If you have your Bibles, turn to 2 Kings chapter 18. We're going to look there in a minute. In our prayer time in the last service, we read Ephesians chapter 3. And at the end of that passage we read these words. who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think according to the power that works within us. To Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen. And that really is the desire of the believer. And we've been looking at the lives of two men in the Old Testament that might help give us some guidance on how that can be applied practically, whether it's in a church or whether it's in a home or as a believer in a town, at work or at school. Now we began our look last night at the life of Ahaz, and Ahaz was a wicked king who departed from the Lord and he failed to understand the ways of God. When he chose idols and God graciously disciplined him and the nation, he just added more idols. He refused to live in the grip of the promises that were given to him, even promises of the coming of a Messiah. But we're gonna look now at King Hezekiah, and we're gonna look this morning at how Hezekiah started well. And there's so many things there for us, but this evening, I think, is even more particularly suited to a situation like yours. How did Hezekiah endure well? Because we're gonna find by the time we hit chapter 31, 32, that things get rough in the midst of Hezekiah's reign. Now Hezekiah is a 25-year-old king. He inherits the same situation that his father left him, except things are a little worse. 16 years they've lived under the ill effects of the idolatry of Ahaz. What does that look like? Well, 16 years of emptiness in their religion, 16 years of devoting themselves to false hopes, 16 years of the judgment of God on the entire nation, and all the lies that are attached to religion when that's the situation. Lies that we talked about last night. Does God really care? Can God still do anything? And the temptation then, of course, to just continue to add to the idolatry. But what a difference we see when there's a person in place who is in the grip of the reality of a living God and responds to God in a way that is in harmony with God's character, that is in harmony with God's ways. So that brings us to Hezekiah, and I want to read that passage from 2 Kings chapter 18. Anthony read from 2 Chronicles. I told you last night there's parallel accounts. 2 Kings 18 and then 2 Chronicles 29 through 32 speak a lot about Hezekiah, so we're going to kind of piece them together again this morning. But let's look at the early description of Hezekiah in 2 Kings 18 verse 1 down to verse 8. Now it came about in the third year of Hosea, the son of Elah, the king of Israel, that Hezekiah, the son of Ahaz, king of Judah, became king. He was 25 years old when he became king, and he reigned 29 years in Jerusalem, and his mother was Abi, the daughter of Zechariah. He did right in the sight of the Lord according to all that his father David had done. He removed the high places, and broke down the sacred pillars, and cut down the Asherah. He also broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made, for until those days the sons of Israel burned incense to it, and it was called Nehushtan. He trusted in the Lord, the God of Israel, so that after him there was none like him among all the kings of Judah, nor among those who were before him. For he clung to the Lord, he did not depart from following him, but kept his commandments which the Lord had commanded Moses. And the Lord was with him wherever he went, he prospered. And he rebelled against the king of Assyria and did not serve him. He defeated the Philistines as far as Gaza and its territory from watchtower to fortified city. Well, here's one of those rare bright spots in Judah's history, and it always reminds me of reading through the Bible in a year, and you make it through the Pentateuch, and you start to hit the kings, and after David and Solomon, then you really begin to hit these long stretches in the Bible where it's just one sad tale of unnecessary destruction after another as king after king is unfaithful to God. But here's one of those bright spots. all the reforms of Hezekiah, all the victories that God gives this king, who wouldn't want to be a Hezekiah in their own day? I mean, what believer reads the life of Hezekiah and simply steps back and says, well, I really admire a guy like Hezekiah. I mean, every believer reads this and says, God, I want to be like that. I want to be the kind of person that can be used in my home or my church. We want to be the kind of church that can be used in our town. We want to be the kind of people that can be trusted with your honor. Now, I'm glad to say that there is no particular formula for that, because if we had a formula, I suppose we wouldn't really need to walk with the Lord. But there are issues here in these chapters that I would say that, issues of stewardship. What does it look like when a believer can be trusted with the honor of God in helping a people return to God? John Wesley in the 18th century warned his preachers of what he called religious enthusiasm. It wasn't a phrase new to Wesley. It was a common phrase for about a 200 year span, religious enthusiasm. Now we think religious enthusiasm would be wonderful. You can imagine going to a church where the