type: Sermon Manuscript\
belongs_to: "[[i-found-the-book-josiah-july-1-2026]]"
Manuscript - I Found the Book - Josiah - July 1, 2026
Take your Bibles with me tonight and turn to 2 Kings chapter 22. We're going to talk about an awesome king tonight, a king named Josiah.
Let’s go ahead and read verses 1-2:
[1] Josiah was eight years old when he began to reign, and he reigned thirty and one years in Jerusalem. And his mother's name was Jedidah, the daughter of Adaiah of Boscath.
[2] 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.
2 Kings 22:1-2 (KJV)
Last week we talked about King Manasseh, who was the worst king in the history of Judah. He was a very, very bad person who spent 50 years of his life trying his best to undermine God's work in Israel and Judah. He built all kinds of places of idol worship. He desecrated the temple, killed many innocent people, and committed child sacrifice. Just bad.
But then at the end of his life he repented and sought the Lord and God forgave him and restored him. Well he died after that short period of goodness and his son Ammon became the king.
Ammon was a very wicked king. That's probably the consequence of the life of wickedness that Manasseh lived. Ammon quickly tried to undermine the reforms that his father was making at the end of his life and put the idols and such back.
But his reign didn't last that long. After about two years Ammon dies at the young age of 24. People in Ammon's court were sick of what he was doing and they assassinated him. Ammon's son, Josiah, becomes the king at eight years old.
Now do the math. If Josiah became king when he was eight and his father died when he was 24, how old was Ammon when Josiah was born? I was 16. The thing is, that's not that unusual for that time. Many, many of the people in the Bible had children when they were teenagers. A lot of scholars think Mary and Joseph were just teenagers and that the disciples, many of them, weren't much older than teenagers.
So Josiah comes to the throne at eight years old and Josiah is going to be a very good king. It says that he walks in the way of the Lord like David did and that he doesn't turn to the right or to the left. Josiah is just going to cut it straight his entire life.
Now we're going to have a couple of different messages about Josiah. We're going to talk about the reforms that Josiah made and his death next week. Today I want to talk about the events that happened mostly in this chapter of 2 Kings 22 and we'll look a little bit at some information in 2 Chronicles 33.
Let’s keep reading:
[3] And it came to pass in the eighteenth year of king Josiah, that the king sent Shaphan the son of Azaliah, the son of Meshullam, the scribe, to the house of the Lord, saying,
[4] Go up to Hilkiah the high priest, that he may sum the silver which is brought into the house of the Lord, which the keepers of the door have gathered of the people:
[5] And let them deliver it into the hand of the doers of the work, that have the oversight of the house of the Lord: and let them give it to the doers of the work which is in the house of the Lord, to repair the breaches of the house,
[6] Unto carpenters, and builders, and masons, and to buy timber and hewn stone to repair the house.
[7] Howbeit there was no reckoning made with them of the money that was delivered into their hand, because they dealt faithfully.
2 Kings 22:3-7 (KJV)
Josiah, when he's 16 years old, starts to seek the Lord. We read about this in Chronicles. He spends the first part of his life as king doing incredible religious reform, getting rid of all the idols and taking care of all of that. Again we're going to talk about that next week.
In the eighteenth year of his reign, when he's 26, this would be 10 years after his personal revival. He wants to get work going on the temple. The temple had fallen into terrible disrepair under Manasseh and under Ammon and it needs to be rebuilt again. You get the impression that money has been collected for this for a while but work isn't happening. People aren't pulling the trigger. Josiah the king steps up and he gets with Hilkiah the high priest to get this done.
And a first principle here is...
1. Sometimes leadership needs to stir people up to get the work done.
If you're reading this and it kind of feels like déjà vu to you, you're not crazy. There was another king of Judah, many many years before this, who came to the throne at a very young age. He had to repair the temple and get the priests to stop taking the money for themselves and to get the work going.
Jehoash was the king who was saved by Jehoshabeath. If you remember that story, Queen Athaliah tried to wipe out the royal seed. One of Jehoash's great works was rebuilding the temple. He set up a collection system for rebuilding the temple because the priests were kind of sitting on their hands. They weren't doing it.
And it seems to me that Josiah is doing the same kind of thing here. He's got to stir people up. It's not getting done. The money is being collected but the work isn't happening. He gets the artisans, the builders, the masons, all the people that actually needed to do the work, working. Then he says something interesting: they're good. They don't need to be accounted for. They are working faithfully.
