We saw that Hezekiah, who is one of the greatest kings that Israel had, did something very unique that no other king from the time of Solomon had done. We’ve studied a huge period of time. We went all the way from studying David and Solomon, Rehoboam, the splitting of the kingdom, the northern kingdom of Israel, all of their kings.
We see that now that kingdom has come to an end during the time of Hezekiah because of the rebellion of the people against God. And then we saw that the southern kingdom, Judah, had their own issues. And that even though they had more godly kings, because the northern kingdom had no godly kings, even though the southern kingdom had men that started out good, oftentimes they’d finish bad.
And oftentimes they would allow altars and high places to false gods to come in to the land of Judah, just as they had to the land of Israel. It’s interesting that Hezekiah’s dad and his father, whose name was Ahaz, was one of the worst kings that Judah had. Ahaz followed Jotham and followed Uzziah.
Uzziah started out good but ended up bad, thinking he could be king and priest and only one could be king and priest, and that’s the Lord Jesus Christ. And even though Ahaz had had instruction, he turned from God and he introduced all the false gods and the pagan gods, and even to the point where it said that he followed after the kings of Israel, the northern kingdom, and really was more like the house of Ahab than the house of David. So much so that he wasn’t even buried with the rest of the kings of Judah because he was so bad.
But his son turned out so good. And Hezekiah, when he was a young man, the first thing he did, not like Rehoboam, the son of Solomon, who went to all of his friends and said, what should I do? He went to the Lord. And the first thing he did is introduce the people back to God, an amazing thing.
He began to tear down the high places and the altars. He began to clean the temple and he had the priests sanctify themselves and the Levites sanctify themselves so that there were those that could lead the people in the worship of God. Then he called the people to repentance.
We saw on Sunday that for the first time, as I mentioned, since the time of Solomon, the whole nation of Israel that was left in the land, the northern tribes as well as those of Judah in the southern portion of Israel, were summoned by Hezekiah to come to the temple and celebrate the Passover. This is extremely important. As we’ve studied when we celebrate the Lord’s Supper, we know that the Passover was pointing to the coming of Jesus.
It pointed to the fact that there was only one way to come to God and that was on His terms. And as the Lord Himself said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man cometh unto the Father but by me.
Jesus had not come during the time of Hezekiah, but the Passover was showing that a sacrifice would come and would be made and that sacrifice would be Jesus, the Messiah. As he brought the whole nation of Israel together, they celebrated the Passover as we saw. The tribes of the north came and we’re going to see tonight that something amazing is going to happen.
As these people come together to worship at the temple for the first time since Solomon, they’re reintroduced to the true and the living God. They’re reintroduced to the truth of His Word. They’re reintroduced to the fact that they need to have a relationship with Him because apart from the relationship there is no hope.
And they were reintroduced to the sacrificial system which pointed to their need to have a sacrifice offered on their behalf for their sins. But even though these sacrifices were offered by the priests and the Levites because there weren’t enough priests that were sanctified to offer all the sacrifices brought, and so we see the Levites had to help as well, that they were introduced to the fact that there was a Messiah that was coming who would ultimately be the sacrifice. You and I live at such a unique time in history.
Hezekiah, even though he was living in an era of history that wasn’t much different than the one we’re living in. There was all kinds of wickedness going on in the world. There were evil leaders that wanted to destroy all that God loved.
You had the Assyrians, you had the Egyptians, later on you had the Babylonians which would be those that would lead the southern kingdom of Judah into captivity. But in the midst of all that turmoil, in the midst of all the pressure coming from false gods, false religions, false leaders, and even the leaders of Israel, and the leaders of Judah, turning to worship false gods and leading the people astray, Hezekiah’s eyes were on God. What an amazing thing.
I want us to see this evening as we look at chapter 31, what Hezekiah is going to do. But before we do that, let’s just bow in prayer. Dear Heavenly Fathers, we come before you this evening.
Lord, I pray that you would just bless our hearts. Lord, help us to understand the importance of following you and looking to you and not looking to men. Not being influenced by a world system and culture that would have us turn our backs on you and embrace a world system that’s in total rebellion to you, but instead longing for you, embracing you, and having a relationship with you that we can walk with you and be light and salt in the midst of all the darkness around us.
Help us to learn from King Hezekiah, and help us to be like him. This we ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.
I want us to begin with verse 27 of chapter 30, which tells us what happened after the Passover was completed. Then the priests, the Levites, arose and blessed the people, and their voice was heard, and their prayer came up to his holy dwelling place, even unto heaven. And when that happened, God began to stir a tremendous event in the hearts of all the people.
