Are there male prostitutes in your temple?

This weekend was in short, amazing. Really. This weekend, I* took my high school students to Head Waters Lodge in Highland County for our spring BreakAway retreat.

So, Head Waters is a great place. If you ever get the chance to go, take it. One great thing about doing retreats there is that I don't actually have to plan or lead. I get to hang out with students, worship, and listen to other people give Bible lessons. It's brilliant.

This weekend, we studied a couple passages in 1 and 2 Kings. Raise your hand if you've spent a lot of time personally studying 1 and 2 Kings. Yeah, me neither. Sure, I've perused these books at best, most notably when I'm skipping back to get to 1 and 2 Samuel where we find the amazing adventures of David (future blog post: Who would you cast in what could possibly be the most epic movie ever about the life of David? Eric Bana as David? Or is that too obvious?)

Mostly we talked about Elijah in the evenings and Josiah in the mornings. Right now, I want to talk about Josiah. Now, I knew there was a Josiah in the Bible. Mainly because (A) I know for a fact that there exists a man named Josiah Weaver and (B) the Weaver's have Biblical names that start with the letter J.

Here's some background on Josiah (not Weaver):

• He became king at age 8 when his father, Amon, fell to assassins at age 24.
• When he was 16, he began to seek the Lord (this was a big deal - it had been a while since any king remembered what the Lord had done for David. During this time Jerusalem and the Israelites were behaving very badly. Bad, Israel, bad.)
• When he was 26, he decided to repair the temple of the Lord. While this was happening, the high priest found the Book of the Law.

This is where it gets interesting - Josiah had already been seeking the Lord, so finding the Book of the Law was a big deal. Josiah was now able to get some clear direction about what the Lord expected from his people.

When the king heard the words of the Book of the Law, he tore his robes. He gave these orders..."Go and inquire of the Lord for me and for the people and for all Judah about what is written in this book that has been found. Great is the Lord's anger that burns against us because our fathers have not obeyed the words of this book; they have not acted in accordance with all that is written there concerning us." 2 Kings 22:11-13

Three sidebars:

1. When we truly allow the Word to infiltrate our hearts, we see how incredibly off base we are.
2. When we truly allow the Word to infiltrate our hearts, we see how incredibly off base our culture is.
3. The longer we spend away from the Word, the worse we get.

Here is what is supercool about Josiah - he took action. First, he started to seek the Lord. Second, he decided to repair the temple. When he heard the Law, he started to take action. He started to make changes. He cleared the temple.

The king ordered...the high priest, the priests next in rank and the doorkeepers to remove from the temple of the Lord all the articles made for Baal and Asherah and all the starry hosts...He did away with the pagan priests...He took down the Asherah pole from the temple of the Lord...He also tore down the quarters of the male shrine prostitutes, which were in the temple of the Lord. 2 Kings 23: 4-7.

We read this and think "whoa that's bad. Prostitutes doing business in the temple. Yikes. Stuff made for other gods in the temple? Geesh. That would never happen at my church."

Oh really?

Sure, we may not have such extremes going on in our own churches and more importantly in our own hearts. But we aren't far off base. When we allow ourselves to drift away from the Lord and from his Word, we let other stuff creep in. The male prostitutes probably didn't just up and move into the temple one day. They probably just got closer and closer and, before you know it, had set up shop there.

There's a song by Randall Goodgame that I love. The chorus goes like this:

I am Jerusalem/I am the temple of the Lord/Holy of Holies/The Lord dwells within

So what immorality is going on in your temple? What shrines to other gods are set up and fully functional?

It may be time to follow in King Josiah's footsteps and clear the temple.

(*For those who don't know who I am, Hi. I'm Laura, also known as the girl Halie graciously shares this blog with, also known as the youth director at First Presbyterian Church in Harrisonburg, VA, also known as Mallie's** mom.)

(**For those of you who don't know who Mallie is, she's my superdog.)