Chapter 30

2 Chronicles chapter 30. Hear the word of God. Hezekiah sent word to all Israel and Judah and also wrote letters to Ephraim and Manasseh. Invited them to come to the temple of the Lord in Jerusalem and to celebrate the Passover to the Lord the God of Israel. The King and his officials and the whole assembly in Jerusalem decided to celebrate the Passover in the second month. 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. The plans seemed right both to the King and to the whole assembly. They decided to send a proclamation throughout Israel from Bershiba to Dan calling the people to come to Jerusalem and to celebrate the Passover to the Lord the God of Israel. It had not been celebrated in large numbers according to what was written. May God add his rich blessing to the reading of his word. Let's pray together. Our Lord Jesus, you are kind to us to give us words that come from so long ago and yet speaks of plainly to who we are today. Would you grant to us the mercy to see you in this passage and to understand ourselves and the light of that light so that we may serve you more faithfully and we may bring honor to you in what we do. And as you grant us this grace, we will give you praise for it. Amen. We readily convinced that the Achilles heel of the reformed tradition is worship. I don't mean by that simply, that we don't do it very well, but I also mean by that that as we try to reform it and reshape it in our day, we run a serious risk of actually destroying ourselves as we try to fix something. I don't know if you're aware of it or not, but RTS Orlando is a rather peaceful place on this subject compared to many in our circles. The reality is that as we deal with the question of worship in this day and age when it's a controversial matter among us and our communities of faith, it's important for us to learn from the Bible how to deal with the reformation of worship, the change of worship and the transformation of worship. And I cannot think of a better passage that's more practical to the life of God's people on this subject than Second Chronicles chapter 30. I won't give you much because I'm assuming you already know this as a seminary community, but you know that this book in the Bible talks about worship perhaps more than any other portion of the Bible. The chronicler, the writer of this book, was deeply committed to changing the way that people worshiped so that they did it in a way that was pleasing to God. And yet by the example of Hezekiah here in Second Chronicles 30, we find the practical wisdom, the practical advice that we so desperately need in our day as we try to bring this aspect of our lives into conformity with the word of God. I can remember one day walking along a path one Sunday afternoon with a friend and I just fell flat on my face and I looked around and tried to figure out what was up, you know, find some excuse. And there it was. There was a big rock in the middle of the path and so I said who put that rock here anyway and as we looked, we noticed there was more than one, but two or three in the path and we were noticing that. In fact, they may sort of erode through the woods and my friend was one of these know it all. He said, this is an old wall. This is an old wall. Let's go follow it. And so we did. It was in New England and you know that in the old days when they would clear the fields, they would run into stones and simply throw the stones to the edge of the fields. Am I right, Dr. Nicole? Yeah. That's right. All through New England. All through New England, you find these kinds of old remnants of walls going through the woods. And as we followed this path, we came to a great clearing. He knows the right answer. The answer is yes. In fact, we came to this big clearing and often the distance there was a farmhouse and around the farmhouse, there was a very tall wall and you could tell by watching these stones and looking at that wall that at one time they had lined up. Now around the house, this wall stood at least two meters high and my friend said he was one of these know-it-all. You know the difference? You know what's the difference. You say, well, they would take the very special stones and sometimes even cut them to be just perfect for the wall around the house. And then they would put mortar between the stones around the house and the ones out in the fields. They would just pile them up on top of each other as they came. And of course, with time, the ones in the field, although they were knocked over by the trees and by the storms and with the one around the house, stood strong. Surely, that's what we want to happen. And it comes to fixing, adjusting, purifying, our worship of God. Surely, what we want is a living temple, a living stone coming together in a way that builds a strong wall and not a weak wall that will fall apart the next day you look at it. And that's what Hezekiah does here in this passage. For many years, the northern tribes have been separated from the south and they have gone their own ways, even in the area of worship, to the point that God despised the sorts of things that they were doing up north and Hezekiah living in his day wanted to bring the nation back together. And the way he brought the nation back together was by putting first things first, changing worship, fixing worship. And as Hezekiah put this wall together, I want you to know he had several different kinds of stones. And he also had a special mortar to hold those stones together. And I think that if we can see what kinds of stones Hezekiah used, as he built this temple to the Lord, as he built the spiritual