prayer meeting's kind of dead, where the singing's a bit dull, and the preacher gets up and says, folks, we should be more enthusiastic. And they say, yeah, we should do better. But John Wesley used that word in a day when it had a very different meaning. Religious enthusiasm in John Wesley's day meant kind of what we would mean if we talked about kind of an unbiblical fanaticism. Here's how John Wesley described religious enthusiasm. He said, it's when a Christian desires a good end, a good goal. They have a right aim, but they don't desire the steps that lead them from where they are to this goal. So it's a church that says, we wanna see God honored, but doesn't want to take the steps required to lead to that. It's a mom and dad that look at their kids and they say, we want to see God honored in our home, but doesn't want to take the steps that are required. It's a Christian that looks in the mirror and says, I want to grow in Christlikeness this year, but doesn't take the steps, doesn't desire the steps that God has given them to make that progress. So we do not want to be religious enthusiasts and we are glad to see that Hezekiah is not. I want us to look at a number of things that show the real practical value in Hezekiah's pattern for us. The first is this, Hezekiah sets himself to walk with God. Right from the beginning, or we could say it this way, he starts with the right person. How easy it is to forget that the right person to start with when we think about our nation being changed, the right person to start with when you think about your church being changed, the right person to start with when you think about the university being changed, the workplace being changed, and your family being changed, is not someone else, it's you. It is so easy to think that really what God wants you to do is to get busy helping everybody else get right. And no believer is exempted. You might say, well, look, I've walked with the Lord a long time. I've grown old in the Lord, and there are a lot of young couples in this church, and they will be the ones that God uses, but why not you? Or you might be a very young Christian and say, I've only known the Lord a few months, and so it's for people like Pastor Anthony or the other elders. It's for those kind of people to do that, but why not you? Listen to the description of Hezekiah at the heart of the passage we just read in verses five, six, and seven, and tell me, is there anything there that is unique to a pastor or to a king or to a mature Christian? It says this, he trusted in the Lord, the God of all Israel, verse 5, so that after him there was no one like him among all the kings of Judah, nor among those who were before him. Verse 6, for he clung to the Lord. The word there, clung, is the same word in Hebrew for a way a wife clings to a husband, a newlywed couple. He did not depart from following him, but kept his commandments. which the Lord God had commanded Moses. Do you see that? Very simple things. He trusts the Lord, he clings to the Lord, he doesn't depart from following the Lord, and he keeps his commands. If we want to be the kind of people that God can trust with his honor as a church, if you want to be the kind of people that God can trust with his honor as families, or as an individual who is in a workplace surrounded by people that don't know him, or at a university where the people you sit next to don't know him. then you must set your heart to follow the pattern of Hezekiah. Begin with yourself. Start with the right person. You have a living God, and through the saving work of Christ and the Spirit of God within you, you can be in the grip of God's truthfulness. And that's not easy. I mean, really, faith is life and death. Have you felt it? You go to speak to the Lord, and the enemy just lays before you all the reasons why someone like you shouldn't talk to someone like him, and you think, well, what's the use? Every Sunday morning, we have a prayer meeting like your prayer meeting here, and I have a pulpit that's Actually, Anthony helped me find this pulpit, and then we went and picked it up. So it's from an old monastery. It's about 150 years old, and it's shaped kind of like a goblet. You walk up in the first three feet of it, and it's kind of a narrow cylinder, and then it widens out. So it's a big circle around me. So after I get the prayer meeting started, I just sit down in the pulpit. And then I have kind of a private prayer time. And normally it goes something like this, God, I think that somebody else should be pastor today. Like, I quit, okay? And I don't think I should preach. And I think, really, honestly, I should just stand up and say, folks, let's just have a prayer meeting, because the sermon stinks, or I'm not ready. And, you know, I make it sound like it's a light issue, but really, there are some Sundays where the thought of, the sin I'm capable of, the thoughts that I'm capable of, the attitudes that sometimes I allow in, and I look at myself and I think, God, I just don't know. But if God, I have to say to myself, John, if God's, if the work of Jesus Christ can't be trusted for a prayer time and a sermon, then the work of Jesus Christ can't be trusted for your own soul, so you might as well just ditch it all. Do you trust him? Do you cling to him like the wife to a husband? Leaning on the