[SPEAKER_00]: Well, isn't it amazing what God did in this church through our ministries and through each of us?
[SPEAKER_00]: I just praised him for including us as part of that journey.
[SPEAKER_00]: My name is David Iranguin Morning Church.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have the privilege serving as one of your elders.
[SPEAKER_00]: This morning's scripture reading, as Adam mentioned, is from 2nd Chronicles chapter 29, verses 1 to 5.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's hear God's word.
[SPEAKER_00]: As Ikea was 25 years old when he became the king of Judah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he reigned in Jerusalem 29 years.
[SPEAKER_00]: His mother was a biker, the daughter of Zechariah.
[SPEAKER_00]: He did what was pleasing in the Lord's sight, just as his ancestor David has done.
[SPEAKER_00]: In the very first mouse of the first year of his reign, Hazikaya reopened the doors of the temple of the Lord and repaired them.
[SPEAKER_00]: He summoned the priests and Levi's to mean him at the courtyard east of the temple.
[SPEAKER_00]: He said to them,
[SPEAKER_00]: Purify yourselves, and purify the tempo of the Lord.
[SPEAKER_00]: The God of your ancestors, remove all the defiled things from the sanctuary.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is the Word of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's bow our hearts and pray together.
[SPEAKER_00]: Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for giving us your words.
[SPEAKER_00]: I pray this words will be our everyday inspiration.
[SPEAKER_00]: Lord, I pray that you would open our hearts and minds, so we can understand them and follow them.
[SPEAKER_00]: I pray that you would raise up leaders this year for the new season of ministry at first grade that impacts more lives around us.
[SPEAKER_00]: I pray that you wouldn't renew our passion in you, in your church, so we can love you with all our hearts, our soul, our mind, and our strengths.
[SPEAKER_00]: Lord, I also pray that you would use the new sermon series, open doors on mission, to draw us closer to you.
[SPEAKER_00]: And with your grace and mercy, bless us, a passion for holiness, so that we can leave out your mission of loving you and loving our neighbors.
[SPEAKER_00]: Repraises in the mighty name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
[SPEAKER_01]: Amen.
[SPEAKER_01]: We have a phenomenal elder board here at the church and we're so excited to add Brian to that mix and just a great team, really wonderful team all in all.
[SPEAKER_01]: So thankful for them.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's fun to look back at 2025, isn't it?
[SPEAKER_01]: And see everything that God accomplished and as fun as that is, it's even more exciting to look forward to the future and what we believe God is gonna do here.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think God has some big stuff in store for us.
[SPEAKER_01]: We've had some challenging years as a church, as a nation, all churches have, but it seems like God is on the move in some exciting new ways.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's true around the world that's true across the country, even in our area, and in our church.
[SPEAKER_01]: We see God doing things in the hearts of people and moving it, particularly in younger generations in some really, really exciting ways.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so we see an opportunity
[SPEAKER_01]: to get along with that, to move with God and align with Him in what He is doing in some new ways.
[SPEAKER_01]: We see opportunities in our case to redesign some of our space here to better facilitate the mission work that happens here, to facilitate the discipleship of kids and teens and adults to better facilitate our outreach into the community and invite people into this place to worship God with us.
[SPEAKER_01]: to create a better community hub that will help our church be more united more connected in ways that we haven't been able to do before just because of the layout of our building.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you know, that's been a journey for us for over a year now that we've been researching and praying and investigating all the possibilities.
[SPEAKER_01]: We've had multiple forums about this and lots of meetings and time to talk and pray.
[SPEAKER_01]: a lot of due diligence and research that has gone into this.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so in the next couple of months, we hope to be at a point where we as a church, our members anyway will make a decision about whether we move forward with this.
[SPEAKER_01]: But before we ever get to that point, we want to make sure that our hearts are aligned with God in all of this.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we want to look to his word and make sure that we're prepared well for what he may be doing here in us to move along with his mission of what he's doing in the world.
[SPEAKER_01]: Before Nehemiah, the great rebuilder of the walls of Jerusalem, ever picked up a trial, he spent four months in prayer, getting ready for that great building project.
[SPEAKER_01]: Before King Josiah started his renovation project on the temple, he gathered the people and challenged them to be obedient to God first.
[SPEAKER_01]: Before Ezra led a group of exiles back to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple, he led the people to pray and humble themselves before God.
[SPEAKER_01]: And before last week, I didn't really realize just how many of the revivals that happened in Scripture involved some kind of a building project, or a rebuilding project, a renovation project.
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe it's because building projects tend to galvanize people and they can actually see the work that's being done together.
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe it's because these building projects are all meant to draw people back to God, but there's a pattern in Scripture, a cycle that happens here.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we think that's instructive for us.
[SPEAKER_01]: We want to learn from that as we get ready to possibly embark on another building project of our own or more of a renovation project.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the grand scheme of things, it's relatively small.
[SPEAKER_01]: But it's big for us.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's something this church has done multiple times before and faithful believers in the past.
[SPEAKER_01]: have raised the funds necessary and sacrifice as necessary to provide the amazing facility that we enjoy today.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we believe God has calling us to do something similar now, but before we do any of that, we want to go to Scripture and say, okay, what can we learn from the godly leaders of the past and how God interact with them that is instructive for us today?
[SPEAKER_01]: All Scripture is given so that we can learn from it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Be taught by it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we want to learn from one of those godly leaders.
[SPEAKER_01]: One of my favorites from the Old Testament.
[SPEAKER_01]: His name is King Hezekiah.
[SPEAKER_01]: King Hezekiah is one of the most written about figures in the Old Testament.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's covered in many different books of the Bible.
[SPEAKER_01]: But the passage we're going to look at today is in second chronicles.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's a book that you probably crack open on the daily.
[SPEAKER_01]: But second chronicles chapter 29 is where we're going to live for the next five weeks.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I want us to see a building project or really not a building project but a renovation project that has a cayenne barked on and the difference that it made for his people and the difference that it made for the surrounding community.