And so I think a second principle we can take from this little bit of the story is...
2. We ought to strive to live with such integrity that we don't need a minder.
I think if you are a faithful person, you do not mind accountability. If you are a faithful person with high character, accountability doesn't bother you.
But I think we should live in such a way that we don't need accountability. In other words we do what's right whether people are watching or not. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying accountability is a bad thing. Accountability is a very, very good thing. What I'm saying is live with such character that even when people are not looking and even when people are not checking, you still do the right thing.
How much of your job would get done if you didn't have a manager? How much work do you do when your boss takes the day off? Do you take things you're not supposed to at work?
We need to live with integrity and these workers had proven their integrity to King Josiah.
Let's keep reading.
[8] And Hilkiah the high priest said unto Shaphan the scribe, I have found the book of the law in the house of the Lord. And Hilkiah gave the book to Shaphan, and he read it.
[9] And Shaphan the scribe came to the king, and brought the king word again, and said, Thy servants have gathered the money that was found in the house, and have delivered it into the hand of them that do the work, that have the oversight of the house of the Lord.
[10] And Shaphan the scribe shewed the king, saying, Hilkiah the priest hath delivered me a book. And Shaphan read it before the king.
[11] And it came to pass, when the king had heard the words of the book of the law, that he rent his clothes.
[12] And the king commanded Hilkiah the priest, and Ahikam the son of Shaphan, and Achbor the son of Michaiah, and Shaphan the scribe, and Asahiah a servant of the king's, saying,
[13] Go ye, enquire of the Lord for me, and for the people, and for all Judah, concerning the words of this book that is found: for great is the wrath of the Lord that is kindled against us, because our fathers have not hearkened unto the words of this book, to do according unto all that which is written concerning us.
2 Kings 22:8-13 (KJV)
Josiah gets with Hilkiah, the high priest, and Shaphan the scribe. I want to stop here and talk about these two guys because they are very interesting. Not that they themselves did anything interesting beyond what's in this chapter. They're interesting because of their family, because of their children, because of the legacy that they had as parents.
Hilkiah, the high priest who finds the book in the house of the Lord, is the father of somebody that everybody here knows. The father of a guy named Jeremiah, the prophet. Apparently Jeremiah came by his faith in the Lord honestly. He had a goodly heritage. He had a godly father in Hilkiah.
Shaphan, the scribe, is this kind of wonky guy who works for King Josiah, the sort of lawyer who works for King Josiah. He has a bunch of children and grandchildren that you read about in the rest of the scripture.
When King Jehoiakim wanted to burn Jeremiah's scroll, it was a son of Shaphan named Gemariah who stopped him from doing it. It was his grandson Micaiah who heard Baruch read Jeremiah's second scroll in the temple and reported it to the king's secretaries. He had a son named Elishamah who carried Jeremiah's letter to the Jewish exiles in Babylon. He had a son named Ahicham who was one of the people who consulted Huldah, whom we're going to read about in a minute, about the book of the law. After the fall of Judah, his grandson Gedaliah became the governor of Judah.
So Shaphan was used by God in this story but I would say maybe he was even more used through his children. So maybe a third principle we can put out there tonight is that
3. One of the greatest impacts that you can have on the world is through your children.
Your children can be like arrows in the hand of a mighty hunter. Arrows in the hand of a mighty man, aimed at the enemy. You can have a huge impact on the world through raising godly kids.
Now we're not always going to get it right. Shaphan had four sons. Three of them ended up very godly and one of them is recorded for being an idolater. But God used the parenting of these two people greatly in the history of Israel.
Maybe you're not a preacher. Maybe nobody knows your name, but maybe you can be a godly dad and a godly mom and have a huge impact on the world through that.
So Hilkiah the priest and Shaphan are doing the work in the temple and Hilkiah finds a book, the book of the law. Now that's strange to me because the temple had been there all along. This is Solomon's temple. It's been there all along.
There have been godly kings. Hezekiah had been the king about 70 years ago. Manasseh had come back to the Lord and started instituting some reforms. Josiah has been a godly king now for 18 years, instituting godly reforms. You know what they didn't have in all that time? They didn't have the Bible.