reality of worship as God would have it be, we can learn how to have these kinds of stones in our wall and we can learn how to have the mortar to hold them together. What was the first stone Hezekiah had? You can find it in verse 5. Why did he decide to celebrate Passover to the Lord in Jerusalem? The last sentence, it had not been celebrated in large numbers according to what was written. That's an Old Testament way of saying the Bible. They hadn't been doing it the way the Bible says. And of course, we believe that. We believe in this tradition more than any other, I believe, that we must learn how to do worship according to what is written. And that is what Hezekiah believed as well. Now I say that to us in an affirmation that we believe in the regulative principle and we believe that the Bible must rule over the worship of God's people. But the fact is, is that we seldom have that kind of commitment that Hezekiah had. Instead we put into our wall, we put into our temple a plastic substitute stone. They come in varieties. One of these substitute stones, these plastic stones, is let's not do things according to what is written, let's do something new. The new will be better because Old certainly is boring, at least we know that much. So let's do something new. And that will be great to get people to come and everything will be wonderful. That's not the motivation Hezekiah had and that's not the motivation this passage wants us to have. The motivation we must have instead of doing something new is to do something according to what was written. Now I say that because here in our own school, we have people that would rather have something new rather than evaluate whether it's biblical or not. But that's only one plastic stone, there's another plastic stone. You know what it is, don't you? Let's do it the way it used to be done. Let's do it the way it's always been done. I mean this is what reform people have always been doing. Can you do better than they've done for the last two or three hundred years? My goodness if Hezekiah had done that, it would never have changed a thing in Israel. They had not celebrated the Passover according to what was written in generations. Their mothers, their grandmothers, their great-grandmothers, their great-grandmothers. You know, what are you going to say about this, except that they had a long-standing tradition, a long-standing tradition of not doing it the right way? Let me ask the women here a question. When your man is driving you into a car, whatever may be a friend, husband, son, whatever may be. You're driving along the car and he gets lost. What's the first thing he does? Is the first thing he does to look for directions to ask somebody and stop saying, hey, can you help me? I'm lost. Is that the first thing men do when they're driving cars and they get lost? Of course not. You know what they do. They wrap their hands around this steering wheel like that and they say, shut up, I know how to get there. I know how to get there. Now they take them, you know, a hundred miles out of the way but they know how to get there. And you know the reality of that, don't you? Because that's what they do when they drive a car. What do you think they do when they drive the church? What do you think they do when they lead the worship of God's people? Don't bother me with the data. Don't bother me with directions. Put the map back in the glove compartment. I know how it's supposed to be done. This is how we've done it in our tradition forever. So long, plastic stones. And you and I must be committed not to doing something new and not to doing something old but to doing something according to what was written, that's who we are. Alright, I can buy that but that's not the only stone Hezekiah had in his wall. It's quite remarkable really because the chronicler idealizes Hezekiah except for one little thing that he does. He's really very clean in this book and it's a magnificent example of how we can find something that is exemplary for us in the Bible. Hezekiah did have a stone of commitment to truth, not to the new, not to the old but to truth. But he also had another stone. And this is ever so hard because those who really are committed to truth don't like this stone. It's a commitment to the unity of God's people, a commitment to the unity of the worshiping community, a zeal and a drive that pushed him to do certain things because he wanted the people to worship together. You know what Hezekiah did of course and we can see how driven he was by this was that he sent invitations to people and he didn't just send invitations to Judahites who knew how to worship correctly or at least they were supposed to have but he sent them to all Israel. Can you imagine the people in Atlanta sending invitations to the people in New York and Boston, Ephraim and Manassah and inviting them to come down to have a Lord's Supper. They all come down and have Lord's Supper with us. And what do you think those people in Yankee land would say, these guys are crazy, we have it up here already. We don't need to come down there to you, but that's exactly what Hezekiah did. In a day when he knew they would laugh at him, when they knew that they would mock him and they knew that most of them would reject and in fact as you read the chapter they did, Hezekiah still sent invitations to Colious around, all Israel, inviting them to come to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover. I'm convinced of this. One of the greatest tricks the Satan has performed on the church is to get us to choose between one of these stones or the other. Show me