Thank you, Bob. All right. Second Chronicles, chapter 32, we begin in verse 24, and we look again at this passage of Scripture, and we mentioned last week that we were looking at two of three things that were true that God teaches us in this text, and this morning we look at the third thing. Second Chronicles, chapter 32, beginning in verse 24. This is God's word, eternal, and true. In those days, Hezekiah became ill, and was at the point of death. He prayed to the Lord who answered him and gave him a miraculous sign. But Hezekiah's heart was proud, and he did not respond to the kindness shown him. Therefore, the Lord's wrath was on him and on Judah and Jerusalem. Then Hezekiah repented of his pride as did the people of Jerusalem. Therefore, the Lord's wrath did not come upon them during the days of Hezekiah. Hezekiah had very great riches and honor, and He made treasuries for His silver and gold, and for His precious stones, spices, shields, and all kinds of valuables. He also made buildings to store the harvest of grain, new wine, and oil. And He made stalls for various kinds of cattle and tins for the flocks. He built villages and acquired great numbers of flocks and herds, for God had given him very great riches. It was Hezekiah who blocked the upper outlet of the Guy Hunt spring, and channeled the water down to the west side of the city of David. He succeeded in everything he undertook. But when envoys were sent by the rulers of Babylon to ask him about the miraculous sign that occurred in the land, God left him to test him, and to know everything that was in his heart. The other events of Hezekiah's reign in his acts of devotion are written in the vision of the prophet Isaiah, son of Amaz, in the book of the kings of Judah and Israel. Hezekiah rested with his fathers and was buried on the hill where the tombs of David's descendants are. All Judah, and the people of Jerusalem, honored him when he died. And Manasseh his son succeeded him as king. Here ends our reading. We have a response of thankfulness written for us in the upper right hand corner of your bullet in there. Let us get thanks to the Lord for his word, the word of the Lord. Let's pray. Our Father, we are thankful to You for Your word. Your Word is an act of You being a loving Father to us, not leading us without instruction. Rather, the loving Father, You give us instruction that we might understand who You are and be amazed at You. And that You might teach us how we are to live so that our lives are characterized by Your character. And so that we can see Your blessing in our day-to-day lives rather than You having to discipline us, to get us back into Your blessing. Help us to receive this Your Word with open hearts, hearts of desire to see You and follow Your way. Jesus preached us by Your Spirit and by Your Word here. We ask Jesus in Your name. Amen. As I mentioned, we looked last week at two things that we see in this passage, and this week we looked at a third. And what we talked about at the beginning last week, in the first few blanks here, if you'd like to fill out blanks in an outline, you're welcome to do that. Oh, I gave you one for free. Sorry about that. Okay. We looked last week at these three things, which the cats out of the bag there. But if you'd like to fill out blanks in an outline, you can do so and we'll do our first few, which will be reviewed from last week. So if you remember last week's Gospel lesson, which I know you all have that memorized now, right? Yeah, like I do. These are reviews. We talked about last week, first of all, that God is not somebody who's bent on doing bad and ruining people's lives. He's not a cosmic kill joint. And with his own people, sometimes we get the view that I got to keep in line because God's up there with the fly swatter or some kind of some kind of whip. And he's waiting for me to get out of line. So when I do, he can give me a little whip down here. But we saw last week that this is not God's disposition at all. Rather, God is up in heaven doing exactly the opposite. Almost finding excuses so that he can rightly bless us. His orientation is blessing his people. He knows we're not getting it 100% right, but he's looking for ways he can bless us so that we can, as his words say, taste and see that he is good. So we can experience his blessing in our lives. And we see a person here in this text who's tremendously blessed by the Lord. And so as we look at this, we're to take this and God wants us to take this as an example of what things are things upon which we can focus that help God be able to bless us in our lives instead of having to discipline us. And Hezekiah had both things in his lives. But as a point of introduction, we say this, God looks to bless his people. That's your first blank there. God looks to bless his people. And we see this in verse 24, 26. And we see the big passage there, 27 through 30, where God lists for us all these various ways in which he blessed Hezekiah. And then verse 33 has a guy who dies and he's given great honor by the people. He's