Month: March 2024

2 Chronicles 30:8-9 Now be ye not stiffnecked, as your fathers were, but yield yourselves unto the Lord, and enter into his sanctuary, which he hath sanctified forever: and serve the Lord your God, that the fierceness of his wrath may turn away from you. For if ye turn again unto the Lord, your brethren and your children shall find compassion before them that lead them captive, so that they shall come again into this land: for the Lord your God is gracious and merciful, and will not turn away his face from you, if ye return unto him.

Hezekiah sent messengers into all the land inviting the people to come to Jerusalem for the great renewal Feast of the Passover. The message was: return! Do not resist God’s kind invitation by being stiffnecked and stubborn. Accept the invitation by yielding yourselves to the Lord. Repent, desire to change your ways, and give in to God’s grace and kindness.

The Lord is angry with you, and rightly so, because of His holiness and your sin. But if you return He will turn away His fierce wrath. For the Lord is not only holy; He is also gracious and merciful, and He will not turn His face (presence) away from you. Believe Him, believe His love, turn and return. Experience grace and blessing.

The key response is Turn. Because we are sinners, and will never stop being sinners, we need to return and turn again. Weekly. Daily. We come to God regularly with a penitent heart, confessing our sin and confessing Christ’s love, forgiveness, mercy, and grace. Then the Lord comes to be with us, leaving behind a blessing. If we return to the Lord. We respond to His loving and glorious invitation to Come, and through the power of the Gospel the love of Christ compels us. And we turn.

2 Chronicles 30:6 So the posts went with the letters from the king and his princes throughout all Israel and Judah, and, according to the commandment of the king, saying, Ye children of Israel, turn again unto the Lord God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, and he will return to the remnant of you, that are escaped out of the hand of the kings of Assyria.

Hezekiah had made a decree that they would keep the Passover in the second month. There was no time to get ready for the first month (April), but the Law of Moses made provision that the Passover could be celebrated in May. This event was a major piece of the reforms and the restoration of true temple worship. So the word went out to all Judah and to the remnant of believers still left in Israel, inviting them all to come to Jerusalem for the restoration of the Passover Feast.

The Passover had been neglected, and now it was being renewed. All true believers were called to return for the Feast and to turn again to the Lord. The Lord’s love and care for the people did not stop just because they left Him. He is still the “hound of heaven” waiting at the gate for the return of the prodigal son. And the promise and sure hope is that He will return to us.

We are blessed with the privilege of celebrating the Passover every week in the Divine Service of Holy Communion. And we have the opportunity to turn again to Him every day in repentance and faith. And this comes with the promise that He returns to us, restores and renews us. We remember.

2 Chronicles 29:36 And Hezekiah rejoiced, and all the people, that God had prepared the people, for the thing was done suddenly.

Hezekiah had finished the religious reform and restored true temple worship. The service of the house of the Lord was set in order. The people rejoiced greatly under Hezekiah’s leadership. Hezekiah rejoiced now, not only that the work was finished, but also he rejoiced that God prepared the people. The most important work was done by the Lord, for it was He that moved the hearts of the people to actually will and to accomplish the reform work that God wanted done. And the thing felt like it had been done suddenly, and completely.

Certainly Hezekiah recognized the work, service, and dedication of the people, the priests, and the Levites. But he rejoiced and thanked God for preparing the people. The outward work of repairing and cleansing the temple, putting the singers in place, and restoring proper worship was evident and wonderful. But the greater blessing was the inner change in the heart of the people. God did this; it was beautiful to behold; and it caused Hezekiah to rejoice in the Lord.

It gives us great joy to see the results of God preparing the hearts of people to be converted, baptized, saved by grace, and blessed with faith. The outward building, music, and worship is merely an outward expression of God’s inner transformation of the human heart. When we see that, we rejoice.

2 Chronicles 29:27-30 And Hezekiah commanded to offer the burnt offering upon the altar. And when the burnt offering began, the song of the Lord began also with the trumpets and with the instruments ordained by David king of Israel. And all the congregation worshipped, and the singers sang, and the trumpeters sounded: and all this continued until the burnt offering was finished. And when they had made an end of offering, the king and all that were with him bowed themselves, and worshipped. Moreover Hezekiah the king and the princes commanded the Levites to sing praise unto the Lord with the words of David, and of Asaph the seer. And they sang praises with gladness, and they bowed their heads and worshipped.

