Reformation is always a gift from God and yet it also tends to reflect a certain predictable pattern. Whether in the Reformation of Martin Luther or that of King Josiah in 2 Kings 22 and 23, the wholesale revival and reformation of God’s people tends to travel through the following 6 steps and stages.
1. Recovery of the Scriptures
The Reformation of King Josiah began with the recovery of the Bible – literally! In 2 Kings 22 the young King orders the temple to be cleaned and renovated and in the course of the renovations Hilkiah the High Priest discovers the Book of the Law in the House of the Lord. Shaphan the Secretary takes it and reads it to the King. 2 Kings 22:11 records: “When the king heard the words of the Book of the Law, he tore his clothes” (2 Kings 22:11 ESV).
Reading the Bible gave birth to a spirit of repentance in the King.
So it was at the beginning of the Protestant Reformation. The Reformation began, humanly speaking, when Martin Luther was sent to Wittenberg to become a teacher of the Scriptures. Before he could teach them, he had to read them – and read them he did. He read the Psalms, Romans and Galatians and in the process of so doing, he found salvation.
Luther went on to translate the Bible into German; John Calvin translated the Bible into French and William Tyndale did most of the same in English. Every true reformation of God’s people begins with the recovery of God’s Word.
2. Reformation of the worship
Doctrine and doxology cannot be separated – the one logically leads to the other. As Luther attacked the mass, so Josiah attacked the polluted worship of the temple. In 2 Kings 23:4 it says:
the king commanded Hilkiah the high priest and the priests of the second order and the keepers of the threshold to bring out of the temple of the Lord all the vessels made for Baal, for Asherah, and for all the host of heaven. He burned them outside Jerusalem in the fields of the Kidron and carried their ashes to Bethel. (2 Kings 23:4 ESV)
Luther’s Reformation didn’t attract the notice of the common people until he began to make changes to the liturgy. Not every Christian reads books, but every Christian sings and every Christian takes communion; therefore, until the reformation touches the worship it hasn’t really taken hold. If you change the sermon that people hear but not the songs that they sing, then you’ve turned on the furnace while leaving the windows open. Nothing will change in the house of God until people are hearing, singing and seeing the Word of God.
3. Reordering of the ministry
Both Josiah and Luther immediately targeted the ministry in the early days of their reforms. Luther attacked the distinction between the laity and the priesthood. He also attacked celibacy and the cloister. Josiah undertook an even more dramatic reform. 2 Kings 23:5 says:
he deposed the priests whom the kings of Judah had ordained to make offerings in the high places at the cities of Judah and around Jerusalem; those also who burned incense to Baal, to the sun and the moon and the constellations and all the host of the heavens. (2 Kings 23:5 ESV)
And he sacrificed all the priests of the high places who were there, on the altars, and burned human bones on them. (2 Kings 23:20 ESV)
Some priests were deposed, others were killed and the ministry was reordered.
These may seem like very drastic measures, but as Luther and Josiah knew well, the church can never be better than her teachers and shepherds. James the brother of Jesus seemed to understand the need for a very high standard in the ministry; he said: “Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness” (James 3:1 ESV).
As it was in Luther’s day, so it was also in Josiah’s: there is no reform of the church without a wholesale reordering of the ministry.
4. Rejection of idolatry
In the Protestant Reformation it wasn’t really Luther who led the charge on the issue of idolatry. While Luther did attack the idolatry of the mass, he was somewhat inconsistent in his attack on religious idols and icons. While Luther insisted that “this is my body” was to be taken literally, he did not feel the same about the words of the second commandment: “do not make for yourself a carved image.” The rejection of idols and images ultimately came from Luther’s colleagues – first through the radical and unstable Carlstadt and then later through more reasonable colleagues such as John Calvin.
In Josiah’s day, the King himself took the lead:
he brought out the Asherah from the house of the Lord, outside Jerusalem, to the brook Kidron, and burned it at the brook Kidron and beat it to dust and cast the dust of it upon the graves of the common people. And he broke down the houses of the male cult prostitutes who were in the house of the Lord, where the women wove hangings for the Asherah. (2 Kings 23:6–7 ESV)
Reformation inevitably involves building up and breaking down; both Luther and Josiah understood that very well. People become very connected to the forms of popular worship – even if those forms are blatantly idolatrous. There is no true reformation until false gods and false forms are rejected by the people of the Lord.
5. Removal of distractions
In the history of Israel and Judah, the “High Places” were a constant distraction. In essence these “High Places” were private shrines that often facilitated popular superstition and heterodoxy. Josiah understood that they needed to be eliminated. 2 Kings 3:8 says:
And he brought all the priests out of the cities of Judah, and defiled the high places where the priests had made offerings, from Geba to Beersheba. And he broke down the high places of the gates that were at the entrance of the gate of Joshua the governor of the city, which were on one’s left at the gate of the city. (2 Kings 23:8 ESV)
Bad worship is often the enemy of good. Josiah understood that, as did Martin Luther. He rejected the display and veneration of religious relics despite the fact that his patron and protector Frederick the Wise had perhaps the largest collection in all of Europe. Luther understood that popular superstition – even well meaning – was the enemy of true and pious worship. Therefore, like Josiah, he attacked it root and branch.
6. Restoration of the centre
For a reformation to be effective it must be ultimately restorative. It will inevitably involve a certain amount of destruction, but in the end, the goal is not to tear down but to build up. The goal of all true reformers is to bring the people of God back to the heart and centre of their worship. You can observe this desire even in the architecture of the Protestant Reformation. Images and idols were removed and the pulpit was given centre stage. Luther wanted to put the focus back on the person and work of Christ as revealed and celebrated in the preaching of God’s Word.
Josiah had similar ambitions. In 2 Kings 23:21 we read: “And the king commanded all the people, “Keep the Passover to the Lord your God, as it is written in this Book of the Covenant”” (2 Kings 23:21 ESV).
All worship is essentially a response to the character of God as revealed in his work of redemption. In the Old Testament, that meant remembering the Passover and the Exodus. In the New Testament, that means remembering the cross and the empty tomb. In these events we see the Lord in all his glory and goodness – and we give thanks.
That is the heart and centre of covenant worship – Old Testament and New. That is the goal and aspiration of all true programs of reform. And that is what is desperately needed again in the church of Jesus Christ in our day.
Even so, come Lord Jesus!
SDG
Paul Carter
N.B. To listen to Pastor Paul’s Into The Word devotional podcast on the TGC Canada website see here; to listen on SoundCloud see here. You can also find it on iTunes.
