While singing with kids, I’d sometimes ask why we used an open hands motion for “Bible” rather than a closed hands one? Their honest answer was that we should be reading and living it. Far too often there’s dust on our Bibles. This was certainly true in Josiah’s time.
I. 2 Chronicles 34:1-13. Was God’s Word missing or hidden? After all, for the previous six decades, God’s people had endured Manasseh’s 55-year and then Amon’s 2-year idolatrous reigns. Would the 8-year old Josiah be any different. Then, we’re told that at 16 he began to seek God. At 20 he enacted reforms and at 26 repairs to the temple. That’s when God’s Word was brought out.
II. 2 Chronicles 34:14-21. The priest Hilkiah “found” it who gave it to the secretary Shaphan to read to the king who seemed to have a different spirit than what the nation had known. Josiah’s reaction was to tear his clothes and to take action. From his repentance, he asked that God be sought and laid their struggles upon their not doing “all that is written in this book.”
III. Psalm 1:1-3. The same restoration spirit is needed today. Rather than one copy collecting dust, we live in a time where we are surrounded by physical and digital copies of God’s Word, yet ours have just as much dust upon them. We need to recognize its usefulness in equipping us (2 Timothy 3:16-17), tear our clothes figuratively and take similar literal actions like Josiah did.
The decision starts with yourself to blow the dust off your Bible and devote yourself to its instruction and rebuke. Then we will see changes happen in our families and in the Lord’s church.