WEBVTT 00:00.031 --> 00:03.157 [SPEAKER_00]: I have the honor of serving as one of the elders here at first free. 00:03.798 --> 00:10.110 [SPEAKER_00]: I'd like to continue reading in second chronicles chapter 29, which we started last week. 00:10.290 --> 00:19.828 [SPEAKER_00]: This is King Hezekiah of Judah, and this is him talking after summoning the priests and Levites to the neglected temple in Jerusalem. 00:21.732 --> 00:24.581 [SPEAKER_00]: He said to them, listen to me, you leave it. 00:25.363 --> 00:30.679 [SPEAKER_00]: Purify yourselves and purify the temple of the Lord, the God of your ancestors. 00:30.811 --> 00:33.554 [SPEAKER_00]: Remove all the defiled things from the sanctuary. 00:34.515 --> 00:39.722 [SPEAKER_00]: Our ancestors were unfaithful and did what was evil in the sight of the Lord our God. 00:40.643 --> 00:43.066 [SPEAKER_00]: They abandoned the Lord and his dwelling place. 00:43.767 --> 00:45.168 [SPEAKER_00]: They turned their backs on Him. 00:45.208 --> 00:50.615 [SPEAKER_00]: They also shut the doors to the temple's entry room and they snuffed out the lamps. 00:51.596 --> 00:57.443 [SPEAKER_00]: They stopped burning incense and presenting bird offerings at the sanctuary of the God of Israel. 00:58.334 --> 01:02.181 [SPEAKER_00]: That is why the Lord's anger has fallen upon Judah and Jerusalem. 01:02.902 --> 01:08.712 [SPEAKER_00]: He has made them an object of dread, horror, and ridicule, as you can see with your own eyes. 01:10.014 --> 01:15.704 [SPEAKER_00]: Because of this, our fathers have been killed in battle, and our sons and daughters and wives have been captured. 01:15.724 --> 01:23.498 [SPEAKER_00]: But now I will make a covenant with the Lord of the God of Israel, so that his fierce anger will turn away from us. 01:24.001 --> 01:27.125 [SPEAKER_00]: My sons do not neglect your duties any longer. 01:27.165 --> 01:35.635 [SPEAKER_00]: The Lord has chosen you to stand in His presence, to minister to Him, and to lead the people in worship, and present offerings to Him. 01:37.337 --> 01:37.797 [SPEAKER_00]: Let us pray. 01:42.823 --> 01:45.406 [SPEAKER_00]: Heavenly Father, thank you for your word. 01:45.446 --> 01:50.953 [SPEAKER_00]: So relevant for us, even as we read this almost 3000 years later, 01:52.115 --> 02:03.792 [SPEAKER_00]: Lord, we have no stone temple to restore, no physical sanctuary to rebuild, but Lord, our bodies, our temples dedicated to you, and we have neglected our worship of you. 02:04.613 --> 02:10.422 [SPEAKER_00]: We have too often turned our backs on you, abandoned you, been unfaithful to you. 02:10.462 --> 02:20.637 [SPEAKER_00]: We have worshiped false idols of wealth, comfort, popularity, and safety. 02:21.747 --> 02:38.524 [SPEAKER_00]: Lord, I pray that we as a church dedicate ourselves a new, today, to serving you and you only, help show us areas in our life where we are not obeying you and may your Holy Spirit correct and guide us in new pathlessness. 02:39.605 --> 02:50.877 [SPEAKER_00]: May we be faithful in those roles you have assigned and planned for us and may our worship this morning and in every area of our lives be pleasing to you in Jesus' name, amen. 02:52.730 --> 02:53.193 [SPEAKER_01]: Amen. 02:53.234 --> 02:53.959 [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you, Brian. 02:54.584 --> 02:57.002 [SPEAKER_01]: Our newest elder on the Elder Board. 02:58.214 --> 03:12.649 [SPEAKER_01]: We are in second chronicles and I want you to imagine as we dive into this passage and the verses that Brian just read for us that you are a kid growing up in the nation of Judah. 03:12.969 --> 03:17.614 [SPEAKER_01]: That's the southern part of what used to be the United Kingdom of Israel now divided. 03:17.634 --> 03:22.939 [SPEAKER_01]: Imagine that you are a kid growing up in the era of King A.H.S. 03:22.919 --> 03:27.268 [SPEAKER_01]: Just to try to feel and experience what they were feeling at this time. 03:27.789 --> 03:35.024 [SPEAKER_01]: For your entire life, normal has been a landscape of spiritual and national decay. 03:35.044 --> 03:38.852 [SPEAKER_01]: You walk past the great temple on a regular basis. 03:39.558 --> 03:42.625 [SPEAKER_01]: used to be a wonderful, beautiful place. 03:42.765 --> 03:46.453 [SPEAKER_01]: So you've heard back in the day back when your grandparents were around. 03:46.493 --> 03:51.845 [SPEAKER_01]: But now, all you've ever seen is the thing just kind of worn down and people don't use it regularly. 03:51.885 --> 03:58.579 [SPEAKER_01]: And actually now, all the gold and the precious metals have been stripped away and though doors are boarded up. 03:58.559 --> 04:05.435 [SPEAKER_01]: This is the place where God's glory dwelled and God had this connection with the people of your nation. 04:05.455 --> 04:11.269 [SPEAKER_01]: And you know the stories of the past, the great kings of old and the miracles that God worked. 04:11.485 --> 04:14.109 [SPEAKER_01]: but that hasn't happened for a very long time. 04:14.610 --> 04:17.375 [SPEAKER_01]: The temple's just gathering dust and cobwebs now. 04:17.415 --> 04:25.348 [SPEAKER_01]: It's a silent monument to a God who has in a sense been evicted from his own house with the people, at least as far as they are concerned. 04:25.669 --> 04:32.540 [SPEAKER_01]: And then on every street corner, and every high hill in the land, there are now these pagan shrines and altars. 04:33.662 --> 04:35.485 [SPEAKER_01]: Your parents, 04:35.633 --> 04:43.399 [SPEAKER_01]: have been worshiping the gods of the nations that continuously raid and pillage your land. 04:44.425 --> 04:56.322 [SPEAKER_01]: And this is the culture and the environment that you have grown up with to be a child in Judah under King A has was to witness an entire society filled with compromise and with failure. 04:57.043 --> 05:04.494 [SPEAKER_01]: And you would have seen your king, the man who was supposed to be the leader, the shepherd of the people who would lead them after God and point them to God. 05:04.534 --> 05:12.846 [SPEAKER_01]: You've seen that person strip all the valuables away from the temple and give it away to four and leaders who would then just come and attack anyway. 05:14.142 --> 05:26.438 [SPEAKER_01]: Essentially, the worship of the people of Judah was kind of for sale, and they were willing to follow after any old God or pagan ritual that came along that they thought might help them. 05:26.758 --> 05:34.969 [SPEAKER_01]: So as a result of this, you growing up in this culture would have this deep sense that something was wrong. 05:35.067 --> 05:38.191 [SPEAKER_01]: with where you were, with your nation, with your people. 05:38.231 --> 05:47.582 [SPEAKER_01]: There's this feeling of inadequacy that hangs over the city because in that ancient world, everything was tied to the God's that you worship and how good things were going for you was to put in the house strong. 05:47.843 --> 05:56.113 [SPEAKER_01]: Your God was and supposedly you had this God that your ancestors followed faithfully who did amazing things, but that hasn't happened in a long time. 05:56.532 --> 06:04.704 [SPEAKER_01]: And so your parents and your government has been chasing after the gods of other nations, thinking, oh, maybe that will help us be more successful. 06:04.905 --> 06:07.689 [SPEAKER_01]: Maybe that will help us be more victorious, but it hasn't worked out. 06:08.751 --> 06:12.096 [SPEAKER_01]: And the country just keeps slipping further and further into decline. 06:13.257 --> 06:20.869 [SPEAKER_01]: You could say that your parents and your country traded their birthright for a pot of stew. 06:21.322 --> 06:25.879 [SPEAKER_01]: They gave up the good that they had for something that was of no lasting value at all. 06:25.899 --> 06:27.505 [SPEAKER_01]: And this wasn't just a streak of bad luck. 06:27.525 --> 06:31.399 [SPEAKER_01]: This was a legacy of disgrace. 06:32.020 --> 06:33.522 [SPEAKER_01]: It's the world has a chia new. 06:33.562 --> 06:41.014 [SPEAKER_01]: The Bible says that while his grandfather was a good king, the people of the country continued to practice idolatry and paganism. 06:41.054 --> 06:52.932 [SPEAKER_01]: And then when his son King A has came to power, he made things so much worse, removed all hints of worship of the true God and followed after all of these other gods of the people, the nations around them. 06:52.972 --> 06:58.821 [SPEAKER_01]: This is the world that has a chia and all of the young people of that day grew up in. 06:58.801 --> 07:11.456 [SPEAKER_01]: And you have to think about it from has a chia's perspective, the shame that he must have felt knowing that his dad brought the nation to this its lowest points. 