If you will return, O Israel, says the Lord, return unto me: and if you will put away your abominations out of my sight, then shall you not be moved.

If God had a message for this country today, I think this is what he might say. There are a lot of good people in this country who are trying to live a godly life, but they are losing the battle. We just don’t recognize the determination of the anti-God forces in our society. There is a war going on for the minds and spirit of our children, and we are losing battle after battle. The kids may recognize that better than the rest of us do. They are taking steps on their own to maintain prayer and an awareness of God in their lives, and they are sometimes doing so right on the grounds of the very schools that don’t allow prayer.

The social structure of Israel was starting to break down. The nation, so dedicated to God in the beginning, was drifting away. There was a direction for their return. It was to the God who is there, to borrow Francis Shaeffer’s phrase. It was a return to a personal God who cares what we do and don’t do. And the situation was not hopeless. If they would return and get rid of all the idolatrous symbols they had gathered, all would be well. This is what King Josiah was all about—rooting out idolatrous worship, even from the Temple of God—finding the way back to God. And the way back to God is never long, but it is quite specific.

There is an odd thing about the beginning of Jeremiah’s ministry. Not only was he very young (he describes himself as only a child) when he was called by God, but the King he served was very young, as well. King Josiah came to the throne at age 8, and Jeremiah began to prophesy when Josiah was 21.

Josiah was eight years old when he began to reign, and he reigned thirty and one years in Jerusalem. And his mother’s name was Jedidah, the daughter of Adaiah of Boscath. And he did that which was right in the sight of the Lord, and walked in all the way of David his father, and turned not aside to the right hand or to the left.

It’s talking, at this point, about his overall reign—and overall it was it good one. Josiah had a long reign even though he died young, at age 39. But when he was 26 years old, he embarked on a major restoration of the Temple. Jeremiah’s ministry had started 5 years earlier, and may conceivably have had some influence on Josiah.

He told his men to do an accounting of the money brought to the temple and turn it over the contractors who were doing the refurbishing of the building. While they were doing the work, they made an astonishing discovery. And this discovery caused Josiah see the depths to which the state of religious affairs in Judah had sunk. We’ll find this in 2 Kings, chapter 22.

In all the many years of human civilization, basic human nature hasn’t changed at all. Technology has changed the way we live, but the basics remain the same—and they are remarkably the same across all cultures and all people. Also, down through all the ages of time, God has not changed. So, we human beings go through the same stuff over and over again, never seeming to learn the lessons. This is why history repeats itself. It is why prophecies are fulfilled more than once. It isn’t that God hasn’t told us. He has sent prophet after prophet, but people don’t listen to prophets.

We would like to think that we would listen. But would we? I think one of the reasons people miss the point on prophecy is because they are trying to determine what will happen and when. The prophets are mostly concerned with what is happening and why. There is a genre of literature called apocalyptic which concerns itself with what the future holds. The difference between apocalyptic literature and prophecy is that prophecy is loaded with moral teaching, which is almost entirely absent from apocalyptic literature. In my experience, most people are really interested in apocalyptic and give short shrift to prophecy. Perhaps because the powerful morality of the prophets makes them uncomfortable. It may be that the necessary moral tone of the prophets is why God picks them very young and brings them up the way he wants them. To Jeremiah, God said this:

Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations. Then said I, Ah, Lord God! behold, I cannot speak: for I am a child. But the Lord said unto me, Say not, I am a child: for thou shalt go to all that I shall send thee, and whatsoever I command thee thou shalt speak.