Till There Was no Remedy — Dan Biser

I had a beloved man, T .W. Hunt, that I often talk about. And he was in West Virginia back in the early 2000s, and we had a Marathon Pastors Conference, and I knew of him. I had not read his materials, The Mind of Christ, and those kind of things.

But he was there for that, and there wasn't a lot of us there. It was at a resort kind of setting, and saw him as he was walking down the hallway on the first night that we was there, after I heard him speak, and immediately you come across people, and you say, just like the woman did about Elisha, I perceive that this is a holy man of God that passes by this way.

And so I wanted to get a hold of him and talk and sit down. And I just happened to see him shuffling with him and his wife, shuffling down the hallway. They were on the same floor as us. And I told my wife, I said, oh, there he is.

I said, I'm going to go try to grab him to see if we can have a time to talk, time to fellowship. So he had already got in the room the time I got down there, and I knocked on the door, and he came to it, and I introduced myself, and I said, is there any way that you and I would have time to sit down and talk?

And he, in his humble, meek spirit, he said, he said, oh, brother, he said, they've got me jam-packed. He said, I just don't see how that could possibly happen. I said, okay, appreciate the time, and I made my effort, did what I was supposed to do, and so I walked away disappointed but trusting.

Next morning at breakfast, he comes up behind me and grabs my elbow, and he says, I've got lunch time. He says, you and your wife join me and my wife, and let's have our conversation. We had 20, 25 minutes, and I had an array of questions that I was firing at him just about as fast as I can.

You're going to note how fast I speak here in a moment as I get revved up. And just back and forth as quick as we could because that's all we had. And at the close of that conversation, he said, Dan, he said, I've got a prayer notebook back in Houston, he said, and I'm going to put you in it and pray for you.

And I think at that time we had four or five of the kids, and he said, I'm going to pray for your wife and your children. Well, two, three years went by. He was at one of the conventions with his daughter, and so I told my wife, I said, well, let's go up and reintroduce ourselves.

Just, you know, he meets thousands of people. There's no way he would remember me, you know, guy out of the hills of West Virginia. And so as I stuck my hand out to introduce myself, don't ever do this, by the way.

You do this to speakers, and it just is an awful thing. Do you remember me? Doug, can I use you? I know. I know the face, but I can't call the name. And as I started, because I was manners, I started to tell him who I was.

He called me by name, called my wife by name and the kids by name. And I know my mouth hit the floor. And I said, how in the world did you do that? He said, didn't I tell you the last conversation we had that I would put you in my prayer notebook and pray for you every day?

Almost as if I was questioning his integrity of saying you lied to me. But the reality, he did. He brought me before the Lord until his dying day. When you find a brother or sister that does that, latch on.

Because there is nothing greater in a moment like this or a moment at work or services tomorrow or whatever you face next week is to know that there is someone praying for you right now. And there is no greater comfort than you can give to someone, especially we're talking about revival.

Prevailing Prayer as the Foundation of Revival

And I learned a long time ago in my studies that the only reason revival comes is because somebody prevailed with God for what God wants to do, which is glorify Himself. Revival is sovereign. God picks and chooses and He speaks it and He says it and it comes at His bidding.

But He always, the pipes, He always uses the pipes to lift the incense up before Him to receive it so His will can be done. So when you understand that, then we come to a revival conference and my heart on prayer, it's to answer that question.

Where are we at? What's going on here? And so it becomes this hope, this opportunity is to say, Lord, are we going to prevail in prayer before, not before this that Brother Doug brought about this manifest working that's going to happen to the nations, but we have people dying today.

We have crisis today. We have emergencies happening all over the place. And so coming through Scripture and trying to put all this together about my place, your place, a conference like this, the church's place, even though I know God keeps all things in His hands and time and He makes no mistakes and His way is perfect, I know that it's not on His part, it's on our part that we fail, we falter.

The church is so frail right now. How'd we get there? How'd this happen? Well, it's a repeat of history. One of the earlier speakers had made reference to that. I'm a history major. And I learned the adage there is that we are doomed to repeat history if we don't learn from it.

“Till There Was No Remedy” in 2 Chronicles

So in the book of 2 Chronicles, it is time to learn the lesson of history because we're repeating it. And it comes with one of the most awful phrases in the Bible to me, and there are several of those that I want to bring to you this afternoon to close out this session.

I want to begin reading in 2 Chronicles 35 in verse 23, and I want to read right on down through chapter 36, verse 17. That's a larger passage of Scripture, and go with me as we do that. We was talking, one of the other speakers and I was talking about this.

