So who are these people with funny names?
I'm willing to guess most of you probably haven't read 2 Chronicles recently.
! Very few people do.
I find it kind of fun when doing a one-off guest sermon to sometimes pick things that are a bit obscure.
Things that maybe we don't usually look at in our normal preaching through different sermon series.
And so I want us to look today at the story of King Hezekiah.
And this is only the first bit of the story.
But why do I want us to look at that?
Well, because the writers of Chronicles is actually taking a look at the history of Israel.
And as he's doing this overview, he's dealing with a very important question to the people of his day and his culture.
And the question is essentially, does what we worship really matter?
And that's a compelling question, isn't it?
Does what we worship really matter?
Does it matter who or what we worship?
I would guess that most of you or many of you in this room this afternoon would probably say yes to that question.
But are you really sure?
And the reason I ask you that is because the answer our culture would give to that question is a resounding no.
It doesn't really matter what you worship as long as you're satisfied with it.
If it gives you some meaning, if it gives you some purpose, if it makes you feel better about your life, then it's a good thing.
Tim Farron, the now former leader of the Lib Dem Party, recently gave an interview where he said in his experience out on the campaign trail,
what he found was that generally people are happy with your faith.
They're okay with it, especially if you have a nice building or you wear funny clothing.
You know, you're different, you're interesting.
Then that's a good thing.
And it actually helps our credentials as a liberal society because we can say, you know,
we get along with people of all different cultures and different faiths and different religions.
But here was his conclusion.
He said the moment that you actually assert that you believe a certain creed or that it actually impacts the way you live or the way you think or how you make decisions,
the instant that that faith actually does something to your life, transforms it in some way,
well, that's the bit that we can't put up with.
Does what we worship really matter?
It's the question that's on the mind of the writer of Chronicles.
So the writer of Chronicles is writing to a group of people who had been in exile.
They've been taken away from their homeland, their ancestral land.
And now they're coming back.
And it's a generation or two later.
And they've in that time, they've been stripped of their cultural identity.
And so they're returning to the land of their forefathers.
And the question on their minds is, well, does it really matter what we worship?
Are we still the people of God?
Are we coming back to the land that he promised us?
Does it does it make any difference what we worship?
And here we are, twenty five hundred years later, with extremely different circumstances, but much the same question.
So this afternoon, I want us to look at a little piece of this story, a little piece of the history of God's people.
It's the story of King Hezekiah and actually his father as well, King Ahaz.
And what we're going to see in this time, I hope, is that behind a deeply flawed man, God works in a remarkable way.
Can we learn from this?
Can it impact our lives today?
Does it still resonate with us?
I believe it does.
What I want us to see in our time together are three things.
First of all, just the setting.
What's the setting when Hezekiah comes to the throne?
The second is the turn.
What does he change?
How does he turn things around?
What does he do different from his father?
And then lastly, I want you to see the joy that comes from the worship of the true God of the universe.
So first of all, the setting.
And this is where we looked at in chapter 28.
The setting is dire circumstances.
So King Ahaz is the king of a tiny bit of the nation of Israel.
Israel at one point, they were the people of God.
They'd been brought out of Egypt.
They'd entered into the promised land.
Here we are years later.
The kingdom has been split into two.
The southern kingdom is called Judah.
That's the part that Ahaz rules.
The northern kingdom has been split multiple times.
They've been taken over by various other groups.
And now Judah sits surrounded by enemies.
Surrounded by smaller nations.
Some of them they have historic cultural ties to.
But many of them are nations that have invaded.
So the southern kingdom is there.
And Ahaz finds himself with enemies at the gate.
So what does he do?
Well, he decides to turn to other gods for help.
Did you notice that?
In verse 23, he sacrificed to the gods Damascus.
Which had defeated him.
And said, because the gods of the kings of Syria helped them.
I will sacrifice to them.
That they may help me.
So Ahaz is faced with a major problem.
He has these smaller kingdoms around them.
But then there's a much larger kingdom.
There's a superpower that's starting to systematically eat up each of these kingdoms.
They're called the Assyrians.
And the Assyrians, if you want to know more about them,
you can go just up the road to the British Museum.
They have a whole section on the Assyrians.
And the superpower.
And so Ahaz looks at them.
And he becomes afraid.
And so what does he do?
Well, first of all, he adopts their gods.
