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.
He spent the vigor of his life lecturing and debating with his colleagues. Once he argued, "Puerperal (Per-iph-eral) fever is caused by decomposed material, conveyed to a wound. . .I have shown how it can be prevented. I have proved all that I have said. But while we talk, talk, talk, gentlemen, women are dying. I am not asking anything world shaking. I am asking you only to wash...For God's sake, wash your hands." But virtually no one believed him. Doctors and midwives had been delivering babies for thousands of years without washing, and no outspoken Hungarian was going to change them now!
Semmelweis died insane at the age of 47, his wash basins discarded, his colleagues laughing in his face, and the death rattle of a thousand women ringing in his ears. "Wash me!" was the prayer of King David. "Wash!" was the message of John the Baptist. "Unless I wash you, you have no part with me," said Jesus to Peter. Without our being washed clean, we all die from the contamination of sin. For God's sake, wash.
Proverbs 28:13 (NKJV) 13 He who covers his sins will not prosper, But whoever confesses and forsakes them will have mercy.
MORE IMPORTANTLY – HEZEKIAH UNDERSTOOD THE CONCEPT OF A VACUUM CLEANER!
Hezekiah’s address and appeal found willing hearts among the servants of God. The Levites rose. The three leading families of Gershon, Kohath and Mer-a-ri, were represented. Then there were two from the family of Elizaphan; two of the descendants of Asaph; two of Heman and two of Jeduthun. They gathered their brethren and went into the inner part to cleanse it. They did not begin on the outside to work towards the inner part. All true work must begin in the inner part.
3. RESTORE WORSHIP (29:20-30)
“Don’t Expect different results if your habits are the same!”
Psalm 132:1-5 (NKJV)
132 LORD, remember David
And all his afflictions;
2 How he swore to the LORD,
And vowed to the Mighty One of Jacob:
3 “Surely I will not go into the chamber of my house,
Or go up to the comfort of my bed;
4 I will not give sleep to my eyes
Or slumber to my eyelids,
5 Until I find a place for the LORD,
A dwelling place for the Mighty One of Jacob.”
God is looking for a place to dwell with you, a place that ONLY HE shares with you.
Psalm 132:13-16 (NKJV)
13 For the LORD has chosen Zion;
He has desired it for His [a]dwelling place:
14 “This is My resting place forever;
Here I will dwell, for I have desired it.
1 Corinthians 6:15-20 (NKJV) 15 Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a harlot? Certainly not! 16 Or do you not know that he who is joined to a harlot is one body with her? For “the two,” He says, “shall become one flesh.” 17 But he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him. 18 Flee sexual immorality. Every sin that a man does is outside the body, but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body. 19 Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? 20 For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s. (Not just the spirit, but both body and spirit are God’s)
1. Once the heart is turned the feet will follow!
A. Begin to do the right things in place of the wrong things you have been doing
2 Chronicles 29:20-24 (NKJV)
Hezekiah Restores Temple Worship
20 Then King Hezekiah rose early, gathered the rulers of the city, and went up to the house of the Lord. 21 And they brought seven bulls, seven rams, seven lambs, and seven male goats for a sin offering for the kingdom, for the sanctuary, and for Judah. Then he commanded the priests, the sons of Aaron, to offer them on the altar of the Lord. 22 So they killed the bulls, and the priests received the blood and sprinkled it on the altar. Likewise they killed the rams and sprinkled the blood on the altar. They also killed the lambs and sprinkled the blood on the altar. 23 Then they brought out the male goats for the sin offering before the king and the assembly, and they laid their hands on them. 24 And the priests killed them; and they presented their blood on the altar as a sin offering to make an atonement for all Israel, for the king commanded that the burnt offering and the sin offering be made for all Israel.
a. Worship God for Who He is
b. Confess your sins to Him
c. Commit the new behaviors to Him
Compared with salamanders and starfish, mammals have the limited ability to replace lost parts. But now reports of children growing back fingertips and spleens are changing that.
In 1974, Cynthia Illingworth, an English physician specializing in emergency medicine, discovered that when children accidentally sever the fingertip (down to the first joint), the best treatment is no treatment. Cleaned and covered with a bandage, the fingertip, including the nail, grows back. In 11 or 12 weeks the new fingertip usually looks as if nothing had happened to it.
