Going For It

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

Father, we come before You and ask Your blessing on not just Anya and her family, but on all our families and relationships at this time, that we would be so Gospel-centered in our lives that men and women will see the Gospel. Not just hear it from our words, but they would see it lived out in us day-by-day in the way that we interact with our husbands and wives, the way we raise our children, the way we talk to our friends, the way we date, and the way we spend our money. Father, we want to be people of the Gospel, not of the law but people who do Your will because of a heart filled with love, thanksgiving, and worship for You. Father, we now come before You and open Your Word. We ask Your blessing on us that we might further understand how to have a heart for the Gospel, a heart for God in all these parts of our lives. We pray in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Amen. 

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We started our series on Hezekiah last week, and we looked at Hezekiah beginning to go into the Temple and the very first act of his reign as king was to cleanse the Temple to make it worthy for God by removing all the idols and impurities in the Temple. I titled that sermon, "Getting It Going," because our overall picture here is "Regaining Our Momentum." For many of us, we've been stuck, we're not moving, and this is a chance for us to restart ourselves. The way we get going in this process is by getting our worship right. That was the very first thing Hezekiah did in the midst of enormous challenges he was facing. That's the very first thing you and I need to make primary in our lives as well: getting our worship right. 

Today we want to look at the next act that Hezekiah did, and it was celebrating the Passover Feast. It's not simply getting it going, but it's also going for it. It's about really making it happen. Going for it reminds us that it's a lifestyle where we are so confident in our faith in Christ, that we're willing to risk, be vulnerable, and be honest for God's glory. I know that for many for us that's hard to do. It's hard for Asian parents (as Anya just shared) to be open and vulnerable to their children and say, "I made a mistake."

But yet, because we're anchored in the Gospel, we're able to do that. I want us to be a church that's so anchored in the Gospel, so mature in our spirituality, that we have the confidence to be humble, to be a forgiving community, and to be a community of grace. That's what I pray God will do in and through us this month as we're beginning to dive into the life of Hezekiah and through our small groups as well.

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How do we believe that which we state with our mouth? How do we live it out? When Hezekiah cleansed the Temple, he was saying, "I want to put God and Christ supreme in my life." Now when he goes to celebrate the Passover in our text today, he's saying, "I want to be boldly living that faith in my everyday life so that all might see and give great praise to God." Let me read for us from 2 Chronicles 30:1-20:

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Hezekiah sent to all Israel and Judah, and wrote letters also to Ephraim and Manasseh, that they should come to the house of the Lord at Jerusalem to keep the Passover to the Lord, the God of Israel. For the king and his princes and all the assembly in Jerusalem had taken counsel to keep the Passover in the second month — for they could not keep it at that time because the priests had not consecrated themselves in sufficient number, nor had the people assembled in Jerusalem — and the plan seemed right to the king and all the assembly. So they decreed to make a proclamation throughout all Israel, from Beersheba to Dan, that the people should come and keep the Passover to the Lord, the God of Israel, at Jerusalem, for they had not kept it as often as prescribed. So couriers went throughout all Israel and Judah with letters from the king and his princes, as the king had commanded, saying, “O people of Israel, return to the Lord, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, that he may turn again to the remnant of you who have escaped from the hand of the kings of Assyria. Do not be like your fathers and your brothers, who were faithless to the Lord God of their fathers, so that he made them a desolation, as you see. Do not now be stiff-necked as your fathers were, but yield yourselves to the Lord and come to his sanctuary, which he has consecrated forever, and serve the Lord your God, that his fierce anger may turn away from you. For if you return to the Lord, your brothers and your children will find compassion with their captors and return to this land. For the Lord your God is gracious and merciful and will not turn away his face from you, if you return to him.”

So the couriers went from city to city through the country of Ephraim and Manasseh, and as far as Zebulun, but they laughed them to scorn and mocked them. However, some men of Asher, of Manasseh, and of Zebulun humbled themselves and came to Jerusalem. The hand of God was also on Judah to give them one heart to do what the king and the princes commanded by the word of the Lord.