But then secondly, he actually goes to the king of Assyria.
And he asks him for help.
He goes to him and he says,
Look, I've got all these little kingdoms around me.
They're causing me all kinds of trouble.
Could you come and possibly help us out?
So he does this in order to maintain power, to maintain control.
But he does it because he doesn't really think it matters what he worships.
The gods of the Assyrians and the Assyrians have defeated him.
The gods of Damascus.
So perhaps if we adopted those gods, if we took on a bit of the culture,
then perhaps they could help us where the God of the universe could not.
See, his greatest ambition and his greatest hope is simple survival.
See, at the heart of Ahaz's actions is a simple pragmatism, isn't it?
When he's faced with a dire situation, he wants the quickest and simplest way out.
He probably faces intense social pressure as well, doesn't he?
He's the king.
What do we do to our politicians when there's a problem?
What do we want them to do?
We want them to fix it, don't we?
If they don't fix it, we'll boot them out and get somebody else in who we think will.
And when they don't fix it, we boot them out and get someone else in who we will.
And then the problem is going to get...
But Ahaz probably felt that social pressure.
Fix the problem.
Well, how do we fix the problem?
Well, we'll go ask the enemy for help and then we'll take on their gods.
And if they see that we're really serious, then, you know, everything will be just fine.
See, spiritually and culturally, we live in a time not so similar to that of Ahaz.
We may not be faced with enemies at the gate,
but we're faced with intense social pressure to conform,
to simply accept everything that culture gives us
and just kind of live with that.
I believe that Tim Ferriss' quote that I mentioned earlier actually nails our society.
We're a deeply religious society as long as our religion isn't deep.
And the reason why this is relevant to our discussion
is because every single person in this room, in one way or another,
has been impacted by this view of faith.
So the story that our culture tells us
and that most of us have probably bought into
is that the greatest desire and the greatest happiness in life
is to look within yourself and to find the true you.
To find just whatever might work for you.
And that's the promise that Ahaz had believed in as well.
We just need to find what's going to work for us.
We need to protect ourselves from our enemies.
What's going to work?
Perhaps idolatry.
Perhaps just being nice.
But do the promises of Ahaz's idols work?
And do the promises of the idols of our day work?
Look at verse 23.
No.
Yeah, 23.
The second bit.
But they were the ruin of him and of all Israel.
Did they work for Ahaz?
No, they didn't.
And what you get a sense of is the desperation of Ahaz.
He's looking for that thing that's going to work.
But he finds only disappointment.
And we see in the end that he dies a broken man.
They don't even bother burying him with the other kings of Judah and Israel.
But they bury him in the city in Jerusalem.
This is a way of saying basically he was a broken man.
He was a disgraced king.
And he was set to the side and largely forgotten.
And the question I have for you this afternoon is,
what leaves you feeling empty?
What leaves you broken?
Oftentimes when we talk about idolatry,
we ask, what's the thing that you desire the most?
And that's one way of looking at it.
But my question for you is,
what's the thing that you desire most in life
that ultimately leaves you feeling empty?
That's our idols.
And what generally happens is,
as those things disappoint us,
we move on to the next thing and the next thing.
Ahaz didn't have that luxury.
He dies a broken man with his enemies on the plains of this country,
bearing down on his capital city.
And he leaves his son to clean up the mess.
And it's quite a mess that they're in too, isn't it?
So what does Hezekiah do?
Is he going to continue to do the same thing as his father?
Is he going to continue to just try and find what works?
Well, here's where we see the turn.
What did he do?
He actually does the opposite of what his father did,
doesn't he?
He turns and moves everything in a different direction.
He moves in a different direction from his father,
from his culture.
And the calling of faith in the God of the Bible
is actually a calling to be radically counter-cultural.
It's a calling to believe differently.
It's a calling to act differently.
It's a calling to live differently.
But does it work?
Well, let's find out together.
I want us to look at five things that Hezekiah does here.
We're going to go through these very quickly here.
There's more than five things that we can point out,
but these are the five that I think we should really see here.
First of all, look at verse 2 of chapter 29.
He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord,
according to all that David, his father, had done.
The first thing that Hezekiah does is he believes differently.
He doesn't believe that religion is just a thing to get him through the day,
but he actually believes in something deeper than that.
He believes in the God of the universe.
This young king doesn't do what his father does,
but he wants to do what is right in the eyes of the Lord.
