Episode Transcript
[00:00:04] I'm going to talk this morning about God being restored to his rightful place in our lives, in our homes, in our communities.
[00:00:16] My passion, and it has been for a very long time, is to see God restored to his rightful place for the church, to stop playing church, and to really be impacted by the presence of God amongst their lives.
[00:00:35] I think we're living in really exciting times.
[00:00:39] I think there's no doubt that God is speeding up the harvest. There are so many stories. I think we went through a time, maybe a few decades ago, where there was just nobody coming into the church, getting saved.
[00:00:54] And I believe God is speeding things up.
[00:00:58] But I also believe we are in days of trouble as well. I do believe we are in days of trouble on the earth where things are happening. And I'll go through that a little bit. So don't allow the media today to tell you that the church is not growing.
[00:01:16] Okay, Peter Greg, if you follow Peter Greg, the prayer guy, 24/7 prayer guy. He just tweeted a couple of weeks ago, he was in the Netherlands and there were 55,000 young people hungry for the presence of God, spending a week together just worshiping God. 55,000 people. In London last week, a group of young adults decided to send a message around to all their mates and say, hey, our church past pastor has basically said, we can have the hall tonight. It's a Saturday night. Do you want to come over? A thousand young people in London turned up to worship the Lord.
[00:01:58] Young people, we've got Deo, you've got the keys. Anytime on a Saturday night, you come back from that beach and you go, should we just go and worship the Lord for an hour? Do it. Just don't tell Phil or mark you or anybody else. No, I'm not joking. They will love that.
[00:02:17] In America, there were 10,000 people three weeks ago getting baptized. Turned up to be baptized, 10,000 people.
[00:02:30] God is restoring his rightful place amongst us, and I'm passionate about seeing that happen in the church. Okay, this morning we're just going to continue our headship series, series five. And we started by looking. If you want to turn in your bibles, get ready to. We're in the Old Testament today, actually, to two chronicles 29. So if you want to turn and get ready.
[00:02:55] We started off by looking, what would it look like for Jesus to be truly the head of our lives?
[00:03:01] So that in every decision we make, we don't make a decision without first inquiring of the Lord. We don't step out to do anything without saying Lord what is it you are saying?
[00:03:14] What would it look like if we really heard the voice of the spirit leading and guiding us in these days?
[00:03:23] What would it mean for us to relinquish any control or any need to control our lives fully, lay them down to allow God to lead us?
[00:03:42] What would that look like? And that's what we looked at over the couple of weeks we've been looking at this headship, and this morning we're going to look at an old Testament character. Now, we don't often go into the old Testament during our preach. Well, I don't. I like to stick to the new, especially at the moment. While we're a young church, we're, you know, a church plant. But what the Old Testament does, the Old Testament is rich in history. It is a history of the start of how God created the world and how he, his desire to have a people for himself, that's God's desire, that he would have a people that were set apart from every other nation of the world. And that would be God's special possession. We today, if you are in Christ, are God's special possession. And so the Old Testament is kind of showing us God's heart for his people, which includes us. It is rich in prophetic statements that have come to pass today. You look at Isaiah. Isaiah prophesied about the coming of Christ 700 years before he came. I encourage you over this summer when we have like summer rhythms where our lives change a little bit because the days seem longer because of the sun that we're supposed to be having.
[00:05:08] Okay, change your rhythms. Get digging into some of the Old Testament stories because they're rich in prophecy, they're rich in promises.
[00:05:18] How many of us know there are promises in this book today that are for us?
[00:05:24] Take hold of the prophecies and then the other one, although I'm not going to focus too much on this is principles. There are principles for us to live by in this book. And there is also provision.
[00:05:39] If we obey, if we follow the principles, God brings the provision. It is the obedience that brings the provision and the blessing of God. So we turn to two chronicles this morning.
[00:05:54] We're going to read about a guy, a king called Hezekiah. I'm going to read it in two parts because it appears in kings as well. Okay, so here we go. Hezekiah became king when he was 25 years old old, and he reigned 29 years in Jerusalem. His mother's name was Abijah, the daughter of Zechariah. And he did what was right in the sight of the Lord according to all that his father David had done. Now let me just pause for a moment there. David. We all know about King David. King David was not Hezekiah's biological father. All right, King David here when it says David, his father, King David was, I think, about 1415 kings before Hezekiah.
