Introduction: When my family lived at Fort Leonard Wood we had an ongoing encounter with some pests that had the endearing name of "sewer flies." The post engineers sent out exterminators repeatedly and each time the flies would disappear for awhile, only to return a few weeks later.
As it turned out there was a bigger problem than sewer flies--the sewer flies were merely a symptom of the leak in the drain under our kitchen. This leak resulted in a damp warm spot in our crawls space that was a perfect breeding ground for the flies. The fly problem was finally solved when the leak was fixed and the breeding ground was taken away.
In last week’s passage we talked about Joash and how his promising reign fell short of it’s promise because he failed to get rid of the high places, those places of pagan worship hidden in the hills, the breeding grounds for all sorts of evil activity.
Proposition: In this week’s lesson we are treated to the example of Hezekiah, a king whom the Bible says, "did what was right in the eyes of the LORD."
Interrogative: Last week as we looked at Joash, we asked ourselves what went wrong, what was it about Joash’s reign that kept the Lord from sending revival. This week we want to ask ourselves, what went right? What was it about Hezekiah’s reign that found favor in God’s eyes and led to revival?
Transition: I think that the answer to that question is fairly straightforward, I see three very specific things in this eight verse summary of Hezekiah’s reign that give us a clear indication of what it was about Hezekiah that pleased God. The first is in verse four, and it is His complete...
1. Turnaround
v. 4 He removed the high places, smashed the sacred stones and cut down the Asherah poles. He broke into pieces the bronze snake Moses had made, for up to that time the Israelites had been burning incense to it.
Joash, failed to tear down the high places. He wasn’t willing to make the effort to confront those strongholds of sin and idolatry; and the consequence was that the momentum toward revival was overcome by the evil of those strongholds, both in the nation and in Joash himself.
Hezekiah on the other hand doesn’t fool around in his turnaround. He takes reform all the way to the hills. He confronts the pagan priests and idolators. He says, there is no room for this kind of activity in my kingdom, because my kingdom is really God’s kingdom. There aren’t going to be parts of this kindgdom that don’t bow down to His authority--He will be Lord of All.
If we want to experience revival in our lives, in our homes, in our church, in our community we’re going to have to make the same bold stand. We cannot afford to have holdouts. We cannot allow the high places of sin to escape the Lord’s authority. We can’t say "Lord you can have all of my life except--my finances, my relationships, my entertainment, my future plans."
Historically revival has come to the church when people have allowed the Holy spirit to take the jackhammer of repentance to the strongholds of their lives and once those barriers are broken, the river of revival comes crashing through.
Yes the river sweeps through with blessing, and the story of Hezekiah’s reign demonstrates that, the enemies of God’s people are overcome, but the first step is repentance--simply put, the first step is TURNAROUND.
The second thing about Hezekiah that pleased God and led to revival was his complete...
2. Trust
v. 5 Hezekiah trusted in the LORD, the God of Israel. There was no one like him among all the kings of Judah, either before him or after him.
Hezekiah, the Bible says, trusted in the Lord and note that it is this trust in the Lord which leads the author of the biblical record to comment that there was no other king like him among all the others before and after who had sat in that throne.
Hezekiah’s forefather, David declared "Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the LORD our God. They are brought to their knees and fall, but we rise up and stand firm (Ps. 20:7-8).
It must be easy for a king to trust in the resources of His kingdom, to try to devise a way to solve their problems with weapons or wisdom or wealth, the way that Joash did, but Hezekiah trusted in the Lord.
Without faith, the Book of Hebrews says, it is impossible to please God. But as we see here, with faith, trust in the Lord, God is genuinely pleased.
If we are ever going to please the Lord, He will require of us the same that he required of Kings of Judah--Repentance and faith--Turnaround and Trust.
First that trust must mean trusting in Him for salvation--believing that the sacrifice of Christ upon the cross is sufficient to pay the price for your sins and to make youright before God--this is the foundation of a God-blessed life.
Then when that central issue of salvation is dealt with the Lord wants us to trust him with more--with all of our life. He wants us to rely upon him for deliverence from the enemy, for daily bread, for our families and our future.