beloved, do you come up out of this wilderness? Do you determine never to depart from following him? Now what is following Jesus? It's more than just reading the Bible and understanding and thinking of ways to apply it. It's a very personal metaphor, isn't it? When you follow someone, all right, so I get lost all the time, all the time. So when I go from Anthony's house to here, as simple as it is, I still either follow my phone. This morning I just followed Anthony. But if I follow Anthony, what does following look like? So I watch someone. And if he goes to the right lane, I go to the right lane. And if he slows down, I slow down. But if he speeds up, I speed up. Following Christ for the believer and never departing from that means I just wake up every morning and I take a long look at Christ and the scriptures, at our God, and I adjust myself constantly, little by little, to make sure that what he does is the kind of things I do. and our life is characterized by a real obedience, not just good intentions. One of my favorite Scottish writers, Robert Murray McShane, in his personal journals, as godly as he was, he writes this. He laments that he has spent too many days living in the land of good intentions. Is that where you're at? Hezekiah did not live in the land of good intentions. Has God laid his finger on things in your life, or in your home, in your marriage, in your thought life? Has he laid his finger on things in the church? And you still are in the land of good intentions. I mean, repentance is in that good intention zone. Well, Hezekiah isn't like that, and he starts with the right man. Second thing about Hezekiah, he starts at the right place. When you look at your church, if someone were to say to you, what's the biggest need for your church? If you look at your family and someone were to ask you, I mean, what's the thing you need most as a family? If you were to look at your city, if you were to look at your workplace, if you were to look in the mirror and someone were to interrupt you and say, wait, wait, wait, what's the biggest need for the guy in the mirror, for the lady in the mirror, what would you say? Because that really does affect a lot of how we live. Not long ago, I was asked to speak to a church that once was a fair size, five, 600 people. It's about 40 minutes from my house. So I went to this church that now had shrunk to about 20 really grumpy people. So they had a big family life center with the gymnasium and all the... everything that churches would want, and a big facility, and about 20 grumpy people left. And so they asked me to come there as a church revitalizer. I don't know who told them I was a church revitalizer. I am not a church revitalizer. And so I started the speech to them with, I'm not a church revitalizer. It probably wasn't the best place to start, because they just switched off. But we talked about some things about how to turn back to the Lord. One thing I asked them was, what is the thing that your church needs most? I just went around the group. There weren't that many, so they could all give their opinion. The opinions are exactly what I thought they would be. We need a young, dynamic pastor. We need young families. We're all in our 60s and 70s. There are no children left in our church. We need money. Our account's low. I don't know if we can afford to get the right kind of preacher. Not one person said, we need God. But that's not surprising. How would you answer it? Where did Hezekiah begin? He began with God. Think about it. I can't imagine having the kind of responsibilities the king has. I mean, I have the responsibilities of a pastor, and I think that's more than I'm capable of bearing, but what about a king? The Bible says this, in the first year of Hezekiah's reign, in the first month of the first year of Hezekiah's reign, he goes to the temple and he sets in motion a series of royal policies that will result in the removing of every aspect of idolatry, and the destroying of the idols, and the cleansing of the temple, and the purifying of the priests, He could have started with the political problems. Hezekiah, you are a king who's inherited a throne that's under the thumb of Assyria. Hezekiah, you're surrounded still by those forces that we talked about last night. Other smaller nations who have now grown strong again. There's the Philistines, and there's the Amorites, and all the others. But he refuses to delay putting right the thing that has to be put right first. Everything else can wait. What about God? But when he does lead the nation to begin with God, he also does it in a way that's so helpful. He doesn't do it by adding good things that have been left behind, but he begins by removing bad things that have been brought in. In other words, he begins with repentance. And as he leads the nation to repent, nothing is overlooked, nothing is left to chance. Repentance is where he started. Repentance is where we have to start. Think about it. We look at a church and you talk to churches and they say, well, I know what we need. We need elders. We only have deacons. We need deacons and elders. And I think having deacons and elders is the biblical pattern. But there are many churches who have deacons and elders and ungodly men in both groups and it doesn't do them any good. They say, well, we need a catechism. And