[SPEAKER_01]: I want to understand what the outcome of this project is, what's the goal, where are we going with this, but I also want to understand the history of why it was needed in the first place.
[SPEAKER_01]: And along the way, we're going to learn some lessons that I hope will be helpful for you as individuals, be helpful for your families, be helpful for your community, your neighborhood, and be helpful for us as a church.
[SPEAKER_01]: There are some great things that we can learn from this.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now to understand why has a guy embarked on this big project, we have to understand where he came from.
[SPEAKER_01]: We actually have to go back to chapter 28 and learn about what happened with his father.
[SPEAKER_01]: His father was one of the most evil kings and Israel's history.
[SPEAKER_01]: Anybody know what his name was?
[SPEAKER_01]: A has, A has the most evil king in Israel's history, or Judas history, A has at this point, the kingdom was divided the northern kingdom of Israel, and the southern kingdom of Judah, they both used to be all part of one kingdom of Israel.
[SPEAKER_01]: King A has replaced the worship of God with paganism.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we read about that in chapter 28.
[SPEAKER_01]: So go with me the second Chronicles chapter 28.
[SPEAKER_01]: We'll start in verse one that says this.
[SPEAKER_01]: It has was 20 years old when he became king.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he rained in Jerusalem 16 years.
[SPEAKER_01]: He did not do what was pleasing in a sight of the Lord.
[SPEAKER_01]: As his ancestor David had done.
[SPEAKER_01]: Instead, he followed the example of the kings of Israel.
[SPEAKER_01]: He cast metal images for the worship of Baal.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, A has just to remind you, is the king of Judah, the southern kingdom, the kingdom of Israel is the northern kingdom.
[SPEAKER_01]: They all used to be one kingdom called Israel, but when it says he followed the pattern of the kings of Israel, it means that northern kingdom which had a lot of really bad kings.
[SPEAKER_01]: Verse 3, he offered sacrifices in the valley of Ben Hinnam, even sacrificing his own sons in the fire.
[SPEAKER_01]: In this way, he followed the detestable practices of the pagan nations, the Lord had driven from the land ahead of the Israelites.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, sometimes we look back at the Old Testament and we think that, well, God was so different back then, look at how we judge those nations and how he led Israel to drive them out and kick them out and kill them in many instances.
[SPEAKER_01]: But we also have to recognize these were wicked, horrible, detestable people who did terrible things.
[SPEAKER_01]: And God actually was very patient with them.
[SPEAKER_01]: and allowed them a lot of time before he finally brought judgment on them.
[SPEAKER_01]: The Old Testament says that as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: And one of the terrible things they did was human sacrifice, child sacrifice, detestable things, horrible sinful things.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so they were rightly judged by God.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's important that we remember that.
[SPEAKER_01]: But of course King A has, he actually liked the ways of those people.
[SPEAKER_01]: He followed their practices and their worship and he became like them.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he led his entire country to become more like them.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now because of this evil,
[SPEAKER_01]: God allowed the surrounding nations to have victory over King A. has and the kingdom of Judah in battle.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so the northern kingdom of Israel had success against A. has when they went to fight.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they captured a ton of people and they captured a lot of plunder and they hauled it all back to the northern kingdom.
[SPEAKER_01]: But there were a few godly men there and God spoke to them and said, you need to give all that stuff back to King A. has and the southern kingdom.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so they did.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you would think, wouldn't you, that King A has, would have a little bit of a change of heart at this point, or at least think about it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Wow, the Northern Kingdom just came in and wiped us out.
[SPEAKER_01]: That seems like God's judgment, and all of this would be attributed to God's and he attribute lots of things to different God's.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you would think, wow, this must be God's judgment, and then in the mercy of God, all the people and the goods come back to us.
[SPEAKER_01]: the imagine the army that just conquered takes all of this stuff and says actually never mind you can have it back.
[SPEAKER_01]: All your people all your stuff you can have it back.
[SPEAKER_01]: You would think that might cause King A has to go okay maybe I need to change my ways here but no.
[SPEAKER_01]: He just keeps on doing what he was doing.
[SPEAKER_01]: So God allowed the e-demites.
[SPEAKER_01]: and the Philistines, and the Assyrians to all have victory over Ahes, and you would think that that would cause Ahes to recognize that he's going down the wrong path.
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe this is the judgment of God, so I need to return to God, and then He will protect us as a nation.
[SPEAKER_01]: But here's what happened.
[SPEAKER_01]: verse 21, A has took valuable items from the Lord's temple, the royal palace, and from the homes of His officials, and gave them the King of Assyria as tribute, but this did not help him.
[SPEAKER_01]: Even during this time of trouble, King A has continued to reject the Lord.
[SPEAKER_01]: He offered sacrifices to the gods of Damascus who had defeated him, for he said, since these gods helped the kings of Iran, they will help me, too, if I sacrifice to them.
[SPEAKER_01]: But instead, they led to his ruin and the ruin of all Judah.
[SPEAKER_01]: The king took the various articles from the temple of God and broke them into pieces.
[SPEAKER_01]: Imagine that going into the temple, taking all of these items that are their instruments of worship, to help the people in their worship of God and breaking them all in a fit of a rage.
[SPEAKER_01]: When he should have realized, this is on me as a king for not following God, all it did it caused him to do, all he did was respond by being angrier at God and destroying all the things in the temple.
[SPEAKER_01]: He also shut the doors of the Lord's Temple so that no one could worship there.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he set up altars to pagan gods in every corner of Jerusalem.
[SPEAKER_01]: He made pagan shrines in all the towns of Judah for offering sacrifices to other gods.
[SPEAKER_01]: In this way, he aroused the anger of the Lord, the God of his ancestors.
[SPEAKER_01]: This guy is King Hezekiah's dad.
