Dennis Tuuri

# Return and Rejoice

Our sermon text today is actually all of 2 Chronicles, but to put it in context, I’m going to read through the first set of verses. If you have the handout today, you could follow along on page two. We’ll complete the first major section of that outline—a classic reading of the text prepared by my wife. So, and I think it’s pretty good. So we’ll begin reading at verse one. We won’t read all of the chapter now, but we will in a little bit.

Please stand for the reading of God’s word. So we’ll read through the A section concluding at verse 12. 2 Chronicles 30:

“And Hezekiah sent to all Israel and Judah, and also wrote letters to Ephraim and Manasseh, that they should come to the house of the Lord at Jerusalem to keep the Passover to the Lord God of Israel. For the king and his leaders and all the assembly in Jerusalem had agreed to keep the Passover in the second month. For they could not keep it at the regular time, because a sufficient number of priests had not consecrated themselves, nor had the people gathered together at Jerusalem.

And the matter pleased the king and all the assembly. So they resolved to make a proclamation throughout all Israel from Beersheba to Dan that they should come to keep the Passover to the Lord God of Israel at Jerusalem since they had not done it for a long time in the prescribed manner. Then the runners went through all Israel and Judah with the letters from the king and his leaders and spoke according to the command of the king:

‘Children of Israel, return to the Lord God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel. Then he will return to the remnant of you who have escaped from the hand of the kings of Assyria. Do not be like your fathers and your brethren who trespassed against the Lord God of their fathers, so that he gave them up to desolation. As you see, now do not be stiff-necked as your fathers were. But yield yourselves to the Lord. Enter his sanctuary which he has sanctified forever, and serve the Lord your God, that the fierceness of his wrath may turn away from you.

For if you return to the Lord, your brethren and your children will be treated with compassion by those who lead them captive, so that they may come back to this land. For the Lord your God is gracious and merciful and will not turn his face from you if you return to him.’

So the runners passed from city to city through the countries of Ephraim and Manasseh as far as Zebulun, but they laughed at them and mocked them. Nevertheless, some from Asher, Manasseh, and Zebulun humbled themselves and came to Jerusalem. Also, the hand of God was on Judah to give them singleness of heart to obey the command of the king and the leaders at the word of the Lord.”

Let’s pray. Lord God, we are those who have assembled today having heard your voice to come and to celebrate the greater Passover, the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, and to praise your holy name, to seek your favor, to turn our sorrows into joy. We pray, Lord God, that you would hear from heaven, that you would receive our praise in this time of worship, that you would instruct us by your word. Give us a perspective of our world based on this text. Help us, Lord God, to move from suffering and trials to joy through the work of the Savior. In Jesus’ name we ask it. Amen.

Please be seated.

Joy, gladness. That’s what this text moves the people of God to. And the context for it is the great judgments of God—Assyria taking much of the northern tribes of Israel into captivity. And this, of course, has an effect on the southern tribes of Judah as well. And so there’s great suffering going on. They’ve had a very bad king, now replaced by a very good king, Hezekiah. And the goodness of this king is portrayed for us here, reuniting north and south again and moving them from suffering into joy and gladness.

He urges them to return to the Lord, and he assures them that as they return to the Lord, they will be healed. And then he adds to that—they’ll receive joy and gladness. And four times this word for joy and gladness is multiplied as the text moves toward its conclusion.

So we have here really a text that fits well with our theme verse for Lent. Our theme verse from Lent is on your handouts. It’s Isaiah 19:22. It’s over the foyer in case you haven’t noticed. Pam Forester did wonderful calligraphy for us for the Lent season. That verse is:

“And the Lord will strike Egypt. He will strike and heal it. They will return to the Lord, and he will be entreated by them and heal them.”

And that’s exactly what happens in our text today. Egypt, Israel, whatever people God is dealing with, this is the movement. He strikes them, they turn to him, he heals them, he hears their prayers, he answers their prayers, and he moves them to joy.

So our goal with Reformation Covenant is to have this season of Lent be one in which we turn very self-consciously away from particular sins that the Lord has brought to our mind and convicted us of, and to turn more steadfastly to God. And we know that this is where joy and gladness are to be found—in a walk constant with the very reason we were created and made. We are image-bearers of God, and our greatest joy, our greatest gladness comes when we’re in good relationship with God and we’re in good relationship with his people. Joy and gladness is to be found there.

Now, I mentioned particular sins that we want to focus on, each of us as we think through this season of Lent and preparing for Resurrection Sunday. But there are general sins in our culture as well. I read an interesting article this week online by Tim Keller on different perspectives of the gospel. And you know, what I want to say here fits with our text because the text really—if we want to know what they’re turning away from and Hezekiah sends runners throughout Israel and Judah—essentially the big thing they’re turning away from is idolatry.

And idolatry has different lots of different forms. And Tim Keller, talking about the gospel, talks about the different perspectives of what the gospel is. And he, like we do, embraces a gospel that is more than justification of individual sinners. It’s certainly that, but that wasn’t really new news with the coming of Christ. That’s certainly good news. It’s the best of news that we can have. But beyond that, the gospel is the good news that Jesus has come and been faithful to the covenant. He’s kept our side of it for us, and he’s changed the world and he’s ushered in new creation.

And so we’ll focus on that on Easter Sunday. But that’s what it’s all about. And the good news is that the world is changing and it won’t be the same again. That idolatry is being replaced throughout the entire globe. This holistic perspective of the gospel leads Keller to think about different ways to talk to people in the context of our world.

