KING HEZEKIAH, REVIVAL, AND LOVING GOD

 

 

The Law of Moses had been both a source of blessings and of curses if it wasn’t obeyed. It was also the way to test the Israelite love of God:

 

·       “You shall therefore love the Lord your God and keep his charge, his statutes, his rules, and his commandments always…You shall therefore keep the whole commandment that I command you today, that you may be strong, and go in and take possession of the land that you are going over to possess… you shall be careful to do all the statutes and the rules that I am setting before you today.” (Deuteronomy 11:1, 8, 32)

 

But what would happen when the Israelites overlooked a command? They could offer a sacrifice to the Lord who would mercifully pass over their sins.

 

However, what would happen if they purposely disobeyed a command but with a right motive and heart. This happened during a great revival of King Hezekiah who reigned in Jerusalem for 29 years.

 

It had been a time of great suffering for Judah under his father, King Ahaz, who had led the nation into idolatry, remodeling the Temple to serve Assyrian idols. Judah knew that they had sinned and had endured its horrific consequences. They were ready to return to their God, and King Hezekiah was the one to lead the revival. He rallied his broken nation for this return.

 

They sought to reinstate the Passover and sent emissaries throughout Judah and also into the now dispersed vassal state of Israel to invite the remaining remnants of the Israelite tribes to attend:

 

·       So couriers went throughout all Israel and Judah with letters from the king and his princes, as the king had commanded, saying, “O people of Israel, return to the Lord, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, that he may turn again to the remnant of you who have escaped from the hand of the kings of Assyria.” (2 Chronicles 30:6)

 

However, the couriers to Israel were scorned and mocked. Nevertheless, the hearts of some were touched, and they journeyed to celebrate the Passover:

 

·       The hand of God was also on Judah to give them one heart to do what the king and the princes commanded by the word of the Lord. (2 Chronicles 30:12)

 

Meanwhile, they were busy cleansing Jerusalem for this great return. However, they had a problem it was already too late to celebrate the Passover, which had been designated for the first month of the year, but it was now the second month and there weren’t enough priests to officiate. Besides, they and the other Levites didn’t have time enough to purify themselves. Nor did the returnees have the time to cleanse themselves. Therefore, Hezekiah prayed:

 

·       …“May the good Lord pardon everyone who sets his heart to seek God, the Lord, the God of his fathers, even though not according to the sanctuary’s rules of cleanness.” And the Lord heard Hezekiah and healed the people. And the people of Israel who were present at Jerusalem kept the Feast of Unleavened Bread seven days with great gladness, and the Levites and the priests praised the Lord day by day, singing with all their might to the Lord. (2 Chronicles 30:18-21)

 

 

What should this teach us? Proper priorities! It reminds me of the Pharisees who had criticized Jesus disciples for eating the standing grain in the field on the Sabbath:

 

·       [Jesus] said to them, “Have you not read what David did when he was hungry, and those who were with him: how he entered the house of God and ate the bread of the Presence, which it was not lawful for him to eat nor for those who were with him, but only for the priests? Or have you not read in the Law how on the Sabbath the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath and are guiltless? I tell you, something greater than the temple is here.” (Matthew 12:3-6)

 

Perhaps something greater than the specific specifications for Passover worship was here too - something that would have made the angels rejoice.

 

Right afterwards, they entered a synagogue where Jesus healed a man with a shriveled hand. Again, the leaders sought accuse Him of working on the Sabbath:

 

·       He said to them, “Which one of you who has a sheep, if it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will not take hold of it and lift it out? Of how much more value is a man than a sheep! So it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.” (Matthew 12:11-12)

 

Some things are more important than others. But which things should head our priority list? Certainly not those things that had been the shadows or representations of the reality that was to come:

·       Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ. (Colossians 2:16–17)

 

How then can we distinguish the shadows from the substance? Jesus gave us the ultimate rule:

·       And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.” (Matthew 22:37–40)

 

For King Hezekiah and the people of Judah, the answer had become clear. They had to remove all pagan worship and replace it with the God of Israel. Under King Ahaz, Judah had taken the wrong turn, and now they had to backtrack.

 

Fortunately, many Christians are awakening to the fact that we too have taken the wrong turn into compromise and must reassess what it means to love God with all our being. This can prove costly. Judah had to pay dearly for revolting against Assyria. However, eventually the Lord delivered them when He, by His own hand, struck down 200,000 Assyrian soldiers, ending their siege of Jerusalem.

