2nd Chronicles chapter 30. 2nd Chronicles chapter 30. Our text this evening is the next events that are recorded for us in God's holy infallible word in describing for us the history of the reign of King Hezekiah and the revival and reformation that took place by the mighty hand of God in his day. Hear now the reading of God's very word. 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 keep the Passover to the Lord the God of Israel. For the king and his princes and all the assembly in Jerusalem had taken counsel to keep the Passover in the second month. For they could not keep it at that time, because the priests had not consecrated themselves in sufficient number, nor had the people assembled in Jerusalem. And the plan seemed right to the king and all the assembly. So they decreed to make a proclamation throughout all Israel, from Beersheba to Dan. that the people should come and keep the Passover to the Lord, the God of Israel, at Jerusalem. For they had not kept it as often as prescribed. So couriers went throughout all Israel and Judah with letters from the king and his princes, as the king had commanded, saying, O people of Israel, Return to the Lord, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, that he may turn again to the remnant of you who have escaped from the hand of the kings of Assyria. Do not be like your fathers and your brothers who were faithless to the Lord God of their fathers, so that he made them a desolation, as you see. Do not now be stiff-necked as your fathers were, but yield yourselves to the Lord, and come to His sanctuary, which He has consecrated forever, and serve the Lord your God, that His fierce anger may turn away from you. For if you return to the Lord, your brothers and your children will find compassion with their captors and return to this land. For the Lord your God is gracious and merciful and will not turn away his face from you if you return to him. So the couriers went from city to city throughout the country of Ephraim and Manasseh and as far as Zebulun, but they laughed them to scorn and mocked them. However, some men of Asher, of Manasseh, and of 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. And many people came together in Jerusalem to keep the Feast of Unleavened Bread in the second month, a very great assembly. They set to work and removed the altars that were in Jerusalem, and all the altars for burning incense they took away and threw into the brook Kidron. And they slaughtered the Passover lamb on the fourteenth day of the second month. And the priests and the Levites were ashamed, so that they consecrated themselves and brought burnt offerings into the house of the Lord. They took their accustomed post according to the law of Moses, the man of God. The priest threw the blood that they received from the hand of the Levites, for there were many in the assembly who had not consecrated themselves. Therefore the Levites had to slaughter the Passover lamb for everyone who was not clean, to consecrate it to the Lord. for a majority of the people, many of them from Ephraim, Manasseh, Issachar, Zebulun, had not cleansed themselves, yet they ate the Passover, otherwise than as prescribed. For Hezekiah had prayed for them, saying, May the good Lord pardon everyone who sets his heart to seek God, the Lord, the God of his fathers, even though not according to the sanctuary's rules of cleanness. And the Lord heard Hezekiah, and healed the people. And the people of Israel who were present at Jerusalem kept the feast of unleavened bread seven days with great gladness. And the Levites and the priests praised the Lord day by day, singing with all their might to the Lord. And Hezekiah spoke encouragingly to all the Levites who showed good skill in the service of the Lord. So they ate the food of the festival for seven days, sacrificing peace offerings and giving thanks to the Lord, the God of their fathers. Then the whole assembly agreed together to keep the feast for another seven days. So they kept it for another seven days with gladness. For Hezekiah king of Judah gave the assembly 1,000 bulls and 7,000 sheep for offerings. And the princes gave the assembly 1,000 bulls and 10,000 sheep And the priests consecrated themselves in great numbers. The whole assembly of Judah, and the priests, and the Levites, and the whole assembly that came out of Israel, and the sojourners who came out of the land of Israel, and the sojourners who lived in Judah rejoiced. So there was great joy in Jerusalem, for since the time of Solomon, the son of David, king of Israel, there had been nothing like this in Jerusalem. Then the priests and the Levites arose and blessed the people, and their voice was heard, and their prayer came to His holy habitation. in heaven. And then if you'll turn back with me to chapter 7 of 2 Chronicles, we'll read just a few verses in chapter 7, beginning in verse 4. Well, we'll go back up to verse 1. As soon as Solomon finished his prayer, fire came down from heaven and consumed the burnt offering and the sacrifices. And the glory of the Lord filled the temple. And the priest could not enter the house of the Lord because the glory of the Lord filled the Lord's house. And when all the people of Israel saw the fire come down in the glory of the Lord on the temple, they bowed down with their faces to the ground on the pavement and worshipped and gave thanks to the Lord, saying, For he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever. Then the king and all the people offered sacrifice before the Lord. King Solomon offered as a sacrifice 22,000 oxen and 120,000 sheep. So the king and all the people dedicated the house of God. The priests stood at their posts, the Levites also, with the instruments for music to the Lord that King