When the Word Comes Home Text: 2 Kings 22:11-13
Introduction: The Dust of Neglect
We live in an age drowning in information and starving for truth. Bibles are everywhere. We have them on our phones, on our shelves, in our hotel drawers. We have leather-bound Bibles, study Bibles, Bibles for men, Bibles for women, Bibles for teens, and Bibles for recovering aardvarks. And yet, for all our apparent access to the Word of God, our culture behaves as though it has never heard a single syllable from Heaven. The book is not lost in a dusty corner of the Temple; it is lost in the cluttered attic of our evangelical minds. We have it, but we do not hear it. We possess it, but it does not possess us.
This is why the story of Josiah is such a bracing slap in the face. Here was a nation that had the Scriptures, but had lost them. They were God's covenant people, but they were living in profound ignorance of His covenant law. They went about their religious business, such as it was, maintaining the facade of worship, all while the very blueprint for their existence, the very words of their divine husband, lay buried under the rubble of neglect and compromise. The book of the law was not just misplaced; it was forgotten. And a forgotten law is no law at all.
What happens when that Word is rediscovered? What happens when the light is switched on in a room that has been dark for generations? It does not bring a gentle, sentimental comfort. It brings a crisis. It brings conviction. It brings a rending of garments and a terror of the soul. True revival does not begin with a warm feeling; it begins with a holy fear. It begins when a man, a king in this case, hears the Word of God for what it is, the very speech of the living God, and realizes that he and his entire nation are standing on the tracks with the express train of God's judgment barreling down upon them. This is the story of what happens when the Word of God comes home.
The Text
Now it happened that when the king heard the words of the book of the law, he tore his clothes. Then the king commanded Hilkiah the priest, Ahikam the son of Shaphan, Achbor the son of Micaiah, Shaphan the scribe, and Asaiah the king’s servant, saying, “Go, inquire of Yahweh for me and the people and all Judah, concerning the words of this book that has been found, for great is the wrath of Yahweh which is set aflame against us, because our fathers have not listened to the words of this book, to do according to all that is written concerning us.”
(2 Kings 22:11-13 LSB)
The Proper Reaction to Scripture (v. 11)
We begin with the king's immediate, visceral response to hearing God's law.
"Now it happened that when the king heard the words of the book of the law, he tore his clothes." (2 Kings 22:11)
Notice what Josiah does not do. He does not form a committee to study the book's relevance. He does not hire a consultant to poll the people on their feelings about these ancient words. He does not suggest they incorporate some of its more inspiring passages into their existing worship services. He hears it, and he is undone. He tears his clothes, an outward sign of profound grief, horror, and repentance.
Why? Because he heard the words not as suggestions, not as religious folklore, but as the words of the book of the law. This was the covenant constitution of his nation. These were the terms of the treaty established between Yahweh, the Great King, and Israel, His vassal people. And in the hearing, Josiah understood instantly that they were in catastrophic breach of contract. The curses stipulated in the book, likely Deuteronomy, were not abstract possibilities; they were imminent realities. The words had weight. They had authority. They judged him.
This is the first mark of a work of the Spirit. The Word of God lands on the conscience. In our therapeutic age, we want the Bible to affirm us, to make us feel good about ourselves. We treat it like a self-help manual or a collection of inspirational quotes. But the law's first job is not to affirm, but to kill. It comes to show us our sin. It comes to strip away our self-righteousness and leave us naked before a holy God. Josiah's torn robes are a picture of his torn heart. He saw the gulf between what God demanded and what his people had delivered, and it shattered him. If the reading of Scripture has never made you profoundly uncomfortable, it is likely you have never truly heard it.
The Urgent Delegation (v. 12)
Josiah's personal grief immediately transforms into public action. He does not mourn in private; he acts as the covenant head of his people.
"Then the king commanded Hilkiah the priest, Ahikam the son of Shaphan, Achbor the son of Micaiah, Shaphan the scribe, and Asaiah the king’s servant, saying," (2 Kings 22:12 LSB)
He gathers his chief men, the spiritual and political leaders of the nation. This is not a matter for personal devotion alone. The sin revealed by the book was a corporate sin, a national sin that had been accumulating for generations. Therefore, the response had to be corporate and national. Reformation is never a purely private affair.
Josiah understands his responsibility as king. He is the one who must lead the nation in this crisis. True leadership does not pass the buck. It does not blame others. It takes responsibility. He had been busy repairing the Temple, a good and noble work. But he discovered that you can have a beautifully renovated building and still be under the wrath of God. The true temple is built of obedience to the Word. He had been dealing with the symptoms, the decay of the physical structure, but now the book has revealed the disease itself, the heart-rot of disobedience.
