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The scripture reading of the morning is from the second book of Kings, the entire 22nd chapter. Josiah was eight years old when he began to reign, and he reigned thirty-one years in Jerusalem.

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His mother's name was Jediah, the daughter of Adiah of Bozkath. And he did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, and walked in all the way of David his father, and he did not turn his side to the right hand or to the left. In the eighteenth year of King Josiah, the king sent Shaphan, the son of Azaliah, son

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of Mashulam, the secretary, to the house of the Lord, saying, "Go up to Hilkiah the high priest, that he may reckon the amount of money which has been brought into the house of the Lord, which the keepers of the threshold have collected from the people. And let it be given into the hand of the workmen who have the oversight of the house of the

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Lord. And let them give it to the workmen who are at the house of the Lord repairing the house, that is, to the carpenters and to the builders and to the masons, as well as for buying timber and quarried stone to repair the house.

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But no accounting shall be asked from them for the money which is delivered into their hand, for they deal honestly." And Hilkiah the high priest said to Shaphan the secretary, "I have found the book of the law in the house of the Lord."

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And Hilkiah gave the book to Shaphan, and he read it. And Shaphan the secretary came to the king and reported to the king, "Your servants have emptied out the money that was found in the house, and have delivered it into the hand of the workmen who have the oversight of the house of the Lord."

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Then Shaphan the secretary told the king, "Hilkiah the priest has given me a book." And Shaphan read it before the king. And when the king heard the words of the book of the law, he rent his clothes. And the king commanded Hilkiah the priest, and Ahicham the son of Shaphan, and Akbar

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the son of Micaiah, and Shaphan the secretary, and Uzziah the king's servant, saying, "Go inquire of the Lord for me and for the people and for all Judah concerning the words of this book that has been found. For great is the wrath of the Lord that is kindled against us, because our fathers have

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not obeyed the words of this book, to do according to all that is written concerning us." So Hilkiah the priest, and Ahicham, and Akbar, and Shaphan, and Uzziah went to Huldah the prophetess, the wife of Shalom, the son of Tikvah, son of Harach, keeper of the wardrobe. Now she dwelt in Jerusalem in the second quarter.

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And they talked with her, and she said to them, "Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, tell the man who sent you to me, thus says the Lord, behold, I will bring evil upon this place and upon its inhabitants, all the words of the book which the king of Judah has read, because they have forsaken me, and they have burned incense to other gods, that they might

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provoke me to anger with all the work of their hands, therefore my wrath will be kindled against this place, and it will not be quenched. But as to the king of Judah, who sent you to inquire of the Lord, thus shall you say to him, thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, regarding the words which you have heard,

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because your heart was penitent, and you humbled yourself before the Lord, when you heard how I spoke against this place and against its inhabitants, that they should become a desolation and a curse, and you have rent your clothes and wept before me, I also have heard you, says the Lord.

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Therefore behold, I will gather you to your fathers, and you shall be gathered to your grave in peace, and your eyes shall not see all of the evil which I will bring upon this place." And they brought back words to the king.

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And may God bless to us and to our understanding this reading from his words. Pray with me. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

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You've probably heard it. It's an old line by this time. That you can now fly anywhere in the world in half the time it takes you to wait for your luggage once you get there.

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Now that's a bit of an exaggeration. But if you are a frequent flyer, you know that you spend a lot of time waiting, and most of it, for your luggage. Not long ago I had a particularly long wait, and as I watched the luggage go round and

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round on the luggage carousel, it struck me that that luggage, in a sense, represented what we hear from so many of those who speak from positions of public prominence today. The ideas that they offer, the phrases that they use, the slogans that they announce, the promises that they make, the patriotic fervor that they manifest, the proclamations,

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all of these things we've heard endless times before. I read in the New Yorker magazine just two weeks ago that some people are already tired of the 1988 election campaign, because the same people will be saying the same things over and over again.

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What we need, it seems to me, is a new word, a challenge, something that will claim us, something that will put before us a sight that is greater than any sight we have seen. We need something that will both compel the soul and the mind, and we have that something. It's called the Bible.