07:11.476 --> 07:20.286 [SPEAKER_01]: The first thing you think of when you read this chapter, and especially the verses that Brian just shared with us, may not be shame, but it's there. 07:20.654 --> 07:23.177 [SPEAKER_01]: There's a lot of shame in these verses. 07:23.197 --> 07:27.283 [SPEAKER_01]: In fact, let's look at it again and try to point out the shameful things that we see there. 07:27.564 --> 07:31.809 [SPEAKER_01]: Starting in verse five, he said to them, listen to me, leave I, it's purify yourselves. 07:32.610 --> 07:38.759 [SPEAKER_01]: And purify the temple of the Lord, the God of your ancestors, remove all the defiled things from the sanctuary. 07:39.520 --> 07:42.524 [SPEAKER_01]: They defiled things and they put defiled things in there. 07:42.564 --> 07:50.475 [SPEAKER_01]: Could have been elements of idol worship and paganism on top of the true instruments of worship that had been smashed to pieces by King A.H. 07:50.692 --> 07:56.852 [SPEAKER_01]: He says our ancestors were unfaithful, and they did what is evil in the sight of the Lord our God. 07:56.872 --> 08:01.246 [SPEAKER_01]: They abandoned the Lord and His dwelling place, and they turned their backs on Him. 08:01.326 --> 08:03.874 [SPEAKER_01]: How many different ways can you say they messed up? 08:04.580 --> 08:07.124 [SPEAKER_01]: There's a lot of shame for these people in this country. 08:07.825 --> 08:12.653 [SPEAKER_01]: They also shut the doors to the Temple's Entrum, and they snuffed out the lamps. 08:12.954 --> 08:15.738 [SPEAKER_01]: They stopped burning incense like they were supposed to do. 08:15.938 --> 08:18.723 [SPEAKER_01]: They stopped presenting burnt offerings like they were supposed to do. 08:19.023 --> 08:28.238 [SPEAKER_01]: At the sanctuary of the God of Israel, that is why the Lord's anger has fallen upon Judah and Jerusalem. 08:28.319 --> 08:31.043 [SPEAKER_01]: He has made them an object of dread. 08:32.423 --> 08:35.947 [SPEAKER_01]: horror and ridicule. 08:37.349 --> 08:40.412 [SPEAKER_01]: Can you feel the shame that he feels? 08:41.714 --> 08:45.138 [SPEAKER_01]: He goes on as you can see with your own eyes, in other words, look around you. 08:45.578 --> 08:57.672 [SPEAKER_01]: The evidence of this shame, this dishonor, this ridicule, it's all around you because of this, our fathers have been killed in battle, and our sons and daughters and wives have been captured. 08:58.900 --> 09:02.428 [SPEAKER_01]: As far as we know, this is King Hezekiah's first official speech to the people as King. 09:02.969 --> 09:04.954 [SPEAKER_01]: Good job. 09:04.974 --> 09:10.286 [SPEAKER_01]: First thing he does is go out there, pull all the leaders together and say, our forefathers screwed up. 09:10.407 --> 09:12.271 [SPEAKER_01]: Our fathers messed up. 09:12.371 --> 09:14.055 [SPEAKER_01]: Our ancestors were unfaithful. 09:14.276 --> 09:16.200 [SPEAKER_01]: And we live in shame. 09:16.687 --> 09:17.328 [SPEAKER_01]: because of it. 09:17.988 --> 09:25.415 [SPEAKER_01]: Can you kind of feel the shame that they must have felt because of this legacy of sin and rebellion? 09:25.695 --> 09:27.256 [SPEAKER_01]: The temple was all closed up. 09:27.556 --> 09:32.781 [SPEAKER_01]: The elements of worship were stripped away, given away, smashed to pieces, left all around. 09:32.821 --> 09:35.603 [SPEAKER_01]: The temple was basically a garbage minute at this point. 09:35.824 --> 09:46.693 [SPEAKER_01]: The practice of worshiping God had been essentially done away with it was systematically removed and replaced with idle worship and has a kind of nose 09:46.673 --> 09:48.557 [SPEAKER_01]: and on these people. 09:49.319 --> 09:52.265 [SPEAKER_01]: And he knows that this is what God warned them about through the prophets. 09:53.087 --> 09:57.396 [SPEAKER_01]: When he said, look, if you follow me and obey me, you're gonna prosper and do well in the land. 09:57.596 --> 10:00.362 [SPEAKER_01]: And if you disobey me, I'm gonna remove my hand of blessing from you. 10:00.543 --> 10:06.235 [SPEAKER_01]: And you're gonna experience all the terrible things that are gonna make you wish you lived differently. 10:07.379 --> 10:12.064 [SPEAKER_01]: So he has a guy who knows they're living in that second possibility right now. 10:12.104 --> 10:16.529 [SPEAKER_01]: And not only do they not have God's blessing, but he says his anger has fallen upon us. 10:17.170 --> 10:19.272 [SPEAKER_01]: God's wrath is on us. 10:20.813 --> 10:26.500 [SPEAKER_01]: But the new King's response to all of this is not a victim mentality. 10:27.621 --> 10:33.387 [SPEAKER_01]: His response to all of this is not to say, 10:34.447 --> 10:36.910 [SPEAKER_01]: He has a completely different response. 10:37.611 --> 10:42.037 [SPEAKER_01]: He knows that this is deserved, but he knows they can chart a new course. 10:42.077 --> 10:48.185 [SPEAKER_01]: It's easy to read all these verses and miss the significance of their feelings and their emotions. 10:49.026 --> 10:51.109 [SPEAKER_01]: But has a Kaya, he acknowledges it here. 10:51.790 --> 10:56.917 [SPEAKER_01]: He knows that a large amount of their people, or a portion of their population, has been killed in battle. 10:56.937 --> 11:01.703 [SPEAKER_01]: A lot of their dads, the guys who are standing for hundreds of people standing in front of their dads are dead. 11:02.358 --> 11:07.322 [SPEAKER_01]: because of battle because of the sin of his father and of their people. 11:08.243 --> 11:11.626 [SPEAKER_01]: He knows that a lot of their wives and their kids have been captured and they're gone away. 11:11.846 --> 11:13.027 [SPEAKER_01]: These are people who are hurting. 11:13.287 --> 11:14.348 [SPEAKER_01]: They are broken, they are mourning. 11:14.508 --> 11:31.943 [SPEAKER_01]: Maybe some of them are callous at this point because it's all they knew it's what they've grown up with and has a chia points this out and acknowledges it to them because he knows that their hearts are heavy and their emotions are just running dry right now and this is just the world that they're in there 11:33.239 --> 11:34.921 [SPEAKER_01]: that lives over all of these people. 11:34.981 --> 11:45.372 [SPEAKER_01]: Now those of us who have grown up in an Americanized Western culture, we don't understand the kind of corporate shame in the same way that they would have in ancient Israel. 11:45.412 --> 11:46.513 [SPEAKER_01]: Some cultures today do. 11:46.834 --> 11:51.919 [SPEAKER_01]: We experience personal shame very deeply, and it drives us to do some very destructive things. 11:52.120 --> 12:02.571 [SPEAKER_01]: But we don't necessarily have the same understanding of the collective group shame that they would have had back then in this society, 12:02.551 --> 12:16.793 [SPEAKER_01]: Even the shame that was brought about by the buildings and the structures, this was a huge source of a national pride and heritage that they would have this iconic building, the temple, but it's now in ruins. 12:17.013 --> 12:22.342 [SPEAKER_01]: The writers of the Old Testament talk about how shameful it was when the walls of Jerusalem were torn down. 12:22.782 --> 12:25.567 [SPEAKER_01]: And the fact that there'd be a city without walls, it was like it was naked. 12:26.508 --> 12:27.850 [SPEAKER_01]: It was a shameful thing. 12:28.083 --> 12:35.355 [SPEAKER_01]: And then whenever the temple was in ruins either torn down or just needing to be rebuilt how it was such a shameful thing and they felt it very, very deeply. 12:35.595 --> 12:46.232 [SPEAKER_01]: And the shame of having parents who had embraced paganism, the shame of having parents who sacrificed some of their siblings in fires to these false gods. 12:47.654 --> 12:50.158 [SPEAKER_01]: Unbelievably shameful thing, a heavy burden. 12:51.269 --> 12:52.813 [SPEAKER_01]: for this new generation. 12:52.933 --> 13:01.574 [SPEAKER_01]: The shame of being part of a nation that once flourished because it embraced and worshiped the true God, but it's now in shambles. 13:03.398 --> 13:05.363 [SPEAKER_01]: I came across a story. 13:05.512 --> 13:13.444 [SPEAKER_01]: this week that helped me to maybe understand a little bit of that feeling of shame and the multiple levels of shame they must have been going through. 13:13.484 --> 13:18.152 [SPEAKER_01]: It's a familiar hero that you may know of his name was Thomas. 13:18.732 --> 13:19.794 [SPEAKER_01]: His friends called him Ned. 13:20.455 --> 13:28.768 [SPEAKER_01]: His father was a noble men in Ireland who abandoned his wife to go live with the illegitimate daughter of a servant woman. 13:28.748 --> 13:30.551 [SPEAKER_01]: And they had Thomas. 13:30.591 --> 13:42.047 [SPEAKER_01]: Now, at an early age, Thomas learned the truth about his identity, but unfortunately, so did all of the kids around, and so they mocked him and ridiculed him because of his low status, his illegitimacy, his parents. 