How do identify spiritual idols in our lives. Clip from Revival II: Hezekiah’s Revival

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. 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, 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 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. 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.

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

He is. 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 risks 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.

Second Chronicles 2934, 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. Well, thank you for watching the clip. We hope that it was helpful for you. If you want to hear the full audio of that podcast, you can find it on any of your favorite podcast apps.