See, clearly Hezekiah recognizes the emptiness
of the promises of his father's idols.
His father looked at other gods and he saw opportunity.
Hezekiah looks and he sees only need and he sees brokenness.
And so he, like David,
who is one of the greatest kings in the history of Israel,
looked to someone different.
He looked to the Lord and he saw true hope.
What I want to suggest to you today
is that most of us are probably like Hezekiah
in one way or another.
Most of us are probably desperate.
We're desperate to find some meaning and some hope.
And sometimes we even think we have it,
but it fades away over time.
But the calling of the gospel is to believe differently.
To place our hope in someone far more solid
and far more real and far more powerful
than the gods of our lives.
To look outside of ourselves
and to find a solid hope in the greater God,
the God of the universe.
And the beauty of the gospel is that
you today can believe in that same God.
The same God that Hezekiah believed in 2,500 years ago.
We can put our faith in today.
The second thing we see Hezekiah do,
the first thing he does is he believes.
The second thing we see is he actually turns.
He makes a change in his life and in his kingdom.
Believing differently causes him
to turn from his father's ways.
To change the momentum of his kingdom.
And turn to something else.
We see in verse 3 a powerful statement of this.
In the first year of his reign,
in the first month,
he opened the doors of the house of the Lord
and repaired them.
So what does that mean?
So the first month of the first year of his reign
is fancy biblical language for right away.
Immediately, he does something different.
He opens the doors of the house of the Lord.
The very doors that we saw in chapter 28,
his father closed.
The very same temple that we saw his father steal from.
Those are the doors that he opens.
See, it's not enough to simply believe.
But that belief has to take action.
And that action is to reverse the wrongs
that have been done.
Christianity isn't a call to keep going
as we have before.
It isn't a bit of inspiration
for our day-to-day lives.
If you want to just think more positively,
there's cat posters for that.
You can get them at the corner shop.
Christianity is a calling to a radical change
and a radical new direction and momentum
in your day-to-day life.
And this is a change
that you don't work out for yourself.
But you have the blessing of God's Word.
You have the blessing of the Holy Spirit.
And you have the blessing of the fellowship
of the local church.
If you're with us this morning
and you're not involved in a local church,
speak to one of us afterwards
because we want to get you involved.
The church is there to walk alongside you.
If you're walking the journey of faith alone,
stop and get with people
who can help you along the way.
The third thing we see
is that Hezekiah is obedient.
Verses 4 and 5.
It isn't enough to simply believe
and it wasn't enough simply
to stop doing what was wrong.
But he became actively obedient
to the law of God.
When he calls together
the priests and the Levites,
what does he tell them to do?
He tells them to go and cleanse themselves,
to consecrate themselves
in line with the Old Testament,
the law of Moses
that God had given to him.
So it was spelled out very clearly
in the law of God
how they were to approach God.
It was spelled out very clearly
in the law of God
how they were to worship God.
And they hadn't been doing
any of those things.
And so the first thing that he does
is that he calls the priests in
and he says,
let's get our worship right.
How do we do that?
We do that by obeying the law of God.
And this is the biggest difference
between God and our culture.
See, our culture says
it's all about you.
It's about how you feel.
It's about what you're getting out of this.
But Scripture says
it's all about God.
Our focus is to turn
and approach God
as he calls us to
in his word.
We tend to think of the law
as something that's prohibitive
that keeps us from being able
to do the things that we want.
But the law of God
is actually intended
to speak deeply to our humanity.
To reveal to us
who our creator is.
What his character is like.
And to show us who we are
and what we're like.
And to show us
the expanse between us
and to call us back to God.
It's meant to bring us
in line
with who we were created to be.
So what's the next thing
that we see Hezekiah do?
The next thing,
the fourth thing,
is that Hezekiah confessed.
So he believed,
he turned,
he became obedient,
and then he confessed.
Look at verse 6.
Our fathers have been unfaithful
and have done
what was evil
in the sight of the Lord our God.
They have forsaken Him
and have turned away their faces
from the habitation of the Lord
and turned their backs.
In Hezekiah's day,
the king represented
the entire people.
He represented the entire nation.
And so his sin
was the nation's sin.
And so Hezekiah openly
acknowledges that.
He openly admits that.
He openly faces that.
There was no reason to hide it.
There was no reason
to be polite about it.