This must have been quite an event when Hezekiah restored temple worship and offered sacrifices. He and the people celebrated raucously by singing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, bowing their heads and worshipping, while musical instruments sounded loudly. True worship and exuberant song is the natural response to the sacrifices that restore a right relationship with God.

Singing and making melody in the heart is the natural response of the believer to the hearing of the gospel and being reminded of the once-for-all sacrifice of Jesus for us. Every time we remember the Gospel our heart erupts in jubilant song, whether it is heard aloud or not. The often rehearsing of the gospel produces a joy-filled life, full of thanks, praise, worship, and song. Every day can be jubilation and celebration.

2 Chronicles 29:24 And the priests killed them and they made reconciliation with their blood upon the altar, to make an atonement for all Israel: for the king commanded that the burnt offering and the sin offering should be made for all Israel.

After Hezekiah cleansed the temple and restored temple worship, he had the priests prepare the sacrifices of bulls, rams, and he-goats for all the people. This sin offering was to make reconciliation with the blood of the sacrificial animals. Reconciliation is the bringing together of two parties that have been estranged or separated. A synonym word is atonement, or making one. God says, “Your sins have separated you from me.” The blood sacrifice reunites the two again.

It was most appropriate that reconciliation between God and His people take place at this time when such a rift had taken place. The separation was caused by the people because of their sin, idolatry, and forgetting God. Union between God and man is restored when the blood sacrifices for reconciliation are made.

Our sins have separated us from God and we have lost His life. God Himself, to whom we could find no way, has taken the initiative to come us in the person of the Son of God to reconcile us to God by the Blood of Christ. This is the way we come back to God and His life. Jesus reconciled us, propitiated God’s righteous wrath, and made atonement (at-one-ment) for us. Our saving response is to believe in Christ and joyfully receive the gift of reconciliation, life with God forever.

2 Chronicles 29:15-16 And they gathered their brethren, and sanctified themselves, and came according to the commandment of the king, by the words of the Lord, to cleanse the house of the Lord. And the priests went into the inner part of the house of the Lord, to cleanse it, and 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, to carry it out abroad into the brook Kidron.

Good King Hezekiah’s response to God included cleansing the temple of all foreign paraphernalia used in worship of demons and false gods. First he had the priests and Levites sanctify themselves according to the Word. Then they cleansed the temple by bringing out all the uncleanness they found in it, and then carrying it out to the brook Kidron. Hezekiah restored pure worship of the Lord, reforming the faith and life of the people of the kingdom.

This is the same thing that we believers in Christ do on a daily and weekly basis. We come into the Divine Service, or begin a daily quiet time with God, by sanctifying ourselves, which means confessing our sins and receiving absolution. Our body is the temple of the Lord, and the heart needs to cleansed by the Blood and sanctified by the Spirit. Then we worship in spirit and in truth all day long, and all week long, as we pray, praise, and give thanks without ceasing.

An important part of the sanctifying process is finding and getting rid of the junk, the sin and doubt, the worry and fear, the false teaching and deception that remains inside the “temple.” We take this sinful and unbelieving clutter to the Cross, and we leave it there for Jesus to bear away. We are sanctified by faith, for Christ is our sanctification. In that holy state we worship.

2 Chronicles 29:10-11 Now it is in mine heart to make a covenant with the Lord God of Israel, that his fierce wrath may turn away from us. My sons, be not now negligent: for the Lord hath chosen you to stand before him, to serve him, and that ye should minister unto him, and burn incense.

Good king Hezekiah reformed the faith life of the kingdom by restoring proper temple worship of the one true God. He began his reforms by making a covenant with the Lord. All reform and changing life for the better begins with renewing the covenant God made with His people. He also charged the priests and Levites to renew the covenant and do their work and service to God by standing before Him in service and ministry. The priests’ charge was to make the sacrifices for the people to bring them before God and to serve them by praying for them. They represented the people to the Lord by bringing forth the covenant blood and praying.

We also respond to the Gospel by renewing the covenant God made with us through the once-for-all sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Through this covenant relationship the Lord is working in us to will and to do of His good pleasure, to re-form our lives according to His will expressed in the Word. We pray, “Holy be Your name, Your kingdom come, Your will be done.” We do this every day in our time alone with God and every week as we receive the blood of the new covenant in church.

