is at First Baptist Soot Lake, where we have friends. And now we're here with Bill, and we have friends. It was interesting to hear you guys holding up Wilson Creek in prayer. We were there from 70 to 74. Case you're guessing my age, I was 10 years old when I went there. And then you started talking about Paul and Carolyn Pierce. They're missionaries with the Friends of Israel. Paul Pierce is my brother-in-law. But that's no big deal, because I have 10 sisters-in-law. When I tell that to women, they say, oh, how nice. When I tell it to men, they go, oh, my. But it is a treat to be here again. I looked in my notes, and I see that this is the fifth Sunday we've been here since we started filling the pulpit, and we're just enjoying ourselves to no end. And Beverly and I, my good wife, who will have been married to me 57 years tomorrow, I can tell you where I was 57 years ago today. Where was I? At church for the wedding rehearsal. I was going to be married by my uncle, who would do the valves, and then by my father-in-law, who was by then the pastor of the church. So I've been surrounded by Baptist preachers all my life. We got here at great personal danger. We were driving here, we got into Spokane from Chihuila, about an hour's north of Spokane, and fire truck came by and I didn't see him in my mirrors. He sounded his horn and that's a hint, you know. And the minute I pulled out of the way, I could see the lights. And we came up to an intersection, and a car shot across the intersection. And the fire truck plowed right into him, right on the side, and pushed the car into the person who was going to turn. That was exciting. You know the most exciting part? We weren't in the accident. But I went up and talked to them and said, do you guys have a camera? And he said, no, we don't have a camera. And I thought, well, that's not going to work very well. And I went back to my truck. I was sitting in there. And I'd give my name. And they asked me to stay so I could be a witness. And I looked up at my windshield. And here was this thing about the size of a cigarette pack. I don't know what analogy to use, so we'll use that one. And it was my camera. So I pulled the SD card out of it and took it to the fire department and talked to the policemen. They kind of thought it was a bit of nuisance. Now, we can tell this story our way, but they were very kind and took it, and I'll get it back when they're done with it for evidence in about 200 years. So we had a bit of an adventure getting here. We were camped at Murray's. We need to get a name for your campground, you know that? And then my adult daughter, Laurie, my firstborn, her husband, John, are here today, because they got to kind of hang out with us, which they enjoy doing very much. So that's the adventure so far of Peter and Beverly. We now live in Trulia Baptist Church. They commissioned Beverly and I's International Pulpit Supply Ministry just before we went to Wales to minister for three months while the pastor was gone. And so, we have an official ministry, has become missionaries now, and it has been just a very pleasant time, and we continue to hope that we will be well enough to serve the Lord for many more years to come. It's been 12 years now we've been retired. Turn in your Bibles to 2 Corinthians 18. That's for the tape, by the way, because I know you're already there. came to pass in the third year of Hosea, son of Elah, king of Israel, that Hezekiah, the son of Ahaz, king of Judah, began to reign. Twenty-five years old was he when he began to reign, and he reigned twenty-nine years in Jerusalem. His mother's name also was Abi, the daughter of Zechariah, not to be mistaken for the prophet who won't exist for another 100 years. Verse 3, he did that which was right in the sight of the Lord, according to all that David his father did. I realize this is a political season. The Democratic Party is having their convention as we speak. Would you rather be there? The curiosity in me says, yes, that should prove quite interesting. But it would be wonderful if we were able to choose our politicians on the basis of that verse. He did that which was right in the sight of the Lord. Isn't that great? His father didn't. His grandfather didn't. Grandfather let the temple fall into repair. His father had closed the doors of the temple and had taught his young son to worship Baal. That's what's so remarkable about this man. I want to look at this extraordinary man today because he is greatly underappreciated. Little quiz time. How many times does the life of Christ occur in the Bible? Matthew, Mark, Luke, John. You know how many people have their life repeated four times in the Bible besides Jesus? None. There are many places where we hear people's lives once, and so we have Ruth. we looked at in Sunday school today. Good time to explore the life of Ruth again. And then we have people who have their life repeated two times. Got an example for me? David, whose life occurs in Samuel, and then it occurs again in Chronicles, in 1 and 2 Samuel and Chronicles. We have many things about his life in Chronicles, which is believed to be the priestly account. David's sin is not mentioned. Whose life occurs, now you know the answer, whose life occurs three different times in the Bible? Yeah, nice wild guess, Hezekiah. This is fascinating. Something really interesting about it we'll get to in just a second. So in 2 Kings 18, 19, and 20, it's the life of Hezekiah. 