God’s word and of his personhood? Well, we can’t do it if we don’t read the scriptures. It’s in the scriptures the Holy Spirit illumines to us the person of God and his law and the necessity of keeping it. So, we’ve got to read the scriptures, meditate on them, and by kneeling down in prayer before his majesty.

The second thing I want us to ponder about God’s law and its place in reconstruction is the correlation between the previously stated need for faithfulness that we just talked about and the theonomic perspective. God and his law apply to all of our lives. And it should develop, or we should develop rather through it, a biblical world and life view that places importance on being faithful and lawful in our approach to the small things of life.

I regard it as ironic—that’s a nice word—that a church that prides itself on its theonomic position and its accompaniment, the idea of faithfulness to God and every all the covenants we’ve entered into yet finds it such a difficult time to get here at 10:30 on Sunday morning. Now, I’m not talking about any individuals here. We’ve all shared in this problem.

Hi, Bill. Sorry.

Well, that’s okay. Right on in. Bill Hosman. How you doing, buddy?

So, here we are. Theonomic church and yet we can’t get here at 10:30. Now, the only person I know that has had a problem in this area is myself and Chris W. We’re always here. So, there’s a reason for that. But even with myself, I know that I’ve failed time and time again to meet deadlines Saturday night and ended up starting my Sabbath rest at the Orton Graduate Center, making copies of some new communion form or something else.

I’m not trying to be picky here, but I am trying to encourage and point out the need for a theonomic faithful attitude about all things in life, great and small. God uses his law to affect reconstruction. We know it. We must act on the basis of that knowledge.

Howard, could you read 2 Chronicles 34:20-28, please? Read it in the… Yes. Just read it loudly for the tape.

And the king commanded Hilkiah son of Shaphan son of Micah, Shaphan the scribe and Asaiah the servant of the king saying, Go inquire of the Lord for me and for those who are left in Israel and in Judah about the words of the book that is found. For great is the Lord’s wrath that is poured out on us because our fathers have not kept the word of the Lord, to do according to all that is written in this book.

And Hilkiah and they whom the king had appointed when went to Huldah the prophetess wife of Shallum son of Tokhath son of Hasrah keeper of the wardrobe. She dwelt in Jerusalem in the second quarter. They spoke to her to that effect. She answered them, Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, tell the man who sent you to me. Thus says the Lord, behold, I will bring people upon this place and upon its inhabitants, even all the curses that are written in the book which they have read before the king of Judah.

Because they have forsaken me, have burned incense to other gods, they might provoke me to anger with all the works of their hands. Therefore, my wrath shall be poured out upon this place and shall not be quenched. But say to King Josiah of Judah, who sent you to inquire of the Lord, thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, concerning the words which you have heard, because your heart was tender and penitent and you humbled yourself before God when you heard his words against this place and its inhabitants and humbled yourself before me and rent your clothes and wept before me I have heard you says the Lord.

Behold I will gather you to your fathers and you shall be gathered to your grave in peace and your eyes shall not see all the evil that I will bring upon this place and its inhabitants.

They so they brought the king word again.

My third observation this morning is that God judges sin. God judges sin. That’s pretty simple. And yet passages like this show us the results of God’s wrath, the results of that judgment. The predecessors to King Josiah and Judah had been wicked, very wicked. When we get to the portion of God or of Josiah rather, tearing down the strongholds, we’ll see the extent of that corruption in the land of Judah. This sin will be judged by God.

After Josiah’s death, the nation of Judah will be taken into the Babylonian captivity. This should give us a heightened awareness of both the vileness of sin and the power and justice of God. We’re in the midst of a very wicked nation today. And it’s so easy to wink at sin, to overlook it, to get dulled to the whole thing. This nation is walking down the same steps that Judah and Jerusalem walked down in the time before King Josiah.

We’re going—two weeks from today is the anniversary of the Roe versus Wade decision of the Supreme Court. That’s one example is the abortions that are going on in this country. Murders, one and a half million a year now, maybe more. And because of that, in two weeks, we’ll have a special service here of a liturgy of confession of malediction. We’re going to use the basic form that’s been supplied by the people in Texas in the Phineas report. We may alter it a little bit, but I think that’s proper to do in the light of the sinfulness of this to make confession as a nation before him and call for his wrath and his judgment to come upon those people involved in this murder.

I know of Christians who look around them and lay down as frightened sheep due to die. I was living on a farm up in Carnation, Washington, and a dog got loose and started chasing the sheep and chasing this one little lamb particularly and this lamb just laid right down scared to death and just collapsed on the ground. The farmer came up and picked that lamb up and hid it on the backside and got it going.