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Now let me review an Old Testament story with you to make my point. A long time ago there was a king in Israel whose name was Josiah. He reigned from 638 to 607 BC. Now his father and his grandfather were very poor and evil kings, but Josiah, contrary

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to his ancestry, was a very good king. Now one of the things that he did was to seek to rebuild the temple, which had largely been ignored for a period of 250 years. And as they were working in this temple, carpenters and masons and all of the rest, someone chanced

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to find in some dusty nook or cranny of the place a scroll. And this scroll was brought to Hilkiah, who was at that time the high priest, and he put it into the hands of Shaphan, who was the secretary to the king. And when he handed it to him, he said, "I have found the book of the law in the house

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of the Lord." Now the king had the book read to him, and he repented when he heard the book, for he realized that much that was going on in his nation was an offense against God. And he tore his garments and he appointed a special committee and sent them to the leading

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prophet of the day. Only it wasn't, interestingly enough, a prophet, it was a prophetess, a woman, and her name was Huldah. And on the instructions of Huldah, the king called together all the people of the land,

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and he had the book read for them. Now we know today that that book was what we call our Old Testament book of Deuteronomy. And Deuteronomy is one of the greatest books in the Old Testament. It explains the history of Israel.

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There are 27 books in the New Testament, and 21 of them quote from Deuteronomy. In fact, there are only two or three books in all of the Old Testament that are quoted more in the New Testament than Deuteronomy, and that's Genesis and Isaiah and Psalms. So Deuteronomy is a very important book, and it was read to all the people at the instruction

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of the king. And as a result of it being read, tremendous reforms happened in the land, political reforms, social reforms, economic reforms. False idols were torn down.

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The purveyors of the occult were driven out. The covenant was taken more seriously. The worship of God was purified. The reading of the book changed things.

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The reading of the book always changes things. And the reading of this book can change things still today. You know, I really believe that this word of Hilkiah that is our text for this morning is one of the most amazing words in all of the Bible.

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Hilkiah says, "I have found the book of the law in the house of the Lord." Well, naturally, we say, where else would you expect to find it? I mean, where's the most natural place in the world to come upon a Bible or part of a Bible?

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It is, of course, in a temple, in a place of worship. But the fact of the matter is that in that day and in this day, the word of God is not being heard in many places of worship. Not long ago, a story came out of California about a pastor who heard very negative criticisms

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with regard to his church school. So he decided one morning to visit various classes. And he was in a class for junior hires, and the teacher asked the question, "Who knocks down the walls of Jericho?"

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No student answered, and so she called on one boy. "Who knocked down the walls of Jericho?" And Billy responded, "I don't know, but it wasn't me." Well, the teacher was embarrassed with such an answer in front of the pastor.

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She said, "I'm sure it isn't," and went on. The pastor was very concerned, and when he went out of the classroom, as he walked down the hall, he met the superintendent of the church school, and he told him exactly what had happened.

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And he said, "What do you think of that?" And the superintendent said, "Well, I know Billy, and if he said he didn't knock them down, then he didn't knock them down." By this time, the minister was utterly appalled.

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So he called a meeting of the Christian Education Committee for the next night, and he told them the whole story. And then he said, "What should we do about this?" And one of the older members of the church, who had been a member of that committee for

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quite some time, said, "Now, preacher, don't get excited about this. We'll just take a special offering and pay for any damage that was done." The ignorance of many people in church today with regard to the Scriptures is quite amazing. There was a time when a preacher could stand in a pulpit and just make reference casually

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to a story, and immediately everyone would know what that Bible story was about, but you can't do that anymore. And I think it's largely the fault of the clergy. There are too many ministers you see that read books about the Bible instead of the

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Bible. There are too many ministers who believe that their congregations don't want to hear the Bible but want to hear other things. And there are too many ministers who have broken the vows of their own ordinations in

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proclaiming the Word of God. I had a man say to me not too long ago about a church here in Pittsburgh that his minister spent so much time criticizing and correcting the Bible that he was beginning to lose all faith in it.

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Let there be no mistake about this. The task of a minister is not to demythologize the Bible. The task of a minister of God's Word is to let the Bible demythologize him and his people. Certainly a clergyman has to have a broad diet.

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He must read widely and he must read well. But his most important source is always to be the Word of God. Two weeks ago I was attending a conference for ministers in Orlando, Florida, pastors of larger Presbyterian churches.

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We had a speaker on the use of artistry in preaching. We had a lecture on techniques in preaching. We had a lecture on the problems of pastors outside of the pulpit. And then they invited four of us who were attending the conference to preach, one each

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morning. I happened to be one of those who were invited. I brought the sermon which was one I'd previously preached here. When you preach to ministers, you don't preach any different sermons than you preach to anybody

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else. And when my message was done, there was no applause. Now it might surprise you that I would say this, but you see all week long after every lecture and after every sermon, there had been applause.