I love to hear the rattling of the pages when you say take your Bibles and turn to. There's nothing wrong with licking your finger and making your iPad or your cell phone go to your Bible translation.

That's fine. But I love the rustling of the pages. Verse 23. Now the rest of the acts of Josiah and his goodness, according to that which was written in the law of the Lord and his deeds first and last, behold, they are written in the book of the kings of Israel and Judah.

Then the people of the land, they took Jehoiaz, the son of Josiah, made him king in his father's stead in Jerusalem. Jehoiaz was 23 years old when he began to reign, and he reigned three months in Jerusalem.

The king of Egypt put him down at Jerusalem, condemned the land to a hundred talents of silver and a talent of gold, and the king of Egypt made Eliakim, his brother, king over Judah and Jerusalem, turned his name to Jehoiakim, and Necho took Jehoiaz, his brother, and carried him into Egypt.

Now Jehoiakim was 25 years old when he began to reign, and he reigned for 11 years in Jerusalem. He did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord his God. Against him came up Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, bound him in fetters to carry him to Babylon.

Nebuchadnezzar also carried the vessels of the house of the Lord to Babylon, and they put them in his temple at Babylon. Now the rest of the acts of Jehoiakim and his abomination, which he did, and that which was found in him, behold, they are written in the book of the kings of Israel and Judah.

And Jehoiachin, his son, reigned in his stead. Now Jehoiachin was eight years old when he began to reign. He reigned three months and ten days in Jerusalem, and he did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord.

When the year was expired, king Nebuchadnezzar sent, brought him to Babylon with the goodly vessels of the house of the Lord, and made Zedekiah his brother king over Judah and Jerusalem. Jehoiachin was 21 years old when he began to reign, and he reigned 11 years in Jerusalem.

He did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord his God, humbled not himself before Jeremiah the prophet, speaking from the mouth of the Lord. And he also rebelled against king Nebuchadnezzar, who made him swear by God.

But he stiffened his neck, hardened his heart, returning unto the Lord God of Israel. And moreover of all the chief of the priests and the people, they transgressed very much after all the abominations of the heathen, and they polluted the house of the Lord which he had hallowed in Jerusalem.

The Lord God of their fathers sent to them by his messengers, rising up at times, sending because he had compassion on his people and on his dwelling place. But they mocked the messengers of God. They despised his words.

They misused his prophets, until the very wrath of the Lord arose against his people, and here's the phrase, till there was no remedy. Therefore he brought upon them the king and the Chaldeans, who slew their young men with the sword in the house of their sanctuary, and they had no compassion.

Mark that in verse 15, God had compassion, but in verse 17, God took away the compassion, and had no compassion upon the young men or the maidens, old men, or him that stooped for age. He gave them all into his hands.

Come back to that little phrase there to preach this afternoon about where we're at and what's going on. I am one that is in full agreement with what has been said. I wouldn't be up here. I wouldn't be as viminent as I am, and I am stern, dogmatic, as someone asked me the other day about that.

I am very dogmatic in my approach to the things of God, but I'm not like most that want to see the temporal. I hear a lot of that in the conversations in churches, in gatherings, in meetings, conventions that I go to.

What do you think of that ball game? How about this weather? What do you think about that Supreme Court nomination vote they had this afternoon? I hear all that, and I stay up to date with most of that that's going on.

But I'm always looking beyond. I have my eyes on something that is far more important than the here and the now, the temporal and the carnal. We have not taught that. As Christians and as the church, we're taught what?

Eternity. Everything about this life is eternity. We're given life to get ready for eternity. We're given hope to share with others to get them ready for eternity. But as we have already heard throughout these sessions, is that the one thing that has been literally drained from most people is hope.

Even in the church, they're not looking to the place that the hope comes from. They're looking to the right arm of flesh. Never has there been a greater cry of humanism in the church than today. We can do this.

We'll fix this. We'll make all this right. And I read that little phrase, till there was no remedy, and I say you are steamrolling to your own destruction because you are no better than Jehoiakim or Zedekiah.

Rejecting the Word of God

Remember Jehoiakim? Jehoiakim was the one that got that long letter from Jeremiah while he was in prison, and he was so arrogant, he was so sinful, so vile, he even mentions there the abomination that he did, is that when they were reading the parchment of Jeremiah the prophet, of repent, get right with God, and God will have mercy on you, it was the cold winter, and they had a hearth burning there, and he took his pocket knife, and he would cut the segments off as they finished, and throw it in the fire.