buried with David and the good descendant kings of his ancestors of his and given great honor at his death. And we are, as the people of God, to look at this and say, okay, looks like Hezekiah got it right. And Hezekiah was a man that God greatly blessed and God wants to bless his people. What are things that Hezekiah got right that we can copy, that we can emulate, that we can follow after? And there are three things and that blank was free. And we're going to look at just one today. But in review, the first thing that we talked about last week, number one, is that we're to be people who are thankful. So the first thing God says this morning in review is be thankful. When Hezekiah forgets to be thankful, when He forgets that what He has is from the Lord, then that's when He gets in trouble. When pride rises in His heart, that's when the Lord disciplines Hezekiah to get Him back in the right way so that He can bless Hezekiah again. So we're to be people who are thankful. Secondly, we're to be people who are humble. That's your blank there. God says to us, be humble before God and others. And we see in verse 26, when Hezekiah has had pride in His heart when He comes before the Lord and humbles Himself, before the Lord, before His prophet Isaiah, and before the people, God returns blessing to Hezekiah and Jerusalem. And so we see that from the gospel, this was the case for Jesus. He was a person who came from heaven, was God Himself from all eternity past, and He comes and He humbles Himself, Philippians 2, and takes on the form of a servant and serves us. And it's the lolliest of servants and is willing to be regarded as the dust of the earth and is one to be spit upon and despised and whipped and treated as the worst of all people during His day, being crucified on a cross. But God doesn't leave Jesus there through that humility, through humbling Himself, Jesus is given a name above every name. So we saw this morning in our call to worship. We see Jesus has risen to heaven, and we have this heavenly scene in Revelation 5 there, the first passage printed for you in the scriptures, and we see Jesus is there, and He's surrounded by the angels, and by all creation, and by the saints, the believers who have died before us, and they are all giving praise to Him. Worthy is the Lamb who was slain to receive power, and wealth, and wisdom, and strength, and honor, and glory, and praise. And this is essentially what happens to Hezekiah, Jesus ancestor. Jesus was the Son of David, a descendant of David. Hezekiah was the Son of David, a descendant of David, and Hezekiah provides for us a picture here in this text that is a picture of what would one day happen to Jesus. Hezekiah was faithful to the Lord, and God, the Father, greatly blesses Hezekiah. Give some great honor, and wealth, and wisdom, and strength, and Hezekiah is praised, and has a glorious existence, but this is just a precursor for what has happened to our King and Savior, Jesus. So where to be people like Jesus who are humble, that's how we came into God's kingdom, through humility, through saying to God, God, it's not through my merit that I deserve your favor. In fact, what I deserve is punishment, punishment of death, and so we come into the kingdom that way, and we continue in the kingdom that way. Be thankful, and be humble. Third point, what we look at this morning, new to us this morning, God says this to us, number three, have your life marked by two blanks, acts of devotion. Have your life marked by acts of devotion, and we get that from verse 32 there. The other events of Hezekiah's reign and his acts of devotion are written in the vision of Isaiah, and we see a reason for all the blessing that Hezekiah has received. Hezekiah's life was marked by acts of devotion. So the first thing we look at is this aspect of devotion. That's your small letter A there, and just write the word devotion, and that's a great thing, devotion. We're to see that, and we're to say yes, devotion is good, and we're to have it. It's a great thing for us to have. God cares about, and here's your next blank, our hearts. We see three mentions in this text alone, this small number versus three mentions of Hezekiah's heart. We see that in verse 25, and then 26, and 31. God cares about our hearts. When Hezekiah's heart becomes proud, He's disciplined. But when His heart humbles itself before the Lord, Hezekiah is blessed. Our hearts are immensely important to God. Throughout all the first and second chronicles, there's this account of various kings, and the bottom line evaluation of them is whether they had whole-hearted devotion to the Lord. That's it, and some kings have half-hearted devotion to the Lord, and some kings have no heart. Their hearts are cold toward the Lord, and those are the kings who are told to us to be the bad kings that we see all this trouble come upon the people because of their lack of devotion or their lack of hearts. The good kings are those who are the bar of the words of Greece, you know it, hopelessly devoted to the Lord. I won't, you want