When northern barbarians sacked Rome in A.D. 410, pagans insisted that the gods had judged Rome for turning to Christianity. The north African bishop Augustine had direct contact with many refugees fleeing Italy for Africa at that time, and wrote The City of God as a response. No, Rome did not fall because most of its residents turned to Christianity. Rome fell because its centuries of sins were piled as high as heaven, and because the Christianity of most Christians was too shallow to stay God’s just judgment against these sins.

In God’s purposes, God may delay judgments on some nations for the sake of helping believers in other nations, but if biblical principles apply, judgments are sure to come on sinful nations. Judgment was due for the innocent blood of Manasseh’s generation, which included burning newborn babies as sacrifices or good luck charms (2 Kgs 21:6; 23:10; cf. 16:3; 17:17, 31):

“Moreover, Manasseh also shed so much innocent blood that he filled Jerusalem from end to end—besides the sin that he had caused Judah to commit, so that they did evil in the eyes of the LORD”—2 Kgs 21:16 (NIV)

“The LORD sent against him bands of the Chaldeans, bands of the Arameans, bands of the Moabites, and bands of the Ammonites; he sent them against Judah to destroy it, according to the word of the LORD that he spoke by his servants the prophets. Surely this came upon Judah at the command of the LORD, to remove them out of his sight, for the sins of Manasseh, for all that he had committed, and also for the innocent blood that he had shed; for he filled Jerusalem with innocent blood, and the LORD was not willing to pardon.”—2 Kgs 24:2-4 (NRSV)

A bit of homiletical application for my fellow U.S. Christians (others will have to judge for their own settings): we are also polluted with innocent blood. For those of us who believe that life is sacred already in the womb, we as a nation bear the guilt for more than 50 million preborn lives since abortion’s legalization in 1973. Those who don’t see preborn babies as live human beings still ought to recognize massive innocent bloodshed. The civil war may have been judgment for some of the sin of the slave trade; between marches in Africa and the infamous Middle Passage across the Atlantic, some estimate the death of four to six million, not including those who died in slavery itself. Had the civil war purged the spirit of racism, we might suppose that the judgment due the United States stopped there, but anyone who knows anything about U.S. history (not least the Jim Crow era and thousands of lynchings after Reconstruction) knows that the spirit of racism continued to flourish. One thinks also of the slaughter of Native Americans—often women and children noncombatants. Air power reduces U.S. casualties in war but in some (especially urban) settings increases “collateral damage” (much as many have tried to prevent these). Etc.

Those who do not believe that any of the above examples might count as the shedding of innocent blood still need to reckon with an estimated 17,284 cases of murder and non-negligent manslaughter in 2017 alone (which has varied in recent decades from a high of 24,700 in 1991 to a low of 14,164 in 2014). Very few of these would have been government-sanctioned actions, but they do reflect a culture of violence. In 2010, over 10,000 people died and over 300,000 were injured from drunk driving. Etc. However you slice it, our nation is stained with innocent blood.

Are there many nations much worse, especially in current government-sanctioned violence? Of course. And entire movements such as ISIS and Boko Haram, which have killed indiscriminantly and often even targeted those who bear Christ’s name surely will face judgment. But as mentioned earlier, we don’t have the right to judge ourselves charitably by simply comparing ourselves with others. We live in a nation with a heritage of knowing biblical morality. So it seems that if the biblical pattern holds in this case (though even throughout the Bible there are variables known only to God), our nation stands under divine judgment.

But Huldah also had some good news for the king. Yes, judgment was coming. But because Josiah responded in a radical way to the Book—because he took it seriously—the judgment would not come in his generation. Josiah’s generation would be short-lived (sadly, he died young), and he was not able to turn the following generation fully from the legacy of past idolatry and good-luck bloodshed. But Josiah did make a difference for his generation.

One person who takes the Bible seriously and lives according to the message one finds there can make a big difference. Granted, none of us is a king who can dictate a top-down moral reformation, so this model of national revival is not so easy to imitate. (If I do have any royal readers in some other countries, though, you can apply some of these passages much more directly than some of the rest of us.) But we are also a partly bottom-up culture, and there are believers also among some of our cultural elites.

We can have an influence by showing how much better God’s design for living is—by living that way ourselves, and sharing with those willing to hear us. “This is how everyone will know that you’re My disciples,” Jesus said: “if you love one another: (John 13:34-35). “And I’ve given them the glory You’ve given Me, so they may be one, just as We are one: I being in them, and You in Me, so that they may be brought to full unity—so the world may know that You sent Me, and that You have loved them just as You have loved Me” (17:22-23). Three thousand were converted through Peter’s sermon at Pentecost (Acts 2:41), but Jesus’s movement in Jerusalem grew daily (2:47) as outsiders witnessed Christians sharing meals, prayer and apostolic teaching from house to house, and even possessions (2:42-47).

