The Axe at the Root: Josiah's Reformation Text: 2 Chronicles 34:1-7
Introduction: The Necessity of Public Righteousness
We live in an age that has completely lost its nerve. Modern American evangelicalism, for the most part, has made a separate peace with the world, a peace treaty written on the back of a napkin in a dimly lit bar. The terms of this treaty are simple: Christians can have their personal piety, their quiet times, their praise songs, and their internal feelings about Jesus, just so long as they agree to keep this faith strictly private. The moment Christian conviction dares to walk out into the public square and make demands, the moment it insists on speaking to how we order our society, our laws, and our culture, the secularists cry foul. They call it theocracy, intolerance, and a breach of the sacred separation of church and state, a phrase which, mind you, appears nowhere in our founding documents.
This privatization of faith is a lie from the pit of Hell. It is a spiritual anesthetic that has rendered the church impotent. It is the acceptance of a gnostic gospel, where "spirit" is good and "matter" is bad, or at least neutral and unimportant. But the God of the Bible is the God of all reality, not just the God of our quiet thoughts. He created the material world. He took on a material body. He will resurrect our material bodies. And He has laid a claim of absolute sovereignty over every square inch of this material world, including the halls of government.
The story of King Josiah is a bracing slap in the face to this kind of timid, privatized religion. Josiah’s reformation was not a quiet, internal affair. It was not a series of inspirational seminars. It was a public, political, and often violent cleansing of the land. It was the application of God's law to the nation, by the nation's king. Josiah understood that idolatry was not a private matter of personal preference. He understood it as high treason against the one true King of Israel, and therefore, a cancer that had to be cut out of the body politic, for the health and preservation of the nation. This is a story about what happens when a leader fears God more than he fears men, and what happens when a nation is called back to its covenant responsibilities. It is a story we desperately need to hear today.
The Text
Josiah was eight years old when he became king, and he reigned thirty-one years in Jerusalem. And he did what was right in the sight of Yahweh and walked in the ways of his father David and did not turn aside to the right or to the left. Now in the eighth year of his reign while he was still a youth, he began to seek the God of his father David; and in the twelfth year he began to cleanse Judah and Jerusalem of the high places, the Asherim, the graven images, and the molten images. And they tore down the altars of the Baals in his presence, and the incense altars that were high above them he cut in pieces; also the Asherim, the graven images, and the molten images he broke in pieces and ground to powder and scattered it on the graves of those who had sacrificed to them. Then he burned the bones of the priests on their altars and cleansed Judah and Jerusalem. And in the cities of Manasseh, Ephraim, Simeon, even as far as Naphtali, in their surrounding ruins, he also tore down the altars and beat the Asherim and the graven images into powder, and cut in pieces all the incense altars throughout the land of Israel. Then he returned to Jerusalem.
(2 Chronicles 34:1-7 LSB)
A Tender Heart and a Straight Path (v. 1-2)
We begin with the summary of Josiah's character and reign.
"Josiah was eight years old when he became king, and he reigned thirty-one years in Jerusalem. And he did what was right in the sight of Yahweh and walked in the ways of his father David and did not turn aside to the right or to the left." (2 Chronicles 34:1-2)
The first thing to note is the terrible spiritual condition of Judah when Josiah took the throne. His grandfather, Manasseh, was perhaps the most wicked king in Judah's history, who "shed very much innocent blood" and filled Jerusalem with idolatry from one end to another. His father, Amon, continued in this wickedness for two short years before being assassinated. This is the environment Josiah is born into, a cesspool of paganism and apostasy. He comes to the throne as a boy of eight, a child king in a corrupt court. By all human standards, this is a recipe for disaster.
But God is not limited by human standards. The text tells us that Josiah "did what was right in the sight of Yahweh." This is the ultimate standard for any ruler. The question is not whether a policy is popular, or pragmatic, or approved by the experts. The question is whether it is right in the sight of Yahweh. This requires a fixed, external standard, which is the law of God. Without it, "right" and "wrong" become whatever the man in power says they are.
He is compared to his "father David." This is the gold standard for kings in the Old Testament. It doesn't mean David was sinless, far from it. It means that David's heart was fundamentally oriented toward God, that he repented when confronted with his sin, and that he established the true worship of God in Israel. Josiah follows this pattern. And notice the description: "he did not turn aside to the right or to the left." This is the language of Deuteronomy, the charge given to Joshua as he entered the land (Joshua 1:7). It means he was steadfast in his obedience to the Word of God. He did not compromise. He did not seek a "middle way" between worshipping Yahweh and tolerating Baal. He walked the straight path of obedience.
The Stages of Reformation (v. 3)
Verse 3 shows us the progression of Josiah's spiritual growth and the public ramifications of it.
"Now in the eighth year of his reign while he was still a youth, he began to seek the God of his father David; and in the twelfth year he began to cleanse Judah and Jerusalem of the high places, the Asherim, the graven images, and the molten images." (2 Chronicles 34:3 LSB)
Here we see two crucial stages. First, at age sixteen ("the eighth year of his reign"), he "began to seek the God of his father David." Reformation begins with personal conversion. It begins with a heart turning to God. Before any public action, there must be a private seeking. Josiah, as a young man, makes a conscious decision to break with the wicked legacy of his father and grandfather and to seek the true God. This is the necessary foundation for everything that follows. You cannot lead a people where you have not gone yourself.