 

IF WE BELIEVE, WHY SHOULD WE BE CONCERNED ABOUT DEFENDING THE FAITH (APOLOGETICS)?

For one thing, apologetics, the defense of the faith, is not an option. Instead, we are commanded to make a defense for the faith:

• But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, and always be ready to give a defense [“apologia” in the Greek] to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear; having a good conscience, that when they defame you as evildoers, those who revile your good conduct in Christ may be ashamed. (1 Peter 3:15-16)

Moses knew that he had to make a defense for the faith once he’d return to the Israelites, claiming that God had sent him to lead the His people out of bondage in Egypt:

·       Then Moses answered, “But behold, they [the Israelites] will not believe me or listen to my voice, for they will say, ‘The LORD did not appear to you.’” The LORD said to him, “What is that in your hand?” He said, “A staff.” And he said, “Throw it on the ground.” So he threw it on the ground, and it became a serpent, and Moses ran from it.  But the LORD said to Moses, “Put out your hand and catch it by the tail”—so he put out his hand and caught it, and it became a staff in his hand— “that they may believe that the LORD, the God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has appeared to you.” Again, the LORD said to him, “Put your hand inside your cloak.” And he put his hand inside his cloak, and when he took it out, behold, his hand was leprous like snow. Then God said, “Put your hand back inside your cloak.” So he put his hand back inside his cloak, and when he took it out, behold, it was restored like the rest of his flesh. “If they will not believe you,” God said, “or listen to the first sign, they may believe the latter sign. If they will not believe even these two signs or listen to your voice, you shall take some water from the Nile and pour it on the dry ground, and the water that you shall take from the Nile will become blood on the dry ground.” (Exodus 4:1-9)

The LORD (“Yahweh”) did not tell Moses, “Just tell those Israelites to believe!” In fact, the Bible never asks us to believe without evidence, without reasons to believe. The Bible never tells us to close our minds in order to experience God. Instead, it tells us to love the Lord with all of our minds.

The Pharisees had tested Jesus by asking Him, “Which is the greatest commandment?”

·       And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” (Matthew 22:37)

We are not to turn off our minds in order to get close to God or to experience Him. Instead, we are to turn our God-given minds up to their highest setting possible to receive everything that God wants to give us. He wants to give us understanding and reasons to believe – evidences. This is what He had given to Moses so that the people would believe.

It is these reasons that had become the basis for their faith. Forty years later, Moses reminded Israel of what they had seen:

·       “Did any people ever hear the voice of a god speaking out of the midst of the fire, as you have heard, and still live? Or has any god ever attempted to go and take a nation for himself from the midst of another nation, by trials, by signs, by wonders, and by war, by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, and by great deeds of terror, all of which the LORD your God did for you in Egypt before your eyes? To you it was shown, that you might know that the LORD is God; there is no other besides him. Out of heaven he let you hear his voice, that he might discipline you. And on earth he let you see his great fire, and you heard his words out of the midst of the fire. And because he loved your fathers and chose their offspring after them and brought you out of Egypt with his own presence, by his great power.” (Deuteronomy 4:33-37)

Faith is not a leap into the darkness but an embrace of the light of truth. Is it different now in New Testament times? Does God no longer give us a rational basis for our faith?

Certainly not! Jesus performed miracles and prophesied about what would soon happen so that His disciples would believe:

·       “You heard me say to you, ‘I am going away, and I will come to you.’ If you loved me, you would have rejoiced, because I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I. And now I have told you before it takes place, so that when it does take place you may believe.” (John 14:28-29)

Jesus didn’t tell them, “Just believe,” but He provided them with an evidential foundation for their faith. We need an evidential foundation, especially as we go through trials. John the Baptist experienced as crisis of faith after he was thrown into jail. He therefore sent his disciples to Jesus to find out if He is really the Messiah.

This might seem surprising to us. John had been Israel’s greatest prophet. He had even seen the Holy Spirit descend upon Jesus in the form of a dove. He had proclaimed about Jesus, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” How could he now doubt? Wasn’t he above doubt? No! He too needed evidential reasurances.

And what did Jesus tell John’s disciples? Did He tell them:

·       Go tell John, “Just believe. He already has enough reasons to believe?”

No! Instead, He provided more reasons to believe:

·       And Jesus answered them, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them. (Matthew 11:4-5)

Above all, we need to have confidence that the Bible is the very Words of God,

How can we face the world with the confidence and the boldness we need if we can’t be confident about the basis of our faith! We can’t! Before I went to seminary, I had subscribed to “Biblical Archeology Review” (BAR).  Many of the authors wrote approvingly of the “Wellhausen Hypothesis”– a radical theory of how the Hebrew Scriptures were humanly assembled by cutting-and-pasting from pre-existing manuscripts. The contributors to BAR seemed to be so confident about their working theory that they didn’t even bother to provide any evidence for it.