And many people came together in Jerusalem to keep the Feast of Unleavened Bread in the second month, a very great assembly. They set to work and removed the altars that were in Jerusalem, and all the altars for burning incense they took away and threw into the brook Kidron. And they slaughtered the Passover lamb on the fourteenth day of the second month. And the priests and the Levites were ashamed, so that they consecrated themselves and brought burnt offerings into the house of the Lord. They took their accustomed posts according to the Law of Moses the man of God. The priests threw the blood that they received from the hand of the Levites. For there were many in the assembly who had not consecrated themselves. Therefore the Levites had to slaughter the Passover lamb for everyone who was not clean, to consecrate it to the Lord. For a majority of the people, many of them from Ephraim, Manasseh, Issachar, and Zebulun, had not cleansed themselves, yet they ate the Passover otherwise than as prescribed. For Hezekiah had prayed for them, saying, “May the good Lord pardon everyone who sets his heart to seek God, the Lord, the God of his fathers, even though not according to the sanctuary's rules of cleanness.” And the Lord heard Hezekiah and healed the people.

When we're talking about living in grace, we see in this passage several phrases that keep appearing: "turn to the Lord" and "return to the Lord." This idea of living by grace means that we need to get our orientation correct first, and then we're able to apply the Gospel message to the lives of the people around us.

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I've done a lot of, not really wild things in my life, but pretty stupid things because I'm the kind of person that likes to push the rules. Sometimes I make rules just so I can intentionally break my own rules. I like living just a little bit on the edge, but again, not doing anything really terribly destructive.

One day, I was working up in Kalimantan and we're in the middle of the rainforest. The place that we were working was about 10 km away from where we were housed. We had the company car - it was on a Sunday so they weren't driving us around. So we had the car that Sunday. It was a dangerous thing to give a couple of 25-year-old men a company car in the middle of the rainforest in Kalimantan.

As we're driving through the rainforest, we had a mission. Our mission wasn't get back in time for lunch because that would make it too easy. Our mission on this day was to find some wildlife. After all, we're in the rainforest! How can you not go into the rainforest and see orangutans, tigers, and elephants?

So we're driving through the rainforest on the road we always pass. But, of course, you never see wildlife on the road. So my friend who was driving, this British guy, says, "Look, here's a side road. Let's go down this side road." Of course, we're told very clear instructions: never take the car off the proper road. But that's a rule, and we don't really like rules, do we? 

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We turned down this side road. As we're going further and further along this side road, it's very interesting to see how very quickly the rainforest was overgrowing this road. The space for the car to pass through was getting smaller and smaller. Soon the car was brushing branches, and after a while it kept going down into thicker rainforest. Eventually, we get stuck in the mud kilometers away from the road we're not supposed to pass off of. Stuck with no way to get out of this mess.

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That led us to some decisions on how we can apply our engineering skills to solve a problem that we created in the first place. So we quickly began to devastate and deforest the rainforest by taking all the branches we could, shoving them under the tires trying to create some traction in order to get this car unstuck out of the mud. To make a long story short, we eventually managed to get this car out of the mud and back on the main road. I know the big question you're all asking in your mind, and no, we did not see any wildlife.

I think that's sort of a picture of what we're hearing here in the life of Hezekiah. The nations of Israel and Judah have started going down the wrong path. At first, going down the wrong path seems like it's not too different from being on the right path. But over time, slowly, the world closes in on you, your freedom to live in Christ gets smaller and smaller, and eventually you find yourself stuck with no way out. The good news of the Gospel is that if you turn back, God is ready and waiting for you. God is there to call you back to Himself. 

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Turning Back to the Lord

As we look at this passage today, it's about the idea of turning back to the Lord. How do we live in grace? It starts by being men and women who turn back to the Lord, who say, "Instead of living for myself, I'm now going to turn back and live for God." Hezekiah has now gone and cleansed the Temple. He has prepared the place of worship. Now, when he celebrates the Passover, we see that he's applying worship and the Gospel to our lives.

Until we do both of those things, you and I will fall into a trap in which we either make ourselves supreme and just say, "It doesn't matter what I do, God's going to forgive me." Or we put God supreme and we want everyone to fall and fear, and not have a life of fulfillment, joy, and peace that He wants for you. But when we put in tension the two of these - the freedom in the Gospel with the sacred worship of God - when we put our worship right, it leads us to an understanding that the only reason we can worship today is because of the Gospel message. The more we're rooted and anchored in that Gospel, in Christ, the more we see the fruit of that Gospel in our everyday lives. We need to look at how Hezekiah applied that message and truth in the people that he was in charge of leading.

