Friday: Further Thought – Josiah’s Reforms
As the lesson stated, the depth of corruption that had befallen Israel can be seen in the kind of reforms that Josiah had to undertake. How, though, could the nation have fallen so far? In one sense, the answer is easy: it’s because humanity has fallen so far. Just how far humanity has degraded was revealed in a famous experiment conducted at Yale University in the 1960s.
Image © Rolf Jansson from GoodSalt.com
Participants were brought in arbitrarily through newspaper ads and told that they were to administer electric shocks to people tied down to chairs in another room. The switches that administered the shocks were marked from Slight Shock
to Danger: Severe Shock,
including two more ominously marked XXX.
Participants were told to administer the shocks according to the orders of the scientist leading the experiment. As they did, the participants would hear the people in the other room scream and plead for mercy. In reality, the people in the other room were just acting: they were not getting shocked at all. The point of the study was to see how far thesenormal
participants would go in inflicting what they thought was pain on those whom they didn’t know, simply because they had been ordered to do it. The results were frightening. Though many participants got anxious, distraught, and even angry, that didn’t stop a stunning 65 percent from administering the severest shocks
to these people, believing that they were truly hurting them. Ordinary people,
wrote the scientist who conducted the experiment, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process.
How many ordinary
people have done terrible things through history, or even today? Too many have, for sure. Why? Christians know the answer. We are sinners, plain and simple.
Discussion Questions:
- What does the story of Josiah’s reform tell us about the importance of the Word of God in our lives?
- A valid question could be raised now: If it were too late to avoid the coming catastrophe, why the call for repentance and revival and reformation? What was the purpose of it all? What answer would you give? In what ways might the reason be found in how such a revival would impact the people individually, as opposed to the nation as a whole?
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Culture has everything to do with how people live, and what is important to them. We are thousands of years and maybe that many changes from the time period of Josiah. We can only deal in generalities. Man has been very sinful from the time of Adam, Gen. 6:5, till our current time period. The difference may be that there are considerably more enticements in our culture today, that influence and separate us from a relationship with God. Satan knows where we are the most vulnerable.
Why call for reform though it was too late to avert the judgments soon to fall?
Because we are each saved by grace through faith. We are saved as individuals, not groups. The group is only to be more effective at serving others with the saving message of Truth.
We each stand alone with our faith or unbelief, and faith will be revealed in our works of righteousness as we become partakers of the Divine Nature through God's "exceeding great and precious promises".
Only those who by faith allow the Spirit of God to work reform in their lives will stand before God faultless "with exceeding joy".
The word reform would indicate that a change in direction or consistency is needed. This may be needful for some. Another word that has similar meaning is repentance. One could be due to an unplanned event, while the other could be a determined choice. God has provided every help in the time of need. Our part is to want His help. EG White has made it clear that repentance is a gift from God. "New Life(Revival and Beyond)" page 20.
How does this gift from God(repentance) work? What makes it happen in the life?
Will the finally impenitent simply be lacking this gift?
Paul states that "the goodness of God leads [us] to repentance"(Rom 2:4), so can we conclude His goodness is the gift? Would this not lead us to conclude that the unrepentant simply were not interested in this goodness of God due to selfishness being cherished instead? IF this is true, then repentance is a choice, and not just something that some receive while others don't. No one who stands condemned in the judgment will have an excuse to offer. Like the man without the wedding garment, they will be speechless before God who's righteousness and holiness will condemn their wicked works which they chose to cling to in the face of the Goodness He offered and that they rejected.
God will lead every soul to understand the need to repent, and while some will exercise faith, others will refuse in unbelief. Both faith and unbelief are choices exercised concerning the Gift of Truth and it's clear evidence which is given to all (John 16:8). (Yes, some will say, correctly, that faith is also a gift, but the actual gift is evidence for faith to be exercised. If the act of exercising faith is a gift, then we have no choice, and we could also argue some were not given this "faith". In God's righteous government, we always have the final choice in every aspect of our salvation, while God supplies every incentive and adequate evidence to the world through His Holy Spirit.)
On Sabbath yesterday a Pastor stated “our faith is not dependent on demonstration, our faith is dependent on EVIDENCE”. You say, Robert, “the actual gift is EVIDENCE for faith to be exercised.” Apparently this is our doctrine.
But God says “FAITH IS ...THE EVIDENCE of things not seen”.(Heb 11:1). FAITH IS A GIFT of God - that is the FAITH OF JESUS CHRIST.(Rom 3:22; 10:17; Gal 3:2-5; Eph 2:6-9; Phil 1:29; Jhn 4:10; 6:29; James 2:5).
God gave us specific demonstrations of FAITH that’s related to Salvation.
At the Pool of Siloam (John 5). The man ill for 38 yrs unable to get to the pool for the moving of the water. Jesus tells him “Get up, pick up your pallet and walk.” If he was possessed of faith before he would have been gone from the pool, long ago. Why would this man, impotent for 38 years, even attempt to get up and walk seeing no change in his condition, NO EVIDENCE that anything had changed. “Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the WORD of CHRIST”.(Rom 10:17) By this same WORD the heavens and the universe were made, were called forth. Faith was imparted to this man by the WORD of Jesus Christ.
Abraham, an idol worshipper, got a call from God to leave his homeland, his relatives, his father’s house to a land “which I will show you”. He promised to make him the Father of multitudes. He left! God approached him again and said He would make him the Father of many nations and sons as the sand of the sea. He was “old”, and his wife was barren. With NO EVIDENCE he believed the WORD. Why? Faith was imparted to him through the WORD..
The robber on a cross alongside Jesus, also on a cross dying. While in the act of insulting Jesus, he received God’s call. What EVIDENCE this man had before him that would lead him to put all his trust in this dying man. Both gifts, REPENTANCE AND FAITH were GIFTED to him.
The messengers of God will declare the unadulterated truth, not tradition. The people will hear it and “ THOSE WHO ARE ORDAINED TO ETERNAL LIFE WILL BELIEVE”(Acts 13:48) That is the truth.
Believe it or not Kenny, you verified the fact that evidence is the gift that inspires faith. Too many examples to cite. 🙂
Faith is the personal choice to accept. It is the taking hold of a promise through choices and actions that reveal trust. If God gave "faith" rather than evidence, wouldn't He be controlling us, even against our will? Wouldn't everyone have perfect faith(there is no other kind)?
Everyone is given evidence, as we see in the examples of both Pharaoh and Nebuchadnezzar. Which one exercised faith? The alternative to exercising faith is unbelief which hardens the heart. Just as God "hardened" Pharaoh's heart, He gave Nebuchadnezzar faith. Both came about through acceptance or rejection of the evidence given.