Taking Out the Trash: Josiah's Reformation Text: 2 Kings 23:4-14
Introduction: Reformation is not Tidying Up
We live in an age that loves the idea of "spirituality" but despises the reality of true religion. Modern spirituality is a vague, sentimental fog, a do-it-yourself project where you get to define the terms, pick the parts you like, and discard the rest. It is a religion of the interior, a private hobby. But biblical religion, the faith once delivered to the saints, is something else entirely. It is objective, sharp-edged, and public. It makes demands. It draws lines. It confronts. And when it has been neglected, when the house of God has been turned into a den of thieves and a gallery of idols, it does not politely ask for a little tidying up. It comes with fire and with hammers.
The account of Josiah's reformation in 2 Kings 23 is jarring to our modern, effeminate sensibilities. We are conditioned to think of tolerance as the highest virtue. We believe in "live and let live." We want a soft-spoken Jesus who would never overturn a single table. But the Jesus of Scripture is the Lord of Hosts, and the spirit of Josiah is the spirit of a man fully consecrated to that Lord. What we are about to read is not a spring cleaning. It is a controlled demolition. It is a holy war waged against the high places of the heart and the high places of the land.
For generations, Judah had been playing the harlot. Under kings like Manasseh and Amon, the nation had descended into a syncretistic sewer. They wanted Yahweh on Sunday, but Baal on Monday, and the stars of the host of heaven on the weekend. They tried to blend the worship of the one true God with the sexual debauchery, child sacrifice, and cosmic fatalism of their pagan neighbors. They brought the idols right into the Temple, setting up their abominations in the very house where God had placed His name. This was not just a series of bad policy decisions. It was high treason against the covenant Lord. It was spiritual adultery of the foulest kind.
And so, when the book of the Law is discovered and read to the young king Josiah, his response is not one of mild concern. He tears his clothes. He weeps. He understands that the wrath of God is kindled against his people because of generations of covenant unfaithfulness. And his repentance is not merely a private affair. It is a public, national, and violent reformation. Josiah understood something we have forgotten: true worship requires the destruction of false worship. You cannot serve God and Baal. You cannot have the Asherah pole in the house of the Lord. You cannot dedicate your children to Molech in the valley and then come to the temple and expect God to accept your sacrifices. Reformation is not addition; it is subtraction and purification. It is taking out the trash, and burning it.
The Text
Then the king commanded Hilkiah the high priest and the priests of the second order and the doorkeepers, to bring out of the temple of Yahweh all the vessels that were made for Baal, for Asherah, and for all the host of heaven; and he burned them outside Jerusalem in the fields of the Kidron, and carried their ashes to Bethel. And he did away with the idolatrous priests whom the kings of Judah had appointed and who burn incense in the high places in the cities of Judah and in the surrounding area of Jerusalem, as well as those who burned incense to Baal, to the sun and to the moon and to the constellations and to all the host of heaven. And he brought out the Asherah from the house of Yahweh outside Jerusalem to the brook Kidron, and burned it at the brook Kidron, and ground it to dust, and threw its dust on the graves of the common people. He also tore down the houses of the male cult prostitutes which were in the house of Yahweh, where the women were weaving hangings for the Asherah. Then he brought all the priests from the cities of Judah and defiled the high places where the priests had burned incense, from Geba to Beersheba; and he tore down the high places of thegates which were at the entrance of the gate of Joshua the ruler of the city, which were on one’s left at the city gate. Nevertheless the priests of the high places did not go up to the altar of Yahweh in Jerusalem, but they ate unleavened bread among their brothers. He also defiled Topheth, which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom, that no man might make his son or his daughter pass through the fire for Molech. And he did away with the horses which the kings of Judah had given to the sun, at the entrance of the house of Yahweh, by the chamber of Nathan-melech the official, which was in the precincts; and he burned the chariots of the sun with fire. Also, the altars which were on the roof, the upper chamber of Ahaz, which the kings of Judah had made, and the altars which Manasseh had made in the two courts of the house of Yahweh, the king tore down; and he crushed them there and threw their dust into the brook Kidron. And the high places which were before Jerusalem, which were on the right of the mount of destruction which Solomon the king of Israel had built for Ashtoreth the detestable idol of the Sidonians, and for Chemosh the detestable idol of Moab, and for Milcom the abomination of the sons of Ammon, the king defiled. And he broke in pieces the sacred pillars and cut down the Asherim and filled their places with human bones.
(2 Kings 23:4-14 LSB)
Cleansing the Temple (vv. 4-7)
The reformation begins where it must: in the house of God. Before you can address the sins of the nation, you must first cleanse the sanctuary. Judgment begins at the house of God.
"Then the king commanded Hilkiah the high priest... to bring out of the temple of Yahweh all the vessels that were made for Baal, for Asherah, and for all the host of heaven; and he burned them outside Jerusalem in the fields of the Kidron, and carried their ashes to Bethel." (2 Kings 23:4)
Josiah, as the civil magistrate, the king, gives the command. This is a righteous exercise of his authority as a "nursing father" to the church. He is not usurping the role of the priests, but rather commanding them to do their duty according to the Word of God. The temple had become a museum of idolatry. There were vessels for Baal, the Canaanite storm and fertility god. There were items for Asherah, his consort, a goddess of sensuality. And there was paraphernalia for "all the host of heaven," which refers to astral worship, the fatalistic religion of the Assyrians and Babylonians. They had everything in there except exclusive devotion to Yahweh.