First of all, turning back to the Lord means to turn from your covenant violations through grieving earnestly. Hezekiah could turn back to God because he knew that God was gracious. I find it really interesting when people say, "I don't like to read the Old Testament because God's scary. He's always punishing people. He's always letting them have it. He's wiping them off the face of the earth, He's destroying them, and the ground opens and swallows them." Over and over again we see stories of plague and destruction, and we think the God of the Old Testament is the angry God while the God of the New Testament is the loving grandfather.

But nothing could be farther from the truth. In fact, in the entire Old Testament, we find the most important word is hesed, God's covenant and faithful love towards us. God made covenants with us. He made a covenant with Israel. He told Israel that if they follow God and worshiped God alone (and not other gods), He will bless them. But if they were to leave God and worship idols, God promised that He would exile them from the land. That's exactly what happened.

Now, we see the fruit of that. The Northern Kingdom has been dragged off into exile in Assyria and the Southern Kingdom of Judah is now under the shadow of Assyria coming and invading them. In the midst of this, Hezekiah is owning the sin of the people, saying, "We've screwed up. We have sinned. It's our fault, I'm not blaming anybody else. Even though our forefathers did that, I am responsible for my own covenant violations."

In order to turn back to the Lord, it starts by grieving. It starts by you and I saying, "I am responsible for my own sin. I might have grown up in the church or may have at one time made a profession of faith, but let's face it - my life today is not reflecting that. God has been faithful towards me, God has been loving towards me, but I certainly have not been loving and faithful towards Him."

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Spiritual renewal happens when we start to grieve our sins. That's why in this passage we see the very first thing Hezekiah does once the Temple has been made clean is to celebrate the Passover. He's going right to the heart of the Gospel message. The Gospel that is celebrated in the Passover is that we are sinners that are only saved because we're under the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Secondly, we see that Hezekiah says to turn from your backsliding through renewing hope. In verse 6 we read:

So couriers went throughout all Israel and Judah with letters from the king and his princes, as the king had commanded, saying, “O people of Israel, return to the Lord, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, that he may turn again to the remnant of you who have escaped from the hand of the kings of Assyria."

You see this whole idea of, "if you want to turn back." Israel has been backsliding. They knew where they were supposed to be, but they chose on their own to go a different way. The invitation from God to all of us who find ourselves going in the wrong direction and stuck in the mud of our sinful choices, the message of the Gospel is, "Turn from your backsliding through renewing hope."

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Hope is built in this promise. As the Passover Lamb was sacrificed in the Temple, it was a picture of hope that in spite of your sin and covenant violations, God has a plan to unite you to Himself. God has taken the initiative. God has made the way. There's hope because God is not up there thinking, "How can I punish you today?" God is up in heaven thinking, "How can I restore you to Myself today?" God so desires to bring the prodigal sons and daughters back home that He's like the father in Luke 15 who's waiting and waiting, "Turn back to me."

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Hezekiah writes to those who are left in the land that weren't taken into exile. He says, "God's grace is abundant for you. Come back to Him so that He may turn to you." That's the hope! The hope is that God will turn to you if you turn back to Him. After all, you're the one who left Him. You're the one who chose to walk away from Him. The way for us to be men and women of the Gospel is to simply confess our sins and say, "I need to turn back to God." In doing so, we find hope because He is indeed always turning back to us.

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Here's the good news for us: your situation today could easily be changed. You are not in a hopeless situation, where you think, "God can never forgive a person like me." The hope that's found in Christ and the Gospel is that no matter how bad your sin is, God's grace is so much greater than your sin. That's the good news for each and every one of us who have backslidden. 

Thirdly, we see that God says to turn from your rebellion through obeying wholeheartedly. In verse 7 he says:

"Do not be like your fathers and your brothers, who were faithless to the Lord God of their fathers."

He's saying, "You have been faithless. God has been faithful, but you have violated His covenant. You have rebelled against Him. What is required for those who are faithless is a change of heart. A heart that now has loving obedience at its core."

Faithless people are treacherous people. We have betrayed the very One who loves us most. Instead of embracing His love and enjoying it, we have chosen to stab God in the back repeatedly by our rebellious acts and faithlessness. That's why Israel and their worshipping of other idols was often viewed as spiritual adultery. Just as I had covenanted with my wife when I married her and we stood before the Lord and we said that we would be faithful to one another, so too I had stood before the Lord and I said, "I will be faithful to God." Which means I will have no other god before Him. The one and only god I worship is the God of the Scripture.

