Our Gospel lesson text this morning is found in 2 Chronicles chapter 29, and if you're using the Bibles in your seats, that's found on page 327, or if you're using the Bible you brought from home, that's found on a different page. I'll give you a moment to find that we're moving along with our count of King Hezekiah, one of the faithful kings in Judah. It was the southern kingdom of God's people when God's people for a time were split into two kingdoms. 2 Chronicles chapter 29, beginning in verse 20, this is God's word, eternally true. Early the next morning 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. The King commanded the priests, the descendants of Aaron, to offer these on the altar of the Lord. 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. He stationed the Levites in the temple of the Lord with symbols, harps and liars, 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. As the guy 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 singers sang, and the trumpeters played. All this continued until the sacrifice of the burnt offering was completed. When the offerings were finished, the king and everyone present with him knelt down in worshiped. King Hezekiah and his officials ordered the Levites to praise the Lord with the words of David and of Asaph the seer. So they thanked praises with gladness and bowed their heads and worshiped. Then Hezekiah said, you have now declared yourselves 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 those whose hearts were willing brought burnt offerings. The number of burnt offerings the assembly brought was seventy bowls, a hundred rams, and two hundred male lambs, all of them for burnt offerings to the Lord. The animals consecrated as sacrifices amounted to six hundred bowls and three thousand sheep and goats. The priests, however, were too few to skin all the burnt offerings, so their king's been 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. There were burnt offerings and abundance, together with the fat of the fellowship offerings and the drink offerings that accompanied the burnt offerings. So the service of the temple of the Lord was re-established. Hezekiah and all the people rejoiced at what God had brought about for his people because it was done so quickly. Here ends our reading of this gospel lesson text. We have a response of thankfulness printed for us there in our bulletin. Let us give thanks to the Lord. The word of the Lord. Let us pray. Our Father, we are thankful for the forgiveness that You have provided for us in Jesus, the Lamb of God who took away our sins. We thank You that as we sang this morning, full attonement can it be, hallelujah, what a Savior. You, Jesus indeed, have provided for us full attonement, full satisfying of the justice of Your Father against our sins. Help us to see that this morning, more clearly, in greater depth, and help us to see this morning, how we can rightly respond with the right thing for us to do in light of this great sacrifice in Your great leadership for us, Jesus. Teach us by Your Spirit, preach to us, by Your Spirit, Jesus, we ask in Your name, Amen. Some of you know the story of me taking my, when you go to seminary, you take classes that cover all the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, and it's divided up in certain ways, and different seminaries do it in different ways. In our seminary, we had three old Testament classes, Genesis, Joshua, and then we had judges through the poetic books, and then we had prophets, those three segments, and then we had three separate classes, and in New Testament, one of those New Testament classes was Acts and Paul. So we covered the Book of Acts, and then we covered all the books that Paul wrote, those 13, and we integrated those as the where Paul was in the Book of Acts when he wrote this book, and what his previous engagements were with the people like the people of Ephesus before he wrote Ephesians, that kind of thing. And that was very interesting class, really educational, really helped me out, and out of professor that I liked, and I liked all my professors, but this was a crazy guy, a child of the 60s, and so in the 60s, he had had, he still has a kinky curly hair, and so we saw pictures of him in college, at the College of William and Mary up in Williamsburg, and he had hair out to here. He was Groovy, Groovy Reggie, and his name was Reggie Kid Stillis, and it looks like Reggie but his parents didn't know that he pronounced it Reggie, so they called him Reggie, and he always went by that, and found out later in life that his parents just didn't know how to pronounce it, so he had gone through all his life correcting his teachers on the first day of school. He was Reggie out of classmate, whose name was Megan, so she had to do that every day of the first day of school, Megan, Miles, Megan. But Reggie was a neat guy, wore a Birkenstocks and Tivas to class, even when he had a tie-on, but good guy, learned a lot from him, but we came to take a final, and yeah, you had to like them there, it was good dude. So we took our final and part of the final, we had an