Read: 2 Kings 22
Devotion: The mountaintop experience. If you’ve ever been a Christian long, you know what I’m talking about. It’s a common story from church retreats.
A professing Christian feels far from God, usually due to a recurring sin, their neglect of the gathering of the saints, or because of a trial they are going through. Whatever the case, they feel like they’ve been in a dark spiritual valley, but then they’re invited to a retreat and everything changes. They’re in the woods for several days, disconnected from the outside world and the internet, surrounded by Christians, experiencing powerful worship maybe even with a live band, and they’re hearing clear gospel messages with strong appeals for them to dedicate or rededicate themselves to Christ—and so they do.
As they’re in the woods, in the car on the way back home, and for a short time after the retreat, they are once again on fire for the Lord. But then their spiritual fervor begins decrease, and it doesn’t take long for them to be right back in the same spiritual desert that they were in before. Sometimes they’re even worse off. But then next year’s retreat rolls around, and they have another mountaintop experience, only this one doesn’t last as long as the previous one. What gives? Why doesn’t the mountaintop experience produce a lasting effect?
Before we answer the question, we want to make sure that we’re not overgeneralizing. There are many who have the mountaintop experience at a retreat, are truly saved or truly return back to the Lord after a season of backsliding, and have their lives changed forever. Those experiences, however, seem to be the minority compared to the fleeting flash-in-the-pan experience described above.
The same is true of the modern “revivals” that have happened sporadically at college campuses the past few years. There’s a huge buzz for a week or two and then they fade away with no discernable lasting fruit.
The reason that these experiences do not last is because they are not built on a solid foundation. They are built on the experience and the emotions that the experience produces. For many modern retreats and conferences where these experiences happen, the emphasis is on the music and the experience of emotional fellowship and community. Those things aren’t bad, and they can be quite helpful for faith, but they can neither produce saving faith nor illicit true repentance in the sinner.
When Josiah was made king at the age of eight, by God’s grace did not follow the wicked ways of his father or grandfather. Rather, he followed the ways of David and did what was right in the ways of the Lord.
He was, however, ascending to a throne over a people who were as wayward and idolatrous as they come. The spiritual condition in Judah at the time was so bad that the temple was in gross disrepair and the Word of God had been lost potentially for fifty-seven years, which was the combined reign of the previous two wicked kings.
Judah needed a spiritual revival.
So, in the eighteenth year of his reign, Josiah began repairing the temple. For spiritual revival there must be proper worship. But as the construction on the temple commenced, the high priest found the book of the Law, which he gave to the king. Think about that for a second: Not even the high priest in Judah had the written law before he found it during the repairs.
Well, Josiah gets the book and reads it. What does he realize? He realizes that Judah is much worse off than he ever realized (v. 13). The guilt of Judah was greater than he thought.
And so, even before the repairs of the temple was completed, what does Josiah do?
Then the king sent, and all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem were gathered to him. And the king went up to the house of the LORD, and with him all the men of Judah and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem and the priests and the prophets, all the people, both small and great. And he read in their hearing all the words of the Book of the Covenant that had been found in the house of the LORD (2 Kings 23:1-2).
It was this foundation—the reading of the Word of God which is the two-edged sword that divides the soul and pierces the intentions of the heart—that Josiah based Judah’s reforms on. Spiritual reformation and revival, must begin with the Word of God. It is the hearing of the Word, and only that, that produces a true saving, repentant, faith (Rom. 10:17). If you want true revival in your own soul or the soul of another, you don’t need to go to the top of a mountain, you don’t need a retreat or a conference; all you need is the gospel of Jesus Christ in the Word of God.