2Ki 22:8 And Hilkiah the high priest said unto Shaphan the scribe, I have found the book of the law in the house of the LORD. And Hilkiah gave the book to Shaphan, and he read it.

Josiah became king of Judah at the age of eight (v.8). He walked in the way of Jehovah God. He was remembered for repairing the Temple of God. We read in 2 Chronicles 34:3 that “in the eighth year of his reign, while he was yet young, he began to seek after the God of David his father; and in the twelfth year he began to purge Judah and Jerusalem from the high places, and the Asherim, and the graven images, and the molten images.”                                                                           “In the eighth year of his reign” means he was only sixteen years old. Josiah was full of zeal for God at this age when most teenagers would rather do their own things. It is unbelievable! Why do I say so? It is because his father, Amon, and his grandfather, Manasseh, were the worst kings in Judah. They undo every good thing that his great-grandfather Hezekiah had done. They brought back every single idol that Hezekiah had put away. The fact that Josiah was able to follow in the footsteps of his great-grandfather and not in his father and grandfather is amazing. The young Josiah saw the worship of God neglected all these years by his father and grandfather. He began to purge Judah and Jerusalem from the high places and the idols. Then in the eighteenth year of his reign—when he was twenty-six years old—he began to repair the house of the Lord which had been long deserted and neglected. In the process of restoring the temple, the high priest Hilkiah found the "Book of the Law" (v.8). For 57 years under Manasseh and Amon, that Book of the Law sat in the Temple collecting dust. No one bothers about it. No one misses it. Every one forgets about its existence. Shaphan the scribe read the Book of the law to King Josiah who listened attentively to the words of the Law. When he heard that the people had neglected the worship and commandments of God, he rent his clothes. King Josiah made a vow to keep all the laws written in it (v.10-13). The Book of the Law was lost in no other place but in the very Temple of the Lord! Sad, isn’t it? The Temple of God should be the place where the word of God was preserved and read often but it was lost in the very place which supposedly was the safest place. It happened then, it is still happening today. The Word of God is lost in many “churches”. The Word of God is lost due to neglect. Many so called “Christians” do not know the Word of God. Many more do not study the Word of God. The Word of God is lost in the hands of Christians. I taught some visitors from denominational background. Many didn’t even know how to turn to the passages of the Bible. Most were so ignorant about the Bible. When I mentioned there is only one church that Jesus built, they looked at me with big eyes like saying: “Huh. Are you sure? I thought all churches are the same.” When I mentioned baptism, it seemed like a new word to them. How about us? Is the Word of God lost among us? Is it lost in you? The Word of God is lost through neglect by those who should be preserving and telling it to the world. Unfortunately, too many Christians do not know the doctrinal truths found in the Bible. It may be due to lack of studying the Word of God from the Bible. The Bible sits idly in their homes. What should they do? Perform a spring cleaning like Josiah! The New Year is only a few days away; it’s a good time to resolve to make things right with God. Let the Word of God be our daily bread each day: “O how love I thy law! it is my meditation all the day” (Psalm 119:97).