In 2 Chronicles 34, we read that King Josiah began his reign in Judah at a mere eight years old. He was a good king, as the Chronicler summarizes, “And he did what was right in the sight of the Lord, and walked in the ways of his father David; he did not turn aside to the right hand or to the left” (v. 2). 

We are told that when he was still young, at the age of 16, he began to seek the Lord. And then when he turned 20 – an adult in Israel for at this age a man could serve in war and in the temple – he began his work of reform, purging the land of pagan high places, images, and altars. He tore them down, smashed them into pieces, and scattered them on the graves of the pagan priests. 

Now one lesson that we can take from the life of King Josiah is this – that early piety is possible and acceptable to God. By this I mean that our children may seek after the God of their fathers, as the text says of Josiah, while they are still young (v. 3). 

They do this at first in step with you, their parents. They learn by your instruction and by imitation. But as they grow up, you must be preparing them to seek the Lord on their own two feet, you must be readying them to serve the Lord as adults.  

When Josiah became an adult and came into the fullness of his kingship, his immediate action of cleansing the land was the fruit of seeking after God in his childhood. It was the result of his growing and sincere devotion to the God of his fathers. 

And so the exhortation this morning is for our children, especially our many young adults in their teen years here in this room. You are becoming your own person. You are now responsible for many things, and yet still look to your parents for many others. One thing that you must begin to take on as your own is your faith. You must begin to cultivate an earnest relationship with Christ that is not merely mediated through your parents. 

This is so that, when you come of age and leave home, you are equipped and eager to follow Christ wherever He takes you in this world. And hopefully, like Josiah, you can smash some idols along the way.

Shawn Paterson – July 28, 2024

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If you are a Christian, then God has performed a miracle of resurrection.
There was a time when you were dead, room temperature, face down in the gutter with yesterday’s sins congealing around you.

We all were. It was a mass grave. We’d followed the lusts of our flesh and our spiteful ambitions, and it hadn’t helped a bit. We were all born with the cursed birthmark that signified our doom, and nothing in man’s power could remove it.

But in defiance of all expectation, the King of Heaven looked on his wayward creation with pity, for His love is an everlasting love, higher than the firmament and deeper than the sea, older than time, fiercer than death.

And compelled by nothing other than his own good pleasure, he stooped down to that gutter, lifted your head out of it, and breathed in your nostrils the breath of life.

And in raising you up out of that gutter, he bound you in covenant to Jesus Christ, the God-man, such that where He is, you may also be. Just as He is seated in glory, so are you with him seated in glory.
This work of resurrection, this raising up and enthroning, is a flaming example of the kindness of God that shines from age to age like the golden dome of a cathedral.

It is the free and uncompelled gift of God that gave you faith to rest in Christ’s work. You were in the gutter, but God showed you mercy.

So the fact that you may come into the presence of God now, unashamed and clothed in your Sunday best, is gift. If you had had your way, you would still be a decaying corpse. Not much room for high-mindedness there.

But thanks be to God that He did what you could not. You are a resurrected saint, a new creation, and you are to get busy. This is more grace: you are an actual member of the team, you are an ingredient in the recipe, a part of the body with a job to do. So whatever you have been given to do, work at it with all your heart, working as to the Lord and not for men.

And when you stray back to the gutter, when you splash in the slime of your old sins, come to your Father for cleansing, again and again. You are His workmanship, He stands ready to forgive.

Joshua Edgren – June 16, 2024

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While there is no good time to have a blind guide, there are worse times to have one. If you must have a blind guide, then have him when you are meandering through a meadow, making your way through Kansas on a calm sunny day. Unfortunately, we are not in that story at the moment. Our situation is more like traversing the Rockies in a blizzard, with snipers on the ridge, and it is almost certain that several in our caravan have come down with a nasty case of cholera. Now is not the time to have a blind guide and it is not the time to be one.

You can easily spot the blind guides. They are the ones who leave their big gnarly sins festering, only to wake on Sunday and open the spice cabinet to measure out the oregano tithe. They use the sieve to strain the gnat out of the coffee while sitting down to a camel breakfast. The blind guides have lost all sense of proportionality, distance, weight, size. They have lost their vision, but they are still eager to talk to you about what you need to see. Well, how did they become such visionless visionaries?

Jesus told his disciples that the Scribes and Pharisees said, but did not. There was plenty of talk about what ought to be done without the doing of it. They would strap others with burdens, but they wouldn’t move a pinky to move those burdens. 

When the LORD shakes the things that can be shaken, as He most certainly is doing, the people who have been laboring away at the things that cannot be shaken really do have a lot to teach others. But the only way to guide others is to do the good works God has called you to do.

Jared Longshore – July 21, 2024

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Why do we get tired?

On long summer days working on projects, filling the weekends with adventures and making the most of Idaho summers before school starts up again, it is inevitable that you will get worn out. 

It is easy to think about exhaustion and see it as a consequence of the Fall. Our bodies break down with time, we get sick, we get tired. Tiredness is a little form of death, and every night we lie down to sleep, and we die, but like death, that is not the end. You rise back to life in the morning. Death and resurrection. 

But unlike exhaustion, rest has a very different picture in Scripture. God rested on the seventh day from His work. God was not worn out and in need of a break. And man was given this pattern of six days labor and one day of rest before man fell. Work was good. And rest was good and there was no sin. The Israelites looked forward to their rest in the promised land of Canaan when their work of conquering the land was complete. The new Israel, the church, looks forward to rest in this land, when the last remaining strongholds of sin are removed. Rest is the reward. Rest is sweet. 

So, when you are dead tired from long days of work well done, thank God for the rest that He gives each night. Thank God and take rest on the Sabbath. Ecclesiastes 5:12 – “The sleep of a laboring man is sweet…” 

But when you are exhausted because you have been living with sin, fighting and falling to temptation, when there is no rest in your marriage, when you are filled with stress and can’t relax on Sunday, this exhaustion gives you the picture of the only place that sin will lead to death. If you want rest, if you want peace, then first go and fight the giants in the land, the giants in your house, the giants in your heart. Do not be ok with a few sins on the edges that are currently out of site and not causing trouble. The command is to kill every last one, and the God who gives the command is the same God who has promised you rest. The reward is sure.

Zach Browning – July 14, 2024

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