When God is removed a very serious vacuum is created for man was created to worship. Mankind always gets worship all wrong. Few take the time to even consider how God views their worship. Is your regular worship according to God’s Word and His Holy requirements? Josiah had to go back far into Israel’s history to rekindle worship in Jerusalem.
2 Kings 23:21-27 And the king commanded all the people saying, Prepare the Passover to Jehovah your God, as it is written in the Book of the Covenant.
The most holy of the festivals had been completely forgotten or turned into a form of pagan idolatry. The Passover helped the people how God redeemed with His Hand from Egypt. How He destroyed Egypt and Pharoah’s army right before their ‘father’s eyes’.
Surely there was not held such a Passover from the days of the judges who judged Israel, nor in all the days of the kings of Israel, nor of the kings of Judah,
but in the eighteenth year of King Josiah, this Passover was held to Jehovah in Jerusalem.
It seems that this was so new to them that it astounded most. Josiah did not improvise some worship according to his ideas or desires, but to God’s. In order to worship God in both Spirit and Truth, you have to put away all forms of sin, idolatry, and man-made traditions.
And also Josiah put away the mediums, and the soothsayers, and the family gods, and the idols, and all the abominations which were seen in the land of Judah and in Jerusalem, so that he might perform the Words of the Law which were written in the Book which Hilkiah the priest found in the house of Jehovah.
And there was no king like him before him, who turned to Jehovah with all his heart and with all his soul, and with all his might, according to all the Law of Moses. And after him none rose up like him.
Sad commentary on Judah.
But Jehovah did not turn from the heat of His great wrath, with which His anger was kindled against Judah, because of all the provocations with which Manasseh had provoked Him. And Jehovah said, I will also remove Judah out of My sight, as I have removed Israel, and will cast off this city Jerusalem which I have chosen, and the house of which I said, My name shall be there.
God never promised to remove all the serious consequences from our sin. There will come a time for all of us when judgment will come and the time to repent or change for the better will be gone forever.