essay section, and there's one of those things he told us, so I'm going to give you a choice of questions to answer, and you just select from the choice and answer the question, and so I was going through the test and got through all the tests, and the essay section was the last thing, and I was cranking along on it, remembering, I think, about everything I need to remember, or at least what I had studied, and got to that essay section, and I thought I read that it said choose one from the above, and so I looked at my watch and said okay, I got 30 minutes here, whatever it was, and wrote that essay and just nailed it, you know, everything I knew, I got it in there, and it was organized, that kind of thing, I was really excited about it, and after the exam I was talking to some people, it had been in the same exam, and they said, you know, what two essay questions did you choose? It said two, and so I asked all these different people, and they all said yes, it said two. So what do I do? It was a night exam, we finished at about 830, so the next morning I went to the seminary first thing, like I did each day, I would go and the building would open up, and I went right up to Reggie's office, and I told them, what happened? I just did one essay, I guess I didn't read it carefully enough, but I was talking to people at the lab, and they said there were two essays, and I said when I found that out, I said, I didn't talk to anybody about, you know, what they put down, I haven't looked at a book, I haven't looked at my notes, I haven't looked at anything since, would you please just let me sit down, and you can even select the essay question for me, or give me a different one, and I'll do it, I just didn't see the question, and he said, don't worry about it, I'll just answer one question double, so he showed me great grace, and I thanked him, and he said, I had a similar situation when I was in some, I forget whether it was college or seminary or as a doctor or work, or he did the same thing, and his professor had shown him grace had forgiven him for what he didn't come up with and just doubled that, and so he did the same thing for me. It's great to find out, it's great to be a recipient of grace, of forgiveness, there are also appropriate responses to forgiveness, how awful person would I be to badmouth reggae kid, after he did that for me, and certainly I haven't, and wouldn't, because he has been so gracious to me, and this passage shows us just this, that the Lord has been gracious to us, and as he has been gracious to us, there's a right set of responses that we have to him in living in that grace, and the first thing we're to see here, and if you'd like filling out blanks in an outline, you're welcome to do that, or you can just listen and put your outline to the side, either fine, but if you'd like to fill out blanks in an outline, you can just like to fill out blanks in an outline, we're to point one, God says to us a couple of things this morning at least, two that we'll talk about, and the first thing he says to us is trust the Lord, our King, trust the Lord, our King, and then quick, quick second line for you there,
through him, through our Lord the King, is forgiveness, is forgiveness, and rescue. Through the Lord our King is forgiveness and rescue. That's what God's people experienced during Hezekiah's day. That's what God's people experienced, the people that first got this book of first and second chronicles. They were the people that had come back from the exile, Daniel's friends. They were often exiled in Babylon. They had experienced the curses of the covenant, the Bob Red Force, from Deuteronomy 28. If you don't pay attention to my covenant, my laws to you, if you ignore my prophets that I send to you, you will experience the worst of all covenant curses and that it's exile. I will expel you from the land. You'll be taken away by a foreign army and you will be in a place that you don't know. That's indeed what happened. Daniel was one of those people who went off there. Esther's still often in Persia a little bit later because of this exile, but God's people had gotten to come back and that's when chronicles was written. When God's people came back from exile and there to see here is a look at this passage that the key to their forgiveness, the key to their rescue was the King. In the case of these people here, that King was Hezekiah. In our case, that King is, we know, the person who always talked about the kingdom when he was here on earth. Jesus, the King of kings, and the Lord of lords, and He is King and head of the church and the message of the gospel is essentially this message, isn't it? Trust the Lord as your King. Through your King, you will be restored from exile. Through your King, you will be rescued from your ruin. Through your King and his commands and his doing, you will receive forgiveness. That's the message of the gospel. Baal the knee to King Jesus because through him is forgiveness and rescue. Rescue from what? From two things and that's in your outline there. First of all, from ruin. Now, in the case here, the people under