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And here I was preaching on the last morning and when I was done, there was not a single sound. Well, I was puzzled and somewhat discouraged by this. And then I began to notice that throughout the day, no less than 16 people came to me

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and said, "We are so grateful that you spoke to us out of the Word of God, out of the Bible." And I began to think of all the things that we had heard. And all the things that we had heard were good and all the things that we had heard were true, but none of them were rooted or grounded in the Scripture.

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And the fellow with whom I was rooming came back that night and had said that he had been sitting with some of the other people and they had been talking about the message of the morning and they said they just couldn't applaud because they had been impacted by the Holy Spirit of God.

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Now no sermon is worth anything unless it is touched by the Holy Spirit of God. But what is the Holy Spirit of God most likely to touch? That Word which is built upon His Word written. I read this book every day of my life.

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I read it in the sun. I read it in the light of my own heart. I read it in the dark nights of my own soul. I read it when I am believing and I read it when I am unbelieving.

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I read it when I am strong and I read it when I am weak. I read it when I am sensitive and I read it when I am insensitive. I have never been able to read it without finding something new. I am never able to plummet steps.

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I am never able to scale its height. When you lay me to rest, put with me this book. And when I rise again from the grave, there is only one thing I want to have with me, and that is this book.

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And everything in life which I have done that is any good is because of my reading of this book, which says a great deal about me, but still says very little about this book. I have found the book of the law in the house of the Lord. So may it always be.

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If that were more true, this book would have greater power in our society. You remember from the Old Testament story that I shared with you that as a result of the reading of just one portion of this book, all kinds of reforms, social and economic and political, took place.

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The whole society was changed because the Word of God read "does change." It's an interesting thing, isn't it, that this book is the most purchased book in our society. This is the best seller of all time.

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This day is any other day. And yet it is so often unread. There have been times when it's against the law to read the Bible. Henry VIII, for example, would allow people to read the Bible in private, but they couldn't

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read it in groups, even when they were in church. Slave owners here in this country, many of them would not permit their slaves to read the Bible because they didn't want them to hear too much about dignity and too much about freedom.

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As far as I know, the only place where it's illegal to read the scriptures in this country today is in our schools. And isn't that a tragedy? Doesn't that help to explain why the morals and ethics of so many of our young people

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are no deeper than a pizza pan? We give them sex education, the mechanics of sex, but we offer to them no moral guidelines on which to conduct their sexual lives. And the result is illegitimacy and abortion and rape and suicide.

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The Methodist bishop of Arkansas recently wrote about being asked to come into a court and serve as a character witness for a teenage boy who had been arrested for stealing. And he gave his character witness, and a little bit later in the trial, the judge addressed the young boy and he said, "Do you go to Sunday school?"

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And the boy said, "Most Sundays, sir." He said, "All right, do you know the Ten Commandments?" The boy said, "No, I don't know the Ten Commandments." And then the judge looked at the bishop and said, "If the boy goes to Sunday school, why

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doesn't he know the Ten Commandments?" Well, there are a variety of answers to that question. It may be that the boy didn't pay any attention. You can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make it drink.

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It may be that the Sunday school was not a Sunday school where the Word of God was held up and exalted. There are many Sunday schools in the land where the time is spent on anything other than the reading and the studying and the understanding of God's Word written.

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Or it might be that someone should have said to that judge, "Judge, you're hopelessly naive if you believe that one hour of Christian education a week is going to combat all of the moral inadequacy and iniquity which this young man encounters in the rest of his week." Now, parents, here's a matter I want to lay upon your heart, whether you're a member of

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this church or watching us on television or listening to the radio. Do you know what kind of Christian education your children are receiving in the church that you attend? I mean, you're concerned about the diet of your kids and that they go to see the dentist

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when their time of checkup is near. Are you equally concerned and disciplined about what they are taught about the Word of God, and is the Word of God read and heeded in your own home? You know, our kids are standing in front of those luggage carousels, you see, and the

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same old dead ideas and the same old philosophies and the same old promises and the same old ethics keep going by, pleased to be good for goodness sake. And no one is good for goodness sake. There is no power for goodness in a life until a person meets God and understands that God

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wills good, and out of gratitude to God, they give themselves to the pursuit of the good. So are they being offered God through his book? I read not long ago in the Wall Street Journal about a new gambling place that's been opened in Atlantic City.