David had made for giving thanks to the Lord. for his steadfast love endures forever. Whenever David offered praises by their ministry, opposite them the priests sounded trumpets and all Israel stood. And Solomon consecrated the middle of the court that was before the house of the Lord, for there he offered the burnt offering and the fat of the peace offerings, because the bronze altar Solomon had made could not hold the burnt offering and the grain offering and the fat. At that time Solomon held the feast for seven days and all Israel with him, a very great assembly from Labo Hamath to the brook of Egypt and on the eighth day they held a solemn assembly for they had kept the dedication of the altar seven days and the feast seven days. On the 23rd day of the seventh month, he sent the people away to their homes, joyful and glad of heart for the prosperity that the Lord had granted to David and to Solomon and to Israel, his people. Thus Solomon finished the house of the Lord and the king's house. All that Solomon had planned to do in the house of the Lord and in his own house he successfully accomplished. And then the Lord appeared to Solomon in the night and said to him, I have heard your prayer and have chosen this place for myself as a house of sacrifice. When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain or command the locusts to devour the land or send pestilence among my people, if my people who are called by my name humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land. Now my eyes will be open and my ears attentive to the prayer that is made in this place. For now I have chosen and consecrated this house that my name may be there forever. My eyes and my heart will be there for all time. And as for you, if you will walk before me as David your father walked, doing according to all that I have commanded you, and keeping my statutes and my rules, then I will establish your royal throne, as I covenanted with David your father, saying, you shall not lack a man to rule Israel. But if you turn aside and forsake my statutes and my commandments that I have set before you, and go and serve other gods and worship them, Then I will pluck you up from My land that I have given you, and this house that I have consecrated for My name I will cast out of My sight, and I will make it a proverb and a byword among all peoples. And at this house, which was exalted, everyone passing by will be astonished and say, Why is the Lord done thus to this land and to this house? Then they will say, because they abandoned the Lord, the God of their fathers, who brought them out of the land of Egypt, and laid hold on other gods, and worshiped them, and served them, and therefore he brought all this disaster on them. Thus ends the reading of God's very word. Let's pray. Father, as we look at this exciting and thrilling passage of scripture, Lord, we pray that what you did in the days of King Hezekiah, that you would do in our own hearts, in our homes, in our church family, in this community, all over in this land, that you would pour forth your spirit and cause us to seek your face, to humble ourselves, to pray, to turn, from sin to you, Lord Jesus, and that you would hear from heaven, that you would forgive us and heal. Bring the gospel to bear. In Jesus we pray. Amen. Well, King Hezekiah, as we have seen, We don't know the details of how this man was converted, but we see him as we saw last Lord's Day evening that we looked at this passage together two weeks ago. Hezekiah was a godly man, and in chapter 29, He is described as one who did what was right in the eyes of the Lord according to all that David, his father, had done. We see that Hezekiah cleansed the temple, that he called the Levites to get to work and to do what God had commanded them to do, and the temple was basically restarted once again. And as soon as that had taken place, in chapter 30 now, we see a council had taken place. And you see that in verse 2. For the king and his princes and all the assembly in Jerusalem had taken council. And in this meeting that they had taken together, they realized that a horrible neglect, a horrible sin had fallen upon the people, just in general, and that one of the expressions of that rebellion against the Lord was the neglect of seeking the face of God in celebrating the Passover. Now we're going to spend some time in chapter 30 looking at various aspects of why Hezekiah says, we need to start celebrating the Passover again. We see that the Passover had not been kept as often as prescribed. We don't know exactly how many years it had not been observed. We do know from a glimpse of some of these kings that we have seen in the past, Jotham, Ahaz, it could have been scores of years. since the Passover was celebrated. And so this assembly, the king, the princes, and the leaders of God's people, they took counsel together, seeking the face of God Almighty, and Hezekiah now sends a letter, not just in the southern kingdom of Judah, But he sent a letter throughout the whole of the northern kingdom as well, who was still estranged and had been destroyed by the Assyrians, but there were still a remnant of God's people scattered throughout that whole region. And so in verse 1, 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 keep the Passover. And you'll remember that Jeroboam, when the kingdom was divided, Rehoboam, Solomon's son, had foolishly taken the advice of the young men who were his advisors rather than the godly, wise advisors that Solomon had had. And the kingdom ended up being torn in two because of sin. And here now we see Hezekiah inviting the people to come to Jerusalem. Jeroboam had set up the golden calves because he was afraid that if the people would go to Jerusalem and worship there, that he