Session 9

###  *The Gospel According to Tennessee*

#  Priest, Prophet, King

###  *The Three Runners Gathering Around the Recovered Word*

by Hope Wooten | about 35 minutes to read

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 ![runner holding a torn page](https://narroway.net/images/devotionals/runner-torn-page.webp)

I love trail running.

Given the choice between pavement and dirt, I will choose the trail almost every time.

Trail running lives in its own universe.

On the trail, pace means something different.

Miles feel different.

Hills definitely feel different.

You stop worrying quite so much about what the watch says and start paying attention to roots, rocks, turns, climbs, creek crossings, and whether that stick in front of you is actually a stick.

The main goal is no longer necessarily to run faster.

Sometimes the main goal is simply:

Do not fall and bust your teeth out.

But even among trail runners, there are levels of crazy.

There is my level.

I like the trails. I like the woods. I like climbing things. I am perfectly willing to get muddy and come home with leaves stuck to me.

But I would also like to return home that same calendar day.

Then there are people who race on trails.

These are the people who look at a mountain I would like to enjoy at a reasonable pace and think:

We should put a timing mat on this.

Then there are ultrarunners.

Fifty kilometers.

Fifty miles.

One hundred miles.

These are people who reach the point where a marathon ends and apparently think:

That seems like a good warm-up.

Then there are elite ultrarunners.

They do all of that—

but fast.

They run through the night.

They climb thousands upon thousands of feet.

They eat while moving.

They sleep very little.

They finish distances that would make most people want to call for transportation.

And if all that were not already unreasonable enough, there is one more level.

The people who run the Barkley Marathons.

At that point, I am not sure we are still talking about the same sport.

The Barkley sits somewhere beyond ordinary trail running.

Beyond racing.

Beyond ultrarunning.

Possibly beyond good judgment.

And somehow, every year, a small group of people looks at it and says:

Sign me up.

The Barkley takes place at Frozen Head State Park in Tennessee, beside the old Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary.

The prison matters to the story.

In 1977, James Earl Ray escaped from Brushy Mountain and disappeared into the surrounding mountains.

For more than two days he tried to make his way through that rugged terrain.

When authorities finally recaptured him, he had made it only about eight miles.

Gary Cantrell—better known in the running world as Lazarus Lake, or simply Laz—heard that story and thought he could do considerably better.

And eventually, the Barkley Marathons were born.

Almost nothing about the race is normal.

Even getting into it is strange.

There is no ordinary registration page where you enter your credit card number and pick a T-shirt size.

The application process has historically been kept deliberately obscure.

If you are accepted, Laz sends what he calls a letter of condolence.

And if it is your first Barkley, part of your entry fee is a license plate from your home state or country.

Those plates have accumulated around the race over the years like trophies from people who voluntarily traveled to Tennessee to make very questionable life choices.

And that is before the race even begins.

The runners know the day.

They do not know the exact starting time.

At some point during a twelve-hour window, Laz blows a conch shell.

That means they have one hour.

One hour later, everyone gathers at the famous yellow gate that marks the Barkley start and finish.

There is no starting pistol—the gunshot that traditionally signals the beginning of a race.

No countdown.

No dramatic music.

Laz lights a cigarette.

And the Barkley begins.

Around forty runners disappear into the Tennessee mountains.

They have five loops to complete. Each loop is roughly twenty miles, though the actual distance can feel considerably longer depending on the course and navigation.

Five loops.

About one hundred miles.

In sixty hours.

An absurd amount of climbing.

Briars.

Creeks.

Darkness.

Fog.

Sleep deprivation.

No course markings.

No GPS navigation.

Only a map, a compass, and their ability to figure out where they are.

Three loops—somewhere around sixty miles through that terrain—are considered the Fun Run.

Which should tell you everything you need to know about Laz's definition of fun.

## The Books on the Course

But perhaps the strangest feature of the Barkley is hidden throughout those mountains.

Books.

Actual paperback books.

Laz places them at specific locations along the course.

Each runner has a bib number.

When they reach a book, they tear out the page corresponding to that number.

Then they keep moving.

At the end of the loop, they return to the yellow gate and hand over those pages.

The pages are proof.

Proof that they found the places they were supposed to find.

