Hope From the Word

Guest (Male): Excited to gather together with God's people to worship? That's the right heart to have. Here's Pastor Bill Luebkemann.

Bill Luebkemann: You've all heard people who complain about this, that, and the other thing. "We don't go to church anymore because it's the same thing every week. They sing, they sit down, the preacher gives a message. Oh, we've heard all the preacher's messages already. We don't need to go anymore." These people were excited. It hadn't been done in a long time.

But even if it had been done as recently as yesterday, we should always be excited at giving thanks to the God of the universe who created all of us. There is no other that's deserving of our praise.

Guest (Male): Someone once observed that a parent who cannot discipline themselves cannot discipline their children. Though this is a problem today, it's not one without hope. Today on Hope From the Word, we'll hear the encouraging story of King Hezekiah.

Despite his father's failure, his mother was a great influence in his life. The story is found in the Old Testament book of Second Chronicles, beginning in chapter 29. Again, I think you'll find it encouraging. From the pulpit of Calvary Chapel of Marlton, here's Pastor Bill Luebkemann starting in verse 18.

Bill Luebkemann: So we were looking at Hezekiah who took over. We saw that Ahaz was not a good thing. Then we looked at the beginning of Hezekiah in chapter 29 when he took over as king. He was a good king. He reigned for 29 years from when he was 25 to when he was about 54.

The first thing he did was purify the temple. We looked at that in the first 19 verses of chapter 29. The temple had fallen into disrepair and into disuse. In fact, Ahaz had boarded it up. We saw that at the end of 28. He shut the doors of the Lord's temple and set up altars at every street corner in Jerusalem. Ahaz was doing everything wrong.

The more bad things that happened and the more trouble that he had, the more he sought out after other gods. And eventually he had so much trouble, he boarded up the temple of God. He was doing exactly the opposite. Isn't that interesting? More bad things happened and he did more of the opposite instead of ever wising up and saying, "Gee, I wonder why this is not working. Maybe I'm seeking the wrong gods."

Hezekiah, on the other hand, turned everything around. He got right on the ball in his first year as king and he opened up the temple that had been closed and he repaired it. And he had the priests consecrate themselves and clean it out. And it took them a week or two. I think it took them a week to get halfway and then another week to finish it. It was so full of junk it had become the town dump perhaps.

And we saw here the first half of Second Chronicles 29 how Hezekiah was cleaning it out. And finally in verse 18, they went to King Hezekiah and reported, "We have purified the entire temple of the Lord, the altar of burnt offering with all its utensils, and the table for setting out the consecrated bread with all its articles. We have prepared and consecrated all the articles the King Ahaz removed in his unfaithfulness while he was king. They are now in front of the Lord's altar."

They put everything back that had been removed. They replaced it, I guess if they couldn't find it or if it was lost, melted down, stolen, or given away. And they had the entire temple set up and ready to go here. And King Hezekiah wasted no time in getting the offerings going again, the burnt offerings. He wasted no time in getting the whole operation of the temple up and running again.

He didn't say, "Okay, that's great. Let's put it down for the first of next month, or the first of next week, or let me look at my calendar here and see when I can fit it in, or we'll wait until the first of next year or the next festival or what have you." He did it immediately, early, it says in verse 20. Early the next morning. Not a week later, a month later, the next morning, early.

King Hezekiah gathered the city officials together and went up to the temple of the Lord. They brought seven bulls, seven rams, seven male lambs, and seven male goats as a sin offering for the kingdom, for the sanctuary, and for Judah. Here we see seven, the number of perfection. And they're bringing seven each of several different kinds of animals. And he just gathered together the city officials.

He didn't take the time to go all throughout the land. That's going to come a little bit later. He could have advertised this far and wide, and he did that when it came time to celebrate the Passover. But in this case here, it was what he could put together quickly. He grabbed the city officials. They were nearby. They went up to the temple. They brought the animals that they were going to use for sacrifices.