A fourth principle tonight is
4. It's a terrible thing when God's word is neglected.
It's really, really sad to me that they found the Bible in the Temple. They found the book in the Temple. It was there all along; it just wasn't being read, it just wasn't being used. It's sad that in a lot of churches they sing songs about Jesus, preach sermons, baptize, and do all of the things, but the Bible is not really being used very much.
I find in some churches where the messages are essentially coming from Reader's Digest or commentary on the news. I've been in some churches that are preaching some book, some Christian book that's popular at the time. I remember a preacher in town asked me once, "What are you doing for Sunday morning at your church?" I said, "Well, we're preaching through I forget what book it was at the time, Romans or something like that." He said, "Oh, we're doing Purpose-Driven Life."
There are some churches that read a verse or two from the scripture and then the message doesn't come from that verse. It's just whatever the pastor's opinion is at the moment.
The story of Josiah shows us that you can have religion without the word and that's a really bad thing. When Shaphan reads this book that's found for King Josiah, he tears his clothes in a symbol of grief because he sees God's word. He sees how far the people of God have come from the standard of the word of God.
Church, the standard is not the opinions of man. The standard is not the traditions that our fathers and our grandfathers did. The standard that we must always judge ourselves against is the standard of the Word of God. There have been Christians throughout the ages who, judging themselves by their traditions and by their parents and grandparents, thought they were being very good Christians but had come very, very far away from what the Word of God actually says.
We need to read the Word of God and follow the Word of God. We'll come back to that in a second.
Josiah hears the Word of God. A lot of commentaries and preachers believe that, particularly, what affected him was the book of Deuteronomy.
The book of Deuteronomy has a lot to say about Israel when they have a king and become an actual kingdom. It has warnings about what they're not supposed to do:
- They're not supposed to worship idols.
- They're not supposed to intermarry.
Israel and Judah had done all those things. They had broken all those laws. There were things that they were supposed to be doing that Deuteronomy said Judah had not been doing for many many years. Deuteronomy had a covenant that needed to be renewed.
One of the things that Deuteronomy said was that the king was supposed to have a copy of the law of Moses, his own copy, and that it was to be read and thought of. Here is Josiah. He's been king for 18 years and he's never seen it before.
The thing that most affected Josiah was that Deuteronomy said that if you don't do these things and if you have idolatry in the land, you are going to be cursed. God is going to judge you. He is distraught because he realizes that Judah deserves God's judgment. He gets his guys together and says, "Go find a prophet. Go listen to somebody and get a word from God if this is actually real or not."
Look at verse 14.
[14] So Hilkiah the priest, and Ahikam, and Achbor, and Shaphan, and Asahiah, went unto Huldah the prophetess, the wife of Shallum the son of Tikvah, the son of Harhas, keeper of the wardrobe; (now she dwelt in Jerusalem in the college;) and they communed with her.
2 Kings 22:14 (KJV)
They find a prophetess, a female prophet named Huldah. A fifth principle tonight. Huldah is a name that means mole. Must have been a looker.
But she is a female prophetess. Now listen. My temptation, as a traditional Christian who believes that the New Testament teaches that pastors are supposed to be men, is to think that whenever I see something like this, "Well, there must not have been any male prophets around." We actually know that's not true because this was a time when there were lots of male prophets and we know their names: Jeremiah, Zephaniah, Nahum, Habakkuk. They all were alive and operating at this time.
And so a fifth principle here is...
5. Sometimes God speaks through women.
Do you know there are eight prophetesses in the Bible? There's Miriam, the sister of Moses, who's called a prophetess. There's Deborah. There's a woman named Naodaya. The prophet Isaiah is actually married to a woman who is also called a prophetess. You have this woman, Huldah. In the New Testament you have Anna, who we see in Luke chapter 2, who's called a prophetess. Philip the Evangelist has four daughters, and I feel that I have four daughters. They are called prophetesses.
Now they're not called pastors. We understand the New Testament teaches that the pastoral office is for men and that men are supposed to speak with authority in the church. That doesn't mean that God doesn't speak through women. That doesn't mean that God can't use women.
Let's look at what God says through Huldah.
[15] And she said unto them, Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, Tell the man that sent you to me,
[16] Thus saith the Lord, Behold, I will bring evil upon this place, and upon the inhabitants thereof, even all the words of the book which the king of Judah hath read:
[17] Because they have forsaken me, and have burned incense unto other gods, that they might provoke me to anger with all the works of their hands; therefore my wrath shall be kindled against this place, and shall not be quenched.