me to sing? No, okay, I heard you. Olivia Newton-John does that one much better. God is, here's our next blank. God is pleased when our hearts are devoted to Him. That's the message we see here from Hezekiah. God is pleased when our hearts are devoted to Him. He's looking at our hearts, and He's looking to see our hearts devoted to Him, and when He sees that, He's greatly pleased. Notice what we're hearing here, and what we're not hearing here. We're hearing that God cares that our whole hearts are devoted to Him. God cares when our whole hearts are devoted to Him. Sometimes, though, we can substitute other things as having central importance to the Lord, and usually it's by giftedness. You know if we're strong in a certain aspect of the Christian life, we want to say that's the most important thing. That's the thing that God really, really cares about. I remember I used to be on the staff of Campus Crusade for Christ in Campus Ministry, and there are three main campus ministries on campuses across the nation. They're all a pair of church groups, there's intervarsity, and there's navigators in this campus crusade, and I was talking to a former NAV staff, navigators staff, and He was bringing me up to speed that all those organizations bear the marks of the giftedness of their founder. So Campus Crusade was started by an entrepreneurial businessman, and so Campus Crusade is run like a business. We produced widgets. We didn't produce widgets. We produced Christians, and we figured out how we could market and get the gospel out to as many people possible, so that people would become believers, and how those believers could then share the gospel with other believers, and we could find more essentially increase our market share. That's all setting good things. Navigators was created by someone in the Navy, and so what stands supreme in the navigators, if you were in the navigators in college, you know that navigators is a ministry all about discipline. You being spiritually disciplined, and navigators have all these disciplines, people that are involved in navigators have all these disciplines, according to the giftedness of their founder. Or some of you I know were involved in an university that was founded by a professor. So what are the university people do? They sit around and talk about the Bible. The crusade folks were the action folks, and the IV folks were the people they were the talkers and the discussors, and the navigators were the serious devoted discipline ones. And it's all coming from, we take what is most easy for us to do, and we say, that's what God cares most about, and so recognize that about yourself, and have humor about that about yourself. But see what God's saying here. God's saying, when I want, regardless of your giftedness, regardless of the bent that I've given you, what I want is your heart. And whatever you're doing, I want your heart. He's not saying I'm going to give you a list. He's not saying knowing doctrine apart from a devoted heart is the center. Nor is he saying the center is knowing the Bible apart from a devoted heart. These are all good things that I'm going to name. He's not saying being a long time church member apart from a devoted heart is the center. See those are things that we can all look to, and I've met people, and I am some of those people who have said those things. Here's why I've really got it right. And I've substituted knowing doctrine over having a whole heart for the Lord. I've substituted knowing the Bible over having a whole heart for the Lord. Or substituted my faithfulness to the church or being a long time church member doing these certain things in the church instead of having my heart devoted to the Lord. So we can be involved heavily in the church. A lot of times, as I'm a pastor and I meet people and they find out I'm a pastor, the first thing that comes out of their mouth is that they have a relative who's a pastor, like I'm supposed to be impressed by that. Oh wow, you must be really spiritual then. You have a relative who's a pastor, but I took a lot of work on your part to have that relative. But some people, that's the center, and they rest on that. And when they meet me as a pastor, they say, here's why I'm okay spiritually. I have a relative who's an officer in the church, a clergy person in the church. Some people think that certain appearances of devotion are the center of things. And this is just slightly off. You've heard it when people pray and they change their ton of voice. Is that devotion changing your ton of voice? You can do that without a heart devoted wholly to the Lord. Or humorously, it can sometimes we can kind of substitute in our minds that we are devoted to the Lord if we don't just pray in Jesus' name but in Jesus' holy precious name. And that good, aren't we extra devoted? If we say that, all these things that I've been talking about, they can be done. There's nothing wrong with these things. And you can say, Jesus' holy precious, wonderful, magnificent name at the end of your prayer. And that's fine. But