Proof that they traveled the course they were supposed to travel.

Miss one of the books, and it does not matter how many miles you ran.

It does not matter how hard you worked.

It does not matter how exhausted you are.

Without the page, you cannot prove that you stayed on course.

And you cannot continue.

At the Barkley, finding the book matters because the book tells the truth about where you have been.

## A Kingdom of Priests

For Israel, the starting line takes us back to Egypt.

God delivered His people from slavery, brought them through the Red Sea, and brought the walls of water down on Pharaoh’s army.

On the other side of the sea, Israel celebrated the God who had rescued them.

And then God brought them to Mount Sinai.

It was time to talk about what this relationship was going to look like.

God had already shown Israel what He would do.

He would rescue them.

He would carry them.

He would bring them to Himself.

Now He was going to tell them what it meant to live as His people.

This was not simply about a list of rules.

It was about identity.

What would it look like for an entire nation to belong to Yahweh?

What would their lives tell the rest of the world about the God who had rescued them?

In Exodus 19, God says:

“You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine; and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.”
—Exodus 19:4–6

A kingdom of priests.

That is a phrase of identity.

This is who they were called to be.

And Israel would have understood the language of priesthood.

They had just come out of Egypt, a world filled with temples, priests, gods, and goddesses. They knew what a priest did because priesthood was woven into the religious life around them.

In that world, the worshiper did not simply walk into the presence of a god.

There was a priest.

Someone who stood in the sacred space between the divine and the worshiper.

Someone who represented the god to the people and the people before the god.

If you encountered the priest, you were supposed to learn something about the god that priest served.

And then, at Sinai, Yahweh took that familiar idea and widened it.

He was not speaking only to Aaron.

He was not speaking only to one tribe.

He was speaking to an entire people.

You will be to Me a kingdom of priests.

You are going to live between Me and the nations.

When the world encounters you, they should learn something about Me.

Not just from your worship.

From the way you conduct business.

The way you treat the stranger.

The way you care for the poor.

The way you practice justice.

The way you treat one another.

Everything about the way you live will say something about the God you belong to.

Your lives are putting God on display.

God was placing them in a remarkably small strip of land between some of the greatest powers of the ancient world.

Egypt to the south.

Mesopotamia to the northeast.

And between them, Canaan—a narrow land bridge, only tens of miles wide in places.

Armies moved through it.

Merchants moved through it.

Travelers moved through it.

The nations were going to pass right through Israel’s neighborhood.

And when they did, they were supposed to encounter a people whose lives told them something true about Yahweh.

God had rescued Israel and brought them to Himself. He had given them an identity and shown them the course. And He did not leave them to guess what that course looked like.

He gave them a Book.

Words that would teach them how a holy God could dwell among an unholy people. Words that would shape their worship, their relationships, their justice, their daily lives. Words that would teach them how to live as the people He had called them to be.

But Israel struggled to live into that identity.

Again and again, they wandered off course.

God had brought them out of Egypt, but Egypt had not yet been brought out of them.

And although the road from Egypt to the Promised Land was not especially long on a map, an entire generation would perish in the wilderness before Israel entered Canaan.

Because sometimes the longest journey is not the distance between two places.

It is the distance between who we have been and who God has called us to become.

The road into Canaan was relatively short.

The road out of Egypt would take much longer.

## Off Course

The road out of Egypt took forty years.

By the time Israel finally crossed into the land God had promised them, an entire generation had lived and died in the wilderness.

Then came the conquest.

Then the long, uneven years of the judges.

And if you stay in the book of Judges for very long, you begin to feel the rhythm of it.

Israel forgets.

Israel wanders.

Things fall apart.

They cry out to God.

God raises up someone to rescue them.

For a while, they remember who they are.

Then, slowly, they wander again.

By the end of the book, Scripture gives us a sentence that almost sounds like a sigh:

“Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.”
—Judges 21:25

They had been given the words of God.

But more and more, they were choosing their own way.

Then Samuel enters the story.

Samuel was a prophet, and he arrived at one of the great turning points in Israel’s history.

The days of the judges are coming to an end, and Israel wants something new.

They want a king.

God is already their King.

But they want a king they can see.