Let me read a little bit of what he says in this article, specifically talking about how he preaches the gospel to people in a postmodern world. Keller says this:

“I take a page from Kierkegaard’s The Sickness Unto Death and define sin as building your identity, your self-worth and happiness on anything other than God. That is, I use the biblical definition of sin as idolatry.”

Okay, let me just read that again. Sin, he says, is building your identity, your self-worth, your happiness, your joy and gladness—we could say, in terms of today’s text—on anything other than God. So he uses the biblical definition of sin as idolatry. And this is what Hezekiah is urging the people of God to turn away from—particular forms of idolatry.

Keller goes on and says that puts the emphasis not as much on doing bad things but on making good things into ultimate things. So the emphasis changes from not just doing bad things but turning good things into ultimate things.

Now I think that is an excellent perspective of what our culture is in the midst of today. Our post-Christian culture—we’ve taken good things and we’re making them ultimate things. Keller goes on to say:

“Instead of telling them they are sinning because they are sleeping with their girlfriends or boyfriends, I tell them that they are sinning because they are looking to their romances to give their lives meaning, to justify and save them, to give them what they should be looking for from God.”

In light of today’s theme—returning to joy—looking to that for the ultimate source of joy and gladness instead of God. This idolatry, Keller correctly says, leads to anxiety, obsessiveness, envy, and resentment.

Now see, that’s right. There is no joy and gladness ultimately in finding your identity and taking what could be a good thing—a romantic relationship—and making it idolatrous, for instance. Or taking a good thing—benevolence or desire for social justice—making it idolatrous and removing it from the context of how God’s word says to achieve these things.

So rather than focusing on the individual acts of sin, Keller tries to reach the broader idea of sin in a culture where they’re taking good things, turning them into bad things by making them ultimate things. And as a result of that, they are unhappy. They don’t have joy and gladness.

He goes on to say:

“I have found that when you describe their lives in terms of idolatry, postmodern people do not give much resistance. Then Christ and his salvation can be presented—not at this point so much as their only hope for forgiveness, but as the only hope for freedom. Their only hope for freedom.”

You see, idolatry—that’s what you need. You need to be freed from that. You need to be freed from enslavement to idolatry that comes about from making good things ultimate things.

He continues:

“This is my gospel, for the uncircumcised,” quoting from Paul there. “I use both a kingdom and an eternal life gospel. I find that many of my younger listeners are struggling to make choices in a world of endless consumer options and are confused about their own identities in a culture of self-creation and self-promotion. These are the people who are engaged well by the more individually focused presentation of the gospel as free grace, not works. This is a lot like the eternal life gospel of John.

However, I—and now listen, I think many of us can identify with what he says next—I have found many highly secular people over the age of 40 are not reached very well with any emphasis on personal problems. Many of them think they are doing very well, thank you very much. They are much more concerned about the problems of the world—war, racism, poverty, and injustice. And they respond well to a synoptic-like kingdom gospel”—talking about Matthew, Mark, and Luke as opposed to John—”a kingdom gospel.”

So what Keller is focusing on is that we have a gospel to present to the world. That gospel is much broader than just personal salvation. It includes that, of course. But when Hezekiah tells them to repent from their idolatry, he’s calling them to repent from a worldview that takes good things, makes them into ultimate things, and takes matters of war and injustice and stuff and tries to come up with their ways of dealing with problems instead of turning to God as the source for their ways.

And the end result of that life lived apart from Christ is not joy and gladness, but rather it is increasing anxiety, pessimism, a kind of sarcastic, cynical attitude toward the world, and division. And our culture is filled with division. That’s the culture that Hezekiah was living in—filled with great division between the north and the south. And into that culture, Hezekiah calls people to return to the Lord and by returning to the Lord, to return to the true source of joy and gladness.

So this text falls into what we’re talking about in this season of Lent—returning to the Lord and be healed. And part of being healed and the result of being healed is joy.

Now, I’m going to focus on that section that we just read where he tells them to return in a little bit, but first I want to talk about the arc of the text. So if you have your handouts or if you just open your Bible, one or the other, I don’t care which. When you look at a text of scripture that’s clearly denoted as a particular text—chapter 30 is a unit. Sometimes it’s quite helpful to look at the arc of the text. Where does it start? Where does it end? What happens in the middle?

This returning to God and the celebration of the Passover is put in context by these two bookends. And if you look at that, look at verse one:

“Hezekiah sent to all Israel, wrote letters to Ephraim and Manasseh that they should come to the house of the Lord at Jerusalem to keep the Passover to the Lord God of Israel.”

That’s the simple introduction. Hezekiah calls, and he calls to the entire nation of Israel—in the north and the south—to come together to keep the Passover.

Now, if we go down to the conclusion of this, in verse 25:

“The whole assembly of Judah rejoiced, also the priests and Levites, all the assembly that came from Israel, the sojourners who came from the land of Israel and those who dwelt in Judah.”

So now we’ve got reunification for the first time since Solomon, right? Long ago, Solomon had died and his son Rehoboam got bad advice and God set up Jeroboam to take over the northern tribes. And Jeroboam instituted false worship to specifically keep what’s going on here from happening—the unification of God’s people in worship. And from that time on, for all these many periods of time, these years went by divided.

Hezekiah sent letters desiring to see unification, and by the end of the text, unification has happened. Verse 26:

“So there was great joy in Jerusalem.”

You see, in verse 25 and in verse 26, joy is the result of what happens here. He moves them through the calling of them to return from disunity and a lack of joy to a great joy together in Jerusalem.

“For since the time of Solomon, the son of David, king of Israel, there had been nothing like this in Jerusalem.”