Josiah doesn't auction these items off. He doesn't put them in storage. He takes them outside the holy city, to the Kidron Valley, and he burns them. This is an act of utter contempt and repudiation. But he goes further. He carries the ashes to Bethel. This is a brilliant polemical stroke. Bethel was the site of Jeroboam's original sin, where he set up one of the golden calves to keep the northern kingdom from worshipping in Jerusalem (1 Kings 12:29). By dumping the ashes of Judah's paganism on the original site of Israel's apostasy, Josiah is declaring that all idolatry, whether homegrown or imported, comes from the same polluted source and deserves the same end.
In verses 5-7, the purge intensifies. He deposes the idolatrous priests, the "chemarim," who had been state-sponsored clergy for a false religion. He brings out the Asherah pole itself, a wooden image of the goddess, which was disgustingly housed in the temple of Yahweh. He burns it, grinds it to powder, and scatters the dust on the graves of the common people. This is the ultimate act of defilement. He is saying that this idol is fit for nothing but to be mingled with death and decay. Then he tears down the quarters of the male cult prostitutes, the sodomites, which were located within the temple complex itself. This reminds us that pagan worship is never abstract; it is always carnal, always degrading, always a rebellion against God's created order for male and female.
Extending the Purge (vv. 8-12)
The reformation could not be contained to Jerusalem. The cancer of the high places had metastasized throughout the land.
"Then he brought all the priests from the cities of Judah and defiled the high places where the priests had burned incense, from Geba to Beersheba..." (2 Kings 23:8)
The "high places" were local shrines, often on hilltops, where people would offer sacrifices. Some were dedicated to pagan gods, while others were dedicated to Yahweh but were still illegitimate. God had commanded that sacrifice was to be centralized at the place He would choose, which was the temple in Jerusalem (Deuteronomy 12). This was to protect the purity of worship and to constantly remind the people of the one true God and the one true way of approaching Him. These local shrines, even the "sincere" ones, were an act of disobedience and inevitably led to syncretism. You start by worshipping Yahweh in your own way, and you end up worshipping Baal in his way.
Josiah brings the priests of these high places to Jerusalem. He doesn't execute them, but he does demote them. They are not allowed to serve at the main altar, but they are allowed to eat with their fellow priests (v. 9). This shows a measure of grace, but also a firm commitment to the principle of right worship. Sincere error is still error, and it has consequences.
Then, in verse 10, he confronts the most horrific of all the pagan practices: child sacrifice. He defiles Topheth in the valley of Hinnom, later called Gehenna. This was the place where Israelites, in utter defiance of God's law, would burn their own children as offerings to the Ammonite god Molech. This is the logical endpoint of all idolatry. When you turn from the living God who gives life, you will inevitably end up sacrificing your future to dead gods who demand death. Josiah desecrates this place, making it ritually unclean and unusable for its demonic purpose. He then moves on to destroy the horses and chariots dedicated to the sun, another form of pagan worship, and tears down the illicit altars built by his wicked predecessors, Ahaz and Manasseh.
Confronting Solomon's Sin (vv. 13-14)
In a final, audacious act, Josiah confronts the legacy of Israel's wisest and most compromised king.
"And the high places which were before Jerusalem... which Solomon the king of Israel had built for Ashtoreth... and for Chemosh... and for Milcom... the king defiled. And he broke in pieces the sacred pillars and cut down the Asherim and filled their places with human bones." (2 Kings 23:13-14)
This is a staggering statement. These high places, built by Solomon himself to appease his foreign wives (1 Kings 11:7-8), had stood for three centuries. They were a monument to the sad reality that wisdom without obedience is folly. For three hundred years, king after king had tolerated this open sore on the face of Jerusalem. It took the courage of Josiah to finally deal with it. He defiles them, smashes the pagan pillars, and cuts down the Asherah poles. And then, in a final act of desecration, he fills their places with human bones, making them permanently unclean.
This tells us that no sin is too old to be repented of. No compromise is too venerable to be torn down. No tradition has the right to stand against the clear command of God's Word. Josiah was not sentimental. He was not interested in preserving "cultural heritage." He was interested in the honor of God. He understood that you cannot build a godly future on a foundation of compromised history.
Taking a Sledgehammer to Our High Places
It is easy for us to read this account and commend Josiah for his zeal, while remaining comfortably detached from its application. We may not have Asherah poles in our churches or altars to Molech in our backyards. But do not be deceived. The human heart is, as Calvin said, a perpetual factory of idols. Our high places are more sophisticated, but they are no less offensive to God.
We have high places of materialism, where we sacrifice our time, our families, and our integrity on the altar of prosperity. We have high places of sexual immorality, where we bow down to the cultural idols of personal autonomy and self-expression, tearing down the created distinctions between male and female that God Himself established. We have high places of entertainment and distraction, where we offer up countless hours to the glowing screens that numb our souls and keep us from fellowship with God and our neighbor.
And what about in our churches? We have brought the vessels of Baal into the sanctuary. We have replaced the preaching of the Word with therapeutic self-help talks. We have substituted the robust psalms of our fathers with sentimental, man-centered ditties that would be more at home in a coffee shop than in the courts of the Lord. We have tolerated the cult prostitutes of false doctrine, allowing wolves in sheep's clothing to teach that there are many ways to God, or that God's law has no bearing on our lives.
What is needed is a Josiah-like reformation. This begins, as it did for him, with a recovery of the Word of God. We must read the Book, believe the Book, and tremble before the Book. When the law of God exposes the idolatry in our hearts, our families, and our churches, our response must be to tear our clothes in repentance, not to shrug our shoulders in indifference.
And that repentance must be active. It must be a violent tearing down of idols. It means taking the sledgehammer of God's Word to the high places in your own life. It means defiling them with repentance and filling their places with the bones of your dead self. It means taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. For the individual, for the family, for the church, and for the nation, the command is the same. Take out the trash. Burn the idols. And return to the worship of the one true God, in the one true way that He has commanded. For He is a jealous God, and He will not share His glory with another.