There seem to be three requirements for regrowth: the patient must be under 12 years old, the cut must be above the crease of the first joint, and surgeons must keep hands off the injury. Any operation performed on the finger destroys its ability to grow back. The last condition is the hardest to accept, admits Dr. Michael Bleicher, a pediatric surgeon at Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York City. Reader's Digest, March 1980.
Do you want to expedite your healing, leave it to God that created you?
Open your heart and allow Him to heal you.
Do not try fixing it yourself.
Isaiah 53:4-5 (NKJV) 4 Surely, He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; Yet we esteemed Him stricken, Smitten by God, and afflicted. 5 But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, And by His stripes we are healed.
4. THE SACRIFICE/THANKSGIVING OFFERING (29:31-36)
29:31 … “Now that you have consecrated yourselves to the Lord, come near, and bring sacrifices and thank offerings into the house of the Lord.” …
Sacrifice
Every year in Alaska, a 1000-mile dogsled race, run for prize money and prestige, commemorates an original "race" run to save lives. Back in January of 1926, six-year-old Richard Stanley showed symptoms of diphtheria, signaling the possibility of an outbreak in the small town of Nome. When the boy passed away a day later, Dr. Curtis Welch began immunizing children and adults with an experimental but effective anti-diphtheria serum. But it wasn't long before Dr. Welch's supply ran out, and the nearest serum was in Nenana, Alaska--1000 miles of frozen wilderness away. Amazingly, a group of trappers and prospectors volunteered to cover the distance with their dog teams! Operating in relays from trading post to trapping station and beyond, one sled started out from Nome while another, carrying the serum, started from Nenana. Oblivious to frostbite, fatigue, and exhaustion, the teamsters mushed relentlessly until, after 144 hours in minus 50-degree winds, the serum was delivered to Nome. As a result, only one other life was lost to the potential epidemic. Their sacrifice had given an entire town the gift of life.
Hebrews 13:15 (NKJV) 15 Therefore by Him let us continually offer the sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to His name.
People talk of the sacrifice I have made in spending so much of my life in Africa. Can that be called a sacrifice which is simply acknowledging a great debt I owe to our God, which I can never repay? Is that a sacrifice which brings its own reward in healthful activity, the consciousness of doing good, peace of mind, and a bright hope of a glorious destiny? It is emphatically no sacrifice. Rather it is a privilege. Anxiety, sickness, suffering, danger, foregoing the common conveniences of this life--these may make us pause, and cause the spirit to waver, and the soul to sink; but let this only be for a moment. All these are nothing compared with the glory which shall later be revealed in and through us. I never made a sacrifice. Of this we ought not to talk, when we remember the great sacrifice which He made who left His Father's throne on high to give Himself for us. David Livingstone.
Ministry that costs nothing, accomplishes nothing. John Henry Jowett.
Thanksgiving
1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 (NKJV) 16 Rejoice always, 17 pray without ceasing, 18 in everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.
“Be Thankful even when I see nothing to prove otherwise.”
There are many circumstances that can shift our focus from God and wear us down: financial instability, physical ailments, illness, grief, loss, and the stress of our daily lives. When we think about facing these things, how often do we consider them through a lens of gratitude? What if we thanked God in advance for walking with us through these trials? What if we thanked him for what we will learn by experiencing these situations?
In Budapest, a man goes to the rabbi and complains, "Life is unbearable. There are nine of us living in one room. What can I do?"
The rabbi answers, "Take your goat into the room with you." The man in incredulous, but the rabbi insists. "Do as I say and come back in a week."
A week later the man comes back looking more distraught than before. "We cannot stand it," he tells the rabbi. "The goat is filthy."
The rabbi then tells him, "Go home and let the goat out. And come back in a week."
A radiant man returns to the rabbi a week later, exclaiming, "Life is beautiful. We enjoy every minute of it now that there's no goat -- only the nine of us." George Mikes
COLOSSIANS 2:6-7 (NKJV)
As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, rooted and built up in Him and established in the faith, as you have been taught, abounding in it with thanksgiving.
