Getting It Going

The transcript below has been slightly edited to make it easier for reading.

Father, we thank You once again for Your Word. We thank You for the great blessing of being in Your church and the work of the Gospel in our midst. We thank You, Lord, that You have called us into this relationship with You. In a time like this, in a time of our struggles, we know that You are a God who has asked us to approach You. And in asking us to approach You, You are there - ready to be met by us. Father, we ask that today and in the weeks to come, as we study together the life of Hezekiah, that You would help us to root ourselves in a knowledge and understanding of God and that we would live our lives as Hezekiah did before You. Father, help us to recapture our momentum to get our lives going again. We commit this time in Your hands. In Christ's name we pray, Amen.

Let us read together 2 Chronicles 29:1-19. Then in our Bible studies you will continue on in this passage starting in verse 20 onwards. Throughout the week we'll be spending our time thinking about worship from the perspective of 2 Chronicles 29. Let me read for us the first 19 verses:

Hezekiah began to reign when he was twenty-five years old, and he reigned twenty-nine years in Jerusalem. His mother's name was Abijah the daughter of Zechariah. And he did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, according to all that David his father had done. 

In the first year of his reign, in the first month, he opened the doors of the house of the Lord and repaired them. He brought in the priests and the Levites and assembled them in the square on the east and said to them, “Hear me, Levites! Now consecrate yourselves, and consecrate the house of the Lord, the God of your fathers, and carry out the filth from the Holy Place. For our fathers have been unfaithful and have done what was evil in the sight of the Lord our God. They have forsaken him and have turned away their faces from the habitation of the Lord and turned their backs. They also shut the doors of the vestibule and put out the lamps and have not burned incense or offered burnt offerings in the Holy Place to the God of Israel. Therefore the wrath of the Lord came on Judah and Jerusalem, and he has made them an object of horror, of astonishment, and of hissing, as you see with your own eyes. For behold, our fathers have fallen by the sword, and our sons and our daughters and our wives are in captivity for this. Now it is in my heart to make a covenant with the Lord, the God of Israel, in order that his fierce anger may turn away from us. My sons, do not now be negligent, for the Lord has chosen you to stand in his presence, to minister to him and to be his ministers and make offerings to him.”

Then the Levites arose, Mahath the son of Amasai, and Joel the son of Azariah, of the sons of the Kohathites; and of the sons of Merari, Kish the son of Abdi, and Azariah the son of Jehallelel; and of the Gershonites, Joah the son of Zimmah, and Eden the son of Joah; and of the sons of Elizaphan, Shimri and Jeuel; and of the sons of Asaph, Zechariah and Mattaniah; and of the sons of Heman, Jehuel and Shimei; and of the sons of Jeduthun, Shemaiah and Uzziel. They gathered their brothers and consecrated themselves and went in as the king had commanded, by the words of the Lord, to cleanse the house of the Lord. The priests went into the inner part of the house of the Lord to cleanse it, and they brought out all the uncleanness that they found in the temple of the Lord into the court of the house of the Lord. And the Levites took it and carried it out to the brook Kidron. They began to consecrate on the first day of the first month, and on the eighth day of the month they came to the vestibule of the Lord. Then for eight days they consecrated the house of the Lord, and on the sixteenth day of the first month they finished. Then they went in to Hezekiah the king and said, “We have cleansed all the house of the Lord, the altar of burnt offering and all its utensils, and the table for the showbread and all its utensils. All the utensils that King Ahaz discarded in his reign when he was faithless, we have made ready and consecrated, and behold, they are before the altar of the Lord.”

Today we want to start looking at what does it mean for us to get our worship in order. Hezekiah is a new king, and in the first month of the first year of his reign, he gets to work putting his nation on the right track. I think this is a timely message for many of us because for the past year, many of us have felt stuck in neutral. I think the past year of pandemic has taught many of us one of two lessons: either we're on the wrong track or we're on the right track but we're not moving.

As the pandemic has stripped away many of the things we have relied on for our lives - the busyness, the things that we kept racing after that filled in our moments, the things that we thought were so important we couldn't do without - suddenly, we're left to face a reality: our lives have been wanting to go somewhere. We have wanted to proceed to someplace, but instead find ourselves not proceeding to that place at all. In fact, we find ourselves on the wrong train, proceeding in the wrong direction, heading to a destination that we haven't wanted.

