Consider Revival II: Hezekiah's Repentance

Welcome to the Whole Council Podcast. I'm John Snyder, and with me again is Steve Crampton. Steve has been a friend for over a decade.

How long, Steve? Eighteen and a half years. I think it's ten. Yeah. Yeah, this is our going joke in the church that I have no concept of time.

So it's just recently that I thought you've been there about nine years, but you've been there 18. Yeah. Yeah. So half.

That's pretty good. That's pretty good. Yeah. Okay. Well, Steve is a lawyer, and so Steve, kind of give us the one -line explanation of what you do.

Yeah. I defend religious liberties for a public interest law firm all over the country. When we were talking a couple of months back about doing a podcast together,

I left the topic up to you, and really I thought that it was going to be kind of scary for me, because,

I mean, Steve's got a brain the size of a planet, and, you know, you like, you know, constitutional law, and I thought, man, what if Steve throws this constitutional law question at me?

I don't even know what country I'm in, you know, and so I was actually really pleasantly surprised when you said, let's talk about God's reviving activity in the nations, particularly in the

Old Testament. And last week we talked about a really unusual account,

Nineveh, a pagan nation. Yeah. And how God used a very unlikely messenger, a very poor picture of God, really, but God used

Jonah to turn the nation back. So one question I have for you before we look at this week's topic is, why did you pick that?

You know, a year ago I probably wouldn't have picked this, John, but frankly, as I look around the world and the issues that we're involved in in our own nation, things are so bad on so many fronts,

I think we've gotten to a point in our own life and a place in time that revival is pretty much our only hope going forward.

And so revival has become much more of a serious topic and contemplation for me in my own life right now.

And when we talk about revival, there are so many various ideas. I think probably the simplest way to direct your reading in that would be to read people prior to 1820.

Some of the 1858 men are very good as well, but around 1820 there was a shift in emphasis.

The focus on revival, or the theology of revival, kind of divided into two streams. Charles Finney, where the idea is that we create a revival, a series of meetings, and we do

A, B, and C, and God owes us D. And then there was the older views, like Edwards and, you know,

George Whitefield and John Wesley. They held that revival was a sovereign gift of the

Lord, and yet we were responsible to seek, you know, to prepare our hearts while we pleaded.

One way we could think of it is, if revival can be described as the extraordinary presence of God among his people, producing extraordinary results, which is not a definition that we came up with,

I believe it's kind of an adaptation of Richard R. Roberts' definition. If we think of it that way, then think of this.

If you are longing for the visit of a person, you would prepare your home for that person.

So whether it's, you know, getting everything clean, or, you know, getting the kind of food they like, you know. So, you know, when you have kids that are off in college and they're coming home, you think, well, let's get their favorite food, or let's get their room ready.

So while we are not manipulating God, and God does not owe us a season of grace, it seems to me that there's a complete lack of integrity if we ask for revival, but we have made no preparation for God's nearness.

Exactly. Well, like we said, last week we looked at Jonah. This week we're going to look at the life of Hezekiah and the extraordinary work that God did in Israel during his reign, and we're going to take two weeks to do that.

Hezekiah's good start, and Hezekiah's enduring well. And I want to mention a book.

Now, this is an old copy of the book. It's called Revival, a People Saturated with God by Brian Edwards, published by Evangelical Press.

This is an old edition, so I don't know what it looks like right now, but I know it doesn't look like this. And it's a pretty good book.

It's a pretty warm -hearted treatment of those seasons of extraordinary work, where the

Lord draws near to His people. But the reason I mention it this week is that He uses the life and labors of Hezekiah as the paradigm through which to view revival.

The days prior to revival, the repentance, the reviving, you know, the glorious days following.

So if you can look this up, TJ will put a link to this in the show notes.

Well, Steve, get us started. What about this guy, Hezekiah, and the context that he grew up in? Yeah, one of the fascinating things,

I think, about Hezekiah is the life that he lived before becoming king.