the church I pastor, we use a catechism. We need a confession. The church I pastor, we use a confession. But those things, while they're good tools to teach doctrine, those are not really the need. We need to do better with evangelism. We need expository preaching. We need church discipline. We need a prayer meeting. We need right doctrine. Those are all good. And it's not an either or situation. But we have to begin where Hezekiah did. We need God. Okay, so what does that mean? It doesn't mean that you begin by adding a lot of good things. But we begin by removing things that we've brought in that have offended him. So we start by removing the things that offend God. We remove the rubble from the road when we want the king to come visit us. We clean up our spiritual homes and we get them in order in the way that God delights in. What idols have crept into your life? If you find yourself drifting as a Christian, if you find your family drifting from a walk with the Lord that you once had, your marriage, generally speaking, the first step will not be for you to go buy a new book that tells you how to add something good to your life. But you will probably have to begin with the hard work of rooting out things that you've planted there that offend God. We just don't have the size of a heart that can fit everything we want and Jesus too. And God never comes in and in a sense moves in when things that offend him are still cuddled. What fillers are satisfying you? What things are dulling your hunger for Christ? What's distracting you? What is a competitor to God in your heart? Start where Hezekiah started. In the first month of the first year, he goes to the temple and he guts it of all the idols that his father Ahaz has put in there. Sometimes I think what we find with churches and individuals moving from maybe kind of a careless approach to a more careful approach or to what's been nicknamed a reform doctrine, I think that sometimes what we find is this. A person goes and they say, well, now I see what's missing, I need to be reformed. And so they come to a church and then they go buy a bunch of Boehner truth books, which I really like. And they get all their reform doctrine and they throw it on top of a life that hasn't really dealt with the issue of sin. And I think it's kind of like this, I've used this illustration before, but it's like going into a bedroom and the church is in bed with bad doctrine. And so you go, or you could say the individual is in love with self, and there's this adulterous relationship going on. You shouldn't be in bed with self, you should have your heart given to Christ. And over that adulterous relationship is careless doctrines, like a blanket that just covers it up, so it doesn't look so bad. You know, the idea that I can be saved by Jesus now, but he can become my Lord later. And so we kind of put those bad blankets over us, and nobody seems to notice. But then comes the preacher, and he rips the bad blanket off. And he says, this is bad doctrine. That's not what the Bible teaches. And he throws on a blanket of reform doctrine and walks out of the room. And nobody stops and says, what are you doing in bed with self? Why are you so impressed with you? Why are you living for you? Why is it all about you? It doesn't matter if you add five points of Calvinism to a life that's self-centered. So we start where Hezekiah started. What things in the life have to be removed so that when we plead with God, draw near to us, there isn't a contradiction between what we're asking and how we're living. Start where Hezekiah did. Remove the things that offend before you add the things that please. A third thing about Hezekiah, he set his heart to bring other people along with him in this repentance. Any Christian that's earnest about repentance starts here, me. Starts by removing things that have crept in and I haven't really noticed them perhaps, but I realize now that they are fillers and distractors. But you're also interested in other people. I am determined that by the grace of God, if he will help me, my life and my words will be used by God to bring other people along. We're not happy just to return to the Lord ourselves. We're not happy just when this church is being careful. There are other churches. Hezekiah, this chapter, is full of this. In chapter 29, which Anthony read, Hezekiah begins by bringing the priests along with him. Listen again, verse 3 of chapter 29 in 2 Chronicles. In the first year of his reign, in the first month, he opened the doors of the house of the Lord and repaired them. He brought in the priests and the Levites and gathered them into the square. on the east, and then he said to them, listen to me, oh Levites, consecrate yourselves now, and consecrate the house of the Lord, the God of your fathers, and carry the uncleanness out from the holy place, for our fathers have been unfaithful, and have done evil in the sight of the Lord our God, and have forsaken him, and turned their faces away from the dwelling place of the Lord, and have turned their backs. Then down in verse 10, now it is in my heart, to make a covenant with the Lord God of Israel, that His burning anger may turn away from us. My sons, he's speaking to the priests and Levites. My sons, do not be negligent now, for the Lord has chosen you to stand before Him, to minister