morning. So today's reading come from 2 Chronicles 29 verses 1 through 6. His achial was 25 years old when he became king and he reigned into Jerusalem 29 years. His mother's name was Abigia, daughter of Zachariah.
He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, just as his father David had done. In the first month of the year of his reign, he opened the doors of the temple of the Lord and repaired them. He brought in the priests and the Levites and assembled them in the square on the east side and said, listen to me Levites, concentrate yourselves now and consecrate the temple of the Lord, the God of your ancestors. Remove all the filement from the sanctuary.
Our parents were unfaithful. They did evil in the eyes of the Lord and our God forsook him. They turn their faces away from the Lord's dwelling place and turn their backs on him. This word is true and can be trusted.
Thanks, Claudia. So what do you do when things get difficult? That's an important question for us to think about. How do you handle difficulties?
What's your normal response? I know how I respond sometimes. Other people can respond in interesting and fun ways as well with that. But what do you do when things seem to get tough?
How do you get around the idea that you find yourself living in a difficult situation? One of the reasons a lot of times I think we find difficulty in dealing with things is because we have this internal desire and assumption that we can control anything. That's like a defining philosophical idea of the modern world that we can control this. We have this belief that all things are under our power.
So what do we do in difficult situations? We try to control them. But rarely do we encounter God when we leave him out of the equation and we just try to power through things on our own. Alan Rochsborough says that God meets us in the space in between where there can neither be power or control.
Nobody ever wakes up in the morning and he puts their feet on the ground and says, I think I'm going to make life incredibly difficult today. But we encounter difficulties throughout life. And the ways that we work around those difficulties tell the greatest story about who we are. And so for the next couple of weeks we're going to be looking at the story of Hezekiah.
We've got us going with that. We're going to look at what is it life like when you are up against insurmountable difficulties and how do you handle it? And that's what today's about. And so we're going to talk about who is this Hezekiah person?
This is a weird name. Who is this guy? So we find Hezekiah in the Old Testament. And he's a king in Judah in the 8th century BC.
So about 100 years before Christ. And by this point in time Israel because of just arguments among themselves and worship practices and all sorts of like just silly behavior had broken into two countries. You have Judah in the South, which really truly is pretty much just Jerusalem in the surrounding area. And then you have Israel to the north.
And during Hezekiah's reign, the entire northern kingdom Israel is actually carried away and removed from the land because of their sin. Hezekiah also shows up in multiple books, the Old Testament. So he's in kings, he's in chronicles. He's also in the prophet Isaiah.
And these stories about the difficulties that Hezekiah went through is he was leading God's people. And let's put this in time and situation. Hezekiah was a king when every single thing around him seemed to be crumbling. We've got a map here that shows that they're literally in a squeeze point.
And you can look down where Egypt, I have the circle circle where Israel is. You see to the north, that's the Assyrian Empire. That's Iraq, that's Iran, that's modern day Syria. That's massive, massive empire.
And then there's the Egyptian Empire below them. And the only way to go from Egypt to Assyria or Assyria to Egypt is to go right through the kingdom of Judah. Now one of the reasons we see conflict throughout the entire Old Testament and really to this day now is that piece of land is a giant squeeze point between other larger ruling powers. And so many of the decisions we see people making the Old Testament, they're making because they see the squeeze point and these kings are trying to live with this.
So Hezekiah's father, A.H.S., had been a horrible king. He'd bow down to the Assyrian culture, their way of life, to their politics, to their worship because Assyria was jockeying for power. He had to make a decision to follow along with Egypt or to follow along with Assyria. What's going to keep my people safe?
He has died. So, Hezekiah becomes king and we read what Claudia read for us this morning from 2 Chronicles 29.3. The very first month of the first year of his reign, Hezekiah reopened the doors of the temple and repaired them. Hezekiah realized that difficult situations take different solutions and different solutions take different people.