He was the son of a wicked king, Ahaz, who reigned for about 16 years, and was at the end, as we were talking about a moment ago, of another period of lengthier time of real wickedness in the nation.

And Ahaz went to extremes, worshiping idols, he removed some of the treasure from the temple in order to pay off the king of Assyria, who was the major threat at the time, it didn't even help, even took the furnishings of the temple, cut them in pieces, and, quote, shut up the doors of the house of the

Lord. So closed off the means of access to God, or at least the physical means.

And one of the things that struck me, just in that background kind of context, John, is how the people suffer as a result of the wickedness of the leaders.

And in this particular case, we are told in Scripture that a hundred twenty thousand men of Judah were slain in one day by the king of Israel, who was also coming against them, and another two hundred thousand were taken captive.

So enormous harm to the people, and Scripture doesn't beat around the bushes.

2 Chronicles 28 6 tells us, "...because they had forsaken the Lord, the God of their fathers."

So the dire consequences, you know it's often said today, ideas have consequences.

Well, so idolatry and sin has grievous consequences for us, for our families, for our nation.

I think it's really important for us to consider, you know, just for a moment, what it would have been like to be living during that time.

You know, imagine, you know, the year prior to Hezekiah. Yeah. So you're under this ungodly government.

Perhaps you've grown up, and all you've known is an ungodly leadership in Judah, and you know, and the priests following, kind of following suit, and idolatry everywhere.

So God plus, and you know, when God's people drift for a long period, and God enters into that gracious judgment with them to get their attention, you know, to shake them.

If they don't respond, and that downward spiral continues, I think one of the things that we fall prey to is that we start to think that this is all that God offers.

You know, so in our language today, we would say, well, this is as good as Christianity gets. But is this

Christianity when we've drifted? Or is this a

Heavenly Father judging His children? You know, is this the abundant life? Well, no. This is the life under God's judgment, because we are unrepentant, and kind of stiff -necked.

So Israel, or Judah in this case, is experiencing decades of judgment, and you know, all the lies about God.

Does He not care? Is He not all that He's cracked up to be? And so, you know, it's at that time that God mercifully raises up from an ungodly lineage,

Hezekiah. Yeah. I mean, extraordinary, isn't it? Into a family of such wickedness, here comes

Hezekiah. And Scripture says, He did what was right in the eyes of the

Lord, according to all that David his father had done. And so you can compare Hezekiah to the likes of Josiah, and some of the other godly leaders before him, who followed after God, did what was right in God's eyes, but not according to David's way.

So there was something special, it seems, in God's grace in reaching out to Hezekiah, and giving him a special grace and spirit that was wholly set on following the

Lord. Really extraordinary to do what was right in the eyes of the Lord, and to make

Scripture his guide, rather than the traditions of men, or what he heard from his wicked father, any of those things.

He had a single -mindedness about him, which is really remarkable. Yeah, you know, quite a stewardship from the

Lord, and a faithful, you know, response to God. So if we take that phrase, doing what is right in the eyes of the

Lord, I remember reading through this in my own quiet time about two years ago, and thinking of that phrase, you know, so whose eyes am

I acting for? And I was thinking that, you know, it makes all the difference in the world.

A real simple illustration, if you tell your kids they have to clean up their room, you know, so you say to them, guys, you got to clean up your room before your friends come over.

And so they go in there, and about, you know, and it looks like a disaster zone. And they come back out in two minutes and say, it's done.

It's clean. Yeah, it's clean. And so you go in there, and you look, and you go, guys, guys, this isn't clean, you know.

It's clean in their eyes. Like, come on, dad, this is clean. Or, come on, mom, that's clean. But you clean very differently if you say, you know, the children clean differently if you say, okay,

I'm gonna come back in 30 minutes, and I'm going to inspect. I'm gonna look under the bed, and in the closet, and it's got to be cleaned by my idea of clean.

And so things are very different. When we are repenting and going about our religion for the eyes of men, there are some distinct evidences of that.

One, I think, is that we deal primarily with outward sins. So sins that other people notice.

