"I hope that the low pricing does not cause the low prizing of God's Word."-John Wycliffe
II Kings 22:8-10 "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. And Shaphan the scribe came to the king, and brought the king word again, and said, Thy servants have gathered the money that was found in the house, and have delivered it to the hand of them that do the work, that have the oversight of the house of the LORD. And Shaphan the scribe shewed the king, saying, Hilkiah the priest hath delivered me a book. And Shaphan read it before the king."
Imagine spending your entire life until the age of about twenty-five without hearing one word of Scripture. Josiah, the king of Israel, did just this. For many years, the Hebrew people had disobeyed the Lord. Now, the great Temple was just a monument. People would go there for a history lesson instead of worship. One great day, while doing some work on the Temple, some of the servants found a copy of the Book of the Law (which we would call the Pentateuch or the Torah). It was read to the king, and he was astonished by what he heard. He was so disgusted by his sins, by the sins of the people of Israel, that he rent his clothes and mourned. He commanded that all of the false idols be removed from Israel and that the nation turn its eyes solely to the Lord God Yahweh.
Years later, after Josiah's death, his son was on the throne. Israel had, once again, turned her back on the Lord. How silly! How foolish! (It's sad that we Christians do the same exact thing so often. We forget of His blessings and mercies upon our lives, and we desire to do things that we ought not to do.)
Jeremiah 36:1-2 "And it came to pass in the fourth year of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah king of Judah, that his word came unto Jeremiah from the LORD, saying, Take thee a roll of a book, and write therein all the words that I have spoken unto thee against Israel, and against Judah, and against all the nations, from the day I spake unto thee, from the days of Josiah, even unto this day."
Jeremiah did as the Lord commanded. He wrote down that which the Lord said unto him, and when he was finished, the scroll was presented to the king. The king did not like what he heard. He became "fed up" with the Words of the Lord, so he did what so many Christians do: he cut up the Scriptures. (Jeremiah 36:22-23 "Now the king sat in the winterhouse in the ninth month: and there was a fire on the hearth burning before him. And it came to pass, that when Jehudi had read three or four leaves, he cut it with the penknife, and cast it into the fire that was on the hearth, until all the roll was consumed in the fire that was on the hearth.") He cut up the scroll, and threw it into the flames.
Now, I know what you're thinking. "I would NEVER cut up a copy of the Bible! That's blasphemy! I would never do that!"
Really? You wouldn't? Every time that you disobey the Bible, you are doing just that. Every time that I have a bad attitude about something, I am cutting out Scripture. It's as bad as if I were to do what Jehoiakim did. It is as if I took scissors and cut out pages of the Bible. How many times do we unknowingly cut out parts of the Word of God?