what we don't want is a wire cage with paper mache painted around it. It's like having one of those, you know, you put the chicken wire together and then you put the paper mache over it and you paint it. You can make a cake that way, but that's not going to taste very good. And what God says is He wants cake. He wants substance behind what appears to be there. So as we talk devotion, we're not talking about things that look like devotion, but about the fact that we are to have here Sir Blank coming up here, we are to have in whatever we're doing hearts that are actually actually devoted to Him. We can do lots of things that are good things. We can do lots of things for the Lord. We can do lots of things in the church. We can do lots of things with Scripture. But in all of it, we want to make sure that our hearts are actually devoted to Him. And so devotion, it's a great thing. We're to center on this in our lives. Second thing, B point, it's the X side of thing. We see that Hezekiah's life was marked by, he had blessing in his life because he had X of devotion. So that's your B blank there, X of devotion. What brings all this verses 27 through 30 blessing to Hezekiah? X. Now there are two errors, two ways we can go to the right or to the left. And we kind of talk about one already, but let's get them both out there now. One error, maybe to the left or to the right, whichever way you want to go, is having X without devotion. That's your B blank devotion. You're one parenthesis there, X without devotion. That's an error. Just to have X and have no devotion, maybe we could call that legalism. Second thing, second error, second way off to the other side of the road, is devotion without X. Devotion without X. This is the people that Jesus speaks of that say, Lord, Lord. And He says to them, I never knew you. We look at this passage and we are shaken up or confronted with the fact that we don't want to be a Lord, Lord, Christian. We don't want to be somebody that just acts devoted, furrows our eyebrows so to speak and closes our eyes when we sing, but there are no acts associated with it. We don't see and hezekiah is both. His heart being fully devoted to the Lord, but acts. He was doing things. You've probably heard someone say, well, I was going to do that. Some act of obedience to God, some way of following God. I was going to do that, but my heart wasn't in the right place. We've all heard that. Maybe we've all said that. Or it's alternative. Well, I was going to do that. Some act of obedience, some doing something in the Lord's way. I was going to do that, but I would have been doing it for the wrong reasons, so I didn't. Again, perhaps we've all heard somebody say that or we've all said that ourselves, but this is wrong thinking. In Hezekiah, we have both things going on. Let's examine how this is wrong thinking. I suppose I'm standing up in Atlantic City like I was about eight or nine years ago. My family went to Atlantic City for vacation and we stayed in this probably changed its name four times since we've been there. The time is called Crystal Coast Inn. It had about ten floors and we were staying on the eighth floor, I think. There was a pool down below that you could see as you were standing on the balcony if your hotel room and then out to the ocean there. I suppose I'm standing there and I look down and I've got a 14-year-old son and he's catching some rays. He's on a lawn chair there, a pool chair, and then I look down and I see a four-year-old son of mine and he's drowning.
I'm on the eighth floor, I can't do anything about this. I look and the lifeguard is not there. He's gone coffee break or something. So I yell down to my 14-year-old and I say to him, Pete, your brother, get him, get him out of the pool. He's drowning. Pete looks up at me and says, okay, and he starts to go to the pool. Meanwhile, I exhale it out of my room. I run down the stairs because I can't wait for the elevator and I get down to the bottom there and my four-year-old is at the bottom of the pool. The emergency squad comes and gets the sun out and it turns out that my son dies. So we're debriefing so to speak and our grief and our mourning and I say to Pete who never got in the water. I say, Pete, what happened? I told you, get your brother out of the pool and he says to me, well, I was going to. I know you said that to me, but I realized on my way to the edge of the pool that my heart wasn't in the right place. But I wouldn't be saving him because I really loved him. I was just going to save him because you told me to do it. So at that point, we asked the doctor Phil question, you know, so how's that working for you? How's that philosophy of if your heart's not in it, but you know the Lord has told you to do it, you should do it anyway? How's that working for you? And so it's not a good MO for us to wait until our hearts in the right place before we obey. If we know what God's will is, which, you know, anything that he writes in his word, we do that. We do it regardless of whether we're feeling it, whether