The text wants us to identify Hezekiah with Solomon. So it isn’t just the fact that unification has happened like it happened in the time of Solomon. Now there’s a direct reference to Solomon, the king of Israel—all Israel, in other words, united Israel. The text wants us to do a double thing here. It wants us to know that turning to the Lord is corporate here. It’s on the part of the whole church, we could say. And when the whole church comes together, what joy and gladness there is.

And Hezekiah is being likened here, obviously, to Solomon. And then look at verse 27:

“Then the priests, the Levites arose and blessed the people.”

Now that’s a nice conclusion to a text—a benediction. That’s what’s going to happen at the end of our service here today.

“Blessed the people. Their voice was heard. Their prayer came up to his holy dwelling place to heaven.”

Hezekiah calls them to the temple in Jerusalem, and we find out at the end that their prayer has been heard at God’s dwelling place—the house of God in Jerusalem, the dwelling place of God in heaven. Those are linked textually here. That’s the beginning and end of the text. That’s what’s happened. So heaven and earth linked together by way of people approaching God’s heavenly temple by going to his earthly temple.

Beautiful, beautiful arc of the text that shows us the significance of what we do in response to the call of God to return—specifically to return in unity to the worship of God.

So the text has this wonderful arc to it that’s quite significant. And Hezekiah is likened to Solomon. So we have this beautiful arc, and it’s also the reversal of Jeroboam’s sin. Now this is interesting. You probably didn’t catch it, but the text before us has a lot of interesting things in it that are strange. And one thing that is strange in the text is that Hezekiah celebrates Passover not in the first month but in the second month. Hezekiah changes the Passover date this one time. Well, so what?

Well, the law of God prescribed that Passover was to be kept in the first month. And Hezekiah—well, we couldn’t get it together quick enough, whatever. We’re going to do it in the second month. Now, that’s interesting. It’s particularly interesting when we see this connection between Hezekiah’s unification and Jeroboam’s division after Solomon.

Let me read from 1 Kings 12:32 about what Jeroboam did. Okay, so Solomon dies, his son takes over, and the end result is the breaking apart because he’s too much of a tyrant. God gives the northern tribes to Jeroboam, God’s own man. But then Jeroboam turns bad, and we’ll see how he turns bad in the text I’m going to read in just a minute. And as a result, division becomes permanent, at least for a long time.

Here’s what we read in 1 Kings 12:

“Jeroboam ordained a feast on the 15th day of the 8th month, like the feast that was in Judah, and offered sacrifices on the altar. Now this feast is the Feast of Booths, and the Feast of Booths was supposed to be celebrated in the seventh month. And Jeroboam said, ‘We’re going to make it a month later, in the eighth month.’ So he did at Bethel, sacrificing to the calves that he had made. He had made up, you know, calves as well to represent Yahweh. Visual image—bad.

And at Bethel, he installed the priests of the high places which he had made. Needed new priests too, because priests were supposed to go to Jerusalem to the temple.”

And then in 1 Kings, the next verse says:

“So he made offerings on the altar which he had made at Bethel on the 15th day of the 8th month, in the month which he had devised in his own heart.”

In the month that he had devised in his own heart—there is liturgical idolatry. When Jeroboam devises a thing in his own heart that seems good to him—”Let’s not go to Jerusalem. We’ll have it a month later so you can just don’t worry about going down there in the seventh month, and the eighth month you can have the feast here with us.”

Competitive events like this are quite interesting, you know, politically. Jeroboam probably had political wisdom, but when you do things in opposition to God, the end result is your destruction. And so this is what Jeroboam was about. But he moved the Feast of Booths one month back because he devised it in his own heart.

Now when the message goes out from Hezekiah to the northern tribes as well as the southern tribes, some of them mocked him. We don’t know why they mocked and made fun of the proclamation to come down here. But I wonder if it wasn’t in part due to what Jeroboam had done. Think about it. What’s the difference? Jeroboam moved the Feast of Booths back a month. Hezekiah moves the Feast of Passover back a month.

Now, it’s temporary. It’s just this one time. But sometimes you can’t tell on the basis of just the actions people take what’s going on. The text lets us know that Hezekiah’s total motivation was good and proper. God blesses it. He hears Hezekiah’s prayer. He receives Passover in that second month. Now, one reason for that is there’s an alternate Passover that we’ll talk about in a couple of minutes.

But you see, he can be ridiculed like he’s another Jeroboam by the people in the north. “Oh yeah, another guy moving the feast back. We know what that’s going to happen to us because of that. A lot of our kids and stuff are taken into captivity to Assyria. No way we’re going to do that again.”

So, you know, part of it is that. And it’s interesting because the text wants us to say, “Well, there’s a good and a bad reason sometimes for changing dates of things. It’s not always bad.” In Hezekiah’s case, his actions are blessed. Jeroboam—it specifically said he was devising it in his own heart. It was what he came up with. Hezekiah was doing something in conjunction with the leaders of Judah to try to honor God and to edify the people. And he changed the observance by one month.

Now, he does that because there’s another text that gives them actual justification for moving it back one month. In Numbers, we’ll see that text. But my point is that, again, he is the reversal of Jeroboam here. He’s actually doing things correctly, even though he’s doing things that could be interpreted by some people as not proper.

So the arc of the text is this wonderful joy resulting from returning to the Lord, and the likening of Hezekiah to Solomon, and the reversal of Jeroboam.

One other text that is interesting to think of in terms of this is 2 Chronicles 7:14. It’s a very familiar text to us. Let me read it:

“If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, will forgive their sin and heal their land.”

Now, that’s a very popular verse amongst American evangelicals and conservatives over the last 20 years because this is a verse that really has gone out from pulpits to call America to repentance, properly. So what’s interesting is this verse seems to inform chapter 30 in a lot of ways.