2 Chronicles 29 to 32, it's the life of Hezekiah, which, by the way, is the last book in the Hebrew Bible. So if you want to know how the Hebrew Bible ends, go read the last verse of 2 Chronicles. It's been kind of a head-scratcher for rabbis that it didn't say more about the return of the Messiah and the return of the land. And then Isaiah, who writes this huge book of prophecy. What, 66 chapters long? Wow. And chapters 1 all the way up to chapter 35 are basically about Isaiah's leadership in Israel. And then you get to chapter 40, and it begins the account of the end times. And he stops in the middle of his book and writes four chapters about Ruth. Yeah, Hezekiah. And you stop and think how extraordinary that is. There is not one book in the prophets where the prophet, after prophesying and doing his stuff, stops. And then he shares the life of the most important king during his life, Isaiah and Hezekiah, alive at the same time. And Hezekiah really leans on Isaiah as his pastor. That stops and gives the life of a king or someone. And then it goes on with end-time prophecy. Nobody does that. Only the book of Isaiah. So, this has got to be a very important person, right? And how much time does he get from us? Well, maybe not enough. Paul in Corinthians says, these things are written for our learning upon whom the ends of the ages have come. And then in Romans, he talks about how Scripture was given as a warning to us. You know what the Scripture he's referring to? Is it this Bible? No, it's the Old Testament. That's the only scripture they had. So when he said, all scripture is given by inspiration to God, he was referring back to the Old Testament. And so we're constantly being pointed back to the Old Testament. The most quoted book by Jesus is Deuteronomy. He quotes it twice. in the temptation when Satan comes to tempt him. Recently started writing the book of Deuteronomy, right? Reading the book of Deuteronomy written by a Jewish scholar named Prager. very well known by people who are very engaged in the whole political thing going on right now, because he has written a lot on the American constitution and life and how it harks back to the Old Testament and to the New Testament. And he really develops the book of Deuteronomy by understanding how a Jew, now these are not, he's not Christian, might interpret it. And so as I read the chapters, I stop, and I have a complete set of all J. Vernon McGee. Everybody know who J. Vernon McGee is? Great scholar. His degrees were earned, by the way. He had a bachelor's in Greek. Anyway, J. Vernon McGee, who is this great preacher from the South in heaven now for, what, 20, 30 years? And I listened to what he says in his commentary about Deuteronomy. And of course, he's watching the flow of the Christian concept of what's going on there. But that was Jesus' favorite book. Now, why did we get sidetracked on Deuteronomy? Oh, I think it's because I like the book. Let's look at Hezekiah and see if we can learn some things about the kind of man God uses. And if I get another opportunity to come back, I may actually bring a study on his conversion. You know how many accounts we have of people in Israel who actually, we believe, got saved? We have one, and it's Hezekiah. And there's a reference both to Isaiah and Micah in that account. But that's for another time. He did that which was right in the eyes of the Lord. Let's see how your Bible memory's doing. Proverbs 3, 5, and 6. I'll give you a hint, and then we'll say it together. Proverbs 3, 5, trust in the Lord with all thine heart. Now, I know I'm using the common version, but go ahead and use the other pronouns and we'll all be happy together. Trust in the Lord with all thine heart. In all thy ways. Okay. What's the next verse? I don't know. I didn't know either until I got to looking at this. Hezekiah did that, which is right in the eyes of the Lord. The next verse says, be not wise in your own eyes. Isn't that powerful? We can get to thinking. I know the answer. I know what's right. I know what we need. I know what America needs to do. By the way, I have some ideas, but for another time, okay? Hezekiah did that which was right in the eyes of the Lord. His daddy hadn't done what was right in the eyes of the Lord. His grandfather hadn't done what was right in the eyes of the Lord. So he came from a horrible spiritual home, but he came to the Lord. We'll maybe get an opportunity to add his conversion another time because