Hezekiah, they were in ruin. They had had relatives that had been carried away by the Assyrians. We can read about that. We did before in chapter 28 and in chapters before that, when God's people had unfaithful kings, when they had unfaithful kings, awful things happened in the land. People lost their homes. People had relatives be carried off into a foreign place and these people were cursed. And the land was under threat, not entirely. And so people could not be at peace in their homes because of this threat. But we see that with the faithful King, like Hezekiah here, God's people are rescued from ruin. Things are restored. But they're also rescued from next one for you, from separation. That is from exile from God's presence. Now, back in Hezekiah's day, God was present in his special blessing way in the tabernacle or in the temple during Hezekiah's day. God dwelled in a special way in the temple and he would bless his people who came to him in worship. And so the land of Israel, the promised land was known as the land of the living or the land of God's presence. God is everywhere, but God's presence in blessing, that was in Israel, that was in Jerusalem. And God's people had been just in the chapter before here and then later with Daniel had been separated from God's presence, his special blessing presence in Israel. And for us, we see this true in a number of ways, but we see here we just make the point right now that we see the very end of this that when God's people do trust their King, Hezekiah. When they do what He says, when they gather around Him and show their loyalty to Him, it leads to, and this is your blank here, your trust in Him leads to rejoicing. See that in verse 36, what's the result of all this? What's the result of their King's initiative? What's the result of their loyalty and their faith and their King? It's rejoicing. How is this so? Well, they experience restoration from the ruin and the forgiveness of their sins and Hezekiah's day. They experience the forgiveness through these animal sacrifices at the temple. Too kind, there are lots of different sacrifices in the Old Testament. I'm sure you all remember back to when we were preaching through Exodus, what the different sacrifices were, right? Yeah, I had to look it up too. And that burn offerings and sin offerings were specifically to deal with the guilt of sin. They were forgiveness sacrifices. And we see that's a very big part of what's going on here with Hezekiah. God's people were forgiven through these animal sacrifices in the temple. But in a larger scale, when God's people finally do after the days of Hezekiah experience exile, the prophets comment on the significance of this exile and the Babylon, the comment on what Daniel went through, on what the son of David went through when he was exiled in the Babylon. And what they say, and Isaiah 53 contains this, is that God's people are punished through there and along with their King. And their King gets stripes on his back. Their King is punished as representative of God's people. And so Isaiah speaks of this and Isaiah 53, the other prophets speak of this that the King, and if you look in Deuteronomy 28 and one of the other verses that we didn't cover, God specifically says, I will take your King away. He will be punished. The King was representative of the people. And so when God's people come back into the land, it's this sacrifice, this punishment has gone on. This punishment of exile no longer was a punishment of just an animal in the temple adequate because God's people sin was so great. So God then punishes the people themselves through exile. And Isaiah 40 speaks of our exile ending because God's people had paid a double for all their sins. And God's King had been humiliated before the known world by being carried off into exile, not just defeated in battle and able to stay there in his home, but actually been carried off into exile. And so as God's people came back into the land during the days of the writer of Chronicles, as they came back into the land, it was assembled to them. It was representative of them. It was an indication to them that they had been forgiven through what sacrifice, through what punishment, through the punishment of exile, through the punishment of their King. How about for us, we receive forgiveness through both in Jesus. That is Jesus comes and he dies in the cross. He bears our sins and he dies in the cross. So that's the priestly temple sacrifice that Jesus makes for us, his people. He bears our sins. We see here early in the passage, the priests lay their hands on the animal. That was in the law, that's what the priests did. And it was a transfer of the people's sins onto the animal. And when the animal then has that sin transferred on it symbolically, then what must I do to the animal, slaughter it? The animal takes the punishment for the people's sins. And Jesus does this for us. He is great high priest like we read about in Hebrews 9 and he goes before, not that the earthly tabernacle, but the tabernacle above, the one that's not a part of this creation is Bob Red Force and Hebrews 