Evil,

Our Gospel lesson text this morning comes from 2 Chronicles chapter 29, that's found on page 326 in the Bible sitting in your seat, so I'll give you a moment to find that. We looked at this last week and we looked at one thing that King Hezekiah in this other kingdom of God's people, the kingdom known as Judah, there were two things that he was tremendously concerned with when he came into the office as King and during his first hundred days, so to speak, things that he took care of. And what we looked at last week was that he took care of getting the temple open again. The doors were literally shut, had been shut and locked up and he got those doors opened up and he got the Levites and the priests working on the temple so that it could be used so that it could be functional. And this is something that he did in the first month of his first year with his top priority. But getting the temple in order was not the ultimate thing. Getting the temple in order was so that the ultimate thing could happen, that is that God could be worshipped from 2 Chronicles chapter 29 verse 1. Hezekiah was 25 years old when he became King and he reigned in Jerusalem 29 years. His mother's name was Abija, daughter of Zechariah. He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, just as his father David had done. In the first month of the first year of his reign, he opened the doors of the temple of the Lord and repaired them. He brought in the priests and Levites, assembled them in the square on the east side and said, listen to me, Levites, consecrate yourselves now and consecrate the temple of the Lord, the God of your fathers. Remove all the filament from the sanctuary. Our fathers were unfaithful, they did evil in the eyes of the Lord our God and forsook him. They turned their faces away from the Lord's dwelling place and turned their backs on him. They also shut the doors of the portico and put out the lamps. They did not burn incense or present any burn offerings at the sanctuary to the God of Israel. Therefore, the anger of the Lord has fallen on Judah and Jerusalem. He has made them an object of dread and horror and scorn as you can see with your own eyes. This is why our fathers have fallen by the sword and why our sons and daughters and our wives are in captivity. Now, I intend to make a covenant with the Lord the God of Israel so that his fierce anger will turn away from us. My sons, do not be negligent now. For the Lord has chosen you to stand before him and serve him to minister before him and to burn incense. Here in our passage, we have a response of thankfulness for the Lord giving us this word. It's printed in your bulletins there. Let us give thanks to the Lord. The word of the Lord, let us pray. For God, sometimes you say something to us from Scripture that seems like it's from Mars, which I guess is our way of saying nobody else is saying it, but thank you for saying things like this. Lord, even your church today, you know, has not put a great emphasis on worshiping you. Help us to be more conformed to the importance of worship as your word here and in other places present. Cause our hearts not to be hearts that are resistant to your word or angry or arguing as we see so many people in Scripture respond to your word, but help us not to be unfaithful, but help us to respond faithfully. And as we are rebuked or corrected or patted on the back, whatever the case may be, causes to see your word and to respond to it and to align for us to align ourselves to it. Jesus, we ask that you would preach to us now by your spirit and this your word. Grant us understanding by your spirit. We ask in Jesus name, Amen. We talked about last week how we in society define evil and we typically think of something like a scary movie with lots of gore, or we think of somebody like Charles Manson who has done some horrific crime or a spree of crimes. Evil, we think of something as scary or maybe we think it's just the thing that someone else would do that we would never do, like Osama bin Laden plotting the airplanes going into those buildings with citizens, and that's how it typically works our hearts are that way. We point to the things that we don't have a problem with in terms of temptation and sin, but that other people are doing and we say, you know, that's evil or that's sinful. But God here gives us a definition of something that is evil, that is a heart thing, a central thing for us as people, and something that he is chiefly concerned about. If you'd like to fill out blanks and an outline, you're welcome to do that. You don't have to do that. You can just listen this morning if you'd prefer to do that, but God defines evil in part, as we begin our outline here, in part God defines evil, and this is what we talked about last week in verses 3, 3, 6, lacking devotion to his church. He has a kaya is greatly alarmed about as he comes to take power, and