Okay, so there he says they have to humble themselves. We see that in verse 11. They’re called to humble themselves in 2 Chronicles 30. They’re supposed to pray. And in verse 18 of 2 Chronicles 30, they pray. They’re supposed to seek my face. And in verse 19 of 2 Chronicles 30, they seek his face. And they’re supposed to turn from their wicked ways. And in verse 4, that’s what they’re called to do—to turn from their sins, to return to God by turning away from their sins.

And he says he’ll hear from heaven. We just read, and there’s a couple of places where God hears from heaven. Verse 20. And “I will forgive their sin and heal their land.” And healing is what specifically Hezekiah will say. As you turn to him, God will heal you, in verse 20.

So it seems like 2 Chronicles 30 is intended to bring back this summation statement, which is similar to the one that is our theme verse for Lent, to return to God. And using all these different words in 2 Chronicles 7:14 to inform what’s going on in 2 Chronicles 30. So 2 Chronicles 30 is like an expansion of that single verse, and it kind of matches up with what was being said in this earlier text from 2 Chronicles chapter 7.

Okay, so I said that there is some kind of justification for what Hezekiah does. And if you’re a member of RCC or actually if you’re on the RCC mailing list, you actually read a verse this week if you read the email about our worship service coming up this Friday, April 1st. You read the very text that I’m going to read now.

In the providence of God, what we’re doing this Friday had no relationship to what I was going to preach on today. But what I’m preaching on today specifically relates to the same text in Numbers 9:9-11. We read this:

“Then the Lord spoke to Moses saying, ‘Speak to the children of Israel, saying, If any one of you or your posterity is unclean because of a corpse or is far away on a journey, he may still keep the Lord’s Passover. On the 14th day of the second month at twilight, they may keep it. They shall eat it with unleavened bread and bitter herbs.’”

Now, this is an important verse. It’s in our constitution because what it tells us is that the calendar can be moved to accommodate difficulties that people have. I believe we’ve applied it since the earliest days of RCC to say this: If someone is unable to attend Lord’s Day worship services on Sunday here at RCC for these reasons that are articulated here, then it is legitimate for the church to provide an alternative Lord’s Day during the week.

Some people say, “Well, the whole calendar thing, the whole Christian Sabbath, Sunday’s the day of worship. That doesn’t work because we’re in a 24/7 environment. People have to work now. And so what are you going to do about that?” Well, the text of Numbers 9, as well as Hezekiah’s holding the Passover in the second month in the text of 2 Chronicles 30, are biblical justification that say alternate days of worship can be established. God gives them the ability to do this.

Notice, by the way, that in Numbers 9—listen to the conditions: “If any one of you or your posterity is unclean because of a corpse or is far away on a journey, he may still keep the Lord’s…”—two specific situations. Uncleanness by way of a corpse or far away on a journey, that would include business trips. He’s far away. So based on this, if a guy is unable to attend worship services because of business—as Tim M. is right now employed in that particular way—then it’s legitimate for the church to establish and really we ought to be trying to establish an alternate day of worship for people that cannot come to church on the Lord’s Day because of being away at work.

Now, what’s number one? Numbers 9 is a justification for doing what we’re doing this Friday. And it’s a long-term justification for the church working around a secular environment where people have to work on Sundays or they can’t make money to feed their kids and their wives. So that gives us justification for that.

I really hope that many of you come out Friday night because covenant renewal worship with communion—which is what we’ll be doing—and yes, you can take it twice this week if you come on Friday night. But covenant renewal worship involves the body of Christ, you know. It’s not just individual—it’s not that at all. And so we really hope that a number of you will come out from 7 to 8:00 this Friday for our alternate covenant renewal worship service this week and participate in that with us. All the elders will be here.

If you come at 8:00 following this one-hour worship service, it’ll be a truncated service at 8:00. If you want to hang around, you can sing for an hour or so. They’re going to have Make Us Praise Glorious bumped back from 8:00 to 9:00.

So number one, we can do that. But what’s interesting about this is Hezekiah takes these two exceptions and broadens them way out, right? These are exceptions that seem to be given for individuals. And Hezekiah says, “Well, we’re going to make that exception for all the people of Judah and all of the people of Israel.” Okay, so he is returning imperfectly to the Lord.

I mean, it isn’t quite what the text had in mind in Numbers 9, but it does give us justification for applying in a broader sense things that are written for a particular case. And that’s what Hezekiah does. So we can kind of move around that a little bit with the text.

But what we see as the text develops is not only do they do it on the wrong day, they do it with people that are not really supposed to be eating the Passover. Let’s see. You know what we should do at this point is just walk through the entire chapter briefly, and we’ll see this as we get to it. So we’ve looked at the beginning and end. We’ve looked at how Hezekiah is going to send out these letters. So let’s turn to the text and just kind of do a run-through of the text itself so you’ll know what’s actually going on instead of me just continuing to talk about it without you having looked at the text itself.

Okay, so in verse 2, the king and his leaders and all the assembly in Jerusalem agree to keep the Passover in the second month. We’ve just talked about that. They couldn’t keep it at the regular time because a sufficient number of priests had not consecrated themselves, nor had the people gathered together at Jerusalem.

Now, that’s interesting because the two exceptions in Numbers 9 are uncleanness and distance. And both those things are referenced in our text. So he is building off of the Numbers 9 exception, and that’s why they moved it to the second month. But in any event, in verse 4:

“The matter pleased the king and all the assembly. They resolved to make a proclamation throughout all Israel from Beersheba to Dan that they should come to keep the Passover to the Lord God of Israel at Jerusalem since they had not done it in a long time in the prescribed manner. Then the runners went through all Israel and Judah with the letters from the king and his leaders and spoke according to the command of the king.”