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When Israel went to worship idols, it was the equivalent of me saying to my wife, "I love you. I make this covenant with you. But I'm going to go out and have free sex wherever I want." Faithlessness. Betrayal. A heart of want who gives themselves in marriage to others only to find their spouse committing adultery. A sense of betrayal is almost unforgivable because of the depth of the sin that's committed.

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That's exactly what Israel has done. They have disobeyed. The Lord God says, "In spite of your disobedience," and this is the good news for us, "despite the betrayal that you have given to God, despite the spiritual adultery that you have and are committing when you worship money, yourself, and your careers, despite all that return to Me, obey, and worship. And I will heal and bless you."

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It says in the end of that passage in verse 8:

"Do not now be stiff-necked as your fathers were"

That has been Israel's story all along. Israel's story has been one of being stiff-necked. In fact, the first time you hear the word stiff-necked is in Exodus 32:9,

“I have seen this people, and behold, it is a stiff-necked people."

The first time Israel is referred to by God as being stiff-necked is at the foot of Mount Sinai. God had just brought them out of Egypt, had struck down the first born throughout all the land of Egypt, and only those under the doorpost of the blood of the Passover Lamb - only those inside the house covered by the blood celebrated on this Passover - were saved from death and destruction.

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Then the Egyptians say to the Israelites, "Go! Get out of here! We're just getting cursed! We're getting wiped out because of you!" They left but then Pharaoh changed his mind and chased them down at the Red Sea. God parted the Red Sea and Israel walked through on dry ground, and the Red Sea closed up over the chariots of Egypt and they all died.

Then God led them to the foot of Mount Sinai after seeing all these miracles and all these things. Moses goes up to Mount Sinai to speak with God and down below, the Jews are making a false image of the golden calf, an idol. They are bowing before this idol saying, "These are the gods who brought us out of Egypt." Can you imagine? After seeing all that God has done in their lives, they immediately go back to idolatry and spiritual adultery. These are the people who saw with their own eyes the miracles, experienced the presence of God in their midst. They couldn't remain faithful to God. God says, "These are a stiff-necked people." This is the first time God has referred to them as "stiff-necked."

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The second time is here in this chapter. Hezekiah, looking back at the history of his own people, says, "God's right. What more proof do we need? We're a people who are faithless and stiff-necked." I don't know about you, but every so often I wake up with a stiff neck. When you have a stiff neck, it's pretty miserable. Those with a stiff neck can't turn, they're just stuck. They're always just trying to move, but it's painful.

This word "stiff-necked" goes towards that a little bit, but it's more about when you're trying to get an ox to turn around when it's plowing the field. If he has a stiff neck, you can't get him to turn. You've got to get the head to turn in order to move him in a different direction. Just like when you wake up with a stiff neck, you have to turn your whole body because you can't turn your head to see.

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The problem with Israel is that like an ox that has a stiff neck that can't be turned. We need to repent, but we can't if our head won't turn. It's a picture of rebellion, of how you and I continually refuse to orient ourselves to the beauty of God and instead chase after the false charms of this world. What is it that you're chasing after? What is it that's causing you to run away from God and instead of seeking Him, you're seeking your own pleasures? What idols are in your heart today that is causing you to put more and more distance between you and God instead of drawing you closer to God?

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True worship draws you closer to God, the idols draw you away from God. For many of us, it might be this desire, "If I don't get married, I'm not complete. How can I be married if there's not enough men around? What am I supposed to do?" And you begin to sell yourself short, you compromise your standards, and you compromise primarily on what God has said is the best for you. You begin to drift away from God and get more backslidden instead of returning to God and the plan that He has. 

Some of you think, "My life isn't complete if I don't have more money." You think, "If I work on Sundays instead of worshipping, that will make me more profitable. If I don't pay my taxes - instead of doing my obligation to fulfill the law of the land by paying my taxes - it'll make me more prosperous." You think, "If I lie and cheat a little bit, that'll get me what I want because my relationship with God is not giving me what I want."

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Rebellion. Worshipping idols. Backsliding. Putting that greater distance between you and the Lord. We're told to remember - it's a chance for us to reorient ourselves and move back to the Lord.

