2 Kings 23:1-3
"23 Then the king sent, and all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem were gathered to him. 2 And the king went up to the house of the Lord, and with him all the men of Judah and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem and the priests and the prophets, all the people, both small and great. And he read in their hearing all the words of the Book of the Covenant that had been found in the house of the Lord. 3 And the king stood by the pillar and made a covenant before the Lord, to walk after the Lord and to keep his commandments and his testimonies and his statutes with all his heart and all his soul, to perform the words of this covenant that were written in this book. And all the people joined in the covenant."
One almost wishes for a detailed account of this tremendous scene in which Josiah gathered together all the people of Jerusalem to hear the words of the law which had been found in the Temple. But imagination can supply what is lacking in words, and we can surely visualise the solemn hush that came upon them and the sense of the divine Presence that pervaded the scene as the word of the Lord was read to them. It was clearly a work of the Spirit of a kind that had not been known for many generations among God's people, and it is not surprising that it led to such a whole-hearted consecration by king and people alike (3). What is important here for us is to see the relationship between the reading of the Word and the consecration of the people. Historically, it has always been the recovery of the Word that has led to the revitalising and renewal of the Church's life, and we can go so far as to say that the deeper and fuller the apprehension of the Word is, the truer and more wholehearted will the consecration be. This is why any attempt to revive the life of the Church that does not base itself solidly upon the Word but on some form of organisational activity, is doomed to failure from the start. The real criterion of a Church's health is not the multiplicity of its organisations but the extent of its interest and the amount of time that it spends on the Word of God.