it's quite interesting. So the first thing we know about Hezekiah was he chose the right motive. It will be a great thing when we elect leaders whose motive is to do that which is right in the eyes of the party. No, in the eyes of the Lord. Let's go on. He put things in their right place. Verse 4. He removed the high places and break the images and cut down the groves. We'll leave the rest of the verse for a minute. He removed, he broke, he cut. There's been many a person, after they got saved, who went into their young person, into their bedroom, an older person, maybe elsewhere in the house, and they started to take things out. and throw them away, because they had no place in the Christian life, and they would, in the future, hinder their witness. So, he put things in the right place. He removed things from his life that dishonoured God, that hindered his service, or are meant to be a substitute for him. He used the best possible message of dealing with each sin. He removed it, he burned it. got it completely out of the way, no half measures. Now, remember, he's been brought up to be a person who worshipped the Lord, but also worshipped Baal, the false gods of the land. And so, when he started breaking up the groves, it could easily have been a grove with an idol for Baal that his father had taken him to church, excuse the anachronism, to worship the Lord, or to worship Baal. Put things in the right places. There's something in my life, in my heart, that I need to get out of the way if I would serve the Lord better. That I would not only do that which was right in the eyes of the Lord, but I would remove those things that are a hindrance. And this is where it gets tricky. End of verse four. Let's pick it up. He break, you probably have broke, but that's good. He break in pieces the brazen serpent that Moses had made. For unto those days the children of Israel did burn incense to it and called it nehushtan, a piece of junk, a piece of brass. Now what's important about the brazen serpent? Who told Moses to make it? God. What were they to do? They were to look and live. That's where the hymn, Look and Live, comes from. Look and you shall live. It was the idea that are you going to trust God or aren't you? And those that looked and lived were healed. How old was the brazen serpent by the time Hezekiah came along? It was 700 years old. If he had taken it to the antique road show. What do you got there? Moses' brazen serpent. How old is it? Well, it's about 700 years old. It's precious to us. Now, why is it precious to us as a Christian? Because in John 3, you remember John 3, 16? In John 3, verse 14, when you back up there, it says, even as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness. In other words, it is a picture to us of Christ being lifted up on the cross as our substitute to whom we look and live. And what did he do with it? He broke it in pieces, ground it down, and said, this is not your god, the brazen serpent. See, that's what they've done to it. They turned it into a god. This is not your god, the brazen serpent. This is Nahushtan. Wouldn't that be a great name for your dog? Yeah, it wouldn't be a compliment, by the way. This is a piece of brass. This is a piece of junk. He called things by the right names. Now and then. We can get to worshiping junk instead of worshiping God. Sometimes, forgive me, men, sometimes it's a car. Forgive me, ladies. Sometimes it's clothes. Movie star, especially the ones that start out Christians. And the next thing you know, they're living with their girlfriend. The next thing you know, they're DWI, and you're kind of going, you know, do us a favor. Stop telling people you're a believer until you at least show some signs of the conversion. This was an important piece of Israel's history. There may be things in your family life that are just some important part of your history. Had a dear man in the church I was in. I was the pastor at that time, and he When asked why he hadn't been baptized yet, he said, well, my mother is Catholic. And she believes I have been baptized in my Catholic church. And so I don't know what to do. I do not wish to displease my mother. By the way, what's wrong with infant baptism? Oddly enough, it isn't the mode. The mode is sprinkling as opposed to immersion. The problem is you bring unsaved people into the church. Did you know that? Those unsaved people, when asked if they're a Christian, will say, yes, I was baptized at St. Michael's Parish Church in Tungham, England. And so you get a lot of people into the church who are unconverted, but they are absolutely sure they're going to heaven. I had one of my dear cousins in England once tell me that he was going to heaven because he was part of the Anglican Church. He'd been sprinkled in it. Well, that's a nice sentiment, but how do you get to heaven? Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, thou shalt be saved. Now, you forgive my digression, but I'm a Baptist, so I'm gonna talk about baptism. This great man was fearless of people's opinion. It had come down to taking the piece of brass and saying it's an idol. When I was at Bible school, I had a wonderful professor, Dr. King, who was in a wheelchair. He had taken his master's in philosophy I'm thinking Arabic, from Princeton University. He had this fantastic education. He could sight-read the Greek New Testament. And we were going through in the Greek class on 1 John. We were going through 1 John. We got to about chapter 4, by the way, Pastor. He was one of these people who didn't believe in finishing up a book. He just taught us how to deal with it. You know what the last verse in 1 John says? There are a lot of funny last verses in the Bible. Genesis, a coffin in Egypt. Do you start out in Genesis with coffins? No. Creation, life. And so there are these. Jonah, doest thou well to be angry at the gourd? I do well to be angry. He's saying that to God. Bless his heart. And so, when you get to the last verse of 1 John 5, 21, it says, little children, keep yourselves from idols. Now, you've got to remember that this was a culture of pure idolatry. When you went to your lodge, there would be an idol. When you went to your union hall, there would have been an idol. When you came in your house, there would have been idols to your parents. When you went to any meeting of any organization, like the incident in Acts with the greatest Diana of the Ephesians, there would have been an idol there. But I don't think he was particularly talking about false worship. You read 1 John, you realize these Christians are quite a ways along. And he sat there in his wheelchair looking at our little group of students and said, gentlemen, keep yourselves from idols while you're away for the Christmas vacation. Do not get distracted by the things of the world, the idols of this age, or maybe the idol of your own heart. Little children, keep yourselves from idols. Well, Hezekiah hadn't read that verse, but he sure appreciated it. Verse 5, 2 Kings chapter 18. And he trusted in the Lord God of Israel. so that after him was none like him among all the kings of Judah, nor any that were before him. He put confidence in the right person. Verse five, he trusted in the Lord. If there would be a revival in America, we don't even use the rhetoric of revival anymore, which I think is unfortunate, but if you would have a revival in America, It will begin with people trusting the Lord. I preached in Wales for a number of months while their pastor was gone. Next neighbor church was Steve McLean, my nephew. So it was kind of fun to be there. I've lived in England before that a few times and have a lot of family there. So I kind of understood the culture of England and Wales and Great Britain. On the coast of Wales, the English speakers arrived from England. And when you get inland, you often meet situations where people speak only Welsh. But we were there. What is Wales famous for, from a Christian perspective? The great Welsh revivals. started the turn of the century and continued into the 20s and 30s. They had churches that were having five meetings a week because people wanted to be in God's house. Many were converted. There was an elderly pastor, I was told about in Wales, he would have been quite old by then, who said, I grew up at the tail end of the great Welsh revivals. Wales was probably the most Bible-believing Christian country in the world at that time. And now, it is almost surely the least. In Europe, what country has the most births out of wedlock? Wales. They have, in spite of this great revival, shrunk back to being almost worse than they were before the revival happened. And so I got very interested in the revival, and it was interesting because they described how a revival starts. It starts when people start praying for revival. In other words, you have to go back to before. So people didn't start changing. They didn't start behaving differently. They started praying for a great national revival. Well, I think part of that would be putting our confidence in the right person. They trusted in the Lord. A return to God is ever a return to trust in God alone. By the way, did you notice the end of the verse that made him incomparable? There was none like him. This is one of these places where Hebrew and English don't get along very well. The phrase is used elsewhere of other people, that there was none like him. The point being that he was extraordinary. You want to be an extraordinary person at school, kids? You want to be an extraordinary person at work, men and women in your community, in your community organizations, whether it be the Red Cross or something, you be the person that trusts in the Lord. Let's go on, verse 6. And he claimed to the Lord and departed not from following Him. By the way, that claim means to cling. He walked in the right path. He claimed to the Lord and followed him. Let's go back to our verse. But