13:42.127 --> 13:44.371 [SPEAKER_01]: They weren't married, and it was a very big deal. 13:44.471 --> 13:48.196 [SPEAKER_01]: He felt like he was a stain on society and on his family. 13:48.256 --> 13:52.863 [SPEAKER_01]: He felt like he was a disgrace and not worth anything and people mocked him. 13:53.404 --> 13:55.667 [SPEAKER_01]: He ended up joining the British Army. 13:55.647 --> 14:14.162 [SPEAKER_01]: And he served with great distinction, did very well there, but ultimately he was captured, and he was tortured, and he was abused in ways that caused great trauma for him, and ended up leading to a substantial amount of more personal shame that he carried with him for the rest of his life and wrote about it impacted him horribly. 14:14.783 --> 14:17.227 [SPEAKER_01]: He ended up trying to hide his identity then. 14:17.287 --> 14:20.151 [SPEAKER_01]: He changed his name to John Ross and he joined the Air Force. 14:20.171 --> 14:23.897 [SPEAKER_01]: And he managed to get away with that for a little while until people found out who he was. 14:24.298 --> 14:29.246 [SPEAKER_01]: And then he had to quit and he was disgraced again and he felt the shame of it. 14:29.286 --> 14:32.952 [SPEAKER_01]: So he changed his name again and he joined the tank corps and he tried to do that for a while. 14:32.992 --> 14:34.634 [SPEAKER_01]: And he served with distinction. 14:34.674 --> 14:38.901 [SPEAKER_01]: He was successful in the military, but he could never get past his feeling of shame. 14:39.623 --> 14:42.366 [SPEAKER_01]: He was fascinated by the middle ages, though. 14:42.426 --> 14:45.670 [SPEAKER_01]: He loved the idea of the knights who would fight with honor. 14:45.770 --> 14:48.673 [SPEAKER_01]: Honor was a big deal to him, because he didn't feel like he had. 14:49.474 --> 14:52.157 [SPEAKER_01]: And so he was fascinated that they would fight with honor and for honor. 14:52.197 --> 15:01.868 [SPEAKER_01]: But then, because of his distinguished service in the military when the king tried to give him a knighthood, he refused because of shame. 15:02.573 --> 15:05.459 [SPEAKER_01]: But it wasn't just personal shame. 15:06.160 --> 15:10.749 [SPEAKER_01]: It wasn't just family history shame or the shame of what he had experienced, the abuse he endured. 15:10.990 --> 15:22.613 [SPEAKER_01]: It was also a national shame because you see, when he served in the military, there were times where he represented his government and he fought for people and he made certain claims because he was told this by his leaders and then his leaders went back on it. 15:22.653 --> 15:24.497 [SPEAKER_01]: And so he was now ashamed of his country. 15:25.625 --> 15:31.051 [SPEAKER_01]: He had multiple levels of shame that he experienced and that lived with him for the rest of his life. 15:31.091 --> 15:35.656 [SPEAKER_01]: And you probably have heard of this person before we know him as the Lawrence of Arabia. 15:36.637 --> 15:53.235 [SPEAKER_01]: But he lived within tense, personal shame from family history, from abuse and trauma that he endured and from a nation that was not living up to its promises and leaders that went back on their word. 15:54.143 --> 16:03.618 [SPEAKER_01]: And that helped me to understand a little bit of maybe what has a chia and all of these people were experiencing these multiple levels of shame that weighed heavy on them. 16:03.859 --> 16:04.940 [SPEAKER_01]: And now don't get me wrong. 16:05.241 --> 16:07.044 [SPEAKER_01]: Shame is not always a bad thing. 16:07.745 --> 16:09.107 [SPEAKER_01]: Shame can actually be a good thing. 16:09.167 --> 16:19.003 [SPEAKER_01]: Paul actually says in 2nd, Thessalonians, take note of those who refuse to obey what we say in this letter, stay away from them so they will be ashamed. 16:19.473 --> 16:21.758 [SPEAKER_01]: they actually wants to use shame as a positive tool. 16:21.798 --> 16:27.609 [SPEAKER_01]: But why he says don't think of them as enemies, but warn them as you would have brother or sister. 16:27.629 --> 16:32.058 [SPEAKER_01]: And so shame when it's responded to correctly can actually be a positive good thing. 16:32.098 --> 16:37.228 [SPEAKER_01]: It can convict us when we are wrong and point us back to the right path. 16:37.833 --> 16:44.242 [SPEAKER_01]: There's healthy, holy shame that's appropriate, but there's also unhealthy and toxic shame. 16:44.762 --> 16:46.324 [SPEAKER_01]: Holy shame is like a warning light. 16:46.725 --> 16:53.614 [SPEAKER_01]: It lets us know something's wrong, something's been done that's wrong, something needs to be addressed and taken care of, and let's pay attention to this. 16:53.694 --> 16:59.882 [SPEAKER_01]: It's like that light on the dashboard that when you see it, it's just supposed to nag you until you take care of something, whatever is wrong. 17:00.984 --> 17:03.267 [SPEAKER_01]: Unhealthy shame is like a poison. 17:03.382 --> 17:06.027 [SPEAKER_01]: that sticks around and just makes things worse and worse. 17:06.047 --> 17:11.678 [SPEAKER_01]: Holy shame says, maybe I did something bad or I experienced something that needs addressing in my life. 17:12.620 --> 17:13.441 [SPEAKER_01]: So let's deal with it. 17:13.482 --> 17:14.143 [SPEAKER_01]: Let's get into it. 17:14.163 --> 17:15.105 [SPEAKER_01]: Let's take care of it. 17:16.247 --> 17:22.419 [SPEAKER_01]: Unhealthy shame says, well, I'm just spoiled goods and that's never going to change. 17:23.601 --> 17:26.166 [SPEAKER_01]: And I think as I was considering this this week, 17:26.585 --> 17:34.015 [SPEAKER_01]: that one of the most dangerous aspects of unhealthy shame is that it often leads to a lack of community. 17:34.035 --> 17:34.896 [SPEAKER_01]: Here's what I mean by that. 17:35.697 --> 17:43.968 [SPEAKER_01]: When we experience shame in our lives and it could be family history shame, it could be personal mistakes shame, it could be trauma things that have happened to us shame, all sorts of shame. 17:44.749 --> 17:52.980 [SPEAKER_01]: That shame often leads us to isolate ourselves and not be open and vulnerable with other people and authentic with other people. 17:52.960 --> 17:58.812 [SPEAKER_01]: When we respond correctly to Holy Shame, it can actually cause community thrive because we admit with other people. 17:58.832 --> 17:59.633 [SPEAKER_01]: Hey, I'm not perfect. 17:59.914 --> 18:00.976 [SPEAKER_01]: I've messed up in this way. 18:01.216 --> 18:02.399 [SPEAKER_01]: Can we hold each other accountable? 18:02.419 --> 18:03.521 [SPEAKER_01]: Can we encourage each other? 18:03.561 --> 18:05.425 [SPEAKER_01]: We're all not perfect. 18:05.465 --> 18:06.226 [SPEAKER_01]: We all mess up. 18:06.246 --> 18:08.691 [SPEAKER_01]: And so let's all go through this and help each other grow together. 18:08.911 --> 18:11.256 [SPEAKER_01]: And it can be great for community. 18:11.236 --> 18:16.586 [SPEAKER_01]: and help us to build deep relationships where we encourage each other and help each other grow and thrive. 18:16.706 --> 18:23.279 [SPEAKER_01]: Holy shame when we respond correctly can lead to this upward trend of maturity, the rising tide that lifts all ships. 18:24.361 --> 18:28.027 [SPEAKER_01]: Unhealthy shame, though, can lead to this downward spiral. 18:28.047 --> 18:33.177 [SPEAKER_01]: This is one of the reasons, by the way, that we believe groups are such an important ministry here. 18:33.848 --> 18:38.878 [SPEAKER_01]: We love gathering together and singing praises to God and listening to a message from God's Word. 18:38.898 --> 18:45.470 [SPEAKER_01]: We spend a lot of time trying to prepare for and represent God well in these services and honor Him with these services. 18:45.530 --> 18:46.251 [SPEAKER_01]: But you know what? 18:46.492 --> 18:50.760 [SPEAKER_01]: I've said at many times, most of the one and others can't happen in this room. 18:51.162 --> 18:53.886 [SPEAKER_01]: They actually happen in smaller settings. 18:54.587 --> 18:57.370 [SPEAKER_01]: Some people say real church life happens in circles, not rose. 18:58.172 --> 18:59.694 [SPEAKER_01]: That's really where the rubber beats the road. 19:00.034 --> 19:02.357 [SPEAKER_01]: We have these phenomenal Sunday morning communities here. 19:02.598 --> 19:05.762 [SPEAKER_01]: Where every Sunday, hundreds of people gather in all the different rooms around church. 19:06.143 --> 19:07.685 [SPEAKER_01]: And they go deeper than we can go here. 19:07.705 --> 19:08.926 [SPEAKER_01]: They get to know each other better. 19:08.946 --> 19:10.909 [SPEAKER_01]: They know each other's lives better. 