Hezekiah took the different option. That's why we're jumping into his story. So the big what of this whole thing that's going on is about idolatry. Nobody wakes up in the morning and says, let me find a new god to worship.
Now a lot of us, I know what that word means, but idolatry means you've got this weird statue at your house that you bow down and works. You don't have a weird statue in their house? I've got at least one of big foot. No, that's normal, right?
Like most of us think about idolatry. We think about weird statues and a little bit of money and candy and like you pray to your weird statue, right? And so apparently since I'm the only weird person with a weird statue and they're like, okay, chat idolatry is not an issue for me whatsoever. No weird statues rise in my house, chat.
But Martin Luther, the founder of the Protestant Reformation, spoke about idolatry. And what he does is he is quoting and referencing and working around that first 10 commandment where it says, that I'll shall have no other gods before me. Martin Luther 500 years ago defined idolatry as whatever your heart clings to and relies on. That is your God.
Trust and faith of the heart alone make both God and idol. G. K. Beel, a writer living now goes a bit further with Luther and says this, whatever your heart clings to or relies on for ultimate security.
That is your idol. Now we might not have a weird statues that we cling to for safety and security, but I bet we can name two or three more things that we cling to for safety and security, right? As a pious father, A.H.S. was one of the most wicked kings that Judah had ever seen.
Child sacrifice, the other happened with him. And all sorts of other things that are not appropriate for me to talk about in front of little ears in the room today. We see these things and it's not just that A.H.S. with this horrible mean evil guy like the weird guy in Temple of Doom.
You know the whole Kali. We got a guy. We see this like A.H.S. Oh yeah, Temple of Doom got right now.
He's not. Like why is he doing these things? Not because he woke up and said let me follow another God or I want to be a weird guy in Temple of Doom. But instead he's trying to appease the Assyrian expectations of worship for the purpose of safety and security.
He felt it to keep Judah safe. He had to keep the Assyrians happy by worshiping their gods and by completely believing their worldview. That's why that's why Israel always struggled with idolatry is because they were trying to hold to the world around them's expectations for what does it mean to stay safe and to secure and to have full bellies and have water in the creek. At this point the Temple of Doors and Jerusalem had been closed for a generation.
By opening these doors up, Hezekiah was making a statement. He's saying the Lord is here. The presence of God is accessible. The presence of God is available and the presence of God is here to meet with us.
His presence is here and his presence is the most important thing to us. The priests, the Levites, they've been out of work for a whole generation. He calls them back to their original task and their original purpose. He did so much more than just opening up doors at home sheet this week.
That's three chapters in Second Chronicles and you can actually read all of the things and all of the ways that Hezekiah does this for pretty much his whole life. The way he just opens things up and opens things up. We're gonna talk about more in a little bit but different and difficult situations take different solutions and different solutions take different people. Hezekiah knew that he had to be different and that all of God's people had to be different.
And why this matters is this. It goes back to that different thing because Hezekiah, the message of Scripture, to being God's people different means distinct. And this religious difference that Hezekiah is contending for and what we're reading today is also a political distinction. It's Him telling this to you, hey we don't need you to keep us safe.
We rely on God and His protection and what He offers and who He is. We don't need some foreign and some pagan nation to keep us safe because the Lord God keeps us safe. He knew that to define different in light of the difficult that He had to go back to the start. And the meaning of all of this start really is the fact that God is holy which at its most basic non-church language means God is different.
And God created His people to be different and God calls His people to be different. That difference. So what part two? So hezekiah, the way the story is told is almost like I said the first month of the first year of his reign it's almost like he did wake up that morning put his feet on the ground and said okay we're going to be different.
He immediately asked the priests to come in and consecrate the temple and to consecrate the things of the temple to set them apart. You know this first action and really all of the other different actions that Hezekiah is going to do is really about just setting things apart. I have a drawing here if you can read my handwriting. That outlines all of these three chapters and you see the spiral that goes on and on and on and on and on and we see that he starts out in the middle by consecrating the priests of the temple and then he consecrates the priests and then consecrates the Levites and in the last he consecrates the people.