When a British preacher told D. L. Moody, “the world has yet to see what God will do with a man fully consecrated to him,” it changed Moody’s life. When a friend of a friend of German immigrant George Mueller began living completely by dependence on God, it so touched Mueller that he decided to begin the same adventure. Over the course of his life in Britain, he and his associates cared for over 10,000 orphans, and provided education for more than 120,000. Mueller was moved by compassion for the orphans, and also to show the world that God’s Word was really true, and could really be lived by in their own time. The friend of a friend had a huge impact on Mueller, who impacted Christians around the world, including Hudson Taylor and the China Inland Mission, with a living, active faith in God in the present life.

You as a reader may be just one person. But like Josiah, God can use you in your sphere of influence. What will it look like, if you are fully consecrated to God? If you take God’s Word seriously? The world may have yet to see.

(For the first installment of Part II, see http://www.craigkeener.org/what-does-revival-look-like-ii-returning-to-gods-word-2-kings-2210-20-a-setting-the-stage/)

As we noted in the previous post, God’s people had forgotten the law. Most people could not read, and during Manasseh’s long reign, priestly scribes had stopped public readings of the Bible. But because Josiah is serious about serving the Lord, and had orally heard stories about the past, he had priests restoring the temple. Some ancient temples had foundation documents deposited in their masonry, and in the process of repairing the temple’s priestly sanctuary, the priests uncovered the law. Hilkiah the high priest rightly recognized this as a special treasure, and handed it over to Shaphan the royal scribe. Reading from it, Shaphan realized how important it was. Along with his report to the king about the temple finances, therefore, he read the book to King Josiah.

Josiah really wanted to serve God, but, like many in our generation, he did not understand all that God required of him. But he was doing what he could (repairing God’s neglected house), and in this process the law came to light. (In 2 Chronicles, much of Josiah’s moral reformation is already underway, but 2 Kings emphasizes the extent to which much of this reformation depended on returning to God’s Word.)

When he heard the book of the law, he heard for the first time the fulness of what God required. He did not do with the Bible what some of us do (and have been able to do only in recent centuries, when literacy and printing have made possible private reading of the Bible). He did not congratulate himself on how long he spent on his devotions, listening to the book.

Nor did he say, “Wow, I’m glad I’m walking with God. Too bad for all these other people who aren’t paying attention to the book.” Nor did he say, “Okay, this is useful for tomorrow’s sermon, and then we can move on to some more timely subject likely to hold everybody’s interest.” He didn’t even say, I’m too young. After all, he was only eight when he became king (2 Kgs 22:1), and was just 26 now (2 Kgs 22:3).

He responded in a radical way to the book. He recognized that this was not just an antique of interest for his people’s heritage. It was not just something to be read but not taken seriously. It was God’s message, and it promised judgment to any generation that disobeyed it. Granted, they were doing much better now than in the days of his grandfather Manasseh or his father Amon. But the law showed that judgment for the sins of those prior generations had continued to build. He recognized that, according to God, his nation was at a crisis point, and in grief over corporate sin he tore his expensive royal robes (22:11). Finding the book was good news. But for the state of their nation, the book contained bad news.

Josiah didn’t do what we sometimes do with God’s Word today. He didn’t say, well, it can’t be that bad. Look, even the priests don’t seem that bothered. This must all be an exaggeration. Too often we shrug off radical teachings of Scripture (such as Jesus calling us to forsake all and follow him) by consoling ourselves that we’re surrounded by good Christians who don’t take it that way.

Well, who’s to say that all these good Christians are right? Maybe they’re doing the same thing we are. Maybe Jesus does want us to abandon everything to follow him. In most cases that will not mean giving up our jobs or becoming homeless (in Acts, only specific messengers of the kingdom do this), but it does mean that we should devote everything we are and have to Christ’s honor. You can serve Christ in most jobs (including flipping greasy hamburgers—so nobody misunderstands what I said in the previous post), if your lifestyle there helps your fellow workers to desire Christ and if your wages serve good purposes. But what does Christ’s Lordship say about our “leisure” time—the movies we watch, the things we read? Are there better ways to spend our time and resources for God’s kingdom than the way we spend them? Scripture invites us to evaluate our resources in light of eternity, to make the most difference we can for Christ.

Josiah heard what Scripture said. He had an idea what it meant for his generation. But he needed the voice of the Spirit to guide his application for his generation, and so he sent to the prophetess Huldah (22:14-20). She was the most prominent prophetic figure at this time (Jeremiah was still quite young). Thus Josiah sent to her for the word of the Lord just like, a century before, Hezekiah had sent to Isaiah (2 Kgs 19:2). Huldah gave Josiah’s messengers the bad news straight: the book meant what it said, and religion was not what “everybody” was saying.