And here’s what the letter said. And this is what the runners declare:

“Children of Israel, return to the Lord God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel. Does that sound familiar? The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel. It shouldn’t. That’s only used four places. We’ll talk later about why that’s interesting here and what’s going on. But he specifically uses a name for God that is unusual—the God of Abraham, Isaac, and not Jacob, but Israel.

If you return to him, then he will return to the remnant of you who have escaped from the hand of the kings of Assyria.”

So he’s talking to the remnant that are left. Assyria has already taken much of the northern tribes into captivity. And he says, “Return to God and God will return to you.” Okay? Return to God, he’ll heal you. Return to God, he’ll bring you into joy. Return to God, he’ll return to you. So there’s a back and forth.

“Do not be like your fathers and your brothers who trespassed against the Lord God of their fathers.”

How did they turn away from God? By sinning. The word “trespass” means they broke what the law said to do. This is the word that just means a violation—to trespass, to go across a particular line. So you return by endeavoring not to trespass against the Lord God of their fathers.

“So that he gave them up to desolation. As you see, they saw it. They were in captivity. The land was devastated. The Assyrians—they had lost the war. So you see the desolation that comes from violating the word of God.

Now, do not be stiff-necked as your fathers were.”

So don’t stiffen up. Be humble. In other words, yield yourselves to the Lord. I think literally there it means to give your hand to the Lord in covenant. Yield yourself to the Lord.

“Enter his sanctuary which he has sanctified forever and serve the Lord your God.”

So there’s three things that are given positively: Yield yourself, enter his sanctuary, and serve him. So it begins at least here in Hezekiah’s text with coming to worship at the Passover feast.

“And the end result of this is that the fierceness of his wrath may turn away from you. If you return to the Lord, your brethren and your children will be treated with compassion by those who lead them captive so that they may come back to this land.”

Okay, this is interesting. Just a side note, but motivationally, if one reason you should return to the Lord, one reason why you should turn away from specific sins or from general idolatry—of seeing your identity apart from the Lord God, of looking to the good things that he’s given you for ultimate joy and gladness as opposed to him—one reason you should turn away from that is that when you do that, your children suffer. And a motivation for you to return is your children will be treated kindly by their captors.

Now I don’t know what stronger motivation a man could have or a woman could have than their children, who have been led away captive, will be treated graciously by their captors. That’s strong motivation, my friend. And our children aren’t led away captive at this point in our history, but our children suffer when we sin. And one tremendous motivation for returning wholeheartedly to Christ during this season as we prepare for Resurrection Sunday, or one tremendous motivation for turning to God and away from your idolatry, is the well-being of your very children themselves.

He brings that into this:

“For the Lord your God is gracious and merciful. Will not turn his face from you if you return to him.”

Turn. Turn. Just think—you turn to him, he’ll return to you. He won’t turn his face away from you if you return to him.

So the runners—rather, the runners—pass from city to city throughout the country of Ephraim, Manasseh, as far as Zebulun, but they laughed at them and mocked them. So there’s the laughing and mocking. We don’t know why, but that’s part of what people do in response.

Nevertheless, some from Asher, Manasseh, and Zebulun humbled themselves. So there it is. You either mock or you get humbled. You either hear the word of God and you repent and you turn to him and you’re humble before him, or you become stiff-necked and you mock him. So the word of God has a way of pushing people one way or the other. You’re either in an aroma of life, the message of God is, or an aroma of death to those who are perishing.

And so some mock, but these other ones from the northern tribes humbled themselves and came to Jerusalem.

By the way, you know, if you’re Hezekiah and you’re the people in the north and it makes clear all the assembly are doing this, do you really want to treat the northerners like they’re part of your united kingdom? I mean, there’s a lot of north-south rivalry built up over the years here. And maybe you just want to tell them, “Yeah, good for you. We knew that was going to happen to you. Too bad for you. Now see what you’re going to do.” But no, the southerners reach out in grace, imploring the northerners to return. And indeed, for the first time since the day of Jeroboam, people from the north come to attend Passover at Jerusalem.

And now this is very important. Verse 12:

“The hand of God was on Judah to give them singleness of heart to obey the command of the king and the leaders at the word of the Lord.”

So you know, “Turn to God and he’ll return to you.” But then this text tells us that the reason why people turn to God in singleness of heart is because the hand of God is on them. So this shows the sovereignty of God in the whole process. The command is real. Repent. Return to the Lord. This is where you’ll find joy as you return to the Lord. But behind that command being real and efficacious, you’ve got a real choice to make.

Ultimately, it’s the sovereignty of God, the hand of the Lord, that put it in the heart of Judah to come with singleness of mind to obey the command of the king and the leaders at the word of the Lord.

All right? And so that’s the first part—this thing is established and the king sends out his runners and he tells them to return.

The second section really is about the keeping of the Passover itself. And it’s got an interesting center. We’ll get to it in a minute.

“Now many people, a very great assembly gathered at Jerusalem to keep the Feast of Unleavened Bread in the second month.”

The terms “unleavened bread” and “Passover” have become basically synonymous. So that’s what’s going on here.

“They arose and took away the altars that were in Jerusalem. They took away all the incense altars and cast them into the Brook Kidron.”

As they prepared for the feast, they get rid of their idolatry. As we go to the table of the Lord, we’re to cast out the leaven of hypocrisy. We’re supposed to put on the new leaven of sincerity, right? So we do the same thing when we come to the Lord’s table. When we prepare for the greater Passover, we are reminded to return to the Lord and throw out our idols.

“Then they slaughtered the Passover lambs on the 14th day of the second month.”