would lose influence and control. and wickedly, instead of following what God had said in His Word, that Jerusalem was the place where God's name would dwell, that that was the temple and the focal point where the people were to go and offer sacrifices in faith. Here now, Hezekiah is inviting both the northern and the southern kingdom, the remnants of the northern kingdom, and all of Judah to come to Jerusalem to keep the Passover to the Lord. Now what was the significance of the Passover? And I don't want to spend an inordinate amount of time, but cannot resist looking at least a few high points. If you'll turn back with me to the book of Exodus, because it really is a thrilling thing that God has recorded for us in His Word. You remember in the life of Abraham, in Genesis chapter 15, God had come and appeared to Abraham, renewing the covenant with Abraham. And God took Abraham and showed him, well, turn with me to Genesis 15. After these things, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision. Fear not, Abram, I am your shield, your very great reward. But Abram said, O Lord God, what will you give me? For I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus. And Abram said, Behold, you have given me no offspring, and a member of my household will be my heir. And behold, the word of the Lord came to him, this man shall not be your heir, your very own son shall be your heir. And he brought him outside and said, look toward heaven and number the stars, if you are able to number them. And then he said to him, so shall your offspring be. Now, it is incredible that mathematicians in our day and time have estimated that there are more stars that we know of now in the universe that we can see and detect than there are more stars than there are grains of sand on all of the beaches in all of the world. Now that is a mind-boggling number. And here God tells Abram that he is going to make his descendants more numerous than the number of stars. What was Abram's response? He believed the Lord and it was counted to him as righteousness. And so Abram, he said in verse 7, God says, I am the Lord who brought you out of the Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess. But he said, O Lord God, how am I to know that I shall possess it? And then the Lord instructed Abram to take those animals, cut them in two, and we could go over to Jeremiah chapter 34 and see the significance of animals being cut in two. And you see down in verse 18 of this chapter, on that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram. And the word made a covenant literally in the Hebrew is cut a covenant. And God himself passed between the pieces. In Jeremiah 34, the people passed between the pieces of the calf that they had taken and killed. as they renewed their covenant with the Lord, their commitment to follow the Christ. Well, here God is the one who passes between the pieces. And Hebrews 6 tells us that God, desiring to make even more sure to Abraham, that you can trust me Abraham, he gave by two unbreakable things. The first unbreakable thing was God's very word, His promise. And the second unbreakable thing was God's oath. that God took a self-maladictory oath. So be it done to me, Abram, as has been done to these animals, if I fail in any of the promises that I am making to you. And in the context of God renewing this covenant with Abram, you'll notice Down in verse 17, when the sun had gone down and it was dark, behold, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces. On that day, the Lord made a covenant with Abram saying, to your offspring, I give this land from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates, the land of the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, the Amorites, the Canaanites, and the Girgashites. And Abraham had told, God had told Abram up in verse 13. Then the Lord said to Abram, know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs, and will be servants there. And they will be afflicted for four hundred years, but I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions. As for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace, and you shall be buried in a good old age, and they shall come back here in the fourth generation, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete." And so God gives a history of His people. He tells Abram that they are going to be oppressed in a land that is not theirs, and then after 400 years, God would bring them back. Well, over in the book of Exodus, chapter 2, we see Here it's been 400 years. God's people are living in Egypt. God spared them from the famine. And now a Pharaoh arises who knew not Joseph and enslaves God's people there in Egypt. One of the amazing things is how God raises up Moses. And Moses is spared from execution. Pharaoh's own daughter goes to the Nile River to bathe and she sees in this little basket, this little baby, and rescues this little baby boy, Moses. She names him. It sounds like the Hebrew name to draw out. That's why he had the name Moses, because she said, I drew him out of the water. And God raises this prince of Egypt now up to be the one who would lead God's people. But I want you to notice the last two verses of chapter 2. Verse 23, During those many days the king of Egypt died, and the people of Israel groaned because of their slavery, and cried out for help. Their cry for rescue from slavery came up to God. And God heard their groaning, and God remembered His covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob. God saw the people of Israel and God knew. God loved his people. Well, in Exodus chapter 3, we have the commission of Moses. Moses, for the first 40 years, was a prince of Egypt. And then from 40 to 80, he serves the Lord as a shepherd. And at the