19:11.362 --> 19:22.697 [SPEAKER_01]: We have hundreds of people that meet in small groups throughout the week and in those smaller settings, you can actually build trust and authenticity and vulnerability in a way that wouldn't even necessarily be appropriate in this room. 19:23.438 --> 19:33.471 [SPEAKER_01]: If I would ask you right now to just turn to a group of people next to you and share some of your deepest struggles and challenges, I don't think you've enjoyed that very much. 19:34.328 --> 19:46.107 [SPEAKER_01]: But if you can sit down in a room with half a dozen people who you built a relationship with over the last three, four years and you know you can trust each other, now you can do the confess your sins to one another. 19:46.848 --> 19:51.516 [SPEAKER_01]: Now you can do the gently correct one another and encourage each other. 19:51.536 --> 19:55.743 [SPEAKER_01]: You can do all the one and others of scripture in such a deeper, more powerful way. 19:56.864 --> 19:58.547 [SPEAKER_01]: And so you really need both. 19:59.270 --> 20:03.556 [SPEAKER_01]: You need the gathering of the church together to worship God corporately. 20:03.596 --> 20:04.297 [SPEAKER_01]: That's biblical. 20:04.557 --> 20:10.405 [SPEAKER_01]: But you also need that smaller community of people that you can go deep with and be vulnerable with. 20:11.006 --> 20:14.190 [SPEAKER_01]: And I don't wanna touch on this without saying, how do you actually do that here? 20:14.231 --> 20:16.754 [SPEAKER_01]: Well, you can talk to any of us on staff here. 20:16.794 --> 20:21.160 [SPEAKER_01]: You can talk to Jeff, especially who's gonna get raise your hand, Jeff, so everybody knows he are okay. 20:21.380 --> 20:23.403 [SPEAKER_01]: How and him after the service, and he will connect you. 20:23.924 --> 20:25.866 [SPEAKER_01]: You can go to our welcome desk and talk to somebody there. 20:25.887 --> 20:28.450 [SPEAKER_01]: You can go to our website, go to e3.org slash groups. 20:28.430 --> 20:32.918 [SPEAKER_01]: And you can find out how you can sign up for Rudy, get on the waiting list for that, get into a group. 20:32.938 --> 20:34.982 [SPEAKER_01]: Or just show up at a Sunday morning community next week. 20:35.002 --> 20:36.865 [SPEAKER_01]: We got a whole list of them out of the desk there. 20:36.885 --> 20:40.371 [SPEAKER_01]: But we want to see everyone here connected to a group of people. 20:40.411 --> 20:45.661 [SPEAKER_01]: That's going to help you go deep and fight that isolation that can be caused by shame. 20:45.701 --> 20:48.025 [SPEAKER_01]: It's such a dangerous thing. 20:48.528 --> 20:59.885 [SPEAKER_01]: Now, some of you might be wondering at this point, wow, we're talking a whole lot about shame in the series that's all about open doors and on mission and building things for God and what is this all about here? 21:00.586 --> 21:11.802 [SPEAKER_01]: And I got to be honest, as I was working on this this week, the thing that kept running through my head over and over again was the shame experienced in Mulan when the little dragon goes dishonor on you, dishonor on your cow and 21:11.950 --> 21:19.322 [SPEAKER_01]: all of that, like shame, shame, such a big thing, you know, and that culture that society shame is a big deal, and it's the same for this group of people right here. 21:20.403 --> 21:29.858 [SPEAKER_01]: If our focus is on being on mission as a church and if we're talking about enhancing our place of worship so that we can be more effective at being on mission for God, what does shame have to do with it? 21:29.918 --> 21:33.604 [SPEAKER_01]: So here's the thing, shame is a thief of vision. 21:35.002 --> 21:42.253 [SPEAKER_01]: Shame is a thief of vision and that is true for you individually, and that is true for us as a church, as a people. 21:43.375 --> 21:48.643 [SPEAKER_01]: We're dreaming about a future where God does great things to us to reach many, many more people. 21:48.983 --> 21:52.909 [SPEAKER_01]: Many of you who are sitting here today were reached by somebody else who is sitting here today. 21:53.986 --> 22:02.239 [SPEAKER_01]: And so you're connecting with people and helping people get introduced to a God who cares and a Savior who loves and a people who help go through life together. 22:02.259 --> 22:15.259 [SPEAKER_01]: And we wanna see hundreds more people get connected to that reality and experience the forgiveness that comes through Jesus and the healing that comes through God and that relationship with Him and the joy of having the Holy Spirit in your life and having a hope for the future. 22:15.279 --> 22:16.240 [SPEAKER_01]: We wanna see all of that. 22:16.260 --> 22:18.103 [SPEAKER_01]: We wanna see all of our ministries 22:18.083 --> 22:28.656 [SPEAKER_01]: firing on all cylinders from the kids ministry to student ministry, all of our outrageous men's and women's ministries, our groups, everything, all working together to help people grow in their faith and reach more people. 22:28.676 --> 22:29.558 [SPEAKER_01]: We want to look forward. 22:29.918 --> 22:31.680 [SPEAKER_01]: Shame always has us looking back where. 22:33.342 --> 22:37.888 [SPEAKER_01]: Shame always has us looking back where we want to prayerfully take bold steps for God. 22:38.689 --> 22:41.433 [SPEAKER_01]: But shame tells us, don't ask big prayers. 22:41.573 --> 22:42.454 [SPEAKER_01]: You don't deserve it. 22:43.396 --> 22:46.363 [SPEAKER_01]: Shame tells us, don't bother, God doesn't want to use you in that way. 22:46.383 --> 22:56.005 [SPEAKER_01]: And the thing is, every single one of you, if you're a child of God, God has plans for the things he wants you to do to work through you to impact other people in a positive way. 22:56.474 --> 22:58.257 [SPEAKER_01]: He's got a mission for you in this world. 22:58.557 --> 23:02.443 [SPEAKER_01]: He's given you gifts to use, to minister, and impact people in this world. 23:02.464 --> 23:14.843 [SPEAKER_01]: And a lot of times, the reason why we sit on the sidelines, the reason why when the Holy Spirit gives us that nudge to go do something good for God, the thing that holds us back is that fiery dart of the enemy that has something to do with shame. 23:15.885 --> 23:21.013 [SPEAKER_01]: It's not always shame, but for many of us, many times it is shame. 23:22.192 --> 23:36.116 [SPEAKER_01]: And whether it's true or not for you, I guarantee it's true for some people in this room, where we feel like we're not good enough, we feel like we're maybe a stain, like Lawrence did, we feel like God wouldn't want to use this in a big way, and so we don't even try, and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. 23:37.298 --> 23:39.521 [SPEAKER_01]: And we don't do the things God has prepared. 23:39.541 --> 23:42.867 [SPEAKER_01]: The Bible says, God's prepared, good works for you that you should walk in them. 23:44.045 --> 23:51.015 [SPEAKER_01]: But whether or not we walk in them sometimes is determined by whether we're willing to submit to God's leading in our life, or we hold back and sometimes that is because of shame. 23:51.235 --> 23:59.587 [SPEAKER_01]: And here's Hezekiah, who has more shame than any of us can imagine with what His family did and the shame of His country and the shame of the worn down temple. 23:59.607 --> 24:05.715 [SPEAKER_01]: And in essence, He is saying to the people, our past does not disqualify us for what God has for us in the future. 24:06.742 --> 24:09.045 [SPEAKER_01]: And that might be what some of you need to hear today. 24:09.105 --> 24:22.199 [SPEAKER_01]: Your past, the baggage you hold on to, your regrets, your past mistakes, the things that have happened to you, by other people, the things that your parents have done, or grandparents have done, that does not disqualify you from what God wants to do for you in the future. 24:22.599 --> 24:28.726 [SPEAKER_01]: And through you in the future, he's got great things in store that he wants to do, the Bible tells us that. 24:28.746 --> 24:35.854 [SPEAKER_01]: But notice that he didn't ignore the past, he didn't just sweep it onto the rug, 24:36.256 --> 24:38.520 [SPEAKER_01]: He didn't ignore the shame or run from the shame. 24:38.540 --> 24:46.995 [SPEAKER_01]: He actually leaned into it in a healthy way to process it with this group of people and acknowledge it and say, yes, this is where we came from. 24:48.057 --> 24:49.519 [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, this is what we've experienced. 24:50.541 --> 24:51.723 [SPEAKER_01]: And we didn't even ask for this. 24:52.284 --> 24:57.353 [SPEAKER_01]: Our parents let us into this and has to guys, in my dad let us into this in a really big way. 24:58.430 --> 24:59.692 [SPEAKER_01]: But yes, that's where we come from. 24:59.712 --> 25:01.935 [SPEAKER_01]: That's not where we need to be in the future. 25:01.955 --> 25:03.377 [SPEAKER_01]: And maybe that's what some of you need today. 