Hey everybody. Welcome back to another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. Hello everybody. It is Tuesday and we have another question that as promised we're gonna get to here on the podcast. It has to do if I can just paint the category probably with the question about righteous indignation. That's a phrase that we talk about in the church, which really has to do with getting angry in a way that is not sinful. There is a category in scripture provided for that. In fact, Paul says, be angry and do not sin. So all anger is not necessarily sinful anger, but how do we approach this concept of righteous indignation? The question specifically was dealing with. Is it good and right to feel anger, disgusted, et cetera, over sin? And conversely, is it wrong? And he says, disordered to not feel anger and disgusted at sin. So I think. This is really looking at the same issue from two different sides here. Let's deal with the first one the anger. Is it right to be angry over sin? I'll say yes. So long as our anger is again righteous. And the key to that, I believe, is that our anger is connected more to the offensive. Of God than it is to the, of offense of our own sensibilities or our own morals or our own standards or whatever. It will transgress those things. However, it should transgress those things because those are the morals, the standards the ethics that God has put in place first and foremost. So then what causes our indignation over the loss of life? For example, somebody being murdered or, you've got. The sin of the perversion of marriage and gender issues and things. What should cause our anger is that this is a, an offense against God. We talked about it in the last episode, fearing God, this is the world not fearing God. This is the world. Throwing the fist in the face of God and saying, we're gonna defy you and we are gonna pervert your design and we are gonna reject your design and we're gonna reject your morals, your standards, your ethics. That's what should cause us to be angry. Not because we feel like our own sense of justice is, has been offended or. Our own sensibilities have been wronged on the other side of things, is it wrong not to feel that anger? In, in some degree, yes. I think it is. I think there's a sense where our holiness does need to be in tune with God's holiness. Our sense of what is right and wrong does need to be in tune with God's sense of right and wrong. And in a sense of his own, awareness and perception. Here he says, I, I fear that maybe at times we can become. Puts it this way desensitized to perhaps cultural brainwashing and whether it's cultural brainwashing or not, I think he's right. We can become desensitized to sin and we can lose our desired response, our god's desired response in us. Because we look at that sin, we think it's not that big of a deal because we see it everywhere in society, and we live in a world that has deemed it to be appropriate and not sin anymore. And that's why it's so important for us to be in God's word on a daily basis. It's why it's so important for us to know what God's word says on things, and that is our final stance. That is our final arbiter, not how the world thinks about something or how we ultimately may want to feel about it. But what does God's word say that's going to inform how I respond to a given cultural issue? Pr your thoughts. The organ that the Bible calls the heart is multifaceted. It is comprised of three. What we would call three dynamics that make up the whole of who you are. And so the first one is the obvious one here. Your heart can refer to your emotional state, the way that you feel about certain things. The other would be the way that you think about things, the way that you understand the world around you. And then lastly, your volition, your act of conscience, your will, what you do with your life. So when the Bible talks about your heart, it's talking about the. The composite of these three things working together. They're not separate parts per se. They're part of the whole, so the, your thinking, your feeling and your doing. I love your question, Matt, because I think it really helps at least tease out some of these pieces and help us to put them together. And so let me tackle it this way. I think it's, I think your question is right headed. We should feel the feelings that God feels. When God feels anger towards sin, we should feel anger towards sin. And if we don't feel anger towards sin, if we're calloused and cold-hearted toward it, it's because we don't feel the way God does. That means our conscience is not attuned to the way that God works and therefore it would be wrong for us. And so I would say that in so far as we are reflecting kinda what you were saying, PPJ, as we're reflecting scripture, we should reflect the way that scripture presents an emotionally healthy response to things around us. I immediately thought of Ezekiel chapter nine. In relation to your question, Matt, it says this, and the Lord said to him, pass through the city, through Jerusalem and put a mark on the foreheads of the men who sigh and groan over all the abominations that are committed in it. This marking was