9. And Jesus makes a sacrifice on the altar, so to speak, that altar was a cross. So Jesus grants us, Jesus achieves for us forgiveness through the sacrifice that he brings his priests, but he's also not only priests, he's also the sacrifice. He's also the Lamb who have God in essence credits or puts onto Jesus our sin on the cross. And when our sin gets placed upon Jesus on the cross, Jesus says, Father, why have you forsaken me? And Jesus life is extinguished. Jesus is punished for our sins. Jesus is killed because that's what we deserved. But not only through Jesus' punishment on the cross, are we forgiven? Not only is Jesus this burnt and sin offering for us, but also Jesus serves not only as priest and sacrifice, but as King. Jesus is Son of David, just like Hezekiah was, and it's through His work, His enduring punishment, like the King, the Son of David, endured punishment and Babylon, it's through His exile that we, His people, receive forgiveness. Where was Jesus' exile? It was in that three days between His death and His resurrection. Some of us know the apostles creed, right? And out of the Ephesians it says, He descended into hell and He rose again on the third day. Jesus was an exile. Ephesians tells us Jesus descended. And that was His exile for us. He as King was embarrassed before all the nations because He loves us. He was willing to be embarrassed before the entire world, to be known even today for dying, for being put to death. That's what Jesus is known by, for being humiliated. That's what Jesus is known for. And that speaks to His great, great love for us. Paul writes in Romans 5, 8, for a righteous man, no one maybe will even dare to die for a righteous man, but for an unrighteous man, nobody will die for that person. But Jesus did. He looked at us and he said, there's an unrighteous man, there's an unrighteous woman, there's an unrighteous boy, there's an unrighteous girl, I will be humiliated, I will be exiled, I will offer myself up a sacrifice for him and for her. And notice the wideness of the forgiveness of Jesus. Look at verse 24, there's a point being made here that maybe we don't see in our 21st century eyes at first, but Hezekiah was King of Judah. And so for a Judah height to speak of Israel, spoke of Israel was the northern kingdom. And one of the things we see through Chronicles, but we see here in the lips of Hezekiah was the term all Israel. And that meant all 12 tribes. And Hezekiah, son of David, commands the priest to make this sacrifice for all Israel. Even for their brothers in the north, the 10 tribes that had ward against them year after year, in fact very recently, had taken their people and scattered them around from Judah. But Hezekiah, son of David, says, this is for all the people, not just the Judah heights, not just those who are near to the presence of God, but it's all people. That speaks to us today too. The gospel is to proclaim to all people, not just to the most likely to believe in Jesus people, but to all people, even as Carl was mentioning in prayer, even to your atheist boss. The gospel is available for him. And that was him. We'll see this later with Hezekiah when they celebrate the Passover. The invitation goes out to all so that all can come and take advantage of the sacrifice and the forgiveness that God has provided. So trust the Lord our King. Jesus' King is, in many ways, the only means of forgiveness, the only rescue from the ruin that we find ourselves in apart from Jesus. Now, second thing, in addition to trusting our Lord, the King, in thanks, God says to us, worship the Lord. That's your blank worship. In thanks, worship the Lord.
Notice the progression of events here. First of all, burn offerings and sin offerings are offered that is forgiveness is taken care of. And then after that, Hezekiah turns to the people and says, bring thank offerings. And we see it's in verses 31 and 35. That is, they were these thank offerings or fellowship offerings. The thank offering was a kind of fellowship offering. And we see both mentioned here. And this was something that the people gave, they brought from what they owned to worship the Lord. And notice how these offerings are worshiped. Giving these offerings are worshiped for them. That's how they worshiped. But how do they do that? What are things that characterize worshiped? Worship that's given in thanks to the Lord. First thing, in thanks, worship the Lord with willing hearts. That's your blank, with willing hearts. That's a big phrase in first and second chronicles. Those who had willing hearts did this. Those who had willing hearts did that. And all whose hearts were willing did this other thing. And all these things that represent faithfulness to the Lord. And the Lord wants our hearts. He doesn't just want our dry recitations of doctrine. A doctrine is a good thing. It teaches us who God is. But He wants that to be believed and understood from the heart. He wants us to love Him with all our heart, soul, mind and strength. And so when we worship the Lord, we're to worship the Lord with willing hearts. And if we don't want to worship, we're