And as a sin offering for the kingdom it says, for the sanctuary and for Judah. So it would seem that they want to gain God's forgiveness for how they have strayed. And at least one commentator that I was reading was suggesting that by "the kingdom" here is referring to the line of kings and how the kings had gotten off track.

In other words, "the kingdom" meaning the king, and the king before him, and the king before him, the line stretching down from David and how the kingdom had gotten out of whack because so many of the kings were out of whack. And this one commentator suggesting, of course, the sanctuary meaning how the temple had been defiled. Suggesting that Judah referring to the entire country and how the country had been defiled.

And that sounds like as good of an explanation as anything. Basically, under the previous king, just about everybody had left the Lord. Now, I'm sure there were some who were serving God somehow, but they weren't making any offerings in the temple. The temple was closed. There were probably some godly people there, but it doesn't look like they were doing much to make noise or protest what was going on.

So there was a lot of things that had been done wrong and a lot of forgiveness was needed. And the king here understood that and recognized that and said the first thing we're going to do now that we've got the temple all ready to roll here is we need to seek God's forgiveness by making these offerings to him. The king commanded the priests, the descendants of Aaron, to offer these on the altar of the Lord.

You'll remember that the priests were descendants from Aaron. The Levites, the descendants of Aaron, were also Levites, but not all the Levites were priests because they weren't all descendants of Aaron. So the descendants of Aaron was a subset, if you will, of the Levites. And the Levites worked in and around the temple. The ones that weren't priests, they were the gatekeepers and they did other kinds of jobs around the temple.

But it was only the descendants of Aaron specifically that were the priests that could make the offerings. And the king commanded the priests to do that. So they slaughtered the bulls and the priests took the blood and sprinkled it on the altar. Next they slaughtered the rams and sprinkled their blood on the altar. Then they slaughtered the lambs and sprinkled their blood on the altar.

The goats for the sin offering were brought before the king and the assembly, and they laid their hands on them. The priests then slaughtered the goats and presented their blood on the altar for a sin offering to atone for all Israel because the king had ordered the burnt offering and the sin offering for all Israel. And you'll recall that when they were making a sin offering, they put their hands on the animal and in a symbolic way, their sins were transferred to the animal and then the animal would then be slaughtered to atone for their sins.

He stationed the Levites in the temple of the Lord with cymbals, harps, and lyres in the way prescribed by David and Gad the king's seer and Nathan the prophet. This was commanded by the Lord through his prophets. So the Levites stood ready with David's instruments and the priests with their trumpets. So they had a musical division here, a worship team if you will.

And he followed and did this the way that King David, his ancestor, had done it hundreds of years before. They had the musical instruments that they needed: cymbals, harps, and lyres. And he followed the procedure that David had set out exactly. Verse 27: Hezekiah gave the order to sacrifice the burnt offering on the altar. As the offering began, singing to the Lord began also, accompanied by trumpets and the instruments of David King of Israel.

The whole assembly bowed in worship while the singer sang and the trumpeters played. All this continued until the sacrifice of the burnt offering was completed. So they were worshipping the Lord here, they were praising the Lord. The burnt offering was in progress here, an offering to atone for their sins. And while that was happening, they were rejoicing and making merry to the Lord in their hearts and with their lips and with instruments of music.

And everybody there, the whole assembly, so whoever was gathered there that day, we know at least it was the city officials and some of the priests and Levites, not all of them. We'll see because more of them come on the scene a little bit later. But whoever was there, they were bowed together in worship. They were singing, the singers were singing, the trumpeters were playing, and the burnt offering was going on and they were having a jolly old good time there in this first worship service that had taken place in this temple in a long, long time.

And so quite an occasion. It would have been an occasion always to have a worship service there, and it still is today an occasion. And we shouldn't get tired of singing to the Lord when we come. We shouldn't be saying, "Oh, we got to go to church again and sing again. We sang this song last week or last month or whatever. Why do we always sing the same songs?" I know we don't do that here, we sing a lot of different songs.