kept his commandments, which the Lord commanded Moses. Walked in the right path. Claim is a big word in Deuteronomy. It's an important word. You probably have in the New King James, which is, by the way, an excellent Bible, claim. So, you're fireman. You're five stories up. I stopped looking out the window at the first floor. I can get vertigo looking up at the skyscrapers in Seattle. I have a slight fear of heights. And so you're a fireman, you're hauling yourself up there with all this equipment on your back, and you get up the ladder, and you get to the window, and you go up against the wall, and there's a woman screaming, help me, help me. And you reach in. And you say, hang on to me, cleave to me. What do you suppose she does? Oh, you're all smoky and dirty. You got a clean one down there somewhere you could send up? No. Hezekiah walked in the right path. He followed the Lord. He cleaved to the Lord. They hugged, and he hugged the Lord. And in Deuteronomy, which again, as I've come to notice and appreciate even more than ever, is a book about hanging on to the Lord, cleaving to the Lord our God. This becomes an important term again and again in the Bible. And then it says he departed not. Isn't that wonderful? Let's go on, verse 7. He enjoyed the right kind of success. And the Lord was with him, and he prospered with us whoever went forth. He rebelled against the king of Assyria and served him not. He enjoyed the right kind of success. The Lord was with him. Success is not success. That sentence has too many S's in it, you know that? My children could tell when I was tired at church. Because if we were in the second book of Thessalonians, I would start saying, now turn to 2 Thessalonians chapter 2. Eventually, I got smart and realized I needed to break up all those siblings. And so I would say, turn to the second book of Thessalonians and turn to the second chapter. Well, this note of mine has too many S's in it. Success is not success if done without the Lord, because true success is always in line with God's will. All else will count for nothing. So you get up to heaven and you say, I became president of the United States. That's a nice thing to do, you know? It's hard. There's only one person at a time, sort of. And you look up at God like, boy, I suppose you're going to congratulate me now. And God says, did you do it for my honor and glory or for your own? Success is not success if it is done without the Lord. One of the neat things about America, besides our extraordinary freedom, is that we allow people to get filthy, stinking rich. What's the result of that? We have private businesses making rockets that can go to the moon and perhaps to Mars. You know how many countries in the world are so prosperous that they have businessmen that can build rockets? For which, by the way, they're getting very little financial return. You heard that the couple that's stuck in space because they can't attach to the, what do they call it? Yeah, the spaceship. And he's come forward and said, I can send a rocket up to rescue them if you want me to. I don't know whether they're using them as guinea pigs up there or something. But do you know how many private men can say, well, you know, I happen to have in my backyard a spaceship. And I could send it up and rescue them and bring them back. And so you stand before the Lord and you say, I was one of the richest men in my state, in my country, in the world. I was a great success. By the way, more power to my two examples. And the Lord is going to say, did you do it for my glory, or for the fun of it, or for because it was something you could do, or for your own glory? The wonderful thing about Hezekiah was he enjoyed the right kind of success. It says the Lord was with him. All else will count for nothing. He showed the right kind of independence. And we'll stop with this. He showed the right kind of independence. Verse 7, about the middle. Well, let's start at the beginning. By the way, you heard of Gaza? Yeah, big war going on in Gaza now, by the way. It's kind of interesting how these things the Bible talk about have a way of turning up again. Now and then you get somebody who says, well, we don't know whether the Bible's true or not. And the temptation to say, have you heard of Israel? Have you heard of? Well, you know where London is, right? Do you know where Jerusalem is? Have you heard of Gaza? All these places mentioned in the Bible, they exist and they existed. Anyway, backtracking here to verse eight. And they smote the Philistines, even unto Gaza, and the borders thereof, and from the tower of the watchman to the fenced city. And you may have a little different translation there. The idea is, a watchman who's watching out, and then the other is a city that has walls. In other words, the smallest place to the greatest place showed the right kind of independence. The person who is most dependent on God is the person who is the most independent