Joy Grows when Sin is Removed | Rediscovering Joy - 2 Kings 23:1-20 | Brian Squires

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:26

All right. So we didn't have one of the fancy videos this morning. You just got me. So. Alright. So we're continuing this morning in our study in the life of King Josiah and how he followed God and restored the law in the land of Judah. And so last week, what we saw is we saw that Josiah had rediscovered the law and he had it read to him. And when he did, it opened his eyes to just how corrupt things had gotten in the land of Judah. And that revelation to him, it had a profound effect on this young king. And so this week, what we're going to see is kind of how that plays out in his life and what it does. It drives him to remove all the idols and stuff. And so as we look at, as we look at what Josiah experienced, I believe we can learn some truth for our own lives this morning. So our passage is in 2 Kings chapter 23. I'm not going to read that to you this morning, but we will be, you can turn there if you want to, and we'll be referencing that as we go. So the title of our message this morning is Joy Grows When Sin is Removed. Joy grows when sin is removed. And so as I was trying to figure out, you know, how to lay all this stuff out, I thought, well, you know, if you're going to talk about removing sin, then maybe the first place to start is just to talk about sin itself. And so the first thing I want us to do is I want us to look at the problem with sin. What is the problem with sin? You know, in Josiah's day, the people had brought all these pagan gods and these pagan rituals into their worship. And so much so that it had become a part of their culture. And so what happened in Judah with Josiah is a picture of what can go on in our lives, and we can allow sin to come into our lives, and it comes in, it sets up, and we don't even maybe really realize what's going on. So I want to look at Judah and what happened with them and peel that open and see how it works for us. And so the first thing that I want us to see about sin is that sin creeps in. It creeps in. I suspect, and when you read the Old Testament, you see that all of what's going on in Josiah's day, it all really started back with Solomon. And it's been going on for generations. And so it wasn't like they come in one day and they said, okay, here's what we're going to do. We're going to bring a whole bunch of idols and stuff into the temple. We're going to set them all up. I'm sure it kind of came down like we're going to bring this one thing in. And that's in there for a little while. And so, well, we got that thing in here. Let's bring this other thing in. Well, you know, we're we're paying homage to Baal, so let's bring something with Asherah in here. And so one thing leads to another and another, and it just creeps in. Sin creeps in. And that's the way that it works in our lives. James said it this way in James chapter 1, verse 14 and 15. He says this, but each one is tempted when by his own evil desire he is dragged away and enticed. Then after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin. And sin, when it is full grown, gives birth to death. Sin is very insidious. It just creeps in. And I think as you look at this verse, you see the way James describes it, it's like I'm walking along and I see something, and it's like, ooh. That looks pretty good. I think I will examine that in a little more detail. And I examine it in a little more detail. Now that seems very, that seems very uh that seems like something I would like. And I'd like to bring that into my life. And so we start to bring these things into our life. Our desire gives way. And then once we start to bring this stuff in, at some point, we've been we've been bamboozled, we've been hoodwinked by sin, right? We've allowed it to come in. We've been snookered and deceived. And the Bible says, taken captive by the sin that comes in. And so when I when I look at this verse, so I'm going to give you guys a little window into my brain this morning. I don't know if you're ready for it, but when I read this verse and I think about the way that the way the insidiousness of sin and the way that it kind of creeps in and the way that we allow it to come into our lives, I think about this scene right here.

SPEAKER_01 5:33

You can't go in there. You're not allowed in there. This is the king's private garden. You're standing on royal ground. Royal ground? You mean to say that this ground is better than that ground over there? Yes, it is. Oh, I don't know. Don't you take this piece of ground over here? Now, here's a nice piece of property. Level, fruit trees, choice view, improvements already in. What type of house would you plan them? Well, I uh I sort of had a six-room tuna in mine. Then this is just the place for you, and it's priced just right. But uh first, uh, are you a veteran? Oh, I'm uh good, then it'll be easy. Here, just sign on the dotted lines. Well, uh, couldn't I call you later? You see, I uh Well, I don't know. You see, there was a couple here from Kansas City looking at this place this morning, and they Alright, I'll shine. I'll shine here. You'll never regret it, my friend. This place will double in value inside of six months. I know, I know.