Much public religion in North America is driven by shortcuts, sound bites, and even marketing hype (“God directly revealed this to somebody much more spiritual than you or your pastor!”) But the Spirit bears witness to the Word, just as the Spirit-inspired Word summons us to heed the Spirit. We have a privilege ordinary Israelites in Josiah’s day didn’t: we have Scripture available for ourselves (indeed, much more Scripture than yet existed in his day). If his generation could be liable for neglecting the whole counsel of God, how much more can we?

Next time: more about judgment—and mercy.

I may exaggerate somewhat: usually even some of the lighter fare (such as many encouraging testimonies) is spiritually healthy. But it can’t substitute for the Bible or what helps us understand the Bible, even if it makes a nice dessert topping. Regarding the Bible, the most knowledgeable voices are not always the best communicators, and even they do not always have the best marketers. In keeping with U.S. culture, the religious market, like other markets, is driven by consumer appetites whetted by good marketing.

Bibles sell well, but difficulties in understanding parts of the Bible mean that even in a land saturated with Bibles, many people do not read them much, or read isolated verses apart from the context that helps explain their purpose. (We have instant foods and other shortcuts; we sometimes treat the Bible in the same way.) Meanwhile, in some less information-glutted parts of the world, people are desperate for Bibles in their language, just like in some parts of the world, people would be desperate to eat much of the food that many North Americans throw away.

Jesus taught that the first commandment is to recognize that there is just one true God, and so to love him with our whole being (Mark 12:29-30, citing Deut 6:4-5). That passage goes on to speak of keeping God’s words in our heart and reciting them for successive generations (Deut 6:6-7). (Most people could not read, so they had to learn and recite.) God’s law should be what they talk about at home and when they’re not at home (i.e., wherever they are), when they lie down and when they rise (a nice Hebrew way of saying, all the time; 6:7). They should surround themselves with reminders of God’s law everywhere (6:8-9). When God blesses his people with material prosperity, they should take heed not to forget him (6:10-15), but should continue to keep his commandments (6:17).

But Israel did forget God’s law. Many still claimed to follow their national God, but they no longer tested things from Scripture. Many of the priests and scribes who were supposed to instruct them tried to be more progressive and incorporate religious traditions from surrounding, polytheistic cultures. More commonly, the people who lacked teaching simply adopted traditions from such cultures without recognizing what was forbidden. They worshiped on high places, and worse yet used deity-images, and dedicated some of their babies as bloody sacrifices to obtain divine favors.

Such behavior prevailed through royal example through most of the reign of Manasseh, who reigned for over half a century. Manasseh experienced a latter-day change of heart (2 Chron 33:12-16), but pagan practice was now too deeply entrenched among his people to change their practices (33:17). After all, most of them had grown up with this state of affairs. His son Amon carried on this line of behavior for two years. When Manasseh’s eight-year-old grandson Josiah came to the throne, he followed a different path, probably encouraged in it by tutors put in place by the aged and repentant Manasseh before his death. But what could Josiah do? After all, he was righteous as best as he knew, but he did not have other standards to go by. Scripture had been suppressed or forgotten; certainly it was no longer center stage.

Throughout the ancient Near East, collections of laws were promulgated and then often forgotten. But foundation documents were often preserved in temples. To honor the Lord, Josiah orders the high priest to begin repairing the Lord’s house (2 Kgs 22:3-7), and what happens next sets a revolution in place. Christians in parts of Western Europe experienced something similar when Erasmus made available the New Testament in Greek: in a time when scholars were interested in going back to the classical sources and people were tired of corruption in the church, more leaders realized that the church’s foundation documents—Scripture—taught something different than many of the customs that had grown up since then. This discovery sparked the Protestant Reformation, as well as reform within much of the rest of the Western Church.

In Medieval Western Europe, most people could not read and many priests had inadequate knowledge of Scripture. Today we can read, but the book of the law has been lost in much of Western Christendom because of skepticism, difficulty understanding different literary genres, or most often simple negligence. Some simply defend adamantly their denominational traditions without searching Scripture for themselves; others depend on various other filters (their pastors, radio preachers, etc.) for their access to biblical truth. Some of these sources are trustworthy and valuable, but how can one evaluate which is which? Teaching is necessary, but devotional materials (including my blog posts) cannot be a substitute for direct engagement with God’s word itself, where (as for anyone with a Bible or internet access) that is available.

What happened when the book of the law was discovered in the temple? That’s the story that’s the heart of this lesson. It is the subject of the next lesson. (See also part I: http://www.craigkeener.org/what-does-revival-look-like-part-i-the-spirit-speaks/; http://www.craigkeener.org/what-does-revival-look-like-the-spirit-speaks-application/)

For 23 free lectures on Acts, see http://faculty.gordon.edu/hu/bi/ted_hildebrandt/DigitalCourses/00_DigitalBiblicalStudiesCourses.html#Acts_Keener