So, yes, okay, so my family notices, you know, your spouse points out some things, you know, your parents or your friends point out things.

So you clean up your act only as far as men's eyes go. What a very different thing, then, when it's done for the eyes of God.

So one difference would be the extent. So suddenly, now, the internal sins are just as grievous to you as the externals.

Sins of omission and commission are equally grievous. Okay, I haven't done anything really bad, but I have left so much good undone.

But then also, I think, not just the extent of what you're concerned about changes, depending on whose eyes you're repenting for, but the motivation.

Love to God is a very different motivation than man -fearing, or really, love to self that says,

I want to be thought of as a certain kind of person, so I'm going to do these things. So, repenting for the eyes of the

Lord, quite a significant issue there. One of my favorite quotes is from Amy Carmichael, the missionary to India, and she had a prayer that she often prayed, and this is it.

She said, God, make me to be what I appear as a missionary.

Make me to stand to my conscience clear. So a real integrity there.

Yeah, and that whole idea, too, you talk about whose eyes. I think as well of the deceitfulness of our own hearts, and in our own eyes, unaided by Scripture and the

Spirit sort of instructing us, we do think we're clean, when in fact, we are far, far from God's standard.

And so, very sober to look at that kind of standard. Well, in Hezekiah's life, we see not only this attitude, but we see it in his action.

He took such bold and prompt action to turn from the wickedness that his father, and really that whole generation, had put in place in order to worship

God according to God's standards as set forth in the Scriptures. One of the first things he did, after his father had closed off the temple itself, is he opened the doors of the house of the

Lord and repaired them. He went then, and he's confessing the sins not only of his own heart, but of his nation, and of his people.

And so, turning back to the Lord in a way that really was inspirational to others, and just a dynamic that sort of changed the whole tenor of the nation at his day.

Yeah, he even leads the entire nation to really re -establish the covenant with the

Lord, you know, to seek the Lord together. I think that another wonderful passage that describes this is the parallel passage in 2nd

Kings. If you're not familiar with how 1st and 2nd Samuel, 1st and 2nd Kings, and 1st and 2nd

Chronicles coordinate, just a quick Bible lesson, 1st and 2nd Samuel are contained a parallel account in 1st

Chronicles. 1st and 2nd Kings are then contained in 2nd Chronicles. Same events viewed from a more of a priestly perspective, more of a religious perspective in Chronicles.

2nd Kings 18 verse 1 through 7 gives a description of Hezekiah coming to power.

But let me read just a few verses, verse 3 through 6. It says this, 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, the goddess, fertility goddess. He also broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made.

We'll come back to that in a minute. 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.

You mentioned that. For he, and here gives the description, he clung to the

Lord. He did not depart from following him, but he kept his commandments which the

Lord had commanded Moses. So let's just kind of stop and think about a couple of things here.

If we want to be the kind of people that God can trust with, you know, being an influence on others to lead in a time of repentance, a time of reforming and, you know, in pleading for revival, one of the things we need to do is we need to make sure that we are starting in the right place, starting with the right people, and not stopping until we, you know, we've included the people that God intends.

So those three things real quickly. Starting in the right place. So the Old Testament tells us that in the first month of the first year of Hezekiah.

So we can imagine if we were in Hezekiah's situation, a 25 year old suddenly in charge of a nation that is under the boot of the

Assyrian Empire. So there's all these, there's all these, you know, dangers and these perils all around on the outside, and then there's the moral corruption that's been taking place within.

Where do you start? And it is amazing that Hezekiah, growing up in a very ungodly home, says the only appropriate place to start is with God.

So we're going to repair our relationship with God before we worry about our relationship with any other nations.

And you know, how few do that. Not only politicians, how few pastors.

Not many years ago, I went to a small church in a neighboring town that was struggling to keep the doors open.

They had a fairly large complex, but only a handful of people. And so the the bank account was quickly draining.

And so they asked if I would speak to them about, you know, kind of how to rejuvenate a church.