a church that's committed to the truth of God. Show me a church that talks a lot about doctrine, talks a lot about the word of God, teaching, teaching, teaching and I'll show you the church that will split at the drop of the hand. Show me a church that talks about, let's love each other, let's be brothers and sisters. Show me a church like that, and 90% of the time I'll show you a church that has little regard for the Bible. And today we have people who are talking a lot about, let's change worship according to the regular differenceable, let's fix worship, let's make it according to the word of God and what do you find very frequently coming out of the very same lips, absolutely no concern about the unity of the people of God. The two of them go to their little church and have worshiped the way it's supposed to be. I know you won't believe this unless you see it in New Testament. You have to have truth and unity together. They go together in Jesus' kingdom and in the kingdom of God they go together, a commitment to truth and a commitment to unity. In John chapter 17 you know this passage, Jesus high priestly prayer. He prays a number of things for the apostles and for us and he prays in verse 17 about the truth. Justify them, he says, by the truth, your word is truth and that was as a guy's commitment. And it's got to be our commitment too that as we try to fix worship in a way that will honor God that we do it in a sanctify manner and that sanctification comes only by the word. But listen to what Jesus says in practically the same breath beginning in verse 20. My prayer is not for them the apostles alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message that all of them may be one father. Just as you are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. You see Jesus was not just committed to the stone of truth, he was committed to the stone of oneness. And he says, Lord, I want the church to be one like you and I are one. How much closer can you get than that? He says, I want the church to be unified as you father and I are unified and notice what he says the purpose of this is, what the result will be so that the world may know you are sent me. Did you hear what Jesus did not say? He did not say that the world will come to know Christ was sent by the father because of good preachers or because of good confessions or because of fancy church buildings or great youth programs. He said the world will come to know that God sent Jesus when they look at us and they see that we are one. Any wonder why they don't believe? We find opportunity to divide and to hate and to castigate each other every turn. And the reality is Jesus didn't like it and hezekiah didn't do it. Now I say this as a great satanic ploy because what Satan tries to do is to get us to choose between these two. And the feel is if we can't keep them together, his apiah was able to keep them together. And he did this because he took the stone of truth and the stone of commitment to unity in the subject of worship, in the arena of changing worship and he held them together with a mortar. He had a mortar that held these stones together. And I want to tell you just three ingredients in this mortar that you can find right here in this chapter. Three ingredients, if we can get them, we can hold it together too. The first ingredient was patience. Do you remember we just read in this chapter that the Yankees up north couldn't get down in time to celebrate Passover in the first month? So hezekiah says, well that's okay, that's okay, we haven't done this in a long time. We'll just wait a month, that'll be okay. The whole assembly agreed that this is the way they would do it. And can you not see Hezekiah's great patience? It's such a contrast to me. You know how I treat you. I've been doing this thing now full time for almost 25 years, can you believe that? And I'll give you three weeks to catch up with me, and if you don't, you know how I feel about you. And isn't that the way we often feel when we come to grips with certain things about worship? We begin to see the certain things that the church has been doing are wrong, and they need to be changed and fixed, and now we know the truth, and anybody that disagrees with us, well, give them a couple of weeks, and if they don't like it, let them go somewhere else. We don't care in patience. There's a big difference between patience and compromise. Compromise says, I don't care anymore about truth. Patience says, let's take a time with this, it's all right. It's okay, we're going somewhere, and I think things are going to get better. So back off in lighten up. As a guy, I was able to hold truth and unity together because he had a mortar of patience, but it wasn't just patience. It was also priorities. You ever met Christians that believe every single thing that they believe is just as important as every other thing they believe? It's amazing. In church's split, you realize most churches don't split over things like whether Christ was divine or whether the Bible's the Word of God, they usually split over the feller of carpet in the new sanctuary. But the fact that someone didn't receive a thank you note for keeping the nursery during their revival services, things like that, that's the kind of stuff that causes splits in the church. And Hezekiah knew the difference between what was important and what was not important. Great illustration to this again, and this passage is that he decides to postpone Passover to the second month, second month. When did Moses say it should be done? The first month. Hezekiah knew something. He knew it was more