meant to preserve these people, to protect them because God sees them as responding rightly to the sins that are committed inside. And I think that's true for us in the sense that God wants us to respond with the right thoughts, the right emotions, and the right. Actions to things that are evil. I think the biggest challenge with this is that our hearts are so often wrongly attuned or misattuned that our anger ends up being more than ungodly. You were saying earlier that the danger is that you respond in a sinful way. And I think that's probably most often what we experience because our hearts are they're informed and they're. Shaped by so many other outside influences that it's hard to know for sure. Am I feeling the right feeling about the particular murder that you mentioned here, Austin about Austin Metcalf. All that to say, I think the scriptures are really helpful. And I think you said this also, pastor pg I'm just saying exactly what you said with my words. No, it's good. I think we need to have our heart shaped by scripture, and the only way to successfully do that is to have your heart so immersed and so shaped by the way that God speaks and the way that God thinks and the way that God feels that you have a more reliable guide. When you respond to things that are not explicitly stated in scripture. So all that to say, it's a good thing that you're in your Bible over the course of time. As you spend more and more time here, the more you'll find yourself responding thinking, feeling, and acting in alignment with the way that God says is right and good. It's kinda like that song. Have you heard that song recently? Dusty Bibles. Yes. Such a good song. Yeah. Have you guys listened to this song yet? Josiah Queen, I think. That's the one, yes. It's folksy sounding. He's, he is a young, new artist, but I love that song, if you haven't listened to it yet, Josiah Queen. Yeah. Josiah Queen. Josiah Queen dusty Bibles. I, that's a great song. Yeah. And in fact, his name matches who we're talking about today. Ah, king that is a transition if there ever was one right there. Yeah. King Josiah, man. Great question Matthew. Thanks for submitting that and hopefully that was a helpful response from us. King Josiah is next up and we open up with him in two King Chapter 22 and 23. And King Josiah is really such a, a. Says he's a good king in the Bible. That's an understatement. It says he did everything according to the ways of David, his father. And there's so many things here that I think, Hezekiah, we just came off Hezekiah not long ago. Hezekiah was a good king. But there's some key differences between him and Josiah here. And Josiah is just a king set to do the good things set to do things in a way that honors the Lord. After ordering that. The temple should be repaired. The book of the law is found in the reparation process of the temple. They bring it to the king, they read it to the king, and he tears his clothes. That's a sign of mourning. This is verse 11. So he goes into mourning because he realizes just how far the people of Israel had fallen short of what God had called them to do. That's the right response too. Totally the right response, and that's should be our response to sin. Talking about sin, right? How do we respond to sin? I think here we see. One other response besides anger over the offense against God should be, man, it should sober us and cause us to feel this conviction that he, we go in a mourning over that. And he's, he explains why here in verse 13, he says, for great is the wrath of the Lord that is kindled against us because our fathers have not obeyed the words of this book to do according to all that's written according. Concerning us I, my mind went to Deuteronomy 28, which is the chapter that deals, details, the blessings and the cursings, blessings for obedience, cursings for disobedience. And so I don't know if that's exactly what Josiah was thinking of, but it's the book of the law. It's part of the Pentateuch. And so he knew that Israel was in trouble, and so he responds the right. Way. And that response is not just conviction. That feels sorrow, and that could lead to self-pity, but it's also penitential and repentant. Look down at verse 19. God commence him and says, because your heart was penitent and you humbled yourself before the Lord. When you heard how I spoke against this place and against its inhabitants, that they should become a desolation and a curse God's gonna say, look, I'm gonna gather you to your fathers, and you're gonna be gathered to your grave in peace, and your eye shall not see the disaster that I will bring upon this place. And so Josiah in, in chapter 22, the book's discovered. He finds it, he reads it. He realizes, man, we are in trouble. And and he is penitent before the Lord. And the Lord says, Hey, look, I'm not gonna bring the judgment upon you in your time. And this is where there's a key difference between him and Hezekiah. 