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Fourthly, we're told to turn from your stubbornness through serving gladly. In the remainder of verse 8, it says:

"but yield yourselves to the Lord and come to his sanctuary, which he has consecrated forever, and serve the Lord your God"

The negative side is to leave this all and confess your faithlessness. The positive side is to yield, come, and serve. God is extending this invitation to you, where you reorient yourself 180 degrees. Instead of going away from God because of your sin and then you get yourself stuck in this rut thinking, "I will never be forgiven if I don't solve the problem myself." Instead, you find the solution is to say, "I can't solve the problem myself," and return to God. In the midst of returning to God, He says, "Come, yield yourself." To yield means to come back on God's terms, not on your terms.

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Too many times when we find ourselves backsliding, we still try to hold onto something - our own goodness. We come to God with excuses, "I wouldn't have done this if You didn't give me a wife like this." "I wouldn't do this if you didn't give me a husband like that." "I did the best I could." But those who yield to God just come and say, "I'm a sinner. Forgive me because I know that You're gracious." God says, "Come today." Come, submit on God's terms, meet together, and come into the sanctuary to serve.

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In the Old Testament, two words are often used for worship which mean to bow down and to serve. God is inviting us to orient our worship back to Him and to give ourselves wholeheartedly and fully back to Him and to His work.

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Fifthly, we're told to turn from our self-reliance through praying confidently. We see in verse 9, Hezekiah is telling these rebellious people who have lived in sin and false worship for too long:

"For if you return to the Lord, your brothers and your children will find compassion with their captors and return to this land. For the Lord your God is gracious and merciful and will not turn away his face from you, if you return to him.”

He's saying, "If you return, pray for your brothers and sisters. Even in their captivity, even in the place where they are being punished for their open rebellion and idolatry, even there God will answer your prayers and meet them."

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The problem is we have our self-reliance. We come into these relationships, we come before God thinking we bring some goodness in ourselves that makes God pleased with us. But God is so unlike your parents. God is a Father so unlike you, because earthly fathers (like it or not) like to look at their children and say, "I love my child, but when they perform I love them more." Our heavenly Father's love is not based on your performance. It's agape love, it's self-sacrificing love. He loves you because of who you are, not because of what you do.

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In order for us to turn back to God, it takes a commitment in you and I to say, "I will not rely on myself anymore, because self-reliance got me into this mess. The thing that's going to get me out of it isn't relying on myself all the more, but relying on God." Prayer is an illustration, a sign of that reliance on God when you turn to Him and say, "I'm a sinner in need of grace, and I come to You because God is gracious and merciful." There is nothing in your life that should keep you from coming back to Him. Like the father who is waiting for his prodigal son and daughter to come home, so too our gracious God is ready to forgive and embrace you.

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Os Guinness said it like this:

The story of Christian reformation, revival, and renaissance underscores that the darkest hour is often just before the dawn, so we should always be people of hope and prayer, not gloom and defeatism. God's Holy Spirit can turn the situation around in five minutes.

That's the message of Hezekiah. That's the message of having a gracious God. In spite of your dark situation, God is there to turn it around. For example, before the Reformation in Europe the Gospel was being hidden, the Word of God was being put away, and people lived by salvation by works. Overnight, God brought a reformation. Whether it's in your own family, devastating news of a harvest and lifestyle that has been constantly moving further away from God, and it seems as though your family has no hope, God is there to turn it around. 

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Some of us come looking very holy on the outside. We put on our nice clothes for church, we come on time, and we sing our songs, but in fact we know our very lifestyle from Mondays to Saturdays is not a lifestyle of the Gospel. We know very well Monday through Saturday what the idols that we're worshipping are in place of the true God. The Good News for us today is that if you turn back to the Lord, He is ready to turn back to you because He is a gracious God.

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Living By Grace

Part of living in grace or having a lifestyle of grace isn't just understanding that God is gracious so I turn back to Him, but it's then applying this grace into our lives and situations. Once we turn back to the Lord, we then need to start living by grace. Living by grace is an invitation from God to us, to take the grace that God has extended to us and now apply that to the people around us. The more I understand God's grace to me, the more it's going to impact and affect how I relate to others.

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In our story, we saw that Hezekiah had a choice to make. Hezekiah has cleaned the Temple and it's all ready for worship. Now he looks at the Temple and goes, "It's time for us to use it! The first big event we have to do is celebrate the Passover, celebrate the Gospel and remember how Jesus will come and save us." He calls Israel together to do that. The problem is, they're a month too late. Hezekiah was probably a pastor on staff at this church, because everything we do at this church is instant, has to be really fast, get it going, don't delay. Sometimes we do things so fast that we don't thing through the plans. We act and then fix the pieces as we go along. 