he's had a wicked father who cared nothing about the Lord, his wicked father A has, had closed the doors of the temple, and led the people in worship of pagan gods, and idols, and gods of the nations there in which we live. He's just gone with the flow of the people in the area, and he has a kaya comes to power, and he is greatly alarmed, and the first thing he does, and his first 100 days, so to speak, is he gets the temple doors open, and he gets the temple repaired so that the temple can get used, he's concerned about building up the temple. We talked last week about how the New Testament doesn't define the temple as a group of stones in Jerusalem in Israel today. The temple is not a geographic thing, and the Old Testament, the temple which was a geographic thing back then, which was an actual constructed building back then that existed in God's people use, was just a shadow of something that God would show his people when Jesus came. Jesus comes, he identifies us as his temple, us as the thing that he is building, and he says himself that he will build his church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it, this is Jesus' temple. He says to his apostles in the New Testament that you, 1 Corinthians 3, 16, and Ephesians 2 and Ephesians 3, you are the temple of God, in whom God dwells. And in the Old Testament, God dwells in his temple, in a special way, by his spirit, he dwells in that holy of holy, the most central place in the temple, and this is why the temple was such a sacred place, because God actually, in a special way of his special blessing presence, he dwells in that temple. But that just was a foreshadowing of the church, and today God dwells in his special blessing presence in the church. He dwells in each believer, and collectively is the church, he dwells in us, we are the temple of God. In Jesus, as king, as son of David, as he was called so often in the Gospels, and as he in fact was, the descendant of David, he is so devoted, like Hezekiah, to the building of the temple of God, to the building of the church that he even gives his life for the church. So great is Jesus devotion to the temple of God, the church, that he dies, he spills his blood, he faces shame and mockery, and he endures the most unjust death of anybody, who has ever walked the face of the earth. So much was his commitment, so that's your a point there. Lacking, God defines evil, in verse 6 here, we see it, our fathers, Hezekiah says, were unfaithful, they did evil in the eyes of the Lord our God, and for sook God, they turned their faces away from the Lord's dwelling place, they shut its doors. They weren't devoted to the temple, and God calls that here evil, not being devoted to the temple, and so as much as it, we don't want to say that, as much as it sounds like we're coming from a different planet to say that, God declares it's an evil thing to not be devoted to the temple for whom He died. It's an evil thing to not be devoted to the church, we're just connecting the dots of what scripture said, the temple of God is the church, and God says if you're not devoted to the temple of God, that's an evil thing. It's the last week we talked about how it's important for us to be devoted to the church. Jesus was so devoted to it, He died for it. And so we take on His purposes, and we're the Levites and priests here, and first Peter 2.9 here says, we are a royal priesthood. We're the people that King Hezekiah speaks to, and says, be devoted to the building up of the church. You are a royal priesthood. You have been made priests, or as they said in the Reformation, there's a priesthood of all believers. And Jesus, our King, speaks to us, and says, make sure the church is always in good shape, in good repair. But that is, to use our favorites, a 25 cent word, or whatever inflation has that up to, now our $5 word, that's the penultimate thing. It's next to ultimate, it's not the ultimate thing. The reason the church is so important is because the church is where worship takes place, and that's the ultimate thing. That's the thing for which we as human beings were created. That's our chief purpose, that's the highest calling that we have as people. It's not tying our shoes, it's not doing our jobs, and those things are important, we don't want to trip, and we want to do things that will benefit other people's, we do our vocations. But God didn't need somebody to tie shoes, and say, okay, I'll create man. God did not create somebody, just for the purpose of fixing a car. He wasn't setting up in heaven before any man or woman was created, and saying, boy, I need somebody to fix cars, I'll create so and so, so he can do that. God creates men and women that he can bless, and their chief responsibility is to worship him, to ascribe him worth. And so, our B point here, God defines evil here in this passage, verse 7, as lacking commitment to worshiping him.

