‘They spoke the word of God with boldness’ (Acts 4:31), ‘They preached the word of God in the synagogues of Judaea’ (Acts 13:5), ‘It was necessary for the word of God to be spoken to you first’ (Acts 13:46), ‘... to speak the word of God fearlessly’ (Phil 1:14), ‘the word of God is not bound’ (2 Tim 2:9), and above all, ‘The word became flesh and dwelt among us’ (John 1:14) and ‘his name is called the word of God’ (Rev 19:13).
It is funny, if you will, how one can read the scriptures all of their life and yet miss what is, perhaps, the most important aspect of them. Of course, for those of us who belong to Jesus Christ and witness in our lives His Holy Spirit at work, we do not really 'miss' these things so much as we lack the spiritual maturity to discern them. In modern America, I believe, we actually strive to spend much of our time in that place which Paul names in I Cor. 13:11 as 'childish', though admittedly this is often not a conscious choice so much as it is the result of the childish culture or environment in which our Christianity is being cultivated. We seem, or at least for me it has been this way, to see Christ as a sort of cosmic 'bandage'. We do something wrong and we go to him to put on the 'plaster', as the English call it, kiss us and make it all better - until we do it again. Now don't get me wrong, this is a part of the marvelous love that God has for us, that He calls us to come to him when we are hurting, when we have done something wrong, when we are weak or shamed, and He WILL make it all better. But, and this is a large BUT, on our end these are only temporary 'fixes'. We take our Father's love, thank Him, sing a few songs of worship, and then go out and do the same thing. This is because we do not understand the root of sin. We are focused on our behaviors, when we should be focused on the WORD.
God has given me a charge, or task if you will. He has asked me to bring the story of King Josiah to His people. A few of you who read this blog will say 'cool'. Most of you will probably scratch your heads and head for your Bible to find out who I am talking about. King Josiah was one of only a handful (well, that might be overstating it) of 'good' kings of Judah. He lived and reigned in the 7th century B.C. and was an ancestor of our Lord. Josiah was born into a culture where the word 'wickedness' was accounted a good thing. His father, Amon, was the son of Manasseh. According to 2 Kings 21, Manasseh, Josiah's grandfather did 'evil in the eyes of the Lord, following the detestable practices of the nations the Lord had driven out before the Israelites.' This child, Josiah, had no hope, no worldly reason to turn out good; no chance of being anything other than the sum total of all that had gone before. So our world would tell us. Right?
Wrong.
Josiah 'did what was right in the eyes of the Lord and walked in all the ways of his father David, not turning aside to the right or to the left'. (2 Kings 22)
With God, nothing is impossible.
Now, why did I title this blog entry 'the Word come to man'? Due to Manasseh and Amon, the Word of God - the books of the law of Moses - were lost. Destroyed, actually, and on purpose. For many decades the people of Judah had to rely on oral tradition, on memory, and on what they had been told by their fathers and mothers for the Word of God. It is clear that God preserved His Word through people, for in Josiah's tale there are people of faith who guided this young man and aided him in becoming the 'good' kind who did not turn right or left. God raised Josiah up to destroy the high places, to eject the pagan practices from the land of Judah and from His temple, and - and here is the beautiful thing - to bring His Word back to His Chosen People.
Josiah, through God's providence, brought the Word of God back to man.
As I research this man and the world around him, I thought I would share some of that research and my thoughts about it here. It will get me back to blogging
Next time, the chosen title and why I chose it -
The Uttermost Part of Heaven: The story of good king Josiah