And it began with worship. It began with repentance. It began with humbling themselves.
It began with acknowledging the fact they needed God as their Lord and Savior. And then it ended with calling on his name. And the Levites, who were instructed by the Lord to lead the nation of Israel in worship of God, were the ones praying.
Chapter 31. Now when all this was finished, and all Israel that were present went out from the cities of Judah and break the images in pieces and cut down the groves and threw down the high places and the altars out of all Judah and Benjamin, in Ephraim also and in Manasseh, until they had utterly destroyed them all. Then all the children of Israel returned every man to his possessions into their own cities.
I want you to see that when true repentance and true acknowledgement of God as your Lord and Savior happens in the hearts of people, they just don’t go back to the pigsty. They don’t go back to the world, but instead they get rid of it. You know, this last week we had the Super Bowl.
Look at the people here tonight. And we’ve got the grand totals of, what, seven of us? Look at the Super Bowl last week. You had a stadium that was filled with thousands.
You had millions watching on television. And Mark Cahill just wrote an interesting article for his little weekly paper that he puts out on the Internet. And it said, Men Playing with Balls.
In that article he said, when you’ve got a small boy and you give him a ball and he throws it up in the air and he catches it, mom and dad and everyone around will clap their hands and say, good Johnny, good Johnny. When you become a man and you throw a ball and you catch it, millions cheer, you’re paid millions of dollars, but it’s still a ball. And what does it really mean? And what is the purpose of it? And at the same time that literally millions were turning on their televisions to watch the Super Bowl, I would ask if you counted the people that went to church that Sunday, were the churches filled or was everybody at home making preparations for their party? What is the priorities of our lives? What has God called us and revealed to us that we should be doing and how should we live our lives? My wife will attest to the fact, I like sports.
Sports aren’t the issue, but sports become the issue when they become your God. A number of years ago I heard a man bring a sermon and he called the greatest false god in America, the ball game. I want you to stop and think about something in our nation.
If you go back to the Roman culture, they built these giant coliseums and literally thousands of people would come and sit in the coliseums and they started having games but it ended up where it got more brutal and more brutal and bloodier and bloodier until they had the gladiators in the coliseums killing one another and the people would hold their thumbs up if they wanted the man to live or hold their thumbs down if they wanted the man to die. It is said that one day there was a Christian that came to Rome. He’d been living in the wilderness his whole life and he hadn’t been introduced to the culture of Rome, the Roman culture.
He found himself going to the coliseum and there he saw the brutality of man against man and he couldn’t take it. He got out of his chair and he went down in the field and he started crying to the people, what are you doing? What are you doing? God hasn’t created you to kill one another. God hasn’t created you to worship this.
It is said that the impact was amazing and even though, if I’m remembering the story correct, one of the gladiators killed him but the people were silenced and it was the beginning of the end of the Roman gladiator fights. When revival has come and revival has come in our nation a couple of times and it’s amazing. When revival came in America, the first time it came was before the War of Independence and it was referred to as the Great Awakening and you had three young English preachers, John and Charles Wesley and George Whitefield and they came to America.
They were not allowed to preach in the churches in England. When they were in England, they would go out into the parks and preach in the open air. They came to America and they began to do the same thing.
It is said of George Whitefield that he had such an amazing voice that literally thousands of people would come to hear him speak. He wouldn’t have the amplifiers. I’ve got an amplifier in here for seven people but he had such an amazing voice that when thousands would come to hear him, the ones that were furthest away could hear him as well as the ones that were in front.
It was said that there would be those that would come to mock him, to distract him and try to undermine the things he was saying and oftentimes those would be the very first ones that would be converted to Christ as they heard the Gospel message. The Spirit of God was on the preaching of these three men. The Wesley brothers were more route preachers.
They had horses and it’s said that John Wesley rode many more miles than most preachers travel in cars but they had an impact because God was using them and people’s hearts were stirred. There was a great awakening and many people came to Christ. Shortly thereafter was the birth of America, the Constitution that God gave our land which is totally different than any other government in the history of the world but it began in the preaching and the transformation of hearts of people in America.
The second revival came before the Civil War. If you study history and study the Civil War, you will understand that the Civil War was an attempt to destroy all that America stood for and whether you take the side of the North or the South, that isn’t a significant issue but if you look at those that really were behind it, both on the North and the South, they desired to undermine and destroy God’s influence in America. But prior to the Civil War, in the 1850s, there was another revival and many people came to Christ.