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It's called Caesar's Boardwalk Regency, and the Wall Street Journal said this about it. It is created in an atmosphere designed to relax the morality of people. All the halls are of marble, beautiful statues. There are no windows or clocks, so you have no sense of the passage of time.

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The rooms where you go to spend the night are garishly painted and brilliantly illuminated. They're deliberately made to be psychically inhospitable, to lead people to go back to the gambling tables again, to forget their responsibilities, to forget the mortgage, and to forget the education of the children, and to forget laying something aside for a

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rainy day, and to forget their obligations before the Lord to support the growth of the kingdom. That sounds silly, doesn't it? That these things could be done in people with some lights and some marble statues and

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covering up the windows and hanging no clocks. Well, it may sound silly, friends, but it works. And the reason it works is because those people have no foundation. They have not found the book of the law in the house of the Lord, and they go in weak.

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Their philosophy of life is without strength. Their character is without conviction. They do not have the pure distillation of that which is good and true. They don't know the Bible.

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And so they're subject to anything. I have found the book of the law in the house of the Lord. There was a time in this country when we were a people of the book, but no more. I haven't traveled in every nation on the face of the earth, but I've spent significant

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amounts of time in more than 60 of them. And I will tell you that as you go from nation to nation, when you go into a society where this book is not known and not honored, you see the worst disease and the worst poverty and the worst cultural debauchery and the worst moral depravity that you see anywhere

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on the face of the earth. It's the reason we as a people must get back to this book and back to its gospel. You know, this last Thursday, I was having lunch with one of the members of the church and he said, "You know, we come in on Sunday morning, we're all beat up, and you stand

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up there and try to put us back together again. But who do you go to when you're all beat up and you need somebody to put you back together again?" Well, I gave him a quick answer, seemed to satisfy him.

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But I've been thinking about it since. The fact of the matter is that that which puts me back together the most, that which fills me with joy and puts the wind of the Spirit in my sails again, is when I see you grow in your maturity before God.

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My greatest encouragement is your developing that peace and power which belong to the children of God. This may sound very sentimental or it may sound like some maudlin pastoral paternalism, but I really mean it.

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You see, this book can be your strongest ally, your richest treasure. I read about a man once whose aunt died, and when she died, her will said something like, "I leave to my nephew my Bible and its contents and anything else that remains after my lawful and just debts have been paid."

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Well, what remained was $200, and he spent that very quickly. The Bible he put in a drawer, and there it remained for 35 years. And then in a time of great desperation, particularly of economic hardship, he went one night and he pulled out that Bible.

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And as he opened it, he found stuck in amongst its pages more than $5,000 in cash. I leave to my nephew my Bible and the contents therein. He'd missed the treasure for so many years because he never opened the Word. And there are a lot of people who miss the treasure because they do not open the Word

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of God. Don't miss this treasure. It's when I see the fruit of it in your lives that I am most tremendously encouraged and restored, for this is dependable.

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This is the ultimate standard in its symbols and in its stories, in its characters and in its parables, in its history and in its poetry, is to be found nothing less than the counsel and the power of God, what we need in our churches, what we need in our nation, and what we need in our individual lives.

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The disciplined and devoted use of the Scriptures is the greatest power a Christian can know aside from the power of the Holy Spirit. You know the National Archives in Washington is where the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights are kept, and I've been there to see them, probably

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many of you have too. And you know the room in which they're displayed has very dim lights because they don't want the lights to fade the documents. And there's a safety device there so that if anyone should try to get to those documents,

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all a guard has to do is press a button and immediately those documents will roll back and be covered over by literally tons of protective marble. That's how we protect the Constitution and the Declaration of Rights and the Independence Declaration, and that's good, that's the way it ought to be.

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But my friends, you don't have to protect this book because this book protects you. You can take it into the valley of the shadow of death. You can take it into the time of the deepest and most severe persecution. You can take it to any height or victory or triumph you might have, which in itself can

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become a special kind of temptation. You can take it with you anywhere and it will be enough. I have found the book of the law in the house of the Lord. My heart would rejoice if every one of you on going forth from this house of worship

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today would say that. I have found the book of the law in the house of the Lord. For it's that that will make you even more than you are the beautiful, powerful, and peace-filled people that God longs for us all to be.

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Let us pray. O God, we thank thee for the treasure of thy word written. Move in us so that there will be a hunger and a thirst for the righteousness to be found therein.

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By thy spirit, hide thy word in our hearts that we might not sin against thee. We will give thee all the honor and the glory forever and forever. Amen. Amen.

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Amen.