to Him, and to be his ministers, and to burn incense." Verse 15, they assembled their brothers, they consecrated themselves, they went in to cleanse the house of the Lord according to the commandment of the king by the words of the Lord. Do you see the order? The words of the Lord come to the king, the king turns to these men and says, join me in this work, we want to turn back to God. Hezekiah isn't okay with just being a godly king. What about the priests? So he begins with the priests, and then he turns to the people. And not just the people that live in his own land, but he turns to the people that live to the north in Israel, where he's not king, he's king of Judah. And he sends messengers and letters to the northern tribes, even to the furthest northern tribe, inviting them to come down and to repent and to join their brothers and sisters down south in worshiping the living God. Look at chapter 30 in verse 1. It says this, now Hezekiah sent to all Israel and Judah and wrote letters also to Ephraim and Manasseh that they should come to the house of the Lord at Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover to the Lord, the God of Israel. All right, those people are not under his jurisdiction. But he's not satisfied that just Israel would, that just Judah would repent. What about Israel? So he sends out these letters. In chapter 30, we don't have time to read, but chapter 30 describes how they move from a national time of cleansing, in chapter 29, where they remove all the idols, and the priests re-consecrate the temple, and that requires a lot of sacrifices, and the cleansing by the blood, and all the princes are gathered together, And they offer with the king sacrifices, and then all Israel is invited to come to a Passover. So first we remove what offends God, then we add the Passover again. And all of Israel to the north. Look at verse 10 of chapter 30 in 2 Chronicles and see the result of inviting them. It says, so the couriers passed from city to city through the country of Ephraim and Manasseh as far as Zebulun. but they laughed them to scorn and mocked them. That was the general response of the Israelites to the north when they were invited to repent and join Hezekiah in serving the Lord. Verse 11, nevertheless, here's the bright spot, some men of Asher, Manasseh, and Zebulun humbled themselves and came to Jerusalem. The hand of God was also on Judah to give them one heart to do what the king and the princes commanded. by the word of the Lord. Have you ever considered that in returning to the Lord as a church it will not be enough for it to just be you? That you will want to reach out to sister churches in humble ways, in gracious ways and encourage them. That it's not just enough for you as a Christian in your family, but you reach out to those who are lost. It's not just enough for you at work, but you try to speak and to live in such a way that God might raise up other believers there. You may find that what they do is what Israel did, that they may basically mock you, and they say, well, we don't wanna do church the way you do church. We don't wanna follow Christ the way you follow Christ. I'm doing fine as I am. But I think you will find, as you already have here, that God will raise up hungry people, and they will come. And in a sense, they will say to you, we hear that you're really serious about the Lord and about serving him. And you'll say, well, yes, we want to be. And they say, well, then I want to join you. How many of you here have come here, maybe even moved to this area, Because you heard of the work of the Lord, of His kindness to a little group of people in Radford. In New Albany, it's a very small town, 8,000. And yet we find God continues to bring people who want to serve Him. Now, the worst thing would be this, and this is what we saw in the life of Rehoboam, and we looked at him a long time ago. Rehoboam was Solomon's son, and when Israel to the north embraced idolatry, a lot of the godly people to the north packed up and left everything behind. It was pretty costly, and moved down south because they said, well, at least down south under Rehoboam, Solomon's son, at least we can worship the living God. And when they got there, they found out that while God was officially still the God of Judah, that Rehoboam and the people under Rehoboam were really pretty lackadaisical. They were pretty lukewarm toward God, and they just went through the motions. One of my great fears is that people will come to the church where I pastor because they've heard that we want to serve the Lord. Or people will come to the church here because they hear that you're serious about the Lord. But after a few years, they'll say to themselves, it's not what I thought it would be. It just appeared to be that. You say, well, I'm not King Hezekiah. I can't command princes and I can't command preachers. Well, listen to the words of Paul and see how they would apply to you, Christian. In Colossians 1, verse 28, Paul says this, we proclaim him, admonishing every man and teaching every man with all wisdom so that we may present every man complete in Christ. For this purpose also I labor, striving, according to his power, which mightily works within me." Now, I know Paul was an apostle, but you can apply that to yourself. Christian, speak about Christ. Admonish