The Dusty Constitution Text: 2 Kings 22:8-10
Introduction: Revival by the Book
We live in an age that is drowning in information and starving for truth. The modern evangelical church is a peculiar creature. We have more Bibles per household than any generation in history. We have Bible apps on our phones, Bible podcasts in our cars, and Bible studies in our coffee shops. And yet, for all our access, we are functionally illiterate. The Word of God, for many, has become a familiar piece of furniture, a respected heirloom that we dust around but never open. We are busy. We are renovating the temple, balancing the budget, organizing the programs, and all the while, the actual constitution of our kingdom lies neglected in a corner.
This is why the story of Josiah's revival is such a potent and necessary rebuke to us. The kingdom of Judah had been in a long, slow slide into apostasy. They hadn't become atheists; they had become syncretists. They kept the temple, but they added high places. They kept the priesthood, but they added idols. They were religious, active, and utterly faithless. They were doing many things, but they had lost the one thing necessary. They had lost the Book.
And so, when King Josiah, a rare shoot of righteousness from the stump of David, begins a sincere, if somewhat blind, reformation, he starts with the practical things. He sets out to repair the house of the Lord. This is commendable. It is good to fix the leaky roof and restore the crumbling walls. But true reformation, the kind that shakes a nation, does not begin with hammers and nails. It begins when someone finds the Book. What happens in our text is the spark that lights the bonfire of true revival. It is the rediscovery of the objective, external, authoritative Word of God. Without this, all our religious activity is just rearranging deck chairs on a sinking ship.
The Text
Then Hilkiah the high priest said to Shaphan the scribe, "I have found the book of the law in the house of Yahweh." And Hilkiah gave the book to Shaphan and he read it.
Then Shaphan the scribe came to the king and responded to the king with a word and said, "Your servants have poured out the money that was found in the house and have given it into the hand of those who do the work, who have the oversight of the house of Yahweh."
Moreover, Shaphan the scribe told the king saying, "Hilkiah the priest has given me a book." And Shaphan read it in the presence of the king.
(2 Kings 22:8-10 LSB)
The Astonishing Find (v. 8)
We begin with the central event, which is reported with a kind of stunning simplicity.
"Then Hilkiah the high priest said to Shaphan the scribe, 'I have found the book of the law in the house of Yahweh.' And Hilkiah gave the book to Shaphan and he read it." (2 Kings 22:8)
Take a moment to appreciate the tragic irony here. The high priest finds the Book of the Law in the Temple. This is like a ship's captain finding the navigation charts in a storage locker on the bridge. Where else ought it to have been? It should have been the central textbook, the daily standard, the very thing from which the priests taught and by which the king ruled. Its location was correct, but its condition was one of neglect. It was lost, not geographically, but functionally.
This is a picture of institutional apostasy. When the very leaders of God's people, the priests, have to "find" the law, it means the standard has been abandoned for generations. They had been running the temple on institutional memory, on tradition, on what their grandfathers had told them. They had the building, the rituals, and the robes, but they had lost the script. This is the constant temptation of the church in every age: to substitute the living authority of Scripture with the dead hand of tradition or the flighty whims of personal experience.
The Protestant Reformation was nothing more and nothing less than a "Hilkiah moment." Martin Luther did not invent a new doctrine; he found the Book of the Law, specifically the book of Romans, buried under a pile of ecclesiastical junk, indulgences, penance, and papal decrees. He found the doctrine of justification by faith alone, and he simply read it out loud. Sola Scriptura is the battle cry of every true reformation. It is the declaration that we are not governed by priests, or popes, or synods, or popular opinion, but by this Book. It is an external, objective, written standard that can be lost and, bless God, can be found.
Notice also the simple, declarative nature of the find. "I have found the book." The Word of God is a thing. It is not a mystical feeling or a private revelation. It has heft. It can be held, opened, and read. And when Shaphan receives it, he reads it. He does not put it on a pedestal; he engages with its contents. The authority is in the words on the page, not in the leather of the binding.