SPEAKER_00 6:53

Yeah. There you go. Sin creeps in, right? It looks really good. We got somebody that comes along like Bugs Buddy and he goes, hey, no, no, no, this is okay. And then one day we wake up and we're in the middle of all of this. And what happens is we allow we allow this sin to creep into our life, and the next thing that happens is that sin can become natural to us. It can become a part of who we are and what we do. We allow sin to come in, and over time it becomes something that seems so natural to us that we find ways to excuse it. We say things like it's not a big deal, everybody does it. Or we justify it, and we say, I'm a big boy, I can do whatever I want to do. Or we hide it. We say, I'm not hurting anybody. What I do in my and what I do in private is my own business. We use these excuses, we use uh these logic to try to try to justify. There's a thousand different ways and excuses that we can use to brush off sin and try to normalize it in our life. And when we do that, it just becomes a thing that's there, it's with us every day, day in and day out. Now, here's the problem with that. That's what had happened. That's what had happened to the people in Judah. They had brought these idols in, they had brought these religious practices in from these other lands. And they had been doing them for so long that it was just a natural thing. It was just a cultural thing that we do. And so that's what happens to us. And here's what happened to them, and here's what happens to us. Here's the real problem with sin. Sin will always, always cause a rift in our relationship with God. It will. It did with them. It did, it brought God's judgment on them. But in our case, if you are a believer, if you're a practicing believer, if you're a Christian, if you have put your faith in Jesus Christ and you allow sin to come and stay in your life, then you will have this rift in your relationship with God. It will come between you and Him. Here's the way Isaiah explains it in Isaiah chapter 59, verse 2. He says this, but your iniquities have separated you from your God. Your sins have hidden his face from you so that he will not hear. Now, I don't want you to hear what I'm not saying. Okay? I'm not saying that if you sin as a Christian, you will lose your salvation. I'm not saying that. So don't hear that. Because we all know that Jesus said that once you're mine, you're in the Father's hand, and nobody can pluck you out of his hand. There's all kinds of verses that talk to us about the fact that once we're saved, we're saved. What I'm talking about is not losing your salvation. What I'm talking about is losing your fellowship with God. Now, we can see from Jesus' teaching in John chapter 15, verse 14, how this might happen. This is what Jesus said to his disciples. He said, You're my friends if you do what I command. Yeah, that's in there. He said that. Right? And I mean, you know, what would be, like you flip the coin over, what would be the other side of the coin? You're not my friends if you don't do what I command. Right? We will have a broken fellowship. If you go off on your own and you start to let sin come into your life, you will break your fellowship with me. We're not going to be, our relationship is not going to be the same. And why is that? How does that work? Well, it works like this. If we allow sin in our life and we allow it to stay in our life, then that sin comes between us and God. And anything that comes between us and God is an idol. We have put it in front of God. And we have said, God, I know your word tells me to do this or to not do that, but I'm going to do this or I'm not going to do that because that's what I want to do. I want to live this way, and I want to have this thing in my life, and I want to have this practice. And God, I like it and I want it. And so what you've done is you've said, God, I'm putting myself on the throne. And you're no longer on the throne. Because I have chosen this thing over you. And that's why God got so upset with the people in Israel, the people of Judah. Because he's like, look, I you put all these idols in here, you put all these practices in. That's not what I wanted. You're chasing after somebody else. And the last thing that we see about sin, it creeps in and it can become a natural thing. It causes a rift. And the last thing is this. It kills our joy. It kills our joy. And you say, well, I don't know. I feel pretty joyful. Listen, I don't know if you've ever experienced this, but I've had some friends in the past who have decided to chase after some sin in their life, and they start to pull away. You know, you call them up, hey, let's go, let's go to lunch. I got something else to do. They don't want to be around you. That's what happens. When you start to let sin into your life and you start to allow it to be a regular thing in your life, then you, oh, I'll pray tomorrow. I'll read my Bible next week. Why? Because God, I don't want you to keep pointing this thing out in my life. I like it. And I want to keep it there. And that's how, and that's how our joy goes away. David experienced this. We talked about this a few weeks ago, and I actually used this verse a few weeks ago. David committed sin with Bathsheba, and then he had her husband killed. And he's he then he covered it up and he thinks everything's good. But listen, this is what he said in Psalm 51, 12. He says, God, restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit to sustain me. He says, God, I've got this tin and it's come between me and you. And it's wrecked our relationship, and in that I've lost all my joy. He doesn't say, give me new joy. He says, restore to me the joy that I had. Are you here this morning and you just don't have that joy, you don't have that peace with God that you used to have? It may be because you've allowed sin to come into your life. And it's come between you and God. And it's robbed you of your joy. So we talked earlier that Josiah