[SPEAKER_01]: Somehow Hezekiah managed to escape the fires.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's a good thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: But this is his dad.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is the legacy that he received
[SPEAKER_01]: a demoralized priesthood and Levites, religious leaders who were either compromised and actually followed the ways of the king or maybe were forced into hiding and could not practice their faith.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then you have this massive foreign threat of Assyria.
[SPEAKER_01]: It is kind of ironic that King A has thought he would take all the good stuff from the temple, all the valuable stuff, give it to the King of Assyria, and that would appease him.
[SPEAKER_01]: Instead, the King of Assyria just came in and said, you know what?
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to attack you too.
[SPEAKER_01]: actually what happened is they has reached out to the King of Assyria and asked him for help with the Edomites and the Philistines and said, help me.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're attacking me if you will come and be on our side, we'll be loyal to you and we can work together and the King of Assyria showed up with his army and said, huh, looks like easy pickens and he just came in there and stole a bunch of stuff to even after A has gave him a bunch of items.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is the legacy that Hezekiah receives from his father.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the big question at this point is will Hezekiah follow in his father's footsteps
[SPEAKER_01]: or will he do something radically different?
[SPEAKER_01]: And Hezekiah chooses radically different.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's going to do something totally different for the country, for his family, for the direction of the kingdom.
[SPEAKER_01]: But before we get to that, now I want to skip ahead.
[SPEAKER_01]: We've looked at the past and chapter 28 shows us the wickedness of A has and what led to this horrible situation that they are in, the non-existent spiritual leadership, the broken down place of worship.
[SPEAKER_01]: If we skip over chapter 29, we're going to get to chapter 30 and we get to see a completely new picture.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like everything is radically transformed.
[SPEAKER_01]: Look at verse 1.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to just give you some select verses from this chapter.
[SPEAKER_01]: King has a chia, now sent Word to all Israel and Judah, and he wrote letters of invitation to the people of Ephraim and Manasseh.
[SPEAKER_01]: He asked everyone to come to the temple of the Lord at Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover of the Lord, the God of Israel.
[SPEAKER_01]: This plan for keeping the Passover seemed right to the King and all the people, we skipped over some logistics about the plan, but we're just gonna gloss over that.
[SPEAKER_01]: So they sent a proclamation throughout all Israel and Bershiba in the south to Dan and the North, inviting everyone to come to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover of the Lord, the God of Israel.
[SPEAKER_01]: The people had not been celebrating it in great numbers as required in the law.
[SPEAKER_01]: The runners went from town to town through Ephraim and Manasseh, and as far as the territory of Zebulan, but most of the people just laughed at the runners, and made fun of them.
[SPEAKER_01]: However, some people from Asher, Manasseh and Zebulan humbled themselves and went to Jerusalem.
[SPEAKER_01]: At the same time, God's hand was on the people in the land of Judah, giving them all one heart to obey the orders of the king and his officials who were following the word of the Lord.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, a huge crowd assembled at Jerusalem in mid-spring to celebrate the festival of Unleavened Bread.
[SPEAKER_01]: The entire assembly of Judah rejoiced, including the priests, the Levites, and all who came from the land of Israel and get this part, the foreigners who came to the festival.
[SPEAKER_01]: And all those who lived in Judah.
[SPEAKER_01]: There was great joy in the city.
[SPEAKER_01]: For Jerusalem had not seen a celebration like this one, since the days of Solomon, King David's son.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then the priests and Levites stood and blessed the people and God heard their prayer from his holy dwelling in heaven.
[SPEAKER_01]: That doesn't that sound good to you?
[SPEAKER_01]: Doesn't that sound like a huge revival in the nation of Israel?
[SPEAKER_01]: Here's what sounds so good about that to me.
[SPEAKER_01]: I went through and made a list of all the neat things that happened there.
[SPEAKER_01]: They invited everyone to worship together at the temple.
[SPEAKER_01]: They decided to start celebrating the Passover again.
[SPEAKER_01]: They sent missionaries from town to town and inviting people to come back to God and worship God.
[SPEAKER_01]: God unified the hearts of the people in Hezekiah's kingdom.
[SPEAKER_01]: So they would follow their leaders who were following God.
[SPEAKER_01]: Even though many people laughed at the missionaries still a great crowd gathered to celebrate and worship God together.
[SPEAKER_01]: Their outreach efforts evidently reached beyond the realm of the region of Israel, because foreigners on top of all the others came and were a part of the festival and worshiping God as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: the people rejoiced because it had been many generations since they had experienced a celebration like this and the leaders blessed the people.
[SPEAKER_01]: And God heard their prayers.
[SPEAKER_01]: How does that sound to you?
[SPEAKER_01]: Doesn't that sound good?
[SPEAKER_01]: Doesn't that sound exciting?
[SPEAKER_01]: Isn't that something you want to be a part of?
[SPEAKER_01]: This is a movement.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is a movement of God among the people of God who were far from God and now they're going back to Him in great numbers, thousands, tens of thousands of people who are eager to worship God together and be united in their efforts and what happened.
[SPEAKER_01]: How did we go from Genesis 28, a pagan altar in every corner of Jerusalem, a pagan shrine
[SPEAKER_01]: A country that is decimated, a temple that is destroyed, board it up, trash everywhere, rubble all over the place.
[SPEAKER_01]: All the good stripped out of it and given away or stolen.
[SPEAKER_01]: How do we go from that to this?
[SPEAKER_01]: That's what we want to learn from in the next few weeks.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's where we want to go.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a series we're calling open doors on mission.
[SPEAKER_01]: open doors on mission and there are five key things that we are going to cover one each week that happened in this incredible radical transformation from second Chronicle 28 to second Chronicles 30.
[SPEAKER_01]: So go with me to chapter 29 because that's what's in the middle.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we want to study what happened and what led Hezekiah to make these incredible changes in his nation.