we're in the obedience zone, so to speak, or whether we're not feeling it and follow your blanks down here. We say it's better to obey when you're not feeling it, than to disobey the God of the universe. And then secondly, next blank for you, Jesus does exactly this in the Garden of Gethsemane. Jesus isn't feeling it. He's not feeling, oh man, it gets good at the cross. When he's there in the Garden of Gethsemane, rather, he's an agony. He's in pain. He's dropping sweats of blood. He's saying, Father, if there's any way that I can get out of this, let it be. Help me get out of this. I don't want to drink this cup, but even though I feel that way, let your will be done. Not my will, Father, but yours be done. I get this question a lot, and so we're spending some time with it. What if my motives aren't right? I know what's right to do, but my motives aren't there. You do what's right anyway, because that's what God has commanded us to do. And it's your responsibility there, relying upon the Holy Spirit to get your motives along with it later, but obey first and have your motives follow later. And so we look here at this with Hezekiah and say, devotion is great and God is looking at our hearts, but God is really impressed too when our hearts aren't there. When we say, God, my heart's not there, but you've commanded me to do this. I'm going to do it anyway. I'm going to follow you even though I'm not feeling it right now. And Hezekiah's life is marked by acts of obedience. Two special acts that the writer of Chronicles reveals for us, two special acts, two special groupings of things that Hezekiah does. What are the acts that Hezekiah does that despite the fact that He waivers in His faith and falters here and there, as we read about in this lengthy portion of Chronicles devoted to Hezekiah, what are the things upon which He focuses that are considered to be especially acts of devotion by the Lord? The first thing, this is your number one now in your outline, number one, worship, worship. Hezekiah's life contribution was an essence of commitment to seeing Himself and God's people worship. Carl read for us this morning that when Hezekiah took the throne as a young man, the doors of the temple were closed. They were boarded up and the temple was in disrepair. We skipped a whole section there because it would have taken so long about how there was just all this junk. There were idols and probably the temple was being used to storage space. And so the priests and the Lebes, Hezekiah, gathers to Himself and says, we need to get this temple up and running because we need to worship. Our fathers were unfaithful, but I don't care what our fathers were. We need to be right before the Lord. We need to worship Him. And so Hezekiah was greatly devoted to worship. This was His perhaps His purpose for life. Hezekiah, that He and His people would worship. And we see this as reflective of what His descendent Jesus would do. Jesus' son of David does this as well. Jesus' purpose for life and His life contribution we can say was to see the worship. The worship of His father takes place. Why does Jesus come to earth? Because nobody can properly worship Him unless His blood covers their transgressions. Why does Jesus not just come to earth as a 33-year-old man and die in the cross? Well, a number of reasons for that. But one of them was He cared to instruct us about God. He cared to tell us how we might worship God in spirit and in truth. Jesus was concerned that there would be a people who would worship His father. And so He goes around and He spreads this good news and He dies on a cross so that we so that a people can come together and worship the father. Hezekiah has spent great part of his life so that God's people could worship God. Jesus spills out His life so that we can worship Him. Jesus' purpose for his life was to see the worship of his father take place. And we're to do the same. God says to us, be devoted to me by having worship, by having a thoroughgoing commitment to worship being part of your life. An act of devotion to me is worship. This was true for Hezekiah. It's to be true for us. That we are to have our lives marked with this act of devotion worshipping the Lord, being committed having our hearts wholly desiring to worship Him. Second special act of devotion that we see in Hezekiah deeds for the sake of Christ's Church. Deeds for the sake of Christ's Church. This is very related to the idea of worship. Hezekiah's life work was for the temple. When he takes his place as king, the doors of the temple are shut. He repairs the temple. He gets the temple consecrated through all the right people and he re-institutes worship. The last verse that Carl read for us, verse 35, in the second Chronicles 29 talks about how worship was re-instituted in the temple. All these sacrifices were made and that the people rejoiced and the temple was consecrated and worship occurred again. Hezekiah had repaired the temple. Now what does it have to do with us today? It doesn't mean that we send money away so that they can rebuild the temple physically in Jerusalem today because the New Testament tells us that the temple of God is the Church. