Because your heart was responsive and you humbled yourself before God when you heard what he spoke against this place and its people . . . I have heard you, declares the Lord. (2 Chronicles 34:27)[Josiah] did what was right in the eyes of the Lord and walked in the ways of his father David, not turning aside to the right or to the left (34:2). The parallel account in 2 Kings says this about Josiah: Neither before nor after Josiah was there a king like him who turned to the Lord as he did - with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his strength (2 Kings 23:25).
Josiah became king at age 8, and began to search out the things of God when he was 16. At age 2o he purged from Judah every vile and offensive thing. When he was 26, he started the work of repairing the temple, which led to the discovery of the Book of the Law.
Josiah was not some cavalier young man following his basest instincts until suddenly being confronted with the word of God. He had already been pursuing God for sixteen years. When God revealed his plan to punish Judah, how easy would it have been for Josiah to throw a tantrum? Don't you know everything I've done for you? But he didn't. He submitted to the words of God and found favor in God's eyes.
How do you respond when you get bad news?
No comments:
Post a Comment