[00:06:44] But David had made such a mark when he led that 15 kings later, this king Hezekiah said, I am not following in the ways of my biological father because we'll look about him in a minute. King Gahaz, I'm following in the ways of David.
[00:07:05] I believe what we do today will impact generations to come.
[00:07:12] If we serve the lord wholeheartedly, people will be marked by our lives. They will.
[00:07:22] Don't think here today that your life doesn't count.
[00:07:29] Continue to follow the lord. Continue to follow him wholeheartedly.
[00:07:34] And I believe the generations to come, your children, your grandchildren, will remember what you have done. And it says, so he fathered in the way. Sorry. According to all that his father David had done in the first year, everyone say, first, in the first year of his reign, in the first month, he opened the doors of the house of the lord and repaired them. Then he brought in the priests, the Levites, and gathered them in the east square and said to them, hear me, Levites. Now sanctify yourselves, sanctify the house of the Lord God your fathers, and carry out the rubbish. Everyone say, rubbish. I love this. Carry out the rubbish from the holy place. For our fathers have trespassed and done evil in the eyes of the Lord our God. They have forsaken him, have turned their faces away from the dwelling place of the Lord and turned their backs on him. They have also shut the doors of the vestibule, put out their lamps, and have not burnt incense or offered burned offerings in the holy place to the God of Israel. Therefore, the wrath of the Lord fell upon Judah and Jerusalem, and he has given them up to trouble, to desolation, and to jeering, as you see with your eyes. For indeed, because of this, our fathers have fallen by the sword, and our sons and our daughters and our wives are in captivity.
[00:09:08] Flick over to two kings.
[00:09:11] Two kings 19. We're going to read that again. It's also in two kings 19.
[00:09:21] Sorry. Two kings 18.
[00:09:32] Let me just read it very quickly now. It came to pass in the third year of Hosier and son of Elah, king of Israel, that Hezekiah, the son of Ahaz, king of Judah, began to reign. He was 25 years old when he became king. And he reigned 29 years in Jerusalem. His mother's name was abbey and the daughter of Zechariah. And he did what was right in the sight of the lord according to all that his father David had done. He removed the high places and broke the sacred pillars, cut down the wooden image and broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made for until those days. The children of Israel burned incense to it and called it Nehushtan. He trusted in the Lord God of Israel, so that after him was none like him among all the kings of Judah, nor who were before him, for he held fast to the lord. He did not depart from following him, but kept his commandments, which the lord had commanded. Moses. The lord was with him. He prospered wherever he went. And he rebelled against the king of Assyria and did not serve him. He subdued the Philistines as far as Gaza and its territory, from Watchtower to fortified city.
[00:10:46] Okay, so I'm going to just put that down at the moment. There's so much more I could read, but for the sake of time this morning, I won't.
[00:10:53] So King Hezekiah, his father, king Ahaz, was wicked, totally wicked. In fact. Judah, the southern kingdom, I don't get too much into it, but under King Solomon, after King Solomon, the kingdom that God's people were divided into northern and southern territories, and most of the northern kings were evil. Okay. They did evil. Some of the kings of Judah were okay. In fact, there's probably about four or five that were okay. They were good kings. They followed in the ways of the Lord, but the majority did not. Okay. And so when it came to Hezekiah, Hezekiah's father was so wicked, and he decided that he would shut the doors of the temple, he would encourage the people to worship false gods. I mean, I want you to start imagining this.
[00:11:46] How far they had fallen from God, how far they can fall, how far a generation can fall. And Hezekiah comes up into power and young people this morning, Hezekiah is 25. He's not 55. He's not 65. He's 25.
[00:12:07] And he's got the elders and the generations around him, and he decides that the minute he becomes king, he is not going to live and lead as his father Ahaz did.
[00:12:21] And so the very first thing that Ahaz did, it was an immediate priority. It didn't go on the to do list. He didn't say, well, at some point, I'm going to attend to this. He said, this is priority, and I'm going to open the doors to the temple of the Lord.
[00:12:44] They had been shut for so many generations.
[00:12:48] The temple of the Lord. Now, as I'm talking this morning, let me just. If you are new to the christian faith, if you are new to studying your Bible, let me just make one thing really clear. And Graham, I guess he's our great teacher, will probably be able to answer some of these things as well. All right? But we've got.