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The pandemic has shown many of us a lie that has been propagated by society that says your twenties should be the most productive years of your life - that our twenties is a time in which our lives are based around achieving something. For the first two decades of our lives, we've been cared for. We're in school studying, and finally graduate and get a sheet of paper. Then we feel, "I'm going out into the world! The world's mine to conquer!" But in reality, what we face when we go out into the world is that it's not like that.

And now we blame it on the pandemic. We say, "I had to move back to my parent's house. Why? Because of the pandemic. My career is put on hold. My life is on hold. I don't know what to do with myself." And we put all that wrong on the pandemic. But what we're going to see in the life of Israel and Hezekiah is the fact that it's not the pandemic's fault. It's not a conquering army that is moving towards us. The fault is we've got our worship wrong.

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The other reality is that many of us find ourselves on the right track. We're on the train going to the right place, but our problem is that the train is stuck and not moving. The rail is correct, but there's just no drive to it. How many games of Solitaire have you played on your computer? How many times have you played Candy Crush on your phone? How much time have you spent watching reruns of shows that you have already watched? How much time have you wasted in this past year, when God has given you time to decompress and process anew the things that have been going on around you?

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We're a people without momentum. As our church is facing the future - soon things will open up again, life will become busier and busier, things will move forward - the question is, how are you going to move forward? How are you going to take the lessons from this past year and put them in your life so that it will impact your life and set you on a course to do the work that God's prepared you to do? 

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Some of us for a year have been brought to our knees, brought to tears, over the problems and struggles we face. But in reality, some of us here have been refugees for seven years! Stuck in neutral, waiting, can't get married, can't work, can't have a life, everyday the same thing over and over and over. This series, the life of Hezekiah, is a chance for you and I to address anew what it means for us as a church and as individuals to reengage in the life that God has for us.

We've read the first part of Hezekiah (the first month of the first year of his reign) and we see that Hezekiah is facing a challenge. The challenge is the city of Jerusalem is surrounded, and Hezekiah's life as he knows it is over. Judah is going to fall soon, just as the Northern Kingdom had fallen. Now Judah and the city of Jerusalem is going to fall into the hands of the Assyrians and the people of Jerusalem are saying, "This isn't the life I signed up for."

What does it mean for Hezekiah to get out of this hole and get back on track again? What's interesting is it wasn't just this event of Assyria invading Israel and now invading Judah which has caused Hezekiah to think this. Actually, Hezekiah's whole life has been a life of brokenness.

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Break the Cycle

The first point I want us to look at today is the need to break this cycle that we're stuck in, that just keeps going and going. There's a need for you and I to feel like we can break it because God wants us to break out of it and capture some momentum. 

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As we break the cycle, the first thing we need to see from the life of Hezekiah is that there's a terrible upbringing with disastrous consequences. Hezekiah's father was terrible. King Ahaz was one of the worst kings that you could have in the Southern Kingdom of Judah. King Ahaz actually had a decent father, Jotham. Jotham, the grandfather of Hezekiah and the father of Ahaz, did things that pleased the Lord. But somewhere along the process, a godly grandfather produced a father that was terrible. Hezekiah is being raised in a house under a king who has led the nation in false worship and has led his family in immorality.

Ahaz was a mess. I mean, he was a literal mess. It stems from having false worship in his life. Ahaz, when he became king, quickly put himself under the authority of the Assyrian kingdom in Damascus. He recognized that he doesn't have much power, his treasury is whittling away, and his kingdom is whittling away. In order to save himself,  to buy some time so that he could survive in the short term because maybe something in the future will change, he submitted himself to the authority of an idol-worshipping king in Damascus. This started Ahaz further along a path that led to the corruption of Israel and its worship.

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In 2 Chronicles 28:2-4, it says:

but he walked in the ways of the kings of Israel.

So Ahaz was walking in the ways of Israel, the Northern Kingdom, which is those who won't worship God's way.

He even made metal images for the Baals, 

for the false idols, the false gods in the land of Canaan.

and he made offerings in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom and burned his sons as an offering, according to the abominations of the nations whom the Lord drove out before the people of Israel. And he sacrificed and made offerings on the high places and on the hills and under every green tree.