to say, there's something wrong with me right now. I need to repent and ask the Lord to give me a willing heart that I would desire to worship Him. So that's from verse 31. We're to worship God with willing hearts. Second thing, we're to worship the Lord with music. Here we see that there's singing and there are instruments. You know, there are some churches that believe you shouldn't use instruments in worship. I don't know how they get that. But they do. But here specifically geared for us or laid out for us is that we use instruments in worship to create praise for the Lord. So we worship the Lord with music. And we see that as specifically named in verses 25, 26, 28, and 30. A third thing, a third way we worship the Lord is with bowing. And we see that mentioned twice, bowing, verses 28 and 29. And before coming here, the church we were, of which we were members in Orlando, they were bowers. And they had, they had little kneelers. You know, a kneeler is, if you have been in a Catholic church maybe or maybe a higher church, it's like a thing that attaches to the back of all the seats or the benches or the pews. And it's on a pivot and you pull it back and gives you a little pad that you can put your knees on. So you don't have to get your, you can still kneel without getting your pants dry cleaned after the service. But you know, maybe that's something we'll do when we get into our building, depending on how much room it's in between the seats. I think we're going to have carpet in there. We haven't carpeted in the sanctuary. That'll start being a possibility for us. But certainly in your private worship at home, that's an appropriate thing for you to do, to bow before the Lord, to kneel before him in Thanksgiving. We do it here through bowing our heads in prayer. So it's appropriate for us to bow our heads in prayer. This shows we are in submission to you, King Jesus. Third thing or fourth thing with worshiping were to worship the Lord in thanks with ascribing, ascribing and that word is ASCRIBNG. Ascribing him worth. And we see that in verse 30 here. What are they used to give praise to the Lord? The Psalms. See, there's the words of David and of ASF. Those are the two main writers of the Psalms. Most Psalms say at the top of them a psalm of David or a psalm of ASF. So what do the Psalms do? The Psalms declare who God is and what God has done. And they ascribe to the Lord worth. They say, God, you are worthy to receive praise. You're worthy to receive thanks because you've done these things for us, your people. So in worship we come and we do it and we ascribe him worth. It's not content less worship. It's not just a time of fun and it's not a time of entertainment. It's a time where we ascribe to the Lord worth. There's substance there. We communicate, God, you are the only forgiver of sins through Jesus. That's ascribing the Lord worth, declaring who he is and what he's done so that he can be glorified. And Psalm 29, 1 and 2 are called to worship this morning, specifically commands us to do that. Command the angels of heaven to do that. In fact, the mighty ones are the angels in heaven. Ascribe to the Lord, almighty ones. Ascribe to the Lord glory and strength. See, declare who God is. He's glorious and he's strong. Ascribe to the Lord, the glory do his name, worship the Lord in the splendor of his holiness. Next, we worship the Lord and thanks with giving, that's your next blank, with giving offerings to the Lord in, here's your next blank, in abundance. And I'm not saying these things, the text is saying these things versus 31 through 35. And so we note here, first of all, that giving, like we say in our service, giving is an act of worship. So what do I say every week? Now, let us continue our worship of the Lord by giving to him, of our tides and our offerings. Giving is an act of worship. And that's what Hezekiah the King calls for, worship the Lord by giving these thank offerings. And verse 35, we see that they're given an abundance. Giving these thank offerings to the Lord is worship. And these offerings were not tides. They weren't from the 10% but they were beyond the 10%. Why? Well, it's in response to and to the purpose of something. First of all, it's in response to, here's your next blank, why do we give in response to forgiveness? That's what we see here. God's people are forgiven. The temples opened up again. They hadn't had a means of forgiveness. And the temple gets opened again by the work of Hezekiah and the priest and lead by the He had ordered to clean up the temple to get the temple cleaned up. And then now they have burn offerings and send offerings given for them. And in response to these burn offerings and send offerings given for them, they come with these thank offerings. So this giving is done with in response to forgiveness for and for our salvation. Okay, so we're saved. So we give. We're forgiven. So we give. That's at least a motivation and a proper motivation for our giving. And it's for the purpose of what we see here, building a worship facility.