But you've all heard people who complain about this, that, and the other thing. "We don't go to church anymore because it's the same thing every week. They sing, they sit down, the preacher gives a message. Oh, we've heard all the preacher's messages already. We don't need to go anymore." These people were excited. It hadn't been done in a long time.

But even if it had been done as recently as yesterday, we should always be excited at giving thanks to the God of the universe who created all of us. There is no other that's deserving of our praise. When the offerings were finished, the king and everyone present with him knelt down and worshipped. King Hezekiah and his officials ordered the Levites to praise the Lord with the words of David and of Asaph the seer.

So they sang praises with gladness and bowed their heads and worshipped. Perhaps this was the Psalms that they were singing, the Psalms of David. And perhaps there were other songs also that they had access to of David that perhaps we're unaware of today. So the king told the officials and the Levites to start singing the songs of David and of Asaph the seer and they sang praises with gladness it says, and they bowed their heads and worshipped the Lord.

So they were happy to be doing these things and happy to be in a kingdom that had started again to worship God. And remember, this was the southern kingdom of Judah. The northern kingdom of Israel had long since departed from God. And I believe at this point didn't even exist as a kingdom. I believe they had been carried away into captivity by this point. If they hadn't, they were close to being carried away because of their insolence.

Then Hezekiah said, "You have now dedicated yourselves to the Lord. Come and bring sacrifices and thank offerings to the temple of the Lord." So the assembly brought sacrifices and thank offerings, and all whose hearts were willing brought burnt offerings. So thank offerings, also called fellowship offerings. We saw earlier that King Hezekiah and the city officials brought together the bulls and the rams and the lambs and the goats that they started with.

But now Hezekiah says, "You've all dedicated yourselves to the Lord. So everyone who wants to can bring their offerings." So you kind of get the feeling here that the whole city had gathered together there, maybe people from the surrounding areas as well. And Hezekiah said, "Now come and bring your offerings, bring your sacrifices, bring your thank offerings, your fellowship offerings to the temple of the Lord."

And the assembly did just that. They brought their sacrifices, they brought their thank offerings, and all whose hearts were willing brought burnt offerings. It had to have been a real change in the attitude of this kingdom from the time of Ahaz when they were not following the Lord to the time of Hezekiah in the very first year.

You get the impression that maybe there were a lot of people that were unhappy with the spiritual condition of the kingdom but were not able to do anything about it. And now when this happened, they were eager to worship the Lord again. And there were probably other people who were worshipping idols and changed their mind and the Lord changed their heart through all this situation here and they realized, "Hey, we're not getting anywhere with the way this kingdom has been going. And it's because we've left the Lord God and we need to get back to Him." And we'll see that also in the next chapter a little bit more.

The number of burnt offerings the assembly brought was 70 bulls, 100 rams, and 200 male lambs, all of them for burnt offerings to the Lord. The animals consecrated as sacrifices amounted to 600 bulls and 3,000 sheep and goats. So now we see the basic offering for the sin and then the additional animals given freely. Whatever people wanted to bring, 600 more bulls and 3,000 sheep and goats.

The priests, however, were too few to skin all the burnt offerings. So their kinsmen the Levites helped them until the task was finished and until other priests had been consecrated. They didn't have enough priests to do all the work. There were so many people, so many animals, that the priests just simply couldn't keep up. And so they had to enlist the aid of the Levites to help them work with these animals, which really was not permitted under the law.

But it seems like the Lord overlooked it here because they were shorthanded and the attitude of their heart was right. Let me read that sentence again. So their kinsmen the Levites helped them until the task was finished and until other priests had been consecrated. For the Levites had been more conscientious in consecrating themselves than the priests had been. So the Levites had done a better job of consecrating themselves and presenting offerings for themselves so that they could be cleaned of their sins, so that they'd be ceremonially clean and being able to make these offerings.