We find that Ahaz has abandoned worship. He has closed the doors of the Temple. He went to Damascus and saw the altar in the temple and said, "Well, obviously the gods in Damascus are helping this king because their armies are big and their territories are expanding." So he quickly made a picture of this altar in Damascus, went back to Jerusalem, made a replica, and put the altar from Damascus in the Temple. He removed the altar to God, to Yahweh, and instead he put an altar to a different god and had the people worship there.

Then he closed the doors. He said, "You don't even need to go worship there. Let's close the doors. Let's worship idols. You don't even need to come to Jerusalem." On the hilltops in different places he put more and more idols so that the people could fill the land with false worship to idols. 

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Even worse, he took his sons, Hezekiah's brothers, and threw them in the fire to sacrifice them to false gods. What a mess. What a terrible father. A father that instead of protecting his children, sacrifices and offers up his very children to the worship of false gods.

A terrible upbringing. An upbringing with disastrous consequences. Many of us aren't just in terrible situations from the pandemic this past year. Many of us come from families that have been terrible, broken, and have scarred us for life. We carry with us, as we approach God and the remainder of our lives, tragic scars and wounds. We wonder, "Is there any hope for someone like me? Damaged and broken. Ruined." The good news is, from Hezekiah we'll see that you can put your worship correct which will put your life on a path of transformation. 

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The second lesson I see from Hezekiah is that the righteous response of Hezekiah leads to a transformative impact. Hezekiah could have been sitting at home saying, "God, it's not fair! Why does my father have to be like this?" He could be angry at his father and upset about his situation. His father was angry, his father was abusive, and all of that could go into Hezekiah's life and he could walk around burdened by the baggage of his family's history that has scarred him forever.

But that's not what we see happening. Hezekiah, who saw his own brothers sacrificed to idols and has seen Israel turn away from the Lord, chose to be different. He chose to put the first things first. The first thing wasn't to get himself into counseling. His first thing was to put himself right with God - to put the worship correct. Until you have the worship correct, everything else you do to repair the brokenness of your life is just a short term fix. You need to get the right things right first, and that means putting God and His way first. 

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It's interesting, because the first three chapters of the life of Hezekiah all deal with him restoring the worship in the Temple in Jerusalem. The first few months of his reign occupied most of the Bible's story about what Hezekiah did. Why? Because the most important thing that he could do to make his life right is to get his worship right. 

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How can we talk about restarting our life unless we talk about how to restart your worship first? The way you overcome tragic lifestyles, the victimization that's happened to you in your life, is by having a righteous response. All that comes from having the grace of God at work in your life. It's the grace of God that's going to bring these unexpected results to you.

Recapturing your momentum starts by getting your Gospel-heart orientation correct, because then the grace of God flows into your brokenness. The grace of God flows into the problems you're facing and in the midst of these struggles, God's Word works. God's love encompasses your heart and fills you. God's Spirit empowers you so that you and I will see the transformative work of the Gospel in our lives.

From Hezekiah, we see something important. We see that God raises up somebody out of brokenness because they got their worship correct. It's time for you and I to stop and ask what's been going on in the past year of our lives. Have we oriented our lives correctly around the worship of God personally and corporately? Are we allowing God to take away our excuses? Instead of blaming our situation, we should come to God and say, "I've sinned. I've erred. The people have gone astray. I have gone astray. But God, I need You to fix me and it can only happen through me now submitting to You as the true God and worshipping You." 

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Unfortunately, the question for a lot of us is, "Why is this happening to me?" You already know the answer. The answer is you're on the wrong train. You're headed to the wrong place. The only way to get to the right place is to get off the train and get on the right one. Worship the true God. That's how this cycle is going to be broken. Until you get on the right train, until you put your worship in order, you and I will not see the cycle of destruction and brokenness ended in our lives. 

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Confront the Problem

Hezekiah then shows us what it means for us to confront the problem. After we break the cycle, we see how Hezekiah practically gives us step-by-step ways of how you and I can get our worship correct. How is it that we confront the problem of worship?

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The context is this: Assyria is threatening. They are the big military machine. They are the greatest army around there. They just defeated Hezekiah's and the people of Judah's bothers and sisters up in the Northern Kingdom of Israel nine years previously. Now they are threatening the city of Jerusalem and Judea, and the people there are afraid. They're terrified for what's going to happen. In the midst of this time, Hezekiah ascends to the throne.

