- We have another weeping king in 2 Kings 22. Josiah tears his clothes and weeps before the Lord when he hears the book of law read. It had been lost. God’s law had been lost.
- God is going to carry out His word. His plan isn’t going to change, but He sees how Josiah humbled himself and was sad for their sin. God is going to reward Josiah for that and keep him from seeing any disaster.
- I noticed something as I read this. He’s eighteen years into his reign when he has them repairing the temple; that’s when they find the book of law.
- But, it had said that he did what was right in the eyes of the Lord and walked in all the way of David his father, and he did not turn aside to the right or to the left.
- How could Josiah have been walking in the ways of his father David if he didn’t know what they were?
- In Chronicles it says that in the eighth year of his reign he begins to seek the Lord. It says that in the twelfth year he began to take down the Asherah poles.
- Then another six years later or so he’s tearing his clothes at how they have sinned against God.
- This was a process. His own version of the sanctification process.
- And that’s how it works for us as well.
- When we come to the cross, we are forgiven and seen as right in God’s eyes.
- Our sins of ignorance and “unintention” are forgiven, covered by the blood. Then, as we walk in the light and God’s light shows us something wrong, we ask for forgiveness and ask Him to remove it from our lives. We give it up to Him, give it up for Him, because our will is to love and fear Him, not to please ourselves.
- And we grow in our knowledge of His will, His heart’s desire for us, and we walk in more and more of His ways.
- We stay right in His eyes at all times because He has forgiven the sins we don’t know that we are doing, and when He shows us something wrong in our lives, we immediately turn to Him in repentance, and remain clean and right in His eyes.
- We can’t go backwards though. There is no more unintentional sin once we’ve learned the truth. We need to walk in the light of the truth we’ve been shown. And then God sees us as one who has always walked according to His ways and did what was right in His eyes.