[00:13:07] When we look at the old Testament, the Old Testament is shadow, okay? It is a type. It is a pattern of the New Testament. So when we look at the Old Testament, looking at temples and sacrifices and offerings, we don't do that today because we have Jesus. He is a great high priest. We don't have to shed animal sacrifices because Jesus was the ultimate sacrifice for our sins. Okay? That's a tiny little basic snippet this morning because I can't go into it. So the Old Testament kind of kept the people in line and guided them to kind of show them a pattern of the reality that was to come, which is Jesus. Okay? And so Hezekiah, it was a massive thing to open the temple doors.
[00:14:06] Shutting the temple doors is basically saying, God, we don't believe in you. God, we're not trusting in you. God, we're not following you anymore, God. In fact, we're ignoring you. We're walking away. We're trusting in something else.
[00:14:27] That's what it was like, shutting the doors. And not only did he shut the temple doors, but he shut. He shut the portico, which was the porch entrance. In other words, not only can no one get into the temple, but right at the front of it, no one's crossing over.
[00:14:44] We're shutting these doors completely. And Hezekiah, at 25, 25 years old, he said, we're going to open the doors to the house of the Lord and we're going to repair these doors because we're going to use this house.
[00:15:02] In other words, I am restoring God to his rightful place amongst us as a people and as a nation. I'm restoring back worship and honour.
[00:15:15] I can't wait for this house, Lawson, where we don't particularly need music.
[00:15:22] People are coming to worship the Lord where we can't be silenced.
[00:15:30] And he restored worship and honor. And he was bringing back God to a nation that had shut him out for too long.
[00:15:43] For Hezekiah.
[00:15:45] For Hezekiah. He knew that if he was going to lead this nation and succeed and be prosperous in the land, there would be no hope for him. Without the presence of God, there would be no peace in the land without the presence of God. There would be no safety without the presence of God. I want to say this morning to us, don't shut out God in our daily lives. Don't leave this place today and forget about God during the week more than anything. And Mondays are important.
[00:16:23] Don't shut the presence of God out.
[00:16:26] The presence of God had to come first, and it's the same with our own lives. We will not navigate through life without restoring God back to his rightful place in our hearts. Can you imagine what heaven, heaven. Looking down on Hezekiah that day when Hezekiah decided he was going to open the temple doors after they've been shut for generations, can you imagine all of heaven rejoicing over Hezekiah's decision to open the temple doors?
[00:17:08] The second thing Hezekiah did, he brought in the priests and the Levites. And I love this. And he says, sanctify every jolly thing.
[00:17:21] It's been so unholy around here for a long time. I need you to go in and you go and sanctify, you wash everything, you cleanse everything.
[00:17:31] We're talking about bringing God back into this house.
[00:17:37] Go and cleanse everything. And while you're at it, go and cleanse yourself because you haven't been doing what you should be doing.
[00:17:44] Get the rubbish out. Get it out.
[00:17:50] Today.
[00:17:51] We don't need priests and levites to come and wash us clean, thank goodness, because Jesus is our great high priest and he washes us clean.
[00:18:05] He takes every bit of filth and he washes us clean.
[00:18:12] Incredible, really, when we're talking about a holy God and that because of Jesus we can come close. That any of us can come close. I was in worship this morning and Phil was saying, you know, just talk to the Lord or I might have been lost. Talk to the Lord and thank him. I was like, how could somebody like me ever come close to a holy God? I don't know. It's true.
[00:18:35] It's only because of Jesus.
[00:18:37] Only because of Jesus.
[00:18:40] And Hezekiah says, I want you to clean everything up.
[00:18:46] Clean out the rubbish.
[00:18:51] I want to suggest this morning that each of us at times carries rubbish in our lives.
[00:19:00] I want us to take our rubbish seriously as a people.
[00:19:05] If we truly want God to move amongst us, if we want truly his presence to be. Every time we gather in our homes, amongst our families, in our workplaces, I want us to take our rubbish seriously every time rubbish gets close.
[00:19:22] As a church, people, let's say we will not tolerate rubbish. I'm not going to tolerate the amount of times I've had to turn something off. The telly, you know, I love kind of the. I'm going to be really, really honest now.
[00:19:35] I love the years and years ago. I'm going to show my age. I was in my twenties and keeping up with the Kardashians. Ever heard of that? It had just come out. That's how old I am, like 20 odd years ago, keeping up with the Kardashians. And me as a person, I was, like, 23 at the time. And me as a person, I can't switch off quickly.