If you were in this situation - the kingdom buffering you from Assyria has recently fallen, you know you don't have the ability to withstand the onslaught from the Assyrians, and soon he's coming for you - what would you do? I know what I'd do. I would call a committee, we'd form a team, and we'd go off and have a strategic planning retreat. I would get out my markers and a whiteboard (because I'm unable to have a meeting without a whiteboard) and I would say, "Give me all the ideas you can think of that can solve our problems and save us from the Assyrians."

I'm sure some people would think, "Maybe we need more free speech. If the people could say what they wanted freely, that would solve our problems." Or some would say, "Let's try some economic treaties. If we can get more money, then it would allow us to solve our problems and we won't fall to the Assyrians." Others would say, "Maybe we need more defenses. Let's build bigger walls and get a bigger army. Let's tax people." They would go through all the lists of all the different possible solutions.

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But that's not what Hezekiah does. Hezekiah knows clearly what needs to be the priority. That's why I think Hezekiah is so important for us today as we look at what does it mean to get our life back on track. The priority addressed by Hezekiah is the same priority you and I need to address - it's a priority of worship. 

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The very first thing he does is he identifies the correct priority. That's why it says:

In the first year of his reign, in the first month, he opened the doors of the house of the Lord. 

He starts a revolution of worship. He says, "The only chance the people have is to return to worshipping the Lord our God." Has that been the priority you've identified in your life over the past year? Have you been shut down, work from home, play from home, eat from home, and do everything from home? When you sit there regretting the lack of progress in your life over the past year, have you sat there to reflect and to say, "Actually, what truly is the problem here?"

Jerusalem is working from home. They're surrounded by an army. They have nowhere to go, it's not safe out there. It might not be a pandemic, but it's a war machine - a brutal one at that. Hezekiah says, "You know what the problem is? The problem very simply is we need to get our hearts right." And the very first thing he does once he finishes the burial of his father and ascends to the throne is he goes into the Temple and flings open the doors. He identifies the problem: the problem is worship. 

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I recently read a quote by Bob Kauflin which helps us, I think, identify our twenty-first century problem, because it's also a problem of worship. It might not be the worship of statues, of idols like you see happening in Hezekiah's day, but we have something we're worshipping that's displeasing to God. Bob Kauflin says it like this:

We see ourselves as isolated individuals all seeking personal encounters with God, wherever we can find them. Sadly, this reflects our individualistic, me-obsessed culture. Rather than seeing ourselves as part of a worship community, we become worship consumers.  We want worship on demand, served up at our own time, and with our own music.

What he is saying here is we still have a problem of worship. Today, the pandemic has revealed to us again that the core problem facing humanity is nothing more than worship - it's just different. Thousands of years ago, the problem was worshipping idols. Today, the problem is worshipping yourself - consumerism. Our me-obsessed culture is saying, "I deserve worship like I do at Starbucks. I go to Starbucks, ask for a latte low fat, less foam, this kind of picture, and this color mug. I can get it down to whatever I want. And I think if Starbucks can meet my needs in such a specific, tailored way, God should be doing the same. If this church doesn't do it, if this community's not doing it, I can just go online and get worship on demand when I want it, how I want it: by myself, in the privacy of my own home."

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While it's true that you can worship God whenever, wherever, and however, what we're learning from Hezekiah is the importance of corporate worship. To be honest, when we have gathered together, the difference has been incredible and noticeable. People have come back after months away from the church because of the pandemic (and some have stayed away for valid reasons). But when they have come back after months away, they have seen for themselves the difference gathering together has made. When many of you turned out on Easter's sunrise service, people we haven't see before in months, in almost a year, the joy on your faces was evident to all. The problem we face today is the same problem of Hezekiah. Me-centered, self-obsessed worship.

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Hezekiah calls us to address this. He does this by first casting the vision. After he identifies what the problem is, he then casts a vision. He gets people together and he says, "Look, we need to do something. Open these doors. Get to work. We need to clean them out." One of his first acts as king is to reverse the closing of the Temple that was done by his father King Ahaz.

