I can't imagine a better epitaph than, "he did what was
right in the eyes of the Lord."
Hezekiah did just that. In the
very first year of his reign he began repairing and re-opening the temple and
he invited everyone to come, all the nation.
So lax was the nation about its worship that it wasn't even regularly keeping
Passover. If you don't keep that
festival there is very little motivation to keep the rest seeing that it
celebrates God's adoption of the nation as His own treasured possession. There weren't enough priests who consecrated
themselves for the festival so it had to wait it had to be postponed. Hezekiah reached out to those who had been
dispossessed from the land by the Assyrians and yet most of these were
perfectly content in their exile and laughed the messengers to scorn. Really, you were driven out of your land
because of your apostasy and are now offered a chance to get it back and you
tell the messengers to go away, you're perfectly happy elsewhere? Their ancestors who conquered the land would
roll over in their graves. As they celebrated
priests and Levites, the spiritual leaders and servants, were ashamed and
consecrated themselves. The people
celebrated in great numbers and with great joy.
Leadership made all the difference.
Hezekiah began in the right place. He got his own house in order, took the log
out of the eye of his people, the people of Judah, before he reached out to the
people of Israel and offered them a chance to repent. That is what Jesus is counseling here. The church has to do the same thing to recover
its moral voice. We have to deal with
issues like divorce that destroyed families and generations of children our
tolerance of premarital sex and the culture of promiscuity it created. We have to deal with issues like greed and
pride and racism and repent of what we have done and left undone in seeking
justice and mercy. When we are willingly
to honestly deal with sin in our own house we can begin to speak about other
issues to the world. In our liturgy we
affirm over and over we serve a merciful God and it is fortunate for us that
this is true, we need a merciful and forgiving God. It is to this God, our Abba, Father, that we
make our prayers and supplications and like Hezekiah we trust in Him to forgive
our sins as we come to worship in spirit and truth.
Paul continues with his analysis of the spiritual life and
relationships. His advice is based in
Jesus' admonitions to be prepared for His coming. Paul believed, as I said yesterday, that the
return was imminent and therefore His counsel is based on focusing all your
attention on being ready. Anything that
got in the way of that readiness was to be put aside. We, in our society today, spend a great deal
of time, talent and treasure on readiness preparation but I don't mean that
this readiness is for the right thing. We
prepare to preserve something, our family, our stuff, our lives, and our way of
life in the event of the zombie apocalypse, an electro-magnetic pulse, stray
meteor, or some other disaster and the amount of time and treasure spent on
these things could be re-focused on preparation for His coming. I recall well the Y2K mess and the Mayan
calendar and so many other things that did not come to pass and yet what
difference does any of this make in eternity.
It is never too late to turn and recognize how much of what we do is
wasted on earthly concerns. Let us
restore the church to its purpose, to glorify God and enjoy Him forever, proclaiming
Jesus to the world.
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