And we see this as this passage goes along, verse 7, the fathers of Hezekiah and the fathers of these priests had also shut the doors of the portico and put out the lamps, the lamps were used in the worship of God. They did not burn incense, this was an act of worship in the temple to burn incense. They didn't present any burn offerings, this was another act of worship in the sanctuary of the God of Israel. And so, they had ceased to worship, and that was the chief thing over which Hezekiah was extremely alarmed. He had plenty of things he could have done when he came to power. The land was in great disrepair when Hezekiah came to power, from the devastation that we see occurred during the reign of Ahas. It's written for us in Scripture, but instead of focusing his attention on all those things, he focuses his attention on the central thing worship. We need to get worship up and running, because lacking commitment to worship, this lack of commitment that our fathers had was evil, verse 6. So, that's your next blank there. God defines an attention to worship as evil. So, God says it, and so we say it, and we say, okay, that's the way it is. And then we have a number 2 here, that's because number 1 was last week, number 1 is really your 8-point here, be devoted to the church. And point 2 from this passage is this, commit yourself to, guess what, worship. Commit yourself to worship as a lifelong and weekly commitment. And in your homes is a daily commitment. Be a person who is about worship. Be a person for whom, if everything can be stripped away, every activity you could take part of, the thing that you will not give up is worship. Commit yourself to worship, and to continue on this phrase here you have printed for you, for the quality of your life rests on your doing so. Hezekiah understood this. He wants to get the people, the nation, that was his job as king, to get the people of the land committed to worship and worshiping, because he recognized his fact that it was a supernatural thing that determined the quality of their lives. It was not how big of an army they had, it was not how big their houses were, or how big their capital city was, or how big the walls were around their capital city, or any of these other things that he could have named, that determined the quality of their lives. He understood that the quality of their lives was determined by their worship, whether they were committed to worship or not, or put this way in your outline there. Hezekiah understood that worship is the center of the Christian's life. When we look in verses 9 and 10, he says, this, our intention, he's just named how they haven't been worshipping. He's named, they haven't been burning incense, which showed loyalty to God. They haven't done burnt sacrifices, which for the basic forgiveness of sins, sacrifice that went on the temple, the burnt sacrifice, they put the lamps out, which was a part of the worship of God. They haven't been worshipping, and he says, this, verse 9, there, this is why our fathers have fallen by the sword. Not because our army wasn't trained well enough, not because we didn't have enough troops, not because we weren't intelligent enough in making alliances, not because we haven't built up fortified cities as we should, but this, this lack of attention to God, has brought us the anger of the Lord, has made us an object of dread and horror and scorn. All the nations, guys, are laughing at us, hezekiah says, and here's why they're laughing at us, because God has given us over, because we haven't worshipped him. This is why our fathers have fallen by the sword, why our sons and daughters and our wives are in captivity. They've been carried away to other nations, and this is a reference primarily to the brothers in the north. The 10 tribes in the north known as Israel, the northern kingdom, they were already in captivity as hezekiah comes here, already scattered, but Judah itself had been bruised and beaten as well. So hezekiah understood that worship is the center of the Christian's life. This is why, and we've said it here this morning, but to fill in your blank, this is why the church is so important. That's what we talked about last week, that's your blank, this is why the church is so important, because the church is the place of worship. Paul and the second Timothy calls the church the pillar of truth. It's the vehicle through whom God receives worship. So we see here in verse 11, that God, like at verse 11 there, hezekiah says, my sons do not be negligent now, for the Lord has chosen you to do what? To stand before him and serve him, serve and worship our synonyms in the Old Testament, may get translated, the same word gets translated, serve or worship, depending on the context. So we can say here, the Lord has chosen you to stand before him, this is a reference to the priest, would stand before the presence of God and the Holy of Holies, they would stand before the Lord and do his service, they would worship him. The Lord is chosen you to worship him, to worship him and to minister before him and to burn incense. And we saw here that the Lord God, and to fill in your blank, has chosen you to worship him. In the same way as these priests were chosen to worship the Lord in the temple and to stand before the Lord and to do these acts of worship to the Lord in the temple, verse 11 tells us that. First Peter 2.9 says, guess what? You're the priest. You've been anointed first John 3. You have been anointed by God's Holy Spirit to be priests in the temple of God. We all have God's Spirit, especially given to us. We all have God's Spirit who has given us gifts to use in the church, 1 Corinthians 12 through 14. We are the priest. We're this royal priesthood that Peter flat out states in 1 Peter 2.9. And so God speaks to us. Jesus, our king, speaks to us like Hezekiah, their king, spoke to the priests in the Levites. God has chosen us to worship him. Look at that verse 1 Peter 2.9, if you happen to still have your finger on it. But you are chosen people of royal priesthood that you may declare the praises of Him who called you out of darkness and is wonderful light. Why have we been made of royal priesthood that we might worship Him, that we might declare His praises? So put another way following in your outline that is what that is. You giving Him worship is part of why God chose you to be His child. God chose you to be His child that you might worship Him. Just like God chose these priests to be priests that they might worship Him. And Hezekiah has recognized something when he takes power and what he recognizes is this. To fail to