There were burnt offerings in abundance together with the fat of the fellowship offerings and the drink offerings that accompanied the burnt offerings. So there was all kind of offerings going on here at this point. So the service of the temple of the Lord was reestablished. Hezekiah and all the people rejoiced at what God had brought about for His people because it was done so quickly.

Here we see that the whole system of worship in the temple and the whole system of sacrifices, the entire thing which had gotten off track and been derailed and wasn't happening here and they got the whole thing running again just in a record amount of time. This new king comes on, he's a young guy, they get the temple cleaned out, the call goes out to the priests and the Levites to cleanse themselves and report for work.

And it seems like they knew what to do. So they must have been reading the scriptures or perhaps it was passed down from their ancestors. But it seems like most of them also knew what to do. I think there's a verse in here to that effect also we're going to get to shortly, Chapter 30, verse 1. Hezekiah sent word to all Israel and Judah and also wrote letters to Ephraim and Manasseh inviting them to come to the temple of the Lord in Jerusalem and celebrate the Passover to the Lord, the God of Israel.

So Hezekiah here now decides we're going to celebrate Passover here, which hadn't been done maybe in a couple hundred years. I think even when they had good kings, they weren't celebrating Passovers, at least not very often. And he sent word out to all Israel and Judah. So remember, he's in the southern kingdom, Judah, but he invited the northern kingdom.

And we see that mentioned there when he says Israel and Judah and also when he mentions Ephraim and Manasseh. We see that he invited everybody to come. The northern kingdom having been carried away into captivity at this point, but obviously some people were left up there. And he invited everybody to come to the temple and celebrate the Passover.

Remember, the northern kingdom, ever since the kingdom split, they didn't want to come down to the temple. The very first king of the northern kingdom, Jeroboam, he saw to it that they didn't go down and worship because he set up places for them to worship in the northern kingdom. He was afraid of losing their allegiance by having them go down to the south.

So here they probably hadn't celebrated a Passover in a very long time, but they hadn't celebrated one together as a whole nation probably since the time of Solomon. Because it was shortly after Solomon died that the kingdom was divided. So we're talking here a very long time between when the last Passover was celebrated and now, maybe a couple hundred years.

Imagine if Christmas hadn't been celebrated since the time of the Revolutionary War and we were spearheading an effort today to celebrate Christmas again for the first time. And you'll get an idea here of what this was like. It had been a very long time. The king and his officials and the whole assembly in Jerusalem decided to celebrate the Passover in the second month.

Now remember, it was the first month that they got the temple cleaned out and going. Well, Passover is supposed to be celebrated in the first month. But if you check back in Numbers, God does say, though, if a particular person is not clean on the date of Passover, that person can celebrate Passover on the same date in the second month of the year. So the first month is roughly from March to April. The second month is roughly from April to May.

So if you were unclean, you could celebrate Passover, you and your family maybe, in the second month. But it seems like Hezekiah took that idea a little bit further. Said, "Well, if one person can celebrate it in the second month because they're unclean, we probably all can do it because we were unclean. We weren't ready yet. We're going as fast as we could here." And God certainly honored the intention of their heart here.

So the king and his officials and the whole assembly there, they all decided, "Hey, let's celebrate the Passover. Let's do it in the second month," which kind of like the backup date for Passover. They had not been able to celebrate it at the regular time because not enough priests had consecrated themselves and the people had not assembled in Jerusalem.

So they also didn't have time to get the word out to everybody. It wasn't like they could put it on the internet. They didn't have the emergency alert system like we have on Hope FM so that we can beam out messages from the president, should he ever want to tell us that we're under attack or something. They didn't have anything like that. They'd not been able to do it.

And furthermore, they didn't have enough priests, they didn't have the people weren't there, the logistics, it just didn't work out. The plan seemed right both to the king and to the whole assembly. It sound like that's a good plan. Everybody was happy with it. "Let's do that." They decided to send a proclamation throughout Israel from Beersheba to Dan calling the people to come to Jerusalem and celebrate the Passover to the Lord, the God of Israel.