This is about every single part of this country setting itself apart to be different. Not just a different king not just a different temple in a building or a different priest but all of us are called to be different and set apart Leviticus 10-10 Leviticus the fun book. We enjoy that when don't we? There's not any cross-stitch Bible verses of Leviticus you notice that?
Says that so you can distinguish between the holy and the common between the queen and the unclean. Think about that between the holy and the common. No a lot of times we come to this conversation thinking okay holy that means there's good and there's bad right? Or we would say what's the opposite of holy?
It's evil. It's the temple of doom guy right? Leviticus is holy and it's common to separate between the holy and the common. If we really think about what this whole message comes into it's this chart right here.
It's about the goodness of God and it's about the character of God. The goodness of God and the character of God is going to manifest in the law of God. And not law is in like we've got to judge the tier or there's a list of do's and don'ts but law is in like these are the safety lines. These are the boundaries.
These are the bumpers that show up at the bowling alley that you always want to have a four-year-old to bowl with so you have an excuse to put the bumpers up because it's always fun to have the bumpers up right? The law of God we read the book of Psalms like this like the law of God's unrestricted thing the law of God is these bumpers to just keep us safe and keep us in here and that those things they those lead to the behaviors of the people to our behaviors to our morality when we think of holy is just holy or evil or just this manifestation of good and bad that brings us to any idea of morality turns into a conversation that's just the right thing to do then we assume if it's the right thing to do that means God is happy right that's how we think let's be honest and if we do a bad thing that means God gets mad at us right that's how we think we do good things God's happy we do bad things God's mad that's not Christianity that's paganism you're not gonna believe me when I tell you this but there's a slippery slope of good God's happy bad God's mad that's the slippery slope to child sacrifice and we're pagan things that's what hezekiah is trying to contrast here I know we are following God because God creates a different world around us and we want to be part of that that we have the image of God that he has made himself manifest especially us now long time later from his kai we have Jesus Christ his life is death his resurrection we have the coming of the holy spirit that fills us up that rejuvenates us that gives us the ability to have a relationship with God and to be with him alongside of him we read the book of Psalms that the law of God is a reframing action the law of God in our participation in our when we see it is a valid thing and a valuable thing that that builds up strength upon strength upon strength around us it's not just good God's happy bad God's mad that's not big enough are we doing the things that lead us to experiencing God daily because greater experience leads to greater trust you know we've got personal doors to the temple that we have to be opening up in our own lives we have those closed off doors it might have been closed for a generation or two that we need to open up see no one wakes up in the morning and says I think I'm going to stop trusting God today but it's a slow descent when we are not intentionally activating trust in our life James Clear Rights by Productivity had the book called atomic habits which is really good I recommend it to you but he says this in atomic habits tiny battles are the ones that will define our future self how do we approach difficult situations we approach them with fear and distrust or do we realize that God is always working God is always moving God has been doing things for us for a long time and God wants to continue doing those things for us for a long time that difficult news does not negate the previous action of God in our life it doesn't mean our world's falling down we begin to see we begin to lose faith when we no longer see this different world of God is a valid thing when we begin to be troubled and we begin to let it lose its validity because we are often unintentionally watering down the holy and turning it into the common that we get difficult situations we don't realize that we have not done the things to be able to understand it to cope with it and we need we were surrounded by the common and what we need is different that's how this happens to us you know oftentimes a different initially means unknown is anybody enjoy the unknown is the unknown a frightening place anybody in here unknown means that we don't know what to expect and oftentimes we struggle with expectations because we struggle with control but ultimately that first move that first move that so many of us need to make is just opening up those personal doors those personal doors the temple and we realize that separating the holy from the common is us realizing that we aren't looking we aren't looking at God as a way to cope in this world but instead God is offering us up a different world for us to step into is we try to cope with this one holy and common so let's have a couple practical conversations talk about what does it mean to wake up in the morning and make Hezekiah level decisions first things first back to the start Hezekiah knew that he could not accomplish