For the purpose of building a worship facility. Now in Hezekiah's day, the worship facility had been built already. But when Chronicles is written, they are standing there with no temple because Nebuchadnezzar the Babylonian king had flattened it. And one of the Chronicles main purposes of recounting the history of Israel in his books, first and second Chronicles, the reason he writes is to encourage people to build the temple, to rebuild it. Okay, you're back from exile. Now rebuild the temple and he gives them this example. He shows them he lays before them. What is it like when God is blessing his people? Here's what it's like. God's people are giving in abundance to build the temple, to build the worship facility. And so this was an encouragement to the original audience, the original readers of Chronicles, that they should likewise be giving for the building of this temple. In their day, this was about 520 BC and the temple was not yet rebuilt and they were encouraged through this book of scripture, to give generously like this group of people had done during the days of Hezekiah, during these days of blessing. And so we say, hmm, wonder how we might apply that in our lives today. There are worship facility that we might give to. If any of you can think of anything, come up to me afterward and let me know about that. I'll put it in the email. Now, actually it's a great passage for us to look at and to encourage you folks and me and what we're doing in the last month and that now and that's through the rest of the summer, preferably before July 31st, in giving to the construction of our new church building. I covered Bruce Road. And as you are, know this in your giving. It is back to your outline. It is above your tithe. That was the case for these people here. The tithe stuff took care of the initial burn offerings. But the God's people are asked to give these thank offerings which were, the offerings in the law were things that people gave above their 10%. So it's an offering above your tithe. Secondly, this is an act of worship. That's your next blank worship as it was for these folks here. It was a way they could say, God, you are worthy here. Take this bowl. Take this goat. Take this lamb. Something that is part of my livelihood because you are worthy. So giving and giving to building a worship facility is an act of worship. It's not just a business transaction. It's not just an ugly necessity. It's a spiritual act. It's a part of your spirituality. It's a part of your spiritual life. It's a part of your spiritual growth to be able to give to the Lord in a way that even might hurt a little bit. If that's what you can call not getting that big screen TV this year. So it's an act of worship and be encouraged as you give that this is worshiping the Lord. Like you do each week, I hope each week or each month, however you give during our normal offering. And when you put that check or that cash or whatever you do, not accepting credit cards this time, as you put that in the offering plate, really have the conscious thought in your head, God, you are worthy. I worship you by putting this check in this plate. Giving is really a significant thing that we do in the eyes of the Lord. Next is conditionally commanded, that's your next blank, commanded by your king, Jesus. That is notice who invites the giving to the building. It's not some sneaky guy. It's not some professional and some other business. It's not a businessman. It's the son of David. The son of David says, bring your offerings into the temple. And we're told here it's responded to by those next line here, by those with willing hearts. So this is an offering was not a mandatory thing at least most times. It was an offering. Tides was mandatory, but the offerings many times were extra and above. But the son of David asked something. And so there's a certain conditionality, we tied to this because it's responded to by willing hearts. But when we read this in scripture that those with willing hearts gave and a big deal is made about all the numbers of animals that were given, it's really a challenge. And that's your next blank there. This is a challenge. It says to me, John, do you have a willing heart, if given the opportunity to give in a way where you have to give sacrificially, that above what you plan to give through normal kind of tithing, is your heart willing? Where's your heart? Jesus said where your treasure is there will be your heart also. And so it becomes a very spiritual thing for us because when we let go of our money, there goes our heart. As we give our money to the Lord, there goes our heart to in a good way. Our heart goes to the Lord. Amen. Count me in. What do you need? What can I provide? Not how little can I get away with providing and not feel guilty. And you know, we're not looking at what anyone's giving and I never see that and that kind of thing. So you don't have to worry about that. But the question is how much do I need to give? The question is how much can I give? Remaining responsible to my family and the responsibilities I have financially and that kind of thing. But how much can I give? It's responded to by willing