Then we minister as priests of God bringing our needs and the needs of others before God. In prayer in Jesus’ name we serve God by bringing others before Him. The Covenant reforms and transforms our lives.

2 Chronicles 29:2-5 And he dod that w hitch was right in the sight of the Lord, according to all that David his father had done. He in the first year of his reign, in the first month, opened the doors of the house of the Lord, and repaired them, Andhe brought in the priests and the Levites, And said unto them, Hear me, ye Levites, sanctify now yourselves, and sanctify the house of the Lord God of your fathers, and carry forth the filthiness out of the holy place.

Hezekiah was one the two most faithful kings Judah had. He did that which was right in the sight of the Lord. After the wicked reign of Ahaz, he repaired, restored, and cleansed the temple of the Lord and reinstalled pure worship of the Lord. He opened the doors of the temple. He had the priests sanctify themselves and the temple. They cleaned out the temple and carried out the filthy rubbish.

Because we sin every day, we need to sanctify and cleanse the temple, the human body, in which God dwells on earth. The body is the temple of God the Spirit and Jesus lives in the heart of the believer. But sin and unbelief corrupt and “filthify” the dwelling place of God in us. We sanctify ourselves and the temple by repentance of sin and filth and by faith applying the cleansing blood of Christ. We confess the filth we find inside and carry it to the cross. Jesus restores us to and maintains us in a right relationship with God. We have God’s life and enjoy it forever.

Jesus Christ is our sanctification, and in Him we are forgiven, holy and righteous, and daily we sanctify a place in our heart for the Lord. And life is good.

2 Chronicles 28:22-25 And in the time of his distress did he transgress yet more against the Lord: this is that king Ahaz. For he sacrificed unto the gods of Damascus, which smote him: and he said, Because the gods of the kings of Syria help them, therefore will I sacrifice to them, that they may help me. But they were the ruin of him, and of all Israel. And Ahaz…shut up the doors of the house of the Lord, and he made him altars in every corner of Jerusalem. And in every several city of Judah he made high places to burn incense unto other gods, and provoked to anger the Lord God of his fathers.

Ahaz responded to the time of distress by transgressing even more. Instead of learning his lesson, he turned away from the Lord and worshipped foreign gods. And adding transgression to transgression, he shut down worship in the temple and promoted the worship of false gods. It was bad enough that he forgot the Lord, shut the temple, and served false gods, but it was even worse that he promoted idolatry and led the people into sin.

Jesus calls woe upon those who cause one of my believers to sin; it would be better for a millstone…. Leading, promoting, encouraging, and tempting others to sin is regarded as even more evil than the original transgression. It is bad enough to follow the ways of the world, but then to become the world and lure others from God is even worse.

Sinning without repentance leads to shutting the door to God and bringing rival gods into our life. Confession of sin and receiving forgiveness opens the door to God and shuts out false religions and philosophies.

2 Chronicles 28:6, 19 For Pekah the son of Remaliah slew in Judah an hundred and twenty thousand in one day, which were all valiant men; because they had forsaken the Lord God of their fathers….For the Lord brought Judah low because of Ahaz king of Israel; for he made Judah naked, and transgressed sore against the Lord.

In the days of Ahaz, Judah lost a huge battle with Israel under king Pekah. The reason given for the slaughter was that Judah had forsaken the Lord. The reason given for such unbelief of the people was because their leader, Ahaz, had transgressed sore against the Lord. Judah had forsaken the Lord because of the sin of Ahaz. Therefore, God brought Judah low. The king failed, the people forget God, Judah was slaughtered.

This progression that led to disaster begins with the wicked king. The writer of Chronicles gives us the real spiritual reason for losing the battle: the sin of the king. He did not lead the people into the true faith and worship of the Lord, but he allowed and promoted idolatry. Faith and unbelief is the cause of the effect.

The real Enemy of God’s people is always looking for sin and unbelief and the uncovering of divine protection to attack and destroy. He finds a hole, a chink, a weakness in our life, and then swoops in. Therefore the Lord reminds us to “Be sober-minded, be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour [1 Peter 5:8].”

Our response to the presence of enemies is to remain in touch with Jesus by repentance and faith in the gospel and maintaining a prayer covering. We are mindful of God, not forgetful.