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 3-16, you are the temple of God. Paul brings it to light in Ephesians 2 and 3 as well. He talks about the temple and he says, You are the bricks. You are the mortar with all your gifts. You come together as a people and you form a holy temple of the Lord. And so we see Hezekiah's example of being devoted to the temple of the Lord translates for us and New Testament terms for us being holy devoted to the Lord's house, for us being holy devoted to the Church. Jesus likewise is son of David just like his forebearer Hezekiah. His life work was for the temple of God which is the Church. Jesus' work, his deeds were for, here's your blank, were for the Church. He sheds his blood as the Lamb of God. He gives Himself up. We read that in Ephesians chapter 5 in our Declaration of the Good News. Christ loved the Church and gave Himself up for her. Jesus spilled Himself out for the Church. We are a follow in His example. We are called to do the same. So do act of devotion to God by next blank 40th year serving the Church. And we can serve the Church in a number of ways and we won't talk much about this this morning but there are numbers of ways that we can serve the Church. We see Hezekiah's life. One is by here's your parenthesis area there by giving your treasure. Hezekiah does this certainly. He gives it his own personal resources so that the temple can be built up. And we have that as well. I've talked to you before and kidded with you about before as we're building this church building over here. I guess that's not the time for me to get that 50 or 55 inch or maybe 60 inch plasma TV so that I can really watch the Olympics. Maybe it's time to put that money to another place. What is it? What is it that I really have had in my heart in terms of a material thing? Maybe that's not me. Maybe that's me not giving my treasure to the Lord. And God applauds that. Jesus sees a very poor woman give her last little tiny bit of money to him and he says he commends her in that. So we can give our treasure. We can also give our time our time. And there are many things in the church. Many ways we can employ our gifts and some of those of you yesterday for instance who have the gift of still being physically able to do landscaping kind of work. I came out for that. That's a great example of giving your time to the church. And you know here in this church we don't ask for a lot of your time so that you can be out there in the community and being lights in the world. We don't have Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday night services here at the church nor will we when we move into the building. We want you folks involved in having your kids and little league and YMCA soccer and what they call it. Sivitane football around here, not what they call football. I was going to say popcorn around here. We want you involved in your PTAs and that kind of thing being lights to the world. So there are times where we can give our time to the church and with wholehearted devotion. And then lastly giving our talents different people of you have different talents and you employ those in the church. So it's a good thing to always be thinking what are things that I am able to do that God has given me talents or gifts or abilities. How can I use those for God's glory in the church? Has Kaya has priests and Levites and people who are skilled in building and repairing things come and work on the temple there? We all have gifts that God talks about and especially first Corinthians 12 through 14 gifts that we can give for the building up of the church. So that's our talents, invest in our talents in the church. So in this way your life can be characterized by having acts of devotion. And in this way by having acts of devotion to the Lord the Lord is he has his excuse to bless us. God wants to bless us, he wants to show his people how good he is. And he gets to do that as our lives are marked by acts of devotion, especially as we're devoted to his church and to the worship of him to putting that at the center of our lives like Kaya. Let's pray. Our Father we thank you for your goodness to us, loving us, caring for us. We thank you for giving us Jesus son of David devoted to the church, devoted to having a people to worship you. Thank you Jesus for dying on that cross, for spilling your life blood, forgiving yourself for the church. Help us to do that as well. Help us to think through ways that are appropriate and good and pleasing to you where we might do acts of devotion to you. Protect us from doing acts without devotion and protect us from having devotion but not putting that devotion to work. Help us to be like Jesus, devoted to your Father whatever he called you to do and putting that devotion to practice by going to the cross. Help us to put our devotion in action and help our action be under and girded by devotion. We pray Jesus in your name. Amen.