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SERMON on 2 CHRONICLES 30: 1, 10-20 @CHRIST CHURCH SOUTH by Daniel Odhiambo

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SERMON on 2 CHRONICLES 30: 1, 10-20 @CHRIST CHURCH SOUTH by Daniel Odhiambo SERMON ON 2 CHRONICLES 30: 1, 10-20 @CHRIST CHURCH SOUTH by Daniel Odhiambo For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it; you will not be pleased with a burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. Prayer. What is required for us to realise a robust and true worship? What is required for revival? Our passage today begins with an admission of spiritual dryness, so to speak. v.2 for they could not keep it at that time. The Passover celebration v.5 for they had not kept it as often as prescribed. They could not; they had not! But then look at v.21: And the people of Israel who were present at Jerusalem kept cthe 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 might2 to the LORD. 22 And Hezekiah spoke dencouragingly 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 epeace offerings and giving thanks to the LORD, the God of their fathers. In fact, at the end of these seven days, the assembly actually agreed to continue for another 7 days. What is required to bring about spiritual awakening? Context: It’s 100years since last week with King Joash and 4 kings have passed: Amariah, Uzziah, Jotham and Ahaz. Their CV is terrible. It’s an escalation of failure climaxing at Ahaz who is the most wicked. He plunders the temple and ultimately closes it down in a persistent path towards paganization of the nation. His 16yr reign is marked by the worst of idolatry including, even child sacrifice. Hezekiah is his son and begins his reign at only 25 taking up the nation in such a state of spiritual, social and moral collapse. The parallel of this section in 2 kings 18 only has one verse on his spiritual reforms. What the chronicler does here, is to take that one verse in 2Kings 18 and expand it into three long chapters: 29-31. Ch.29 covers his first month in office, ch.30 his second month and ch.31 his third to 7th month. In the first month he opens the temple doors and calls for its consecration, and the consecration of the priests. And here today we have his second month, where he calls for a Passover. What is required for a spiritual awakening? 1. The Hezekiah of God 2. The Hand of God 3. The Healing of God 1. The Hezekiah of God The Chronicler is deliberately setting Hezekiah up. Think of the first hearers of this story and how they’d respond to hearing such an account. “I wish we had a king like Hezekiah who would consecrate the temple and bring about such a spiritual reformation.” I think that is the response the Chronicler is setting up. Ch. 29:35b: Thus the service of the house of the LORD was restored. 36 And Hezekiah and all the people rejoiced because God had provided for the people, for the thing came about suddenly. You see, God had provided temple consecrating King, and now the worship of the temple is fully restored. He is God’s king per excellence, likened only to David who set out to build the Lord a temple and Solomon who actually built the temple. The Gospels are very keen to take on this theme in Jesus. Last Sunday in the church calendar, we remembered the presentation of the Christ in the temple. The baby Jesus comes in the temple, then the child Jesus, probably a teenager, returns to the temple and owns it. Didn’t you know that I was to be in my father’s house? Then the adult Jesus consecrates the temple. My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves. And on the cross he becomes the temple. Destroy this temple, and in three days aI will raise it up.” 20 The Jews then said, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple,3 and will you raise it up in three days?” 21 But he was speaking about bthe temple of his body. 22 When therefore he was raised from the dead, chis disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed dthe Scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken. Do you see, that Hezekiah points to Jesus. He’s the man we must long for. After consecrating the temple, Hezekiah then calls for a Passover celebration. Now the Passover was a significant celebration right at the heart of the identity and history of Israel. It was a reminder of the time when God came down and brought salvation through judgement as the Egyptians were destroyed and the Israelites were rescued. It was a sacred ritual, something like the Lord’s temple which we will share later on as we remember that day that God came down and brought salvation through judgement, as Jesus bore his judgement for us and we rescued. Jesus does not just become the temple, he becomes the Passover lamb offered for the forgiveness of our sins. 2. The Hand of God The invitation for people to come to the Passover goes out, sent by royal couriers. This week my country lost a former 24yr reigning head of state. Soon after, a presidential proclamation was issued detailing how he will be mourned. Now in my life I’ve never heard of a presidential proclamation. I mostly hear of executive orders, or just an address etc but the language of a proclamation sounded in my ears like this is something worth attention. This is nothing like a president’s tweet which goes viral but is largely forgotten after 48hrs. This is serious stuff! You can almost see the couriers on horsebacks charging around the whole land in the King’s colours as people stop whatever they’re doing to come and hear. And what is proclaimed to them is basically the gospel: Repent. Turn! Yield to God. Next Sunday we will hear more of that call to repent. The message is met with scorn. They laugh at it, hahaha! Familiar? However, something happens.. v.11, However, some men of Asher, of Manasseh, and of Zebulun humbled themselves and came to Jerusalem. 12 The hand of God was also on Judah to give them one heart to do what the king and the princes commanded qby the word of the LORD. Do you see, that these men who actually heed the message did not do it absolutely by their own power or will? See that word also? It’s not just Judah that the hand of God stirred to respond, but also all the others. Notice that the invitation came with a condition. If you return then the Lord will turn to you. We have a lot of such conditional statements in the Bible, an sometimes it feels like it all depends on us. But that’s not what happens here. It doesn’t depend on them. It is god that acts first, so that they can act, so that God can keep his promise. God doesn’t live it all on our shoulders. Revival is absolutely the hand of God. We cannot manufacture it as some have tried to do. That would be revivalism not genuine spirit inspired revival. The implication then is, if it is the hand of God then we need to pray. Only God can send the fire, and so we set our eyes on him. 3. The Healing of God And I think this is really what is at the heart of this passage. Many people gather in Jerusalem for this feast. The spiritual zeal of the people is on an all-time high, even to the shame of the priests and the levites. It is not the first time, a commentator I read noted, nor is it the last, when the religious enthusiasm of the laity has rendered the professional clergy irrelevant or put them to shame. But two significant things are happening here which is where I want to end. One, the Chronicler is recasting that magnificent promise of God at the dedication of the temple in 2 Chron. 7:14 here. Remember it?: if my people who are called by my name ghumble 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. All those concepts are here retold: They humble themselves –v.11 Prayer –v.18 Hezeziah prays for them Seek my face –v.19 seek God Turn from their wicked ways –v.6-8 Hear- v.20 God heard God healed –v.20, which has to do with forgiveness of sin. God is fulfilling that Solomonic promise. Secondly, if we zoom a little closer, something more interesting is going on. There is a problem that some of the assembly cannot join up in the worship because they are ritually unclean. We don’t know why explicitly, but they are not ritually fit to join in. v. 18For a majority of the people, zmany of them from Ephraim, Manasseh, Issachar, and Zebulun, had not cleansed themselves, yet they ate the Passover otherwise athan as prescribed. For Hezekiah had prayed for them, saying, “May the good LORD pardon everyone 19 bwho sets his heart to seek God, the LORD, the God of his fathers, even though not according to the sanctuary’s rules of cleanness.” Do you see that priority is given not to the rules of ritual worship, but to the contriteness of heart.
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