'cause I think Hezekiah, if we know how he responded after God said, Hey, don't worry, Babylon's not gonna come into your life. And Hezekiah said, great. As long as it's not my time, I don't care. Josiah doesn't say that. In fact, that's chapter 23, where Josiah gathers the people and begins to in institute some reforms there, but pr Anything else on, on chapter 22 before we jump in there? Yeah. I just wanna note here what you talked about at the very beginning. I wanna point out to your attention, verse two. Josiah did what was right in the eyes of the Lord and walked in all the way of David, his father, and did not turn aside to the right or to the left. Just wanna make this point, Josiah is given the kind of superlative that no other king enjoys. He's the only king of all the Judean kings that receives this kind of phrase. The others, Hezekiah gets something similar. And there's another good king that also Asa gets something similar as well. But Josiah's the only one that gets this precise phrase, and I think he's. The best king that Judah ever enjoys short of David himself. So I think it's really cool. And that's why most of what you read here in Two Kings and Chronicles is largely positive. There is one small area at the end of his life where you're, it's unclear exactly what's going on in his mind. It doesn't look like it's a good thing, but by and large, he receives accolades from the writers of two Kings and Chronicles. And that's worth noting. Yeah. Yeah. And it also, I don't know about you, but when I think of David, I. And more often prone to think of his flaws than I am. His, the good things about him. I, yeah, I, they're they'd come pretty quickly after I think about the good things for sure. Yeah. Because of his sin with Bathsheba and then, Absalom and Amon and Tamar and all that stuff. It's just. There's so many of his warts that are there, but he is held up as a standard of that was his commendable. And God says he was a man after his own heart. And so it's a good reminder for us to say, man, David was a godly man and a godly king. And yeah, Josiah's. The accommodation of Josiah there in chapter 22 walking after David, I agree with you. I think he probably was one of the best kings that, that Judah ever had. Oh, yeah. In chapter 23, what I love is that again, he doesn't just kick his feet up and go, okay it's not gonna happen in my lifetime. So upset. He gathers the people and he reads, and I take it to be him. I don't, maybe it was one of his servants or maybe one of the priests he ordered to read the law, but the text says he read the law and the. Accountant. Second Chronicles says the same thing. He read in the hearing all the words of the book of the Covenant that had been found in the house of the Lord. And then beyond that, he says, we're gonna make a covenant. Now, this is not one of the big covenants. This is not a covenant that God makes with his people, but this is a covenant that Josiah is making. As the king in calling the people to join him in. And that covenant is going to be to walk, to keep, and to perform the words written in the law of the Lord. In other words, it's a covenant of obedience. Josiah is saying the problem is, and he recognized that in chapter 22, we've been disobedient. So chapter 23 is now gonna be about repentance, and we've talked about this recently. I think repentance is not just feeling bad about your sin, it's not just. Changing your mind about your sin, but it's actually bearing fruit and keeping with repentance. And that's chapter 23. From here on, he goes on and basically cleans house. He brings out all of the idols from the temple. He destroys things. He defiles the altars even goes up into the northern parts of the kingdom to some of the altars that Jerome and others had set up. And he does something that's really interesting. He takes the bones of the priests, the godless priests up there, and he burns them on these altars. And that would've been to defile them even more so that they could never be used again. Josiah is on a rampage at this point, but it's a good rampage. It's a rampage for the Lord. And he is going to just. This covenant that he makes, he follows through on it. And he is a man that leaves just a fantastic and phenomenal legacy aside from, again this ending of chapter 23, which has to do with Pharaon, Nico and some things there. But yeah, to your point, verse 25, PR says Before him, there was no king like him who turned to the Lord with all his heart and with all his soul, and with all his might according to the law of Moses, nor did any like him arise after him. So that's a pretty strong. Epitaph there. That's an endorsement of his legacy for sure. I love the facts and this uniquely stood out to me as I read through this time. I love that he went to Bethel and went to go defile their pagan sites. Yeah. In verse number five, here in chapter 23, it says. Actually verse four, it says that he he burned them outside Jerusalem in the fields of the kidron and carried their ashes to Bethel. At first, I'm like, why did he do that? And then I realized a few verses later in verse 15. Moreover, the alter at Bethel, the high place is erected by Jira Bois and a Neba who made his Israel of sin that alter with a high place he pulled down and burned, reducing it to dust. And so he's trying to do exactly what you said. He's defiling areas where there's potential for Judah to want to pursue