He said that if he hadn’t done that, that sheep would have died. Well, there are Christians today in this land who are laying down scared and they’re ready to die.

It’s interesting. We in this church have tried to figure out, I’ve heard a lot of conversations, is God going to bless this nation? Is he going to bring us back to repentance or is he going to judge this nation and take us into captivity? Which are we going? Up or down? Well, Josiah knew. He’d heard the word of the Lord from Huldah the prophetess saying, that the judgment of God was going to come upon his country. Did it change what he did? No. He acted in faithfulness to the word of God. And that’s our calling to act in faithfulness to God’s word, not turning aside to the right or to the left.

It’s up to God to do what he wants to do in this nation. We can pray to God. And I think we all are that God brings this nation to repentance before he sets his mind to bring us into captivity. Josiah knew who he was serving. He knew that God was faithful and just and holy. He loved God and so he desired prepared to serve God and he feared God and was moved to serve him. I think those things to be true of us.

God judges sin. He’ll judge this nation. Pray to God that our country will turn before God sets his mind to deliver us into captivity. Serve him while you may. God takes care of his faithful ones. And in the last portion of the scripture we just read, we saw that God postponed the judgment of Judah and allowed Josiah to go to his grave in peace, not seeing the taking away of the people into captivity. He graciously delayed the captivity until after Josiah’s death.

Steve Brown here, Steve S. Could you read 2 Chronicles 34:29-32?

Okay.

Then the king sent and gathered together all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem. And the king went up into the house of the Lord and all the men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem and the priests and the Levites and all the people great and small. And he read in their ears all the words of the book of the covenant that was found in the house of the Lord. And the king stood in his place and made a covenant before the Lord to walk after the Lord and to keep his commandments and his testimonies and his statutes with all his heart and with all his soul to perform the words of the covenant which are written in this book.

And he caused all that were present in Jerusalem and Benjamin to stand to it. And the inhabitants of Jerusalem did according to the covenant of God, the God of their fathers.

My fourth observation is that God works through a covenanted people. God works through a covenanted people. We see here that one of the effects of the finding of the law and of Josiah’s reaction to it was to form a covenant, to renew the covenant between God’s people and himself. We here the book of the law is referred to as the book of the covenant and that’s what it is.

The next portion of scripture we’ll read or one of the next ones we’ll see that Josiah reinstitutes the Passover and the Passover is the sign of the covenant. The covenant is important to God. Many of us listened to Dr. Kelly’s messages on Samuel a year or so ago. We were particularly edified by his remarks on the remaking of the covenant in the time of Nehemiah. That portion of the scriptures were part of the reasoning behind our covenant statement as a church.

God takes covenants very seriously. He works through covenants and we found it right and proper to covenant ourselves together as a group committed to one another in faithfulness to one another and also in faithfulness to God and to his every word.

If I have a New Year’s resolution or wish, it would be that this year would see Reformation Covenant Church as a fellowship of faithful men and women acting theomically in every sense and striving to walk in obedience to the covenants that we’ve entered into. If we’re faithful in these simple tasks, God will bless us as he blessed King Josiah.

God works through a covenanted people.

Gordon, could you read 2 Kings 23:4-20?

2 Kings 23:4-20.

And the king commanded high priest and the priest of the second order and his doorkeepers to bring out of the temple of the Lord all the vessels that were made for Baal for Asherah and for all the host of heaven. And he burned them outside Jerusalem in the fields of the Kidron and carried their ashes to Bethel. And he did away with the idolatrous priests whom the kings of Judah had appointed to burn incense on high places in the cities of Judah and all around. He also those who were involved and burned it and threw it to dust and threw his dust in the graves of the people.

He also broke down the house of male prostitutes which were in the house of the Lord where the women were weaving for Asherah. And he brought all the priests from the cities of Judah and followed the high places where the priests had burned incense, and also broke down the high places of the gates which were at the entrance of the gate of Joshua the governor of the city, which was on the left.

Nevertheless, the priests of the high places did not go up to the altar but they ate unleavened bread of their brethren. He also defiled Topeth which is in the valley of the sons of Hinnom that no man might make his son or his daughter pass through the fire. And he died and he did away with the horses which the kings of Judah had given to the sun at the entrance of the house of the Lord by the chamber of Nathan the official which was in the precincts.

And he burned the chariots of the sun with fire and the altars which were on the roof the upper chamber of which the kings of Judah had made and the altars which Manasseh made in the two courts in the house of the Lord. The king broke down and he ran from there and threw their dust and broke the could also be smashed there and the high places which were before Jerusalem which were on the right of the mount of destruction which Solomon the king of Israel had built for Ashtoreth, the abomination of Sidon, and for Chemosh, the abomination of Moab, and for Milcom, the abomination of the sons of Ammon.