A king like the nations around them.

So they ask.

And God gives them one.

His name is Saul.

Which is where the story gives us one of those little details that is too good to pass over.

The name Saul comes from the Hebrew word sha’al—to ask.

Requested.

Asked for.

Israel asked for a king.

And the king they received was literally the one asked for.

There is a lesson tucked inside that.

Sometimes there is great danger in getting exactly what we ask for.

Because what we want and what is good for us are not always the same thing.

And in Saul’s case, that becomes painfully clear.

Then comes David.

Then Solomon.

And after Solomon died, the kingdom itself came apart.

What had once been one people became two kingdoms.

Israel in the north.

Judah in the south.

Same God.

Same covenant.

Same calling.

But now divided.

And slowly, both kingdoms began looking less and less like the people God had called them to be.

The people who had been told to put Yahweh on display began borrowing the gods of the nations around them.

Their worship changed.

Their loyalties shifted.

Justice bent.

Power was abused.

The people who were supposed to show the world what God was like were beginning to look remarkably like everyone else.

And that was a problem.

There was a growing distance between what God had said and how His people were actually living.

And into that distance God sent prophets.

The prophets kept holding the words of God up beside the lives of His people.

This is what God called you to be.

This is what you have become.

Look at the distance between the two.

Come back.

But generation after generation, the people kept wandering.

And eventually there came a point when God would not simply allow the course to continue unchanged.

In 722 BC, Assyria conquered the northern kingdom of Israel.

The kingdom fell.

Its people were scattered.

This is the history behind what we often refer to as the lost tribes of Israel.

The southern kingdom of Judah remained.

They had watched what happened in the north.

They knew where that road could lead.

And still, over time, Judah began following many of the same paths.

## The Lighthouse

Years earlier, the prophet Micah had warned Jerusalem about exactly this kind of false confidence.

The leaders of Judah were leaning on the LORD and saying:

“Is not the LORD among us? No disaster will come upon us.”
—Micah 3:11

They had the city.

They had the Temple.

They had the visible signs that God had chosen to dwell among them.

And somehow they had begun to confuse the presence of the landmark with the condition of their hearts.

But the presence of a lighthouse does not tell a ship that it is safe.

It warns the ship that danger is near.

Rocks.

Shallows.

A coastline that can destroy you if you refuse to change course.

The message of the lighthouse is:

Pay attention.

Know where you are.

Correct your course.

Judah could still see the Temple.

They could still point to it.

They could still say, in effect:

The LORD is among us.

But the Temple was not a guarantee that everything was fine.

If anything, it should have reminded them that a holy God lived among them—and that their lives needed to reflect Him.

Micah was warning them not to trust the landmark while ignoring the warning.

Because you can see the lighthouse and still be headed straight for the rocks.

Judah was.

Then the throne passed to a boy named Josiah.

## A King Without the Book

Josiah was eight years old when he became king of Judah.

Eight.

His grandfather Manasseh had filled Jerusalem with idols. His father, Amon, followed much of the same path and was assassinated after only two years on the throne.

And then the kingdom landed in the hands of a child.

But Josiah was different.

Scripture says he did what was right in the eyes of the LORD. While he was still young, he began seeking the God of David. By the time he was twenty, he was tearing down high places, smashing idols, cutting down Asherah poles.

He was trying to undo what generations before him had done.

Then he turned his attention to the Temple.

Judah had put enormous confidence in the Temple despite Micah’s warning.

The LORD is among us.

Surely Jerusalem was safe.

Surely God would never allow anything to happen to His house.

But the Temple they were trusting in was falling apart.

They had confidence in its presence while neglecting its condition.

Hebrew names often reveal more than simply what someone was called.

And I think it is fitting that Josiah’s name carries the idea of Yahweh sustaining or supporting.

Because that is exactly the kind of work he stepped into.

Josiah began restoring the Temple.

Years ago, we restored a house built in 1826 that was on our town’s historic registry.

And I learned during that process that restoration is not the same thing as renovation.

Renovation gives you freedom to make something into what you want it to be.

Move a wall.

Change the layout.

Update the design.

Make it work better for the way you want to live.

Restoration is different.

Restoration asks you to look backward.

What did the builder intend?