“The priests and the Levites were ashamed because they hadn’t been sanctified. And they sanctified themselves and brought the burnt offerings to the house of the Lord.”

And this is in the middle. Now, if this outline is correct, and I think it is, they stood in their place according to their custom, according to the law of Moses, the man of God. Okay? So in spite of the irregularities, these priests have to quickly consecrate themselves. They weren’t really ready to go. The Levites are helping because they’re not really ready to go. It’s the wrong day, you know, technically speaking, but the text wants us to see at the center of it that what they’re trying to do is obey God and the laws that he’s given them that came from Moses’ hand.

So you return to the Lord by trying to keep his word, and that’s the source of joy and gladness. So, you know, even though there are irregularities in their performance of this, the text wants us not to become antinomian—against God’s law—as a result of that. Think, “Whatever God puts in our heart is okay.” No, we don’t want that to happen. That’s a ditch. And God is keeping us from that ditch by having at the very center of this that they keep the Passover according to their custom, which was the law of God delivered by Moses.

So that’s at the very center. Don’t forget it.

“The priests sprinkled the blood received from the hands of the Levites. For there were many in the assembly who hadn’t sanctified themselves. Therefore, the Levites had charge of the slaughter of the Passover lambs for everyone who was not clean to sanctify them to the Lord.”

So we got unclean people participating in this Passover.

“For a multitude of the people, many from Ephraim, Manasseh, Issachar, and Zebulun had not cleansed themselves. Yet they ate the Passover contrary to what was written.”

Okay? So this is the way this text is. It’s messy. It’s the wrong day, and they don’t do it according to what was written because some of the people that were unclean ate the Passover anyway. And yet the very center is they’re trying to keep the law of God.

Then we get to the last section—the last section where we have this wonderful week of peace offerings and confession. And how does it start? This section that focuses on joy and gladness.

“But Hezekiah prayed for them”—for the people who partook unlawfully. They weren’t supposed to take the Passover because they were unclean. And it appears that the priests and the Levites knew this. It’s why they were doing it the way they did.

“Hezekiah prayed for them saying, ‘May the good Lord provide atonement for everyone who prepares his heart to seek God, the Lord God of his fathers.’”

He prepared his heart. He might not have gotten himself prepared ceremonially. Some of them didn’t. He didn’t prepare correctly ceremonially, but he prepared his heart to seek the Lord.

And Hezekiah says the good Lord. He asks the good Lord to provide atonement for people whose hearts are right. For people whose hearts are right, though these people are not cleansed according to the purification of the sanctuary.

“The Lord listened to Hezekiah and healed the people.”

He heals them. He doesn’t strike them dead. He blesses them through the Passover that they partook of—technically, illegally, in an unclean state. That’s what the text says.

I love the text because it’s telling us in a historical account that history is messy. Our lives are messy. Our lives are not lives of perfection, doing everything right. And that’s what this text is about. Hezekiah prays for them. The Lord listened to Hezekiah and healed the people.

“So the children of Israel who were present at Jerusalem kept the Feast of Unleavened Bread seven days with great gladness.”

There it is. We get to gladness through the grace and mercy of a good Lord who, when you return to him with your heart, even though you don’t do everything right, will hear the prayers of the greater Hezekiah, the Lord Jesus Christ, and will bless you and provide atonement for you, will heal you and bring you into great gladness. Great gladness. That’s what this text is heading toward. It’s moving from this command through calling them to turn through trying to do things according to the word of God at the center, and now to great gladness and joy.

“And the Levites and the priests praised the Lord day by day, singing to the Lord, accompanied by instruments of power.”

Literally instruments of power. You know, I’m going to make this point so I don’t miss it. And if I make it again later, it’s okay. It’s good to hear it twice.

This phrase “instruments of power”—we don’t know exactly what it meant. We don’t know if they were loud instruments, if they had electric amps. No, it probably didn’t have that. But these were loud instruments, the instruments of power. Maybe not loud, maybe powerful. I think what’s going on is that instruments and singing are instruments and singing of power to accomplish their purpose.

When you come to worship, you reach great gladness through worship. Now, it’s interesting because in the last chapter in 2 Chronicles 29, it says that the Levites sang with joy. But really the word is “singing unto joy.” And the indication seems to be that what’s going on in the singing in Hezekiah’s day is they sing until joy is reached, and that the singing with instruments is powerful to bring you to joy.

That seems to be what’s going on. And so, you know, the idea is when you come here, you don’t come in and everything’s joy and happiness and gladness right away. You’ve got stuff you’re working through. You’ve got sufferings that may be going on right now in your pew. My eyes still watering. Whatever it is. But God says that we’re to sing and we’re to sing in such a way, and have people trained in music in such a way, as to process those difficulties and trials and tribulations.

We’ve returned to the Lord, maybe imperfectly, but we’ve returned to him today for joy and gladness. And part of reaching joy and gladness is having musicians and song leaders who can do this with power—power to bring you to joy and gladness in spite of the tribulations that you live in the context of. I think that’s what’s going on here. And I think that’s what it’s talking about here when it says that they had loud instruments or instruments of power.

You know, you don’t sing a psalm because it’s always a happy clappy deal. A lot of the psalms are pretty depressed, but they resolve by the end of them. And that’s what worship is supposed to do. It’s supposed to resolve all of these things for you, to get a heavenly perspective, to see that everything’s okay, the Lord is in control. And whether you’ve done things perfectly or not, and whether the culture is going to hell or not, it’s okay. God’s sovereign hand is upon you. And when you return to him, he’ll heal you. And part of that healing is using the power of worship itself to bring you to joy and gladness.

