December 10, 2021

Terry Goodman
Clergy
Smoky Mountain District

2 Kings 22:1-10 (NIV)
The Book of the Law Found

22 Josiah was eight years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem thirty-one years. His mother’s name was Jedidah daughter of Adaiah; she was from Bozkath. ² He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord and followed completely the ways of his father David, not turning aside to the right or to the left.
³ In the eighteenth year of his reign, King Josiah sent the secretary, Shaphan son of Azaliah, the son of Meshullam, to the temple of the Lord. He said: ⁴ “Go up to Hilkiah the high priest and have him get ready the money that has been brought into the temple of the Lord, which the doorkeepers have collected from the people. ⁵ Have them entrust it to the men appointed to supervise the work on the temple. And have these men pay the workers who repair the temple of the Lord— ⁶ the carpenters, the builders and the masons. Also have them purchase timber and dressed stone to repair the temple. ⁷ But they need not account for the money entrusted to them, because they are honest in their dealings.”
⁸ Hilkiah the high priest said to Shaphan the secretary, “I have found the Book of the Law in the temple of the Lord.” He gave it to Shaphan, who read it. ⁹ Then Shaphan the secretary went to the king and reported to him: “Your officials have paid out the money that was in the temple of the Lord and have entrusted it to the workers and supervisors at the temple.” ¹⁰ Then Shaphan the secretary informed the king, “Hilkiah the priest has given me a book.” And Shaphan read from it in the presence of the king.

Devotion

I don’t know about you, but for me, I have spent a large part of my life looking for things. As a seminary student, I was assigned to a church only a few miles from the high school at which my mom taught. Occasionally, during the week while I was away at seminary, Mom would go to the parsonage to kill some time after school while waiting for an evening meeting to begin. Let’s just say that my housekeeping was not up to her standards. I was, and in many ways still am, a person who likes to put things in piles – piles of this and piles of that, mostly papers, magazines, and books. While it may have looked disorganized, I sort of knew where to go to find something for which I might be looking. Mom, though, had had enough of my disorganization and decided one week to clean things up. In doing so, I lost many items. Let me rephrase that. I didn’t lose the items as much as I lost the ability to access them. You see, my piles, though disorganized to the outside viewer, were sort of organized in my mind. With Mom’s tidying, I now did not know where to begin.
 
Life is like that sometimes. We don’t know where to begin. The messiness of our lives, while it may seem semi-organized to us, may just seem like a mess to the outsider. Let’s be honest. Our lives probably are a mess, and we just think we know where things are and what things need to be done. Sometimes, we get so caught up in the messiness that we forget there is even another level … another aspect … of life we might be missing.
 
As I read the text from 2 Kings about the rediscovery of the Book of the Law of Moses, I thought to myself, “That must have been a very messy place.” Josiah, the King of Israel, sends his secretary Shaphan to the high priest Hilkiah with instructions for Hilkiah to use the money brought to the Temple to pay the workers who are doing the repairs on the Temple. While there, in what seems an almost casual aside, Hilkiah says to Shaphan: “I have found the Book of the Law in the temple of the Lord.”  … record screeching sound … what do you mean you have found it? How could you have lost it? How could things be so disorganized that you lost it in some dark corner and the Book is just now seeing the light of day? It was your job to keep up with such things!
 
Then I think about my life. At times I have “lost” the Law (and the Gospel) myself. At times my relationship with God has been pushed into some dark and dreary corner of my being, and I have concentrated much more on my own selfish human desires than I have sought to be the person God has called me to be. The good news is that even in those dark “me” moments, God’s Law and Gospel were still there. They were just waiting for me to find them.
 
As you continue with the story from 2 Kings, you will note that Josiah came in from the darkness and responded in the appropriate manner: “Then the king called together all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem. ² He went up to the temple of the Lord with the people of Judah, the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the priests and the prophets – all the people from the least to the greatest. He read in their hearing all the words of the Book of the Covenant, which had been found in the temple of the Lord. ³ The king stood by the pillar and renewed the covenant in the presence of the Lord – to follow the Lord and keep his commands, statutes, and decrees with all his heart and all his soul, thus confirming the words of the covenant written in this book. Then all the people pledged themselves to the covenant.” 1 Kings 23:1-4 (NIV)
 
When I realized those dark moments of my life, when I realized that I was farther from God and God’s word than I should be, I did the same thing. I turned back to God and celebrated God’s word in my life and let the Laws of God once again instruct me, and I found myself again on the path that God had planned for me.
 
My suggestion is this: if you don’t know where God is because of the messiness of your life, if you have shunned God for the things of this world, then it is time to turn back to God. Start with confessing your wandering ways and get back into the Word. Let God once again shape your life as you rediscover God’s promises for you.