people. Plead with people. Speak about Christ in a way that applies to their situation. Wherever they're at, show them Christ, and show them how the gospel is what they really need. And do that, labor hard at that, by the strength of God that works within you, so that you can present them, one day, complete in Christ. We cannot use the excuse with God. Well, I can't make anybody follow Jesus. Well, of course you can't make anybody follow Jesus. Do you remember the statement at the end of Job where God looks at Job and he's showing Job that Job really isn't nearly as big as he thinks he is. He's nothing compared to God. And God says to Job, can you stretch out your arm and humble the proud? Job cannot. Think of it as a parent. Can you stretch out your arm to an adult child and make them humble themselves and love Christ? You can't. And the enemy comes and says to you, well, I mean, obviously God doesn't expect you to do that, you can't do that, but we do know who has that kind of arm, and you have access to his throne, and you can go to him and ask him to stretch out his arm through your life. Who has God placed on your heart? that you long to see join you in following Christ. Do not despair because you don't have that kind of arm. Hezekiah didn't have that kind of arm. The princes didn't have that kind of arm. The parents who would have heard the command and told their kids, we're going to follow the Lord, did not have that kind of arm. But God will use the church. A fourth thing about Hezekiah, he was guided in all of this, in starting with the right person, starting at the right place, ripping out the junk, repentance, bringing other people along, not being willing to go by himself. But the fourth thing is he was guided in each of those choices by the right pair of eyes. Now over and over we find a phrase in these passages, these chapters, and it says things like this, Ahaz did not do right, what? In the sight of God. Or, Hezekiah did write, how? In the sight of God. Don't skip over that phrase and think it's just one of those Bible phrases, you know? That you could like put your thumb over in your Bible and it would just be just as good. Ahaz didn't do right. Hezekiah did right. Why does the author add that phrase? And could we just mark it out and be okay? It is a very revealing question. Whose eyes are you concerned with when you make choices as a church? And whose eyes are you concerned with when you make choices as a family? And whose eyes are you concerned with when you make choices that no one else sees as an individual but God? Don't skip over the phrase. It is a clear fact throughout Christian history and the scripture that no one will adequately repent and return to the Lord. unless it is God's eyes that they're concerned with, primarily. Now, I know that we have two audiences. Listen to what Paul said in 2 Corinthians 4 when he talks about his ministry and wanting to make sure that the way he lived commended the gospel to people, that his life didn't contradict and unravel the things he said. But that's not the only set of eyes he mentions. Listen, he says this. 2 Corinthians 4, therefore, since we have this ministry, as we have received mercy, we do not lose heart, but we have renounced the things hidden because of shame, not walking in craftiness or adulterating the word of God, but by the manifestation of truth, commending ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God. There's the balance. I live in such a way so as to manifest the truth of Christ to you, commending myself to your conscience. So you're looking at me, and I want what you see to match what I'm saying. John Newton, the 18th century hymn writer and pastor, had this simple prayer as a pastor. He said, God, help me to preach as I ought and to live as I preach. God, we could say, help me to speak to the lost or to the drifting Christian. Help me to reach out to the backslidden and say the things that I ought to say. But God, don't stop there, help me to live as I speak. So Paul says, we manifest the truth of God and commend ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God. There's two sets of eyes. And if you're going to follow the pattern of Hezekiah, you're going to have to consider both. It is just so easy only to think of the eyes of men. Now, they are secondary, but not unimportant. Again, let me give you a quote from Robert Murray McShane. He was writing a letter to a young ministerial student in college, and the ministerial student had a lot of questions about how to prepare sermons, et cetera. And McShane gave him some advice about sermons, but then he went on to another topic, and he said to him, take great pains regarding the way you live. He said, your sermon will preach one morning a week, but your life preaches all week long. You never know what argument your life is forming in the eyes of the people that are watching you. His two-volume biography, perhaps my all-time favorite biography, Hudson Taylor, toward the end of his life, in that second volume, it mentions a number of people's testimonies, what they saw about Hudson Taylor. And one of the men that had worked with Taylor for most of his ministry used this phrase to describe his life, and I find it to be so convicting. It said this, there was a life that bore looking into. Do we have that? I know that men's eyes, man's