2 Kings 22-23
Josiah was one of the youngest Kings in Israel and he followed the good example and legacy David left by serving God from a very young age. There is a lot to learn from both his achievements and his mistakes.
We can see a demonstration of his zeal and love for God when he decided to restore the Temple and also when he cleaned up the land of all idol worship and paganistic practices.
He also asked Hilkiah the Priest to interceed, for him and the nation of Judah when the scrolls the law of God were found and the prophetess Huldah revealed that the whole nation and its ancestors had departed from God.
Josiah was repentant and tore his cloths in sorrow and repentance and God who saw the genuineness of his repentance decided to hold back on the disaster He was to bring on the nation until after he died. Josiah went on an aggressive exercise to turn Judah back to God all across the land by removing and tearing down all that had been done and established by other Kings and the people to worship other gods and to adapt other pagan practices. In 2 Kings 23:25 (NLT) the Bible says “Never before had there been a king like Josiah, who turned to the Lord with all his heart and soul and strength, obeying all the laws of Moses. And there has never been a king like him since.”
It’s sad to see though that despite all Josiah did to clean up the land of Judah God was still very angry with Judah and in 2Kings23:26 He reteriated He had rejected Judah and was still going to punish Judah for the wickedness of Manasseh.
The lesson to learn here is no one knows the extent of God’s patience or when it will run out and we must live our lives in accordance with His word and also appreciate His love for us.
Josiah made one last mistake which cost him his life. He should have sought God’s face before rising up against the king of Egypt who was on his way to help Assyria, as this action cost him his life. We need to learn to pick our battles by asking God first before stepping out to fight just like David always did.
The sad part about all this is Josiah’s children who were Kings after him didn’t follow their father’s good example instead they did what was evil in God’s sight. Could this be another mistake Josiah made by not bringing them up in the ways of The Lord while he was alive? It is important as parents to ensure we do not only serve the Lord but also encourage and command our household to do the same.
Psalm 73
This scripture warns us about the danger in envying the wicked.
Things are not always what they seem and here we can see the Psalmist sharing that he almost lost his footing, he almost slipped because he took his eyes off God and started admiring the wicked and listening to their empty boasts.
When he looks to God the Psalmist to finds an answer to why the wicked appear to prosper. God reveals their end to him and he realises his foolishness and begins to value the benefits of resting in The Lord like in Psalms 73:23-24 (NLT)
“Yet I still belong to you; you hold my right hand. You guide me with your counsel, leading me to a glorious destiny.”
The whole scripture gives us a catalogue of why we must never take our eyes of God for He is the reason for our existence, He is our ultimate source and without Him we are nothing.
2 Corinthians 5
This scripture is meant to refocus us on having the right mindset and how we should live our lives as Christians.
It talks about how living in our present bodies is only temporal as heaven is our home but while we live here on earth we should be dead to ourselves but alive to Christ.
We read of how we always need to bear in mind God will judge us for all our actions in our body so we must draw grace from Him to live our lives according to His word and to please Him. So in 2 Corinthians 5:15 (NLT) the Bible says “He died for everyone so that those who receive his new life will no longer live for themselves. Instead, they will live for Christ, who died and was raised for them.” We also know that we have a brand new way of living for Him hence in
2 Corinthians 5:17 (NLT)
The Bible says “This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!”
In Christ
BM
Sixty-six books in a year 