The king defiled and he broke in pieces the sacred pillars and cut down the poles with human bones. Furthermore, the altar that was in Bethel and the high place of Jeroboam who made Israel sin, even that altar and the high place he broke down. Then he had lost his thumb to dust and burned the Asherah.

Now when Josiah returned, he saw the graves that were there on the mountain. And he sent took the bones from the graves on the according to the word of the Lord of the monument that I told him the man of God claimed these which you’ve done against the altar of Bethel. He said let him alone let no one disturb his bones. So they left his bones undisturbed with the bones of the prophet from Samaria.

And Josiah also removed all of the high places the cities of Samaria with the kings of Israel and they did to them just as he had done and all the priests of the high places were there.

My fifth observation is that God’s reconstruction tears down strongholds. We’re talking about here is reconstruction of the nation. And it’s interesting that after they renew the covenant based upon the book of the law, the first thing that we’re recorded that’s that Josiah does is to tear out the altars to tear out the of idolatry that abounded in the land. You can see the extent of the sin in Judah at this time and the extent of God’s wrath upon that sin.

You remember several months ago when we talked about the Supreme Court decision in Bob Jones case and I compared it to Gideon in the Supreme Court. We talked about one of Gideon’s first tasks was to tear down his father’s idols. This theme is found throughout the Old Testament. And I’m convinced that this theme is going on in this country today. Praise God, that we see across this country churches and men of God who are beginning to bring down strongholds of idolatry.

Last Friday afternoon, Dan Prenis and I went out to Joe Lutz’s church. Judge Beers was there, Steve S., other people. And Joe Lutz, who’s the pastor of Independent Baptist Church in Portland or in Gresham, I guess, or Clackamas, Milwaukee, I guess, is what it is. It’s all the east side to me. But anyway, he was there and he’s deeply involved on both the Nebraska situation and the social security fight.

And we heard some reports about that. One of the men that talked there for a short period of time, Joe really cramped his style, I think, but pastor of a church in Vancouver, another Baptist church, who had filed papers for dissolution of their corporate status in the state. And one of the reasons for this, in case some of you aren’t aware of what’s going on here, Joe gave an interesting little story of pastor Sullivan—with one of the first when the Providence situation in Nebraska was just starting to heat up several months ago and Sullivan went in the judge’s chambers and he was saying to the judge that this is the church of God.

We can’t, you know, you can’t tell us what to do. This is the church of God. And the judge said that, what’s the name of the church there in Nebraska? Faith Baptist. Faith Baptist. The judge said, pastor, he said, you’re talking about Faith Baptist Church, Inc., you’re incorporated in this state, and you’re subject to the jurisdictional laws, corporate laws of the state of Nebraska. And that, as Joe said, should turn a key in all of our minds.

We should realize that this is what’s happened. Nobody put a gun to that church’s head and said incorporate. Even if they had, it wouldn’t have been okay for the church to do it. The church did it out of ignorance. It’s not surprising that many churches across this land have entered into these sort of contractual legal agreements with no mind for it whatsoever. We’ve divorced the spirit of God from the law of God.

We’ve divorced a proper understanding of how society is run and we’ve forsaken the idea of legal or contractual obligations. So, this has happened to the church not by force of the state. This happened to the church willfully. Now, praise God that men like this pastor we heard there—going to be hundreds perhaps thousands of churches next month that will begin this process of deincorporating. These men have realized that they’ve erected an altar, a false god, saying that the church owed its allegiance to the state and not to God and owes its creation to the state as a corporate entity.

They realize that they’ve brought this false idol into their church and they’re tearing it down. Now, it won’t be easy. They’re beginning that process of tearing it down. Notice that one of the first acts of Josiah was the destruction of Topeth, that no man may cause his children to pass through the fires to Moloch. Men and women across this land are tearing down altars of Moloch as they pull their children out of the public education system, which is messianic.

This country, the secular thoughts of this country, are that education can accomplish the salvation of the people. The church is becoming aware of that and they’re pulling their people out. No longer will the remnant suffer its children to be initiated into state worship. No longer are we willing to offer up our praises and our children to the false gods of Moloch and statism.

Again though this has not been a matter of compulsion. Originally the church brought all this to pass with bad doctrine, with bad teachings with bad practice. There’s a book called The Socialist Phenomenon which was reviewed in by Gary North in preface and which probably most several of us have copies of and he traces the roots of the socialist heresies or the socialist phenomena we see manifested in a secular way in our day and age to some of the early heresies of the church.