25:03.417 --> 25:08.924 [SPEAKER_01]: Maybe it's shame that is the thief of vision for you, the vision of what God could do in your life. 25:10.326 --> 25:14.011 [SPEAKER_01]: Maybe some aspect of your past continues to haunt you. 25:14.933 --> 25:15.794 [SPEAKER_01]: You know what I'm talking about? 25:15.814 --> 25:20.320 [SPEAKER_01]: The enemy loves to bring those things up at the worst possible times. 25:20.553 --> 25:34.416 [SPEAKER_01]: And I think a lot of times that keeps us from stepping into how God wants to use us in other people's lives because the devil knows how to use those things to interrupt that process of you doing something good for God and remind you, you're not worthy, you're not good enough. 25:36.259 --> 25:37.061 [SPEAKER_01]: And so you don't do it. 25:38.543 --> 25:43.692 [SPEAKER_01]: Maybe some of us have shame in our country, in our culture. 25:44.262 --> 25:48.047 [SPEAKER_01]: And that can impact us by preoccupying us with the news. 25:48.868 --> 25:56.619 [SPEAKER_01]: And a news retainment industry that exists to bring shocking and bad news to us because that's what gets eyeballs and clicks and money. 25:57.320 --> 26:00.284 [SPEAKER_01]: And so we become so preoccupied with that that it takes up all of our time. 26:00.464 --> 26:06.552 [SPEAKER_01]: And there's less time for doing the things of God, less time for our relationship with God if we're spending all of our time absorbing that content. 26:07.053 --> 26:11.839 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, we had two competing, Super Bowl halftime shows last week. 26:12.157 --> 26:17.885 [SPEAKER_01]: And I did not watch either of them live, but I did watch them a couple of days ago, and I tried to analyze them. 26:18.766 --> 26:35.228 [SPEAKER_01]: And what I witnessed was really interesting to me, because one Super Bowl halftime show had singers who glorified sinful behavior and promoted immorality and wickedness. 26:36.170 --> 26:42.176 [SPEAKER_01]: And the other Super Bowl halftime show had singers who glorified immorality and wickedness. 26:43.678 --> 26:47.922 [SPEAKER_01]: And if you don't believe me, go back and watch the things that were promoted in both of those shows. 26:49.083 --> 26:55.530 [SPEAKER_01]: And it's just reminded that we live in a broken and fallen world that thrives on chaos and conflict and friction. 26:56.852 --> 27:03.038 [SPEAKER_01]: And don't get me wrong, there was some good there too, but there was a shocking amount of bad in both. 27:04.148 --> 27:08.493 [SPEAKER_01]: And we can look at those things and we can think, oh my goodness, what has happened in this country? 27:09.134 --> 27:15.422 [SPEAKER_01]: And it's appropriate to mourn and to grieve, but at a certain point we have to say, okay, that's the reality, that is what it is. 27:15.783 --> 27:18.066 [SPEAKER_01]: What can I do to be on mission for God? 27:18.306 --> 27:24.834 [SPEAKER_01]: What can I do to be a positive impact in this world and represent Christ regardless of what is happening around me no matter how shameful it is? 27:24.894 --> 27:27.878 [SPEAKER_01]: You see these multiple levels of shame, we can experience. 27:27.858 --> 27:33.107 [SPEAKER_01]: and different people are hitting different ways by it, but the question is, how will you respond to it? 27:33.447 --> 27:35.992 [SPEAKER_01]: Instead of wallowing in it, it should lead us to worship. 27:36.252 --> 27:41.901 [SPEAKER_01]: Instead of shrinking away, it should lead us to be bold and representing God in this crooked world. 27:43.184 --> 27:44.145 [SPEAKER_01]: That's what Hazakkai did. 27:45.547 --> 27:46.629 [SPEAKER_01]: He's starting it right now. 27:46.669 --> 27:49.995 [SPEAKER_01]: And I want to show you how he went through this process. 27:50.015 --> 27:51.317 [SPEAKER_01]: Really, it was a workshop. 27:52.057 --> 27:58.868 [SPEAKER_01]: This was a moving from shame to impact workshop that has a Kyle led these people through. 27:59.089 --> 28:10.268 [SPEAKER_01]: And we're gonna see in this six words, six steps that he took these Leviathan priests through to prepare them for impact given their shameful past. 28:11.289 --> 28:14.074 [SPEAKER_01]: So six words, we're gonna start with this one, listen. 28:15.536 --> 28:17.119 [SPEAKER_01]: He says to all of them, listen up. 28:18.145 --> 28:22.392 [SPEAKER_01]: And that sounds simple, and that sounds obvious, but here's the thing, Shane is noisy. 28:23.473 --> 28:28.862 [SPEAKER_01]: Shane makes a lot of noise, and that just the wrong time in our lives. 28:29.783 --> 28:35.833 [SPEAKER_01]: The enemy knows it, brings it up, your past, your hurts, your regrets. 28:36.117 --> 28:37.919 [SPEAKER_01]: Your trauma, your problems, all of that stuff. 28:37.939 --> 28:40.062 [SPEAKER_01]: He knows how to send those darts at the right time. 28:40.322 --> 28:41.243 [SPEAKER_01]: Shame is noisy. 28:41.504 --> 28:42.665 [SPEAKER_01]: And so what is the answer to that? 28:42.685 --> 28:43.366 [SPEAKER_01]: Well, it's to listen. 28:43.566 --> 28:45.148 [SPEAKER_01]: And he has a chia by saying, hey, listen. 28:45.368 --> 28:46.570 [SPEAKER_01]: He is saying, listen to me. 28:46.790 --> 28:49.733 [SPEAKER_01]: But everything that follows shows you, he's not just saying, listen to me. 28:49.934 --> 28:52.036 [SPEAKER_01]: He's saying, let's start listening to God. 28:53.458 --> 28:58.304 [SPEAKER_01]: This week in our elder meeting, our elder chair, Rich Keffer, challenged us. 29:00.046 --> 29:03.851 [SPEAKER_01]: That oftentimes, when we go to pray, it's all about talking to God. 29:03.871 --> 29:05.112 [SPEAKER_01]: It's not listening to God. 29:06.678 --> 29:10.743 [SPEAKER_01]: I thought that is a really convicting thought because we are busy people. 29:11.684 --> 29:13.867 [SPEAKER_01]: Our world is noisy in so many ways. 29:14.829 --> 29:23.900 [SPEAKER_01]: And so we can, even if we have very active prayer lives, spend all of our time talking to God and never just sitting back and saying, okay, God, you've given me your Holy Spirit. 29:23.920 --> 29:25.522 [SPEAKER_01]: He's a counselor and a guide. 29:25.743 --> 29:28.286 [SPEAKER_01]: When did the last time I stopped and said, give me some guidance. 29:29.187 --> 29:32.972 [SPEAKER_01]: Give me some counsel and I'm just gonna be still and listen to you, God. 29:34.775 --> 29:42.205 [SPEAKER_01]: We're constantly filling our time with media, with sound, with noise. 29:42.986 --> 29:55.483 [SPEAKER_01]: We're filling our thoughts with things that we want to do in the future, or things that we've experienced, that we're reliving in our head, that are maybe negative in our lives, and how often do we actually just stop and be still and know that he is God? 29:55.463 --> 29:58.846 [SPEAKER_01]: And stop and be still and say, Lord, would you just speak to me right now? 29:58.866 --> 30:00.948 [SPEAKER_01]: And maybe I'm not going to get an audible voice. 30:01.569 --> 30:06.194 [SPEAKER_01]: Maybe he's going to speak to me through his word or through other believers or through those nudges of the Holy Spirit. 30:06.214 --> 30:09.437 [SPEAKER_01]: And when he brings to mind an idea and I check it, I go, yep, that's good. 30:09.697 --> 30:10.878 [SPEAKER_01]: That aligns with God's word. 30:10.898 --> 30:14.082 [SPEAKER_01]: I think God is prompting me to move in this direction. 30:16.284 --> 30:18.446 [SPEAKER_01]: In fact, maybe we should just pause and do that right now. 30:18.466 --> 30:23.631 [SPEAKER_01]: Take a moment right now and just, Lord, what do you want to do in my life this week? 30:28.454 --> 30:29.735 [SPEAKER_01]: How do you want to redirect me? 30:32.678 --> 30:35.021 [SPEAKER_01]: If there's anything God that you want to bring to my mind, I'm listening. 30:39.986 --> 30:45.412 [SPEAKER_01]: Who do you want me to reach out to this week and make a difference in their lives? 30:50.777 --> 30:56.503 [SPEAKER_01]: We probably don't spend enough time listening, but that's the first step. 30:56.720 --> 31:09.147 [SPEAKER_01]: You've got to listen to the right voice, you've got to choose what you're going to listen to, the noise of the shame, or your heavenly father that wants to be a part of your life and wants to work through you and in you. 31:10.109 --> 31:13.817 [SPEAKER_01]: So step number one, word number one, is to listen. 31:15.113 --> 31:17.615 [SPEAKER_01]: The second word is purify. 31:18.316 --> 31:21.058 [SPEAKER_01]: So listen, and then he says purify. 31:21.238 --> 31:24.642 [SPEAKER_01]: Not just purify yourselves, but also purify the temple. 31:24.662 --> 31:26.243 [SPEAKER_01]: He gives them both instructions. 