[SPEAKER_01]: How did he do something so different from his father so effectively?
[SPEAKER_01]: David read the passage for us earlier, but I'm going to do it again.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're going to put it on the screen for you.
[SPEAKER_01]: We want to study this together.
[SPEAKER_01]: So please read it carefully, pay attention to every word.
[SPEAKER_01]: Here's what is recorded.
[SPEAKER_01]: Hezekiah was 25 years old when he became the King of Judah, and he rained in Jerusalem 29 years.
[SPEAKER_01]: His mother was Abijah, the daughter of Zechariah.
[SPEAKER_01]: He did what
[SPEAKER_01]: In the very first month of the first year of his reign, Hesakaya reopened the doors of the Temple of the Lord and repaired them.
[SPEAKER_01]: He summoned the priests and Levites to meet him at the courtyard east of the temple.
[SPEAKER_01]: He said, did I listen to me, lead you Levites, purify yourselves, and purify the Temple of the Lord, the God of your ancestors, remove all the defiled things from the sanctuary.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now remember how bad things were,
[SPEAKER_01]: One week earlier, how bad the nation was, the temple wasn't ruined, the spiritual leadership, the priests and the Levites were either compromiser and hiding.
[SPEAKER_01]: There were four other nations at least that were attacking them and having victory over them.
[SPEAKER_01]: And all the valuables had been taken out of the land.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the country was basically in shambles.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was weak.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was undefined to anybody could come in and just take stuff from them.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that if you're a new leader in this kind of a country, you're gonna start with a military, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: You're going to, okay, we got to get our defenses up here.
[SPEAKER_01]: We've got to figure out a way to defend ourselves from all these invading nations around us.
[SPEAKER_01]: Or maybe, maybe because of how bad the economy has gotten, you're going to start with the economy, because all the goods have been taken in your people or suffering and struggling, because of all that.
[SPEAKER_01]: All the raids that we're going on from these other nations pouring in.
[SPEAKER_01]: But Hesakaya did something totally, totally different.
[SPEAKER_01]: He went in a new direction.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's going to be our main point for today.
[SPEAKER_01]: He has a guy embraced a new season.
[SPEAKER_01]: He embraced a new season.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to explain in the rest of this talk what that means and why that's so important.
[SPEAKER_01]: But he looked around.
[SPEAKER_01]: He saw nothing but bad news.
[SPEAKER_01]: His social media feed was just filled with very discouraging stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: And bad things here, bad things there, paganism over here, families in trouble over here, nation's rating over here, just all sorts of bad things.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he saw it as his father was in charge.
[SPEAKER_01]: He saw it a lineage of destruction, much of it led by his father.
[SPEAKER_01]: And his people were demoralized.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they were beaten down and worshiping the pagan gods.
[SPEAKER_01]: And his family led them there.
[SPEAKER_01]: But Hezekiah said enough is enough.
[SPEAKER_01]: We are going in the new direction.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're going to embrace a new season.
[SPEAKER_01]: How long did it take for him to do this?
[SPEAKER_01]: You see in the text, in the very first month of the very first year of his reign, not long at all.
[SPEAKER_01]: He said, right away, we are stopping this right now.
[SPEAKER_01]: We are breaking this cycle.
[SPEAKER_01]: When his dad was in charge, there wasn't much he could do.
[SPEAKER_01]: But now that his dad has gone, he can take the whole nation in a new direction.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, you might wonder, how did he has a guy had turned out so much better than his dad?
[SPEAKER_01]: And I want to spend a little bit of time on that because it's really fascinating to me.
[SPEAKER_01]: The clue, it one of the clues, is in verse one, which says his mother was a biger the daughter of Zechariah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And these ancient records, the mothers of the kings can often be a predictor of how good the kings turned out to be, because the kings were usually involved in all the political affairs, domestic and international issues, and all those sorts of things.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so the primary educator of the Crown Prince was often the queen mother.
[SPEAKER_01]: And many times, these queens and Israel and
[SPEAKER_01]: were pagan worshipers.
[SPEAKER_01]: They were not actually God followers oftentimes, and so many times you actually see that as the queen mother goes, so goes the next king for good or for bad.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes it's a bad king with a good queen, and the next king is good, and sometimes it's the reverse of that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes it's a foreign woman who comes in and emmerage to form some kind of alliance and this foreign woman brings in her pagan idol worship and instead of making sure that that does not continue, she actually influences the next king of Israel or Judah, that's what happened with Solomon.
[SPEAKER_01]: Solin married an Aminite woman brought in the worship of Molec and guess what?
[SPEAKER_01]: The next king, Rayabon, is a bad king, a follower of Molec.
[SPEAKER_01]: It happened with multiple kings that way.
[SPEAKER_01]: In fact, some of these queens are particularly called out by the prophets as being the ones who led their sons into wickedness and idol worship.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, Hezekiah's mother is called Abijah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we're told in the text that she's the daughter of Zechariah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that is significant because there is a Zechariah that lives at this time who is a friend of Isaiah the prophet.
[SPEAKER_01]: And Isaiah, the prophet actually refers to this Zechariah as an honest man and a faithful witness.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so that's probably the same Zechariah that's being talked about here probably.
[SPEAKER_01]: There is a good grandfather in Zechariah and a good mother in Abijah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then we also know that Hezekiah's grandfather on the other side, Jotham, the former king of Israel, also was a good godly king.
[SPEAKER_01]: How he ended up with evil A has, I'm not 100% sure, as a son.
[SPEAKER_01]: But Hezekiah has this foundation of Godly family history if he skips a generation.
[SPEAKER_01]: If he goes back beyond his dad.
[SPEAKER_01]: So he probably had good training from his mother and from his grandfather on his mother's side and even his grandfather on his father's side and he decides to abandon the ways of his dad and embrace a completely new season.
[SPEAKER_01]: And change is never easy.
[SPEAKER_01]: changes as often a really difficult thing for us and it comes with some risks and some discomforts.