I don’t know what God’s going to do with our nation. I am concerned because I don’t hear things like repentance, revival, turning to Jesus. I hear the importance of following our Constitution.
I hear the importance of following conservative leaders. The people in Israel at the time of Hezekiah didn’t follow Hezekiah. They followed God.
And the amazing thing is, Hezekiah began to be used by God to put the things in motion but it was the transformation of the people’s hearts that resulted in what we’re seeing in Chapter 31. Initially, Hezekiah is the one that went to the priest and he went to the Levites and for those of you who aren’t familiar with the Old Testament, the priests were those that were descendants of the sons of Aaron that were responsible for leading the worship in the temple and they all had different responsibilities depending on which son they were a descendant of. And the Levites were all the descendants of Levi and God had chosen them to be the spiritual leaders of the whole nation of Israel even though their ancestor Levi had received really a judgment from God for his attitude along with his brother Simeon when they killed all the men of Shechem.
Yet because the tribe of Levi in the desert when God’s character was under attack stood with God and not with the rest of the nation of Israel that was ready to throw Moses out God said, I’ve got a special place for you. They became the leaders of the nation of Israel spiritually and the Levites were placed they didn’t inherit any land they just inherited little cities or suburbs outside the other cities of the other tribes and they were placed throughout the tribes of Israel and they were to bring spiritual direction for the land. As we read in the opening verses of chapter 31 the Levites had made their prayer to the Lord at the end of the Passover and the people responded to God’s direction and it says in verse 1, and now when all this was finished that is the Passover was finished the worship of the Lord was finished the singing of the hymns were finished the prayers were finished when it was all finished all Israel that were present went out to the cities of Judah and break the images in pieces and cut down the groves and threw down the high places and the altars out of all Judah and all Benjamin and Ephraim also and Manasseh now what’s significant about that? Ephraim was the center of worship for the northern kingdom of Israel Ephraim had Bethel where one of the calves and the false altar was set up Manasseh was the other tribe that was descended from Joseph and they always used to work together in conjunction with Ephraim they were close in these two tribes which if you remember when initially Hezekiah called for all the northern tribes anybody who was left in the land of Israel because a lot of the northern kingdom had been taken into captivity by the Assyrians but anybody was left up there and he sent it all the way from Beersheba which is in the southernmost part of Judah all the way to Dan which is in the most northern part of the tribes that were in the north that composed Israel he sent out the call to come and worship initially there were those in Ephraim and Manasseh that mocked his calling they laughed at him now they are broken before the Lord to the point that they are going out and tearing down their altars and tearing down their false gods and tearing down their high places could God transform hearts? that’s the question I think the evidence is clear it happened in the nation of Israel it happened in America and it’s in our past will God be merciful and gracious to us again and pour out his spirit of conviction on our land that people would turn to him and that we tear down our altars and our false gods and what we worship I was talking to a man the other day who grew up in a Christian home and he said you know I never realized how blessed I was my mom and dad made sure I was in church every Sunday my mom and dad taught me the Bible my mom and dad showed me the importance of making God not the things of this world first in my life I never realized how blessed I was he was talking about those that he’d come in contact with and priorities and what are we teaching our children today like I said I’m not against sports because I played a lot of sports but they were number one in my life when I played sports the furthest we ever traveled for a game was just a few miles today when you’re as young as four and five years old for hockey and football and baseball you may travel not just hundreds of miles but literally even close to a thousand miles for tournaments and camps and parents will have their kids every weekend at a tournament they won’t be in church and even if they’re Christians they won’t be in church what’s wrong with that what’s wrong with our kids placing so much focus on Hollywood and music it becomes a god to them.
What have we taught them? Are we setting the example of these people that really repented and went out and began to tear down altars to false gods, that begin to cry out to the true and the living God, that begin to ask Him to work in their hearts and lives? I want you to see what Hezekiah says. Verse 2, And Hezekiah appointed the courses of the priests and the Levites after their courses, every man according to his services, the priests and the Levites for burnt offering and the peace offerings, to minister and to give thanks and to praise in the gates of the tents of the Lord. You know, the last king in Judah, no king in Israel ever did, but the last king in Judah who put the courses of the priests in order was David, the second king of Judah, really the first king that God had really established.