Hezekiah has this great enthusiasm. He just came to the throne and said, "I need to purify the Temple. Now, it's been so long since we've had a Passover, we've got to celebrate it." So he calls the people together and says, "Let's have a celebration of the Passover," but they're not ceremonially clean and there's no time to do it. He's got a dilemma. He can either say, "It's already been how many years since we've had a Passover, what's another year? After all, we've got to do it correctly. Let's form a committee, let's have some meetings, let's raise some money, let's practice, and then we'll do it next year, 11 months from now."

Or Hezekiah had the choice of saying, "Let's just do it next month. I know it's not the right month, but it's been so long since we've celebrated the Gospel. Let's just have it! We'll worry about the other stuff later. Next year we'll do it exactly right. This year we'll do it 90% correct, next year we'll do it 100% correct."

We have two different types of people like this in our church as well. We have two different people like this in my marriage. In my marriage there is one that likes it 100% perfect and then we'll do it, and one that says, "Close enough, let's just do it."

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That's the dilemma that Hezekiah is facing. That's the crisis we face not just in our marriages, but in churches, in families. We're constantly always trying to figure out what's the best way to serve and honor God. Is it 100% correct, but a little bit later? Or is it 90% now?

It's easy for us to want to be perfect, do it all correctly, and have everything in line just right. But the reality is we live in the real world, a broken world. A world in which oftentimes plans don't go according to schedule. We need to be people of the Gospel because then we see how God brings those two themes together so that we can exhibit the Gospel message to the world around us.

There are three possibilities for us here. The first is that there are people who have a commitment to the truth of God's Word. Most of us are committed to God's Word. Whether it's 100% perfect and put it off until later or it's the do it now people, they're both committed to the truth of God's Word. This is what we should be!

Oftentimes in the church, people struggle with this. "Let's do something new so we can be relevant to the culture." And others are saying, "No, we must do old things because old is spiritual, old is correct. The older the better." Some people say, "Get rid of the old, in with the new!" Some say, "Get rid of that new because that's wrong."

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Well, it's not about old or new. The standard isn't how old something is to make it correct. We sing a lot of the older songs here. Let me tell you, there's a lot of very bad old songs out there. Guess what? Nobody sings those. There's hundreds of thousands of songs written, but we only sing 100-200 of them. This should tell you something.

But there are also a lot of bad new songs out there. I remember being in a church once in America and while they were singing this song, I sat there just all upset because this song could've been sung by any religion. The Buddhist, the Hindus, the Muslims, or the Jews could sing this. There wasn't a word about Christ in the song, and we're singing in church!

Old and new isn't our standard. Our standard is God's Word. How do we be faithful to the truth about God's Word? How do we do what is written? That's what Hezekiah is faced with here. His challenge is the Word of God says the Passover needs to be celebrated in the first month, not the second month. How do I be faithful to God's Word?

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Secondly, we see Hezekiah saying that there's also a need to have a commitment to the unity of God's people. Hezekiah could've very easily said, "Us in Judah, we're ready. We live near the Temple, it's easy for us to get purified, let's do it for ourselves." But instead Hezekiah says, "Our brothers who are backslidden and now many of them carried off into exile, there's only a few left - they're weak, they're poor, and they're suffering. How much of an encouragement would it be for us to bring them to Jerusalem to celebrate together? To reunify the people of God? What a blessing! What an encouragement! What a testimony to them in the moment of greatest need."

Hezekiah had the heart of the Gospel. He wanted reconciliation to take place. It's not just that I'm reconciled to God, but my heart now is so filled that I want to be reconciled to others. Hezekiah sees this as the opportunity for reconciliation to take place. Is that the kind of zeal that you have as you worship God? The more you worship God, the more you have zeal to see that all people can enter into the worshipping community.

Here you see this great unity. He keeps saying, "the king and the princes," "the king and the leaders." "All of us here in Judah want all of you, who have been worshipping wrongly in the North, to come back to God - to return. It's our leader's heart's desire to see this coming back, this movement, a momentum based on grace and returning to God."

