One of my earliest memories is of my preschool class at our church. I was about three years old. Plopped onto someone’s lap amidst the group of kids and adults, I listened and squirmed as our teacher shared the lesson. I won’t editorialize about how it caught my attention; all I recall is being mystified by the shimmering, winged creature as it crawled across the carpet. Suddenly, I wanted to possess it. I needed it to be mine. I placed my pudgy fingers on the carpet right in its path and, to my delight, it accepted my offer and climbed up onto my hand. I remember feeling special and powerful, as though I had captured mystery itself. Then something horrible happened. A searing pain ripped through my tiny knuckle as though someone had lit a fire inside my hand. It’s a pain I know all too well now, but at such a young age, I had never been stung. I had no idea that the “lovely thing” I was holding was, in truth, a harmful enemy. I screamed and wanted the pain to stop, but I could not bring myself to fling it from my hand. In fact, I don’t think I understood that it was producing the pain.
In our last installment, we looked at the modern reality of idolatry. As Jesus followers in the West, we can often dismiss idolatry as an archaic reality that only applies to the naive people in ancient and agrarian societies of the past — or perhaps those unenlightened by modern education.
However, when we really dive into the struggles of Scripture, idolatry, for YHWH, wasn’t simply about the created thing. He knew idols held no power. The idol itself is not a threat to God. His anger and grief are poured out over the loss of our heart’s devotion to Him. He knows that He is our very breath and life — that we will be unable to live in the abundance of His design for us if our hearts are attuned most fully to anything but Him. It is for His glory and our good that God says, “You shall have NO other God’s before me” (Exodus 20:3).
If you didn’t get to read about how we learn to see our idols, you can find that here.
In my preschool story, anyone can clearly see the problem. “That thing is hurting you! Drop it! Throw it away!” I, however, could not so easily see what I should do. All I knew was that I had possession of the object of my desire, but something was wrong.
Followers of Jesus often have the same struggle. We know something isn’t working. Perhaps we even see our idols clearly, but we don’t know what to do with the thing that we hold in our hands or — more accurately — our hearts.
Josiah was a young King in the Bible tasked with casting down idols for the nation of Israel. I highly urge you to read his entire story in 2 Kings chapters 22-23. It is powerful and worth your study.
To summarize, Israel (the northern kingdom of God’s people) had already been taken captive by Assyria, and Judah (the southern kingdom) was headed toward a similar judgment. God’s people were facing the consequences of generations of idolatry and not keeping sabbaths. Josiah was one of the final kings in Judah and one of the very few righteous kings.
He was crowned at the age of eight! And it seems that God had put within him a heart for revival because at a very green 26 years, he began restoring the temple.
As they were cleaning things up and clearing things out (study this to note how far they had fallen from God’s covenant), the High Priest told the King’s secretary, “I have found the book of the law!”
Can you imagine? That’s a little like if your church had been functioning as a social circle with Ted Talks every Sunday and suddenly, the gal who ran the office came to the leader and said, “Hey, while we were repairing that wall in the annex, we found this book. The cover says, B-I-B-L-E.”
The King’s secretary, Shaphan, read the Book of the Law to Josiah, and the extreme difference between God’s call and Judah’s reality was so stark, the King tore his royal robes in grief. He sent a coalition to inquire of the Lord through the prophetess Huldah. She informed them that God would judge the people for their sin and extreme, chronic idolatry but said Josiah would be spared since his heart was humble and repentant.
All too aware of God’s right to destroy them, the young king began a campaign to return the remnant of the nation to the heart of God. It was intense and thorough. He began by renewing God’s covenant before the whole nation. Then he had all the idols to false gods removed from the temple.
Did you catch that? Yes! They were actually worshiping other gods inside the temple! What?! It was so gross, there were even huts for male prostitutes within the temple to engage in pagan sexual rituals. Can you imagine the anger and grief in the heart of God? Do we realize His immense agony over this? People often groan that the “God of the Old Testament” is so harsh and judgmental. But Israel was an adulteress wife with an addiction to spiritual fornication!
Josiah did away with, desecrated, burned, and destroyed everything ungodly that had been worshipped by the people.