I mean, God had Samuel anoint Saul, but that was because the people demanded a king, and He gave them desires of their heart, and Saul was never a king after God’s heart, but David was. And David established the courses of the priests, and he did it according to the law. He went back and he read what God had told Moses to do with the sons of Aaron when they came to the temple.
Now some people say, well, what difference does that make? We studied just a few weeks ago on Sunday morning about Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist, and he was a priest, and one of his responsibilities was to offer incense, and he was of the course that would offer incense, and there were so many priests, even by the time of Zechariah, that you probably only got to do this once in your life. And while he was doing it, an angel appeared to him and told him he was going to have a son, and he should name his son John, because this was going to be the one who would come and preach and call the people to prepare themselves for the Son of God. God’s Word reveals to us all these things, but most people don’t even know them.
Why was it important that he re-established the courses? Why was it important that people look and have the temple worship the way that God established it? It was not by chance that the one time in his life that Zechariah got to offer the incense, that that is the day the angel of the Lord appeared to him, and that is the day that his wife Elizabeth was told that she was going to have a child by Zechariah, who would be the forerunner of the Messiah, who would be like Elijah as one calling out in the wilderness. We see that he appointed the king’s portion of his substance for the burnt offerings to whip for the morning and the evening burnt offerings and the burnt offerings for the Sabbaths and for the new rooms and for the feasts and as it is written in the law of the Lord. Did Hezekiah demand anything he didn’t do himself? The answer is no.
Not only that, he set the tone and he set the direction and he set the way. He was the first one to bring the offerings to the priests. He was the first one to make sure they were there in your home.
God calls us as husbands and wives to a unique position in front of our children. We’re to set the tone. We’re to be the leaders.
We’re to be the ones that show them as Hezekiah showed the whole nation. Why does God do this? Why does God call us to have the sanctity of marriage in a home where the children are a real blessing? Why does God do that? Because God has established a way by which we pass from generation to generation faith. In the book of Deuteronomy or Numbers, I just lost what place it’s in, but it talks about what the responsibilities of a father are and said every action that he takes during the day is to be pointing to the Lord.
Every action. And he’s to be teaching constantly his children and moms are the same way. And in many ways, moms have even a greater opportunity for influence because oftentimes they are with the children more than dads.
But it says when you’re sitting at the table, when you’re going about your work, when you’re doing anything, you’re to be doing it unto the Lord, and you’re to be setting an example for your children. If we go into most churches today and ask people, what example are you setting for your children? Are you like Hezekiah that takes the lead, that shows and brings the offerings that God asks? And you know what offering God asks of us? Because he does ask of an offering from believers in Christ. It’s a very unique offering.
It’s found in the book of Romans in chapter 12. And the Apostle Paul says, you are to be a living sacrifice given to the Lord. What is a living sacrifice? When you see what a dead sacrifice is, that’s what Hezekiah was bringing.
Goats and sheep, bullocks. He sacrificed their bloodshed, pointing to the coming Messiah who would be sacrificed and his blood would be shed. But because his blood was shed, as the Apostle Paul says in chapter 15 of 1 Corinthians, when he gives us a summary of the gospel in about three verses, and he said that Jesus died according to the scriptures, and Jesus was buried according to the scriptures, and Jesus rose again from the dead according to the scriptures, and was seen by many.
And it’s revealed by the Apostle Paul in that short summary, the heart of the gospel, that Jesus went to the cross, shed his blood, was buried, but rose again from the dead, gaining victory over death and sin, and then coming before his disciples and commissioning them to be those that would go out and be the example. He said before he went back into heaven, he commissioned them, go and teach and baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Go and reveal what I have shown you.
Go and reveal what I have done in your heart. That’s what Hezekiah did. God revealed to Hezekiah the importance of following in obedience to him, the importance of looking to the sacrificial system that was given at his time that was pointing to Jesus, because there was only one way to come to God, and that would be through his Messiah.
And Hezekiah did it and set the example. We’re called to do that as parents. We’re called to do that as leaders, no matter what position of leadership you have.
It was interesting, there was a person who was going to be elected to office in our state, and this person was elected, and they’d held this office for a while, and they were re-elected. And the office that they hold could have great influence over the young people of our state. And I called her to talk to her about it, because I was very concerned about what was happening in the Fargo school system, where they were violating state law by teaching transgenderism, encouraging kids to lie to their parents, encouraging school staff to never tell the parents if the kids were wanting to think they were a boy instead of a girl, or a girl instead of a boy.