Well, I warned them that I'm really not an expert on how to rejuvenate a church, but I did have some things

I thought should be said. One of the things I did was I asked them at the beginning of our meeting, what is it that you feel that really you absolutely need to continue to exist as a church?

And every answer I felt was a wrong answer. So we need young people, therefore we need a young pastor.

You know, things like that. It is rare to even find a minister who would come to a church and in a loving, humble way say, actually the first thing we're going to deal with is the fact that you have drifted far from the

Lord. So let's start with repentance. First we repair our relationship with Him, and then we can talk about how to be relevant to them.

You know, in a marriage, in a home, as an individual, where do we start? So getting our priorities straight.

It really, no matter what you say, no matter what theology you're quoting, where you start certainly shows a lot about the heart.

And I would just throw in, imagine like the modern ruler, surrounded by all these wise counselors, right?

You got your foreign policy guys, you got your interior, you know, domestic policy people.

Surely none of them would say, let's don't do anything with regard to these threats pressing upon us, just go to the

Lord and get right with Him. So it's so counter what the world would counsel here.

Another thing, priority. Starting in the right place, but also starting with the right person. Hezekiah does deal with himself, and then works outward.

One of the dangers we face as evangelicals, especially in a day where through social media, everybody can kind of have a platform to express their views.

It is easy to say good things, but for the good things to be coming through the lens of a life that has not applied those things.

So our best words, think about evangelicalism as a whole in the

West. The counsel of the churches, the advice, the message of the evangelical church is generally considered a weightless matter.

If someone says, did you hear what religious people are saying about this next event, you know, that we're facing?

It probably, nobody probably would just stop in their tracks and say, please tell me what the churches say. We have become a people with a weightless voice, in part because we haven't started with ourselves.

So nobody wants to be preached at by a group of people that aren't applying the things to themselves in the first place.

Right, no question. Another thing is, so we start right place, start with the right person, us, but then one of the wonderful things in this passage, which we'll discuss in a minute, is

Hezekiah doesn't stop with himself. He is required to do all, by the grace of God, in his position, and we all have different positions and different, you know, degrees of influence, to do all you can to bring other believers with you on the path of repentance.

Yeah, you know, we're engaged in this book study now, the book of Malachi, at the church, right?

And one of the things that we're really struck with in the last couple weeks is how, for better or for worse, we are all influencers.

So, you know, we have to ask ourselves, are we in fact influencing others for good or for evil?

And in Hezekiah's life, you have that phenomenal beginning where he dedicates himself to the

Lord, but he doesn't stop there, as you say. In fact, he inspired those around him.

So in 2 Chronicles 28, again, in verses 4 and 5, he consecrated the priests and cleansed the temple of all the idols and filthy things.

And one of the things that struck me in this context, John, is where were the priests during all the years up until now, right?

They're just sort of missing in action. There is no initiative on their part to take action here, but Hezekiah inspires them.

And then you have a passage there from about verses 12 to 19, where the priests seem to really throw themselves into the work.

They roll up the sleeves, so to speak, and get after it. And Scripture describes kind of a day -by -day, almost progress, and it takes them several days.

We don't have all the details of what they were carrying out, but the cleansing was an enormous work, apparently, and they put themselves to it quite faithfully and zealously, finally, with a little inspiration from Hezekiah.

So a wonderful encouragement to us, I think, to see how we really can make a difference,

Hezekiah certainly did, in inspiring those around us who may be a little lukewarm at the time, frankly.

And you had mentioned earlier, in passing with the second King's passage, that he removed the nehushten, which incidentally,

I like to look up some of the meanings of the words and the names of God and so forth, and I'm expecting like there's some weighty kind of description of what this word means.

Apparently, as you probably know, it means the bronze thing, right? Pretty much, what, about 800 years old by this time?

But it had become this focus of idolatry at that point. Extraordinary.

Yeah, it really is an unexpected detail, you know, so the Baal and the

Asherah, the kind of the flavor of the day for fertility idols, and all the foul practices that went along with that, you know, the sexual immorality as you're worshiping a fertility idol, being promised that you'll have more children, or you'll have more crops, you know, so you'll have all the growth in whatever area you want.