What belonged here originally?

What has been changed, covered over, damaged, or lost through the years?

And then, as much as possible, you put it back.

When we restored our house, there were things I wanted to change.

I remember wanting to move a wall only a few feet so our furniture would fit better with our big-screen television. It seemed insignificant to me.

But because the house was on the historic registry, there were limits to what we could alter.

The people overseeing that process were concerned with something I was not thinking about.

Integrity.

Did the house still retain enough of its original character to represent what it had been built to be?

My comfort was not the standard.

My preference was not the standard.

My new flat-screen television was definitely not the standard.

The original design was.

And that is what Josiah was trying to do with Judah.

Not invent something new.

Recover something old.

What had God intended His people to be?

What belonged?

What did not?

What had been damaged?

What had been lost?

In the eighteenth year of Josiah’s reign, he ordered the Temple repaired.

And the Hebrew describes the work with a phrase I love:

**לְחַזֵּק בֶּדֶק הַבָּיִת** *leḥazzēq bedeq habbayit*

They were repairing the **breaches of the house**.

Cracks.

Breaks.

Places where something that should have been whole had come apart.

So the workers began repairing the Temple building.

Stone was replaced.

Timber was brought in.

Breaches were strengthened.

And all the while, there was something they did not have.

The Book of the Law.

## The Lost Book

How do we know?

Because somewhere in the middle of the restoration, Hilkiah the high priest found it.

How did he find it?

Scripture does not tell us.

Maybe it had been tucked away in some back room.

Maybe it had been placed in a cabinet and forgotten.

Maybe it was stacked among old Temple objects no one had looked through in years.

Maybe, if this had happened in my house, it would have been sitting in a box marked for Goodwill.

We do not know.

And honestly, how it was found may not be nearly as important as the question underneath it:

How did something this important ever become lost?

This was not just another scroll. These were the words that were supposed to shape the life of Judah.

And somehow, while the Temple remained standing and worship continued around it, the Book had slipped far enough from the life of Judah that no one seemed to know where it was.

Until Hilkiah picked it up and said:

“I have found the Book of the Law in the house of the LORD.”
—2 Kings 22:8

The Book the king was supposed to keep near him.

The Book the priests were supposed to teach.

The Book the people were supposed to live by.

Had to be found.

And that raises an even more unsettling question.

Did anyone know the Book was lost?

Did anyone notice it was missing?

Or had it been so long that no one even knew they should be looking for it?

Because eventually you can lose something for so long that its absence begins to feel normal.

How do you know what you do not know?

How do you realize you are missing the blueprint when everyone around you has learned to build without it?

The Temple was still there.

The priests were still serving.

The people were still worshiping.

Life was still moving.

And perhaps that was part of the danger.

Nothing had stopped dramatically enough to force anyone to ask:

What are we missing?

Until one day, in the middle of repairing the house, Hilkiah, the high priest, found the Book.

And suddenly they were confronted not only with what had been lost—

but with how long they had been living without realizing it.

## When the King Heard

Hilkiah handed it to Shaphan, the king’s secretary.

Shaphan read it.

Then he went to Josiah.

He gave the king the update on the construction. The money had been delivered. The repairs were moving forward.

And then Shaphan added:

“Hilkiah the priest has given me a book.”

Almost casually.

A book.

And then he read it to the king.

Second Kings 22:11 tells us:

“And it happened, when the king heard the words of the Book of the Torah, that he tore his garments.”
—2 Kings 22:11

The words hit him, and something visible happened to the king.

The Word that had been hidden away—lost somewhere inside the Temple—was now being read aloud in the king’s court.

And Josiah was undone by what he heard.

In the biblical world, tearing your clothes was a visible expression of grief, horror, repentance, or deep distress.

This was not mild concern.

This was the moment Josiah realized:

We are not just a little off course.

We are in covenant violation.

They had been repairing breaches in the Temple.

Now the Book revealed the breaches in the people.

## Seek the Lord

Josiah immediately called for Hilkiah and several of his officials.

Second Kings 22:13 records his command:

“Go. Seek the LORD for me, for the people, and for all Judah concerning the words of this book that has been found.”
—2 Kings 22:13

The Hebrew word is דִּרְשׁוּ — *dirshū*, from דָּרַשׁ — *darash*.