These Temple doors were separating the people from the Holy of Holies, keeping the priests from going in to minister before God, and keeping the high priest from bringing the blood of goats into the Holy of Holies once a year as an atonement for sins. All of this was a symbol of how they had forgotten the Gospel message and instead decided to worship according to their own flavor, according to what works for them. 

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The reason we need this vision to redo our worship is because false worship doesn't honor God. Our worship service is designed to model the Gospel. We first sing praises to God, then we talk about how we struggle to live in this world, which leads us to the reality that I have failed to honor the true God, which brings me to prayer of confession, "I'm a sinner, I need the grace of God." And then the sermon, the Word of God, brings us into a time in which our faith is built up. Then we are commissioned and sent back out into the world. Our corporate worship is a Gospel worship: that God is perfect, we are sinners, and only by the grace of God can we live in this broken world. Only by the grace of God can we shine the light of the Gospel to others who need it.

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Hezekiah starts with this vision: until you recover the Gospel, your worship is meaningless, false, and ineffective. So he commits himself to the work. It says in verse 5, after he opens the doors in verse 3, he says:

Now consecrate yourselves, and consecrate the house of the Lord, the God of your fathers, and carry out the filth from the Holy Place.

There's this passionate devotion going on here. Hezekiah has seen the sorry state of the people of Israel and he says, "We need to set it apart. We need to work to consecrate, to sanctify, to make holy once again the people and this Temple."

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"Consecrate" is a great word. It means to set apart, to separate from all that is wrong. That's why the filth here is brought into picture for us. It starts by committing yourself to the work by having a personal, passionate devotion to worship. How do you approach worship on a Sunday? Do you approach worship as something that if it fits, I do it? That if I have no better option, nothing else going on, I will do it?

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One of the biggest things that have hacked me off as a parent was when my kids were taking Yamaha piano lessons, their piano lessons were on Thursday. No problem, I'm happy to drive them there. The problem is, every time they needed to go up a level, their test was Sunday morning. I'm sorry, what's more important: my kid's piano test or worship on Sunday morning? Some think, "Well, it's just one time. It's no big deal." Yes, it's a big deal! It's a big deal because it's a lifestyle of worship. It's a lifestyle of saying that the things of this world are not as important as getting your worship priority right. I said, "They can just skip the test. If the school wants to take them again, fine. If not, I could care less because the worship is what the priority is."

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What's your passionate devotion to worship? How committed are you to racing into the presence of the Lord on Sunday? For those of you who don't come in person, the service starts at 10 o'clock on Sunday. There's no traffic jams, no problems. Five minutes to 10:00, have you entered the link? By the way, that's not a sin. You can click on the link before 10 o'clock and be prepared for worship. Do you sit there, pray, meditate, and prepare your heart? Or is it 10:15 before you ever click on the link? The great thing about YouTube and the livestream is that it tells you how many people are on and then after the sermon, how many people drop off.

Worship is the WHOLE thing. It's a picture of the Gospel. We're not done just because the sermon started and stopped. You need to usher yourself in preparation into the presence of God. Yet we have no excuse, do we? The excuse is, quite honestly, you just don't have devotion. You don't have passion. You approach Sunday worship as though it's just another activity, another event, rather than something that stirs your heart with love and honor for God, to come before Him and celebrate the redemption we have in Christ. 

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Then, in verses 6-10, you see this sincere devotion to the task, a sincere dedication. Not only is he passionate, "Hear you Levites! Consecrate yourself. Let's get moving!" This is something he really wants to see happen. With sincere devotion, he starts getting at the work. He says, "Our fathers have been unfaithful. My father, he's violated the covenant. He's done everything wrong, he deserves what he got. But we need to be different. We need to dedicate ourselves anew."

What's really remarkable to me here is Hezekiah could've blamed his father for all these problems. Instead he says, "Our fathers have been unfaithful, but we need to fix it." Hezekiah could've simply said, "My father was the worst father you could ever have. I have no other choice but to just follow along because that's the example my father gave me. You have no idea how broken I was as a child, after living under an abusive parent like that. Be thankful I'm not worse than I am." How many husbands have said that to their wives? How many times have we made excuse after excuse after excuse to justify our own sin?

But a heart of worship is a heart that owns its sin. A heart of worship is one that comes to God and says, "Look, I know exactly what's inside my heart. No excuses." You may have a terrible parent, you may have a great parent. You're still a sinner. You may have had the best upbringing in the history of humanity, it doesn't help you. You're a sinner before God. The only reason you can come into worship before God is because of the Gospel. 

