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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Mark Quion

Giftedness & Godliness: A Message to the Graduate

Family, Father, we're so grateful to be able to stand here today and allow you to do what you do on our hearts to work, to write, to change us.

There are so many influences that tell us what success is, but we want to know from your word.

We want to know from the way that you've worked in others' lives who have come before us.

Each and every person here is busy carrying finals weights in with them from this week, from work, from busy cases, difficult cases perhaps, I pray that we would be able to cut through that fog and your Holy Spirit would come and change us.

Just abide with us now, In your name we pray, amen.

I was excited to do the neurological exam.

And in 1 of those first couple days out at Kettering, we had a patient on the neuro ICU.

And so I walked up there with the attending and as any good attending wanted to see how good my neuro exam skills before letting me loose.

We went in to see a patient together and I got the best type of history someone can being just starting on the wards.

And as I began to approach the patient and start my neuro exam, the patient's family said, Whoa, wait a minute.

And so I stopped and they said, Just how old are you?

So I explained again, well, I'm a medical student, I'm just starting out, This is my third year.

And usually how the conversation will go, that just kind of flies by them.

1 of them even asked me, are you on a high school field trip?

I thought, why would I be at a field trip in the neuro ICU?

1 patient even asked me, there's no way, there's no way you're a medical student.

I said, no, no, I'm just the normal kind of med student, just getting by.

And I walked out of that room and my neurology attending took me aside and he said, son, you're probably going to need to grow a beard.

And I told him, sir, this is me trying to grow a beard.

This is my seven-day shadow just coming in.

I know some of you are just finishing finals.

When you're staring at those questions and you're remembering all that Dr.

Werner has told you about how to go through each 1 and you've covered it up and you're going through and you get to the last 1, you say, nope, none of these still make sense.

Wouldn't it be nice to be a child genius?

Please turn in your Bibles to 2 Kings 23, chapter 23, verse 25, And we'll look at a child who was a genius, but in a different sense of the word.

And it reads, neither before nor after Josiah was there a king like him who turned to the Lord as he did with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his strength in accordance with all the law of Moses." No king before and after.

We grew up reading these kings, we know there are bright spots, but for some reason scripture delineates Josiah as being above them all.

Now Josiah was put in at the ripe old age of 8 years old.

He inherited the kingdom from his father, Amon, who was indeed wicked, who had followed the steps of his father, Manasseh.

No improvement along that line, no hereditary help there at all.

His father was killed by his own servants, who were in turn killed by the citizens.

Hardly a vote of confidence for the young eight-year-old king.

Imagine yourself reading this on paper as an applicant of somebody who has an incredible life.

Here he is, 8 years into his reign, so he's 16 years old, he begins to actively seek the Lord.

At 20 years old, he's purging the high places of idolatry to Baal and the ashram poles and the idols, which is unique as we'll learn later.

At 26 years old, just around my age, he is actively repairing the temple.

And while doing so, the high priest Hilkiah finds a book, probably in the back corners of the temple as they are repairing it, and it is the book of the law.

It is the law of Moses, likely being referred to in this passage.

Josiah is cut to the heart, tears his clothes, realizes how far into apostasy Israel is, and this triggers, initiates a nationwide revival geographically and in depth beyond any revival that occurred in Israel to this time.

He himself reads the words to the people.

It says in verse 23, 2, chapter 23, verse 2, 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, and 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." If you read the rest of his stories, particularly in Kings, maybe more so than in Chronicles, his life is devoted to uprooting wickedness in the land of Judah and reaching into the northern territories, which was unusual compared to his predecessors.

Josiah looked neither to the right nor to the left.

Qualitatively, his reforms were different.

Asa had tried, Jehoshaphat, Joash, you know these names in the blue book, Bible stories.

Amaziah, Uzziah, Jotham, but you'll see in the red, there's Always something at the beginning of their story that says, yes, they were good, but this 1 thing.

And it's usually having to do with these high places.

Each of them, Asa, high places were not taken away.

Nevertheless, though, the heart of Asa was wholly true to the Lord.

Jehoshaphat, the high places, however, were not taken away.

Joash, nevertheless, the high places were not taken away.

And the people continued to sacrifice and make offerings on the high places.

Interesting for Joash, I put there Jehoiada, Joash is only faithful so long as he has a mentor.

The moment he loses his mentor, the people and himself turn back into apostasy.

Amaziah actually is reported to have tried to live by the law.

You see him making decisions in Israel, in Judah, based on what we believe he was reading scripture.

But when he went to Edom, he brought back with him the idols and worshiped them.

The high places were not removed and the people continue to offer sacrifices and Jotham does no better.

Jotham tries, he leaves the high places though, but the issue there is even though his heart is converted, the people don't follow him.

There's something lacking between his conviction and those of the people.

But you get to Josiah and he does take down the high places.

Perhaps the only person that came close to him would have been Hezekiah.

But as we'll look at a little bit closer, there are still areas where Josiah just edges him out with how deep and how intense he's willing to go for the Lord.

It is clear that Josiah's desire to change is not because there's a king coming down the road, which often triggers reforms in Judah.

It's not because he's promised something if he does, it is because he found the word of the Lord in some dark corner of the sanctuary and he read it.

That is the only motivating factor that we can find for his reforms.

This is a simple initial point, but it is simply this, to be fully faithful.

This is a point that applies to everybody, especially as we're coming to the close of the year.

If there is something that the Lord is convicting you of, if you have a high place that's taking your worship, a high place that belongs to him, Perhaps you've made advances to remove it.

You've taken all the astral poles, you've taken everything else but this 1 last thing.

Whatever it is between you and God, I'm not gonna stand up here and play roulette and just start spinning off different sins.

Likely, whatever it is is coming to your mind right now.

Giftedness & Godliness: A Message to the Graduate

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