And they said, we’re going to do it for the sake of the kids. I don’t know, when I grew up that would have been child abuse. And I called her and she said, well, you know, my hands are a bit tied, because I can only do what the state legislature allows me to do.
I said, well, they passed a law, and they said every school, if the kids came and said, well, I’m a boy, but I want to be a girl, the parents were supposed to be immediately told. And our school in Fargo isn’t going to do that. They’re going to break the law.
You’ve got the power to do something. I asked her, do you like to read? She said, oh, I love to read. I said, can I send you a book? And it’s about a man who nobody thought had the power to do anything.
His name was William Carey. William Carey, at a young age, was called by God to be a missionary. So he went to the mission board, and he asked what he had to do to be a missionary.
And they said, you’re not qualified. You’re not qualified. You don’t have degrees.
You don’t have the proper upbringing. You don’t have the proper lineage. You’re just not qualified.
William Carey went home, and know what William Carey did? William Carey was a shoe cobbler. He repaired shoes. Well, why he was repairing shoes, know what he did? He taught himself Hebrew and Greek so he could read from the original language versions of scripture, and he went back to the mission board.
They still said, you’re not qualified. I would like to know how many other missionaries knew Hebrew and Greek fluently and taught it for themselves. I would say probably zero.
William Carey ended up going on his own to India, where he was called. God called him to India. What was happening in India at that time, the major trading companies of England were in India.
England was supposed to be a Christian nation, and many wonderful men and women of the Lord had come out of England. But the English trading companies wanted to keep the people of India enslaved to their false gods, enslaved to their system, so that they could control them and use them for profit. William Carey went to India, and the first thing he did is he was aghast and abhorred by what he saw of these people’s worship, and who they were worshipping, and what they were worshipping, and how they were worshipping.
One of the things that they did in India, which is sad to say they are turning back to today, is if a husband died, they would burn his corpse, but they would demand that his wife climb on top of the platform where he was being burned and lay with him as the torches were lit, even though she was alive. William Carey got that stopped. William Carey had the Bible transferred, translated rather, into the languages of the land.
He did much of the translation himself. William Carey taught the people how to grow their crops properly. William Carey taught them about economics, but the most important thing that William Carey did is he introduced them to Jesus Christ.
The man who was not qualified transformed the southern eastern portion of India from a pagan culture to a Christian culture where many, many people were believers in Christ, and today you still have some influences in those provinces of southeast India from William Carey from way over just about 200 years ago. There was a book about his life, and it’s not in print anymore, so I had to go on Amazon, and I had to pay a little bit for it, but I got a copy of it, and I sent it to this lady, and I said, I’d like you to read this book. You say you really can’t make any influence.
They told this man he could make no influence, but with God nothing’s impossible. Now, I want you to understand, as with Hezekiah, Hezekiah yielded to the Spirit of God and was led by the Spirit of God and did what the Spirit of God directed him to do, and things happened in Israel that had not happened for hundreds of years, and in Judah since the time of David. And people came to know God, give their lives to him, so they were out tearing down the idols, not Hezekiah, not the soldiers of Judah, not the priests and the Levites, but the people, because it was their hearts that were being transformed.
What does America need today? I’m grateful for what’s happening in our country with the current direction and getting rid of a lot of the total nonsense and ungodliness that was brought in over the last four years, but I want to tell you it’s never going to last unless people’s hearts are changed. And where does it begin? In the home. It begins in the Christian home, and it begins in the Christian churches, and it begins with pastors who are unwilling, who are willing rather, to preach the gospel uncompromisingly and not allow the vain philosophies of the world to undermine and penetrate God’s Word.
That the Spirit of God can convict the men and women of our nation about the importance of giving their hearts and lives to Jesus, and it’s more than walking in ire and saying a prayer, but it’s becoming a living sacrifice for holy God. Let’s just close in prayer. Dear only Father, I thank you for this opportunity.
I thank you for the fact that we could gather together tonight, and although we’d be few in number, Lord, you are speaking to hearts. Lord, I take that this word would go out over the internet, and you touch hearts there too. Lord, may we see you work in our city, our nation, our state, transforming lives and helping us to see what’s really important.
Helping us not just to get lip service to you, but rather give our lives to you. Lord, go with us and help us to make a difference where we’re at. Help us to be an influence to our neighbor, to our co-worker, to our fellow student, to those that you bring across our path, because you commissioned every one of your followers to do that.
Not just pastors and priests and missionaries, but you commissioned every Christian. And Lord, I pray that you would help us to fulfill that. This we’d ask in Jesus’ name.