Oftentimes after someone has died,
they become
an absolutely perfect person,
don't they?
We don't speak ill of anyone,
no matter how terrible
they might have been.
But Hezekiah actually
is honest about
the sins of his father
and therefore
the sins of his nation.
There's no reason
to overlook it.
When you come to know God,
you can't help but be honest
with Him
about your wrongs.
So are you broken?
It's okay to admit that.
Have you done things
that you're ashamed of?
Have you done things
that you know are wrong?
It's okay to tell that to God.
He invites us to do that.
He calls us to do that.
He doesn't want us to hide
behind a smiling facade.
He doesn't want us to hide
behind just saying
everything's okay.
But He calls us to
an honesty
that Hezekiah embraced.
Finally, the last thing
that we see Hezekiah do
is we see repentance.
And we see that worked out
in these other verses
you can see,
20-25.
What does Hezekiah do?
Once the priests
have consecrated themselves,
once they have set themselves apart,
they come to Hezekiah
and He calls them
to offer sacrifices.
So He sought atonement
for His sins
and the sins of His people.
And it was good for them
to confess their sin,
wasn't it?
But a simple admission of guilt
wasn't enough.
There had to be something
done for that.
There had to be atonement
made for that guilt.
And so Hezekiah
took sin against God seriously.
Because he knew that God
took sin against him seriously.
And so when everything
had been prepared,
they made sacrifice
for their sin.
See, true repentance
requires atonement for sin.
And so where do we find that?
In Hezekiah's day,
they made sacrifice.
Lots and lots and lots
of sacrifice.
If you go back and look
at this passage in your Bible,
you see even going into
the next chapter
where they were sacrificing
thousands and thousands
and thousands of sheep
and goats and bulls.
Just tons and tons and tons.
of animal sacrifice.
See, in Hezekiah's day,
they made lots and lots
of sacrifice.
But these were just a picture.
They were a signpost
that was pointing forward
to something greater.
They were in anticipation
of a greater atonement
that would be made
by a greater king
than Hezekiah.
See, at the appointed time
in history,
God would send His Son,
Jesus Christ,
to make atonement
and to be the ultimate
and perfect sacrifice
for our sin.
And if we look to Christ
by faith,
we find forgiveness
of sin.
And you'll receive
the full measure
of atonement.
So very finally,
what's the result
of all of this?
What's the result
of the faith of Hezekiah?
What's the result
of our faith in Christ?
Look down at verse 36
of chapter 29.
It's on your sheets.
And Hezekiah and all
the people rejoiced
because God had prepared
for the people
for the thing came about
suddenly.
Notice the contrast
between the story of Ahaz
and the story of Hezekiah.
Where did Ahaz's pursuits
leave him?
Broken
and undone
and dead.
But where does Hezekiah's
pursuits
lead him
and his people
to joy?
Verse 36 says,
they rejoiced
because God had done
a great work in them.
God had prepared it
and God had executed it.
It wasn't because of anything
special that they had done.
It wasn't because they were
doing all these great works.
But it was because God
had prepared that work
to be done.
God had placed it
on the heart of Hezekiah
and his people
to turn from their sin
to God.
If you get one thing
out of this this afternoon,
get this.
If you've zoned out
for the last 20 minutes,
I don't blame you.
It's okay.
But get this.
The scriptures are
ultimately about
God.
And every story
in the scripture
tells us something
about his character.
And what we see
in the life
of Hezekiah
in the story
of God's people
is that
the God of the Bible
is a God
who saves.
He's a God
who saves
His people.
He's a God
who gives hope
where there is none.
He's a God
who calls us
to be human
by knowing Him
and glorifying Him.
To this day,
the greatest hope
for our world
is to look
to the same God
who Hezekiah
looks to for salvation.
Because what He offers us
is a better hope
and a better story
than the gods
of our world.
He offers us
much more than
a nice religion
or a great philosophy,
a happy approach
to life.
So our world
offers you fulfillment
by finding your true self.
But what the God
of the Bible
offers you
is your true self.
When you place yourself
under the reign
of the King of creation,
when you place yourself
in the hands
of Christ Jesus,
you find joy
amidst sorrow.
You find hope
amidst fear.
Do you want to experience
the peace of God,
peace amidst chaos
of our world,
and look with faith
to God
and know His grace
through His Son,
Jesus Christ?
Please pray with me.