anything with a broken relationship to the presence of God because that presence of God in that personal relationship to the presence of God it opens up personal freedom his father a has and kings before them they had traded in presence for protection and we have to start separating things out power our normal habits slowly decreasing trust in our lives James Clear talk about him earlier he talks about this thing he calls it the plateau of latent potential that we make a small change for a day then make another small change for day we might make it two or three days these small changes and then we get frustrated and we stop because we don't see massive change just yet soon we go back to doing things the same old way the plateau of latent potential and I think this applies to our own personal spiritual development really really well you know when we have like that one verse every four or five days is gonna get us a one verse every four five days level of awareness and confidence in God's world we also have to build up tangible practices that cause us to trust now we've already done this portion of service you don't have to worry about me doing it too much but you always talk about our own ideas our finances and trust you know we might not have a weird little statue we bow down to but we all got some of these knowing now our giving is a spiritual discipline because it is a tangible exchange of trust and protection the thing that we all have that we feel like we can rely on if things start to go south is our income and our finances and that gives us that stability for us to hand that over is a pretty big expression it's a deep level of disciples saying hey you're in charge here I'm not worried about this you've got this under control the second thing is we talk about this is I've wrote this on the slide and I've been trying to practice it all morning long so cope with me here but the differentest thing I made up a word completely I made up a word and I can't pronounce the word that's pretty chat the difference us thing different as anyway worship worship distinct and this is why remember how last couple weeks ago we talked about peg communities that peg communities are when different groups of people when people are together in the same place the same time doing the same thing but they're not doing it together that's that whole holy and common thing blending the lines we tell you all story happened to me about a year and a half ago so you'll remember when the hurricane came through we have power for like a week in the National Guard set up and had all of the MREs and water anybody else go get a box of MREs every day red on right so a couple months after I had my several boxes of MREs why not I had a sweet tooth one about eleven o'clock at night I really I wrote some candy didn't have any house I remember hey I've got a bunch of boxes MREs MREs normally have skills him and him since I'm so I go fat guy going there tear up the MREs try to find a long story short end up popping a crown off with an MRE skittle that night and I'm in the doctor's office like a week later getting this crown put back on if you were popped a crown off there's like a glue and so all girls sitting there with that dremel tool like getting stuff prepped and ready and my dentist has the radio on as they do at dentist office and they're playing Christian music and it was Corey Asbury song reckless love I don't think anybody pretending to happen and while I appreciate the fact that my dentist wants to play worship music over there I just kind of think it might not have been the most appropriate space for it I mean it's just it was it was a whole situation there's holy and there's common there's holy and while I appreciate deeply our attempts to make our faith to be a very public thing I'm also fearful especially in the last few years that our like moving everything into everywhere means that we have lost all situations of distinction and while we might think it's a holy thing to have the worship music playing while you're getting your crown put back on you know all things for all people sometimes means nothing for no one and that when things end up being everywhere they actually are nowhere that we see worship as a subversive activity Robert Jensen says this worship is the reality in which truth can be told worship is the reality in which truth can be told this is where we truly declare truth and safety to where we look for God and what he is already doing our lives worship it's not escape and I think that I think we fall into that escape thing sometimes worship is not a dream worship is what happens when we just the language the song when we peek out from underneath the wing of God and the protection that he offers us and then we step out into dangerous spaces because we know that he promises to provide safety for us while we are living there that's a biblical picture of worship and trust that significantly stronger than Christian music at the denestation there in the last thing we pursue God's action in this world we don't wait we don't wait we actively listen and then we activate normal is just waiting for something interesting to happen holiness means attention to the presence of God and expecting something different something distinct something holy and we see those things we also then know that we have been invited into it by the very creator of this world the difficult situations take different different solutions and different solutions take different people and God's calling us to be different beautiful things