Dr. G. Campbell Morgan said this about believers who are reluctant to commit themselves wholeheartedly to Christ: "When our convictions are yielded to Him completely, He is able to give Himself to us in all His fullness. Until that is so, He cannot trust us. How true it is that we often miss the joy and strength of our Christianity because, by withholding ourselves from Christ, we make it impossible for Him to give Himself to us in all the fullness of His grace and truth." (Today in the Word, April, 1998, p. 23)
You see in this way we give ourselves completely to Him, by trusting Him with all of our lives, and when we do that we open ourselves up to His blessing, not that He’s been withholding it but simply that we have been unable to receive it. So then with TRUST as with TURNAROUND we open the floodgates of revival.
There is one final thing about Hezekiah that the Scripture is careful to note and I think it’s an important point for us too. The last thing about Hezekiah that pleased God and opened the way for revival was Hezekiah’s...
Tenacity
vv. 6-7 He held fast to the LORD and did not cease to follow him; he kept the commands the LORD had given Moses. 7And the LORD was with him; he was successful in whatever he undertook. He rebelled against the king of Assyria and did not serve him.
Hezekiah stuck to it. It wasn’t that he never faced difficulty, he did and we’ll see some of that in the next couple of weeks, but unlike Josiah who when faced with a crisis surrendered what was sacred, Hezekiah plunged forward with unwavering commitment, He continued to trust and he continued to do what was right even when confronted by the world’s only superpower of his day, even when he saw the neighboring northern kingdom of Israel defeated and sent off into exile, he continued to serve God in faith and righteousness.
And if we are genuine in our desire to see God moving in our lives in a new and a fresh way, if we long to see His blessing, we must exhibit the same kind of spiritual tenacity.
If I had to guess the number one reason why revival doesn’t come at times and places where it seems as if revival is likely I would say it is the lack of tenacity. I have seen time and again and perhaps you have too, people who are anxious for God to move in power, people who earnestly desire to have a new vision and deeper understanding of the majesty and holiness of God, people who are anxious to see the lost come to faith, people who believe they have a God given vision for revival, people who have begun special prayer meetings to ask God to send revival but who never seem to get there, Oh I don’t mean to say nothing happens--there is always spiritual fruit when people desire to draw closer to the Lord. But you know what I mean--the outcome never quite lives up to the expectation.
Why does that happen? I don’t know for sure--perhaps part of it is simply our inability to box God and to define what revival is going to look like. But I suspect that part of it is the lack of this one thing on our part: TENACITY.
After a few weeks the attendance at prayer meetings begins to dwindle. After a few times inviting our friends and neighbors to church, we quit asking. After a few days of resisting temptation we give in. We have not yet, as our NT text today said, resisted to the point of blood.
ILLUSTRATION In 1913 in the French Alps, because of careless deforestation, the mountains around Provence, France, were barren. Former villages were deserted because their springs and brooks had run dry. The wind blew furiously, unimpeded by foliage.A simple shepherd named Elzeard Bouffier, took it upon himself to do something about it. Each night he meticulously sorted through a pile of acorns, discarding those that were cracked or undersized. When the shepherd had counted out 100 perfect acorns, he stopped for the night and went to bed. By 1913, the 55-year-old shepherd had been planting trees on the wild hillsides for over three years. He had planted 1,100,000 trees, 20,000 of which had sprouted. Of those, he expected half to be eaten by rodents or die to the elements, and the other half to live.
By the middle of the century something incredible had happened: there was a veritable forest, accompanied by a chain reaction in nature. Water flowed in the once-empty brooks. The ecology, sheltered by a leafy roof and bonded to the earth by a mat of spreading roots, become hospitable. Willows, rushes, meadows, gardens, and flowers were birthed. Where there had been only ruins now stand neat farms. Little by little, the villages have been rebuilt. (Hal Seed, Oceanside, California, Leadership, Spring, 1993, p. 48)
What brought about the transformation? The Tenacity of one simple farmer. We began with an illustration about sewer flies, and how the only way to rid yourself of them is to deny them a breeding ground. We conclude with this illustration about restablishing habitat. The two are really two sides of the same coin--much like the lives of Joash and Hezekiah. Each of us today must choose which type habitat we will nurture.
To choose life we must choose to Turn around, and tear down the high places giving God sovereignty over every part of our life, leaving no breeding ground for temptation and sin. And we must choose to trust in Christ alone, both for salvation from sin and it’s penalty and for all that matters in our lives. And it cannot be just a temporary decision we must choose to follow hard after the Lord with Tenacity.