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Is that the heart that the Gospel has implanted in you? A heart of unity, a heart of coming back to Christ. We typically struggle with these two. We either think, "I'm going to be faithful to the Word of God," or "I'm going to neglect the Word of God and just worry about unity." What do we do? I don't think either are 100% correct. But I find that both of these, held in tension, are seen in this: a commitment to the principle of God's grace. That's the glue that brings this together.

The Word of God is important - it's supreme, we have to obey and follow it. But the unity of the brothers is also something that is important. After all, didn't Jesus pray about that? We see both of these things in Jesus' prayer in John 17. On the night before He was arrested, He prayed in the upper room with His disciples and He said:

"Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth."

He says, "Make them holy by obeying the Word of God." And then He turns around only three verses later by saying, "I pray for them that they may be one." Truth and unity. Jesus has always put those two together. They're not contradictions. We can be a church based on truth (obeying and following the truth) and we can be a church that unifies the people around worship of God.

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So how do we get that proper balance? How does grace work practically in our midst so this balance is achieved? Let me give you three principles that I think are key to us being people of grace and reconciliation. The first is pursue peace with weaker brothers and sisters. That's the biblical principle.

I remember when the pandemic hit, it's amazing what pastors start to say. A lot of them said, "This is a test to see if you're going to be a real Christian. In the midst of the pandemic, in spite of all the fear, will you come to church?" I thought, "Oh no. Where's the concern for unity? Where is the concern for your weaker brothers and sisters?" It's not a litmus test. You who are here today, thank you for being here. It's so much nicer than me preaching to the cameraman for months. But it doesn't make you more holy.

We honor God by coming to worship corporately because we need it as well. But it's not a litmus test because there's some who are weaker. Our weaker brothers and sisters need to be helped. Reconciliation takes place when we understand the truth but we're filled with grace and extend grace towards others.

Patience with weaker brothers and sisters is different from compromise. Compromise says, "I don't care about truth, what's important is that we're together." Patience says, "I know you're not ready for truth, but I'm going to help you until you are." A church that's filled with grace is a church that's patient towards the weaker brothers and sisters by showing them what God wants but is willing to say, "We're going to do what we can. If your faith is you're only able to come to church once a month, praise God. If your faith is you can't come at all, we're there to help you. We're going to walk with you, encourage you, and strengthen you until you can." 

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A heart of worship is not in the details of meeting the requirements. God says, "I don't need more sacrifice. A heart of worship is a broken and contrite spirit, not another sacrifice on the altar." Principle number one: pursuing peace with weaker brothers and sisters.

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Principle number two for us: prioritizing the primary issues. Here's one of the big problems we have in the church: we make secondary issues primary, and primary issues secondary. We get these confused. Or worse yet, a lot of times in our church EVERYTHING is primary. Let me tell you, when everything is primary, you get exhausted very quickly because you can't keep at it. You have to realize some things are primary, some things are secondary.

But what's amazing is most churches that split never split of primary things - it's always secondary things. I have yet to hear of a church splitting over the issue of the deity of Christ. They don't split over the primary thing, they split over that secondary thing. They didn't like this guy, they didn't like this thing, and they weren't happy here so they split oftentimes over secondary things.

Oftentimes our problem is we don't prioritize the primary. What did Hezekiah do here? He decided it's more important that they celebrate the Passover imperfectly than delay celebrating it for another year and do it perfectly. What's the priority? The priority is for them to celebrate the Gospel. The Passover is a picture of redemption, a picture of the Gospel. What did the people in the North need more than anything else? What did the people in Judah need more than anything else? They needed to see the Gospel! The only way to do that was to say, "Let's apply it in this situation. Let's celebrate the Gospel by applying the Gospel - by being gracious. God is gracious and has reconciled with us, so I'm going to be gracious and reconcile with one another."

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Living in grace shows that you're on the right path in understanding and growing in your knowledge of God. We need to be flexible but faithful. We need to know when to stand firm to the principle of truth, and we need to know when to let it go. Follow the truth, but don't worry about all the exact details because flexibility sometimes is more important than rigidly following traditions or even God's instructions about the Passover. Pursuing peace, prioritizing the primary issues.

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Thirdly, praying for healing. The people come, they're celebrating the Passover. Hezekiah must be in his palace and he is ecstatic! He's thinking, "Look at that! The people are together! They're worshipping! The Gospel is being celebrated! It doesn't get any better than this!" But then a report comes, "Some of them are falling ill." They're eating the Passover meal, the big banquet, they're celebrating together and they're falling sick because they didn't purify themselves properly. 

