Cleaning Out The Temple Series

Cleaning out the Temple

Part 3 in the Series “Breaking Bad”

1 Corinthians 3:16-17 (NKJV)

16 Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? 17 If anyone defiles the temple of God, God will destroy him. For the temple of God is holy, which temple you are.

2 Chronicles 29:1-11 (NKJV)

Hezekiah Reigns in Judah

29 Hezekiah became king when he was twenty-five years old, and he reigned twenty-nine years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Abijah the daughter of Zechariah. 2 And he did what was right in the sight of the Lord, according to all that his father David had done.

Hezekiah Cleanses the Temple

3 In the first year of his reign, in the first month, he opened the doors of the house of the Lord and repaired them. 4 Then he brought in the priests and the Levites, and gathered them in the East Square, 5 and said to them: “Hear me, Levites! Now sanctify yourselves, sanctify the house of the Lord God of your fathers, and carry out the rubbish from the holy place. 6 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. 7 They have also shut up the doors of the vestibule, put out the lamps, and have not burned incense or offered burnt offerings in the holy place to the God of Israel. 8 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. 9 For indeed, because of this our fathers have fallen by the sword; and our sons, our daughters, and our wives are in captivity. 10 “Now it is in my heart to make a covenant with the Lord God of Israel, that His fierce wrath may turn away from us. 11 My sons, do not be negligent now, for the Lord has chosen you to stand before Him, to serve Him, and that you should minister to Him and burn incense.”

Summary: Part 3 “Cleaning out the Temple” of Series “Breaking Bad”.

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Cleaning out the Temple

INTRODUCTION: Bad habits are easy to develop, and often hard to deal with and remove. Israel, under king Ahaz, had developed many bad habits, and as we will see in our text, his son, Hezekiah set out to remove these habits from the people. Now, in Hezekiah’s actions we see some practical principles for removing bad habits from our life.

1. BEGIN IMMEDIATELY

2 Chron. 29:3 In the first month of the first year of his reign, he opened the doors of the temple of the LORD and repaired them.

A. The best time to deal with a bad habit is NOW! To delay only allows the habit to get entrenched deeper in our lives.

B. Hezekiah is the son of Ahaz – one of Israel’s worst kings. Hezekiah had 16 years of bad habits to correct

C. Hezekiah correction:

1 Hezekiah got things right with God – repairing the temple (the place God had chosen as his home)

a) He opened the doors – Access to God

b) He beautified the doors – Priority of God

2 Hezekiah selected Levites

a) Requires personal cleansing before service.

b) Nothing spiritual can come from a willful life of sin.

3 Hezekiah removed the idols – the things that would keep us away from God

Mark 10:18 (NKJV) 18 So Jesus said to him, “Why do you call Me good? No one is good but One, that is, God.

a) God is the source of what is good

b) Cannot hope to do what is good in our own lives apart from the influence of God in our lives

2. REMOVE THE ROOTS (29:3-19)

2 Chron. 29:5 and said: “Hear me, Levites! Now sanctify yourselves, sanctify the house of the Lord God of your fathers, and carry out the rubbish from the holy place.

A. Hezekiah understood the concept of Cleanliness

a. Remove all defilement (Clean out the Sin)

b. Simple put any defilement, regardless of how small defilement is.

c. Isabella of Spain bragged that she had had only two baths in her life--one when she was born, and the other when she married Ferdinand. They gave her a third when she died.

B. Hezekiah understood the concept of purity – if you do not get it all, it will come back

Boyce Mouton

In 1818, Ignaz Phillip Semmelweis was born into a world of dying women. The finest hospitals lost one out of six young mothers to the scourge of "childbed fever." A doctor's daily routine began in the dissecting room where he performed autopsies. From there he made his way to the hospital to examine expectant mothers without ever pausing to wash his hands. Dr. Semmelweis was the first man in history to associate such examinations with the resultant infection and death. His own practice was to wash with a chlorine solution, and after eleven years and the delivery of 8,537 babies, he lost only 184 mothers--about one in fifty.