[SPEAKER_01]: But God is a God of new seasons.
[SPEAKER_01]: The Bible says he likes to do new things.
[SPEAKER_01]: He says, behold, I am doing a new thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm doing a new work.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes he says, you wouldn't believe it if you were told what I'm about to do.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's so radical, so different, so crazy.
[SPEAKER_01]: And one of the hardest things for us to do sometimes is to recognize when God is doing something new and get on board with it.
[SPEAKER_01]: This has been a problem throughout history, it's been a problem throughout church history.
[SPEAKER_01]: There is this cycle as time moves on and culture moves on and technology moves on, where you see God doing a new thing and working in a new way, and it sometimes takes us a while to catch up.
[SPEAKER_01]: It takes people a while to recognize, oh wow, this new technology or this new ability that we have or this new cultural movement that's happening here could actually be used for good in some way.
[SPEAKER_01]: And yet oftentimes over time, we look back and realize, oh wow, God did amazing stuff through the Romans as wicked as that empire was, building all those roads and allowing the missionaries to spread quickly all over in the gospel to spread all over the place.
[SPEAKER_01]: God does amazing things to the printing press.
[SPEAKER_01]: All of these things are tools, new things that God uses to reach people for Christ in ways.
[SPEAKER_01]: We couldn't have imagined before.
[SPEAKER_01]: Even AI is being used and you've seen examples of that in this church over different times.
[SPEAKER_01]: Some of our missionaries use AI tools to reach people for Jesus in new ways.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's hard for us to adjust to that change sometimes because we get comfortable with the way things are.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then our world gets rocked by some big change.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this not only happens at a large cultural level and at the church level happens at the individual level, things that change in our lives, they often make us feel uncomfortable.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're forced to get a new job.
[SPEAKER_01]: You have a relationship that changes in a way that you didn't expect.
[SPEAKER_01]: A sudden illness or a life-changing injury that happens, or even it could be a good thing, it could be a great opportunity that's in front of you, but it's scary.
[SPEAKER_01]: And these changes sometimes make us very uncomfortable, but what if God is allowing these things in our lives or even causing these things in our lives so that there is a new season of impact and ministry in front of us, and we need to actually get on board with that and embrace it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because God likes to do new things and has a chia senses, something's come in here.
[SPEAKER_01]: There is a change that God is willing to do.
[SPEAKER_01]: God has a mission.
[SPEAKER_01]: He is going to, if we return to Him, He's got things He's promised to do.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, He's a guy in braces this new season.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we need to be ready to embrace a new season as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: For whatever God is doing in the world, in our church, in our lives, in our families.
[SPEAKER_01]: So here's how he did it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Four things that He's a guy who did to embrace this new season for his family and for his nation.
[SPEAKER_01]: Number one, He's a guy who chose foundation over history.
[SPEAKER_01]: He chose foundation over history.
[SPEAKER_01]: Verse two says he did what was pleasing in the Lord's site just as his ancestor, David had done.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now he could have followed his father's footsteps, but he looked to a better foundation.
[SPEAKER_01]: What did David do?
[SPEAKER_01]: What did my grandfather's do?
[SPEAKER_01]: not what did my father do now that's a gutsy move because the people were active pagan worshipers at this time had pagan altar set up all over the place.
[SPEAKER_01]: These are people that went along with A. has his wickedness for years, but has a chia saw past all of those years of wickedness.
[SPEAKER_01]: In fact, even his grandfather, Jotham, who was a good king, detect actually tells us in the preceding part of second chronicles, even though Jotham was a good king, the people continued to be wicked in practice paganism the whole time.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so there's actually many, many years, even through his good grandfather's tenure, that you have the nation of Israel just rejecting God and abandoning God.
[SPEAKER_01]: And even, Jonathan couldn't bring him back to a good place, but now has a guy who wants to change all of that.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he chooses foundation over his immediate history.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a lesson in there for all of us, because we all have a choice.
[SPEAKER_01]: between our history and a better foundation.
[SPEAKER_01]: For some of us, it might be our family history.
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe there is a cycle of challenging circumstances and bad choices and bad ways of treating people that gets passed on from generation to generation.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's hard to break and when you're young, you say, I'll never be like that.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then you're old and say, I'm just like that.
[SPEAKER_01]: We do that in little ways, but sometimes we do that in big ways, sometimes in destructive ways, because hurt people hurt people.
[SPEAKER_01]: are we willing to break that cycle and embrace a new season by choosing foundation over history.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes it's the history of our own choices that have brought us to where we are right now and we look back over the last 10 years or 20 years or 50 years or however long it isn't.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we think, wow, this is where I'm at and this is just who I am.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm just this kind of a person now and it's okay and it's just that's who I am and I'm not going to change at this point.
[SPEAKER_01]: But there are some aspects of that that God wants to refine and improve and he wants you to show the fruit of the spirit in your life.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he wants you to demonstrate love toward other people in your life and he wants you to be a generous and kind and comparing and passionate person and a patient person.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we get to the point where we choose our history over that foundation that God has for us.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we say, well, this is just who I am now, this is what I can't teach an old dog new tricks, this is just the way it's going to be.
[SPEAKER_01]: But we have to be willing to choose the better foundation that we have in the things of God.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then the history of what brought us to this point.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's never too late to embrace a new season of what God wants to do in your life, a fresh focus from God of how He wants to work in you and through you.
[SPEAKER_01]: So Hezekiah shows a better foundation over his immediate family history.
[SPEAKER_01]: Number two, Hezekiah opened the doors of the temple.
[SPEAKER_01]: His dad boarded him up, left the place in ruins, tore everything up, broke all of things, stripped all the stuff off the walls.
[SPEAKER_01]: They had gold over the wood on the walls, he tore it all down and made them look terrible.
[SPEAKER_01]: Made him look ugly.