had rediscovered God's word. And I want us to see now what he did once he rediscovered God's word. Let's go to our passage in 2 Kings chapter 23. We're going to look at the first couple of verses there, and it says this. Then the king called together all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem, and he went to the temple of the Lord with the people of Judah, the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the priests and the prophets, all the people from the least to the greatest. So he calls everybody together and calls them all to the temple. And what does he do? He read in their hearing all the words of the book of the covenant which had been found in the temple of the Lord. So what had Josiah learned that we need to understand? I think it's this. He learned this, and we need to understand this. God's word is the standard to define sin. God's word is the standard to define sin. Right? You need a standard. So we're talking about sin and we talk about uh. Can we get that slide? Go to the next slide. There you go. In case you don't know how to spell standard. Oh, I'm the only one. Okay. So when we talk about sin and we talk about God's word being the standard, you might ask the question well, can you give me a concise definition of sin? Okay, Pastor Brian. You're so smart. Give me a definition of sin. Well, you know what? Pastor Brian's not that bright, but I do know some bright people. And uh and we just had a quest camp, and in quest camp, they gave a definition of sin for all the young people. And that's kind of where I'm at. And it actually is a definition that I learned working with the child evangelism fellowship people uh a few years ago when I was doing uh good news clubs in one of the local schools, and it's this we're gonna put it on the screen. Sin is anything that I think, say, or do that goes against God's word. I think it's a great definition. It's very simple, it's easy for me to understand. Hopefully it's easy for you to understand. Sin is anything that I think, say, or do that goes against God's word. But I want to stop right here for just a second because the first time that I was ever introduced to this with the good with uh the Child Evangelism Fellowship folks, which is a great organization. I think they're one of our, one of the organizations that we support as a church. Uh I thought, well, now that, okay, that sounds a little uh legalistic, right? Because you got this thing that goes against God's word, goes against the rules. Sin is anything that doesn't check the box. And that's really not what that's saying, right? Well, you can get over into legalism, but the reality of all this is that God gives us his word and it is his guidelines for us. It reveals his heart to us about how he wants us to live. And why does he do that? Is it so that he can, you know, take his like 50-pound family Bible and whack us on the head with it whenever we sin and do wrong? That's not what God's word is all about. You know what God's word is? This is a love letter to you. It's like when I was raising my kids. And I said, don't run out in the street. Well, they're too little to understand the implications of running out in the street. It wasn't because, well, I don't like you and I want to make your life miserable. Don't run out in the street. Because you can't you can't get a three-year-old to understand when a car runs over you, it's gonna go bad for you. This is God's love letter to us. It tells us how to live, it tells us where the banks of the river are, it tells us where the guardrails are. And he says, Look, I want you to be free. I want you to enjoy life. I want your joy to be full and complete. And if you will live within the confines of what I give you in my word because I love you, then you will enjoy life. It's not a restrictive thing, it's not something where he's just trying to steal your joy, it's where he's trying to help us know his heart and live lives that are productive, that bring joy to us and advance the kingdom. So there has to be a standard. There has to be a standard. The problem is you've got a lot of people, and they take this book and they go, well, you know, I see how it says that. But I really think what it means is this, or, you know, I okay, so I see that it says that, I just choose to ignore that in my own life. And the real the problem is if you don't have a standard, then everybody gets to make up their own standard. You gotta have a standard, you gotta have something that is the absolute truth. As a matter of fact, we have a standard for a second. Did you know that? The National Bureau of Standards has defined for us what a second is. Put that on the screen. One second equals 9,192,631,770 oscillations of the microwave radiation associated with the transition between the two hyperfined levels of the ground state of the cesium-133 atom. That is one second. Just in case you needed to know. And I always thought it was when that long hand went tick to the next thing. That's a lot of words, isn't it? I don't even understand half of that. I don't even understand. Not even half, a lot less than half. But you know why we have that? And so there's never any debate over what a second is. You know why we have this? We have this. So there's never any debate over what sin is. Because he tells us in his word. As a matter of fact, if we go to God's word as it relates to sin, we see this first thing is that it helps us to identify sin. It helps us to identify sin. We read this in Hebrews chapter 4, verse 12. It says this, for the word of the Lord, the word of God, is living and active, sharper than any double-edged sword. It penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow. It judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. Does that sound familiar? The thoughts and attitudes. What is sin? Anything that I think or say or do that goes against God's word. Hebrews tells us that God's word is active, that it will help us understand