"Time to Clean House?"

Scripture Passage

Jeremiah 5:20-6:30; 2 Kings 22:3-20; 2 Chronicles 34:8-28

Scripture Focus

Hilkiah the high priest said to Shaphan the court secretary, “I have found the Book of the Law in the Lord’s Temple!” (2 Kings 22:8 NLT)

Observation

Imagine this: In the corner of some neglected storage room, workers repairing the Temple run across a dusty scroll. In my mind, it was probably hidden behind the stack of broken folding chairs or obscured from view by the cast-off flannelgraph board. It has apparently been there so long that nobody even knows what it is…or why it’s there…or why anyone ever stuck it in the storage room in the first place—why they didn’t just toss it in the trash, instead? (If you’ve ever gone through a church storage room, you know *exactly* what I’m talking about.)

And so the high priest himself takes a look (I can hear the workmen now—“Pastor, is this something we need to keep?”). And he discovers that this is “The Book of the Law”—the written record of the covenant agreement between Jehovah and Israel! Of course, this raises an obvious question for me: “How’d he ever do his job without that book? How does God’s leader ever navigate from one Sabbath to the next without the guidance and resource of Holy Writ?”

There’s more to the story: Hilkiah reports the news to Josiah the King, who responds in genuine distress and repentance, and God grants something of a reprieve of the judgment coming Judah’s way. But I’m caught thinking about how (like Hilkiah) we so easily and readily neglect God’s Word in our day. I know this is a predictable thing to say, but…

How many Bibles lie dusty and neglected on a bookshelf or an end table while Christians carry on as if nothing were missing in their lives? How many professing believers really have no working knowledge of this gift from heaven and how to secure its benefits? No generation has ever had such ready access to Holy Scripture as this one—printed, online, and audio copies in multiple translations—yet we seem too busy with the “important” stuff to bother feasting on these living words!

To some degree, I’m sure I’m preachin’ to the choir with this one. You wouldn’t be reading this if you weren’t spending your own time in God’s Word. And everybody can always say, “I wish I knew more…I ought to read more…” Still—in the big scheme of things—I’ve got to ask myself what kind of an account I’ll be able to give for the stewardship of resources God has entrusted to me—including the ready availability of His Word. “From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked” (Luke 12:48 NIV).

***