end of that time, God appears to him in the burning bush, the great I Am. And we read in verse 7 of chapter 3, then the Lord said, I've surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters and I know their sufferings. And I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey. Verse 9, And now, behold, the cry of the people of Israel has come to me, and I have also seen the oppression with which the Egyptians oppress them. Come, I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt. But Moses said to God, who am I? That I should go to Pharaoh and bring the children of Israel out of Egypt. He said, but I will be with you and this shall be the sign for you that I have sent you when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God on this mountain. And then the Lord reveals again the glory of his majesty, reminding him of this amazing name, I Am. And then down in verse 16, Go and gather the elders of Israel together, and say to them, The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, has appeared to me, saying, I have observed you and what has been done to you in Egypt, and I promise that I will bring you up out of the affliction of Egypt, to the land of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, a land flowing with milk and honey. And they will listen to your voice. And you and the elders of Israel shall go to the king of Egypt and say to him, The Lord the God of the Hebrews has met with us and now please let us go a three days journey into the wilderness that we may sacrifice to the Lord our God. But I know that the king of Egypt will not let you go even by a mighty hand. So I will stretch out my hand. Now some of your translations say, I'm less compelled by a strong hand. That is the force of this, but literally the Hebrew says, even by a mighty hand. And so what hand is there who alone could deliver God's people from the hand of Pharaoh? It is only one hand. It is the hand of God Almighty. And so God says, so I will stretch out my hand and strike Egypt with all the wonders that I will do in it. After that, He will let you go. And so here is this reference now to the ten plagues. Here are the wonders that God is going to perform. And the culmination of those ten plagues is the very last of these plagues is God striking the firstborn of Egypt because Pharaoh has put his finger on God's own God's firstborn and so the Lord commissions Moses, look in chapter four, verse 21. And the Lord said to Moses, when you go back to Egypt, see that you do before Pharaoh all the miracles that I have put in your power. But I will harden his heart so that he will not let the people go. And then you shall say to Pharaoh, thus says the Lord, Israel is my firstborn son. I want you to notice that. Here's God's child. And God says, because you've put your hand on my child, I'm gonna put my hand on your child. You have harmed my firstborn son, I'm gonna put my hand on your firstborn. Israel is my firstborn son, and I say to you, let my son go, that he may serve me. If you refuse to let him go, behold, I will kill your firstborn son." Um, we have the account of Moses. Um, he, uh, keep reading verse 24 at a lodging place on the way the Lord met him and sought to put him to death Moses. And then Sapphora took a flint and cut off her son's foreskin and threw it at Moses feet with it and said, surely you are a bridegroom of blood to me. He let him alone. God let him alone. It was then that she said a bridegroom of blood because of the circumcision. You see Moses is commissioned by the Lord to go rescue God's firstborn and he had not even put the sign of ownership, the sign that he belonged to the Lord upon his own son. Because of his wife, supposedly, we surmise, was not pleased with this ritual. But she understood what needed to take place, and so it is accomplished. The book of Exodus, we have the plagues. And the tenth of these plagues is the Lord coming through the land and killing all the firstborn of Egypt, both of man and beast. But God made a provision. Look in chapter 12. Chapter 12. And let's go back to chapter 11. Verse one, the Lord said to Moses, yet one more plague. I will bring upon Pharaoh and upon Egypt. Afterward, he will let you go from here. When he lets you go, he will drive you away completely. Speak now in the hearing of the people that they ask every man of his neighbor and every woman of her neighbor for silver and gold jewelry. And the Lord gave the people favor in the sight of the Egyptians. Moreover, the man Moses was very great in the land of Egypt, in the sight of Pharaoh's servants, and in the sight of the people. And you remember in Genesis 15, God had said they will go out with many possessions. Well, how do slaves get possessions? Well, the people asked their neighbors, do you have anything you want to give me? And at this point, the people said, here. And they are just giving them the family jewels and everything and saying, just go. And so, in verse 4, so Moses said, Thus says the Lord about midnight, I will go out in the midst of Egypt, and every firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die, from the firstborn of Pharaoh, who sits on his throne, even to the firstborn of the slave girl, who is behind the hand mill, and all the firstborn of the cattle. There shall be a great cry throughout all the land of Egypt, such as there has never been, nor ever will be again. But not a dog shall growl against any of the people of Israel, either of man or beast, that you may know that the Lord makes a distinction between Egypt and Israel. And all these your servants shall come down to me and bow down to me saying get out you and all the people who follow you and after that I will go out. And he went out from Pharaoh in hot anger and then the Lord said to Moses Pharaoh will not listen to you that my wonders may be multiplied in the land of Egypt. And Moses and Aaron did all these wonders before Pharaoh, and the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart, and he did not let the people of Israel go out of his land. The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, This month shall be for you the beginning of months. It shall be the first month of the year for you. Tell all the congregation of Israel that on the tenth day of this month, Every man shall take a lamb according to their father's houses, a lamb for a household. And if the household is too small for a lamb, then he and his nearest neighbor shall take according to the number of persons, according to what each can eat, you shall make your count for the lamb. Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male, a year old. You may take it from the sheep or from the goats, and you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of this month, and when the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill their lambs at twilight. Then they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which they eat it. "'They shall eat the flesh that night, roasted on the fire, "'with unleavened bread and bitter herbs they shall eat it. "'Do not eat any of it raw or boiled in water, "'but roasted, its head with its legs and its inner parts. "'And you shall let none of it remain until the morning. "'Everything that remains until the morning you shall burn. "'In this manner you shall eat it, with your belt fastened, "'your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand. "'You shall eat it in haste. It is the Lord's Passover, for I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast, and on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments. I am the Lord. The blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you are, and when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague will befall you to destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt." This day shall be for you a memorial day, and you shall keep it as a feast to the Lord throughout your generations as a statute forever. You shall keep it as a feast. Then down in verse 29, At midnight the Lord struck down all the firstborn of the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sat on his throne to the firstborn of the captive who was in the dungeon, and all the firstborn of the livestock. And Pharaoh rose up in the night, he and all his servants, and all the Egyptians. And there was a great cry in Egypt, for there was not a house where someone was not dead. And then he summoned Moses and Aaron by night and said, Up, go out from among my people, both you and the people of Israel. Go and serve the Lord as you have said. Take your flocks and your herds as you have said and be gone and bless me also. Well, over in the book of Hebrews, chapter 11, we have a commentary on this. In Hebrews, chapter 11, verse 28, by faith he, Moses, kept the Passover and sprinkled the blood so that the destroyer of the firstborn might not touch them. And Hezekiah, now in his day, is calling the people to celebrate that God is the one who delivers his people from wrath, from death. Sin produces death. And we're going to stop there tonight because I don't want to rush through chapter 30. But that's the backdrop. That's why it is this particular feast, even though it is the second month, normally they would celebrate it in the first month, but Hezekiah says this is where we begin. We begin with looking at this Passover lamb and consecrating our hearts to the Lord. It is this One who in the fullness of time will come and shed His blood. He alone can deliver us from the consequences of sin. And as we're going to see in 2 Chronicles chapter 30, all of the things that God had instructed His people to do Answering Solomon's prayer in chapter 7, you will find in chapter 30 of 2 Chronicles. God is stirred in the hearts of people. They humble themselves. They throw away their worthless idols. They seek the face of God, praying to God. They repent, turning from sin, turning from worshiping false gods, and they look to the Christ. Well, one final passage, 1 Corinthians chapter 5, if we would see revival in our day, We need to do what Hezekiah did, and that is to look to God's provision to take away sin. And that provision is none other than the Lamb of God. 1 Corinthians chapter 5 The last part of verse 7, for Christ our Passover lamb has been sacrificed. And so we find ourselves in a day where we are in need of revival. What does it look like? What does reformation look like in our day? Well, it is us humbling ourselves. Praying to the living God in the Christ, seeking his face, repenting of sin, looking to the provision, or God's wrath will rest upon us, but those who in faith are looking to Jesus. God's wrath does not rest upon us, but he passes over us. Praise God. Let's pray. Father, as we look at this exciting revival that broke out, Lord, that you stirred in this king's heart, in the prince's heart, in the assembly there in that day. We pray that you would come down and that you would stir in our hearts. Oh Lord, sin is just as real today as it was then. how we thank you that we don't just have the shadows of the one who can deliver us from sin, but you have come in the fullness of time, O Lamb of God, and we look to you, Lord Jesus, to wash us and cover us with your precious blood. Bless now as we sing your praise, and then as we come to celebrate this great work that you have accomplished, and that Lord, as we present ourselves before you, in faith looking to you that you would come and you would give a sweet communion with you and with one another in your name even this night. In Jesus we pray, amen.