important to celebrate as one nation according to what was written in large numbers rather than doing it at 11 o'clock on Sunday morning. I was in a PCA church, and this is my church, so I can talk about this. My family now. I was in a PCA church on Sunday morning up on the platform with the pastor, and nobody was in the church, one or two people, and but a bunch of people were back in the foyer, and you could see them because they had big glass windows back there, and I leaned over to them as they were playing to pray. They said, when do these people come in? He looked at me and said, they can't. I said, what? He said, yeah, they can't. The session last week decided we're going to lock the doors to the sanctuary at 11 o'clock. You see, the elders were upset because people kept coming in late interrupting their worship service. They were more concerned that people be there for the call to worship and for the prelude than sitting down and being quiet during the prelude, more concerned about that than they were that the people were coming or not coming, so they just locked the doors, kept them out. Oh my goodness, can you imagine people not singing hymns? Can you imagine people making people feel bad, even when they think it's a great thing to do? Just to sing songs. Can you imagine the standing in front of a church and not singing with the people of God and the humble praise of their Savior because they think that they shouldn't sing hymns? That's like locking the door at 11 o'clock. Priorities. Priorities. Some things are more important than others and you'll never be able to hold your commitment to truth and unity together unless you begin to believe that. But there's a third element in Hezekiah's mortar. Let me tell you what happens in this chapter. The Yankees come. They celebrate Passover and they did not observe the rules. They forgot to wash. They had done it a long time. They didn't know what to do. Maybe they didn't. They just didn't care. But they didn't wash up before they came. And as a result, they began to become sick. I think this is the passage that Paul is referring to when he interprets the first Corinthians problem that way. That they become sick because of taking the Lord's Supper in an unworthy manner. These people were becoming sick for having taken the Passover in an unworthy manner, not having cleansed themselves. What could Hezekiah do? They were ruining His Passover. Everything was going crazy because these people had not followed the rules. What did He do? Well, He didn't do what we would have done. Keep those people out next week. He did not do what we would do. Call in the elders. Let's discipline them. He did not do what we would do. Let's split the church. If they don't know how to wash their hands properly, we're going to split this church and we're going to do the right thing over in our church. It's not what Hezekiah did. You want to see what He did? Look at verse 18. Although most of the many people who came from Ephraim, Manasseh, Issa, Karin, Zebelin had not purified themselves yet the eighth of Passover, contrary to what was written. But Hezekiah prayed for them, saying, May the Lord who is good pardon everyone who sets his heart on seeking God, the Lord, the God of his fathers, even if he is not clean, according to the rules of the sanctuary. And the Lord heard Hezekiah and healed the people. I've seen churches go through changes. Lots of churches go through. Lots of changes. And most of those churches, as they go through these changes, go through what we lovingly call in our circles of Scottish revival. You know what that is, don't you? So, you take a church from 500 down to 50.

Now, praise the Lord for the Scots. This is our heritage and we're all excited about that. But you take it from 500 down to 50 in the name of purity, you understand. But the reality is, that's not what Hezekiah did. And I've seen some churches go from one end of the spectrum and worship all the way over to the other end of the spectrum. Theologically and in their practice of worship and instead of going through the reduction, they've actually grown as they've done this. But you know, there have only been two churches I've seen do that and they common element as I've looked at them as this. The leaders of the church decided they were not going to preach their people through this. They decided they were not going to drive their people through this. They were not even going to lead by example what they were going to do is they were going to pray their churches through the change. And all the while, what they were doing was asking God to have mercy and patience on those who worshipped in an unclean manner. We have a lot of material coming out in our circles nowadays on the purity of worship and on fixing worship and making it according to the Word of God. I want to see that material balanced. I want to see it balanced with as deep or concerned for the unity of the people of God. And I want to see us talking to each other using the mortar that Hezekiah used, the mortar of patience. On both sides, on every side, the mortar of priorities, on every side, and the mortar of prayer. Let's pray together. Oh, Lord Jesus, you are merciful and kind to be so concerned for us. And we confess to you that many times when we're in the throes of the arguments and the debates that we forget the basic principles that should be governing our efforts to worship you in spirit and in truth. How we want to be committed to your Word in this and how we want to be committed to the unity of your people. Grant us the grace to have patience and priorities and prayer.