31:26.283 --> 31:37.253 [SPEAKER_01]: And I want you to notice the order of operations here, because if it were me doing this, and I was standing in front of the temple, and I see all the rubbish all over the place, and all the stuff has been broken apart, and the walls are boarded up. 31:37.273 --> 31:40.075 [SPEAKER_01]: I would gather everybody together and say, okay, we got hundreds of people here. 31:40.376 --> 31:43.078 [SPEAKER_01]: Every one of you gets a big black trash bag get to work. 31:43.835 --> 31:47.060 [SPEAKER_01]: We'll figure out what we're going to do next, but it's pretty obvious what we need to do first. 31:47.140 --> 31:48.222 [SPEAKER_01]: Let's clean this mess up. 31:48.242 --> 31:48.903 [SPEAKER_01]: That's not what he does. 31:49.944 --> 31:51.727 [SPEAKER_01]: He doesn't start with, let's get to work. 31:52.568 --> 31:55.313 [SPEAKER_01]: He starts with, let's work on the internals. 31:55.553 --> 31:56.514 [SPEAKER_01]: Let's work on the heart. 31:57.195 --> 31:57.636 [SPEAKER_01]: Purify. 31:57.676 --> 32:06.410 [SPEAKER_01]: Now the exact actions that they would have taken at this point would be to do the things that God had command them to do to demonstrate purity of heart. 32:06.430 --> 32:12.559 [SPEAKER_01]: So there were certain actions they were to take or restrictions they were supposed to live by to demonstrate their purity. 32:12.539 --> 32:27.364 [SPEAKER_01]: Dietary restrictions, laws about what they could do when and where they would go to show that they were willing to follow after God, cleansing ceremonies that they would do with both themselves and with objects to show that they were consecrating their lives and their activities to God. 32:27.384 --> 32:31.611 [SPEAKER_01]: It was an outward demonstration of what was supposed to be an inward heart posture. 32:32.063 --> 32:32.684 [SPEAKER_01]: of purity. 32:33.445 --> 32:36.368 [SPEAKER_01]: And so that's what he was calling them to do, to get pure. 32:37.189 --> 32:39.352 [SPEAKER_01]: But we have to do the same kind of a thing. 32:40.113 --> 32:47.181 [SPEAKER_01]: We have to take an honest look at our lives in our community and say, are there things we've allowed to hang around that are actually garbage? 32:48.303 --> 32:53.168 [SPEAKER_01]: Are there things we've allowed to just sort of exist and they become like that thing in the corner that we pass by all the time? 32:53.209 --> 32:56.412 [SPEAKER_01]: And we don't do anything about it because it's just always been there and we get used to it. 32:56.973 --> 33:01.058 [SPEAKER_01]: You know that area of your house where it just sits there a mess. 33:01.780 --> 33:08.418 [SPEAKER_01]: And if you, if you were to walk over and you had never been there before, you'd notice it right away, but because you live with it, it just sort of exists there, you know? 33:09.160 --> 33:10.503 [SPEAKER_01]: And you get used to it over time. 33:11.747 --> 33:15.958 [SPEAKER_01]: We've got to look around and examine and go, where do I need to get pure in my life? 33:17.153 --> 33:22.384 [SPEAKER_01]: Many of you know the verse 1, 1, 9, about confessing your sins and God cleansing you. 33:22.404 --> 33:25.471 [SPEAKER_01]: But I wonder if you know the context of this passage. 33:25.511 --> 33:27.656 [SPEAKER_01]: Let me read a few verses before and after. 33:28.458 --> 33:30.282 [SPEAKER_01]: We'll start in verse 8, 1, 1, 8. 33:30.382 --> 33:36.816 [SPEAKER_01]: If we claim we have no sin, we are only fooling ourselves and not living in the truth. 33:37.049 --> 33:38.671 [SPEAKER_01]: Everybody is a sinner. 33:38.911 --> 33:48.041 [SPEAKER_01]: There's no one who is perfect but, if we confess our sins to Him, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness. 33:48.782 --> 33:54.848 [SPEAKER_01]: If we claim we have not sinned, we are calling God a liar and showing that His word has no place in our hearts. 33:55.149 --> 33:59.734 [SPEAKER_01]: Every one of us needs to get pure, but then look at verse 1 of chapter two. 33:59.754 --> 34:02.857 [SPEAKER_01]: He says, My dear children, I am writing this to you so that you will not sin. 34:02.877 --> 34:05.740 [SPEAKER_01]: But if anyone does sin and by the way, He just said everyone sins. 34:06.344 --> 34:10.589 [SPEAKER_01]: We have an advocate who pleads our case before the Father. 34:10.669 --> 34:14.454 [SPEAKER_01]: He is Jesus Christ, the one who is truly righteous. 34:14.494 --> 34:23.325 [SPEAKER_01]: What is He saying here, the way to get pure for us, those who know Jesus as our Savior, is not to try really hard. 34:25.287 --> 34:27.610 [SPEAKER_01]: It's to submit those things to God. 34:27.877 --> 34:31.821 [SPEAKER_01]: to confess to Him and surrender to Him and allow Him to do the cleansing. 34:31.861 --> 34:37.867 [SPEAKER_01]: Look at 1 John 1 9 again, He says, to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness. 34:37.927 --> 34:40.129 [SPEAKER_01]: It's Him that does the cleansing. 34:41.310 --> 34:47.256 [SPEAKER_01]: If we are going to get pure, it means surrendering and submitting to God bringing purity in our lives. 34:47.276 --> 34:48.697 [SPEAKER_01]: And we have to work along with that. 34:48.897 --> 34:50.819 [SPEAKER_01]: We are co-laborers with God in that effort. 34:51.039 --> 34:53.762 [SPEAKER_01]: But it's God that actually does the cleansing work in us. 34:54.022 --> 34:56.044 [SPEAKER_01]: We have to listen to Him. 34:56.159 --> 34:59.682 [SPEAKER_01]: We have to be willing to get pure and take steps to do that. 34:59.722 --> 35:01.815 [SPEAKER_01]: And the third word is removed. 35:03.010 --> 35:04.032 [SPEAKER_01]: The third word is removing. 35:04.052 --> 35:08.379 [SPEAKER_01]: He says, go in there and remove all the defiled stuff from the temple. 35:08.799 --> 35:17.393 [SPEAKER_01]: Now this would have included any of the trashed instruments of worship, the things that King A has had smashed apart and left all over the place, just the rubble, the trash everywhere. 35:17.654 --> 35:25.787 [SPEAKER_01]: There may have also been some elements of idolatry, some shrines, some idols, things that were brought into the temple, all the defiled things, he says, get rid of that stuff. 35:25.807 --> 35:29.473 [SPEAKER_01]: Anybody that's ever done a renovation project knows that there's a lot of trash involved. 35:30.095 --> 35:31.877 [SPEAKER_01]: I've done a lot of work in my basement. 35:31.897 --> 35:35.422 [SPEAKER_01]: And I have hauled dozens and dozens of bags full of trash out of there. 35:36.243 --> 35:47.997 [SPEAKER_01]: And when you do all the demolition work, you get to a point where you have all this trash line around the places and messes and dusting, and there's just little bits of stuff everywhere, and you can't actually make the nice, new, beautiful thing until you get rid of the trash. 35:48.978 --> 35:50.500 [SPEAKER_01]: So you get rid of the bad stuff. 35:51.374 --> 35:52.675 [SPEAKER_01]: And that's what he's telling them to do. 35:53.516 --> 35:54.757 [SPEAKER_01]: Gather up all the bad stuff. 35:54.797 --> 35:55.818 [SPEAKER_01]: Let's get it out of here. 35:56.239 --> 35:57.420 [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, we listen to God. 35:57.980 --> 35:59.301 [SPEAKER_01]: We need to make sure that we are pure. 35:59.361 --> 36:00.342 [SPEAKER_01]: We get ourselves pure. 36:00.542 --> 36:04.086 [SPEAKER_01]: And then let's remove all of the bad stuff to get where God wants us to go. 36:04.146 --> 36:06.288 [SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes we have to remove some things. 36:07.489 --> 36:11.453 [SPEAKER_01]: On a personal level, this means looking around for the things that hurt our relationship with God. 36:12.193 --> 36:19.440 [SPEAKER_01]: Or finding the things that keep leading us back into sin or identifying the priorities that we've allowed to come before God in our lives. 36:20.095 --> 36:21.697 [SPEAKER_01]: I've been convicted about this lately. 36:22.678 --> 36:31.988 [SPEAKER_01]: This is kind of an interesting one, but I spend so much time in ministry meetings and doing seemingly good things that check the spiritual boxes and even studying the Bible. 36:32.008 --> 36:48.887 [SPEAKER_01]: I get spent a lot of times studying the Bible, but there's a task and there's a purpose involved and I thought about it this week, man, I don't spend enough time just sitting with my heavenly father and evaluating honestly my life, not for the purpose of sharing with all of you. 36:49.660 --> 36:51.204 [SPEAKER_01]: I love sharing with all of you, don't get me wrong. 36:52.126 --> 37:01.910 [SPEAKER_01]: I love teaching, I love communicating what's in God's word, but I also have to stop and pause and take the time to evaluate my own life and realize that God wants to remove some stuff in my life, too. 37:02.993 --> 37:05.138 [SPEAKER_01]: This is true, even as a church. 