the false deities. Of the Northern Kingdom or anyone else for that matter. I think that's helpful for me. I think about the avenues wherein we might be tempted to sin, things that we might be, seduced by just because it's available to us, it's convenient to us. And I think Josiah shows us a principle that's helpful for us in the New Testament, which is to find ways or opportunities where there's potential for you to sin and say, I know that's a weakness for me. I'm gonna do everything I can to knock that out. I wanna cut off that avenue, even though the avenue itself is not inherently bad. Bethel was in a bad place, but he knew that those temptations were particularly. Enticing to his people, and therefore he cut them off. So helpful. It's as the old Puritan says, John Owen, be killing sin or it will be killing you. There is no neutrality when it comes to sin, and therefore we ought to deal with it in a similar way to Josiah taking sin seriously, cutting off its avenues and doing whatever we need to remove its influence from our lives. I remember one story, one of my friends when he got saved, he had this massive CD collection. Do you guys remember what CDs are? Do you know what a CD is? They were like, they were like DVDs, right? Yeah. But they played music and stuff. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Old technology. He had this massive collection, and when you had a collection like that, it was something enviable. You know when you had those massive books that you'd put in your car, big folders with the big, yeah, there was like four or six of 'em on each page, and then you would flip the pages back and forth. Those were the good old days, kids, let me tell you. That was fun. I love that. Anyway, he had this massive book and he said, I got, I threw all of them away to my shock. I'm saying, why would you do that? Not all of that was sin. Surely some of them probably need to get rid of, but he threw away a, all of them. And he said, because all of that was for me before Christ was related to my old life, under the curse of sin, under its total age and under its slavery, all those things. And so for him, it was better for him just to get rid of everything. Yeah. And to start fresh with. Worship CDs and super tones and whoever else was out at that point. And now that I look at Josiah, I think maybe that was the right call after all. Yeah, there's that scene. You remember that movie that came out in the late nineties, early two thousands, fireproof. Oh, the Kirk Cameron. Kirk Cameron, yeah. Where the, he takes the computer, which was a source of a problem for him. And he takes it out in his driveway. Yeah. He drop, kicks it or drop kicks it and beats it with a baseball bat and stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah. That's another example of that. It's Jesus, right On the sermon on the mount. If your right hand calls you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. If your eye calls you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. These are metaphorical commands by him, but it's the radical dealing with any, anything that could be a source of sin. And Josiah does that, not just for himself, but corporately for the people. He's leading the people so well in doing this. And as the king goes, so goes the people, as the husband goes, so goes the family. As the pastor goes, so goes the church. The principle of leadership here is why they enjoy such a season of prosperity. Now there's also issues to be sure, 'cause we're gonna read about that. Tomorrow. Yeah. We'll read about some of the issues tomorrow, but for now, just notice he's setting a trajectory. He's setting a wake that all people follow behind, and it's a good one. Yeah. Would we, would that we had people like this. Yeah, for sure. God, give us more. Josiah's. Yeah. Second Chronicles 34 and 35. The companion reading here chapter 34 is a lot of, again, what we just read about. One thing that jumped out in the Chronicles account, I can't remember if it was there in the King's account, but just where the age markers. Eight years old when he begins to reign. Oh yeah. It says in verse three that he's 16 when he begins to really set his heart to seek the Lord. And that's a good reminder for us. We've, you've probably dealt with this much more than I have in your years in student ministry, but adolescence is a. Is a cultural construct, right? It's something that has its purposes and I think there's some reasons why it's good, but I think we also can fall prey into thinking that our young people are not capable of doing things that they're, they really are capable of. Totally. And so it's a different time, but. 16 years old, and he begins to set his heart to, to pursue the Lord. 26 years old, verse eight in the 18th year of his reign. So he is 26 years old when he, when the book of the laws is discovered, and he goes on this this cleansing rampage that we were just talking about from two Kings. So he's a young man, 26 years old. When I was 26, I didn't necessarily think I was a young man, but now at 41, I'm going, man, he was a young dude. He was a young buck. For sure when he did this. And he just, he loves God and