He sends his most trusted advisors on the most important errand of their lives. The discovery of this book has reordered all their priorities. Everything else can wait. The budget meetings, the infrastructure projects, the diplomatic cables, all of it is secondary now. The king has heard from the King of kings, and nothing else matters.
The Central Concern: Divine Wrath (v. 13)
Here we find the substance of Josiah's command and the root of his terror. This is the theological core of the passage.
"Go, inquire of Yahweh for me and the people and all Judah, concerning the words of this book that has been found, for great is the wrath of Yahweh which is set aflame against us, because our fathers have not listened to the words of this book, to do according to all that is written concerning us." (2 Kings 22:13 LSB)
Josiah's first instinct is to "inquire of Yahweh." He knows he needs a prophetic word. He needs to know where they stand. Is there any hope? Is judgment inevitable? This is not a sign of unbelief, but of profound faith. He believes the threats in the book are real, so he appeals to the God who made the threats. He runs toward God, not away from Him.
And what is his central concern? It is the wrath of Yahweh. Let that sink in. Modern evangelicals are deeply embarrassed by the doctrine of God's wrath. We try to hide it, explain it away, or soften it into a vague "disappointment." But for Josiah, and for all the saints in Scripture, the wrath of God is a terrifying, blazing reality. It is "set aflame against us." He understands that God is not a passive, grandfatherly deity. He is a holy God whose covenant has been trampled, whose honor has been insulted, and whose jealousy burns like a fire against sin.
Notice also the corporate and generational nature of his confession. He says to inquire for "me and the people and all Judah." He includes himself. He then identifies the root cause: "because our fathers have not listened." This is covenantal thinking. Josiah knows he is part of a federal history. He is reaping what previous generations have sown. The modern individualist thinks he is a self-contained unit, responsible only for his own choices in the here and now. The Bible knows nothing of this. We are bound up in the bundle of life with our fathers and our children. Their sins affect us, and our faithfulness or unfaithfulness will echo for generations. Josiah is not blaming his fathers in order to excuse himself; he is acknowledging the mountain of covenantal debt that has just come due on his watch.
The standard is clear: "to do according to all that is written concerning us." Not some of it. Not the parts we like. All of it. Partial obedience is just a prettified form of disobedience. God gave His law as a whole, and it must be received as a whole. This is what had been lost, and this is what Josiah, in holy terror, now understood. The standard was total, their failure was total, and therefore the wrath they faced was total.
Conclusion: Finding the Book Today
This is more than just a historical account. It is a paradigm for every generation of God's people. We too have a tendency to misplace the book. We can get so busy with our church programs, our building campaigns, our political activism, and our personal anxieties that the plain reading and radical obedience to the Word of God gets shoved into a dusty corner.
And what happens when we "find" it again? What happens when the Holy Spirit blows the dust off a passage and convicts us? Our response should be the same as Josiah's. First, there must be a rending of the heart. We must see our sin, individual and corporate, in the bright, unflattering light of God's law. We must stop making excuses for our compromises, for our worldliness, for the ways we and our fathers have failed to listen to all that is written.
Second, this grief must lead to urgent inquiry. We must ask God what He would have us do. We must seek His face, not to find an escape from the truth, but to find the path of repentance. And third, we must be honest about the central problem. The problem is not a lack of self-esteem. The problem is the great wrath of God that is set aflame against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men.
But for us, who live on this side of the cross, the story does not end with Huldah's prophecy of judgment. For we know that another King, a greater King, heard the words of the law and knew that the wrath of God was kindled against His people. But instead of tearing His robes, His own body was torn for us. The great wrath of Yahweh that was set aflame against us was quenched, not by our repentance, but when it was poured out in full upon the head of Jesus Christ at Calvary.
He is the one who listened to all the words of the book. He is the one who did according to all that was written. Because of Him, when we find the book and it convicts us, that conviction does not lead to despair but to the cross. The law, for us, is a schoolmaster that drives us to Christ. And having been driven to Christ, we then receive that same law, not as a list of curses, but as the instruction of our Father, which we now obey out of love and gratitude. Let us therefore pray that God would grant us the grace to rediscover His Word today, to have hearts as tender as Josiah's, and to find in its pages not only the terror of His wrath, but the glorious wonder of His Son.