hearts. And then next, it is an act of thanks to God for the forgiveness. It is an act of thanks to God for the forgiveness you have received in the gospel and we see this idea of thanks and forgiveness. The idea of thanks in verse 31, thank offerings and the idea of forgiveness in verses 23-28, the sin offerings and the burn offerings. How valuable is this to you? Jesus said, let me tell you how valuable forgiveness is. What shall profit a man if he gains the whole world? He had four fits his own soul. And what can a man give an exchange for a soul? Nothing. If we had to give everything we had like Jesus asked the rich young ruler to do. If that's what we're required and it's not but if that's what we're required to get that pearl of great price, to get that treasure in the field, Jesus said, it's really worth it. Give everything you have. Give the shirt off your back. Give your underwear. Give everything to me and my girls like underwear. And that's funny when you're a kid. It's worth it. If you die in poverty here, if that were the requirement, if God said, I will give forgiveness to everybody who gives everything to me. Do it. It's just a dumb thing not to. But forgiveness is valuable to us. And that's why giving is a valuable thing in the eyes of the Lord. He looks down at us and we're a good giving church. You folks, other people have studied our giving and say, wow, that's really, you've got a very extraordinarily good giving church. And when God sees good giving, when God sees this show of thanks to him, everybody likes to be thanked, right? My dad used to get kind of perturbed and do something really nice for someone and they wouldn't say thanks. Not that he was doing it for that reason, but he always thought it was appropriate. And it is. God delights when we say thanks. Thank you, Jesus, for forgiving my sins. God delights in that. And that's appreciating his gift. And we appreciate the gift of forgiveness for giving. 35, verse 35, it's abundant. That's underlined there in verse 35. It was an abundant giving. That's the big picture we're supposed to get out of here. It is with verses 20 and all. It's with enthusiasm. Hezekiah, as soon as the temple gets cleared out as soon as it completely gets cleared, verse 19, early the next morning, how fast can we do this? It's like when I was putting up insulation into our current house, so Betsy and I did this. John O'Neill helped us out a little bit. And we did our, put our own insulation up. And mostly, mostly insulation that went up, I think we did the majority of it.
But there were drywallers coming. And we had to get that up before they arrived. And so for period of four days, skipping Sunday where I rested, period of four days, I was getting up before the sun got up in June. Man, that was hot. And putting up insulation and when there was no more light, there were no lights in the house. No more lights of the day going down the bed and then getting up again as early as I could because I knew I needed all that time. And indeed, I put up the last pieces of insulation in the house in congruence with the timing of the drywallers. Man, they're fast. But they were there. They were there. I was there the first hour. I beat them there that morning. I'm still putting up insulation in my house and they came and I was there overlapped with them about an hour. But that's what Hezekiah does here. He says, how early can we get up? To start offering sacrifices to the Lord to his tone for our sins, that we might give thanks to the Lord as a community. So with enthusiasm, we give to the Lord. And then lastly, to underline again, verse 36, look there in your text. What's the result of this? Of trusting the Lord our King, of worshiping the Lord through giving these offerings to him? What's the result of enthusiastically abundantly giving? What's the result of reflecting on the forgiveness that we have? What's the result of responding to the command of the son of David to give thank offering to the Lord? What's the result? It's rejoicing. Verse 36, it brings joy. The people were there and they said, boy, this took something from me. But man, I've got joy. And that's what the New Testament speaks about. There's more blessed to give than to receive. There's joy in that. We all know that from times when we've given sacrificialism something, there's great joy in that. And even some of us in our pre-Christian state at Christmas time actually enjoyed buying the gifts for others and giving them to them because there is more joy in giving than receiving. Our response to being forgiven is worshiping the Lord. Let's pray. Jesus, we're grateful because you are our king who went into the exile of death, endured that punishment so that we could be brought into your heavenly temple when we die. Jesus, you are our great high priest who brought the sacrifice of yourself that our sins would be laid upon you on a cross and punished so that we could have forgiveness. Thank you for doing this for us. Help us to be appropriate in our response in worshiping you with enthusiasm. And thank you that you give us joy in our souls when we do that.