[SPEAKER_01]: But Hesakai's first recorded act as king is to repair those doors and open them up again.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is in verse 3.
[SPEAKER_01]: It says in the very first month of the first year of his reign, Hesakai re-opened the doors of the temple of the Lord and repaired them.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now that may seem like a small thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: But it's got huge significance.
[SPEAKER_01]: To the people of Israel, this represented their bridge to God.
[SPEAKER_01]: The temple was their version of our cross.
[SPEAKER_01]: We look at the cross and say, wow, that is how Jesus opened up the pathway between us and God.
[SPEAKER_01]: And for them, that pathway was through the temple and through those doors.
[SPEAKER_01]: These are the doors that the priest went through to represent the people before God.
[SPEAKER_01]: To bring sacrifices on their behalf, to a tone for their sins, to represent their requests to God.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is how they really had that connection.
[SPEAKER_01]: These doors were this bridge for them incredible spiritual significance.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm sure that it was puzzling as the people watched in that first month of the first year of Hezekiah's reign and they saw the carpenters all heading towards the temple.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they saw that I'm carrying all their tools and all the supplies in the gold to put back up there.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they watched as the doors were opened up for the first time in years,
[SPEAKER_01]: And maybe some people caught a glimpse of inside.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now it looked terrible inside.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was a mess.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I'm sure it was an incredible thing to see while these doors are opening up again.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it symbolized the relationship that God wanted to have with his people.
[SPEAKER_01]: These were the doors to the sanctuary.
[SPEAKER_01]: So there's the courtyard around the temple.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then there's the sanctuary, the Holy Place.
[SPEAKER_01]: And there's the Holy of Holies, which is inside there behind a curtain.
[SPEAKER_01]: And in that sanctuary, only the priests were allowed to go in there, but this is where they represented the people to God.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this was a special kind of gateway that they could go through to have this connection with God.
[SPEAKER_01]: So for the people to see this, what they were seeing was this passageway to God is now officially open again.
[SPEAKER_01]: We can now worship God again, the priests can go in there again.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it symbolized the relationship that God wanted to have with us people.
[SPEAKER_01]: Not only did God make it possible for the be the way to approach God, but also because it was this sanctuary that was set apart only the priests who go in there, it communicated that God is holy.
[SPEAKER_01]: God is separate.
[SPEAKER_01]: We talked about that in our last series.
[SPEAKER_01]: God is pure.
[SPEAKER_01]: He is special.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was meant to communicate God wants to be with you.
[SPEAKER_01]: He wants to be present and involved.
[SPEAKER_01]: He wants this relationship with you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Also, He is worth respecting and revering and even fearing in a way because He is special.
[SPEAKER_01]: He is different.
[SPEAKER_01]: He is unique and you need to give him reverence.
[SPEAKER_01]: And by fixing up the doors and making them look beautiful again, has a chia and the people we're showing.
[SPEAKER_01]: We value this relationship with God once more.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, it makes me wonder, what would be the ways that we board up the doors to God in our lives?
[SPEAKER_01]: I think about that in a couple different ways.
[SPEAKER_01]: One is the things that we put in place that are obstacles to our relationship with God, the things we hold on to.
[SPEAKER_01]: the habit, the distractions, the addictions, the priorities that we put before God in our lives, but also those doors were sort of the public facing image of where that relationship with God sat.
[SPEAKER_01]: And of course today, we know that we don't have a physical temple that we're supposed to go to.
[SPEAKER_01]: We are the temple of God.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so if we make those doors look ugly, and if we board them up, the other thing that we're doing is we're putting a demonstration out there to other people of this is not a place where God is worshiped.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is not a life that worships God.
[SPEAKER_01]: And sometimes it's because we're just too afraid to show it.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're too afraid to show other people that we are different.
[SPEAKER_01]: And God has done something different in our lives.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I wonder if there are boards on the door to the temple of your life, what they would look like and what you would call them.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's just kind of a sidebar.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I think it's instructive for us individually.
[SPEAKER_01]: And as a church, the place that we worship God here together, even though this is not a temple, we are the temple.
[SPEAKER_01]: But even the physical space that we worship God and it should represent Him well.
[SPEAKER_01]: It should be welcoming.
[SPEAKER_01]: The doors should be open so to speak.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that everyone is welcome and invited and encouraged
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, the next thing that Hezekiah did to embrace this new season was to get the leaders on board with his new plan, look at verse 4.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's summoned the priests and Levites to meet him at the courtyard east of the temple.
[SPEAKER_01]: Hezekiah knew that if he wanted to start a movement of the people, he needed to start with the leaders.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's number 3.
[SPEAKER_01]: Hezekiah started with the leaders.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now the priests were the descendants of Aaron.
[SPEAKER_01]: They had special responsibilities to represent the people before God through sacrifices, through bringing incense into the sanctuary and the holy of Holy's and other things that they did.
[SPEAKER_01]: The Levites were descendants of Levite.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you very much.
[SPEAKER_01]: So when he's paying attention, it's got to make sure you're awake from time to time.
[SPEAKER_01]: The Levites were a special group of people that a sense of Levite, who had responsibilities of administration and logistics and food and managing supplies and music.
[SPEAKER_01]: They did a lot of administrative tasks in all of the extra special things of service around the temple so that the priest could focus on their role as the spiritual representatives of the people.
[SPEAKER_01]: These two groups of spiritual leaders had been largely absent for many years.
[SPEAKER_01]: But now they were called back by Hezekiah because he knew that the best way to reach the people was to start with the leaders.
[SPEAKER_01]: To get these influential leaders, the priests and the Levites on board with this, and then they would help spread this throughout the whole region.
[SPEAKER_01]: So how do we apply this to our lives today?
[SPEAKER_01]: If we want to see God work in a fresh way, if we want to see that incredible passion and fire in the on mission of chapter 30, how do we learn from this?
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I want you to think about this question.