what sin is. In James chapter 4, verse 17, James says this. Anyone then who knows the good he ought to do and doesn't do it sins. That's an interesting verse, isn't it? Because James says inaction is action. You follow that? That's like to not decide is to make a decision. You think about that. Maybe over lunch I'll come to you. If you know the good you ought to do and doesn't do any sins. So we see we know the good that we should do and the evil we should avoid the same way that Josiah. Josiah read the word of God in the temple that day, and when he read that word and they saw God's standard, they realized we have come woefully short of the standard of God. We've messed up. We are far away from what God's ideal is for us. So that brings us to the second function of God's word in our life as it relates to sin, and that is this it provides direction for correcting sin. It not only can tell us what sin is, but it can tell us how we correct that. And we see that in Paul's writing to Timothy, and you guys know this verse probably, you've probably heard this before. In Timothy, 2 Timothy 3, 16, it says this all scripture is God breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. Now, what is Paul telling us there? There's a couple of words that I want you to see in this. First of all, I want you to see rebuking and correcting. So what does that tell us? He says God's word is good for rebuking and correcting. Well, what is that? Rebuking is where God's word tells you what you've done wrong. It calls us out. But he doesn't leave us there, right? He doesn't leave us. God's not ashamed. He's not a God of shame. Oh, shame on you, shame on you, shame on you. It's good for rebuking, but it's also good for correcting. And what is that? Well, it tells us what we've done wrong, but it tells us what we can do to make it right. And it tells us how to live right. It tells us, it convicts us, and then it corrects us. And just like in Josiah's day, when we look into God's word, we see how he desires for us to live. We see what's good for us and what's bad for us, and we come under conviction and correction. And as we do that, we will experience his joy. James said it like this in James chapter 1, verse 24. He says, But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom and continues in it, not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it, they will be blessed in what they do. So I think the question for us this morning is this Are we looking into Scripture to discover how God wants us to live for Him? Are we looking into His holy Word for direction and how to live our lives? Because when we do, I think we will be like the people in Josiah's day, the people of Judah. When we look into God's word and we see those places where we have fallen short, or we see those places where we've allowed sin to creep into our lives. Instead of making excuses or justifications for it, we should do what they did. Let's see what they did. Let's look at 2 Kings 23, verses 3 and 4. It says, The king stood by the pillar and renewed the covenant in the presence of the Lord to follow the Lord and keep his commands, statutes, and decrees with all his heart and with all of his soul, thus confirming the war, the words of the covenant written in this book. So he he reads the book, he sees I'm not doing that. He commits to God to do that. Then all the people pledge themselves to the covenant. The people committed themselves. Now, it doesn't stop there. Let's keep reading. The king ordered Hilkiah the high priest, the priest next in rank and the doorkeepers, to remove from the temple of the Lord all of the articles made for Baal and Asherah and all the starry hosts. He burned them outside Jerusalem in the fields of the Kidron Valley and took the ashes to Bethel. What did he do? He saw in the book where he had come short. They had brought all this stuff into the temple, and he realized this should not be. And he didn't just say, this should not be. He said, we're going to fix this. I'm going to take action to clean this up. And here's what we learn. We learn that repentance is the proper reaction to sin. Repentance is the proper reaction to sin. And what is repentance? Repentance is more than just recognizing that we've done something wrong. Repentance is more than just admitting. Oh yeah, I see that. I see God says that. I see I'm doing this. Yep, I agree. That's not a good thing to do. It's more than that. Repentance is really this holy sorrow that comes over us when we realize that what we're doing is not what God wants us to do. That we've left something out, we've added something in, whatever, whatever it is, when when God, when his word penetrates your heart, and you realize in that moment, God, I am I'm a sinner, undone. I have sinned. I've done this thing. Repentance is that sorrow that comes over that drives us to action. Repentance always results in action. And what is that action? That action is the cleaning of the sin. And we saw that. We saw that in what we read about Josiah. When he saw what they had done, he said, we got to get these things out of there. Now, I know that some of you may say, well, that's the Old Testament, and that's the law. And I'm not under the law anymore. I don't have a bunch of rules. I don't check a bunch of boxes. I live under grace. I live under God's grace. And you know what? You're right. We do live under grace. And we don't have, we don't have a checklist that we're trying to keep up with. We're not working our way to heaven. We're not working our way to salvation. Salvation is freely given through God's grace and mercy and Jesus' death on the cross and our faith in him. I wanted you to be real clear on that. You're not working your way to heaven. But listen, Paul says this in Romans about grace. Romans chapter 6, we've got verses 1 and 2, and then 15 and 16. He says this, what shall we say then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means. We died to sin. How can we live