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What's remarkable to me in this story is how different Hezekiah is from many of us. Here's what happened: God is angry. God has said He is going to punish Jerusalem. When Hezekiah heard about the anger of God, what was his response? To me, this is the thing that is the most remarkable. When Hezekiah heard of how angry God is with the sin of the people and the sin of Hezekiah, Hezekiah ran to God because he knew that God is a god of repentance. 

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Today when most of us hear about sin and God's judgment of sin, we run away from God, we blame it on others, and we're convinced that we can talk our way out of it later. Hezekiah says, "That's not the way it's going to be. The only hope is to drive myself to God." Has this pandemic shown you that? As you're home alone, confronted by your laziness, your jealousy towards others, your lusts in your heart; as everything has been stripped away and you're left with yourself in the quietness of your home, your emotional instability, your physical instability, your psychological problems, and you've been left with all these problems at home, have you realized that the problem isn't God? The problem is your distance from Him.

This is the sincere devotion, the sincere dedication of Hezekiah to draw himself closer to God in the midst of this, so that as we read in verse 11, there's this unwavering determination. He says in verses 10-11:

Now it is in my heart to make a covenant with the Lord, the God of Israel, in order that his fierce anger may turn away from us. My sons, do not now be negligent, for the Lord has chosen you to stand in his presence, to minister to him and to be his ministers and make offerings to him.

He's rallying the people, "Commit yourself to the work of worship." In order to do that, we need accountability from one another. That's why corporate worship is so important, because I struggle to worship corporately without accountability. Although we're happy that the technology is there for those who can't physically be present, I know that without accountability, my worship declines.

Let me tell you, one week out of this pandemic I watched the service online. It was Easter last year. Because I wasn't preaching, I was forced to actually watch it online. We couldn't come in person, Reverend Tong was preaching, I was home, and we worshiped as a family. I took a shower and even put on a batik shirt, and my daughter Nicole comes over and sees me wearing blue jeans. She says, "I thought we were worshipping, dad?" I figured I was pretty good - I put a clean shirt on! I combed my hair! I was on time! I was there to worship and to sing! But quite honestly, I quickly realized that without accountability, my heart, my quality of worship would not be that which the Lord deserves from me. 

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How have you faced corporate worship remotely? What sort of commitment have you made to consecrate yourself, to make yourself ready for the work of worship? Worship is hard work. What sort of commitment have you made to give yourself accountability for worship? Do you meet with others - two or three? Or if you can't physically be with them, do you have a little covenant community? That's why we created shepherding groups so people could have a community of accountability after worship. Or have you just simply found, "I want worship on demand, worship my way, worship according to the things that I do best, and if I don't like it, I'm just going to shop online for a different service." Hezekiah got his priorities right. Do not be negligent. Consecrate yourself. Put yourself on the right path. 

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Then Hezekiah, he gets everyone involved. It's amazing! If you noticed, I read a list of names of these Levites. Hezekiah goes through them and starts talking about this need to really start a movement of worship. I think each and every one of us can be part of a movement of corporate worship. In our small groups, we're going to talk about personal worship. But today, as we look at Hezekiah's cleansing of the Temple, it sparks the need for us to be part of a revolution of worship corporately.

Churches need to go back to purifying the worship of God and making it right. It starts by you and I not just being consumers of worship, but being leaders of movements of worship for men and women who hear the Gospel, understand the Gospel, and center their worship around the Gospel.

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That momentum starts with you, and then flows out into your community. From your community, it flows out into your nation. As you worship corporately, it should so impact your life that on Monday morning when you go into your office, people can't stop but notice, "Wow, they're so different. You're so different than we are on Monday. I come into Monday and I'm like, 'Oh, I hate work.' I come into Monday and I hate being at the office. But at least I see real people." We come in on Monday knowing that God has commissioned and sent us here to be His ambassador, to help others gain and embrace the momentum of worshipping the true God so He will visit them in their life, in their situations, and bring them out of this darkness and into the light. It starts with you and then it impacts others.

In this passage here, he talks about each family coming - the Levites, the faithful servants. He goes on with all these names of peoples, groups, and those involved in Temple worship. It's remarkable because he talks about two representatives from each of the three major clans.