[SPEAKER_01]: Are you more like a priest or a Levite?
[SPEAKER_01]: Are you like a priest or a Levite?
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you want to go in throw it out there?
[SPEAKER_01]: What do you think you are?
[SPEAKER_01]: A priest or a Levite?
[SPEAKER_01]: Not a lot of takers.
[SPEAKER_01]: I got to tell you guys, the nine o'clock crowd was a little more responsive.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm just saying, I don't know how.
[SPEAKER_01]: Are you like a priest or a Levite?
[SPEAKER_01]: Ooh, I heard, I heard somebody say yes.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know who said it.
[SPEAKER_01]: That was pretty good.
[SPEAKER_01]: Over here somewhere.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, very good, very good, yes.
[SPEAKER_01]: You, we are like priest and Levi.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let me show you how?
[SPEAKER_01]: First Peter 2, 9.
[SPEAKER_01]: But you are not like that.
[SPEAKER_01]: For you are a chosen people, you are royal priests, a holy nation, God's very own possession.
[SPEAKER_01]: As a result, you can show others the goodness of God for he calls you out of the darkness into his wonderful light.
[SPEAKER_01]: Peter says, you are royal priests.
[SPEAKER_01]: We don't have other priests that we have to go to as intermediaries between us and God.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because we are priests.
[SPEAKER_01]: When Jesus died in the veil and the temple was torn and symbolized that relationship with God that has now opened for all of us where we can go right to, we don't have to confess our sins to a priest.
[SPEAKER_01]: We don't have to go to priests for anything, really.
[SPEAKER_01]: We can go to any other believer and say, would you pray for me?
[SPEAKER_01]: But we also have a direct connection to God, just like the priest of the temple system, is over in that way.
[SPEAKER_01]: And now we are the temple of God, and we have direct access to God.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so you are priests, in fact, paid special attention to that next part.
[SPEAKER_01]: As a result, you can show others the goodness of God.
[SPEAKER_01]: Not only can you go directly to God, but you are God's representative to people.
[SPEAKER_01]: You are God's representative to other people in this world in the same way that the priests were God's representatives to all of the people in Israel and elsewhere.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's your job.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, if you're a follower of Jesus, if you trusted in Jesus, you are a priest before God.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now what about the Levites?
[SPEAKER_01]: Ephesians 411 and 12 as one place we can look although there's many.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now these are the gifts Christ gave to the church, the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the pastors and teachers.
[SPEAKER_01]: Their responsibility is to equip God's people to do his work and build up the church, the body of Christ.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now the job of building up and taking care of the temple system was the Levites.
[SPEAKER_01]: But here, we're told that all of the saints, all of the believers are supposed to be involved in that work.
[SPEAKER_01]: doing the work of the ministry and throughout the New Testament, we're told that we're given special gifts to be able to serve in different ways and there's a ministry and there's mercy and there's service and there's all these things that God has gifted us to be able to do so that we can serve in the body of Christ and so the answer to the question are you more like a priest or more like Levi it is yes you are to be both.
[SPEAKER_01]: So where do we see ourselves in this story?
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, just as, as a guy had called the priests and the Levites to start this movement of reaching people for God and he calls them all there to be a part of this and to be ambassadors and this Peter says, you're priests too, you represent God to the people.
[SPEAKER_01]: The Bible says, you are like the Levites in doing the work of the ministry in the church.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so our application of that today is that we need to answer that same call.
[SPEAKER_01]: Say, we have a responsibility.
[SPEAKER_01]: We are leaders, all of us.
[SPEAKER_01]: The leaders of the church are not just the pastors of the elders, the deacons, but every born again Christian.
[SPEAKER_01]: Every follower of Jesus is supposed to be a leader for God in this world, showing God's goodness to other people reaching out to other people.
[SPEAKER_01]: We get to help bring people to God.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's a really cool privilege, but also a responsibility.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I wonder if just like the Levites in the priests, if it's so easy for us to just become stagnant in that, and to not be that representative of God that he is designed us and made us to be, and given us that great privilege of being.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's one more thing as a guy did.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's in verse five.
[SPEAKER_01]: He said to them, listen to me, Levites, purify yourselves, and purify the temple of the Lord, the God of your ancestors.
[SPEAKER_01]: Remove all the defile things from the sanctuary.
[SPEAKER_01]: Hezekiah, number four, called for purity.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now the kind of purity that he's talking about here wasn't just a recommitment or a dedication or a change of heart because he's actually referring to following the commands of purity that God had given the people of Israel in particular, the Levites and also the priests and also the people.
[SPEAKER_01]: There were physical steps they were to take to demonstrate the purity of their heart.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's ritual cleansing, there's sacrifices, there's dietary restrictions, there's ritual washing of temple items, he's not just calling on them to do better, he's not just calling on them to have better hearts, although all of that has to happen, but he's actually calling them to take action.
[SPEAKER_01]: to do the things God has commanded them to do to show that their hearts are back to God.
[SPEAKER_01]: They were supposed to be doing all these things all the way, but along the way they got distracted.
[SPEAKER_01]: They got complacent.
[SPEAKER_01]: The text says multiple times that they had lost their purification, because they didn't keep up with any of the things that they were supposed to do.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm afraid that oftentimes the same thing can be said of us.
[SPEAKER_01]: You a lot of us when we come to faith in Jesus, we get excited about it.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're passionate about it, and we're not afraid to share Jesus with other people, and we're not afraid to look different.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so we do represent God to other people, and we do it very openly and boldly.
[SPEAKER_01]: Over time, it's pretty easy.
[SPEAKER_01]: As we get farther and farther from our conversion experience, to become more and more casual about our faith.
[SPEAKER_01]: They even more hidden about our faith.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just, yeah, I'm a follower of Jesus.