in it any longer? And then you go down to verse 15 and he says, What then? Shall we sin because we're not under the law, but under grace? By no means. Don't you know that when you offer yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one you obey. Whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or obedience, which leads to righteousness. What is Paul telling us? He said, look, under Christ, you have this freedom, you have grace, you are given grace. Do not use that grace to sin. Because when you sin, you become a slave to sin. That's how it comes in. That's the insidiousness of it. It comes in, it creeps in, it takes over. How does it do that? Because you become a slave to that sin. He says, Don't, don't go there. Get rid of the sin. Like Josiah, we need to recognize the sin in our lives and we need to purge that sin out. Well, how do you do that? I'm glad you asked. The Bible tells us how to do that. It's my favorite verse in the whole Bible, 1 John 1.9. If we confess our sins, because I have to do this, you understand? I'd like to say that I never have to do this. But then that would be a sin. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. What a great verse. What a great verse. And Jesus says, How many times should you forgive somebody? And Peter's like, seven times, no, no, seven times, seven. Always. I can come back to God. I can confess my sins. And every time he is faithful and he's just and he cleanses me from all unrighteousness. So what let's look at our passage and see what happens when that happens. In 2 Kings 23, 21, it says this the king gave this order to all the people. Celebrate the Passover to the Lord your God as it is written in the book of the covenant. Neither in the days of the judges who led Israel, nor in the days of the kings of Israel and the kings of Judah had any such Passover been observed. It'd been a long time. But in the 18th year of King Josiah, the Passover was celebrated to the Lord in Jerusalem. So what is it we see here? We see this. When sin is gone, joy is restored. When sin is gone, joy is restored. You know, I don't want this to be, I don't want this to be a message where you leave here and feel beat up. That's not what this is all about. This is a message of hope. This is a message for you. This is a message that says, you can have the joy that God wants you to have. David said it this way in Psalm 32. He said, Blessed is the one whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered. Blessed is the one whose sin the Lord does not count against him, and whose spirit is no deceit. The culmination of Josiah's cleansing of not just the temple, but if you keep reading, he cleansed the whole land of all these things. It's kind of brutal, actually. He was like a take no prisoner's guy. He's like, I'm getting rid of all this stuff. And the culmination of all that stuff, we find David talks about it in verse 11 of Psalm 32. He says, Rejoice in the Lord and be glad, you righteous, seeing all you who are upright in heart. What's David saying? He's saying, when you get rid of the sin in your life and you restablish your relationship again with the Holy God, that you're going to be filled with his Spirit and overflowing with His joy. Do you lack joy in your life? Is it because you've walked away from God and you need to come back? You know, this is a great day for this message because on this day we celebrate the Lord's Supper. And that's what it's all about. It's all about Jesus telling us, I shed my blood for you, my body was broken for you. You can be healed, you can be restored, your sins can be forgiven. You can experience joy once again. You can celebrate with all of the saints. I'm gonna pray and then uh and then we're gonna have a time of reflection. And here's what I would like for you to do during that time of reflection. I want you to ask God, God, is there some sin in my life that I've let creep in that it's been there for so long that it just seems like a natural thing now? That I need that I need to confess to you so that you can forgive me and cleanse me. God, will you restore the joy of my salvation today? So let me pray, and then we will have this time of reflection. Father God, we do thank you for your word. God, we thank you that uh you put it all in there. The good, the bad, the ugly, and that we can learn from all of that. God, we don't have to repeat the mistakes of history. We don't have to do that because we have in your word examples of how we should live and what we should do. And God, we realize that your word is a love letter to us. And so, God, this morning I pray that you would impress on our hearts what your desire is for us. God, I pray that if there are those here that they have harbored sin in their life, God, that they've let it come in and kind of set up shop, that it's kind of, it's, it's, it's between them and you. God, it's breaking the fellowship that you so desperately want to have. God, I pray that you would reveal that to them. God, I pray that you would show us the places where we need to give up to you the things that we have held on to. God, help us to be righteous through the blood of Jesus Christ that cleanses us. God, I my prayer for these people in this room is that everybody in here would leave clean today. And God, if there's somebody here and they've never bowed in knee to you, they have never confessed you, uh, Jesus as their Lord and Savior, you know that. I pray your spirit would be on them in such a way that it would be undeniable to them that you are calling them out, that you are asking them to come and to join you, and I pray you would give them the strength and the courage that they would need to say yes for the first time and make you their Savior and Lord. And so, God, we we give you this time. We're about to have this time of reflection, and I pray that you would use it for your kingdom's purposes and for your glory. I pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.