Then he brings up these two men from Elizaphan. Why are they there? Actually, Aaron had four children, and two of them (it says in Leviticus) offered unholy fire before the Lord: Nadab and Abihu. As a result, God struck them down in the Tabernacle because they worshipped incorrectly. Elizaphan was commissioned to go into the Tabernacle and remove those bodies. Then later you see some of the descendants of Elizaphan again being commissioned by David to bring the Ark into the Temple in Jerusalem. Every time God wanted to restore purity to worship, He called on this clan. These were His go-to people who were there to do worship correctly.

Movement leaders restore corporate worship back to its proper place in the life of the people. That's what each and every one of you should be. Each and every one of us should be agents of bringing corporate worship to society; to cleaning and cleansing the false worship, removing the filth, and consecrating the people once again for worship.

That's exactly what happens here. This movement is initiated and they get to work. The people gathered, they were consecrated, and then they served. That's what we're doing on a Sunday morning. We gather, we remind ourselves of our sins, we ask God to purify us, and then we're commissioned and sent out to serve as agents of worship in a society that's walking in darkness.

Everybody gets involved. The priests go into the Temple because only the priests were allowed in there. They had to remove the objects - the filthy idolatrous objects in the Temple. So for eight days they went into the Temple and they removed it. As they brought it out of the Temple into the Temple courtyard, there the Levites spent another eight days taking these idols. Can you imagine how many idols there must have been? Can you imagine how many filthy, idolatrous things must have been in the Temple that it needed eight days just to remove them, and then another eight days to take them to the Kidron Valley, the graveyard?

When you go to Jerusalem today, you can still see all the graves all over the Kidron Valley as people want to be buried very close to the Temple so when the Messiah comes they'll immediately rise from the dead and come right into the Temple. They want to be as close to Jerusalem as possible. But the Kidron Valley, because it was a graveyard, was unclean. So the priests took these unclean objects from the Temple and passed them off to the Levites who took them into the Kidron Valley and destroyed them there. Why? Because purity of worship is what God is seeking.

Do you see the great care that's given to worship? Hezekiah focuses on it, he consecrates the people, and they come up with a plan. They get involved in analyzing every aspect of the worship going on in this place saying, "What is impure?" not, "What don't I like?" What is displeasing to God? Because what's displeasing to you in worship is secondary.

The question you should ask whenever you go to a church is, "Is this worship honoring God? Is this worship focused on Christ? Is this worship Gospel-centered worship?" If not, you're in a place that is impure. You're in a church where God's not present. You're in a place where they're worshipping their own idols of community, culture, and God according to their standards, not according to His Word. That's why the Word is preached here. The Word reminds us of what is the source of true worship: God's own instructions to us. 

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Hezekiah gets to work, and he follows it through until completion. He does it until the place is completely restored. It takes 16 days just to make the Temple clear again, and then he consecrates again the results. In verses 18-19, it says:

Then they went in to Hezekiah the king and said, “We have cleansed all the house of the Lord, the altar of burnt offering and all its utensils, and the table for the showbread and all its utensils. All the utensils that King Ahaz discarded in his reign when he was faithless, we have made ready and consecrated, and behold, they are before the altar of the Lord.”

Why is it important for this Temple to be consecrated? Why is it so crucial for this worship to be made right again? Because when you worship God falsely, you're hiding the Gospel message. Worship in the Bible is centered around redemption. In Revelations 5, before the throne of God throughout eternity, we see worship is about the Lamb who was slain to take away the sins of the world. True worship is Gospel worship; is redemption worship of Christ our sacrificed lamb for the sins of the world. 

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When we worship falsely, we are taking the greatest, most glorious act that God has ever done (His incarnation, His death, His resurrection) and we're throwing it aside and replacing it with our own ideas. Recovering our worship, getting ourselves back on track means being men and women of the Gospel.

The reason we come together as a group, as a church is to say, "I see that person, they're much richer than I am. And I see that person, she's not as smart as I am. Oh, look at the way he's dressed, he must not have that much money." And as we look around and see people of different social classes, different educational levels, different ages, the whole point is we see that even though we're different, we all are the same before God.