worship brings hardship. To fail to worship brings hardship. That's your blank there. We see that in verses 7 through 10. Hezekiah names all these things that have come upon them and he says therefore the anger the Lord has fallen on Judah. That's why we are an object of dread and horror and scorn. Verse 9, this is why our fathers have fallen by the sword. When we fail to worship we bring hardship on ourselves. That is put this in a positive way. The key to, here's your next blank, key to blessing is our commitment to worship. Verse 9, this 8 and 9, this link is made. The key to God blessing us is based on our commitment to worship. Not because worship is this great activity in and of itself, but worship is where we tell God how much He is worth. And when we are committed to worship, hopefully what that means is that our hearts are right before the Lord. We are related to the Lord in the right manner. We are saying, God, you are the Creator. I am just the creature. You are the giver of every good and perfect gift. I am just the receiver. I haven't made these good and perfect gifts. I haven't earned these good and perfect gifts. Winds of change can happen and layoffs can happen in my company. Various things can happen. We have seen tornadoes happening around and our fortunes change. A business we are working for is talking to one of you recently. The business is just a booming because of the niche you are in. Because that whole industry has taken a bad turn that all of a sudden there is not enough work to get you to new. Because things have slowed down so much. God is sovereign over all things and we are dependent upon Him and in worship that is where we acknowledge this. We acknowledge who we are and who God is and we give Him worship for this and God likes that. But this isn't something that we would conclude. What we would conclude is what A has concludes in chapter 28. What I need are stronger alliances with foreign nations. What I need is to conive better and to line things up and to do everything myself. What I need is a better God. What I need is a God who is visible that I can go to and pray to and look at. A has concludes things that are very natural for us to conclude but God gives us things that require faith. And this isn't something to fill in your blank here. This isn't something that we would conclude. That we'd conclude. That blessing, the key to blessing is our commitment to worship. This is a divine going to your next slide. This is a divine promise that God wants us to trust. You think you need to work harder. Indeed, everybody should work hard and do a good job at your job. You think you need to do this. You think you need to do that. You think you need to sacrifice obeying God's word in order for things to go well for you because you are in a certain situation. And God says, no, I want you to trust me on this. Your key to blessing is your commitment to worship. This is a divine promise that God wants us to trust. And God is a rewarder. We see here in this passage of those who are your blank here as loyal to Him. We see a reference in verse 7 and verse 11 both to the burning of incense. And in the ancient world in which the Israelites lived, the burning of incense, the depending on who it was to whom it was directed, this burning of incense showed to whom you were loyal. And God has the burning of incense going on in the temple. And it showed that God's people were loyal to God, that God was their king. And they would burn incense unto Him. The incense is one of the gifts that the three wise men, we don't know if there are three, there were three gifts, that the wise men give to Jesus when they come to Him from the east. Incense, and they were showing in this gift, there was a gift of gold showing he was king, but they were showing them in this gift of incense that he was their king and their obedience was to Him. Their loyalty was to Him and that crossed national boundaries. They weren't obedient, they weren't loyal to Herod, they weren't loyal to the kings of whatever nations they came from in the east. This was probably Babylon, but they were loyal to Jesus. This was the king of kings, the one upon whom they looked. And God is a reward of those who are loyal to Him and we show our loyalty to God in our worship. Okay, so Hezekiah is one example to us, but our other example, our great example is Jesus, and that's your next blank here in your outline. Jesus showed us the way here. For, next line, he was loyal, he was loyal to our father, even upon pain of death. What's worshiping the Lord going to cost you? And Jesus is our example. He says, if it costs your life, do it. Now I don't know if any of us are going to end up dying because of worship. Maybe if we were in one of the African nations where Christians are being persecuted for worshiping Jesus, maybe that would be the case. Maybe if we were in mainland China, maybe that would be the case or different nations. And the world where worship might cost us our lives. In the first century, worshiping Jesus cost many Christians their lives. They were put into the Roman coliseum to fight each other or to fight gladiators or to just be eaten by lions and wild beasts. Jesus is the example. If worshiping God costs you your life, do it. Jesus shows loyalty to our father, even upon death. He, on the cross, is in essence, burning a fragrant incense to the Lord. Father, I am loyal to you. Not to Peter's advice, not to go to Jerusalem, not to the Pharisees, not to anybody else, not to Rome. I am loyal to you. If you told me to go to the cross, I am loyal and I will do it. Secondly, Jesus worshiped her father in a way that cost him his life. So that's the fill in your blank of what we said there. Jesus worshiped cost him his life. And then we see that Jesus didn't give something else as a burn offering for sin. That's mentioned in verse 7 here, but as we see in our Hebrews passage today, 727, Jesus was. That's your blank there. Jesus was a burn offering for our sin. Jesus shows us the way. How committed am I to God being worshiped? I'll give my life as incense into the Lord. I'll give my life as a burn offering to the Lord. That's how important it is for God's people wouldn't be blessed today. The church wouldn't be blessed today if it were not for this worship that Jesus did in going to the cross. So we see that. Jesus going to the cross is his big act of worship to the Father. So he's our example. Jesus gave his life, not just save us from our sin, but to worship. To worship. That's your next blank. He was a priest and he offered himself as the burn offering for worship to our Father.