of men. I worked part-time while I was a pastor and the church was getting started. I worked with people with severe and persistent mental illness, and I was a job developer. I would go out as a, well, technically a psychiatric social worker, and I would find jobs for my clients. And then I would help them apply. I would help them I've taken the food handlers test about 20 times. And then I'd go to job and I'd work with him. I have made more dough at Pizza Hut and more hamburgers at Burger King than you can imagine. As I stood by my client and taught him how to do it and taught him independence and then would advocate for him, had one of them come into my room and say, I'm going to quit my job. I hate my job. I don't want to ever go there again. He was a little stressed. And he had come in with his counselor, and we sat down and we talked, and I said, sit down for a minute. Let me call your boss. And I called up and said, you know, I'm the job coach for this person. He needs a few days off. And I said to him, take a few days off. Maybe you just need to settle down. I had another client come, and she'd been there, like, 10 months, which is a long time and a lot of success. She said, I'm going to quit and I'm going to go home. She came back a week later and said, did you know that afternoon TV is very boring? How many of you know that afternoon TV is very boring? She said, I want to go back to work. God bless my work. Every time before I would go in to sue a new employer, the one skill I brought to my job that most people don't have is cold calling. And so I would go in and say, I've got some clients that need work. They have a disability. I can't tell you what it is, but I can tell you how it might affect their work. They need fewer hours, mainly. And they may need some support, which I will provide, so they can get their job. And I would stop and say, oh God, give me favor with this employer. And even when they turned me down, I felt like they had given me a fair hearing. Hezekiah was a man who was most dependent upon God, and we need to be the most dependent upon him. Says he rebelled against the king of Assyria, We could kind of think Iran and Iraq. That's basically the same neighborhood. And he dealt with the Philistines. He smote the Philistines, even at the Gaza and the border thereof, from the Tower of the Watchmen, meaning a small place, to a fenced city, a big place. Assyria is the great world power. The other great, almost greater world power is Egypt. Egypt had the longest sustained government in the history of the world. Almost 2,000 years until the Romans came along and changed their mind about that. Antony and Cleopatra and all that stuff, by the way. And so if you wanted to attack Egypt, where did you go? Well, it's all horrible desert. You went over to the coast. You took a hard left. Whose country are you going through? Israel. And once you got through Israel, you got to Egypt. And so a lot of the wars would get fought just on the outskirts of Israel. And so that nation had taken over Israel as kind of a surrogate state that they could travel through at their convenience. The Philistines are the dominant people in the land who are non-believers. The Philistines were sea peoples. All around the Mediterranean, there were Philistine settlements. They settled in the valley. That's why, later on, you read of the Philistines being so dangerous for Israel because they had chariots. Well, you couldn't use chariots in the hills of Judah, but you could use them down on the plains and down toward the ocean. And so, you have these... internal strife of unbelievers, and you have the external world fight going on. Now, is Israel in kind of a bad location nowadays? Yeah. The only democracy in the Middle East. Did you know that? Some claim that they have elections, but almost inevitably they have an ayatollah who's a supreme ruler. These two forces have often been seen as illustrations, Assyria of the domination of the world over us, and the Philistines as the domination of our sinful flesh over us. He showed the right kind of independence. He broke with the past that he might have future usefulness for God. Is it time for us to dare to do right? Perhaps the first step is to trust Christ as your Saviour. He that hath the Son hath life. Do you know the rest of that saying? He that hath not the Son hath not life. Judgment is coming. All will be there. Each one receiving justly their due. Sprinkle your soul in the life-cleansing blood. Do you know the rest of the hymn? And I will pass, will pass over you, an allusion to the Passover events, and, of course, primarily to Christ, who comes and intercedes and stands before us, before God, and becomes our substitute for our sins. O God, thank you. Now and then, it's... Good for us to praise worthy men who went before us and are our fathers spiritually, that we might find here in King Hezekiah a model of how we might walk with you. In Jesus' name, amen.