Living by Something We Haven't Read
Everyone has experienced someone asking them the dreaded question, "What have you been reading in the Bible lately?" Whether it's a pastor, friend, or your parents, you don't really know what to say. Because you haven't been reading Scripture, you don't have a good answer. But you know you can't be honest and tell them that because you feel guilty. Also, you like the Bible. You quote the Bible. You try to live by the Bible. So it doesn't make sense, even to you, for you to say that you haven't been reading it. So many times we land right there: trying to live by something we haven't read.
The truth is that when we try to live by something we haven't read, we will miss something.
Interestingly, there is a moment in Scripture where we get to see a society do exactly that. The story comes at a time in Israel's history where they had been around for a while. The kingdom of Israel split into the Northern Kingdom (Israel) and the Southern Kingdom (Judah). The 34th chapter of 2 Chronicles tells the story of a teenage king who changed his kingdom by following God. Josiah chose a different path than his father and grandfather and followed God. Because of their unwise choices, Josiah had inherited a kingdom in shambles. So he decided to clean it up.
Josiah spends years ridding the land of idols and sites for the worship of other gods. In the eighteenth year of his reign (when he was 26), he commissioned the temple of God to be repaired. This is when we discover that Israel is living in a strange scenario where they are worshipping the true God in some ways, but also have turned to other gods. The temple was still around – and there was still a priest in charge of it – but it was not what it was supposed to be.
While they were cleaning out the temple, the priest, Hilkiah found the Book of the Law - God's Word. He gave the book to a secretary to give to the king. 2 Chronicles 34:18 says that "the secretary told the king, 'Hilkiah the priest has given me a book.'" It's in this moment that you realize, these guys have no idea what they're holding! "A book?" It's here that we discover, Israel was trying to live by something they hadn't read.
Here's the deal: if you could have asked any Israelite during the reign of Josiah, they would have said that they were following God. But in actuality, they were trying to live by something they hadn't read. And they missed a lot. If you keep reading 2 Chronicles 34 you discover that the temple was full of items used to worship other gods. And this was after Josiah had already cleaned things up! How did they get to this point?
When Josiah read over the Book of the Law, he would have come across a little gem of a verse: Deuteronomy 17:18. This verse calls every king of Israel to write out their own copy of the Book of the Law! This would have ensured that the kings knew God's Law. However, there's no evidence that this was ever done. The tradition may have been kept from the first kings, but eventually they drifted off until they got to the point where they were living by something they stopped reading.