So that by the time we get to the end here, that’s where we’re supposed to be. Okay?

And that’s what the psalms are like. Why do we sing dreadful psalms? Because our lives are dreadful oftentimes. And we need to resonate with the dreariness of some of the psalms, the depression of them, the difficulties of them, because they resolve in the context of singing them. They move toward—again, there’s an arc. We move from one thing into joy and gladness.

“Verse 22: Hezekiah gave encouragement to all the Levites who taught the good knowledge of the Lord, and they ate throughout the feast seven days, offering peace offerings and making confession to the Lord God of our fathers.”

That’s the center of the last part. A week-long deal. The peace offerings, the culmination offering. Everybody gets to eat from that. Not just God, not just the priests. Everybody’s eating together. They’re all singing together. They’re all praying together. They’re making confession to the Lord of what a good God he is. They’re making confession sincerely, wholeheartedly. Making confession in the context of that week-long celebration. That’s the joy and gladness.

“So the whole assembly agreed to keep the feast another seven days.”

This is too good. Family camp’s too much fun this year. Let’s talk the folks into letting us stay another week if we can. That’s what it was like here. They’re not always like that, the weeks. But here it was. They said, “Let’s do it another week.” And they kept it another seven days with gladness.

“For Hezekiah, king of Judah, gave to the assembly a thousand bulls and seven thousand sheep, and the leaders gave to the assembly a thousand bulls and ten thousand sheep, and a great number of priests sanctified themselves.”

A godly leadership makes for a glad, rejoicing people who don’t want to go home. And that’s what these people were like. Hezekiah provided for it, and they kept it going.

“The whole assembly of Judah rejoiced, also the priests and Levites, all the assembly that came from Israel, the sojourners who came from the land of Israel, those who dwelt in Judah.”

Judah, Israel, Israel, Judah. Little structure that says altogether, the people of God rejoiced in the context of this as they turned, they tried to do what was right in the middle, and then they had this week-long feast at the end.

“And there was great joy in Jerusalem. For since the time of Solomon, the son of David, king of Israel, there had been nothing like this in Jerusalem.”

“And the priests, the Levites, arose and blessed the people, and their voice was heard, and their prayers came up to his holy dwelling place in heaven.”

What a wonderful text, isn’t it? Hezekiah’s great Passover, 2 Chronicles 30, and that great Passover is sketched out for us in a lovely way.

Let’s make a few points here as we try to make application. So we’ve said we’ve said that we return to God and we’ve looked at the arc of the story, and turning to God results in great joy. And we just made the point that returning imperfectly to the Lord with our hearts is what this is about.

And that’s why I got off on all this, to show you that there were wrong things going on. Priests weren’t all cleaned. The Levites actually had to do things in the temple that they weren’t supposed to do. There weren’t enough priests, it says in chapter 29, to skin all the animals and stuff. So the Levites were doing stuff they weren’t supposed to be doing. The people that ate the Passover were eating, and some of them weren’t supposed to be eating it.

And really they were supposed to be doing it a month earlier. So there were a lot of things going wrong, which, by the way, is proof that it’s inspired because in Chronicles the whole point is doing everything right liturgically. It’s an analysis of history based on worship. So it shows us this is really an accurate account. Otherwise he would have, you know, tidied up all the errors. But to us it gives us great confidence to return to the Lord and desire to serve him with our hearts, even if we can only do it imperfectly.

So that’s the point here: the text is a wonderful text that shows us the messiness of life, and yet the grace, the mercy, the goodness of God, who desires to heal his people and to bring us from difficulties and trials, turning to him, to bring us into great joy and gladness—repeated four times as the text moved to a conclusion.

So returning imperfectly. Returning to the Lord with humility. I talked about this earlier. It says the difference between the people that responded: some mocked and scoffed, and some were humble. Some people think, “I’m above God. I’m as good as God. I can figure it all out.” And some people say, “Whoa, what am I doing? The Lord God of all creation is calling me to come to his place to worship him and to love him,” and humbling themselves before him. That’s what brings us—that’s really the mark of whether you’ve turned to the Lord, returned to the Lord or not—is humility of heart.

1 Peter 5:5:

“Likewise, you younger people, submit yourselves to your elders. Yes, all of you, be submissive to one another and be clothed with humility. God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble.”

God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble. Are you struggling? Become humble. That’s what it—that’s the end result here. This is repeated a number of times in the New Testament. I’ve got the references on your outline.

Our Savior says pretty much the same thing. These ref—in Matthew 23:12:

“Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

The key to returning to the Lord is humility. Humility before God that says, “You know, he’s the source of joy and gladness. He made me. He made all of this. How can I possibly try to self-identify who I am, to see myself in isolation from the very God who not only gave me life but sustains me? God removes my breath, I die. That’s the end of it.”

Okay? May the Lord God grant us humility of heart, that we would not be stiff-necked and proud like our fathers have been.

Matthew Henry says:

“There is in the carnal mind a stiffness, an obstinacy, an unhappiness to comply with God. We have it from our fathers. It’s bred in the bone with us. It must be conquered. He and the will that had in it the spirit of contradiction must be melted into the will of God.”

Recognize this is who we are in the old man: stubborn, prideful, self-sufficient—American spirit, independent. God wants us to have a degree of personal strength, but he wants us to be meek, strong horses under the harness of the Lord Jesus Christ. Humbled, broken to the harness of Jesus. It doesn’t mean weak people. Meekness is being broken to his harness. And that means being humbled before the Lord God.

May the Lord God grant us today to drive out obstinacy and the stiffness of our neck that’s so prevalent to our fallen nature, and grant us humility before him.