37:05.489 --> 37:19.541 [SPEAKER_01]: Churches, oftentimes over time, things that were started as great practices that pointed us to God in some way, over time become traditions, and over time those traditions become sacred, and if we're not careful, those things that we count as sacred traditions can become idols. 37:20.943 --> 37:34.855 [SPEAKER_01]: And so there are things that develop over time and churches that actually do not come from God's work, but they have such deep meaning to us, maybe an nostalgia to us of familiarity to us, that when someone changes a practice or a method or a thing, I'm gonna give you an example, 37:34.953 --> 37:37.336 [SPEAKER_01]: that has no bearing on anything. 37:37.356 --> 37:39.098 [SPEAKER_01]: This is not something we're talking about doing right now. 37:39.138 --> 37:39.658 [SPEAKER_01]: Nothing like that. 37:40.840 --> 37:48.228 [SPEAKER_01]: But if we were to decide, brace yourselves to replace the fuse you're sitting on with chairs. 37:49.830 --> 37:52.032 [SPEAKER_01]: I bet there'd be a handful of people that'd be like, I don't know about that. 37:54.135 --> 37:58.159 [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know if I can really worship God as effectively. 37:59.236 --> 38:03.542 [SPEAKER_01]: if I'm not sitting on a puke, there's something about the puke, there's this tradition to it. 38:03.562 --> 38:06.746 [SPEAKER_01]: There's even maybe a sacredness to it. 38:06.766 --> 38:14.856 [SPEAKER_01]: Or the way we do certain things, the way we do baptisms, the way we do communion, the way we practice our, in our groups, the way we do certain things. 38:15.096 --> 38:26.351 [SPEAKER_01]: Whenever we do that for a long time, when someone comes in and changes something like that, if you get a little feeling and you look, I don't think we should be doing that, and you can't find a versus a supports and scripture, that's a sign. 38:27.332 --> 38:28.213 [SPEAKER_01]: Be careful. 38:28.582 --> 38:31.505 [SPEAKER_01]: You may have seen a tradition become sacred, become an idol. 38:32.486 --> 38:34.228 [SPEAKER_01]: And so churches have to be careful about that. 38:34.248 --> 38:43.138 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, as we look towards the next 10, 20 years of ministry here, we have to approach that with open hands and say, just because that's what we've always done or done for a long time. 38:43.438 --> 38:47.743 [SPEAKER_01]: If that's not right from God's word, we have to be open to God changing that in the future. 38:48.644 --> 38:50.045 [SPEAKER_01]: Now, I don't know what that looks like, believe me. 38:50.205 --> 38:52.127 [SPEAKER_01]: This is not a precursor to some big announcement. 38:52.147 --> 38:53.689 [SPEAKER_01]: We're suddenly gonna do some weird thing as a church. 38:53.709 --> 38:54.410 [SPEAKER_01]: That's not what I'm saying. 38:55.111 --> 38:58.234 [SPEAKER_01]: Alright, there's nothing like that in the work, so if the perfect time you talk about this. 38:58.433 --> 39:05.883 [SPEAKER_01]: We just all have to have this understanding that, hey, if it's not prescribed in God's word, then we've got to be open to God, maybe working in a different way. 39:05.943 --> 39:11.951 [SPEAKER_01]: And of course you have to use wisdom as you approach that, it doesn't need to try every new thing that comes along, but we just have to be careful. 39:13.393 --> 39:18.140 [SPEAKER_01]: To be willing to remove the things that maybe become idols as a church. 39:19.221 --> 39:20.964 [SPEAKER_01]: One of the things we have to be willing to do, we have to listen. 39:21.825 --> 39:25.690 [SPEAKER_01]: We have to purify, we have to remove the fourth word is to remember. 39:26.412 --> 39:28.095 [SPEAKER_01]: As a guy doesn't tell him to forget their past. 39:28.696 --> 39:30.779 [SPEAKER_01]: He doesn't tell him to ignore the past. 39:30.839 --> 39:31.981 [SPEAKER_01]: He says it's good to remember. 39:32.221 --> 39:33.223 [SPEAKER_01]: In fact, he calls it out. 39:33.243 --> 39:35.126 [SPEAKER_01]: In fact, he says it in multiple different ways. 39:35.526 --> 39:43.219 [SPEAKER_01]: Remember all this stuff and the unfaithfulness and the evil and shutting the temple doors and locking them up and all of the bad things that our forefathers and my father did. 39:43.239 --> 39:47.205 [SPEAKER_01]: I always say it's better to learn for the mistakes of others than to make your own. 39:47.405 --> 39:49.568 [SPEAKER_01]: And it seems like that's what Hezekiah is trying to do here. 39:50.109 --> 39:55.778 [SPEAKER_01]: Now, many of these people who are listening to him have been involved in the pagan worship as well, but they grew up in it. 39:55.799 --> 39:58.383 [SPEAKER_01]: Their parents raised them in it. 39:58.403 --> 40:02.690 [SPEAKER_01]: Many of these people, they're not pure, which is why he tells them they need to purify themselves. 40:02.710 --> 40:06.055 [SPEAKER_01]: They haven't kept up with the purity that they ought to have. 40:06.305 --> 40:13.817 [SPEAKER_01]: But he's pointing to the past and he's pointing to the legacy and saying, we don't want to be like that, but we need to remember what they did. 40:13.857 --> 40:14.598 [SPEAKER_01]: So he was honest. 40:15.459 --> 40:20.126 [SPEAKER_01]: He was honest about the sins of his dad, of all of their deaths. 40:20.146 --> 40:22.350 [SPEAKER_01]: It's important to acknowledge the past wrongs. 40:22.931 --> 40:25.054 [SPEAKER_01]: But not so we can dwell on them. 40:25.615 --> 40:28.920 [SPEAKER_01]: We remember it so that we can leave it for something better. 40:29.322 --> 40:32.949 [SPEAKER_01]: Some of us have shame that we bring forward from our parents and to our lives today. 40:32.989 --> 40:44.270 [SPEAKER_01]: Some of us have shame we bring forward from our past mistakes or from things that have been done to us, but the beautiful thing about the gospel is it's not just about saving you for eternity and giving you a hope for the future. 40:44.530 --> 40:47.095 [SPEAKER_01]: It's about giving you hope in a new life now. 40:47.497 --> 40:59.083 [SPEAKER_01]: And when you see everything through a gospel lens, when you've got Jesus in your life, you can honestly say that's what I was, but then Jesus happened, and I'm a different person today. 40:59.564 --> 41:03.733 [SPEAKER_01]: That's what happened to me, but because of Jesus, I can look at it in a different way today. 41:03.713 --> 41:08.237 [SPEAKER_01]: God doesn't value me based on what I did or my family did. 41:08.277 --> 41:10.860 [SPEAKER_01]: He values me based on his love. 41:11.160 --> 41:20.328 [SPEAKER_01]: My future is not based on what I did or what someone else did but because I believe in Jesus, my future is based on what God has in store for me despite all of that. 41:21.089 --> 41:24.072 [SPEAKER_01]: So we don't remember to dwell on the past. 41:24.332 --> 41:31.138 [SPEAKER_01]: We remember so we can see how God has faithful 41:31.372 --> 41:39.370 [SPEAKER_01]: So the next time the enemy tries to bring up one of those things in your life and remind you of shame, remind you of regret or hurt, try this. 41:40.573 --> 41:45.043 [SPEAKER_01]: Say God, thank you for loving me so much that you see past all of that. 41:46.458 --> 41:51.743 [SPEAKER_01]: In fact, use it as an excuse to remember God's faithfulness instead of dwell on the shame. 41:52.284 --> 41:53.445 [SPEAKER_01]: Use it as a reminder. 41:53.585 --> 42:00.932 [SPEAKER_01]: The enemy is going to bring it up to try to take you out, to try to get you discouraged for the rest of the day, to try to keep you from doing the good things God has planned for you. 42:01.192 --> 42:05.436 [SPEAKER_01]: But what you can do is turn the tables on him and say, actually, thanks for reminding me about that. 42:05.657 --> 42:08.259 [SPEAKER_01]: This is another reason for me to praise God. 42:08.279 --> 42:16.347 [SPEAKER_01]: This is a reason for me to thank God, use it in a completely different way. 42:17.609 --> 42:23.761 [SPEAKER_01]: After you remember, the negative things of the past, it's time to commit to a better future. 42:23.801 --> 42:25.905 [SPEAKER_01]: He's a kind of challenge for them in three different ways. 42:26.246 --> 42:30.955 [SPEAKER_01]: The first one was obedience, you need to start being obedient to God in the things that you do. 42:30.975 --> 42:32.157 [SPEAKER_01]: The second one was worship. 42:32.217 --> 42:39.972 [SPEAKER_01]: In fact, the group of people that were gathered in front of him, their purpose was to lead in many ways, was to lead others to worship God, to help people worship God. 42:41.150 --> 42:44.053 [SPEAKER_01]: And then Godly action that would come out of that. 42:44.093 --> 42:49.640 [SPEAKER_01]: So not only obedience in their life, but the Godly actions they would do to represent God in the world. 