To seek.

To inquire.

To search out.

Josiah was not simply asking someone to explain what the Book meant.

Go seek the LORD about this.

His ears had told him what God had said.

His eyes told him how far Judah had wandered from it.

The Book had exposed the gap.

Now he needed someone who could stand in it.

So the king’s men went looking for a prophet.

And Jerusalem was not exactly short on prophetic voices.

Jeremiah was already speaking during Josiah’s reign. Zephaniah belonged to this same period.

But the men carrying the question of the king of Judah went somewhere else.

To the Second Quarter of Jerusalem.

To the home of a man named Shallum, the keeper of the wardrobe.

And to his wife.

Her name was Huldah.

Scripture gives her a title that tells us exactly why they had come:

Huldah the prophetess.

The high priest and the king’s officials went to her.

They had found the Book.

The king had heard its words.

Now they wanted to know what God had to say.

## Priest, Prophet, King

Before we hear what Huldah says, step back with me for a moment.

Because this scene has roots all the way back in the garden.

In the opening pages of Scripture, male and female are created in the image of God.

Genesis 1:26 says:

“Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness, and let them rule…”
—Genesis 1:26

And then in verse 28:

“Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it, and rule…”
—Genesis 1:28

So from the beginning, humanity carries a royal calling.

They are not kings because they have thrones or crowns.

They are royal because God gives them delegated authority over creation.

God is the true King.

Human beings bear His image and exercise His rule under His authority.

And importantly, that calling is given to male and female together.

So there is the first piece:

King — representing God’s rule.

Then Genesis 2 gives us another piece.

God places the human in the garden “to work it and keep it.”

The Hebrew words are:

**עָבַד — ʿavad**
to work, serve

and

**שָׁמַר — shamar**
to keep, guard, watch over.

Those same words later become part of the vocabulary used for priestly service around the tabernacle.

Which means Adam and Eve are doing more than gardening.

They are living in sacred space.

They are serving in the place where God dwells.

They are supposed to guard what has been entrusted to them.

So there is the second piece:

Priest — representing and guarding God’s presence.

And then there is the Word.

Genesis 2 tells us that God commanded the human.

God spoke.

Humanity received His Word.

Everything depended on whether they would remember it, trust it, and live according to it.

Then Genesis 3 opens with a question:

“Did God really say…?”

The serpent attacks the Word.

He takes what God has said and twists it.

And ideally, one human should have turned to the other and said:

No. That is not what God said.

But no one does.

The Word is distorted, and no one faithfully relays it.

So there is the third piece:

Prophet — hearing, guarding, and faithfully communicating God’s Word.

King.

Priest.

Prophet.

Rule.

Presence.

Word.

Before the fall, these are not three separate offices.

They are all part of what it means to be human in the image of God.

Humanity lives in God’s presence.

Humanity hears God’s Word.

Humanity exercises God’s rule.

And then Genesis 3 fractures all of it.

They fail royally because they stop ruling according to God’s wisdom and allow the creature to direct them.

They fail priestly because they do not guard the sacred space entrusted to them.

They fail prophetically because they do not hold fast to what God actually said when His Word is distorted.

And then they are driven from Eden.

## The Pieces

From that point forward, those pieces begin to appear in separate people and separate roles.

Priests — presence.

Prophets — Word.

Kings — rule.

And once you begin looking for them, you see these three roles everywhere.

Most of the major characters in Scripture fall into at least one of them.

At their best, they give us a glimpse of what humanity was always meant to be.

They listen to God.

They live in His presence.

They exercise authority under His rule.

At their worst, they make the fracture even deeper.

A priest can serve in the house of God and still fail to guard what has been entrusted to him.

A prophet can claim to speak for God and speak falsely.

A king can be given authority under God and begin acting as though the authority belongs to him.

And sometimes the categories overlap.

Moses is remembered as a prophet, but much of his life also carries a priestly shape. He stands between God and the people, intercedes for them, and brings God’s Word back to them.

David is unmistakably a king, but his psalms speak prophetically, and there are moments when he moves into priestly territory too—bringing the ark toward Jerusalem, offering sacrifices, and blessing the people.