eyes, they aren't primary, but if they follow you home and just watched you all week long, do you have the kind of home that bears looking into you? Do you have the kind of thought life that bears looking into? Amy Carmichael, the missionary to India, wrote this prayer. God, make me to be what I appear. Make me to stand to my conscience clear. So the eyes of men are not unimportant. We want our life and the things we say about Jesus Christ to match. But if you only repent, if you only walk with the Lord, if your religion is primarily for the eyes of men, then you will stop short. You will stop pressing on when you win their approval. How many times have we seen this? First church I pastored, a young man that was lost, but a church member, never came to church. He got bothered in his teen years. He was a guy that was given to kind of depression and melancholy, so he showed up at church. And I spent a lot of time talking with him. I knew that he wasn't a believer. We were in the process of evangelism, and he had not embraced Christ, but he started coming to every single meeting the church offered. He even asked me if he could come to the old lady's Bible study, which I told him he couldn't, but he came to every other meeting. Now, this was a very small church, 35 people, and they were so excited to see a young person showing up at church, and they all without fail told him what a great Christian he was. And once he had the approval, he started skipping Wednesday nights and then Sunday nights. And then I couldn't get him to show up hardly at all on a Sunday because his religion was for the eyes of the people around him. If you repent for the eyes of your parents, if you repent for the eyes of your pastors, if the pastor, if his religion is for the eyes of his congregation, then as soon as you win their approval, you will slow down. And that means repentance will generally be focused on the externals, which people can see. So you don't skip meetings. but the heart is distant, and it will inevitably be concerned only with appearances, and it will be inadequate. Think about a child cleaning their room. I have four kids, and they're all young adults, but the youngest is like me. He's a total slob. He's a 20-year-old slob, and his room is upstairs in our house, and it's a war zone. The rest of the house is nice, because he doesn't bring his mess downstairs, but upstairs we just say, look, it's your room, whatever. Until we have a lot of guests come over, and then we say to them, it's your room, whatever, except now we have guests, you gotta clean it up. All right, so on a Saturday, you know, after college and work, he comes home, and on Saturday, he cleans it up. And his mom says to him, did you clean it up? Oh yeah, I cleaned it up. But he cleaned it up according to his eyes. So then mom goes upstairs, and she opens the closet, and she says, oh, good grief. How could you fit all of it into one closet? It's not clean. So he has to clean for her eyes. You see the picture? How are you doing? How is your repentance? You say, well, no, it's up to date. How is your walk with the Lord? No, it's close. How is your thought life? You say, well, it's clean. By your eyes? Yeah. By the people around you? Yeah. By God? It's a very different thing when we clean for His eyes. Which sins in your life are you willing to leave alone for now? And which sins are you determined, I must never do that ever again? Are these determined by which sins are visible to the people around you? And what grieves you most about your sin? That you disappoint people or that you misrepresent God? When I hear of people leaving a church, or of a pastor making errors, and people being disappointed with him, and it's over there somewhere, I think to myself, well, that's unfortunate. But when I disappoint the people that I care about, I about can't get out of bed. Why? Well, it's not because I love the honor of the Lord so much. Why didn't I suffer when I heard about this? Why is it only when it's John that it bothers me so much? Because sometimes my repentance must be for the eyes of people. You will live for someone's eyes at work. You will live for someone's eyes at church. You will live for someone's eyes when it's just you in the bedroom all alone. Whose eyes will it be? Hezekiah did right in the sight of the Lord. Ahaz never did that. Let me give you the last thing. Hezekiah understood that repentance had to include more than getting rid of the foul things. He had to also be willing to remove good things that had gotten into the wrong place. And we read this in 2 Kings 18. He removes the high places, he breaks down the sacred pillars, he cuts down the Asherah. Those are all pagan things. Those are all dealing with idolatry. He also broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made. For until those days, the sons of Israel had burned incense to it, and it was called Nehushtan. Can you see that? Doesn't that shock you? I remember the first time I read over that, and I noticed it, because I read over it many times and just didn't pick it up. So there goes the Baal idol. There goes Asherah, the female version of the Baal idol. So these Phoenician fertility gods are being thrown in the Kidron Valley and that idols being in that false altars being disassembled and then there you go into the temple and there