So we look back at ourselves now having looked at Hezekiah and looked at these Old Testament priests and then having looked at Jesus who is king, concerned about worship, who is priest offering sacrifices ministering before his father to worship. And he's also burn offering sacrifice giving himself for the forgiveness of our sins. We say because Jesus life was committed to worship, we should commit ourselves to worship. That's your next blank. We should commit ourselves to worship as well. This is what our king is concerned about. He's concerned about this unto death. And we commit ourselves to worship. Maybe not to the point of death, but certainly with intensity. Certainly with intensity. My dad, my father, he would have been 70 on Tuesday.

That was one thing that he always would encourage me. I was a person I had more athletic talent than my brother but my brother had much more intensity than I did. So my dad had worked with my brother on the talent stuff and he had to work with me on the intensity stuff. But you know, I said this to you before my dad didn't care if I played sports or not. And I quit certain sports that he played and that was fine with him and so did my brother. But he always said, John, but if you're going to play, play. Hey, don't get out there and embarrass yourself. That's not fun. Be intense. If you're going to be there, if you're going to be out on the field, be Johnny on the spot, get there first. I ran in Clayton Road Race for the third week in a row a few Saturdays ago. Maybe I guess technically three Saturdays ago, two weeks in a day ago. And one thing I learned as I was ramping up for this, I ramped up for this year. One thing I realized as I ramped up for this race this year was what my legs were doing, what my heart and lungs were doing when I could run faster, how my body could take or not take hills going down. Down hills going up hills doing all this testing for the last half year, but really especially in this last last month before the race. But one thing I realized was that when I was playing soccer as a younger guy is if there was a ball about to be dangling in front of the goal with the goalie who's just gone out to get it and missed it, I was going to be there on that ball. And I didn't care how much it killed me. I didn't care how much how tired I was. I didn't care about 40 yards away. If there's an open net in a ball potentially dangling in front of it, I was going to get there and the guy who's guarding me was not going to beat me there. And so Larissa took a picture of me toward the end of the race and I say, that's the second I had that thought and the race is basically uphill the last mile of these three. I figured out as I was training for this race that I could run indefinitely faster if I would just picture a soccer ball dangling at that finish line with no goalie in that goal. And it works for me. That just works. But that's just intensity. Get there, John. And I was having that thought. She took that picture. Don't get beat to that ball. All I got to do is get a toe on it. Just stretch my toe out. And it's going to roll gently into the goal. Those are the easy goals. I don't need to have to beat a goalie. And that's the kind of thing that God calls us to with worship in our attitudes and our hearts. He says, get there. If you're going to play, if you're going to be part of his people, worship, that's the center thing. That's the main thing. That's the thing over which our king, Jesus, is concerned that we be about just like Hezekiah was here in the Old Testament. He saw his people suffering and he said, it's because we haven't worshipped well. And so we as a church, we say, let's do this well. And we do. This is something you folks are really good about. And this message comes to you. It's chiefly an encouragement and an epad on the back to you to say, do this. What you do this? Well, keep at it. This is the right thing. Center yourself. I'm giving worth to our God. Let's pray. Jesus, your death and a cross was an act of worship, the burning of incense showing your loyalty to your father. And your going to the cross was you as great high priest offering up a sacrifice because your people had not been worshipping you well when you showed up on this earth. But you showed us how to worship. You said, if it costs us our life, do it. And it did for you. You saved us. You offered a burn offering. You were that burnt offering for us. Your act of worship meant the salvation of our souls. And so Jesus, we thank you that you worshiped well. And also we thank you for the example of priority that you have given us to worship you. Causes to worship you well. And we thank you Lord for all the blessings that you give us that we even when we worship you well don't deserve for our sin. But we thank you Jesus for your blood and your burn offering which covers our sins. We thank you Jesus for your cross indeed. Causes in our hearts to have our priorities on ascribing to you worth and worship. Causes in our hearts to test you in this, to test you in seeing that the way we worship determines the quality of our lives. The satisfaction that we have in our lives, in our near term, in our middle term, in our eternity. We ask that you would work in our lives in this way. Amen. Let's not join together.