Years ago, while helping him with some small tasks, he suddenly remembered having stashed something in the hayloft years earlier. I followed him up the ladder to look. Lying atop some dusty hay bales were two thick, very broad planks of wood about 6-foot long with the bark still attached. “Those are from some old black walnut trees I cut down 35 years ago,” he said, “I thought I might make a gun stock or two out of them.” “How old were the trees when you cut them down?” I asked. “Well, they were mature trees when I was a little boy.” I did some quick calculations and determined that the wood had to be at least 150 years old. “That would be great wood for a guitar!” I blurted out. He gave me a plank. Fast forward 25 years, I am finally having a luthier make a guitar for me from that wood.
King Josiah, one of Judah’s last godly kings, had ordered some repairs be done on Solomon’s temple, which was in disrepair from decades of neglect under the reign of ungodly kings. Wanting to pay the workmen, he sent his secretary, Shaphan, to the temple to ask Hilkiah, the high priest, for the money in the offering box. While hunting for the offering box, Hilkiah found “the book of the Law of the LORD.” At a time when God’s Law was not considered important, someone must have stashed it out of the way, and it was forgotten.
Shaphan took the book to the king and read it to him. When the king heard what God required of him and his people, he tore his clothes in great distress. Not only had they been neglecting the temple, but they had also been neglecting the God of the temple and his Law, and were under is wrath. The king ordered all the people, young and old, to gather to hear the Book of the Law read. He ordered all the idols and idol altars thrown out of the temple and the idolatrous priests with them. He enacted sweeping reforms to bring the people of Judah and their worship back in line with God’s Law.
I think about the church in America. We have deemed God’s Word, the Bible, no longer essential, and have stashed it out of the way. Preachers spout their own wisdom. Christians tap other sources in search of God’s will. We’ve embraced a different Christ fashioned after our own likeness. We fit neatly into the world. Christians, God gave us his Word, it is time to dust it off, read it, teach it, and obey it.