[00:19:57] I'm quite an intense person, I like to be, and I find it really hard to switch off.
[00:20:03] And one day, I was still living at home, I came across keeping up with the Kardashians, and I thought, oh, this is really. This is funny. This is funny. Well, 20 minutes into the program, I realized it's not quite funny, it's actually really filthy.
[00:20:26] But I carried on watching it, and the week after, I carried on watching it because it was the only thing I could switch off to.
[00:20:36] The week after, I carried it, and it went on for about four weeks, I was watching keeping up with the Kardashians.
[00:20:42] The following week, I was due to preach at a youth camp in Wales, and I was in prayer, praying for this week, what I was to share, and I felt the Lord saying, I was doing a seminar during the week, I was preaching and also doing some seminars with some girls, some young teenagers. And I felt the Lord say to me, you need to confess what you've done to these teenagers.
[00:21:04] All right. Whoa. And I did say to the Lord, I said, lord, I'm not going to watch this again. And I didn't, like, literally, after five weeks, I didn't watch. Keep keeping up with the Kardashians.
[00:21:13] But I went to this conference and I did a seminar. There's a couple of hundred young teenagers there. And I straight away started off with, I just need to confess.
[00:21:22] I've been watching keeping up with Kardashians, and I want to tell you that it's not right. I want to get the rubbish out of my life so that the presence of God can come in and he can use me to bring a message to you guys, you girls today.
[00:21:36] And one by one, girls were starting to weep. And the whole session just changed. Whole session changed. And they came out for prayer, and they were laying down their rubbish. One by one. They were going, I'm going to say to the Lord, I'm not going down this avenue. I'm not going to be watching this. I will not date this guy because he's not saved. And all of this rubbish, they were saying, we're just going to lay it down before the Lord.
[00:22:04] We've got to lay down our rubbish. And I can see why Hezekiah was so adamant about laying down the rubbish, because all the nations around him, and we're going to talk about this in a moment, were kind of taunting him, were mocking Hezekiah. The minute Hezekiah decided that he was going to bring the presence of God back into this nation, all the other nations started taunting him and mocking him.
[00:22:34] And that's what will happen with us.
[00:22:37] Family members won't like it if they don't know. The Lord won't like it. The minute you start to say, actually, minute, I don't want this in our home, I don't want to listen to this, I don't want to go and see that.
[00:22:49] And so Hezekiah, he said, we've got to remove everything that will pollute us.
[00:22:56] See all the nations around Hezekiah, they tried to get Hezekiah to practice and follow their rituals.
[00:23:09] The nations tried to get Hezekiah and the people to go along with their practices.
[00:23:18] And the tension that we will always have, and the tension has been there since the beginning of time. Time is, who will be our master?
[00:23:26] Who are we listening to? Who are we going to allow to influence us?
[00:23:32] Are we going to get sucked along with the culture of the day? Or are we going to be set apart and sanctified, ready for the Lord to come and do amazing things amongst us? I believe as a church, we are at that crossroads. My prayer is, God, come and sanctify us. Purify my heart for God to do great things amongst us.
[00:24:01] Will we submit to his rule and his reign?
[00:24:06] Or will we follow the nations around us? I could say more on that, but I'm not going to. Maybe that's for another day. The third thing, in order to restore God to his rightful place. This is a hard one. Hezekiah to call out the sins of the fathers.
[00:24:27] That's a hard one. When Hezekiah had to stand publicly and say, we're not following in my father's footsteps, we're not going there. He was so evil, he was so wicked.
[00:24:44] And Hezekiah had to call it out and say, we're not going there. We're not following what the previous generation did. You know, what makes a generation turn so quickly away from God? There are loads of reasons, loads of reasons why a generation turns so quickly for Hezekiah, his father, obviously shut the door.
[00:25:12] They decided to follow in the ways of the nations around them. But they practiced such wicked things in their day. One of the things king Ahaz did was he sacrificed children on fires. It was a ritual that happened in the Old Testament under the wicked kings. And in order to hope, or hope, in hope of bringing peace upon their land, they would sacrifice children and throw them on a fire to their God that they had made out of wood or bronze or whatever.
[00:25:48] A nation. 100 years ago, church was a nation that I believe feared God to a certain degree.