Imagine Hezekiah - he's already bent the rules, he's already prioritized the people, their unity, and making this picture of the Gospel evident to all. In the midst of this big celebration, because they didn't wash properly and weren't ceremonially clean, they're ruining Hezekiah's big Passover. How would you react if on your big day, somebody showed up not wearing the right clothes? How would you react at the big event, where you bring everyone together and the caterer brings the wrong food? How would you react in a situation like this?

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Hezekiah is so rooted in God that the Gospel flows out of him in great measure. When he saw his big Passover celebration being ruined by these people who weren't properly clean, what does Hezekiah do? He turns and prays for their healing. He prays for the people who don't deserve to be prayed for. What do you do when people in the church don't treat you the way you expect to be treated? Do you stop going to the church? What do you do when you feel someone has slighted you and they say they're a Christian? What do you do for your parents when you feel they are wrong towards you and aren't asking for forgiveness? A heart of the Gospel says, "I'm going to pray for my parents. I'm going to pray for this church member who disrespected me. I'm going to pray for my pastor who said the wrong words to me when he should have known better."

A heart of the Gospel says, "I'm going to pray for healing. I'm going to pray that God is going to restore this because the Gospel is restorative." When we turn to God, God will turn to you. When God turns to you, He heals. A healthy church is not a perfect church. A healthy church is a church that lives by grace.

Let me ask you all, how is grace evident in your relationships at this church? How are you living out grace in a day-to-day practical means with the people sitting around you? Are you so confident in the grace God has given you, that you're willing to ask for forgiveness when you're wrong? Are you so confident in who you are in Christ, that you can give forgiveness to people who have wronged you? Are you so convinced of God's love for you, that you're willing to go for it - to put yourself out there day-by-day not expecting anything in return? "I've come because God said to yield, come, and serve. Here I am. I'm here to serve you as a symbol of my worship of serving the Lord." That's the kind of church that we should strive to be. That's the kind of church that has momentum. That's the kind of Christians that will change the world around us.

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Healing the Land

Finally, God promises to heal our land. He will do that by two things. First, we need to be drawn to a reconciling God. The whole key in this passage isn't so much to turn and return, but it's return to the Lord. The whole focus is completely coming back to God. When we recognize that God is gracious and reconciling, we should be drawn to Him and away from our idols. What is it that's drawing your heart away from God today? Turn from it.

When you read the life of Hezekiah in 2 Kings 18, it says that as part of Hezekiah's reforms he went and took the bronze serpent that Moses made, so that the people who were bit by snakes could look at it and get healed, and he destroyed it. Why? Because it says that people were sacrificing to that bronze serpent so that a different god would hear. They made something spiritual into an idol. 

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It's very possible that your church is an idol. It's very possible your quiet time is an idol. It's possible that your holy living is an idol. More likely though, it's your career, love life, wealth, laziness, leisureliness, the way you spend your time, and your focus on yourself - your image, your looks - that has become the idols of your life. The healing God wants to give you is found by being drawn to Him, made close to Him, and more rooted in Christ and in His Gospel.

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Secondly, after we're drawn to God we're sent out as agents of reconciliation. God says to pray for others. Go out to meet them where they are so that God may meet them and bring them in. Who are you inviting into the experience of the grace of God? How are you seeing yourself as the Gospel is rooted in your hearts so that you are going into this world that is broken, fallen, and in disrepair to be agents of reconciliation? 

That's a lifestyle of grace. That's a church rooted in grace. That's people who are so confident in Christ that they don't have to protect their image but instead say, "I know I'm broken. But I know that God loves me, has called me, is with me, and He too can be that for you."

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Father, we thank You for incredible invitation that You've given us to be agents of reconciliation. Our hearts are filled with joy this morning to reflect on how much You care and love us. You sought us out when we were enemies and were far from you just like some in Israel who mocked and scorned when they heard this. Father, we realize that when You send us out, so too some will mock and scorn. But we know that when the message of the grace of God is extended to them, people will respond. Father, we ask that You might use us to reflect Your grace to a hurting world. Father, if there are things in our lives this morning that we need to clean up - sin that we've been harboring, idols that have kept us from worshipping You - we come before You today and we ask that You would uproot these idols from our lives so that our worship might be pure, holy, and pleasing to You. Thank You Lord for being gracious. Help us to extend that grace to others. We pray in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Amen.