He is not an Aaronic priest.

But pieces of all three callings seem to gather around him.

The roles are fragmented.

But they keep reaching toward one another.

Prophet.

Priest.

King.

Word.

Presence.

Rule.

And maybe part of the reason we miss how closely they belong together is because Scripture teaches us to picture them so differently.

The priest comes dressed in linen, with the ephod and the garments of sacred service.

The king wears the crown.

Gold.

Jewels.

Royal robes.

And the prophet?

Well, sometimes the prophet is wrapped in a rough hairy garment.

And sometimes apparently the prophet is wearing almost nothing at all.

I am looking at you, Isaiah.

They look different.

They stand in different places.

They carry different responsibilities.

But underneath all of it, they are the same thing.

Flesh and bones.

Human beings carrying one piece of the calling humanity was given from the beginning.

One tending the presence of God.

One carrying the Word of God.

One exercising authority under the rule of God.

And every once in a while, Scripture lets us watch those roles move toward one another.

Not because the differences disappear.

But because sometimes the kingdom moves forward when the priest does his part, the prophet does hers, and the king does his—

all oriented toward the same God,

all responding to the same Word,

all carrying their part of the same calling.

And that is exactly what is about to happen in Jerusalem.

## Huldah Speaks

The prophet they went to ask was Huldah.

The high priest and the king’s officials brought Josiah’s question to her.

And Huldah answered.

There is no hesitation in the text.

No explanation of her qualifications.

No defense of why they came to her.

She simply speaks.

“Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel…”

And there it is.

All the way back in the garden, the serpent had introduced the question:

“Did God really say?”

Now, generations later, with the Book finally recovered and an entire kingdom waiting to know what God had to say about it, Huldah answers:

“Thus says the LORD.”

Yes.

God really said.

And what He had said still stood.

Judah had abandoned Yahweh.

They had worshiped other gods.

They had provoked Him with the work of their hands.

The judgment written in the Book was not an empty threat.

It was coming.

Huldah does not soften the message because the king is listening.

She does not tell Josiah that his reforms have somehow erased generations of rebellion.

She tells him the truth.

What had been written would come to pass.

But then Huldah turns from Judah to Josiah.

“But to the king of Judah, who sent you to inquire of the LORD…”

And what follows is remarkably personal.

God had seen what happened when Josiah heard the Book.

His heart had become tender.

He had humbled himself.

He had torn his clothes.

He had wept.

And through Huldah, God tells him:

“I also have heard you.”

Josiah had heard God.

And God had heard Josiah.

The judgment on Judah would still come.

But Josiah would not live to see the disaster announced against Judah.

He would be gathered to his fathers before that judgment fell.

Then the messengers carried Huldah’s answer back to the king.

And now look at what has happened.

What had been fractured after Eden has, for one remarkable moment, gathered around the Word again.

Hilkiah the **priest** recovered it.

Josiah the **king** heard it, believed it, and humbled himself before it.

Huldah the **prophet** stood in the gap it exposed and declared:

“Thus says the LORD.”

Priest.

King.

Prophet.

Presence.

Rule.

Word.

A distorted word in Eden had been part of the great unraveling.

Now a recovered Word had drawn these three roles together around the question that began it all:

Did God really say?

And together, the scene in 2 Kings 22 answers:

Yes. He did.

## Living as Though God Said It

And Josiah does not stop at agreeing with the answer.

He acts like it is true.

He gathers the people.

The Book is read aloud.

The covenant is renewed.

What does not belong is torn down.

And then Judah celebrates Passover.

Not casually.

Not as one more religious observance.

Scripture describes it as a Passover unlike anything that had been celebrated for generations.

Which feels fitting.

Because Passover is a feast of remembrance.

Remember who God is.

Remember what He did.

Remember who you are because of what He did.

A people who had lost the Book had lost their bearings.

When the Word was recovered, they were brought back to the story.

Back to covenant.

Back to remembrance.

Back to Passover.

And maybe that is where this story gets uncomfortable for us.

We have access to the Word of God in ways they could not have imagined.

We can pick it up whenever we want.

Read it in print.

Read it on a phone.

Listen to it in the car.

Sit Sunday after Sunday and hear it taught.