So you're removing all that, but also you've got to deal with this bronze thing.

What do you do with the bronze serpent? And it's been kept for eight centuries, and at least at this point, it is being abused.

So an object that once was, by the command of God, made, fashioned, put on a pole, looked to.

So here is something that, by God's Word, is an instrument. Eight centuries later, has slid from the category of instrument in response to God's Word to, you know, kind of a substitute for God.

A superstitious, you know, ornament that, well, God plus this bronze snake.

And we were talking about, you know, what applications for today? We don't have a bronze serpent. What do we have?

Well, there's a lot of things we could say. You know, sometimes we think of traditions. Well, we've always done it this way. And that can,

I think, a tradition can be a very good thing. And we don't want to be anti -tradition. What we want to be is very, very careful to constantly be adjusting our traditions to God.

But if a tradition ever comes between us and obedience, then it's a dangerous thing.

But I think that, let's think of those in the Reformed camp, because we would be in that camp.

And I think that there are dangers that are very hard to spot, because they're good things.

They are things commanded by God, and they are tools that He's put in our hands. The problem is not that we are using them earnestly.

The problem is that they are sliding from one category into the next in the way that we think of them, in the way that we, you know, promote them.

They've gone from tool to a substitute for God. And maybe folks would not agree with that, but let me give you some examples.

I go to many conferences where I am told that expository preaching is the only way to preach, and I think expository preaching certainly is the main diet.

Now, here's the problem. Expository preaching is wonderful. The problem comes when we say this to a church.

If you will change from thematic preaching to expository preaching, you'll fix the church.

But only God fixes His people. Let's take confessions and catechisms.

We have both, and these have been tools that have been neglected for a long time by Baptists. So we bring confessions and catechisms back, and they're so strange to us that, you know, it seems like the first thing you have to do is convince people these are not

Roman Catholic, okay? Okay, so these are just tools. Other people have used them, but they're good tools.

But when we hand them to the people, it's tempting to say, if you catechize your children, you'll fix your family.

But it doesn't work that way. Homeschooling. Yeah. A lot of my clients, very well -intended, undertake, with some faithfulness,

Jericho walks around, for instance, an abortion clinic or something. Nothing wrong with the idea, but when, as you say, it kind of slides into the category and becomes an idol, we have a problem.

Yeah, so, you know, we use the means of grace. I mean, media gratiae, the Latin translation of means of grace, even that.

There's a wonderful hymn that we often sing, the means of grace are in my hand, the blessing is at God's command.

The better, the more effective, the more biblical the tool, the more we are often tempted, just by our nature, to let that become a substitute for God.

I do think it's quite frightening to us to realize that none of our tools can fix us, not even the biblical ones.

Yeah. And to be completely dependent upon our God can be a frightening thing, unless we step back and remind ourself who

He is. Who He is, yeah. Yeah, amen. So in Hezekiah's case, those reforms that they undertook, radical though they were, and that's the other thing

I would just kind of footnote here, John, is oftentimes when we are breaking from sinful habits and ways, it isn't something you can do gradually.

It takes radical action, and Hezekiah was not afraid to do that, in spite of the fact that he risked alienating the people and even the priestly class, and so forth.

He boldly went forward, and the result was a wonderful breaking out of worship and a genuine return to God, the sacrifices, the atonement, the praise and worship that followed, and the response of the people.

2 Chronicles 29 34, But the priests were too few and could not flay all the burnt offerings that the people brought forward, willingly and joyfully.

So there was this remarkable time when, I would say,

God drew near, and the people experienced His presence and understood what it was to serve and to commune with a living

God. And they followed all of that in chapter 30 with a Passover celebration, and another just extraordinary kind of snippet here, where Hezekiah sent to all the

Jewish brothers and sisters in Israel and elsewhere, begging them to come back, and chapter 30 verse 9b, he graciously invites, quote,

For the Lord your God is gracious and merciful. If you return to Him, He will not continue to turn

His face from you. We hear that same invitation, I think, in maybe different words throughout

Scripture, Old Testament and New, and it's just such a wonderful reminder that however far we may have drifted from Him, God stands ready to welcome us back to Him.