[00:25:57] There were revival fires being lit. You just look at the welsh revivals Hebrides over 100 years ago, God, I believe, had a voice in our nation. We had godly leaders in positions of power.
[00:26:14] We had people who feared God.
[00:26:17] Our Sunday schools, this is before my time, but our Sunday schools were packed. You'd have afternoon Sunday schools in halls like this. And families would send, whether the families believed in God or not, they would just sit, send their children to Sunday school because they believed in God and wanted their children raised to believe in God.
[00:26:39] We used to have bibles in this nation, in every hotel bedroom. We used to have the Gideons coming into schools, handing out bibles.
[00:26:49] Parliament. Places of education used to start with the Lord's prayer. Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be his name today. It's an insult if you do that. You offend someone.
[00:27:03] How far we have fallen.
[00:27:07] Anybody with me want to see God restored to his rightful place in our lives and our families?
[00:27:18] I haven't got all the answers, but I know he wants a church that wants to honour him and love him and lean on him. I'll talk about that in a moment.
[00:27:32] You know, let's not judge Ahaz so badly, because some years ago, some decades ago, as a nation, we made a law that said it's okay to slaughter millions of unborn babies in the womb.
[00:27:52] Young people today are in such a crisis of identity, they don't know who they are. They don't know that they are so loved.
[00:28:04] They don't know that it's okay to be so different in appearance. Like some are thin and some are bigger and some have got whatever hair, because God has made us so different and unique.
[00:28:18] But young people are having a crisis over their identity. They don't know who to be from week to week.
[00:28:26] Last Saturday night, Phil and I were coming back from Exeter. It was so late, way past our bedtime.
[00:28:34] It was about a 11:15 and we were coming up to the park by Holden hill on the a 38. And I was driving, Phil was snoring in the passenger seat, and we were coming past Holden Hill and you know that whisper of the Holy Spirit? You get a whisper.
[00:28:47] And I just, I said to Phil, he was asleep. I said, I need to slow down. I was going 70. I'm not a fast driver, but I just felt I need to slow down to 60.
[00:28:56] And it was late at night, hardly any traffic, and I'm just slowing down at 60. We get close to the Bobby Tracy turn off and suddenly halt.
[00:29:08] Every car stops and everyone's putting on their hazards and we're all stopping and we're literally just like, you can't see ahead, what's happened? But we were like about 1012 cars from the front and we're like, ah, somebody's had an accident. So your first thought is, I hope they're okay. I mean, you do, you hope they're okay, but you're like, oh, no. And the traffic starts piling up. We're going to be stuck here within two minutes. We're all parting. The fire engines are coming, the police cars are coming fast and furious. And we realise this is serious.
[00:29:44] Eventually, the police kind of make their way up to us and say, we're going to have to get you all off the slip road. And we pull down the window and said, look, is everything okay? And he said, no, she's died.
[00:29:55] And we're just so stunned. But we get off the, the slip road and Phil and I are just crying in the car all the way back home.
[00:30:05] 24 hours later, we realized this was not a car accident. This was a young, young woman in her twenties who had taken her life just in bovy Tracy, the turn off, like Bobby Tracy, you see, we're desperate. People are desperate for a move of God again, because society is leaning on the wrong things.
[00:30:34] Society is leaning on things that are shaky, on things that will not sustain you, on things that will self destruct.
[00:30:44] I want to say, young people today, which one is it going to be or any of us?
[00:30:54] Are we going to lean on what social media? Are we going to lean on this throughout our lives? Are we going to lean on the precious word of God?
[00:31:04] Which one are we going to lean on? Sorry, listen, there you go.
[00:31:10] Society is caving in with every pressure under the sun because they are leaning and resting and relying on the wrong things.
[00:31:22] Hezekiah knew that if he was going to defeat the nations around him, who were bigger, by the way, and stronger, he was going to have to lean, rest and rely on God and God alone.
[00:31:35] I believe that we are at a time with all my heart where all we've got to do and the pressures will come.
[00:31:43] Pressures will come.
[00:31:45] But I believe, and as Hezekiah did, he said that we've got to lean on a foundation that will never, ever break. A foundation that is so solid that it is immovable, we cannot move it. And that foundation is Jesus Christ.
[00:32:07] I'm going to wrap up in a couple of minutes.
[00:32:10] There was one incident in King Hezekiah's reign where the king of Assyria was mocking Hezekiah.
