Hezekiah’s Revival: Radical Cleansing and Restored Worship

And and the next thing that we notice in this time of revival, in this account of revival, is that god moves suddenly. What had happened? Sixteen days of labor, this intensive effort, taking the filthiness out, dumping it in the Brook Kidron, then something remarkable happens. The temple is clean now. It's all glorious and ready for worship. The sacrifices are offered. The singers begin. The trumpet sound. The whole assembly worships.

There's praise. There's thanksgiving. There's offerings. There's glory. And scripture says in verse 35 of the account, so the service of the house of the Lord was set in order. Everything was right. The filthiness had been removed. The service of the house of the Lord was set in order.

But as Hezekiah prayed, Lord, pardon everyone that prepareth his heart to seek God. Revival. It reveals the heart of God. He welcomes those who sincerely seek him even if they come imperfectly. And, of course, we all come imperfectly. It's a picture of grace really at work here, isn't it, of grace? That God received these ones even though they were, as it says there, they were eating otherwise than it was written, verse 18, that they were still welcome.

They were still received. What about worship? Our worship, is it routine or is it that living joy filled encounter with our living God? When we gather, have we got that heart to worship? Have we prepared our heart to seek God?

Hezekiah did not start with programs or man's methods or man's engineered intentions. He started with a call to cleansing. He starts with a purification, with a spiritual cleanup, if you like. There was a lot that needed cleaning up after his father's idolatry. We see that two chronicles twenty nine five, the order of the new king, and he calls the Levites. He said unto them, hear me, ye Levites. Sanctify now yourselves

Notice the revival begins, sanctify yourselves first. It's the same for you and me, brother and sister, to get ourselves right, personal holiness, then corporate renewal. Before the temple could be cleansed, the priest themselves had to be clean.

The temple of the holy spirit is here and me, isn't it? It's the people of God. Today, we are the temple of the holy spirit. Our lives are meant to be that holy dwelling place for God. Yet how easily spiritual clutter accumulates, doesn't it? I know Julie and I, we it's probably more me than her. We tend to be hoarders, and people might have seen some some of the clutter we've got. Of course, it's all all my clutter, not Julie's clutter. But when you think of spiritually, though, of clutter,

things get cluttered, don't they? Our lives get cluttered. We accumulate and things build up, and this is what happened in this temple. There was spiritual clutter you could compare it to.

And then the thing was done suddenly. Suddenly, joy. Suddenly, worship. Suddenly, God's pattern. Preparation may be slow. Sixteen days, they'd work. Sixteen days. It was sweaty, filthy work, dirty work, hard work. But then God prepared the people. The thing was done suddenly. Breakthrough. Breakthrough came. They've been obedient to God. God had prepared the people. God had made their hearts ready. And revival is not manufactured by human effort.

They knew what these idols were. They were taking God's place, and their love for God had so awakened that they wanted to get rid of these idols. And so it tells us there that they utterly destroyed them. They utterly destroyed them all. That's two Chronicles thirty one one. Sorry. I know you're trying to help me in the booth there, but I'm just fine. There there it is. Yeah. It says that they break in pieces the images.

And the idols fell not because of the king's direction or not because of some imposed direction, but it was because the people's love for God had so awakened that they had that spontaneous willingness, that practical obedience to destroy the false worship.

Because God satisfies, doesn't he? And a revived heart cannot tolerate rivals. You know, we wanna we want him to have our whole heart, not have any kind of little compartment that we don't let him fill, but let him fill the whole heart. Amen. So just to kinda recap, what can we learn from Hezekiah, from this revival? A young king. He was 25. You don't have to wait till you're 30 or 40 or beyond. You can start now, young men, young women. He was a young man.

People might have just overlooked him or discounted him, but now he stood. He accepted the spiritual challenge, and he wasn't willing to accommodate the coldness any longer.

You cannot truly worship what you've not surrendered to. You need to come as it were to the burnt offering and then the singing, then the worship. Verse 29, they sang praises with gladness and bowed their heads and worshiped. So the burnt offering is a picture of dedication, worship, and sacrifice. They go together. And the song represents joyful praise. Both are necessary. So, again, twenty nine thirty five, the service of the house of the lord was set in order.

So when people truly encounter God, they worship. They stop feeling like it's duty. It becomes a delight. And, of course, we know as it translates to us in the new covenant that Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us. Christ our Passover, it points to him, our precious lord. And our worship today is not about some earthly temple, but a gathering of god's people around the finished work under the authority of his word and the power of his spirit.

What doors in my life have been shut to God? Those doors of the temple have been shut. Sixteen years, those doors have been shut of the temple. What about doors in my life? Am I maybe not letting God have all of the compartments of my life? What filthiness have I got accustomed to that I no longer smell it? You know, sometimes you visit someone's house and and poor.