We're talking about the entire nation, northern and southern kingdoms, from Beersheba to Dan, the entire thing. And they decided to send out this proclamation telling them to come and celebrate the Passover of the Lord, the God of Israel. It had not been celebrated in large numbers according to what was written.

At the king's command, couriers went throughout Israel and Judah with letters from the king and from his officials which read... so here's what they did. They wrote up this proclamation. They made the copies and they sent it off with couriers going in all different directions. And the job of these couriers to go from town to town and read this proclamation so the word would get out. And here's what it said.

"People of Israel, return to the Lord, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, that He may return to you who are left, who have escaped from the hand of the kings of Assyria." So he says, "Look, people of Israel, you need to, you should, you ought to, I'm calling you to return to the Lord, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, so that He can return to you, those of you who are left."

Wouldn't it be great if somebody in the White House or in Congress stood up and said, "Oh people of America, return to the God that your forefathers sought after during the time of the Revolutionary War, that President Lincoln searched for during the time of the Civil War, the God who blessed your country. Return to Him before your time is up." Wouldn't it be great?

Well, here's what they said: "Return to Him so that He can return to you. Do not be like your fathers and brothers who were unfaithful to the Lord, the God of their fathers, so that He made them an object of horror as you see. Don't be like them. See what happened to them was they weren't faithful to God and look what happened to them. They got carried off into captivity, they lost the battle, they got killed, this happened, that happened. Don't be like that. Do not be stiff-necked as your fathers were. Submit to the Lord.

Learn a lesson from them. Learn a lesson from your ancestors. Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it. I think the saying goes something like that. Come to the sanctuary which He has consecrated forever. Serve the Lord your God so that His fierce anger will turn away from you." God is unhappy with you, he was saying.

Serve God and let Him turn His anger away from you. "If you return to the Lord, then your brothers and your children will be shown compassion by their captors and will come back to this land. For the Lord your God is gracious and compassionate. He will not turn His face from you if you return to Him." He will hear your prayer, He will forgive.

And all throughout the scriptures, anytime anybody ever turned back to the Lord, He always forgave. If we can learn anything about God from reading the Bible, it's that people look at the Bible and say, "Why does God have so much blood and guts and stuff going on in here? And why did He allow so much violence and how terrible is that?"

He's the God that forgives anybody who comes back to Him. And He's still in the forgiving business today, still forgiving those that come to Him. He will not turn His face from you if you return to Him. Now you'd think, wow, boy, we're going to get back with God, let's go for it. You'd think the reaction would have been that everybody would have been eager to do this, but not so. Verse 10: "The couriers went from town to town in Ephraim and Manasseh as far as Zebulun, but the people scorned and ridiculed them."

Guest (Male): What a great shame that God's people didn't respond to the call to gather together to worship the Lord. And you know that the call to gather with God's people still goes out today. How will you respond? You've been listening to Hope From the Word. We're currently in a study of Second Chronicles.

You can hear this message or more Hope From the Word with Pastor Bill Luebkemann by going to ccmarlton.org. Pastor Bill's messages can also be found by downloading the Hope FM app on your smartphone or tablet. If you prefer to listen via podcast, you can find Hope From the Word wherever you find your podcasts.

We'd love to have you join us at Calvary Chapel of Marlton, either in person or online. Our Sunday service begins at 10:00 a.m. and there's a Wednesday evening service at 7:00. To catch us online, you can subscribe to our YouTube channel at Calvary Chapel of Marlton or just go to our website for the link: ccmarlton.org.

And if you'd like to take a moment to write to Pastor Bill, it would be such a blessing to us. We're thankful each and every time we hear what God is doing through our listeners' lives, and we want to pray for you too. Either email us through the website at ccmarlton.org or call 856-983-1662. We'll continue our study in Second Chronicles next time on Hope From the Word with Pastor Bill Luebkemann, a presentation of Calvary Chapel of Marlton.