Throw the Bible away. And we've heard that statement about that, and if you've watched the news and heard about what Sister Sarah was talking, they're going in and taking their Bibles out of their homes, out of their churches, and out of their arms in China, in Myanmar.

And I left with that thought, and I was glad Doug did that, because I'm right there. What would I do if someone took my Bible? I've invested so much. I'm 50 years old, and I have invested so much time in the Word of God and about the things of God, and to have that stripped out of me would be like losing a limb.

And yet for most people that you come across in this day and time, in the church, God's people, this isn't about the heathen, this isn't about the lost world, this isn't about those that are following their Master and their Lord the Devil in the world.

This is about God's people in God's place. The Word of God is absent from the mind, it's absent from the homes, it's absent from the heart, and it's absent from the house of God. And so here we come with this, is that the Word of God being presented to people, and they have no appetite for it.

And they are just as daring and as arrogant as Jehoiakim was, is cutting it and throwing it into the fire and saying, that's the last thing that I want. 2006, 2008, I never have got the memo on what years we did this, but when Greg was down there in Atlanta, and I, and I believe Edgar, and some of the others, we was called and asked to be a part of the prayer meeting that was going on, I believe it was Tuesday nights at that point.

And so I had started writing devotions and prayer points for people to pray for the conference that was coming up, much like I did back in April for this one, what to bring before the Lord, when one was fasting and those kinds of things.

And I had people that was writing me and saying, hey, I'm praying with you, we're going to pray right through this thing. And one of those ladies who kept contact, because after the conference had stopped, I continued on with sending out prayer emails.

I call them, I've advanced in the social structure of the internet by saying, now I'm doing blogs. So I'm not just doing emails, it's now prayer blogs. So, but the idea of this is, is that I was sending it out to this lady, she was here in the United States, but she also had ties in Jerusalem.

And in the midst of that, I was trying to encourage them that they would maintain their walk with the Lord. This is one of the struggles in the church today, maintain your walk with the Lord. You know, the old hymn, when we walk with the Lord, no other way to be happy in Jesus than to trust and obey.

Well, where does it all fall apart? Where do they start hitting and missing? You've got a four-cylinder car, six-cylinder car, now all of a sudden, you're only half of the cylinders are hitting. What's going on?

You're losing power. Something's wrong. Spiritually, it's the same thing. And I'd encourage them, study to show yourself approved. Read the Bible. Stay in the Word. Digest. Feed yourself all the time.

Get devotions in that. And this lady, she took it to heart. She said, I've been in the church for almost 30 years. And she said, and I've never read my Bible through. And she read her Bible through. And then they did it in like six, seven months.

And then she turned to her husband and her and her husband were reading the Bible together and reading it through. But they had business or somehow contacts that was in Jerusalem. She went to the pastors that were in Jerusalem, Protestant pastors, Christian church.

And she started asking them. And I think that had come from something that I had shared about most pastors. When I talked to them, have you read the Bible through? And most pastors had never read the Bible through.

They get a Sunday, they message for Saturday night for Sunday, but they don't study it on a daily basis, which is another part of where we're going. But the idea of this was that she went to the assembly of God, the Baptist, the Methodist and whoever else was out there in Jerusalem.

And she asked about 18 pastors that were in Jerusalem where they was at in their walk with the Lord. She said zero of them have read their Bibles through. That didn't shock me. It doesn't surprise me.

It's just where we're at. Now, that was 10 years ago. Now, you're here to be a part of this because God birthed something within you. Not of yourself, not of sermon index, but of eternity, of God. Do you remember that day, that book, that sermon, that song, that scripture?

And it captivated your heart. It captivated your thought. And you said there's something more than just church. There is a divine power of His manifest presence that comes down. And nothing else satisfies than that.

Historical Accounts of Revival and the Manifest Presence of God

Here in these accounts, and I've shared with you, just to kind of whet your appetite, you know, just because I like to talk about them and share them and all that good stuff. But I asked Ralph Saterre.

I've asked Henry Blackaby. I asked Dennis Kinlaw. I said, man, you was up on cloud nine. You saw the hand of God. You saw the work of God. It just didn't happen one night and was over the next. It went on for weeks.

It went on for months. You heard the testimonies. God was glorified. Souls were saved. Churches were inflamed. Word of God went out. Missionaries were sent. And God's kingdom was advanced. Makes you a little happy, doesn't it?