Not saying for anyone present here, but you walk in and you can smell the pet or whatever it is that they got they've had in their house for so long, and it's noxious, isn't it? Sometimes we don't smell the filthiness.

And wouldn't that be something where we have revival such that it doesn't have to be that the pastor dictates things to you to do, that the pastor doesn't have to put a yoke on you to do something, but you willingly do it. And this was a willingness of the people. It wasn't that they had to be told to do something or pressured. The people themselves did it. They tasted the presence of God, and they knew that idols were wrong and intolerable.

They knew what these idols were. They were taking God's place, and their love for God had so awakened that they wanted to get rid of these idols.

And, actually, that's a big thing, isn't it? With all his heart. Do we seek our God with all our heart? Are we wholehearted? And think about other high places, other those things that we ought to cast down those things, those areas of compromise in our homes, our schedules, our finances, our relationships, our entertainment, high places as it were, things that there's a compromise there. Yeah. I've kinda just let that slide for a while, but no.

We ought to have the response of the people, spontaneous response, utterly destroy the idols. How about our heart?

I know. I used to work in a factory, in a tire factory, and my job was to clean under the big tire machines at Bridgestone down at Salisbury. I had to remove the filthiness, all of the muck and mire, the grease and gunk, the the oil, and to scrape it out with my hand and put it in a bucket and and remove the filthiness. And, you know, when you remove filthiness, you get filthy, don't you? You don't put your best I wouldn't wear these clothes to to remove the filthiness.

And so there's times when god moves on us to take things out and to dump it. Do a do a spiritual dump as it were. And so that's what happened here as they dumped things at the Brook Kidron. It represented a purification from sin. It represented a dedication, a devotion to the lord. Kidron represented judgment and defilement. It represented the graveyard of idols. And so revival begins with this radical cleansing this radical cleansing.

And so there's this destruction of false worship. When you think about it, anything that replaces God in our affection is an idol, isn't it? And it must go. Little children, one John five, keep yourselves from idols. There's a sense where we should have that abhorrence of that which is idolatrous, that which is really taking our lord's place in our heart. And so the people's hearts were so stirred here that they went out and they systematically destroyed

every vestige of idolatry in the land. It was spontaneous, led by the people as god moved them, ignited by the spirit a zeal for God's holiness.

And and the next thing that we notice in this time of revival, in this account of revival, is that god moves suddenly. What had happened? Sixteen days of labor, this intensive effort, taking the filthiness out, dumping it in the Brook Kidron, then something remarkable happens. The temple is clean now. It's all glorious and ready for worship. The sacrifices are offered. The singers begin. The trumpet sound. The whole assembly worships.

Hezekiah then calls the nation back. He calls the nation to worship, and his vision goes beyond just Jerusalem. He wants the whole nation, even the scattered remnant of the northern tribes to return to worship. He wanted restoration. He wanted to heal a division and to rally the remnant to come to true godly worship and unity.

He wanted a spiritual unity and a healing after the division so that northern and southern kingdoms, he wanted to find restoration there. It was a godly intention there.

And we can have that heart to to welcome the scattered. And so the people of Judah, they welcomed the scattered, the backslidden, the and we can think of those that might be hurting, that are nominal. Maybe they may not measure up as far as we would gauge it, but they're preparing their heart to seek God. Can we have grace to them? Can we show grace? Can we be like Hezekiah, pray for them, and receive them.

And we see then also another characteristic, there was generous hearts. As the revival produced generosity, the people brought offerings in abundance, and there was heaps in the temple courts. It's a picture of revival. Revived hearts are generous hearts. We we just wanna overflow in that

wonder of of what God has given to us.

God moved suddenly. It was a God moment that God moved suddenly. And the same God is with us, isn't he? Can we let him have a heart, the doors that we've closed, the door of the temple, as it were, our temple, The filthiness that we've tolerated, take it down to Kidron and leave it there. What part of your worship has grown cold? Are there idols that still stand? They should have been torn down long ago.

What is it that occupies my energy and my interest such that it takes away from him? He should have it all.

You know, I look back as a young man and as a newly saved man, I had a bit of an addiction to collecting particular books and particular hobbies and interests that I had that consumed my life, and they weren't necessarily harmful things. I used to like collecting aircraft books and books about World War one and two. I I collected war medals that I had different collections of medals and collections of stones and collections of stamps.

You know, had collections of this or that, coins, But it became such a it kind became an idol to me.

So there's times when god moves on us to take things out and to dump it. Do a do a spiritual dump as it were. And so that's what happened here as they dumped things at the Brook Kidron.