It did not keep the exile from coming to Judah (only years after his death), but it did set the nation up to be a holy remnant in exile! Spiritual giants like Daniel were born and trained in the Lord during this holy era. Josiah’s devotion to casting down the idols and purifying the nation set them up to live faithful to YHWH in a foreign land and return later to rebuild.
So what? What does this mean for us? How does this help me recognize the danger of the tiny, stinging thing in my hand and throw it down? How does it help me answer the call to cast down any and every idol that threatens Jesus’ first place on the throne of my heart?
- Start by seeking God. 2 Chronicles 34 (another record of Josiah) states that, in the 8th year of his reign, the king began to seek the God of his ancestor David. If you do the math, that means he was just 16 years old when he began to pursue God. If we are pursuing God, He will reveal His heart to us. Jeremiah 29:13 promises, “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.
- Begin restoring what is broken down. “Repent and do what you did at first,” Revelation 2:5 admonishes. Josiah recognized that the temple, the place where God’s Spirit was known to dwell, was not the holy, set apart place it had been at the first. He did not know about the book of the law, but he may have heard the ancient stories about God’s brilliance filling the temple to the point that no one could enter. Probably led by the Spirit, he set about cleaning out God’s house. Perhaps he reasoned that God’s presence might feel welcome again. Where is your union with God broken down? Sit with Jesus. Ask Him to repair the breach. You may need to toss out things that have cluttered His place your heart.
- Do the thing God has given you today. Shaphan was the secretary to the king. He was not the king. He did not have the authority to turn the nation’s heart back to God. Even so, he did what he could do to carry out what he had been commanded. He read the law to the king, and that act led to a national movement of repentance! Similarly, Huldah was not the king, she was a prophetess. Still, when the time came, she did not shrink back and say, “Because I’m not the king, I cannot have an impact.” She was bold and faithful to speak the word of the Lord. That word encouraged and inspired Josiah to carry out the cleansing of, not only the temple, but also, the nation as a whole. What mission has God placed before you? Do that thing in faithfulness for God. Don’t try to be the king if you are not the king. God gets the most glory when we are obedient to what He has called us to do.
- Recognize your idols and tear your robes. Can you imagine Josiah’s grief? Generations of wicked kings and the people’s own wayward hearts had led them far from God. So far that the nation was not even recognizable as the set-apart, spotless bride commanded in the book of the law. Of course God was going to judge! Of course God was going to condemn! Josiah saw it so clearly, and the love his faithful heart had been developing for YHWH struck him with a grief so desperate, he had no recourse but to rend his royal robes to match the tearing within him. We have to ask God to show us the damage our idolatry has done. In Isaiah 44:16-20, the prophet paints a painful picture of how ridiculous we are when we worship created things instead of YHWH. He basically says, “No one stops to think! ‘Half of it I used for fuel, to cook over. Should I make a god with the other half?’” Beloved of Jesus, our love affair with anything but Jesus has to stop!
- Renew your mind/heart. Once Josiah realized what God desired, he changed his thinking. The story tells us he had already been pursuing God for 8 years, but he had not fully known God’s heart. When God revealed truth to him, he changed his thinking. He had all the people come to the temple and the renewed the covenant with God. They pledged their hearts anew to God and His commands. Josiah submitted his heart to God, and his actions followed. Where does your heart need to renew a commitment to Jesus? How can you tell Him that today?
- Change your habits. Changing our habits has to follow a change of heart. Unless our hearts submit to God’s ways, our bodies will not obey for long. Scripture even says, “As a man thinks in his heart, so is he” (Proverbs 23:7). Josiah took this seriously. He cast down or destroyed all the old worship habits of Judah so they could not go back but only forward in worshipping YHWH. What habit can you change today as proof of your heart change? What idol will you cast down?
I hope the Lord is stirring in you a hunger to throw down that thing or things that is causing the sting in your relationship with Him. If you ask Him, He will show you how to cast down the objects in your life that are stealing your worship from Him. He wants to be the only One you worship because He knows that nearness to Him is your life, your breath, your health and peace, your eternity!
He is near, and He will help you. (Isaiah 41:13)
He’s got you, and in Him, you’ve got this. You were made for freedom! You were created for a life of calling!