Even though some of you might be more prosperous, more intellectual, or more handsome, we sit here together saying together before God, "There is no difference. We are all sinners saved by Christ. Glory be to Christ." That's why corporate worship is necessary. That's why as a body we come together to remind ourselves to stop comparing ourselves to one another, but compare ourselves to the most holy God. 

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Recover the Momentum

So what are you and I supposed to do about this? Where do we go from this? How is it that you and I are to worship the Lord? As you and I try to recover our momentum, it starts from worship. We don't need to talk about recovering our momentum if we're not talking about getting our worship correct. Remember, Hezekiah is in a city that will soon be surrounded by the greatest war machine in the Middle East. In the midst of this, Hezekiah isn't stocking arms or trying to negotiate treaties with other countries.

Hezekiah is getting his worship right because here's the point: if you got your worship right, if your heart is worshipping the true God, you're impregnable to anything and everything that comes your way. That's the lesson of the Bible. Once your worship is right, everything else that comes to attack you - your emotions, your bad decisions, previous sins, economic downturns, pandemics - you're impregnable and you can stand tall in each and everything that you face. 

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That's why Hezekiah teaches us these three things. First, be like a king by leading in worship. Each and every one of you need to follow the example of Hezekiah - that means leading in worship. Are you leading yourself in worship? Are you leading a community, your family in worship? Your friends in worship? Are you leading a larger group in worship by being part of a church? Each and every one of you need to function like a leader, like a king. Hezekiah was a great king like David and Solomon. Why? Because the first thing he did was worship, restore the Temple. For you and I to recover our momentum in life, we need to be leaders in worship. We need to be kings and queens who believe what God has told us. 

When the pandemic hit, we started a prayer meeting. In the first week, I brought our devotional from 2 Chronicles. It said: 

If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.

I believe that when Hezekiah read these words in the Word of the Lord, he believed them. That's what it means to lead in worship. It's not to think, "What do I think the problem is and how am I going to solve it?" It's to say, "What does God say the problem is and how do I orient my life around it?" Leading as a king in worship is to say, "I'm a sinner. Christ is my redeemer and I will orient myself - my personal, my private , and my public worship - all around that fact." 

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Secondly, be like the Temple by being cleansed by the Holy Spirit. In order to come to worship, we need to have a heart that is pure. We need to have a heart that is dedicated to the things of the Lord, sanctified. What is it this past year has shown and revealed in your heart? What sins have you been hiding by rushing here and there, and trying to hide yourself from the reality that you and I are sinners facing a God who is angry over stolen worship? Today, our challenge is to be like the Temple; to be cleansed. 

Thirdly, be like the priests consecrated fully onto God. The priests said, "I have consecrated the utensils. We brought all the things out that God had given to the people of Israel and that were polluted by the kings and Ahaz in his faithless worship. We brought them out and we've cleansed them all." Many of us seem to be priests, but we're not serving with the utensils God's given us. Have you committed yourselves to prayer? To Bible study? To fellowship? To confession of sin? These are the utensils in the Temple of worship that God has given us, and you and I are to use them.

The problem in working for the Lord is everyday you need to go into the Temple and light that light. Everyday you need to take away that old bread and put the new bread there. This is tedious work - daily tedious work that leads us to the experience of corporate worship. Today, our challenge is to consecrate ourselves like priests and say, "I will do the daily mundane tasks which will bring me into worship."

Our mistake in the church is we think worship is Sunday morning. Worship starts Monday morning. Worship is important on Saturday evening - you go to bed by 9 o'clock so that you can have time to pray and read your Bible and prepare your heart, and when you go to church on Sunday morning, you're prepared to be in the presence of the Lord. Worship isn't something you do when you wake up on a Sunday and figure, "Oh, it's a little too late. I'll just watch it at 4:00." But worship is a week-long activity which culminates as you have had private worship. It culminates when you come together as worshipping individuals to meet corporately to worship before our Lord. 

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Father, we thank You for the covenant that You've invited us to make before You today. A covenant in which we commit ourselves anew to worshipping the Lord privately and corporately. Father, we're a church that has strayed, a people that has strayed. And now as we face the crises in this life around us, Father, restore us to proper worship to You so that we might once again be a people blessed by You, living in Your presence. Reveal to us Your heart for worship. Lead us into true, pure, holy worship of Christ. We thank You in Jesus' name we pray, Amen.