[18] But to the king of Judah which sent you to enquire of the Lord, thus shall ye say to him, Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, As touching the words which thou hast heard;
[19] Because thine heart was tender, and thou hast humbled thyself before the Lord, when thou heardest what I spake against this place, and against the inhabitants thereof, that they should become a desolation and a curse, and hast rent thy clothes, and wept before me; I also have heard thee, saith the Lord.
[20] Behold therefore, I will gather thee unto thy fathers, and thou shalt be gathered into thy grave in peace; and thine eyes shall not see all the evil which I will bring upon this place. And they brought the king word again.
2 Kings 22:15-20 (KJV)
Holda basically says listen, everything God's Word said is going to happen is going to happen. God is going to bring judgment because of the sins of Judah. And that did happen! Not much after this Babylon becomes a world power and takes Judah captive, mostly because of sins that have already taken place in the past.
I think it's interesting what she says in verse 19: "Because your heart was tender and you humbled yourself before the Lord, I am not going to allow you to see the curse. Josiah was going to live out the rest of his reign in peace and prosperity. It would be after Josiah that the curse would come."
So a sixth principle tonight.
6. We should keep a tender heart towards the Word of God.
It is a good thing when we allow God's Word to speak to our heart. We allow ourselves to be pliable to the Word of God.
When's the last time you heard the Word of God and it convicted you and you felt remorse for the way that you were living? I'm not telling you to tear your clothes. Please don't do that in church, okay? You felt remorse because God's Word showed you that you didn't measure up and you needed the mercy and grace of God.
We need to keep a tender heart towards the Word of God. Maybe it's been a long time since God's Word spoke to you in that way. Maybe you need to pray that God's Word would be like a hammer and break the rock of your heart in pieces, and that God would start directing you and leading you through His Word again.
Now there's one more passage I want to read and it's in the book of 2 Chronicles, so 2 Chronicles chapter 34 it tells the story of Josiah's reforms and we're going to look at that next week. It also tells most of the same stuff that we've read in 2 Kings 22 but it has a little bit at the end that we don't get in 2 Kings. I want to read 2 Chronicles 34, verses 29 to 32.
[29] Then the king sent and gathered together all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem.
[30] 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.
[31] 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.
[32] 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.
2 Chronicles 34:29-32 (KJV)
Here's what I love about Josiah: it wasn't enough for him to hear the word of God and for him personally to respond to it. He wanted the word of God to be the driving force of Judah. He wanted that so much that he got everybody together and personally, the king, read them the word of God. When the word of God said, "You should make a covenant," he said, "All right guys, here's what we're going to do. We're going to make a covenant, all of us. We're going to sign this thing and promise that we are going to walk according to the law of God."
One final principle tonight.
7. We should try to make God's Word the central guide of everything that we do.
I hope your life is directed by the Bible. I hope you make decisions about:
- what you're going to do in your family
- what you're going to do as an individual
- what you're going to do in the workplace
I hope you make those decisions based upon the word of God.
You're not the king of Judah, but maybe you have a domain that God has given you leadership over. Maybe you're the father at home. It would be good for your family to hear you read the Bible, speak of the Bible, and talk about why you do things and don't do things because of the Bible. (I’m not holding myself out as an example here. My kids need to hear more of the Scripture out of my mouth at home.)
Have the people you work with ever heard you say, "I'm not going to do that because God's Word tells me not to"? Your family members know you're going to go to church on Sunday because God's Word tells Christians not to forsake the assembling of themselves together.
Is God's Word the central guide of your life, the lamp to your feet, the light to your path? This is the thing that you meditate on day and night.
When I was in college my freshman year, we had a professor who passed away suddenly in the middle of my freshman year. He was a beloved professor at our school, kind of the main Bible professor. His name was Keith Kaiser, and Dr. Kaiser wrote a song based on this story. It's called "I Found the Book." I think we sang it as a choir years ago.
Sing the chorus with me if you know it.
I found the book that tells the sweet story of Jesus, my Savior, resplendent in glory. With great love he has loved me. All my sins he took. I sing of salvation for I found the book.
I'm glad we have the book, aren't you? Let's stand together and pray.
