Josiah also got rid of the mediums and psychics, the household gods, the idols, and every other kind of detestable practice, both in Jerusalem and throughout the land of Judah. He did this in obedience to the laws written in the scroll that Hilkiah the priest had found in the Lord’s Temple.
2 Kings 23:24
2 Kings 23 is a laundry list of the shrines, altars, and idols that Josiah destroyed. It’s a laundry list of the items that had crept into the community of faith. They had taken on a lot of junk over the decades. But when they were re-introduced to God’s message, they had to have a spiritual purge to get them back on the right track.
When you stop paying attention to what Scripture says and rely on what you think you remember about what God says, you can wind up accumulating a lot of junk in your life that can lead you away from the path of righteousness. It’s far too easy to say “I think Jesus would do (enter the thing here that you really want to do because surely Jesus wants you to be happy),” without ever bothering to look at Jesus’ life or listen to what he said. And people do that all the time. Shoot – I do it much more than I care to admit.
And if we’re not careful, we’ll keep gathering up all this crud in our lives and eventually find ourselves in the same situation that the people of Judah discovered: lives full of a whole lot of spiritual and religious stuff, but no room for the Spirit of God Himself.
Maybe it’s time for another spiritual purge.
The Tale of Anakin Redeemed 