Oh, you're not happy? I get happy. I get a little excited about that. I love hearing about it. I'll join Avon sharing about that. Oh, I love hearing about it. Tell me more. But I asked them. I said, you sat through some of the most divine moments where God literally saturated the atmosphere.

It was on. Doug, you said it. You said a, what'd you say, a chill up and down your legs as you was preaching there. You was getting so excited. I call it a surge of the Holy Spirit. Everybody's got their own terminology.

I understand that. But you know what the surge is? If you don't, Shane, you got an electrical outlet we can have just for a moment? And a surge. I'm an electrician. I've done that stuff. I know what it is to hit the wrong wire.

Man, I don't stand there and hold on and say, well, that feels different. But the Holy Spirit, you just know the surge when it's there. Thursday night I had. If you watch, I didn't want to close. I didn't want to stop.

I just wanted to weep. And I didn't grieve the Holy Spirit. I wasn't disobedient to the Holy Spirit, but I just was feeling the surge, appreciating it, thanking Him. He's here. But people have lost that.

They're missing that. They go through church. As old Vance Habner said, we start at 11 o 'clock sharp and we end at 12 o 'clock dull. Missed it. Miss God, or dictate to God. And now we are steamrolling to a time and a place in our nation with all that's going on, and we are now coming to 2 Chronicles 36 for the masses of people that are in the nation until there was no remedy.

Personal and Corporate Revival

You say, how can you say that in a revival conference when we say that revival is the answer? I believe that it's already been specified. We've heard about two kinds of revivals, personal revival that you have in your secret chamber with God on a daily basis, and corporate revival where God takes over the churches, every church.

And if they don't abide by it, He simply removes them. We've heard that almost in every session of someone mentioning the church of Ephesus over in Revelation 2 where he says, and if you don't repent, this is the church of America, listen, if you don't repent, I'm going to remove your candlestick.

And Robert Murray McShane that I referenced the other night in the 1800s went on a missionary trip when he left the pulpit and was going to Israel. He passed through Turkey and that region there, and he looked for the church of Ephesus that Paul wrote about and Paul wrote to, and Timothy was the bishop, and all those things that we know about its history, and he says the foundation of the church, he writes this in the Seven Churches of Asia, Robert Murray McShane's book, Seven Churches of Asia, and he says, and I looked for the church, and there was a cornfield growing on its foundation.

And he makes the statement, God removed their candlestick. A witness, a church. Look across America. In my region, West Virginia, I could take you to boarded up churches left and right. Plywood's over.

They've got chains on the doors. They're shut down. We hear about pastors leaving the ministry left and right. What's happening? He's removing candlesticks left and right. And the more that you remove the candlesticks, which are there for light, what proceeds into the room?

Darkness. And the darker it gets, the crazier it gets, the greater the cup of iniquities. Until there was no remedy. How did we get here? How did this happen in this? I want you to go, and I'm going to go quickly through this.

And again, this is something as you read through scriptures, and I believe that I'm going to hope that you know, but I'm never under the assumption that you know. I know that you tell me. So let me walk with me through this.

David, Solomon, and the Loss of Covenant Faithfulness

Go back over to the book of 1 Kings chapter 13, and we have the introduction here kind of out of sequence. You have David, who's king of Judah and Israel, and he did that which was right in the sight of the Lord.

And God says, I found me a man after my own heart, and the blessings of that. And he had a 40-year kingdom that was reigned there, and they worshiped the Lord God. And there was great advancement for God and for the kingdom and for the covenant and for the children of Israel.

And right after that comes in Solomon, his son, and where Brother Al preached to us there in 2 Chronicles 6 and 7. And he offers that great prayer in chapter 6, and they offer the sacrifices. And you note that in these phrases that I read of 2 Chronicles 36 about God's place, the temple.

Remember what happened after he made the prayer and they offered the sacrifices? The fire came down, and the glory of the Lord filled the temple. So much so that no one could stand in it until God finally pulled himself back up.

Every revival that you read about when God fills the house, they don't get up, they go down. He filled the place. And because he dwelled there, it was holy. He made it holy. And then Dan goes into 2 Chronicles 7 there after the Lord had filled the place and made it right.

But you go back over to 1 Kings 13 where I just referenced, and you have this young prophet because right after Solomon, Solomon drifts away from God. He's subverted by his wives, and he falls to the idols.

And 20 years of great kingdom work and great advancement for the Lord, and then the last half of that is what most of us understand in the Christian pilgrimage, is that it's not really the beginning, is it?