But true faith is never merely private. It does not remain locked in the heart. Four years later, at age twenty, Josiah's private seeking overflows into public action. He "began to cleanse Judah and Jerusalem." Notice the verb: cleanse. Idolatry is not a harmless lifestyle choice. It is filth. It is pollution. It defiles the land and the people. And as the civil magistrate, the king, it was Josiah’s God-given duty to purge this filth. He goes after the "high places," the unauthorized centers of worship, the "Asherim," which were sacred poles or trees dedicated to a fertility goddess, and the "graven images" and "molten images," the physical idols themselves. This was a direct assault on the entire religious infrastructure of the nation's apostasy.
The Thoroughness of Destruction (v. 4-5)
Verses 4 and 5 detail the violent and comprehensive nature of this cleansing. This was not a polite request for the idols to be removed. This was war.
"And they tore down the altars of the Baals in his presence... he broke in pieces and ground to powder and scattered it on the graves of those who had sacrificed to them. Then he burned the bones of the priests on their altars and cleansed Judah and Jerusalem." (2 Chronicles 34:4-5 LSB)
Josiah is personally involved, overseeing the destruction "in his presence." True leaders don't just issue memos; they lead from the front. The altars are torn down. The incense altars are cut in pieces. The idols are not just broken; they are ground to powder. This is the Deuteronomic prescription for dealing with idols (Deut. 7:25). You are to show them no mercy. You are to utterly destroy them, to obliterate them, so they cannot be put back together again.
And then he does something profoundly symbolic. He scatters the idol-dust on the graves of the idolaters. This is an act of ultimate contempt. He is saying that their false religion led them to death, and now the residue of that false religion belongs with the dead. It is a graphic illustration of the wages of sin. Then, he goes even further. He digs up the bones of the false priests and burns them on their own desecrated altars. This was the ultimate defilement. It was a posthumous judgment, a declaration that their ministry was an abomination and their memory was cursed. This is not the action of a man trying to build a pluralistic, tolerant society. This is the action of a covenant king enforcing the terms of the covenant. The first commandment, "You shall have no other gods before me," is not a suggestion. For a nation in covenant with God, it is the foundational law of the land.
National Reformation (v. 6-7)
Josiah's reformation was not limited to the southern kingdom of Judah. He extends his purge into the territories of the former northern kingdom.
"And in the cities of Manasseh, Ephraim, Simeon, even as far as Naphtali... he also tore down the altars and beat the Asherim and the graven images into powder... Then he returned to Jerusalem." (2 Chronicles 34:6-7 LSB)
The northern kingdom of Israel had been destroyed by the Assyrians over a century earlier because of their idolatry. The land was now a patchwork of pagan peoples and remnant Israelites. But Josiah, seeing himself as the rightful king of all of God's people, pushes his reforms north. He understands that the covenant promises and obligations extended to all twelve tribes. This was a claim of spiritual and political sovereignty over the entire promised land.
He does the same thing there: tearing down, beating into powder, cutting in pieces. The repetition drives the point home. This was a systematic, top-to-bottom, border-to-border eradication of public idolatry. And once the work of cleansing was done, he "returned to Jerusalem." The center of true worship had been re-established and secured.
Conclusion: No Neutrality
The story of Josiah confronts us with a deeply uncomfortable truth: there is no neutrality in the public square. Every law is an establishment of morality. Every society is shaped by the god it worships. The question is never whether we will have a religious foundation for our laws and culture, but always which religion it will be. For generations, America was shaped by a broadly Christian consensus. We are now living through the results of rejecting that consensus. Our public square is not neutral; it is filled with the high places, the Asherim, and the graven images of a new, secular paganism. We have altars to sexual autonomy, to materialism, to the god of self.
What is the church's response to be? Are we to retreat into our holy huddles and wait for the rapture? God forbid. We are to be salt and light. Salt is a preservative, but it is also an irritant. Light exposes and drives out darkness. We are called to seek the Lord, as young Josiah did, to have our own hearts set right with Him. But that seeking must lead to action. It must lead to cleansing. For us, this does not mean taking a physical sledgehammer to the idols of our age, because we are not a civil magistrate. But it does mean taking the spiritual sledgehammer of the Word of God to them.
It means we must preach the crown rights of Jesus Christ over every aspect of life. It means we must call sin by its name. It means we must work, pray, and vote to see our laws and culture reflect the righteousness of God. It means we must build faithful Christian households, churches, and schools that are outposts of the kingdom, centers of reformation. We must teach our children to despise the idols of the age and to love the Lord their God with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength.
Josiah's reformation was not the final reformation. It was a shadow, a type, of the true reformation brought by the greater David, the Lord Jesus Christ. When He came, He cleansed the temple. At the cross, He tore down the ultimate altar of sin and death. And by His Spirit, He is cleansing His people, grinding the idols of our hearts to powder. He is extending His kingdom, not just through Judah and Israel, but to the ends of the earth. And He has commissioned us to be agents of that kingdom. Let us, therefore, take courage from this story. Let us not turn to the right or to the left, but let us do what is right in the sight of the Lord, and seek to cleanse our own hearts, our homes, and our land for the glory of our King.