[00:32:19] Now, it's interesting because KING Ahaz, well, he didn't really have a lot of mocking because King Ahaz kind of just went with the flow.
[00:32:27] He blended into the culture of the day. He blended in with the other nations. So the other nations kind of left God's people alone.
[00:32:35] That's exactly what will happen to us.
[00:32:38] We will be left alone to our own devices if we just blend in.
[00:32:42] But God is looking for a set apart people, and it's not easy. If you've lived any amount of time being a follower of Jesus Christ, it isn't easy.
[00:32:54] But Hezekiah, during Hezekiah's reign, Hezekiah knew he was in trouble and the king of Assyria was taunting him. And God's people, let me just tell you, say we go into all the chapters this morning, but these are some of the things that the King Azaria said. You ready?
[00:33:12] What confidence is this which you trust?
[00:33:18] So he's saying this to Hezekiah's messengers. He comes along and he says, what is this confidence that you have?
[00:33:25] You speak of having plans and power for war, but they are just words. This is this king of Azeria, this is what he's saying to Hezekiah, who didn't have a big army, by the way, at the time. And in whom do you trust that you rebel against me?
[00:33:40] This sound like the enemy sometimes in our lives, except the enemy is all mere words. I'm telling you, he likes to sound bigger than what he really is.
[00:33:53] And so the king of Assyria, he's taunting and he's mocking and he says these messages. He says, don't let Hezekiah deceive you.
[00:34:03] The God that he's talking about, you can't have any confidence in, he won't come through for you. In fact, I have beaten all the other nations of the world. I've taken their gods and I've completely destroyed them.
[00:34:15] But of course, these gods were made out of wood. These gods were made out of bronze.
[00:34:21] The king of Assyria had no idea who he was coming up against.
[00:34:29] And this is what King Hezekiah said. He told the people, hold your peace and say nothing.
[00:34:39] Hold your peace and say nothing. And it said, hezekiah, the first thing he did when these taunts and this mocking from the king of Assyria came was to throw himself before the Lord.
[00:34:55] He went straight into the house of the Lord and he threw himself in front of the Lord and he said, we are in a day of trouble, lord, we're in a day of trouble, but I'm coming to you.
[00:35:13] Then the second time the king of Azeria came to Hezekiah, he wrote him a letter.
[00:35:19] So first of all, it was a message to the messengers, King Hezekiah's men. But now it's a letter that Hezekiah finds in his hands from the king of Assyria saying, basically, you're dead. We're coming for you. You will not stand. We're going to annihilate you like I've done to the other nations. And Hezekiah says, you are not having God's people. God's people are not yours. Some of us have got to attack what the enemy's doing in our town.
[00:35:52] We've got to get a bit angry. What the enemy's doing, we're saying, no, the enemy will not have these people.
[00:35:59] We're going to see a harvest, believe we're going to see a harvest of people won for Jesus Christ. And it said, hezekiah, he received the letter from the king of Israel and this is what he did. He got the letter. He went straight again to the house of the Lord. Can I suggest you this morning that you have a house of the Lord. You have a place in your home that you call the place, the special place where you meet with God. Yes, we can meet with God in a car. Yes, we can meet with God wherever we go. We can walk in the street.
[00:36:30] But I encourage you to have that little closet, that place that you keep visiting with the Lord, wherever that is. And Hezekiah laid the letter out in the temple and he laid before the Lord and he said, lord, I am leaning on you. I am resting in you. I am relying on you. I am in trouble.
[00:36:57] Some of you have been handed letters from the doctors and they're not great. The report's not great.
[00:37:04] Some of you have been handed letters that are to do with broken relationships. Okay, it might be an email.
[00:37:14] Some of you have been handed things, results that haven't been great. Can I suggest we do what I, Hezekiah did.
[00:37:24] We get it. We lay it before the Lord and we say, lord, I don't know what to do.
[00:37:31] I'm in trouble.
[00:37:34] I don't know what to do. But I'm going to lean on you. The pressure is coming. But, Lord, I'm going to lean on you and allow you to take the pressure. Take it all. I want to rest on you.
[00:37:48] You know, one of the greatest things we can do as a church is to lean on the Lord.
[00:38:00] I think as a church, we stopped leaning on him.
[00:38:04] I think we've got such consumed with life and the pressures of life that a lot of human nature takes over.