It's the end. Finish? Well, now again, we're watching people struggle left and right. Watching them fall in church and then fall back out. Or they come forward and they get saved, and as someone said it the other day, the exit is as big as the front door in the churches.

To be honest, I had a pastor brag to me in my own hometown. Brag to me. Hey, we had 21 baptized down at the river Sunday. And I'm telling you, when people tell me those kind of things anymore, and again, you may rebuke me at the end of this, and I understand that, but I understand what I've already been through this.

When people tell me how many people get saved in these crusades and all this stuff going on. Well, he saw all these people get saved, made decisions. In the back of my mind, I want to rejoice. I want to praise God.

Great. You know, the angels rejoice over one soul that's saved. We know all those things. But he said, we baptized 21. I said, and what'd you do, start a new Sunday school class, new study to get these new believers in orientation?

He said, no, I didn't have that problem. I said, what do you mean you don't have that problem? He said, well, half of them never even come back for the baptismal certificate next week. Why'd you baptize them?

They weren't ready. They're just like what Jesus rebuked in the Pharisees. You make them that much more a child of hell by making them religious. Careful with that. Stillborn children, Nicole. Not born of God, born a man.

And Satan claims them. It's the scariest thing in this world. And that's the reason that I said that the other night. One of the greatest things that we can ask and hear from each other, how did God save you?

Tell me your testimony. And again, most of us sitting here, as I would feel safe of saying, tears would automatically form in your eyes. Let me tell you about the day. Let me tell you about the moment when Jesus saved my soul.

Minister serving. How'd God get a hold of you? Just reached in there. You're saved. You're serving. You're growing. And all of a sudden, God just breaks and says, no, now you're going to follow me in ministry.

I love to hear those calls. I think first time. You know, most of these speakers, I don't know. Doug is under the radar, so there's no way to get a hold of him at all because he's the hardest one to get a hold of.

But most of these other speakers, they got social media or something, and so I tried to hook up with them. And for the last five months, I tried to call them every month, just wanted to pray with them.

And before we all got here together, that we had some kind of get together. And I remember Brian, that was one of the first things I asked him. I said, how did God call you? How'd you get that heart desire for revival?

And we had a wonderful conversation that day, and I just sit there with a smile on my face just taking it all in. You just, God wants to do this. He's inviting us to be a part of it. But when men lose sight of who God is, and they lose sight of what God has instilled for his purposes, they get to this point of destruction and death, which is all upon our nation right now.

So here you got Solomon, falls away. Sin is allowed to enter in. God tells him, because of your sins, I'm going to strip the kingdom from you, and I'm going to give it to someone else. I'm going to give Rehoboam one tribe, but the rest of them I'm giving to Jeroboam the son of Nebat.

And what's he do? He makes two false idols, sets them up in Dan and Beersheba, and says, here's your gods that brought you out of Egypt, Israel. You don't need to go to Jerusalem where the glory came down.

You don't need to be in Jerusalem where God abides. Just worship these idols, and they did. So in 1 Kings 13, God sends a young prophet. No name. Don't you love those prophets with no names? He comes into the town.

He immediately comes to the altar of Jeroboam, and he speaks against him and says, Thus saith the Lord. How do you know the prophet? He always says, Thus saith the Lord. And he spoke against the altar, and he says, And there shall come a king out of Judah named Josiah.

This is 950 B .C. I read 2 Chronicles 35 and 36 to you. 600 B .C. 350 years went by before that prophecy was fulfilled, but it was fulfilled. God keeps His word, doesn't He? You want a good word study?

The I wills of God in the Bible. When God says, I will, there's 2 ,000 of them in there. You can go to my blog and find them. And for $9 .95, I'll sell them to you. One of the greatest promises in the Bible, when God says, I will, that's an absolute.

You know what an absolute is? It's a sure thing. And God has said it from Genesis to Revelation 2 ,000 times. I will do this. And in revival, we learn the I wills. You remember Duncan Campbell's revival in the Hebrides, and he's listening to that account.

He arrived on the island. He said the church was full. The people are waiting for you. He got up. He preached two hours. It was 11 o 'clock p .m. Nothing happened. Benediction. Let's go home. Try this again tomorrow.

He's walking down the aisle. And the deacon who had been in the prayer meeting on Friday night where the barn was closed, and the spirit blew through this. Some of you are looking at me funny. You don't know this account.