And yet sometimes we are moved by it only as far as the restaurant we choose after church.

What would it look like to hear the Word of God and actually orient our lives around what we heard?

At Barkley, the runner does not simply find the book, read the page, and keep moving.

The pages come with them.

They are torn out.

Carried.

Brought back to the yellow gate.

Evidence that the runner had actually been where the course required them to go.

And maybe that is the picture I keep coming back to.

The Word of God was never meant to be something we merely encounter and leave behind.

The psalmist said:

“I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.”
—Psalm 119:11

There is a right way for the Word to be hidden.

Not forgotten in a room.

Not buried somewhere no one knows to look.

Hidden in us.

Carried with us.

Close enough to shape where we go next.

Into our homes.

Into our calendars.

Into our decisions.

Into the way we treat people.

Into the way we remember.

Into the way we live.

At Barkley, the pages carried back to the yellow gate prove the runner found the books and stayed on course.

In Judah, the evidence that they had truly heard the Book was that their lives began to move according to it.

They did not leave the Book in the Temple.

They carried what they had heard into Passover.

Into worship.

Into their homes.

Into action.

Because Passover was not simply a meal.

It required action.

Planning.

Preparation.

Sacrifice.

People had to gather.

Animals had to be selected.

Food had to be prepared.

Homes and families had to order themselves around what God had commanded.

They did not simply hear:

Remember what God did.

They built their lives around remembering it.

The Word moved from the page into their calendar.

Into their homes.

Onto their tables.

Into their worship.

Into their bodies.

They heard what God had said—

and then they lived as though He had actually said it.

And Passover did more than order their lives around what God had said.

It taught them how to look in two directions.

## Looking Back, Looking Forward

Passover is a feast of remembrance.

Look back.

Remember Egypt.

Remember slavery.

Remember the blood.

Remember the night God brought you out.

Remember that you did not rescue yourselves.

Remember who your God is.

Remember who you are because of what He did.

But Passover does something else too.

It taught Israel how to look forward to another, greater deliverance.

A deliverance the prophets foretold.

A deliverance the priests anticipated every time they stood before God on behalf of the people.

A deliverance the kings could never finally accomplish, even as the promise remained that one day a Son of David would sit on the throne and rule as God's King was meant to rule.

Prophet.

Priest.

King.

The pieces kept moving through the story.

And every Passover table rehearsed the same truth:

God delivers His people.

Remember Egypt.

Remember the blood.

Remember the night God brought you out.

But keep watching.

Because the God who had delivered before had promised that the story of redemption was not finished yet.

Generation after generation, Israel gathered around the story of redemption.

They told it again.

They ate it again.

They remembered the night God brought them out.

Bread.

Cup.

A table built around the memory that God saves.

Remembering the first deliverance also taught them to wait for another one.

And generation after generation, the prophets kept speaking of it.

The priests kept standing in the presence of God on behalf of a people who still needed it.

The kings kept coming and going while the promise of a better King remained.

And Passover kept coming around.

Year after year.

Generation after generation.

Remember.

Remember.

Remember.

Until one night, centuries after Josiah gathered Judah around that recovered Book, another Passover table was set.

An upper room in Jerusalem.

The bread was on the table.

The cup was poured.

The ancient story was told again.

God delivers His people.

And then the man sitting at the table reached for the bread.

He broke it.

“This is my body.”

He took the cup.

“This is my blood of the covenant.”

And suddenly Passover was no longer only looking backward.

The deliverance they had been rehearsing was sitting at the table with them.

The Prophet is speaking.

The Priest is offering Himself.

The King is announcing His kingdom.

Word.

Presence.

Rule.

What had been whole in Eden, fractured through the human story, and briefly gathered around the recovered Word in Josiah’s day—

was whole again.

In Him.

## The Final Word

Centuries earlier, workers had gone into a neglected Temple and discovered something almost unbelievable.

The Word was already there.

They simply did not know it.

It had been sitting inside the house of God while the people of God had learned to live without it.

And when the Word was finally brought into the light, it exposed just how much needed to be restored.

Centuries later, John tells a strangely familiar story.

Only now the scene has widened far beyond the Temple.

The whole world is in need of restoration.

