2 Chronicles 35:20-27 - Homiletics

The lamentations for Josiah's death.

Some cloud of mystery, but, so far as we can see, none of shame, hangs over the closing events of Josiah's reign and life. His determined resolution to oppose Necho King of Egypt, when he came to "Charchemish by Euphrates," with the view of engaging in battle with the forces of Babylon or Assyria, had no doubt some strong motive, It is not at all impossible to imagine and even to assign some alternative motives as those most probably at work. One element in the obscurity concerns the question—What was the operating and determining reason? The larger source of difficulty, however, lies in the obscurity surrounding the question whether any blame whatsoever attached to Josiah for his immovable resolution. That he paid no heed to the representations and remonstrances of the King of Egypt, as that king made very free use, but by no means necessarily equally intelligent and religious use, of the name of God, was very natural, and surely diplomatically justifiable. We can, meantime, find nowhere any reflection passed on Josiah for neglecting the pretended anxious warning of Necho, which may be construed to mean all anxiety for himself only. No condemnation of Josiah's conduct is written on the page of Scripture, either before or after his death, in connection with this subject. And, lastly, the allusions which the writings of the prophets contain ( Jeremiah 22:10 , Jeremiah 22:18 ; Jeremiah 34:5 ; Zechariah 12:11 ) are not only equally clear of any suspicion of reflecting blame upon him, but also are of the most touching, tender, and sympathetic character. The probability seems to be that, after the earnest, religious work of Josiah to the date of the Passover, special and solemn celebration (in "the eighteenth year of his reign," and twenty-seventh of his life), with its last effort to bring in the hapless remnant of Israel also, and after the lapse of another period of some thirteen years, the doings of which, on the part of Josiah, are nowhere recorded, he is to be permitted, before the sad plot thickens, to be "taken away from the evil to come;" and as his life was by no means in the sere and yellow leaf, the method of his departure shall be ordained mercifully— not one of sickness, or stricken plague, or ignominious "accident," but in the honourable risk and challenge of battle. Occasion may be taken here to consider the mingled mysteries and mercies that mark the Divine methods of summoning men from this present life, the methods of him whose wisdom is unchallengeable, whose ways are so often a profound deep, but of whom this may ever be recorded as comforting certainty, "Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints." The phenomenon before us is that of a good man and a good king, placed at a most remarkable juncture of history; one, indeed, without the possibility of an exact parallel, who has served his day and generation and his God with singular fidelity amid circumstances of singular difficulty. He is the last true king, and the short following of his descendants and his successors on the throne are not in any degree the inheritors of his virtues and goodness. He has made one more, one last protest for his God and against that idolatry of his nation which has cankered to the very heart its religious and its national health. Such a stand he has boldly and for a year successfully made; but he has been told, and doubtless has seen, that all was too late, and that the tide could not be turned. He is but thirty-nine years of age. And the appearance is as of a man rushing on his fate. But there is no appearance of recklessness or of intemperateness. He does not sport nor gamble away his life; and if in any partial aspect it looks for a moment like a gratuitous hazarding, it cannot be said to come of any of the ordinary impulses in any such cases. It is not for self, for sense, for sin; not for the gratification of any of these; and, meantime, it is not plain for what it is! It is the parable of providence—a parable by no means unfamiliar to us; known, indeed, to many an age, many a nation, many a family, and full of silent, deep, useful lesson and suggestion. It teaches—

I. THAT WHAT WE KNOW AS DEATH IS NOT EXTINCTION OF LIFE . Let alone whatever else, what it simply and by itself means is the merging of one cycle of existence in another; the removal of life from one school of knowledge to another; the shifting of it from one sphere of activity to another. All the living force and excellence and virtue of Josiah are not quenched, cannot be merely thrown away; and if in one sense broken in twain—though all the analogies of sense must here in this very respect fail— only in one sense. Such a death at such a time of present life, under such circumstances, is one of the strongest moral persuasives—a source of moral conviction irresistible as to what death is.

II. THE THING CALLED DEATH , IN ITSELF , ASKS ABSOLUTELY MORE TITAN ANY OTHER OF THE FACTS OF LIFE , THE THING CALLED FAITH . It is itself a fact of life—the last fact of the series known here. To be understood rightly, and to be used rightly, and to yield anything like its full fruit of advantage, it demands to be "mixed with faith" more than any preceding fact of life. Therefore it is that sometimes it actually gives birth to faith, sometimes greatly strengthens it, or, lastly, supposing it is absolutely wanting, condemns the forlorn mourner to utter darkness.

III. THE METHODS OF DEATH OFTEN SERVE , EVEN BEYOND THE FACT ITSELF , TO SURPRISE , TO STARTLE INTO EXISTENCE A WONDER THAT WILL NOT REST . That irrepressible and often agonized wonder assists to tear open the eye of flesh and sense, and operates to find deep within, or deep behind, the dormant but now struggling germ of other and more real vision. Sorrow, grief, and wonder are three of the greatest moral forces of our nature, and their agonized unanswered questions avail to sound some of the deeper depths of that nature. The mystery of death is one thing, but the mysteries of the methods of death—the victims of death, the apparently capricious or arbitrary action of death in those taken—of youth and excellence and usefulness, in the height of their service to the world, add where heads and hearts are, in consequence, literally mowed down in widest sweep and circles—are other things. It is, indeed, sometimes not impossible to imagine the gain to those who go; but what a wrecked scene for all that is left behind—with work that must be abandoned, schemes that must be abortive, hopes that must be dashed to the ground—a widespread field of desolation and devastation! For the whole scene there is one refuge. It is one which postulates, for its highest safety, and adequacy, not merely the existence and presence of faith, but faith of overcoming and dominant quality. Wanting this, which so uniformly is wanting, it may yet be that faith learns life, and lifts itself to bud and to begin to unfold its buds.

IV. THOUGH DEATH IS SUCH A VIGOROUS AND RELENTLESS BIDDER FOR FAITH , BOTH IN ITSELF AND IN ITS CIRCUMSTANCE , YET IT DOES ALSO INFER SOME VERY CERTAIN PRESENT USE AND SIGNIFICANCE . In every case, for instance, of deep sorrow and sincere expression of it in "lamentation," what (comparatively speaking) healthy action of living hearts is betokened, and what a pure tribute of unharmful and direct honour is rendered to the vanished goodness! Upon this ancient sorrow, so far removed from ourselves, of "all Judah and Jerusalem … and of Jeremiah … and of all the singing men and the singing women"—so that they made "an ordinance of it in Israel," and recorded the words of their lamentation in their historical writings—with what pathetic interest we nevertheless look back! And we wish there were no sadder end to the history of Judah and her kings impending, no bitterer tears to flow, no anguished cries to be heard, no shame to be bowed beneath! So the death of Josiah, and his place after death yet on earth, in memory, in heart, and in song, are fraught with no little interest, apart from faith's higher action, and are charged incentives to zeal, devotion, pure religion, and sensitiveness of conscience even for ourselves.