I was troubled but decided that I would lock my doubts away, pushing them back into a crevice of my mind until, perhaps, I might have the tools to critically examine them. However, this strategy didn’t work. The doubts that this theory had provoked interfered with both my reading of Scripture and my faith. Consequently, I read the Bible less and with less excitement. The doubt that the Bible might merely be a human creation festered in the back of my mind.

Fortunately, I was struck down with a bad back for several months. Meanwhile, someone gave me a copy of Gleason Archer’s “Survey of Old Testament Introductions.” Although it was one of the driest texts I’ve ever read, I cried my way through it. Archer dealt conclusively with the “Wellhausen Hypothesis” and restored my Bible back to me, as if Jesus Himself had been restored.

I think that it is inevitable that without understanding the rational foundations of the faith and without knowing how to critique the challenges, our faith and life will suffer.

We all experience challenges that come against our faith. The Apostle Peter warned:

·       Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed. (1 Peter 4:12-13)

Our Lord allows these trials for a reason. For one thing, they prepare us for His return by creating within us a deep longing for His return.

BETRAYAL OF THE GOSPEL AND THE SEEKER-SENSITIVE CHURCHES

In his famous "Letter from the Birmingham Jail," Martin Luther King, Jr. lamented the fact that Southern White pastors had failed to join the Civil Rights Movement:

·       “In the midst of blatant injustices inflicted upon the Negro, I have

watched white churches stand on the sideline and merely mouth pious

irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities. In the midst of a mighty

struggle to rid our nation of racial and economic injustice, I have heard

so many ministers say, ‘Those are social issues with which the gospel has no real concern.’”

Evidently, these Southern White churches were Seeker-Sensitive Churches

(SSC). They refused to preach an unpopular message, one which might turn

away the seeker and even the attender. They had forgotten the first great commandment to love the Lord with all our hearts, souls, and minds (Matthew 22:37) by abiding in His Word (John 15:7-14; 14:21-24).

However, these SSCs have now been joined by a wide range of brethren. Their message might be different, but the principle of political correctness remains the same - to not offend the prevailing culture, even if it means ignoring wide swaths of the Gospel.

However, we cannot ignore any of the Gospel, lest we incur the wrath of

God. Paul had been concerned about this very thing. Therefore, he testified

of his faithfulness in this regard:

·       “Therefore I testify to you this day that I am innocent of the blood of

all, for I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God.”

(Acts 20:26-27)

This is the very error of the SSCs. Please understand. I am not suggesting

that we should be sensitive to seekers. In fact, we must be (1 Cor. 9).

However, we must not be "sensitive" to the extent that we refuse to preach

the doctrines of the faith. The is not sensitivity but deadening silence

about some of the very things that should be screamed out from rooftops.

What doctrines are being left out? Many! Here is a partial list:

·       Creationism: SSCs avoid this subject because they are afraid of seeming

to be science-rejectors.

·       The children of the light vs. the children of darkness (2 Cor. 6:14-16):

In the eyes of many, this distinction seems overly harsh, culturally

insensitive, and divisive. Professional Christians want to be able to

embrace the cultural, and preaching such a radical distinction between

saved and unsaved makes this difficult. It is also potentially embarrassing.

·       The role of women in the church: In SSCs, you will not find any

discussion about women in the pastorate.

·       Sexual sins: As social sexual standards have changed, SSCs have gradually

ceased mentioning any form of sexual sin. This omission tends to

communicate that sexual sins really don't matter.

·       Eternal Punishment, the Depravity of Man, and Salvation through

Jesus alone: These teachings are so integral to the Gospel that they are

only silenced as the SSCs approach an advanced stage of apostasy.

·       The plight of the Christian refugees: The silence of the SSCs in this

area is perhaps the most disturbing silence, especially since the world is

supposed to know us by the love we have for our brethren (John 13:35;

17:20-23; Galatians 6:10). Yet I have experienced hostility from SSCs when

I have pointed out their dereliction in this area. SSCs claim that we

shouldn't be showing favoritism.

The Gospel was never intended to make us friends of the prevailing culture.

It's message will always offend.

What would Martin Luther King have said about our SSCs? I suspect that he

would have seen them in the light of the Southern White churches of the Jim

Crow days.