Fourth, returning to the Lord corporately and liturgically. And this is what I was talking about earlier. Returning to the Lord—explicitly in chapter 30—is about it, and it’s the beginning of the united period of time here between the two nations. It’s about liturgy. It’s not about personal relationship with Jesus, I mean, it is about that. There are personal responses that we’ve seen, but it’s about corporately coming together with the rest of the body of Christ to worship God. It’s returning corporately and liturgically as the beginning of the rest of our lives.

And so it’s quite important to see that. And as I said, liturgically, this is what brings us from difficulties and trials into rejoicing.

Fifth, returning to the Lord is covenant renewal. I mentioned this phrase, “the God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel,” on your outlines under point number five. It’s only used four times, I think, in the whole Bible—the God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel. And the first place it’s used is Exodus 32:13, after the golden calf incident. And Moses pleads with the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel to not destroy Israel, the people of God, because of their gross idolatry.

It’s repeated in this phrase in 1 Kings 18, and this is where Elijah is doing battle with the prophets of Baal, and he calls on God as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel. And then it’s listed twice in 1 Chronicles 29:18 and here in chapter 30. But the point here is that in every one of these occasions, what’s happening is God is renewing the covenant with the people.

They’ve broken covenant by worshipping the golden calf in the wilderness. They broke covenant by worshipping the followers—with the followers of Baal. And they’ve broken covenant here by being disunited and not doing what God wanted them to do. And in each case, God is calling them back to liturgical assembly, but he is going to, in that liturgical assembly, renew covenant with them and give them a history and a future—rather, a posterity.

That’s specifically what Moses asks for in Exodus: that God would grant posterity and land, the possession of the earth, a future to his people. And so the phrase implies a future, but it implies covenant renewal. And so what happens is the returning to the Lord in 2 Chronicles 30—at least—is a returning to the Lord who will renew covenant with them in the context of liturgical assembly. And that’s what he does. That’s what he does with them. And that’s what he does with us when we obey the word to return here today with our hearts.

Sixth, returning to the Lord and to our cities. I give you on your outline an outline that David Dorsey did of the movement of this whole section of Chronicles from chapter 29-36. And what happens in the next chapter is the very first verse says that the people return to their cities.

So he asks them to return to God, and we see the end result of that is joy and gladness and mercy and blessing from God in heaven. And then they return to their cities, and reforms are then carried out in the cities. And one of the first ones that’s talked about at some length is the tithe, which affects what they do with their money that they make during the week.

So returning to the Lord liturgically prepares us to return to our cities with a renewed commitment to obey God even in our finances. Even in our finances. So returning to the Lord liturgically is preparation for returning to our cities in obedience to God. And so that’s what they do, and joyful worship then should prepare us to return to our homes with a renewed commitment to honor Jesus Christ in all of our lives.

And then seventh, returning to the Lord is preparation for great deliverance. And this is interesting. I know I’m a little long, but hang in here.

Now, you know, the center of Isaiah is God’s delivering Hezekiah and the people of Israel from the Assyrian horde at the gate. Remember, the center of Isaiah, he spreads out the bad words of the leaders of the Assyrians who hate God. And he asks for God to kill God’s enemies and to deliver his people. And God says, “Okay.” And the next morning they get up, and all the enemies—tons of them—have been killed. The king—the king of the Assyrians gets killed in his own idolatrous temple by his two sons. God strikes them all dead.

In the middle of Isaiah is the prayer of Hezekiah in the temple. But that is what happens—in Isaiah or in 2 Chronicles 32. The telling of it in 2 Chronicles is found in chapter 32. So God has them return in chapter 30 liturgically. He has them return to their cities in obedience and start paying their tithes again and other things. And this prepares—then this is how the Chronicler puts the setting—for Hezekiah’s prayer that Jerusalem and Judah would be delivered from the Assyrians when they surround the city.

The point is you can’t wait till the devastation happens. They were prepared for that deliverance by returning to him before the Assyrians attack the south. And so they return liturgically. They return to their cities in faithfulness. And that’s preparation. The Chronicler says for God hearing our prayers when, you know, the Libyans or the Chinese or whoever it is may be at the doors of our homes. Whoever it is, preparation for that comes from returning to God liturgically and returning to our cities in obedience. And that’s what sets up God’s answer to prayer, Hezekiah’s prayer, to save the whole nation in chapter 32.

So returning to the Lord is really important, not just for your own personal joy and gladness, but for the well-being of the nation. For the well-being of the nation. 2 Chronicles 7:14 is used nationally and properly so. And the well-being of the nation comes when the people of God do what we’re trying to do here at RCC this year: to return to the Lord, to be healed by him, to be brought into joy and gladness, and then to return to our cities and increase faithfulness this week.

And that’s—God says—what will deliver your nation ultimately. That’s the way the Chronicler puts it.

And of course, in all of this, we’re returning to the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus said, you know, in Matthew 12:42:

“The queen of the south will rise up in the judgment against this generation and condemn it, for she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and indeed a greater than Solomon is here.”

Jesus said Hezekiah is connected to the great Solomon, but even a greater Solomon is the one who gave us the call to worship today—the Lord Jesus Christ, who provides his own body and blood as the New Testament Passover. And the scriptures make that connection that our Passover lamb has been sacrificed for us.

Hezekiah didn’t die for the people. Jesus did. He died for our sins, for our well-being. We’re to return to him. We hear him through the voice of Hezekiah. We hear him through the unity of Solomon. We hear him as the one who pleads for us in heaven. And God says he answers the prayers of the Savior. He’s merciful and gracious to us because of the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ.

May we hear the voice of Jesus calling us to return to joy as we return to him during this season.

Let’s pray. Father…