[00:38:16] And we try to do it in our own strength. We try to work out things ourselves.
[00:38:21] Or is that just me?
[00:38:24] We take matters into our own hands. We try and work it all out. And I believe the Lord would say to us today, lean on me. Rest in me. Rely on me.
[00:38:38] Do you know the outcome of the story with Hezekiah? It's incredible.
[00:38:42] Let me just read it very quickly to you.
[00:38:52] And it came to pass on a certain night that the angel of the Lord went out and killed in the camp of the Assyrians, 185, 80,000 of their army.
[00:39:10] When the people arose early in the morning, there were all the corpses, all dead.
[00:39:27] In the day of trouble, when we look around, we're in a day of trouble and desperation. We are.
[00:39:37] My heart is so for our young people in the day of trouble, we say, Lord, we are leaning on you.
[00:39:53] Are we going to lean on him?
[00:39:57] Like really lean on him, rely on him?
[00:40:02] Instead of working it out, trying to figure it out, it said, just at that time, the angel of the Lord came.
[00:40:11] Do we not think that the angel and angel of the Lord can come and rescue us?
[00:40:18] Do we not think the power of God is enough to rescue us, heal us, deliver us and see us through?
[00:40:31] I'm going to get us this morning to listen to a song.
[00:40:38] I haven't finished this. I'm going to finish now because of time.
[00:40:43] One of the things to read really quickly, one of the things that Hezekiah restored was this continually burning of the lamps. The continually burning of a lamp in a temple was important because it signified that we want to be ready for the presence of God.
[00:40:59] We're going to be ready. We're not going to fall asleep. We're not going to walk away from the temple, the house of the Lord. We're going to be fully present because somebody important is amongst us.
[00:41:14] And this lamp was lit continually during Hezekiah's reign. It reminds me of the parable of the five wise and five foolish virgins. It's in Matthew. I think it's 28. Is it or 25?
[00:41:32] The bridegroom was coming. There was a delay in the bridegroom coming and these virgins went out to meet him. Five of them were very wise. They were prepared. They were ready. They were not.
[00:41:45] They were awake. They were like, yes, my life is going to be ready for when the bridegroom comes. The bridegroom represents Jesus. When Jesus comes.
[00:41:56] But while they were waiting that long time, five of them, they ran out of oil. In other words, they were not prepared for the day. They were not prepared in the hour when they needed to be prepared. And so while they ran out of oil, they had to go and get. In other words, they had to go almost back to square one and go and get prepared again. But of course, while that happened the bridegroom came and the wise virgins were taken into the kingdom and the foolish ones were left outside the kingdom.
[00:42:41] Hezekiah brought back the worship restored God to his rightful place.
[00:42:52] Lord, help us as a church to bring you back for you to have your rightful place amongst us, Lord. Thank you, Father, for your word. We thank you, Lord, for those who have gone before us, Father who would not conform to the patterns of this world. But Father, would look to you, Lord, in their generation. We thank you for the Hezekiahs. We thank you for the Jehoshaphats. We thank you for the davids. O God, Lord, that would say and stand and, Lord, declare that you are God and there is no other. Father, I pray today for us as a church as we go out this week. That, Lord. That we would restore, Lord, you to your rightful place, Lord. In our homes, in our hearts, Lord, that lord, that we would be brave enough, courageous enough, Lord to get rid of the rubbish. Father, help us by your spirit, Lord, to. Yeah, to highlight those areas in our lives where we need to get that rubbish and throw it out, Lord. And have nothing to do with it, Lord, so that your presence and your provision can walk with us, Lord, in our lives. So, Father, today, Lord, as we step out this week, Lord. And yeah, Father, as we live for you, Lord, I pray that we will bring great glory to your name across this southwest region, Father. That Newton Abbott will know that there is a God in heaven who answers prayer, who still saves, whose blood is still cleansing people.
[00:44:24] Father. That Newton Abbott will hear the good news of Jesus. Jesus Christ.
[00:44:29] Father, we love you. We honor you in this place. Bless every family amongst us. Lord, those who are on holiday at this time. Father, will you strengthen your people, fill your people with joy? Lord. Fill your people with your presence in these days, Lord, may we hunger and thirst for you and you alone, Lord, for you are worthy of praise. You are glorious king Jesus. Jesus. And we honor you, Lord. We honor.