[SPEAKER_01]: But it's maybe not something that I wear as openly as I once did.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the fire that once burned in us for the word of God and for sharing it with other people gives way over time sometimes to politics and news and hobbies and careers and even good things like family can end up taking a priority in our lives over God.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I Jesus told the church in Ephesus, which, by the way, will study in a few months.
[SPEAKER_01]: In the book of Revelation, he said, you've lost your first love.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this can happen over times to us, just like it did to the Levites, who at one time were practicing the things God told them to do, and so they were pure in that way.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then over time, they just lost it, and has a guy had to call them back to it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so the question for us is, are there some ways in which your life,
[SPEAKER_01]: is more like those Levites than you would want.
[SPEAKER_01]: Some ways in which you have given up on the things that you used to do that God has commanded you to do, the priorities that he wants you to have, faithful in all the ways he wants you to be faithful, living out your faith before him.
[SPEAKER_01]: Have you slipped away from some of those things?
[SPEAKER_01]: I could give you a huge list of what it might be, but it's different for every person.
[SPEAKER_01]: ways in which we've become more casual about a relationship with God instead of respecting the holiness of who He is and what He has called us to do.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so my message for you today is that we need to be willing to embrace a new season like has a chided like He let all the priests and the Levites and the people to do.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm going to give you those four points again with a question for each of you to think about.
[SPEAKER_01]: Number one, has a chided chose foundation over history.
[SPEAKER_01]: Here's the question, will you embrace a new season in your life, in our church, even if it interrupts what seems familiar?
[SPEAKER_01]: Even if it makes us a little bit uncomfortable, will you embrace a new season of what God may want to do?
[SPEAKER_01]: Number two, has a chia open the doors of the temple?
[SPEAKER_01]: Will you open the doors and clear the way for people to meet and follow Jesus?
[SPEAKER_01]: I think of that in two ways.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's the way your life represents the doors to God.
[SPEAKER_01]: The way that gets presented to others and sometimes that presentation can actually be an ugly one.
[SPEAKER_01]: Just like what A has did to the doors of the temple.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's also the doors of this place, as we welcome people in, one of the greatest things we do to open the doors is to literally open the doors and have our greeters there with smiles on their faces welcoming people and we want to make this the most welcoming place around.
[SPEAKER_01]: So when people drive by it and drive up to it, they go, wow, I want to see what's in there.
[SPEAKER_01]: They really look like they care about what they're doing.
[SPEAKER_01]: There are lives should reflect that as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: Number three, has a chia started with the leaders.
[SPEAKER_01]: So will you be like the priests and the Levites who showed God to the people?
[SPEAKER_01]: Who even though they had slipped away from that over time, they were willing to recommit themselves and to do the important work of going through the purification and doing the things God commanded them to do.
[SPEAKER_01]: I know it's different for us today than it was for them.
[SPEAKER_01]: You don't have to go richly cleanse the different aspects.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, we don't take all the stuff here at the church and dip it underwater like they did.
[SPEAKER_01]: But that was just a simple.
[SPEAKER_01]: That was a way of showing that their hearts were dedicated to God.
[SPEAKER_01]: Will you show God to the people in your life as being leaders who are pure before God?
[SPEAKER_01]: And number four has a guy called for purity and what here's what that looks like.
[SPEAKER_01]: Will you take radical action to live a life dedicated to God, removing all idols and distractions that keep you from him?
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's the most important part.
[SPEAKER_01]: Hey, if we're about to see a new season of God at work in our church and in our community, if we're about to embark on a big project together and we pray for God's wisdom and all of that, and it a lot of us are harboring sins and addictions and sinful habits, strongholds in our lives that we're just holding on to and we're not turning over to God, then I don't think it's gonna work.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think every one of us has to be willing to get right before God and say God, I am willing to put aside this thing that's kept me from you.
[SPEAKER_01]: I am willing to put boundaries on this and limits on this because it's kept me from following you.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I know there's things you want to do in my life that I haven't been willing to do.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I want to get right with you right now.
[SPEAKER_01]: If we're going to do things for God in this world and align with him in his mission, that I think we have to be willing to take that first step just like they did individually to say, I'm going to get my heart right before God.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's what I want to challenge you to do today.
[SPEAKER_01]: as we all seek to embrace whatever God has for us in a new season together.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's start by bowing our heads and prayer right now.
[SPEAKER_01]: Would you pray with me?
[SPEAKER_01]: Heavenly Father, you have given us such an incredible challenge in this story of Hezekiah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's convicting.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's convicting to me, God.
[SPEAKER_01]: As I look at my life and see the ways I fall short and see the ways that I want to do better for you.
[SPEAKER_01]: I know that it can only be through your power, as I surrender it over to you.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're the one that does the change.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're the one that makes the good.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're the one that cleanses the heart and so God together.
[SPEAKER_01]: I pray that we would all confess whatever since we have an heart to you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Lord, for the ways that I've sinned against you this week, in my heart, in my mind, things I've said, we bring these before you now, God, and we ask you to change us, to make us righteous and more like you, to continue that good work that you've started, that you'll be faithful to complete God.
[SPEAKER_01]: help our hearts to be in the right place and fully align with what you want to do in this world.
[SPEAKER_01]: Give us wisdom and discernment to know where you are going so that as a church, we can have open doors.
[SPEAKER_01]: In our lives, we can have open doors.
[SPEAKER_01]: We can point people to you.
[SPEAKER_01]: We can represent you as your priests in this world.
[SPEAKER_01]: I pray that you would make our lives, lives worth following, so that we could say as Paul did follow me as I follow Christ, but that we would truly start by following Christ Lord.
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe there's somebody here today that doesn't actually know you doesn't actually follow you Lord, I pray that you would show them.
[SPEAKER_01]: Your mercy, your grace, how you died for them on a cross to pay for their sins so that they could have a relationship with you if they just confess their sins and believe in you, God.
[SPEAKER_01]: I pray that you'd help all of us to live that out and represent you well this week and in Jesus' name we pray, amen.