These heresies of socialist understanding of the word of God and actually a rejection of the word of God still abound. Another thing that’s been going on for several years, one of our own senators from the state, Senator Hatfield, continues to try to push through this bill on global resources. What this bill is it would make zero population growth the goal of the country and would bring the forces of this country fully to bear on that problem.

I don’t remember the wording exactly, but something about how the government should bring all resources available to achieve this solution, zero population growth. Well, you’ve seen what the IRS has done with a very little window. This global resources bill would just open up the doors and say do whatever you want to us to make us achieve zero population growth in this country. Those things are linked up with the socialist heresies that came out of the first and second centuries.

I don’t want to get into a lot of detail there, but we can later on if you want to. Pastor Sullivan in a recent interview with Gary North, one of the one of the firestorm chats said that one of the biggest problems we’re going to have trying to affect any kind of change in this country is the fact that our churches are filled with people who are receiving government assistance, who are in one form or another on the dole.

Now, you may say, “We don’t have too many people on welfare. We take care of our people.” Well, what about there’s all kinds of other means of government financing of people. For instance, I just saw an ad this last week for weather proofing. And if you do this sort of thing to your house, then you can get a government rebate on your taxes. Well, you begin to start to take advantage of those things and start eating that food that the government gives you, so to speak, and taking that money the government supposedly gives you, and now you have a problem breaking off from that allegiance to that idol.

You want the good things that idol will give you, but at the same time, you’re saying you want to tear it down. You can’t be double-minded about this thing. Most of us have gone through a process over the last few years of tearing down some altars that we have built up in our own lives and in our churches.

Dispensationalism with its accompanying antinomianism. The belief that God’s word, God’s law rather, is not valid today and does not have to be obeyed. That’s an altar of an idol. It’s an idol of destruction as Schaeffer points out. I don’t know if he attacks that one specifically, but it is something I’ve thought for a long time. Well, this is just a problem we have. I had a little misunderstanding about the word of God. And isn’t this nice? Now, I guess we should obey his law.

Well, when King Josiah again was exposed to the law of God, he got on his knees. He rent his clothes before God. And I think that we have to get that same attitude that what we’ve been engaged with is not some sort of intellectual problem. It’s sin in our lives. And I can continue to suffer from that and I don’t expect that to happen overnight in my case nor in your case to root out these ideas of antinomianism, of rejection of God’s law and of the quick fix the rapture out of here.

These things take a while to root out but we have to do it. We’ve brought the beast to life in this country. The church it’s happened in the church. It’s not happened outside it. We’ve brought it to life by not serving the true God and by bringing in these altars into our churches. And we’re now responsible to bring them down. You bring that beast down. What weapons do we have?

In 2 Corinthians 10, we read: “For the weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God. And we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. And we will be ready to punish every act of disobedience once your obedience is complete.”

We take captive every thought as the people from Texas continue to say and others do as well. Ideas have consequences. The ideas that we’re talking about this morning of reconstruction, the need of following God’s word, making it applicable to every area of life. Those ideas have consequences. We haven’t been brought into this thing just to sit back and say, “Well, I guess we understand and they don’t.” We’ve been brought to spread ideas and to demolish strongholds, and that’s what we’ll do.

God’s reconstruction tears down strongholds.

Ron, could you read 2 Chronicles 34:33 and then 35:1-19? Chapter 34:33 and then chapter 35:1-19.

And Josiah took away all the abominations out of the countries that pertain to the children of Israel and made all that were present in Israel to serve, even to serve the Lord their God. And all his days they departed not from following the Lord, the God of their fathers.

Moreover, Josiah kept the Passover unto the Lord in Jerusalem. And they killed the Passover on the 14th day of the first month. And he sent the priests in their charges encouraged them to the service of the house of the Lord. And said unto the Levites that taught all Israel, which were holy unto the Lord, Put the holy ark in the house which Solomon, son of David, the king of Israel did build. It shall not be a burden upon your shoulders.

Serve now the Lord your God and his people Israel. And prepare yourselves by the houses of your fathers after your courses according to the writing of David, king of Israel, and according to the writing of Solomon, his son, and stand in a holy place according to the divisions of the families of the fathers of your brethren people. And after the division of the families of the Levites, so Passover and sanctify yourselves and prepare your brethren that they may do according to the word of the Lord by the hand of Moses.

And Josiah gave to the people of the flock lambs and kids all for the Passover offerings for all that were present to the number of 30,000 and 3,000 oxen. These were of the king’s substance. And his princes gave willingly unto the people to the priests and to the Levites and Zechariah and Joyful rulers of the house of God gave unto the priests for the Passover offerings 2,600 small cattle and 300 oxen.