Humanity still bears the image of God, but that image has been distorted.

The darkness has settled in.

And once again—

the Word is already there.

“He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him.”
—John 1:10

The Word was here.

And we did not recognize Him.

Not a scroll lying forgotten somewhere inside a deteriorating Temple.

The living Word walking through the broken world He Himself had made.

The Light had stepped into the darkness.

And the darkness could not overcome it.

Which brings us back to the question that has haunted the human story from almost the beginning:

“Did God really say?”

We doubted His Word.

Distorted His Word.

Forgotten His Word.

Ignored His Word.

At one point, His own people had even lost His Word inside His own house.

And so John takes us back.

Past Josiah.

Past David.

Past Moses.

Past Abraham.

Past the garden.

Past the serpent.

Past the question.

Back before anything had gone wrong.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
—John 1:1

Before anyone ever asked,

“Did God really say?”

there was the Word.

And the answer to that question would not ultimately come as another sentence.

Or another scroll.

Or even another prophet declaring,

“Thus says the LORD.”

God answered it Himself.

“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”
—John 1:14

The Word humanity doubted—

came near.

The Word humanity lost—

came looking for us.

The Word humanity ignored—

spoke again.

The perfect image of God had stepped into the story.

The question was:

Did God really say?

And God answered by sending

the Word Himself.

The Last Word.

But not the finish line.

## Between the Tables

Near the end of Revelation, John sees Him again.

This time He is coming as King.

And John tells us His name:

“His name is called the Word of God.”
Revelation 19:13

The Word questioned in the garden.

The Word carried by the prophets.

The Word lost in the Temple.

The Word recovered under Josiah.

The Word who became flesh.

Still standing.

Still speaking.

Still King.

And then the Bible pulls back the curtain and shows us where the whole story is headed.

A garden.

The tree of life is there again.

The curse is gone.

God dwells with His people.

“They will see his face.”

And they will “reign forever and ever.”

Presence.

Rule.

And in the middle of it all—

the Word.

But we are not there yet.

We live between the tables.

Behind us is the Passover table in the upper room.

Ahead of us is the wedding feast of the Lamb.

Behind us is the victory already won.

Ahead of us is the day when every enemy is finally put beneath His feet, every tear is wiped away, and we see His face.

But here we are.

Still running our leg of the race.

Still carrying what has been handed to us.

Still learning to live as though God really said what He said.

We cannot see every turn in the course.

The finish line is not yet in sight.

But we know where the story is going.

And we can look behind us and see the long line of people who carried the Word far enough for it to reach us.

Someone preserved it.

Someone taught it.

Someone believed it.

Someone lived it.

Someone handed it forward.

And now, for this stretch of the course, it is in our hands.

May it never be said that the Word was lost on our watch.

May we hide it in our hearts.

Order our lives around it.

Carry it faithfully through the miles God has given us.

And when our part of the course is finished, may there be another runner reaching for it.

Another generation who knows what God has said because we faithfully handed forward what was given to us.

The Word made it to us.

By faith, may we carry it forward.

 ## Questions for Reflection

1. At the Barkley, a runner's miles count for nothing without the torn page that proves they found the book. When you look back over the past week, what evidence would show that you actually went where God's Word pointed you, and not only that you covered a lot of ground?
2. Judah kept pointing to the Temple and saying, “The LORD is among us,” while the Book sat lost somewhere inside it. Is there a landmark in your own life (a church habit, a family history, a role you hold) that you have been trusting in place of paying attention to where you are actually headed?
3. Hope describes restoring an 1826 house, where the question was “What did the builder intend?” rather than “What do I want?” Where might God be asking you to recover something old instead of inventing something new, and what would you have to stop treating as the standard?
4. When Josiah heard the Book read aloud, he tore his clothes before he did anything else. When was the last time Scripture reached you with that kind of weight, and what tends to keep its words from landing that hard?
5. Hilkiah recovered the Word, Josiah humbled himself under it, and Huldah spoke it without softening it for the king. Which of those three pieces (guarding God's presence, living under His rule, or faithfully relaying His Word) is God asking you to carry for the people around you this season?

- [ Session 8: Jehosheba ](https://narroway.net/gat-devotionals/jehosheba)

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