All right, I'll share that one tonight. And Duncan Campbell's walking down. The deacon grabs him and stops him and says, Lord, did you not say I will pour water on him that is thirsty? I will pour water.

And what did God do? You're right. I did say that. And I am the God who keeps His word. I cannot lie. I'll do it. And Duncan Campbell says right there, God came down. Revival. When God comes down. Because God said, I will.

God's people come to Him, He will. When God's people go away from Him, He also will. There are 30 of these in the Bible. Reciprocal responses between God and man. We always focus on the positive. I don't care who it is, where I go.

It's always the positive. I guess Norman Vincent Peale must be happy. Positive thinking. It's in the church. Lord, if I abide in you, you abide in me. Lord, if I draw near to you, you'll draw near to me.

It's always the positive things. Out of 30 of them, 2 thirds of those are negative. Horrible. If you forget me, I'll forget you. You turn away from me, I'll turn away from you. You neglect me, you call, I call to you and you won't answer.

When you call to me, I won't answer. We only know the lopsidedness of the scriptures in knowing who God is. But when you put it all together, this is the same God of yesterday, today, and forever, isn't it?

He ain't changed. And unfortunately, neither are we. So that young prophet cursed the altar of Jeroboam. And you know what happened with the kings of Israel. And every one of them have that epitaph that follows them.

And they did evil in the sight of the Lord. Every one of them. But now the children of Judah, they bounced around. He did good, then did bad. Well, then we had a good one. Josiah, the close here that I read about in his death there, he did that which was right in the sight of the Lord, according to David, his father.

He did it right. But how did that happen? If you go back a couple chapters there, leading up to this before Josiah, we had a great falling away. In chapter 26, Uzzah's king. And again, you read the beginning of this.

And Uzzah did that which was right in the sight of the Lord, according to his father, his father. Now, again, the standards of Christianity and the standards of holiness. You have that supreme desire, what I'm talking about when revival comes.

Holiness, Compromise, and the Need for Finishing Well

Holiness is mandate. It is restored. It is returned. Not this carnal hit and miss kind of stuff that we see going on today. It's the right relationship there. That's the way David was. He was a man after God's own heart.

He was perfect in the sight of the Lord. We read the attributes that are described there. But we come to Uzzah. He wasn't like David. He was like the one who had taught him. Well, what do you do when you get someone who's your teacher, your mentor, and they're not right?

Everybody's making comments about my dialect. I'm sorry. That's the way my father taught me. I talk with a slang, a draw, whatever it is that you all hear. But that's what I was taught. That's what I learned.

My dad had a crippling disease when he was young, and so they ended up that they had to take part of his knee on his left leg off, and so he's got about an inch, an inch and a half difference in his leg length.

So when he walks, he wears out one shoe faster than the other. Well, growing up, and again, manners, I never walked with my dad. I walked behind my dad. Well, what did I do? There's nothing wrong with my legs that I know of, but I would walk behind him, and I started wearing shoes out because I was walking as he was walking.

Now, again, I'm looking at a son to a father, man to man, and we have a lot of that, and we've heard that today, and I respect Leonard Ravenhill, and I know Doug would agree with this, but Leonard Ravenhill would never point us to himself, as he said.

Leonard Ravenhill would point us to eternity, to Christ. Every revivalist does. And so, again, Uzzah wasn't meeting the standard. He was compromising with it, and we read over there in verse 16, he got arrogant, went into the temple.

The Lord was going to offer sacrifice. Got mad when the priest tried to stop him, and God smote him right there in the middle of the temple with leprosy from the top of his head to the sole of his feet.

And you read the verse where it begins the downward spiral there in verse 21, and he was cut off from the house of the Lord. He couldn't go. He had to go out to the city, up into his vineyards, gardening that he was doing, and he wasn't allowed to come back ever.

Cut off. And then he has his son, Jotham, and we read that about him in verse 2. He did right in the sight of the Lord as his father. Well, we know what Uzzah did, and at the end of verse 2 there, you read that, that the people did yet more corruptly because he wouldn't go to church.

Scared of what happened to his dad. Psychoanalysis, all as you want. Doesn't change anything. Uzzah got cut off from the house of the Lord. Jotham wouldn't come to the house of the Lord. And then when you get to the next chapter, you got old Ahaz who did evil in the sight of the Lord, and he shut the doors of the church.

And then God raised up Hezekiah. In a brief revival, a brief change. Three kings that fell, and then now Hezekiah. But what about Hezekiah? He gets to the end of his life. He's got to boil. Not to scare any of you that got to boil right now.