Conaniah also and Shemaiah and Nethanel his brethren and Hashabiah and Jiele and Joahabad chief of Levites even the Levites for Passover. 5,000 small cattle and 500 oxen. So the service was prepared and the priests stood in their place and the Levites in their courses according to the king’s commandment and they killed the Passover and the priests sprinkled the blood from their hands and the Levites slayed them.

They removed the burnt offerings that they might give according to the divisions of the families of the people to offer unto the Lord as it is written in the law of Moses. So, and so did they with the oxen. And they roasted the Passover with fire according to the ordinance. But the other holy offerings sod they in pots and in cauldrons and in pans and divided them speedily among all the people. And afterward they made ready for themselves and for the priests. Because the priests sons of Aaron were busy in offering the burnt offerings and the fat until night.

Therefore the Levites prepared for themselves and for the priests, the sons of Aaron. And the singers, the sons of Asaph, were in their place according to the commandment of David and Asaph and Heman and Jeduthun, the king’s seer. And the porters waited at every gate. They might not depart from their service, for their brethren Levites prepared for them.

So all the service of the Lord was prepared the same day to eat the Passover and to offer offerings upon the altar of the Lord according to the commandment of King Josiah. And the children of Israel that were present kept the Passover at that time and the feast of unleavened bread seven days. And there was no Passover like to that kept in Israel from the days of Samuel the prophet. Neither did all the kings of Israel keep such a Passover as Josiah kept, and priests and Levites and all Judah and Israel that were present and inhabitants of Jerusalem.

In the 18th year of the reign of Josiah was this Passover kept.

This is a beautiful scene of reinstitution of one of God’s commandments of the nation. We see here that God has moved through faithful men covenanted together acting in obedience to his law. He’s used these men to tear down strongholds of idolatry to reconstruct his institutions.

My final observation is that God reconstructs through restoration. God reconstructs through restoration. Now, this is a—it’s probably a little tough to catch it in the first reading, but if you get what’s going on here, you’ve got a nation that is acting in concert together. They’re covenanted together. They’re acting for the common good of obeying the law of God and keeping the Passover.

Remember, the Passover is the sign of the covenant. We see the covenanted people now acting in obedience to that sign. It’s a beautiful thing. And it’s been a joyous thing this last year at Reformation Covenant to celebrate communion in the context of a victorious love feast. Most of us in the past our communions have been a little dirge-like—we kind of sitting around mournfully till God beams us out.

But we know that the communion is a joyous celebration of God’s forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ and of Jesus Christ’s accomplished victory over sin and death once for all accomplished. And he’s working that through now in our nation and in our lives.

As God continues his work of reconstruction in this land, he’ll continue to restore those institutions that he has ordained and so ordered to be the vehicles of the expansion of his kingdom. We’ve come out for the most part of churches where the concept of vocational calling was either completely ignored or even denied. Having done that, we it would be easy thing to understand why it would happen if we then ignored the church and didn’t realize the church is the essential part of the union of God’s institutions for the expansion of his kingdom.

God will reconstruct and restore his church to being once again a vital part of the synergistic mechanism of home, vocation, and church. A synergistic mechanism. Synergism is when the whole of the parts together is greater than the individual parts added up. And that’s the case of the institutions that God established. The home, the workplace, the church, these things are synergistic.

We’ve all been encouraged by our fellowship here, but I think that we all realize that it’s only a shadow of what it will be as God continues to enable us by his spirit to bring every thought captive to Jesus Christ.

In this next year, we’ve got a lot of things planned. Hopefully, within the next month or month and a half, we’re going to have a Saturday seminar with Jack Lekman coming out to talk about electoral politics. As a result of that seminar, we’re going to try to get people from various churches involved in that. As a result of that, we want to set up some community and political sort of action groups, neighborhood groups.

We are working on the questionnaire still that we’ll take out into our communities as part of perhaps this whole project, build a mailing list off that and set up seminars in the neighborhoods to talk about how God’s word applies to all these things, all the problems of life. We are—Howard’s investigating what it will take to start a political action committee. We may have that going fairly quickly, hopefully over the next few months.

We’re talking about a computer network small at first, linking up several people in port of the Portland area so we can have a fast conduit of information exchange and a kind of a hotline sort of effect and that may involve the Reconstruction in California perhaps and some other things. The next issue of a good report is going to center on education and we’ve got a year now to get ready for the battle that will surely face us in the next session of the legislature regarding home education.