he's gonna set himself to, to follow the Lord. And it's the same story here in chapter 34. So it's a lot of the same things. He makes that covenant again and calls the people. Verse 32, he made all who were present in Jerusalem and Ben and in Benjamin to join it, to join with them in the covenant. And it, it appears to their credit that the people. Did it. To, to your point, I think they respond to his leadership. They're going, okay, here's a strong leadership. We're gonna get behind this and we're gonna do what he's calling us to do. And I think that just showcases the way that God designs the world to work. Leadership affects its followers. And so for all of us who lead families or homes or businesses, or even just lead ourselves, your leadership has an influence on those around you. And the significance of it cannot be overstated. Yeah. Something that we didn't really dive in into much back in this, the King's account, we get a whole chapter about here in Chapter 35, and that's the Passover that Josiah keeps on top of this. And so he not only noted that there was all of this idolatry that was rampant, but that the Passover had not really been observed very well by his predecessors. And so he sets out to observe the Passover, and there's a line that is here in verse 18. It says, no Passover like it had been. Kept in Israel since the days of Samuel the prophet, none of the kings of Israel had kept such a Passover rose. It was kept by Josiah and the priest and the Levites and this time reading through it. I think the reason being is because of how intentional he was to do things exactly by the book, and just the generosity and the general sense of. Of community and the participation by everybody involved that you see here in chapter 35, which is again, part of his leadership impact here. But I think that's what led to this being such a significant Passover. 'cause there were other Passovers that were observed. But I think what makes this one so unique is he was saying, we're doing this exactly by the book. And everybody was all in and fully committed to it. There was no going through the motions here. Yeah, and I think to your point, what made it by the book was that it was a heartfelt endeavor. Something that everyone participated in, joyfully, generously, and with integrity according to what the word said. So I think the heart element is what. Put it over the edge. Yeah. The end of Josiah's life is a little bit odd. Pharaon, Nico goes up to battle. It says here, the King of Egypt came up to fight at Kamish. And Josiah goes out to, to confront him, to fight him. And there's this, bless you. A fascinating interaction here where the King of Egypt says to his to Josiah, he says, you need to go home. 'cause God told me to come out here and do this. And the text. Actually says there he did not listen to the words of Nico from the mouth of God. This is verse 22, but came out to fight in the P of Megiddo and he ends up dying in battle there. So it looks like this is a stumble by Josiah towards the end of his life. Not to the same extent as we've seen the other kings stumble, but it seems that he did not listen to Nico and recognize that God was speaking through this foreigner telling him, Hey, Josiah, go back home. This isn't your battle to fight. So he meets his a, a tragic end with this battle with Nico. It is fascinating that God spoke to this pagan and this pagan communicated honestly. Yeah. To Josiah. Yeah. God told me to do this and he was telling the truth. Yeah. What do you do with that? If he can use Cyrus, if he can use Nebuchadnezzar, if he can move them like chess pieces around the boards or accomplish his plans and his will. Or a donkey. Or a donkey, I think it. It's, it fits with those things. I it's awe inspiring to be sure, but I think if this were, its only thing that we ever had in here in the Bible about him using pagans in the accomplishing of his will or communication of his messages it, yeah, it's God's ways are mysterious for sure. Amen to that. Yeah. Hey, let's pray and then we will be done with this episode of the Daily Bible Podcast. God, we thank you so much for your word and for these chapters in Second King. Second Chronicles. We thank you for Josiah's life and his pattern, his example. We pray that as you give us opportunity to to leader, to influence others, be it at home or in our workplace, wherever it may be, that we would set ourselves to lead in this way, that we would set ourselves to lead in a way that honors you first and foremost, and that we would be sensitive to your word and its principles for guiding us in how we conduct ourselves and lead our families. And God, thank you for Josiah and for his impact, his legacy, his testimony, and we pray that you would raise up more people like him not just in our churches, but also even in our nation. As you call us to pray for our rulers, pray for our nation. We do ask for those things as well. So we thank you, God, for his example. We pray this in Jesus name. Amen. Amen. Keep bring your Bibles tuning in tomorrow for another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. Bye bye.

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