Sometimes you have to clean house completely
if you want to make a real change…
'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.
The king ordered Hilkiah the high priest, the priests next in rank and the doorkeepers to remove from the temple of the Lord all the articles made for Baal and Asherah and all the starry hosts. He burned them outside Jerusalem in the fields of the Kidron Valley and took the ashes to Bethel. He did away with the idolatrous priests appointed by the kings of Judah to burn incense on the high places of the towns of Judah and on those around Jerusalem—those who burned incense to Baal, to the sun and moon, to the constellations and to all the starry hosts. He took the Asherah pole from the temple of the Lord to the Kidron Valley outside Jerusalem and burned it there. He ground it to powder and scattered the dust over the graves of the common people. He also tore down the quarters of the male shrine prostitutes that were in the temple of the Lord , the quarters where women did weaving for Asherah.
Josiah brought all the priests from the towns of Judah and desecrated the high places, from Geba to Beersheba, where the priests had burned incense. He broke down the gateway at the entrance of the Gate of Joshua, the city governor, which was on the left of the city gate.
He desecrated Topheth, which was in the Valley of Ben Hinnom, so no one could use it to sacrifice their son or daughter in the fire to Molek. He removed from the entrance to the temple of the Lord the horses that the kings of Judah had dedicated to the sun. They were in the court near the room of an official named Nathan-Melek. Josiah then burned the chariots dedicated to the sun.
He pulled down the altars the kings of Judah had erected on the roof near the upper room of Ahaz, and the altars Manasseh had built in the two courts of the temple of the Lord . He removed them from there, smashed them to pieces and threw the rubble into the Kidron Valley. The king also desecrated the high places that were east of Jerusalem on the south of the Hill of Corruption—the ones Solomon king of Israel had built for Ashtoreth the vile goddess of the Sidonians, for Chemosh the vile god of Moab, and for Molek the detestable god of the people of Ammon. Josiah smashed the sacred stones and cut down the Asherah poles and covered the sites with human bones.
Even the altar at Bethel, the high place made by Jeroboam son of Nebat, who had caused Israel to sin—even that altar and high place he demolished. He burned the high place and ground it to powder, and burned the Asherah pole also. Then Josiah looked around, and when he saw the tombs that were there on the hillside, he had the bones removed from them and burned on the altar to defile it, in accordance with the word of the Lord proclaimed by the man of God who foretold these things.
Just as he had done at Bethel, Josiah removed all the shrines at the high places that the kings of Israel had built in the towns of Samaria and that had aroused the Lord ’s anger. Josiah slaughtered all the priests of those high places on the altars and burned human bones on them. Then he went back to Jerusalem.
The king gave this order to all the people: “Celebrate the Passover to the Lord your God, as it is written in this Book of the Covenant.” Neither in the days of the judges who led Israel nor in the days of the kings of Israel and the kings of Judah had any such Passover been observed. But in the eighteenth year of King Josiah, this Passover was celebrated to the Lord in Jerusalem.
Furthermore, Josiah got rid of the mediums and spiritists, the household gods, the idols and all the other detestable things seen in Judah and Jerusalem. This he did to fulfill the requirements of the law written in the book that Hilkiah the priest had discovered in the temple of the Lord . Neither before nor after Josiah was there a king like him who turned to the Lord as he did—with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his strength, in accordance with all the Law of Moses.' 2 Kings 23:3-8,10-16,19-25
this one is a painful reminder of needing to identify, address, and correct areas in your life that is not right with God. whether it is stuff you’re doing, how you speak, attitude, or whatever that is wrong in His sight. you can choose to ignore the reality of those things in your life which may lead to you spiraling out of control, or you can face them head on and learn to be at peace with God.
in the beginning, the real difficulty is accepting that those things are bad (sin) and were causes of my downfall. my doing them, accepting that it was ok, believing it was not hurting anyone, basically putting blinders on so i wouldn’t see the affects, the consequences, kept me from stopping. the same applied to the people who turned their hearts away from God and did what was detestable. doing so was leading to their destruction and would have happened if not for josiah who recognized the gravity of their situation and the need for immediate change. fortunately they heard the message and changed their ways.
for me that meant removing the diseases in my life; besides the drugs and alcohol, among them were: 1) pride, 2) jealousy, 3) greed, 4) deception, 5) idols, 6) defiant, 7) cheater, 8) being an @$$hole and a dickhead, and many others. while in these verses the people changed right away (or at least that is what i believe) for me it wasn’t overnight, it was years in the making, even until today.
the cleaning out process meant digging deep and seeing all the junk in my life that needed to be thrown out, destroyed, and removed that were not in alignment with God’s Word. first it was the drugs, alcohol, certain people, places i would frequent. then it was things around the house that reminded me and my family of the destruction i caused. i even stopped listening to certain music, wearing fancy clothes and expensive jewelry, driving flashy vehicles, which i was definitely embarrassed because i was an idiot wanting to be seen for what i have and not who i am.
can’t say i’ve identified everything as josiah did and made immediate changes that affected his and the people’s future. what i’m trying to do is when i do find certain areas of my life that does need to be corrected, i try to isolate it from everything else i’m doing to make sure it doesn’t infect the parts of my life where i’m actually following The Lord ‘properly’, nor allowing it to have any affect on the areas that does bring God glory and honor and praise. this way i can just work on that part until i get a handle on it and get back on track.
dear Heavenly Father, thank you that when we read Your Word, the prompting of your Holy Spirit, we hear or watch something, that you are certainly pointing out in my life or our lives that we readily heed your call to change. i don’t want to be in enmity with you Lord; want our lives to be lived out that pleases and demonstrates our love for you. please work on my heart when it’s hardened towards you; bring me to a place where i am pliable, able to be molded into your image each and every day. i love you, we love you, in Jesus’ name i pray, amen!