is the golden or the bronze serpent. How cool. I mean, I really would probably like to have it. I go around Britain and try to get, if I weren't a Protestant, I would probably dig up these people in history and get a pinky bone and bring it home. I mean, I got a piece of a tree from the yard of Samuel Rutherford, who's my favorite Scottish preacher. There's the bronze serpent, and oh, what a wonderful thing, and Hezekiah says to the priest, what about that? And they say, well, it's the bronze serpent, man. I mean, this is what God gave us, and it's such a symbol of His mercy. Yes, but you know what we've been doing. We've been offering incense to it. It's a good thing, it's a good reminder, but it's gotten into the wrong place. Break it, destroy it. Are you stopping with the ugly things? What about when things that are good become things that, they get in the wrong place. So for instance, past mercies of the Lord. Remember the Apostle Paul in Philippians 3? He gives this long list of these past mercies and then he says, but forgetting what is behind, I press on. When are past mercies? When do they have to be sacrificed? Well, when they become a substitute for present obedience. Are you the kind of person that can say, I remember when I was a younger Christian, I used to. But you know, if you continue that sentence, you would have to say, but I no longer. I remember when I first came to this church, I used to. But I no longer. But instead of feeling the conviction that I've slowed my pace, I just keep going back to the past. And I remember those mountain peak moments and I say, well, I must be right with God because the past mercies. And so they become a substitute for present obedience. Or they become a sense of false security. How often did Israel, in the New Testament, remind the Son of God, their Messiah, their God, their Creator? How often did they remind their Creator that they were the children of God? And they gave them a list of all the privileges they had as a nation, and they used those things as reasons for not obeying Christ. All the kindnesses that God has given Radford Church, all the kindnesses that you could list that God has given you, use them as fuel to pick up the pace, not as a pillow to lay down on and say, I'm okay, we're okay. Like Hezekiah, you have to be jealous for the honor of God, not just when it comes to the embarrassingly sinful things, but even when it comes to good things that have become idols. Well, what is the result of Hezekiah's effort? Look at chapter 29 in 2 Chronicles. Chapter 29, verse 36, and then we'll look at chapter 30, verse 25. 29, verse 36, these are two summary statements. Then Hezekiah and all the people rejoiced over what God had prepared for the people because the thing came about suddenly. That's the way of describing the whole nation coming together to seek the Lord. Then look, after the Passover, which they celebrate for a week, and then it's so extraordinary, they say, can we do it another week? And Hezekiah lets them do another week. And then look at verse 25 of chapter 30. All the assembly of Judah rejoiced with the priest and the Levites and all the assembly that came from Israel. Remember those people that were invited? Both the sojourners who came from the land of Israel and those living in Judah. So there was great joy in Jerusalem because there was nothing like this in Jerusalem since the days of Solomon, the son of David, king of Israel. Then the Levitical priest arose and they blessed the people and their voice was heard and their prayer came to his holy dwelling place to heaven. What an extraordinary description. What if that's, why should that not be for you? So the people in Radford, a small group of believers got together. I know you're not the only church in Radford, okay, don't mistake that. But we're just talking about here right now. So the Christians gathered together and others came from other places. And there was great joy in the church because there was nothing like this before. And the ministers rose up and blessed the people and their voice, your pastor's voice and their prayer came. to his holy dwelling place that they were heard in heaven. There's so many wonderful ways to describe God restoring a people. God drawing near to us, God speaking to us through his word, God dealing with us, but what a wonderful description this is, that our voices would be heard in heaven. Who's the great actor in this? Well, we say, well, Hezekiah, you just gave us five things. Well, actually, Hezekiah's a secondary actor. The great actor is the God of Hezekiah. It is God that raised up Hezekiah. It is God that birthed a hunger in his soul. It is God that sustained him. And it's the same God that we want to see, remember the prayer meeting, honored in generation after generation in the church through Christ. So go to Him and don't leave Him alone and don't be satisfied until you, like these believers back then, are able to say, we rejoice in what God has prepared for us here, how little we expected what He would do. Let's pray. Father, we ask that You would give us careful lives. That we would be good stewards of the opportunities that lie before us. And that we would follow the pattern of Hezekiah. And God, we ask that you would do it again for your namesake. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.