Budgets and Books (v. 9)
Next, Shaphan the scribe goes to report to the king, and his priorities are telling.
"Then Shaphan the scribe came to the king and responded to the king with a word and said, 'Your servants have poured out the money that was found in the house and have given it into the hand of those who do the work, who have the oversight of the house of Yahweh.'" (2 Kings 22:9 LSB)
Shaphan begins with the administrative update. He gives the financial report first. "King, the renovation project is on schedule and under budget. The funds have been properly disbursed to the contractors." This is the language of every church board meeting. It is the language of responsible stewardship, and there is nothing wrong with it. It is good to be organized. It is good to be fiscally responsible.
But it is possible to have all your accounts in order and your soul in mortal peril. It is possible to run a very efficient and well-managed organization that is in direct rebellion against the God it claims to serve. The danger for us, as it was for them, is to mistake the means for the end. The budget is a tool, not the goal. The building is a facility, not the faith. Shaphan's report highlights the vast difference between good administration and genuine revival. You can have the first without the second, but you cannot have the second for long without it producing the first. First things must be kept first. And the budget, important as it is, is not the first thing.
The Word Before the Throne (v. 10)
Only after the financial report does Shaphan get to the truly important news.
"Moreover, Shaphan the scribe told the king saying, 'Hilkiah the priest has given me a book.' And Shaphan read it in the presence of the king." (2 Genesis 22:10 LSB)
The delivery is almost casual. "Oh, and one more thing. The high priest gave me this book." There are no trumpets, no fanfare. The power of the Word of God does not depend on our presentation skills. It has its own intrinsic, explosive power. Shaphan's job is not to sell it, but simply to read it.
And here is the linchpin of the entire event: "And Shaphan read it in the presence of the king." This is where the rubber of divine authority meets the road of human power. The Word of God is brought before the civil magistrate. This is a direct assault on the modern, pietistic notion that the Bible is a private book about how to get your soul to heaven, with no bearing on public life. That is a lie from the pit. The law of God is for the nation. It is for the king. It speaks to economics, to foreign policy, to jurisprudence, and to the ordering of the entire commonwealth.
The king's job is not to be religiously neutral. The king's job, as God defines it, is to submit himself and his kingdom to the law of God. He is to be a nursing father to the church (Isaiah 49:23). When the Word of God is read, the king does not get to stand aloof. He is under the Book, just like everyone else. In fact, he is under it in a more profound way, because his obedience or disobedience affects the entire nation.
Josiah's response, which we see in the following verses, is to tear his robes in repentance. He does not form a committee to study the book. He does not hire a consultant to see how its principles might be integrated with current policy. He hears it, he understands its implications, and he is shattered by it. He recognizes that he and his people are in gross violation of God's covenant. This is the proper response when the Word of God confronts human power. It is the fear of the Lord, which is the beginning of wisdom. And it was the beginning of the greatest revival Judah had ever seen.
Conclusion: Finding What Was Never Lost
The tragedy of Judah was that they had lost a book that was in their own house. Our tragedy is that we have a thousand Bibles in our houses, and they might as well be lost. We have them on our shelves, collecting dust. We have them on our phones, buried under twenty other apps. We have access to the divine standard, the very words of life, and we neglect them for things that are, by comparison, utter vanity.
True revival will not come to our land through a political victory or an economic upturn. It will not come through a clever new church growth strategy. It will come when the people of God, starting with their leaders, find the Book again. It will come when a man, like Hilkiah, stumbles upon the absolute authority of Scripture and says, "Look what I have found." It will come when another man, like Shaphan, takes that Word and reads it in the halls of power. And it will come when our leaders, like Josiah, hear that Word and are broken by it, leading the people in a national repentance that touches every area of life.
Our task is not complicated. We do not need to wait for a special feeling or a new revelation. The Book is right here. The command is simple. Find it. Read it. Believe it. Obey it. And do not be surprised when the dust flies and the foundations shake.