And yet, you have so many then, as today, who responded, quote,

They laughed them to scorn and mocked them. But still, the remnant of God's true people who genuinely repented and humbled themselves and came.

And verse 26 of chapter 30, 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.

Wonderful picture. Yeah, and we see this principle acted out a number of times in the history of God's people.

Think of King Asa, when he led the nation to really seek the

Lord, and he had a good start, you know, and God gave them victory over an

Ethiopian army that was a million man strong, and the prophet Oded meets him on the road back home after this wonderful victory, and you know, in the prayer that Asa prays before and says,

There is no God like you that comes to the aid of the helpless of the weak, and God does.

Asa's already, like Hezekiah, initiated a number of reforms and national repentance, but on the way back, the prophet says, basically,

Don't stop here. It's a great start. You haven't reached a stopping place. And the whole nation presses forward in their repentance and in removing idolatry, and God draws near to them.

But it's not just Judah to the south that Asa rules that benefits, but you find that pockets of Jews from the north leave the idolatrous northern territory and come back south because God has returned.

And so here again, like you said, many in Israel to the north mock Judah's earnest return to the

Lord, but some of them come. And what a wonderful picture. One of the evidences that God has granted us broken hearts, has heard our cry, has seen our repentance, is not just that we feel that we have entered into, you know, a season of extraordinary joy and walking near to our

God, but that God begins to attract other people to Himself through our changed lives.

What a wonderful, you know, way that that plays itself out over and over through Christian history.

Well, next week we're going to look at an example of this, not from Scripture, but from Christian history.

Actually from Scotland in the year 1651. This is a little book that's printed by PNR Publishing called

Words to Winners of Souls. The title's a little, maybe, confusing because it's not a book on evangelism.

It really is a book to spiritual leaders. Of course, spiritual leaders within churches, pastors primarily, but really any spiritual leader could benefit from this book.

It is, of all the books I have, I think it is the greatest small book for exhorting you to really take stock of your spiritual condition, to turn your face again toward Him more fully, and to run the race, you know, more at a pace that's appropriate to your

God. Horatius Bernard wrote it in the early 1800s. In this book, he has a chapter that he mentions an occasion about 200 years before he was pastoring in 1651 in Scotland.

The pastors in Scotland got together at their National Assembly, and this year, they noted that the decline of spirituality throughout the land, and instead of preaching about the bad stuff that's happening out there, or even the compromise of our people, they said, we must start with us.

We have drifted. And so they had a series of sermons and a number of days of fasting and prayer, looking at the sins of the preachers themselves, and it ended up producing such an extraordinary period of repentance that they wrote up in 1651 a public confession of their sins as preachers.

What happened next was a wonderful outworking of God's grace that reached all the churches, and really a season of wonderful revival.

But we'll talk about that next week, and particularly we'll talk about some of the very specific sins they confessed.

Week after that, we'll finish with Hezekiah. How, after many years of extraordinary blessing following this revival, how strangely the

Lord allowed enemies to descend again to mock their hope in God, and then we'll see how

Hezekiah handled that. Because I think many churches that have, and families that have, tried to turn to a more careful approach, it is easy to be alarmed if years down the road you find yourself running into very difficult circumstances.

Yeah, I'm thinking, you know, the Proverbs assure us that when the wicked rule, the people groan, but when the righteous rule, basically all is well.

And so you tend to think God's gonna just keep you from any of those disastrous encounters, and yet Hezekiah shows us that's not always the case, is it?

Yeah, easy to read the revival accounts, and you know, and they kind of tend to stop at the high point. So the

Scripture is so perfectly balanced. We're gonna look at difficult times that came later in Hezekiah's life, his godly response, and how

God again took the field. So thanks for joining us. We'll be back next week looking at 1651 in Scotland.