42:50.500 --> 42:53.664 [SPEAKER_01]: He said, I want to have a new covenant between us and God. 42:54.325 --> 42:56.467 [SPEAKER_01]: We're going to commit today, all of us here together. 42:56.627 --> 42:59.971 [SPEAKER_01]: We're going to commit today to live in a different way than our parents did. 43:00.271 --> 43:01.313 [SPEAKER_01]: Yep, that's where we came from. 43:01.633 --> 43:04.336 [SPEAKER_01]: That was our shame, that was our past, that was our legacy. 43:04.536 --> 43:07.039 [SPEAKER_01]: We're charting a new course, I want a new covenant. 43:07.340 --> 43:09.245 [SPEAKER_01]: And that's what he established with the people. 43:09.265 --> 43:13.215 [SPEAKER_01]: And we'll get to learn more about that and read more about that in the coming weeks. 43:13.235 --> 43:14.679 [SPEAKER_01]: But that's number five is commit. 43:15.481 --> 43:17.586 [SPEAKER_01]: And then number six is lead. 43:18.848 --> 43:21.052 [SPEAKER_01]: Number six is lead and here's what he wants them to do. 43:21.092 --> 43:24.638 [SPEAKER_01]: The priest and the lead by it's supposed to take their positions, they're supposed to take their posts. 43:25.480 --> 43:26.321 [SPEAKER_01]: And why are they doing that? 43:26.341 --> 43:38.983 [SPEAKER_01]: Because these are the spiritual leaders who are supposed to now help the rest of the country and the region and even they'll end up reaching out into the northern kingdom of Israel to lead the people back to God. 43:40.085 --> 43:43.371 [SPEAKER_01]: Shame makes us want to follow from a distance. 43:43.570 --> 43:48.640 [SPEAKER_01]: but God's grace empowers us to influence and lead others to God. 43:48.680 --> 43:53.890 [SPEAKER_01]: When you've been healed of shame, you become a more powerful leader. 43:54.571 --> 44:02.065 [SPEAKER_01]: One who's not leading out of perfection, but leading out of redemption, and you can then go to other people and say, look, I was a mess, here's where I came from. 44:02.186 --> 44:05.612 [SPEAKER_01]: I can be honest about that, here's what God's done in my life. 44:05.930 --> 44:09.815 [SPEAKER_01]: And that is what God wants for each and every one of us. 44:10.837 --> 44:14.341 [SPEAKER_01]: He wants us to be His ambassadors in this world. 44:14.722 --> 44:16.524 [SPEAKER_01]: That's a role of leadership. 44:16.544 --> 44:23.334 [SPEAKER_01]: Even the great commission, you go back to the great commission where Jesus would go into the world and preach the gospel and baptize them and make disciples. 44:23.974 --> 44:24.615 [SPEAKER_01]: And what does He say? 44:24.655 --> 44:26.638 [SPEAKER_01]: Teach them to do all the things I've commanded you. 44:26.905 --> 44:29.589 [SPEAKER_01]: which includes going into the world and making disciples and baptizing them. 44:29.609 --> 44:31.432 [SPEAKER_01]: And so it's the cycle that's supposed to continue. 44:31.693 --> 44:33.756 [SPEAKER_01]: The message of the gospel is not supposed to end with you. 44:33.776 --> 44:36.941 [SPEAKER_01]: It's not supposed to be a chain of events where someone leads you to Christ. 44:36.981 --> 44:38.183 [SPEAKER_01]: And then it stops right there. 44:39.145 --> 44:44.453 [SPEAKER_01]: It's supposed to be all of us on mission as leaders in this world representing God in this world. 44:44.473 --> 44:50.563 [SPEAKER_01]: Just as Hezekiah is about to send them out to do into the surrounding area and lead the people back to God. 44:50.603 --> 44:52.947 [SPEAKER_01]: That is the next step of this. 44:53.332 --> 45:04.184 [SPEAKER_01]: After we deal with our shame in appropriate ways, and after we experience the healing and the forgiveness of God and then we commit ourselves to Him, and we purify ourselves as we've surrendered to Him and allowed Him to cleanse us from wickedness. 45:04.244 --> 45:08.008 [SPEAKER_01]: Now we can go out and represent Him in this world, and that is what God wants from all of us today. 45:09.689 --> 45:14.114 [SPEAKER_01]: If we're truly going to be a people on mission, we've got to deal with this issue of shame. 45:14.895 --> 45:21.482 [SPEAKER_01]: That's the thief of vision, and then we've got to commit to going out and representing Christ every single day. 45:22.694 --> 45:25.618 [SPEAKER_01]: It's not just a good face that we put on at church. 45:26.780 --> 45:28.222 [SPEAKER_01]: It's not just going to Bible study. 45:29.564 --> 45:38.638 [SPEAKER_01]: It's at work, it's at school, it's everywhere we go, it's the people we encounter, it's the neighbors that we are with, do they know about your relationship with God? 45:38.658 --> 45:40.541 [SPEAKER_01]: Do they know what a difference God's made in your life? 45:40.781 --> 45:42.244 [SPEAKER_01]: Do they know that you're a praying person? 45:42.504 --> 45:49.174 [SPEAKER_01]: If they have something going wrong in their life, are they gonna come to you and say, you know what, I've never thought much about this, but I know that you're a praying person would you pray for me. 45:50.234 --> 45:54.521 [SPEAKER_01]: That's the kind of reputation and representation that God wants you to have in this world. 45:55.523 --> 46:02.655 [SPEAKER_01]: As you lead on His behalf, we talked about last week how today, we are the priests and Levites of this age. 46:03.597 --> 46:10.909 [SPEAKER_01]: The God has given us the gifting and the ability and the responsibility and the connection with God, and we are stewards of His grace, the Bible says in this world. 46:11.530 --> 46:13.654 [SPEAKER_01]: So how well are you stewarding? 46:13.794 --> 46:19.784 [SPEAKER_01]: Are you allowing shame to distract you and keep you from being and doing all that God has for you? 46:19.804 --> 46:25.033 [SPEAKER_01]: I want to invite you now to just bow your heads with me in a moment of reflection, but also a moment of prayer. 46:27.297 --> 46:34.129 [SPEAKER_01]: Guys, we look at this passage and how has Akaya led the people to reopen the doors 46:34.582 --> 46:38.709 [SPEAKER_01]: And invite all the people from the region back to worship and follow you. 46:38.749 --> 46:41.494 [SPEAKER_01]: And we think about the fact that today you say, we are your temple. 46:42.535 --> 46:45.601 [SPEAKER_01]: We are your representatives, your hands, your feet, your ambassadors. 46:45.661 --> 46:49.106 [SPEAKER_01]: God, I pray that we would have open doors in our lives. 46:50.088 --> 46:54.435 [SPEAKER_01]: Open doors to show you to represent you well in this world, God. 46:55.597 --> 46:59.003 [SPEAKER_01]: I pray that you would help us to deal with all of the... 46:59.371 --> 47:05.181 [SPEAKER_01]: the hangups and the regrets and the shame, the things that keep bubbling up in our life and they're just a distraction. 47:06.022 --> 47:10.189 [SPEAKER_01]: Maybe it's a personal shame of things we've done or maybe it's a family shame. 47:11.231 --> 47:12.994 [SPEAKER_01]: Maybe it's something we haven't even thought about in a while. 47:13.014 --> 47:14.917 [SPEAKER_01]: We've repressed it or we've become call us to it. 47:14.937 --> 47:16.620 [SPEAKER_01]: Maybe it's cultural shame. 47:16.640 --> 47:24.012 [SPEAKER_01]: Maybe it's something that just continues to not at us in a way that distracts us from all of the good things you plan for us to do. 47:25.966 --> 47:30.813 [SPEAKER_01]: So Lord, across our church today, I pray that there'd be a spirit of confession. 47:32.395 --> 47:44.272 [SPEAKER_01]: God, for all those times, and this is myself right now, for all those times that I've been about myself and not you, for all those times that I have failed to represent you well in this world, and there are many, many. 47:44.312 --> 47:47.637 [SPEAKER_01]: God, I confess that to you. 47:49.203 --> 48:00.562 [SPEAKER_01]: God help us to commit to live differently to obey you, to worship you, to take bold action in this world, to represent you, God to be leaders, and influence other people to be constantly on mission for you, Lord. 48:00.622 --> 48:12.983 [SPEAKER_01]: May this be a new season that we embrace as a church where we're willing to move past anything that's a hindrance that's a distraction from you and open the doors and just show everybody what a great God we serve. 48:12.963 --> 48:15.088 [SPEAKER_01]: What an incredible difference you can make in our life. 48:15.148 --> 48:26.556 [SPEAKER_01]: God, and we praise you for everything you've done for us and everything we believe you are going to do in the future both in eternity and right now through your people in the next decade of ministry here at First Free Church. 48:27.579 --> 48:28.581 [SPEAKER_01]: It's your name, we pray. 48:29.223 --> 48:29.824 [SPEAKER_01]: Amen.